The Strategy to Scale from 20 to 550+ Properties with Dennis Goedheid
episode
The Accommodation Show - Hospitality Success Series!
39 min
2 speakers
8 chapters
transcribed 24 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What challenges did Dennis face after the first year and why did growth stall?
And welcome back to another episode of the accommodation show. We are here for part two of Dennis's story of building Cassiola. Welcome back to the show, Dennis. Thank you, thank you. Last episode, we talked about your business and basically we we we spent a bit of time on that sort of getting started. Started those first steps in a business. There are different alternatives. And I thought that that was a very important part to cover for those that are looking to get into short term rentals into Airbnbs or even just starting their own business. I think that this week we should continue your story and your journey. Because you said that within the first year you actually contracted rather than grew the business.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And then you started to build a bit of reputation and you started to to grow things. Now your uh let's let's let's go from there. Let's go from from that part of the story. So um you've done your first year. What what are things looking like for you?
Yeah, so I again financially it wasn't bad, but I had ambitious growth plans that I I was not able to to accomplish. So um I also have to be honest, I was completely new to the industry, didn't know anything about the business. So it took me a while also to figure out what was working, what wasn't working, what software to use, how we could make uh improvements. So there was also a lot of of I think internal uh focus on on uh how the business was operating. Maybe not enough external sales uh focus to to really grow it. Um and and that's also all those those things and and mistakes I I made is also what we use to to build our our franchise concept basically to to help other uh business owners and and uh managers that want to scale their business to avoid making the same pitfalls that I uh did in the beginning and and and just letting them skip a few steps and and focus on on growth.
Yeah. What do you think that was your own mindset that made you that kind of held you up there? Um
I I think it it was just a lot of of things that I didn't know and understand uh um yet. And and yeah, if everything is new, everything takes a little bit longer figuring out how all those channels uh work and and which websites uh you should be on. I I remember when I started there were a lot of of subscription services. Um they no longer exist, but that was also one One of the first things I I did was just look at performance of all those different websites that we were paying a month monthly or yearly fee to to advertise our properties with no guarantee whatsoever in getting ever a booking. And and what I noticed that ninety nine percent of those websites did not deliver any um bookings or or results or at least not a return on investment.
uh maybe got one booking but if your subscription was three four five hundred dollars uh um for a year Yeah, you didn't really make uh your money back. Uh so we we actually canceled all those subscriptions from all the website. The only one we kept was was Ferbo back then. Um still home away. They were doing a lot of subscriptions and they had some some traffic. So they were still uh um giving us a positive ROI, but all the others I I had to yeah just uh get rid of uh it was a cost. costing us money. So a lot of those things I I I just didn't know. I was new to the industry, had to figure everything out on on my own. Spent a lot of hours and a lot of of of weekends and and nights uh um just on on those kind of things.
And yeah, it just takes uh time to become a specialist. They always say what is it, ten thousand hours before you really master a a certain subject. So um I I probably had to do my ten thousand hours uh two first.
Yeah, that's it's really it's it's it's very interesting because I think that a lot of people can get quite stuck in the systems and the processes rather than growing the business, uh adding more customers, doing sales, uh business development and that sort of thing. And as a founder or CEO, you can get quite stuck in the parts that you're quite comfortable with. Uh the parts that are a lot easier for you.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What challenges did Dennis face after the first year and why did growth stall?
0:12–8:05
2
How does the “Founder’s Trap” of focusing on operations over sales limit scaling?
8:05–15:39
3
What is the unconventional growth hack of buying contracts from competitors?
15:39–24:06
4
How do you evaluate, structure, and protect an acquisition of STR contracts?
24:06–33:01
5
Why are asset deals preferred over full business purchases for liability protection?
33:01–36:38
6
How does using escrow safeguard contract acquisitions and owner retention?
36:38–38:04
7
What role did the Aruba case study play in proving the acquisition model?
38:04–38:42
8
What final advice does Dennis give for simplifying operations to scale beyond 200 properties?
38:42–38:44
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Accommodation Show - Hospitality Success Series!
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