Network is your Networth

Hey everybody. Welcome to the new episode of the booster podcast. It's the podcast that gives you the tactics, the tools, the trainings and most importantly, the confidence on how you can go out there and get more threat buttons. So today we are going behind the host. My name is Liam Carolan and we're going to behind the host with Buck Combo and he is from Sea Mountain Vacations. If you want to go and check them out before we get started, you can do so by going to see mountain vacations.com go and check out his awesome branding. He's now got a boostly website which we're going to talk about as well. And today's episode is all about how just networking and building connections. Saying yes and figuring out along the way really helps you in the hospitality industry and how having those connections really opens up those doors in general. So. And Buck's got a great story which he's going to share with us. So welcome along. Buck. Thank you for joining us today.

Yeah, Liam, thanks for having me, man. Super, super excited.

So tell us a bit about your business and where you are in the world.

Yeah, so I'm currently based out of Nashville, Tennessee. I run the business remotely. All of our properties are in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. I lived there the past 15 years or so and kind of just, I moved here to chase my, my beautiful wife. Now she's a songwriter out here and we kind of, we bought a property and you know, it kind of just forced us to figure it out, you know, build the right systems and processes to be able to scale upon. And we had really good success with that property and we decided we would take on a few more. So it's been a, been an exciting journey over the past few months.

That's cool. How many units do you currently look after and what sort of model do you use?

Yeah, so right now we have 11 units that are live. Um, we have, I'd like to say another 30 or so that are being renovated. So we're holding our homeowners to a very high standard to kind of ensure that that guest satisfaction's met. So typically when we take on a new homeowner, we're going to ask them to renovate their property and refurnish it kind of up to our standard to again, bring that, that guest experience to a really, really high point. You know, that's, that's very important to us. Um, we started out with the co hosting model, kind of wanted to just get our, our feet under us and figure out this, this whole, this whole hosting thing. You know, and get all the kinks worked out before we started taking on other clients. So I think this, this past summer we, we had four and we're up to 46 now, just within about four or five months. It's been, been a crazy journey.

We had Bill Faith on recently and, and he was saying, do you know the right way to do this? If you want start with that co hosting model. So how did, absolutely. How did you learn what you needed to know from that co hosting and what kind of doors did that unlock?

Yeah, so it again it helped me refine the systems and processes I needed to build a strong foundation to scale upon. It was extremely helpful just taking a few properties under the belt before I took any real management clients and, and just utilizing that to build everything out, whether it be the guest messaging, the templates, knowing the issues that might arise and kind of having systems in place to address them. It was extremely helpful starting with that model initially and then graduating to the.

Management model and just to jump in. So how did you do that initially? If somebody was sitting there just going, you know what, I'd love to get in co hosting, but what steps did you take to, to really, you know, meet these, these hosts, to become their co host?

Yeah, I mean you, you really just gotta be initially good at selling yourself. You know. Fortunately my wife and I had bought a property and that was kind of our trial run and we worked out all the kinks from there and had really good success. So pitching, pitching myself to other investors to like, hey, let me, let me co host your property was a little bit easier because I had built that, that foundation first with, with my personal property. But I think one, one of the biggest things that helped was initially after the short term rental wealth conference, Mark spoke and it got me fired up. So I think I had two listings at the time and I like reached out to you guys, I was like, hey, let's, let's build a, let's build a site. And boostly got a site built and that helped build a tremendous amount of rapport with co hosting clients. So just having that, that forward facing site was it, it helped tremendously being able to convince these, these homeowners to, to know that I'm legit, you know, so that was extremely helpful.

That's amazing. And you know what, again we've not spoken about this obviously before the call. I know I did ask how's the website going? But you've made a really important point and one which I found as well. I'm a host myself and by having a website, and obviously in this case, we've both got Boostly websites. Naturally, as I work for Boostly now and yourself as a client, the benefit of having that website is that they suddenly go, hang on, you've got a professional website, you're geared up for direct bookings, which 90% of people aren't necessarily geared up for direct bookings. And that just puts you as the kind of industry leader in your particular local location. So that's a really awesome point and thank you, Buck, for sharing. That's awesome.

Yeah, absolutely.

What would you say for the people listening and the things which they'd have to consider differently with management to your own first unit? Was there anything which you look back and go, ah, there was perception I had about management, which, you know, has changed over time or something that people would be aware of or need to be aware of.

You know, it's really not that, that different, you know, than managing your own unit. You just have to put yourselves in the, the homeowner shoes, you know, and be able to provide them with, whether it be reports or different services to maximize their experience as a client. You know, we're trying to make this as hands off for these investors as we can. And that's been extremely helpful for them and, and us, you know, but having that, that foundation built out with our own property, again, just kind of help lead the, the path into that.

That's cool. And setting them expectations. Because I've seen some of your properties obviously on your website, which, which I encourage everyone else to, to go to see view sorry, seamountain vacations.com and go and check out your properties because they're beautiful. And that's one of the things where when you're then managing other people, you've got to say, hey, you know, I need you to be at this, this standard, which, you know, by being at this standard, I can then get you this sort of income and will then most importantly, get good reviews, which then brings more people and the cyc. Obviously you're doing very well there, which is cool. What, what challenges have you had along the way so far, Buck?

You know, the, one of the biggest challenges has been imposter syndrome. You know, kind of just getting to the point where I'm at now and just being like, okay, well am I, am I worthy of this? You know, is, is this me that, overcoming that has been one of the biggest struggles, you know, and trying to step out of my comfort zone and do things like this very, very introverted guy. So just, you know, Just comes back to the imposter syndrome. Everything else has been easily worked through as far as the hosting journey is concerned. You know, you just, you learn from trial and error.

Let's talk about your tech within the business. What top pieces of tech do you love to use on a day to day basis?

Does my, does my boostly website count?

It definitely does.

Yeah.

You can give that a mention. Thank you.

Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. So beyond that, integrating the Schlage smart locks has been really, really cool. Just again working remote, you know, just having the, we got it connected to hospitable. So when somebody, when somebody books it sets the code for the last four digits of their phone number, you know, and we just have somebody kind of roll in and out of there just to, to check that all that's in line and that just that smooth check in process. Guests absolutely love it. Beyond that like we utilize Rank Breeze to track our rankings and that's been extremely helpful and it's been a selling point being like, hey, all of our properties are on page one. So that's been really cool. And I mean really, we're just, we're implementing new softwares and technologies every day just trying to innovate and stay ahead of the game. So each step of the way we're figuring out something new that we like or something that we're going to take away and replace with something else. It's definitely been exciting. My favorite part has been the tech side of things.

It is exciting. And this with hospitality there's so many new tech as well. I mean all PMSs are pretty new. Did you mention a PMS? There was. Do you use a PMS currently?

Yeah. So currently we're working with guesty but transitioning into working with lmpm. Yeah, they have a really robust system that we're excited to start using.

This is the exciting thing about like say hospitality is that things are so new. PMSs in general are so new. Dynamic pricing software is still relatively new. You know that there's, there's all these tech and they're all coming together and it's, it's the most exciting space hospitality tech because all these things didn't exist 10 years ago. So what are they going to look like in 10 years time? You know, it's really going to be amazing. So thank you so much for spending your time with us to buck today. And thank you too. If you're listening in either on the live or on the Boostly podcast, come and join us on the hospitality community on Facebook if you want to keep the conversation going and with us or ask myself or Mark Simpson any questions. You can find that just by going to group searches and search Hospitality community, and we'll pop up as the top group there. So thank you again for listening and we'll see you on the next one. That's bye from me and bye for Buck.

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.