In this episode, hosts David Millili and Steve Carran interview Benjamin Powers, founder and CEO of Visiting Media. Benjamin shares his entrepreneurial journey, from starting businesses as a child to founding a company that revolutionizes hotel sales through immersive technology. He discusses how Visiting Media's software empowers hospitality professionals to leverage virtual tours, 3D models, and other immersive assets to drive revenue and enhance the customer experience.
In this episode, we discuss:
- The immersive assets in hospitality sales (360-degree photos, 3D models, virtual tours)
- How Visiting Media's software helps hotels increase revenue
- The importance of data and analytics in understanding customer behavior
- The role of AI and machine learning in enhancing sales processes
- Advice for young entrepreneurs
- The value of education and sharing knowledge in the industry
The episode provides insights into innovative sales techniques, the power of immersive technology, and the entrepreneurial mindset in the context of the hospitality industry.
Sponsor spot:
Visiting Media: https://visitingmedia.com/
Join the conversation on today's episode on The Modern Hotelier LinkedIn page.
The Modern Hotelier is produced, edited, and published by Make More Media: https://makemore.media/
Episode Links
Benjamin Powers
David Millili
Steve Carran
Steve on LinkedIn
The Modern Hotelier
Transcript
Automatic Transcription - please excuse any errors
Steve Carran: Welcome back to The Modern Hotelier. We are excited to release this episode with Benjamin Powers, CEO from Visiting Media, where he really focused on upselling immersive assets.
David, what was one of the things that stood out to you in this interview?
David Millili: well, Benjamin's a pretty cool guy. So from blueberries to birdhouses to immersive technology, a great episode. We just learned a lot on how to leverage that, the technology to actually deliver revenue to the hotel.
Steve Carran: Absolutely. And it, I mean, it seems like it's a cheat code for hotel sales teams that they can just put their guests into these hotels, even if there's an event going on, even if the room's dirty, they're, you know, going through a renovation or anything like that. this is definitely a cool product and I'm excited to see it in use when we get a chance, but enjoy the episode and let us know what you think.
David Millili: All right. Enjoy
David Millili: Steve, who do we have on the program today?
Steve Carran: Yeah, David. Today we have on Benjamin Powers. Benjamin is the founder and CEO of Visiting Media. Benjamin has over 20 years of experience as an entrepreneur and a recognized expert in immersive selling solutions. Visiting Media offers cutting edge software products that empower the hospitality industry to revolutionize the way they do business, care for Connect with customers and outperform competitors.
Welcome to the show, Benjamin.
Benjamin Powers: Thank you very much. Excited to be here.
David Millili: So Benjamin, we're going to go through three areas. We're going to get to know you better, learn about your background, dive into your career, and then get into some industry topics. Sound good?
Benjamin Powers: Sounds great. Let's do it.
David Millili: So what was your first job?
Benjamin Powers: first real job was picking blueberries. Got fired pretty quick from that. Uh, and then I've only held one other job since then as a radio sales guy when I was in my 16s, 15s, 17s, about that age.
other than that, it's been running my own businesses and, inventing products and whatnot.
David Millili: What's something that you wish you were better at? Do you
Benjamin Powers: I thought I'd be good at that. You know, my journey to becoming a CEO was not through schooling or it was just happenstance. And I was really excited at the beginning and then realized, boy, managing people is challenging. So it's an area where I can constantly push myself to learn and wake up every morning a little bit better, but I'm still way behind those who are excellent at it. So that's an area I wish I could step up a bit in.
David Millili: have a role model?
Benjamin Powers: Boy, several role models, but honestly, in life and business, I'd have to say my uncle, my mom's brother, very successful businessman, but wonderful guy. And anytime I've got a challenge, really anywhere, I go to him and his advice is very consistent and steady and full of wisdom. So definitely him.
David Millili: That's great. What's a luxury you can't live without?
Benjamin Powers: Ooh, flying. I'm a pilot. I've been flying since I was 17. Um, fly almost every day after work. Gonna go out this afternoon. And so that's definitely a luxury that I'm addicted to beyond measure at this point.
David Millili: So what's a place that you've never been to that you would most like to go?
Benjamin Powers: Boy, you know, we've been talking about Portugal, Croatia, those sorts of areas in Europe. I'd really love to go to, Patagonia. I think it would be awesome. Yeah.
David Millili: Cool. So if you had your own late night talk show, who would your first guest be?
Benjamin Powers: Boy, that's a tough one. Probably Billy Joel.
David Millili: Oh, cool.
All right. Last one. you have a time machine, you can go into the future, into the past. Which way are you going and what year are you going to?
Benjamin Powers: ooh, definitely into the past. What year? Boy, again, not super exciting here, but probably back to about the time planes were just starting to, to get on the scene. Um, so that'd be, you know, the early 1900s, but that's a tough one. I wish I had these questions before today. I would have thought through it a bit, but
David Millili: Uh, we like the
Benjamin Powers: I think the future would scare me to death.
So I'd probably go back. Plus I don't want to know what my kids are doing in 20
Steve Carran: Yeah,
David Millili: That's funny.
Steve Carran: Oh, that's great. And I gotta say, I went to Portugal last year. If you get a chance, go. It is one of my favorite
Benjamin Powers: Everybody's telling me just amazing things, so I
Steve Carran: It's incredible. So that was great. Now we're gonna go into your background a little bit more, your personal details. So your hometown is Carlton, Oregon, is that correct?
Benjamin Powers: That's correct. I'm sitting here right now.
Steve Carran: So how did that shape you into who you are today?
Benjamin Powers: Well, hometown was actually, uh, south of here, about 30 miles in the Willamette Valley. But then I moved to Portland, um, about 1999, right in there, lived in the city for a while, started the company there. And then when the pandemic hit, I actually also lost my mother unexpectedly and just kind of was thinking about life and what matters to me.
And I owned this property out here in the Willamette Valley. And my wife and I decided to move out here. So Carleton is our absolute hometown now. My kids are growing up here, but this place is really peaceful. And one of the things I love to do the most, probably can see the yellow pad over there, you know, I wake up every morning, 4.
30, 5 o'clock, get my cup of coffee and I sit right there and I develop product. and then I spend my days talking to Executives at Hospitality, I've got RLJ in an hour, Remington after that, Pyramid after that, with the exec team, that's today. But we talk about their challenges and problems and then I sit down every morning and I work on solutions and I'm able to inject that right into our product development team and push things out sometimes within a week or two.
So this place, that wasn't your question, but this place I have found insanely valuable in getting down to the ground of what I call my being and just being there. Being at peace where you can think audaciously, you know, and not have to worry about the world punching you in the face, which does happen, but for the most part, it's pretty relaxing.
Steve Carran: I love that.
David Millili: That's great. So you went to Santa Clara University School of Business and majored in Business Administration and Management. what made you decide to go there and what made you decide to choose that major?
Benjamin Powers: Yeah, I actually chose economics, and I only lasted a year,
but I was already running, I'd been in my, it was my fourth or fifth business by the time I got to Santa Clara, so I spent a year studying that and I, I learned a bit, but I realized that a lot of what I was learning I was already doing every day, and, you know, my tuition just became all the mistakes I made, but I decided to leave Santa Clara, moved back to Oregon.
The intent was to. To go back to school. I've never gone back. So I have one year of college at Santa Clara. But yeah, that's the background. And I just thought, you know, I'm already doing this. I already know what I want to do. I might as well learn in the trenches. And so that was the math.
Steve Carran: And you started a photography company while you were at Santa Clara, right? And it became one of the largest wedding photography studios. in the United States. And it sounds like you've been an entrepreneur your whole life, but was that kind of that first business that you started where you're like, holy cow, I can make some good money doing this and really grow a
Benjamin Powers: No, actually it's way down the road. So I started a birdhouse manufacturing business when I was eight or nine. And we did, we we developed custom birdhouses based on the bird you want to attract to your yard. This is before the internet. So you could pick the wood. Well, we selected the wood, the pitch, the stick length, the hole size, and that would attract certain birds.
So I did that first. Then I was, uh, I was, uh, regularly at the, uh, Boys and Girls Club. And so I bought into vending machines and put them in the Boys and Girls Club to make money off the candy. And then I went to a party at the Boys and Girls Club and saw the DJ and asked what he got paid. It was a lot more than the candy gig, so I decided to become a DJ.
And then I was at a wedding DJing and I asked the photographer, will you get paid? And he made four times as much and carried half the gear. I thought, that's a better deal. So in 1994, I started a wedding photography business. by 2000, we were by far, in a way, one of the largest in the United States, and we started buying and investing in event facilities.
And that's what led to this current company and the vertical integration of how do we outperform as an event facility. But that's the daisy chain from, uh, I mean, just, it was just, uh, selfishness, right? Guys are making more money and less work. I better try that.
Steve Carran: Hey, that's great.
David Millili: that's incredible. So, you launched Visiting Media Foundation. it's obviously close to your heart. Can you tell us more about why you started it and about how you're spreading the love of wallowing? I think I'm saying that right. Could you just give us a little more information there?
Benjamin Powers: Yeah, there's an interesting story there. I'll try to keep it short, but my mother was a, up and coming watercolorist. My grandmother, who's 102 next week, is still painting and teaching. Up until two years ago, she was teaching globally. She's written, I think, 15 books on watercolor. So, she's, uh, So, big arts family.
And right after my daughter was born, literally a week or two after, my mother died suddenly of a heart attack. Totally suddenly and, um, completely unexpected. And so as probably a healing process, I wanted to do something. And so the idea was to start a non profit that supported arts awareness out here in our community.
In our neck of the woods here in Yamhill County, and that sort of morphed into a bigger foundation just to promote wellness in the community. And so now we have set up an endowment and we fund local entrepreneurs who are running their own nonprofits. There are several, I just actually met last night with one of our board of directors for a group that funds CF research, cystic fibrosis.
But the idea is to just promote and inject wellness. investment in our area in any way that we can build wellness for our community. And there's a long list of opportunities in that area. Um, we also started a vineyard it's right behind me up there and are building a tasting room winery, all owned by the foundation.
And then all the proceeds, a hundred percent of the proceeds are going to go back into the foundation. So Again, back to your question about what's the benefit I've found of living here.
It's just such an incredible spot for, you know, in general.
Steve Carran: That's awesome. So now we're going to get more into your career a little bit, how you became the CEO of Visiting Media, but before Visiting Media, as we've heard, you have quite the entrepreneurial background. you said your first business was at five, right?
Benjamin Powers: I would say the first real thing where I was actually making decent money. Um, I loved baseball. I love baseball cards. Um, so I started a custom baseball card company with my best buddy, Lindsay, who's still. My best friend is an executive at our company now, and we built baseball card holders, wood cases, sold them in the Beckett magazine.
And I think we were seven or eight. and that led to the birdhouse thing I told you about, but all of those were, were actually very successful. At least it felt like it at the time. That was probably the first true business, right? To worry about profit and loss, you know?
Steve Carran: How did you get that entrepreneurial gene? Like, how did you, you know, at five, seven years old, you're like, well, I'm just going to start my own company. Like, how did that come into your life? Were your parents entrepreneurs? Did they just encourage you to just get out there and do your own thing?
How did this get installed in you?
Benjamin Powers: that's a question I've actually been trying to think about as I've tried to figure out really what I want to do and who I am and what drives me, you know, because a lot of being an executive is you got to go through coaching and try to figure out really your purpose as a person and align that with your company.
So I've actually been thinking more about that now than ever. And I think I was just born that way. I mean, there was a constant desire, no matter what I did. To improve on or to find a zero to one, it wasn't about making it better. It was about doing it in a completely different way that sort of redefined the way we do things.
You know, I live, I live every day kind of, at least in relation to our company and how the industry is today and where it's going, I sort of live 20. You know, 5-10 years from now, in my brain, and then when I get out into the world, like, oh my god, we're still doing it this way. We're still sending email attachments.
We're still doing RFPs like this. So my mind is already like, here's the way it should be. And I've just never not had that. Also, it could have been put to a lot of, really bad uses and directions. And I think I just got really lucky. Um, my mom told me one time I asked her, why did you let me, you know, drive across the country when I was 16 with my best friend going to Billy Joel concerts for six months or whatever she let me do.
And she said, you know, I realized if I told you, no, you're going to do it anyway. And the odds of you dying are pretty low. And the odds of you learning a ton are pretty high. And of course, this is quite a while back, but I think it just came down to. Part of who I was and I don't really know how it's like with you or David or anyone, you know, there are things about us that just make us who we are.
David Millili: I agree. It's interesting. You grew up, I've got three younger brothers and Everyone says, we don't know where, to me, where, where did you come from? Where'd you come from?
Benjamin Powers: same story. I'm like, okay, wait a second. What's going on?
David Millili: Anyway, so how did you come up with, what was the inspiration behind starting Visiting Media?
Benjamin Powers: Yeah, it was a very specific event. we owned and managed quite a few wedding and event facilities around Portland, Oregon. And I met a guy named Ben Kaplan. I still remember the name. Came into my office. He worked for Google. He was a Google certified photographer. And this is back, I don't know, 15 years ago, uh, their Street View technology had just come out and he says, I want to, I want to sell you essentially this for your event facilities.
And I remember the moment I first saw a 360 photograph today. It sounds funny, but it was the first time ever. It's like the moment, July 1st, 2007, when I got my iPhone, the first iPhone, you know, it was just a paradigm shift of what's possible. And it was crazy in my mind. I go, Oh, whoa, okay, hold on. What's going on here?
And I wanted to figure out why my body and brain felt the way it did when I saw that for the first time, that immersive visual. but I, I realized pretty quickly the way Google did it was not the way that salespeople needed it done. And it's more about the distribution and the ability to, as a salesperson, use that visual tool when selling, not just having it, having it doesn't drive ROI.
And so. I thought, okay, really powerful media, how do we encapsulate that in a vehicle that allows me as a sales guy who hates technology to drive revenue? Like that's where the key is. And so we built this early, early model of our legacy platform, we have a next generation platform now. And it worked very, very well.
Like we were able we saw, I don't know, it was 50, 60, 70 percent jump in revenue overnight. You know, every deal we did, every phone call, every email, other, was there email then? I think there was, but everything just boop, boop, jumped up, you know? And, and, uh, so we thought we had something there.
So we refined that for our own salespeople and then, um, delivered a V1 to our competitors. We actually got our competitors together and said, okay, we, Try this, you know, they were our first, um, customer advisory board, if you will, and it worked for them. And next thing you know, we're like, all right, we're going to sell this for 20 a month and provide this ongoing service.
And, and it started to go and grow and grow. And it was, uh, 2017 when I sold off that last company and decided to go all in here. but that's kind of how it came along. It was just this aha moment. And the feeling I had of clarity about this place I'd never been to, you know, I wanted to inject that into a sales process.
Steve Carran: that's awesome. love hearing that. So for the listeners or viewers that might not be familiar with visiting media, can you give us a background to what what you all do?
Benjamin Powers: Yeah, you know, a lot of people when they look from the outside in think we're a virtual tour company. but our interest is creating incremental and new revenue for hospitality, for hotels and resorts that really is not possible to obtain without this type of product. So it's a really a greenfield you know, new way to drive actual additional revenue.
But we are a software company, you know, through and through, uh, we're dedicated to simplifying How hotels and resorts and management companies and ownership groups sell. But our software is really tailor made for human beings that are doing that job, whether they're property level, regional, call center, global, travelers.
And so we have these different levels of software. But you know, if I'm a, if I'm a hotel DOS or regional, I come to work on a Monday. I click on this thing, loads up. And then every phone call I have, every email, every proposal, I'm utilizing functionality within this suite place immersive experiential media, not just virtual tours, into everything they're doing.
And it's funny, we're on a podcast, you can see me, actually, I didn't expect that. But everything we do is so visual. So it's really hard to explain it. I always tell my clients, I can't explain, I got to show you. But ultimately, it's a way to take, you know, things like virtual tours and, and harness them through software. for salespeople to drive them to drive competitive advantage to help that customer who's never been there get it quicker become more comfortable book faster the customer who is there but the place is a mess so there's an event or you can't get up to the suite no problem you know all those barriers are broken and you think about the world think about the total obtainable market for a hotel a lot of us who work in hospitality like like Probably all of you too.
Having that client in our lobby is like the gold standard, but that's really hard to do anymore. In fact, it's trending so far the other way that if we can't address all those folks who aren't in the lobby and frankly don't want to come anymore, that's the cool thing guys, is the data has shifted big time.
Like they don't necessarily want to come. And so that attainable market now is a global market. And if you can deliver the feeling of being there or checking out the room or understanding that cabana, if you can deliver that from the first conversation or even before the first conversation, clients just turn left towards you.
They don't even go right. I mean, it's a whole different world. And so, I don't even remember the question you asked, but you can tell I get excited about
Steve Carran: you answered it.
Benjamin Powers: Yeah, so it's software that, that distributes, Sales tools to sales teams and end points like Hilton. com or booking engines. it's all managed down to a single source of truth.
So if you make a change to anything in your hotel, you change it one place. That updates every website, every proposal you've ever sent, every salesperson within about three seconds. And then all the analytics from all these, this use is flying back to one place so you can actually learn things about your market that you couldn't learn before.
So that's a high level fly over, but
Steve Carran: That was great. So now we've learned a little bit more about your background, how you got to where you are. So now we're going to go into the your industry thoughts and, you know, how how you're helping out the industry. Um, so Immersive assets like, you know, you're talking about 360 degree photos, 3D models I feel like we're going to see more and more of these.
in your opinion, how are you differentiating yourself from maybe the newer folks or other, other companies like that in the industry?
Benjamin Powers: Oh man, good question. So I would say we produce immersive assets for our clients that are our software clients, but we don't charge additional for it, which is really uncommon. No, people don't realize that until they get to know us. But, uh, every immersive, let's, let's back up a bit. When we talk about immersive assets, virtual tours are one kind.
But virtual tours are like video productions. They actually don't work hardly at all for hospitality. What you got to do is boil them down to their ingredients. So for example, a 360 photo is an ingredient in a virtual tour, but that photo is actually more powerful than the production because you can use the photo everywhere.
So what we do is look at, okay, what is immersion? And, and when I say what is immersion, I mean, what are the immersive things out there that will help You sell your hotel quicker to me, because there's a lot of things that don't fall on that list. there's 360 photography. There's 3D modeling. Those are obtainable today and pragmatic.
Coming soon, there's mixed reality, social, there's all this stuff coming, right? But all that stuff that's there today and popular will be obsolete very, very fast. And everything that I was using two years ago, or that we started the company with, is already gone. So, we're more interested in the data behind which of these things actually works.
And how to apply it, when to apply it in the buying cycle, and, you know, really how to use it. And that's sometimes as complex as what device are you on, how old are you, what market are you in, what brand hotel are we promoting? But we've got all that data. We're the only company in the world that's built that body of data.
And so, when we go to a Hyatt, well, let's take Pyramid. I have a meeting with Pyramid here in an hour. we're going to be able to show them how most of the virtual tours their hotels have bought on their own are going to harm their revenue. We can actually show them how they're using it incorrectly and then create the protocols for how to use it correctly.
And if they don't have the assets, at least they can acquire them from vendor where they can hand them the rulebook and say, here's the technology we need, the specific way to create it. We also do all that, but again, we do it complementary. So we do produce millions and millions of square foot of virtual tour assets a month.
But if the hotel already has that, or they have a vendor already, great. We don't have a bone in that fight. So we're more interested in taking all that stuff and loading it into a vehicle that manages distribution and adds a ton of superpower functionality on top of the immersion. I'll give you one quick example there, actually give you three quick examples.
If I send you a virtual tour right now, of my restaurant, because you're interested in my restaurant, you get it, great, you see it, you see the restaurant. If I send you the menu for the restaurant, and I attach the virtual tour inside the menu, which our software does like that, it's about 10 times, about 10 times as effective of getting you to go to that restaurant because you're reading about the food.
Which is immersion. you're thinking about it, and you can see the restaurant. If I add my voice on top saying, Steve Thanks for your interest. Here's our menu. You can tap over to the right and walk the menu. Check out the patio. The view is amazing. there's a little video here from our chef, and I put my voice in it.
It goes sky high. The odds of you booking and not looking around, not shopping around, just through the roof. it's multi sensory immersion. We can combine all that together in an RFP That goes out to David, and I'm the DOS, and he's never met me before. He's looking at 10 RFPs on a Tuesday morning, and there's mine, where I'm welcoming him, saying hi, showing him the view from the air, and then giving him the menus and the quote and all that.
it's crazy. Anyway, I get, again, I get very excited about it, but that's the kind of stuff we're doing. but immersion is really multi sensory. It's. If we were in the room together, we'd be fully immersed and it's smells, it's touch, it's sound, it's thinking, not just visual.
So that's where we sit. We're about true immersion in selling and what works, what doesn't. And again, most things don't work. So it's, it's pretty surgical.
David Millili: Steve and I always love it when the guests answer the next question. So you kind of answered a little bit of the next questions, but could you give an example maybe a little more specific of either.
a property or somewhere they've used, the immersive assets and, and some of the successes, like you talked about, you know, the journey you just talked about, you know, as you layer on these things, it becomes much, much more, you know, probably the, the conversion rate, you know, skyrockets. Can you give a, maybe a specific example?
Benjamin Powers: Yeah, for sure. I'll talk about it in maybe two, two ways. You know, we spend most of our time dealing with the headwind of assumption until we get in the room and until they actually try it. so I have a lot of clients, like if you looked at my to do list, I'm, I do a lot of selling.
There's probably 200, I won't mention any names, where for years I've been reaching out and calling, just trying to get in the room and, oh, we have virtual tours. Well, that's great. We can help you. You know, Marriott, for example, recently did something where they gave the hotels an easy way to buy 3D on a one time basis, which we fully support.
and then they put out some messaging that, means you don't need visiting media without knowing what we do. And so now we're fighting that headwind and trying to explain, you know, and all the big ownership groups typically use us. And so it's a little of a re education, but that's one issue.
But once we see adoption. you know, we have a 99.7 year over year renewal rate. We've had that for nine years. It's top decile in software. and it's because the pro technology works. There is no question. We don't build things that don't work and, most of my ideas don't make it from there to the product guys and they burn the rest of them.
I get like one or two a year. But it's because we try them with our clients and they work. So, I'm thinking like, on the luxury side, Auberge, We had a property that reported a million dollars of ROI within the first month. And that's not uncommon, by the way. We see million dollar ROIs at full service and lux hotels all the time now.
the average ROI is about 35 fold what they pay, select service hotels it's six figures almost every time. But it's kind of common sense. You know, we're, we've got salespeople. They're all selling. A lot of them are really good too, but they've got an arm tied behind their back. You know, they can't use devices, which is where everyone buys these days.
They're still sending emails and they're not using immersion at all. They're trying to explain things verbally like their competitor. When you break them free of that, it's a light switch. And all we're really doing is saying, here's what your customers will respond better to. Let's give you a simple way, simpler way to give them what they need.
And you know, the nice thing about it, we're in hospitality, it's more hospitable. It's more helpful. Like they're, it's what we're on earth to do anyway in hospitality. So I don't know if I answered your question, but you know, it's, I have yet to have a customer, uh, maybe one that was really challenging in terms of adoption, but yet to have a customer say that, Oh, this didn't work really, really well, it's just.
Getting over that hump where you're in the room and able to be a consultant and, you know, earn their trust, so.
Steve Carran: I feel like in the immersive space, this is a, kind of a space in technology that's moving quickly. And, you know, new updates, new things are coming out all the time. Aside from sitting on your mat and making sure you're ahead of them, how are you staying ahead of these different, you know, how are you staying ahead of the curve?
Benjamin Powers: it's really a question. Let's just stick with virtual tours because that's easy. If we go off, we can go off the rails with other sensory immersion. But virtual tours have gone through really five or six major shifts in the last 15, 20 years since they were invented. you know, 360, 3D. but really what drives that change is a couple of things, but mostly consumer devices.
How do we, how do we consume virtual tours? So think of virtual reality. I've got an Apple VR headset over there. And I got my iPhone here. Steve, David, do you have a VR headset next to you?
No. How many of your friends used their VR headsets this morning?
Steve Carran: that I talked to so far.
Benjamin Powers: do you have your phone near you? Okay, we turned our ringers off, but we have our phone.
Everyone on planet Earth that is a customer of my customer has a smartphone. They're not using VR every morning anymore. And they may be someday, who knows? I hope not. But so we got to look at pragmatism. Where can we, where can we actually deliver immersion and how and, and what, what's, you know, what makes sense?
So we see immersion and the speed at which it's changing really driven by the consume, how you consume it, and also the data behind it. Bye. A more literal answer is there's 360, so that's, you know, this, and there's 3D where I can actually walk into a space and see it dimensionally, and the next leap from there is going to require a different way to engage.
You won't really see, in my opinion, major leaps beyond that for a while until there's another like holographic way or intra asset, like you can get inside the asset, and that is coming. I frankly have been inside And I'm going to be talking about how to design assets virtually, and it's incredibly compelling.
So that's coming, and then we'll have to design technology around that. Probably the biggest area that's on the market today is the ability to augment. Like, we have a lot of clients where they're building a hotel or they're renovating. And we developed a platform a year ago where you can walk inside that Park Hyatt hotel, guest room and then click a button and watch the room just transition to the post renovation which is happening in a year and pre sell the reno that's never been possible at a low price point and we made it almost free so that kind of technology is also coming but our goal is our goal to stay ahead isn't just to stay ahead like i said earlier we care about our customer like they are they're our partner in crime right and so our goal is to help them stay ahead Have more superpower, win more deals.
And so our innovation is all around how can we eke out a bit more of that. And that's how we stay ahead for the people that we serve.
David Millili: This is a little bit of a trick question because I also sell technology in the hotels and I
Benjamin Powers: I was difficult it is and how difficult it is for them to embrace it, but is there any technology as you travel or you read about that you see that that's being adopted outside of your space that excites you?
Outside of hospitality? Yes.
But they're things we're building now, too. I think AI and, machine learning. You know, I don't wanna, I don't like to talk about AI a lot, cause like it's, I was, I was chatting with our CEO last night, like, 10 at night, literally about this, and he was telling me something funny about AI, and I said, you know, that's, that's real to real.
That's the real to real, you know, they're at today in like audio world, you know, we're just at the very beginning. We have no clue what's going to happen. It'll be completely different in a year. And so to make any big bets about how it's going to affect the industry, there's a lot of, discussion around that, but who knows.
But in our world, AI can help us. Salespeople, because most great salespeople are busy parents. They don't like tech. They, they are, you have to be extremely compassionate for, for those people because they're not going to adopt things, but they also a lot of times are dealing with such volume and they can't do the job they want to do.
So where I see AI being so powerful for, our clients, it's just going to eliminate a ton of stuff that really they shouldn't be doing anyway. and make it, uh, allow it to support the personalization that they really should be doing. that excites me a ton. The other, the other, um, is the way that we can now look at, user engagement data and actually start to see patterns through machine learning and AI and other technologies that can tell us insights.
So, I'm going to show you how this works instantly in real time. Like right now, I've got, I've got a demo here. Like I said, in 20 minutes, I've got our global analytics dashboard right here. So we're seeing a couple million users every few minutes, and I can actually track them across over a hundred hospitality channels, brand.com, all the proposals that our customers are sending out right now, couple thousand in the last hour, all the analytics flowing together to one dashboard. So if we want to learn about behavior and intent in the buying cycle, we We can run that against software that can chug away and say, okay, I see a trend here.
And that's like a little gift. When we see a trend that drives revenue or changes consumer behavior, right? Like, okay, now that's a strategy you want to deploy. And so that that connection to me and AI and a lot of advanced, advanced learning softwares have made that really fun.
Steve Carran: The data. The data is so key with AI. And you hit the nail
Benjamin Powers: the Yeah, but the data, like a lot of people in our industry, they're probably saying, yeah, I do that. You know, me too. I get this data. Cool. Big numbers must be good, but it's not true. What does it mean? And what does it mean to me today? And to me tomorrow, and that's to us again, like our customers are our partners in crime.
And, you know, we used to do what they do and we want to empower them. So we try to, a lot of times it's just constant education, but taking like that data through that really advanced computing power and breaking it down to a little dashboard. So when I come to work on a Monday as a salesperson, it says, call Josh because, you know, it's just that simple.
Yeah.
Steve Carran: I love it. So last question from our end here. you are probably one of the best entrepreneurs that we have had on this show. Just lifelong entrepreneur of starting your own businesses. What is advice that you have for maybe some younger entrepreneurs out there?
Benjamin Powers: Hmm, boy. Oh, man. Well, if you're entrepreneurial by nature, you know, lean into it. I think a couple things that really rang true always to me is that you got to always look for the problems to solve and be audacious. I said that earlier, like, assume there's no rules. You know, there's this thing where you can get your personality scored, I forget the name of the assessment, but as a CEO, I've gone through it now four times.
And I was 100 out of 100 on mischievousness. And I'm like, Yep, that's right. And I think I was like two out of 100 on tradition or something. But, be mischievous, dream big, you know, you hear all this dream big, you can do anything. I don't know about that I think a lot of it is just timing too. But, but you know, think about the zero to one, there's a great book on that.
Don't just do it a little better. Because you're not going to probably be successful, look for new, things that no one's thinking about. And when there is a competitive market, like virtual tours, don't sit down there in the market, get above it. So if you're thinking about any area that you're passionate about, how can you become the differentiator that adds value to everyone who's doing that, one layer above, you know, little things like that, but just try to constantly think.
And I would also say, give yourself time to think. Like, I don't come up with anything good as an inventor unless I'm sitting there, I'm driving the tractor, or I'm in the shower, like these moments where you can just think. And a lot of us don't give ourselves time because we're too busy. and then I guess the last one that came to mind, most of what you're going to achieve as an entrepreneur is going to be done in, 2-5 of your time.
The rest of it's just you doing stuff that doesn't matter. So really think about the things that. Absolutely drive forward and get good at saying no to everything else. And that includes a lot of the ideas you come up with that you really got to just say no to, and that's a habit that took me 30 years to learn, but it pays off.
Steve Carran: That's incredible advice. That's awesome. So we've been asking you the questions so far, this whole podcast. Now we're going to turn the tables and we're going to let you ask David and I a question.
Benjamin Powers: Oh, boy. Wish I'd known the format ahead of time. I wish I'd know we were
Steve Carran: part of the fun.
Benjamin Powers: worn a better shirt.
Steve Carran: No, you're good.
Benjamin Powers: No, that's funny. Oh, boy. Um, you know, I was curious about, like, you guys talked to a lot of people, a lot of different guests, like, what's, what's one of the most memorable, where you walked away from the show, probably thinking, thank God that's recorded.
But you know, boy, we didn't see that coming. Do you ever have a moment like that on your show?
Steve Carran: I'll go first, David. I think this happens more in the live shows that we have. Like this, we kind of have an idea of what's going to happen, but we're in a live show. We really don't know what's going to happen or things come up. I remember we were filming in Las Vegas one time with Judy Chen from Dream Hotels and Anthony Melchiorri happened to be in the room with us.
We were filming in his suite, but he was, you know, pouring drinks for us. He was Putting appetize platters like while we were filming and it was just one of those episodes that I looked back at recently and I'm like That was so fun. And, you know, when you have a lot of personalities like that all in one room, I think those are kind of when those memorable experiences come out.
Benjamin Powers: See, that's immersion, yeah,
David Millili: on the show that we are, a lot of times you become friendly with people in business, but you didn't grow up with them. You aren't, you know, you don't go on vacation with them. You don't always go to baseball games, but you still, when you're at a convention, they're great.
You hang out with them. You have a beer and Andrew Benioff, like. He's a great guy, but I had no idea, like, all this time he spent in Japan, all this martial arts stuff about him, that just, there was no real reason, I guess, for him to bring it up in, like, at an event, or at one of his things, or on a call, and I was just like blown away, like, here's this guy I've known for many, many years, that I didn't know.
Like, there was all this really cool, incredible stuff, so that's one of the The cool things about being on this side of the podcast is, is learning from people and, you know, that's why, like I said in the beginning, our format is really trying to make sure that people get to know the guest before we just start talking about, you know, what are the trends and what is this? So yeah, that was pretty cool for
Benjamin Powers: I like that format, by the way, a lot, um, you know, to that point you just made, like, what is something about you guys that you would say? None of your guests know, you know, that really is a part of who you are. It's funny how we have our work facades. I try to make my work facade as close to my non work facade that, uh, but it's, but you know, we turn this thing off and it's Friday afternoon and we've got to do something that none of my work folks know that I do.
What about you guys? What's something unique about you?
Steve Carran: unique. I, I,
Benjamin Powers: person that's asked that.
Steve Carran: you, actually are. Um, I love the outdoors. I, I am one of those people that I, I love camping. it sounds kind of crazy for Memorial Day weekend. I went camping and, go with my wife, my dog, and my cat. And that is, yeah, my cat. My cat is the biggest camper of our family. He's got his own
Benjamin Powers: Have you seen that thing about the cat that like goes on trail, what hikes and
Steve Carran: that's my cat. I have a, I have a leash. We have a leash. We walk our cat. Like, we have a, we have a stroller for our cat when it gets tired. We have a backpack for it as well. But yeah, that's kind of, it's kind of a weird thing about me, but I, I've always liked cats and my cat just happens to love the outdoors as well.
Benjamin Powers: That's cool.
David Millili: Yeah, well, they know people don't know about me and, you know, it's kind of like you're saying how you have different, you know, brothers and everybody's different. Is that, you know, it was a quick funny story. My father was a mechanic and I used to work in the gas station and that's how, you know, I got my first car for 300, cleaned it up, sold it for 700, then use that 700 to buy another car.
So I just, I always had that in the back of my back, my head, that kind of upbringing and things. A lot of people I think might assume that I kind of came from like, my father was a business person, so that's why you must be entrepreneurial. So he was a mechanic, he could fix anything, he could, our thing was we drove by a pile of trash, you see a lawnmower, and he'd be like, Oh, that lawnmower is still good, take it out, rebuild the motor and everything.
So, and I can't do any of that. So I think a lot of people always assume that like, I probably, you know, got into business because of father or something of that nature. And it was just people. I don't know what the hell I was doing. When I left my town, people were like, where the hell is he going?
Benjamin Powers: I think a lot of people do what their parents did, but they really hate it. You know, it's, it's not so, and then every now and then they're really good at it. But a lot of times they just hate, hate it, but think they have to, you
David Millili: Yeah. Two of my brothers went into automotive stuff and I'm like, are you guys crazy? I'm like, our father worked as an ass officer. We didn't have to go into that. Like, anyway, so I got it.
Steve Carran: No, that's great. That great question. so now we're bringing in our producer, Jon. He's been listening to the episode the whole time and he's going to ask the final question before we head out here.
Benjamin Powers: all right.
Jon Bumhoffer: You were talking about how you come up with your ideas in that chair. Very picturesque if you're just listening to this. Sounds very great. I was wondering, you know, we've got so much coming at us all day and you just talked about making sure to take time to like sit and think and allow yourself to come up with ideas.
With all, you know, the things coming at us every day, Social media, emails, what have you. How do you, what are some of the strategies you use, or what do you do to make sure that you have that time, because I think most of us don't get time to just sit and with our own thoughts and come up with
Benjamin Powers: Yeah, you know, I hear a lot of people talk about this because I've been on my own personal journey with anxiety and all the kind of stuff that people deal with and don't talk about a lot. And then you read all these books, I mean, all these, you know, When Things Fall Apart, great book, but this is on wellness.
I've read it probably 20 times because I can't remember the stuff I want to remember, right? Great, it sounds really great if you can do it, but it's really hard to do, right? So we're all just people, and we're all struggling. I think it's important to understand that, first of all, it's very It's not, it's not consistent, but what I try to do really hard is get to know, I try to like who I am and think, you know, laugh at myself a lot and acknowledge that I've got all these quirks and complexities, but that's who I am and it's cool, it's fine, you know?
And I've spent a year or two trying to get good at that. I was telling my son yesterday, he has a black belt test coming up tomorrow. He's 12 and he's really nervous. And I said, boy, I got a podcast tomorrow. I was telling him that. And this is yesterday, driving to school and I'm nervous.
And I get nervous on every single call still, and I've done thousands of them. I still get nervous. And so I try to pause. I try to breathe. A lot of times I'll just sit and breathe for five minutes. Do a little light meditation. But mostly it's have compassion for myself and laugh at everything and realize it's just not that.
It's just not that. Serious, you know, we take life really seriously. We're just trying to keep ourselves occupied, you know, to get through the day, really, you know, when you think about it. So, and then I try to have a lot of, constant, constant gratitude. That's a big one.
Steve Carran: Love that.
Benjamin Powers: Yeah.
David Millili: great. Well, that does it Oh.
Benjamin Powers: time.
David Millili: Well, that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. Benjamin, this is where you can let people know how to find and connect you, how to find out more at Visiting Media. Well,
Benjamin Powers: and doing things that you can't do without this technology. so the blog is great on the website, lots of case studies. there's a huge section on return on investment through the words of our customers, a lot of videos of your peers, if you're in the industry, their own words, you know, not ours.
and really, I think the best thing that I love to provide the industry is education. The stuff we've learned that I see, I see like superpowers and whether a client books us or not, or works, invests with us from a financial standpoint, that's less important than, understanding what we know now and what we really want to share that.
And so a lot of what we do is just education. You can call us and just be frank, like I'm not in a position to invest, buy anything yet, but I just want to learn more. And that's the best kind of lead we can ever get because eventually we may do business, but we are going to. Build a friendship and a bond with someone who's going to walk off that 30 minute chat thinking, okay, whoa, I got that.
Like I can use that in this next meeting coming in. I, that strategy I can use without any technology. There's things I can just do differently. So that, but you know, website is a great one. There's a contact us page. My email is just Ben at visiting media. I talk to clients constantly throughout the day.
and then of course the good old fashioned telephone, but I won't mention that here.
David Millili: that does it for another episode of The Modern Hotelier. So whether you're watching us or listening, we appreciate you. Until next time, thank you.