From Track and Field to Treehouses: Lessons for Hospitality From Building Businesses In Other Industries - Nathan Woods, Bolt Farm Treehouse

Josiah: Nathan, thank you so much for taking some time to chat with us today. I've been looking forward to it and I want to get into your whole journey, but just to set the stage, maybe just let's tell our listeners that are maybe unfamiliar with the brand, tell us a little bit more about Bolt Farm Treehouse and what your role is there today. Then I'd love to get into the story of how you got there.

Nathan: Yeah, we're a really unique space and we're kind of in that mixture of luxury and glamping and that's popped up a lot in the last five, eight years. The backstory is Seth Bolt. He is a founding member of a rock band called NEEDTOBREATHE. He built an original treehouse on his parents' farm in Walhalla, South Carolina for his honeymoon, for his wedding. And it was at that, during that honeymoon and during that wedding season, that moment that him and his wife Tori got to experience a treehouse and experience that slowdown, experience that rest. And they just decided in that moment, too, that's what they wanted to do. And you kind of wonder, like, how can you do more than what you're already doing? But they went on the path to pursue that. And so that started with short term rentals, building a few more, building some more on in Charleston, South Carolina. And then that's what ultimately led over the course of a few years, buying this an amazing piece of property outside of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where we currently have 50 acres on this cliffside overlooking the valley. We're unique, like I said, in that mixture of glamping meets luxury, and you kind of said it. We are a resort with luxurious accommodations and truly cloud nine views. that invite our guests to rest and reconnect with nature, as you said, with their loved ones, with their purpose, and whether they're coming to celebrate life's biggest moments. We've hosted well over a thousand anniversaries, over 500 birthdays, and growing number of proposals and elopements and all that. Whether they're coming for those biggest moments of their lives or they're needing a place to truly rest from the craziness. They're going through some of the hardest times. We invite that space and we provide that environment so they can get that time to reflect and grieve. And our team sets that up so they can experience that. We're fast growing. We have big expansion plans for 2024 just in the property that we have in Tennessee. Right now we have 19 property, 19 accommodations between tree houses, geometric drones. and Muir Cabins, which at the time were the first in the U.S. In the next year, we'll be building more tree houses, expanding into more of a from a short term rental type space to a true resort with food and beverage and spa and a lot more experiences. So a lot of growth, a lot of needs for more people to come join us, what we're doing both remotely and on the property. So we're kind of getting set up to go through a big hiring phase and people find people that want to join us in creating these experiences for guests.

Josiah: Well, maybe to get into that, I would love to hear about your own journey into hospitality because you have not spent your whole career in hospitality, but you decided to focus on this as this next chapter of your career. You're building here, you're creating things in the world of hospitality. But let's rewind the clock for a little bit of context and talk about some of the roles and experiences that you had in business and as a way to kind of set that up and how you transitioned into hospitality.

Nathan: Yeah, it's funny when you, it's been, and you can look back in 10 years and be like, oh, this is obviously the path for your life. But in the moment you're like, I would have never guessed this is where I was headed. I, funny enough, got, I was, so my first job out of college, which was in that 2009, not the greatest time to leave college, look for jobs, went to work for a heavy equipment machinery brand that housed different different bigger brands and went to work for sales training. But since there was not a need for sales, I was basically driving truck parts around the state of Oregon. And on the other side, I'm based in Oregon, properties in Tennessee that I work for now. But in that, I had those moments where you're just in a car by yourself for hours. And that's where I came to the first conclusion like this. And I probably wouldn't have put the term hospitality on it yet. But what I love to do is create experiences and opportunities for people to experience joy. For me at that time, that was like, I need to get into events and sports. I'm here in Eugene, Oregon, Tracktown, USA. And I was like, well, the Olympic trials are coming up in a couple of years, and this is back 2011. And through that and then a pursuit of a master's degree in sports hospitality. That was kind of my first taste in hospitality. I didn't see it as hospitality as we talk now what I'm doing now, but that idea of like just creating the space for people to come escape or be entertained was the idea. So I started with, that was kind of my first taste, did that for a few years, hosting the world's biggest track and field events or bidding for the world's biggest track and field events here in the United States. Before I even left, I was part of kind of the bidding that eventually led to the last year we actually hosted the world championships here in the United States in little Eugene, Oregon. And so that was my first taste in hospitality, but through that garnered relationships with people. And I don't hear you. I don't hear you.

Josiah: I'll have to edit that up. But I wonder before if we go any further, if I could just ask a follow up about that, because like you say, maybe it's not traditional hospitality, but hospitality at its core is thinking about people. How do you create these moments, these experiences for people? I'm curious in that world of sports and live events, is there anything that stood out to you early on or now reflecting back on that in terms of what creates these really kind of peak experiences for people in that world of sports and live events?

Nathan: People go to sports and spend an ungodly amount of money either because they're big fans of their team or that sport. And so often, that's what they look forward to. Whether it's we're in the middle of football season, the amount of people that they live for Saturday mornings. college football or live for Sunday, like that is what they live their weekends for. And I think the other part of that is so many of us did them as kids growing up. And so you have that passion for that sport. My involvement in there was like the VIP hospitality. So even more like, hey, I'm providing the space for important people. CEOs of big shoe companies and things like that. And so I think the thing I learned the most was the importance still in that moment of welcoming people in and the experience that they have from the moment they walk into the gate. And sports, athletic programs and sports teams, they put so much emphasis on the guest experience and the entertainment that they provide. From the moment they're walking into the stadium and I mean, obviously I'm not thinking about them, but looking back now, like the effort and energy they put into making sure that people entertain, because that's an entertainment business. As much as they're there to watch their favorite team and it's about the players winning or competing, it's an entertainment business and they have to do the job of entertaining. But I think the experience I drew out of that was the importance of paying attention and the importance of like, even like now, some of the things that we do now is like, I had world junior championships. back in 2014, we had binders with every guest in the VIP hospitality with their faces and their names. And we had to pay attention to that much detail because they wanted to be greeted by their name. And, you know, I don't always have to deal with guests that have that kind of level of needs, but just some of those little things of like, but how much more welcoming it is to know people's name when they're walking in the door or know some of their favorite things or know the food or the drink that they want to have when they sit down in their seats. And those are things that we did back then. Now it's like, well, we're doing some of those things now here on the property in Tennessee. So.

Josiah: I appreciate you breaking that down, because I think sometimes people in hospitality think they're only looking at other hospitality businesses or experiences. And the reality is the people that we're serving have their expectations set in the world of live events and sports and all these other contexts. And then bringing that to the hospitality property So it's really important to think about what does creating those peak moments look like? What does it look like to make someone feel special? And it's cool to see you tie that thread from earlier in your career to the work that you do today.

Nathan: Yeah. I mean, we were, I was talking to our team about just that, that binder the other day of just how can we replicate that without being creepy? Obviously you don't want to be creepy too much, but just having that like resource of like, here's what. This is how you can welcome people in a way that's different and it can have a huge impact has been, yeah, that's one thing I did to ever have taken from that world.

Josiah: I love it. So from there, you moved into the world of direct consumer, I understand, right? And within the world of entrepreneurship and starting companies, I feel like direct consumer or DTC has been very, very hot recently, but you've been at this for a while. I'd love if you could speak a little bit to that experience, because I think there's some lessons here that we can also take into the world of hospitality.

Nathan: Yeah, on the high level, it was a company called Run Gum. It was founded by a runners coach who I connected with through that previous job of working in track and field. And I was employee number one. So I was like, here, we're launching a company that we know no idea what we're doing. Can you go figure it out? And, you know, that was in kind of that 2013, 2014. I want to say it was during kind of that heyday of early where you're seeing all these different consumer brands launch, launch, launch, because it was easy. You had a couple of ecosystems that said, Here's a site, you can put your product on there. Social media was still super organic. You could just post about it, share about it, and you could grow a small little company like that and grow it into a big company. We did that. We started as a small Shopify-based business. We grew, doubled, doubled, doubled, started going to retail. And then eventually, we got into Target, Walmart, Nationwide, which the product still sits on those shelves. In packaging, and I think one of the things that starting a company and being in that phase of the industry that has greatly helped me now with this younger brand of Bolt Farm Treehouse is the willingness and the nimbleness to wear mini hats and to learn and be scrappy to get either design done or build out your marketing funnels, create emails to being the DMs and engaging with your potential customers, seeing every comment as, hey, this is a potential customer here that I'm commenting back to. All of that and then seeing the whole process of like, I remember engaging this person on DMs. I remember them signing up for an email and now I'm sitting in the warehouse packing up their box and shipping out the door. I think just being part of that entire journey and seeing the impact the entire journey can have like on a very granular level. It's definitely stuff that as we're in a still, I mean, I would say startup, but definitely fast growing small hospitality brand. We still have the luxury to some level to be part of that entire process and have very few people part of that entire process. So it's like we actually can do a lot of the little direct consumer things that have, that grew direct consumer so fastly in the hospitality space.

Josiah: I think that's really special. I just want to underscore that point because I think regardless of the size of company you're at, if you're at a smaller company or individual property wearing those multiple hats, actually can be very cool and meaningful, right? I think for the same reason that you mentioned in this other industry, this other context, I was talking to somebody the other day that talked about this innkeeper mentality. And you think about the old classic bed and breakfast where you're the person answering the phone, making the reservation, greeting them, maybe making breakfast in the morning. And there's something about seeing that whole thing where if you're only in a very specific functional area, it's easy to lose sight of why do we do all this or what is the impact on people. And so I think maybe, especially if you're an executive or a leader at a larger company, it'd be interesting to think about, is there a way where you can expose people that are working in the narrow functional area, either through rotational work or somehow helping them see the impact of the specific thing they're doing on the person you're serving, right? And I think that's important to close the loop there.

Nathan: Yeah. And I think when you get to that granular level of engaging with your prospective guest or customer, they've booked and it's pre-arrival. I don't know, at least for me personally, getting in that granular level makes you realize it's not just IP address on your site. It's not just reservation number XYZ. It's like, no, this is a human. This is an individual who's gone to the effort, pulled out their pocketbook, and is giving it to you. And I have this sign right above my desk. And I've had it since I started the other company. It says, never forget your customers pay your salary. And back then, it was like the company was mine. So that was for sure. But even in this environment, they're the ones that allow me to do what I get to do, not And I know you can get into the world of investing and all that, but it's ultimately the guests that are paying the salary and that humbleness and seeing it through that whole journey. I think take every, like all the granular being in the weeds of direct consumer and get it up in the clouds. I think that's the thing that I learned most about that decade-plus in direct to consumer is just how powerful it is to engage a guest on a one-to-one level. and building a community from the one-to-ones to many within direct to consumer and just the importance of that direct communication, direct engagement, direct community building within your tribe of your guests and your customers. I would have ambassador groups and community groups and customer advisory groups in this small DirectConsumer brand because They were the ones that were going to be telling people about us and helping us grow.

Josiah: How'd you get started with that? I'm really curious about community building in the context of building a business.

Nathan: It started for us a marketing level of like, Hey, people are in a social perspective to level like, Hey, if we build a community and they share it. And it's really easy when it was like a, you know, $2 product to send samples to people and say, Hey, share this with individuals. But through that, we also wanted them to represent the represent the brand if we're going to give them an opportunity. And the thing that I find so interesting, especially when you go into social perspective, but you can add it for communities, people do want to engage with the products they buy. Like I no doubt about it to my mind. And they feel when you extend that invite to them, like, hey, we see we want you to be just a part of what we're doing, whether it's in a private community or an ambassador role or an affiliate role. However, they get excited because not too many people get an invitation to be part of a brand and all that. And so from my experience, the amount of excited people that were just, Hey, we're in a private Facebook group. It's not much more than that, but you're part of it. They take a lot of pride in that. And that from a marketing perspective is phenomenal because when they're sharing the brand to their entire community, whether that's, you know, in that world running and sports and a very, you know, niche world there. I just, people, I think we take it for granted, like how much people like that. I mean, we all want to feel wanted and needed and having a brand do that with an individual, I think has a great impact.

Josiah: So that's really fascinating to me. And I feel like people use the word community in a lot of different contexts and has value in a lot of different contexts. I think there's personal friendships we have, there's the environments we're in, there's these digital communities. And so there's so many, you know, layers to this onion. So you talk about building customer advisory boards, ambassador programs, all this kind of stuff. You also built your TikTok account to 750,000 plus followers, I believe. We're recording this in 2023. I want this to be valuable for years and years to come. I think my question is less about the tactic of the platform, but how did you think about, I guess, scaling your ability to reach and engage people, in this case through TikTok, to so many people?

Nathan: And this is a pretty hard stance belief on this is that social media is for engagement and not posting. And so the level of engagement and the level of content and the type of content for me, it's not engagement versus beautiful and sexy and represents the brand perfectly. It's not like either or, but it's definitely, I'd take engagement over sexy photos or a sexy image or video or well-produced instead, if you don't want to use sexy, well-produced. Like you can, I made these plenty of mistakes and I think hospitality makes a lot of these mistakes as we spend so much money in making the perfect video or the perfect shot, you post it, No one wants to see it or engage with it, so it's not going to get any love from the algorithm. And so what's the point of even doing it at that point? And those platforms, whether it's TikTok or Instagram or Facebook, any of them, they're built for engagement and they're built for comments and talking and all that. And so I just have a heart, there's a really hard stance that like, you need to be engaging over everything in that platform. So the type of content is like, you know, think of content that's actually gonna get engagement, whether that's likes, comments, shares, not, hey, it looks pretty and it fits the brand. Yeah, if you can do both, that's phenomenal, but it's, and the level in which then I've always, whether it's me, myself, the teams that I've hired, the amount of time we just spend in the comments, engaging with our brand, engaging with other people's brands, engaging with creators, and just being in the platform and talking and engaging and starting the conversation, fitting in it within a specific platform. That's how I found most success. And again, you could see sales happen from a direct consumer standpoint. And that still happens, you know, Bolt Farm. I think they had a great platform when I joined it, but that's still kind of the emphasis is like engagement over sexy.

Josiah: I feel like you're my long lost brother because so many people see it differently. And I'm obsessed with ability to create conversations. And so it's just a different orientation. Right. And I think kind of by thinking of things that way, Hospitality Daily has more engagement than any other hospitality media brand because, you know, there's these Great companies is good people, but they have like whole teams of people in production and everything honestly looks really good. And for me, it's just me, right? It's just me and having conversations, trying to facilitate conversations, people start talking. And I think a takeaway that I've seen building Hospitality Daily, you've seen building these companies is that that's kind of how you win. That's where you get traction. That's where you get a very engaged group of people, right? It's not about just looking super polished all the time, right?

Nathan: Yeah, I mean, if we all scroll, whatever platform we're scrolling and how often you see the algorithm just favor a boring image of a product or boring image of a hotel room. It's never that. It's super engaging reels. It's super engaging creator type stuff. It's the media. Like sometimes I base my what's ESPN doing because they got a million comments on the thing. It's just like, well, how can I copy or mimic some of their, I think one of the best posts Bolt Farm has had was I mimicked an image of basically a kind of like a story headline that you would see from E-Online. And that's like one of our best like static images. So it's looking at the ones that get engagement. knowing that people engage with that type of content. And there's times when you look at things and you're like, that looks great. It has zero comments or has 10 likes. What was the point? And I challenged myself and I challenged our team. What was the point of posting it or posting that type of content if it's not going to get anything? And so when it came to growing TikTok back then, it was, we're just going to repeat some videos often. We're going to share it. We were posting three to four or five times a day. And repeating stuff three weeks later, if it had a great engagement and great, you know, went kind of viral, just let's try it again, repost it. Cause there's a whole new audience that might see it. And so not being afraid to do some of that and share the same thing that we shared 10 times, because for whatever reason, the algorithm, our followers, the community within that found it interesting and engaged with it. And then that was what opened the door for big growth.

Josiah: I think your growth story there is really fascinating to me because you're not only building community, you're leveraging cutting edge digital platforms like TikTok, but you're also thinking about key partnership and key relationships, right? So you talked about the product being on the stores of Target and Walmart nationwide, right? Incredible distribution. What did you learn through that process about identifying and putting together these key partnerships that are going to scale the business to the next level?

Nathan: And I'd be lied to you if I said, hey, it was very strategic and we went and hammered these guys and it was just super simple or it was super, you know, got beat up in all these meetings and things like that. I think us focusing so long and establishing that direct consumer part of it and building our social and building our brand. And having that platform made it really easy for them to like, oh yeah, we like your product. And you have a much bigger following than this competitor brand. So you're gonna send people into our stores. I think that was a part of it. We hit a right time with the right product with what some of these bigger stores were wanting to do to expand into more nutritional, sports nutrition products. And then we were able to have the right conversations with the right people. Kind of similar to the world I'm in now with Bolt Farm and having a CEO founder who has a different life. The founder and the CEO of RunGum was an Olympic runner with a big following. And so, you get them into the room and people are going to be like, Hey, I was a fan of you. Okay, I'm going to bring you a product. But it still took them how to see the proof of product and see that we are going to drive people into your store because we have a direct relationship with them over here. We have this many followers and an email list of hundreds of thousands. When we send an email, people are going to go into your store and buy it. We're going to send people your way. And for those big retailers, like they want to know what are you going to do to sell the product on the shelf? It's not their job. It's your job to get the product off the shelf. But that wouldn't have happened if we didn't have done what we had done for the six years, seven years prior of building an audience and building a list and owning those relationships. And I think that's kind of the big thing now in the direct booking world is owning the relationship versus waiting for them to come on and hopefully they maybe sign up for your web wifi so you can start having that direct relationship. Like owning the relationship allows you to do so much more when you need to pull the trigger.

Josiah: I want to get into the world of hospitality, but just one more follow-up to this. You were employee number one at this direct-to-consumer brand, and then you've talked about parallels of, you know, working for a high profile founder, CEO in that context, and also what you're doing now at Bolt. My question for you is, what have you learned about being effective as an early employee working for a high profile person? Because I think there's a lot of people that listen to this that are maybe not the founder of their company, but they're working closely with that person. And I think it is a very underrated role. I spent seven years working for a founding CEO too, and you get to see a lot. I'm curious what you've seen or advice that you'd have having done this and you are doing this now. in what it takes to be effective in that capacity.

Nathan: And I want to say I've always done it well, like on an individual basis. I think there's that part, just DNA and ability to just want to be help. You know, you don't have too much ego that you're not willing to help build someone else's vision and dream. And I think that's something I've always been fine with. Yeah, I can have my own dreams, but I can also step alongside and do that. Depending on the size of the company, and I kind of mentioned it, if you don't have a willingness or tolerance towards change and being nimble when something's different, then it's really hard to be in an environment of a small company. Because whether it's the founder CEO decides to shift vision or economically something has to change or you're seeing growth over here with this different type of product or different type of campaign. And if you don't, if you're not willing or can't like move through those very well, then it's really hard to be in those environments when things are constantly changing. And then too, I think that the last part is like, you know, whether it was, his name was Nick Simmons. He's phenomenal. He became a YouTuber. He's got massive YouTube following now. Making sure for me, like making sure the founders like, is allowing themselves to still do the things that like makes them fired up. Like Seth, like trying to like be like, I don't have enough time for Seth here at Bolt Farm. And then, you know, like, and trying to like, he needs to be here more and get better that he's not around. Like, no, he needs to be doing what he's doing, making music, playing around the world. One, that helps us because he's around the world talking about Bolt Farm Treehouse, but then two, that gets what, that's what fires him up and gets him, his excitement going and his joy complete so that he can then be the leader and visionary that he needs to be at Bolt Farm Treehouse. And that was the same at Rundle. I'm like, I needed Nick to either be running and when he retired, I needed him to be making YouTube videos because that's what got him so excited about coming to work every day. And then we fill the team or fill the things that they aren't able to accomplish every day for the sake of the company. And so whether it's adding to the team or taking on different parts that they're able to do. But those are the kind of the two things I found similar to a lot of ways is they're in their spaces for a reason. They're very They just, they had that drive and that desire to be successful. And when you've reached the heights they have in two different worlds, like the amount of drive you have to be there to get to that level and sustain it for as long as they have. Nick was a professional runner for, you know, 10 this years and Seth's been playing high level band music for almost 20 years now. And to sustain it, that takes a level of thing that you just want, you want it to continue and you don't want it to dry up. And so creating those spaces so they can do that, I think it's just really important.

Josiah: I love it. I want to talk a little bit about how you transitioned into hospitality. What was the opportunity that you saw? You were building these amazing companies. What attracted you to hospitality?

Nathan: I think it goes back to just the core of what I know is more an alignment of my heart. There's that one, you know, my wife and I have said for the longest time, like kind of our mission for our family. You can't really read it, but it's right up there. So it's to provide hospitality with our home and our hearts. So that's kind of been like our course, like the idea of hospitality. I don't know if it's going to be able to be readable there, but that's a basic way.

Josiah: You've actually wrote this out and you framed it. It's a little hard to see in the camera, but that's amazing.

Nathan: And so it's just been like for us, how we want to live our life is being hospitable and being welcoming. And that is far different from the industry of hospital. I don't say it's far different, but They're different things. The industry of hospitality versus the heart of hospitality. I had the heart of hospitality without really understanding. This going back to the 10-year, how did this happen? I was a big fan of Need to Breathe, the band, going back to 2006. I've been following them, going to concerts, following the members as they had their own social things. That's step one. About the same time Seth started building his original treehouse down in South Carolina and posting about it and sharing about it, my dad and his brothers and kind of me were building a not quite the same level treehouse, but a treehouse on the southern Oregon coast. Following along, I'm like, hey, he's building a treehouse. I'm building a treehouse. I remember a really funny story. I went to a concert for Need to Breathe back in 2015, 2014, and got kind of some access to the VIP and like having that conversation with Seth, like, hey, I'm building a treehouse, you're building a treehouse. No, obviously no idea what's going to happen eight years later where I was going to start working for it. But you can look back and be like, man, it was just a collision that was starting back eight years ago. And the start of 2022, I mean, just whenever you're in, I mean, startups are hard. And, you know, a decade plus into it, roughly, I was just starting to feel kind of that wear of being in that. And for whatever reason, started reading books on hospitality, both whether it's community idea of hospitality to industry hospitality, just started reading books. And, you know, I think you look at that, how that collision of me just wanting to start to read books. And then my wife's desire to follow Bolt Farm Treehouse and on Instagram, like, I want to go there and following their posts about, hey, we're hiring kind of led to me like putting my name in there, but not really expecting much, not really thinking I even wanted to leave what I was doing at the time, but eventually kind of got to that spot where my family and I decided it was time for maybe a little change. And Tori had reached out to me on email and we kind of connected for over the course of a month to just kind of go back and forth. Like, does this make sense for you guys to hire someone like me? Does it make sense for me to join the team of what you guys? And after that conversation, we just felt like it was, was an intriguing and curious like move for both of us to, for them to bring in a direct consumer guy into a hospitality brand that was majority of direct booking at the time already. And then me to kind of finally take that leap into, hey, I need to do something different, whether it's for refreshing my career, not like for stance, but just refreshing my excitement to go to work every day. And going into what I know is an alignment of the heart. I made gum, at times, as a marketer, sound like it was life-changing. You do that as marketers. We have to put this persona that your product is going to greatly impact someone's life. And it can have an impact on someone's life. Being in hospitality for as long as like, I know, the experiences that we create for our guests, often couples, has a huge impact. And so just like the marketer in me is like, man, it's so much easier to wake up and market and be excited about the the weeds of marketing, building funnels and creating all these data things, knowing that it is actually having an impact versus a product that's, yeah, it's a good product. It worked. People liked it, but it's, I don't know. Yeah. So that's the full story there is like moving into an alignment of a hospitable heart makes it my job and coming to my job a lot easier.

Josiah: I love that and appreciate you sharing your story. I think it's really special when you find that alignment between things that you really care about and how you're able to spend your time, right? And use your skills, what you've learned over your career in service of that. I'm always fascinated to hear from people who are coming from outside the hospitality industry, what their first impressions are or opportunities. they see in the world of hospitality. As you mentioned, there's the notion of hospitality. That's a very big, beautiful concept. Sometimes the industry of hospitality doesn't necessarily live up to the ideals and all the potential there. You are running highly sophisticated marketing programs, community building, partnerships, all these different things. you enter the world of hospitality and this is your full-time gig now. What are some of the first things that stood out to you about opportunities or things that you're most excited about building in this new context where you are now?

Nathan: Yeah, I mean, I think the big difference in mindset was how do you go from selling a $20 product online to, you know, a couple hundred dollar, few hundred dollar night per stay accommodation. And so the mindset of understanding the journey on how long it takes, like I could get people to booking an instant for $20 product, but understanding it's going to take a little bit longer for someone to come in. Now, we get occasional people find us on Instagram, they book two seconds later, but that journey was a big kind of like needing to understand, but also having to be a little more patient. Like, hey, this is going to be a journey and you're not going to see the same level of type of analytics that you're normally seeing from a marketing and MER and ROI, you know, return on ad spend. So understanding that and I'm still saying like, it's still, that's dumb. Like my mind's still like at times, like it should be a lot easier. It should be a lot faster. The thing that was like the most shocking, I'm like, oh man, this is a lot harder than I thought, was the convolution of the tech stack that we have in hospitality. And that like, there isn't this, and it's all connected to this. Like, direct consumer, I mean, it is Shopify, yeah, maybe a couple others, but it is Shopify, and everybody's building these very guest, I wanna say, the good thing is I'm saying guest now instead of customer, but got customer, engaging apps, whether it's for loyalty or all this stuff. And if you're in that building, that's easy. You plug in Shopify, you're set. In hospitality, it's like, that's a lot harder because there's so many different PMSs. There's so many RMSs and not one property is using… It's not like we're all flocking to one. We're all all over the place. You can't click on 10 properties and see 10 of the same systems, especially from the booking engine and PMS. And I think that's made it difficult for… And you can understand why the push towards direct booking is so hard, because the systems to be able to do all the things that you do in direct consumer are just not easily connected. I mean, you can do it, but it's not seamless like, you know, direct consumers had for a decade now. And I've been pulling as much direct consumer apps into the world of hospitality and having these conversations with some of these platforms like, hey, we haven't touched hospitality. It's like, I'm going to give it a shot just because that's… Give an example of that, that you've kind of used from the world of consumer. I mean, our email system is not built for hospitality, but I'm making it work. We utilize a postcard, automation postcard system that's with very direct-to-consumer CPG that I'm making work, automation, sending postcards at different points of the journey, banning cards, post-checkout, things like that, being wildly successful. Not crazy integrated, but I can tell wildly successful. The different ways we use video, I think, is another one that you see direct-to-consumer use, especially on an on-site perspective. to engage and do quizzes to get really more information about the guest wants. I don't have to see it. You'll see it on our site, Ballpark and Treehouse. Like we have a video that is a quiz to get an idea of what the guest is most looking for. Hey, they want a treehouse in the winter with their spouse for a romantic thing. And then And what we can do from that, from a marketing perspective, automation-wise, is way more impactful if we just said, hey, what's your email? Things like that.

Josiah: That's super interesting. So it's not just kind of like, here's what we have. You're immediately engaging people and trying to get a sense of what they're looking for so that you can communicate. I guess you can get a sense if you're a fit, right? And if you are a fit, you can communicate more effectively.

Nathan: Yeah, and this is my naiveness a little bit to the world. It's like, I don't know. I'm sure that's being done at some level in hospitality. As you go independent boutique, probably less. But that's what direct consumer, like you want to know what products they're interested in buying. And then you want to know why they want to buy those products. And so bringing in some of those ideas, you know, the quiz Direct-to-consumer quizzes got really hot there in the COVID time. You just saw everybody in direct-to-consumer was doing some form of quiz and then would give you an algorithm-based product recommendation. was really big in makeup and sports nutrition and all these things. And I had done it previously as well. And so that was one of the first things we implemented was a quiz. We did it through video because, you know, we have kind of faces of the company that made it super engaging. And then instead of the first email being very generic, it's like, hey, you want to come in the winter and stay in a tree house for your anniversary? Sweet. And we can start providing the right messages to the guests versus, you know, just very generic information.

Josiah: Well, there's so many different elements, obviously, to hospitality technology and data within hospitality. Obviously, there's a big operational component. There's big revenue management component. I think I'm curious with your background, your expertise in marketing, how you're thinking about data and gathering. What else is on your mind in terms of collecting and using data to be relevant and communicate in an engaging way with your guests or prospective guests?

Nathan: Yeah, I think. I still find it interesting and I'm still learning. I would say it's interesting because it's still something I'm having to learn and understand completely. But much of the hospitality focused on PMS and focused on occupancy and room rates and all this data over here. And kind of interesting to me is it was never about the guests, it was about the rooms. Versus like, you know, you go to platforms or direct consumers, like what is the lifetime value? What is the recurring customer rate? What is all these things that are very guest facing? How many products bought this, but not this? How many products didn't buy this, but they added this to their cart at the very end? Those are the data that I was spending so much of my time on. I wasn't spending time too much on like, you know, product cost of this and that part of it, but it was more like, what is this data on the guest? And at least in, you know, in my short years, like getting that kind of information has been much harder than, yeah, I can pull up my ADR in a half a second. I can pull up my occupancy and my rev par and all those things really quickly. But like to get like some of this very, like, I need to understand my guests better. That one's taken a lot more of like, I need to connect this system to this system and then kind of pull this report and plug it into here versus just being able to see it. And there might be systems out there. If you are, let me know. But that's been the most interesting when it came to data is it's more centered around rooms and all that, which is super important. But I'm coming in from a direct consumer. It's like, I want to know everything about my customer and what this cohort of customers look like. Like people that come during this season, how much more likely are they to come back and how long does it take for them to rebook? And getting that kind of data has been a lot harder to just easily grab and understand. And it would be super helpful. I think it's super helpful. Like, so it's time to like, think of like, how does the hospitality, as they go, as they want to go more, as you know, you're hearing everybody talk about how do we go, you need to go direct booking, direct booking, direct booking. How do we shift that? Like, all right, then your hub needs to be your guest, not a PMS. That's kind of, again, this is my outside brain thinking about it of like, it needs to be a, like that needs to be the hub and the PMS is a feature of it versus the main part.

Josiah: Right. The guest does need to be the hub. I mean, that is hospitality at its core, right? So technology should be a support of that. But that's the orientation. I think we need to provide great service to be effective in hospitality. And I think I like hearing that, you know, whether it comes from outside the industry or within, it doesn't matter. Like, hospitality is about the people that we're serving, right?

Nathan: You know, Nathan, I think that's really… I guess the one other part on the technology, like when it comes to as well as like, the ability to, yes, market and get commerce from it, but from a guest perspective and not like how does it fit within the room perspective. Um, you know, I think direct consumer, you saw the ability to how you can upsell and how you can find other products to add into their cart. So their cart values way more, you know, that, that world of direct consumer and the post the pre post checkout to create add ons. Like it's in there in hospitality, but it's, again, it's not like a, a major focus or the features aren't consistent through all the different platforms to make it easy for especially independent hotels to like, Hey, we're going to add these add ons. or these upsells or these other product ideas that can increase brand loyalty, increase conversion, increase ultimate commerce and dollars as well, while still being focused on the guest.

Josiah: Love it. I love it. You know, we're recording this towards the end of 2023. As you look into 2024 and beyond, I'm curious what themes or trends are top of mind for you right now that you're excited by, that you're looking into, where you see there might be some opportunity in the world of hospitality.

Nathan: I know the industry is into direct booking, and obviously AI. I don't even jump into AI. It's powerful. I use it daily. I don't know exactly how it's going to work and look. How do you use it daily? I use it for creating marketing ideas, creating marketing language from just a language-based chat AI. We're starting to implement and train so we can utilize it on our site instead of having a boring FAQ, just have our own AI kind of chat widget. Different from like, I guess not chat, but at least like FAQ, people can ask whatever question will be in that. I mean, I think, I guess trends that I'd like to see. Yeah. Because I don't know if I have the finest finger on exactly what's going to happen. I think we know AI is going to have an effect. I think as people head direct booking, I think more and more hospitality brands are going to look at direct consumer. They're going to look at Shopify and what you do to engage guests on a one-to-one, one-size-fits-one type of idea versus relying so much on OTAs and all that. I think the amount of commerce that is happening in reels and in TikTok, like direct sales of products. understanding like it needs to live in the world that you're engaging with the guest in is something that I just know feels like if the consumer behavior for buying products is going to move that way on products, it's going to move in other ways as well. And eventually, hospitality will catch up to that. And I just like the idea or believe in the idea that if it's going to move into a more kind of social environment, like having that relationship with the guest is going to be way impactful. So those are things I do. So I think that's what allows us kind of be in this forefront of this idea of direct booking, direct to consumer. I mean, I'm still going to call it essentially direct to consumer is utilizing the technologies or systems or ideas around loyalty and membership and community and rebooking and all of those things have been that direct consumer has been doing for a while now. starting to kind of move over. And we're going to see brands, hospitality, looking at more direct consumer brands, that how did they grow so fast and how were they, how they get the amount of orders they did in one day and how they did that. That's what I, at least that's what I'm looking at still.

Josiah: It's exciting stuff, man. I'm really excited to see what you and your team build there. Where can people go to learn more about or follow you and your work and also learn more about Bolt Farm Treehouse?

Nathan: Bolt Farm Treehouse, I mean, we have 420,000+ on Instagram. So if we want to see the beautiful cloud nine shots that we talk about, they're all over the place there. And when you DM us or engage with us, you're going to get us. We talk about all the time that hospitality for us starts in the DMs. It doesn't start when the sum show up on the property. So that's the easiest obviously to book. We're 95-98% direct booking. Yeah, you can go to some of the OTAs and the VRBOs and Airbnbs, but we like that direct booking relationship. the ease of that. So boltfarmtreehouse.com is our site there. I'm LinkedIn. Me personally, like direct consumers vary Twitter and hospitality is not. And so for me starting to gauge, I guess LinkedIn is where hospitality people live. But I've been loving engaging this community and people in the world of hospitality just because I'm learning so much. And there are great people in this industry that are wanting to share about how they're building, what they're doing. And I just find it so interesting. But I mean, I generally find myself still on Twitter and talking to my direct consumer people.

Josiah: You can learn from anywhere, right? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for joining us here today, Nathan. I really learned a lot from you. I enjoyed our conversation. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us.