Building treehouses and marketing with Sarah Orchard

EP#16 - Building treehouses and marketing with Sarah Orchard

[00:00:00] Jenn: Hello and welcome to the Direct Booking Success Podcast. Today I'm speaking with Sarah Orchard. Sarah, hello. Thank you for coming on. Can you tell, hi, can you tell everybody a bit about yourself?

[00:00:14] Sarah: Yes. My name's Sarah Orchard. I'm the creator of getting Fullybooked com., and also I am a host, so with my husband Adrian, we run the hudnalls hideout Treehouse.

[00:00:25] Jenn: brilliant, brilliant. So let's start. Let's begin with your background. Let's start with why marketing? Because I think you started in marketing before you went into sort of holiday rentals. Is that correct?

[00:00:37] Sarah: Oh, yes. I've been in marketing for 30 years, so I'm a bit of an old hand at it now. I went to college, and I discovered I hadn't wanted to be a marketer.

I went to university thinking I was going to be an accountant. Oh, I did, some accounting. I had to do a lot of that throughout the four years of my degree. And, I hated it. . Mm. That possibly wasn't the right choice for me. And then, I studied marketing in my second year, and I did a marketing placement where I went out and worked for a year, and I just thought this, I, I enjoyed this, this is what I want to do.

So I left uni and then started a sort of typical corporate career. For 16 years, I worked in the travel industry, so I worked for some great companies like Kii and Hog Robinson Business Travel. And I spent nine years at Avis Car Rental. I was looking after a lot of their partnerships with people like Virgin Atlantic and Eurostar and KLM and British Midland, Forte Hotels as they were at the time.

So, yes, very much a sort of traditional. A corporate career, in marketing, but, I left there in 2006. I decided I'd had enough of the corporate world and set up my own marketing consultancy and have been doing that ever since. Really? So that's like 15 years, working predominantly with tourism, hospitality, and other small businesses.

Helping them get to grips with their marketing and, you know, be more successful.

[00:01:59] Jenn: Yeah. And how did you get into holiday le Holiday rentals? How did that come out of the travel?

[00:02:06] Sarah: Yes. Well, it was interesting because my husband and I, before I left my sort of corporate career in 2004, we, we, I don’t know, we just suddenly had this moment of like wanting to go travelling.

We, both of us, hadn't done it when we were younger. We didn't have the money, and we sort of got into our careers and decided to go on an around-the-world trip. So in January 2004, we left and rented our house out. We left the UK for six and a half months, went off traveltravellingd the world, stayed in some fantastic backfantastic places, and spent three months in New Zealand.

Wow. We loved it, and we thought we were going to immigrate. We decided that we'd fallen in love with New Zealand so much that we would go and set up a backpackers. We thought we stayed in all these quirky places and thought, you know what? We could create an excellent experience for backpackers.

We love the country. Then we came back to the UK, and we thought about the fact that we might not see people. It's a long way away. So we sort of went back into, I went back to Avis and, and just picked up my career again and, and, but we had itchy feet and, while we were travelling, we stayed in our first treehouse, which was in Salt Spring Island, just off the coast of Vancouver.

Oh my

[00:03:17] Jenn: goodness. I know where that is.

[00:03:21] Sarah: The backpacking places were all quiet you, with lots of quirky cabins and exciting sites. And, of course, we didn't know about glamping at the time because it wasn't. But when our first free house experience was in Salt Spring Island and. So just sort of magical structures to stay in, bringing back that child in all of us.

And just something about being off the ground and up in the tree. Mm-hmm. . I have to say the tree house we built is slightly different from the one we stayed in. I would

[00:03:47] Jenn: I think so. And I was. I was back in Canada this summer in Vancouver, and I was on Gambia Island, which is a bit, but not too close to where Salt Spring is, but I went up into a tree house, not a, like a kid's tree house.

Yeah. And I haven't been in a tree house and, Oh goodness, since I was a kid. And yeah, there was a moment where I was like, Okay, I think I may have to live here. I'm not sure if I can get down that ladder. My brain, my adult brain was going, This is not a great idea, but I can imagine that tree houses these days when we are going to stay in them and sleep in them, they're much more luxurious than what we have in our minds from being a kid.

[00:04:28] Sarah: Exactly. And the robber, we stayed in it, you know, in salt Spring Island was quite essential. I had like a trap door on the floor, and you climbed up this little ladder, and it really was built correctly in a tree, and it was tiny, and the toilet wasn't up there. You had to get the ladder to go to the bathroom.

And actually what was funny was that there was a Turkey. That was the neighbour’s Turkey that was quite aggressive. So Adrian got down the ladder and went off to the little composting toilet, and he got stuck and trapped. Because Turkey wouldn't ladder to the treehouse. It was quite an eventful experience, but it did sort of stick in out, stick in our minds, and it was magical, and I think that's sparked our desire to believe we wanted to create something sort of different.

And we were then coming back to the UK I, like I said, itchy feet. I think we both realised that we'd made our corporate careers, we'd gone as far as we wanted to go, and we wanted to do something different. So we started looking for someone in the UK, and which took a long time to find the right area and eventually the right house for us to move to and build our sort of dream project.

[00:05:35] Jenn: So it was a, it was a search for the right property to build a treehouse of your own to, to rent out, but also to have a property on it for you to

[00:05:43] Sarah: live in. Exactly. And that was the challenge because also we didn't have a limitless budget. It was Right. Go up the house that was suitable and the land as well.

It's tricky to find a property that had the land. Suitable sort of woodlands that we could build the tree house in. which, and how

[00:06:02] Jenn: long did it take you to find it?

[00:06:05] Sarah: Well, we started looking probably in about 2006, seven when I sort of left, you know, the corporate world correctly. We decided that you know, we wanted to change of direction and we.

We looked at many different areas of the country, sort of dos it, and Wilshire, Devon, and Cornwell. And then, in 2014, we went on holiday to the Y Valley. My husband's a fisherman, and he said, I've always wanted to fish the Y., And I was a bit like, Where's that? And he was like, Well, it's where England meets Wales.

And I was like, Oh, over the seven bridge. Okay, I get where we're going. Because we came here in 2014 and fell in love with the area. I was brought up in Scotland, and it's pretty, you know, the grampy area of Scotland's, quite mountainous and there are lots of hills and like space, side and side, lots of river valleys.

It's beautiful, with lots of woodlands. And we came here, and I suddenly felt this reminded me of Scotland, and I just, Fell in, we fell in love with it, and we came back for a couple more holidays in 2015, and then we started house hunting. And it took us two and a half years to find the house. And we did 23; We saw 23 homes over ten trips.

So we were living in Surry at the time and doing quite long drives. I got three speeding tickets, I think. Oh, my goodness. And

[00:07:25] Jenn: so anybody who's, for anybody who's not in the UK, so the Y Valley. Where England meets Wales. So what would be your closest sort of city landmark?

[00:07:36] Sarah: Bristol, Bristol and Bath. Sort of 23 miles away.

So they're sort of where we, So it's just north of Bristol, and you cross the seventh bridge heading board, sort of Cardiff. In the South of Wales and the Y Valley, Gloucestershire is an exciting county because it's Gloucestershire, so it's still in England, but the Seven River splits it.

Seven sorts come up from Bristol and go up towards Gloucester. Mm-hmm. You have half of Gloucestershire on one side, mainly the Cotswolds, which people will have heard of. And the other side, you've got the rest of Glosser shirt, which includes the Forester Dean. And then it butts up to the Shire in the south of Wales.

So it's an exciting area from a sort of, you know, geography and a culture point of view as well, in terms of different, you know, you've got the Welsh and the English and the Cowells and, and the forest of being. It's all quite different, Different areas. Yeah.

[00:08:28] Jenn: Well, it sounds like an idyllic spot.

It does. Sounds lovely. And it's not an area I know very well in the UK. And you had a bit of help finding it, didn't

[00:08:39] Sarah: you? We did. We were getting a bit desperate, and it got to the July of 2016, and we've been looking for a good couple of years. Adrian, my husband was on a business trip, and he was away and

I was talking to a girlfriend who lived in Gloucestershire, and I said, You know, we can't find anywhere.

We think we're going to sort of give up for the moment. And she was like, Well, why don't you apply to the BBC TV show, Escape to the Country? And I said, Well, Adrian will kill me if you know he's not. I've talked to him about it, and he's not up for that. Well, we won't. He doesn't want to be on television. And she said, Well, he's not here at the moment.

So why didn't you fill in the application form? And it was the bank holiday in August of 2016. And I thought I'll just send the application, and they won't be interested in us. I sent it in, and I got a phone call four days later. Wow.

[00:09:34] Jenn: So they were waiting quick.

And they said, We'd like to have you on the show. And I was like, Okay, now I need to tell Adrian. Yeah. So that was an exciting conversation. Not repeatable. He, wasn't very impressed to start with, with the idea. And we were both very nervous when we did the first set of filming. So they came back to us within a week and said, Right, we're going to come to your house and film with you.

[00:09:54] Sarah: So we had no time to sort of, Process it or think about it, they, or get out of it

[00:10:00] Jenn: or get out.

[00:10:02] Sarah: Well, for me, me to listen to my husband's pleas of, I don't want to be on the television. I'm sort of shy. I won’t be on the table. Yeah. So we filmed at our house, then two weeks later we came for four days down to the Y Valley, and did the filming for the show.

And yeah, we, we found, we saw four houses. And house number three has a fantastic spot on the top of a hill. And funny enough, I had actually seen some details about the house, but I hadn't; we were a bit tired of coming back and didn't have anything else to see. And I thought it didn’t, the house doesn't look great and the land sounds quite good, but there are no pictures of it.

[00:10:41] Sarah: Mm. I think I can face two trips to come and see just one. We’d sort of put it to one side, and we were coming back in October, and we thought, Well, if it's still there in October, we'll go and see it, but if it's not, it's not. They showed us this house. And we both actually parked at the top of the drive, and they do their sort of setup before we calm down, and they lead you down completely blind.

You haven't seen the property, you know, in mm-hmm. , They don't tell you where you're going. And we stood at the top of the drive, and we both looked down the valley at the view; and Adrian said to me, We're buying this house regardless. This view is. Out of this world, we can change the house, but this is an absolutely fantastic location.

So we walked into the house, and both loved the feel of it, saw the land, and knew the ground was perfect for what we had in mind. Even a little spot that looked like the tree house could nestle there brilliantly. So we put an opera in before we finished filming the show.

And

[00:11:43] Jenn: that's an escape to the country. Probably a success story, isn't it?

[00:11:48] Sarah: It is. And they've come back and filmed us a couple of times. They did an I escaped show where they sort of go back and visit people who've, you know, fulfilled there, and moved to the country and whatever their plans were.

Well, I

[00:12:02] Jenn told you before we started that I saw that episode, and I remember your face popping up, and I'm going, Is that? Is that Sarah? Or should the one that I know of, you know? Cause I don't, I didn't know you personally then. And yeah, and it's a show that has been on all over the world.

[00:12:20] Sarah: As indeed, yeah. We get lots of exciting emails from people in all corners of the world, including New Zealand, Australia, America, and Canada, saying we've seen the TV show and Googled you to know the weather. Because if they've seen the first show, they didn't know that we built the Treehouse, and they go onto Google.

Our friend Googled and, they searched for us, and then they found the website and sent us the message, which is just delightful. It's, it's lovely too. You know, the fact that they're, they're so pleased for us that we managed to, you know,

[00:12:50] Jenn: What does Adrian think now of you being on that show? Because it has become such a marketing magnet for you, but it also helped you find the place.

Is he glad that you put that

[00:13:03] Sarah: application in? Yes. I mean, I think that He wasn't keen at the time, but he realised that it gave us that push and made us focus on what we wanted. And interestingly, we stayed in a hotel and the bar, the night we arrived, there was a, there was a message on, someone had written like a, quote on, on the board and it said, sometimes step one step in the right direction is the most significant step of yours.

Tip them if you must, but take the step. And I read it, and I took a picture of it because I was like, This is just ki it, it's fate, you know; we are going to, we are going to find the house for us, you know, they're going to help us do that. And, yeah, we did. So, he doesn't regret it now. And the four days that we spent in the Y Valley, he enjoyed it.

We found it more arduous filming at our house, but the crew were great fun once we got down here. Laugh with them, and they put you at your ease. And Johnny Irwin, who was our presenter, was hilarious and kept us, kept present, paying for four days. So it was, it was a great experience. Yeah. What

[00:14:07] Jenn: would that be hilarious, however?

So you said, Oh yeah, Adrian's gone on to do his show and, but it doesn't sound like that's

[00:14:14] Sarah: happened. No, I don't think he's pretty much got that often on camera. He much prefers I think, speaking to people. He loves talking to the guests and the business, but he doesn't; he’s someone who doesn't like being on tv,

And so the

[00:14:28] Jenn: tree house, you created it yourself, you guys built it, and you opened, what was it, The end of 2019.

[00:14:36] Sarah: Well, we didn't build it, we build it ourselves. We had a team that helped us. Right? It took eight months, and five guys were working on it. It weighs 55 tons, so it was a significant engineering project.

Adrian and I might be good at a little bit of DIY. Yeah,

[00:14:49] Jenn: I didn't quite mean that you were physically nailing in the, you know, settling in the boards. But anyways, Yeah,

[00:14:56] Sarah: it's funny, Jen, but some people ask us and say, So you built this? And we're like, Oh, we wish. Talent. So yes, we were making all through sort of 2019 to the beginning of 2020.

So we finished the build in January, and we set our opening date for the 14th of February, perfect. For 2020. The world changed slightly. Yes. So we opened.

[00:15:23] Jenn: Yes. We all know what happened in the March of 2020. So yeah, a bit of a rocky start, but it sounds like you're fully booked, which is perfect because that's what you do.

[00:15:35] Sarah: Exactly. I finally got to market my glamping business, my own, you know, as a host and marketing it rather than doing it for other people. I love my job and marketing other people's properties and their GL sites, but it was realextraordinarybe able to, a bit nerve-wracking as well, if I'm honest, to work on your own.

It's sometimes more accessible when you profile this; you work on someone else's business. We're not emotionally attached to it. Yes, exactly. Successful. Yes, we're focused on what they want to achieve, but there isn't that emotion, and it's that emotion that can hold you back because of you. You're a little bit inhibited.

[00:16:12] Sarah: It took me about, I think it was about four weeks to sign off the branding right below when I'm doing it for someone else; I just kept going colours and is that quite right? And, and you just get tied up in it. And that's, I suppose that's what we bring when you work with clients is that. You are, are objective, and you're not so emotionally passionate.

But yeah, it was great to be able to, launch the hideout. And I know what to do because I've been doing this for 30 years, so at the time, it was sort like at least seven years. So I sort of know what I'm doing. But yeah, it's been, it's been great to be, to have that particular thing.

[00:16:46] Jenn: And I, I think I heard you say, somewhere read it, that you are booked a year in

[00:16:53] Sarah: advance. Yes, we've got over 2000 people on a waiting list, and we are currently sold, fully booked until January 2023. But we've only got six dates between now and next June, so it's roughly 12 months in advance.

And we've got people pampering and saying, When will you open the rest of 2023? We want a book for honeymoons, significant birthdays, and things like that. So, Great position to be in. And we've taken a hundred per cent of our direct bookings. So we’re not paid a penny in commission, which feels good because it's more profit in our pockets than through an agent.

We're an OTA. So can

[00:17:30] Jenn: Can you give us any tips or ideas of what you've done now? I know the place is fantastic, so that will have a draw, right? It’s not like it's a two bed cottage in the middle of a city. You know, it's got an interest that is unique and unforgettable.

But can you tell us anything, maybe give some tips on what you've done to be able to accomplish? Yeah,

[00:17:55] Sarah: I think, even if you have something that you think, I mean, we've all got competitors and interestingly people always go, Well, you've got a tree house. So it is easy. There are over a hundred tree houses in the UK now.

Are there, Yeah, there's not as many as like, you know, like the two little cottages you described, You know, there's a lot more of them, but there's, all of us had got competitors and, and I think when we started looking at building the treehouse,

when I did some research, online research, there were about 45.

Tree houses in the UK, and now there's a hundred over a hundred. So the, you know, there are always competitors. People always have a choice, and I firmly believe that you need to know what your experience is and who your ideal guests are. And I think where people sometimes go wrong is that you try and be all things for all people.

So you become, you're trying to be, you know, just your messages are pretty generic, and you try and be. Appeal to everyone. And even if you've got that little two-bedroom cottage, if you can niche down to a particular, you know, even if it's people with dogs that love walking and they, you know, or they, they are, they're foodies, or they want to go, maybe you've got like an antique trail in your, your little village or your town.

And you can niche in on those. And actually, You know, the branding, the language, the style of your, you know, your accommodation, your property will appeal to them. You can differentiate. And we, I spent much time, we worked hard on, on working on what we wanted our experience to be.

[00:19:21] Sarah: Like consistent decisions, as someone said to me, Well, just put a gas barbecue in. We were like, No, no. We want to connect people to the outdoors. We don't want them to cook with a gas barbecue. You know, you can do that at home. We don't want to put the bath inside. We want to put thtubth out on the deck because we want people to get rained on when sitting in the tub and have that sort of exhilarating experience that something is just not; you have a bath at home.

Yeah. Sit on a deck surrounded by birds and woodland or bats and stars at night and actually, you know, be immersed in that. Or sit around the campfire cooking with flames rather than, you know, your gas barbecue. And we tried to carry it all the way through in terms of, Mapping out what that guest experience would be like, and then what our brand sort of stands for.

And they are also knowing that we had to start marketing as soon as we broke ground. And I think that's the common thing I’m seeing now. The clients that I'm sort of working with and that I often notice that they come to me when they've some kind of finished the build or they've completed the renovation of their, of their holiday property, and they're like, Right now, I need to do marketing.

[00:20:26] Sarah: And we're opening in two. You're like, Okay, it's going to be quite challenging because you're trying to hit the ground running, and nobody knows about you. So I started as soon as we broke ground, and we knew it was going ahead. But I opened our social profiles, built an email list, and we had, at the point where we launched, we had 500 people on our email list.

It's that

[00:20:49] Jenn: anticipation, isn't it?

[00:20:50] Sarah: Yeah. I, I already had that little, little pot of people. Who had put their hands up and said, We like the look of what you're doing? We’re interested. Tell us more when you are open. Yeah. We took 50 bookings in 19 days from the moment we pressed go live on the booking system because we already had a social following.

We already had people on our list. So we had that pent-up demand to buy, and then it's just built from there. And then obviously we did a lot of launch PR and marketing as we sort of, once we were ready and able to with the pandemic. But, yeah, my biggest tip is to invest in two things: understanding your experience and what you offer your guests and how that differentiates.

From, you know, what else is out there and how you can differentiate it, and start as soon as you can with the marketing rather than leaving it to maybe two or three weeks before you. Press go live on your website. I think everyone feels like they have to have everything ready. You know, the website needs to be prepared and perfect.

The booking system also needs to be set up, and then they go; right now, I can press go. Yeah. About you. So it’s been a hard job to get those drag bookings in and, and not have to rely on, on a bigger. So marketing panels such as, or, and it.

[00:22:11] Jenn: it doesn't have to be a unique thing, like a treehouse.

I have a client who does actua a two-bed cottage in Norfolk, and they wanted to start, but they did not want to do any OTAs. I even said to them at the beginning that you might want to do some OTAs to use them almost like a lead generation acquisition. And then phase them out, and they're like, Nope, we just want to do it a hundred per cent direct.

I said, Okay, let's get marketing. So we started marketing while they were. Still, they'd bought the property. They weren't building it, but they were renovating it. Yeah. So we were selling through that. And the same thing is that they had a pot of people that when they were ready to open, they had gone through the experience with them.

They had seen the transformation that they have, they had created in this two-bed bungalow in Norfolk and then were able to say, Okay, now we're ready for bookings. Who wants to come and open the doors? And people were willing.

[00:23:13] Sarah: Exactly. And we did a little launch promotion. Because you’ve got to give someone an incentive to get on your list.

And this is the thing we, you know, I often see people join my newsletter, and it's like, well, no one's going to put their hand up. Yeah. At it. We all get too much news. So it's like you, we, we said we were going to do a launch. I didn't know what that launch offer was going to be. But I knew I would reward the people who had put their hands up and shown interest.

And I think we did; from memory, it seems a long time ago now, 20% off for the first, and it was midweek bookings for the first three months. Cause we knew they would be hard to shift because we were also opening in February. So it's like not the best time in the UK or knowing the UK and how much we love to talk about our unpredictable and generally damp weather.

I think the day we opened, it was Storm Dennis. So it was a bit of a, Oh my goodness, Yes, it was, it was a tricky sort of, first opening night, but, battling the elements. But, you know, then we had the pandemic as well. So it, you know, we knew those first three months were going to be a bit tricky.

[00:24:13] Sarah: So we knew we had to incentivise people. To, to, you know, to stay. And of course, then you get the refuses, and you get people sharing stuff on social, and then it just snowballs from there. Because then people are like, We must go and stay there. It looks, you know, as good as they say it.

[00:24:28] Jenn: Yeah. Well, they become your ambassadors, don't they?

They sort of, yeah. You are telling everyone about their stay. Now, if you're booked a year in advance, are you still marketing? Do you take your foot off the gas? What are you, what are you doing to drive bookings a year from now?

[00:24:47] Sarah: It's an excellent question, actually. It’s a bit like, you know, plumbers with leaky taps.

You know, I'm the worst person at doing my marketing because I'm, it's my day job. I have eased off a little bit because I think I also balance. You don't want to create demand, but you don't want to frustrate people. So we've got quite a big following, and we've got eight and over, eight and a half thousand people on Instagram.

If you keep posting, I generally post about two or three times a week. You’re also almost taunting them slightly because they can't stay with you for the moment. Mm-hmm. So widespread presence, and sort of kept our visibility. Cause also, you know, the way the algorithms work is an if you say a massive break; it’s much harder to, to get the visibility once you sort of re restart.

What we have done and how we've also grown our email list is my hthat usband is an absolute genius at this, so he handles many inquiries. When people contact us and say, we're looking to speak, we're like, Really, sorry, we're fully booked. But if you get on our email list, you'll be the first to hear, and we have any cancellations or new dates, I think.

What I've been cautious of, and I think another thing I see where people maybe go slightly wrong, is they will put everything out on social. If you put everything out on social media, people do not need to sign up for your email list. There's no incentive; there’s no like exclusivity, of being the first to hear.

So we stick, and I'm very strict about it. We generally think twice; I’ve put some dates on social that have been available when, like as a last resort, but all of. Cancellations or new dates go out via email. And we respect and honhonoure people who have put their names down. They are the ones that hear about it first.

And Adrian is brilliant at getting people to sign up for the list. Cause every time he gets an inquiry, he's like, I've jumped it into him. He's like, he's like, But if you get your name on our list, you'll be the first to hear. And that's how we've grown the list. there's a signup form on our website.

But he's proactively encouraging people. Mm-hmm. And selling it to them, but they they're going to, you know, get that benefit. But you just have to; you do have to be true to that. Yeah.

[00:26:52] Jenn: Well, why beyond the newsletter list? Is everything's going to be on social? I saw somebody the other day post their newsletter on Facebook.

Mm. And I'm like, Oh, you've just.

[00:27:04] Sarah: completely put yourself in the foot.

[00:27:06] Jenn: Yeah. You've run undone all the work you've just tried to do. You know, keep it exclusive, make it that v I P community, which are the first to hear about anything and talk to them regularly. Don’t let them sit there for six months and then pop an email.

[00:27:26] Sarah: Exactly, and I think that's the thing. We've all become very reliant on social media, and it's our sort of go-to platform or platforms. And we tend to put, you know, we just tend to put everything on there, so we don't give. People. And for me, my website and my email list and my marketing weapons more than social, because I know that social, you know, the reach now is so little compared to what it was.

If you go back five years and you need to do ads. So, you know, I use it as a sort of constant just to keep that presence. I don't anticipate that it's going to grow hugely. And also I think something to bear in mind. And this is a bit controversial, and a large number of followers on social is suitable for your ego.

It's not very good for booking sometimes, and that's all we've got to bear in mind. Particularly with Instagram, I find that you know, you can have 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 followers, which makes you feel great. Are, they doing a great job, but actually, when you analyze them, a lot of them can be in another country, and they'll never travel to your country to say.

It also can be many people who just love. Liking. Think about what we all do. We go on there; we see a beautiful picture, we see something that makes us smile. Or we see someone, you know, my husband always says, they describe the treehouse as dreamy. And he says, I hope that you know, they might be nostalgic, but they need to come and stay as well and spend money with us.

And that's true. You know, you can have many people for the vanity of having this huge following. But the people on your list have put their hands up and said that they're thinking of staying and that for me, having 2000 pounds, you know, 2000 people on my list is worth having a hundred thousand people on Instagram because I know that these people, you know, I only need to take 140 books a year, and with 2000 people on there.

Maths. It's like, actually, you know, if they all decided they wanted to stay, we could, we could just use our list for the next few years, and everything would be, you know, fine. That's not the case. Because you need to keep adding people, and not everyone will convert. But you know, we've successfully usually fill all of our cancellations and all of our new dates through predominantly, our list.

[00:29:33] Jenn: Well, I'm just nodding away here as you're talking cause Yeah, you're, you're talking, you're, you're speaking the truth. It is. And you know, on the other side, if Instagram or Facebook closed up shop tomorrow, your business would not be affected.

[00:29:48] Sarah: Yes. And yeah. Building your house on someone else's land is the expression that I often like.

Yes. Is because it's, you know, we, if they disappeared tomorrow or if they started charging and they have started charging mm-hmm. To to get surreptitiously behind the scenes. It's like, now our reach is so little, but most businesses. That you do need to advertise, so they are charging us by accessing our audiences on the platform.

And you know, as you say, if they close down tomorrow and platforms have disappeared, we, many people who've, you know, are pretty confidently saying, Well, I've got 5,000 people or 10,000 people on social media. And it's like, but I've only got a hundred people on my list. Mm-hmm. in a much weaker position to be able to continue, to operate.

[00:30:32] Jenn: Yes. Yeah, I'm just agreeing with you, just silently sitting here going, Yes, yes. And I hope your words are going into our listeners' heads because it's so important. It is. Especially when you're, looking on social media and you see people, with all the dates and the cancellations and the new, you know, it's just, Yeah, get you, get your community off of social media, and that will help you far more than a couple of more followers.

Hmm. So I'm going to end because this has been so amazing, but I have been asking everybody this question, and I would love to hear your answer. What does direct booking success

[00:31:16] Sarah: mean to you? Or Dan? That's an excellent question. . I think it means different things to different people. For, me, I always knew that we wanted to take a hundred per cent our bookings direct, but the reality is I've got the time and and the skills as a marketer to sort of do that.

And for some people, direct booking success might be, or booking success might be through, through an agent or an OTA because they haven't got the skills or the time to do it. But for me, it's building that capability in your business, that marketing capability, so tat you can take those bookings directly.

You know, investing in your website with a good booking engine, you know, like we said, having that email list. And it's getting whatever percentage of bookings you want to handle directly. Cause for some business owners and hosts, they won't want to have, they quite like having, using an OTA or an agent because they do some of the marketing and they do the admin and some of the work for you.

And some of the conversations I have with clients are around, Let's just be honest about, you know, how much time have you got to upskill and learn the marketing techniques, which anyone can understand. It's not some, you know, you don't have to have magical powers to be able to do it.

No. Sometimes I wish I did have a magical one but don't we all?

[00:32:31] Sarah: Yeah. Having that know-how and then having the time so that you can do it yourself. It is achievable for any holiday in the hospitality business. However, you’ve got to be realistic about do I have, the time and the desire to do it. Because the thing about being your boss, and first of us are running our own, you know, our businesses and small teams, is we are the.

Which is the best thing in the world, but it's also the worst thing in the world because no one is going to come after you. Suppose you don't do the marketing. You're not going to be like, When I worked in my corporate days, I had my boss talking to me if I didn't deliver against my objectives. But certainly, you know, you are motivated by going to the office and having to pay against a set of goals.

But when you run your own business, nobody comes after you if you don't put that social post. Yeah. Or you don't do that email campaign or let it drift for months because you’re not. Target. So I think for me, direct booking success is building that marketing capability and being able to do it yourself.

And it feels gratifying to be able to, you know, two fingers to the, to the, you know, the big boys and, and to be able to take the bookings and, and be successful as, as just, you know, we've got one property, you know, we're a small team. It's the husband and wife team that feels. But there's no shame in using an OTA or an agent of some description if you haven't got the time or the inclination.

And I think you just have to be honest with yourself as a business owner. Are you going to put the time in? And I believe anyone can achieve it, but you've got to connect to it to make it happen. And then it's within. Scope of being able to do it? Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.

[00:34:20] Jenn: So, some good points there. Excellent points there. So can you maybe tell everybody how you help and where they can find you?

[00:34:29] Sarah: Well, not surprisingly, I'm on social media,

[00:34:33] Jenn: I think you might have an email list,

[00:34:36] Sarah: I've got an email list, but both my businesses, so obviously they want to check out the tree house, and they need to look up the Hus Hideout.

And we are on Instagram and Facebook, and my marketing business is getting a complete hyphen book so that you can find me there. I also have a free Facebook group where you can hang out with me. Get visible and fully booked so you can come and hang out with me for free there. Yeah, and I run a marketing club, which I have members in and run every month, but there are full details about it on my website.

[00:35:07] Sarah: So yeah, I come and connect with me on Facebook and say hi and drop by my website. That'd be great.

[00:35:13] Jenn: Well, thank you so much, Sarah. We'll link to all of those on the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on today and talking to us, giving us tips on getting your property fully booked for a year in advance, and giving us a peek into how you created it. Thanks very much.

[00:35:33] Sarah: Thanks, Jenn

it's been great fun.