Building Unbreakable Hospitality Brands: The Power of Direct Bookings w/ Boostly's Mark Simpson

don't build something on rented land. I know you're passionate about that, so I'd love to hear your point of view on—

Yeah, so don't build your house on someone else's land. So I, I, the reason why I mentioned that, and I mentioned that on stage in front of a lot of people and it got a bit of traction, is that if you boil down to what we do in this industry, whether it's an STR or MTR strategy, is that we're in the industry of making memories and doesn't matter whether it's a leisure or a business or a pleasure, people will remember staying at your property or properties. And so because of that, this industry is very in demand, even during what could only be described as the biggest lockdown ever that we have had in our lifetimes, and travel was pretty much turned off. People were still traveling, and they're so pumped up and so wanting to go away, even if it meant traveling whilst working. So that's what COVID was. And so we've come to the other end of that. And I still say that we are so in demand. Obviously there's a lot more choice now, but we are still so in demand. And because of that, we're very lucky in our industry that you can start a business today. I could go and find a property, put it on a number of websites and be guaranteed to get revenue in depending on your market. Time of the year. That's what we have in hospitality. There's no other industries like it. So if I look at what Boostly does now, which is website design, there's no website that I can go and list Boostly's web design on and be guaranteed to get revenue after. I've literally got to drag people kicking and screaming sometimes to work with us. So that's the blessing. But the curse is that because it is so easy to get revenue, people become complacent and become lazy and just go, it's all right, Airbnb or get my MyBookings. And the problem with that is what happens when that revenue stops coming in? What happens when, let's just say, your listing gets suspended, or your account gets deleted, or you get a couple of bad reviews and then you drop off the page one? Or there's a load of reasons why, and more and more reasons why are happening even to today in 2025. And so the terminology of don't build your house on someone else's land, that is what a lot of people do. And it is surprising to me because a lot of people come into this industry from other industries where you don't have that luxury, where you literally have to build a brand, do sales, do marketing, drag people kicking and screaming. But yet, as soon as they land in hospitality—

Welcome to the She's Got Assets Real Estate Investing Podcast. I'm the host, Shona Lefas. Follow along as we unpack and demystify real estate investment strategies through expert interviews and personal experience, from how to find off-market deals to creative financing to long-term and midterm rentals. We aim to educate and inspire others to gain financial freedom and generational wealth through real estate. And as always, please subscribe so you never miss an episode. We really appreciate reviews. It helps others find us and it just helps us get found. Everyone, uh, welcome to the She's Got Assets podcast. I'm Shauna Leffis, your host. I have a really special guest today. I've been like a fangirl for a long time. Mark Simpson, the founder of Boostly. He's really well known for like direct booking, just like a genius. So Mark, thank you so much for coming on. I'd love to hear just your nutshell background and what you're up to.

Yeah, no, thank you very much. As you can tell by the accent, I'm from across the pond in the United Kingdom. Grew up in hospitality, grew up in a farmstay bed and breakfast. So I've always been used to having hospitality in my blood. Tried my hardest to escape as much as I possibly can, but it keeps dragging me back in. In, in my 20s, I went traveling around America doing soccer coaching, which I absolutely loved. And then towards the end of it, My parents were like, you're going back into the family business. And so me, my, my, my wife was then my, my girlfriend at the time and then our eldest, our Alfie, who's now 12. We basically just moved back into the family farm and my role was marketing just because I was the youngest. And so that's literally my qualification. And I just got stuck into it. I devoured everything I could, resource that I could back in 2011. There wasn't really much at the time, but loved it. I loved every aspect of marketing and social media and sales. And, and we, we basically— my parents had the business for about 25 years before I came into it and just took that 25 years worth of offline marketing, offline word of mouth, and we put it online and it went like gangbusters. And then in 2016, I started helping other hosts just naturally in my area. And then in 2017, I started a Facebook group called the hospitality community, which is still going to this day. You're more than welcome, everybody, to come and join it. And when I created that group, there was people from outside of my town of Scarborough, like, wanting help and advice. And got to a point where I was answering more questions from hosts than I were from guests. And my wife said, you should really do something about this. And so that's when Boostly was founded. That's when the Boostly brand kicked off. And it's It's gone from being just me on a kitchen table answering questions to a worldwide brand. Now I'm very fortunate. I get to go travel around the world speaking at events. I've got a couple of books out and we've helped thousands of hosts and yeah, we're just, we're just getting started like 9 years later now.

I love that. I was just, that's impressive to start from just not even, I mean, being in the industry and then just growing it to the brand that you've grown it to and helping people, right? So I do feel like we are in the hospitality business. I think people forget that, especially with short-term and midterm. I'm, my background is my parents have vacation rentals, so I grew up with it. I still remember the first website I put up. I was so tired of answering the same questions, right? So that was, yeah, did not do what you did, but that's really impressive. So you're really well known for direct booking and I've heard the term You don't build something on rented land. I know you're passionate about that. So I'd love to hear your point of view on—

Yeah. So don't build your house on someone else's land. So I, the reason why I mentioned that, and I mentioned that on stage in front of a lot of people and it got a bit of traction, is that if you boil down to what we do in this industry, whether it's an STR or MTR strategy, is that we're in the industry of making memories. And doesn't matter whether it's a leisure or a business or a pleasure, people will remember staying at your property or properties. And so because of that, this industry is very in demand, even during what could only be described as the biggest lockdown ever that we have had in our lifetimes. And travel was pretty much turned off. People were still traveling and they're so pumped up and so wanting to go away, even if it meant traveling whilst working. So that's what COVID was. And so we've come to the other end of that. And I still say that we are so in demand. Obviously, there's a lot more choice now, but we are still so in demand. And because of that, we're very lucky in our industry that you can start a business today. I could go and find a property, put it on a number of websites and be guaranteed to get revenue in depending on your market and time of the year. That's what we have in hospitality. There's no other industries like it. So if I look at what Boostly does now, which is website design, there's no website that I can go and list Boostly's web design on and be guaranteed to get revenue after. I've literally got to drag people kicking and screaming sometimes to work with us. So that's the blessing. But the curse is that because it is so easy to get revenue, people become complacent and become lazy and just go, it's all right. Airbnb, or get me my bookings. And the problem with that is what happens when that revenue stops coming in? What happens when, let's just say, your listing gets suspended, or your account gets deleted, or you get a couple of bad reviews, and then you drop off the page one? Or there's a load of reasons why, and more and more reasons why are happening even to today in 2025. And so the terminology of don't build your house on someone else's land, that is what a lot of people do. And it is surprising to me because a lot of people come into this industry from other industries where you don't have that luxury, where you literally have to build a brand, do sales, do marketing, drag people kicking and screaming. But yeah, as soon as they land in hospitality, their natural inclination is just to go, I'll just put on Airbnb and I'll be fine. So that's where that sort of came from, and it's got to become synonymous, and it said a lot. And like, the whole of my first book, the Book Diet Playbook, was built on that sort of quote.

You hear so many stories of a bad review or those, they're siding with the guest, right? We don't have a lot of rights, I think, as hosts. So I think it's so important. There's so many reasons, but I think branding and marketing, you are building a brand. If you want to have an actual book of business versus just, does it depend on your vision or your strategy? Do you think anyone, any operator should have their own? I think they should, but what is your take on?

No, 100%. Again, the caveat is, and the context is, what do you want to do in this? Is your short-term rental or midterm rental, is it like third down on the list of like priorities in your life and your career? Is it something that is just there and it's just, you'll just check in with it every now and again? If that's the case, then call it an Airbnb, just have it on Airbnb, but just be so warned that as soon as it stops working, you'll either turn it back into an LTR or you'll just give it to a property manager, right? That is literally what you'll do. If you're looking to make this a thing, if this is like your main priority, if this is what you want to be known for and this is what you want your day-to-day to be, then you are doing yourself a disservice by being in that camp. You've got to basically turn yourself into branding it, give it good sales and marketing. And if there's a chance with it that you can grow and scale it and potentially want to sell it one day, want to exit, and if that's the case, then it's even more important to be doing that because as soon as any good investor takes a look at your business, And if they see your revenue, whatever your revenue number is, and if they see over 50% coming from just one channel, that'll be the first red flag that them and the board will see because then you are so reliant on one platform, one channel. What they want to see is a real diverse income stream with multiple revenue channels coming in from multiple places. And I can totally get it if you're at the very start of your journey. You'll— the last thing you're thinking about is an exit. But what I advise to everybody is start thinking of an exit before you're even exitable. Because even if you build a business that is sellable, that's not a bad place to be. That means that you're clockwork. That means it's multiple revenue streams. That means you've got a really nice functioning business. So the sooner you start, the better.

I love all that. And I heard someone say recently, we go into real estate for passive income. It's not that passive, but you need to build a business around your real estate, and that's what you're doing for people, and that's so important. I don't think as investors we think like that, that we should.

Yeah, I think talking about MTRs, it is so much more passive than a short-term rental vacation business because obviously the STR, you're talking more 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 nights, where MTR is 30, 60, 90 days a year. But still, even when you have got a guest in that's in for 30 days, then you are always thinking one step ahead because if you leave it as being passive and then those 30 days dwindle down and the client decides not to renew, then you're stuck because you've got the feast and the famine model where all of a sudden you're super busy and then you're not. The best time to be doing new business, the best time to be doing sales and marketing is when you're at your busiest. Because then you've always got a pot that's full. Again, massive thing that I see in the MTR industry, the massive mistake that they make is they have somebody booked in for 60 days, 90 days, and they just literally switch off for 90 days and it gets the 90 days is out and they're instantly in the Facebook groups and in the community chats going, I'm dead. What do I do? Do I flip it back to STR? Da da da da. You know what I mean?

100%. Yeah. And I think it's ongoing and it's very much relationship based. Yeah, 100%. Okay. So on that note, like, I'm, my background's branding and marketing. I'm a big believer in that. So what should someone do? I mean, you guys obviously provide a valuable service and I think it's an investment that will pay dividends, right? Because y'all, I feel like you should not build a website unless it's done right. That's my personal opinion. I don't know what you think.

No, this is why we, this is why we started. So Boostly started as like a, a vault, like a coaching course, so to speak, without it actually being a course, I, because I was getting so many people asking me questions and they were asking the same things, I basically recorded myself for a week doing the mundane tasks that I do on a day-to-day. I put it all on Thinkific, which is like a coaching course platform at the time. And I just said, listen, you can buy it, buy access to it, who wants to test it? And that's how it started and it evolved over time. And it went from 1 person to 500 people and a core thing that kept coming back was my website doesn't work. I'm not confident in sending people to the website. My auntie's best friend's son did it and I don't really trust him. Now it's, I went on Fiverr and got one for $200, but I don't actually know what they've done. And so in 2018, I had one person come to me and said, listen, I'd love to do the change that you recommended. But I can't. I said, oh, why? He said, oh, my web designer's gone to prison. I was like, oh, well, that sucks. So I said, let me have a go. So I had to go at it. And it's simple, one property in the United Kingdom was a vacation rental. And I had a go and it was awful. It was shocking. I am not a web designer. So I, luckily a friend of mine that I knew of who was living in Bali, living in Bali, you can get by on very little. And I said to him, who's a designer, who's a dev, and I said, listen, I've got this website, I've had a go, it's shocking, can you just have a little look at it? And within an hour he produced this beautiful looking WordPress website, the booking engines and all sorts of stuff. And I was like, that's fantastic. And so this lady paid me $500 and I think I paid him $200 and I kept $300 and that was it. And then as soon as that lady showed a friend, I had another message. And it was another message and another, and before I knew it, we had about 50 websites. And that was the start of the website design part of Boostly. And it's over the years we've tweaked and tested and evolved it. And our framework, I believe, is the best out there for the price range that it is. It's a lot more than $500 now as we've learned to properly price ourselves. But you're right, is that just because there's a good website designer out there, just or say that they're just prioritizing, say, fitness or PTs, doesn't mean they can build one for the world of hospitality because it's a different booking persona, it's a different booking trend. And we were recommending website designers before we started doing it, and they were putting together like the Mona Lisa of websites. She looked absolutely stunning with graphics and videos. And I was just like, dude, I don't even know how to book a place to stay, you know what I mean? And then just I come back to our industry and I go, look at Airbnb. The design is awful, right? From a, from an aesthetic looking point of view, but you can go from looking for a place to stay to booking to a stay in as minimal clicks as possible. Same with booking.com, with Vrbo. You go to Hilton, you go to Marriott, and they all have the same vibes. And so we just built our whole framework and we just borrowed bits from what everybody does and we put it into our framework and it works. Like last year it generated over $100 million in tracked direct bookings for our clients. And I think our USP, and this is what nobody on Fiverr will do and your auntie's best friend's son won't be able to do, is that we built the connections and the relationships with the property management software tools that are out there. So Guesty, Hostfully, Hostaway, the big names, Hospitable. We went to them and we created these relationships, these partnerships, these networks. So it means that your details on your PMS will just sync straight into your WordPress website. I know what a lot of people are thinking, oh, I've got a website that's with Logify. I've got a website with Hospitable. That's not a website. That's just a landing page. They're all crap. I'm not saying that Logify and Hospitable are crap. They're all as bad as each other. And that's why they work with us because they know that their clients are getting a bit more savvy now. They don't just want a templated crappy landing page. They want a WordPress site that can do all the cool things. And so when we created those integrations, we've now got 24. Combine that with our framework and it does produce like really nice looking sites that work and it's got the integration and the connections. It really does set itself out. This is probably why we've just got just shy of 2,000 websites and we've helped loads of people and yeah, it's, it's really taking traction.

I really unpack that. Like my, I was a website designer way back in the day, hand coding. I remember when WordPress came along, but the landing page versus a findable website is very different. I'm not sure that people understand that difference.

Yes.

Getting found. How do you get found? If you just throw up a crap one, you're not going to get found. I know you're an expert.

Oh no, 100%. And it's the— a website is your online business card, right? And if you go— and I always say, if you're in a coffee shop and let's just say person next to you in line is like your ideal guest, let's just go down the route of MTR. So this could be a contractor who's in town, he's got several other contractors in town with him, and they're staying at the local crappy pre— like travel travel at a motel or whatever, when they're spending too much money and you go to them and go, oh wow, I do this. I've got this property, private parking, got your own kitchen. You don't have to worry about security. Da. And they go, can I have more information? You give them a business card with your details on it and your domain. You know what I mean? It's like, you want to be proud of where you're going to send them because that's the first impression of you and your business and your brand. And yeah, I'm afraid like that crappy landing page, like you say, is not going to get you anywhere. And, and the PMSs know this, the customers know this, and I think for the first time they've actually got a place that they can go where they can have something done for them, but then we also give them the ability to make all the edits and all the amendments. And that, that's why we did it. And it's, it's really changed things, which has been awesome to see.

So let's walk through that journey. So say there was a contractor, they're going to probably go right to the OTA, Airbnb. But I'm assuming with Boostly, you actually get found in searches, right? Because you're SEO optimizing it.

And yeah, at the end of the day, if the person who we're talking about, let's just say that they've never been to your town or your city, they don't know anybody in your town or city, then chances and likelihood are they are just going to go to what they know, which is search and Obviously these big OTAs spend billions making sure they're at the top of search. Let's call it spade, they are going to probably land on the OTAs. But we don't just do websites at Boostly, we still do the training. And one of the biggest trainings that we've created over the years is how to drive traffic from your OTA listing to your direct booking website. There's some very subtle things you can do on your real estate of your listing page that will drive traffic back to your direct booking website. So, or the other scenario is, let's just say that contractor, you've just met them and you've given them the card. That's a sense of new business. That's a sense of networking. So when they've got the card, they can scan the QR code, so to speak, or just go straight to the domain and then they land on your site. So there's a number of ways that we can do it depending on the scenario. And again, like in the book that I put out, the Book Direct Playbook, that's just like 2 of the 100 and 1 tips that we shared in there on how to not only generate traffic to your site, but how to actually increase your direct bookings.

Okay. Can you, so if you were to share a couple tips, obviously go read the book, right? But the drive, I have my, what I do to optimize to, I drop, I kind of name drop the name. Is there anything like that you recommend doing?

Yeah.

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Let's dig into it. So one of the cool things that you can do on like the real estate of your listing page, you're lucky on Airbnb that you can still amend the text. So on Vrbo and Booking.com, you're still restrictive on what you can put in the text, but that's prime real estate right there to brand your business. So one of the things that we recommend is in that first two lines of text, you say, this is X, so you've mentioned the house name, brought to you by your brand name. So instantly what you're doing is you're giving your house name and your brand name. So if they were to then do a Google search or a Bing search, your name and your property will come up at the top of the list. The reason being is that it's a very specific key term that you are giving them. Also as well, the second line of text in your listing description will say, check out our online reviews, they're rather good. So basically what you're doing is you're encouraging them. If they don't get the first hint on the first line, you're giving them a massive hint on the second line. Now, because Airbnb have got AI bots that are scanning every listing, you can't specifically drop in it, go to www.mydomain.com, because those bots will flag and they will highlight them and you could get your listing suspended, listed, taken down, or get a very angry message from Airbnb. But you've got to be clever on how you get around it. So those are the first two lines. Also as well, every picture that you have on your listing, you've got the ability to brand your business. So you can put a watermark on anymore. So watermark is on a picture, you just put your logo on it, put them on all the listings. That's what people used to do. Can't do that anymore, because again, the new AI bots that Airbnb have created will scan for that, and they do it very super fast. But what you can do at a photo shoot, for example, is you can very subtly leave your business and your brand name in the picture. So for example, coffee cups, or pillow covers or cases, or we had one person go the extra mile and they created a sign outside their house, which on the sign it says best rates when you book direct with a QR code on it. That got past the Airbnb bots, which was genius because with a QR code, the users now know in 2025, a QR code means scan this. And then the final real estate place is your profile. So your guest, your host profile, you're able to add a little bit of copy into there and amend the description as well as added in what's your favorite '90s movie and all those weird things that Airbnb are collecting at the moment. But in that description, you have got the option and the ability again to brand your business. So you'll put, I'm Shona, I'm the founder of X. And those of you that go the extra mile, you could put, here's my Instagram handle. So you just put IG. Whatever your handle is. You won't type out instagram.com like you would type in linkedin.com, but you could just put IG. Again, most people know IG is short for Instagram. The symbol is pretty straightforward, and then you would put your handle. So Bruce Lee UK, for example. And again, the travel— smart travelers, the smart travelers will then see that and then go to Instagram and find you that way. Especially if you've got an Instagram page, which is decent that people want to stick around to. So there are several parts of real estate on your OTA listing that you can grab attention and drive people to your direct booking website or your social media channels.

Clever. That is— I do that, but that's— there's some more tips. I did— thank you. That is very cool. I like the photos especially. Okay. And I do, I think just to clarify, I've heard you say the 65% direct booking, so there's a balance, right? Like, so can you just speak to what your goal is for and how long it takes someone to get direct?

It's a process, but yeah, to start with that 65%, that's just, it's not the be-all and end-all number. If you're at 64, doesn't mean that you're a failure. The reason why I said 65 is that I want people to be over 50% of their income coming in through direct, right? You do have to have a diverse portfolio. It is as dangerous being 100% direct as it is being 100% Airbnb, but you need to make sure that you are split around all the channels. So not only having an Airbnb account, but have a Vrbo account, Booking.com, Furnished Finder, have all of the channels open, because the more channels that you are listed on, the more visible you will be, right? And that includes Google Business Listings, Google Travel, Bing Travel. As many places that you are visible, you've got to be and see. How long does it take to get to 65% direct bookings? It totally depends on your, again, your business model. If you've got hundreds of properties and you're solely doing short-term rentals, it may take you quite a while. But if you've got one property and you're doing the midterm rental strategy, the MTR strategy, it won't take you that long to get there, to be perfectly honest. If you've got one property, there's 12 calendar months, 365 days, 52 weeks. And if you get, let's just say, 2 guests and they stay for 6 months each, and one's direct and one's from an OTA, then you're already at 50%. So it comes differently. I think the main thing that I save that for is to change the mindset of the person who's listening or watching or reading, and just to explain what a direct booking is, why it's important, and why it is dangerous if you are so reliant, like over, like say, 50% of your bookings coming from just Airbnb, how dangerous that is to like your future business plans.

Yeah, I feel just a small example for short-term, you get one bad review through no fault of your own that can just tank you. And that we don't have that so much with midterm, but it's a delicate—

that is. And this is another thing as well, is that you are always fearful of a review. You're fearful not just of not getting a 5-star, you're fearful of a 4-star review. And that's what they have created this culture of, that if there's a small little problem, let's just say the Wi-Fi is not working, you instantly jump into action because you are scared of getting anything but a 5-star review. And you are beholden to that. And I always say that as soon as a booking comes in from Airbnb, Booking.com, Vrbo, it feels like you've got a big brother over watching your shoulder every single move that you make. And you're right, sometimes you could just have that guest. And we've all had that guest. I've, I've homed and looked after thousands of guests, there's always that guest. And you always remember that guest. And unfortunately, when you play the game, and you're doing just Airbnb, You will pander more to that person when in reality, the beauty of a direct booking is that if you have that guest, you just cancel the stay and kick them out. Or just say, you know what, don't bother. Because when it's direct, there is no algorithms to pander to. There is no Big Brother watching over your shoulder. It's your business. It's your booking. It's your rules.

I never thought of that. You're right. And then not that we are, we are in the hospitality business, but we're these golden handcuffs with those OTAs.

And so yeah, yeah, it happens. And it's just, it's the thing that they've built. And I'm not doing this to throw shade on Airbnb. Their story is phenomenal, like how they grew it from being air mattresses in a room in San Francisco to take advantage of a conference to not only catching up with Booking.com and the Expedia Group, but overtaking them. To become— people don't walk around saying, I'm staying in a VRBO. They don't say, I'm a VRBO host. They walk around saying, I'm staying in an Airbnb, I'm an Airbnb host. So they have verbiaged short-term rentals. My sort of grief is with those hosts who are so reliant but yet don't want to do anything about it. So I feel like that's why the message has caught traction. I feel like it's a couple of things that have happened over the last 9 years. There's been those hockey stick moments, COVID being one, and other things that have happened as well, but that the message is definitely starting to hit home more, which is, which is awesome because that means we get more customers. That means the accountant's happy, P&L is happy. And so it's, it's, it's awesome that all these years of hard work and consistently being told, it's all right, Mark, I'm on Airbnb, it's all right, Mark, Airbnb have got me, to now where they're like literally coming to us going, yeah, we need your help.

Yeah, this is gonna sound silly, but when you said, we as investors, we always talk about our exit strategy and is, is it long-term, short-term, midterm? Are you gonna flip it, wholesale, all the options? But this is part of your exit that you should really be thinking about building that business around it. So I, that's a great analogy cuz it's so true. Okay. So aside from hiring you guys, obviously you guys, and you're, and the other thing I just wanna call out, your websites are really beautiful and I think aesthetics are really impor— they're very, I know you put a lot of time into the UX and all that, but they also They look nice. And that's to me, really.

No, absolutely.

So what are like, I don't know if this is like an easy answer. What are best practices? Obviously you guys hire professionals, but if you're like, whatever reason you can't, do you bother or is it just don't bother? Because I feel like websites are so nuanced and SEO especially and all the integrations.

So it really does depend on where you are in your journey. When you get going, I always say it's like playing a video game. I used to love playing video games when I was younger, like playing Mario and Zelda and stuff. And when you first start off on those games, you've literally, you're so scrappy. You're fighting the big Bowser and they give you like a hammer, you know, you know what I mean? It's wow. And as you level up, you then get more tools and you get more abilities to be able to do all the cool things. And it's the same with business. When you're starting out, you're so scrappy. So you may just have to, for the first year, just get by with a free PMS, right? The most important tool that you all need in your toolkit is a PMS because that is the first start to becoming off Airbnb. The biggest mistake that I see people make is they get the property, they list just on Airbnb, and let's just say the first year goes well, second year it sort of dips. And so the first thing they do is they go, oh, well, I'll just go and list on Vrbo. But then what they do to connect the calendars so they don't get double bookings is they connect their Airbnb calendar to VRBO. And so they're using VRBO as the main source of truth, when really the right move to make, which is why I put the second book together, which is the Book Diary Blueprint, it explains about the power of PMS, property management software tool, because that is the central zone of truth. Because that will be the place that you go every day. And then that will be what's connected to VRBO, that'll be what's connected to Airbnb, that's what gets connected to everywhere. And then that is you building, starting to build your house on your land, right? And that's a really key step. And yes, they have a free website. We've talked about that. But for the first year, you may have to just rely on that and just be scrappy and just do all of the free marketing tips. In that book I mentioned here, there's 101 tips. And the cool thing about it is that for 80% of them, they don't cost a penny. That literally don't cost a penny. It just takes your time. And at the start, you are literally trading time instead of money. And as you level up and you grow, then you can trade money instead of time. So it's just how to— just how the way the world works. Unfortunately, you can't start a business and not have investors around you and capital to, to go to. And, and you've got to do— be scrappy. But as you grow, you'll start to build a bit of pot profit pot, and then you can start to put it back into marketing and branding and web design and working with experts.

And just to touch on it, you need to invest in your business and the ROI of investing in a good website and investing in branding and marketing is exponential, right? There's no—

yeah, yeah, you have to. We tracked it. We just, on January 2025 now, so we just looked at 2024 figures and We charge $1,000, just around about $1,000 a year with your fees to be part of Boostly. Our average customer last year tracked $59,000 back. So that ranges from someone who's got one property to those who have got just over 100. And so that is 59,000 times return, 59 times return on investment, which is not a bad— we're talking about investing and whatnot. It's not a bad ROI. And so when you do get to these levels where you can afford it, then it, it pays because then they can take that money and that could be a down payment on another house. It could be investing in maybe a really good A-player for their business, or it could be just scattered around improving their existing portfolio. But yeah, it's when you start to level up, obviously things level up.

Okay. It's so many ways to get— so I have to ask, and I've heard you talk about this before, like marketing and branding, right? It's being more active and we're building your own book of business. So I know coach people on that and you've got tools like you have all these emails and how do we leverage that? Because just putting up a site and there's more to it, right?

Yeah, no, 100%. So I always say that we give the host the tools, the tactics, the training, but most importantly, the confidence to go and do this, right? To go and market your business. And tools definitely lands on website design. So we do that. We also give a CRM. So CRM, for those who don't know, is customer relationship management. Email marketing, social media, it all sits in this. So GoHighLevel is probably the most overused CRM that's out there and we use it as well. The cool thing is about it is that we can give you an account and we give you all the templates and things inside it and then we can see when you're using it. So for me, from the training and confidence side of things, when someone comes to me and says, oh Mark, we've got no bookings, I'm like, let me just go have a look at your CRM. Can I have a little look, see how many emails you've sent? Oh, it's zero. How many social media posts? Ah, it's zero. Let's start there, shall we? And so that's a massive part of it. The training. Yeah, we've got a Facebook group with over 10,000 years worth of experience in there. We do twice a week coaching calls. We bring in guest experts from revenue management to branding and SEO and social media, Instagram and everything in between. So that's the training. And then the coaching, I'm sorry, the confidence is the, the hand-holding aspect of it. So we've got accountability buddies, people that will egg you on. We've got, we've got a chap called Ger who's our Mr. Motivator, so he's our motivational guy. And yeah, it just all comes together nicely, so you'll never feel like you're alone. And I guess this is like the main reason why I created all of this, is that when I was doing this back in 2011, I was by myself. There was no Facebook groups, no communities. I was just literally pissing in the wind and hoping something stuck. That's literally how we're doing it. And then in 2016, I found a Facebook group for business owners in the UK, which I thought was just invaluable for helping me. And then the Hospitality Community was born on the back of that, and there's a community there. And I feel like now there is no better time to be running a business. The tools that are available, the communities are literally at your hand or your your phone, and now with AI coming into it as well, with artificial intelligence, you've got the ability to have a 24/7 intern who's the most cleverest intern in the world that you can ask questions to and it'll give you business advice, which I find is phenomenal. So yeah, we just bring all that together and we put it into the world of Woosli.

I love all that. I just have to comment. I've done WordPress sites myself. You can hit the wrong button and blow the thing up. I've done all the things. And they, the plugins expire. Yes, you can do this yourself, but there's a lot of management and I use GoHighLevel and I've spent so many hours trying to figure it out. I'm sure you guys get a very neat and tidy version of it because it's very powerful, but it is, it's unless you're a real techie, like it is not something you dabble in.

No, absolutely. Yeah. We get it. We get it there so we can hand it over. So it's all like I say, done with you. And obviously the website is done for you because you're right. If you press one thing wrong in WordPress, it can go kaboom. And even if it's just like updating plugins, but with the rest of it, it's done with you. It's all ready, plug and play, off you go. The templates. So we, we worked with a copywriter last year and she put together all of these different generic templates that you can use in the CRM. So one of them is ideal for corporates. So it's like, how do you get past the gatekeeper? Business that you're trying to get hold of. So we've got 5 email templates for that. And the cool thing about AI is that we created this bot without getting too techie, we created this bot. It's a large language model that is trained solely on Boostly. Like AI is at its most powerful when you've got data to give it. And now after 9 years, we've got 800 podcast episodes, over 1,000 videos, 80 hours worth of coaching videos, and everything else, 2 books, and everything else in between. So we could, we fed all of this into this robot. And, and now anybody can take one of these templates, plug it into the, paste it into the robot and just say, Mr. AI, can you please amend this to speak personally about my business? This is my avatar, this is my location, and it spits out beautiful templates based on the framework of what we give it. And that's all in GoHighLevel as well. So it's all at one place.

That's the beauty. All of these tools are really powerful, but it takes a lot of nuance and—

Yeah. And it's like we— And the reason why it's not done for you marketing is that there are people who do done for you marketing and they are fantastic, but they are so expensive, right? We're talking minimum $5,000 a month just to even for them to talk to you. So This is like the in-between. It's not DIY, it's not done for you. The reason why I say it's done with you is that for $97 a month, it's literally there. All you have to— we try to make it as simple as possible. All you have to do is copy, paste, send. And the cool thing is that if you don't want to do that, we've got 3 recruitment companies based within Boostly that are working with hosts to recruit some of the best VAs that are out there, whether they're in Bolivia, South Africa, Pakistan, or the Philippines, wherever your preference is. And so then if you want to, you can just drop your virtual assistant into the Boostly training, and then they can learn themselves on how to do marketing just from what's in there. We have a— we have about 30% of our customers who currently do that.

But I, I'm a huge tech geek. The technology and AI and what you can do with the right strategy and not that many doors is is pretty powerful, right?

Yeah, it's making it so much easier now for people to run a business. I think there's a famous quote that Sam Altman said that with AI, there'll be the one man band billion dollar business, which the more that you see what it can do, and obviously last week at the time of recording, they released their first AI agents that they're calling operators, you can see where they're getting at with all of this.

So it's interesting to really embrace it because if you're not, you're just missing out.

Yeah.

So cool. Okay. I'd love to unpack marketing a little more because I think we have, we've gotten so complacent with just putting ourselves on the platforms. And I do teach people how to optimize and get in front of like different avatars, especially for insurance. So how frequently are you recommending like email campaigns, social stuff? Right. Because it is, it's work and you can have systems in place, but you can't just put up your website and ride.

My advice there, and I say this to every business owner, doesn't matter whether it's hospitality or not, is that you've got to spend the first sort of 30 minutes to an hour of every day doing sales and business, new business. Because again, it's so easy to get complacent with this, especially in the world of MTR or something that, say, a guest is with you for 90 days. You're literally looking at your calendar like, I'm good. Isn't that your days? I'm so good. But it's why you really need to be then doing like your sales and marketing. And that doesn't mean you need to be spending hours behind your computer. Just give it an hour. That could be sending an email to a potential contact that you met. It could be blasting out an email to a list. It could be starting to build a list. It could be posting in a Facebook group. There's a chapter in the book about utilizing Facebook groups to generate direct bookings and There's Facebook groups everywhere, loads of them. And there's a tactic there that shows you how you can spend just 10 minutes a day focusing on maybe 5 key ones fit for you and your demographic and generating business. There's always something that you can be doing. And I still do it to this day, like 9 years later with Boothly. I spend the first day, 30 to 60 minutes of it doing new business. And it is mad. And if you can It's, well, we're in January, right? And by now we're at the end of January, so everybody has pretty much broken their New Year's resolutions. But the trick to a New Year's resolution is to do it daily. And it's, I think the stats, if you do it every day for 23 days and it just becomes as common to you as brushing your teeth, and we do that every day. And so it's just about consistency. And I think if there's one thing that I preach and teach and do myself, it's consistency, because as soon as you break that routine, as soon as you break that consistency, it's so hard to get back on the ladder, so to speak.

Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like people are— I don't know if you— I realize we're in the sales business, and I just recently I've been studying sales. I think that's so important. I don't think we talk about that enough. Being in real estate, we have assets and they produce income, and that needs sales and marketing. So I— but I think a lot of people are a little bit I was for a long time private about it because it's a bit loaded, right? So do you have any advice for someone just to be like, I realize the more kind of authentic, if I'm changing a garbage can, I'm out there talking, whatever the silly thing is, right? I'm actively in the business, but there's a lot of people that are just a little shy about it, I think, right? Or they feel self-conscious.

Well, at the end of the day, you can be shy, but if you're not going to sell, then it cuts off all the revenue stream, right? And so sales powers everything. So there are definitely videos that you can watch to become more confident to strike up a conversation, but the best thing to do is just practice. Truly is. I, when I was traveling the world, when I said that I managed to escape hospitality for those years when I was in my 20s, I had sales jobs galore, right? I was working at supermarkets selling those raffle tickets. I was door-to-door. Selling vacuum cleaners for a couple of weeks. I was doing bar jobs, you name it. And I feel like those gave me the skill set to get better at sales. And I'm not saying start selling vacuum cleaners or start selling raffle tickets. But the main thing is in that when you're doing your training for those companies is they just say, just get on the phone, just get on the phone, smile and dial, And a really easy way of doing that to get used to it is in your phone book, right? You've got hundreds of contacts, right? Everybody in that contact will know, love, or at least know you. And one of the simplest things you could do when you start a new business is just pick up the phone and just call people in your phone book. You're not directly selling to them, but you're just gonna have a conversation, just have a chat about it. Anybody who's ever done anything MLM, my wife used to do it for a company called Nu Skin. Again, it's the same thing. Reach out to your contacts, send them a message. You definitely cut your teeth that way. And yet, because she's not a natural salesperson, so for her it was very hard. But no, even though she didn't do anything really in the MLM world with like Nu Skin, she learned skill sets there that she now takes into her social media marketing business where it definitely helps. And I've— I like it, I love it. I know people who hate it, but at the end of the day, a business that doesn't run on sales doesn't run at all.

100%. And I think when, when we're selling something, that we're providing hospitality, a beautiful place to stay, it's not selling, it's an experience, right? Reframing.

Yeah, exactly. You're not selling a meme coin that's going to do nothing. You're actually selling something that you actually love, that you think will provide value. Whether it is selling to a homeowner, your management services, whether you are selling your property to somebody, whether you are selling it to a guest to provide that experience that we talked about, you're selling something that you believe in. So again, it's no different than selling a meme coin on the internet.

I, looking back, I had a lot of restaurant experience, which was great for customer service.

I wish I did more like sales jobs because I think it would have served Yeah, I, I know that me and Avery Kyle share this same philosophy on this, is that everybody who wants to work in hospitality should have at least had a bar job or a wait-in-home job at some point in their time, because you learn customer service so quick doing that, and it definitely tends you well when you're doing this realm of Airbnb-ness and hospitality, because reviews are the lifeblood.

Right?

And when you put so much time and effort and energy and money into something that you truly believe in and somebody gives it a crappy review, it can literally knock the stuffing out of you. I don't know, it used to do to me, uh, but I always say to everybody, it's not personal, right? If 1 out of 10 people leave a crappy review about something, then just brush it off. If 8 out of 10 people are talking about the same thing that's wrong, Fix that thing. And, but you definitely get tough skin from working those jobs and they definitely do you no harm. That's definitely for a fact. And so now my kids now 12, 9, 6, and 2, and my oldest is starting to get to the age where he needs to go and earn a little bit of extra money. I will 100% push him down the route of working in a hospitality venture of some sorts to, to help him. Mature and got tough skin.

There's nothing like it. Yeah. My buffing days, lots of good lessons. It's very stressful too. You're managing a lot and people and expectations.

Wow.

You forget the bread at a table and—

Yep. Absolutely.

I'd love to just come full circle. Obviously I'm MTR focused. I feel like that's a trend. Talk about trends, talk about MTR in the space. I feel like you need a website even for MTR. I'd love to hear your kind of point of view on that, like what's going on.

Yeah, so we obviously, we do website design and I'd say what, 60% of our customers have just got short-term rentals, but 40% of them have got, if not solely MTR focused, they've definitely got parts of their portfolio that they do rent out for more than 30 days. And a website is as crucial. I always say to people who come to me saying, oh, I'm doing the MTR strategy, is that Sales for you is so much more important because your whole business is built off sales, marketing, networks, relationships. And a website is very important as well because you're going to be dropping in calls to a PA of somebody who's sorting accommodation out for maybe their staff, or it could be home insurance replacements, etc. You want to be sending across a website that, like, exudes confidence, that exudes, like, you know what you're talking about. And I see so many crap ones that get put across our door. I was like, dude, no, because there's got to be— it can't be the same website that you would do for a short-term rental vacation. As much as possible, you need to make sure that Instant Book is turned off, right? You want to have it as inquiry only. Because the last thing that you want to do is give up a week's day or a month's day when that could be a 3-month, 6-month booking. And so you want your whole website pretty much to be inquiry only, because then you're going to have the lead come through, first name, last name, email, and you want to be calling them instantly. That is a hot lead. That's a sales lead right there. You want to make sure that the things that you talk about are more geared to Somebody's gonna be staying to you for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, more than just a weekend getaway in Georgia or wherever, Atlanta. It's, it's, it speaks so differently because it's a different type of advertiser, different type of client. And yeah, all of our frameworks, the outer body will look the same because that's sound, but it's the bits in the middle, the words, the pictures, The things that you show them and obviously the booking part of it is very crucial. So yeah, the, like looks-wise can look pretty similar, but it's the engine behind it that is so different.

Yeah, 100%. And people are not there for vacation. So what you're emphasizing.

And so that's really, yeah, like electrical charger, like car electrical chargers. If you focus on helping healthcare workers, like I know that Jesse Vasquez got popular for, then You talk about blackout blinds, if you like, it's home replacements, like people have got lost their homes for other reasons, insurance claims and everything, you got to be talking more if you're going to be focusing on families. Again, it's different conversations, you talk about how far you are away from things and bits and bobs and the benefits. And everything is features and benefits, you got to match up the features and the benefits to your ideal avatar. And so you can't just use a a PMS-free website that will just talk about the short-term benefits. You want to talk about different types of benefits. And that's why the beauty is working with a professional company who knows this inside out and backwards, instead of just going to Fiverr for $100. It's— it'll stand you the test of time massively. Because again, we see the bookings come in, right? With the MTR, you get those lovely big bookings because you see them all over Instagram, right? The numbers look great. And if you can, if you want to be getting those big numbers, you've got to be able to A, give the confidence of the person on the other end that you can provide that service to them or their client or their staff members. And that's a big part of it.

Yeah. I mean, I was just there getting those great bookings. We get them, but there's, you have to be a professional operator 100%. I'm like, I'd almost venture to say like having a bad website is worse than not having one. I don't know what you think, but No, I agree.

I agree.

My pet peeve is just even photos and the way, yeah, I think people sometimes just use ChatGPT blindly and they're not creating a story or a text. It's just, yeah.

That is also a thing that's definitely coming out of trend is that now it is so easy to create content. Now it is so easy to put words down because of AI. That doesn't mean you got to blindly copy and paste what you see there. You have to spend the time. I say, get it 80% of the way there. And then use that last 20% for your own human touch, your own inclination just to read it, look at it, proofread it, check it, get rid of the emojis, get rid of the hashtags, and give it that little bit of human touch because the trouble is that we will just turn into a world of copy and paste and we'll be bland and vanilla and nothing will stand out, which does open up the gates to those that are good. And I always say the cream always rises to the top. And don't be part of everybody else who just gets sucked into the same vanilla content that's just filled with emojis and hashtags and nothingness. And actually spend the time to give it a little bit of bespoke, put your own touch to it, and rise like everyone else.

100%. Yeah, it's very flowery. I review a lot of listings and I can instantly Oh yeah, I see it on LinkedIn all the time.

It's so funny. I have to stop myself short of calling it out in the comments when I see it, but I don't want to become a content cop. I'd stop.

But I think that we also, also make it funnier, add humor, and just to make it a little more human. I want my brand to be personable and relatable, not this like gorgeous countertops and all this like flowery, like real estate listing style. That doesn't, I don't like that, right?

No, absolutely not.

Um, so as we wrap up here, is there anything we didn't touch on? I know there's a lot of trends going on or top tips, like obviously work with you guys, but any like takeaways that you hear people doing, uh, they should be doing?

I think if anybody's interested, I definitely think they should go and pick up a copy of the book, the Book Diet Playbook. There's 101 tips in there, and I think we've just scratched the surface on a few. There's so much in there. And what's really important is that the takeaway I would say for everybody is to go and look at your listings that you have on your Airbnbs and your Furnished Finders and your Vrbo and just go and see how you can disrupt it. How can you brand your business a lot more? Again, tap into AI, but don't fully rely on it. And I feel like if you can just get started on those two things, it'll set you ahead because again, there's so many people, there's over 630,000 hosts on Airbnb with 1 to 20 properties, right? There's a lot on there. And yet, I've only helped 2,000 of them. So I've got a long way to go to make an impact. So what that says to me is that there are a core 5% of people who are actively looking to improve. So there's 95% of people who are just doing nothing. So even if you just start, you're doing way more than those who aren't. And so just by watching this podcast, listening to this podcast, being in the groups, being part of masterminds, going to events, you're literally in that top 1-2%. And so you've got such an advantage over everybody else if you just take time to make those small changes. Just do about 30 to 60 minutes every day and you'll be way ahead of everybody else.

That is so true. Yeah, no, I established myself as an MTR person just by talking about it, and that wasn't really my intention. I just got so excited that you could cash flow. Yeah, expensive market. And everyone, you're the MTR queen. I'm like, that's not what I set out to do. I was just very excited about it.

You just became the go-to. That's all you need to do, right? You don't need to be the best. You just need to All you— to be an expert, all you have to do is to have an audience underneath you that knows more than them. And that could be one person, it could be five person, it could be 10 people, it could be 20,000 people, right? But that's literally all I did 9 years ago is I started talking in front of what it was like 100 people in our community, in the Scarborough community. I went to the meetings and then they came over to the Facebook group and then that just exploded from there. So I Just takes one, just takes 10, just takes a few.

100%. Yeah, just, yeah, 100%. And I just, one more thing I want to circle back. I don't know if this is public and if not, I'll edit it, but you mentioned that the networking capability of if you're like an operator, is that something you want to talk about or is that kind of in the—

Yeah, so this is what we're working on. I don't know. How long will it be until this podcast comes out? How long?

Probably, I think, 2 weeks or something.

So it won't be ready just yet, but it is in the making. We've got it built. We're just testing it. So one of the things that I said off air that we're doing is we're creating a solution where you can have your own direct booking site as Parkit over here, but you may want to have another website where you can have not just your properties, but other people within your community or your network's properties as well. And this works really well with MTR and STR, and we're going to call it Boostly Connect. And with literally a click of your fingers, you can sync in all of your properties. And all that you'll need to do is have other hosts in your network connect their PMS to your Connect dashboard, and they'll be able to sync all their properties in there as well. So the cool thing about that is that when you go to a company, when you go to a contractor, when you go to an insurance company, And they need properties for 10, 20, 30, but you've only got 5. Instead of you saying on the phone, oh yeah, I'm good for it. Don't worry. I'm good for those over 25. You can actually show them and show them your network. And this solution will just take 2 hours to put together. It's literally so simple and easy. And we're going to create it. And it works in so many different levels, which is what I'm really excited for. We're hoping to have it ready to sell at the start of Q2.

We—

I want to make sure this is thoroughly tested inside and out because my— if my superpower is consistency, my super con is that I'm so eager to get things out. In the past, I've pushed them out far too early. And so with this, I want to get it tested and make sure it works. We're lucky now we've got 1,000 members that we can test this on thoroughly inside out and backwards, which is cool. Soon as it's ready in Q2, I'll be talking about it a lot and Yeah. And the cool thing is, is that with the way that this will be built is that let's say you've got 100 properties on your site. If somebody that you show it to books with somebody else, you will get a cut of that referral, cut of that income to you. So it's a great little way you can basically create your own Airbnb, which is pretty cool.

That's so timely because there was, we were talking off on a bit of a turf war going on and we all have very powerful networks and if we can present ourselves, we can make We all have that network, so that's— yeah, can't wait. That's really cool.

Yeah. So it'd be very cool. I'm looking forward to it.

I love that because they're just— it's heating up. I— yeah, it's interesting. Definitely interesting times. So we covered your superpower. I just— one question before we wrap up. I always like to ask the top business or life advice you'd give someone to live life on their own terms.

Okay. So this is a life one. That me and my wife heard, we heard on a podcast, probably a Tim Ferriss podcast years ago, we're driving and it came up and the quote was, I would rather live a life of ah wells instead of what ifs. And when we heard that, we have definitely embraced our life since then. I would say it's about 7 years ago. So it's ah well instead of what if. So it's everything that we go by. And another one, which is a Derek Sivers quote, is that if it's not a hell yeah, it's a no. And as you grow in business, as you grow in what you're doing, at the start you've got to say yes to everything. But as you get popular, you're going to have so many more people asking you questions, asking you, can I pick your brain? If it's not a hell yeah, it's a no. And sometimes saying no will open up more the best right yes. And I think like those two things combined will stand you in good stead.

Yes, that is amazing advice. Okay, so last question. You're pretty easy to find, but how— if someone wants to work with you guys, what's the next steps? How do they go about doing that?

So if you're watching the video, in my title there it says boostly.co.uk. Please don't go to.com. It's a text messaging service for restaurants, not me. Boostly.co.uk. If you're struggling there, just Google search Mark Simpson Boostly. Instagram is @boostlyuk. You go down one of those three routes, you'll find us and you can book a call with our team.

Amazing. Yeah. Mark, thank you so much. I've been a big fan for a long time, so it's an honor to have you on. And thanks for sharing all these tips and what you're doing to like impact people. And it's just amazing that you can build a brand and be pretty small.

So thank you.

Or vague, right? Amazing. All right, I'll put all that in the show notes. Yeah, thanks again and reach out if you guys need a website, cuz it don't— if you're not gonna do it right, don't bother.

Thank you.

Yeah.