One of the most intense feelings that I've struggled with as a business owner is the feeling of isolation
and feeling like this is all on me.
There's nobody else that can help me with this.
Like I have to figure it out.
Do you see all your Wayfair stuff is shipping?
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Ultimately, at the end of the day, so many people's livelihoods are dependent on Be Still
Getaways. At times.
It's been a challenging thing to sit with, but it's motivated me.
It's given me fire.
Like, keep going because you have to.
My name is Jamie Stark Inlow.
I'm 32 years old and I own a property management and design company called Be Still Getaways.
We are on track to bring in $3 million for this year.
Basically we are a one stop shop for someone with a short term rental.
That's like, I would like to purchase real estate for a short term rental, but I don't necessarily want to be
in the trenches really at all because it's a whole production.
Prior to starting Be Still Getaways, I worked in higher education.
I was a student program director and I really enjoyed my work.
After getting pregnant and having my son 9 to 5 definitely was not cohesive to our
lives anymore. I was dropping my son off really early at daycare, picking him up late, and I was like, This
is just not what I pictured for my life.
So my husband and I, we ended up selling our home, moving back to Virginia.
We purchased a mini farm in Scottsville, Virginia.
Our neighbors had a sheep farm and they had a beautiful barn and I can't remember
why, but I had gone through the home above their barn.
It was finished very beautifully and I was like, This could be an Airbnb.
So from there I wrote a business plan to my neighbor.
I asked him to give me $2,000 to furnish the barn.
We drove all over the state of Virginia doing Facebook marketplace pickups.
We furnished the barn, I listed it, and then I manage the unit from there, I dove into branding and
creating a website.
And when I started the barn, I was like, This is it.
I want to do property management for short term rentals.
Sales grew so much in the past few years.
We certainly have different levels of luxury now that, you know, 2022 brought some really, really
upscale properties into our inventory, which was exciting.
So property management obviously comes with a lot of different expenses.
Definitely the things that we spend the most money on are number one, wages.
There are many times that I ran a payroll for staff before I ever paid a dime to myself, and that's how it
had to be. And I knew that from the beginning.
I was like, I want to instill in my team a company where they feel valued, where they feel paid
well and where they don't want to leave.
Supplies are also up there.
I would probably put this as our second most costly line item.
This would include all of the things that you need in your short term rental paper products, dishwasher pods,
laundry detergent, makeup remover, cloths, toothpaste, those little things that you need in a quality
short term rental.
Last year about this time there was a warehouse opportunity here in the town that I live
in, and so we signed a lease and that absolutely changed our lives to have a point place where we could
ship all supplies.
So 120 doors worth of supplies, not to mention all of the outfits that we do.
We have about 4000ft².
And right now it is completely full of furniture for about three different properties, as well as
all of our supplies for all of our units where our inventory coordinator is just able to go pull what she
needs for a unit and take it to whatever property is running low.
I worked for almost three years working my higher education job as well as operating Be
Still Getaways, so I started matching my salary.
I was like, okay, if I'm comfortable for a year where I can pay my salary with Be Still
Getaways, then I feel like I can quit my job.
My husband also recently quit his job.
He was an educator and he is actually our full time lawn maintenance man.
So he literally 50 hours a week mows grass, which he really enjoys.
He listens to podcasts and this line of work has been very good for him and he fills in a lot of gaps that we
didn't have before. There are still days where I'm like, Oh my gosh, what if?
Because it's scary.
It's a scary leap.
But I'm so glad that I did it.
And it was such a relief to be able to just devote 100% of my time to this company and ultimately continue
to scale.
Afton is a pretty tiny mountain town known for vineyards and breweries and
distilleries. I mean, I picture when this home was built, there was likely close to nothing around.
And so with Afton Mountain Inn, we've created a very luxury resort experience in Afton, Virginia,
which I think is really unique.
We renovated all suites.
We renovated seven bathrooms and added an additional one.
And we were able to open within three months of doing all of these renovations.
I think our contractor wanted to kill us when we picked 30 different paint colors
throughout the entire inn, which is I think that's the only property we'll ever do that on.
So this is our snack bar slash coffee room.
We call this the cafe.
The property owner of Afton Mountain Inn actually suggested what if we do complimentary ice cream for all
of our guests? Have these little Ben and Jerry's tiny pints that we keep in there.
And I was like, That is a beautiful suggestion.
If you are willing to pay for that, let's absolutely do it.
Be Still Getaways obviously experienced an immense amount of growth.
Even through the pandemic and just over the past couple of years, it was truly like wildfire.
We grew we went from two to 10 to 20 to 40 to 60.
And that happened so fast
when we expanded into motels, that was when our team structure
really was tested.
Now, 2023 has had so many intense challenges.
Our original team structure, it's not working.
Like we kind of need to tear it all down and start over.
That is certainly the hardest part of scaling, is how do you keep your quality or how do you keep your
team from being burnt out?
How do you hire appropriately and make sure everyone's taking care of as you experience this immense
scale? So that has been, I think, the thing I'm the most proud of in 2023.
It definitely is my lowest point in business and feeling like I don't know how to figure this out.
I don't know how we're going to do this.
And just feeling my staff, having so much weight on their shoulders, it was very challenging.
And now sitting here in July to see us coming out on the other side is a relief.
I think my best advice for anyone wanting to get into real estate and property management is that it requires
a dive in and a commitment and being like, This is what I'm going to do.
Obviously, one of my number one goals is bringing on a Be Still getaways owned commercial property.
And so that's exciting. That's definitely one end goal.
My dream, like, you know, pie in the Sky vision would be I would love to write a book, The Secrets of Short
Term Rentals, not just a book about, you know, helping other hosts in this industry, because I do really
enjoy the education side of hosting, but also just like all the fun t and drama that unfolds in this
industry, there's so many fun things and like hilarious stories that happen seriously every single
day that you could totally do a reality TV show or a book on it.