Designing Unique Cabin Experiences: How Eric Moeller Blends Boutique Hospitality with Cabin Living

Alex Husner  0:17  
Welcome to Alex & Annie: The Real Women of Vacation Rentals. I'm Alex,

Annie Holcombe  0:21  
And I'm Annie,

Alex Husner  0:22  
and we are joined today with Eric Moeller, who is the founder and CEO of Freewyld. And we are so excited to see you, Eric. Thank you for joining us. 

Eric Moeller  0:30  
Yeah, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. 

Annie Holcombe  0:33  
Well, we're really excited to learn more about you, and I told you, just off camera, I was reading about your your your bio, and just reading where you come from, and I was surprised that you've been in the business so long, because we haven't run into you at a conference or really see much of you. So I would love to hear more about your journey and how you got through into short term rentals, and then learn about free Rob, 

Eric Moeller  0:54  
yeah. So I yeah, I've been in the short term rental space for quite some time. I got into real estate investment. I'm originally from New Jersey. I got into real estate investing right after high school, like fixing and flipping houses. And back then I got into vacation rentals, like right around 2006 seven and eight down in the Jersey Shore markets. And that was like, way before Airbnb was around, we were renting stuff on VRBO and on Craigslist and things like that. So I've been in the space for quite some time as an investor, but when I moved to San Diego about nine years ago, that's when I discovered Airbnb as a as a business model. So kind of played with multiple different models, from scaling a rental arbitrage company back back in the early days, which moved into a luxury property management service for properties here in Southern California, some in Mexico, Colorado, things like that. That that then turned into a educational company. So we were helping short term rental hosts from all around the world scale hospitality brands, and that was a lot of fun. My partner and I Jasper scaled that over the last five years or so, but through that process, that as we were helping other short term rental hosts grow their brands, I was building free, wild in in the in the background, and this has really kind of turned into a passion project for me, and now we're focused on growing this throughout the country. So we're focused on buying these, like really cool cabin communities and nature inspired locations. We fully renovate them. We have a really cool, unique guest experience that that we build out in these brands or in the cabins. And now we're focused on growing this. So we have our first location in Ottawa, California, and now we're opening up our second location in Texas, which we're pretty excited about, 

Alex Husner  3:04  
wow, really interesting, and definitely a varied group of projects that you've got there. But it also, you know, just speaks to something that Annie and I talk about all the time, of like, all these projects, like, they seem kind of like separate, but they're really very much intertwined, right, as far as your experience and and the people that you bring into them, but so with free wild so these are area like you said, like cabins, you go and you redo them. But like, are, is this, like, campsites that you're buying? Or what is, what does that actually mean? 

Eric Moeller  3:36  
Yeah, so we focus on, we focus on buying, like old Vacation Rental Communities. So markets, yeah, the markets that we look at are markets that are nature, nature inspired, locations that are two to three hour drives from metro areas, right? So, you know, here in SoCal, there's a handful of different mountain towns and desert towns that that we're moving into. And you know, like the property that we're looking at in Texas is about an hour outside of Austin in the hill country. So we look for these really beautiful secondary towns that already have a vacation rental or short term rental market, part of it. And then we seek out and buy these old cabin communities. So we buy old vacation rental communities that have a handful of existing cabins. We go in there, fully renovate them, bring them up to our brand standards. And then we also build our what we call free wild cabins on these on the land as well. So all of the properties that we're working on, not only are we renovating, but we're also building new, purpose built cabins on there. And the the merge like the like, we're kind of merging like the boutique hotel world, because we're buying properties that have boutique hotel or hotel licensing all of that. But the way that we design these properties. The market the properties is each individual cabin is a different design and theme, and they're marketed and rented as individual cabins to short term rental travelers.

Annie Holcombe  5:11  
Very cool. We were talking to somebody recently. There's a gentleman, and I'm blanking on his name, and I'm embarrassed. His name is Carter, something. He's from HGTV, and he bought an old like, I guess it used to be like a camp up in it might be up in Canada or, like, up in New England area somewhere, but it was like a bunch of cabins all around a lake, and he's got into it, and he's like, renovating it, and got into it thinking, like, this is not going to be a problem. Then all of a sudden, like, there's a problem when you buy some of these old cabins because they weren't built on, you know, firm ground. They don't have good foundation. So I'm curious when you go in to do these things. I mean, do you have a specific budget for each group? Or do you go in and think, like, Okay, we know we're going to have to rebuild some or just renovate a few. Like, what does that look like? Because I feel like that's just a almost an unknown until you really, really dig into it. 

Eric Moeller  6:03  
Yeah, the renovation side is insane. My background comes from, again, I was a real estate investor, and I was in the construction field for for a while. So like, my background is in renovating old properties and flipping them or renting them out. So I have a lot of experience with that game, but it is. It could be a nightmare if you don't buy the right property, or if you buy the wrong property, it could be a nightmare. But, yeah, I mean, it's look at the end of the day, like real estate investing and like buying these properties, it all comes down to numbers. And for us, you know, building the brand of free wild, it was a big gamble, because we were going for to bring an asset to this marketplace that there was really no other competitors in the space that that had these elevated designed cabins, design forward cabins, and so it was a big gamble for us on if the market was going to really accept what we were bringing to the marketplace. But right away we started recognizing, like our guests were willing to pay extra money, pay more money for elevated experience, right? So yeah. I mean, to answer your question, you know it's going into renovations are always a challenge. You don't necessarily know. You go in there with some type of budget, but the moment you open up a wall, especially on these old cabins, you know, the property that we have in Ottawa, it's an old mountain town. Most of these cabins were built without permits, and, like all these things, and now we're still running into those issues. But as part of our model, we kind of expect that we put contingencies in place, but we really focused on creating something that was truly unique for the marketplace and the guests are, they're absolutely loving it, and they're willing to pay extra money for a better experience in this in this town. So it was worth it for us to take on that risk. Yeah, no, it makes a lot of sense. And so, so two questions. One, the properties that you're buying were, had they previously been on Airbnb? I'll ask that first, like, had they already been on vacation rental, short term rental type websites, or they had just not even been in that spear before? No. So all the cabins that we're buying are old Vacation Rental Communities. So they already on like, you know, VRBO, or booking.com and, you know, some Airbnb, but these are properties that you know, most likely have been ran by Mom and Pop operators for a very, very long time. They haven't really updated anything. You know, we've all been to those, like mountain towns, where you see the cabin communities that are always there that, you know, the the owners just it works for them. It's been in the family for a long time, and now they're looking to exit. So for us, you know, it's, it's our models, like, we're able to go in there and buy them and, like, very quickly clean it up, and then start marketing it and getting some cash flow as we're developing out the brand, and, you know, looking at the renovation costs and all of that to to bring it up to the free wild standard. And my second question, is it one? Is it like one entity that's your investment group that is funding all of this, or is it different people that you have for each community? Yeah, good question. You know, free wild is like a is the Opco, propco model, if you're familiar with that? Yeah. So, yeah, yeah. So we have the front end Opco, which is the brand, the customer service, all of that, the marketing, and then the propco is our syndication. So we raise capital through bunch of different investors to take these properties down, and then, yeah, eventually we'll create our own funds. But as of right now, we're just raising per property that we take on. 

Annie Holcombe  9:52  
Yeah, so if somebody, if somebody's listening, and they have an old community that they're they're looking to to get out of it, and it's in a unique. Location that's not, like a high end, or nicely, high end, high traffic destination. They should reach out to you and have they should reach out, yeah, I was just curious, like, if Are you actively looking for new, you know, new destinations, 

Eric Moeller  10:17  
yeah, yeah. I mean, it's, we're all in on this. It's something that's super exciting. We built a really incredible team over the last year that we're out there looking, we're underwriting so many of these properties. And look right now, it's a very challenging time to buy real estate. You know, money is very, very expensive, so is labor and material, and owners sellers haven't really caught up with the times to know that, like they're not really budging on their prices and expectations. So there's a lot of standoff and negotiations. So we underwrite a lot of these properties, and we have to you know, we're not looking for Grand Slams when we buy these homes. We are these these communities are our focus is to is to bring something to these communities that will last for a very long time. This is a generational type of focus for us. yeah, we're looking we need to buy more. We want to buy more. I shouldn't say need. We want to buy more. We have some investors that that are interested in and continue to support us on this, and constantly looking for new investors as well. So yeah, if anybody has cabin communities, or know of one, we look, take a look at it. Is it just cabins? Or would you do other types of communities too? Yeah, so good question. We, uh, actually this property that we're trying to purchase right now. They have unique structures on the property, like domes and tree houses and things like that. So we're going to take that on, but we're going to be building out more cabins on the property. So we're, yeah, I would say, like we're, we're not a glamping company. I know a lot of glamping companies are growing quite a bit, and those are fun. I just stayed at under canvas. I don't know if you guys are familiar with that company, yeah, yeah. So that was my first experience with them, up in Glacier National Park. And it was fun. You know, it was really cool, but it's not, it's not free wild. Free wild is more, you know, where I really value space. I get really inspired by design and space. There goes my light again. And yeah, I love cabins. I love, you know, I want to feel at home when I'm at when I'm traveling, you know, like, feel comfortable in spaces. So, yeah, we focus predominantly on cabins. That makes sense. 

Alex Husner  12:43  
I know Annie and I both love cabins, and we've actually stayed in one together not long ago, a few months ago this year, up in Gatlinburg. And you know, I'm in the Myrtle Beach market, so it's like most of my travel really ends up being more in like another beach destination, staying in a nice hotel or a nice condo vacation rental, but there's something about staying in a cabin that's just, it's unique. And I feel like, when you go to some of them, especially, it's like, you know, the the accommodations become the destination unto themselves, of like, you're there because of the house or the cabin and the amenities that it has. And that's that's really hard to create, I think, in in a condo, you know, and some of the traditional vacation rental type accommodations. So it's a great model. Really interesting. Yeah, it's fun. 

Annie Holcombe  13:29  
So you talked about your, like, your elevated experience, and kind of blending the boutique hotel. So tell us a little bit about what that entails, in terms of, like, if I come and stay in a for wild property, like, what is it that I'm getting that I wouldn't get by running from, you know, ABC, company that has a cabin down the road, yeah, you know, 

Eric Moeller  13:40  
I'm just gonna let this this light. 

Alex Husner  13:52  
I do have to tell the listeners, because if you're not watching on YouTube, you should, but that we we spoke before we hit record. And you know, there's been many faux pas On this show, for sure, so it happens, yeah,

Eric Moeller  14:03  
it's funny. It's like we in this digital world that we're in where we invest in all these, like, fancy tools for podcast set up, and then they all just start falling 

Alex Husner  14:11  
and then they don't work. Yeah? We understand, yeah,

Eric Moeller  14:16  
yeah. So free, wild, what was, you know, because I, I've had quite a bit of short term rental hosting experience at many different levels. And one thing that I started recognizing is like our industry as a whole is going through like a maturity stage where the guests are really seeking a more of a they're seeking an elevated experience, more of they want more properties that feel good, that feels like someone actually put intention into the design and the materials that are in the property. They really want that professionalism of hosting and connection with the people that are hosting them, either a company or individual. I. For many years, I think our industry just went through this thing of like throwing cheap furniture in places, automating everything, and trying not to do any type of customer service or connection with the guests. And I think again, we're kind of maturing through that as an industry from the traveler and from the host side. So it was really important to me that we created something that would leave a mark on the people that come to our properties. So first is the space, right? So like, we put a ton of intention behind our designs, the materials that we're buying, like everything when you're at a free, wild all the way down to the forcing knives, have some type of character to it, and it's a mix of modern and reclaimed type of products, right? And we want everybody from the moment that you pull up to the property to the moment that you check in to I love being at properties where you're just like, you're picking up things and looking at it, you're discovering new new aspects of the home, and we put that effort into the design, so that was really important to us. And then two is on the customer service side, it's like we're still a short term rental business, right? So we do have automations and, you know, sell guests, do self check ins and things like that. But we were asking ourselves, I got obsessed with hospitality, especially after reading unreasonable hospitality, which I highly recommend everybody to read, read and reread that book. So we started implementing that into our business of understanding, like, how do we take short term rentals and bring it to the next level of hospitality? So we've really implemented a really implemented unreasonable hospitality to make sure that our guests are experiencing a world class experience, hospitality experience every single time they say at the property, right? We can get into details on how we do that, but that was like our really leading from the heart, like really, we call it surrendering to service. So it's like, no matter the situation, we're here to correct that situation and make make it, make it right and make your experience better with us. Yeah, and it's a lot of work. It's a lot of work, but if it freaking feels good and guests are like they're re they're coming back to us quite a bit now and staying with us, and that's the piece that we absolutely love. And then lastly, we've created something, what we call wild mode in our properties, where we're helping our guests through certain programming. We're helping our guests disconnect from technology when they're at our houses, at our cabins, and that's really become our identity with our properties and our guests. And I can get into the how on all of that, but to me, that's how we are separating ourselves and creating this unique property and brand for the short term rental space. Is those three main areas. 

Alex Husner  18:00  
I just want to mention one thing, because I think this, this has come up a lot, and I feel like this is now certainly a common denominator of the companies that really want to be able to focus on that unreasonable hospitality. And a lot of them that are able to not only say they want to do that, but then actually execute on it, are the ones that they own the properties, right? I mean, it makes sense, right? I mean, you know, Annie understands. I mean, like Marriott, they could do things as far as like hotel portfolio, or any of the hotel brands that are out there, because they, you know, well, I guess they're franchise, but still, the standards are there. And in this case with vacation rental, the companies that they own the portfolio or their investment owned, they're able to make those recommendations, they're able to make changes. They're able to do things that when you've got 400 homeowners is a little bit harder to implement. So I feel like that's just, you know, that's becoming more of a trend of these different pop up ways to do vacation rentals, and with the investment side, that you're really able to control that experience, which would be interesting to see, like, where this, where this all goes, you know? I mean, if that becomes more of the norm, and that vacation rental companies are now trying to find more investment partners instead of trying to find homeowners, but to actually buy properties that they manage, it's a complete paradigm shift for our industry. But, yeah, it's are you? Are you guys familiar with, uh, wander,

Eric Moeller  19:18  
yeah. So, so they started as real estate investors and really look up to what they have created and what they are creating. They started as investors buying their own properties, but then that's a very difficult model to scale. Real Estate just takes a very long time to grow. So they've recently, the last year, moved into the property management side, and this, to me, like this is exactly what I think the industry is maturing into. Is as a property manager, they have a brand, they have brand standards, and they have partner standards, right? So they only accept in properties that meet their certain standards and allow them to. To implement those standards in their properties, right? So I think that's where the maturity is coming from. Of like, instead of vacation rental managers shirts and rental managers just saying yes to any type of property that's coming their way, and focusing on like, hey, let's we're at 400 and that we have to get to 500 let's just keep growing. It's more of like, what is our brand? Who are we serving? What's this experience that we're trying to create? And then how do we find the partners to help us grow that? Right? So I do see that happening quite a bit, and that's the stuff that I love, because it's like, it's a win, win, win for everybody that's involved. 

Annie Holcombe  20:35  
Yeah, I think, I think you're you hit the nail on the head. And it's actually something that Alex and I were actually having a conversation with somebody earlier today via text about kind of like somebody who can take kind of that hotel franchise, not the franchise model, but kind of that branding, and get into the vacation rental space. And so I think that people in the business are hungry. When I came up in the vacation rental side of the business, it was exactly what you were just saying we shouldn't be doing, like, it was all about land grab. It was trying to get as many units as quickly as possible, because that was what you could show people. The value of your business was how many units you had on plan. And then it was like, What is your top you know, what is your top line? But at the end of the day, your bottom line is still what it was if you'd had 100 units and really paid attention, right? It's just, it's just numbers and and like, the amount of work that you have to do. To do it is just really, really hard. And I'm glad you brought up wander, because I was, I was been following them for a little while, and it's really fascinating, because what they they got so hyper specific on the type of service and the level of service that they wanted to offer that it just wasn't scalable. You can't have a Tesla at every house. You can't, you know, like, there's just things that you that you can't do, but it set the bar high. So now, like, there's some things that people are looking to, and I think it's a game changer for the industry, and it speaks to what a lot of the professional, large scale companies have been saying for a long time. It's like, how do we have some level of standards from the very beginning that you know you're going to go left or right on it based on what your type of business model ends up wanting to be, what your where your passion lies, but we need to have some sort of sense of, what are we, who are we? Like, defining, you know, what that business is, and so what you're doing, I think fits in that, in that space, really well. 

Eric Moeller  22:14  
Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. And I see I agree, like when I first started growing my arbitrage company back in the day, we got it upwards of 150 plus units pretty quickly. And then once I was introduced to the management model, especially, we started doing luxury management larger properties. We started to your point. We started recognizing, like one management client, of these luxury properties equaled five or six of our smaller properties that we are. And it's like, why would we want to continue to grow this other company? And it was all out of ego, right at the Yeah. And it's like, you know, as entrepreneurs, we gotta challenge that. Of like, you know, how, just because we can grow, do we like does that really align with us, as in our lifestyle and with our business? The Vision all of that and just to grow, to grow is not not the best model, yeah, obviously, make sure it's profitable, but at the end of the day, it's like we're in the hospitality business, right? So we have to create these, these products and places that will really serve human beings. And just because we have four or five, 600 of it doesn't mean that we're doing a great job. And so, yeah, I think people, you know, it's like, my that's my recommendation. Is like, take your time. Get super clear on what you're creating. What's your brand standards? Who are you serving? What properties align with that, you know? And I think what we're doing in free, wild, yes, we own the properties, but it's, you know, at the end of the day, it's a that's a repeatable process, regardless of the model, yep, just have to hold a line on it. 

Alex Husner  23:53  
Yeah. I'm curious, too. I mean, a big part of that, of course, is identifying the KPIs, especially when you've got investors involved in this, and not only just from the you know, the return that that freewill is getting and your investors are getting, but also like, how can you continuously up the guest experience based on, you know, how the property is performing? But what does your tech stack look like for a project like this?

Eric Moeller  24:16  
Yeah, the lovely question of tech stacks we're constantly moving well on the front end, you know, we use look what we have now, I don't necessarily know are the right tools for us to scale with, although, like, we're taking that approach to make sure that the tools that we're bringing on that we can grow with. But yeah, from like PMS to pricing to project management, like we use, hopefully, as our back end. We use price labs as our revenue management tool, and we one thing I didn't mention is we also launched a service side of free wild where we offer revenue management as a service to you. Operators and managers that are doing one to $30 million a year in revenue. Because we started, as we were growing free wild, we developed out a process that worked, really, a strategy that worked really, really well for us, and then we started implementing that in other people's businesses, and sort of started scaling. And through that, we have found like price labs. I love all the other pricing tools, but price Labs is by far, in my opinion, the best tool to for any operator or host to use and grow with over time. So we love that company. We love that tool. We use clickup for our project management and internal, you know, management of the company, yeah,  it depends on how deep you want to go. We have a tech stack. 

Alex Husner  25:47  
No, that's interesting. Those are kind of the main things that I was interested to to learn about. So that that's, that's good, I think, interesting for our listeners to hear that too. So also, on your LinkedIn, you it says that you were like, kind of like, the power behind some of these different mastermind groups that have gotten together, the STR masterminds, and what was, what was the other ones that are there? 

Eric Moeller  26:12  
We did STR legends for a long time. We are, you know, educational companies called overnight success. And we had, we had a handful of different things in there. We had legends mastermind, which was for operators at scale, we would create these incredible five day retreats in different parts of the world and bring some incredible CEOs together just to mastermind and help each other grow. We did that for a long time, and then we had a legends x, which is our 90 day accelerator, where we were helping short term rental hosts, vacation rental managers, that had a handful of listings on doing exactly what we're talking about, building those brands, setting up the systems, hiring the team members, and Growing something that's like, organic and natural to them. So we did that for quite a bit, and that was fun. Yeah, that was, that was a lot of fun. We impacted a lot of companies that way, but not doing it anymore. Yeah, we're still doing it. I stepped away from that as CEO to go all in on free wild. I'm a big believer that you have to put the blinders on and say no to shiny objects and all that, and overnight success and all the masterminds and everyone that we helped with that, it was incredible, but it was pulling me away from what I actually wanted to do the most, which was free, wild and be in the business. And you know, you know, as we free, overnight success was growing very, very quickly, and I had to get to this point where I had to decide to really, essentially, put my, my heart and soul into into either overnight success or what I wanted to do. And I realized, like, free, wild is something that it came the origin story is very close to my heart, and it's something that I'm going to do for the rest of my life, right? And I just absolutely love it, so I decided to go all in on that, and it's been incredible. So yeah, overnight success is still running. It's more evergreen. So we don't have coaches one one to one coaches anymore, and we're not doing the in person masterminds, but people, if they need help with systems and trainings and all of that, we still have that available for people to join. 

Annie Holcombe  28:26  
Very cool out of curiosity. One thing that Alex and I talk to people about a lot is that getting the education piece out to people, and we've found it challenging from the traditional vacation rental side of it is like that outreach to that short term rental side of the business. And so we keep talking about this, like olive branch. And it's not really, it doesn't need an olive branch. We just need to know where to go, you know, like, where to go get these people. And so for you, how were you getting in front of those people? Because it does feel like there's there. It's it's somewhat fragment, but it's somewhat together in all these little, small groups, depending where you are around the country, and it's almost like an underground community that's that's sort of risen up. But how did you reach out and get in front of these people? So like, if somebody wants to start out and they're looking for education information, they knew to find you, 

Eric Moeller  29:13  
yeah, so our approach towards this, and it's still my approach now, like, why I'm why I'm jumping on podcasts and sharing what we're doing with free, wild and, you know, I've been doing this from the beginning. I've never looked at myself as an expert in this space ever. I feel like I'm always I'm a forever student, always learning and experimenting and and, you know, most of those experiments don't work, and I'll share my lessons from that, and then the ones that are working, I share my lessons from that. So I'm a big believer of just consistently experimenting in your business and then sharing those results and those lessons with everybody. So we were just constantly pumping out information on what we're learning as we were growing our businesses and people, you know, a lot of people connected with it. Some people didn't. Yeah. Um, and that was really our approach towards it. So it's like we, you know, shared on our podcast. We shared social media. We've created a email list, a newsletter that has been going for like, eight years now, and we have few in 10s of 1000s of people on there that have, you know, really just joined to kind of follow, and I just spoke to someone today, today who's joining our revenue management service, who's been following us for eight years, listen reading our emails on a weekly basis for eight years. And I've never spoken to him until today. I'm like, This is freaking cool. So yeah, I just, I think that's the biggest thing. Is just like, what you guys are doing now is, like, consistently just sharing with what you're learning, the experiments that you're taking and but you definitely need something that people can connect to. And it's either, you know, for us, it was a podcast and an email list, email newsletter, and then from there, we would introduce to them the ways that we can support them. Gotcha. So what is the the sales outreach process look like, as far as trying to find these different communities to bring them into free wild man, yeah, it's, it's, it's a very difficult asset to find, to find these, like cabin communities, in these locations where people are ready to sell. So it's a lot of personal outreach. We are leveraging our community of kind of sharing with the world, like what we're buying and what we're looking for, and we have a lot of people kind of bringing us properties that they're aware of, or introducing us to communities that are in their their towns, or markets that they're in, that they feel would be a good free, wild property. So that's a big like top of funnel for us. And then two is we've identified about 16 different markets throughout the country that we want to buy something in, and my team is just consistently trying to find those companies and then just reaching out like, Hey, if you're if you want to sell, we want to buy. So it's a lot of manual outreach, yeah, 

Alex Husner  32:08  
I would imagine, and how many locations Did you say you're in? How many and how many doors? 

Eric Moeller  32:14  
Yeah, we just had one our first we opened up our first location. It had we opened it up little less than a year ago under the free wild brand. We bought the first lot had four existing cabins that we renovated, and then we bought all the surrounding property to it, and we're building out 15 additional cabins, a bunch of programming and experience. It's on about three acres of land. We're opening up. We're working on our second and third purchases right now, where each one of those locations will have about 30 cabins on each each property. And then, yeah, we're negotiating some other ones, but we're not sure if they'll they'll go through. So, yeah. So hopefully by this time next year, yeah, year from now, the goal is to have four additional locations. 

Alex Husner  33:04  
Yeah, awesome. Yeah,

Annie Holcombe  33:09  
you're on mute. Sorry. Faux Pas again. So the beginning of my career was actually in hotels, in conference, conference facilities, conventions, that kind of thing. So, like, I'm thinking that, like groups, business, that type stuff. Is that something that you think you would do to put out in front of, like travel agents and meeting planners and things to be able to, you know, it sounds like perfect facilities for company retreats or again, I mean, anything that you could do with a group. But do you foresee yourself getting into that space as well? 

Eric Moeller  33:43  
Yeah, 100% a big part of our business is group rentals, which is which is beautiful, right? It just makes it so much easier for us to execute at a high level on these but yeah. So part of our our model is, along with the individual cabins, we also build out amenities and programming on the property to for in the for the individuals that are staying at the property, but then also for events. So a big focus of ours is actually bringing in masterminds business masterminds, business retreats, things like that. We do micro weddings, but that, that it, it requires a bit more hands on with that. And so yeah, we'll do some micro weddings from time to time. But our big retreats, or our big avenue for retreats, is Business Mastermind. So yeah, we just finished. There was a woman's retreat at our location just couple weeks ago. They were there for a week. They rented all the cabins. We brought in tents for them. They set up the tents, stayed on site, and they were there doing a full retreat for a week. And. Yeah. More intense, yeah. So yeah, they brought in, like, glamping tents and set

Alex Husner  35:05  
that. I was thinking a bunch of cabins. Sounds good for an idea. Annie and I have, I don't know if we'd be good in tents, but definitely not. I'm not a tent person, that's for sure. 

Yeah, it was a unique that was a unique structure or unique agreement with them, but, but, yeah. So I think that's a big opportunity as well, especially for, like, remote country companies today. 

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And how do you, I think it's a massive opportunity. How do you get in front of them? Like, what is the marketing strategy to get in front of those groups? 

Eric Moeller  35:37  
Yeah, so right now, we're working with a couple of different they're almost like OTAs, essentially, where you can list properties for group rentals, weddings, things like that. We're also, because we're about two hours outside of Hollywood, we're also marketing the property for movie locations and TV shoots, things like that. And then as far as finding companies, we have some marketing that is targeting companies in the area for this being a retreat center. So we're kind of just slowly turning it on right now. It's, it's a lot of word of mouth. Yeah, makes sense. 

Annie Holcombe  36:23  
Very cool. Any Do you have any target markets that you're looking to go? You were mentioning that you guys are going to go into hill country. I think you said Hill Country in Texas, right outside of Austin. Okay, pretty familiar with some of the properties there, and they're beautiful, like some of there's, it's, I didn't have any idea that that area I just always picture Texas is like this, you know, like wide open, you know, cattle fields or something like that. But there's a lot of green, green lushness around, around the Austin area. But what areas are you looking to move into or expand into? 

Eric Moeller  36:54  
Yeah, so as of right now, we're kind of just focused on the West Coast, I would say, like, if you draw a line right down the center of the country, everything west of that, we're kind of focused on these markets that are a two to three hour drive from the big cities that have over a million people in those cities, right? Yeah. So we've identified, like, 16 markets that we really love. And you guys can envision this. It's like those secondary mountain towns or desert towns, that they're not the park cities, but they're outside of the Park City Utah areas, right? You know? So we would love to you know we're looking outside of Austin right now, in Hill Country. But we're also looking outside of Nashville, you know, in those markets where multiple different markets throughout California, which California is just a challenge to do business in, and, but it's also like one of the most beautiful states in the country where it's just like two hours in any direction, you have just complete different beauty in nature. So, yeah, we're kind of looking in those, those different markets right now, all the way up to Washington and then Utah, Tennessee, Austin, Texas, those, those types of areas. Very cool. Yeah, yeah, no. 

Alex Husner  38:21  
That makes, that makes a lot of sense. And, you know, I feel like the competition has kind of changed in like Gatlinburg and some of these more traditional markets, a lot of those communities have ended up getting purchased by, like, timeshare, Vacation Club inventory. So it's like, you're actually, you're competing in some of these markets, I'm sure, against some people with some real heavy pockets, which has got to be a little complicated, but sure, I think, I think it's a great business model. And I think, you know, the unique thing that you're able to do with these properties that a traditional timeshare or hotel is not going to do is they're not going to take that next step of doing these really unique renovations and making them truly Airbnb friendly, because that's just, it's really, it's not their, it's not their ball of wax. Like, that's not really how they use them. And in a lot of cases, they end up using them more as, you know, those are the properties that they might renovate them, but, like, it's still kind of basic. But as far as, like, vacation club that's used for, you know, the the free giveaways that they use to get them into taking the timeshare tour. But right, I'd love to see you take over in that space and get some, make them into cool accommodations. 

Eric Moeller  39:25  
Yeah, that's the goal. You know, we want to, I have a pretty big vision around doing around free while, but, you know, we're taking our time because, you know, we notice that, like, once you get to a certain level in business, you have pressure from investors and, you know, from the market and everything else that kind of takes, in my opinion, takes away from the guest experience and the product that you're delivering, and it becomes, you know, cookie cutter. And just like, they serve a purpose, for sure, but you know, it becomes forgettable. And we want, we want our guests to, you know, we. Just be blown away from the moment they show up to the property to when they check out, they're thinking of revisiting again, right, and booking that next trip. And you know that doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense for bigger companies to invest that much into it. Maybe it's just a naive approach to business, because I'm in a early stage of it, but I do believe that it's something that guests want. The communities that we're moving into are happy about what we're you know, how the product that we're bringing into the town and it makes sense for us financially. So, yeah, yeah, hopefully it's a model that we can continue to scale over the years. 

Annie Holcombe  40:39  
Yeah, absolutely sounds exciting and you're doing I mean, it's again, the industry needs creativity and ideas like this that are going to set itself apart. So I applaud you for doing it. Thank you. Yeah, yeah. 

Eric Moeller  40:52  
Well, super nice to chat with you today, Eric, and I'm so glad that we got to finally connect. But where will we see or do you go to the events? Or where can our listeners find you, if not at the events? Just to find you, yeah, 

I'm gonna start tapping back into some of the events. I you know, I've taken a backseat to a lot of the industry events, but I'm excited to get back into it. I won't be at the next VR May, but my team will be there. But yeah, the best way to contact me is either through freewill.com or LinkedIn, is where I spend a lot of my time, and I've been creating a lot of content and sharing content on that platform. So it's Eric D Muller on LinkedIn.

Alex Husner  41:36  
Great, awesome. Well, thank you again for being here today. And if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I you can go to alexandanypodcast.com and until next week. Thanks for tuning in, everybody. Thanks. Cheers.