We landed in a city right outside of Waco, Texas, called Hewitt that had no city regulations. While hosts would use Airbnb, for example, as a tool to get their properties listed and booked. Somewhere along the way, it got very corporate and now Airbnb essentially uses the host as a tool. For a guest, the biggest draw is direct connection with your host and saving a lot of money. Airbnb had canceled it. On their behalf, they said there was some generic term that it was a quality assurance or something like that. One of the challenges is neighbors who don’t like people coming in and out of properties. It’s always good to get a property with a little bit of space around it or at the end of a road or something like that where there’s not a lot of neighbors really right next door really tight.

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Carrie, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you’ve been in the space for a while. I am curious though to kind of take a step back and see how you got into real estate in the first place.

Yeah. Well, in 2020 when everybody had equity and more time on their hands and stimulus packages, we thought, what can we do with this investment wise? And so we started looking at investing. We’re in the Pacific Northwest and real estate is pretty spendy here. And so we were looking at investing somewhere else just for change things up, but also affordability. So we ended up landing at a place in Texas and it grew from there. So in that process we ended up talking with people in the industry, our real estate agent and other people who suggested that we look into the short-term rental world. And so we thought at first we’d do long-term, but anyway, turned into short-term rentals and pretty good area for that there. So we have two properties in Texas and one in Louisiana. We bought it and we bought it site unseen and renovated it site unseen. And we didn’t actually visit it in person because it was COVID time and plus just logistics on our end. And we did visit it in person probably for nine months after we bought it. After it was already renovated and being rented out. So that’s kind of how we got our start. We just jumped right in.

Wow. I’m glad it all went well because not being there for nine months definitely could be bad if you didn’t hire the right people. But what was life like before getting into investing for you?

In what way?

Just differences in your life day to day or stress or anything for that matter.

Okay. All right. Yeah. I kind of like to be busy and so I would say that I needed something to do so I didn’t have enough to occupy my time, the creative outlet, I guess. But before that, I mean, I work full-time and we’ve got our kids and so just regular family life, but always had this interest and I always wanted to flip a house or have investment properties. I always been interested in it. And so I guess I just needed something to do. And so yeah, after investing definitely gave me something to do. Kind of have a lot on my plate now, I guess I could say.

Yeah. Just for the people listening, what does the business look like today? And I know you have an app and some other sorts. So who do you primarily serve? What are you doing now? Yeah, kind of fill us in. Yeah.

So I started with a single investment property and it was so fun and I decided it went well. So we thought let’s do another one. And in the process of doing a second one, a third one snuck in there, same time. So we went from one to three and kind of got pretty busy and it was very exciting at first. And then over the course of a few years as a short-term rental host, you start to see some of the grievances with some of the big platforms that you’re working with in order to get bookings and deal with situations. And so in all that, we decided to create a platform of our own. So it’s called indirectly. There’s two ends indirectly.com. And what that is, it’s a platform where hosts can list their properties and guests can search and find them. So similar to Airbnb, except it’s not platform specific like that. So on indirectly, a host can list their property with all its booking options and including their direct booking site and their contact information and a guest can contact them directly. They can find the property they want, book it however they want, be in connection with that host directly. So now I can’t remember the question you asked me, but because of this platform with indirectly, we now have properties in 31 states and six countries and we’re five months old tomorrow.

Awesome. So it really helps the renter and the rentee, what would you recommend people that are looking to get on it as a renter? Is there anything specifically that you guys would want them to have besides obviously a property wanting short-term rentals, but is there anything specifically that you guys try and look for with these properties?

With a property that would be a suitable short-term rental? Yeah. Yeah. The first one that we got as somebody’s recommendation that maybe we look at short-term rental suitable properties, we had to look at city regulations and there’s a lot of those. So we landed in a city right outside of Waco, Texas called Hewitt that had no city regulations. And so that’s big because Waco Proper has so many and it’s so hard. I spent so many days looking at the map, like this is an R1 zoning and this is an R2 and this is all sorts of O zonings. And so I looked at that colorful map all the time. Every property put the address in and I was trying to find the perfect property that actually I could run as a short-term rental that was even just allowed. And if I ever found one, everybody else found it too. So that was super challenging. So we ended up landing in Hewitt just 10 minutes from the City Center of Waco, no regulation. That was pretty nice for about a year and a half and then they started adding some regulations. So I’m grandfathered in. We’re okay to be there, but now there’s additional fees on top of that. When we looked at the second one, we were very intentional about avoiding that. And so the second one we have is in Waco, but it’s outside of city limits by a few minutes and so that regulation doesn’t apply. And so I think looking in areas, it’s challenging too, especially if you’re looking to invest in a property and you’re investing remotely, which is what we were doing, buying actually all three properties slight unseen kind of one of them we saw. Anyway, is looking for an area that’s a good area, it’s not that people feel safe in and looking for an area like that and that people are going to come visit. So there are some websites, rabu.com comes to mind where you can type in your address for a property you’re considering and type in how many bedrooms it is. And anyway, you can type that criteria in and it will give you an idea of how much that property could generate as a short-term rental. So I used that quite a bit as well when I was looking. So I think city regulation and amenities is helpful. I think parking is pretty huge. I do have one property with limited parking and that’s really challenging for, yeah I can sleep 16 guests, but we can only take six cars and there’s no street parking. So there’s that.

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What was the main problem that you were trying to solve when starting the app?

Yeah. So with indirectly, we were trying to solve the problem of the big corporations like Airbnb and Virbo, they bring a lot of business, but they lost that personal touch just there’s a lot of middleman situation going on there. So while hosts would use Airbnb, for example, as a tool to get their properties listed and booked somewhere along the way it got very corporate and now Airbnb essentially uses the host as a tool. So it just flipped and I really appreciate the business I’ve gotten from them, but it honestly can feel like walking on eggshells. You have to do everything perfectly right. You can’t say the wrong thing AI is going to come in and make decisions without actually being able to speak with to reason with somebody. And so the problem I think is just that corporateness, taking away the personal touch, but also honestly, my biggest fear and part of the biggest trigger to creating indirectly is I was worried about waking up one day and having all my listings suspended or canceled for who knows why. There’s a lot of hosts upset about the review system and how it’s the math that does make sense and it’s unfair and guests can come in and know how to work the system essentially and use reviews as leverage to get what they want. And we all kind of know that that’s out there and it’s frustrating because now with AI making the call, you can’t reason with them. And so it kind of takes away your ability to run a small business or make a profit actually. And so I’ve been with Airbnb for quite a while and it started out at a 3% host fee and a certain percent to the guest and over time being a host, they changed the rules constantly. So many rules have changed us in 2025 and early 2026 alone. And in October last year, this was after indirectly launched. I didn’t even know this was happening when we were developing, but they raised the fee to 15%. It’s pretty big. And I guess it seemed like we should be grandfathered into the commission that we signed in under, but they keep changing the rules. So I was also trying to solve that problem. So then the host has to raise the price in order to compensate for that and then the guest is paying more and it just kind of keeps going up and up

And up. Yeah, that’s definitely, I mean a big jump, three to 15 is not little. On the flip side, what do you think the most common misconception is about indirectly?

I think that when first presented, people think it’s a direct booking site. Anyway, it is a listing site where it’s encouraged that you put your direct booking site. That’s actually with all the booking options that you can list on your page, that’s front and center because we want to kind of empower hosts and guests to go that route and connect directly. But in itself, it’s not a booking site. So we don’t facilitate payments, we don’t take commissions. We provide a whole lot of, we call them host tools or other companies that can provide things like insurance and all sorts of different options, but that doesn’t come from us. Everything is off platform.

Gotcha. What are some strategies that you’ve been using to find renters and rentees? Yeah.

Well, you mean within directly I guess so far we have used social media to market becoming affiliates with a lot of companies out there that are in the same space with short-term rentals and just a lot of boots on the ground, I guess we are just very personal touch. So if anybody emails indirectly, I’m responding to you. We have three people in our company, but you’ll hear directly from us. So I speak with hosts and guests and email, text. It’s all coming from me right now. So that’s right now for a guest, I mean, the biggest draw is direct connection with your host and saving a lot of money. We just had a booking on Airbnb a couple weeks ago because obviously I’m on all the platforms that I can be on personally and I encourage people to get on all the platforms indirectly as a place to put all of them right there. But anyway, we had a booking on Airbnb and we received a cancellation happened sometimes, but it was a non-refundable booking. They did non-refundable so they could save a litle money and it was canceled and I thought, “Oh my goodness, what happened? Why would they do that? ” And about 20 minutes later, they messaged me frantically like, “I don’t know what happened. We didn’t do this. ” And Airbnb had canceled it. On their behalf they said, what do they say? There was some generic term that it was a quality assurance or something like that. I had spoken with this person back and forth and I thought, “I’m okay having this person book my property. I understand if they think there’s an issue, they could bring it to me and I should be able to decide if I want to proceed or not, but I’m okay with this person booking. Why did they cancel it without our input?” And so anyway, sometimes they cancel a booking, but sometimes they cancel a person or a property or a host. So I love that idea with indirectly. So this goes for hosts or guests as well, but I love the idea with indirectly that a guest could still have contact with the host even if that happened. Even if they came to indirectly and they had an Airbnb gift card they got at Christmas, they want to book through Airbnb, that’s fine. Brings that host business, that guest gets to go stay. But if something happened with their booking or their listing or whatever it is, they could still contact that host directly through our website getting that connection. Also, that is something else that’s changed with Airbnb recently that just really concerned me as a host is now they’re hiding phone numbers. So previously when a guest booked, you’d receive their phone number, which disappeared about two weeks or a week after their booking because Airbnb doesn’t want you to take the business that they brought you and turn it into and then try to direct book or something after that with those same clients. And I get that, but now all the phone numbers are hidden and they’re a false phone number or the temporary phone number that Airbnb provides. And that’s something else that was pretty concerning to me because in that situation where that person got canceled and never could have called them if they hadn’t messaged me through the platform because I wouldn’t have had their actual phone number.

Yeah, that’s really, really big. What do you think mistake-wise, what are some mistakes that you see investors or hosts make that you think would be really easily avoided? I

Think the biggest mistake is just regulations for sure. So if somebody’s going to invest in a property with the purpose of making it a short-term rental and the regulations, they don’t know for sure if they can or they haven’t gone buy first and then figure it out second. I kind of tend to do that type of thing in general, but as far as regulations go, there’s nothing you can do about it. So if you were to buy a property to use as a short-term rental and then find out you can’t actually do that, what would you do? So I think that’s the biggest thing. I think from what I understand with condos, that’s a big challenge to find one that allows short-term rentals. But the scary thing is even if you do, they could change it on you six months later and then what would you do? So I think that’s the biggest mistake I think that can be made. I think neighborhoods are important. One of the challenges is neighbors who don’t like people coming in and out of properties. It’s always good to get a property with a little bit of space around it or at the end of a road or something like that where there’s not a lot of neighbors really right next door and really tight. Off the top of my head, those are the biggest things I can think of, but I’m sure there’s a lot of pitfalls people can fall into.

Yeah, for sure. Well, I’m always intrigued to ask this question because everyone defines the word success differently, they measure it differently and they strive for it differently. How do you measure the word success? How do you strive for it and how do you measure it in your day-to-day life?

That’s a good question. As far as indirectly goes, I think success, I’ll feel like we’ve had success when it’s a recognizable name when we have properties instead of in 31 states, it’s in 31 cities per state. I’d love to see that. Like I said, we’re only five months old, so we’re just kind getting our start. I see that we’ve had great momentum and I think it’s going that route, but I think success will be when hosts can recognize that they’re getting additional direct bookings or just getting additional exposure through listing on indirectly and when guests know to look there as a guest, I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but I will go to Airbnb because I’m going to go somewhere and I’m excited to stay somewhere and see what I can find and I spend a couple hours and then maybe I don’t find quite what I want and I go to Vrbo and I spend an hour and then pretty soon it’s been three hours or more and I’m like, “I got to call it right now. I got other things to do and end up coming back the next week to resume or a couple days later.” And then I kind of have to start from scratch. I don’t know what’s been new added since I last looked. I don’t know what I’ve already looked at and just didn’t save because I didn’t really care about that property. So I have to start all over again and I think I’m hoping and looking forward to the day when guests start coming to indirectly and they can just see it all in one spot so you don’t have to go from platform to platform. Also, excuse me, one thing that I added to and directly that I’m so excited about is a Redfin or OfferUp type feature. So if somebody is searching for a property, they can save their search. And so if you’re looking for Phoenix for four, for spring break, house with a pool, you can look and then if you want to just go about your daily life, you’ll get a notification when a new property becomes available or when new availability comes from a property that’s on the site, which is really cool. I’ve got a lot of alerts on mine just personally just to see and I’ll get emails all the time when new availability happens. So you were asking about success. So I think successful when people start to recognize that type of, they’re getting those notifications coming through as guests and they’re stays directly from the host and not spending that additional 15 to 25% to platform fees. And when hosts start to recognize that they’re getting guests come through that route. And I think just the independence, really as a small business owner, everybody who has a property that they’ve invested in as a short-term rental is a small business owner and everybody wants that small business. They want their success, but it’s kind of being squashed by the big corporations sometimes. And I think I’ll feel that we’ve had success as indirectly when more people that are individual hosts and property managers have success for their small businesses.

Yeah, I love it. I love it. If your short-term rentals were to go away, you were going to restart from scratch trying to get a bunch of rentals, what would you do first? What would you focus on first if you were trying to rebuild what you have gained now?

That’s a good question. What would I focus on first? I think I would focus on looking for properties. I mean, I’m pretty happy with what we’ve done. I would focus on finding a property that had some uniqueness to it. And what I love about the properties that we have and that I would do again in a heartbeat and maybe just do something different next time just for fun is that they kind of have a theme. So I love that part of it too. So I like to find a property that has something unique that would maybe draw somebody. For example, our first property and probably favorite has a sunroom in Texas, big sunroom and it’s everybody’s favorite and it’s just a feature that people want to book it because there’s a sunroom and it’s got a long dining table that seats 12 and it’s just bright and sunny and everybody loves that. But anyway, that’s a sunshine house. And so the whole house has yellow accents and it’s kind of the Texas Sunshine oasis. And so I think doing it again, that house has been really good. I think I would love to find a house with lots of parking and with no very close neighbors, but yet it’s got to be close to things to do. So I think I just look for something unique and come up with a theme that I like and a name that’s fun that can be Googled. And I think also affordability is pretty big because what I realized, because we’re in the Pacific Northwest, about now we’re from Seattle and what I realized is that the three properties that I do have, all three of them are about the price of on property here. And I was looking at properties here just for fun that were quite a bit more and realizing that the nightly rate that people would end up paying is about the same. So I thought, man, that hadn’t really sunk in before, but I think the area that you invest in can make a huge difference on how much success you can have with that rental. So the property I was looking at here, one property would make the same as one property there, but that on property there is a third of the price.

Yeah, it’s crazy for sure. Well, if someone is interested in learning more about your platform and wants to maybe get on it or start using it instead of Airbnb or along with Airbnb, where would they go and where can they reach out to you at?

Yeah. So indirectly.com, but there’s two ends. A lot of people will type it and forget the second N. Also, Google will try to make it one end. So just two ends indirectly.com. We made it as simple as possible and just as straightforward and transparent as possible because one thing that we’re also trying to answer a problem for actually is algorithms and promotional placements of properties and we don’t want any of that. So on our site, it takes about 15 seconds to create an account and it’s just free, you just create account and then confirm your email. And then after that, if you are a host, you can switch to hosting at the top and you can create your property. It takes about five minutes. Bare minimum information is needed. Of course, a lot of people like to add a lot of information and that’s totally fine, but it can take as little as five minutes to create. And then it does cost for nothing for a guest and for a host is $50 per property per year. So that’s $4.17 a month. We felt like that was pretty fair and feasible. And so then they can subscribe for that first year and it is all very quick and simple. To reach me directly, I mean, you can reach me through the website but also hello@indirectly.com, two ends. Also, I wanted to say another feature that we have as far as the pricing being $50 a year, do have a couple property managers with 50 plus properties and in those cases reach out to me because we can do a first year at a special deal because of the amount of properties you have, but then it would renew with that 50. But what we built in is a referral system too. So everybody who signs up for free has your own account and you get a unique referral code and if you share that with another host who lists the property, they get a $10 coupon, so it’s 40 instead of 50, which is a little bit of a perk, but you get a $5 credit. And even though $5 isn’t very much, neither is 50 and over the course of a year it can add up and they can completely or partially offset that renewal cost every year. So could essentially get it for free if they’re referring a few people. So that’s how you would do that.

Awesome. Well, Carrie, thank you so much for coming on everyone. Thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time.

Thank you.