From hotel manager to media entrepreneur: Wil Slickers on building, burning out, and selling Hospitality FM

Wil Slickers didn't set out to build a media company. Seven years ago, he was a hotel manager looking for mentorship his boss never delivered. Today, he's an exited founder who built one of hospitality's most influential podcast networks, and learned some hard lessons along the way.

His journey from buying a $50 microphone on Amazon to selling Hospitality FM to Skift reveals what actually works in B2B media, why quality beats quantity every time, and how the barriers to entrepreneurship have collapsed in ways that would have seemed impossible a generation ago. 

The accidental beginning of a media empire

Wil's entry into podcasting came from frustration rather than ambition. Working as a hotel manager, he'd been promised mentorship that never materialized. He'd always struggled with formal schooling, so traditional hospitality education didn't appeal to him. When he saw a video of Gary Vaynerchuk and Tony Robbins explaining how anyone could start a podcast with basic equipment, he took the leap.

"I spent 50 bucks and started a show called Slick Talk, the hospitality podcast," Wil explains. "I was just interviewing people from my own curiosity on revenue management, housekeeping operations, maintenance and just overall hospitality guest service."

The show took off faster than expected. Within seven months, he landed his first sponsorship. The payment was equivalent to two months of his hotel manager salary, so he set himself a test: if he could maintain sponsorship revenue for six consecutive months, he'd go full-time.

He hit that milestone in December 2019 — right before COVID-19 would reshape the entire industry. "It was a great time to take a massive risk," he jokes now.

The pivot that changed everything

During his early podcasting days, a blog post listing top vacation rental podcasts mentioned Slick Talk because of an episode he'd done on Stay Alfred, an urban operator that would later close during the pandemic.

"That somehow got me on the short-term rental list and gave me more interest in the short-term rental sector," Wil recalls, noting that until then he was “mostly a hotel guy.”. His parents offered him a property to manage on Airbnb, assuming it would be just like running a hotel. It wasn't.

But this pivot proved crucial. Wil launched a property management company alongside his media business, using the podcast as a testing ground for tools and strategies. "We kind of used the media to build the management company," he explains. "We were talking to companies like Minut, Wheelhouse, Hostfully, and then implementing."

The relationship between the two businesses was symbiotic, but not in the way most people would expect: the media business quickly became the primary focus, helping to build the management company.

When COVID hit: launching Good Morning Hospitality

March 2020 brought chaos to hospitality. Properties closed. Bookings evaporated. Information changed by the hour. Most industry voices went silent, afraid to publish anything that might be outdated within days.

Wil and a friend saw an opportunity. They launched Good Morning Hospitality, a daily news show covering the rapidly evolving landscape. "It became a really good outlet for us to stay connected and for other people to stay more informed on what's going on," Wil says. 

The show's success led to something bigger: a full podcast network. At its peak, Hospitality FM managed 47 different podcasts, handling production, sponsorships, and distribution. The media business had become all-consuming, which created tension with the property management company.

The hard truth about running two businesses

"The media became my full-time thing, and the property management company became kind of like a side project," Wil admits. His co-founder was running operations while Wil contributed connections and occasional hours. By 2024, both realized the arrangement wasn't sustainable.

Wil made the difficult decision to step back from property management and focus entirely on media. It's a choice that reflects a broader truth about entrepreneurship: you can't do everything well simultaneously.

The experience taught him something crucial about focus. "If you're not trying to create a media business, don't create a media business," he advises. "If the thought of being in a studio recording content sounds terrible to you, you're most likely going to see that type of result."

What actually works in B2B media

Running a podcast network in a niche B2B space taught Wil lessons that contradict most mainstream media advice. The biggest? Quality of audience matters infinitely more than quantity.

"Don't get upset or frustrated that you're not at that 5,000 or 10,000 download mark," Wil says. "Be okay if you have a thousand listeners or a hundred viewers, because the quality of that audience is better than the quantity of an audience that maybe doesn't give a crap about software or pricing for a vacation home."

The principles that actually matter

• Build an ecosystem, not a channel. Wil learned not to silo content across platforms. Email lists, YouTube channels, audio platforms, and social media should work together, not in isolation. "It needs to be a content machine, a content ecosystem," he explains.
• Measure engagement differently. B2B media success doesn't look like Joe Rogan numbers. A private Facebook group of 300 engaged professionals can be more valuable than 10,000 passive listeners. "I know plenty of brands that would pay a good amount to be in that room with those 300 people," Wil notes.
• Don't be a slave to algorithms. Short-form video platforms like TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts dictate what they want, not what your audience needs. "We're creating content to please YouTube, to please TikTok, not to please our listeners or the people that have been following us for a long time."

The surprising commonality among entrepreneurs

Through hundreds of interviews, Wil discovered something that eased his imposter syndrome: almost everyone stumbled into their success.

"A lot of us accidentally stumbled into this," he reflects. "We didn't all have this expectation of where our lives are today. I was feeling this moment of insecurity where I'm around these excellent entrepreneurs that I get the pleasure of talking to every week, and I just kind of stumbled in. But then I realized, we all kind of stumbled in."

This realization shifted his perspective from looking up to industry leaders to seeing them as peers. "It put us at a peer-to-peer level, and that's where a lot of the collaborative content and concepts and partnerships really unfolded."

The burnout that led to an exit

By spring 2025, Wil was exhausted. Hospitality FM had grown rapidly. The team had taken on more than they could handle, and Wil was maxing out credit cards to keep operations running.

"I was definitely tired," he admits. "I told my team I'm going to go camping, hiking, remote. I'm going to basically not work for a month or two."

During that time away, Wil reflected on three options: pursue acquisition talks with Skift (which had been ongoing for over a year), continue self-funded, or shut down the business.

The relationship with Skift had started with a LinkedIn DM from founder Rafat Ali over a year earlier. What began as partnership discussions evolved into something bigger, but the process was slow, with months of "dating" between the companies.

"I sent them an email and said, 'Look, if you guys want this, I'm in. But if not, I'm not sure what to do,'" Wil recalls. Skift responded positively. On July 7, 2025, they announced the acquisition of Hospitality FM alongside another company, Women Leading Travel.

What he'd do differently

Looking back, Wil identifies two major changes he'd make:

Slow down the growth

"I probably would slow down," he says. "We were trying to grow so fast that we weren't maximizing revenue or operational efficiency."

The rush to expand prevented the team from optimizing what they'd already built. Slower growth would have meant better systems, more sustainable operations, and potentially less burnout.

Avoid production work

As sponsorship revenue fluctuated, particularly when venture funding dried up in the industry, Hospitality FM increased production services to maintain cash flow. This kept the team employed but created work Wil hated.

"I'm not gonna lie, I hated running a production company," he admits. "You're just doing things that aren't sexy, aren't fun. You're repeating yourself over and over again."

The production work paid bills but drained passion. In hindsight, he wishes he'd maintained a clearer focus on the media business he actually enjoyed building.

The future of B2B content

Despite selling his company, Wil remains optimistic about media's future — with one major caveat. He believes the next five years will see a dramatic shift toward in-person experiences.

"Content media is really going to become personal, and I mean that as in-person," he explains. "We've been craving, through the time of COVID and now the time of AI, that in-person experience."

Why in-person matters more than ever

"I'm in the camp of ‘AI is not that great’. I'm underwhelmed," Wil says. "I think I'm just tired of seeing the crappy LinkedIn posts with the crappy AI-generated image and the clear lack of personality."

When anything can be multiplied by a thousand or a million, it loses value. You can't scale in-person experiences the same way. Events, conferences, meetups become more valuable as digital content becomes commodified.

Wil points to Formula One and WWE as examples: both are fundamentally media companies, but they're built around live, in-person experiences. He predicts more B2B media companies will follow this model, creating events and gatherings that complement their content.

Key takeaways

• Start before you're ready. Wil bought a $50 microphone and started interviewing people out of curiosity. The business model came later.
• Quality beats quantity in B2B. A hundred engaged listeners who care about your topic are more valuable than 10,000 passive ones.
• Build an ecosystem, not a channel. Your content should work across email, social, audio, and video.
• Don't be a slave to algorithms. Create for your audience first, platforms second. Short-form video trends shouldn't dictate your entire strategy.
• Most entrepreneurs stumbled into success. If you feel like an imposter, you're in good company. Almost no one followed a perfect plan.
• Slow growth often beats fast growth. Maximize what you have before adding more. Wil's biggest regret was growing too quickly.
• Protect what you love about the work. Taking on revenue-generating work you hate (like production services) can kill your passion for the business.
• In-person experiences will matter more. As AI commodifies digital content, face-to-face interactions become increasingly valuable.

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