Boost Your Marketing Skills and Productivity Now! 🚀 with Noah Kagan

A recorded live interview (April 10, 2020) between Mark Simpson (Boostly) and Noah Kagan (AppSumo, SendFox, OkDork). They discuss practical, low-cost marketing tactics for hospitality owners during the COVID-19 pandemic — emphasizing weekly email newsletters, Facebook groups, and repurposing content — plus productivity/habit tips (Gmail shortcuts, faster typing, trackpad speed, sleep optimization). Noah also shares side-hustle and pivot ideas (Airbnb Experiences, teaching platforms, affiliates, Gumroad, long-term rentals) and recommends contacting past guests for referrals to boost direct bookings.
Chapters
Podcast we're in season 8 episode 20.
And today was probably one of my most favorite podcast interviews to date. I was very fortunate to interview Noah Kagan from the Sumo group. He's got AppSumo King Sumo, Sendfox, okay Doc is his personal blog. OkDoc YouTube channel is where everybody is heading to right now because it is full of daily actionable advice on how.
To get through the coronavirus.
And I reached out to him a couple of weeks ago to say if he fancied doing this live video with me, he was kind enough to get back and say yep, we'll do it.
So that's what we did tonight.
This was recorded on Friday 10th April 2020. He shared a ton of actionable advice on Airbnb on getting some side hustles up and going about the power of email, about why you should contacting previous guests and we talk about that in length and detail. And he shares so many links. So much so I've had to put them all into the blog post. You can go and check it out by going to boosted.co.uk podcast. You're going to look for season eight episode 20 so it should be right at the very top and once you go and do that, please check out this video, please check out the audio and most importantly head over to OkDoc, go to the YouTube, go watch his videos and make sure that you tell him that you came here from Boostly.
Before we head over to the interview.
I just want to thank our sponsors which is hostfully hostfully.com is where you can go to get online digital guidebooks. Now these are super cool because you get one digital guidebook for free. With those digital guidebooks you can send them to your guest pre post during stay and it's a fantastic resource to grow your email listed and get them to book Direct also as well. It's sponsored by the Book Direct membership. It's my thing. My Book Direct membership 9.99amonth gives you access to all of the social media content that you need, fresh pieces for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn on a monthly basis so you don't have to worry about the social media content you're going to put out. Also gives you access to over 80 hours worth of training and tutorial videos for how to set up Facebook, how to make this OTAs work for you, how to set up email marketing and also as well you get listed on the bookdirectmap.com to go check out more go to boosley.co.uk BDM the short of.
It man, my life and career has been about evangelizing and marketing and so kind of followed my interest to join different companies. Like working at Facebook was one of the first people and kind of explored a lot of curiosity around like what products do I like what products are coming up. And I've built a company with a lot of great people called appsumo.com, which is the number one site for software deals. So if anyone's looking to start a business online or already running an online business, go sign up for our free newsletter. A few times a week we send out, hey, here's the latest and greatest products. Plus it's only $50 for life for most of the tools we promote. So I do that. And a lot of where I spend my personal time is sharing how to do marketing, experimenting with a lot of marketing, do my best to have fun with it.
So if you could do me big favor just to start off with, just expl how sendfox is different to mailchimp and what the sort of similarities and what sendfox is and why, what it is, why it's being created and just sort of give people an idea. Because the reason why I asked is that this week we've been talking about email market. We've been talking about quite a lot because so many people don't do it and we've always had mailchimp but mailchimp have changed a lot recently. A lot of people are sort of looking for alternatives. So yeah, I thought it'd be a nice place just to quickly start, have a little chat about sendflox.
The reason that email marketing is so important so I'm gonna tie this in, is that if you have an Airbnb and you've had guests over a period of time, email marketing is a great way in to either get them back or potentially sell them other things. So for right now, if you're an Airbnb and you don't have you're empty. Wouldn't it be nice if you could communicate directly with your past customers? Say hey, do you want to pre buy for the future? Or B, maybe you can actually offer them something else. Is there a physical product? Is there a food? Is there another service that you can recommend? And so email marketing, what I found is I've been doing Internet business world for 20 years and I found that this is the only place and only way that you can communicate at scale with your audience. And so we've built with AppSumo and an eight figure business just off of email. And so for me, I was on Mailchimp just like you, and I'm paying, you know, 3, 400, 500 bucks a month. And it took me like an hour to create every email. And so I think the best way to run a business, the best way to run an Airbnb, is just make the Airbnb the way the one you'd want to go to. And so we got tired of using mailchimp. And so we said, well, what if we did just build it ourselves? And that's what's become sendfox. So the things that matter to us right now is that I don't want it to be very expensive. So right now it's just, it's free to start or one time payment of 50 bucks forever. And what we're really trying to focus on is just encouraging people to communicate with their audience weekly. So how do we make a tool that makes it very easy for you to create content or material so that you're communicating with your customers or potential customers regularly? I think that's a huge mistake that a lot of people miss out on. If you're having Airbnb, maybe they're not visiting you weekly, so maybe monthly makes more sense. But I think what I've been saying a lot lately and what I think people need to think about is attention is worth more than money. Attention is worth more than money. And if you are not at the top of the attention or somewhere on the attention of your customer, they will stay somewhere else, they will buy something else, or they will use something else, or they will learn from someone else. And so it's critical to stay top of mind. I think email is a great way to do that.
I just want to say, and again, just to reiterate what Noah's just said, there a lot of people right now are stuck at home and they're on social media, they're on the Internet, you know, reading the emails. And if you're proactive at this point and you're sending emails, you're on social media loads. And like you say, you've got the attention, then when this is over and when we're on the other side and people are sort of starting to go right, we can, you know, lockdowns are lowered, let's go and find somewhere to stay. And if you're, you've been doing this right now by being proactive, by getting the attention, then you're gonna be the place that they're gonna want to stay. And you know, if you want to go and get started go to booster.co.uk sendfox that's a little link you can use. You go get started. Go get going on it. And I first came across your tactics and tips. I can't remember if it was a YouTube or a podcast or a blog post, but there was one that you spoke about. It was all about how to speed up your computer. And I was saying before we went live that one of my favorite productivity tips I've ever picked up is from yourself, because it was as simple as speeding up that mouse cursor on your MacBook. It's so simple to do. So many people don't do it. And, you know, by simply doing that, I was able to 2x the productivity because things were able to move around quicker. Now, with yourself, how did. When have you always been curious about productivity and, like, hacking things and just making things go quicker, smoother, faster for yourself? And the second sort of question is, apart from the mouser cursor trick, what other, like, sort of little tips can you. Can you share and pass on to people that may not be aware of it?
Two nights ago, we were doing this dating game. It's called we are Not Strangers. And it's a card game where you and your wife ask different questions. And so one of the questions she asked me, Mark, was, what do my shoes say about me? And she's like, well, you don't like tying your shoelaces. And I was like, what do you mean I don't like tying my shoelaces? And so she's like, yeah, you never tie your shoelaces. And so what I realized is that ever since I was a little kid, I've been really into efficiency. So, like, one of my favorite things in elementary school was the hypotenuse. It was the shortest distance between two points. I was fascinated with, like, how to get to school the fastest way. And it's something I've reflected on in my life. And so, yeah, I think it's just more efficiency. It doesn't mean just because you're efficient doesn't mean you're effective, which is a very important thing in business. Efficiency and effectiveness. It's like, are you going very fast while you're. This is a Gary Halbert quote, which I love, which was, it's not great to be going very fast on a canoe up the wrong stream. So you don't want to be going fast up the wrong stream. But for me, it's been very important to be going fast and trying to be effective. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of productivity stuff that, you know, people are like, how do I make more money, how do I get more done in life? And if you kind of start looking at what's where am I spending the majority of my time and how do I optimize that that trickles down so that it's a huge multiplier effect and so I can go through. Do you want some examples of like probably the top, top five things that everyone should do? One of the number one thing for me is learning how to type faster. So most people, if they're not typing probably around a hundred words a minute, then you're gonna be as less efficient on everything else you're gonna be do subsequently. I can tell you about apps, they can tell you about. You know, our business is based on promoting tools, but you can't even use the tools. Then you're taking too long. So two ways to go improve it. One is called keybr.com k-e y b r.com and the second one is ratatype R A T A R. Those are the two places totally free that I'd recommend people going and learning how to get to. At least if you're not at 80, you should be focused on getting to 80 and get out. Don't do that chicken typing. Number two is your tracks pad. I think that's something that you were talking about earlier is that if you're using a Mac, you go to system Preferences, click on trackpad and then the point and click section make your tracking speed the fastest. This is the interesting thing. Whenever I use someone else's computer now, I can always be like, dude, it's so slow. Like what are you trying to do anything today? Are you just like giving up hope? So that's number two. Number three. Three is a stupid one because people may not realize this stuff, but your computer and your phone, it's not about necessarily that but wherever you're spending the majority of your time, if you're on an old phone, if you're on an old iPad, if you're on an old tablet and it takes a long time for it to load times, how long it takes to load times, every day times the whole year. So again, what I'm really trying to people to think about is think about where you spend the most of your day. If most your day is on a computer, get a faster one. If most of your day is using some certain software, learn the key. So another example of that is and I always try to think of top of funnel. Most people here Use Gmail, go to Gmail, go into your settings, the little gear thing in the top right, click on Settings and then turn on your keyboard shortcut. And then all you do is in Gmail you're gonna hit shift question mark. And so in shift question mark it's gonna show you all the keyboard shortcuts. And I've studied almost every single one of them. And that basically just shows you I'm a big loser. But the second thing that it shows you is that if you can save time by not having to move your mouse from the, like the email to the next thing, you're gonna save tons of time because most people spend about an hour. And if you're using Outlook, it's the same thing. There's a bunch of keyboard shortcuts, but if you're not using the majority keyboard shortcuts in Gmail or Outlook, you're probably wasting 15 to 30 minutes every single day, times 300 plus days a year that you're checking your email.
I knew that I had a note on my computer. I use iPhone notes, icloud notes, how to store everything in there. 25th of October 2017. I knew it rang a bell because that's when I first heard about this, I think from one of your blogs. Got it saved in there that all of the shortcuts now I never, I never scroll around in Gmail.
Try this out. You're in Gmail. Hit backslash. It's the same one as the question mark. It might be different for Euro, but the question mark automatically goes to the search section. But that one is like a simple one. Just hit the backslash, you go to the search area. Other ones that I really like that maybe aren't as common is that if you're, if you, if you do J and K from the inbox, it goes up and down, which is pretty known. I think people know that. But do J and K go up and down? Then when you. The two things that are cool, I'll give you some things that I really like. You hit X and it chooses the email. Then this is the one I actually really like. For the. You can hit L which labels it. So you just hit L or you hit M and that moves it. So I don't have to actually do anything. Choose on it, it's L or M and then an M. Oh, M is muted. Ooh, I'm getting it wrong. But L basically labels it. So I'll label it with L and then I'll archive it with Y. V is move it. Excuse me. So Going back to what I was just saying, I hit. So if you click into an email, let's just say you do J or K and you hit enter into an email. Then you hit gi, it'll take you back out of the email. Or you hit shift U and it'll unread the email and take you back to the inbox. But look, I could spend all day doing like a Gmail class because honestly, this stuff gets me excited. Whenever someone shows me a new one, I'm like, oh, shit. The key things that I think we've talked about today, and I'll share one more that I think is a key thing, is that look at where you spend the majority of your time. It's in email, it's on your phone, it's on your laptop. So maximize that stuff because that's the biggest wins. The last one that I think most people don't optimize is their bedroom. Try a nice bed, like in our bed. I can maybe at the end of this show you guys a sneak peek of our bedroom if my fiance is okay with it. We've tried different mattresses. We have a mattress cover. We've. We basically have bought a bunch of different comforters, a bunch of different covers. We have a weighted blanket. We have a bed cooler like a bed air conditioner. We have different pillows. I think that's pretty much it. I also wear the OURA ring to figure out what time is the best time to go to sleep and when to wake up and all this stuff. You know, sometimes I hear people say this shit on other podcasts or shows and I'm like, dude, shut up, man. Like, I don't need all your hippie dippy. Like, I don't want to eat some, like, frog legs to sleep better. But again, if you sleep better, like on Monday, I didn't sleep well. It ruined my whole day Tuesday. So again, think about where the majority of your time is, and if you can sleep great, then the rest of the day you're going to have that energy. So it's kind of the same concept I think is really important for everyone.
My top productivity tips on sleeping is don't sleep with a one year old in the bed. I've got that right now. A one year old that sleeps horizontally. So I just get kicked all night long. So you can do all the cool things, but just basically my tip, don't have a one year old and you'll sleep fine. All right, let's move on to marketing. We've done productivity so many Gmail Tips and if you just literally Google Gmail shortcuts, you'll go and just basically be able to get super productivity in Gmail alone. But I think it was the 12th of March when for me in the UK, I feel that the coronavirus really clamped down on us. It was on the 12th I was walking to the Short Stay show and it was after that event, 13th and 14th and 15th, we really felt it here. But during that walk up the Thames, going to the London xl, I had your podcast on and you were talking about marketing strategies that you were looking into for 2020. The main ones that I took away from were Facebook groups, weekly email, and let's just add Marketplace into there as well. Obviously 2020 from where you were when you recorded that video. That first video is. It's gone a bit crazy. Let's just focus on weekly email, Facebook groups and Marketplace. Now. Why at the time do you feel that those three things were really important, like where you're putting your attention for 2020 and has that changed since then? Are you still sort of looking at these three things, particularly with Marketplace, like local right now and just sort of. Yeah, just share a bit of an insight into your thinking behind.
I think with marketing, there's kind of a few different aspects. I think if people aren't sending emails to their audience once a week, that's the number one thing. Just get going. Right. Because Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, all these places, they control the audience, they control your customer. And so, you know, I always like to say the analogy, like, Mark, with your wife, you don't want to pay me to talk to her. You like talking to her yourself. And so same thing with your audiences, number one thing is get an email, use sendfox.com it's free. And start communicating with them every week. I think with your communities and marketing, the way that I like to think about it, and we can talk about different specific products, but generally there's how do I find new audiences and then how do I nurture my existing audience. Of the things that I've been experimenting with, Facebook groups has been one of them. And it's a little bit more of a nurturing. Right. So the people who already know about Noah Kagan or know about Dork or AppSumo, it's not necessarily expanding the pie. It's more that the people that like me. It's a way that I can connect them with other people and become a hub, which is always very powerful. And it's a chance for them to help each other, which is also very Powerful and it's fun. Groups have actually we have it's okaydork.com group and we've been starting this group. I don't know if you're in it, Mark, but every week we help a different person in it. It's a great way is all. Another thing that I like about the free the Facebook group marketing is it's a hedge. It's a hedge. So what I mean by that is that if you're running any business, you probably there's a pie of marketing which is your ads, it's your press, it's your affiliate, it's your partnerships, it's your content. With email marketing, you know, a good email, most people get 30% open rates. That means 70% of people didn't see it or deleted it. And so that is where social can be helpful. So groups, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn. That's why I do like having certain other channels as hedges towards my main thing, which is email. Like recently what's been fascinating is I've been putting out a lot of content on YouTube and I think when we're doing this content stuff, I was surprised. This week specifically this stuck out to me. I had multiple people say, hey, I saw your video on LinkedIn. I saw your video on Instagram TV. And I was like, I didn't even really care about those places. And so it was an interesting reminder that I like what you're doing with this. And I think in terms of marketing, this is another great example. Try something out on one place and then promote in other places, but see where you're getting the response.
This is going to be a future podcast episode that I'm thinking of doing for hospitality owners because I don't think there are any really good hospitality owner podcasts. But you've obviously got a podcast yourself. And you know, so many people are looking at podcasts and what would your advice would be maybe to say a hospitality owner right now, a bed and breakfast owner, small hotel owner, rental owner, who would be potentially thinking about maybe looking at a podcast. Is there any super quick ways that you've seen that someone could get started, do you think? Now more than ever, because we're recording this on Zoom. Everybody's doing Zoom. The quality of the video, people are just putting quantity out instead of quality, which is maybe flip of what it was back end of last year. Judas advising people now just to get something down and get it out there. Because like you're saying you can repurpose it in so many different ways.
If you were a Bed and breakfast owner. I would not start a podcast. A podcast is for your most loyal fans. And it's not, I say, hey, I don't like the word fan because I don't want people to be below me, but it's for the most. Like, I love Mark. I always appreciate Mark's opinions on bed and breakfasts. He's always bringing on great guests. I want more Mark. And so the thing I would think about for a bed and breakfast, especially right now, this is such a great time for bed and breakfast. Why? Because you're like, holy shit, I'm really dependent on this, this Airbnb website or vrbo or Facebook marketplace. I'm very dependent on someone coming. And secondly, if, you know, airline, if there's another 9, 11 in a different country or there's another virus, wow, I'm gonna be impacted. So I think the opportunity right now is not about a podcast. It's more how do I diversify my revenue within this sector? So if this happens again, I don't really care. Right. And so you're like, well, what can I do as a bed and breakfast? So I don't think it's hosting a podcast yourself, but. But could you potentially host people who want to do podcasts in your area at your bed and breakfast? So maybe you don't do a podcast, but if you have anyone in your area, if you're in London, if you're in Houston, if you have extra space in your Airbnb or in your hotel, maybe you can use that space more creatively so that if no guests are coming, you can still have people that maybe are using it. Maybe you can have it as a YouTube recording studio. Hey, I know you're doing videos. Why don't you come over? We have a great place. I'll cook you lunch and you can maybe mention you recorded this here. And so that's a way of actually building exposure. And so I think the thing I would be considering with my Airbnb is how can I diversify the revenue so that if the short term rental thing doesn't ever come back, I'm not really going to be worried. So there's a lot of options out there. There's long term rentals, which, you know, people have considered. I'm sure you've talked about it with that.
I mean, I don't know what the lockdown restrictions are in Austin right now for as strict as what they maybe are in the UK and Europe, but things like that, like, I think that's where I want to go with the next end of this conversation would be pivoting and not putting all of your eggs in one basket. Specifically, when it comes to your income, can you just share the ones that you've heard of and examples that you've seen and heard of over. Over there and just sort of share with everybody just to sort of get the brain juice going to see what they could potentially be doing?
If I had an Airbnb, I'd still, you know, you still have an asset, right? If most of your audience has bed and breakfasts like I have an Airbnb, and I posted in the comments on Facebook that you can, you know, if you're watching YouTube, maybe it'll get shown as well. My Airbnb is empty all this month. I'm making $400 before, and that's including my cleaning fee. So I'm gonna end up making $200 and my monthly burn is 2,000. So that means I'm down negative $1,800. And so I think the key thing here is two pieces. One, thank God that's not my main income stream, right? And so I think if you're an Airbnb owner out there, there's two main options. One, what can you do with the property? And so we can maybe talk about that. But I think, secondly, how can you get creative in generating a second income stream or side hustle that can compensate for it? So if one thing is down, you've hedged it with another thing up. As an example, on Wednesday on YouTube, you can go to YouTube.com okaydork I started a business live. I don't know how to make any money. I've got no skills. I've got nothing. And I was like, well, let me just see. Without emailing my audience. And I think everyone should build a newsletter. I think everyone should be communicating with whatever small audience you have. Sendfox.com, by the way. And you go to, go to Mark's link boostly.co.uk sendfox for a hookup. I think it's easy to say it, right? Cause it's easy for me to come on. And this is what I did for the past few weeks. Hey, everyone, diversify your income because you're fucked. Thanks, asshole. Like, that's not helpful because I'm struggling right now. And so I said, hey, let me just show you live. And so in one hour, what I did is I just did two things. I posted in a few text groups, WhatsApp groups, and on my Facebook. Does anyone need anything delivered in this area. That's one thing I posted. And then. And the second thing is I posted, does anyone need any gym equipment or bikes? Why did I post that? Because that's what I need. And I think the best way to start any side hustle is to try to figure out how to serve yourself first. And so I just posted, hey, does anyone need gym equipment? And people went crazy. I can't. I wish. And honestly, I was shocked because I think when most people are trying to diversify their income or start a side hustle and I want to talk, I want to come back and explore. If you have a property that's an Airbnb, even like mine or yours, and yours is, I'm guessing, more empty than usual, what can we do about it? But let's start with the side hustle. So with the side hustle, what I did is I said I didn't go out. And this is where people get number one mistake. Most people go out, buy stuff or build stuff and then say, let me go out and find customer. Let me go see if I can hopefully find a miracle. And what I like to do is say, let me find customers. Because now that I have the money, delivering on that is easy. So it turned out that people were like, yo, give me gym equipment. And people like probably 10 to 15 people immediately were asking for it. And I said, alright, which gym equipment are you looking for? I want this, I want that. And then I just tried a bunch of different ways to deliver on it. I called local gyms to see if they'd sell me their equipment. I called hotels, I called national distributors. I ended up someone posted that their friend's friend has the equipment. And so I ended up buying $500 worth of gym equipment. And I made and I sold $620 worth. And the example was just to show people there's a lot of money out there and people are still spending, they're just spending differently. You can diversify it. Maybe it's not gym equipment, maybe it's food, maybe it's entertainment. My fiance is a children's nurse. Maybe it's making baby food. But the point is it's still out there.
Talking about a side hustle, that's how I first got started with this. With Boost Lee 2016, I started to go to local tourism meetings. Other B and B owners in the Scarborough and Whitby area started to go to there. And I just realized that nobody really understood marketing. Nobody knew what Facebook was. And I'd had sales jobs and sort of marketing jobs in London, studying All of this. Got a good knowledge of it. I grew up with Facebook. That was my side hustle. I just sort of said, well, I, I can see that everybody's struggling with Facebook, Twitter, whatever it was back in 2016. And I just said, you know, I can help you on a one on one basis. And those were my first ever clients. And that's where it's sort of crazily grown to what this is now, you know, with the podcast and an online academy and online membership and book, direct map and everything. Times like these people, you know, there's two ways they could go and they can be super proactive, or they can just dig their head in the sand and just wait for government Grant. What were you doing before hospitality? And there's people that have got amazing careers that were before that and they can now use those skills to start up somewhere online, like one on one teaching. We asked the question, what is your favorite recipe? Like, what's the one recipe that you do for your guests that is just like phenomenal? And again, it's like, well, why not put that recipe, why not put it out to your email list and say, hey, I can show you how to make this recipe. You know, we're doing like a 10, 15, 20 minute $20 for like an hour of our time. We'll come on Zoom and we can do that. And there's so many little things you can do. So, Yeah, I think 100% just to sort of touch on what you were saying. And one thing we will get to do with yourself. No. Is that we'. Once all of this is over at the Airbnb, we'll get you multi channel, we'll get you direct booking, we'll get you all that. So we'll get you sorted. Outside of hospitality, outside of Airbnb, what are the other, would you say, the other sort of success stories that you've seen of a business that is very much brick and mortar pivoting online? Like, is there anything that you can share?
I've pulled together my 10 favorite pivots. It's actually, I'll post the article for you. I want to give out some sight that if you're at home and you're like, man, I want to start a business, I want to get something going. Whereas maybe customers, like, maybe you don't have anyone, you're alone in like, you know, some remote, like Wales, but like in the remotest part of Wales and you got no one around you. So here's some sites that I think you can go teach other People to start building your business. I think the ones I'd recommend, I think you can go and take lessons. Italki or preply.com, i think that if you have any skill you can teach people. You can teach them a language, you can teach them how to do hospitality, you can teach them cooking, you could teach them folding. There's a lot of things that people are willing to learn out there. More people at home now learning more things ever. I think you can go there. Check out appsumo.com, you can be an affiliate like you've been doing, Mark, where you recommend products that you use and get paid for it. Number three, sendfox. So start a newsletter. Start teaching your people about how to run a bed and breakfast. You know, kind of like Mark. Mark was smart. Like, hey, I have this thing in the family. Let me teach people the marketing parts. So I'd say sendfox.com or substack. Gumroad is another really cool one for people out there. Like, if you have anything you could sell, like a digital template, icons, PDFs, anything you can create that you can sell. Gumroad is a really easy way to sell something digital. I think there's a few other places, but there's a lot of sites now, Airbnb Experiences. So they just launched today. And if I was looking for money, I would definitely go on Airbnb Experience, put some fun experiences up, because they're all online. Maybe it's juggling. Maybe it's yo, yo. Maybe it's like Irish dancing. And so you can go on Airbnb Experiences and actually start selling different services. The last things I would check out are kind of like skillshare.com or teachable. See what else you could teach people, because there's a lot of people out there that want to learn. You know, right now, people just need ways to get going and finding their customers, and sometimes that's a little hard in terms of business pivots, actually, one of my new favorite business pivots happened yesterday. It's by this company that makes my cell phone case. So these guys, I hate cell phone cases. So these guys make like the. I'm turn off my background so you can see it. Ultra thin case. That's their whole shtick. So you can see it's called Buy Peel Calm. And what these guys did, which I was so excited about, was that they created a key holder. They've used their design skills and their packaging and their skills around that to launch something new. I think the other Thing that they did that's really critical and I want to highlight is they thought about, I already have a customer base of people. How could I potentially sell this customer base that I already have access to something else that's relevant. And so I think they're gonna survive for many years because, look, in business most stuff won't work, but at least they're trying something and they're doing something about it versus sitting and hoping someone comes and saves them.
I think everybody, as business owners, whether it's hospitality or just business owners in general, we're always fascinated with new money, new customers. In fact, if you've already got a customer base that know, likes and trust you and you've got them on email or you've just got them where you can pick up the phone, you know, you don't have, have a full email list. You can just pick up the phone and just have a have a chat and just think of something that will help benefit them in these times and you'll be amazed at what these conversations and if they don't, just ask the question, hey, I totally get it that you don't, but do you know anybody? Power of the do you know anyone? And we talked about this loads is so powerful. I just want to say thank you very much for all of that and there's so many links and what I'll do is we're going to get all of these links, we're going to get everything, we're going to get them, put on the show notes. We will make sure that there are links to everything. So you can go and check it out. Go to booster.co.uk, forward slash podcast. You got a season eight right at the very top, episode 20. We'll have Noah's blog there, interviews, the whole shebang, full transcript and everything. But we like to finish these with our quickfire question. Quick fire questions with a little lockdown style y because obviously of current times. So I've got a couple of questions, Noah. Number one quickfire. If you could be isolated on lockdown with one celebrity, who would it be?
Celebrity. I'd want someone well rounded that could like entertain and cook, you know, the first person.
Yeah, mine would be Joe Rogan. I think that he ticks off a lot of those boxes.
I don't think Joe. I think Joe would just. I don't know if he would talk a lot, I guess. Yeah, I guess Joe Rogan would be pretty interesting. That's a pretty good one. My first thought was Tupac. I just think Tupac would be like, yo, you want to watch a movie? I'm like, yeah, dude.
And you'd be like, all right.
And we just watch a movie together. But I think, yeah, you're. It's interesting. My first. My other thought was, like, who's a cook, right? Like, who's a famous chef slash, like, entertainer? Like, maybe Gordon Ramsay. Like, that would be cool. Or like, one of the guys in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Because then he'd be like, yo, I'm gonna cook you, and then I'll make you a nice drink, and then we'll, like, you know, play some games together.
It's interesting how the mind just goes.
It's interesting what we both think about, right? Like, my first thought is, how can I get someone that makes it fun to be around? But, yeah, I guess Joe wrote good.
I think he just takes off. You'd have a good conversation. He probably could cook. You know, he's a good hunter. You know, he always puts up those Instagrams of him cooking and whatnot. And I think that, yeah, it'd be a good person to be on lockdown with me. One series or movie that you've had on your to watch list for ages that now you've got the chance to watch it.
So let me pull up my list. I track every movie I watch. I'll tell you. Let me just say a book I've watched, I'm reading today. I'm reading this book called the Lost Airman. Dude, this book is amazing. I love this book. It's about a guy who got his plane got shot down behind Nazi area and how he tried to survive. And it reads like the most crazy story I could have ever imagined. But it's true. In terms of movies, like, I'll give a few that I think, you know, people haven't. Are not as common maybe because, you know, I think there's a lot of ones that have common recently. What have I watched on movies? One of the movies I watched that I thought was a really interesting documentary was called Gringo. That's a pretty crazy movie. It's a John McAfee story. Was the last, oh, Ford versus Ferrari movie. Was actually much better than I expected it to be. And then Dark Waters. Dark Waters was good. And then the gatekeeper. Gatekeepers about, like, Israeli security.
Next one, then. What is the one thing that you've missed being able to do? Civilization since being on lockdown?
I miss going to the sauna. I just like going to the sauna once a week. You know, I work out A lot. So I like going to the sauna. The second thing is especially you're British, you're gonna fucking love this. I play squash once a week. Yeah man. So I miss going to the sauna and I miss playing a little bit of squash. Definitely like, you know, I miss doing this.
Alright, so what is the best purchase that you have made under $100 in the past six months to a year?
I'll say. Okay, over a hundred. I bought an Oculus Quest, like this whole VR thing. It's right over there, that one. You can do workouts. So I do my workouts once a week on there and then there's a bunch and it's really, it's the future. So I'd say that's been my like top over a hundred purchases. Actually I just bought this thing and it's been a game changer. Is this like USB hub. This was like 10 bucks and so I can plug in the microphone. I didn't know you could do this stuff, but that one's kind of a crappy one.
It's interesting you're talking about the virtual reality being the future. I think like if anything comes out with this, all of these big, big companies like Amazon are going to be, you know, pushing on with the whole AI sort of thing next because they're going to go, hey, what's the one thing that slowed us down during all of this?
Humans.
We could, that we could be cracking on if we've got all the robots.
The worst.
More robots, more robots, less people.
What was your, your best hundred dollar? Oh, actually let me throw, I'll throw in my favorite hundred dollar purchase. Lululemon for guys out there. I know you have a lot of female in the audience. Lululemon makes shorts for $60 that are like, that's like pretty much it, man. That's under a hundred bucks. Those are literally. I probably wear them almost every day.
My Under a hundred $100 purchase a pair of Adidas trainers. Basically we do a lot of traveling. I've got a me, my wife and my three boys. We do a lot of traveling. And last year we're coming back from Bali back to the uk but we stopped off in Bulgaria for six weeks. I desperately needed a pair of trainers because my Birkenstocks that we had just basically were ruined. Went into Bulgaria, went to this first shopping center that we saw. There was this pair of Adidas. They're sort of Tennessee type shoes that they're not like the usual sambas that are Stan Smiths, but this one Type I bought them, pretty much wore them every day. They got ruined literally a couple of weeks ago. That's why they're top of mind. They're my favorite trainers I've ever had. Literally will spend every day in them. Those are my favorite purchase by far under £100. Final question then. What is your one bit of advice that you would give to anybody watching, which is obviously hospitality owners to help them boost their direct booking?
I would contact all of my previous guests and ask for a referral. I would just ask because I mean the easiest thing is the people you already have. So go to them and say, hey, who's one person that you think would stay? And I'll give you both something special. But it has to be, you know, generally has to be something. Either your place is awesome or you give them something special that they both want it.
What is your favorite social media channel to hang out at the moment? Is there any way you're checking more than others?
I think YouTube lately. YouTube.com okay dork. I've been really, I feel like Facebook that you eventually screw you over. So I kind of just. YouTube's been fun. I've had a lot of fun just kind of messing around with that.
Thanks so much for coming on and helping hospitality owners. I know, I appreciate. I know people will be watching back in the future but will appreciate and I know the people watching live have said thank you very much. So thank you very much for doing it.
Okay.
Doc.com YouTube go to just basically Google YouTube OK dot or YouTube Nokagan.
It'll pop up.
Just go watch the videos that's been putting out. Thank you for everybody that has tuned in tonight. Means a lot that you keep on doing this every single night. I'm going to be doing this all the way through April. Every single evening we're going to have live videos. Whether it's marketing reviews or we bring on a guest or we're just talking and just sharing advice that we're doing. Host doing so really, really appreciate it. Thank you to everybody for doing so. And if you've got any questions, you just know. But you just got it. Email markoostly.co.uk please go and leave a rate review and subscribe as we're always doing on the Apple itunes and just please share this video with one person. Share it in a group, share it on your wall, share it on your business page. Really appreciate everybody that has done that so far. So thank you so much for doing so. I'll be back for the next episode where we're going to be interviewing re interviewing Simon. Saw Simon, as we all know, is part of the co meetings that are over in Jersey right now. So he's got a very good insight to how everything is going down right now. So that's going to be on Monday, the next episode of the Boostly podcast. But thank you so much everybody that is watching and I'll speak to you all very soon.
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