Hospitality Secrets: Creating a Unique Space For Your Guests

Okay everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives you the tools, the tactics, the trainings and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get yourself some direct bookings. My name is Liam Carolan and I'm Mark Simpson's co host. Today we are going behind another host. So this is the Boostly behind the Host miniseries where we get to talk to interesting and inspiring hosts from all over the world. Today we're talking to Garrett Holden from Trippy Homes. We're going to be talking some various bits and pieces. We're going to find out his story and talk about how to host while creating some fun and unique spaces for your guests. So welcome along. Garrett, thank you for joining us today.

Yeah, thank you for having me.

Awesome, awesome. So let's get started by you just introducing yourself a little bit about where in the world you host and what kind of model that you use and who tends to stay there.

Yeah, sure. So my name is Garrett Holden, as you mentioned, me and my wife Sherry, we have two kids, four year old and two year old, another baby coming in July. So we're super excited for that. We also have two dogs and yeah, we started our business Trippy Homes just to get more involved in real estate and specifically in short term rentals and to be able to quit our nine to five jobs. So we're actually in the great state of Texas in the usa. All our properties are in San Antonio. Most people haven't heard of that city, but a lot of people have heard of Austin, Texas, live live music capital of the world and all the tech companies that go there. We're actually about an hour and a half south of there. So that's where all of our properties are located as of right now. It's where we grew up and we'll probably be here for as long as I can tell.

I love that. And that's a booming market from what I understand. It's been a busy, busy couple of years for Texas in general, isn't it?

It has, yeah. I mean especially. Yeah. A lot of people don't think of San Antonio as a big hub, but just me living here the past 15, 20 years is, I've seen so much change. Construction all the time, everywhere.

That's amazing. So who, who do you tend to host? Is it more leisure or is it some of these sort of tech companies, sort of people working and things like that?

Yeah, so we find a lot of, I guess a mix of a lot of people that are coming here for work their Companies will, you know, house them for a couple months at times. We also find a lot of leisure people being so close to Mexico. We have a lot of guests that come from Mexico to visit San Antonio and visit family here. Yeah, that'd be two of the biggest, I would say, that we host. We really try to focus our avatar, though, on families that are traveling.

That's cool. And we'll talk a little bit more about how we can appeal to families with some of your cool designs shortly. But before we do, you mentioned there that yourself and your wife look to start this business to get out of the day to day work work. So first question around that is, do you work full time or part time in the business? And also, what is your favorite thing that you've discovered about being a host?

Yeah, so to answer your first question, yes, I do still work full time. I guess our Airbnb is kind of like a part time job. I work full time as a financial services representative. I've been doing that since we started hosting four years ago now. My wife, she was a medical assistant. She since quit that job just to stay at home with the kids and help out in our business. But, yeah, that's. That's kind of where we were in terms of the. Our jobs.

Yeah. I mean, what's cool about this is that we talk to hosts in various different circumstances all the time. Some people are literally just got their first unit. Some people have got like 50 units and anywhere in between. And what's cool with yourself, Garrett, is the fact that, you know, you've. You've not only just got started, but you've now got, I think you said seven units. Is that how many you've got at the moment?

Yeah. So I can tell you actually, funny story on how we got started, if you'd like.

Yeah, definitely.

I guess, spoiler alert. We wouldn't have gotten started if it wasn't for my wife. My wife's family, she. They gifted her a home in San Antonio, but we actually had to move to another city for my work when I graduated from university. So we had to figure out what we wanted to do with this home. We didn't want to sell it and we didn't want to rent it out long term because we still wanted to be able to use it for ourselves, for family or friends, times that we came to visit as well. So my wife decided to list on Airbnb. I thought it was a terrible idea. That was it back in 2018, 2019. And I was like, no one's going to Rent this place. I mean, why would anyone rent it? But as you can probably guess, you won that debate. And so we listed it and hoped to just make enough money to pay the property taxes and, you know, any other kind of maintenance that comes up. But it ended up doing a lot greater than that. The first year posting, the house was fully paid off. We had no mortgage on it. So we could have just kept, like collecting that income and left it at that, but we just decided to grow the business from there.

That's cool. And you know what's nice about that is the fact, like you say, if you hadn't taken that step, you wouldn't know what you know now about who you can host. Like you said, who will come and stay here. But actually, you discover that and you get to grow from there. So your model at the moment that you've got the seven units, is it all the same sort of model or do you do a couple of different models? Is it. Is it rental arbitrage? Is it management? How do you do it? Or is it purchased times?

Yeah, great question. So I can walk through how unorganized we were. We started in the ownership model on that home that we owned. We then dabbled in rental arbitrage a little bit. We had three properties that we did rent that rental arbitrage master lease model with. And then we do some management as well right now. So currently we manage three properties. We own four. And we're almost done finishing up a renovated school bus, actually, that we're going to start renting out. So that's. We can talk about more of that later. But so, yeah, with those three rental arbitrage properties, we just offloaded them because we just decided that model wasn't really aligned with what our goals were. Very profitable and all that. But we just found that we had less control over things like maintenance and doing some unique remodeling and decided to just focus on the ownership model. The properties we manage, two of those are for our mothers. So we just. We just manage those out of the goodness of our hearts. You know, they've helped us so much. We want to give back and help them a little bit. And we managed one other property for another family. But we. We decided that the management rental arbitrage just wasn't. Wasn't in line with what we wanted to do. So and we have to, you know, report back to landlords. Felt like we were just kind of in another job. So we just focused on that ownership model to create those, you know, fun and unique spaces that you can't really do too much with like a cookie cutter home.

Do you know, that's so refreshing to hear, though, because a lot of the time people saying, hey, do rental arbitrage, you know, really, it's great cash flow, but it is good cash flow. But the trouble, like you've mentioned there is the fact, and I can, I guess what you're saying really hits home with me because I grew with a rental arbitrage and a management model. And the trouble is with the arbitrage model, or rent to rent, as we call it, or rent service accommodation in the uk, is that although the cash flow can be good, that when something goes wrong or when something's a little bit tired and needs replacing, you're having to ask permission for landlords and sometimes they say yes, sometimes they say no, sometimes they won't put in the money for it. When you feel for your hospitality business, it needs to be updated and it can get a little bit frustrating, I guess, at times. So it's a really interesting point that you've made there, that sometimes, if you're looking, what I'm hearing from yourself is that you're creating really cool and unique spaces. I mean, we're going to be talking more about that bus, but is something which you can only do when you've got a little bit more control. And this is the great thing about every person's hospitality business, we were just saying before we got started, is a little bit different and how you want to run your business is to give that unique, that unique feel to it, which you just couldn't do with an arbitrage. So you're best to, you know, cut those ones out and like you say, go for. For the ones that you can have full control over, which is amazing. So what has been the main benefit from that journey that you've been on? Do you feel as though, looking back, do you think you should have always gone down the arbitrage route to learn what you have now, or would you say you'd rather avoided that altogether?

Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, I feel like the arbitrage model, it's not wrong, you know, it's not a bad thing, the management model either. It helped us get to where we are, you know, it made us income to be able to buy more properties. So a lot of it's a lower, I guess, cost to entry than putting a huge down payment on a house and all that. So I have one of my best friends, he. I got him started in the arbitrage model and he's doing great and good and he wants to buy a home next year and hopefully with the income that he made from there, he can do that. So it's, it's nothing wrong with it. I, I think it's a great model. It's just, you know, eventually you, you find what you want to focus in on and you know, you learn from what you've already done and decide from there. Cool.

Cool. So let's, let's go a little bit deeper then. So when you've switched or when you're, you've got your career at the moment and you're looking to, to grow this business, what does success look like to you and what would, where do you want this business to, to go?

Yeah, so I guess success to me is just really having the time to be able to design my time, how I want to use it, not someone else. So for example, like I said, I work a 9 to 5 job. They tell me I have to work from 9 to 5 every Monday through Friday or whatever it may be. And at the end of the day it's kind of feels like I'm just building someone else's dream. And don't get me wrong, I appreciate my company for giving me that opportunity. That's the stable income, benefits, it's huge value and it's, it's helped a lot just grow our business, you know, to have that income coming in. But yeah, I guess just having that time to be able to design my day myself and choose what I want to do. And that's not saying I want to just be lazy and you know, drink margaritas on the beach every day. I'm, I'm a, I'm a workaholic. Even when I'm off work, I'm always trying to do something work related, but just being, having the ability to dictate where my time is spent, that's what I really truly value and what I think success means to me.

It's so important, isn't it, just to have your own time and be in control of your life, which is, which is what hospitality allows you to do. So before we dive more into the unique spaces, you mentioned that you've still got your full time career and you're managing these alongside that. So what tech in your business do you use which, which allows you to do that? Is there a favorite either system or app or piece of tech?

Yeah, I have a few systems and pieces of tech. So one of the ones I've been using a lot recently is Operto. They're kind of like, they do a lot of things like smart locks, thermostats, all kinds of other noise monitoring. It's like a hub for all of those things. We use them for our smart locks to create unique codes for guests, and that automatically gets sent out to them through our PMS hostfully. We also use them to control our temperature with our smart thermostat. So we live in Texas. It gets super hot here, and it's not very efficient to leave the air conditioning running when there's nobody in the house. I've had months where our utility bill is like $400 and there won't even be anyone in the house. So they're software basically changes the temperature when a guest leaves the property and will turn it back on to whatever temperature you set when they get when ax guest checks into the property. So it saved us a lot on electricity costs. Definitely better for the environment, I'm sure, as well. So, yeah, we've been using them a lot and really loving their service. As far as project management, just jumping.

In with Alperto, I mean, that is amazing. And I've heard of Alperto. It's not one that I use in my business, but that is an amazing time saver, isn't it? Because even today, I mean, before we jumped on this, I was talking about as we record this, we're in December 2022, and it's freezing where I am. It's not ever so warm where you are. And it's just so important, isn't it, to have some sort of way of having when your guests check in it feeling welcoming and warm and at the same time not costing you the earth every time they've checked out. And then there's long periods of it being used without. Without anyone being in. So aperto sounds really awesome. And certainly I'll check them out. And I'm sure people listening will do.

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you can set it to whatever temperatures you want. Their customer support's super awesome. You know, I'll just tell them, like, hey, I want it set to this temperature three hours before the guest checks in or whatever time you want. And they can change those settings. So every little minute detail you want, super helpful. But yes, as far as other services, I use Price Labs, huge one. I don't think, you know, I don't think I could have done any of my pricing without them. Mostly just because I don't. I don't think I should charge as much as they think I should charge. And so, you know, I'll be Like, how is that place getting booked for whatever, $300 a night when I think it's maybe worth 150. But people book it and, you know, just kind of that validation that, you know, they have all the data. I don't. So it helps a lot with that, with pricing. And the last one I would say is Open Phone. I've been using that one as like a phone service. And there's also other ones like Google Voice or Grasshopper, I think is another popular one. But I think just having a phone service to separate your business from your personal has been really important for me. Just instead of getting texts on my personal phone all day, you know, I'm not sure if it's an Airbnb message or VRBO or something, or if it's just a friend that's texting me. This service, it's still just an app on my phone, but it clearly delineates like, hey, this is an open phone call or message. I'm like, I can call and answer the phone and say, hey, this is Gary from Trippy Homes, not oh, hello, who is this?

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Yeah, you make a really good point that the fact so many hosts out there have their personal life and their business so interlinked that there's no escape from it. So whether or not you've got that text going off and you think, oh, you know, I still remember the time when I had all things coming through to my phone and it would make me panic every time I got an alert or something like that, because you'd go, oh, is it something I've got to really pay attention to? Or is it like you say, just a friend, you know, messaging in a group chat or something like that. So yeah, Open Phone is a great one. And I know it's only currently available in the U.S. but for those who are listening in and you're looking for a similar sort of service where it's like, I'm Virtual phone number where you can monitor and text and call and do voicemail from it. We use just Call and that's very similar to OpenPhone, but both fantastic pieces of software. If I could, I would use OpenPhone, but we don't have it over here yet, so. Amazing. And I heard you mention your PMS as well, Hostfully. So how do you find hostfully? Is there any. What do you like most about Hostfully as a pms?

Yeah, so I actually was on Hospitable for the longest time and I think for, you know, people starting out, Hospitable has everything you need. You know, it syncs your calendars, has really great, like automated messages and like tools, I guess for determining or for, I guess I would call it AI for determining, like what a guest like is saying in their message and it'll automatically reply to them with a certain type of message. But we ended up switching to Hostfully just because we started doing the management model and it provided a little more integration and made things a little smoother. I would say the messaging capacities aren't as great as Hospitable, but in terms of the actual management portion of it all, it's a lot more robust system, pull a lot more reports and things like that that I've been using. And it makes listing on several different platforms really quick and easy. You just kind of put it on Hostfully and it shares it off to Airbnb, vrbo, everywhere it needs to go.

And that's one of the things we often hear from hosts and especially, I mean, there'll be people listening. Go. Well, I'm not sure which PMS to go for. You just mentioned that Hospitable is a great one to get started with, and it truly is because it does so much for such a good price as well with hospital, they're so affordable. But one of the things that we often notice when we're talking to people on behind the Host is that every hospitality business is so different and every need of that business can be different. And depending on what the needs of the business are, will depend on, will specify really what PMS you should be considering. And in this case, Hostfully that you've gone for are very good with their enhanced reporting and they allow you a little bit more information than Hospitable. So that's really cool that you've identified and switched to a different pms. How did you find the journey switching from Hospitable to Hostfully? Or do you still use Hospitable for your messaging?

No, I don't use Hospitable anymore. It was a pretty smooth transition, honestly. The. I had, I think, two or three meetings with Hostfully, and they made it very simple to get everything onto their system. But we didn't make it live until, you know, everything was on there, everything was good and ready, and then we switched on the switch. Turn it on Hostfully, just so that nothing would get lost in, you know, a booking or something that we forget about or doesn't get transferred over. But they were really good about making sure that everything was on there to my liking before we actually turned on the switch to make it live on Hostfully.

That's cool. Because sometimes hosts are a little bit worried about, you know, making a switch and that.

Cool.

That's.

I was too. Yeah.

Yeah. It's natural, isn't it? But it's easier than it ever used to be to switch, which is. Which is nice. So let's dive into the unique homes aspect. Why have you called your business Trippy Homes? Because I think that's an awesome name and I'd love to find out why. And what is the unique aspect? Talk us through some of the kind of designs in your. In your properties.

Yeah, sure. So Trippy Homes just came. I honestly can't remember why we thought of it. We thought it was a funny name. We thought it would catch people's attention. And, you know, it's like you take a trip somewhere, you vacation, you know, and just kind of worked. I don't know.

I hadn't thought about that. That's the pun as well. It is trippy. You're going on a trip, aren't you? And as well, it's got Trippy. I mean, I've checked out some of your places and, you know, the. Some of the designs, they are a bit trippy. They're about out there, aren't they? Which is cool. The corn, you know, like that sort of thing. Which is cool.

Oh, yeah, that one as well. But yeah, a lot of people, they compliment our logo a lot. So if you want to check it out, you can go to our website, trippyhomes.com and I don't know, everyone loves that logo. We thought about selling stickers for it, maybe get to that at some point. But as far as the unique homes go, we try to just create like a. A theme, I guess that's kind of like in your face. It's different from all the other cookie cutter homes out there because we started, we used to host those homes, right? Like just a regular suburban home where, you know, it has a couch, a bed, and not a ton of decoration, but it's. It works.

Right?

So accommodation, it's all you really need, a place to sleep. But later down our journey, I guess we, we decided to really make it a place not only to sleep, but a place to create an experience and a memory. So, yeah, like you mentioned, we have the corn themed house that's in a city right outside San Antonio called Helotus. Helotus in Spanish. Some language that related to Spanish. Related to corn. Right. So we made this whole house corn themed. It's. There's a popcorn room and it's got, you know, art. Popcorn art. The bed sheets are popcorn red and white stripes, got little popcorn pillows. There's a corn dog room, a pink corn room, all kinds of corn. There's even corn side tables that I've never seen before, but they're really cool. But yeah, we just went really in on that corn theme and it's done really well. I feel like it stands out across all the other Airbnbs if you see one and you'll see the name of it, it's called the corniest property in Texas is what we titled.

I like that. Yeah, I'm seeing there's a lot of puns in the business and do you know what, what you're doing is you're stopping that scroll. One thing we say in Boostly is you've got to capture. People have got so many things thrown at them, so much information. And certainly when they're looking for homes on places like Airbnb or on any of the online travel agents, you've got a very short time to capture their attention. And if you can do that with something that stands out in the room and instantly for me it was them corn side tables and the cornea, you know, and then I spotted the name and I was like, ah, I get it. I see what you're doing. And instantly when people are then thinking, well, where should I book? Because they might look at a few homes. But the one that'll come to mind first is the one that stands out, which is what you're doing there, which is, which is a really cool way. And I know you've got like a cactus. Cactus one you mentioned as well, right?

Yeah, we actually just finished. We just finished remodeling that one last month. Actually. It was like a year long remodeling project disaster half the time.

But.

But yeah, it's cactus themed again. We went really, really deep on the cactus theme. Try to put a cactus pillows and wallpaper that's cactus. There's an actual room that's just we created as an Instagram room. It's got like a ring light, a Polaroid camera, there's cactus wallpaper all around it. Just to take some pictures there and say. You say it's a cactus themed house.

I mean that, that tip that you've got there, I mean, just. And this is something which I've done in one of my units. Not in all of the units, but is that ring light with, you know, somewhere where they can take a picture? Just a thing which says, hey, this is where you take pictures and instantly it's an activity. And also when they share, they should be sharing and tagging your company in on online to be able to then advertise your company and potentially you get more bookings off the back of that, which is cool. So what would be the advice? I know before we, before we move on, you mentioned the bus. We've got to talk about the bus.

Oh, right, the bus.

How did that come around and when is it launching?

Yeah, so the bus, we basically we bought the bus because we wanted a, like an RV kind of thing to travel around with and also just rent out on the side when we're not using it. So it was a school, old school bus. The fully renovated inside, there's no seats in it anymore. It's got, you know, a bed, a shower, a toilet, a microwave, everything you can think of, like in a kind of like a tiny home. We painted the whole thing pink. So now it's a pink bus and it's called the basic B is what we're calling it. But that should be launching here probably in the first week of January if all goes well. It's been a struggle to, you know, remodeling house is one thing because. But remodeling a bus is a totally different animal. I never even thought how that would work out, but after six months it's worked out. So.

Yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad to hear it. And of course, by the time this even goes out, there might be, you know, it may be ready. So that'll be on your website then. So trippy homes.com, correct?

Yeah, that'll be on there. It'll be on there, definitely.

I'm going to go check that one out. So, yeah, this, this will remind me when I listen to this, this back at the time. So I mean, that's one of the things, creating unique spaces. Is this the future of trippy homes then? Are you going to be looking to Create more of these kind of themed. And what is the benefit of, of doing these is, does it. Are you finding that they get more in terms of the nightly revenue?

Yeah. So that it is our goal just to create more unique spaces like this. I do think it creates a higher nightly revenue because you're selling not just a home, but you're selling an experience like we said. Right. I do think that's the future of Airbnb and short term rentals in general. The markets, at least here in the US getting pretty saturated with a lot of Airbnbs. And in Texas, there's not a lot of regulations to make it harder to start a short term rentals. So they're popping up all over the place. I think San Antonio and Houston, Texas are one of the top three in terms of number of short term rentals that have gone into the market in the past year. So it's, it's definitely made a little more difficult to stand out. But creating these unique properties, I think that's the future to get people to, to book. And yeah, our next property that we're actually remodeling right now is a five bedroom luxury property that we're making all candy themed. So, you know, not candy is in like cotton candy, but you know, like a chocolate room. Nice luxury feel to this candy theme of a home.

You know, it sounds fun as well and part of what business should be should be fun, you know, it should be. I know. And we'll come on to this in a second. There's been challenges, I'm sure, along the way, but when it comes down to the stuff you do, if you create something which is fun, that you can see the joy and your guests will see the joy in that too. So that's amazing. So let's come on to that then. Has there been any challenges since you've started this business and how did you overcome them?

Yeah, definitely quite a few challenges. I would say my biggest challenge that I just have to deal with personally is I guess, my control. I'm a big control freak. And half the time I find myself, since all our properties are in close proximity to where we live, I find myself this, this went wrong with this property. This toilet's not working or this shower rod fell down or whatever. I find myself always like, oh, well, I can just drive over there. It'll take me 30 minutes and fix it. But eventually that gets very draining, especially when we're trying to fit that into my full time job time, family time. Yeah, family and big one. And letting go of Control that and just delegating those tasks has been a huge struggle for me personally. Luckily, we're working on that. I've actually just hired a virtual assistant and so that's helped a lot just to take some things off my plate little by little. Still trying to give up some control, but. But, yeah, that's. That's definitely one of the biggest struggles that I found in growing the business.

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Definitely. Sometimes having it on your doorstep is all too tempting. And what's interesting about this is just in this last few hours, I've come off a podcast with a chap called Michael Chang and we were talking about VAs and how important it is. We've somewhere between like five and 10 properties that you get a VA to really help you move to that next level, because all of a sudden that frees up time in your business. So that is really cool that you've got it. And how did you hire your VA out of interest?

So I used this service called Virtual Staff Finder. I think they cost a couple hundred bucks, but they go out and find three or four virtual assistants that fit with what you're looking for, and then you interview them through Skype or whatever it may be, and you kind of pick who you want to choose. And yeah, it's super, super helpful service. If I ever go for another va, I'm definitely going to use them again.

They're fantastic. And I'm slightly biased too, because I've used them. They are really, really good at what they do. And although you pay for it, it cuts out so much work about finding a good va, because that'd be so much worse to have a VA who you start training and then you have to let go for whatever reason or it doesn't work out. Whereas when you go through a company or an agency like Virtual Staff Finder, they do find you the best out of like 50 or 100 candidates, don't they? Which is really cool. So cool. Let's move on then to who is on your team. How do you do this when you're working full time? Do you have people around you who can help you?

Yeah. So our VA definitely helps a lot.

She.

We only have her part time right now, I guess until we grow a little more. There's more, more time that we need to, I guess. But right now it's just me. My wife, she helps with the guest messaging quite a bit. And you know, at the end of the day I feel like it's not that much guest messaging that we have to do more of the tasks in the business are those administrative tasks like sending out those hotel reports or sending reports to owners, changing the pricing, those things on the back end. A lot of people think it's like, oh well, people are going to be messaging me all day and I'm going to be getting calls in the middle of the night. And really like the guest messaging for me is pretty minor. Maybe like when they check in, if they have a question on where are the towels or something like that. But. But yeah, it's just between us three, we're able to handle it most.

That's cool. And you know, all them little tiny tasks, they are little, they don't take long. But there's a lot of them, isn't there? All these. Every single property, you have to check the price and you have to check that. So that's where VA comes in really handy because they take out the. The day to day small tasks free up your time to go and do the stuff you need to do. So what would you tell yourself then, Garrett, if you was to be able to go back to the start, what advice would you give yourself to try and make your journey smoother? And wherever hosts might listen to that and really need to need to hear that at this stage.

I guess my top tip, I would say is just set smart goals and track them. You know, a lot of people set goals and right, right now's a great time. You know, I guess when this comes out, it'll be February. People will probably have set their yearly goals. But a lot of people make goals to says like maybe work out more. But I say goal needs to be more like specific and measurable than that. So maybe for example, your goal is for the month of January. I'm gonna work out three times a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the gym. I get super specific. You, you know exactly if you did or you didn't do that. You have to keep in mind while you're, while you're doing this is what I was really getting at. You know, if you're just wanting to like supplement your income, are you wanting to create a business to sell it in the future or just to create a business to hand on to your children? Like for my 4 year old that just walked in, whatever it might be, there's no like right or wrong answer. That's what I would tell myself to just keep in mind if I went back and I guess like, while they're, while we're on the topic of goals, I use this website called yearcompass.com I've used it every year for the past three years and it's like a yearly reflection and goal planning workbook. It's free. You just download it, print it out, or do it online. But it's been a huge difference in my business and personal life. Just for getting better, like every year, year in and year out, just to visualize your goals, I think that's super important that not enough people do.

Yeah. And that is great to look back because we were saying, even this podcast that you're recording now, like you might look back on this in a couple of time and actually go, wow, I remember how I felt then and where my business was. But by setting these goals and moving forward, it's a constant state of flux. You're constantly growing, aren't you? And progressing, which is cool. So before we, we bring these to an end, we love to do a couple of just fun quick fire questions. The answers don't have to be quick, but it's just some fun questions. So less about hospitality, just throw it out there. So if you could transform into one animal, what animal would it be and why?

I would say a unicorn, because man, my children, my two girls are obsessed with unicorns and that'll probably make their day amazing.

What beautiful answer. So when you travel, obviously we're talking about when guests travel to us a lot of the time and the amenities that they're after. When you travel, what do you look like look for in a short term rental when you're looking to travel?

Yeah, great question. So with our two kids especially, we try to as much look for a place with like a crib or some kind of child amenities. We've traveled recently actually, and every time we go any place we fly there. We can't bring a high chair and stroller and all those things. So our first stop when we go anywhere is to the super supermarket to Get a high chair, travel crib and some kids like cups or something like that, you know, some kind of activities and dinnerware cups for them. They don't break. We always just end up leaving them at the Airbnb that we stay at because usually they don't have them and too much trouble to haul it back. We'll just buy the cheapest homes you can buy and just leave them there. But yeah, that's why we try to put those in our properties now too, so people don't have to haul that all around all the place. We know the struggle.

I love the answers to the question because whenever we're asked when we travel what we're looking for, that's exactly how our guests feel. And like you said, you now put that in your places. So again, if there's people listening to this and you're trying to be family friendly, then it doesn't cost that much to get a high chair and a cream of a cot or whatever it is. And also, like you say, the children's utensils. I mean, in most, not all, all of our child friendly places, we'll put the kids cutlery and a couple of plastic kind of dishes instead, you know, because that's needed, isn't it? And that's the type of stuff where when you're traveling, you don't want to have to think about packing. I mean, hey, just getting the kids ready, there's enough to get ready, isn't there? So you don't want to be thinking about this extra stuff. So what was your last impulse buy? It can be something for the business. It can be just something which is, you know, which you go, do. You know what? I really wanted that, so I went out and got this gadget. Yeah. What, what was your last impulse buy?

Honestly, I do a ton of like home improvement stuff. Really into all those DIY things you see on TikTok and all that kind of stuff. But my last, I guess, impulse buy was this. This, I guess I would call it like a. A drill attachment that can help me get into like any little tiny little crevice and corner attaches to the drill and. Super helpful.

Nice, nice. These things make a difference though, don't they? And yeah, I'm the kind of person who sees one of the advert for things like, it's only this much. I'll get it and just see if I use it. And then it just sits on my shelf, unfortunately, for a long time.

Oh, me too.

Me too. Okay. And as we bring these to a close, Garrett what we love to do is ask, is there a motto or a mantra or something that you like to live by?

I'm terrible at remembering quotes and mottos, but definitely a mantra or I guess saying that resonates with me. So I guess a lot of people of us focus on hustle culture right now. I feel like it's very trending and you know, just grind and do what you need to do, Work super hard to, to create the life you want. But like I'm working still and I, I too, I was doing that for the longest time just trying to work as hard as I can to reach my quote unquote goals. But Rob, dear Deck, he's popular on MTV, I think, and that kind of stuff. But he has this podcast that I listen to quite a bit. He really helps you think about finding the balance between work and life. And I guess to paraphrase what he was saying in one episode is you just need to know your personal capacity and your limits to avoid getting overwhelmed. Because if you're overwhelmed, I mean you're going to question your decisions, you're not going to have focus, just become erratic in like everything you do. So knowing your limits is really, really important, especially when you're growing a business. You know, don't, don't overextend yourself. It's okay if you take time to grow your business. It doesn't have to be all done. Become a million dollar company in two years.

I think that's such a actionable bit of advice that because there is so many people just go, no, just put, put in, put in all these hours, put in all these hours. But if you're ultimately then not enjoying it, then that could kill the business anyway. So yeah, you're absolutely right. And one thing which I know our founder Mark Simpson would absolutely agree with you and Boostly has been around since 2016 and I actually got to overhear, I get to see some snippets and bits and pieces which don't always get broadcast. And he was talking to a guest and he actually, the guest said, hey, you know, sort of how big is Boostly and that sort of thing. He said, well, it's now we've got 40 staff and you know, it's grown a lot. And we now helping people, we've made almost £4 million worth of direct bookings for our customers in the websites that we do. And he said the nice thing is, and the thing that he's most proud of is that actually he spends his time with his family. The family life comes first, and then he works outside of the family hours. So, you know, if he's taking care of his kids at certain times, he'll work between, say, 8pm to 10pm or something like that. You know, it's got a work, it's got a fit around family. And that's exactly kind of, I guess, the message within that podcast that you saw that ultimately, know your value, know your limits, and where really where you want to spend your time, which is really cool and a nice way to draw things to a close. What was the name of that podcast?

Can you remember? I think it's called Build with Rob.

Yeah, Build with Rob. Yeah. Awesome. That's really cool. So thank you so much. Lastly, we need to ask is, how can we follow you? How can we get in touch? Yeah. And all that cool stuff.

Yeah. So we just actually, thanks to our va, got some social media accounts set up, I believe on pretty much every platform, like TikTok, Instagram are the two biggest ones. We're just trippy homes.

Trippy homes. Lovely. Yeah. So that is it for. For another episode of the behind the Host podcast. Just, just before we go, was there any questions that we missed or anything else? Any final thoughts before we finish, Garrett?

No, I don't think so. I really appreciate the time, though, and I'm looking forward to hearing this when it comes out. Yeah.

Thank you so much for spending your time with us today. And thank you, too. If you're listening to this on the Boostly podcast, we know there's a lot of places you can put your attention, and we really thank you for putting it with Boostly. If you do want to carry on finding out more about hospitality, more about Boostly, more about how you can get direct bookings, you can always go to Facebook, search for the group, the hospitality community, and you're welcome to come and join. That is a free, open group. There's lots of us in there all sharing our thoughts on hospitality subjects, so feel free to come along on that. And yeah, that's it for today. So thank you so much. That's bye from me. That's bye from Garrett. We'll see you on the next one, everyone. Bye for now.