A Family Legacy of Paying it Forward.

Hey everybody, I'm your host Steve Schwab, the founder and CEO of Kisago. Today I'm sitting with Kish, Jay and Sharon Kanji. There are newest owners in Kisago. They've taken over some markets in the Northeast Florida area. It was the first time ever we got to interact with y'all and I have had such a great time getting to know you guys. Before we get started, I'd like everybody to introduce themselves just on a personal basis and tell us a little bit about you. Maybe I can start with Kish. Yeah, Steve, thank you very much for having us on this podcast. We're very honored to be part of this. I am Kish with Impact Properties and I've been in the hospitality business and in the company for about 30, 40 years. And I know we'll dive into it a little bit more in detail later on on how we got into the space. But we've obviously had the next generation come in and started to diversify our portfolio. How about you, Sharon? Yeah. Steve, great to be here. Great to be here with the team in lovely Oregon and we've had some good weather out here. But yeah, Sharon Kanji, I've been with Impact for many years now. I know the company's been around for about 40 years, but I've been part of it since 2008. I married two kids, live in Tampa, Florida, travel a lot because we get ourselves into a lot of things, which keeps it fun and interesting. But I'm really excited about the vacation and also the STR world. Yeah, so exciting. And then Jay. Yeah, thanks, Steve. Thanks for having us. Jay Kanji, Kish is my dad, Sharon is my cousin. And it's been a blessing to work with my family for a decade plus now and then growing up in the family business and the hospitality industry and seeing the other segments we're getting into. And I think STR is going to be a great addition to our portfolio, our community, our ecosystem. So looking forward to this new opportunity. The first day I met you guys, I got to go out and have dinner with you all. And I had such a great time listening to your family's history and how you got into hospitality. And I think I would like to start off by really getting you all to share about how your company really is a family business and how you ended up in hospitality and Kish, would you mind kicking that off and then everybody can jump in as they see fit? Yeah, no, I'd love to do that. And in everybody's family's life, the generation always is working to make the next generation's lives better and on a more solid ground. And I think for our family, it started a long time ago, maybe multiple generations back when our family pretty much comes on a certain part of Gujarat in the middle part of India. And everybody in that part of the region are farmers by trade. And I think our great, great grandfather probably saw that farming was going to be very difficult as a future for the next generation. And I think they wanted something better for the next generation. So they, my great grandfather decided to go and send my dad and my dad's brother to another country and our community had heard that there were people moving, migrating to a part of Africa in the middle of Africa in Zambia, where they were doing retail businesses. And so back in the fifties is when my dad and my uncle went to Zambia and basically went into a retail store business and was trying to get the family to move into another opportunity and another growth area. And it was there that I think the family started to settle down. And that's where me and my two brothers, I'm the youngest of two brothers who were born. And I think after about 10 years, my dad realized that education for the next generation for us was going to be more important than maybe just retail business. And that's when he decided, let me go to where they're the best education in the world is in England at that time was perceived. And so my dad moved over to England. And so in 71 to 73, we basically grew up in England and we had our education in England. And then from there again, that next generation, what's better and my dad's thought always was that I want my sons to get educated and be a doctor and engineer that's always perceived to be a great career and life changes things when sometimes nothing goes according to plan. And I think my dad's health made him rethink and fast forward and ended up sending my brother to America because one of our uncles had come here earlier and had started in small mom and pop hotels in California and had done so well. So my dad literally put all of our life savings that he had and he sent my oldest brother, Sherian's dad, and said, just go to America. And so they start his business in California. And I think my brother spent quite a bit of time, looked around, didn't really find anything that really we could afford with the money we had. And his last step was to come to Florida, see if there was any opportunity there. My uncle felt like Florida was going to become the next great state for tourism. And we were very fortunate that literally when we were able, deciding to just not be able to find anything, we ran into a little mom and pop motel in Gainesville, Florida, that my brother was very fortunate enough to be able to purchase. And literally that's where our introduction into hospitality started. And I would say that would be in 1978, '79, late '70s, that we started basically our American dream. And a few years later, I was studying to be an aeronautical engineer and then he called me and he said, "Hey, look, there's an opportunity to buy another motel and I need some help." And so I ended up flying over, didn't complete my college education, and we bought another motel in Gainesville, Florida. Now, I'm going to tell on you a little bit because if I remember correctly, you took over that hotel the day after you got married. I did. And your wife never did get her honeymoon. No, she didn't. And I think she's still mad about that today because literally the day after we got married, we took over a 10-year-old motel and we're running this motel ourselves. And obviously it was our first business, very small motel without really able to hire all the staff. So literally me and my wife were the housekeepers and maintenance, the engineers, the front desk, the landscaping. We did everything. And fresh from college, it was very difficult at that time to accept that. And so honestly, in the beginning, I really did not like where we were going and is this my future and the career. But as we started to take care of the guests and created these experience and memories for them and they kept coming back and in Gainesville, Florida, the University of Florida Gator football team had a strong following, fans would come every week for the games. And we would get that repeat customers and I began to realize that maybe I didn't become an engineer or a doctor or a career that would be rewarding and fulfilling. But I had indirectly found a path to do something that created some amazing experience and memories for people that was just as rewarding for me. And that became my passion. And then also my brother was so amazing at looking at the vision and having the future of growth for the family that very quickly within a few years, we were beginning to partner with our friends and our families to start developing franchise hotels. And fast forward, we literally were very fortunate to be able to grow and learn the business and partner with some of the greatest brands in the hospitality space with Marriott and Hilton and Hyatt and we grew the family business from there. The next generation obviously grew up in this business and part of this is that they probably saw how hard we worked and 24 hours, seven days a week and probably when they came and finished their education wanted that family business to be more diversified and I'll let Sharon and Jay now chime in and say when they started looking at it and finishing their education, they saw an opportunity to diversify our portfolio into other space that would help us offset that business. I love that you found your passion for hospitality through the practical application of working from the ground up. You guys really are Main Street, not Wall Street and I think that whole culture really flows through your entire family. Sharon, maybe you can tell us a little bit about the second generation of this legacy that you're getting to live. Yeah, for sure. I think Kish is being very humble when he shares that story and for Jay and myself, it's one of those things where we're all of what's happened before us, which is humbling and amount of sacrifice that's gone through and as a result of that, it leads us and drives us in the direction to say how do we make things better. Right, and I think to your point about our philosophy and culture, that desire drive to make things better initially starts internally and with the family, but then starts projecting itself in ways that benefit anything that touches our ecosystem. And so we got into retail, we diversified into consumer service, home service business as an end of the day. I think you know this very well, Steve, is it always is about the people. It starts and ends with people and that's your customer. It's anyone, your clients, business relationships. When you take care of those things, you follow processes which franchise organizations are very good at, especially the best ones in their fields. It's a model that works and is repeatable and you have a lot of fun doing it. And I think for us, as we've grown and diversified through the years, it's just following that plate book and it sounds simple and maybe you can get a little oaky sometimes, but it works for us. And we're fortunate that we've had a 40-year track record of taking care of people, our internal team members, taking care of our customers and kind of meeting them what they're having. Yeah, you know, I was talking to Mikasa before this merger happened. I told them a problem that had happened at Mikasa is they believed it was a tech play and they'd been lied to. It was never a tech play. It was always a relationship play. This is always a relationship business. We can use tech in different products to make sure that we do a better job to help scale our time and these sort of things, but to your point, it's a relationship business, right? Yeah, it always has been. One of our settings that we use anytime we're stepping into any business, whether it's one that is an acquisition or we're starting from the ground up, is our desired motto is to give our people the tools and resources they need to succeed and get out of the way. They're the ones delivering those experiences like Kish mentioned on the front lines and we were the ones doing those experience of our life. We just think back to kind of chokes me up a little bit, think about like my mom was the maid, like cleaning rooms. You know, when you process weekly payroll, it's just your family members. Nobody else. It's like, you pay all the expenses, like whatever's left is what you buy groceries with and you go again the next week, right? And you just kind of continue to cycle to get out of it, right? So that has never left us. I feel very fortunate that that's our foundation and, you know, that relationship focus is, you know, tools and resources to make tech and we're, it's amazing how much amazing technology that is out there and what it can do. And at the end of the day, it takes away certain processes or certain things that were manual, but that really means it gives you more time to spend with the guests, the customer, the homeowner, whoever it may be that you're interacting with because that's where the bonds are built because when we know we all travel, you know, things happen. A lot of bad things happen when you travel, like for us, getting out here was a journey. We almost didn't make it, but we got here, but the interactions we had along the way, those get reinforced and those are the people you end up doing business with the ones that care the most. Yeah. Jay, lovely to catch your perspective on all this. I mean, you've come into the family business and obviously making meaningful contributions to it. What's your perspective on hospitality within your family business and the go forward? Yeah. I mean, I echo what kitchen chair and have shared, you know, we, like Sharon just said, we are very aware of the sacrifices that came before us that gave us the opportunities and the lifestyle and the opportunities for education and being our own person and living in America. Those weren't there even one generation ago, let alone two. And so I feel very lucky, very honored that those sacrifices gave us this opportunity. And, you know, those and seeing my family build from very little and create all these opportunities for employees, for guests, for each other was powerful and, you know, growing up there was never any pressure like, what are you going to do back to the family? But I always wanted to see what can I do? How can I pay back? How can I pay forward? How can I continue to grow? And so about a decade ago when there was an opportunity to come into the family business, my dad, Kish, needed some help. We were growing our hospitality portfolio, you know, I left the career I was building an investment banking and business banking and jumped at that opportunity to be a part of this and learn the business from them and help anywhere I can, wherever I can and STR, you know, coming into this industry with Costco is no different. You know, we are very hands on, we are leveraging our collective knowledge basis skill sets and getting our hands dirty and trying to turn the ship around in the markets we're building with the team members that we are inheriting. You know, as I listened to all three of you talk, I'm finding a pattern and it struck me, Jay, at one of the things you said, and then I started thinking back to this conversation, the paying it forward seems to be a fundamental value of this family, thinking about the next generation, making the next generation better, going all the way back to as far as you can track in the 1950s. And I'm sure that was a legacy that was given to that generation too, but within this family, there seems to be a very much of a pay it forward. How do we make the next generation better? Definitely appreciate who brought us these opportunities and how do we make sure to continue that tradition. And I think it's a really powerful family tradition that you guys have. Yeah, I appreciate you catching on that, Stephen. I think for us, you know, we're family business, so by default, everything in long term. And when you, we found the greatest consistency, the greatest success and the greatest personal fulfillment for us and our team members and customers alike is that when you think long term as default proposition, you generally make the best decision that works for all people involved. And when you don't have that any short term pressure or influence, there's no shortcuts. And sometimes you have to maybe take a half step back, one step, two steps back sometimes to go forward, but you end up in a better place. And I think that long term mindset is really what drives us because it's that anchor that North Star that says what's the best for this situation or this business, this team member or this customer right now for the long term. And if you filter everything through that lens, it's a good guiding light. It's a great guideline and it really segues into some of my next questions because, you know, in Casago and with the Orange Credo and talking about being older centric, you know, our people that we work with are the most important people within the ecosystem. But their most important job is to make great decisions on the owner's best behalf, especially in their absence, right? And often making the best decision for the homeowner may be a short term loss for us at Casago, but that lifetime value of that relationship we build that transcends the business, creates the value that we have within our company because these relationships we have with homeowners is so important and the trust they give to us is so important. And having that long term mindset that, yeah, I may have to make a decision that's not great for today's P&L, we might have to take a loss on this, we need to pay this owner. It's what we need to do, but the lifetime value of our relationships with these homeowners over sometimes decades is really how we think about it and how you guys align with that sort of thinking. You all are on your last day of Casago University and it's the first time we've done Casago University in the United States is happening right here in Portland. Can you guys share a little bit about what it's been like to go through Casago University, maybe some of the highlights on some of the things you've learned? Yeah, obviously for us, it was an opportunity to come and learn a little bit more about this short-term rental business and the accounting process and all the standard nuances that is unique to this short-term rental business. And so we were all excited and it would be easy for us to just say, hey, let's send the general managers, let them learn the systems, they're going to be out here, they're going to be working with the owners and the guests and we're, but we really felt like we've done from generation to generation that we need to know the business, we need to know exactly how to get this thing done right. You know, like your story is very similar to our story where you started in Rocky Point, you got thrown into the deep end when you inherited that short-term rental business and you learn and you made mistakes and you realize, hey, I don't want to do that again and learn how to do that better. It's no different than how we learned in our generations in our hospitality. I got thrown into a deep end, into a hospitality world and figured things out and did we make mistakes? Absolutely. I mean, sometimes mistakes are the best schools for teaching you what to do right the next time. And part of that process is us coming here, meeting the culture, or, you see, the last thing we expected was a CEO of a cast that was sitting in the classroom to meet us on the first day. So that was an amazing surprise and great for us to see. And then the team, everybody that we've interacted with, it's been really very informative. But even while we're learning about this space, it's just the connections that we're building with the team members that are here to teach us is at another level. Then just again, meeting with you and just spending the time that we did last couple of days has been, and everything you say is like, okay, you have been through this process for many years and you're sharing some experiences that we are going to be looking at in the future. And that's our opportunity to learn. And again, that owner-centric kind of a teaching process that without the owner, we don't have an SDR world. That's what the foundation is at the end of the day. And there is no property manager. There is no guest. There is no other processes after that. So that's why even your orange credo is amazing as the more I learned about it in the universities that everything starts with ours, you could have come up with the credo letters and all of that would have been in there and oh, would it not have been in the first place. But having owe first, it makes it even more powerful of what we've learned here. Yeah. I love the very first line. I am the owner's advocate. Right. Yeah. It's powerful. And I would just add that the week's been fun. I mean, usually when you think of training, it's like, I got to sit in the classroom, you know, you're going through worksheets and got presentations and it's like, okay, starting to look at your watch, the clock, when you're going to get out of here and, you know, not saying maybe that's what the perception we had. We were excited because it's a new venture. But coming here and being here for this full week, Steve, the team has been great. Well-prepared. They handle us. I know maybe we may not always be a little rambunctious because like we three see something we're like, like, what does that mean about this, this, this, and this? And we like go way off tangent, but all of it was entertained and it was applied to the business and it helped us get a deeper understanding, which was great. And it's just been fun. We've been interacting, you know, in between the breaks, lunches, dinners, even, which is the nice. So it's been a great week. Everybody's been loving the questions you guys have been asking, fully engaged curiosity. You know, the truth is if somebody's not asking questions that take you even off of the different directions, then they're not truly fully engaged or curious. I think in a business, well, maybe any business, the curiosity about the business is how you end up getting into a place of proficiency, right? And knowledge. Jay, what do you think? Yeah. And I'll just echo agree with what both of them have said, but I'll echo that orange, the owner centric part of the credo. You know, I think we've obviously been in the owner seat in all of our businesses. You know, I am in the Airbnb that I've run, you know, living in Jacksonville, but in this industry, you know, we're obviously sitting on the management side of things, not on the owner side, but being able to bring that same mindset that we've approached to every business, every decision we've ever done into this business was important to us to start with and to see that alignment with Casa Go, and that focus being front and center, I think, was refreshing and welcomed. Great. You guys brought in the teammates from the Casa to one, get to know them, show them who you are, and let them know a little bit about, you know, what their future looks like. Can you tell me a little bit about how that went? What did you do and what can those employees be looking forward to? Yeah. So obviously with this change, you know, they've been aware of this change long before they knew we were coming in as the local partner with Casa Go, but we really wanted to get in front of it. You know, they're the ones that have those relationship with the broader team, the vendors, the owners, right, the even past owners and community members. And so we brought them in. We own a couple of hotels in Jacksonville, so bring them to a central neutral site. We brought them in, kind of gave them the same background we shared today, maybe a little bit more in-depth with some fun examples, but shared our history and one of them to see us as people, you know, we're not your new boss, we're your new partner, and we want to grow upon the foundation that we're getting from this Fakasa merger. We had the opportunity to also bring in some team members that have worked for us at that hotel in a neighboring one that have been with us five, 10, 15, 20 years, respectively. And you know, Kish and I walked out of the room and we said, you guys talk to ask them anything you want. We want them to tell you the good, the bad, the ugly of being part of the impact, dealing with Kish and me and Sharon. And I think that went positive and it didn't scare anybody away. I think they welcomed that opportunity for us to be a little bit vulnerable to share that experience. And I think we're just starting with building those relationships with the team members, but we wanted their buying and their excitement to not only start, but to now flow out to the owners that they're communicating with and show in how they're treating the guests. And we're just getting started so there's still a lot more to do. Yeah. You know, I always talk about how we teach our teams hospitality by how we treat them, right? So the way in which we treat our teams is the first step to teaching them how to treat others that they're working with within the business. And I think you guys are really doing that. And your plan is fully to keep the employees that are there and reinforce where you need to and really bring them along with the ride, right, in the long term. That's right. I think for us, you know, getting to know the team in the early days has been great. The response has been fantastic and we're already talking about adding team members. And I think as we got to, I think maybe tie back to training a little bit, you know, we had a couple of field visits out to some properties, helped with some inspections. Not kind of serenity names, but we even got down and dirty, we're doing help and doing some cleanings with some situations that arose and with some guest check-ins coming. But that's just kind of who we are. But that's kind of, this is a training team and they want to jump in and help, right? So, you know, when we got to see that full process from start to finish, it's like, wow, this is what a property manager goes through. This is what a housekeeping or maintenance or a GM has to do with when stuff comes up. You know, the hospitality business stuff always comes up, right? And it's like, well, who would normally do that in our markets, given what we've seen, we're like, we don't have enough people, you know? And it's like, we got to start structuring the organization and the process is to have people that can be happy doing their job and not feel like, because at the end of the day, the one common theme of everything that occurred from our interaction so far is to see how deeply the team in the field cares about the properties and the homeowners and the guests. And they feel bad when they feel like, I wanted to get over there, to get a second set of eyes before the guests checked in, or I wanted to deliver it to cementity, but I had to go to 10 other places at the same time, right? So when they care so much, it's like, well, we got to do everything we can to give them more tools, more resources, which gets more people to help share the load and provide good experience both for the homeowner and the guests that we have to do it. Yeah, you got to give your teammates an ecosystem, which allows them to succeed, right? Because often, you have great people in the ecosystem that isn't set up for success. And how in the world are they ever going to be able to provide what we want them to do if they don't have that? When you all are thinking about the homeowners that you're going to get to meet and interact with and those who are listening, tell me a little bit about what they should be expecting from you all and what they can look forward to. What's the vision for your homeowners and their experiences and the changes that you're hoping to make for them? Yeah, I can start. I know that Kish and Jay have a lot to add to this as well, too, but what the homeowners can expect from impacts in Northeast Florida is we're going to do everything, like we said, and what Jay was alluding to with that owner's mindset and with the focus on the owners. And I think for us, our vast experience in other industries, being in the hotel world, retail, consumer services, home services, gives us access to things to do for the homeowners that maybe were not possible or present before. But I mean, there's also things that I know are trying to do in the STR world, like revenue management, that we can bring to the table to help them get the most out of their their properties. And for some homeowners, they just want to cover their costs and enjoy a vacation, though. We're there to meet them there and have those conversations and make sure we're set up. And some owners are like, I want to make X amount of dollars, X percent every year. Well, we're going to craft plans to be able to deliver that for them. And we want to tailor make everything for the homeowners, exactly to what they want to stay with us as long as possible. That's right. Don't you, Kish? Yeah. No, I think shouldn't hit all the major points and I think transparency, making sure the own homeowner knows exactly what we're doing it and why we're doing it. I think that is so important for them. I think if they understand certain costs or certain changes that happen or certain market dynamics is not delivering the revenue that they're expecting, educating them and explaining to them and not letting them try to figure it out on their own, I think it's so powerful. I think being local and as Sharon said, we bring all these tools and experiences that have made us successful in the hospitality world and driving that revenue, doing that revenue management is so critical and comparing our performance with the comp set, which is similar houses with the similar amenities. And are we doing better or worse and giving us those goals and challenges to do better are the things that we need to share with them and letting them know everything we do will be fully transparent to them and they are not going to be left in the dark. I think it's so important. It's so important. Providing context to your homeowners keeps them your homeowners, right? So how about you, Jay? Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest thing they can see just to echo what both of them have shared is just we're local. We live in Jacksonville. We've been part of that community. We've owned and managed multiple businesses in that community. We have strong relationships. We're bringing decision making, revenue management, all those tools that I think got lost in the shuffle of being part of a bigger organization. I think Casago recognizes, especially in this industry, you have to be, I think you said it before, you can only be local in one place, right? And I think that's so true. And to bring that back, even in our markets, we know Amelia Island is very different than Jacksonville is very different than St. Augustine. So understanding that dynamic and how we're going to price things, how we're going to set up the teams for success, how we're going to take care of the guests, all goes into that. Yeah. As we start to wind down, you guys have gone through Casago University. You've been through what we call orange meetings. These are meetings that we have where we talk a little bit about the culture and our principles or standards and then get on to whatever else we're working for the day. Maybe if you don't mind, could each of you just share with me what your favorite wine or part of the orange frito is and why? I'll jump in with just tagging the owner centric. I mentioned it earlier, but that's a mindset that we have in our other businesses, whether it's us as owners or to our partners that trust us to take care of those businesses for them. But that was already a big mindset shift for us, even though we're not sitting in the owner's seat with the owners that are coming into our ecosystem to act in their disinterest. And again, to see that as a big core value or principle for Casago was very important to us. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Obviously, a owner centric would be the most important for all of us. Because here is an owner of a home and they've basically trusted us to take care of it and manage it. And that's such a powerful position to be put in. Is this something personal to them and we cannot take that lightly? And so I think for all of us, I'm sure it'll be owner centric is the most important part of it. Excellence I think is what I would look at the next one. Because the thing for excellence is that we're always striving for perfection. I think that's the goal that we have our team members. We have to strive for perfection and we're never going to get there. There is no such thing as perfection. But while we're striving for perfection, we're going to run into excellence and that's the mindset I think the team has to have to deliver at all levels of the connection points that we have with our team members, with our guests, with our owners, I think striving for excellence in all the relationships gets us to that perfection, I should say, gets us to excellence. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. When it starts and you use that again, then I think the AS-31 I'll take with anticipate and for us and in this industry, the anticipation is everything, right? I mean, if you want to deliver a great guest experience, it starts with the pre-arrival or what do you have to do? You have to anticipate all the needs, make sure the unit's set up correctly, make sure the team has everything they need to do that. If there's special requests coming in or if there's things you can surprise and delight with that, sometimes it's going above and beyond, sometimes it doesn't cost anything. But if you're thinking about those things, that anticipation helps deliver those guest experiences, but then there's flip it to the owner side again, right? And if you go there, there's things that the owners are going to think about. I mean, we're kind of in uncertain economic times, but the travel industry still goes on. There's questions, there's thoughts. Well, the more we can anticipate the owner's needs, we share things with them, get them comfortable, let them know how we're addressing it, moving forward with their units and doing the best job that we can. So yeah, I think we go in the middle, we start with owners, we anticipate, and then we finish and strive for excellence. That's why we've been big fans of the credo this week and we're going to live it already as much as we can. You guys, thank you for such a great conversation today. If the homeowners or anybody wants to get a hold of you, we go ahead and put the contact information in the show notes, make sure to look below the show notes so that you can get a hold of the team. And thank you again, guys, for coming in. What a great experience this week. I can't tell you how much I appreciate my time with you guys. I've been inspired the whole week by you all, and I'm really looking forward to a partnership between all of us and you all and our homeowners and pink things. Thanks again, guys. Thank you. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]