From 0 to 118 Units in Hospitality: Expert Top Tips!

Hello and welcome to a new episode of the behind the Host podcast. The podcast where you can learn from other hospitality owners from across the world and how their businesses thrive so you can pick up tips, tactics and some of the training that you can implement into your own business. So today I'm really excited because we're, we're joined by Tim Mortimer from BNB Made Easy and he's coming from Australia, so all the way from the other side of the world. So welcome along, Tim.

G' day, Liam. Thanks for having me.

It's a pleasure to have you here. So normally I give a great big introduction and Tim needs no introduction at all. He's a hospitable host, he's a best selling author, he's got over well, he's got 118 units in Australia. But what I'm going to do is not steal too much funder from here. I'm going to let him introduce himself and his business. And tell us a bit about yourself then, Tim.

Yeah, first of all, thanks very much for having me. I us hospitable host of all, we've got our own little sort of community going on and really enjoy crossing paths from time to time. So, you know, when I got this opportunity to speak, I jumped at it. So thank you very much. I'm Tim Mortimer, I'm in Orange in New South Wales in Australia. Orange is a town about four hours drive west of Sydney. So in the middle of the lockdowns we, although it hurt for some periods, we also had periods of intense travel where, you know, Australia's borders were closed, even state borders were closed and we've got a lot of Sydney signers come in. So luckily for us we had, I had started the business a couple of years earlier and then had gained the knowledge and were and was ready to grow and handle the workloads that we actually thrived during, during that Covid, sort of between lockdown time in Australia and yeah, love the industry and just continuing to thrive and learn as much as they can and obviously pass on as much as they can as well because I think we can all help each other out here.

And Tim, I think you're being modest there. You're a superstar when it comes down to the, how quick your business has grown and just for what did you do? Take us back to before you got into the business, what was your career and how did you, how did you get into this? How did you spot the opportunity?

Yeah, so I grew up in this town in Orange. It's a food and wine region and There's a few other industries so it's always been kind of growing and thriving. So a lot of opportunities, put it that way. Similar, similar to you. I was struggling to. Not struggling but looking after. Trying to look after my family and you know do as much as I could look for opportunities and you know I was a school teacher, a teacher which, which was good. I enjoyed the role. Had to take up a second job in a boarding school, you know looking after the kids who as you were doing overnight care and things like that. So working very long hours and then the, a lot of the farmers around the town they'd send their kids in and got talking to the families and then earn learned that Orange and I knew this anyway but Orange has a lot of homes that just sit empty when, when those farmers or boarders parents come to visit they use it for that. That's their investment in their sort of holiday home or you know, their place to see their kids. So being like globe moment I thought geez. And I was, this is how I think as well. So I finally thought of an idea that might have a bit of traction and haven't stopped thinking about it since. Reached out on a Facebook page again during, during a shift when there wasn't much going on. Just started thinking about a business idea around short term property management in our town. Didn't take long to realize these things exist all around the world. And I was quite sheltered in Orange but luckily reached out on a Facebook group and a lady by the name of Julie George responded to me. We had half a. Half an hour conversation and that was all the inspiration I need to get to where we are today, which is pretty much three and a half years. Quit my teaching job and managing close to 120 properties. Now we're talking houses, not units. So it's a, it's been a very quick change but it's very exciting as well which I love.

I love that as well there you mentioned Julie George and if anybody's listening or watching and doesn't know who Julie George is, just type in $1 million host. And she has had a fantastic story. She's got her own book, hasn't she? She's also inhospitable host.

She.

Yeah, exactly. We'll keep plugging the book. But yeah, she is an amazing host and short term rental thought leader really isn't she in the industry. So yeah, that's amazing to hear. And you've gone from you know, sort of, you spotted that opportunity. You've then you know sort of realized that there's some empty homes in the area. You've reached out to somebody who's kind of walked that path before and got some advice. How did you get your first one? What was the first one or first few? Talk us through how you done that.

Yeah. So naturally it was a. It was a slow start. There was a big learning curve to be done. Off the advice of Julie I went and got my real estate license before even starting the business because that was my commitment to then moving forward. I was quite lucky. My parents own a vineyard in town and they had a couple of apartments on it. Mum was only on booking.com so, you know, that was my sort of. I piggybacked off that a little bit to learn whilst doing a lot of nighttime research and a bit, you know, podcasts and things like this just, just to gain some knowledge. I knew that it wouldn't take long before I was. Before I could become a bit of a market expert in the area because no one was doing it before and that meant once I was that I could then offer the service of helping other people out because I would have more knowledge. So I did about nine months and then I remember I saw a house for. And I thought Jesus would be amazing. A bit of luck as well. I called up the owner. Orange is a small community. So I found out who the owner was, gave them a call. It was a cold call. I remember exactly where it was, what road it was. I pulled over the car and was nervous. I was so nervous anyway. And they had heard of the ID Airbnb idea before and yeah, there was my first property and it performed extremely well and without even that business name yet. We. I had two or three other people in town call me up from word of mouth that this was happening, established the business name and so that had taken a full year. I was teaching at the same time then I was like, oh, this is actually working. Let's give it a bit more. Let's see how we can go. And then within the next year got up to 24 properties and that and I had a part time employee helping me out. But you know, yeah, made the decision mid that year that I'm really going to. I'm going to step off teaching here and give this a go. Yeah. So the, you know, the following year we'd say we got up to 60 or something. Covid hit straight away when I hit. Stepped off teaching as well. So that was a bit scary.

You're just saying about those steps there. So you've gone from like four for A short period of time and then you've suddenly gone up to 24 and then you've gone up, you've jumped up again to 60, obviously. And how did you feel obviously switching away from teaching? And you mentioned obviously you're doing this for your family. What was the emotions like at the time and just making that switch?

Yeah, I think I'd never stopped thinking about the idea since I thought of it and Julie George inspired me and I gained more knowledge and knew it was going to work. So I was quite confident that it was going to work, which is good. Um, I thought I'm 30, I think it was 33 or something at the time. And if, if I'm going to do something, it's, if I try something, it's now. So I, and I paid for my real estate course. This is off of, of a couple thousand dollars. This whole business was created as well. Um, so it was a financial commitment as I mentioned, that we, you know, we, we were, we had a lot to pay for, so there wasn't too much spare cash around. But again, all of those things, commitment contributed to really backing myself and the idea. And yeah, it had to work because I had a family to support. So I was working long, long days and, and yeah, I'll never regret it because I'm in, I'm in such a much better place right now. But I knew that if I dug down and got to that sort of point that I would emerge in a pretty cool place. And that's exactly where I am now. It's really, it's really good.

That's amazing. They say when you've got a strong enough why, the how becomes the how becomes clear, doesn't it? So.

Yeah, exactly. You. Yeah, that's, that's exactly how it works for me. And yeah, and then obviously I learned, didn't know much about business before, so there was a lot of, lot of things I had to learn. I built my own first website and it took me two months, I think, and it was, it wasn't good at all. But you know, you've got to, you've got to get in there and do those little steps in order to emerge, you know, in a better place where we can eventually pay someone, Mark, to.

Do a website that's cool. I mean, when it comes down to the scaling. Let's talk about your great purse to ask scale questions too, because you've gone from, you know, a few properties and then jumped up in these, you know, sort of blocks of properties. What would you say was the success what allowed you to do that? Scale up by the number of properties. Because there'll be people listening at the moment who goes, well, do you know what? I'm struggling with one property or three properties or six properties. What is the mindset that you need to have to scale and what advice would you have around scaling in general?

Yeah, a great question because it's so complex as well. I'll just try my best. But definitely a growth mindset from the start. You know, knowing that, you know, if you've got a growth mindset, you'll be thinking the next step all the time and how to develop yourself and all of that. So, you know, we, or everyone we hire in our. In our business now we're looking for things like that. Something I learned early and I did a bit of research on it is. And because of our hospitality, but also the course of a guest coming in or the communication, a guest coming in, the communication again, then the cleaning business. We've created our own cleaning business in house as well. So that's. That's been a great factor during COVID but it's also meant a lot of work and it's also a really good protective factor. If anything else happens, we've got that in house, so we can control that. But everything, it comes down to the systems that you create and writing it down so you don't have to rethink every time something happens again. If you can have a procedure for it, then you can hand it off to someone else who can do the same job or a similar job and you can monitor them. So that's something. If you say you have a couple of properties or even one property looking to grow, really start writing things down, how you do things. Once you start getting people to help you, don't do it for them, Teach them to do that. And I've got onto a point where I've got probably 12 staff and they're all thinking that way that when something. When he has to do something more than once, let's write it down, make a procedure for it and. And then, you know, then we can. We don't have to use that brain power and drag us down on another day. We can actually just. Just get this. Get the procedure done, you know, and. And contribute ourselves better to the business or to.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Making things move. Yeah. So definitely the system. I've established a really good team culture. So once you start getting a few team members, that's quite vital in the midst of a time where there's enormous labor shortages. I Don't have problems finding people to work for us because one was. It's interesting. But number two, because we've got a really good reputation around town that this is a great place to work. So that's also been a great factor. Technology is a big one.

How do you get that reputation? So you've mentioned reputation around town. Have you relied on to grow that reputation?

I think it's just. And a lot of teaching skills have helped me in this business as well and I'm a team sports player for 30 years as well. So I think it's just people lucky getting to know people, having that time to have a chat. Celebrating wins as little as they are or as big as they are. We really celebrate and we have achieved a lot. So we've had a lot to celebrate. We don't let them pass because. Because we're too busy. We. We set a date even if it's not right now. We'll set a date for a month in the head. Cause we're going to celebrate reaching that amount of properties or, you know, something like that. So every month we have a bit of a. I, I throw on lunch for the team and we. And we do some peer sort of affirmations where we're. I've got everyone selling, I'll call it a culture champions lunch where we really keep the culture at the front of mind by recommending other people where you've. I witnessed that they've lived up to the culture. So it's not me appraising downwards or any in any way, it's. I sit back and let everyone boost each other up. So I don't know. And then. And then that just gets around, gets around town and I mean people love working here.

That's amazing in itself though, to even, you know, there'll be a lot of people listening, go, you know, wow, we could do that. We could set, you know, sort of time aside to celebrate these wins and actually celebrate the team. And it sounds as though you've built a culture there which enjoy coming to work but also understands the, the goal, the aim that they're looking to achieve together, you know, and sort of all relying on each other, which is cool. So you mentioned about the team. Talk me through who's in your team, you know, what and who was your first hire as well.

Yeah, it's been quite interesting, especially with the rapid growth and as you get further into the business, all charts and things like that. When you're first starting off, you just need someone who. Well, I wasn't great at accounting. So I need someone with, when we do trust accounting here, someone with a bit of accounting knowledge or experience or strengths in that. So that's another thing. Don't hire someone exactly like you because you're going to have find the same problems. Hire someone who's smarter than you in a different area so that you can complement the business. I found that person first. First interview I was like, that's it, I know who it is. Proceeded with the other five interviews that I had lined up but found found a gorgeous lady who was, who became the mother of the business and fostered it through the next year or two until she left. But yeah, it's, I don't know, just get the right people. I think like think about your values, what you want for the business and, and again, do research around interview questions and try and expose those things throughout the questions without directly asking them and having them say, yep, I'll do that. You know, ask, ask scenario questions and things like that. And I don't know, I may have been lucky but just, just felt the connection straight away and, and, and, and that this person was going to look after my business. That was my first hire. Um, and then we've, we've ended up to a point now where we have four or five departments that we have a. And they, and they are teams. So gaps team and that's Guests and Property Success. So they focus on that. Then we have an operations team and that's the warehouse that's cleaning our home Hosts, which we call them as well. That came from Julie George but also our maintenance team. Then we have a business development team as well. Yeah. So we're starting to develop teams and as you get, when you get to that point point, things become much clearer. Like you, you need to, you, you can define your roles because if someone leaves in that position, maybe someone else fills that position. But as you're growing with, you know, maybe one to two to three people, your positions are going to have to change quite frequently. So again, if you've got a good positive culture and you let them know that change is going to happen, that will happen much more easier.

I love that, I love the, not only that, the mindset growth there of not just managing, you know, yourself and you know, the properties, but actually then start to manage teams of people and have defined teams. What was the, did you say the gap team? What did that stand for?

Gaps Guests and Property Success. Again, all of our business. They all, yeah, we figured that that's a person. They all the guests. That's all the communication and the reservations and they're on the property management software that we use. But then also they are in tune with all of our properties. So we figured that because if the guests are asking about a property, they would have the knowledge on the property. So. And the connection to all the platforms and that's. That just found its way to that side. Yeah. And then the warehouse and operations found its way to another side as well. So. And then we've got a little bit. Bit of team sort of attitude and camaraderie there. So. And then when we bring everyone together, it's. It's kind of cool. So yeah, we're, you know, it's. And it's not, it's not easy. It's never been easy. People aren't easy all the time. So, you know, it's just an ongoing not, not challenge, but, you know, opportunity to develop people as well. And that's, that's our next step moving forward. It's about empowering people to become the market leaders. Not, not to us to, to talk down, to empower our staff to. Then as we develop as well, they'll. There's management positions that emerge and we want people to show initiative. So, you know, we're really sort of allowing that to happen, which is cool.

It sounds really exciting. And to go from, you know, we've talked about sort of where you started the growth and then now looking at the team members who are helping you doing that and like you say you have already, you've got that vision for the next step. So it's really inspiring. Tim, I really like that one of the things you mentioned just then was that was one of the challenges. What would you say has been the biggest challenge that, that you've had to face during your time as a host?

Cleaners and linens, that's always been the challenge, so. And it always will be a challenge. So like when we talk a big challenge, obviously when Covid hit and lockdowns happened and that, you know, we got through that, that's okay. But yeah, labor shortages and finding cleaners, we worked out that we weren't paying them enough. Again, we built our cleaning team in house, which is really strong because then we can. Then we have a. Now we have a scalable cleaning business to go with our scalable property management business to start dropping around into different places. So that's our next sort of opportunity. But yeah, and labor shortages in Australia also affect linen supply as well. So. But again, this is, this is how it works. We. Our team culture. So at Christmas I was on a beach somewhere. Linen didn't arrive. We had. This is New Year's and people investing their time into, into which, you know, we focus on a lot. We want everyone to, you know, to their investments as far as their properties investments, but investments as well as their holiday investments. You know, they've been working hard and they're investing in their holiday. So we protect investments in that respect. But a couple of trucks of linen didn't arrive and all of our home hosts, they all took linen home and washed it and bought it back because it was that team culture and vibe and they were happy to because they knew that a guest would be arriving to a home with no linen and that would be disastrous for the business. And yeah, in a way for us as a team.

Yeah, that's amazing. And just that all pulling together and having that culture is amazing like you say, because you can't stop stuff from going wrong. But it's how you react when it does go wrong. You know, how you solve that issue. So. Sounds amazing.

And I found that was one point where there's more but where if we were outsourcing to a cleaning team, we would have had a huge problem right there. So very. I felt very lucky, especially during COVID because we can control, we can control a lot with an in house. We have control quality and that's probably what we'll move on to a bit later on, which is how we keep it so high. But that's again, it's part of our business and what we're controlling is that sort of things too.

It seems to be often, you know, the great thing is I get to speak to a lot of hosts and the common themes are just making sure we're documenting having that vision, being brave and also having great people around you. And that sounds like, you know, you've got some really great people within the business, which is fantastic. So you mentioned just then the ratings and I won't steal your funder, but let the listeners know the rating that you've currently got and also how at this scale you're keeping that so high.

Yeah. So I was big focus on, on, on quality. It ensures your business moving forward. There's nothing more important than it. I, I won't. You know, when I'm looking at an Airbnb, I'm extremely picky and I'm, I'm a guy who doesn't really care. But. But yeah. So the quality's got to be really high. So we've always had a focus on supporting them and ensuring that it's there. The issue is though, when you start to add more and more properties and, and me gets a little bit further away from teams and people working in the business, there are gaps that can appear. Throw a bit of COVID and labor shortages and all of that stuff in there as well.

Just a sprinkle of those, you know.

Like, yeah, so we're 118 properties and we are still Airbnb super hosts, which we do strive to achieve as much as we're on the other platforms as well. I figured that's a really good KPI to be chasing and staying above because there are benefits from being that if people are looking on Airbnb, you know, that's, that's a trust icon that people are searching for and obviously our Airbnb algorithms help you out. Not a bad place to start for the whole business across the board anyway. So, yeah, we did lose it in, in the last quarter and we, once we did it was a huge reconstruction of the cleaning business and we, we, I was accountable for it. As much as I can point the finger at cleaners and say, you know, there's your job and you're not doing it right. They weren't supported, they weren't trained, they weren't called out. When they weren't doing a good job, they, they. There was a lot of business structure missing around them. So, so yeah, so we went back right down to ground level at the cleaning business, sat there a few days, went right through everything and built it again from the ground up with, with the fresh impacts that were happening, like the pay rate was increasing elsewhere and we weren't. So we didn't have cleaner availability or. And then that was putting pressure on other cleaners that were loyal to us. So, you know, made a few decisions to, to, to be the place for cleaner where cleaners want to clean pretty much. So we have really good systems. We, we. There was a little bit of an opportunity, was more positive feedback on really good clean. So the GAPS team sends that through to the warehouse team and yeah, that gets displayed up on the board and the property, the cleaner, the review, it's all, it's all showing up. So really encouraging that positive feedback down there and then probably I've had a lot of achievements but one of the, one of the most satisfying for me was when we got that super host status back. That was, that was a, that was almost a six month workload, full team contributing to a success there, which, which is now the standard for us moving forward again. So glad to have got it back. But, but yeah, we've. We've got it back with a much better cleaning business as well. So, yeah, setting some good goals for the team moving forward. We're monitoring those now. So even if we get a little bit close, we'll be, we'll be on to. Onto some people in the team to fix it up. We introduce more spot checks as a kpl we've got to do. We have to do at least 40 and they are targeted as well, so. And random at the same time. So everyone's contributing to keeping that cleaning score high because at the end of the day that, yeah, that's, that's what guarantees the future business for me.

I love the, the fact that you've overcome that challenge and for people listening, it's over 4.8, isn't it? 118 properties, which is amazing for, for that. Is that, Is that right?

Yeah. I went to the scale up conference in Barcelona and there was a stat that came out that above 100 properties the standard drops down to 4.5 or 4.3. And that's just the average that a property manager, because it is a challenge at scale. It's a massive challenge once you add more people and get further away from properties and there are properties now that I still haven't been into, but I don't need to because I've got my team trained up to do what I used to do, but that therefore life the challenge. And yeah, we pride ourselves on our quality that we do. And clients. We actually had a client come on because they stayed with us as a guest, had a plumbing issue on a Friday afternoon. Our team sorted it within 10 minutes and then our warehouse team turned up with fresh towels because they had to soak up some wet ones. So within 15 minutes and she said, oh, I'm up here to buy a property, I'm coming with you guys. So that's amazing. Keep that quality. It's just the reputation around town, word of mouth, there's cafes all around. People just like to talk, especially about money. So it's. Yeah, it's, it's a level of service that sort of guarantees future business for us.

Just, just hearing the journey there is amazing and it's kind of. I want to go in two different directions with two different questions, but we'll stick with the, the guest side of things. The experience, which just sounds amazing and like you say, that is helping the reputation, which is helping more people come to you, which again in turn with your systems is. And helping to deliver on that promise to them and then again attracting more people, which is amazing. So let's talk more about the guest experience. I know that as you've grown and this is mentioned within the, within the book or within the chapter in the book that you've added on experiences for guests and things like that, you've become a place where you can offer a little bit extra. Is that right?

Yes, definitely. You can only do so much. We're still not doing it to the point that I know we, that we will end up doing it too. But yeah, you get more guests, they ask more things. Naturally. A business like this, you build up a list of recommendations and that's the starting point of, you know, that's the starting point of building a brand that links to businesses who also recommend you. Or we'll get to a point soon we can charge a marketing space to be on our guest app that they can then get again. That's all in my head. I haven't got there yet. There's other things we're focusing on first but that's. The guest experience is extremely important because they're the ones who lead the reviews. As long as you're, you're supporting the guests. And that's very much the attitude. It's in our core values of how can I help? The attitude of any guest that isn't entirely happy. The communication is there as well. But if a guest has a good experience staying in a professionally managed property and yeah, they're going to leave a five star review or if they, you know, if they're misinformed, they might leave a four star review if they have a bad experience. And some people that you just can't please, we all know that in hospitality but you know that knowing that it happens, we still try our best to please them where we can. That's hospitality. But yeah, ensuring, I suppose adding those guest experiences just further enhances the guest experience. The guest, yeah, the guest enjoyment of the property or enjoyment of their stay and they're more likely to leave a good review. Not that we do that. We're in a small town. We want, we want to. We've such a position of power where we have 800 people in our houses in our town with direct message access to go and support our local business who have done it tough through drought and through Covid. We have that power to send them out. We also have their emails that we can bring them back as well. So we're really finding ourselves in an exciting position for the town that we can start to play influence on. Encouraging visitor Spend before they even arrive. We're upselling bottles of wine and early chickens and late checkout. So they're spending before they even come into the region and then again in the head. Next plan is to get a cheese platter. Upon arrival, you go and book a photographer. So we're going to start linking with local businesses and services again. Again, it'll come back. Not that, not that that's the intention. The intention is support the town. Yeah, yeah.

I mean that sounds, I can, I can see the vision as you're setting it out there of, of, you know, that really will help the local area. But also like you say, you're also adding additional income, additional spend from the guest. But actually the, the key thing isn't the additional spend. You're actually giving them a better experience, a greater service and that's making their.

Job, they're making their time easier. We're a weekender town. So you leave Sydney after work at the 4pm you get here at 8pm, it's dark already. You don't really want to because you finish your week of work. You don't really want to research what you're going to do tomorrow or whatever. We want to have them do that two weeks before they arrive and know where they're going and book their things and then again enhance the guest experience. Receive great reviews.

I'm certainly inspired by that and I know some of the listeners will be as well because that sparks a lot of ideas on how you can make that experience better. But you know, and like I say link with local businesses where it's a mutually beneficial relationship then as well, which is cool. So what tech have you used that has helped you? Is there one particular piece of tech or a system that's really helped you in your business growth?

We actually use a lot and part of our mission statement is, and I think in this business or any business in today's environment is using or leveraging of technology and data to obviously all ours is to be market leaders in the region. So of the attitude like this is something I learned in business as well, how to view things as an investment. So yes, that is going to cost that much money but how much stress is it going to save from that person who's manually scheduling every clean or manually doing this and the amount of time, amount of time saved as well as stress. I pushed one staff member out accidentally because that happened and then therefore have learned and can see the investment in good technology will allow us to grow faster, but it also allows us to provide a better experience allow our workplace to be more enjoyable. We use Guesty as our property management service. We're very happy with them, we have a great relationship with them. Price Labs is fantastic. If you've not on. If you've got more than two, if you've got one property and you're not using some sort of dynamic pricing, I'd recommend get on it or research it straight away. There it is. There's a lot to learn. When you're smaller. It's a lot to learn and I'm still. Just before this interview I was, I was revisiting our prices because I just want to make sure. And there's a lot of data in that that comes with it. So you get to a point I think up until about 40 properties we were manually schedule and cleans and then we use. Well we, we went with Guestview because it integrates with a lot of other softwares that can then make other departments jobs easier. So we use Breezeway and it, it's, it's a really user friendly. They're all, all of our softwares are all user friendly. That's what we look for. We obviously look at the cost but we also look at the cost saves in time and stress and energy and. Which allows our humans to do the thinking and the cost. Customer service rather than being bogged down in manual processes. So yeah, there's main, main text. We use some project. Project management technology as well which is a huge time saver. I'm talking days and days and weeks. It's per person. Yeah. So that's amazing. And yeah. I don't know. You've got to embrace it, you've got to pay for it but really look at it in the time saved which. And what will it allow you to do? Because you've taken. Save that time. Yeah.

Sounds like an amazing tech stack. And I love what you said there about you view it like an investment, not just, you know, obviously the money and that's the time it'll save for your people and how they're just freed up to then do what their main role is, which is, you know, sort of the customer service and to think, you know, ahead that the technology, the manual tasks are then covered, aren't they? So that sounds.

Yeah. And like you said to think like we, we don't want people drained down in processes. That's not what we're about. You know we want again we're empowering our staff to think, to be the market leaders themselves. So we want them thinking like that. Okay. How can I do this. What about this? You know, to come to me with questions and ideas that. That's. That's the kind of environment we want. You want it to be quite dynamic and fun and engaging as well.

That's cool. So we've covered obviously, where you started, your scale, your tech, your team. One thing that we must talk about, if not with Julie George will tell us off, especially if we don't, but is to just talk about Hospitable Hosts. And if you haven't, for people listening, people on the live, they can see we're holding up the book. Tim's got a copy as well. And this book is an amazing book, which was a idea born from Jody Sterling and to bring hosts together from all across the world to have their stories within there. If you haven't already, go and check out Hospitable Hosts. You can get a copy on Amazon. It is a bestseller. And there's chapters, including Tim's, including mine, including people like Julie George, Mark, Simpsons. There's lots of great hosts. Yeah. From across the world. And there's some really cool tips in there. And it just says a bit more about your story and that side of things. So definitely one of the questions I'd have is, what got you involved in the book? What tempted you to get involved in the project?

Yeah, I'm very close with Julia George. I invited her down to our 100 property party just as a big thank you, and we've become quite close. She was also there in Barcelona when I was there too. So we've crossed paths a few times. And she said, tim, you've got an amazing story to share. Get on this book. And I was like, oh, okay. I haven't written a book before, but then once I learned more and who. It's an amazing. It's an amazing book because obviously the book's called Hospitable Host and that was the only direction we will give it. Like everyone, they're all of different levels. Like, Mark is doing his thing with marketing and websites. I actually met him through this. And we've got a website being made now, which I'm really excited about. Julie, she sold her business and she's doing local consulting and things like that as well. And then everyone is in their own environments around the world, so everyone's had to adapt to different things. So if you. It doesn't matter how small or large you are, there's some really good stories and obviously the core being around hosting guests, which again, it's all about raising the bar. We've done the short term, the rental industry and, you know, helping each other move forward together as a broader industry to keep the quality really high and to ensure that. Ensure its longevity.

Hospitality. It's such an exciting space, isn't it? It's a growing space. It's an exciting space and, you know, having stories and what we can learn from each other all around the world with these new pieces of technology and new ways to market a new experience, experiences that people can have. So, Tim, thank you so much for that. I really feel we've got to know your business. As we draw these to a close, we'd like to ask a couple of quick fire questions. And I know that recently you traveled a bit. I got to see. I'm friends with you, obviously, on Facebook, and we get to see from the hospitable host group. Where was your favorite place that you traveled to?

Yeah, my wife's French, so we went and spent some time, which is another big achievement. I got to take some time off the business and had someone else run it for me. So that was. That was huge. But oh, geez. Auto Albie was around town. We spent a few weeks there. Carcassonne. Then we went to Barcelona, which was a bit more tourism for me because I've never been there. But that. That was amazing place as well. So any anywhere in Europe's good for me.

Love it.

If.

If you could have any superpower, what would it be?

Oh, Let's say walk through walls.

Fair enough. It already sounds like you walk on water with the amazing things that you've done.

I think I was meant to say street walls.

I was gonna say.

Let'S just walk through wall. Don't we love it.

And lastly, who inspires you? Or is there any sort of mantra or quotes that. That you like to live by?

I don't know if this is good or not, but on everything I do, like we put on a concert in that too, and. And it's like nothing happens. If nothing happens, you can just drift through life and then, you know, nothing happens. You know, when you go the effort of doing something, geez, you feel great. Although it might have been a lot of hard work and. And to see other people smiling from an effort that you've done. Like I said. Well, the business is one example of that. Then we're putting on local sort of events around town, and that's my passion. I only put them on because I'd like to attend them. But, you know, a lot of people and smiling. So nothing happens. If nothing happens, get up and do it. Get out there.

I love that. I feel inspired. That reminds me of Steve Jobs quote of. You know, it's not clear looking forward, the steps you take, but looking back, you can see how it's all connected and, you know, sort of like you say, once you've. Once you've taken action and done something, then it fills you with pride and sort of quite humbly, being able to make people happy is a gift. That's really cool, Tim.

So his is a bit more polished than mine.

I like it. I like it. So thank you so much. I know that everybody listening will have got some great value and some real gems from this. If people listening want to get in touch, what's the best way for them to do so?

Yeah, well, our website is bnb made easy.com au Australian but. Or Facebook. Facebook's the best. Not. Not the best, but the best way to. To see what we're doing. Facebook or Instagram, jump on the BNB Made Easy and follow that. That's. Be very happy to connect with anyone. I wanted to as well. That's easy.

That's cool. And just for people listening as well, we've got your link tree here, which is www.tr.eeforward/tim Mortimer. So that's T I M M O R T I M E R. So for anybody listening, go and check out Tim on Facebook linktree and what is your website URL? Just so when that is live, people will be able to. To go and check it.

You know, it is live now and we're further developing it. And for anyone else as well, it's all about the trust icons. People need trust when booking a home. People need trust if you're going to look after their home. So we haven't got there yet. We're really spending a lot of time to making sure that's right before we put it live. But yeah, our bnb made easy.com love it.

Love it. Tim, thank you so much. This has been absolutely fab. Did you have any last sort of comments at all?

No, I'm gonna have a be.

Love it. I'll speak to you again soon.

Cheers.