How to Run Your Accommodation Business All From an iPhone With Ahmed Khan

All right, welcome to. Welcome to the Boost Hospitality podcast. We're in season six, episode 13 and today. This could potentially be my favorite podcast to date. It's something very close to my heart. It's talking about automation, it's talking about running a business from a WI FI connection and an iPhone. I'm talking to Ahmed Khan. Ahmed, in 2016, came out of uni and wanted to get into a business where he could travel and have a successful career at the same time. He sort of fell into property, fell into service accommodation, fell into rental accommodation and he quickly grew his portfolio from just running the whole business from his phone. Today we're going to talk about the channel manager that he uses. We're going to talk about the systems and the structure that he has set up. We're going to try and uncover some hidden gems. Ahmed was a fantastic guest. I really recommend that everybody goes and checks him out. After this podcast, go to Ahmed Khan. Co A H M E D K H A N dot co While you're at it, while you're checking out websites, go to booster.co.uk podcast. We've got 12 of our episodes that you can check out for from this season. This is a special season that I'm doing all about the world of service accommodation. My aim and my goal with this season is to show service accommodation owners what hospitality owners do so well and show hospitality owners what the service accommodation owners are doing well. This one, like I say, it's one of my favorite episodes I've ever done. Please sit back, enjoy the conversation with Ahmed Khan or all about running your business from an iPhone. I welcome everybody to the Boost Hospitality podcast. This is season 6, episode 13 and today we are going to be talking about running your business, your service accommodation business, all from an iPhone. We're going to give you some tactics and tips and some recommendation from today's guest. Today we've got Ahmad Khan. He's got over 40 properties that he runs all around the UK. He has progressed so far in his career from from 2016 to where we are now, but he is now talking on stage, he's doing training courses and showing other people how he does it. I've been really looking forward to this episode because it's a topic that I love, minimalism, having all you need to do to run a business is just having a phone or a laptop and an Internet connection. So I'm really looking forward to this. So without further ado, I'm going to get Amadon just to insert introduce himself. So welcome, buddy. If you could just take a few minutes, just explaining a little bit more, delving into your story a little bit more from where you are, from where you are now, and just take a few minutes just to say hi, if you could.

Yeah. Well, firstly, thank you very much for having me in the first place. I'll give you the long story short, which is I finished university a couple of years ago, September 2016. Now, when I finished university, I didn't want to get a job straight away. I wanted to try different things out. But one of the things I could realize was that I needed something which was going to make a lot of cash flow pretty, pretty fast. See, when I looked at the normal way of doing property, because that's one of the things I was interested in, it was great for making money if you had the time to wait 10, 20, 30 years and wait for the property prices to go up, wait for you to build up your portfolio and all those sort of things. Whereas I needed something which was going to make a lot of money now as opposed to in 10, 20, 30 years time. And that's when I started looking at strategies within property, which was high cash flow, you know, which made a lot of cash fast. And one of them was service accommodation. Now, with service accommodation, what I'm typically doing is I'm not buying property, but I'm renting properties and then turning them into Airbnb type let's. Right. So short lets. All the other thing I'm doing is I'm taking a property and I'm managing it for someone else, and I'm taking a fee for managing it again on Airbnb. So that's what I've done in the last couple of years. And one of the reasons I got started in this business was because when I did the initial research, I found there was quite a lot of different apps and systems and different things you can plug in, which could allow you to run the whole thing basically off an iPhone. And that's, you know, that's kind of the lifestyle I want to live, which is be able to do anything from anywhere, as long as you have an Internet connection and an iPhone. And that's essentially where we are today.

Nice. So, yeah, I'm looking forward to delving into seeing what apps, software you're using. But what I wanted to do to start off with is just delve in a little bit more to how you're able to grow and yourself, as in how you've managed to develop that mindset of where you are now. And so the first few Questions and I have sent this in preparation. So number one, what would it be your favorite business book that you've read in the past year? Something that you've read that you've taken on board and then put into your business? If you've got any ones, you can share on that.

Yeah, so there's a book I read recently, it's called Measure what Matters. It's not the most exciting read, it's a bit of a dull reader, but it's written by a person who actually built a management framework within Google. So it's a guy who was already high up in Silicon Valley and it's a book written by him, a billionaire guy. Now what's interesting about that book and the reason I like it is because as you know, a lot of people have great goals and they've got a big vision that this is what I want to achieve. But then in reality, most people have the vision, they've got the goals, but they don't actually have a, to get to that goal or they don't have a vision, you know, they don't have a step by step layout or how am I going to get there. So I feel a lot of people, they've got these amazing goals but they don't have a clear road path. Well, how am I going to get there with you know, with set deadlines, with set steps and if you, if you don't know how you're going to get there on a piece of paper, then it's, it's very unlikely you're going to get that get there in practice because it's, you know, if you have no idea what you're doing on a day to day basis in order to get somewhere within the next 12 months or 18 months and you can't put that on a piece of paper and can't work out. Well, this is what I introduced. Step one, step two, step three, then how would you execute in the real world, right? How do you execute on a day to day if you can't execute on a piece of paper? So what this book allows you to do is basically you write down your objectives and you write down the key results you need to hit in order to get to that objective. And if you actually follow the exercises properly within the book, it's actually very, very hard because it makes you question, well why am I doing certain things? Because these things don't actually allow me to reach where I'm reaching, right? Because if you start looking at every small thing you're doing on a day to day Basis. So should I be doing this or should I be doing that? And you have your objective on the top and your key steps. It really makes you question why you're doing certain things and it makes you think, well, what should I be doing to get to that stage? Because my belief is if you can't plan out how you're going to get there on a piece of paper, then there is almost no chance you can actually put it off because it's like you don't know what to do on a day to day basis. So I think it's a really good book for pretty much everyone because most people have goals, but I don't who've got a set, set strategy of getting there. So if you follow the exercise and you follow the framework which is laid out in the book, it will give you a lot of clarity of what you should be doing on a day to day, on a week to week basis. So that's the book I would recommend to everyone because I was doing a lot of things which were good things, they help build brand and all that sort of stuff. But I could be doing things which are better or things which are more aligned to where I'm trying to get to. It just helps you get rid of a lot of the waste activities and helps you focus on the things you really should be doing. So that's the book I recommend.

And is that why you picked up the book in the first place? Did you feel like you needed a bit of help guiding you from A to B? Or was there other reasons?

No, it was, it was pretty much that. Which is. I read this book towards the end of last year, start of this year, when I was planning for the year ahead. And in my head I kind of, I knew what I wanted to do, but I wasn't entirely sure. Well, because I, you know, what happens is as you start doing, as you start to grow your business, you get a lot of opportunities come to you, right? Different people come to you, different things, different opportunities and you're trying to evaluate them. Well, should I be doing this or should I be doing that? And you only have 24 hours in a day. And I needed a way of working out what exactly should I be doing to get to where I want to get to. I didn't want to spend a year and then realize, well, yeah, I did X, Y and Z. And that was, it was great and I met some more people. Did it actually help me achieve what I was trying to achieve or do I just do more things to kind of say at the end of the year. Well, I did this and I did this and I did this. But, you know, what did that lead to? Did that actually lead to you getting to where you wanted to get to? Yeah, I've done a lot of that stuff. I've done a lot of things for the sake of doing things right. You get an opportunity and you're like, well, yeah, I'll do that as well. And I'll do that as well. But how much of that actually leads to where you're trying to go? Because, you know, when you get opportunities, a lot of the times it pulls you off in different tangents, right? There's something which comes up which is kind of what you were gonna do, but it's slightly different, and you end up doing a lot of that stuff. So I just wanted clarity more than anything else.

I like that we're going to talk about quotes in a second, but falls in line with what you're talking then. I'm a massive Tim Ferriss fan and he interviewed Derek Sivers and he talked about the hell yeah. So if it isn't when you're presented with an opportunity, if it isn't a hell yeah, then it's a no. And we've since listened to that podcast. I've adopted that into every day today. And me and my wife do it. We always say when we are presented with an opportunity or just something to do. If it's not a hell yes, an instant hell yes, it's a no. And it serves you. Serves you well. So talking about quotes.

So is a hell yes predicated on you enjoying the activity, or is it predicated on you thinking, well, this is going to get me to where I'm trying to get to.

All depends on what the question is. If it's a place to take the kids for the day, it's about enjoyment. And if they're going to savage each other, yes. So it's like if it's a business opportunity, and again, like, it all depends on what the scenario is. But I think the beautiful thing about it is that it doesn't matter if it's a day out with the kids, where we're going to go for date night, or if it's a case of opportunity for the business, then it all falls in line on all levels. And, yeah, it's a great.

The reason I ask is because there's a lot of things I feel like sometimes I have to do, which I have to do them. And I know it's part of it, but I'm not like Hell yeah, I'm more like, I gotta do it.

Yeah, yeah, well, it's hell yeah, you gotta do it or you find somebody to help you do it. As in outsourcing, which is what we're gonna move on to. So, talking about quotes, Em, I love a good quote. What about yourself? Is there any quotes that you've recently come across or is there any one same quote that you keep saying to your delegates or friends or people that are sort of, you're chatting to, anything that you can sort of pass on and the meaning behind them is really important.

Yeah, so my quote, well, it's not my quote, but the quote I like, it's actually kind of in line with the book that we're just talking about. And there's a quote which is something like, if you chase two rabbits, you won't catch either one. And you know, again, it ties back to the whole conversation we just had, which is a lot of the time you're trying to do so many different things at the same time that you're all over the place. And you know, like the quote says, if you try taste two rabbits, you're not going to catch other one. And happens all the time. You know, I do it all the time. A lot of people do it all the time, which is you get an opportunity and you want to go after every single one and you end up taking too much on. And you know, what happens is now you're giving everything 10% of your attention as opposed to maybe 50 or 60%. And obviously if you spend less time doing that one thing, it's going to take you a lot longer to get good at that one thing. And you know, it's, I think in business if you're very, very good at some aspects, that's probably better than being okay at a whole bunch of things. That's kind of my take. So that's, you know, when I was doing service accommodation, a lot of people who get into the property space, they end up doing service accommodation, buy to, let's HMOs, commercial conversion development. And now their mental focus is on five different things. And the way you analyze a deal is different and the way you raise money is slightly different because it's a different type of project. And there's so many differences within the same industry that your mental focus is now on five different things, which is very, very hard to do. So I like to stay at one thing at a time until I'm ready that one thing and then I'll move on to the next. I want to give my energy to that one thing and then I'll move on once I feel like I'm good enough, that I'll sort of go to the next as opposed to, you know, burn my energy. Try and do five things at the same time, 100%.

And talking about service, accommodation, rental accommodation. That fits nicely in with targeting your ideal customer. If you have a property and you try and appeal to everybody, then again, you're going to appeal to nobody because you're not focusing on what your property, your guest house, your hotel, your service accommodation. They're the plus points of it, which is key. Which is key to a lot of this. And what you're saying is key to what a lot of people in this series of the Boost Hospitality podcast have been talking about, which is good. I like to see that there's a lot of tangents between each guest and everybody that's come on talking about guests. And this, this month, this. Well, this month, this series, we've been very fortunate to have a lot of online personalities. We've had people from all areas of serviced accommodation. People have got big followings, little followings. Now, for yourself, you've got a really good Instagram account, you've got a very good social media presence. Your personal brand is awesome on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. But who do you look up to? Who do you follow? Who do you try and replicate, I guess, in everything that you're doing in the business world.

Yeah. So purely from a business point of view, I think Gary Vaynerchuk is probably one of the best. I don't know if you follow Gary Vaynerchuk or not, because see, a lot of people, a lot of business people who are good in social media, they were already famous. And then they also do social media. Gary Vaynerchuk is one of those people where he made himself the. From social media, so he wasn't already famous and then he jumped on social media. It's like he built himself. He made himself famous using social media. So I think if you're. If you're gonna try to replicate someone and you want to achieve similar results, you know, whatever they are, I think those sort of people are probably better to model than someone who was already famous, because if someone was already famous, they can put out something at the wrong time and the wrong picture and they'll still get likes and comments purely because of, you know, their real fame. Whereas when someone who isn't famous to build themselves on the back of social media, they had to be doing something right, you know, they weren't on tv, they weren't on radio, they weren't a singer. They had to be doing something right to kind of build that platform. So I think if you're gonna model someone, model someone. Lewis Howes is another one. Lewis Howes was also not famous. He made himself famous using LinkedIn. And you have a lot of these people who made themselves using influences, right? YouTube influences. They weren't famous before. So I think if you're gonna model someone from a business point of view, find someone who wasn't famous before and they made themselves famous using this platform as opposed to someone who already had a bunch of fame. Like, if you look at someone like Robert Kiyosaki, rich dad, poor dad, I don't know if you, if you are familiar with himself, I think he's got like, he's got like a million followers. But if you look at his Instagram, it's not great. You know, the captions aren't great. He doesn't post that much, but he still has a million followers. But it's not because of social media, it's just because he was already famous and now he also does a bit of social media. So I think, I think people like Gary Vaynerchuk are good purely for that. From that point of view.

No. Gary Vaynerchuk is a. Is a character and somebody that. I've watched his dailyvees and stuff and I do appreciate a lot of the things that he does and he's definitely a good one. And all the ones that you mentioned there will be good. Alright, so the topic at hand, how to run a business through your iPhone. Basically the reason for this is there's so many things you feel like you need to do and there's so many reasons why so many people don't travel as well as running a business because they feel like they have to be sort of stuck in the location. And obviously there's going to be a lot of people watching this that can't. But you've done this really well and I think this episode will help so many people, not just in property, but business owners, digital nomads. People are looking to travel and run a business as well. So what I wanted to do and I did sort of give you a precursor, I asked for free app recommendations that you use pretty much on the daily or regular enough that you can pass on. A lot of these will probably be ones that a lot of people know of, but there may be one or two little bit of goals from this. So we'll start with the first one, an app that you use that is really important for your business to succeed and grow.

So like you mentioned the start, I've done a talk on, you know, just apps, right? And I go through a whole bunch of different apps and sometimes people who are new to service accommodation and new to all of this, they get a bit overwhelmed because they're like, well, crap, I need so many different apps. Like, you know, I need this and I need this and who's going to learn X, Y and Z? So obviously, you know, I've done that talk and I use all those systems, but it's. You only really need one big one which can do a lot of things and then these add on ones. It helps like, it helps to have the add ons. Like I would rather have the add ons, not have the add ons, but if someone was just gonna put in one system, you know, kind of like the, the analogy of low hanging fruit, how do I do the bulk of the work with the least amount of effort? Which was the one big system which allows you to do that. And that's, in my opinion, the channel manager, because the channel manager controls so much of your business, controls the cleaning, scheduling, the guest messages, you know, all the property information. It connects to different platforms like Airbnb, booking.com, does the task management, does, you know, the price management, all that sort of stuff. So if someone's gonna just learn one and just take away one, I would say the talent manager. And the one I use is called Guesty. I don't know if you're familiar with. Yes, you're not, but that's the one I use. And you know, a lot of people, this is a very common question which is, you know, what's the best talent manager to use? I don't know if you get that a lot as well. And people ask all the time, what's the best one? And in my opinion, there isn't really a best one. It's more. So what features are you looking for? You know, it's kind of like a car. You know what, cars are best, right? One's faster, one's more comfortable, one has more seats, one has two seats. You know, it's like there isn't a number one ranked car. It's based on your preference and based on what your needs are. Now with Desti, Desti is the only talent manager, as far as I know, which also has a reception service. What that basically means is they have staff. I don't know where the staff are based. They already have a Whole bunch of staff and you simply plug into their staff as opposed to you hiring staff. So the people at Guesty, they reply to my messages and they almost like my staff without me having to hire staff, if that makes sense.

Yeah.

And they reply to my messages. If there's a issue with a review, they get back to me, they reply to reviews, they do a lot of stuff with the payment. And the reason I used Guesty was because, like you said at the start, I wanted to travel, I didn't want to manage staff, I didn't want, you know, those sort of hassles and I just wanted something which I could plug in and I could replicate again and again. Because once you set up Guesty, all you have to do is keep finding more and more properties and you simply plug them in. Plug them in, plug them in. So that's the main reason I recommend Guesty, which is it's the one big system which takes away the bulk of the work. And you don't have to hire staff, you don't have to manage staff. If someone leaves, it's not, you know, it doesn't matter if someone leaves or not or, you know, because with. Once you hire staff, if you have a good staff and you train them and then they leave, now you've got an issue because now you've got to get another guy to train, you know, now you train the second person and then you. If they leave now you've got to train the third person. But I didn't have any of those hassles. All I had to do was set out once and I could just keep plugging in more and more and more properties. So from growing a business point of view, I wasn't technically doing half of it because I just plugged the town manager in, whereas everyone else, they were hiring people and they were teaching people and they were delegating and they were doing all that sort of stuff. So that's why I recommend Guesty. I'm not paid by Guesty. I don't have a commission with Guesty. I really should, to be fair.

You should do. You should do. Because that was a good. That was a good recommendation. I was just checking out the website little bit more because Guest is somebody that I've heard of and again, it's a very, very, very common question, who should I have as a channel manager or whatever? I've even done a blog on it. Booster.co.uk PMS. There's a ton of them in there. And yeah, Guest is obviously one that's just come on come on the Radar. But that was a very, very good recommendation of it. And obviously you're not an affiliate. You should be. If Guest are watching, everybody should be. So delve into Guesty a little bit more than does it. Yeah, I totally see what you mean. I like to dig into Guesty a little bit more. So is it just an Airbnb model or does it a channel manager that links into all of the online travel agents?

It currently links into Airbnb booking.com, links into a few others, but what they do is. Because it doesn't link to every single one. You know how there's hundreds of them, right, like in across Europe and Asia and all those sort of things. If you sign up to Guesty, they give you a free membership to a thing called Rentals United, which is also kind of like a pms. And through Rentals United, you can connect to hundreds and hundreds and you get Rentals United free through Guesty. So it basically does it, you know, long, long answers. Sorry. To answer your question, it does do it, but it does it through Rentals United. If you want a direct connection, it currently does. Airbnb does booking.com and it does it, I think Home Away and a couple others. But that is. That is the big, big thing with Guesty, which is if you have ambition to maybe take, you know, quite a few of these properties. When you take a few of these properties, you get guest messages all the time. You know, like people looking on Airbnb, they message you before they check in, they message you during their stay, they might ask you some things, you know, when they are leaving. It's a lot of messages. And yes, essentially gets rid of all of that. And it kind of deals with it. See, because the thing is, a lot of people recommend getting VAs, and I've got VAs, which is absolutely fine. But if you look at the Philippines, that is where the most VAs typically are. If you want 24. 7 service, right? If you want someone to reply to these messages, 24. 7. Well, as far as I know, the Philippines has a law that someone can't work seven days a week, they have to take one day off. So they can only work six days a week. So now, you know, you got. You probably have to. If you. If you want a week's coverage, you got two people, someone has, you know, three days, four days, whatever, and then they will work nine till five. Now you need someone from five till nine. So now you. Now you need four people in order to manage this. 24 7. And obviously Jesse is doing this for me 24 7. So I never needed. So I didn't need any of that sort of stuff. And I was just simply able to get more and more properties without having to worry about, well, how am I going to get more staff, how am I going to train more stuff? You know, like I said before, I was half of my business was pretty much taken care of and I was only doing the other half, whereas everyone else was doing the full Hz. So that's the reason I use it.

So there's a lot of pros on guesting. Obviously, if anybody wants to check it out, it's G-U-E-S-T Y.com what are the cons? If somebody's like guesty, the owner was sat opposite you now and he asked you, Ahmed, what is the one thing that we could do better? What would. What would that be?

Okay, so the one thing they can do better, weird one here. Because of this reception service, they introduced something which was if you wanted to use Guesty, you needed a minimum of five properties because they had to make it worthwhile for them. So if someone wanted to get listed, you had to have five properties. Now, I'll put this out to you, to your listeners, which is. It basically said to me, because I've been using it for a couple of years now, that if I recommended someone, then they don't need five listings, they can get on with one. So I refer people all the time and again, I don't get paid for that either. Just to make that clear. Guesty doesn't have an affiliate scheme. I'm making that very, very clear. I do hope they have one in the future, because you might, because you.

Would be a rich man.

Exactly. Once we'll work out some sort of like credit scheme or something, or. My last email was they said they were going to introduce one at some point, but it doesn't matter if someone. If someone can find it useful and I can introduce them, I'm more than happy to do that. It's not an issue. But that's the one big thing, which is the limitation. But they might not have the limitations soon, who knows? That's the one big thing. The other one is their accounting isn't great. A lot of talent managers are very good with accounting in terms of you can easily see how much money is coming in, how much is going out. They're all very good with accounting. They're very good with the reception service and 247 support and those sort of features. Pricing they're not good with accounting at all. I think they're getting better, they're improving. But again, you know, comes back down to what sort of features you want. I don't care about the accounting feature. Whereas if you, if you need the accounting feature, like you were desperate for the accounting feature that, like, you know, you have to have the accounting feature, then don't go for yes D, because it's not the best one. But I personally didn't really care about the accounting feature, so that's what I said. It comes back down to what features do you want and what's the best Channel manager, which accounts for those features. That's how I would sort of work it.

I like that. And you're so right. The channel manager is the key to your business, for hospitality, because it powers everything. The property, the pms, the channel manager, booking engine, whatever you want to call it, powers everything. And if and when it comes to it, don't just sign up on the back of somebody's recommendation. You've got to pick up the phone and have a call, book a demo with them and you've got to speak to the. Whoever's the customer service rep on the other side and you've got to break down, be prepared and say, I need something that can do X, Y and Z, I need my cleaner to be able to see a report, or I need accounting, or I need email triggers, whatever that may be, and just have a simple pros and cons list and then make the best decision because there are a lot out there.

There are a lot of people who.

Are vying for your attention and who want your money. And yeah, I mean, we're very fortunate this, this season that we've had a chat with Niam from Zevu, we've spoken to Amanda and David who do the essay angels, and they've got all these things covered. So if accounting was key, then maybe guesty might not be for you, but you could go with somebody else and then use David and Amanda's service for the outsourcing, which was a big thing. So it's very key to know that if there's things that work for you but doesn't work for others, then there are options. And the best thing is to do make full advantage of the Facebook groups that you are that are out there, the hospitality community and everybody else. Go in there, ask questions, find recommendations, check the boostly blog, but before you make any decisions, just go and give them a call. Okay, so the manager is the main one?

Yeah. Just to add, I think One of the issues is that people don't necessarily know what they want until they start doing it. Right?

Yeah.

Because you don't realize these small, small things until you actually started running a business. And only then do you realize, well, crap, I kind of want that as well. So that's where the challenge slowly comes in, when you start comparing them. Because it's not like you have a. Yeah. You know, things like Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint people have been using for years, you kind of know what you want. Right. Like when you can easily compare stuff like that. But when you're doing something like a channel manager and you've never used one before and there's all these small, small, small things, it's very hard to compare because you don't know until you actually start using one.

Very true.

That's why I think you really have to look at the main features, the big, big features. And guessing the big feature was they were gonna do 24. 7 support for me, so I never had to message a guest again. And I was in. I didn't care about the accounting. I didn't care about none of that. I was in because what I did not want to do was replying to people all the time and I do not want to hire staff at that point. So they were my two big things. I didn't care about the pricing, I didn't care about the accounting. I wanted the. I've sold on those two features alone, except because it's very hard to look at the small features because, you know, I, when I took, when I took on Guest Yard, like one property, I didn't know I needed, you know, this task thing, which is going to go to that. Thing, which is going to go to that.

Yeah, yeah.

Just. Yeah. Something to be mindful of.

So here's a question. And you had one property and then you grew it to over 40, whatever the number may be. What was the, what would you say was the deciding factor from you. From going from, say, 1 to 3, from 3 to 5 to 5 to 10, what were you doing that you see others not doing? When you were growing, what were you doing in your business to help enable you to grow?

Well, kind of like I mentioned slightly earlier, which is once I had the automation framework built, Guest, who was up and running, you know, the whole thing was being automated. There was no limitation from an operations point of view. Whether I had one or whether I had 100, it didn't matter because I was simply just plugging another one in and it was the same system again. And Again, there were some issues with, you know, having different cleaning teams and different maintenance teams on the ground, but to a large part, you know, if someone goes from a 1 to 100, they have to hire more staff, they have to train more staff, they have to then get someone to manage that stuff. And that slows you down because now you're. Now you've got that to worry about. At the same time, I didn't have any of that. All I was doing was taking one, plugging it in, taking one, plugging it in, because that framework was already set up. So I just had no operational challenges, except for some on the ground stuff with cleaners and maintenance. But from the bulk of it, the main framework, it was just a simple case of plugging another one in.

And how were you filling your properties at the time? I assume you're doing a lot of people do get them on the OTAs and whatnot, or were you doing something a little bit different to increase your profit? Were you doing something different from others when it came to your listings, to your properties, to get them fully booked so then you could get the confidence to go, right, number one is working. How do I go and get number two and number three?

Yeah, so we do Airbnb, we do booking.com. those are the only two OTAs I use. I like OTAs, but there's a lot of issues with OTAs Commission being one of them and the fact that it's very, very easy for competition to enter. Right? If I've got 10 apartments on OTAs, tomorrow morning, someone can list, take 10 more apartments on down the road. And now they also have 10 more apartments on OTAs. There's no barriers to entry, right? All you have to do is make an AB&BA account and you're up and running. So because of that, because of that issue with barriers to entry, I wanted direct bookings at the same time, because direct bookings, it's not that hard, but people don't make the effort, right? It's like Google Business Pages, working with service, accommodation agencies, all that sort of stuff. It's not hard stuff, but 99% of the people rely only on OTAs. Airbnb, booking.com being probably the main two. And then you can chuck in Expedia, Homeaway and all those sort of ones. But I do a lot of direct stuff with Google Business Pages with service combination agencies, because most people don't. And in my opinion, that is where like, the big, big money is, because you get, you know, we've the longest booking I've had the longest through an agency. Long term booking was 11 months. Someone paid me by the night for 11 months. Because what happens is with a lot of these long term surface, they don't book for 11 months. Initially, the guy booked for two months, but he was a contractor. Now, the biggest problem with contract work is the fact that you never know when it's going to end. It might have ended one month or it might have dragged on and on and on. And so he initially booked for 1, 2 months and enrolled, Enrolled, Enrolled. I've had people book for seven months, six months, five months, four months, all the time. No occupancy issue, Cleaner goes in once a week, no void, no tenant issues with, like, noise and all that sort of stuff. It's just a much, much better business model. Going direct rather than getting online. Sorry, going ota, because ota, you know, any area that you're in, people ask me about saturation all the time that I. Well, you know, this area, it looks kind of saturated. And then I told them to look at these platforms and check how many people are doing it. And almost no one's doing it because everyone does the Airbnb and everyone does the booking.com, because it's easy. You simply make an account and you're up and running, right? You're easy. It takes 20 minutes and you're good to go. The other stuff's not hard, but you just have to know what you're doing.

It takes time. So you talk about these essay agencies. What, what are these essay agencies? Who are these essay agencies?

So companies like Silver Door, companies like Situ, companies like Bridge Street. Because, see, here's the thing now, let's say you're in London, right, And there's a company like HSBC. Now, HSBC might need 50 apartments. Now, if you've only got three, you can't contact someone at HSBC and be like, you know, there's someone in three apartments because it's HSBC is huge. So service accommodation agencies like Silver Door, Situ, they work with the big corporate companies, the big insurance companies, the big relocation companies. So when someone like HSBC sells to Silver Door, you know, we need 50 apartments, they can then branch out to their operators and someone's got three, someone's got six, someone's got eight, and they can fill those things. But you can't call HSBC with your two apartments and be like, you know, I've got two apartments in London. What's someone going to do with two apartments? So there's a lot of these agencies. I Think in the hotel world, you have travel agencies, if I'm correct, something along those lines. Someone told me about them once, but it's a similar play. But they're service combination agencies, and they mainly deal with corporates, relocation and insurance customers, clients. And you again, plug in. I'm a bit, you know, advocate of plugging stuff in. You plug into the service combination agencies, they do the marketing, they bring the customers in, and when you get a booking, you get a booking, and you get a lot of those bookings if you do it right.

So Silver Door, let's just focus on access to one. I remembered, is it a set fee or do you have again, is it a commission? When. So it's. You basically take the OTA commission and you put it onto some silver dollar, is that right?

Yes, but the thing is, the rates are better than the OTAs because it's normally a company looking at, not a family haggling, saying, but I'm coming for three weeks, can I get a discount? Because I'm gonna. The companies don't care about any of that sort of stuff. The other benefit is a lot of the time is long term. So it's one month, it's two months, it's six weeks. So you don't have any voice for that term. And the clientele is also better. And if you work with them, you also tend to get more and more as you get to know them and as you get to work with them, because it's not like an ota. There's millions of properties. It's. You get to know your account person who manages, you know that set area or something. So after a while, you kind of know them by name. And when something comes, you're sort of first to mind. You know, you're on top of their mind sort of thing. So it's just a much better place.

So do you have to have a criteria? Do you have to have a certain amount of properties? Or could somebody with two in London, instead of going to hsbc, go to Silver Door and go, how's it doing? Can we. Can we come with you?

It depends on the area you're in. So some areas have a criteria and some don't. And even the criteria changes. Some place the criteria is four, some people. Sorry, I didn't mean four, but it might be four, some it might be six, some it might be eight. And some agencies don't have a criteria. So it's literally, I know people in Salvador with one property, but at the same time, other people in different areas have been Told we need minimum six because see from their point of view, if they already have a ton of properties on the books then they might be a bit more selective in terms of what they take on. Whereas if they're in an area where they don't have that much, they might be a bit more flexible because they would want to take stuff on where they don't have that many properties. So different agencies have different requirements and different areas have different requirements. It's just a case of calling them up, finding out what those requirements are and going from there.

And you've got properties all over the uk, is that right?

Hertfordshire and London. So Stephanie Dwellin, Hertford, London Bridge, Victoria. Yeah, mainly in those two sort of counties. London, Hertfordshire.

So if you were somebody say in Manchester or Birmingham, Newcastle, not in the sort of the big bit of like London and the south bit there, do you find that SA agencies would work with you or is it really just depend on the different agencies like Silver Door, Is that mostly predominantly London or.

Are they more Silver doors? Global Silver Doors globally is huge. But yeah, Manchester, Birmingham, you know, people travel all over the place for work. Right. People go to Birmingham for work and Manchester, Liverpool. Insurance cases in every town, right. There's relocation in every town. So you know, I get inquiries from Silver Door in very, very small towns. This town doesn't even have a big hotel and I get inquiries there because it's next to a GSK GlaxoSmithKline, which is like this pharmaceutical thing. A lot of contractors obviously go to the GSK for work reasons. Town doesn't even have a big hotel. They've got a whole bunch of these tiny kind of like, you know, family owned hotels. It's not a big town, population is probably like 30,000 people or something. But I get a ton of inquiries there because of what is there, which is, you know, with business. Gsk. Yeah. So it's, it's not a case of well I'm not in London, it's not really going to work for me. It's just a case of why would someone come to your area if there's no reason for someone to come to your area because you're in the middle of nowhere and you've got no business and you've got nothing. Well then it's gonna be a bit hard facility to put someone there. There's no one there.

And final question then on these agencies, do they plug straight in to guesty or do you have to have some form of manual?

Manual, yeah, it's a bit manual because with these agencies, they normally send you an email saying, you know, we're looking for two months, we're looking for three months. And then you have a look at your availability and then you let them know and if you can get them in, you would then manually put that booking into your channel manager and then it would sort of run like normal, but you would have to manually adjust that in rather than automatically booking because there's a bit of a back and forth in terms of availability and number of guests and those sort of things. So they normally do this over the phone or email as opposed to via booking link. That's generally how it's done.

And is that with you or is this with your staff or is this with guesty? Do they cut you out so you'd have to be the middleman or are you having to.

This is.

This is where you step in.

Yeah, Guesty wouldn't do that. Guesty would only do things which are directly fitting into guesty. Yeah, by the OTAs, Airbnb, booking.com, all those sort of things. But at the same time, if I, if I get a booking, you know, let's say a long term booking and I plug in the email and I plug in the. Or the guest details. Guest, it will then run like normal, as if it was a normal OTA booking. Yeah, plug it in and then it would shoot the check in instruction, the checkout instruction. It would do the whole process. If the guest sent a message saying, how do I turn the heating on? It would then reply because it's on the system like a normal booking, but you would have to put it on the system like a normal booking. So that, that's the only one manual step you've got to do. But here's the thing, if someone's in there for two months, you only have to do it once for two months. So it's.

Yeah, so that's where you step in. So the agency goes to you. And that's really, from what it sounds like in the whole of this process is you're getting inquiry from these agencies that you work with. You then have to manually go into your calendar, which is obviously on your phone. This is the whole part of having to run in a business from a phone and then if it's good, you plug it in and then again it just runs in automation, which is awesome.

Exactly right. Exactly right.

So you've obviously then started to grow your business, your own personal brand business, and now you're obviously hiring your own VAs. So you've got guesting and whatnot. So how would you say that your business breaks down from the people that you hire to automation? Would you say, like, it's a 70, 30 split from automation to people that you actually hire? Or is it a little bit more 50, 50? Where are you right now with, with what you're doing to like, grow your business as well as your personal brand?

So there's a lot of automation even within Guesty. There's a lot of automation, you know, even within Guesty. I've seen other people guesty accounts and they're completely different to mine because it's, you know, Guest Guest is a platform, but it's kind of like the, you know, the analogy I use is friends of mine, they work in banks and stuff, right? And if you give them Excel, the amount of stuff they can do in Excel is ridiculous. Like, they do some like, crazy shit with Excel, whereas all I know how to do with Excel is sum and average. That's all I can do with Excel. I know how you can add it, I know how you can divide it by the thing. But some people do some crazy shit with Excel. It's like, you know, you press a button and 5 million things happen at the same time. Jesty's kind of like that. Or any talent manager is kind of like that, that you can customize it to how you want it. So my VAS spend hardly any time doing service accommodation stuff. You know, I'm tempted to say I don't know the exact time, but it's hardly any time. It's the only time they already spend is if I get a call from an agency and they have to get something booked in. That's pretty much the only real thing they do because there's a lot of automation. And we'll speak a bit more about the systems as well, because you can do some very, very small things which will save you a ton of time, which a lot of people sort of overlook because they think, well, it's only taking me two hours a day, that's not too bad. But my view is I want the humans to do the least amount possible, right? How do you cut out everything in the middle so they have to do the least amount possible. There are some things they have to do. Like, for example, we take ID from all our guests. Someone has to verify the ID. But what my VA's don't have to do is send the email to ask for the id. They don't have to send the taser email, they don't have to send a form, they don't have to process a form. All they have to do is once the ID arrives, they look at it and they see, you know, they go through their security process. But what a lot of people do is they send the initial email, they send the chaser email, then they get in, then they type everything out and they've got the ID and then they process it. But my thing is, how do I only get them to do what they have to do? Everything else I automate. Everything else I automate. So when it comes to this split, I'd say, you know, 9010 in terms of automation and people actually doing it because some things they have to, a human has to do some things because, you know, machine is not going to be able to pick up ID and do the security checks and those sort of things. But everything else is automated.

So when it comes to that 10%, would you say that the, your team that you're building, the majority of that is just checking IDs. Is there anything else that they're doing or is it predominantly that like checking like the minute details, they check the.

IDs, they also anything to do with the agency. So if an agency calls, they will do all that sort of stuff. Every now and then someone will send an email saying oh, I think the payment amount is wrong or something along those lines because people don't read the fine print and there's a security deposit and those sort of things. So like an issue here and there even that you can automate to a large extent. So it's not that much a lot of the things guesty deals with. But if it's a payment related thing then someone has to go into our payment account on stripe and just have a quick look there. So again that's something they would do. But that's something which is like here and there the only thing they're doing on a day to day. So those things are here and there. Right? The things they're doing on a day to day is checking id. That's pretty much it. The rest is here and there, here and there. If something comes up but that is kind of like on their list, check ID like, you know, just make sure.

So I think you're a perfect person to ask this next question to. In the hospitality community group this week I ran a poll and the question was who does their own laundry? And you'd be amazed at the amount of people that said that they do do their own laundry because to keep the costs down, somebody came up with a nice question. How much do you value your Time. Because if you're spending, like you said, two hours doing the laundry a day, what then does that mean for your cost? So for somebody that literally automates and outsources, I would say 95% of what you do, as in from a systems and structure sort of place, what would you say to somebody who goes, ahmed, I do my own laundry, so guest house owner, rental owner, I don't care, I do my own laundry to keep the cost down. What would your comeback be to them, to sort of sway them otherwise?

The reason a lot of people do their own laundry is because of this whole cost issue, right? Which is, well, I don't want to pay that much money. If you start hiring linen, the problem is if you've only got one unit, and I'm going to make the assumption that if someone's asked this question, they have few units, they don't have that many. Maybe one or two. I don't know if I'm correct or not, but that's what I think.

Yeah.

Yeah. Is that fair to say?

Yeah.

Because when you have one or two, you have higher costs. Because if you're going to get someone to deliver the linen, then, you know, it's kind of like Amazon, right? You only get free delivery if you order more than £40. If you order £2 by the sub, they don't give you free delivery because it's not worth them delivering for free. So here's my thing, which is a lot of things in business get easier as you grow, as you take more and more properties on and you have more money coming in, linen over multiple units gets cheaper, right? You'll start the cost spreads because now you've got one person managing 10 as opposed to one person managing one. My focus would be hire the linen. You're going to make less profit right now in the short term, but spend your time building up the business. Because if you can take more units on, and that is your ambition, if that person said, well, I only want one, I don't want more than one, I'm happy with one, well, then carry on doing the linen. But if you have the ambition of actually building a business here, give up the short term. In the short term, give the money up, right? If you're making 600, make 300. But use that time to really grow the business, because once you get to 5, 6, 7 units, the linen becomes very, very cheap because you can bulk order at the same time. And now suddenly you're making 600, you're making 800. You know, I'm just Making the numbers up, but you're making more money and you're doing less work at the same time. You know, it's, things get easier as you get bigger because you have staff, because you have other people do it, you have cheaper linen, you have economies of scale. That's what I would recommend. Give the money in the short term and build.

Nice one. I like that. And final, final question, I ask everybody this. What is the one mistake that you see people, when they come into rental accommodation, service accommodation, what's the one big mistake that you see people make?

Trying to do everything themselves? I think even from an assistance point, want to be those sort of things, just, just doing everything yourself. And it's, you know, I always say that, let's say you're making a thousand pound a month, but it's taking you 10 hours a day. Suddenly that thousand pound a month is not very good. Whereas if you're making a thousand pound a month and it's taking you half an hour a day, that's very, very good. So a lot of people look at, well, I'm. A lot of people look at the money they're making, they're like, well, great, I'm making so much money. But it's like, how much time are you, is it taking you to make that money? And the other thing is, the biggest mistake is the Ota. Everyone's on OTAs. And, you know, whichever town you're in, more and more people are going to start using Airbnb. More and more people are going to start using booking.com and if you're solely relying on that, there is no brand, right? This is not like the hotel industry. But if you look, if you go to a town, you'll be like, well, I'll go to the Holiday Inn or I'll go to the Premier Inn, or I'll go to the Marriott Hotel. Because they're brands, right? People, people recognize those companies. No one recognizes a service accommodation company, in my opinion, because there is no big brand in service accommodation. The biggest company might have a thousand units across the uk, which isn't that much at all. No one's recognizing the service combination world. You look at two things. You look at the pictures and you look at the reviews and the price. But if someone opens up 10 more units down the road tomorrow, people are not going to be loyal to you, right? People are going to go to what's cheaper and what's look better in the pictures. And if they're new units, they're probably going to look better than the pictures. And if you're solely relying on that, then you have big, big issues. If a lot of people start jumping into your area, you know, there's a going back to your quote and there's another quote which goes something like something along the lines of repair the roof, but when the sun is still shining, when you still have bookings coming in. Right now we're in August, everyone's cool, right? Everyone's making a lot of money while you're still making good money. Stop thinking about November, December, January, those sort of months while you have no mental pressure because you're still making good money. What you don't want to do is you get to suddenly November, December, and now it's time to pour it down and, you know, you have some patches in the roof and suddenly everything's coming down. So that's why I say, you know, you know. Well, it's not my saying, but it's repair the roof when the sun is still shining. Start doing those things while you have the opportunity and you can really build. And don't just rely on the OTAs.

I like that. Perfect way to end, seeing that it is all about the diary bookings and all about building your list, doing the things that you can do to capture the email, start to nurture your guest and do whatever you need to do. And if you want to get more tips, if you are watching this about direct bookings, then just head over to Boosie. The blog is there, but I mean, if anybody wants to find out more about you, where you're speaking, what you're doing, the words that you're saying, how is the best way to keep in touch with you?

Yeah, they can go to my website, which is just my name, Ahmed Khan co. It's not.com, it's not co.uk it's simply co. And my email is there. If someone wants to have a conversation on something or if someone has a question here and there, feel free, just send me a message and I'll get back to them and we can take it from there.

Nice one. I really, really appreciate that. There's so much. And it's always the case with one of these, when we do an episode where so much information is thrown at you, it's easy to get overwhelmed. So I will make sure that there will be a full blog post on this and we will document and we will link up everything that Ahmed has mentioned. We'll talk about guesty and Silver Door and everything that we have covered today. But I just want to say thank you so much for tuning in. If you could do me one big favor. If this episode has been the one that you have liked the best, please get out in touch, go on to itunes, leave one of those reviews and talk about it. Share this with your peers, people that you are maybe running service accommodation with. You may be running your own hospitality business. You may not even be doing service accommodation. It may be a guest house, a hotel, or just a small rental. Just reach out and tell more people about it because the more people that do and the more people will then eventually will be able to start then increasing their direct bookings and like Ahmed said, not have to rely on on those OTAs. So thank you so much for tuning in. This has been Season 6, Episode 13 of the Boost Hospitality Podcast. If you want to find out more, go to boostly.co.uk podcast. There are 12 other episodes in this series that you can tune into now, and then there's another five seasons which shows you all about direct bookings, the booking process, how to run a Facebook competition, interviews with actual hospitality owners up and down the country, and much more. So thank you for tuning in and I'll be back very, very soon for the penultimate episode of this season of the Boost Hospitality Podcast.