Adding Location-Based Touches To Attract Guests

Hello and welcome to the new episode of the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast, as you know, that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the trainings, and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get direct bookings. My name is Liam Carolan. I'm Mark Simpson's co host here on the Boostly podcast. And today we're going behind the host with another successful and interesting host who we've been lucky enough to make contact with. So today there's actually two hosts, I should say it's husband and wife who are coming to us from a company called hello Sunshine OC I'd like to introduce to you, we've got Casey and Angie Coram. So welcome along to you both. First of all, if you can give us an introduction to whereabouts in the world that you host. Also, you know, your favorite thing about hosting and how many units and who you kind of host to. I'm throwing a bunch of questions at you there.

Yeah, we're, we're on the very northwestern edge of Orange County, California, Louisiana. County's a, a stone's throw away. We are four and a half miles from Disneyland. We're 15 miles from the ocean. We're about 25 miles from Hollywood. And we're, we're like, we're in a, we're in a city that's just north of Anaheim called Fullerton, California, which is, if you look at a map of la Orange county, it is basically dead center. So, so most of our guests, I would say 95% of our guests are families going to Disneyland. That's, that's the simplest version. Of course there's a lot to do in Southern California. So, but you know, given our proximity to Disney, that's, that's almost always a piece of the puzzle. We're empty nesters. We have four daughters, grown daughters. We, we started very young and we bought a two unit property with a back, it's a house with a back house. Our house is a mid century ranch style house, kind of classic Southern California neighborhood house. And that's, that's the house we rent. We live in a one bedroom, one bath adu back house. 400 square feet.

Yeah, so it's that crazy lady that's always wanted to live small.

Yeah, it's, it's our, it's our empty nester adventure. This.

Hello Sunshine OC Whereabouts are you at the moment? That looks like a very professional up.

Well, I'm a professional musician, so what that, what that actually means is I have lots of different jobs can attest. So this is A, I'm at a university called Biola University. So one of the things I do is I teach, I teach songwriting and music stuff here at, at Biola. So this is my, this is my Biola day. So I'm in one of their studios. We, we fit this in and, and it let me borrow some of their tech too. So that's also helpful.

Yeah, he's a busy guy. He's so busy. I tend to like adjust my life to like wherever he's at for the day. So I came here.

It's not far from our house.

What is your favorite thing about hosting? And it could be the same for both of you or both different. What are you enjoying about this hospitality journey that you've, that you've kind of set out on?

Well, one thing is it's kind of given us a really new fun thing to do together as a team. But I really enjoy making people happy and I love providing a place where I know people could enjoy themselves and relax and have a great time together.

Yeah, that's cool. Yes. Yeah, this is, I mean we've done a lot of, of creative work together. I mean Ange's, we're both musicians, but she's also, she's, she's, she's the design, design genius at, at hello Sunshine OC I, I, I generally handle the back end stuff, but it's interesting. As much collaborative work as we've done together through the years in different, different lanes, this is strangely the most kind of like hand in glove, you know, side by side thing that we've done. And this has been a fun adventure. We've been dreaming about kind of launching into short term rentals for a while, but this has really given us a vision for the next chapter of our life. And, and you know, it's our plan to obviously this is like an extrapolation of our own, our own, our own home, but our plan is to, to build and to scale and do this together because I think this is as a couple, this is something we, we're very, we're very complimentary in the things we bring to the table.

So how did you feel when you set up your home as, as a short term rental? Was there any kind of emotional attach that I think of, of my loved ones, my parents and things like that? If they was to let their home, they'd be very, very emotionally attached. So was this something that, that both of you struggled with when you'd done this house hack?

No, it's not the house we raised our kids in. So we didn't have that attachment to it. But it was a big change to downsize to something that is small. Small. And the kids aren't going to come back too. So there is.

Yeah, the kids were out in the, in the process of, of doing what we're doing.

Yes. We waited until they were established a bit before we kind of jumped into it all.

What are the reasons that people come and stay with you?

Well, one of the things when I put together the design for the house was to keep in mind that everything about three feet and below was going to be touched by a child. And so as a mother of four kids, I, I knew the stress of traveling somewhere with my kids and hoping the whole time that something is not going to get broken. And so when I went to design the house, like all the things that are three feet and below are things that cannot be broken. And they're decorations that are actually encouraged to be played with by the children. But they're retro toys, they're retro things. And therefore when the grownups come into the room, they're like, I played with that when I was a kid and so there's some of that. So even in the pictures, every room looks adult, but there's aspects to every room that brings the kid out in the adult and as something for the kid. So our pictures show that we're not advertised as a kid place. But when you look at our pictures, the kids are seen in all of, in all of our spaces.

Yeah. And, and we aren't particularly Disney themed. Like I know a lot of places. Like there's a place in our town that's 100% haunted mansion themed. I would suggest people go look at it is unbelievable sound effects and the whole thing. I think they help work at the parks at one point, but it's, it's incredible. That's not us. That said, there's little echoes of California and sunshine of course, but also Disneyland. So like there's, there's a, there's an Etch A Sketch and there's a, you know, kind of a, like a, like a little toy phone. Like echoes of like Toy Story moments.

We got Lego logs that light bright.

Yeah, yeah. There's, you know, kind of like throwing back to the. Kind of like it's almost like a reimagining the. That kind of mid century 50s, like when Disney was. It's not. Again, it's not just Disney focused little golden books. There's a bunch of little golden books that are about California, they're about Disneyland. Like all these little and that's, you know, that's almost all Ange. She's got, she's got the eyes to see and to. And to kind of speak to the child. But like she said, it also, you know, with these retro things, it also speaks to the adults. I think one of the things that gets played with a lot is a. Is a retro game of Rock em Sock em robot.

That's right.

So you can see that kind of.

Thank you so much to you both for sort of spending your time with us. And yeah, I'm sure people are going to reach out to you and it's just nice you can now direct them here to share your story on hospitality. And I look forward to seeing what you guys do in the future. You know, that second one that you're talking about in the future, which is going to be cool. So thank you so much for spending your time with us. Was there any questions or anything that I missed along the way?

No, you asked every possible question.

Good, good. That's what we like to hear.

Five stars. Five stars.

First. I got a good review. Thank you so. Thank you so much to you both. And thank you too. If you're listening in on the Boostly podcast, we know there's a lot of places you can put your attention and we really thank you for putting it here. And yeah, we'll see you on the next podcast. That's bye for now.

Having a bl. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf Making up those rhymes don't write it, just do it loosely.