Tips For Growing Your Co-Hosting Portfolio Including SEO

Hello and welcome to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the trainings, most importantly, the confidence on how you can go out there and get more direct bookings. Today we are going behind another successful host and we're going to be talking about how to do co hosting tips for success and also how to use search engine optimization to grow your co hosting business. My name is Liam Carolan, I'm Mark Simpson's co host and today we are joined by Tristian, Pennsylvania Petrica from Sojourn Properties. In a moment, I'm gonna open up the mic and he's gonna give an introduction to his business. But yeah, settle in for behind the host podcast and let us know if you're watching this over on YouTube or if you're watching this on the Facebook, then just let us know where you're watching this from as we love to find out. So let's get started. Welcome along, Tristan.

Thank you, Liam. Pleasure to be here.

So, want to introduce your business and anything that people may not know about your business. So where you are in the world and anything you want to include.

Sure. Yeah. So I live in Arizona. I'm in Scottsdale, Arizona. I've lived here for a handful of years now. I live my wife and my couple kids. So, yeah, Sojourn Properties is a co hosting company that I started right at the beginning of about 2020, which is a fantastic time to start in the heart of COVID But it was, it brought a lot of challenges, but it was a really good time to kind of get going. And the market here was growing, so it was actually prime time because 2021 was the best year in market history. So, yeah, so we do primarily co hosting and we operate throughout most of Arizona. We're expanding up into the north. So Flagstaff, Sedona, that's. Those are key areas that we're looking to get into. But we operate pretty much within an hour to two hours kind of around the central hub here in Phoenix.

Nice, nice. And how many units do you look after at the moment? How many doors?

So we got up? So let's see, last year, at the beginning of last year we had three in February and by August we had 34. And then, yeah, then I realized that not every property is the same and not all owners are the same. And so we, we trimmed back the, the properties that we were working with. So now we have a, I believe 15. So we cut it pretty big numbers. But ironically, our revenue didn't change very much because we were working with properties that didn't really fit the bill for what our company stood for.

So there's definitely some lessons that both myself and the listeners will be able to learn from that. So before we move on to diving into some of those lessons, what, what is your history? What did you do before you got into hospitality? You mentioned that this started in 2020, so it sounds as though there was a bit of a pivot into hospitality.

Yes, there was. So I grew up in Massachusetts. We lived on kind of a far on farm type land and small town and my family had a construction business. So my grandfather immigrated from Italy at 13 and started the construction business that my father would later take over. So I just work construction every summer when I'd get out of school with the jeans and work boots on and bring my lunch and go work construction every day. And I hated it. It was 90 something degrees, 95% humidity and I knew I didn't want to do that. So I always loved, I always loved cooking and I've been doing it all my life. So I was like, well, maybe I'll try hospitality. So I worked back a house. I was a sous chef and kind of a chef for prep chef and all that stuff for a few, few summers. And then that's. And then I got old enough and started bartending. And that's really where I knew I had a passion for hospitality. I loved talking with people and telling stories, making them laugh and just having a good time with patrons and guests and I mean, it was really great. I remember working at one country club and I talked to the guys about sports. They come in after a round of golf and I download them on, hey, LeBron's going here and you know, this guy's going here and this guy cut a deal. And. And so I love that. They were always excited to come in and talk. And then on the other side, I had the wives as a young single guy, you know, they would sit at the bar and I'd chat them up and the husbands loved it because then they could go do what they wanted to do and I kind of kept the wives occupied. So it was just a fun dynamic. I just really enjoyed the people side of the business and hospitality. So then, you know, there was a time where I kind of took a shift. So I was bartending in Massachusetts. I decided to move to San Diego, California and I had my brother and cousin were living there. I figured I can bartend anywhere, so I might as well go where it's, you know, one of the nicest cities around. So I got out there, was doing bartending for another probably sort of a year and that's when things started to kind of shift and my, I had a friend who was a patron come in and said, you know, if you ever get sick of getting people drunk, my. The company I work for is hiring entry level support for all their clients doing, they do turnkey websites so you'd be answering emails and phone calls from current clients. All right, so he gave me a crash course on SEO and a crash course on reading and writing some code and I went into the interview and somehow got the job. So I got the entry level job and within the next, over the next, probably year and a half, two years, I climbed up to the highest level of without being management, senior account manager. And that was pretty much where I fell in love with digital marketing. Even then it would be until 2019 when I met the short term rental world.

Nice, nice. So that SEO and that marketing is definitely giving you an edge and we're going to speak about that in just a moment. So let's go into the co hosting side of things now. So why do co hosting, first of all, what is co hosting? Because there will be people out there who are just looking after their own units. So if you could give a brief introduction to what exactly co hosting is and, and what is the attraction for, for you as a company to, to do co hosting?

Absolutely. Yeah. So co hosting for me was really the only option to get started in this business. I didn't have, I had a 9 to 5 job and I just didn't have the capital to drop, especially in Scottsdale where a shanty is $350,000. So you know, anything you want to get into as far as a property that's going to be decent and competitive, 7, 800, $900,000. So it just owning was not the immediate option for me at the time and that's what I learned about co hosting. So co hosting is where property owners or investors purchase a second home or any real property and they want to run it as a short term rental but they don't want anything to do with it, they just want to hand it off, they want to collect money, they want, want the tax benefits and so they want someone else to run it. So that's where we step in, say, look, we will handle everything. We'll handle the, handle the cleaners, the guests, any maintenance issues, we'll make sure it's in great repair at all times. And most importantly, we are professionals in this space and we are the skilled Operators, we will make you more money. And so the idea Is we take 25% of the revenue and people say, well, why would they give up 25%? Well, because an amateur operator versus a professional operator, the professional operator is going to make at least 25% more money because they have the systems and the pricing and the tools in place to optimize revenue, especially direct bookings. And so that's where the benefit comes in, as they are going to make just as much money but not have to do any of the work. So that's what co hosting is, essentially. And a lot of people get it confused with property management, and they're very similar. I mean, on some days, I still can't even figure out where the line is drawn, but essentially what we're doing is just stepping in and being the host of these properties for these owners and investors.

That's cool. That's cool. And obviously the attraction is that you can take more properties quite quickly without having to, like you say, even buy one small place. You know, you can start generating cash quite quickly as well as then you've got the expertise for these hosts. So it's, it's mutually beneficial, isn't it? So that's a major, a major plus point.

And, and honestly, I wasn't really expecting the return. And every market's different and everyone's business is different, but given that we had three properties in last February, when I looked at the numbers, so our peak season here in Arizona is February, March and April. Those are the biggest months. We do 90% of the business in those months. And after the peak season, I had made 65% of my W2 in those three months.

Nice.

And that's when I was like, all right, I got to shift something here because I just, I was, I didn't understand that the market was really that nice for people co hosting and that, you know, there was that much revenue on the table, because I had no idea. So it can be a very good avenue for people who don't have properties, don't have the money to go get one. Co hosting can be a very good way to start building your capital so you can go invest.

And there's, there's a couple of points which I want to mention, which some, like you said, why would somebody give up 25% of their capital? And I actually turn that around, I go, well, why would we manage for only 25%? They're getting a deal. Do you know what I mean? We're doing all the work. Yeah, a lot of the work. For only 25% and we've got the expertise, the systems, the team, we deal with the guests, you know, that side of things. So it's such a good model because it mutually works for everybody. You mentioned obviously you're earning more from doing this. Are you still in a full time job at all or is now your full time sort of location, the property business?

Well, actually it's kind of. That's a tough question because so the W2 that I was working, I back in 2016, I actually started a digital marketing agency with a few of my buddies from that original agency that I got hired at. And so we've been. So that again is. That's a turnkey website development company and digital marketing agency that does websites generally for dentists and optometrists. That's really kind of the two verticals that we serve. And so I was CEO of that company, still am. So I do a lot of day to day in that because it requires a little more effort. When I first got the short term rental business going in the co host business, it was a lot of work because I didn't know anything. So I was doing everything at this time because of my mentor Michael Sjogren and everything he's taught me and the people that I've put myself in the room with. I now probably, I mean I answer questions throughout the day of my virtual assistants but I probably spend two to four hours a week on it. So it's like running now if I want to go get new business, I'm going to have to put in a few more hours to get properties up and whatnot. But I've got my systems, my technology, which I'm sure we'll talk about and stuff like that. But I've got those things dialed in to where the properties run, the cleaners run, the guests are happy and my team's good to go. So I say I spend a little more, a lot more time now back in my agency than in the co host.

That's cool, that's cool. And that's the nice thing that hospitality gives you that if you've got the right system structure in place, you can, you can do just that. And shout out to Michael Shrogan for those listening in and don't know Michael, please go and check him out on Instagram and get, you know, follow him. He's somebody who's very much worth listening to in the short term rental space. So let's come on to the challenges. Actually before we do that, you mentioned busy season was February through to April. And I've got to ask why, why is that bus season in Phoenix?

Well, so the weather is generally nice. It can get cool and I say cool like 20s, 30s degrees Fahrenheit here. So we can, if it rains hard enough and it's cold enough, we will get snow in, in the desert here. So it, it's rare and it won't stick around very long, but we will get snow. But for the most part, your days are going to be completely blue skies, 60 to 75 degrees and just very mild and dry and nice. So we get a lot of snowbirds. People coming from Canada, Minnesota and the cold places are coming here to spend the winter, so you get a lot of that. February's the PGA Waste Management Tour, the biggest event in sports here at Phoenix. That's huge. That's, that's a really fun time. This year we had the super bowl and then March kicks off Major league baseball spring training. And so for those of you don't know baseball in spring training, there's two main hubs. There's Florida where all like the northeast and eastern teams go down and then everything west goes to Arizona. So there's like seven or eight parks here where they all play. So that's huge. People are coming for that. And then April, good weather. Spring break for schools and vacation time in the good weather. So that's the main draw.

You know, I think the lesson we can take from that is that you really pay attention to your local sports events and things like that because people flock where there's good weather. You know, weather patterns control a lot of what we do in hospitality. And then the other thing which controls it is events and you know, things that people controlled aspects which is, is exactly that. Like you say the super bowl, the, the, the tour and also, you know, just, just the baseball, all that sort of thing is going to make a difference. So worth everybody listening and, and checking out what's going on in their area.

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

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

One of the things I want to come onto is some of the challenges that you've had. You mentioned while doing co hosting, which is a great model that you've expanded really fast. There was that period of time where you went from like, five to, like, 33 units really quick, and then you've gradually sort of went back down to 15. Can you talk us through the challenges, the. The reasons why that had to happen? And then we'll move on how you done the scaling in the first place, because people are going to be really interested in knowing how you quickly scaled up.

Yeah. So, I mean, honestly, the biggest challenge was balancing the challenge of startup costs versus my time. So do I pay someone to do it, or do I do it because I'm broke and I can't afford to hire someone to do it? I mean, and that's the challenge that I see in, you know, because I'm in Mike Shogren's mastermind and all the new people that come in, that's like the biggest question. Well, how do I. I can't throw money at it because I don't have any money to throw at it, so what else can I do? So that was definitely the biggest challenge. What I did was what you have to do. You have to suck it up. You got to work long hours to get going and then find people and services to help you out. Just recently, I found a young man named Oscar who's been fantastic. He was by trade a landscaper, but he approached me and said, hey, Tristan, I can do pools, I can clean up, I can do handiwork. Whatever you need, you know, I'm here. Young, ambitious, he's been a rock star for us because he's cheap. Now, I don't underpay him, but my regular handyman is $75 an hour. And Oscar will go run and fill a propane tank for, you know, 15, $20, and I'll pay him for gas and all that stuff. But much more affordable than paying 75 every time you have something come up. I mean, that adds up very quickly. So I didn't find Oscar until recently. So before I had to think of other ways, my cleaners, I utilized them, you know, they were, okay, we'll do that. That'll be 10, $10 extra. I'm like, cool, do it. You know, so finding ways like that. But then there's other things I was dealing with furnishing. You know, I was building out these rentals for owners. They'd hand over A completely empty house and say, fill it. And I worked with interior designers, and we would do the designs, and then we would accept the shipments in the very first house. I'll never do it again. It was. I just had everything shipped to the house, and it would arrive in the driveway, and I'd move it into the garage. And then I was going to hire handyman to help me assemble it. Well, it was 20 minutes away, so I'd get a notification, boxes were delivered. I'd go down there, I'd get the boxes, I'd move them into the garage, I'd close everything up. I'd get back in my car, I'd drive home, I'd crack a beer, I'd sit on the couch, My phone would go off. Another delivery, get back in the car, go back down there. And it was just. That happened to me some days it happened three or four times. And I was like, I'm never doing this again. So I learned of consolidated shipping. One of the biggest things I learned of, learned of is shipping warehouses. And you can Google these, and they are warehouses that will receive your goods. They will unpackage it, build it, inspect it for damage, and then store it. And then when you're all your stuff has arrived, they have movers who will load it onto a truck and bring it to your house and install it for you. It's a little bit more. You would think it's a little more expensive. On that first build, I spent about six grand on all the shipping stuff, plus the handyman I had to hire, plus my time. And when we did it consolidated at the next house, it was about three grand, and I didn't have to do anything. So by putting yourself in the mix doesn't always make things go better. So that was the biggest lesson. And then the second biggest challenge that I learned was saying yes to every deal that came across my desk was not good business. It was a horrible business system. It was not good because, as I said, not all deals are the same and not all owners are the same. So I was hungry, and I wanted deals. I'm like, okay, if I can get 500 bucks from this one and a thousand from that one, you know, and I stack them all up. Well, that's like $20,000. Yeah, but that's all on paper. You know, you actually have to get the reservations, and if the house isn't as nice, it's not going to get the reservations. So I learned very quickly. And then you have, you know, I started businesses to become my own boss. Now I had 30 own, 30 bosses. So, you know, there's that challenge too. So you want to make sure you get along with the people that you're working with. And one thing I learned was when I'm sitting through these meetings, an initial call with the owner, instead of them saying, why should we work with you? That's fine, I'll answer that question. I turn it right back around now, why should I work with you? And they go, what do you mean? I'm, I'm the investor, I'm giving you a property.

No, no.

Why should I work with you? It's just a question. And if they give you a good answer, then perfect. But if not, I mean, I'll walk away. Because there's nothing worse than being in a bad deal for an extended period of time with someone that every time your phone rings, you cringe. So that was the biggest. Those two things were the biggest things. I dealt with that.

That makes sense and certainly resonates with me. I've, I've said yes in the early days to deals, which they weren't deals, they were headaches. I was saying yes to a big headache that I thought was money. And you soon learn, don't you, from, from having to, to either, either that owner moves on or we've in the past turned around and said, yeah, this isn't working out. We're, we're, you know, you need to find a new management agent or a new co host. So when that happened, and obviously you then start to reduce down the 15 that you've now got. Are they the 15 sort of best stock? And now do you have a, do you have more of a spec over what you're looking for, for, for taking on these properties?

Yes. So the 15 that we have now, I would say are generally the top. They're probably the top 90% of what we had. There's one owner I really like. His property's not as nice, but I like him and he's been easy to work with even through the challenges of his house. And he's able. He said he'll improve it if I suggest it. So I like him. Conversely, I have an owner whose house is killing it. We went 40% above market and we dominated and we're cutting ties. Can't be soon enough because it. I just. We're not clicking. We don't see eye to eye on pretty much anything, regardless of the success we've had. You know, they're just not happy. So we're just, it's just not worth it. So there are still some of our 15, even though some are performing well. We're not working with the owners and the owners are cool, so we'll work with that property. But I would say then for, I'm sorry, the second part of the question.

The spec, I guess that you have for properties or the, the one thing that I've learned to do is have a spec for the property but have a kind of avatar for the, the owner as well. You know, like are they, how do they react to things, you know, meet them a couple of times beforehand. Do you have things like that?

Yes, I do. Yeah. So now spec wise, in this particular area, three bedroom, two baths are very, very common. Those are the properties we've had the most trouble with. And the, anything above that, four bedrooms. And those types of properties have worked out way better. 4, 5, 6 bedroom, they bring in a lot more money. They bring in a closer guest avatar to what we want, which is primarily families and business travelers and like golfing groups. So the higher end luxury type of stays, those are really what we're looking for. And then for owners, I mean the investors that have a lot of properties generally are pretty relaxed and let's see who else. So some second homeowners are good. We work with a lot of them. They come maybe a few times a year to enjoy the property around the holidays, but other than that they just stay out of things. They get my report, they get paid and you know, they're happy.

So important, it's so important to have people who are. I mean this one thing that we always say to owners is that, hey, if you're the kind of person who wants to come and look in the property every week and wants to know what the guests are saying and be involved, you're probably not right for us. You know, it's just not. You want to be able to have the space to be able to co host in the way that you need to co host and, and that side of things.

The other biggest thing is the ring camera. I've been bullied into allowing access to an owner of the ring camera. Anyone listening, Avoid it like the plague. Avoid it at all costs. If it's going to make or break a deal for a huge opportunity, maybe suck it up. But if you can have a choice, I explain. It's a two way, a two way communication device. You can speak to guests through the camera. For that reason, you're not allowed to have access. Because I can't control what you say. I highly train my team on the communication strategies so that's my scapegoat for when I tell an owner they can't. But again, I got bullied by two people who had to have it. I'm telling you Right now, 100% of my headaches are from those two people in that damn camera.

So good advice. And you know what it is? It just comes down to you don't want somebody who is overly worried. I mean, I think back to somebody who that was inheritance. They then invested the money into a property and they were so interested in that property that they should have probably just been managing it themselves or, you know, and, and that is the kind of, you don't want people who are too, who want to be too close to it at the end of the day is, I mean things happen in hospitality. You know, we have to deal with stuff or cleaners deal with stuff. It is hospitality. We have to be, you know, sort of, we treat people as guests. Most of them are great, 99% of people are great and we're giving them great experiences. But there's always going to be times in hospitality where there's going to be things that happen and you don't want an owner who's too jumpy, who's too worried about those one time happenings that they're just glued to. Like you say ring doorbell or things like that.

Yeah. And the owners, I mean, I love them, you know, they're great. Those, those two examples, they're great people and they just care about their investment. So I completely get it. But yeah, as you said, like especially when you build and you scale and you get a ton of properties. When my virtual assistants come online, their very first task of the day is to go through and scan through the history of the ring camera from the night before. You know, where it was there a bunch of people showing up, Was there anything, some issues, if not, move on. But I can't hire someone to sit and stare at a screen and watch these cameras like some mall cop. You know, I'm like, it just doesn't happen. So if someone has 15 people show up at night, we will catch them and we will deal with it. But it may not be at 12:45 in the morning, you know, on a Tuesday. Like I'm sorry, but we'll get them the next day. So.

Yeah, yeah. And it's rare that it happens, isn't it? I mean it's a handful of fuller situation. So one thing I know everyone's going to be dying for me to ask is what tactics did you employ to scale so quickly? Because although we don't want to say yes to every deal, we do want more deals land on our laps. What tactics did you employ to grow your portfolio?

So the first thing I started with when I learned this course, I had a big curriculum in videos to learn from Michael. So I knew, yeah, I got to put my time in, you know, 20, 30 hours. I got to watch all these videos probably a couple times to digest. But then I was like, all right, what can I do to get started? Well, I can build a website. I know how to do that. So I'm going to go ahead and launch a website and start building out the content there. So I launched my co hosting website. What do you do? Who do you serve? You know, why should I choose you? That type of info? So people can scan it and contact me. And then from there I went another level down into the granulars of keyword research. What are people searching for when they need me? Well, unfortunately, I know you, y' all at Boostly are gonna hate to hear this, but they search for Airbnb property managers in Scottsdale. I said, all right, that's what I'm gonna do. So I built a page, Airbnb Property Managers, Scottsdale. And now it, you know, I get like 80, 80 and 89 to 80, 93% of my leads from that page. But yeah, I have like a short term rental management page, but I made a page for those main keywords so that I could start grabbing a lot of that search volume. So that was my first move. Made a, you know, a lead gen form. And so that took care of that. Next thing I did was create a Google my business page, get it verified so that I could start pulling in reviews so that I could show up higher in local SEO or local searches. And so it, I think because I looked in the competition here for being as big as this area is, I think the best company out here had like a 47 or a 45 and they had like 30 reviews. So I'm like, oh, all right, I can do this. So I just started hopping into forums and Facebook groups and talking to people in our network and just providing value in any way I could. And when they came back and like, wow, so helpful. If there's anything I can do, let me know. I would just say, hey, if you wouldn't mind leaving me a review on my Google page, you would really help me out. You don't have to lie and say that you're an owner and I'm managing your house. Just say, you know, whatever that you're happy that I helped and blah, blah, blah, whatever you want to say, I'm fine with it. So then I got to, you know, 20, 30, 40, 50 reviews and then I noticed my phone was just. Every time I added another review, my phone, I get five or six more leads a week. So that's really what started to turn the table. Now I get somewhere between 70 and 80 leads per month from my website and Google my business.

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

Nice, nice. And you know what? That is a. That is a mini masterclass just there with, you know what to do. Because everybody listening to this can create their own. You know, you can create your own web page. Obviously, Boostly do web pages if you need to come to us. But when it comes down to going that next level down, I did exactly the same, you know, with the keywords, you have just got a search and you can easily find that stuff by putting in if everybody listening just puts Airbnb managers in name of the location. You'll soon find out. And of course Google then suggests the other questions, the other kind of keywords that you're looking for at the bottom of the page, which is cool. So you can start to factor in all of those keywords within your website. And then you mentioned you've got the lead form, so that lead form is so important. Is that a Google form? I take it a Google type lead form.

So I used a WordPress plugin. Gravity forms is what I use because for the agency we have the developer license. So 10 years ago I paid 250 for it or whatever. So, yeah, you know, I just use a Gravity form and I've changed it from a basic contact form that just collected their name, contact info, address, anything they want to say. Now I made it more robust, so it has conditional questions. So is it a condo, a house or other? How many bedrooms, how many bathrooms? Are there any amenities? Check all, you know, list all that apply. Is there an HOA so I can scan my emails and go no, no, no, no.

Yep, you know, good choice. And, and you know what? This again, something that I've done for, for my business and you kind of take it for granted that all of that information you get and is really making your job so much easier because you don't need to spend an hour on the phone call with the owner or even going to visit. I remember the first time I used to do this, I used to get the lead and go and visit the place. That would be like half a morning or ever just visiting a place which would be a total no. You can now you can get this information on a form. You can politely decline all the no's and just pick out the handful of yeses. I think that's, that's marvellous. So obviously we want to fit as much in as we can in today's episode. So I want to move on to both team and tech. So we'll do a mini question on team. You mentioned you've got some VAs in your business. How did you recruit them and how many VAs have you got? What do they do?

Yeah, so I have two full time virtual assistants and they manage pretty much all the listings items. They do all guest communication, manage anything coming in or going out or present guests and then business side of things. They put together owner's reports from my bookkeepers because they send a draft of the reports, someone has to go through the numbers and compare it. So they handle all that and then they send it to me when it's ready for final approval and then they just, and then they email it out. So I tried to take anything that I really don't like doing, which is basically anything alone at a computer. I like to be out talking to people and doing business. So they really help me with all the stuff I don't really love that has to get done for a business to operate. So yeah, I mean I've, I really stepped outside of my comfort zone to try and assign them things that normally I would hold, you know, so dear. And it really just comes down to the process. Like is your process organized and can it be explained very easily? If yes, then explain it and hand it off or make a video and they can do it. No. Well, then find a way to make it understandable so someone else can do it. But if you love to do it, then do it. But that was the one thing I found and then I found them through Michael Shogren, one of his very first va, started a VA agency essentially. And so I went through him and I was one of his first clients. And so both of my VAs have come through him. And I've had multiple. They're not all. Again, you know, everyone's a person, so none of them's created equal. I've had some good ones, I have my good ones, I've had some bad ones. So it may take a little bit, but it really made me dial in my process.

Nice. And that's so important, isn't it? Because what you've just mentioned, a lot of people go, I'll get a VA and they'll just take over my business and they'll do everything. And you know, it doesn't, doesn't work like that. You've really got to work quite hard when you're training them to, you know, it'll increase your workload when you first have a VA to pass across the videos, the tasks, make sure they're all right, make sure they're learning. And then they might be rubbish, you might have to get rid of them, you might have to sack them and go and find another one. But it's just getting used to that kind of process until you find your, you know, sort of the, the, the MVPs, the, the ones which you really want on your team, which is cool.

Yep.

So one thing I wanted to ask is you've got a quite a big tech stack I've seen on your website. Can you pick out your favorite ones and why?

Yes, definitely. So very first and foremost, my websites are gold. I have my website that I created and then I have my Boostly website done by you guys. And so both are incredibly important to my co host business. I did not want to muddy waters.

You're welcome.

Yeah, I did not want to muddy the waters, believe me. I looked into it and I was like, I can, I know there's a plugin out there. I can just add it to my website and have book now and create it and I'll figure it out. I mean, I'm smart, I'll figure it out. I did not want to go through that. Don't reinvent the wheel. So that's when I turned to Boost Lee, obviously. I met Mark last, last year at the short term rental conference down in Nashville and we got talking and I knew like, no, I'm just going to hand it to those who do this for a living and they do it very well. So my Boostly website, my website and then my PMS So I use Guesty. There's a lot of them out there, but just none of them are perfect. I'm going through issues right now when we're working through them, but they make your life a lot easier. And I have the VAS help set it up. Every call I had scheduled with the onboarding, the VAS were on, so that I wanted them to be more knowledgeable on this stuff than I was. But as a tech guy, I'm obviously learning it all too, but that really helped. And on top of that, I'm a data nerd. So any way, any software out there that you can use to improve your visibility into the whole business. Airbnb, you know, so we use Rank Breeze. So I can track where our listings rank and as I make changes to the listings, I can track to see if we improved or, you know, went down and go from there. So I love Rank Breeze. Kelvin Ma is a great dude. Met him as well. He, he has a great platform there. Price Labs for pricing. You can't go anywhere without pricing, so definitely something that you can do. Dynamic pricing, again, there's a lot of them out there. I chose Price Labs because Michael Shogren taught it. Those are the main hitters.

I would say there's some really good ones there. And certainly, you know, first of all, having a website facing towards owners and then a website facing towards your guests, you know, is a really important kind of aspect of it. Price Labs, you know, dynamic pricing in general is awesome. And of course, Rank Breeze is something which is just so important. The analytics. If you're not tracking what is happening to your listings, then how do you know if they're performing? So some really good bits of advice and people listening can, can go and check those ones out. So as we reach towards the end of these, we'd like to do a couple of quick fire fun questions. So first question for yourself is what skill do you personally excel at and what are you looking at?

Developing my skill, I would say my best skill is being able to read people and kind of walk into a room and, and establish and get like in a group of people and, you know, get to know people very quickly. Be basically being personable. The one skill I'd really like to improve on, I would say is elevating to CEO at a high level. Because everyone says, well, yeah, dude, you're a CEO, but yeah, but are you assigning yourself 20 tasks and you have 25 of them to do, or are you signing all 25 out? And so you're. You're able to elevate. And I think that's my biggest challenge. And I think it's the challenge of a lot of people. You know, we don't want to feel like we're throwing it on someone else's plate. We don't want to have it get screwed up by someone else. I do it better than everyone else. I'm just going to do it and, oh, it'd take me twice as long to train somebody, so it's better if I just do it myself. Those are a lot of things I hear often and I'm guilty of. So I would say I need to do a better job of elevating myself as CEO and hiring great people below me so that I can trust everything that they're doing and I can focus on growth of the company.

Fantastic answer. I really like that. This one's a bit more of a fun one, which is, if you had to choose between being invisible or flying, which would you choose and why?

I would say probably be invisible. And I think you can. You can get yourself into some places so you can just kind of stand in the back of the plane, you know, and you can get anywhere you want to go. So that's kind of where my head goes there.

That's cool. That's cool. What advice would you give yourself if you could go back and give yourself some advice, either at the start of hospitality or, you know, a much younger self, what advice would that be?

I would say the best thing is to put yourself around great people. So, you know, you always have to be willing to develop yourself. And you have to know that you're not the best out there for every task. So find people who have done it better than you and follow their path. You can branch out later, but find successful people. Mimic what they do, you know, how they eat, how they talk, how they dress, how whatever it may be, so you can be elevate to that level and don't be scared to ask questions. Put yourself in the room with smarter people. It's okay to be the dumbest one in the room as long as you're trying to get better. So I think anyone who has achieved anything in life has learned from someone and they enjoy giving that knowledge back, whether it's coaching, you know, a high school team or your new friend joins the business and you're teaching them, it's enjoyable. And so don't think that you're a burden. Always try to learn. Always put yourself in a good, good spot.

I like that. I like that a lot. And one of the questions that we always end with, which is, have you got a mantra or a saying that really resonates with you? Something which you know that you'd go, do you know what? That really means something to me?

Yes. And the, the mantra is what your mind can conceive and believe you can, you can achieve. So, and that was Napoleon Hill who said that. And Think and Grow Rich. And I really focused heavily on from the time I had three properties till now. The one thing that's really changed was putting myself into mindset courses. And Michael Sjogren teaches one called Limitless. I've been in every single one since he launched it. And there's no doubt that's where a lot of my successes come from.

Amazing. And one of my favorite books, by the way, Think and Grow Rich. If you haven't checked out, go and check it out. It really does blow your mind over what can, what, what can be achieved by just starting with an idea. Everything around us started with an idea. So this has been a really enjoyable podcast. Tristan and I think there's been so much value shared by yourself. There's going to be people listening in on, you know, how they can scale up, how they can do the co hosting. How can people come and find out more from you and is there anything exciting that you want to talk about and tell us about that people can go and check out?

Yes. So I'm actually launching a course, a training course specifically for SEO for s for short term rentals, so people can check out the website. We're just finalizing the course curriculum, but people can go sign up. At least give me your info and we'll send you more info on when everything's launching. They can go to SEO for str.com seo4str.com get on the list there and all. We collect your emails and we'll be able to send the info out to you. Basically, it's, we're going to teach people the nitty gritty of how to do what I did. But even if you're in the ownership model, how to market those properties, especially with a company like Boostly, when you have a website for direct bookings, you know how to take those properties, get them more successful, how to really build your brand. So we're just going to try to give people as much info as possible about this market because you can go on YouTube and watch videos all day on SEO, but it's, there's nothing there for this industry and it's so specific. So I'm here, I want to help people out. So check that out. People can find me on Instagram, social and Facebook @tristanpatrica. And my name will probably be on the podcast, so you can't spell it. It'll be right there. But yeah, please reach out. I love helping people. I've been coaching sports and other things for over 15 years, so I love helping. So please come to me with questions and I'd love to help you out.

That's definitely one to post in the Boostly communities as well. I'm sure you get a lot of people, you know, sort of come and join the wait list for that. So thank you so much for today. Was there anything we missed along the way, any other questions or anything else you wanted to cover just before we bring it to a close?

No, I don't think so. I mean, the main thing that's really made the biggest difference, as I said, is mindset and understanding that, you know, all of this stuff is, is it's a growing industry and we're not always going to knock the mechanical things out of the park. We're going to make mistakes along the way. But the mindset, the mindset you have as a business owner or business person in general is going to be key. So, you know, check out books like Think and Grow Rich and those types of things. But, you know, if you want to improve your business the most, it starts up here. It starts between your ears and changing your mindset.

I love it. I love it. Well, thank you so much for sharing first of all, your story with us, but also all the tips, all the knowledge, all the gems that we've got from today's podcast. Thank you to you. If you're listening to this on the Boosted podcast, we know there's a lot of places you can put your attention, and we thank you for spending it with us here at Boostly. So that is it from us today. Thank you very much again, Tristan, and yeah, bye for now.