August 04, 2026

#196 ​​​​When Growth Stops Serving You: The Short-Term Rental Pivot That Changed Everything with Leah Yuhasz

Pulling into her church parking lot last August, Leah Yuhasz, an Emerald Coast real estate agent and property operator, found herself completely drained and barely present. She’d scaled her portfolio to ten properties across Destin, Panama City Beach, and Asheville, but the nonstop demands were breaking her. Making a short-term rental pivot isn’t giving up—sometimes, it’s the exact move you need to reclaim your life.

Leah built her portfolio through arbitrage and management contracts, implementing software like Hospitable and OwnerRez to handle the backend. But even with solid systems, the reality of managing five different condos meant constantly dealing with wristbands, parking logistics, and after-hours guest messages. She couldn’t shut her phone off at night, and it started stealing precious evening hours from her young kids.

The Hidden Emotional Load Before a Short-Term Rental Pivot

Managing properties for other people brings a unique kind of pressure. You’re acting as a financial steward for your owners, striving to keep their revenue high and expenses low while delivering a flawless guest experience. I’ve discussed this exact pressure with my own team—even something as simple as a maintenance guy buying daylight bulbs instead of soft light bulbs at Walmart adds friction to the system and eats into profitability.

Leah hit that same wall. She and her husband found themselves clashing over how to handle routine maintenance problems. Working with your spouse differs completely from raising a family or being married to them. When you’re growing fast, you just do what needs to get done. For Leah’s husband, that meant addressing property issues on his way home from work to save money, which ultimately caused a heavy strain on their relationship.

When Parking Passes and Wristbands Dictate Your Evenings

Leah describes herself as a “yes girl”. She took on whatever referrals came her way, traveling from the Florida coast all the way to Asheville just to be the hero for a client. But she soon realized she was outsourcing her own life—getting her groceries delivered and paying a local laundromat to wash her family’s clothes.

Why do we build these businesses in the first place? Usually, it’s for flexibility and family time.

When you’re giving everyone else your energy and failing to recharge, your battery will eventually die.

Are you running your portfolio, or is it running you?

If you’re dropping the ball at home because you’re tied to your phone managing condo logistics, it’s time to reevaluate. Your business should serve your current season of life, not hold it hostage.

Making Your Short-Term Rental Pivot Without Guilt

Leah didn’t just walk away overnight. She intentionally kept two owners through the end of the year to ensure a smooth transition. By March, she handed off her final client to a trusted boutique manager with a twenty-property portfolio.

She also sold her primary investment property to a client she was helping. They were struggling to find a condo in Destin with enough square footage and a great view, so Leah gently offered them her own. That equity is now funding a house-hacking strategy south of Highway 98, allowing her family to book just four weeks a year to cover their travel expenses.

Transitioning Your Short-Term Rental Management Business

Stepping back isn’t always a relief right away. Leah admits the shift felt slow at first, and she had to do the mental work to figure out how to actually relax again. We get so hooked on the hustle and the dopamine of seeing properties succeed that silence feels uncomfortable.

When you’re scaling, you can’t just cross your fingers and hope bookings roll in. Leah admits she’d approach her pricing strategy differently today. She was manually adjusting PriceLabs and putting her own property last on her priority list. After noticing a booking slowdown, she finally dropped her rates by five or ten dollars and immediately secured three bookings. If you don’t have the bandwidth to monitor your algorithm, you must hire a revenue manager.

But as Leah beautifully puts it, pivoting isn’t failing.

“I look at pivoting as a beautiful thing. It’s an opportunity for us to change and also to grow and stretch in different ways, and oftentimes to recharge as well.”

If you’re questioning your current path, you need to turn inward. Trust the instincts that got you into this business to guide you into your next season.

Check out the full episode below to hear Leah’s story. If you’re struggling to streamline your operations before making a change, explore our coaching resources at Stacey St. John to regain your time.

Click here now to listen to the full podcast.

HIGHLIGHTS AND KEY POINTS:

Golden Nuggets:

• “Working with your spouse is very different from raising a family with your spouse, or being married to your spouse.”
• “To grow carefully is to do yourself and your property owners a favor.”
• “When we’re giving other people our energy and we’re not able to recharge ourselves, we’re draining our own battery, and eventually it’s going to give out.”
• “You’re having to pivot, that’s not failing at all, that’s simply making a change. So many people look at pivoting as failure.”
• “I look at pivoting as a beautiful thing. It’s an opportunity for us to, to change and also to grow and stretch in different ways, and oftentimes to recharge as well.”

Connect With Stacey:

Website : https://www.savvy.realty/meet-the-team

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/leah.yuhasz/

 

Full Episode Transcript:

 

00:00:00.862 All right, here we go. So today we are joined by Leah Juhasz, and we are talking about the very raw topic of being a mom and pivoting in this industry. Leah, I’m so grateful that you have the courage to come on and talk about this topic. So thank you, first of all, for being here. 

00:00:22.250 Thank you, Stacey. And I hope I can keep up energy-wise. It is June right now, the middle of June, and I have a four and a seven-year-old. And summer camps where we are, we’re barely hanging on by a thread. So I may not have as much energy as you today. 

00:00:41.246 It’s all good, girl. See, I’m well past the day of summer camps. I remember that, though, like dropping my kiddos off at camp. And sometimes they would be excited about the camp they were at that week. Sometimes they weren’t. I definitely dealt with mom guilt. So I’m curious to hear if you are experiencing the same. But walk us through. I know, obviously, I started off and I said we’re going to talk about pivoting, but I would love for you to take us back to the time when you first got involved in the short term rental space, what that looked like and when you decided to make a pivot. 

00:01:23.587 Yeah. Wow. So I was actually it’s kind of crazy. I was finishing my nursing BSN. This was about five and a half years ago and I had a six month old. And as crazy as it sounds right now, having a baby and a toddler was actually easier than having two babies. toddlers and two children. It’s no one can really prepare you for the hard transitions. But nonetheless, I knew I still had a lot of time on my hands. And I’ve always been that kind of person that I don’t have. I don’t like to have a lot of time on my hands. So I’ve kind of got to fill it with something meaningful. 

00:02:02.989 And as I was finishing up that baccalaureate degree, because I had had my two year nursing degree for about seven years at this point, and I just wanted to finish my four year, I figured, why not start transitioning into another type of learning? 

00:02:20.170 i really had kind of set out on this journey me and my husband both um i took it on as i usually did because i would work one or two days a week as a nurse and i had more free time than him we had extra money you know above our monthly expenses and we’re blessed enough to kind of figure out what do we do with investments and so that put us in front of several different people and and really got us talking to a lot of people that he did business and work with. 

00:02:49.752 Of course, several were in the stock market doing different things like that. A few of them owned investment properties. A few of them, you know, referred us to their financial advisors. And I remember one really odd, vivid conversation, and it stuck with me to this day. It was a nurse that I worked with, and she made the comment to me. 

00:03:13.146 oh, what do you mean what do we do with all of our extra money? That sounds nice, honey. And I know that it came from a genuine place for her, but it was such a shot down because I was just trying to gain information anywhere and everywhere I could. And I just… I knew at that point that there’s a different kind of thinking that’s involved in investing. 

00:03:40.175 And you have to be around other people that are looking for other ways to be smart with your money. Because it’s not like we had this huge excess, right? We were still very, very young in our late twenties, early thirties. And we just wanted to know how do we be smart with this? How do we steward it well for our kids? 

00:04:03.308 That really got me studying, really got me diving into podcast. As I make a lot of notes about my journey, podcasts keep popping up. So I know you’re encouraging and reaching a lot of people through this because every time I pivoted through the last few years, I have learned and consumed through Audible. 

00:04:24.483 Yeah. So, yeah, a lot of studying, a lot of learning. And then and then that’s when we decided that real estate was something tangible we could understand and that we would buy a short term rental property, given that we live in a vacation market anyways. 

00:04:41.096 OK, so tell our audience where you live. 

00:04:44.139 We live in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, and we’ve been here almost ten years. And that’s in between Destin and Panama City Beach here on the northwest coast of Florida. 

00:04:53.362 Yeah. Right in thirty eight. Everybody talks about thirty eight. 

00:04:58.567 Yes. Thirty eight boomed about six years ago when social media boomed around twenty twenty. So I love it. 

00:05:05.673 OK, so you were in a vacation market. You decided to invest in real estate. You decided to purchase a short term rental. Take us through what happened next. 

00:05:19.096 And so once we did that, and it was kind of a simultaneous study of how do we make sure we can write this off, you know, kind of deduct it from my husband’s W-II, because I thought, wow, this is a double-ended, double-edged type of situation. We can not only take excess funds, but we can take and design, but then we can also have a I think cost segregation bonus depreciation was at sixty percent. So it really wasn’t that juicy, but it was juicy enough to make a big impact. 

00:05:50.961 And it really quantified to almost our down payment. So that was awesome. So we bought our condo in Panama City Beach. And then crazy, three months later, the property right next door came up for sale. And I thought, oh, I can’t buy it. But I connected with the owner and I figured out a way. 

00:06:16.901 Arbitrage was very kind of new at this point. But I had heard of it briefly. And so I maneuvered my way in there. And on a trip to the Smoky Mountains that summer, that’s all I remember from that trip was just figuring it out, figuring out how I was going to connect with her because out of all of the short term rentals in that condo complex, hers was actually a long term rental for years. 

00:06:44.038 So it was wild. But we took that on. About two months later, I put in some property software, which was game changer. And then from there scaled a small management company. 

00:07:00.586 Okay. So talk to us about the small management company. And did you end up, you ended up arbitraging your neighbor’s property. Is that right? 

00:07:11.713 Yes. 

00:07:12.434 Okay. So the small management company, I mean, it’s funny that you mentioned like, oh, I just happened to grow a small management company because most people are like, oh my gosh, growing a management company, that’s a lot of work. So talk to us about what that process looked like for you. 

00:07:31.473 So once we had that second property, that arbitrage property that was right next door, it really just opened my eyes up to if I can do this with two properties. then in the future, maybe we take on a couple more, no matter what that looks like. I didn’t know what that looked like at the time. 

00:07:49.406 But the funny thing is, once you do start in life trying to level up, you get this kind of spirit about you where you tell everyone what you’re doing. And I’m already just the kind of person, I don’t like awkward space, so I just make conversation with people. 

00:08:04.379 And one of the people that I met on site at our property, was another owner at the complex and he owns another unit and turns out he really wanted another management team involved. He wound up being one of the head of the HOA people there within the next year, which was a great resource to have too. just having that relationship and really diving into business in that aspect as well. 

00:08:36.775 But from there, because arbitraging is really kind of like owning your own, all of the bookkeeping and everything, accounting, at the end of the year, it’s all kind of on you. You can do it very internally. If you miss any part of the maintenance or you miss a tag, it’s still coming out of your bank account anyways, right? But when you add another property on, I immediately saw… OK, there’s some legalities, there’s some software they do not have set up that I need to get involved in. 

00:09:06.053 I connected with Joe, Joe Rohn, and he helped. He was one of the first people that helped me. But I was one of the first people that he helped kind of do this business wise. So really low key coaching for maybe a month. And then and then I took it from there. 

00:09:26.971 Awesome. And then what software did you end up putting into place? 

00:09:30.942 hospitable. 

00:09:33.124 Okay. And so you’ve now gotten two different owners that you’re working with, one that you’re arbitraging from, and you have another owner that now you’re offering a management solution for them. Talk to me about what you grew that portfolio to look like over time. 

00:09:57.756 So the portfolio grew to ten properties and it grew over the next two years. So it was three years of grow, three and a half years. It really was all a referral base. So I did get involved in a kind of a mastermind, a group that we all kind of joined in and we would have referrals, different people that we knew, just networking with people. But then also posting videos. just very lightly what we were doing. 

00:10:29.115 And I had, I had an old coworker, a doctor that I used to work with that wanted his property long-term rented. Okay. And that was, that was an interesting jump too. That was one of those heart fluttering, you know, this is, I’m going to figure it out. I don’t know how, but I’m going to. 

00:10:50.312 And so at what point throughout this journey did, Did you discover, hey, I might want to pivot? What did that look like for you? 

00:11:04.100 I think when I had this many properties and I could not shut my phone off at six or seven o’clock and all of a sudden with both of my kids in school full time, that evening and nighttime routine was precious to me. And at that point I had gotten into real estate sales and I’m also a yes girl. 

00:11:25.865 So there’s really, there’s no true clear boundaries that I’m easily able to set because I’m a big helper. And I saw there being a lot of gray lines between the people that I sold to and being able to tell some people yes and some people no for management. And I didn’t I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be a very clean, clear relationship where I continue to help them further after they acquire their property. And I was able to get that off to someone else. 

00:11:56.931 And there’s a lot of pressure that I think people don’t talk about when it comes to managing other people’s properties, because yours, you know, your goals and you can really, you kind of maintain that control a lot easier, but when it’s someone else’s, no matter how many systems and safeguards you put into place, some of it is just out of your control. 

00:12:20.485 It’s interesting that you say that because, uh, you know, I just had a very lengthy conversation with my team this morning about light bulbs and that might, you might be like, why are we talking about this on a podcast that’s talking about pivoting? But, uh, The pressure as a property manager or even a co-host is to, in my opinion, provide the best experience for our guests and provide world-class service to our owners. 

00:12:54.426 One of the things that we have to do as property managers and co-hosts, and by the way, I do both. So I’m a full service property manager and I’m a co-host. I am a financial steward of my owner’s money. Okay? I actually have a whole team in place. And the conversation around light bulbs, it’s something that we had that was so simple this morning. But to your point, there’s pressure on me. I want to have my owner’s revenue as high as possible and their expenses as low as possible. Right? So they have… the greatest amount of profitability.

 00:13:33.817 I happen to notice, I won’t tell you the long version of the story, but the short version of the story is that we were deploying maintenance folks to change light bulbs. And instead of running to the office where we have light bulbs and inventory, our maintenance guy was stopping at Walmart and just picking up light bulbs. Well, I’ve ordered light bulbs at bulk rates, at wholesale rates. And so the cost for the light bulbs is a fraction of what he’s getting at Walmart or Home Depot or something like that. 

00:14:11.447 And then also… You know, the pressure beyond the financials is I want a guest to walk into that property, our owner’s property and go, oh my gosh, this is exactly like it looks online. It is so clean. It is so perfect. And lo and behold, there’s two different color light bulbs in the light fixture because the maintenance guy stopped and got daylight when I order soft light. Okay. 

00:14:37.663 He’s sort of like all the little pressure points that… A lot of people don’t talk about in the short-term rental space, everything looks glamorous. And I will tell you, I absolutely love what I do, but the pressure is to deliver, again, the best experience for our guests, the best service for our owners. And that’s not always easy. 

00:15:02.340 So how did that pressure show up for you? Maybe it showed up in light bulbs. Maybe it showed up in different ways. Talk to us about that. 

00:15:10.245 Yeah, I think that that could be a whole separate episode right there because you touched on something, your maintenance guy. And I’m just laughing thinking of last summer because that’s when it really all came to a head. You know, ten properties, one was in Asheville because that owner had added another property so they were all here from Dustin at Panama City Beach but he added another property in Asheville and he asked very nicely and I said let’s go with it and you know because I want to be the hero for them and I know better than everybody else so we we went with it 

00:15:50.077 my husband wound up being reined in as a big part of the the money saver and i think that working with your spouse we found out very quickly that we have very different styles of attacking problems and um and i have a very type a Problem solution, you know, timeframe that I need to have everything done and it really stems from, you know. That pressure that you talk about that I just put on myself, but at the end of the day, I also knew internally what happens if you do not attack those issues immediately. It can skyrocket into this, you know. bigger, bigger snowball effect because time is very important. 

00:16:40.702 And so it became a very hard situation between me and my husband because growing so fast, you’re scaling this team, you’re scaling this team, but at the end of the day, you do what needs to get done. And if I’m here with the kids, then you need to do it on your way home from work because it’s more convenient and then we’re saving everyone money. And you can kind of really get into a little bit of trouble with trying to save money and it causes a strain on the relationship as a whole. 

00:17:15.797 And so thank you for talking about that because I do think, again, that’s often an unspoken thing in our industry. You see all these couples who may be working together and maybe on the surface, everything looks great. But for so many folks, working with your spouse is very different than raising a family with your spouse or being married to your spouse. 

00:17:48.559 I know when I was first starting out, my husband still works in the corporate world to this day. And there were times… that he wanted to get involved in things. And I’m like, hold on timeout. I got it. I’m fine. Um, and so we had to work through that. Now I have to point out like he is wicked smart and actually is a mentor to me in many forms. Okay. Um, He, my husband loves to like shop, like he loves to decorate. Okay. And that’s where I was like, can, can I’ll just do it by myself, honey. I’m fine. I’m good. 

00:18:39.141 I think a big part of that too, is we have, we have young kids at home with no family around. And so that creates this situation because I have so many mentors in this space and so many people that I know very lightly on the outside, um, of their business and life. And I respect them so highly when I see them working together. And I think it really is all this season of life that we’re in of why this was not coming together the way it could and should. 

00:19:07.923 There’s a certain amount of wiggling that you have to do with your kids, which is what this was all about for me, was creating something for them. and getting involved and doing things flexible around their hours, around their schedule. And so the flexibility, at the end of the day, we have to be happy mom, happy dad, and there for them. And so you have to be super careful when running a business without mom and dad ten minutes down the road. You know, grandparents are not here. It’s just us. So that’s what caused, I think, a lot of extra strain in this season of life. 

00:19:49.644 Yeah. First of all, I love that you’re calling it a season because that’s exactly what it is. And I’m also curious about, you mentioned, you know, last summer, everything kind of came to a head. When did you decide and how did you decide I need to make a shift? 

00:20:11.383 That was in August. So in August, I had picked up quite a bit of real estate and client work and busyness as well. So I was really just coming out of about six months of working. seven days a week where I had already for three years worked seven days a week. And it was increasing into a Saturday and Sunday was a six to seven hour day. And so that will eventually ruin anyone. If you’re not able to actually run an errand, I think that’s really tough. 

00:20:48.482 um if you can’t run an errand on a monday because you’ve got a leak in a management property you know you’re you’re putting out a fire and i will say that is the other really big piece of advice and it’s the one thing that i will do whenever i i do this again because i’ve already kind of um considered maybe in the next year or two i will i will grow and scale very slowly again um to grow carefully is to do yourself and your property owners a favor. 

00:21:21.185 Because once you know what you need to know to do it successfully, growing with the right properties, if you’re doing this from afar, if you’re doing this with younger kids, growing with strategy and the right properties where maybe you have newer HVAC systems, you know, better secure toilets, less leaky shower heads, um in areas that are booking better guests more luxury type homes um knowing your time and your skill set and what you want to provide and offer to the business um and doing it in a slow careful way i think can be really amazing 

00:22:02.104 i took whatever referrals were coming my way And I also matched up the owner personality and if they would allow me to design it, help design it, help give them a refresh. So that was my top priority, but it was not the property and what all that involved. And there was a lot of things like wristbands and parking at condo complexes. That was half. I had five condos and that’s a lot of moving parts with that. 

00:22:31.126 Yeah, yeah. You know, I totally understand. A lot of folks who don’t manage in condo buildings don’t know that there’s a whole other side to this business where we do have to talk about parking passes and wristbands and key cards and towel cards. And, okay, we’re out of parking passes. Where do we get, you know, are we going to the front desk? Are we going to the HOA office? Like, there’s a whole… to managing in resorts that adds complexity for sure. For sure. 

00:23:05.567 So last summer, last August, you decided to make a shift. Was that an easy decision? Was it a quick decision? What was the impetus that made you make that choice? 

00:23:21.901 So I was pulling up into the parking lot at church on Sunday and Sorry, I’m going to get emotional. You’re fine. You can probably cut that out. So we were going to church on a Sunday and there was one very vivid day where I was just Barely present, you know, just not able to focus. And it really just had everything to do with both businesses that I was running at the time. 

00:24:00.848 So just having two different businesses going, being strained, that kind of really just put me over the edge to make that decision of I need to scale back. I need to, you know. This is my time to say no to what I’ve grown, even though there’s so much pride that comes with that. There’s so much. I’ve still got some left in me. I still need to see this through. I still want to make sure that they hit their numbers next year. I’m going to give it until the end of next summer. 

00:24:33.715 I also did not want to shift out of it for two different owners. So I did keep two owners with me for the next six months as well as my own property. And then in January of this year, I went into this year with three different properties. That was the plan to just manage those three for the year. 

00:24:57.430 One of my neighbors, they had the plan to do more personal private bookings. They wanted to do more off-platform bookings. And we’ve spent the last few years really trying to optimize on platform and building that. And that’s something that is just more of with my business model. There’s a lot of back end stuff that we would do financially. And I think that was just a little bit confusing to kind of know where that was coming from, because everything was. Shuttle straight to them financially. 

00:25:31.384 So I just didn’t feel like that would be a good fit moving forward into this year. And there was also a whole half of the year that they were missing revenue wise because their HOA was having a really big renovation. So I wanted to kind of give that back to them because I knew what they were also facing and they had managed it before. So I kind of made that executive shift and decision because I thought it really would benefit them and their property better to just take that back over. 

00:25:59.416 And then I actually had a client, it was wild, was on a property search with her and she had her buy box, had given it to me and I was standing on the balcony of a condo in Destin and I was just racking my brain trying to think. How could I get her a better view, a better price point, more square footage, because she wanted the bigger square footage. And we had been looking for two months and nothing was on the market. 

00:26:27.903 And it hit me, our property. And it’s something that me and my husband had talked about. And that way we could exchange our equity and move up into a townhome here closer. And so I kind of just gently showed her. And she loved it. Said it was everything she wanted. We sold our property. And then I was able to shift the last client that I had in March to a new property management company. A small boutique owner that managed twenty properties. 

00:27:05.121 And we are… Crazy how God works because that equity we are going to use for a primary property that we’re going to house hack and short term rent our primary property. Wow. We’re going to be south of ninety eight. We’re going to be very close to thirty eight. And it will be a huge blessing to be able to rent out just four weeks out of the year and get about twenty three thousand dollars, which will pay for our trips. wherever we want to go, you know, and help continue to build wealth. So we’re shifting all family focus for a minute and then we’re restructuring and we’re going to kind of go at the investment side again here pretty soon. 00:27:52.034 So I love that you’ve given us that detail and I want to ask you what it feels like post-pivot. And I want you to compare that, what it felt like pre-pivot. 

00:28:11.720 I would have answered that question very differently six months ago. I would have said, I feel a relief. I feel like this is the right decision. I feel like, gosh, I’m going to have so much more relaxed time on my hands. But I’ve been doing a lot of mental work the last few weeks and going, how do I relax? You know, because there was so much of a craving and a constant, you know, I guess connection to seeing these properties soar and do great. And it was a great feeling to have all these different things checked off my list. 

00:28:54.885 And now it does feel a little bit slow. Yeah. 

00:29:00.373 And the other thing I’m just going to highlight, if it’s okay, is I think it’s very interesting that you had this desire, this vision for what you wanted the properties to do, what you wanted to have happen for your owners. And yet… You were the yes person. You said, I’m the yes girl, right? I want to serve other people. I just want to highlight that during this slow season, you serve yourself. 

00:29:37.667 Take the time to recharge. Take the time to do that soul searching. Take the time to look in the mirror and say, what do I want out of my life in the next ten years, twenty years? The world is your oyster. Okay? The sky is the limit. I’m going to encourage you not to be the yes person anymore. With the exception of, I want you to be the yes person for Leah. Yeah. Yeah. 

00:30:06.553 Because when we’re giving other people our energy, And we are not able to recharge ourselves. We’re draining our own battery. And eventually, it’s going to give out, right? Yeah. 

00:30:23.377 I think part of the last whole, especially the whole last year, as I got hardly any time, I found that I was outsourcing everything from grocery delivery to laundry services. And I’ll never forget showing up at the local laundromat that does a wash-dry fold. And I just… I was upset. I was like, how am I not doing my own laundry for my family? And now me and my husband laugh and think it’s the greatest thing. And sliced bread. Yeah.

 00:30:55.137 I am. I’m a lot more on time for the kids. I’m showing them up with the right outfit on for the theme days. And I am definitely weeks ahead on getting everything ordered and done. So there’s a lot of little moments that I am. you know rejoicing in that okay i may not be ahead business-wise right now with a business like that but i’m still ahead for my kids um and that’s the most important thing right now as they are growing 

00:31:25.355 I love that. The other thing I just think it’s important to highlight as something you just said, it’s right now. This is a season. This is a season of your life. And I know you know that. I can tell you know that. The cool thing is, is you can take the experience that you’ve had, that you’ve been through and use it for the greater good, right? You can use it for the good of other people to look for opportunities, to pay it forward, to share your journey. 

00:31:55.413 Hey, listen, guess what? You’re having to pivot. That’s not failing at all. That’s simply making a change. So many people look at pivoting as failure. And I said before we pushed record, I look at pivoting as a beautiful thing. It’s an opportunity for us to change and also to grow and stretch in different ways and oftentimes to recharge as well. So I know we don’t know each other all that well, but I’m very proud of you for making the choice to pivot because candidly, a lot of people would have… stayed stuck, and eventually had a catastrophic situation, right? 

00:32:40.288 Yeah. Yeah, that’s super powerful. There was a huge moment just a few months into joining Savvy that I realized that everything that I’ve done the last few years was not just for me, that it’s now for the investors that I help serve. I sold eight million in the last six months, or excuse me, the last year on the emerald coast and to help these investors navigate where to go how to choose a property if they’re going to self-manage all the things to look for all the things to put into place um so my busy is still busy but it’s flexible it’s hey we’re going to hop on a zoom and i’m going to show you everything to do 

00:33:22.575 because i’ll never forget putting into place hospitable and my husband asked me who’s checking in this weekend you know because we used to make conversation those first couple of properties we would who’s how many guests are coming who’s how long are they staying and um just a couple weeks later and he goes who’s checking in i said i don’t know i don’t know their name 

00:33:47.839 The systems were running. And that’s when I got hooked with the systems blog of trying to put into place anything and everything we could that would offload completely as much as possible. And also to think about the guest side of things, what they need and think about it before they need it. And so like a true passion for hospitality, as much as you can be hospital, we’re still Even if you’re giving one hundred and ten percent, we’re still failing as a somewhat slim five to ten percent sometimes. And that’s OK. 

00:34:21.623 We’ve got our phones and we’ve got backup auto messaging now. But to really think about it for them and to give them that. service that we all want when we take a vacation. It’s very, very simple and it’s always the same thing. So just timing it to be appropriate and to be kind and on both sides serving my flexibility, not getting hit with ten messages every two hours, but really just thinking about it for them because you don’t want them to be lost and stressed and confused and not think that no one cared about their place. 

00:34:58.739 Right. Absolutely. I’m curious if you were talking to someone who is on the verge of deciding whether or not they should pivot, what words of wisdom would you share with them? 

00:35:17.853 Taking the energy and everything that allowed them to have the confidence and the ability to get in and then turning it inward. And that’ll show you the answer of what you need to do. 

00:35:33.630 Beautiful. All right. With that, Leah, I want to move to the lightning round. Okay. So I’m going to ask you to answer these questions with the very first thing that comes to mind. First question is, where is your favorite place to vacation? 

00:35:49.737 Oh, goodness. there’s no way i can’t say here and there’s so many reasons it is um i just answered on a facebook post earlier today someone asked if they would go to curaco or if they would you know go on a cruise to curaco or if they would come to thirty a and i have taken a cruise recently to the bahamas and i was so offended at how they made you pay to go to this small beach nasty sand pigs running around everywhere you’re crammed you have to set through forty five minutes of a lecture of how to go to the beach and then you have to wait another hour and a half on a weird bus to get back to the beach where they tell you how much their prices in milk work no culturally i enjoyed it um and i love sandals in jamaica and antigua um 

00:36:47.461 But the water here is breathtaking and the ease and the safety of being in this area. I just love it. So we take our vacations on like a Wednesday afternoon and, you know, Friday morning sometimes. And that’s, this is our life. 

00:37:07.909 That’s so great. That’s so great. I do remember the first time I visited the Dustin area and, I was absolutely floored at the water. I, you know, it’s like Caribbean water and I’m thinking it’s twelve hours away from where I live and I drove here. What is going on? I didn’t even know this existed in the world. You know, such a beautiful part of the country. So beautiful. 

00:37:34.594 Yeah. I’m a simple girl. I’m a Southeast girl. 

00:37:38.394 There you go. All right. Next question. What’s one place you’ve never been that you want to visit? 

00:37:45.257 Oh, Yellowstone. 

00:37:46.757 Okay. That answer came quickly. 

00:37:50.318 Yes. Almost everyone in my family has been, my sister’s been a couple of times the last couple of years. Um, So yeah, it sounds wonderful. I have a lot of friends that have been as well. And my husband has been actually, I have not. 

00:38:03.115 Okay. Well, that trip better be planned soon. 

00:38:06.518 Yeah. 

00:38:09.202 Okay. What’s one thing you know now that you wished you knew when you were starting out in the world of short-term rentals? 

00:38:18.253 Probably just how easy it is to put in software and systems. It took almost a year to fully understand how to connect everything together and how to secure the right door locks and automate those and really just getting that main software tool hooked up could save you a lot of, a lot of messages. 

00:38:41.804 Yeah. So property management software, you use hospitable. What other softwares did you find to be incredibly helpful in your business? 

00:38:51.974 I did use owner res. I am not tech friendly. So I had someone help set up my owner res. I layered that in once we had a property that was a larger property with a fire pit and some different things. It was also pet friendly. So I felt the need to start collecting deposits, but also having that agreement with a large balcony with some different things in place. Really wanted to make sure everyone was on the same page. So after about four properties, I layered that in and I never got rid of hospitable again. I’m not tech friendly, so it just works with my brain and my eyes and it’s just easily navigated. 

00:39:32.222 So that was a good one. Price Labs, I would redo me doing Price Labs. I would get a revenue manager. 

00:39:43.086 Yeah. Yeah. I always say, if you are not the type of person that wants to be spending at least an hour a week you know, managing your revenue. If you don’t have the time for that, if you don’t have the bandwidth for that, if you don’t have the expertise for that, if you don’t have the desire for that, get a revenue manager. It can be game changing. It can absolutely be game changing instead of just crossing your fingers and hoping your bookings come in. 

00:40:18.282 Yes, that’s something that I dove in a lot to try to figure out with my competitors. And there’s a science to really understanding where they’re priced at, your booking window. So I really try to educate everybody that I help purchase a property that if you are going to self-manage, either spending a certain price per month or that percentage, whichever model you go with, you’re going to… gain a lot more in hours and um kind of relaxation of knowing that it’s being done the right way because you could spend a whole year learning and still not know enough and not be on top of top of it enough if you wait and you’re not on top of your pricing i did this a few months ago and i’ll tell myself because i was putting my property last right everybody else was taken care of 

00:41:05.780 Mine, it was good. I was good. And then I logged into Price Labs. I teetered with my pricing. It had been about three weeks since I had done so. Bookings were slowing. Should have gotten them in my window. I didn’t lower them, but five to ten dollars. And what do you know? We got three bookings within four to eight hours. So I was really kicking myself after that happened because there’s so much in the algorithm that I knew better. And it’ll sneak up on you if you’re not on top of it. 

00:41:40.458 Yep, absolutely. Okay, next question. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? 

00:41:49.282 Oh, in business or… in life in business best piece of advice oh this is man i’m gonna struggle with this because i’ve been listening to a lot of mindset coaching all morning oh give me some throw out some ideas they’re gonna have to edit this part out i’m gonna have to think for a minute 

00:42:15.293 Maybe it’s a piece of advice about what to do, what not to do, what to focus on, what not to focus on. Maybe it’s a piece of advice about business, but it could be about parenting. Trying to think like a quote or something. You don’t have to be like, it doesn’t have to be fancy. Could be something your grandma told you. 

00:42:52.985 I’m going to go with it’s not necessarily a piece of advice, but it’s something that I’ve learned. And it’s also something I’ve heard, especially recently. There was a Tony Robbins and Jay Shetty podcast a few weeks ago. And he said something that I thought was very powerful and very true. Some of the most. successful billionaires, billionaires, top of the top in the U S are quick decision makers, not good decision makers. And there’s a big difference and they’re able to pivot and go at things quickly. And they’ve made some of the worst decisions. No one sees that now, but they make them quickly. 

00:43:37.371 Um, so I think everyone that has that entrepreneurial spirit is, If you feel that urge and that push and it scares you a little bit, it really is true that every time you are about to level up, you feel a little bit of that fluttery butterfly feeling. And that’s when you know it’s real. But that’s when it’s also it’s time to go do it. Go do it. You’ll never grow. You’ll never grow more than just jumping in. 

00:44:08.197 Amen to that. All right, last question. What’s one thing and or person that you’re grateful for today?

 00:44:15.983 Well, you, you’re, you’re a leader in this industry. You’re taking time to do this. You’re teaching so many people out there. So I have to, I have to be thankful and grateful for you. You’re in front of me. You’re giving me the opportunity to maybe reach other mothers out there, other leaders in this space that maybe feel seen or heard by anything that I say that is just a true transparency, raw and real. and tired given that it’s midsummer. 

00:44:48.815 But yeah, I’m grateful for you taking the time to educate other people because there’s so much selflessness in doing that. And people need to thank you more often. 

00:45:00.784 Well, thank you. That gives me goosebumps and made my whole afternoon. So thank you. 

00:45:07.625 Leah, if somebody is looking to purchase a property in your market, where is the best place for them to find you online? 

00:45:17.271 They can find me on the Savvy website, SavvyAgents.com. And I am under Meet the Team, but they can also find Leah.UHouse on Instagram and same on Facebook. 

00:45:31.961 I love it. Leah, thank you so much for being here. 

00:45:35.023 Yes, thank you for having me.

 

 

 

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