IAM2097 – CEO and Founder Connects Local Amenities to Short-Term Rental Through a Hospitality Platform

In this episode, we have Annie Sloan, co-founder and CEO of The Host Co., a hospitality platform connecting local amenities to short-term rentals, offering services like massages and chef services.

She focused on the importance of execution in the short-term rental industry and the need for easy and automated processes to cater to the majority  of hosts who are female.

Furthermore, Annie discusses her definition of being a CEO which involves making decisions that generate revenue and investment to sustain the company.

Website: The Host Co
Instagram: thehostcompany

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Transcription:

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Annie Sloan Teaser 00:00

We need to make it something that if your guest texts you at midnight on Friday night when you're out at the bar with your spouse, that you can text them back an exact link to that late checkout, and they're done. Making it, not only automated, but just making it very easy to understand and start.

Intro 00:17

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:44

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Annie Sloan. Annie, excited to have you on the show.

Annie Sloan 00:52

Thank you. I am thrilled to be here.

Gresham Harkless 00:54

Yes. Absolutely. The thrill is definitely all ours, and the excitement of all that Annie's doing, we're gonna dive into, of course. But before we do that, I want to read a little bit more about Annie so you can hear about some of those awesome things. And Annie is co-founder and CEO of The HostCo, the hospitality platform connecting local amenities to short term rentals from massage and chef to fresh flowers, bike rentals, and beyond. Prior to The Host Co, Annie was a creative director of both Facebook and Twitter. She has led in embedded projects for Google, Airbnb, Samsung, and is a graduate of USC film school and has produced and directed broadcast television and film internationally. Through her years in film, she spent a cumulative four years on projects in Asia, Africa, and Europe, developing both a global POV and a passion for supporting small businesses from tourism through technology.

And one of the things I was reading about when I was prepping for this is that she considers herself a lifelong traveler, which I think is pretty awesome to see the world in so many different perspectives. And I and she also was probably gonna talk about and introduce me to a new I don't wanna say word, but maybe phrase, which is shoppable Airbnbs. But I love everything she's doing because we always hear that the riches are in the niches and her getting the opportunity to drill down into a niche within a niche is really what I'm excited about for this show. So Annie, excited about all you're doing, excited even more to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO Community?

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Annie Sloan 02:15

I am. I definitely am.

Gresham Harkless 02:17

Let's get it started then. So to kick everything off, let's rewind the clock a little bit, hear a little bit more on how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

Annie Sloan 02:24

So you reading the bio, that is a mouthful. Right? And the first thing I'd say about that is there are so many things in your career that seem like disparate, really different things. Right? I went to film school. I worked in film and television for many years, and then I went, deeper into tech. And I was working at, for example, Twitter as a creative director, but I was directing, animated videos for them. I was writing videos. Right? So it actually became a pretty natural transition to go further into tech from television. I just kept getting book which is fantastic, getting booked to do interviews with people who might be leading the comms team at Twitter or Facebook, et cetera, or at Facebook making videos that were animated videos for senior citizens in Brazil about how to be less lonely through playing group games, things like that.

Gresham Harkless 03:18

Cool.

Annie Sloan 03:18

But you, at the time, it they all seem like disparate dots. And then when you look back, you're like, oh, it's really connect the dots here that has created the picture that it is today. I think especially for younger people, it doesn't have to be a linear line. Right? You're gonna take all the different things you've done in your past to make up the picture of exactly what you're gonna do. And for me, it was that. It was working in film and television and doing a lot of international work in very weird parts of the world, being very tired and hungry a lot of the time. Right? And then really moving deeply into tech. And then while I was in tech, my current co-founder at The Host Co, he and I used to work at HGTV, Home and Garden TV together.

And, we flipped houses on shows Color Splash, Design to Sell, Landscape Smart, Curb Appeal, Design on a Dime. You name it. I probably worked on one of those shows, right? So not only working in television, learned how to flip houses and learned a whole lot about real estate. My co-founder at the time, he left HGTV with a designer from a show, and they built a real estate and property management company. And their model was, we're gonna find homes in distress in vacation destinations, and we're gonna buy them for real cheap. This was also a while ago, so it was probably easier to buy real cheap real estate, right? And then we're gonna flip them really fast because we know how to do that.

And we also know all the contractors because they've all been on the shows. We're gonna flip them and then we're gonna sell them as ready to go short term rentals. So, hey. You wanna buy this house? It already has a Wi Fi on. It already has an Airbnb listing. Do you want us to rent it tomorrow? Here are the keys, which is a really smart model because, one, they also have the property management company, so they're still making 25% of the overall rentals as a property management company. The second part of that is if you buy a place for short term rental and you've never done it before, you think you're gonna rent it the next day, but you need to have property management. You need to have the right furniture. You need to have the right pictures. You need to have the right gated Wi Fi, and how do you do the Netflix with the guests and everything. They just took care of all of that, right?

So they could sell these houses at a premium, completely furnished, and you're off to the races the next day. You're renting out right away. And they built up this big property management company while they were also building up real estate company. And they were keeping some houses. They were selling some houses. And at the same time, I was going further and further into tech doing moving away from doing video to doing more product and how you talk about product, how you, get people to understand product and why it's a useful product, things like the Google privacy policy I worked on, how to communicate that and also, how to tell the stories around it.

At this time, you think, oh, these guys are doing two really separate things. But I also was a short term rental host and have been for many years, and I bought one of the properties from my co-founder. And, of course, at this time, you're not thinking anything of it. And then he kept saying to me, we have all of these guests at all of these houses, and we get the same questions every day. If you have thirty rentals, you get the same question thirty times a day. It's where do I get a massage? Can I get a late checkout? Hey. It's Friday night, and we're two bottles of wine in, and we're twenty miles from a store, and we ran out of firewood. What do we do? You can predict all the questions that guests are gonna ask. Can I get a Midstay clean? So he started saying this to me, and I said, yeah. I noticed that guests are asking for the same things every day, and we're unable to provide any of those things.

And there's this huge operational inefficiency that we're also getting the same question thirty times a day. So I said, why don't we build a beta of a product that will retail anything we wanna retail in this space and take care of all of the communication around this so we can just get this off your plate. And we built a beta. I put a team together because I've been really moving further into tech and put it in seven houses in the Joshua Tree area of California. And in the first month, forty percent of guests made a purchase.

Gresham Harkless 07:23

Wow.

Annie Sloan 07:24

It was crazy. And 93% of guests opened the store, which is a digital store that says right after you book, hey. If you'd like to add any amenities or services, head on over and check out our store. So like an eBay store, but totally on steroids for hospitality. And I then very preemptively, I was a creative director of Facebook. I was on a long term contract, quit my job, which was way too early. But I said, this is something. Like, this is really something here. I quit my job to start fundraising and building the actual product, and we did a VC we did a pre seed round in 2021, which you may also say, hey. Isn't this hospitality? And wasn't that during COVID? Yes. It was. So it but it actually ended up being a really good time to build before we released in 2022.

Gresham Harkless 08:14

That makes so much sense. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more. I know we touched on a little bit. Can you take us through a little bit more on how The Host Co works? Yeah. How you're helping out, you know, the people that are, visiting Airbnb's, but also the host as well too.

Annie Sloan 08:27

Yeah. So how it works is if, let's say, you're a guest and you go to book a weekend cabin, and it can be on Airbnb, it can be on Vrbo, it can be on price line price line booking, direct booking, et cetera. When you book, you're going to get a message from your host, and that's the first time the host can actually communicate with you in generally on any of these platforms. Hey. Thanks for booking confirmation. Thanks for booking. We're so excited to have you. Now what that host can add to that message, which is generally an automated message, is if you'd like any services while you're here, like massage, chef, late checkout, it's very variable about where you are. If it's a city, it might be a parking spot, luggage storage, any of those things. Check out our store.

And that store, it's very mobile focused. There's nothing to download. It's a link. And that store has all the things that likely the host has already identified that you're gonna ask them about. And starting with generally things like late checkout, pet fee, guest fee. We have a lot of people that add extra recycling pickup. They have, like, bachelor party destination because you're like, get it out of here. We have people who do a lot of on-site sales of things like phone chargers, snack baskets, and then we have people who only do wellness services, right, in that area. And what we do is we connect local vendors in the area that we've identified.

Gresham Harkless 09:45

Love that. Would you consider that to be, like, part of your secret sauce? It could be for yourself, the business, or combination of both. But isn't that ability to see that and understand that, see the forest for the trees and be able to, of course, execute on that and bring that to light?

Annie Sloan 09:57

I would say a lot of it is the execution, and here is why too is that so the majority of short term rental hosts in the US and globally is female. The fastest growing demographic is women over sixty.

Gresham Harkless 10:10

Wow.

Annie Sloan 10:10

In the short and that's globally. So it's a much more female focused. It's older focused. We need to make it something that if your guest texts you at midnight on Friday night when you're out of the bar with your spouse, that you can text them back an exact link to that late checkout, and they're done. Making it not only automated, but just making it very easy to understand and start is a big part of our I don't wanna see secret sauce sounds like so big, like, part of our thing. Yeah.

Gresham Harkless 10:38

It's your thing. Okay. We could do that. I love that. So I wanted to, switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or even a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Annie Sloan 10:51

So I just read this book called Four Thousand Weeks. And it's productivity for mortals. And it really changed. I've read every product. I'm like, the Pomodoro method, then this method, then that method. This book, the premise of it and what it's saying is that if you live eighty years, eighty years is four thousand weeks. Only four thousand weeks. And if you're halfway there, like, what? Two thousand what's crazy. Right? And it's just taking a different view of productivity and deep thinking. It's the productivity the former productivity writer for Times of London or New York Times, but it just gave me a different perspective on deep thinking and energy management. And it's made me more productive in a different way of, I'm gonna sit down and do this thing, but I might just be doing something because I enjoy it. I would say more than anything, and including with this book, it's your energy management and knowing your zones as well.

Thinking you can sit down and be productive for eight hours or twelve hour I can grind for twelve hours, but I know at this point that I'm gonna be effective at this time. And at this time, I am not gonna be very effective. It's gonna be really frustrating, and I'm not gonna be the in the best place for decision making. Right? So knowing your peaks and valleys and energy management being the most important part of all of it is the thing. And what are your, like, your zones of excellence during the day? I know the two hours of my day that I would be really good, and I try to not have meetings during those times so I can get deep thinking done and not be distracted. That's another a big part of it is not thinking that you're superhuman, but knowing you're superhuman two hours a day.

Gresham Harkless 12:34

Yeah. That ends up being one of the most powerful the most powerful knowledge is knowledge of self and and to be able to understand that. So what would you consider to be a little bit more of what I call a CEO nugget? This could be a word of wisdom or piece of advice. I like to say it might be something you would tell a potential host, or if you were to happen to a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

Annie Sloan 12:52

You're gonna get really burned down on your product, and you are constantly gonna be thinking of new ideas for new businesses and want to leave and do those new bit like, oh, I've got the best idea. And now I've been doing this for long enough that I understand the model and how to replicate it. So I'm like, oh, we gotta do this. We gotta do this. And that is the time when you should go and listen to your users. Like, I in this last week, I took over our demos.

Gresham Harkless 13:20

Mhmm.

Annie Sloan 13:20

Because I have become so far away from the way that people use our product and also hearing the value that they are getting from our product. And I've just been so far from that. I'm like, oh, the grind, man. I have all these new ideas and these seem so sparkly, these fun ideas. But even last week, I was like, this is amazing. We I had someone on a demo and I maybe wouldn't know this, who is using our product to offer or to encourage their guests to tip their cleaning people, which again, that could be contentious. I don't do it in my rentals. But he said my cleaner's really happier because the I have an eight bedroom house, which is usually like two families, right?

And nobody carries cash anymore. Before they check out, I send them an automated message that says, hey. Thank you so much for staying. If you'd like to tip the cleaner, here you go. The cleaner is way happier. This same guy said, oh, and we also leave. We have a donate in our store. We have a donation to a local foster center. We're on an island in Texas. We have a donation button too. I was like, I'd never even thought of that using the host code for either of those things. That's that's great that you're doing that.

Gresham Harkless 14:30

Yeah. That's really powerful. So now I wanna ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And our goal is to have different unquote CEOs on the show. So, Annie, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Annie Sloan 14:41

This is another thing that I was told a long time ago. Bottom line with being a CEO is don't run out of money. I wish that it was more than that, their strategy, but the money is the energy. And if you're getting that from the revenue, if you are making the decisions that are spurring the revenue, if you're making the decisions that are spurring the investment, that if you have no other job, that is your job, is keeping the company alive, and the thing that keeps it alive is money. If the, again, if the money is just coming from from sales, whatever it is, and I keep coming back to that whenever I'm like, oh, I got so many things in New York. I'm like, the most important thing is don't run out of money.

Gresham Harkless 15:25

Annie, truly appreciate that definition. Of course, I appreciate your time even more. So what I want to do now is pass you the mic, so to speak, to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best people can get a hold of you, find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

Annie Sloan 15:39

Yeah. So you can always find us at www.thehost.co. So join us, and you can also sign up. You can get started, but it's always best to join a demo for half an hour, and you'll just know how to use it. Yeah. And you'll also once you join a demo, you get a first month free of pro. Our product is actually free to use forever, which is a big part of what we do as well. We take a 7% commission on your sales, but then we have subscription tiers from that. So Okay, www.thehost.co and Instagram at thehostcompany. Anyone across the globe can sign up right now.

Gresham Harkless 16:13

We'll have the links and information in the show notes so that everybody can follow-up with you, sign up, do all the things. But truly appreciate you taking some time out to to be on the show. Truly appreciate you, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 16:23

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by CBNation and Blue16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co. I AM CEO is not just a phrase. It's a community. Want to level up your business even more? Read blogs, listen to podcasts, and watch videos at CBNation.co. Also, check out our I AM CEO Facebook group. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless, Jr. Thank you for listening.

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