What exactly does Book Direct mean? An Interview with Steve Kopandy of Book Direct Symposium

Foreign. Welcome to the Bruce Lee Podcast. We are now in season seven. We are in episode 20 and today is a very special one because we are actually discussing what Book Direct actually means. As you know, the Boost Hospitality Podcast is all about me showing you ways on how you can increase your direct bookings. But a lot of people don't actually know what Book Direct means. So I am going to be speaking at a big event this year called the Book Direct Symposium. In fact, when you're watching this intro or listening to this intro, it will have happened only a few weeks ago. This has been recorded on the 6th of February. This is the day after Book Direct day. It went down really well. So many hosts spread the message of Book Direct. There were so many people that actually got direct bookings through the work and the preparation that we did as part of the Boostly Academy. If you want to find out more about the Boostly Academy, then please do go and check out the Boostly website. We have got the new enrollments open for just a few more days. So if you go to boostlyacademy.com or boostly.co.uk Academy, there's going to be a little page for you to read testimonials, how it works, pricing and all of that jazz is going to be available there. So go check it out. But anyway, the 5th of February went really well and today I reached out to Steve Kapandi of the Book Direct Symposium. Now, Steve has been involved in the tours and the activities world for nearly 10 years from Australia. He's a singer, songwriter, he's done loads of things, he travels all over the world, he's a great guy. And now what he's been doing for the past six years is running symposiums, which is meetups for other tour operators in the cycling world. And they do it in different cities each year. Now, this is the first year that he wants to get hospitality involved. That's why he's reached out to me. And because it's about Book Direct, because it's in Athens and I've never been to Athens before and neither is my family. And because he's a guy and a great guy who just asked me the question, do you want to speak? We've gone and said yes. So we're going and we're going to be speaking at this event. Now, this podcast that I'm about to show you is obviously going to be recorded now, but it's going to come out afterwards. So I'm going to be showcasing a lot more about it. Now, if you've missed the event, please do go to bookdirectsymposium.com the videos will be live by now, so you can come and catch up on the videos, what was discussed, the speakers that were there and what was learned and the feedback and all of that. So go and take care of that. Sign up to the newsletter because he's going to be doing more of these in 2021, 2022 and beyond. He's going to be doing it in different cities, so he might be coming to a city near you and it's definitely worthwhile being on the email list to find out more about it. We'd start talking about Book Direct, but it ends up talking about partnerships and everything else, and there's some real good takeaways for you in this. Now before you do go and tune into the full episode, please do visit the podcast sponsor, which is hostfully do you get one free guidebook? And right now they're doing a contest hostfully.com contest. You can go and create a stunning guidebook that will wow your guests and for the next few days you'll be able to enter it. And if you win, there's loads of cool little prizes to be won. So please do go and check that out. We've got a couple more weeks of that before we close it. And my other final thing, my final ask is that you please go and rate, review and subscribe. This podcast got over 10,000 downloads on iTunes and it's been seen by so many people and it's climbing up the ranks to get high up the ranking. We need more reviews, we need more social shares. So please tell people about it. Booster.co.uk podcast to get all the show notes. This is a really good episode. I'm really looking forward to you to tune into it. Whether you are on the audio or whether you're doing something else, please tune in and please enjoy this episode.

Hi Mark, how you doing? Thanks for having me on. It's great to talk about Book Direct and what it really means because as you say, there are so many people who don't actually understand that. So it's a message that is so close to my heart. I'm Australian. I was brought up in Newcastle, Australia. I always loved music and I loved travel as well. I did my first overseas trip when I was 19 and I just couldn't wait to go and explore the rest of the world. I was doing music for a while and the band I was in got signed to a label in the uk, so we moved the band over to the uk and that was my first time of London. Pretty much. I've stayed. I'm not in that band anymore. I still do music, but I've stayed in London. I used to do like little weekend trips to Europe all the time because as an Australian, you feel like everywhere is so far away. But then to go to Europe and then, you know, within a space of two hours you're in a different country was such an exciting thing for a young Australian. So I spent so much time traveling around Europe and really got a taste for European tourism. Eventually I got a job as a tour guide in London for the London Bicycle Tour Company. I started to get involved in the business side of that. I was the second in charge pretty quickly. And I dealt with him in terms of strategy, marketing, operations, everything. I was working with the owner of the company. Then I decided to start a network of bike tour operators. So we grew it to 40 cities around Europe, North America, South America. Our bike tour operators now have a annual meeting, a symposium, and we started that in 2015. This year is our sixth annual symposium. We go to a different European city every year. 2020, we're going to Athens. So now I'm running this book Direct symposium, which is a separate event. However, main focus topic that came up time and time again at the Cycle Cities Symposium was marketing and how to respond to the rise of the OTAs and their ever increasing influence on our sector. We talked about it so much, I thought, you know what, let's create a whole separate day to focus on this issue. And then I thought, well, you know what, this issue is not specific to cycling tourism. Let's actually invite hospitality owners, let's invite hoteliers, let's invite small and medium businesses who have got the same issues, and let's learn from them. Because I know that the hospitality industry has been dealing with this issue a lot longer than tours and activities. So that's in a nutshell, how we got here to where we are today.

Started off, obviously, let's say Newcastle, traveled to London, got into tours and activities, you started to network. So let's just sort of try and delve back on that a little bit. When, what was the year that you started working for the Icicle Tour Company in London?

2009, actually. 2009.

2000. 2009. So we would have been in London at the same time. 2009 is when I moved down to Canada Water. So we would have been there. We would have been there at the same time. So you were doing bicycle tour company. When was it? Between say 2009. So in 2015 you started up this network, which is awesome. When was it that you started to realize about the bigger companies, these third party companies that was starting to take away direct bookings away from this tour company?

Well, very quickly I was involved in a lot of different aspects of the operations and all different functions of the business. And even back then in those early days, the OTAs were making a big impact on London Bicycle. I think that the bigger companies in the cities, they kind of felt it first. Back then Viator was our biggest supplier. A few years before I joined the company that the CEO of Viator actually took a bike tour at. London Bicycle Tour Company. That was in the very early days of Viator. We had to come up with a strategy that basically saw our business grow and succeed into the future. And the commissions that we were paying, ever increasing commissions were a real area of concern, not to mention the increasing percentage of sales that that came through these new digital channels. So yeah, it was from the moment I started really Vitor was already an issue. Expedia was quite big back then into IT and activities and then there are all these other little ones popping up. So you know, we, we saw that, you know, this was a situation that we had to address. It wasn't something we could, we could ignore.

So let's just delve back right to the very start of this topic to you. What does Book Direct actually mean and how could you best explain it to somebody who doesn't have a clue what Book Direct means?

Book Direct is all about the ownership of a certain activity or tour in our sector. It might be the ownership of a small hotel, it might be the ownership of whoever owns an establishment. It might be the ownership of a pizza restaurant down the street as opposed to somebody who is reselling their products. Like Deliveroo might be reselling pizzas to you, you're paying them, but there's an actual company that is making those pizzas in a hotel. Booking.com don't own any hotels. These hotels have owners. So the Book Direct message really about making a connection with the owner, the actual provider of the operation of the establishment so that they're not having to pay commissions to other sites. I suppose you would call them middlemen coming in to basically take a cut just by making that introduction. And you know, the travel industry is not new to this concept. Travel agents have always existed and travel agents to a certain extent middlemen and they, and they connect travelers with establishments, things to do. That's totally fine. That's quite Valid, but really with the Internet, the Internet has brought a lot of small companies out of obscurity and made them visible to a large audience. So really, to just continue down this line of will an agent do the work for us is not sustainable for a business because you now have the opportunity to make these direct connections with your customers and to avoid paying these commissions. And it's something that every owner wants to do and needs to focus on doing as a strategy. It might be a strategy which is run, you know, concurrently with your agency strategy, but nevertheless, it needs to be a strategy. So in answer to your question, if I'm speaking to somebody who's not really aware at all, it would be finding the owner, finding out who actually owns what you're trying to buy, as opposed to are you buying off of a brand or even just a tech company that's facing themselves as a travel company?

This is really interesting to have this discussion because from my world, the hospitality community, the Boost Lee community, the academy, the map and everything, I think everybody that is in my world will feel like booking direct can be just sort of related to just our industry, but really it can be involved in every single factor and facet of it. And it's really interesting speaking to yourself because you've come from that tours and that activities background with the London bicycle tour company. Now, what did you do? So you realized it was a problem and an issue because there was a lot of your new bookings or your bookings were coming via Visa third party, which obviously commission had to be paid. So you spotted this trend and what did you do to stop that trend and then to increase your direct bookings where the customer or the guest would come to you instead of going directly via Expedia or Viator?

Well, first of all, we didn't ditch the OTAs completely. We decided for the two pronged approach where we would use the OTAs for what they were worth and we would make sure that we had access to the large audiences that they command. But at the same time, which was a much slower and more arduous process, we would change our internal processes to build up a better direct approach and appeal. So the main thing is the customer acquisition cost. I mean, initially we were spending less on marketing because our marketing budget was really our commission budget. We said, okay, well instead of marketing, we're paying commissions. That's where our marketing's going. So that's valid to a certain extent, but really it's unsustainable. You know, you're outsourcing your sales channel you know, your sales channel is something which is intrinsic to your organization. If you outsource a function of your organization to an external entity, then you're giving them so much control. So we always use the OTAs to the extent that we needed to, to keep bums on seats, so to speak, but just built our own direct strategy and how we went about that. Well, there's a lot of things, and I think what I can sum up by saying is it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of energy, it takes a lot of effort, but it has its rewards. Over time, you know, the rewards come back and it's incredibly important.

So, yeah, you're right. There's loads of things you can do and loads of things that you can impact. Was there one specific thing that stands out in your mind? Was there one specific action that you guys took as a company that had direct cause into increasing your direct bookings? Or is there any sort of success stories that you could just share with people that are watching? Because then we can unpack that and sort of put it into more accommodation sort of talk.

Absolutely. I'm really glad you asked, Mark. I mean, branding. Branding is massive. You know, your brand is your land. If you. If you don't own anything, you have to build something, and that's what a brand is. You know, if you build a unique, strong brand that people can see what your identity is, see what you're all about, see what your passion is, see what you've got to offer, if you can build that, then people are going to be loyal to that. So really building a really strong brand, a really strong image is something that, particularly in the travel industry, because I consider it such a friendly industry. We're in the business of making people happy. Our tour guides out there on the roads, connecting with people and taking photographs with people, and they're really making these deep connections. And for us to have our brand really strong in that customer experience meant that our loyalty was so much better to achieve that we were achieving this loyalty that we couldn't achieve before because we just attached our brand to the experience so strongly. Really, I honestly feel that any company which is aiming to increase direct bookings but doesn't have a strong brand, branding and ownership are really, really tied in. You know, your brand is your land. So definitely the number one tip is have a really strong brand and a really strong identity attached to it.

I asked that question to a lot of people. What is the one thing that you would do or you would change or you would see that other People do. And Shelly from guesty, she was on episode 18 of this series and Shelly said exactly the same thing about brands. So there's a consistent message that is being picked up in these series. When I interview experts and people in the field that are doing work around marketing and book director, there's a lot of the same traits. And those of you that have tuned in and listened or watched to every single one of the episodes in the season, I hope you are picking up notes because this is fantastic free advice that is being given to you. And it's a case now of you looking at what everybody's saying and trying to implement into your business. And you're right, brand is big. You know, you've got to have a consistent brand for all the social medias. That's one of the simplest things that you can do. And I see this so many times, just taking one thing, your profile picture of your social media, your profile picture that needs to be consistent throughout because whether it's Instagram, whether it is LinkedIn, whether it is Facebook, whatever the channel is, Twitter, you need to have that consistent same profile picture. So when people are doing the scroll, they see the same image, the same brand image time and time again. And then you can go from that and you can utilize that and you can grow on that even more and more and more Boostly Academy members. There is a full section on branding in the vault. So if you're part of the private training group, the Boostly Academy, you can go into to the vault, you can look at the interviews that we did with some more experts from the branding world and you can divulge in that and put that into your business. If you can do so straight away, that's fantastic. But yeah, really good one. Now, you've done this for a long time. Bicycle Tour Company, 2015, you started up the network. Now, I want to quickly just touch upon this network because it's really interesting. 2015, you sort of reached out to other tour companies. What was the initial conversation? What were you looking to achieve with building this network? What were you looking to sort of grow? Was it the chance to develop more relationships or was it just a case of being able to get everybody in a room and say, listen, this is how we increase our book directs, how we increase our brand. What was the sort of thinking behind that?

Actually, 2015 was our first event, but the network started in 2011. So I basically, you know, I was looking at what was happening in our industry as I discussed, you know, strategies for, for growing the business and looking at our situations, our competitive threats. And we're a pretty small business relative to the big forces of nature happening in the tourism activities sector. So you've got your OTAs, and they're big behemoths. You've also got a company called Fat Tire, which was setting up franchises of bike tours all around Europe. And what's happening is they set up in London as a competitor to us, and they were getting all the Americans kind of landing in London, and then they were getting them on tours, and then they were finishing their tours with Fat Tire and then going, right now you've done a tour with us, why don't you do a Fat Tire tour in Barcelona, in Berlin, in Paris? So they were basically the introduction and then upselling through to all these different cities. So I said, you know what? We don't have operations in different cities, but let's have partners in different cities and let's send each other more customers. So it was built around this premise that if we're part of the network together, when people want to take another bike tour, we send them to the partners. And it was received really, really well. You know, the first year, I think we had about 20 bike tour operators on board. It was fantastic. Everyone really liked the idea of cross promotion and partnership. But I soon realized that it was never the plan to turn it into a live conference, an event, a symposium. And I did a tour. I think 2013 or 14. I traveled around Europe and I visited most of the partners for face to Face meetings. And they said, why don't we all get together and have an event where we can network? And I said, cool, let's do it. So we did our first event in 2019, 2015. Sorry. And what I really got out of that was that when you're in a small business, when you're. When you're trying to build something, but you're really, really small, it can get so lonely. You can feel so isolated. You've got problems coming at you from all different angles. You've got to be a marketing guy, you've got to be an operations guy, you've got to be an IT guy, you know, you've got to be a bicycle guy. And people were feeling lonely and like they couldn't juggle all this and that no one was helping, and there was no real support network. So putting these events on, basically it was the birth of our family. And people come back year after year after year. And it's like a big reunion for us because we all support each other, we all help each other on this mission. And we have experts. We have a Google Ads expert, you know, we have a bicycle fleets expert. You know, we have marketing experts. People come along and they add to, to the knowledge base of what we have within the network. And all of a sudden it doesn't feel like you're in a small business anymore. All of a sudden it feels like you're part of something massive. We take that into the marketing realm and we start to create posts that we ask every partner to share. And then they get momentum. They basically help beat the Facebook algorithms without having to pay for boosting because, you know, we've got momentum, we've got a groundswell. So the real thing that I've learned through this, in growing this, is that you. We're creating a family, we're creating a network here of people who are supporting each other and finding real, you know, real solitude in that. And we're all in the same path here. We're all trying to just be good at what we offer. We just want to give people great experiences, you know, great. It might be hotels or establishments. We're in the business of experiences and making people happy. And if we're not happy ourselves, we can't do that. So having these networks has helped us really become a lot happier in what we're doing because we feel like we're supported. You know, there's a, there's a, a rock bottom that we can hit and our partners will be there to help us out and that's, that's what we, what we find year after year after year at all our events.

Now this is, this is awesome. And this is a thing that I think so many people, specifically, we're going to have hospitality people tuning into this, accommodation owners. And I think that what you've got to package this all down and break it all down to what Steve is saying here. He had a big company, Fat Tire. Everybody will have heard of Fat Tire as come in to their area and set up. Now, instead of Steve and the bike tour company kicking up a fuss, kicking and screaming, saying, ah, oh, well, let's just pack up, we've got a big company come in, they're doing all of these things. They've now got partners, all, they've got companies and bases all over the world, franchise all over the world, let's just, you know, we'll kick up a fuss, we'll bitch and moan and we'll just close that. Instead of doing that, what they've gone and done, gone and created partnerships. And instead of creating competition with each other. They've just collaborated and created partnerships with tons of other small businesses from around the world. And this is what is key and this is how everybody is going to stick together and build and grow. It's a support network. It is one of the foundation reasons why I started up the hospitality Community Facebook group again. I was a family business based in Scarborough, went along to a couple of meetings from the local tourism and I realized that it was great to have these offline little meetups for the tourism in Skywar and Yorkshire area, but there was nothing online. And the trouble is that when you meet up, say once a month or once a quarter and some people can't make it to each one, then there's loads of times when help and advice, or maybe news about troublesome guests or just, you know, scam calls that are coming in that was being missed and everybody was having to deal with it in their own time. So they would get a scam call from a scammy seller trying to sell them a scammy product and they would just agree to it because they are naive to the fact. And then before you know it, they've wasted £500 to a grand or more. When, if there was an online Facebook group, then these things can get talked about on a daily basis. And that is why I created the hospitality community, started up for Scarborough and Whitby. And just like anything that works, it's now spread to being worldwide. And that's why we've got 3,000 plus people in there. It's totally free and any hospitality owner can come in and join. And this is why now it's grown to the level that it is. And this is what so many other people are doing all around the world, whether it's a Facebook group or whether it is a symposium, like what Steve has now got with events and meetups and all of this cool thing, but it's developing partnerships. And I know that Debbie Laby will be tuning into this. She's a. She's a big fan. She loves the podcast and she has got a creator company, she's Australian as well. Steve, we've got another one. I met Debbie.

I know Debbie, she's great.

Yeah, Debbie's amazing. And Debbie has created something called the have you come got, have you got network. And it's the same premises. Is that where somebody comes to your property, whether it's an email, phone call, a Facebook message, and they go, right, we need accommodation for these dates. Do you have them? Instead of just going, no and hanging up the Phone or being the end of the conversation, it's going, listen, we are fully booked, but check out this network that have you got? And that's it. It directs people to somewhere else, so it keeps that discussion going and it can. And again puts it into other partnerships that can keep people instead of them going. Okay, fair enough. There's no accommodation there. I'm going to go fly back to booking.com or wherever that is, and then go back down that rabbit hole it keeps in that direct booking realms where I'm. Where you can greet the guests and you're passing it on to somebody else, whether if that's your local area or surrounding area, it's doing the same sort of thing. And you're building that partnerships and you're building the relationships and. And that's key. And that's why I am super excited to come along to the BugDirect symposium. So we first met through a totally bizarre random connection. It was somebody on Instagram, bed and breakfast from. I think they're from America. How did you first come across, like, how. What was the connection from you chatting to these guys, to them getting in touch with me? What was that connection? Why did you sort of feel like, yeah, you gotta. I gotta. You gotta speak to me. How did that sort of come about?

This was like the first week after I decided to put on the Book Direct symposium and to integrate with the hospitality communities. I started by just adding Instagram people who were. I think I was following the Book Direct hashtag. And I found companies that, on the hospitality side that were involved in that. I found this company, Breakfast and a Bed. And then I think I contacted them and said, oh, I like what you're doing. This is what I'm doing. And then we set up a call with John, the guy from there, and then he mentioned on that call, he's like, do you know Mark Simpson? I'm like, nope, I'm pretty new at this. So, you know, all of a sudden I was@boostly.co.uk and checking out what you did, and I'm like, right, this is what we're talking about. This is the kind of partnership we want. Because I found somebody who was doing what I had been doing with Cycle Cities in my little sector. And I'm like, hang on a second. He's doing what I've been doing in this sector and he's doing it actually bigger and he's doing it. He's gone a lot further down this path. So I thought, here's someone I want to connect with and get involved with and, and to, you know, share resources with because that's, that was really the original plan. I mean, I, I'm not really inviting, I'll say this, not really inviting hospitality companies because I want to preach at them or, or I want to, I want to become a big name in hospitality. I'm actually inviting you and having you part of this because we want to learn from you. Hospitality, small businesses, establishments, little hotels and stuff, you guys deal with this, you've been dealing with this a lot longer than, than we have. On the accommodation side, OTAs have been massively influential and actually when it comes to bookdirect movement and practices, you guys have been started this movement a lot earlier than we have as well. So we have so much to learn and basically there's so much crossover. When I look at how you deal with email campaigns, when I look at what you do with social, when I look at what you do with website design, it crosses over beautifully into tours and activities. So I'm well known in the bike tour sector, but it's fairly niche and I will honestly serve my network so much better by bringing in the best people from the hospitality sector to create something, you know, really, really powerful. And the other reason is because we can make connections for cross promotion. I mean, there might be a local hotel that will promote your bike tour or maybe your bike tour is going to promote a local hotel. You know, maybe by joining all together and meeting up, we're going to create these connections, we're going to find professionals in different areas that we can work off. And ultimately we are acting as a union. We are, we're turning ourselves into a big company on a level that concerns them. I actually had threats from one of the OTAs trying to shut us down because we were having so much influence where our partners were basically saying, right, how do you deal with this OTA and their contracts and stuff? And we're like, oh, okay, do this, do this, do this. And we started to work like a union and it really, really gave us, you know, a lot of power. And I honestly feel like, Mark, it's, it's, it's not only the only way to go about this, it's a really enjoyable way because you're building relationships in a community and you're putting, you're putting faces to people all over the world and you're helping each other out and it's such a rewarding thing. And the face to face events, honestly, I know many of our listeners won't be able to come well, this will actually podcast will air after the event, but we're going to have Future events in 2021, 2022. Hopefully it will keep going ahead if it goes really well in 2020. And if you don't get involved in face to face events, you really should. I mean, I did the Cycle Cities Network for before the face to face events and that was great. But things really took off when we started to have our meetings and that's when it really felt like a community. So I highly recommend that you check out the book Direct symposium. If you can't make it, it's fine. There'll be plenty of resources, there'll be videos online, there'll be heaps of stuff post event and heaps of information about future events as well. So, yeah, I just really look forward to getting to know more people in the hospitality community. So thank you, Mark for coming. We are really looking forward to having you as our headline speaker.

I say really happy to come along and do this. And I remember our phone call, it was back when I was in England, it was last summer. I never knew at the time, but it was like a little audition for the actual show itself. So really happy they were able to come down. And you write that when you start this route and they start these partnerships, all you've got to do and just have a little nosy at what Airbnb are doing, have a little nosy at what Booking are doing, have a little look on the news and see what, what companies are Expedia Group buying up at the moment. They are buying into more tour companies because what they want to do is they want to create an all in one shop. If you look at what Booking are going to start doing, they're going to start integrating kayak flights onto booking. They've obviously got the tour side of what they're doing there and they're going to try and create an all in one shop. So the best way to combat that and the best way to grow and to prevent it is by partnering up. Now, if you think about it and think about the guest experience, right, you've got a guest that is going to come and stay with you. You'd be naive to think that they're going to spend 100% of the time in your property. They're going to want to go and see and do things. Now, if they are on business, obviously they're going to be a lot of the times going to be business related. But even business guests will want to have to do fun things as well when they're not going to be working and maybe got a bit of downtime if they have to sort of do some sort of team bonding thing. Right. So what they're going to be doing is they're going to be looking for things to do and this is where the crossover is and this is what we can, we can sort of start to see more of is that you can start to recommend places, local places in your area, tours in your area. And again, instead of just leaving a leaflet out that you get from your local tourism thing, start to go out and build these networks, try and go out and sort of meet the business owners of these tour companies and you'll be amazed at what's going to happen. Like what Steve says it really kicked off when he started doing face to face event meetups. Like instead of just doing one to one, like try and see if you can, can come to like local meetings, whatever they may be and you'd be amazed at the benefits. So you could actually build up a nice little niche of tour operators that you can send people to. Doesn't matter what it is regarding to whether it's cycling, I don't know what's in your local area, it could be cycling, chocolate tasting, wine tasting, whatever it is, you can start to build up these relationships and if you can then keep everything in your network in your loop, then what that is doing is it is keeping more money and more funds into your local area. So then it keeps then getting regenerated into the local area, which is really what a massive part of Book Direct Message is all about. So instead of small businesses thinking that they've got to do all the things by themselves, thinking that they have to rely on these massive third parties, what it is, is just by building up these relationships you're able to then not to feel like you're doing this all on your own. And this is a massive part of it. So the Book Direct symposium, if you cannot make it to Athens, Greece, which I know a lot of people won't be able to, like Steve says, there is going to be a lot of video, there's going to be a lot of footage taken so you can tune in, you can go and watch all of these, the past videos and you can go and keep update with what's going to be happening in the future, all you need to do is you need to go to the book symposium website and all of these show notes are going to be on the blog that we're going to create after it. So go to booster.co.uk podcast, but go to Book Direct Symposium. So Book Direct Symposium is spelled S Y M P O S I U M dot com. If you go on there, if you scroll down to the bottom, there's a section on there. After you scroll past my face, you'll see a section that says sign up for the newsletter. So sign up for the newsletter. You'll be one of the first people to find out about the videos that are going to come out from the event, some of the takeaways from the event, and anything else that comes out of it. And plus as well, then you'll be able to be made aware of any future events that are coming up. Steve, is there anything else that you just want to talk about about the symposium, about. About where you see it going or just anything else you want. You want to finish on that before we go and ask you the quick fire questions to end this?

I'm really excited about the symposium, honestly. It's a lot of work and I think that when you're building something and it's just you or it's a small group, it takes time. You know, I'm well known in city bike tours. I could put on an event and everyone buys a ticket. But the Book Direct Symposium, this is our first year and I'm not known in the hospitality circles and I'm not known in Athens either. So it's been really, really difficult to establish a reputation and to get the word out there. But this is just what hospitality owners go through. This is what small tour companies go through. They start and it takes time just to build your reputation. But eventually, the longer you do it, the easier it gets. So you have to play the long game. So if you're sitting there thinking, I don't have the time or the energy to focus on building mailing lists or building social media followings or going to partnership events, it's not all going to pay off straight, but over the long run it will pay off. So I want to encourage anyone who's struggling, just, just keep at it because you know eventually you will win.

Awesome. That's a perfect way to end the topic of the podcast. Now, like what I like to do at the end of everyone is we'd go through a couple of quick fire questions. This is where we can delve into into Steve and the mindset of Steve a little bit more. We're going to pick up on a few things. Now, if anybody is tuned into this podcast before, you know that, we're going to get some pretty decent answers. And it may be that you are tuning into this and you are driving, you're on the move and you haven't got time to make note of some of the answers that Steve gives and all the other guests that they've answered. So please make sure you go check out the show notes booster.co.uk podcast. Go to season seven, scroll all the way down till you see Steve's name come into it and you'll find out there. So quick fire questions then. The first one is what has been a personal favorite business book of yours.

To the four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. Brilliant.

Why that one?

Honestly, it's not only theoretical about the way you should conduct your life, it's practical. The first half of the book is all about the principle of designing your life and not basically putting too much into the future, but living your life now. And the second half of the book is practical ways to achieve that, to build a business that that is portable, to build a business that you can make yourself redundant from, that can help make money while you're absent. And it's an absolute fabulous book. I don't think I'll read a book which will better it.

I'm yet to massively agree. I'm a big fan of Tim Ferriss and my personal favorite of his is Tools of Titans because it takes little segments of the four hour work week and does so much more. I know it is. You've got it in your hand. Tools of Titanium.

That's the one, mate. I'm actually about halfway through this one, so that's a good one too.

All right, so I'm going to ask the next question, which is favorite podcast, Are you going to double up on the Tim Ferriss? If you've got anything else you like to listen to when you're on your.

Travels, the Growth Mindset podcast by a guy called Sam Harris. He's actually my housemate and he's fantastic. He's very intelligent guy and he's massively into Growth mindset, positive attitude. So check out Sam's podcast, the Growth Mindset Podcast.

Good Growth Mindset podcast by Sam Harris. We will definitely check that out. Okay then, so favorite purchase under 100 pound in the last year. What would that be?

Six Ryanair flights.

Six Ryanair flights. There you go. Where were they to?

My mum came over from Australia and for six weeks and I said, right, we'll base ourselves in London and we'll take just do short trips to different parts of Europe. So we went to Norway and then we went to France and then we went to Spain and we did all those trips return including luggage for less than 100 pound each.

So YouTube. Are you a YouTube channel? Do you like watching YouTube videos? If so, which is your favorite one? I do.

A big fan of Gary V. He's fantastic motivational speaker. I think he'll be one of the most famous people in the world within the next 10 years. He's incredibly good. His mindset and his advice, particularly for young people and how to work in the digital realm. I like politics so I like watching visual politics and I also like School of Life. It's really good too.

I think Gary Vee will one day get to own the jets. That is what he is. Day one. Definitely get there. Yeah, I used to watch a lot of Gary Vee and then I just literally took his advice literally of stop watching and start doing and Brilliant, brilliant. Loosely came from what is your would you say and you can talk about the symposium or just anything that you're doing right now. So what has been. What is the biggest pain point right now in your business or what you're trying to achieve with the growth of the book? Direct movement or anything like that? What would you say right now is your biggest pain point? You know what?

Digital being on email, so much being attached to, the need to be so present and social media emails, you're constantly gotta be on your computer, on your phone and I find that difficult. To be fair, I try and batch my work so that I'm not constantly online so that I get time to chill out, to meditate, to relax. But that's probably the hardest thing is getting away from it all because there's always more to be done.

Especially in times like these when there's big events coming up in a couple of weeks. You must feel like there's a lot to be doing all the time. Do you ever go to switch off like when you know but it's getting a bit too much? Did you have. You just literally can switch off and escape or do you still got to try and find that perfect switch off?

Wednesdays.

Wednesdays is the one, mate.

Don't call me on a Wednesday. Don't expect an email back from me. I put my email on autoresponder on Wednesdays. Obviously the day of the book direct symposium is Wednesday in two weeks time. So I'm going to be working that.

Day the other 51 in the year. That's all right.

Yep, exactly, exactly.

Next one then. And this is the panorama one. It's one of my favorite questions. What is the one big tip you have to give to anybody watching when it's coming to boosting their direct partnerships and communities, mate.

You know, don't do it alone. Don't, don't, don't even watch a video and listen to the advice and go, oh, cool, that's a good idea. Join a community, join a group, Ask a question, answer a question, meet someone, go to an event. You know, build these communities and partnerships. It's going to make. Make your ride so much easier and so much more fun.

I, like, I really, really am a big fan of that. And finally, what would you say would be your superpower?

I can hold a crowd. Yeah, I'm going to take that tribute band. I play, Howard, and I've performed to over a million people in the last 10 years, so I'm good with the stage. I can certainly host an event and I can hold a crowd. I'd say that's got to be my superpower.

You can't really just be a bit blase about that. So you're in a take that tribute act. How long have you been doing this? And you are Howard Donald. So just explain a little more about how did you get. How did you get this gig? Like, what was. Does somebody walk past you in the street in London and go, you look like Howard Donald? How does this even happen?

Oh, I was. I was working in LA for a little while as a songwriter and on a project and that finished up. And I was depressed when that job finished and I was working at London Bicycle and I'd come back to London Bicycle, but I needed to be creative, I needed to, to be doing something else. And I just went online and looked for auditions for different jobs and I auditioned for this job nearly 10 years ago now and got the job and started touring around the UK and, you know, we've turned into one of the UK's biggest take that tributes. We get about 100 shows a year. It's great fitness, it gets me out the house, it pays some bills as well and I really enjoy it. I get to have a lot of fun. So, yeah, that's it. That's the other half of my life, really. But I can work, it's portable work, so I can do everything.

Might be seeing you on a stage in the UK sooner than you know it, and who knows what it may be.

Check out the Take that experience and come and come and say hello after a show and say, oh, you saw me on Mark's podcast.

Like, ah, I like it. All right, buddy, well, let's end it there. I Just want to say thank you so much for doing this. Thank you so much for coming on. I know life is a little bit hectic right now and yeah, I'm looking forward to meeting you in person in a couple of weeks time. It's going to be such a cool event and it's going to be an amazing few days in Africa. Be really cool to see where it just expands and grows to from there. Because I think, I think everybody can agree with me and I can say this, that if you can do anything, it's going to be growing and this is just going to take on and it's going to grow and grow and grow. So I wish you all the best of it and they say I'm looking forward and I'm very honored and grateful to be a part of it. So thank you so much.

Safe travels. Mark, we'll see you in Athens in about a week and a half. It's. It's getting close, mate. Looking forward to it.

All right, thank you so much for tuning in and thank you everybody for tuning into this as well. Obviously, when this goes live in the world of itunes and Spotify and whatnot, it's going to be the end of March. So we will have done this event, we will run this event and I will have reported it. There'll be daily vlogs, there'll be loads of footage and content being around it. So please, please, please do interact with it. Go to the Book Direct Symposium website, go and get the social media channels followed or whether it's Instagram, Facebook, Facebook, you name it. Obviously I'll be daily vlogging it from the event and sort of speaking about it and just sort of showcasing it. We're really looking forward to going over. I've never been to Athens before. Laura and the boys are coming with us. So it's going to be great. And we will be talking more about it obviously over the coming weeks and the months. Even if you are tuning into this at the end of March or in the future. So thank you so much. Please make sure that you rate, review and subscribe to the Boostly Podcast, itunes, Stitcher, wherever you get it. If you're watching this on YouTube, please make sure that you tap the subscribe button and leave a comment. It just gets more eyes on it. Boostly Podcast has now surpassed 10,000 downloads. So please make sure that we continue this growth of this podcast. Leave a review, tell people about it, share it on the socials and do me one thing. The Boostly Podcast is sponsored by Hostful. Please Go and get hold of your free digital guidebook. You can go to hostfully.com your first one is free.

Okay.

And you have got exactly 10 days left to go and enter in the context where you can win premium listings on Hostfully. You can win goodies and merchandise and all of those lovely things. All you've got to do is submit your guidebook. So go and create it. Go and submit it. Just go and do it. Doesn't have to be the best it could possibly be. Just get it done, get it looking. All right, Send it in. And who knows, you might be able to win. So go to hostfleet.com contest to do that. And yeah, go and get your free free guidebook. It is really cool. Paula Butler from Cockington Cottages, she has one for her property and her guest has said that it looks so cool. And again, it them find out about checking information about things to do in the local area. And again, we're talking about this, building up partnerships. You can go and add in any of the tours or the businesses you want to recommend your guests to go to, and it's all on the app, on a computer or on a tablet. It's a really simple and really nice bit of kit to use. Thank you so much for tuning in, as always. I'll be back again soon for another podcast, but until then, thank you so much for tuning in and we'll speak to you very soon.