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- [00:00]
Mark Simpson
Welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training, and most importantly, the confidence to go out there and get yourselves direct bookings. We're doing something slightly different today and we've done this on a few previous episodes which were very popular. We even had some of the software providers reach out to us and say, hey, can you do this? And can you talk to somebody who's using our software? So what we're going to do today is we're going to talk about a particular property management system or channel manager, some people call them. The reason we're doing this is so you can really get to understand from, not us at Boostly, but from a host that actually uses this tool what they like about it, what other features they'd like to see in the future and the reasons they switch to it. And that gives you more information if you're considering switching now. Really important to say that we're partnered here at Boostly with many, many PMSs. There's not a single one that we recommend. What we always say is go and test them out. Or like this podcast does, listen to other people who's using it, see what you think and then if it sounds good, you can click the link and you can go and go and test it out. Many of these softwares give tests these days. So to help me with this, we've got an awesome host from the Boostly community. He's accountant as a friend. He's been on the podcast before. We've got Toby Dior and he is from Cajun Stays. So welcome along. Toby, thank you for joining me to do this today.
- [01:17]
Toby Dior
Thanks Glee. I'm glad to be here.
- [01:20]
Mark Simpson
So can you give an elevator pitch into yourself, Toby? What, where are you based? What kind of things do you do in hospitality and into your hospitality brand as well?
- [01:32]
Toby Dior
Yeah, so I'm in Lafayette, Louisiana and so the unique thing about hosting here is this is the center of everything that is what's called the Cajun culture. And most people go to New New New Orleans seeking that out and that's one of the biggest tourist cities in the world. Short term rental is huge here and I've been on the scene for 13 years as an Airbnb host. But I started a property management company within the first six months doing arbitrage and managing the neighbor's house next door within the first six months of of joining Airbnb as a host and then using it to travel. I also have a travel blog called the Cajun Traveler and I'M also a full time professor at the University of Louisiana. Sports psychology professor. Go Cajuns.
- [02:34]
Mark Simpson
Nice. So that is quite a mix of different things and especially I mean your travel blog is, is amazing. And we'll give a shout out to where people can find that at the end as when it comes down to your experience as a host. Like you say, you've got 13 years experience and I know you've used a few different software. So let's dive in. So how long have you been using UP Listing and what was the key factors that influenced your decision to choose this particular pms?
- [03:03]
Toby Dior
Yeah, so one of the things about Cajun Stays is that. Well, first of all, back 13 years ago the name of the company was Cajun Hostel. And so I was with at the one and the only Airbnb conference in Los Angeles several years ago. I've been with UP Listing for three years. But way back 10, 11 years ago I remember talking to the top software engineers about blocking a bunk bed. Whenever you somebody books the whole books of bunk bed it blocks the entire house or somebody. We have also on suite private rooms and shared bathrooms just like a hostel. We evolved into managing three houses like that and but at that time these engineers like looked around and like what are you talking about? And so this is what became a channel manager. And then fast forward to uplifting. We were using a different software for five years, a different pms. They got bought out by a larger company. When that happened, we started to have a lot of glitches. The customer service wasn't as good when we would have problems. I was attending VRMA pretty regularly and met this guy named John Ann. He owns a company called Techtape. Believe you know him. And I remember like talking to a lot of people. But I did a, I called him up and he really narrowed it down for me and I explained to him I had a boostly website that I used Price Labs even though we were at the time, you know, still looking at other pricing software. But I was pretty much get, you know, stuck with Price Lab, not stuck with Price Labs. I was pretty, I was pretty happy with Price Labs actually I was, I had the hostel thing where I still had the bunk beds in the private rooms that needed to be blocked out. I was traveling around the world and so your tech package is huge for someone who has a full time job but is also traveling and blogging and then running a short term rental management company. And so your PMS has to be working right and you can't afford to have double bookings and glitches and things like that. And so those boxes needed to be checked. The Boostly website, price labs. And then we had not used housekeeping software. We were about to join with one software and then we got the notification that Turno is free, which was formerly turnover. BNB is free if you're an uplisting member. And so that next nail in the coffin was. Was tapped and then finally for everyone else and then the pricing came out and we started talking about pricing at the end. And so with John, he and I narrowed it down to two. And then once I had that call, that final call with the owner of Turno, they were still pretty new three years ago. And he was like, you know, this is the price for the amount of listings you have. I don't remember what it was at the time. And you get turnover for free. And it was a done deal. And so we never look back after that.
- [06:36]
Mark Simpson
Nice, nice. And we're speaking to John Ann earlier on this week on the Boostly podcast or that may have been last week's episode as you listen to this on the, on the recording here. So you've moved from one PMS due to like, when these, when these get bought out, pmss get bought out, it can be quite difficult. So you chose to move because of glitches, tech difficulties, and you've moved across to uplifting because it works with, for exactly what you need with the hostel side of things. The. It's a great tech stack while you're traveling. And also it had some free. It had some bells and whistles with the free software, which allows you to look after your cleans and that side of things. So that's really cool. I know we've mentioned one, which is the feature that integrates really well with turnover, but what other features of uplisting do you find most beneficial for managing your properties? And can you talk us through some of the features, like either some of the menu layouts or the views, the analytics, whatever it is that really goes. Do you know what? I'm just happy with my pms.
- [07:43]
Toby Dior
Yeah. So as far as the calendar manager, when we first onboarded with uplifting, I was like, and most of it, you know, 90% of the time I've. I've always had two or three virtual assistants that do guest communications and they're looking at that screen nonstop. And I was like, I'm so used to my old people PMS and what the calendar looks like. And I was like, I don't know if I'm gonna get used to it and then it grew on me and then now I can't imagine I do demos every now and then because I'm, I'm just kind of, kind of a techno, like, not as much as, as, as John. He's an expert. But, you know, I like to do demos with other people and meet a lot of people, new people in the industry. And I'm like, I look at these other calendars and so it took me about six months to get used to the, to that calendar system. The locks was another issue. That was another box that I had to tick. I had four Schlage locks. So I have two apartments that I own. I'm sitting in the main house. It's got two locks on those doors. And at the time, the Schlage inco locks are $350. And we also had convinced the new properties and the older properties to switch from the old regular Schlage lock to this new encode. That was another box that had to be ticked. Uplisting uses a different app, but that app connects uplisting to Schlage home. And if you have Schlage encode app locks, sorry, then you don't have to worry about anything. If you do the original setup and the onboarding with uplifting, it automatically changes the codes. Our checkout time is at 11 o'clock. Check in is at 3. You set your automatic messages, it changes the code for you. It tells Schlage through this other app. I can't remember the name of the app now because I've only seen it once. Once you cook it up, you're done. You do that inside on the back end of uplifting and then you let it do its thing, it automatically changes the code. And so obviously there's a security benefit there. Knowing that the code is to be. The codes are being changed every time somebody checks out. I call them dumb locks. So these are smart locks. The encode that connect to the WI fi. I have dumb locks. The interior codes, doors, they're a different brand. I honestly don't know what brand they are. But Schlage does make some dumb locks as well. But so it, you know, we have to send a code that changes and then we have to send another code that doesn't change unless we manually change it, which we do every couple of months for security. But what's interesting about that is uplisting knows that I have a Dunlop and a smart lock and it knows that this one changes every time somebody checks out and this one stays the same. And that's all programmed on the back end, not only is it a security thing for the guest and for myself, it's also a time saver for having to go in and manually change codes and things like that.
- [11:18]
Mark Simpson
That's really cool. And especially what you're saying at the start when you first change these softwares. And something for everybody listening, keep in mind I call it the new phone syndrome. You know, when you go and you get a new phone for the first time, no matter how good the new phone's meant to be for the first like four weeks, six weeks, I'm like, I just don't know how to operate it, I'm not as quick on it. And then all of a sudden you just go, oh, this is this like second nature. I can now find my way around it and it happens every time I get a new phone. Unless, you know, unless you stick to very similar brands and stuff like that. But if you do swap brands of phones, it's exactly the same when you swap pms, isn't it? The layouts are different and there's a little bit like I'm just not sure. So it's really important for people to persevere and to keep testing it out and see ultimately it's like when you go and test drive a car, see if it's the one for you. The locks are really cool. The fact that you can easily connect to the locks, the fact that it can automate the codes. I didn't know it could do that. Changing of code. So this is why I love doing these kind of podcasts. I learn more and more about the softwares which we work and boostly work directly with. So that's very cool. Is there anything else features wise that you want to give a shout out about? One other thing I should just mention you mentioned that your needs were very different because obviously you do like hostel setup as well as, you know, homes and that sort of thing. So did you find it was adaptable as a software?
- [12:42]
Toby Dior
Yes. So again, going back to that conversation with John and in talking to people at conferences, at the SDR wealth conference, at the, at vrma, I was, you know, talking to these property management software sales reps, doing a lot of online stuff, meeting them face to face and demos and so yeah, that was the trick. So we had bunk beds in a dorm room, we had private rooms with and without bathrooms, we had studio apartments and we had three, four and five bedroom houses with swimming pools. Like we, you know, when I set up the boostie site they're like, you know, so what, what should be the feature of your company and your website. And I was like, Variety, that was easy. Like it's really, you know, the places are located, you know, where you go eat Cajun food and listen to Cajun music, which is not, you know, the city two hours down the road, which is an amazing city. And it's variety. And so the, the ability of uplifting to be able to have three schlage locks on one five bedroom house and then you know, a house where there's two locks but then there's three dumb locks inside. You know that, that's, that's versatility at its best. And so that, that was a no brainer for me and it was great to have other people to talk to. And I really never have thought in three years that you know, oh this happened or that happened. I knew we need to start looking for a new PMS because we've downscaled, we've got here with regulation. We went through Covid, we had some arbitrage projects, didn't work out. You know, I've, I've done it, I think I've seen it just about all of it. And so I've never really thought about moving. And the price has dropped our monthly fee based, you know, because we've actually downsized quite a bit since COVID and it's where I want to be. You know, it's not that I, I could have gone out and tried to find more properties but I'm focusing more on the travel blog. But the point is that uplifting was able to be able to be versatile enough and we never thought about changing because you know, they, their pricing is based off of individual properties. So like we're talking about going from 25 to 5, 4, 5 or 6 up to 7 or 8. Where I've seen other pricing strategies where it's like 0 to 5 or 0 to 10, here's your price and then 10 or more. And so again you people all, a lot of people tell you this, you know, these PMSs do a lot of the same things. But this checked the box for me.
- [15:46]
Mark Simpson
Yeah.
- [15:46]
Toby Dior
And so you know, and the fact that people with 30 or 40 properties, you know, you may want to go to, to one of these more expensive PMSs and they may have a lot, maybe even more bit bells and whistles, but you're gonna, you're gonna pay for it.
- [16:02]
Mark Simpson
Yeah, yeah. And that's really cool. I mean that's one of the things which often you see in these Facebook groups when somebody says hey, which PMS should I Go for, you'll get suggestions and sometimes some of those suggestions, it's like suggesting to somebody who's just passed their driving test, hey, go out and buy a Ferrari. Like, people don't tend to do that. So sometimes, you know, only price is a factor, isn't it? And with this, it's really good to hear that uplisting vary their price based on the number of units. But actually, like you say on some PMSs out there, unfortunately, that if you've got less than a certain number of units, it's still expensive just because really they're targeting the bigger, you know, the bigger companies over 10 or 15 properties and things like that. So it's nice to know that uplifting is a great choice no matter what size you're at. And ultimately that is very flexible around what you've described based on your need for the various locks, the various types of units and the variety that you've mentioned. This is all very cool. So let's flip that round now. What would be some of the features that you'd love to see that aren't currently on uplisting, but you'd love to see as additional features in the future on uplisting?
- [17:13]
Toby Dior
You know, and I was kind of expecting this question because, yeah, I, I really, I always have usually one VA and multiple virtual assistants or specifically in charge of, of uplifting or what, whatever the PMS is at the time. We've only used three different ones in 13 years. And I think more about the features that it has that we don't use. I, I, I, I just started training a new one yesterday and we were just going step by step and then it hit me. It was like, oh, wait, I have a podcast tomorrow with Liam. This is great experience. But there was, there's, there's other features in there that we don't use. And I'm going to give an example of one of them is there is a financial analytics feature and the reason we don't use it is because it wasn't there because we've been with uplifting for so long and we use Get Clearing, you know, and we like it and it's not expensive. And so I went back and I was like, wow, look, these are some statistics that, you know, clearing does a lot more than that, granted. But you know, we could be using these statistics and I didn't know this was here. And for that same reason, I specifically remember doing the owner statements on Excel spreadsheets for five years with bunk beds and how in multiple houses and then, you know, We. I tried to do it with uplifting when we first onboarded, and I don't remember specifically what it was, but it was something brand new for them. And it. And there was a question that I couldn't get answered. And I mean, I onboarded with up with clearing a few weeks later. But then I went back, you know, and started looking at it this past week and, you know, they fixed those issues. Obviously, it's been a couple of years, and so I don't know if it's a money saver or a time saver. We're still looking at maybe switching to the owner statements and keeping it all in one place, especially since we've been downsizing and we have less owners and less statements to send out. But I just want to make it a point that Out Listing does have that feature to, to provide you with owner statements. You do pay a little bit extra per month for each lock that you connect, but it's well worth it. It's six bucks per schlage lock. And then you have the option of allowing your owner to see their information only instead of logging in. And there's a small monthly fee for that. But some of our owners don't care. And some of our owners, like week one, they're like, hey, where can I see my calendar? And so you just add them on there. And so that's a really cool feature that we just started using as well. So, you know, and I mean, this is more of a clearing thing, but we've used at least two different bookkeepers that were recommended on the clearing site. And both of those people had used uplisting before.
- [20:40]
Mark Simpson
Oh, nice.
- [20:42]
Toby Dior
Another point I want to make is Turno Turner is free. And this one we've really dove deep into because for so many years I'd always heard that some of these other software programs were way too much. They were way too technical. That should just to have organize your cleaners. A lot of it your PMS can do. But Turno being free and the fact that it's, you know, they have a partnership with up listing. We pay our housekeepers by the hour and they clock in and clock out. So we were using another software program. We got rid of that. We were paying for another program to, to do our time tracking and payroll. And so you can clock in and clock out on turnoff and then it pays them 10 days later with a credit card. And I get flight miles for that.
- [21:39]
Mark Simpson
That's awesome. That's awesome. I mean, overall it sounds really positive. And I mean, just as like a Headline statement as we draw it to a close, what would you say having a good PMS in general has allowed you to do? Has it allowed you to travel more or has it allowed you to kind of relax and not sort of worry about some of the stuff as much as, you know, what is just having a PMS overall allowed you to. To do within your business?
- [22:08]
Toby Dior
Yeah, most of the questions I get a lot are about when, you know, at these conferences and things like that and on podcasts is, you know, because I've been using virtual assistants for more than 13 years and for three different hats that I wear. And so, you know, that being able to for a virtual assistant combined that marriage between having them and a pms, and particularly a PMS that is easy to use and that they don't have to keep coming back to me and asking me questions. And a lot of times I don't know the answer anyway because the previous virtual assistant and probably knows it better than me or uplifting does. And so that customer service combined with having a virtual assistant, you know, I remember, I don't know if it was in the Mastermind just the other day or one of one of the calls and somebody said, you know, I'm waiting to do this. I have two properties. I've done this and this and this. The last thing I'm waiting to do is hire a va. And my thing is, no, the first thing you should have done is get a pms. And. And the second thing is hire a va and then you learn it together if you've got your second property. And so I, you know, obviously I have, I'm wearing these different hats and I'm traveling a lot. And I was saying how, you know, I like the way my old calendar looked and it was a little bit weird at first with uplifting. And I do log in. It's. It sometimes it saves me time. So my apartment right upstairs, right above where I am right now, I have a backpack. And so there's a lot of blocking calendar dates for me. And we put, you know, far Toby and there's, you know, two weeks. And then I decide, you know, this weekend I'm going to fly to Mexico, you know, and so we unblock it. It usually gets booked in a couple of hours and. And then I'll either message my va, Hey, I decided to come back tomorrow. I'm flying in. So we'll block one of the apartments and sometimes I'll go in and do that because it, sometimes it's just as easy for me to go in and block one of the places for me. Sometimes I'll WhatsApp one of the vas and be like, hey, can you block the cabin for me for the next two weeks? I'm, I'm coming back home. And, and it's really easy to do. And so, you know, I think that for me is the number one advantage. Also we use a Boostly website, of course, and I think we were with Boostly about a year before we switched to Uplisting. So been with Boostly a While and Verbo booking.com and Airbnb. So that's another important thing to mention that Channel Manager is pretty powerful. We use the big four, you know, direct booking website and then Uplisting does build their own website. You. So it does have that feature in there. It's just that I was with Boostly before Uplifting so you know, my relationship with Bruce Lee is, you know, it's like I'm Bruce Lee for life and that I'm not gonna go and do an uplifting website. And, but, but, but the thing about it is, you know, like if, if someone's listening to this and they're not already with Boostly, that is another feature that Uplifting has. I can't speak to how, how good it is, how good the websites are, but I can see the advantage of, you know, if you're just starting out, you know, and you're, you're looking for a direct booking website, it is a feature that's there.
- [26:12]
Mark Simpson
That's cool. That's cool. And ultimately we always say this, even at Boostie, we say like, start with what you've got and then when you're ready to go to the next level, obviously you can come and have a chat with some of the team at Boostly and we can talk about how API connects and has the email systems and that side of things to direct message. But ultimately this is the cool thing about doing this kind of podcast because you've got first hand experience and you know, because you've got the confidence in the software, you've got the, it's adaptable and because it's at the right price, with the bonus of having Turno as the partnered software, then I can definitely see why Uplisting is such a win. And thank you so much for coming on here, Toby and covering some of the key facts and how you feel about uplisting. This is really useful. Hopefully this is useful for you who are listening to this podcast and you're thinking, well, maybe I'll go and try these guys out then. Obviously, this information will help you make that decision. Toby, if somebody's listening to this and they want to reach out to you, is there anywhere that they can come and reach out to you? And also I know you've got the link to Uplifting which will share however you're listening to this podcast or watching on the YouTube channel. There'll be a link below. If you're thinking about checking up out up listing, click that link and go and check it out and see what you think. But if people wanted to get in touch with you directly, Toby, how is best to come and find out more?
- [27:39]
Toby Dior
So as I mentioned in the beginning, you know, I have the travel blog. And so if you reach out to Cajun Stays, you'll probably end up talking to one of the customer service people. If you want to speak to me directly or email me directly. So Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and it's the Cajun Traveler. So the Cajun Traveler is the name of my travel blog. And so those social media channels are go directly to me. And so that's the best way to reach out to me is to reach out to one of the socials or email@tobyjantraveler.net and that's also the cajuntraveler.net is the, is the blog URL. So. And then. Yeah, and so I'll be adding that referral code. And that's another thing is once you join with Uplifting, you can immediately join. You don't have to be a big wig. You can immediately join their referral program. And it's, it's very nice. It's pretty robust compared to, I think it's like 30 or 40% off for the 12 months if you refer another host. And you don't have to be a longtime member to do that. So that's first. Yeah, that's good for someone wanting to join. And also, yeah, I'd love it if you, if you use the referral code for me as well.
- [29:10]
Mark Simpson
Well, thank you so much, Toby. And if Toby's helped you on this podcast, use the referral link, which will be somewhere below. And ultimately it's so easy to refer softwares which work well for us, aren't they? If they've helped us with our business, it's really easy to then then recommend them. So thanks again. I'm sure we'll have you back on the Boostly podcast to talk about the, the VAs, the hospitality stuff. I know we could really deep dive into that. But thanks again for coming on here. We'll see you all on the next one. Bye for now.