The Techsplained Series presents - The Host Co

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[00:00:15] and remember to hit like and subscribe. Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of The Techsplained Series. Once upon a time when you ran a vacation rental, you rented a property, you welcomed the guests

[00:00:29] and that was the cycle. Your revenue came from the rent so bookings gave you an indication of your revenue. Well, those days are long gone and with technology, you can now make so much more revenue.

[00:00:40] And don't let the word technology scale you. Today it's possible and in fact easy to earn extra revenue from your property. And today we'll learn about one of those ways. Today my guest is Annie, who will explain to us what the host co can do.

[00:00:59] Hello everyone, nice to be you. I am Annie Sloan from the Host Co. Hello Annie, thank you very, very much for joining me today.

[00:01:09] Sure thing, I'm very happy to be here. Thank you. Annie, we're going to start off as co-usual. Can you please tell us in one sentence what does the host co do?

[00:01:21] The host co enables host and property managers to offer upsells. Everything from massage and chef to late checkout to onsite rentals and beyond offer this upsells directly at the time of booking with a digital mini market. And then we help fulfill those items throughout the guest day.

[00:01:44] Okay, so I'm a property manager and I would like to use the host co when you say okay first of all I'm assuming it's sort of like a Shopify shop where there are things in there that the guests can buy.

[00:01:57] Okay, so we'll come to that in a second. When you say when the guest books. How does the guest see the things that I have to upsell?

[00:02:09] So let's say you're a host on a beautiful tropical island right. They'll make it fun for everybody okay, tropical and and you have a gorgeous property when your guest books on any channel if it's Airbnb booking price line direct. When you send them your.

[00:02:33] Like a confirmation message. Yeah, yeah, hey, thanks for booking. We're so excited to have you stay. There's now a new part of that message which is if you'd like to add any products or services to your stay like massage.

[00:02:45] Like check out it might be in your area parking passes. Check out our store and that is a link and that link is your specific mini market that is branded exactly to your listing.

[00:02:56] And we'll have the things that you as a property manager have said, you know what people always ask for or you know it would be really helpful.

[00:03:05] Or you know at one AM I always get a call. Hey, we ran out of firewood were two bottles of wine in where do we buy extra firewood right.

[00:03:14] Those kind of things and then generally most property managers share that link also one week before the stay you're one week out if you'd like to add anything to your stay book now because things have a lead time.

[00:03:28] Often property managers will also share that link. During this day you can have signage with a QR code, but it's mostly the prior is really the big time for sales.

[00:03:40] And also you can share just links to specific products so when I guess asks for something you can say oh it's right here or again it's 11 p.m. You're out with your spouse at a bar and someone asks for like checkout or if you're doing it right.

[00:03:56] You can just send them the link via WhatsApp. So it's just basically yeah it's basically a mini website that is attached to or a storefront to your listing. Okay, okay.

[00:04:09] One of the big headaches is a property manager is I want to I want to offer message and I want to but you know I don't have time to be running around and finding who the local messers are.

[00:04:19] And the florists and the birthday cake make the make is. You do that like work done to you.

[00:04:27] Yeah, so how the hose co-started briefly is that I am a short-term rental host and my co-founder has a property management company in Joshua tree which is my heart my absolute favorite place right.

[00:04:43] But people ask these questions over and over again if you have eight listings you got eight same eight questions a day where can we get a massage therapy if it's in Joshua tree it's where do we do that sound bath where do we find a raking old woo woo stuff because it's just a treat.

[00:04:58] So for us a big part of what we were doing was we want to reduce these questions quite a bit and because we're answering them over and over again the second part of that is we're recommending the same services over and over again.

[00:05:11] So what we did at the host co is we have a three-person vendor team that sources vendors both nationwide in the US and then per city is the first part of it.

[00:05:23] And how we do that is we make sure they have cancellation policy they have a business license they have very good reviews and then we add them to the store.

[00:05:33] In the US and now in many parts of Europe we use a bedrock of what's called national vendors so we use the same people that your hilton or myriad uses.

[00:05:42] I think the big secret is that hilton and myriad are not actually running a spot they're using contractors same thing with chefs. So we have a bedrock of national vendors and then we start to build in certain areas. vendors on top of that.

[00:05:58] Interesting part is that 80% of the sales we see on the host co are host owned products this is not what we thought it was going to be all vendors that we were recommending.

[00:06:09] But it's turned out people go oh well you know I want to do extra recycling pickup because I have a party destination and that's a problem and everyone wants it.

[00:06:17] I want to do a linen refresh I want to do mid state cleaning oh we have campsites that will say hey we'll set up your fire fit city folk before you get there because the people on site want to make more money.

[00:06:29] On the back end of that what happens is when it guest makes a request to any vendor so if it's your extra recycling guy or if it's our national spot and massage partners.

[00:06:42] And what happens is it's a request so your guests gets that store link maybe right when they book and they go oh look we could do to girls weekend let's do massages for four and a chef's dinner for eight.

[00:06:54] Great we want to request this service at this time at this date. We're going to put down our credit card info and then we ping the vendor and say can you do this thing on this time at this day for these people if so.

[00:07:09] Click yes and we will then process all the their information directly for you and we process their credit card information so what we're doing is we're taking the property manager out of the equation.

[00:07:21] Who previously was just texting for people or texting you the guest the address or the person and then your guests says oh wait shoot I have the wrong phone numbers that they're phone number what's their phone number again oh they're not open anymore but the bad.

[00:07:36] Because people don't read that books as we all know like nobody wants to read and it's in age they want to use their phone and click a button.

[00:07:44] So we've set up a system where the vendor is contacted immediately and seeing if they can do it so we're also not guaranteeing any service.

[00:07:52] Very good example of this would also be hey we live on an island and everyone has to use a golf cart you can't drive on this island it's $1,200 or whichever currency to.

[00:08:05] To rent the golf cart so you're a property manager man you're answering that question every time even though it's in your guidebook you're giving them the info you're kind of.

[00:08:14] Often handholding them right up to the door of the talk art place so instead of that hey click this button it's going to send that golf cart company a ping to set this up and what it's going to do for the property manager is it's going to give you a little bit of the revenue will make an action to those vendors.

[00:08:32] Great great yes there's there's services to them there's local services there are items that the property manager wants to want to offer. Yeah and then there are okay so the thing is to factor the five would it want to talk in the morning yeah.

[00:08:50] What a complete luxury it's getting someone wants to welcome basket or the five would or groceries or something how does it get there was that part of the service.

[00:09:04] No a bit of both so if you have a listing that you generally do provide firewood what we or you have firewood on site is often the case.

[00:09:17] You can give a little bit for free what we always say is be hospitable it better hospitality is always best but when they run out of that free firewood you probably have bundles set aside somewhere else.

[00:09:27] What the host co-can do is it can lock that information so your guests can only get the information about where to get that item after they've made their purchase so they make a purchase 25 dollars on their receipt in big red letters it says this item is in the garage under a tarp take one bundle or.

[00:09:45] You know it's at a set or you're guests also signs a terms of service that says I've agreed to take this amount you also have their name and our credit card info she's also great for rebooking I will tell you because you're getting all the emails of the people that are purchasing.

[00:10:00] And on the back end you can assign to that firewood purchase inventory management so you can say I got 10 bundles here and when I'm down to two.

[00:10:11] Ping my firewood guy so you can set a notification to your firewood guy hate we're down to one bundle coming bring more and put it in the garage.

[00:10:19] And you don't have to do that work essentially anymore and then tell your firewood guy okay invoice me like you probably do with under vendor other vendors so you're just setting up a system where you're again taking yourself out of the equation for those little tasks we see that for.

[00:10:37] And you've got a parking passes if you got eight condos and you've got two parking spots we can say I've got two per day your guests can pick a date and you can say great put your receipt in the in the front in their car and we can sell it out for you so every day you got cool passes if you got.

[00:10:56] Firewood if you have another interesting one is. Beach keys which I live in California we don't have such a thing as beach case because all the beaches are public I know what a bitch. So beach keys are.

[00:11:11] If it the area to the beaches gated and you cannot access the beach without beach key I know. Yeah, I mean I had neither to be honest but.

[00:11:23] People are they're going to the beach of course they're going to lose your key right or the thing that you need to give them if there's something that people lose all the time for your rental you can have.

[00:11:34] More of those but you can get access to them and say hey the restocking fee for a beach keys 50 dollars which you already think but you're having your runner go out and drop off another beach key right so instead of that or.

[00:11:46] If they're always losing your beach towels and you need to say well you lost our beach towels it's a 50 dollar restocking people we already have them on site because they need them they can't you know.

[00:11:57] A pool of pool floaties is another good one everybody breaks your pool floaties right so having extra but selling them because it's costing you and those kinds of things are not things that your guests. Are thinking that they're going to get for free.

[00:12:14] So it is not it is not a poor hospitality experience to say oh if you'd like to we have some on site if you'd like to purchase more pool floaties. Yeah, it's actually yeah.

[00:12:25] They're not expecting it but they can do it without leaving home and they could buy a beach towel they have a thing to think oh well where do we buy a beach towel in this location.

[00:12:33] Great yeah yeah and you're making money it's funny because when we started the host co it was because these issues were a pain in the bleep for us revenue is great which I'm have I will talk about but the.

[00:12:48] Decreasing guest questions and the improving I'm just those things where you're like oh man that's repetitive tasks that I have to do over and over again if you can remove those with a store.

[00:12:58] Fantastic yeah yeah and a great guest experience too that they can get whatever they want I'm assuming it's on their phone or they can access it on the phone. Yeah, it is mobile so it's just it's like an eBay site essentially.

[00:13:13] You can send it to anybody it's your website it's on it's optimized for mobile as well so they can see everything there the other part of. The other part of it that's great to share at the time of booking in terms of better guest experience is.

[00:13:29] It provides a differentiator for you to other listings you can talk about it in your booking you can say we. We do we connect to on demand's policies.

[00:13:40] We have chefs available should you want you we need to have photos of that type of thing yes or not expecting a chef to be free or a massage to be free right. It amenities if you're listing amenities.

[00:13:51] Those things should be free but when you're saying we connect to on demand dot dot dot we have. A property manager that connected a mobile tattoo artist for the week of Coachella which is legal first of all we had to make sure that was legal but.

[00:14:07] What that does is three months before Coachella when you send out your direct booking email and you say we could coachella on demand mobile tattoo artist. Everybody opens that email everybody opens that email or if you say.

[00:14:21] You know in niece we have a special like a special chef for the season available. Yeah, yeah. The opens that email if you say early bird early in the season 15% off on the villa.

[00:14:32] No one's going to open that I mean sure if they're compelled but they don't have people book for. The reasons of experience and memory right obviously they want high quality hospitality but when you have a saturated market.

[00:14:49] What is your differentiator if you're sending things saying and hotels know this they do this all the time right like oh we have this pop up chef or. Limited time only we have special I don't know blankets or whatever it is.

[00:15:00] Yeah, yeah on that I think that's great so in fact the services are not delivered. They actually you have to keep them you have to have them on site they just get it or is that what you the term is.

[00:15:13] So yeah for products that you have on site just have them gated or things like obviously mid state clean. Alterations which you can also do with your certain alterations you can do with your PMS like early check and like checkout.

[00:15:29] Yeah, if you're doing spa heating extra pet extra guest we have lots of different alterations I'm just more wondering about whether the guests even needs to put the address of the property.

[00:15:42] They do not because that creates some friction of the following people down from purchasing right if you're purchasing something and you have to go check your email. Bad experience right so what we do is we get the the address of the listing.

[00:15:58] When the store is created so we on the back and have that and we can share that with the vendor we don't share it with your guest.

[00:16:07] We we can and we get that address we you can connect directly to Airbnb or quite a few different PMS and say make me I've got 10 listings make me 10 stores.

[00:16:18] Yeah, and it will automatically pull in the name of your listing the photo of your listing the address of your listing zip code and that's how we add suggested vendors to your area is your zip code and then you have a list of 10 stores and go okay cool I've 10 stores.

[00:16:31] And we do not release the information for that address until it's been approved so and you also are as a property manager you're in total control of which vendors it's not like you have to you any vendors right.

[00:16:44] No, I was actually wondering because when you when you innovation rental you don't remember what the address is and I think. I'm not sure if you can remember that but I suppose in the back end of the of the store then that's proud that's really great.

[00:16:57] We like to say your guest is either tired or drunk or both which but to me too too much on that but.

[00:17:06] I see this the way that we created the stores it's very, very visual and it is button I want this thing which is very much how retail works is who I want this thing and then will suggest something additional in check out.

[00:17:19] Ooh we're going to get a form of sausages oh while we could do.

[00:17:24] You know a guided hike around the property for herbs right or we do add a few experiences you will see but what we tried to avoid is our arch ethos is we're not going to show you anything where you have to get on a bus with strangers right.

[00:17:39] Yes, if you look at the analog of hotels they do this exact thing you walk in the door.

[00:17:45] And it's a beautiful you know hopefully a lovely check and experience and they say would you like to have any spa services you know we have a fantastic restaurant would you like a nicer room you know we're doing a.

[00:17:56] We're doing a horseback ride tomorrow would you like to join so often things that will come to the property or things that happen in a more exclusive way than.

[00:18:05] A big group. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's very interesting way to look at it. Yes, yeah more exclusive more personal.

[00:18:12] Yeah, yeah and hotels have known this for millennia right and they make a full service hotel is going to make 15 to 30% of all of their revenue on the things that are not the stack. Mm-hmm. Yeah, can we have a look at what a shop looks like.

[00:18:29] Yeah. So and I think let me see here we go so here is what a. A store looks like can you see it? Yeah. So this is what we'll see. This is what a property manager will see and I'll show you the story look like.

[00:18:48] Yeah. And it looks almost exactly the same, but you can see it has a image it has signage sales everything you need and then when the guests looks at it. It's going to look like I'm screen sharing so like this.

[00:19:03] So in this store they will have tiles and they can select options and as a property manager you can say here are the options right you can say this is three day lead time. And I'm going to tell this person I have this many, et cetera.

[00:19:18] And most people 99% of your guests are going to see this on their phone so it's very much you can see it's big buttons not a lot of language right and you can select items so everything from I'm just going to scroll briefly.

[00:19:32] Yeah, fresh flowers if you have someone you're already connected to like a florist who will deliver you can set up the relationship with them and then you can also set the price for that item so that's a pretty good.

[00:19:45] Item you can also request extra insurance you can upsell insurance damages insurance as well and keep all money from that. Yeah. And we also enable connection to outside websites so here's an interesting.

[00:20:02] Issue that we've seen is people saying oh everyone asked me about my couch and let's say your couch is from west Elm right.

[00:20:12] We what we say is great find the west Elm affiliate and add a link to it because it's too specific to put in every store but if everyone asks you about anything put a link to it in your store is what we always say put a link to it in your store.

[00:20:26] So people can go off to that and you can make some money from that as well. Let's go into a problem. In those of the checkout let's say they want to really check out or early sorry early checking like check out.

[00:20:40] And of course that's dependent on other bookings are the rent so so I did see something about a lead time so you can actually say I can only approve this you know.

[00:20:53] Yeah, yeah you can do a lead time and with late checkout it's an interesting one because you don't know and sometimes you don't know until. A couple of hours before because you're thinking oh I hope of books right or tomorrow.

[00:21:09] So with your guest request to let checkout if it's more than seven days in advance we don't hold their credit card info for more than seven days.

[00:21:18] But more people request it a couple of days in advance so if someone says you know we really want to let check out the great thing is you also then don't get that phone call midnight but.

[00:21:28] You add your own description or you can use ours which just says hey I need more than 12 hours notice or I'm not going to cancel this for you because I'm doing the work right and I'm doing the work.

[00:21:41] Here's the date that I would like this as you can see. This doesn't have a lead time on it you can book you can request it the same day yeah but it is a request so they can't.

[00:21:53] They can't just do it right it has to alert you to that and then you can approve it or deny it.

[00:21:59] If if you say we can't do it or what we see people doing is they can you can attach your cleaner if you're small enough organization or you're cleaning company and they can say yes we can do it.

[00:22:11] Right so what you are probably doing before is texting your cleaner and saying hey can you move this right yeah how it can text your cleaner for you and say. Any slowness as for a late checkout two hours late approve or deny and your cleaner or we see.

[00:22:27] Large your property management companies they have this go to a a slack thread yeah where they move or deny all of them within the slack thread and you can do that you can send all the notifications. To a runner to anyone on your team.

[00:22:42] To approve or deny so that's that's that they have to agree to it they have to have to log out of this store to show you what that looks like so if they say.

[00:22:51] You know we really want to let check out it's going to log me out but I'll show you what that looks like I've read this you know we're fully looking for this the other thing is you know how it says two hours here.

[00:23:03] Every tile you can change it you can say per hour you can say four pm so you can do exactly what you want or you can say per hour add multiples I want seven of those. The other cool thing is.

[00:23:18] So your stores are auto created and they are also auto populated with generally four services. U.S. in Europe I think there's. The other sort of.

[00:23:31] And baby equipment rental and then the alterations are already in there too so all this is already set up and you just have to say I want to tweak it or I don't want that right because. Our other sort of our ethos I would say our values is.

[00:23:46] And it's everything we do it should take you less than 30 minutes to start because all of us.

[00:23:53] Get hit up for software all the time and then as you were saying you might go oh that sounds so good or oh I this is really going to solve this problem and then you set it up for seven hours or 15 hours and it doesn't.

[00:24:05] And then you can say that you're not going to do exactly what you need it to do even waste all this time so our take on things is this has to be easy as ebay it has to be created my stores to create and products I'm going to modify them I'm going to share the store.

[00:24:21] Yeah, the other great part of that it's pretty low risk because your your guests are requesting. So if you're like I want to see how it works your guests can request items it's not like anyone's buying a bunch of things in your unbeknownst to you right.

[00:24:35] So having everything on the list and actually doing it and then you know even if you do one thing at a time to get a pilot then the next thing you you're flying and you're not even holding a steering wheel anymore you don't have to.

[00:24:49] Yeah, and what we say to most property managers is sell four things start with three or four things yeah because being most property managers go oh you know what we should do or really creative ideas about.

[00:25:01] Oh, we should do a romance package with flower pedals and chocolates yes you should but if you are always like oh we got to talk to this this guy and make sure he's part of it.

[00:25:14] You'll never get start you know it'll always be 10th on your list because your property manager right so.

[00:25:19] If you add I'm going to add two things we have stores that sell three things that are making or listings 10 thousand dollars a month because there are a group of cabins on the lake they sell firewood they sell late checkout they sell the occasional massage that's it.

[00:25:36] Yeah, my god. So let me go through if I added a card is going to say log out which is just fine.

[00:25:45] I read this how how payment works is you can see okay great it's in my cart and you're going to this is what's going to be seen on a phone right.

[00:25:55] You can see it's recommend additional products yeah and it's if you're on a phone Apple pay Google wallet. Yeah, digital methods your name your email your phone number which is very important because our support team.

[00:26:08] If they have any questions they will contact the guest and they'll say hey would you are are you interested in you know is anyone vegan right or things like that so we have support team visibility.

[00:26:21] And we also give you that information which you might not have so because it might not be the person that booked it might be someone else in the stay right.

[00:26:30] And then that is essentially it you can see there's all of the taxes depending on where you are services generally are don't have taxes.

[00:26:38] But you have all of this information too that you can download and what happens when your guest clicks yes request this it sends an email to them that says great you put your request it sends an email to you that says you have a guest request and if you have a third party like your cleaner it says you have a guest request so your cleaner can answer it or you can answer it and say yes I can do this.

[00:26:59] And testing yeah great now in terms of the payment you're taking the payment and what at the end of the month we get a check we get we get a deposit pay out for all the the sales for the month yes so exactly this store is a is a fake store but let's look and see so you're going to see here nothing in here I'll show you this has a quite a few stores fuel stores here I was going to make me log in as I said.

[00:27:27] Let's do that. All of the information it's it's it's model a bit like I'm going to see if there's a store that has some sales in it it's modeled quite a bit like Airbnb in terms of the.

[00:27:44] I mean in a lightweight because we're not a multi billion dollar. Yeah, but you're going to see.

[00:27:51] You're going to see all of your sales so you know all of the information about every single sale you're going to be able to see in a sales report even a receipt for every single product so if you need to re issue or receipt oh we need to look at it and then you're also going to see your pay out which you get paid out every month.

[00:28:12] And it's going to tell you and that you can pay out to ACH et cetera is going to tell you your pay out history so if you have 10 stores is really really great for property managers who might be.

[00:28:24] Operating or managing 30 listings hey this store paid this much money this month right. We pulled the funds and the host code is actually free to use I should have said that at the top of the episode. I think we're going to get to the process later on.

[00:28:39] Yeah, yeah, it's not anyway. But what happens is each each month we get a small amount of commission on sales and then rest you will see just did that kind of strangely you will see.

[00:28:55] In each one and you can generally go into it and see what you sold and how much you were paid out. Yeah, yeah. Great, now what about things like. Not complaints but you know if they didn't something wasn't received or.

[00:29:16] I suppose even like or there weren't any beach towers in the cupboard I suppose all that inventory control looks after that so you're never going to run out of something you're going to be given the heads up. Yeah, obviously with enough time to restock so.

[00:29:30] I suppose you don't really get much bad guess feedback. Yeah, I mean thus far it's been fantastic. We have done about we've been live for a little over 18 months so we're a relatively new company we have done over 10,000 sales at this point and because one we don't allow.

[00:29:52] On the host code side vendors just say I want to do it we have a very thorough vetting process.

[00:29:58] Yeah, on property manager side if you're adding someone as your own vendor so if you're adding that mobile tattoo artists it's a really very edging sample I will say but if you're adding someone that is.

[00:30:10] Your chef or your spa company that you use that is your livelihood is your company so you are making sure you're only using fantastic partners who are already likely. servicing the unit or working with your guests so they know the system really well.

[00:30:27] Yeah, we do see I would say more than any complaints is people who cancel so hey I canceled my stay each product has a cancellation policy and we do if someone contact says hey I'm not going on the trip in two months.

[00:30:43] I'm not going to need that massage we just have a very because we do everything through stripe it's a which essentially a refund process.

[00:30:50] Yeah, yeah, okay, yeah there is an open effect I suppose but yes, okay as long as I get a refund there is a cancellation policy for each experience and yeah and obviously at the top box when they buy it. Yes, yeah exactly exactly.

[00:31:06] Yeah, and it's essentially a year as the property manager recommending services so they're also it creates a buffer.

[00:31:16] Between you this is an interesting one between you and your guest in a certain way because it's not you as a person saying oh this is the spa we use and then you have a you know if they don't love their massage.

[00:31:28] It's a few versus the host co becomes this buffer same thing with denying a lake checkout or an extra guest or something like that we send an email that says hey we're sorry that services unable to be fulfilled so it doesn't reflect as much on your.

[00:31:45] Your services and maybe even your. Your review because it be it's a company and not a person yeah it's an interesting kind of side effect okay but the thing is can we go back to the store. Yeah that the guests says.

[00:32:00] So we'll go back to what will do a different storage as for fun. We'll do let's do let's do this guy.

[00:32:11] Okay, so the thing is there's the thing with the host co up to top it no they're not seeing that we see the guest you I just want to see that branding. So they the host co is not written anywhere.

[00:32:26] The host co on a phone I wish I'd like to phone with me. He's on a phone it's a tiny little dot that's an h at the top so they do not see our logo.

[00:32:37] Yeah they see essentially this where it says our downtown villa and you can add your description we do include in the footer tremendous go down to the footer yeah this one has a lot of experiences in it but we do include. And the host co in the footer.

[00:32:57] Or you can actually upgrade and remove the host co branding from almost all of store you have your own URL that says you know great property management. Host co store 17 right but the reason we have our information here is because if there are questions regarding the product.

[00:33:17] We don't want that to go to you or if there's support needs or if your massage therapist is in West Hollywood and they can't find a place to park. Yeah right we want them to be able to say to you hey I'm still looking for parking right.

[00:33:31] We also have on the the guest side and the host side the information that says hey if you're a get are you guessed.

[00:33:39] If you have questions about check in time about if you need help with your booking contact your host so that is store can answer any questions about this but this prevents us from. The the crossover of we are your host. Yeah right. Not trying to be your host.

[00:33:56] Yeah so having that has top day I know that they're actually booking through host co and then not going to hassle the property manager. Yes and the email is going to come from the host co.

[00:34:08] Again if we have enterprise clients where they've added the name of their property management company amenities provided by the host co.

[00:34:16] But again we're providing them we don't want to bother you with something that you might not even need to know about right you might probably want to know about it but you're going to get emails but.

[00:34:25] Essentially saying great hands off we know you're doing this thing and we just made $30 off of it. Yeah yeah. Yeah I don't think I have any more questions about it or very very good. You can create your own listings and you thought they were pretty yeah great.

[00:34:44] Yeah it's I will say a couple more things about this is that you can. You can remove items so this is a really busy test store so we're just going to look at all of these so let's go to.

[00:34:57] And back to maybe Mexico townhouse this is so fun to see all these lakeside summer cabin there we go.

[00:35:03] You can move things around so you can drag and drop them as of this week you can say I don't want anyone to see this you can remove them you can add.

[00:35:14] There's a lot of bells and whistles that you can do that make it for we people all they do is sell Christmas ornaments which is so strange to me but that's what they wanted to do right good on them.

[00:35:24] Yeah people only use it for food services right we people use it for for alterations so it's very flexible for some people are like oh it just works with that one thing I needed right.

[00:35:36] You know there was a number of years ago are remember having a chat with someone we were trying to figure out a way how do we stop a place full about the whole that they have to buy it to take it but like how do we do this it can't be an honest decent them all my call and we can't live it to the cleanest to check the inventory.

[00:35:53] And you know how do we do this and you can have a cup of a cup of full of wine and you know here's the access and obviously you could check with the inventory at the end of the stay but.

[00:36:06] And that's what I'm saying one of the more than one of my call yeah well and you know in Europe here we cannot sell alcohol in stores because we can't verify the eight year age we do work with their vacation partners but we do have people who have runners.

[00:36:27] Or someone on your team or a college student or whoever who's saying I want to make extra money. Yeah and because it's reserved in advance they can say do an alcohol run for us right you're of age we'll check your ID.

[00:36:40] And do that or there's quite a few services that will deliver to that area for my own rentals I don't do any service where where someone has to get into the rental before the guests because that is a pain.

[00:36:54] And that box it's set or a so I'll say OK great.

[00:36:59] You know I'm sending this store if you want alcohol delivery if you want there are things on site like we do see people including extra cleaning products or midterm and long term stay that you can buy fire would et cetera.

[00:37:11] But purchases things and you as the guests set the delivery time. But right when you want to arrive right or two hours after you arrive and you no longer again asking us yeah. Yeah, the ad bill, I thought, oh yeah, that reminds me of

[00:37:27] Hangover because you had hangover packages. Now is that one of your standards? Is that a supply that gives you these hangover packages? So we don't at the host code provide any products. The services we do provide, but what we say,

[00:37:45] which is this is a, this store is interesting because the Adville, what I would normally say to any property manager is have a branded something to your listing. So you know what you can go on eBay or Etsy or anywhere and say,

[00:38:01] wedding, you know, wedding emergency kit and put stock your sticker on it. And if you have 30 hangover kits, you can sell them for, let's say, $25, right? Generally I say sell more expensive products. If you sell something under, this is an interesting store.

[00:38:18] If you sell something under $20 unless you're a lower, if your hostel go ahead and sell anything you want, but at higher end properties have a package of something or have a basket of local snacks. Right? And also give again a welcome basket for free.

[00:38:36] If you have a higher end property, give it for free. When they ask, would you have a second one of those? Guess what you likely already do because your, your cleaner is putting it out. You can sell that for $80. It can be in your store additional welcome basket.

[00:38:50] So making less work for yourself, not having tons of things to restock. In my own properties, I don't sell any items on site because I live. My properties are in Joshua tree. I am a seven hour drive away from properties.

[00:39:08] I have a property manager but there's too much work for me. So my own properties, I have all of those services and amenities. And that services and amenities that will go to the house in alterations.

[00:39:20] But I mean, we have people who do have because they live right on site. They have lots of things for sale on site but generally you're also going to make a lot more money from the services. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:31] And people are going to take a photo of a hangover kit if it's branded to your listing and they're going to share it. That's the up part. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. It's really great. Okay. We'll start with the share screen and we'll get back to the other questions.

[00:39:47] There we go. What is your unique selling point? Two things, one, we are free. We're free to start free to use. I think all of us just get hit up for software all the time and it has

[00:40:05] huge onboarding fees and it also has subscription fees. So the host code how it works is we get a percent of the commission of sales. So we get 7% of all the sales. If it is our vendor, we mark it up slightly as well. So there's zero risk

[00:40:23] is the other thing because if you're not selling something, you're not losing any money. The second really unique value is so my background prior to the host code. I was a creative

[00:40:33] director at Facebook and part of that as a creative director at Twitter. I'm just a Silicon Valley in the virtual. But what we've created is something that is so easy to use for your guests and

[00:40:47] for you as well, that your guests look at it and go, yep, I wanted that. You know, I was thinking about that. We want girls dinner for eight. We want a rakey healer to come to the property. Great.

[00:40:59] I did these things and I'm done. Right? And that is the true thing is removing a lot of that friction and the time for you. So just kind of set it, you know, I think a lot of people say

[00:41:11] set it and forget it but set it and don't think about it a lot as well. Yeah yeah. And that pay out was going back to the payouts. When did you buy something? You hang on to it until the

[00:41:27] month and then there's the payout at the end of the month. Yeah, I can correct. Yeah. And how that works if it is your product, if it is the property managers product that's something like firewood,

[00:41:39] lake checkout or anything that you are setting up. You are setting the price for that. Yeah. So you could say my sister will do a Tiki bar by the pool until the bartender and I'm going

[00:41:54] to pay my sister $100 and I'm going to charge $300. So you're making a large profit on that or a popular one in many beaches as a family photography. Everyone wants their holiday photos and

[00:42:08] they're matching outfits or, you know, so I'm just using my sister as a relational, you know, is a portrait photographer. I'm going to pay her $200 and I'm going to charge $400. So you can make

[00:42:23] quite a bit of money with your own services and again we paid that out at the end of the month. If it is post-coast service, like the host co's recommending a spa service, you are getting

[00:42:35] 5 to 10% of that sale as a property manager. So at the end of the month we go, oh, so you sold $17, massages, you're going to get $400, $500 just for essentially recommending that. Yeah. But back to the sister being the photographer, $200 with the photographer, $200 to the property manager,

[00:42:53] do you pay the photographer for them and then you pay out the $200 to the property manager? If it is your vendor, like the portrait photographer, we paid you the property manager. Yeah.

[00:43:05] And then you pay the third party vendor and the reason that we do that is because we are not we have very little visibility into that vendor. Yes. So we are not going to pay out someone we don't

[00:43:18] know that we have an approved for everything. It's not like we sit in the mop, it's not like the property manager sits in the mop as a vendor. The property manager is selling this service and

[00:43:29] is up to me then just put the costs with the right door. Yeah. Although we have a huge queue, I don't want to say huge but of people who say can you bring this vendor on for your hope for

[00:43:42] this whole city and then we do keep it now. And that's actually how we scale quickly is because we look at vendors that are selling well in thousands of areas and we say,

[00:43:52] you know that portrait photographer is doing really well and we'd like to be them to be available for the whole city. So then we will call them and we'll say do business license,

[00:44:01] do you have insurance or you've added and we will then put them into the whole city and they're also that's bringing a lot more money to them. So all of these new guests get to see who they are

[00:44:12] and what they do. So that's how we can grow quickly and we don't have to go and scout in any city vendors. Fantastic. Yeah. Now given that it's a free service, what's the who's your target audience?

[00:44:27] It's basically anyone with one property. Yeah. I mean it's nicer for us if it's what has some per property. Yes. But it is usable if you have one property. I would say in terms of really big

[00:44:43] property managers, there's things probably that you still want from it like you would like it to connect directly into your quickbooks which it doesn't but we do have users. I think 400 doors is our largest because it does spit out reports for your CSB reports for everything.

[00:45:02] But anyone can use it. What we see more of lately is larger property managers connecting to the host code through their PMS if it's guests or hospitable or owner res and saying

[00:45:15] great make my 30 stores and then add this product into every single store. And that's a huge one and then it's just done for you and what if you have a property management software,

[00:45:27] generally it will also send that link into it. So when you're writing a message or if you have your your booking confirmation message, you can just say add my host code store link within this message. Yeah. So with the with the PMS connection, what you're saying is that

[00:45:43] you automatically can create shops for all of your listings on the PMS. Yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah. And then each one has a photo. It has a name. It has the address. So again,

[00:45:55] it's the idea of let's just people all this work that we don't need to do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. But ideally, there is your target audience. Happy. I would say a 20 listings, 10 to 20 listings is probably the real sweet spot because you still have a lot of control over

[00:46:15] all of your views. If you're if you have 50 listings and you're getting 50 requests for late checkout a dairy, it's you're going to have to go through and say approve every one of them or your

[00:46:27] maybe if you have someone in your office. But that's really the sweet spot. Yeah. It's yeah. I would say between one and 25 is probably the sweetest spot. What are the things that I want to mention

[00:46:38] that I didn't about that the cost is that how we make money as we get that 7% commission. Right. But we also add an 8% convenience fee for your guest. If you're selling late checkout for $100,

[00:46:53] we're going to get eight to eight we're going to add $8. So your guest is going to pay a $100. Yes. Generally it's convenience. So they thus far have really not minded. Right. And that's how

[00:47:04] we're able to operate for free. Yeah. Cover all the visa charges and all the tax calculations, yes. Absolutely. Now also I could see you only operate in the U.S. at the moment. You know, we operate internationally. We have users in Iceland and Spain and France. But the

[00:47:24] interest that really money part is that we are currently only in U.S. dollars. Uh huh. So we are not. I'm going to say air quotes operational outside of the U.S. because it's only U.S. D. Yeah.

[00:47:36] But next year we will be adding or hopefully late in a year multi-currency. And we use stripe as our partner so they can do the tax calculations also on multiple currencies. It's

[00:47:49] good feeling I would say as a founder that people want to use this badly enough, which is phenomenal that they're using it in so many places even in U.S. dollars. I might I wouldn't think someone

[00:48:00] in Italy would be selling their own cookbooks and guided tours or ideas in U.S. dollars. So very soon I will say we will we will be getting there. The next thing we're adding before that is

[00:48:11] more property manager tools for reporting to your to your users and better texting. And then multi-currency. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. Amazing. Now it's free. It's quick to set up so I'm assuming there's no contract. Correct. Correct. There's no contract. You can go to our website

[00:48:36] uh thehost.co and say start my stores. Yeah. And we always recommend and it'll say you should do a demo or a QA session when we do daily QA because there's so many bells and whistles that if you

[00:48:48] just go and start a store you're probably going to miss a lot of the cool things that can do. You can still just say nope I don't want to demo make me 10 stores for my listings and I'm

[00:48:57] going to go poke around and look at that. Fantastic. Oh yeah. Okay. What's come to the end of the news world questions was there something that we missed or something else we should

[00:49:08] know about the host of that we haven't talked about. You know the one thing that everyone asks how much money can I make? Yeah. What's important question? Most listings I'm going to say the average is about $200 per listing additionally and that average is low and that's an honest

[00:49:29] answer because some people are only selling again Christmas ornaments and they're $50 a month. And then we also have listings that are making $4,000 a month because they are renting a kayak. They are renting a bike. Each guest is going to buy a late checkout right? So just

[00:49:50] really depends on how you use it. Is it how much money you make? We see guests we're going to guess the other day purchase $3600 in amenities in one go which is hey we have a chef's dinner for

[00:50:04] for we have four massages and we have a guided hike right so you see these huge purchases and these small purchases. Amazing. Yeah that's great. We've also we've also there's so much variety in the industry

[00:50:19] got small studios. You've got a big you know big mansion houses and yeah there's so much variety. So in terms of I actually think that's a trick question how much can I make? Well

[00:50:30] how big is your property how many people still have it with the budget but yeah but I love the fact that like you said you feel that you forget about it but you don't have to think about

[00:50:41] two. Yeah. You said it. Let it run and get the payment from the housecoe every month. Thank you very yeah thank you very much. Oh that's extra money that came in. We also see property managers do it

[00:50:55] a little differently some taking all the host co money and then remit a portion of it to their owner that's another big question how does the owner get money? We have property managers that say

[00:51:07] I'm running this guest experience I'm keeping all of these profits because I am the one doing the guest experience. Yeah and then we also property managers that say hey owner I'm actually going to

[00:51:18] invoice you for a little less money so it makes me more competitive because I'm making all of this other money from the host co. Oh yeah yeah okay very good yeah. Look Annie it has been an absolute pleasure learning about the host co I've heard

[00:51:36] I've been about it and this wasn't quite sure what exactly you want from but what a great product. Thank you it's been a very fun journey and leaving tech in 2021 I am it's been so much fun also I mean this is my my people so it's fantastic to

[00:51:54] target you yeah great well I will pop a link in the description below and if you have any questions for any pop them in the comments below any thank you very very much for your time. Thank you so much

[00:52:06] have a great day or evening yeah thank you and I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to catch up on once you've missed just head to the techsplained series.com or if you're short for time

[00:52:25] you can head to the tech mini's.com where you'll find extra short interviews see you next time