One Airbnb Condo Turned Into $1 Billion In Real Estate | Ep. 441 with Sky Mitchell Founder and CEO of Everwild Nordic Spa & Hotels
Founder's Story
Sky Mitchell shares her transformative journey from being fired after just 30 days in a corporate role to building Everwild Nordic Spa & Hot
Key takeaways
- People are shifting from accumulating material possessions to investing in meaningful experiences like luxury travel, wellness, and hospitality.
Main topics
- Entrepreneurial resilience after being fired
- The rise of experience-based consumerism
Notable quotes
"More things, more problems."
"I was never going to work for someone again."
Conclusion
Sky Mitchell's story exemplifies how adversity can fuel innovation and success. By
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) The biggest learning was at the very beginning, all the banks said no. No one wanted to finance me. We now have over 700 investors because we have made people money. Speaker 1 (0:09) This is Skye Mitchell, founder and CEO of Everwild Nordic Spa and Hotels, fired 30 days into a six-figure job. She started with $19,000 and one Airbnb, bought a 99-room Holiday Inn, and turned it into 400 employees and almost a billion dollars in real estate. Every bank in the country said no, so she found another way. I Speaker 2 (0:35) just took that BMW I mentioned I bought for $38,000. right back to the dealership with a whopping 500 kilometers on it and said, I need a refund and use that as a deposit for the first base camp resorts in Canmore. We've since raised over $100 million, which is insane. Speaker 1 (0:50) Your ability to have success, sum it up with one rule, what would that be? The Speaker 2 (0:54) only way to grow. Speaker 1 (1:04) So Sky, I was just watching a video around how people are, especially in the 30s and below, maybe even 40s and below, they don't want material things like before. They want experiences. And I think all the changes with technology and such, people want to go somewhere and they want to disconnect and they want to have an experience. How have you seen that change in the last 10 years? Speaker 2 (1:28) Well, someone once said, more money, more problems. And I would say it's more things, more problems. And so I couldn't agree with you more that people aren't interested in owning a bajillion cars and houses and all this stuff and having a million monthly payments. They want to take that money and spend it on something like our offering at Everwild Nordic Spa, for example. Go out, spend a lot of money on nice food, nice wine, an amazing thermal cycle. a great hotel room. And that's why you see all these luxury hotels are really taking off because the experience is so much more important than it used to be, where it was like, where can I find a hotel for $119 a night and no more than that? And I think this trend is going to lead to exceptional opportunities in hospitality. And Speaker 1 (2:15) you obviously saw the mixture of the hospitality piece with the health, wellness and longevity piece. Are you seeing that morph now where people want to do all of those things when they stay somewhere? versus what you said, I just want to go to a hotel because I want to find a bed to sleep in. Speaker 2 (2:31) Correct. The experience, and to top that up, the experience in health and wellness is so important. You'll see all the big brands are trying to team up with different spa experiences, introduce new spa experiences, build new spa experiences. Saunas are popping up on every street corner. And I don't think this is a trend. I think this is here to stay, which is really exciting. Speaker 1 (2:53) So let's go back to when you got fired after 30 days. What happened? Speaker 2 (2:58) Well, like you see in the movies, I was handed this cardboard box, the one from Staples or Home Depot or where they buy these things. Put your stuff in here and you're out. And I was under probation, so I had no choice. Not that you have a choice when you get fired anyway. And off I went. I couldn't believe it. They had just pulled me from another job, offered me this fancy office, six-figure salary. I had just bought a brand new little BMW for $38,000. Like I thought this was it. I'm an executive. Everything's going to be amazing. I'm going to go and buy a house and get married and have kids and do all the things you're supposed to do after you get an MBA. And instead, 30 days later, I was sent packing and I cried so hard that the basement tenant in my house thought like, you know, someone had died. Speaker 1 (3:39) Wow. Okay. I Speaker 2 (3:40) was so upset. I was so upset. It was terrible. Speaker 1 (3:43) I imagine that I've been fired twice. So I know the feeling of we think it's a secure job, but not realizing that there is no job that's secure. Did you think at that moment, OK, I'm going to go into business or did you think I need to go find another job? Oh, Speaker 2 (4:01) no, I knew I was never going to work for someone again. I had two job offers just, you know, through the industry, real estate development. I couldn't do it. I was like, there's no way I can go and give up on my dreams to slave away for someone else's. A lot of work. Speaker 1 (4:17) People don't realize when you go into business, you think I have freedom. Did you realize, though, early on that the definition of freedom is different? Speaker 2 (4:25) Oh, absolutely. It's not like do whatever you want whenever you want. You're married to that business. Like you can I might be on the beach, but I'm on the beach on my headphones, on the business, on the beach. Speaker 1 (4:36) Let's go back to when you started with $19,000 and in one Airbnb condo, which has now turned into almost a billion dollar in developments. When did you realize that this is going to be huge? Speaker 2 (4:49) I don't think I ever did, to be honest. I was just like blindly hustling because when I got fired, the $19,000 was a down payment for my Airbnb condo that I had been running on the side while I was working. So then here I am with no job. And I'm like, well, I'm going to rely on this Airbnb income. I'm going to go couch surfing. So I start staying with my friends. And then I'm going to go on Tinder and see if I can find a boyfriend and stay with him instead. So then I meet this guy, Tim. And all the while, while I was working, I had actually bought another house in Calgary that I was renovating. And I'm like, Tim, nice to meet you. You're a carpenter. Great. How about you finish my house renovation? At that point, I get fired. And hey, I've known you for like two months. Let's build a hotel together. So it was all just very serendipitous how it all worked out. We're now married. So it's not just this random guy anymore. But yeah, it was really just taking that Airbnb model, having two Airbnbs that I was running while I had a job, getting fired, then relying on the Airbnb income and staying wherever I could find somewhere to stay and then deciding I was going to start a hospitality company. Speaker 1 (5:53) So when you started, you had to refinance your car to put it down payment for land. Did you think that was going to be reckless or did people tell you that, hey, Sky, this is this is super reckless? Speaker 2 (6:05) I didn't tell anyone because it was just so out there. I just took that BMW I mentioned I bought for thirty eight thousand dollars right back to the dealership with a whopping five hundred kilometers on it and said, I need a refund. And they're like, this isn't Costco or Walmart. We don't issue refunds on brand new cars. But the guy was a great salesperson and he said, however. Since you paid cash, I'll upgrade you to a $75,000 car, give you a loan. And at the time, it was 1.9 % financing for $75,000, which in turn got me the $38,000 that I went to the bank, check out the door and use that as a deposit for the first base camp resorts in Canmore. Speaker 1 (6:45) So there's very creative ways to raise funds, essentially. I think we always think, OK, I just need to raise money. from venture capital, private equity. I need to go get an SBA loan, depending on where you're at in the world. But it sounds like you found very creative ways to enable you to have the funds to start up. Did you ever think that maybe I need to just go the traditional route of fundraising? Speaker 2 (7:13) Never. No, I met a ton of family offices, private equity firms. At the beginning when we were doing Basecamp Resorts, it was basically a purpose-built Airbnb. They were townhomes, but they were a hotel. So anybody institutional was like, that's not a hotel. That's a townhouse. That's multifamily. No, it's not. It's actually a hotel. And it's branding the Airbnb experience. So you don't get like Jack's Basement Suite with like pillowcases or Susie's house where the air conditioning breaks and you have no one to call. At Basecamp, you get the multiple bedrooms, the laundry room, the multiple bathrooms, the full kitchen. And hey, you can call Basecamp if something goes wrong. So that was the initial thesis. Nobody wanted to invest who is institutional or as you say, like the traditional route. And I'm so happy they didn't because it would have made my life a nightmare. I've always loved the retail investor. So our average check size is $127,000. It started with friends and family and grew from there. Speaker 1 (8:08) How did you come up with this idea? Because you were very early on and it was very unique. And many times these ideas go bust. It's almost harder, I think, to do something that has never been done before than to take what's already being done and just tweak it. Speaker 2 (8:25) Well, as I mentioned, I had these two Airbnbs and I was doing everything. I was cleaning the toilets. I was doing the bookings. I was paying attention to the customer profile, to the feedback. You know, it's all about the customer. Everyone says that. But I was like neurotic. What can I offer? What can I do different? Do they want a Banff Parks pass? Do they want some cookies when they show up? Like all these little things, right? And this was just my side hustle. I never in a million years like thought I would end up in this full time. But as I was watching the trends at the time, I could understand why people didn't want to stay at like the Best Western or the Super 8. Nothing against those brands, but they wanted to have the kitchen and the laundry room and all that. But again, I had been on Airbnb and I had Jack's basement with the pillowcases and I had Susie's kitchen with the mouse in it. And I've had those experiences where there's nobody to call. And I was like, I never want my customers to feel that feeling that I felt in those moments. So I'm going to offer this hospitality product that's a branded Airbnb experience that they have, but they, you know, always endless towels for the hot tubs, 24 seven front desk service, like the things you want at a hotel. But here's your code. Here's your door number. Call me if you want. Don't call me if you don't want. So it's really optional. And people like to call. It was at the time, it looked like people were going this remote key, you know, no front desk. And it's not. It didn't work. It was a fail. Like we had no front desk and we had to add a front desk. Speaker 1 (9:51) Wow. What were some of the biggest learnings beyond just that one that you thought it was going to be this? It ended up being something different. Speaker 2 (10:00) The front desk was the biggest one. We had this thing called the bat phone. And it was like, oh, I don't want the bat phone. I don't want the bat phone. Because we didn't have a front desk at the beginning, it was like a hot potato throwing this phone around. Who's going to answer the phone this weekend? Because people would call like 24-7. We had 32 townhomes. And, you know, they were two