Building Trust and Relationships in Vacation Rentals with Jane Mack

45# Building Trust and Relationships in Vacation Rentals with Jane Mack

00:00:31 - Jenn Boyles Welcome to another episode of Direct Booking Success. Today I am with Jane Mack. She is a holiday let consultant and coach. Jane, lovely to see you today.

00:00:42 - Jane Mack Hello, Jenn. Thank you for having me. It's lovely to be here. Great.

00:00:46 - Jenn Boyles So, can we start by you telling us a bit about who you are and what you do?

00:00:51 - Jane Mack Yes, of course. So, as you said, I am a holiday let coach and consultant, so my background basically isn't obviously in holiday letting, which was my previous business. So back in 2010, my husband and I actually bought a property management company, so it was looking after holiday homes and that's all we were going to do. And then within two years, we brought in the advertising, the bookings, and we had a full blown agency like that.

00:01:20 - Jenn Boyles First up, we have to tell everyone where you are.

00:01:23 - Jane Mack Well, yes. So I am on the beautiful Isle of Aron, which is just off the west coast of Scotland. So Aron is pure tourism destination. Obviously it is with the tourism destination, high volume of holiday lets on the island. So it basically relies on tourism, basically all year ride to survive.

00:01:44 - Jenn Boyles And what possessed you and your husband to buy this management company?

00:01:49 - Jane Mack Yes, so we were in Glasgow, eastern Glasgow, originally living in Glasgow, and it was one of those things. I was on maternity leave and my previous job in HR was going to be a redundant. My husband hated his job, he always wanted to live in Aaron, and I was the city girl who would never leave because what would I do on an island? And this kind of it came out, we saw it advertised in the local paper because his family used to get the local paper sent to them and we saw it, joked about it for a while, oh, we should move and do that. And before we know it, I was across the water having a chat with the owner who was selling, finding out about it. Within about six months, we bought business and we were off. We'd moved and off we went with an 18 month old across to an island to lives and look after holiday homes.

00:02:31 - Jenn Boyles Oh, my goodness. It sounds like quite the adventure, especially with an 18 month old.

00:02:36 - Jane Mack Yes, it was a big adventure at a one point concern, because everyone, like our friends, kept saying to us, oh, you're very brave. Well, that's really brave. And I thought, oh, my God. What are we doing? Why is everyone telling me how brave I am all of a sudden? I wasn't scared of terrified, no, because apparently it's a brave thing to do. And I think, to be honest, it was a change in terms of jobs for us. I didn't want to go back to the whole community and every day to work and juggling a toddler and nurseries and into Glasgow. It just seemed like the right thing, the right time, let's go and do this. We went because we were just going to look after Haldi Hobbs. That was it.

00:03:15 - Jenn Boyles Okay, so tell us about the first few days of this business. It had been how long it had been established for?

00:03:23 - Jane Mack So the business had been there, it was a bit of a funny one. So the business had been there, I think since about four or five, and it actually grown. It was actually originally holiday netting, but the owner had ended up selling off all the netting side to another big company and just kept the management side on the island. And then she realized, actually, I don't want this now, I'll sell out as well. So that business that we bought had been just property management for about two years and that's since then, which meant there was then that gap on the market again for actually doing the nettings and the bookings as well. Okay. The first few days was crazy. I hadn't a clue what we were doing. It was a huge learning curve. I was like, I don't know any of these houses, I don't know where anything is, I have no idea. But let's just roll with that. And obviously the owners kept phoning because we were new owners of the company and the property owners wanted to get to know us. So actually, it was a good point. I just spent so much time speaking to these new owners about their properties and who we were and just started to learn the business, just start to learn.

00:04:25 - Jenn Boyles It's a real baptism by fire.

00:04:28 - Jane Mack Oh, 100%. 100%. Absolutely. I just had 18 months off from return to leave and bam, I was into running a business I knew nothing about, in a new place with a new house and a toddler in childcare. It was all just a bit mad, but we did it. We did it.

00:04:44 - Jenn Boyles Okay, so talk us through those first couple of years and then you decided to sort of expand the business.

00:04:50 - Jane Mack Yes. So what we noticed very quickly that our owners of the properties, who they were letting them see another agency not on the island, that was some of the agency that covered the whole of Scotland. And very quickly they were asking us, oh, I assume you'll do bookings again? And I thought, no, I'm not doing that. And they'd be asking, but you should do bookings. We want them back on the island. Oh, why would you do the bookings?

00:05:16 - Jenn Boyles Let me interrupt you there for a second. So the actual bookings were done by someone else. So you were dealing the management, the changeovers, dealing with guests once they come.

00:05:27 - Jane Mack Yes, okay, all that. And another company would take the bookings that advertise. They probably take the bookings, send us the bookings, only do the management side. I found out one case, we were actually turning away new potential owners because we had people coming in saying, oh, we want to use your management services. Where do you advertise? And I said, well, we don't advertise because we don't do the bookings. So we were losing potential customers. I thought, hold on here.

00:05:52 - Jenn Boyles Right?

00:05:52 - Jane Mack So I thought, there's a lot of people asking for it. People were not getting on board because we don't have it. So it really became a bit of a no brainer was, let's now do it. Let's open up and bring in the advertising and bring in the bookings. So literally, within the first two years, by two years down the line, we were a full blown netting agency offering my goodness service.

00:06:14 - Jenn Boyles So even more things on your plate, more and more.

00:06:19 - Jane Mack I think in the first sort of year or so, we really learned the management side really well, and I made sure we got to know it and how it worked, and how owners worked, and what guest expectations were and what they looked for. So we really got into it. So when we came to do the netting for the whole new learning thing, but we really grasped the first part of it. So it was a case of, now how do we advertise? How do we do the bookings? Now, what do we do booking systems? And that was a whole new ball game, but once again, we just went with it. I was a bit of a Libya seat of the pants at one stage. Just get a booking system, put it on the website, let's tell people we do bookings. Oh my god, I need houses. I got no houses for my website. Let's get some people on board in the houses and let's start doing it. And it went from there. We learned very quickly, very quickly on what we needed to do and what people expected. That was a big thing of it.

00:07:09 - Jenn Boyles So tell us the numbers of how many properties you had on the books when you bought it.

00:07:14 - Jane Mack So when we bought the business, there were 25 properties that we were managing, just managing. Then when we decided to let I started well, the advertising started with just five properties on the website. Three of the properties were owned by one person. I was like, please, can I put them on my website? Give me three properties, please, can I use your properties? And two of my owners who were quite happy to say, you know, I quite like you to do my bookings. I'm happy to give you my property straight away. So I started with five then, and then over time, I just started saying to my owners, this is what we're offering. I worked really closely with them, I think because we were so diligent about the management side, we got such good relationships with them and trust that they were quite happy to say, do you know what, I'll happily give you my bookings. You can take my priority for bookings. So, bet by bet, I pulled them over onto our website for bookings at the same time. The industry has been growing for years, hasn't it, in holiday letting, and there was obviously new properties coming into the market. So they were coming to us and said, oh, you're the local property agent there, can we use your services? So people were also coming also. It was just growing quite quickly. So before we knew it, I originally thought, let's have 1015 houses to let. That sounds like a nice number, keep it over. I like the sound of that. Because we didn't really know what we were doing to begin with. And obviously there was a few online independent people letting ten houses here and twelve houses there, all in our area. And I thought, well, they've been doing it for years, they're well established. If I can get ten or 15 houses, that's great. But before we knew we were at the ten and the 15, then we're at 2025 30, and then we hit 55 and I was like, oh dear God.

00:09:03 - Jenn Boyles Oh my goodness.

00:09:04 - Jane Mack Just took off. So we ended up, all my owners who had been with us from the beginning and they'd been with the other company, were all them with us. We have no connection to them in any way. Everyone had moved across, we had new people on, and so it was just us, just us with all our owners on our 55 houses. Yeah, it grew more than we ever expected, but nobody ever really knows what you're going to do, your business, do you? You'd have a plan, you don't know how it's going to happen, and sometimes you do, sometimes you don't. So, yeah, it went beyond what I expected it would do.

00:09:38 - Jenn Boyles And were you using any other means of getting bookings or was it just your website?

00:09:44 - Jane Mack Just the website, just our one we website, that was it. So we originally had just when we first started it, I obviously had a website talking about property management services and I just got off the shelf booking site, plugged it onto the website that did for a year or so, and then we got full new website with everything put into it, made it much better housekeepers because they could log into it. So we did all that eventually, but it was just our website, that's how we did the bookings through. We also had a brochure, remember brochures in the days and brochures before came in and all that, literally up until I left, we still had a brochure. I loved our brochure, it was fantastic. And it was just this small brochure, which was purely the houses we had. But the reason we did it was because of where we were in our location. We would get a lot of people walking past the office who would just pop in have you got any flood on your houses? Have you got a brochure? Have you got this? So that's a stardust unit. I thought, Jenn, people are wanting us. So we eventually that's we started that and that once again grew. We started with like we actually started doing it in Hoist. We started just printing them up in black and white originally and then we went into color and then we were like we couldn't keep up with the demand of the printing and the time consuming aspect. Used a local company. We started with like 500 brochures with them and then we were doing 2500 a year. That grew. That was because people were walking past and we thought, you know, that this is an opportunity, let's grab it. People are wanting this, let's get the brochures. Right. And these are people who were staying on their properties. There were day trippers, we're staying in hotels. They maybe didn't know about us. So that was a very local way in. Very sort of locally specific way in. But other than that, it was the website that everyone would find us through.

00:11:30 - Jenn Boyles That's amazing. That really is. And that sort of offline marketing, which I think still holds today. You had an office right there on the street. People could walk past, get those details for their next trip.

00:11:47 - Jane Mack Yeah, exactly. I think the thing with us, I mean, with anyone, there's always different opportunities there depending on your business. And for us, because we were very location specific, we grabbed those locational sort of opportunities. I even created a QR code so they all came out. I even created a QR code. So we had to get an A board, a blackboard A board which would step outside on the street which basically said come and book your next Aaron holiday. Come and get your free brochure. Or the big arrow directed in.

00:12:15 - Jenn Boyles Right?

00:12:15 - Jane Mack And I also then on the board would have a big massive print QR code. People scan here for the website so they could scan straight in. I was very proud of my QR code and people used to say, what is that? So poor people really knew it. I thought I've created a QR code. My God, I'm all technology based now. We grabbed those opportunities because there were people on our if we were it's like anywhere, knowing who your customer is, isn't it so important? And knowing the types of people that come to your area that want to book your houses. And we did have high population of like an older generation who weren't so well, not that they weren't online, they were to a degree, but they liked Hell's brochure. They liked to flick through something because that's what they've done. And with that. We knew that that was a big part of our out of season customers because they didn't have children, so they weren't relying on school holidays. So it kind of catered for them as well. They were able to come past, get their brochure, and then they discover places for actually next year I'll come here and the daytime day tippers turn into Hollymakers. So the daytippers should come across, would walk right past us, pop in, grab a brochure. It was small, it was light, popped in a bag, nice and easy for anyone to carry about on their day trip. So we were kind of trying to capture all the different sort of customer bases that we knew would come to stereo properties. Great.

00:13:35 - Jenn Boyles And what other marketing were you doing?

00:13:37 - Jane Mack So basically the majority of marketing went into the website, so that we actually used google AdWords was the main thing. I tried doing it myself for a while and after two hour conversation on phone with Google AdWords people, my head was fried. My brain couldn't take anymore. I thought, I actually haven't got a clue what this is. So anyway, that was outsourced very quickly to the people who did my website. That was great. But we did have a lot of aaron, obviously, with being a tourism destination, has a lot of local sort of maps and different inserts to go into the local paper at a certain time of year, like certain brochures about what to do. And they always had to have like accommodation section so that would go in there. We would always advertise and those local things because it captured a huge market coming to the island. We did have our Facebook page, which we created once we started doing the advertising, bookings wasn't overly active on it because to be honest, I just didn't have the time. And back then I actually didn't really know much about it. So we used to just put on new properties when they came on, or if there was maybe with certain events here and festivals, annual events, we pop those on. But mainly that was more so sporadic was the Facebook site. We never really used social media because it wasn't as prominent back then. Instagram was up and coming, but I was saying, what is this Instagram? I've no idea what that is. So Facebook was the big learning curve. Twitter, I'd actually Twitter account for a while as well, but they were kind of the on the side things that we would keep using, but everything was always just phone us or directed to your website. So it would either be Direct Booking Success into the website or people phoned could be an office. People like to phone, people like to talk, don't do they might just pop.

00:15:19 - Jenn Boyles In and see you. You're right there.

00:15:21 - Jane Mack Yeah. Because a lot of people say guests who'd be leaving would come in and book the holiday before they left. A lot of booking. They'll all book ahead, a year ahead, same property, same week every year. Someone do three years in advance because they must have that property for the family holiday. So we would get a lot of repeat customer but those people got to know us and they like that. They like to sort of have that conversation with you and get to know you and chat about your holiday in the area and different things they can do. So it was a real sort of personal side commitment as well. But I like that my team liked that. My team loved when you got to know who your guests were and what you also got to really find out what they liked. You'd chat away to them and you'd be like actually people love this or you love that and we should put that in or we should put that on Facebook and you gather so much information. Once again it comes down to really knowing who your customers were and what they want, their expectations. So having that personal sign really helped as well.

00:16:21 - Jenn Boyles I'm hearing combination of the location, which just sounds amazing, and the personal service that you provided for the owners and for the guests. Those seemed to be the biggest things that allowed you to be 100% booked direct.

00:16:39 - Jane Mack Yeah, absolutely. And when people booked, there was an option when you booked this always said I think it was how did you find out about us? Or how did you where did you find out about us? In order to book your property. And the three top reasons were always obviously the first one was always your website, then was our brochure and the other one was referral through family ascend referral because we gather we gain such a good relationship with between guests and owners, people would refer us. So that was always a big part of our so always remain that piece of all the other bits you would find out, yes, somebody booked through the map that we advertised on or our ferry that you come across in. Obviously we didn't advert there, but they weren't the big ones. It was that come and got a brochure from you, I've spoken to you, I've been here before and you've been referred and I've got your website where I bake the big things.

00:17:27 - Jenn Boyles Did you have a referral program or was it just off of people's own back that they were referring you?

00:17:34 - Jane Mack It was off their own back. We never had a referral program at the time. It was one of those things where every now and again we would put out a bit of a deal to guests to say, for example, maybe we wanted people to share our Facebook page and to share things. And sometimes we put out competitions where we talk about maybe refer a friend and get 10% off or refer a friend. And sometimes we'd offer a little gift from the island, things like that. And people love that. They love the gift from the islands or send us your holiday photos and we'll put them on the front page of our next brochure, the ones that win big competitions. So having those little sort of connection pieces with guests, they really, really love it. Didn't cost us anything, but it was what it brought in, what they liked and they loved that being part of it all and just getting a little small gift from a local business on the island, they loved that. It was great. It was just something so all those little things, simple but really effective as well. But I suppose where we were with an office, we were able to do that. We were sitting there and I know there's so many businesses now operate all just from their home, they don't have an office. But I think the fact that we had an office, we really utilized that fact of it because we had the opportunity to have those sort of facilities and the resource in place to do that.

00:18:48 - Jenn Boyles Yeah, it almost sounds like if you're listening and you've got a holiday destination and you are doing the property management and all the bookings and everything, that maybe having an office even, I think in 2023 would be a worthwhile endeavor to do, wouldn't it?

00:19:07 - Jane Mack Absolutely. And I think the difference is what we noticed was with a lot of our owners, they like to come in to see you so that they might like to speak to you. Because at the end of the day, you're looking after a huge investment of theirs, a lot of money put in and they are trusting you to do the right thing, to do the right job and to do it well, and to bring them the bookings, look after the property and do all that. And I think having that really personal relationship where they can come in and you sit down, you have a conversation with them and you have a top to them, they like that. And to me, it just grows and builds on that whole trust and loyalty side. And even for guests, because quite often it's one thing just phone in a guest to say, yes, we've managed to fix the boiler, we've done this or we've done that. Guests also like the fact they can just go and say to somebody, oh look, I've noticed this isn't working, or I can't find or how does this work? Or they want to just talk to you. Guests love just to pop into the office and just to have that conversation. It's just that personal side that really, really does pay off. And especially if you're trying to encourage people to maybe come back as repeat customers, it's really nice, pop in and see us come and book before you leave or you send people our way. It's that coming into that people really like, I think we still do like that. I like it. I like to go into places and see the people in the area and talk to them. I love all that. So I think if there's an opportunity there for people to have that space, then I think it's fantastic for a growth point of view in terms of your owners and your guests. But even if you have some staff, even a team of staff, it's really nice to work together someday. Suggestion, let's come in the office and let's actually really collaborate together and learn and help each other out. And that whole piece as well is really nice. Definitely recommend it if you can.

00:20:47 - Jenn Boyles Yeah, I think that it's 2023. We're sort of in the age of chat GPT and everything's remote and AI and everything's getting really digital. And I think we can't compete with that personal experience that in person, face to face.

00:21:10 - Jane Mack Exactly, yeah. And I know that obviously we were at the short stay summit together and one of the conversations that we stage was saying about is this whole AI, is it going to how is it going to affect us? And they said I think people were talking about is it going to affect jobs? Because people like, we don't need human beings now. What they said is in the world, if you're managing properties, you still physically need the people on the ground to drive to a house and check it. To drive to house and do a health and safety check or to check housekeeping or whatever it is, you need to go to that physical property. So you still need those people on the ground. And I certainly from having we had, let me see, I was myself and five, I had a team of five with me in the office, plus two maintenance guys as well. But those people in the office really relied on each other. When you were talking about the properties, I've been to this property, I've noticed this and what should we do about that? I think just the whole piece of supporting each other and just a knowledge base as well. Yeah, growing. Because one of the things I noticed with owners, I was guesses you need to know your properties. If you're going to sell them, you need to know them. And that's one thing that we had a big advantage on is the fact that because we were local on the island, we were physically there, we could go to all the properties, we checked them, we knew the ends night, so we could to the owners about them, we could talk to the guests about them. If you got queries about them, you knew what they were talking about and you could help them with it. And I think that big part and that knowledge sharing with the team and going out together and going to properties, that is a big part of your property management. And being able to actually really know your sell your service well, to your owners and provide a really good service as well.

00:22:51 - Jenn Boyles Yeah, I wonder if it gets to the point where you have too many properties on the books to be able to provide that service. I wonder if there's going to be a stage because when you think about people who have got hundreds and hundreds, they're not going to be able to know all of those properties, are they?

00:23:10 - Jane Mack Yeah, I mean I have funny, somebody spoke to the other week said I don't want to grow too much because I'll lose given that personal service. So the time I left the business, after we sold, at the time I left and we were on 80 properties, I knew every one of those properties because I brought them on. So I knew them. So obviously I brought the property on. I've done the right of the description, I know the ins and outs. I think you can still provide that service, but there's a lot of stuff you can automate and to me, automate those admin behind the scenes tasks and put your resources into physically knowing these properties. And it's about how you structure as well. You can structure things by location, you can structure your team by deals with maintenance or management and that's the person you speak to for that particular area. I think as you grow, everybody can't know everything all the time, but the whole business as you grow, that I discovered because as our team grew, I couldn't have everyone knowing every single thing. But we structured it in a way that should an owner need to talk about the management of their property or the housekeeping, we had the right people in place, so they still had that one to one conversation. That person knew the ins and outs and they knew how what was happening, so they still got a personal experience. It doesn't mean that every single person needs to know about every single house at every stage. It's having the right structure. You can still provide that personal service and it is doable. But I think it's all about how you structure it and it's about how much you can automate to free up those on the ground. People who physically need to be using.

00:24:37 - Jenn Boyles The tools available, use the tools and your marketing, your advertising, your PMS, your email, all those kinds of things, use the tools available, but keep what you can personal one to one.

00:24:50 - Jane Mack Yeah, absolutely. And there's so many out there now, tools. I mean, I've been blown away by the amount of stuff these last couple of weeks, just getting to know all the different more tools out there. And the software is phenomenal. There's no reason people don't need to automate it. There's no reason that you can't do it because I spoke to people last week at the summer and I said, if I had you in my life ten years ago, oh my God, he didn't have so much. Stuff ten years ago it's developed so much and I think we need to utilize it because a lot of this stuff does really help with getting those bookings. That's the biggest thing isn't getting those bookings in through the door. The work that it can do to get the bookings in is phenomenal now and you can start to see where's the gaps and where do I need to put focus into it helps you in your actual business. So definitely these things need to be used, these things need to be invest in them, do them because in the long run it's going to save you so much time but it helps you grow your business continually.

00:25:49 - Jenn Boyles Yeah, I know it's an exciting time with all the tech and the programs and the tools out there.

00:25:55 - Jane Mack It is.

00:25:56 - Jenn Boyles But I think maybe you can expand a bit more on what advice you would give somebody who is trying to do what you did. You grew from what did you say when you bought it was 25 properties.

00:26:10 - Jane Mack So 25 managed properties and non letting at the time. Then we started with five letting and got that up to 55 for sold.

00:26:18 - Jenn Boyles Yeah, which is a great accomplishment. It really is. So what advice would you give somebody who's sort of trying to do that these days?

00:26:28 - Jane Mack Oh gosh, quite a lot here. So I would say one thing is stop looking at your competition and focus on your own business because when we keep looking at the competition our focus goes off what we're doing and that can just stalls everything. You don't move forward. There's so many people out there doing their own thing but you need to do your own thing. So I would say look at what you need to do in your business in terms of what systems do you need, what processes do you need, have you got the right tools and automations in there that's going to help you and let them do that job? You focus on your actual business. I think it's important that you do get support, whether it be in the form of better tools available or bringing in a team member somewhere who can help along the way. Because at the end of the day, you need to be able to step back a bit out of the daily operations, because you will not grow the business if you're continued being the one out checking houses and answering all the booking inquiries and doing all this stuff. You will not grow it. You need to step back.

00:27:25 - Jenn Boyles You see the big picture, don't you?

00:27:27 - Jane Mack You do. You need to step back from that daily ops because otherwise you'll just get pulled into everything every single day and all those plans you have and all those ways you think well, I want to market better or I want to attract different types of clients or I want to attract these types of houses. That will never happen. You need to step back and focus on that and let the automation tools do their job. Bring in some people who'll be able to check properties for you or manage the housekeeping side because there's ways of doing all that. So let people take that support and help. But you need to step back from that when you do step back, once again a focus in the business, it takes you away from looking at all that what everybody else is doing. Just keep your focus on your business. I would also say you also need to take some time off and your business will not fall apart if you do get time off. That was always a big problem in this industry. And as well as note, find your business. What makes your business different from everybody else? What makes you stand out? What is your unique selling point? That's a really important one because I find that too often we just look at everybody else and we think, well, they're doing that, so I'll do it and that's a service they provide, so I'll provide that. But actually, like where I was, my big sort of benefit was my location. So I utilized that and I utilized opportunities it could bring and how I could get the right customers in that I wanted and listen to what my customers said. So find out what makes you a bit different from everybody else, what makes you stand out from your competition and use it in your marketing, use that to pull your customers in and your guests in because people will book with you because of what you're offering or maybe something different or how you can position yourself. So I think that's really important, certainly, and you're getting your direct booking is being your own business. You be yourself right there to bring in people to book with you rather than be the same as everybody else. Because we've all got something we can offer, haven't we? We've all got something different and I think we need to and we're sometimes a bit scared to show it, but obviously no, you absolutely quite there and you use it, be showed about it.

00:29:27 - Jenn Boyles It's really good advice, especially sort of ice, call it staying in your own lane. Yeah, just stay in your own lane.

00:29:33 - Jane Mack Yeah.

00:29:33 - Jenn Boyles It's kind of nice sometimes to look around and see what other people are doing, but don't get stuck on it.

00:29:37 - Jane Mack Yeah, I mean, from a strategic point of view, it's good to know what people are doing, but purely as and that's what's happening there, right? What am I doing? How am I going to get there? What do I need to do? What do I need to focus on? And put your focus into it, put your blinkers on for a while and go down, as you say. And you're only into move forward.

00:29:55 - Jenn Boyles So tell us, what are you doing now? You sold the business back in what, 2017?

00:30:00 - Jane Mack 2017. We sold business. Yeah.

00:30:03 - Jenn Boyles Still on the Isle of Aaron.

00:30:06 - Jane Mack Still on Aaron. So I continued to work for the business for a few more years and then just again things start to change. I felt it was just time for me to move on then. So I ended up doing a couple of years of lot of like social media work because I'd done a lot of social media training because obviously that became so proud of my business, which I knew nothing about. So I did some journey in it because the online world was growing and I knew nothing about that. So I did training and courses and I did Facebook ads course to really get my so kind of better my knowledge as well and that side of things. So I started doing that but realized actually I don't like actually physically doing that, I like to know about it. I don't know what to do it. So I thought I've got ten years experience here in running and growing a business. I've got experience in the Hollywood industry, that's where I should be going. So I had done a coaching accreditation last year to get those skills behind me because I knew I was using a business coach and I knew there was lots of, I suppose, additional skills I could give people. So I thought, right, I want to do it properly and give the right service to people. So I got my coaching accreditation, which was great. I've now niece myself back into here's my zoning genius. It's a Hollywood industry, so I can help people. So a lot of people I tend to attract are agencies. So people doing what I did, looking after multiple properties and I can help them to grow that property list, to structure their business in the right way so that they can grow up with more ease rather than that sort of hamster wheel of I can't get off the hamster wheel. And it's all becoming all consuming. So it's helping them grow that business and obviously just putting in place how to do their pricing, how they do their promote their business, how are they promoting their actual service and their business, how are they bringing on the properties and how they're structuring it. And it's having all that in place so that they can run it much smoothly and step back. As I said before, it's stepping back from the everyday operations to actually have your business running in the background but allow you to grow it and actually really progress forward in it.

00:32:06 - Jenn Boyles Great. Well, you're perfectly positioned to do this.

00:32:11 - Jane Mack You've walked the talk as absolutely walked the talk, Jen. Yeah, I think I've ran that talk a few times. And also yes.

00:32:20 - Jenn Boyles It'S wonderful, it really is. Now, this podcast is called Direct Booking Success. So I want to know, what does Direct Booking Success mean to you?

00:32:32 - Jane Mack Obviously what we spoke about with Vaccine was that it totally resonates with me because my whole business was walled just on Direct Booking Success. It's all I did. It's what I knew. For me, it's very much about bringing in a personal level to it. It brings a lot of trust and loyalty, I think, as well. And I think direct booking as well. I know a lot of people look at it and think, well, we save some commission and we get people direct to us. But it also brings a lot about repeat customers as well. Having those people come to you direct means to me, it's that whole sort of loyalty bet that they will ask other people to come and book with you and it just creates that overall experience, better experience, and I think it's quite nice. Obviously, all I knew was Direct Booking Success, but what I gained from it was that whole piece of it's like another part of your whole relationship of your business with your customers. When they book Direct, you get a really better feel of the types of customers that you get as well. And it gets you to really know, who are my customers? Who are my guests, what are they looking for, what do they want, their expectation? And it can really enhance their whole customer journey as well when they're booking with you direct.

00:33:46 - Jenn Boyles Lovely. Well, thank you, Jane, so much for coming on today. It's been lovely to speak with you.

00:33:52 - Jane Mack You too. It's been lovely chatting. Thank you for having me.

00:33:55 - Jenn Boyles And where can people come and find you? Do you have a link that people can come and find you after this?

00:34:01 - Jane Mack Yes, absolutely. So I'm on Instagram and that's the best way to find me from there on, my Instagram bio is my link tree, so I've got lots of various things from different resources they can download. So just popped instagram at Jane Mack coaching.

00:34:15 - Jenn Boyles Great. And I'll put those links in the show notes.

00:34:18 - Jane Mack Perfect.

00:34:18 - Jenn Boyles Thanks, Jane, so much for coming on today. I've learned a lot and I'm sure you've given so many nuggets of wisdom there of what you did, using your business to grow it and then ultimately sell it, but also providing some advice there for those who want to do the same.

00:34:37 - Jane Mack Yeah, thank you.

00:34:38 - Jenn Boyles Thanks, Jane.