I was a guest on a Service Accommodation Podcast

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 loose leaf Making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you better but direct.

Mmm.

Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next.

So. Hi, Mark, thanks for joining me on my what's Key with Sarah G. Podcast. Thank you ever so much for being on.

I am so excited. You don't even realize I binged Sarah season one and I am so looking forward to it. Thank you for. Thank you for having me. What's Key with Sarah G. I love that name, by the way.

Oh, awesome. Oh, thanks. Well, that's what it's all about. It's all about people like you, entrepreneurs about property, business and mindset. And I thought it'd be great to have someone like yourself on. I think you've made loads of waves. I've been following you sort of the past year or so. And this year I feel like for a service, accommodation operator, entrepreneur, business owner like myself, I feel like you make a lot of good, major good points. There's massive sort of key factors in there. So I thought it'd be really good to have you on. Not even as someone listening now as a hospitality owner, but maybe someone that's also a business owner or maybe wants to get into the hospitality, rent to rent or service accommodation business as well. Because obviously, as you know, things have kind of gone to pot in a way, but also changed or we have to adapt as well as business owners. So I thought it'd be great to have someone like yourself on a marketing genius, Mark Simpson. So thank you for being on.

Thank you for that lovely intro. Thank you.

Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit, people that don't know who you are, Mark. Just tell us a little bit about you, where you're based, your family life, and just a little bit about you, your background.

So I am speaking to you right now from a little town called Javier, which is in Alicante, Spain. So we're an hour north of Alicante, 30 minutes north of Benidorm, everyone knows where that is, and then an hour south of Valencia. And the reason why we live here is that there's only 40 days of rain in a year, which is a big. A big for us because we. I come from Scarborough, I'm a Yorkshire boy originally, and it probably rains there 320 days. So I'm very, very fortunate that over the last four years I've been able to build Boostly. And Boostly in short, is shot for boost. Hospitality. It was my wife Laura that I know that you chat too. She came up with the name. And basically what I do is I give the tools, the tactics, the training and the confidence to hosts to go and get more direct bookings. So for anybody who doesn't know what direct booking means, when you book a property, a stay, whether it's for business or leisure, and you go via booking.com or Airbnb or Expedia, hotels.com Verbo, wherever it is, when you do that, they charge big commission rates to the property owner or the, or a host or manager or whatever. So what I do is I show them how not to rely on these channels and how you can get your own bookings, whether it's via social media, email marketing, your website, your Google, you name it. And all I'm simply doing is showing what I did for my family business, which is called the Granary Farm State, which is based in Scarborough, which is where I grew up. So in the, in the 90s, my parents had a fifth generation farm. It was 200 acres in the middle of the North Yorkshire moors. It was in between Scarborough and Whitby. And this was when, funny enough, another pandemic was hit and it was the foot and mouth crisis and farms all over the UK were having to kill off livestock and just businesses were getting ruined. And they had an amazing foresight to transform this farm in and knock down a barn and turn it into a four bedroom guest house. And this was really before any of the other farms were doing this. Farm Stay now is very, very popular. There's an organization magazine, Farm Stay and whatnot. And I grew up, I mean, I'm five or six at the time, so I grew up in hospitality. I'm just used to always having somebody at our house growing up, you know, if there was always somebody in the kitchen, you know, and it's, and it's a weird world is that you literally invite strangers to come and stay with you, whether it's for a day, two days, a week or whatever. And over time that got really popular. So it grew from four beds to 14 beds. They added on tea rooms, a restaurant, and it was really popular. And I did what any other person my age in Scarborough was doing. I was growing up and I wanted to leave because in the middle of nowhere, one road in, one road out. But at the same time I was working in the business, you know, I was seeing how it was growing and you know, I was doing the tea Rooms, waiting on changing beds, all the things. But at 20, I had an opportunity to go and coach soccer in America. So for six years, six, seven years, I went to nearly every state in America. I got my visa, I think it was my H1 visa. So you spent five months there, came back to England for seven months and it was amazing. That's where I got the travel book. And then in 2006, me and my buddy, we went traveling around Asia and Australasia. We went back to America, we jumped on a one way ticket to Bangkok and we were basically away for two years. But again, even no traveling, backpacking in Australia, I was ending up in bars and whatnot. And eventually, a long story short, 2009 ended up back in London. I fell into working at Quipe, which then turned into Yelp. Everybody knows Yelp, big review site. And I was doing their sales, trying to sell listings to businesses. But at that time is when I started to learn about social media, about Google. I was in the marketing team more than the sales team. I was like geeking out on what they were doing. And I got just infatuated with this thing called marketing. And then in 2012, December 2012, so 1212 12, my first born, my first child was born, Alfie. He was now 7. He was born and we had an opportunity. My parents gave me an opportunity, me and my wife and Alfie to come into the family business because I'm one of four and I'm the eldest of four. And they asked if we wanted to come in because at that point the business was 25 years old and they needed some young blood, they needed somebody to help them get online because they had just relied on word of mouth. And we said yes. And my job was to do the marketing. And I loved. I was setting up Facebook pages, I was doing websites, doing the Google, you know, we're getting listed on all these channels, booking.com, airbnb, just doing all of the things TripAdvisor and I literally applied those tactics and trainings into the granary. And from 2012 to 2016, it just grew. The offline word of mouth went online and it just exploded. We were going viral. We had superfans, we build an online brand. We were top three ranked on TripAdvisor in the area. Our Facebook page grew to the most followed local independent business, which was insane. And we're just a tiny little farm in the middle of nowhere. And we did this. It was crazy. And then in 2016, I started going to local hospitality association meetings. It's the Sha and it was at here, but I just sat at the back of the room. I didn't really know anybody. They were just all chatting and moaning and complaining about booking.com and other things. And I was out here. I realized that. And it's really easy as a business owner to get stuck inside the bottle, you know, to try and just sort of. You could. It's really hard to sort of zoom out on your business and realize what you're doing isn't what others are doing. It's easy to think that what you're doing, everybody knows. And I could see that people were struggling with Facebook, I could see that people were struggling with Twitter at the time or YouTube and Google and Google business listing and websites and all of the things. And I just put my hand up and said, if I do a workshop at the granary, after we finished a restaurant one night, just showing you five ways that you could increase your direct bookings, would that benefit you? And out of 100 people there, five people put their hand up. No, the first five people I caught and on the back of that I created the hospitality community Facebook group. And it grew from five people to now it's over 5,000 members. It's a worldwide group. We've got people in nearly every country and continent in the world, which is insane. And on the back of creating a hospitality community, so many people were starting to ask the same questions and I just kept showing up every day. So 2016, 2017, I just showed up every day and answered all these questions. And at the time I had one on one clients in Scarborough that I started working with. And, and I realized that there was amazing opportunity to go pivot from one on one business to many. And that was the start of Boostly. Really? That was the start of Boostly. And I created an online training course, I created a podcast, I created a YouTube channel, I did all of the things and I just took it from a one on one model to one to many and created website design. And then that gave us the opportunity to start, start traveling again. We came out of the family business, we jumped on planes, we flew to Bali, Bulgaria, Thailand, Cambodia, everywhere. And now we're in Spain and a couple of years and now Boostie's got over a thousand clients. We do website design, we do content creation, online training, and it's insane. Now I'm talking to you.

What a story. Yeah, that's amazing to hear it. That's why I love to have guest speakers on, just because their story is completely different and it's just so interesting because I think listeners, they can just take in. I think when they see a business thriving at that time, they don't realize how much experience, how much work, how much blood, sweat and tears is put into it and that things don't go to plan and that things come up and you grab an opportunity when you can and then sometimes things also just fall into place. But it's also that work behind it. And that's why probably your, your parents, I'm guessing, they, they wanted your help, they needed your help. They said, look, you've got all this experience. Is that, is that how it sort of come across? And that's why they said, could, could you help us, Mark, and grow it? Or did they want to go sort more into retirement or how did you end up sort of taking it on?

Well, it was, it was definitely, it was just an opportunity, you know, some of it you don't plan for at the moment. At the time, at that time, when they asked a question, we were living in Darlington. We had bought a house in Darlington and I was working from home for an events company selling events. So I, when the question came up, it was something that we hadn't planned for, but it was just that opportunity was amazing for Alfie to grow up on the farm. I mean, the cool thing about the business is that we work really, really hard for 10 months and then you get two months off. So we would still be able to travel in those two months, which we did. And we, we, we got married on the farm and it was just a fantastic opportunity for us. And then for them, they got one of, you know, our, you know, their children to in on the business. They knew it wasn't going to be forever. They knew we weren't going to take it over forever. Um, it was, it was, the plan was to get in, grow it, increase the profile, increase the, the revenue so then eventually they could sell in. You know, it was really successful. We added on holiday cottages and we added even, even more thing and we definitely increased the value. So then when it went up for sale in 2017, 2018, it was at its peak value, you know, because we had added so much to it. There was a wedding venue and all of the things, so they needed one of us to come in. The problem is, is that my brother, the second, so second oldest, me, two years younger than me, he was working in London doing ppe, helping people get PPE back, working for the Lloyd Bank. I think it was my, my sister, she was a, she's a teacher, had no interest Coming into it. And then my youngest brother, he's 12 years younger than me, so he was at university at the time. And so I, it just made sense for us to do it and I mean, it's great. If we hadn't accepted it, if we hadn't said yes, then who knows where we would have been? But yeah, so thankful for it. It was, it was a lot of, a lot of hard work. I mean, it's, it's one of them where me and Laura were like ships in the night. We're doing different shifts. Like you get up at 6, you get all the bills, you do the emails, you then set up for breakfast, you come back, you get the boys up, you feed them their breakfast. One of us would take them off the nursery. And then you do change the bedrooms, you do the bills again, you set up the tea rooms, you do the tea rooms, which finishes at 4. You quick change around, get the boys from school, get them fed, and then one of us will put them to bed, the other one's working the evening meal. You know, it's, and that's pretty much seven days a week. Yeah, and it's, you know, it was a lot, but we worked hard for 10 months. We got those two months off and you know, it was really good experience because again, if we hadn't done that, then we wouldn't have been able to do this.

Yeah, exactly. And what you mentioned earlier about going to a networking event, like a local event, what made you go to that in the first place?

Well, in 2016, I'm a big Liverpool fan. Big Liverpool.

Oh dear.

I know. You're Manchester United, aren't you?

No, Arsenal all the way. We're all Londoners. So.

Okay, so 2016, I went to Liverpool to go go to Anfield and I was sat in the pub afterwards with a buddy and he's kind of an entrepreneurial business owner and whatnot. And he mentioned to me, have I ever heard of a guy called Tim Ferriss? And I was like, I've never heard of a guy called Tim Ferriss. And he said, oh, you're gonna love him. So I, I, I downloaded his podcast on the train back and it was the episode of Jamie Foxx. It's probably like his biggest ever episode that he's ever done. And I was like, this is really cool. And I figured he had a book and I, you know, got the four hour work week and all of the things. And it was thanks to that book that I learned about outsourcing, about hiring other people. And I started to put it into with what I was doing at the granary, so I didn't have to work all the hours and I could spend time with the family. So I discovered this thing called upwork, and I was able to hire a virtual assistant, virtual team member, and I was able to give her so many tasks that I shouldn't have been doing and it was awesome. I was basically able to sack myself from the business and I free up all of this time. That meant that I could go to these meetings and I always got invited, but I could never ever go to them. But because I was able to do all these things and free up time and I was able to do all of the things and I went one evening and, you know, it wasn't just the one. We went to a few, it was part of the Hospitality Association. You got to go on days out and things like that. And it was good. It was a good chance to see, sort of meet other owners. But the more that I went, and I think the first ever meeting I went to was like an ADM where we were chatting about things and I just sort of realized that this is an opportunity to help. And then it was born out of frustration, really, because I was really annoyed at the local tourism. Yorkshire, welcome to Yorkshire, that they weren't doing more help online. It was all offline. You had to go to these meetings where I was like, well, what happens if you get a troublesome guest? What happens if somebody calls up and asks for availability and you've not got any? You could go jump onto this online Facebook group. And I said these things called Facebook groups. And this is before Facebook groups were really popular. And they just looked at me like stonewall, like, what are you talking about? And I thought, well, soda, if you're not going to do it, I'm going to do it. And I created the hospitality community. It was just for Scarborough and Whitby at the time, again, to sort of give advice, share availability, warn of troublesome guests, whatever. And I set it up and I just showed up every single day. And at the first, I posted some up and it got no engagement, nobody liked it. But over time, the more I showed up, and I showed up every single day, people started to comment and like and ask questions and. And then again, it got really popular. So then they started telling people in York and in Edinburgh and it just sort of started to spread. And then other people started to join and other people started to join. And then before I knew it, we got to, you know, a thousand members and we have People from France and Germany and then Bali and Australia and everybody started joining and it was crazy. So it's that I literally decided to go to that meeting was. Was definitely the catalyst for. For everything.

Yeah, that's brilliant. And. And I think as sort of, you know, entrepreneurs and solopreneurs and business owners, it can be quite a lonely place. It can be quite a lonely experience. You do feel like you're the only one sometimes doing it out of your sort of group. And I think Facebook groups can be such a great tool, not only just for basic advice, like you say, but also just to get so much more tips and hints and tricks and just network with people that you. You will probably never come across, maybe face to face. And obviously a lot now being, you know, during a pandemic and lockdown, it's all virtual, isn't it? Like we are now. So I think Facebook groups are a great thing. And like you said back then, it wasn't really as popular. And even when you used to Google something, probably a Facebook group or even Facebook probably didn't even come up, so. Whereas now it probably would and your group would come up. So.

No, you're right, definitely. And that's how I got into entrepreneurial Facebook groups, not mine. It's like I. When I was looking for, like, guidance when I first started, Tim Ferriss was fantastic, but he, you know, he wasn't really anywhere online. He just sort of did his podcast himself, but he wasn't showing up anywhere. And then I sort of fell into, like, the likes of Pat Flynn and. And Noah Kagan and all these people. But the problem was that they were talking like Ramit Sefi and Jay Abrams were all talking, like, really about American stuff. And I was like, well, I'm in England, you know, I need somebody more closer. So that's where I discovered Coffee with Dan, Dan Meredith and his Facebook group, and then his paid group, which is Espresso with Dan. And that was. That was one of the best things that I discovered back in 2016, 2017, because that was a place that I could go in and ask a question, whether it was social media advice, something that I could pass on to my community, or whether it's, you know, starting up a business, tax questions, you name it. And the answers that you were getting in there are just phenomenal because my. My friend group, my, like, offline friends, like, I've known him Since I was 3 and 4 years old, like, all three of them, like best men at my. My wedding, and they've got no real Business bones in their body, you know, they're not, they're not, they don't care about that. I couldn't ask them those questions because, again, they'd look at me with the stonewall expression. Our WhatsApp group, it's just memes and just talking about football. It's not like. Not that. You know what I mean? So I needed that group to help me 100 and it was the. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that group, because the people that I've met in there, and a lot of people, a lot of them I've never really met face to face. I've met a lot face to face, but a lot of them, it's just been through chatting and whatnot. But again, I've been able to work with them. I've hired them or they've hired me or whatever. We've just worked together on something and it's been, it's been phenomenal.

Yeah. And a lot of entrepreneurs and listeners at the moment that are listening to this have either just started their journey or want to start their journey into business or slash hospitality. So what advice do you think you would give to a listener right now if they wanted to start their own Facebook group or they want to start their own business? Because you've obviously had a lot of experience. I know that's quite a broad question, but you've had a lot of experience, obviously, and, and then you started sort of your Facebook group and you started quite niche in your, in your area and built it up from there. So is there any sort of little, little tips or maybe advice you could, could give some listeners now?

Well, there's two answers to the question. It's a great question. Well, the first one is just get shit done. Just get it done. Don't procrastinate. Just 80, as Matt Zuckerberg said this, and I think it's on the walls of Facebook, 80 of something done is better than perfect. So just get it done. That's the first thing. If you've got an idea, just do it. What's the worst that's going to happen? You know? And then the second thing is that when your, your starting out and when you want to get going, then I think that it's, it's, it's, it's really key and, and crucial that you, number one, you look to outsource as soon as possible. Don't do all the things yourself. That's, that's, again, that's, that's super key. So there's amazing websites. Upwork.comfiverr.com these are. You can find people online, anywhere in the world that are trained and skilled with all the tasks. So again, don't try and do it all yourself. Make sure that you as soon as possible as well. I mean I was earning less than boosters, bringing in less than a thousand pound a month and I was still outsourcing, I was still hiring at that point. A lot of people think that they have to get super successful, they have to be bringing in x amount of money before they can then outsource that. You know, you can, you can lo and bring back as much money as possible. The one thing you can't get back is time. Not possible. We don't know time travel yet. It's not being done. So you know, really, really crucial from the start is to look to outsource, you know, and look to find the tasks that you shouldn't be doing, don't like doing and, and, and look to outsource it as soon as possible. So yeah, the first recommendation, just get it done, just do it. And then the second thing is look to, to outsource. And I'm sure there's a second part to your question, but I can't remember what that was.

No, that, that's, that's fin just going to add there that, you know, I think a lot of us want to be doing or we try and do everything at once or we try and be perfect and, and everything and it has to be spot on before you even launch when actually you've probably wasted a shitload of time load of money and you haven't even got off the mark yet and then you're just going to present it to someone and you're going to expect people to buy and, and I think a lot of people realize that's not going to happen. You know, people buy people. It takes time, it takes rapport. I think you've got to give a lot before you can get and I think you made a really good point there that you just outsourced rather than trying to be a jack of all trades and try and do everything. And that even though you weren't earning top dollar or maybe for what you wanted to be earning, you still went out there and thought I still need help and it's worth investing in now because I can then concentrate more on other things in my business.

I remember what the answer was going to be. Sorry to interrupt. And I literally says the top of my mind, so go for it. When I came up with the idea Of Boostly, I could have just said that I was a marketing agency. But the trick is, is the to niche on your niche, as I call it. So find a niche and then delve down into that niche even more. So I could have just said I was a marketing agency, but what I, what I went from there, I went down further, is that I work with hospitality businesses. So again, I hospitality marketing agency, as I like to call it. But then I've niched down even further, so I've really delved down on the niche. So people I'm going to serve, and I'm the direct bookings guy, you know, I show people how to get their own direct bookings hospitality businesses so they don't have to rely on booking.com, airbnb, etc. So you find your niche. If you're thinking of starting out, don't just call yourself a website designer. Find a niche that you can specialize in, that you can speak to directly. Because the problem is, is that we try and appeal to everybody. And when you appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody. So really delve down on your niche, figure out who you're going to serve. And then some really good books that I can recommend. So Super Fans by Pat Flynn, Starrybrand by Donald Miller, you can get them on Audible, I've just, just audible them a couple of hours, which is fantastic. Those are two really good books to get started on because superfans will show you how to create superfans. You know, like the, your, your core group of people that follow you, that will, that will follow you online, will buy your product, will talk and talk and talk about you. And then story brand is how to get your message across. And those two books, you can get them on Audible, I think they're doing like free trials at the moment. So you can get them for free. And then a blog to read. And I've just revisited it. It's A Thousand True Fans by Kevin Kelly. If you have got the Tools of Titan book by Tim Ferriss, you know, there's a section on it in there, but you can just Google it. Thousand True Fans by Kevin Kelly. It's a phenomenal book about, again, how to build those superfans. And that's what I did, that's what I read and study when I first got started. Coupled that with the Facebook groups I was a part of. And I think my key to getting so much done is that we can really easily study, study, study. You can go from course to course, the next YouTube video to the next YouTube video. But if you just study and you don't actually practice what you're learning, then you, you're literally just learning stuff for learning stuff's sake. What I've done is, doesn't matter if I'm listening to a podcast, I check out a Blinkist book or an audible, I always find that take that 10 that one thing that I can action now and I go and do it. So, like, for you listening, even if the one thing is that you go and buy Story Brand by Donald Miller, then that's something that you've done, something. You're not just going to listen to this podcast and go, yeah, that was great. He was a funny guy with a weird hat. Let's go on to the next podcast in my list. You know what I mean? You actually do thing. And that's the. And that is the trick. And, you know, go back to that mark Zuckerberg quote, 80% done is better than something that's perfect. Just go and create a group, go and do that thing. Put a message out to free people of an idea you've had and see if they like the idea of it. You know, you can chat to your friends about it and just message free people on Facebook right now. It's super, super simple to do. The problem is, is that people don't do it because they think I have to get it perfect. I have to get that perfect recording of a podcast. I have to have a perfect course, I have to have a perfect X, Y and Z before I launch it. And procrastination is the killer of all businesses.

Yeah, yeah, it's like the fear of the unknown, isn't it? And like you say, 80% of something is definitely better than 100% of nothing. That is for sure, as we've learned as well over time. And you said about sort of boost Lee, so tell us a little bit about people that don't know about Bruce Lee. I know you mentioned it a little bit earlier and obviously it's grown a lot and so more for hospitality owners and direct bookings and I think this year or even last year really, but especially this year with a pandemic and a lockdown and they shut all the calendars in Airbnb. So everyone that knows of online travel agents like Airbnb booking.com you know that they are great tools to have, but you can't just rely on them, obviously, because at the end of the day, someone else obviously owns them and they have to follow our UK government guidelines and the rest of the world and a lot of them got shut, as you know, and they aren't right now while we're recording this.

Yeah.

So we needed someone like yourself, Mark, that's obviously a big expert in this field and getting direct bookings. And that's what you've been sort of shouting about, raving about online this year and trying to help. Help hospitality owners like myself. So explain a little bit about that. I'm sure loads of listeners will definitely appreciate it and get a lot of tips from it as well and how you can help them.

Yeah, 100%. So I've been talking about diet booking since 2016. I think that the reason why people now calling me the direct booking guy is that since 2016-2017-2018-2019, nobody cared because there wasn't a pandemic. There's never been a Covid before. And a problem that I have with a lot of property courses that are out there that happen over a weekend or whatnot, is that they show you how to get started, they show you how to approach an estate agent. Excuse me, I've been doing a lot of talking today. They show you how to approach on stage, they told you how to get the keys, they show you all these things. But when it comes to marketing, it's like the last thing that they show and they just say, ah, just get on booking.com and Airbnb and you'll be fine. And if you think about our industry, it's true, we are very fortunate. I can't think of any other career or industry out there that you can list your business on. And you can pretty much guarantee that you're going to get income coming in. You can't, you know, if you're an E Commerce. Yeah, you can list on Amazon. You can't guarantee, pretty much guarantee that you're going to get bookings. We're in hospitality. Hospitality is. There's not enough properties. You can get to a point where. And, you know, you can get to a certain point in a calendar, whether it's an event on or whatever, you've literally got people that are fully booked. The whole town or city is sold out. You know what I mean? So we're in a very, very fortunate position in that way. But the problem is, is that if you just put it to the side and you start up a business and you go, you know what, I'll just put it on booking.com and Airbnb. I don't need to bother with anything else. I'll just put all of my eggs in that basket. You're building your house on someone else's land. And when you build your house on someone else's land, it's going to fuck up. Whether you like it or not. It's just going to happen. And I've been talking about this since 2016, and I didn't think in 2020 was going to be a global pandemic where the whole world would just stop for this to come true. My ramblings of a madman will come true. But it has. And you know, I am not anti OTA. I listed my family business on the OTAs. You know, I'm a preacher of you've got to make them work for you and not the other way around. The problem is, is that when you put all of your eggs in one basket and if you I speak to people that 95% of all of their bookings, including repeat guests, are coming through Airbnb or booking.com the problem is, is that in March when they. And it was middle of March, March 23, what they did Airbnb and everybody remember this. If you are watching or listening to this and you've got property and you've listened on Airbnb, you will all remember this day because you woke up to a notification on your phone from Airbnb, they sent it to everybody saying, you can cancel your stay free of charge. Doesn't matter what the policy is, you will get all your money back. Now, obviously, they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. They had guests on here, they had hosts on here, and they had this big little elephant in a room called the IPO that they've got coming up, right? And they didn't know what to do and so they panicked and they've admitted they've made mistakes. I've listened to podcast episodes and interviews with, with the founders of Airbnb and they've realized that they made a mistake because they didn't consult with us. They didn't give us warning. They just said, nah, screw you don't care what your policies was. And I know people that lost thousands, thousands upon thousands of income. And you know, like I said, I, I flew into England on 11 March for the short Stay show, which was in London at the xl and for the Short Ease Awards because I won the best use of social media. I was speaking on 12th March at the sorted State show and it was coming out of the Excel center at 5pm I was walking with a couple of people that I knew from the world of property and service accommodation. And we're just being frog Marched out of the Excel and we didn't really know what was going on at the time. Turns out that the Excel then got turned into one of the emergency hospitals that they needed in London and all of those things. But as walking out and obviously coronavirus is there and you know that it's obviously in some. In China and whatnot, was hit in Italy at the time and of Spain, where I live. And I said to somebody, I said, there's going to be one phrase, it's going to be banded around when all of this gets back to normal and it's going to be staycation. You're just going to hear tourism boards and everybody's like, if you said staycation in March, if you type staycation in in March on a Google search, next to. No results or clicks on it, you do it now. And it's everywhere. Because what's happened is that international travel has just gone and so. But the thing about hospitality, think about the career that we are in. What we do is we provide experiences people love to have, something to look forward to. And, you know, just flashback to June, the month before lockdown was dropped in the uk, and you've been stuck in your house for all of these weeks and months. And if you're in a city and if you're in an apartment and you've got kids that are running around that are just literally doing your heads and you're just giving them the tablets, just to say, just give me a bit of peace and quiet, you know what I mean? You've done all the online teaching and stuff, you've got to have something to look forward to. And what do you want to do? You want to escape. Which is why in July and in August, one of the main things that bounced back the fastest and the hardest was rural properties in uk, usa, wherever that's out the way, private accommodation. So you don't have to share with anybody, you can just get away and just switch off. And, you know, so many people. It's why campsites have just been rammed, because again, it's. It's getting out into the countryside and it's. It's a staycation and it's been a massive contributor to the fact. Now the problem is again going back to Airbnb and booking.com, like you said, not only did they refund guests, but then they closed off calendars. They bemoan the fact that so many people could still home key workers so they could still host key workers. Those are the. There's very clear guidelines of who you can and cannot host. You couldn't have any business, you couldn't have any leisure back in March, April, May, June, but you could. You could get key workers. So we were stuck in gatwick Airport on 16th March. Me, my wife, my three children, and we were texting friends back in Spain. Our flight was meant to leave at 6pm, our EasyJet flight back into Alicante, they were locked down in hard and locked down in fast. We didn't know if we could get back into the country because we didn't have our residency details with us. So we had two choices. We either get on that plane and we just chance it, or we get in a rental car and we drive back up to Scarborough to our family home and we sort of hide out there until it's all over. We did the latter. So we jumped in a car, we went there. I didn't have any of my podcasting gear with me. I just had my laptop and we had wi fi at the farm. And what I decided to do, it was on the 20th of March. So three days before Boris announced the lockdown. I thought, right, well, what I'm going to do is if, if I. If I can do the work from Spain, I'm just going to do it here. And I'm very fortunate that boost Lee is 100% virtual. And so I announced that I was going to go live every night on Facebook. And I naively thought that this was going to be over in a few weeks. Obviously, we're still now coming into December nearly, and we're still not over it. So I thought, right, every night I'm going to go live on Facebook, I'm going to do it at 8pm and I'm just going to give tactics and advice and just sort of help, because I could just. That those weeks in March, I don't know if anybody, you can remember how you felt. It was scary as shit. Not only did the most worrying thing for me is that governments didn't know what to do, they're literally panicking and doing all the things like, these are the people who run our country. So I just thought with hospitality doing all of this and Airbnb doing all things, all I can literally do is every night for free on my Facebook, I'll go on and I'll just go live until this is over. And all I was doing is I was number one, giving tactics and tips, marketing tactics and tips of how you can get key workers. So we were, we were sort of brainstorming live on my Facebook, going right well, this is what you can do. Number one, contact your local hospital trust. And we're just picking information bits that we were getting every day. I was seeing what other people were doing. And it, to be fair, it was the people from the service accommodation world that were acting first, like David Diak, Matt Ward of Sorted Stay, they brought in 30 grands worth of direct bookings from hospitality trust people by simply reaching out to hospital trust and just saying, we have properties, we need to fill them. You know, we obviously had to pivot their rates and their prices, but they were doing what, what needed to be done. And, and all I was doing every night was coming on and saying, right, well this is how you get in front of these people. Facebook groups, Gumtree, this is, you know, this is what you should do. You should contact everybody who stayed with you in the past, who is a, who is technically a key worker and find out if they need to travel for work. And, and then I reached out to experts and we brought experts on the podcast and that went for 44 nights. And after those 44 nights it got to the end of May, start of June and I was just like, I gotta stop. You know, I literally couldn't think of any other experts to do. My brain was frazzled. And then as well, at the start of June we had to figure out how to get back to Spain because we had left our whole life. Our car was in the Alicante airport for like five or months in the end. So I had to stop and I start to think about, you know, of our family and whatnot. But by the end of it, because we had 200 people tuning in every night and then we had loads of people watching back on the replay, my name just started to get associated with the direct booking guy and again I was just sharing these tips on how to do it. And the only to finish off this very long answer to is very question, short question, is that the cool thing about the lockdown right now of where we are recording this on the 10th of November and anybody in England, you've got this four week lockdown, right, is that we've got a playbook to go by, is that unlike March where we didn't know what we were doing, you can simply just go back to March and go, right, I've got these properties, they need to be filled and we've got a little bit more hope because business guests can still travel, you can still travel for work. So it's a case of doing the same tactics and tips, tapping into that network, tapping into Facebook groups, putting it out there that you can, you can do it. And again, this is what people are doing and they have pivoted their business. They have, you know, they have done so well in so many different ways. And for the first time in the four years of me doing this, people are marketing their businesses like never before because they've realized that they cannot just rely on a third party to bring in their bookings. They have to take responsibility, which is phenomenal for me. For I've been talking about this non stop for four years to finally see it in action. And I see it every single day from members of the Boost Lee Academy, Yourself content creator website. I see it in the hospitality community Facebook group. I see in the essay groups that I'm part of. More and more people now are talking about direct bookings because my, my goal in all of this is that I want to get the OTAs to reduce their commission costs. I want it to knock down from 15, 14, 20, whatever it is, down to 10. I think that would be more manageable. And I also want them to treat us more like the partners that they say they are. I want them to give us more data. And the only way that we're going to do that, and I made this decision back in 2016, is that I could just stand there on my Facebook page on the top of my plinth, just shouting it to the rooftops. It'll never work because it's just me. But If I get 1 million hosts, if I can help 1 million hosts, and those 1 million hosts then explain to all of their guests the benefits of booking direct, whether that's on their website, on their social media, talking to guests on arrival, on departure, in emails, or all of it, then we can spread the word and we can start to increase our direct bookings. So then the OTAs will look at their reports and go, hang on a second, they're booking less and less and less with us and they're going direct to the property. What are we going to do about it? And you know, if, if I can force that conversation to happen in the next, and I've set a very ambitious 25 year goal to help a million people, then I'm four years in, so I've got 21 years to go then. That's why I'm doing so right now. It's fast forwarded like massively because so many people are coming to Boostly. So many people are sort of coming to my world, which is, which is awesome. All because of going live for 44 days, every night on Facebook.

That's brilliant. And just. Yeah, I was in awe of your long answer there, because it definitely needed to be, because, yeah, it's just been an absolute whirlwind, hasn't it, all of this year and it's been up and down. And I think to show that you went live every day, even though you kind of didn't know what was happening, like you said, the government were just sort of taking it day by day and we were always, you know, clinging on to sort of half past four or five o', clock, saying, what's Boris going to say tonight? And things that could affect us as hospitality owners and business owners as well. So for you to go live every day not just shows that you also care about what you are saying, putting that into practice and to help others, but also that shows consistency. And I think that goes a long way in whatever you do, doesn't it, in life? And especially if you want a successful business, like you said earlier, you can't just rely on one thing. You were getting hospitality owners where 90, 95% of their bookings were from an OTA, for example, like Airbnb. So it's about thinking outside the box, adapting to change. And at the time, it's funny, you. You is sort of going to Alicante. I was in LA at the time because my wife's from there and we were there. We were in New York first and then we went over to LA and then it was about the 11th of March. And luckily we always get sort of a lot of direct bookings. I think that has been knowing your area and I'm also very sort of salesy in that sense that I like to convert them to direct. I feel a bit like I've got to pay a service fee on the ota, so I kind of like that. But when it all hit, I think it just hit like any business owner and it was like, you know, cancellation after cancellation after cancellation. I think on the 11th or 12th of March, because I remember it in LA and I think it was my nephew's birthday and I was. And I was like, shit hitting the fan. What the hell do we do? So I knew I had to get home similar to you and do something about it. And yeah, I think that your lives as well as just Facebook groups, your hospitality Facebook group really helped because you probably got a lot of service accommodation operators and other hospitality owners that did rely on mostly leisure guests and are in those sort of areas where there very seasonality going. Mark. I've just had Everyone cancel. Because everyone's cancelling even for August, even though it's March, because no one knows how long it's going to go on for people starting to lose their jobs. And I don't think furlough come into play or. We didn't know what that meant at the time. So everyone was on panic mode. So it's. I think a lot of hospitality owners have definitely learned a lot this year, and especially helped by people like yourselves. Have you found now, even though we're on the second lockdown now here in the UK at the moment, I know you're in Spain and we've got a lot of listeners as well from the US and Canada, so slightly different rules. But have you found that this lockdown, because it was kind of sudden again, has it been a little bit easier? Have you had a lot of messages and emails again saying, mark, panic stations, can you help me? Or a little bit calmer?

Well, I think, like the, the misconception in what I teach, people have said that even though it's a diary booking, they can't cancel, which isn't true. Everybody can cancel, as you know, even if it's a dirty book. But the power of a direct booking is you've got the choice. So you can call up that guest, you can message that guest, because unlike with Airbnb, they can do the Thanos click and they can literally get rid of all your income with a direct booking. It's still in your power. So you can contact them and go, listen, Sarah, I totally understand, you know, you, you can't come and stay with us in, in April because of the lockdown. But, you know, if you're up for it and if you're open to it, well, let's change your, your date to October or November. You can change it at any time, but we'll have a. We'll have a, you know, you can. We will have a very flexible change policy. And that's what we were talking about instantly. So we went in on day one, it was the 23rd, the day after Boris did his announcement, and that's the message that we were spreading the change, not cancel. I was very fortunate to have Jessica Lorimer, sales coach, come onto my podcast and we're talking about retention because she obviously trained in retention. And it was one of the first things that we spoke about, the change, not cancel. And it was the sort of the mantra, the motto that we spread everywhere. And it worked massively for Darren bookings. The change not cancelled. Because, you know, at the end of the Day we get fall into a trap in hospitality. When a booking comes in you can just look at as a number or a profit or whatever. But at the end of the day we're in a, in the most sociable industry I believe, because you're getting strangers come and stay in your house or the property that you manage. And we're very fortunate in that way because we can have so many cool conversations. You know, it's like when you contact somebody to switch them from a OTA book into a direct, it's because of a phone call. And the power of a phone call was massive. And on that phone call I was just saying to people, listen, just be honest. You know, just ditch the ego and just say, listen, if you really need this money, I will refund you, no problem, 100%. If you, if you are desperate for this money, I will give it back to you. I have no qualm in that. But if you don't need it then I would really appreciate if you could just change it for a date in the future. Because our business, we are losing money at the moment and we don't know if at the end of it we're going to be able to survive. So your, your money and your custom is going to be help massively. And again, just by ditching the ego, having an honest conversation with them, showing a little bit of, you know what.

I was going to say, just being honest, showing a little bit of authenticity and saying, look, we're, we're just a sort of a family run business or we're just a small business. Can you just help us out if you, if you can, you know, just, just move it. You don't need to cancel.

And, and that worked. And I mean our family business, we had cancellation after cancellation, but we also changed a lot. We also moved a lot of dates and we then had to remove them. You know, it's, it's just something that had to be done. But it was taken like a sort of step back and just, I think the problem with a lot of people is that they get into this and they realize that, you know, maybe property managers or whatever they think the property people or, or whatever you want to do and then they get into it and they try and automate their whole life, their whole business business. But the problem with that is that you lose that human touch. And if this is show one thing is that the power of being that having that human touches is everything. Being able to reach out and to communicate with people, being able to chat to people, being able to Just text or whatever is going back to old school methods, which is working massively. So to answer your question, yes and no. So there was a ton of cancellations, but they were leisure cancellations. What's happening is that people are pivoting again and going back to the business bookings because they can still come in, the key workers can still come in. So again, it's just sort of going. And for a lot of people, they are having to do things maybe they're not used to before the. The whole business thing, but there's amazing training on it. And, you know, Boostly Academy members. I've got Greg Dorban who came in and did some contractor training, which was fantastic, which was only a couple of weeks ago, and that's really helping. We're discovering right now Gumtree is a. Is really working for contractor bookings like Wales. And this is the hard thing for myself because I do the training and I do these podcasts and I do all these. This advice is that this time last year I could just give generic advice and everybody in the northern hemisphere could use it. Southern hemisphere, not so much because it's there. It's. They're coming into their summer now, where I was talking about winter shoulder season. So I. I had to maybe pivot sometimes for that. But right now, as you said, Wales is different to Scotland, is different to England. And when the whole tier thing was going on, it was insane. And I live in Spain and in Spain we have lockdowns in our county, in our area. I mean, I can still walk around, I just have to wear a mask, the boost mask. Gotta wear a mask at all times. And, you know, and then it's different to what's in Italy, in America. Yeah. Christ, God knows what they're doing in America. Everybody's having a great time, like it's never happened.

And then you've got Canada and.

But like. And again, you've got different states in all these areas. Bali, you know, I've, you know, got a lot of friends in Bali and. And they're not allowed anybody in or out. And in Australia, again, it's so different everywhere. So, you know, the advice you give and the generic advice that I can give to everybody is that, number one, make sure that your systems are in place. You've got a website, you've got a pms, you've got your email list and you've got your social media. And like you said, consistency is everything. And it was. The one big advice that I was giving out during lockdown was don't go dark, don't disappear. Post on Facebook, post on Instagram, use this as a time to start doing Instagram stories or Facebook stories and sort of document your day. Because those that stayed top of mind when everybody else was going dark, and this is a crazy thing is that booking.com and Expedia shut off all advertising. So I know companies that have, and this is small independent businesses in the UK that have capitalized on booking.com and Airbnb, not advertising on Google in their area and they've shot to the top with really effective Google Ads. And this is how they got in their key worker bookings and this is how now, because they're top of mind because they've got all this amazing karma built up on Facebook and they've grown their brand and whatnot and they've got amazing relationships with business. Lockdown two comes along, they're not affected at all because they've already built up these relationships and whatnot. And, and so a long way around of answering your question. Again, I apologize. You've got this playbook. We've got this playbook now that even if it happens again in, in February or March, hopefully it doesn't. But even if it does, we have this playbook. Hospitality doesn't have to be accommodation doesn't have to be as affected as much as pubs are now. Like people sorry for hospitality, people were sorry for our industry. Well, they didn't realize that we could take on businesses and key worker, key worker guests and now business guests, we can get by this. And which is why more and more and more and more people, I can see them all the time signing up to the email list, coming into the hospitality community, but downloading the podcast to subscribe to the YouTube and you know, they're joining the website business, getting a website or content creator or the, my private training group. More and more and more people are coming in because they're finally going to listen. I cannot rely on one source of income. I cannot just all my eggs in this basket cannot build my house on that land. I got to do something. I got to become multi channel. And I'm very fortunate that I've just been the guy who's just been banging on about this for the last four years and now I've done that, I've built up all of this clout that people are now are going come to Mark. Come to Mark. Which is, which is, which is awesome. Which is, is amazing.

Yeah, definitely. And I, I hear you sort of say the word quite a lot about sort of workation Is that what you say? Quite, quite often staycations and workcations. Is there like a difference between sort of a workation and a staycation and, and how that can help sort of hospitality owners, service, accommodation, etc.

Yeah. So. And I like how it's come up on the screen. Very nicely done. Thank you. So, workcation. So basically it's just a play on words. Staycation, workation. I was even calling it in Australia, state cation because out of lockdown they couldn't leave their state. But work cation is a new trend and it's one that everybody doesn't matter when you listen to this, whether you're listening to this in November, December or even 2021, it's a trend you have to get ready for. And if anybody has ever listened to anything called Naval Ravikant and Tim Ferriss the podcast, then you will know what I'm talking about right now is that we're coming into an age and a time in our human existence where this nine to five in an office is slowly edging away. Google have still got a massive travel ban. Google have still got where people are remote. Twitter are now 100% remote. Dropbox are 100% remote. And these are some of the biggest companies in the world. Booking.com 100% remote. They are all working from home. Now. What does that tell you is that they have got people that are not having to go into an office to work. This trend, this work cation trend really kick started in America back in May and June. Again, all the rules and regulations that are in place in our country. You can look in America and it's just literally it's mental county, state, it varies, you know, and, and I love America. Like your wife's from America. You've been to America? I've been to every state. You know, I, I almost Long Beach, I love that place. Is crazy, crazy place I've ever been to.

It's a world.

But they kickstart a lot of trends and obviously Airbnb is out of San Francisco, which is why so many hosts adore Airbnb. Or they did. Now it's a very long route. Again, another little tangent about why I'm going to explain about this is because you've now got people that instead of being in a city, in an apartment and not being able to go into their office, they're realizing that they don't have to stay in their house, they don't have to look at the same four walls. What they will do do is they will Go on a work patient. And whether that is a solo person or whether that is somebody who's got a family, what the trends and what the surveys and the stats are showing that's come out of Skift and even Airbnb have produced this report, is that more and more and people, which this is the crazy stat, and again, the founder of Airbnb mentioned this on the How I Built this, this podcast is that in August 2020, they had more business travelers than they had in August 2019. Which is insane if you think about it, right? Because what's happening is, is that people are flicking that little filter on Airbnb. You traveling for leisure or business, they're putting business down because they're putting on a business expense. And then what they're doing is that they're going and working from a location, okay? So that's workation. And it's getting so important that Airbnb are changing up their filters right now to include the speed of the WI fi, which is really. So if you want my top tip, the aha moment you're going to take away from this podcast, whether it's a single one or it's a part two or whatever, is that on your listing on Airbnb right now? Go into the title and amend it. And if you've got epic WI fi, when I mean epic WI fi, it's anything more than 100 megabyte speed per second download and upload, mention it in the title because if, if you're trying to stand out on a very stagnated or crowded listing site, an Airbnb, you have the ability to do this more than any other OTA out there, is that you can amend the title, put it in the title, because you will stand out. And when they add the filter in, you can put it in and make sure you keep checking back on the amenities because again, if you've got super fast WI fi, mention it and have it as a tick box also as well, have a look at your amenities right now because you may be able to add in workspace. Because think about how a guest would book. They're going through the filters and going, right, I need air conditioning, I need a washer, I need a kitchenette. Workspace, yes, I need workspace. Need WI Fi. And again, if, if nobody else has ticked workspace, put it in. And all you need to do in one of your units or your property or your wherever is that you just go to Ikea and get a lack table or whatever, or just get some stationery or even Just get a printer, cheap printer from Facebook Marketplace and put it in and then you've got a workspace in there and make room for it. And then you've got a new USP and it's so simple to be done. But when you are on there and when you're on your website and when you're on your social media, take a picture of it, talk about it, promote it, because people are looking for places to escape. And even if you are appealing to a family now, think about it. If you've got a guest or a potential guest and just think about your customer avatar, your ideal target client for this. Right now we're in an apartment in Manchester city center and they don't have to go into the office and they've got a two or a three year old and I'm a parent of a two year old. I know how annoying these little.

I'm a parent of a three year old, so I know.

There you go. So I've got a two, a five and a seven year old. My, the two year old, literally you could pull your hair out. But he's beautiful little boy. But again, little. But anyway, if I'm trying to get work, I'm in an office, right? I'm nowhere near him. If I was trying to get work done and he's there, he's like, blah, blah, blah, doing two year old stuff, I couldn't focus. But if I see a place that pops up on my social media feed or in a group or a recommendation or wherever saying, listen, we've got a work cation, it's a three bed property, you can stay for a month or whatever you need, it's got availability for it. You can, it can be a work cation, as you call it, and it's a place where the family can come as well. And that's a business trip, that's a work trip. You know, you can do that. And again, maybe not right now in lockdown, however will you lock down that you may think it is, but if you maybe can't do it now, well, hopefully in December you can do January, February, March. And that's what people are doing in America and it is proven so successful. This is why Airbnb started a brand new search on their algorithm. For months, days because of this, people were traveling for work. And this is what work cation is. And again, I'm talking about this now because this is a fast growing trend and if you take advantage now. So if you're one of the people who listen to this, when it first comes available, you've got the ability to take advantage of it right now. And the most simplest thing that you can do right now, what I talk about where it's take action straight away, that 10 take one thing. Go onto your listing sites on Airbnb and just put in the WI fi speed. If it's good, if it's crap, if it's 10 megabyte, don't talk about it because that's crap. You know, you've got to have a good WI fi, fiber optic, whatever you want to call it, put it on there and put on as well that you've got Netflix. Go and get Disney. Disney, you pay once and you can add multiple units to it. Go get Disney and talk about it. If you get these things and you get these cool things in, then make sure you talk about it. Go onto your social media, put a post up, go onto your website and put it on your homepage of your website. The amount of websites that I see that aren't mostly websites and on the homepage they don't talk about any benefits of booking direct. It literally blows my mind. How are we going to get guests to book direct and know to contact us directly if we don't talk about the better incentives of booking direct, the reasons why to book direct. So put this on the homepage of your website where people are coming to put it on your Facebook, put it on your Instagram stories, your LinkedIn, your tickety talk, whatever you're using, put it on there. And the more you talk about it, put it into groups, the more you talk about it, then people will realize that that's what they can do. And that's how you get those workation bookings.

Brilliant. I love that. That's some great tips there, listeners. So if you're listening workation, get on it. Get on your channel managers and your Airbnb now. And yeah, just those little things like you say, like we also sometimes you'll see a lot of like on Netflix in the title because that was our kind of a thing. And now, you know, like you and I, we've got, you know, little ones and Disney plus for sort of the same price, if not cheaper, you can, you can have that. And that's been sort of a saving grace for a lot of families in order just to get a couple of hours work done while they put a Disney movie on. Because Disney away ahead, you know, they, they own those rights to those films and they're all on there. So if you want it, you can get that. And you know, those, those little tips and those little golden nuggets are so helpful for people because like you say, some people do get sort of in a rut or stuck in their own ways. Like you said back at the start of this, when of this recording you were saying about, you know, you had sort of North Yorkshire and sort of Whitby area and they, they've probably been doing it for donkeys years and they're just so stuck in their ways, but not in their own fault. That's just what they're used to.

Yeah, well, if you think about it, when I first started as so many people in that room that had run their guest house of their business for 10 plus years, if you think about it, Facebook didn't really get started properly in the UK 2007. So they've had their business longer than Facebook's actually ever been around. So for a lot of people when I came in and started talking about these things, it was so new and you know, it was exactly why my parents asked us to come back into the business is that they didn't want to figure it out themselves. They wanted somebody that they could just pop in and I was there and, and it was, it was, you know, it was the start of everything. And you know, I don't know what it is. Maybe it was my coaching background that means I could, I knew that I could teach it and coach it and explain it and I could put it into words that was explained, easy to understand. But the main frustration to me was that there was nobody doing it online. And if anybody was doing it, any agencies were doing it, they were charging stupid amount, like £12,000 a year plus for it. And, and again, these weren't people that had done it, hadn't been there, hadn't changed beds, hadn't know what it was like to get like a one star review on TripAdvisor or whatever, you know, they hadn't experienced it. Or again, the people that were there was like one or two coaches and the, the information was out of date and overpriced and crap. And I was like, well, well, fuck it. If no one else is doing it, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna step up a mountain, I'm gonna do it. And I honestly thought it was gonna be Scarborough and Whitby. I honestly thought I was gonna just my niche of my niche of my niche was gonna be Scarborough and Whitby. But for whatever reason it's grown and it's grown to like worldwide, which is crazy. You know, we've got clients in Costa Rica that tune in regularly, which is amazing. We've got cl, you know, Tasmania, we've got far east of, of Sydney on the eastern coast. And you know, we've got people down in Mexico and California and Canada and all over Europe. All over like the UK and, and Ireland and it's insane. But that's the beauty of where we are right now in 2020 is that Zoom has just made it accessible to all. Facebook is everywhere. It's on every laptop, phone, tablet. You got the portals now. So it's, it's everywhere, you know, as the Oculus glasses. And it just, it just given everybody a platform to talk to everybody for free.

Yeah.

Whatever your feelings are of Facebook, whatever it may be, it's given, it's given business owners a chance for free to promote their business, have a. Build a platform and, and, and you know, that's what I've done. Most of my new business business leads come via Facebook. Whether it's a recommendation in a group or they see something like this or they come across my Facebook page and just go from there. So, yeah, it's utilize it. So many people are scared of it, but utilize it and if you need advice on it, then just come and find me at Boost Lee and you'll be able to find out more.

Yeah, brilliant. Don't, don't be afraid. It's like getting out your comfort zone, isn't it? And we've all had to do that this year. I think that's taught us just as, you know, entrepreneurs and business owners and the ones that didn't want to adapt to change and pivot a bit are the ones that are going to lose ultimately at the end of the day, I think that's. As a business owner, those probably ones why your place has stayed in business and it's done so well is because, you know, your parents were open to change and adapting. They realized that they had to and that you were fortunate enough there to be able to help them. And then you've taught, you've been taught sort of others as well, but you've probably learned a lot yourself. And over the years, as social media has grown and now everything's virtual, isn't it? You know, so that's definitely great. And workcation, so get on that, people. Workcations, that's for sure, because we're all doing that now. So that's for sure. So just tell us a little bit about Boost Lee before we finish, Mark. Just tell people about how they can get hold of you. On social media or if they do want sort of an upgrade on their website or just to learn more as well about how to grow their business and not rely so much on the OTAs.

So the best place to go to get started is boostly.co.uk so b O-O-S-T-L y.co.uk, on there, there is a little link that you can click and I will send you five videos on how to get started in direct bookings. So I break down five really key places to get started and so many people have seen great success in just those five videos. So we talk about Google Ads, we talk about bid on brand, we talk about email marketing, we talk about contractor bookings. So go in there and check them out. That's the best place to start.

And that's.co.uk mark.

Yeah, boostly.co.uk go on there. It's the first thing that pops up. You'll see a picture on there. You can go and check that out. If from, from there, if you want to check out on the social medias, you want to come and say hi. Instagram is where I spend my time. So Instagram is@Boostly UK. I do love that channel. I don't have them. I don't have any other apps on my phone apart from Instagram, because I do like to create little, little daily videos on there.

You like vlogs, right, Mark? You do like vlogs on you?

Yeah. So I'm, I'm three days. So basically when I started Boostly in 2017, we went traveling around Asia and India. So we went to Thailand, Cambodia, Bali and India. And my wife created a little travel blog called Two Traveling Tots. And when we were doing it, I started to do little videos for two traveling tots. And the videos are still on YouTube. It's. It's awesome. We were just watching them at the weekend on the projector, which was awesome. When we got back, I kept on doing the daily vlogs, but for Boostly, and I just kept on doing them, doing them, doing them. And I realized last week that I'm up to episode of thousands in three days time. So I've been doing these, I've been doing these daily vlogs for so many years now. And it's Monday to Friday, so. So basically all I do is on Instagram, you got the little stories and when you create a story, it saves it to your phone. So at the end of the day, I take the videos that are on the camera roll. I Use an app called Quik Q U I K. It's a free app from GoPro. You load them in there and it turns it into a little movie for you, a one minute movie, which is awesome, adds music and whatnot. And then every day I was uploading them to just Facebook and just call them a daily vlog. Now over time I've outsourced them and now somebody from my, my virtual team, they upload it for me. I just send it to them in Google Photos. But we've got to a point where I'm free away from a thousand and we thought you talked about consistently and showing up every day. And that is just one little thing. It gets maybe one or two likes, gets a couple hundred people view it every day. But every time I do it's like people are joining in the journey with me and I've. And, and from a selfish point of view, just like we were doing in the weekend, we're on the YouTube channel and watching back our travel vlogs in five or 10 years or 15 or 20 years time when I'm hopefully at that goal, I can watch back on these daily videos in 20, 30, whatever year's time and just sort of be able to remember and show it to the boys, show it to Alfie, show it to Charlie when. And just say this is what we were doing when you were like two. Yeah, five and seven. And it's, and it's, and it's awesome, you know, and that is it. And that's why I use Instagram.

It's great, it's great. And just creating memories like you say, just something to look back on and your journey and that obviously at that age they won't remember things that you know, you, you've brought them or took them along to or having to deal, stuck in the airport and then having to go back and then and you know, be locked down in North Yorkshire, shared everything. So that's just cool, isn't it? Just like you say from your perspective just to have something to look back on and your journey as well. Because I think we all forget, don't we, as entrepreneurs, how hard it is and the slog and sometimes, you know, the ups and downs of life and business and the stresses and the background stuff that sometimes we just get on with it and we don't actually think about it.

So it's just sort of, it's, it's been, it's been one of the best things that I did. It's been the best thing that I've done and I'll. I will continue to do so and I recommend everybody do. It doesn't matter whether you're starting out or if you're two or three years into your business. Is document. Gary Vee talks about this all the time. Document over create. And it's one of the simplest things to do. You just pick up your phone and you hit the record button and it's done. And you just post it. You don't even worry about it. You just share your day, share your journey. And it's awesome because there will be people who can relate, who can follow, and if they stick around and follow you for years, then they will get to feel like they know you. And whether they're customers or future customers, they will remember it to the point of where. When they've come to stay with you and if they've been following your social media for a while, when they. You first meet them in real life and you know they come to stay when your properties. I've had this conversation with so many people. It's like we feel like we already know you. We feel like we already know your family because we've been following the Facebook page or whatever. And that is how you build superfans. That is how you build an online brand. That is how you achieve so much of what you need to achieve to where you don't actually have to market your business. You've got people that are doing it for you.

Yeah, brilliant. Brilliant. And just. Just to sort of wrap up Mark, I'll put all the details in the show notes as well of how you can get in touch with Mark and check out his website as well. Boostleigh.co.uk. there's loads of things and loads of tools on there as well. And join up to the hospitality community Facebook page as well, because you'll get so many tips and tricks and just also support. I think that's the biggest thing this year. If you're around the world and you normally just list on Airbnb or you've got one or you've got 40 and you manage them for other investors, it's just bringing people together. So definitely join up to that people. But I always ask sort of guests, Mark, just finishing off and we've had loads of key things that you've put in there, loads of things that I love to hear as well, that some things I did know and didn't know. So I'm sure a lot of listeners will definitely take it in. But as this is sort of what's key with Sarah G. I Always ask, what's one key message you want to, to give listeners what you think they're going to get from this episode, Whether it be a two parter or one parter. But what's the one key message you think people should be able to take away from you? Or key advice?

Do you think I've, I've already said this and I'll repeat it just in case they missed it the first time around is that pick out one thing from this, from this interview, this nearly two hour interview. And, and what I want for you to do is pick one thing and action it. So whether that's buying one of the books that I recommended or whether it's going to amend your title on Airbnb, or just doing one thing, just go and do it. Whether it's going onto the booster website and getting those five videos, just do it straight away. Don't think about it. If you're walking your dog, flip open Google on your phone or whatever, open up the Airbnb app on your phone or if you're watching this and you buy your computer, just do it. Whatever you do, don't procrastinate, don't think I'll do it tomorrow or I'll do it next week because you'll never will. Simple, never will. Just do it now, whatever that's going to be. And if not, if you're just going to go, I'm just going to ignore that guy with a weird accent, then thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning in.

Oh, that's brilliant. No, I bet a lot of people will do. Like you've put so many sort of key tips and tricks and hacks in there, Mark. So thank you ever so much for all that advice and I'm sure someone will take at least one thing away. I've taken loads. I'm sure loads of people will take loads. So thank you ever so much for your time and thank you everyone for listening. And Mark, is there anything you want to want to finish on or. That is pretty much it for the listeners.

Just come and say hi on Instagram if you are tuning in, just send me a message and say you came from the podcast. I always like to know where people discover me. So please do come and say hi, Instagram. Say it was from Sarah's podcast. But thanks for having me on. Like I say, I, I binge season one and you know, I do enjoy it. You've got, you've got an amazing thing here. So please do keep it up because it's, it's, I know it's. But I like listening to it and I know others do as well.

Oh, thanks, Mark. No, I appreciate that. Well, thank you ever so much for being on. So I really appreciate that. Thank you ever so much. And thank you, everyone, for listening to another episode of what's Key with Sarah G. And stay tuned again for next week. We have another great episode for you. And please don't forget to review, rate and subscribe. And please follow Mark Simpson as well on boost Lee or boostly.co.uk. you can get him on Instagram as well, but all the details will be in the show notes as well where you can find Mark. And then. Yeah. Thank you ever so much, Mark. Until the next time.