BOOK DIRECT DAY - HUGE LIVE STREAM (4 hours)

Right, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. We are live to the Internet on Book Direct Day. Hello, everybody. If you can see me, if you can hear me, please drop a live in the chat, wherever you are tuning in from, because we are now streaming. Fingers crossed. On YouTube, on Facebook, on LinkedIn. Hello, LinkedIn. I can hear me. So we're definitely live somewhere. All I need for you to do so I can hear some, see some lives. That's all I need. I know we've got lots of people. I can see the numbers, I just can't see the chat. This is what we're going to be doing today. This is Book Direct Day. Happy Book Direct Day. For the last, oh, gosh, I think six, maybe eight, nine, 10 years has been a day. The first Wednesday of February, this being Book Direct Day, is where we all come together as hosts. We all come together as management companies, as people in the business and we talk about the power of direct bookings. Today, since the very early mornings, I've been doing posts, sending emails, giving you templates, whether it's email templates, social media templates, videos, captions, you name it, to send to your lists or post on your channels. And it has been amazing to see these templates go live to the world. I'm very, very proud of every single one of you who has done it. It's not easy to do it, but it is essential to do it, which is great. And let me just share my screen super quick. We will come back to this in a wee second. I will come back to that. Just a little teaser if you want to win a cool prize. Drop a number between 1 and 10. We're bringing back, spin the wheel, drop a 1 to 10 in the chat. I'll explain what that is in a, in a second. So let me just go into the Facebook group and if you're thinking, Mark, what is this Facebook group that you are talking about? Well, this is the Facebook group. We've been in here all week. It's going to stay open. If you want to come and join it, just type in on Facebook. Boost your booking. Special, special virtual summit. This is the thread that we've had going today. So you can come in, put your post, put a link to your post, go and engage in other people's posts, comment like, do all the things, share and spread the word of Book Direct. If one person does it, fantastic. If 10 people do it, great. If we can have 100 people or a thousand people talking about direct bookings today, that word will spread. And who knows, you may get A direct booking from it. You may re educate the book in public about it. And that's the whole point of what book that book Direct Day is all about. I try every year to do something fresh, do something funky, do something new. Last year I put a billboard up in Nashville. You may have seen it. The year before, I did a billboard outside the Airbnb HQ and outside Brian Chesky's apartment in San Francisco. And I thought, well, what could we do this year that would be funky, cool and something that I can do without getting in too much trouble? And I thought, well, let's go ahead and do a massive live stream. So for the past two days, we've been doing cool videos. Today is the big one. Again, massive. Thank you to Frank from Hostfully for Monday, Reuben yesterday from guess Way. Today we've got an amazing lineup. So I'm about to introduce my guest, very special guest. We're going to talk about AI and all of the things that it means for our industry. Then we're going to go have Natasha from Convert your Stay, Damien Sheridan from Scale, Simon Lehman, Brittany Matzig, Rajan Chida. Those two people combined, Britney and Rajan have a million followers on social media. That is going to be a real cool one that we're going to discuss. Mark Lumpkin, Rose Tipka, Danny Roostein and Maddie Rifkin. Now, obviously, this is all going to be live. That lineup may change, that lineup may amend depending on how, how we're going Internets and whatnot. But fingers crossed, all things are being well. And that goes. We're looking to go for three hours, could be longer. If for whatever reason you have to stop, come back, we'll probably still be going live, but the replay will be always where the replay is. The replay is going to be on your LinkedIn, the replay is going to be on your Facebook, and the replay is going to be on your YouTube. So that's, that's awesome. You don't even have to worry about it. It's always going to stay there and it'll be there forever. So you can come back to it at any point, anytime. And you're thinking, mark, you keep talking about YouTube, you keep talking about YouTube. Where, where, where is this YouTube Live? Well, if you're watching on LinkedIn, you can head on over, literally. Click on the Live tab on the Boostly podcast and you'll see here it says live. So we've got the people watching and all of the replays will be in there as well. All right, let's go ahead and spin the wheel, shall we? If you would like to win a very cool prize, we're giving away seeing this book, Direct Day, a copy of the book, Direct Playbook, and what's more, I'm gonna sign this copy and I'm gonna send it to you wherever you are in the world. All you have to do is just type in the number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 10. You can't vote twice, you can only vote once. I'm going to spin the wheel in exactly 10 seconds time. And then when we do that, if you add a lucky number, then you win. If two people have voted on the lucky number, I'm going to pick a name out the hat and then I'll let you know if you won. All right? So go ahead, you've got 10 seconds to do that. And while you are doing that, while you're typing those numbers in, I've also asked the people in the WhatsApp group to do it. We've had a lot of people voting, which is, which is good. So we're definitely going to have a winner. All right, let me. Go ahead, click this. Let's go and spin this, spin this wheel. And if you can just do me one massive favor before we get going to do this massive stream at any point in the next couple of hours, can you please just repost, share, tell people about it, share this into Facebook groups, go and share it around the Internet. I need as many, many people as possible to hopefully discover what we're doing for Book Direct Day and start talking about it. So if you're watching on the Facebook, please go and share it in groups. I'm going to go and tap on this button. I'm going to go and share it into a group now, just to show you how easy it is. I'm going to go share into the. Into the hospitality community. Tag everybody in that. Right, let's go ahead and do this. We've got a lot of numbers being voted for. We're definitely going to have a winner. 3, 2, 1. Ah, number four. All right, so if you were lucky, lucky, lucky number four, it doesn't mean that you are automatically a winner. What I need for you to do is to send me a message on Instagram, which is Boostly uk, on Facebook, Mark Simpson, or wherever you are tuning in from, send me a direct message and just say, hey, Mark, I was lucky number four. Or if there's more than one person who messages me, I will put your name into a hat, probably this hat. Pick a name out And I'll get in contact with you via DM to let you know that you're a winner and how to get the book to you. All right, let's stop sharing in that group, let's stop spinning this and I'm gonna come over to here. All right, so this is what we're going to be talking about today. Let me go and bring in my special guest, Boris. Hello, my friend. Thank you very much for joining us. This is going to be an action packed session. I'm very much looking forward to it. Can you please tell the people that are tuning in with us in the next sort of 30, 40 minutes, what are they going to learn? What are they going to take away from this session that we're going to talk about today?

All right. Hi, Mark. Thanks all for having me. Happy book direct day. Hi everyone listening in. My name is Boris Pavlov. I've been in the industry for quite a while. First as an operator for the better part of seven years. I was lucky enough to scale and eventually exit property management business a few years back. And when I saw how much money I had given to OTAs over those seven years, I didn't get depressed. I decided to make it my life's mission to help other property managers reduce their dependence on OTAs. And that's what we've been doing with Flat Away for the past couple of years. We failed at a few attempts, but now I think we have something going on with, with AI, with the advancement of AI. It's not that we came up with a new way to disrupt this industry and to, you know, enable property managers to make more money. It's just the industry is changing. Everything is changing because of AI, thanks to AI. And there is a massive opportunity out there right now that we need to prepare for. We need to prepare for as operators to take advantage of it. The time is now to start preparing. We will be reaping benefits very, very soon. And that's the topic of the session that we're going to have now with Mark. It's going to be a conversation. It's not just going to be some presentation on my end. It's going to be a conversation where we dive into the future a little bit. So we're going to look ahead, we're going to look ahead to what's happening in the next couple of months, how we should position ourselves as operators to take advantage of the shift that AI is, is causing an industry. And we're going to also have like a more long term perspective of the vacation Rentals industry. So that's what we're going to talk about. Direct bookings in the AI era.

Nice. All right, so let's go ahead and start this. Oh, I've lost your face. One second. I'm going to bring you back. Let me tap this so everybody can see on the screen. You don't want to amaze. We've got the slides that we're going to be talking about. Like Boris said, we wanted it to be not so much just a case of looking at slides and talking. We do want to have a discussion around this because it's something that is very close to heart for both of us. Right. And for what we do on a day to day. But I feel like a lot of you will be able to get a lot out from it as well, because we're going to look into, you know, the future of DAR bookings. We're going to put sort of like our crystal balls in front of us and have a look to the future, but we're also going to talk about how we're going to do this and how we can master this with AI. So yesterday was good because obviously Reuben was talking about how we can be human, still keep that human element with AI. And this is going to be fantastic because it's like direct distribution. And I've had Boris talk a lot about this over the last, I want to say, 12 to 18 months. Every single time he talks. He gives me a lot of confidence in direct bookings when it comes to OTAs and whatnot, when it comes to what we're going to talk about today. So let's scroll down. First and foremost, can you all say hi to Boris in the chat? That'd be lovely. Let us know where you're tuning in from around the world. We've already had somebody say we've got to go. That's good. We'll be back in a little bit. That's fine. We're going to be here for many hours. Let us know where you tune in from around the world. Boris, where are you tuning in from? You didn't. I don't think you told everybody where you are in the world.

Yeah, I'm based in Bulgaria. That's where most of our team is right now.

Fantastic. It's. It's amazing place. So fear Bulgaria, right?

That's right, that's right.

And you've got a conference coming up in a couple of weeks. Do you want to tell everybody about that?

Exactly. We are happy to host the edition for Central and Eastern Europe of scale as you know, scale is, I think, the largest vacation rental series in the world. Global. They have events all over the place. And we're the hosts of, of the event edition for Central and Eastern Europe. So anything that is sort of like, I would say, west and south of the Czech Republic, Poland in Europe, we're bringing together all these operators on March 27th in Sofia. The last event was amazing last February. So this one, we're going to top it up for sure. And Mark, sorry you missed it, but 2027, you promised. You promised in 2027 you're joining.

I'll be there. We'll bring the family. We'll, we'll bring the family over 2027, make a weekend of it. Fun fact, I, I went on a, a week away before I, I met my wife a week away in Sophia in Bulgaria. I was living in London, like, right, I want to go somewhere in Europe. I just, I was literally on like a backpacker. So I was like, where's the cheapest place I can go to? A flight out of London took me to Sophia. I had an amazing time. I was 2009, a long, long time ago. So I'm looking forward to coming back. All right, let's have a wee look at the first slide. Will one click booking inside CHAT GPT actually work? So what's the story behind this slide?

All right, so the story is something that Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, who is also OpenAI, is the company at own ChatGPT. Sam Altman said that one click bookings are coming to ChatGPT. Now, Sam Altman and a lot of people in Silicon Valley, they say a lot of things and these things happen at some point, but they're never very accurate, never very specific on the timelines. And also whenever it's something that is specialized, for example, in travel, in the travel vertical, they don't necessarily always have the full context. So when he said that, we are not entirely certain what he meant, did he mean that booking.com and Airbnb are going to get integrated so well within the ChatGPT ecosystem that it would just take one click to book with airbnb.com or VRBO, or did it mean that we as operators will be able to distribute directly to OpenAI and ChatGPT? Now, ever since he said that, nobody noticed, like the world didn't notice, but everyone in the vacation rentals industry and travel, we noticed and we started these discussions on how that's going to look like now. The ultimate, ultimate goal of what we do at Flat Away and what I believe is going to happen in the future is intermediaries are going to be removed from the equation. And that's not just in travel. That's going to happen to a lot of industries where the intermediary brings value in terms of distribution to the demand side. Meaning the intermediary takes all of our money as operators and puts a third of that money into Google or Facebook to buy users or to buy travelers in our case. These travelers go to intermediaries website and then they book. So AI is great at eliminating efficiencies. And these inefficiencies in the case of intermediaries, are they taking 15 to 30% in commissions for just that? Distributing a third of those to advertisements across a couple of major players and then getting all the travelers? Now, distribution used to be something that was unachievable by any individual operator and by any startup. Ota. We were an ota. At some point we tried to be an ota. That didn't work out. Why? Because we didn't have the power of distribution. We could not outbid out compete Airbnb and the likes. But right now we have these massive companies. There's ChatGPT, there is Claude, there is other user facing companies with products with enormous adoption like ChatGPT, I think 7,800 million weekly active users that already have the distribution solved very, very easily in theory, very easily. They can just plug in supply of vacation rentals and they can enable direct bookings at any commission rate they want. Now is this going to happen in practice? We're trying to figure it out, we're trying to work towards that direction to build the technology to make it happen. I'm happy to say it's there more or less. Now what's missing is OpenAI saying hey guys, we want to work with you. Because OpenAI has no clue who flat away is as of today. Right. But again, they don't have a clue who anyone is in our industry except for Airbnb which have refused to work with ChatGPT. And that's very interesting. So we don't know what Brian Chesky is playing at, but he does not is not going to work directly with ChatGPT, at least not for now. So our idea is to get your properties from your PMS directly into ChatGPT. And ChatGPT would surface pictures, would surface availability, amenities and everything else that's needed by the traveler to make a booking within the app itself. How much is that going to cost? Of course it's not going to be free and we're not going to be the one charging ChatGPT will. And I have a theory, don't quote me on that, but I have a theory that the percentage will be 4%. Why? They're already doing that on Instacart and a few other similar partnerships where they're going to be enabling essentially bookings directly through the app. So I think a 4% commission is coming. Mark, do you have any takes on that?

Yeah, I was going to ask about that. So basically, from what you can see, OpenAI are opening up, like say one click booking, for example. And with Instacart they're doing a 4% commission, is that right?

Yeah,

obviously. They've also started to do shopping in terms of like, you know, you can go on and you can look for a jacket, click on the jacket and it's click through. Is that also doing 4%, you know, or is that a different sort of model?

It.

Apparently it is, but we don't really have that much information. It's just guesswork right now how much it's going to cost when it comes to travel. Good news, though, good news is OpenAI would be more flexible than Google and Gemini because Google would have to cut, you know, who's the biggest client ofgoogle ads, booking.com. so if Gemini wanted to surface direct bookings within chat, that would mean that Google is literally telling booking.com hey, actually, we don't want your billions every year. We would rather, you know, get in the field and do distribution on our own, of course, bringing about a bunch of other problems that any sort of company will have.

Such as, yeah, it's a tricky one. It's like trying to have your cake and eat it or, you know, bite in the hand that feeds you, so to speak, with it. And I don't know if you've done a. I don't know if anybody has done a search on Gemini. I tried looking for a, a product. I needed something. I can't remember what the product was. I did it through Gemini and when I went, right, I want to buy it, give me the link. It didn't go straight from Gemini to the website. It went from Gemini to Google Search to the website. So if you're somebody doing analytics of your website, it will still come from Google, even though Gemini has done the, the hard yards to get me to that, to that phase which, you know, it wasn't trying to book a stay, but it was just buying like a salary product. But it was, it was interesting that that's the route that they went. But Obviously with Chat GPT, if you're trying to search for something and you get the link, you ask for that link, it sends you straight to where you want it to go. Talking very quickly about these sort of tools and these LLMs. What's really interesting, I, I tried messing around with Expedia and Expedia's a I travel assistant that they brought out. So if you go onto the app, you can go and chat with it and go backwards and forwards. And what's really funny with that one is that I was able to chat to the Expedia AI assistant tool so much, but it actually just told me it was best to book direct and it gave me the link to a Hilton site where I could book direct, which was really funny that that's how you can talk to them so much that they can just go, yes, I'll just go and book direct. It's probably easier. Which I thought was fun. Okay, so will one clip booking inside actually work? So if we're to answer this in one one word, think one click booking will actually work for our industry, yes or no?

Yes. The technology is there today. Will it be ChatGPT or someone else? I'm not sure, but it's happening for sure.

Very interesting. Okay, then this is. I'm going to throw the question out to everybody who's tuning in with us. Simple yes or no. Do you think that one click booking would work within Chat GPT? Slash your LLM of choice, yes or no? Just pop it in the chat. I'd be interested to see and Boris unfortunately can't see, but I'll. I'll run the live poll and I'll let you know know at the end. So let's talk about the next one. And this one is, is personally fascinating to me because I'm a big fan of marketing. I love all different types of marketing that there possibly is. I've tried to dabble with as much as it as possible. Just when I thought I was starting to get the hang of this thing called SEO and Search Engine optimization, working with amazing people like Craig Webb, then at the back end of last year, I discovered these new words, these new little free little letters that made up a word that I didn't even know what they were talking about. Boris, can you just go and very quickly break down AEO, Geo and all the EOs for us, please?

Yeah, I don't know if it makes any sense to do that. But anyway, just for the sake of what these mean, Agentic Engine Optimization, Generative Engine Optimization or GEOLOCATION Engine Optimization. That's. I mean, I've seen both versions of the same acronym. And to be perfectly frank, I just call them Visibility in the AI Era. These are more or less the same things. I'm not an SEO expert. I'm not an expert in any of these letters. What I tried to do a couple of months ago is to gather all the research I could potentially find about how to optimize for LLMs. Because while the products we're working on, it's sort of a requirement, we need to make sure that the websites are optimized for visibility. So I ended up with a bunch of different sources. Some of them may even contradict each other. And that's not what you want to see, is a founder of a tech company trying to build a product and all of a sudden getting contradicting things. What we can focus here, and I like to take this topic from a more practical standpoint, what can we do as property managers today that would ensure that we have better visibility in the AI era? And it doesn't start on the website, it actually starts on the listing itself. We need to optimize our listings the way they appear on Airbnb, on vrbo, on all the platforms where they are, to an extent, where the AI, when it crawls this listing, wherever it does that, or whenever it does it, it understands who this property is for, the budget range, and more or less what the property is. But who it's for is, I think, the single most important piece of the equation. Why? Because every time you're searching for accommodation options Anywhere other than OTAs, you are speaking to a chatbot that already knows you. And that chatbot is tasked with finding the property that you want according to your preferences. They know who you are, they know if they're traveling, if you're traveling with family or with friends, or you're a solo business traveler, they know all these things about you and the purpose of the particular trip. You may not know the bot, may not know it, but you would share it because you'll say, hey, I'm traveling to London for a conference. So making sure the listing is optimized is the most important part. And make sure it's optimized for a customer profile, like a guest traveler profile. So that's when it comes to listings on the website itself, there are little tips and tricks we can do, such as FAQs, very short answers to very common questions, things that we take for granted sometimes because we think they're obvious. Well, not that obvious. Put it in Frequently asked question. Put as many of those as you can because that's where usually the crawlers go to find information. There are these crawlers. It's super interesting to see even the impact on the hosting costs of a website where when the crawlers find it and they start crawler is this. Think of it as a spider. It just goes all over the website and just gathers all the information. FAQs are super, super easy for the machines to read. What else is easy for the machine to read? Well, any machine readable text. When you're building your website, I think it's as important the design and how it looks and feels to a human being is as important as the structural components. That was also valid for SEO, Mark. You know that, you know and it's more important than ever to be able to show the website to a machine and to deliver all the essential information about that website. Another thing is Google Maps, Apple Maps, all sorts of maps out here. Well, open street maps. Let's limit to these three. You need to have your business details straight on there, make sure everything is matching across the board. That's not related to your website, that's related to your business. And this is free advertising, free optimization for being visible in the AI era. I wouldn't dive in too much into all these acronyms because it really does.

Well, if you're wanting more on this. Well, in a couple of, let's say be about an hour's time, maybe about an hour and a half depending on how long we go with with with Natasha and Boris here. But Damien is coming in and he's. And I've asked him to break down what a successful direct booking website looks like in 2026. And one of the things on his notes that I' to talk about is the power of the faq. And this ties in really nicely with this. And just a little note there, if you didn't pick up on that little tip, it's a big one. Go to Google business listings, go to Bing business listings, go to all these maps and just again, just make sure all the information marries up and it's the same. When this new AEO Geo thing kicked off, I went and dabbled with tools like Uber suggests Peak AI and a few others. And I was really fascinating to see how these models are getting their data sources from now again, spoiler. What was the. What was there in 2025 has changed now. So it was, you know, Reddit was a massive source for whatever reason. Now it's YouTube. I mean it changes all the time. But for the. The big thing that I have learned in a short space of time is that the more places around the Internet that are talking about you and your brand in a positive light, married up with it all matching up together, you've got more chance of it. It's seeing you now. A lot of it is potluck. I saw a post in a Facebook group a couple of weeks back, a Facebook group in America, and they just said, somebody called me, they wanted to hire me for my management services and they said that they discovered me because they were the top recommended on chat GPT. He had done nothing to optimize for that. He just said it's potluck. And again, like we and Boris and I could give you loads of information that we know is true today, but let's just say you come and discover this video in six months time. It's probably all changed. It's moving so ridiculously fast. But be aware of it, be wary of it. And I feel like the biggest takeaway that I could say to you right now is go into chat GPT or Gemini, do a private mode search. So don't do one that where it knows all about you. Do a private mode search and just type for search results in your area. For example, management companies recommended for properties in wherever or places to stay that aren't the big chains in wherever. Just see what comes up, see how they come up, see where they come up. And make sure you do it in private mode and not normal mode. Anything to add to that, Boris, before we move on to the next slide?

Yeah, that totally spot on. One thing to add, if you're creating content for SEO purposes and you're just plugging into ChatGPT, hey, write me a blog post on this and that topic and then pasting it in your blog. That's not great. That's not great at all, actually. If you, if you go on my LinkedIn, I made a post about this show earlier today. I think three or four of the people who commented on that post, they were not people. I mean, they're people, but someone else is commenting. I can spot this. Like, they're not my first level connections. Their comments are so broad and vague. They look, they feel human. Like six months ago I would have been 100% sure that those are human because they didn't have the, you know, the, um, dash, the dong dash, which is, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right.

Yeah, don't do that. Don't copy paste slop from AI into your blog.

I Think this is very off topic, very like tangent, but I've been saying this for a while. There's going to be a case in point in time in the near future where you will receive a digital message and you will doubt for the first time whether it was from a human or from a robot, whether that's a comment, a DM text message, email. And there's something to say about that. And I've spoken about it lots on the channels, but I think it's interesting. Okay, let's move on to the next one. AI Travel Planners breakthrough or dead end? So what's this about?

Well, you know, these travel planners like Layla and Mind Trip, we've been trying to get in touch with those and trying to distribute inventory directly to them. But I mean, I don't know, it seems like they're not interested. Maybe it's just they're not interested right now, but it seems to me, I don't want to accuse them of anything because there's a bunch of AI travel plans out there. But it seems to me that the shortcut that they're taking is just go with the OTAs. They cannot handle supply on their own and their value is not really in finding the right, the best accommodation at the best possible price. Their value is in finding a good accommodation and making the whole trip around it. So the value added on top of what ChatGPT would do for you or any other LLM today is very, very little. I'm going to keep this one very short, but I know that it's been a topic for ages, like, hey, this AI is going to plan my entire trip. And there are all sorts of wrappers of LLMs that try to do that. They sit on top of OTAs, which likely means that the inventory is even more expensive than you would find it for on on Airbnb. Therefore, unless one of these travel planners somehow starts working with direct distribution, beats also on the price for accommodation or flights or everything else, I don't think they have a solid future at all. So for me, that would be finally the end of Travel Planners, 2026, 2027. I might be wrong, but the travel plan of the future for me is chatgpt and or of course the travel planner of Expedia or booking or Airbnb, whatever they launch in the future. What do you think, Mark?

I honestly feel that with AI Travel Planners, I feel that there is a massive. I think we're going to go two ways. One is just going to go all in. We're never going to want to speak to a human again or the human travel agent will come back absolute tenfold because people will get so annoyed and frustrated at the process of going through these AI travel planners that they'll just go, I just want to speak to a human. And so I don't know what it's like in Sofia, but in the UK we have town centers, city centers and as travel agents that you can walk into and speak to a human will help put your holiday together. Right? That's been around for forever and you know, whatever your views on that, but I feel like there is going to be well, we could go, I say one or two ways. Either A, they're amazing, everybody absolutely loves them. They'll go to the LLM of choice of a user third party and it'll just be like the best thing ever or they'll go, this is the worst thing I've ever experienced. It's giving me the worst whatever it's giving me the worst rates. I'm going to go speak to a human. And I. And there's a lot of use cases for that with AI and I think that either you know, people are going to go all in or it's just going to revert back to that human, that human touch which again comes back to it we were talking about yesterday and I'll reemphasize it today. We are in the industry of making memories, right? As an industry, there's so many industries right now who are looking at AI going is my job going to be here in 10 years time? I think with hospitality and with AI, we are going to be for the biggest boom ever. It's going to be such, it's going to be absolutely amazing what's going to come our way. We, we just have to deal with what this next 18 months, 24 months looks like. There's still so much nonsense around, regulations, et cetera. And I'm going to be speaking to, I want Simon Lehman to come in and talk about is like the future of our industry. But I feel like with, with, with us, I feel like I say people are either going to love it, they're going to hate it and I feel like those that, that are positioned to be that human travel agent I feel will come out well from the, from the back of it. And when I say travel agent, I'm speaking to everybody here. You are your, you are your local brand ambassador, right? You are that local go to person. You are the, the person that can, you know, recommend people to places to go and visit, places to go and Travel. You can also. This is something we're going to talk about with what. What you're doing here at Flat Away, but you can be like that local travel agent for your area and you can reap the benefits of it. So this is. This is what makes me really excited on this topic and how we're going to go. Right, lovely. All right, next one.

Apps.

Apps within chat GPT. And should we build one question mark? Are you building one question mark? That's the question.

Yeah, we are, we are, but we are because we kind of have to do it and we are either way building an MCP, because unlike OpenAI, we do have conversations with other companies. Can't really share right now which ones, but they are looking to direct distribution and that goes through mcp. What is mcp? It stands for Model Context Protocol, which is not going to tell you anything unless you are into AI. It's essentially a way for AI assistants and LLMs to interact with the applications we currently use. It's AI API. If you've heard about what an API is, the simplest way to think about it is an API, but for large language models and AI agents. Anyway, speaking about ChatGPT apps, the charge Beauty app is something quite simple, actually. It's a. It's an interface, it's an app that lives within ChatGPT, which you can build and. Oh, yeah, if you can. If you show one.

This is the power of the Internet. I was thinking I could just show this. So this is. This is that everybody has it within their own chat GPT, right? Yeah.

I don't know if Euro has it. I go through a VPN still to get the best features, unfortunately.

Allegedly VPNs just in case. Just in case. But this is what apps looks like for most people. You can see this. So talk me through what these apps are. And obviously it says beta here very, very clearly. And if anybody's ever been on this page or experimented, let us know in the chat. So what do we see here?

So you see the initial partners with which they launched Charge of the apps. Imagine the App Store, the one that you have on your iPhone, the Apple App Store, or on Google Phones. You have the Google Store, you can not really download it, but you can add it to your chat. And Mike, you can actually add the booking.com app right there and there. And you can call it just like when you're talking to Charge, you wanted to do deep thinking or deep research or create an image. You can just in the Same way call booking.com app when you call the booking.com app. What's going to happen is you'll be able to search. You do conversational search, which is great. And the way it happens is booking.com has this MCP that connects to ChatGPT and that allows the conversational search and, yeah, conversational search. Now, the problem is, once you find. It's not a problem, actually, it's good for us. Once you find the property you want to book, you go on booking.com's website to finalize the booking. So essentially what they've done is just a pretty user interface which shows you these cards within the chat with the properties, and then you go off and you book on the booking.com website. Every major company is now building a ChatGPT app without really knowing whether a ChatGPT app makes sense for them. Now, my personal verdict Here is a ChatGPT app makes absolutely no sense if you're a property manager, standalone property manager operator, unless you are Sykes or Casagal or someone huge with a huge direct distribution already. If you have a huge percentage of direct bookings, yes, sure, build a ChatGPT app, because some of your travelers, some of your frequent travelers might want to test it out. And that's just another touch point for you. But you would need to build up the brand within ChatGPT, and that's going to be almost as difficult as building up the brand when you have a website. But you're adding this complexity of having to maintain an app, so you need to pay someone to do it. And believe me, there are not many companies out there that are doing that right now because we are not really sure whether it makes sense, whether it brings any value. Now, why are we building a ChatGPT app as flat away? Well, we have about 50,000 properties in our database, so we want to have this as an additional distribution channel for our customers, but that's it. And we don't really expect. We're not going to advertise it in any way for now. And we don't really expect to get a lot of bookings from there because, well, booking.com is going to get all the bookings. Right. So my verdict on this one is you don't need a charge app. If you really fancy one, Sure, I guess we can do it for you, or other companies out there can build it for you. But your return on investment is going to be very low.

Yes. And return on time as well. It's let. Let us test all of this because I know, I don't know if I can reveal this But a company that starts with the letter S and ends with the letter I. I know they're building one. I know there's quite a few. Obviously, Boris has announced that he is. There's definitely something happening at Boostly around this sort of thing and it's interesting. Let, let us make the mistakes, let us eat the glass on this one and then we'll, we'll, we'll come back and share more onto this. But, yeah, don't, don't worry about it. I mean, even if you haven't even mastered this thing called SEO yet, definitely don't worry about it. If you're sending your first email of the year, definitely don't, definitely don't worry about it. But here's, here's the one, this is the one that I feel like everybody should be definitely paying it, paying attention to. And for anybody who's watching, you may be thinking, Chat gp. Chat gp. What about Claude? What about Google? Gemini? What about Grok? What about whatever? Obviously, Chat GPT is the market share leader, right? I know it's obviously lost a little bit, but a lot of people are using it. This is obviously the one that, you know, if you speak to, if you speak to Joe, blogs on the street, and if you say I, they'll go, oh, you mean that Chat GPT. Yeah, that's. You know what I mean? Like, that's, that's where they are at the moment. That's their first move of advantage. So everything at the moment, Chat GPT, we, you have to pay attention to. But I'd be actually interested, actually this nice little point, because I can see we haven't had a comment for a while in the chat. Let us know what is your preferred LLM of choice, Your preferred chat AI tool of choice? Is it Chat GPT? Is it Gemini? Which one do you like using the most? Drop it in the chat. Be fascinating to see, but this one. I saw you go on a podcast and talk about this very recently. I've seen a couple of LinkedIn posts about this and I feel like this is fascinating. So, Chat GPT ads for hospitality owners, property managers. What is your take on this and when can we start playing with this, do you think?

Right, that's something I'm very excited about. I'm not excited about the apps at all, but the ads, I am very excited about them. So, first of all, what is that? It's going to be a snippet below the chat that you have in ChatGPT. It's not going to be included in the answers that ChatGPT gives you, that's a promise by OpenAI. It's not going to influence the answers in any way. Why am I so excited about ads? First of all, when OpenAI announced ads, the example that they gave was a direct booking. They literally said, ads are a great way for small businesses to. With ads, we're going to support small businesses. They don't mean Airbnb, that's not a small business, they mean the suppliers. And they gave an example with a college somewhere or something. I don't remember the exact example. So that would be open to any hospitality professional. Why am I excited? Because if they are going into the ads space, they need a better offering than Google. Remember, they're all competing, they're all intertwined, but at the same time they're all competing and OpenAI are competing in the B2C space. So direct to consumer space. Anthropic Claude is their model. They have amazing models, even better than ChatGPT, I think, but they're for enterprise, they're for companies. We are interested in ChatGPT because it owns distribution. Those 700, 800 million weekly active users, we can advertise to them. And it's still the wild, wild west. Meaning I don't think you even need an agency. Once ChatGPT ads become available, everyone's gonna be in the same level playing field. Everyone's gonna know the same thing about ads. They're going to be cheaper and for sure they're going to be a lot more effective than Google. How do I know that? Because of context. Google Ads, they were relying on keywords, and keywords do not portray intent as efficiently as context does. So when you speak to ChatGPT, it knows what you're doing, it knows exactly what you want to buy, whether it's a book, whether it's a flight, whether it's whatever you want to buy. It knows exactly what you want and it can show you an ad of that particular thing. It's not keywords, where Google is. As good as Google is, it's still guessing you know what exactly you need. So a lot more customizable, a lot more personalized. And because they need to gain market share in front of advertisers, I think much cheaper. So the moment Chat GPT ads become available, I would be, if I'm you, I'll be all over this opportunity. Obviously you'll be advertising your direct booking website, which needs to be top notch, clearly. But you know, that's an opportunity for us to get a cost per traveler acquisition. If I can put it in a more financial terms or cost customer acquisition relatively low. And imagine that if you don't do it, the OTAs would do it and then they'll charge you 15%. Imagine 15% of one booking, how much that is in dollar amounts. And if you had put it into ChatGPT ads, I don't know how many travelers you're going to get from there. I have no idea. But certainly it's worth at least the try because it's an open space. It's not going to be dominated by the OTAs, at least in the first couple of months. So you can get these customers, get these travelers directly to your daily booking website and then you can log them in as frequent travelers. So watch out for that.

Yeah, I think this is fascinating on a, on a, on a number of levels is that yes, you can use it for vacations 110, but obviously for other elements of your business. So if you are somebody that is a management company and you want more homeowners, again, that's super quick win. It's, it's like Facebook ads, like 12 years ago, 13 years ago, if you did it well and did it right, there's a massive opportunity. And if you're a first mover on this, you're just shocking your way to getting the attention because there is a lot, a lot, a lot of activity on this and so be aware it's coming. They'll obviously announce it. So, you know, stay on Boris's LinkedIn which we'll give you the links for later on. Check out my LinkedIn or socials because we will definitely be talking about it. When it is, is a. It's, it's going to be interesting, really interesting. It's either going to be Facebook ads of 2012, 2013, or it's going to be crap like TikTok ads. We don't know if, we don't know which just yet. No, Mark, it's not ready just yet, but it's coming. All right, so we've got a couple more talking points and then we'll, we'll let you go and we'll bring our next speaker in. But what's, what's this one? Collaboration through cross selling?

Yeah, that probably doesn't ring a bell for anyone out there because it's a relatively new concept that a couple of us out there, Mark, myself and a couple of others are trying to introduce to the industry, which is collaboration. What does that mean for a property manager? In simplest terms, it means that if you're trying to Gain that independence to out compete the OTAs in any way, and you're doing it alone, you stand no chance for the very pure, simple reason that you're running a local business. Now, I'm pretty sure most of you in the audience are people who run a vacation rental or a couple, maybe even a hundred. But they're located in One city, maybe two, but that's it. OTAs have a massive advantage just because they are own supply and that supply is everywhere. So how does this collaboration work? Essentially, let's say you operate properties in Manchester, you have people who love visiting the uk. Those people are also going to be traveling to London and to Leeds and to Liverpool and to a bunch of different places. Let's say they're football fans. So they would be traveling around watching football games live and they would need places to stay. Especially they're staying a couple of days now, if you're all alone and you're trying to attract Liverpool. Mark, were you a Liverpool fan? Is that.

I'm a big Liverpool fan. So good analogy. Let's keep going. I'm off. I'm all ears.

All right, all right. So you have your properties in Liverpool, you're hosting a bunch of Liverpool fans from all over the UK and Liverpool is playing in different cities across the season. So you want to keep these travelers but you cannot offer them accommodation. Right? You can only offer them accommodation in Liverpool. So you can create through collaboration. You can create a partnership with property managers who might be fans of different football clubs, but it doesn't matter. For the sake of this example, you create this collaboration where essentially you can advertise their properties and every time that there is a booking that you secure for them at their property, they give you a fee, a referral fee, and that's standard. And that's how you can make additional revenue. One, which is always good. But two, you can solve the biggest problem that each individual operator has, meaning you're no longer a local business, you're actually a platform. You can offer accommodation to your loyal guests anywhere in the world if you can make these partnerships work. Now, in theory, it all sounds good. So you get other property managers that you know in different cities. You're not competing for homeowners, you're not competing at all. You just run the same business in different locations. So you agree on some sort of a referral fee and you agree to collaborate. How does that work? Well, you need the technology to make it happen. That technology now is Boostly Connect. Flutaway has the same technology. A couple of Others also can offer this. Now, it's still the early days, it's a bit clunky, but it works. So why are we not doing that? Why are we not collaborating and keeping any sort of commissions amongst each other? That's the best way to stand out and to really compete with OTAs by instantly getting supply all over the UK, the US, even the world. You can pick, you can choose different properties from different property managers. There is an approval process, you can agree on the terms and you can work together. First, it's an additional revenue stream for you and second, you get to keep. And most importantly, you get to keep these travelers. You know, if the travelers are Liverpool fans, you create a website that's all about Liverpool, that has properties everywhere that Liverpool is playing. And those guys, they're going to book with you, they're not going to go and book with Airbnb, they're going to book with the Liverpool fans. Ota, Mini ota. That's not. Call it an ota, let's call it

a club, a listing site, a club, a membership, a collective. Yeah, there's loads of cool names that we're sort of bouncing around. So, yeah, I do, I do like this. And the best thing is as well, it's direct. And this is what we're talking about before, before a couple of slides ago, is like, if you set this up and you're the person who creates this, you become the go to. You're the one that they will, they will come to. And the problem in the past has been we talk about niches and going very far down in a niche, like having accommodation just for Liverpool fans is a very picnic, a very micro niche.

Right.

But then, then it's like it's going to take me forever to put, you know, a website together to, to get all the properties together. It's. It's a nightmare. So this is why you've come up with the idea of flat away. This is what we're trying to do at Connect. You know, there's Eli at Home Runner. And what Wander are trying to do is so many people in our industry now has seen this, seen the power of what we can do and how we can spin up sites in minutes, not weeks, with this sort of thing. So it's, it's really cool. I mean, collaboration, it's been around forever. There's so many people I know in the UK alone who have got WhatsApp groups for their local area. Liam. Liam, Carolyn massive part of Bruce Lee, he's got a WhatsApp group. For Norwich, which is his area, probably got 10 other buddies in there who also property owners and they, they share bookings. Like there's a movement called Past the Booking. There's a Facebook group called Pass the Booking for exactly this. But the problem is, is that it's stuck behind WhatsApp groups. It's stuck behind Facebook groups. What you've done with Flat Away and what we're all trying to do is take this away from the manualization and have it automatically done with the tools that are available to us so you don't have to do it. So it's fascinating and I love that you're talking about this and, you know, we've talked about it, we've talked about it a lot. I've heard you talk about it on stage and obviously as well podcasts and whatnot. So keep a word, keep an eye out for this. And that's definitely what Flat Away are doing because it just makes it all autonomous and you don't even have to have the properties, which is very cool. So I want to just move quickly on to what happens to the OTAs. Like for the last, I want to say 20 years, the OTAs have taken advantage of a fact that this industry was very inquiry only. This industry was very listing sites. This, this, this industry was. I remember way back when I first got going and I was looking at the family business and where to put our property. If you wanted to put your property anywhere, you had to pay to play. So you had to, you know, you had to pay like a subscription fee, a listing site fee to be on there. The OTAs obviously came in and went, no, we'll just do a commission model, which was amazing for business owners because, like, hang on a second, I don't have to pay anything. I can go on your website and I only pay you. If you get me a booking, sign me up. That's the OTA model. That's, they took it and they, they absolutely ran with it. It's really fascinating. Now, 2026, as we come to the end of this decade, what the future holds. Distribution is not a problem with AI. We've, we've established that. So in your opinion, what happens to OTAs in an AI driven world?

They go from being an amazing, huge global, huge reach to being niche, to being specialized in a particular asset class in terms of types of properties or in terms of types of experiences. Airbnb is probably going to move into, become some sort of a place where you can, they have the services that launched, I don't know what happened to that? I don't know how to going. I guess they're, they're seeing what's coming to them, the disintermediation of the industry. Not just that industry, all industries that, that's happening across the board. So I believe they're going to evolve in something more niche, which is the best case scenario. Honestly, I cannot imagine a scenario where they, in the AI era, where they actually win. Why? Because first of all, any AI that's involved in booking travel will have two tasks, two objectives. A, find me the perfect accommodation for my needs, for my preferences, budget, etc. B, get it at the best price. The best price is the direct price. And now there's no more technology mismatches, no more gating of the supply. It's out there. It's out there, it's exposed. We help expose this direct supply. So it makes no sense for the OTAs to be there. The second thing very important that has changed is nobody has been able to challenge this status quo of the OTAs because nobody had the pockets, the distribution power and the trust. Trust is something that we haven't talked about in this, in this discussion, but it's super important. It's still the reason, one of the main reasons people go and book on OTAs because they trust them, they trust the brand. Now you have new players with the pockets, with the distribution and the trust, the people installing a bot, giving them access to absolutely everything on their computers just because it's trendy and fashionable. I'm talking about Open Call or Cloudbot

or the first official mention of Clawbot in, in Bruce Lee and for hospitality, Chick Clawbot. So don't go Googling it. You'll, you'll get lost in Twitter and you won't come out the other end. I know a few people who have dabbling with it, but anywho, let's, let's bypass that.

We deal with AI all the time. We, we have another computer, we install it on there, but we haven't really played on it anyway, don't touch that. But people trust ChatGPT. People trust these newcomers who have the pockets, who have the distribution powers. And I just don't see why they wouldn't make a small step forward and start disintermediating markets. What they've been doing so far is they've been killing startups at every new product announcement of these large companies. Couple of hundred startups are gone because they were just working on a feature. Same thing will happen to large market intermediaries. So yeah, I mean, obviously I like this to happen. I would like it to happen. Not because I don't like the OTAs or I think, I just think it's time. I think it's time. I don't believe in the value.

Yeah. I just don't think they're going to go down without a fight. And it's gonna be really interesting to see, it's really been interesting to see what booking.com have done with the app going straight into chat GPT and it's really fascinating to see booking.com go to Tik Tok and let people book via Tick Tock. That's big moves. And you know, you can see Expedia with the app and who knows what Airbnb is going to do on their app. Fascinating. We're in, we're in that fascinating time. This decade will go down as being a crazy decade for a number of reasons, but I think by the time that we look at it at the end of 2029, we'll be like, wow, that was an intense decade. And I think for our industry, like I say, if you can get through this next 18 months, I think you'll come out at the other end and you'll be liking what you see. But here's the burning question on Book Direct day. Do direct booking websites still matter in 2028? Do we still matter in 2027? Do we still matter in 2026? What's your opinion?

My honest opinion here is today they do matter. Of course, they're super important. 2027, probably still. But the next point actually is how bookings will happen. And to be perfectly honest, even though we are creating websites, and that's one of our main products right now, and that's how we make a living, I do believe that they would become obsolete little by little. Depends on what new devices we see coming up in the next two years. And that's the most exciting topic in AI, I think in 2020 or second half of 2026, devices, actual robots and other type of devices that are going to become our data use. But I don't believe that in 2028, direct booking websites will matter as much in the way that we perceive them today. You would still have to expose your inventory in certain way. So machines will still need to be able to access your inventory because they will show it to the human, but they will show it to the human in a different interface. It's likely not going to be a browser. Think about it. When it comes to browsers, for the better half of maybe two Decades, we've had Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox, Google Chrome, and what was the other one? Bing. Browsers four. That's it. Nobody even thought of creating a browser. 2025, three new browsers. Things are changing. And the browser is just the first step. The interfaces, the way we interact with the digital environment altogether will change. So I don't think it's going to be direct booking websites, but direct bookings will matter more than ever in 2020.

I think what will be interesting, and obviously we both build direct booking websites, is that I feel like by just gatekeeping your inventory to just your direct booking website in 2028 will be a bad move. You don't want to, you know, just keep it there. You've got to be spreading your inventory around as many places as possible. And it's not just Airbnb, it's not just the booking dot com. It's not just to Expedia and to your diet booking website. And, you know, the writings on the wall. And I feel like the play that we're making at Boostly with Connect and what you're doing with Flat Away and like what Eli's doing at Hudson Creative with Home Runner and everybody who was doing this is. Is having sort of that writing on the wall, that inventory, and having mass distribution of it is going to be the key. And what we talked about up here with the AEO Geo and all those sort of go as in eos, is that the biggest play right now is just having your information as much as possible. Right? So start thinking about that. Definitely. Definitely start thinking about that. And, you know, you don't have to try and build it because that's what, you know, what we're doing collectively and what our friends in the industry are doing. But just pay attention to it, like, keep following us on LinkedIn, keep seeing what we're talking about, because they do still matter and they will still matter. Direct bookings 100 will matter. But if you are just thinking, I'm gonna just put it all on my website and not share it anywhere, that's the. That's the bad move. So, interesting final question before we let you go and before I bring in my next guest, expert speaker, how does travel be booked? How will travel be booked in 2030? So we've got past this decade. All the craziness will have happened. We're coming into the next decade and whether we're still here or not, how will travel be booked in 2030? What's your crystal ball looking like?

I see you mark with your family at the dinner table, deciding where to spend your summer holidays, asking a device, I don't know what that device will be. But just a hint. The guy who designed the iPhone started working for OpenAI a year ago. Yeah, yeah. So I mean he's doing something right. They didn't just pay him a billion dollars to do nothing there. So he's designing something. So there will be a device. I don't know what that device will be. Probably airports in the beginning, but anyway. And that device will just say, hey, you should come to Bulgaria for the summer, we have this amazing beaches, etc, Etc. You'd really like that with your family because you like sandy beaches, you like good food, you like, I don't know, water parks. Here is a cool destination. Do you like it? And then you just see a few images projected somewhere on the wall in your apartment or wherever this thing, project stuff, you say, I like it. It will give you three options for hotels or for vacation rentals. You just pick based on the photos and then it's going to be a done deal. That's it. Obviously the discovery part of travel, it's the exciting part, it's what gets you happy even before you start traveling, you know, planning a vacation. I don't want to remove that, I don't want to touch anything that removes that part of, you know, planning your travel. But you know, getting excited about a new destination, discovering this new destination before you bought the tickets and all that, but buying tickets, making the booking and making sure that you're booking something that fits your requirements, that's going to be fully automated and you're just going to say yes or no and it's going to get booked directly. I want to stress on that it's going to be a direct booking, not

going to an ok, ok. So if anybody wants to have a look at what the future may look like, I think the closest film that I've seen in the last sort of 12 years, 13 years now, is this one, her 2013 film with Hawker and Felix, Scarlett Johansson. I feel like everywhere that we're going with what we're being told, I think this is probably the closest that, that we're going, going to get. If you've seen the film, just put her in the comments and people are watching a replay going, what's he talking about? But this is probably as close as what we're going to get to. If you want like a little, little sneak peek of what the future will look like, which I think is pretty cool and crazy at the Same time. Boris, that was amazing. Thank you so much for that. If you want to go and we talked about LinkedIn a few times.

Yeah.

Come on over to. Come on over to LinkedIn. Let's see if it loads up. Boris, how can they find you on there? How do I spelling your last name?

Boris Pavlov. P A, V, L, O, V. It's not coming up.

B O, R, I, S. There it is. Let's get rid of my why hangry discussion. It's in there somewhere. It just keeps flipping around. All right, Internet. Stop being internety. All right, Boris, thank you so much. Go check him out. Boris Pavlov. Go to Flat Away AI. That's where you want people to go? Yeah, yeah.

Connect with me on LinkedIn. That's the best place because we are going through a rebranding very, very soon. If you want to sign up for the distribution, it's a free product. Go on Flatway AI directly. But, yeah, happy to chat on LinkedIn anytime you want. Mark, thanks a lot for having me. This has been amazing and I really can't. I'm just going to tune in now and watch the rest of the show.

Go and see the comments. Go check out. All the comments are on there. Please can we all show Boris some love in the chat? Go over to Flat Away. Go follow Boris on LinkedIn, because there's a bit of a rebrand coming up in a couple of weeks, so it'll be a new name, but definitely go and check that out. Fantastic stuff. You've got a lot of fans in the. In the chat, so head on over to the live stream. It's over on LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, everything. Thank you very, very much. All right, I'm gonna gotta go get my next guest. My next guest is literally waiting in the. In the waiting room. I need a quick drink. I need to go to the toilet very quickly. I will be right back. I'm going to. What I'm going to do in between my guests, I've got some, like, ad music, right? It's. It's something that we've created. Literally will be on for a minute. Come back afterwards whilst I am going to get a quick drink and a quick toilet break. Can you do me a massive, massive, massive, massive, massive, massive favor? If you are enjoying any of the content that we are putting together for you, I just need more people to be aware of it. All right, go over to Facebook. I think we're here right now. Where are we looking? Are we on the Facebook?

Yes.

So go to Facebook. Right, Type In Boostly uk. Right, Boostly UK Facebook group, you will see the live video is literally happening. Go and hit this share button here. Share it in groups. I've already shared it to free Facebook groups as we've been talking. If I share any more, they'll kick me out. So just go and share in one. If I do it, what if I do it three times, great. If. If everybody who's watching, which We've got almost 100 people from all over watching, just goes onto the Facebook, goes into Boostly and we all share it three times, that's 300 groups we've shared in. All of this content that is coming up today is 100% free. There's no sales pitches. If you come and book a call with with Boostie, great. If not, I don't care. All I want for you to do today is to learn the power of direct bookings, learn from his expert speakers and spread the word so we can all find out and about it. Go in there, hit groups, find a group of your choice to share it with. Don't try and share it in the top three ones because I've obviously shared it in there, but go find another ones and go and do that for me. Totally free. Takes a minute to do. Thank you very much. All right, can we all shout thank you to Boris in the chat? I'm gonna go get my next guest speaker. You'll be. You'll have like a what? Hold music for like a minute and then we're gonna go again. I really hope that you enjoyed that. What a fantastic conversation to get kickstarted with. And just as a reminder, the replays will be available wherever you're watching this. And I'm know for a fact I'm gonna have someone go in. Oh, you put it all in a big four or five hour live stream. How am I gonna watch it back? I will clip everything thanks to AI and I will get all these individual videos up and I'll put them up on a later date to be there and to get that, you need to make sure that you are in this Facebook group, which is the boost your bookings virtual summit Facebook group. Come and join us. Come and find it. Well done. To whoever got lucky number four, send me a message. Right? Let me go do this break. We'll be back in one minute. Sam. All right, welcome back everybody. I've got another amazing guest with me on on this day book direct day. Where, where do I begin? So I became aware of Tasha through LinkedIn. Some couple of LinkedIn posts popped up. I was like, what, what is going on? Who is this person? The, the posts are documenting startup life and I really, really loved it. And Tasha, I think this was probably what, September, October time last year and obviously we got to meet in Manchester at Scale uk which was, which was great. And from there I've just become a massive fan of what you are doing, what you're building, but more importantly, how you add document in this process, the bells and whistles and all of the shit that goes with it as, as well. So what I would love for you to do is number one, explain who you are, talk about the property that you have and then talk a little bit about how you have decided to build a product that everybody here can go and get on. Okay, great.

Thanks for having me, Mark. So I own a holiday property in Cornwall on the coast. It wasn't intentional, it was our home that we had to move. So it became a holiday bet. And like everyone, we sort of have the peak season and then the off peak season and I also have two young children and a partner and I was sat, I think it was probably in November several years ago, thinking, how do I get more bookings? Holidays are booked up, you know, Christmases, etc, the summer, no problem. And then you've got these kind of off peak periods, lulls that just don't get booked, you reduce the prices, etc. But still nothing. Anyway, I really love going on holiday, as I'm sure most of us do. We work super hard so that we can afford to go on nice trips. And I kind of thought, well, if I'm not getting cash in from bookings, is there any other way that I can leverage my holiday home? So that's kind of where the idea started and I started reaching out to other owners to see if they wanted to swap essentially. And to my delight, every single person said yes. And that's kind of where the story started.

So most people, when they don't get bookings, they go, right, well you know, what can I do? Maybe a bit of social media, bit of paid ads, SEO, you decided to come build a whole other product. So talk about like the sort of the idea to making it a reality. Like how have you gone about doing this? Because most people wouldn't go and build a whole of a product when they need some, some booking. So how has it become a reality from like an idea in your head?

Well, first of all, I don't like doing things the easy way. So I make for a rod for my own back. But I mean I tried all the other stuff, it's not that we don't have the social media presence or the direct booking site. So I tried all those things. I think the reality is is unless you are insta famous generally speaking you're not going to have 100% occupancy. So I, I actually looked to see if there were other platforms out there which there were dealing with sort of home exchange. So I tend what I ended up doing was actually using the existing platforms sort of addictively for three, four years and I just realized that there was a huge gap in terms of what actually worked professionally for holiday owners. Holiday let owners where it could just slip in as a layer that didn't make it any sort of more difficult to run with your existing setup. So I decided to leave my well paid job and go all in. I sometimes think if you research too much or look too in depth, you end up talking yourself out of things. So, so I just went all in and decided to start building the platform using all of my experience from the last few years. And as a holiday let owner thinking okay, what really works with my lifestyle, you know, as I said, I've got two kids partner who works full time running the holiday let also run other long longer term rentals. So it just needed to fit in so it wasn't more effort. So that's what I've created.

So we've teased it. So what's the name of the domain? So convertyourstay.com so sort of walk us around like the, the idea for the name walk us around like is it UK based, Is it worldwide? Like talk us through the, the types of owners that you're looking to get onto the property, onto the website. Sorry.

Yeah.

So yeah, convert your stay essentially it's a case of converting what you already own. So we essentially you know, want to help holiday homeowners get more life from what they already already own. So that's where the name name came from and also sort of looking at things that looked cool with, with logos etc. So that worked and essentially our focus is on holiday let owners second homeowners. The, the primary, primary goal is to have properties on board which aren't your primary residence. So anything that isn't your main home works on the platform. So even if you've got an annex in the garden that works, it's about utilizing what's already there.

And so we're now couple of months into the journey. You have very clearly documented the, the highs and lows of creating a software solution. What would you say has been, I say, a couple months in now. What's been your biggest takeaway from, from doing all of this? Like say, being a busy parent, having another business partner who works all the time.

I.

And obviously you're doing this with, with your brother, that, that is being the tech behind the scenes. We've obviously been seeing him set up the microphone just before we went, before we went live here. So what would you say your biggest takeaway has been sort of doing all of this? What's the biggest lessons that you collectively you've learned by building this software solution?

I think when you go into something that you really love, you're so super passionate about it and you kind of, in the first instance, or I did at least anyway, is you see things through rose tinted glasses and you assume that everyone thinks the same way that you do. You know, for me, this is the best thing since sliced bread. I mean, it's totally changed our life. You know, how we travel as a family, the savings we've made, all from what we've, what we already own. And I think what I've learned very quickly is it's so ingrained in the human mindset to see value through one like channel, which is cash essentially. So you either earn cash or it's unbooked. And it's trying to, I guess, get people to understand that there's still value sat on the table, which is just waiting to be used. And I think from setting up a business, I think people on social media make it look easy. And I think even from the social media side of posting and documenting, all of that takes so much time and effort and it's almost a business in itself. So I think, yeah, I think I've learned to be a bit more patient with the process. And I think also you can learn anything, I think, if you're willing. Because I think a lot of people stop themselves from doing things because they think, oh, I haven't got the experience, I've never done that before. You know, this isn't my niche. But I think if you're willing to learn and read and work with other people in the industry, then I think you can do anything really.

And a lot of the guests that I've got coming on tonight for the, for the live stream or this afternoon or tomorrow, wherever you're watching this from in the world. A lot of the people that I wanted to bring on is about building in public and I really wanted to get you on because you are somebody that is building in public and we've got people that are coming on that have maybe built their properties in public as in they've showcased it before they, it goes live. But you are obviously building this, this business live as well. Can you speak to any cool conversations that have come up or any opportunities that have come up? Because you are sort of peek behind the curtain, so to speak. It's not all rose tinted glasses. You are being real. Have you had, have you had any interesting conversations or any cool things happened to you because of doing that?

Yeah, I think I, I definitely think LinkedIn has helped hugely, especially in, in my domain of building a platform which isn't particularly sexy. You know, when people are building their properties you kind of see the, the real transformation of before and after and that's engaging and exciting to watch on, on Instagram. But I think when you're building something tech based, I think LinkedIn is great with the professional networks. I've certainly had opportunities of meeting people that I would never have got past sort of the gatekeepers in the first instance. So, and that's not about posting every single day. I mean, as you know, Mark, I'm

not as much as I try and tell you to post more, I, I,

I am not great and I intend to do better this year, but I think even, even posting occasionally, you know, once a week, once every couple of weeks, I think just opens doors and, and it's not necessarily about selling, it's just reminding people that you exist and what you're doing. And again, it doesn't need to be perfect. I mean, I am by nature a perfectionist, so I do struggle with putting out raw bits and pieces or assuming that it's boring from my perspective. But actually I get quite good engagement and, and also it's the lurkers, it's sort of the people that come up to events who have never commented on your posts, have never liked them, never shown any engagement. And then they come up to you at an event and they said, oh, I love your, I love like watching your journey and what you're doing and you come across really well and you're like, oh, oh that's, that's, that's quite nice.

So talk about events. And so you started to go to these events, which again has been a busy parent. You know, it's not the easiest to, to take time out of your routines and life to go to defense. But can you speak to like the, the conversations that you've had or maybe the opportunities that you've had or the network that you've done by being part of these industry events that you've been to so far?

Yeah, well, actually, you've helped me a lot ready for this year because you created, like this master plan with. With all the events laid out. So that saved me a massive headache. But I think there is nothing that replaces the human connection.

It's.

It's great on social media, you know, and you can connect with people, but you really get to know people when you're at these events, you know, And I think I've only been to a few, and again, some of the ones I went to to begin with, I went on my own and just for the first half of the event, sort of sat quietly in a corner and just took everything in. And then by the end thought, sorry, I'm just going to go up and grab people and start talking to them, because otherwise no one's going to know I even exist. So I think there's huge value of just putting yourself out there also just learning about the industry as well. And I think this is a really nice collection of individuals who really care about what they do in the str world. And everyone's really supportive. I think that's the biggest thing from my personal experience is how supportive the industry is. People want other people to do well. They don't gatekeep with information. You know, it's a tough world out there. And I personally feel that everyone has been just. Just really nice. And I think you only get that from being in person.

Yes, 100% conversations happen in person. All right, so can we all please show Natasha some love in the comments? This is not easy. As you can tell, Natasha doesn't do this a lot, so I'm trying to get her out of her shell to do more of these because it is a fantastic concept. And like, say, go and follow Natasha. How are we spelling your last name on LinkedIn so people can go and find you?

H I, R S C H M,

A, double N. Hirschman. Go and find Natasha Hirschman on LinkedIn. But let's go and have a little look at the website. Right? So I haven't said I've done this. I don't get any of our guests tonight to prepare questions because I want to pop them on the spot. So we've got convert your stay up on the screen now. Convertyourstay.com. i'm hiding the domain here. It's up here. You can see on top here. All right, so I'm gonna give a scenario, right, because we're gonna have people watching this from all over the world, right? We've Got a lot of people tuning in from the uk. We're getting people over in America, which is great. We've got people waking up over in Australia, so we've got people all over the world now, even Dubai, which is awesome. But let's just say we've got somebody listening who's watching who, even if it's on the live or on the replay, they've got maybe 40 occupancy.

Right.

Like you said, weekends, summer, they take care of themselves. But there's a night coming up in a couple of nights coming in February and March in the midweek that is open.

Right.

So what is the pitch that you would give them to go from? Oh, convert your stay sounds like a nice idea too. I'm gonna go and sign up tonight. Like, what's your pitch to them? How would you say to that person?

Right.

This is what convert your stay can do for you. Let's go and give it a go.

I think at its core, convert your stay is just about getting more life about out of what you already own. So this isn't about replacing paid bookings. This is to complement your existing setup and is meant to seamlessly fit in with your calendar as it is. You know, I advocate 100% for paid bookings. We all want those. So it's making use of the nights that would never sell. So it's to, you know, take that extra trip with your girlfriends or your family or your kids, or maybe even just have a change of scenery, you know, with working from home. I think when you remove the nightly rate, it just opens up a world of opportunity. And also what it does is it lets people experience your place in a super happy mindset because they've got it essentially at a bargain. And in my case, certainly people have then rebooked in peak times. So just don't let values sit on the table. I think if you like traveling, you like connecting with people, this is just a little lifestyle hack and perk that. That you can add into your existing setup.

Amazing. So you've gone down a model as well. That was very common back, you know, in 2010, 2011, when I first got into this world of hospitality, which is the you you pay to be on the site. There's no commissions that are being taken. So talk to us about that and why you decided to go down that route.

So, again, comes from personal experience, using existing platforms, also listing my property on sites like Airbnb, OTAs. You know, there's a lot of money being spent and life is tough and it's Expensive. It's even more expensive when you have a family. And at the core of it, I just wanted this to be affordable for people. I, you know, this isn't, this is meant to be a genuine perk, something that people don't even need to second guess about. Almost, almost like having a, you know, like a credit card. You're just earning from what you already do and, and paying a nominal fee to, to get that benefit. So that's, that's essentially why I only had a, have put an annual membership on it.

I do believe that this year is going to be the rise of these niched or micro listing sites. There's a, there's a lot of them because people are getting very fed up with the big, the big ones, you know, obviously Airbnb, booking.com Expedia and they're not going to all leave, but there's a, there's a large chunk of people that will, that will decide to look elsewhere and through convert your stay and from the other providers that are out there, I definitely think it's worthwhile. And at the end of the day, for everybody that's tuning in, the more places that you are listed, the more people that can view you will buy from you. So if you are struggling to get bookings and you're thinking, right, what can I, what can I do? Where else can I get listed? Convert your stay. Very, very, very cost effective. But then there's a high risk that there's more people that can potentially see you in book of you, which is, which is epic and you get to be part of a very awesome startup. So please everybody, head over to convertyourstay.com go and check out Natasha on LinkedIn. Where else? What other socials are you, are you out on about on? Where else can people go and find out more and interact with you just in case they're not LinkedInners?

Well, I'm, well, I am on Instagram and I am on Tick Tock.

Oh, really?

There's. I, I would, let's stick, let's stick with the LinkedIn for now and it will start ramping up along. You can see the journey, but there's a lot of platforms and it's just my brother at the moment. So.

All right, so LinkedIn is the one for now, but obviously a bit of Instagram and even if you can delve into the world of TikTok, then Good. All right, Perfect, Perfect. Really, really enjoyed this. I'm going to go and grab my next guest, but Natasha, thanks for joining us. Thanks for joining us today on Book Direct Day. Love to see it and I look forward to seeing you at the upcoming, upcoming events that are happening in the uk. Thank you.

Thank you, thank you.

Hi. That was amazing. Well done. Thank you very much. Natasha, go check out convert your state, everybody. Right, I'm gonna go and get my next guest. He's just joined the waiting room. This is going to be a good one. I've got him prepared to come with me with loads of good stuff for you. In the meantime, please do go show Natasha some love in the comments. We'll be right back in about one minute, so go get whatever you need. We'll be back in a minute. Speak soon.

Sa.

All right everybody, welcome back. We are cracking on. We are ramping up our book there deck live stream and when it comes to direct bookings, there's a mind that comes up to me more than off the most and that is the person who started the very first Book Direct sort of conference and show way back years ago now, which is Damien Sheridan. So I asked Dame if he could join us to talk about a couple of things, direct bookings and definitely about websites and all that good stuff. And we're going to talk about some events that are going to be coming up this year, which everybody has to have on their calendars wherever you are in the world. So first and foremost, get ready. We've just had a little break. We're going to be talking about actionable things in this next sort of 20, 30, 40 minutes. So Damien, very first and just to kick things off, just give us a little bit of background about direct bookings and you know, from your SEO journey to starting a conference on it and everything else in between.

Thank you, Mark, thank you for inviting me today. Happy Book Direct day. So yeah, for those who don't know my story, I worked in many years as an SEO, a search engine engine optimization consultant for property managers in our short term rental industry. Did it for about probably the best part of 10 years and then yeah, pre covered. That's how far back we go. It was actually only about a month before COVID We had our first book direct show that you, you were there for and many others in London and really grew since then. So yeah, so that's the book direct show. We've had seven now. We have our scale events that many people might know about across the uk, across central and Eastern Europe, that we had Boris, we have Boris arranging for us. But yeah, my one, one of my loves is direct bookings, SEO, everything, you know, really related to property managers kind of regaining control themselves and, you know, taking after taking control of their own business effectively. So, yeah, delighted to be here to talk about websites and book direct. Goodness.

So we're not going to borrow everybody on SEO, because that could be, that could be a massive conversation in itself. But obviously you have looked at a lot of websites over your time and obviously now in the capacity of what you're doing and, you know, people are coming to you saying, hey, we've got an event coming on in wherever, you know, where do you recommend we book? And I'm guarantee you still see a lot of websites, so let's focus on there. That's obviously what we do here at Boostly as well. Now, when it comes to a solid diary booking website from. From all, well, we'll start from the guest aspect and then we'll talk about the business owner aspect and then we'll sort of finish with like the search engine aspect to it as well. So, from a guest perspective, with a direct booking website, what is like the key essentials that you would be looking for and recommending people do on how they lay out their site to make it as easy as possible to do that booking? Let's start there.

Yeah, well, look, yeah, as I said, I'm not going to talk about SEO, social media or how we get people to our websites. I'm going to assume that everybody listening to this has a website and is driving some element of traffic or visitors to their site. So I think, you know, we all know generating direct bookings is actually really, really difficult from your own website. You know, we can have repeat bookings and that's great and probably the easiest way to drive them, but really, to get somebody to come onto your website and book is tough. And I know you have, you know, millions of pounds that you have generated in direct bookings, but I think for the average person who's considering this and has, you know, maybe had a website for a year or two, it is particularly tricky. So really what I just wanted to do was highlight a few things that really help generate trust, especially on our websites and things that I've been looking at for years in my capacity as an SEO and even looking at all the websites of attendees that join us at our scale and book direct shows. So really the main focus is on trust because, you know, your website is trustworthy. But doesn't the average person who hits your website most. Probably not. And we've all had experiences whereby they might jump back to Airbnb or booking and book there, which is Hugely frustrating, but it's because they trust those sites. So I just wanted to highlight some things. First of all, HTTPs or a security certificate. I know you have them in place for all of your websites, Mark, and I think the majority of people will have that now. But in case you don't, please make sure you do, because search engines will flag that and they won't even let people get straight to your website unless you have that certificate in place.

It's crazy talking about that, that one, because that was such a big one, I think round about the start of the decade. And it's one of those things that, like, I remember the amount of conversations that we had to have with people to just go and get it activated on their, on their domain. Luckily for all of you that are new and you're recently set up a website, it's pretty much standard. If you haven't got that HTTPs, like that security thing, I'd be very, very surprised if anybody set up a domain and it hasn't done a standard. But yeah, it's mad hearing. I literally just got deja vu. I've got ptsd. Of all the times I've had to have this conversation with people. But, yeah, that is a huge one.

It's very unlikely that new websites really developed over the last few years will, will have that issue at all. It's normally standard, but it's, you know, sometimes it is sites that are a little bit older, perhaps five, six years, that really haven't been maintained at all. So it's just, it's absolutely essential. It probably won't affect most of the, of the people listening and watching today, one of the biggest things, one of the simplest things I would say is add a phone number, a very prominent phone number to your website. Now maybe we can ask you, Mark, in terms of boostly sites, I'm going to put you on the spot a few times here. By the way, adding a phone number for me makes a website and a property manager or host much more real, less anonymous. You're basically saying you can contact me on this number at any time. You know, I should pick up or I should have some way of communicating back to you, but to make sure it's real and a clickable option on mobile. So, dare I ask, Mark, is that the case on a boostly site or should we just skip?

No, 100% is because the reason being is we have some advantages when it comes to direct booking websites that the OTAs don't have. So if you look at Airbnb, there's No live chat, there's no phone number to contact. Right. Expedia booking.com is the same, but there was a, a survey done at the turn of the decade and they interviewed 15 to 20,000 travelers. And one of the questions was during your booking process, if you had a question, would you like to speak to someone? And over 70% of people said yeah. So when it comes to direct bookings, that's our superpower. We have the ability to offer up a conversation with a human. What I will say is having a live chat box bot box on your website, a button on your, on your website is also advantageous as well. Give them both options and make sure that phone number and that button is on every single step of your booking, booking journey. There's some cool, really cool tools that are available now. Obviously AI has massively helped with this where you can have like an assistant, an AI assistant answer questions for you and there's loads of third party solutions that help with that. We use Go High Level as our CRM that has that built in that you can train these up and that's the one we put on our booster sites. But having both options is great. Just giving that option for the guest to call you and you know, always look on your avatar, who's the person that's going to be on your website? If you specifically speak to Boomers or Gen X, they love a phone number. If you're predominantly targeting Gen Z, they hate picking up the phone and speaking to people, you know what I mean? So we do it on all of our sites. We give the option for all of our customers and hosts to do it and whether they choose to have it on theirs or not, it's up to them, love.

Yeah, that's exactly it. Some people do still like to call, you know, and if you've got a larger property whereby people are spending a lot more money on us or they, you know, they're going to have a big group of people, for example, they need to ask certain questions that one of their buddies asked. Just give them the option at least. You know, chances are you may not get many calls, but at least give people that option. Yeah, and really kind of alongside that, just, just making your, your website less anonymous for me is really important. So a couple of things on that. Having an About Us page I think is, is absolutely vital. Make yourself more real and with photos as well. Again, I'm sure there's a couple of people watching here might say, I don't

want my photo on website.

That's the last thing I want, I don't want people knowing all about me. But there's a reason people do this. It makes you much more credible, much more relatable. And you know that you have a team of people or if it's just you, you know, I rented an apartment in south of Spain for many years and it was pretty much just me, but people knew me, they got to know me and they know who they're speaking to if they, you know, click on that phone number as well. So add an About Us page.

That's the one part that I'm gonna kick back on this one. We, we stopped doing About Us pages. And I'll tell you why is that we all know that the majority of people start their search on mobile phones, right? So if they're going to search for a place to stay, they start on a mobile phone and they're not always going to have wi fi or 5G, right? And the phone reception may be a bit, whatever. And we looked at our stats and we were very lucky that we can look at a lot of websites when we come up with, with, with a synopsis. And we found that by having your homepage, which is an absolute standard, by having more pages in, the potential booking process was actually a large factor on why people were bouncing. Number one, people weren't going to the About Us page, which is interesting. They go from the home to the map, right? Or they'll go from home to a specific property page. But they weren't really going to the About Us page. So we got rid of it. And what we did was we had a section on the homepage that was a very solid section where it's about the owner. So it's not a full dedicated page, it's a solid section on the homepage. And we turn the homepage into like a really cool, almost like a magazine where you start at the top, you've got your hook, you've got the above the fold and you get people to scroll down. So a little bit about the properties, about the business, how it can, why is it for them. And then just below the actual properties itself was the About Us. So it's a nice big picture of the host or the host and their partner, or the host and their family, or the host and their team. And there's a good solid paragraph on that. But we didn't need anything more than that. What we instead did and encourage all of our clients is obviously to utilize social media as they're getting to know the business, getting to know the host, getting to know the team, whether it's through Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or whatever. And that's what we did in did instead. And we did it purely for an optimization of the website, just purely because the amount of time that pages can get to load from home to about us. As we all know, the attention span of humans now is less than three seconds. And if a page doesn't load within three seconds for whatever reason, they'll bounce and they'll go. And they'll go bored and they'll go somewhere else. So we do believe in about us, but we don't believe in a dedicated page to it.

Yeah, that's fair. As an SEO, I would disagree on that. But I think that's what this is all about. I think additional and optional pages for people to visit is always important, but that's a really good point. But alongside about us, I think we need to think about how people are contacting you. I see so many websites out there where there's a contact page and that's great. And you jump on to that page and it's just a standardized anonymous form to say contact us. And if it is a subject, there's a field for your name. There's probably a hundred fields, actually far too many. But it's just. There's no mention of who you're contacting, a phone number, details of that property manager or host. So with that contact area, if it's on your homepage or if it's a specific page, just make it a bit more personable and just, just give someone a bit more information about you and not just a standardized form, which is so dull and so anonymous and boring.

Yeah, on that we don't. We got rid of the contact page as again, because again, contact pages, it's 9 out of 10 times boring. Nobody really, you know, if you do it well, you can have your contact information on every page without having a specific page of a, of a, of a contact. And what we're finding as well is with contact forms that were on your website, they were an absolute gateway to getting malware on your site. Just, you know, these bots and these, whatever these scammers can get in in many ways to your website. But, but coming in through your contact forms was one of the most easiest ways to go about doing it. So we got rid of contact forms. We just had your phone number, live chat button instead. And as long as you have that information in regular places in your footer and around the sites, then it was a. You didn't need a contact us page.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah.

But I think you still see it. It's very, very common just to have that just standard concept contact us page with, with a form and nothing else. And it's, it's a terrible user experience.

Yes, good. I like this. All right, so we've gone through ht, PPS security, phone number, about us contact page, a little brief, little mention of SEO, which we are going to come back to at some point. But what's the next one?

I don't want to send people to sleep with SEO, but we can get back to it. Trust us, Paige, why trust us again? We know we're trustworthy. But does your, does your prospective guest. Most likely not. So give them the reason why you're trustworthy and that's not only just a bit of information about you, but tell them about your accreditations. Tell them how they can verify you. Are you IPRAC approved, for example, or do you have a company registration number that they can look up and see details about your company. Tell them you take credit card payments or PayPal payments, for example, so that they're protected using something like Truvy or some kind of verification or insurance. Give them the reasons to trust you and don't just assume that they will because they don't. You know, the vast majority of people that come to our websites, they don't trust us and they'll go and they'll book where they feel like their money is secure. Let them know that they're secure with their experience on your website.

Yeah, definitely. The trust you have to get over straight away. We find. And I don't know if I'm spoiling your. Your upcoming things, but reviews work really well on this. That was my next one. How is it? All right, well, let's combine it but 93 of people of all purchases that are done online are on the back of social proof. So if you want to block off trust, great to have reviews. We'll. We'll talk about that in a second. But you mentioned two companies, so IPRAC is an accreditation blockchain certification, whatever that you, you know, you have to have it on your site. It's unique to you to show that you've come through that other people, a lot of our clients, they'll whack up their super host badge, which is again, it's cool as long as it doesn't link off anywhere.

That's cool to have, like exactly.

As long as it doesn't link off anywhere. That sound by us. Obviously I'm not a fan of it. Being there. But you know what needs must any awards that you've won obviously have them on there. And as long as it's not just spamming the site, as long as it looks good in a special section. Again, we don't believe in a special specific page, but a special section on that homepage, it always does, does well to build that trust. Because you're right with any business, if anybody's going to separate themselves from the money, especially if it's going to be a stay and especially if you're going to be bringing your family with you, you know, partner, kids, grandparents, whatever you want to make sure that the place that you are staying at is actually going to be there. And it's, it says what it says it is. And so if however you can eliminate that fear factor, build that trust between arriving on your site to then check out. Brilliant. So trust. All right, let's combine it with reviews. So what's your opinion on reviews on sites?

I think we're long past the days of just type manually copying and pasting reviews you have into a reviews page or onto your listings. It needs to be a lot better than that. So you will know of services like Reviews with Christophe aggregators where you can bring in your, your reviews from Airbnb, from Google, from various sites to all show up in your website on your listing pages. Just tools like that where you can show hey, I, I am a super host or I have got a 4.8 on such and such insight. People need to know that. They need to know that you are, that you have a really good offering and that you're a sound, credible host.

So I've got some breaking news that I can reveal today on Book Direct Day. We've been in discussions with Christoph and the team for the last couple of weeks now. It feels like years, but last couple of weeks on how we can utilize reviews at Boostly for our clients because we've been using a tool called ELF's site. We've had a special agency agreement with them for, with elfsight for ages. We just could put unlimited sites on there for X amount of money. Elfsight have just very recently come to us and tried to absolutely catapult that price up. And so I went to Christoph and said what can we do? And we've worked on an agreement and we are literally, if I haven't done it by the time that you all watch this, which is obviously Book Direct Day, I'll be in May. So we're gonna basically have reviews working on Boostly sites, which is Cool. So we're going to have all of the Reviews which is rev1 r e v y O O S We're going to come onto the site which has got again the cool thing about that solution is it's got massive SEO benefits which we'll talk about. But also as well it means that I can work with a company that is specifically designed for this industry. So we're really excited. All boostly customers are going to get moved over automatically. You don't have to do anything, which is, which is cool. And yeah, we put reviews on the sites because it's, it's huge. Like I say, 93% of people of all purchasing decisions check on social proof and reviews is one of the easiest ways of doing it.

Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Breaking news. Breaking news. All right.

On reviews, one other thing I would, I would add is consider the power of video reviews, which nobody does. Ask your regular guests will they send you a short video with a review of them in your property saying how much they enjoyed it. You know, if they, if it can be with a view in the background or you know, in front of your nice pool table or something like that. But it goes such a long way in terms of putting that on either your homepage or on your individual listing pages where people can actually see themselves in that particular spot and they see someone else has been in there.

It does.

So it makes such a difference in terms of giving people that, that sense of trust for, for a particular property. So consider video reviews. For those who see me speaking about this at conferences, I apologize, but it's something I bang on about and have been for about three or four years. Still less than 1% of property managers and hosts actually use use it. But you'll be surprised at how many of your, your regular guests especially will do this. No problem. They'll send you a little video on, on WhatsApp. Use it. And honestly it can, it can give you so many more bookings. I've seen some companies increase their bookings on particular listings by 40%.

Yeah, it's definitely untapped and there's so much you can do with a video as well. And again, people will trust it because it's come from a person and it's not an AI video. Which, which other thing to get into but talk. Talking about video as well is that you can put it on YouTube. YouTube is a search engine in itself. And again it just goes further. People love it. You can turn it into multiple layers of content for your social medias and again it's It's a, it's a, it's a one of those easy little hacks and if you have to give a little incentive to someone to do it, so be it. Send them a bottle of wine, tickets to your favorite football team of choice or whatever. It's like it will. The return of investment on that is. Is huge.

Yes. So absolutely do explore it. Connect with me on LinkedIn if you want and I'll give you some examples of some companies who have done this off the back of me speaking. And it really the most important thing actually here it does not need to be a professional production at all. In actual fact, it works better if someone is just doing it from their shaky phone. It looks actually a lot more real. So yeah, so please just explore it, especially with those who are likely to do it and they are your repeat guests. I've got so many things here Mark, but maybe we should if we want to talk about SEO. I'll just. Couple of final just things on websites. Email address. Craig Webb mentioned this in Manchester at the Scale UK event. Have a customized email address. Don't use a Gmail address. If you've got a domain, get the email address for that domain, even if it's just info. Or Dave at Having a Gmail address listed on your site for content contacts is not a good idea and it just doesn't scream professionalism at all. So get a customized email address. It's really cheap. It's a few quid.

Yeah, exactly. It is so simple. It is amazing how many people come through the boostly universe and they are using their Outlook or Gmail or whatever as their business email. So again we're getting everybody professionals on this one and again just takes two minutes to do super simple go and go and see set that up which again is a nice, a nice little one. All right. Have you got one, One more before we talk about

one more.

Have a book now button. Make it prominent on the site. I guess that's possibly one of the most important things. Get the flow right, you know, make sure that is very easy for them to see where they can book and, and also I'd say alongside that make sure the booking funnel is as simple as possible. So you're not asking for too many things. Now I don't know with, with the boostly booking Funnel or many PMS's out there, how many clicks it takes from start to finish but simplify it and just get the information that you need. Again, I see so many sites that are asking for details like your job and you Know your, your title and things like this. Don't have like 10 or 15 things that you're asking for for. Just get the essentials, the email address, phone number, name and payment details. You know, you, you can do your upsells later on and you can find out, you know the requests and stuff like that. But, and don't get them to have to register like that. So yeah, keep it simple and make that booking Book now button very prominent.

Absolutely. I feel like the biggest mistake that we see when we're doing order in of websites is the Book now button is, is there but it's hidden which is mad. Like the key to any website is you've got to be able to within the first three seconds of somebody opening up your website, know who you are, what you do, how it can buy. And the Book now button, a super simple hack takes 10 minutes to do. Change the color of the button so it's different to the rest of the text on that top line of the header. It's so simple, you got to make it stand out and it's got to be in the top right hand corner. For whatever reason, when people are making purchasing decisions with websites, our eyes naturally go to the top right hand corner of a website. So obviously if you're on a laptop, this is why everybody's checkout section is in the top right hand corner. So if you go on Amazon, go on any site, the checkout section is in the top right hand corner. So you have to do the same on your, on your website and make it a different color so it stands out. That is key. And yes, the booking flow, we try and make it as simple as 1, 2, 3. And this is where having Goliath like Airbnb, Verbo, booking.com, expedia, Marriott, it's fantastic because we can just go and look at what they're doing and mimic it. And if you can have your website as simple to book as homepage map listing checkout, you're good. Again, don't try and make it hard, don't try and make it confusing because when you confuse, you lose. So definitely aligned on 100, aligned on that. Right, so let's very, very quickly talk about how and where you see in this world of AI in 2026 and these new things that people are talking about. People have just managed to figure out what SEO stands for, but now they've got to learn this thing called Geo and LLMs and whatnot. How important do you see personally from your own personal view? Search engine optimization, doing your website so it is readable by Google, Bing etc. How important is that when so many people now are going to chat GPT or Google Gemini Perplexity, your large language model of choice to search for websites.

That's not really important at all jokes. It's still hugely important. Absolutely. I personally believe for the most part that as long as you, you're doing a good job with your SEO, you should be picked up by LLMs.

This is.

If you've built up a sense of expertise in your local area, you'll have heard of eat just building up that trustworthiness and authority in your, in your given area or whatever it is your website is talking about. From what I'm learning, the main difference is mentions. So whereas with traditional SEO, links were hugely important and it was all about getting links, links into your site, third party links and follow links, etc. And as SEOs, we looked at that for many years and keywords, etc. It is a little bit different with LLMs and we're all still working that out. You know, don't let anyone tell you they've got it nailed because they don't. We're all still figuring out what it is that actually LLMs pick up on. I'm reading a lot about YouTube and Reddit being some of the key indicators, but it's still, you know, nobody knows exactly that said mentions are important, but Google still has a monstrous amount of traffic. So let's not all think, oh, we need to now be looking at ChatGPT, that's where it's at, that it's one of many distribution channels and we've also got to think where are people actually likely to book? Are people ready yet to do everything or can they even through LLMs? I think we're some way off that still. So whilst we want to be mentioned and we want to be to have distribution channels get the basic SEO right. When I say the basic SEO, that's another two hour, you know, session in itself. But I think the, the principles haven't changed significantly but we do need to, to look in, in different ways as to how other sites are mentioning our brand and, and I think brand is really important here as well because it's not just, you know, Jim's place in Sheffield. You know, we, we do need to build brands up more in order for LLMs to, to understand the, the, the importance of, of us and why they should be including us in, in an answer to a prompt.

It would be amazing if there was a gym who's watching this in Sheffield Right now and is pricked. So let's talk about. Because obviously there's a wealth of knowledge that you have and obviously doing scale for so many years. There's like a wealth of knowledge that have been shared at these sessions and you've decided to put it all in to this community. So very quickly talk about scale, the community where people can go and just give like a little synopsis of the events that are coming up this year with the Scale brand and what on what you're trying to do this year.

Yeah, well people have seen. Boris speaking. We have an event coming up. The next one actually is in Sofia in Bulgaria at the end of March. That's for our Central and Eastern Europe, European kind of market. But we have events. We have I think eight this year. Eight or nine. Uk, France, Dubai. I know I'm going to miss some here. India, we've got, you've got. We've got a lot going on. Essentially they are events for professional property managers. So those who are doing this full time usually have about 10 plus properties and we bring people together for two days. You've been to many of them now Mark, for really just two days of networking with like minded ambitious property managers who really want to grow but learn from each other as well as all of those extraordinary speakers that we have as well. So we have, yeah, lots of events. The Book Direct show is not sure this year exactly how that's going to work. We might have a little hiatus this year but we've also got a. Yeah, we've got a community that we're redeveloping at the moment. We've got the Wire which Louise is working on, which is a news outlet now for the short term rental industry. We got a supplier directory coming out at the moment called Connect. We've got a lot of little things happening but yeah, if anybody out there is interested in joining one of our events. If you just look up the Scale show events calendar you'll be able to

see and that's scalerentals Show. Head over to them, go and check it out. And Damien is Damien Sheridan. S H E R I D A N on LinkedIn. Go out and see all the stuff that he puts out on, on there and any final little words before I let you go and get my next. Go and grab my next speaker.

You put me on the spot there more than anything. No, I just. Look, it's always nice to be involved. Book Directors is kind of where. Where my heart is. All due respects to our OTA partners out there. I think it's really important that everybody out there should just at least be looking at distributing their inventory across different channels. You know, we know that the big OTAs are really important. You know, I think actually my main message here is let's not whinge about the OTAs. Let's not complain. You know, it is what it is. We're in a situation where we live in a sharing economy. There's always going to be some behemoth, some big companies at the top. You know, think of Uber, you think of, you know, Deliveroo. These are companies that, you know, have done an amazing job in the OTA space. Airbnb and Booking have pushed our, our industry forward like we, we could not have imagined 15 years ago. So let's actually, for me, let's be appreciative of that, but at the same time, and let's use them. But they are tools for us to use for our business. And let's not make it the other way around, whereby we're just abiding with all of their algorithmic changes and having to do everything the way they want. Let's shift it, let's make sure that they are tools that we use. But we explore all those other ways that we can drive direct bookings. And there are an infinite amount of ways. You've been speaking about them for years, Mark. I have been. SEO is one of thousands of ways we can push more direct bookings.

Yeah, absolutely. Because at the end of the day, and this was Phil Canard at Future State told me this and then Auto Rank backed it up 65 of all bookings that are direct start their search on an ota. So you need to be on there. It's all about the billboard tactic that I spoke about. Loads of boostly over the years, but you got to be on there to be able to, to grab that attention, to then take them from that part of the funnel to Google to your website and everything that you've laid out in this last, what, 30 minutes is exactly what you need to have in place to turn a looker into a booker. The problem is that only 0.4% conversion rate from a traditional vacation rental website. So if you can do these things, then you can get that conversion rate up so you don't have to get so many people to your site to be able to turn it into a booker, whether it's first time or repeat. But brilliant. Go and check out scalerentals. Show massive thank you to the scale family that's helped put this all together these past few days alongside obviously Hostfully guest way and flat away, but we'll let you go. Right, I've got my next speakers, just joined the green room. Damien, thank you very much. Can everybody just say thank you in the comments in the chat and we'll see you all very soon.

Foreign.

Welcome back. We are here with another session, Book Direct Day Live Stream and I've got with me a very special guest to my right, to my left, however you're looking at this Mr. Simon Layman. So for those of you that, that don't know, Simon has started a podcast over the back end of last year, one that I am a massive fan of. Definitely go and check it out as well as finding out more about Simon. If you don't know already, Simon, just very, very quickly give us the name of the podcast, give us the, the name of the business, what you do and just a very quick synopsis of the many years that you've been in this industry, my friend.

Yeah, absolutely. It's great to be here. Thank you Mark for having me on the Book Direct show today. I've been in the industry for 20 years now, so it's scary. Actually. I'm entering the 21st year. I'm running a short term rental and vacation rental consultancy firm called AJL Aptelier and we consult property managers, tech companies, literally every stakeholder within the STR space on a global basis. Matter doesn't matter, size doesn't matter. We're the personal connections and the need of support or willingness of getting support is what's most important. I also have started a podcast last October called STR Global Unlocked. Obviously it's a global podcast. We're looking at the global aspect of the STR industry, prop, tech, real estate, vacation rental, STR and hospitality at large. And, and that's what we're doing. And I'm based out of beautiful Zurich, Switzerland. Excellent.

Yeah, no, it's a great podcast because you have such high level conversations. The one that stands to mind was the conversation with Glenn Fogel. Obviously, you know, wanted to head head honchos over at Booking holdings, which obviously is part of booking.com. so I feel like the conversation that we're going to have today, which is like, like a sort of a looking ahead to 2026. Obviously we're in the first two months of this year. So many hosts who are watching this, whether you've got one property, 10 properties, 100 properties, they're all gonna want to know what we're looking ahead to. We've had so many conversations so far about social media AI and all of the things. But I'm excited to get, get your take because you are very, very knowledgeable about this. So let's go straight in. A lot of the people who are watching this, they fall under the category of being either hobbyist hosts, professional hosts, and then we've got the professional operators, which, you know, it's 100 plus properties. Regulations are tightening.

Right.

Costs are creeping up, margins are getting thinner every year. So from, from your viewpoint, do you see this as the point where the casual hobbyist host side hustle can actually make it this year or are we basically at that breaking point where if you're not treating this like a proper business, you're not in this industry at all? Like, what's your take around the hobbyist host?

Yeah, that's a very tough cash question and I would like to look at this through a reality lens. Let's put it this way. I think for a long time, the way I look at it, the short term rental industry allowed hobbyist behavior to survive because demand growth covered a lot of structural weaknesses. Right. I mean, post Covid, there was very little we could do wrong. And then obviously a lot of small. The entry barrier of our industry is still incredibly low. There is nothing required apart from a property and you're off to the game. And I strongly believe that phase is over. So you already alluded to that There's a reality in 2026 which basically are aligned with my prediction podcast that I've just screened last week. Funny enough, talking about where is things going and I think higher cost is something that drives that as well. Tighter regulation is another one more demanding guests, you know, I mean, we also have more demanding guests post Covid as well. And safety standards and communication and unit level economics are going to be absolutely key for 2026 if you ask me.

Yeah. And I feel there's going to be people watching this who might get a little bit hurt with the term hobbyist host. And you know, we've said it a lot and listen, it's, it's, it's no, it's no slight on you. If you're earning under, you know, $10 million a year in revenue, then you are classed as a small business. And there's a lot of people who like get really hurt when you say small business or lifestyle business. You know, me too, I used to get that way until I figured out that a lifestyle business is one that I am happy and a small business one I am happy having. But when, when we say hobbyist host, we are sort of talking about those that just take their business and just list it on, let's say Airbnb. And you know, they don't really have a pms. They don't have any systems or structures in place. They haven't got any staff members apart from the people who help them clean or whatnot. That is what a hobbyist host is to me. And I feel like you're right. In 2021, 2022, this industry was very easy because people couldn't travel abroad. You know, people couldn't get on cruise ships, people couldn't stay in hotels for, for a large part of this world. And so you could open up a short term rental or flip your long term model into a short term model and just make money simply because you were there. And now that the bubble is not bursting. But like, obviously regulations are getting a lot tighter. The hotel industry is like, hang on a second, these short term rentals they got, we got to pay attention to them and you know, costs are creeping up, doesn't matter what we do and the margins are thinner. And I think you're right. We are going to get to a point this year where if you don't start treating it like a proper business, you're either going to pass off your property to a management company who does treat it like a proper business, or you may just flip it back to that, that long term. But one thing I will say for everybody watching this, if you are taking time out of your busy day to watch this live stream, be part of the book Direct livestream, be part of the book direct summit that we've been holding for the other few days. I honestly think that you are not part of that bracket. I feel like you are somebody who wants to pay attention to your business. So fantastic.

Now obviously direct bookings allude on that very important. I think, I think you raised some very important points as well. First of all, the term hobbyist comes from the right term, having a hobby and still maintaining a day job. So where is the demarcation line in that? And you probably can run a business up to 20 units and then you have to think about getting a new hobby and take that as a full time job. So there's nothing bad with that. And you could call it many other terms, but I think hobbyist explains it quite well that you still sitting on the fence, you know, do I need to give up my job? Do I still can I still handle it, et cetera, et cetera. Second point I would like to talk about quickly in relation between hobbyists. And let's call them professionalism or professional property manager is it. So this is about hobbyism, professionalism in terms of size, and that's how we sort of stipulate that. But I think ultimately it's about behavior. So it's more about the actual behavior than it is about, you know, just doing it small or big to the point that you said lifestyle, business or not. So I think that's. So the size is not necessarily the market line of between hobbyists and professionalism. I mean, you can operate one unit and still be professional and you can operate 500 units and you still be hobbyist in the way you execute. So I think that's something we need to, we need to differentiate. So the consequence is simple. Operators who don't align their behavior with today's reality that includes technology, unicost, transparency, feel constant pressure financially, operationally and mentally. So my model isn't get bigger or get out, it's get real or the market will do it for you.

You, I would love to know everybody who's watching with us live or even on the replay. What is your interpretation of a hobbyist host? Do you class yourself as a hobbyist host, professional operator, and what are you sort of doing to sort of steady yourself away from this being a side hustle to being a proper business? Like what? What are you doing behind the scenes? Whether it's getting SOPs, whether it is connecting that PMS, doing simple things or big things. So let's move on to the dark booking. Obviously, we're all about dark bookings here. I've always banged the drum of if you build your house on somebody else's land, then it is very, very risky for your long term longevity of becoming a proper business. But you've always argued that distribution wins. So this is a real good conversation to have. So 2026, do you think it is achievable for the people in the room or watching on the replay to hit 50%, 60% direct bookings or is everybody kidding themselves and they're just better off leaning into the OTAs and playing that game? What's your take?

You know, Mark, one thing I want to, I want to express here, what I love about this show today is that it's not prepped, right? So you put me on the spot here and I'm not gonna put out fire like, you know, launch fireworks on behalf of direct bookings versus ota. So I have definitely my opinion on that. So direct booking for me is actually a good example of where the narrative drifts away from reality and the reality, and that is in the most cases still today, the fact is that OTAs still are the primary demand engine for most operators. It's just a fact, right? And doesn't matter where we look. If it's North America, is it South America, is it Europe, is it Australia? And that hasn't changed. And pretending otherwise leads to bad decisions in my opinion. So let me get to the point that you have raised and what you can control is how you use direct bookings. Right? And I think that's fundamental because for me direct booking has many different facets and actually also economical value and it's extremely strategic at the end of the day to what we just discussed before. I mean how many hosts have we had in the past which is built simple businesses on the soulback of an Airbnb demand engine? I mean I in all honesty, and I've repeat myself for probably three years now, I wouldn't invest a dime into a business like that. So what does that mean in my model? Direct booking is not an escape plan. It's a margin tool, a retention tool and a risk balancing tool. That's what we need to consider. Because when you were listening to my predictions last week, I talk about, you know, a lot of property managers and we've seen that at DARM when I asked them, hey, what's in your calendar? What's in your agenda for 26? It's reduced churn, increase profitability and margin and get unit cost control on a property level and that's significant. And all of that is driven by our operating costs and that includes distribution. Right. So if you expect direct booking to replace platforms quickly, I think you'll be very disappointed. I'm sure you support me on that. But if you treat it as a long term capability built on trust and consistency and operations, it compounds quietly over time. And this is not a run in the walk in a walk in the park. This is a marathon. Right? So the mistake I see is people investing in websites before investing in experiences. So the product needs to be right and the consequence at the end is frustration. Why is it not happening? Right. So I think so the right question isn't should I do direct booking? It's what role does it realistically play in my business? And that's a much healthier and reality based framing if you ask me.

I love that you said the word consistency because it is a common theme that we are seeing today with our other amazing speakers and over the past two days as well that we've been, we've Been doing these sort of sessions. You're right. You're not gonna all of a sudden decide I'm gonna become a direct booking expert and on day one, hit 60% direct bookings. It comes over time, it goes, comes with consistency into small marginal games that will, that will get you there. And, and you're right. There's some guests that I give them full breakdown of what topics we're going to discuss. There's some guests that I just give bullet points and I just let your expertise flow. And that's why I gave you the little bullet points of what we're going to discuss, but not the context around it. Because I know that I can just lay you up and just let you fly with some quality knowledge. So thank you very much for that. Okay, we're gonna have two more talking points that we're going to cover. First and foremost is this tech bloat. So there is a lot of tech that is out there. I feel like everybody who's in this room watching with me right now will nod their head at that. You've got many logins, you've got many tech, you've got all the things that are going on, whether it's automation, widgets, AIs, PMS's, subscription, subscription, subscription. But at the same time, margins are getting squeezed, right? So if you personally walked into a property managed business tomorrow to consult them, what's that very first piece of tech or operational cost that you would cut to save money fast? Like what are you going in and saying, right? Chaps, chapettes, let us look at your books. Let's cut this first. What is, what's that first bit of tech or operation or operational cost that you're looking at as a, from a consultancy point of view to help them save money?

I love this topic. And before I tell them what to do, I need to understand what they do. One important piece about consultants is to listen first. Before you act, you need to get yourself a good overview. What is the business about, what tech stack do they actually use? And I think one thing that I do most very quickly when we analyze tech stack strategies is to understand what the tech stack is, number one. And number two, what's the usage and the usability of that tech stack in relation to their own business? Who they are, are they in an urban leisure destination, luxury, less luxury, mainstream? So there's a lot of different things you need to think about because tech stacks can be different and then you can start cutting because it's like using many different tools on your own. Like a Microsoft Excel suite. I know probably hardly anybody in my entire life who uses an Excel to its absolute maximum capacity. Right. And so for me, it's not about immediately cutting technology out of an operation. It's about understanding at what extent is the technology being used. Have we received enough training? Are all the stuff trained up and using the features? You know, one thing that happens if people get lazy, they start building workarounds manually because they can't be bothered understanding what's happening. So for me, most, if, in my opinion, most operators don't have a technology problem, they have a clarity problem. And, and that's where I put my focus on. And I see that all the time. When I see a property manager, just tell me, hey, I'm working with this and this pms. But we need to now source a guest communications app. We need to now have this and that. And the owner's like, excuse me, that's all in there. Why are you not using it? You know, talk to your account manager, get trained, get your team trained. And you know, because they don't have 5,000 properties, they might don't have to fight for an account manager to come and do training. And I think that's where we need to make a difference. You need to force your suppliers to train your team to the max on your software before you source anything new because you might be surprised that your technology can do a lot more than what you think and then you end up with seven different platforms.

Yeah, I also as well, and I know a lot of people bang on about AI, but what I will say is that all of these tools now are phenomenal at helping people get trained. Case in point, I am shocking at coding. I do not know anything about coding at all, but I have learned over the last sort of two weeks how to code. With Claude, it is so easy to do and if I can understand it, anyone can understand it. And it's got me sort of thinking about the tech that we use. So we had a question come in at Boost Lee about a pms and they're asking a very simple question, but they post it in our community. And it was like four hours until somebody jumped in and helped. And I was like, dude, you know, just ask this question to whatever AI tool you're using, Chat, GPT, perplexity, whatever, it will give you the answer. You know, if you go and type in support docs for insert tech that you're using, get it to read it and help answer it, you can get trained up very quickly on how to do It And I feel like before 2024, if you were to go to somebody, right, you're using this platform. I don't feel we're getting the most out of it. And it's like, right, go and learn everything about it. You're like, oh my gosh, that's hours. How am I going to find hours in my. A very busy day to go and do this. But now you can literally do it while chatting, whether it's, you know, whatever app you're using. And it can be very quick to learn. And I think you're 100, right? Nobody's married to their PMS. I mean, that's the thing that I've, I've seen a lot. People will move from one to the other because we get it in our support tickets when they're moving from one to the other. We have to connect the APIs a bit differently. It happens so much. But before they move, we are now saying, hey, exactly what you've just said. Did you know that this can do this? You know, you're moving to this pms, this tool, your current one does this. Did you know this? And they're like, no, because, you know, they've, you know, they've gone to the conference, they've had this sales talk for, watched a webinar. They didn't realize what their current system can, can do. Very good one.

So in terms of that, the reality over the last few years, I think it's important to mention is that tech stack grew reactively and this is important to, to think about tool on top of tool, often without clear ownership or integrations. And that's the biggest challenge that you still have today. You want to use a certain software and it's not integrated your pms, you can, you can't use it, right? So if they don't talk to each other. So what you can control in my view is actually simplicity. So in the model of technology, you should reduce decisions not to create more of them and create more complexity because that creates massive frustration, right? Every tool that you add introduces friction training and, you know, an additional cost, which is something you can't pay right now, and their failure to risk. So to summarize in 2026, talking about predictions, I think it's the year where discipline operators cut back to fewer system that actually talk to each other rather are and are actively used. The point I made earlier, and I think that's where we need to focus because AI will accelerate this, right? So not by adding more dashboards, but collapsing workflows is Ultimately, results. It all comes back to what we started before. It's about profitability, it's about margin, it's about efficiencies. And that's something we need to think about when we define our technology strategy for our businesses.

So before we go into the last question, just want to share a little hack, a little tip that everybody can do. And I do this every quarter. So every three months I do this when I feel like it's getting a little bloaty, if I feel like there's a bit of waste. So number one, I, I go through my banking system and I get it to print off, not in a Google sheet, but just print off every single transaction in that last three months. And I go for every single one. And if there's something that is cropping up, whether it's a subscription or something that I know that we just do not use personal level or as a business level, I cut right at the end of the day. Once you cut it, if in a month's time you're like, oh, I need that you can re sign up, right? Second thing that I do is I go through all of my email inbox and if I'm getting emails from people that I don't want to get, hit the unsubscribe button. A simple way to do this. Go into your search bar of your Gmail or whatever you use, type in the word unsubscribe with the two little brackets either side and it picks up any sales email because any sales email has to have the unsubscribe button. It's a great way of going for it. So clean out my inbox. The third thing I do it with close. So I'm a little bit minimalist in my, in my style. I, I don't like clothes in my wardrobe that I just don't wear. So I, I have them on the hanger and every time I wear it, I flip the hanger around so it knows that I've worn it every three months. If there's one that hasn't been moved over three months, I just gift it or sell it on Vinted. And I find by that way, clearing out the clutter, clearing out the blow, headspace wise, it makes you feel so much better. Especially when you can see, can see that you're saving money or clearing up space in your inbox, clearing up space in your wardrobe, it just makes you feel much better. Going into the next quarter you can be very anal and do it monthly. I like to do it every three months, but again if you're feeling like you're spending a lot of money on something, give that a go and let us know if you've done that before. All right, Simon, Gonna end on.

I do the same. By the way, you sometimes you subscribe to an AI tool and then a month later you forget about it. So you just get rid of that thing and if you need it, you subscribe again.

Yeah. And if, and if anybody comments says I'm going to unsubscribe from Boostly, I will hunt every single one of you down. So everything else is fine. Right, last one. It's a big topic and I know that you obviously spoke with Glenn Fogel, head of booking holidays. Obviously booking.com booking.com quietly is sneaking up in the short term rental space on, on Airbnb. What is your opinion on booking.com in 2026? Which is really interesting because obviously in America, if you're in the Europe or the UK, Dubai, Australia, booking.com is obviously very big in your world. In America, maybe not so much, but it is growing. And obviously with the FIFA World cup happening in America, Mexico, Canada this year, a lot of people are now getting positioned on booking.com to take advantage of the worldwide guests that are coming in. But what is your sort of prediction for, for booking.com in, in the STR space for 2026? Do you see it as a case that will, will catch up, a mirror, maybe even better? Airbnb, is it going to stay where it's at? What problems does it have? What's like the, the Simon opinion on the booking.com phenomenon?

Yeah, great question. First, maybe let me clarify the, the fact that I neither have Airbnb nor booking.com shares. I think that's an important aspect of bringing my opinion about this. I've been a huge Booking fan for a long time because that has historical reason. But When I was CEO at Interhome in 2008, we were the first PMC basically in the world that integrated with booking.com because they understood and they needed that supply that was bookable at the time through an XML feed. So that's 17, that's 18 years ago. Where Booking has understood the chairman at the time and Darren Hewson was the CEO in Amsterdam to say, hey, we want this inventory and if it's bookable, it's great because at the time for the large operators, there were only homeaway out there with inventory. But that was all on request because it was listed. There was a listing site at the time. So we've come A long way. And I think booking has understood how to bring different hospitality content into its search results and get incredible conversion out of that. So they had hotels and then all of a sudden you went onto the system and looked for Amsterdam and then all of a sudden there was apartments in your search results which which helped category tremendously in its visibility because people were educated by booking that there is supply that you can actually book as well, which is STR. And obviously a lot of things happened in these 17 years and booking definitely with Priceline in the US didn't have to focus off the US market. Airbnb came in extremely strong and took over in a way that market and it was hard for VRBO Homeaway to co access those. The exit to Expedia in 2015, which is already 11 years ago as well when Hong Wei was taken off the stock market and sold to Expedia. And I think Airbnb was able to take a lot of advantage and had a lot stronger brand in itself. Whereas booking.com is a brand that acquires most traffic through Google and other means and less brand driven traffic. But the fact of the matter is in Europe there highly established, they've understood. So recently in Australia, October I saw a presentation from booking.com and said where? Where Reese, the local manager of Booking said, you know, short term rental is the growth engine of booking.com that's a big statement. In my recent episode with Glenn Fogel, I've talked to him about this as well and he only supported OCD statements to say, you know, 35% of bookings revenue is now coming coming from the STR space and Europe is definitely that stronghold. So in terms of the question that you have on the us so first of all, Airbnb Booking and others, they're not going to go away, right? They're extremely efficient at demand engines. So I don't think we will see significant changes that in 2026. I think Airbnb still needs to find its space. They explore on experiences. They bought hotel tonight, which you know, is not even talked about in a way maybe it's gone under. Within the DNA of the business is Airbnb. We hear a lot about Brian Jeske talking about moving Airbnb as a brand in towards more an OTA approach with flights and everything else. So I think that needs to be seen how Airbnb is now moving towards a slower growth market in terms of supply. Competition is coming in the US with booking the and it's clear and Booking had a market entry plan before North America, unfortunately. And that didn't go as well as they anticipated because they had a lot of problems with fraudulent bookings, credit card problems, etc, etc, so they literally had to slow that down, fix all their problems and come back again. The biggest challenge that booking has, and trust me, I'm absolutely convinced that booking is not going to let the North American market to Airbnb. There's no question booking makes an enormous amount of money. They have a lot of cash they can invest in developing that market. I think one of the biggest challenges booking has is that the perception of multi channel distribution in North America is totally different than what is in Europe. In Europe, every average, you know, mid to large size PMC lists their properties on as many channels as they can. Hollywood, Home to Go, you name them, booking.com, airbnb, Verbo, Expedia, all the sub brands, Agoda in Asia, they list their stuff everywhere in the us. One channel, that's it. Or maybe two. So multi channel distribution is not seen as a strategic alternative yet in the United States. So booking has more the problem of education than actually delivering ultimately the results to the people that list on booking.com and I think they're now investing more into the market development in the United States. And I think over time, in 26, when you see the growth of the absolute market share of booking.com in the United States, it's massive, it's over 100%. But if you only have 2% market share, it's easy to double that to 4%. Right? But that's not going to go away.

It's really interesting and maybe those of you that are tuning in from America, you can answer this question like why are do in your opinion, Simon, and put in the comments. Everybody else, why do you think that in America they are so solo channeled, orientated in their mindset? Because you are right in the uk, in Europe, rest of the world, from personal experiences, we got listed everywhere, right? We, we tapped into booking.com obviously when you get listed on booking.com you get listed on Agoda. When you go with the Expedia Group, you've got all of their sister channels that are there, but in America you're right, they are so solo focused on just being on, on, on Airbnb. Why do you think that, Simon and I'll be interested to read the comments afterwards about what what everybody else thinks. Especially for those in America,

the risk is passivity, like being passive. Right? That's where I see it and that that is a risk over time. And I Look, this is a great question mark and I think for me to wrap my head around this question, you know, I want to find the right word, but it's just, I don't have to, right? It's, why should I? It works. And, and I think that's one of the core reasons. And that is also driven by the integration strategies of the PMSS in the United States. Like a streamline or an inhabit, like track or anybody else. I mean, they're at the forefront of bringing multi channel distribution education to the PMCs. And I think so far, as long as you don't have to fight for more demand to have more occupancy and everything else, it could be it's a passive attitude, it's maybe even a lazy attitude if you wish, without putting a bad connotation to it, it's just been okay, right? And I think in 26, when we look at the predictions also from the data providers, I believe that property managers will look for more demand, increase occupancy. And as the supply growth is coming down, as also demand is softening, I think the multi channel distribution approach will, will set in because people need more reservations at the end.

I think, like if you look at the numbers and obviously the numbers@booking.com report, I feel like the, the context around it is that more hosts are starting to go on booking.com as well as Airbnb, which is why I've been booking.com numbers have rose so much is because hosts who have been so solo focused in the past are just Airbnb are going, listen, I need to be more places to be seen. I always say the more visible you are, the more chances people can book with you and buy from you. And just to give you a little boots on the ground, I won't reveal my sources, but booking.com are actively looking out to get more people at conferences, at these events, at these workshops on the ground speaking to host. Which is good because if you go in any Facebook group and if you type in the word booking.com in the search, you will see so much people slate in the extranet, which, you know, compared to Airbnb, Extranet looks like it was created in the 80s. It is very hard, it is very tricky. But that's, they've got a lot of, they've got a lot of obstacles to jump over booking.com but I, I feel like with the World cup coming over, and we said this in this, we said this in December, it's, it's essential that everybody does get on booking dot com. Because if not, you are missing out on potentially so many eyes visible on your property. Because obviously booking.com opens the doors to Agoda, which is the big Asian market. So it's big. All right, Fantastic. Obviously, the big message is book direct is the goal. It's not the bill and end all. But you got to tap into these, got to tap into these players. That was great. So little recap. Hobbyist hosts, you know, you've got to level up, change your mindset, change your thinking. Being part of this. Obviously this session and obviously this week will help with that. D booking, reality check, you know, consistency over time, tech bloat, see what you can cut. But obviously learn the product before you decide on switching to go into a new shiny object. And obviously booking.com versus Airbnb. Get listed on booking.com if you haven't already. Simon, any words of wisdom to leave our amazing audience with?

Yeah, absolutely, I do. And I think all four questions point to the same thing ultimately. Right. And great summary. And the way I would put that together is the industry didn't get harder, actually. It just got more honest. And in an honest market, only reality is going to win.

The industry didn't get harder, it got honest. I think that is the clip. That is the clip. That's the takeaway. I like that, Simon. Thank you so much. Everybody. Go to LinkedIn. Check out Simon. He's very active on there. The podcast, new episodes every Tuesday. Is that right, sir? Available on Spotify, itunes, wherever you get your podcasts. Everywhere, everywhere. So. And again, it's one of my personal favorites. I download and I listen to it as I'm driving around, which is. Which is phenomenal. And again, great work on the guests. And some big guests are coming up. Right, Simon, thank you very much. I'm gonna do a quick pause while I go and round up my next guest. So we will have a little two minute interlude. Go grab a drink, go drum a coffee, somewhat stronger, whatever you want to have. And we'll be back in two minutes. All right, everybody, please say thank you to Simon in the comments. And we'll be back in two minutes. All right, everybody, welcome back. We've got a very, very special session for us all. We're going to talk about how to actually get bookings from social media. As anybody who has tuned in will know that I love social media. I think it's a big proponent of driving direct bookings. And the biggest sort of kickback that I get from all of you is, yeah, but how do I actually do social Media. I've posting been for years and I've got nothing from it. So I wanted to go out into the world of Tick Tock and Instagram and into my little black book. And I've got one of the best to my right or to my left, however you're looking this with Brittany Maxic. And we're going to delve in to a couple of topics today. So number one, talk about the journey, talk about how we got here, talk about the amount of diet bookings that Brittany has developed over the years. And then we're going to do some at Cool. We're going to share my screen and we're going to look at the Tick Tock account and the Instagram account for for Mountain Mama cabins, look at a few videos and delve into the story behind them and how the creation process came about. So got a really good session lined up today. Brittany, thank you so much for doing this. Just a super quick one. Just explain to the whole world where you are, how long have you been doing this? And a very quick like sort of story of how you become to developing one of the best social media accounts that I've seen online.

Thank you so much. What a compliment coming from you. So I live in mid Michigan right now. It's 11 degrees outside. I'm looking outside, there's just snow everywhere. And my main focal point of my business is in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. It got started there because my great grandfather moved down there after he. I'm sorry, he grew up in eastern Kentucky, met my mama who grew up in Tennessee. They wanted a new life for themselves, so they went to Michigan when the car industry was booming and he started a really successful life for himself. And once they retired, they went back down to the Smoky Mountains. And we grew up going there. So the Smokies was our Disney World and we loved it. And when the pandemic happened, I coincidentally was married to a real estate broker. And Michigan had these very strict rules where we could not travel. We couldn't do anything unless you could visit family. And so me always finding a loophole, I feel like anywhere to justify traveling or just getting out of my house, we went to go visit family down in Tennessee. And visiting family in that sense was like my uncle and aunt still lived there. So, you know, just figured that out. But we ended up staying at multiple Airbnbs in the Smoky Mountains. And by the time that rental income added up, we were like, all right, let's stop spending money. Let's maybe dip into our savings because we love to travel. We're usually like the big hosts of our big vacation groups, you know, with our friends. And this Airbnb thing sounds really enticing. And I love organizing, I love communicating, I love connecting, and it just makes sense. So the numbers made sense. We made a plunge and purchased our first cabin, and we got it for a very good price compared to what's out now. We got in before the crazy Covid boom, which is what's referenced a lot in a lot of the hospitality industry. And when I bought it, of course, my Michigan audience goes to the Smokies, but I felt when I was in 2020, I was promoting it on Facebook and Instagram with text and pictures and reels. And reels didn't exist. It was just Instagram pictures and TikTok existed. But it was more of like this, in my opinion at the time, it was more of a juvenile app with trends. And I say that cringing in my mind, speaking about it, because it sounds so judgmental, but I felt like as a new mother, as a 30, I think I was 31 or so. I was like, I can't be seen in front of my colleagues dancing on this app, but I can utilize the video to my. Or the video, I don't know, qualities to my advantage by instead of me dancing or doing things, I can take footage of the Smokies and put music behind that. And then once I started getting better at doing that process, I started putting my face more and more in front of the camera because I saw that's what gained more traction, and that's actually what felt more aligned to me than always just hiding behind footage of beautiful mountains. And so I created that TikTok account because I'm also very competitive. I was a former Division 1 athlete here in the states, and when I do something, I'm not going to fail. And I also, I don't want it to look like I'm failing. So I was like, if I'm not getting any bites from my center of influence here in Michigan, like, how do I reach a global audience? How do I get beyond what Facebook and Instagram are limiting me now? So I made an account for my Smoky Mountains just kind of brand. At the time, it was one cabin. And now we've turned it into a business where we are hosting multiple cabins, we're exposing multiple cabins. And yeah, it's turned in that one little tick tock has turned into a really great, really great entity.

And we are definitely going to go and look at the tick tock and. And the Instagram in a minute. But when you, when you started on, like, when you started doing this, you know, you had the one, the one cabin. Like, were you. Were you, like, you say, you're very competitive. Were you. Did you have a marketing plan or were you just thinking, I'll, I'll list and then I'll have social media in mind and we'll just see how it comes. Like, was.

Was.

Was there a goal in mind, or were you just thinking, I'm going to start this, I'm going to not do the silly TikTok dances, but I'm going to do something with a purpose? Or were you thinking, right, I've got a plan this A to B to C to D, this is how we're going to do it, and this is how I'm going to break the Smoky Mountains. What was the sort of process that you had?

Yeah, great question. I think I was just. The way I wanted to convey the Smoky Mountains, I was not able to do with just a picture or six lines explaining my property or explaining the area. And I had so much footage of my children there at child at the time, with my kids, with me, with my husband. We got engaged there. Just so many pictures and videos I wanted to bring to life. And I feel like when I was explaining it to people, I wasn't doing the vacation area, just so I feel like I started there, like, okay, I have to explain what this is and why they should vacation to my cabin. And once that got traction and dms and they were like, how do I book? And then I would just say, I would say, go to my Airbnb site. And then they. And then I would think to myself, oh, my gosh, I'm having them pay hundreds of dollars extra just to go through this site. And I was like, well, you can pay me on Venmo. And they were like, are you a real person? And I was like, okay, I have to create a system to like, prove my just authenticity and just validity to these strangers. Because when a video would go viral, you know, you get any content. Big content creator knows this. Once you have a viral video, a lot of people think that generates sales. It actually doesn't. I even heard, maybe even you said this, like, you're sometimes your lowest performing videos are the ones that convert to the most sales because you're educating. And with those viral videos comes a lot of anxiety. It comes a lot of misunderstanding. It comes, you're a horrible person for taking up housing. And you're like, wait, I just love this place. My Grandparents grew up. But honestly, with that does come a lot of chatter and I want to go to the Smokies. Tell me more about your cabin. So with all of that happening, I made a rental agreement on DocuSign. I had this process where, you know, I vet the guest and you go through me for Venmo and PayPal and Facebook Pay. You can sell me. And then I would have them put 250 down to hold their dates, so I know they're serious. I had three calendars going. This was before I used a PMS either. So I'm handwriting here, blocking it off on VRBO and Airbnb here. So it was a mess for a while. Never have double book, though, knock on wood. And we've grown a lot since then. So to answer your question, I never really had a direction. It was more of like. And then I actually would follow some TikTok coaches because I got kind of addicted to the process. Like, if I'm going to do this, kind of like what I my everyday life, when I do something, I want to do it well and I want to be competent doing it. So I followed some TikTok coaches. Like, talk about talking about a hook. What is retention time? Not going over a minute at the time is very important. Getting your meat and potatoes of what you want to say out first. And of course, we'll talk about that and the call to actions at the end. And I was a sponge. I'm like, okay, this is strategy now. So that finally that system started to come into play years and years later after lots and lots of practice.

So let's just break down the timeline. So 2020 is when you got the property. That right?

Yep. So June 2020.

When did you. So when was that moment that where you were thinking, well, basically it just all came together. So when was the moment that those people on social media started to message you and say, how can I book with you? Is that 2021? Is that 2022? When. When was that happening?

Yeah. So we closed on our cabin June 20th. And then I started the TikTok account August of 2021, when I saw we were 95% booked in 2020. And then 2021 looked to be only 83. And I was like, well, this isn't perfect, so I gotta fix it, because we were still in Covid boom land. But August 2021 is when I started social media on Tick Tock and Instagram. Instagram.

Cool. So 2021, when did you get your property management software? What year was that? 2020. Two, 2023.

This is pretty embarrassing to say. It was 2024. I think I was still living at the seat of my pants.

So two years doing everything manual. And I think I remember this time personally, because I think that's when I started messaging you on Instagram because I. I noticed a few things and. And I was like, hey, when you direct. And I remember going through this, this. This process. 2024. So that is, what, 18, 19 months ago. So 19 months now you've obviously got all the tools in place. And just for context, who's the PMS that you're currently using?

I use currently hospitable.

Hospitable. Fantastic. So that's obviously a great tool. Does all of the things put you on all the channels so you don't have to worry about double bookings? Which is. Which is fantastic. Okay. Really good. Thank you for that.

All right.

And when did it. So I guess from 2021, then to say 2000 and now 2026. When did it actually hit you? But hang on a second. I can put a post out and it can result in direct bookings. Like, when was that sort of moment to you when you sort of flicked that light switch to go, oh, hang on a second. I can use this to fill my property.

Yeah, I think when I started following those quote, unquote, TikTok coaches or accounts that would, like, just promote how to do it, they would sell their own courses. I just, like, kind of gathered as much free information as I could. I actually, I posted about this the other day, actually. Ironically, I posted for five months, three times a day before my first viral video. And my first viral video was me dancing to this song. It was actually a more fun song, so I'm glad it was that video. But at the top, the song had nothing to do with what I was talking about. But I wrote, we have a cabin in Gatlinburg. And then that text would leave. We have a cabin in the Smokies, a beautiful view, Forbes number one travel destination, book here. And then I think, gathered 10,000 followers overnight. And then that's when it started where people were like, I want to book this place. Show me more of this cabin. And I was like, ben, my husband, we have to get to the cabin to get more footage so I can show this place off. And so I think too, what gains followers is when you have an established account. You know, there's. Especially nowadays if you go to follow people, it's hard to get a follow as a content creator, because right now it's the season of social media, of likes and engagement. And I feel like you're more susceptible to be followed if you have a track record and a resume of other educational or fun or content that people like, oh, I'm going to go look through this, or I know she's consistent so she's going to post more. So I think that separates a follow than just a like or a view.

We are going to go and have a look at the account very soon. But before we do, can you just break down your ratio now of OTA bookings, diary bookings and. And the follow up question is how much you can attribute to social media for that?

Yeah, I would say when I started keeping track from 2022 to 2025, we did between 63 and 71 of direct bookings. And this year was my actually least occupied year. January and February of 2025 was rough, but aside from those two months that kind of skewed that data, we were running between 85 and 93% occupancy. So only approximately 25 to maybe at the most 39% of my bookings were an OTA like VRBO or Airbnb, and everything else was direct.

Wow. And for you as a, as a business owner or somebody who doesn't live where your cabins are, you live out of state and, and all of that, when you get a direct booking and it's a guest that has come direct instead of like an ota, somebody that has followed your social media account, etc, how, in terms of stress levels, what is the difference like for you, personally speaking, are you a bit more relaxed? Are you still the same? If it's an Airbnb guest, do you trust them a bit more? Do you know that they're going to love it more because they've already vetted you technically on social media before they've arrived. Like, how does it feel to you to get a direct booking compared to a. I know, yeah. The money, it's not monitorial.

Yes. Direct bookings, to me, the first thing I think about, and I don't know if this is weird or not, but I think, great, they can't review me. I don't know. Even though my Airbnb reviews are 4.97 after, like, I don't know, so many, several hundred. It's always every. I still get that butterfly feeling, like you're about to play a big match, a volleyball game, when they're about to review you, but because you just never know what their experience is. And with direct bookings, their feedback comes directly to you. I mean, of course they could go to my Facebook and review me. Of course they could leave a comment somewhere if they wanted to. And I think we even have reviews you can leave on my website. Please, guys, don't take that upon yourselves to be mean. But yeah, I just feel like they could if they would. But that direct feedback, if anything ever happened goes right to me and I can solve it right away. And so that part is nice. Just, I feel like just you get that more of connection, community and just relationship. And if things go wrong, there's been sometimes with my guests where they've had to postpone their trip or even cancel. And I feel like as a host, how you handle that speaks volumes. Number one. And then number two, you really can get them to come back because they're like, I have like my grandma, something happened to her. Or I got stick or my, my daughter's band rehearsal. I'm sorry those recitals got rescheduled. And you know, you just, it just,

you can't move them down the line. You can give them a voucher, give them a credit, and it's so much easier to deal with. And I feel like this gets caught up in a lot of it because obviously direct bookings are very, very talkative at the moment. Very, very hot. And I feel like everybody focuses on the monitorial aspect. Like, I can make X more money when I have have a direct booking or whatever, but I feel like there's the, the untalked about aspect of a direct booking that is just so, so good. And that is like you say, you're not living by the review. You're not under scrutiny by a big brother that is overlooking the whole booking process. And the guests, you know, whether we like it or not, they are savvy with Airbnb. They know how to get money back now by putting in like messages on the app that aren't true and you know, and all of that. So direct booking bookings does give you that. And like you say you, it's much more easier to talk to a direct booking guest and to, you know, if something happens, you can just give them a credit voucher and just move them to. Down the line. So. Very good. All right, so let's. We haven't actually revealed like numbers in terms of followers. This is why I'm excited to share the screen now because then we can have a look at the, at the account. So we're going to dig into the next part. So this is Britney's Mountain Mama Cabins tick tock account 405,000 followers. 8, 8.2 million likes. I. In terms of your analytics, do you ever go and like, check this? I mean, I know you said you're a very competitive person, so I assume you do go and check this. Like how, like how many impressions, like on a monthly basis are you getting from just a tick tock? We're going to look at Instagram in a second. Second.

Yeah, it kind of depends. You know, I would say about three, two to three times a year you get a viral video. And this past month I had this weird video about my furnace go viral. It got 8 million views, it got over 20,000 followers gained. And that kind of skewed my data. But you know, when I'm. When I'm collaborating with brands and proposals and things I do have in my media kit where we're getting about 1.5 to 1.7 views a month across all of our, across all of our videos on TikTok. And I feel like, you know, once that data is out of the average, that's kind of what I try to keep up with because that's what I sense is working in trajectory.

Are you still. You mentioned this before and I wrote it down because I thought it was pretty good. Is that for five months you posted five, three times a day? Are you still keeping up five, three times a day for every single day? Or can you like chill out a little bit now that you've got like a big follower base?

Yeah, a little of both. So I kind of just do based on what the need is in my business. So if I have a few great meetings that, you know, that week of listing people on our. Sorry, Listing owners and cabins on our website, I will have a lot of videos tailored towards new listings and house tours, which actually don't do. They don't really become viral. I've had a few that do, but that's not the main purpose. It's more of like organizing within my social medias. If people want to book where I can place them under like mama cabins.com making sure my owners know that their social media is going to get taken care of. But there are times where I'm sporadically making a video about something that happened or something that happened in my Airbnb, which I will say I enjoy when that happens because people love those weird, sad, conflicted, controversial stories. And I always say, like, as long as you're aligning yourself with good character, character, just your morals, your ethics behind it, how you handle things, I mean, you can always talk about something and it's not be super controversial. But anyway, that garners a lot of more attention over time to those tour videos, because when people come to your page, they're like, oh, she's talking about this. But look at all these other things.

Yeah, I was gonna say I saw here there's an Airbnb guest tried to charge back. That's what I'm looking at the screen here. 21,000. Yes, 21,000 impressions. Obviously, if you compare that to a few of the other ones as well, you know, it really hit home. And, you know, social media is all about controversy. Social media loves, like, a hot take, and social media loves the story as well. So when you can combine all three. And I think what's really important to remember here is that Brit isn't based out of where her cabins are. I mean, it is a. It is a journey to get. To get there. So how do you go about getting the content when. When you do go to the cabins and go to the area, are you just taking tons and tons and tons and tons of footage and videos and pictures so that you can use it when you get inspiration?

Yes, that's exactly. That's exactly it. So when I go to the Smokies, it's usually because I have to leave the family. I gotta leave my two kids, 4 and 2, with my husband, who works 24 7. And so it's a lot, but I make the most of it. So some friends have been like, can I come with you next time for your work trip? And I'm like, ah, it's not very fun. I'm truly in the car all day in town getting content. I'm that weirdo that stands on concrete blocks just like this. Because the fomo, the fear of missing out, is so big that I only have two days to get everything that the Smoky Mountains has to offer. And then now, in the most recent years, now putting cabins on my website, I have to drive to those cabins. And sometimes they're way up in the mountains, and it does take a lot of time. So when I'm in the Smokies, I gather as much content as possible within two days, and then I just bring it back home to what you said, post when I have inspiration, post when I see a great song. And like, this would fit with that cabin. So just to have it on my phone.

Okay, so let's go and look at, like, a piece of TikTok content that actually moved the needle or drove bookings for you. I can see. But we've got three of the Pinned posts up here. Any of them sort of like the ones you'd like to have a little look at or is there another one from you? Let me to have a look.

Yeah. You know, I even think my strategy of those three pinned videos are interesting because what I love to do also are those little 7 seconds voiceovers. Those don't get tons of views, but they are so aligned with who I am and sometimes it shows my humor, my relatability, a situation. So I feel like I love Kendrick Lamar and the music artist and so he had a great video. The first one where I said 22 weeks pregnant and I said we're listing this. So it was a. It was a fun way for me to like dance along to that song just in my living room. Lighting wasn't perfect and you're a good

dancer so it obviously helps you.

So that like did fairly well. So I'm like, I'll pin that. That shows a little of my personality. The second one, what is just like kind of more. Yeah.

So this is. So walk me through this. So this is really cool for TikTok because I think everybody assumes it's video. So what have you done here?

What I did here is I. We got a 3 million dollar cabin listing on our cabin website and I thought to myself, to promote this, obviously it's a, it's a showstopper. But I also want to utilize it to. If you're scrolling through, oh, look at all the other cabins on her website at the time, maybe for our first month or so. It didn't really have any hits like originally on the algorithm, but I still felt pinning it is important because once random videos of mine go viral, people come to your page and they'll go to the top. And I want the top three to represent kind of who I am in my business.

And these are just pictures, right? And they just carousel scrolling through. And you know, like you say, the really cool thing about this is that social media lets you add a comment and an image as well. So people go in and that's even had traction. So yeah. Awesome. And like I say some of the comments. Are any of these near Dollywood? Is this property for sale or just, you know, there's loads and loads of potential people in here. So that's. That's really interesting. And then, and then this one. Talk about this one.

Yeah, this one was a house tour I did. My husband and I visited a cabin together the last time we were in Tennessee and I thought the video was funny, you know, me pretending to push them in and that was like the hook to it. And that one went pretty big because it also has an indoor pool. It has a basketball court, pickleball court. It's one of our top cabins. And so showstopper effect. And I wanted people, if they come to my page to look at that. That's cool. And I want to know what else she has to offer on her website.

So what's also cool as well?

You.

You've mentioned it a few times and I'd like to delve into it just in case somebody doesn't know who's. Who's tuning in. But the hook. So yeah, talk us through the hook. And obviously you have soaked in a loads of knowledge about this. You know, you don't come from a marketing background per se, but you've learned and learned and learned. You've listened to a few TikTok coaches and how important is the hook with something like short form content?

Yes. So the hook is the make or break of the video. You know, I can say this from a personal standpoint and also as like a. Just a strategist. When people come on their video and go, hey guys, or good morning, I'm going to talk to you guys. Scroll. The hook has to be whatever you're going to talk about within that first three seconds. And sometimes you don't even get three seconds. So in a lot of my videos, if I'm doing a storytelling, I'll try to think of a strategic way that I would want to keep watching. Or if I'm showing off a cabin, I'm going to start with the mountain view first. Or I'm going to start with me moving first. Because psychology, for some reason people like when you start the video moving, it just captures your attention. So any action I can get first in my video and then go into kind of a conducive, fluid video of what I'm trying to portray. That's the editing is probably more, more important than how often you post.

So let's talk about that quick, great little transition, which is gonna be my next question. So you've got the footage right. What tool are you using on your phone? I assume it's your phone to edit these videos.

Yeah, I use splice. I tried cap cut. I've tried a few. Splice has been nice because it's. It feels most professional. But it is for your phone. But I do pay $11 a week for is pricey because it offers a lot. But luckily that, you know, it's a good business expense.

Yeah, well, $40 or $44 a month, whatever that is, is a business expense and I guarantee the ROI is being good for you. So splice is nice.

Yeah, Spice is nice.

Splice is nice. I like that. We can cut that. So that's S, P, L, I, C, E. It's on all of the apps. Whatever phone you're using, go and go and check it out. It's got free trials. Go and have a little play around. But how often would you say that you take to edit a video, so to speak? Let's just say like a, not, not, not a massive video, but like a normal video. But you would put up like how often or how much time do you spend editing that before hitting that publish button?

Yeah, if I do a typical house tour and it's three minutes of me going through a cabin, that'll probably take me 12 minutes front to back to edit and caption and book and cross post to Instagram and Facebook. It used to take me probably an hour. I've gotten better at pressing the red button on TikTok as soon as I'm done talking and that helps a ton. Yeah. So I'd say if I'm working on a video for anything over 15 minutes, that's probably because I'm gathering screenshots and preparing my video of what I'm going to talk about in front of a green screen. And typically those are like me talking about the cabins that are on my website. And I really. And those videos, I just want to be very accurate because you only get one shot. You get one shot to. My husband always says in real estate you get one shot to list your property. You get one shot to really do these owners justice.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's just go look over the Instagram Mountain Mama's canvas and again, Mountain Mamas cabins. Go and search it. It's the same on Tick Tock on Instagram and again, same branding work. So if you brand it on these, on, on all the channels, it's easy for people to find you. So when, so what was the transition like? So first and foremost, so obviously started on Tick Tock and obviously moved over to Instagram. Like, how was the transition for you? How do you feel that the channels are different? How do you feel like the channels are similar? And a sort of a follow up question, a third question is, which is your preferred? Like which one do you love? Like which one do you love more than the other? So let's talk a little bit about the old Instagram.

Yeah, Instagram started having reels and I'll be honest with you, this was a big personal issue with myself. I knew I could be myself on TikTok. TikTok was one that the, the camaraderie was different, the community's different. You're a little more authentic. And I feel like on Instagram it's a little, if you're a little more. Instagram's vulnerability and acceptance of that has, hasn't really caught up, but it's so much better than what it was. I, I felt like I could say, see that my husband, I, you know, he's a local realtor, an associate broker in the area. And I felt like it was my duty to do right by him too, and not like, be as cheeky online as I am. And that was an internal issue and, you know, some external factors at the time that were in play. But I felt like once I finally just started telling myself, who gives a crap if you're not, if you're not doing something important, like, no one's going to talk. You know, the more, the more you rise and the more you do things aligned with yourself and the more successful, successful you are, you are going to get those comments. But like, that's because that's like pure just reflection of how well you're doing and just having that voice that you want to have. So anyways, I only had about not even 10,000 followers up until a year and a half ago. And it just literally took me putting the same exact TikTok on the same platform. Of course, each platform gets different comments, views, attraction, but I was just starting to repost it. And once I started doing that, I grew 30,000 followers this year just, just by being myself. I'm glad that Instagram has now. Is now catching up in the life of just being more storytelling videos and getting in front of the camera. Instagram is a little more aesthetic and I try to also tailor my content both ways now where even my fonts. You can tell it's a TikTok font. You can tell it's an Instagram font. I've now tried to be more neutral just to appease both audiences without losing myself and also my sanity. Because I, I'm technically a stay at home mom. I work from home. My kids have sporadic daycare throughout the week. And I used to envy the content creators that get these big brand deals and all the time and these big follower accounts. But I really like the trade off of just kind of being where I am and having a life outside of my phone and online.

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So you Obviously do a lot. Right. We can tell you do a lot, but you've managed to really get those systems down and you're obviously, you know, a parent as well and, and a partner and, you know, you want to have a social life and all those things. Right.

So.

But how does the current content system look like today? And I feel like everybody's breathing a sigh of relief to know that the content that you post on Tick Tock is more or less the same you can post on Instagram. You just change a few things here and there. But like, how does it. How does it look like? So, for example, walk us through what like a day in the life sort of looks like now when you're creating content and running these social channels.

Yeah, a lot of my. The beginning part of my day is answering emails, attending to the cabin. I do a lot of social media for my husband's real estate brokerage, so I actually do a lot of that and more of it's planning. If they have a closing coming up, a listing coming up. A lot of my time is taken making the captions perfect of how we're using social media and SEO. And then I really do the bulk of my content between 2 and 4pm right when I'm about to get my kids, it's where I get that coffee of the day. I can disengage from like the monotonous tasks. And I really do try to. If I got an Airbnb message and I'm like, this would be great content. Or if I see that one of my cabins have been sitting empty for a month and I'm like, you know what, I could promote them. So I try to take one and a half to two hours, not a day, probably three times a week to just really focus on making content. And I kind of like when I go to the Smokies, I make bulk content. I really do bulk content in one, because once that inspiration leaves you, it's hard to get back. And so I probably have 30 drafts of me in the same outfit I. With different sounds I've sent to myself and reuse or stories that are ready to go. Because I just know once you have it, you got to use it. And there's not really a consistent day to day where you can be like, all right, what should I post about now? Because I feel like the big part of, I think why people relate well with me is because they can tell that I'm passionate about what I do. And this isn't just a job. It's fun.

I really, really like that. And I really just want to finish up by looking at a couple of things. Number one is the link tree. So I mentioned this before. We, we jumped on with everybody about your link tree. So link tr.ee mountain mama cabins. I think yours is one of the best that I have seen because the idea of a link tree or a landing page or whatever you want to call it is to direct them to the place that you want them to go. And please do go check out my Mama cabins on link to you. Go to the Instagram, click on the first link. So talk, talk to me how you decided to, to set this up. What's your strategy behind this? Very quickly.

Yeah, so I knew at the top, so a link tree, you know, I look at other people's and I would see like what works, what doesn't. The more I became a content creator and not just an Airbnb host who did content. You have partnerships that you want to kind of show your partners, like hospitable. I work with Air DNA Price labs. I want to make sure those are seen. And my, you know, just my partners know that I will promote them too and keep them visual. And I thought that was important to always have consistently. And I think in this time of life it's, you know, jumping on a podcast with you. This is going to kind of show up in my link. This is definitely going to show up in my link tree too. But being able for people to see different realms of me outside of this 10 second video, they might see and judge and who what have you, but it's just kind of a good way to get to know me. And so I was like having my podcast be there with many different people of walks of life is very important. And at the very top, I didn't want to have all my cabins in a row because kind of like retention and the hook, it gets lost. So I wanted to put my website on top. I promote one of Airbnb hosts right under it. And then you can always find what I feel like in that season I want people to know about me or know about my business is kind of right underneath.

Do you find that now that you have learned a lot about marketing in terms of short form content? Because again you mentioned the hook and how you put, put this into a link tree. Do you find that it has helped in other aspects of your, your marketing so for example, emails or for example, other things. Do you feel like now that you can take these skills that you've learned and put it into other forms of marketing that Helps have a, have an impact.

Oh my gosh. I love that question. Yes, unfortunately, I would say, I wouldn't say it's depleted by attention spam, but I'm actually more cognizant in the way I, I talk with people and also I talk with in sales because, you know, I want to. And sometimes I do feel like I ramble, I want to over explain. But if I in the beginning can get to like the meat and potatoes and then explain a little bit here, it's kind of, you know, that beginning to end. When you learn that in school, you know, you have a topic sentence, those three points and the conclusion, it's so similar. And I find in conversations now, my poor mother, I'm like, mom, I love you so much, but can you. You started with this and I want you to get to this. Oh, okay. Sorry, honey. So it's helped me market other people with more of a system and also helped me be a better communicator. Honestly, overall, I like that.

And, and do you do any email strategy?

Do you.

Are you a big proponent of it behind the scenes like from, from gathering stuff on hospitable and whatnot? Like are you, are you dabbling in email marketing or are you doing mostly social? Like what's the sort of the, the usage?

Oh my gosh, that I. It was funny. I was driving here and I saw a notification. Avery Carl has her. I'm subscribed to her email list and I think to myself, I gotta get on that. I gotta make emails, go to my, you know, newsletter signups every day. And if you're really good at that, I'd love to do your help because that is my blind spot spot. That is going to be my 2026-2027 goal.

Yes, yes, definitely. Well, I, whenever you've got any questions, just jump in the DMs. I'll be happy to help. We believe in it massively. Okay, so two final questions, ones that I've written down have. We've been talking. So there is a big, big tik tok and booking.com have done a partnership and they are going to start selling on Tik Tok. They're going to start linking up with, with booking.com so travel content creators can promote places and they can book on platform. It's the first social media slash OTA link up that we have seen and I can see this being the start of more bookings on on OTAs which hopefully opens the door to integrated bookings with your direct booking website. Obviously they'll have to get integrated into Hospitable and your PMS of choice for that to happen. But let's just say that we're here in a year's time, and TikTok have announced that you can now add in where you can book a stay directly on the platform. How would that impact how you utilize social media like TikTok and Instagram? And do you also, as well, want that to happen? Do you think that could happen? Have you ever. Have you seen any trends that that could be something that you could foreshadow this year or next?

Yeah, I mean, for me, I'm at a point in life, too, where I know I can't compete with the big dogs and money up to a certain point. So it's like, if you can't beat them, join them. And it's like that. Having conversations already with booking and showing them. It's almost like you're applying for a job and I'm already doing this. Let me maybe even inspire you to teach you some things, because this is what works for me. I've done this from grassroots. That is, like, a hopeful goal. That's, like, ideal, right? And they're like, oh, yeah, we want you to be our spokesperson for that. And then if it doesn't go that way, it kind of does scare me in a sense. You know, I say that with, you know, a catch 22. It scares me in a sense, because I never want us to get oversaturated or, like, not be viewed as good enough to book, because TikTok has their own system for it. But at the same time, if people find this is a very normal way to do things and they find me for the first time or they've been a silent follower and they're like, yeah, like, this is normal to do on social media. I'm gonna finally book with her. I think there's a catch 22 to it, and I think that's just the mindset of an athlete. It's like, you gotta figure out which coach you're gonna work with and which one will give you a chance to do so.

I like that. And okay, two final questions. If there's somebody that is watching this or listening this or tuning in on the replay or even live with us right now, what? And they come to. They come to me, or they come to you and they message you afterwards, right? And they go, brit, I really struggle with putting my face on camera. Like, the mindset, I just can't get. Get around it. Right. What is that thing that you would say to them, to a. To give them reassurance. And then what would be that first, first piece of content that you would recommend that they film and post to help get around that, that inside fear?

Yeah. I have this conversation a lot with the realtors and our brokerage. They're worried about putting their face on there because of what their peers might think about them. So I tell them, you put your face in front of strangers every single day, selling your heart out of why they should choose you as a. To represent them and why not? I mean, the worst thing you can be afraid of is getting poked fun at. But there are those people poking fun at you likely aren't doing it as well. And I mean a lot of people who do say negative things are scrolling on their duty free lunch for 30 minutes at their 9 to 5 and you have made a life for yourself that you are gonna be above or be different or elevate in a different way. And of course they're gonna say that. So once you kind of accept it and just post a line to who you are and then the second part of that, what I would really, what I tell them to talk about is a first great starting piece of content. The market is saturated everywhere in sales, so why should they use you? Why. What makes you. What about your character makes you a. Let's take real estate, for example. Love real estate. Love the selling process, love people. And why should they choose you? And I think selling yourself per se is the best content A lot of. You know, my husband will send me things like we need to do this. And it's really funny viral trends that are like silly, but it doesn't tell me anything about the realtor. So when I go to choose one, for example, or when I become one, I wanna, I want people to choose me for a specific reason, not just to get likes or engagement on my posts. So I always say start with who you are, not what everyone else is doing.

Yeah, that's, that's some very good advice. So now that obviously you've done this and got very good at it, do you find that your partner is more bought into it? Do you think that he comes to you like you said, he brings funny skits or ideas to you and say, hey, let's do this. It's like, has that been a change over time or is he always from day one being like, yeah, let's, let's do this?

Oh, yes. Oh gosh. The first few years, and I think it was kind of maybe what was around us in the sense of it wasn't accepted, what I was doing in a very small town of Michigan. And what I'm doing now, I think has become more of a blueprint. And I see more and more agencies doing it, and it makes me super excited. But at first he was like, I don't know if you should do this. Like, what will people think? And I would. I would agree with him. I'm like, you're right. I don't want this to impact anything with us. But it's so funny. In our office the other day, he was. There was a closing that happened, and the other side of the buyers came in and they were like, wait, are you mountain mama? And I was like, I am. They were like, oh, my gosh, you're pregnant. Congratulations. And my husband was there, and I was so excited. He was, because I'm. I wanted to nudge him and see, like, see, this is working out. So it's been a definite gradual process, and I think the more confident we both have gotten in our business and our marriage, and we just realized, too, as maturity as we're getting into our 40s soon, like, no one really gives a crap, so. Including me. So if you're just doing, like I keep saying, what's aligned with you and moral and good character, and you're doing it for the, you know, benefit of the greater good or even a spiritual level, you're going to be in. Great. You're going to be great.

Amazing. What a lovely place to end this, Brit. Thank you so much for jumping in. Please go and follow if you're not already and go and drop a message on. On either TikTok or Instagram, say, hey, watched you on this and any questions, like, fire away. But yeah, some really, really good takeaways from this. Just that, you know, don't give a crap and just be consistent. I mean, there's a. There's an overriding theme from all of these videos that, that we. We put together and. And that we publish is that consistency is key. If you are just consistent with it. If you try and do it once or twice or three times and it doesn't work, don't give up. I mean, it's just like going to the gym, right? You're, like, going to the gym. It's like you. You go in on day one, you know, you set those January goals. You go on day one, you walk out and you haven't got that six pack. You're like, oh, this doesn't work. I'm gonna give up. It's like, no, you Got it. It's consistency, it's hard work, it's just perseveration over time. Even at those points where you feel like it's not working, keep on going because you know what if, if the day that you keep going is the day that's just going to get better and if you can get 1% better time and time and again, good things will happen. So thank you, thank you so much. Any final little words of wisdoms you'd like to leave us with Brit before we let you go?

Thank you. By the way. And I feel like just off of that words of wisdom is you know, when you're, there's no competition in a sense when you get older, just like, I don't know, collaborating at the top with you and like you're, I, you have so much benefit to me and just like when you're at that place of you just want success, collaboration is key and it's been just so nice being with you after all these years following each other and yeah, I don't know, it's just, it's, it's so exciting because it's just connection, relationship and that's what business should be about 100%.

All right, well there you go. Thank you so much for joining us. Take care. All right, that was the fantastic Britney magic. Please everybody just go and drop some love in the comments below. We're going to take another quick break. I've got another speaker ready to go. We'll be about 30 seconds to one minute. Can you do me a massive favor if you are enjoying this? We've got three sessions down, we've got more to come. Do me a favor, just wherever you are tuning in, hit the like button, hit the comment button. Tell me where you're tuning in from. Let us know your main takeaways so far. If there's a repost button or a share button, hit it. More people we can share this with, the more people we can help get educated on today. Big day coming up, loads more sessions coming up. All I ask in return, just hit that share button. So again, say thank you to Brit. Go and check out Instagram, tick tock all those good places. Let me hit the pause button, hit the break button. I'll go get a quick drink, I'll go get my next speaker lined up and we'll be back in about 30 seconds. Enjoy this cool little graphic I've made for you going off the dome. Ready for my close up. Good looking, let me tell you. Get more bookings.

Oh that'd be nice.

Giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah, you're gonna get them, hon. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Simpson.

Whoa.

Having a blast. Gonna get a on the Bruce Lee podcast.

Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee cuz it's

so hard and the tea is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you'll better but direct. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next. All right, welcome back. I've got with me now somebody that in a year's time, if I try and line this up, it will not happen. This guy is probably one of the hottest prospects on Instagram right now and it is fate, as has it, that he has fell into this world of Airbnb and short term rentals that we all know and love. I've been following this chap since August, September time had a couple of good conversations with him. Massive, massive fan. And it was Jeremy Verdum from BNB Cal who put me in contact with him and like I say, been a massive fan since this is somebody that could have put his skills to anything and he would have been a success. Success. And I guarantee that he's going to go on to massive success in the future with whatever vertical he falls in. But right now he is in his Airbnb short term rental real estate phase of life and it's amazing to have him on here with everybody right now. So we've got Raj and Cheetah now. Rajan, I've got 10 facts that I've learned about you from the short time that we've been chatting and following you around on the world of the Internet. I'm going to list them off and I want you just to fill in the blanks. That's all right.

Beautiful.

All right, so you're currently either 22 or 23 years old. You turned down an offer from JP Morgan in an internship back in the days when you're in Dallas. You then went and pivoted and got a 2.5 acre in Virginia with your business partner Renzo. You have a follow account on social media of closing in on a million combined on all of the socials on YouTube. Instagram has just topped over 500,000 at the point of recording, which is insane. Well done. You started flipping shoes when you were 17 years old and like I say, now you've come into the world of short term rentals, which is amazing. You are one of my favorite people because you've all gone in on diary bookings. This is how we got chatting and we're going to definitely talk about that. And you have modeled everything on a good friend of the show, Isaac French, and his Live Oak business venture that he did in Texas, which obviously he sold and exit for for many, many millions. Fill in the gaps. What have we missed out there?

Wow, that. Thank you so much for the intro, Mark. I'm, I'm truly humbled. Yeah, that was, that was pretty much. That was pretty much it. I, I just graduated college six months ago in May of 2025. So I'm 23 now. Just turned 23 in November, went to the University of Virginia and that's where I really started my business ventures, selling shoes right before I got to college. So, yeah, when I was 17 in high school, I started selling shoes. Did that for five years. And then my high school friend Renzo, in the middle of my senior year, brought me this land deal, which is two and a half acres of land in Virginia already subdivided into four lots. And yes, we took a lot of inspiration from Isaac French and his live Oak Lake model, building seven cabins and then selling, selling that. So our thesis was that if we can bring a live Oak Lake style property to Virginia, we haven't really seen one like that, we can't fail. So that's pretty much what we did. Finished off our first unit, planning to build two more on the same lot just like Isaac did. All of his are on the same line. He had seven, we're gonna have three. We don't have a lake, but we got, we got the Virginia mountains. So, yeah, have our first unit out. It's been live, I think for a little over 30 days now. Every single day that we've been open, we've had a guest. I'm today's guest, actually. We're in the cabin right now because we're gonna have a reality TV show pull up tomorrow. So that's going to be super fun. It's been an amazing ride. The best part of all this is that I get to meet people like Mark, super cool people. So that's my favorite part of all this.

It's like I say your style and we're gonna, at some point we're gonna share the screen and we're going to go and look at the content. We're going to talk about the content and just get the, the peak seek. But one of the things that I love about you is the storytelling and the effort that goes into the content that, that you put out. And I remember seeing in an interview that we said that you watch Your. Your Instagram Reels maybe 100 to 150 times before posting. You probably spend three hours or so editing. And your first million view video was you talking about about a sector system, you know, like boring topics that you have turned into, into content. And so many hosts that are watching this who are trying to dabble with content creation, they always, always come back to me when we talk about social and they go, I don't know what to talk about. I literally haven't got a clue what to talk about. Nothing in my day is exciting. You have proved by talking about something like a septic system problem that you had turn into a million views. So talk about that. Talk about, like, you don't need fancy cameras. You don't need professional editors. Like, what is your system set up? How do you go about creating the content and what are you actually using to create this content? Break it sort of down for the people that are watching.

Yeah, I'm so happy this is the first thing that you bring up, Mark, because I get the same thing too. It's. I don't know what to talk about. My days aren't interesting. Every story can be interesting. You just need to tell the story in an interesting way. I don't think there's any topic that's not interesting. Like you said, the first time I ever hit a million views on a video was when I was talking about our septic system and I wasn't even on the property. It was me dragging a piece of paper to the camera, visually showing our four lots. It was a dirty piece of line paper. And I just explained how the engineer thinks that the septic system won't fit on this lot. This is even before we closed on the land. So that kind of broke a barrier for me. As in, okay, you don't need anything fancy. Because at that time, and even now, this is all the equipment I use to film. I have a $10 tripod. I use my iPhone. I have an iPhone 16. At the time, I was using an iPhone 14, and I use a mic, and that's all I have. So it's literally all in probably $150 setup. You can get away with buying a used mic that I have for. For probably $70, and that's what I've been ripping this entire time. Now I recently bought a drone for more visuals, but even when I first started, literally got to probably 400,000 followers with just my phone, $10 tripod, and a $70 mic. So. Yeah, go on.

Yeah, I was gonna say like you. So you have gone down this route of building public. You started, like you say, way before you even closed the land. You're, you know, you've done hundreds of days now, you know, over 200 days of, of posting this documentary style. How do you still keep it fresh? Like you're on the property today. I assume over the next two days you're going to like film some kind of content. Like, what is the framework that goes through your mind now when you're standing at the property and you're going, what's today's video like? How do you break that down?

Yeah. So one thing that I'm super blessed and lucky to have is, is that real estate development as a topic, there's just so many moving parts so that I have a lot of things to talk about. So when it comes, when it came to building the cabin, you don't just, it's not just the actual structure that we're in right now. There's, you know, utilities, there's like the financing. There's so many little subtopics within the overall topic that you can hit on. And that's one thing I, I guess if we're talking about content for anyone that wants to start, you should think about the one broad topic that you're in, and for me, that's real estate development. But then also think about all the other subtopics. Subtopics you can hit after that. So within real estate development, there's financing and then there's design. So I talked a lot about interior design and then our Airbnb is wellness focused. So I made a lot of wellness videos talking about wellness, real estate and also like hot tub, sauna, cold plunge remedies, like actual technical knowledge on wellness. And there's so many other things I've talked about too, even just my life as a college student building this thing. So there's a lot of different subtopics you can hid within the broad topic that you're in. And you never want to box yourself into one thing. That's one thing that I've always been super passionate about, is that I love, I, I loved documenting the build of this, but I also give myself the freedom to just make a video telling stories about my life. And, and I feel like that's how I've resonated with so many people online, is that I was never afraid to share my story. It wasn't always just about the cabin. And I think it's just something that people see. I'm no different than the person watching through the screen. Like I'M really not. I graduated college, I didn't have, I had a good amount of money to my name through the shoe business. But that I took five years to build that. It was nothing. It was nothing too brain intensive that I don't think anyone else can do.

Okay, we are gonna go look at the content because I feel like we have to put it into context to show the type of content that, that you're creating because you, you're 100. Spot on. But before we, we do that, like two questions that have come up. Number one, have you taken any inspiration in, in this storytelling style? Do you get inspiration from other people from outside of our industry or is it just something where you've gone and we to pick up my phone and I'm just going to talk and I'm going to edit it. Like how, how are you coming up with this, these ideas?

Yeah, so what? I, I'm a huge fan of Gary Vee. So that's how I originally got started into content. I feel like that's how like so many people got started. But when it comes to actual storytelling frameworks, I've always been a writer. So even in school. So I will say that there is like a natural capability for me to tell stories because I've just been writing for so long. But also when I first started, there was a kid named Mino Lee. He's not in our, he's not in the real estate industry at all, but he makes content about making content. And he's also a college student, he's in my grade and I remember seeing his videos and how he just framed stories and I loved it. So that's how I first originally started. I was making content about shoes and I was just documenting the day to day, trying to tell little stories every single day of about, hey, I'm sourcing shoes here. I'm cleaning shoes now. Just showing the day to day. And that's really the first person I took inspiration from. But now I see so many people that tell great stories. Like I feel like I take bits and pieces from a lot of different people. But at the end of the day you really have to think for yourself and tell the story the way that you want to tell it. I'm a huge believer that the first 50 to 100 videos you should copy, like you should totally copy someone. You should copy me. You should copy me. Know you can copy anyone and that's just to get the initial reps down. But after the first 50 to 100 videos, you kind of need to find your own voice and your own style, and that's what's really going to start resonating with people.

What's really interesting these last three to four months is that I see so many people now in the real estate Airbnb niche on Instagram who are doing your style. You talk about copying. They are doing your style of storytelling. The. The quick clips and the. And the. The things that are going on in the background. It's very interesting, like, how from a. From a content creator's point of view, do you go, ah, they're copying me. Are you going, ah, man, that's so cool that somebody's trying to do what I'm doing and do it on their sort of angle.

Yeah. I mean, definitely at first, I was like, I remember the first couple of people I messaged them, and I was like, yo, I recognize his style. This is super cool. But in the back of my mind, I was, damn, they just, like, ripped my style. But then so many people started doing it and showing me love, and they were. They were saying how I had inspired them. And it's just like, it was a thing where I said, okay, these people are running such cool businesses. I'm actually just going to connect with them. And that was the best decision I ever made in my life to this day, because now we just have a huge community of people that I've connected with all across the country. Young people, even older people, running businesses that I would have never connected with otherwise. And now every time I see someone who has a cool business and that's running it in a similar style, and I really like the video, I will literally comment on it. I will follow them, and I will message them. I'm like, I love what you're doing. We should hop on the phone. And I've been. That's the one thing. That's the one thing. I'm going to toot my horn on this podcast.

I would say that that is your superpower. I am like. I say. You say you're 22, 23. I'm 20 years young. You're senior. Like, one of the things that you first did when we reached out, you reach back. Like, it doesn't matter. Your superpower is the. Is the connections. Your superpower is reaching out to people. Your superpower is getting back to people. I don't know how you do it, honestly, because I just imagine the state of your inbox on all of these channels, including the discords that you've set up as well. So that, I mean, it will definitely come to fruition later down the line and we're definitely going to talk about that later on, but, but really cool. I mean, another thing I want to quickly mention before we share the screen is so many people, host in particular, they, they feel like they can't talk about their property, they can't talk about the place that they are doing up until that it's actually ready. They can't start. They say, I can't start marketing it. It's not ready. Where you literally started talking about Royal Oak months before it was even ready to the point of where you, you did it like right at the very time. Same start even before you like say you signed the D for it. Right. And you instantly had people following you and commenting and joining you on, on, on the journey. So if you could speak to a host who's watching this, who is in the process of renovating a property or getting it ready, what would you tell them to start documenting now, even if they're in, in themselves, they're thinking it's too early. Like, how can you speak to this?

I think what I'd ask them is that, have you, when you watch a movie, do you want to, does it start with the finished product or does it start with a storyline that builds up to something that you then see the final product? No one ever wants to watch a movie with the final product. They want to see how you got there. Now, if your goal is just to get bookings and book out your property, then maybe yet maybe doing a whole series and documenting it may not be the best, best use of, of your time if you're only optimizing for bookings. But what I can say for me is that I never have to put another dollar into a real estate deal ever. Like, ever. That I think is the real power with this is that meeting a lot of other people in real estate and showing just basic knowledge on the numbers and seeing how we went through the build and connecting with these people, talking about our struggles and how we got through that, that will show so much credibility in you for you to not only maybe book out the current property, but then go on to a bigger project. And I think that's the big picture with Instagram is that I feel like a lot of times we maybe look at the smaller picture and that, okay, I just want to convert to bookings. And I remember talking to you, Mark. I'm like, wow, my personal page isn't really converting to bookings right now. Well, yeah, my property isn't finished yet. At the time, it wasn't Finished. Then when we started finishing, it was just a snowball of bookings things on top of people who are like, hey, come build a royal oak here. I'll fund the deal. Hey come. But like, there's so many options now that I want that for the people in the industry because there's a lot, there's a lot of people that are way smarter than me that deserve the money to go out and build cool stuff. But I put myself out there so I'm getting those opportunities and I want that for other people.

I, I keep wanting to share the screen, but you keep lining up a great question to follow the thing that you're saying. So the final, this is the final question I promised and then we will go and share the screen and look at your content. But you have said on an interview that you haven't made a dollar yet from social media, but your phone is worth $500 million because of your network that you are building. And that is part down to a couple of your superpowers, which is obviously the storytelling, growing a following, your networking ability is, is very, very good. So if, if all of this works out in your head, like from what you're planning, what does this all look like in 5, 10 years, 15 years time with like the, the opportunities are coming your way.

It's hard for me to have five to ten year goals. I've just never really, really been that person. I do play long term games. I know real estate's a long term game and I'm in it for the long haul. But especially with the network and social media now, there could be an opportunity that comes to me that could completely change the trajectory of my life. And for, for example, the CEO and founder of Spartan, it's, it's a race company, basically like an iron man. If you look it up. I think they're, they're, they're an amazing company. They might be a billion dollar company, I'm not exactly sure. But the founder, Joe Decenna, through Instagram, we connected and he had a, a 750 acre farm that he just had. They used to live on it and then he moved out and he's so busy running the business that he just has this beautiful mountain in Vermont and he gave me and Renzo the opportunity to completely run the farm. It had a wedding business on it and he said if you save the wedding business, you can build as many royal oaks on here as you want and you can turn this into, gave us literally through the kitchen sink at us, gave us the greatest terms ever and if we took that deal, you know, that would have changed the trajectory of my life completely. We ended up turning it down for, for personal reasons. It's a little bit far away and all that. It just wasn't practically the, the best thing. But who's to say that an opportunity like that doesn't come to me in a year? And last year I was selling shoes and I thought I wanted to run a really big shoe brand. And then Renzo brought me this deal. So it's super, super tough for me to say that in five to 10 years time I want to do X. But right now we would love to have 20 Royal Oak retreats outside of big cities in the U.S. that is, that is the North Star.

And again, you just got a good context. This is like, this is 23. I'd like try and think back. Everybody watching what you were doing at 23, 23, I couldn't even scratch my ass. So fair play to you to have this gumption, confidence, ability, skills to, to do this. And again, everybody watching, please drop in the chat, please drop in the comments and just show some love because this is epic, right? This is a lovely little transition point. Let me hit this button. This is the me sharing the screen as I've been promising. Missing. So we are now on Rajan's Instagram account. As you can see here, 515, 000 followers. And let's go and just have a little look. Now you might not be able to hear the, the audio, but what I'm gonna say. Let me just press this button.

Billion dollar inheritance.

Holy.

Can you hear that, Rajan? When I put one up.

Yeah. My dad immigrated to the US from a small village in India in 1995, where he worked at small, small tech companies until he started his own business. He failed pretty badly, twice until he hit a win on a big data company.

My dad immigrated to Canada 1989 from Johannesburg, South Africa, which is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, starting a pole dancing company to building one.

All right, so very quickly on that one. Number one, my wife is from Johannesburg, South Africa, so I can totally agree with what she was saying there. But so walk us through this video, right? Walk us through the idea, walk us through the thought concept. Walk, walk us through. Like this is an idea that you've had recently. How has it come from being a concept to an idea to film into editing? So walk us through like a day in your life of putting this together.

Yeah. So this was a really cool video to shoot because I Love doing collabs with other people. And the first thing I think about when I'm collabing with someone else is where is the overlap in our story? So my story, you guys know, 23, graduated college, had a yada, yada, yada. And then Jade, she's also my age, so she's 22, but she's from Canada, didn't go to college. And then she ran a trades company, a handyman company in Vancouver, and eventually sold that. She also was in tech and AI. So I was just trying to think, okay, where are commonalities? And we eventually, probably were discussing for about 30 to 45 minutes and we eventually came to. Okay. I think the best commonality we have is that both of our parents are immigrants and we're first generation. Like, we're first generation in the countries that we live in.

Yeah.

And I've also told the story of my dad before with another person. So I knew that was a great topic that resonated with people already. So I was like, okay, why don't we just tell the stories about our dads? Okay. Very similar story. Came to America, started their own business, both entrepreneurs, and now we're both entrepreneurs. So I think that could be a great story to tell. So that's the framework and then next is the visuals. I'm huge on the visuals. And when it comes to short form content, I'm going to get really technical here. I think, I think that could.

Let's geek out. This is where we get to geek out. And we love geeking out here.

I, I love geeking out about this because I view short form content is like my art. I just, I just love creating. Just to create. That's. That's who I am. And I'm huge on the visuals. So the first three seconds in short form are the most important part. I don't care what anyone else says. If you have the greatest story ever, but it comes on. If it starts on second four, people's attention spans are fried. It's bad. So people will scroll if they don't see anything interesting in the first three seconds. And a huge part of that is the first shot. So me and Jade were thinking about, okay, what's like a cool shot that we could do that? Because people register with their eyes before they register with their ears. So a lot of times we're thinking about the verbal hooks. I think a lot about the visual hook. And especially since the cabin is so visual and it's a, it's a great property and people like have seen it A lot on Instagram. Now. I want to play on that.

Let's just pause for, like, one quick second and just very quickly watch these first three seconds.

So our dads gave us a $50 million inheritance.

Right. So that's. You're very visual. Right. The first three seconds, we've just played it. So you then give this idea to Jade. He's like, right, I'm gonna get on your back, and we are gonna fall over. Like, so where did. Where did this idea come from? Bearing in mind the visual hook.

Yeah. So I was like, okay, there's two people. It is a boy and a girl. It would be. I'm like, yo, if it's not too weird, like, let me just. I actually just knew from the beginning that, yo, if I hop on you. She was like, at first, why don't I hop on your back? And I'm like, no, it'll be even, like, weirder if, like, you see a dude on a girl's back. I was like, that's just something that, like, will catch someone's eye.

Yeah.

And then also a visual that's always worked for me is that I have a drone. So I know I said before, you can get away with, you know, minimal equipment, but I eventually invested in a drone, because when you put that thing up in the sky and I come out onto the deck, like, it's just. That visual has hit so many times.

Yeah.

It's just something that you never see. Those sky angles coming out onto the property is just.

It's just a.

It's just a visual I haven't seen anyone else do. So I'm like, I'm right there.

A drone. That shot there is that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

This shot is with the drone. So I set it up, like, kind of high up, but close to where you can still see that I'm on her back, and I'm like, we should just fall. I. I kind of just came up with that one on the fly. I didn't have a. A big side step, but we spent 30 minutes setting up the shot. This. This was our 10th take, maybe, because the audio. Every time I would fall, the audio would mess up. So I had to, like, hold the. The mic in a way where it didn't muffle when I fell. And this ended up being the best shot and the most clear. So after we had that, I was like, okay, this is great. The rest of the shots are still very important, but this was the one that I focus on the most.

Yeah.

So you've. You basically, you hook everybody in with the first three seconds. So let's go and look at the. The one from the. The day before, the night vision one. And to be the best. So let me just go again. Get the sound off.

My cabin is going to be the best night spot in Virginia.

So again, drone shot.

Yeah, this is a drone shot. And I can actually go into. So still great. This video still performed great, but in comparison to my other videos, like, one of my worst performing videos. And I can. It's. I think it's great to go through mistakes, and I think the mistake here was that the drone is a little bit too, too far. And you can't even notice that I'm speaking. I think that might have been the one that's. It's like, unclear, like, who is speaking? Where is he speaking? My yellow jacket is kind of blending in with the yellow lights, so I think it's kind of hard to see, like, if I'm even talking. Whereas. And the other one with Jade, it's super clear because it's in the daylight.

It's super clear.

Like, who's. Like, it's a lot closer. Like, you can tell, like, this visual is just like, okay, like, what's going on here? Whereas in the other one, it's a little bit less clear.

I love that. And. And just as well. I think you'll have noticed every time that I play a video, I need to tap that on mute button to hit to hear the sound. So obviously, like Instagram and shorts, they. They play it like you say it. Like, it. It auto plays. And it. You see the visual before you hear the sound, which is. Which is so different to how we learn things. You know, obviously you see sight before sound before sight. Obviously. But. But like you said, the reason why those three seconds. Seconds are so important is because you want to make sure that visual. Because, like you say, people see with their eyes, especially on Instagram, because before they hear the sound.

Also, something that's super interesting for you guys to hear is that I think it's a crazy stat, but don't quote me on it, but I think it's. 70% of people watch Instagram reels on mute. So a really good gauge for how a good video is. Can you understand it without the sound? So that's why I'm huge on, like, the text, like the text you're seeing right now. I spend a lot of time, like, crafting that out on making that super clear. And I'll, like, change it, make it kind of dynamic. I think that's what really keeps like the viewer's attention is the text as well. All these little details.

That's an amazing step. But yeah, you're right. If it's not 70, it is very, very high. They do listen. But if they consume Instagram with no sound on which is, which is a big one. So these are two of your more recent ones. And what I love about your, your pinned posts is you've got it right back to day one right now. Talk us through your pinned post strategy.

Yeah, I don't really have a pin post like strategy. I only the day one is I want, when people come to my page, I just want them to know what we're about. And then pinning the college. My graduation was just that, that was, I mean I have immigrant parents so that was like one of the proudest days of my life graduating college. So I just have that post up there and then the construction loan video is my most viewed video ever. So just putting my most viewed video up there kind of gives me a lot of credibility. I think it has like six, six and a half million views or something like that. And this is the other thing, this is the other thing. People who are telling me, oh, I don't have a property, I need, I need to. That my most viewed video is in a classroom talking about like if we want to go through that.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. So this is, this is your Most viewed video.

Three cabins for short term. Nine weeks ago, me and my boy bought two and a half acres of land for $37,000. We're developing the land into luxury cabins for short term rentals. But how did two bot college students finance this project? Our contractor priced our first cabin at about 300k and we wanted a construction loan to finance that. We had to shop around 10 different banks before we could find someone that was willing to lend to us. We eventually found someone that was willing to lend 90 loan to valley value of our project numbers. We bought the land for 37 grand in cash.

Yeah. So talk us through this. This, this, this video.

Yeah. So at this time we had, we had just dug the footers for our foundation but I, I couldn't get out to the site and get any of those visuals. So let's go back to the first three seconds again because I think boy bought two and a half nine weeks ago, me and my boy bought two and a half acres of land for $37,000. Yeah, so, so me, I was like, okay, I'm not at the property. I, I don't have anything cool to show yet. But what's a visual that I can come up with that's. That's interesting. And at the time I was still in college and I was like, okay, I filmed in the lecture halls before. What's just a. What's just a frame that I think would be super interesting to show. And it's just. I put the tripod down, I was playing around with it a little bit, and I'm like, oh, wow, this is kind of a cool shot right here. If I just stood on a desk. So I was like, I really wanted to come up with the best shot. And then also when I talk about numbers using the whiteboard, like, being really intentional with the visuals is. It's just always. And yeah. So seeing the B roll, showing Isaac's property, what it's going to be like, all this comes together on. Can the person who is watching the video visualize what is going to happen at a baseline? That's what I'm thinking about.

One of the things, the further that I get into, like content creation journey and YouTube and whatnot, the things that people always keep saying is show, not tell. And I feel like you've just hit the nail on the head right here, is that, you know, people will see with their eyes and they want to see what you're talking about more than you telling them. Because if you were just to come on and just talk numbers in one ear, out the other, but because you've got it here, it will visualize and. And sink in more.

Exactly. And like you said, when you talk about numbers like this, and even though this isn't the most complex topic, when you're throwing around more than three or four numbers, it just gets hard to calculate. So you want to. You want people to do as little thinking as possible. One, one thing I use. So I write all my scripts, I don't use a lot of AI, but when I do, it's. I'll write a script and then input it and then I'll say. I'll say change the language so that a fifth grader can understand this. Because sometimes I feel like in the real estate world, we might be talking about things and it might be familiar to us, but it might not be familiar to someone who's not in the space. So sometimes I'll use that to clean up my language and make concepts like this a lot more simple.

So when you are filming, have you got a teleprompter on a camera? Or like, when you say you scripting this, are you just memorizing it and saying it back? Are you Doing little short segments at a time. Like, how are you actually putting it altogether when you're filming it so you can get across these points?

Yeah, so I, I script on Google Docs and then I have two phones, so I have my like old iPhone 10 and I'll just put the script on there and then I'll film with my phone. So if you see, I film one line and then I change the angle. So it's actually pretty easy to memorize it. So I'll look at the script on my phone, read that one line off, change the, change the camera angle, read the next sign, and so on.

So A, I bet you have tons of videos on your, on your phone. You must have the best storage ever. But B, what is your editing process look like? What tools are you using? What apps are you using? Like, how are you sort of remembering I filmed that and I got to put that all together. Like, how does that sort of look in, like your world?

Yeah, I edit all on capcut on my phone. I've never edited on desktop before. So for all of you are like, oh, I need to get fancy software. No, no, I'm not letting you have that excuse either. I edit all on my phone to this day. Don't use any fancy filters. All I do is use cap cut, use the auto caption, sync it up. So the workflow is I'll film all the clips in order in the script. I'll input it into cap cut and the first thing I in order. And the first thing I do is cut all the dead space. So all the silences, I cut every little.1 second out. So if you go go in my videos, you don't see really any silences. And if you do, it's very intentional. It's like a pattern break that I want to happen. But for the most part I don't have any silences. Then next I'll do all my zooms. So sometimes I like to keep all the shots dynamic. If you look at the construction loan video, there's no zooms because that, that video is from like a long time ago. I don't zoom in at all. But I use a lot of B roll like this. So I'll do my zooms and I'll do my B roll. So you see I'm showing Isaac's property, all these B rolls, I'll put that in next and then the next thing I'll do is these on screen captions. So this is super important to me. Like all these on screen captions, I'll like Move around. I'll. I'll chop it up so that it's only three to four words per line. Yeah, so do that. Move that around. And then the last thing I do is choose the music. So that's, that's kind of the workflow right there.

And for you watching this back, like, obviously you've got. This is what done 32 weeks ago to this one, which was literally a couple of days ago. How can you see your own personal improvement in your filming, your editing, your storytelling? Like, how do you. Can you do that? Can you like, self reflect and go, wow, this is. This is amazing? Or do you struggle to be able to, like, break that down? Or can you actually see that journey that, that you are improving, proven and taken?

Yeah, I definitely think my videos have gotten a lot better in terms of the actual storytelling and the visuals. Just because I have a cabin to work with now.

Yeah.

And it's not just me in the classroom talking about it. Like, I will say, if you have a property, you have an advantage over everyone just showing when I. If I told you, just looking like this, hey, we put our windows into our cabin, versus me standing in front of the cabin that I put the windows in. Way more powerful to do the second one. Right. So I could see my videos get a lot better when the cabin started getting built. But what I will say is in June and July, I thought, I mean, my videos, when I look back at them, I'm like, wow, like, these videos are a lot. Not worse. They're still great, but they're a lot worse than what I can do now. But the. When you look at the views, it looks like, oh, you're getting a lot more views in June and July. And I think the. The thing about that was I was kind of the new kid on the block. There was like a really new style that was going viral versus now. I still think my videos are 10 times better than when they were before, but it's kind of lost its novelty a little bit, which is now I'm trying to transition. Not transition, but I'm trying to find like a new style almost. I want to play around. I'm in an experiment, experimentation phase right now.

Yeah.

Because Look, I've done 198 videos in the same series. It's a great skill to keep that fresh. I don't know how I'm going to do it, which is why I'm here now by myself. And today I'm just, literally just going to think, hey, how can I. What's a new idea? I can come up with, I'm not going to watch anyone, I'm not going to doom scroll today. Like, I'm literally just going to think like with my own mind, what have I not seen on social media before in the real estate space specifically. And let me just go try and shoot that. And it might flop, but it might do well.

So let's talk about conversions because obviously getting these numbers is amazing. You've opened up the cabin, you've got bookings like, like you say, and people are, people are booking. How are you finding that, that conversion now of going, right, follow the journey to, hey, you know, book this, book this day. Like how now that you've opened the booking engine, you've got the website flowing, which we've, which we've got here. So you've got the website up and obviously you're collecting emails, which is, which is fantastic. You've got the website like flying and whatnot. Like, how are you, how are you finding that transition and what's like the next stage of your direct booking journey? Getting booking journey.

Yeah, exactly. So, like I said before, if your goal to, is to get only bookings through the personal brand, you're better off not doing it. Because I had a hard reality check that when we first launched, we still weren't done, but I thought for some reason, hey, I have like such a big personal brand, everyone's going to book. This cabin was not the case. And that's for a number of factors. I think the biggest one is that my audience is primarily younger men who are trying to become entrepreneurs and the people that book luxury stays are older women, primarily over the age of 27, 28, that have disposable income. That is not my audience. That is not my audience.

I love how you said older women, 27, 28. This is. I just love the mind of a 23 year old. Anyway, go, go back to it. So, so this is funny. All right, so now let's just very quickly. So you build the personal brand, right, and you've got the website now. I did notice that the Royal Oak retreat branded account popped up already at 24,000 followers. So, like talk us through, got the personal. You opened up the website like you said, your, your personal audience over, over here is different demographic than somebody who would book potentially like, like a retreat. You, you know, they may try and treat their partners or whatever, they make, whatever, but like you've, you've opened up this. So number one, who's behind this? Are you behind this? If you like, sort of got Somebody else involved with this. Like, what's the sort of thinking behind the branded account compared to the personal account?

Yeah, so I'm behind this. And when I look at this, I don't even look at the view count. I'm looking at, at all conversion and like how we can. This is just, this is purely just like an ads account. Like I, I just, I want to keep selling you on booking your stays. So that pinned post with Morgan, the one on the left, that literally got us like all our bookings to this day. So I said, okay, I, I don't appeal to women at all. Like, who do I know that does in the D.C. area? So like it needs to be hyperlocal. I was like, oh wow, this girl went to my school, I hit her up and she's like, I gave her three free nights. Her boyfriend is a basketball youtuber funny enough that I used to watch since I was a kid. So it was super cool to have them be our first guest and they made this video. Just a very simple funnel. Just comment to, to book your stay. And it works so well. It works so well. Like that's. She's the reason why our cabin is, is been at 100 occupancy so far.

Amazing. Amazing. So you worked with an influence. Like you worked with an influencer of sorts.

Exactly. Yeah. But now. And I think this would be an interesting conversation, I'm almost like asking you a question, which I don't know if.

No, go for it, go for it. Let's, let's, let's go.

These types of posts, what I'm understanding is that, okay, you'll get like a rush, a surge of organic growth and you'll get a good amount of bookings. But I almost feel that's such a, it's such an unpredictable system to where I think paid, like you said, paid ads is an actual business system that I could start running to get more bookings a lot more consistently because yes, like, I dropped this video and bookings are still trickling in from this video. When, when do we even make this? I think two or three weeks ago, right?

Yeah, more than five weeks ago it went live.

Yeah.

Yeah, so, yeah, so. And it's still trickling in. But that's not. This video is not a system. This is kind of like a one off thing. And maybe we could keep, maybe I can get away with keep doing one off influencer stays and juicing up the bookings. I'm not exactly sure. I'm still new to the game, by the way. Anyone watching if you're in the Airbnb game. You probably know a lot more than I do. I'm still a rookie in this. So I think creating a system for paid ads, getting the email marketing a lot tighter, those are the kind of systems I want to build in 2026 to where my face is completely removed from this brand. And that's the only way you can sell too. Like, if my face is attached to this brand, that's not good for anyone really. So how can I create the systems to. To get direct bookings throughout the whole year? Like two years from now, when, when

this pipe is so number one, when somebody comments retreat. Have you got many chat set up or as Morgan got many chats set up where it instantly drops in a dm? Is that what's been. Is that why you're getting people to drop, retreat?

That's what's, that's what exactly happened. So we have many chats set up. We have a little message that, hey, thank you for your comment. We'd love for you to book your stay, yada, yada, yada. Here's the link to our website. Please DM us with any questions. And that's pretty much how I did it. And then I closed like those people in the dm, so if they had any questions, I would just be like, I would do that manually. So I don't even know if I was supposed to automate that part either.

But I mean, no, you're good. You're good. So first and foremost, many chat phenomenal tool. We've talked about it a lot on, on the podcast and all the trainings that we've done. Everybody has noticed probably at some point last year or end of 2024, people were saying drop the. Drop a keyword in. And like, why everybody's saying this same keyword because manychat takes that runs it into an automation flows that you can build out to drive people to a squeeze page or for you, or for most hosts, you want to drive them to a booking page, right? With a, with a code. So that's number one. That's great. And many chat work all the time, you know what I mean? So you can have somebody come today, tap retreat on here, and it will still be working to drive them to the right place. Now, the cool thing about many chat is you can a b test it. So if, you know, if, if you jump in manually and for whatever reason it doesn't convert, instead of going straight for the kill, as in straight for the hey book now maybe go, hey, you know Give me your email details, you know, give me your name and your deets and we can, we can continue to conversation. I can send you some more information. That's good because then, you know, even if they don't get the book in there and then you can get them onto the email list. Number two, how do you keep this evergreen forever? Yes, ads are phenomenal. If you've got a really good piece of content and one of the things that you guys are very good at is creating content, you can run that with paid ads targeted to the right people. And I know we've had a conversation in the DMs and I, we introduce you to somebody over in the UK that could potentially help with that. But like, if you target this to the right people, it will just sit there forever and just be like printing, printing money. And again, you decide whether it goes to a squeeze page, which is obviously to a lead gen to get the email, or whether it's going to go straight into the website to, to get them bookings. It depends on retargeting and all those things. But you just need like a couple of good pieces of content for that. What a lot of people do with people like, like Morgan is they use the shoulder season, which now is the shoulder season. It's like, it's not the peak time, it's, it's the bit in between to work with content creators. You, you either know them from high school or you've known for a long time or, you know, if, if they're good content creators, you can reach out and work out about a deal or even pay them a little bit of money where they can come and stay in a day where you're never going to get a booking, like a Monday, Tuesday or whatever. And they will create that content for you that, that you can use and then you can basically again run that with your strategy that will just run forever. Because as you know, content is great. Content sits there, but ads can just appear all the time, wherever you want it, anytime. And if you do it right and the targeting is right, it's, you know, you're paying pennies and you can get dollars back.

Yeah, so, exactly. So that's the, that's the goal with this is I actually had another female influencer stay recently. I haven't even posted her video. I'm honestly probably just gonna start running that as an ad because it was, it was also a very similar video to what Morgan did.

Nice. Yeah. Well, the goal is, once you do ads as well, is, you know, you got to pay to play on these platforms when you want to get, like, bookings. And the cool thing about it is that it can literally feel like your brand is chasing them around the Internet wherever they go, whether it's, you know, Facebook or Insta or, or wherever. So let's just very quickly jump over to TikTok. Right, so you're on the Tik Tok. You've got a steady following there. How. How are you differing your Tik Tok strategy to your Instagram strategy? If, if, if any?

Yeah, I'll be completely honest. I don't pay much attention to TikTok. If I'm being honest. It's a, it's a nice platform. I feel like it's a lot of younger audiences, a lot of bots in my comments. I just don't really prioritize Tick Tock that much. I do like it that they pay for views, so it definitely is a little bit of side income for me. But yeah, if I'm being completely honest, I don't focus too much on Tick Tock. I've never responded to a Tick Tock DM ever. I really like Instagram.

Instagram is your. Is your one. So do you just post and ghost on. On Tick Tock?

Pretty much. I'll respond to some comments here and there, but yeah, I kind of post and ghosts. It's not. Yeah, I feel like I had. I wish I had a better answer

for this, but hey, even if you're just posting and ghosting. 143,000 followers, 2.4 million likes. You know what I mean? It's like even if you're posting and ghosting, hey, do that. You know what I mean? Right?

We.

We're coming to the end. I feel like this has been phenomenal. I really appreciate your time. You've shared so many little bits of. Of nuggets that I want everybody to sort of take takeaway. But if you were to leave like with that one little gem, that one little takeaway that somebody here who is, who is watching can just take on and like, apply tomorrow. Like, what would, what would that be? What's your, like, your words of inspiration?

I really want to think about this because I do want to leave the people with something that's actionable or while

you're thinking, can everybody just do us a favor? Number one in the comments, say thank you to Rajan. Showing some. Showing some love. If you've been following the content, let us know and I, I'll make sure that Rajan gets the link so he can. Can interact with you, but also as well go and follow his account. So Instagram, it's Cheetah Rajan and obviously go and hit up Royal Oak Retreat. Go and sign up to the newsletters, you know, showing some love. And if you are interested in potentially working with him, then go ahead and send a message. He's looking to build out this, this franchise. And you know, he's, he's a, is a good guy to. Is a good guy to know. So. All right, Ryan, I've given you some thinking time. What do you want to leave?

My one message that I've given to everyone in my DMs who asked me about starting content specifically, because that is my strong. My strong suit is just put the phone on the tripod and record. I know we went through a lot of technical things today on the scripting, on how I did the shots. No matter. You could literally DM me for an hour and I can tell you how to do it step by step. And your first video is still going to be bad. Scroll down all the way to my first video, not good. Not good at all. First five videos, not good. First 10 videos, not good. So you just have to get the reps in first and then you can worry about the technicals. My goal for everyone is that post 15 videos first. Just put the phone on the tripod and record and make one small improvement. Every single video for 15 videos. Then we can start talking about the of type technicals. Then we can start talking about, okay, what should be my first visual? What should my hook be? But in the beginning, like, you just need. You don't even know how to talk to the camera yet. So that is a skill in and of itself that I did not have when I first started. And that's what you should be prioritizing in your first 10 to 15 videos. So just put the phone on the tripod and record. It's going to be bad anyway. It's going to be bad.

Just. Just be bad.

And I hope that's the most empowering thing I can tell you.

No, it is. Just. Just do it. You know, Nike said it for a reason. And there's. There's a, there's a massive theme that is developing throughout the. The whole series that we've been doing, all of the interviews that we've been doing with all of our amazing guest speakers. Doesn't matter whether we're talking about social media, whether we're talking through LinkedIn, Instagram, whatever. It's be consistent, show up and be consistent consistence over time. Wins. And there's another, there's another one to it here, buddy. Thank you so much for your time. We're going to end it there. Can we all show some love? Rajam, thank you very much and we'll, we'll be seeing you very soon. Cheers, man.

All right.

How good was that? How good was that? Okay, so we are coming up to three hours in. We've been doing this for a long time. If you're still with me, drop me a comment to say with you. If you've just joined us, let us know if you're on the live. Leave a live. We're at streaming over on Facebook. It is on LinkedIn, YouTube and obviously this is being recorded. If you need to get any of the recordings, you can jump over to the YouTube. If what I am planning on doing is I'm planning on taking all of these and separating them to their own little sections and uploading them onto either the podcast or YouTube or whatever. Because there's just so much good stuff that we've, we've dug in already and what is to come. So I'm going to go get a quick drink. I've got another little ad, a little break coming up. Lasts for one minute max. So go do what you need to do. Come on back. Whilst you're doing it, just show some love in the chat. That was an amazing session. Go, you know, go follow Rajan Royal Oak, all of that good stuff. Tap the love heart emoji button, comment as many times, repost. Share this. Get as many, many people involved as possible. This is the book Direct live stream. I've got my. Another guest expert has just joined in the green room. I'm gonna go and get them, get a quick drink. Be back in one minute. Enjoyed this little thing that I've put together for you. These take a while to get done, so please go and enjoy them. We'll be back in one minute. I spit fire while I'm good looking. I'm gonna tell you to get more direct bookings. Not circuitously through a travel agent. One that's come to you. You sit there in amazement, like, wow, mad respect to the guy with the hashtag book direct. Not a gang sign.

It's a pound.

In the US we call it hash over here. Running through this book directly, it means that you go. Not a book from a library. Oh no, bro, you need to understand words. Please heed. Use Facebook to get more leads.

Like a dog with the collar with the multiple leashes.

More leads. That's the pun. It's Hard to believe it.

I punch hard like Bruce Lee, but

probably the only rhyme I can think with Bruce Lee. Like an orange, I squeeze it cause it's so juicy. And Mark Simpson, not orange, but he could be yellow like the fellow in the Matt Groaning show. All right, this session I want to focus on two topics that I feel are top of mind. Number one, social media branding. Obviously that's what we're focused on. But number two, talking about your property and what you can do to it to get more adr. Joining me on my left, on my right, however you're watching, this is Mr. Mark Lumpkin, part of STR Cribs. Somebody if you are on social media, you will have definitely have come across his work. 100 will have seen the properties that he's done. But the thing that grabbed my attention is how he has utilized social media to grow his branding and obviously the business that comes with it. So Mark, just do us a quick favor, quick introduction who you are, where you are in the world and how you you became to doing strips.

Yeah, thanks for having me on, Mark. I'm super excited to chat with everybody. Like Mark said, I'm Mark Lumpkin. I run our sales marketing, all of our client facing stuff for STR Cribs. We're a licensed general contractor in the state of Florida. We actually have licenses in eight different states and we focus on design renovations and setting up profitable short term rentals. I kind of fell into the short term rental world. I traveled a lot in my early 20s. Me and my wife did internationally and we were just a little bit older than we than we would have wanted to be to stay at hostels. And we were not broke, but we weren't loaded so we weren't staying at five star resorts. And we kind of found this sweet spot of traveling with short term rentals and Airbnb and VRBOs. And then when I came back, I was in construction. It just was a perfect fit for me. We all exclusively travel at short term rentals, so we are customers of the industry. And then it made sense for me to work in that space. So, so that's how I ended up here. That's what I'm up to. And yeah, I'm excited to chat with you and dive into what we do and how I view social media to help us grow.

So just in case there's anybody watching this who is in one of your eight states, which are those eight states that you operate in.

So yeah, we're operating in Florida, Texas, Arizona. We do both of the Carolinas we operate in the Smoky Mountains, which would encompass kind of that north Georgia, Tennessee area. We do Pennsylvania. Pick the Poconos is a very popular tourist destination. And then we just branched off into Denver, Colorado. And so we started off in Colorado. So we've also done some projects in different states like Michigan and California. So I wouldn't necessarily say no, we couldn't help you in other states, but that's really primarily where we work.

So you've done over 200 projects now and you know, there's loads of patterns. I always say there's patterns in this business and you can connect the dots. This is why we do things like the summit and the podcast and whatnot. But what would you say are the top 10% performing properties that you design? And what's those patterns that you spot with them compared to the those that you've stayed at? And you go, oh, this is, this is nice. Like what, what are those patterns between the winners? Like, what are you noticing over the time that you've been doing all of this now, especially from like the, the overlooking view that you can provide?

Yeah, definitely. The patterns are kind of as follows. The most straightforward and simple one is definitely heads and beds. And so having bigger properties that have a higher guest count for the most part will generate more revenue than smaller properties. And so from from like a contractor's perspective, if I'm looking at a three bedroom house that has an office or as a three bedroom house with 3,000 square feet, I'm thinking to myself, hey, there's extra square footage inside this home that could probably be converted into a fourth, maybe even a fifth bedroom. And so to me, that's the initial lift. What's the, what's the max occupancy we can get out of a property? And how can we strategically do that? By adding bedrooms, we see a lot of wasted space and properties that are not str built. Right. Most homes are not built specifically for a short term rental. They were built as a single family residence and we're transforming them into a short term rental. And so what are those extra spaces? Seen houses with huge primary closets that are 2 or 3, 400 square feet. Could that be a kid's bedroom? Do we have garage space that's not going to be utilized by guests that could be converted? Do we have offices? So that's a big one. How do we add extra bedrooms into a house? The next one would be really focusing on the guest avatar from an amenity perspective. And so who's going to come stay at the property Is this families? And we need playgrounds and bunk beds and slides and things like that that kids will really enjoy and will gravitate towards. Is this, you know, a cabin in the Smoky Mountains where people are going to be spending a lot of time hiking and adventuring? Are those hot tubs, barrel saunas, cold plunges, massage chairs? Those might be really great amenities to have. And so there's definitely not a blanket statement for what amenities work the best all across the country and all across the world in different markets, but figuring out what market you're in, what type of travelers you're going to be, accommodating who's your guest avatar, and then going all out on the amenities that will work for them. I think that's step number two. And then I'll wrap up on the third piece that we're really looking at, which is quality over quantity. And so if you have the option to do five extra amenities or add two or three bedrooms, but it's not going to be good quality, I would recommend you actually do less and do it at a higher tick. And so if you can only have the budget for two or three amenities, maybe you should only do one or two, but do them very, very well. Get the good quality, maybe get the larger hot tub, stage it, photograph it. It's not necessarily just about how much you can jam into a property. It's about how well those things are perceived by your guest, the quality and how they improve the stay. So those are my three things that I'd start with. I could talk forever on this, but

yeah, well, it's good because obviously the thing that I get from you and looking at the website, doing a bit of research is you are very data driven in your approach as a company. So I guess the, the sort of, the answer, the question that I have when looking at this is like, what is exactly the type of data that you're looking to pull in before you even like, you know, touch a lick of paint a coat, you know, like what, where are you going after? And if you've got an example where the data told you to do the opposite of what the owner was asking you to do, is anything you can sort of share there. But it would be kind of interesting for the audience.

Yeah, all the time. There's two, there's two questions. I'm going to start with the first one. How do we pull data and how do we make decisions? We look at all the readily available data sources, right? You've got air, DNA, Rabu, you've got a lot of different data sources, we're pulling those. We are also using first party data. And so we have the benefit of, you said we did 200, we did about 180 last year. We've done about 500 projects and many of our clients are repeat clients. And so we're able to pull their data and ask them, hey, what worked on that first one and what didn't. What kind of revenue are you seeing year over year? So we have a lot of first party data as well. That really helps. And then we own a lot of our own properties too, so that helps. So we're looking at all the readily available data. We are filtering out the non full time properties. If this is a part time thing, if this is not available for more than 8, 10 months out of the year, we're getting rid of that. We are also sorting based upon the top performers. So we look at the top 10% of properties and use that as our benchmark. Okay, how well do those properties do? What kind of amenities do they have? How many guests do they sleep? Are they dog friendly, are they not? Are they fully fenced? Do they have a hot tub? Do they have a two night minimum? We're really diving deep into this and then we're setting a benchmark and saying, okay, these are the top three performing homes in this market. These are what they're doing and these are the type of revenues that they're pulling. And in order to hit those revenue, we at least need to be as good as these three or four properties. If not, we need to be better in our design and in our amenity selection. So that's kind of the baseline for how we start to formulate a plan for a property. Anybody can do that. Anybody can take our formula, go out and look at the top proper performing homes in their market, figure out what they have, what they're doing and it make that your baseline. If I want to hit 100 grand revenue and these four houses are doing it, what do they all have? And I at least need to do what they're doing. I probably need to do a little bit better from a design and amenity standpoint. And then number two, the second part to that question was really around owner preference and personal preferences, what, what we like. And so it is difficult, just as a human being, to put aside my bias, right, My personal bias. And we ask our owners to do the exact same thing. Okay, just because you don't like pink cowgirl themed houses doesn't mean that that's not the best idea for your Nashville Tennessee property that's three blocks away from Broadway probably is the best idea for that property. And so getting people to put their personal bias aside is not easy to do, but it is very important to the success of a property. I've seen hundreds of investors totally sabotage their property and underperform because they didn't want to do something that they should have done because they're not interested. Oh, I don't like dogs. I don't want dogs in my property. Okay, guys.

Well, the truth is always there. Like they always say, the truth is in the data. The data never lies, you know, And I think your own personal assumptions can kill any good business idea.

Right?

So.

So, yeah, so we ask our owners to do that, we look at the data and then we come to them and say, hey, guys, this is what the data tells us. Put your personal bias aside. This is what we need to do in order to make this property successful.

Yeah. And I think you're now at the stage of your business journey where you have got the power to say no. You know, maybe where at the start of your journey you were maybe having to like sort of bend a little bit. But now you can go, hey, listen, the truth is in the data. We know what we're doing, trust us. So. And that obviously does work. So looking at 2026 from like a design point of view and obviously the data that you're seeing, is there any amenity? Is there any thing? Or is a, is a what. What is coming up on the horizon from a design point of view? What are people asking for, looking for? What are these amenities that everyone should be like on their radar?

Yeah. When we were talking just before we jumped on and jumped online, you, you were asking about pickleball courts. Right. And was it a fad? Was it not a fad? Is that what people push pickleball courts really hard the last two years. And so I don't think it was a fad. I do think it's a great amenity to have in a certain environment and in the right market. That's not a blanket statement that says pickleball courts are going to boost revenue and going to be worth it in every market and every property across the country. And so I think the big trend of 2026 and what people and investors should really focus on is very property and market specific amenities. And so don't just look and say, oh, everybody's throwing a pickleball court in our property and their properties. And being successful, we need to do that. You need to really dive into who's staying, what's the length of stay and what is that traveler looking for? It could be something as simple as a great coffee bar, a really high end coffee bar with an espresso maker and all the equipment and all the gear and it's set up and staged really, really well. That might be one of the best amenities that you could put in a property that may only cost you a thousand bucks versus going and spending 20 or 30 grand on a pickleball court. And so really, really being strategic and niching into those amenities for who your ideal guest is. I would also say that I think niched properties are going to become more and more prevalent and are going to have more and more success. The blanket properties that market to everyone are going to continue to struggle. And I think we see it. It's like I talk to people and they're like, yeah, in 2021 we did this much revenue and then we were down 10% and then we were down 4% and then we were down 6%. And they're just on this slow decline. And every year gets a little worse and worse where the opposite, those really maximize properties that are super unique and different. I see them on the same, on the opposite, they're just doing a little better and better, better every year. And so to me, that's the theme. You've got to have a very unique property that creates a unique stay if you want to be successful in this space.

I love it because again, I'm not right a lot of the times, but some of the times I'm very right. I've been saying this for a long time. The riches are in the niches. And I feel like this year, talking to you, I think that phrase, I'm going to be using it a lot. But again, there's a common theme over this summer. There's a common theme over all the sessions knowing your avatar. And again, there are some amazing free tools that are out there with AI that can help you get your brand, your avatar, your brand voice. So do tap into it because it is, it is key. Okay, so let's do a little game. I'm going to give you a ten thousand dollar budget and we're going to look at a couple of different niches, right? We're going to look at a couple of different areas because obviously like you say, if you're two streets away from Broadway in Nashville, it's going to be different to if you're, you know, 20 minutes away from Disney down in, in Kissimmee or if you're you know, you're in the Poconos, right? There's different niches, there's different people. So I'm going to give you a $10,000. So I'm a host, right? I'm coming to you. I'm going mark. Got $10,000, right? I'm in the pocket. I said the first thing. I'm in a pocket nose. My ideal audience is families, right? Let's just say family is six. I'm a family of six. What's that? What could I be doing to add to my property with $10,000 that will make it bang in 2026? Let's start with this fun little game first.

All right. In the Poconos, I think, I think I try to add two things. I try to do some built in custom bunk beds. We do some really cool bunk beds that have built in slides. They photograph really, really well. They are an all season amenity where people can use them when it's cold and rainy and snowy. And I've been to the Poconos. It's not great weather all year round, right? You get a lot of different seasons. So I think that could be a really, really fun amenity to have. It also helps your property stand out. No one wants to sleep in those crappy IKEA bunk beds. You know that if you're, if you're 7 years old, it's all right. But if you're an adult or a normal sized human being, it's a terrible experience. They're jankity. They're falling apart. So skip the cheap bunk beds and do some fun built in bunk beds. That can be a really cool thing. And then I would, I think a fire pit would be number two for me. And that could be a propane fire pit on a back stove that's staged and set up really, really well. Or it can be a wood burning fire pit out in the backyard or on the lot. It can be a really fun thing for people to do in the summertime. And then even in the winter, it can be fun to hang out at night around the fire pit, drink a bottle of wine, roast some marshmallows. And you get a lot of people in that market that are traveling from major cities and so they don't necessarily get to have those type of experiences at home. And this is really like their chance to get out to the woods. And having a fire pit can be a really great event.

I like that. Okay, so let's move south a little bit. So we're gonna go, we're gonna Go kissing me. Obviously you've got, obviously you've got Disney and a little bit further upper field you've got, you've got Universal. $10,000. Everybody obviously has got the games room that's got the, the game, the arcade games in. But what are you seeing for 20, 26 that could help them stand out? $10,000 again, people are going to that, that area. Maybe a couple of families coming together. Could be like a sports team, whatever. Like what, what are you sort of saying for, for them? $10,000 max.

Yeah, that's a tough one. That's a really competitive market. Most of those properties are in HOAs that don't have backyards and have shared amenities. So you usually have a pool but no yard and everything else is shared by the hoa. And kiss me. I would focus on garage spaces. They're oftentimes completely unused in those neighborhoods. It might be difficult on that budget, but you could swing it on a DIY type deal. I would try to utilize that garage space for something, an indoor glow in the dark mini golf course, a Nerf gun shooting range, something like that. Try to utilize that unused space because many of those properties are cookie cutter. They're in the same neighborhood. They all, they all have the same floor plan. They have no space for backyard amenities. They have a pool, but they all share the neighborhood's amenities. So try to utilize garage spaces they're not utilized in most properties and do something fun in that space. And then number two, I would look at the new attractions. So you know, you've got Disneyland, Universal Studio, you've got all these different parks that are oftentimes launching new attractions. I think LEGO World just launched or. Yeah, it was LEGO World and they spent billion dollars to put this together. I haven't really seen any Lego World themed properties out there. I've seen a lot of Disney, a lot of Harry Potter, a lot of princesses. But if you can keep up with the new trends and see the new attractions that are coming in and set your property up to be kind of staged and designed with that theme, I think that could be a way to win in that market.

So just, I don't know if you realize, I heard on the news, but in the UK they have just signed off for Universal Studios UK to be announced down in Bedford. So it's going to be a project that will take many years to get done, but let's sort of say the end of this decade there's going to be Universal Studios. So I'm looking forward to seeing the people of Bedford doing out their garages, going all Universal, which is going to be going to be exciting. And obviously Disneyland is coming to Abu Dhabi as well over in the Middle East, 2031. So it's going to be interesting to see all these properties who take on board this sort of idea. All right, let's do one more. And I want to go on to the final question, but the final area would be. Okay, let's go Cleveland, Ohio. So not, you know, massive on the touristy area, but we've got, obviously business guests can come there. People do like to come and check it out obviously. But you've got, let's just say it's a property that is catered more for for business guests.

Right.

So you've got people coming in for conferences, for events. I know there's a few events that happen in Cleveland. In Ohio, you've got $10,000. You've got a property that is within a, a 10 minute walk from the city center. Let's just say you've got two, two, three bedrooms. So again you can look after like a corporate company coming in. You got $10,000. What are you doing to make that property stand out with amenities or, or what you can do there?

Yeah, I'm doing a few things. One, I'm probably setting up as many very nice primary bedrooms as I can. And so instead of having a home that maximizes for occupancy and having like bunk beds and rooms and things like that, if that's my ideal guest, I'm thinking more along the lines of five, three bedroom house. I'm going to have three king beds in that property versus a bunk bedroom. I'm also going to try to set up every bedroom as if it was a primary bedroom with a very nice full length mirror and just kind of all the extra little touches that you would expect on something like that. I'm also investing heavily in the beds and making sure that I have really good quality comfortable beds. I am setting up a very nice coffee bar in the kitchen. I am. What else am I doing on something like that? I'm basically trying to create a house that is going to keep three or four people very comfortable with no one feeling like they were shoved in the Harry Potter bedroom. Everyone feels like they have a great stay. I'm gonna have very nice towels, very nice linens and kind of create a four Seasons style property that just has four bedrooms that are all nice Four season hotel bedrooms, if that makes sense.

That makes a ton of sense. Yeah, because people.

And then I might be Doing some state, some office stations as well, where if I have a nook, a corner, a space, an area, I'd like to have a standing desk and at least have one or two office spaces in that house.

Yeah, that's perfect because again, I think with, with these cities, with these urban properties, obviously the reason why they go and stay at your, your Hilton's, your Marriotts, your insert chains, is because they have that sort of more of a premium bed, you know, decent night's sleep and you get all the, the things that like the amenities, workspaces and whatnot. So if you can provide that, and again, under 10k, you can, you can do it. So good. We've got some good ones in there. Right, I want to leave you on one thing, and this is the reason why I came across you, is that your content is very good. LinkedIn in particular, I remember chatting to you, I want to say, four or five months ago, and you just said that you, you made a play for LinkedIn, you set a plan out and you stuck to it and you achieved it. You are everywhere. When I open up my LinkedIn, I see you. How have you achieved it? What did you do on LinkedIn? Like how. What was your sort of blueprint? What was your plan? How have you achieved it? Because there's a lot of people here who want to do social media, they want to do the LinkedIn. How have you been able to, to sort of crack your goals and what has been the benefit from it from, like a business point of view, from, from cracking LinkedIn?

The benefit? Yeah, it's a great question, man. The benefit has been massive. I'll start with that. We closed around 20% of our total business last year came from my social medias. And so that has been really powerful. A little over $4 million in sales. Obviously our projects are much larger, but that, that's massive for any business to bring that kind of revenue in from social media. So it's been a huge benefit. The other large benefit is my ability to connect with pretty much anybody in the industry where I can shoot a DM and it's not going to go unanswered. And you probably have the same type of reach with your social media. The connections you're able to make are really, really powerful. And then the credibility, right, when I go to someone who does a deal, it's much easier because they've already seen me, they already know I'm real and they've been following me. So there's some really, really powerful things behind it, not just Closing more deals. There's a lot of other benefit to that, but that is obviously a huge one. And then how, how I made it happen was pretty simple. It evolved a lot over, over the course of the last couple of years, but it was pretty much just a commitment to post and engage every single day and be genuine and real. I think that's the biggest thing, especially in how, how quickly AI is is transforming and changing. Yeah, we're seeing so much fake content. We're even seeing businesses create fake human profiles that pretends to be a customer of that business and talk about their journey. It's cringeworthy. It's not good enough to fool anybody yet. It might be in the very near future, but at least today when we're talking, I think being real and being genuine on social media is one of the most powerful things you can do. And so I was just my real self and I just said, hey guys, this is what I'm experienced as a host. This is what I'm going through. The bears got into my trash can last night. This is disgusting. I'm out here picking up piles of trash. And that stuff resonated really, really well. So to me that was one, it was a lot of activity posting and being genuine and then two, was giving back to that community. And so I try to engage and not just like and give some BS comment on someone's post. I actually want to read their post and say, hey man, this is awesome. Congratulations. Did you consider doing this versus this? So real genuine engagement I think has been really powerful. It's helped me grow. And I'm not viral. I mean, I don't have millions and millions of followers, but I do have maybe tens of thousands of real genuine connections. And a perfect example, I was at the VRMA just a couple of months ago and someone came up and sat next to me at the bar and said, hey Mark, how you doing? First night. And I didn't know who they were. I was like, oh, I'm so and so I follow you on social media. Like, okay, cool. That was the theme of the three day event over and over and over again. People had came up to me that said, oh, I follow you. I know you really, really well. I didn't know them. I started looking back at my posts. Those people never engaged with me. They never liked or commented. So I think we underestimate the power of a post and how much reach it gets because we oftentimes simply look at the comments and the likes and we don't realize that 90% of social media viewers are lurkers. They're just watching and they don't do anything. So if you think you've only reached 10 people from a post, you probably reached 100 people. Just 90 of them never engaged or

commented on your post. There's also a little vibe here for lurkers is to reach out and say hi, jump in the DMs, you know, say, just like, you don't have to be slimy and sleazy and you're going to sell something, but just say hi. Because then that person who came up and said hi to you in the bar, instead of being, who are you? It's like, hey, you know, I love you. Thank you so much for coming. Yada, yada, yada. Really happy that you were chatting and let me buy you a beer. You know, it's like one of those sort of conversations so the lurkers jump out. But you're right, you know, it's amazing. You can post something and it'll get two likes, zero comments, and you're thinking, oh, that's a bit of a dud. Didn't see it by anybody, but you know, it could have been seen by thousands and you just don't realize. And then it just, you know, people can consistently do that. But the vibe that I got from you is just be consistent, which you have been very consistent. And you're right, LinkedIn is rife with bot activity. So again, I feel like the overriding message here is don't treat your audience and your viewers like idiots. If you can spot an AI post and if you can spot an AI comment, don't think you can get away with it because don't think that your readers won't, you know, your viewership, your potential customers can't spot it as well. So be real, be interesting, be interactive, and that's how you do it. Mark. Phenomenal. Thank you so much. So go on to LinkedIn. Lumpkin is L U M P K I N Mark Lumpkin. Go and check him out. Go say hi. Go interact and we'll be seeing you on the conference circuit this year. No, no doubt. I'm sure there's going to be a few on your on your radar. Congratulations for all your success and here's to more of it. Any final words you want to leave us with?

No. I appreciate you having me on, Mark. I love everything you do. I've been a big follower of you guys and so I hope that you just have nothing but continued success as well. And if you're going to check My social media out. Check Mark's social media out as well because he does a really, really good job of that as well. And you can learn a little bit from each person and start to implement it on your own.

Amazing. Right, so we're gonna call on into this session. I'm gonna go get my next speaker. So everybody. So I'm gonna put this on to a little break as I normally do. So go grab a coffee, go grab a tea. We'll be back in two minutes with our next speaker, Mark. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

Thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me on.

Sa. Sam,

Foreign.

Guest speaker with me to my right and my left. However you're looking at this and we're going to get a cool session. So the sessions today have sort of ranged from everything from social media. We've had Simon Lehman coming in and talking about state of the industry, we've talked about amenities, etc. Etc. But what I wanted to do is I wanted to get Rose in and we just want to have a conversation. So we're just going to talk and chat from a host perspective. Somebody who's been doing this for a while, who's had property but grown to properties, somebody that I've known for a long time and somebody that can talk about direct bookings, I think more than any because the proof is in the pudding with my guest speaker. So, Rose Tipka, thank you very much of your family's place. Thank you for joining us.

Absolutely. Thank you for having me.

Absolutely. Everybody who's in the chat, can you just please say hi and if you're still with us, we've been doing this now for a few hours. Can you just hit that like button, comment button, share button, all those good things. Because this is an important day. Book direct day, obviously this is where hosts get together all over the world and talk about direct bookings. And today is obviously a day that I want to get somebody that I think has adopted this more better than most. So Rose, super quick background for everybody who is tuning in. Just let me know where you are, how long you've been doing this, how many properties you've got and just sort of give it like a quick sort of background on the sort of the last couple of years that you've been doing this thing called hospitality.

Absolutely. So my name is Rose Tipka and my company is called your family's place. We specialize in large homes for multi generational family vacations. And we do that because we have a huge family ourselves. We have six kids. I homeschool them so I'm actually sitting in our homeschool room right now. And right now we have. We started in 2017, so we are in coming in on year nine right now, and we have grown to 11 properties. So this year we will expand out. We will hit 11. And it looks like we're getting close to having two more under contract because we're working on expanding our business out up into Northern Michigan. Michigan. So we are located right outside of Amish country in Ohio, and that is where a lot of our vacation rentals are located. I like to use the word vacation rental because that is what we are. We are not an Airbnb business. We really doubled down hard with our brand, your family's place, starting in 2021. That was when Covid was going on and the good times were rolling. And the time for companies to make investments is not when times are hard, but when times are good. And so this is the company that supports our family. This is what feeds my kids. This is what keeps the lights on. And we have a staff of. We have nine, nine, ten people depending on the projects that we're working on. They are all depending on me to make reservations. And so I take that job really seriously because they're depending on me for their income.

And you. I've built a business that is obviously very big on direct bookings, which is awesome. Love to see it. We're going to go through some numbers in a little bit, but also as well just want to very quickly touch upon something that your repeat guest numbers is very high as well. I think last time that I spoke to you was at about 60. Just around 60, yes. So the question I have is if you could just break down because we've got a lot of people tuning in that will have either a lot of repeat guests or a lot of like first time visitors just depending on the markets and whatnot. So how have you been able to A, achieve those numbers, but B, as well sort of talk about guest journey from the point of checking out to we'll see you next year. How does that sort of look within your family's place and how you've sort of developed that?

So I need to give the folks that are staying with us, who are already choosing to stay with us a lot of different opportunities to be loyal to our brand. And so part of that is them knowing me, knowing what I look like, knowing my voice, because people will book with you if they know, like trust you. And so they have to have those three things from me. And so from the very beginning as soon as somebody books in our system, whether they're booking direct off of our website or if they do come through verbo, we don't use Airbnb at all. And that is something that blows people's minds when they are coming through. As soon as that new reservation comes through to my system, I am grabbing my phone and I'm recording a video. I'm not getting dressed up, not doing hair and makeup. I'm not overthinking it, because I want it to be real. I want it to be authentic. I want it to be me. And I am sending them a video that I record where I thank them for choosing us. I like to use the word choose because it gives them the power and control. I give them a very important message that they can relax because vacation is. Is supposed to be relaxing, and that I am going to take excellent care of them. I am taking personal responsibility for that. So I'm giving them that message. They also then have my number. And so if they need anything, they can feel free to reach out. And so they feel like they have that direct connection to ask me questions or get any information that they need. So as soon as that reservation comes in, they are getting those messages from me. And so that is starting to establish the relationship. I like to view our guests not as transactions, but as relationships. And that's a fundamentally different thing. I'm not looking at that person staying with us once for whatever the value of that reservation is. I'm looking for that person to come back year after year after year. And people only do that when they have that personal feeling of a relationship with their host. People go to Airbnb over and over again because they're loyal to Airbnb. My guests are loyal to our brand. They're loyal to me as the host. And that starts from that very beginning with that video where I'm giving them those really important messages.

So you've been doing this for, like I say, going on nine years. A lot of repeat guests, and like you're saying you're giving them your direct details.

Right.

How do you scale that? How? I mean, obviously, have you added properties as well? So how are you being able to do that where you don't feel like it's getting out of control? Because that must be a lot of people over a year times that by nine times, about a number of properties. How do you sort of manage that without getting overwhelmed?

Yes, and I get this question a lot from folks, and I think, first of all of all, doing something like the video message the message itself is 20 seconds long. It is not that heavy of a lift, to be honest with you. And so when that message, when that reservation comes in, I can pause because I have 20 seconds in my day to film that video. But also it's a question of priorities. I want to grow this business into something that sustains our family and creates that legacy. Yeah, I'm gonna have to take 20 seconds out of my day to do it. The other thing that I do is I write handwritten thank you notes. So much is digital, so much is AI. And so when our guests get a piece of actually interesting mail that's handwritten for them, that means something and they remember that. And so usually what I'll do is I have, on the weekends I'll sit down and I'll batch write my thank you notes whether I send those twice at the point of reservation. And I also mail one when, on the day that they check in so it's waiting for them at home. So I have that combination of that high personal touch. How do I get that done? I have a system. I knock it out, I hold myself accountable, that's how I do it. The other thing is I do have automations that run in the background that are personalized. So all of our properties are pet friendly and people who have dogs are pretty obsessed with their dogs. And so I have a series of emails that I schedule for folks that stay with dogs. And what those emails are is actually an email from your dog to you that I'm forwarding to you, if that makes sense. Because people love their dogs. And so I, I have those kinds of emails that are set up in the background that run automatically. So there's the combination of the high touch. Watch the video and the notes. How do I get that done? I'm very disciplined and this is important to me. I also have automations in the background that feel personal, that continue to nurture people over time. So there has to be a combination of those. But by prioritizing those personal touches and those connections with people, that's what makes them loyal to our brand and loyal to me.

We're going to go talk about numbers in a minute. And you, you've managed to build a family focused portfolio whilst homeschooling six kids. You can hear them in the background. It's, it's literally like this is your day to day. So what are like the two to three key decisions early on that let you scale your business without burning out or lowering your standards? Because you do have very high standards, you're very disciplined, as you can tell from the answers. Like, is there anything in particular that you've learned along the way, those two to three key decisions in your journey that has helped you to do this, like you say, without burning out or, you know, lowering your. Your standards?

Well, I think for us, we have an amazing team, and a lot of our team members, they're mothers themselves, and they are people that have high standards, and so they feel really invested in our guests having an excellent experience. And so a lot of times I, I see the room reviews, I get the feedback from the guests, but then I am immediately turning around and sharing that with the team because they need to experience the wins, too. And so building a team that shares your values is incredibly important because they do a lot of the heavy lifting. You know, everybody has their zones that they are in charge of, and everybody takes responsibility for those. But when the people doing those things share your values, then that makes everything a lot easier. So that's a really important thing. You also have to learn how to say no to opportunities that don't fit you. So a lot of times people will go out and try to vacuum up a bunch of properties because they need to grow revenue for us. We own our property, so we don't need to scale to a massive number, and it allows us to keep our experience really tight and focused for our guests. So we have said no so many times to projects, to properties, to partnerships, because they simply don't work for our brand. And it can be hard to say no to things that feel like amazing opportunities, but if they are not in the direction that your brand is going, you have to say no to that. That can be. That can be really, really tricky. Also, I will say this. I am very tenacious. I'm very tenacious because I, I take. But what I'm doing, I take seriously. I mean, it's a lot of fun. Don't get me wrong. My family's depending on me, our team is depending on me, and there's no way I'm going to let them down. So there is that, that, that something factor. You have to have tenacity. And a lot of people, as soon as they hit that friction, like, oh, it's too much. I can't do it. This is too hard. I don't know how to scale it. There has to be a, a scrappiness to what you're doing.

I want to have this conversation for the people that are watching in live or on the replay later, where they can go, I want to take some away from this. And for you, I feel like as a, as a mom, as a parent, as a business owner, if as a another parent business owner, who's watching this, who is juggling, I don't know, life kids, you know, guest messages, writing hand notes, doing all of the thing, and feels like, you know, this person's drowning.

Right.

What are the first three systems or boundaries that you would tell them to put in place this month to sort of buy back their time without hurting revenue?

So the first thing that you should be doing is locking down your revenue management when you are properly pricing. I think that takes a lot of guessing out of it. And you can hook up to a revenue management software in five minutes. It's that simple. So in the beginning, you, you should be. That should be one of your very first tech adoptions is revenue management. The second thing is you need to have a pms. And I get that that can feel very overwhelming trying to set that up. But that's the difference between being a hobby host and being professional host. So you need to get your tech lined up so it's working for you because that will give you more time and more control. I also recommend that you batch tasks together. So, for example, yesterday sat down and I wrote all of my thank you notes. I did it in a half hour. It wasn't that long. And so I batch things all together. Okay. I do have apps on my phone, and when I'm sitting at fencing practice or soccer practice, I do work during those times. And there are going to be times where you are going to have to work during events when you might not want to. And yes, that feels overwhelming. But again, it goes back. It goes back to that scrappy thing. You have to. You have to be willing to do what other hosts are just not willing to do. You need to adapt appropriate tech at the right time times. Some people want to come in and disconnect everything. And I'm like, dude, you have one property you don't need. You know, 10 pieces of tech.

Yeah.

Adopt things at appropriate times in the right orders. I have a friend who has one property and she's like, I need an AI chat system. I'm like, no, you don't. You got one.

Yeah. Knowing when to do things at the right time is very, very key. And I feel like there's a lot of people watching and I can think of a few people right now at the back of my mind who are like that, who have got, maybe started their journey, one or maybe two properties, and they're trying to do Everything, they get this shiny object syndrome because, you know, again, I'm at fault because I do amazing live streams like this and we bring in all these amazing people, we have all these services that are just thrown at people and they think, I need it all. When at the end of the day, you gotta treat it more like a video game. You know, start off, you're at level one, super scrappy. You haven't got all of the tools, you haven't got all of the time, you haven't got all of the money. So just do the, the simple thing. I like that. Okay, so final question before we go into numbers. And it's tapping back to something you said earlier. And you said, you know, success isn't better marketing, it's better relationships.

Right.

And you are very good at this with relationships and your guests. So do you have an example come to mind where, let's just say one of your bookings, they came to you via Airbnb or a, or whatever, ota, and then they went on to be a multi year, direct repeat guest. Have you got like a cool example or a cool story that you can share on this?

Yes. So I'm going to talk about Joy, who is one of our guests who actually lives in New Jersey, but comes every year over the holidays because she has family locally and she is, she always stays at the same property every year. They call it their Christmas house. And she books over the holidays, it's like $1,000 a night. And so she's a high value guest for us and she comes back year after year. When she first stayed with us, she was driving in from New Jersey and there was a snowstorm. It's Christmas, it's in Ohio. And I called her and I said, joy, I would feel more comfortable if you came a day early and if you could check in like a day early. And I'm not going to charge you anything extra for this because the property will be ready for you. Because if you wait till your check in day, I don't think you're going to make it in because of the storm. And she's like, wait, you're offering me a free night to stay? And I said, yes, I am, because I want to make sure that you get in. And so a lot of people would say, why in the world are you giving away a free night? Because I'm looking at the lifetime value of Joy coming back every year for a $10,000 reservation. And now I looked this up. Joy has stayed with us for seven years in a row at $10,000 a night. And so that one free night, I didn't lose money by her staying an extra night. That was an investment in her coming back year after year after year. I prioritized her safety and making sure that she got in. And in return, I have her loyalty every single year for Christmas.

I love that because I haven't prompted you with any of the questions. So normally on these podcasts, what are these interviews that we're doing now? On the live streams, you'll see where the host has given the guests, like all of the questions that you're going to ask. And it's just a case of just matching them up. I've done none of that for us. And that Joy was just sat there on the other side of that piece of paper, which is epic. So you're looking at a piece of paper. On that piece of paper is some numbers. So I want to, I want these hosts and these viewers to go away from watching this live stream or the replay and go, I want to be able to get to X amount of direct bookings. I want to grow this business on my own land. I don't want to have to be right on Airbnb, share some numbers as inspiration so they can go and watch this and go, right, I'm off to do this.

So 2021, yeah, 2021 is when we launched our book Direct website. So we had already been doing this since 2017. So we had cut our teeth. We had, you know, figured out where we wanted to go brand wise. That's important because a lot of times when you're starting out, you don't really know where you're going. 2021, when we first started, we were at 14% direct bookings. Okay, not terrible. Don't get me wrong, not terrible. But that was just starting out. 2022, we grew slowly. It's very much like a snowball. So 2022, we got up to 20%. So that, that's pretty good. We're getting our systems in place, we're getting people into our communication funnels, we are building our email list. We start email nurturing right there. Now in 2022, we started working with build up bookings and they do our email list. We send out two emails a month. They run ads for us, they also write our blog posts, all of that kind of stuff. So when we implemented that whole nurturing campaign on the backside, we went from 20% in 2022 to 65% in 2023. And now in 2024, we dipped down a little bit and we were down to 60%, but still, 60% is really good.

Very good.

2025, we have our systems in place. We're snowballing. I really doubled down hard on social media and working with content creators and improving the quality of our content. In 2025, we were at 73% direct bookings.

Wow.

We don't use Airbnb at all. We have not used Airbnb since. When was last time? In 2020, that was the last time that we used it. And so last year we were at 73% direct bookings. It takes time. A lot of people think you throw up a website, you make a Instagram page or a TikTok page, and then the people just flock to you. That is literally not how it works. It's a billboard and you have to direct people's eyes to it. You then have to earn their trust and get them to book with you. They might not book at that first moment that they see you, but if you focus on the. The relationship and they get to know you, they get to trust you, they will choose you when the time comes to book their vacation.

Yes, absolutely. Small little steps over the years. Well done. So break down the mix and you say there's no Airbnb. Obviously, 70% is direct, which is great. Where's the other. Let's just say 30 for easy math sort coming from.

It's coming from verbo. We do have verbo listings, and so we'll get some through there. I don't think that we will ever get to a point where we don't have OTA listings, because I think that that's another. Another version of danger where, you know, let's say your website goes down or something. You do need to have a diverse. A diverse set of listings. So sometimes the question is, where should I list? The answer is everywhere. So now we don't list on Airbnb. But what that always is in the. The future for us is a lever we can pull. It's not like we can not go on. Yes, we can always turn it back on if we need to. But it's that decision that keeps me driving forward, because I don't want to, but I can if I have to, because I am not too proud to do it if we need to.

Yeah, absolutely. You got to have multiple revenue streams coming to your business. It's just like any forms of business or any forms of investing. You're not just going to put 100% of your money all into one pot, because that one thing, that one stock, that one Share that Bitcoin is just never, you know, it's never, never sensible. You would have multiple forms of revenue streams for your investment. So 110. And I love that you've said, listen, we've turned it off, but with. There's nothing stopping us from turning it back on if needs be. But you've built a very strong foundation to hopefully to the point where you won't have to turn it back on. And for a multiple reasons, I think that the people that are tuning in will be able to realize, like the systems and the structures that you've put in place, the relationship building that you've put in place. And it's, you know, it's. It's a lot of work over nine years. But, you know, you've. You've felt the. The benefits from it. Now you're able to travel around the world, you know, with. With your. With your husband and the kids, and go speak at events, which is fantastic, and go and see Pete, other sites, other peoples, and obviously, like all of the books, projects that you're part of, and it's fantastic to see. So, so, well, well done. All right, we're gonna. We're gonna pull it a pause to this very soon. But before we do, is there any sort of final words you want to give inspiration to the people that are tuning in? And also, if people want to find out more about you, give them some social handles that they can go and check you out and chat to you after this.

Absolutely. So our social media pages at your family's place on both TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. We're growing our YouTube side right now. And our website is also yourfamilysplace.com one of the things that I really hope that everyone takes away from this is that you can bet on yourself. And that sounds really, really scary. I am a mom in my 40s in the middle of nowhere, Ohio. My backyard is literally a cornfield. Okay? Literally a corporate cornfield. There are Amish buggies that will drive by on the road today. And I bet on myself. And I was not. That was not where I lived. Who I was was not a limiting factor, okay? So you have to have that confidence and bet on yourself even when it's really scary, because you can do it. It takes time. It takes sustained effort, because this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. And so for parents out there, people growing their business and think that you're overwhelmed, yes, I'm not going to lie. It is hard work. But when you bet on yourself and you start to see those returns come in. There is no better feeling than knowing that you did it.

Nice. Nice work. So, yeah, go check out the socials. I say there's a lot of work being done on the YouTube and me and my family are very looking forward to coming over in the summer and seeing those cornfields and introducing them to what an Amish is.

That's right. And Mark, you know what this means. You're gonna get to have my cookies.

Nice. Looking forward to all of that. Yeah, we're really looking forward to coming over in, in the summer and witnessing your family's place and your hospitality directly, which is very cool. So, everybody, please, can you show Rose some love in the chat? Amazing, amazing, amazing. Right, everybody go and grab a break. We've got one minute, two minutes max. I'm going to go. My next speaker has just joined the green room. We'll come back and, and we'll do this all over again. Rose, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Foreign. Everybody, welcome back. We have got another amazing guest speaker and somebody that you will recognize if you've been doing this game for a while, if you've been on the YouTube, being on the Instagram, Obviously Danny has been on the Boostly podcast a lot. We've featured him and his expertise a lot. And I think he's. He's one of the Go to's AI has already said he's wanted to go to experts on, on Airbnb. He's mentioned it before and, and again is one of our Go to's. A pleasure to have Danny Roostein of Optimize your BNB and the offer of profitable properties, as you can see behind him on the right and left with his books. Danny, thank you for joining us. It's an absolute pleasure. Where. Where are you tuning in from? Around the world. I know you like to travel around.

Yeah, I'm, I'm in the. The capital of Colombia right now. It's called Bogota. And you mentioned AI.

You know the AI.

Sometimes I say that, you know the AI that recommended to me, it's a Boostly AI. Yeah, you know that because you sent me the screenshot.

Yeah, 100%. That's right. So the boost. Yeah, it's a good one. So the Boostly AI, you can go check it out. Boostly.co.uk AI built on deli. It pulled in every single podcast, any video, but we've done all the books that we've done and, and there we go. Which is awesome. So I wanted to bring Danny in today, talking about Pricing, it's something that you've been talking about a lot on your YouTube and on the Instagram. Really, really good topic and really good sessions. But before we dig in further, just for anybody who isn't aware of your books and your good self, just give a quick breakdown of, of who you are, how you got into the world of Airbnb, and. And why you're talking about pricing and why it's important.

So in. In February. Excuse me, in December 2012, I quit my job. I was a CPA, public accounting. And that started off a chain of events and I made my way to Airbnb, stayed there for a couple years. At this point, it was more than a decade ago. I was working at Airbnb headquarters, and then after Airbnb, I switched over to more of being. Although I was a host at Airbnb, I switched over to being a host, being a property manager. In 2017, I started living in Airbnb pretty much permanently. I now have. I own Airbnbs myself, so I live in those sometimes I have. And I. And I have the, as you mentioned, the YouTube. And I've been starting on pricing since about five months ago because I think that's kind of my niche and I really feel like I have a good pricing strategy. And ever since Airbnb rolled out that Insights dashboard, I can actually prove it. I could show you my nightly rate is higher than competition. My occupancy is higher than competition.

Yeah, it's. It's been fascinating to watch your journey because like I said, I, I met. We met in, in the little island of Bali back in 2019. So what, six years is ago, which is a lot. Nearly seven years ago, which, which is crazy. And since then, like I say, followed your journey, traveling the world. You're one of the most traveled Airbnb guests that, that there is. And now obviously, I've got the property as well, which, which is. Which is awesome to see and your sessions that you're running. So you've got something new that's called the Pricing Power Hour. Just very quickly talk an overview of what it is, why you created it, how it works, and then we'll delve into the. To the questions on the topic.

Today, the Pricing Power Hour is meant to be a. A way to ease yourself into the pricing strategy that I teach. A lot of hosts have trouble with pricing strategy, but that the. The reason why I created Pricing Power Hour is because you can't pay for a course and sit down and watch it for three hours, and then you have Pricing because there's so many nuances, there's so many exceptions to the rules.

Rules.

So, and I just got, so, you know, even on my YouTube videos, they're not about pricing. I got comments about pricing always. Everyone's always curious about pricing. People pay private consulting, consulting calls. With me, it's pricing. So this is a, a low cost, low commitment way to speak with me directly and I'll talk about more at the end, but that's what I've been doing.

So let's talk about pricing then. Because you're right. So many hosts struggle with it. So many hosts just turn on autopilot on, on price Labs and think, right, I'd never have to check this again. You know, I'm sure in the times that you've been doing this and doing your consultancy, I'm sure you've seen all the different angles that people go on it. But the first thing I wanted to ask you, really good video that I saw you did recently about guests asking for a discount. So can you walk us through how you teach hosts to handle guests asking for a discount and when you actually think a discount actually makes financial sense? If, if ever. Let's start on the, the old discount one. Because we, we always get it a lot.

Yeah, can I have a discount? And it always seems to be the dates that are already discounted, you know, but the guest doesn't know that. So you, you watched one of my short videos, which I've been doing a good, a lot of recently, but they're only 60 seconds. So I'm glad you asked this because I can go into a little bit more detail here. So when a guest asks me for a discount, there are times to give that discount and I'll cover those at the end. But what I do most of the time is, is tell the guest something like this. I'm still working on the phrasing is, you know, I just check the rates and they're too low. I have to raise the rates. So can you tell me if you're not going to book? So I can do that. And it oftentimes, I don't know, I have to go back and check it. I've done it so many times now. The strategy has been around for a few months, but oftentimes they book it the same day. Sometimes they don't, which is totally fine. Now, when, when is it good to give a discount? You have to know your listing. So discounts isn't a winning game. But if you have a, you know, some hosts just like to make A little extra money with Airbnb, they have a listing, they don't want to spend much time on it. So they're not going to get the premium rates or the premium occupancy. So maybe in your, if you're in that category. Yeah, you take, take the discount or if I know it's a low demand day. So discounts are for, I call it the three L's. So they're, they're low season, low demand and last minute days. So if someone's asking me for a discount for Monday, Tuesday next week, that might be when I give them a discount.

Right.

If someone's asking me for a discount in high season during Thursday to Sunday, that's an obvious no.

Yeah, the FOMO there is really good that you give to the guests, like say when they come to, to you asking for a discount. It's like, hey, Danny, you know, these discounts are already, these rates are already discounted. In fact, I'm about to go into the back end of my extranet and put the prices up. So you know instantly when you save that and to a guest that's already crossed that barrier to reach out to you, they're, they're wanting to book more often than not, they're being a little cheeky. So by adding that little FOMO in, I love that because it's like, hey, these rates are already low. In fact, I'm going to go and put them up. Whether you're going to buy or not, that's up to you. But what's the, what's the fine line then? So the fine line of, you know, getting as much money as possible, putting the price up or killing that potential booking. Like, how do you strike that in, in your mental models that you run through, how do you break down that barrier between getting the book in, putting the price up or potentially killing the booking?

So putting the price up is a different thing that we can chat about if you want. I do, I do sometimes increase the price on inquiring guests, which you can do. But right now I'm just focusing on if someone is, is talking about a discount. If they're talking about discount, I'm not going to raise the price because they're very price conscious. They've already looked at the price, they know what it is.

And I'm, I'm not, I'm not going

to raise the price. I'm just telling them that it's a psychological thing. I'm trying to communicate that this is an error. Like, you know the airline error websites, this is an error. You could book now or I got to raise the price. So do it quick, like give you an hour, respond quick. It's, it's finessing how you communicate it.

But that's the idea.

You want to communicate that it's pricing error, you need to raise it. But you'll honor. Your honor what they saw for a moment.

Okay, well, let's move on to the, to the next one then. So the one where a guest inquires to you and you, you know, you can raise the price when that guest Inc. Inquires, like how does that work? And give us some examples of that. Where it's, where it's paid off and, and again, again those levers right when it, when is it smart to do so, when's it potentially going to like kill the booking? Like how do you sort of go through that? Because this is a real good topical point because we get a lot of guest inquiries come from.

Yeah, yeah. So this is actually some. A few years ago I stopped talking about some topics because I noticed that things changed on the platform after I talked about them. So this is one of the first times I'm talking about this live. So we'll see, we'll see if AirBB changes the platform. Okay, this is, this is a real, a real time test. So currently how it works is if a guest inquires, that means they have to scroll to the bottom of the page and click message without dates. I don't think then you can raise the prices, you can lower the price, you can change the price. And I do that on an inquiring guest. Now we all know. And if you don't and an inquiring guest is an unlikely guest to book, I don't know what the percentage is, but I can't imagine it's 20%. So what I do though is I rate the price. Okay. If you're inquiring, I know you're not going to book and, and you're taking more of my time. I think of a lot of things like kind of in my hourly rate might be an extreme example because it doesn't take that much time, especially with some PMS tools. Adding an AI where you just click a button and they automatically respond to it. Even the ones that are like kind of personalized questions. But I'll raise the price. It won't be much. You know, on a thousand dollar reservation I might measure it to a thousand fifty, a thousand one hundred.

So that's when, say that I come onto your list and the Belmont, I scroll right down to the bottom. I hit message. I've not put any dates in. I'm just sending you a message saying, hey, your place list looks cool. I'd like to book. Or do I have to put in some form of date in there for it to be able to. To get a price back? How. How is, how is that working exactly? Just in case someone wants to spot it.

Yeah.

You do have to actually put in dates to even send an inquiry, but there's a difference. So there's three times. There's an instant reservation. Everyone knows that there's a request to book, which is when they've put in their payment information. You just have to accept the money goes into, well, Airbnb's account. And the third one is an inquiry. So the guest.

Yeah.

Scrolls down, contact host, puts in the dates, messages you. Now, especially if a guest asks a question that I've already answered. Like, for example, sometimes I have like, Paris is very common. So I have like in the title, like Nine Minutes to Paris. Then I have it again in the text, which I don't recommend repeating things, but this is such a common question. And they ask, hey, how far are you from park? Ages. Okay, I'll answer you, but you're also going to pay 100 bucks extra for that.

It's like a penalty for asking a silly question. I like that. Okay, so very, very quickly before we move on, because I've got some questions in my mind that I want to ask you, but you mentioned the Airbnb watch your content. Obviously someone who used to be part of Airbnb and now obviously you know that they watch their content because they obviously been in contact with you. How often have you mentioned something on some of your video, short form, long form, blog posts and where you've noticed that Airbnb have actually actioned it, maybe weeks, months or years later. Is there any examples that you've got? And it's, it's fascinating for me to sort of hear that.

Yeah. So the biggest. There's a lot of them. So there's one of them. So there was a Airbnb put in simplified pricing.

Right.

And no one at the company actually is an Airbnb host or a guest, I'm convinced, maybe a guest, but they don't really know how the platform works. So there was a way to

kind

of play the game by the rules, but leverage it to your case. So I recommended you don't do simplified pricing, which is add the 15% on your, your listing. Because at the end of the day, if two Listings were a thousand dollars and one had simplified pricing on and the other one didn't. The night rate of the listing that did not have simplified pricing on would have showed a lower nightly rate, meaning their pool of fp, their pool of guests would have seen them more, which means they would book more. So Airbnb, it took them a while to take that out, but they, they took that out. The WI fi speed. I've been putting WI fi speed in my listings for 12 years. They eventually put that in.

And are they still doing that with the WI fi listings? It's gone a bit quiet on that. Are they still doing the one where you have to go into the room in your property and measure your speed? Is that still a big part of their ranking factors or not so much anymore.

That is still. Yeah, you still have to go in and connect to the same WI fi.

And that's the.

That's the WI fi that comes up. And it comes up typically in the top area, which is bullet points. Again, bullet points is a good idea. And something that, Something that I've been doing. Airbnb removed emojis from titles. That was a good hack.

You were the one who told me about that. I remember you were the one who told me about that all those years ago. Was the emojis in the emojis in the title all those years ago?

Yeah.

And then there was a hack where you could actually use Guesty to circumvent it and still put emojis. I went public with that on a YouTube video.

They took that away.

That was, that was very quick.

They took that away.

Of all the things they could focus on, they focused on taking out emojis.

There was also.

There was also a hack on how to lengthen titles more than 50. They took that away.

Yeah. So they, they, they are watching. Which is, which is fascinating. And again, if anybody's ever seen Danny's content, please drop it in the chat below. He's been around for a long time. And if you've read any of the books, Profitable Properties and optimize your bnb, drop it in the chat. All right, I want to talk about market occupancy. So I feel like a lot of people in this room who are watching this now, where it's live or on the replay, they're either chasing 100% occupancy or they're just looking to copy competitors prices. What's your framework for deciding the right occupancy range for a listing in any given season, and how do you adjust that as A market occupancy shift throughout the year and you can use yours as an example or a student of yours or just any examples that you've got that comes to mind.

You the, there's one data tool. I use a data tool to fit. So I need to know the market occupancy and I need to know the market occupancy for my level. Am I a luxury, am I at the very top or am I just an average listing? I have to be honest with myself

and know about that.

So each market has different seasons. Some don't have seasons, which is my preferred markets where that occupancy line just bumps. It bumps up close to 100 all year round. So that's how I be. That's what I base it off. One, if, if the market shows that the, the 90th percentile is getting 90 occupancy year round, then I know I can get 90 and maybe 95. Now that's the case in Medellin and I get 94 is my occupancy.

So.

So those tools are pretty accurate. That's not true for every market. Some markets the 90th percentile is getting 75% for six months and 45% for the other six months. But knowing that is super important because then you can. Because if you don't know that and you're in slow season or shoulder season, you're going for 70, 80 or 90% when the market realistically you're only going to get 40, 50 or 60%. What are you going to do to reach that occupancy? You're going to lower your price. So you can go into the back of your Insights dashboard and confirm this. You can confirm if your pricing is good. I, I have a few recent videos about this where you can look at two things. One is look at your occupancy first. Occupancy is easier for hosts to know. If I fully booked, I'm fully booked. That feels good. But oftentimes, if your occupancy is high, you'll go into the next metric, which is your nightly rate. And you can, in Airbnb's Insights dashboard, you can compare to similar listings. Oftentimes, your nightly rate will be lower than copy competition and, and you, you have less insight into night.

Great.

So you don't know if you're charging 20 less or 20 more, but Airbnb now tells you so I encourage all the users to go in and verify that. So with my power hour that I've been doing, which is basically just Strategy that I'm teaching. You can also go to the YouTube and, and, and learn for free there or the book. Well, this, where's my hand going to come up.

Profitable properties.

Yeah.

Part five is all about pricing.

So yeah, I think, I think we're talking about the next topic which I want to talk about, which is last minute discount strategy. Now you, you mentioned it there about obviously pricing and being reactive to the, to the market or being proactive to the market. Now, last minute discount, we're at a time of a year where it's the shoulder season for a lot of people. Like obviously if you're in the southern hemisphere, maybe different but for most people that are watching, they're in the northern hemisphere and you know, the majority of the people are in their quiet time now. And last minute discounts is something that crops up a lot. So can you walk us through how you use the booking lead time and occupancy to decide when to start that discounting conversation in your mind and, and how steep to go and how to avoid training guests or your Future potential guests, FPGs as you call it, to just wait for cheaper prices.

My strategy that I teach for last minute discounts is I want to be a little bit cheaper a little bit sooner than the competition. And so I do that based on what most of the competition does and then I take it a little bit bit extra step. Now let me be clear. Last minute strategy is not a winning strategy. So you don't want to have a totally open calendar and lowering dates. But what I do, so, so here's the strategy and then there's nuances. So we start with the, we start with the, the default, the default is 50% gradual discount up to your booking lead time. So if your booking leads me 60 days, or let's say 50 days and your, and your discount is 50%, that means at 51 days would be 0% discount. At 50 days there'd be 1% discount. At 25 days into the future there'd be 25 discount. So most. So, so you're going to be a little bit more discounted a little bit sooner than your competition and that's going to result in ultimately higher prices.

And how are you setting this all up? Are you doing it straight within, like the Airbnb back end? Are you using a pricing tool for this? Like, is there any third party software solutions that you're running or are you just literally doing it straight in the back end?

I use price labs. I use and recommend price labs. I've been using them for many years. I over the years have went into other pricing tools, but at this point Price Labs is not only the best, but they keep making advancements. So it's been a few years since I've been into the other tools. With that said, using a pricing tool is much better than not using a pricing tool, even if you price manually. That just doesn't make sense because it takes so much more time and oftentimes you're going to leave money on the table. So that's a different kind of a conversation.

But

that's a tool that I highly recommend over Airbnb Smart pricing and every other method.

The Airbnb Smart pricing. What's your quick sort of 60 seconds on the Airbnb smart pricing tool that they use within? Is it getting better? Is it something you just straight avoid? What's Your sort of 60 second sort of synopsis of the Airbnb smart pricing tool?

Airbnbs is for Airbnb. They have more inventory than they can sell inventory, meaning beds or Airbnb listings. So for them it's a lot more, more profitable to sell all of the inventory at a cheaper rate than half of the inventory at a beneficial rate to the host. Now, most hosts think their properties are worth more than they are, but that that's where Airbnb is. So don't expect to be profit maximizing if you're using Airbnb's smart pricing, which is free, but I think Price labs cost like 20 bucks a month. Month, I forget.

But it's not very cost effective. Very cost effective. You might as well use a third party tool because at the end of the day, Airbnb's price and tool is there to benefit one person and one person only. It's Airbnb. So I've got one more question that I want to ask you about the, the thing that you talk about of far out premiums. And then I want to quickly just jump back to the, to the power hour, how people can get involved, YouTube and all that good stuff. So there, there's a two parter. So number one, we as a me and my family, we've been looking at booking our summer excursions and that is what, six months into the future? I notice so many people that when we're checking their, their listings or checking their website, they haven't opened up that calendar six months ahead. So can you talk to us about opening calendars up like in the future? How do you do it? And secondly, I want to talk about this thing that you talked about, about which was called far out Premium. So how for, for a host that's watching this, how do you even decide what a far out premium is? How do you get your head around it? How do you avoid overpricing and just walk us through what? Walk us through that before we sort of look to wrap things up.

There was a moment where I lost my train of thought earlier and it just came back to me. So I want to jump back one question.

Okay.

Which was about the last minute discounts. So there was one more thing I wanted to mention, which is slow season strategy. You can type that on Google and my blog and YouTube video will come up. But in slow season, which is one of the 3L times low season, you want to. It's not just about last minute gradual discount, which we talked about. You also have to do a season strategy which essentially says getting, getting there. There are guests searching six months into the future, nine months into the future. That next slow season, we have a strategy to scrape up as many of them as we can to get some blocks on our dates. Far out. So as it relates to a host side of when should we open it up and how much? If you don't know what you're doing, the rule is just three months as you start to understand what you're doing. Six, nine and then 12 months maximum. The reason is because if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to. Guests are gonna, you probably, you're probably gonna have a low far out pricing or too high far out pricing, both of which aren't ideal.

Okay.

So that's how, that's how far you should open it up. Now there's you, you. We've talked about that.

I.

There's three time periods in pricing that you would need to optimize. One is around the booking lead time. We've discussed that. One is near term pricing. The last minute pricing. We discussed that. Now the last time period you need to optimize is far out premium. On a lot of the tools, the far out premium is elevated higher than it should be. So if my average nightly rate is 500 bucks, I notice that my far out is like, you know, 800 bucks. I know I'm not going to get that. So what I do typically is I turn, I reduce the 4 out, the generic default far out premium. So realistically, there's so much competition on Airbnb. It's a true market there. There's perfect supply and demand. So what I want, typically you're going to get a 5 or 10% premium on far out bookings, maybe. Sometimes, luckily you'll get a 25 or 30% premium. Those are on guests who aren't price sensitive. There's few of those in this world, so betting on them, but we're happy to take them. So, and here's how I structure my default basic strategy and then, and then it will get optimized. But I consider far out pricing one and a half times your booking lead time. So if it was 50, going back to our example, I would start by far out premium 75 days and then I would raise it gradually 10% over the length of my booking lead time. So in this case 50 days. So from 70 to 75 to 125, I would gradually raise the price 10%. How do I change that? How do I change last minute? How do I change booking? Depends on the real world booking patterns. If no one booked me at that rate, what would I do? It's easy. So get that base strategy down and then it's going to become easy. If you get a lot of far out bookings, you're booking recently, 50 days and you get four, four or five months booked out. Okay, well then you know what to do. Raise the price a little bit.

Yeah, it's fascinating. Again, I feel like so many people who are watching this live or replayer are very susceptible to the fact that they'll just set a price and they'll just leave it. Like, what would be that one bit of advice that you would give to people? And what's that one bit of advice you give to people in the pricing power hour when it comes to like really pricing their product, really pricing that, that property? Is it, you know, what is the dangers of just set and forgetting and like how, how do you sort of get around people when they come to you and go, danny, you know what, I know I need to do the price and I've watched your videos, we've chatted a few times now. But this is a lot of work. What do you say to that?

Yeah, let's keep. Why are we doing this front and center? We're doing this because of something that I've proven now many times, but with myself twice. So that difference is $120,000, which is the difference between what the property manager made in the, in, in Airbnb that I have. So I, I bought two Airbnbs in 2021. The prior property manager was the worst kind of pricing manager. One price all year round, they made, they showed me $42,000 a year. Now I Bought that, that house, that Airbnb ready to go. The dude left the liquor on the shelves. He took a painting. That was it. So basically it was the same. Sure. Maybe some hospitality differences. I did optimize the online listing, but pricing was the thing that earned me four times the amount of what that property manager was doing. I repeated it on the second place. I bought in Dec. Oct 2024. That manager was making about 32,000. I'm less clear because they were less, less transparent about it, but about 32,000, I'll be making 65,000. That's mostly to do with pricing. So that's the, that's the goal that we have to keep in mind.

So.

So, you know, that depends if that's worth it.

If

you know if it's worth it, it's worth it. So that's the main challenge for me, is because it is. I, I spouted off a bunch of numbers. My background is a, as a cpa, so I guess I'm good with numbers and maybe other people aren't. So my challenge is to make it as simple as possible, which it is. It is not difficult. But I think that's why the power Hour, you come on live, you ask the questions that I've already covered. But sometimes just talking with it through and through and getting your specific example, okay, my booking lead time is 37 days. It's not 30. So what do I do? Okay, it's the same thing.

50.

You know, look, market occupancy. 50% of market occupancy at 37 days instead of 30 days.

So we talk about the power Hour. How, when did it start? How has it been going? How does it work? And more importantly, if anybody's thinking, wow, I want to tap into that mind of Danny. How can they join? How can they join in the next power Hour?

They can.

There.

There's one. Once a month, we are doing a power hour, Power hour for one hour. The next one will be in February, the end of February. For those located in Europe, it'll be in the afternoon time, somewhere between 3, 5, 6pm we do it live. It's live and the recordings are there. There's. There's two ways to join. You could join a monthly at a very low price. And in fact, for you guys, I'm offering a discount code book, Direct Day. It'll let you try the first month, including one live mastermind for 10 bucks. That's only good for today.

And

in the mean, in between classes, I have a private forum for members of my Profitable properties program and my, my course program, the two programs I have.

And that.

That's where we interact there. And, and there's some interesting threads on there, including how to get negative reviews removed. And a few hosts have posted, including one recently who got a Airbnb changed their negative review removal process about maybe a year and a half ago and it's been extremely difficult

even.

Yeah.

So anyways, this host got it removed and he documented his whole process.

Nice. So the link is okay. M so O for Oscar, M for mother, bnb me forward slash, product forward slash, P for Peter, P for Peter, H for our go there. I'll pop the link. If someone could pop the link in the chat for me, that'd be amazing. I'll also get around to it and when we. Sorry, say again.

You know, you could just. Rather than that like crazy link pricing,

Power Hour, it'll pop up price and Power Hour. Go and do it on your search engine and on the Instagram. Optimize my Airbnb. On the YouTube optimize my Airbnb. Danny's name is like you say. You pop it into any Google Search, Bing Search or any LLM of your choice, his channels will come up. Like I say, he's been around for a long time. He knows what he's doing. And you can just tell from this interview and this chat and this discussion that we've got with us, super, super smart on the topic. Any final words of wisdoms you want to leave for our audience? Anything you want to leave us with,

just thanks for having me on. I'm honored whenever you ask me. And your community has always been very good to me. If you have questions, you can reach me via my chat, my website, my website, chat, YouTube. And I have, I just want to promote my YouTube real quick. I have some very good, I think, videos coming out. Top 10 Ways to Increase your nightly rates, your search rank, your occupancy and your review rating. And so, so keep, keep your eye on that. Those are coming out early, starting to come out early to mid February.

Nice. Yeah, the, the YouTube videos I've noticed personally from, from watching your content have leveled up a lot over the last, I'd say year to 18 months. So it's been great to see. Fantastic to have you on. Can everybody please say thank you to Danny in the chat below? All right, Danny, I'm going to let you go. I've got my next speaker. I can see him in the waiting room. I'm going to do have a quick break. We're going to be back in a minute. So everybody go get a drink. Go do what you need to do. Go share this video, Drop all the comments, all that good stuff. Say thank you to Danny and we'll be back in about one to two minutes. Thank you very much. Foreign. Welcome back. I've got another amazing guest speaker with me to my right or to my left, depending on how you are looking with me. A face that you will recognize. A favorite of the show, a favorite of Bruce Lee and a favorite of so many of our clients is Maddie from Mount Maddie. Welcome. Thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you for having me.

Today we're going to talk about a couple of things. We've got some breaking news, some big news, some exciting news, and then we're going to talk about what it means for the industry, but also as well, what it means for everybody else who is watching at home because we've got some really cool announcements. But before we do get on, can everybody please just drop in the chat again where you're tuning in from? We've been doing this now for a lot of hours. The Book Direct. The, the Book Direct day live stream, as you can tell from my voice, has been going on all day and we've got loads more sessions to go. So let me know where you're tuning in from, where you are in the world. And before we go any further, if you haven't done so already, like this video, share it amongst guests and host whoever that you is watching this because the more people we can get aware of Book Direct, then the more that we can help hosts grow their business on their own land. So without further ado, somebody who is massive on direct bookings all over these years, Maddie, you've got some, got some big breaking news. So can you, I'll pass the floor over. It's yours to share that I do.

Yes. The new year has come with a lot of exciting updates. The high level is that I am no longer Maddie from Mount Mount actually has joined a company called Pop Fly. So I'm now Maddie from Pop Fly.

The air horn is going.

Air horn.

So first and foremost, congrats. Big, big news. So what's the, what's the scoop? What's the tea? But I don't normally get a chance to do things like this. I feel like I should be on skiffed on Will's good morning hospitality here. But like, tell me like the scoop behind it. What's, what's, what's, what's the story? What's the tea? Spill it as much as you possibly can.

Yeah. I mean, so basically, if you guys noticed, middle of last year, like, MOUNT had gone pretty deep on the social media direct booking, creator, influencer side of things. Really it was to help us promote our hidden gems. So we were making all these little videos about all these amazing things to do, connecting them back to you guys, the hosts. Popfly took notice, a few other companies took notice, and really we were hitting crazy social media numbers and growth on our community side with creators that it was unheard of. And so basically what PopFly does, which is really cool, is they're in the outdoor adventure space and they built all this software that basically allows brands and you guys to connect to these vetted content creators and then work with them. And we were doing a lot of that, but we were doing it manually because our focus was on, let's bring in amazing creators. We already have you guys working with us anyways, let's connect you. And so popfly just made that a thousand times easier with their software. Hence why we joined. So basically, as of today, there's two announcements. One, Mount joined PopFly, but as of today as well, PopFly specifically launched a freemium version for you guys, our hosts, our property managers, local businesses. Basically you get access to what a lot of big brands pay for to work with social media influencers and content creators to help you build your strategy to then drive direct booking. So that's actually what I am spearheading now at Popfly, is that growth in the industry. So you will still see me around. I will still be talking about direct bookings and social media as well. Casey. Casey's joining Pop Fly as well. They wanted both of us, and we're very excited about the new journey.

Congratulations. So what's the domain for people to go and check out? Popfly.

Yeah, so I mean, you can go to popfly.com if you want to see specifically what you guys get from mount. Our domain, rent mount.com will just redirect you to an amazing landing page specifically about what you get as a property manager, a host, experience, operator, that type of stuff. So I would suggest going to our website and it'll get you to the right place.

Yeah. So go rent mount.com it'll divert you to the right page and you can go and check it out. But exciting time. So I guess this ties me in nicely. Why I reached out to get you on the. On the booked out live stream as we're talking about, obviously, social media, number one, how to get eyeballs on your business. We've had A lot of speakers today talking about the power of social media, the power of storytelling, the power of visibility. And obviously this ties in nicely with what you're going to be doing this year with, with poplight, but also as well with, you know, the content creators that you work with and things like retreats and eyeballs on business. So from what you learned in 2025, from putting on these retreats, from working with the content army, from working with content creators, how first and foremost, what was the takeaway? What did you learn? And then secondly, how can a host who's watching this, whether they've got, I don't know, two properties or 100 properties, put that into their 2026 thinking in terms of how can I get more bookings that are direct and on, you know, Airbnb, Verbo booking.com?

yeah, absolutely. We learned a lot in 2025. I will say there is a pretty large disconnect between these content creators and influencers. Like those words are pretty interchangeable. Interchangeable. And then also the property managers and hosts, the content creators and influencers are not really versed in the short term rental space whatsoever. So they don't understand that they should be coming and asking for a free stay like in exchange for content during the weekdays, during low season. Like they're like no, I want to go during Christmas week. And you guys are like, well absolutely not. That's like a very high revenue week.

Yes.

So what we're trying to do is educate them for on your guys behalf on like here's what to ask for and why so that it makes your lives easier so that you're not getting your DMs flooded with random people just asking for free stuff. So that would be one of our larger learnings from 2025 is just there needs to be way more education from both sides so that you guys can work together properly. And then what we're doing from your side of things is we ran a lot of retreats in 2025. So that was basically partnering with a pretty large property manager who had a huge house or multiple houses like together on a compound. We would bring eight to 10 influencers stay, you know, three to four to five days. We'd also work with the local businesses, the local attractions, the tourism board, like it became a huge thing for that destination. And then we deliver over 2000 pieces of content to everyone that was involved. And that's just like a whole content archive, you know, have for the rest of the year to be using. Because the other really hard thing about this Is like, yeah, you need to be on social media. Of course, everyone's telling you that. But it's like how like you're running a business. Where on earth are you going to find time to go film, shoot, edit? Like, that's incredibly challenging.

Yeah. And not only crafting 2,000 pieces of content, which is insane in itself, but also crafting 2,000 good pieces of content. Like anybody can create a piece of content right now. You literally can go anywhere and type in and any LLM type, create me this. But you know it's going to be slop or crap. Right. So how can you create a thousand pieces of content that is good, that is speaking to your ideal guest that will get eyeballs and get attention. And obviously when you get eyeballs and attention, booking comes on the back of it. So that's crazy. And the brands that you did work with, I don't know if you can mention any names, but like, so do you have any sort of results? Did they share with anything with you? Any of kind. Cool sort of numbers on visibility, etc. From. From these efforts that you did with. With those brands?

Yeah, so we did one with Casiola at their Aruba property. So they have a big operation down there in Aruba. We brought in. That one was 8, 10 craters. Something around that line. All women, though, because we were actually going for like a bachelorette vibe because that was like one of their target demos. So we partnered with like a party bus on Aruba. Like we. We brought in like really cool things. Also, I would like to point out that also ensures that your content is just not property shots and boring. Like you are actually showing what your guests are going to be doing, which is great.

We.

I don't know the exact number off the top of my head, but we were. What we do is we come, we shoot film and then right after we leave, we start live posting on Instagram and TikTok with all the influencers. So Casiolo gave us like a booking code basically that all these influencers could use. And then we were driving a ton of website traffic to their book direct website. We got one or two bookings, which is great because that house is actually quite expensive. I think the average nightly rate can be anywhere between like 5 to 10,000. So one booking, you know, really got that ROI. I will say though, you should not have expectations if you bring in an influencer to get a massive amount of direct bookings instantly because this is a pretty qualified purchase, so they need to keep seeing it. So it's great. That that influencer came and posted about it. But you need to keep following up on your own socials with more and more videos so that that person keeps seeing it, they're even more influenced and then they click purchase. So the ROI is hard to track.

Yeah, well you need to obviously as well have a strategy in place and obviously this is where working with someone like yourselves is fantastic because you can come with the experience of going right, well instead of, let's just driving people to book which is, you know, a very high, a high purchase price for, you know, seeing it for the first time instead how can we instead do something else like get the email address, get the contact details so that we can build, get them from like the social to a, to a squeeze page which is like landing page, get on the email and then keep in touch that way. Or you know, there's loads of different ways that you can, that you can do this. And we've got so many people and so many videos that we've done over the past, you and I and so many of us have said how they have worked with content creators and had, had an ROI for, for not just the, the one time deal, but this evergreen that will last forever. Let's say this content that you get when you get with the content creator is yours to keep. You know, you're not just going to do it once and never see it again. You know what I mean? So really, really cool stuff. So okay, so looking forward to 2026, looking to how you are seeing the industry, looking how you're seeing content creation and social media. What could be a couple of actionable things that our hosts, our viewers that are watching with us right now could be doing that they could be putting into, into practice that will help them hopefully get more bookings this year.

Yeah, I mean, so I will say one really interesting thing just to keep tabs on is TikTok did launch the ability to basically book directly from a video. So if they see a property place to stay, you can now book it. Instagram typically copies everything TikTok does. So I would assume Instagram is going to be rolling out that feature sometime in 2026. Which means if you do not have an Instagram account for your property or your brand, vice versa, for TikTok as well, you're behind. So I would say that's starting point number one is getting those accounts created, claim that name and then from there you need to figure out a way to start posting video. I would say you can post photos, but that's so Old fashioned now that if you aren't posting little videos like 30 to 60 seconds long, you're really just not going to be relevant in that algorithm. No one's going to find you, no one's going to see you, you're going to have no growth. So that would be. Point number two is think about that. And then point number three is when you're thinking about a strategy. When we work with various clients on building their Instagram and TikTok strategies, like in this space we typically are like, how can you become the expert of your market? Because people want to know everything about where they're going. They don't just want to know what bed linens you're using or how many beds your house has. Right? Like that's great stuff. But that's not ultimately why they're going to come. They want to know, what am I going to do on here? What's the best restaurant in town? How do I get a reservation? What are the can't miss spots? What are the stuff that Google isn't telling me, like all that extra stuff? So really you want content around all of that. And if you can start making those type of videos where it's like your hook is like, this is the best place to eat in Denver, Colorado. And it's like a really bold statement. It's going to go viral because, because people are like, wait, what? You like spark controversy, which is great, but it's those videos that then people are like, wait, I want to go to Denver. I want to go there. Oh my God, this is from a place to stay. Now I know where I'm staying and my whole trip is planned and booked. That's really how you get them in there.

All right, so two questions. And the reason why I'm going to ask this first question is that imitation. You know, there's no point in us trying to reinvent the wheel. You can just go and see what other good people are doing and try and take it and put, get inspiration and put it into your word. So the first question is, and I'm going to let you think about this while I ask question two is, are there any brands that you see in our space that are doing this? Well, while you're thinking of that, the second question is you talk about video, you are 100% right. If anybody was to, let's just say you can think about when you are sitting at home or chilling out or whatever and you hit the, the Instagram button and you go hit that Search Explore button of all the videos that appear as you scroll up and down. There are no pictures. It's 99.9 videos. So think about that. Same with Tick Tock. As you're on the scroll, very, very rarely do you see like a photo carousel pop up. But what do you see? You see videos. But what I will say, and this is a question to you is could a host, for example, take a lot of good pictures that they have, put it into like a splice or a Cap Cut or even the Edits app on Instagram and turn that into a short video? Would that fly as a video in. In like 2026? Just in case someone's watching this going, ah, no, I gotta go get a load of video content. I've been getting photo content for days now, I've gotta do a video content and. Or do they have to go and get those videos? So two part question right there.

Yes, I would recommend that you go and get video. If you really are in a pinch and need a place to to start. You could splice some photos together. But again, that is pretty old school. Like not a lot of people are doing that anymore. But if you need filler, like you're just like, I need to post today, like, yeah, last resort, totally do it. And Cap Cut is a great app for that. Although I will say this is actually another tip. Cap Cut is an app bought or owned by TikTok. So if you edit on cap cut, TikTok knows that and they're going to push that video. Instagram just did something very similar where they created an app, I think it's called Edits.

Yes.

Where you need to edit there for it to do well on Instagram. Now this is very annoying for someone who is a content creator, like running an Instagram TikTok page because now you have to edit in two different places because Instagram doesn't like Cap cut videos and TikTok doesn't like edit videos. So do with that what you will. I haven't really figured out what to do with that, but I will say it's rather annoying. But just something to note in terms of someone who's doing it really well, actually spoke with this person at Verma at the end of last year. Red Rock Vacation Rentals is doing their TikTok and Instagram strategy incredibly well. And they do a mix of working with local influencers and also their own content. So that would be someone to talk to, you know, look at their videos, take their strategy, emulate it. I think they're doing it really well. That would be like the, like a big property manager off the top of my head, a boat also actually.

Let's go have a little, let's go a little. If I hit this button. Ah, here we go. So we've got Red Rock Vacation Rentals. Is this, Is this the 1 22, 000 followers based out of Utah.

Yeah, that's the one. So like, when you first look at this, 22, 000 followers is not like crazy like, whoa, right, like that's like a pretty average number. But what she told us on stage is the amount of revenue they're doing from direct bookings is insane. So I will say we also use this strategy at Mount Now Fly is we were not really going for follower count because at the end of the day, what does a follower really do for you? For all of our videos, we were trying to convert them into content creators that would work for us. You know, same goes for Red Rock. They are trying to convert them into a direct booking. So that strategy really works for them. If you try and go for both I want to direct booking and I want a follower, it's most likely not going to work because those are two different, very, very different goals.

Yeah, well, the, the, the thing that everybody's saying now in 2026, this is obviously pioneered by TikTok and the others, like you say like to copy, is that the follow means nothing has a certain amount of gravitas, but what they're doing is they're pushing out more content. Doesn't matter of the, the follower or how many followers you've got. If you do good content, the, the AI or the, whatever, the, the machine learning that's built into all of these apps will push it to the right people. Right? So, yes, it's lovely to see big numbers, but B, at the end of the day, from a business perspective, it's if this video got say 100 views or 100 likes, but it generated, you know, a million dollars of direct bookings compared to a video that got, say, a million views but got one booking. What would you rather, you know, one is vanity and one actually keeps the lights on. And I think for a lot of people as you are, all of the videos that we've done today, all of the speakers that we've done today, all of the sessions we've done today, we've had people that have come in with like one follower to someone who's got over 500, 000 followers and has built a huge brand. You know, there's, there's, there's, there's loads of ways to do this, but I think at the end of the day, from everybody's looking to create content in 2026, you know, don't just try and go for the silly TikTok dance because you think it's going to get a million views. You know what I mean? You got to think of like, at the end of the day, if I create content, how am I going to generate some form of return office? Whether this is email subscribers or generate revenue, open up conversations, whatever. So good company to go follow. Red Rock Vacation Rentals. And who was the one you mentioned? Sorry, Above.

Abode Luxury rentals.

Let me go see.

We actually ended up doing a retreat with them. So some of their content is from stuff we made, but they do really well.

So is this the one? Park City?

Yeah, yeah. Yep, that's the one.

Nice. So again, like, you look at 10,000 followers and you think it's okay.

It's not.

Not amazing.

So they actually found a creator who's in the Utah area.

Yeah.

And they work with her a lot. Her name's Betsy. We actually work with her as well. And so they know that her. Her content is so quality and that she knows what to do when she steps into a property that they have her go to their Jackson Hole properties, Park City properties. Like she is in a lot of their content because she's the one making the videos.

Is this Betsy Hidden Gems days or

no, no, that must be another influencer.

Oh, look at them. Check them out. Is that Betsy?

No, that's. That's the owner's.

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course it is. That. Is that Rachel?

Is that.

Yeah, there we go.

Oh, that might be Betsy. That could be her.

Okay. Oh, this is Hidden Gem Stays again, Maybe.

Okay, that's who they're tagging. That is Betsy, though. That is her. So she probably made that piece of content and they bought it from her.

So Hidden Gem stays as a marketing gem. So this is. This is them. So who knows?

Oh, I know what hidden Gem stays is. Yeah. So Betsy's filming the content, she's getting it to them, and they're doing the editing.

Okay, there we go. I love that. So look at this. Content creators are leveling up. People are leveling up. Everyone's leveling up in 2025, 2026. But this is good content. Right. And now you work with Betsy as well. Is that right? Did you say that?

Yeah, she's one of our mount stewards. So she'll come on the retreats to some of them that are relevant but like, seeing that, I've seen the behind the scenes of all this. Like the stuff you can't see here is like the tripods. The, like 20 times they've done that shot because they're like, oh, it wasn't good enough. Like, this is not just like naturally whipping out a camera and filming. Like, this is very much plans.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, absolutely. So again, you work with professionals, you work with experts and you get expert footage and you know, the, the results speak for itself. Like this. This page looks exactly how you want it to. So good. So we've got two good examples. We've done broken some big news, which is exciting and good luck. So we're going to be finding out more about Pop Fly throughout the year. Again, everybody head to. To rent mount.com. it will divert you to a special landing page for Pop Fly for, for you guys and you can go and find out more. So just give a little breakdown what if. If I'm a host right now and I want to find out more about what you guys are doing and how I can get involved with. Break down, like what I can expect when I. When I check out that domain.

Yeah. So when you get onto that landing page, it's just going to tell you a bit more about what Pop Fly does and how Mount is like, we're working together and what that means for you guys. Um, but really like on. On the real, like what we're doing is if you. I think there's going to be some call to actions on that page that say, like, get started. You know, those typical things that will lead you to a form. That form goes directly to me. So you're actually booking a meeting with me and we can talk. Basically everything Mark and I just chatted, like your, your social media, Instagram strategy, how Popfly can help you. The account is free, so it's like a win win. And basically what it does when you get in there, like, not all the features of Popfly will be available on the free account just because they do work with very large brands and there are like some really good features in there. One of the ones I do know that is in there is like, it's a contract. Right. So if you want to work with an influencer content creator and you're like, well, do I give them a contract? What's in the contract? All that stuff, all those templates are in there, so you can just use them. So there's a lot of stuff that makes your life easier, but that's what you'll see on that landing page and specifically how host property manager should be using social media to really level up, start that book direct strategy and, and get going.

Well, I'm looking forward to hearing more and, and all that good stuff, so please do go and check it out. Marty, thank you so much. Hi. There we have it. It's very late. I've been doing this for a lot of hours. I don't even know what time I started doing this, but it's a long time. So just want to say thank you very much to everybody, all the speakers, all the partners who have helped me put this on. It's been a great, great day and I really hope that you've got something from it, from whatever session we've done, from whatever speaker we've done, whether it's social media, whether it's websites, whether it's accessories, amenities, whether it's influencers, whether it's all the things. But for the last three days we've been putting on these, these live events and today was obviously the mammoth one being Book Direct Day. I think the core takeaway I want for everybody is consistency, right? Direct bookings is the goal, Direct bookings is the aim. You want to have a strong direct booking present in your portfolio, right? If you've got 100 of your bookings, if you can get over 50% direct, you are ahead of majority that are out there. But you're not just going to click your fingers and be direct. You have got to put in the graft to do so. And hopefully with today, or if you've read the books or been following along this for an extended period of time, you will know. There's so many ways to do it. You just got to start, just do one, pick one, give it a go. I was watching this video last week and it was saying if you just dedicated 18 minutes a day over a course of a year, that's something like 10,000 hours. I don't know, I'm tired, leave me alone. But anyway, if you can dedicate just 80 minutes a day to a car topic or subject or thing that you want to do, whatever that is, you will be in the top 5% in the world at that skill set, which, you know, you break it down, if you hear 10,000 hours, you're like. But if you break it down to just 18 minutes a day, it's more achievable. Again, my mass may be off on that one, but it's the principle of the theory is you just got to put a little bit of time in a day to do it. And if you're looking at me going, mark, I haven't got 80 minutes a day, I challenge you to open up your phone, look at your screen time and look at where you're spending your day online and I guarantee I can shave off at least 80 minutes that you doom scrolling on social media. So I'm going to leave you with that. Again, thank you to all of our speakers and thank you to all of our people that have been tuning in. I see all of you in the chat. Please show some love. Please drop the chat. I just ask one thing. This is all for free. No pitch for boostly in any way, shape or form. But if you do want to work with us, you know to come. But anyway, all I ask in return is just hit the repost button, hit the share button, comment and tag people in. You know this content is going to stay here forever. It's not going anywhere. Whatever channel you're watching, it's going to be here. Go and share people, whether it's today, tomorrow, next week, next month and just help somebody that is out there. Share this into Facebook groups. The admins of Facebook groups love it when people share my stuff in there. So go and do it for me. I'll be back very soon. Obviously we've got more videos on the YouTube coming up. We've got social media, we've got emails and all that good stuff. And I'll do another one of these boot camps. Maybe not to this extent, but I'll look to do one before the summer for sure. With that being said, go and check out all of our amazing speakers and the links that they dropped. I will package all of this up, I'll whack it all into Notebook LM and I'll come up with some cool takeaways and whatnot and I'll. I'll email it out to everybody. So if you want to be on the email list, just drop me a. Drop me an email marketbooster.co.uk if not already or go to bookingsboosters.AI for a report. Go to workshop so you can go join our next live workshop. If you want me to roast your listing, go to something roast. I don't know, I'm tired. Leave me alone. Right, off you pop. Thank you so much and I'll see you on the next one.