In this episode of Tame the Mobile Beast, Tom Butta is joined by Joel Holland, CEO of Harvest Hosts, a membership program that offers RVers unique places to overnight camp across the United States and Canada. Joel shares what inspired him to enter the space, what strategies he has leveraged to grow the community, and key lessons he has had on his entrepreneurial journey.
In this episode of Tame the Mobile Beast, Tom Butta is joined by Joel Holland, CEO of Harvest Hosts, a membership program that offers RVers unique places to overnight camp across the United States and Canada. Joel shares what inspired him to enter the space, what strategies he has leveraged to grow the community, and key lessons he has had on his entrepreneurial journey.
Harvest Hosts was originally founded by Don and Kim Greene in 2010, and once Joel discovered the service, he saw the opportunity to supercharge a loyal customer base with user-friendly technology and expanded locations. So in 2018, he purchased Harvest Hosts and got to work.
Fast forward to today, Joel and the team have grown the platform to over 9,000 unique locations with over 260,000 members. The conversation explores the keys to this continued success, including a large emphasis on consistently across platforms, which he Joel terms “web-app parity.” Through this strategy, friction and mental burden have been reduced to make booking a stay as simple as possible.
As the episode continues, Joel shares valuable lessons he’s gained throughout his entrepreneurial journey. He underscores the benefits of acquiring and scaling businesses with proven product-market fit, the necessity of strategic advertising, and the importance of building a strong team. Looking to the future, Joel outlines plans to expand Harvest Hosts' appeal without compromising its unique offerings by incorporating more community-driven features.
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Guest Quote
"Our users really didn't appreciate the disjointed experience. And we're always trying to make things easier, not harder. And so web-app parity was the easiest way to take the mental load off the user.” – Joel Holland
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Time Stamps
00:46 Meet Joel Holland, CEO of Harvest Hosts
01:39 The rise of adventuring and RV travel
04:45 Harvest Hosts: unique overnight experiences
10:15 Web and app parity for seamless experience
13:34 Joel Holland's journey to Harvest Hosts
18:08 Navigating outsider perspectives
18:28 Effective survey methods
19:01 In-app feedback strategies
21:40 Success stories and growth
22:46 Marketing and advertising insights
24:39 Referral programs and influencers
27:32 Lessons from a CEO
31:26 Rapid fire questions
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Links
[00:00:00] Joel Holland: Some campgrounds are great. Most campgrounds are commoditized. You're not excited about it. And I was like, man, I'm excited about every other piece, but I'm never really excited about the knights. What about all these really cool properties we're passing? Like, look at that farm. It's gorgeous. I had these ideal concepts of like parking on top of a ridge on a farm, looking out over a beautiful red barn in a countryside, or parking at a winery in the vineyards.
[00:00:23] Joel Holland: I was like, I know it's possible. There's so much land, they have room and I saw the opportunity.
[00:00:28] Voiceover: Welcome to Tame the Mobile Beast, everything you need to capture customer value. Here's your host, chief strategy and marketing officer at Airship, Tom Butta.
[00:00:44] Tom Butta: Welcome to Tame the Mobile Beast. I'm your host, Tom Butta, and today I'm joined by Joel Holland, the CEO of Harvest Hosts. Harvest Hosts is a membership program that connects RVers with unique overnight experiences. Amazingly, [00:01:00] Harvest Hosts has over 250,000 members and has facilitated over 1 million stays.
[00:01:07] Tom Butta: Welcome to the show, Joel. How are you today? I'm great, Tom. Thanks for having me on. I'm talking to you here from, uh, from the mountains of, uh, Colorado, right?
[00:01:15] Joel Holland: That's right, yeah. And then, and I can feel, I can taste skies and, uh, descending upon us because it's snowing and the slopes are starting to open up and, uh, the Vail, Vail Mountain opens up next week.
[00:01:25] Joel Holland: So, yeah, feeling good.
[00:01:27] Tom Butta: That's very exciting. Like most people think about Spring as, as the time of rebirth, I think. Probably for you in Vail. This is the moment.
[00:01:35] Joel Holland: That's right. This is what we've been waiting. This is what I've been waiting for all year.
[00:01:38] Tom Butta: All right, cool. Before we talk more about you and Harvest Hosts, I wanted to kick off the conversation with our beast of the week.
[00:01:45] Tom Butta: In this case, our beast of the week is adventuring. So what I mean by a beast is it's one of those areas, one of those topics, one of those challenges that feels actually pretty big. So much so that it feels like a beast. [00:02:00] In this case we're gonna talk about adventuring. So it's interesting, like why would we talk about adventuring as a beast?
[00:02:07] Tom Butta: Well, for a bunch of people who are introduced to the idea of nomad lifestyle during Covid, it, it's pretty daunting to have figured out every aspect of that adventuring lifestyle themselves. Joel, can you talk about this beast of this adventuring idea and this challenge and why you set out to tame it?
[00:02:27] Joel Holland: Totally. I mean, I, I think that people have this inherent desire to travel and experience new things, and that was taken away from a lot of people during Covid and that it was a good reminder that, Ooh, we really don't like monotony and we really don't like doing the same thing every day and being stuck.
[00:02:46] Joel Holland: There's like this energy you get from new experiences and travel. Adventure is the easiest way to get that right. Like rarely. I mean, never, never am I traveling and am I bored? It's just, it's all [00:03:00] new. It's, it's all new stimulus. Super exciting. So road travel and RV travel have become a. In the last, you know, few years, a really good way to scratch the itch.
[00:03:11] Joel Holland: You know, it's a, it can be a less expensive way, it could be a little easier logistically, right? Like all of us are busy with life, uh, you know, and I might not be able to plan months out for an air travel trip and hotels and, you know, yada yada, but impulsively, I can go jump in the RV this weekend when it's open and go somewhere cool and go see something I haven't seen before.
[00:03:30] Joel Holland: And so I think that's why we've seen such an influx of road travelers. They want the adventure. They love spontaneity. Road travel gives you both.
[00:03:39] Tom Butta: Interesting. Are the numbers up pre Covid and post covid?
[00:03:43] Joel Holland: They are totally so, so the numbers, I mean, COVID exploded the numbers, but even when you take the Covid bump out, right, and just normalize the numbers, they're up.
[00:03:53] Joel Holland: They were going up before Covid. People were getting back to like Van Life and Road Travel, seeing [00:04:00] parts of the country that. They would typically fly over small town America. It was all seen kind of rebirth and Covid kicked it into high gear, got a lot more people to experience it, you know, sooner than they might have.
[00:04:12] Joel Holland: And now we're seeing the long tail where people are sticking with it and plenty of people are like, all right, I did it. I'm going back to like my normal approach travel. But there are so many people came into this world that the long tail is more, people are still on the roads visiting, you know, the national parks, the state parks.
[00:04:30] Joel Holland: Hopefully stopping the Harvest Hostslocations along the way and visiting these small towns and communities to get these authentic experiences that you, that I, in my opinion, you can only really get when you drive to a small town accessible only by CAR R rv.
[00:04:45] Tom Butta: Interesting. So where does Harvest Hosts come in?
[00:04:48] Joel Holland: Yep. So Harvest Hosts, we have over 9,000 locations where you can stay as a member, and these are really interesting and upscale and, and, and unique locations. Wineries, [00:05:00] breweries, distilleries, golf courses, museums, and when I say museums, I'm talking like outdoor air museums, underground salt museums, toy museums, really neat and funky places, right?
[00:05:13] Joel Holland: The, the Mount Washington Cog Railway in New Hampshire. You wanna go to the oldest operating cog railway in the country? You can, you can stay there. If you're one of our members, you can park in the parking lot and watch these trains. Go up Mount Washington. Hmm. And so they're really cool experiences, right?
[00:05:28] Joel Holland: Like our, our whole thing is stay somewhere awesome. And when you're in an rv, you've got plenty of options. You know, we don't think that staying in a Walmart parking lot or a Cracker Barrel parking lot or a rest stop should be an option when you can stay at a winery or the Mount Washington Cog Railway and, and for our members, it's totally free to stay there.
[00:05:47] Joel Holland: You know, you, you pay us a hundred dollars a year to be a member. You can stay at almost 10,000 places. For free in return for supporting the business. Right. And that's why the businesses are in our program. They love [00:06:00] members coming in, buying tickets to the museum or buying the wine, doing a tasting, buying the fresh produce.
[00:06:06] Joel Holland: So it's, it's a good win-win program. Our beer stays somewhere cool businesses from our program. This year we'll get over $50 million in additional revenue.
[00:06:15] Tom Butta: Do you have any kinda rev share with them or is your revenue mostly based through your membership fees?
[00:06:21] Joel Holland: I'm glad you asked. Um, we do not take anything from our hosts.
[00:06:24] Joel Holland: We don't charge them to be in the program. We don't take any of the revenue our members spend with them. It is all accretive. We basically summarize it as the greatest free marketing program in existence. Right? Like if you're, if you have room for an RV program, an rv, or to park and you know, and stay overnight.
[00:06:40] Joel Holland: We will send you the traffic and there's no cost to do that.
[00:06:44] Tom Butta: And in exchange you get a portion of their, I don't know, their facility, their parking facility, their land.
[00:06:51] Joel Holland: So really the nice thing is, you know, all of our businesses, they're zoned as business and they have parking lots, um, or they have somewhere, right?
[00:06:59] Joel Holland: [00:07:00] We work with them to make sure they're somewhere flat, ideally scenic. Peaceful, right? That, that our members can park and spend the night and our members come fully self-contained. They've got all the water and the power and, uh, the bathrooms. They, they don't need anything from the host, so no plugins.
[00:07:16] Joel Holland: They just literally need a place to park. And what's really nice is as someone who loves tasting wine, my wife and I can now visit wineries park a lot of times in the vineyard. Go inside, both of us do a tasting. Take a, you know, take a bottle back to the rig and we don't have to drive anywhere. So it's awesome.
[00:07:32] Tom Butta: Wow. So, uh, you talk about like a frictionless experience on the part of both the adventure or the rv, but also on the part of the host.
[00:07:40] Joel Holland: That's right. That's right. And we try to make it easy, right? We know small businesses, they're already too busy, so we make it simple for them. We have a booking system that we've built that connects to their calendar system so they can really control when people visit.
[00:07:53] Joel Holland: We make it as easy as possible.
[00:07:55] Tom Butta: That's cool. How do your members, um, how do they engage with you? [00:08:00] Is it on a website, is it on an app? What's your engagement platform?
[00:08:03] Joel Holland: That's right. So mobile and web. And so we have it, we have a great app, we have a great website and you can use either and both. Um, the majority of our members are signing up either on our website from a desktop or on our website through mobile.
[00:08:19] Joel Holland: Then they're downloading the app to use the app for the actual search and booking experience because the app has a great route planning feature. You can filter by size, by type, see all the photos and reviews, and then also see the booking system. So the majority of our members are booking through the app.
[00:08:37] Joel Holland: What's really interesting, you know, it is funny when you talked about the beast earlier, I, I smiled because the beast that I'm dealing with today, and you'd never guess is a beast. My head of analytics posted a chart and said, Hey, something you guys might wanna be worried about. We are getting more mobile signups this month than we ever have before.
[00:08:57] Joel Holland: More people are going into the app store and buying harvest [00:09:00] hosts, and we don't want that because Apple is an unreasonable partner. They take too much and we don't want them signing up through the app store. So we don't, we don't support that as a journey. We don't advertise in the app store. And it's just expensive, right?
[00:09:15] Joel Holland: Like we can, members can come through our website and we pay 3%, or they can go to Apple and we pay 30%. It's outrageous.
[00:09:23] Tom Butta: Mm-hmm. Interesting. It's a little bit of inertia there that you're working against, I think. Right?
[00:09:27] Joel Holland: Yeah. And, and by the way, we fight it aggressively. Like if we, we make, we try to educate our people, go to our website, get a discount.
[00:09:34] Joel Holland: You're not getting a discount through the app store, right? So, so the only reason you would buy it through the app store is if you somehow haven't. Engaged with us in other channels and we do everything we can to push you away from the app store and, and just download the app to use it as a utility. But
[00:09:49] Tom: yeah,
[00:09:49] Joel Holland: it's not a lead gen source,
[00:09:51] Tom Butta: right?
[00:09:51] Tom Butta: So it's interesting. So your workflow is, you know, come to our website, sign up, authenticate yourself, provide, I don't know, your preferences, answer a few key [00:10:00] questions so we can optimize, you know, your particular experience and then. Download the app to actually leverage the capabilities in the app for your plans as well as the experience when you're on the road.
[00:10:14] Tom Butta: Totally. And how much do you think about, um, I'll, I'll call it unifying the experience between, you know, web and app, given that it's the same person, right? Yeah. Um, that's interacting on both platforms of choice.
[00:10:30] Joel Holland: That's right. We think about it a lot. So we basically did a, a, a full year rebuild that launched.
[00:10:35] Joel Holland: In April and we called it web app parody, such that the website and the app are an identical experience.
[00:10:43] Tom Butta: Well, for the listeners of this podcast, I, I have to stop you right there because that is actually a great term that I think everybody should think about. This idea of web app parody. And you know, we often talk one about one of the biggest beasts I think most [00:11:00] brands face today is, um, what we as consumers experience.
[00:11:04] Tom Butta: Particularly we as consumers who are really leveraging mobile, like the mobile device as as our primary form of interaction with the brand and the beast that we're we're talking about is you can be in an app and then all of a sudden and you're authenticated and you're known and all of the rest, and then you're like, it feels like you're airlifted up and out of that onto some HGML web page where the experience is completely different.
[00:11:31] Tom Butta: It's not at all native. To either the web or to what the app experience was like. And it breaks, you know, it disconnects that experience from what was feeling like a pretty good and personal one, you know, to one that's like, you don't really know me, and it's, this is very different. And that's, that happens so much today.
[00:11:52] Tom Butta: And the fact that you're talking about an initiative about driving web app parity. I think that's something everybody should pay attention to. So maybe, [00:12:00] maybe you can unpack that a little bit for us. Talk a little bit more about it.
[00:12:02] Joel Holland: Yeah. I mean, we basically found exactly what you're describing was that our users really didn't appreciate the disjointed experience, right?
[00:12:12] Joel Holland: Like I. Every time you, to use a weird example, but every time you walk into a Walmart, they're, they're always the same. And I think people like that. You kind of know where stuff is. You can be walk into one here in Colorado or one in Missouri. They're the same. How weird would it be if every time you walked into a Walmart everything was different?
[00:12:29] Joel Holland: Some are bright, some are dark, some have carpet, some don't. Some have a food section on the right. Some have it on the left. That would just be weird. And that's kind of what we had. And so it made people have to like. Learn things twice. And this concept of context switching is not a good one when it comes to getting someone to do what you want, which is get in book a stay and go visit a host.
[00:12:51] Joel Holland: We were making their mental burden too high and we're always trying to work to make things easier, not harder. And so web app parody was the easiest way to like [00:13:00] take the mental load off the user.
[00:13:01] Tom Butta: What do you mean by mental burden?
[00:13:03] Joel Holland: Like you've already got. A lot you're trying to figure out, especially as a road traveler, right?
[00:13:08] Joel Holland: Like you're, you're trying to figure out where to go and like what's available. The last thing you need is more friction. So I guess a different way to put it is we are just trying to reduce friction.
[00:13:16] Tom Butta: Yeah.
[00:13:17] Joel Holland: The less friction the better. And when you've got a different experience in your website and your app, people have to think.
[00:13:23] Joel Holland: Twice as hard
[00:13:24] Tom Butta: and it's frustrating. And now you got this emo, the emotion that you're triggering is not the one that you wanna trigger.
[00:13:29] Joel Holland: That's right, that's right.
[00:13:30] Tom Butta: Yeah.
[00:13:30] Joel Holland: Especially for our audience, which is an older audience. So how did you come about
[00:13:34] Tom Butta: Harvest Hosts?
[00:13:35] Joel Holland: Yeah, so I built a business called Story Blocks in the DC area first, and as a stock video production, music stock photo company.
[00:13:44] Joel Holland: Great business. Took a long time to build it and we sold it, um, to a private equity firm that opened. My wife and I up to like do something different. And so we impulsively bought an rv, we started traveling around the country, ended up really, really enjoying it. Spent two years RV through all [00:14:00] the lower 48 states.
[00:14:01] Tom: Wow.
[00:14:02] Joel Holland: Ended up in Colorado, in Vail, also kind of impulsively buying a house here and putting down roots. And on that process, you know, on, on that like trip. Loved the freedom of the open road, loved the um. Ability to set our schedule, decide, Hey, should we stay here a little longer? Are we over it? Let's go somewhere else.
[00:14:22] Joel Holland: So like the flex, the freedom of flexibility was so awesome. And the only complaint we really had was the places we were staying were not so magical, right? Like campgrounds, some campgrounds are great, most campgrounds are commoditized, and they're just a parking spot. Next to someone else with, you know, a nice bathroom facility, but it's not like you're not excited about it.
[00:14:44] Joel Holland: And I was like, man, I'm excited about every other piece, but I'm never really excited about the knights. Um, what about all these really cool properties we're passing? Like, look at that farm. It's gorgeous. I wanna, like, I have these, I ideal I concepts of like parking on a top of a ridge on a [00:15:00] farm, looking out over a.
[00:15:01] Joel Holland: Know a beautiful red barn in a countryside or parking at a winery in the vineyards. Like, I was like, I know it's possible. There's so much land they have room. And that's actually when I discovered that this company, in its very nascent form existed. And it had been started by a husband, wife team out of Prescott, Arizona.
[00:15:19] Joel Holland: They had a wonderful concept, uh, had already brought together 600 wineries and, and farms, and they didn't have the technology like they had like a WordPress website. They didn't have a. Booking system. They didn't have an app. And I said, I saw the opportunity. And so the, the question was like, build versus buy.
[00:15:37] Joel Holland: Love the idea, do I go out and try to build this network and then start to try to scale it? Or could I rely on the work they've done over the years to get the bones the program going and try to scale it without that part? So I reached out to them and said, Hey, I love this, love this concept. I have a background in technology.
[00:15:55] Joel Holland: I would love to improve the technology and then market it to more our [00:16:00] viewers and more hosts, and ultimately bought it in May of 2018. So, so like I was able to skip. Zero to one pro part. Yep. Um, which I was not looking forward to and skip Right. To let's make this thing better and get it into the hands of more people.
[00:16:14] Tom Butta: Hmm. Are they still involved or in No, in any way. Connected.
[00:16:18] Joel Holland: Full, full buyout. And, um, I think they're kind of RVing around the world actually having fun, which is awesome.
[00:16:24] Tom Butta: That's cool. So I'm sure that you, as you continue to find adventure in new places, uh, through Harvest Hosts, I'm sure you also have your own experience, which you play back.
[00:16:35] Tom Butta: I'm sure to the team because it's, it's, it's sort of real time and you are in fact a real user, right? Maybe a power user. You're a power user, maybe.
[00:16:45] Joel Holland: I like to say I'm our best customer and, and, and, and honestly it makes running the business so much easier because I have instincts and I can trust them because I'm, I use the product and so it's pretty cool.
[00:16:57] Joel Holland: Like it was the same thing in my last company [00:17:00] Story blocks. I started it as a user. It made it a lot easier to run because I could trust my instincts. I wasn't just like trying to solve someone else's problem, and by the way, it's because I use it and love the product. It makes it more fun so that when there are challenges and there are always challenges of business, it's a little easier to have fun because it's something I enjoy.
[00:17:21] Joel Holland: So, so it's just one of these like hybrid hobby slash businesses, which is a pretty cool way to do things.
[00:17:27] Tom Butta: Also, I would think that the feedback that you then receive from others, and we could talk about maybe how you do that, but that the feedback that you receive from others, you probably pay more attention to.
[00:17:40] Tom Butta: Because on some level it's relatable as opposed to maybe the instincts of people who are removed that might dismiss it, right? As these outliers. And you might actually find a nugget in some kind of a comment, right?
[00:17:53] Joel Holland: Yes. Yeah, totally. And, and by being. So close to the industry. I mean, pros and cons. The pro [00:18:00] is, I do feel like I understand this industry.
[00:18:02] Joel Holland: I understand all the players in it. I understand our users and our members. I understand their mindsets. Massive pros from that con would be, I don't have the outsider's perspective. Right. And the longer I'm in it, the more of of a box I live within in an echo chamber.
[00:18:18] Tom: Mm-hmm.
[00:18:19] Joel Holland: But you can solve that by getting outsider perspectives and making sure that, you know, we do a lot of surveying and member interviewing and make sure that I'm not off base.
[00:18:28] Tom Butta: Yeah. So how, how do you do that? You said you do a lot of surveying. Is do you do that like within the app or how do you do that?
[00:18:34] Joel Holland: Yeah, we do it two different ways. We'll use email, right? We, we will email our members and, and ask them to take surveys and get tens of thousands of responses from our members.
[00:18:43] Joel Holland: But we'll also use third party. Survey companies mm-hmm. To go out and ask non-members, you know, what's the reputation of harvest sales? Have you heard of this company? What have you heard about them? Right. Would you consider buying? If not, why not? So we get both the third party perspective and the [00:19:00] internal perspective.
[00:19:01] Tom Butta: Yep. I mean, I might offer just, you can add another, uh, form of, uh, customer feedback, member feedback literally in real time. So today it's entirely possible that, you know, within the app, when you're literally in the app. You can have a popup, not necessarily an interruptive one, one that's a little bit more embedded into the current experience.
[00:19:22] Tom Butta: And you can ask simple questions like, you know, was this helpful? Is there anything you would like to, would you like to see more of, insert one, two, or three, boom, done. And now you have, you know, first party data that's real time based on an experience that they've just had. And there, there is nothing like that because I will tell you, having surveyed over talking about surveys, having surveyed over 11,000.
[00:19:45] Tom Butta: Mobile customers or consumers around the world against all age groups in many, many, many countries. One of the most common perspectives is that we as mobile consumers are willing to share a [00:20:00] lot of information, particularly as it relates to how we want to experience your brand, um, and how you can help personalize that experience or make it even better or provide even more value for us.
[00:20:11] Tom Butta: We're willing to exchange. Information provided. It's, it's, it's used that way.
[00:20:17] Joel Holland: Yeah, no, totally. And we do a little bit of the in-app messaging, to your point that the critical part is not interrupting the flow. Right. So getting the, getting the questions, the prompts in the right places.
[00:20:27] Tom: Right.
[00:20:27] Joel Holland: But by the way, like that's also one of the, as most app owners don't get the request for reviews.
[00:20:36] Joel Holland: Right. Right. There's a really good way to do that. There's a reason we have tens of thousands of five star reviews because we're asking people at the right time. We're not asking 'em right. When they open the app for the first time, it's after they've like done something we want them to do, like book stay.
[00:20:51] Joel Holland: Then you ask 'em, and I'm amazed by how many app owners don't ever push the request for fee feedback. Then those who do, how many do it at the [00:21:00] wrong time. So to your point, like the, the in game dynamics are very important.
[00:21:05] Tom Butta: I mean, it's not unlike, I suppose, you know, like getting to know somebody. And sometimes people are in the interest of maybe being a little bit bold.
[00:21:12] Tom Butta: They're, they, they ask way too many questions, too early, too many bold questions, and it's a turnoff, right? So it's just, you have to, you know, it sounds like you've really nailed the pacing, and I would call it in a highly respectful way. People appreciate that. And especially you're talking about an older audience cohort, people that generally grew up with manners, right.
[00:21:32] Tom Butta: And they, you know, they understand what good and bad is, you know, and so it's great that you're, that, that you're intuitive about, about that. Any key stats or big wins, uh, or anything that you'd like to talk about? It's okay to brag a little bit, right? Yeah,
[00:21:47] Joel Holland: no, yeah, totally. I mean, I'm proud of the fact we came in with a playbook, which we had used at my last company around, you know, improve the product first and then turn on marketing advertising and try to get the [00:22:00] word out.
[00:22:00] Joel Holland: And we grew Harvest Hosts from 6,000 members in 2018. To now 260,000 today. And we grew host locations from 600 to now over 9,000. And that wasn't accidental. It was by following this playbook of, you know, improve the product and then invest in getting the word out. And so on the host side, we actually invested in getting a host recruiting team to.
[00:22:24] Joel Holland: Get more locations. Like we, we knew that it would be dangerous to overrun our current locations with members. And then on the membership side, we started like putting our faith in the product and spending real money, like spending millions of dollars advertising on Facebook and Instagram and Google, starting with those direct response performance channels.
[00:22:46] Joel Holland: Meta has always been our largest acquisition channel because they have the right audience and they have the ability to target. It's getting harder these days and more expensive, but Sure. But yeah, I think that was the big thing. Like, it's funny, I [00:23:00] remember the owners, the original, the, the founders of Harvest Host, they said, you know, we have 6,000 members and we think we're about tapped out on market.
[00:23:08] Joel Holland: And I said, well that's interesting. I don't think you are. I think you just haven't. Spread the word you haven't paid to tell people about it. They're like, well, we think we have a very, you know, person to person product. We think that we are now nine years into this business. Everyone who would've heard about it would've heard about it and joined and, and I told him, I was like, I disagree.
[00:23:25] Joel Holland: And I'm like, I, and I will actually like go spend millions on Facebook to test this. And I might be wrong and I might lose a lot of money. But it worked right? Like it worked because we took a great product and added some virality to it. And I think that's the big, like, that's a big lesson is if you have something you believe in.
[00:23:41] Joel Holland: Put some spend behind it and you might be amazed how putting gas on the fire helps spread the word.
[00:23:47] Tom Butta: Very cool. It's great that you start with the product first, which is probably, um, really attuned to the customer experience and then you invest behind getting more people to know about it. How, how much are your [00:24:00] current members or referral channel for you?
[00:24:02] Joel Holland: Yeah, it's a really interesting question. So. When we ask new members how they heard about us and we, you know, we randomize it, we try to get as good information as possible. 40% say they heard about us from another friend or family member. Right? So like word of mouth referral is what is, what new members say.
[00:24:19] Joel Holland: It's hard to track that, you know, directly. We do a lot of, you know, advertising as well, and we have a lot of partnerships with, um, dealerships and manufacturers. We also have, we work with a lot of influencers and content creators, so. There's a lot of places sending traffic, but people say word of mouth is a big, big part.
[00:24:39] Joel Holland: We have a referral program that we use. It's not great. And so we're in the process of rebuilding it and building it ourselves, and so we're gonna release soon our own home built or referral program. I just have not seen a referral system out there that is that good. And so I think this is a good opportunity for us to just make it easier, easier for members [00:25:00] to like, share discounts with other members, get some sort of reward for that, some free membership, you know, some points towards swag, whatever it is.
[00:25:07] Joel Holland: Um, but just make it easier.
[00:25:09] Tom Butta: So if you don't mind going down a little bit of a rabbit hole here. I'm actually interested in the fact that you said that you, as part of your marketing efforts, do you have, you use influencers. I would be really interested to know what your experience has been like for in this particular, you know, case.
[00:25:26] Joel Holland: Yeah, so I don't like the term influencer. I think it's just a really like haughty. Highfalutin. It's nonsense. And I think that term's gonna go away like, but, but I do like the idea that there are content creators. Who are really good at telling stories, and if they're relevant to your audience, it's a great way to tap into a following, right?
[00:25:45] Joel Holland: And so we go out and we try to find anyone who's RVing and has a following and, and for us big time is YouTube, like people who are creating content on YouTube with a certain size following its Rel [00:26:00] RV relevant. They're great, right? We go, we go to them and say, look, we want this to be authentic. We're not, we're not paying you to like, just make stuff up.
[00:26:08] Joel Holland: Like, here's a membership. By the way, most of 'em are already members. So it's like, okay, you already know the program. You like the program. Let us pay you to just like, make this more a part of your discussion. Hmm. And, and, and we don't tell them what to say. It's just like, talk about us. Like mm-hmm. For the good and the bad.
[00:26:23] Joel Holland: And luckily, you know, we've, again, we have a product we believe in, so I'm not worried about what's gonna come out. And it, and it works really well. You know, I think at a time, like 10% of our acquisition is coming through this sort of program where people, you know, we're content creators. We're out there talking about their experiences using us.
[00:26:39] Joel Holland: By the way, the one thing I would not do again, and I never did it at Harvest Hosts, I. Was affiliate exchanges.
[00:26:46] Tom: Mm.
[00:26:46] Joel Holland: And, and you know, like back in the day, you know, commission junction and things like that. Mm-hmm. Like, I use that at story blocks. They're, they're fraught with fraud. It's amazing the creativity with how people can figure out how to be fraudulent with these things.
[00:26:59] Joel Holland: [00:27:00] Incredible. And, and even, you know, like whether it's stolen credit cards or whether it's like incentivizing people to purchase your membership and arbitraging it, um, so they get the kickback and then you have this like. Cohort of people who churn at a high rate and hate you. So we never do any sort of like third party, uh, affiliate programs.
[00:27:19] Joel Holland: Anything we do is internal. We pick the partners. You have to be a member, you have to actually have used our program before you talk about it. That, that's been something we've held onto.
[00:27:28] Tom Butta: Terrific. Well, congratulations on the success that you've had. I'm sure in your mind, you're just beginning and also now as a.
[00:27:36] Tom Butta: At least the second time. CEO. Can you share some lessons that you, uh, you've learned, uh, you talked about this playbook, you know, that you have now used a second time that, you know, other, other folks that are considering being entrepreneurs or in fact just running businesses, um, may be able to learn, learn from you?
[00:27:54] Joel Holland: Yeah, I mean, and I can only talk from my experiences and, and, uh, but I will [00:28:00] say it's been a lot easier this time around. Buying a company that I believed in and then helping scale it versus building it from the ground up. Because anytime and anyone listening, this is preaching to the choir, but building from the ground up, you gotta find the hard as hell product market fit.
[00:28:18] Joel Holland: When you can skip that process and buy something that you think you can come in and improve, that's pretty cool. And so I've now done six acquisitions in the last six years. I'm addicted to this idea of buying great businesses that I can improve and then go spread the word for. I love that and I, I don't think I'll ever go back.
[00:28:35] Joel Holland: I think, you know, people have to have the confidence to invest in advertising, right? Like word of mouth and organic growth is never gonna be enough. You need to throw gas on the fire. So if you've got a great product and you really wanna like, get the word out, you have to take the, the, the leap and invest in advertising.
[00:28:55] Joel Holland: Then, then it gets even harder. Like where, how much, et cetera like that, that it's, it's a challenge and, and [00:29:00] advertising is getting more challenging these days. Targeting's getting more difficult. We're going through that challenge right now. So, you know, and then, and then I guess the last piece is, I get also like pretty cliche advice, but having a great team is more important than having a great idea.
[00:29:16] Joel Holland: You know, ideas are a dime a dozen, I think when you have the right team that comes in to execute and. Help you really like, make it work. That's what matters. And so, so I spend most of my time on people and that, and I think that's probably what most entrepreneurs would say.
[00:29:33] Tom Butta: Yeah. Those are great pillars, you know, of, of potential, of success for, um, for entrepreneurs.
[00:29:39] Tom Butta: Is there, is there anything, and I'm not saying that there is, but is there anything that I would say maybe you believe or you practice that maybe runs counter to what other people might. Think or do?
[00:29:54] Joel Holland: I think the simpler you can make a business, the better. I, I think that too many times people try to make things too complicated [00:30:00] and, you know, Occam's razor, the, the, the simplest solution is usually the best.
[00:30:05] Joel Holland: And I love the Jim Collins concept of the hedgehog, where the, the, the good to great businesses had a really simple concept. They were the best in the world at it, and they just drove it home repeatedly. And then he draws a contrast between that and the fox businesses that are super cunning with all these, like, they're totally, they're always changing their ideas and having this, the new best, greatest thing to try, like simple oftentimes wins.
[00:30:31] Joel Holland: And so, you know, that's something we fight against here is we add more brands, more products, more customers, organizations get more complex and. You gotta really work on simplifying it because not only is it harder for the customers to understand, but it's harder for employees. And like, we're going through this right now, I'm really trying to work hard on 2025 planning to make sure, like as an organization, we have a simple concept.
[00:30:54] Joel Holland: We know what we're trying to, like, we know our mission, we know what we're trying to accomplish, we know the message we're trying to tell members. [00:31:00] Um, simple is almost always better. So I don't know if that's something that most people also believe maybe, but I've, I firmly believe it.
[00:31:07] Tom Butta: Yeah, I, I, I agree. It's, it's hard to keep up as a consumer, but as a, uh, you know, uh, having worked in companies that have multiple, that are platforms that have multiple, you know, capabilities, it's, it's really important to, um, you know, to, to, to, to simplify it.
[00:31:24] Tom Butta: So. Great, great advice. Alright, we're gonna move into the last section of the show, which is, um, a series of rapid fire questions. So, uh, you ready? Yes. All right. Cool. This one's kind of a big one. What beast do you think needs to be tamed next? This could be something maybe you wanna work on or something completely unrelated.
[00:31:43] Joel Holland: Well, within our business, I think that we are starting, we've like hit a bit of a ceiling on the current product set and how many people we could ever track to it. And it's a great number of people and it's, you know, et cetera. But I, we really want to take this experience to millions of people. And so then it's like the beast is [00:32:00] how do we, how do we broaden the um.
[00:32:04] Joel Holland: Tam without diluting the product, right? Like we don't want to just go out there and try to be all things to all people that never works. Um, but we do wanna be a great thing to more people. And so we're working on that. And, and a big, one of our big concepts is right now we're all about to stay, is like you with Harvest Host, you stay somewhere awesome.
[00:32:23] Joel Holland: We are layering in community and. We bought a company last year called Escapees. It's one of the oldest and greatest RV clubs in America, and they have, you know, 50 different rallies and get togethers every year. They have state chapters, they have interest groups, and I'm really excited to start layering more the community part into our business so that we're like, stay somewhere awesome and find your tribe.
[00:32:45] Joel Holland: And I think that those two things are pretty powerful. So that, but it's gonna be a, it's gonna be a journey.
[00:32:51] Tom Butta: You know, it's interesting, uh, if I might just comment on this so much for rapid strike here, um, but my, my, my immediate response is you're [00:33:00] tapping into two fundamental, uh, premises about, you know, humanity.
[00:33:04] Tom Butta: One is like, people will forget what you said, people forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. So you're all about the experience. Right. One. And then two, the other thing about humanity is that we're connected, right? We're innately a community and I mean, we just, you know, saw evidence of, of where that's, you know, a challenge frankly, uh, at times.
[00:33:32] Tom Butta: And the fact that if you can provide an experience that you know, people love and will talk about and get value from, and you'll, you'll provide a group of people who are like them, who are experiencing similar things and. It just grows. Um, those are two fundamental purposes. I think you're right on, you're onto something there.
[00:33:49] Joel Holland: Yeah. No, I, I love it. I totally agree. I mean, and this, there's another thing I love about travel. Travel transcends politics. It transcends race. It transcends age. No one cares about that stuff. [00:34:00] They care about the travel experience. They wanna tell people about it. It's pretty cool. It's a unifying thing.
[00:34:04] Tom Butta: It is.
[00:34:05] Tom Butta: Um, beyond Harvest Host, what's the one non-utility, um, mobile app you cannot live without.
[00:34:12] Joel Holland: I mean, this is just because of who I am and where I live, but there's an app called Open Snow and, and it, like, it gives me the ability to like dig into like hyperlocal forecasts. And, and maybe that's still a utility app, but, um, I, I use that one every morning I wake up and there's a, a written summary from a human, human being of what the conditions are gonna be like to stay on the ski slopes.
[00:34:35] Joel Holland: And like, that's, that's my first place I go. Um. That's,
[00:34:40] Tom Butta: that's cool. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Um, yeah, my, my wife kind of does something similar in the fact that she is, um, walks the beach and she's like always looking for like, when's the low tide and what's the winds like? And, you know, all that stuff.
[00:34:53] Tom Butta: So is there a favorite app feature that you've experienced? Uh, remember fondly, whatever it might be, [00:35:00] you know, like Spotify wrapped or, you know, at the end of the year or that kind of thing? Or is there anything that you're, like, it could be culturally like, you know. Books you're reading shows, you're watching things, you're listening to podcasts, um, music, you know, stuff that you're like tuned into a little bit that's just like, Ooh, this is interesting.
[00:35:17] Tom Butta: I'm gonna go a little further into that.
[00:35:20] Joel Holland: Yeah, I mean, a good example of that would be, um, read Wise, which is an app that we can sync with Kindle and any of the other reading things you do anywhere. You have text data. Read wise, then surfaces your highlights and your notes every day. So they create like a newsletter of every highlight I've ever made in every book I've ever read.
[00:35:40] Tom: Oh, wow. And
[00:35:41] Joel Holland: it's awesome. And so every morning, um, I get a, uh, a summary, right? Like I get, I get a newsletter from Read Wise, and then you can, you know, I. Really like heart, the ones you want to particularly remember. Um, and then on Sundays you get this digest of things that you like not only wanted to remember, but you then really, really, really wanted to remember.
[00:35:59] Joel Holland: And it's a [00:36:00] really cool reinforced learning experience because I'm, I'm seeing books and highlights that I read five years ago, and it's like bringing it back to the top of my mind, which is why, by the way, I was able to do like good to great quotes because they just came up on a read wise.
[00:36:12] Tom Butta: Yeah, that's really cool.
[00:36:14] Tom Butta: I mean, I can even like think about that from a, from a, you know, university studying perspective. Yes. Cool. Like we all have our notes and then like we go back through the notes. Like, but like imagine that being like organized for you. That's really cool. Well Joel, it's been an absolute pleasure having you.
[00:36:30] Tom Butta: Um, thank you very much for coming on, uh, Tame the Mobile Beast, uh, podcast and I really enjoyed our conversation and I wish you much, much success.
[00:36:38] Joel Holland: Thank you Tom. Appreciate it. This is fun.
[00:36:43] Voiceover: Thank you for listening to Tame the Mobile Beast, brought to you by the team at Airship. Find out more about how you can help your brand deliver better, more personalized mobile experience@airship.com. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to subscribe and rate the [00:37:00] show.