Download the full transcript PDF.

[00:00:00] Sarah: Hello, listeners. Welcome back for another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:00:03] Annette: I’m Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:00:05] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:00:06] Sarah: Let’s kick off this episode like we do every week, and that’s sharing one of you, our amazing listeners who’s using our hashtag on Instagram. Use #STRShareSunday, and we will find you and share you here on the podcast, and you’ll get a little love in our email blast, sharing in our podcast information. Annette, who are we sharing this week?

[00:00:26] Annette: This week, we are sharing @retroretreatscincy. That’s CINCY with a Y, C-I-N-C-Y, Retro Retreats Cincy. Everyone, please, if you’re driving, I understand, but sometime this week, please go give them a follow. We have been following along for quite some time, and they have four different apartments. And exactly what they said, they are Retro Retreats, but they are television-themed.

[00:00:56] They are of course not named this for licensing purposes, uh, so they have different names, but I’m going to go with the generic names of them, or the famous names. They have a Schitt’s Creek spot. They have a Golden Girls, Friends, and last but not least, Seinfeld, and they crushed it.

[00:01:17] Sarah: Crushed it.

[00:01:18] Annette: We might have to have them on the show because I want to know how long it took them to source all of the things in these properties. Please, go give them some love. Kudos to them for really thinking about what they wanted to do, going after it, crushing it. And they just recently opened up this year, but man, I want to hear about the success of going in on a niche and making it happen in Cincinnati, Ohio. I’m sure that the amount of, um, shares on social media are pretty intense, but I just think, what a fun thing to bring these sitcom places. They essentially feel like the set. You’re in the sitcom. 

[00:02:10] Sarah: When you want to stay at all four, the way that you can– not repurpose, but just truly asking guests to come back and experience the other units. 

[00:02:20] Annette: Okay. We’re going to have to do this, Sarah. We’re going to have to go film YouTube. We’re going to have to take on a character in each sitcom.

[00:02:26] Sarah: I want to be Moira.

[00:02:27] Annette: Okay. I actually think I want to be the dad.

[00:02:30] Sarah: Okay. It’s weird, but I’m here for it.

[00:02:32] Annette: What Golden Girl?

[00:02:33] Sarah: Ooh, I want to be Rose.

[00:02:36] Annette: Okay. I think I want to be Blanche. Why not? Okay, Seinfeld, I want to be the shorter guy. What’s his name?

[00:02:47] Sarah: George.

[00:02:48] Annette: I want to be George. And then–

[00:02:49] Sarah: I’ll be Elaine.

[00:02:50] Annette: In Friends, I want to be Phoebe. Stole her from you.

[00:02:53] Sarah: I don’t want to be Phoebe. I’ll be Monica all day long. Okay.

[00:02:57] Annette: All right. So Retro Retreats, we’re going to come for you. Everybody, give them some love. That’s exciting. But so is this episode.

[00:03:05] Sarah: Listeners, don’t tell Ray, but we were like, okay, we have to make sure we like ask Ray really good questions because we just don’t want the same information for our listeners. No. Ray brought it today.

[00:03:16] Annette: He gave a master class.

[00:03:18] Sarah: He killed it. Ray Vargas is the owner of Home Sweet Hudson, a luxury vacation rental management company located in the beautiful Catskills Hudson Valley region of New York, just two hours north of New York City.

[00:03:30] What started off as a side hustle turned into an opportunity to follow his dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. And we’d love to give you little like teasers to get you excited for the episode. My favorite part of this interview was the hiring tips that Ray shared with us. I was just like, of course, that makes so much sense. And I haven’t done that. I need to do that.

[00:03:54] Annette: My favorite part was the pressure test.

[00:03:56] Sarah: Ooh, that was good too.

[00:03:57] Annette: And what happens when he doesn’t do the pressure test.

[00:04:00] Sarah: Listeners, get ready.

[00:04:01] Ray: Ray, welcome to the show. We are so excited to talk all things leaving corporate jobs, starting a business, and absolutely crushing the hospitality industry. Share with our listeners a little bit about your story and what you were doing before you were managing short-term rentals.

[00:04:21] Thank you for having me on the show. I had been working for corporate America all my adult life and was working at a New York City for a digital media company, and wanted to buy real estate and found a house upstate in the Hudson Valley. And at the time, which is funny, this is pre-COVID, so I was working remote before remote was actually popular. 

[00:04:47] I was traveling a ton, and so my house was sitting there unoccupied. I love using Airbnb personally as a traveler. And so for fun, I decided to put my house on Airbnb. Before I could even realize, it was booking every single weekend, and I just couldn’t find anyone globally to help me manage the property.

[00:05:10] And there’s where I saw the opportunity that there was a need in the market. And it just started off as a side hustle, doing it while I was working my 9-5. And before I knew it, it was two full-time jobs. Deep down, I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and start my own business. I never knew what I wanted to do. This just fell on my lap, and I took the leap of faith, and here we are five years later. 

[00:05:37] Sarah: Okay, I love the story of, you were trying to find someone to help you manage or manage for you, but instead of throwing up your hands and saying, maybe this isn’t going to work for me because I have this job that I have to focus on, you doubled down and managed your own property. What were those things that you were hearing when you were trying to find help? What were people saying to you, or was truly no one answering the phone? Was there no one to call?

[00:06:01] Ray: People not being able to get into the apartment. They can’t find the keys, or the cleaner, last minute, decided that they weren’t available to turn over the property, or someone needing to be let in early because they want to early check-in. I found myself often calling friends in the community like, hey, I’m in a pinch. I’m in LA. They’re locked, and there’s a snow storm. I need you to go out there. 

[00:06:27] And so that’s when I quickly realized I needed to get involved. So I literally was cleaning [Inaudible]. Back in those days, people were actually open to meeting in person versus just self-check-in. And also, to add, I have a three-bedroom home. The back of the house has a mother-daughter living space. So I was actually renting that unit itself. 

[00:06:53] So the times where I was home, I was able to greet them. A lot of times, they’d come hang out in the backyard. We’d light a fire and maybe become friends with these people. And that’s when I realized this was a hospitality business. I am creating unique experiences for these people, developing relationships, and now I’m seeing them come back year after year and spending time. And now we manage about 50 homes. So they’re bouncing around, which is pretty cool. But, um, yeah, I learned everything doing it myself.

[00:07:27] Annette: Was there something special, Ray, that you were doing in those early days where you’re like, wait a second, I’ve got something here that other hosts don’t have? What do you think your secret sauce was at that time to continue to get booked every weekend and have a problem on your hands, a good problem on your hands? How did you start out as a unique experience or just offering something that others didn’t?

[00:07:52] Ray: It still happens. And I actually grew up in the Hudson Valley. And so when I was living in New York City and decided to buy real estate up north, I had left when I was 18. When I bought the house, I was around 36, so it was a little bit of a homecoming, but I am a local. And so for me, it was very natural to offer cool recommendations like private swimming pools in areas where people wouldn’t really know existed unless you lived there.

[00:08:25] And so partnering with local restaurants, kayak companies, concierge-type experiences, so that when guests come to the house, they have, a lot of times, a full itinerary set before they even arrive, which for me, it was really fun, and it always led to five-star reviews and repeat business.

[00:08:52] Annette: Obviously, half the battle is finding where you’re going to stay. And then after you conquer that, you’re so pumped after you get maybe your flight or you know what car you’re driving, and you know when and where, and then you’re like, oh, now the real planning begins. What am I going to do once I get there?

[00:09:08] And if you can take that weight off and just that mental mortgage for your guests, I’m sure that’s why you were winning. And like you said, those smaller things that other hosts may not have known that were newer to the area. Love that. Can you go back to that first property that you listed and started to host? What year was that, Ray?

[00:09:25] Ray: It was around 2017.

[00:09:28] Annette: Okay. And then take us through the journey there of, you’ve got your two full-time jobs. You’re like, wait a second, no one else can help me. I’m going to have to help myself. To you helping others. Because I know there’s a lot of listeners that maybe they’re crushing it with their first one and people are starting to ask them, or they’re like, could I do this more? Just talk to us about your journey of growing your business.

[00:09:50] Ray: It really happened organically. So as I mentioned earlier, I grew up in that area. And so coming back, I reestablished old friendships of people that I’ve known since we were five years old that are now business owners, or plumbers, electricians, cleaners. My father was also a custom home builder in the area for about 35 years.

[00:10:13] Annette: That doesn’t hurt when it comes to leads.

[00:10:16] Ray: Yeah. When I told my dad about this idea, he’s like, oh my God, it’s brilliant. We have all these people that can support you. And so in the beginning, I outsourced a lot of our services. So housekeepers were independent contractors. I was doing all the guest messaging myself.

[00:10:35] If there was a maintenance-related issue, I would just find someone locally that I knew who maybe was a contractor and could help me out on the side. In terms of new business, that was interesting because being that we were the first professional management company in the market, as soon as real estate agents found that we even existed and created our Instagram handle, leads just started to flood in, and people were just like, thank you for creating this business. We’ve been wanting and needing someone desperately. 

[00:11:09] Because a lot of the clients I work with primarily live in New York City and have a second home in the Hudson Valley, which they visit more time. So when they’re not there, they needed someone to trust that was local. And that was us. And that is us.

[00:11:26] Annette: Everyone’s probably wants to go to your Instagram right now. I know a lot of people say, this is the number one question we get, but this is truly one of the most frequent questions we get for hosts that want to become co-hosts and/or property managers. What content were you posting there, Ray, that would pique their interest? Can you give us some ideas of those early days of your social content that you’re posting?

[00:11:49] Ray: Yeah, so in the beginning, it was the homes themselves. And, knock on wood, we were fortunate to bring on very special homes. Cabins, mid-century, modern homes with pools and hot tubs in parts of the Hudson Valley that are very secluded and very private. So just the homes themselves were impressive. 

[00:12:12] And then we just started posting the day in the life, just sharing stories around how our maintenance manager, Tony Garcia, who’s really the heart and soul of our company, would do the most incredible things, from saving a bird in a chimney, uh, to fixing the most random things. Uh, just the other day, someone had an above-ground pool, and the liner busted, and the entire pool drained.

[00:12:43] Sarah: Oh no.

[00:12:44] Ray: Zero. Gone. During the middle of a reservation. Um, within a week, he was able to get a new one installed and saved all of the upcoming reservations.

[00:12:54] Annette: Tony Garcia. 

[00:12:55] Sarah: Tony.

[00:12:56] Ray: Yeah, we had this inside thing called set the tone because he’s always setting the tone. 

[00:13:02] Annette: That’s brilliant. And listeners, do not go poaching Tony Garcia. He has a very, very airtight contract with Ray.

[00:13:11] Ray: Yeah, yeah.

[00:13:12] Annette: Don’t let your cleaner’s name out, Ray, because people will start–

[00:13:16] Sarah: They’re vicious out there.

[00:13:18] Annette: Take us through your first client. And actually, if you don’t mind sharing, share with us some of the mistakes you made. Did you undercharge? Did you take on too many clients? I know you’ve probably learned some lessons the hard way. And if we could spare our listeners some of those, could you share a few of those?

[00:13:34] Ray: Yeah. So interesting enough, our first client was someone that I actually went to high school with. He happened to own a house about 30 minutes away from where we were based, which was out of my garage at the time. And in the beginning, we used to just have these handshake agreements that, hey, we were going to manage your house, and we’ll do all the pricing, and we’re full service. You don’t have to do anything.

[00:14:02] And while it worked, and I think everyone benefited from that, eventually, once we started to get five, six, seven properties, we realized that we needed to have a contract or some management agreement that really protected both sides of the partnership so that the homeowner felt very secure about what our expectations were and what services we were going to deliver, as well as setting rules and boundaries with homeowners.

[00:14:35] I’ll give you an example. So we require [inaudible] cameras at the front entrance pointing towards the driveway just so that we have visibility on a few things. It’s snowing. We want to make sure that service provider is servicing the house. But if the housekeeper indicates that maybe there was a party, too many people at the house, we can go back to the camera. All of our homeowners have access to the camera as well. So a lot of times, they’ll see something during a reservation.

[00:15:04] Annette: Mm. 

[00:15:04] Sarah: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:04] Ray: Uh, so our support team will say, hey, there’s someone doing something that we’re not happy with, and we need you to reach out to them. And so as you can imagine, that puts us in a pretty tight scenario. We want to protect the guest’s privacy. We want to protect the guest’s experience, and we also want to protect our brand. We don’t want people saying Home Sweet Hudson, people are on us while we’re at the house. Um, so we had rules around that and understanding that that works for both sides.

[00:15:37] Annette: And I’m sure in the beginning, were you bringing on anyone and everyone that would call Home Sweet Hudson and just say, hey, can you manage my property? And has that changed over time? 

[00:15:47] Ray: Yeah. It’s a great point. And a lot of them are actually still with us, as I mentioned. We were lucky to bring on some special homes. And over time, we’ve become even more particular, especially when it comes to aesthetics and interior design. We firmly believe that that has a very big impact in terms of maximizing your income, as well as professional photos.

[00:16:13] So case study, first year of doing business, we had a client who had taken their own photos of the property, and they were very adamant that there were good enough and didn’t want to spend money on professional photography. So we agreed to move forward. Within two months, they weren’t getting many bookings. 

[00:16:37] They were, obviously, frustrated and wanting us to do something about it, and I said, well, let’s try doing professional photos. We did, and within 24 hours, their listing was just booking. And it’s a beautiful home. So once we were able to present it in all its beauty, it just started booking like crazy. So photography is definitely very important.

[00:17:02] Annette: And can you share with us, if you don’t mind, in the Hudson Valley, when you’re talking to a homeowner about that investment, how high does that investment go on the professional photos there? What average do you give them that they’re going to have to invest?

[00:17:15] Ray: No more than a $1,000. That includes staging, which we take into consideration. We also include drone footage, which in our area is very important because it’s in the middle of the woods, and during full foliage, you want to have those dramatic shots. So yeah, I would say drones, staging, is about a 1,000.

[00:17:39] Sarah: I want to shift the conversation a little bit to your personal life and how it was affected by this change of starting your own company, Ray. My first question is, when did you decide to quit that job? Was it replacing your revenue? Was it just you believing in this and that you didn’t quite replace it, but you really believed in yourself? What was that catalyst?

[00:18:03] Ray: That’s a good question. So it really was a blessing in disguise. And I say that because about eight months after I purchased the home, me and my partner at the time, we had moved into the house, and my company was acquired by another huge organization that let go of 90 people, including my entire team, one day.

[00:18:29] And at that point, we had already on boarded a few properties. And again, this was just a side hustle. Tony Garcia happened to be working with a contractor who was doing some remodeling in my house while I got laid off. And so he saw me firsthand doing interviews on Zoom, traveling to different places looking for a job.

[00:18:56] And eventually I realized that I was no longer interested in pursuing corporate America, and I had this wonderful opportunity in front of me and just decided that I was going to go all in. Very scary because there wasn’t a lot of revenue at that point. We were like five properties. Um, but I just relied on my savings. We worked out of my house, and it was the best decision I made.

[00:19:26] Sarah: Let’s talk about, you were traveling all the time, and now you have this position where, and tell me if you’ve figured a secret out that I haven’t, it requires you to be there, especially because you’re open 24/7/365. And as you’re building your business, you probably need to be around more often. It’s not impossible to do it remotely, but talk to us about that life change of you needing to be at home building this team and that lifestyle change.

[00:19:53] Ray: Yeah. So I loved it. Hudson Valley is an incredible place not only to live but also to work, especially in this industry. In fact, onboarding certain homes have brought me to parts of the Hudson Valley I never even knew existed. That was just a gift in itself, but we have a pretty big team now.

[00:20:13] I have about eight full-time employees. We have a very structured organization, a lot of standard operating procedures, and so I have the luxury of working remote and being on site. Actually, I just came back this afternoon from– I did an overnight at a house that we’re onboarding, which is part of our onboarding process. We’ll stay at the home as guests to get information around what we think guests are going to have questions about.

[00:20:43] Ooh, let’s dig in right there. So Sarah and I call it, uh, have a trusted, uh, truth-telling friend say. Do you have a report that you fill out, things that you check? Take a hot shower, make a pizza [Inaudible]. Can you give us some of the Home Sweet Hudson secrets of your overnight stays, what you’re looking for? Yeah, it’s a pressure test document. It’s a living, breathing document because we’re always adding new things. And yeah, we find the most random things. So this overnight, I actually was sleeping in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and it has a ceiling fan with a light, and at around 4:00 AM, the light just came on totally by itself. 

[00:21:24] Annette: That’s called a ghost.

[00:21:25] Ray: Sounded like it was haunted.

[00:21:27] Annette: I don’t know if that’s on your list of like, make sure it’s not haunted. Or maybe it is. Maybe that’s an amenity. Who knows?

[00:21:32] Ray: We’re now looking out for ghosts. Um, but yeah, me and Tony were laughing about it today because you never know what you run into unless you stay at the property. And I’ll tell you, there have been times where we didn’t have the bandwidth to do the overnight, and we were like, you know what, let’s just get it live, start renting in, and it never fails.

[00:21:55] We start getting questions that we do not know how to answer. Now, it forces your team to have to drive out to the property, troubleshoot, and that can cost, obviously, time and money to do those things. So I highly encourage people to do the pressure test. Sure.

[00:22:11] Annette: Ooh, I love that because anybody listening to this episode, whether they’re just getting their first listing up or their first property, getting ready to have their first guest or their 10th property, their 20th property, that’s such a good thing that they can start to incorporate in, whether it’s their own portfolio or if they’re managing for others.

[00:22:30] I love that. How far away? It sounds like your properties– Tony Garcia might be putting some serious windshield time behind the windshield time. How far apart are your properties, and does that present a challenge? Because I know that Sarah and I both right now, hearing all of your properties, and once you tell us this mileage between them, what’s going on with your cleaners? How are you making that happen?

[00:22:54] Ray: Yeah, so we’ve been very strategic in the way that we’ve developed our service area. So currently, it’s about 45 minutes to an hour radius of our warehouse, our main office, which is where we keep all of our– we have some trucks. The maintenance guys meet there every morning, backup supplies, linens, paper towels, that stuff.

[00:23:19] We recruit housekeepers based on their living proximity to the property. So for example, there’s a town called Saugerties, New York, which is about 35 minutes from the office. We have about seven or eight properties within that zone, and so we’ve recruited housekeepers who live in, uh, Saugerties.

[00:23:41] And we try to keep them within 35 minutes traveling time. And there’s a lot of benefits there because really good cleaners who are efficient can do multiple cleans in one day, even if there’s a same day turnover. And the reason why they’re able to do it is because they live within that 30-minute radius.

[00:24:00] And we also do laundry off site. In the past, we used to do it on site, but what we found is that the cleaners end up finishing the clean and sitting around waiting for the dryer to finish. Plus, it’s a lot of wear and tear on the homeowner appliances, so we’re very mindful about saving homeowner costs.

[00:24:22] So the minute we started this laundry program, they were very grateful because now that’s going off site. But to answer your question, it’s 45 minutes to an hour. We recruit within each zone, and I think an hour is the max we’re really going to go. There’s enough prospective clients that want to work with us that are within that service area.

[00:24:42] Sarah: Great. You just hit a nail on the head, Ray. If there’s a listener out there who loves their short-term rental, they tried hosting it themselves, and they love their full-time job, or they’re in their stay-at-home parents, or whatever it is, and they can’t dedicate the time that they want to dedicate to managing their rentals, they’re exploring the idea of hiring a property manager, what questions do you think owners should ask a potential PM that will really suss out the property managers who are really there to just plug them into a system and hope it works versus you, who is very cognizant about their appliance usage and guest privacy, but also keeping the owners making as much money as possible? What are some questions they should ask when they’re interviewing property managers?

[00:25:31] Ray: Yeah. I think an important question is to really investigate in terms of how full service they really are. Certain companies will say that they’re full service, but they outsource a lot of the work. And listen, when we first started, I outsourced a lot of the work too, but realize that timeliness is very important, especially vacationers coming out of New York City that are paying $1,000 a night for a luxury home.

[00:26:01] If the toilet’s not working, someone needs to be there that day to get it done. Being that we live in a rural area and have a lot of mom-and-pop businesses, they’re on country time, and that’s okay. I love that personally. But for us, we understood that it was super important to hire people within.

[00:26:22] So W-2 employees. They’re full time. Tony is the maintenance manager, but he also has three other guys that work underneath him. And so we’re constantly supporting guests during their stay as well as setting them up before they get to the property. So knowing that they’re full service.

[00:26:41] And then also, what are you doing in between reservations with the property. So part of our fee includes preventative maintenance. So our maintenance guys are going to the properties between reservations to check on your appliances, check on your fuel levels. Uh, if there was a snowstorm, most service providers are not going to get out of their truck and shovel the steps. So our guys are doing that work. Just really making sure that if the home is sitting for a couple of days, that they’re getting in there and getting ahead of stuff.

[00:27:20] Annette: How many properties do you have under management right now, Ray?

[00:27:23] Ray: We’re right around 50 properties.

[00:27:26] Annette: Listeners, I am blown away at Ray’s dedication because you heard what he said. He has eight full-time employees, and it sounds like you just said four full-time maintenance people, correct? 

[00:27:37] Ray: Yes.

[00:27:40] Annette: I’ve lived places that maybe they were apartments, but they had a 1,000 units under management, and two maintenance people. So I just want to applaud you because I’ve never heard ratios like that, having that type of care. And I know, like you said, obviously, you have luxury homes, but that also doesn’t mean that you needed to take on a full-time, like you said, W-2 team like that. So kudos to you for doing that, because I know that’s not an easy feat for obviously payroll.

[00:28:07] And then just lucky you finding four full-time maintenance people. You also need to tell us– let’s go there really quick. How are you hiring your team? Four full-time maintenance people. To find four excellent people and all these cleaners, what’s your trade secret there on finding the team that you’ve built?

[00:28:26] Ray: Well, I think it starts with being from the area. So Tony and I went to high school together. I’ve known Tony since I was a teenager, and I told you the story about him happening to be working on my house when I started this company. And just word of mouth. And living in a rural area, it’s really difficult to find people online, posting on Indeed or Craigslist. You really just have to get out there.

[00:28:53] And I’ll give you a really good example of how I just found an amazing housekeeping manager, which in the past, I would promote cleaners to the housekeeping management role, but learn the hard way that just because someone knows how to clean doesn’t really necessarily know how to manage people.

[00:29:13] Sarah: Yes.

[00:29:14] Ray: And so I went to a conference a couple of years ago, VRMA, and I had spoken to one of the housekeeping managers from the Outer Banks, and he had told me this story, how he recruited a police officer and said that when you look at the skill sets, a police officer has in his job, very detail-oriented, knowing how to deal with heightened personalities and people under stress, being very meticulous, and also accountable and assertive, all these skills really applied well for this management role, because let’s face it, housekeeping isn’t a glamorous job. 

[00:29:57] So a lot of times, housekeepers, they just need to be heard. They need to feel supported. They need to be able to pick up the phone and be like, hey, someone just left a mess here. And obviously, there’s nothing we can do about it, but we can be there. And if we need to go out there and support them and do what we need to do, we will. 

[00:30:15] And so I started hanging out at local restaurants in our area because I thought a general manager for a restaurant who has to deal with hiring staff, scheduling, inventory, hospitality, dealing with angry guests, all those skill sets really seem to transfer over for this position. So I’ve been friends with this guy who runs a restaurant, and we’ve been talking for about two years, very casually, and recently, he approached me and said, hey, I’m looking to make a career change. Working at a restaurant can be pretty brutal in terms of his work schedule. 

[00:30:58] And so he was looking for more of a work-life balance, and he started about two months ago, and I have cleaners calling me thanking me, saying, wow, this guy returns my phone calls, and he’s showing up to homes, and he’s supporting me. So you really have to be boots on the ground and creative when it comes to recruiting to find quality people.

[00:31:18] Annette: Love that.

[00:31:18] Sarah: You are thinking outside the box. You have shared nuggets that are going to serve our listeners on so many different levels, Ray, so thank you so much for being so generous with your tips. Truly, listeners, this is like a gift of an episode. I love that reminder of, when you are interviewing someone, those resumes don’t have to say that they used to do the job you’re looking– I love looking at their personalities, what traits they need to possess, and really thinking outside the box. 

[00:31:49] They might absolutely love the position and the opportunity that you have for them to change careers, but still foster and put them in the seat that they thrive in. Ray, what else haven’t we asked you that you think our listeners could benefit from all of your knowledge as you’ve grown your business?

[00:32:09] Ray: Yeah. So developing a company culture, core values, things that people can really attach them to find purpose when they show up to work every single day. This job can be pretty brutal, especially during the summertime, which is our busiest season, where you feel like the business is running you. You’re constantly putting out fires, and–

[00:32:35] Annette: You’re on defense, just playing defense.

[00:32:37] Ray: Exactly. You’re running defense. And so I really focus on being mindful of my team having work life balance. I also invested into EOS, which you’ve may have heard of. They’re the entrepreneur operating system. We started about seven months ago. And through that, we’ve lived by this acronym, which is, GWC. 

[00:33:03] So you want to find people that get the position, want the position, and have the capacity to do the position. And that’s essentially how we formulate our interview questions, and then we back it into core values. So for us, it’s being detail-oriented. It’s being able to go above and beyond and owning it.

[00:33:27] And when I say owning it, really treating these homes as if they’re ours. And that’s why I say Tony is the lifeline of our business, because that is how he approaches it every single day. And he walks into these homes, especially from a safety standpoint, and ensures that people are walking into a home that’s incredible.

[00:33:53] And so I would really say to your listeners, culture, core values, and just loving your team, loving your people, and it all will come together. And for me, this is a lifestyle business. Our mission is to create incredible lifestyles, not just for guests but for homeowners, for our employees, and for everyone in our ecosystem. I have house cleaners who now started their own housekeeping business. They have employees, and they’re inspired to do great things. And so I think, at the end of the day, that’s what you really want to look for.

[00:34:32] Annette: Mic drop. Love it. A lifestyle business for everybody that you touch. We love that. Ray, I know our listeners are going to want to follow you, learn more about your business. Heck, maybe there’s someone in the Hudson Valley that is looking for either a job or someone to help with their amazing property that’s only within one hour from the warehouse and the office. Where can our listeners follow along and find out more about you?

[00:34:58] Ray: Yeah. So you can go to homesweethudson.com. You can find our properties, and that’s the easy way to contact our team. We’re also on Instagram, which is @homesweethudsonco, C-O. Uh, someone took the Home Sweet Hudson, so we had to add that CO.

[00:35:14] Annette: That’s okay. We got you.

[00:35:15] Sarah: We’ve been there.

[00:35:16] Annette: We’ll put in the show notes.

[00:35:17] Ray: Yeah, thank you. Those are the two best places to reach us.

[00:35:21] Annette: Listeners, do us a favor too. If you are planning a stay or know anybody that’s planning a stay in Hudson Valley, book it with Ray. Let him know that you found out about him from the show. That would be such an awesome, um, thank you gift that we could give him ifa listener has any plans to head that way anytime soon.

[00:35:38] Sarah: With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

[00:35:41] Annette: I’m Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:35:42] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting. 

[00:35:43] Sarah: We’ll talk to you next time.