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- [00:00]
Liam
Welcome to the Boostly Podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, most of all, the confidence for you to go out there and get yourselves more direct bookings. Why do we love direct bookings? Because it usually means more money for your pocket as a host, but also in general, it is just the best thing to do in a competitive market. We've got the Boostly Spotlight today where we shine the Boostly spotlight on a service or an app or something which will help you within your hosting business. And today I'm super excited because this is something which I'm always passionate about, which is the guest journey, the guest experience. And today we're going to be speaking with Mike. He's the founder of Happy Guest. And if you haven't heard of Happy Guest, do stick around. This is going to be so worthwhile because this is really exciting. They're doing something a bit different and it's something that you need to be aware of, especially when we're bringing it to you right now. This is, this is fairly new, so I'm really excited to be sharing this with you as our guest and our listener. So welcome along. Mike, thank you for joining me.
- [00:59]
Mike
Thanks for having me, Liam. Appreciate being on. I've been friends with Mark for a long time and the whole Boostly team, so it's a pleasure to actually be on this long time coming. So, yeah, thanks for having me.
- [01:10]
Liam
Well, thank you, thank you for being here. And first of all, before we dive into, like, what it is, what it does, what do you want people to get out of the next 20, 25 minutes? They're listening to this episode.
- [01:20]
Mike
Yeah, just like a basic understanding of, you know, no matter how large you are or how small you are. We're all professional operators, right? We're all, for the most part, entrepreneurs and you don't really need to be limited by the technology that's out there. You can operate your business just like that big, you know, thousand property and property enterprise business does. And it's not a technical driven thing. Anyone can operate like an enterprise business from a technical side. And that's kind of why we, we created the platform just to show people that it is possible to run their business like this. These large enterprise companies, you don't need to be, you know, bullied by OTAs into, you know, booking through them and only being able to book through them. I think, you know, not to jump ahead, but there's this sentiment in the space that, you know, you need to book through an ota. They're going to protect me. And that's not the case. So we're here to try to, you know, both educate and provide solutions, you know, to help people be able to book directly and be able to sleep at night knowing that, you know, they're going to be safe with those guests that arrive.
- [02:23]
Liam
And I think this is something which you see like way back when, like 20 years ago, this is something which I get told all the time from people who've been in the industry for a really long time that, hey, we were here before OT ever existed and we're definitely seeing a shift, aren't we? That that's a kind of people are now feeling a bit more, they seen the benefits of booking direct, but also if they're with a host. And I think this is the, the, the key thing is if they're with a good host who is given a good guest experience. And that starts with, I know what we're going to be diving into today and where they can personalize their experience, maybe buy the, the things that they want to want to buy to make it their kind of experience. All of that stuff ends up with more money in the host pocket, but also a better experience for the guest. And if you can cut out that big ota, it's music to. Music to my ears. So let's dive in. What is Happy Guest?
- [03:13]
Mike
Yeah, and I just want to touch on that because they were here before. I remember my first VRMA conference years ago, and I was working at a company called Turno and I said to this, you know, member of the rma, yeah, no, we help you find cleaners for your Airbnb. And this guy went absolutely nuts. And it was just like every time I hear someone refer, you know, to a short let or to a short term rental, as an Airbnb as a noun, always brings me back to that moment. It was very humbling. And since then, I never, ever did that again. But what get Happy Guest is, is it's called a guest management system. So you have your property management system. Now we've coined this term, I like to think so it's really a guest journey or guest experience tool that is everything post booking. So you guys did a great job. You got that direct booking, you got the booking through the ota. Now I have that guest coming to stay with me. So from that point on, we need to deliver an exciting guest journey, right? Something that's seamless and take care of these guests. Because we got to remember we're always, we're hospitality professionals, right? You know, we're not Internet professionals, we're hospitality professionals. So what Happy Guest does is it consolidates that post booking Guest Journey. So the guest is going to be sent a link that's a static link that's assigned to each property. From there they're going to go through their house rules. They can sign a rental agreement, they can purchase a damage waiver, upload their IDs, and once they complete all those steps, that's when they're given their check in instructions. I can't tell you how many times I'll talk to a Host or a PM that has rental agreements, but maybe 10, 20% of them get signed because they're going out via email. And then it's the day they're there asking for the door code. And that person could be in the house without signing a rental agreement. You might not have their ID on file because you're scrambling to get them the door code. You're scrambling to check them in. Right. So this is a clean, easy way to guide them through that guest journey. And once they're in, right now we have directions on how to get to the property, personalized videos, upsells, we have guidebooks all in one place. So it'll replace some of the other tech that you're using. It'll work alongside your pms. If you're not using a pms, that's okay, we can, we can still help you there. But that's basically Happy Guest in a nutshell.
- [05:29]
Liam
That's cool. And just to, and usually I ask the kind of questions like this, I guess the kind of protest questions that you sometimes get. Because I know I'm sitting in a lot of masterminds and groups of people at the moment who go, hey, we've got a lot of tech at the moment. So what makes Happy Guest different and having a look at. Had a look at it and seeing it, I know this, but I want you to. What makes it different?
- [05:56]
Mike
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of things that make it different. It's a little bit wild, a little bit out there and that's why we love it. One thing to remember is depending on who you are operating, most of us are, you know, facilitating vacations. These are fun and exciting trips for families. And someone even said to me the other day that, wow, your app shits rainbows. I don't know if we can swear on here, but that's not an insult to me. It's exciting, right? So we have like a loading page that's a satisfaction video where they're you know, going through these steps, it's all curated, it's almost a gamified check in process. And from there you're capturing their phone number, you're capturing their email, which is very important for retargeting all in a fun way. It's not like I'm going to an email and signing a rental agreement. I'm skipping out on, you know, a lot of these really awful tasks that people just skip because guests don't want to do it. And guests barely realize they're signing a rental agreement and then they're checking in and they're having a great, great experience from there.
- [06:56]
Liam
I'm so glad you mentioned that because that was literally the first thing when I saw it I was like, oh, hang on, this looks and feels different from many of those out there. And we've been talking for a while on this podcast and to the community just saying, hey, you kind of now do need digital kind of experiences and upsells and things like that. But ultimately there's choices out there and you know, there's some really good choices out there. But we're now seeing some softwares come along where they're very similar, right? Very, very. You can swap out a few brands and stuff like. But actually as soon as I saw your, your product I was like, this is different, this is funky. And for anybody who's listening to this on audio, you won't be able to see, but Mike's got an awesome Happy Guest. Bright logo, bright T shirt. Everything about this company is interesting, fun and I'm so glad you picked up on the fact that it's not really about us. As hosts, we are the enabler for our guest to come and have a great time and a great fun experience. And often the memories that they make when they come and stay in our places, for the most part, if they're, they're staying for leisure, they're going to remember these experiences hopefully for the rest of their days. You know, like if they've had a good time and that starts straight away where they've just spent that money and all of a sudden they get the link for Happy Guest. And because it's fun and exciting, that's already making an impact to them, which is really important. And I think from what I've seen, this is very new. And the other thing which, which I haven't seen in many of these type of softwares and what I loved about Happy Guest is that it does so it replaces so many of your other softwares and it does it simply and if you could just talk us through how it helps a host. First of all, how easy is it to get the information to this because it's one of the pain points, right is I don't want to spend a lot of time doing it.
- [08:53]
Mike
No, I mean super easy. We're integrated with, you know, a handful of PMSs that you guys are probably using. When we built this, we built it originally to run pretty agnostically on an ICAL integration. So if you have a calendar, we can, we can run this for you. One thing that we're really good at and what we like doing, and I'm not dissing anybody, but when we have people self onboard, sometimes they just don't know. If I gave someone the keys to a Ferrari, they might not drive it well. And I, I think we've built a Ferrari. But we're going to help you along the way. We're going to help build out the guide books. There's a lot of psychology when it comes to the process and the colors and you know, how everything's laid out where we want it to make sense to that guest. I could give you, you know, a guidebook and you could put 10,000 lines of text in there and the people might be confused. One thing we implemented which is really special is you can embed personalized videos that are property specific. So if you have a weird coffee maker at one place, do a 10 second video on how to, how to use it. We have a host that just onboarded and she did this on her own where she's got this tree house up a half mile hike and it's up this weird trail. She has a time lapse that she filmed of herself walking up there and that's a heck of a lot easier than you reading. Okay, walk up this hill, take a right down this path. Like there's just these little things that we can do to really, really, you know, boost that guest experience in small meaningful ways. One thing that I'll say too is it's like I'm an operator as well. So we have a boutique hotel in Florida and we have this rule. If two guests message about the same thing, we're, we're doing wrong, we're doing something wrong. So if I have two people message me, how do I find the wi fi or you know, where do I park? Then something's wrong in our guest journey and we're going to kind of help you identify that as well.
- [10:39]
Liam
That's very cool. And it's the time of the video, right? As in, you know, like once upon a time there was these house manuals and stuff like that and you know, people would read instructions, then there was photos and stuff like that. Whereas now is the time of the video. You know, people should be comfortable. There's a saying that Mark always says to me which is get comfortable being uncomfortable. And part of that is we encourage our Boostly members to get on video and actually put their personality within their business, within their brand. And you can easily do so in, in this, in a happy guest, can't you?
- [11:10]
Mike
Which is cool and it's funny because I'm actually a proponent of the old school stuff. Hot take. But in our property we do like two special things. One, we print out this monthly massive newspaper that has kind of local events things in it. It's really vibey and like really fun and we leave that on the coffee table. Most people think we're crazy. Like we have this full guest book guidebook. But people, there's something special about something physical in your unit, in your place that you can touch. Another thing we did, and this is like something that I think people will steal, we have this little scrapbook and next to it's a Polaroid camera. Now those ones you can buy, they're like 50, 60 bucks and it has the film and we asked them, hey, take pictures of, you know, you, your family, whoever's staying here and put it in the scrapbook. But then in happy guest there's an option for an upsell because that family might want to buy that camera and take it around with them on the rest of the trip. So we sell more Polaroid cameras, you know, and we don't charge a big upsell on it. We make a few bucks. But it's something special that that family that has that Polaroid that brings it down to the beach and gets like a picture they can bring home is going to give me a five star review on that OTA if, if they booked on the ota. And I don't even care about that. It's like we want these guests to have an amazing time in these small, meaningful ways. They go a long way.
- [12:24]
Liam
I love that. I really love that.
- [12:26]
Hostfully Sponsor
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Hostfully. The leading property management software in the short term rental industry now according to Hostfully's research is property managers who upgrade From a basic PMS to top tools like Hostly see at least an 11% boost in revenue. That's because Hostly saves you time, letting you focus on growing your business with features like channel management, free listing on Google revenue management tools and discounts on integrations. But don't just take my word for it. Hostfully has plenty of success stories. A property manager I know in Manchester saves about a day's work each month thanks to their advanced owner report generator. Another in Liverpool has cut guest communication issues by a third. And somebody that I know in Miami went from six properties to 50 in just a year. Now, you listening to this podcast and you being part of my world, you get a special deal when you sign up. All you need to do is go to www.hostfully which is spelled H O S T-F-U-L-L-Y.com forward/boostly. There'll be a chat box, start a chat, mention that you're part of the Boostly world, and you'll get a unique discount. Now, I recommend Hostly to many, many, many people and we've built over a hundred integrations with our websites into them. And I know firsthand how much people love working with them. I love working with them. I'm so proud that they are sponsoring this podcast. So I would encourage everybody go and check it out. Www.hostfully.com forward/boostly. Right, let's get back on with the show, shall we?
- [13:59]
Liam
And just in general, because I want people to really understand the, the value add of, of what Happy Guest is, is you mentioned that it does the, you know, sort of get the contract signed and takes the government ID and, and, and all these things, but it also does waivers and, and, and bits and pieces like that. Just talk us through what that looks like.
- [14:18]
Mike
Yeah. So one of the things that we do, and we've been doing this, our property for a while, is having the guest put a security hold down and you can make that number, you know, whatever you'd like. What we do in Happy Guest is we give that guest the option of if they don't want to put a security hold down for say $1000, they can buy a damage waiver for $45. Right. And that's going to protect them up to 1500 dollars in accidental damage. You can buy those straight from Happy Guest. We sell those at $37, so you can mark that up and make $8 every single time that someone buys that, which is a nice way to, you know, generate ancillary revenue. We have hosts that mark them up, save a huge property. You can mark that up to 60 bucks and, you know, make 25 bucks every single time someone checks in. So it's a great way to kind of protect yourself Especially on a direct booking. Right. When there's, when there's no, you know, someone coming in to save you. Right. It's a great way to protect yourself. If you're taking a direct booking and you're not doing a security deposit, a hold, or, you know, having a damage waiver in place, it's a little bit risky. I know we all carry insurance, but think of it as fender bender insurance. Right. So if someone damages a couch, messes something up in the house, you're, you're protected there. And we pay Those claims out 48 hours after checkout if they're reported. And there's an easy way in the app to report damages, take photos, all that fun stuff.
- [15:39]
Liam
That's really cool. And one of the things which definitely for me as a host, I struggle with, I don't want to charge guests out of their security deposit if it's something a bit, you know, replaceable. You know, sometimes there's, there's some linens which marks on and stuff. Like actually this entire waiver thing gets rid of that worry. Right. If they've paid that waiver, you never have to worry about it because they are, you know, they're, they're effectively covered. And because you're, as a host, I mean, let's face it, most people are going to a markup on that, on that waiver and they're going to be making some income that's going to help you to, you know, cover these costs when, when you need to. Which is, which is so.
- [16:18]
Mike
Yeah, and, and there's some methodology there too, with the price that you set that I always give the option. It's. If you want to put a hold down. I'm never going to make someone forcibly buy a waiver. Not my style. So you can have the option. Right. And you, you pit them against each other. So say it's $1,000 versus that $40 non refundable waiver. Odds are a lot of guests are going to, you know, pick the waiver, which is nice because you have that protection and you're not dealing with chargebacks and all that kind of fun stuff. But we, there's not many complaints about it. They understand, you know, when you're going to check into a hotel, you're going to see a security hold, you're going to be asked for your id. It's not something that's, that's wildly different, especially with these traditional, you know, vacation rental brands. They've been doing this for years and years since before you and I have been in the in the business, you know, you're going to the office, you're putting your ID down and you're sometimes giving a cash deposit. Right. There's companies that still do it that way. So that's kind of where that comes from.
- [17:16]
Liam
They're buying certainty at the end of the day, isn't it? It's funny because even now when I book like, you know, like a car hire or whatever, whatever kind of thing I'm doing, if there's that option to pay a little bit less and just have the certainty that I'm not going to have to put any money on the line, you know, like it's, it's certainty is, is what they're buying and many people go for it like you say. So let's talk about upsells. How does it help me as a host get some upsells?
- [17:43]
Mike
Yeah, so there's like the traditional upsells and then there's those non conventional ones like our Polaroid camera. The most popular one that we have is early check in. And in Happy Guest, we've built out a fully automated early check in process which actually works with, you know, whatever cleaning tool you're using, your PMS or what. The other way to do it is we literally put a QR code under the kitchen sink. And the last item on my cleaners checklist is scan this QR code and that marks the unit guest ready. So it's same day turn. It's going to let them know at 1:30, hey, you can get in here for $10 an hour, 15 an hour, whatever we pick, if it's not a same day turn starting at 9am or whatever time I pick the next day, it's going to start marketing to that guest. Hey, you can buy this early check in, you know, at this rate. And the nice thing about it is say they pick, okay, I'm going to check in at 2 and they show up at 11am I'm not releasing the door code to them until 2 because that's the time that they picked. So that's kind of the most popular upsell. A little trick that we've been doing for years is my checkouts at 10am My cleaners think that checkouts at 11. I always know that I have an hour late checkout no matter what. Like in my sleep if someone messages me or tries to buy this at 2am I have that on auto approval. A lot of systems out there. If you request a late checkout for an hour, it's okay. Let's wait and see if they approve it. You know, with happy guests, if you, if you run it in that, that capacity, you're always going to have that hour on each side. And same thing with early check in.
- [19:11]
Liam
I love that, I love that, that QR code because you're absolutely right. I, I have, I use cleaning app software and ultimately so many times, despite us going, please do fill in the form, they just don't. And I don't blame them, right? They're busy, they want to get to the next job, they need to, you know, they're worried about the parking is, you know, however much time they've got, so they forget to complete the job. So we only find out that actually they did it four hours ago and we see half an hour before the guest is checking in that's ready. Well, if, if they can just scan it and it's easy to do so and it then marks it as ready, then that is the important factor, isn't it? And the fact it can then start to market to a guest. And I also, you know, a lot of these I haven't heard before of, like you say, just always have that option where your cleaners know it's always 11 and then you can auto upsell that one hour. Now, for me personally as a host, I always look at and go, if I'm going to charge, I've got to make it a long period of time. But actually I could probably have quite a small menial charge and always make that upsell because more people are going to take me up on it.
- [20:14]
Mike
And actually, oh, and there's, there's that psychology behind it. When they can buy that hour, right? They'll buy it. And then, you know, if they want to stay another few hours, you can do one of two things. You're going to receive that message. You can, you know, upsell them till 4 or 5pm or what a lot of people are doing is sell them another night, right? Hey, you know, we don't have the option because our cleaning team gets in. Would you like to stay an additional night? Our cleaners can't clean the place after 4pm we can't offer that. We can give you a full night and if you want to leave at 4, so be it. So selling those gap nights, those shoulder nights, it's, it's, it's big business. And that's all your money, right?
- [20:50]
Liam
I got it, I got it. And instantly. So I can see from the guest point of view, this is a very easy flow or, you know, for the guest, they're not having to Click random links, click a stripe link and then go to this, you know, is it's all done within, in the flow, which, which again we can't show on the podcast. But I will share a link obviously at the end here where you can go and see this for yourself. From a guest point of view. I'm making more money with upsells is kind of handling a lot of the other kind of software things where I'm using lots of random bits of software to do these things. So my question is to you, Mike is how did you come up with this idea? As the founder, how did you come up with this and why is it important to you to solve this problem for the industry?
- [21:34]
Mike
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of platforms out there that are really, really good at kind of, you know, one segment of it. Like there's ones that are great with upsells and we were using some of these things too, where if I'm just sending us a straight link, that's my upsell link, my store, you know, what percentage of those guests are actually doing it. Whereas with Happy guest, every single guest is going to be at least shown these upsells. It's like exiting through the gift shop at a amusement park, right. You have to walk through at the end. So all of your guests are going to see these options. That's kind of one of the differentiators that we have. And we really wanted to make something super simple for the person with one property and then something that, you know, large operators can use too. Like our spread of customer base is pretty, pretty wide and it's just something that we wanted to make that was simple. Everyone at the company has, you know, short term rental experience. Like our co founders all have rented rooms for a living, right. So we're also operators, we understand that side of it. There's a lot of tech out there, you know, that's really built based off of, you know, how the technology company wants us to operate. So we're really into listening, you know, to our hosts when there's, there's features that are being built right now, you know, that we didn't even think about that some of our customers are requesting. Right. So it's, it's very customizable in that sense. And where it came from is like I just said, we wanted a simple solution that anyone can use to automate their guest journey. Because I think we were really hyper focused as an industry, me including myself, on just getting bookings, right? Scaling, getting more inventory, getting more bookings and then you know, direct booking movement. But now it's like, how can we actually make sure that we're getting the most amount of revenue in a nice way? Right? I'm not saying go out there and charge people $150 to stay an extra hour or, you know, upsell them for every single, you know, do you want. Do you want extra electricity or an extra roll of toilet paper? No, that's not what we're after. And it's more like a nice, meaningful way to make some ancillary revenue and drive direct bookings. Because the other thing you have to remember, too, if you don't have a way of collecting, you know, emails and phone numbers from guests that are coming through, you know, where we're doing that for you. So everyone that's checking in, we're getting their email for you, and we're getting their phone number, and then that's your CRM that's retargeting. And we do a really good job of, you know, helping new hosts with that as well.
- [24:09]
Liam
I'm so glad you mentioned that, because ultimately, you. There's still hosts I talk to who aren't building their own email list. And as you're listening to this now, if you're not, if you're one of the people saying, oh, I'm guilty, I haven't got my own email list, well, there's really simple ways to start. There's no excuse now. It's not like the days where you used to have to copy someone's email and stick it in an Excel sheet or, or whatever it is. This is all now really automated. You're able to collect guests details and ultimately change your business's trajectory. Because where I'm speaking to hosts and they're saying, hey, the market's saturated and I'm going, well, actually, the market's growing. There's more people traveling now than there ever has been before. What is changing is guest journey, and experience is becoming more important than ever. And knowing about things like this podcast and knowing about Happy Guest, there's things that you, as a host can do about it, and that's also going to help you grow your email lists, which then you can get more. You can market to these people, get more direct bookings, and it goes hand in hand. And this is stuff that simply some of your competition either won't know about or aren't bothering doing. So don't be like them. Just. Just take some action and go out and do it. So this feels like a good time to share the link. Mike, unless there's anything else that we've not covered?
- [25:24]
Mike
No, I think we've gotten to a lot of it. And like you just said, with direct bookings, like we are huge proponents of it. In our guidebook, there's functionality to bring people right to your direct booking booking engine that hopefully boostly made. Right. So there's a lot of fun stuff that you can do. Customizations to really drive direct bookings, offer a discount on, you know, a stay in the future. We've done a lot with that and we're excited to kind of grow and build more solutions and that help us kind of take back our businesses, right?
- [25:52]
Liam
Yeah, 100%. Being in control is so important. And I mean we don't often talk about cost and stuff like this, but if you're listening to this, go. Sounds amazing, but it's going to be a huge, huge cost and I probably won't be able to afford it. Did you want to dive in? I know this is. As we record this today, obviously prices change. It depends on when you're listening to this. But ultimately did you want to dive into like what is, what is the cost from.
- [26:18]
Mike
Yeah, no, for sure. We wanted to build. I'm tired of. And maybe we'll do it one day, but I'm tired of, you know, the whole per listing, per property, per month. We have a lot of hosts that are seasonal, they're three month ventures. Right. You know, in Maine we have an operator that's like I got to pay for all my solutions for 12 months by bookings three months out of the year. So Happy Guest is fully consumption based. Right. So if you make an upsell, we take 10% of that and you can pass that 10% off to the guest. So say it's a $50 upsell, that guest is going to pay 55 bucks. Happy guest is taking the five. We've got to keep the lights on somehow. We also have our early check in module as well. And that's a little higher percentage because it's our fully automated function there. That's 25%. Now if you're making money, we're making money. That's kind of the mentality here. There normally is a $99 yearly fee, much like a credit card kind of situation. But for anyone that is a boostly customer, user or they came in off this podcast, we're going to waive that for you. And then the other thing to keep in mind is like you're just linking your stripe account up with Happy Guest when you're upselling these Damage waivers. So we're selling those to you at $37. It covers you up to 1500. You mark that up to 50 bucks every time, every guest, you're making $13. And then say you sell an early check in for 30 bucks and then you sell a late checkout by the end of it if you have 10 properties. This is a money making machine and that's what we want to empower. We're not something that's this, oh God, I got to pay my happy gas bill. Like we're literally paying you. And I'm not saying it's too good to be true. Come try it out. But that's, that's ultimately what we wanted to build.
- [27:58]
Liam
Yeah.
- [27:58]
Mike
And ultimately host that work here.
- [28:01]
Liam
It is really too good to be true. In terms of. It is awesome. And this is one of the things that I was surprised about when I've checked out the platform is you go, hey, something's got to give. It's awesome. It's great experience for the guest. It's good options for the host. And actually usually that goes well. It must have a high price tag. Guys, you can jump on this now with no, no fee, using the, the link or a referral link and you can use the boostly. You know, if you're listening to this podcast and you then not paying that fee and you get all these benefits and there's nothing not to like, which is amazing. So I'm really excited for this, Mike. And genuinely, I'm in it. Try it myself. Sorry.
- [28:43]
Mike
Yeah, no, that's awesome. And it really helps. Like, this is what I love about the product too. Like our onboarding team, who you're going to work with. So you go to that link, you're going to book a call. Their job is to get you set up and get your automated early check in. Going to get your upsells in a place that know people want to buy them because our company is not making money if you guys don't.
- [29:01]
Liam
Right.
- [29:02]
Mike
So that's something to think about as well.
- [29:03]
Liam
And like you say the, the number of hosts that I've talked to recently who have either scaled up or even sold, some of them have sold their businesses. They and, and I always ask them, I go, what was the one difference that you did with your business? And go, do you know what? We really focused on the additional revenue streams that we could create within our business. Waivers, upsells, you know, all of that stuff. And the number one reason why people don't do it in, in my opinion is that they Go. Oh, it's quite hard to manage all that stuff, you know, like we'll make it a lot easier. Go and check out Happy Guest and that link for if you're listening on the podcast will be around in the show notes. But for those who like it on audio, it is happy guest official.com forward/boostly. Really simple to to go and find it and you're able to sign up. Like you say, you'll be able to save that $99. And it is a handheld kind of service to get you started, which is cool. And as I say, don't wait around on this. This won't be that forever. I'm sure there'll be somebody listening to this in a few years time going, oh, that sounded awesome at the time. I can't believe it was that that price. Don't be that person. Go and test it out now. So, Mike, that leaves us with just the last couple of questions. One I'm just going to throw in there for fun. What song do you sing when you go to karaoke? And the reason I ask you this is you're a fun guest. So I want to find out what song you'll go to.
- [30:28]
Mike
My sister is a professional singer and oh, nice. I, I, well and I just cannot sing. I've always, I've always joked like if I she had my personality, she'd be a rock star.
- [30:37]
Liam
Right?
- [30:37]
Mike
No, but I love getting up there and doing a good old tequila. It really gets the people going.
- [30:43]
Liam
Oh, nice.
- [30:43]
Mike
And I only have one word to sing.
- [30:45]
Liam
Yep. Yeah, very true.
- [30:46]
Mike
If I'm really, if I'm really feeling it, we'll mix some piano man in there.
- [30:51]
Liam
Billy Joel.
- [30:52]
Mike
Yeah. If anyone saw our performance, I did it with Andrew Kitchell and, and Oliver Stern from Wheelhouse in Barcelona last year and maybe we'll do an encore at scale this year.
- [31:01]
Liam
There's somebody out there has probably got the phone footage.
- [31:04]
Mike
So on film, I'm sure. So if anyone has that film, please send it to me. It's Mike at Happy Guest.
- [31:09]
Liam
Yeah, and, and just any of the emails you can find for Boosley. We'd love to see it or tag us in on the socials if anyone's got it. And lastly, and I love ending with, with this sort of question which is is there a motto or a mantra which is kind of helped you're on your journey or something which comes to mind as being like, you know what? That has always run true for me. That's something which I perceive as true.
- [31:35]
Mike
Yeah. Just don't Be afraid to do something that's unexpected. Right. Something it's not ordinary. Right. So, like, when we started this business, like, it's a bit wild, it's a bit out there. We were showing it to, you know, some early stage hosts that are like, you guys are crazy. And, you know, we're now at a point where we just crossed 30, 000 reservations on the platform, so guests seem to like it and that's what matters. Right? Listen to your guests. Please listen to your guests. That's. That's the one thing that I would say. And, and your branding's great. Like, everything's great, but like, your guests are the, ultimately the ones that are, you know, putting money in our pockets. Right.
- [32:14]
Liam
100%. Thank you so much and I couldn't agree more. So is there anything else you want to say before we bring it to a close, Mike?
- [32:22]
Mike
No. Thank you for having me on, Liam, and it's always a pleasure working with the Boostly guys. And yeah, we'll go from there. And hopefully I talk to some of these hosts soon. I'll be around.
- [32:32]
Liam
I look forward to seeing you at the event. I look forward to seeing you where happy guest goes in the future. And I'm sure we'll, we'll have you back on in, in the future as well and talk about all the new cool things which are coming along. Which I know this stuff.
- [32:46]
Mike
We do have these fun shirts and we do have these fun shirts and hats. So we're excited for the events to hand those out, get everyone rocking it.
- [32:53]
Liam
Awesome. Well, I look forward to, to grabbing one of those. And if you're listening to this podcast and you're going, you know what, this has been really handy for my business. I'm going to go and check out happy guestofficial.com forward/boostly. Well, share it with somebody, you know, share the love. Right. There's other hosts out there, maybe not somebody in the same patch as you. Share it with another host in another city because ultimately this is going to be giving you the, the advantage, but ultimately do share it with somebody because this is a very collaborative industry and community and I look forward to seeing happy guests grow and to seeing you as a host succeed. So thank you very much for listening to the Boostly podcast. That's it from us. We'll see you on the next one. Bye for now.