Wil Slickers, the host of the Slick Talk podcast, has launched Hospitality.FM, a network of hospitality podcasts. We talked with him about how he assembled the 8 shows currently in the network, what short-term rental operators and other hospitality professionals can get from it, and why advertisers are interested in joining in.
What is the Hospitality.FM network?
Wil Slickers: You can just go to Hospitality.FM, you find your favorite show or any episode that sounds interesting to you, you hit play and you’re able to walk away. Our network is becoming the Spotify of hospitality. We’re not just doing short-term rentals, but we’re covering hotels, food & beverage, technology, entrepreneurship in general guest experience all this across the board. It’s not just one niche of hospitality. It’s the whole, it’s a whole industry.
Here’s the current roster of podcasts on Hospitality.FM:
- Slick Talk: The Hospitality podcast
- Good Morning Hospitality
- I Meet Hotel – The Hoteliers podcast
- The Proven Principles Hospitality podcast
- GuestX Podcast
- The no-BS short-term rental podcast
- Post Shift, The Hospitality podcast
- The Room Block
The Hospitality.FM network helps the audience, podcasters, and advertisers find each other.
Wil realized that other podcasters were coming to him asking questions to which he had already figured the answers for his Slick Talk podcast:
- Hey, we’re starting a podcast or we have a podcast we need help with. How do we professionalize it?
- What kind of equipment can we get?
- How do we monetize it?
- How do I find an editor?
- How do I get guests?
- How do I set up Calendly?
- How do I set up my onboarding form?
- How do I streamline from post-recording to editing, to publishing, really all these processes in the backend?
On the other side of the spectrum, Wil’s personal podcast had reached a point where it could not welcome any more advertisers. He saw an opportunity here to grow the pie for everyone:
Wil Slickers: I had a waiting list of sponsors wanting to get on Slick Talk. I had no room for them anymore. In a way, I had capped out my business, which isn’t good. Like that’s not a good thing. It is a good thing, but it’s not a good thing. I decided it was like,
I already had a contract set up for sponsorship. I could go from offering 30 Slick Talk episodes to 60 episodes through 8 different shows, whereby advertisers can hit multiple demographics in different locations.
The podcasters that need the help to the advertisers that want to spend the money within audio? I looked at networks, how they work, and structure their setup and their business. I kept the best parts of it. I took the negative parts of it and just got rid of them. For instance, a network usually takes full editorial control of the podcasts. I didn’t want to do that. I want people to find the passion or love of podcasting the way I did by having total freedom and creative control.
A service provider for hospitality podcasts
Wil Slickers: We’re able to bring in other established shows or create new ones. We just signed Steve Turk, who is creating his own podcast with us in the network. It was a brand new podcast from the ground up and he already has a dedicated audience.
Some people are going full onboard with getting the editing and the monetization. They just want to record, upload and walk away.
Others are keeping their own editor, their own system in play. They’re just really looking for us to find them that right partner to team up and monetize the show. They want also want to grow their audience, but then also get to speak at conferences.
Some just want to be on the network as the player feature. The website is also a podcast player. You can go on your phone, click any podcasts for any episode that you want, lock your phone or go to a different app. It continues to play just like Spotify or Pandora. A lot of people just actually want to be a part of that distribution side. It is a win-win for all of us because we’re able to add more than just our own shows.
How does Hospitality.FM select its podcasts?
Wil Slickers: It’s really about finding the thought leaders in this space. We’re not going to just take any podcasts. We don’t want to include podcasts that are teaching or preaching the wrong types of practices when it comes to property management or hotel experience or food & beverage operations.
We don’t want people that are in it for the fame, such as the YouTube influencers who say “Hey, I’m gonna teach you how to make a million dollars on Airbnb, follow me, subscribe for more, like the channel”.
We’re in for the people that are in love with hospitality, that’s where we’re really dedicating our time and resources.
We have a minimum requirement of at least 10 episodes published. 26% of podcasts on Apple podcasts alone never make it past 1 episode, 50% of podcasts never make it past 10. We want to beat that statistic.
For the shows that we’re creating internally as a network, we record 10 episodes before we launch anything. Before we launch a trailer, we need to have 10 episodes ready to go, that we can produce and edit and schedule out while you’re recording future episodes or seasons.
Why do advertisers reach out to Hospitality.FM?
Hospitality.FM counts companies such as Hostfully, NoiseAware, Safely, Operto, Jetstream, Wheelhouse, and Jurny among its advertisers. We asked Wil Slickers what value they were getting from his network:
Wil Slickers: I’ve been trying to educate and teach advertisers that this isn’t like pay-per-click advertising. You’re not going to be paying $20 per click or per day or whatever their usual KPIs. This is a partnership. The more consistent you are, the more aligned with the show or the hosts that you are as a company. That’s where I found success with Slick Talk, the more I aligned with great partners that were in it for the long run. They weren’t in it for a quick “how many times was your discount code used?” kind of thing.
That’s about reaching people, becoming a more prominent voice in this space, whether it’s short-term rentals, whether it’s hotels, whether it’s restaurants.
