Jack Forbes:                       00:00                    I will say we’re trying to give those individual homeowners a fighting chance, right? Fundamentally, companies that can just optimize, they do have that advantage, right? They can find these cleaners that they charge the least to and use technology to automate the messaging and everything, but I think fundamentally individual homeowners and hosts can offer best experience. You have that opportunity to personalize the experience.

Julian Sage:                       00:29                    This is episode 59 of the short term rental success stories podcast. Are you an investor that’s looking to have your home professionally managed? Go to cohostit.com for more information.

Julian Sage:                       00:39                    Welcome back to the short term rental success stories. I’m your host Julian Sage. This is a show where I talk to hosts about their journeys and starting and growing the short term rental business. My goal is that you’ll be able to walk away with practical information that’ll help you become a better host and learn how to scale your business like any exceptional hosts. We all strive for five star reviews, so please go on over to iTunes and let us know what you enjoy. It really helps support the show. If you haven’t done so already. Going over to our Facebook group, the host nation to connect with the community.

Julian Sage:                       01:08                    Hey, what is going on? Host nation. I am super excited to be back again with you this week. In this episode we have the special honor of speaking with Jack Forbes. Jack is the co founder of Kopa.co, a direct booking site that allows guests to find short and medium-term furnished apartments and hosts with business professionals. There’s been a big pivot in the short term rental space where a lot of hosts are pivoting to be able to accommodate medium term guests or guests that will be staying for typically anywhere from a month onward. A medium term guest is typically going to be a type of corporate client where you are getting them from, let’s say a hospital or another business. There’s been a lot of interest in trying to find and accommodate these types of guests. A lot of hosts have been going to sites like furnishedfinders.com also hosts putting their listings on sites like Zillow to try to be able to offer month to month rentals.

Julian Sage:                       01:55                    One of the things though is that a lot of hosts are also trying to separate themselves from these OTAs like Airbnb, booking.com, VRBO and trying to diversify themselves onto different platforms, but it doesn’t really matter which platform you go to because you’re always going to be dependent on another platform for your guests. As professionals, we’re always talking about direct booking sites and trying to capture that guest information and lead them back to our websites. For a lot of hosts, it’s been one of those things where it’s been on the back burner saying, okay, I’m going to do this eventually, but right now since everything that has been especially happening with Airbnb, many hosts are trying to look for different ways to be able to diversify themselves, but still, even if you are diversifying yourself, you’re still going to be dependent on that platform to be able to provide you guests.

Julian Sage:                       02:39                    Well. That’s why I’m super excited to talk with Jack Forbes because Jack is going to be sharing with us information on how you’re able to take leads from the source and this is where you’re going to be working with businesses, hospitals, and different types of organizations and get them to directly stay with you. So this episode is really unique because Jack is talking about trying to get for a direct booking site that is basically connecting you to another renter. So you could imagine Jack is crank trying to create something similar to like a furnished binder, but as a host, the information that Jack is going to be sharing is invaluable because you can apply the same things that Jack is doing in his own business into yours. Jack talks about how Kopa started, how they find businesses that provide corporate clients the challenges of scaling a direct booking site and how they get hosts and renters to their platform.

Julian Sage:                       03:27                    If you like my show notes for this episode, go to shorttermsage.com/str59. Or if you’d like my show notes sent directly to your inbox every week, then go to shorttermsage.com/shownotes. With all that being said, under this week’s conversation, they welcome back host nation to another episode of short term rental success stories. In this episode we have the special honor of speaking with Jack Forbes. Now Jack is the one of the co founders of a direct booking site called Kopa and Kopa allows you to be able to find furnished apartments and compatible housemates. So it’s not exclusive to traveling nurses, but Jack actually reached out to me on LinkedIn, which is kind of interesting, saying like, Hey, you know, I heard about the podcast and you know, this is what we’re doing and I definitely want it to you know, share this resource with the host nation community.

Julian Sage:                       04:13                    But and then I got a phone call and a text message from this guy named Jack who said he was working with cope on my phone. I was just like, Whoa, how did this guy find me? And he said that he found me through furnished funders. So Jack was going through furnished finder in my area, gave me a call and I was like, are you trying to stop me or is this a a just an uncanny coincidence. But Jack is a real go getter and I definitely wanted to get him on the show. So Jack, would you please introduce yourself but the host nation know who you are and what inspired you to get into the short term rental? World.

Jack Forbes:                       04:45                    Hello everybody. Thank you for hosting me. First of all, really appreciate it. Yeah, happy to talk about Copa. That is my life. Yeah, and it was a pretty funny coincidence that I gave you a call after also connecting on LinkedIn. The double whammy there. Yeah, so briefly about Copa. It’s first worth noting, I am one of three co-founders. Zach and Courtney are my two other co founders. And we would not be where we are today without them, so shout out to them. They’re phenomenal humans. Copa for the kind of in a nutshell like you touched on is the medium term furnished housing marketplace. So basically the in a nutshell is that we moved 52 times in the span of seven years between the three of us co-founders and found it to be quite the struggle every time for those four to six months stays that we had, you know, we were interns 15 times over new grads, you know, moved around a lot and you know, found that, you know, started to support the longer stays. But we just saw that the renting experience we wanted, it was pretty different from the experience. So with that, you know, we help renters form compatible groups, housemates amongst other things. And yeah, we started five years ago and have come a long way.

Julian Sage:                       06:09                    And how many, how many bookings are you getting through corporate now?

Jack Forbes:                       06:13                    Yeah. we’re, we’ve been approaching 250 bookings per month now. So we just went full time on Copa about two years ago. So just kind of been ramping up new markets while we’ve been focused on product kind of every year up until now.

Julian Sage:                       06:35                    I D I definitely want to hear about how you started Copa for, but for those of you, for the listeners, can you kind of explain how Copa works, the model and you know, what, you know, Oh, how the direct booking integrates with like Airbnb or these different sites. Like what what is Copa?

Jack Forbes:                       06:52                    Yeah, for sure. So I’m sure a lot of you are on Airbnb. We work very similarly to Airbnb from your perspective. We’re kind of like Airbnb for these longer stays. So again, we found renting to be a pretty different experience from vacationing where, you know, as a host, even you want more verification about these people, right? Like a six months say, is a much bigger deal than six days. So you typically want more of like a rental application, a security deposit lease. And from a renter’s perspective as well, you know, there’s other things that we needed as well. You know, we needed to be able to find people to live with in many cases cause with urbanization growing faster than ever, cities are more expensive than ever to live in. And whether you’re an intern, a travel nurse maybe even in the military in many cases to afford rent in those places, you have to live with people.

Jack Forbes:                       07:50                    So yeah, we kind of have a housemate search or housemate finder built into the housing search that we also have created. And you know, other kind of renting things that differ from Airbnb to include you know, needing to see a commute time because usually you’re moving for work or school. And it really comes down to like, how close can I be to that, that destination. You know, our service fees are a lot lower. That’s another really big one where we tried using Airbnb ourselves, but found for, again, these four to six months stays, you know, that service fee ended up being anywhere from like a thousand to $3,000. And, you know, we couldn’t really afford that, especially as a kind of younger renters. So you know, we only charge 1% service fee to hosts and 2% to renters and you know, don’t plan on charging more since we’re hoping to not get caught in the fundraising hamster wheel that involves, you know, having to the answer to investors and kind of optimize profits. But instead we hope to run you know, more of like a longterm business that doesn’t have to grow at hyper rates, but rather can, you know, serve a purpose that genuinely has a positive impact. So yeah, that’s kind of the, in a nutshell.

Julian Sage:                       09:17                    Well, awesome. Thank you. Thanks for the explanation. It’s you know, I wanted to get you on here, Jack. You know, not only to share it with the community, but also to highlight the different people that are in the space. Cause a lot of hosts that maybe just get into short term renting. They’re just, maybe they’re just thinking of hosting, but you know, having, there’s, there’s different aspects of short term rentals. You know, one of the terms that you said was a midterm rental. There’s lots of other, you know, fields within the short term rental community. So prior to getting into this, did you know what hosting was? Did you know you know, do you, do, you know, do you even know what hosts do now? Do you have a better understanding of kind of what the community is like? How has this been?

Jack Forbes:                       09:58                    Yeah, so I honestly was not familiar with hosting before starting Kopa. But I actually have since being a host on Kopa. So I do rent out one place in San Francisco honestly to kind of dog food, our app. For those of you that don’t know the term dog food Google has made it popular, but I’m sure others use it as well. It basically means using your own product to make sure you’re creating something that you enjoy using. So yeah, having been a host for over two years now through Kopa, I have definitely understood the host side a lot better. And it’s worth noting too, one of the original reasons I started Kopa with my co founders is because we all had some, you know, not so great parenting experiences. Some not so great kind of landlords, but we also had really great landlords and hosts and, you know, we thought, why can’t the not as great hosts or experiences, we had always be those great ones.

Jack Forbes:                       11:05                    And that, that really was the main inspiration is like those great hosts I had were just phenomenal. Right? Like some of the things they would do. One of, one of those hosts who was actually one of our very first host on Kopa would let you pay in Bitcoin if you wanted. No one really did that, but the fact that he offered it was really cool. He would put together a dinner for everyone staying at his five places here in France, out every four months. So, you know, he would typically have new renters every four months and we’d have a big dinner with everyone. You know, he was obviously just your typical, very responsive, all that. But I just saw how down to earth he was doing some things that I hadn’t really seen before as a renter. And I was like, okay, that’s, that’s really cool. I want to, you know, try and encourage all hosts to do the same.

Julian Sage:                       11:59                    And with, with this, because you know, a direct booking site or kind of what you’re creating is like an, an OTA, what would you consider Kopa more like an OTA or direct booking site?

Jack Forbes:                       12:10                    It’s a good question. I would say more of a direct booking sites since all bookings are completed through Kopa. So it’s more like Airbnb. You know, we’re not just a lead generation. Like, you know, Craigslist for example. We have an end to end experience. And the reason we did this is because again, we built that experience we wanted as renters, right? So we were actually Canadian students from Ontario. Zach and I at least coming to the U S for those internships. And in some cases hosts genuinely wanted us to mail a carrier check across the border for that initial deposit. And, you know, some of those experiences that were just really inconvenient, kind of disjointed, we thought, well, why can’t we just always have that seamless experience of booking a place like you’d get on Airbnb.

Jack Forbes:                       13:06                    And that is definitely a major differentiator from the Craigslist and the furnished finders in them. And on top of that, you know, we also at the same time, so this Ted talk we really liked called what is home and it’s by a guy named Pico Iyer. And I just love the talk. And the gist of it is basically he makes the argument that home is a combination of the place you live, the people you live with and the experiences you have. And I couldn’t agree more, right? It’s not just about that physical apartment you’re in, but rather those housemates you’re living with the adventures you have outside of the house while you’re living there. And we kind of check off, you know, the place to live and the people to live with. We help renters find both of those.

Jack Forbes:                       13:54                    But we actually now also have started helping renters, you know, get out of the house and find things to do. And not everyone would want that, right. If we’re helping a family, you know, find a apartment to live in for three months while their new houses built. You know, they may not be interested in that. You kind of Kopa adventures of sorts, but the interns, the new grads, the travel nurses, a lot of other renters, you know, really are interested in getting help with. Yeah. Like what, what is there to do outside like in this new city on it? Who else can I do that with it? You know, personally, it may not come across this way, but I’m an introvert and you know, I kind of gain Manoj, so to speak by being alone. And that can definitely make it tough to convince myself to get out of the house and, you know, try new things on those internships and even now and you know, we want to kind of help with that by lowering the barrier to entry and ultimately helping people find a community.

Jack Forbes:                       14:59                    Right. I used to think that was the cheesiest term. But in the last couple of years I actually finally get what community really means. It’s kind of like feeling like you belong somewhere and yeah, that’s the kind of third leg of the stool, the things to do when people to do it with that we’re also trying to solve for now. And if we, you know, if the experience on Copa ended at message host and then you just, you know, take a call and you know, work directly, we wouldn’t be able to do corporate ventures either.

Julian Sage:                       15:25                    So. So you’re trying to include more, more aspects of Copa to turn it more from just connecting a traveler with the home to where you’re trying to create all of these other experiences, kind of converting into some type of online travel agency where you have experiences and all these other things to make it a more full experience.

Jack Forbes:                       15:46                    Exactly. Yeah. You know, we found that the kind of Christmas experience of just message landlord and then it ends there. You know, didn’t feel very human, like it wasn’t the most fulfilling experience and Airbnb experiences is, you know, a cool thing that they’ve run where, you know, hosts are essentially kind of tour guides. But you know, we see an opportunity for something kind of at a higher level than that. You know, instead of turning hosts into the tour guides, we can literally recommend any activity. It doesn’t have to be hosted by a co host. It could literally just be, here’s a really awesome mini pop place near you. Here’s a great hike to go on. You know, we don’t have to make money from this kind of Copa adventures side of things, but genuinely we can have a positive impact on people’s lives, right?

Jack Forbes:                       16:39                    Like we can help them feel less lonely staying in doors. And honestly, you know, I think that loneliness and feeling like you know, the lack of motivation to get outside and meet other people really can contribute to a lot of the mental health issues we see nowadays. Right? So I think there’s honestly a huge opportunity to even help fight depression and other you know, anxiety and kind of mental health issues that are prevalent right now. So personally that’s like, what really drives me is more than just like a housing platform, but the opportunity for me to have a truly net positive experience on people’s lives. And I touched on this previously, but instead of, you know, starting at a company that we can just, Oh, hyper grow, make as much money as possible, pump as much money into the company as possible. Instead, if we can measure our success by kind of that positive impact we have on people, I think that’s just a much cooler. And honestly a goal I hope more companies shoot for. Yes.

Julian Sage:                       17:48                    With everything that’s happening right

Jack Forbes:                       17:50                    Now. Have, have you seen a increase in growth on your, your site or because of the lack of bookings that are happening in the world? Have you seen a decrease in your traffic? Definitely a huge increase in supply. So you know, a lot of the kind of Airbnb short term, you know, one to 30 day hosts have been really flocking to the medium term housing that we do. So huge increase in supply demand has, has stayed steady and grown a bit, not as much as we had projected, but there are obviously people still moving around, renting the travel nurses. We help students that have been kicked out of on campus housing and we are helping them through an initiative we introduced called Copa for good. So Copa for good is essentially us taking all of the hosts and property managers on Copa and saying, Hey if you can kind of hold yourself to these standards of cleanliness, discounted rates you know, some of the basic procedures of making sure, you know, someone doesn’t move out, move in within 48 hours.

Jack Forbes:                       19:04                    You know making sure that there’s basic cleaning supplies, toilet paper, et cetera. If you can not hold yourselves to this you know, Walmart, you, your profile and all your listings as Copa for good spaces. And then you know, the travel nurses, the students, people who just can’t go home to risk getting a family member sick, they can all then see these faces that are a good fit for them. So through that initiative we’ve seen quite a few more renters coming to us. But yeah, definitely not like the increase in demand we were seeing, but still an increase of some sort.

Julian Sage:                       19:41                    And can you explain that that term a medium, medium stays that you threw around a couple of times though?

Jack Forbes:                       19:46                    Yeah. I want to make this a thing. So I find the current terminology rather confusing. So you’ve got short term, which if you Google it is technically one to 30 days. You got longterm, which personally I always considered a year or more. And then the in between currently is called extended stay flexible leaps month to month, month li. There’s just some such an array of terminology there. But really the thing, the term that makes sense between short and long is medium. Again, if you Google medium, it literally is the in between short and long. So I want to make medium term housing a thing. You know, I want that to be the standard, no more extended stay or flexible or monthly. So that’s what, what we’re kind of calling ourselves as the medium term furnished housing marketplace. So we do one month minimum stays tend to go up to a year. But you know, we do support longer if needed with average of four to six month rentals right now.

Julian Sage:                       20:49                    So some more in line with what the corporate housing world kind of already says as their standard.

Jack Forbes:                       20:54                    Exactly. Yeah.

Julian Sage:                       20:56                    Okay. And can you talk to us about, because there’s a lot of hosts that are listening to this and you know, we, we’ve seen all these crazy things happening with Airbnb and lots of hosts are very angry trying to get off the platform. You know, trying to do the, the hashtag book direct movement and finding alternatives to you know, having all of your traffic come from a single source. So utilizing, you know, Copa, utilizing furnish finders. You know, maybe some people use Craigslist. I’ve seen a lot of hosts go on to Zillow and all these different platforms all just to kind of feed into their, their own listings. So what was that like when you first started Copa? Like for a host that’s just starting to take on trying to get more direct bookings. How was it when Copa first started to be able to try to get those first people to, you know find out about you guys?

Jack Forbes:                       21:49                    Yeah, we actually started focused solely on interns. So the first version of Copa even required a student email address as a renter for the sign up. You could say I was very small minded in some regards because yeah, I just saw a problem. I personally faced trying to find housing during those internships and said, Oh, well, let’s just solve that specific problem. Thankfully my cofounder, Courtney joined very early on and that she’s the designer and bigger thinker of the group and said, well, why are you restricting it to only students? I mean, there’s plenty of people in a similar boat. We’ve talked about already, digital nomads, travel nurses, new hires, moving to a new city that, you know, need the same thing. So that’s the point where we opened it up, but since we started with interns the hosts, getting them on board actually was a much better pitch because they had been hosting these interns for years and San Francisco was ground zero for us and saying, Hey, you know, you know how you’ve been trying to use Craigslist to rent specifically to this renter demographic.

Jack Forbes:                       23:04                    Our platform is exclusively built for that demographic. So we’re like the same thing. And it was even a free at the time. So it was actually a pretty easy argument initially which led to, you know, a good kind of fundamental base of hosts and listings to really prove out Copa as a company improve you know, find product market fit.

Julian Sage:                       23:29                    So when Copa first started, you know you’re trying to fill a need and for the hosts that are listening you know, that need your property has, you know, hopefully you’ve, you’ve built a brand, you haven’t, you know, a target customer. Your target customer at that time was, was interns. How are you getting in front of your target customers? Were you like cold calling a school or cold calling different businesses and saying like, Hey, you know, we house interns. Like what, what was that process for you?

Jack Forbes:                       23:58                    Yeah, so getting the hosts initially involved, just asking the entrance, we knew, Hey, or do you stay for this internship? Did you like staying there? If so, can you introduce me to the host? And that worked quite well. You know, some of those hosts would then have six properties they manage. And before you know it, you can get, you know, a hundred plus listings to kind of prove the concept. Renters initially came from yeah, employer partnerships. So a lot of tech companies here in Silicon Valley that again, we would even have the interns introduce us to their university recruiter and say, Hey, like I started using this service to find housing. It worked well. You should offer it to the other entrance. We started working with some of the universities, so university of Waterloo where Zach and I are from has 20,000 cooperative education students every year that work you know, anywhere from locally in Ontario to us and beyond.

Jack Forbes:                       24:57                    And in the San Francisco Bay area for example, alone, Waterloo sends 500 interns every four months. So that alone was a really big channel for us. And we’re honestly still like approaching kind of a hundred percent of those students coming to Copa to find place to live. So yeah, those were our initial renter growth channels. And since that has evolved into you know, SEO, right? Search engine optimization showing at the top of Google. We now manage 221 Facebook groups across the U S for every major university. And even just some high level city ones. We have a lot of partnerships now, so over a hundred partnerships with, you know, medical staffing agencies, schools, relocation companies. And yeah, kind of a few other renter channels too, but that’s where it started initially.

Julian Sage:                       25:55                    Yeah. That, that, that is so cool. I want to dive more into that. You know, I think that this is, this is a real special episode for that, for those that are listening that that one channel that you found, it was kind of like, you know, in, in hosting, we call it kind of like the golden goose. Like you find that that investor client who just keeps on throwing more properties at you and you’re just building up your management portfolio like that. But you found that golden goose coming from a, a single channel that was going to supply, that was supplying interns for you, for the properties that you were connecting them with. Was, was that kind of like the game changer? Did everything change at that point?

Jack Forbes:                       26:32                    Oh, it’s a good question. I feel like there wasn’t a single point where everything changes. That’s really just where we got started since, you know, that was our use case as Waterloo insurance ourselves. To expand on that a little bit, the way cooperative education programs work, is there a form of work integrated learning? So in our case at Waterloo, we’re required to have five internships before we graduate. And those internships are built into the program. So you switch off four months of school, four months of work, four months of school, four months of work for five years, which is really great for hosts cause you get consistent interns all year round, you know, that can actually pay pretty well since in many cases they’re at, you know, tech companies, financial institutions, what have you, they get stipends from their employer. So yeah, hosts have really just loved hosting these kind of interns and that’s why I think it was a particularly good channel for us to start with. The I, in Waterloo’s case, they’re the biggest form of work integrated learning in the world actually. With the 20,000 annual co-op students or interns, you could say each year. You know, in the U S schools that have co-op include Drexel university Northeastern and a few others. It’s not as prevalent, but honestly, in the rest of the world co-op, it’s actually a really big thing in Canada. Almost every major university has some form of co-op now.

Julian Sage:                       28:00                    So, so you were using your existing, existing you know, knowledge base that just the things that you knew because you were, you were in that environment to be able to connect with that. I mean that, that’s a really you know, a good opportunity, a good chance, you know, very, very kind of lucky in that situation. But from going from there though, how, you know, how do you, like, how would you even reach out to, like, did you try to expand that intern network and keep on growing that or how do you grow from there?

Jack Forbes:                       28:29                    Yeah, definitely growing the intern kind of renter demographic was our primary goal. That happened for about three, three and a half years. And then the last year, year and a half, we’ve expanded that retro demographic to, yeah. Travel nurses, which are also consistent you know, new hires by partnering with relocation companies. You know, even just students looking for off campus housing. But initially that was our, our channel was growing the intern market coming to us, including, yeah. Other schools that you know, would send us interns. Summers are obviously especially big in the U S since the colleges that don’t have a form of work integrated learning just have students coming to us for summer internships.

Julian Sage:                       29:22                    How, how do you even, how do you even reach out to a school and try to offer that? Because like right now you’re, I mean, technically you’d be like competing against like a Saunder or lyric as far as trying to find you know, those longterm type of stays, those corporate clients. But instead of you providing the housing let you come out of pocket for your, just connecting it with the landlords or with the, with the hosts. So how are you, are you doing the same things that like these companies like Sondra and lyric are doing? Or are you doing something different to be able to find these types of you know, corporate clients?

Jack Forbes:                       29:58                    Yeah, so partnerships are huge for us. I would say that is our secret sauce. You could say. We just started reaching out to as many in this case, tech companies in Silicon Valley as possible to say, Hey, you should send all your year round interns our way. And I think the reason our argument was stronger than, you know, a Saunder or Zeus or someone going to them is because we can say, you know, we’re the one stop shop for all their furnished housing needs. We also help them find roommates. So, you know, the roommate matching I think was a huge plus as well. But yeah, instead of that employer having to have, you know, 20 links to different operators, they could just have one Copa link that, you know, their interns could then find housing it, whatever operator was on there. So, yeah, that, that was kind of our secret sauce. We honestly have never really approach too many schools. You know, schools have a much longer and slower sales cycle. So, you know, it can take a year to really become an official housing resource with the school, whereas, you know, employers especially tech or have offer a new innovative service like that. So,

Julian Sage:                       31:23                    So you’re, you’re, you were reaching out to all of these tech companies being in the Silicon Valley area and just saying like, Hey, this is the site that you can go to. You don’t have to use all these other sites. You can just use ours. And that was kind of your pitch.

Jack Forbes:                       31:37                    Yeah. You know, you don’t have to use the others, but also the kind of roommate, housemate matching that we do is another huge plus because the employers would have to do that themselves previously. And we actually even took those conversations to the next level where some employers even, so we actually even enabled the impulse to book the spaces directly through Copa or they could pay us for, you know, additional services for their interns that included guaranteed housing.

Julian Sage:                       32:16                    So, so what’s the difference from let’s say, Copa and like corporate housing by owners? So like corporate housing by owners is another, you know, kind of aggregate site where they just connect with different types of property owners that have fully furnished housing. What, what’s the difference between, between you two?

Jack Forbes:                       32:36                    Yeah, I would say compared to corporate housing by owner, we are geared toward the younger demographics of corporate traveler interns. You know, new hires, new grads. You know, we are very much focused on our technology, right. Making sure we have a great user interface, user experience, which those younger demographics especially appreciate. You know, I think yeah, anyone using technology a lot nowadays, let’s say like in their twenties I think we’ll tend to go for, you know, that application that they find a lot easier to use versus, you know, one that maybe they see as a little clunkier. So yeah, we’re, we’re also not geared toward, you know, the general business traveler quite yet. So I think that’s the major difference.

Julian Sage:                       33:30                    Okay. And you’re reaching out to these, these companies, these tech companies as a host that is trying to get more direct bookings, let’s say. You know, there’s, there’s a host that’s by like an airport. Are you, you know, for Copa, are you trying to target, like, where would you be trying to target? Like if you had a property in a specific type of location, you were trying to fill direct clients with that property?

Jack Forbes:                       33:56                    Yeah. So for the you know, workers that we help, the interns, new grad hires, just new hires in general being near the businesses is huge. So in the case of the city, being near downtown is pretty big. You know, Seattle is one of our other big cities now too. And we help a lot of Amazon new hires. So if hosts have a property near South Lake union that is especially you know, valuable there. For the travel nurses, we help help if they’re near a hospital that is particularly helpful. Sometimes, you know, they’re, those can coincide where the, you know, big buildings are and the employers, hospitals tend to be nearby. Now with the kind of third channel, I’d say we’ve been approaching with schools you know, if you are near a university to offer off campus housing you know, that helps as well. But really commute is huge for our renters. You know, they, they all want to be as close as possible to where they’re working, you know, at the employer where they’re going to be a nurse, let’s say at the hospital or where they’re going to be going to school.

Julian Sage:                       35:08                    What about for hosts that are in more like rural or vacation destinations like not necessarily a downtown. Are those hosts able to still get those types of direct bookings? Like who would you even reach out to in order to try to get people to stay directly with you if, if let’s say you were in a rural location?

Jack Forbes:                       35:28                    Yeah, absolutely. You know, we are more than happy to support like hosts in rural locations. You know, in those cases it still could be, let’s say, you know, off campus housing cause universities can kind of be in the middle of nowhere. You know, there still could be cases of those workers that say like construction workers there for a six month project. Yeah, maybe military maybe even like an oil a company that you know, has moved to a new project there. So there definitely are cases of renters needing a place to live in those rural areas. We’re now approaching some of those potential partners like construction, staffing agencies you know, oil stuffing agencies like film studios. Even if they’re going to go film a movie for half a year somewhere. Our, we’re starting to approach them now too. But yeah, I think those are the first ones that come to mind in terms of rural, like where you could have construction. I would say a big one.

Julian Sage:                       36:31                    That’s, that’s super interesting. You know, just kind of thinking I want, I want the whole sort of listening to this to understand like, you know, if you have a property in a specific location, you’re trying to look and see like, okay, who are my target, my target guests? Who would be my target client? But what you’re doing, Jack, is you have, you know, thousands of properties across the U S and then you’re trying to connect those thousands of people with the same, you know, with the people that they’re looking for. Essentially. It’s just, you’re going through the process of reaching out to these companies, reaching out to these construction companies and basically filling it for them. So, you know, they, they might be able to do it themselves, but you know, for the hosts that aren’t doing that, you’re basically just allowing these companies to be able to find them easier. Who are you contacting when you’re, when you’re pitching these or when you’re calling these companies and saying, Hey, I’ve got all of these properties that are available for these midterm stays. Who do you talk to? Do you just call the front desk and be like, you know, who’s, who’s the person in charge here? Or what, what is that gatekeeper?

Jack Forbes:                       37:27                    I would say, yeah. So the question is kind of like who at the potential partners do we communicate with? Right. So it really does depend, right? Like let’s say for a film studio they tend not to have like a housing staff member, right? That’s like dedicated to finding housing for the staff. It’s more just a general management kind of member that has to deal with the logistics of filming somewhere. With construction staffing again, like, yeah, they, they don’t tend to really have like a specific person on housing. So it honestly varies. Like I haven’t found really like a pattern per se where there’s like, Oh, this title was what they did to have. But you know, in other scenarios there, there is a title right. Like off campus housing, almost every university has a dedicated team for that that we can contact.

Jack Forbes:                       38:20                    Medical staffing can be missed, right? Like sometimes you’ll have someone that, a big part of what they do is explicitly funding, helping find housing for the nurses, but in many cases, they don’t have that person. So you’re just like trying to find who talk to. And that’s really where we think we can add value to host as well as like, we can do the dirty work of forming these partnerships and sending the renters your way. So then hopefully that, you know, relatively small 1% service fee we charge is worth, you know, that work we’re putting in. And one thing worth noting too is it might go without saying, but it, it’s geography dependent, right? So depending on the city you’re in, there are different industries that send people your way. You know, Seattle obviously is big with tech. But Pittsburgh for example, is maybe bigger on like medical and yeah, like oil and, and actually film is like bigger than you’d think. So, yeah, depending on the city, you know, those are different kind of partners we’re going after.

Julian Sage:                       39:23                    Okay. And you, you just call like, you know, let’s say there’s a host in you know, nowhere, Missouri and they’re trying to find people in their area to be able to help them stay direct as cope is not there. There’s just no other good sources. You know, they’re trying to find those direct clients. Who would they be contacting? Like what do you call, like the front front desk of the business or you send them a, a letter, like how do you reach out to these people?

Jack Forbes:                       39:51                    Yeah. You know, front desk doesn’t hurt to start. Yeah. And just telling your story, like, as a host you could say, yeah, I have available spaces in this current state of affairs, they are clean discounted, blah, blah, blah. And I’m just looking to help people that need housing. And you know, that first person you talked to will usually direct you, point you in the right direction. Yeah. You know, it’s, there definitely isn’t like a secret formula to technically you could call it B to B sales. But yeah, you know, it’s just a grind of getting on the phone.

Julian Sage:                       40:33                    What would you say is the biggest fear that you faced when starting a Copa and trying to find, you know, hosts to be able to, you know, come onto the platform and then also these businesses to be able to work with?

Jack Forbes:                       40:46                    Yeah. You know, we’re fortunate to have been supply constrained pretty much since day one. We had the renters coming to us, like they acknowledged the benefit we provided over a Craigslist of Facebook, even Airbnb with the savings that they see. But yeah, getting the supply has always been the hardest part. So in terms of maybe, you know, fear, maybe it’s a bit much. I wouldn’t say I’m like too, too afraid of something that’s I think I’m so driven by my own passion to solve the problem I had that, you know, I’m not really like scared of you know, what, whatever it is that all faced. But yeah, getting enough hosts for all the renter’s coming to us has definitely been the part because, you know, one thing I tend to say too is you know, the average host is maybe an older audience that didn’t grow up with the technology younger generations have, right? So while you don’t have generations might view technology more as a tool older generations might view it more as a chore and it convinced thing people who view technology as a chore that Hey, you should try this new technology. It’s easier said than done. You know, it takes a lot of kind of direct sales, typically calling every host to say, Hey, I have this thing that can help you. Let me explain how, so yeah, getting enough supply for the renters we have is, has always been the hardest part.

Julian Sage:                       42:17                    I know Jay Jackie left, he left me three minutes. You left me a three minute voicemail or three, three calls at three separate voicemails. So I, the hustle is very real and you know, getting people to take action and take moves, you know, a is, is a lot more challenging than maybe people realize. What were some of those obstacles that you saw that you faced getting hosts onto your platform and then also obstacles that you faced with the businesses that you were trying to get acquire new supply or acquire new leads coming from?

Jack Forbes:                       42:46                    Yeah I guess obstacles with getting new hosts first. Again, since it’s, you know, the average host I think we cater to maybe doesn’t find technology is as easy as others. Getting that experience down. So, you know, creating your account and listing your space is as seamless as possible. Years. I mean, that took, we iterated on the listing edit process over a dozen times. You know, we just kept sitting down with our hosts and saying, okay, I’m going to watch you make a listing. You know, don’t ask for help but, but say when you’re confused about something and we would just watch them see what parts were confusing, fix that, you know, do it again and honestly how we iterated enough times that finally, you know, hosts could easily make a listing and now actually even copy like 80% of the details over from Airbnb automatically.

Jack Forbes:                       43:48                    So that, you know, from like coming to COPAS website to having your listing published could take less than 10 minutes. So that was a huge obstacle. Like that was one of the biggest obstacles we face as a company. And then in terms of the businesses and forming new partnerships I wouldn’t say this like obstacles per se, but more just, it takes a lot of time and effort. There’s definitely some seasonality. You know, there’s better times to reach out to these companies throughout the year. So that part can be tough where you learn, Oh, okay, I really shouldn’t reach out to I don’t know, maybe financial institutions as tax season is approaching or something like that. Or right now, you know you know, there’s certain companies that are busier than ever with the craziness going on and some that are have more time than ever. So yeah, finding which ones are the right ones to reach out to right now, it’s another learning.

Julian Sage:                       44:48                    You know, it’s, it’s, it’s like you, you really have to kind of understand the local market to be able to find the people to be able to stay in your properties. Like I thought it was super interesting when you said, you know, like, I’m in Pittsburgh, it’s very oil driven and there’s a lot of filmmakers and as a host that has a property there, when you’re trying to find people to stay with you, it’s like being able to understand like, okay, now’s probably not the best time to be able to reach out to these companies or reach out to these people. And these are the types of people that are within my market. You know, when you’re creating a direct, you know, a, a, a online travel agency or a direct booking site really it’s like you have to understand what every single market is and who are all the people there, who are the hosts, who are the, who are the people that would be staying with you? It sounds like, like a lot of work.

Jack Forbes:                       45:33                    Oh man. Yeah. No, it really is. I mean, any marketplace where it’s two sided is more challenging than, you know, I guess some businesses could be. But then yeah, once you add even more players into the game and in our case partners it’s, yeah, a lot to juggle and yeah, figuring out how to nail down the renter experience, the host experience, and then also the kind of partner experiences. It’s a challenge.

Julian Sage:                       45:59                    What, what about for, because they’re, you know, there’s, there’s companies like Google, Google probably has their own like housing supplier or their own like corporate housing or something like that. Or have you noticed like a lot of companies that already partnered with different types of companies to be able to provide them that housing?

Jack Forbes:                       46:17                    Yeah. So in the case of those bigger companies, they typically work with a relocation company. So we approached those relocation companies to say, Hey, you know, those different clients you have, whether it’s Amazon, Google, whatever you know, we are a great resource for you know, those new hires, especially the interns, the you know, maybe younger working professionals. And I would say into general you know, the only time it’s maybe a dead end is if they provide corporate housing. Right. Cause then they maybe just don’t even have any need for you know, helping their employees actually find a place to live on their own. But in most cases, the companies are happy to offer more resources, right? Like it’s just more help that they get to offer their employees. So it just hurt to, you know, add a link to the list, for example. And a lot of them tend to kind of filter through that list every year, let’s say. So they’ll ask their employees, okay, what did you use, what you use? And then, you know, remove the links that no one really did use and maybe bump up the links that people could use.

Julian Sage:                       47:26                    So, so we’re tapping into a relocation company, they’re able to utilize your, your listings or your property is also another. So as a host, as an individual host, if we, if we knew like, you know, being in the DC area, I know Amazon, it’s coming in as a host, should we be reaching out to these companies like Amazon and saying, Hey, can you put me on your list? Or is that a little bit too, too much?

Jack Forbes:                       47:49                    Yeah. In the case of being an individual host or property manager approaching them, I actually wouldn’t recommend that because it honestly will probably end up being a waste of time. Especially with the bigger companies, if they have offloaded their housing help to relocation companies, first of all, they don’t even really, we wouldn’t even be the ones to talk to. Right? They would point you to the relocation company. But then also as a relocation company you know, they, some do want to work directly with an operator. You know, a host, but usually only if it’s like a big, you know, many, many, many units at that host would have. So, you know, that’s why, yeah, if relocation companies took those calls with every individual host, you know, that could become a crazy list of listings that they now have to manage. So that honestly maybe isn’t the best direction to go. I would say as an individual host, if you’re trying to, you know, get fucking this directly from the source, you know, instead of using a Copa on Airbnb, whatever really, maybe just trying to reach out to local organizations would be the most helpful. You know, something specific to your area. Like again, those, those industries we mentioned were yeah, maybe there are yeah, I don’t know. An oil company, let’s say that is nearby, that staffs people to your area who you could house.

Julian Sage:                       49:18                    Are our companies looking for a certain requirement or certain things to be able to stay with a host? You know, because hosts have different types of different standards right now. Like, as we’re even seeing, like, you know, the steps, so it’s probably going to come out a little bit further when the news got released. But like Airbnb today said, Hey, we’re going to have this like set cleaning standard trying to make like a, you know, the universal for you know, the share sharing economy. For companies though that are utilizing midterm stays, do they have like specific requirements in order to be able to accommodate those for, for their, their employees or whoever?

Jack Forbes:                       50:02                    Yeah, definitely. Especially right now with the current craziness you know, they do want to see a cleaning standard. A big one that even outside of the current state of affairs flexible cancellation policies is something a lot of companies like medical staffing agencies especially. So if you’re trying to house travel nurses, those medical staff, you just want see a flexible cancellation policy, right? Because travel nurses, their gig at the hospital could get canceled or moved like at a moment’s notice. Right. And the nurse, you know, as no control over it, it’s not their fault. So if the host doesn’t have a flexible cancellation policy, yeah, the medical staffing agencies aren’t going to be inclined to send them your way. Yeah, that’s a good question. So that, you know, flexible cancellation definitely right now trying to hit cleaning standards. Overall, you know, what we tend to recommend to our hosts on Copa is, you know, have great photos that tell the story, right.

Jack Forbes:                       51:07                    And paint a picture of where this renter is going to be leaving living you know, take them in the corner of the room at the brightest time of day. You know, basically look at some of those big companies like Saunder and try and make your listing real quick. There’s, you know, like they’ve hired a whole team to just analyze what really converts renters to booking our listings so you don’t have to do the hard work, you know, AB testing. Okay. What little details can I tweak on my listing? You can just look at the company that have already done that work for you. And yeah, just kind of take what they’ve done, you know, have a good description that shows your personality. One little pro tip I tend to give to if we’re looking specifically at like your listing on a Copa or an Airbnb is try and make it unique, you know, like make it, have some personality in there. If you just do your kind of generic three bedroom, two bath house in city, like that doesn’t really, you know, stand out at all. But if maybe there was a theme in there like you, I don’t know, had star Wars figurines throughout you could be like you know, some specific live with Darth Vader or something like that, you know it to a certain extent obviously, but I think having some personality really catch people’s eye too.

Julian Sage:                       52:31                    Yeah, it’s, it’s very, it’s very experiential. And do you see that the companies that you’re that are, or a lot of the companies that are looking for places that have an experience? Cause usually when I think of like, you know, just a traditional corporate housing, I usually think of kind of something that’s traditional, a little bit more old school catering maybe towards an older demographic, like the business professional. But for a lot of more, you know, millennials or the, the, the newer hosts you know, they’re, they’re looking for an experience. Have you found that companies are also looking for a certain type of listing as opposed to traditional listings?

Jack Forbes:                       53:07                    That’s a good point. With companies actually booking the spaces through Copa, you know, they may be are you know, just as inclined to book the more traditional yeah, three bedroom, two bath house in city kind of listening. Cause you know, it’s, I guess professional is definitely something that they’re trying to check off the list. But yeah, with a lot of the ranchers we help where it’s, you know, not as much those kind of older general business travelers. Yeah. The renters we help, like millennials and whatnot are, are definitely looking for yeah, some experience. Yeah.

Julian Sage:                       53:46                    Awesome. We’re going to be wrapping up here. I know that we’ve taken a quite a bit of your time, but I, I’m curious since you’re kind of in the same space as like a, you know, Saunders, Zeus, you know, you’re, you’re all kind of trying to find the same, you know, source trying to get the people to stay at your properties. You know, again, them, they, they, they are paying for the properties and they have a lot, probably more, they have a lot more at stake than than you do since you’re just connecting the supply to the leads. But do you think that there still is a place for, or do you think that these companies, these mass release companies are going to be able to thrive continuing on? Or is it going to shift to where more individual hosts are going to be able to get more direct, direct stays? Like are this, is it that challenging to be able to, or would companies like that be able to really find the leads that will just be their sole supplier? Like they’re dependent, you know, like a Saunders, very dependent on, you know, let’s say that Waterloo and if Waterloo dries up, then it’s like, well, there goes all the business for, you know, their, their housing. Do you think that that’s a sustainable model?

Jack Forbes:                       54:55                    Yeah, that’s a good question. So one trend I think will happen is there will be a shift toward medium term stays that we do from short term. You know, I think people have realized it just is more reliable. So something does happen on the vacation front. You know, you can have something more reliable. So I think we’ll see that shift. In terms of a shift from the master lease companies to more individual homeowners, it’s honestly tough to say. But, you know, I will say we’re trying to give those individual homeowners a fighting chance, right? Like fundamentally, you know, companies that can just optimize and can operations standpoint like diseases and Saunders and them, you know, they do have that advantage, right? They can like find these cleaners that they charge the least to and use technology to automate like the messaging and everything.

Jack Forbes:                       55:52                    So that they can spend less time, but I think fundamentally individual homeowners and hosts can offer the best experience. Right? Like you have that opportunity to personalize the experience. If you run just one house, let’s say that you rent out, you could do stuff that the centers in them could never do. Like you could pick up your renters from the airport. You could, you know, take them to Costco for the first trip that they need. Like you can do stuff, you have an advantage. And yeah, we personally, you know, we’re trying to help those individuals kind of have a fighting chance. So yeah, in terms of where the market will shift, I don’t know. But I do hope, yeah, the individual hosts will, will thrive.

Julian Sage:                       56:38                    Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jack, for taking the time. Do you have any, any last things that you want to share? Maybe a best way that somebody can reach out to you if they have any more questions?

Jack Forbes:                       56:48                    Yeah. email me jacket, copa.co if you know, I can be of any help. It’s, I guess for those listening, J a C K at K O P a. Dot. Co. And yeah, you know, if your space is a good fit for Copa for good, you know, we’d love to send the travel nurses, students and others your way right now. So yeah, just email us and we can opt you into Copa for good as well.

Julian Sage:                       57:17                    Awesome. Yeah. Thanks. Thank you so much. Or if you’re on furnished finder in the DC area, I’m expect a call from Jack with a, with a bit long voicemail about the Kopa. But no, I thought that was so, so funny. I was just like, how did this guy find me? I didn’t respond quick enough, but no, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jack. I’ll include all the links down below in the description. I think that’s so cool. Thank you for taking the time to explain, explain your story and excited to see where we’re cope is going to go in the future as well. Thank you. All right, and until next time, host nation, keep on hosting.

Julian Sage:                       57:52                    Hope you hosts benefit from the show. If you found value, please go on over to iTunes, leave us a review and let us know what you enjoy about the show. If you’d like to talk to hosts that have been featured in these episodes as well as the community, go on over to our Facebook group, the host nation.