My Chat with Liam Carolan 🚀

Saving the best for last. Mr. Liam Carolan from Ginger and Gold over in Norwich. You could do us a favor, buddy. Just take a minute of your time, just introduce who you are, where you are, how many properties you've got and then we'll crack on with the question.

So, I'm Liam Carolan, I've got Ginger and Gold Limited is my company. There's five properties at the moment, which is a mixture of rent, serviced, accommodation, management. We've taken on our latest one just last week as well, under management. So we're still. Still growing at this time. My background, I've been in retail all my life. I decided April last year that I didn't want to keep making money for other people and to take the dive into hospitality. And the main motivation behind that is because I want to spend time with my family. I've got a little two and a half year old boy named Harry who I wanted to make sure that I can spend some time with and that's what motivated me to start my business.

What was your business and how was it affected on the back of when it really started to kick off here in the UK, obviously the lockdown started on the 23rd, but that week leading up to what was happening, because the Airbnb managed to cancel loads of bookings, booking.com did something similar. Like, how was it for you? How were you affected?

For me, I mean, we were a bit like Tanya. I was then getting prepared to come to the short stay show. Things were going really well. We were about to take on more sort of summer type bookings. In Norwich we've got a real mixture of corporate and in the summertime, there is a lot of tourists coming down to see the Norfolk Broads and just generally sights to see the history around the city. So we were starting to get a lot of bookings, weekends, weeks, booked up in advance. It was getting busier and, yeah, it was starting to come out of that dark winter time and spring was really starting to hot up and then Corona hit us. So that was a bit of a shock.

How was the booking, like? Was it just evaporated or did we manage to claw someone? Like, how was it looking, that sort of front?

I think it was the Sunday just before lockdown, we start to get one or two cancellations and they were citing different reasons, saying they were worried about traveling and things like that. Straight after lockdown, it was like an avalanche. We had over. We had almost 50 bookings and it was pretty much our summer was wiped out in the space of day, two days we had a few people sort of hanging on, but, yeah, most of it was wiped out overnight. Most of them were the tourist ones, to be honest, canceling. So we still had a lot of the contractors still during the weeks, but it represented some serious money for our business lost at that time.

I think everybody, everybody watching, whether it's live or on the replay, will totally relate to that. What have you done since then to bounce back? What proactive things have you been doing? What can you share with everybody watching to sort of help, give them a little bit of guidance?

Straight after that was announced that we're going into lockdown. I spent about one day feeling a bit sorry for myself and probably in a bit of paralysis from the fear. Just looking around at the other people in the communities and the ideas that they have, and I realized that's a case of just got to get on it, got to step up and really start looking at the opportunities around us that we have got and who we can market to. So I think more than ever, it's our responsibility to backwards engineer the future and think who is in need of the accommodation and who is it that I can actually help at a time like this? Who's going to need what I've got to offer. We reached out to every single guest who was still booked with us and really picked up the phone and started to talk to them. So whether it was a case of reassuring them if they were here for work, that we're still going to be open, everything's as normal, they were here for leisure and they did want to cancel then instead of just cancelling, would they like to move their dates later on in the year? Host who's got a flexible cancellation policy. So if they did need to cancel, then fair enough. But we then got a direct email and we got permission to market to them for later on in the year as well. So we've added about 20, 30 people from just doing that, like everybody else is saying as well. We pushed the Facebook posts, really followed your advice on Canva, pushed it towards all of the local Facebook buy and sell groups. We pushed it to the caravan and holiday park groups. There's a lot of those around our area. We started to really think about who is it that we can help. So at the time, we did push the isolation message and I even joined a couple of groups further afield to say come and isolate in these units. When the government changed their policy and things start to tighten up, we quickly removed that message and really aimed more towards key workers particularly.

Do you know anybody who works in the HS and particularly to rail workers, things like that side of things, you know, just anybody who is still working. Engineers. Yeah. We contacted the local accommodation officer at the hospital and she. It was quite interesting because she explained that she's been inundated with offers of accommodation and she didn't actually need it at that stage. Trying to build a relationship with her, we actually said, well, what do you need? What is it that, that you actually need at this moment? And she explained that actually her nurses and people like that needed. They couldn't get fresh fruit, they couldn't get fresh veg, they couldn't do all these things where they were working 12 hour shifts and then having to go to supermarkets which were empty. So what we done, we decided to get involved with a local community and we'd done a collection, loads of people helped out and we managed to get an entire van load of fresh produce, tinned food, stuff like that to the local hospital. And off the back of that we've now built a really strong relationship to the point where me and the accommodation manager stay in contact weekly and I'm now fully aware of her needs, accommodation wise, but otherwise as well as how we can help out.

This is a business tactic and tips of any business owners watching. Ask a very, very specific question, what do you need? Don't assume what they need, as in you assume that they think they need accommodation. Liam thinking on his feet and just said, what do you need? And on the back of that has done some amazing work and has built fantastic relationships moving forward. Okay, so if there's anybody that is watching now needing bookings, wanting to get bookings, what would be that one bit of advice that you would pass on to somebody if they sort of need it in this time?

Positive mindset. It all starts with just thinking there are people out there who are still spending money, who needs your help. You don't need to sell to everybody, you just need those group of people who do need your product at the moment. Proactivity and taking massive action by picking up the phone, you know, really just build relationships around you with the people in groups, other hosts, your guests, local employers and really just taking action and getting out of the fear mindset because the worst they can do is say no. And you might have 20, 30 phone calls saying no, but all you need is one that says yes.

If anybody wants to reach out, have a chat with you, where's the best place to do so? I assume it's Facebook. Is there anywhere else you'd like to spend your time Facebook.

So I've got a Facebook page as well. Liamsa Carolan so if you go onto my normal profile, just mess me on there. But yeah, I've been posting videos on the journey since I started way back last year just to keep it like.

A video diary for myself.

So hopefully some people will find that useful.