Security Halt!
Welcome to Security Halt! Podcast, the show dedicated to Veterans, Active Duty Service Members, and First Responders. Hosted by retired Green Beret Deny Caballero, this podcast dives deep into the stories of resilience, triumph, and the unique challenges faced by those who serve.
Through powerful interviews and candid discussions, Security Halt! Podcast highlights vital resources, celebrates success stories, and offers actionable tools to navigate mental health, career transitions, and personal growth.
Join us as we stand shoulder-to-shoulder, proving that even after the mission changes, the call to serve and thrive never ends.
Security Halt!
Foxhole: The Veteran-Owned App Changing How Military Members Travel
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In this episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero sits down with William Denzil Collins, CEO and founder of Foxhole — a groundbreaking veteran-owned travel platform built to serve the military community.
From the frustrations of traditional travel booking sites to creating an Airbnb-style solution tailored for service members, veterans, and their families, Collins shares the inspiring journey of building Foxhole from the ground up. He reveals the lessons learned from Foxhole 1.0, the exciting updates coming in Foxhole 2.0, and how his military service shaped his entrepreneurial mindset.
This conversation dives deep into the power of community trust, the role of mentorship, and how social media marketing can fuel business growth. Whether you’re a veteran entrepreneur, a military family traveler, or simply curious about innovative veteran-owned businesses, this episode will inspire you to think bigger and support those who’ve served.
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Securepodcast is proudly sponsored by Titans Arms. Head over to the episode description and check out Titans Arms today. William Collins of Foxhole Welcome to Security Hall. How's it going, brother? It's going good. Thanks for having me. Absolutely, man. You've got something unique and special and I am so glad that you guys jumped at my invite to come on the show. I love finding veterans out there doing amazing and game-changing things. Like most of us, I have stayed at Airbnbs before and the experience used to be quaint. It used to be fun and I would venture to say it is an absolute fucking nightmare with the fees and the hassle these days Fighting foxhole. I just knew I had to bring it out to my audience and let people understand that there is a veteran behind this, and I want to dive into your story, man, and this amazing company yeah, thank you.
Speaker 2:We uh we share the same dislike for the extra fees and, uh, that's something we're so proud of at Foxhole is that we don't charge a guest fee and I think the ability to go to checkout and know that, hey, man, this listed price was $100. Why am I paying $150? That's a frustrating. I mean, I felt that as a service member when I traveled. I felt that as a civilian when I traveled, but Foxhole gives you the ability to look at a listed price and calculate in your head hey, I'm staying four nights, that's going to be $200. And it's going to be $200. So, yeah, it's super cool.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Make it work. Make it make sense. The fee that you advertise is X amount. Why is it? When I check out, it's sometimes almost fucking double. It's insane. I understand Maybe you're going somewhere that is an absolute travel destination, but if I'm going to interview somebody in hoboken, wisconsin, in the middle of nowhere, why is that fee still outrageous? But uh, we'll get to that shortly. I want to dive into you, my man. How did you come up with this?
Speaker 2:Give us the superhero origin story of Foxhole so first off, I'm from a military family, so my dad retired colonel. I grew up in Fort Sill, oklahoma. Where I grew up I was super lucky. I was decent at football. It's where my high school team we won state championship and I got to sign to play division one football. Nice, yeah, yeah. So I was a quarterback at the University of Louisiana Monroe, played there and then I graduate, transferred to UCO, which is University of Central Oklahoma. I did my R2C, my master's program, there, and that's how I got it. That's how I got my foothold into the Army. Football is where I learned a lot of, I know, kind of being a quarterback. There's a mental game there. It's not just you know how hard can I hit someone, how fast can I run. So that really prepared me for the Army. So one, if you're a student athlete watching this and you're thinking about your career after football or basketball or whatever, go join the Army, go join the Marines, go join the Navy I built for you. I promise Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I commissioned as an infantry officer to get my master's degree and served four years in the infantry, loved it. And that is where the Foxville story begins, because I met the best officer I ever served with in the Army, spencer Colazos. So Spencer Colazos was my company commander. Here I come, you know, a second lieutenant, brand new, don't know anything, and he's like the seasoned top company commander who had all the schools, all the badges, all the experience. He was amazing, and he kind of put me under his wing and taught me everything I knew in the Army. What's really funny, though, is I got out of the Army to pursue he had an engineering degree from West Point. He wanted to get out Now. I stayed close, though, and he actually came up with the idea of Foxhole. So, spencer, he's our founder and our chief growth officer. So he focuses really on strategic partnerships and how we're going to grow this thing, whereas I'm more I'm our CEO, and I'm in the weeds, I'm in the operations, I'm in the You're in the fight.
Speaker 1:You're in the dredges.
Speaker 2:But that's where it started. He called me up when I was getting towards either staying in and going to, you know, triple C and taking command for now, and he called me and says hey, you know, there's a whole story to it. I actually had a service member come in through Lafayette, louisiana where he was living, and called him and was like hey, are you still in Lafayette? I'm a need a place to stay. I had last minute orders, last minute changes, and he opened up his house to him and he stayed the night with him. But then he called me the next day because we always had these creative thoughts, we always were thinking of something, and he was like dude, what if we start Vet B&B? And that's what the first name was Like a week of like no, I was instantly in. I was like I'm in this, I'm good, here's my refrag, my battalion commander, and I'm getting up. I love this idea, I'm all about it. That comes from four years and then a whole childhood of stressful travel.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm sure that you have your horror stories when it comes to PCSing or EY or vacation rentals. It's so bad, like you're talking about three kids, wife and husband, traveling with two dogs and they're having to stay in a hotel and they're getting in with a U-Haul and they they're in somewhere they don't know. U-haul gets stolen all the you know nine yards. So that's where foxhole began.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's pretty cool yeah, man, I gotta imagine we'll dive into this. But you know, I want to pause and reflect on this. This friendship, mentorship that grew into a partnership. That's something that's important to understand. In the military, you will be around some amazing individuals and more often than not, just a little bit of daydreaming can lead into this. If you're willing to be brave enough to go into something like entrepreneurship, like being an entrepreneur diving into this space like it's scary, did you have any sort of hesitation or fears? How did you guys work through that?
Speaker 2:So Spencer and I have a belief that an infantry officer and an infantry NCO can do anything. Yes, if you give those two groups of people a task, it's going to get accomplished if they're really good at their job. Now, the secret code to all this is Spencer and I's partnership. I won't find anyone, including my wife, that I trust more than Spencer, and that was forged through military service, so he and I did. I've seen him at some low spots and he's seen me in some low spots, where you know. Luckily our character never broke and we we do trust each other. Like I said, spence is one of the best officers I ever met. Served the ranger regiment. Dad is a like ranger hall of fame guy. I mean just total stud which comes from an awesome. I mean he's. He walks the walk and he and his family does too. I couldn't think of one. Just being partnered with him gave me the confidence to have a partner who believes in this mission and believes in me and I believe in him.
Speaker 2:But the second part and this is kind of the secret is a wife who owns a business like Charles Louisiana, and that was the second reason why I decided to get out was because her business was doing so good. She's a website designer, she does really well and she works really hard. And I got to see after being married for three years, I got to see the grind that she was going through as a small business owner. She has two employees and she does really well, but she also is the only one working besides her two employees. So I got to see and I got free reps at what she's going through. I kind of had a little bit of a cheat code where I didn't have to rely on like Instagram reels and them telling you inspiration. I actually had someone who happened to be my wife, who basically gave us the blueprint.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, living and breathing like blueprint right there in the house, going up against something that's already out there proven concept. Even if it's horrible, even if we hate it, it's out there and I have to imagine it's like David and Goliath, you've got Airbnb. Talk us through this process of building Foxhole 1.0.
Speaker 2:What were the first steps? Foxhole 1.0 was were the first steps? Foxhole 1.0 uh, was built by my wife andi, so we we teamed up and we built this when I was on terminal lead.
Speaker 1:Really foxhole, that's a lot yeah, that's a lot to do on terminal leave. And and it was uh, I mean, not only you're doing, you did an app as well the, the website and the app as well at the same time. Just the website.
Speaker 2:So we're launching the app here in September 5th, okay, but Foxhole 1.0 was just a web-based platform, man. It was like Sprint, sprint, sprint, sprint, sprint, sprint. This is I mean to any entrepreneur listening you got to pick something and go after it. You can't hide behind due dates. And hide behind what I mean by this is when I got out, spencer called me hey, let's do Foxhole, let's do that B&B Dude. That conversation happened in like late November. I got on terminal leave December 1st, like we launched this thing March 1st. All that was was me saying like all right, hey, we're gonna launch this thing on March 1st, so that's our due date. Just boom, right there.
Speaker 2:Boom, march 1st done that takes guts, that takes guts, that's not a lot of run time, start putting it on social media, start getting people like, hey, march 1st I'm gonna have a travel platform. So we kind of put that pressure on ourselves. And what I see a lot of people do is they like hide behind that. They, they don't put a due date, they sit on things for a long time and it's actually how fast you can go, the tempo you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, there could have been right in that same timeframe. There could have been right in that same timeframe. There could have been other people with the same idea. In fact, I know there's other people that thought about that same idea. You've got to beat them to market, you've got to be. And oftentimes, what if somebody has got a more capital? What if somebody has an investor Like you might just have enough money to launch it first and get it up and running. And how did you find the infrastructure? You have to go through and find places and develop that. Like, how did you build that network?
Speaker 2:and you were uh referring to our supply and so, like, our hosts are listening, yep, so. So boom, we build the website. We do that kind of secretly. But as we're doing that and currently I'm old, call on hosts, I'm, I'm, I'm uh urging our veteran network, you know, because, dude, the veteran network is way more connected informally than everyone believes it is. You know, you're one phone call away from like the top.
Speaker 2:Seems like so, man, I just reached out to some of my veteran networks. Like my dad, you know, he served 30 years. Both my brothers are both field field grade officers right now. So, and then spencer's side, and all we did was just make spreadsheets of basically call sheets and just went calling, calling, calling, and we got 10 hosts to the list on foxhole for the first, for the launch on march 1st, which I thought was the biggest blessing ever. I was like, thank you guys so much for believing in us. Um, and then after that, our social media game really got really picked up and, uh, just really, from social media man, people will dm us and they're just like, hey, I want to live some foxhole. And then our customer service man. We have a guy who's just the best and he is like he's a veteran and he totally is like just online at all times and he just totally professionally helps these people.
Speaker 1:Yeah I want to pause on that. I want to dive into this for a little bit. I I work in the social media space, so not only do I manage and produce other shows security hall, it's my thing but I got other shows and one of the other things I got into was social media marketing and managing for people, and I'm trying to explain to somebody that, uh, they have to utilize social media. It's free. It's free real estate. You have to, but you have to work. You have to understand your audience, you have to understand themes and messaging. It's why it's perfectly. Nobody wants to understand it, nobody wants to dive into it, but it's. You're perfectly suited for it.
Speaker 1:If you're in the military, if you're an officer in the military, by and large, you can operate in social media and get ahead of people in the game when you don't have the ability to pay somebody to do your marketing. Dig into Instagram, dig into like. I know, I know it's not easy, but if you brew some coffee, if you stay up for a few nights, you can outwork the competition. It's that easy. You just have to understand your niche. You have to understand your area, your audience and the veteran audience. Oh my God, it's such an amazing group of people to work for and to create content for, because I know what you like, I know what you like, you listening, I know what you enjoy. Did you dive into that space as well? Having to like initially trying to keep everything within house, not having to try to go out to a subcontractor or hire somebody on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the funny thing behind that is, have made me personally every piece of content, every flyer, everything, and I did exactly. What you just said was this was like I need to master this. This is where the game is being played and I have to win this game if I want, in order to survive. So it's a pretty. I'll take, like you said, brew some coffee. It's an effort thing, you know, just max effort, and once you you get going, you really get going.
Speaker 1:it's really cool yeah, but you have to put in the work. That's the thing I I have a hard time trying to express to people that are like, are going into it one foot in, one foot out. I'm like dude, the idea that you can just be half half stepping this and not seeing it as an important part of your business, bro, you're not gonna not going to grow If you're a podcaster, if you are in any sort of business where you have to get your stuff out there. You're not going to grow unless you take it serious and you have to study it.
Speaker 1:And one thing that I hate is when you give the person some guidance and you give them case studies and like, hey, look at your top competitors, look at the people in the same market, and they still go do the same thing utilizing ai. It's photos, painful. It's like you're never going to get a client. You're never going to you're you're. If you're a coaching business, like dude, take it serious, take it serious. How fast did you start generating a following and getting people that like say like, wow, this is working right, I'd rather do this than airbnb.
Speaker 2:So march 1st we launched with zero everywhere, zero listings or users. Uh, we did. We did have 10 listings, but, um man, we had, you know, zero followers on instagram and right now we're sitting at 8500. So we're almost to 10k. Yeah, yeah, wow. And all that took was I tell spencer this all the time and the rest of the team so easy, because we have an awesome product and we have an awesome honest message. I'm actually impressed with people who have to sell bad stuff, just a bad deal, like a car salesman sometimes Kudos to them because they can sell something bad, because for us it's super easy. We have an awesome product, we have an awesome benefit. I mean to get into the Airbnb guest fee. Is so those people, airbnb, vrbo, awesome platforms and companies to put us out there? We don't necessarily compete with them. Obviously, we're in the same space. We are just focused on serving the military and whoever that audience is, whoever of the veteran, active duty or military dependent cohort come to Foxhole, dude. You got to partner with us, we're going to serve you.
Speaker 2:If you want to stay doing Airbnb, vrbo. Hey, those are good apps, those are good platforms. They've earned your trust. So I mean until Fox platforms they've earned your trust. So I mean until foxhole, can you know, earn your trust? Hey, I totally understand staying on those platforms. Here's a great piece of information to know before you book the next time.
Speaker 2:We don't charge a guest fee. Example you get on a abnb platform and it's listed for a hundred dollars. You're saying one night, and then there's no host fees, so there's no cleaning fee, there's no pet fee, nothing else. You got $100 for one night for one guest. You're going to end up paying what everyone thinks in their head $100 at or around Tax, say, five bucks. So at checkout at Foxhole we're going to pay $105. That's pretty awesome, because what we do at Foxhole is we charge a host fee. We charge a 10% host fee of that $100, except all 100 through Stripe that's our partner. We give 90 to the host and we keep 10. But the key, though, there is we also pay the payment fee. No other business pays the payment fee, and that's something we're committed to, because I'm telling you, man, we're almost like a nonprofit, I mean, we're a for-profit company, but we pay the payment fee and we don't charge a guest fee. So really, out of that 10% we get, we're really only getting 7% because we're having to pay that 3%. Just like every other business, they've got to pay the 3%. So $105 on a short-term rental.
Speaker 2:If you go on to any other platform, you're going to get a guest fee, all right. So just to give you an example of what some of these people do you check out with $100. That's why when you press checkout it takes a second because it's calculating all the fees. Boom, now you check out, the guest is going to end up paying around $121 for that because there's a 14% anywhere between 14% and 17% guest fee that the platform charges the guests on top of the price. They put that payment fee into that price as well. So they give you that 3% payment fee. So you're looking at 20% right there. And on top of that, these platforms also charge the host additional 3% to 4% service charge. So every single time you stay at these other platforms, they're making around 21% to 23% on every single booking. Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2:That's just getting handed to a platform. Money that's just getting handed to a platform to me. I just got tired of that as a service member because I had no, some of the. I mean, I'm sure that you haven't had these situations where it's like I have to stay here or I'm sleeping on the ground because timing and orders and everything else just hated that someone could. I'm not saying they take advantage of people, I'm just saying like, from a military perspective, it seemed like I had no other options. Yeah, so that's why we started Foxhole.
Speaker 1:And no guesswork. Yeah, it can seem like look, I love capitalism, I love it. I've been and traveled around the world where that's not the main theme and I don't enjoy those areas. They're not fun. I will say this when is enough enough? When do you make enough money?
Speaker 1:One thing that's really infuriating is those fees when they get put on the Airbnb owner. That's the other individual that we got to look out for. How is it fair to them? How can we make the experience enjoyable for both the guest and the person who's putting their property on that platform? And I think that you're doing a more than fair, fair and really admirable position by saying, hey, we're going to take that fee and we're going to eat the cost. We don't want to just pass it off to you, the actual facilities owner, and I don't certainly don't want the guests. I want you to come here. So that's, that's a big, big undertaking. How do we scale? How do we scale? How do we get bigger? No, we're not competing, but we want veterans to say, hey, if I'm traveling somewhere, I'm going to Foxhole there. They represent me, they represent my service, I'm going to go to them. It's like, how do we scale? And what's a plan for Foxhole 2.0? So thanks for bringing that up.
Speaker 2:So 2.0, one. We had great growth in 1.0, the first six months, to where we had a number of people calling to invest in Foxhole. They see the vision, they see the growth they see the numbers, spencer and I.
Speaker 2:we met with about four to five different investors, who all gave us different you know offers to invest in foxhole, but we chose one who is a veteran. So we chose a veteran investor. I gave us a six-figure investment and what that did for for me as a CEO was I still have the control. I own the company. Everything that happens through Foxhole is going to be either because I failed or I was successful or my team was, so there's no I love that the empathy offer is still there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because, dude, some of these people were coming in civilians and they were trying to take the company. They were just like here's a cool amount of money, but we want the company and I'm like you won't serve the military community because you'll go charge a guest fee day one. So we chose actually to go with a veteran investor. It was awesome pairing. They have this super cool deal with them because they just want to see us run. They just want to see us go. What that did, though, is I got to hire a team. Right now, I have a seven-man team. I still do all the marketing, though I probably never hire a marketing officer because it's just super quick. Every time I post or every time I build a product, I literally picture speaking and representing the military community. So if it's got one comma, that's messed up. If it's got one comma, that's messed up. If it's got one animation, that's not tight end it like it hurts me because I know that I'm either representing or yeah.
Speaker 1:But you want to know why. You want to know why? It's because we've been trained and it's a con op. It's an absolute con op every single time and the BC is going to read it. I understand it completely Every time and the BC's gonna rate it. I understand it completely Every time I'm building something for either my podcast or Special Forces Foundation. It's exactly like a con op. It's exactly like building. I'm not using PowerPoint, so at least there's that. Now I'm using Canva. It feels more snooty.
Speaker 2:Well, if there's anyone out there listening who's in now the army, or transitioning, or a veteran who has some marketing, you know, let me know, but you gotta pass the test first yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:It's important to understand like you gotta at some point you do have to let go so you can focus it. It's just like hey, this is good for the captain me. Now I have to transition up to the major.
Speaker 2:Dude. That's a great point. That's a great point For Foxhole 2.0, what I did was I met one of the best human beings that I've met in my life so far. It's Troy T. He's a 55-year year old, or he might be 52. He worked at microsoft as a software in engineer. He also then, like, worked his way up into manager roles and then he jumped around from different oil companies to work on as their software site. Dude, I found I listed the job for chief technology officer, had like 100 applicants inside of like 20 minutes it was crazy interviewed a lot of them, um, and a lot of them were veterans. It was cool. I wanted to hire a veteran, but, boy, you know, I met and hit it off and I hired him right on the spot. Uh, he was awesome. He's responsible for, he's the lead developer on Foxhole 2.0.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you right now and I hope this is like the click that gets, like smacked Foxhole 2.0 is going to revolutionize military travel forever. This app, I've seen it. Every week I have a meeting with them and I review the product, the design, everything. It is the cleanest, most efficient, most simple UX UI I've ever seen. Really, oh man, I'm telling you if you're a veteran or active duty or a military dependent, you are going to want to download this on September 5th because it's only yours. You can go, show all your friends and be like look, I was hoping you'd say sooner and I'm a tech nerd man.
Speaker 2:I need to see this one 1.0 is still up and uh it's, it's serving the military community like it's. It's done 25 plus bookings. So it's a fully functional website, but it's not an app. But we are, we're building like the end-all, be-all Taj Mahal app.
Speaker 1:Heck yeah.
Speaker 2:I cannot wait for it to get on the market and that people can jump right in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we want to just take a moment to highlight this. Being able to get an investor and then being able to find the right person and then building a team these are all important milestones that so many people dream of. And it's just like you know, getting that runway because a lot you know sometimes you got a bootstrap, sometimes you just got to get this thing out there on your own. But getting that person that sees what you have and then agreeing that that's the right person, that sees the right, sees the vision that you're also envisioning I I got to imagine. That felt amazing.
Speaker 2:It did Not to get too. I do say I am a Christian and dude a lot of prayer and just a lot of trust man. That's why I go back to what I said at the very beginning is you can't sit on decisions too long. If you sit on them too long, they go away and then someone else makes them faster.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and don't discount the power of prayer. If you're listening and you're out there and you're in the space, my wife gets on me a lot because I'll complain about something and I'll talk about a friction point, a sticking point, something that's really on my mind, and just wearing me down the first thing she'll say is all right, have you prayed about it? And just wearing me down, the first thing she'll say is all right, have you prayed about it? Have you sat down and prayed? If you haven't, look, I get it.
Speaker 1:Faith is still a touchy subject for some of you. I get it. I'm going to talk about it because it's part of my journey. It's part of my life. You got to go and talk to the big guy, whoever that is for you. I'm not going to judge you Exactly, man, it's your journey. You find it.
Speaker 1:But talk to God, talk to the universe, talk to who you believe in, get it out there, put your trust and faith and let that out. Put it out there, get it out of your mind and then move forward. I'm telling you, god works in mysterious ways. You'll be surprised how many times you're dealing with that frustration. You give it over in prayer and the next day, that person that you needed to talk to or somebody that you stumble upon gives you that piece of advice or that resource that you were needing and you're like back to 100%, back at it and you know, in your journey, understanding that that's something you can turn to. Looking at it now. On this side of the journey understanding that that's something you can turn to, looking at it now, on this side of the journey you got to be able to say, hey, there's proof in the pudding, like when I was stressed out, I was able to pray, I was able to give this over to God and say, hey, I don't know how we're going to make it through it, but I'm going to trust in you and I'm going to move forward. We're going to launch this.
Speaker 2:No, and say this for anyone listening For me. From my point of view, it's kind of like how Spencer was my partner and he was in with together. I'm never alone, man. So I may be in my office doing all this work and crushing it and making quick decisions, but if I ever need anyone's help, or maybe I'm questioning something or something I'm doing it's a quick prayer. It's just that simple. Maybe I'm questioning something or something I'm doing. It's a quick prayer. It's just that simple. And that gives me the confidence to go execute and make sure that I'm doing things right and take a pause, Say, hey, am I being greedy? Am I doing something bad here? Is this the right move? That's what it provides me, man and I. Just for people who don't have that dude, you're missing out because you're doing this alone. Yeah, dude, you're missing out because you're doing this alone. Dude, props to them if they can do it alone. You're better than me. You're stronger than me, I guess. Yeah, I definitely love that teammate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the best way to put it, man, that's the best way to put it. Just an additional resource out there hey, if you can do it on your own, hey, my body and spirit. I had to tap into that spirit domain to get back what I was missing most and it brought me back to the best version of myself, and it truly is part of this entrepreneur journey. It is. It fits in all aspects of your life. But in this journey, when you're staying up late at night and you don't have somebody to talk to, if you're a solo entrepreneur, that's the guy that you can talk to and rely on. You got to be a little more patient for the answer. Sometimes you got to be more in tune, like, okay, this might be me waiting a little bit longer for this answer, but it's out there, it's worthwhile. But now you have a team, now you have people around you. How has it been managing the team? Have you were some?
Speaker 2:pitfalls and some struggles, trying to get back in the team mentality and, uh, so much, oh, we're veteran owned and we're veteran operated. So seven employees and five of them are veteran and, uh, like, they have served that's, that's a plus. And then the two who haven't are in roles where we do serve civilians. So, troy, our CTO, I'm just going to be completely blunt it's very hard to find a veteran who has the tech background to do what he's doing. I mean, he's literally building an app that's going to compete and outperform major platforms. Yeah, that's hard to find. That's hard to find. Uh, our second uh guy he just, um, he's serving civilian hosts as our. It's called our chief supply officer because we, we focus on supply and demand, so supplies, the host demands a guest, so all he does is he's focused on host recruitment and host retainment. Yeah, oh, that he is. He is a civilian and he, he didn serve in the military but, oh my gosh, he, he comes from a military home. He, he grew up with me, yeah, that's awesome yeah, he was.
Speaker 2:He was a division one athlete. Uh, that's the thing I'm trying to build at foxhole. Is this like team first competitiveness, almost like your dream unit in the army, you know. And then the other dude, a guy who totally helped us, is a guy named Martin Howe and he was a Chinook pilot, oklahoma national guard, got out, got his MBA, got out as a captain, multiple deployments. He was a prior service guy, full stud, and what he does for us is he's our director of strategic operations. That sounds like a title that you're like man, that's what. What's that guy do? But he is a person that I can just put on any problem or project and it's. It's absolutely crushed and done. And, for example, he's overseeing Foxhole 2.0.
Speaker 2:Because what people don't understand is when you're making an app and you're makinga brand new platform, you have the design aspect. So you, so you have a you, one person does it all. So you have a designer who's designing it, who then delivers the design plan to the developer or developers and then they build the actual tech stack. You have this, basically two fronts, that are, you have to coordinate or else you get in front of one another. It's not going to, it's not going to work. So it comes the budgeting, because you know, yeah, you right on budget and uh, burton has done such an exceptional job. It's really showcasing what the veteran community is capable of man, because that's it's like he was one of the best pilots in local national guard and now he's he's responsible for overseeing foxhole 2.0.
Speaker 1:So was he a warrant officer or was he a proper officer? He's proper, he was a commission. I was gonna say, if he was a warrant officer, then, uh, he a proper officer.
Speaker 2:He was a proper. He was a commissioner, not a man.
Speaker 1:I was going to say if he was a warrant officer, then he's pretty good with a budget man. It sounds like you guys are building a team of teams. That is like being able to put people together in certain sections to get them to execute. Well, that's not as easy as you think. You can theorize it and it breathes well on paper, but getting them together, getting them to, you know, and it's kind of biased, because this is kind of a sexy, cool thing to do, whereas you know other entrepreneurial endeavors that might not be as attractive as building a game-changing lodging app, might be a little more difficult. But this is fun, this is something that's exciting.
Speaker 1:When you come into work, it's like oh, like, oh man, like we're changing the way veterans travel, exactly certainly going to be bringing something new. That's wanted, that's needed. It's like that excitement and that thrill has got to help that. That's got to be an added bonus. But moving on to, like that, the growing, the supply, growing the amount of places you can stay at, like how is that grown? How are you finding you know it was. It was probably a little easier when it was just you cold calling. Now it's, it's become a bigger thing. How are you broadening, expanding man so?
Speaker 2:one chief supply officer does an awesome job of just honestly using our Foxhole Instagram account. Just, I mean just any host, because most of these people direct book to when you're a short-term rental owner and I haven't touched on it yet but we also do long-term stays I can get that in a second but for these short-term rentals, what they often do is they're trying to maximize bookings. If they could have this thing booked 365 days a year by 365 different people, it's a good deal. So they'll list everywhere. They'll list on Airbnb, vrbo, bookingscom, furnace Finder. What they also do, though, is some of them they'll just list their own website, they'll just create their own, and they just rock and roll, and they do it all in-house.
Speaker 2:What we try to do is we try to partner with veteran hosts. That's our number one goal, because we have two people who can host on Foxhole. One is a veteran, so when I say veteran, this is the hardest part about marketing to the military community. When I say veteran, in my head I'm thinking everybody, because kind of, in a way, but if you're an active duty veteran or military dependent and you have a rental or you have an open room in your house, you can list that on Foxhole. Right now Foxhole is not involved. You verify your military status by creating an account. You can just list your property. The second person is a civilian host, which right now what we do is they have to submit an application to us and then we partner with a veteran owned company who does a background check on them and then they sign our foxhole standard. It's really just Army values, in all honesty. It's just saying that you're not going to take advantage of pricing stuff like this, the stuff that people get frustrated with on other platforms. We do recruit civilian hosts, but they cannot book, they can only host To get that supply.
Speaker 2:What we've been doing is what first started off with cold calling and just finding places. However we can find them Turned into now this unique veteran network that like spread. It's not a fast spread, it's not like a blow up wildfire, but what it's turned into is about we've been gaining about three listings a week. So you say that to anyone else. They're like it's not that much, but it's a domino effect.
Speaker 2:Because, example is, we found a veteran in Texas who reached out to us, just literally got on our page, contact us for him. He had 27 properties throughout Texas and he was like hey, I want to serve. Hey, I got out a long time ago. I still want to stay connected and serve the military community. Sign me up, dude. He's gotten 11 bookings alone off of lots of cause he's got. He's got one. That's a. It's gotten 11 bookings alone off of Foxhole Because he's got one. Have you ever heard of a Glamp? Yeah, yeah, he's got a Glamp in Tennessee. All of his listings are in Texas except he's got two Glamps in Tennessee. They've been booked every weekend on Foxhole by someone at Fort Campbell.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that it's the community serving the community.
Speaker 2:that is absolutely and there's a couple of civilians too who and they're like, hey, I never served, but I love our military and like, put me up to list on foxhole and they're some of our best hosts. Because they're like, hey, this is my way of serving. Because you know, yeah, you're not making it, they're not charging my guest fee and they're going to save money. Listen, at my property on Foxhole, sign me up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a no brainer when you just described with the gentleman in Texas. That's a lot of our guys are getting into real estate. Like I know, there's a vast majority of seventh group guys in Florida right now, in the panhandle, that need to get on this app ASAP because that's exactly what they've done. You spend, you know, vast amount of your career traveling, saving your money. You start buying properties. I know a lot of my friends that as soon as they got to Florida and when seventh group made the BRAC move, as soon as they got down there condos, beachfront property scraped every penny and bought and have. I'll be. I'll be sending some people your way. It makes sense. Serve the community, you're part of it. Put your stuff out there on foxhole. This is brilliant man.
Speaker 2:And then how about this? Another, another thing say you are tdy in seventh group and you're going to florida for an official eating or training and you're only there for like a week or two weeks. Right, you're on orders, the government's going to pay for it. You can stay at a foxhole and get reimbursed by the DOD. Yes, so if you're a host and you're anywhere near DC, so this is a see. I wanted to share this so bad.
Speaker 2:We have a retired colonel right now in Washington DC. He's a grad bed. We have a retired colonel right now in Washington DC. He's a field artillery officer. Awesome guy, great, he's really smart and he's fun to talk to. He heard about Foxhole.
Speaker 2:He owns rental properties across the country, probably about 12. Sold them all, boom Done. He then buys, he's buying. He bought one this week, he's buying two other ones Short-term rentals in DC, and he wants a general officer or senior NCO who's going to DC or the Pentagon. And he's buying two other ones, short-term rentals in dc, and he wants a general officer or senior ncos who's going to the d, who's going to dc or the pentagon and he's going to stay. His dream is that they just list through foxhole and that they get reimbursed and they're staying as a really nice place, and what that does for the host is you can, this guest isn't paying for it, it's literally, it's it's their official travel. You, you know, yeah, dts, done and done, so no more what that does for the traveler. So, if you're active duty and you're listening to this, what that does for you is no more hotels, no more PCS.
Speaker 1:No more kitchenettes.
Speaker 2:No more driving from Florida to, you know, Fort Lewis, and at two o'clock in the morning you're trying to get into a third story hotel with the dog. It's not happening anymore. You just roll up to an air or roll up to a foxhole Boom. So you know, that's the cool part for us, and you're still getting paid back.
Speaker 1:Exactly, I love this. This is yeah. I cannot. Oh, my goodness man, I'm sending you some folks.
Speaker 2:The other cool thing about Foxhole that it's secretly my dream is one thing I hated about, especially. I mean, I can't speak for other branches, but the Army. There was a different platform for everything Personnel. You had to go log into this. If you wanted to do training, you had to log in DTMS. If you wanted to, I mean it's like Defense ready yes, so you had like eight different logins. Now, granted, you did just use your cat card, but I'm just saying, like you memorize all these different places With Foxhole, my dream is that you can just log into Foxhole and if you want to manage a property, boom, it's Foxhole. If you want to rent to military, boom, foxhole, all on Foxhole. So that's my dream is that when people think travel they say foxhole.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what about for PCS, long-term rentals, for moving into a new area? I don't know, maybe that's too much, but I would say one of the hardest things for me when I managed my property in North Carolina was PCS season People trying to find a place for you know, trying to move my property. Be advertised on this website versus this website. Any thoughts about doing and moving into the wider real estate market?
Speaker 2:Oh, so for the PCS example. So what we do and this is like cheat code, in my opinion, to anyone who's a long-term host so if you're looking to rent to military who are PCSing, so you're looking at 28 days or, more typically, six months to 12 months, you can list on Foxhole. We do long-term stays and here's the best part we don't micromanage you, we don't collect a monthly payment. So say, give me an example uh, lieutenant collins is going to fort fort polk, louisiana, to go up to his first unit. I can go on foxhole, find a long-term stay that I like, that it's in my price, it's got enough bedrooms, whatever. Well, I pay right there. So say it's listed for $1,200. I pay $1,200. What I would do is I don't have to go through the actual in-depth, but the guest is going to pay $1,200 because that's the listed price, right, just gets it. 15% of that is going to go to Foxhole. So it's $180 that first month. After that you keep 100% of the rent, sign your lease. You can pay on Foxhole if you want monthly, if you want to just like they sign your lease and you go to whatever systems you use. So, zelle, venmo, that's all you man. You can totally do that. We're not involved. All we care about is delivering you the verified military guest who signs your lease, and then we collect our payment. If they never sign your lease, we're not. It's not like. We're like oh hey, all right, readjust, we'll go find you a new. That's one thing Foxhole does that no one else does is.
Speaker 2:We have a PCS service. So, example we had a guy going to Fort Bragg, a staff sergeant in Foxhole. Now we have a form on our website that he could have filled out, but for whatever reason, he just he shot us a DM and it was like dude, I need help. I PCS in a month, matched him within 48 hours. Wow, and that was just straight. Us just and that's.
Speaker 2:We have a guy literally on staff who is doing that role. So anyone who's like example I'm in command, I have a short PCS, I don't have the bandwidth to plan my PCS hey, just message Foxhole. Man, it's a free service. You tell us how many bedrooms you want, where you're going, the price range you want. Hey, we will email you back within 48 hours with like hey, here's three options. Here's the listing link. Click on it. Connect with your host. That's awesome. Like hey, here's three options. Here's the listing link. Click on it. Connect with your host experience. So that's what we do and that's the best part, because these guys can just hey, I need to go clear, cif, hey, I need to. I still have to do my duties and responsibilities in the role that I'm in, can't even worry about moving my family or moving my stuff. So you do that for free 100, 100%.
Speaker 1:That's fucking awesome, william. I think that you guys are going to be a very, very, very successful company. Dude, it's a no-brainer for me. It is a no-brainer for me. If you're traveling and you're a veteran or service member, you're not using Foxhole. You're going to look back at this and you're going to say man, I wish I would have paid attention, I wish I would have known about this, but I got a feeling. In the next few months, you guys are going to know who Foxhole is and you're going to be utilizing them, because I promise you right now, I will never use Airbnb ever again, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. William, I can't thank you enough for being here, man. Before I let you go, though, where can we go? When's that? Tell us again. When's the app launching? Where can we go to check out foxhole? Show us, tell us, all of our social media social media handles you got I know, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:So if you want to check us out on social media, it's going to be at stay foxhole, okay, uh, that's for instagram, twitter, uh, facebook or x, you know, okay. And then if you want to check out Foxhole 1.0, say you want to book right now or go create an account, hey, go to stayfoxholecom. Here's the other cool thing when we move over to our custom-built app, if you sign up on 1.0, you'll automatically get carried over to 2.0. We'll have to do it again when we launch 2.0, we may launch it before September 5th, but we will launch it by September 5th. Nice, 100%, september 5th is the far right. I'm trying to launch it honestly in the last week of August. Okay, I'm telling you guys, it's going to be in the App Store, it's going to be awesome. And it is going to be just for military, because only if you're active duty, if you're a veteran or military dependent, can you access Voxel.
Speaker 1:Dude, this is awesome. This is going to get used and people are going to love this. I already know it. Especially coming around August, people traveling Can't wait to see this in a destined area. Man, yeah, this is uh. You, sir, came into the right market with the right app. This is going to be freaking huge. William. Again, thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 1:To all y'all tuning in, please do me a favor. Go ahead and pause the episode's almost over. Just go ahead and episode description. Click those links. Send a friend request to Foxhole. Link up with them. Follow them on their journey. Be one of the first that can say like hey, I stayed at Foxhole this weekend. It was awesome, leaving the review. Go to their website. Support our veteran community and our veteran entrepreneurs. It's not an easy job. I'm not asking you to just play Kate. I'm asking you to try it. Give it a shot. You can go to every other app and pay a lot of money, or go to Foxhole, stay in an amazing place, pay no fees and be supporting a veteran business. So it's a no brainer move. I'm Danny Caballero, thank you for tuning in and we'll see you all next time. Until then, take care. Securepodcast is proudly sponsored by Titans Arms. Head to the episode description and check out Titans Arms today.
