Biggest Takeaway From Season 6 and Recap of Every Interview 1-14

Foreign. Podcast. My name is Mark Simpson. This is series six, episode 15 and this is the final episode of this series. What I'm going to do in this is I'm going to go through my main takeaways. I'm going to recap on every episode that we have done so far in this series. So let's just recap on the series first and foremost. So episode one, like I mentioned at the start, we had Jason living now. Jason is probably one of the first people that I spoke to when I wanted to find out more about service accommodation. He was amazing in his time that he gave up and how he explained it all to me. And I've probably known Jason the most, next to the guest in number two in this world. And he's opened a lot of doors to me, to a lot of people, which has been phenomenal. I will always be appreciative of the fact for this, the episode that we go through, it just talks about what is service accommodation. He breaks down every single aspect of it. He explains why people are moving towards this model and why it is very successful. Which moves on to nicely into episode two. Trish McGeer was the person who introduced me to Jason probably September 2018. I've known Trish for a couple of years now thanks to another Facebook group that we are a part of and Trish has had a fantastic career and is always adopting and sort of bringing so much value into the property world. She has actually got a course out and I'll make sure that I put all of the information about that course in the in the show notes. I'm not affiliated in any way, shape or form, but I know what she does provides so much value and our people who are on that course and I can see from the feedback that I've been seeing that again a lot of really good results from it. With Trish, what we spoke about was how to approach a landlord, how to approach an estate agent, how to pluck up the courage to go and try and get into this world. Number three, episode three spoke to David and Amanda. David and Amanda's background is in property and they've built up such a good portfolio but now they do coaching on the topic. But the reason why we spoke is all around outsourcing, how the by outsourcing the cleaning, guest relations, so many different aspects of the business, it has helped them grow. In episode four I spoke to Naya of xivu. So Zevu is an up and coming channel manager, booking engine, property management service. And what I like about Naim is That he scratched his own itch. He's got plenty of properties that he manages with his team at payments and he was getting frustrated with the property management system that he was using. So much so. And he's a very clever guy and he's gone and created PMS that is now live and people are using up and signing up to the properties. In fact, one of our latest websites that we have created for boutique rooms uses XIVU and it's the first time I've been able to work with them alongside because we've been able to connect the website to the booking engine and it's working flawlessly at the moment. In episode five, it was the first time that I spoke to a lady that I have listened to. Her podcast followed on social media for a long time. So I was fanboying out a little bit. But it was great to have Elaine what from the HLS podcast on my podcast, which was great. We talked about how she got started in property, how Elaine created a podcast simply because she wanted to learn from the best and podcasts is a great way of doing so. Number seven, I went away from property and I went into the world of MLM and invited Danny Clark on. Danny, fellow Liverpool fan, unbelievably clever guy, although I wouldn't tell him that to his face because he'd get a big head. He has created a really outstanding business. I'm trying to think of the right word to describe it. Him and his wife Liz have created such a great community, such a great group, such a great business. I mean we're talking about multi six figures probably going into seven figure business all around helping people grow their business, network marketing business, doesn't matter what type of business. They are helping so many people in so many different avenues and their VIP life is definitely one I recommend that you check out if you are wanting to grow your business like tenfold. We talked about how to network without being a spammy dick and if your Facebook is anything like mine at the moment, because I'm getting more into the service accommodation world and because when they go on these training courses and they go on these things, they get told to just add people like Shotgun approach on Facebook to network and to find potential investors. Episode 8 Sally Campbell from SA Secrets podcast. Again, another podcast that I tune in on, I listen in and the reason why I love Sally is because she's basically documenting her journey, why she started her love of art, why she chose Progressive as the training company that will teach her more about property and all the other things, why she chose Rob Moore as a sort of mentor and why she believes that he's the right guy for her. And you know, we talk about a lot of different things in this episode. Another good one for you to go and check out, especially if you're on the progressive bandwagon. Episode 9. We then started part one of the Touchstone Education guys. Gordy was fantastic to interview, so be so positive and he shared some really effective tips on how to get bookings for your essay property. One tip in fact, that he shared, which you have to go and tune in to find out what it is, is one that I am sort of just forwarding on to other people when they say I can't get bookings. This one tip, which takes me two hours of your life, is worked phenomenally for him and I guarantee that will work for others. Episode 10, possibly, some could say of an unknown in the service accommodation world, but is definitely one to keep an eye on. Adam is somebody that I actually went to stay with in Birmingham back in June. Me and Laura went down, we had a couple of kid free days and Adam kindly invited us down in exchange for a coaching call, which we did, and it was phenomenal. And I actually went and met Adam and we just discussed in our podcast episode what he does that's different from everybody else. And we go down the route of hospitality, we go down the route of how he gets feedback from his guests pre, during and post study and how it has helped him get so many bookings based on referrals. Episode 11, Part 2 of the Touchstone Trifecta, as I like to call it. Paul Smith, head guy there, you'll see him a lot, you know, really in depth interview. He really talked about some topics that I don't see many other people talking about, specifically when it comes around regulation, health and safety, the pitfalls if you don't get that. And again, we touch upon a lot of things. How his first ever experience with service accommodation was somewhere close to home to me, you know, in Middlesbrough. Episode 12. Anakan, again, really interesting character, part of the progressive crew, does a lot of his own thing. But we spoke about how he runs his whole business just from his iPhone. Again, he has built systems and structure in place. He attributes guesty as a big part of him being able to run everything, all of his properties, which I think is from what I remember coming in at 40 plus due to that. In fact, now that he's grown that he's systemized, that he's structured it, he's now looking at going into Other aspects of property. Episode 13 Benjamin Portsmouth came into my world purely because when I was doing the research for Gordy, Ben reached out to me. He's a good friend of Gordy's for many a year and I asked him some questions that I could ask Gordy that would throw him off. To be fair to Ben, I think he let him off lightly because Gordy absolutely smashed it in the interview. But after it, me and Ben got chatting. Found out that Ben is an expert marketer. He teaches property people loads of direct booking tips, which is right up my alley. Finally, the one before this one, the penultimate episode I chatted to Part three of the Touchdown Trifecta. Abby is just one of those infectious characters and I've been trying and trying and trying all summer to try and get Abby on the podcast. We're able to work out a day. In fact, when we spoke, Abby was in Italy. She was doing a week away with the Touchdown crew, going through so many things, she was writing a book. She's an extremely busy lady, but she very kindly put out, set time aside to chat to me about how she chooses locations. Now, the locations, like I said at the start, service accommodation is predominantly in built up cities because that's where the assumption is, where you're going to get the most bookings. Abby has taken a different route. She's got properties in Bakewell, she's got properties in Whitby and she's going to go to the lakes and you know, she chooses her areas based on where she would take her kids for a holiday. And I love that we've got so many free downloads as part of last season, from Trish's cuddle checklist to Abby's book. Paul and Gaudy all had books to sort of give away, which was fantastic. Adam was offering out some 15 minutes free calls and you know, that's just off the top of my head as there's so many more in there. But again, I recommend you go and check out. So that's everybody, all 14, 15 people, if we include David and Amanda who both joined us in there. Next part of this podcast is to give you my takeaway. What I have realized, and this is the main difference between hospitality world and when I say hospitality world, I mean bed and breakfast hotels, small hotels, small rental properties, you know, farm stays. That's my, that's the world I'm coming from here. And now that we're bringing in more people from the service accommodation world, one of the big things that I have noticed and the big problem one of the big questions I ask is what is the level of direct bookings that comes in now? That should be, on average, maybe about 30 to 50%. You know, at worst, you sort of talking 20%. So 20% direct bookings. Now, what I was noticing, and when I say direct booking, I mean an owner booking, not one that a third party brings to you. So a direct booking, somebody calls you, emails you or books via your website. That's a direct booking. When I was chatting to service accommodation people, the average of direct bookings coming in is 5%. Just 5. 95% of all of their bookings are coming in from a third party, whether that is booking.com, airbnb, an agency that they are working with, whether it is Silver Door or any of those sort of things, somebody that they're paying commission to. And bearing in mind that when you do the service accommodation model, you have to pay rent to the landlord, and that could be anywhere between 400 to 600, 700, £800amonth. So your profit is being heavily cut into by these third parties that you work with. And these parties charge anywhere from 15% to 35% commission. So this is a big key thing that, that I want to be helping service accommodation people moving forward is their direct bookings. And a big way of doing that is by having a website that will work. I reckon 95% of the budget goes towards that. And then they always think about website and marketing last, which, if you think about it, this should be one of the first things that they think about, because it's all well and good, doing the training, getting the property, buying all the things to make it all epic. But at the end of the day, if you've got all the gear and no idea and no one's booking your property, then you're gonna be up Schitt's Creek, because then you've got bills to pay, landlords to pay, and you've got no bookings coming in. And when it comes to a website, they either just don't have one, which is a massive no, no, or they're just relying on the free websites that, that they get with their channel manager. And again, I'm not singling anybody out but Toki Kygo or whoever, they've got a free website and at the end of the day, you get what you pay for. If you're going to pay nothing for a website, then you should expect zero results back. And again, this is what I'm seeing. I do a lot of marketing reviews. I've probably spoken to 100 people, about 20, 30 marketing reviews and coaching calls for people in SA when it comes to the website. And I ask, okay, so how many bookings are you getting from this? Are you using Google Analytics? It's zero. No, haven't got a clue. Google Analytics is what are you doing? And again, if you want to be going from 5% direct bookings to 10, 20, 30, 40, 50%, it begins and ends with your website. So, so that's number one. The big thing that I would say to anybody who's watching, listening back or watching this from Service Accommodation World is invest in a website. But not only do you need a decent website, you need to be doing a lot of the other right things, as in being present on social media, building up your email list. So when a booking comes in, doesn't matter where it comes from, you need to be doing everything in your power to be getting the guest's email list, getting permission, and when you've got permission, actually use it and be sending emails to encourage them to refer you to other people or to come back and stay with you. And the main thing that I've noticed and guest two, Trish McGeer said this, amazingly, what people in the service accommodation of the property world need to know, when you start to offer short stay accommodation, you're no longer property people, you are hospitality people. And again, I think one of the things that so many people forget about here is that you will live and die by your guest experience from number 100% outsourcing, outsourcing your time, building a virtual assistant team to take away the tasks that you don't need to be doing. And if your thing is time, then you need to be doing something about it. You know, we are time poor. You can lose all the money in the world and you can get it back, but one thing we can't get back is time. So one thing that I would love for all hospitality people to do on the back of this is to look at outsourcing. And if you are part of the Boostly Academy, well done. There's a full training video in there. If you're not part of Boostly Academy and you want to read a free blog, please, please, please go and check out boostle.co.uk TAGA T E G Ah, sorry, I'm homeschooling at the moment and the way that we describe letters is so different how you do it in normal person talk, so apologies about that. So the other thing that I think that hospitality owners can learn from Service Accommodation people is the automation side of things as well. So it goes along outsourcing, but instead of relying on people, you're going to rely on things like Zapier, you're going to rely on things like ifttt ifttt.com and all of the automation tools that are out there right now just to make your life easy with email trigger. And that is my big takeaway. And that's the things that I think that people from the hospitality world can learn from service accommodation and what people in the service accommodation can learn from hospitality. Now what I would love is for you to interact. Like I said, we had over 2,000 people download and listen to to the podcasts in the last month alone. There are a lot of people that are tuning in who are reaching out to me and sort of saying that they're going through the back catalog of podcasts. They're learning all the things, which is amazing. But I want to know what you have listened to and what you are putting into practice so you can reach out Facebook. It is Ostleruk. Send a message, let me know. You can email me markusley.co.uk you can get in contact on Instagram. I love Instagram on a daily basis. Twitter booster, the UK LinkedIn. You named it, I'm on there. I want to know what your takeaway has been from this season. I want to know what you've put into practice, who you've reached out to, who you follow, what advice you've taken on board and more importantly, the results. As always, I love to hear and get your emails and find out what you're doing. So please do get in touch. And before you finish this episode of the Boostie podcast, go to wherever you listen to this podcast. Go rate and review and subscribe. Because I'm on a mission now. I'm consistently climbing the charts and I'm consistently increasing downloads on a month by month. I want to make this a regular thing, so much so that I'm not going to take a break between season six and season seven. I'm going to start straight up and for season seven we're going to go back to the normal format. It's going to be hospitality in general, short stay accommodation in general. And I'm going to reach out to experts and I've got some pretty amazing guests lined up already for season seven. So you can come in, people from the bed and breakfast world, you can come back. People from the hotel world, you can come back. The farm stay people, you can come back. Rental accommodation people, you can come back and you can combine with the service accommodation people and you can all join in and listen and take away, of course. Go and check out the Hospitality Community Facebook group. We are. We are just surpassed the 3,000 member mark, which is amazing. It's the best Facebook group for hospitality owners all over the world to have a rant, share tips and advice and I've even got five core videos in there that you can watch to improve your direct bookings. So again, just find my page, go to Hospitality Community, search in Facebook and you'll be able to find that. But for me, this is the end of season six. I just want to say thank you so much to Jason, to Trish, to David, to Amanda, to Nick, Naim, to Elaine, to David, to Danny, to Sally, to Gaudy, to Adam, to Paul, to Ahmed, to Ben, and to Abby for helping me put it all together. I really do hope that you've enjoyed it and as always, I'll be back for another episode very, very soon.