The Danger of OTA Dependence: Building a Strong Direct Booking Strategy with Mark Simpson of Boostly

Alex Husner  0:00  
Welcome to Alex & Annie, the real women of vacation rentals. I'm Alex, and I'm Annie, and we are joined today with Mark Simpson, who is the CEO of Boostly, Mark, it's so good to see you back again for the third time.

Annie Holcombe  0:12  
Yeah, thanks for having me back. Can't believe you actually came back for a third time that yeah, punishment,

Mark Simpson  0:18  
and it's the punishment,

Annie Holcombe  0:22  
and it's late there, so it was nine o'clock,

Mark Simpson  0:25  
nine o'clock, 10 past nine. Just got the kids to bed, so it's the perfect time just to have a little chat and catch

Annie Holcombe  0:30  
up. Awesome for our listeners that don't know who you are, why don't you tell us a little bit about you?

Mark Simpson  0:36  
Yeah, sure. So I created this little company called Bruce Lee, nearly 10 years ago. Now, after being born into the world of hospitality, I grew up in a 200 acre farm stay Bed and Breakfast, you know, worked full time in it from 2011 to about 2016 17. We eventually sold that business, and, yeah, for like, the last 10 years with Bruce Lee, I've just been helping host when it comes to, you know, direct bookings, whether you've got one property or, you know, we've got some clients now we've got a couple of 100 properties. We just give you, I say, like, my liver pitches, the tools, the tactics, the training and the confidence to increase your diet bookings without relying on these online travel agents. And, yeah, that's what we've been doing, and it's just sort of grown crazy over the last, I'd say, the last five years. It's really sort of like ramped up, and I get to now travel the world, speak at events and all this cool stuff. So that's my little me. The interesting

Alex Husner  1:27  
thing is, too, I bet, when you went into this business, that you, I mean, you knew what the situation was at the time that, like, there was a need for this, and there were, there were issues, but you probably had no idea how your business model would continuously be fed by the engine. Is Airbnb and the, you know, just problems and issues that people are having and how they're looking for other options. But it's been a wild ride. I mean, that last time we had you on was three years ago. I mean, that's, it feels like an eternity compared to all the things that have happened in the world of OTAs since then.

Mark Simpson  1:57  
Yeah. I mean, truthfully, like, the way that I started the business was just for my little hometown in Scarborough, because there I just, there was no help from the from the local tourism board when it comes to, like, marketing and sales, yeah. And, you know, it's a funny thing as soon as you start putting stuff on the internet, like people all over the world can see it and and want to be part of it. And I just started a little Facebook group, and, you know, I saw people requesting to join and and they're off just from all over the world. And you know, when we got to 1000 members in that group, I was like that, there's got to be something here. There's got to be like a business here. And again, it's just evolved over time. And I've sort of been on this sort of one, one man mission to piss off the OTAs as much as possible in any given chance that I get, and, yeah, it's been a fun ride.

Annie Holcombe  2:43  
Well, that's where we I actually wanted to get started was pissing off the OTA. So I'm sure you've been called a lot of names in some private rooms, but you like to poke at Airbnb specifically. And there has been a lot of changes the last, I would say, the last three months, specifically with Airbnb, specifically in the US, but I think globally. And so I think people lean on those that have always been poking at them to say, like, what am I supposed to do now? And so I know that's the conversations that I've been having with people. Is they're just their head is about to explode. It just feels like every time they open an email from them, there's a new policy or a new change in it. And once again, just feels like another layer, or another statement of we're not friendly to the property managers. We're only friendly to the guest. So wanted to get your take on it, and kind of all the things that have happened, address them, and maybe get your thoughts on where we're at with that channel.

Mark Simpson  3:34  
Yeah, it's mad. I was trying to take the summer off.

Annie Holcombe  3:39  
They had other ideas. Yeah, every

Mark Simpson  3:41  
single week there was just something and yeah, obviously I like to react, and I do feel like it's I try and keep it fair. I poke the bear with booking.com as much as VRBO as well as Airbnb. But yeah, this summer, Airbnb have seemed to be pivoting to more of a traditional OTA model. I feel obviously, Brian Chesky has mentioned it time and time again, that as good as their business is for every one night booked on Airbnb, he said somewhere like nine bookings are made on hotels. So obviously hotels is the play. Where do hotels most majority live is booking.com and Expedia. So that's obviously where their whole sort of focus is going. And the changes that have been made, if you look at it from like a 60,000 foot view, it's obvious that they're trying to change their model their back end, so it mirrors what a traditional Ota booking.com X BD would look like. But when you do that, and you change the rate that they are doing, they are going to annoy a lot of people, and the people that they are upsetting the most are these, their sort of Avatar. Their hobbyist hosts, as we call them, all the smaller operators who have maybe been, you know, we talk about fees like 3% they've been paying 3% happily paying, paying 3% all of a sudden, they've been told it's gone up to 15.5% which things like that, and then cancelation policies and things like services coming in, where. She's like, you know, you give up all of the, all of the, all of the juice without the squeeze. You know what? I mean? It's like, you get nothing back, and you take all the risk on board. And, you know, it's, I've heard so many people talk about it, so many people give their opinions. But what's really interesting to me is some of the Airbnb gurus, the Airbnb like number one fans, they're actually now going, well, hang on a second. What is this? And that's been fascinating to me, and I say Bruce Lee on the back end is just, I was saying offering our call calendar has never been this full. You know, it's insane how busy our call calendar has

Alex Husner  5:32  
been. Yeah, it's like you've been pushed and bullied so long that finally, eventually, like, you might take it for a little bit, but then you then that last one is just kind of throws you, know, really, really over the deep end. And I was just on a call with a pretty large operator in South Florida today, and they were asking about if I thought that Airbnb was going to make it mandatory for hosts to do a 24 hour cancelation policy, and if that would be different for large companies versus small companies. And I said, I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball, but I do have somebody coming on the podcast later today that might know a little bit more or have maybe some insights. But have you heard anything on that side?

Mark Simpson  6:09  
No, I feel, I mean, Airbnb will always try. And as you've said on a number of podcasts, I was, I was listening today, one with Dennis Shaw earlier, earlier today. And you know, he's, he's probably more connected than than all of us industry, and I feel it's 100% that podcast was, was amazing, and it's basically confined to everything that we've been thinking about is that Airbnb is their priority, is the guest and their shareholders, and it's, unfortunately, the host have to sort of put up with it. But it all boils down to is that, you know, if, if you are so reliant on this one platform for your whole revenue coming in, then it's, it's your own fault. You know, I've said this a lot like, my issue isn't so much with Airbnb. It's not so much with Expedia, with booking.com, my issue with is with the host, the host who is so reliant, who refuses to do anything about it. And you know, luckily, now there's so many resources. There's fantastic podcasts and YouTube channels and books and everywhere wherever, is so much education that you can get for free. But it really is not an excuse not to learn how to do these, these things. So when these do these policy changes, do change, you can just go, Oh, that's cool. But, you know, you've got this whole direct booking funnel and whatnot. But bringing it back to the 24 hour thing, I've not heard, I'm not privy to it, it wouldn't surprise me to be honest with with all of the changes that are going on behind the scenes. But like I say, Nothing is surprising me at the moment with the things that are coming out from Airbnb, HQ,

Annie Holcombe  7:39  
at the moment, kind of touching on, you know, some of these hosts, and you and I go back and forth on Instagram a lot about some of these, the influencers that are the get rich quick guys as Alex and I always call them, you know, that they've started to take notice. And I think it's like, I also fault them to some degree of like, giving people this false sense of what reality actually is. I've been meeting with a manager, and, you know, she said to me very, very pointedly right off the bat, like I am too reliant on them, that's all I have. But then I looked into like her PMS, and her PMS only has connectivity to a few channels, so she doesn't have a lot of opportunity to kind of diversify. They don't offer a channel manager, so she's very limited in what she can do. So some of it, you know, some of it, is a technology problem, but some of it is the messaging that gets in front of these people, and that's all they're seeing, is that, like, it's an Airbnb empire. It's you're building it only on Airbnb. So they think it's okay, like, almost like, this business is going to be their friend forever. And now they're all seeing that maybe that's not exactly the case. So I'm wondering, like, in your mind, what do you think some of these influencers who have staked their reputation and their business on this Airbnb Empire theme? You know, what do you think they're going to do with

Mark Simpson  8:53  
this for every influencer that is out there on Instagram for the last sort of five years, they've had me in the comment section and then the message is trying to sort of educate them. And you know, to be fair, a lot of have listened. And, you know, I've ended up working with a lot of them, but it has been very, very funny and interesting. Like, there's different things that become very popular topics. And you know, whether it is the shiny NFT coins or cryptocurrency or whatever that is, the flavor of the topic of the month, or if it's this sub two thing that goes around the states, obvious, all these different strategies and whatnot. This year seems to be the year where everybody wants to talk about direct bookings. And it's been fascinating to see people that maybe a year ago, they didn't know what a direct booking meant, but now they're talking about it like they're the experts in it, which is really fascinating. I totally understand where there'll be people talking about and just because they're good at Instagram or YouTube, that they will get the attention. But I feel like what is really, really important for any host that is watching this or listening listening to this, is there are some fantastic resources out there, and I would never try and stand here and talk about the sub two movement or talk. Talk about arbitrage or talk about whatever, because that is not my skill set. I can talk about marketing because I've been doing it for Well, since 2011 and when it comes to Derek bookings, that is all I really love to talk about. When it comes to these other influences, and what they're sort of been talking about, and they've literally put their nail to the mast on on Airbnb, and Airbnb being in the only channel, it is fascinating to me now to seeing how quickly they start talking about these, these, uh, things called direct bookings.

Alex Husner  10:29  
Yeah. I mean, it's definitely something that has been built with awareness of why people are now finally understanding this is something they didn't be cognizant of, and building a plan. But, you know, I, I get this question all the time from smaller hosts that, you know, they know, my background is mostly working with larger property management companies that have hundreds of units, and we can very, you know, not more easily, but, I mean, there's, there's a huge expense to it, but a company has a lot more resources than individual host does to drive marketing dollars and demand to a property. But a lot of people ask, you know, how do I how do I do direct bookings if I don't have a big marketing budget? And my my response is, and I'm very curious here, what you also recommend mark, but it's get as much of the lowest hanging fruit as you can. So if you're whether you are you're not, but if you're in a market where you get a lot of direct like repeat business, for sure, make sure that your information is all over that property, that they know the brand, that there's QR codes, that it's super easy for them to stay in touch with you, and, you know, create an experience that people are going to actually remember and that makes them want to seek out, coming back to you. But you know, the not being able to get guest emails Now, if you're just relying on Airbnb, also creates a lot of friction there. So it's like, it's now kind of the onus is on you to make sure that the guests go out of their way to follow you if you want to stay in touch with them. But curious, your thoughts on how smaller hosts really can move the

Mark Simpson  11:53  
needle? Yeah, so it's a great question. And in 2021 I remember clubhouse being really popular, like the audio app that everybody was on, especially if you had an iPhone. And I used to sit in those rooms and I would join in. And these questions were coming up so much, even back then, like, you know, I want to do, you know, Dow bookings. Where do I start? Yada yada yada, which is why I put that book together, the book that I play, book, the one that I spoke about three years ago when I came on the podcast, which, which changed everything like for me, and there's 101 tips in there. And the cool thing is about that is that majority of the tips in here don't cost a penny, but what it really boils down to is data like you've got to get the data of your guest as soon as possible, whether that is through Google Forms or stay fi or QR codes, like you mentioned, as soon as you can start getting that data, it changes a lot. And we've got people within the boothly world, our booths community, our boothly customers. And whenever they join boothly, they get a CRM. So the CRM that we use is basically built on go high level, and you can import your contacts, from your PMS, from stay five, from wherever you get them into there. And we've got the agency level so I can see everything from like the agency level view. And it is fascinating to me, the customers of ours who do amazing work with direct bookings, as in going from zero direct bookings to maybe 50% direct bookings within a year or 18 months is the ones that are building the database but then do something with it, as in sending campaigns, sending SMS is sending emails, whether it's individual or broadcast, they're the ones that are truly doing doing work with it and making that Data go to work, the people that struggle, the people who don't improve their direct bookings, even when they've got like a real snazzy direct booking website that's integrated into their PMS of choice are the ones that don't collect the data. But maybe there was one client who had 7000 emails, but they never sent an email.

Annie Holcombe  14:00  
They've got them, though,

Alex Husner  14:03  
I'm taking emails to the bank Absolutely.

Mark Simpson  14:06  
And I said, so we crafted this email that was built together with an AI bot that we had, and they sent out to the 7000 people. And it was a very friendly email. It was like the question was, do you know anyone? So basically, all of these guests that we sent it to had stayed with them in the past six months, and it was all emails that they had gathered through collection of Google Forms, stay, fire, etc. And this email was so easily put together. It took two minutes to put together, and it was just asking the question to the guest, hey, we loved having you as a guest. Thank you very much for staying with us. Do you know anybody that is coming to this area. It was such a simple question that to ask, and it wasn't a massive tourist destination. This was like a, like a city in the United Kingdom. It was Chester. So it wasn't like, you know, when you think of the UK, you don't think of Chester, but it's a kind of cool little light city. And that email generated so much rest. Revenue just off the back of it from people recommending people to it. There was a couple of business guests that they got in contact with. They put them in touch with their head office, because the head office was sending lots of people to Chester, but this guest in this client didn't know about and it was just at the back of an email. So it was a case of a getting the data, B, doing something with it, and that's what it literally, it all boils down to the people that I see that do data and email and communication, the best wins, basically.

Alex Husner  15:27  
And quite honestly, I would say that same issue applies to large managers just as much as small managers. That if you have a huge email list, if you've been in business for a long time, and it's just sitting there and you're not utilizing it, it's, it's also doing, you know, good, right? But that's a really interesting idea, to see who they're you know, who they would recommend you to. Was there an offer or, like, a referral bonus, or anything attached to it?

Mark Simpson  15:50  
Yeah, I'm a big fan of dangling the carrot. So if you're going to ask the question, you got to have the incentive. And if you do it on a smaller scale, and I talk about a smaller scale, is that I always say that your phone book, your contact list, when you're starting out as a host, is so powerful because you've got people in there that know, know you, love you and would want you to succeed. And a lot of people don't even realize what you do for a business or a job or that you're starting this new venture. So I always say just, just blast it out, text 10 people and just say, Hey, if you know anybody that's coming to the area, and if they book and they reference you, I'll send you x and if you know the person to dangle that carrot, even better. I'm a big Liverpool football fan, you know. And if someone wants to entice me, just offer me Liverpool football tickets. But even if you don't know the person, you can just say, you know, I'll send you $100 in amazon vouchers or cash or whatever, you know, you incentivize them to do it, and when you incentivize people, they're more likely to to act. And that's what we're doing in a thread in that email Fred that we sent

Annie Holcombe  16:50  
out. Yeah, so you, I know one thing we talked about previously, and I've talked to you about it before. You've you've customers literally all over the world. You're working in on every continent. Are you seeing anything that works better in one region than another? Or is does it work generally the same everywhere? I feel like Asia is one of those. It's always kind of an enigma to work in. But what are you seeing?

Mark Simpson  17:15  
Sales and Marketing I feel just works all over the world, because at the end of the day, simple sales and marketing tactics work whether you're a bigger company or a smaller company. You do have different things to contend with. Depends on where you are in the world, 100% and obviously, as well, Northern and hemisphere and southern hemisphere, you've got different times of the year where things work differently and others. And you know, this is before we even get into like regulations and tourism and licenses and etc. But when it when it really does boil down to sales and marketing, which is what this is, I think the same practices run parallel with hospitality, if they run parallel with around the niches, but it's exactly the same. You can pick it up and put it into things like personal trainers, or you can put it into like barber shops or brick and mortar businesses. It's the simple sales and marketing tactics that have just stood the test of time. We just repackage it and do it a little bit different, because it is the world of hospitality, and I always say that we're in such a really favorable position in hospitality, because we're in the industry of making memories. When, when we sell our product to the people, the guests, they are literally making memories. They will talk about that vacation that stay for forever, for the test of time, like and because of that, we are in such a favorable position. But also, as well, bringing it back to the OTAs, we are in very lucky position that we can literally just list our property on these free channels, booking.com, Expedia, verbo, Airbnb, and be pretty much guaranteed to get some revenue coming in. You know, Annie, you're about to go into the world of, you know, solopreneurship, and there's, like, there's nowhere that you can go and list your services on that you'll be guaranteed to get revenue in you know what I mean? You've got to like, you know, you build the brand. You've got to, like, do the market and do the sales, etc. So we're very fortunate with hospitality, but at the same time, like, the curse is, is that, because it is so easy, so many hosts, especially smaller hosts, they just get so reliant on that one platform that will just drive them revenue and don't do anything else, and that's like, where the problems occur.

Alex Husner  19:23  
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with the friends and family thing. And I know that ties into the email campaign idea that you did, but in my history, I mean, there's been nothing that can more easily set you apart from your competition in the market. Is pretty cost effective to do as a program, but is to generate or to get your guests to submit user generated content. And I think where companies and hosts get stuck around that is just literally in the process, and the technology to be able to make it happen, facilitate it, get usage and rights to the pictures. But when you think about it, like you said in your phone, there's probably in your. All of our phones, there's a bunch of people that demographically are very similar to us, so you have to think about them the same way that it's like if you incentivize your guests to share a memory or a picture from their stay and share that to their friends and family. And you've got some contests and, you know, gamifying that process, it's just amazing what I've seen for success in that side. But it's, you know, it's one of those things that I think a lot of companies look at it as a nice to have, but the companies that really utilize it, it's actually a key differentiator between them and the competition in the market. Yeah.

Mark Simpson  20:32  
Can you think about, when do you mostly post on social media? Is when you're on vacation, because you want to show off to your friends and families at home that you're on vacation. And the way that operators fall down is that there isn't some form of signage or somewhere in digitality where it says, when you take pictures and you post it online, tag in our handle, or tag in that you are here. And for everybody that does, we'll send you x like we used to do at our farm stay business is we used to do a monthly competition on social media. And this is back in 2011 2012 when this was all very new. But we would put on the on the in the property would have this, this cool little laminate that's saying, when you take a picture, you upload it to social media, tagging the granary. Every month we pick our favorite one, and you will win a bottle of wine. It was so simple, so easy, but we gamified it. And everybody would go on Instagram and Facebook, and they would tag us in and then we would use those pictures for our social media posts. Yeah, exactly, yeah. People buy from people. People want to experience. They can see themselves staying at the place through other people on social media. And if they post it on Facebook and they tag you in and we all dream of working with these influences that have got hundreds of 1000s or millions of followers, but the best influences the friends and families of the people,

Alex Husner  21:54  
100% Yeah, yeah, 100% and this happens to me all the time, that even if it's not somebody that I'm like, close friends with, but if I saw somebody that went to Grand Cayman, and I saw pictures, and I was like, God, that looks so beautiful there. And a month later, now I'm thinking about going somewhere, and I'm like, I remember that person went to Grand Cayman, I will definitely reach out to them and say, you know, where did you stay? What did you like to do? Even if it's not somebody that I'm like, a close, close friend with, but you'd rather get advice from somebody that's close to you, but even just people within your network that your network that like you, you know, a little bit more than just looking on a website. I mean, there's a certain level of trust if you can, you know, see a little bit more about a person. But, yeah, I love that you do that. That's great kind

Annie Holcombe  22:34  
of on the on the influencer note, one of the things that I think that you have done is influence people to think outside the box. You do a lot of kind of guerilla marketing around things and some unique, unique things. And one of the things that caught my eye that you did this year was you weren't able to attend a conference. It was the SDR wealth conference in Nashville, and that's always known, depending on what side of the industry you sit on, it has a flavor, and some people like that flavor and some people don't like that flavor. And I'll say it that way, but you weren't able to attend, so you did these wanted posters, and so I really never got a chance to talk to you, and so we were talking about it off camera. I'd really like to understand what the impetus was behind that. And like, you know, what other other types of guerrilla marketing you've done for events and kind of, what you you know, it feels like it's encouraging people to really, really do different things to get noticed. But you've done the stickers on the bathroom walls, yeah, done a couple of different things, so maybe talk us through that process.

Mark Simpson  23:30  
Yeah, I like to mess around with marketing. I like to be a guinea pig at marketing and and, you know, I've, I've always loved Richard Branson, and I love reading all of his books and how he would go and launch one of his virgin products, he would do something like crazy, like guerrilla marketing to get the get the attention. And I haven't got the budget of a Richard Branson, but I I kind of look at what other people are doing outside of the world of short term rentals, and I try and bring it into this, this world. So toilet stickers, prime example when you're at an event, and I used to do this, and I would get help in the women's bathrooms, but basically, I would get these stickers done, and these stickers would have a QR code on it, and I'm always thinking, well, when do you have your phone out? Is when you're sitting down on the toilet. And I would go into the men's cubicles of any event I was speaking at. And I've done this at Verma in Orlando. I've done this SEO wealth. When it was in, like, the saloons at any event, I would just, I've got stickers, like, literally behind me. Now it was like a bag full of stickers. And I would go into the men's toilets, and at the start of the day, and I was going stick them all on. And basically, the copy would change. I would AB test. The copy would vary from, would you like to flush Airbnb down the toilet. The copy was like, the guy that Airbnb don't want you to know about, or the guy that the OTAs don't want you to know about, with a QR code that they would scan. That QR code will go to my link tree. And the cool thing about link tree is it's absolutely free, and then you can change the links on. Where people go on the link tree of a specific event, I would say, if you're attending Verma or if you're attending SDI wealth, click watch this video, and it's a pre recorded video where I just explain about Bruce Lee, what we do, where you can book a call. I tried at an event. It cost maybe $100 say, to get all the stickers done, we would have calls booked on the back of it, because I could track it for a UTM code. When I had the success, I thought, well, what more can I do? And so I've done billboards. For example, when I was launching the second book, which was the book direct play blueprint, I discovered that there was a company that you could rent billboards in New York on Times Square. It was a bit of a cost, but I thought, this is, this is great to launch the book. And so I was able to get a billboard spot in Times Square, and I was able to get two of the co authors that I did the second book with who lived in New York to come down. We got pictures, and it flashed up for like a second, but we got the picture,

Alex Husner  25:56  
yeah, just a second, just for the picture. Looked at the OTAs

Mark Simpson  25:59  
don't want you to know about which, yeah, didn't generate sales for Bruce Lee, but the attention and the awareness of that post when we put it online just went through to her, yeah. And so

Alex Husner  26:12  
we've done some of the things that you just mentioned, but with a little bit when we went to Italy last year, we had a bunch of our stickers that we bring everywhere also. But actually, it's funny that you mentioned it, because I just reordered these, and I put a QR code on them, because we're out of the ones we have. But when we were in Italy, we put them on street poles, on buildings everywhere, and we've, we got, actually, an increase in people from Italy now listen to the

Annie Holcombe  26:40  
shows on a pole in Mexico City last year.

Alex Husner  26:42  
Yeah, all the straight balls, all the good places. I had never thought about the bathroom stalls, but I think that is super

Mark Simpson  26:49  
interesting to remember about the bathroom stalls for legal reasons. I do go and take those stickers down at the end of the day. I tell you what, though, when we were at Verma Orlando, I can't remember the venue where it was, but their bathrooms people there were on it, and they, like, as soon, really,

Alex Husner  27:04  
straight down, keeps going in here,

Mark Simpson  27:07  
that's this year. Like, like you saying, honey, I couldn't make the STR wealth this, this year. And like you say, the the event is, is Marmite. So people love it, people hate it. But for me, from where my target audience is there's like 2000 people in that room. That's my target audience, everybody, yeah. And so I had two ideas this year, and I couldn't be there because I was speaking event in in South Africa. So I organized for a mobile billboard. So I had the billboard in Nashville, which is great, but it's right out on the interstate. Nobody sees it. So I thought, well, how can I get closer to the event? So I organized, I did a little search on Google, and I found this mobile billboard company that you could hire it for three days, cost about $1,000 and they were basically all day, just drive around the venue with the British National Anthem blaring out, and

Annie Holcombe  28:00  
the billboard

Mark Simpson  28:04  
was the old saying, like, the guy that the OTAs don't want you know about with a QR code, with my face, and it's like moving. And the amount of messages I got over those three days, I had Steve Schwab in a taxi sending me a picture, going, why are you on a billboard outside Nashville? Why not? I had Mike from happy guest with a video that you posted online and tag me in, and that was really cool. But at the same time I thought, Well, what else can I do? How can I actually get in the venue? This is why I had the idea of this wanted poster. And again, I quickly put it together on Canva. It looks shocking, but the best way to describe how I got the inspiration from this that there was a guy on YouTube called ampho, and he did this Timothy shall away look alike competition in New York round about February time it blew up and got a ton of exposure. And all that was, was a very simple look alike post a QR code, and it went everywhere. Well, I can do that. So I did it, sent it to FedEx. They print it, and it's just waiting there to get picked up. I found somebody on TaskRabbit and basically paid for them for two days to take these. I think it was like 1000 posters, and would just hand them out. Obviously, you've got to be very careful with this, you know, if you you can't do like soliciting, etc, within in the venue, but you can do it in public places around the venue. So I basically spoke to her, arranged for a few people that will remain nameless, to meet my task, grabber. Grab a load of posters that who were attending the venue, and they took the posters and walked into the venue, and again, they took pictures, and they left them lying around, etc. Again, this QR code on that had UTM tags on it, so I could tell how effective it was. And from a 200 I would say $400 that I spent on those posters we had, I think it's just been clocked in about 12 to 60. $18,000 worth of revenue come back. So in terms of return of investment,

Annie Holcombe  30:04  
yeah, great. Roi

Mark Simpson  30:07  
social, social awareness was great. Again, it was a lot of exposure, shares, likes LinkedIn, DM saying, What are you doing now? And it's just a ton of fun. Again, it's just, it's a bit of fun, little bit of, you know, being there, but not being there, and it's got me thinking about what I can what I can do next. But what is really cool to see now is I've seen the likes of optimizer and auto rank. They are doing their own version of events and how they can sort of break the mold and get attention. And it's really funny to see what they do at events with the Viagra rank. I don't know if you've seen that.

Annie Holcombe  30:39  
And last year, the condoms,

Speaker 1  30:41  
the last year that was, I mean,

Alex Husner  30:42  
that's right, yeah, what conference was that? I remember that earlier this year? That was

Mark Simpson  30:46  
Burma last year. Okay, yeah, again, yeah. It's interesting, and it's fun to see, because at the end of the day, when you go to a conference like before you even left, you can easily forget what's being said on stage, right? People will always remember how you make them feel. And I like to do things with a little bit of fun, a little bit of joke, a little bit of just not gonna take myself too seriously. Well, that's how I've run Bruce Lee. And, you know, the it's worked, and I love doing it. I never take it too far. I don't try and step over the line too much. I just try and have a bit of fun with it. And, you know, and Your vibe attracts your tribe, and the people that we work with are super cool, and the people that come to us are awesome, but at the end of the day, we just want to help them get get more bookings, get dark bookings, and we're kind of a bit of fun while

Annie Holcombe  31:31  
we're doing it. I can't wait to see what you do for Verma this year. Talked about some ideas walking down the strip and get handed a picture of Mark.

Mark Simpson  31:43  
So I got in trouble last year at Verma, because remember Jeff and host GPO organized that pickleball. So I sent a boostly rep down. These were two of the top two pickleball players in the world.

Annie Holcombe  31:59  
Oh, my God.

Mark Simpson  32:02  
And they're playing up against, you know, you know, the likes of

Alex Husner  32:05  
Robin Craig,

Mark Simpson  32:10  
oh my gosh. They won the competition, obviously. And they've got Bruce Lee shirts on, and they win it. And they social media was everywhere and spreading around.

Alex Husner  32:19  
They were just pickleball players. They weren't related to the injury. Oh, my God, that is so kudos to you. I mean, like, this was super smart marketing.

Mark Simpson  32:29  
I'm not banned from taking part in any host GPO organized events.

Alex Husner  32:35  
We know Jeff, then we get you.

Annie Holcombe  32:38  
Oh, my goodness, I do. Like,

Mark Simpson  32:40  
it's a lot of fun. So, yeah, I'm thinking about what the next one we can what we can do,

Alex Husner  32:44  
yeah, well, I think everybody you know from the vendor perspective is thinking about that at any of these events. Of like, how do we get, you know, more more opportunities to talk to people? There's only so many opportunities to be on stage, and the vendor Hall is either super busy, which I definitely prefer that, or there it's a ghost town. There's no one in there. And it's like, you pay all this money for booths and everything else, but you've gotta, you gotta get creative and think of different ways to just cut through the noise. And we talk about this on the show all the time. There's a lot of noise. I mean, since last time we had you on the show, fascinating to know how many new suppliers have popped up since 2022 I mean, like it's, it's got to be hundreds, I would say at least, but yeah,

Mark Simpson  33:25  
especially the ones that have got aI at the end of the name. Oh gosh,

Alex Husner  33:31  
name, but it is AI.

Mark Simpson  33:34  
I was just with the boys at boom in South Africa for a lot of fun, so it's great to see what boom I've done in the space and disrupt it. And, yeah, I've been, we have a lot of customers moving to boom at the moment. So it's, we've had a lot of communications behind the scenes and figuring out API connections and integrations. But yeah, it's, it's good work. I was with the team when they signed up Rebecca cribben over in Oh God.

Alex Husner  34:00  
We were getting live pictures as that was happening.

Mark Simpson  34:04  
It's awesome to see, and it's great to see. And, yeah, there's a lot of new people in the space, and it's really interesting to I've been doing this now for, what, nearly 10 years, and I've been doing event space for maybe four or five of those years, and it's cool to see. You know, I love going to events, catching up with people and saying hi to people, meeting people. And I'm doing the scale UK event in November, and they've given me permission to organize the icebreaker party the night before the event. Be prepared for the videos that are going to come out of that. I've got something. Oh boy,

Alex Husner  34:42  
we see you at the video camera. We're probably gonna

Mark Simpson  34:45  
hide special lined up for that. It's gonna be fun to see.

Annie Holcombe  34:49  
We won't see you at scale Italia. Then,

Speaker 1  34:52  
No, I'm afraid. I'm afraid not. Because when is that again? Sorry, that is in

Alex Husner  34:56  
it's a couple weeks early September right now.

Mark Simpson  35:00  
September is like, I am just not available in September. I have an idea.

Alex Husner  35:04  
Why don't you come? It's skill Italia, and then it's the Women's Conference, vacation rental Italian Women's Conference. That could be your thing. You just show up at the Women's Conference. Well, I mean, guys did it in Charleston. So that could be the big surprise. I'm here.

Speaker 1  35:17  
Hello, everybody.

Alex Husner  35:21  
I'm here to help. Oh, man. Well, I have actually have a serious question for you. So if somebody is looking at, you know, either building a website or redoing their website, I mean, there's, I wouldn't say, say quite a lot. I mean, I think there's, like, a handful of vendors that are specific to vacation rentals that you can go to because they've got the API connections to the softwares, but, and I've worked with most of them at this point, some better experiences than others. But what's the difference between Bruce Lee, would you say, compared to some of the more legacy website providers and like, what? What is the experience like for somebody when they come in to work with

Mark Simpson  35:58  
you? Yeah, I mean, I know all, all the guys that are doing website design that have got the connections and the connectivity, I think the connectivity is the key. Because anybody can put together a front end of a website. And, I mean, you can go on Fiverr, and you can find 100 people in India and Pakistan will do it for, like, less than, less than $100 now, but the connectivity is, really is the key, because the booking process from the point of where your future potential guest, that prospect, hits that map, hits that listing, and then wants to make the booking. That is so key. If you if you mess that up, the guest will just basically get fed up, get confused, and they'll leave and they'll just go straight back to Airbnb. So having that connectivity is is key. And I know that like Bruce Lee, we've got 27 connections and other guys at icnd, they do fantastic work, Gil at crafted stays, and you've got Eli Hudson and Conrad over at builder bookings. And we've all sort of, we've got this joint slack group between us, and we're all we call ourselves the dark book and Avengers, and we're just talking about the pain points and the pros and cons of what we're doing and everything we share advice, I feel like what Bruce Lee separates from ourselves, from from others, and how we are a little bit different from others, is that we don't just give you a website. We actually give you all of the tools as well behind the scenes that that you need to be able to succeed. So I talked about go high level. I talked about this. That's a massive part, and I feel like we're only scratching the surface of what we can do with that. So for email and social media, that's bare basics of go high level. There's so many other things that we can do, but we're discovering with like AI and assistance and, you know, marketing flows and funnels, etc, so that gets plugged in, and that's part of boostly. You don't get charged anything extra for that. But we also do twice a week group coaching calls. So I do the Monday one. I've got Liam Caroline, who's co hosted a podcast, who is a host himself, property manager himself. He's got 20 to 30 properties in Norwich. He does the Thursday call. And we've got the community. So the community's got about 10,000 years worth experiencing. You know, you come in and ask a question, you get answers from, like, really cool people who have been there, done that, bought, bought the t shirt. So it's like the old package I always that's why I say tools, tactics, training, confidence, to be able to go and practice being called short term rentals and growing your business. And everybody in there is from that, that two to 100 properties. That's like, where our sort of world sort of sits. Yes, we get people with maybe one property or a couple of 100 of that. Two to 100 is sort of like where we sort of sit, and everybody in there is on that sort of path together, which is, which is really cool. And the thing that we're doing next, which is the next thing that we're going to launch, which is called Connect. I'm really fascinated at this, because it was sort of taking these API connections that I talk about that are really important, that I feel like as AI is going to grow. You can go onto any, probably, website builder, and get it to do a front end website for free very soon. But the thing that it can't replicate is the thing behind the scenes, these API integrations that go into the pm are out there, and we've got 27 of them, and that's growing every day, and that we're going to take, we're going to pull out, and we're going to offer to people, and we're going to call it connect. And what we can do with that, that's really fascinating. So that's, like the next sort of thing, I think

Alex Husner  39:11  
you, you told me about this, maybe even, like, a year or two ago. It was a while, but, I mean, basically it's, like a universal API,

Mark Simpson  39:17  
yeah, that's, that's pretty much it. I've been talking about it for a year. It's been taken a year to get to this stage. Oh, I'm sure. And what's really cool is that I know Boris at flat away in Bulgaria, he's creating his version of it. I know that Eli Hudson, he's creating his version of it. So to see two industry peers creating something, knows that this is this is something that has legs. This is something for sure we can definitely, we can definitely achieve. And so yeah, that the goal from it would be that you can create a mini online travel agent, your own little mini listing site, within within minutes with this, and you'll be able to do it all connected to this, to this dashboard. So that's, that's what we're building now. And yeah, and the training will always be there. And I feel like, what. Truly like separates us is you get, you get a guy with a crazy British accent who does weird market instance, behind the scenes, access to my brain as well.

Annie Holcombe  40:10  
I think you keep people you keep people sharp, and you keep people thinking. And I think that that's what's really exciting. And I love watching what you do and how you interact with people because it's, it's, again, it's, it's constantly creative. It's constantly retooling. It's thinking outside the box, you know, the proverbial box all the time. And I think we need, we need more of that. There's so many people that will say, a lot of people in this industry are sort of reticent to change, and I think they have upended that, and you're making people see that, like you have to constantly be changing in order to adapt the industry is wanting you to be I just try and

Mark Simpson  40:44  
document it. I've tried to document it like a scrapbook since day one. And I talked about the good and the bad, you know, the good things and like, the like, the bad things that happened, the good things happen, and thankfully, now it's all good. Last year was a little bit crazy, but, but, yeah, I try and sort of, like, I see what other people are doing in other industries, and package it up, and I sort of bring it into our industry. How can we do this in in here? And yeah, there's some cool things that are going on, so I'm excited to see what the next sort of chapter looks like.

Alex Husner  41:11  
Yeah, I've got one question on that API, and then we'll, we'll wrap up. But is that going to be available for suppliers to access to, or is it for the purpose of if a vacation rental company wants to build their own OTA,

Mark Simpson  41:24  
yeah, no, I'm going to white label it. This is why I'm calling it connect and not boostly Connect, because then, with this we can. I would love to give it to like revenue managers or people who do Google ads, or we talk about Maddie mount. She's got the content creator on me. I'd love to give dashboards to their content creators so they can then go and create their own little mini sites. So I'm looking to white label it for everybody, even website designers, even if you haven't got property and you want to create like a listing site and go and market it, this is what this will be able to do, because you can, you can sync in more than one PMS into this dashboard at a time. So you could have free boom, customers sync their data, and you could have free whatever, customers sync their data and all into this one dashboard. So yeah, it's really exciting. What we can do

Alex Husner  42:10  
that's cool. That's super exciting. I think that that's probably one of the more interesting things I've heard about recently. So definitely keep us in the loop on that. But Mark, it's always a pleasure having you. I can't wait till the fourth time that you come back. If you come back four times, you will have hit a record. So we gotta make sure we get

Annie Holcombe  42:29  
that. But if

Alex Husner  42:31  
anybody wants to connect with you, obviously you're going to be at scale UK, but any other conferences you're you'll be at

Mark Simpson  42:38  
fingers crossed, VR, nation, 2026 conversation, conversations have been had behind the scenes, so hopefully,

Alex Husner  42:47  
feeling I know where that's going.

Mark Simpson  42:49  
So hopefully that one and I'm going to be back in Dubai next month for scale Dubai, which is a really cool conference, that what the guys are doing there is amazing. And I'm really excited to go back, because when we go to Dubai, the whole family comes with which I love. So have a bit of family time. Awesome.

Alex Husner  43:06  
Well, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, probably mark at Bruce lee.co.uk,

Annie Holcombe  43:11  
yeah, booster.co.uk.

Mark Simpson  43:13  
Is me, but Instagram, Instagram is my favorite channel. So Bruce Lee, UK or LinkedIn. Mark Simpson on LinkedIn.

Alex Husner  43:20  
Okay, great. Well, we will include links in the show notes for that, and if anybody wants to get in touch with Annie and I, you can go to Alex and Annie podcast.com and until next time, thanks everybody for tuning in.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai