Mark Simpson (speaker) announces that Boostly won the Shorty Award 2023 for Best App & Website Solution, describes the significance of the award, and summarizes the newly launched Boostly Bookings Booster (launched 1 May). He provides adoption and revenue metrics (tracked £13M direct bookings from 335 live sites over past 12–14 months; 450+ untracked DIY sites), product features (new plugin & theme, ChatGPT-enabled sites, improved booking engine, Zapier integration, PMS API integrations), business goals (move clients to 3.0, target £100M direct bookings), staffing (surpassed 44 employees), and CTAs (pricing page and book-a-call links).
Chapters
This is a very quick podcast update just to say, and I wanted to document because everything that I've been doing since 2016 has been documenting the journey of Bruce Lee, Fruity's podcast, while we also do behind the Host, the Spotlight series and everything else that we do is also documenting Bruce Lee and the journey. And today is a big milestone because we won this. This is The Shorty's Award, 2023 for the, for the best app and website solution in the whole industry. This is, this is Boost Lee's. It's a little bit marked still because it got covered in champagne and beer and all those things, but it was a, it was a massive night. I'll be perfectly honest, when we were shortlisted for this award and the people that were coming up against, I did think it was a step too far because the way that the Shorties works is that it is 50% judges vote and then 50% people can, the public can vote. And I know because of the amazing community that we have behind the scenes, we will definitely get loads of public votes. But it was the judges one that I wasn't quite sure. And the people that we were up against in this category, they are like the goliaths of this industry. They are, they are huge. So to hear my name get called out, to hear Boostie's name get called out was phenomenal. And this is the one that I really, really, really wanted. I was nominated for two awards. Well, Boostie was nominated for one and I was nominated for the other for Best Disruptor, Billboard, you know, the things. But this was big because this is Boostly, this is not just me, this is like the whole team behind the scenes and what we've built and trying to get towards. And now when we jump on a sales call, for example, or if somebody's like shopping around having this, just to say that we are voted for by our peers, the best website solution is huge and it's like a massive achievement for everybody behind the scenes, which, which is great. And also as well, the timing is perfect because literally as of the 1st of May, we've now launched our brand new website product and solution which is called the Boostly Bookings Booster. I'm going to do a separate video which goes into a lot more detail about what that entails. But I'll give you a very quick summary. Number one, no more DIY websites, no more pro websites. It's all going to be Boostly Bookings Booster. Every single website is going become a done for you solution and it's going to be Integrated. The reason why for that is because at the present moment in time, as of the 1st of May, Boostly websites have got a track £13 million in direct bookings over the past 12 to 14 months. And that's only from 335 websites. We have got over 450 DIY websites that aren't being able to get tracked and we've got many more that aren't even live just yet, just literally behind the scenes. And so my goal is to move everybody of our existing clients over to the the new 3.0 version where we're able to track every booking that comes in. And if we can get that 335 current live API sites up to a thousand, then the potential of how much revenue that we can generate for direct bookings is even bigger and bigger and bigger. My big goal is to get it to 100 million. If we can get 100 million of direct bookings coming in, we will start to get the attention of the OTAs. And if we can get the attention of the OTAs, it will show them that direct bookings is a thing. And I know that direct bookings is a massive pain point for them right now, because in London last week I heard from sources that they are massively worried about it. It is annoying to one of the OTAs. The other ones, the other OTAs, they kind of embrace it in a kind of way, shape or form, but one OTA hates it. And this is really massive for what we're doing. And it's like a little, you know, as big as this award was, to hear that, that the OTAS or a certain OTA is really worried about it is music to my ears and gives me the spur and the confidence to keep on going. So the new Boostly bookings booster, a quick summary of what we've done. Number one, we've now got our own plugin and our own theme. We've created it behind the scenes. It's taken a long time to do it, but what that means is that we have more power, more functionality and we can do more cool stuff. Cool stuff, as in, every single one of our new websites will have ChatGPT enabled. There's a live demo happening right now over on the YouTube channel where you can see that. Number two, we have been able now to improve the booking engine, so we're going to be able to collect guest data right at the very start of the booking process. And with zapier integration that we've now created, it means that all of the information that your website collects all the data that you collect, it will instantly sink in to your email marketing Software, I e Mailchimp, IE ActiveCampaign, IE Switchback, whoever you use. So there's much more power with what we can do with our book direct websites. And the main goal is to turn a looker into a booker sooner rather than later, which is the goal for every website needs to be with the API integration that we have into the top PMS providers around the world. It means that we can keep the booking on site, it means that we can do much more. And for the guest, it's a seamless process. The checkout process will be as easy as checking out on Airbnb, checking out on booking.com, checking out on Expedia, or checking out in any of these OTAs that that are out there. We've got a new simplified pricing model. It all can be viewable and visible by going to boostly.co.uk forward slash pricing. So b o o s t-l y.co.uk forward slash pricing. And all you need to do to get started with is to book a call. The links are all on the website. Booster.co.uk It'll take you to Calendar. You can then choose a time and a date that fits you best. We'll get on a call, we'll find out about you, where you are in your business and we'll make a decision if we are best suited for you or if we could recommend somebody else. Obviously we want to take on board as many as possible, but I've really been refining who our ideal clients that we want to work with, our ideal hosts that we want to work with are, and that is what we're going to be deciding on these calls. I'm really excited. I hope you are. I just want to say again, for everybody who voted, thank you so much. Obviously, the public vote was a large part of the reason for it. Thank you to all the judges, whoever you are. I don't know who was voting on our category, but thank you for choosing Bruce Lee. And this is a little flag in the ground towards the next step of the growth of what we're doing here. We've just surpassed 44 members of staff behind the scenes. We've got, you know, everybody in support, project managers, customer services, copywriters. There's loads of people behind the scenes and that's not even to talk about the marketing team, the social media team that's helping me to finance his team and, you know, Child, the CEO who's such a major part of what we're doing, and obviously Tom, who's the CTO who's designed all of this. So there's been a lot of hard work behind the scenes. It's definitely not just me. In fact, I play a minor role in it now. I'm just the voice and I'm the mouth that talks to you. And so I can focus on helping you with the tools, tactics and the training, but most importantly, the confidence to getting you those direct bookings. So thank you for tuning in short, under 10 minute podcast today. This will be visible on video and it'll be visible on the audio as well. I'm going to leave you with the video that somebody sent me on WhatsApp of me collecting the award, and I'll give you the context behind it, is that I was talking to somebody. The venue was in East London, next to the Olympic Stadium in London. Cool, cool venue. It was like a big circle and you could overlook the views of London. The problem is, is that because it was this massive circle, the. The voice from the stage couldn't travel. And I was chatting, chatting, chatting, somebody, and all of a sudden somebody grabbed me and said, you've won. So I didn't even know it was our category, which is crazy. Someone just said, you've won. And I was like a little. I was just like a. A deer caught in the headlights. I didn't have a clue where to go, what was going on. And I just arrived at the venue, so I was seeing people for the first time that I haven't seen in a while. So very happy and took me ages to get to stage, which is why this happened. All right, so as you can see, very happy, very proud, very smiley. But that is it for today. Um, hopefully you'll stick around and you want to find out more. Make sure you subscribe and all those cool things. We've got free podcasts every single week coming out, giving you the tools, the tactics, helping the confidence. My name's been Mark Simpson. Thank you so much for this. And if you want to find out more about Boost Lee Bookings Booster, all you need to do is go to boostlee.co.uk. having a blast. Gonna get it on the Boost Lee podcast. Bruce Lee. Like Bruce Lee. Cause it's so hard and the T is loose leaf.
