How to get the kind of business challenges anyone would love to have.
When Vacasa made it into Inc. Magazine’s 2014 list of the fastest-growing private companies in America, the article reported Vacasa’s three-year growth rate had topped 16,000 percent.
This tech startup originally offered full-service vacation rental property management and marketing for some 2,000 homes in 13 U.S. states. Now they’ve expanded to Belize, Panama and Mexico, and they plan to spread into Europe and Australia.
Such dramatic growth brings serious challenges – the kinds of challenges that any leader would like to have.
Read our Slideshare “Growing pains” to learn about three imperatives for technology in a growing business.
So how did Vacasa’s leaders do it? We looked at the Vacasa website as well as other sources for an answer. There, we discovered insights about the company’s growth and success. From company executives, in their own words:
1. Know When to Ramp Up
“One of our goals when we started the company was to have 50 full-service properties. Once we hit that point, we had built our business model off of getting the revenue from 50 properties and being able to staff according to that. That first year was about building out the model and the viability of the business. After that, we were ready to take off. It pulled us away from having to do all the day-to-day tasks.”
COO Cliff Johnson, excerpted from the One Million by One Million blog
2. Be Flexible
“Prior to the financial downturn, people were buying vacation homes as an investment, without plans to rent them. When the downturn hit, prices fell 40 percent. Combined with property taxes, maintenance, and more, homeowners were much more eager to explore renting their second home. This timing helped us quickly become one of the largest vacation rental companies in the country, and we now have owners earning over $100,000 annually by renting their home for periods it previously sat empty.”
CEO Eric Breon. excerpted from Vacasa press release, August 14, 2014
“We collect rent from the guest. Out of that rent, we pay the home owner a portion. Our current commission rate has evolved over the years. We found new marketing channels that allowed us to provide a better return to owners. As we’ve done that, we’ve made some adjustment to the commission.”
Cliff Johnson (One Million by One Million)
3. Stick to Your Core Business
“One of the things that we always look at is staying in our core business. There are all these side opportunities which are related to the vacation rental space. A good example might be a concierge type of business. It’s not something that we do right now because it’s not a core part of our business, but we might have some local partners that we work with.”
Cliff Johnson (One Million by One Million)
4. Keep Costs Down When You Combine Technology with Automation
Vacasa works to integrate intelligent routing of customer calls with its CRM. As a result, they “… ensure that our agents have all the information they need to quickly and effectively respond to all questions and calls, this helps us provide a great customer experience and keeps overhead low so we can pass the savings on to our customers.”
Chief Technology Officer Erik Tylek Kettenburg, excerpted from BlogGeek.me
Of course, no single formula for growth exists, but one thing is certain: Whatever you do, you must never let up.
“Over the past few years,” Johnson noted in a Vacasa press release, “we’ve been figuring out what it takes to do growth right, and we now have it down to a science. We’re launching in 15 new markets … and we plan to continue accelerating our pace of growth.”
Subscribe to the Small Business Solutions Blog and receive updates when we publish a new article. [wysija_form id=”1″]
Share with your followers, in 1 click
Tweet: 16,000% growth in 3 years? No, it’s not a typo. 4 strategies that you can use.
Tweet: A look at one of the USA’s fastest growing companies. Apply their strategies with 4 tips.
