Del Mar Vacations Boosts Revenue 600% with Crews & co.
CLIENT
Del Mar Vacations is a vacation rental management company that oversees hundreds of homes across Cape Cod.
CHALLENGES
Del Mar Vacations lacked company-wide alignment, financial clarity, and, as it expanded its leadership team, true accountability, which made it difficult for the company to facilitate sustainable growth.
SOLUTION
Del Mar Vacation Rentals partnered with Crews & co. to implement the consultancy’s Growth Method and develop strategies for success.
RESULTS
- Del Mar Vacations increases revenue by 600% and enterprise value by over 1,000%, which earns the company a spot on the Inc. 5000 list for three years in a row.
- Del Mar Vacation Rentals uses OKRS to align short-term and long-term goals across the company.
- Del Mar Vacation Rentals’ leadership team rigorously assesses the company’s financial health regularly, balancing growth metrics with profitability.
- Del Mar Vacation Rentals integrates tools and coaching from Crews & co. to develop its leaders.
Del Mar Vacations: Redefining the Industry
After five vacation seasons, Luke Chapman was tired of remotely managing his Cape Cod vacation home. He’d received one too many calls from renters 3,000 miles away interrupting his quality family time. Eager for a better experience, Luke took advantage of the gap in the market and founded Del Mar Vacations in 2015.
Del Mar Vacation Rentals is the bridge between homeowners looking to rent out their Cape Cod homes and vacationers seeking well-managed, quality vacation homes. Luke solved the problems he’d faced by implementing a comprehensive hotel quality hospitality service solution including a customer service team, integrated maintenance, landscaping, and cleaning teams. Under Luke’s leadership, Del Mar grew rapidly, expanding to 15 employees by 2019.
As Del Mar expanded, Luke recognized that he would need to help the company evolve. When the business was relatively small—5, 10, even 15 people—Luke was able to employ a top-down leadership model. He was a skilled operator and had instituted quarterly planning. This planning, combined with metrics that kept Luke informed about the health of the business, helped Del Mar achieve its initial growth. But success brought a new set of challenges that would require greater collaboration, accountability, and visibility in the organization.
Crews & co. Growth Consultants: champions of growth
Luke didn’t just want a consultant to advise him—he wanted a partner who could advise him and hold him accountable as he continued to grow Del Mar. He knew he wanted another voice in the room to help him build the long-term strategic vision for the company, and he was seeking accountability, for himself and his team, to keep them on track as they pursued their ambitious goals.
Crews & co. was the right fit at the right time for Luke and Del Mar. “Crews & co. is more process-oriented and personable than any consultancy I’ve worked with,” says Luke. “The talent at Crews & co. is great—they’re excellent for growth-oriented companies like Del Mar.”
“Crews & co is more process-oriented and personable than any consultancy I’ve worked with. The talent at Crews & co. is great—they’re excellent for growth-oriented companies like Del Mar.”
Solutions in Action
Working with his Growth Consultant, Eric Crews, Luke began implementing the Crews & co. Growth Method. He found the implementation process to be relatively straightforward.
“Eric helps set up the Growth Method in baby steps. He gives you everything in manageable, bite-size chunks—first, the weekly meeting format, then the scorecard, and so on,” says Luke. “It doesn’t even feel like onboarding, but before you know it, you’re already seeing results.”
“Eric gives you everything in bite-size chunks. It doesn’t even feel like onboarding, but before you know it, you’re already seeing results.”
Together, Luke and Eric began addressing Del Mar’s challenges. They identified three areas they needed to focus on to ensure the company continued its growth trajectory: long-term strategic planning, financial visibility, and collaborative leadership.
Challenge: Developing long-term strategic planning
Del Mar excelled at operational planning on a quarterly basis, but Luke felt something was missing. He wanted the company to have a stronger strategic vision that could inspire the team and provide a clear picture of Del Mar’s future state.
Luke wanted to address multiple aspects of strategy: the company would need clear differentiation and value in the market if it was going to continue growing. Finally, Luke wanted a way to ensure that the team’s execution was as strong as its operational planning. He lacked the framework to create consistent, ongoing accountability—and he knew that being accountable was the key to Del Mar’s success.
Solution: Creating a big-picture vision
Crews & co. complemented Luke’s operational planning with strategic thinking. Eric helped Luke set a 10-year North Star for the company and build out their value proposition. From there, the Del Mar leadership team developed its 3 Year Objectives (based on OKRs, or Objectives and Key Results) which have been a linchpin for the organization’s longer-term planning.
OKRs opened up Del Mar to tie their skill in short-term planning to meaningful progress toward long-term goals. At the onset of their engagement, Crews & co. employed Rocks, used in EOS®, for goal-setting, but Luke found the system lacking.
“Rocks felt very tactical and spread out,” says Luke. “We came into meetings and had difficulty identifying the most important thing to achieve each quarter. Teams fabricated goals because we weren’t aligned on what the company needed most.”
When Crews & co. developed the Growth Method, the consultancy adopted OKRs for their flexibility and future-focused approach. For Luke, the switch to OKRs made all the difference.
“OKRs streamlined our goal-setting process,” says Luke. “Now, we have continuity for the most important things and can choose the Key Results accordingly.”
Challenge: Gaining financial visibility
Before partnering with Crews & co., Del Mar lacked a formal method for determining the company's financial health. Luke did have metrics he felt relatively comfortable with, but as the business got more complex, he found they weren’t providing him with a complete picture. In the early years, he focused on growing revenue but paid less attention to profitability, which created an imbalance in Del Mar’s finances.
Luke needed a tangible way to assess the company’s financial performance at a glance and stronger structures to help him balance revenue and profit.
Solution: Leveraging scorecards
One of the key tools of Crews & co.’s Growth Method is a scorecard. The scorecard displays the most important metrics that impact a company's profits, enabling business owners to assess their company’s health at a glance.
Together, Eric and Luke determined the four key levers of Del Mar’s profitability, which became the core of the company’s scorecard:
- Homeowner retention
- Guest reviews
- Guest bookings
- New homeowner sign-ups
To measure trade-offs between growth and profitability, Del Mar also began tracking combined revenue growth rate and profit margin (adapted from the “Rule of 40” frequently employed by SaaS companies). This scorecard metric helps Luke monitor expenses and ensure his business model stays viable.
The scorecard empowers Luke and his leadership team to proactively manage Del Mar by the numbers. As long as he has those five metrics, the president remains ahead of the curve. “These metrics are the operations engine of our success—today and into the future,” says Luke.
“These metrics are the operations engine of our success—today and into the future.”
Challenge: Fostering team collaboration
Del Mar has no investors. Luke is sole owner and president of the company, which left him accountable to his customers—and no one else.
It wasn't an issue in the early years of the business, when most of the team was inexperienced and relied on Luke's guidance. However, as the company grew, Del Mar began attracting experienced industry leaders who had their own wisdom to share.
Luke wanted to ensure that his senior leaders felt heard, but he was concerned that the team dynamics wouldn’t create the environment for them to thrive.
“If I’m not accountable to anyone, I risk chasing away great talent,” says Luke. “I needed someone else in the room to facilitate strategic planning and ensure the best ideas float to the top.”
“I needed someone else in the room to facilitate strategic planning and ensure the best ideas float to the top.”
Luke wanted Del Mar to have a collaborative environment, but he needed guidance and third-party perspective to ensure his voice didn’t dominate the conversation.
Solution: Empowering open conversations
Luke welcomed having other people in the room who influenced decisions, but he lacked the tools to facilitate open communication between them all—especially because he still held the hiring and firing power.
Enter: the Growth Consultant. Quarterly leadership meetings are a vital component of the Growth Method. Having a trusted third party facilitate these strategic planning sessions for Del Mar created an essential accountability structure for Luke.
“[A Growth Consultant] acts like a buffer during our leadership meetings,” says Luke. “Their presence helps us have open conversations together because they don’t have any agenda except to see us succeed.”
“A Growth Consultant doesn’t have any agenda except to see us succeed.”
Having that neutral third party facilitating planning sessions creates a checks and balances system to ensure the entire leadership team is heard and understood. As a result, the team comes away with the best strategy possible.
Incorporating OKRs has also helped develop the team’s collaborative spirit. Over time, Del Mar has been able to integrate OKRs throughout the company. Ideas come from every corner of the organization, and the team is aligned from top to bottom.
Crews & co. has also provided personal Executive Coaching for Luke. His coach, Jay Bacrania, works closely with Luke to help him develop leadership skills, make strategic decisions, and achieve personal growth.
“It’s super valuable, especially for somebody like myself, who’s sort of on an island,” says Luke.
But with the help of Crews & co., Luke is building bridges.
Measurable Results
While partnering with Crews & co., Luke has secured real results for Del Mar:
- Revenue increased by 600% as Del Mar achieved sustainable company growth, landing the firm on the Inc. 5000 list for three years running.
- In just four years, Del Mar grew from 15 employees and 152 homes to over 75 values-aligned employees (and 300 values-aligned contractors) and 400 vacation houses.
- Del Mar’s enterprise value grew by an estimated 1,000% as a result of the company’s growth.
Del Mar Continues to Excel
Today, Del Mar Vacations has achieved Luke’s initial vision of being a Cape Cod-exclusive company managing over 500 exceptional vacation homes. Del Mar has taken the tools from the Crews & co. Growth Method, embedded them into their structure, and made them their own.
For his part, Luke is pleased with where the company is at today—and with the help he has received from Crews & co. during his journey.
“The talent I've worked with at Crews & co. is great,” says Luke. “I think their services are excellent for growth-oriented companies and companies in the $5 to $100 million range. I wholeheartedly recommend them.”
“The talent I've worked with at Crews & co. is great,” says Luke. “I think their services are excellent for growth-oriented companies and companies in the $5 to $100 million range. I wholeheartedly recommend them.”
