The Guest-First Strategy: How Brandon Hall Built a Scalable Vacation Rental Brand

In this episode, we sit down with Brandon Hall, Founder and CEO of Hallson Hospitality, to explore how a guest-first philosophy can become a true engine for growth in the vacation rental industry.

Brandon’s journey into hospitality began long before he managed homes. After co-founding OneHope Wine and spending 15 years growing a nationally recognized brand, he developed a deep understanding of customer experience, brand building, and emotional connection. Those principles shaped the DNA of Hallson Hospitality and helped him grow from three homes to eighty while keeping hospitality at the center.

That approach earned Hallson Hospitality national recognition, including being named 2024 Vacation Rental Management Company of the Year by VRMA - a clear testament to the power of guest-first thinking at scale.

Across this conversation, Brandon shares the mindset, touchpoints, systems, and leadership decisions that allowed him to scale without losing the heart of his brand.

We cover:
1️⃣ How a guest-first philosophy creates long-term scalability
2️⃣ The role of brand standards in building a portfolio that performs
3️⃣ Why he turns away owners who don’t align with the guest-first model
4️⃣ Small touches that create big loyalty
5️⃣ How team culture supports hospitality at scale
6️⃣ The tech stack behind the scenes
7️⃣ His approach to responsible scaling in 2026

Connect with Brandon:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonhall/
Website: https://hallson.co/

Get 20% off any yearly or bi-yearly Lodgify plan, plus free personalized onboarding (a $3,000 value).

👉 Use code AAA20 at checkout. Offer valid until December 31, 2025.

Considering an exit strategy?

Discover how Nocturne Luxury Villas helps vacation rental founders protect their legacy while unlocking new opportunities.

👉 Contact anthonybarrera@nocturneluxuryvillas.com 

#vacationrentals #shorttermrentals #guestexperience

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:31

And now it's time to get real and have some fun with your hosts.

SPEAKER_02 0:37

We'll start the show in just a minute. But first, a word from our premier brand sponsors.

SPEAKER_04 0:41

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SPEAKER_02 1:36

Welcome to Alex Navy the Ruleman of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex.

SPEAKER_05 1:40

And I'm Annie.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

And we are joined today by Brandon Hall, who is the CEO of Halston Hospitality. Brandon, it's so good to see you today.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

You as well. Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_05 1:50

We are excited to get to know you. We talked a little bit off camera. I had the opportunity to work with your team. I did uh branding photos in one of your beautiful properties a couple of months ago, and they were tremendous to work with. Um, but we don't know a lot about your organization and a lot about you. So why don't you give us a little bit about your background and how Halson came to be?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yeah, absolutely. Got very into real estate investing back in 2007 and bought my first real estate deal in 2000, one week before the market crash in 2007. And then um shortly after that, decided to start a wine company, kind of put off real estate for a while. Spent 15 years. I founded a wine company called One Hope Wine uh with uh six co-founders and uh spent 15 years traveling the country, growing that brand. It took me all over, and Nashville was one of the first uh markets that we that were distributed in on the East Coast and uh fell in love with Nashville. This is back in infancy when there was like a handful of bars on Broadway. It was a very cool small city, but I always say that back when I started coming here, I I um got out of a couple tickets for having a California license plate. Now that definitely doesn't happen these days. Um, but really loved it here and was coming back a lot for work, made a bunch of good friends and just kind of saw the potential of this market. So while I was building that brand, I started again, you know, 10 years later, um started investing in real estate again. And this was kind of the infancy of short-term rentals. I was actually living in New York City at the time and going back and forth between New York and Nashville. And so I bought a bought a home here that I would Airbnb when I was in New York, and I was Airbnb my my um apartment in New York when I was down here or traveling. Most of my uh my time in the wine industry and what a lot of my expertise was in is in branding, marketing, and just customer experience. Um, it's actually now that I'm deep into both industries, you know, there's a lot of overlap in the way that I think about it in the wine industry. You you have we had 10,000 competitors in the wine industry, and the everyone is looking for the next best bottle, and it's highly dependent on the label and the story and the emotional connection that you have with that. So we divide everything that we developed there was about that. How do we emotionally connect people to our brand? We have a the core idea behind our brand is that we donated back to uh nonprofits. So uh originally every bottle gave back to a different nonprofit, and um, you know, today we give back to social um human needs projects uh through our foundation. And so we created this really you know cool, brand, unique story that connected people to it. And so as I started investing in real estate, I used my you know kind of um passion for design to design design really cool properties. And then while I was you know managing the properties while traveling around, I just delivered really great guest experience from freshly baked cookies to to I pre-write hand with handwritten thank you notes and have our cleaners put those out and um just really believed in that process. And so as I I was able to grow my portfolio in Nashville, and as I got very busy with the with the wine business, I at two uh points handed my portfolio over to local property management companies, and I was a co-host at the time, so I can watch how they were managing properties. And um, I'd be like on an airport in an airport, no, no, no, no, no, don't don't do that, don't say that. That's not what they meant. Um, but very quickly I saw my reviews just tank and I just saw there wasn't the the care of the property that I had, and there wasn't the care for the guests that I had. And so after two rounds of that, I decided I had three properties at the time. I decided just to hire someone of a friend of mine locally and kind of teach them what I know because I just wasn't able to keep up with it with my schedule. This was right before COVID. As COVID started to happen, I was able to invest in in more properties in Nashville. And I helped a lot of friends and family invest in Nashville as it was booming during COVID. And in these, in each instance, I brought in one of our partner designers uh to design the property and I plugged it into our little tiny management team that was behind the scenes. And over the span of about a year and a half, we went from my three properties, about 25 properties on our portfolio. And I came to, at one point, I had my my mom moved out from California to oversee the operations and the cleaners. I had a friend doing the guest communication. She had just had her second kid. And at one point they both came to me. They're like, you need to do something with this because this is getting out of control. We can't help us anymore. So I kind of I kind of had a like um come to Jesus moment of what you know, kind of fork in the road of what do I want to do here? I know we're we had incredibly high performing properties. Uh, I knew we were on to something. And um, and so I took, I took um this was conference season about two and a half years ago, and I went to a lot of the major conferences in the industry and just to kind of see, okay, what's this industry about? I know we're doing great in Nashville. Let me go to these conferences and see kind of what this whole industry is about. And basically, my main takeaway from that conference I went to was that there was not a lot of talk about hospitality or guest experience. It was all about operations, it was all about the owners. How do you get more owners? How do you take care of the owners? How do you make the owners happy? And then cleaning, maintenance, and all that. And there was like, there wasn't, there was like one talk about marketing, and there was like one, maybe one talk about guest experience, but overall it was like not talked about at all. And I'm just like, in my mind, I'm like, what is going on here? And um went to another conference, kind of the same thing. It was very just revenue management focused and operations. And I kind of looked at while I was there, I was kind of looking at a lot of the other, you know, property management companies that were there, looking at their websites, and it was very, it was all kind of the same thing. It was all just very much here's our portfolio, book our home. We'll take, you know, we'll take care of your home and then owners, like a big owner's button, you know. New owners click here. And uh so I kind of my takeaway from that, I came back and I just believe that there is a really big opportunity to build a brand in the space that was focused on guests first and hospitality and doing whatever you can to make the guests happy and delivering our portfolio. That was the other thing I noticed at these conferences when I is that every management company had a huge um diversity of portfolio um from beautiful mansions to small one-bedroom apartments. There was not a lot of consistency. This has definitely changed over the past couple of years, um, which is awesome. But um, those are the two big takeaways I had. And so I decided to step away from my wine business and start Hulson Hospitality um and create a brand, put it out there and uh and start marketing it and building building kind of a brand around it.

SPEAKER_05 9:05

So here you are. How many properties do you have now?

SPEAKER_01 9:08

We have 80 properties right now.

SPEAKER_05 9:10

Yeah, I was gonna say because I knew it was well over 50 when I looked at it because there was some beautiful choices. Yeah, thank you. Congratulations. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can tell too on your website. I mean, when you look at the properties, like they do all, you know, have have a similar kind of as far as quality look and feel. I mean, very, you know, clearly very curated in terms of the design and um some of the fun elements and things that you have in them. But um I'm I'm curious in this process. I mean, you went from 23 now up to 80. And did you have opportunities to kind of go in a different direction just to manage other properties that you turned down? Or like what did that process look like of just finding these 80 that really fit the brand?

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Yeah, good uh great question. Most so most of we have done zero outbound um outbound like kind of fishing at this point for owners. Oh, everything that we have has been referrals or refer or um word of mouth or referrals and or people just organically finding us and reaching out. And we do I do have very tough conversations with owners that come to us, especially in Nash, Nashville. Nashville's a very tough market right now. So I would say I would probably turn away three out of every four owners that I speak to. In many cases, the properties need significant redesign to be able to fit our standards. Um, and the reason I have that conversation is I believe truly, in my in my experience as an owner dealing with property management companies, there was a there was really bad transparency and really bad trust issues. And it was promising the world and under delivering. And so when I started this, I I believe very strongly on being very transparent, very honest up front of what a property can actually do, because the worst thing in the world is managing a property for an owner that can't make their mortgage payment because it's not performing. So I literally tell people we will not take on your property if you if if at this like very conservative pro um projection, you can't make your your cover your bills. We just won't do it. I don't care if it's a I don't care if it's a a you know$10 million home. Like if you can't pay your bills, it's just gonna make our life miserable because you're gonna be gross of uh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 11:34

Yeah, I don't think anybody's ever put it quite like that. I mean, there's yeah, I think there's a lot of conversation about level setting expectations with owners, but I don't think anybody's ever said, like, I won't take an owner because I they're not gonna be able to make because I think that's a really big distinction that isn't made. Yeah, you know, we we talk to people all the time that get frustrated with the realtors in their market that the realtors will be like, absolutely not a problem. And then they come walking through the door and they end up taking the man, you know, taking the owner on, hoping that they're gonna be able to, you know, change the conversation and make them understand where they're really, really at. But like you said, it just sets everybody up for a bad situation from the beginning. Um, so I I definitely, I definitely think the way you put that was it was spot on, and more people need to be able to have the confidence to do that.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's interesting too. The conference that you mentioned, I kind of I kind of have a feeling in my mind which one it was a couple of years ago that you said there was no talks about hospitality. And I remember if it was the one I'm thinking of, Annie and I were at a dinner with Matt Landau and his friend who was outside of the industry, and we were asking him, we're like, What do you what do you've never been to one of these? What do you think? He's like, I'm really confused because I thought that this is a vacation rental comp conference, and like no one's even talking about the most important thing, the hospitality. Like, like you said, everybody's just talking about like the nuts and bolts and the SOPs and how things are like mechanically done. And it's like, he's like, that's what I would have thought this would be of more of thought leadership and like how do we all become better and you know elevate the industry? And that really was just was was lacking from the conversation at that point. But um it it's it's always interesting to hear people that are from outside of the industry but have like the background like you do, and in you know, branding and marketing and other businesses come in and hear their perspective because we've been going to these things for I don't know, two deck two decades now. So it's like nothing real shock class.

SPEAKER_05 13:30

But so, you know, you decided to go all in on the hospitality component. And you, you know, you mentioned that it's gotten better, you know, since you've been in the industry. And I absolutely think that's true. I think I started out in hotels and I always joke, like, you know, there's you shouldn't be in this business if you don't have the hospitality gene, and you can tell the people that have it and the people that don't. And I think that that's what is we're starting to see a lot of people that got in kind of post-COVID because it was an area that they saw they could make a lot of money really, really quick. And they didn't really have that gene and they didn't really have that sense of creating an experience and curating the properties and making people feel welcomed when they're staying in these homes. And so it's really it's really great that you identified that. And so, what do you think from your perspective, the industry at large can do to continue to elevate that as a as a focal point?

SPEAKER_01 14:18

I've actually thought a lot about this because it comes very naturally to me. Like I I I care very deeply about people and I care how they their experience with whether it's coming over to our house for dinner or renting one of our houses. Like it's just I'm a people pleaser. And so it comes very naturally to me. And it's very, it's it's like it just it didn't make a lot of sense to me how like this people were missing the the connection here. But I think why it hasn't been there is from my perspective, you guys have been in this way longer than I have, but pre-COVID, um, I think it you know there wasn't a lot of expectations when renting a VRBO or short-term rental. It was, you know, give me my door code, make sure there's some toilet toilet paper, and I'm good, I'll figure it out. And then post-COVID, a lot of the hotel sector came over. So obviously hotels were shut down. So there's a whole cohort of people that came over that were used to staying at hotels and you and had expectations. And so there's this, I think there's a lot of people that really love the operation side of this and done an incredible job with the operation side of it. I'm not good at the operation side of it at all. I first thing I did was go and hire a very good operations person, but it's a very different just like personality trait to be able to like think constantly of what the guest needs and wants versus like making sure the homes are clean and maintained. Like I can't do that. I would drive myself crazy trying to do that, but I can like I can um think of every little touch point in a house that's gonna make a difference in the guest experience. So I think it's just like a natural trait that people have. But as far as like what the industry can do, I I truly think it is just literally thinking of it as a as a guest first mentality. Like you have to put that guest first. It doesn't matter. Um, it doesn't it doesn't matter kind of what they need. You have until like I tell my team, until they're rude and disrespectful, we have to do everything that we can to make sure that their needs and expectations are met. Because at the end of the day, guest happiness is all about are their expectations being met or not. And I think if you think of it from that perspective, um you know, starting with they're they're expecting to show up to a clean and maintained house. So that's like step one, right? They're expecting someone to pick up the phone when they call, that's step two. But every opportunity you have to exceed that expectation is a point in the wind. So they show up in there's it's a clean house and there's fresh baked cookies in a handwritten note. That's two points, right? Yeah, yeah. If they need some help and you they call, and so and we say, Yeah, though, someone will be there in 15 minutes to fix the toilet seat for you. That's another point. So every time we're like exceeding their expectations, you're getting another point. And I think if you consistently build that into your operations, it just compounds over time.

SPEAKER_02 17:09

And so, where do you make the cookies? How do you run?

SPEAKER_05 17:13

Let's talk about the importance of it.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

I used to, yeah, early on. I well, early on, I would just bake them when I was doing it. And then when my mother moved out here, my mother started literally baking, like she had a bakery in our house.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

She was just all day long, just oh my god.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

And I was like, this is gonna stop. Yeah, and then we low um partnered with a local um bakery and we'd get cookies from them. And now we do a handful of different things. We have a variety of different options that we do based on you know the property and who's coming. We try to personalize it as much as possible now. So we're not doing the freshly baked cookies now, but what if it's the first three stays for a new property? We do everything we can to get fresh baked cookies there just to like get those first couple great reviews in the door.

SPEAKER_05 18:01

Yeah, there's nothing like smelling fresh baked cookies when you walk into a house. That's definitely vacation rental.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

You know, I had a um client that I work with that they initially the first year or so of owning the business, they put fresh flowers in every property upon arrival, which was also like wow, you don't see that often, but they found it just it wasn't scalable for them. So that kind of went away. But um, if you're able to scale that and it makes sense how you know having an outside vendor fulfill that for you, that that's a that makes a huge impact when somebody walks in the home. I mean, that's like such a nice treat, literally.

SPEAKER_05 18:39

When I walked into your home, there was a basket on the kitchen counter and it had wine. And I didn't take any of it. I left it for whoever the guest was coming in. I assume that's who it was for, but it was very nicely placed and done. And like you you walked in it and just saw it, and you immediately felt like, I could, you know, I could breathe, I could relax, I could just, I could unwind here. And so I mean, I think it, I think that's that's a really nice touch. And and some people kind of try, but they don't go the extra like little step of the handwritten note. And I think that that's that's always something that you can do that really doesn't take a lot of time. Yeah, you might have to sit down every week and write 50 different notes, but it it it that is so meaningful in today's technology world where people just send texts and we don't get mail, you know. Like what you do get in the mail is generally a bill or junk. You know, you're not getting handwritten notes so to show up someplace with either fresh baked cookies or a handwritten note. I think that that's that's a nice little touch that a lot of people aren't doing anymore.

SPEAKER_01 19:29

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

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SPEAKER_01 20:57

We make it very clear up front that that's how we operate. And if they're not on board with it, then they need to go find another management company. It's as simple as that. I just tell them literally in our first meeting, like this is who we are and this is why it matters. Um, and ultimately, if you buy end our philosophy, like our true belief is it's gonna generate more success for your property, more revenue for your property. But if we don't have the ability to do whatever we can to make to get five-star reviews, then naturally over time something's gonna happen and it's gonna, you know, bad bad reviews are gonna come in. And if you're if you're not willing to do what we need to do, then you know, we're not gonna take away. It's not gonna work. And for a perfect example is we do charge, you know, we do charge, we we typically leave a bottle of wine and either cookies or popcorn or like things, depending on what it is for, and we charge that to the owner, but we tell them like that right there is like three points when they walk in the door, right? It's like it's all it they will for they will that piece of hair that was left on a on a sheet or pillow, like they'll forget about that when they're greeted with a really nice thing. So we have to kind of like talk them through examples like that of why it matters. But if they, you know, if if they say no, they're not gonna do that, or or like we've managed them for three or four months, like I don't want to spend the money on the wine or cookies or this anymore, then we're saying that's fine, then we'll terminate the contract.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Yeah, because that's not part of your brand. So that it's it's not optional. What about though on the homeowner, like just the relationships with owners? Like, do you guys do anything special when owners come to town to stay in the properties? Or like how do you how do you keep maintaining those relationships that are vital to be able to keep these properties?

SPEAKER_01 22:39

Yeah, no, absolutely. We um we treat them just like guests when they come to stay at the property. So um we obviously know our owners a little bit better. So we'll go a little more above and beyond to make sure that you know, if they're a big whiskey drinker, we'll go a nice bottle of whiskey. Kind of depends what what they're here for. We have someone coming for Thanksgiving next week with their family. So our team's gonna do something special for her. But yeah, and we and we treat them as we treat them like clients. We send them gifts throughout the year, we send them nice Christmas gifts, like we send them handwritten, you know, thank you notes, thanking them for trusting us. Um little thing. We just we take the same approach, but you know, if you have to rank them, the guest comes first, the owner comes second.

SPEAKER_02 23:18

You know, yeah, interesting.

SPEAKER_05 23:21

That's a good way to look at it. I was curious. Um, so we were we were talking before we got on air, and I mentioned you played college football. So you obviously you to play college football, you played football your whole life. So team is is probably just completely part of who you are at at the core of you. Um, how did you do you think that any of the any of the things that you learn through playing football and obviously in college because you were a division one school, you know, do you you like use any of those learnings as you were putting together your team and how you manage your team?

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Yes, 1000%.

SPEAKER_05 23:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

I went to I played football at Cal um UC Berkeley, which is obviously an incredible, incredible school. And I always tell people like I learned way more on the football field than I did in the classroom at that school. Yeah. Um and yeah, I think I mean some of the best teams that we had had the best chemistry. And and we had other teams that had incredible talent, but didn't have great chemistry. And I believe that's very, very true in business. And so as I'm hiring a team, and this goes back, we we did this at my previous or one hope as well, is we're very, very, very cognizant of who we're bringing on the team based on how they're gonna fit in with the team and and how they fit into the culture of the team. And it's very important that they understand the guest first mentality as well. Um, that's a huge part of it, is they have to be passionate about hospitality. They have to understand why the guest comes first. And um but yeah, and and because that we've had, you know, have a great team that that really cares about this. Cause I think I think that's what it comes down to more than anything, is really caring about a home as if it's your own home or a guest as if it's you know, dear friend of yours that you want to make sure is having a good time. So, anyways, but yeah, to answer your question, I think chemistry and culture is probably what I learned the most from there that I've carried through all my businesses since.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

I love that. I love that. Uh I'm curious too about the technology that runs behind the scenes that enables you to be able to give these uh elevated touches. What does your tech stack look like?

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Oh man, ever evolving. Um we we use uh guestie as our PMS, um, breezeway, and then um conduit as our kind of communication hub, which was host AI.

SPEAKER_05 25:46

I've heard of Conduit before. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Conduit as in regards to this, or in regards to kind of the guest first approach, they what I was really looking for is a platform that um an agent or someone on our team can go in and see the entire conversation with that guest, whether it was an email or text message or a phone call. Um it was just even with Guestie, we had to use different phone systems and it was very, you know, we have we're messaging on Breezeway, messaging to Guesty, then had a phone system as well. And you had to kind of put the whole story together. You kind of had to go in between all of them. So conduit was one that is a platform that kind of plugs into everything and and you get one clear understanding of what is going on with the guests. So that way, you know, someone who hasn't been dealing with them can very quickly get up to speed and deliver the right answer or need.

SPEAKER_05 26:42

Yeah, yeah. You you kind of alluded to like ever evolving. So do you feel like there's other technology that you I mean, uh everybody's talking about AI right now. Do you think that there's new technology that you need to adopt or something that you're looking into for maybe for next year?

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Yeah, I mean, I yeah, I say it's ever evolving. So I'm like, can someone please just put all of this into one package for us? You know, like we get some mergers going on, so we don't have to. Um, but I I am very much looking at um, we also use Monday.com as our, you know, probably task management board. And that's I think one of the hard things with this business is just the it's very complex, right? You're dealing with homes that are complex and have a variety of issues. You're dealing with guests that can be non not complex, very complex. Um, and you're dealing with homeowners that can also be, you know, either don't hear from them or they're or they're texting you every day asking questions. And so trying to build like a centralized hub where all of the information can live and um I think is incredibly important. And we're going through that process right now with a actually an AI company called Axe Automation that is basically kind of takes our entire tech stack and um helps kind of make sense of all of it in one place, which would be Monday.com. And so um, and they use a ton of AI to do that to just to make sure all the dots connect and that everyone knows what's going on. So that is that's the biggest undertaking. And I'm doing that because like scaling from we we've scaled from 25 to 80 properties in two years, and there's a couple months we're onboarding eight properties in one month, and then it's just mayhem, right? Just absolutely mayhem as much process as we're trying to put together, like things are still slipping through the cracks. I'm just kind of obsessed right now with figuring that using AI and using the technologies out there to put the system in place to make sure things are not slipping through the cracks. So as we scale, I think I think it's not, you know, every many people know this in the industry, is like a lot of the problems really start to occur when you start scaling. I'm talking all this about brand standards and guests first, but if you start bringing on 100 properties a year, it's really hard to keep that up. And so I'm I'm trying to build out systems using AI and the technologies there right now to be able to scale responsibly and keep the standards that I'm put in place.

unknown 29:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

Already you know how that goes.

SPEAKER_02 29:20

Yeah, I think everybody's or a lot of companies are in a similar boat that it's like you've got a lot of different bolt-on technologies that each of them serve a specific need. But at the end of the day, even if they're API connected, they're not they're not all from one source of truth. And inherently that's going to lead to you know disconnects and and not having all the information that you need to have it you know completely flow all together there. But and really it's like you know, you came into the industry at a very interesting time that back in the day, I mean, pre COVID, I think the industry to a certain extent was less complex than it is now. And I think the technology, in some cases, Has helped, but I think it's also made it more complicated for managers because there's so many different things. And it's like you go to the trade shows and it's like, God, I mean, I feel like I need everything here, but like, how do I how do I narrow down what's a nice to have versus you know looking at it from a couple different lenses? What's going to make more revenue? What's going to simplify things to improve the work, you know, the work uh environment for my team, and what's going to allow me to be able to continue scaling, you know, like you mentioned, I mean, onboarding is you know, that's also a topic that I don't feel like is talked about enough at conferences because some companies have a playbook, some don't, you know, and and with properties, big homes in particular, onboarding is a it's a long process and there's a lot of different departments. I mean, it has to touch every every part of the company essentially. Right. Everybody agrees. But yeah, it's it's it's it's complicated for sure. And I hope I'm hoping that the industry we kind of start going towards more of a consolidated effort because it's it's just a lot and there's a lot of decisions that have to be made as an operator.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_05 31:13

Yeah, so you've obviously done something right because you won property manager of the year?

SPEAKER_01 31:20

That's been impressive last year last year.

SPEAKER_05 31:22

Last year, last year. So when we're in Phoenix.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 31:25

Yeah. So congratulations for that. That's a really that's a really big honor. Um, I I know a lot of people just work tirelessly to get to that point. So what do you think that meant for you and your team? Kind of to just one, be called out in front of your peers. But I mean, do you think that that was justification of everything and the blood, sweat, and tears that you've put into it at this point?

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yeah, I think it was, I mean, I think it was for me personally, it was validation of my gut that I decided to step away from my other company with that I started with my five best friends. You know, it like was my baby for 15 years and like give this crazy idea a shot. So I think for me it was validation of like, okay, I I I am onto something here and it is working. I think for my for my team in general, it was, you know, they everyone's come from this world, you know. They they've they'd all have worked at other management companies before and they were attracted to Halston because of the story I'm telling you and the vision I have for it. So I think it was also the same thing, validation for them, that they made the right choice and that we're on something.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

Yeah, yeah, I'm sure they're super proud of that.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:33

It's nice to have your team team uh it's nice to have your team rewarded equally, you know, for the the hard work that they put in.

SPEAKER_01 32:39

So that's yeah, no, and it was it was actually awesome because my I was at the the during the conference, I was in the hospital here in Nashville with having our second child. So he was literally literally born during the conference. And so my um Jake Ahar, who's our operations director, who came in and we had like 30 homes and just has been uh he's just worked as worked so hard to like get all the homes onboarded. Um he's a rock star and and he went out there and accepted it. So more than anything, it was like really cool to have him go out there and he's been in the industry forever and and kind of go up on stage and accept it. So that was that was really a cool moment.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

That's really cool. How many people do you have on your team?

SPEAKER_01 33:22

We have um between local and VAs, we have 14 right now.

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Okay, gotcha.

SPEAKER_05 33:31

That's that's a pretty lean, pretty team for 80 properties, but yeah, but I it's I but obviously I think you know you got the right technology in place to be able to help with some of that.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, we can definitely we're we're hiring a couple more, we'd probably use two more right now. So we're we're looking. It's it's uh you know, it's also a very competitive market here, so it's it's hard to find you know the right people of the right fit and culture fit and all that, but we're we're always looking for sure.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

Yeah, that's great. Well, what are your goals for 2026, Brandon? What are you what are you looking to what are you excited about or kind of where do you see the company going in the future?

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Um, our goal, I've also thought a lot about this, um, of where where we want to take this thing now that we're here. The first my first year was very much, you know, what I call like the the branding year, like getting the brand in place, the story, the message of what we're trying to do. And this this last year was very much like the team building year, getting the foundation, the team in place and the foundation to actually scale. Um, and so next year for us is definitely the the scaling year. Um primarily, you know, I've thought everywhere of do we do this just in Nashville or do we go outside of Nashville? And I'm still kind of working through that. But I think in general, it's it's how do we how do we take what we built here and scale it in a very responsible way and yeah, go from there. So I don't um I don't know what that number is. We've grown at about 25 properties per year the past two years, and we'll probably we're in the process of hiring a business development position that will kind of hopefully improve that pace. And that would be what I would say is the the biggest goal and focus for next year.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

Yeah. That's great. That's exciting. Yeah, very exciting. Well, Brandon, thank you so much for coming on today. It was great to meet you. And I know Annie just raved about the place that she had for the photo shoot. So it's it's cool to actually meet who's behind, you know, the places that we stay at or that we go to. Um, that's kind of a nice little benefit. But um if anybody wants to get in touch with you, what's the best way for them to reach out?

SPEAKER_01 35:41

Um, I'm on Instagram, uh Brandon Hall11. Um, and always welcome to email me. It's Brandon at Halston.co.

SPEAKER_02 35:49

Okay, great. Uh we'll put that in the show notes. And if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to alexandannypodcast.com. And until next time, thanks for tuning in, everybody.