I found Brian Chesky's Airbnb Listing and tried to make a booking

All right, my name is Max Simpson. Giving hosts all over the world the tools, the tactics, the training, and the confidence to go and get more direct bookings. And today we are going to be talking about the Airbnb Winter release. What it means for you, what it means for the platform. And most importantly, we're joined by a very special guest who has had a sneak peek all of these new features for a little while now. So very, very excited. Going to be announcing some really cool things. But as we get started on this very special podcast episode, it's only right that we begin with a little freestyle rap. This is a freestyle going off the dumb. Ready for my close up. Good looking, let me tell you.

Get more bookings. Aw, that'd be nice.

Giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah, you're gonna get them, hon. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Simpson having a blast. Gonna get it on the Bruce Lee podcast. Bruce Lee, like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the tea is lo. Making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you'll better put direct.

Here are the words in the podcast.

That's what comes Next. Oh, right. Mr. John Hildebrand, thank you very much for joining us today on. On a pretty big day. Thank you very much for giving up your time. I can imagine it's been pretty busy today. So what we're going to be doing today, we're going to be talking about the Airbnb Winter release. Thank you to everybody that's tuning in live with with us. If you could just do us a massive favor if you are watching live, because all I see is a number at the moment, if you are watching live on all the platforms that we are tuning in from, just put a hashtag live. And also as well, in the next comment, let us know what you think of the Airbnb Winter release. This is obviously going to get turned into a podcast episode, which you can go find@boostly.co.uk podcast. But right now, this is a live video streaming everywhere, because today of all days, there is a. A winter release that's being released. Now. My, my goal, obviously, is to make it that when there is a new Airbnb release, you just go, oh, that's nice. That is my ultimate goal, because you'll be 65 direct and then 35 others. But I know for a lot of people, this actually means a lot, and there's a lot of things to sort of dig into. And, you know, I thought, who better to reach out to. To Mr. John Hildebrand, who has had a pretty crazy month, I think it's fair to say. He's been. He's been all over and everywhere. And I'll let John introduce himself properly in a second and then we'll sort of dig into everything that we've done and we've even managed to find Mr. Brian Chesky's listing, which we will dig into as well. So, John, can you just take a minute, please and just sort of give a super quick synopsis of, you know, your history into getting into short term rentals and. But more importantly, what has been happening to your life since Las Vegas.

Oh, man. Yeah, that's good. Just real quick. I think you froze on my end, but I think if anybody else sees that, I'm not sure, but you're frozen. What's up, everybody? Super stoked to be here. Mark, you're the best. Super stoked to be here. Like I said. So quick story. I've been hosting since early 2016. I was a starving traveling artist for a long time and my place would sit empty and I turned to Airbnb. I had no freaking idea what I was doing. No clue. I turned it on, started booking a bunch of places and I started traveling more and more that ended up paying all of my bills, all my mortgage, my overhead. I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. I'm like, I wonder if I can keep doing this instead of being a starving photographer the rest of my life. That was in 2016. Fast forward. My brother's in real estate in Malibu. Him and I purchased a fixer up place in Inglewood next to the football stadium, turned it into a full time vacation rental and exploded. Did that for about a year and a half. Just sold the house. Recently moved to Arizona and bought three homes, gutted them and brought them up to Airbnb. One of them is a plus listing. Became a super host on all of them. So that's like a very quick story of my journey. And the. The last year have been absolutely insane for me. I've never thought I would be where I am now. I'm an official Airbnb ambassador, which got launched today to the world, which is super exciting. I was in Vegas, got to meet with like everyone at the trade show and kind of understand the industry a lot better. And then like the icing on the cake of everything is I went to San Francisco to the Airbnb headquarters and did a two day workshop where with so many amazing employees at Airbnb, which we'll Talk about more. Yeah. And that's my quick introduction story. I hope that was good.

Very good. Very, very good. So very quick, can you quick name drop the business? You know the, you know, just sort of way like how many properties you've got? Just, just sort of Hildy Homes obviously that's the one you're based out of Arizona like and like any sort of other things that you can share that sort of been happening recently. I know that you've been doing quite, quite a bit of work with like regulations and whatnot. Like, like how, how far into you now would you say after doing this a couple years, how far down this, this journey are you? Would you say that you're going man.

I feel like I'm So, I mean 24 hours, seven days a week of, of short term rentals right now. It's like fully in my DNA at this point. So like yeah, my company, I, I branded a company. I'm really into branding and telling a story. So my company name is Hildy Holmes. My last name is Hildebrand so it's short. Hildebrand Hildy Homes. I have a YouTube channel where I teach a lot of content on YouTube. Yeah. And I'm pretty stoked on my Boost Lee website. I have to plug for sure. It's been an amazing journey and like a very scary process at first and it, I don't know why I was scared but I have no reason to be. I've gotten a six month booking on Boostly not too long ago I got a three month, 45 days so I'm all for it. Yeah, super, super stoked. And then yeah, just to talk real quick, I am super advocate on policy. I feel like all host, no matter what platform you're on, you better start speaking up and be very strong advocate in your space. I work extremely closely with rent responsibly and then I also created a board here in Arizona where I'm based in Scottsdale. We have over like 2,600 members and we're just fighting to protect our short term rental rights.

Yeah. Shout out to rent responsibility. That's, that's awesome. And the amazing work that they're doing and yeah you know it, it's for me I came across your just enthusiasm at some point this year and I knew I had to reach out and since then it's just been, it's been amazing being able to like work together on, on obviously the, the website and just sort of introducing you to like a few people and now obviously you're working with, with an amazing team at hostfully for the pms, behind the scenes and, and all that cool stuff and as well with Airbnb, which is why we wanted you on because, you know, there's so many people that could potentially talk about the winter release, but you've had being able to. To dig into it and get, get first access to it and specific specifically go to the head office and talk to them. So it's cool. So this isn't going to be an Airbnb bashing podcast. I want to get it from angles from both sides. I feel like. I feel like you are really good to talk about this because obviously you're in with Airbnb, but you understand the benefits of building your own brand, your own business and you know, having. Having that. That fail safe to fall back on as well, which is, which is epic. So what we're going to do, we're going to start off because a lot of people may not have known this, but there was a video released today. So we're going to start off. I'm going to share my screen. Both me and, and John can see this and we're just going to very quickly watch the, a little couple of segments of the. The listing. We're going to stop it and we're just going to dig into little bits as we go. If that sounds good, John.

Yes, sir.

All right. For 119, take one.

That's your art.

Yeah, a lot of this art I did when I was in high school.

So you're taking pictures of all your house?

Well, I'm taking photos of this house because I'm gonna put it on Airbnb.

All right, I'm gonna stop it just there very, very quickly when I stop it right there. Now, as we could see in that video, Mr. Brian Chesky is walking around his apartment, his house in, in San Francisco. And his exact words were, I'm taking pictures because I'm going to upload it to. To Airbnb. Now, I don't know if what your first impression of. Of that, John, but for me it was very interesting that he was just walking around taking pictures on his iPhone and he wasn't a proper, proper camera or a, or getting a like a proper photography coming around. Now, what's your view on that or your thought on that? Do you reckon that we're reading into it or do you reckon he's literally saying it is so easy to get on on this channel?

Dude, that is so freaking funny that you said that, because the second I saw him whip out his iPhone. I was like, oh, man. He didn. Bringing out a camera. I thought for sure he would have whipped out a camera or maybe had someone there. But I think that's just us being like, super into the business and knowing that, like, sure, an iPhone can take like a decent photo, but you, you, you need professional photos and Airbnb has like, the professional photo department and whatnot. So, yeah, that's funny you said that because I was literally the same thing. I was like, oh, man. But maybe like, we're. We're probably reading too far into it where it's like, it is that easy to just take a couple pictures and launch.

So talking about being how easy and whatnot, he's literally listed this today. So this is. If you look at the screen now, everybody, this is the Airbnb website and this is actual Brian's property in San Francisco. And if you ever have heard any of the story around Airbnb and how it got started, this image right here will stand out. Obama O's. That's very prevalent with the story of Airbnb. You can, you can go and check that out if you, if you're not already. You can go and find out more about why Obama rose means. Means something definitely in this also as well. You can check out the list. And it's literally the pictures that he's taking now. Now if we, if we think back to. Would be. It would pretty. Pretty interesting if those are the actual pictures that we can see here, if those are the actual pictures that he took on his phone. Because, you know, you're good with a camera, John. You're very good of a camera to me. Those don't look like the. These don't look like the pictures that he was. That he was taking on on his phone on that video. But again, I think we're being a bit picky there. So what I thought would be really.

Funny because you can't have an iPhone that none of us have. Maybe so the light is the Leica phone or something.

Maybe so. Maybe so. Now I was actually thinking if I could maybe check about an inquiry. But as you can see, the man's fully booked out. He is. He is busy. So I thought what we'd do, we'll send him a little message. How about this? And again, this could get me into trouble. I've been told to stop talking about Airbnb as much as I do, but I thought, you know, this is a bit of fun. So let's put. Hey, Brian, Love the Obama O's. Looking forward to coming and staying with you one day in the future, we can. I'll bring you a copy of my book. There we go. Send a message. Oh, I can't. I can't send a message because I haven't chosen dates. Oh, I'll tweet him. I'll tweet him later. So, anyway, right, let's get back. Let's get back to the video. So he was literally just talking about. There's a lot of. There's a lot of faff in here. So let me just go skip a little bit forward. Right, so here we go. This is Mr. Chesky taking up the. The interview.

I'm excited to show you what we've created for our 2022 winter release. Starts with Airbnb Setup. Airbnb Setup is the all new super easy way to Airbnb your home. From listing your place all the way to getting your first booking. Airbnb Setup is designed around a simple idea. The best way to help you do something new is with the help of someone who's done it before. And we have a lot of people just like this. Our very best hosts, they're called super hosts, and they're at the heart of Airbnb Setup. So let me show you how this works.

And this is where you come in, Mr. John Hildbrand. So can you just sort of. Obviously, Brian's going to go and show that in the video, but can you just sort of break down, like, what you do behind the scenes for. For Airbnb? And bearing in mind this is literally what Brian Chesky is doing on that video there.

Yeah. Real brief. Just to be clear, I don't work for Airbnb, so I speak pretty freely. I'm an ambassador, but Airbnb knows that about me. I speak insanely freely. I tell them how I feel and vice versa. So I don't want you guys to think that, like, I'm fluffing it for any reason. I speak on what I like and what I don't like on. On everything I talk about. So let me just get that out. I don't work for Airbnb, but with that, it's called the Ask A Super Host program. My personal belief is I think it's a way to educate guests. From day one. Or host, sorry, from day one. We all know when you know you're intimidated or you're scared or you don't know how to set up a listing, do you need a permit? How do you do photos? Like, what about a caption? There's all these Things going through your brain whenever you're trying to set something up. And I think it's Airbnb's way to link someone like myself who's an expert in it and knows the most common questions, because it's usually just like a common question issue or just some reassurance. So let's say Mark here wants to build an Airbnb profile. You could use my link directly. Or if you go to Airbnb and you're signing up as a host, you'll see a little button that says ask a super host. Then you and I will be connected. And then I have a back end dashboard. I can see the progress that you're making when you're building out your listing. You can ask me questions, we can jump on a zoom call, I can review your listing. It's pretty cool. I think it's a way for them to, like I said, clean up the platform a little bit from the very beginning stages. Does that make sense?

Oh, yeah. 100. And it, it makes, it makes so much sense for Airbnb to do this because just like when you're talking about setting up your direct booking website, it was very easy to get overwhelmed with everything because there is a lot to take on board when you sort of switch into like a direct booking business. Just imagine going back to like day one when you're just starting up full stop, from your scratch. It's very overwhelming. So to have access to somebody like yourself, access to Natalie Palmer, access to Marilyn Taylor, to Brindy and some other people that are super hosts that went along to the, you know, San Francisco offices is. Is. Is a, Is a win for them. And again, you're not working for Airbnb. You're very much like your own person, which is why we wanted to get you on this, which, which is awesome because trying to get Airbnb anywhere near this is ridiculously hard. And I know a few people who work at Airbnb as well, but they will not come on these podcasts with. Which is. Which is fun. Yeah.

All right, so just to comment on a comment right here, it's. He said that somebody said it's scary part is not all super hosts are experts. And I fully agree with that. A thousand percent agree. So I want to. There's a very long onboarding process. I was lucky enough to be part of the pilot program. I was one of three that started the program, and I got insane amounts of training. I have to go through interviews all the time. They're constantly looking at my profile. They're looking at my reviews, it's like, it's not if. If I'm not meeting the standards, I could be kicked off at any point. And so just to be clear on that, it's not anybody who's just a super host. You definitely have to go through training. You definitely have to sign your life away a million different times over again.

Yeah. And you've. Yeah, yeah. And you've had a crazy, like, NDNA double triple mdna just so you couldn't talk about anything. And you were at headquarters a couple of weeks ago until today. So, you know, we know how seriously you take it. Right, let's go to the next bit. So the next big. He's going to talk about air. So we're going to bring this in.

Grades to air cover to give you even more protection. One of our biggest upgrades is identity verification. From the beginning, we realized that to let someone into your home, you have to trust them, and to trust them, you have to know who they are. So what if we could verify every single guest booking on Airbnb? Well, that's what we're going to do. We're starting today by verifying guests in 335 countries. This covers 90% of our reservations. Next spring, every guest booking an Airbnb around the world will be verified. Now, once a guest is verified and they make a reservation, it's important it doesn't lead to a party in your home. So that's why we built reservation screening technology. This technology looks at hundreds of factors to block bookings likely to lead to unauthorized parties. We're launching the US and Canada this fall, and we're expanding worldwide next spring. Now, in the rare event.

Now, I just want to very quickly stop it right here. Now, it's very interesting with what they're doing and obviously guest verification, etcetera, which is obviously a good thing. You know, everybody needs to be verified. You need to know how they say they are. But the one thing here about this, this next thing that they're talking about, I don't know if you picked it up as well, but anybody that's got a large property, you are obviously going to get people making reservations, and it's going to be for, you know, more than 10, 12 people. My worry is that what he's talking about is that he's relying on AI, he's relying on bots, and there could be a very solid booking. Friend of ours, Kyle Stanley, fearless Kyle on Instagram, did a live video today, and he was talking exactly about the time he's got a Large property. And he knew through his own verification processes it was a solid booking, it was never going to be a party. Now, Airbnb have had a lot of trouble with parties. It's been well, well, well, well documented. We don't need to go into that. But he was like, this is a solid booking. I want to accept it because it's going to be a, you know, a large booking, a very, very good booking, but Airbnb wouldn't allow it. Now what's, what's your thoughts on that now? Do you have large properties? Do you have any, as it happened to you, where you said no, this is a solid booking, but Airbnb has said no. Like, what's your thoughts on what they're just talking about just there and then.

Yeah, in my, in my area, to Scottsdale, Arizona, the policy and stuff has gotten so insanely strict. And on large homes, it's a, it's a major concern. They're trying to pass a law where we can't have more than 6 occupancy and their children, which even if you have a 15 bedroom house, you can't have more than six guests. So it's insane. But to rely on AI to screen that to me is very, very scary. Also, there's been, I have many large homes that sleep 12, 15, 16 people. No problem at all. Yeah, that part makes me a little worried. I've never had an issue with that myself. One of my properties got flagged one time during a major holiday was a last minute booking. But then once I looked at that guest, to be honest, they seemed a little shady.

So I wasn't too concerned. It's like, it's like speaking like from personal. I'm a family of six, you know, I've got four kids. Like, I would literally be on the edge of what would be deemed by the state or the council or the county is like a reasonable booking. And you know, one of the big things that has come out the last 18 months is the reconnect. So everybody that was shut inside couldn't get out, couldn't see family for Christmas, for holidays, etc. Last year Airbnb were banging on about this verbose. Their main selling point was the reconnect. Like reconnecting families after the big lot, like the big shutdown. So to sort of go total 180 on this is, is, is, is, is, is surprising. And I feel like for anybody that has got a large property, maybe you are best. I mean, obviously what we talk about so much is not just relying on one platform, getting Listed on severals. Building up your direct booking engine. But it would be really wise for somebody now to create some form of list insight that would be catered more for the, for the larger stays. Because I feel like with Airbnb there's an even extra barrier to entry to prevent you from actually doing any good on it if you're just planning on being on that one platform.

Yeah, I'm really curious on that because there is Airbnb Lux and a lot of those homes are. Are big properties. You know, five bedrooms easy, six bedrooms, eight bedrooms. Yeah. To rely on AI seems a little scary.

Very, very much so. Now the, the rest of that video was just talking about pretty much the same. Same air cover is going up to 3 million million. 3 million from 1 million. And it covers anything from arts valuables, cars and boats, which I thought was pretty funny for throwing boats in as well. But there's 10, there's 10 updates in, in total. I don't know if you've. You've seen any more. So we'll go from there even more air cover, guest identify into the identity verification, which we've spoken about. Reservation screening technology. Easier to file a claim. Easier to file a claim. I don't know if you've got any other information on it. Now. How is, how has your experiences been this year with claims? Have you had to fill many in? All you have to do is look on Facebook groups and you can see the amount of mess people are getting themselves into in this. But what, what's your thoughts currently on the process and what feedback, if any, have you given to them in terms of improving it and have they listened?

Yeah, man, I'm scared to talk about this one because every time I talk about this one I get like a bad guess and then I have to file a claim. It's so weird. I swear I get jinxed. But I like, I've had to file a claim. I filed a claim one time that was like 8, 500. It was my second guest. They trashed my house, smoked in it. And I, I was losing my mind. I just launched the house. I spent my life savings remodeling this place. That one was easy. It was like I filed the report a couple of months later. I had all my money. No harm, no foul. I was like, oh shit, that's easy. But I just had a guest not that long ago. That was a nightmare we had to kick out. I had to like call the cops multiple times. Like it was not a good experience whatsoever. And I just found out last couple days ago that I got denied on my claim and I have no idea why I filed it. I know what I'm doing when it comes to filing step by step by step. And some. I have no idea why to this day. Now I'm trying to fight it. And yeah, so what I've been told, I hope this is correct, that they realize that it's such a disconnect and they don't tell you anything and you don't know what stage you're in. You don't know if you filed something incorrectly or incorrectly. There's just no feedback. So I'm told. I haven't done the process, but I'm told that you can go through a step by step process. It's going to be way easier. It gives you a better breakdown of how you're supposed to file, what you're supposed to file, and then you can watch it in real time. You can see what stages it's in, who's looking at it. If they have questions, the customer service can write you a question right then and there, figure it out. So it's supposed to be a lot more intuitive, whatever you call it. So we'll see. I haven't had a file claim on it yet.

No. Okay, so, but basically they are listening. This is the main thing. Even if it's like, not perfect, as long as they're listening and they're trying to act on it. Because the most, the biggest problem when, when you talk about any of this is that whether it's booking.com verb or Airbnb is that there's groups out there that, you know, say these are the problems. And there's been committees and things that are set up, you know, to, to deal with this and nothing gets done. But, you know, like the people that you met at Airbnb are super passionate about it, even if it doesn't get all the way to the top as it is with these massive, massive, massive, massive companies now, you know, Airbnb is a huge company. At least things that's trying to get, trying to get started. Which is, which is a, which is a plus. Even if it's not perfect, it's a plus. All right, so the other thing from like a marketing point of view for having our marketing head on is, is the categories. Now, obviously in the summer release, I believe it was, when the new interface was shown, there was a lot of confusion. And now was that a talking point in San Francisco? Was this a talking point between other Airbnb super hosts? And what has been done since now? The new things that have happened in which is view your category and new Airbnb categories. Like, what's your opinion in what's going on with these categories?

I probably get some hate for this one for sure, because, like, I'm on the fence of I kind of like categories. I'm not going to lie. I'm, I'm a marketing guy. I'm a visual person. Like, I think it's the way of the future, right? I don't know yet. I'm still trying to figure it out, to be honest. But I kind of like the idea of categories. I, I, I, like, just click on random categories and start looking at places that I want to go book. So I know it's like 50 50, man. A lot of hosts I talk to absolutely hate the categories so bad, and they think it messed everything up. But as you can see right here, there's a. One of the calories is called New. So one of the issues that we had when we went to San Francisco is, oh, wow, now I have to have a place that's like, fits in the category, and it's like, over the top, it's super cool and all, all these features. What about, like, you know, a property that's brand new, that doesn't have all the reviews and all that stuff? So it's pretty cool that just a few weeks ago we talked about this and they added that, they added new. So it's supposed to be new properties. I've kind of been seeing it. I've been testing it for the last two weeks in Scottsdale. I've been seeing a lot of the new properties come, so that part's kind of cool. Also with categories, I'm told I haven't seen this part of it yet on my back end, but you will be able to see what category your house is in now. So if it's a tiny home, you will actually be able to be like, okay, my home's a tiny home. And then you will be in. You can't, like, tag it to get put in a category, as far as I understand, but you will be able to see what category your place pops in now. So I think the categories is a very work in progress, but I kind of like it. So I know people are probably going to hate on you for that, but.

No, no, I mean, it's good, it's good to have that, that different of opinion, but also as well. I mean, you got to remember they're not just doing this on a whim. They're not just doing it because some guy in the, in the sort of tech team said, hey, we should just do this. They're doing it off of data. And you know, and they're doing it not off millennials. They're not doing it off Gen Y, they're not doing it off Boomer generation. They're doing it off the Gen Z generation. Because this is going to be the future. And you know, if you, if you think about it, and, and how the sort of the trends are clicking around and being totally free, no restrictions. And with the new massive rise in digital nomadism, even slow mods, there's a massive thing that's coming up now. You can see kind of why they're doing it now. It will definitely annoy a lot of people because again, categories is crazy. When it first came out, people were being placed in categories that would just didn't make any sense. And you know, if you were a, a certain type of category or certain type of tag, it would just mean that you would not get visible at all. But again, you know, totally interesting. Just like with anything, you got to make sure that, you know, the same advice is still prevalent and relevant. The thing that's really interesting to me is not so much this update. The interesting thing is what was announced a couple of days ago with the pricing.

Totally.

Now how is that? I mean, did you get heads up that that was happening? How has it affected your properties? What's been like the sort of general word on the Airbnb street about the pricing and what the changes have been?

So that. That's what you're talking about, just to be clear, is the display pricing in showing the cleaning fee and the nightly rent booked in as one?

That's correct.

So that was a. I guess the good and bad, right? Things move fast. I've noticed that. I have tried to get things changed in a company this big. It takes forever. But I guess it seems like the social media took full effect over this one. I think the viral video is all over Tick Tock, the news articles, the miscommunication, the disconnect from guests and overly charged insane cleaning fees. And then like, I can't even begin to think this is real, but I've seen it over again where like, hosts are like, you got to mow the lawn and you got to wash my windows and you got to like, get me a new couch. Like the craziest chores I've ever seen in my life. I guess we're getting more and more common. So they did this in like a few weeks is what it looked like to me because they didn't really talk about it when we were in San Francisco. They said they were trying to figure something out and it was a major problem. They were getting our feedback and they were asking questions but they didn't make it seem like they, they were had had a solution yet. So I think they probably just moved really fast on that one.

I think from looking from a an outside in as well is that they purchased Hotel Tonight because they wanted to take on, they wanted to become the ultimate ota, they want to become the ultimate online travel agent, they wanted to overtake booking.com the Expedia Group, etc, and there's a couple of things that really will stop them from doing that. And you know, only up until before the purchase of Hotel Tonight they didn't have a proper two way API connection into the pmss. It was very much an ical, which was very outdated. And so for me this is like a step to them getting rid of obviously the cleaning fees so it's a flat fee. Getting rid of X, Y and Z, getting rid of the service fee so the guests will no longer be paying the service fee. I think this is the next step towards maybe spring of 2000 and 2023 where they get rid of the service fee and all hosts won't pay the 3%, they'll just pay a flat 14 which is still 1% cheaper than booking.com, which is 1 or 2% cheaper than VRBO. And then the next step will be that it will just have the same prices because what they want to then do is they want to crack this meta search which is, which is obviously Google. And you know, everybody's got to watch Google and the next play that that they make. I put a little prediction that my prediction is next year 2023, what you'll next see in, in Airbnb, especially when it comes to categories. Let me just come back and share my screen for a wee second. So when you're in here, there'll be an option on one of these or even if you like, you click on somewhere. So say I want to go somewhere in Europe and I do this. There'll be an option where you can get into like a Boosted or a Premium or a whatever in here. And it'll be for people who pay more commission. So the more commission you pay, the higher you will, you will show in certain categories. I, I feel, I feel like that is they'll come in the next bit where you can pay a little bit more. I put this prediction out on, on LinkedIn. And some people were messaging me back in the comments saying, hey, it's been done before, it's been tested. Da da, da, da, da. So I don't know if it'll become like a, a massive rollout. Maybe they'll test it, but once they get the proper inline pricing, that will link nicely up with everything else. So there's no service charge, because the service charge is still quite unique to them. Then I feel like that's, that's one of the next steps, which is, which has been a super interesting week. I mean, overall, the changes that have been made today aren't massively groundbreaking. I think for a host like yourself, who's experienced, been doing this for a while, and for any other experienced host, it's not a massive biggie. Air covers had a bit of a change. The file claim process is, is going to get a change. You can see what category you've been placed in. But for the most part, the people that really benefits is who they really want. They really want more hosts, they need more listings, which is why you're doing what you're doing, what others are doing what you're doing, which is helping as well to make it as seamless as possible from going from, hey, I fancy listing my place on Airbnb to being listing live, because I obviously need more demand because that's what the, that's what, that's what they want. So super, super, super interesting. Any final thoughts? Anything that you want to say, any feel that, anything that you want to pass on, any message you want to pass on, or just any, any sort of like, whirlpools of wisdom from over there.

I mean, I'm sure, like everybody who follows follows. You are our top tier host, right? And a hosting community. And I have so much respect for you because you're always teaching people right? You don't ask for anything. You're teaching people and getting people right. And I think, like, not to be so preachy, but I think as host and no matter what platform you're on, if you're only doing direct booking, if you're doing OTAs, we kind of have to police ourselves. Like, the industry is getting bigger and bigger. I've seen some really bad hosts, I've seen some really bad guests, right? And like, we have to kind of clean up our industry if we want to protect it. I work so closely on policy, and it's mind blowing to me, some of the stories I hear. And, and it's just like, what people actually do that, like this is insane. So it's just like, not to get too preachy, but you know, I love this business. It's been so great to me. It's given me so much freedom. I get to meet with so many rad people and be creative. I don't have to work at 9 to 5. It's like, but yeah, it's like a double edged sword. We're getting big and we're growing, but man, we definitely got to police ourselves, man.

I, I 100% agree. And everybody who's tuning in and watching this live and on the replay, listening to podcast, you had a, you had a, you had a good host. You are not the 5% of the problem. Unfortunately, about 5% of the problem is so easy to get on Airbnb. It's so easy to get visible and it's so easy. And you know, there's, we're not going to go into specifics and whatnot, but it is, it's, it's too easy. And that will, that will change, you know, as all of this, this happens and evolves and changes will come and changes will happen. But the most important thing, and it's why I got it tattooed on my arm right here, is just focus on what you can control. I literally focus on what you can control. Focus on your day to day and you will keep becoming a better and better host. And I think the one thing that I'm sort of trying to spread to everybody is that when it comes to market in your business, it, you know, don't get too overwhelmed. Just, just take it step by step. It's just like doing the dishes if you start off at the breakfast at the morning, and if you have your breakfast, have your cereal, have your bowl, you leave it in the sink and then you have lunch and you just leave all those dishes in the sink and it comes to dinner and you leave all those dishes in the sink before nighttime. You look at it and you go, oh, that's a lot to crack on with. But if you did little bits of cleaning every day, so after breakfast you clean up the mug, the bowl clean, cleaned it, put it away. Lunchtime, you did the same. Dinner time, you did the same. You're doing little chunks day by day, step by step, and it just makes, makes life a whole lot easier. And so if you keep doing that, keep focusing on what you can control, then you're never going to be affected in any way, shape or form. I, if anything, what this industry is trying to do is weed out the bad eggs and all for that massively for that.

Yeah, I can't, I can't agree with you more. Just, just to elaborate on that. Just, I can't agree with you more on that. I mean, you, you said it correctly.

Oh, thank you very much, my friend. All right, so we're gonna let you go again. Please, please, please go and check out your YouTube channel. Go check out Instagram. I'll make sure that all the links are in the descriptions and the blog posts and all of that cool stuff and we'll get it linked up so everybody can come and find you and make sure you do go over and say, hey, saw you on the Boosted podcast, awesome work, pleasure. We'll definitely do this again, no doubt in the future and looking forward to, to meeting you as well next year. Which is, which is one of my things that we've got to get done. We've got to get started on this.

That's on the major checklist for sure.

Absolutely right. I will, I will let you go. Thank you very much. Can everybody in the chat and in the comments just say thank you very much to John. It's been an absolute pleasure. And before I leave, I just wanted to very, very quickly show you something because this is something very, very, very cool. Today the printer sent me this, a lovely gold envelope and on the side is a Boost Lee golden ticket for the Big Boostly Bash. Now this is going to be happening in November 2023. Now these envelopes are going to get sent out to a lot, a lot of people, I think over 500 people at some point over the coming weeks. It's over a year away, which is mad, but I wanted to get the planning and preparation done in now. So it's called the Big Boostly Bash. It's going to be on the 14th of November 2023. It is going to be the funnest event in this industry. That's all I'm going to say for now. If you want to find out more and if you want to make sure that you get on the message list, go to boostly.co.uk messenger boostly.co.uk messenger M E S S E N G E R and the other other other other big news that is coming very, very soon is that obviously this year I released the book Direct Playbook which was a worldwide bestseller, which is amazing. Thank you so much. In a couple of weeks time in December 2022 we've got the follow up book called the book Direct Blueprint. Now the book Direct Blueprint is all about the systems and the structures to have in place to build a proper an amazingly successful direct booking business is a multi author book. I'm going to be joined by IPRAC, Mount Price Labs, Touch Day Uplifting, DAC Techtape, Super Hog, Minoan D Travel and the co host expert and Mr. Tom O', Brien, the CTO of Boostly. The the brains behind everything. He's going to be features and focused in a in a chapter as well. So please make sure that you go and check out boostlybooks.com we're going to do a big, big, big launch around it. Gonna have a ton of fun around it, which is going to be great. So that's some big news that's being happened in our end. Until then, thank you so much everybody for tuning in. Thank you to John, thank you to everybody that's watched live. This is our biggest live video for a long, long time. And this will obviously get turned into a podcast where you can go and find out all of Those and over 500 episodes more@boostly.co.uk podcast right, as we always do, I'm going to see you out with a little rap.