We’re honored to have our good friend and 2021 Women’s Summit Pioneer Award winner Carole Lynn Sharoff join us this week.
The President of AVH Realty, Inc, and Atlantic Vacation Homes brings her almost 40 years of vacation rental industry knowledge (and stories) to the table in a way that only she can.
On top of running her business, Carole has served on various boards and committees both industry-focussed with VRMA and community focussed with Rotary and the Chamber of Commerce.
Carole has paved the way for many in the vacation rental space to include 2 of her 3 amazing children Jonathan Fonvielle and Michelle Williams. In addition, she had been at the forefront of Diversity and Inclusion initiatives pushing for industry-wide recognition, acceptance, and understanding.
Talking about who she is as a person, Carol states “I won’t let things be said that can’t be proven”. It is this type of leadership that we here at the no BS pod admire and look up to.
A true outspoken and courageous pioneer!
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Listen on Google PodcastsListen on Amazon MusicListen on PandoraListen on iHeartRadioRSS FeedListen on StitcherListen on Pocket CastsListen on Podcast AddictListen on Castbox
Pioneer, Mentor, Advocate, Friend With Featured Guest Carole Lynn Sharoff
Mateo, how are you?
I’m doing fantastic. How are you, John?
I am good. This is season 2, episode 2. I just got back from a little jaunt up to New England for VRMA Connect – New England in Portland, Maine. I ate a lot of lobster. I ate a lot of steamers. I gained about 10 pounds at least.
This is you trying to make me jealous. I didn’t get anything in the mail. You can cold freeze those things.
Do you know how expensive it is to do that? I looked into it for you. I wanted to get it. You know I did.
The first thing you talk about is, “I’m so fat from eating all this lobster. It was amazing.”
You saw that picture of that lobster roll I shared on LinkedIn. I’m not one normally to take pictures of my food and then post it, but I had to. It was that good.
Now, you’re that guy. One step closer to being an Instagram personality. I never thought better about you, John.
This is a great episode. I want to get right into it. One of my favorite people, you and I have both gotten to know her over the years with the different things we were doing with DEI when I was with TRACK and with different things. I have known her for quite a long time. She is the recipient of the Women’s Summit Pioneer Award. I want to go ahead and proudly want to introduce Carole Sharoff of Atlantic Vacation Homes. Thank you so much for joining us, Carole.
Thank you for inviting me. It’s wonderful. I’m thrilled.
I am honored to know you. I think John articulated that part.
The honor is mine.
I’ve known you for a little while now. I think the award is definitely fitting. Congratulations. I think there isn’t anyone better that should have gotten that award. Shout out to Amy and all of those that put all that together. We’re going to dig all into that. We’re excited. Thank you for joining us. I am super excited to have you and I hope we don’t embarrass you.
Also, don’t embarrass us. You know some stuff about us.
She’s classy, no BS in a way. She doesn’t play around. Some people are curmudgeons and/or a little crotchety about things. She’s sweet and smooth, but don’t get it twisted. You don’t play around. She doesn’t play around.
From Atlantic Vacation Homes and your involvement with VRMA, you’ve held multiple positions for multiple years on different committees. We’re doing the math on LinkedIn. Thirty-nine-plus years in the vacation rental space. That’s amazing. I’ve been in it for a few years and I’m like, “So much has changed in these few years.” It’s mind-blowing. I couldn’t imagine. Even in older conversations that I’ve had when I first came in, as you know, Carole, and many know, my first stint in vacation rentals was with Ascent.
I talked to Regina and Deanna. They’d tell me old VRMA stories in the ’90s. Back then, it was the Wild West but tell us, how did you stumble into this space because no one chooses to go into vacation rentals, at least not the OGs, especially. Talk about it.
Some people, when they’re going into college, know that they want to be a doctor or they have some plan and I didn’t really. I didn’t necessarily come out of college with a plan. I have a Bachelor’s degree in French Literature with a minor in Spanish and history. Everyone said, “Do you want to be a teacher?” I was like, “No,” because I didn’t think that it was a good thing for me, but one thing led to another.
I found myself in Boston. I went to the University of Connecticut and Boston, a couple of hours away North. I found some people to live with and hung out with. My mother wasn’t very happy because I was moving further away from her. She was still in Connecticut. I think what I did then, which I continue to do, is you take opportunities as they come to you. I’m intellectually curious and I like people.
After a year of working in Boston for the Model Cities Program, which was a wonderful experience, I decided to go to graduate school in Anthropology at BU, and I got my Master’s there in Archeology. The short story is that I’m very lucky. I came from a family that could afford to help me pursue my education. They put that at top priority, except that when I got my Master’s degree and my dad looked at me and he said, “I’m proud of you and congratulations, but I can’t believe that I supported you while you went to school to get a degree in archeology.”
He was a businessman. He said you should have gone to law school. You should have gotten your MBA. I said, “What made you a good father is that you didn’t make that happen. You supported me.” Fast forward a number of years, I thought, “He was right. I learned a lot by being in my anthropology courses and it pulled me in good stead through everything I do in my life.
Having a business degree also now that I’m an entrepreneur and working in my own business might have helped or a Law degree. I thought at one point I wanted to go to law school and I cloistered myself in a room with my typewriter and my Selectric, and I was trying to write my essay about why I wanted to go to law school. I wrote an essay about why I didn’t want to go to law school.
It was a good experience and I’m very happy because life pulled me in this direction. The short version is that I used to run a lot. I moved to Gloucester. I got a job working with kids restoring burial grounds. I had to prove to my father, who threw down the gauntlet, that I couldn’t get a job with a degree in archeology, and I did. It was in Gloucester restoring colonial burial grounds. I did it for a long time. It’s got its own story.
Maybe next time you come back, we can kind of dig into that.
Literally, dig in with it.
I used to run in the mornings and there was a woman that had a little antique store on my route. I would stop in. I’m a collector. After a couple of years with her selling the stuff and me doing my other business, which was working at one of the largest housing projects in New England, in Boston, I worked at Columbia Point. It was part of the redevelopment of Columbia Point from low-income housing to mixed-income.
I wrote up all the RFPs for how to bring in daycare, healthcare, and everything to the wonderful people living there. It was thrilling, but while I was doing that, I was also buying this little shop from this person. People would come in and ask me if I had a certain kind of China, if I had a piece of furniture, or if I knew of any houses for rent in the neighborhood. I was like, “Sure. This person rents their house out occasionally.”
One thing led to another and I formed a company. I got my real estate license and then my broker’s license. I formed my own real estate agency with a partner for a while and bought him out. I grew my rental business and I didn’t know anything about it, but I got picked up by a company in the UK where it was already an industry. That helped me immensely. I did that for eight years while I ran my shop and while I worked in Boston. I learned.
Here I have been doing the same thing for all these many years, just different iterations. The industry’s grown. It’s extraordinary. I kept saying, “There’s got to be some company or some association that focuses on vacation rentals.” Someone introduced me to a company in Vermont, and they told me about the Vacation Rental Managers Association, which was fledgling. I joined and that did make a lot of changes in my life. I’m forever indebted. That was a good thing.
You said the VRMA was fledgling. Approximately, when was that when you joined and what were they doing at that time?
It took a while until I decided to join. Maybe I joined in the early ’90s, ’91, or something like that. I remember going to Atlanta and listening to people talk about stuff that I needed to be educated on. It’s very much the same. It was much smaller and we were in a smaller room, not the 1,200 people in San Antonio. It’s good. You could see the growth of the industry and its sophistication. When I started, we didn’t have the internet.
I had a Selectric typewriter. I got a fax machine. I remember getting a copier. I could copy one page at a time. I had to run down to the local photo photography store to get pictures of the houses that I would then glue onto a piece of paper and mail. That is what’s different. I think that’s why I won the Pioneer Award because that was the day of Wild West.
You put up with the most shit.
We didn’t know better. We were happy to have it. The Chamber of Commerce was an incredible asset. Later, I joined the Rotary Club, where I swore I would never join any of those very standard-like institutions and communities. It’s all been a wonderful experience and I have met great people along the way.
Your dad is proud of all of those things, the Rotary Club included.
My dad’s in the Rotary forever.
I’m on the board of the chamber right now, The Greater Cape Ann Chamber of Commerce, and guess who’s the chair of the DEI committee, which we call the idea committee because it includes disability. I’m also the chair of my Rotary club in Gloucester. We’re trying to get like a whole citywide connection for diversity.
Mateo, you’re going to go ahead and say something.
I wanted to dig in a bit with your experience and the things you’ve seen because it’s not only the time you’ve spent in vacation rentals with VRMA and all of these, but it’s what has happened in those times. The change that’s happened in the industry, the world, and even opportunities. When I look at you and I see that you got the Pioneer Award, I’m like, “No brainer.” It is what it is. I don’t think people can appreciate it.
Yes, they know you worked hard. Yes, they know that you’ve built this. Yes, they know that you’ve had your hands in this industry and the professional side of this industry for some time, but I don’t think they understand what it was like during your journey through that. Our industry is unique because we do see women business owners and women in positions of leadership within companies that you don’t necessarily see in our broader society.
You had gone down the law route. Knowing you, I know you would’ve done remarkable things within that space, but also that during those times, there were constrictions in terms of the social ideals of where people could go, even with women who were considered professionals. Still, a lot of times, we are not allowed the opportunities to build and lead organizations the way that their male counterparts could at that time.
Your life, career, and experience have been one of leadership and one of being able to step forward, learn and push organizations forward and companies forward. Talk to us about what that experience was like. Being able to see the change in our society and having to live through those experiences during your journey.
That was a huge question. I consider myself a team player and I don’t think of myself as a star necessarily. I think of myself as someone who’s persistent and the word of the year is resilient because I kept putting one foot in front of the other, despite having wonderful success in so many ways, but also a lot of heartache along the way too. It wasn’t all because I’m a woman developing my business, but the Rotary Club didn’t get women until 1986 in our club. I was speaking to Jeanie Daley, and I think it was later than that woman joined. Now, there are so many women and it’s a very different place.
Also, it’s the same thing for the Chamber. I’m on the board of the Chamber in Gloucester, and it’s significantly women where women couldn’t get on those kinds of boards before. With the VRMA, I was not the first woman on the board. I served for six years. Perhaps back in the day and I maybe wasn’t paying attention, there were fewer women then but the changes that I see, the people want to learn. They want to get along.
The people want to connect and want to do right. The women’s movement is not over, but it’s certainly made its mark by people recognizing that women can do all sorts of things. We have all sorts of skills and all sorts of gray matter that wasn’t touched before. It’s always hard to balance work and family. In the days that I was building my business, I was single. I didn’t get married until I was in my mid-40s, and that’s when I had a child.
[bctt tweet=”The women’s movement is not over. But it has made its mark on people that women can do all sorts of things.” via=”no”]
I had all those years not having to worry about childcare and glass ceilings so much. Although, I did work for a couple of companies and the state. For a large part of my life, I worked for myself. For anyone who’s independent, you know that in some years you’re going to have growth and income and in some, you’re not. How do you balance all that? I live in a beautiful place and I like people. I got involved with my community and found the best parts, as far as I’m concerned.
You mentioned family. Every time I think of Carole, I can’t think of Jonathan and Michelle. The family, the Atlantic Vacation Homes trio. You must be proud of everything else. Your children are amazing. The three of you and I met your husband briefly through Zoom. Everything is fantastic. You must be proud of looking at it, and I don’t want to say you’ve built because Michelle, Jonathan, and everyone are very much contributors.
However, you guys have made a fantastic mark in our space as a family. I’m a better person for meeting all three of you. I’ve learned a ton from every one of you and individually. I think that’s a testament to who you are, your family, and your values and what you bring into our space. It’s been pretty fantastic to see and interact with you.
Thank you, John. I met you when you pulled that call together and Bill and I were on it.
It was right at the beginning of George Floyd stuff.
That was a great thing to do. I met Mateo over the years. I’m not sure specifically where.
That would be at VRMA.
I’m very lucky. I was in my mid-40s. I met a wonderful, handsome, and brilliant man. We got married and he brought his two daughters into the marriage. One of them is Michelle. She was graduating high school or a freshman in college when we married, and her sister is a little younger. She’s not in the industry yet but in customer service, so you’ll never know. My husband’s a management consultant. He does surveys and understands the customer’s voice. He has written a couple of books and is well-known worldwide.
I had my little business going and then we had Jonathan. Jonathan is our son together. Bill, from the very beginning, helped me put together a strategic plan. He helped me understand that I had a business that perhaps needed a little more structure. I was a sole practitioner for a while. I hired some of my friends to help me. It grew. I bought a bigger space to work out of and not just this old antique shop.
The antique shop before it was an antique shop, it was a florist and it had one room in it that was the refrigerator for the flowers, but it was the only room in this little shack that was insulated. I would work there on the weekends and I would bring my quartz heater and my Selectric typewriter. I put it into this freezer with the door open, heat it up, and work from there. It was pretty basic, but it was a rough start.
I had the benefit of marrying a guy who cared about my business and helped me in so many ways. Michelle was a Medieval Literature major at Yale. I didn’t think that there was any interest in working with me in Gloucester. There was no expectation. Jonathan, all he wanted to do as he matured was to travel as far away from home as he could get. He took his junior year abroad in New Zealand, which is pretty far but not too far.
Anytime that we’ve had this conversation, Mateo, and anytime when you flush a toilet in the water, it goes the opposite direction. You’re far away from home.
I was very lucky because Michelle started working with me first. She brought this whole other experience and education with her. She’s very knowledgeable about technology and all the way that social media is developed and software websites. I told you I started before that and it was all self-learned. I had a staff at one point when Michelle joined us, and we had about ten people, or maybe 12. There wasn’t anyone that knew how to do it. We had software. We figured it out intuitively, but we didn’t have an IT person because I don’t think it existed. I probably couldn’t have afforded that anyway, so we made it all up. They straightened it out, is what I’m saying.
What was the DOS program? There were still some that some property managers are using now. What was your first software?
It was a company that was based in Colorado. We finally decided that we needed software, but they were on DOS and it didn’t seem a good idea even to me at the time. We had a couple of different software companies that we worked with. One went belly up. Another one has emerged as a leader but wasn’t at the time. I might have told you that I was at a VRMA meeting with some of my staff and as you know, I love to dance.
VRMA had a Tuesday night dinner dance. They had a band. We were there and we were trying to find seats. It was filled and the only seats we could find were with these four guys who had just founded Escapia. They didn’t know anyone there. We sat and danced with them. One woman in my office is good at the Tango. When we needed software, we said, “Let’s go with them.”
Were you one of Escapia’s first clients?
Yes, within the first 60 or so. It’s been twenty-some-odd years that we can use that. They developed their software as we grew. Maybe Navis was underway with their CRM program. We got braver and started different softwares and worked with them, but I think it was with Michelle and then Jonathan who coalesced what we were doing. I know we used a lot of paper and we had files. I still do. You get older, and you forget. It’s like, “I got to write it down.”
It grew and I met the most incredible people at the VRMA. I was so lucky to be part of the world of total strangers, but we shared this commonality in this world of vacation rentals. As you guys know, most vacation rental people are not introverts. You go up in the elevator and you got your name tag on, and everyone’s like, “Where are you from?”
It’s chatty, friendly, and inclusive. I need to be more inclusive and we’re all working on that. That’s one of the things that the three of us certainly have in common. We do want to reach out and make sure that there are more managers of color and of different backgrounds as we grow as an industry.
Briefly, I want to say a couple of things about that. I’m not going to speak for Mateo, but for you, Jonathan, Michelle, and everyone I’ve met in VRMA, there are certain people that I’ve met at VRMA that have made me want to keep pursuing further and further my professional development and wanting to potentially in the future be even more involved with VRMA. It’s been great serving on the membership committee with you, Drew, and everyone. Us truly, from the ground floor, starting a whole DEI subcommittee that both Mateo and Margot have.
We’ve got a plethora of support from the industry. I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that the genesis of that support came from the work you and Michelle have been doing, even with me wanting to get involved more. I saw the presentation. I saw the empty rooms. You guys put together a fantastic presentation about building a social case to a business case to using the data that’s not only saying, “This is us up here saying DEI is important. Look at what the McKinsey report is saying. Look at what these people are saying.” You are bringing a level of business intelligence to it and appealing to the balance of nature that makes up the good people in this industry.
I agree with you. There is something unique about our business in terms of hospitality that makes our industry different. We do care about people and I think we do want to be inclusive. I know that you guys were starting the narrative of why that’s important and how that’s important. We’re following up on the work that you guys did to ring the bell, get a louder megaphone and continue to do this work because this isn’t something that’s going to be solved overnight or even in the short term.
We’re laying ongoing work. It’s a bridge building. At the end of the day, we’re picking up where you are, and I’m not saying left off because you’re still very much so on almost every call, attending every event, and are present. I’m big on the actions of what people do. You don’t just talk about it. You’re there. You do support it. It is important to you and we can tell that because you are always supporting, whether it’s sponsoring our events, whether it’s nudging people who need to get on, and all people there.
I was the membership chair for the VRMA for a number of years and that became one of our goals. It was to work on the whole DEI before it became all those words. Ultimately, with our committee that sprung up with Margot Schmorak, you all and so many others, it’s been important and, and fast-growing, I would say. The whole diversity piece is all about being the parrot on the shoulder of the leadership. It’s not just a committee. It is the way that everything flows. It shouldn’t have to exist because we should all be the same.
[bctt tweet=”Diversity is not a parrot on the shoulder of leaders. It is the way that everything flows.” via=”no”]
We have different cultural norms and I am an anthropologist. I get all that. I think married to an African-American and reading a lot, I understand more than I ever did about so much that has gone on and how so many obstacles for people of color existed. As the mother of three children and four grandsons, I want them to be safe, successful, and resilient.
When stuff happens, you got to keep going. As a Jew, which I am, I’ve seen that. You see antisemitism and things that have happened on the one hand, on then you see wonderful things on the other. It’s about the growth of different cultural norms and keeping things together in the industry. I’m so excited to be a part of this world now, in the vacation rental world that is putting a focus on diversity.
It’s a great accomplishment. Two years ago, at the Vacation Rental Women’s Summit, I was asked to do a session on diversity. I reeled in Michelle because how could I do this without her? Also, she was so knowledgeable and it is her life. When you’re white, you walk a different path. We did that presentation there. We did a few more at the VRMA. We did another one at the Summit in New Orleans and it was good. It’s a start. We got a lot of work ahead of us.
We talked about this, but you went ahead and snagged a pretty amazing speaker for the VRMA Connect up in Portland. She was great and I learned a ton. From our talking, I’d say 99.9% of the people enjoyed her. Enjoyed the content and learned a lot. I think I came out of it with a greater understanding of the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
You weren’t in attendance, but there was a lot again on terminology, which was great. It is understanding the definitions and that’s how it all started off. It was very interactive and the whole room participated. With that said, one person came to me flabbergasted that we even had that presentation.
It’s like, “What a waste of time.” It’s not important who that person was. What was important is that not everyone, again, looks at this the same way and it’s even more reason why this needs to be continued to be at the forefront and brought to the attention. At the Spring Forum, there needs to be something. At International, there always needs to be something. We need to keep on trying our hardest to get a bigger audience every time.
I think it should be the keynote.
We’re trying very hard.
I think for us, that’s something we would love to see. Being a person that wants to see action, there are a lot of things going on that we see with DEI in the space. Even with what we were talking about before, I think a lot of people in our industry don’t understand why. They don’t understand for whatever reason. I’m not in their heads. I don’t know, but DEI is threatening to them or it’s off-putting to them. It’s something they don’t understand or want to understand. Those people exist within our culture and our organization. I think we take ownership in part of that because I take a very realistic view of a lot of these things.
You can’t force people to understand something that they’re not open to understanding. They’re not open to considering. We’re not in school. We’re not in other places. We’re dealing with professionals who are in a space to be there to work because it’s their work and because it’s their business. When people feel like they’re being force-fed things that they don’t understand, it’s resistance. They’re not going to magically just go, “That was a great point,” because they probably made up their minds beforehand. “I don’t get this. I’m not wasting my time with this and I’m not going to this.”
I think we’ve seen a little bit of that in the lack of attendance in the events that we’ve put out there, but I also, on the other side of that, see the tremendous support that we have with the committee. The work we’re doing is people willing to give their time and energy to make a change and to go on this long process of building this out.
To your story, John, one of the things that we have to do better is to have these conversations very candidly and make sure that we understand where people are coming from within that space. It is hard for me to do too because I’m like, “It’s not my natural state.” I feel like if you’re bigoted or things like that, my natural disposition is to be a bird to you or whatever.
People try to force-feed me things and it doesn’t work. I’m not open to it because I’m so fixated on what I don’t want and what I think is being shoved down my throat and not looking at the, “What is this and why is this?” I’m so caught up in the action. I can’t focus or even see what’s being presented or given to me to the point where I feel like something being handed to me is being forced down my throat.
We have some work to do around that, especially with our industry, especially with the geographies that our industry touches. As a committee and as a whole, we have to take people where they are and not shame them for being there. Give people the opportunity to be open and learn. People are adults. They’re not going to get into it and they’re not going to go down that road. It’s not something we can force-feed.
We can try and change the narrative. We can show the value. We can do things that are inclusive and show what inclusive means. Show why these things are important for whatever level or at the business level or at the good social level. That’s what we can do. We continue to fight that fight and to be welcoming and safe for people to come to ask questions and learn in a way that would suit them.
What I’ve experienced is fear from some people who think that what we’re trying to do with this movement, which I’m thrilled to be a part of, is because they are anti-Semitic or they’re racist, or that it’s on them. I said, “I’m not looking to find out what you did 25 years ago. I want you not to repeat it.” It’s about helping you to understand. There are some buzzwords like institutional racism and unconscious bias.
Those are things where people don’t even understand that they have this bias. It came out at one of the board meetings that I attended for one group and we were looking to see where the DEI committee could fit into the organization. Someone said it should be under the international chair. I was like, “I don’t think so. We all live here and it’s not international. Someone else said I’m reading the book Caste. I said, “That’s great.” I’m thrilled that you are and I intend to read it. I give it to my husband for Christmas one year and he’s reading it.
It’s a must-read.
I read The Water Dancer. There is good stuff out there, but he didn’t need to defend himself because he’s a wonderful man. I’m thrilled that of all the books he could read, he chose to read. That speaks well of him, but it’s about bringing stuff like that up in self-defense. They think that we’re going to be attacking people.
“I have Black friends.”
This is the shit I’m talking about. At the end of the day, we have to be able to have a conversation that’s based on mutual respect. I had this conversation with someone in our industry. I told you about this, John. They didn’t understand the DEI thing, either. Through listening to them, it’s like, “I’m not looking for you to defend slavery. I’m not looking for you to defend the state of racism in America right now. What I expect from you is to be a good person. If you value me and value these ideas and ideals that you say you value, then your actions need to support that.
You need to be open to listening. No one’s trying to shove anything down your throat but approach this with at least the intention of understanding or don’t even approach it at all. The problem that most people have had is they’ve been having to fake that they care or that they understand these things or subscribe to these ideas and don’t know. They’ve never really had safe places or people to articulate these things around.
From my experience, I can’t have a conversation with you and be responsible for the things that you feel guilty about. I don’t even know that you feel guilty until I see the responses that you start having. You start throwing out, “I read Caste,” or “I read the article.” or, “I got a black niece three sections down on my other side of my family.”
We should all be that lucky. My husband, who is African-American and who has a graduate degree from Yale and belongs to Mensa and is a successful businessman, will not leave our house without his ID. When we were dating, we went for a bike ride, and he left his ID in the house. He went right back in to get it. I’m like, “You don’t need an ID. Even now, it’s like, “Get in the car. You don’t need an id if you’re not driving.” He will not leave our driveway now and he’s in his 70s. That, to me, has been one of the most extraordinary actions that have had the most reverberations for me. It is because how can someone who’s got that master points in bridge and has been involved in the civil rights movement his entire life be afraid? It’s because stuff happens.
It’s enlightening and it’s sad, but it’s still the unfortunate world we live in. I wanted to bring this up a little differently. I wanted to bring it back to VRMA and some of these different things that we’re talking about. Those are reading and attending where it has a DEI workshop or a presentation. After Vermont International, we had a presentation that was more well-attended than in the past. We could have had a lot more people there, but the people there overwhelmingly told us that it was the best presentation they went to. They learned more. They were more enlightened. There was more to take back to their offices and their coworkers.
There was more amazing knowledge in enlightenment than anything else. It wasn’t about tips and tricks, how to get more revenue and how to go ahead and build a better website. It was how to be a decent person. We’ve got a lot of positive responses to that. I hope that if you look at it only in that light, it’s going to be a reason for you to go and participate in future DEI conversations with us.
Lastly, I want to bring this back to Carole. Pioneer Carole, the definition of pioneer, I looked it up. Develop or be the first to use or apply a new area knowledge or activity method. I wouldn’t say you’re the first, but you’re a woman pioneer in our space. We’re like so honored to have you on our show now. You were at the Women’s Summit where you received this award. What would someone in attendance that has known you for a long time what would they say about Carole?
That’s not Jonathan or Michelle.
I may want to hear what Jonathan and Michelle have to say about you too.
This is going to be all three of them next time at the same time. We got to get Jonathan. We’ve had Michelle on.
What would people say?
You have been in this space for many years now. People who are in this industry have known you for at least 30 years. They’ve seen you grow and blossom and become this pioneer of our space. I know what I would say about Carole and I’ve known you for a couple of years now. They’re all positive things.
I think there’s a certain amount of consistency and you can talk to some of the other people on the board of the VRMA when I was on. I didn’t let things be said that couldn’t be defended. I am not big on lip service or comments that go about whether it’s about a racial comment or whether it’s about the way you treat people. At one of our board meetings, you can ask some of them. All the guys went off to a room and were all sitting around a round table and all men and the women were sitting at another table in another room. It was the way the restaurant was set up. I want to get you guys cigars and you could go do your own thing.
They didn’t do it on purpose. They wanted to talk football or whatever with their friends. I let them have it and they have not forgotten that. During any number of situations in anything I do, I am outspoken and sometimes that’s hard. You think that when you do it, people will think ill of you. Some do and sometimes it takes courage and it’s not always there because you don’t know who you’re with or how it’s going to be responded to, but actions count too.
I think it’s important to set an example for integrity in your world and what you know about and not go too far into the deep about what you don’t know about. The responses from this award, which was the other day, and I’ve been traveling so I haven’t even had a chance to bask in it. Many people came over to me at the Summit and thanked me. The two things that struck me, they thanked me for being inclusive and not necessarily from a racial, gender, and diversity thing, but more because I’m a broker. I like to introduce people to one another.
[bctt tweet=”Set an example for others for the integrity in your own world. Don’t go off too far into the deep about what you don’t know about.” via=”no”]
I did that at the New England Connect. There was someone new from New Hampshire that joined. I connected them with some of the suppliers and they thanked me. You don’t need to thank me. It’s logical to me. It’s where my brain works. People felt that I was being inclusive on a very broad scale and any number of people thought that I was a mentor to them. I appreciate that. I’m glad to hear that because you don’t always feel like you’re a mentor to anyone because you get it on both sides.
I married out of my religion. I married someone that was a different color than me. He turned out to be a better bridge player than my parents and they were fine. You’ll find your commonality. My husband and I are more alike than not alike. We grew up in different worlds with different experiences. I’m so grateful for that. I love the vacation rental world.
I think that we need to do more to market to different populations to get them. As you were saying, Mateo, to come to different parts of the country years ago, and not that many years ago, but within the past 100 years. They didn’t allow Jews. They didn’t allow Blacks. They didn’t allow people from Puerto Rico and Hispanics. They don’t come to these places because many of the guests that we have, certainly on Cape Ann, are families that have summered here for years and years and years. When they get older, they come back to places where they were happy because everybody’s family is dysfunctional.
They don’t want to go back to their mother’s house. It may not be big enough or there were some unhappy memories there. You rent a house at the beach where everybody plays and the water is warm, but not everybody has those experiences. My next-door neighbors are orthodox Jews and they wore yarmulkes.
They walked down to the beach with their garb and everybody stared at them. What did they do? They went the next day because that was more important to them. It’s getting better, but we need to get this world integrated a little bit better. Whatever we can do, one small piece at a time. Just keep going. I’m proud to be a part of it and to know you guys. Thank you for all your efforts as well.
As I said, we’re taking up the bridge building that you’ve done. Hopefully, we will have a run that is even remotely successful as yours. I was thinking about that a lot now. I was driving and I knew we were going to talk later. When you think of the state of the world now and I look back. I have a blended family. My sister is Jewish and my mother’s Puerto Rican. My sister’s Jewish-Puerto Rican, my mother’s Puerto Rican, and my father’s African-American. My family is super blended within that space. That’s how I grew up.
I grew up on the west coast. I grew up in a different world, believing that so much of what we’re living through was in textbooks and was the past. We’ve worked through a lot of these issues and we’ve pulled through. As an adult and as someone that has a child, has raised a child, and now seeing the world through this lens, it’s like there’s so much work to be done. I hear people say, “This next generation’s not going to take this and they’re not going to have all that.” We’re still here. There’s still so much more that we can be doing.
It’s interesting when you hear people say, “Push it to the next generation and they’re not going to put up with these things.” I had to sit there now and be like, “Am I putting up with these things?” It bridges that question of, “How are these things done?” To even answer John’s question, when I think of you, I think of leadership and action because of what you do. I think that’s the key. You can’t just be good enough to say like, “We subscribe to these things anymore. This is what we believe,” and then completely live the other way and not have that follow through in our actions.
You don’t have to change the world and thank you for all those nice things you’ve said. I don’t see myself that way. You have to change the world around you to start and then it gets bigger. When you said this generation is different, I think it is. When you look at the whole gender issue, the acceptance of lesbians and gays and the whole LGBTQ, all the initials, that’s new and it’s not new in terms of it’s been ongoing, but the visibility is so much better than it ever was. You look at the hardships that so many of those people have had.
[bctt tweet=”When you change the world around you, it starts to get bigger.” via=”no”]
I have one grandson who is gay. I have another grandson who’s transgender. I see the world through their eyes as well. They happen to also be Black. It’s mind-blowing, but I also see acceptance. When I said to someone, a professor at a university, about transgender, we were talking about that, and there wasn’t even a blink. It’s like, “Yeah, we are,” and that’s wonderful. I think more and more people are feeling and accepting that way. It’s not even about acceptance. This is how we are. Be there for other people that might be different than you and be open.
I think that’s it. Be there.
The world is changing and there is acceptance. There is a lot that is still slow to come to acceptance, but I think overall, there is more acceptance, but maybe not in all facets of recent things that we see in the news. Media plays a big part in it and the media is more accepting of certain things than others. They play certain things up more than others. I feel that we have to keep working and we’ll get there or we won’t, but as long as we keep putting our best foot forward, then we know we’re doing everything we can.
We got to stop being educated through the media. The media has a specific purpose, but it’s on us as individuals to learn for ourselves, experience for ourselves and make up our minds. That’s part of the problem. We rely heavily on these other things to make decisions for us or tell us how to feel without. I was talking to somebody in the industry yesterday about the metaverse and I was like, “I’m not with this. I don’t want the metaverse. I don’t want a virtual house next to Snoop. I want to sit with John. I want to be and talk with people.” I want the opposite of whatever the metaverse is. I want it in real life, which is our real life.
Things change. Speaking of change and before we let you go, Carole, we’re not going to get off this without talking about Vacasa. I want to get some feedback from the pioneer, the legend, and the business owner about where you think this is taking us as an industry. Is it good? Is it bad? Are you agnostic with the Vacasa stuff?
I’m not sure that I am the first person to speak about it, but I do think that the vacation rental world is local. Like all politics is local, all vacation rentals are local. You have to have the boots on the ground and I’m not an advocate of these large companies that have lost the connection. The reason that people come to vacation rentals in the first place is to experience the community and get a sense of authenticity.
[bctt tweet=”Vacation rentals are local. People come to them to experience a community and get a sense of authenticity.” via=”no”]
Some people may come because they feel that there’s a better price point with vacation rentals. Certainly, during COVID, it was great. My joke was that you leave your clean house in Upstate New York. You get in your clean car, pack your food, go to your perfectly clean vacation rental, and never have to go out. It’s all right there and you’re safe. That’s the exception and hopefully, we’ll soon be done with this pandemic and vacation rentals will be seen as now a universal form of hospitality.
In Massachusetts, the hotel business has been separate from the vacation rental business, so I’m very excited about Kim Miles as the VRMA chair now or executive director who can blend like Pedro Mandoki did the two industries. Without speaking about Vacasa, I’ve never rented a home from Vacasa. I know that people some have good experiences, and some have bad ones.
Do you think it’s overall a positive that a large company in our space is going public? Do you think that’s going to bring positive momentum for the VR movement or do you think it’s a negative overall as a company?
I hope that they have a conscience about the vacation rental industry because they are going to be calling attention to it and it’s either going to be good for us or hurt us. I don’t personally love the idea of that size for vacation rentals because I feel like vacation rentals are more intimate and local. I do worry about that and there are other people and companies that are growing. They’re not going to be the only ones in that field. Is it that we’re all going to be like the hotel chains in the vacation rentals? I don’t think so unless they buy up all the housing.
Vacasa has got big boy commercials now. They got commercials like Booking and VRBO mainstream during football. The message that they’re sharing is not sterile. It’s not like a Hilton or a Marriott commercial. It’s a vacation home. It’s families. It’s clearly, “This is a clean standard. This is a good time for you and your family and this is going to be a great experience.” My question is, from a business standpoint, can you keep that local touch and be that large?” I don’t know if that’s been answered, but we’ll see.
We know it hasn’t been answered in the past because, truly, there were some missteps, but does that mean it has to stay that way? Fingers crossed and like everything, media attention is going to glob onto whatever’s the biggest thing. As Carole was saying, that’s going to be great for us. If there are some negative things and fighting in communities from local, that is going to have a potentially negative effect as well.
I look at things from my perspective of Northern New England and certainly, in this part of Massachusetts, we don’t have big condo associations where a company might be managing 500 units in the same complex. That’s one kind of thing, but when you have separate individual houses everywhere, that’s a whole different side of the way things can work. I wish them luck and good luck to our industry that it can maintain as we grow as an industry and people now appreciate that we have high standards. I want that standard to stay high. I do worry that it might change with the growth of some of these large companies.
Won’t that drive people back and away because the people are going to vote with their dollars in where they go? People aren’t going to continue not having good experiences with their hard-earned money that they’re going on vacation with for whatever reason they’re spending that around. I always look at this as an experiment, “Can this work? Will this work?”
If it doesn’t, who’s going to win? I don’t look at it as one eclipsing the other. I always think of our industry as being diverse and ever-evolving, but I also think that there are niche and quaint things about our industry that can’t be scaled and replicated. Those things will always have value as long as the people value those things.
I remember, and I was saying this the other day at one of the first VRMA meetings or early VRMA meetings I went to. Someone spoke who was the president or something of the Ritz-Carlton. He was talking about how lucky we all were as professional managers because he had to go get venture capital. He had to go get permits from the city. He had to go build hotels. All we do is go and talk to an owner who’s already got that property and professionally manage their property.
There’s that piece. The other is all the Rent By Owners that are springing up now need to be included in our world. I’m glad that the VRMA has changed some of its policies to make sure that everyone who’s in the vacation rental galaxy, whether they’re a large company going public or they’re a rent by the owner that’s got 1 or 2 properties, maintains the same standards that we’ve worked so hard to make sure that people understand and do. We know the Rent by Owner is also a burgeoning movement, and many of those people are turning into vacation rental owners and learning to be and professionally managing properties.
That Rent by Owner movement, Carole, is definitely growing and there are many more resources available at their fingertips to quickly become more professionalized than that previously in the end. VRMA opening their doors is nothing but positive. I’m excited that, as an organization, we are opening up to those with one or more. If you want to come and be a part of and learn, I think there’s so much benefit for these individuals, but also for professionalizing the industry as a whole.
It’s because of the regulations out there affecting people with one company, one property, or 10,000.
It is being inclusive and because we’re associated, if they do bad and mess up, they are short-term rental. It’s another narrative of inclusion being better.
Carole, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Unfortunately, we have to wrap this up, but we could keep going on and on and on. Let’s have you back in the future. We’re honored to have you join us now as the pioneer that you are. We appreciate you spending some time with us.
I love talking the talk.
We want to give you your flowers while we can. If we’ve not learned anything over these past couple of years, for me, it’s been to appreciate the things that are here.
We got some great people in our industry and I look forward to tuning in to your show with more of them on them. Thanks for doing this.
Thanks for joining us.
Take care.
Important Links
this episode is proudly sponsored by:
guest links:
Atlantic Vacation Homes
Previous
S2E8 – Big Money Big Money No Whammies
Next
S2E9 – Tackling Everyone’s Biggest Issue