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Welcome back to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly the confidence so you can go out there and get more direct bookings. Today we're going behind another successful and interesting host on the behind the Host miniseries on the Boostie podcast. This is the series where we interview a short term rental host. We're going to find out what tools they use, their story, and we're going to get inspiration from them about stuff that you can apply to your hospitality business and some lessons. So I'm looking forward to this one. Today we've got a great pair of girls on and there's going to be lots of giggles I feel from tonight's episode. So welcome along Kate, Katie Buckley and Sally Ford, both directors of Petal Barley Stays or Petal Barley Developments and we're going to get to know their business today. So thank you for joining me and welcome along. Why don't we start by you introducing where in the world you host, where you're based at the moment and anything else you'd like to share. And if we start with yourself, Katie.

Hi there. Yeah, we have two luxury cottages on the east coast of Yorkshire. We are based in Huddersfield ourselves and we are quite new to this in terms of hospitality. We both work full time in other industries and we have turned our hand at this quite by accident, really, haven't we? Sally saw our first property when she was on holiday in Flamborough and the rest is history. We kind of, we, we, we never imagined that we'd go into hospitality. We kind of wanted to invest in bricks and mortar, but didn't quite know. We hadn't quite imagined it any further than that. And then as we saw a cottage on the coast, we kind of then thought actually this would be okay as a holiday let. And then.

We thought, we'll have a.

We'll have another.

Nice, nice. So, Sally, when you saw this, this property, you were on holiday, I take it, then? And is that, is that what gave you the idea and the inspiration behind this?

Absolutely. Where it's situated, we walked past every day. It was up for sale. I was with the parents and they spelled, they said, have a look at this. We booked an appointment, had a look and as soon as we walked in, we fell in love. I ran Katie and I said, it's beautiful. She said, put a, put an offer in. So straight away, she hadn't even seen it.

Had you just trusted that, Sal? Kind of know what?

Yeah.

What we wanted.

It had an ambiance about it and that it was like a house that we kept giving. It just went on and on and on and we just saw the potential. It was a mess.

Yeah.

But we rose to the challenge. Yeah.

Yeah.

And if. Well, Wave Crest is Wave Crest now it's our baby.

I just got to add to that as well. Our parents have been absolutely instrumental in, in supporting us in this venture.

Absolutely.

Without them, we couldn't have done it. Yes. Both my dad and Sal's dad have spent a lot of their weekends and there's their time, you know, they're. They're actually at our cottage in Saltburn now.

Oh, nice.

While we're here.

The help from family is just so important, especially when you get started.

Absolutely pivotal in helping us. And, you know, the. Both our dads are really skilled in terms of trades, so we've, we've saved money on tradesmen and yeah, we can't thank them enough for the time and energy They've put into our business. And not forgetting my mom, she's there.

Cooking, cleaning, sorting the bedding out. You name it, she's doing it. Writing a little list.

She loves the list.

What we need to do next.

And so for many of the listeners, they might not know Yorkshire in general, but there's. Yorkshire is such a destination for people to go and visit, isn't. And as you say, you were on holiday, you could see this would be a good holiday. Let. How long ago was this? How long. How far into your hospitality journey? I. How many years?

Just over two.

Two years. It was just after lockdown, wasn't it was when we were first allowed out, just after lockdown. You'd gone away.

It was December.

We bought it December 20th.

Yes.

We launched it 6-21-21. So we spent six months renovating. Yeah, the cottage. And it's an old 1920s fisherman's cottage, so it's got all the old beams in, it's got the old window hatch for where they brought in the nets. It's a listed listed window. So, you know, in terms of character, I think. I think one of our models, when. When you sent us our. The email, we talked about model. I think it's characterful cottages. So we. We don't. We looked at the general kind of house, didn't we? And it just didn't feel right for us. We want to have characterful cottages. The one we just bought at Saltburn is 1800s. It's an old cottage, you know, that we've. We've fully renovated and made a fabulous space, but still kept that unique old touch nice.

And one thing we normally share towards the end, but I'm going to encourage people listening to. Check out. It's ww.competal barley.co.uk. yes, you can go and see these awesome cottages on there and just. Just have a look at what Kate and Sally are talking about there. And they have got real character. And this is one of the things which guests must love about them. What would you say? We'll dive more into your. You mentioned you got a career and I'm going to find out more about that shortly. But what would you say is the reason that guests come and stay at your properties? What amenities attracting them and what have you discovered in the two years you've been doing what hospitality has been? Some of the surprising things that you didn't know at the start of this journey?

Well, I mean, I would say first and foremost, before we even get into the property, is how we befriend our guests. We are there for them. We answer any questions, we're interactive with them.

Communication.

Communication is massive. So before they've even arrived, they know who we are. So they're very, very comfortable to contact us if they need anything. And then I suppose when they get in the property, in fact, because we've befriended them, we're chatting with them. The first thing that when they walk through the door, they contact us. We get an email, we get a text, they ring us and they say, wow. And we get that quite a lot, don't we? Which is so lovely. That's the best part, the land.

And they just. Yeah, well, yeah.

And then they said that the pictures don't do it justice. So hearing that is like, yeah, we.

Think our photos are pretty good. And we know that that's important because we, of course, we've had a professional photo shoot. We haven't yet that Saltburn is coming on Sunday.

Okay.

So when we. When we go back to Saltburn at the weekend, the photographer is going to come. So by next week, we should have our full catalog of photographs on the website for Saltburn, which is equally as impressive as Wave Crest. But one of the things is really people. People are already messaging us about photographs for some Saltburn because they've stayed at Wave Crest. And the trust in that it's going to be fabulous. We've even had bookings at Saltburn without any photographs.

Yeah.

Because I guess the trust in us that it's going to be as fabulous as their stay at Worth Crest. I think on the back of that, we talked about trust as being a really, really pivotal thing.

Absolutely.

As a business. And I'll tell you a time about when a guest. I must have spent about three hours on the phone to a potential guest who'd been scammed out of a holiday at a local holiday destination called Castle Lakes. And I think there's lots of scammers selling holidays that don't exist. And they'd arrived with the family, two adult children, car packed up full of the holiday gear and arrived there and there were no holiday. And they paid the full amount. And it took me ages to kind of direct it to companies House, directs to our website, directs to, you know, all the things that kind of showed us as being legitimate hosts. And now she's actually working for us. She's a travel agent. She's actually working for us. So she's selling our holidays. That's cool how you know that her putting that trust in us. And now she's. She's you know, working for us. So. And actually she stayed at both cottages now.

Yeah, she's been the first guest at our second cottage.

Yeah. So that trust is massive.

It's one of the things that's one of the things that we talk about so often here is that when you can show people that you know, you're on company's house, you've got your own website, you've got your own reviews on the website as well, where people can trust, you're not just hosts but you're a business where people can see proof of that. And that's the cool thing. And like you say, if you're delivering on exactly what it is that you're showing and actually over delivering when people turn up under promise and over delivering.

Yeah.

And that messaging you with that. Wow, then this is going to help to build trust. And this is one of the things which is the side effect like you say, you set off to invest in bricks and mortar in property but actually one of the benefits is actually you're helping people. People are coming to enjoy themselves and it's rewarding on a human level, isn't it?

Absolutely. It really is. You know, it's amazing to hear that. And we have some fabulous reviews. We've got a guest book in the cottage, you know, we, we post things online, we've got some fabulous reviews and lots of returning customers as well. We've got a guest coming this year and it'll be his fifth this day.

Amazing. Amazing.

Yeah. You can't write, you can't pay for that. You know, it's just, it's amazing.

So I want to dive into how you're doing that stuff. But before we do, you mentioned you, you've got full time jobs. So two questions. What is your full time career? To each of you and if we start with Sally first and then, then come back to Katie but also how do you manage to do what you need to do around the full time job? Because I know as hosts we're busy people in general.

I have no idea. We do, yes. So I work in an insurance broker status. Insurance brokers. And so I'm in sales and yeah, full time job then I'm a full time mum. And you know you've obviously run a house. Yeah, yeah, yes, it's, it's tough but we make time, don't we?

We're all passionate about passionate.

We work together, we do it on evenings, weekends, weekends etc and yeah, our aim is to eventually this be our full time job one day.

Yeah, that's a Dream.

It can't come soon enough. But for now.

Yeah, yeah, I think we don't mind putting in that time because we know that ultimately we're going to benefit from that, you know. Yeah, we take. Yeah, we just, we give that time because we know that ultimately we're going to benefit eventually for being able to do it full time. That's. That's our aim.

Yeah.

100%. And what, what is your role? How do you split up the roles within the business?

Kind of quite naturally, really, hasn't it? Yeah, I do more of the marketing. The kind of layers in with different companies that we work with, such as sort of the travel agents and the Facebook pages that we. That we've kind of got links with and you've kind of naturally taken the form of doing all the bookings and the more of a backend kind of stuff.

Accounting. Yeah. Payments and. And again, contacting the guests once they've booked or interested as well. And. And selling our extras, such as our pamper packaging packages. Should I say breakfast hampers, seafood platters.

Upselling.

The upselling. Yeah. So I would do that. We just works.

And.

And again, if one of us is a bit busy, we'll speak to each other and we'll take over and we just, we just.

So we compliment each other really well. Don't worry. So I would have never had me down as the marketing.

No. Because that's my job. That's my actual job.

That's just not my forte at all.

No.

But I've kind of just turned my hand to it and it's working.

You are very, very early in the morning. So before anyone's awake, Kate's already been.

She's an idol.

Yeah. All the marketing.

Yeah. That's cool. So somebody gets the messages at the start of the day. Somebody deals with.

All that cell. I'll pick it up at the end of the day when I'm in bed. Well, seriously, I'll be like getting ready for the benefit.

Do you know this is one of the most important things within business, though? Because I was asked even this week, how do you find a business partner, you know, within business, what's important? And I was just like, well, for, first of all, somebody you can trust and you know, that you respect, but then somebody who's not like you are is as different as you could. You know, when it comes down to.

Something, we're really, you know, as I said, we compliment, don't we?

A lot. And even when we've been finishing off the properties, the decor, we are so similar.

Yeah, we are.

And we both like the same thing, so it's really easy.

Yeah, that's. That side of things is really, really easy. Yeah, we like pick this up, like. Yeah. You know, really easy.

And we're best friends, so.

Yeah, that helps.

Yeah.

Well, did you. Did you find you had many transferable skills from the. From the career that just taken you into hospitality? Because it's one thing which I know a lot of people listening will definitely. Yeah.

Yeah, I didn't. Obviously we've not touched on what I do yet, but definitely the communication side of things.

Yeah.

Not the marketing, because I would have never saw myself as a market doing marketing or anything like that.

You see, I talk to a lot of people in my. In my job. I'm always talking.

And you're a salesperson.

Salesperson. So I could talk for England. Yeah.

Well, it goes hand in hand, those sales and customer service, doesn't it? Operations. So coming across to yourself, what is it that you do and what have you found as the transferable skills for hospitality?

I'm a manager for a charity. My charity is called Humankind. We're based in the northeast, but a kind of looking at. Well, we have moved throughout the country working with vulnerable people. So my service is for people with drug and alcohol problems. So I'm a manager, manage a team of recovery navigators there. And I've worked in service for 20 years, so been around a long, long time. So I think my transferable skills are just. I'm just. I'm just a general kind of people person.

Yeah.

And can be quite. Turn my hand at quite a lot and quite amenable to. To most things. And yeah, I would have never thought I'd be down with the market marketing stuff and even the sales. I think for me the sales just comes with being passionate about what you do. So you can sell anything if you're passionate about it. I could talk. I could probably sell my cottage to the person next door because. Because I'm passionate about my cottage. And I think that's. That's. That crux of it is that passion.

That we have, it comes through.

Yeah, we want to succeed.

We have to succeed.

Yeah, yeah, no failing.

That doesn't exist.

Well, let's talk about some of the challenges and some of the successes and then we'll come on to some of the operations and the stuff you do within your business. So what would you say has been the biggest challenge so far in the last two years regarding the hospitality business?

Like we've just said about working Full time. That I would say is our biggest challenge. We would love to do this full time. Yeah.

Not been able to. Not been able to put enough hours in.

Hours in. Yeah, we're doing so well. Yeah, we are getting the bookings, but we could do better because if we had more time.

We run our own. We don't use any booking. We don't. We use the OTAs as little as possible. Booking.com and Airbnb in the winter months, we kind of rely on them, but we've really got a knack of turning those into direct bookings now.

Nice.

Thanks to that boost.

Yes, thanks.

Thanks for the.

This week.

Nice.

We've changed two direct book, two OTA bookings into direct bookings this week.

Let's dive into that. So how are you doing it? What's working for you?

Okay, so she does this part.

Yeah.

Customer service.

Yeah. So, yeah, I'd just give them a quick call and to be fair, I would sort of say. Have you. Well, if, if you'd like to come direct, there's a personal service we can offer an earlier check in which they love, don't. They do love. Of course. We also have a charge now for the hot tub on hot. On arrival, obviously with all the increases, the gas, electric, etc. And water. So 50 pound charge, it's nothing. But we'll offer maybe that free direct and. And again, a personal touches with all the, the hampers that we provide. If this, if it's for a birthday, we do celebrations, we do cakes, banners, balloons, etc.

Yeah, there's some personal touch.

Yeah. So we can offer a lot more if they want to talk to us direct. So far we've had 100% turnaround, which is great. It's fabulous. And again, we've got that personal touch with them. We know who they are, they know who we are and they can ring us anytime. So it continues. So when they, when they arrive, we know that they'll probably contact us and say, wow, again, it feels a bit.

It almost feels a little bit weird when we get OTA bookings because we have. We haven't known them before because obviously this is a new thing since we've joined Bruce Lee and we've got on board with Mark and all his tips and, and techniques and what have you. So, you know, before it was like, oh, we don't really know what's turning up, you know, because we've not had that connection with them. Now we make it our point, make it our point to contact them and have that and turn it into a direct booking. And as I said, so far we've got a few to ring. We've got a list of ring.

Yeah.

But so far, so good.

Do you know, it's so exciting, first of all, to hear that, because it's not only helping you feel more confident about who's staying, but actually it's giving you the better reviews. And most importantly, you're switching people from, you know, yourself paying 3 to 15 plus that, you know, in commissions and all of a sudden they're coming direct here and people, you know, it's something which I talk about quite often, which is people will always feel more treasured when you've gone above and beyond. And whether that is, you know, like the stuff we normally do in our business, people know if you've done a little bit extra. So that stuff that you're saying there. But look, we normally charge for the hot tub, but if you come direct, we'll just do that for you. Well, they feel that, you know, they actually feel that as appreciation. And what do they do when they've had good service? Well, they're going to pay it back, they're going to give you a good review, they're going to tell their friends, they're going to tell family. So, yeah, that's really cool.

We've heard that your returning customers aren't a big thing, but we have found it's one of our big things that we've got a lot of returning customers.

And recommendations as well. So our customers recommending.

Absolutely.

With their friends and family. But not only that, but let me tell you a time when our guests actually bought us presents.

Oh, nice.

We leave gifts, a little gifts for our guests, a little arrival gift, something to say. So thank you. But a couple of times we've actually had guests leave us gifts and one of the gifts was a hurricane with some pebbles in and lovely. Which was like fitting in with the C seam. We've left it in the cottage for other guests to enjoy. So, you know, such a lovely touch. And I think that was really early on, wasn't it? Yeah, we were both, we were like, oh, my God, it's so nice to.

Hear that you're having real effects on people.

And yeah, if you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2, 000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B o o s t-l y.co.uk call and booking an appointment with one of our sales team.

One thing that we see time and time again, people try to get into this business and they go, oh, you can make thousands on the side and. And people say it's passive, but ultimately this is. Hospitality is doing exactly what you're talking about there, which is customer service speaking to people. Giftology. You know, I know Mark talks about, you know, if you. If you're given these gifts, then you get in return appreciation and word of mouth and that side of things. So it's just so important. Let's talk more about how your. Your operations and, and how you. What kind of technology you use. So first of all, who's on your team? Do you have a set of cleaners or anybody locally and handy people? Who's on your team?

Yeah, we are very, very lucky.

Yeah, very lucky. You've talked about Katie.

We've got Katie at Wavecrest and she lives directly across from Wavecrest, so it's perfect.

She's on hand.

She's on hand whenever we need it. It's perfect.

Yeah, she knows, she knows tradesmen.

She'll. Yeah, she'll.

She's hands on. She does the hot tub, she has to clean, she does wet. She's. As a linen. She's. Yeah, she's on top.

How did you find her? Is she. Is she just a neighbor of.

Yeah, she lives.

Like I said, she lives right across the road from.

From the cottage because it works for her. She said she's a mum with three children and it fits in with her busy lifestyle as a mom. The hours that she does for us and, yeah, she's just. We wouldn't be able to do it without her. She's amazing. Compliments about the. How clean the cottage is.

Yeah.

How well presented.

It is pristine.

Yeah. So she's amazing. And at Meadowview, we've just got Julie and her team from Cafe Creations next door who are going to be providing us with our housekeeping service. So obviously we're not quite set up fully there, but within the next couple of weeks we will be ready for launching and launching once we've got our photo shoot done and we get the website pictures on. As I said, we've already got bookings, but That's. Some people have trusted us and know that the cottage is going to be equally as fabulous as Wavecrest. But Julie and her team are going to look after Medevay and what we were just saying earlier was that WaveQuest looks after itself. We don't do anything other than sell the holidays. Katie does. She's there.

She's amazing.

We've also got Matt who comes and does our handy stuff in case we need anything handyman wise. But we very rarely hear from her because you know, she gets the bookings from our automated site to tell her what's coming in.

She'll also send us little screenshots of our reviews. Reviews on our book.

Review of the book.

Yeah.

So yeah, it runs itself. So we were kind of saying earlier we can't wait till middle views are in itself.

For everybody out there who's taken on a short term rental, just make sure you're knocking on the neighbors doors because potentially, you know, build a relationship with these people. You don't know if they could be part of your business, which is amazing.

Absolutely. Well, Katie as well, she funnily enough, her best friend as a child was lived in the house, lived in Wave Crest. She's even got more of a personal connection to the property than you could ever imagine because she lived there as a child.

That helps to build trust and care ultimately, doesn't it?

Let. She loves it and she, she really does.

Yeah.

Careful. Waste Crest.

Very lucky.

We, we get, we know that she does, you know and she'll. She. Yeah, she's just got her backs, aren't she?

Yeah. You know, it's.

Well, it's quite emotional thinking about what she does for us.

It just works, it just works behind any good business. There's fantastic people, isn't there? And it's important to have those.

Yeah, absolutely.

You mentioned you don't use a property management system. Is there any tech or anything in your business that you find help you, whether that be apps or anything at all tech wise that you use currently?

For us it's been Facebook.

Absolutely. Yeah.

Obviously for two people who've never worked in hospitality. Yeah, I just would. I just joined those Facebook groups.

Yeah.

What sort of thing, what sort of thing do you post? So, so for people listening, they should be joining what sort of Facebook is our Facebook page.

So joining all the groups such as pet friendly hot tub cottages. Luxury cottages. Luxury cottages with hot tubs and pets, you know, anything and everything. Yeah. So one of the things that we pride ourselves on is being pet friendly and we've not kind of talked about where that comes from because our business name, Petal and Barley are our pets. They're our dogs.

Yeah. So Petal is this Labrador and she's here walking around now. And Barley is yours.

Golden. Golden Spaniel sp. We. We got this. We'd got this property and we were, we decided to run it as a business and then we're like, well, what we're going to call it. And then it just came, they were there and we just said.

You know, that that is such a good. People always say, what should we call the business? And I always say, make it personal to you, first of all, you'll care more about it. But also it's more unique. I mean, when I saw it, I assumed that was just like. I assumed that was like, I don't know, like flower type, you know, like, type thing, like. But yeah, that, that makes Sen. Being dog friendly is so important. There's a stat which I read this week, which is 33% of households in the UK have a. Have a dog, basically. So that means that there's a huge, huge portion of people who need to go away with dogs. I've got two dogs myself, Labradors crossed with whippets called Whipped. Yeah. Baxter and Walter is their names.

Oh, wow.

We are, we are looking. We. We've just booked somewhere in, in October.

And you need to go to Flamborough, by the way, I'm sure.

Yeah, I was thinking that it sounds dog friendly, so. But the most important thing for us is, is making sure first of all that the dogs are allowed. And many places. I'm so surprised how many people just say, hey, there's only one dog allowed. And you just go, well, you know, that's, that's not ideal. If it's not friendly, it's dog friendly. But then also enclosed gardens, you know, that's one of the things which is so important to us. So is there things which you do within your properties which encourage people, pet owners to, to book?

Yeah. So we've got outdoor hot and cold doggy wash. Oh, nice. So we've got a specific area outside where they can wash the dogs off to the beach or everybody walk. We ask that we know that. Well, Petal and Barley in particular like to get on the furniture. So what we do is we ask guests to bring their own throws. She's barking now.

Right on cue. Yeah. Right.

So we ask guests to bring their own throws. So they're not. Well, we don't. We want to keep our furniture in tough condition. So if dogs are Going to sneak themselves.

Typical.

So if dogs are going to come to the cottage, then bring your old rovers. Just to protect our lovely furniture, we provide dog bowls, dog treats. The garden at Wavecrest is absolutely an amaze. It's amazing for dogs. It's a huge, fully enclosed garden that's absolutely fantastic for dogs. So, yeah, we pride ourselves on saying we're fully doggy friendly.

And would you say that the majority of your guests are bringing pets with them?

Yeah, yeah, we've. We've had a request of cats this week.

Oh, nice.

Yeah, I've had cats and we've actually had a hairless cat.

Yeah, that's perfect. That's perfect. And to be fair, I've hosted cat owners before and they've brought their cats and, you know, a lot of people are worried about stuff, but they were brilliant. You know, like, the owners are very conscientious and they are.

I think doggy owners are really conscientious about the dogs. I know that when I go on holiday and book a cottage, I'll take all my promos, I'll make sure that the dogs haven't got access to anything that they shouldn't have. I think I'm more. I'm more kind of conscious of that.

Yeah.

Than other people might be.

Yeah. But we have to be. Don't you? Yeah.

Just on the back of that as well, we've. We've also hosted guests who have had allergies and we've had no problems with that. So though we're doggy friendly, clean is so pristine. You wouldn't know if you had allergies and, you know, wouldn't want somebody came with a child had got pet allergies and we assured them that the cleans done to a really high standard and there were no problems at all. So we're down doggy friendly. We can host also people who have got those allergies and, you know, wouldn't necessarily want to bring the pets.

That's cool. And the other one you mentioned, of course, is hot tubs. I mean, hot tubs. Yeah, A major draw for holiday lets in general. And having that hot tub understandably increases your nightly revenue rate. Obviously it does cost more to run, but overall, what advice would you have to somebody out there who hasn't got a holiday let who's thinking about buying one and getting a hot tub? What would. What should be, the things they should be aware of and what are the reasons they should go for it?

It does attract guests. We've actually talked about it. With the increase in utility bills. It is a draw and it just bring people in. I think people need to be aware of the regulations, what the. What they. Something is. But you've got to be able to be able to test early, got to be able to show that you're testing every day and also send your water off for sampling. So there is some regulations that you've got to adhere to.

We have to change it every.

Yes, every day.

Changed, completely emptied, cleaned.

We don't live, we. So we live two hours away from our cottage. We rely on cater to do this. She was just over the road. You know, if somebody was having to travel in every day to do that, then that would incur. Incur quite a cost because she's so local. She literally just nips over, dips it and logs it and then go again.

That's ideal, isn't it? And this is what we always say to people, that if you're living on site with your hospitality. Yeah, yeah. Or if you've got somebody who can do it.

Yeah. You just need to get somebody who can do it and who's willing to because it's a two minute job. So to have to travel to do that two minute job would be a bit of a pain, particularly if you're having to pay somebody to. To do that and travel.

Absolutely.

Because Katie's so local.

Saltburn next door, the cafe, they're there every day. So again, someone just nips in. Yeah. Perfect, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

It sounds like a really nice business overall. And as, as we come to the end of these, we love to do a couple of questions. First of all, what would you say has been the biggest wow moment and what does the future look like for your business?

We have discussed our wows. I think once we've finished a property and we've got all our decor in, it's amazing. And we've actually gone wow. So obviously, you know, when we. When you're renovating and all the mess and everything and it's been hard and then to see the final product with. Even now we will still go into the properties and go, wow. Every time we try that is the wow factor. And again then our guests saying the same as us, it's always wow, isn't it?

As soon as when we land at Wavescrest, it's like we. Yeah, it's just. My God, it's amazing. You know, we forget how fabulous it is, don't we?

That's always nice.

Not been for a while, so we do a visit.

Yeah, it's always A good sign. And what would you say the future holds for your business? What's the aim? What's the next say five years look like?

Well, obviously once we're doing this full time, we are definitely continuing with our properties. Yeah, well, I would say definitely a minimum of five.

Yeah.

However, if it continues, sky's the limit. We won't stop again. We'll know when the time comes that we've enough. But I think we've got the bug.

We've already started looking meta views just in the process of being launched and we're already. Well, yeah, I'm already looking well.

Yeah, we are.

We'd like the property in each kind of holiday destination. So we probably look at the lakes and the peaks, nothing below anyone else. We'll know it when we see it.

Yeah, I was going to say if you, if you need any advice on Norfolk, you know, of course.

Have you got a holiday cottages?

Yeah, I'm Norwich centre of Norfolk, so I'm more urban based but I can still give advice on the area. So. Yeah. So as we come to the end, we love to just do a couple of quick fire fun questions. I would love to know, first of all, if you could have a coaching call with anybody famous, who would it be? Who would you ask for advice? And we'll go to Katie first.

I think it's got to be Mark. We've learned so much from. From Johnny, Bruce Lee, from buying his books. Yeah, they're here. We brought them with us to kind.

Of say, I'm going to add a disclaimer that we've not. We've not talked about this beforehand. I didn't know you were going to say that.

So I can see yours in the background.

And as well.

And it's, you know, when you talk about it doing. Giving you the tips and the tricks and the confidence to get on as a host. It certainly has. We would have never, ever approached OTA booking and asked them to book direct. We'd have thought that were rude, you know, that we were doing some. Someone a disservice somewhere along the line. But now we're helping them.

We realize that we're actually helping them if they come direct, don't we?

Some of the stuff that he's taught us in from the book has just been really pivotal and we'll just. Yeah, we'll continue to be obviously members of the booster community, the hospitality community, Facebook page as well.

Well, the emails as well that we send out. Yeah, we've sent a lot of emails to our previous guests.

And based on the templates that he.

Absolutely. We've had, we've had bookings from that as well.

So we know that it works.

I'm going to, we're definitely going to sound bite that bit. So thank you so much. Yeah, I will pass on the message to Mark after this. That, yeah.

What do you put that on?

We definitely will put that on. I mean as I say before we start, we don't cut anything from this. So. Yeah. Thank you. One of the questions I'd love to ask is what is the skill that you really excel at? What is something which you say, do you know what, I'm really good at this customer service.

It's got to be.

I mean we've got lots, but customer service I would say is the top one.

Awesome. Awesome. And last lastly, the way we love to end these is, is there a mantra or a saying that really resonates with you?

I'll let you say this one.

Feel the fear, do it anyway. That's ours.

Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Just take those risks. We would never be in a position where we are now if we hadn't been able to take the risk. We didn't know how it was going to be. We didn't know the hospitality community, we didn't know the industry. We just thought this is what we want, this is our passion and we just went for it and you know, the rest is history. Look where we are now. And obviously I'm going to be flying in the future.

Yeah.

As well. Yeah.

Very excited.

I'm so excited for you both. I've really enjoyed getting to know your hospitality business. What I'm taking away from this is first of all, you know, be a hospitable host. First and foremost it's experiences that people are having. Some of the advantages of be having some of the big amenities which is being pet friendly hot tubs, having things which is got character, you know, having you're picking the right kind of properties which are obviously people have got that wow moment when they walk in and overall just given great service all round and actually, you know, hospitality is a slog, especially when you got a full time job. It can be very rewarding and I've got no doubt in the future we're going to see you be full time in this amazing business. So how can people come and find out more from your business? Where should they follow you?

Okay, so you can find us on Facebook. Petland Barley, that's our business page. We've also got Petra and Barley Developments which is the page that we set up before we set up the business page. Petlifeandbali.co.uk is our business and you can also find learning stuff and Twitter. Actually, we're on Twitter as well. You know, just email us info. Petal-barley.co.uk. happy to speak to anybody. We can take calls and offer. Just offer that personal touch.

Mention one other thing that.

Of course.

Yeah. Our second property in Saltburn, we've actually built our own sauna as well.

Oh, yes, we have.

Oh, nice.

As well as just obviously having all the luxury of the cottage and the hot tub, we've also got a sauna, in fact, a decking overlooking the meadows and the sea in the background. Yeah, but we, we didn't even mention what's in the properties.

That's like having an ace in the hole. I'm sure there's going to be lots of people who reach out. I normally say people will be reaching out to you for hospitality and that, but actually they're going to be reaching out to you to stay and you're also.

Yeah, yeah, that's what we want. Come and stay with us.

Awesome. Awesome. I'm still here. That's just the. The camera goes. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Was there anything we missed before we bring it to?

No, I think we've touched on. On everything.

Yeah.

I think the way we'd like to do it now is working on our SEO. We're conscious that we need to do a little bit more. A little bit more work on this on our SEO and also our Google profile and that kind of thing. So that's something that we're going to be doing in the background. But again, what's your space for us?

Well, we can. I'll pop you in touch. There's a couple of people we want. We can send you about that. So thank you so much for your time today and thank you to when. If you listen to this on the Boostly podcast, we know there's a lot of places you can put your attention and we really appreciate you putting up with Boostly. So thank you very much. That's it for this episode. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.

Bye.