[00:00:57] John: good morning, everyone. A little different this week as Mateo had other engagements he had to partake in, so it is me and our guest this morning. I’m super excited with our guest Jeff Ellulian of Host GPO. Thanks so much for joining today.

[00:01:15] Jeff: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here.

[00:01:18] John: I’m I’m, I was pretty proud of myself for crushing how I your name

[00:01:22] Jeff: You friggin nailed it. So nice work.

[00:01:25] John: And if you listen to this pod I’m horrible with names. And those of you that are tuning in now, I practice a little bit before I said, but I’m pretty pleased

[00:01:33] Jeff: A little bit. It was like seven minutes straight of just practice is what we did before we jumped on here.

[00:01:39] John: Liar! Hey so we got a pretty cool podcast today. I’m excited to dive in and learn more about you, learn more about host GPO. You’ve been all over the place as far as I don’t want to say in our face, but like it seemed out of nowhere. You have emerged and you’re doing big things in the space, but like all big things that happen in space, your journey here didn’t just start this year.

[00:02:04] John: There’s no such thing as an overnight success 2020, right? Imagine that, imagine those years to start a new company. Which if you go back in time and, you look at all these companies that have made it, the Airbnbs, the Amazons, there’s always a big thing that happened.

[00:02:21] John: And so it’s a downtime and a downturn in, economics and everything that’s going on. And these are where these power companies emerged from, seemingly nowhere. And, And you can see this, tried and true back in time. And so that’s pretty exciting. But let’s start way before that.

[00:02:40] John: You had another company I guess it was WV Management you were a co founder CEO there with that Winthrop Valentine company. You did some other things. How do you get from, say, college and you’re, litigation and an attorney to this?

[00:02:58] Jeff: Yeah, it’s a wild story. And I think most people in this space, one of the reasons why I like it so much is because everybody has a real unconventional way of falling into the vacation rental industry. Not a lot of people that are that now probably more But the folks that were doing it, 10 years ago, everybody just fell into it from different directions.

[00:03:13] Jeff: And for me, I was practicing law I was an attorney for, about three years working in a giant law firm, representing giant companies. And I remember getting into this space. I remember reading an article in the New York Times about, Actually a deal book about lease arbitrage. And I was like, this is a real interesting business model and idea.

[00:03:36] Jeff: And this was like 2013, 2014. And I was like, this is

[00:03:40] John: Before lease arbitrage got scary,

[00:03:43] Jeff: Before it got really scary. Yeah, before it was, before everybody, before you were out there doing your first lease arbitrage deal, and just with one, you could make a million dollars. But, before, before that time I thought it was a really interesting business model.

[00:03:54] Jeff: And I never wanted to jump right in, but I had a really unique. angle to start in the vacation rental space, which was I knew a bunch of real estate developers who were buying and flipping homes. And they were buying these homes in decent neighborhoods but really upgrading them because the market was moving faster.

[00:04:10] Jeff: And there was a value in adding, Additional floors to a house or, upgrading it or maxing out or whatever you were going to do. And so I had this really weird intro into this space where the first lease arbitrage deals I was doing were homes that had been purchased and were waiting for entitlements to get flipped or to get like really renovated.

[00:04:29] Jeff: And those are really unique properties because they usually had a 12 to 18 month window where they were going to be empty from the previous owner leaving. To the demolition to build or, renovate the property. And so I got into this space by leasing those properties while they were on that in between phase.

[00:04:49] Jeff: So I would lease it for like way less than market rent, manage it myself, and then do short term rentals until. The permitting came through to build the house because they were otherwise just going to sit there empty. But that was like my

[00:05:01] John: had a 12, you had a 12 to 18 month window of in between of almost purgatory for this for this, property and this unit and that you could do whatever you want.

[00:05:13] Jeff: exactly, and even more than that, it wasn’t even I could do whatever I want with, the developers were thrilled that it wasn’t going to sit there empty. They were like, oh, you’re never going to call me for anything for, plumbing issues or whatever, because we’re going to pretty much knock this down or add a second floor or strip it to the, to the studs.

[00:05:28] Jeff: And the homes were in decent condition sometimes they needed a little bit of paint work, but they weren’t bad. And

[00:05:32] John: was this in, is this in LA or is this New York?

[00:05:35] Jeff: this was mostly in LA. We ended up going to a bunch of different markets, but mostly in Southern California. So that was the, and the permitting process to get a permit in Los Angeles is extremely lengthy.

[00:05:47] Jeff: Sometimes it was 12 months, sometimes it was supposed to be 12 months or 18 months, but it ended up being three years. We were on this Hey, just let us know, 30 to 60 days before you’re gonna start working on it and we’ll move out. So that’s how I started in the vacation rental space, was with some lease arbitrage work.

[00:06:01] Jeff: And then grew that company from 1 to 5 to 10 properties. When we got to around 40 properties, we started doing property management work as well, just because we had a team. We had cleaners, we had, operations, we had the software in place, etc. And then, over the, that was the first two, three years, and then we really ramped up to about 150 properties.

[00:06:19] Jeff: We’re doing really luxury homes, like 000 a night ADR, and then we were doing apartment buildings, 80 a night rooms, 100 a night rooms, with, 20 units in the building. Whatever we could. Get our hands on that was a good deal. We would just go after that. So it was a mix of arbitrage,

[00:06:35] John: is all, I’m sorry, and this is all pre COVID, correct? Or the

[00:06:40] Jeff: This is all, yeah, this is like 20 14, 15 through 17, 18,

[00:06:46] John: okay,

[00:06:47] Jeff: 19. So those are those years. And it was still, what’s really funny is that now it’s I’m sure, you’ve been in the space for a while, and it’s people always say, Oh like It’s not the Wild West anymore.

[00:06:58] Jeff: It’s not what it was. This industry is fully developed but, eight, nine years ago, everybody was saying the same thing. Oh, this industry is fully developed. It’s not the Wild West anymore. Like those days have come and gone. And I bet you in eight, nine years, people are going to say the same thing.

[00:07:10] Jeff: It’s just. It takes time.

[00:07:13] John: yeah, I think, I’m a big believer that we’re still in the infancy of, STR this whole landscape is still very much getting developed. It’s very, volatile, but also established. I don’t, there’s rules in place, but these rules are getting challenged every day.

[00:07:30] John: And I think these next years, and I’d say 10 years or so we’re going to be dealing with, rules in government and how do we go ahead and find a happy medium what is win? What is that definition?

[00:07:44] John: Who knows? But I think how can we all play nice and play well together? And once we get past that, Then we’re gonna see the Wild West will be over. And again, I’m using air quotes there for those of you that aren’t watching on YouTube. Because then it will be a whole different Wild West, and I don’t like using the word exploit.

[00:08:03] John: But there are people in their businesses that look at loopholes and look at small things and how can you go ahead and exploit those to win for yourself. And so there’s always going to be a sense of that Wild West, but this stage we’re in right now for, and we’ve been in for a few years with regulations, this is probably the most.

[00:08:22] John: I don’t want to say damning, it’s just the most, where, how we come out of this is gonna show a lot of where we move and how we move forward.

[00:08:30] Jeff: I think that’s 100 percent right. And I think that your whole comment about, people playing nice and getting along and working together. That community aspect of this industry will determine who is in control of the industry moving forwards. Because if the industry isn’t able to align itself, Uh, there are other industries that will just come in and take over, and whether that’s hotels coming in and just running vacation rentals better than vacation rental companies because there’s, misalignments, or whether that’s, bigger operators or smaller operators, there’s a lot that’s To be determined for this entire industry, but it’s a very exciting time.

[00:09:06] Jeff: And this last decade has been extremely exciting to watch the evolution of, from the insane 10 years ago days till now.

[00:09:14] John: It’s, yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with your agreement of my whole heart. All right, I’m going in a weird circle. The interesting thing about this too and where I stand, and I always like looking at the politics of certain industries, right? There’s politics everywhere.

[00:09:28] John: And I love being a student of how the different relationships work and how they, feed off each other. And right now you’re seeing a lot of different cells, a lot of different Break offs, they were all working well together. And that’s why I love this industry so much is because everyone still shares ideas.

[00:09:47] John: Everyone still is overall looking out for everybody in the betterment of the short term rental industry. But there’s still, I’m starting to see some different, some separation, right? And this is how we think that, this cell over here is this is how we think it’s going to move forward.

[00:10:02] John: And we think this is how. The industry as a whole is gonna, it’s gonna get to the next level. But this cell over here on the other side, Yes, we think as a whole, it’s very interesting. And I’m starting to see that more now than I’ve ever seen it. So how this shakes out is going to be

[00:10:20] Jeff: And it’s, there’s a ton of these cells, you have the people that are. Embracing outside institutional capital and you have the folks that are really believe that this industry should remain separate from outside. You have folks that are, very much believe in economies of scale and, rolling everything up and you have folks that really believe in localized operations and then you have, the in between.

[00:10:43] Jeff: It’s a really cool time to be in the vacation rental space but I do think that overall I’m extremely excited about the changes that are happening because The best thing about it is that the industry is getting better. Overall improvements, and what that means in an industry as small as this that’s growing as quickly as this is that there will be this rising tide.

[00:11:09] Jeff: And as the industry overall gets better, being in this industry will be a better thing, right? Overall, people are going to start trust, like the best example, people start trusting vacation rentals, because the standards of what they’re expecting are higher. And they’re going to be The standards are being met by operators that are paying more attention to how to run vacation rentals, the right way and how to, provide excellent hospitality and these great spaces, etc.

[00:11:31] Jeff: And as the overall level of the vacation rental industry quality increases. People are going to book vacation rentals more overall than alternative accommodations, right? The changes that are happening in this industry are very much rising tide, tailwind changes that are very exciting.

[00:11:48] Jeff: And, there’s just a ton of tools that are available now that weren’t available 9, 10 years ago that are just unbelievable. I think HostGPO is one of those but I think that 10 years ago, I wasn’t using dynamic pricing software. I was pricing myself every day, with our team.

[00:12:04] Jeff: And, we did, we were doing background checks ourself. We were taking people’s IDs and running background checks. Cause there weren’t these companies that were doing it. It was it was crazy. It was a crazy

[00:12:13] John: And being in the tech side of it from my real job, I see it and I see the advancements in what we’re bringing to the table and the lives we’re changing and it’s phenomenal. You mentioned this rising tides thing and I think part of what is rising these tides too is because there’s a little bit of separation everyone is trying to up their game.

[00:12:33] John: Which is not a bad thing. Competition is good when it’s healthy. A good healthy competition is part of the reason, on top of wanting to put out a better product for everyone involved, it’s part of the reason why we are excelling so fast. I’ve never been part of something that is such a steep curve.

[00:12:53] John: It’s been fun. It’s

[00:12:55] Jeff: I just, I feel like the vacation rentals I stayed in. 7 8 years ago, and the ones that I stay in now are just, generally speaking, I stay in a lot of vacation rentals. I travel a lot right now, especially for HTPL. We’re always in different cities. We try to stay in vacation rentals as much as we can.

[00:13:10] Jeff: Overall, everything from the communication to just like the quality of the home is it’s awesome.

[00:13:17] John: 100 percent agree. Talk to me about what made you go from WV And what you’re doing there, and what made you go, you know what this this GPO thing, it makes sense. What was that? Talk about that transition.

[00:13:33] Jeff: It just happened, organically and we started post GPO while we still had our vacation. I was still involved with the vacation rental company. And. The idea behind it, and for those of you that don’t know what a GPO is, it’s a group purchasing organization. And that’s, that exists in a lot of other industries.

[00:13:49] Jeff: Hospitals have them, schools restaurants. When you’re a, hospital and you need to buy who knows? Curtains or IV stands or equipment for the doctors, right? You’re not just going on Amazon to find what the, highest rated one, what’s the number one set of scissors that, somebody’s using on Amazon, and it’s sure, it might have great ratings, but that’s probably not what you want to, doctor doing surgery with, right?

[00:14:12] Jeff: You’re going to a GPO that’s gone and negotiated, found the best products, and then they’re bringing that set of scissors for you. to the entire group of hospitals at a negotiated price so the hospitals can go to the GPO, trust that what they’re getting is, the best price, and then buy it directly, right?

[00:14:27] Jeff: And they’re buying groups. And so that, that has existed in all these other industries, but there wasn’t one for the vacation rental industry. And, I was having a tough time as you can imagine setting up homes really on a 12 to 18 months cadence so I was like always setting them up taking them down you know probably over that time we had 250 homes you know like up and down so over that period I was buying a lot of furniture a lot of linens a lot of you know supplies everything from like I can’t even tell you how much, toilet paper probably my vacation rental company used over that 10 year period, or shampoo, or whatever.

[00:14:59] Jeff: It was a combination of this frustration that I had not knowing what the right stuff to buy was. Like, I didn’t understand what the difference between all these linen companies was. And then, when I did find something that I liked, like a mattress or whatever It was hard for me to get a bunch of them.

[00:15:15] Jeff: It was hard to figure out how to work. You can’t buy, you can’t walk into a mattress store. I tried and buy 60 mattresses, right? And it’s not like you have to do that, but sometimes you’re do you’re in that, I was literally doing 60 beds in one kind of setup and I couldn’t find that.

[00:15:30] Jeff: And so that was really frustrating. And. I knew about GPOs existing in other businesses and I was out of vacation rental conference in 2019 and floated this around, like a couple of people that were standing around and I was like, Hey like, where are you, like, where are we getting our mattresses from?

[00:15:45] Jeff: And what are you looking for in a mattress? And I was like, if I negotiated a mattress deal for us would you guys buy from that? And that’s how it started. It was like a couple dozen companies that got together. Everybody had between, I don’t know. 40 and a couple hundred homes and went and started negotiating these deals.

[00:16:01] Jeff: And I was using this negotiation to buy stuff from my own company. And then at some point, there was just all this interest and people kept asking like, Hey what are we gonna do about, furniture? What are we gonna do about, linens? And I just really saw that there was this big hole, this big need that I had that I knew a lot of other people were experiencing, and I wanted to Start a GPO for this space to be able to, one, use it myself, but also help out all the other businesses that were in the space.

[00:16:27] John: Are you the only GPO? Because I see other amenities companies, that, that are in this space there that are doing linens, some of them and doing some other things that, and some are exploding. Are you the true only GPO? How do you differentiate and do you look at these others as competition or is it different?

[00:16:46] Jeff: I think that it’s different. I think that everybody has their own version of it. I think we’re the only true GPO in the sense, we’re certainly the first and we’re certainly the largest. And there’s a kind of thing about that, which is. Host GPO is the only company that contractually has the guaranteed best pricing.

[00:17:04] Jeff: So you might go somewhere else. We charge a membership fee. It’s usually like 120 a year which is not that much, but if you want a free version of Host GPO, they’re out there. The discounts are not going to be as good as those GPO discounts, so if you’re going to buy anything, like a couch or you’re going to spend more than a couple hundred bucks it’ll probably end up saving itself over the course of the year.

[00:17:24] Jeff: So there, there are kind of those versions out there. We also there are folks getting into the kind of the ship per ship per stay amenity world. Every time somebody checks in a box of soaps and shampoos will supposedly show up. I don’t know, I don’t know about that.

[00:17:39] Jeff: That’s not really something that I’m interested in. I personally believe you should buy, whatever, 12 bottles of shampoo and keep it in the storage closet and put them out and refill them as you need or, there are people going at it from different angles, but what we’re doing that I think is great is, one, we have the guaranteed best pricing.

[00:17:53] Jeff: And then, two A lot of our brands are fully exclusive. We’re the exclusive distributor for that company in the vacation rental space, which is really what GPOs do. So an example of that is like Standard Textile, right? That’s like the largest hospitality limb company in the U. S. So that’s who sells to Marriott, Hyatt, Hilton, Ritz, like all the big hotel companies.

[00:18:14] Jeff: And you don’t have to host GPO members, right? Because we really are collectively. We have over 300, 000 units that have signed up to be a part of Host GPO, which just gives you like an idea about the size and scope of like where we are. But that allows us to, even if you’re ordering just two towels, get really competitive pricing.

[00:18:32] Jeff: And we believe and have done an extensive amount of research and testing and, talks to all the different companies. We believe it’s the best linen product in the world. The US, look, Marriott believes it too, right? We’re not the only ones. There was a nice benchmark there for us, but, they have all these benefits and I can go on about linens forever, but the pre laundered stuff, the color coordinated threads on the inside, the, there’s no corners, they go on both ways, they, come in packs of, without having to buy the sheet sets, they’re hospitality grade linens that are meant to be washed a million times, right?

[00:19:00] Jeff: One of the things that makes this GPO different is Not only do we have the guaranteed best pricing, a lot of the brands that we work with are only available through host GPO. And that’s how we’ve built what we’re doing. And we really focused on just that, as opposed to a lot of the other kind of bells and whistles of this is going to show up at your, your same time.

[00:19:15] Jeff: Or, what if your guest wants to buy your toaster with the QR code? That’s not really where we’re focused. We’re really focused on just getting you the best pricing. On the best products guaranteed and having a one stop shop for it.

[00:19:25] John: What what’s the average, you’re talking about you, you guarantee the best pricing, right? Because you are our GPO and you’re buy in. What’s the average that your users, your members are saving?

[00:19:36] Jeff: Yeah, it’s a great question. We did it for the last year or the last, I don’t know, 12 months or something. And it was the average discount our members are getting is like 39 and a half percent. So almost 40%. And they’re saving almost 13, 000 a year. Pretty cool.

[00:19:52] John: man. Like 13, 000.

[00:19:54] Jeff: To pay 120 a year to save 13, 000 a year is a pretty, pretty cool idea.

[00:20:00] Mateo Bradford-Vazquez: you and I talk all the time about Direct Software, but we don’t dive into it too much here in the show. What can we tell our listeners?

[00:20:08] John Stokinger: Let’s start with the fact that Direct was built specifically to meet the needs of its own management company. , Fast forward a few years. Updates and features are executed and released by a team that cares about user experience for hosts, property management teams and guests.

[00:20:20] Mateo Bradford-Vazquez: so built by users for users, how does that make direct a solid PMS,

[00:20:26] John Stokinger: Direct is special. It’s built on a modern framework and it’s intuitive. What I mean by that is that it’s clean, easy to navigate, and everything you’re looking for as an operator is where it should be. Have you seen or used some of that other software? A lot of them are a mess. Features and options are just crammed everywhere .

[00:20:42] Mateo Bradford-Vazquez: That all sounds good, but does it work for everyone?

[00:20:45] John Stokinger: Absolutely direct, seamlessly integrates operations, connectivity, accounting, and engagement tools all in one place. It’s built for scale, whether you manage five or 5,000 units Direct also eliminates redundant manual processes and leverages advanced reporting and payment processing features to make data-driven decisions maximizing revenue potential.

[00:21:03] Mateo Bradford-Vazquez: As their director of sales, what’s your main focus right now?

[00:21:06] John Stokinger: I just want direct to be part of the conversation. Deciding which property management software to use and changing from one solution to another isn’t easy. I encourage everyone shopping for a better solution, to demo a few options and see what is best for you now and for your growth. That’s the goal. If you’re a host or property manager that is unhappy, we should talk.

[00:21:23] Mateo Bradford-Vazquez: To learn more about direct and to get $500 towards implementation costs, go to info.direct software.com/nobs and book a demo with John. Make direct part of the conversation

[00:21:36] John: yoU alluded to, choosing your partners based on, A, buying power, but B, specific to hospitality, I’m sorry, I forgot the name, but American, is it American Textiles?

[00:21:48] Jeff: Standard textiles. Standard textiles.

[00:21:50] John: the largest in America, huh?

[00:21:51] John: See? Close. The, what are, I, on your website, I see a few other partnerships that are, the ones that you’re showcasing on the website, are these exclusive to you? Or are these, some of these seem pretty, pretty cool.

[00:22:03] Jeff: Yeah, look, I think they’re, some of them aren’t fully exclusive standard textiles is like a fully exclusive, but, something like, article furniture or West Elm or Crate and Barrel CB2 you might be an interior designer and you might be able to get the normal interior design discount where you have to Apply, you have to show them your interior designer etc.

[00:22:20] Jeff: And you have to apply to host GPO too. We have to accept you and approve your application for you to be able to log in. We don’t talk publicly about what our discounts are, but what I can tell you is that our discounts are always better than the trade discounts because of our size and our volume.

[00:22:32] Jeff: And, again, like a lot of the other folks that are out there, they might be giving you just trade discounts or slightly above trade discounts or whatever. We are always The best pricing. And the brands that are listed at hostgpo. com are, I think, most of our brands, but not all of our brands.

[00:22:45] Jeff: We also partner with a lot of if you’re just getting started in the space, you’re growing your business and you’re interested in maybe you’ve heard about StayFi, right? And you’re interested in collecting, email addresses to remarket or, whatever a handful of other service providers in the

[00:22:59] John: yeah, Arthur’s a good friend of the show.

[00:23:01] Jeff: Yeah, a big Arthur fan. But HostGPO has discounts on the services that you need for the vacation rental industry as well. So if you’re a HostGPO member and you log in, you can get a discounted on site which is awesome. And again, those are some of the brands that we work with. All of our pricing is always contractually guaranteed to be the best with those brands.

[00:23:19] Jeff: And there’s more once you log in. We can’t talk about it openly what the discounts are, but we do have a three month no commitment trial. And the idea there is just, hey, look, join, apply, once you log in, you can see everything. You can get samples of the stuff, try it out. I’m a big believer that You should probably try the shampoo that you’re going to put into your home rather than just buy it because it’s, the cheapest thing.

[00:23:43] Jeff: Look, I think we have the least expensive options that are also quality. And you might as well request some samples. They’re free. And log in and see the pricing and then decide if it’s worth your 120 a year.

[00:23:55] John: Which again, is pennies on the dollar compared to potential savings. And average savings.

[00:24:00] Jeff: I think that’s right.

[00:24:02] John: Talk, talk to me about, about, you know you’re a newer company. You’ve scaled pretty aggressively. You have 300, 000 units that are now part of the host GPO network. Where have you fucked up? Like, where is what was your big oh my god.

[00:24:21] John: Why did we turn this? How did you stop it? And how, and what was the pivot?

[00:24:27] Jeff: Yeah, look, I think there have been a couple. And I think those are just. Some of them are just general business things. There were a couple times, I think generally one thing we’ve done really well that I’m super proud of is our host GPO team is really good.

[00:24:40] Jeff: But it took a long time to get to this point. And one of the things that, that we started doing, that we diverted from, that we came back to is hiring people who are hosts to join our team. Right? Our team is made up of people who are vacation rental operators, or worked at big vacation rental companies, or are hosting currently.

[00:24:56] Jeff: And so they get it. They get what the problem is. They get who our members are, and who our community is, and who we’re communicating with. I think that one of the things that we messed up on, just generally speaking, which happens, is, there were a handful of, kind of team members over time that just weren’t a great fit for what we were doing for a variety of reasons.

[00:25:12] Jeff: That’s just kind of normal scaling stuff. I think there are other ways that we’ve messed up. I think there are learning lessons that we’ve gotten. One was early on, we were trying to figure out how should the GPO work? Should we be in the middle of the transactions?

[00:25:28] Jeff: Like, where people are paying us, and then we’re placing the orders or whatever, and We realized that was a huge mistake because ultimately what people really want is immediate ordering, right? So there’s no quoting process, there’s no waiting process, like people want to order. So when you go and host GPO, like you’re ordering from the vendors directly immediately, whether that’s a coupon code or whether you’re logging in to just place the order, like we, we’ve streamlined it so that you can just order directly and immediately.

[00:25:55] Jeff: So that was a big learning, a learning lesson, like from a product perspective. I don’t know. I’m sure there, I’m sure there are a bunch more, but

[00:26:02] John: I appreciate your transparency because sometimes you’ll ask this question and people are like, don’t necessarily want to be as straightforward or as such a straight shooter With this type of thing. So I appreciate your transparency on that. What’s next for y’all? Where, you got, you are where you are, you seem pretty hungry.

[00:26:19] John: Yeah, I don’t think you’re done. What’s next?

[00:26:22] Jeff: yeah, we’re definitely not done which I’m really excited about the stuff that’s coming. We actually just did a we did a a fundraise, an outside capital raise to just help grow HostGPO faster. And we did that about, I don’t know, five or six months ago, and there were a bunch of things that we wanted to get from that.

[00:26:38] Jeff: But one of them, and one of the real strategic reasons why we did this, is we raised from, like one of our new investors, is the biggest GPO in the U. S. And they don’t do anything in the vacation rental industry, they do things in a lot of other industries, and what’s great about that is that they are they have access to things where we can be a part of their even larger volume, and then Figure out how to funnel that pricing through.

[00:27:06] Jeff: That’s like a big strategic thing that we did that we’re really excited about. There are a bunch of other really cool investors too, like Spencer Raskoff and, the guy who like founded Zillow and all these other people that like, we’re really excited about having involved. But that was like a really strategic thing and what we’re hoping is that the kind of next thing and the stuff that’s about to roll out is we’re really closing a lot of new vendor partnerships and supplier partnerships.

[00:27:27] Jeff: really quickly right now which is just great. So we recently added, and for those folks who are listening who are post GPO members and maybe haven’t logged in for a little while, these are just a handful of the things that we’ve added recently. Like we added Staples, which is not a company you would think to buy your toilet paper and paper towels from, but we actually have unbelievable pricing that beats Amazon through Staples.

[00:27:48] Jeff: So that’s a huge thing. We launched a new amenity line which is extremely affordable, but also very good quality. And we did it by doing a non branded amenity, which was a way that we were able to cut the costs out, which is awesome. We launched a partnership with Nearly Naturals, which is like a fake plant company, which is like the best fake plant company.

[00:28:09] Jeff: Again, like going to a company that’s the best seller on Amazon, or the best seller on, Wayfair, and just doing a deal directly with them. And then we’re about to announce a number of them, I don’t know when are you planning on releasing this? How much of a delay do we have?

[00:28:21] John: It’s it will be two weeks from this it

[00:28:25] Jeff: so just

[00:28:26] John: two weeks from this Thursday. Wow.

[00:28:28] Jeff: great. So just now, since this conversation we announced a partnership with Yale Locks, which is really exciting. We announced a partnership with a handful of other companies that, that are literally going live. A new pot and pan company that we’re excited about called Maiden.

[00:28:43] Jeff: There’s been a handful of new exciting suppliers that have gone live on HostGPO since this recording, which is really exciting.

[00:28:49] John: I love the the Yale announcement here. So my question for you with this is, being a GPO and the buying power that you have, they’re, obviously there’s some law companies out there as well that also have, their buying power. I’m curious how it’s going to play out because, a company say, it doesn’t necessarily matter what the company is, but some of these companies

[00:29:09] Jeff: Yeah, let’s not say, let’s not say any of the names of the companies. That’s a nice way to do this.

[00:29:13] John: they’re who are friends of the show and they’re,

[00:29:14] Jeff: Of course!

[00:29:15] John: yeah, we’re all friends together, but I’m curious how that, how you’re buying power is going to, cause those aren’t cheap,

[00:29:23] Jeff: No and I think the goal, and what should happen, and what happens in other industries, is that soon, those companies should also be, and some of them we’re already talking to, will also be buying locks as a part of the GPO because that’s what we can do is get better pricing on the locks than those companies and look, a lot of those companies also do.

[00:29:44] Jeff: What they’re offering is services, right? They’re offering connectivity, they’re offering, visibility, they’re offering subscriptions, et cetera. That’s not going to change. Just the hardware pricing is going to get lower

[00:29:53] John: right? No I love this because, now you’re not just. Serving, and you probably haven’t only just served, when I think of and where most think of like a GPO in the hospitality space, you’re thinking of the, those that are providing the stays, right? The property management companies that are, those are the ones that are buying.

[00:30:10] John: But now when you’re also You know, you’re not only able to go ahead and sell to the property management companies or the hosts, you’re now, you’re also able to go ahead and sell to the vendors who also supply because these vendors go ahead and they have a warehouse when they’re buying. If we’re talking locks, some of our friends of the shows, they’re they warehouse and they pre buy as many of these locks as they possibly can go ahead and get, but they still only have so many of them.

[00:30:36] John: And their buying power might not be the same. So now they go ahead and they pre buy with you, still house in the same warehouse, offer it to, either at a discounted rate to their users or at a, which they normally do anyways, right? Hey, you buy from me to, you’re going to save X amount, but now they either can go ahead and offer the same rate to their users and they can pad their pockets a little bit, or they can give the end user a better deal.

[00:31:01] Jeff: sure. And, however that ends up working. There’s a ton of different ways, sometimes people want to buy it through those companies because they end up coding the locks themselves before they send them out

[00:31:09] John: Most do.

[00:31:10] Jeff: and that’s the, and that’s the. That’s the benefit there for folks that are doing that.

[00:31:15] Jeff: Some folks, that’s not what they’re doing. But ultimately, if everybody’s buying locks through the same channel, then all of a sudden, everybody’s getting cheaper pricing. And that’s what we’re really focused on doing. It’s the community aspect. It’s the bigger, and I’ve seen it happen over the last three years, right?

[00:31:29] Jeff: The bigger HostGPO gets as a group, the better our ability to negotiate and bring, Folks under the umbrella is we could have never done a deal with Google, three years ago, but we have Google Nest products and our Nest pricing for thermostats and whatever else, Wi Fi is better than you’re going to get on Black Friday, which was, and Cyber Monday, which was, last week or whatever, we’re getting better pricing than that all year round. So it’s, that’s what the GPO does. And why it’s so powerful because collectively the bigger it gets, the better the deals get.

[00:32:00] John: Who do you see is Your ideal client persona. You’re called host, GPO, right? So you know where you’re calling out for the individual user the individual host, someone that has one or two. I, is that who you’re going for or is, was that initially who it started?

[00:32:20] Jeff: It’s both. Look, my company was, over a hundred properties, when I started, and so I really, it was built for me selfishly, right? I didn’t want to spend money. I didn’t want to do the, man, I’ve got stories for days about the 48 shopping cart Ikea checkouts and stuff I used to do that was just so crazy, but screw that.

[00:32:36] Jeff: But I think the ideal host GPO member really falls into two buckets. I think it’s the smaller operators, smaller and midsize operators that are growing and scaling their businesses. If you’re, if you’re about to set up a new property, like host GPO can save you like more than 13, 000 on just that one property, right?

[00:32:55] Jeff: I, I like, so I think people that are scaling and growing from both like the, 3 unit, 5 unit, 10 units, and need a partner to help direct them on what the right things to do are, right? I think we really do well in that space because those people are in the best position to start setting up processes now.

[00:33:17] Jeff: So that, and you just learn this the hard way. You want to be buying contract grade furniture now because you want it to last six years. You don’t want to buy the, junk off of, Amazon that is going to break in in six to eight months because then all of a sudden you have to replace it.

[00:33:32] Jeff: You have to block off a night. So those smaller folks are benefiting a ton from the educational component and the pricing that they would never be able to get on their own. So that’s one, one facet. And then on the other side, we have host GPO members that have 2, 000, 4, 000 properties plus.

[00:33:47] Jeff: And those folks benefit from a kind of different part of it, which is, they’re really benefiting from the procurement solution side of host GPO, which is, Hey, we’re doing a, big 200, 000 linen buy. We need it in four months from now. They want somebody to help, manage the timeline of that and learn how and when, and maybe they have more advanced, shipping needs like they have warehousing and split up in multiple parts of the U. S., and so we’re able to assist with those folks as an outside procurement arm as well.

[00:34:19] John: Super smart. I love it. I love it. I absolutely love it. I think what you’re offering overall is hugely beneficial and it’s, I don’t want to say it’s about time because there’s, everyone’s been doing it, but at the same time, it’s about time, let’s get this, let’s get this leverage and betterment for everyone involved.

[00:34:38] Jeff: It’s it’s so funny that this whole start of this conversation focused around, the community finally getting together and the fact that like everybody playing nice and moving in the same direction is going to elevate the industry. And that’s literally all we do.

[00:34:51] Jeff: That’s what we are doing in our own little sliver of that, but very much. Aggregating the industry together and getting everybody to play nice, buy from the same companies to benefit everybody’s bottom line.

[00:35:01] John: yOu’ve been on both sides. You were, a property manager, you’re doing arbitrage, now you’re on the vendor side. Two things. Are you still doing anything? Are you still hosting at all? Are you still running a property management company and doing that?

[00:35:16] Jeff: Not my full company I ended up splitting up the company when I decided to do HostGPL full time. So I haven’t been involved with the entire prop that entire company anymore but I do still have a handful of properties myself. That are just the ones you can never, the ones that you can never give away, the ones that have been running themselves for six, seven years and just, they just do great,

[00:35:36] John: I love it. So you’re still doing both. Like what, what is, if you were to leave our listeners with anything from knowing both sides the way you have in this in I always have to like, when I have a conversation with somebody, I’m just like, Hey, I’ve never been a host.

[00:35:51] John: I’ve I talk to hundreds and thousands of people, every year. I think I’m in a better position than most that have only been on the vendor side of things. Because I understand, right? And I’ve been a vendor for more companies than I’d like to admit throughout my tenure here in the short term rental space.

[00:36:09] John: I’m very happy where I am now. But, so I’ve seen from payment processing to, digital marketing to software to, I’ve seen it all, right? But I love talking to, those that have actually been property managers and are continuing to be property managers and they’re also on the vendor side.

[00:36:24] John: If you could share some nugget with our audience of whether now or, outlook into the future, what would that be?

[00:36:32] Jeff: Yeah, I think one that I keep coming back to is, Taking a page out of the hotel playbook is not a bad idea, right? There’s this aversion to we’re short term rentals, they’re hotels. This is we can’t like, I don’t even want to listen or look at them, right? That’s wrong. I’ll tell you what they’re doing. They’re not doing that.

[00:36:54] Jeff: They’re looking at the short term rental industry and they’re being like, what’s going on over here? One, how do we get into the space of short term rentals? But two, why are people booking these? And you know what the big move in the hotel industry right now is? Just as a, precursor to the takeaway the hotel industry If you walk into a lobby of a hotel like especially a newer hotel right now, you will see that it has an Instagrammable moment inside of it.

[00:37:16] Jeff: That it has a giant flower wall with a swing and some neon signs, and whatever, and the hotel lobby, and there is an Instagrammable space there. Now, That isn’t an accident. That is because the hotel industry saw what the short term rental industry was doing with these Instagrammable stays and really focusing on high design and trying to make unique experiences.

[00:37:37] Jeff: And they’re taking a page from the design of the short term rental industry and putting that in their book. And so I think that we should be taking pages from the hotel playbook and using it in the short term rental space. And so one of those is the fact that hotel companies operate and think about things. Longer than just the immediate future. And I think that short term rental industry folks in general tend to be really focused on the immediate future. And what that means is everything from, well, I just want my bottom line to make sense. Right now, like, how do I get my bottom line to make sense immediately?

[00:38:17] Jeff: If I do the next three months that are making sense and they’re cash flowing and I’m making profit out of the gate, there’s a big focus on that, I think across the industry. Some of the bigger companies have longer vision and broader vision, but I would encourage everybody to do is start thinking longer term about your investment.

[00:38:35] Jeff: And that isn’t just hey, buy better quality furniture that’s going to last longer, or standardize your linen so they all match in a year from now, as opposed to buying random stuff from, Target or whatever. I think that it goes into things like, are you building a Hospitality brand or processes to message people and deal with guests and focus on guest centric stays and high quality reviews and collecting email addresses and creating a brand for yourself and putting your

[00:39:03] John: 100 percent brand awareness.

[00:39:04] Jeff: Brand awareness, like, all of those things are, and I was a I don’t want to say, I don’t want to victimize myself, but I made that mistake in my vacation rental company, which was, and it wasn’t even a mistake at the time, it’s just, there was this gray area and you were, it was like, lonely, because you weren’t sure if you were supposed to be talking about the fact that you were a vacation rental company or not, because it’s wasn’t it was legal, but not sanctioned, and like that, those times are gone.

[00:39:29] Jeff: If you have, a brand and you have a good enough property, and again, this isn’t for everybody, but if you have a bunch of properties and you can have a website or you have, a really great property that has an Instagram handle, like lean into building long term equity value with your brand, if you can, by the way, this doesn’t make sense for everybody.

[00:39:47] Jeff: There’s like a ton of people out there that like. don’t have cups in their house and they’re like really focused on how to get, how to channel people through their direct booking website. I’m like, you have to like, you have to get through steps one through, nine.

[00:40:00] Jeff: Everybody should go in that direction when you’re ready. But I think that this overall kind of takeaway is I really hope that people start looking at their vacation rental businesses from a longer term horizon of, it’s not just about squishing out the money right now. It’s about investing into a business that a year from now and two years from now can continue to be more and more profitable.

[00:40:23] Jeff: And how can I think about doing that intentionally now so that, I’m not just dipping my toe in the space because you’re going to lose. You don’t just go to the gym and lift 500 pounds, right? That’s just not, you don’t just walk in

[00:40:34] John: I do, as you can tell.

[00:40:37] Jeff: but Hey, look, but you know what? You’ve been going to the gym for years. You’ve been lifting 50 pounds, then a hundred pounds. And you’ve been thinking about how am I going to lift 500 pounds down the road, not just dip in your toe. And anyways, that’s, that would be my kind of.

[00:40:49] John: I think it’s really insightful and we talk a lot about on the show about brand and brand awareness and we talk a lot about the, the need to scale appropriately, looking at, ROI as in like a short term as in a year, like how do I get return on investment in a year or two years, and I think is short sighted, to go ahead and look at ROI as in 5, 10, 15 years.

[00:41:12] John: As an investment, and when you look at brand, how do you go ahead if you have five properties and they’re all different and they all feel different, you’re not doing the right thing. What is your brand? What are your brand standards?

[00:41:24] John: How do you go ahead and put that into every one of your properties and keep the same level? When someone looks at, Acme or whatever brand, whatever vacation rental company brand you are. And they, just a Hilton, just like a Marriott, just like any one of these companies, when you stay at a Marriott, you know what you’re getting.

[00:41:41] John: When you stay at a Hilton, you know what you’re getting. And, I know so many people say, they’re using their rewards points for whatever reason. This is the only place I’ll stay. The same with flying. Like I only fly Delta, right? For a reason, that’s, there’s a reason behind it.

[00:41:55] John: That’s your brand, dad. You built

[00:41:57] Jeff: lemon, it’s the lemon bars. That’s what it is for me. That’s the reason.

[00:42:00] John: Absolutely. But. The, these are the type of things that, you need to start thinking about, in the beginning what is my brand? How are my guests gonna go ahead and see that in social, the first, opening of that door and walking into that STR, it’s oh, does it, exude X brand?

[00:42:20] John: If it does, you’re doing it right and you’re starting off in the right foot, and think about that over, the trajectory of your business. When I talk to people regarding, software, right? I’m in software sales, right? I sell a software and, one of the things that chaps may ass more than anything else is when I’m getting on these social these groups and people are like, What software should you use?

[00:42:43] John: And there’s three or four recommendations that are out there. I use X, I use this, I use that. Ask some friggin questions. How big are you? What type of properties are you renting out? What is your ideal client? Where do you see yourself in five years?

[00:42:56] John: What are you trying to do with your software? By purchasing a software, are you trying to eliminate things? How are you? And there’s so many friggin questions that people aren’t asking. They’re just It’s like someone like, where should I buy my linens? Okay,

[00:43:09] Jeff: what linens? Even better, what linens should I buy? Even if you know the company, which ones should I get? I don’t know. What are you doing with your home?

[00:43:16] John: what’s the best bed for my short term rental?

[00:43:19] Jeff: Yeah. What, how much are you trying to rent it out for a night? Which bedroom are you talking about? Are you talking about which bed you should get for your main bedroom or which one you should get for your trundle? Like they’re very different.

[00:43:28] John: How long are you looking, like, how long is this bed going to be in this one place? Is this a, and there’s so many different questions. But yeah, we’re on the same page with this.

[00:43:37] Jeff: I think it’s great. And if I was a skeptical listener, I would be like, yeah, but I only have five properties or I only have seven properties. Nobody’s going to like book my brand name right now, et cetera.

[00:43:48] Jeff: Okay. Sure. Maybe. I don’t know if that’s true or not. Depends. But what they will do is. let’s just say base level, they found you on Airbnb, right? They’re going to click on your profile. They’re going to look at all of your listings and they’re going to see if you have a new property, they’re going to want to know what are the ratings of the other four properties that you manage?

[00:44:10] Jeff: And that is your brand, right? Your brand is that level of consistency. It is knowing that, Oh, you know what? When they click on that, like they’re going to, they’re going to know that I have a five in communication on all of these other things, like maybe they’re going to dive that deep, maybe they aren’t, but.

[00:44:24] John: Most are today. Most are

[00:44:26] Jeff: it. I do it for sure.

[00:44:29] John: Absolutely, me too.

[00:44:30] Jeff: You, you want to, look, it’s an interesting kind of longer conversation about the whole super host versus the new kind of Airbnb badge for, property level. But what you can say about the super host badges. It’s cross property, right?

[00:44:45] Jeff: It’s, and there’s a reason for that. That’s like a brand badge, brand standard badge. The other one is a property level badge. Which I think is interesting.

[00:44:53] John: Yeah, it’s definitely we could spend a whole other show on that, but I

[00:44:56] Jeff: I’ll come back. Let me

[00:44:57] John: that’s good. That’s it. Hey Jeff, this has been great. I appreciate you joining the show. This has been awesome. And thanks again. Yeah, definitely will want to have you back.

[00:45:05] Jeff: Anytime. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:45:07] John: Absolutely. Hey, for those of you listening you want to go ahead and learn more about Host GPO, where do you go?

[00:45:13] Jeff: yoU can go to host GPO. That’s for group purchasing organization. So host GPO. com or follow us on any of the things that you can be followed on at host GPO.

[00:45:23] John: And at the NoBSPodcast. co will, there’ll be a link for all of Jeff’s and Host GPO’s things and go ahead and find it there. And if you like our podcast and you love what we’re putting out, go ahead and go to Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Leave a review. Give us five stars. We appreciate it. Swipe up or whatever the hell you do.

[00:45:44] John: We appreciate your help and support. Thanks again .