Episode 8 Excerpts from A Night on Ski Mountain: Segment 2 — The People Behind the Promise

Episode 9 Excerpts from A Night on Ski Mountain: Segment 3 What We Owe This Place

Welcome back to the Smoky Mountain Vacation Rental Forum. This is Part Three — the final episode — in our Night on Ski Mountain series. In Part One, you heard the state of the market. In Part Two, you met the people behind Mountain Laurel Chalets — Kay, Kelly, and Corey. This episode is different from both. This one steps outside our company. That night at Ober Mountain, I brought four people onto the stage who between them represent decades of history in this community — not just in vacation rentals, but in Gatlinburg itself. Patrick Potter, president of the Chalet Village Owners Association. Patrick's owned property here for thirty years. He used to have his home on our program — now he keeps it strictly for personal use, doesn't rent it at all. He cares about this village the way you care about a neighborhood you've raised kids in, because that's exactly what he's done. Randy Watson — general manager of the Gatlinburg Sky Park, and a high school friend of my wife Susan's, so this one goes back a long way. Randy and I also serve together as elected members of the Gatlinburg Chamber of Commerce. When we recorded this, Randy was closing in on forty-nine years at the Sky Park. Forty-nine years watching this town change. Vernon Corum, who you already know if you caught Episode 6 — an educator, a market observer, someone genuinely passionate about elevating professionalism across this industry. Vernon and I connected through LinkedIn, of all places, and it's turned into a real friendship. And Pam Betts. Pam owned a chalet company right next door to our office, back before Mountain Laurel acquired it more than twenty years ago. She kept her own home on our program after that. She served thirty years on the Chalet Village Owners Association board. And her connection to our family goes back even further than that — she and her husband were guests of my in-laws, Ralph and Dot, all the way back in 1974. As it happened, the night we recorded this was the sixty-year anniversary weekend for the Chalet Village Owners Association — so having four members of that board in the room together was something none of us take lightly. I asked these four one real question, in a few different ways: what do we owe this place? Not what can we extract from it. Not what can we get out of it this season. What do we owe it. What came out of that conversation is honest, and at times it's pointed — about deferred maintenance, about communication breaking down between owners and managers, about the difference between a consumer culture and a steward's culture. I'll step in with a little commentary here and there, but mostly, I just want you to hear what they said. Let's get into it.

Episode 8 Excerpts from A Night on Ski Mountain: Segment 2 — The People Behind the Promise

The second installment from The Night on Ski Mountain. This panel of experts in Vacation Rentals represents 85 years of leadership with Mountain Laurel Chalets.

Episode 6 STR From the Ground Up: A Conversation with Vernon Corum

What does it actually take to succeed with a vacation rental in the Smoky Mountains right now? Not the version you see on Instagram or in a realtor's projection — the real version, from someone who walks the properties, sees the gaps, and helps owners fix them. Vernon Corum is a real estate agent, investor, STR educator, and founder of Short-Term Rental Rescue — a program where he walks struggling properties and identifies exactly what's going wrong. He's toured over 200 Smokies properties a year and has a boots-on-the-ground perspective on this market that's almost impossible to replicate. In this conversation, Tom and Vernon dig into the operational blind spots that are quietly killing properties in this market, the misconception that vacation rental ownership can be truly passive, what it means to actually know your guest, why differentiation matters more than ever in a market with 13,000–19,000 available properties, and what it looks like to do this business the right way. Vernon also shares his vision for GRID Smokies — a new collaborative community for investors, operators, and vendors who want to get in a room together and actually help each other. Details in the show notes. This is a conversation about stewardship, trust, and the long game. We think you'll find it worth your time.

Episode 5 Don't Build Your Business on Borrowed Ground

If you vacation rental reservation are all coming from one platform, you are not building a business, you are renting one. In this episode Tom Goodwin unpacks what the data actually says about chanel dependency in the short term rental industry, and why it deeply matters for cabin owners and operators here in the Smoky Mountains.

Episode 4 Managing From Four Hours Away: What 20 Years of Getting It Right Looks Like

Tom Goodwin sits down with Paula Elliott, owner of Goldilocks Haven in Chalet Village — one of Gatlinburg's most storied vacation communities — for a conversation about what professional self-management actually looks like over the long haul. Paula bought her three-bedroom cabin in 2004 with her late husband, spent nine years learning the ropes with a management company, and has been self-managing from Indiana ever since. What she's built over 20 years isn't passive income — it's a system built on trust, relationships, proactive communication, and genuine care for guests, neighbors, and the community she's been part of for decades. In this episode, Tom and Paula talk through the infrastructure every long-distance owner needs, why setting expectations with guests prevents middle-of-the-night calls, how to think about the local workforce with the respect they deserve, and what it really means to be a good neighbor in a market that's changed dramatically since 2004. Paula also shares her honest take on the wave of new investors entering the Smokies — and what she wishes someone had told her from day one. If you own a cabin in the Smokies and you're doing it yourself, or thinking about it, this conversation is one you'll want to hear more than once.