Is Serviced Accommodation Still Worth It? A Chat with The Property Athlete

In this episode of the Girls in Property podcast, Athena Dobson sits down with the “Property Athlete” Daniel Budden — a former athlete who left the sports world behind to build a thriving business in serviced accommodation. Daniel opens up about his journey into property, sharing how he made the leap, secured his first SA deal, and shaped a winning money mindset along the way.

They dive into the rent-to-rent strategy as a smart starting point for new investors, and why relationships with letting agents and sharp negotiation skills are key. Daniel also shares tips on using Facebook ads to find leads — perfect for anyone balancing property with a full-time job — and explains the importance of having solid contracts in place.

The conversation also touches on the highs and lows of running a serviced accommodation business, from dealing with market saturation to the power of professional presentation. With plenty of practical advice, Daniel highlights how mindset, community, and constant learning make all the difference.

Whether you're just getting started or looking to level up, this episode is packed with energy, insight, and encouragement to help you grow your serviced accommodation journey with confidence.

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Transcript

0:01

Good morning everyone and welcome back to the Girls in Property podcast. How is everybody doing today? I hope that everyone is great. What are we now? We are going to be smack bang in May, aren't we? And with May, we are hoping for lots of new things coming our way, lots of sunshine, lots of exciting things. And as I said to you in a story not so long ago, I was really hoping to get somebody on this podcast to talk to me about the wonderful wacky world of service. accommodation. So many of you are in service accommodation. So many of you ask me all about service accommodation. You know I sort of had what feels like a brief stint within the world of service accommodation, but also felt like 100 years. And when I was thinking to myself about the person I wanted to go on to have a conversation about this, I wanted to get a person on who first of all has a wealth of experience within the service accommodation world. This person was actually recommended to me multiple times by various people. And also just in terms of wanting to have a conversation where the opinions might actually differ and the opinions might be slightly different. And I think that's what this podcast is all about. It's about real authentic conversations and to see the other person's point of view and opinion about it. So without further ado, I would love today to introduce Daniel Budden. Hi, Daniel. That's right. Did I pronounce your name correctly? It is Budden, right? Yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, know what, I get so self conscious the amount of names I have mispronounced on this podcast is hilarious. So yes, I got it right. Fantastic. So of course, some people may know you under your actual tag on Instagram. So what's your tag on Instagram? Yeah, so name's not your button, but also as a property athlete, which is the tag on Instagram. I guess the property aspect comes from my Airbnb business. I started in November 2019 and the athlete part comes from, I used campaigning towards the Olympics and Parasite 24. Unfortunately, didn't make the Olympics. So I stepped full-time into the business about a year and half, two years ago, and then scaled the Airbnb side from there. But yeah, I was part of Team GB for the last like eight years of my life before that. mean, how amazing is that? we just, before we go into actually doing a full introduction, can we just take a moment to appreciate, first of all, appreciate the dedication and effort it must have taken you to even have got to that level. I know a lot of people who compete in their own level of sports and to have got to the level that you have. I mean, what was that like growing up in terms of the sacrifices and in terms of dedication you had to do for that? You know, it was good. mean, it was a lot of it's obviously a good lifestyle. I mean, we got to travel and stuff like that. But I mean, I missed out on like a lot of parties at like work was quite trying to balance like school and all the events and then university and all the events. It was quite a lot. But yeah, I probably I probably mean you sacrifice in terms like pies and stuff. But is it really sacrifice when you know you're doing something you love and you know, you're pushing towards something. So it was cool. And it's always like sacrifice by choice as well. Like an end of the day was a choice for me to do it by. Yeah, absolutely loved it. And even like when I reflect on now, maybe didn't make the Olympics or whatever, but it was like an incredible seven to eight years of my life. And also like the person I was when I started compared to the person I was when I finished was like absolutely totally different. And like I wouldn't, I used to be so like nervous, not confident at all. And then sailing really brought that out on me. So even when I started, when I was year like nine, I think it was, or maybe even earlier, that's when I really changed. So yeah, can't, life was pretty, life's pretty fantastic now. So yeah, it's all, it's all what's built me. So I'm pretty happy I did it. Yeah, fantastic. Do you know, I am the worst sailing person in the world. I get so seasick. It's unbelievable. People used to laugh at me all the time. I used to work in the travel industry for seven years, but I'm the worst traveller ever. When I'm at the destination, I'm great, but put me on a boat or a car or anything. And I'm like, I just feel horrendously sick. Yeah, yeah, I'm fortunate I don't get seasick. yeah, my, some of my, my same apartment did at times, which is quite funny. But yeah, it's, it's one of those, isn't it? I mean, traveling, I'm a good traveler, I would say. I think so. I think I have to be with that amount of travel I've done. I'm so jealous. I'm so jealous. Just really quickly, I don't mean to detour, but I have to tell you because it's so funny. So when I used to work in travel, one of the celebrations was that we used to get to be taken on these trips with like the CEOs and directors. And one of the times we had to get on a catamaran in St. Lucia. And I knew, I knew I was going to be ill. I was like, this is a really bad idea. But there was only 20 of us and you didn't want to be left on the beach on your own. So was like, okay, I'll do this. And it was so glamorous. There was like... I mean, it was ridiculous when you think about it. was like lobster and caviar on this catamaran and everyone was having like the tunes and dancing. And literally there was just videos of me hurling over the side of this catamaran. hopefully. think to myself my god like I'm so jealous of those people that can just do all these wonderful things but do know what I got on that catamaran so that just shows how you know the bravery that I have. So Daniel talk to me about you then talk to me about like you as a person and tell like your story of you know what we've just learnt and heard but also where then that then led in terms of then growing your own business. and the service accommodation business that you have today and how that all came to fruition. Yeah, so I started the business in November 2019 alongside my salem because I've always been someone that was like very money driven. I've always wanted to have like money for my future family stuff like that. It's just I don't think people say enough like it's fine to want money. So I really wanted money but salem was very like money and money out. It was like net even. It was a great lifestyle. It was travel. You're doing like a sport for a living which is absolutely incredible but there was no like money coming in as such. So I wanted to build the business alongside. I partnered with my mom 50 50 at the start. And basically, like she would sell for the properties and I would do all like the acquisition side, the systems, everything like that. And my dad was actually doing the accounts because he's an accountant for someone who was doing rent to rent. Because I was young, I got a lot of calls with him. I managed to get a lot of free information. So I learned off this person and then I kind of built it alongside the sailing. Yeah, just kind of one thing led to another, to be honest. We made mistakes along the way, but then we grew the business to 38 rent to rest days now. And then we have 70 % of management as well. But along that journey, kind of the first three years was kind of a bit slower. My sister joined a year and half in. And then yeah, we started to like scale quite aggressively in the last like two years with me going full time. And yeah, it all started from just a conversation with someone my dad was doing the accounts for. And then I got like mentored by him for three months. Super cheap at the time as well, because he was also not as not that big of an operator. And then yeah, just kind of scared from that really, you know, kind of one thing led to another. And it was just I've always been big on it was always like money driven at the start and then you know as money becomes less of an issue in terms of the profit you're making stuff like that which sounds like you're boasting but it's not and it basically like I've started to shift gear a little bit to help other people but also continuing to grow my own business at the same time. Yeah, I love that. So there are a couple of points I want to pick up on what you just said. So the first thing to pick up on is I love the fact that you said, I am motivated by money. I'm motivated by money and the money that I want to make for my family. And you're absolutely right. We don't talk about that enough. And I think it's to do with being British. I really do. Because you know when you speak to Americans, Americans are like, yeah, you go girl. Like, I want to make loads of money. I can't do an American accent, but you know what I'm trying to say? They're so forward and they're so out there. I feel like I've been learning about this and I talk a lot about money mindset and I talk to a lot of psychologists about that and I want to continue to have this conversation. And it's this idea of like, oh, we shouldn't talk about money and we shouldn't want money. And why is that? Is it deep rooted within childhood and the way that we were raised? And you know what? I was having a conversation the other day with somebody and I was so proud to say, because I think that it could be seen as a negative thing and I think it could be seen as therefore you're a type of person if you're motivated by money. And I was talking about this with somebody and I... absolutely said to them, I am 100 % motivated by money. Like money, if you look at me and my values, money is like one of the top priorities for me in terms of why I do what I do and how I do what I do. But that could be assumed if you don't know me to think, well, therefore she's a money grabbing person. That's all she cares about. She doesn't care about the people underneath. Whereas people who know me and know you will know that's the opposite of us. It just so happens that we're all so like that. And for me, I was talking to a psychologist about this and about money mindset. And for me, the reason I'm motivated by money is because we didn't have very much when I was younger and I was raised by my mom. And there's stories behind it and there's so much deep rooted psychology behind why I'm motivated by money because of my childhood and what I went through. So for you, was there like a uh reason why you feel you are motivated by money? Do you think it comes from childhood or do you think it just comes from you being a competitive person? Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, I mean, I had an amazing childhood. had such a good childhood. I absolutely love my family. Everything they've done for me. And one of the big ones was like, I wanted to give my eventual family the same opportunities I had growing up. But also when I was like, I don't remember, it was like 13, 14. My dad basically said to me, one thing you regret was not being around as much when I was a kid. Like he would always like working before I woke up and then he'd get back after I went to sleep. He says he doesn't remember that, but I remember and it kind of stuck with me. And that was really like a moment. was like, hey, well. I'm not, I'm not saying like it was never around. Like I said, amazing childhood, but I was like, if there's one thing I can do, you know, level up with such cause like, think cause a guy always want to be better, like be better than your dad, et cetera. And trying to always push further. Um, but yeah, I was like, there's one thing I can do. It may be in a position that when I eventually job a family, I don't have to work. I don't have to, can do what I want with them. I can like, you know, put them first. So that was a real, that was probably the biggest driver for me. Um, and then also like, yeah, you know, people don't address it, you know, money buys nice things, money buys travel like. One of the biggest, like right now I'm so focused on like, what do I want my life to look like? And I try and help other people that like don't start, just don't start mindlessly building something. Go, what do want your life to look like? And then build to that because not every single business is going to get you there. Um, and mine was always remote and I I want to travel and I want to be able to do what I want to do on a day day basis. So everything will, the decision I make is based off the fact of does it make me money and doesn't mean I can travel and then does it probably bring me fulfillment and give me energy? If it's not one of those three things, then what's the point, what's the point in doing it? So. I love that. I'm going to come on to that as well because I'm massive in that. I'm massive in lifestyle as people know and beautiful what you just said. I completely agree with you. And then the second thing I just want to pick up on based on what you said in your intro is this notion which I love. I love the fact that it started off with your family. So your mum was 50-50 with you. I mean, how awesome is that? That your mum saw you, saw the potential and was like, you know what, I'll come in with you. I'll help you. How was it doing that and working with your mum and like starting off with this dream? Yeah, it was definitely, it's having a tough moment. So it was definitely easier at the start, I would say that as it got bigger and stuff, like my, my, my, my family's and my goals, I aren't really aligned because at different levels, but I only found out, you know, it takes a lot to find out how you're working with family. Um, there's like, I'll go into a few things, but like the first one is one, it's like amazing to work with your family because there's no level of trust you can get with a business partner when you're with your family. My sister's involved as well. So that part's amazing. The part that like wasn't amazing as such, but I do see now it's amazing. was like our goals and the alignment of where we want to get to are very different because my mum was working for me to make me happy. My sister was working because she has a family now, my nephew, she wants to have like a family and like downtime and stuff like that. But I was working to like scale this huge Airbnb business. So it took a while for us to get aligned on like, okay, actually these goals are my goals or these goals are your goals. I'm trying to work, we're still trying to work that out. But in terms of, yeah, I mean, it's been super fun. I think it's been... a blessing because like I say, you can't trust someone more than you trust your family. And at the of the day, yeah, wouldn't be where it is without the guys. They were literally boots on the ground. um And yeah, it they put some money in and know, spent to the strength, which you can't complain. that and and you're right like family family is everything and it can it can either go really well or really wrongly I always find so I'm so happy that like you managed to make a success of it I have so many things I want to talk to you about but before we get into the nitty-gritty of it what would you say at this moment in time that you would be celebrating at this moment of your life Yeah, so I've got an Ironman in a couple of weeks. Hopefully by the time this podcast is done, I'll Ironman so we'll how we get on. But yeah, I'm just pushing hard towards that at the moment. So yeah, I'm really looking forward to getting that done. And it's not, it's like, I guess it'll be an achievement. We'll find out. It depends on how you feel. tell us a bit more about Ironman because you were mentioning this to me before you came on the podcast and I said to you, so once upon a time, not anymore, once upon a time, I used to do a lot of things called Tough Mudder, which I know a lot of other people have done as well. And so, you know, but Tough Mudder, think is quite different to Ironman where we had to, we had to run. I don't even remember. I think it was half a marathon. I remember I used to run half a marathon, but within running half a marathon, you then have to do all these obstacles as well. And there was one of these, I used to get electrocuted a lot during Tough Mudder. like electrocuted constantly covered in mud. But I'll never forget the day that, and my mother will never forget the day, that I basically, my heart was like pumping so fast because I was running. And then we had to jump into something called Arctic enema, which is basically an ice lorry. And then you have to go under and come up. And it's the only time in my entire life where I genuinely felt my heart stop for about... four seconds, I reckon, and I couldn't catch a breath. I remember my mum on the sidelines watching me, like her face was just like, my gosh, she's going to die. And me being me was like, that's all right. And I caught my breath and I could feel my heart pumping again. And I was like, yeah, I can carry on running half marathon. It's fine. I'll be fine. And I did get to the end and I've done it three times. But yeah, a lot of mud, a lot of electrocution. lot of ice baths. So what's Iron Man like? What do you have to do? A full Ironman is a triathlon. So it's swim, bike, run. A full Ironman. I'm doing half Ironman 70.3, but a full Ironman is 3.6 kilometers swim, 180 kilometers bike and a marathon. Whereas a half full marathon. Yeah. So a half Ironman. What I'm is 1.9 kilometers swim, a 90K bike ride and then a half marathon. yeah, we'll see how it goes. It should take around five hours. we'll see. The training's not gone amazing. I can't lie. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm in New York. Nice venue. I'm going out there for two weeks. I leave on Saturday and I'll be out there for two weeks. What made you want to do Iron Man accuracy? So I did marathons last year. So I did London and Manchester last year. And like my goal was to do Manchester quite fast, which was good. I did it quite fast. And then just complete London. um with my girlfriend at the time, I tried to basically get her a PB, which is cool. then I also like, as long as I have some, I've always wanted someone to have like focus towards. So I always want like a goal to kind of hit fitness wise. um And then yeah, just was like, you know what, man, we'll try and Ironman at some point. um And it was definitely, I've gone through a lot of like. transformation recently and sounds like mindset and stuff and will I do will I go for a full on man? Probably not. But I think I will always have something to work towards like a 10k 5k, just because the training for like I'm anyone hasn't been a marathon or iron man like the training to fit it in is crazy, especially if you're trying to do it fast like I am. Like you're trying to get like three hour run, you're gonna get like three hour sessions in two hour sessions every single day. So it's a lot to fit in around your life and depending on what your priority is at that time. It's something a lot but like Yeah, I just, like to hard things. I always say like, if it was easy, everyone would do it. And it's quite fun to say that. it's funny isn't it as entrepreneurs like our personalities aren't they there were funny little things because it's It is that notion what you just said we're always wanting new things We're always wanting to like be ourselves as well I can I can imagine you having like you're not competing with anyone else I can sense this in you you're competing with yourself And so you're like looking at your own times and you're like what I want to beat that time Even if it's by a second you're like well, I beat me so that's great. I I love that about your personality 100 % now I think that that's what's so it's good about the Ironman like there's no time to beat but I've already put a time in my head that I've not even done but I'm like I'm gonna beat it and like for the marathon I was like I'm gonna go sub 3 I'm gonna do it and then it was like my first marathon I did it was good but it was just yeah it's funny how I just like create these goals in your head and just like yeah I need to do them now and like yeah doing hard stuff's fun it is fun. It is fun. this is actually gonna lead me on to my celebration actually, which was, so this was filmed about three weeks ago and obviously it was Easter around that time. And I saw a lot of my family over Easter and a lot of them were kind of asking me about what I was up to. And some of them were asking me really interesting questions about the types of sort of circles I hang around in now, the types of people that I speak to. And for me, I know it sounds really silly, but I almost didn't realize it until I thought about it and somebody asked me about it. But the circles I now hang around with are mainly entrepreneurs, business owners, property investors, people like yourself. And the conversations hit differently. The conversations are around this and talking about money and talking about like Ironmans and achievements and everything that we're doing at the moment. And it's all about just seen in a really cool way, like lifting each other up. And I think what I'm celebrating is expanding my expanding my network and my community with really, with people that really inspire me because I love to be around people where I almost always want to be like not the dumbest person in the room, but not like not the smartest person in the room. I want to learn from others. And I feel like I'm constantly in this cycle at the moment that I'm learning lots and lots from others. And I really feel like the sense of growth in that. And then when I go and I like see my family and I tell them about what I'm up to, they're like, wow, that's amazing. And I'm like, that's just like life. But then when I hang around other people, other people are like, cool that you're doing that. I don't know, sometimes it's nice to go back to family and remember how far you've come in their eyes, who've known you since you were really young, but then also surround yourself with these people who are doing amazing things. And so I'm celebrating networking and connections in that way. No, it's cool. Yeah, it's hard to it's definitely hard to reflect back on where you come from stuff like that even like in the last three months, like the change that I've gone through is like astronomical and yeah, you're surrounding yourself with people that are like, think the what there's a couple points like one you've got to be open to change and like you've got to be open to like always learning if you go into a room you think you can't learn from anyone even if you are the smartest in the room like we hosted an event on Friday and like it's literally it's a VIP community but everyone there yes they have less units than me but I still learn from them all. And like also when you teach someone something you learn from as well. there's a bit of you need to be a need to be open-minded to learn from everyone. And then yeah, obviously like leveling up this leveling up your circles and being around people that you know push you to be better is like absolutely massive. And I think unfortunately, it's hard to find but I think there's a time and a place for yeah, family friends that it's just knowing who's there in your life for what reason. I have friends that aren't you know, morning driven as such. I'm like, why are you in this nine to five job? But that's them and that's like, you don't have to you don't have to bring them on with you. But they have a purpose in my life. I get on really well with them and they make me realize like how far I've come each time and make me chill out. oh exactly. And sometimes friends are there just to make you laugh. They're there just to make you smile and have a good time with. You don't even talk about anything. You can literally just go to the movies with them or go bowling with them or something, which is great. So Daniel, talk to me about like, let's go into essay then. So talk to me about like the beginning of this notion of Renta essay. So the conversation I want to have with you is this, where I don't know about you. In fact, it will definitely be for you as well. Where you get a lot of people who DM you and message you and say, hey, I'm starting out on my journey. I don't have a lot of cash at the moment. I've heard about this idea of rent to rent. I think it's a great way for me to get into the industry. I really want to get into property. I've got a nine to five job. How can I get started in rent to SA? I think I want to get into rent to SA. And I think that's the strategy I want to do. how like, let's start at the beginning, which is like, How did you choose and find that Rent to SA was the strategy that you wanted to get into? Like, why did you choose it? Yeah, it was definitely like cash upfront, like I didn't have a lot of capital, I I had like two and a half thousand. And my mum had like two and a half K she could put in as well. And that was like our starting capital. And so the biggest one was, yeah, I wanted to get in property, but I didn't know I didn't have a lot of capital to get involved. And then my dad was like, obviously, well, this guy didn't rent to rent, you could, you know, try that. That's not a lot and can make X amount per month. So yeah, the biggest one for me was capital, capital, capital. And just like the cash flow side, I was always I wanted as much cash flow as fast as possible, so I could build my own assets and build my own portfolio. And that was basically the route in there. And so that's the only route I saw in. I looked at like deal sourcing, stuff like that. But there was just like so much for me, like the risk for versus reward for me was just like, it was the best option. And like the cash upfront and capital was quite small. And a lot of people like, there's a of, it's not really a topic, but yeah, there are a of people like, oh, it's so risky. What if you can't fill the property? But if you can't fill the property, you can let you just rent out as what you're paying and just net zero. So worst case scenario, if you really F it up, then you can just rent it out. that at a flat rate and not make any money. It's not like you're locked in. Also, you're not even guaranteeing it for three to five years. Yes, you say that to landlords, but the 12 month break cause, if you do it right, you can get a six month break cause just on your side, not on the landlord side. There's so many ways that you can de-risk it. Absolutely crazy. And you can literally sit there and do exactly what a letting agent does and rent it out for like 200, 300 pound profit per month. And if you have the air, now knowing what I know now, I'm like, I'm so glad I did choose it as a vehicle. But yeah, at the start, the reason I chose it was simply I didn't have a lot of money to start with. I didn't want to do work without reward, whereas deal sourcing is a lot of work without reward, would say it has, because you're not guaranteed to sell the deal, you have to get all the viewings. So yeah, that was probably the main reason. uh Okay, cool, I love that. So you started, saying that you had about two and a half thousand pounds and your mom had two and a half grand. So you're at like initially starting at five grand. Okay, so with your first property then, you've now got this notion that you've spoken to your mom, you definitely wanna kind of go forward with it. You got this five grand. How did you go about actually acquiring your first property, your first landlord? Like what is the first bit that you did? So I got, I got educated off of this guy for, was very fortunate enough to pay like 10 grand for a course. I literally got a lot of information for free because I was young and yeah, I paid him for like a mentorship. He was like 500 pounds a month because it was very early in his career as such. And yeah, basically what he basically taught me the acquisition process and just like how to get units. So what we would do, I basically like wrote down a list of all the Latin agents in the hall of like Chester, which was the area we chose. And then I started dialing. dining whenever property came on, dining like messaging on open rent, messaging on write me stuff like that. And then my mum would go to the view ins and I would do all the negotiations over the phone. It's actually so funny because the first ever property we got, we got through a Latin agent that we worked with for a little bit and then I just didn't work with them. But yeah, the first of all, we got about a month and or two months later after we started like, you know, it started profiting and stuff. The Latin agent was like, how old is Dan, by the way? I think I forgot, I was 21 at the time. And they were like, oh, if we knew he was 21, wouldn't have like done the contract. So it's quite funny that. Yeah, it was, it was like my mom and dad went there because they were there, probably got the deal. Obviously, I think we would have got a deal somewhere else. But yeah, that particular one and probably the reason we were able to go in so fast. But it was different times as well. Like back then you can just ring any agent and they would be like, what is this? Whereas now you ring an agent and know what it is because everyone rings them. So there's like, if someone was to start again now, then you shouldn't ring and let an agent, you should go into an agent and talk to them because people are best in people, not over the phone. especially when you call them up and ask, do you do a company like that? And that's the same for any rent to rent strategy, it's honest with you. Don't call an agent. Yeah, we just did that. I called all the agents from abroad and then once we managed to get, we just basically hammered home like 20 or 30 view-ins and eventually got one. I was very fortunate, like we started, honestly it took us like less than a month to get a deal. So yeah. you've just said a multitude of things that I want to talk to you about. Number one, how long ago did you start then? How many years ago was this? 2019. Okay, so in 2019, we're now in 2025. Okay, cool. So the first thing you said was you gave some bits of information there. So the first thing was they actually admitted as an agent that they wouldn't have given you the deal had they known your age. Okay. So we get a lot of people now, as you know, and you'll be mentoring them yourself, Dan, who are young. They're young, they're starting out, they're passionate, they're entrepreneurs. I know many, many young 21, 22 year olds who are inspiring. Like they're the most incredible people. So do you think, like what would be your advice to somebody who comes to you who is that age, 21, 22, in terms of feeling like they're on the back foot, what would you say to them? I think it's a little bit different now because when you go into like a Latin Asian, and I was going to help a lot of people that are younger. When you go into a Latin Asian and you talk directly to your landlord, if you can get yourself to the Latin's manager and to director of the landlord, they look past your age. They're kind of excited. If you have enough energy, they're excited at the fact that you are young, you're going for it. So I think it's a little bit different now. I think it was more that like I just literally rang them on the phone. It was a new thing. No one knew what it was. Whereas you had the people I work with now. They go into an agent, they get to let manager, they talk direct to landlord. And if they have the right energy, then like the other person feels that and accepts it. And they're like, actually, I want to invest in you. want to trust you. And I'm asked that particular agent, then give us, wouldn't have given us that deal. Um, there was other agents that wanted to work with me because I was young and because I was, especially landlords, if you can get a direct to a landlord or an investor or anyone, and they realize, he's young, he's passionate. It's just because you're young and you're like, this has to work for me. If you can get that across to someone. then they're going to be, you know, you're super invested in their property and you're super invested in that relationship for it to work. And if you can get that across to someone, it's kind of like a, it's kind of like a strength to have. So yeah. I mean, whereas sometimes, um, I've worked with older people who there's like some weird like power dynamic where the Latin agent wants to feel more powerful, but the other person's like, cause you're the same age, it's a bit more of like a clash. Um, whereas yeah, if you're younger, you can go in there with energy and you can get your, you know, your point across like this is, it works for me. So a little bit different now, but yeah, that's what I would say. Yeah, I like that. And then the second point I just want to make is you said something about, I feel that sometimes people think that letting agents, or let's just say that agents are like aliens and they think, oh, like, you why would an agent want to do this deal with me? Why should we go and speak to agents? So it's interesting, first of all, that you had a good experience with the agents and the agent actually gave you your first property. So that's an interesting conversation to have also. But you mentioned something in passing, which was you said, now, if you were going to do it again, your advice would be not to actually call the agents. your advice would be to go in and talk to the agent. So can you just explain what you mean by that? Yeah, so like one of the big ones is everyone who's teaching like rent to essay and all these Airbnb courses on social media, they don't actually have a business anymore and they're not scaling like I'm scaling and they're not, probably only ever got, you know, three, four, maybe 12 units max. And what they're teaching is to call. So all the agents are getting absolutely peppered with these phone calls of people, you do company lets, do you do company lets? And no one's getting anywhere because they're not doing it right. Whereas if you go into an agent, no one goes into agents anymore. Everyone's always like, it's over email, it's over phone, but they're like, they want to speak to people. They sit in the office all day. and no one comes in because it's all done online now. So if you go in, you've you've already beaten pretty much everyone. You've beaten probably 90 % of people. And the reason I say go in, yeah, because it's a people's business and like people invest in people. And if you can just talk to the right people in the agency and you can like do a value exchange and there's loads of ways you can do that. If you're a value exchange, then yeah, they're going to invest in you. But yeah, it's more because they just get absolutely peppered with people asking, they need to come with us on the phone? And it's just literally the worst tactic ever. So if anyone listens to this and they see like an ad about the core script and it's just a lot of rubbish basically. I agree with you. People buy from people, absolutely. And also, the one thing I would say about that, in my opinion, is uh I never used to, I sort of changed tactics when I was doing it. At the beginning, I was taught this whole idea about talking about corporate let's. Half of the agents never actually understood what that meant. And for me, when an agent immediately doesn't understand what something is, they think it's too difficult. And then what they'll say to you is, our landlords aren't interested in that. That's what they say. Our landlords won't be interested in that. The landlord isn't interested in that. That's actually not true. they haven't even checked with the landlord, it's that they don't wanna do it. They think it's too hard work or they think you're just gonna then cut them out and take the business. So if you ever heard an agent say that to you, that doesn't mean no, it just means that you need to have a further conversation and a further relationship with them. Yeah, agents are already interesting ones. So just coming back to this then, when you're saying go in, so I say to a lot of my mentees, I have this conversation about agents all the time. Now, one of the issues that we have is if people have got wanting to do rent an essay, majority of the time they'll be in a full-time job nine to five with limited time. So therefore they only have, let's say weekends in order to go and speak to the agents. And as we know on weekends, the manager does not work really on weekends. It's usually the Saturday staff don't really know what's going on, haven't got a clue about the properties, don't really have a lot of time or they're constantly out on viewings because Saturday is just a day of viewings. So what would be your advice for people who are in a nine to five trying to get in to talk to the agents? This is like bit off base, but yeah, Meta ads, like Facebook ads, you don't need to, you can just cut out the whole agent's part. I work with people who do it work nine to five and I just push them down Meta ads and just say, look, spend, cause when you, cause they're up, they've got a couple of options. It's like, you could use a source, which you just shouldn't use a source of rent to say you should just use Meta ads and it's way cheaper. But yeah, Facebook ads basically would just eliminate all the agent need for agent anyway. Um, because so little people are doing it. And basically you get direct to landlord leads. And if you can, if you know someone who can do good Facebook ads, which is quite simple to do. That's the way we teach it. Like, cause they don't have time and like you can go, you can still go into agents. Um, if you wanted to, and we can talk about how I'd still do it on the weekend, but honestly, I'd be like people, it's really hard for me to sit here and say to someone who does a nine to five hours, no time, might have kids, stuff like that. It turned, give up their Saturdays every single weekend to go walk into agents when actually you could just spend 400 pounds and get like, an example was one of the people in my community, did like a Maher ads webinar and basically, yeah, he launches the Facebook ads. He'd spent probably about 60 pounds and got 17 leads within like four days. Um, and like it's crazy how many leads you can get on Facebook. So, and then direct to landlord leads. So I would say if someone's working nine to five and they don't want to give up the Saturdays, I'd go matter ads. Uh, if you did want to give it to Saturdays and did want to go to agents, then basically it's about kind of what you touched on before in terms of the, like the value exchange and also like just being, being personal and explaining what you do because yeah, you want to try and get past like what I call it, viewing clerks, which are kind of like Saturday staff. because they're not going to have any sort of, you know, knowing like thoughts about what's going on. But there's a few things you can do. can take an information pack and leave them on desks. And like if it's an actual really nice document, then they're not going to throw it away. So like make it like a very nice, like a nice document that give to them and say like, can you give this to X on the, you know, whoever it is, the manager of the week during the week, whatever. And like, you'd be surprised, they'll call you up, but just like consistency as well. Like if you come in, if you did every single weekend for like eight weeks in a row, They're going to say something to the letterman. They're going to this guy, Dan, has come in every single weekend for last eight weeks. Like he wants to talk to you. Can you like call him? You know, and you got on the phone with him and it's just consistency. Whereas people do it once and they're like, oh, that didn't work. Actually the people that if you're going to let an agent and they're like, no, I don't know why you're here. So if you keep going in and they're to get a property at some point, they can't get rid of and they're going to give it to Dan. You know, give it to that, give it to that guy who keeps coming in. But yeah, I'd say if you did want to go to the agents then consistency. information packs works super well. And the fact that you're in there, honestly, they're super, people are super nice to chat to. So, and there's like some other ways as well, like little tips where if you go into like an estate agency, there's like a lettings and a buying side, you can go to the buy side first, specifically for rent, I say, go to the buy side and offer your like services as accommodation first. So you're giving them value. So like I would say, hey, my name's Dan, I'm from 53 reviews property, we do Airbnb's across the whole UK, but we have properties to let in. this location. Do you ever have people between homes that need accommodation? They probably do because they have chains and you're like, cool, I like anyone you refer to me, can give you 10 % instant value exchange. You're helping them for like, they're like, what has why is this guy helping me? And you can leave it at that for day one. Like you could just be like, yeah, that's it. Here's my card. And then they're going to research you based off that conversation. And as long as you have some sort of website, you're already starting to build some rapport with them and you're going to wait later and you say, you know, actually, here we go. And then you go to the letting side or whatever and say, I'm looking to rent as well. I know I came in last week, but I spoke to Rosie. And she said, that comes around and it's just about like building up rapport inside the agencies. So it's like the way you can do it. top tip, I love that. Do you know why I used to do that? It's exactly how I used to play it. We used to go and I used to sit with the bar with the the selling agents first and I never used to go into the lettings first. He either used to say I was looking to buy a property in the area. I obviously live in Bournemouth and I was talking about doing a do a wrapper because I was interested in the time. But even if I was and I'd still go and do that. And then after that conversation would finish and again. like you said, offer services to them, such as we've got our properties, if you ever need them in between, that's a fantastic piece of advice, Dan. And then they, I'd say, can I talk to the Lettings about this, this is what we do. They instantly take you more seriously. And actually what will happen is the agent who is in the selling area, they'll actually take you over to the Lettings and they'll do the introduction for you. And then instantly in that, you then have bigger credibility and rapport. And that used to work a treat. I learned that quite early on and I was like, I'm just going to continue to do that. So it's a really, really good tip that you just gave. Quickly, just before I move on, you talk about paid ads then, for example. Now paid ads are quite expensive and they don't always have the highest success rate. I have dabbled in paid ads myself, Dan. I have mixed opinions about them. I've never done them, to be honest with you, for direct vendor leads. I've never done that before at all. So just going back to that, what was your, I know we can't talk about it in huge amount of detail, but on a surface level, what was your advice about that? uh Yeah, basically get to know Facebook ads and they're a lot easier than people make out to be. I think they're expensive because you ultimately get them wrong and they don't have to be that expensive. If you do like really good creatives, Facebook's like super smart now. like example is like it's infinitely scalable and like I can go into this because if you work out that your cost per conversion, so your cost per actually qualified lead is say that's 500 pounds. But that lead makes you a thousand pounds a month the next 12 months. That lead is worth to you, like say 10K, 12K. So even if you spend like three grand to acquire that, you'd still be making money. As long as you can, I it will not cost you three grand. If you spent three grand on ads and you had a good creative, honestly, you'd get hundreds of leads. So are you saying instead of like a direct to vendor letter saying this is my company, we offer basically corporate let's, this is how we do it, you're saying instead of actually sending the letters, it's obviously the agents create Facebook ads. Yeah, 100%. Do not do that. If anyone came up to me, I'm a director of vendor campaigns, I was like, look, you can do that. Not waste time, but do a lot of that. Just Facebook ads, you are literally direct to the person. And Facebook is so smart that as soon as you spend a little bit of money and people start clicking, it's gonna start realizing who are landlords and who aren't landlords and who do click and do don't click. And there's all this stuff like women over 40, for example, click all the time as landlords. a really good example. if you just targeted that you get absolutely loads of clicks. And yeah, yeah, and it's just, it's crazy how smart Facebook is and AI is and like how fast you can scale them. And yeah, the point for me is like, once you once you get like a good ad creative or a few good ad creatives, which doesn't cost a crazy amount, it's quite simple. It seems to be like the same as like a real hook, pain point solution, call to action, very similar. As long as you do that, have a few ad creatives, send it out into Facebook, like just simple campaign, Facebook will start to learn or like what your audience is and who you see as a qualified lead. And as long as you put that data back in, it'll just get better and better and better and it'll get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And as long as you can call as long as you can physically take on the properties, that's what like when people are like, what's like the downfall of Facebook ads is that you can't take on all the leads that come in. That's like that's where you can get it to. Because I mean, a high a big cost for an elite would be like 250 pounds to get a really good qualified lead. Like if you And if you think I can pay 250 pounds and get our property, which someone's selling for three grand because it's a renter, say, cut, it's just on a CVS, if someone came to me with three grand, they spent three grand on ads. They could literally get like, I'd say like 10, 20 qualified leads so easily. But obviously from those qualified leads, we then actually have to go to the viewings and therefore we actually have to do the negotiation and then actually get... Yeah, you still need to close them. I'd say qualified. Like you would get from that three grand, you'd get a hundred, like you'd get like a hundred leads with 10 % of qualifier to attend. landlords, landlords looking at Facebook looking for who can actually be taking on my properties right now. Yeah. So I mean, the point is like that maybe they're not like, maybe they're specifically not looking for someone to take on that property, but I'm not thinking it's on Facebook. They're, are all on Facebook, Instagram though. And then when you pop up and it's like, hang on a second, like you find there's a lot of people ultimately, there's loads of people right now with properties to rent. There's loads of people right now. It was easier to get guaranteed rent and management. Yes. Because guaranteed rent, like there's more properties for rent than there is someone who's like, I want to Airbnb my property right now. but you can shift a lot of guaranteed rent needs to management. So like we get five to six leads a day at the moment and we don't spend a lot on ads anymore. They're all retargeting from our website. But of that, I'd say like 60 % of guaranteed rent for maybe even more 70 % guaranteed rent, 30 % of management, you can convert a lot of the guaranteed rent ones. So. That's interesting what you just said also about just because it doesn't work for rent-to-rent doesn't mean it won't work for you. It means that you could switch them to management as well. So you could switch between them because both are trading. How interesting. my goodness. This is the way the world is going, isn't it? Yeah, I I learned Facebook ads off some really, you know, very experienced people who are spending way more than I'm spending. They're in e-comm and they're spending, you know, 60k, 150k a month on ad spend. So they're very well renowned in ads. And they just told me how simple it was. And I was like, great, cool, let's do it. So you can also like do course on like Udemy and stuff, but like for 12 pounds. So if anyone's out there wants to learn Facebook ads, then go Udemy, get one for 12 pounds. Absolutely fine. Wow, that's so cool. Okay, so we've done agents, that's cool. We've done acquisition basically, so we've done agents. Facebook, as I wasn't expecting you to say, so that's really interesting. And you're saying, your opinion is, because I send a lot of letters, Dan, like a lot of letters, you're saying actually the letter thing might be a bit of a dinosaur now. Yeah, would say mean, honestly, I don't even open letters. The fact like I have a postbox I just never look at. mean, I'm obviously I'm young, but and it might be different, but I've never done a direct vendor campaign. I think the ones that can work if you do it like in Airbnb example would be like do a book in a like an apartment tower block that you want to do management under. That's probably the best way I would say for monster scale management. I'd say yeah, do you just take a leaf or drop in five big towers that you want to try and get management leads in for example, but Very rarely, like I say, the landlord is like going to open that letter. You know, it's one of those. think it's easier with like rent HMO because you can, you know, you know, the landlord's addresses. m one. So I used to do rent to HMOs and I used to do rent to service accommodation. So with the rent to rent HMOs, our biggest success rate came from letters by far, because we could get of course the HMO register. And in Bournemouth, that was about two, I it was just shy of like 3000 HMOs. I mean, it's crazy Bournemouth, it really is Article 4, all of that. And so we used to be able to do direct to vendor letter campaigns and we'd send like, literally one a week, obviously switching out the letters, we sent postcodes, we were quite creative with it. But we had a really good response rate to that because we were really consistent with it. Whereas people then said to me, well, I think that's easier for renter and HMOs because you've got like a list that you know you can send it to. Whereas with Renta SA, there is no list that you can send it to. It's literally which postcodes work, which postcodes don't. For me, what I had to learn really quickly on, particularly in Bournemouth, is that a lot of the places that would have been ideal and perfect to have done service accommodation, by the beach, see views, et cetera, specifically in the least do not allow for holiday lets. And I reckon I can now tell in Bournemouth, each postcode that you should avoid because you just, there's no point even getting in there. We did ignore it on one of them where we just, basically just, we're like, no one's gonna find out. It'll be fine. People do find out, people snitch, they then come along and then you have to stop and then you have to basically go through the whole thing again. Don't do it. If they say you can't do it, it's not worth the aggro. It's the best advice I can give you. move on. But yeah, it's about really understanding that that sort of area. So we've done acquisition, we are now in the property, the landlord has finally said yes, the negotiation went well. uh You mentioned some some some key things there that I just want to touch on really quickly just in the negotiation part. You mentioned things such as break clauses, and in the contracts. So if you were to say, let's be really strategic about this, Dan, if you were to say the top three things when you're negotiating, And when you're looking at the contracts for listeners who are going to do it for the first time, what should they really think about with their negotiation? One I'd make sure you get a really good contract and we have a solicitor look over and make sure it's actually like Fort Knox for sure. The main points for me probably the most three most important ones. I know the three best like things I would want in a contract like I wouldn't want to pay a deposit which is hard easier said than done but like no deposit would be ideal. Rent free period would even be more ideal and the break clause but yeah if apart from the fact of making the best negotiation ever I would say the break clause is important it's like make sure you have a break clause in because even if you have to settle on like a mutual break clause at 12 months, as long as you are able to gather deal, that's good. Like I said before, worst case scenario, you rent out at the same rent, but it's just, it's how more hassle and it's worked. So it's nice to, it's nice to have that in there. And a three months notice period is also good with that. But the main, yeah, it's really just, I mean, there's so much, there's so much in that good contract. I mean, there's so many people who use that it's like stupid management contracts for rent to say, and it's just like, It's not even worth the paper it's written on. It's like an NDA. It doesn't even do anything. Whereas a good solid company-turned-see agreement might actually look over by solicitors, will save you on lot of aspects, especially when it comes to giving the property back. you ever give the property back, we've had some with landlords that have said, need to charge you two a half thousand pounds for this work that's not been done. And it was all a lot of rubbish, but we were like, where's the inventory? And because they never did an inventory, their whole contract was invalid. m like it was, we were safe, but they weren't. So, cause in their obligations, they had to submit an inventory, which then the deposit would be taken off and they didn't, they never gave us the inventory. So stuff like that, which if you had this management contract, which has like four clauses in, we can rent this property as Airbnb, it just means nothing. yeah, it's probably too much to say there's three top priorities, but if you're in negotiation, if you're trying to get like three top priorities, I would be like, the deposit is genuinely useless because it's in a business anyway. in a good contract, will say you're going to pay for all the refurbishments needed off the back of it. And you should be able to negotiate a no deposit. A rent free period is amazing as well because then you can set up and launch before you even have to pay. And then yeah, the break clause is a definite must because worst case scenario, you always want an X option. So what I would also suggest that that was perfect that those are those are mine as well Those are literally ones that I was thinking of one one piece of advice I would give is because I know what it feels like and I really do when you start off with this You're you're first of all desperate for a landlord to say yes to you because it's so rare. You're like, oh my god I'm nearly there. I'm nearly there The landlord might say yes to me and then when the landlord says yes you get this like feeling within you to go Oh my god, the landlord said yes, this is amazing. I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna pick up a property I'm a property investor, look how cool I am. And this adrenaline takes over. And then what ends up happening is you end up, and this is what happened to me, you end up, the landlord starts putting all these things in the contracts or saying, well, I need you to do this and this and this. And you end up just feeling like you need to please them because you don't want them to pull out the deal. So they'll start coming up with these ludicrous things and you're like, yeah, that's fine. Yeah, that's fine. Because you're desperate for it almost. And the best advice I can give to you is what Dandruff said, the contract is essential. And I'm telling you, the amount of issues we have had with landlords, at the beginning they're wonderful, we have great relationships, there's no issues there. When we need to exit the contracts due to various reasons, landlords change. They do. Like it can get, it can get, what's the word? ah Conflicting in it. Landlords can change and then they can start making stuff up and start saying that you need to pay for XYZ. And if the contract is not watertight, that can cause a real issue for you in regards to that. And so what I would say is this, please, please don't rush to take on the property if it's not right. Don't get desperate. Just, I promise you, just hold tight. It will come. And if it's not meant to be on this particular one, don't feel disheartened and thinking it didn't work because I didn't give the landlord what they wanted. By God, you're doing yourself a favor. Because if you think about it, if you're getting into a three to five year agreement, regardless of the break laws, they are going to be a pain in the bum. And I so wish I'd have known that when I started. It'd have saved me a lot of money and a lot of headaches. And in some cases we lost money. Like we actually had properties we lost money on because we rushed to take the property on and it wasn't the right property to take on. And I take that on board and it was definitely my mistake as a young, naive person just trying to get started. And I appreciate that. So think about that. 100%. Like it's super easy for me to say as well and say like act from abundance. Not like when I've got a hundred plus properties, but it's a, if you honestly, I was talking to someone the other day at one of the dinner we did and he was like, he's got three, the unit's going through exactly what you just mentioned there with his fourth unit. And I said to be transparent, like your contract is your contract. That is how you operate. And if you just say, look, I've got 15 other deals on the plate right now. If you don't want this, I don't want it. It's fine. And if you act like that, then they want you. And you got to realize you let her, you're the perfect talent in the day. Like you are there. like they need you, they don't need them. like, whilst it might feel like you need to this deal, needs to get this deal. Honestly, if you come a place from abundance, like we have exclusivity agreements that management clients sign because in like, and people are like, how do you sell an exclusivity agreement? And basically what that is, is from management side, if someone wants to use us in the next 12 months, we made them sign an agreement saying if they have a property to come to the letter or anything, they'll give it to us first, like exclusively over it. And people are like, how'd you get that to sign? It's like, well, we've got a wait list. If you don't get, if you don't sign the contract, then we can't onboard you on time. So If you don't want to sign it, then fine, you can come to us in six months time, but we might not be able to take one at that point. Whereas if you sign now, you're locking your management fee, which might go up in X amount of time, locking in this contract details, and also, yeah, you're going to be on the waitlist. So when we reach out to you month in advance, it means when you go live, you'll go live. And similar when you're doing like rent to rent and you're talking to a landlord. If you say, look, I've got three of the deals right now, I can only take on one, I want to invest in the property, let me do it, you know. But if you don't want to do it, then it's fine. And if you act like that, Like I say, it's easier for me to say that now having properties, but if you can get that across to someone like the with or without me energy, then honestly, you're gonna close way more deals anyway. Like desperate is the worst thing because the power dynamic changes, whereas you can take that power back and say, actually, no, you need me for this deal. Like I'm your best tenant, then you'll close way more deals anyway. Definitely and if they are interested in you and they have gone that far they are definitely interested for a reason in having you as a corporate let they have something that isn't quite working for them at the moment and you are going to be their solver of their problem and I love what you just said act with abundance act with abundance have that positive mindset and Absolutely, don't be desperate to get your first deal is the is the worst place you can be just act like you've in your mindset You've already got all of these and going forward with it great great advice So we're now in the property, we've now done it, everything's going great. Talk to me, Dan, because this is the best bit, right? Talk to me about when you started out or even now, like, talk to me about things that could go wrong with service accommodation and this difference between having guests, for example, and direct contractors. What have been things that you're like, on reflection, these are the things that went wrong that people need to know about and the reality of it? Yeah, I think the I mean, in terms of like the deals actually going wrong. I think yeah, like don't, don't force deals to work is a big one, like pre pre gains the property don't force deals to work. um Also professional photos is like the easiest game in the world. Most people that come to the issues is because there are professional photos. And then in terms of actually like guest staying and stuff like that. Yeah, you can have like, people have parties or like prostitutes to find out that happens quite, you know, not regularly. I mean, it happens that you can count on one hand in last five years that's happened. But you've got to have processes in place to stop that. And I would say there's loads of like, I would always target like more luxury high end because the clients you get away better. Same with both like the landlord side on the guest side. Because there's two things here. There's yes, the guest staying, but also you've got like as a rent to a say and as a management, you've got to account, you've got two clients, you've got like guests and you've got landlords and on both sides, if your guests are like paying nothing, they want loads of discounts anyway. And like if your landlords is their only property, this means the world to them if it's management and that landlord is going to be on your back. whole time. So on the guest side, we've had like part we've had like attempted parties, but we have there's like a few things that you must have terms and conditions need to get signed by guests deposits need to be paid by guests IDs needs to be taken by guests camera on the front and back doors to see if can monitor parties, noise monitoring devices in the properties that all of these things put off so many people because it's all on the listings as well. And not one no one night stays is another one. And then that will just stop pretty much all issues with like partying, to be with you. then you can push towards, depending on the location, you can push towards obviously more contractor stays, stuff like that. in terms of the worst things that are gonna happen, at the end of the day, it's just gonna be like the house will get trashed or you'll have prostitutes in there. And the prostitutes aren't actually that bad. They just pay money, but it's obviously not very good for the town and stuff. They don't ruin the house is what I'm saying. Whereas like the worst you can have is like young people having a party. But with those things I just spoke about in place, you can mitigate that massively. I can say I can count on one hand in my party and stuff with them. We've hosted probably like 35,000 nights now, so maybe more. So it doesn't happen that regularly if you've got the right stuff in place. Other people seem to have more issues because they have like one night stays and they're super cheap locations. So if you qualify top of funnel at the property type, how the standard you do it to all the right systems, then you commit to getting them massively. But one point I do want to touch on, yeah, that like when I say qualifying top of funnel is like, what what guest type do you want and what landlord types you want if like in terms of rent to a say in like management because the guest type if someone's paying like 50 pounds a night l17 one bed they're your worst guests because they want a discount for everything whereas we have guests paying like 10 15 grand a month in london who are our best guests because they've paid someone like they just know the service they're getting you know so if someone was starting out i always say try and start start with you'll get like what you want your brand to be and ideally if you want your life to be easy then go for like contractor brand or luxury brand because yeah, can the guest type you're going to get a lot going to a lot easier unless it whatever wherever you are aim for areas that there's like a good high 90 rate because the guests that will stay up in our surface and then on the landlord side the management side I try this is a bit harder now for someone starting out but like if this is like that a landlord's only property and they care about loads of my money's really important to them honestly, I would not take the deal like every management side. So it's not worth it. Yeah, you can make 500 pound a month off it, but having that on your back every single month, they might not be booked or it's not quite performing like you did. Then it's just not worth it. like setting expectations is massive. And that's one reason we don't manage rent to SA is because their expectations are so ludicrous. are like, I've got this sauce, I've paid three grand for rent to SA, I'm gonna make a thousand pounds a month profit after management fees. I'm like, well, you're not, you're make 300 pound a month profit after management fees. And at that point, always expectations that start. So if you're misaligned, it's gonna be way more hassle than it's worth. So yeah, a couple lessons there, but qualifying top of funnel, whether it's your guests or client is super important. Yeah. Do you think that SA in certain areas is quite saturated now in terms of occupancy? You know, I speak to quite a lot of people who are operating service accommodation and I understand 100 % that this depends on the area and I get that, but I do feel like there has been a shift where more people are now operating service accommodation for whatever reason it may be. Bournemouth I know is more saturated. Like I've seen it over the years and there are more and more appearing like in your area, like where, like in terms of where you invest, do you feel it is more saturated? say like no market saturated if you're the best I always say that like if you are the best at what you do then it can't be saturated because everyone looks with you for a reason like 55 % or probably like 60 % of our bookings right now direct long term so and then I'm not competing with anyone for those bookings you know they've come straight to us for reason so yeah I'd say no market saturated I would say like at the moment inside there are obviously because of all the bad bad courses being sold there is like a massive influx of just bad properties so if it's saturated saturated with S H I T I would say. So, and it's just the point is that it's people getting taught by the report in the market. I think there's like an inflection point where I give it like half a year, they'll all be gone. They'll realize like at rent to essays, not for them because they've been taught badly. They're losing money. And then like, basically what happened is all regulation will come in and then like there'll be a massive dip out of market. It has been like a plateau and number of units going live as well recently as well. Most of the areas, I mean, I'll operate in like pretty much every area across the UK, except for the Southwest or you Portland, but except I know people who do operating like Southampton, stuff like that, Portsmouth that do really well. But there's probably, if there's saturation, it's yeah, saturation with terms of like, a lot of properties without reviews that haven't been booked yet. Once they start getting reviews and the quality of services is down, you start to outperform them again. uh But yeah, if you have a good strategy, you have a good property, then you can definitely make it work in most locations, I would say. Yeah, some locations are easier than others for sure, because of less competition, but. The areas that there are competition, just forces you to be better. And if you are better than everyone else, then people still book with you. I hear what you're saying. think that, you what's really interesting is when majority of people are starting out, Dan, they're on their own, right? They don't have a big team. They're on their own and they've usually got a nine to five job. And what I say to them is this, and it comes back to what you said at the beginning, actually, which was perfect. You've got to think about the life that you actually want to live. And for example, I always say to people when they come to me and they say that they want to start a rental SA business, I always ask them why. I say, why? And nine times out of 10, they'll say, because I can make about a thousand pounds a month cashflow from this. And I'm like, when do you think you're going to make a thousand pounds cashflow in a month? Do you think that's the first month that you get in there? And they're like, yeah. I'm like, no, no. Because for me, and this is my opinion, and if you disagree with this, Dan, like, tell me, but this would be my opinion. My opinion is when you start out doing service accommodation at any level, the first thing I always think to myself is how long is it actually gonna take to make profit from this? Because at the beginning, there were no reviews. on your business, your property needs to get the reviews, it needs to get in place, it needs to get the processes. And if we're thinking about this person that I'm thinking about, let's say me, when I started out, I was on my own. I had no team, it was just me. And so I had to do all of it at once. And if you've got a nine to five job as well, how do you fit in everything? Yes, you can have cleaners and yes, you can have a linen company, but in order to get the bookings in, the channel managers right, get it all set up, get the reviews up. Like how do we get people starting out in terms of like the reality check I want to talk to you about of when you're starting out, when you'll actually start profiting from it, depending on the season that you start as well. mean, that's the whole question around, do we start in summer? Do we start in winter? Like I just kind of want to give a bit of a reality for people listening to this podcast. Can you kind of help me to do that a bit? Yeah, I think there's a few things because I've been through like massive ebbs and flows in terms of like, I went through this thing of like everyone, people like pushing on social media, oh, it's so easy to find that. But then recently, because I've been helping more people like we've, we've got like, depends how you set it up. like 100 % more and just learn from the right person, like just learn from someone who actually knows what they're doing. Because if you learn from me, then you would like be able to profit quite fast, like within like three months, if you do it correctly, depending on like again, season you launch and stuff. Yeah, nothing's like at the end of the day, it's not going to like nothing worth doing is easy. it's not going to be, don't just, it's not going to walk in the park, but yeah, if you get top of the right people, you can fast track it, I would say. But the problem is, like, there's a mass, I do believe there's a massive cloud over rent to say, because of how bad people are teaching it. like on I've because of, I'm so clear on like, I help people build a remote Airbnb management business. You just happen to start with three to four interest rates because you learn your own properties. And the only way I'm like, would honestly get people to start just with Airbnb management. But the problem is they don't believe in their own service enough to sell it. So the reason you start with Rent2SA is so you can one, you may as well generate three to four K a month from like three to four properties. And as well, like you shouldn't scale more than that because there's a VAT change recently, which means that like you basically cut your profits again, no one who's selling courses talks about that. like the reason we took the reason I teach three to four first, learn the business, you may as well make the three to four K and also like then you believe in your service and you have the systems. and then you can offer it to other people. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, do you know what? There's so much I want to talk to you about, but I also appreciate in terms of our time. We're just gonna have to do a part two of this. We really are. But really quickly, can you just, because I've just used the word, can you just explain what Toms is and what we're talking about here? it's tourist operators margin scheme, which basically means that rather than paying like, in very simple terms, and you have to quote me on this, but yeah, in simple terms, it reduces your VAT to not paying on gross revenue, and you pay on like a margin. And it was originally created for like, like, you know, travel companies that offer packages where they can't like add VAT on because that's kind of the price they pay. So they pay on margin. And basically, a massive operator called Sonder who's basically like a huge rent to rent company. uh well basically I managed to find like a loophole where you could operate rent to rent under the same scheme and it kind of reduced your VAT from like 20 % to like 8%. So it's fine. So when you went over that threshold, which is like a 95,000 I is now, you would only be paying like 8 % whereas there was a recent case where Sonder lost, they've appealed again, so we'll see what happens, but it's kind of up in the air. Basically what happens is now you have to pay VAT on your gross revenue. which for a rent to SA, if you're doing like 3000 pounds a month gross revenue, you have to pay 20 % tax on that. And that comes off your profit straight away. So you kind of, if you weren't making a lot of money before anyway, like say if you're making 500 pounds for that unit, and your gross revenue is like three and a half, 5K, you can actually be losing money or not making any money now. So yeah, that's what kind of came in. No one seems to talk about it. And like we had 30 rent to SA's at the time it came in and we've been like moving some to management and stuff like this, but also the ones that make a lot of money. we just take on the chin. Like we've got enough to, it may just reduce the marginal a lot. So yeah, when someone's starting, I'm like, look, if you're super clear on like what amount of money is going to change your life, which for most people, it's 10K a month. It's just such an opportunity. And like, I used to think that was a lot of money, but I've realized it's quite easy to get there. But if you talk about people, but yeah, I would say the main thing is, okay, you want to get to that amount. The best thing you can do is three to four end to essays, like set them up really well, learn it, and then scale the management if this is what you want to go down. and you wouldn't need to get crazy numbers to make that happen. The big one for me is just making sure it's remote and you've got to be clear on, like you say, what you want your life to look like when you do it because there's going to be a lot of reinvestment in the start. If you did want to do it as outsourced, reinvestment in VA's early, reinvestment in systems early, you're going to be paying more subscriptions to other people, but it's going to be more hands off. Paying a pricing manager 1 % of revenue as well is a massive game changer for people who are starting out who don't want to do prices themselves. There's loads of stuff. So, but yeah, I would be clear, as long as you're clear on where you wanna get to, like getting there becomes a lot easier. And then you're like, you can come to someone like myself and then I wanna do this. And be like, okay, well, this is how you need to do it. Do it that way. Or let yourself go there and be like, this is how you should do it together. Yeah, yeah, I love that. And do you know what? There's so much we haven't spoken about on this podcast, which is so important. know, systems, for example, like systemization, channel managers, like how we should all operate it as it were for for rents at SA because there's so many people wanting to get into it, but I don't think they actually understand the nuances that come with it and how to do it correctly, as you say, is this word about doing it correctly. And I've definitely learned for myself. all the things not to do. I have made so many mistakes. I've said to you, Dan, like I come from this, I come from the other side of for you in a way, which is I told you this before, I was as happy the day I picked up the keys to my rent, rent service accommodation units as I was the day I gave them back. It was amazing. I had a great time. We did make some money, had a great time in summer, but there was, there was a lot of headaches. There was a lot of problems that came up with it and It comes back to the why it really does. Like if we really bore this down to it, comes back to I didn't, by the end of it, I didn't realize why I was doing it anymore. And it certainly wasn't for the money. The money wasn't the motivating factor for me with the amount of headaches that came with it. So what I'd just love to finish this podcast with, if it's okay with you Dan, is let's say that somebody is looking to literally start tomorrow. They're in a nine to five job. They don't have a massive team. They are going to be a one man, woman band, whatever you want to say. What would be your top? advice if you had to start again today with no money let's say you had to start again today with your five thousand pounds nothing else just that what is your top tips that you would give to them I'd book a one-to-one call with me for one hour and you'll probably learn more in that hour than any course will teach. don't exist. You've gone back to the beginning. Now what? now if I was starting again, I would I would surround myself with other people in the industry. So I would join a community. like we have a community of a thousand members, like I say community and there's like a there's like a smaller VIP community in there. But I would join like I'd be I'd be in I'd be in a place where other people are like so in the industry doing it who are successful and trying to get in those rooms. So if I wasn't here, the essay community wouldn't be here either. But let's just pretend that is there. It's an option that I would get into like a free community starts around yourself with people that are in the industry. Honest people in the industry share loads. So I wouldn't go to these like, you know, scammy like one pound crash courses, stuff like that, where you get forced to sell like buy a course at the end, I would honestly just start to like, put yourself in the environment of people making money in that specific space, whether that be like little master not like huge expensive masterminds, but like little network events, where some people are rent to SA, or like specific SA events. And yeah, to start having conversations with people at the start about it, don't like that you have to dive into. make money tomorrow. Yeah, I would definitely like join our community of people that are you know, actually doing what they're selling gonna do and just start talking to them because loads of people give away stuff for free. I remember like when I like one of the ladies in our community Helen she went she first rang me up she's probably similar situation you were in terms of like three she had like three units was like I'm doing everything. She was like down just take them off me and I was like hang on. Send me the listings I was like okay, first off these are not optimized at all like Just professional photos will change your life. Okay, now I'm not working for bookings. Cool. Okay. Get a VA. Okay. Now customer service is gone. Okay, fine. Now how do we acquire properties? Okay. Do that. And it was just like, and now she's making like 10, 12 K a month, 14 properties. So she's pretty, it's, and like, she's doing nothing. So it's like, you just got to learn from the right people. And I'd say, yeah, if you want to start, if you're starting right now, then get yourself surrounded by people who are successful in the industry. Kind of what we spoke about at the start. And just start having conversations, you know, start to live and breathe it. Yeah, and I love that success story of that girl as well. You know, she wanted to give up, but she didn't. She got advice from the right people, and now she's going on to amazing things. I think when we're talking about this, and we're talking about giving out free advice, I was at a networking event the other night, and one of the girls there, she said to me, I'm looking to start Rent-a-SA, what advice would you give me? And so the advice I gave to her, and the advice I would leave everybody is with this. For me, one of the biggest things you can do when... taking on rent service accommodation, the biggest things I learned was cleaners of gold would be the first thing I'd say. Like for me, the cleaning team was everything. They're the eyes, the ears, the lot, systemization. So for me, one of the biggest issues and headaches I used to have was around check-in. So check-in process was a nightmare. Even if you provide videos and photos and PDF documentations and everything, a person will be checking in at three o'clock usually. Expect your phone to be ringing at three o'clock because One thing I've learned about service accommodation and one thing I've learned about people is people are people. People are the biggest headache that I have to deal with on a daily basis and guests. So for me, even if you send all the information, you are still going to get those headaches. But if you can avoid it through having automations and systems, definitely do that. Get yourself a good channel manager. We haven't had a chance to talk about this on this podcast. Dan, you're to have to come back. Spoiler alert. Like we need to do a part two of this. But channel managers, so the ones that I personally use was up listing. There's also smooth boos another one to have a look at those and the purpose of the channel managers guide just to explain why you would need those is let's say that you're set up on Airbnb. What you actually want to do is you want to make sure that then the booking gets cancelled in the different diaries. So if you're on Verbo and booking.com m and Airbnb, it will then cancel so that you don't get duplicated bookings. That's why we're talking about that. um Linen was a pain in my ass. Linen was literally like... I could do a whole hour on linen, but you'll probably be bored. But linen, get yourself a good linen company. And then more so than not, get yourself a good storage unit in the actual property itself. Because what happened to us was we had a huge problem where the linen on certain days couldn't be provided or was provided and there was nowhere to store it. And because we were in a block of flats, they wouldn't let us store it outside of the flats because it was a health and safety reason and fire hazard. And then we had to store it in the property and then people kept trying to get into it. and then we had to lock it all up and we had to build things. So storage is a massive one as well. So those would be kind of my top things that I learned through it. Also, you want to get as many direct bookings as you can. So for example, anytime at the end somebody leaves, you say, please leave us a review. We're to give you like a 10 % discount. Always offer direct bookings because obviously the OTA platforms take a fee. It's usually 15 % plus VAT, say 18. You want to be getting as much of the profit and as much as the money to you as you can. and get them onto the channel manager and booking through your direct platform landing page on that would be my advice. So yeah, so service accommodation. I'm still not, I don't know. I don't know if I'm convinced. It was a lot of work. Nah, yeah, I mean, like I say, it would have been funny if we'd met when you were like right in the mix of it, because maybe we could have made a little change. Do you know what? I'm probably that girl, be honest with you, Dan, that would have called you and said take them off me. I'd have been that girl. told you don't don't do that just do this instead every month damn there you go Oh man, could, I'm so close to 10 to 15 grand a month. Just missed out. Could have, should have, would have. But do you know what, Dan, I've got no doubt that people are gonna wanna get in contact with you because to be honest with you, a lot of times people do come to me and they say to me, who do you know in the industry who is fab at service accommodation? Who should I be learning from? And that's my advice to you on this podcast. So people are gonna wanna get in contact with you and drop into your DMs, I've no doubt. can you just remind everyone where they can find you to do so? yeah, the property athlete on Instagram. the underscore property underscore athlete and OYG but Daniel Budden, you'll find me. yeah, just give me a slide into my DMs on Instagram and I'll have a chat with you and see if SA is the right fit for you because it's not fit. And quick question, would you be up for doing a part two of this podcast? Yeah. Okay. Brilliant. Yeah. And I also have my own community for girls and property. And of course, although I do a girls and prosperity, which is teaching them just about being them and business owners, I also do property sort of sessions as well within that. Would you be up for coming to do like a service combination session for the girls and like maybe a live Q and A? Yeah. Yay. Okay. We're going to make that happen girls. It'd be great. So thank you so much for coming on this podcast. What would be your what would be like your parting words to end this podcast? Dan, what was the last thing you'd want the listeners to take away? And the last thing is kind of the first thing we spoke about as well. Just like be really good upon like what you want to do, like where you want to be like when you when you say I want to get somewhere, where do you want to get to in life and what do you to be doing day to day basis and I'll make your your development your growth so much easier because you have a clear like end goal in mind and one of the big things is like when you get there, get someone to remind you like tell the people because I've helped people get to where they want to get to and then they they tell me they want to get somewhere else. I'm like hang on a second. You want to get here. So like have a rain check because like you know, you don't have to be scaling to oblivion all the time, you know? But yeah, be clear on where you want to get to, why you want to get there, and what you want to be doing when you're there. And build to that. That's great advice actually, I could take on a bit of that advice. So thank you for that. And then as always, if you wanna find me, I'm Athena Dobson underscore official and girls and property on Instagram. As I mentioned, of course, I've got the girls and property community. Dan's gonna come on and do a session. I'm gonna hold him accountable to that. So yeah, if you need anything, DM me. If you wanna know about certain topics, let me know. And a part two of this will be coming soon. But yeah, if you wanna join the community, just DM me the word community and we'll meet on the first Tuesday of every month. Thanks guys, have the most wonderful week and hope you enjoyed this episode. Take care, bye.