How Sally Kember of Service Accommodation Secrets Grew Her Business by Documenting

Foreign. Welcome to the Boost Hospitality podcast. We're in season six, episode eight, and in this episode I'm talking about documenting your business journey and I'm talking to Sally Kember. So for those of you who don't know Sally, she has been into property now for coming up to three years. And then two years ago she started up a podcast because she thought it'd be a good idea to document her essay journey. And she has been somebody that I've been following now for a while. I've loved her podcast series and I love how she talks about the good and the bad and she likes to pass tips along the way. In this episode we're going to talk about Sally's past, about her artist career, about how she started to work with Progressive, all about Progressive founder Rob Moore, why she likes him and why she relates to him. And she passes on a couple of tips here and there. So without further ado, please sit back and listen to this episode with Sally Kember of SA Secrets. What we're going to be doing tonight is I'm going to be chatting to Sally Kember. We're going to be talking all about documenting your business startup and the pros and cons of doing so. The reason why I asked Sally to help me out on this episode is because I've been following and tuning into Sally's podcast, which is the Service Accommodation Secrets podcast, which is really good because, like, what Sally is really good at is documenting her journey. And then we're going to go into what Sally did before service accommodation and short stay accommodation. We're going to go through all of that and we've got a pretty decent, I got a pretty decent episode lined up. So if you want to, you can tune on in. This is going to get packaged all up afterwards and I'm going to put it together and we're going to turn it into a podcast episode for Bruce Lee. It's going to get, the video is going to get edited and we're going to do all of that. One thing I will want to say is that whilst recording this episode, please come in and say hi. I won't be answering any questions live. It's purely a case for you just to tune in and find out more about Sally and the podcast. But afterwards, if you want to find out more about about Sally, about the podcast, about what she's doing, she will come in on this live and sort of answer any comments later in the comment section below. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start the episode. Like I say, feel free to tune on in and if anybody wants to find out more afterwards, you just go to boostly.co.uk podcast all right, so if everybody is ready, Sally is ready. So we're going to get started. Okay. Welcome to the Boostly podcast. We are on season six, episode eight, and in this episode we are going to talk all about documenting and why you should document your business staff and the pros and cons of doing so. And in this episode, I reached out to somebody that been following for quite a while now. This lady has documented her business style in the form of audio and in the form of a podcast. And it has really helped me when I wanted to find out more about service to accommodation. Obviously my background is hospitality. It's bed and breakfast, it's cottages. And when I've wanted to research my service accommodation, which is the theme of this season of the Boost hospitality podcast, I like, I say I reached out to a few people and I got onto tuning into Sally's podcast episodes. What I like really about what Sally does is that I say she documents the start and the pros and the cons and what she's trying and things that she's trying. And I've picked up a couple of tips that I can put into my hospitality business. So I'm really looking forward to getting her on this episode. So before we start, before we start going into questions, I just want to bring in Sally. I just want to say hi and welcome. If you can just take a couple of minutes, just to explain more about you, about your journey into short stay accommodation and service accommodation, where you are in the world and just a little bit more. And yeah. Hi, Sally, welcome to the show.

Hi, good to be here. Thanks for asking me, Mark.

Lovely. So, yeah, so just introduce yourself where you are in the world and just let us know a little bit more about you, please, if you could.

Yeah, sure. So I live in West Sussex and operate five service departments and rent to SA in Redhill in Surrey, so in the southeast of the uk and I've only been doing it about a year and a half or a bit longer and was completely new to it, really came in through property, which I was new to until about two years ago, really. So it's all been a learning curve and I'm actually an artist by vocation. That's my real thing that I really love doing. And in fact, I do rent my art to our essay units as well. So my screen prints and paintings are on the wall. So I really love doing that and my husband works with me as well. He tends to be on the technical side in the background making things work like the Internet. It's always good and I don't know, all sorts of things doing with the systemisation he's brilliant with as well. So yeah, that's where we are now.

Lovely. So what made you get into. Probably like you say you're a budding artist, you have been involved in that for quite a while. What was the. The sort of the jump and what made you go down this route of short stay accommodation?

Okay, so really in terms of. Well, property isn't property at all, is it? Service accommodation? It's hospitality which is what you're in. But we did property training together as I say, just a couple of years or so ago we started Peter, done some property training before that but we were both keen to kind of look at ways to become more financially independent and service accommodation a good way to have a cash flowing strategy and you know you can combine it well with property as well. So did lots of training and all different types of property strategies and then started off with this one and you know, we've got other things going on as well. But yeah, really the journey to be financially independent because I actually haven't had a proper job, I'm kind of unemployable. I don't know, artist temperament maybe, I don't know. But I really like working with people and you meet all sorts of interesting people and I actually quite enjoy property as well but haven't done much else with it. There are lots of other things I'd like to do as well.

Amazing. So you touched upon it there. You've done a lot of training and there are a ton of companies out there who offer property training and essay training. So which one did you go with and why did you choose to go with that company?

Okay, so with Progressive Property we did basic kind of masterclass which was all about Vitalettes and just intro into property because we have our own residential property and have done breeders but you know, just the whole business of being in property. We learned initially with them and then we carried on with them because I really like their ethos and they give a lot of content actually and the step is to then put it into action. But yeah, they have a. Have a lot of really good trainers and very inspiring. We met loads of really bad people. You know, they're not just into property, they're into all sorts of really interesting things and there's a whole network with guests of property and lots of Great people.

So you mentioned when it comes to doing, you know, they give you all the help and whatnot. And you've obviously done the training and you did the service accommodation training and I say you've done property because you've got different things going on and different, different assets. So we're going to focus just on the service accommodation part.

Yeah.

And what did you find was the biggest hurdle from doing the training to then actually getting in and getting started.

Okay. So to be accountable was a good thing because we did like a three day training and then we did a mastermind for six months which was good because we were looking for a rent to SA rather than purchasing and it just seemed to take forever to find a property. And I don't know how much of that was procrastination things and you know, stepping out of the norm, shall we say. And the fact it just was a bit problematic. Problematical. So I'd go and see agents and say too much or I'd go and say not enough. And we did different role plays together because it just wasn't kind of working. And then finally we met some developers who were freeholders who've been going for quite a long time in our area and that they are the guys we're still working with and they're brilliant. So yeah, it just took a long time to find property really. But I think it's also a big mindset thing. I'm quite into different mindset aspects and exploring all of that. I'm quite spiritual really. I think mindset is huge. It's kind of everything really because without the right attitude you just don't do anything really. And so I think that was key. And also if we hadn't been accountable, I think it would have been easy to kind of drift off and not do anything.

Yeah. Is there a large. From what you've seen and from other people that you've been on the courses with and kept in contact with and all the groups you may be a part of, have you seen the ratio of the people that go on the actual courses to actually do something? Is that high or is that low flight from what you've, from what you've seen and from what you've witnessed?

Probably from the actual like initial course, it's probably fairly low in a way because some people are trying out, if they like the idea of it, they do their numbers and they think, well now I can't see it working but from the mastermind I think actually a lot of people did implement it. There are very few who didn't? I'd say that that was really high. That's probably 90%, I would say, is really high on the mastermind. So. But I found. And you might be gonna ask me this, but with the, with the learning, when you learn all this stuff, in theory, it's all fine, but then when you go and do it for real, it's like. So, yeah, that's why I started the podcast, really.

That's a nice little segue into the podcast. So there are a lot of podcasts out there. There's tons of podcasts out there, if you look at them. But you sort of went down a different tactic of sort of documenting your journey. What you did well, what you did wrong, which is. I love that, by the way, that you document the failures as well as the successes and you just sort of brought it all in nicely. So go back to episode one or the planning stage you were at. What part of your journey were you on the course at this stage? Or is this the mastermind that you thought doing this? When did all of this come together? Why did you start doing it?

Well, because, as I said, I like progressives, so I've done quite a lot of training courses with them, and one of them is actually a podcasting course, and it was when Rob Moore was presenting it, because I wouldn't really necessarily have thought of it otherwise. I do listen to them anyway. And I don't know, just when you're in a group and you kind of got ideas bouncing off each other, I thought, well, what have I learned and what am I doing? I'm doing service accommodation. I think there's a huge gap between the learning and the doing. So I thought to help people, it would just be really good to do that. But I had been up and running for a year. Yeah. Already by then. And I have to admit, it took me six months to actually start the podcast because I was. I was scared.

No, that's fine. I mean, that's absolutely common with a lot of people. Like, even doing something like this, you know, chatting and being live is a big step to make. And obviously when you. You've got the idea of a podcast and actually getting from A to B is a big step. But what was. What made you do that jump? What made you go, you know, okay, I'm just going to go for it, I'm going to put it out there, I'm to going to see what happens?

Well, I think I really like helping people is my key thing. So I thought, well, I can't really do that if I hide somewhere, nobody will know what I'm doing and I can't help them. So I was really. What I was actually concerned about is people thinking I was going to come across as an expert, if you like. So it's much more commentary and, as you say, documenting what I'm doing because I'm quite new to it. There are loads of people with lots of service departments, service accommodation unit, you know, got really big companies and they could easily do something like that and, you know, presentation or lives, and they know so much more than me. But I think what I was feeling would be valuable for people is for people who are fairly new or started quite recently, that event to help them share the fact that it's not all amazing because, you know, you see a lot of the hype and how fabulous it is, but there's also the downside and it's how you solve all those different problems and things as well. And so what made me take the leap was really, there's no point doing all this training and wanting to help people if you just don't do it. So I just actually started doing Facebook lives in order to launch the podcast because I thought, you know, with the podcast you can just sit behind a microphone, can't you, and not be visible. But I thought, well, if I do a weekly live, then everybody will see what I'm talking about, what I'm doing in my business. So there's two things there. A, it means I'm saying I'm going to do a podcast, therefore I have to because I'm doing a Facebook Live. And then B, it means that, you know, I'm sharing information on what I'm doing in my business. So keeps me accountable and actually better in my business, I think, because I'm talking to people about it and it helps them.

What I like as well is that's repurposing content. So by going live on Facebook, you take that and explain to me the process. So you go live on Facebook and you do your episode. What are the next steps from them getting it where it's on itunes, for example, or insert podcast.

Okay, so, yeah, sure, we've got a platform called Omnistudio and I think you can have up to four channels on there with the. With the setup we've got. And so you can either just record. So I've got a zoom recorder and you can have, you know, We've got a C1 microphone, which looks like a traditional kind of microphone. So I tend to have that set up if I am Just at home or at the apartments or somewhere where I can set up the equipment as well, as well as my phone recording the live because that has better audio than my phone. So if I've got a zoom recording as well, then I did start off with an outsourcer, actually, because I just needed to get going. And my husband Pete, as I said, he's very technical and he said, oh, I'll edit it for you. Okay. And because he's a really busy man and it's like I'm never going to get started. So I found an audio editor who put together my first six episodes. It's really good to have six episodes in the bank. So when you launch, people have got something to listen to. So he helped me do that and then he probably edited it more than we do now. So when I said hi to people in the lives, he'd edit that out. And I've got an intro and an outro. So we basically. We're supposed to have five seconds of silence, but I find silence a bit of a challenge. Then we basically have the intro and the outro put on the end of the audio of a Facebook Live most of the time.

Nice.

Sometimes I do an extra section for more information.

Yeah, so you record it. You now just. I mean, so you've got this thing. Was it called Omnichannel? What was. Is that like a software?

Omni Studio? Yeah, Omni Studio.

So basically you record the episode, it goes straight into there and then it goes off and it appears on itunes.

Yeah, itunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

There you go. So, yeah, you can be.

Oh, I'm on Spotify. It's very exciting.

So on any Amazon, Alexa, you know, I discovered this the other day. The Boostly podcast is now on Spotify. So I was able to impress my seven, my six year old. Sorry. And my three year old by putting on the Boostly podcast, which was, which was a lot of fun. So yeah, you're there as well. Which is. Which is amazing. And I say what I like about it. The way you do it is it. It repurposes content. So instead of having to go, right, so I'm going to do a Facebook Live and I'm going to record separate audio. Another task, another time. I can do this and you've got all of that. And then if you wanted to, then you could. So what I do is as a really cool little app called Otter Otter IO Jessica Lorimer introduced me to this and this is a transcription tool. And what I then do with this is I run the podcast through there, it transcribes it all. So then we've got a blog post. So again, it's just repurposing content, so you've got more and more things that you can do. And again, it keeps it evergreen, which is really cool because then when people are searching on Google Search, for example, it can then come up in the. In the future, which is great. So, no, I really do like it. Now, you mentioned somebody very briefly, Rob Moore. So for those of you people who are watching and tuning in, and there will be a lot of people who don't know who Rob Moore is. Can you just give a little bit background of who he is and what he does? He seems like he's got fingers in a lot of pies with property and podcasting and all the things that are going on. So just for people who don't know, just try and explain to me a little bit more about who Rob Moore is.

Okay. So he and his partner, Mark Homer, own and run Progressive Property, and they have other companies, so unlimited success as well. And that's Amazon business. And he has a couple of podcasts as well, Disruptive Entrepreneur and the Money Podcast. And I don't know, I like Rob quite a lot. I resonate with him quite a lot. He was an artist and a failed artist by his own admission. Sorry, Rob. But he's really interesting because he said he was arrogant and, you know, didn't like people like Tracey Emin, you know, and Damien Hirst, who was so successful in art, and he just thought it was all wrong and he didn't know anything about sales. He didn't charge enough. And honestly, I can resonate quite a lot with that because actually I did a degree and did commercial illustration, but I've always just loved art. And it's one of those things where, I don't know, artists are supposed to. In a garret, and then when they're dead, everybody buys their art. That's the thing that I bought into, which is not right. I don't like it. And so that kind of aspect of him I really resonated with. And I've seen him speak at quite a few events because we've done mentoring with Progressive as well as I say, you know, just to keep the kick up the backside to keep things going. And I just. He's really into the whole mindset aspect as well, which I really enjoy. So the thing I went to at the weekend was a mindset and money event, and he's just written a book called I'm Worth More. And it's really fascinating, you know, what you believe you can do, you can do. Whereas if you don't have the belief or you don't have the imperative to do things to drive you forward, you're not likely to do them. And I don't know, I think people like that are very inspiring. And sometimes when you're having a really bad day and you think, you know, this is such a pain, you could just go and get a job. And that's the kind of thing they were talking about that weekend I went to them. The Mindset and Money event is when you're an entrepreneur, when you've got your own business, you have a different set of challenges than somebody who decides, oh, yeah, I'm gonna go and work for somebody else. But, you know, it's on your terms, isn't it? So I think that's the great thing about it. And Rob's very much an ideas person, so he has a lot of different things. He starts podcast being one of them, and they do all sorts of events, Progressive all the time. And he's got a bit of a reputation for being heavy on sales. And I was at the super conference that they did recently with Grant Cardone in London as well, and there were quite a lot of sales there, but some really interesting people speaking as well. So you do get a huge amount of content and learning as well. So, you know, you can sit on your hands and not get a credit card out and learn a huge amount. But I think their mission is global financial freedom, which I think is pretty awesome. And so I think coming from that place of really caring about people and what they can achieve, I think, well, the selling is okay. It's fine. I can live with that.

The more you talk about Rob and how much you relate to him, I can totally see why you went with Progressive to do your original courses, because, you know, being a fellow painter, talking about Mindset, two things that you're really big on, and I can totally see why now. Did you do a lot of research into Rob and Mark before you went with Progressive, or was it a recommendation? How did you come to choosing them to be the ones training with?

Honestly, it's a bit weird because probably lots of people watching, listening, have read Rich Dad, Poor dad, which we read a long time ago, did training with other people. So I also trade forex. That's another thing I like doing. And I'm doing a thing with another guy, Dylan Denietzsche, which is market mastery at the moment. And that's all about not just creating wealth for myself and my family, but also people beyond that. So starting to contribute to sustainable UN goals and things like that. More legacy creation. But years ago I did training with another company in Forex and I supported people in a group helping people. I was a bit involved in things and Pete did some property training, but kind of went a bit pear shaped. But my cousin, who's a bit younger than me, we got him into property and then he dragged Pete, my husband, off to Progressive for a discovery day, from which Pete rang me and said, we have to start learning properties. And that was a couple of years ago. So it was like this weird circle of things that happen. They're not my cousins.

On that day, Pete firmly didn't have his hands on his bum. Bum on, his hands was out and he got started. Okay, cool.

I'm not really bad on sales, but I love shopping, so I do tend to.

Yeah, yeah, no, I totally get so. And it makes sense because this is where you are now and you've got like, say you've got the five properties, you've got lots of things going on. And I said the podcast has been part of that. So we've teased it long enough. What is your podcast? How can people find it? Do we have a link? How can people sort of find out more? There'll be lots of people watching this who may be at right at the very start of their podcast journey, but maybe people who are a year, two years in. But you know, podcasts are fantastic because they can listen to it in the car, you can listen to it, you know, in transport, you can listen to it when you're doing the dishes. A great medium, part of contact content that you could, you can listen to. So tell us a little bit more about the podcast. How can people find out more?

Okay, so my podcast, you can literally, we'll give the link, but you can literally search for service accommodation secrets. Itunes in there on your phone. You search it up or Stitcher or Spotify. And I think I'm on episode 36 or thereabouts. And I started off with an introduction to service accommodation, but then into different areas, like, you know, people have trouble with different areas and suggested that they need help with pitching to agents, which I needed help with early on. So I know the downsides, you know, how you can say too much, put them off or not say enough and things like setting up your service department and having different methods so you don't overspend, you know, inventory, things like that, researching areas, doing your due diligence. So you know, you're in a good area, the things that you need to have nearby and the type of client that you want to attract. What kind of guests do you want? Do you want contractors, do you want corporate guests, which is what we aim at, or are you high end? All those kind of things. There's a lot of practical stuff to do with setting up, but then as you said, I have quite a lot of episodes where I'm just talking about what's happened in the week and sometimes weird stuff goes on and we do things like interview cleaners and have trial shifts and I talk about all those kinds of things. So if somebody is thinking of setting up service accommodation, I'd suggest starting at the beginning with the intro. If you're already in service accommodation and you've got different issues that happen from time to time. Yeah, there are already lots of different subjects in there that could help. And I'm always happy to have feedback on other areas that I could cover because people said to me, well, how can you just keep doing a weekly thing? You know, surely not enough happens. It's like, well, it does. And it's always learning, growing and you know, how to expand and.

Which is the life of hospitality. Like you said, right at the very, very start, I think a lot of people, when they get into service accommodation or property and they, they go down this magical route and of, of service accommodation, rent to rent to sa, as you call it, and it's like, right, amazing. We get the property, we do all the hard work, we get the sign off from the landlord, we do the property up and then it's shit. We have to get people in and then it's like, okay, so where do we go? How do we do it? What do we do it? You've managed to get your first booking, you get your channel manager sorted, whoever that may be, you get listed on all the sites, you do all the work and you get people through the door and then the hard work begins. And I think that's what people just do not understand, is that when you get people through the door, that's not the easy bit. That's the hard part because anything can happen. And like you said, this is where you keep getting weekly content is, because everything can happen. And this is what I love about your podcast, is that you document this and you show this and you put it out there in, you know, it's not heavily edited. You don't hide, you know, hide away from the things that aren't going well. You document it well, which is What I love, because my big problem with a lot of these salesy events is that they only sell the dream. They talk about passive income and this other thing that I've heard, no money down. And this is the thing that so many people don't get. And coming from a hospitality point of view and the hospitality community, which is my Facebook group, and, and is that every single day and every single week in there we have some called the Tuesday rant and we talk about the things that go wrong and there are so many things that go wrong. And this is why the inspiration for doing this whole series, talking to yourself and talking to so many people from this, from the accommodation world and the service accommodation world is just to sort of go, well, these are the sort of things that can go wrong and these are the sort of things that property people can, can do and learn from, from the hospitality. But like I said in other episodes, there's so many things that people in the service accommodation do so well that hospitality people can learn from as well. So thank you so much for coming on today. Now, you mentioned about before we leave, you've mentioned that you like to get feedback and you like people to contribute to future episodes and you do this for a Facebook group. How can people find that Facebook group?

Okay, so my Facebook group is Service Accommodation Secrets group. It's probably easier to just have the description, the actual address, isn't it?

Yeah.

And people can ask to join it because I did by mistake add people, which is a big no no, isn't it? But I do also have a page with the same name, Service Accommodation Secrets, but all just search up my name because I post property stuff on my own page and service accommodation stuff on my own page.

So that's the best place to start. We've go to Sally Kember, go into Facebook search, type that in. If you're listening to this on the podcast and you want to find out more, go to facebook.com, type in the search Sally Kember and she'll come up and then from there you'll be able to find the group, the podcast, pretty much anything you want. So, Sally, thank you so much for coming on today. Really, really appreciate it. And I'm sure that everybody listening, you're welcome, will want to find out more. Like I say, if you want to find out more about Sally, please, please, please head over to Facebook, type in Sally Kember. Kember is K E M B E R. From there you can find the group, you can find the podcast and everything else that Sally contributes and thank you so much for listening. Today, this is being podcast as episode 8 of series 6 of the Boostly podcast. All I ask is that if you've enjoyed this episode, you head over to itunes, you go give it one of those lovely five star reviews, or wherever you are, listen to it, go and hit the review button. If you want to find out more, go to boostly.co.uk podcast Like I said, this is episode eight. We've had seven other episodes in this series. You can go and listen back to Elaine what where we talk about networking. We got David Dyack, where we talk about growing your service accommodation business. We've got David and Amanda Healy, part of SA Angels, talking about outsourcing. Right back to number one with Jason Living, where we talk about the basics. And then Trish McGeer, episode two where we talk about how to approach landlords and she gives you an actual script on how to do so, which is even better. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week where we have got episode nine coming up. And if you've got any feedback, if you want anybody that you want me to feature on these podcasts, please let me know. Come over to Facebook, facebook.com BoostlyUK Send me a message and I'll see what I can do. Thank you very much for tuning in and I'll speak to you all very, very soon. All right, that's the live stream done. All good.

Excellent. That seems really short.

No, it was good. What are we on? Let me just pause this. 32 minutes.

Really?

32 minutes? Yeah.

Which is.

Which is really good. So that's perfect. So what I'll do. Let me just stop the recording. I almost.