Main Street Business Rescue - Bed and Breakfast

The country those in need of some business tax or legal help to recover in a bad situation. Jay and Adrian own a bed and breakfast in 1880. Hi, my name is Mark J. Kohler, and this is Main Street Business Rescue. Our mission is to seek out through nominations of our clients from around the country, those in need of some business tax or legal help to recover in a bad situation. Jay and Adrian own a bed and breakfast in 1887 Victorian home in Abilene, Kansas. It's been a bed and breakfast since 1992, and over the last 14 years, they've had over 20,000 customers come through and stay at their bed and breakfast. In fact, Adrian is also a professional chef. But here's the current situation. Their annual sales are typically $100,000 with a profit margin of about 30, 36,000. But since COVID and the pandemic, they are down over 75%. This same time last year, in August of 2019, the same time this year, they're down to 27,000. They're at risk of losing their own bed and breakfast, their livelihood, and they're struggling for ideas and answers and hopefully we can provide it for them here in this interview. Take some notes. Hopefully it'll be helpful for you as well. Welcome, everybody, to a Main Street Business Rescue. Our inaugural episode of what I think is going to revolutionize America, change the lives of millions. My name is Mark Kohler, a local tax attorney living and breathing and working on Main street in America. Grew up in a small town, love small business. And I've got my amazing co host right here next to me, Matt Sorenson. Matt, I don't know what to say. I'll let you introduce yourself because you're so amazing. I'll probably screw it up, but.

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, that's, that's Avenue behind me. You know, it's kind of a Main street, but yeah, I mean, this is. Mark and I are business owners too. So, you know, we're living this with many of you and right now is such a difficult time for people out there trying to live the American dream. And we just want to bring some people on and talk about it and try to help them try to build a community here of those business owners trying to learn from each other and also improve their businesses. So we got some cool guests we're going to have in this series and I think this first one, bed and breakfast, will be pretty excited to. I'm excited at least to dig into that and how they're trying to cope and get through this. I mean, we're here to rescue much like the team at Baywatch. If you're familiar with Baywatch, I think I'm going to be David Hasselhoff. You can, you can pick your favorite character.

I'll be Pamela Anderson. I'll just be running through with my little buoy. I'm ready to go.

Good news for those coming on the show is we're not David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson. But we feel like we have some good business advice and we've been there, too, and we've been helping clients through stimulus stuff and dealing with COVID We've got some good insights. We've been in the trenches on it, so. Yeah, I'm excited to see this. And thanks.

A couple last disclaimers. We try to keep this light. We're both boring tax lawyers, I guess is our title. But in real life, we love. We're avid movie watchers and quote, we love, quote, fun movies and make jokes that hopefully most of the time keep it enjoyable and a topic like this enjoyable. So be patient with us. Matt, any final words before we bring out our guests?

No. Let's get them on. I'm excited. Let's get into it.

All right.

All right. Well, it's my pleasure to welcome Jay and Adrian Potter from Abilene's Victorian Inn bed and breakfast in Abilene, Kansas, not Texas, folks. Abilene, Kansas, most commonly known for the Eisenhower museum. I'm sure everybody knows. And library.

Yeah, it's.

It's a beautiful historic home that was built in 1887. It's a 6,000 over 6,000 square foot home.

Let me ask this, was it a bed and breakfast before you guys came there, or did you guys turn it into the bed and breakfast?

It's been a bed and breakfast. It's been operating as a bed and breakfast since 1992. We're the third owners.

Excellent. Okay, and you've been operating for 14 years, right?

Correct.

Okay, give us a breakdown of what's inside. What are you doing? Let's. Let's get the rooms and let us know what.

We have five rooms on our second floor. One of them can sleep up to four people, the others two each. And then we have a third floor that has a three bedroom suite, a living room, kitchenette, walkout balcony.

Is that the Eisenhower suite?

No, it's called the Nest. We do have an Eisenhower room. Everything is themed with that time period of people that have lived here or are from the area. So all of our rooms have their own private bathroom and shower. Two of them have full bathrooms and showers. They all have televisions, access to WI fi, and everything does include a gourmet breakfast in the morning prepared by me.

Tell us what's going on. I mean, why do we have the pleasure of talking to you today? I almost said stalking. Why are we stalking you? To be on our show. And I know you're in good spirits. And Matt and I do have a very jovial way of talking about business to make it enjoyable.

I love it.

Things aren't good. And tell us what's happening with this Covid and how it's affected you guys.

Well, to give you a quick synopsis, so to speak, as we were in Florida visiting our son and grandson and our son's wife when this really started to get bad, when the numbers started to really climb back in March and Adrienne started getting one email after the other of cancellations here at the end, we looked like we were going to have a very, very good summer. We were really looking forward to it. In fact, I had been working full time with Pepsi for the past 14 years. I turned 62 in October and decided to go ahead and take my Social Security and work part time so that I could be here more to work the bed and breakfast. So when that happened, we realized we were going to probably have a problem. And people aren't traveling people. The museum closed. The library closed in town in March. It has not reopened at this point. We're still getting cancellations now and again when people find out that the library museum is closed.

So that's our big draw is the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum for our town. Our town is a little under 7,000 people and we are right on i70.

Now if we. Let's talk about the exit strategy too, and what you've got into this. How much is the home worth if you were to just go out and sell it? And I guess we need to look at two variables. If you were to go out and just sell it as a home versus sell it as a bed and breakfast can. Do you have a ballpark figure of what those two figures might be?

I would guess about 450 as a bed and breakfast. We have listed it on a couple of websites, not with a realtor, but on our own for 729. And that would include all of the business.

What's the mortgage at right now?

Mortgage balance just slightly under 200.

So there's equity there worth keeping, obviously.

Yes.

Okay.

All right.

What's the monthly expense like to break even on the point? Like what's your monthly break even point of revenue. You got to have to pay the bills. The mortgage.

It's $9,000.

Tell me what that is, that mortgage.

That would be rent, mortgage, utilities, cable.

Now what's the term of the mortgage?

It's 2,500.

So monthly expenses are the monthly nut. 2,500 for the mortgage. Utilities couldn't be more than a thousand at some point.

We have had $800 electric bills.

So let's dive in. What are your fixed costs then?

That includes it.

Okay, so the 2,500 interest and principal, property taxes and insurance.

Correct.

Okay. And you've got utilities. Maybe no more than a thousand. You said 800 would be high.

No, I would say maybe like 1200 for everything.

Yeah, 1200 would be worth 3700.

Yes. The only thing that's not variable is mortgage and utilities.

So with Social Security and your part time job, monthly revenue is about how much?

$2,084.

What have you done already during this COVID pandemic to try to make some extra revenue with the tourism off track. You said earlier some curbside.

Yes, yes. As I mentioned earlier, we are doing breakfast all day and lunches. I posted on Facebook weekly, come up with a menu and hope and pray people call.

Now, you've also had some, you've gone into some of the government programs or looked at some grants and other things. You've already gone through those processes, looked at ppp, you looked at Eidl, you got some grants from the county.

Tell us, okay, so because we don't have a payroll right now, we didn't qualify for PPP or Eidl and we did receive a loan from hire fund, which was the very first loan offered that we could get and that was from our county. It's a three year return, zero percent interest, which is great. We were able to get 15,000 and you know, we're using that to pay our mortgage basically and utilities. We have applied for a few other grants and we're waiting. We're waiting. We received one for 375 through the county as well. And we received one. We're going to be receiving one for a little under 5,000 here shortly. And there's two more that I've applied for that we're waiting on.

Did you. And every state's a little different for entrepreneurs during this pandemic. Did you apply for unemployment, Adrian? Because Jay's got at least the part time job.

No, I have not. The last grant I applied for was as a woman owned business. It was a minority grant for women owned businesses and it is all in my name. So we were hoping to use it that way and this has been the only thing that we've been able to use it on so far.

Have you started renting out rooms on longer than a nightly basis? Has that been a strategy you've employed this year more than you may have in the past?

Yes, we have. We recently had some gentlemen from a company that climb wind turbines and they were here for three months and it really helped us a lot.

Now I suspect you're not charging your normal nightly rates when you do a room rental for a month. What is the ratio off your regular rate?

Less than 50% of the normal rate. You know, we, we didn't want to lose them and we weren't really sure what to charge. But we came up with a $35 a person per day as a rate and it seemed to work for them. Since the guys left, the revenue for that has paid our mortgage which yeah, 22, 2300amonth is what we brought in just from those long term renters for the past three months. And that's really been a big help.

It was three guys for a while. So that.

So the average monthly rental at about $35 times 30. We're in that $900 range per person per month. So approximately 2,700 made a big difference for a couple months.

Yes. So we're looking for other long term

renters that we've advertised at 800amonth, which is we used, we've advertised our smallest room for single person but we're open to doing other things. So that's not in stone.

All right, now what's. Let me ask this about when you are occupied, let's say you're at 90%. I just want to get like best case scenario, short term rental, 90%. What's the monthly revenue that you would have?

Oh my goodness, 1012 grand.

1012 grand. Now you said earlier your expenses are nine grand, right? Like we had your fixed and variable, you're at like nine grand. So when it's fully occupied at 90% in good rates, you're get bring in about 10 to 12 grand. So your net profit is only couple thousand bucks. Okay, so now you've got Mark's explanation here. And we know of course a great, you know, gotta love this tax lawyer CPA combo. We're gonna get that tax turned down as little as possible taxable income, maybe even a loss, I don't know. But what are you actually taking home? Like there's so many benefits of the business and you actually are cash flowing. This, this is many people, rental properties and even a owner, it's like, what are you taking home a good month, if you had it going nice, what are you actually taking home out of the business?

So in a, in a. On an average, I would say our cash flow is about 3,000amonth.

Okay, so that's annualized over the year,

36 grand a year you're making.

Yes.

Okay, now because here's, here's part of the question, and this is what I'm getting at by asking it is what is the value of the business?

There's a lot of potential for growth here. There's a lot more food service that can be done. Someone could get a liquor license, many ways that it could grow and even more in occupancy. If we were at 100% or even 80% all year long, the revenue would be close to 200 instead of 100.

So, Adrian, let me ask about marketing for a minute.

Okay.

Do you people. How do they book? Can they book on your website? Is it simple? Is it easy? Are you blasting it out there on social media? Tell us what you're doing with your website and some of your. What's your marketing plan look like right now? Is it word, amount?

Yes. Well, we do have a following of word of mouth. We have a lot of repeat guests. But on our website, we have a booking site called Free to Book. They can book directly on the website and then I call them back to verify, get their credit card information, their financial information, talk to them a little bit, dietary needs and that sort of thing, and guarantee and confirm that way. Being a little old school, we like to talk to people on the phone. So our guarantee is always when I call them back, they. They are not completely guaranteed unless I talk to them.

Now, Free to Book. Free to Book is something you put on your website. So no one's finding that unless they go to your website. It's not like you're on a listing where people go to look for a room.

Correct.

They're only hit your website.

Correct.

We are on TripAdvisor, which I don't know if you're very familiar with TripAdvisor, but it's. We don't pay to be on TripAdvisor. It's wonderful because you don't have to pay to be on it. If someone goes in and puts a review for property, it goes on Trip Advisor. So if you go on Trip Advisor and look up Abilene, Kansas, you will find us, but you can't. You cannot book through there. Then you have to go find us on the website, which we actually get quite a few people that do. They, we, we ask everyone that checks in or when they call, how did you find out about us? Because we want to know where people are seeing us or hearing about us. And we do get quite a bit of business from TripAdvisor, which is wonderful,

since the biggest thing is when they Google hotels, Abilene, Kansas, we pop up. We're on the city site, the county site. We are on several other sites that people might put in. We were on the state site for quite a while. We are all over the Internet.

We actually have. There's a link from the Eisenhower Museum to go to our property. So they can find us that way, too, if they're looking at.

So if they're coming to Abilene specifically, they will find us by looking up the Eisenhower Museum, by pulling up Abilene, Kansas website. We're in lodging there, but again, we only book direct now.

So an important question is, obviously you're not going to go through Airbnb because you're not that type of location. You're a bed and breakfast. And there's a whole culture to bed and breakfast. When I've stayed at bed and breakfast, it is kind of a. It's a whole different ambiance. It's very common what you do to give that phone call and who are you? And whatever. And if you, if I sound like a serial killer, you're gonna say, oh, we're booked. You know, it's a very home sound, actually.

I don't know. How does a serial killer sound?

It's odd. Most people turn me down. I don't. I don't know why. When I try to book for the.

I can't tell you the story while we're live.

Okay. Yeah, that's right. But that is kind of one of the culturistic aspects of staying at bed and breakfast is it's a very homey feel. And I've never stayed at a bed and breakfast where I haven't met the owners, you know, and I'm in the kitchen eating, you know, and I wander down there in my robe in the middle of the night. You know, it's, it's, it's. They never have me back either. I don't know why that's. But, but on that note, there are websites that do cater to the bed and breakfast industry that do take a fee so that they can help book you out. Have you not done that because you don't want to do the fee or you don't feel like you need to be on those sites because you're booked enough already.

A little bit of both. A little bit of we don't want to pay the fees. The commissions are high on most of those sites, which makes you want to raise your rate. And a lot of people do. In order to be on those sites, they will raise their rates. It's always financially feasible to call the property individually rather than calling one of those sites. Sometimes it's 20 to 30% higher on a site like that.

Okay, so now here's the golden question, or we're now going to start getting into the Matt Sorenson, Mark Kohler mindset of analysis here. Yeah, that's right, baby. You said just a moment ago, before we asked about your marketing plan, that our sales could be at 200, but we don't want to have an employee here part time in the morning helping cook or we don't need extra help making beds or cleaning. We don't want to do that. We're going to stay at 100 grand. And in the last few years, that's been fine. You're happy, go lucky. You're building equity in the home. You make 36 grand in cash flow, you're living the dream in that bed and breakfast lifestyle. Now comes Covid. Now, I have to feel that in some ways there's a little bit of regret going, darn if we would have been doing some of those things to create a $200,000 revenue when Covid hit, yeah, we may have been at 80 to 100, but we didn't have that larger infrastructure revenue. So that when Covid hit, we could at least have a baseline that was survivable. Now, because we've chosen that different approach with COVID hitting, we're below baseline. Is that a fair analysis?

Yeah. So it seems to me like you like the bed and breakfast as a lifestyle. It's a business, but you like the lifestyle of it and you enjoy it. It's almost like, yeah, it's a hobby business a little bit, but you're not. A lot of business owners are trying to get every penny out of their business.

Right.

They're trying to squeeze every penny they could out of that bed and breakfast, make it as profitable as possible. You guys approach it like, hey, we want it to just be us. Maybe we get some help here and then here and there, but we want to run it how we makes us happy and we want to have comfort and we don't want to be hustling all day. Just scrape every penny of profit out of it.

Right? You got it. You hit it right on the head, buddy.

You hit it. We don't want to be greedy. We just want. Want to be comfortable and happy and, you know, not work 20 hours a day.

Okay, so now, because. And this is going to be the session that we're now going to turn the corner on, I think in this meeting here is because of COVID we're going to have to turn on some of the marketing strategies that we've been able to avoid.

Yes.

Lifestyle. Now it's about survival.

Yes.

I want to ask. And I'm going to. You live this business more so than Matt and I. But when we get on the phone calls with clients, this is what we're trying to draw out of them because we have the, regrettably, the luxury of being a step away from the forest while you're down in the trees, cutting trees down, trying to survive. We can come in and say, hey, put your ax down. Let me ask you a few questions. What are four or five of those strategies that you were able to get away, not employing before and now you need to. The liquor license, maybe some more aggressive marketing. I want to ask about your diet. I want to talk about your dining room and some things that you could do with your food and turn it in kind of a restaurant type scenario. But before I go down and I know Matt's got a list, what are some of the things that you're like, Mark, now, you're right. We've been thinking about this. We've got to just do it. What are some of those?

I'll chime in one thing. One of the things that we did not want to do was to

be

on an Airbnb site because of the fact that what you talked about are most people, when they stay at an Airbnb, they want a very cheap room. They don't expect a lot, and I'm just speaking generally. So we felt like we weren't the right kind of property for that, so we didn't list ourselves on their site. We now have a room on that site, only one room. And part of the reason for that is the price of the room because they want you to put on a very, very low price, because that's what people are looking for. So we've talked about adding another room and maybe two more rooms on the Airbnb, which is the OTA idea that we didn't want to do.

Yeah.

Airbnb the good thing about them, I'll say this is their commission rate is a lot less than like Priceline, Expedia

or Hotels.com, which is. Right. So I, I have a client that owns some hotels and they hate like the hotels.com and stuff.

Right?

Tell me, don't book through there, man. When you're coming to town, book on our site. Well, I think what, what some, what this client told me that he does is they only set aside a certain amount of rooms available for the other third party booking sites and they do it based on what they think they're going to be able to book themselves. And so they know we can book 60% of the rooms ourselves. So we're not going to let all rooms go up there. We're going to book them direct. But the other that would otherwise have been vacant, we're going to throw them up there. And they have, they have a pretty good, you know, model for how they do it and how they take them off and add more on. Because sometimes they might have a week or two coming up where it's like, we didn't book as many as we thought. We want to get more on there. And so, but that way it's still keeping revenue coming in, it's more consistent, but they're being a little more strategic about it. You could, you know, these are 50 to 100 room type hotels, you know, think or something like that would be what he owns. So you could be doing things like that.

All right, now as we go through these strategies, I think before we even go to number two, three or four more, I want to throw this out. Have you developed this year's Covid affected 2020 marketing plan? Have you sat down and written down even one to two or three pages to create a little marketing plan to respond to this pandemic?

No, we have not.

We have done a lot of talking, but not writing.

We talk a lot, we come up with ideas and strategies, nothing written. And we pray a lot.

We pray a lot. And the thing is, because there's two of us here, when one of us comes up with an idea, invariably the other person will say, yeah, but what if? Or you know, I'm guilty of that a lot what if? I do the what if a lot, which is not good.

But what I think is key on your marketing plan right now and what you're missing, you need to meet their customers, where they're at. When you guys talk about, I mean, you guys are talking about an old school marketing plan. They book on a website, you have to call them you like that your customers don't. I know nobody books rooms like that anymore. And so you probably have a lot of people going to that site not booking or stalling out in the process because you have an old school thing everyone's used to be able to book fully through on the site. So I think that's a thing that you really want to look to addressing is meeting a customer where they're at, communicating in the way they want to be communicated to, not with the way you like to run the business.

Well, in summary, on the marketing plan, what I want to encourage both of you to do in this next maybe that was a little southern reference y'. All but what I need both of you to do is after this show and with further consultation with some a board of advisors which we're going to recommend as well is writing pen to paper, a real marketing plan. Something that things that you can do immediately to turn your typically slow season into maybe one of the best slow seasons you've ever had and be ready for even a bigger season next year because we've got to get through these winter months and having a written plan. And on this marketing plan, Jay, you said something interesting that one of you is usually the idea person and the other one will shoot it down. I want you to use these ideas as bargaining chips and say alright Jay, you've always felt strong about I'm going to give it to you. Why don't we do a couple of your ideas. I may not be a believer, but let's do it. And then you're going to turn around to Adrian and go okay, you got a couple ideas. I'm going to, let's fly with it. We need to be more patient with one another and with these ideas. And when we're in the forest sometimes chopping at those trees, we got to experiment some new ideas. And it's hard when you're married, let alone let your spouse run with an idea and now your business partners. You know, it's tough.

The only thing is my ideas always cost a lot.

Okay, well and you may need to but this is where those grants could be well used. Maybe our grant is has got to be used to pay a bill. But at the same token maybe that grant could be allocated to some ideas that we need to kind of dip our toe in. So I'm going to say I'd like that number one idea of the third party rental, the online travel agency. We need to open ourselves to that and expose at least a couple rooms to it. But Right out of the gate as well. We need to develop a written marketing

plan and take action on the things that you're talking about.

One last thing on the marketing plan is the difference of a marketing plan with a strategic plan. And we're not going to have a little training session on that today. We'll save that for another show. But right now it's about marketing. Your system could be wonderful, and it sounds like it is. You've got great food, you've got a beautiful place, you're in a beautiful part of the country. You've got all these tourism, you're on i70, all these great things. It's really not about how do we change our business model and how we deliver our service. It's about how do we get people renting rooms, how do we get money in the door.

They say heads and bets.

Yep. And that's bottom line of marketing plan. So, Matt, what would you say maybe another idea that we need to start doing better at or take advantage of?

I think you want to think about your business in two areas right now. I want you to think about what can you do today, in the next 30 days that's going to affect your business, but that is different of what you're going to do coming out of this. Because it seems to me the Eisenhower Museum is a big part of the draw if it's open, people are coming to town, they're, they're booking it, they're coming there if it's closed. So in some ways it's like you need a strategy to get through to when the Eisenhower Museum opens up. That might not be your long term strategy. And you've done some things. You've had the workers going up on the turbines. Right. Doing some more longer term rentals. Think of it like, I kind of feel like your car's broken down right now and you got to put the spare tire on. It's not the way you're going to drive the car all the time. But right now you got to get from point A to point B. You need a patch, all right. You need a spare tire. And I think the strategy of the month long tenant, the workers, was a way to kind of bridge the gap. But then eventually you want to get the real nice tire on the car and move it down the road. And so in some ways, I think what you're doing now may not be what you want to do long term, but you need to make that sacrifice. You need to say, we got to get the fricking spare on and get the Car down the road.

Right. We need to be the destination. So if we were the destination, which usually lodging is not the destination. The guest is finding something to do and then they find lodging after that. If we were the reason they were coming as the destination and. And then they look at the town and go, oh, but I have all these places I can go visit as well.

We do.

We have had people do that before. It's rare, but we have had people read about it.

Let's play with that strategy for a moment. I would suspect, and I'm going to be so bold as to throw out on your website. Do you have a list of all the things to do while you're here? And Aberdeen?

Yes.

We have a little icon that says 100 reasons to come to Abilene.

Okay.

Is from here.

We have an awesome web host. This guy in Mississippi. He's just wonderful. He's really.

I love.

We've had a lot of. We've had a lot of compliments on our website about. It's easy to navigate through and so forth. It's just the fact that, like you said, the twofold things, people aren't traveling right now as much as they are. And because we're. They normally do. And also the fact that we're not on Priceline. A lot of places that people look when they're looking to stay somewhere.

Okay, now I want to get back to Matt's point for just a moment before we get. I've got. I think we're going to run away. Give you some great runaway strategies here today. Monthly tenants, not what you would typically want. Most bed and breakfast owners don't like that monthly tenant. They're not the type of person that you want to sit down and have that, you know, croissant within in the. In the morning over a cup of coffee. These are people that are coming and going for a business reason. But it's what we've got to do in the short run. It's the spare tire fix.

There you go.

How so on that monthly tenants, what have you reached out to companies in the area? What are you doing right now to maybe find those monthly tenants? You said that there was a site you were trying to. It was the tenant.

Turbo Tenant.

Turbo Tenant. Is that turning out to do well right now for you or not? Word of mouth.

I've had some leads. I've not had anything pan out from those leads yet.

They have their own vetting.

Every 30 days you have to update the site. They vet people. They ask them when they want to move in their reason, if they can, you know what their finances are. And then they send us the questions that they might have.

But on this note, and it's probably again too much for the show today, but I would sit down and think, okay, in the slow season, what type of businesses are flourishing in our area that may be bringing in employees during the slow season? And are they the type of character we would want in our home? But is there also something where we could reach out to their HR departments? Go, hey, we've got rooms for rent here. It's a much better value than the Hampton Inn on a per month rate. We'd like to be one of your first choices. Now it's only during our slow season, but we'd like to be there. And I think if you sat down on a spreadsheet and started making a list of some of those businesses or industries within a 50 mile radius that might have some short term workers that are of a higher caliber, they might be worth reaching out to. Anything else?

One of the places I had, I did reach out to in March when all this started was our hospital, our local hospital. And I did talk to HR about doctors and nurses and first responders staying with us.

But you brought up a good point because now I'm thinking that was at the time the person said, okay, thank you very much. If I get anybody, I'll let you know. And that was back in March.

We had a few people.

Now they're probably not even thinking of us anymore. So we need to do that again.

Circle back.

Yeah, I think it's, you got to do some hustle. I think that's, I think that's what it's going to boil down to. It. There's going to be a lot of guerrilla tactics and things that you need to do. And you just talked about one. The hospital is the perfect example in chasing down that resources, being top of their mind, making sure they know what you're doing. Because right now you've got to conserve cash too. I don't want to give you strategies of like we'll just do more marketing on Facebook or you know, or go dump a bunch of money. You can't do those strategies right now.

Right.

We're trying to cut all those variable costs but do some of the guerrilla mark and I think the strategy of the month long tenant the workers was, was a way to kind of bridge the gap. But then eventually you want to get the real nice tire on the car and move it down the road. And so in some ways I think what you're doing now may not be what you want to do long term, but you need to make that sacrifice. You need to say, we got to get the frickin spare on and get the car down the road. People with COVID right now and moving around and people working from home and there might be people that want to come there and live there for a few months during COVID Right, that's true.

Yeah.

There you go.

Tell us about the cookbook. When did it come out? And obviously the COVID tells us a little bit about it. What would you like to say about it?

Well, it took me five years to create it. It's a compilation of guest recipes as well as mine. That was my marketing idea that if your name's in the book, you'll probably want to buy three of them. And that was true. So we have 22 different people that have their names in the book and their recipes. There's over 200 recipes. It came out in 2012. I revised it in 2015 after my children told me where all the mistakes were and what are kids good for? Right. They weren't good for proofreading before. It was

before I sent it to the printer. Thank you.

Exactly. And we've sold over 400 of them just out of our little gift shop. We have a small gift shop that's also our office, and we sell about 15amonth just out of our gift shop. And what I do is at breakfast, I'll say, by the way, your breakfast is in our cookbook for sale in the gift shop. And they always want to buy it. So it's pretty easy sale. I've not put it on Amazon or any place on the Internet, just selling it out of our little gift shop.

All right. I'm telling you right now, I was just like, oh, I'm just gonna go buy her book right now. As many viewers might be wanting to do.

We do ship them as well.

It is not on Amazon, as you just said.

We ship it from here. The other thing is I sign it and people really love a chef's signature.

All right, all right, now let me throw out a couple.

I know where you're going with that. Yeah, yeah.

I bet you probably did a little background on Matt and I. So I'm gonna throw out a couple thoughts and I'll let my fellow authors say something. Adrian, Adrian, Adrian. First, you got to get this on Amazon right away. And I want a third edition. And while it's slow right now, Jay, you're not going to let her sleep. You're going to get her up at, you know, the crack of dawn and then tuck her into bed at midnight. And I want to see a third edition in the next two to three weeks on Amazon. And Kindle Direct is fantastic. They will print and deliver right there for you. I let Matt make a few comments. It'll create a revenue source and it's going to be a wonderful, wonderful way to get you potential guests to come to the bed and breakfast. Drive up the value of the bed and breakfast. I'm just going to say two words, Pioneer Woman. We're going to talk YouTube here in about three seconds when I let Matt finish. But we also sell our books hand autographed if you buy it on our site. So if anyone wants to book mine, you can go to markjkohler.com and buy a book right now. I'll sign it, personalize it, yada, yada. But a lot of people want it right now in the middle of the night on Kindle because they're going to be cooking in the morning for family or they need this cookbook immediately. It's going to be on Kindle. Matt, where do I pick it up?

Now? I know some of your roadblocks. You're thinking, how do I print it? I just my own run here that I keep at the shop. I get a few sales. I don't want to go buy a bunch and stock to Amazon. Amazon has figured it out. They made it easy for authors. It's all online. Get your cover on there, they'll print it on demand. That's how my book sold on Amazon and I've sold 25,000 copies there.

I have your book.

Okay. Yeah, I know. So. But it's a good marketing tool. It's also good for people to know that even before they come, they could go buy your book or they've left and they could go and buy your book. It's a revenue stream for you that also is a marketing tool. You've already done the hard work in writing the book and putting it together, designing the COVID Now you just got to get it on the mediums that can sell it. You know what, that could be a theme of this for when you come out of COVID or whatever about your business in general and the reluctance for Airbnb. I know you're fighting Airbnb and the third party booking sites, but that could be something that could really energize your business. I think that's something we have not thought of.

Thank you.

Oh, my gosh. Okay. By the way, we're just Getting started. Okay, so you're going to get the book on Amazon, third edition within a month. Matt will, his assistant will send you the link to get down to kdp.com direct publishing.com. you're going to get over there, set it up. It'll be available on Kindle, it'll be mass printed by Amazon for you and you can buy it at wholesale prices to stock in your store. I would like an updated cover. I want this thing to rock and roll. And you're going to put, you know, if you want to put a little something in the acknowledgments for Matt Sorenson.

No.

Next. You've got 20,000 built in buyers. Did I not hear? In the last 14 years you've had 20,000 customers. And if you're like any other bed and breakfast I've stayed at, you've got a little nice little sign in sheet when people come and you've got their phone number and email. Am I correct?

Yes.

Tell me about your CRM. You know, sorry, CRM, what's that

do you have there? Do you have a list with their names and emails?

Oh did I just came up with.

It's not in a spreadsheet.

Okay. We just came up with Jay's job. We are gonna put, if you remember the old movie the Odd Couple with Walter Mathout. All right, we're going to put a piece of tape down the room and Adrian's going to be over there working on her book. Guess what Jay is going to be

doing working on the list.

He's going to be on one of the top five CRM sites which could be starting with the top of the. Which you don't need. But when people think of CRM they think of salesforce, they think of infusionsoft. But the lowest and most affordable level, we're looking at these contact me type sites where you can input all of your customers data and we're going to reach out to them. We're not even to the rebooking destination site opportunity. We're talking about just the book. You're going to get them in that CRM so that soon as Adrian's got the book available, you guys are emailing all your prior customers and saying Adrian has her third edition out. Oh and by the way, you 20 that have your name in it, they're gonna get a different email and they're gonna say we're gonna say you're now an affiliate for the sale of this book and we need you to help. They're publicizing the bush this book everywhere. And Matt, before I just. My brain explodes. What else on this CRM?

Well, I think on. On the CRM, you've got to get emails. Okay. People want to get communicated that way. So hopefully you. Did you get emails? Please say yes. Did you get their emails?

Wait.

We have some.

We don't demand it from people, so we do it on it. Sometimes people, for some reason, they. We have a place for them to sign in and put their address or email their phone number, so so forth. They don't always put their email in or the phone number.

I did say a lot of them do. I did sign up for mailchimp, but never did anything with it.

You could use that. You could import the data. Okay. You got to get the emails into there. Now, here's what. And you could be very strategic about. There's different ways you could approach this, but you want to get a. You want to think of what's my strategy when I reach out to them. You don't want to just say, hey, we're open for business. Come visit us. Right. What's the strategy that you have?

My partner.

Yeah. Why did they come there before? What did people love about it when people come and they leave there? Why did they love staying at your bed and breakfast?

I'm sure it wasn't Jay's demeanor. It had to do something with Adrian's food. Am I right? Okay.

But Jay does. Jay does tell jokes.

Okay.

Okay.

See, I would do that.

I see book number two.

Jay's jokes reference that. How many of your guests would remember that? I remember that guy. How many people? So when you go out, when you send out that email or whatever the communication is going to be, try to bring back the things that would remind them of the stay when they were there. The Eisenhower Museum may be closed. Don't hit that angle. Just talk about traveling. You have time on your hands. Everything's closed. We're open.

Eisenhower is dead. You're open. Eisenhower's dead. You're open. This is an important point. Yeah.

Come back and visit us. I got a new joke.

Something. Something I haven't mentioned to you, but we get a lot of thank you cards and gifts from our guests, which

is amazing to us that people pay to stay here and then they send us a thank you. It's just unbelievable.

We've had jams and jellies and nuts and flowers sent to us as a thank you.

I love people.

Those are the people that would want to come back. Yep.

I love jams and jellies and nuts Those are my three favorite things. Okay, now here's. Okay, we are just scratching the surface because I'm not kidding. While Adrienne's updating her book for the newest edition, Jay is working on the CRM. Now that you're going to get very familiar with that. There's great training out there on YouTube and all over on what that means. You can get a book on it on Amazon very, very quickly and start reading it. One of our clients that is literally a personal client of ours and has a very affordable CRM is all clients, all clients calm. The owner is Jeff Seamus. He's the CEO. It's a very friendly website that allows you to take signups to get maybe the. Oh, did I just hear newsletter and recipe of the month. Yes, I did. So you're going to get people signing up for Adrian's recipe of the Week. Recipe of the month. And Adrian's going to start publicizing this and it's going to be on your website and you're going to get your client list of prior guests and followers of Adrian's cookbook and Adrienne's the bed and breakfast queen. She is going to be out there branding herself. I don't know what it is. And you're going to get to choose that. But think of pioneer woman. I'm not kidding. She is fantastic. And you want to be the brand of man. Because it's true. When I stay to bed and breakfast, the food is always phenomenal. Well, you want a top of mind awareness. It's called Toma. When I think of bed and breakfast and I think of food, I think of Adrian. And that's what we want to be doing. And so you're going to start your newsletter, you're going to start your book, and Jay's going to be over there emailing everybody. And Barry, strategic ways. I love what Matt said. You're gonna have good reasons to reach out to people. You don't want to end up in their spam. You don't want them sending them nasty emails going, I hate your jokes. Jay, you're going to be sending them wonderful, careful crafted emails. Leads us to your YouTube channel.

Oh, my gosh. I have thought about that. I have thought about cooking classes.

She's actually done a few here.

I've done a few cooking classes, but I've thought about YouTube videos of. Of me making breakfast, of teaching.

Oh, we're coming to cooking classes. It's already on my list, but YouTube is worldwide.

Matt, go ahead. Right now. And this is. You can't control the Eisenhower Museum, right? That's gonna open up whenever it's gonna open up. But let's think you can do and get people there. Regardless of whether the Eisenhower Museum's open, remember, you can't control the wave, but you can control the surfboard.

One of my.

There you go. I like that. All right, so Newport beach, here's.

Alright, so here's what we can do. Get an experience, have it on the site to say, come stay with us, bring your friends. Maybe it's a girls weekend, a family retreat. You're all, you're going to book multiple rooms and we're going to have an experience. We're going to do some cooking classes. You can come in the kitchen with me. You're going to have a video like Mark talked about. You're going to get some of your friends to go over there and make it look like this is what you do when you do this experience. And you love that, right? You love cooking for people and talk with them. You did it for free for the people staying there.

And here's the beauty of this. My wife and I have done some of these cooking classes in people's homes and they're a lot of fun because when I've stayed at a bed and breakfast, you get up in the morning, you have your great breakfast, you get in the car, you tour around, you maybe even go have lunch, a little cafe and then you get back and you're at the bed and breakfast with nothing to do. And Jay's jokes are only going to last so long. So I want to say at 4 o', clock, for $50 a person, they get to help with a cooking class and enjoy the meal that they help prepare and learn. So they're going to be back at 4 o' clock for a cooking class and then they go back and get dressed up and come back for dinner after. They help prepare the bulk of the meal. So they're going to taste it. Da da da da da. Then they get to go for a walk and they get to go for a little hike and then come back and Adrian takes it to the next level and they have dinner. Dinner is included with the cooking class. Oh, and a complimentary copy of my book. May you. So you're going to be bringing all this together in what Matt just put together a wonderful deal. Now you're a destination experience.

Okay.

Now the YouTube channel, love it.

I'm writing all this down.

Okay. And I

if we do all that, we're successful, we may not want to move.

Oh yeah.

We will. That's right. Now is the other thing, because. And let's just step back for a minute. We need to make some money right now to pay the bills. We need to make some money that you can be making money while you're asleep at night selling books and videos and online material regarding your cooking. We also want to make sure that in the off seasons we're creating more revenue. But you know what, the biggest reason why is the value of a bed and breakfast home is directly tied to its revenue. If you want to sell this thing for more than 700 grand, you got to get your butts in gear and start creating the revenue. So you're going to have an exit strategy at 700k, not 500k.

Right.

You're going to have, like Matt said, you're going to have to hustle. You're going to have to kick it in the gear that you may have not wanted to do. But now we see we want to exit in five years. We better create the revenue that can show a 7 or $800,000 sales price.

Yeah. And they're going to want to see that for a couple years consistently. So that's your exit strategy. You're going have to do that for a couple years to show that revenue. And, and that's how they're going to. Because now they're going to go off of what's your net income you're making from the business. Right. They're not buying it for the real property. You're not going to give half the price you're going to have. We've hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table. Yep. So you're going to have to have a two year track record in that, in the sale of a business.

Now I know what's going on here too. And I'm going to because I've done this long enough and you guys have been so patient with Matt and I getting excited. We don't want to be talking down to you or being rude.

You're not.

I know what's going on through your head, Mark. We've already said it nine times on the show. We are old school. I don't even know how to start a YouTube channel, let alone shoot video that people would want to watch. So here's the recommendation here is we're going to talk about some other ways to generate revenue. You're going to be paying the bills, living on Top Ramen. And I need some of that grant money to go to a local college student. There's probably five colleges within 40 miles, am I right? Probably a community college as well as something else, right?

There's two more within 40 miles.

Okay, maybe within 40. You're going to call. I'm not kidding. One of the phone calls you're going to make in your homework is to the local college and talk to the marketing department chair or his or her secretary or administrative assistant, and you're going to say, I'm a local bed and breakfast. I need a marketing student that's looking for an internship, knows social media. Most of these colleges are requiring even a paid or unpaid internship before graduation. You're going to call the marketing department, go, can I interview just two or three students? Can you send them my way? And they're going to bring them over and you're going to put one of them in charge of your social media and your YouTube channel. They need to have YouTube experience. Also, when you get into the marketing department, most of them have a film class. You want to drive down, get in the freaking car and drive down to the college and say, when's your next class? Well, we're doing it all on zoom right now. Fine, I'll be there. Zoom me in. And you say, hey, film students, I need some help launching my YouTube channel. Because here's what you're going to do. You may say, well, Mark, what am I going to shoot video of? Oh, Matt made a good one. You're going to shoot the video of the cooking class. You're also going to shoot a video of every recipe. That's what the pioneer woman does. That's what she does. And there's special cameras on tripods that can go over a cutting board, that can go over the cooktop. They're very, very affordable. Get on Amazon and you can do cooking video tripod. And there's very affordable tripods. You're going to get an affordable used camera on Craigslist, and you're going to get this student that's going to be very affordable. And you're going to pay for them with your grant. This isn't your guys's expertise. You're gonna let some students help you, and are you gonna make some mistakes along the way? Yes. And you're gonna hire the wrong person once in a while. That's okay. But you're gonna start shooting video of these different recipes. Now, why are we doing all this? Because it's gonna drive attention and awareness to an amazing bed and breakfast. But this, all of this video and all of this attention on your cooking and your cooking is going to bring now local cooking Classes together and dining. I'm going to shut up. Let Matt talk. But I'm just going to. How many people can you seat in your dining room?

20.

Oh, my gosh. Are you kidding me? Did I not just hear a lot of restaurants.

Okay, back up just a second.

But not during COVID Right.

I was just going to say that we couldn't do that now. They'd be way too close. We couldn't do it. We have ordinances about that, actually, so.

But I. But I also have a.

You know what? You know what? You're not gonna. You're not gonna open up next week and get 20 people in there anyways, right? In a month and you get this rolled out, you might have. Or let's say a couple weeks, you might get a group of four people that pop in for it. You could do that, Right?

Right.

And let me confirm.

I don't know about all the different ordinances around the country, but you could still have the restaurant open as long as there's six feet or greater distance. Could you not have three couples come for dinner?

Yes, we could. That's how we do the breakfast now.

Sometimes they're not even in the dining room. They're in the parlor.

Okay, here's the tables.

Yeah.

Worry about those problems when they hit. You know what I mean? Like, you might have a 50% occupancy on the right until you have 10 people. Don't even worry about that rule yet. Right?

Right.

Who cares? I know I can get 20. Let's worry about that one when we hit it. But I think, too, here's the thing. I think this could be overwhelming, right? Mark's like, have a YouTube channel, get a ton of class. And you're probably thinking, I don't even know what my first video would be. Just cook, okay? Cook your favorite meal. And if you can talk about. Have some passion about it, people will like it. And even if you use an iPhone, I don't care. Use an iPhone to do your first couple videos if you need to. Just get used to it. They're not going to be great. First videos are great. Yeah.

You're not going to shoot 20 videos in the next 20 days. I'm just saying, next time you cook that recipe, go, oh, I'm going to call my best friend or my College student at 10 to 15 to $20 an hour to come over and video me while I cook that meal. If there are any worth their salt in their film class at college, they'll be able to break it down into a 30 minute video. And then you can post it on your YouTube channel just once in a while. But you start all the videos that I have. Mark Kohler on YouTube. I started him 15 years ago. You just start slowly but surely. Now I'm going to just cut to it because we're running out of time here. This food opportunity is huge because now you can start having a dining experience for the locals in the area that's Covid friendly. We only allow for six people for an intimate dinner at night. Are you sick of eating at home? Yes. Would you like an intimate dining experience? Candlelight with less than. With more than 10ft from the next person?

With a professionally trained chef. How many professionally trained chefs are there in Abilene?

I like it.

And then as they. Yeah, there you go.

There's one other. There's one other. Sorry.

Okay. And then you're going to say, as they leave with the nice little envelope, saying, 10% off your next getaway. Romantic night here at the Victorian Inn. And here's a free mug. And here's a free cookbook. By the way, did you see we're starting our next round of cooking classes next month? Would you like to be a part of that? Oh, and let me just drop the C word. Catering. Okay. Can I just get that? Go.

Hey.

Oh, I'm sorry. Did you say that you were rolling in cash over there and you didn't need to do something you hate doing? Oh, I'm sorry. You're okay. You've got ten grand a month. No. You're going to buck up and do some catering once in a while of the menu items you want to do, and you're going to start just choosing, picking and choosing the catering you like. Because I know catering is a pain in the butt and it's not fun sometimes, but when you can choose the type of event, the type of food, and load up the car and send Jay out, it's okay. You know, Jay's going to show up and serve it, not you. It's all right, Adrian.

You can handle it.

And then I get the tip. Right.

But I just want to say this. Sometimes in life, we have to circle the wagons, you know, and we're going to have to do some work that we don't typically want to do.

Right.

But it can open up doors, connections and friendships and strategies that could make life much easier when you turn the corner and come out of this.

Yeah, Yeah.

I just. I know it sucks.

Well, that's what you're so wonderful at, it coming up with all these ideas. That we would probably never have thought of. So we're kind of written down. I'm sure there's more I don't think you'll have. Yeah, we appreciate it very much.

Yeah. Now, I'm just gonna say you're gonna have some misfires.

Right?

You're gonna start doing some new things, some new technology, maybe some new different ways of doing things. A cooking class that, I don't know. Maybe Jay lights something on fire. I don't know what could happen. Are you gonna run the grill? Maybe.

I don't know. Oh, no.

You like cereal? Okay. He's not certified cereal, but I think you can have fun. You guys have passion in your business. You love people. If there's people in your bed and breakfast, I think you guys are successful, and that's what makes you guys happy. And I think that'll be the secret to coming out of this being successful. I liked how you said it. And I don't know if it's an industry slogan or what that heads in beds people in bnb, you guys interacting and getting to meet the people. That's why you started this business in the beginning, right?

Right.

Yes. Well, we appreciate you giving us a little bit of your time to allow us to. And I know you've been very respectful and quiet and just, like, smiling while we come up with ideas that you particularly hate or like or not or whatever. You've been so kind to us to let us brainstorm, we'll shoot a conclusion for this show. We're hoping that many people find that Main street, you know, Business rescue is trying to help people get back on top, get back on their feet. So please share other friends and family.

You guys.

Absolutely.

You guys are great. It's been a lot of things. Like I said, we would have never thought of half of these things. You did. That's why you people, like you are so much needed. So needed so much to help small businesses.

We appreciate it. Before I forget, I feel like I need to say this, too. And for many of our listeners out there, having a small business is hard. It's extremely rewarding and wonderful.

I love it.

It's a part of my DNA. But being married and having a small business is tough because you hope your spouse is understanding of the demands of the business and all that. You want to know what's even the third hardest? The hardest of all is being partners with your spouse in the business, and it's tough. And I want to challenge both of you here just as your, you know, anointed marriage counselor. For the moment is, is as you try these new ideas. As one of you may be working harder one night than another or one weekend. 1. Another one of you works harder. It's not a competition. You both are invested in this. And some days one of you is going to work harder than the other. One of you might have a more emotional day than the other. And some of the ideas may be great. One spouse has a great idea, the other one of you has a bad idea. Be patient. Don't beat each other up. Remember that what's most important is that you're in this together. You've got a lot of equity in this home. Worst case scenario, you're going to sell it and head down to Florida to be around the grandkids. And how you hit this in the next three years is going to determine how it's going to look financially the next 15. I think you've got a great opportunity to turn this thing around. There's so much opportunity here you're not tapped into. But that's just my take. Matt, final words. Anything too.

Yeah, no. I want to thank you guys for coming on. It's tough burying your souls and like your business, everyone wants to be private about it. I can't tell you how many people are going to learn from you guys and being open about your business. People who want to start a BNB could really watch this and learn a lot from you guys too. So thanks for coming on and sharing your story. We really appreciate it.

We appreciate it. And our. Our story is ongoing because we still have a business plan to own and operate a hotel and a breakfast lunch cafe on a beach somewhere for retirement. So we're gonna press on and work our little hands.

I love it.

Yeah, cocktail. You know, you'll be out there. Jay's flipping drinks around. You know, he and Tom crack cruise. Just working the bar at the.

You know, I know that movie. I know exactly what you're talking about.

I already thought of breakfast, happy hour.

And yeah, Adrian's out there, you know, making omelets. You know, the omelette station. Jay's running the bar. I can already see it. The Caribbean, you know, St. Croix. I'll be there. You know, give me a call.

As long as I can hear the beat, the waves crash on the water on the beach, I'll be fine.

We'll get one close. Don't worry.

It doesn't matter where it is.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you, guys.

We'll see you.

Bye Bye. Thank you.

Bye Bye.