11 Countries in 6 Weeks: The Life of a Traveling Host

Hey, hey, everybody. Welcome to the Boosely Podcast. This is the podcast that gives you as the listener, the tools, the tactics, the trainings, and most importantly, the confidence so you can go out there and get more direct bookends. Today, we are shining the Boosely spotlight on somebody who's a good friend at Boosely, who's been on the show on the behind a host show before. And we're shining the spotlight on Amanda, the traveling realtor. She's Amanda Williams. She's awesome. She travels. She's got short-term rentals. She helps people. She coaches. And I'm really pleased to have her with us here today on Boosely. So welcome along, Amanda. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me back on the show. It's awesome to have you back. So there'll be some people who are tuning in for the first time. So can you introduce yourself, give us the elevator pitch, and whereabouts in the world, your short-term rentals are based? Sure. Yeah. So I'm on the end up, aka the Travel Realtor. I just hit 11 countries in the last six weeks. So that's pretty exciting. I own a short-term midterm rental business. Actually, we focus on midterm rentals back in Raleigh, North Carolina. And so we have close to 30 properties back there. I've been living in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico for the last three years. However, now I'm officially a nomad. And I am in Cabo right now, but I have decided to go the nomad route. And I really help other real estate agents. I'm a real estate agent, of course, with being the realtor. And I help other real estate agents start and scale their short-term midterm rental businesses as well, because I believe every agent needs to have multiple streams of income. I mean, there's lots of reds to that bow, isn't there, really? So let's just start off. You've just, you said 11 countries in how many weeks? 11 weeks? Six weeks. It's six weeks. Wow. Okay. So let's hear them. Whereabouts have you been? And why? Yes. So in March, I joined the Tony Robbins Platinum Partner Program. So there's only 400 people in the world that are part of his high-level program. So I'm doing 22 events with Tony Robbins this year. And we're doing events around the world. So the first event was in June, well, the first live event was in June. And so we did a trip to Africa. We had our adventure trip there. And we were doing all kinds of crazy stuff jumping off cliffs and right water rafting and helicopters and just all kinds amazing, of course, safaris. So we did that. I did five countries in Africa. I did four with the group. And then there was a few of us that went up to Kenya. And we did some stuff up in Kenya as well. And then from there, I hopped over to Gibraltar because I bought a condo on a ship that's going to sell around the world. And I went and met the designer for that. And some other the people who bought into that project as well. And then from there, I went over to Portugal. And I filmed some awesome racetrack properties over there that I think I'm going to end up buying one for vacation rentals. And then from there, I went to Tuscany filmed another villa there that's for sale. And that's a great opportunity for someone who may want to move to Tuscany and just live in one of the units and rent the other ones. And then from Tuscany, where did I go? I went to Rimini Beach, Italy. And then I went to the UK. And I did another Tony Robbins event in the UK. And one did and all that. And then up to Canada. And now I'm in Mexico again. Wow. I wish, you know what, I somebody offered me some really cheap tickets for the one in the UK. And I was just, I'm not too sure, you know, like, if I'd known you there, I would have 100% come along just because I knew it would be an amazing event. But sometimes you just need that little nudge to get you to go somewhere, don't you? So, you know, my guest was at the UPW UK event. Who was your guest? Jody Sterling, Hospital Bull Host. Nice. Nice. Jody. Jody is like, if anybody listening to this and don't know who Jody is, search hospitable hosts is an amazing book, which Jody's got loads and loads of short-term rental infusions and hosts from all over the world together in this book. And what was something which was just a kind of idea three years ago is now mega. And she is everywhere. She's the US, Australia, you know, sort of, so it's amazing. Yeah. Did it all go well? Was it great? The Tony Robbins, yeah. It was so good. It was so good. Actually, and a few of us from UPW UK ended up coming to Cabo because I was speaking at a short-term rental retreat here in Cabo the first week of August. So, yeah, I'm just like collecting people and they're just joining me in my travel. It's been awesome. I like that. I like that. Now, there's, there'll be several people I'll be saying, well, how do you run your business when you're when you're traveling? And I know we touched on this. If you haven't heard of Amanda Williams going search of going search of the previous podcast, we dive a lot into this. But just briefly, how do you manage the business while while doing all this awesome stuff? How does that work? Yeah. So I'm blessed to have a partner. We have a partner. We have a team. And so he really manages the business. He's the one that deals with the check-ins, check-outs, all of that. I do the marketing for it. And just so you know, we are 95% direct booking. We have our own website. And so we don't really do a lot of short-term. We are doing mostly midterm, 30, 60, 90 days. Our average client actually stays about three months because we're focused on relocation clients. So it's not a ton of work because you're not having to deal with those constant, you know, cleanings and check-ins and check out all the stuff that comes along with short-term rentals. You don't have to deal with that. Nice. And there'll be a lot of people listening to this because as we record this, we're sort of August time, but you know, winter autumn, the fall is looming. And we're we always like to have more certainty in that time when there's not so many bookings, depending on your market, obviously, as we are in the world when you're listening to this. But where do you get the midterm bookings from? Without obviously selling the secret sauce, where are some of the best places to be thinking about if you're a host? And you mentioned the marketing, which is what Bruce Lee absolutely loves, how you can market to not only get bookings, but direct bookings. So yeah, sharing information you can about that. Yeah. Yeah. I do a lot on social, in different social media groups, all of that. Facebook actually built something called Workplace. It's just like Facebook, except for it is for Bible estate firm. And so we have close to 90,000 agents in our firm. And so I run the midterm rental group and the Airbnb group within that company. And so I wouldn't say all of the agents know what I do, but a very large percentage of them know what I do. They know where my business is located. We've been very active with reaching out to local real estate firms, attorneys, mortgage brokers, all of that to get their referrals for people moving into the area as well. So our target audience is someone who's moving from, say, California into Rowling, North Carolina. And they don't want to sign a 12 month lease and move twice, right? And they also don't want to come into the area for a weekend or a week and buy a house when they really don't know the area yet. And so being able to come in and stay in a furnished rental, keep your stuff in storage, put it in a pod, do whatever you do. If it has a garage, we're like cool with them moving their stuff into the garage. And that gives them time to really get to know the area. And then they can start house shopping once they understand which area of Rowling they want to live in. Quick break from the podcast to let you know that the two Boosely books that we brought out, the book, direct playbook, and the book, direct blueprint are towards the top rated and the best selling in the hospitality category on Amazon. For just two pounds, you can grab both of those books right now. The foundations and the structures that you need to put in place is in the blueprint. And then for a 101 mark in tactics that is in the playbook. So go and grab a copy on Amazon. Now just type in book, direct playbook or the book, direct blueprint. And we'll see you on your side. Nice. So that gives them a chance to test the area. It gives your company a great long book in which do you still do mid-state cleans and stuff like that? Or do they take care of that side of things? Yeah, I mean, we offer it. Honestly, a lot of people don't accept it. They're just like, no, we'll keep it clean. The only thing is whenever they leave, we do have to do a deep clean. Yeah, that makes sense. They're not doing the baseboards, you know, they're not doing the deep points. They're just keeping it clean. That makes sense. And is there any worry? I mean, a lot of the time when I speak to people, I see Facebook posts about it all the time and on social media where they're like, should I, you know, should I take these people, you know, should I be taking deposits? Is there any way I can predict, protect against damage in that side of things or if they won't leave at the end of the state? Is there anything that you have like system procedures to prevent that sort of thing? Yeah. So even if someone comes into the area and they tell me they want to stay for what's to say three months, we actually do a 30 day contract because that is the regulation in my state is anything 30 days or less falls into short term rental law. Anything 31 days or more is a long term tenant, meaning I would have to go through the eviction process to get them out of my house. So we do 30 day contracts. So every 30 days, they're going to get a new contract assigned. We do say, hey, we're going to do a walkthrough. If you're keeping the property in good shape and your kids not coloring on my walls, then we'll renew with you. But if not, we're going to ask you to leave. That's great. And of course, depending on where our listeners are listening to this in the world, the laws, the regulations are all be slightly different. But ultimately, there's lots of ways you can take these mid-state bookings. I mean, there's nowhere in the world I've found, which you can't. And in some places, I know a friend of mine in San Francisco can only take over 30 day bookings at the moment. So, you know, this is a great way to market. And what I love about what you're doing there is you're actually knowing there's a market there before, you know, setting up the places. So you know, people are moving into the area and you actively. And I want to draw attention to that when actively reaching out to agents, to brokers and people like that. And that's the difference, isn't it? I know there's people who listen in and they go, oh, I don't know if I'd have the confidence to go in and say what I do or to ring them up and say what I do. And you know, that's the differences between successful businesses and not is you've got to be proactive, not reactive. It's just so important. Yeah. And you also have to understand that you are offering them something of value. So when their clients come into town, they don't know where to go. I mean, they're going to go stay in a, you know, an extended stay hotel, which is complete craft or a normal hotel with a bunch of kids, right? So that's not ideal for someone coming in. So if an agent has that access to you and your company and they're able to say, oh, yes, come into town, I have the perfect place for you to stay, come stay here. You know, we can take your time buying the house. That is so much more comforting to that buyer client coming into the area. And they're going to, they're going to respect you number one. And they're going to work with you. So it is a great value ad. So when you, when you, you was the host going in, don't feel like you're like trying to sell them on your business. You are literally offering them something that they desperately need. And the other great thing about midterm rentals, of course, is that a lot of times when people are doing short term, they're scrambling to get to a lot of bookings in one month. So more turnovers, more clean, you know, more, more pressure points of having sort stuff out and to, to be present, whereas for mid-stay rentals, if you've got three or four, you know, three month stays, well, actually, you know, you've got that unit covered for the year. You've got the income guaranteed. And you can soon build up more units and concentrate on that instead of having to worry about filling weekends, filling gaps and things like that. So I absolutely love the midterm rental strategy and some of which I've taken into my SDR business, just not going to let me. I've taken into my SDR business. So one of the things you mentioned, Amanda, was that you've got a partner who looks after the business side of things. And I know there's a lot of people on here who goes, well, how do I grow a team? How do I find people who will work with me? Can you share any of your experience around that and what advice you'd have for those people who want to either partner up with people or find good team members? Oh, man, we've been to the ringer. We've been to a lot of people. I think the most amount of people we've been through are our cleaners. We, I mean, we finally are, we worked the same cleaning lady now for us, been up out of here, which has been amazing because we were just rotating cleaners like crazy. They would come in, they would do three or four, maybe five good cleans, and then it just went to crap. So I think, you know, just, I wish I had a better answer for you, honestly, but I think it's just keep going through them until you find someone and you treat them good and they like you and you like them and you keep that relationship very good with them. And you have to check less than all of that with them. At least for cleaning, for everything else, I would say run personality profiles if you can, just to make sure that you guys are good to work together, especially if they're going to be partnering with you or like working on your projects, then you need to know, you know, how to speak to that person, how to get them motivated, how to how to make them want to treat your business the way that you treat your business. 100% and it's great advice. I mean, the personality tests is something which I I mentored somebody and he was really good and I was like, you know, I think I could work with this person more. And I get to do the wealth dynamics one, which is like you pay like $45 or something like that and you get the the test and we were polar opposites. And that was when I knew I would work well with that person because you don't want somebody who's just like you, you know, if both of you want to do the marketing, it's not going to work. If both of you want to do the operations, it's not going to work. You've got to find that synergy between the two, haven't you? And Amanda, you just reminded me, I had a flashback of when you were last on a show, you said something to me, which you really stuck with me, which was that your cleaners are your VIP, so your MVPs, your most valuable players and sadly at some stage, you probably will still have to sack them, you know, like you'll still have to get rid of them because no matter across the timeline, you know, there's going to be problems, they'll they'll go off and want to do other things as well. So at some stage, you know, that, you know, you need to constantly be bringing in people and looking at that side of your business, don't you know, which is cool. Yeah, I mean, I've even been thinking lately, like, do I just buy a cleaning company? Do I offer to buy their company, you know? That way you're set and you can you can manage all of that. If you're struggling on how to get direct bookings and overwhelmed on where to start, then I recommend you go and book in a call with Boosley and our team right now. We can walk you through exactly what we're offering, how we can help you and give you a portfolio of websites that we have worked with that are matching not only on niche, but could be in your location as well. Boosley has helped over 2,000 hospitality businesses all over the world, increased their direct bookings and if you are interested, then all you need to do is go to Boosley, b-o-o-s-t-l-i.co.uk or slash call and book in an appointment with one of our sales team. Well, sometimes, you know, I look at the businesses around short-term rental and I actually think are they making more money than the short-term rental? Sometimes you look at the cleaning, the linen hire, the maintenance, you know, all of these subsidiary businesses and hey, you know, if I had enough energy to do to look after all of that, I would love to have the control because I just give you such a, you know, such a foot up compared to everyone else wouldn't it? So one of the things that I always love to ask I'll get is you mentioned direct bookings, is it anything that you do that really helps to gain more direct bookings and any of the marketing that you like to do around branding or anything like that that really stands out that makes your company different and memorable for your guests? Yeah, I think the biggest thing for us is we have a really good relocation guide. So we'd run ads with that, we send that link to, you know, we did tons of marketing with that one link, which takes them to our website, which is where the relocation guide opt in is. So that's our data grab and so they'll put their information in, they get the free download and then that goes into our CRM system, which then they're going to get, you know, few emails, maybe a few phone calls and then it kind of goes from there. So I think that's the most important thing that drags traffic directly to our website. Nice, nice. And it's just so important isn't it? First of all, to have a website, which is, you know, working and on, on form, but you mentioned CRM as well. So there'll be some people listening to this, you don't know what CRM is. What, what CRM do you guys use if you're happy to share and what does it do for you? Yeah, so right now I'm using like a go high level platform. It's a software and what it does for us is it gives us our company number. So then we can send out our text, we have like text campaigns and stuff like that through the company number, which everything goes directly into the system. And it also allows us to be to do our email marketing campaign. We can see who's downloaded, who's downloaded the lead magnets, who's stored at our contact forms, just everything lives right there in that system. It can do a lot more than what we had it doing, but right now like we're just trying to keep it very simple because I've just hired a few new team members as well to run the CRM system. So that, but that's in general what it does. It's just a way to automate communication. Nice, nice, very nice. And one of the things which I'd love to find out more about your business is the the tech side of things that you use. Obviously you mentioned the CRM, but is there one piece of tech that you'd love, you know, that you absolutely go, well, without this we wouldn't be able to do what we do. And if so, you're happy to share what that is for the people listening. Gosh, I would say chat GPT. It's just amazing, isn't it? He's amazing. Yeah, I've been really getting into chat GPT lately. Yeah, I mean, that's been helping us write our blog articles. Just do so much, our social content, even our guide, you know, it helped us write our guide. It's helping us with all of that. So everything content wise, you literally can have chat GPT help you with all of that. Such a time saver, isn't it? I genuinely am starting to forget what I used to do before I just went on to chat GPT now, like, you know, it's just and the thing is, it's not not perfect when it's written, but it saves you so much time and then just a quick couple of edits and you're there on it. So it is amazing. So obviously today on the spotlight series we like to keep things fairly short. And I know there's some stuff that you want to share and that you can help the people listening on the boostly show with direct dynamics. They're looking to get started and stuff like that. So I'm going to throw it open and tell me about what you're doing to help other hosts at the moment. Yeah. So I'm about to roll out my newest course. It's a shorter course, but it's all about mental rentals focusing on relocation clients. So that's coming. I also have an AI course for host, how to use AI chat GPT to just exactly what we were just talking about, you know, have it do all of the things to save you all the time. So I have those two things coming very, very soon. That's cool. That's cool. And where can we go and find out more about yourself, follow you, and where can we we see all the all the things? Yeah, I'm very easy to find. I mean, Amanda, the traveling realtor, but if you do a made of the traveling realtor.com slash course or slash get your starter kit actually would probably be a good one. The starter kit we just wrote out is a it's a checklist. So everything you need per room, it's also an ebook that we wrote and it's a workbook. So if you are thinking maybe do I want to do short term mental rentals, do I want to buy them? Do I want to arbitrage them? Do I want to market them? Like what do I want to do? That workbook is going to help you figure that out because the way that I coach people is it's really about how much time do you have? How much money do you have? What did your network look like, you know, what industry are you in? So knowing all of that upfront is going to help you decide what's the best strategy for you? And that's what that workbook is all about. Nice. Well, I'm sure there's going to be lots of people who go across to that and go and check it out. It's amazing to catch up with you and just hear all these amazing things. I mean, certainly you weren't doing the Tony Robbins things before, which is huge. And I'm so excited about that. And obviously, like you say, just being around, you know, people in the industry and collecting these awesome people along the way. So I'm excited to see what happens next time we get to speak to end off. I'd love for you to share some advice for the people who are listening to this who aren't quite where you are at the moment, but are looking to either, you know, they may have got one unit or starting to get their first unit. What kind of gems of advice would you love to give them thinking about, you know, the start of your journey? What do you wish you knew at the start? Oh, man, so much. I would say, I mean, when it gets down to like technical stuff, I would say set up your business correctly from the beginning, because once you're in and you have a bunch of properties, it's so hard to go back and like backtrack and try to get like all the foundation done correctly. It's almost impossible. And so I would say, you know, find someone that you can really work with to set that up correctly and just know that, you know, life is, life is happening for you, not to you, right? So everything that happens along the way, find the good in that, ask yourself why that happened, and then learn from that. Don't count it as a, as a mistake, just learn from it and keep growing into that whatever vision is it is that you have. Nice wise words, very wise words. What's the plan for the rest of the evening where you are? Is it evening or is it day where you are your day? It's day. Yeah. Yeah. Just a, I got a few more calls, agents want to talk about joining EXT, which I'm a leader in. So I'm going to do that and then we're going to go have dinner and it's going to be great. I'm here for a little while longer and then I'm off to another 20 rabbins event and then I'm off to Australia for a month. Nice. Nice. Well, I hope you enjoy it. And thank you so much for spending your time, Amanda, with us sharing some more of your story, talking about the midterm rental, which is huge, especially at the moment. And then obviously sharing how people can come and find out more and get in touch, which is amazing. So thank you for joining us on the Boosely Spotlight. Thank you too, as you listen to this on the podcast or watching on YouTube. We know there's lots of places you can put your attention. I really thank you for putting it with Boosely. So that's bye for me and that's bye for Amanda. Thank you so much. Bye guys. Thank you. Bye for now.