My Chat with Tania King-Mohammad 🚀

Next up, we have got Tanya King Mohammed going back and looking at my note. The main sort of theme that we're getting here is think on your feet, look at where your costs are massive one from Matt and, you know, have these conversations, where these conversations need to be, but also as well, look at what people are asking for and adapt. And if that means going on to Airbnb and just having minimum stay of 30 days and then you whack a discount on top of it, then so be it. So, Tanya, welcome. Thank you so much tonight, take a minute of your time just to quickly introduce yourself, let us know where you are in the world, how many properties you have and then, yeah, we'll get started.

Thank you so much for having me. It's an absolute pleasure for meeting you, like, online, which is great. First time. I'm Tanya, for those that don't know me. I'm based in. In Devon, in Plymouth, which has been awesome over the last few days with this amazing weather, I'm not gonna lie. And I run service accommodation and I have been doing just over a year now in Plymouth, and I've built my business on one day a week whilst working as a doctor part time, most of it whilst being pregnant. I've just had our second baby six months tomorrow. Who's six months tomorrow? Yeah, I run service accommodation here alongside my medical job, although I'm on mat leave at the moment, and we've got a small portfolio compared to the other operators on this call, of eight properties at the moment. You know, it was going really well. I'm sure your question is going to be, so what did you do and what did you feel like once all this shitstorm hit?

Let's have a little dial back to the 15th to the sort of the 20th of March, that first sort of proper week of cancellations. Like, how were you feeling? What was going through your mind? Like, how did you cope? And, yeah, just sort of shed a little bit of light into that place.

So I'll just give a quick bit of a background. February was our best month yet in trading, so I was thinking, great, things are going really good. We've turned over a lot, like a significant amount, a quarter of what we turned over in the whole of last year, just in February alone. So I was happy just on my little small portfolio. And I remember all of you guys went up to the Short Stay show and I was due to go up there. I was really excited to meet you. Obviously, one of my business partners, James Mitchell, was there as well, and I was really Excited to go. And then I decided not to go just because of my young baby, who was what, three, four months at that point, and she's had a number of illnesses that have been serious and she's been hospitalized. So I thought, you know what? I'm not going to risk exposing myself and potentially exposing my kids. So I didn't go. And I remember speaking to James after the short stay show and having a conversation and I didn't realize how it was going to hit. And I thought, well, I've had no cancellations. And for that week after the short stay show date, we didn't actually have any cancellations. It was still going strong. I had some really big bookings. Luckily, my biggest booking didn't cancel. But then literally they just started dropping like flies. And about a week after the short stay show, or 10 days after it hit me, it really hit home. And I'll be completely honest with you, I lost it. I couldn't get out of bed. I literally couldn't. I just wanted to hide under the duvet, hide under the COVID which is not like me. That's completely out of character for me, really. I just. I just couldn't face what was going on. I just thought, that's literally it. We're not going to survive this. This is just crazy. Everything's getting booked. We're not going to be able to take any bookings. I didn't realize at that point all of the different avenues that you could go down and that I've been doing and they've been not lucrative, but they've been really. I've got results from it and I've had win. After that painful week of literally not being able to get out of bed until midday, I. I decided to step up because this is something that I've built on my own, but with a lot of help in the background with my amazing husband, who's a builder, carpenter. And this is my key to freedom, to free me up from my medical job to not have a physical 9 to 5 or 9 to 9 job in the UK. And like yourself, I'm planning to move to Ibiza. We're supposed to be moving to Ibiza at this time. Obviously, you don't live there, but Spain, that was the plan. And, you know, SA was going to be able to provide me the passive, relatively passive cash flow and income to do that. So I thought I put far too much blood, sweat and tears into this. My little. My third baby, let's say, to actually let it go down the drain, like, to let it Go down the toilet. I'm not one to give up on anything. I always see it through, I always follow it through. So I decided, right, that's it, you know, I'm going to do everything that I can. And I'm part of your amazing community. I'm part of the boostie academy. I've tapped into that. I connected with you a few times. You know, a few of my messages to you were probably a bit desperate to be fair. Just like Mark, I don't know what to do. Can't do this. But then I just decided, you know what? This is not me. I'm not gonna let this go. And I've worked my ass off. Literally, like definitely the first week, 15 days I literally worked non stop. I couldn't see my kids, they were just downstairs. It's all just, you know, really difficult. I've got two young kids at home, one of whom is a baby and I'm breastfeeding her. But I've got this business to do, which I don't usually work a significant amount of time in it on a day to day basis because I've got a little team around me. I usually do an hour or two a day, Matt. But I've literally had to jump back into it, take control. And I've literally seen it as take control of everything that I can control. I can't control what's happening in terms of the coronavirus, but I can control diversifying my marketing and diversifying who I'm contacting. Completely diversifying my expectations because we're not hosting our normal guests, obviously is a completely different market. So we just have to diversify.

For those who are watching and don't know, is it normally a leisure area or do you find it's 50, 50, like what's the normal type of guests that you were getting before all of this? Who was staying with you in February that made it such a, such a profitable month?

Oh, God. I think corporate, a whole mix, to be honest. It's not just one set target market obviously from now onwards it would usually be heavily tourist based on, but sort of February time, it was a whole mix of corporates. Contractors are a big one because we've got lots of massive developments going down here, which I love because they fill you up Monday to Friday and then you've got your weekend to maximize your revenue.

So you're saying you just stepped up, you got on, you did so much productive stuff. What was one of the first things that you did? Who was one of the first market and proactive Steps that you took that you wouldn't normally do. What would that be?

Key workers and NHS workers. I'm a doctor, so I can understand the need for it maybe more than others can potentially, but actually, me being a doctor hasn't given me any more connections than anyone else because the kind of connections I thought I had haven't proven to give me results. So I've been contacting all of the companies and travel companies involved in accommodating NHS key workers. There's a whole list of them. I've been contacting NHL, everyone I could possibly think of who may have clients who may need to self isolate or who can't live at home, like local solicitors who deal with divorced clients who may need to want to move. I've been contacting the Access to Housing, the council for emergency housing. Sadly, places like domestic abuse societies and people who help accommodate people suffering from domestic abuse, which is awful, but the rates of that are actually increasing because everyone's in lockdown together, to be honest, like most of the other guys so far have said, the most leads I've got are from simple little Facebook posts in all of my local Facebook groups, you know, and I've implemented everything that you've taught me as part of the academy and as part of being part of the boostly to kind of just, you know, use canva do really striking little images and I'm trying to up my game with that because I've got a bit of time to play with that now. So, yeah, local Facebook group is an absolute must.

Amazing. So many good things to sort of take away from that and just reaching out to people, picking up the phone, picking up an email into a department that you never know where it may lead. So well done. Thank you very, very much for doing that. And if anybody wants to reach out to yourself, yourself and James, I know that you're doing something similar like training wise and sort of helping SA people. Where's the best place for someone to reach out and get in touch with.

You guys Just hit me up on my Facebook profile, my Facebook page, nothing fancy. Tanya, Zahra, King Mohammed, you. Yeah, I mentor in sa. I'm not encouraging anyone to get into it at the moment, I have to say, for obvious reasons. But yeah, or anyone that just needs any support. I'm always in any of my posts, I say I'm happy to help, yes, I'm very busy, but I'll do whatever I can to help anyone that needs it, voice notes, calls, whatever.

You're doing your own videos as well. You're doing some live videos now and again so people can jump in and tune into them. Is it Monday motivation?

It's usually a Monday motivation. Monday morning motivation. I haven't done that this week or last week, but. But, yeah, I'm going to be stepping up my game from now with a few diversifying things as well, not just essays. So, yeah, I'm excited.

Well done. Thank you so much.