Direct Booking Amenities That Make Guests Pay 40% More with Annie Sloan

Summary and Highlights

🏆 The Direct Booking Advantage

The conversation reveals why building your own direct booking website becomes even more critical when you’re offering unique experiences. Unlike OTA platforms where amenities exist in isolation, direct booking sites allow you to create a cohesive brand story that connects your property, location, and available experiences into one compelling package.

Annie explains: “Everything that you can use to grow your SEO to stand out, to improve booking consideration… if someone comes to your website, their booking consideration goes up.” This extended engagement time becomes particularly valuable when guests can explore not just your property but the entire experience ecosystem you’ve created.

📚 Annie’s Book Recommendation

Annie recommends “4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” by Oliver Burkeman. This perspective-shifting book challenges traditional productivity thinking by highlighting that if you live to 80, you have only 4,000 weeks of life. The book emphasizes doing things for enjoyment rather than just achievement—a mindset that translates beautifully to creating memorable guest experiences rather than just efficient accommodations.

⚡ Annie’s Rapid Fire Insights

Mindset Advice: “Most of the time it is a boring grind and mindset wise, you need to learn to be somewhat happy despite the different circumstances… being the one who decides how you’re going to be, especially in startup world, it is such a rollercoaster.”

Tactical Advice: “Get a direct booking site and start talking about it in social media. Start talking about one thing that you can add to it… just see if you get some excitement around it.”

🔗 Connect with Annie Sloan

Learn more about The Host Co and follow Annie’s insights:

• Website: www.thehost.co
• LinkedIn: Annie Sloan on LinkedIn

The integration between The Host Co and CraftedStays launching this fall promises to bring these experience-first booking capabilities directly into your property management website, allowing you to seamlessly market and fulfill unique guest experiences alongside your core accommodation offering.

Ready to transform your approach to direct bookings? Listen to the full episode for deeper insights into Annie’s journey and practical strategies for implementing experience-based marketing in your own properties.

🎧 Listen to the full episode and start building your direct booking brand at CraftedStays.co →

Transcription

Annie: The way that people choose travel, they consider bookings. It has culturally shifted from even 10 years ago, five years ago, particularly Gen Z and millennial. They are experience first, location. Second, they are, what are we gonna do there before they are? Where are we gonna stay there? They’re even like, what are we gonna do before we pick where we’re gonna go?

Annie: Right? It’s like, I wanna go see Taylor Swift in Nashville. It’s not, I wanna go to Nashville and Taylor Swift is gonna be there. Right. Yep. That is a huge shift.

Gil: Before we bring on my guest, I wanted to talk just a little bit about something that I’ve been hearing a lot from Host. I keep on hearing the same thing. I know my website isn’t converting, but I can’t afford $8,000 on an agency to rebuild it. Here’s the thing, you’re letting all these marketing strategies, you’re driving traffic and you’re putting it all to work.

Gil: But if your site isn’t really built to convert, you’re basically lighting your energy and money on fire. And even if you could afford an agency build, every time you want to test something or make a change, you’re having to pay them again. You can’t iterate, you can’t test, and you really can improve on things.

Gil: You don’t need a custom $10,000 website to get the conversion rates that really matter. You just need the right platform. That’s why I build craft estates. It’s purpose built for short-term rentals and designed from the ground up to help you drive more direct bookings. You can finally turn that traffic into booking.

Gil: And you can keep on testing and improving. As you learn, you can make changes all on the platform. You don’t need to learn something new. So if you need some help or you wanna get started, go ahead and go to craft estates.co and start your free trial. Now, let’s bring on our guests and dive deep into hospitality and marketing.

Gil: Hey folks. Welcome back to the Books Solid show, the podcast where we’re bringing on top operators in marketing, direct bookings, and revenue management. On today’s show, I have Annie Sloan. She’s a co-founder, and CEO of the host Co. She. Has been in short term rentals for I don’t know how many years, but she’s been doing this for quite a while, since the early days when it was still poster your stay on Craigslist.

Gil: As a founder of the Host Co, she helps host really uplevel the type of experiences that you can get out of your stay. And she walks us through why she started the company in the first place, what she’s doing now. We get to talk a little bit about some of the stuff that we’re working on behind the scenes.

Gil: I’m super excited about this. Annie has been a good friend of mine. She’s local to me in the Bay Area, so we’ve had coffee a bunch of times, but it’s really good to just talk about why she started this company in the first place and just really where we can take things given the technologies that she’s built and some of the things that she’s working on.

Gil: So, without further ado, let’s bring it in.

Gil: Hey Annie. Welcome to the show.

Annie: Thank you.

Gil: it’s so good to finally have you on the show. I know that we’ve been battling to get this on the books for a little while now.

Annie: Months and it’s summer right now. I don’t know if anyone’s when they’re listening to this, but that’s just always hard.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. And, and both being like startup founders or being tugged in like so many different directions. So it’s, it’s always, it’s always a little bit challenging. Um, but I’m really happy to have you on and I, I’m happy that we get to chance to like, see each other a couple weeks back too. So I am, I’m really excited to have you on the show.

Annie: Thank you, and I’m, I’m excited to also see you hopefully, um, a lot this fall at different conferences too.

Gil: Oh my God. I’m, I’m somewhat looking forward to it, but I’m somewhat like, I, I need a little bit break from, uh, from all the conferences. It’s, it’s, it can get really exhausting.

Annie: Yeah, yeah, I agree. Um, I can only handle so many loud bars, to be honest.

Gil: You know what I really dread? Um, it’s really when you’re the vendor having to lug everything there. That always is like the biggest driver of stress for me.

Annie: I think the whole thing is the biggest driver.

Gil: I, I’m, I’m quite okay doing customer onboards all week and, um, just working with our team to build product like that, that is my happy place.

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: Yeah. Um, so to get right into it, I want you to kind of give folks an introduction on who you are.

Annie: Um, hi everyone. 

Annie: I’m Annie Sloan and I am CEO and co-founder of the Host Co. And we’ll talk about that a bit. Um, I’m also a short-term rental host. I also have midterm and long-term rentals, so, uh, property managers and hosts. I feel your pain. I mean, we talk about a lot of problems. It’s because I have those problems too.

Annie: Um, and in my previous life I was a creative director at Facebook, and prior to that I was a creative director at Twitter. And before that, I was embedded at Google. I mean, I’m just a Bay Area eye roll, like Silicon Valley eye roll. I’m probably, um, uh, probably worked at most of the, I’ve done some time at Airbnb, et cetera, et cetera.

Annie: Uh, but I’ve been a short-term rental host Throughout all of that, I started short-term rental hosting. Uh, on Craigslist, uh,

Gil: That is, that is, that’s been a long while. If you are, if you are on Craigslist posting your property up there, that’s, that’s like the OG of OTAs.

Annie: Oh, and 

Annie: I mean, it was so sketchy. I would say, Hey, uh, just like, um, um, send me a picture of your license. Like, I wouldn’t ever meet people, you know, I was, I was very, I was young, I was impressionable. I wanted to go to Guatemala and Bali, you know, I was like, I’m gonna rent out my place in San Francisco. Um, but, uh, I, I obviously evolved through all of the channels to where we are today.

Annie: And it became such a big part of my life that I left to start a software company to solve mostly my own problems. And that’s where we, that’s 

Annie: how we got here today.

Gil: I absolutely love it when I meet other founders in our space that was originating from being a host like Craft of Stays.

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: We started this company because we’re trying to solve our own problems and. There was nothing out there that solved it. And it was just like beating our heads against the wall to figure out, okay, how can I solve this more efficiently?

Gil: And I find like a lot of the great products out there, particularly in our space, are ones that are like deeply, deeply embedded in the space and live and breathe hosting first.

Annie: Yeah. Yeah. 

Annie: Sometimes I’ll see products and think. That was someone who just wanted to start a startup and found a market that they saw growing. Uh, but they don’t understand the problem at all. So how, 

Annie: how are you gonna get anywhere with that? Right.

Gil: Yeah, and what’s interesting is that when you solve the problem, I don’t know if this applies to you or how much it applies to you, but I never did a TAM analysis. When I started craft estates. I never figured out like, okay, I wanted to be this big of a company and I think that it’s gonna be hit these kind of revenues.

Gil: It was like I had this. Problem that I knew was in our space, and I almost felt like it was my duty to solve it because like I knew how to solve it. I knew I had a strong vision, like whether or not this is an X million dollar company or whatever. I don’t really like people ask me what’s my exit path like, I don’t know my exit.

Gil: I don’t really know or care what my exit is, but like my core is like how do I help shape the industry to where I think it should go?

Gil: Yeah, so I, I absolutely love that about like the differences between founders in our space that come from hosting versus not.

Annie: Yeah, exactly. 

Annie: Where they’re not. They’re like, I’m gonna make people. That’s the thing. Even with conferences, I’ll go because I don’t talk to our users very, I’m not doing the support, I’m not doing the sales. I’m not really talking to the users very often, and I’ll go to a conference and I will meet so many people that’ll say.

Annie: Man, this really helped me, or this changed my life, or we were able to grow, or, and, um, I forget about those things. I get stuck in the slog of like, oh, we gotta grow. We gotta market, we gotta, and I forget that it’s actually doing, it’s solving other people’s problems besides my own. That’s, that is the best feeling.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. I still, my, my team has been trying to pull me like to, to give me more bandwidth and one of the things that I spend a lot of my time to do. Is I still do every single one of our customer onboarding calls, every single craft estate customer has on, has had the opportunity to book a call with me.

Gil: It’s actually part of the onboarding flow, and sometimes if it’s a busy week or I’m traveling for conferences, then that onboarding call might be like a week delay. But I try to like meet with every single one of our customers because I found that through building product, the best way that you can build product is in front of people.

Gil: It’s really good to like, hear from you. For instance, like, like when you go to these conferences, you come back with like all these different thoughts of like how you can make the product better and like what people like really latched onto and what was that like, that core need. So like, I, I, to me like that is like one of the most important things that like fueled our growth.

Annie: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Gil: Yeah. So talk to me a little bit about maybe, you mentioned that your host, you saw this problem, what was that problem? What were you trying to solve for?

Annie: You know, it’s so funny 

Annie: because it’s, our company has evolved so much. So the original problem was. Um, hey, my guests are in Joshua Tree. Uh, I can pretty well predict Friday night at midnight. They’re gonna text and say, we ran out of firewood. Where do we get more? And they’re 30 miles from a store. That is closed, number one.

Annie: Number two, um, Saturday night or Sunday morning, 2:00 AM Hey, can we get a late checkout tomorrow? And or Saturday night at midnight and you’re at a bar with your spouse, or you’re at someone’s birthday party and you’re like, oh, I just gotta step out and take care of it, right? Um, or, uh, hey, we, um, we instant booked, let’s say it’s a guest.

Annie: We instant booked a month ago and one day before, two days before, oh, we forgot. We had two pets.

Gil: Hmm.

Annie: And, uh, okay, here’s where you pay. Uh, then they don’t pay. Hey, reminder, here’s where you pay. Oh, where’s that link again? You send the link again. They still don’t pay. Oh. Um, hey, reminder, you have two pets and you need to pay for them.

Annie: Or you, you know, you can’t check in all of that back and forth. Okay? I’ll give you a fourth example, uh, guest book. They text you And if it’s on, if it’s on Airbnb, if it’s on vrbo, it doesn’t matter what channel. Um, uh oh. We’re so excited. Do you know where we can get a massage therapist? It’s our anniversary.

Annie: Sure. Here’s a link to a massage therapist. Oh, they’re closed. Do you have a second person? You The second person. Oh, they don’t do shiatsu. Do you have a third person? Yeah. Here’s another person. Oh. Um, do you know how much they cost? That is the back and forth of conversation that all of those things. Um, should be one, taking care of without you having to touch them.

Annie: Two, those things should all be shown to your guests and offered to your guests before they even check in so they know where to find them. And the last part of it is they should all be just automated. Automated. So you’re like, I’m not, I don’t have to touch it, but you’re getting what you need. Me. So that was a big, um, driver of how do we fix this by just sh showing people where they can get what they need before they stay.

Annie: And then also making more revenue. It’s, the funny thing is for us, it wasn’t even the revenue piece. It was, I’m so tired of drunk people asking me for firewood that I just wanna remove the problem of them asking me, or, but if I leave out aquar of firewood somehow they’re like, you know, roasting a pig in the backyard, they’ve used like 300 of firewood, right?

Annie: So. Setting that my co-founder, he, his name is Michael Hubbard. He, um, he has owned and operated two big property management companies, times eight real estate that also does flips and I think High Desert Properties is the other one. Um, he has a, he has a house in Death Valley and. The thing, he’s like, the thing that people don’t realize in Death Valley is one, there’s nothing else around like Beatty, Nevada doesn’t, you’re still not in your convenience store.

Annie: It is so dry and nobody brings, nobody brings chapstick. Nobody brings anything they need and they’re out there. They’re like, oh my God, this is the driest place on earth. I will give my right arm for chapstick and moisturizer and all this, and he was saying, well, some things I give for free, I’ll, I will leave some like local high Desert Chapstick, but all the other stuff, people would say, oh my gosh, where do I get X?

Annie: We’re in the middle of nowhere.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Annie: Um, so we built, I was still at Facebook, and this was during the pandemic, so I was working from home, which was good. Um, I was like, let’s just build something. Let’s build something that, and it, the funniest part is that the initial tagline was the mini bar. The mini bar of short-term rentals, and we don’t even do that.

Annie: I mean. I would say 4% of things that you get in a host coast store are actual products at this point is, but that was like our first tagline was how do we just get people to stop asking us questions and have things but regulate it to a degree that we have, um, we have inventory management, we have third party people that will come and deliver it for you, 

Annie: et cetera.

Gil: So what was that initial aha moment? Because there’s many ways to like address. The phone going off like nonstop about the same thing over. And again, like you can have smart message, now you have ai, but AI was less prevalent back, back when you started host code, but there’s many ways of solving that problem.

Gil: What was that aha moment that you’re like, oh, this is something that I really need to like sink my teeth into?

Annie: So when we 

Annie: launched it, we launched in seven houses, which were all owned or managed by us. It was like our test, you know, our testing ground made these stores and um, 93% of our guests opened the store. 40% of guests in the first month, we had it made a purchase. What that 40%? Right. Okay. That’s the first part.

Annie: So then we started rolling it out to other friends, um, specifically in the high desert because, you know, we’re primarily in Joshua Tree. Um, we started rolling it out to more people, and this is the big shift is that, um, hosts can add their own products, right? You can add whatever. You can add firewood, you can add, Hey, we’ll bring you a birthday cake.

Annie: Right. Um. Right away guests, or sorry, host, started to kind of hack it and say, you know, I don’t wanna deal with, with stuff on site that I’m gonna sell. I want services. I want things like a late checkout, which you can do in lots of places. So I was shocked people were doing this right. Um, uh, but here are my problems.

Annie: Late checkout, early check-in pet fee, certainly firewood. Um, but these services, local services, like man, I’m in this area where everybody wants family photography ’cause that’s the trend, I guess. Right? Or I’m in this area where everybody wants wellness services or they want, I don’t know, they want a braid bar or everyone wants glam squad ’cause they’re in some, I don’t know, some town, right?

Annie: So. The first, um, host and property managers, let’s say it’s like 20 people, almost everyone was using it in a way that we hadn’t built it for. We had built it for primarily things on site, and everybody was using it to just offload all of their services problems rather than 

Annie: their product problems.

Gil: Interesting. So in the very beginning, you’re solving just your own, your own problems and rolling this out in a very smaller group of your own properties there. And then you started to. Almost built like a platform and started to leverage this out for others. And that’s where you found like a, almost like a pivot, not like a hard one, but at least you identified that.

Gil: Like actually it wasn’t this initial concept that we had. It worked out very well in the initial concept, but it was actually watching your customers use it and that kind of led you down a whole different path.

Annie: Yeah. And 

Annie: that was kind of the, the phase one of, oh, everyone wants services. They want their own services. Um, but then as we kept growing, let’s say we’re at a hundred host property managers, um. Most of the hosts and property managers started saying, Hey, I don’t wanna add my own services. You know, I don’t want my sister who is a portrait photographer, or, um, ha you know, I can you, can you just, can you just put the services that I, that I want on your side?

Annie: Um, hey, can you just tell me what people in this area already want? Um, can you tell me the best massage therapist and reiki healer that everybody already loves? Because I don’t have the time to go out and find these people. So that was like the, the biggest shift of all was Okay. You tell us the five services that you’re always recommending, and we will go out and we’ll talk to those vendors and we’ll say, great.

Annie: What is your pricing? Do you have a, you know, business license, insurance, et cetera, and we’ll add you to a store. And when a guest requests something, Hey, I want two massages this day, at this time, at this location, we have a database and we match the right vendor with the right guest. And we then, um, essentially do the fulfillment with the vendor.

Annie: And that was. That’s where things took off, right? Because people want, it’s still a lot of their own services, but the other half of that is, um, um, people wanna get to a store. They wanna say, great, here are the 10 things that everyone already wants in my area. Can I just show that to my guest?

Gil: Yeah, you want almost like, like a curated experience for them where they’re like, okay, these are the things that people commonly would, would use if they were to go into into our home.

Annie: Yeah. And 

Annie: um, we were able to really quickly scale that because we could see what was selling well. And every time someone would start using us, we’d say, okay, what are the five things that you wanna sell or you wanna offer? Right? And they would sometimes be, uh, you know, massage, reiki healer. And then some people would say, dog walking. What, and now we see dog walking all the time selling, or a deluxe pet experience instead of a pet fee. And even though it’s something that that host is offering, you know, two dog bowls that say Sedona, Arizona, and a handkerchief, right? We’re able to make templates out of those. And so if someone starts, we can say if hey, um, host in Sedona, Arizona, here’s the 10 things that, that, that are selling really well in your area.

Annie: Why don’t you just start using those?

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how was that growth like? So you started during the. Um, beginning or middle of the pandemic, what was, what were those phases that you kind of gone through and like the, the progression towards that?

Annie: Um, so from 

Annie: 20. 22, 20 22 to 2023. We were basically just building and testing and getting to that first 100 users. Um, I mean, it looked like it was put together with, you know, chicken wire in duct tape as a website, you know, the first year. Um, and then I would say about 18 months ago, the beginning of 2024 is when we.

Annie: Really launched all of the services and have scaled that really quickly. Um, and the, the number one driver of that, I would say is it is immediate. You make a, you, you say, here’s my listing on any PMS or any booking channel. And the host code says, great, here’s a store to add to your listing. And it already is, it’s just ready to go. Um, and before we had that, I mean. You’re a property manager, you’re putting out fires all day. You don’t have time to be like, oh, I’m gonna add this tile. Oh, you know, nobody is gonna use, you know, nobody’s gonna use Reiki heeler where we are. Let’s take that out. We just give you a store and say, if you don’t just turn off anything you don’t want and you’re ready to go, and that has been.

Annie: What has enabled us to scale fast, and I would also say it’s enabled us to scale fast because we’re doing it with partners like craft to say, but we’re doing it with partners so that you as a property manager, you don’t have to go 8,000, you just don’t have to go a lot of different places. Right. It’s just 

Annie: there for you ready?

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. What has, so you mentioned that you had a hundred users, kind of like in the first year or so of you building it out, and it wasn’t until early 24, that’s when things kicked off. You mentioned partnerships. Was that the biggest change in your business of like allowing you to kind of ramp up to the scale that you guys have right now And I don’t know if you wanna share how many users you have on your platform?

Annie: Yeah. Um, we have 

Annie: 18 over 18,000 listings using the host code now, so, yeah. Um, and sometimes they’re down for the season. They’re not selling anything but 18,000. We’re in 16 countries, um, which is shocking to me. Uh, not many users in other countries ’cause we display US dollars. You can use any currency to pay and get paid out, but, um.

Annie: The really funny thing is we assumed that if you had a property management software that you did not need the HoCo

Gil: Mm.

Annie: you already have something that can kind of do late checkout, can maybe do like firewood, right? Um, and as we started to grow quickly. 50% of the people who attended our demos had a property management

Gil: Mm-hmm.

Annie: and that was shocking.

Annie: I was like, what? What? Can’t you just use your pfs for this thing? But, um, our. Our system is a very retail, it’s like shopping at On Target online or h and m online. It’s very visual, it’s very retail first it’s very big button and it’s very in your face, right? Not in your face, but, um, you know, you have, uh, you know, get a, get a local charcuterie board delivered right next to the late checkout visually.

Annie: So what that does is it gets people, guests to see what they want, but then see all the other stuff that they can have. Around it. Um, and also they’re gonna see it right after they book. So they’re not gonna buy anything Right when they book. Right. It’s like when you get a airline ticket and it says you want a rental car.

Annie: No, definitely not. No. Who’s getting a rental car then? But it’s socializing the fact that you can get a rental car. So you start thinking about, you know, one week before the stay. Oh yeah, we do want a massage. We do want a lay checkout. We do want, um, charcuterie board. Uh, and that has. I’d say it’s still about 50 50.

Annie: It, it’s definitely helped us scale very quickly by working with PMSs. Right. Um, but it’s still 50 

Annie: 50.

Gil: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes, that makes sense. It’s very interesting that you said that. You had the, the thinking that because someone has a PMS, they wouldn’t need half the services or whatever, however many amounts that you, you have. And I think if you, if you boil it down, even though the PMSs have the ability to, to do some of these things, it still requires a person on the other end to actually act on it.

Gil: And some of them have guest portals where you can actually go in there. But I found that the guest portals. And the interfaces that a lot of the pmms has put together are very operational focus. You need to do this one thing and you need to find that button so you’re not like, actually, like you’re not encouraged to do those things.

Gil: It’s if you want to do it, like check out, that button is there. You have to go to the guest portal to do it. Whereas the way that ICU folks is that because you’re commerce focused. You inherently need to be conversion focused, so you’re thinking about what the guest experience is and you’re trying to drive the user to take advantage of these services so that they can have a better stay.

Gil: Did I, do I, did I capture that right?

Annie: Yeah. Yeah, you did. That’s exactly right. 

Annie: It’s, um, one, it’s not a, it’s not like a tangle of links of, uh, within like, here’s the wifi, here’s the check-in. It’s a, um, beautiful shopping experience that is provided on a drip. I would say, so it’s provided at a time when you’re like, oh, let me look at that. Oh, let’s check this out.

Annie: Right. Um, and it also has, it’s curated by the host, and the host knows better than anyone else what it is that you want. Um, I will also say that, um, it is, it is not operational at all. So here’s an example is, uh, let’s say your guest books your. Two bedroom condo in Destin, Florida, right? Um, right after that, they get maybe a couple hours later.

Annie: Hey, we’re so excited to have you stay. If you’d like to add any upgrades or additional local amenities like, um, like chef massage or yacht charter, um, check out what we have to offer. Um, the person who books the stay generally psychologically is the person who gets more enjoyment from anticipating the trip than being on the trip.

Annie: Right? And also that, um, that individual is generally someone who probably likes to shop. So, I mean, people go window shopping for fun. People search the internet at night for fun. If you give that person an opportunity to browse something else that is related to this day, they already have a better emotional connection to this day.

Annie: They’re like, oh no, what you. You know, Guild, 99.9% of people are never gonna book the yacht charter. But knowing that the yacht charter is connected to your listing, is associated with your listing, is already giving them like the feeling of a yacht charter, right? Um, and I think that that is how commerce works as opposed to the operational side.

Annie: It’s like, Hey, why don’t you take some time and have some fun browsing all the things that are 

Annie: available?

Gil: Yeah, you mentioned something super interesting where. I don’t know if we had this discussion, nor was someone else. But oftentimes, if you’re booking a trip for a larger group, it’s the person that booked, and it’s usually the mom in the family that’s doing the booking. They’re actually the host. It’s not the US as as property manager.

Gil: It’s actually the mom is the host because the mom is stitching together Maybe. The itinerary for the entire family. They’re making sure that the place is well amenitized and it has everything that the kids wanna play with if the grandparents are included, like making sure that they’re comfortable, that the stairs are accessible for them, like that mom, and most cases I, and like hopefully I don’t offend anyone by saying that, but oftentimes they take on the burden of being that host in there.

Gil: And I just find that super interesting as like. It’s kinda like the social experiment where like, how do you make sure that that host, that mom has everything that they need to make it easier for them to provide the trip for however many people are, are traveling with them?

Annie: Yeah, they’re responsible 

Annie: for the food, the entertainment, the safety, right? And if you can say to that, mom, and I am that mom, so I know very well. Um, hey, you know, um, we, we can, and they, maybe they even see it on your website or your listing. Oh, we can book an outdoor movie night person. They have bean bags.

Annie: They’ve got a big tv, you know, they got, they got it all right. Um, that person’s gonna be like, oh, that’s, that, that takes care of entertainment for night too. Or, Hey, we’re gonna do, and I do this, I was just on a trip with, uh, my, my mother, her boyfriend who were in their eighties, my husband, our kids, and then, uh, a sort of in-law with her four kids.

Annie: And I was the one going, okay, well what are we gonna do during this entire stay? Right? How can we, how can we get some chefs in here to do the work? How, how can I make it so that I’m not cleaning up for seven days after, you know, 12 people,

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. So I find that super interesting and I, I, I, I think out of that will spawn. Like services like you, you, you guys, and that may even change that the menu of offerings that you might have may eventually change to be very hyperfocused of like, how do you actually provide everything that they need?

Gil: And you mentioned like, like one of your examples earlier on, it’s like people, if they’re in the, like the deep desert, they forget their chapsticks and all these different things and. I think the olden way of like solving that problem is, okay, let’s make sure we send the reminders, send them canned messages that says, make sure you bring this.

Gil: And I, I admittedly, I do this the same way. I, I, I say, make sure you bring swimsuits because we have an indoor pool. Make sure you bring X, Y, or Z. Um, but you’re actually taking a very different approach of like, actually don’t worry about that stuff. Like, enjoy your time, enjoy your time here and. We actually have a menu of things to make sure that you have what you need to have a fabulous trip.

Gil: It’s a very different take on hospitality.

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: Um, so given kinda like what you’ve built so far, what do you see as the vision? Like what do you see as the next big thing that you want to tackle?

Annie: Um, definitely, 

Annie: uh, the, the first thing is being a part of, um, other, of direct booking site. Being a, being an embedded product where you don’t have to leave that embedded product, right, is the first thing. So. If it’s within the guest portal or if it’s in with your direct booking site, I’d say specifically with direct booking, if you have a a page of these amenities on your direct booking site, people will hang out on your website a lot longer.

Annie: Brow. And even if they, and, and they’ll come back a year later because you’ve emailed them and said, um, new Hibachi Night Chef for your family reunion. That’s the email that they’re gonna open and click back to your website, an email that says, get 10% off your next day this summer. I. I mean, that’s not, I mean, no discount is compelling enough if they’re not already interested in coming back.

Annie: But if you give them a new vision of outdoor movie night or Hibachi night or um, even just like charcuterie board that says Happy 30th birthday, right? That email gets them back into that trip mode and. As long as it’s connected to your listing, they’re not getting that somewhere else. So this is an interesting thing about something like Airbnb services.

Annie: It has zero connection to your actual listing. Right. It is zero connection, so you can’t say, go to Airbnb and get a charcuterie board and you should also stay at our house. It needs to be, we’ve got the, this amazing chef that will deliver the charcuterie board for you, or it’ll be there when you get there.

Annie: Usually that’s not the case, but um, um, so leaning into every place where we can be that partner for. Marketing amenities into this day, like we are, we don’t, we don’t take care of the booking. We don’t do bookings. That is someone who’s like you, who’s taking care of all of that, but just being the other half of that, because hotels, they know that really well.

Annie: They’re like, we got a popup chef. Check out this new pillow in our gift shop. I have booked hotels because of something in their gift shop before.

Gil: Uh,

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: I have not, but I can see that happening.

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: That’s, that’s a, and so you. So I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m guessing we can openly talk about it here since we talked a little bit about it, but we’re gonna be partnering up together pretty soon, um, and, and doing something pretty unique, which I’m super excited about. Um, for, for our listeners here, Annie and I, we were grabbing coffee in San Francisco.

Gil: I think it was during the Stripe Conference, if I remember correctly.

Annie: Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh boy.

Gil: Um, and we, we were just talking about like. What are ways that we can actually like bridge the experiences? And we decided, like after just some, like thinking about the user experiences, like how do we actually bring these amenities into the entire booking flow, um, and how can we like, bolster each other?

Gil: And I think we’re gonna be, be able to create a really amazing experience where you as a property manager or a host. Can have your direct booking site, it’s well connected to your PMS, but also be able to market other amenities that you can offer as a service. And like you said, they may or may not be able to or want to purchase it at that time, but knowing that that is a marketable experience that they can enjoy, that’s that’s super important.

Annie: Yeah, the 

Annie: value it, this is gonna sound so weird, but the value is not in them booking it. I mean, you’ll make money when they book it. The value is knowing that it exists. We had someone that added a mobile tattoo artist for the week of Coachella, like flash taps, right? Um, what amazing marketing to say three months before Coachella, you know, flash taped artist available at our Coachella Villa.

Annie: I’m opening that email in a minute, and even if I wasn’t planning on going to Coachella, I’m gonna be like, oh, that place is beautiful. Oh, they have great reviews. Uh, but also I wanna, I envision myself having this experience there. Right? Or the, the second part of that is, let’s say someone comes to your Florida condo, they never use the yacht charter or the, like, you know, 200 Flameless candles.

Annie: You, we can provide those for you if you’re doing an engagement, whatever. But they’re gonna come stay or they’re gonna read your email. Three months later, they’re gonna be at a bar with their buddy and their buddy’s gonna say, what should I do for my engagement? Or like, we got a big, you know, we got a big anniversary coming up.

Annie: What should I do? And that’s when you say, you know, I just got an email from this listing that, and they, I, I saw this picture of like 300 candles around a bathtub. That sounds, you should do that.

Gil: That

Annie: That is the power of the amenities marketing. Right? The value is in the story. Sure. It’s also in the experience, but it’s in the story 

Annie: of the experience.

Annie: Right?

Gil: I mean, that’s what most people remember. It’s not the particular like, oh, the hot tub, or whatever. It’s the memories, the feeling, the stories all around that stay there. Like they’re not gonna remember every single thing, but they will remember the feeling that they got out of it.

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: Yeah, we, I think when we originally were thinking about this, and it’s still true, we were thinking about doing our integration on the property page.

Gil: So if someone is looking at your properties, they can see the amenity, the, the serviceable amenities that you can, you can purchase while staying at that property. As I’m thinking through it, and I’m doing some kind of like live product ideation on a podcast, which I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not, um, but.

Gil: It would be interesting to see kind of like how do we leverage this in other touch points? Because the thing that I’m getting outta this show, this, this show, is that this is not just like one place that you may want to experience these amenities. It may kind of be through out multiple marketing touchpoint, so it could be on, I’m thinking like custom pages that people are writing about.

Gil: Serviceable amenities that they have. Like they may have a landing page on just some of the extra perks that you can get while staying with us. And then right before the show, we were talking about something that Craft Days is in the process of releasing right now, which is our marketing hub. And the first version of our marketing hub is going to be our blog and allowing people to write blogs about particular topics really to drive SEO traffic.

Gil: And we were ideating. Oh, like actually it might be kind of cool if you can actually embed. Those same amenities inside the blog itself. So I I, I kind of think like our integration might kind of start off like with this one very particular use case, but I think over time we’re gonna find ways to collaborate, where it’s gonna be part of your overall brand and the way that you present yourself to the guest.

Gil: That, that’s just like how I’m envisioning it.

Annie: Yeah, 

Annie: I mean we had someone recently rebrand as a wellness destination and they’re only using HoCo services. They haven’t changed anything about their actual house, but they’re like, I mean, what an, what an angle, you know, because they can have private Pilates and they have a pool private, yo, private yoga, private Pilates, sound bath, um, you know, nutritional counselor, like, it’s so 

Annie: funny.

Gil: that. That’s very interesting. And I think that what, what’s one, something interesting is that like. I don’t know if you’ve ever done a survey of like, how many of your hosts are local versus remote. I’m actually interested if you do know. Um, but something like this, like the experience of this is very unachievable for someone that is usually remote, like for me to be able to offer some of those services and like I have cabins in the Smokies.

Gil: There’s no way that at any scale that I’m able to offer some of these services. Um, but it’s quite unique where you’re able to kind of figure out what are some of the vendors, what’s the process, how do you actually couple it all together so that even if you’re not local, you’re able to provide a very local like experience.

Annie: Yeah. Yeah. Uh, I 

Annie: would say I anecdotally, I don’t know the exact, but um, uh, most. Hosts are not close to their listings because for us it’s mostly second cities, right? It’s two hours away from the big city, right? So Joshua Tree, two hours from La Tahoe, Arnold, California, two to four hours away from the Bay.

Annie: Um, and. The how, how our system works, and this was a huge learning curve for us, is that guests can never just book something with a host co. They say, Hey, I’m putting in a request for a portrait photographer, uh, these North Carolina beaches for this day, for this time, for this many hours. I agree to the price I’m going to, I’m gonna give you my credit card info and it’s, we’re gonna hold it while we.

Annie: Our backend team and system matches it with the vendor that is available at this day, at this time, at this thing. We’ve likely used them before, and then we process the credit card. And that’s the only way that that system works, is that the guest can automatically request something without having to text you and say, can I get a thing?

Annie: And then on the backend, there’s the automatic matching to the right vendors because, um, I mean, I am in, I’m 600 mile, maybe six. Maybe 400 miles from Joshua Tree right now. I mean, I’m in the Bay Area. Uh, most people are

Gil: probably five, 600. Yeah.

Annie: Yeah. Yeah. 

Annie: I should probably know that stuff, but yeah.

Gil: Yeah. So what, so does that mean that the host slash property manager. Doesn’t need to kind of worry about like how that, how that amenity is gonna get serviced.

Annie: Yeah, 

Annie: the, what happens is that, um, our vendor team says, um, Hey, photographer, are you available this day, at this time, at this location? Um, and we are asking the guest for, do we need parking instructions? Is it a special occasion? Right? So all of that information, when the vendor says, yes, I’m available, we give them the guest info.

Annie: We say, here’s Andy Sloan’s phone number and email. You got questions. Contact her. You can’t find a parking spot in West Hollywood for the massage text, the guest. Right. So it’s taking all of the work out of your hands. That’s why also, so people sometimes say like, oh, well, you know, they want flowers inside the house to surprise, to surprise ’em when they walk in.

Annie: We don’t do a lot of that. We don’t do that with our vendors because we don’t wanna have to arrange like key codes and getting in. But a lot of, um, a lot of hosts and property managers will have people on their own team that will do these services. Um, example, certainly your cleaner will do a mid stay clean, we’ll do a linen refresh.

Annie: A lot of cleaners are like, I wanna make more money. I’ll do, I’ll go get a birthday cake, I’ll decorate for the holidays. Right. Talk to them and say, are there other services? ’cause it’s the same system. We’ll text your cleaner and email your cleaner and ask them if they’re available for you. Right. Um, or extra recycling pickup, um, things like that.

Annie: Or if you have a firewood guy or someone that you know who will do some service locally, that’s the other half of that is you can bring in your own. Vendors to do it, and it’s the same thing. You just don’t really need to know if you’re gonna have the visibility, Hey, they’re having a dinner or charcuterie board delivered, but you don’t need to do any of the 

Annie: fulfillment on the backend.

Gil: Yeah, it’s very interesting that you mentioned like the cleaner’s gonna be already there and they wouldn’t mind making a few extra bucks if they need to go pick up a cake on the way to the cabin before they, before they refresh it. Um, that, that use case of, I’ve never thought of my cleaner as being a person that can go beyond just like, just the cleaning side of things.

Gil: And mainly because like, I want them to like really make sure that the cleaning is the top priority, but you make a good argument that like, actually, if they’re getting a piece of the cut of that service. They’re gonna go, they’re gonna do their regular job and they’re going to, they’re gonna do a good job at providing that new amenity as well too.

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: I know. Um, I know a buddy of mine that is in the Smokies as well too, and. He does the whole, like rose petal, rose petal on the bed stuff. And he, and he told me that he just bought some Amazon kit of like fake rose petals and he keeps it in the closet. And if there’s ever, and he, and he has like in his, on like his welcome message, like if you, we have three different packages while staying with us and he has a honeymoon suite and like, these are the three packages.

Gil: The first two packages are actually executed by his cleaning staff, and then the third one is executed by someone that has to go out and buy stuff and then bring it back. Um, but the first two is just the cleaner going into the closet, getting out the flowers, and just like tossing it in there and, and they charge him extra because like, okay, after you toss rose petals all over, you’re gonna have to clean it all up.

Gil: So, so the cleaner dashie does not mind doing some of those extra stuff. So it’s, I’ve never thought of like. 

Gil: Hmm. 

Gil: If I were to leverage my cleaners to do a bunch of different things, what can I leverage them for?

Annie: Yeah. And you need, I I would say also 

Annie: part of that is you need to know that one, they’re gonna be responsible and two, you’re gonna remind. So what we do is we’ll send them a text, we’ll put it on a, we’ll offer it on a Google calendar. Um, we’ll send a 48 hour, I think, an email that says, reminder, someone’s getting a birthday cake.

Annie: ’cause you don’t want it to be, you never want it to be a poor. Experience and you’re opening a little bit, you just gotta make sure they’re super responsible. Right. Um, we’ve also seen, and it works as long as you have that vendor or you have like a college kid in the area who’s like, oh, I’ll do, you know, I’m responsible.

Annie: I’ll do errands, I’ll deliver whatever you want. Right. Um, occasionally we see things like that with, um, hey, we have a, we have a a, a place at a bachelorette party destination, and we’ve gone on Amazon and bought boxes that are like. Five funny wigs and sunglasses and we offer those and you can purchase those on the stay.

Annie: And um, our software can give you a code or a location on your receipt only. Hey, those are in the closet on the top, like just in the top shelf in a blank. But you don’t even have to have it, you know it locked. You just say like, it’s on the top closet, yada, yada. Or you can do that and have your cleaner again.

Annie: You can have your cleaner take the box out.

Gil: Yeah,

Annie: Um, and, and put it, you know, or like put the five wigs on the table when they walk in or just have the Amazon box. So of course the person who’s hosting, who’s planned the trip 

Annie: knows where it’s,

Gil: yeah, yeah, yeah. How, how do you make sure that the quality is. Up to like the services are being delivered to the call that you want? Like what, what, what measurements do you kind of have in place?

Annie: Um, for 

Annie: our services that we vet, um, we vet them essentially do they have great reviews. They have a business license, and that is, uh, ongoing. Like we work with, um, epic Curate and a couple other national vendors for, um, for, uh, food service. So. Weirdly, hibachi Night is a big seller. Um, it’s, I keep referring to it, but, uh, for food service, um, epic Curate, fire, forks and Knives, the really established companies, right?

Annie: Um, same thing with massage. We use local providers that have been recommended, but we start also with So and Zeal A lot of the people that Marriott or Hilton will use the same vendors. You know, that’s the big secret is that they’re not, like, they don’t own a spa at the Marriott. They’re all contractors, right?

Annie: Um, but the other side of that is if you are a host and you are, um, providing your own services or offering your own services, you need to make sure that it’s someone, it’s either you or someone that you trust to provide that service. Right? Um, uh, here’s an example of that. Um. Hey, we want to do, um, rental beach cruisers, and we don’t wanna deal with the liability.

Annie: So we’re gonna have a local rental company drop them off every time someone buys them, which is great. Um, you can, uh, go through the, you can say, Hey, HoCo, um, here’s the name of this company. Can you put them on offer? And you guys are the ones that call them and remind them and make sure that they’re doing it right, or you’ll make a lot more money if you’re like, oh, it’s my best friend owns that bike rental company.

Annie: Right? I’m gonna have the the host co request go directly to him.

Gil: Yeah.

Annie: Which is great as long as that is a responsible business owner. But what happens is, guess what? That summer, they have a high school kid working at the front desk and they get a request for two bikes and they don’t approve the request and they still bring the bikes, or they never, or, or they approve it and then they forget.

Gil: Yeah. So you do have to have systems and processes in place if you’re running your own services.

Annie: you’re, yes, and we, our systems and processes are, we can text that person, we can text ’em a reminder, we can, um, email them. We can send them an uh, a, you know, a Google calendar invite, but they need to be a responsible vendor. Right. That’s just the bottom line.

Gil: Yeah. 

Gil: Yeah. 

Gil: That’s super interesting. Um, yeah. Do you have any sort of, do you do any type of reviews right now on, on the experience or, yeah.

Annie: we don’t do public facing reviews, but we do ask occasionally for reviews. We had, we had, um, a hibachi thing last week where, um, the. The, the owner who booked it as like a test, ’cause she wanted to see how it worked. She said it was too high energy and I, I don’t know if that’s so much a mismatch of what they booked versus the quality of the product.

Annie: Right. Um, so we do things like that and we certainly keep in a database. Um, and our vendors will drop vendors all the time. I mean, not even if they’ve been booked, but if we’re like, you know what, it’s just not what we want. Or we’re reading their other reviews online,

Gil: Yeah.

Annie: right? I mean, we’re really vetting them very closely.

Annie: So we know and we’re not, um, this is another really big part of how our system works, is that we are not allowing vendors to come to us and say, Hey, show my product to all of these guests. It has to be something that a, uh, a property manager or host recommends to us for us to even even reach out to Ben.

Annie: So that’s how we try and filter it out, because if you go to something like a via tour or something, you see like 90 things you don’t want, you’re seeing all these things. You’re like, I don’t want any of this stuff.

Gil: Yeah. 

Gil: Yeah. Yeah. So, so it sounds like you’re doing a, a combination of like both proactive and reactive, where like on the proactive side you’re doing like sniff tests on vendors on a regular basis to make sure that they’re continuing to meet the quality bar that you, you expect out of all your vendors, but you’re also have a mechanism of reactive where if you are getting signals from a host that like, okay, maybe things aren’t like the right quality to get that feedback back or perhaps even be able to.

Gil: Remove vendors altogether from from your serviceable net network.

Annie: Yeah. 

Annie: and we have a three person team that, that is their, that is their whole role is they do all of the vendor management. They do all of the fulfillment and all of the On the onboarding too.

Gil: Nice. Um, switching gears a little bit, how do you think. I mean, and we touched a little bit upon on upon this, but like, how do you think this makes an overall impact on the ability to attract more direct bookings?

Annie: Okay, so I’ll 

Annie: say this the way, and I’m sure anyone listening, the way that people choose travel, they consider bookings has culturally shifted from even 10 years ago, five years ago, particularly Gen Z and millennial. They are experience first. Location. Second they are, what are we gonna do there before they are?

Annie: Where are we gonna stay there? They’re even like, what are we gonna do before we pick where we’re gonna go? Right? It’s like, I wanna go see Taylor Swift in Nashville. It’s not, I wanna go to Nashville and Taylor Swift is gonna be there, right? Um, uh, that is a huge shift. Also, people booking last minute, which is annoying, less than three, but, um, being able to. Show and in your SEO include talking about the things they can do on site, certainly in your area, but that’s not as specific to like on site, right? Um, showing photos of what people can do on site, talking about what they can do on site. Even, you can even say like, we have such and such barrel winter saunas company that can bring a barrel sauna right to the front of the house like that.

Annie: All of those things are, um, getting you more SEO, they’re getting you better. Um, marketing, um, you know, we had someone that added a bigfoot sighting at their tiny home park in Texas, and, um, they are doing like double the bookings because people want that. It’s not that they want a tiny home park in Texas, right?

Annie: Um, so it’s driving people to the website, it’s driving people from the marketing to the website. Um, and it’s also, um, just increasing booking. And I would say when it comes to direct bookings, everything that you can use to grow your SEO to stand out, to improve booking consideration. And also it’s just a, um, a natural part.

Annie: If someone comes to your website, their booking consideration goes up.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah.

Annie: It, you know, they’re browsing, they’re looking, even if you have four listings and you said like, you can have the movie night guy at any of these listings. They’re gonna look around their, their booking consideration just goes up the 

Annie: higher, the longer they’re on your site.

Gil: Yeah, I think you make a good point where it’s, there’s two big parts of, if you think about like the conversion funnel, like we, we talk about this quite a bit on aircraft days. When you think about the conversion funnel, the very top of the funnel is like, are you. Are you aware? Like are people aware of even you, do they even find you in the first place?

Gil: So, and that’s kind of like where SEO makes a big impact. Like if you’re able to write content about what makes you so special so that when people are looking for new experiences, you come up on their feed or you come up on search, that has a huge impact. And that’s kind of why we focus so much during the summer of building out our marketing hub so that you can.

Gil: You can really have a good chance of being able to service your like be shown. But then what you also mentioned is that like, because you’re now leveraging these new amenities, these new services, that consideration phase is actually amplified where people are like, okay, we’re not just looking at the cabin and oftentimes not looking at the location, but more so like, what is the experience I can get here?

Gil: And so your consideration if you’re comparing yourself from. This day versus maybe even one on Airbnb. Like that’s a very big difference in terms of experience, like on a direct booking site. You can talk about your brand. You can talk about like what makes you different, the service that you have, why the amenities that you put into your property is different, and then you compare yourself against like an Airbnb listing.

Gil: It’s a very big difference in terms of like going back to that mom, if I was that mom. Shopping between these two choices, it starts to separate yourself where you’re not just competing directly on price, you’re like your direct bookings, like property page is not like a replication of your Airbnb listing, but it’s actually a very different like experience that you’re trying to highlight.

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: Yeah.

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: That’s, that’s, that’s what I’m really excited about. And yeah, I, I don’t know how quickly we can push this out. I’m, I’m hoping that we can push it out soon. Um,

Annie: me too.

Gil: um, but like that type of experience is like what I, what I’m like hoping that we can kind of build towards,

Annie: Yeah. Yeah. I very much agree. Um, I, I wanna move four times as fast every day than we’re moving, but

Gil: that’s, I mean, going back to like the, the startup part of it, like, I feel like. Yeah, that’s always been like the, the challenge is like, how do you spend your time on the most impactful thing and you have all these opportunities. I’m glad that like, we have a really good working relationship where like, okay, let’s feel each other’s timelines out and like, we’ve been talking about this for quite a while now and like, let’s try to figure out like how do we make it happen in whatever time that allows us to like align up there.

Gil: Um, it’s always a challenge. We always wanna do more. There’s always like. Customers that we wanna, like, really make sure that we deliver a good experience on, and while also like new innovative stuff that we want to try out as well too. Well, Annie, we usually end the show with three questions. Um, so first question first.

Gil: Uh, what’s a good book recommendation? I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Uh, I’m part of like the STR book club of folks that don’t know about it where we, yeah. Do you not know about this?

Annie: No.

Gil: Do I have my book? No, I don’t have that book. So right now, this month is Start With Why by Simon Sinek. I love that book.

Gil: Um, it’s, I now have multiple copies of it.

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: Um, but yeah, there’s the STR book club. So I do a lot of reading and, and usually it’s towards hospitality growth, entrepreneurship. Um, so I love that. So I’m always looking for book recommendations. What’s a good one for me?

Annie: Um, I had a 

Annie: book that really changed my life, uh, last year that is called, uh, 4,000 Weeks Time Management for Mortals.

Gil: Okay.

Annie: yeah, it’s by the, used to be the, the New York Times productivity writer, and I think it’s his British guy. I think it was maybe Times of London, um, productivity writer. And his, uh, kind of thesis is if you are 80 years old, if you live to 80, you are only alive for 4,000 weeks,

Gil: Yeah, that’s very morbid.

Annie: morbid and really wonderful on, um. Doing things for, you know, it, it, it’s a lot about how, um, make this really brief, you know, before the dishwasher and the refrigerator and the, um, vacuum people are saying, oh, these things, they’re gonna give us so much more time. They’re gonna bring us so much more time. We’re gonna have so much more leisure time.

Annie: And that gets filled up by other things that you wanna do. I don’t think anyone today is saying, oh, I have so much more time, because we have printers and we have, you know, vacuums. Right. You’re just filling it with more things and that, um, it’s the same thing with ai. The way I look at

Gil: I was just about to say that.

Annie: yeah, like, we’re gonna have so much more time on our hands, we’re gonna have universal basic income.

Annie: The human desire to create and be productive and to, um, and to accomplish things is not gonna go away right. Because of that. But it’s also talking about, um, doing things for the enjoyment of them and not just for the goal of them, like surfing because you think it’s great. I know I don’t have to become a professional surfer.

Annie: Right. And also just looking at productivity kind of changing. And I think being in the Bay Area, I’ve got like. Some, some real productivity trauma. Um, it, it was just a really great reframe of, of what you’re doing with your time.

Gil: I gotta pick that one up. I think that that sounds very relatable. Like, I don’t know if you’ve seen the, was it the 40 K calendar? Have you seen that one?

Annie: No. Oh

Gil: I, I don’t, I don’t know if it’s, it’s, it’s called exactly that, but it’s basically a calendar. Um. And there’s a bunch of cells, little small, little squares, and every week you fill in a square.

Gil: And so it starts from the day you’re, the week that you’re born to now, and then you can actually order these based on your age. So you can order this with already like 40 years of cells already colored in, and every week you go in and you color it, and it’s a good reminder of like, oh, there’s this. And that we are working towards, and to make sure that the remaining white cells left are ones that you wisely choose to use your time towards.

Annie: yeah, yeah, that’s

Gil: It, it’s, it’s, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m 

Gil: for folks that don’t know this, I’m afraid of death. So this, like, this topic is really 

Gil: hard for me to talk about,

Annie: Sorry.

Gil: but I love productivity.

Annie: yeah. About, and also about, um, really appreciating the present time that, that you’re in, right?

Gil: Yes. Yes. Um, second question, little less morbid. Um, what’s one, and this is probably gonna align with what you just mentioned, what’s one piece of mindset advice that you would give to someone that’s starting something completely new?

Annie: Um, I, I actually think 

Annie: it is, um, that it is, most of the time it is a boring grind and mindset wise, you need to be or learn, need to learn to be. You know, like somewhat happy despite the different circumstances, despite if it’s boring, if it’s a grind, if you just thought you were gonna get a big check and it fell through.

Annie: I mean, it’s sort of surfing the ocean and, and, um, not the waves to a degree, but it’s not even surfing. I think it’s just, um, being, being. Being the one who decides how you’re going to be, uh, navigating and living your day, especially in startup world, it is such a rollercoaster. I mean, three times a day I’ll be like, this is going crazy, or we’re gonna be billionaire.

Annie: You know, like, we’re solving the world’s problems. And then twice a day, you know, I’m like, oh man, I should just quit. Right? So being able to be, and that’s lessened over time, I will say, but, um, being able to just sit with the present circumstance, so it, it does relate to, I think 

Annie: the previous topic.

Gil: Yeah. And it’s almost like you almost have to decide how you wanna feel, and a lot of times that dictates how you approach the day. Um, like every so often, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll play around with the kids. I was like, today’s gonna be a really good day.

Annie: yeah,

Gil: I’ll say this every once in a while that’s, they’re like, dad, how do you know that?

Gil: And I was like, oh. Just because we decided that,

Annie: yeah,

Gil: and, and, and sometimes I’ll go to the school happy that just because I said that, and it doesn’t work all the time, but it’s a good, it’s a good like, little mindset play.

Annie: yeah. Yeah.

Gil: Um, last question. What’s one piece of tactical advice, something that they can, people can put into practice today that will help folks either get started in direct booking or amplify the direct bookings?

Annie: Um, I would 

Annie: say get a direct booking site in two minutes with graphic stays. Get a direct booking site and, um. Start, uh, start talking about it in social media. You, you know, the first thing if you know, don’t have any, um, if you don’t have any um, uh, email or blogs or anything like that, start talking about it.

Annie: If you have social media and talk about one thing that you can add to it, and you don’t have to have start to using the host code, you can just go look at the host code and see what amenities. Put a photo of the barrel sauna on your. You know, website or the, um, you know, like a cool reiki, it doesn’t even have to be in your unit yet or in your space, but be like, oh my gosh, we’re announcing you, we are now connected to whatever thing, Bohemian picnic image, and see what.

Annie: See what happens. You know, your people who have stayed there before or you might, you know, might be like, oh, cool. You know, it’s giving them something new to chew on and then take them to your direct site and just see how it works. It’s all kind of like, host goes free, so you just, you can just do a little experiment or just go find a picture on the internet and put it, and you can, you can set up the booking later, but just see if you get some 

Annie: excitement around it.

Gil: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a good way to test it. I am sure you can do a lot of iterations and see like which one starts to really resonate and where you wanna, where you wanna like double down in terms of your marketing and like how you wanna position your stays.

Annie: Yeah,

Gil: Awesome. Well, Annie, it was a huge pleasure finally have you on the show and really,

Annie: great.

Gil: really, I’m excited about what’s ahead.

Gil: Um, but I appreciate you just kind of giving us a glimpse on why you started the host co in the first place, kind of the vision that you have and some of our collaboration together. But I’m super excited.

Annie: Me too. I’m so 

Annie: excited for the first person to rebook on craft, you know, rebook on a direct site because of an amenity. That’s through Kraft space. That’s the goal. That’s the, that’s the like North 

Annie: Star

Gil: Yeah. For any listeners that are host co users and craft estate users reached out to either Annie or I, we are looking for folks to kind of like be part of the first wave of this, and we’ve already have a couple folks that we’re, we’re working with, but. If you guys are a user of both platforms and you want to be kind of the ear early first users of this, reach out to us.

Annie: Yeah.

Gil: All right.

Annie: Thank you for me on the show. Been great.

Gil: It’s been a lot of fun. Thank you, Annie. Bye.