Practice What You Preach: The Story of a STR Business Coach

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the Boostly Podcast. This is a podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence for you to go out there and get yourself some more direct bookings. Today we're diving behind the host of a successful host themselves. They're also a coach. So we're kind of looking at spotlight on their business. We're also diving into their hospitality experience and the reason we're doing that is to highlight their business, some of the awesome stuff they're doing. And so you can put some of that stuff perhaps into your business. If it works for them, it can work for you too. So let me introduce, we've got Amanda Stetka. She's the, she's a holiday rental owner, of course, and a property business coach from Unique Cotswolds Cottages and Holiday Litology. So we're going to find out exactly what that means, what that is, and yeah, let's welcome her along. Thank you for joining me, Amanda.

Hello. Thank you for inviting me.

So, Amanda, give yourself the elevator pitch. What is it you do? And tell us what you'd like to tell us about the business.

Sure. So first of all, Unique Cotswold Cottages. So we are a, I'm the founder of that company, we have five owner managed holiday cottages in the Cotswolds and we are particularly targeted at couples and their dogs and they're all very high end. So it's a kind of luxury stay in the Cotswolds. And the reason why I focused on that market is that when I did my research and I was starting out around five years ago, I could see that there was a real lack of smaller properties that just targeted couples. And so it felt like a really good place to start. And budget wise, it meant that I could start off buying a couple of properties in a couple of different parts of the Cotswolds and get going quickly with that target audience. So that's one side of the business and that's grown pretty quickly, I think within four years I've built it up to five properties. I'll be looking to purchase another one next year and the aim is to keep growing that. And then the other side of the business is the coaching business, which I actually started in the pandemic because we, as lots of us were, or in fact all of us, we had to close our properties a few times. In my case, it was three times over the pandemic. And so I had a bit more time on my hands. My background is training and coaching and marketing. And so I Decided to combine that and set up holiday litology. And the reason why I did is because when I started, I didn't feel there was much help out there. I mean, there is a bit more now, but, you know, Mark was one of the few voices at the time that I started and you know, Bruce Lee. And so I felt really stuck when I started. I didn't know how to set my pricing, how to, you know, set up the property effectively, how to market it. And I feel that I made my biggest mistake was I put myself on the books of a very expensive booking agent who promised the world, but in fact sold me very cheaply. Was very much interested in volume of sales and rather than value of sales. And I very quickly realized once I'd started with them that I could actually do it better myself. And during the pandemic when I had the time to develop the coaching business, I'm now able to provide that support to others.

What I love about this is, first of all, you're teaching people from experience. You've gone off and done it and you teach people from experience. But also there's so many other hosts, there's people listening to this right now who are in exactly that same position where they just don't know what to do or where to turn. And we were all about obviously taking that power back, whether or not that's taking it back from the OTAs, you know, people like Airbnb and booking.com or taking it back from also the agents. Because at the end of the day, the more control that each of us as individuals have got over our business, the more choice and, you know, the better business decisions we can make. So just talk us through the, the Cotswolds is, is it somewhere where you go on holiday or somewhere where you live? What, what made you choose? The Cotswolds.

So the Cotswolds is in sort of heading towards the southwest part of England. It's really beautiful. It's this beautiful honey colored stone and it's, and it's, it's quite, there's a lot of history there. So it's a beautiful part of England, beautiful part of the world. And we get a lot of visitors to the area. My partner lives in the Cotswolds and so when I, you know, so I got to know it. I'd visited it over the years, but I got to know it a lot more when I, I met my partner. And so it felt like an obvious choice to actually then start buying property there. So I now split my time between London, where I live with my family, and when I'm not with my children, I'm in the Cotswolds with my partner.

That's awesome. And just given us a brief history about yourself, you mentioned you were in marketing and that side of things. What were some of the transferable skills that you've used for doing holiday letting in general, and what are some of the skills you think that people should have or certainly work on to do what we do?

So I think the biggest. The biggest thing I would say is thinking about guest service and guest experience, because I had worked. I'd worked in marketing, I'd worked for advertising agencies, and I'd also worked within lots of different big financial organizations like Barclays and all sorts of big ones. And when I worked in agencies in particular. But even when I was at Barclays and we were thinking about the. The end user, the client, it was all about making sure that you gave the best experience. And I, I've taken that into unique Cotswold cottages, and I very much teach it because the business is underpinned by reviews, and it's a very quick and obvious way for potential guests to check you out. And so if you go that extra mile for that, those guests, if you make sure that those amenities that they're going to desire are there, and if you give them information and great communication, then they are more likely to rave about you, and that drives bookings. So I feel that that was a big thing. I was also very numbers focused in my. In my, you know, job. I had, you know, I was working with big marketing budgets and having to deliver and make sales. And so I'm very numbers focused in this business. So whenever me or any of my clients are thinking about setting up a property, we. We start with the forecast. And, you know, has it. Has it got potential as a holiday rental? Is. Are we risking our money? Because at the end of the day, these are really big investments. You know, it's a lot of money, so you've got to get it right. It's, uh. So that's the other thing. And then I'd say the third thing is thinking about the promotion of the property. So, like you mentioned, direct bookings, how to, you know, when you're on Airbnb, how to make sure you're top of the first page rather than the bottom of the fifth page so that you are getting that visibility. Um, so the combination of all of those things I brought into the business and then the rest of it, I, I learned, like, lots of people, people, you know, lots of, you know, listening to podcasts like this one and trial and error. Once I started working with clients, obviously that collaborative, you know, that, you know, we all learn from each other, obviously I'm leading the way but you know, the clients learn from each other and I learn from them.

And you've reminded me of a quote which is if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. And this we're learning and being part of, you know, getting coaching and actually going out there and finding out what you don't know, what you don't know that you don't even know.

Yeah.

Is all part of it. One of the things which, which I'd love to ask is we've mentioned that, you know, you can take the power back from agents. What would you say to people who are in that situation of going, well, do I put it when I first start, should I put it with an agent for a little while or should I just, you know, should I dive straight in or what kind of advice would you give to the host listening who's in that situation?

So the big fear when hosts start in, in my opinion is how am I going to get bookings? I just don't know how. And it's going to take all of my advice. These are the two worries because often people start this business as a bit of a side hustle. They either, you know, they want to do it to create a retirement income or perhaps they've got a job and they want to invest some money and then they kind of eventually want to take it over. So that, so it's because of those reasons. Lots of people think, oh, I'll just put it with an agent, they know what they're doing and they'll get me bookings and I won't have to worry. In my experience and many of my clients experience, that isn't really the case in that often, you know, I always say those agents objectives are different to our objectives. You know, they often, they, they, for example, some, some of them get 40 pound or 50 pound a booking fee so they're interested in volume and just selling as many bookings. Whereas we want to get high value bookings and we need to trade off occupancy with how much you're charging. So I would say if you get yourself tied up with an agent, you're also often tied up for a lot longer than you think. It's, it's often around 18 months before you can leave. So I would say actually you can do this. There is enough support out there. You know, there's some free stuff, there's some paid stuff, but there really is support out there. And actually, if you don't run your own business, how do you know? How do you know how you know whether you could earn more? How do you know that, you know that your guests are happy? How do you know how to get bookings year round unless you actually do it yourself? So I would say ditch the booking agents, ditch those huge commissions which really are, you know, huge. You know, you've got to add VAT on and booking fees and sometimes there as much as 25, 30% and do it yourself, because that money could be going into your own pocket. And in my own case, I worked out with my one small first property, it cost me about 8,000 pound in commission and discounted bookings in my first year.

The funny thing is that anything that an agent can do, individuals can do, the technology is there. You know, there's all these different tools, there's, there's the knowledge out there. It might take a couple of hours of time and learning and doing that, but for £8,000 in this case, you know, I mean, it's quite an easy trade off, isn't it?

If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boostly and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only your niche, but could be in your location as well. Boostly has helped over 2000 hospitality businesses all over the world increase their direct bookings. And if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boostly. B O O s t l y.co.uk call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team.

So you mentioned numbers. What numbers should somebody be aware of to be tracking when they're first getting going?

Yeah, that's a really good question. So one of the things that we. One of the key measures is occupancy and also nightly rate, because those are the things that you can change quite easily. So you reduce your prices massively and increase your occupancy. But then there's that saying, you know, turnover is vanity and profit is sanity. And you just have to be really careful with that because I often see on the Facebook groups, oh, I'm booked up all the way through next year already. And I think, well, you're definitely going to be too cheap then? And you, you know, actually with, with mortgage costs rising and the cost of utilities rising, you probably find that your margins are much tighter than you really realize. So that's really important. And getting that balance between occupancy and nightly rate. And actually, according to the stats that I see on Airbnb, with my properties, we be other people on boats, so my properties get a higher occupancy and also a high nightly rate. So that's a big one. In terms of the bigger picture, return on cash invested is a really good measure because with return on cash invested, what you're looking at is how much money have I put into this? And then how much money net am I getting out? And how does that compare to if I just put it in the bank? And particularly. Yes, exactly. You know, when, when it was low interest rates, you probably would have got nothing in the bank. Now interest rates are a bit higher, but inflation's really high. So if you had 100,000 pound in the bank, you know, every year you're losing 6 or 8,000 just in inflation. So understanding that is, is, is really useful as well.

At the start, you mentioned that you realized that in your area there wasn't enough, in your gold mine area in the Cotswolds, there wasn't enough accommodation just for couples. How did you identify who you wanted to serve? And the second part of that question is, how important was it for you to have somebody who you've identified who you want to serve? You know, how has that helped your success?

So when I start working with clients and I work with people who, some, some clients haven't got a property, but they want to buy one. And other clients have already got a property, but they're, maybe they're with an expensive booking agent or they're just starting and they, you know, they're about to, to sort of start setting up a launch and they suddenly realize this is quite a big job here and I could make some real mistakes. And I always say to them, start from the point of view of your ideal target guest. Because if you start from that place, it's so much easier to then look for properties because you're not looking all over the place. You're not looking at all different types of properties. You're focused on one. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is, for me personally, I had, you know, I had some budget restrictions. I also wanted to make sure that it was manageable from my point of view of, you know, not, not me doing the the housekeeping, but me, you know, being able to connect with, you know, get purchase things. All those reasons it made sense to go for this smaller market. And I also did research as well.

It sounds like it's, I mean, identifying your target guest is, is the place to start. And I know often when people first go into this again, well, anyone with money. But you need to go that step further, don't you? To really, I understand the demand because that's going to have a big effect on your success. You, you mentioned that the, that you can help people identify if their, if a property would be successful in general. Is there any, without sharing the secret sauce, is there any tips that you can share on this podcast for the people listening who are considering a particular property?

Yeah. So one of the things that people often say to me is, well, I look on Airbnb at what other people are charging and I look at how booked up they are and my pushback on that is. But how do you know that they are getting it right? And in my experience, lots and lots of hosts are not earning anywhere near the kind of income that they could do because they haven't got their pricing right and they don't have a strategy and a plan for low season, high season, mid season, you know, weekdays, weekends. And so, so that's, that's one thing that I would say is make sure that you are looking in the right places to understand whether or not this is the right kind of property or right kind of area. Yeah.

And can you share where those places are out of interest?

So I do, I just. One of the suggestions that I make to, to hosts is don't just look at other Airbnb owners or on Airbnb. Look, you know, if you're, if you're looking at, for example, couples, then look at what the hotels are charging in your area. Not just any hotel, but you know, if you're going for the high end market, look at those high end boutique little hotels or the little pubs that have got a room above because your offerings much better than theirs because you've got space and you've got a kitchen and you might have some outdoor space and you might have parking and they might not. And so you want to look at what they're charging. And also hotels have huge amounts of information. You know, they do their due diligence and their research in order to decide whether to set up in an area. So if you've got a hotel that has been around for a while, it's good quality, you know, it's busy Then you know that that's got real potential in terms of an area.

Yeah, I think that's a great tip. I mean, hotels, before they build a hotel, they spend a lot on research, don't they? So looking at what they're doing in the market they're going after suggests there's a market in that area. What kind of tech do you use to help run the holiday letting business? Is there any, if we say that the top piece of tech or top few pieces of tech, what do you use?

So the first one is obviously a property management system. And I didn't, I didn't initially, you know, I just, I just sort of started and you know, Airbnb and then I wanted to do bookings and then I had to sort of set up a website and I built my own website, which I'm still running actually. And then I was like, okay, now I need to connect the website up to, you know, initially people could only book directly with me if they sent an email and said, you know, I'd like to book then, and then I'd send them a price. And it was all very, very slow and long winded and limiting. But eventually I set up with a PMS again during the lockdown when I had some time. And I think that's, that is the, the biggest and best tool to help you grow as a, as a property investor and holiday rental entrepreneur is, is connecting to a good pms. And the good ones, you can do all of your communication through it. You have a central point of contact for your, for your pricing. You've got a central point of contact for all of your availability. So it makes it much easier to manage as well.

What advice would you give yourself if you could go back to the start when you first get and go and what advice would you have for yourself?

That's a really good question. And I think the biggest mistake that I made was to launch with booking agent. So when I started in, I started in August, so high season in the Cotswolds. And the person who I met was, you know, they were really lovely, very impressive and they said, oh, do you want to do a discount on your pricing? This is what we think the price and you want to discount because, you know, you're just starting out. And I said, if that's what you advise, yes. So we started with a 25% discount. In the middle of August I launched, I got the property finally ready on the Friday. I went on holiday on the Saturday and I was on holiday and I was getting ping, ping, ping, and just all these bookings coming through and I just thought wow, that's amazing. But it was 59 pound a night for a re, you know, for a property that I'd refurbished with, you know, with a garden and parking and everything else in the Cotswolds, it was, it's a beautiful little property. And I just thought, you know, but I didn't know, I didn't know that that was, was not right. And now that same property, five years later, we're averaging almost £200 a night, 197 pound a night. And that's me setting the pricing. So I think that's, that was my biggest mistake and that's the thing that I would do differently in order to move faster, maximize my income, be able to have that income in order to buy other properties.

100 and that is what we're talking about. That ties in nicely with the pricing because everyone could be at 100% occupancy. Right. If we all lower our price to really low. And this is why when people are looking around at places going oh you know, they're, they're almost 100% booked. Yeah, but what's their price? Are they undercharging for, for their product? And that, that comes with experience, coaching and everything like that.

Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the two boostly books that we brought out, the Book Direct Playbook and the Book Direct Blueprint are two of the top rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon for just two pounds. You can grab both of those books right now. The foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the blueprint and then for 101 marking tactics that is in the Playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon now just type in Book Direct Playbook or the Book Direct Blueprint and we'll see you on the other side.

And that brings us nicely onto to the coaching that you do. So talk us through. Who do you help the most? And yeah, talk us through how you help them.

So I help people who want to grow their income from holiday rental and don't know how. I guess that's a good summary. And some people don't have a holiday rental yet. They want to get into the market. Sometimes they own buy to lets and so you know, long term lets but they, they want to invest in, in this area in the short term rental business and sometimes they have a property already but they're with an agent and they don't, they just aren't making enough Money. So they're the people I hope help. And I have a range of different ways to help. My main offering that I bring to clients is coaching. And we do small group coaching regularly. Every single week. I'm available for small group coaching and there's a one to one element in there as well. And that small group, it really accelerates the client's learning because they're learning from each other's successes and failures. And you mentioned earlier that you don't often know what you don't know, you don't know what questions to ask. So hearing other people on the journey at slightly different stages really helps with accelerating the learning. So I've got that program, I've got a video only program and then I've just recently launched another program just focusing on Airbnb and how to maximize your income from that.

Nice, nice. And at the end of the day, I encourage everybody who's listening to this to really go out there and get some coaching, especially getting started. Because there's some people out there who go, well, you know, I don't want to have to pay for coaching, but you're going to pay one way or another. You're either going to pay through time and experience and that'll probably cost you more than actually paying somebody and being part of groups where there are people ahead of you. And yeah, it's just something which I've found certainly in my life by paying for coaching, I always learn something and also by paying for it, you're more likely to get something from it. If something's free, you, you often don't value it as much. Whereas if you've paid some money for the coach and you go, well, I want to make a return on that money, you know, as hard earned money, I want to pay for it and so I want a return on it. So that's, that's really good to hear.

Yeah. And a couple of client examples. I've got one client who came to me, she has a property on coast, so it's quite seasonal and she had put it with an agent, sort of quite a local ish agent. And she had all the problems in the world. You know, they gave, they gave her a cleaner and the cleaner, the housekeeper, wasn't very good, so she had problems with guests and everything else. And then the year that she was with them, she bought in 20,000 turnover. And then the, when she started working with me, she started working with me in the following March. And that year she brought in 29, 000 pound turnover.

So what's that 50% more? Almost, yeah.

And the following year, which is this year, she is now at 40,000 turnover. So she has doubled her income from where she was when she first started. And so I can, you know, I know that I've really helped her and what she's paid me is way less than that, you know, you know, significantly less. So I know in real terms actually getting that coaching has made a difference to her. I've got another client who bought a property of somebody that had been housekeeping for me in the Cotswolds. She approached me and said, look, she had a little apartment and she said, do you know anybody who wants to buy? And one of my clients bought it and she gave him all of her income for the year before, month by month. And in the first four months that he was running, he actually beat that income every month. And it totaled, I think in four months, about £3,000. And I had always felt like we chatted a bit. She was, she was my housekeeper, so we chatted a bit. And I'd always known that she wasn't quite getting it right and there was, you know, opportunity there. And, and so he's brought in, you know, grown that income just in that short time by using the strategies and the systems and the approaches that I take teach on my program.

It's one of those things where once you know how to do it, then you can. They say, I mean, to double the income from a property is amazing. And so you can't take, you can't take a single property and just go, oh, this will definitely do this. It's how you do it. You know, it's the, the systems and the methods, you know, processes and that is the important thing to learn, isn't it? So what does the future look like for you?

So I think I mentioned that I'm. I plan to buy my next property next year and I plan to keep growing and using the equity in my properties to continue to grow. Having said that, I, I try and teach a. Not, I try not to teach a very high risk strategy. So I always make sure that there's plenty of equity still in the property so that if there is, you know, a big slump in the market or, you know, in, or mortgage rates went even further up, you know, that there was some fat in there, if you like, so that I could manage the portfolio and make sure that I'm not, I'm not losing out or, you know, or worse. So to steadily grow the offering or the ownership of those properties is the plan. And then on the coaching side, next year I plan to bring in some new, some support coaches who can help my clients, specifically around technology and then also around growing and expanding the business as well into a multi property offering. So perhaps if they were, you know, wanting to become property managers. Nice.

Well, I'm sure there's going to be lots of people listening to this who will want to get in touch and we're going to be sharing your details and how to come and find out more in just a second. But before we do, just a quick couple of fun fire questions. So who would you go and see? Any artist, living or dead, who would you like to see musically? A concert?

That's a good question. So I love Ed Sheeran. So I was bought tickets to go and see Ed Sheeran last year and that was amazing. But the person I really admire just as an all round performer is JLo. And the reason for that is she's similar age to me. She's in her, I think she's in her 50s. She obviously looks absolutely amazing but she has been around for a really long time and she has pivoted in her career. So she was a dancer then a singer and she's now, she's a really good actress as well. And I just, and she's got longevity. She's still around in an incredibly fickle business and she's, you know, she's a minority, you know, from a minority group. You know, she's just a incredibly, you know, just achieved such incredible things in her career. So I really do think, you know, she's great.

That's awesome. 2 Answers We've not had before. So thank you for that, Amanda.

Right.

What do you do for fun when you're not doing the coaching, the holiday let. What do you do for fun? And, and who do you, who's the loved ones that you, you, you do that with?

So for fun I actually play five a side football.

Nice.

And I didn't expect that. No, I know, I, that's like, that's right. And most people don't. So I've been doing. I didn't start. I was in my mid-30s and I actually set up the football team. I got a friend of us to start coaching us and so it's been going for over 20 years. We play every single Tuesday, Wayne or Shine. The only date we are not playing this year is the 26th of December because that's obviously Boxing Day.

Hangover day.

I call it hangover day. We have, we play outdoors but we play undercover. So it doesn't matter if it's snowing or whatever, as long as we can get there. So that's a really great passion of mine. I just, I love it. I love the fitness, the team spiritness, the, you know, the fact we have to communicate so well on the pitch. You know, it's great fun. And the other thing is that the players are from all different walks of life and all ages, from sort of 20s right through to 60s, so we really get to know people that I wouldn't have ordinarily got to know.

Nice. This is why I love these kind of questions. You find out stuff that you wouldn't necessarily find out in other interviews over podcasts. So I'm going to throw the mic open. How can we find out more?

Right. So a simple way to find out more is to go to successfulholidayletting.com information and on there there's some options for free information that you might want to get. So there's a webinar that you can listen to which tells you a bit more about the business and me and, you know, present some solutions to you. There's also some free guides in there on how to maximize your income and your visibility from some of the OTAs as well. There's all sorts of free stuff, so I'd say that's the simplest place. And from all of those, you can book a call with me or somebody in my team to have a chat about how we might be able to help you grow your income.

Amazing. Thank you so much for your time today, Amanda. And thank you too for listening to this on the Boostly podcast or however you consume in this. All those links and many others will be around however you're consuming this media. So you can click on those and go and check out Amanda's stuff. And yeah, thank you, Amanda, for spending your time with us. I've really enjoyed this, especially for people who are really in that position of going well. I just don't know. I want to get started and really take those first few steps. Has been amazing. So thanks you for coming along and being on the Boostly podcast.

You're very welcome. Thank you.

Thanks very much. We'll see everyone on the next one.

Thanks.