E43: The Wonders & Wilds of Building a Stand-Out Hospitality Brand w/ Eric Moeller

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Future Hospitality podcast. I'm your host, Jeremy Wells, joined today by co host Dustin Myers. We are partners at Longitude, a hospitality branding and design group at Future Hospitality. Our goal is to interview the brightest minds in the industry, gathering insights, ideas and inspiration to share with you. If you enjoy the podcast, please be sure to leave us a review. Thank you for your support. Today we're joined by Eric Mohler, founder of Free Wild, to talk about his journey from a career in construction to navigating the Wild west of short term rentals and building a standout hospitality brand. During our discussion, Eric shares how Free Wild was born, why branding is so important, and what's next for his company. Well, let's go ahead and dive in. Eric, thank you so much for joining us today. We're excited to have, uh, a conversation with you.

Speaker B: Yeah, of course. Thanks for having, uh, me on, guys. I appreciate it.

Speaker A: So, uh, for those of you that may not know Eric, he's with Free Wild, which is kind of specializing in a lot of different areas related to short term rentals, Airbnbs and hospitality. They're doing really cool stuff and I've been following Eric's journey a little bit on LinkedIn for several months, probably over well over a year now, and just loved following his content and what he's doing and just thought he'd be a great guest for us today. So Eric, uh, just, you know, as a fan, just excited to hear kind of the story of your journey and where you come from and where you're going.

Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate that, man. And uh, yeah, it's been awesome watching your journey as well. And I'm excited for this conversation because, you know, I know that you guys are the branding guys in the space and you're doing some awesome things with your hotel. And, you know, I'm excited to kind of walk through like how we came up with the concept of Free Wild and, and uh, branding and design and feel all of that is so important to what we do. So, uh, yeah, I'm excited to dive into that with you.

Speaker A: Cool, well, let's go ahead and just kind of dive in like we do with a lot of guests. Just kind of the early days of your journey and you can start as far back as you want. What's your journey been like and kind of what got you into this space?

Speaker B: You know, it's interesting. I grew up in Jersey, I live in San Diego now, and I moved out here about 10 years ago specifically to build an Airbnb business. So my Background is in construction and real estate investing and developing. And you know, I did the whole house flipping thing and apartment buildings for a handful of years and just got so burnt out with that business model. And I was really looking to get into something that was like a bit more luxury, luxury real estate, something that I can run remotely and have properties in different areas. Right. And uh, again, this is about 10 years ago when Airbnb was just becoming a, you know, what it is today, a new business, um, model essentially. Um, so yeah, I moved out of San Diego. I moved into, uh, incubator house called the Epic Entrepreneur House with five other startup entrepreneurs. And uh, I just went ham at leasing up as many awesome San, uh, Diego apartments and houses I can find and uh, just dove straight into the Airbnb model. And uh, at that time there was really no one kind of teaching or talking about Airbnb at a high level. And uh, so I was figuring it out as I was go. As I went. And yeah, a lot of trial and errors, but it was, ah, it was pretty nuts. We, we grew that, that business really, really quick in a couple of years here in San Diego. We got, you know, north of 125 properties. Um, and uh, that was through the arbitrage model, which then moved me into the, the management model, which eventually moved me into the Free Wild model. So I kind of come from a handful of different industries, from construction, real estate investing, and then looking at Airbnb as a real, uh, estate model that I can scale through technology. I never really went into it for the hospitality side. Uh, I was really just for the real estate, uh, opportunity and the business opportunity. But through that process, that's how I fell in love with hospitality and what we're creating now with Free Wild.

Speaker C: And that's really cool. Yeah. And I mean, with your construction background, really hospitality is a lot just like place making and having a creative vision for a property or a future property and then bringing that to life in a way that's going to make people remember, uh, it make memories. And, and so there's, it's amazing how so many people end up kind of in the hospitality industry that just come from, from different angles and it's really cool to see how that works.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, it was interesting. You know, I've always been into design and, and space and you know, the construction I was in was never really anything. Uh, you know, it was very cookie cutter type of construction, uh, you know, Sheetrock and you know, laying concrete, putting roofs on houses, and then that kind of me into like, hey, let me just go buy a house and flip it. And that turned into a whole flipping business. And it was beautiful. It was great. It was amazing. Um, lots of learning lessons through that process. But after a while, I was just getting so bored with, uh, that flipping part of the business that I had, where it was like, you know, you just put the cheap. You just put cheap materials in there. It's got to look clean, it's got to look, you know, nice. But you're not really cultivating an experience for anybody other than just having a beautiful, clean space. Right. And, uh, after doing, you know, a couple of hundred of those, I. I just got so burnt out with that experience, and I'm like, hey, I want to start creating things that I feel good going to. And, uh, you know, in the early days of the Airbnb business, we were having fun with creating, like, themed Airbnbs. Um, and we were. But I was kind of falling back into that trap again of just, like, buying cheap, you know, or cost effective, if you will, uh, you know, furniture off of Amazon and Wayfair and all of that, to just kind of make the properties look clean enough and nice enough to rent out on Airbnb. Um, so even that, like, that kind of moved me into, like, all right, well, if I can create a space that I truly want to see, that I think the market, you know, that other people really want to experience as well, what would I create? And that. That question kind of led me to what we're doing now with Free Wild. You know, we're going. We're spending a lot of time on, uh, cultivating the experience through the property, the location. But then every single piece of, you know, furnishings that we bring in from. From the couch to, you know, utensils to the colors of the walls to lighting, temperature, like, we're going really deep into the experience of that. And I've never had so much fun, uh, in business doing that. And then our guests are just absolutely loving it. So, yeah, we're having fun with that process. And, um, yeah, I'm excited to see what, you know, what. What the next few years are going to open up for us when it comes to the design side.

Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, that's where it gets really interesting. I'm curious as. So you kind of are getting into airbnb. It's still fairly new. Not a lot of manuals or guidance from other people. Aside from, like, the design and experience side, what did you Lear, learn kind of from the financial and booking and numbers side in those early Days.

Speaker B: Oh, man, the early days were just like, it was just a mess. You know, I didn't really know how to run a business back then. And, you know, luckily I was living in that, that incubator house where, you know, we were essentially living in a mastermind where we were sharing our best practices and, and lessons of, of these startups. So I was learning as I was going. But I would say the biggest thing that I took away from, like, early scale days was like, really learning how to build systems in my business because, like, for a long time I was the one who was really focused on wearing all the different hats. And it was just as we were scaling, every single property I took on was just like, it was exciting how fast we were growing, but it just meant more work for me at the end of the day. So it didn't really matter how much money I was making because I wasn't happy, I wasn't excited about it. Um, you know, I was just like, it's kind of crazy to think of, like, you know, I moved across the country to build this dream business, and I had the dream business, but I didn't want the dream business because it was stressing me the hell out. Uh, and I didn't care how much money we were making because it was like every single time a new owner would sign the lease or allow us to sign a lease, it just meant more stress and work until I really understood how to build real systems in my business to get me out of it. And then once I did that, I started really focusing on how, how do I hire the best people possible within the business. Um, so, but this is over years, right? Like, this is a long process of school, of hard knocks, of learning how to do this. But yeah, and then the early days were crazy because, like, you know, we were signing property. No one was really doing the arbitrage model. It was kind of new. Um, so we were negotiating with these owners, taking over, you know, their vacancies. And, um, you know, we were making an outrageous amount of money on these properties. Like 2 to 3x our, our rent rental amount or our, yeah, 2 to 3x our rental amount. So every property we brought in, we're making thousands of dollars of profit per month. Um, you know, that quickly changed once the market really started getting saturated and regulations and other, other competition came in. But the early days were, it was like the, it was pretty nice to, to experience all that.

Speaker A: Eric and the, the arbitrage model, for those that are listening that might not be familiar with that, uh, that's where you basically, you know, take over an apartment that's not leased and you rent it from them for a, you know, a negotiated fee. And then you, you basically, uh, run that as Airbnb. Correct. That's kind of the model in a nutshell.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, if you think of like corporate leasing, right. You know, a corporate leasing company will go into a big apartment complex and just lease out, you know, say a hundred, 100 apartments, and they become the corporate, um, leasey. Right. Uh, that's on, on the, uh, ACR in the building, and then they go ahead, stage it and release it to other people. We were taking that same concept and doing it in the early, uh, doing it in Airbnb in the early days. Now it's still a business model. You still see a lot of companies that are doing it more on a micro level versus a large scale level because it, it just becomes. We could talk about the challenges that come along with that model. But, yeah, essentially, because I was a real estate investor, I had a, uh, relationship. I had a big network of real estate investors in San Diego. So I would go to real estate investors and I would negotiate like, hey, any of your buildings or houses that are in these areas of San Diego, uh, once they go vacant, I would love to lease it from you, uh, at market rate for one to two years. And I would love your approval for us to re rent it back out on Airbnb. We'll stage it, we'll maintain it, and then any single time you have a vacancy that comes up, if it fits these metrics, we'll lease it out from you. Um, so it wasn't the easiest negotiation because a lot of people didn't really understand, like, hey, I don't really want you to release things out and have strangers stay in our home. So we had to kind of overcome that quite a bit. Um, and, uh, but once, once we did start aligning, we had a track record and we started introducing it, we were able to lease up quite a bit of properties throughout San Diego. So again, it's still a good model. People still do it. But, um, you know, I think it's a, it's a very, uh, capital heavy model. Uh, there's no asset other than your cash flow and the lease. Um, so if anything happens, like Covid that came, I just completely shook that industry up or that part of the industry up. Um, so, yeah, we focused on that. And then I started recognizing, like, hey, this is, it's, it's nice. We're making a lot of money. But we're on the hook for all these leases all throughout the city. And by that time, we were, like, moving into different states and, you know, some down in Mexico, out in Colorado, and just kind of all over the place. Um, and then that's when I started recognizing, like, hey, we can do the same service, what we're doing here, but instead of leasing it, we'll manage. Manage it for the owners. So that's when we started making the shift from the lease model, the arbitrage model, to the property management model.

Speaker A: I admire you from the fact, moving across country, starting a new business, onboarding a ton of clients. It's like the Wild west of Airbnb. And I would imagine it would have been an exciting yet stressful time. But I think it's really cool that you. It takes a special person to do something like that and take that risk. So, uh, and obviously, I think it's, uh, you know, been paying off, but you've already kind of alluded to it. But, like, what was that? So what were like, some of those kind of. Whether it was one moment, like an aha moment, or like several moments over a period of time, that kind of morphed from where you were in that arbitrage kind of in that space to more of like the free wild and kind of shifting into that space. What was that journey like there?

Speaker B: Yeah, so there's a. You know, there's obviously over the course of, uh, I said ten years. I think it's closer to eight to nine years. Um, but over that time period, there's a lot of discovery. Right? Discovery in myself as a leader and entrepreneur, uh, discovery in the business model. What works, what doesn't work, what I actually want to do. Um, when we moved from the arbitrage model, it was simply because, um, that I started seeing the writing on the wall of if anything happens to the market, um, financially or again, this is right before COVID I just knew, like, hey, we are online for all of these leases, and we're financially obligated to pay these leases no matter what happens to the market. And then at that time, you had these big companies that were raising all this VC money and doing this arbitrage model at the highest level possible, where they're renting out full buildings and, you know, just taking over cities. And, you know, I just started recognizing, like, hey, this is a very scary model. There's no asset here. It's only a cash flow play. And if we're focused only on a cash flow play, won't we lower our risk to this. And that's when we started moving our leases to property management contracts, and we started acting as a service to the real estate investors, right? And we weren't making as much money on the leases or, uh, on the properties, but we didn't have that, that financial obl. So we could just focus on the service of creating these incredible Airbnb experiences and hospitality experiences for our guests. Um, and then the discovery through that was now I'm in a service business, right? So not only do I have customer service that I have to focus on with the guests staying there, but now I also have these owner relationships that they have expectations on what they need to generate in the properties and how they want to run it. So that was a whole other aha. For me, of like, oh, wow. I didn't realize that this business came with this, um, this set of challenges. And after going through that for a couple years, I recognized, like, I don't want to be in the service business in the property management side. I want to own the real estate. I want to. At that time, it's like when you see, like, hey, if we upgrade some of the furniture in this property or do some painting, do some maintenance, we can increase the revenue. And when you're a property manage, you don't have the say, uh, to do that, right. You have to rely on your partners, the owners to make, uh, that decision. And after, you know, experiencing this a handful of times, I recognize, like, hey, the best way for me to control this entire experience for the guest is to own the property. Um, so I took, you know, we did this in phases, and we did it over a course of a year and a half. But, uh, you know, I took my time to develop out the philosophy, the vision, the brand, uh, direction, uh, Free Wild. And like, hey, if, if there was no limitations, if I could do anything, if anything was possible, what would I create here? Um, and then we just slowly just started building the brand and the vision. And then through there, I started attracting in team members and investors that, that bought into the vision of Free Wild. And we took our time and we found the ideal property, uh, in Ottawa, California, to, to launch this model. And, you know, we took a lot of risk on doing this, but it's been, it's been paying, paying off incredibly. Um, and that's completely changed my life. And for the first time, uh, of all the models and all the businesses I've been involved in over the last few years, Free Wild is the thing that I'm most excited about. And I see this as a generational company. It's something that, you know, I, I plan on building Free Wild locations for the rest of my life. Um, and, uh, you know, it's not something just to make money. We obviously are focused on profit and focused on making a lot of money and generational wealth through this play. Um, but if it takes us, whatever the timeline it takes us, that's fine with us, because we're having fun through this process of controlling the entire asset and experience.

Speaker C: That's amazing. Yeah. It's one thing to have good ideas that you think are good, that you hope somebody else will implement, and then it's another to have that autonomy to just do what you think is right and see if it works. And it's certainly a lot more fun, uh, on this. On the second version.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, and then especially if you're creating something for yourself that you. That you're. That you enjoy. Right. And it's like. That's what I was creating was like there was a big, uh. At the time, there was a, A hole in the industry of Design Forward properties that had a brand that people can connect to that had, uh, certain missions and values that were behind it. But that also merged with this Airbnb travel trend of, like, I'm not. I'm staying at Airbnb for. For a reason. Right. A different experience than a hotel. Um, so how do we merge this, like, hospitality industry of, like, Design Forward brand forward with the Airbnb independent travel industry? And, you know, it came out to, uh. And we. We risked it. It risked a lot. I didn't know if our design choices were in our. The investment that we made into the. The property was going to pay off, but people have been absolutely loving it. And, uh, you know, now we're. We're on the process of expanding, developing more cabins up there and then acquiring our. Our next location, which is pretty exciting.

Speaker C: Yeah. Very cool. So with the, The Free Wild model, you own all of your properties, or do you also still provide a service to other property owners to kind of come into the fold?

Speaker B: Yeah. So we've decided as of now, not to take, uh, on any property, uh, management clients, uh, in the future. Part of our business model is, I do see in us acting as a flag to real estate investors, uh, and developers, um, simply to just help us expand the model a bit more. Plus, through this process, we're building incredible, an incredible team, incredible culture and standards, and, like, we're figuring out, uh, in our own way, how to really just create something that just outperforms the market. Right. So, you know, in the future, and we have certain opportunities, different developments and hotel opportunities that we're looking at. But my dream, my goal and the main business model is to acquire all of our properties. We own the property, we design it, we build it ourselves, develop it ourself, and then we run it under the Free While brand.

Speaker C: Yeah, certainly makes sense to work out the kinks and kind of hone the exact product. And then if the time comes to open that up for other people to benefit from, you've got everything in place. So that's, that's really cool.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun right now.

Speaker C: What do you think it is about Free Wild that makes it compete so well in the markets you're in? What's your secret sauce?

Speaker B: Uh, I think brand is everything, as you guys, I'm sure would agree, is like, I think especially nowadays with Airbnb just being saturated with so many different properties and hosts and, you know, as a guest, you never know what you're gonna get. Uh, regardless if it has all 5 star reviews and whatever else, beautiful photos, you have no idea what you're going to get until you check in. And you don't know from the product side, uh, and from the hospitality side what you're gonna get. So I put a, you know, I put a lot of. But I moved all my chips in on brand. And we've been seeing this over the last few years. It's just like more and more branded, uh, hospitality stays are popping up in the air, quote Airbnb industry. And I think the idea of Free Wild of you, you're going to get a better experience than, uh, in person. Like, your experience in person is going to be better than anything that we can communicate across our website, social media, Airbnb, everything else. Right. So the brand is, I think, the biggest thing two is the thing I hate the most. So for New Year's Eve, we just rented this beautiful Airbnb in Joshua Tree. Every year I go away with a bunch of friends and we do, uh, uh, goal setting, you know, end of the year reflection and then goal setting on New Year's Eve. And we're like, you know, this year let's get the most beautiful house in Joshua Tree. Let's stargaze, let's do all the things and let's, uh, let's plan out the new year. And we paid a lot of money for this beautiful, beautifully designed home in Joshua Tree. And when we got there and checked in immediately. Like, the expectation, especially for me, just completely dropped because you can see that they did not invest at all into the guest experience. Right. They had the cheapest materials, the cheapest furnishings. There was no art on the walls. The codes aren't working. When I'm reaching out to the hospital, to the company, they're not communicating back with me. They're getting angry that I'm asking for, uh, updated code because it's not working. Like, things like that. That's almost like the standard in Airbnb and short term rentals nowadays. And I hate that. Like, I, that's the thing I want to just like solve at the highest level in our industry is like, how do you just over deliver for guests?

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So we, we went heavy into not just the brand of the company, but how do we bring that brand into the properties. And very, very intentional with the design, very intentional with the products that we're putting in the property. We have a merge of like modern materials with reclaimed materials. I'm a big believer. It's like there's something different about like putting your hands on a piece of furniture that was handmade versus a piece of furniture that was mass produced in a factory. Right. Like, there's a different energy, different experience with it. And that's the stuff that we bring to the property. Um, but you know, you can have the most beautiful property in the world. If your hospitality sucks, it's going to ruin the experience. Right? Um, so one of our core values, our number one core values, unreasonable hospitality. Um, so we went above and beyond on like, how do we re. Rewrite the scri script on, um, bringing world class hospitality to Airbnb experiences, to the short term rental. Short term rental space. So, and that's, that's still the number one thing that we're constantly refining is like, how do we just continue to make this better, this experience better, how do we improve our hospitality and just like just wow every single person that comes through the property? Um, and then lastly is how we market and price our properties. So we kind of had this like multiple prong approach to brand, guest experience, hospitality marketing and product fit. Excuse me, price fit within the, within the industry. And it's all just coming together. Um, you know, it's just like this year, last year was just absolutely incredible on, um, the experience that we had. And now, you know, we're starting to pick up and the industry is loving it, the guests are loving it, and our team's enjoying the process as well.

Speaker A: Eric, I love that you mentioned you Said branding is important, and you've kind of put everything into branding as far as the focus of Free Wild and the growth there. And the thing that I like about it is a lot of people, and these are conversations we have a lot, uh, through Longitude as well with our clients is, you know, a lot of people hear branding or brand, and they think of logos and colors and fonts and just like, you know, some of those elements. But the way that you describe brand and the way that I heard it at least was, you know, brand is really all encompassing. It's everything that has to do with your experience, your reputation, your product, and really aligning, um, everything from how you present yourself online to your social media, to the design of your space to your operation, your guest experience, like, it's. It's everything and all of it when it comes to how you operate a hospitality business. And I think that just hearing you say that, I think, uh, you know, really excites me and I think others need to hear this too. And it's like shouting it from the rooftop sometimes. But is that accurate as far as, like, how you see brand and how you define brand?

Speaker B: Yeah, 100. I mean, that took me. That took me a little while to really understand that. I, I had spent some time to. To really study from branding experts, like, what is brand? And yeah, you know, for a while I thought it was the, uh, the logo and the website, you know, stuff like that. But, you know, as I started going through the Free Wild experience that I'm having right now, I'm like, what do I want other people to experience? How do I want them to remember us? Like, you know, as a hospitality provider? Like, we, we are looking at the guest experience from the moment they discover who Free Wild is to when they decide to book to the. Them getting ready for the trip to jumping in the car and driving to the Free Wilds. Their first experience. They're walking in their first night, their last night, their checkout, you know, their drive home, their thought, you know, three months down the road of like, wanting to go to the mountains again. We want them to experience Free Wild all the time, right? We want them to, like, what is that memory that they have? What is that experience of ex, uh, of connecting with Free Wild? The logo. You know, we spent a lot of time building our logo and our fonts and our colors and, you know, which is a fun, fun process to go through. Um, you know, but, you know, like, for example, my, uh, my wife has a, uh, Tesla. And, um, talking about brand experience, it's like, you know, when every single time I get in that car, especially now, uh, it's like I'm getting in, I'm sitting into the future, I'm sitting in a spaceship, right? And it's like the car literally freaking drives itself right now with, with a push of one button, which is freaking nuts. Um, but it's not just the experience in the car, it's the experience with the company of Tesla, right? We ran over Nail and uh, when she was up in LA and we had to get the tire fixed. And usually my experience of driving cars in the past is if I ran over Nail, either call AAA or I pulled it into a tire shop somewhere. And you know, Sam was by herself in LA and did not want to do that. Uh, so she just pressed the button on her phone in Tesla and an hour later someone pulled up with a truck, took care of it, you know, set her in a, you know, temperature controlled, um, truck. As you as they were working on the car and the experience as a whole was just like world class. It's something that the industry, car industry just does not like. Everybody else in the industry has to keep up to what Tesla is doing right for their brand. And that's to me, the entire experience of a brand is not just the logo and the look of it, but the experience and the feel, the feeling I have when I interact with that company or that product. And you know, I see some companies doing that a lot more now. Um, but I see, you know, at the time when I launched Free Wild, I saw some companies moving into that space, uh, in the short term rental space, but 99% of them were just focused on heads and beds. Cheap, you know, cookie cutter designs, didn't really matter. Automating everything through technology, all hospitality is just like inconvenience to them. And we're like, hey, you know, the hotel industry has been here forever and, and the companies that outlast every single dip in the market and competition and challenge, like, they really focus on these, these uh, key pillars of like brand and guest experience and world class hospitality. And you know, I felt like the short term, short term rental industry needed that, they needed that injection. So that's what we focused on with our small little boutique brand that we have. Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, full circling back around. It's like, what's the full experience from the moment they find us to three months after they stayed at a property and they're thinking of going on another vacation. How do we, how do we spark a memory with them? And a positive experience with our company. So, to me, all of that is brand, um, yeah, all of that is brand new.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Well, you guys are definitely doing the work and knocking it out of the park, and I'm sure that it's definitely keeping you and your team busy. But I know that, uh, before our, uh, interview, we had connected prior to this, and you had mentioned that you'd been busy with some other, um, endeavors as well. Um, and you kind of mentioned this. I think, uh, as far as one of the secret sauce to Free Wild is, um, being really strategic and thoughtful with the market and pricing of your properties and basically like, revenue management, it sounds like, and really getting into dialing that in for your properties. And, uh, from what I understand, you're working on, um, another type of business that specializes in revenue management.

Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, the real estate industry moves really, really slow. Uh, as you guys know, it's like, it's a. Yeah, it's just a slow industry. And you got to be patient through that process. And, you know, I'm very ambitious. I want to grow Free Wild, and we want to have a lot of locations and a lot of keys, but because we want to control it and we want to buy it, that just takes some time to do. And if we're doing developments, that takes time as well. So the. I ran into this dilemma as a founder of, like, how do you. How do you grow this incredible business that you're so excited about that's working that people love, uh, and hire the people that you want to hire to help build this vision and excitement, uh, in an industry that moves super slow in the beginning. Right. Uh, and there's a couple of different routes you can do. You can be extremely patient. You, uh, can raise a bunch of money from investors, or you can figure out how to leverage what you guys do really well as a service for others. And so we mapped out all the different things, like, what are we the absolute best at in the world, um, when it comes to what we do in Free Wild? And we play with the ideas of, like, do we go into full service management under Free Wild, where we take on other people's properties and do what we did for ourselves but for them? Uh, or are there different aspects that we love that we can outperform anybody else in the world? Um, so through all of that, that took us about six months to like, really get clear on where we wanted to bring the most value to the industry. So we launched, um, in the beginning of last year, we launched the service side of Free Wild called Free Wild Foundry. And this is our part um, of the business where we service other operators. Um, so the one thing that we're focused on uh, is our revenue management. So as we were going through scaling Free Wild, we recognized that we developed out a revenue management strategy for our property that was just like, along with everything else that we're doing, helped our properties outperform the market by 100x. Like it was just, it was incredible what we were generating on these properties. And when we looked deeper into the revenue management industry, we recognized there was a huge opportunity there because there's not a lot of, there's a lot of solo warriors that are kind of doing revenue management stuff. But outside of technology there's no experts that are focused on how to maximize revenue, um, on portfolios. So yeah, we rolled this out in the beginning of the year and it's uh, caught on like wildfire. It's been absolutely incredible. Um, so we focus on helping short term rental operators, either property managers, real estate investors or arbitrage, uh, some boutique hotels as well, uh, where we come in and we take over all of their revenue management. Typically we work with people that are doing at least a million dollars of top line revenue. Um, where my team comes in, it's a boutique uh, service and we just completely transform uh, their revenue management. We take that over as a service. So as of right now, that's the number one thing, along with our cabins, that's uh, the number one thing that we're focused on and it's been absolutely incredible. Um, not just for us, but for the clients that we're working with as well.

Speaker C: Yeah, I love what you said about like what are we the best in the world at? And then figuring out how you could extend that to other people that might need it. And I agree. I think the revenue management offering for a lot of like one offs or investors with a few properties, like smaller hotels, that is definitely an underserved market. And so it's cool that you're able to bring the expertise you developed and kind of extend it out to help other people.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And the results that we're getting are even more fun. You know, like we're, we're seeing uh, our clients raise their revenue just by moving over to us. They're raising their revenue anywhere between 15 and 30%. Um, that's how much money they're leaving on the table without a real strategy. So once our team gets in there and we're seeing that it's like, it's freaking awesome to see these companies, our clients, just scale in that way and then it's helping us fund our dream of building Free Wild.

Speaker C: Absolutely. Yeah. Maybe just cast a vision for us kind of the next two to five years. Like what are you hoping to accomplish and in what areas are you looking to grow?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean usually when I do a uh, goal setting experience, I do it every year, as I mentioned, I usually map out like two to five years. And then after the last couple of years of like going through Covid and everything else that we as a society or as a world has gone through, I recognize that like there's so much, so many different things that can change in that period. So you know, I know where the North Star is. Like I uh, know where I'm steering the ship for my team. But what it ends up being, I think will be determined by the market and determined by the team members that I bring in. Um, I never saw revenue management part of my business plan. That was never part of the business plan. But we started recognizing like, hey, we can do this service better than anybody else and we have a world class team that specializes in this. We might as well start helping some m people. And then through that kind of turned into this part of the business that we just absolutely love. And just having so much we were celebrating today some, some clients that have um, they, they've had the, the best low season they've ever had in their business. Uh, because the revenue management strategies and that stuff's fun, that's fun for us. So you know where we're going to be in two to five years. Time will tell. Um, but you know, overall the vision for Free Wild is, you know, we want to be a uh, uh, world recognized hospitality brand that focuses on these boutique cabin villages that are within a two hour drive of uh, metro areas. Right. And we're focused in the most beautiful nature, uh, locations and our whole ethos of the uh, at the end of the day is helping more of our travelers get into what we call wild mode, where when you come to our cabins we encourage you to disconnect from your cell phones and your devices and we have a fun way of how we do that and help them disconnect, uh, and then be present in the moment, be present in the cabins and in nature and, and with the people that you're traveling with. And that's the thing that lights us up and we want to, we want to do that more and more at the highest level. You know, so we're moving fast. Best we're trying to buy. We're looking for our next couple of locations. Uh, we're working on, for our current location, we're working on building, uh, getting approvals to build out 10 additional cabins and, uh, some other features of the property. Um, so, yeah, two to five years, we'll see, uh, exactly where we're going to be. But the goal is to, is to have our Free Wild locations throughout the country, eventually around the world, and then helping more and more people disconnect from technology.

Speaker A: That's awesome. It's great to, uh, hear about what's exciting you about the future of the industry and about Free Wild. And it sounds like you guys have a lot of awesome, A great journey ahead of you guys. So I'll be definitely following along, Eric, and, uh, appreciate you being on our podcast. I'd love to, if you could just tell our listeners a great way to get in contact with you or find out more about Free Wild.

Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate that. I appreciate you guys opening this up for me. Talk, uh, about what we're working on here. Uh, the best way is, uh, check us out@freewild.com. uh, that's F R E-E-W-Y-L-D.com. uh, LinkedIn is the best place to get in touch with me directly. Uh, so that's, uh, Eric D. Mueller on, uh, LinkedIn. Yeah. And you can reach out to me either through Free wild or on LinkedIn.

Speaker A: Awesome, Eric. Thank you so much for joining us and, uh, excited to see what the future holds for you guys.

Speaker B: Appreciate it. Thank you, guys.

Speaker C: Thank you.

Speaker A: I hope you enjoyed today's episode of the Future Hospitality podcast. If you enjoyed today's topic and episode, please leave us a review. If you'd like to learn more about Longitude, you can visit longitudebranding.com to see our portfolio of design work, read our Insights blog and learn more about our team. You can also find us on Instagram and Facebook by searching for Longitude branding.