How to be Stronger Together During the Coronavirus Crisis with Scott Weir of Pillow Partners

Foreign. Podcast season 8, episode 3 yes, we're still in Scarborough. Yes, we are still doing these daily podcasts right now, but tonight we're going to talk about corporate bookings, business bookings and how to get them even in the time of the coronavirus. I invited on Scott Weir. Scott Weir is the founder of a company called Pillow Partners. He's been involved in property for years, but Pillow Partners is his more recent project and it is helping hospitality owners, landlords, you name it, get short term accommodation bookings. He's created an idea all around, make it Happen shares that story about how that came across. His whole idea in his premises is that it's stronger together. So he gets hosts all on one platform, he gets hosts all in one area. They share the calendar, they share their availability. And the way that it works is that with the corporate and the business world there's always big bookings that can potentially come in, sometimes that they can't host in one property. So what they do is that they work through their network and they just pluck another booking that can fit it. And if they have to move things around, they can do. They've all got to fit their criteria, they've all got to fit their rules and regulations. But it's a fantastic idea and I recommend everybody go and just do a Google search for Pillow Partners after you've listened to this interview, whether it's on the video or whether it's on the audio, please, please, please make sure you go and subscribe and rate and reviews on itunes wherever you may be watching this. So for for now this has been recorded on 19th March 2020. So if you're listening to this in in the future, then obviously if the things have changed and obviously it's a little bit out of date, but please go and pick up some of these tactics and tips that'll help you in the long run before I let you go. So want to say thank you to the Boostly podcast sponsors which is hostfully, hostfully help you with digital guidebooks. Time like this, when you need to make sure that you are looking after every guest that walks through your door, even more so than before. If you've got a little digital guidebook that you can send to them before they arrive, letting them know about property, places to visit, places that can do delivery, places that can make their guest experience stay even better, then it's fantastic and hostfully give everybody one free guidebook. If you just go boostly.co.uk hostfully you get one free guidebook. And if you ever want to upgrade to the premium, they've got a special boostly offer. Put Boostly 2M and you get two months free. All right, let's speak to Scott.

Thank you, Mark, and welcome to everyone this evening. So, really interesting times and I hope to share some nuggets and some perhaps opportunities that are going to come out of this and a little bit of positivity because we know the negativity, so let's make some opportunities. So, yeah, I've been in pretty much property as long as I can remember, Mark. I bought my first property when I was 17. That sounds impressive, but in 1997 they were a lot cheaper than they are now. I was in the armed forces then, back before mobiles and Internet, and my lighting agent was pretty bad. I was 8,000 miles away in the Falklands and back then it was a landline, no Internet, no mobile and my lighting agent treated me horrifically badly. And like all entrepreneurs, I vowed to create a business that would serve that market better. So that at 17, 18, inspired me to be a letting agent. So I did my service in the Royal Navy, come out, worked for letting agents. In 2005, set up my own letting agency called Homesure. So that went on for a good decade. The residential lettings market, I don't need to tell the audience, has changed massively since 2005, so took that through to 2015 and it's still going. There's a manager in place. The team here at HQ managed probably 500 plus plus properties, which is in a challenging market at the moment because tenants are getting free rent and landlords are getting mortgage holidays. But the letting agents in the middle will not get fees. And I know letting agents are not everyone's friend and no one cares, but I have a team of 14 I need to protect. So 2015 changes into the market. We had been doing what they now call serviced accommodation for years. I was doing it when I worked. So since 2002 I've been doing serviced accommodation, although we didn't call it then that. Then holiday lets, corporate lets contract our bookings, we rented to airlines and back in the day there was no one else doing it and we had a local airport and they took 15 properties off us for all the captains and cabin crew. So back then there was no one doing it and it wasn't called service accommodation as such. So pillow been going since 2016 and we've got a nice UK wide network of properties. Service accommodation is now my life. So yeah, I love it, I breathe it. If you cut Me open. I. I would have service accommodation written there. So that's a brief intro to me.

I love speaking and what I love about you is your branding. I love that you also wear hoodies, which has got your logo on. It's a lovely part. And we've already had comments in the live video, but people are loving the Scottish accent. So if anything out of tonight, the live video. So, yeah, so basically, compared to every other boosted podcast that we've ever done, like I say, the way that we normally do this is we record it live and it goes out. And just to give you a little background in the world of podcasts, you normally have a four to six week buffer. Obviously with the coronavirus and the coronavirus crisis, everything is happening now. So these podcasts are going to get put out a lot sooner than what they normally do. So there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes. So this is Thursday 19th March. It's important to stress because as we've realized over the course of this week, even like the last sort of seven to ten days, it's changing on a daily if not hourly basis. We were recording this at 6pm so the British Prime Minister just had his press briefing. Nothing majorly up to date regarding hospitality, apart from he's just reiterating the fact that stay at home. Let's talk about the current state of play then with the service accommodation world. Like you say, you are in it, you live it, you breathe it, you've got tons and tons of partners all over the uk, people that you're working with. How is your week compared to a normal week? How has your week been? How many fires having to put out, what's been general conversations, how are you sort of seeing it from your world?

We'll give a few approaches. I suppose there's two different types of. Different types of properties. One, the classic holiday staycation type property. So of some in the middle of the country, some in Scotland, with those all over. And then there's the classic serviced accommodation that might be booked short term between a couple of days and a week. City centers, towns, those serve tourists, but they also serve corporate lets and contractors. So basically, as everyone would would expect, there's been mass cancellations as we record this. I think it was last week, a week ago, that booking.com did the force majeure, meaning you can cancel for free. Airbnb did the same and of course guests have done that. And again, that's to protect guests. And whether that's right or wrong doesn't matter. But we have seen a massive cancellation of short term holiday let booking. For example, we are here for a racecourse. The race fixtures have been shut, so everybody's cancelling to stay here to go to the races. But coincidentally, and that was a bit of a shock to the start of the week, but when we come in in the morning, the team open up the bookings emails and there's actually a flood of new bookings coming in. So some people are coming here for various reasons, but the team have been pretty amazing. They've been on the phones and we've just changed our approach to marketing. So inbound, what I would call reactive bookings, OTA bookings definitely down and let's say going to be down. But the team have changed their strategy and literally done the proactive work of contacting people and March is going to be a good month for us.

Let's just scale back and just delve in that a little bit. Because last night's live video, I spent about an hour, an hour and 15 minutes going all of the proactive steps that everybody can be doing in getting new bookings, but also as well doing other little tactics and tips which we shared a ton. So again, if everybody's watching this back on the replay, just go to episode two, go to Wednesday 18th of March. If you want to go look at the timestamp on my Facebook, you can get loads there. But I'd be really interested to find out from your eyes, your team, what are sort of the things that you've seen them doing, what are the sort of being the levels that you guys have been going to be creative with your marketing, See if we can pick out anything from there.

Where I record, this is our Kinney media studio and next door is our training center. So when we train our new regional property managers with two types of one's hq, one's that you can train and they're in our building, but we have regional property managers scattered all over the UK and when they come up to do their training, I don't have it here, but we have a very first thing they do when it comes to getting bookings and managing properties. We give them a little document and it has 20 boxes, just a word document, nothing fancy. You guys can do this and I suggest you take this nugget and write it down. Make a word document. Just make a list of 20 things and at the top of that document, I didn't have time to show it. It basically says to the team, imagine there's no online travel agents. How would you get bookings. So there's no Internet, how would you get bookings? So that wasn't something smart I devised in case of a mass pandemic. That was just we don't want to rely on booking portals, so they need to get creative. So from day one, all the property managers who come through the training literally do 20 things and each area is different, so they come up with creative things that don't work. But of all the property managers, there's probably 10, 15 things that everyone independently comes up with. The first thing I would say for that is it's a lot of work to get direct bookings. We said it's proactive and it's nice and easy to list a property on the booking portals and you know what, your channel manager will sync it. But it's physical work, so it isn't as easy as saying, I want direct bookings. We call it pretty much when we're doing the training, hitting the bricks. You literally need to do the legwork to get these. Whether it's physical legwork, walking about or is legwork on the Internet. So some of the things I would do, definitely get your list of creative things and think for your area. One of the nice ways we get contract or direct bookings is actually rightmove and I don't know if that was covered in any tips. Booking.com, i think you can book for maximum 20, 20 odd days. Airbnb charges guest fees, so it looks very, very expensive. But you need to go firstly, you need to go to the mind of and we're talking contractor corporate bookings first of all. So if you've got, for example, I want a doctor in my property or a professor, or we have lots of actors, we can't say who because we've signed non disclosure agreements. But if we're going to get an actor or a film producer, is it going to be the actor that's booking the accommodation? So you need to get into the mind of your target demographic. Random example, if you are going to get a doctor staying in your property and let's say it's Glasgow and that doctor's coming from London, you won't be contacting doctors in London to fill your Glasgow properties. Even though that's the person in it, you're going to be contacting the person in Glasgow that books the accommodation for that person. So that can be HR departments, that can be personal assistants, so that might be the gatekeepers that you can't get past. It's the mind of the person that's Doing the booking, not actually the person that stays in your property. And the good thing about that is it's a nice cold call. If you've done cold calls to estate agents and letting agents to get red to rents, you generally get a negative thing. But if you can solve someone's problem and if you know it's someone's job within an organization, let's say someone now, it's a job and they're at an NHS which is very stressed and stretched, and it's some nurse's job or some admin person's job to find the accommodation for, let's say, doctors coming from France to help this pandemic, that's symbolic for them. And if you can take that away from them, from being their trusted supplier and saying, listen, what do you need? I need accommodation for all these doctors, leave it with me. And if you can't fulfill them, one of the tips at the end I'll bring up is work with your competitors. If you can't fill your properties, they might get bookings and vice versa. If you get a big, long contractor booking because of this pandemic and you've got four or five little bookings, pass them to your competitors and they can do the same with you. So think in the minds of the people that are actually booking it, not the people that are staying there. So I'll give you an example. Production companies, it's not going to be the actors. Glasgow's always full of nice stars like the Rock. The Rock's not going to be sitting on Facebook, sitting on Airbnb, trying to book an apartment. It's going to be his agent. So whatever is working in your area. Amazon, for example, we do lots of stuff with Amazon in one of the areas for one of their warehouses. You're not going to contact Amazon to get the Amazon staff would be the recruitment company that's doing it. And that's one example. There were many. Think in your area, who is the need for and who would be the person that I can solve and take some work away if you go on to any of my teams. So if you look at Pillow Partners or you go on to search pillow partners on LinkedIn, you'll see what the team do and you want to pretty much do what my staff do on LinkedIn. So this is a strategy for LinkedIn. There's two things. You can be proactive and put specific deals for specific properties out and let the world know. But if you look at the content from some of my team, they are pretty much being known and the first thing I told you was they fill out a sheet to be creative. But the next thing is you guys need to be the face in your area. If I think of Emma in Glasgow, she's the face of service accommodation in Glasgow. It used to be me, now I'm pretty much invisible because I do other stuff. Jen in Perthshire, if I think of Birmingham with Natasha and Claire and Derbyshire. So she is the person that people go to and that does take a few years. Mark, you can't just turn up and say hi, you need to build that up. Gumtree is a nice easy one. If you go on to Canva C A N V a dot com, you can make nice graphics all nice and cheap. You can jump on that resource Canva and drag and drop pictures and literally put text and within a couple of minutes you can have a nice image. It tells you the dimensions. So that if you're putting a post on Instagram, then put it in Twitter and it cuts it off. Make sure your media you put out is professional, but you can go into Canva, say hi, I have contractor and contract and corporate booking properties per person per night. It's this rate. So you put your media out on Gumtree but you can do all this and get professional images pretty much for free. So LinkedIn is a nice place to get corporates. Gumtree is a nice place to do contractors and I'm pretty sure that has been covered. This isn't a quick fix for you guys but networking, networking doesn't exist anymore. We can't mass congregate, but the team have built up their links through contractors going to network and it can be as difficult and I told you it wasn't easy. Emma got five properties let for eight months each, but she got that because she went to a networking event from Glasgow to London, spoke to some convention and then they gave hard bookings. So going to that links that get you them. We spoke about your competitors. You will have bookings you can't fulfill. They will have bookings and they will go to it. The way to approach this is if you think of the big companies like Silver Door Situ, all these big companies, that's their job, they employ lots of people to go and get these bookings. So they don't just get bookings, they build up a presence, they get joint ventures with insurance companies, with relocation companies. So we need to, we pretty much need to emulate and copy what those guys do. And that takes time. So lots of tips. I don't know how long you want me to Talk about this for no. Well, let's tomorrow morning. Talking about service accommodations.

I like this because there's plenty to pack and unpack because you gave so much there, which was fantastic. Thank you. And I've been busy making notes. What I do want to say, though, everybody, that whether you're watching this live or whether you're watching back on the replay, and specifically if you're watching on YouTube or any other social channels, here's what I want you to do. Now, I love the tactic that you do when somebody signs up as a property manager and you're training them. You give them a blank piece of paper and you've got all the boxes and you say, right, for the next five to six months, you cannot rely on OTAs to bring in your bookings. What are you going to do? Write down 20. So everybody watching live. What I want for you to do is just write down one thing. Write down one thing in the comments. What one thing would you do if you couldn't rely on an OTA to bring in your book right now? Put it in the comments below. If you're watching this on a channel in the future that you can't comment, then just send me a tweet. Ostleruk, Instagram Ostleruk. Send me a direct message. That's what I want for you to do. The reason why we're going to do this is that we've got 30, 40 people watching this live right now. We're going to have about 3,000 people watch on the catch up and there's going to be a lot of people who right now have got an absolute blank calendar and they are going to be overwhelmed with what they need to do next. So if you could just put down one tip that somebody can watch and then go, yes, that's what I want to do and put it into practice. And if you can just help one person, then we are massively taking a step towards fighting back against the coronavirus. And if anybody does it on the live video, I'm going to give you a shout out. I'm going to mention your tip. Now, you mentioned at the start there about hospitals and doctors. We found out yesterday from a good source that at times like these, and there's been a lot of money put into the hospitals to get accommodation for their doctors and for their nurses that have not got the coronavirus to keep them safe and clean so they can provide support for people that are critical. So again, when it goes to reaching out, you're not going to contact the doctor directly. Try and get on the phone to your hospital trust. If you've got a friend, family member that works within the hospital, local to you, where your property is, then that's a way in. That's how you get past the gatekeeper. Get a name, get an email, get a phone number, drop a call in. Now, from your experience then, Scott, of working with hospitals, how would you approach that conversation? Because out of all the things that we talked about with film crews, recruitment companies, they're not going to be traveling. The ones that we really want to be helping here would be potentially hospital staff or care worker staff. How do you advise people to start that conversation? How would you advise people to maybe price their range properties when speaking to hospitals? That'd be a good place to go.

To give this answer. I made sure that I spoke to people that knew that were in the other end of this, the decision makers. So there's a lot of talk about what might happen and people beds and corridors and stuff. I went and spoke to doctors and there's been seven I spoke to. And again, some of them might be watching this if we're in Doncaster during the week. And again, whether this figure's £50 out, but they tell me the average cost per night to have someone in Hospital is £550. And the way that the doctors, a few of the doctors, the same theme come out and they said, and this was last week when it was like, is that a big deal? It's only the flu and it doesn't matter and people are overreacting, that thinking's gone. They put it like this, was the nhs, were there nurses and doctors sitting about doing nothing before this? Or were their waiting lists, was it stretch the capacity? And the answer is yes, everybody will agree the NHS was not sitting about doing nothing. So a tiny strain on this means that people will be in ICU wards, there'll be people that are in care, there'll be people that need to be self isolated. They cannot throw these people bitches back out to their own homes. So when we look at this one, we want to provide value to the nhs, because if someone's in a hospital bed and they can't put them out and someone is maybe in a corridor, we can provide amazing solutions for them. And before I tell you this, I'm coming from this of the space of one, we are saving our service, accommodation, businesses, two, service to the community that will save lives. So I've spoken about this before and people are very negative. Normally people in employment that say you're profiteering and how dare you? We're not profiteering, we are providing a service that's saving the NHM money and we are saving lives. So by taking people out of places where they might catch it, or taking them from their homes and putting them in service accommodation, you need to do it from an ethical point of view and it is saving lives. So have no problems phoning up, have no problems cold calling, going in, perhaps not visiting, but sending the emails for anyone that's saying, yes, Scott's talking about that and he's team phone up every day and does all this hard work. I don't feel comfortable with that. You know what? That's those days are gone, we need to pay the bills, we need to cover overheads. The days have been too shy to cold call, they're gone. It's a new world for the time being and we need to go and we need to make it happen. So we just need to do it. So one is the cost, the next thing is if we can provide a service and how you package your properties up would be different depending on where you are and what your property is like. But if it's done in such a way that we go in, we spend extra time on the cleaning, we leave it empty two days before anyone goes in to try and kill the virus and again might stay on paper for seven days, we don't know, and perhaps that's not been proven yet, but you're providing a safe, clean, sterile environment that is ready for someone to go into. So it may not be critical patients that are going from hospitals, but hospitals need to decant these patients that can't go home. And before the coronavirus, we were working on a situation for some NHS authorities where if we can provide them a service accommodation unit for £2,000amonth, you're saving the NHS money. And this was our pitch because it's roughly £550 a day to have someone in a bed, they can't go home for various reasons. That could be an elderly person that can't get upstairs or go home because of an operation and users and grass floor. So we need to create stale out environments. It could be not even hospitals, but you're contacting companies that say our big thing, it's an alternative to a hotel. So. And again, we don't know what's happening with hotels. But nice, simple thing, nice simple pitch. This is ours and I've done it. Listen, if you for business people and VIPs so you can get corporate lets or anyone, people with the budget to Stay in your apartment. Listen, if you go to a house, if you go to a hotel, then there's people coming and going. You don't know who stayed there before. But here's the thing, your cleaner's going to be in every day. What is that cleaner doing? They're probably cleaning 40 different rooms in that hotel. What do cleaners do? They touch the dirtiest surfaces, the surfaces most likely to have Corona hotel bookings are down. That means cleaners are getting paid off. They will be cleaning at a very, very short time span. They've one clean to do in, I forget the time. 10 minutes for a turnaround or for a refresh in 20 for a turnaround. That doesn't happen in our service accommodation unit. We spent, we've upped the budget for the cleaners so they're getting double the time. We're giving you hand sanitizer if we can, if you've got it. We make sure everything's clean and we leave time between the previous guests for the virus to naturally die off and we up that from one day to two based on scientific stuff. So lots of different things you can do. But again, look at it as solving problems. We are not profiteering but we do have businesses with empty units and there's people with a need there, local authorities. The team are pretty amazing because they just go and make stuff happen. If you can see the back, that's our business core principle number one.

Happen, make it happen.

I like it. If you've got two minutes for a story, I'll tell you how that hashtag came about and how Pillow came about, why it applies to every one of you. Because gone are the days of sitting hoping we get bookings. So before there was a home, sure. Before there was Pillow, there was Homeshire, our letting agent. And one of our team members had took a phone call and it was a weird phone call and heard her say, no, no, we don't have a six bed property. No, no, no, we don't have anything for £18,000 for a week. And she put the phone down and I said to ex staff member, who was that? And I'm not a golfer, but she named a golfer at that point in time in 2016, he was the second best in the world and the second. And I said, what did they want? It was the second best golfer in the world's agent. The open golf was literally two miles from our office. You could walk it and you'd be back in an hour. So his agent phoned us up and said, hi, you're a letting agent, do you have any properties? My budget is £18,000 for one week. And that staff member put the phone down and I was like, phone them back immediately and tell them we have a six bed property. And she was like, but we don't. And I'm like, phone them back and tell them we will give them the details of the six bed property by the end of the day. And she reluctantly did it. And I'm like, get your coke. We took some business cards and I literally, and I mentioned it earlier, hit the bricks. We literally walked around town of Troon where the open golf was at Troon 2016. You'll see the pictures of the guys in our property. And I literally knocked on doors. Hikes. We took our money. So our commission was four. It was our first essay. Booking was £4,000 commission. So I knocked on doors. Hi, would you like to rent your property for a week for £14,000? Hi, would you like to rent your property for a week? And I just knocked on doors. I made Facebook lives. And within an hour I literally had people chasing down the street that had seen the video, that had missed the phone call, had missed the note through the door because I took lighter heads and business cards. Would you like £14,000 to rent your property for a week? And we went from not having the property to having 10 people chasing and phoning up every 20 minutes to say, are you picking mine? So that is how the make it happen attitude. The staff member thought, we don't have one. I was like, that's £4,000 commission for one week. It's insane. And we went, we got the property on, we rented it to that golfer and all was good. And that was why Pella was born. And we did lots of different deals like that in the next few weeks. We did the Women's Open the next year. But if you don't look for opportunities like that and literally hit the bricks, people like me will be doing it. If you're in an area, my property managers will be doing it. So you need to do it. And if it's uncomfortable, sorry, but tough shit. Those days are gone. Comfort's gone.

That's an amazing story. Thank you for sharing. And again, it talks about taking opportunities where you may not think there's opportunities arise. I did say that at the very start of this, I'd share a story of literally something that's happened in the last 24 to 48 hours from a member of the Boost Lee Academy. She's got a bed and breakfast in the Northwest Woke up on. It was Tuesday morning feeling very despondent, bookings have cancelled. But then she had an idea, came into the Boostly Academy, into our Facebook group and said that she's put up a post idea on her Facebook to deliver her breakfast. So they do amazing pancakes, they do breakfast and she put it up on the Facebook page, post it in the local Facebook groups and it's. And it's had more traction than any of the posts that she's put out in the past six weeks. Explain the situation, super vulnerable about it. So this is the idea, what do you think? She's gone, taken it a step further today, printed up a menu, posted it around Facebook groups. She's contacted the local press because that's a good news story. Got on the radio, got onto the tv, got into the local press, it's going to get Featured and tonight, 20 minutes before we went live, got a Facebook message from her. Happy as Larry. She's got an inquiry and a potential booking for £27 for some breakfast delivered. And this is finding opportunities for where you wouldn't expect it. Diversifying. I think every single business around the world right now is diversifying. And I spoke about this last night with the example of Just Eat. If you look on the Just Eat app, if you look down there, they're offering a service where you do not have contact with the driver. They just knock and leave it at the door. They are diversifying to make how they can make the most of a truly shit situation. So I think, again, just to reiterate, what you're saying is don't be scared of promoting yourself at a time like this. There will be a few people that might give you a little sly look, but then never going to be the ones that buy from you anyway or book with you. There are going to be a lot of people out there that need your service. There's not a lot of people right now fuming at Amazon because they're providing a service where they can get items to you in the next day. So why should there be people fuming at you? Because you can provide a service and accommodation for those that need it. And Scott's example is fantastic. And I massively encourage everybody, stop blaming people for your current situation and start being proactive in how you can turn it around and actually make this into a positive voice. I'm getting fed up with people messaging me saying, can we please do something about the OTAs? Can we please try and find a way of doing petitions and things about the ota? It's not going to work. Why waste your time and energy in something that could take months, even years to actually get to the people that actually need to see this? When you need to focus on what you can control and those things right now is how you can get bookings. So I love that. Thank you very much. Let's talk about another one of your hashtags, StrongerTogether. Can you just sort of explain that? Because I love it. I think right now it's something that is needed more than ever. Can you tell us like the story around that? Yeah.

So we had a different. You might have seen it, it was slightly different before, but one of the. And it really is back to getting direct bookings. And one of the reasons we are probably above averagely successful when I say that versus one person with one property. So one, if we take Glasgow where we may have 64 units, it's kind of the same market and budget and energy and resources to fill those units as one person with one property. So it makes sense for us to market when we have big. So the more properties we have on, the better. I suppose the proposition is we would make you more money than doing it yourself. And we know that for every new property we get, we get more guests. For the corporate bookings, if you want to go for, let's say a film production company as an example, they have two options. If they have to get 10 units for 10 of their team, they've got two options, the sit and look at Airbnb and the calendar's not filled and that person might have bookings and say yes and no. And then they research and they'll go on different portals and they'll send messages and those go back and forth for weeks and months and someone doesn't want to pay the money and someone has bookings they don't want to cancel, that's a lot of work. But the other option is that they phone a larger service accommodation company that has lots of stock reason. If you guys got together and all boostly people says we'll help each other stronger together. And then if you have a six week booking from someone that's self isolating for Corona as an example, then you can take your current guests and give them to the people within your stronger together network and have that hero reach over stronger together. But this essentially is like a honeycomb. So we know. And again it came from a hive thing like bees. Bees all work together for a common purpose to build something amazing. And if you think of honey like money and the beehive is Your network and your business operation that generates that money, then we know stronger together is better. Think of Uber in business management terms and big terms. It's called the network effect. So if you looked at Skyscanner, Skyscanner's problem in the early days was the airlines wouldn't list with them because they had no travelers and travelers would never book through them because they didn't have airlines. So, so it's to think of Uber in America, you can click on Uber and go, if you have to wait two minutes for an Uber, there's something wrong here. It's a lot harder. So people use Ubers in America, definitely San Francisco, because they know that there's so many. So the more Uber's they have, the more passengers they have. And the more passengers they have, the more Uber's they'll have. So it's a cycle. And it's the same with service accommodation. We know the more properties we manage or your network manages, the more guests you'll get. Because you can get the big corporates, you can advertise more for property. So all individual and guys, you, there's how many in your network, Mark? Hundreds of people in your network. If they got together and helped each other during these times, they would definitely perform a lot better than doing it on their own. One person with one property is a really hard slog if you've got one unit. So if you can group together and definitely touching pillow. That's not the purpose of this because again, those times aren't here for me to do marketing pitches. It's to give back to the industry and help everyone. If you can be in some network where he's all work together, then it's definitely you're going to. It's the way big businesses work, the way Uber works, everything works. That's called the network effect. Definitely worth looking into. But we know stronger together, the more properties we have, the higher occupancy level we'll have, because we can take some of those management fees to put money in. If we had 2,000 properties, that's the same market and budget as you for year one, we can multiply that by 200. And it's why if you try to get advertising space for your unit on the first page of Google, it's all Airbnb, it's all TripAdvisor, it's all booking.com, one person with one property will never compete with that on Google AdWords. So we need the presence to be bigger. And I know all service accommodation operators that have the Same core values because we've mentioned make it happen and stronger together. We have other core values and also core values of the customers that we want to work with. People that have the same core values should work together. And the more people in your network, the higher the occupancy rate.

I think what everybody can sort of take away from that is that you don't have to try and look in the whole of the boostly community, you don't have to look at the whole sort of Facebook world for this to start something. You can literally start tonight by looking on Google, looking on Google Maps, type in accommodation in where you are and just pick out four or five and give them a call, send them a message on Facebook and just say, hey, we've never met, my name's Mark, you know, I run the granary. We would love to just be able to have a chat tomorrow and just get the phone number, give them a call and just again say what you're saying there. We've got this availability. I would love to be able to. If we get a phone call or inquiry and we can't fill it time like this, we obviously want the money and the booking to keep in our town, our city, our area, we don't want them to go elsewhere. So I'll be more than happy to share my availability, my calendar with you. You do vice versa. If you get a call and if you can't occupy it, please let us know and then we'll try and do another call. You know, you may call 10 people, you may get nine no's, but you may get one yes, that's one person. That's one way to start and all like say with Scotts there, make it happen. If you bury your head in the sand and you don't try, if you get, you think, yeah, that's not for me, it's never going to happen. But if you just try and just start reaching out to people, whether it's in Facebook groups, whether it is just picking the phone up and having a conversation, then these little pockets will start to grow. Now Scott is being very, very, very, very nice there by saying this is not a pillow pitch, but this is what I wanted to get Scott on for is that there are a ton of people out there that really could do with the pillow service. It's a fantastic organization, it's a fantastic group and they are helping property owners get bookings even at times like these and like you say, stronger together when you a lot of people together. So what I would encourage everybody to do after this interview is either reach out to Scott or just Google pillow partners, go check out what they do, check out how they work. And it may be that this could be the perfect solution for what you need, maybe in the short, medium and long term. So that's just me saying that now before we wrap up, we've got Scott. Is there any other thing that you just want to. You want to say you want to leave us with. You've sort of given us so much, but is there any other little tactics or tips? So I need just one final thing. You just want to sort of thread the word.

Can I give you five opportunities that will come out of the Corona thing? We'll be negative, we don't need to cover it. But I'll wait to find on a positive because stage one of this is just survival, getting through the next time and paying the bills and perhaps something nice happens and it dies off or we got a little bit of support from someone, we know that and we don't need to cover it. That's covered in the media. But I wanted to give some things of here's some positive things for the guys that get through this. It's going to be an amazing time. The reason why I've always felt like the Airbnb or the Airbnb listings or the service accommodation listings have pretty much doubled year on year, give or take. Perhaps in your area you'll feel this, that there's an oversupply city centers, there's a massive oversupply in some areas. This might get rid of 75% of units, meaning that the people that are left are going to be the strong good operators and there's less competition where there's oversupply in an area. Everybody fights by lowering the rates and when you lower your rates, you're going to get less occupancy. So I think this is a great level. People will exit the market that are just shoehorning and buy to lets and the strong, passionate operators like us will be left. The next thing is you're going to be left with lots of cheap deals. All the rent to rent things might be given back. We are looking at acquiring lodge sites and getting actual units and physical units because those people are going to exit this market. So I think there's a lot of good deals to be had after that. If there's some self isolation happening and I think Boris Johnson said we're here for 12 weeks. During those 12 weeks or the week after it, what are people wanting to be doing? Get out the house. So they're going to be doing staycations, so you guys need to be on this as soon as the quarantine's finished or are you there in a property? Why don't you come to lovely Perthshire, lovely Scotch Scotland, the banks of Loch Lomond or your area, and get out your house for a weekend if we can. But when the date finishes where we're allowed to go back to normal, you need to be pushing staycations and you need to have your branding and place for this. So that's a massive opportunity. There's going to be a lot of people going crazy inside and just want to get out and we'll pay you the money for it. There will be some support from businesses on this. If you watched it yesterday, how many times did that guy say, and I don't watch the news ever, but I happen to catch it. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. They will look after us to some degree. So there's going to be opportunities for business. They need to stimulate that economy and we are in the hospitality business, so that's been decimated. There will be support there. And the last thing finally, is in Scotland. It was announced in April 2021. They're legislating the whole market. They're not letting you do it. And there's lots of problems around that. The legislation will come into play here. It's inevitable. Definitely happening in Scotland. Should have been a year from now, a couple of years in England. That will be delayed, meaning we have a little bit more time to recover and we don't need to worry too much about regulation and extra costs that that may bear, things like tourist tax. So all that's gone. And I think the government, regardless of what's happening now, will need to support businesses. So there's my five things of positivity. If we can see this through, then. I'm so passionate about this industry. I think it's going to be an amazing time. And that's hard to say just now, and I don't see that with any. It's okay for Scott. I might need to have bad conversations with some of the staff. My team's through there, have been with me 10 years and some of them might not be here. So I don't say that, that we can start. We can weather this storm. We need to get through it the same as you guys. So I don't say that as if it's great for me. It's hard for you guys, it's hard for me. But if we can get through it and if we can be stronger together. The opportunities there are absolutely fantastic.

Perfect way to end Scott. Amazing. Thank you so much for doing this. And I know everybody that is watching live is saying thank you and showing appreciation for you doing this. And this is exactly why I'm doing these live videos every night. Every night, Monday to Friday. I'm inviting in some of the experts, the big experts, the people that I have watched, listen, consumed and learned from, to help you. They're giving up their time for free to do this, to give back back to the industry. So everybody that's watching live, everybody that's watching back on the replay, we just have one ask, is that. Don't just bury your head in the sand, don't just sit on your hands on this one. Listen to the advice, take it on board, make a plan, write it down, put it into action, take heed from Georgina, take lessons from what Adam has done. And he's gone and watched the video last night, he's gone to boostly.co.uk FacebookAudience. It's an eight minute YouTube video. He set it up, he's put into practice inquiries. Georgina has done something that she thought she'd never have to do, which is do breakfast, takeaways, pancakes, whatnot. And she's got bookings, potential bookings coming in on the back of it. Make it happen is what Scott talked about. Please make sure that you make it happen and start to build up those local little networks in and around where you are, Whitby, Scarborough, where I'm based now, you know, Ayrshire, Glasgow, wherever you may be in the world, start building those little networks. Because Scott's right. And Boris, bravely or stupidly, has put a time limit on this, saying 612 weeks is a bit crazy. But there is going to be the upturn now is the downturn. And it may not even be the peak of the downturn. It may get worse before it gets better. But the upturn in the hospitality world is going to be massive. Those of you that are still talking on social media, those of you that are still communicating with email, those of you that are spreading the word and talking about your business, talking about the area, even at times when it's the last thing that you want to do, you're the ones going to be top of mind, you're the ones that are going to be, when it does start to die down and people do get back to what would be classed as normality, you'll be the first person that they go to. And I just want to end with one Little tip, Scott said this perfectly regarding film crews and production crews. Right now filming and everything has stopped, they have got nothing to do. This is the perfect time now to start having a conversation with these people. Not for now, but when they do start refilming, you can spend the time looking on LinkedIn, trying to do a little bit of research into how to get in touch with these people, get onto LinkedIn, get onto any of these platforms that they may be on, try and find them and start to have the conversation. And you can just say, listen, this isn't for now because I know you're not filming, but when you do open, this is us, this is what we're doing. And if you can start to put in the prep now, then it'll do you a massive favor, maybe five, six, 12 months down the line. So thank you so much. Please, please, please do me a massive favor. All I'm asking, we're doing all of this for free. There is no charge. We're giving up our time to do this. Just share this with one person. Tag one person in that needs to see this. Share it in one Facebook group. If you are watching this, take a picture of your screen, Go and post it on Instagram Stories. Taggin Ostleruk Go and post it on Facebook Stories. Post it on your Instagram actual feed, your Facebook feed, your LinkedIn. Just tell people about it, direct them back to this Facebook. I put it on my personal Facebook so anybody can see it doesn't matter whether if you're a friend with me on Facebook or what. There's no behind any group, the buying, no paywall. This is going to get turned into a proper podcast, going to get turned for proper YouTube and all those sort of videos. So for now just please share it, Please tell everybody about it. I'm going to be back tomorrow, Friday 20th March. I've invited Jessica Lorimer. For those of you that have been following me for a while, you will know that Jessica I am one of Jessica Lorimer's biggest fans. She's a fantastic leadership coach and she's also superb at sales. But also as well, we're going to about talk about retentions and how to save your cancellation. So that's going to be tomorrow. Haven't got a time for you just yet because times do vary. But I will send everybody a message out on WhatsApp and an email when that is going to be. And if you want to jump onto the WhatsApp group chat, it's just boostlee.co.uk dailyboost it's a WhatsApp channel. I'm sending out daily messages to give you help and advice. But now, thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll catch you very, very soon.