Pros and Cons of Documenting your business - FULL INTERVIEW WITH SALLY KEMBER

When did all of this come together? Why did you start doing it? Sort of explain.

Well, because as I said, I like progressives, so I've done quite a lot of training courses with them and one of them is actually a podcasting course and it was when Rob Moore was presenting it because I wouldn't really necessarily have thought of it otherwise. I do listen to them anyway and I don't know, just when you're in a group and you kind of got ideas bouncing off each other, I thought, well, what have I learned?

I.

What am I doing? I'm doing service accommodation. I think there's a huge gap between the learning and the doing. So I thought to help people, it would just be really good to do that. But I had been up and running for a year.

Okay, welcome, welcome, welcome everybody. This is the Boostly podcast on season six, episode eight or nine. Now, I do forget where we are actually in this, all this. What we're going to be doing tonight is I'm going to be chatting to Sally Kember. We're going to be talking all about documenting your business style, the pros and cons of doing so. I've been following and tuning into Sally's podcast, which is really good because like, what Sally's really good at is documenting her journey. So before we start, before we start going into a question, I just want to bring in sales. I just want to say hi and welcome. If you can just take a couple of minutes just to explain more about you, about your journey into short stay accommodation and service accommodation where you are in the world and just a little bit more. And yeah. Hi Sally, welcome to the show.

Hi, good to be here. Thanks for asking me, Mark. Yeah, sure. So I live in West Sussex and operate five service departments and Rent USA in Red Hill in Surrey in the southeast of the uk And I've only been doing it about a year and a half or a bit longer and it's completely new to it really came in through property, which I was new to until about two years ago really. So it's all been a learning curve and I'm actually an artist by vocation. That's my real thing that I really love doing. And in fact I do rent my art to our essay units as well. So my screen prints and paintings are on the wall.

So what made you get into property? Like you say you're a budding artist, you have been involved in that for quite a while. What was the other jump and what made you go down this route of short stay accommodation?

Okay, so really in Terms of, well, property. It isn't property at all, is it service accommodation? It's hospitality which is what you're in. But we did property training together as I say, just couple of years or so ago we started. Peter had done some property training before that but we were both keen to kind of look at ways to become more financially independent and service accommodation seemed like a good way to have a cash flowing strategy and you know you can combine it well with property as well, so. But I really like working with people and you meet all sorts of interesting people and I actually quite enjoy property as well but haven't done much else with it. There's lots of other things I'd like to do as well.

Touched upon it there. You've done a lot of training. Which one did did you go with and why did you choose to go with that company?

With Progressive Property we did basic kind of master class which was all about buy to let and just an intro into property because we have our own residential property and have done breeders but you know, just the whole business of, of being in property. We learned initially with them and then we carried on with them because I really like their ethos. Yeah, they have a, have a lot of really good trainers and very inspiring. We met loads of really bad people. You know, they're not just into property, they're into all sorts of really interesting things and there's a whole network.

What did you find was the biggest hurdle from doing the training to then actually getting in and getting started.

To be accountable was a good thing because we did like a three day training and then we did a mastermind for six months which was good. Finally we met some developers who were freeholders who've been going for quite a long time in our area and they are the guys we're still working with and they're brilliant. If we hadn't been accountable, I think it would have been easy to kind of drift off and not do anything.

Is there a large. From what you've seen and from other people that you've been on the courses with and kept in contact with and all the groups you may be a part of, have you seen the ratio of the people that go on the actual courses to actually do something? Is that high or is that low from what you've seen and from what you.

Probably fairly low in a way because some people are trying out see if they like the idea of it. They do their numbers and they think well no, I can't see it working. But from the mastermind I think actually a Lot of people did implement it. There are very few who didn't. I'd say that was really high.

You sort of went down different tactic of sort of documenting your journey, what you did well, what you did wrong, which I love that, by the way. Document the failures as well as the successes, and you just sort of brought it all in nicely. So go back to episode one or the planning stage you were at. What part of your journey were you on the course at this stage? Or is this the mastermind that you thought about doing this? When did all of this come together? Why did you start doing it?

Well, because, as I said, I like progressives, so I've done quite a lot of training courses with them, and one of them is actually a podcasting course, and it was when Rob Moore was presenting it, because I wouldn't really necessarily have thought of it otherwise. I do listen to them anyway, and I don't know, just when you're in a group and you kind of got ideas bouncing off each other, I thought, well, what have I learned? What am I doing? I'm doing service accommodation. I think there's a huge gap between the learning and the doing. So I thought to help people, it would just be really good to do that. But I have been up and running.

For a year and obviously when you. You've got the idea of a podcast and actually getting from A to B is a big step. But what was. What made you do that jump? What made you go, you know, okay, I'm just going to go for it, I'm going to put it out there. I'm to see what happens.

I really like helping people is my key thing. So I thought, well, I can't really do that if I hide somewhere. But I think what I was feeling would be valuable for people is for people who are fairly new or started quite recently that are going to help them. So what made me take the leap was really, there's no point doing all this training and wanting to help people if you just don't do it. So I just actually started doing Facebook lives in order to launch a podcast, because I thought, you know, with the podcast, you can just sit behind a microphone, can't you, and not be visible. But I thought, well, if I do a weekly live, then everybody will see what I'm talking about, what I'm doing in my business. So there's two things there. A, it means I'm saying I'm going to do a podcast, therefore I have to, because I'm doing Facebook Live. And then B, it means that, you know, I'm sharing information on what I'm doing in my business. So keeps me accountable and actually better in my business, I think, because I'm talking to people about it and it helps them.

What I like as well is that's repurposing content. So by going live on Facebook, you take that and explain to me the process. So you go live on Facebook and you do your episode. What are the next steps from them? Getting it where it's on itunes, for example, or insert podcasts.

Yeah, sure. We've got a platform called Omnistudio and I think you can have up to four channels on there. So you can either just record. So I've got a zoom recorder and you can have, you know, We've got a C1 microphone which looks like a traditional kind of microphone. So I tend to have that set up if I'm just at home or at the apartments or somewhere where I can set up the equipment as well.

You now just, I mean, so you've got this thing. Was it called Omnichannel? What was. Is that like a software?

Omni Studio? Yeah, Omni Studio.

So basically you record the episode, it goes straight into there and then it goes off and it appears on itunes.

Yeah, itunes, Stitcher and Spotify.

There you go. So yeah, you can be.

Oh, I'm on Spotify. Very exciting.

So on any Amazon, Alexa, you know, I discovered this the other day. The Boostly podcast is now on Spotify. So I was able to impress my seven, my six year old. Sorry, and my three year old by putting on the Boostly podcast, which was a lot of fun. So yeah, now you're there as well, which is amazing. And I say what I like about it. The way you do it is it. It repurposes content. So instead of having to go, right, so I'm gonna do a Facebook Live and I'm gonna record separate audio. Another task, another time. I can do this and you've got all of that. And then if you wanted to, then you could. So what I do is there's a really cool little app called Otter Otter IO Jessica Lorimer introduced me to this and this is a transcription tool. And what I then do with this is I run the podcast through there. It transcribes it all. So then we've got a blog post. So again, it's just repurposing content. So for those of you people who are watching and tuning in, and there will be a lot of people who don't know who Rob Moore is, can you just Give a little bit background of who he is and what he does. He seems like he's got things in a lot of pies with Property and podcasting and all the things that are going on. So just for people who don't know, just try and explain to me a little bit more about who Rob Moore is.

Okay. So he and his partner Mark Homer own and run Progressive Property and they have other companies, so unlimited success as well. And that's more of a sort of Amazon business. And he has a couple of podcasts as well, Disruptive Entrepreneur and the Money podcast. I've seen him speak at quite a few events because we've done mentoring with Progressive as well. As I say, you know, just to keep the kick up the backside to keep things going.

Did you do a lot of research into Rob and Mark before you went with Progressive, or was it a recommendation? How did you come to choosing them to be the one?

Probably lots of people watching, listening, have read Rich Dad, Poor dad, which we read a long time ago and did training with other people. So I also trade Forex, that's another thing I like doing. And I'm doing a thing with another guy, Dylan Denietzsche, which is market mastery at the moment. And that's all about not just creating wealth for myself and my family, but also people beyond that. So starting to contribute to sustainable UN goals and things like that. So more legacy creation. But years ago I did training with another company in Forex and I supported people in a group helping people. I was a bit involved in things and Pete did some property training, but kind of went a bit pear shaped. But my cousin, who's a bit younger than me, we got him into property and then he dragged Pete, my husband, off to Progressive for a discovery day, from which Pete rang me and said, we have to start learning properties. And that was a couple of years.

On that day, Pete firmly didn't have his hands on his bum. Bum on his hand. And he got started. Okay, cool.

I'm not really bad on sales, but I love shopping, so I do tend to.

Yeah, yeah, no, I totally get so. And it makes sense because this is where you are now and you've got, like I say, you've got the five properties, you've got lots of other things going on. And like I said, the podcast has been being part of that. So we've teased it long enough. What is your podcast? How can people find it? Do we have a link? How can people sort of find out more? There'll be lots of people watching this who May be at right at the very start of their podcast journey, but maybe people who are a year, two years in. But you know, podcasts are fantastic because they can listen to it in the car, you can listen to it, you know, in transport, you can listen to when you're doing the dishes. A great medium, part of contact content that you could listen to. So tell us a little bit more about the podcast. How can people find out more?

Okay, so my podcast, you can literally, we'll give the link, but you can literally search for service accommodation secrets on itunes. In there on your phone, just search it up or Stitcher or Spotify. And I think I'm on episode 36 or thereabouts. And I started off with an introduction to service accommodation, but then into different areas. Like, you know, people have trouble with different areas and suggested that they need help with pitching to agents, which I needed help with early on. So I know the downsides of, you know, how you can say too much, put them off or not say enough and things like setting up your service department and having different methods so you don't overspend, you know, inventory, things like that, researching areas, doing your due diligence so you know you're in a good area, the things that you need to have nearby and the type of client that you want to attract, you know, what kind of guests do you want? Do you want contractors, do you want sort of corporate or are you high end? All those kind of things. There's a lot of practical stuff to do with setting up. But then as you said, I have quite a lot of episodes where I'm just talking about what's happened in the.

Week, service to accommodation or property. And they, they go down this magical route and of, of service accommodation, rent to rent to SA as you call it. And it's like, right, amazing. We get the property, we do all the hard work, we get the sign off from the landlord, we do the property up and then it's, we have to get people in. And then it's like, okay, so where do we go? How do we do it? What do we do it? You've managed to get your first booking, you get your channel manager sorted, whoever that may be, you get listed on all the sites, you do all the work you need to get people through the door and then the hard work begins. And I think that's what people just do not understand is that when you get people through the door, that's not the easy bit, that's the hard part because anything can happen. And like you said, this is where you keep getting weekly content is because everything can happen. And this is what I love about your podcast, is that you document this and you show this and you put it out there in, you know, it's not heavily edited. You, you don't hide, you know, hide away from the things that aren't going well. You document it well. Which is what I love because my big problem with a lot of these salesy events is that they only sell the dream. They talk about passive income and this other thing that I've heard, no money down. And this is the thing that so many people don't get. And coming from a hospitality point of view and the hospitality community, which is my Facebook group, and is that every single day and every single week in there we have some called the Tuesday Rant and we talk about the things that go wrong. And there are so many things that go wrong. And this is why the inspiration for doing this whole series, talking to yourself and talking to so many people from this, from the accommodation world and the service accommodation world is just to sort of go, well, these are the sort of things that can go wrong and these are the sort of things that property people can, can do and learn from, from the hospitality. But like I said in other episodes, there's so many things that people in the service accommodation do so well that hospitality people can learn from as well. So before we leave, you've mentioned that you like to get feedback and you like people to contribute to future episodes and you do this for a Facebook group. How can people find that Facebook group?

So my Facebook group is Service Accommodation Secrets group and people can ask to join it because I did by mistake add people, which is a big no no, isn't it? But I do also have a page with the same name, Service Accommodation Secrets, but all just search up my name because I post property stuff on my own page and service accommodation stuff on my own page.

So that's the best place to start. We've go to Sally Kember, go into Facebook search, type that in. If you're listening to this on the podcast and you want to find out more, go to facebook.com type in the search Sally Kember and she'll come up and then from there you'll be able to find the group, the podcast, pretty much anything you want. So, Sally, thank you so much for coming on today. Really, really appreciate it. Find out more about Sally. Please, please, please head over to Facebook, type in Sally Kember Kenbury's thank you so much for listening today. This is being podcast episode 8 of series 6 of the Boosley Podcast. All I ask is that if you've enjoyed this episode, you head over to itunes, you go get one of those lovely five star reviews or wherever you are, listen to it, go and hit the review button. If you want to find out more, go to boostly.co.uk podcast Like I said, this is episode eight. We've had seven other episodes in this series. You can go and listen back to Elaine Watt where we just talk about networking. We've got David Dyack where we talk about growing your service accommodation business. We've got David and Amanda Healey, part of SK Angels, talking about outsourcing. Right back to number one with Jason Living, where we talk about the basics. And then Trish McGeer, episode two where we talk about how to approach landlords and she gives you an actual script on how to do so, which is even, even better. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week where we have got episode nine coming up. And if you've got any feedback, if you want anybody that you want me to feature on these podcasts, please let me know. Come over to Facebook, facebook.com BoostlyUK Send me a message and I'll see what I can do. Thank you very much for tuning in and I'll speak to you all very, very soon. Just let me know.