THE BOOK DIRECT VIRTUAL SUMMIT - DAY ONE

One welcome one and all. If you are with me, please do say hi. If you can see me, if you can hear me, I want to know. Please leave a hashtag live in the comments. Let me just double check on my phone to make sure that we are here. It's Wednesday. Facebook has not been kind to me this week with these live videos. Sometimes it goes live in the group, sometimes it doesn't. I think I can see myself in there, so let me just turn the volume up. I think we're good. All right, everybody, then let's get started because this is jam packed. We've got a lot to get in this evening. Thank you very much for everybody that is tuning in live. For those of you that are going to be on the replay, leave a hashtag replay. If you're live, leave a hashtag live. It is currently 5pm our UK time on Wednesday 25th September. So wherever you are in the world, if you're in eastern time, so New York, that sort of area should be 12pm for you. Central Time, obviously over in Los Angeles, a little bit earlier, we've got people tuning in from New Zealand. So it's very early in the morning on your Thursday. Wherever you are in Europe, Dubai and everybody else, please let us know where you are tuning in from. Give your business a pitch and a promote and a shout out because you never know where your next future guest may be watching. And let's get started. First and foremost, I just wanted to give a big shout out to one of our speakers. There was a little bit of a tech snafu yesterday and that meant that his video couldn't be part of our Tuesday sessions. Mr. Sean McGregor. So he sent me it, he. He uploaded it, sent me it and we were able to get it up in the group this morning. Obviously this is day three, so I shouldn't really have to show people where to go, but I will because I know that we've got a lot of people joining us for the first time. But if you come into the group, the Facebook group, the book direct virtual summit, Facebook group, scroll on down. So if you scroll on down here and it is sat right here, let me just hit the refresh button so you'll be able to see it. Obviously. This is me now. Hello, hello, hello and hello everybody. Which is great. If you scroll on down a little bit, you'll see Sean's video, which is, which is in there. Now let's get properly started. As you are jumping in, what I would love for you to do is give me a number between 1 and 10. Okay, for spin the wheel. And I'm going to bring back the wheel today after a couple of people have asked for it. We're bringing back the wheel. The wheel is here. So over on this corner. I'm going to bring it in. Right, Give me a number between 1 and 10 in the comments. We're going to do that soon. But before we do today's, I got to announce the winners of yesterday's. Now I said there was two ways to enter. Number one, we got, we've got the old AI bot up with us and the AI bot picked out number three. I've got a winner there. And also I said that I would get an AI chat to pick a winner if you just left a comment. Yesterday we had 500 comments and the AI picked Zoe Gilding. Zoe Gilding, you won. And look. And the comment that it picked was I love flower seeds idea, which is. Love it. I love that one. So you win, Zoe, can we all just please say well done Zoe. Say tag Zoe in in the chat, let her know that you won. But you win one year membership to the Accommodation Professionals Network by Ibooked Online, which is Bart Sobeys, who's one of our speaker today, which is fantastic. So you've won a year of that, which is fantastic. And the other winner is Terry Hoach. H O E C H Terry has won a chance to be in the next hospitable host book, which is fantastic. Jody Odlin who is a speaker today, gave up that prize, which is great. I've shared all the contact details with Bart and I've shared all the contact details with Jody. So they'll be reaching out independently now, bearing in mind it is very early in the morning over in Australia, so give them a chance to have a coffee and then they'll be in touch, which is great. So let me give you a little sneak peek of what the prizes are that I'm going to be announced tomorrow that you can win with this Spin the Wheel. So number one, if you leave a comment between now and the next three hours you could get a stand to win a chance. But also we're going to do Spin the Wheel. So get your numbers and I can see loads of people doing that one to 10. Now one of the winners is going to win a one on one session with Laura Muse, the fantastic Laura Muse who spoke yesterday. And that session hit home for a lot of people, which is great. And then the second prize is going to be very cool. It's going to Be a ticket to the Hospitable Hosts Conference Summit big event that's going to be in Colorado in April 2025. You're going to get a ticket totally free for that. It's worth a lot of money and Jody is very kindly given away that prize so you could win that. And it will be announced tomorrow. But all you need to do is leave a comment in the next 24 hours. Leave a comment. And we're going to do spin the wheel as well. So last chance to get your numbers in. Give me your lucky numbers between 1 and 10. 1 and 10. 1 and 10. 1 and 10. The rules are simple. If this wheel spins and if it lands on your lucky number, it doesn't mean that you automatically win. No, no, no. What it means that you need to do is you need to send me a message on Instagram, Ostler uk. B O O S T L Y uk. Say, hey, Mark, today I was lucky number. Boom, whatever the number is. And make sure you put Wednesday. All right, let's do this, shall we? You've got your last chance to get those numbers in. Last chances, last chances, last chances. Here we go. Oh, no. Oh, no. It's oh.

Oh.

Lucky number one. Lucky number one. If you did that, you know what you need to do? Send me a message over on the Instagram. And now, before we, before we get going, let's just quickly have a look at who is speaking today. So we've got the fantastic Jacob Murphy, we've got Julie George Bats obese, Jody Odlin, Matt Met Ross. We've got a Boom special presentation. Kenny is joining me any minute now for a really cool session debunking the myth around Airbnb super hosts, which is a really cool session. I hope you all looking forward to that. And also at 8.30pm today UK time. So in 3 hours and 24 minutes, Maddie from Mount Jeff and Jen from host GPO are going to be joining me for a roast. Your listing live special. We've got two listings that have volunteered themselves to be roasted. But the back the, the, the sort of the theme around it, it's going to be infotainment, but the theme around it is also to give advice so everybody can, can take it on board. Don't forget, tomorrow in the group is a get it done day. I'm going to be posting several times throughout the day. I may or may not open up a zoom room so we can have an accountability zoom room group. If you would like for me to do that Zoom room, just put hashtag Zoom Room. If we get enough people, then I will do it a couple of times throughout the day. We'll, we'll see. Got a lot going on tomorrow, but I'd be, I'm interested to see how tomorrow goes. But without more being said, let's get today cracking, shall we? Thank you everybody that is joining me live. Thank you to everybody that's watched on the replay this week. Thank you to not only the speakers, but to the sponsors as well. We literally couldn't do it without you. And again, thank you to everybody who spoke yesterday. All of the sessions went down really well and I'm excited to get going again today. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to come back here, I'm going to have a little 30 second countdown, I'm going to get Kenny, Kenny Bedwell from STR Insights in with me, and we're going to do a special little session all about busting the Airbnb super host myth. Now, if we're ready, leave me a hashtag ready in that chat and we can get going. All right, everybody, see you in 30 seconds. This is a freestyle going off the done. Ready for my close up. Good looking, let me tell you. Get more bookings. Oh, that'd be nice. Giving me tips, tools and advice. Yeah, you're gonna get them, hon. You're gonna sit back, listen to Mark Simpson. Whoa, having a blast. Gonna get it on the boosli pod come pass Bruce Lee like Bruce Lee cuz it's so hard and the tea is loose leaf making up those rhymes. Don't write it, just do it loosely. If you want my respect, you're better but direct. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next. All right, everybody. So a couple of months ago, well, every three months I used to see posts online from hosts. Airbnb hosts short term rental hosts and they are showing off their super host badge and the super host badge. I've said this for a long time and I do a post every three months with this about saying how it is just very clever marketing. And the post that I put out is meant to be thought provoking for a reason because it gets people engaging but changes people's mindset. You know, half the comments are, I agree, half the comments are, you're an idiot because. But then one of the comments was from the chap who is on my right and he comes with data, right? And this is the cool thing, is that I can make up things on the spot, but he actually comes with the data to Back it up. And I said, right, we need to get this on a video that'll be put out through the summit and we can reuse it for time. So Kenny, thank you very much. This is the video that we said we're going to do months ago. For everybody who's watching at home, just give a quick background on yourself, your company and then let's come on to jump in with these, these numbers and this data.

Sure, sure, sure. Thank you. Thanks for having me on, Mark. So my name is Kenny Bedwell. I'm the CEO of STR Insights. We're a data and consulting company. We help people find profitable short term rentals across the United States only. So no UK yet. Maybe one day, maybe we'll wise up one day and do that. But I live in New York and I'm also a short term real estate investor and that's kind of how I got involved into this data and, and helping people find deals. And so my goal is to help people find deals but also educate them on the data behind it to maximize and cash flow with their properties.

So fantastic. Okay, so you've obviously come at this from every aspect and like for those of you that are tuning in overseas, unfortunately is the US but who knows one day. But this data and this information that we're going to share is applicable and relevant to all. So first and foremost, where do you stand on the, on the superhost badge debate? Is it the be all and end all? Does it help boost rankings or is it just a shiny badge that they want to get people to post on online?

Okay, so generally speaking, 56% of all hosts are super hosts. So I don't really know how that makes someone like super when you're, it's like not even like it's like more than one, every two people is a super host, but it is.

But.

However, on the flip side, there is a positive correlation to a slight bump increase in revenue for super host because it's a filter in Airbnb. So anything that's a filter in Airbnb, you know, there's usually a correlation to increase revenue because people filter out properties don't have that. So for people who have amazing properties but don't meet the criteria of super host get, get dinged a little bit. And so it, it, it for me, I mean, is it the end all, be all? No, not at all. And I want to talk about guest favorites because that's a new one too. And, and I think that's actually a little more, it's interesting the New data we pulled from that. But end all, be all. No, but it is. It is important if you're gonna live and die by Airbnb.

So 56. Do we know. I know they said Roughly, there's about 7 million active listings. Do we know how many hosts, roughly, that they're there thereabouts on. On Airbnb?

Yeah. So there's about 4 million, like, true active listings. Maybe there's like 7 million, like, total. They.

They.

They don't really like they. So it's funny, Airbnb, I don't know if you call it lying or whatever, but, like, if you create a listing and then you, like, close it down and, like, start another listing, which you can on the same property, they count that as one, two listings, you know, and they kind of database those. So it's 7 million, like, total listings over a period of time. But I mean, it could be same properties or properties have been pulled out of service already many years ago. So that's something to keep in mind. But so you have about 4 million are actually active, you know, properties that people are, whether it's part time or full time.

Wow.

And going back to super host, what is the criteria at the present moment in time to qualify as a super host? As like, super host and various commas? What is that criteria? If we know.

Yeah, if we know that. I'm gonna get quoted on this one. So as far as I can recall, you had to have. I think you had to have at least 10 nights booked in a single quarter. Remember, it's quarterly. They come out. Or you had five reviews or something like that. Like five individual stays. So five individual stays, and you have to have a rating of a 4.7 or higher.

Okie doie. And that qualifies you for that. And we've got hosts that have got one property on Airbnb under one account, and we've got some that has got. Got plentiful now from all the data that you're looking at and, you know, obviously the people that you help and you work with and, you know, there's lots of people that are out there. Does it benefit? Let's just say me, I've got one account, I've got one Airbnb listing, but then I go and set up a second account. Say I somehow managed to do that, and I then put another couple of listings on there. Is that more beneficial or is Airbnb now trying to skew it to where you should only have one account and have all your listings on? That said, one account, like How's. How is Airbnb? How are people, like, sort of playing it to keep that ranking and rating high?

Yeah. So they definitely want you to keep it in the same. Same account. They don't want you to segregate it out, which is incredibly risky. So I'll give you an example. I had a guest.

I don't know.

I mean, they're obviously using AI to do this, but I had a guest one time, so I own properties, too, for those listening who don't know me. And I had a guest message me about their stay, and they were like, it was great, but we, like, found, like, a crack pipe on top of the fridge. And I was like. Like what? You know, and I didn't say anything about the crack pipe. But then, like, literally two hours later, my listing got. My entire listing account got frozen, like, shut down. And I'm like, what the heck? And so, like, I call Airbnb support, and they're like, yeah, like, it says something. Like, it's flagged, like, safety and all this other stuff. And I'm like. And the guy, like, he. He was kind of joking. Like, he found something that looked like a. Like a pipe, but it wasn't a pipe. And they had to get him on the phone to say that he was kidding to. To confirm, to open up my listing again. But literally it was shut down like that from, like, a guest kind of making a joke with me. It's like, what? But it's all under one account, so all four of my other listings were frozen as well. Like, that's the problem.

So it's. That's like a side topic. And I definitely, you know, I really do want to delve into this. I really, one day, and I would love to have somebody from ex Airbnb support or Airbnb support to try and be on the call with us here is that obviously with their purchase of an AI company, and they are obviously going down a route of bedding into more AI It. The problem with AI is that it doesn't take jokes. And, you know, this guy is obviously joking, but that one little slip of a tongue, it's hit the algorithm, They've suspended your listing. And what happens if you hadn't have seen it? What happens if you were just on vacation or a member of your team hadn't seen it and that listing had said suspended for X number of days? That's not just one list in that show. Whole account. Right, exactly. It's. It's. It's crazy. And you know what? There are so Many people, good people like you that this is affecting. I've. I've seen Danny Roostein, who was an ex Airbnb employee. This exact same thing happened to him and his account was shut down because of an emoji in a title. And, and you know, he had to go through all the rigmarole of calling and, you know, doing all the things to get it back. But. Right, we're gonna, we're gone a little bit off topic. So. Super host, 56% of all hosts are super, super. What's so special about that? But you're right that anything that is filterable will give you a bump. Now let's move on to the Guest Favorite badge. Now, what do you know about that? Obviously it's been around for a while now. And what are the stats sort of showing you from. From STR Insights Backend.

Yeah. So the Guest Favorite badge actually represents the top 20% of Airbnb properties based off of ratings and reviews. So not money, not performance, but ratings and reviews. So the average to be top 20%, you have a 4.85 rating and you need to have about 10 reviews to get a Guest favorite label. We've seen a few like, below that, but everybody else is pretty much above that to be a Guest favorite, it is a toggle as well. And so we have seen A, an 11% increase in average revenue for those who are deemed Guest favorites.

Is that done every quarter as well as the Super Host?

Nope, it's updated systematically. So it's just literally top 20% rolling as time goes on. So they don't say. It doesn't say, oh, you're top 20% just says guest favorite. But we did the math and we, and we realized that we all the ones that were Guest favorite, It was represent 20% of all listings. And then we looked at the characteristics of the ratings and reviews and saw like, okay, cool, you need to have a roughly this and that. So. And that's. It's the same thing for top 10, 5 and 1, which is actually labeled top 10, 5 and 1.

Crazy. But again, it's, it's. Anything that is fillerable, obviously is going to be a benefit to you. And I think a little side note when it comes to it, and again, we see these posts all the time. Always be checking your amenities and always be checking the things that you can add in onto, onto the Airbnb back end because they're adding them and changing them all the time. You've got to be sharp on this. And whether it's you or a VA or a member of your in house team, you've got to always be on it. So I guess the best way to sort of conclude or what we're talking about, bearing in mind the amount of years that you've been doing this now, the amount of listings that you look at, all the data that you view, if, if there's a host that's watching this and they're going, right, what should I be looking to tackle next? What, what should I be looking to do on this platform, on this Airbnb platform next? What would be like some little quick tips that you could just give to somebody that they can go and implement after watching this video?

Yeah. So Airbnb is really trying to force you to be on their platform. Right. So like if you are split between two platforms like vrbo, Airbnb, maybe even you have your own direct booking site and you're not getting reviews and ratings in Airbnb, they're gonna punish you, they're gonna ding you in the, the rankings and also, you know, like the algorithm and things, and they're just not going to promote your property because it's not considered reliable. So the biggest thing that I tell people when it comes to those kind of issues is you need to prove yourself your worth essentially to the algorithm, prove that you can make Airbnb money. So the best thing that you can do to do that is to get as many reviews as you can from your, you know, every single stay. So try meaning including your messages asking guests to leave your reviews. I even started, and here's a secret hack on how I got to 90% of my guests leave me reviews. Now I even started text messaging my guests. So a lot of people don't use the app, they don't communicate through the app. And I'll see guests that I'll send all these messages and they'll never respond, they'll never say anything. They come and stay and go and great, but they'll never get a review from them. I started texting them, hey, do you mind leaving me a review? Here's a link. And they leave me the review, making it more personable for them. And so my advice is make, you know, if you're going to be on multiple listing sites, you're going to have a direct booking site. That's great and you should do that. But Airbnb will punish you. So you got to reverse that by trying to get as many reviews as you can as possible when you do get a booking in Airbnb.

So one of the cool things with the sms, and that's a really cool tactic and tip is that there are some property management software tools, PMSS, that give you the ability to send an SMS. Some even give you the ability to send a WhatsApp. And it can all be set up automated. Because you're right. I know, personally speaking, when I've booked a stay on, on Airbnb, I don't even look at any of that information. Like, I know where we're going to be, we're going to time, we maybe we'll check it for gate codes, etc. But for the most part, we're not checking any of those. But if someone was to send me an sms, I'll go, oh, that's cool. That's different. Again, when everybody zigs, you zag. And that's a real cool way. But again, I think it all depends on where you are in your journey. If you're literally watching this right now, one property just on Airbnb, just focus on getting really good on that platform. And then as you grow and you expand in your career, then obviously you're gonna branch out, get, you know, direct bookings into your world. Multiple platforms, start to get the solid foundation in place. But, you know, we, we always say, we say it a lot here is, you know, you can't just bet on one thing, you can't just bet on one product like Airbnb. You can't just bet on direct. You've got to have multiple revenue streams coming in, and as you're getting going, you got to do where people are going to start off with. But by watching this summit, by hopefully tuning into more videos and checking out the quality content that Kenny puts out, you're at the start of that journey where you can start to get more bookings coming in from different platforms. But really interesting. Any other interesting stats that you've seen with Airbnb over the last year? Seeing it coming to the end of 2024, at the point of recording, is there, is there anything else that you have noticed, not just this guest favorite badges, Is there anything else that you're sort of keeping an eye on for yourself, for your own properties, or just for SDR insights?

Yeah, I'm always tracking the amenities, you know, and seeing like, okay, they've added these particular amenities to the check boxes. Once they add them, the check boxes, we can then really start seeing the data and the correlations. We run regression models and a bunch of nerdy data crap to see, like, what's gonna, you know, what are the results and what are we gonna get? And so I've really been. All the unique amenities they're adding is really fascinating and to see like what impacts they have on revenue. And so it's, you know, like things like bowling alleys and outdoor bowling alleys and things like that are actually really positive. And obviously there's a lot of other things that can impact revenue and I get that. But it's the, the amenities and, and saying I like what you said earlier, staying on top of those things because they're, they're adding more and more all the time and they don't tell anybody. So it's all sudden there.

It's madden it because you know, all of a sudden and you just see so many people on social media and in Facebook groups that are just adding in pickleball courts or they're adding, you know, mini golf courses in the back and it's, it's hard for a host to be able to focus on wherever attention lies. Especially let's just say you're in the management game. Do you go and add just a ton of properties or do you look at quality at the moment? It's, it's, it's a really hard sort of place to where you put your attention to. And this is obviously where a tool like STR Insights comes in because then you can, you know, you're not just going to make assumptions. You've got the data behind you that can prove it, but not just like on an overall USA level. You can dial it down to a state, a town, a city, which will give you some, some really good data that will be able to make up your decisions. So before I let you go, just give us a quick pitch. 1 minute, 2 minutes, however long you need, just to tell us about SDR Insights, what you've got coming up in the future and where can people go and find out more information.

Yeah. So I'll say this. If you are a US based investor or if you're even in the uk, I've actually, I've helped a couple of people from the UK and Europe invest in the United States. We have a service and this is really where we've pivoted to recently, Mark, where we help people find actual deals because that's, that's the real crux of the issue is great, I've got the data, but how do I take that data and find things that are going to make sense? And so I'm kind of pitching our services here and saying like we can help you whether that's getting you connected to our data or actually walking you through the entire process and helping you find deals or just doing it for you 100% for you. So if you're interested in that, you can check out our website, you can message me, DM me. We've got a solid team of deal finding experts who can help you know, what amenities add what, where to look, what markets, what markets aren't saturated. That's a whole nother topic to dive into. So where to, where to stay away from. Man, that's a fun reel to put out. People get offended on that one every time I do that stuff. So anyway, and where to actually go to. So that's our services kind of wrapped up there. So if you have any questions, feel free to DM me at Kenny Underscore Bedwell on Instagram or Kenny or Kenneth Kenny Bedwell on Facebook.

Amazing. Brilliant. And that's SDR insights.com that's SDR insights.com yeah, perfect. Kenny, thank you very much for that. Right back.

G', day, G' day from down under. Julie George here and coming to you from Brisbane in Australia. Mark, thanks for having me on and thanks for letting me talk about something that I guess some of us may not have considered in the short term rental game. We all know how exciting and what a cash cow this business can be and just how, how, yeah, how it can change our lives, get us out of our day jobs. But how many of you have thought even further ahead about selling your business? So today I want to walk you through what I call the ultimate payday and I'm going to share my screen and take you through a little presentation that I put together on my story of selling my business, my short term rental business. But just how you might be able to start considering that option as well. I know I hear a lot of you suffering from burnout or you know, the days that you've had enough of guests complaints or owner dealing with owner issues. You probably think about this quite a bit, but I want you to start seriously considering what the ultimate payday looks like and just what is involved in selling selling your business. Who are the buyers that are out there looking for a short term rental business? Is your business saleable? Does it rely solely on you as well? That's the other big thing that I often pose to my coaching clients and I ask them, you know, does have you created a job for yourself with your short term rental business or have you created a fully functioning independent business that you could hand the keys over to somebody else? So let's Jump in and yeah, look, I wanted start with my own story for those of you who are not familiar with me. Very briefly, 2016, I started my own short term rental property management business. It is no secret that I am in love with Airbnb. Mark and I often butt heads on this, but I just discovered a business where I could have turn an Airbnb property management into an absolute cash cow. 2016 started with my own property, then very quickly realized that a lot of other property investors are looking for something similar. They were looking to get more money out of their properties. They were looking to, they were curious about short term rentals, but perhaps they didn't have the time or the know how to do it themselves. So I put together a business called Host My Home. And it was a short term rental property management business, charging 25% commission, taking another person's fully furnished home, listing it on short term rental sites and charging a commission. Now within a few years, within three years I had 130 properties. We had turned over $8 million Australian in that time. And these two good looking roosters came along knocking on my door wanting to buy my business. Now my initial reaction was no way, don't touch my baby. I put all this effort into building my short term rental property management business. You can' have it. And that was my initial reaction. I went home and had a really good long hard think about this opportunity. At that stage, my book conveniently placed behind me here with Prime Position, Million Dollar Host had gone bestseller around the world. And this was 2019. I was getting opportunities to speak in the educational space. Much what I'm doing with you now, travel all over the world, get into Brian Chesky's office and no Mark, he doesn't have a dartboard with your face on it. But, but I was able to travel and I was able to educate others and I was finding that that's where my real passion lie. I the days of dealing with guests, dealing with homeowners, I don't know, I was kind of over it to be honest. And I just was looking for something more, you know. Yes, I had built up a successful business. Yes, I had a general manager running it. So I only had to be there 10 hours a week. But I, you know, the idea of having financial freedom, having an opportunity to go off and do my own thing, it was very attractive. So when I, the next day I decided that I was going to talk to a broker, a business broker and I listed my business officially with that business broker. And that was probably the biggest mistake that I made.

Why?

Because it cost me $10,000 to do so. Yes. She suggested that we put together a pretty brochure, a pretty prospectus and we contact maybe one or two other buyers in the market. Now we didn't make the pub, we didn't put it out to the public, but we actually went and approached a local real estate agent that had interest in starting a short term rental division but just didn't quite know how to do that. And so we went and approached them, they were interested, they made an offer as well. However, I suspected that that real estate agent was probably going to take my 130 property portfolio and perhaps turn that into a long term rent roll. So I wasn't all that keen. I went back to talking to the boys from home time that you see on the screen right now and those guys just really reassured me that they were going to look after my baby, they were going to keep the team as is, they were going to keep the name as is, they were going to look after the guests in a smooth transition. They were very smart. Now they wanted me to stay on for six months in a transitional role as a manager. So in fact what they actually were able to do for me was to pay up about two thirds of the sale price that I can't disclose, but wink, wink, nudge, nudge, it was pretty good and they were able to do that on the settlement date. But then the last third of the sale price was an earn out option and this was quite interesting. So for six months I worked with them and what we did is we went halves in the profit until I had earned out, earned the amount of money to cover my sale price. So really interesting concept, very smart by these guys. And part of the sale they gave me a big share portfolio in their company. Why was that smart? Jump in, put it in the chat. If you can think of why it was so smart of them to do that. For those of you who are still wondering, it is because that way I was not going to start another business in competition with them. Yeah, sure there was a non competitive clause in the contract and all that type of thing, but they don't hold a lot of weight, those non compete clauses. So by this, by doing it this way, giving me a share portfolio, it just secured things, reassured them that all is good. So I ended up selling to these two young guys here, Hometime, one of the biggest property management companies in Australia and they stood by their word, they were really fantastic, they looked after everything. However, three months after I left the company, so I did My six month period, three months later, Covid hit. Now, it could not have been better timing for me personally. Sucks to be them, sucks to be home time because unfortunately that 130 portfolio was reduced down to about 80 in the peak of COVID All right, But I guess what I am getting at here is it is possible. So I'm going to ask you, have you thought about an exit strategy? Have you thought that far ahead? Have you got a business plan in place? And this is something that I recommend my coaching clients to do. Maybe every six months, sit down and reassess your coach, your business plan. Have a look at yourself, your role in the business. Are you happy? Very important. Are you happy? Are you living the life that you had dreamt of? It's really important to get that spot on. If not, it is time to reassess and look at something else. But we need to look at your exit strategy. Very important question for you. I want to know, is your business self sufficient? Because they, this is not only for selling your business, but it is, you know, there's no guarantees in life if we go out and get hit by a bus tomorrow. And I'm sorry, but life, death, taxes, they're all guaranteed in life, in this world. But if you go ahead and get hit by a bus, what happens to your business? We want to make sure that you've got measures in place, your business is structured, your business is automated. Automated, not complicated is my theory here. But you need to make sure that it is ready to go and the keys to hand over if something bad happens or if someone comes knocking with a big fat check. So who are the buyers in our marketplace and how much are they willing to pay? Good question. Let's run through the different options and just see. You might want to take some screenshots on this or there might be a recording. But real estate agents, I really want you to think about people that like I approached that are wanting to diversify their businesses, add stock into their property portfolios. They're looking to diversify, but they just don't know how to start or where to start. They are going to work off a rent roll valuation. Now this is typically 2.4 multiplier of the management income yearly management income. So I need, if you want to very quickly work out your business valuation, look at your management income, times it by 2.4. Okay. Our other buyers in the market, entrepreneurs looking for a business opportunity. There are so many people out there buying franchises, buying businesses. They've got that entrepreneurial mindset. They just need the business in a box delivered to them is yours. Perhaps it. Now these guys are valuing a little differently. They're looking at the profit of your business. Profit times three. Okay, so that's the industry valuation at the moment. Now these, these multipliers can vary depending on location. They can vary on your business setup. I've seen businesses that have been offered a lower multiplier because they're so complicated. They're not organized, they are messy. If you've got a very streamlined business and you've got some good software, you've got great contracts in place, you're going to get a higher multiplier. It can be up to five times the profit. Okay, and the other one that I want you to think about, current str, short term rental business owners or serviced accommodation business owners could be somebody right now on this webinar and listening in. Maybe it's a boostly contact that you may have, but someone who understands the industry, they recognize the hard work you put in and like I've got there, they might offer you to stay on. So this is also at the same valuation. All right, so they're your buyers, they're the people that are out there looking. And at the moment I see a lot of activity in the North American market. There's a little bit of, a little bit of a buzz going on in Australia and Queensland especially and the UK market. I know of some people looking to sell over there. So if you're thinking of buying, I want you to get in touch because I think we might be able to connect the dots somehow. All right, so you want to sell now what? This is where I want. I want you to really take notice even if you're not considering selling because you need to think about preparing your business for sale. You need to know why you're selling. Okay, what are you going to do after you sell? If you're going to sit on the couch and become a couch potato, it's probably not the best idea. But if you have got other interests, if you've got something that you want to pursue, maybe it's time to sell. If your passion has changed, you need to do a massive self assessment. You learn to look at your income, your expenses, your what you've got in debt, what profit you've got. You want to tighten up your profit margins. Yes, our businesses are very good businesses for running our personal expenses through. And yes, my accountant would probably shake his head when he has a look at my books and sees that all the groceries are down as amenities for properties or you know, basically wine were gifts, client gifts. There was all sorts of stuff going, going on in my business. But yes, I'm not quite the angel that you all think I am. Yeah, right, but tighten it up so you've got some good profit margins on the books. Assess your timing. Is it the right time now or should you wait? I think the best thing to do though, however, is get started now. So you are ready. But my one regret is that I sold to The Hometime Boys. July 1st was the handover. Now July in Australia, in Cairns especially, where I was, is our biggest month. Why did I not wait one more month and then collect all that management income for that month? Anyway, if I went back, that's probably what I would change. All right, what I want you to do is also consult professionals. Talk to your accountant, talk to your solicitor, your lawyer, talk to me, get on. I'm going to offer Everybody here a 15 minute free zoom. You're very welcome just to get on a zoom with me one on one. And let's talk and see whether you're in the right position to sell your business. And then you've got to put together a great prospectus. You've got to get this in front of a potential buyer. So think about putting together just a great brochure, a real estate, when you're buying real estate, something that's going to outline who, what it is that you're selling, why you're selling and what value it offers somebody else. So what are buyers looking for? What should we be putting together for these buyers? I want you firstly, before you even consider giving any information away, to have a good non disclosure form. Now if you haven't got one of these, you need one. I've got a great template, so let me know and I can always get one across to you. But get the potential buyers to sign that non disclosure so that if they're going to see your company secrets, they're not going to share it with everybody. Okay, so we want to know why they would want to buy your business. Now there's a lot of information on these next two slides, folks, so I'm going to jump through it pretty quickly. But once again, take a screenshot or we'll rewind this when you're watching the recordings. They're going to want to know all of these things. So what business model do you operate under? Now here's the thing. If you're doing arbitrage, leasing, subleasing, serviced accommodation, property management, these are all sellable businesses. I promise you, if you've got contracts in place, whether it be a lease agreement, whether it be. And I just sold a business that was on a lease agreement. I was leasing a property and subleasing it on short term rental sites. I furnished that property, I sold that as a going concern, a business in its own right. So if you, whatever you've got set up, get on that, zoom with me so we can talk about how you can make that a sellable business. Have you got the right contracts in place as well? Locations of properties. How many properties have you got in the portfolio? How many are active properties? Because some of them might sit there and then being used by homeowners part of the year. What booking platforms are their properties listed on? What direct booking sites do you have? They're going to ask about your management fees. How, what, what sort of income streams does your business have? Are you making money through extra income streams? What expenses do you have? Software? What employees do you have in the business? Do they have contracts? Are you renting or leasing an office space? Are there other equipment or vehicles involved in the business? And would you stay on? There's a big question for you because you will get asked, will you stay on to help? Are you ready to sell now? How quickly do you want it to occur and what sort of sale figure do you have in mind? Because those valuations I gave to you before, they're just a guide. Unless it's in black and white, it's not, it's not a done deal. But you need to know what you're willing to give up your business for. So this is just a quick look at my prospectus that I had. It looked like a glossy magazine. It just had a few things like what is, what is it that I'm selling all about? The success, the profit, the assets, the income streams, possible income streams that I hadn't tapped into yet, consumables, how that worked, contractors, all sorts of fees. And then of course I also threw in there. So if this business is so great, why is it for sale? And that's where I went on to talk about. Well, I've changed my path personally. I've become a published author, I'm a speaker, I am doing education more than I'm doing wanting to be involved in the day to day running folks. That kind of wraps it up. I hope I've been able to give you a little insight into selling your business and the ultimate payday. I as I mentioned before, I'm available. Please do not be a stranger if this has sparked any interest in your brain at all. Let's jump on a zoom. One on one zoom. Tell me about your business. Tell me about what your situation is. Tell me about what your dreams are. What could you do if you didn't have to be running your business day to day? I would say thank you to all of you who've jumped on today. Also, if you want to book in that zoom, I'm going to get. Make sure you get a free copy of the ebook, the million Dollar host ebook as well. So just jump on and get my details here. Or you can connect with me on any of the social medias. I am available on Facebook, Instagram, I even do TikToks, all sorts of crazy stuff. But folks, thanks so much for tuning in today. Mark, thanks very much for inviting me and yeah, I look forward to maybe connecting with some of you very soon. Thanks guys. Bye for now.

G'.

Day. G'.

Day. Whenever I hear that, I know Julie George is on the end of it. Thank you very, very much. Amazing session. And again, the premise of this is to make you think differently. Whether it's Kenny, the chat that I had with Kenny a little bit ago, or whether it's about selling your business, I want you to think a bit differently. Nobody really starts a business with the, with the end goal in mind, right? Nobody really thinks about, well, I'm going to exit this. Not a lot of people anyway. You're just about surviving to start off with. But even if you don't plan on selling your business, to build a business that is buyable means that you've got a very profitable business. It's got multiple revenue streams and it's just a nicer place to be. And again, a big inspiration for me on this topic was Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz. You know, he's a future, not a future, a past speaker at the summit. I'm a massive fan and you know, it's a, you know, that book sparked everything for me on how to build a business that is clockworkable and not one that you're thinking about 24 7. And Julie is, you know, one of the, one of the leading people in this. And you may be thinking, well, it's all right for Julie. Julie George is, you know, the million dollar host and all that stuff. But doing this in Australia is so hard to do, right? And it's, you know, I've always said this people in Australia and New Zealand, they're about five, 10 years behind on a technical standpoint and everything. Like the way that maybe people in America or UK think so for Julia to do this there was. Is huge. And you know, I'm a massive fan and you know, and she's gone on to help so many people and part of the Hospitable Host, you know, shout out to the hospital host crew. So thank you and can we all just put thank you, Julie. G', day, G' day in the comments, whatever you want to put. So I wanted to keep it in Australia and I wanted to keep it with another hospitable hostie, the founder of Hospitable Hosts. And if you don't know what that is, you will definitely know more about it very, very soon because Jody Odlin, used to be Jody Sterling, came up with the idea and not only has come up with an idea of run of it now, how many times in your day, in your week, in your month, in your quarter, in your year do you go, oh, I've got an idea. But how many times you actually act upon it? Not a lot. I know I have loads of ideas, but I don't really act upon them. Jody did. And what has come out of the other end is, is a massive community and it's just thriving. Right? And I asked Jody to put together a talk for this summit. Jody was based out of the uk, is now based out of Australia, so for her to do this is massive. Time zones have nearly got the better of us, but it didn't in the end. And I just want to say thank you very much to Jody for everything that she's done for the industry and for our community. It's massive. So I'm so glad to see her now stepping up and speaking on stages, virtual stages, and showcasing her knowledge. So let's get straight on. I'll come straight back afterwards and I'll introduce our next speaker, but can we all please say hi? Hi, Jody. Well, thank you, Jody, in the comments and we'll be back very soon.

Hi, everybody. My name is Jody and I just want to thank you all for joining me today at the Virtual Summit. Firstly, let's give a big shout out and cheer to Mark Simpson for putting on yet another amazing event, for bringing in all these fabulous speakers. And for me, I want to say thank you to him for asking me to participate as a summer speaker this time around. But before I start my slides, I want to share something with you. You've probably just been sitting down watching all of these fabulous speakers. It might be time to get up out of your chairs or if you want to remain seated, do some movement. So the power of movement activates your brain and gets it ready for learning. So we have some nerve endings in our ears here. I'm going to get you to start rubbing those. I've got some music and we're going to do a little bit of movement and let's get you ready for this next session. So let me put my music on. Let's go. Remember, this is a virtual summit. No one can see see you, only you can see me. So have a little wiggle. Remember those ears. Dance and rub your ears at the same time. If you've ever seen a Tony Robbins event and they're all up dancing, they're not a bunch of crazy people, this.

Is what they're doing.

They're activating their brains with movement, getting ready to learn. Are you standing?

Remember?

All right, All right, that's probably enough of that. So go back to my first slide. My name is Jody. In my presentation, I'm going to introduce to you an amazing group of people called the Hospitable Hosts. We're all authors of a book and I'm going to share some key takeaways from the Hospitable Hosts and talk to you about the importance of hospitality in the short term rental industry. So, firstly, I'm a host just like you. I'm the founder of a hospitality business in the Cotswolds. Really beautiful area of the UK. I have a collection of properties ranging from 500 year old stone cottages to grade 2 listed buildings with apartments in there. They are in a village town called Tetbury and it's a super special place because King Charles actually lives there. When you think of cute and quintessential cottages, that's what we have in Tetri. It's like Disneyland. Everything's pristine and really, really beautiful. So I've been hosting for eight years now and you could say I got into hosting by accident. We moved to the UK as a family and we rented a property in Tetbury and on the land it had a separate little cottage. And we decided, wondering what we were going to do with this cottage, you know, do we store our bikes? Do we just keep it there for when family and friends visit? And then I got thinking, let's try this Airbnb thing. Well, eight years later, I have 14 properties, two of which I manage for other owners and I employ six staff. So I used to live in Tetbury, but now I am a remote host, managing my staff, my guests and my properties from Sydney, Australia. Yes, there are some challenges in being a remote host, but the biggest one for me is definitely the time zones. So I started my career in hospitality a long, long time ago when I went to hospitality management school here in Sydney. And I decided that was the career path that I wanted to take. I love dealing with people and I loved everything that the hospitality sector had to offer for me. Worked in five star hotels around the world in front office management training and opening up new properties. The stories I could tell you of what goes on in these establishments would amaze you. I could. You've got some crazy stories as a host, I'm sure, but there's just more guests and more staff in these properties and maybe one day I'll write a book about it. But you know what? I wrote a book for the short term rental industry and that book is called Hospitable Hosts. So during lockdown I started connecting with other hosts just like you through Facebook groups and I joined the boostly community back then. I soon learned that there were people around the world out there just like me. I didn't even know really this industry was as big as it was and the people in it had some really interesting stories on how they got to be in the world of short term rentals. So I started connecting with these people and listening to their stories and I came up with the idea to gather the stories in a book and I created what's called a multi authored book. My vision for the book was for these people who are now hosts to come in and share their journey of how they got into the world of hosting and to share some tips and ideas to educate other hosts on what they do. These are hosts from all around the world and we all share the same issues, we share the same joys and we share the same passions. The first book was launched within a year and 18 months later we now have three books that have been launched on Amazon creating number one best selling books so that in turn created 146 number one best selling authors. During that time I also started my own publishing company. Yes, I helped Mark publish his book Direct Blueprint book which you should all have a copy. It's a brilliant book. Dave Goodfellow, who's also a member of this community, we publish together Airbnb Simplified and I've also published another a number of other books that outside of the short term rental space, including the the book that the little girl is holding at the top of the slide there, that is 12 year old Carson Todd who created a give back journal for children. It was a very special day when 12 year old Carson became a published author. So what started as a book project has now become a global movement of professional hosts. I want to introduce you to a few of my friends. All now best selling authors from around the world. We've been on a wild journey together and I just want to share some of their stories.

Hello, I'm Mark Hodge and I'm a hospitable host.

Hi, my name is Mark Simpson and this is Rosie.

I'm Tracey Northcott.

My name is Noble.

My name is Syed.

Hi, I'm Merritt. My name is Sasha Herman.

My name is Oliver Marco Arubias. Hi, I'm Sarah.

Hi, I'm DJ Fenelli.

Hi, my name is Jody and I'm a hospitable host. How did you become part of this hospitable host?

We were focusing on real, genuine guest experience. It's really nice. That's what people want.

My name is Dr. Rachel Gainsbrutt.

My name is Patrick.

I'm Helen.

Hi, I'm Pam Holt.

I'm Tatiana Taylor Tate.

My name is Kale Delaney.

My name is Erin Lindsay Heart.

Hi, my name is Ruben Kanye.

Hi, my name is GS. All the way from Wales.

I'm a hospitable host.

Hospitable host is a.

That's right.

Hi, I'm Katie.

I'm Rebecca Cribbin. Hey everyone, this is Mike Brown out of Dallas, Texas.

My name's Meredith.

I'm Tanya Rudy.

Hi, I am Raf.

So we are talking about host in Australia, South Africa, in the uk.

Hi, I'm Kim Herline. Hey, hey, hey everybody.

The name's Sevilla Vinci.

Sevilla.

Hello, my name's Katrina Pape, but my friends call me Kat.

Hi, I'm Emil Sikel.

Hi, I'm Louise.

Hi, I'm Forhana.

Hi, I'm Chris.

I'm Amanda Alipani.

I'm Karen.

Hospitable host community. Community of experts.

Professionals who really care about what they're.

Doing and are willing to share their knowledge with me.

That has been such a huge advantage.

My name is Daryl Medico, founder of Stay Space.

I'm Rose.

My name is Tristan Petrica.

My name is Valerie Malone.

My name is Mike Bufudo.

Hello, I'm Fiona.

I'm Maria Reeve.

I'm Stephanie Reid.

Hello everyone.

I'm Merid.

I'm Christiane Made many a new concept associates from uk, Europe and the rest of the world.

Being part of hospital hosts really has changed my life.

The good Hi, my name is Jenny.

My name is Will Moncrie.

My name is Maddie Smith.

My name is Toby Dore.

Hi, I'm Kim Menapees.

And I'm Dave Menapese. My name is Chris Cooper.

I cannot believe I still pinch myself.

That I am in such a unique group of wonderful hosts from all over the world.

Jody means the most to me, so much to me.

She's a wonderful friend and I'm so happy for her and all of her Successes.

I'm Stacy St. John.

Hi, I'm Paul Anderson.

My name is Moriah Rockman.

My name is Jen Loviser. My name is Trace Tillman. My name is Debbie Tighe. So being a published author means a lot to me. It's got me in front of a.

Crowd of people that I never would have imagined would have been interested in talking to me before about my holiday Let business.

My name is Brenna Coral.

My name is Karen Guildford.

Really the biggest thing that came from.

From it is a sense of accomplishment.

Not only just becoming an author but.

Realizing we have done things that have.

Been hard and have enabled us to help other people.

I'm Liam. My name is Marky.

My name is Elena Stepanova.

Hi, I'm Josh Plymouth.

Hi, my name is Plaxi Buzjinska.

G'. Day. I'm Tim Mortimer.

To me, being a hospitable host is.

About being part of an amazing community that, that cares more about the people.

And the experience of our guests than.

About just making a profit.

And the bottom line, people with an.

Idea can grow into something amazing worldwide and be changing our industry. One standard and one expectation and one.

Welcome gift at a time.

For those of you who've been wondering who these people are with these yellow circles around their faces that shows that we are all hospitable hosts. So now you know, and that includes this guy here. Mark was actually the first person, person I spoke to about the book project and he was the first cheerleader as well. So I have to give Mark another massive thank you for helping me and introducing me to a lot of amazing hosts from around the world who came into the book project and have shared their vision and passion all about their rental short term rental business. So today we're going to have a look about at what all of these hospitable hosts have in common. After interviewing hundreds of hosts for these books. Yes, hundreds. There was only 40 places in each book and we squeezed a few more in. It was clear to me that they all shared a similar passion and that was for hospitality. Having great hospitality skills is just a must for the short term rental industry. For those who want to be successful, all extremely successful and facing the Same issues. They have that one thing in common. They do share that same passion for hospitality and they know that it's crucial in today's market. Why are good hospitality skills a must for you to have a successful short term rental business? Well, whether you're just started out in hospitality or you're a seasoned host, hospitality is just the number one thing that I believe and many of these other hospitable hosts believe is super important for a successful, successful business. So let's take a look at why hospitality is so important. So excellent hospitality creates memory memorable experiences for guests, making them feel valued and appreciated. This positive experience increases guests satisfaction, leading to repeat bookings and positive reviews. We all love those reviews, right? In a crowded marketplace, outstanding hospitality sets host from apart from the competitors. Guests are more likely to choose properties where they feel welcomed and cared for, even if they are priced slightly higher than their alternatives. Hospitality directly impacts a host's brand reputation. Guests who receive exceptional service are more likely to recommend the host to others, leading to word of mouth referrals and positive online reviews. Again, we love those reviews. A strong reputation attracts more guests and builds trust in the host brand. Happy guests are willing to spend more money on additional amenities and are more likely to return for future stays. Therefore, excellent hospitality contributes to increased revenue through higher occupancy rates, upselling opportunities and repeat business. After reading all the stories in each volume. Yes, I've read them all. There are some major takeaways that I would like to share with you. One of the biggest lessons from the hospitable hosts stories is the power of personalization that these hosts share with their guests. In hospitality, it's the small things that matter most, the personal touches that help create connection with your guests and make them feel valued. I want to share a quick story from one of our contributors, a host from the us. They noticed that their guests were coming to celebrate a special birthday. Without being asked. They arranged a small bottle of champagne and a handwritten note to welcome the guests when they arrived. Not only did this simple gesture earn them a glowing five star review, but it also led to repeat bookings. Not just from them, but from their friends and their family. And to top it off, that same couple went to that property and had their wedding. What a success. So maybe what you could do before your guests arrive is just take a few moments to review their booking, go back and read what they've sent to you. They may have made their booking a year ago and so you need to come in and take a look at why they're coming to stay at your property? Are they celebrating a birthday or an anniversary? Are they bringing children or do they have pets? Maybe there's something that you could leave in your property to just give them that special welcoming touch. A dog biscuit for those who are bringing their dog, some games and toys that are appropriate for the children that are coming with their parents. Why not give them a call before they come and get to know them? If you don't have time to do this, maybe you can consider automated messaging or AI. You can always program that to ask those questions. A quick questionnaire sent before they arrive can also help you to find out why your guests are coming to your property. What's one of the ways that you've personalised your experience for your guests? I'd really love you to pop a post into the Facebook group of this virtual summit and share some of your tips and ideas and of how you personalize your guests experience. Another key takeaway from the book and the stories is communication. Communication is the backbone of any successful hosting experience. Whether it's setting expectations, answering questions, or simply checking in. How you can communicate to your guests can either make or break your guest stay. The Hospitable Host series highlights several examples of effective communication that can prevent misunderstandings and even turn potential problems into positive experiences. For instance, one of the hosts dealt with a power outage at their property. Instead of waiting for the guest to complain, they immediately reached out when they knew that this was an issue and offered alternative accommodation. But the guests were happy through the whole entire process because the communication was there and even though they had no power, they still left a positive review despite the issue. One thing that you could do for your guests to improve your communication is to respond promptly. Set goals for yourself to respond to any inquiries within an hour. Many of the platforms are OTAs. They even rate you, don't they, on the time that you take to respond to your guests? Another way is to be proactive. Reach out to your guests again 24 to 48 hours before check in. Confirm that you are expecting them to come and stay and that that will also give them time and an opportunity to ask any questions that they may have during their stay. A simple how's everything going? Message goes a long way. Sometimes automated messaging is good for that. Setting it up for maybe the morning after their check in is a really great way to just check in with them. It also gives them an opportunity to let you know if there's anything going wrong so you have a chance to be able to fix it before they check out. Leave and leave a Bad Review There are many stories about building a brand and how important it is and it sets you apart and creates emotional connection with you. With your guests. It's not just about a logo or a color scheme, it's about the story you want to tell. Some of the most successful hosts have built strong brands that reflect their values and their unique experience. For example, a host in Mexico transformed his rustic cabin into a wellness retreat with a clear focus of on relaxation and mindfulness. Every element from the decor to the welcome pack reflects his vision. Wonder what you can do? Start maybe by defining what makes your hosting style unique. Is it your attention to detail? The local experiences that you offer? Your eco friendly approach perhaps? Like Cat Puppe, once you've defined your brand, be consistent. Use the same tone of voice in your communication. Have a cohesive look and feel on your online listings and make sure the guest experience aligns with your brand. Promise Handling guest feedback is a vital way for you to gauge the success of of your business. Managing your guest feedback before they check out can be a super idea. Let me tell you about Rose. Many of you know Rose. She has a business in Ohio and one of her tips that she shares in the Book of Hospitable Hosts is that she leaves a guest feedback card in all of her properties. This gives the guests an opportunity to let her know if they had any issues. It also allows the guests time to voice any grievances that they have and that means that they're less likely to write a negative review online. How do you handle your guest feedback? I'd love it if you could pop a comment in the chat box below or in the Facebook group of the Virtual Summit. Let's share some of your knowledge with all of the other hosts. Many of the hospitable hosts get their local community involved in their businesses. So what does that mean? Get out and meet the community. Eat at the restaurants. Get your hair cut at the local hairdressers. If you go and get to know the locals, you can recommend them with authenticity to your guests. It also is a great way for the locals to learn about you and your business. They may need a place for visitors to stay or if they have any customers who are looking for a place to stay, they can recommend you. It's a win win for everybody really. One of the ways that I get my local community involved in my business is I've gone around and set up some discounts and offers at the local cafes and restaurants, hairdressers and even the pet store, because Tetri is a big dog place, so dog friendly place I should say. So one of the ideas I did was with the local butcher. I asked him if he would put together some breakfast packs for a Sunday morning, because Sunday is a big day in Tetbury for my guests. So I have about 60 guests that come through that butcher's on a Sunday morning and pick up their breakfast pack. Now, I don't make any money from that. It's just simply a way that I can get my community involved in my business. And the butcher loves it. He absolutely loves it and so do the guests. A major takeaway from reading these chapters in Hospitable Hosts is that many of these hosts, if not all of them, continue their education in the short term rental industry. As you are all now taking part in educating yourselves through the virtual summit, there's so many other ways that you can do it. Whether it's attending an in person conference, listening to a podcast, reading a book, pick up the Hospitable host book. You can educate yourself so you understand what you can do to become a better host and also a better business person. So attending the conference from me is a wonderful thing. I actually that's where I started approaching people on at a conference in London about sharing their story. In the book I met Mark for the first time and I was literally walking up to people and saying, hi, I'm Jody, would you like to be in a book? And sharing my vision with them? And they, a lot of people from that conference are actually in volume one. So anyway, back to my slide. Education is massive in our industry. It's changing all the time. There's new vendors bringing out new products to enhance your hosting experience. However, I must really emphasize you can go to conferences, you can listen to all the podcasts, you can read all the books, you can attend these virtual summits. But like Hospitable Host, Vinci wisely stated, the application of knowledge is power. And what does that mean? Making sure you implement what you've learned at these summits, what you've read in the books, what you've listened to in the podcasts, that is the key. You must keep consuming information, but it won't lead to growth until you take action. Finally, one of the most important lessons that you'll learn from reading the stories in hospital before Hosts is adopting a positive mindset is super important. Being a host is pretty tough, right? I get that. I'm a host. And now being on the other side of the world, my guests don't know that I'm in Australia, so sometimes I get woken up at 3am, especially on a Friday when everybody's checking in. I do have people on the ground and my team is wonderful. However, they still want to reach out to me being the host, but that's okay. But having a good mindset helps me get through that. So I know that when my guests are checking in on a Friday, I stay up for an extra few hours. So be it. It doesn't matter. But hospitality isn't just about being a great host, is it? It's about running a sustainable and profitable business. Several of the hosts in the series share how they manage their finances, optimize their pricing strategies, and stay updated on industry trends. For example, one of the host shares how they use dynamic pricing tools to adjust rates based on demand and competition, which maximizes their revenue while keeping occupancy rates high. Now, we've all heard the stories about dynamic pricing tools. Have you got a dynamic pricing tool in your business? Maybe that's one way that you could develop a more business mindset. Maybe you could keep an eye on your financials, track your expenses, understand your profit margins, and reinvest in your property where it makes sense. Leverage technology there's so much about out there that's supporting us hosts. I've said it before. Use a dynamic pricing software, automate and streamline your operations. And so that frees you up for more time to do what really matters, Providing great guest experience. So by now you probably guessed it. I love stories and I love storytelling and I would love to find out what's your secret sauce for your hospitality business. So go head over to the Facebook group. Mark has approved that you can do this. Please share with the community how you dare to be different in your business. Let's share the knowledge, share the stories. So please go across to the Facebook group and do that now. Those are just a few of the powerful takeaways from the stories of the Hospitable Hosts. Hospitality is an ever evolving industry and there's always room to learn and grow. Whether you're personalizing your guest experiences, communicating effectively, or building memorable brands, the lessons from these stories can really help you succeed. If you haven't already, I encourage you to grab a copy of Hospitable Hosts and dive into the wealth of knowledge that it has to offer. Please follow our journey on Instagram. It's Hospitable Host. You can also scan that QR code on the screen. And I just want to say again, thank you for all joining in the virtual Summit and I'm going to just share some other photos of the incredible authors all celebrating becoming number one best selling authors. I'm going to put my music on so you can enjoy the rest of that song. And thanks again.

Everyone's dancing their troubles away.

Dance to the music. All night long.

All night long.

All.

Night long.

All night long.

All night long.

That's it from me, everybody. Happy hosting.

You know, you don't really realize an impact something has had until you're looking at something like that at the end with the photo montage and you know, seeing the party, seeing the people, seeing the faces behind the chapters, behind the words. And if you haven't checked any of the books out, please do. There's loads out there and I'm very proud to be a part of not one, but the Free at a Hospital house book. And you know, it's, it's cool to see so many faces. If you saw yourself in there and you are a hospitable host, tag in the comments and just put hospitable host. And it's, it's crazy how if this has just stemmed from Jody telling me about this in 2021 to now being as big as it is, right, we're going to keep it down under this next chap is a gentleman called Bar. And you may have tuned into his podcast, his YouTube channel, you may have heard of him, you may not, but you will definitely know more about him by afterwards. He is somebody that we were very aligned in what we do. We talk about websites, we talk about branding, we talk about all those cool things. And Bart has gone on and he's putting on conferences and events in Australia and New Zealand and you know, he's really becoming a voice and it's cool to see and you know, I've, I've asked if he wanted to do this loads of times and he's finally got the time aside to be able to do it. And I really want for you to pay attention to what he's talking about here. Go and check out his podcast and his YouTube channel because he does interview some really cool people from around the world of hospitality. Recently had Expedia and VRBO on, which is really cool and it's just, it's lovely to get more voices. And I've said this from the start, there's just not one person who is going to be talking about, you know, book direct and education is going to be plenty. And this is one of the coolest things that I've seen over the eight years of having Boostly is that now when I was just one person eight years ago, now there's tons and there's so many ways to do this and you know, some of you may attract onto what I talk about, some of you may be repelled from what I say. Somebody once called me Mark Mike, if you know what that means. But for those that want to get more education and see more people, so Westmoreland Bart is fantastic for. So again, make sure you get ready for this and we're going to hand over to the amazing bar and then we'll be back with another session in about 20, 25 minutes. Over to you, Bart.

Well, hello everybody. What an absolute pleasure to be at this event. Thank you very much Mr. Simpson for inviting me to tag along and to hopefully impart some more information, some more knowledge for all of you that are out there now. Folks, if you haven't met me before, my name is Bart Sobes. I run a business called Ibooked Online. We've been helping businesses with their book, Direct Strategies for roughly around about five years. I'm based out of Australia, but I travel all over the world helping businesses out. We've helped with thousands of bookings, generated millions of dollars worth of revenue. So what we're going to do today is I'm going to take you through a masterclass which I presented at my conference called Strive to Thrive here in Australia in March this year. But the one thing is I've been asked to do this in only 20 minutes. My masterclass was an hour and a half. So what I've done is I've took the best bits and condensed them down for you. So there's some high level topics which I'm going to cover today, but also some practical tips that you can take and implement into your business. Now I'm going to get straight into it. There's going to be a few fun little tasks to get us all connected as well and hopefully by the end of it you'll come away with some really great learnings and if not, at least refresh on some of those things that you should be looking at for your website, for your book, Direct Strategy and your branding overall. All right, let's get straight into it. So I want to start us off by telling you a little bit of a story about how I got got here, how I got into this journey of direct bookings and websites and technology. I actually started my journey when I was roughly about 15 years old. We were building websites at the kind of the very start of the Internet where everything was Super. Lots of gifts, lots of little flashing elements on there. Then I got myself a job at this company called Zwift. At Zwift, we were building websites for restaurants. This was me, this was my brand, this is how I presented myself because I thought I would stand out, that I was kind of, kind of cool, had this really spiky hair. The interesting thing with this story is that when I started my journey, we were calling up restaurants, convincing them that online ordering was going to be crucial to their business. We would literally pick up the phone, call up the restaurant owner and say, hey, people are going to want to order their food online. You need to update your website. The restaurant owner would respond and say, hey, I don't know what you're talking about. Talking about no one's ever going to order their food online. It's never, ever going to happen and they'll slam down the phone on us. Needless to say, 10 years later, 15 years later, and there's been a boom in the online ordering space with UberEats and all the different delivery services. Everyone's got their own website for online ordering now. So that's what we were doing roughly around about 10 years ago, even longer now. Now what I did after that is I actually start up a business business called Ibooked Online. I booked online specializes in building book direct websites, marketing, branding, helping accommodation owners from bed and breakfast through to hotels to short term rentals with their book direct strategy. I also run a conference called Strive to Thrive. Strive to Thrive. It's designed for community, for connection, for bringing people together. We're very lucky because we get sponsors coming all the way from all over the world to this conference in Melbourne to connect with people that are local here. We also are launching in New Zealand next year, so if you need a good reason to come and visit this side of the world now, you have one. Just connect with me and I'll tell you all about it. I also run the Accommodation Professionals Facebook community where it's a great place to come and hang out and get some resources from other professionals and then the Accommodation Professionals Network where we do training. Now, over the past few years I've been the host of the Accommodation show, so I actually have been interviewing top industry professionals about their experiences and their journeys. Now why is this important? Why is this relevant? Because all of my learning are from these people out there. They're from the businesses that we run and the websites that we help, but also with the knowledge from these professionals. I've been touring all over Australia and all over the world teaching. I'm an international speaker. Tourism Tasmania Conference last year, no vacancy. Sydney last year, here to stay last year. And I said this all last year because I'm about to go into them all again in a second. A comcon is coming up very, very soon as well. That's in Queensland. I also got to go to VRMA in Orlando, which is a Vacation Rental Managers association conference. Be going back to Phoenix. If you're going to be there, then make sure that you say hello and you reach out. And also, also this year was incredible because I got to go all over regional Australia in New South Wales, look it up if you haven't seen it. And talking about AI and technology. So not only do I specialize in helping with marketing, branding and the websites with my team, but also I do a lot of speaking trying to help you figure out the technology that you need in your business. Oh, and also I play bike polo. This is one of those ones where I'm building a bit of connection between you and me. This is something most people don't know. I actually traveled all over the world competing, playing bike polo. It's on a hard court rather than a horse. You're on a bicycle. 3v3. Like, on, like contact. Some people break bones, that sort of thing. But it's a lot of fun and it's something that I like to do in my spare time. But now it's your turn. Now, I've told you a bit about me and who I am, but what I like to do, and this is what we did at Strive last year, is we created Community Connection. And what we did is we got everybody to follow each other on Instagram. So I'm going to call this the Insta Tribe on a Challenge. And why is it an honor challenge? Because I'm not with you. I can't make sure that you do what you say you're going to do. So I'm relying on your honor and your participation to make this work. So what I'd like you to do is to scan the QR code or punch in that URL. If it's too quick, then you can pause it and then come back to it later on. And then you're going to get a form which looks like this. You're going to fill out the form on there. You've got your Instagram handle. I just want the. The at and whatever your business is, or whatever the name your business is. Then you're going to put in your. You're going to commit to checking the list in 24 hours. So what you do is this. You put in your Instagram handle and it's going to pop up on this list. You're going to follow everyone that's above you on the list and then you're going to check it in 24 hours and see who's come up below you on the list. And then you're going to add those profiles to your Instagram account. Now, what that means is that you've got new connections, you've got new followers, you're going to learn about people that are in the industry. We did it last year, it was incredibly successful because now I'm following the accounts that I want to know about and see what they're doing and strengthening my business. It's a cool task. Make sure that if you want to take part in that, that you do. Now, we want to get straight into it. So there's some key concepts in terms of building up your book. Direct strategy. And it all starts off with your brand. Your brand is critical because if you've got a strong brand, it helps you so much to get direct bookings. If you've got a weak brand, it's not going to do much. So someone will visit your website and they're just not going to be book. There are so many other benefits of building a brand. So you get a high conversion ratio of bookings, as we were talking about before, so it builds trust. You're building a better valued asset for sale. So if you ever want to sell your business in the future, be it a hotel, motel, Benarex, a short term rental business, if you've got a strong brand, investors are going to look at it and pay a higher multiple because they'll say, oh, this is very, very strong. We don't have any work to do on the branding part. You get more repeat bookings. If you've got a strong brand, you're going to get more referrals, people are going to come back to you, you can start to charge higher prices. If you've got a stronger brand, you improve your market position in relation to your competitors. Right now it's super competitive out there. If you're in short term rentals, you'll know that there's been a boom in competitors that have been popped up around you. So if you want to compete with them, if you have a stronger brand, a stronger website, you're going to do far better. You manage to get some of those bookings because if someone is looking for two things that are identical or very, very close to identical, then this is the way to get that booking. If you've got a better brand negotiating power, you get better deals. If you're out there trying to negotiate on linen with cleaning companies, if you're trying to negotiate with a technology provider as well, if you've got a strong brand and a strong business, they're going to take you far more seriously than an unknown quantity. You attract more quality partnerships. So if you're calling the local restaurant, cafe, zoo, tourism board, anyone that you're interacting with, you're saying, hey, let's team up, let's work together. If you've got a strong brand, you're much more likely to, to get traction with them and they're going to want to work with you, and I'll give you the others yourself. Now, why are we doing all this at the end of the day? Well, it's a little bit simple, right? A lot of people get into business because they want to challenge themselves, they want to do something different. A lot of people do this because it's fun, but also, ultimately, we need to make sure that we are profitable and we're making more money. One of the things that quite often we forget about is the power of direct bookings is the multiple the money. Because if you're earning roughly around about $250,000 a year, which is here now, if you're in pounds and convert into pounds, if you're earning $5 million of revenue a year, your commission comes to roughly around about $750,000 at 15%. Now, some OTAs charge you even more than 15% between 15 to 15, 20%. But I've gone conservative. If you were to get 10% of these bookings direct, then you would save yourself $75,000 a year. Or even if you're a small operator, still saving yourself $4,000 a year just by converting 10% of your bookings direct, or if you can increase your direct bookings by 10%, it makes a substantial difference. If we go to 20% of your book direct, then you're going to be saving roughly around about $150,000 a year. If you're a bigger business, seven and a half grand a year. You get the idea, 30% book direct. If you've got 25 properties, it's around about $50,000 a year that you save. And if you manage to get 50% of your bookings direct, then you're saving roughly around about $20,000 a year. The reason why these numbers are important is because when you look at how much time and effort you want to invest in your book, direct strategy, then these are the numbers that can help guide you. If you're trying to decide whether you need to get a job photographer to go out and take some new pictures, well, these numbers will help guide you, because everything that you do in terms of working on your business and your brand is going to help you get more direct bookings. But also, even if you increase your prices because you're getting more bookings, or if you stand up more on the OTAs, then you're going to make more money from it. So it's a really simple equation that you can put together. Now, one of the things that we did is we did a bit of research, research on our customers and on guests that actually make bookings. And there's some common misconceptions in the industry that I wanted to clarify today. Because there are a few steps that people take when they're making a direct booking, and it's important that you know where you sit as a business. The first step is inspiration. So people are thinking about doing a trip or they get inspired by something that happens and quite often will be external. I'll give you an example. Recently we came back from a trip to Japan. I was talking to a friend about the trip that we had, and the friend said, you know what, Bart? Japan has always been on my bucket list. I've always wanted to go to Japan. We told them all about the food. We told them all about the great breweries. We told them all about the culture. We told them about how expensive it was. We told them about the ease of buying a ticket and getting over there. We inspired our friends to then go and look up flights to then go to Japan. You might get inspired because you saw a TikTok reel or an Instagram reel. You might get inspired because you saw a post on Facebook. You might get inspired because you saw an advert. That's the inspiration stage. And the key to this is that you as an operator are not there to try to capture people from the inspiration stage and get them through to check out. Okay, so when we're building our blogs and we're building all those articles and we're trying to do SEO, we're not trying to do the inspiration stage because it's too early in the pipeline and you'll lose them by the time they get through to buying and making a booking with you. The second stage is my friend's heard about Japan. He's always wanted to go, but now he needs to research it. So he needs to research the flights, he needs to research his accommodation, he needs to think about the things he's going to do, how long he's going to go for and that sort of thing. This is where you come in and you have an opportunity to capture the person, the research stage, because you can write an article about the top 10 things to do in Japan. And on that research stage, that's when you're going to start to get people's traction and you can start to ask for email addresses. At this research stage, once they've done their research and they're making the commitment, then they're going to book, they're going to figure out where they're staying and they're going to do comparisons and most people will go out there and compare. So they're going to look on Google, they're going to look on the OTAs and then they may come to your book direct website, and that's where your opportunity is to capture them. The other piece of research that we did was a little bit about websites, because when we think about, I guess, what kind of visitors we're getting to our websites, we've got these different categories. So people researching for inspiration, they're comparing between an OTA and your website, they might be ready to book already. There might be impulse shoppers because they saw a deal. There might be repeat guests that are coming to your website. So you need to think about each of these different categories of people coming to visit your website and make sure that you capture them. The other big learning that I wanted to teach you before I get into some of those things that you can go and start playing around with on your website, is website visitation. In 2024, 43% of people visit on desktop and 55% visited on mobile. If we were in a room, I would have had you have a guess as to what that number actually is, because most people would think that mobile is far higher. Because we're always told that mobile has taken over the world, everyone's using their phones all the time. But interestingly enough, in our category in accommodation, a lot of people are using desktop, desktops to engage with our businesses and to make bookings and that sort of thing. I'll show you some of the numbers of some of the stats over here on the left hand side on the bottom. Sorry, we've got time. So 2009 to 2023 on the top we've got percentages. I don't know why it goes up to 110%, but you get the idea. In 2009, most people were using desktop. There weren't really many mobile phones out there. As time goes on, you can see that there's a huge, huge uptick in mobile phone usage, which is expected. Right. The surprising thing is this is in 2016, as mobile phone usage goes up and desktop usage goes down, there is a plateau. And the plateau is that basically desktop remains at that 45% mark and mobile remains at that sort of 50% mark, and we've got tablet visitation here at the bottom. Actually, if we look at it here, there's a little bit of a takeover in 2022, but then overall it stabilizes. But the most important figure that I'm going to give you today that you need to pay attention to is this. People will make the booking more often on desktop than they will on their mobile phone. It's almost three to one in terms of ratio of how often they're going to book on your website as opposed to your mobile phone. So, yes, make your website load fast on mobile, make it mobile friendly, make it responsive, but also pay attention to the fact that people are booking more often on the website. So you make sure that it looks fantastic and it looks spectacular. Now, from here on in, folks, I'm going to be rushing through the content because I do have a bit of a time limit. Here are your top tips from today that I want you to take away. First impressions matter. If you're going to a restaurant and you walk in and it's an absolute mess and you're not being looked after, you're gonna walk out of it, you're gonna say, I don't want to be there. I'll go to somewhere that's a lot tidier, a lot neater. You go to the bathroom, it's a mess, you're not enjoying it. First impressions matter. Clean your windows. If you've got a restaurant, clean your windows. If you've got a shop, you want to make sure that everything looks fantastic. So the first impression of your website is. Is the most important. People talk about above the fold and below the fold. That's the first screen that they see before they start to scroll. So you need to have that wow factor. Funnily enough, above the fold and below the fold. Yes, it's conceptually, it makes complete sense, but people will scroll, so you want to make sure that it's consistent all the way through. Does your website go wow? I'll tell you a bit of a story about this client. This was a client from roughly about five, four years ago. They have a small little bed and breakfast in Hamner Springs. It's a little cottage, let's say, on the side of their property. Now they had pictures of the inside of it, so it wasn't too glamorous to be honest, but it was cute little kitchenette, double bed, bathroom, just kind of nothing too spectacular, nothing too wow. But the one thing they had forgotten to do was to explain to people where they're actually staying. Because when you, as soon as you step out of the cottage, this is the view that you see. It's incredible. So what we did is we saw some amazing photos of Hamness Springs, put them up and not only did we balloon their direct bookings, but also their OTA bookings as well, because it just went so well for them. Update your photography. You should be updating your photos every year. 2 years, 3 years, 3 years maximum. The reason is, is that people's one's desires around photography change. Technology changes, the way that we interact with media changes all the time. So we want to update them so that we've got the latest trends, fashions, and so that looks modern and current. Absolutely critical to do. And you might think, well, I did mine not too long ago, they're okay. Actually, no, you do need to go and do them because you'll get new shots this that look far better and far more appropriate and it does increase your profitability. It's the number one thing that people will make their booking decision on, especially seeing the photos. So clear and concise descriptions. You want to make sure that you are telling people exactly what they're going to get. But remember, when you're doing your descriptions, you want to show them the benefits, not just the features. So yes, there might be two bathrooms, there might be three bedrooms, there might be a couple kitchen. But we want to talk about the benefits of the kitchen. A huge kitchen that can cater a whole family who's going to have a fantastic night or a dinner party or whatever. A huge bed where you're going to wake up in the morning refreshed and relaxed. You want to make sure that you're talking to the person in terms of benefits to them. And when we talk about benefits to them, we need to think our avatar so our target client and who they actually are. And that's going to help you have the right descriptions. There's no reason that you shouldn't update your descriptions if you're not. If you've got tools like ChatGPT and that sort of thing, that's going to help you to work with you towards getting those descriptions. For your owners. And these are all things, by the way, that every single website that we review, we go through. Oh my gosh, those descriptions don't make sense. The pictures need a updating. Another one is streamlining the booking process. So this is a tricky one because quite often people will say, well, how do I streamline the booking process? I don't have control over it. The first thing to do is identify where you have issues and the best way to do that is to actually go and visit your website yourself and to put a dummy booking in. You'll see where there's issues, where it's hard to actually make that booking, where it's hard to find what you need. I saw an interesting one the other day. Someone had a calendar picker on their website and then I put in a two day date, okay? So I said, let's say it was the 21st to check out. On the 23rd, it came up with no results, absolutely no results. And the reason why there was no results is because they have a three day minimum booking rule. So therefore the person wasn't to know that it just looks like the place is completely unavailable, like the website's broken and you're going to lose that sale. Go through it now if you've gone through it, go through it on desktop, go through it on mobile and get one of your friends or your family members to also go through it, have a look at what's not working with it and then improve on it. It can be everything from language and terminology, just, just some of those things that don't work. You'll work with your, your booking provider to help you with that. Make it clear what your website is for. This is the biggest mistake that we see, see all the time is that people quite often get their websites and kind of treat it like a passion project. They make it all about them and why this is so such a great business. That's not what the website is for. The website is for driving, direct bookings. That's it. That's what someone's come to it for. If you've designed a website as a social media page, a blog and that sort of stuff, do your blog on a blog page. If you want to do your Instagram, post to them on Instagram. Instagram. If you want to do Facebook, post it on Facebook. Book. Direct website is for direct bookings. Stick to it. Don't go off piste because people won't want to see it. When you go to an OTA website, an Airbnb, a booking.com and Vrbo, you know what you're there for your booking, flights, accommodation or whatever else it may be, you're not going there for all the other stuff. So some of the things you can do on your website to make people aware of the fact that they can book direct. So make sure the top of the page, you've got a search bar so they can do their date straight away. And also we're going to reinforce this with a Book now button. That Book now button doesn't necessarily need to be the top right. Top right is useful because it's one of the first places that people eyes scan. It doesn't necessarily need to go anywhere as such. But what it is is reinforcing the idea that if people click on the button or if they're using this website, they will be able to make a booking. So that way they'll bounce out if they're not there to make a direct booking, which is fan, which is great. We don't really need them there anyway. But they are interested, they should start to get trust that they'll be able to book direct. And then if we talk about trust, reviews, absolutely critical. It's human nature to want to know what we're going to get before we get there. And we trust what other people say. This has been on the Internet for a long time. If you go to onto any of the odds, TA's at the top of the website, there will always be the reviews on there. Make sure you review your reviews to make sure that they're current, they're up to date. And conversely, if you've got really bad reviews, you're going to have massive issues with generating direct bookings because it'll turn people off very quickly. One of the last ones is review your special offers and incentives. So when we talk about special offers and incentives, we're talking about reasons for people to book direct. Now quite often people will say, well, I don't want to give a discount for people to book direct. But the reality is this, people love a deal and that's what you're appealing to. You're appealing to people wanting to find value. And the way that you can do that is in two ways. One is you can do an add on. So you can say, hey, if you book direct we'll do, we'll add on a cheese platter when you get there, a free bottle of wine. You can check in early or check out late, that sort of thing. Or you can give a small price incentive so you can say if you book direct you're going to get the best price guaranteed. Have a look at those offers and those specials. Make sure that they make sense and they're up to date because that will drive more direct bookings for you. Now, the overarching thing with a book direct website and your book direct strategy is to keep it simple. If you keep it simple and you keep it on the point, then people will make that direct booking. Now, I do have one little segment about photography that I do want to take you through. It will take us an extra two to three minutes, so please forgive me if I've gone over time. But photography fundamentals, remember, you're not selling the furniture, you're selling the feeling. You're selling an emotion through the pictures. Take indoor shots with as much light as possible. Turn on all the lights and get more lights if you need them. Take outdoor shots in the golden hour. I'll tell you about the golden hour in a sec. Style the room. Create emotion, Tell a story. I'll tell you about a story in a second. Take more shots all the time. Here is a hero shot of an accommodation. This is in the golden hour. The golden hour is one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset. It's when the colors in the sky become absolutely beautiful. And here what we managed to do is actually to get the owner to turn the lights on of their property, capture this amazing reflection in the pond outside the front of their property. And this is the wow photo. This is the money shot. And what's interesting about this as well is the proportion of sky which is actually in the shot as well. You can pan the camera down a bit, but here it's just giving that balance of color. So it's a really impressive shot. I absolutely love it. It makes you go, wow. And the next thing you want to do is you want to set the scene. And setting the scene is all about telling people what it's like outside side of the property. Because quite often when you're booking, you're looking at an ota, all you're seeing is beds and rooms. But it's hard to visualize what it's actually like when you're in the property or around the property. If it's beautiful and it looks nice, this is something that you can lean on and you can start to tell a story for people that this is what it's going to be like when they're sitting outside and they're enjoying the deck. But what's even better, what you can do is you can actually then go even further and show people what it's going to be like when they wake up in the morning, they're going to be in the bed, open the blinds and they've got this amazing view. So it's a continuation of the story that we had before. Set the scene, create the story. It's going to engage people. You're starting to get some more emotion out of them. The other thing you can do is if you are struggling to find really good photos or you don't have that much to show or in general, you can actually add the things, especially on the OTAs, maybe not as important, but in your book director website, you can show the local things that there are to do. Because remember, pictures has a thousand words as well. So we can show them things like local shopping that they can do. We can show them where they're going to go to eat at a restaurant and be on the river. We're going to show them the local attractions, so art galleries and that sort of thing. We're going to show them nature and walks and all these different things, things that they can experience in your local area. Show off your local area. Okay, grab the photos. You might be able to go to your local tourism board and say, hey, can I use the photos for my business? And you're not going to use them as lead photos. You can have them. If you look at the accommodation pages, you're gonna have all the different the bed, the room, what it's like in the house. And then you're gonna actually show them what it's like when you step out of the house. You can use these ones. If you want inspiration, go to one of our clients@tshhhhh.com and a really great example of how to use photos in a very positive way. Last one on the golden hour. The golden hour can change everything. This client here, they almost quadruple their bookings overall on the OTAs and direct based on great photos. The photographer had to wait quite a while to actually get the colors coming through like this. But that's what it's like at the property at that particular time. So if you get those photos, make sure that you get them because it looks spectacular. Everything doesn't have to be perfect, but you're just playing with that color and that composition of the photo. This is the scene that you're not trying to set. People just don't need a picture of the toilet, so don't include that one. Now the last thing I'm going to do is show you a quick video. If you are playing around with video for your business, then this is a really great example of how to create emotion. What's really interesting about this video is that quite. This is selling accommodation, quiet in the way. It's not actually showing you the accommodation, it's showing you what it's like to be there. It's showing you the people, the environment. Now we get to see the person checking you in. What's interesting here is they get the key and then rather than showing the accommodation which hasn't even been shown, they show, show the glass of wine what it's going to feel like to get there. And the first thing you do is you're going to unwind and relax and they show a picture of it all. One of my favorite videos to show you. I really love it. I think it works very, very well. Now folks, hopefully throughout this session you've got lots of little takeaways that you can implement in your business and have a think about with your book, Direct Strategy. And with that, wanted to say thank you. Thank you for watching my presentation, for getting involved, for engaging, for filling in the form. I will email you guys to make sure that you follow up and that you fill out the rest of it and then you follow everybody on Instagram. Any questions, please feel free to reach out. It's bartbookedonline Tech. You've got my phone number on there as well. Plus six one for Australia. Thank you very much, Mr. Simpson, for having me on here and looking forward to seeing you all. Don't forget, Strive 2025 is coming up in March next year, Melbourne, then New Zealand. You should get involved. Wishing you all the best. Take care.

All right, Bat from down under. Thank you very much. If we've got anybody that is tuning in from Australia or New Zealand, I know you are here, please drop a comment and obviously strive to thrive coming up very soon. Go drop your Instagram handles in. That's a great idea. We did it in the group and that was a lovely little walkthrough. For those of you that were here in the last, last summer, you will know that Phil Kennard from Future State did like a 90 minute absolute masterclass on the diary booking process. But Bart's like consolidated it lovely down there. So again, some really good education in there. Thank you very much. And I want to move very swiftly on now. This next speaker is somebody that I've been working closely with for the last 10 months on my new venture and product which is outsourced. If you don't know what that is, got to get outsourced. We work with companies that are doing a million plus in annual booking revenue that are looking to grow and scale their business with an eye on potentially selling. And I brought Jacob in as part of that process because he has got, he is everything that I'm not. He loves to look at details, he loves to look at structure organizations and he, and he, he's done really well with the, with the clients that we've worked with over the course of the last year and you know, alongside the social work that we do, the SEO work, etc. This is a massive part of, of, of why that has worked so well. And I said to Jacob, listen, I would love for you to be part of this summit. You have got such an amazing way of explaining it and could you just put together like impartial knowledge, keep it to around 30 minutes, keep it all killer, no all filler, no killer, whatever the saying is, and just put it in in the summer because I want to showcase you. And he has done that. He's not only has he worked closely with me with outsourced, he's also been doing really cool audits for our Boostly members. So for the paid Boostly members this year. And, you know, he's, he's somebody that is getting more of a, more of a name friend, you know, I'm all for getting the good people and putting them into the spotlight, you know, and I'm sorry, grateful to be able to have a environment and a platform like this that we can bring such cool people. We've already done loads this week and we've got a few more to go before the roast. Your listing live special that's going to finish later on today, 8:30pm UK and, and Jacob, I really want for you to pay attention because he's going to be throwing a lot at you here and you know, he's part of the group, he's part of the experience and I'm really excited to showcase him to you. So can we all say, first and foremost, thank you, Bart, make sure you go check him out. But next, say hi, Jacob, and thank you, Jacob. And get your questions ready in the chat. Here we go.

Hey, thank you for having me, Mark. Thank you. To everybody else watching this today, my name is Jacob. Well, every day my name is Jacob. I'm with DestinationAsset.com throwing darts at growth Strategy. That's what we're going to talk about today. And I'll share why I've named it that here in just a moment. A little bit about me. I help investors and property managers optimize their Whole funnel optimization so that they can make more money and get more bookings. Started out with a degree in radiology management, but I started working for James Fedich, co author of Airbnb for Dummies in 2020. Became the head coach for some hands on clients at BNB Inner Circle where I would personally help them walk through one on one the entire process of investing when they they start with a lump of cash all the way to the point where they were pricing and managing their properties. I also managed pricing for a couple of James personal Properties and eventually I was brought on by Mark to handle revenue management and tech optimization for some of those clients. On the outsourced side, I'm also one of 20ish worldwide revenue managers officially endorsed and backed by Price Labs, which is a ton of fun. Now I do a lot of these calls like this where people come to me and we have a one on one chat and the biggest questions that I get are, I don't know if I'm doing it right, what settings should I have? Am I making the most money I can? I don't know if it's working and how do I fix when I'm not getting bookings right? It feels like I'm just throwing darts. So today I'm going to address all of these things. So by the time the end, the end of this comes, you're going to know the answer to all of these questions. Now here's what we're going to cover. So specifically to answer what settings should I have? Section on Setup Settings and View Checklist. How do I know if it's working? Confidence in your progress and how do I fix when I'm not getting bookings? So I'll show you how to get more bookings and what that actually looks like and how to think about that. Funnel first part, brief Checklist Here, these are the things and you can write this down. You can take a screenshot. Setup Settings and View Checklist. You want to make sure that your dashboard metrics are covered. You want to have the right metrics in place, not just, not just the three core ones that they have. There's a couple here. So make sure you go through that list and set up so that you have that as a way to quickly analyze what you've got. You want to go to account settings and advanced settings, check out those things, make sure that's in there. You want to go to dynamic pricing, manage listings and then you have an eyeball and a trash can. That's going to be your options to clean up Your Price Labs, make sure you get rid of or hide the ones that you're not using. Two things in neighborhood data, the future pricing chart. Bedroom selection. Make sure you're comparing apples to apples and set up the competitor calendar table. So that way, via the map, you can select up to 10 that are similar to you and you can see specific dates and what they're up to. And the last two things you definitely want to make sure that you keep an eye on regularly is the base Price Helper and the Minstay settings suggestion tool. So look up all of those things. I don't want to spend a ton of time on this because Price Labs has, you know, really, really good help docs and YouTube that can help you walk through each of these things. But these are the core ones that I would say I see the most that people aren't utilizing. So that's the shortcut. Do those things, get that cleaned up and you'll be on your way. Now, number two, confidence in your progress. So there's three things that you should be checking regularly to make sure that you know you're doing the right thing. Neighborhood data tab. Adjusted occupancy pills and pacing reports with the market dashboard. So first thing is the neighborhood data tab. And there's three parts to this. We've got the future prices chart. And when you go into neighborhood data, it's going to look like this. The black line is you. The other colors in there after you've selected the proper number of bedrooms, that's going to show you what other people are asking right now. And a recently added trick, if you click the three dots and select the Market Booked Price 50th percentile, it's going to show you if there's at least five bookings for that particular day. It's going to show you the median price of what's been booked so far. So it can give you a really nice indication of, well, hey, people are booking really low and obviously things like Christmas out here and New Year's, people are booking the cheapest places first. And that's okay. You can also select my upcoming bookings and you can mouse over any of these dates and see what the percentiles are. I'm not going to go into percentiles. Plenty of things on YouTube to explain what that is so that once you see this information, you'll know what it's saying. Next part of this, right below that is the occupancy line chart. This is very helpful. You can mouse over a specific date. You can see things like this where October 12th, we have 41% occupancy right now. And if I had looked on this date last year at October 12, again, lined up by day of week. So last, the middle Saturday of October is lined up over the Saturday. You can see where it was at as of today last year and where it finished. So you can kind of see, hey, do we still have some meat on the bone, so to speak, can I expect more bookings through here and right now, are we ahead or behind where we were last year and should I take any action on that? And then right below that is a new section, a new chart that was added a couple of months ago, kind of, I think Q2, 20, 24 is the market history section, which is very helpful because this is kind of day to day and this is more month to month, which I appreciate. So you can look at market occupancy and market booking window if you click on that and then link to stay, which isn't as useful, and some adr, which isn't as useful either. But I think these two here in conjunction with each other, you can see certain months as of last year, what you can expect, maybe things are ramping up or booking windows are probably going to be increasing. So you can strategize that way and set up some specific seasonal profiles if you want, or just make sure you're keeping an eye on it as things go up in this chart. This chart and this chart are all receptive to the current bedroom selection, which is why at the beginning, one of the key things is to make sure that you're comparing apples to apples here. The second thing you can do for confidence in your progress are these pills, right? So once you've set up your dashboard, a couple of them are going to have these pills. And it's important to mouse over it and make sure that you understand what it's saying. Now, you can't influence the market side of this. Like you see 37% and 32% here for the next 30 days. Just make sure you understand that 37% of 30, you're booked and this is rounded weird when they do this, but 11.1 day, so probably 11 days. But the market average is 32% of the next 30 days, which is 9.6. So in general, you're about a day and a half booked more than the market right now. The next thing to keep in mind is that when it says the next 60 days, that's inclusive of the next 30. So if it says 48% of 60, you're booked 28.8 days, probably 29. It's just rounded weird. There's no, you know, exact decimals on this over the next 60. So if I were to subtract these two, I know that there's 11.1 days in the next 30. If I take that out of the next 60, I can reasonably assume that I have 17.7 ish, again rounded, not a huge deal to be exact, in month two. So days 31 to 60, I have about 17.7 days booked. Same thing you can do for the market, right? 36% of 60 is 21.6 days. And if I take out the first 30, I can see the next 30. Right. And so in general I can see that I'm one and a half days different from day zero to 30 and I'm 5.7 days ish different in days 31 to 60. So sometimes that can be really useful. If you're booked 100% over the next 30 days, this first pill is going to say 100% and then the next 60 by default is going to say 50% because you're booked 30 out of 60 days, right? But it could be that you're completely empty and that is misleading if your first 30 is really, really strong, for example. So sometimes it helps. And this is a quicker way to at least in your head perhaps understand at a glance where things are going and segments of time. And this can also help if you're setting up the occupancy based adjustment tables that they have inside of the customizations. Now the third thing is the pacing reports and market dashboard, right? So you go to analytics, go to pacing, you set your filters and ranges through here, you set your market dashboard and the comp set if you can. If you have that, it's going to be super helpful and make the difference and it's going to look like this. So on this sheet, if you have the market dashboard, it's going to add the market RevPAR, ADR and occupancy. So that you can see in general, once you set up your filters, you can set it up by listing individually. Make sure you're again comparing apples to apples. If it's a three bedroom listing, make sure you're selecting your three bedroom comp set so that you can see how am I doing each month broken down compared to the market, where the market was last year, where we can expect it to go and what it might look like when we're all done for each of these different segments. Am I getting higher than market occupancy but lower adr, but I'm ending up at the same revpar or not or back and forth. But once you have this pacing report screen, which without the Market dashboard is only going to show you your numbers by month and last year, which can be useful, but sometimes year to year can change a lot. So we still want to pace ourselves off of the current market. And that's where the market dashboard is really going to shine. Now, the third piece of this is how to get more bookings, right? You're asking if it's not working, if pricing isn't working, what are we actually doing to ramp this thing up? There's three parts of this. We need to look up the funnel, so to speak. So we need to check out the inside. We need to make those repairs based on data. So we need to fix that funnel and then we pull on some marketing levers. So we need to throw more into the funnel. Right. Now, here's what that looks like in reality. You have searches, you have page views. So how many people clicked? So when they show up in a search, it's like this. Then they click and it goes here. And once they're here, they make the booking, right? You throw the people in, it grinds them up, money comes out, kind of funnels them down like this. In Airbnb itself, it looks like this. You choose your listing where it is over here, you select the date range. Now, these are stay dates. Keep in mind, these are stay dates of things that are happening for those specific dates. So if you select something in the past, it's not what happened, it's not the views and conversions that happened on that date. It's of that date, people who stayed there, what happened. So very different. Now, if you check out something like intellihost, they flip it around. So that way it helps you do some A B testing and things like that to understand what happens on that date, even if it's for a stay date into the future. And also you want to select this box here and you want to go to similar listings so you can kind of compare yourself against what Airbnb determines as your market. And then also just be sure to check out your each of these pages under conversion. It gives you some different stats and you can click on each one and a little screen will pop up over here. And it kind of teaches you a little bit about that so you understand it a little bit better. But when you're looking at this, here's what it looks like when you're in searches. Okay, great. It doesn't specifically say how many searches you signed up for or how many you showed up for. You can work backwards and figure that out, I think. But with searches, it does show you the first page search impression rate. So how many times of those searches were you showing up on the first page for these stay dates? When people search for these dates to stay somewhere for this particular listing, then when the page view clicks, how many of those searches actually did people actually make it to your page? And then of those, how many bookings were actually made? So listing to booking, conversion, from the listing to booking, how many conversions actually happen? So that's what that looks like. That's what it's showing you. You can select different date ranges and you can select. See how it's looking in the future if things aren't going well or things are, how did it go in the past for specific listings compared to each other, that sort of thing. And I can't give you, hey, it should look like this or it should have this number. Because every market is going to be different, especially given certain saturations and certain bedroom sizes and booking windows. I mean, there's a lot at play here. So we want to just optimize this the best we can. But that's what it looks like when you look up the funnel and you're looking at the data. This is how to find that and get that. Once you have that, though, and you know those numbers, you're thinking, well, how do I improve on those steps? If you want to show up in more searches, you want to add things that will allow you to show up in more searches, right? So the things that have filters, pool or king bed or workspace, things like that, you want to add those so that you show up in more searches. Sometimes pets, right? Lots of people search for pets. And you can use Market Dashboard to see if pets are something that people respond to in your area. Obviously, price, people filter for price, things like the 99s, right? And what I mean by that is I've had listings before that are smaller condos where it's a. You put 101 as the price and then you set it to 99. And suddenly everybody has been filtering for $100 and less. And so now it just, it explodes, right? Because everybody can now see you in more searches because you're pricing it at the $99 or the 199 or the 499, depending on the size of, of your place. A lot of those kind of bigger numbers, as soon as you drop below that Be ready for that. Obviously, reviews, rating and number. You want to show up towards the top with better reviews. And then also you can show up in more searches through more conversions. Airbnb makes money when you make money, and so they're going to show the people who make them the most money. They're a business. It's as simple as that. So if you can get conversions and you can show them that you're making them money, they're going to help you make money. Once they're seeing you in the search and you're showing up in more searches, how do you make sure people click on you? Obviously, amazing cover photo. That's going to be huge. Lots of opinions there on the perfect cover photo, but ultimately, you want to stand out and get clicked. The price is going to be huge. People can see that up there, and they want to make sure that it's roughly in line with their expectations. The headline, you know, one of those summer updates last year, the year before, kind of took that away from the search results, but they kind of re added it back. In some searches, you can see it kind of grayed out a little bit. It's like a light gray now. But sometimes that headline can play a part. If people are reading some of those bids to make sure that you're saying the thing that they're most excited about and what they would want when they. When they click there, and then flair, any flair, obviously, inside the search, things that'll say like Guest favorite. You have that little Guest favorite tag that shows up on there sometimes. The strikethrough. If you change the price by a certain percent over from the past couple of days, you'll get a strikethrough on the price. And it's just something that adds to your search results. Obviously, reviews, people can see how many you've had and what your stars are. That's going to be a big, big deal. And then once they're on your page, what do you do to make more bookings? Right. Ultimately, you want to answer their questions. You want to make sure that when they're there, they know that if they want this or they need this or they have to have this, then you're showing it to them. So you have to know what your avatar wants, and you're showing it to them through photos, captions and the description and answering those questions before they even have a chance to get to them. And if they do have to reach out to you, that your response time is very, very quick, because the more time that their question isn't answered and they're reaching out to you for clarification is time that they're going out, booking somewhere else, right? And then obviously they need to trust you. So if you're a guest favorite or host or you have high reviews or it looks like a place that they can trust, whether you know, it's secure, it's locked, it's safe, etc. The other thing that's going to get you bookings or not sometimes is a cancellation policy or the price. Again, obviously they can make that final call on the price and any fees that you might have, whether you decide to charge extra for pets or for extra guests or what have you, some of these fees can affect that final decision. And then of course, amenities your avatar wants, right? So if, if I'm traveling with my family and I'm going to a beach area, it, it blew my mind the first time I went somewhere and they didn't have a, like a beach wagon. Like, how simple is that? For 50 bucks you can have that there. And for the families who are pulling all of their stuff, that's just a really nice, really nice bonus. Or if they're like, I really want a pool. Again, we already talked about this. But having things that they want for your area are going to be huge. So that when they see that in the photos or in the captions and you've highlighted it, then it just solidifies their choice and booking made. So here's what that looks like. Here's what it looks like before the funnel. So for example, we have 1178 searches that are being made, right? And 7.8% of them results in 92 search to listing. And of that 3.26 actually book. Okay, so each of those stages that we just talked about, they're doing okay. So there's 7.8% past the first step and then 3.26 total bookings made. And then 3 of 1178 is a 0.25 overall conversion rate. Okay, so imagine you see that in your insights right now. What do you do? You make those tweaks based on that previous page. Go ahead and grab a screenshot. Once you have those things fixed, here's what's going to look like. So pay attention to these numbers. I'm going to have the same number of searches, right? But if I optimize the searches I have, suddenly it results in 14% actually viewing my page. And then of that almost 6% getting booked or choosing to book results in 10 total bookings made with that same group of 1100ish people, right. And that's a 0.85% overall conversion right now. So I've increased this significantly by not doing anything except optimizing my funnel and making sure that each of those steps along the way are as good as they're going to get right now. How do we do that? Once we fix this, and we have done that, we need to throw more people in there, right? So how do we increase those number of searches so that once I've fixed the funnel, so to speak, what can I do to increase the number of searches? One big thing is add filterable amenities. I already kind of talked about this where if people. Pets is an easy example, but there are a couple that people can filter for. Make sure you're adding the things that people want. And if they say, no, I only want to look at places with pets, then you're showing up in those searches. You can add one new ota. So for example, if you're in the states, it's probably VRBox. If you're international, it's probably booking. But you want to really optimize that funnel. Once it's optimized, then add your one new OTA. Right? Having two funnels on two OTAs that are really, really, really good and that you really, really, really understand is going to be more powerful than the 20 that you can just throw yourself on and have to figure out all the time. Right. The next thing obviously is an email list, something like StayFi. You can grab this, you can collect the emails from the people who have already stayed with you and send them back to the page if you know they've already stayed with you, you like them, they like you. Very easy. Social media, obviously very, very top of the funnel, making sure that people understand you through promotions or partnerships with influencers, that type of thing. And then of course a website have boostly set something like that up for you. And lots of SEO where you take the people who are looking for stays and point them to your particular site. So with those percentages after the fixes, once you have let's say 14% going to the listing and then 6% of those are actually getting booked, all that means is we need to get more people to look at your listing. Because if the same percentages book with you, then I just need to increase those numbers. And if I, let's say I can double that. Well, Now I've got 20 bookings made in that same time period with no change in the percentage of the people in each group, if that makes sense. So once I've optimized the funnel. If I haven't optimized the funnel, I'll say it this way. If I haven't optimized the funnel and I try to double the number of people, yes, it might double the percentages, but I can get a bigger jump oftentimes by just fixing the one funnel I have by making sure that that's the best it can absolutely be. Then I'll worry about chucking more people in. Right. Because a lot of times that's less work. That's the smoother path to get to this point. So your steps, your steps in general. Make sure your dynamic pricing software. I choose Price Labs and listing settings are correct. We talked about that at the beginning. Review your data and numbers weekly so that you know what's working. You have that confidence. And three, first, use data to fix your funnel so you know what to fix when it's not getting enough bookings. Then when you fix it, then you can begin throwing more in. You can also partner with us. Partner with destination asset. Grow your portfolio using data and profit. This is what we do done for you. Pricing and revenue management using Price Labs, weekly updates. Insights using Airbnb or Intellihost. Review with two bonuses right now. Run projections and numbers for you. If you're a PM company and you have clients, I want to help you run the numbers so that you can show them and set better expectations for those potential clients or property leads. Hey, is this going to make me money? What's going to actually work? This is what I've been doing for years, making sure people make the most money possible. You're going to have a much better time. If you're not starting on the back foot from the beginning and that you're buying and getting the correct clients or properties. Also one on one str consulting via WhatsApp. You get me in your pocket at any time for any of these steps. Hey, Jacob, what do you think? So you get access to me at all times via WhatsApp. I don't think there's any other coach out there that's going to help you with this. And very accessible. My heart's with the little guy. Fee per unit that scales with you, makes it very, very simple. Go to destinationasset.com summit. You're going to see my calendar. We'll chat about this and we'll see if it's the right fit, see if it's going to work and we'll get started from there. Again, thank you, Mark. Thank you to everybody else who is here. Any questions you can definitely reach out. Set up a call with me and we will talk soon. Thanks guys.

Hello everyone. We are thrilled and excited to be presenting at this virtual summit where we get the chance to share our insights on AI and how it's shaping the future of the short term rental industry. In the rapidly growing short term rental industry, delivering seamless guest experiences and efficient operations is more crucial than any ever. However, one of the biggest challenges many property managers face is fragmented technology with a wide variety of tools and systems each handling different aspects of operations. Property management systems often struggle to integrate new technologies like AI that could revolutionize the guest experience. From booking engines to customer service platforms, operations and review management tools, many systems don't communicate effectively with one another. This lack of integration makes it difficult to implement AI solutions that could streamline processes, personalize guest interactions and optimize operations. Everyone has heard about AI and many property managers have a basic understanding of its potential. But despite this knowledge, they don't always see how AI can be effectively applied to their operations. Because of these technological barriers, AI can seem distant and disconnected when the tools you rely on every day aren't built to accommodate it. Today we'll show you how AI technology is solving this problem by offering a fully integrated system and how boom is helping to bring the power of AI into every part of the guest journey. Starting with AI for sales. When a guest sends an inquiry, the AI can help by providing immediate responses and guiding them through the booking process. Let's take a closer look. As you can see, this guest shows interest in a property and the AI sales agent steps in to assist by asking the preference of the guest. Upon giving their preference, the AI then searches and offers the best match properties, taking into account factors like availability and seasonality. Additionally, the AI can offer discounts and special promotions, further enhancing the guest experience. Once the guest is satisfied, the AI provides a quick summary including the discounted price and any complimentary offers and the guest is all set for booking. If you noticed. As well, the AI helps by setting a follow up snooze on the ticket to check back on the guests in case they haven't responded. With the power of AI, this approach ensures that guests receive timely, relevant assistance, streamlining the booking process and improving their overall experience. Now let's move on to the next stage. Customer Service After a booking is made Once the guest has made a booking, the real time interaction continues. The AI customer service system is always on ready to handle any issues or questions a guest may have. Let's take a closer look. The AI can assist with basic guest questions such as asking for a local restaurant nearby. It will start working and it will provide suggestions with ratings and distance information. How about a common guest scenario? Suppose the guest arrives and finds the pool is dirty. The guest sends a message reporting the pool and being upset. The AI immediately responds, I am so sorry about the pool. We'll get this sorted for you and escalate it to management inside the system. It has created a service call for the cleaning team to go and clean the pool. The guest satisfaction level is also tracked where you can see. Here the fun level has decreased to 1. This indicates that this guest is not satisfied with their stay and hence an escalation is also created for the team to be in touch to make sure their experience will be turned around. Let's try another example that showcases the power of AI. Suppose the guest wants to know how to use something inside the house. This time a voice recording is sent to ask how to turn on the projector. The AI then analyzes the recording and searches the library of information to find the relevant video tutorial. As you can see, it sends a link to the guest showing how to turn on and use the device. What's amazing is that the AI can also respond in any language, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese and more. The AI supports any language you wish. Case studies show that our clients using BOOM AI saw a significant improvement in their review communication score. The enhanced AI implementation streamlined guest interactions and issue resolutions, leading to higher ratings and better overall feedback as shown by actual data from one of our clients. The red line represents the number of messages sent by AI over the last few months, while the blue line represents the review score on the booking channel during the same period. We can observe a clear relationship between the two, indicating that as AI is more aggressively implemented, the review's communication score increases. Whether it's answering frequently asked questions, managing tasks, handling voice messages, or coordinating repairs. The AI customer service system ensures smooth communication and quick resolutions, enhancing the overall guest experience. Now that the guest stay is over, it's time for some feedback. Reviews play a critical role in maintaining high service standards and this is where AI for review system can help. The AI streamlines the review management system by offering detailed analysis of guest reviews from various platforms. We can see here the guest review according to the channel and reservation was booked as well as a scoring underneath. The AI then generates automated responses and categorizes issues. For instance, this review was categorized as mold, hot water and plumbing issue. It also creates tasks to address and resolve guests complaints. In the analytics page, managers can review comprehensive review data by department property and AI tags. These insights help enhance service quality and guest satisfaction. Additionally, if you want to dive deep in reviews guest report, just click on the specific category and it will filter out properties which has the most to least report. This way we'll understand which listing has the reoccurring issue and focus on it. It also shows which department reports the issue the most Managing Feedback efficiently and Ensuring Quick, appropriate responses Our AI review system not only helps improve your services, but also builds trust with future guests. Speaking of analytics, AI powered analytics provide a comprehensive view of system performance from chat handling efficiency to infrastructure optimization, which ensure continuous refinement, driving better operational outcomes and customer satisfaction. Let's take a look at the chat analytics. This gives us a clear view of how many tickets are being handled by AI and how many require human agents. In the sample below, the AI has managed over 1200 tickets, while human agents have handled the following tickets each. You can see that a hybrid workforce is possible as the system has the ability to seamlessly integrate AI, allowing for flexible, efficient teamwork. This breakdown helps you understand where AI is making the biggest impact, how much work is being handled by human agents, and how often both are working together in a hybrid mode. It provides a complete picture of how efficiently guest issues are being resolved. With these numbers, you can easily track how AI is lightening the workload of your team, ensuring faster responses and better guest satisfaction while also maintaining their personal touch when necessary. Finally, let's look at how we track the performance of our AI infrastructure, giving you full control over how your AI agents operate. Here you can see data on reject rates, showing how often AI suggestions are overwritten by human agents and the usage rates of autopilot versus copilot modes. These reports allow you to monitor how effectively AI is handling operations. For example, reject rates provide insight into where I might need further training, whereas you can see here, Once the implementation process stabilizes in July, the property manager learns to trust the AI, rejecting fewer messages and gradually adopting it as the main tool. While the breakdown between autopilot and copilot modes let you optimize the balance between automation and human oversight. By transforming AI interactions into detailed analysis reports, you gain the ability to track, refine and improve your AI's performance over time. This ensures that your system not only operates efficiently, but continuously evolves to meet your property's needs. Now that you've seen how the AI assists in sales, customer service and reviews, let's explore the AI infrastructure that powers these capabilities. The AI Customer Support Assistant operates in Two distinct modes, Copilot and Autopilot, both designed to streamline operations while maintaining flexibility and control. In Copilot mode, the AI works alongside human agents by offering suggested replies and helpful information that they can choose to approve or reject. This ensures that agents maintain control over customer interactions while benefiting from the AI's speed and accuracy. It offers suggestions for replies and relevant information. In Autopilot mode, the AI takes over completely following predefined policies to autonomously manage guest communications. From answering common questions to escalating issues that require human intervention, Autopilot ensures round the clock service without agent oversight. You can configure Autopilot to operate across all listings or restrict it to certain properties. You can also set specific hours of operation, allowing the AI to take over during after hours or high traffic periods. This flexibility ensures that AI adapts to your workflow, not the other way around. With the review assistance settings, the Copilot mode facilitates review analysis, issue tagging, and suggests the formation of service calls based on guest feedback alongside proposed review responses. Activating Autopilot entrusts this task to the assistant, offering a hands off approach to managing reviews. Through the Live tab, you can monitor all responses from your AI assistant. This functions as the AI Activity tab. One of the key elements of our AI infrastructure is its policy driven approach. AI policies are customizable rules that govern how the AI responds to various guest inquiries and situations, ensuring that it operates within our brand's guidelines. Policies can dictate everything from how sensitive information is handled to how service calls are created when certain conditions are met, like handling sensitive guest data, the AI can be paused to allow human agents to take over. Additionally, policies can trigger automatic escalations to managers if the situation requires human attention. The AI Train feature allows you to improve the AI's performance by providing additional training based on real interactions. Whether the AI is in Copilot or Autopilot mode, you can manually correct responses and teach the system how to handle similar situations in the future. Once a guest interaction occurs, you can adjust the AI's response and use that correction to create a new policy, ensuring continuous learning over time. These adjustments help the AI become even more accurate and aligned with your operational needs. Same with Dry Run, wherein whenever the AI responds incorrectly, you can reconfigure it in the settings. After that it will show the correct answer and will be applied accordingly to the next same inquiry. The AI infrastructure gives you the tools to fully customize and control how the AI behaves across your process properties. From co Pilot mode for agent assistance to full autopilot for hands free operation. The system is designed to adapt to your needs. By continuously training and refining its responses, our AI becomes a seamless extension to your team, enhancing efficiency, guest satisfaction and service quality. And that wraps our deep dive into how AI is transforming the short term rental income industry. What we've shown you today is just the beginning. It's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how Boom uses the full potential of AI and what it brings to the industry. Looking ahead, our vision is to take AI even further. Imagine AI agents that not only optimize guest communications, but actively drive marketing strategies, reaching out to future guests, filling calendar gaps and even adjusting pricing dynamically in real time. The possibilities are endless. The next wave of innovation will include AI driven marketing, smarter outreach to potential guests, and advanced calendar management. Imagine AI that can analyze guest behaviors, predict future reservations and optimize your pricing and availability for maximum occupancy. So what does the future look like? Are we moving toward a world where AI handles everything from guest acquisition to calendar optimization? What role will AI play in setting the perfect pricing strategy? And how will it help you increase revenue while simplifying your operations? These are the questions we're excited to answer as we continue to push the boundaries of what AI can do in the short term rental space. We invite you to be a part of this journey with us. Thank you for joining us today. We hope you've gained valuable insights into how AI can reshape the guest journey and help you achieve your business goals. The future is bright and we're just getting started.

Now. I was watching that for a whole time thinking is this a human or is this AI? And this is literally where we're at now. We don't know if anything that we see digitally is in person or is it AI. Now I am definitely here, I'm definitely real. I do have the AI bot. Obviously you've seen that booster.co.uk bot. It's helping pick a winner today. But it's fascinating what we've just seen and what I love about Boom is that they're not standing still, they're not playing small, they're going big. And you know, big risk could fall flat in his face, could absolutely prosper. But the more that I've got to know the owner, the co founder, the team, the more I'm impressed with them. And they're disrupting that they're disrupting now for some of you, what you've just watched way over your head, don't worry about it. For some of you, it may be like, oh, this sounds interesting. If that's the case, then go get in contact with them. It's, it's making an impact people all over the world and it's simplifying things. And it's frightening, but it's. The future is, can be frightening, but it can also be fantastic. And it can also be, you can be on one side of it all right or the other. I'm obviously tapped in, I'm down, down that rabbit hole. I'm never coming back. But for a lot of you, it's one where my worry is, is that if you don't embrace it, you'll get left behind. Now you'd have to do act on it today, obviously, but it's one to pay attention to. And this whole week is just about changing your perception, changing your mindset. Right, should we move on to our next speaker? Shall we?

Right.

Headlining day three Headlining Wednesday. If the world of AI and automation is a little bit out of you, but you don't want to do all the things yourself, you have to learn how to hire. You have to, have to, have to. Whether it's an in person, virtual contractor, employee, you have to learn how to get good at this. Otherwise you will never grow. You will always be stuck in the weeds of your business. And you know my family background, I've talked about this so many times. We used to wear that busy badge on our, on our chest as like a badge of honor. It was nonsense. The problem is it's very hard to find people that are going to help you recruit the right people. And I've known Matt for about a year now, worked with him loads, recommended him loads. He's helping loads and loads of people. Service is phenomenal. They go above and beyond. It's not just like going on fiverr and finding somebody or upwork and finding somebody. They find the right people, they recruit, they train and they work alongside you and they train you. And this is like a phenomenal 20 minute breakdown he's going to give of, of how to do it properly. At the end of this, we've got roast your listing live, which is great and that will draw an end to Wednesday. But I mean, what an unbelievable day or two days we've had. There has been a lot, okay, we talk about this a lot and I'll talk about this again in about 30 minutes at the end of the roast. Roast your listing live. I just want you to take one thing. Tomorrow we show up and we have our get it done day. I'm going to have posts in the group, turn all the notifications on, I'll send emails out. But come in and just do one thing in your business to make you better than where you were when you started on Monday. All right, let's get straight into this egg because we've got a jam packed session and we've got to finish with Roshi Distant live. Then I'm gonna have a beer. All right, see you on the.

Hey everybody. My name is Matthew Metros. I'm the founder of CS Outsource. I help operators outsource and build virtual assistant teams. We help operators set up front desk. So that's you know, doing the guest communications, dispatching vendors, scheduling them, working with the cleaning team, sending them reminders, helping order inventory and supplies, disputing negative reviews, helping with the claims process, managing reservations, setting up listings. Right. So all the day to day operational parts of the business. Then we have a bookkeeping department where we're helping send out owner statements, creating them, reconciling the accounts, categorizing transactions. We're working in your QuickBooks, your stuff zero really doesn't matter what software you're using. And then we have a digital marketing department as well where we're setting up email and SMS campaigns to retarget past guests, doing Facebook ads, graphic design, social media posting, SEO work. So we're an end to end service for short term rental operators. So I put together this document on how I think about hiring, training and you know, managing and retaining agents for the long run. So you know, you can replicate a lot of what I do. Or alternatively, if you want us to help you out, just reach out to me. The first step here is you want to identify what to delegate. Right? So a lot of people get stuck here. They say I have emails, I got, I'm doing marketing, I need social media support, the guest messaging. Right, let's organize it. Take a moment to list every task you handle in your business.

Right.

So get a pen and paper and as you're going throughout your day, outline the task you're working on, how long it took you to do that task. Were there any distractions? Right. If there are distractions, it likely means that this is a task that you're not interested in or you don't enjoy. That's a really good candidate for something that you want to outsource. So this is a simple chart I put together. You can do this on pen and paper but overall it should look something like this and do it for you know, one week, two week, three weeks, A month and really get down all of those tasks. You might need a month because you have those monthly recurring, end of month tests that take up a ton of time that you're not realizing right now. So take some time to do this, get it right. But overall, just start documenting what you're working on. Right? When I first got started, the first things I got off my plate were guest communications, vendor communications, scheduling them, following up with them, managing the reviews, the claims process, all the ordering of inventory and supplies, setting up listings, you know, accepting or declining reservations, or managing any sort of changes, checking cameras. That's generally going to be your operations and customer service va I think that is a no brainer. It's an easy place to start. Most people, that is where they start. So there's a ton of support online on how to do this the right way. But this is an easy way to start getting yourself out of the business so that you could focus on those higher value tests like writing acquisitions, going to conferences or local events speaking. Those are the higher value tests that grow the business that really nobody else can do other than you. Whereas operational tests, these are things that you can hire for, right? So when it comes down to what can actually be delegated, first and foremost, like most obvious one is it needs to be online. It needs to be, you know, someone can log in in another country and be able to do the task right. So you just have to make sure that all your systems are online. Don't use Quick QuickBooks Desktop, use QuickBooks Online. Right, that's a, that's an example. But good candidates are repetitive tests, right? The time consuming tasks that really anybody can be doing. So researching new vendors, reaching out to them, managing your inventory, ordering supplies. Right. These tests take a lot of time, but really anybody can, can do them again. Low skill, high impact test. These are, you know, another great candidate tasks with clear guidelines. So anything that's really like process driven that makes a great candidate for outsourcing. Now tasks that I wouldn't outsource are things that are very unique to your business. I would hold on to those longer. Eventually you can get to a place where, you know, you can outsource some of the high value tests. But in the beginning, when you're just getting started, hold on to those things like sales, you know, working with your customers, writing, you know, posting. I hold on to those a little bit more and I use the new time that I've found not working in operations to do those higher value tests. So let's move on to the next one. So. Step number two is hiring. The first step here is you want to create a job description. If we look back here, you have this wonderful chart of all the tasks that you're working on. Well, now we have to convert these into roles, right? You don't necessarily want to hire someone who's doing marketing and social media posting, graphic design, and also messaging your guests and disputing negative reviews, as well as helping out with bookkeeping. Those are different roles in the business. If you build a business around a superstar, it's going to be very hard to replace them. And then you start building the infrastructure of your business around a superstar. We want to build a repeatable business, right? So it's better to hire for specific departments. So really look at the tasks you're working on and start categorizing them into these different departments and start creating a very detailed job description. Don't write administrative assistant for property management company. Get really specific with it. Airbnb virtual assistant, guest communications and operations for, for short term rental property management company. Try to be like, you know where you're going to be working. You know, I highlight Airbnb. So right away, topically, you know, the person applying under has an idea of like, what kind of work they're going to be working in or. So I try to give a very specific title. I try to be very clear on the responsibilities. What are we actually doing? Get into the nitty gritty of this, right? Because it's going to help you as well. So I've had a lot of people, you know, get started with virtual assistant and they're genuine, generally, like, I don't know what to do. I don't, I don't know what I really need to outsource. Well, get it clear in your job description. Literally write it down. Be as granular as possible. Make it so that whoever is applying can really see and feel what they're going to be working on. And then when they get started, there's no ambiguity, right? You have a very clear idea on what this person is going to be doing. So you're not going to be saying, hey, I'm not sure what to do with my virtual assistant. No, you already did all that pre work. You know, also make it clear what skills are required or suggested. I have a lot of people that always reach out saying, hey, you know, I need somebody with owner as support or hospitable experience. And the reality is that, you know, this industry is on the newer side in the grand scheme of things. And then in these other countries, you Know, the industry is even newer there. You're not going to really have a large candidate pool that understands owner res or breezeway or turno. The main things that you really want to be looking for or is someone's character. Are they smart? Can they communicate exceptionally well? Are they curious? Did you have a really natural, you know, conversation with them during the interview? Does your gut tell them that, like tell you that this is gonna be a great long term fit? Those things, you just can't, you can't train somebody on mindset. The skills we can teach somebody, you know, getting someone up and running on onorez or breezeway or hostaway, whatever it is, like that just takes maybe a week or two or three and then you have a great long term fit. But changing someone's mentality and their work ethics is just not possible in the timeframe that we're looking at. So hire for character, train on skill. That's what I tell most people. And you know, I dive deeper into that over here. You know, we're looking for someone with strong communication skills. Communication is everything. We're remote. We need to be communicating. If we're not communicating, then we're just expecting things. If we're expecting things, that's typically where I see, you know, relationships fail. So they really need to be strong communicators. It's also hospitality. We're working with guests and customers and we're triaging problems and calling vendors. So communication skills are number one tech savvy as well. We're working with all these different softwares. You need someone that has an intuitive nature with technology. Problem solving, that's another huge one. These, you need to be able to navigate off the script. There's only so much a SOP can do. Somebody needs to, you know, be able to say, okay, like I'm gonna be intuitive here and understand that, you know, I need to go off script here. So also flexible schedule. We're not looking for someone that's very strict about 9 to 5. We need somebody that, you know, can kind of jive with us. So if we need them an extra hour, extra 30 minutes or extra two hours, you know, every here and there, you know, you're looking for somebody that can meet those demands because again, it's hospitality, it's 24 7. Right. Things happen. Sometimes right at the end of their shift, that issue might come in. We don't want them signing off. We're looking for somebody that can have flexibility into their schedule. And I'm very upfront about this with everybody that Joins our team and then gray and perseverance. Right. There's a lot of high pressure situations here. Things are going to get tense. A guest is going to be really upset. Right. Or a customer is really upset. We need somebody that can manage those pressures and you know, not fold under the pressure.

Right.

So what are some platforms that are available? So you have your marketplaces, you have your upworks and your fiber, right. Those you have, you know, independent businesses, freelancers or you have businesses on there. Those make for really good one time projects. The hardest part about getting a freelancer to do a long term commitment with you is that they are already a business owner. So they're going to be working for other clients and that is eventually going to impact your work because as they take on more businesses and more clients on their end, you're going to end up seeing it in your work. And I never see Upwork or Fiverr as good long term, you know, solutions like bringing on a dedicated virtual assistant. You won't get that from Upwork or Fiverr. A headhunter agency. These are agencies, you reach out to them, you sell them, you requirements, they start, you know, they'll interview and present you candidates for you to interview. Right. Remote staff, virtual staff, finder. These are very popular solutions. And then you have the agency model, agency model will hire, interview, they'll train the VAs, they'll provide management over them. So making sure that they're happy, making sure they're showing up on time, they're dealing with, you know, all the nuances of managing a person, which is a tremendous, tremendous responsibility. What often happens is you have an operator that starts outsourcing, brings on a VA and then they are a full time manager over this person and they don't feel like they're outsourcing. And you know, maybe they're also not good at managing people. It's a skill set, it requires you to be patient and you know, an agency will step in and they will provide you with, you know, a trainer, supervisor, you know, they have HR to, you know, do team dinners and make sure that employees are happy and they stick for the long term. They understand how to retain people, how to manage delicate situations. Right. But you know, the major point here is that when you have an agency, they kind of serve as this middle layer so that you can really focus on those high value tasks, business development, writing, speaking, going to conferences. And you know that, you know, this agency is responsible for just making sure that you know, those KPIs are hit, that strategy is hit. Those that New plan is hit and you bring up any concerns about the agents to them and then they actually mediate it and they train it, train the agent. And what ends up happening with a company like us is, you know, you bring on one, two, three or four agents and then you have, you know, you do bookkeeping with us or digital marketing and we kind of act as the integrator, making sure that all the different teams are rowing in unison. Because other, because then you're stuck doing that. You'll have to, you know, you know, work with all these different departments and you know, you know, work at the agent level and make sure they're happy. We do that for you. So it's different. Is one better than the other? I think it depends on your brand, your goals, where you are in, you know, your business right now. So really if I were to give advice, I would say headhunting agencies and agency models seem to be the best. If you need one off support, marketplaces are great for that. The next one I want to go over is location geography. I've, you know, this past year I went from doing solely Asia outsourcing to now I do Latin America and I noticed a huge difference. Latin America, we have longer retention rates with agents. We were able to access better quality talent quicker with less hoops to jump through the communication skills. We find that we can generally find better communication, you know, communicators. The time zone alignment is really helpful as well for working together. And then the cultural understanding of, you know, Western culture in the United States makes it feel more natural. I can have someone speak to vendors and our customers and guests and they, they understand the undertones of the conversation. And I think that, you know, it's not that really like one place is better than the other. I think it's just different and you should know when to use one versus the other. I find that Latin America is more expensive. Right. I find that it's harder to get people to work weekends. I find that it's harder to get someone to work a graveyard shift. Whereas in Asia I find it much easier to do those things. I, you know, it's, it's not as expensive. Latin America, I will sometimes pay three times as much for comparable talent in Asia. So they're different. Understand your brand, understand your business goals. Maybe Asia makes more sense now and then, you know, as your company grows and you need a more customer facing role. Latin America makes sense. But there's good people all over the place. These are just rules of thumb and I'm always learning right I listen to our operators when they say they're having a good experience. I take that seriously and I kind of. These are the things that I've noticed. So interviews, you know, what questions do I ask? How do I assess talent? So here are some of the common things I'm looking for. You know, I ask experience related questions. You know, are you familiar with hospitality, short term rentals, problem solving questions?

Right.

How would you handle this situation? Technology, I want to just get an understanding of, you know, did you grow up with technology and do these come easy and natural to you? Availability? Do you have a flexible schedule? Right. Like these are the things I need to know. Then, you know, I put, you know, people in these scenarios. What I've done in the past is, you know, I'll make up a scenario of running a ski chalet in France and how would you handle these different scenarios that come up with the guest and they oftentimes don't even know what a ski chalet is and then it's in France. So it's super foreign to them. But I'm able to see their problem solving capabilities, how creative they are. If I give them feedback, do they actually take that feedback positively and change the, you know, their response the next go around? These are, you know, things I want to pick up on now with some of the assessments I do Personality test and then English proficiency test. This, in my opinion, the English proficiency test holds more weight because it shows how educated they are. And typically when you're educated, you have, you hold, you have many other traits of like wanting to be a winner. And also, like I said, we're remote. Like communication is literally everything. So if someone scores a very high score on this, like I give them, you know, more precedence. The personality test, I think that's more of an internal thing like, will I work well with this person? I know a lot of people say, you know, for this role you need this personality type. I haven't had that experience. For me, we've had results all over the place and people may still make a great fit for that role. Where, you know, if I really relied on this, you know, I would have discounted so many great people. So I use it, I'm 50, 50 about it. This English proficiency means more to me. So documentation and how to do tasks, documentation and training is everything. If you're not willing to document and especially if you're not willing to train, just don't get started. Especially on the training side of things. I have a lot of people that say I don't have Time to train. I don't have time. Well, if you don't have time to train, you don't have time to grow your business and outsource yourself from the day to day operations, right? Training is so important. And you know, I know a lot of people say I need someone that already understands Airbnb and VRBO and all these things and property management so that I don't have to train them. The reality is that even someone like myself who knows this business still wouldn't be able to work in your business because I'm not trained up on how you do things, how you speak, what's your brand, voice, how do you manage maintenance, Right? So you gotta carve out time to train now with documentation. Here are some examples of documentation you can do to keep it short. You know what I always recommend is once your VA comes on board, they will start creating the documentation for you. You don't need to create loads and loads of documents before they come on. You're likely not going to do it. You're already too busy and don't have the time. And that's why you're getting a virtual assistant. I wouldn't expect you to create, you know, beautiful knowledge base of documentation. It's unrealistic. But what you should do is start creating loom videos of yourself working. Just like I'm doing this presentation as I'm going about my day, doing guest comms, managing maintenance, working with vendors, I'm recording myself doing it. And then when the VA comes on board, I'm sending them this. It's a raw, uncut video, could be three, four, five hours long, it doesn't matter. But they're getting a gist of how I work or how to do the work, then they can cut it up, they can start creating the documentation from there. And it's better that they do this because a it confirms they understand what they're doing, but they're building it in the perspective of a virtual assistant who will actually be using this. So when you bring on more VAS down the line, you have documentation that's built by a VA for vas. Very, very important. So here's an example of like notion. I love it. I think it's the best place to start creating knowledge bases. You know, just very clean and it's a great user experience, makes it very usable. If your documentation is like not really pretty to look at, people are not really going to use it. It's going to make it difficult to, to learn how to do the processes. So some, some popular Software Notion, Monday Airtable. You could use Google Drive, but my recommendation here is Notion. And then when you're recording yourself, use Loom. Loom is the best tool for just recording yourself. And then you send it to your va, they start creating the documentation. But you know, if you really want to create the documentation, here are some, you know, good tips. Make it clear and concise, have visual aids, be very descriptive about, you know, how to use these tools. And again, you know, video documentation works so much better than written documentation. Alright, so. Step number four here is training and starting to delegate. So you know, oftentimes people are like, well, where do I start? Start off with the foundational things. You know, this should be intuitive to you. Oftentimes what I see is people starting with the guest communications, working the pms, getting access to all the logins. And then when someone gets in the pms, they can review all those conversations, start getting a good idea of the properties and this is a great place for them to start documenting things. Right. You know, there's so much historical information in those conversations about issues that happen. You can get a good idea of the brand voice. So I recommend getting started with guest communications because you know, that is going to help them in other parts of the business as well and just understanding your business from a more holistic point of view. So again, you know, I probably don't need to jump into this part as much some of the training tips, because I went over that in the last section. But yeah, here are some training tips. And then, you know, getting access to systems logins, right? How do I share passwords, payment information and other sensitive information? So for password management, recommend lastpass or one Password, right? You can grant access to specific accounts. Now payments. Want my VA to order supplies? Well, set up a sub user in PayPal or set up a sub user in Melio or spin up a virtual card. Right. You know, a great platform that I recommend is Topkey. You can spin up these virtual cards, grant it X amount of funds and set up approval processes for your virtual assistants. And then, you know, you're not giving them your full bank account and they can do the job that they need. They could pay vendors, could, you know, go order on Amazon, those sort of things. And then the reality is there's no 100% way to prevent malicious employees from doing malicious things. Right? No way. But we take all these different steps to prevent, you know, issues from happening. And what I always recommend is have a contract with them that, you know, makes it really like well known how important security is for you. You know it because it is so important and the impact it can have on your business are huge. If an employee goes rogue because you fired them and you know they are still logged into your PMS like they can do a lot of damage to existing reservations and that can impact, you know, your clients as well. So that's another important one that didn't write in here, but have a onboarding pro off boarding process as well. Someone's not working out, make sure you have, you know, you deactivate all their business accounts. Don't let them create the business accounts. You need to create it so that when you're off boarding them, you know, because a virtual assistant is not going to, you know, likely not going to stay forever. If you do get that person, you're very lucky, hold on to them tight. But the reality is they come and go. So make sure you own all the business accounts and you have an off boarding process that is really just a checklist. You know, I offloaded them off the pms, off turnoff, off Breezeway, I deactivated their email and now emails are routing to mine. So you know, just make sure you have all that set in stone. And then again, you know, giving your first test, you know, just start off with a couple of things. I think guest comms is a great way. And then once they're up to the mark with that, add the next test, then the next test. But meet with them regularly and give feedback. But yeah, you just stack them up like pancakes. And over the course of 30, 69 days you've accomplished so much. So you don't need to get started with everything on that job description. Get started with the foundational things. Now let's move on to step number five. Managing, retaining and upscaling. If you have an A plus player, you need to put a lot of thought into these areas. You know, retaining top talent is a skill. There's a system to it. You know, you should look into your compensation plans. One that I really love here is vesting schedule. So vesting schedule is, hey, if you stay for two years, you get this bonus and it drives these deferred incentive plans, drive people to want to stay with you longer. But yeah, you can do performance bonuses, have a strong base pay that's a little bit above the market, but things that drive longevity with your organization. Another one that I love is healthcare. I recently discovered this. There's a company called Safety Wing and I can offer healthcare to my virtual assistants and their families. A lot of operators aren't doing this. And as remote work becomes more popular, we need ways to, you know, just stay above our competition. And more people are going to start doing this and they're going to be more creative with how they compensate, incentivize employees to stay with them. So we have to get, we have to level up our game. You know, it's moving just beyond a base pay. So, yeah, compensation is very important for retention. Now, KPIs, everyone says KPIs, KPIs, KPIs. It is very important. But how do I get my KPIs? Just look at your job description. It's already very detailed. So just pull the core tests that you want them to focus on and build KPIs from those. Now, I know a lot of our tools don't offer, you know, response times and a lot of our work is back office. But, you know, it's not like the first time you give a KPI, it's gonna work out. You know, you're gonna learn over time. And as you see their work habits, you'll start understanding, like, what is a good bar? You know, they'll have good days, they'll have not good days. And, you know, use the good day as a reference point on what success looks like. Right. So if you have any questions about KPIs for a specific role, just reach out to me. I've done this loads of times. I can definitely, you know, give good recommendations here. And then company culture and appreciation, you know, you want, aside from the money, people want to feel that they are valued. I've seen it so many times where a VA was at another company and they left strictly because it was a toxic work environment. They didn't feel appreciated. So add this, systematize it into your business. Like, have a point where, you know, every week at the end of the week, you highlight some of the, you know, you shout out some of your teammates. They love this stuff. They come from, you know, countries where, you know, they're, you know, oftentimes they're almost treated like robots at these other companies. And it's a very churn and burn type of relationship. If you can take the relationship beyond just compensation and people want to work for you and they don't want to let you down, wow, you're going to have stronger retention, you're going to have better results, better productivity and, you know, you'll be able to delegate more because people, you know, they don't want to let you down. So company culture and appreciation is huge and building rapport, you know, Systematized building rapport in those one on one calls with them, you know, start off with, hey, are you happy? Like that is how I do every single call with everybody. I even do it with clients too. I always say, hey, are you happy? Because people don't ask that. And you know, I'll have people and vas like go on a 1 minute, 2 minute tangent about, you know, what's going on in their life and you know, but that stuff's important. If you can build rapport with them, that's gonna make them want to stay with you over the long run. So you can systematize this. Do a regular check in daily and a bigger one, you know, once a week. Ask them about their family, how, you know, talk about their career growth, where do you want to be in a year from now, two years from now, or six months from now? But just it's a great opportunity for, you know, for you to understand, like what's their North Star? Where do they want to go? Maybe it's not everything has to be I want more money. Maybe they value more flexibility in, you know, in their work schedule. Maybe they want to change in their shift. But there's so much that you can learn in these one on one conversations. So thank you for listening to this. If you have any questions about how to outsource or how to build virtual assistant teams, how to build processes systems, whatever it is, I study this stuff. I'm a nerd for it. I absolutely love it. Just reach out to me. I'm happy to share everything with you, the entire playbook. I'm a really big believer in free education. It's really how I've made my career. So I'm more than willing to give you the answers to absolutely everything and not hold anything back. But yeah, if you want to interview candidates, if you need bookkeeping support, customer service support, appointment setting and sales, business development, digital marketing support, you know, you need better SEO on your website. Whatever it is, just reach out to me. I've been doing this for many years now and I'm happy to introduce you to people on our team or have you interview some candidates with us. Our team is in Latin America and Asia and you know, we can definitely help you out. So, you know, the best way to reach me is csoutsource. Csoutsource.com you can Google it. My name is Matthew Metros. I'm very active on Facebook, so you can look me up there. And my email is matthew.metroseoutsource.com so again, thank you Appreciate it.

All right. Hope everybody enjoyed that. Where are we? Here we are. My screen has managed to freeze itself, which is fantastic. All right, let's do this.

Sa.

Where is my screen? Why is my screen doing this? All right, I need to figure out how. I need to get around this, but I'll be back. If you want my respect, you'll better put direct. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next. If you want my respect, you'll better put direct. Here are the words in the podcast. That's what comes next. If you want my. We have some breaking news now. The Boostly podcast is about to begin. Make sure you like this post, comment, hashtag bookdirect, and share this video in Facebook groups. But now let me hand you over to your host, Mark Simpson. All right, need to figure out why. Okay, here's what I'm gonna do. We're gonna be back in 10 minutes. I need to figure out why this screen is deciding to not work. And when we do come back, we will be back with roast your listing live. And that is going to be with the fantastic Maddie from Mount it is going to be from Jeff and Jen from host gpo and we're gonna do roast your listing live. Now, I really do hope you have appreciated and thoroughly enjoyed everybody's talks. I think it's now time to take a pause. I need to obviously put some more juice in the camera and I'll be back in in 15 minutes. Now, do me a massive favor. When we go live on this, we needed to go absolutely bananas crazy and get everybody involved. So I need you to invite loads of people into the group, click on that invite button and all that good stuff, and I will explain what's going to happen tomorrow. So we'll be back in 10 minutes with roast your listing life. Do not go anywhere.