[00:00:57] John: Good afternoon, Mateo. How are you?

[00:01:00] Mateo: Fantastic, John. How are you?

[00:01:01] John: Just, got back from a home inspection buying a house, man. We’re like, We’re

[00:01:07] John: going through it, moving three miles. Three miles. We’re still in the city. The amazing metropolis that is Fort Wayne, Indiana, but actually have a one acre lot in the city.

[00:01:21] John: So pretty excited and have my own office slash studio space.

[00:01:25] John: I know you’re disappointed that I’m no longer going to have to turn on the little lights that are in close up the kitchen upstairs. So people can’t go stomping in above me, but I’m gonna have my own space.

[00:01:35] Mateo: I’m happy that you’ll have your own space. I will miss the silence on the set, coloring scheme that you have in your house. But, it’s time to progress

[00:01:43] John: Yeah, if you don’t know, if

[00:01:45] John: you’re listening or watching, I have these LED lights that I go turn on and there’s, I have different colors mean different things to my family members. so. like yellowish orange means I’m recording. So there’s absolutely no in the kitchen. Red light means that I am in a meeting that I can’t be interrupted. So it’s going to be nice to be like working at home because we homeschool, right? So our kids are home and

[00:02:07] John: so everyone’s home all the time, but this is going to be pretty nice. We’re back and we have some amazing guests. I’m Really?

[00:02:13] John: super geeked up about this actually, because I’m pretty fired up about the product. We have a guest that we’ve had many a time. So we’re excited to have her on a bet back again

[00:02:23] Alex: You guys. Great to be back.

[00:02:24] John: It’s been quite a while, we’re gonna talk with Alex about Directly Alex and her life post Casago but we want to go ahead and learn more about what she’s doing.

[00:02:34] John: And then also first time guest, but I’ve got the pleasure to get to know him over the past couple of weeks. Kanan Whitehead with with a Happy Guest and other things, but thank you so much for joining us. How’s it going, Kanan?

[00:02:47] Mateo: Yeah. Welcome to the show.

[00:02:49] Kanan: Thanks for having me. First time caller, long time listener.

[00:02:52] Mateo: There we go.

[00:02:53] John: Nice, nice. Spit a little, .

[00:02:55] Mateo: it too. I,

[00:02:57] John: That’s

[00:02:58] Mateo: a relic

[00:02:58] Mateo: from

[00:02:58] Kanan: I wonder if phrases like that are still relevant in 2024,

[00:03:04] John: Probably. For our demographic, yes,

[00:03:05] John: And maybe our listeners, yes. But for, those Gen Zs, no,

[00:03:10] John: absolutely

[00:03:10] Mateo: like that, but they have live stream shows where people can call in and stuff like that. Now, it’s not the same.

[00:03:16] Mateo: I listened to the radio the other day. Someone won some concert tickets during a holiday weekend,

[00:03:21] Mateo: but the radio host was mad because they like, actually had to call the person instead of the person calling into the show.

[00:03:26] Mateo: They’re like,

[00:03:27] Mateo: For 15 minutes, they’re like, we’re going to call you, we’re going to call you, please pick up,

[00:03:31] Mateo: you’re going to call you. And then they ended up

[00:03:34] Mateo: calling him, but it was like the reverse. They were like, Oh, great to finally meet you. And they were like, Oh yeah,

[00:03:39] Alex: Yeah.

[00:03:40] Mateo: got through. I get to go to this

[00:03:41] Mateo: concert now.

[00:03:42] John: funny.

[00:03:43] Mateo: aging ourselves.

[00:03:44] John: let’s start with you, Kanan, we like talking the origin story. We like digging into, why people come into the industry. Most of us stumble in, we’ve those that listen know that I used to sell hardwood lumber. You might not have known that, but I sold hardwood lumber, what kind of got you in, I know you’re a techie guy and we’ve talked a lot about this, tell your audience, tell the audience how you got into it and what kind of led to Happy Guest.

[00:04:08] Kanan: Yeah, I am, I’ve been doing vacation rentals since about 20, 2016. But before that I, I hadn’t ever even stayed in a vacation rental before. And,

[00:04:22] Kanan: And so I was working as a, I was working for, I was hired by Amazon to work on Whole Foods when they took over Whole Foods and I was the creative director. And my job was to figure out a way to, to scale uniqueness in the creative process. And so it came up with these technological solutions that really put an easy way to, to scale unique design throughout all of, the stores and keep them keep them really interesting and different while still having a unified brand vision that was, like, recognizable and really didn’t confuse the audiences. And that was interesting to to the folks at Airbnb, and they were working on a new startup that was, based around their Airbnb friendly buildings program and and creating, some brands around that. And so that’s how I got into the space and I really enjoyed learning about creating vacation rental brands and how to really leverage. A VR brand in a way to get direct bookings and to, enhance overall revenue and make a big impact for your space. And and then I started, dipping, which is typical for me, dipping my toes in the water of okay if we want to do this better, I need, I need to get into the operations and to understand the technology aspects and cause really, if you’re, if you really want to make an impact. on a business, you need to do it, holistically. It’s a 360 approach. And so I really loved doing that. And I spent, a few years after that, working on some other vacation rental tech for other private companies and creating You know, PMS systems and all sorts of things that added like a whole lot of value by reducing operational excesses and workflows and things like that.

[00:06:24] Kanan: So I’m really obsessed with workflows and what people are spending their time on and figuring out like the best way things should be and I’m just really passionate about that. There’s a lot of like stuff on social media that’s trying to help new hosts. And and I saw a lot of information that I didn’t really agree with. And so I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and try and contribute some good content to help people out on like good ways to like, Do you know, vacation rentals that would save you time and things like that.

[00:06:57] Kanan: And Alex and I ended up connecting. That’s obviously a big passion for her as well. And, Happy Guest grew. Out, out of that desire to, to really streamline the way that property managers, work and what they’re spending their time on the effectiveness of, how guests are getting into the properties and the guests experience.

[00:07:22] Kanan: And not only that, but just the entire guest journey and really understanding a way to that, that a guest journey is actually something very simple. And

[00:07:30] Kanan: We can do these simple things that

[00:07:32] John: We tend to overcomplicate it.

[00:07:35] Kanan: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:07:36] John: The tech side and just in not even by design, like not on purpose some buy on purpose, but more is just we tend to overcomplicate it. And it’s interesting. I’m glad that you guys connected and you guys come from, similar backgrounds, right?

[00:07:49] John: Like a marketing esque, background, how did, did you guys meet on like a Facebook group? Like, where it was like, where you’re like a Facebook group where everyone like,

[00:07:58] Alex: No, not at all.

[00:07:59] John: or something like that, and you’re just seeing all this bullshit, like terrible do this.

[00:08:02] Mateo: that’s what I wanted. I wanna know what you saw that you didn’t like. Like that part

[00:08:06] Mateo: I wanna know okay. What was it that

[00:08:07] Alex: when we met,

[00:08:08] Mateo: that motivated

[00:08:09] Alex: I, was thinking about this earlier, I feel in the last eight to nine months since I’ve known Kanan, we text every day, we talk on the phone almost every day. I can’t imagine my life without him now, but yeah, what I did all those years.

[00:08:21] John: Is this your cute-meet story?

[00:08:23] Alex: We were introduced by a mutual friend that knew about this project and. I had just left Casago and I was very blessed when I left. I had a lot of different opportunities that were being presented to me and I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. And this one was an opportunity to come in as a founder and an investor in the product.

[00:08:43] Alex: And Kind of be part of the team as it’s being built up. And, I, I told Kanan today earlier too, when I first saw, I don’t even think I saw a demo, but they were telling me about what it was. And I wasn’t really sure. And I thought, this is, it’s a little bit of a risk because no, I did not know him at this point, but.

[00:09:01] Alex: Just his background and what I learned about him was so impressive that I thought, this is a risk worth taking. And I hope at the end of the day, this is something that is what I think it will be. And it is just far surpassed that in such a short amount of time that it’s a great, it’s a great thing.

[00:09:16] Alex: I’ve never been a founder of a company before. I’ve owned companies, but never one that I’m the. The founder of, but, or a tech product Like, this, at least. So to be involved this, early on it’s just been an incredible experience.

[00:09:28] John: So how many, there are just two co founders or any other founders in the company?

[00:09:34] Kanan: There are others and we are

[00:09:36] Alex: I wasn’t sure how you were going to answer that, but yes,

[00:09:38] Kanan: throughout the day.

[00:09:41] John: The funny thing is this is I already know the answer, so I appreciate it. Good answer. I like trying to throw some spitballs and see if they land. , let’s go back in time a little bit with you, Alex, for a second. So you left Casago, you have started up Directly Alex tell us a little bit about that and what you started there.

[00:09:59] John: And then again like. Why found you’re already starting your own thing. Like why jump in with

[00:10:05] Alex: Yeah. And I shouldn’t have said earlier that I’ve never founded a business cause now I’ve, I founded two this year, but but the difference, I’ve never done this with somebody else. So it’s it’s a little bit, it’s definitely different, but and I’m going to go back just a little bit before Casago, I was with Condo World when I first met you for the first time.

[00:10:20] Alex: 13 years here in the Myrtle Beach market and was their chief marketing officer and just, really got to understand and be part of something that we really built our house on our own land. Then we were 95 percent book direct and our strategy was different behind that. We put a lot of money into brand marketing and performance marketing.

[00:10:38] Alex: But for, for a reason there that we wanted to turn Condor World into a And we did. But one of the things that we did really then was we mapped out all the communications of what a guest is going to receive from us from pre stay to while they’re in stay to post stay and then how that life cycle of the guest continues on once they’re in our ecosystem.

[00:10:59] Alex: And I don’t know if we called it a guest journey back then or not, but that’s definitely what, Yeah.

[00:11:04] Alex: Like that, the, those terms are you hear them everywhere now, but that’s exactly what we had done. And that really helped us to succeed. So went to Casago, It was really more on the franchise sales side for about a year.

[00:11:16] Alex: But in that process, everything happens for a reason. Got to see and meet managers all across the United States and realize some of the common pain points that they’re dealing with and marketing is certainly one of them and tech stacks that are just. Over the flowing with different things that are, have overlapping capabilities.

[00:11:33] Alex: So when this came about, I figured, this is, it is a guest journey platform and the way that we look at it, which is different than any others that I’ve seen is really more from a psychological perspective and how we make this super easy, super fun. And that’s what Kanan has built.

[00:11:49] Alex: And I’m just excited to be on the journey, the founder journey now.

[00:11:53] Mateo: It’s interesting too, because when I looked at, I went, I was looking at the website. I loved it. It was fun. It was, I could understand what I’m looking at in, in knowing both sides of the fence, as a host or a manager, like it’s tools, right? Because. The biggest thing that we have to do is communications and logistics, right?

[00:12:11] Mateo: It is building that relationship that you can build a process that’s repeatable that these, again, it’s not the guests that come through the

[00:12:18] Mateo: door. It’s the guests who have a great experience, bond with

[00:12:21] Mateo: your brand and want to come back. And that’s not just a one time thing. That’s not just the stay.

[00:12:27] Mateo: It’s not that you have sharp knives. Yes, that matters. But also what is the rest of your experience there? What is your experience operationally, right? If I got a headache before I even get to lay down on this beautiful mattress, it does not matter, right? If I’m just, if I’m pissed with the manager, I don’t know the codes.

[00:12:43] Mateo: I couldn’t get in. It was like, like none of those, and I can’t get ahold of you if I need you. Like all of those things I think don’t go it doesn’t seem like it goes into the thought with a lot of the tech. It seems like the tech builds around what they think they need to build for managers and forget that it’s not just the managers.

[00:12:59] Mateo: It’s the guests who have to use the technology from those managers, right? So that UX experience, customer journey, whatever you want to call it, seems like don’t know. I don’t know why it’s taken so long to get to this, especially with the, like the progressive tech that we see in our space, but this seems fun.

[00:13:16] Mateo: It doesn’t seem daunting. It seems like my grandmother can use it. My mom can use it. The host can use it. So keep it fun, but help me understand who is this for today? Like right now, today, who is this for? Is it for the host with a couple properties? Is it for the property manager with 1, 200?

[00:13:34] Kanan: I think, Happy Guest. It’s it’s for every, it’s for any property manager that wants to improve their, the way that their guests interacts with their brand and interacts with the space. It’s for any property manager that wants to reduce their struggles with time that they’re spending on guest communication, looking up answers and spending questions. It’s for property managers that want to earn additional revenue in a way that they don’t have to spend additional time to earn that revenue. And it’s for property managers who are. excited to to be able to make an impact on their guests positively and impact their company positively.

[00:14:23] Kanan: And so that can be anybody with one listing to, we have some fairly large clients as well, and they use it just the same. The psychological impact that Happy Guest has. on a guest is really powerful and it’s proving itself. The guests upload selfies into the platform, as they’re doing their IDs. And, I’ve used plenty of softwares where guests upload the pictures of their selfies and the selfies are all the same. They’re like,

[00:14:53] Alex: Yeah,

[00:14:54] Alex: or annoyed. Yeah,

[00:14:56] Mateo: Part mugshot part like, yeah,

[00:14:58] Kanan: mugshot, part I’ve taken this selfie nine times. Why isn’t it saving,

[00:15:02] Kanan: And it’s so cool. Like clicking like the hosts, tell us when they look at their guest selfies, that they’re smiling,

[00:15:09] Kanan: And they’re like they’re happy.

[00:15:11] Kanan: They get responses, the hosts get responses back that are just like, Oh, this is great. Thank you for the recommendations. Psychologically, the guests have a good time., it was really, it’s really thoughtful, psychological project to make sure that the guests are having a good time and that they understand exactly what to do. I have been, I’m sure you have too. I travel in a lot of, vacation rentals now, and it is, So annoying generally to get, I

[00:15:41] Kanan: like, I don’t, I never read descriptions of a listing. I

[00:15:46] Kanan: only book based on what the pictures look like. So I book a beautiful place typically on Airbnb and then I’m communicating with the host on Airbnb and then I’ll get like a message being like, why didn’t you sign your

[00:15:59] Alex: Yeah. Why?

[00:16:00] Kanan: And I’m like, I didn’t get a DocuSign thing.

[00:16:02] Kanan: Oh, we emailed it to you. When? What?

[00:16:05] Mateo: Wait, you have my email address?

[00:16:06] Kanan: Yeah, and then so then I go find like the random DocuSign email and I do that and then you know and then it’s followed by like a payment link to pay a security deposit from something else and then I have to Download an app

[00:16:20] Kanan: to

[00:16:20] Kanan: get into the place but then I’m gonna get a text message with the code like

[00:16:25] Kanan: It’s

[00:16:26] Mateo: Yeah.

[00:16:26] Mateo: It’s

[00:16:26] Kanan: Wild

I want to state I’ve seen a lot of these, and we’re friends with a lot of these guest apps. You name it, there’s some amazing tech out there. And there are, they have their place. With that, like of all that I’ve seen, like I’m bullish on Happy Guest and like Kanan and I, we’ve been chatting, we’re bringing Happy Guest into the Direct ecosystem and we’re we have some big plans and we’re not even finished.

[00:16:55] John: We’re, we’ve been texting back and forth and we’ve got some even bigger plans that we haven’t even unleashed yet or haven’t even talked about. The reason why I’m bullish on Happy Guest, and it’s not just they are a party sponsor for Live and Direct, the biggest party in VRMA by

[00:17:08] Alex: We’ll all be there. It’s gonna be a

[00:17:10] John: 9 p.

[00:17:11] John: m.

[00:17:11] Mateo: no.

[00:17:11] Mateo: Shameless

[00:17:12] Mateo: plugs

[00:17:13] Mateo: right for the party. Okay.

[00:17:14] John: Live and direct. Everyone’s gonna be there. We got

[00:17:17] John: shuttles now. Shout out to our other sponsors Lynnbrook Group and Rental Guardian for coming through and taking care of that. But back to Happy Guest. There’s, No app, your guests aren’t forced to download anything, right

[00:17:31] John: there’s nothing to download and it’s affordable. It’s super affordable.

[00:17:35] John: Some of these other solutions are very expensive. And when I’m looking at I’m a PMS, I got under

[00:17:42] John: 50 units, I’m paying 25, 30 for a solid, and I’m talking full PMS accounting, payment processing, not like entry level PMS. I’m paying 25, 30 a unit for a solid PMS. Now I’m bolting on door locks. Now I’m bolting on this. Now I’m bolting it. Now I’m up to 60, 70 a unit with all these different add ons.

[00:18:02] John: But if HappyGuess is affordable. And what I mean affordable, I’ll let them dive into that. Not,

[00:18:07] John: but also, it ends up paying for some of your PMS. That’s the

[00:18:11] John: win for me. And that was like my light bulb moment, it’s like, Oh, there’s so many different pieces. Like we could bring Happy Guest into our own infrastructure in our

[00:18:21] Alex: Yeah.

[00:18:22] Alex: and I would say not only is it affordable, but is it is a

[00:18:25] Alex: revenue Generating platform. So I mean we’re sending we just closed out August We’re sending you know, our partners literally thousands of dollars like Per manager like this is, and they’re just getting started on it.

[00:18:38] Alex: So it’s this is something that is completely cost neutral and is just going to add more to your bottom line. And I love that perspective, John, of, use this as a way to, to supplement, if you do have to pay for the things that are that. hard cost per month. This is a way to generate, a nice.

[00:18:54] Alex: Nice little bag of change each year, as the year goes on, but, or invest into marketing or other things that you want to do and other staff person. And there’s so many different things you could do with that money that you didn’t previously have. But I think for me, one of the interesting things is, and you asked about what size and what type of companies this works with.

[00:19:09] Alex: When I first joined it, I think we were more going down the vein of this is just for small hosts, with one to five properties, but then As I started introducing the clients, I was getting through my consulting business into Happy Guest and they all loved it. We’re like, okay, we can do this for enterprise too.

[00:19:26] Alex: There’s nothing stopping us. And the way it’s been built is so simple that we don’t need to do PMS integrations. We’re connecting through a different way and it just makes, it’s like the easiest integration that your team will do and it your guests won’t they’ll think that.

[00:19:42] Alex: Literally, you have completely changed. If they’ve stayed with you before, they will be so confused when they get the messages now because the whole part is that it’s supposed to like preemptively reach guests when they have those questions in their minds. So they don’t have to be reaching out to you.

[00:19:56] Alex: And it’s, and it just, it makes sense. It’s great.

[00:19:59] Mateo: I love that. You talk about the psychological effect of that, right? Even what’s the biggest pain point with software in tech in the space right now, like it’s the onboarding process, right? Like

[00:20:09] Mateo: it’s that whole front end. It sounds great. I’ve been sold. This works amazing, but maybe in six months I’ll get to see if it actually works or not, right?

[00:20:19] Mateo: Or maybe six months there’s an integration because those are the biggest roadblocks, right?

[00:20:23] Mateo: And to

[00:20:23] Kanan: are the six months that you’re also paying for it

[00:20:26] Mateo: 100%, right? Got to pay to get that dev done. But no, I think that, I think the idea is great. And it’s good to hear that the feedback, right? Cause at the end of the day, that’s what matters.

[00:20:36] Mateo: It doesn’t matter what we think, right? It matters. Is someone going to go out and become a fan of this, right? Is this going to be

[00:20:43] Mateo: useful for my business? Alex, you said it too. What do property managers want more than anything else? They want their time back. So they can focus on growing the business appropriately, scale appropriately, hire if they need to, go work on

[00:20:54] Mateo: a task, whatever it is, technology is supposed to make their lives easier, not complicated.

[00:21:00] Mateo: You think sometimes that gets lost in the mud, but this

[00:21:03] Alex: Yeah, exactly. And Like,

[00:21:05] Alex: Oh

[00:21:05] Mateo: we need more fun, we need more fun tech in the space.

[00:21:08] John: I like the timing of it So we talk, upsells are like the thing right now, right? There’s always we go through these different phases in the

[00:21:15] John: industry, we’ve been in Mateo and I, nine years now, so we’re almost OGs, right? I was talking to someone who’s been in the industry 35, 36 years this morning, and he’s you’re not OG until you hit 10 years.

[00:21:27] John: So I’m like, all right, soon.

[00:21:29] John: Soon.

[00:21:30] Mateo: you hit a decade, you’re like Hmm.

[00:21:34] John: in, like the people that come and go, and we all go to these conferences, we see, I remember our first conference and our, back in the day and

[00:21:41] John: like how wet behind the ears we were.

[00:21:42] John: And then now it’s oh Yeah, like I know. Everybody minus the new people. And then now I know Kanan, now the thing is, we’ve gone through this, now it’s upsells. All these PMSs have the ability to go ahead and add optional add ons, but no one buys those like the timeframe and when people actually buy the optional add ons is two to three weeks prior to the actual. Check in, not at the time of booking. So great, to be able to have that on the PMS side and say, all right, you know what? I know I’m going to want two bikes.

[00:22:14] John: I’m going to go ahead and get that bike rental now. But that’s still the majority of the upsells aren’t happening there.

[00:22:20] John: So to be able to go ahead and bring them into an ecosystem that is, and not only are you doing it at the right time, because AI is telling you when you should be buying these, but it’s also.

[00:22:29] John: But it’s it’s, it just makes so much sense. You’re going to get more buy in closer to

[00:22:35] John: check in than you are. Book a vacation, nine months ahead of time sometimes.

[00:22:40] Alex: One of the interesting things about this too, is that,

[00:22:43] Alex: If somebody, if they book on Airbnb or they book on your website, the first way that you are corresponding with them sets the tone of that cadence. And, to Kanan’s point, if I book an Airbnb, but you’re telling me you have to go, over my email to sign the docusign and I have to go download this app.

[00:22:58] Alex: And it’s I It’s, you want to keep people where they’re comfortable with. And I say? this from somebody that. Direct bookings are my thing all day long, but get the email address from the guest on Airbnb. But if they want to be spoken to and communicated with on Airbnb, which that’s most of those guests, cause that’s what they’re familiar with, then let that happen and work with a property management system that the automations can trigger to Airbnb or the Unified Inbox, or they can trigger as an email if they that’s their preferred method or a text message.

[00:23:29] Alex: However makes the most sense, but. In mapping that guest journey, that’s where you start realizing like, Oh my God, we’re emailing this, we’re texting this, we’re calling here, we’re doing that. And it’s it’s so convoluted that, no wonder Airbnb is all people remember, that’s the only one that kind of keeps things consistent, but that’s one of our goals is like, how can you, how can we help you map this out and make sure that you’re touching people where they want to be touched and when they want to be touched. Anything else, keep your hands off, they’re happy guests.

[00:23:54] John: when they want to be touched, anything else, if that’s

[00:23:57] John: all you heard, you’re like, what the hell kind of podcast is this?

[00:24:01] Mateo: yeah, about that.

[00:24:02] John: Okay, so you guys came together. You’ve been building this out. If you haven’t taken a look though We’re gonna go ahead and put a link

[00:24:08] John: on the

[00:24:09] John: Show notes on to go ahead and check out Happy Guest.

[00:24:12] John: There’s a really cool video. You get to see Kanan and talk about Welcome to his property. It’s exciting, but talk about the colors. Talk about the, it’s like a hippie, dippy and I love it, but let’s talk about the psychology behind the colors and like that feel. on top of just that it works amazing.

[00:24:31] Kanan: mean imagine, from the guest perspective, the, once, once you book your stay I book a lot of stays. And so I brace myself for the first message that I get back from the guests. Cause I know it’s going to be confusing and I know my OCD is going to be confused on how to read it. But But with Happy Guest the message that you’re sending your guest is giving them the link and it says Happy Guest. And so the guest is seeing the words Happy Guest and that, that’s the first time they’re like, Oh I’m happy. And they click in and they see these like satisfaction style videos, there’s there’s really nuance human animation inside of the platform.

[00:25:14] Kanan: And so when the guest is interacting, not just with the colors, but but in, in the check in process it’s really fun. It’s a game. And it I don’t know if I’m super explaining it properly,

[00:25:25] John: Is there a gamification process like aspect to it?

[00:25:28] Kanan: yeah, it’s, it is a game. And so the check in is a game. And

[00:25:32] John: I didn’t even realize that. I love that. I didn’t

[00:25:34] John: like, you need to show me more. That’s a huge part of

[00:25:37] John: Hopper success is it was focused on millennials and Gen Z. And it was a gamification process.

[00:25:43] John: What they do and how they built the app out with the bunny and the cute, like it’s friggin brilliant. Like I still as an ex hopper employee, I still to

[00:25:51] John: this day, like it’s my

[00:25:52] John: go to

[00:25:53] Alex: yeah,

[00:25:54] Alex: yeah,

[00:25:55] Alex: they made it fun again. I think there’s, within our space, everybody’s gone. It used to be that there was like no design style and you just had websites that were just absolutely atrocious. But then once things went more in the direction of keep it clean and simple, it’s, everything’s gotten a little too simple, it’s just, it’s a ton of white space and, they, it’s very easy to forget what brand you’re actually on. They all just run together and they’re very clean, but it’s just, it’s not memorable. And I think that’s when we were coming up with the, we knew the name, but we didn’t have the logo yet.

[00:26:25] Alex: And oh my God, it’s some, someday Kanan will show everybody the first logo, but it was, One of the other founders made this one. It was very interesting to say the least. But when we’re looking at, what else is out there? It’s we wanted something that was going to stand out and we didn’t have the logo.

[00:26:41] Alex: Kanan, came up with the concept, sent it to all of us. And I thought, yeah, it just makes you smile. And that’s pretty good. If a piece of tech can make you smile and we’ve seen it in the guests and the check ins, we’ve had 14, 000, almost 15, 000 check ins, I think, actually this summer.

[00:26:56] Alex: Yeah. And really just launched in May. Like it’s been a very short amount of time, but it’s been great.

[00:27:03] Kanan: Yeah, I think that, what you were saying about Apple, like the minimalist style and stuff, it’s just, that’s like the, the crux of what’s going on right now in, in tech in general, but especially in like our spaces tech, it’s like the sea of sameness. where everything looks the same and it’s very like chill.

[00:27:21] Kanan: It, I think it’s all like in this like millennial kind of millennials are like addicted to saying Apple style, like Apple’s the best. And, but like

[00:27:32] Alex: Yeah,

[00:27:32] Kanan: they’re not really Apple styles,

[00:27:35] Kanan: They’re like it’s like a Canva version of, and I think that like doing something different is really it’s really nice to put a smile on like the property manager’s faces and the

[00:27:46] Alex: Yeah, exactly.

[00:27:47] Kanan: what you’re, our, we’re in the vacation rental industry is supposed to be selling fun,

[00:27:52] John: Where, what’s next for you all as far as like, where are you taking the app? The experience from where you are today?

[00:28:00] Kanan: Happy Guest has a very robust roadmap that will continue to surprise. Delight, the property managers with the amount of revenue, ways that they can increase their revenue and

[00:28:16] Alex: I love how you give these super vague answers. You are such a better politic. Oh

[00:28:23] John: book much? I’m like, holy shit, can you give me, can you give us a little bit more? A little bit more, Cade. That’s

[00:28:30] Kanan: You’ll have to, if I’ll tell you though It only in, in less than an hour, we can show you Happy Guest. , you can literally get set up in 30 minutes like from demo to live and 30 minutes. If you’re, if you really want to know what the future holds, sign up, it doesn’t cost anything.

[00:28:47] Kanan: It’s free for hosts. As long as you have more than 10 reservations. Annually and you use either our automated early check-in upsell or a custom upsell you, Happy Guest is free for you, for host. So if you are excited about what the future holds, sign up for it and you’ll be the first to get it.

[00:29:07] John: Okay, that’s a better answer.

[00:29:08] John: I think, It’s pretty salesy, but

[00:29:11] Alex: I’m concerned. I think at this point, like we just, we’ve proved out the model. We’ve got a selection of individual hosts. We’ve got a selection of hosts with small portfolios and some with very large portfolios. So now it’s, let’s figure out what companies we want to bring in here.

[00:29:24] Alex: The one nice thing, of course I’ve got A massive network and know a lot of people and I’ve only shown it to probably a fraction of all of them. So I’m excited to have more opportunities to be showing this when we go to the conferences. We’ll be at all the shows and just having conversations and, trying to get more people on boarded and hopefully make everybody’s lives better.

[00:29:42] John: That’s awesome. I’m gonna bring the party back, I’m gonna bring the live and direct party back here, all the digital raffle tickets are gonna be Accessed and viewed through Happy Guest. , if you’re going to the party, you have to see it firsthand because that’s the only way they’re going to have a chance to win one of our tons of prizes.

[00:29:58] John: We’re giving away lots of stays and AirPods and iPads and all sorts of stuff.

[00:30:04] Kanan: How many stays is it up to now?

[00:30:06] John: Right now we have, I think we have eight different stays and we’re looking at five or six cash prizes. We should have close to 30,

[00:30:18] Alex: It’s yeah, What is it? Ellen show. You get a, you get this and you get a vacation. No, that’s awesome. Yeah. We’re super excited. And

[00:30:26] John: like, Oprah,

[00:30:27] Alex: inviting us to be part of that party. We’ve, this will be our first time,

[00:30:31] Alex: Happy Guest has ever sponsored a party. So we’re excited about it.

[00:30:35] John: it’s exciting. Going through your process, maybe not this specifically, going through the process of building out an app, there’s always something like, man, you’re, like, almost took the wrong direction, or you almost pulled the wrong is there, do you have any the, thank God I didn’t do that, or, whew, I caught that quick enough like, how, what did you fuck up with? Did you?

[00:30:55] Kanan: I have been hosting my own Airbnbs for over, over three years now, so I have I have a couple boutique hotels, and so I know that I know what I like, and I, like how to make things. I’m I really, I like, I wanted to make sure that I had VAs that were, making, giving confusing answers to guests, taking a long time to like answer and like giving confusing answers.

[00:31:24] Kanan: And I just knew I knew that there was like a way to give people the information they need when they needed it. And in a way that was gonna make them enjoyable. And so I don’t want to say that happy guess is perfect, but it’s it’s, it is perfect.

[00:31:39] Kanan: And it’s it’s incredibly usable. I don’t think we, we missed a step because We’re all incredibly myopic on the team of us We’re just incredibly myopic on everything like every single thing matters like every single click matters every single moment Matters how hosts are going to interact with each other and how guests are going to interact.

[00:32:03] Kanan: The one thing that I really love about HappyGuest is that like we do the setup for you incredibly quickly cause we’re experts in guest journey and so we can fix your guest journey very quickly. We set it up for you. And after that. The host never has to enter the platform. The guests are doing everything they need to do. And the hosts never have to spend time in the platform unless they want to. A lot of hosts like to, check things out and,

[00:32:34] Kanan: see how things are moving along. But eventually like they. They realize that they don’t have to. And so the amount of time that saves a property manager from having to just do repetitive tasks, like repetitive tasks are quite frankly, the easiest thing in the world to program. It’s not complicated. If every single person needs a rental agreement and a security deposit and

[00:32:57] Alex: Yeah, Or, in a lot of cases, what I’ve seen is if they’re doing, the rental agreement, even in Streamline, for example, you can have a flag set to show whether it’s been actually executed on or not. But if they don’t. Nothing still happens. So it’s like now you just know that they didn’t sign it, but there’s no way to actually get them to sign it.

[00:33:15] Alex: And that’s one of the secret sauces of this to make sure that you do have that. But I will say, John, you asked about if there’s a story or if you ran into something that didn’t, work as expected. And I think one of the eyeopening things has been for us in this journey that it’s not a complete surprise, but definitely made us realize where the benefit of what we’re doing comes full circle is one of my clients that we onboarded, the initial task was get us your terms and conditions, your house rules, all these things.

[00:33:44] Alex: And so this is early on. So it’s like Kanan and I put it all, everything together. And I thought, okay, I got it to him. We’re good. We keep moving on. And I remember we were on the phone for hours. Cause you’re like, this is, it’s all so contradictory that like they have all wrong information in each different listing and each different listing is saying different instructions This has to be fixed first.

[00:34:04] Alex: And so what’s ended up happening, and that’s more common than not, that if you’re a large property manager, you’ve been updating terms and conditions or listings, here and there, one person’s doing it, somebody else is doing it, and there’s just a ton of inconsistencies and overlap. So our approach on that is a little bit of a, sometimes a little bit of therapy. It’s also a little bit of, pruning but it helps the companies really. Have to ask themselves some hard questions of why are we even doing it that way? Do we need to do it that way? So it’s, we’re actually helping them improve their operations in this that, that wasn’t necessarily that part of it wasn’t the plan originally, but. Exactly. yeah, yeah, and it’s been really helpful because typically takes the time out to go back and look at all these different things and then verify is it the same on Airbnb versus Vrbo or Direct? So it, that’s been a cool part of it. And that’s where it is. It’s very hands on and we want to get it set up for success and then you don’t have to do anything at that point.

[00:34:59] Alex: It’s

[00:35:00] John: What I noticed too, that some of these guest apps are maybe not because it’s an app and it’s something they have to download, and I’m thinking about the actual, the customer journey and what they’re like, a lot of times it’s the video and the seamlessly integrate, like exactly how do you specific for this unit?

[00:35:17] John: Not like a general thing, but this is how you get in a lockbox or, and this is how you do this year. Yeah. Yeah. How you guys put that into the app itself is pretty seamless.

[00:35:26] Alex: And it cuts down on customer service so significantly too. If you’ve got certain things in the house that you know are an issue that guests are calling or emailing or texting about, hot tubs, how to work a TV projector, how to work, do use the wifi, how to get into the garage This allows property managers to go to that home and just do just on your phone.

[00:35:45] Alex: You don’t even have to be in the video. Just do a quick video showing how you use something and then you just upload it right into the app and it’s super easy to manage that way. But, and I do think on your other point about the app part cause that.

[00:35:56] Alex: was one of my questions initially. I said is it an app?

[00:35:58] Alex: And Kanan said, no, it’s a platform. It’s web based. And I Really glad that’s the direction that we took because that’s where I’m seeing more with, my clients, if they’re using other types of guest apps, that’s the problem is that it’s an app.

[00:36:11] John: I hate even downloading

[00:36:12] Mateo: Who’s gonna do that? That’s a roadblock.

[00:36:14] Alex: No,

[00:36:15] Mateo: and let’s be

[00:36:16] Alex: because it takes a minute too. You got to go search for the we’ve heard the download and then you have to find where it is on your phone. It’s

[00:36:21] Mateo: I’m gonna go to the one.

[00:36:23] Alex: yes.

[00:36:24] John: Then you got to, add all your personal information in just for the app and then you got to do it for the reservations. You’re doing it twice, right? Let’s be, clear with this. There’s a lot of other things that do some of these things and everything that you said that there’s another.

[00:36:39] John: Company that does something similar, but the difference is just how you package together and how,

[00:36:46] John: and, how easy it is. Like

[00:36:49] John: the journey

[00:36:49] John: is different. How about Alex? Any last

[00:36:52] Alex: Yes. And I’ll actually echo something that I said to Cain earlier today. That, it’s funny in life that when you’re going through certain things or like you’re in a transition and you’re just. in your life and you find new opportunities and sometimes it’s like you are taking that risk or you’re like I think this makes sense, but I’m not really sure. And sometimes it hits you way later on of like why that opportunity came to you. And it came to me as we were texting today about, the guest journey. And it was just reminding me of things that I remembered We had done at condo world, but it would never, it was never talked about like this and it not exact this situation, but you realize at first I’m like, I don’t know why they want me to be part of this platform.

[00:37:31] Alex: Like I don’t really know a whole lot about the rental agreements and stuff, but that’s not what it was. And it’s, when you look back on your life, it’s like all these different experiences and places you’ve been and who you’ve worked with has, , they collectively lead to where you’re going to go next.

[00:37:46] Alex: And so I, I don’t know, I just I feel like fun to look back and realize and be able to connect those dots later on. And I’m so glad the dots connected and just having a ton of fun and can’t wait to see where we go with this. And it’s been good.

[00:37:59] John: Okay.

[00:37:59] Mateo: I love that. More fun

[00:38:00] Mateo: I’m excited. I want to hear how this runs. I this is great.

[00:38:04] Alex: thank you Yeah. Yeah. No, I appreciate that very much. and thank you again for the opportunity to be

[00:38:08] Mateo: where are they now?

[00:38:08] Alex: Always great seeing you guys.

[00:38:09] Mateo: We’ll take that.

[00:38:11] Kanan: This was really fun.

[00:38:13] John: That’s awesome. Thanks so much for being on. We appreciate you guys here.

[00:38:16] John: If you, like what you hear, all you guys listening, please go ahead,

[00:38:19] John: listen, subscribe. You watch our YouTube channel, smash that follow button, do what you do. We appreciate you check out the link.

[00:38:26] John: I think it is happyguestofficial.com

[00:38:31] Mateo: We’ll put that in the link below.

[00:38:33] John: and sign up to learn all the new things that are coming that he wouldn’t allude to in the podcast by being an actual Happy Guest and partner with them.

[00:38:42] John: 10 reservations a year or more.

[00:38:47] John: and you sign up to use your,

[00:38:50] John: the add ons, it’s free. It’s

[00:38:52] John: seems like a no brainer to me. All right. Thanks guys.

[00:38:55] Kanan: Thank you.

[00:38:55] Mateo: Thanks.