In this episode, Kaye and Eric celebrate Freewyld Foundry’s first profitable quarter and reveal their unique approach to sharing success with their team. They discuss the three options for handling company profits and explain why they chose a profit-sharing bonus plan that incentivizes excellence while fostering a culture of ownership.
Key Topics Covered:
The Profit Milestone
- Achieving the first profitable quarter after years of reinvestment
- The difference between revenue and actual profit
- Why most entrepreneurs never see profit despite high revenue
Three Options for Profit
- Reinvesting back into the business
- Owners taking dividends
- Sharing with the team (the path Freewyld chose)
The Bonus Plan Structure
- Based on tenure, performance KPIs, and seniority level
- Designed to attract and retain top revenue management talent
- Future vision: allowing team members to invest bonuses into Freewyld real estate projects
Building Culture Through Rituals
- Starting every meeting with professional and personal wins
- Implementing “unreasonable hospitality” for B2B clients
- Creating company-specific language (like “MIFA” – Make It F***ing Awesome)
Communication & Leadership
- Leading without ego in challenging conversations
- Approaching problems as “us versus the problem”
- Over-communicating appreciation and celebrating client wins
Notable Quotes:
- “We never really understand what profit is. We see top-line revenue and we invest it, constantly keep growing the business.”
- “By bringing the team members into the profit pool, it gives them a sense of ownership in what we’re doing.”
- “Culture is made up of rituals, emotional highlights, and how you communicate with each other.”
Connect with the Hosts:
- LinkedIn: Eric D. Moeller
- Subscribe to the podcast for more revenue management insights
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Kaye: Once you have a team of A-players assembled and your business is growing with record profits, what then? That’s a really good problem to have, Eric. We’re in this moment ourselves with Freewyld Foundry, and you and Jasper have made some exciting decisions about this recently. You just passed a really important milestone. What happened?
Eric: We just celebrated our first profitable quarter for our company, and it’s been awesome. Obviously, there are a lot of reasons to be in business, but one of the main reasons is to drive profit. For a lot of startup entrepreneurs, we never really understand what profit is. We see top-line revenue and constantly reinvest it—growing the business, paying ourselves—but at the end of the year, there’s no profit. That’s the story for a lot of people.
When we launched Freewyld Foundry, we wanted to grow a healthy business that drives incredible results, builds an incredible culture with our team, and drives a lot of profit. We finally got there. It was a mixture of our cabins and our revenue management service.
As we were growing, we asked ourselves: What culture do we want to create? What do we do with the funds when we make money? Our goal is to drive a profitable quarter every single quarter from here on out.
Kaye: I can relate to that. I ran a marketing and branding agency for 10-12 years before joining Freewyld. Nobody wants to talk about profit—everyone talks about making six or seven figures in revenue. But profit is a different equation entirely because there’s always more you can invest in. As visionaries, we always see the next stages of growth, and a lot of that requires investment. If you’re not careful and diligent, you can very easily spend all your profit. This is a massive milestone for us.
Eric: I’ve been an entrepreneur since I was 18 and started many different businesses and startups. There was always money being made, but I never had a profitable business. We were always growing and investing. Even now, when we talk to potential clients, they ask about their profit. I tell them, “No, we’re going to increase your revenue. That’s different than profit.”
For entrepreneurs, understanding actual profit—after all expenses, you have money left over that goes to you and, in our case, the owners and the team—is crucial. We structured this company from day one to be a profitable business, and we’re finally there. Now our goal is to maintain profitability as we continue to grow. I recommend all entrepreneurs focus on driving profit at the end of the quarter. Watch your expenses weekly and monthly, and then you can pay yourself out at the end of the quarter.
Kaye: To be clear, people working in the business still get a paycheck before you’re profitable—that’s one of the expenses, including CEOs if they’re working in the business. But this is above and beyond all team costs and other investments.
The Three Options for Profit
Kaye: What were the options you and Jasper considered when you saw the bottom line?
Eric: We made a decision on what to do with profit before we were even profitable. There are three main options:
Option 1: Reinvest it back into the business – new team members, tech, all of that. When you’re in hypergrowth, that’s where most profit goes: team, systems, marketing. If you’re not paying attention, you can invest 100% of your profit. We did that essentially up until this last quarter.
Option 2: The owners take that profit for themselves – Most companies operate this way, and that’s not a bad way. You’re the owner, taking the risk and growing the business. At the end of the quarter or year, you pay yourself a profit.
Option 3: Share it with the team – That’s the option we took. When Jasper and I were mapping this out in the early stages, we asked: How do we grow the number one revenue management company in the short-term rental space?
We recognized that the number one problem is finding high-quality talent—revenue managers who are talented and understand the short-term rental and hospitality world. The pool for that is very small. Outside of creating an awesome company and working with awesome clients, what could we do to attract the best revenue managers and team members and inspire them to do their absolute best every day?
We decided to create a bonus plan where the main team members—those focused on driving revenue, client results, and leadership—all get put into a pot, and we share that profit together. This bonus plan was inspired by one Jasper had when he was a trader.
By bringing our team members into the profit pool, it gives them a sense of ownership—not just the day-to-day KPIs of driving results for clients, but now everyone is focused on: Do we actually need to spend this money? Can we cut this tool? How do we become as profitable as possible?
It’s not just Jasper, me, and our bookkeepers looking at profit—the entire team is asking those questions. Everyone is incentivized to drive the best results so we can get more clients who stay with us for a very long time because we’re the best at what we do. If everyone’s incentivized for that, then we all get to eat together.
We introduced this to the team yesterday, and it was amazing—our first step toward doing that. Now the goal is to drive larger and larger profits and inspire the team to continue to be the best at revenue management.
Kaye: It was so fun to see you and Jasper present. You put together a presentation, celebrated the wins we’ve accomplished so far, and rolled this out to the whole team. Everyone was really excited. When you have those two questions top of mind—how can I drive more revenue, and how can I spend less to drive this revenue—that’s what makes a healthy business. We don’t want to spend money willy-nilly, and we don’t want to rest on our laurels when it comes to driving results, revenue, and new leads. This really gets everybody on the same page.
Podcast Sponsor Message
Eric: Before we dive deeper, I want to introduce you to our podcast sponsor, Freewyld Foundry. Freewyld Foundry is a revenue management service—white glove, high-touch service for the top 1% of short-term rental operators. We’re currently managing over $60 million in bookings across 1,700 listings worldwide, and we’re growing very quickly.
Our RPM program is a done-for-you revenue management service. If you’re a short-term rental operator doing a million dollars or more, or managing about 15 listings or more, head over to freewyld foundry.com and apply for one of our free revenue audit reports. Jasper and the team will audit your pricing strategy and Airbnb listings to let you know if you’re leaving money on the table. This is free to everyone listening. Head over to freewyld foundry.com and apply for your free audit report.
How the Bonus Plan Works
Kaye: Jasper modeled this after a bonus plan he had when he was a trader. There are three different criteria that determine how much of the pie each team member gets. Can you break it down?
Eric: It’s important for everyone considering implementing this to look at the end goal. We want to develop a team that’s all in on what we’re doing and really cares about the company, our clients, and our results. We’re all incentivized to drive this profit.
The way we measure it:
- Time with the company – The longer you’re with the company, the more points you get toward the bonus structure
- Level of seniority – Whether you’re a leader, revenue driver, or support person
- KPIs – How you’re doing on a monthly basis with your job scorecard and clients
- Performance – How your portfolios as a whole are doing in that quarter
Jasper developed an awesome process where we can measure this monthly, and at the end of the quarter it calculates. We see how much profit goes to the bonus pool, and everyone participating gets their percentage of the pool.
Everyone has their own way of structuring their bonus pool—it could be simpler than ours. But we want to incentivize the revenue drivers to outperform. We ensure our clients get the best results possible, and we measure it compared to the market. If the market crashes, we’re not putting the revenue manager at fault—it’s how their daily decision-making impacts those portfolios. If they’re absolutely crushing it, they get the highest percentage of the bonus plan.
Kaye: I think it’s a great long-term plan. We’re a relatively new business, so it wasn’t implemented and couldn’t be implemented on day one because there wasn’t profit. We were building the airplane as we were flying it. But now that we’re at this point, it celebrates and awards people for joining a company that doesn’t have huge tenure. You get the added benefit and potential growth trajectory the company will have over the next couple of years. It’s an exciting way to incentivize people for being here at the ground floor and to continue incentivizing them as we grow.
Eric: It’s a lot of fun to share our success with the team. I highly recommend everyone listening consider this. It doesn’t have to be as intense as we’ve structured it, but having some type of incentive program—as the company scales, how do you help your team members grow with you financially?
This is part of the culture conversation. On our team call yesterday, we always start with two wins: a professional win and a personal win. Half of the team talked about their personal wins—their personal growth, how they’re dealing with stress, books they’re reading, going to the gym for the first time. Everyone is growing because, as a team culture, we value growth—personal growth, not just business profit. Who are we becoming through this journey? It’s a major milestone seeing the whole team tied into this mindset of becoming a better version of themselves. It’s not something we’re pushing but inspiring through the culture.
Kaye: The celebrating wins part is something we’ve implemented on many levels. Every single team call—Monday and Thursday, both times we meet every week—we invite everybody to share their wins. I love this, especially as a remote team, because you get little glimpses into people’s personal lives without it being completely off-topic. You get this little snapshot of baby birthdays, boyfriends running half marathons, visiting new cities.
We try to do this with our clients as much as possible too. In the monthly reviews where we create a report, we celebrate everything they’re winning at. When we ran the Mastermind, we would always start those calls with wins as well. It’s such an easy culture win if you implement this and make it a ritual and habit, because culture is built off of rituals.
I wanted to be clear—since we’re talking to an audience primarily of CEOs—this bonus pool doesn’t have to be 100% of your profit. It’s a portion of your profit. We’re still reinvesting into the company and putting money away for a rainy day. Just having that pool of money that you dedicate some profit to can be such a powerful motivator.
Eric: You don’t have to follow exactly how we’re doing it. Dive into ChatGPT, start building this out for yourself, and learn the best way to structure a bonus plan. It’s a portion of profit that gets split between team and stakeholders. There are multiple ways of doing it.
The Vision: Real Estate Investment for the Team
Eric: I want to touch on my vision of how this ties into the other part of our business—the real estate side. There was a company called FortuneBuilders here in San Diego, led by Than Merrill and his business partners. They had two arms: a real estate educational company doing hundreds of millions of dollars educating thousands of people, and a real estate side with a fund where they acquired, held, and operated real estate around the world.
I was really inspired by their team and culture. One part I really enjoyed: they always inspired their team to invest in real estate. They educated and supported their team—it didn’t matter if you were an executive assistant, salesperson, or in a leadership position. They wanted to inspire their team members to acquire real estate because that’s what they did, and they wanted their team to develop their own personal wealth.
One of my closest friends, Benny, was in a leadership position running their whole sales team. Throughout the years he would learn through the owners and take a portion of his income to invest in real estate. He got to a point where he was able to retire at 35. He’s not living a baller life, but that was his goal—to buy his time back and do whatever he wants. Now he’s investing in more real estate.
That inspired me, and I’ve been asking: How do we get the team involved in what we’re doing on the cabin side? Part of the vision of the bonus plan is that eventually—probably by next year—our team members will have the option to get paid out in cash through the bonus plan or invest that into a Freewyld project, into an equity position inside Freewyld Cabins.
The vision is that not only are we helping our team become financially free through investing in real estate with the real estate benefits, but they’re also learning how to invest in real estate. Then they become part of this whole flywheel from revenue management.
The whole goal of why we want Freewyld Foundry to be so profitable is so we can roll the profit into Freewyld Cabins and buy one or two properties a year that we put our own capital into. If we could also create this bonus plan where our team members have the option to invest in those deals with us, then all of us start scaling to a whole different level. It’s not just about cash anymore—now the whole team is part of the legacy we’re developing.
Hopefully it gets to a point where the team doesn’t necessarily need to worry about that bonus as extra pay dollar-wise, and they see the value of investing into the real estate part. Scale that out over five to ten years, and everyone is in an incredible position.
Kaye: Such a powerful flywheel. When we were entertaining the idea of raising funds—we talked to investors and started putting together decks—we were at a disadvantage because we needed the bulk of the fund to come from limited partners. But typically the general partners also invest in the project, right?
Eric: Yeah, the GP should invest anywhere between 10-20% of the project. We were trying to raise money with having zero money to invest in these deals. It’s not impossible—we did it once and I used to do it in the past—but when you’re trying to build this brand and build trust, they want to see that you have skin in the game. Also, if you’re not bringing money to the table, you’re giving up more equity in the deal. The more money we can bring of our own capital, the more equity we can own in these properties. Maybe we get to a point where we don’t need to give up any equity and we can leverage our capital with a long-term mortgage without selling equity.
Kaye: This whole process and building is what’s going to allow us to get to that point where we’re in a much better position to bring cash to those deals. We’ll have skin in the game and put our money where our mouth is, which is going to make this whole ecosystem work really well.
Culture: Communication and Unreasonable Hospitality
Kaye: Circling back—you mentioned the wins we start with every call. Another thing we’re doing on the human side of culture, aside from incentivizing people through money and bonuses, is building and walking our talk in terms of unreasonable hospitality. We gave a quick shout-out to this in a previous episode, but we’ve really started implementing it not only in our cabin business—we’ve been adding little things consistently over time—but we’re really focused now on building that culture into Foundry with our B2B service. Can you talk about some of the things we’re doing?
Eric: The whole idea is that there’s a transactional relationship between us and our clients. They expect us to drive certain results, and we expect them to be great clients and keep growing their business. But we want to celebrate all the small wins. As entrepreneurs, we know it’s difficult to celebrate wins. You celebrate one thing and then you’re onto the next thing.
One thing we’re really working on: we have unreasonable hospitality for the cabin side, but if you read that book and understand Will’s philosophy, it’s not just about the hospitality side of the business. Unreasonable hospitality shows up in every aspect of your life and all relationships.
My question to the team was: How do we celebrate our clients’ wins outside of just sending them a Slack message and email? How do we really build relationships with our clients and celebrate in a way that connects with them? I don’t want to give too many details because we’re still doing this and our clients haven’t received what we’re sending yet, but they’re super specialized.
The culture is about giving our team permission and allowance to make decisions on how they celebrate their clients. As we’re hitting certain revenue milestones, or someone’s having a birthday or just had a baby—whatever it is—they have the right and permission to create a unique celebration for them on behalf of the team and Freewyld Foundry.
We have a whole new system we’ve developed, and we’re turning this into a machine. I want to celebrate everything. I want to get to a point where our clients are like, “All right, bro, I get it, we’re done celebrating.” But every milestone we’re accomplishing, anything unique, we want to celebrate that with them. Unreasonable hospitality is one of our core values, and now we’re implementing that into our culture.
Kaye: I think culture is made up of a couple things: your rituals, these emotional highlights—creating celebrations or shared experiences that are high points—and the third ingredient is how you communicate to each other. I think we do a pretty good job of communicating effectively and over-communicating. What are some ways you’re proud of the team for communicating? And what do you keep in mind when you’re communicating to the team to create a positive culture?
Eric: That’s how I envision culture too—how we communicate to each other. That’s the whole idea of starting with wins on every single call. We specifically have a professional win and a personal win. I want everybody to over-communicate on what’s happening. Same thing for our clients—we’re over-communicating to them, not just the day-to-day, but with these unreasonable hospitality gifts we’re implementing to show our appreciation.
As challenges come up in the business—which they will—how do we communicate effectively through that to get to a solution as fast as possible, but not doing it led with ego? One of our team members yesterday shared a personal growth moment where he was dealing with a client communicating in a very challenging way. He was able to disconnect from his ego and emotion and lead through. He started implementing unreasonable hospitality and extreme ownership, and really started communicating in a way where they left the call celebrating where they were at, versus when they first started the call, which was very chaotic.
To me, that’s part of the culture we’re developing here: How do you disconnect from ego and solve through leadership? That’s what he communicated to us yesterday—he led through that conversation to get to the ultimate result of hearing the client’s concern while ensuring we have his back. That’s the stuff I’m really excited about seeing and cultivating. We’ll see how it develops over time as the team grows, but it seems like that’s the direction our whole team is leading.
Kaye: It feels like we’re all connected around personal development and being self-aware human beings. I love and appreciate that about the whole team. What you mentioned reminds me of cliché marriage advice: always remember you’re on the same team as your spouse and working toward common goals. That’s the framework or perspective we approach most conversations with. It’s like, “Okay, I might be wrong, you might be wrong, but let’s figure this out for the betterment of the team so we can move closer to this goal.” I think that’s a really key part of our culture.
Eric: That’s one thing Samantha and I talk about all the time. When we get to a point where we realize we’re pointing fingers at each other and butting heads—”It’s your fault, it’s your fault”—we disconnect and say, “Okay, it’s not your fault, it’s not my fault. It’s us against the problem.” Communicating that way helps us think, “Okay, I’m still upset, but let’s figure out what’s actually happening and solve the problem.”
That’s how I like to approach all challenges as best as possible. It doesn’t mean it happens every single time—emotion can get in the way, ego can get in the way. But the personal growth moment there as leaders is to recognize when you’re communicating through emotion and ego, then taking a step out of that and starting to lead toward the solution, whatever that solution is.
Kaye: I’m proud of that being in the company right now.
MIFA: Make It Effing Awesome
Kaye: One last example of culture in action at Freewyld: when we were talking about our VRMA booth—what we wanted the design to be, what we wanted the experience to be like—Eric put on Slack, “Just make it effing awesome.” So now we’ve been using the hashtag MIFA (Make It Effing Awesome) as shorthand in our company to talk about the level we want to bring something to.
Pay attention in your own company to when that unique language comes from either you as the founder or from a team member, and use that as shorthand because that also develops culture. Those little isms—Freewyld isms—we have Wild Mode and a few others as well.
Eric: I love that. I think that was in the book Setting the Table or Unreasonable Hospitality—one of them talks about creating your own language in your company. I don’t think you can force it. The most important part is creating language that comes from the actual work you’re doing.
As we were going back and forth about design, website, and all these other things, I took a step back and thought, “What do we actually have here as a company?” We have this awesome brand. I remember the early stages when Freewyld was literally just an idea. I said, “I don’t care what it is. This is the vision. Go be an artist and create whatever you want to create.” It came back and it was amazing. I said the same thing to our interior designers, and it came out amazing.
As we go through the steps of building a business, we’re creating so much stuff and doing so many things that we can lose that aspect. We were getting so caught up—”Maybe the other booth has this and maybe we should have this”—and I thought, “At the end of the day, let’s just make it effing awesome.” Immediately you connected with that and said, “Oh, okay, I got it.” There were no more questions, and it came back with this awesome product.
To me, MIFA means building it to our brand standards, but also letting the artist be an artist and just create with no barriers or guardrails. I don’t need to tell you how to make this thing—you’re going to make it a hell of a lot better than I would. Let’s not get caught up on all the details.
Now I see it everywhere—our social media, our YouTube (which has blown up right now, by the way), our podcast edits are looking amazing. MIFA, that’s it.
Closing
Kaye: We spent this episode talking about the brain of culture development when we discussed our profit plan, and I feel like we ended with the heart of culture. How do you want to close, Eric?
Eric: That was perfect. I’m really curious for everyone listening: Is this topic landing with you? Are you finding this valuable? As we grow this podcast, especially this show, I want it to be as authentic as possible. Sometimes we struggle with what topic to get into, and what I’m realizing is I want to share from our experiences of what we’re going through as we’re building these companies and helping other entrepreneurs scale their companies.
Kaye: For everyone listening, if you’re finding this valuable, reach out to us. What’s the best way to get in touch?
Eric: Probably LinkedIn—Eric D. Moeller on LinkedIn is the easiest and best way to get ahold of us. We’re good marketers, so we’re on all the other platforms too. Wherever you find us, send us a message. We would love to hear from you.
Kaye: To give you a little more behind the scenes: I came to you and Jasper a couple weeks ago and said, “Hey, we could create this six-month podcast content calendar and cover these 17 different topics. It would be really strategic and great for sales.” Then we sat down and talked about it and thought, “We don’t really want to do that.” We’d much rather share what’s happening in real time and create a balance. Jasper has more technical episodes because he’s talking about revenue management specifically, whereas we’re talking about a wider breadth of topics—from behind the scenes at Freewyld to culture, leadership, marketing, and so forth.
We would love to hear from you because we’re still figuring out the balance between planning ahead and figuring out what you want to hear. Thanks so much for listening.
