In this episode, we sit down with our friend Mark Simpson, Boostly founder and the best-selling author of “The Book Direct Playbook.” We chat about how content creation, the importance of building a community, how Boostly came to be, and unlike most of us, how Mark was actually born into the short-term rental space. Vacation rental and holiday lets are at an all-time high in popularity for vacationers and investors alike. Mark talks about the importance of designing websites that drive traffic and direct bookings. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors at Vintory!

Special Offer: vintory.com/nobs Free Homeowner Marketing List (up to 500 records) Free Homeowner Landing Page Try Vintory’s Software Risk-Free for 60 days Mentioned in this episode: Vintory Ad Special

This episode is brought to you by our sponsors at Vintory! Special Offer: vintory.com/nobsFree

Homeowner Marketing List (up to 500 records) Free Homeowner Landing Page Try Vintory’s Software Risk-Free for 60 days Vintory Landing Page Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

—

Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

Listen on Apple Podcasts Listen on Spotify Listen on Google PodcastsListen on Amazon MusicListen on PandoraListen on iHeartRadioRSS FeedListen on StitcherListen on Pocket CastsListen on Podcast AddictListen on Castbox
 

Coaching With A Playbook With Featured Guest Mark Simpson

Mateo, how are you?

Fantastic, John. How are you?

I’m good. I got a different background staying at a good friend of mine’s vacation rental. I will soon be coming on to Hopper inventory, so I’m pretty excited about that as well. You always got to throw that little personal plugin. It’s why I’m here. It’s what I do.

It’s good to see you on the road.

Funny story. I thought I was booking in Panama City Beach, but I flew into Destin. That was an hour’s drive.

I was about to say that’s $120 for an Uber ride or Lyft ride.

I got a rental anyway, so it was all good. It’s great because I got meetings in Destin and I fly out there. It worked out like I did the long drive. Down here, I got a busy week scheduled for Hopper and got a little industry meet-up with a bunch of people getting together. Halfway between Destin and Panama City Beach, we are getting a bunch of people together to have some beers and break some bread. It’s going to be fun.

I love all that activity. Back to life.

Truly, we were talking about it but I want to bring it up. My thoughts and our hearts and prayers are to the East of Panama City Beach where I’m in right now. There’s a horrific wildfire going on and it’s taking homes out. These people rebuilt them. They just got back from Hurricane Michael. It’s weird because the working force of Panama City Beach doesn’t live in Panama City Beach.

They live over there in Panama City. They live like it’s not necessarily the vacation destination, but that’s where the workers live. I was talking to a security guy when I was coming up to my room and he goes, “A friend of mine, his house, it’s right at his house.” I’m like, “Shit.” Let’s get into it this time. We got an amazing guest. We are keeping it across a pond. It’s exciting. We have the Founder of Boostly and the best-selling author of The Book Direct Playbook, Mr. Mark Simpson. Thanks for joining us.

Welcome to the show.

My pleasure. I’m a big fan of the show. I have been tuning in. Congratulations on season two. I look forward to all of this to come. Thanks for having me part of this movement that you are creating.

Thank you. I don’t know if we are created a movement. I think we joined a movement, but I appreciate the kind words. We are excited to have you. We’d love to hear about your story. We are all very active on social media and we stay up on the short-term rental and vacation rental social media front and it’s been fun watching. For me, you’ve been a pioneer of someone that’s putting out regular content.

It’s been fun to watch, learn, and take some tidbits every day of like, “Look what Mark is doing. Look at the following he’s getting.” It’s not all about a following, but at the same time, you need to keep people engaged. You need to put out regular content. When we joined Slick Talk, Wil Slickers talked that there was a stat. It was like seven podcasts. Most people don’t get past 6 or 7 podcasts before they give up on it completely. I feel very blessed that this is our 45th. We are coming up to a year here. At the 50th, we’ll be right about a year mark, so we are going to have to throw some party. I had some ideas on that too.

To put an exclamation point on what you are saying, it’s also about having relevant content. You can put out bullshit and it’ll filter through. There are people that spam, flood, and put all kinds of shit out, but it’s putting quality content that resonates with people. I think it’s a wave. It’s a progressive push. I don’t mean progressive politically. It’s an ever-changing dynamic in this business that is finding new and creative ways to make us better and expand our reach to people.

We’ll dig into this in a little bit because you are a fan of this business and I can tell how you interact with people because fans dig in. They know. You came on now and you are like, “I know you. I know this.” I was about to be like, “I saw where your position was on Amazon. It’s a great book.” People who are enthusiastic about the industry are going to make this industry so much better because they will innovate and push for change. It won’t be selfish. It’ll be for the industry at all. I’m glad to have you on. I appreciate all you are doing for the space.

It is awesome as well because I’m now 440 episodes into The Boostly Podcast. When I first got going, I looked at people like Heather Bayer and Jasper. I get your pattern. They were my inspiration like Matt Landau. If any way I can inspire other people to get going on creating content regularly, whether it be podcasts or videos, that’s amazing. I’m happy to be part of it. Thanks for having me part of it and let’s dig in.

It’s fun talking to someone that puts out content that most of the people you talk to don’t. It’s interesting to see that you’re already in 440 episodes like how the tech is already changing. We have changed from one platform to another. We should have been recording on a different platform now, but I didn’t prepare it because I’m traveling. That will be the next episode. Right now, that’s one of the platforms where you can separate all the audio out. Big shout-out to Hospitality.FM for helping us professionalize what we do because we are a couple of guys that love to talk and shop.

I have been trying to get on Wil Slickers’ podcast for years. To do it on Hospitality.FM, there you go.

Wil, you got a bestselling author here, so let’s go ahead and make it happen.

Return my WhatsApp, Mr. Slickers. What are you doing?

Let’s talk about your grassroots. I’m looking at your LinkedIn. Tell us your story.

I have been in hospitality since the age of five pretty much. I was born and raised on a 200-acre farm stay property literally in the middle of nowhere in the Northeast United Kingdom. The reason why my parents transformed the business from a farm into a farm stay accommodation was because of the foot and mouth crisis.

As the foot and mouth crisis back in the ’90s, they had to do something otherwise the business was going to go down. They looked at what was going on and they knocked down a barn and they put up a four-bedroom guest house. This was one of the first in the county to do it. They are one of the first movers. Now, you can go anywhere in the states and the UK and you can find farms stay accommodation with glamping or whatever you can find.

It was so rare, a big risk, and it’s paid out massively. I’m five and starting to go to school and I get so used to having strangers in my house all the time. Imagine going down to your kitchen every day and there’s a stranger. That was literally my childhood. I’m the eldest of four. As I’m growing older, the business is getting better and bigger.

Word of mouth was everything back then. There are no socials. There are no fucking dot-coms. There are no Airbnbs. It’s a word of mouth and newspaper ads. That’s how they grew the business. They knocked down another band and added another ten rooms. They started doing tea rooms and restaurants.

For me, in pocket money, I was doing breakfast before going to school. I was changing rooms at the weekend. I’m doing all of that. When I got to 18 or 20, I wanted to do one thing, and that was to escape. I wanted to get out and see the world. I’m a massive soccer fan. I’m a big Liverpool football fan and I wanted to be a soccer player, but I’m crap at playing football. Can I swear on this show?

When people swear, I feel better about myself because I’m not the only one dropping F-bombs.

I have done a lot of interviews and I have to make sure I got to check myself. It depends on what I’m on. I’m not very good at football and playing soccer so I fell into coaching. I got all my coaching qualifications. I love doing it and I went to America. I had an opportunity to go to America. I took it in 2002. I landed in Memphis, Beale Street. I had an amazing time. I’m so glad social media wasn’t around before 2007 and 2008 because imagine 30 British guys landed in America with this accent traveling.

Not just America and Memphis. Memphis is America, but Memphis is a lot of different parts of America and not all of them are great, but it’s interesting. The parks of them are amazing. Welcome to America.

I was in Memphis, but we were traveling around. Every week, we’d go to another camp and we would do youth development. Alabama is my second and my third week was in Louisiana. I spent my time in New Orleans. This is my first experience abroad and I’m like, “This is amazing.” I love it so much.

New Orleans is a vortex. It will suck you in. Every time I go to New Orleans, I meet someone who’s like, “I came here and couldn’t leave.” It’s been many years that they have been there. This is no lie. This is the absolute truth. Every time I go to New Orleans, I meet somebody else like that.

I have also had some good experiences in Atlanta. I have been very fortunate to travel all over. Another amazing time and I kept doing it for several years. I came back at the end of 2008, the start of 2009. Me and my friend, we were in a little pub in our hometown. Our hometown was too small, so we decided to go down to London.

We worked in London for two years. From 2009 to 2011, I fell into sales and marketing. That marketing was important because that’s when I got a grasp of social media, review sites, SEO, and all of that jazz. In 2012, my firstborn came around and me, my wife, and my eldest had an opportunity to go back to the family business.

My parents had the business for 25 years at this point. They wanted one of me or my four siblings to come in and take on the business, help them grow it, and get it all online because they were still doing all of their bookings on pen and paper, which is crazy. We had to tip that out when bookings came in and they had to do it. It was insane. I came into it and put everything online. I did all the socials. I did everything. Within eighteen months, we took that offline word of mouth online. Because of that, our business grew to be 1 of the top 3 recommended businesses on Tripadvisor in the Northeast. This was when Tripadvisor was a thing.

It gets anyone that’s working a Tripadvisor.

If you’re working with TripAdvisor, get out. With social media like Facebook, we grew our Facebook page to be the most locally followed place in the area. This happens over a 14 to 24 months basis. I alluded a lot to the fact that we took that offline word of mouth online and we did some cool things.

Did you have any formal training? I know you are getting to the web stuff, but is this a trial and error, trials or tribulations?

Massively, trial and error. One of the big people that I look up to is Tim Ferriss. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of the Tim Ferriss books. He had a podcast. The 4-Hour Work Week and all about that is my introduction to him. What I love about him is that he’s a guinea pig. He tests things out and then he reports back. This is what literally I have done. I have learned it by testing and by surrounding myself with good people who constantly want to learn.

This is why I tune in to your show. This is why I listen to all the podcasts and watch YouTube videos because I want to keep on learning. I want to get different ideas that are going on in the industry, and then I bring them back to my community. I put it into a language that anybody can understand. In 2016, I was at a tourism meeting. You know the saying, “You are going to break bread a meeting for some hosts.” I was something like that back in 2016.

At the meeting, the other hosts and property managers were complaining about Booking.com. They were saying about how all the bookings were coming from there, they didn’t feel like a partner, and the guests weren’t the best. I said to them like, “What are you doing to bring in your own guests AKA direct bookings? What about email, social, and all these things?” They looked at me blankly. I don’t know why. I don’t know what came up with me, but I said, “I have been doing this for the granary and I can show you. Give me one evening, and I will show you five things that you can do. We’ll do it after evening meal one night,” and five people put their handle out of 100 people in the room.

Those are the first five people I ever taught for Boostly. I showed them a few things. The results were good, which was awesome. I went to the council, I said, “Who’s here helping our hospitality owners when it comes to marketing?” They looked at me blankly. I was like, “Fuck it. If you are not going to do it, I’m going to do it.” I created a Facebook group called the Hospitality Community. It’s still here now.

Please go and check it out. It was designed for Scarborough and Whitby hosts. All I did is I started posting every single day little tactics and tips. It was either a post, a video, or whatever I could do. It was designed to help them get a better understanding. What I realized is that I was building a community. This is a big thing about the podcast. This could have even been a podcast title. I built a community and then I built a business.

People from out Scarborough and Whitby started wanting to join the group. People from Liverpool, Manchester, London, Austria, Germany, France, and Spain were wanting to join. Also, people from America and Australia, and I was like, “What’s happening here?” Every single day, I was going in and providing content, help and support. In the back of that, people started asking me for help one-on-one, and that’s when a light bulb moment went off.

I managed to Tim Ferriss my way out of the family business. I was able to hire and do all those things. We were born travelers. My wife, before I met her, she was born in Johannesburg. She lived in Egypt for two years. We had two boys at this point, and we wanted to travel again. We started traveling and Boostly was an absolute win-win because we could travel and I could have a business. It was great. We are traveling and doing all of that.

It’s literally grown on the back of that. Now, several years later, the community has grown. The word of mouth has grown. #TeamBoostly is a thing. It’s amazing to the point now where I’m very grateful. I like to say I have a bestselling offer with it. On the website side of our business that what we do is the most recommended website agency in this industry, which is unreal to say we have got over 1,000 hosts that we help with websites. We have got the academy and training which are all accredited and this is growing.

My big ass hairy goal, as I call it, is I want to help one million hosts cut down on their overreliance on Airbnb, Booking.com, and Vrbo. That’s what it’s being created for because there are too many hosts, especially in America, who are so reliant on one platform to bring in their bookings because they think direct bookings or marketing takes too much time or too much money. I’m here to show you that it can be done and you don’t have to spend anything doing it. I have literally tried and tested it all, and it works. I’m going around and showing people how to do it.

You are a coach by nature. Everything you do and everything you talk about is bringing people into it. It’s coaching. Maybe that’s why it’s so prevalent, but it shows in the way that you operate and how you work to help others and share your success. I think that’s important. You brought up something about America and our markets in reliance on platforms. It’s a historical thing. It’s how a lot of the American short-term rental operators came into this culture, especially now through platforms.

Vacation rentals in America were very segmented and not everyone in America could participate in that. Now, short-term rentals are everywhere in urban centers and other places. You have people who are involved even in 1-offs and 2-offs. Everything from renting rooms to renting full places. All they know is platforms.

Keep in mind that 3/4 of this demographic aren’t running a vacation rental. They are getting an Airbnb.

Facts. I didn’t want to blow them up. That’s why it’s one platform. That’s people’s introduction to the space. It’s interesting because here in America, we got a lot of hustlers. We got a lot of people who are throwing seminars. You can come to Atlanta and I will show you all. On the web and the side of the road, it’s like, “Make six figures off your phone and Airbnb.” That’s their experience.

It’s almost like a multi-level marketing scheme. At the end of the day, how certain people are trending into the business, but that’s also affecting a lot of how people experience the business on the front end. They see the platform as the necessary tool for success within their business. At that stage, I’m talking to them about what they could be doing employing old-school tactics to build direct relationships with their customers.

This is why it’s important. I totally understand this. This industry has changed so much in the last several years because of the pandemic and everything. This is a whole episode and topic. Without proper regulation, it’s going to be so easy. Right now, any of us could go find a landlord. If you are staying at a buddy’s place, you could go to him and say, “I can take care of his property for you. I will pay you X. I will do management or co-host,” or whatever he wants to be. You could literally have a property on Airbnb. It’s so simple.

Full transparency, he’s a property manager. I’m seeing one of his units.

If he’s a landlord or whatever, it’s so simple to be doing it. I could go across the road now to that house right there and say, “If this is a place that you are going to have for rent, I will take it off you and I can get an Airbnb.” It’s so simple. We are in a world and in an industry where we are so in demand. Even with everything that’s going on, it’s so in demand.

We could right now put a property on Airbnb on one platform. Take half-decent pictures and it could be booked out next weekend because there are so many people who are wanting vacations, staycations, or workcations. It’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it is so easy to generate revenue.

Like with my website business. If there’s no website, I can go and list my services on and be guaranteed to get revenue. It doesn’t happen. I have to build a brand and do all the marketing spiel, and all of that jazz to be able to get revenue, customers, and clients. It’s a blessing because it’s so easy, but it’s a curse because then you become lazy and over-aligned because it is so easy.

Airbnb is one because it was born out of San Francisco. Amazing marketing. What they have done from 2013 to 2016 is fantastic marketing to build that community and build that trust. Go and look at the TED Talk from Joe Geier in 2016 on YouTube. It’s a good TED Talk about how Airbnb is designed for trust. Right then, they have gone from plucky underdogs to overtaking Booking.com and Vrbo. It’s marketing that is there. The air cover is a fancy marketing spiel. That’s all it is. It’s very good at marketing and branding, and so they provide that confidence.

There are so many people overline. There’s one thing that has changed the tide, which is probably why you see my face so much over the last couple of years is because of the pandemic. Anybody who had a property back in March 2020 on Airbnb knows what happened from the 23rd to the 25th of March. Airbnb sent a mass notification out to everybody who was booked to stay on their platform to say, “It doesn’t matter what the cancellation policy is, you can cancel your stay free of charge.”

It was a fuck up after a fuck up. Brian Chesky has omitted this without warning the host that this was going to happen. I know so many people who have woken up, seen those cancellations and struggled. They lost tens of thousands of dollars. Some people didn’t make it out on the other side, and that was the turning point.

You talk a lot about hosts because that’s your focus. That’s your grassroots effort to go ahead and enable hosts. The professional and property managers as well as the 100 and 200 lost their businesses. There are some that never came out of it. I’m not saying that they are all professional. If you are doing it right, you are doing it professionally. That’s the distinction. Paycheck to paycheck isn’t the right word, but if you borrowed money to go ahead and do things, and if you are doing some type of arbitrage model, you got fucked. There’s no way out of it.

The offset of that was that people came out to the other side and they go, “If I want to build a business or brand, I can’t be reliant on one platform. I can’t build my house on someone else’s land. I got to be multi-channel. I got to have a PMS, PMP, or whatever you want to call it. I have got to have a direct booking website. I got to build this brand.”

This is why in 2020, Boostly grew by 200% because it was timing and it was me being in the right place at the right time. Since 2016, I have been talking about direct bookings. I’m known as a direct bookings guy because I have been talking about it pretty much every day. It came that when people started to look for places to go for direct booking help and advice stages, they naturally gravitated toward me.

The backset of it is hosts are starting to educate themselves about being a multi-platform and all of that. It is amazing. The reason why I started this goal is that I didn’t think that the OTAs, particularly Booking.com, treated us, my family business, as a partner. Whenever there was a complaint from a guest, they always sat on the guest, but they always put the message out like Airbnb saying, “You are our partners.” That’s not a partnership. I want to get their attention. Brian Chesky even said it on The SWAY Podcast back in 2021. She asked him, “What do you feel about hosts who try and get their own direct bookings?”

He dismissed it hands down. He said, “Why would they want to do it when they have got Airbnb?” This is why I do this. It is because I want to show the OTAs that hosts do know how to get direct bookings and I’m going to show them how to reeducate themselves because what they can do is they can reeducate their guests.

If I can get one million hosts to reeducate their guests, and let’s say on average, they get 1,000 guests a year, then that is how we get the attention of these OTAs. You are right, Mateo. I have got a coaching background and this is why it was called the playbook for exactly that. When I was coaching in America, I would have my playbook with me. I would have drills, tactics, and training. I would have all those little things that I wanted in my playbook.

When I wanted to run a play or a drill, I would open it up and I wouldn’t read page 1 to page 200. I would go into a specific chapter and I would focus on that one thing. I would run the drill and would review it, and that’s exactly what this is. There’s that coaching element. There’s that thing that I like to do. I feel like by doing that, by me coming in and coaching, helping, and building this community, there’s no other website designer or agency out there that is doing what I’m doing.

It means that I not only design websites, but I can also come and give that support, drive traffic to a website and show people how to do it. My big thing and why I started this is everybody said, “You have to do this. You have to get on Facebook and Instagram. You have to do email,” but no one is showing the how. This is why I do it. I go, “I’m going to show you how because no one else is doing it.” I feel that has been the main reason why the growth has been so huge over the past years.

You are enabling a person and giving them the confidence to go ahead and do something that they may not have felt confident about. That’s what a good coach does. You can’t take any player. You can’t have someone that’s completely uncoordinated and just not athletic. If we are talking athleticism, we are talking football AKA soccer here in the US. If you are uncoordinated, a person is like, “Yes, you can coach some of that but you need to have good solid bones and foundation.”

It’s like hospitality. If you don’t like people, I can’t coach you. It’s like with soccer or anything. If you haven’t got the athleticism or discipline or you can’t be asked, I can’t coach you. It’s exactly the same. This is 100% spot on. It’s a nice little comparison.

You talked about a goal of helping a million people or hosts. Where are you on that journey?

All I can go by on the numbers is how many people have paid for services or downloaded my guide. I’m in and around just under 100,000. I have got a long way to go. The more that I can do interviews like this, webinars, speaking events, and whatnot, the more the awareness will grow. Thanks to Zoom and thanks to all of the cool tools that are available now. We talked about tools at the very start. It’s making it easier and easier to get more awareness out there. I’m well on the way. I’m sticking at it every single day to get those numbers down, but the feedback is amazing. Confidence is 100%.

In my spiel or elevator pitches, I give hosts the tools, tactics, and training, but most importantly, the confidence to get direct bookings. The whole thing is that guests aren’t confident with direct bookings because they have shared the spiel from Airbnb. They have given up a marketing spiel that you have to be on that platform.

Many people don’t know about insurance. I know you’ve spoken to Superhog. They are fantastic because they give hosts that confidence. You’ve got the people that are coming into your properties of whom they said they are. It’s amazing to do. There are so many tools that are out there that hosts don’t even realize. My mission is to make sure that everybody knows and is aware of this.

You mentioned Superhog, but what’s your involvement with I-PRAC? We are talking along the same lines in this conversation. Talk about that a little bit. I know you are involved with that.

The only way we are involved with them is because they sponsored Boostly. They have sponsored content. Any content I put out at the moment, they are sponsoring for free months. Shout-out to Chris Maughan from I-PRAC. Thank you very much for your trust. I have had some amazing sponsors over the past couple of years.

Amazing people that have trusted the Boostly brand that they want to be able to partner up and team with them. I-PRAC is doing it at the moment. I-PRAC is a good one because, with Web 3.0, blockchain, and cryptocurrency, all of that terminology is now becoming second nature to a lot of people around the world. I-PRAC is using blockchain technology to have an accreditation service.

It’s a certification service so that when somebody lands on your website, you’ve got that trust factor and the global recognition of it. I have known Chris and I-PRAC for years and I have talked about it for years. To be able to have a sponsorship capacity now is amazing. To be able to partner with them is awesome.

I recommend it to everybody, I-PRAC.com. Go check them out. See what they are doing. I know so many team Boostly members who use the service. They love it. I’m excited to see what he does next. He’s got so many ideas behind the scenes. He’s got a massive rental events and exchange business going on in Cannes, France. It’d be interesting to see what he does next.

We are joking with Neely on the last episode that she should give Chris shit because we got her on first. Now we can give a shit because we got you on first before him.

He’s a busy man. He’s a good guy that I want to get on the show in the future.

On YouTube, you got to the point where you are making money. What was that benchmark? On our YouTube, we are just recording. We put it up there and I do absolutely nothing with it. 5 or 6 people watch the video and most people download the audio. That’s where our focus is anyways. Tell us about your whole YouTube journey and how you are finally monetizing things now.

To become a YouTube partner, you’ve got to have over 1,000 subscribers. You’ve got to have 4,000 watch hours in the past years. First and foremost, if you’ve got a podcast, you have to have a video element to it. In 2022, you have to because there’s only so much time in the day. If you are going to take an hour out to record a podcast, you may as well do it video because then you can go and repurpose it and chop it up.

Ruben Kanya has got an amazing podcast agency. He repurposes his podcast content into short-form videos. He works with so many people in the short-term rental space. He’s a short-term host himself. I have known Ruben for years now. He’s got a such good setup and he’s helping podcast people repurpose that content. I am a massive fan of repurposing. Always have and always will.

You see me pretty much everywhere. At least 2 or 3 posts a day. I’m very much Gary Vee in your face everywhere. I only record a handful of videos on a Monday, and then I hand them to my team. I’m very lucky. Now, with the sponsorship money, I can hire an editor and he will take one hour-long content. He will chop it up into Reels to the audio and video. We share it on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and everywhere.

YouTube is a massively important channel because it is the second biggest search engine in the world after Google, and Google owns YouTube. Now it’s got to a point where if you are going to ask a question, you are not going to ask a question in Google. You are going to ask about it on YouTube. I have got a new vacuum cleaner. I didn’t bother reading the instructions. I went and looked at YouTube videos and how to unbox and use them. It’s the same now with any question that comes in.

All I did on YouTube is I used the same content creation tool that I documented in the book. Go and check it out. This is less than $20. Put it into practice. I found out what the most common questions were. What were people looking for? What were people typing and looking at? A lot of people were saying, “What is Guesty,” which is a property management software tool. How effective is Guesty? How to make it work for me?” Again, I created videos on Guesty.

I did so many different things and trialed it and tested it and kept consistent with it. Whenever I posted a video and if it was a good video, I would email the team Boostly list. I have got a WhatsApp group. I have 1,000 people on a WhatsApp channel. I would point them toward the YouTube video and it constantly kept consistent with it. When you can get people onto your YouTube video in a short space of time, that’s when the YouTube algorithm and the YouTube juice kick in.

It just naturally happened. I got to the point where I was at 3,900 watch hours and I was 100 watch hours to go. I had a couple of weeks to do it because you got to do it on a year-by-year basis. It ticked over, and now I’m a YouTube partner. I get about $40 or $50 a month. It pays for Starbucks. That’s all is there.

Now that you are a partner, obviously, they will promote you more. It’s all about making sure that this book’s Direct Message gets spread because there are tons of amazing Airbnb videos. Sean in Airbnb Automated is one of the best on YouTube. There are some good effective and powerful Airbnb videos. but now, with my book Direct Message, it is appearing in the YouTube suggested column, which is all I wanted. It is incredible. That’s my goal in YouTube and it’s working well.

We are pretty excited because we are finally in a position where the video content with Neely is the first time that I didn’t edit the video. I sent it. We have a team and we’ll see how it works.

When you create something, is it like your baby? Do you find it hard to pass over? Are you like Tim Ferriss and delegate everything?

I have my fingers in too much things. The logo and everything, I have had my hands on. I micromanaged a little bit. I’m trying to step back. That’s why we partnered with Hospitality.FM and Wil. He put a great thing together. He is like, “We want to help you.” Me and Mateo’s focus isn’t like our show. Recording this show is like a highlight of our week. We love doing this. This is amazing. We look forward to this and the connections we have made are invaluable. It’s enriching to ourselves but it’s enriching also to our business. This is what actually pays the bills, which isn’t this yet.

Until you get that YouTube money.

For that £40 a week or month.

The thing about podcasts now in 2022, and someone said this to me a couple of years ago, is that a podcast is a new way of having coffee with somebody. You are recording it. It’s a great way of building networks and relationships. Instead of doing it on Zoom where only a one-on-one person will hear it, you put it out.

This is what I love about your show. It’s very laid back. It’s like having a conversation and other people will tune in afterward. It’s an awesome way to go about it. With every podcast, you got to find your niché and what you bring to the market. There are so many now because another offset of the pandemic is that everybody now knows what Zooms is and everybody’s got a podcast.

Everybody was locked indoors for so long, so it’s like, “What can you bring to the table? What do you do?” I love your conversation style. I love how it feels natural and flows nicely and easily and it’s something you can tune in. For any other form of content, audio is the only one that’s non-disruptive. If you’ve got to read a blog post, you have to stop to watch and read it.

If you are going to watch a video, you got to stop to watch it. On audio, you can do it while you are doing whatever you are doing, like washing the dishes, driving in the car, or whatever. The podcasts have that conversational style. You can get away with having what we have been talking about now from 45 minutes to an hour. People will tune into that.

I totally flip mine around because mine is more the how. It’s more the tactics. It’s more about how to do things. I keep mine to less than 7 to 10 minutes because I could see my analytics. I could see after 200 episodes, after 10 minutes, they all stopped. I was like, “Shit. What am I doing here?” The way that I talk and the way that I do all these things is literally short-shot quick tips. Now, I have a podcast that’s going out pretty much every day. It’s no more than seven minutes because it’s how people like to listen and tune into me. Nice work. I love what you are doing.

We found the 45 minutes to an hour for our style seems to be well. If we go more than an hour, it’s a super sharp drop-off. Truly, I’d say that most get 50% to 60% through and that’s okay. Consistency is the name of the game and quality guests. Not to take away from what we have built. Mateo and I have a good rapport. We are actual friends.

This isn’t a business venture like, “How can we make money or how can we talk? I got an idea. Let’s get one Black guy and one White guy, and we’ll put out a show.” That’s not what it’s about. The whole point is we are good friends. It all started over beers in a bar at trade shows understanding what we call the Kearney circuit on the vendor side of things. It’s been fun and learning a bunch of different things.

I think we are less conversational about coffee. More drink champs and bars stool sports for the industry, but because that’s who we are. At the end of the day, the genesis of this show came from John and I sitting at the Kearney circuit at a bar talking about the industry and what we see. Not what’s pushed but the reality. What life was on the floor? I was super new. I always had questions and I was fascinated by the people in this industry. The people in this industry were fascinating. Especially at the time that I came in, you had such an influx of people from different backgrounds. Both in terms of ethnicity, but even their career choices, and where they came from.

Not many people are born into hospitality. People always fall into it from another criminal line of work. This is the most fascinating thing to me and this is why I love doing it because of the people I get to meet. It’s the people and the stories behind it and how they came into it. When I say hospitality, people look at me and go, “I’m not in hospitality. I’m a property manager.” No. As soon as you’ve got a stranger going into your door or go into a hotel, you are in hospitality right there and then.

This is the thing that I have been preaching for a while. When I say host, I include the property manager and everybody. That’s the terminology. I feel like the people that get hospitality get it first because as soon as you start doing that, you don’t look at a person as a dollar sign. You look at them as a guest.

As much as there’s a story behind every host, there is a story behind every booking. This is something that I talk about a lot at the moment. How can you bring that out and how can you make that guest experience better? When you get that guest experience better, you are going to build your direct bookings and you are going to absolutely smash it.

Mateo, you mentioned becoming the go-to and about relationships and collaboration. I remember you talking about it on an episode. It nails it to a tee. Somebody asked me on a webinar, “What’s my one biggest tactic on direct bookings?” I said, “It’s relationships.” It’s those networks. Those collaborations that you have with people in your niché and in your local area. By that coffee shop that you always go to or that place that you recommend. It’s like, “How can you create those partnerships?” You then become that go-to. That’s literally what I have been saying for years. it is to become the go-to. If you do that, then you’ll absolutely smash this.

It’s interesting because you look at your road and someone who’s literally born into hospitality. You’ve been in it most of your life. What I have always seen in this space and what I love about this space and hospitality is when you break it down to its simplest form. It’s respect and communication. Unearned respect that you are engaging in a relationship with someone and providing an experience for someone you don’t know.

What does that take tactically? It sounds simple, but that’s hard. How do you show respect to someone you don’t know? How do you create an environment that is respectful of someone you don’t know? The communication part is because that’s how it happens. It’s how you communicate. It’s the communication portion of it. It’s ensuring that you are providing the service that they are looking for based on minimal amounts of information on someone. Put that into relationship contacts. It’s respect and communication.

Massively, and you got to attract your tribe. You can’t appeal to everybody because if you are trying to appeal to everybody, you appeal to nobody. The big thing that’s going to happen next is there are so many people getting into this industry. It’s those hosts and property managers that focus on a niché. However, these help servicemen to get accommodation who can’t have accommodation. Whatever it is. Literally cannabis and marijuana for accommodation.

You’ve got Robert Geller. He’s a guest of yours. He’s helping LGBTQ+ or whatever find accommodation. This is the niché that I’m talking about, finding your custom avatar. Those that do that, you attract your tribe. Somebody once said to me, “Your net worth is your network.” If you can build a business and community around something, then you are going to go into nail it. If you go into this thinking, “I want everybody to stay at my place,” then you are going to appeal to nobody. Figure out whom you want, your customer avatar, and the ideal guests, and then life is so much easier.

Tell our readers how they are going to get your book Direct Playbook.

All you need to do is to go to Amazon. It’s on Kindle, Audible, and it’s in print. Wherever you are in the world, type in The Book Direct Playbook by Mark Simpson. If you start typing The Book Direct Playbook, it will come up. Go and grab it. Please do. It’s a book that is very interactive. Anybody who has read it or is listening to it, you’ll know what I mean when I say it’s very interactive. There is a full online course around the book as well. As soon as you buy the book, you get a special code and I have got all the videos that are on there because I talk about marketing. I wrote this in 2021, and by the time it would have come to being released, it could have been out of date.

If I wrote this a couple of years ago and if I was talking about Musical.ly, now it’s TikTok. Instead of talking about any specific channel, I talk about the psychological aspects around everything. This is ten years of me putting this book together. The cool thing about having the course is that if things do change and things do amend, then I can quickly update the video. I can’t update the words in the book.

This is a book that is going to be where my son is hopefully, 10 or 20 years in the future, and he is looking to get into maybe vacation rental or hospitality, then he can pick up this book and he can go, “My old man knows what he’s talking about.” This is why I created it. Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss is my major influence from this when I was writing this book. It was a huge book. I wrote it pretty much to have that guidance behind it. I hope you enjoy it.

You stand out. It’s a resource that you are buying. What can you buy right now that you will continually value and use? It’s a timeless product, but it’s a resource that continues to keep its value. If you didn’t take that nugget out of this and create something like that for your business that is going to do the same thing, you missed the point of the show. Before we go, let’s talk about the future. What’s next? What can you tell us? What are you doing? Where are you going?

My goal is to be everywhere and keep continuing the message. I’m going to win a shot at this award when that comes out.

Don’t get us started.

My first ever award was the Shortyz. You have to watch this on YouTube. This is Shortyz 2020. I won the best use of social media. I’m coming back in 2022. I won another one and I have got a shelf now I have got to fill up my office. I want to do that. I want to continue being everywhere. I want to be so good that people can’t ignore me.

I’m going to continue going down that Steve Martin quote that I read years ago, “Just keep being everywhere.” Keep helping and keep providing. Support our website business. It’s going to grow and grow because we want to have all the hosts. I want them to have a website that works. We partner up with Guesty and we partner with everybody. We’ll figure out how we can partner with Hopper Homes and a tease at some point as well. Keep on being awesome and keep on having amazing conversations like this.

It sounds like a good plan. If you haven’t gone to where you are tuning in to the show, whether it be Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or however you are tuning in to it, please go check it out. Give us a like and review. We don’t need the help but we’d greatly appreciate the help. Go ahead and hook us up. We are going to continue with great conversations. Mark, it’s been awesome having you on. Thanks so much.

My absolute pleasure.

Important Links

• Boostly
• The Book Direct Playbook
• The Boostly Podcast
• Hospitality.FM
• Slick Talk Podcast
• LinkedIn – Mark Simpson
• The 4-Hour Work Week
• Booking.com
• Hospitality Community – Facebook
• Superhog – Past episode
• I-PRAC
• Robert Geller – Past Episode
• The Book Direct Playbook: Say Goodbye to OTAs with Proven Marketing Tactics to Boost Direct Bookings
• Tools of Titans
• Apple Podcasts – The No BS Short-Term Rental Podcast
• Spotify – The No BS Short-Term Rental Podcast
• http://Megaphone.fm/AdChoices
• http://Vintory.com/NoBS