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- [00:00]
Mark
Want to take control of your bookings and find some independence from Airbnb? Meet Stefi, the game changer in guest data collection and marketing. Now, Stefi have been around for a while, I've talked about a lot, but let me just delve into a little bit more about what Stefi is and it does. So remember the last time you went into a coffee shop and you wanted to use the WiFi? What did you have to do to get the WiFi? You had to give him your email. Stay fi works exactly like that, but for your short term rental or your medium term rental business. And the beauty of it is that you don't just get the lead booker's details, you get the whole party. And this is fantastic because of a stay of maybe four people coming at your property, you've not just got one email, one piece of data, you've got four. And this is so important to boost in your direct bookings is to build a solid database. Now, after their stay, Stay fi encourage you to keep in contact with your guests and they give you the tools to do so as well. They've got email, they've got sms, you name it, they've got it and it's all automated. Now I reached out to Stefi and I asked them, what can you do for the Boostly peeps? What can you do for the Boostly crowd? And they have given us 50% off your first three months. Now that's an exclusive. Now to do that you need to go to stayfy.com boostly b o o S T L Y. Stayfy is S T a y F I dot com. When you're signing up, you've got to put the discount code in Boostly B O o S T L Y. Then you get 50% off your first three months out of every vendor, every supplier, everybody that we have recommended over the years. The ones that everybody comes back to me with and saying that was the one, it was Stefi. I'm a massive fan of them and I'm so happy that they've agreed to sponsor and partner with this podcast and this show. And now it's time for you to reap the benefits. Go to stayfy.com Boosley use the discount code Boostly and you get 50% off for your first three months. Right, let's get back on with the show.
- [02:06]
Host
Hi everybody. Welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics and trainings so you can go out there and get yourself direct bookings. What we do on this Podcast is we look at services, we look at great people out there who can help you with not only increasing your direct bookings, but increase your bookings in general. And part of increasing your bookings is making sure that you have really eye catching photos, which is the subject of today's podcast. We've got some special guests on here who are absolute experts at what they do and they have been. They're making a returning appearance on this podcast, but it's been a few years since they've been on, so we thought it'd be great to get them back on, get your attention refocused on this particular subject so you can go out there and you can increase your bookings. So let me introduce, we've got Brian and Katie. They're from a company called Overlooked to Overbooked, and as I say, absolute experts with photography and ideas around what you can do as a host to improve your pitches. So welcome along, Brian, and welcome along, Katie.
- [03:13]
Brian
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.
- [03:15]
Katie
Thank you.
- [03:16]
Host
Thanks for being here. So first question, can you just give an intro to your company? I know you're the co founders of Overlooked to Overbooked. Can you give us some kind of background and information on how you got started in this sort of area?
- [03:31]
Brian
Katie, you want to go or you want me to do it?
- [03:34]
Katie
Why don't you start?
- [03:35]
Brian
All right. It's very organically derived. We were what we call super guests for, you know, pretty close to three years between, like 20, 15, 16 and 17. We were traveling and staying almost exclusively at Airbnbs for relatively long periods, like month, two months, three months. And the relevance of that is it put extra pressure on the search process because you didn't want to pick a place that you're going to lock down for three months and then find out that it was a bad choice for anybody who was doing this back then. The listings were not very good in 20, 15, 16 and 17 compared to now. We'll talk about where they still could go, but I was head searcher and I, I was banging my head against the wall and pounding on desks. And Katie can talk about how frustrated I would get because such simple things were not being accomplished. Like, it's like, why, why are there only 10 photos? How come only half the bedrooms have pictures? You know, why are they blurry and dark? And you know, what part of town is this? Right? You just have question after question after question because they weren't being handled in the listing. And, you know, the easy answer for that is the industry hadn't really matured that much. Probably most of those were being done by the host themselves. And not that that's a bad thing, but that host probably had other careers or at least one where they were a dentist or a lawyer or something and this was like a sidelight. And so anyway we, you know, Katie has a background that I'll have her tell you a little bit about, but it was a perfect fit that I started kind of coercing her into saying like, you know, you could help these hosts so much with the things that you've learned from your career. And the other thing that was really exciting about it is I thought the ROI should be massive. Like this should be the most no brainer opportunity for host to upgrade their listing, upgrade their sales and revenue and nightly rates and occupancy and it should be a win win all, all the way around. And so that that was the impetus to start. What we've originally built was a video course that was mostly DIY for somebody to be able to take their own pictures and edit their own pictures and. And then we've since evolved and we'll talk about this later where we now have it done with you and a done for you aspect where we can work with you live over the Internet on your phone or we can send a couple of our people to your house and do the whole thing for you. So that's my version of it. I'm sure Katie has elements to add to it that I'm forgetting 100%.
- [06:07]
Host
Katie, let us know your side of how you got into things.
- [06:11]
Katie
Yeah, that's essentially it. I mean our backgrounds were kind of a perfect fit for this. Brian kind of coming from sales and marketing and I was an editor in Hollywood and I worked in a small post production company but we worked for the big studios and right now I spend a lot of time editing photos and I kind of did the same thing even back then, but I would color correct movie images. But it's sort of the same thing and you have to apply the same logic to it like how do you make this end product look as good as it can for the user? I got to see what all of the viewers were going to see, like the final thing and I really liked that aspect of it. And then of course traveling, when we actually started traveling and looking at places, you can really feel the pressure as a guest, as a host, I know you have a thousand things going on on but as a guest, when you really are sometimes in a different country and you have to book a place and all you have is the listing, you don't get extra info, of course, you can message the host and ask question and then you hope that they respond in time. And you might have a bunch of browsers open like Brian said, and try to choose between a place because you really don't want to have to go back on that. I mean, you just want to get a good place. It's not something you can quickly like, oh, let me just cancel and change it like an outfit. You're putting your money on this. And people, we were working and traveling, but when people book these places, they might be there one vacation a year to your place. So that's a lot of pressure. So you're really feeling it. Like just a lot of questions emerge that you might not even think as a host. And sometimes you don't see the forest for the trees. You might be burying your lead. You know, you have a really good amenity and you're not showing it enough or you know, there's a bit of a disconnect there. It's kind of, you know, bosses and employees, teachers and students. You're all kind of coming at it from an opposite perspective, but really you're in the same space. So sometimes it's kind of just good to swap roles. And I feel like that gave us a really strong start to kind of see things from the guest perspective and say, look, we as a, as a guest, I can see I would want to see this, I would want to know this. If you just show me this, you don't have to give me a long explanation just to give me one photo of it. So we were kind of able to put together this guide from the guest perspective on how we would do things. And then of course we applied our own knowledge from marketing and photography.
- [08:26]
Host
K and Brian is really clear that you're really qualified for, you know, much more than most of our hosts. Brian, you touched on it that most hosts, and especially when it comes down to the majority of hosts, I mean there was a percentage saying that something like 90% of the industry is hosts who are, you know, they've got a second home and they just do this part time. You know, that is what the hospitality short term rental industry is based on through a lot of the world. And all of those people are probably busy doing whatever else they need to do. The last thing they have got time to do is market their places well. And because of that, as you say in 2015, 2016, almost every listing was just whatever the terrible phone was, the iPhone one or whatever it was at the Time was just taken on phones and there were some awful listings. I definitely think that for our audience, the. There's a couple of people out there. Some people will be going, well, hey, I've got professional photos. I don't need to know this. And the thing is, I know from the last time that you guys were on here, I learned something and I went and made some big changes in my business. So, you know, for anyone thinking that, stick around because, you know, honestly, the tips and the tricks is amazing. But also, there's still a few people out there who are still, like you say, they don't have many pictures or they've still got the phone pitches, or they've still got doll pitches. For those people who are still out there, first of all, do you still think there's many of those people? And for those people, what advice would you give them?
- [09:58]
Katie
Well, I feel like here, here's the one thing. And we do the same thing too as we talk about the phone photos. But really, I mean, the tool doesn't matter if you know what you're doing right? We can kind of all agree, like, you can give the best pain during the world, just, you know, egg yolk and old house paint, and they'll make something amazing. So it really, some of it is just kind of knowing, sort of the theory. You don't have to know everything about photography, but just physically kind of how to hold your phone. And one of the big things that I always tell people is make sure your lens is very clean because it'll affect the light. And sometimes it's difficult to put your finger on why your photo isn't good when you don't know what it is. And of course, I can immediately tell what it is. So one of the things is just you get a clean your lens and then there's other, other techniques where people tend to hold it too high and things like that. And just fixing a few techniques will immediately improve your photos. They'll just look way better. Then you can kind of gradually, like once you start noticing, like, all the lines are really wonky or I'm shooting against the sun and that's why the view is really terrible. Like, we can't actually see anything. It looks great in person. Our eyes are amazing, like we talked about before, of course. And everywhere cameras, they're just not as good. And we shoot most of our virtual photo shoots just with somebody's phone. We connect with a host on a chat like this. Well, we now use an app, what we used to not even use an app. And just frame things together and that's really what it comes down to. But it's just whatever phone they have in their pocket, you just gotta clean it and then apply a couple of techniques enough to where they immediately better so. And is there a thing that is possible? Absolutely possible, yeah. We absolutely advocate that you do not invest in all year that you get the techniques right first and just kind of have an eye for noticing things. And then like I said you can start building like oh, the pillow is kind of wonky or like oh this color would be better. You just sort of build on that knowledge and I feel like what used to be sort of the bad iPhone photo. It looks terrible for iPhones. I hope Apple one day doesn't. Your phones are amazing. Don't come after us.
- [12:00]
Host
Yeah, we'll insert any brand of phone in that place.
- [12:04]
Katie
Yes, any brand of phone will just believe it. But it really is what knowing how to use it. It doesn't matter what it is. You can have the fanciest DSLR and your photos are not going to be any better if you're doing it wrong technically speaking. But I feel like what used to be that is just like a poor quality photo. Just you know, somebody who didn't know what they're doing. I think that's gotten replaced with a lot of real estate photos and that's sort of now the thing to the easy thing to beat where the photos that used to look amazing. If somebody even had the mind to hire a real estate photographer. The lines were straight, all the lights were on. They're like nice and edited. But then now everybody's got the same thing. Every house looks the same because you're nobody looking at your listing in a vacuum. Right. Like they're probably picking between. You want to hope they're picking between five. They could be picking between 20 depending on where they're going. So in contact, looking at competition and keeping up to date with your immediate neighbors and kind of the area is always a really good idea. Just what we call just buy on your competition. Just look at their listings. So I think now the real is that's kind of the boring one. Like ah they got real estate photos so they're technically nice but there's no emotion there. There's nothing compelling in there. There's nothing like oh I want to have that experience when it just a living room or just a bedroom and this is even if it's technically nice.
- [13:27]
Host
And these the ones which are like kind of just ultra wide lens, really highly high dynamic.
- [13:34]
Katie
Oh yeah.
- [13:34]
Brian
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean there's, there's good and bad real estate photography. And, and so the, the bad part would be where it's all wide and it's the objective that's different. Right. So in other words, real estate guys trying to sell a property for you. And what you want as a buyer of a property is value. You want to feel like you're getting as much space per dollar as possible. That's not the objective of a vacation rental photography experience. It's, you want something intangible, you want to have fun or you want to connect with somebody or you want to relax. That has nothing to do with a wide angle lens. Really. We're almost the opposite where we're crafting intimacy and closeness and proximity. And it's like the angle that, where your eye would be if you were laying in that hammock or sitting in that hot tub. So it's really more like Katie was alluding to that. We're trying to take it into the emotional realm. I'll come back for a second to your other question. I would approach it from the monetary side of things, or are there still people that either can or should do it themselves? I would potentially do that on a spreadsheet first and foremost. Like, I know it's a smaller fraction that's either using just, you know, a home in the backyard or an extra bedroom or something like that. But you know, if you, if you chart out what you're trying to make from it and what's the upside potential and how much difference could a great listing make? You know, we'll talk about a couple examples later where people are making a six figure difference. Difference, yeah, but those are places that cost a million dollars and are charging fifteen hundred dollars a night or something. So the numbers add up fast. When you, when you make a big change like that, if you're at £120 a night or less or something like that, then maybe you should do it yourself because maybe what it costs to do all the stuff we're going to be talking about would take too long to recoup. So I mean, I try to be very straightforward with everybody. We don't try to convince anybody that should do, to do it unless we would do it in their shoes. So it's like, well, you know, we look at our DNA and other things, other sources and say, well, it looks like there might be 30,000 a year upside if you were in the top 10% right now you're kind of struggling in the middle. So you know, should you Spend a few thousand dollars to be able to potentially get through 30,000 extra a year, probably. I mean, like, that's a pretty good investment compared to most other ways you could spend that money. But that's. That's one way you could approach it is like. And then the other side of it is, do I like photography? Do I. Am I already good at it? Do I have an aptitude for it? Do I have time? Right? All those things factor in, and a certain percentage of people will make it through all those and go, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Dive in. You know, you will get a great skill out of it and you'll.
- [16:15]
Host
And you'll make money from it 100%. And just one more general question I'd have about just generally, photos. There's a lot of people out there at the moment who have. They've got photos which they don't emote feelings from, which I think was what I picked up from you guys, especially from. I. I listened as a, as a fan of Bruce Lee podcast last time you guys were on this, and I picked up that it's about getting the emotiveness from the pitches. But also, how many people out there do you think are missing out on. I think you mentioned the journey before, taking people on the journey through the places. Do you think there's a huge amount of people out there who could. Could benefit from really looking at the order of their pitches? And I know this is something which Airbnb is just. They've pressed a button and they've reordered everything for you, which is terrible for me for a lot of them, but.
- [17:11]
Katie
Yeah.
- [17:11]
Host
What's your thoughts on this?
- [17:13]
Brian
Well, yes, I mean, yeah, go ahead. Go, go. Katie.
- [17:16]
Katie
No, I was going to say, for sure, there are a lot of people who could kind of take a moment and think about it again from the guest perspective, who could benefit from really thinking about the journey, which then it sounds very spoofy, like, oh, the journey. And the emotional. Like, what does that mean in a photo? But it really means, like, does this make sense to a guest? And really, we think about it from a couple of ways, like, do I understand where I am in space? And then does it make me want to go there? And those are the kind of two things that we always try to marry. Like, does it still make sense? Like, where you are in this location, in the house? And does it make me want to go there? And not every space is equally sexy. You know, you got to take a photo of a bathroom, too, and they're not all that amazing. Or sometimes you just want to show that I have a bunch of kids stuff. You have a high chair and a pack and play and all that stuff. You just take a photo of them all and put it. But in terms of the journey, one of the things that people have now done. And of course, yes, you're right, Airbnb keeps throwing monkey wrench at a beautifully crafted thing without asking anyone. I wonder who their consultants are. Again, we'll just bleep that out or blur it. Just some ota, but. And I understand where they're coming from with the way they're now trying to organize those things. They're trying to help host with the thing that I keep harping on when we do our, you know, calls and podcasts and all this thinking about the sequencing. And they try to make it easy for you to understand where you are in stage so that this place makes sense. Because sometimes what people then do is thinking, well, my house is kind of boring. You know, you don't have a lot of staged things or scenes or, or cute stuff. You'd be like, the way to mix it up is scramble the sequence. So we'll look at my kitchen, look at my pool, then look at the town. And then we're going to come back to a bedroom and then we'll, like, go to the kitchen again and then we come back to a different bedroom. I'm seeing this for the first time as a guest. I will be completely lost. Like, you've lost me once. You change spaces that many times. So it really is. And then about crafting, like, how do you take you. You still kind of want to take wide establishing shop, but not with a wide angle lens. But you want to give us a sense of space the way you would in, like an old timey movie. They would always shoot at wide angle, medium shot, close up. Like, that was kind of the structure because it makes sense for the brain. You want to tell people, where am I first? Did we just change rooms? This is the front yard or the backyard? Where am I? And then you want to show me, oh, look at all this cute stuff. But you would never in a million years take your friend to your house and drag him by the hand over to like a little close up, like a little, you know, tchotchke or some cooperation. Look at this thing. And then kind of go back, oh, and by the way, we're in the living room. You enter a room, like, oh, take a look at our living room. We just redid all the paint or whatever. And then you start kind of looking at the details so that makes sense to us and that kind of becomes the journey. When you think about like, well, experience stuff like, what do I add in there? We'll just think about any space where a person's going to sit down, pan me out, spend time. And you're kind of creating a fantasy, right? Because in the fantasy, in the real estate world, the fantasy is that this is the house where I can build my life, right? Like I'm going to put my stuff in there. It's going to look like my home. Vacation rentals are not that you are providing a ready made thing so you can go a little crazy. You can have your neon signs and you can have your movie room and you can have your, you know, whatever, favorite sports, team house. That's what it is. You'll find your tribe. But then you kind of, you go through, you want it to make sense for people where you are. But then you kind of think like, wouldn't it be nice if you could just sit here, put your feet up and watch the game or wouldn't it be nice if you could just lay down in a hammock and read a book and like listen to the waves. That's then. Then kind of becomes the experience. But you can think about it and like, because it seems like such a mess when you're starting, like, where do I even begin? I just. Whatever happened to just having a glass of orange juice? You enter a space and you think like, what would you do here? What would you want to do here? One of my favorite examples for host, you can draw a bubble bath with that little tray on the bathtub and a book and a glass of wine. Like, I'm in. I am never in a million years going to get to do that on vacation. As long as my kids are in school, that's not going to happen. But I enjoy the fantasy of it. I do it, we craft this and it still works on me. Whenever I see it, I think like, oh my gosh, I've maybe had one bubble bath in my life, but it still works. Or just creating that, like you're all going to play a game together. We'll pretend screen time doesn't exist. Let's just play Monopoly. But it's the dream that you're kind of like, remember the fun times that you can have. And they're kind of showing how they can have a good time at your place. How are you going to make this.
- [21:49]
Host
Happen 100% and just, you know, that emotive kind of Feel, I mean, even because we sometimes get people who deal with contractors and workers. And one of the kind of emotive things that, that we've got. We've got a dartboard with like darts on the board. And I remember thinking I should have. I missed a trick for the photography. I missed a trick of having like some beers on there instead, you know, like as in some beers on the side, you know, like very much like aiming it at the target guest. But. So, Brian, any thoughts on this?
- [22:21]
Brian
Yeah, I was just going to go before the part that Katie's talking about. One of the, you know, like when you see the finished product, it's really the tip of the iceberg because the key to doing this is knowing what. What stuff do you want to photograph? And the answer to that is who's your ideal guest? Right. So. So that's where we always start on every project is if they're, if they've been in business for a while. We look at the reviews and what are those people saying they enjoyed about it? And what can we infer about? Is it a couple? Is it a family with small kids? Is it two families together? Are they active? Are they pass. You know, do they just want to sit by the pool or do they want to run out and do something every day? Those are really critical questions that dictate everything that comes downstream. Right. So you wouldn't necessarily do a bubble bath for. For a house that is meant to be like a jumping off point for a new hike every morning or something like that. Maybe, you know, you could come and relax and do that. But it's probably not the mentality of the people that, that are there for that. But there's other houses where that would be the perfect thing. Pets versus no pets, you know, kids or old people who can climb stairs or not. Right. You need to know who's coming or who do you want to come, Who'd be, who had the best time when they came. And then you kind of laser, like focus on what would pull them in. You're almost like baiting them with enticing photos that are irresistible. Right. If you're a sports fan, that's the easiest analogy. It's like, if it's about my team, I'm there. I gotta go to that one. Like, it immediately makes everything else fade from view. And I become emotionally attached to that. So we have a lot of, A lot of people have the nervousness around niching down too much. Like they don't want to turn anybody off. They want to be available to every possible guest, we go the other way. We would say, like you got 52 widgets to sell in a year and that's it. And so there's more than enough people that could fit into any little slice. And when you think this is back to the guest perspective that Katie was talking about earlier. As a guest, you have to think about how much more you remember and how much more you care about the one that seems like it's right on your wavelength. You could look at 100 of them and not remember anything about any of them. If they're not speaking to you directly, but the one that speaks to you directly, you feel compelled to book. So pick a lane and then dive in and try to really create photos that are just the right enticement for that particular subgroup.
- [24:52]
Mark
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 researches, 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?
- [26:25]
Host
I think that's great advice. And just to back up your story, I remember seeing a short term rental from a friend who operates down in London and He had made. It was a little apartment. I mean like it would never be right for me to go and stay there. But he had literally covered the entire thing with 80s post. He'd got the old video cassette tapes and the old television that you have to, you know, like, which is this wide and you have to fit the videotape into the bottom of it. And it was just 80s themed. And I've got to be honest, that sticks in mind whenever somebody says niching down because hey, I'm. I'm that audience that if I was staying there overnight I'd be like, hey, this place is cool. And it's, it's where it will put so many people off. I mean, but the people it will attract, it will attract. And that's. That's good, right?
- [27:08]
Katie
Yep. I know. There's a bar in Finland that I like. It's like actually like an Irish pub. But one of their things is that they have just floor to ceiling covers the bathrooms and posters like the. You would in the 90s or earlier. Like just that kind of experience for when you were young and having all those sort of iconic posters and bands and artists and things like. And it's just the cutest thing. And I always think somebody should do that at their nearby. Just bring back some thing. It doesn't even really have to make sense. And of course you can do like super London apartment in London. You can go do New York in New York. That's totally fine. But you could. It doesn't even have to make sense. I mean, you like whales as an animal. Great, whale it up. Like just take it up to 11 and then commit to your theme. And you can have. And there's so many things that you can do. Like you can turn it into a game. Like, hey, if you find our little mascot, you don't will either wail. Whatever. You'll get something. You get a free cup of coffee at the local coffee shop or something like that. So there's things to kind of spice it up. But people do want something a little bit extra extraordinary on their vacation because it's not something that you have to look at 365 days a year. Then you're on vacation. And especially now when everybody's got a phone, right? Everybody's gonna take vacation pictures. You want to give them a little something where they can just take cool photos. Like look at where I went. So really kind of thinking, not just outside the box, but I can tell when I suggest things people kind of go like, oh, I don't know. But I'm like, not. Not for your home for a weekend. Like, you wouldn't look at this the whole year, but for a weekend or a week. Absolutely. Give me a giant, jungly wall with a neon sign and some margarita glasses. Like, you'll find somebody who will absolutely book because of that thing.
- [28:54]
Host
100%. Yeah.
- [28:55]
Brian
I know almost everybody's listening, but Katie's got a backdrop right now, which is a photo we took at a bachelorette that. That was the theme. So 98% of the jobs we do, we would not take a picture with those colors in the background. But for the bachelorettes to come into Nashville, it's the perfect thing.
- [29:11]
Host
It's perfect. And you mentioned just before we went live that any of the back shots are photos from places that you've. You've been to, which is amazing. I think that's a great for, you know, because so many times we even said that you go on somebody's zoom chat, and the zoom isn't a real place. You're like, no, I've actually been here. This is. This is a real place. And they're like, ah, that looks awesome. So. And I encourage anybody who's listening to the podcast, you can go across the Boostly YouTube and you'll be able to see it on Boostly YouTube, the backgrounds, if you'd like to see the. Those.
- [29:39]
Katie
That's right. And the thing behind me. So it's basically just a rooftop here, but I got, like, a big pink umbrella and lots of colorful pillows, and there's. There's champagne behind me and all kinds of things. And this is the most moderate room in that house. So this house is themed for. I mean, country is using. You are losing the term. Using the term loosely now, because they're basically kind of using country singers or all these kind of iconic songs. So they have some from Miley Cyrus. There's a Carrie Underwood. There's. You know, I already forget. And they have a piece of the lyrics cut out in gold letters. And this might be the most American thing you've ever heard and just put on the wall in front of, like, really colorful wallpaper. But this is specifically geared for, like, groups of young women who are coming to Nashville to have, like, a bachelorette party. It's. If they're really going for that audience hard. And this is one of the most extreme examples of place. They have the cutout lyrics. Every bedroom is kind of themed around these songs. And then speaking of the sort of practical stuff in the listing, they have a shot of their cabinet where they have just a row of champagne glasses, a row of, like, margarita glasses, a row of normal glasses. But just to show that when we say that we can sleep 12 people, and you can all kind of enjoy a glass of champagne here before you hit the town crawling. We have it all. You don't just say that. We do. We really do. And that's one of the things about committing that I kind of wanted to circle back to, to not just with the color palette or the theme or whatever you're into. Turn it into a Spice Girl thing. Like, just pick something. Then one of the things is that, you know, really thinking about it coming back to the guest perspective, like, okay, if I stay, my place is going to sleep eight people. Does it really? Or are you just kind of cramming sofa beds into every corner to the point where it becomes uncomfortable? And when you say that you're going to sleep, say, 10 to 12 people, your house, you. You figured out a way. You found a way. You gotta have cutlery for all those people. You gotta have plates, you gotta have glasses. And you. Maybe you wanna give them the wine glasses, too. And you have to have them for every person. And this is a note that I recently had to give to a host where I didn't think I have to tell them, remind them that you are saying that 12 people can come here and hang out and kind of have a bachelor's thing. It wasn't this place, but a different place. But you don't have enough, you know, wine glasses for everyone. You gotta have breakfast glasses for everyone. And if you're gonna have 12 people in a place where you have a pool, 12 people have to be able to hang around the pool, too. And they only had four sun chairs. So I'm like, this is not the point where you want to get stingy. If you've chosen this path, you have to commit to it. And that's kind of one of those practical things, because then what that does is it makes sure that you get really nice reviews, because, of course, that's important for SEO and all those things. So you want to make sure that what you're promising, what they're expecting to see there, is matched at the other end. And sometimes that is a very practical thing. And that's a part of sort of the floor plan and not bouncing around in the sequence to make sure that people can follow where everybody are going to sleep. You don't necessarily want to have your baby or your grandma right on the other side of the pinball machine, but you want to be able to make sure that you understand, well, this family can sleep next to the game room, but my parents cannot, you know, so that, that becomes a part of it. So it's kind of a dance between the fun experience stuff and the drinks and the views and the very practical communication and figuring out like, how does the space actually work again, where are you in space? Doesn't make me want to go there 100%.
- [33:19]
Host
And so I think we understand obviously the reasons really why we need to be all. Considering our photos and the kind of journey and the emotiveness without given away the secret sauce, what are some of the things that the audience can do which are either I say quick wins. I mean there's anything that's worth doing is worth putting some effort in, but what are the things that, that people can do to really move the needle forward for them? And of course, I know there is a course which you guys do, which we'll talk about in a moment. But without giving away the secret sauce, what is, what is a couple of tips.
- [33:56]
Brian
Well, first I'm going to say we give away the secret sauce. We tried to decide whether there was stuff that we should be holding back. And we've kind of gone all in on telling everything for a couple of reasons. One, because there's a certain kind of person that is going to just suck that up and use it and that's great. And that doesn't cost us anything. We got plenty of business. But it also ends up being a way of generating business because certain people are going to hear it and say that makes a lot of sense. But I don't have the time or the inclination to do that. So how much would it be for you guys to do it? So it kind of, you know, I'll expose our ulterior motive as well. But, but we really do want everybody to be able to benefit one, one way or another. I mean, I'll rattle off a couple of them and we've got probably 10 or more. So Katie will fill in some gaps. Color is a big one because if you, and this comes back to you, even if you don't stay at short term rentals yourself currently, you should pretend like you're going to like go and pick a town and pretend you're going to go to Denver for a weekend or something like that and say, how many guests are we going to have? How many bedrooms do we need? What part of town do we want to be on? And look at what your options are and look at how good is the competition you know, do they all blend together? Fortunately for us, like, to this day, still, there's a lot of listings that are kind of average. You know, they're not bad, but they're average. Right. So they're not standing out from each other. There's a lot of neutrals, and I don't know if that's because of Williams and Sonoma and a pottery bar and all. They're all grays and tans and browns and doesn't mean that those are bad things to have in your house. But you're back to square one when you're next to 50 other people who went to those same shops. Right. So we like to strategically use color to grab kind of the lizard brain part of people when they're seeing something just to get them in the door. Right. So that's one for sure. We talked a little bit about research. The kind of research you can do is your own listings. If you don't have a lot of listings, you can look up the reviews of your competition. What kind of people are coming to stay with them and what are they saying they enjoyed. Maybe you can take on some of that stuff. Maybe you have some stuff that your competition doesn't. What else? Katie, fill me in for a minute. I'm going to come back with a couple more.
- [36:08]
Katie
Well, that's actually really important it work, but we really mean it. You got to look at the competition. So if you don't have a place yet, like Brian said, pick a place that's similar. Like, you know, you're going to rent out your townhouse and it's about this big. Then find townhouses that are about this big, that big, with similar amenities. See what people are saying, like, we enjoyed the vast WI Fi. We love that you could walk everywhere, you know, whatever that is. Surprisingly quiet and being like, wow, those things that I can apply. Do I have those things? And then promote them, put them at the top. And what that means in practice, no matter where you are on booking.com on Airbnb, is that you want to think about the first paragraph in the copy is that that's kind of the overview of your place instead of just going into this is so unfollow. Maybe bedroom and bath and all the kind of more boring stuff. Give us an overview of why we should go there. And they used to say, like, you know, where we have to write in school, and I feel like I lost everybody there. But you have to have that first paragraph explaining what your essay is going to be about. It is kind of the Same thing. Same thing with the first couple of photos. I talked a lot about not bouncing around, but this is the exception that you guys maybe know. If you've ever come across us and you see a bunch of listings, the first about five photos should actually be an overview of what you're going to offer and then you launch into the tour. So something that everybody can do right now without having to reshoot anything or buy anything is look at your sequence and you want to make sure that you have your top amenities, your absolute best stuff right at the top. And don't think that, oh, I want to have my pool be a secret or my rooftop terrace be a secret. They'll find out in photo number 38. No, no. We did a really painful experience with one of our other partners where they were in a room and we made this whole group of, of, you know, kind of professionals, people who, you know, do this as for a living, do an Airbnb search like brands that they had to pick a very, like a real group in their head that they were going to book a real trip. And we, and we said, look, we're going to make you do it like up until we put down your credit card, you have to pick something. And it was not fun. You get, you get the pressure and the stress and you feel like, I'm in charge of booking this place. I want to deliver a good experience and you know, gotta be good for my sister and her frickin family. And then my parents are gonna come, then my brother is gonna, you know, the real pressure of delivering. Or just your group, if you want to go bar hopping with your friends and you're looking for the beer and the dart, but you feel like you're going to be the person they're going to turn to when the bed is a little squeaky, like, oh, you know, Katie booked this place and this thing doesn't work so you want to deliver something good. And one of the things that came up is that if the listing didn't immediately grab people at the top as they were kind of scrolling through the photos, they would just skip to the next one. We're all looking for something that not to be prepped or like, I hope I find something very average that never happened. So best stuff right at the top with the photos and the copy and then go through the tour where you move through the room in order and you go a room at a time and then you kind of want to, you can jump into the best part of your house immediately if it's the Backyard. Just go through that first, and then, like, let's go back in. But then a floor at a time and a room at a time. And then you can kind of go out in concentric circles. Here's the yard, here's the neighborhood, and so on. But that's something you can look at right now to make sure that your sequence makes sense. Or look at other people and their listings and see what they're doing wrong and what they're doing right.
- [39:48]
Host
Got it. Got it. That's awesome.
- [39:50]
Brian
I came up with a couple of quick ones. So one of them Katie already talked about in terms of, like, wide, medium close, like, go. Go through some of the competition and you'll see that 80 to 90 or even 100% of the photos are just wide from the corner. Just the whole room. Just the whole room. Just the whole room. That gets boring even if you're changing rooms. Right. So just like, imagine watching a TV show if they locked in on the two people at the restaurant having a conversation and they didn't move the camera for three minutes.
- [40:19]
Host
Yeah.
- [40:20]
Brian
You would be like, what is wrong? Right. They're gonna zoom in on this person and then that person. Then show the tool and then show it from the outside, then from the back of the room. Every. That's changing, like, almost every second. And our brains are kind of conditioned for that type of variety. So we structure our sequences. So there's like, wide shot. It's not exactly like this, but wide shot, media, close up, maybe another close up from a different angle, then back to a medium shot, then a watch out. So it's always variety. You're staying interested. You want to scroll and see what comes next, and you know the angles and the time of days and all those things play into it. But even if you just took to the basics of not being repetitive in the same way that your competition is, it's going to stick in their brain a little bit more. They're going to remember your listing a little bit more, especially if it's using color in a smart way. I'll give you one for the description as well. So people seem to really, really like this one. It was originally based on what I call website 101, where every website, you know, whatever is most important, should go at the top. And the farther you have to scroll, the less it's going to get seen. Right. Well, the reviews on an Airbnb. I presume this is true on booking, too. I haven't been on it in a while, but I think they're all the reviews are not near the top, right? So you have to scroll through the pictures and the description and the calendar and the pricing. And so people are going to get to the reviews in most cases. But then, like an Airbnb, if there's. If there's 50 of them, then they have to click another button to see the whole thing, and then they got to scroll some more. Well, the best thing ever said about your place might have been three years ago. And only I guarantee less than 5% are ever scrolling down to the first review you ever got. But you can extract that best sentence out of that best review, where they say, you know, I wish I could come here every month. I love this place more than my own home. Or something like that. And you put that as a standalone with quotes and Debbie's name next to it. And you put that between some of your paragraphs in description. Not. You don't overdo it three to five times. And if you can make it relevant. You were just talking about the bedrooms, and then somebody said, you know, I got to get one of these mattresses because I sleep better here than I do at home, or something like that. That is. It's gold. Because more eyeballs are going to see it, because more people read the description than dive through all the reviews. And it's building trust in you as a narrator. So if you. If you wrote the description and you said, our beds are amazing, that's your. That could be propaganda. Like, that's just you because you're trying to make money. But if Deppie says, I could have never slept on a better mattress, then they're like, oh, this guy, he's a truth teller. Like, he's just telling it like it is. And they start believing everything that you say, as they should, because you're bringing receipts. Basically, people are backing you up on all the great things about your property.
- [42:54]
Host
Oh, definitely. And I think that's just so important. And you've also mentioned something there which. To get information in that people can't necessarily see. So, you know, like, if there's a shower and it looks awesome, then in the. You always have the caption underneath that you can. That you can fill in. And just to have, hey, you know, high pressure shower, you know, like just something which gives people that information. Like you just mentioned there, like, super comfy mattresses. And if it's said by someone else, it gives it so much more validity than if you just say, we do have great mattresses. Well, everyone says that. Right? You know, and they got them from like the cheapest possible place around the corner at the local. Right, yeah, but exactly. And it does make a difference. I mean, genuinely, I've invested in really high quality mattresses for my most recent places. And you do get so many more satisfied people from, from just saying, hey, super comfy. And it's super important thing. So. But you can't see that necessarily on the pictures. So then captions are just so important.
- [43:52]
Katie
That's right. And then use your own experience when you sit at a hotel. I mean, a couple of the things that we always kind of assume are going to be terrible on vacation is going to be the way you're going to sleep and probably showers. Right. You're always worried about like just getting a good night's sleep and then, you know, water pressure or things like that. Then of course there's things like delivering a good experience to the kids, but really kind of thinking about like who's going to stay here and what are they worried about. And if you're, if you're not sure, just think about yourself. Go from your own experience. That's one of the drills that we have you do in our course too. And then writing is really hard for people. Like, Brian is a natural writer, which is really upsetting because for the rest of us it's a struggle. But if you can think of anything you say about your place, which may sound weird, is then something you can and should do is just do a voice recording to some in a room or just talk to yourself. Like, why do you like your own rental? What do you like about it? Even if it's even better if you're in and you can kind of almost get a sensory experience, like you can hear the city, but you can turn it into positive because some people like that. I remember staying in a place in Nice where you could hear everything and the locals would complain. Like, oh, you hear the trash can at 5am and the drunkers go home at 2. And I thought this is amazing. You could hear the wine glasses. And I just like, I thought that was the coolest thing. I'm on vacation, so just kind of describing your place. Here's what I like about it in a voice note. Because talking like this, like the way, we're just kind of rambling on because these films come to us and you're excited. Doing the voice recording is way easier than just typing something. You're looking at your empty description thing and you're just like, oh, what is it? There's bedrooms, there's a door. What do I say? Just talk into a voice memo and just kind of listen to it. And you can prompt yourself with a couple of questions like why did you invest in this? What do you like about the property? How did it make you feel to stay there? What's, what's you know, especially nice about it or what's something convenient about it? And then you can, it kind of the description will write itself and you can write in the first person. You can say, hey, I'm Katie, I bought this condo for, you know, whatever purpose and I'm renting it out. And here's what I really love about it. You can put a personal touch to it. And we think that it actually makes people treat your place a little bit better when you remind them, hey, there's a human being behind here operating this. Even if you're running a professional BNB company, you still remind like we have real people who come and clean the place and make sure you're okay and handle your check ins and all that. So you're kind of creating this connection that makes people sort of appreciate the experience and appreciate your place, treat it better and kind of approach you as a human as opposed to just yell complaints into an empty void.
- [46:42]
Host
I know what you mean. And it's clear that you guys, I mean you shared so many tips just there and it's really clear that the expertise that you guys can share and that when you look at listings you'd be able to assess and I know that's one of the services you'd be able to assess and give advice and that side of things. But I think now is a great time. You mentioned your course. How can we go and find out more information about your services? Where do we look and how can we sign up for that course?
- [47:10]
Katie
So the easiest way is to go to our website. I think that's it, right? I mean I'd love to say we have such an overcrowded social media, but we don't. The nice thing is it's because we're so busy, but it just crickets out there. But overlook to overbook.com just their website is a great place to either sign up for an assessment, a listing review or just jump straight to the photo course if you want to learn it yourself. And I do want to say that we have like a 2.0 version of the course coming out that's just a bit more because we don't talk that much about the themes and like you know, all the staging part of it because the first part of the photo of course like just to get a base. And it does do everything from like thinking about your brand to take the photos to editing and putting the listing up. But this is more about kind of having done more of the experience and the scene stuff for the last couple years. And so we're just kind of changing the structure and adding more of that stuff into it. Like, how do you do it? Why do I pick this stuff and how do I make it look cool? So that's coming. And then I do want to say that the assessment is very low pressure, like Brown and say we are kind of data driven. So Brian will try to tell you because what will happen is that you'll sign up for an assessment and you'll try to book a time and we can kind of go over your results. But it's not like pressure sales call where you have to commit on the call or something terrible will happen to you. Sometimes we'll tell people, like, look, you're fine, just change this, change that. We don't hold anything of a secret. Like if you pay extra, you'll find out which photo did we like do that? And some people are just, you know, like, you're good.
- [48:46]
Host
But it's super helpful to know for people that it's easy to access and easy to, you know, to find the course and to get just genuine good help. And this is why we started at Boostly, the hospitality community, which is a Facebook group where people can come and ask questions. Free group and that side of things. And yeah, any kind of services that help hosts in general is great by us. So. Anything to add, Brian?
- [49:12]
Brian
Yeah, I just think, you know, I think most people, if they think for a moment they, they'll know which bucket they fit into. Because there are people who are like, I just want to do it. I'm all about this, I want to get good at this. Those are course people. Right. And. And we'll probably put it in a separate link that could take up straight to the course. They don't even have to go through our website for that part. And, and then kind of combined with what we were talking about before about the, the financials of it, it's like the more money you're potentially losing out on by having a bad listing, either because you're got stiff competition or some other factor that is really holding you down and you could be making a lot more money that justifies a higher investment. And so if you're super busy or, you know, you're a surgeon or, you know, it's like, well, why would I be spending My time, you know, redoing my listing when I should be out there making money, you know, doing surgeries or something like that. So there's that aspect of it. But the, the assessment will give you a bunch of ideas that you could take off and do on your own. But it also leads naturally to just five or ten minutes at the end where I say look, if you want us to work with you, here's how that would work. If you want us to do it for you, here's how that would work. And obviously those cost more than the DIY version. So we basically try to cover everybody and you'll be able if you're in the second bucket and like Katie said at the end I'll just throw those ideas out there and you'll come back to us if you want to hire us and that's fine.
- [50:34]
Host
That's super cool and thank you so much to you both for spending this time. I know Katie, you're in Finland and super late as we record this so thank you. And Brian, I think you're in the U.S. you're in, are you in east coast, west coast? Yeah.
- [50:46]
Brian
So normally I'm in California but right now I'm at an on site in North Carolina. So I'm in Asheville at a really lovely place and I've never been to Asheville so it's, it's quite an eye opening experience to see what a vacation in Asheville is like. It's been fantastic.
- [50:59]
Host
You must get to see some sites. So just final question, just to light hearted to bring it to a close. Where's your favorite place you visited for either vacation or for work?
- [51:08]
Katie
Oh, you go New Zealand. Hands down best place in the world when the apocalypse comes. This is my joke. I'm going to New Zealand.
- [51:16]
Host
Go to New Zealand. I love it. I've never been but I've had everyone who goes there say are huge fans. I mean there's. The scenery isn't meant to be amazing. What about yourself?
- [51:24]
Brian
You know she kind of stole my answer but my second choice would be nice. I really love that town. I'm a San Diego guy and nice is kind of like you know, the San Diego of France. We were there for a good while at one time and it was fantastic and I would love.
- [51:41]
Host
So hey any hosts out there in New Zealand or in Nice then contact Brian and Katie if you've got some good deals. Yeah, hey you know we have an.
- [51:49]
Katie
On site service too where our team will fly in and do everything for you.
- [51:54]
Host
Very nice.
- [51:55]
Brian
Do you want to Cover the specials that we created just for the boostie group.
- [52:01]
Katie
Yeah, that's up to you if you want to do it now.
- [52:03]
Host
Yeah, yeah, let's. So for our audience, we'd love to hear the special offer. Go ahead.
- [52:09]
Brian
So I'll say it in dollars and you can convert it to pounds if you need to, or euros. So we normally do the assessment at 197. It involves at least an hour or two of our research beforehand and then an hour of me presenting it to you in a zoom call that is recorded so you can watch it again or show it to anybody else. And so we're doing that at half. Half price. So that'll be like 98, 50 or something like that.
- [52:33]
Host
Wow.
- [52:33]
Brian
And then I know, because you guys are boosting, some of you are going to want to run to us with your website as opposed to your listing. That's okay. But I'm going to give you a caveat. Like, I want you to think about this from the standpoint of where is most of your money coming from? Where's most of your traffic coming from? You might love your website and really want to tinker with it, but if that's only getting a small fraction currently of your business, I would say optimize your airbnb or your booking.com or your VRBO listing. That's just my two cents on that. And then for those who would like to just dive straight into the course because they know that that's the bucket that they're in, that is normally 497, and we're taking off like 30% from that, so 150 off. So it'll be 347 or something like that instead of 497.
- [53:23]
Host
Nice. Well, thank you so much for. For that. And would people just go straight over to the website for that, or do they.
- [53:30]
Katie
You can go. Yep, you can go straight over to your website. We have a special coupon that you can just apply official code and you'll get those discounts.
- [53:38]
Host
Awesome. And the code will be in the show notes, I take it?
- [53:42]
Brian
Yeah.
- [53:43]
Host
Awesome. That's superb. Thank you so much.
- [53:45]
Katie
Yeah. I can tell you right now.
- [53:47]
Host
Yeah, yeah.
- [53:48]
Katie
Yes.
- [53:49]
Host
Yeah. By all means, feel free to tell us just for those on audio they save.
- [53:53]
Brian
Yeah, yeah.
- [53:53]
Host
They're driving along. What's the promo code?
- [53:56]
Katie
Yes, it's just boostly 24. So. Boostly 24.
- [54:01]
Host
Got it. Got it. So thank you so much to you both for spending your time with us on this. I've certainly learned a lot and it's Been fun to I say catch up as if I was here last time. That was Mark interviewing you last time. But it's just great to have you both on the podcast. And I advise everybody listening to this, if there's any sort of listings and you want some advice, go and check it out, go to the website. The website's in the show notes. But if you just want that again, it is overlooked to overbooked. And if you just put that into.
- [54:31]
Brian
Google, it's the number two not to in the middle.
- [54:34]
Host
Ah, yes, good point for this numerical too. And yeah, you'll come up high on.
- [54:39]
Brian
Google if you do end up signing up for an assessment and you don't see a time that's convenient for you. I'm Brian B R I A N atoverlook tooverbook.com. katie is K A T I at Overlook. And we often have relatively sparse options on the calendar because we only book so far in advance because we'd never know where I'm going to be and you know, which weeks I can take a lot and which ones I can't. But we. But usually I can. I can fit in more than will actually show up on the calendar. So if you say, hey, you know, these are all inconvenient for where I live in the world or something like that, I will find a time that works for you, no problem.
- [55:18]
Host
That's cool. And you know, the great thing is about that is because you actually walk in the walk as opposed to just, you know, you're out there doing this, which is. Which is cool. Which is, you know, why there's limited availability. It's like you say you're out and seeing these real places. So if you're listening to this on the podcast or watching this on YouTube and there's somebody else who can get value, please do share it with a friend or with a fellow host or in on your social media. This for this episode. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Katie. And we'll see you again on the Boostly podcast. Bye for now.
- [55:48]
Katie
Thank you. Yeah, we'd love to give you an update. Bye.
- [55:52]
Host
We'll see you again. Bye.