Corey Walters on Product Experience and Impact on Customers

Corey Walters on Product Experience and Impact on Customers

[00:00:00] Corey Ashton Walters: Welcome to be customer led, where we’ll explore help. Leading experts in customer and employee experience are navigating organizations through their own journey to be customer led and the actions and behaviors employees and businesses exhibit to get there. And now your host, Bill Stagos.

[00:00:32] Bill Staikos: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another week of B Customer led. I’m your host, Bill Staco, another amazing guest for you all this week, Corey Walters is the founder and CEO of a really cool company here.co. And Corey’s gonna outline it for us and tell us what you know he’s been up to and what he’s doing with the company as well as we’re gonna focus on just also product experience and why it’s important to customer experience.

And Corey, I’m really excited to have you on the show. Thanks for joining us.

[00:00:58] Corey Ashton Walters: Thank you, Bill. Great to meet you. Great to hang out today. Yeah. So put simply here, essentially turns vacation rentals into stocks that, individuals can trade. So the idea is, bringing. Really real estate investing and specifically short term vacation rentals, think Airbnbs to the masses.

So, essentially here just makes it easy for the average person to invest, which historically over the last couple years, not only has it become incredibly hard to buy a house to live in, but it’s become virtually impossible for the average person to become a real estate investor. So we think, vacation rentals are probably one of the best asset classes to invest in, in real.

And we’ve made it incredibly easy for the average person to invest as little as a hundred dollars in an individual property. So it’s, it’s a very cool concept we’ve been working on for about, two

[00:01:38] Bill Staikos: years. That’s very cool. So low, low sort of entry point from an investment perspective. I mean, obviously you can buy a stock for a dollar, but like Yeah.

getting a share in a, in a vacation rental and getting sort of passive income coming from that on some level. Exactly.

[00:01:52] Corey Ashton Walters: A bad. Yep, exactly. It’s identical the way that we structure the company and really the property ownership structure is very similar to if the two of us got together and partnered on a piece of real estate and you own 50% and I, I own 50%.

Yeah. The big difference is instead of there being two of us owning a property, there’s hundreds of us that own that property and we split those dividends, so to speak, amongst ourselves. So rental income, appreci. Things like that. And, the, the barriers are much lower than, you know. Yeah. The two of us coming together on a $500,000 property, we’d both have to come out of pocket, $50,000 a piece and it would take, some people years to save that amount of money.

[00:02:24] Bill Staikos: So, full disclosure for listeners, I’ve not bought anything on here.co yet, yet, but I am looking at it because it’s a really cool opportunity just to diversify, my portfolio and get into something that’s pretty. My wife and I have been trying to buy a beach house for 20 years. We still can’t afford one, but at some point, hey, I might as well own a piece of one.

Hey Corey, I’m really, so one, like, we’ll, we’ll talk a little bit more about here, do co as we kind of weave through the conversation. But, I’m, I’m curious, just let’s start, like, let’s share your journey a little bit cuz it’s pretty cool one. Sure. Like, you’ve been kind of like a serial entrepreneur almost since you were like in your teens on some level, right?

Like, and how did that kind of lead you to hear do co so, I’d love to hear

[00:03:04] Corey Ashton Walters: that story. Yeah, so, I’ve been quietly starting companies more loudly, starting companies since I was about 15 years old since before I think I had a driver’s license. I started a a t-shirt company with a, a couple friends from high school.

We screen printed t-shirts and then we would sell them at high school. So it was like this surf brand with the cool logo. It was called eit. And we were really excited about it. And I think we made it a, a whole summer. We, I think we made about $500 in profit and we split it amongst ourselves. And that was our summer fun money.

And then the business was dead. That was it. So that was the , that was the first, foray in the business. there’s been fits and starts and, and really I got into, the, the tech industry right around 2019. I started my last company called Home Worthy, which was a fully digital, real estate brokerage that helped people living in rural America sell a house.

So, think about people that live in, in small town America. generally if you look up real estate listings there for sale, the photos are kind of grainy. The technology is somewhat outdated in regards to deliverables and in big city America, there’s drone aerials, there’s 3D scans. There’s so much more that the, the buyer sees before purchasing at home.

And we thought, well, what if we brought big city tools in technology to small town America? Could we help them sell their homes for more money and faster than their neighbor? So that was the launching thesis for Home Worthy. We launched in 2019 and then, unfortunately we walk into March of 2020, which everybody remembers where they was, where it’s kind of my version of nine 11.

It’s like everybody remembers where you were when nine 11 happened. Most people remember what was happening when March, 2020 hit. And. In Homer’s case, it was kind of like our moment, we built a fully remote way to sell a house. Unfortunately, we just timed, we, we had the timing wrong. We were a startup that, raised a little bit of money, but not a ton of money.

We were still very early, We’d only raised money from angel investors. We hadn’t reached the point of raising money from venture capitalists. We weren’t super well funded. So we unfortunately reached the end of or runway at probably the worst time possible, which is right when Covid 19 kicked off. So, unfortunately, Homeward didn’t survive the pandemic, but I refused to give up.

So I refused to, keep pushing, pushing the envelope and, and trying to create. And around, the end of 2020, Airbnb was getting ready to go public and there was a great amount of just like exposure, research, you name it on the business model of Airbnb and really just short term rentals in general.

And, there was this great research report from a, a company called Grandview Research. And about halfway through the report, they basically dissected the Airbnbs one and. In that report, it basically said by 20 25, 70 5% of all travel and leisure spend in North America was gonna be made by millennials or younger.

So it was a pretty big determination. It basically meant in the next, at the time, it was like that next half decade, four or five years, now, we’re almost two years away from that, that the majority of spend in hotels, travel, flights, et cetera, we’re gonna be driven by young people. And I thought, there’s something hidden in here.

There’s something hidden inside this data. Like there’s something that’s not being, there’s a story that’s not being told. And I went down a bit of a rabbit hole and popped out the other side, and I thought there’s gonna be a pretty big supply demand imbalance of the demand for alternative accommodations when people travel and the current supply that exists, which is largely fragmented and somewhat inconsistent.

So, I dunno how often you stay in Airbnbs, but in many cases it’s somewhat of a coin tos, what you’re gonna walk into. So it is, yeah. Is, is the home gonna be clean or the sheet’s gonna be clean? Am I even gonna be able to get access? I mean, sometimes you’ll show up to the home. The door doesn’t work or the lock doesn’t work, or there’s the smart lock isn’t working or they haven’t described how, how to get into the home.

And I thought there’s an opportunity here to really elevate that experience and, and really bring that to the masses. And that was the kernel of the idea for here. But it really became what it was about six months later when we discovered the fraction of ownership model. So I listened to a lot of podcasts, like yours.

you, you name and I listen to probably five podcasts a week, and there was this great podcast guest, that was the founder of a company called Masterworks. And essentially what Masterworks does is they make high end art and very valuable art like Picassos and bank skis and things like that available to the masses through fractional ownership.

[00:07:02] Corey Ashton Walters: So the ideas that you can invest in, what the hyper wealthy invest in, which was like really high-end, rare art as a normal person. And I thought that is so cool. Like that is so cool. How do they do it? Cuz generally I thought that was illegal. Cause you’re basically selling securities to normal Americans.

And so I thought there’s, there’s, they gotta be figur, they must have cracked some kind of code. And turns out they did. And they used this filing structure with the SEC called the Reggae Plus. Yeah. And what the Reggae Plus does is it allows you to really securitize and fractionalize anything with value and make it easy for anybody to invest in that thing.

They did it with artwork and I thought, Well, what if you pointed this at real estate and what if he pointed it at this kind of idea that I was working on, on this idea? Really creating a elevated experience for people and a consistent experience for people that wanna travel to these great vacation destinations.

And that was probably the, the two big kind of kernels of the founding story for here. And then we went off to the races as quickly as possible and. We had no money by the way. So my company failed. I was living on Washington State unemployment. Oh man. we were broke. Broke, and we bootstrapped the company and we threw up like a crappy website and like, and when I say we, it was me.

So I say we, cuz there’s, there is a, we now, by the time it was just me, we threw up this like crappy Squarespace website and I think at the time we paid five to $10 a day in ad sp whatever the Facebook minimum was. Yeah. So I think Facebook’s minimum ad spend, I think it’s around three to $5 a day. So we paid for ads and I said, I wonder if anybody’s gonna show up.

And it was to our surprise is that people showed up pretty fast and I was very lucky to do this. It’s not like this is premeditated, but I set up a Zapier Z, if you’re familiar with Zapier. Yeah, sure. Which basically like automates tasks that connect apps. And I set up a zappers zap that when somebody signs up, it sends an automatic email from me that says, Hey, my name’s Corey.

thank you for joining here. I would love just to hang out for like five minutes over a Zoom coffee if you’re interested in just hanging out. Like this isn’t a sales pitch, just like hang out. And the big light bulb moment was the amount of people at the time, I think it was like one out of four people that signed up was were eager to meet.

[00:09:03] Corey Ashton Walters: They’re like, Yeah, I would love to talk. That’s awesome. And that was our first experience. And just like it, we’d started talking to customers at basically day zero as, as soon as humanly possible. And what’s ironic is, My, the first two founding team members of here, we met that way. So like, so after I just started working on here, Caleb had a product, we met that way, and Eugene, our head of real estate now, he was actually head of property acquisition.

Now he is head of real estate. They signed up as users. We just became buds from doing this and we ended up building the project together. So it was a really cool, it was a really cool way to, to, to start a company. I’ve never done anything like that. It was, it was, it was very special.

[00:09:38] Bill Staikos: I love that man.

That’s such a great story. I, You totally just socially social engineered, like the founding of a company, right? Like

[00:09:46] Corey Ashton Walters: that’s so cool. Yeah, by luck. So I’m definitely not smart. So it was totally by luck. It was kind of like what felt right. And with home worthy, we were frightened of our customers.

We were very afraid to talk to our customers, homeowners, people that wanna sell at home. It’s a very emotional experience. Sure. It’s very different than buying a home. Buying a home is exciting. Selling a home, you just don’t know why somebody’s selling it home Stress. So I was so afraid to talk to our customers because every time I talked to ’em, they’d be upset, they would be mad, and we just couldn’t handle it.

It was, it was, it was a very, very hard process. It was very hard to, to make home sellers happy. And in here’s case, it was just so refreshing. I was like, I gotta fight this uphill in case I’ve gotta, I’ve gotta, I. Conquer my fear of not talking to our customers. And we, and now it’s, it’s part of our company culture.

Like, we have a team member that continues to do what I do every day. His name’s Tucker and he’s the same thing I did at the very beginning, but he’s continued to do that, which is when people sign up, he tries to reach out, he tries to get to know him. It’s not a sell fest. We’re not trying to upsell him or sell him add-ons or anything like that.

It’s really just to understand who they are, what they wanna see us build, and really just, just digesting those conversations. And now Tucker’s become almost. The, the voice of our customer. So whenever we have meetings, I’ll ask him his opinion, even if it has nothing to do with what he’s experienced in mm-hmm.

because he’s this weird, almost like, like the, this, in like scary movies, they’ve got like the, the person that sits around the table that like conjures the spirit, and they the spirit speak through the person, the customer whisperer. Yeah. Tucker is that person. But, and how do you guys

[00:11:16] Bill Staikos: do that?

Like, so how do you do that in practice? Like, is he joining? You and the founders, like, do you guys have like a regular call with, with him and you guys are talking about sort of like, what are you hearing? Does he, does he kind of summarize like weekly, like, here’s what I’m hearing. Like how does that manifest from the company?

[00:11:32] Corey Ashton Walters: It’s hard to quantify, but the way that I see it is if he’s, he’s a, if he’s emotionally charged or driven by an opinion, it comes from that, from those conversations. And the reason why I say that is because when we first started at here, We were highly combative in a good way, in a positive way with each other, around opinions and things like that.

And, and in many cases it was me being Tucker, like it was me saying, mm-hmm , we talked to these customers. I talk to these cus I know they don’t want this. I’ve talked to 50 people in the last four days. I know they don’t want this. Why are we building this? And I think. The biggest takeaway and when I meet other founders, specifically founders at the early, early, early stage, it’s talk to them as soon as, and it’s actually, there’s, it’s never too late to start.

Mm-hmm. , like it’s never too late to start talking to them. But you have to build it into your company and you basically have to have somebody that, It’s almost like if you can invite a customer into your, if you can invite a customer into your, your team meetings or your weekly town hall meetings, like that’s the equivalent of, of having somebody on our team that does that.

Cause you wanna hear their opinions like you wanna hear. You have these, you have these internal drivers and these things that you are confident about or passionate about, or things that you wanna see in the world, But at the end of the day, you’re building it for somebody that wants to either buy it or use it.

So you have to know if they want it. And I don’t like believe in building things that people don’t want.

[00:12:48] Bill Staikos: There are so many companies out there, Corey, that don’t bring the customer into their development process, create user stories, personas, et cetera, through what they’re. Can you describe maybe a little bit of your development process, your product development process?

And it sounds like you’re bringing that feedback into and, and whether you’re doing like an agile, you’re doing sprints and all that, or not is, is irrelevant, but like can you talk a little bit about your product development process and then how you’re bringing, sort of what you’re learning about the customer into that

[00:13:16] Corey Ashton Walters: process?

Yeah, so I would say version one of this was what I just explained to you, which is really just these constant conversations. Yeah. And, and really just trying to digest an ongoing consensus among the, the folks you’re talking to. Now we’ve become more quantitative in regards to keeping track of that. So we survey, we survey two groups of people.

So we survey what we call, users. So users are people that sign up but haven’t made an investment yet. So we survey them and we give them the same exact survey that we survey, people that have invested. And we compare and contrast that data. And we look at things like ob, I mean the standard stuff, what are the type of features you’re looking for, et cetera.

But we also ask other things. Around, like what is an ideal place in America for you to invest in? Or, various other questions like that. And we constantly try to measure that. We’re constantly trying to measure that and identify that and see that. because again, it’s like at the early stage, if you run off and build the wrong thing, you kill a company.

Like it’s very easy, when you’re a late stage company or public, a publicly trading company, you can build a, a feature or you can build even a team. And it’s not that big of a deal if it’s not successful, but it’s incredibly important to just, I. Like Paul Graham from Y Combinator talks about this a lot, which is like, just listen to your customers build, listen to your customers build.

And like you can do that forever. Like I think you can do that forever, even at scale. But it’s a very important piece of what, what we think about. And again, like version one doesn’t have to be anything special. It’s just talking to people and then again, kind of being that. person in the scary movie that talks through the spirit, that, that has the spirits talk through ’em, and dedicating if it can’t be you as a founder, cuz you’re too busy at some point having somebody on the team that’s always doing it.

Because I think once you lose touch, touch your customers, you’ve really increased the risk of failure as a company. Well I think even

[00:14:55] Bill Staikos: Airbnb, right? They got similar advice like, and they went out and started talking to potential customers even though they were sleeping on couches, to start off and say, Hey, there could be something.

Yeah, they got similar taking the

[00:15:06] Corey Ashton Walters: photos themselves. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, that’s absolutely. Taking the photo and that, and I think that was a big one cause they got to meet the host, it’s like they got to meet the host, take the photos and Yep. There’s just that connection that, that matters. I think as a

[00:15:17] Bill Staikos: founder, Corey, you’ve got, you’ve got a tucker now.

I personally think it’s still important to, to somehow create and maintain the connection to, to your end users. Agreed. Obviously, as a company gets bigger, that is. There’s less opportunity to do so. What advice do you have for business owners or other founders out there perhaps that might be listening?

We’ve got a lot of business owners, even so entrepreneurs that, listen to show, How do you, like, is your advice just like, call them or reach out and just like ask them to be, come onto a zoom? Like what advice do you have for folks?

[00:15:53] Corey Ashton Walters: It’s hard cuz it’s not one size fits all. So in, in our case, We don’t have phones at here.

So this is kind of crazy to say we don’t have phones. So when we meet with people, it’s all Google meet or we have live chat and we have email and things like that. So that was an interesting table like, table setting that we had with these meetings. So we got the chance to see them and they got a chance to see us and see that we’re real.

And there’s something about when, like you and I right now are meeting over, over video and like I can see your expressions, you can see mine, we can build this kind of like eye bond that you have when you meet lock eyes with somebody. And I think that’s really, really, I think that’s an important piece is cuz it’s, it’s so hard.

I mean, if you own a restaurant, you can do it, you can walk by every table. But if you run a company that is digital, you can’t go and it’s really hard to go, to fly from. Miami, Florida to Phoenix, Arizona to meet one, but it’s just very hard’s hard and expensive and yeah, you’re kind of weird.

[00:16:45] Bill Staikos: Your burn, your burn rate kind of goes south

[00:16:48] Corey Ashton Walters: pretty quickly. You probably don’t have a lot of people that, that would agree to meet you, like, Hey, I’m gonna fly from this other place to, to have coffee with you. I mean, some people appreciate it, but some people might be creeped out. But I think it, again, one size doesn’t fit all, but I do think there’s value in the video call if they’re open.

Because I think that’s the way that you build super fans, and I think you know this, this is what I’m building on here, is that, the reason why we do it and kind of the mission inside the mission of doing this, it’s arduous. It’s an arduous task. You’re, you’re having a lot of calls. It’s very tiresome and not everybody’s friendly.

Sometimes people are grumpy. It’s human nature, But you get to find super fans and they get, again, they get to know you. You get to know them, and there’s this thing that happens over video and it works. And I really believe in it. So like everything we do, when we think about building new products, when we think about new features, when we think about removing something, adding something, it’s always about, well, what would the super fan, like, what would the super fans think?

Mm-hmm. like, because those we’re, we’re really trying to multiply them. It’s like we’re really trying to find these people that are emboldened by the brand, excited about the brand, excited to invest. They’re gonna tell a hundred. So you’re really kind of hunting or, or really searching for the super fans.

And that’s the coin. We, I mean it’s, we didn’t come up with a term, but that’s the term we use internally as kind of like the mission inside of the mission of having these conversations. How

[00:18:04] Bill Staikos: do you do identify a superfan? Like what are some of the things, and, and obviously it can be different business to business, but like you’re on a phone with someone, you’re talking to them.

How do you kind of say, this person is

[00:18:15] Corey Ashton Walters: a super. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a com Well, again, hard qualitative, hard to quantify. I mean, with, with seat modern CRMs, you can look at engagement, you can look at various things. But a lot of it is a, for lack of a better word, a vibe. you can just see, again, back to the video calls.

You can see it when somebody’s excited to talk with you. Like you can just see it. It’s an obvious thing, but they’ll be emailing you about other stuff. I mean, I’ll give you a great example and I think you’ll appreciate this. We’re very fortunate, but also unfortunate that usually when we launch properties, they sell out in, minutes to hours.

So when we launch new property, they sell it in usually a little less than 30 minutes in, in a lot of cases. And it’s exciting, but it’s also frustrating because you have people that they’re on their lunch break and if it launches, they don’t get in. They’ve been waiting for that property in Joshua Tree or Big Bear or wherever, and they miss it.

And it’s, it, it is disappointing, but it’s, fortunate but unfortunate. But the point I wanted to make is we had a member, which is like a customer, what we call is like what our customer would we. That sent in a, a, a picture message so that he sent in a picture message to us and said, I’m bummed I missed investing.

I was hiking this morning and he took a selfie of him hiking on a mountain . That’s awesome. That’s a super fan. Yeah, and those are the type, and it’s like, and, and let’s say his name is is, is Jim. It’s like we’re looking for 500 more gyms. Like we, we were looking for this. Those are our people. Yeah. It’s like those are the kind of people that make us excited and who we’re building it for.

But that’s an example of an identifiable trade of a super fan. like he’s, he’s bummed that he didn’t get a chance to invest. He sent us a selfie of him on a mountain. When he very well could have never, I mean that’s, it’s, it’s, it’s so many extra steps and so many extra levels of friction.

He could have simply just not answered any of our stuff. And that’s, so those are some of the things that we look for. But it’s, again, it’s, it’s easy, it’s hard to quantify, but there’re these certain traits and every, every use case in every company has a different version of a superfan is a restaurant.

Somebody that comes in every Sunday, super fan. A restaurant that comes in every Sunday and then brings their family for every birthday, for every kid and every grandparent. Super fan. Yep. It really varies by company and by situation.

[00:20:17] Bill Staikos: And do you bring the super fans in more regularly? Whether that’s like, Hey, we’ve got some ideas we want to run by you, Like do you.

Yes. How do you engage them with them? Yes. Mean we keep track of them, but is there another

[00:20:28] Corey Ashton Walters: way to do that? We keep track of ’em. We keep track of them and we reach out to ’em lot. We’ve opened conversations with them on a, on a either weekly or monthly basis. We do special things for super fans, so, we’ll, we don’t tell them that’s coming, but we’ll send them like a hoodie.

Like you see, I’ve got a bunch of here swag on if you’re watching this. Like I’ve got a bunch of here swag on on myself and like we send ’em a hoodie. We don’t really tell ’em it’s coming. It just kind of shows up like, cool. We do these special things to let ’em know that we know, like we we’re thinking about ’em and it, and again, it’s hard to systematize.

But it’s an important thing to think about. So as a founder, in my opinion, like even if you can’t build a perfect system around it, Yeah, I don’t think it’s possible because there’s, cuz my use case won’t work for another company and their use case probably won’t work for another company. So, it’s an important piece of, of how we think about building product, but then also wind building product.

Which of our customers we’re most interested in hearing from their feedback.

[00:21:16] Bill Staikos: Very cool. We know when we met, I guess maybe almost, I don’t know, six weeks ago or so. Yeah. for the first. I, when I got off the phone with you, I, I think a lot about Web three and, and Metaverse. I was like, This would be cool if you guys did that, by the way, You don’t have to answer that on the show.

Don’t answer that on the show . But, if you think about sort of like how expensive even Metaverse properties have become the investment there. I don’t know if, Reggae Plus would cover Metaverse, but like, Wow. You

[00:21:44] Corey Ashton Walters: never know. Yeah. I mean, I think I. A reward. I think the future of reward systems, like, I dunno if you have the Starbucks app, but it’s a, it’s an awesome reward system.

Little stars are great and they give you these extra little bonuses and things like that. I think the future of Reward Systems is, is web three. Like I think it’s obvious that that’s the future there. And the reason why I say that is with securities there’s this tough like, Black and white in certain scenarios, and then other scenarios, not so black and white.

So it’s very hard, we took the, we wanna be buttoned up, we wanna be legal from day one path, And the challenge is, is that it’s hard to depart off of that because of how much effort, money, time, et cetera, goes into it. So I’m not ruling out Web three, but I think it’s so cool. Like I own a couple NFTs.

I, I, I’m a big fan of a lot of it, and, it’d be, I’d be lying to you if I didn’t tell you I didn’t think about it. Like how could it be woven into Yeah. Here. But it’s a, a challenge with here because we work so closely with the s sec and there’s been so much undefined in regards to what’s okay and what’s not okay.

But I definitely think about it. I’m with you. I’m a fan of it too.

[00:22:51] Bill Staikos: Yeah. Very, very. By the way, I never asked you how did you come up with a name here? Do com. Oh

[00:22:57] Corey Ashton Walters: man. Okay. This is gonna be fun. So I’ve never told this story before. Really? I’ve never told a story on breaking Before breaking. I told it to the team.

I’ve never told it to the team, but so we used to be called something else. I’m not gonna mention it. You could buy, dig around the internet and find it. But we used called something else when we first started working on the project very early. So like early 2021, we had like a holding name. And we were trying to get the trademark for it and we just couldn’t get the trademark for it.

Too many issues, too many challenges. Really couldn’t figure it out. And I remember our trademark lawyer saying, You’re gonna have to come up with a name in like 72 hours. Like this name’s not gonna work. You have to come up with a name in like 72 hours. Because we needed to file. There was just a lot of moving parts and we needed to come up with a new name pretty quickly.

And I, I live very close to the beach. So, I live in Maryland, Florida, which is very close to Coco Beach, Florida, if you know where that is. And I went out and walked on the beach at night and I had a couple names that we were thinking about. I was thinking about, and I was like, Here is the name. Like, that’s the name.

And, and I, but I had to, I was on a crazy crunch. And then we had to find a domain. I mean, here, dot com is an impossible domain to acquire. So the next step after you have that is then finding the domain. And I work. Great Domain broker is named sl, Shout out Slate. And he helped us find here.co. And we were able to acquire, I mean it was like from start to finish, it was a week and then I actually designed the logo myself.

So it was like fast. It was, I mean it was fast, fast. We had to move incredibly fast. We had a lot of moving parts to make that possible, but holy cow. Yeah, it was a bit of soul searching cuz that the old name, I was, I was married, I like, love the old name and, but we just couldn’t, We couldn’t, I mean that’s the hard thing about naming a company.

it’s more than just the name. You’ve got, Can you get the domain, Can you get the seo? Yep. Can is it legal? Meaning like, is there trademark issues? Like it’s, it’s very tough.

[00:24:50] Bill Staikos: Well, I think it’s a very cool name. Thank you. Particularly because like you’re investing here. Right. Like that’s, there’s a spot in the world that you are now an owner of a piece of it.

So it’s, it’s, it’s a

[00:25:00] Corey Ashton Walters: perfect name. Well, and the tough thing about naming a company is that we’re we, we arrive at the nexus of FinTech real estate and travel, and the challenges is that people are staying in here properties. So we couldn’t call ourselves, Short term rental investment.com. And, but because then it’s, you know what I mean?

Or whatever the, the name, that’s a lazy name, but you know what I mean? Like we could, we had to come up with a name that could speak to both investors, but also guests. Yeah. Because at, at the end of the day, there’s gonna be hundreds or thousands of these properties and people are gonna experience the brand.

And it’s like, And what’s funny is I, the reason how he came up with the name, I was like, well, there’s gonna be a doormat on every property. and it’s like what’s printed on the door mat when they walk up? And I’m like, how cool would it be if you walked up on the door mat? You walk in, you gotta like jingle your keys or grab your phone.

You look down and it says the word here. Yep. It’s just cool. So that is very cool. But, But it’s funny cuz now all of our properties have a door mat with a here logo on them at the front door. So That’s awesome. It’s just fun. It’s fun, it’s fun. Love that.

[00:26:00] Bill Staikos: That’s an awesome story, man. I’m always inspired by founder stories and particularly how they come up with the name, because obviously there’s a deep connection to that.

Mm-hmm. Right. But number two is, They always, they vary so much. Sure. Thanks for sharing that, by the way. Of course. I really appreciate that. Yeah, of course. Hey, I ask each ge and I told you, I mentioned I would do this, but I ask each, each guest to ask a question of my next guest and the question from my previous guest.

For you, there are a lot of factors that are going to impact businesses, large or small. What plans do you have or how do you think about lowering your cost of acquisi?

[00:26:40] Corey Ashton Walters: That’s an interesting question. When we think about, we live at a really tough zone with here because we can’t directly solicit securities, through traditional channels because of issues around disclosure.

It’s very hard to disclose in, in advertisement, specifically print or, static image. So we’re, we’re, we live in a really tough world, so it’s, it’s hard cause we can’t optimize for somebody making an investment. We have to optimize for somebody signing. So the things that we think about a lot, or I should say I’m the quasi CMO here currently.

we don’t have a marketing. We, I am the marketing team currently. I’m like, Elon Musk version of, he, they have no PR team and it’s just him except I’m the, I’m the cmo. I’m, I got, we got no marketing team. It’s basically just me, trying to lead it. And one of the things we think a lot about is taking control or ownership of how we acquire customers.

[00:27:32] Corey Ashton Walters: So, traditional. Channels like Google and Facebook, and even print and tv. They’re great. They’re tried and true, but the challenge is you don’t really control the inflating costs, specifically Google Ads, Facebook, I mean, historically they go up and down based on, time of year, et cetera.

Yep. We’ve really, really have found our stride in influencer marketing and it’s, it’s something we think, very highly of, specifically YouTube. It’s a slower burn. You’re kind of fishing for a hit in a way, like Right, you, we, and we work with partners for the long term on YouTube, but it’s something that we think a lot about.

But in regards to driving the cost down, you just have to be very sensitive about making changes to the site, specifically pre-sign up. So the site that you see here is largely the same copy, the same format, and the same messaging as when I launched the site. A year and a half ago on a crappy square space site.

It’s a different design now, but it’s the same, it’s almost identical. format where UX you name, it’s very, very similar and it’s because we found really great conversion early and now I’m almost not scared by not the word, but I’m almost. What’s the word I’m looking for? What’s it, what, what’s it where you’re, you’re, Anyways, I’m, forget the word, but ,

[00:28:49] Bill Staikos: the word’s not important.

You have a feeling. Yes. It makes you

[00:28:52] Corey Ashton Walters: uncomfortable. Yes. I, yeah. Superstitious. That’s the word I’m looking for. I’m superstitious of making changes to the site because I think, well, specifically at our stage, if you’re twisting too many, like if you’re testing a lot of different channels mm-hmm. , affiliate influencer market.

Traditional paid search, print, media, et cetera. If you’re twisting the knobs in the site too, specifically, pre-sign up, like preconversion, it’s hard to get data on if these channels are working. So right now what we do is we measure these channels against each other, meaning acquisition channels without messing with the site.

Mm-hmm. so that we can understand customer acquisition across, across channels and, and lifetime value across channels. And then once we’ve got, and again, we’ve been rolling out new tests in, in different channels for the last six months. Once we have kind of a stable of these different channels Yeah.

Acquisition channels, then we can start to tweak the site, if that makes sense. Yeah. Sorry for that. So I start with that, there’s a little bump, but then we have to, then we could tweak the site. So again, it, I, I’m not necessarily sure that it’s actually the smart decision, but it’s one of the natures of being.

CEO without a marketing team, you have to be careful about what dials you’re changing because you don’t actually get to learn if you’re doing too much specifically in driving customer acquisition costs down, which is something we think a lot about.

[00:30:07] Bill Staikos: Man, that’s an amazing answer. There was so much learning and goodness in that like minute and a half or whatever we just spent on that.

Thank you for sharing that. Of course. Hey, I’m gonna turn the tables to you. Corey, what question do you have for my next guest?

[00:30:19] Corey Ashton Walters: Okay, so. This, gimme an interesting one. This actually, I mean, it kind have to do with work, but kind of fun as well. So if you could live and work remotely anywhere in the world, where would it be and why?

So that’s the question. Very

[00:30:37] Bill Staikos: cool question. I’m thinking about my answer right

[00:30:40] Corey Ashton Walters: now. Wonder that? Can you gimme your answer? Are you allowed to? Is this how it works? Are you allowed to give me your answer on the I’ll give you my, I’ve never

[00:30:45] Bill Staikos: done this. Okay. But I’ll give you my answer. , it’d probably be like, make ano grease, Right.

One, I’m Greek. I could speak the language so that I’ve got some. Yeah. You know there’s that. Number two, it’s cheap living. Mm-hmm. you, I mean for like a 2000 bucks a month you can live high in the hog, frankly. Right. And I mean how asking and beautiful, and you’re down by the ocean all day. Great. Yeah. Very, very cool.

I think that

[00:31:11] Corey Ashton Walters: might be my, Nice. Well now it’s official. So now if, if the, if the tides turn for you and you get to, you get to live and work anywhere, that’s where you’re going.

[00:31:19] Bill Staikos: I’m just hoping, not that I really played the lottery, but like, I hope I just went a billion dollars and then I can just go buy a big house there and never have to work again.

Agreed. That, that’s awesome. Hey, you said you get inspiration on the beach, at least you came up with the company name there, like where do you go? Like what fills your tires? Like where do you go for inspiration?

[00:31:36] Corey Ashton Walters: I, so I read a lot, so I, I read a lot. Sure. You see some books in the background? that’s where I go to be brought back up.

It’s where I go to build, It’s where I go to expand my mind. when I’ve came up with the idea for here, our colors are black and white and it’s because I was largely depressed when I was thinking about the idea I was going through divorce. My company was failing, et cetera. But the reason why I bring this up books, I bring books up, is I’ve really got into stoicism and specifically a book called The Practicing Stoic, which is an incredible book.

Yeah. and it really centered. To become, re-motivated, reinvigorated, and yeah, I mean, that’s where I generally go to. To find inspiration, to find new ideas, and to, recenter myself.

[00:32:17] Bill Staikos: Love that. Great answer, by the way. It’s a great book. It’s one of my favorite books, and I’m a Oh, you have the practicing stok.

Yeah. And I’m like, I forgot here without a, without a staunch. Yeah. Yeah. I’m a staunch, staunch, stoic. I mean, it’s, Oh, nice. Just control what you can, Just stay focused.

[00:32:31] Corey Ashton Walters: I think it’s the best book on stoicism. I mean, I mean, obviously. I, I think it’s the best book on stoicism. Yeah. And I think it’s the less, There’s no fluff.

I mean, there’s not, He doesn’t, he doesn’t add anything new. It’s an incredible book. I mean, it’s just organizing thoughts based on category and letting you infer the information. Yeah, it’s a great book. I always, that’s my favorite. I mean, my favorite book I always go back to.

[00:32:51] Bill Staikos: Hey, Corey, this has been a great, great conversation.

Thanks so much for coming on the show. For our listeners, again here, h e r e.co. co.co. go check out sort of the platform. I am, again, I’m looking at it as a, again, this is not an advertisement, obviously I have no investment in in the company, but again, I’ve been looking at it as a way just to diversify my portfolio and I think that, we’re, my family and I we’re beach people, we’re like vacation rental folks.

I’ve been burned by Airbnb, although I do love them as well. But really cool idea and be cool just to say like, Hey, I own these pieces of these places. And just be able to, to say that and do that, but also great. Obviously it’s nice from a passive income perspective too. Corey, thanks so much for being on the show.

It’s been wonderful to have you on and get to know you a little bit.

[00:33:35] Corey Ashton Walters: Great. Thank you so much, Bill. It’s great. Great to hang out today. All right,

[00:33:38] Bill Staikos: everybody. Another great show. We’re out. Talk to you soon everyone.

[00:33:41] Corey Ashton Walters: Thanks for listening to be customer led with Bill Stagos. We are grateful to our audience for the gift of their time.

Be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com. For more episodes, leave us feedback on how we’re doing, or tell us what you wanna hear more about. Until next time, we’re out.