Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast
This show is for the builders and backers of boutique hotels.
Hosted by operators who made the jump from short-term rentals to boutique hotels, this podcast documents the real journey of acquiring, renovating, and operating boutique hospitality assets.
We share lessons learned in real time and sit down with experienced operators, lenders, designers, and industry professionals who bring practical insight, hard-won advice, and unfiltered perspective. If you’re serious about boutique hotels, hospitality operations, or scaling beyond short-term rentals, this show is for you.
Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast
26 - The First Hire That Can Make or Break Your Business with Rashmi Bhat
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In this episode of the Boutique Hotel Secrets podcast, hosts Adam and Micah, along with guest Rashmi Bhat, discuss the journey of transitioning from short-term rentals to boutique hotel management. They reflect on their experiences, share insights on hiring the right team, implementing effective marketing strategies, and the importance of social media in building a community around their brands. The conversation emphasizes the need for patience in business growth and setting clear goals for the upcoming year.
Connect with Rashmi:
Find her on Instagram: toastyindian, resohospitality
Connect with Micah:
Instagram: micahinvests
Tiktok: micahinvests1
Connect with Adam:
Instagram: adaminvests1
LinkedIn: adaminvests1
Tiktok: adaminvests1
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Three weeks building out KPI sheets, which just sounds crazy because my marketing teams, we just want to be running Azures. And I'm just like, I get it, but unless you know your baseline, like you, it's like you're telling me I want to lose weight, but you're refusing to weigh yourself right now.
SPEAKER_02Hey everybody, I'm Adam Walls, and I'm here with my co-host Micah Thomas.
SPEAKER_01We're short-term rental operators who made the jump into boutique hotels.
SPEAKER_02And we're in it right now. Raising capital, renovating a 50-room property. We're figuring it out as we go.
SPEAKER_01This is the Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast, and these are secrets.
SPEAKER_02Welcome in, everyone, to another episode of the official Boutique Hotel Secrets Podcast. My name is Adam Walls. I'm your host, and on this show, we explore everything there is in the world of making that jump from short-term rentals into the word world of boutique hotels. It's not just me. Again, we got my co-host and a special guest here today. So let me bring in my mister from another sister, Micah Thomas. Micah, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_01I'm doing great. It's been about a week of owning a hotel, and it sounds like there's tons to do, even more than I initially thought. But luckily, we've prepared for this. We got a good team behind us. Very excited to launch this new phase of the same journey. And there's plenty to talk about, plenty to get into. I'm ready to get started.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. And let's welcome in one of our coaches from the Boutique Hotel Secrets community, Rajmi Bot. Been following you. I just saw you'd posted, was it today or yesterday? Again, looking back. We're recording this just to timestamp this. 1231, 2025. This is kind of the transition, reflecting, looking back on a year. You've been posting, you've been running hotels, you're doing all the things, probably already set your goals for next year. So I want to welcome you in. Again, yeah, any reflections looking back, any goals looking forward, and then obviously we can get into systems, operations, all the things.
SPEAKER_00Thanks so much for having me here, guys. I'm excited to be back for round two, I guess, uh-huh is the way to do it. It's been an incredible year. 2025 is wrapping up to be amazing. But I think 2026, we're gonna blow it out of the water. Lots of big things on the agenda for my company and at my life. But I think looking back at 2025, the best decision I made was having the belief to bring on the right people onto my company in a moment where I was like, should I hire them? Am I gonna have more sales? Is the economy crashing? Like all of that. And having the belief, and it's interesting, I just wrapped up reading The Science of Scaling by Benjamin Hardy, the guy who wrote 10x is easier than 2x. I've not read that book, but I did read The Science of Scaling. I recommend it to anyone really at any point. But one of the things I think he mentions in that book is Bill Gates said, and a superstar, it's called a super who team member, they don't perform twice as better as others, they don't perform three times as better. They perform 20x better than your average team member. And he said that if you took away the 20 best people at Microsoft, we wouldn't have a company left. And this is when they had 230,000 employees across the world. And so that just shifted something. We've made a lot of investments this year at the company in just the who. It's not been in any asset, it's not been, and that investment just continues to pay off time and time again.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's great. It's literally the who, not how, especially when it comes to choosing team members. And when you're first getting started, Adam and I really had this conversation two or three times within the last week when it comes to choosing a virtual assistant who's gonna help us with like operations and back-end management. And the first VA you choose is probably the most important because they're gonna set the foundation and the groundwork for where the company goes from there. So you really want to be strategic in who you choose and the training that you give them, the structure that you provide them moving forward. So I totally agree. Uh, choosing staff, not even just VAs, but staff in general makes such a big difference, especially in smaller companies where one hire, the wrong hire, can either be a great benefit or asset or even a cancer to the entire company and their bad attitude, if they're tardy, if they're cutting corners, that really shows out probably even more so for a smaller company than it does in a more bigger organization. So definitely want to piggyback off of what you're saying in that regard. And just I'm interested to hear what's your experience with not just hiring VAs, but hiring staff. You said you you believed in yourself, you hired more people this past year, even with a few uncertainties of what the future looked like. What did that process look like for you? Was it something that you just had to bite the bullet and do? Or did you really think long and hard about what the implications were on the other side of hiring more staff?
SPEAKER_00I think one of the best things I've heard in a couple of years, especially after joining Esther Secrets, is you'll be surprised how quickly successful people make decisions. Like it takes them seconds to be like, I'm gonna do this and so I'm like, how do I bring that practice into my life? And so there comes a moment in your business where you have to decide, am I gonna take this leap or we're just gonna stay here for the rest of our lives? And either one is okay. One is probably gonna get you to have an okay business, and the other one's gonna make you very uncomfortable, but it's gonna help push the team forward. So for us, we decided to bring revenue management in-house. I have zero revenue management experience, and I was like, this is a huge mammoth, like we have to conquer it. How am I gonna do it? Was my first question, and I was like, scratch that. Who can help me do this? So we brought on revenue management in-house. We're training our teams, we're giving them their resources. Next up, we're tackling marketing now because we realized your revenue can be amazing, but if no one can find your property, then it doesn't matter how good your revenue strategy is. So we brought on three people on the marketing team that are learning how to do hospitality, learning hospitality marketing. Some of the ad campaigns we're testing out running are providing like insane, like 30x paid ad results. And so very early on, we're testing a lot of things, and we actually partner with a lot of our owners. And I'm like, we're testing this. We as a company will pay for it. We won't pay for the ad dollars, but we'll pay for testing this just to see if it works. And being very honest and upfront with our owners, and we test out and they're like, this is amazing. And like, I've been paying an ad agency several grand a month and not seeing the results that you guys are pushing. And then having, I come from the operations experience, which is what we initially started with, and then building out these other departments, whether it's revenue management, marketing, and having the people, and then continuing to invest in them and pushing them out of their comfort zone, being like, this is what I'd like to see. So providing North stars for each. We did a North Star, which is like a KPI. So I think about Airbnb, like we should be above 4.95 superhost at all times. Every month you do that, you get a bonus. Great. That's very easy. It's an easy North Star for most people to follow. For our hotels, we do, hey, I want to see 25 star reviews. Once we do that, there'll be an X amount of dollar bonus. It keeps the team very aligned. One thing, so we tested out with the ops team, we did really well. So going into next year, we're doing that per department. And so, like this many direct bookings and our short-term rentals, marketing teams gets rewarded, ops team gets rewarded, revenue teams gets rewarded. So putting more money on the table for the rest of the team to have North Stars to be like, hey, I did a really good job. And I can see a company where I'm valued for my results while having the systems processes back in to get to the next level.
SPEAKER_02That's great. And would you mind just giving listeners a sense of scale in terms of like how big your team is today, maybe how that's how quickly it's gone from maybe just you to building out something that's pretty robust, working across a portfolio of properties. And then I'm curious about a ratio of maybe, I don't know, let's call American-based like in-person workers versus maybe virtual employees from lower cost countries. And I'd love to get into because Mike and I just hired our first marketing and kind of social media VA. We're in the midst of actually going through slates and panels for our first operations VA. So we're in it right now. So I'd like to, if you got any lessons learned about should we start on the lower end? Should we be shopping on the higher end? How to bonus? Do you have any rule of th thumb? So, anyways, I think this is a really rich topic here because it's happening live for us now. But maybe we can just give it a little bit of context in terms of how big the team is and what it looks like today, and maybe how you've evolved that over time.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, for sure. So I started in 2023 when I had six properties under management, and it was just my lead, not my Lau ops manager, but my lead VA back then and one other person. So we started really small. And today the team's grown into we have six to seven people that handle operations. We manage, so we're co-host for boutique hotels. We manage about eight to nine boutiques. I think 10 might be the official number. I don't know if we've signed our latest contract yet. We're waiting. And um, and then we have several kind of short-term rentals that we co-host as well, and then have a completely separate company where we have 75 short-term rentals we manage with a team of about five VAs and the virtual assistants. At our co-hosting company, most of our team is outsourced. Some are in South America, others are in the Philippines. And then we are bringing on a director of ops that is more stateside based. I am a big believer that great talent can be worn anywhere in the world. So, how do we harvest that for our company? And a question I think I'm sure we all get asked is oh, if you're outsourcing, then you're not keeping jobs in America, and blah blah blah. And honestly, I also own an Indian restaurant apart from all of this. And the way we're able to pay our team top of market here is by saving a lot of the cost to outsource. So we're paying great over there, we're also paying great over here. So you get to make a real community impact wh when doing while being like a global company. And so I got lucky, and there will be times in life where you just get lucky where I just ended up with a super who is what they call it. And I wasn't like I didn't know I even had that, I think is really what happened. I see a lot of people struggle. I struggled in my first year of hiring VAs. I had five that left between whatever and six one ended up being right higher. You want to set the high standard, pay them the wage they're asking you if you're like, ah, that loud sounds like a little tight, do it. Like they're gonna be 10x, 20x what you expect from them. But if it's not the right fit, like cut. Like, I think so many people are like, I had my first VA now, and now it has to work. I've invested so much time and energy that they don't cut at the right time. And then you just get into a big mess where you're just like going around around with average talent, and you're like, hey, we're at the point at my company now where my other team members will start cutting new people if they don't meet like our benchmark. And that's really as a leader, your whole job is to invest in your people and bring on new talent that can help grow that. So talk about marketing, right? That's been like my favorite topic, and it's like a big thing going into 2026 for me. So the first thing I did, and I'm not sure if this is like the right way to do it, is I like systems and organization behind me because marketing teams they send to be super creative, they have great ideas, and then like by the time it gets to execution, I'm like, what actually went out? Did we send out the newsletter? Do we send out the blog post? Are we tracking our metrics? When we bought on marketing house, the first thing I think we spent three weeks building out KPI sheets, which just sounds crazy because my marketing team, we just want to be running ads, and I'm just like, I get it, but unless you know your baseline, like you, it's like you're telling me I want to lose weight, but you're refusing to weigh yourself right now.
SPEAKER_01You'll always be on track.
SPEAKER_00So I'm just like, I don't know. So we made like a very simple Excel sheet. And this is the other thing, but don't overcomplicate these. People get 500 like marketing softwares. We literally just have an Excel sheet. We have every gate yellow state, like Instagram followers, views, likes, shares, who's watching the video was a best performed. We're like everything just went and I just spoke back and forth with Chad GPT and created the base for it. The marketing team went and adding notes because they wanted to make sure we're capturing the right dates, and everything's kind of manual at the moment where they're just going in every week and filling it out, and then we discuss it as a team. We have something, so we use Monday at the moment, we might be changing our going to notion, but we have it's called like a can ban board, I think is like the official term for it. But it's basically like a bunch of like sections. So it says inspiration, stories to make, reels to make, and it assigns people automatically, and then things get moved into different buckets. If the editor like made a video, it'll get into the next one where like I have to go approve it, then we'll get into post it. If I have edits, I'm like, no, this is wrong, it goes back to that. So there's a very clean system, and I see all of the videos. Of course, we're at the point where I'm not looking over every single video that's going out for us, but at least there's a cadence. And then the second level we did, and we do things, we realize what we do wrong, and then we go fix it. So I'm all about this taking more action, then we are like planning stuff out. So one thing we realized when we brought on our third social media editor was like, we don't have a formal program, we just expect people to jump in and know what they're doing or what we're doing. One of our social media persons now is creating like a social media training. So it literally is like, week one, here are brand colors, here's day one, and then it has here's what you should be talking about, but here's the end result I want you to take away from it because marketing is a feeling, right? Like operations, I could be like, we the guest like give us a five-star rating or they didn't. But marketing, how do you teach somebody like this is the essence of the brand? This is what we want guests to feel from somebody who like a doesn't have the marketing experience, doesn't have all of the back end stuff, while you're teaching somebody that's probably never visited the property. How do you encapsulate all of that? And then the final piece of that is how do you rope in the local people? I think, Michael, we were just talking about you had an amazing TikTok video. The hook was great, it did really well. And then all of a sudden your GNs, what are you doing? And so they're not looped in, and they're like, What are you talking about? And people don't think they're like, My videos never, no one's ever gonna see this. We've had cleaners call us and be like, Hey, did you like post this? I have a friend who wants to book now. And I'm like, Yeah. Yes, so I like never told them because I didn't think anyone would watch it either. I had the same feeling.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Man, you hit on a lot of good points. I do want to stick a pin in Notion versus Monday, because I'm currently obsessed with Notion, and we can get into that here in a second. But I do want to talk about the power of social media, and I also want to talk about incentivizing each department when it comes to, I know you talked about bonuses, so I'll start there and then we can dive into whatever else. For our property in particular, just thinking of ways to incentivize staff to get those five-star reviews. We even thought about we have a clean-in checklist that we're gonna go with. It's based off of like an 100 100-point system, and whoever's the top cleaner for the month, they get some type of bonus or preferred time off, or just thinking through that. So I'll be interested to hear what you may have, being that this is like week one of us having a hotel. What could we implement now or in the near future that can immediately get people on board and cause them to all align and be on track with the same vision as we have?
SPEAKER_00It's interesting. We every new owner is like, what can I do? What's the first thing I should do? And we're probably gonna laugh with my answer. And my answer is gonna be do nothing for the first 30 days. Just sit and observe. Just get your property, get to know the feeling, get to understand like where's revenue coming from, what are guests here for? Don't do anything like major. And I'm talking about if you were paying people with a check, continue writing that check. Like, it's very easy to go in and like rock the boat and confuse everybody, and then like you're excited, and then it just starts getting very overwhelming very quickly. It took us two and a half years for me to implement a KPI for my ops team. Now, did I know about KPIs before that? Yes. Should I have done it sooner in hindsight? Maybe. But also, like things were working. Like I was paying out bonuses, they weren't KPI-based bonuses, but like we were paying out bonuses. The team was like, hey, we want a more formalized structure. And I was like, I agree. We built it. I didn't go in going, we should have KPI. I think people hear all of these things and just start getting very overwhelmed very quickly. Because the other thing is you need someone on a legacy system, stay on the legacy system. You can make like changes like booking.com if you're like, hey, like, obviously, make your bank account changes and stuff. Typically in 30 days, I don't recommend you change anything. You can look at like new tools, like if you're thinking PMS-wise, that's usually the first one, revenue management. Those are like little levers we can pull. And then in 30 days, once you have a really good like baseline established, now you have a really good KPI rhythm. Then in like the 30 to 60 days, I think you can do like light changes. So PMS is usually like a big one that most people are like, either want to stay with it or I want to change with it. I think you need to keep both systems on for like month two if you're planning a PMS switch. And so you're still on the legacy system in month two, but you've introduced a new one. And then you do a hard like reset month three if PMS is big for you. Payroll, social media. I think social media is like a great level. Revenue management are great levers to go that again don't impact operations as much because that's the heart of the company. A lot of people are like, Wow, should I be like, I want to use price labs, but like the PMS I have doesn't use price labs and see if they have another software that like can do the same thing for the moment. Because if you go in and change everything, it's it makes people very nervous about their jobs. It makes it create this culture of like panic. And so what I always recommend is you're like just take a step back. Let's just see how 30 days happen and then just note everything else. You're like, we talked about Notion, right? Or like you were like, I'm gonna put a pen in it. We're also looking at a migration from Monday into Notion. And it's a decision we've had on the plate for about like six to eight months. And at first, my ops team said no, and I was like, no problem, I'm still want to keep testing it. And then in December, they were like, Hey, we're ready to make the switch. The second they gave me the go, I'll like sign it, was like, let's do it. And so we're doing it in January. It's also who not how. I'm not implementing it. We have two people we that are implementing it. I will probably look over like the final results and make sure we're I'm part of the process, but again, who not how very important.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Mike, Micah, I want to give you the mic for a second because you've been sending me texts at all times of the day about your love of Notion and that you burned up your AI credits within like you're like me, is like a teenager going into an arcade with a roll of quarters. Like you just immediately spent everything, which is beautiful. Sounds like you're having fun. But talk to us about now again, like a month ago, you'd never even been in Notion. To obviously, you built SOPs and things like that, standard operating procedures for those that don't know that acronym. So you've done this before in Airbnb hospitality, but what are you learning as you pivot now to commercial, as you pivot to structuring a system that you know a team is gonna need to get into and roll?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So first I'll say I ran out of Notion credits. Notion has a free version and they give you a certain amount of credits. And pretty much when you run out of that roll of quarters, you're done. You have to pay for the upgrade, or you don't get to use it. But you it's basically like AI that you talk to, you say, No, I want this right here. I need it to link to this. You I need it to be able to assign a name, and when the name is assigned, it sends them a notification via email, yada, yada, yada. So I can go in and learn every single feature of Notion. There's a thousand of them, or I can just tell AI, this is what I want. And if it doesn't look right, I'll go and correct it. So I was just playing with it. I have a vision, like you said, for short-term rentals, I am very heavy on automation, very heavy on AI and systems. I feel like if there's ever a reason a guest communication gets back to me, something has gone wrong. I like to rely on my systems and team to handle every single facet of the short-term rental business. And I want to be able to implement that for commercial real estate in this hotel as well. So that's the first thing. The second part to the story is RGM and our hotel currently has no SOPs. Every system that she operates off of exists only in her brain. So she knows what to do, her staff knows what to do, but it's nowhere in writing. So if a new person was to come in or for whatever reason she wasn't available, nobody would know what to do. And that's just not a type of business either Adam or I want to run. So it was very apparent that we need to get some stuff in writing sooner than later. And like Adam said, like, I'm just coming up with new ideas, and like my goal is to make Notion so easy. And by the way, we don't have an affiliate code for Notion yet. But I'm I feel like I'm selling this to people. But no, just saying my goal is to they have a really nice app. So any individual who works for the hotel, whether it's a cleaner, whether it's a front desk worker, they should be able to look at the app on their phone, know exactly what they're supposed to do. If they don't know what to do, they can quickly search it through Notion and it'll pull up what they're supposed to do. And it should be very easy. It shouldn't be very intricate and they got to go through three layers of software and technology to get this should be something that happens in a matter of seconds. So I want to build it very simple for anybody, a new employee, a seasoned employee to come in and use. So yeah, I've just been playing around. They have all types of build-outs that you can do, and I'm sure I'm only touching 5% of its actual capabilities. But my goal isn't really to touch all 100%, it's just to make a very streamlined workspace for all of our employees.
SPEAKER_02If you're getting value from this, follow the show and share it with one person who's ready to move beyond short-term rentals.
SPEAKER_01And if you want to learn more about the boutique hotel secrets community, the link is in the show notes. Yeah, and I've nerded out on operations and I've probably made 25 SOPs, a lot of which will be reviewed by the general manager and I. But really these SOPs are the first ones are like, what's your mission, your vision, what's the culture, what's the dress policy? These are things that they don't have. They wear what they want to work. There is no mission, no vision of this property. So these are things that can be implemented day one. But there's other things like what are the roles and responsibilities of the front desk worker? Are they cross-trained? Are they allowed to fold laundry and stock the cleaning carts in the evening after staff leaves? So these are just things that I'm drafting and I'm putting in the notion like database so that I can review what the general manager make sure she's on the same page. But there's a level of expectation we can hold these employees to because you don't know what you're doing wrong if you were never told what to do or if there's no reference on what to do. But now we can hold them to the standard. I'm going to be optimistic and say they're probably already working at this standard, but now we have a physical piece of paper, a documentation virtual, really, that we can reference that way. If they ever do fall below that standard, we have something to reference back to. Yeah. I'm very excited. I find myself just playing with Notion, trying to find out what else I can add and how can I make this easier? Everything from inventory to clean in checklists to SOPs to employee onboarding at the whole nine.
SPEAKER_00It probably sounds boring to most people, but Michael display just what Notion is because I don't want people to confuse that with PMS. Yeah. So I just explained like what it is and then what you I think you're building like a knowledge base, but I'll talk about that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I think Michael Denwitty, he's in the uh in the boutique hotel secrets group. He explains it as like a second brain, but uh essentially it's like a work space software that can handle all the information for your company. So whether it's task management, if you need to create like a to-do list or you need to create a set of work orders, like I said, your SOPs, if you need a clean in checklist, if you need your employee orientation, it can handle all of it. It can change it from like a calendar to a checklist to a table to a spreadsheet. It has a lot of dynamic features and it links to like a communication software like Slack. So if you need to communicate things that are happening, you can either have it do it via email or via Slack. So I think that's the way I look at it. Am I would you say I'm explaining it correctly, Rashmi, or would you say there's a better way to explain its capabilities?
SPEAKER_00I like to really call it like a knowledge base. And so you can use different softwares. Notion just happens to be one of them. There's Asana, there's Monday. I think Notion is a really good one. It's one we're moving to as well. I think their AI tool integration is really cool. And you can have a lot of automations. You can go in and automatically update a lot of things. And let's be honest, the price point's decent, even at a paid version, which I know a lot of people will switch from other. I do know a lot of questions I get is should I use something like Breezeway? Is a question. Or are there more hotel kind of softwares that help with cleaning and like cleaners can check in and their time and stuff? And guys, there's like a million tools out there. There's no way for one person to know all of them. So I'm all about really like minimum viable product, right? Like notion's great. You're writing it out, reviewing with your GM. I think the hardest part about any of this is like getting the culture to adopt it. It took us about two to three months. Like we used to be a fully WhatsApp company. It's very easy. It's easy to get into it. And then when we move to Slack, it like took a while for the entire team to be like, everything happens on Slack. Stuff still gets a little bit slick through on WhatsApp, but we've tightened it up. So just give yourself some grace as you build it out and like you roll it out. Like people are usually like, I know how to like make the bed. I'm not gonna read an SOP on how this is the reactions you get when you're like this is real reality, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yep, yep. And I think that's right. I've leveled my expectations. Although I'm so excited about this, they're gonna look at this and be like, oh great, there's something else I need to learn. It's gonna make my job harder. So I'm trying to prepare myself for resistance and like a learning curve and people not wanting to buy in immediately. Yep, definitely trying to level my expectation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And do you want to talk a little bit, Rashmi, about why you made the decision? Because I feel like every Airbnb operator, every boutique hotel owner, every year, right? There's new tools, there's new software, there's new functionality, right? We're constantly evaluating, thinking about our tech stack, our costs, about how it's adding to the employee experience, the guest experience, et cetera. Maybe you can we can zoom in real quick. Just I think this is symbolic of all the time. We're making changes from we used to do it this way, and now we're gonna be doing it this way. Talk us through WhatsApp, this conversion from WhatsApp to Slack, what was working, what wasn't working, what ultimately was that inciting moment to get you over to the other side. Just maybe we can use that as a little mini case study here to learn about because I think every hotelier, you're gonna have existing or no systems, and you need to take your staff to this new, better place. But there is some resistance. There is a learning curve. There, there is some of this. So I'd love to just learn a little bit more about this kind of microtransition that you've gone through with your team.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So it started with just me. And so I would just text the cleaners like short-term rentals, right? So it went from me to having a team and getting it's called quo now, but it used to be called open phone and texting vendors us, kind of like the cadence. Then the team and I were on WhatsApp, we're doing. We realized at like the fourth or fifth way, we were adding people, they have no history on WhatsApp when they get added. So all of this, even though we're putting it in Google Shoes, and this I'm sound ancient now, but this is before AI. We're putting it in Google Shoes, we're putting it on the drive stuff, just wasn't being we were funny. So because I am or used to be a cheaper operator, I went with a software called Chanty, which is similar to Slack, good software, doesn't have the level of integration Slack has, or maybe even the ease of use. So we went to Chanty and they had a little bit better features. And then Slack was, I think, like twice the price. I was like, I don't need Slack, right? They're gonna save a little bit of money, we'll do Chanty. Realized in a couple of months, I was like, we're gonna outgrow Chanti so quickly, it's not even funny. So then moved and like just made the payment to be like, hey, like Slack is just a part of our organization. This is the standard now. And then I just stopped responding on WhatsApp. That's really like how I like stop systems. And like I would like screenshot whatever was said on WhatsApp and drop it in Slack. I'm like, here's like the new way we're gonna do this. And then the team, I think, really likes it. You have a very clear way you can be offline on Slack. And so a lot of my team, like, they have their personal stuff on WhatsApp. And I was like, this is getting way too messy. I can't find what I was looking for. New two members on Slack. There's a history once so there's a free version of Slack, but once you start paying it, you want the history. So again, we're good about putting stuff in SOPs, but if stuff gets missed, it's very easy to search Slack. It's very easy to add hotel owners as guest users on Slack. It's very easy to add the cleaners that are willing to be on Slack. Not every cleaner is, and that's totally fine. Same with our vendors. And also, I think showed a lot of people at the company that like this is the new stage. WhatsApp is great and it works, but at the end of the day, we're not a company that's gonna have one hotel we manage and everything's on WhatsApp, and this is like part-time. Like, we're at 10, we're probably gonna scale to 20 or 30. And so we need robust systems, and we tell owners like this is how we communicate. If you prefer to communicate on text phone, that's totally fine. We have it's called I still call it open phone, but we have it linked into Slack. So I see all the messages that come in. Sunday board updates. I'm a big believer in find like top three problems for your quarter and relentlessly focus on those. We have three items for Q1 that we're relentlessly focusing on. Could we optimize every other thing on design? Like, probably. Is it gonna make that much of a difference? No. What's gonna make a bigger difference is us putting more money in the owner's pocket and paying our team members better and taking care of them. Like that generally is what Moose didn't eatles. So Notion was like a big problem for us because a lot of information was on Google Sheets, but uh they have to like go to Monday, find the SOP, open it, go to Google Sheets, read it, and if the update's not that good, like we have playbooks per hotel, the playbook is now 120 pages. And so they're literally scrolling to and you can use a control F feature, but it just takes so long.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And Chat GPT has a habit of ghosting, so it's just like pulling things out of like random context. And people are like, yeah, Rosh, maybe we can optimize ChatGPT in this one. Okay, but like I don't want to be an AI expert. Like, I run hotels. I need like a minimum viable product that's quick, that's easy. Um, and my team can just go search it and it like just searches from that. And Notion seems like a really good alternative for that.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, I would wholeheartedly agree. I don't want to sell Notion too much because I feel like I've talked enough about it, but yeah, it's great. From what I have saw so far, it's really good. And my brain operates how it works. There's a bunch of tabs, and I can focus on one tab at a time, and I can close that tab when I want to focus on something else. So it works like my brain does. So I like that. But anyway, I want to transition a little bit because I've had a little bit of fame on social media, but we're talking to the social media queen, somebody who has been posting consistently for over a year, and that's something that takes a lot of commitment, a lot of time, but it really makes a difference in a business, especially in the hospitality space where people they want to work for you or they want to come stay at your place because you have such a social media presence where they may not have known about you otherwise. And you've done it for the food industry as well as for lodging in hospitality. So just wanted to hear what your thoughts on like posting so consistent for years to come, and then what does that do for someone who's looking at your product for the first time? What's the effect of being able to have such a strong social media presence?
SPEAKER_00So I started, I've been posting on and off for years. And in 24, I was like, we gotta, I tried Twitter, I'd like I did all of the things, and I was like, nothing was really sticking. And then I just picked Instagram and I was like, we're just gonna go for a 30-day. I'm just gonna post. An advert creator I really enjoy, and a lot of my content was very similar to hers. Um, and I really didn't deviate from that. And I really recommend finding somebody that you're like, oh, I like their content, let me repurpose this in my way. And people are like, we're just copying, or reinventing the wheel here. I didn't invent the first hotel in the world.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I'm gonna miss us one. So get in the habit of it. What was where like first thing I didn't get on it to really promote my business, right? I was like, I'm gonna share my life and I want to have a documentation for myself as to what I do because like now I get reminders. Well, I remember this last year, and I was like, I've never seen this in my life. What are we talking about? I don't even remember it. And so I think it's a really good way, just do it for yourself. There will be effects that are far beyond, of course, what you do, but I think that's like the number one thing. The second thing I did is I think everybody wants to be part of a community and wants to be part of a story. So I really focus whether it's our hospitality, whether it's our restaurant, whether it's our social media, how do we tell the story? Like, how do we make people feel? And so a lot of my content is, of course, about being an Indian woman who owns this, this in America. I bring a family is very important to me. So in a lot of my videos, you'll see my mom, you'll see my husband, you'll see my my dad, and it'll be like funny things we do. Cause like we're a family and like things happen. Because of the videos, have we had a ton of success at our restaurant? Absolutely. Have I also shared like guys last month was slow, right? And so my mom has been doing this, and so people are like, oh my gosh, like I meant to come support you, and I didn't. But I think it's a very authentic way for yourself and for your for people to feel like they're a much bigger version of a story. Because I think people just like being part of a community, and in a world that's like part of this, like social media, everything's digital. People want to feel something that's real. Are the followers great? Of course. Are the views great? Of course. Like that, of course, all of that makes me like super happy. And I'm like, yeah, like we're doing something. I'm making some huge investments into social media going into next year for me. Because I'm like, we need to get this again to the next level, it's big for Q1 for me. But I think in the first year, just do it for yourself and learn the art. That's the other thing. I see so many people posting great content, but they never take time. Whether it's a social media coaching program, whether it's a mastermind, like whatever that is, take the time and like actually do because the thing about social media is everybody's right. Like whatever they tell you will probably work. But if you keep changing strategies every two minutes, it's not gonna work. Yeah, and chasing the algorithm doesn't work.
SPEAKER_02Well, this is the a lot of what you said, I think maybe intuitively or accidentally or fortuitously, like we've stumbled into again. Mike and I, maybe I don't know, what, a month ago, two months ago, Mike? I mean, we had that conversation with Mark Simpson, the CEO of Boostly. Great conversation, wide-ranging. But at the end, he had mentioned a couple accounts that he thought were really interesting to drive direct booking. And one was Rajan Cheetah, who's building right the number one A-frame cabin in Virginia. And again, it's just it's got a new feel. He was doing sneakers before. So, like without even ever meeting this guy, and you can just see the format. It's like a mini HD TV series where each post is a day. And so we just talked about oh my god, like this is great. And then we found this other guy doing a bowling alley, and here's this guy doing a skyscraper, and here's this guy, like it's popping up everywhere now in our feed. I'm watching a guy make pretzels in St. Louis or something. So it's like the template is there, the archetype is there, but now you have to infuse your personality, your story, our hotel in page is one of one. So literally finding the template, making it your own, that honestly feels I don't know, it's not hacky. In some ways, what Picasso always said, the greatest form of flattery is stealing, right? Like we're just we're paying attention to what's working, and then we're infusing our own story into it. So I guess I'd throw it back to you. You've been, I was like, oh, maybe we do like week one, month one, quarter one. Like, I'm and Micah's, yo, I just created an account and boom, we're ripping. And it's like day eight, and every day, even from West Virginia, this guy's posting. So huge hats off to like Micah for just taking the mic and running. And again, we'll work with a brand strategist and all of this kind of like later. Again, progress over perfection, I think, has been your mantra. But Micah, any other thoughts, insights, reflections? You've been doing this for like a week. So, what have you learned about the art of the game and again getting better and paying attention to what's working and what's not working?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I decided to commit. First, I thought it would be like a once-a-month, once a week type of thing, but there's honestly so much that's happening, and it feels right to document it as it's happening as well. And again, I just committed to doing it. I think early on, things that I've learned, social media takes time, especially if you're editing your own videos. That takes time. That is a real life commitment. And I don't want to overlook that because you can go viral on one video, that's great. But if you want to do this as a daily or routine posting strategy, you need to really look into what your brand is, what you're trying to market. And like Rashmi said, don't chase the algorithm because the algorithm is going to have you walking around with your shirt off and paint all over your body so you can get people's attention. But it's like you gotta, you really just want to you want to develop your brand so that the people who follow you are genuinely interested in what you're selling or what you're talking about, and they're not just there to see you do something crazy. So, although I am throwing the phone in one of my videos, I'm genuinely talking about the transformation of our hotel. We genuinely believe that we will create the number one hotel in Page, Arizona, amongst the other 25 hotels, and that's just what I'm going to stick behind. So it may not always be the view or the photo or the view, the fit video that gets the most views, but it's genuine and it's true. And I think that's most important with staying on social media and posting on a routine basis. That's my early takeaways in this long eight-day journey I've been on of up to every day. Eight days, it's so exhausting. My guy, it takes all my life. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.
SPEAKER_00It's a full-time job, and I think a lot of people, uh especially making like good videos, it is a full-time job. And I'm not even including the commenting section in this, right?
SPEAKER_01Oh my gosh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I'm just talking about just posting. And like I didn't, I underestimated how much like time and energy it would take. Now I have a cadence, I have two or three people that are on my team that helped deliver all of it. One thing I realized was a pet peeve of mine was I it drives me insane to do Instagram stories because I have to wait for the upload thing, and it like mentally just drives me insane. I have to blow. And that was my first time. I need a team for this because I am going to go insane very quickly because I can all be like on Slack and I'm trying to upload a story. And if the story doesn't upload, it tells you like five minutes later. I'm like, what do you mean I need an upload? Like I'm sorry, calm down.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's exactly right. It takes time, and then the more intricate the video feels like the longer it takes to upload. So it took you an hour to edit it, now you gotta wait 10 minutes for it to upload, unless you're on like super fast Wi-Fi. I totally agree with that. But I think that the other part of social media that we didn't mention is just the ability to monetize off of your following. And I'm thinking about our hotel in this scenario. People are gonna watch us build this hotel or re-renovate this hotel for months. And then there's a point where we need to somehow work to convert these viewers to actual guests if that's their interest, especially if they really want to experience what we've created. So I guess that comes with strategy and part of your brand. But I just wanted to highlight the fact that your social media follow following can also turn into a source of monetization if it's done right. And I think that's why it also is very important to be very smart and strategic on how you put content out there because nobody's gonna want to stay at the person's hotel with their shirt off and paint on their body. But if all of a sudden you've created this brand that people feel comfortable and they've grown with you as a social media account, they likely want to be involved in it even moving forward.
SPEAKER_00For sure. And I think there's gonna be some people that are just invested in the story. And really at the end of the day, all we do in the hotel space and the hospitality space is human connection, right? So connecting people, whether it's staying at your hotel, whether it's being part of the journey. I agree. I love it, man. I've been like wanting to you guys to get on social media. So look at this.
SPEAKER_02Here it is. And we're talking with our guy, we're recording an intro, outro for this podcast, literally like next week. And our game plan is to release five or ten, like right off the rip, and then one once a week, every week. And again, the podcast audience is really targeted to people that already have some short-term rentals and they have some maybe some aspirations or ideas about moving into the boutique hotel space. So a little bit deeper dive behind the curtain, all the feels, but literally using us as a case study, going from zero to one, all the questions, all the wins, all the L's, but then invite in our community. There's other people that again are actively buying hotels. There are people like you that are going from 10 hotels to 20 hotels. So there's just so many rich stories and lessons in here. But again, I think the podcast being a longer format is kind of for the operators. And in some ways, like TikTok is for trying to catch some eyeballs. But like you say, Micah, at some point, either some of these people might turn into investors, some of these people might turn into guests, or some of these people might just share our content or like our content or engage with our content and help us grow our base. So any of those options are fine, but I think in an attention economy, like you have to be posting something to remain relevant. And all of a sudden, now, Rashmi, we've been on a couple dozen phone calls. But I if you had not posted, I would not know about your mom's brioche French toast. And I literally had to send that to my wife about hey, can we make this? Because it looks amazing. So, again, there's just unanticipated outcomes and goodness that comes when you are vulnerable. You open up yourself to this. You don't have to do this, but people get to know you in a deeper way, and you don't even know that it's happening, right? Again, you're just being authentic and true and open to the universe. And I think the good people that want to connect and engage will find you, and uh it will unlock the next uh the next level of growth.
SPEAKER_00Two things I'd love to like just up on was Micah saying you're in West Virginia and you're still posting content. I it's called batch content, I do it all the time. It's not like I something happens in my life, I record it and I post it. Like that that that sounds like insanity to me, but I think a lot of people think that's true. And like you and I, like social media is not our full-time gig. And so I batch a lot of content, my team goes through and edits it, I do all of my voiceovers and then it gets posted. It takes a little bit more time, but I agree with you. Not none of this is instant, I think is what people think, and which is always talking about like Instagram stories driving me insane. And then the other thing, in being in a digital world, I uh I tell all of my hotel owners, I tell anyone team members that joined, I'm like, follow me on Toasty Indian. You'll get to know who I am as a person because we can be on all the Zoom calls in the world. I could sell you any product in the world, but until you can establish a rapport with me. So, like the French Bureau Shows Adam was like an amazing example. Like, I get a lot of hotel owners. I'm like, just follow me on Toasty Indian. And they're like, oh my god, your family looks like mine. Or I didn't know, like the first time I tried any of your food, I had the same like comment and a question. I'm like, I've always wanted to ask someone, but I don't know who to ask. And so we're not even talking about like hotels, we're just talking about connecting people. And through that, you get so many more relationships. And I think you're just you become real in a world of AI and like information, or being like, let's just make French toast, man. That's all I really want to do.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Love French toasts. I think this has been great. Anybody else want to end with anything? This sounds like a really good kind of episode. We I'm probably gonna go back and review just for clarity on operations, what to do when you first buy a hotel, even on like social media strategy for somebody just starting over. This feels like a really good reference point for people who want to get into this space and maybe don't know where to start. So really happy that we got a chance to talk about this today.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I would say one of the things I'm taking away from this conversation is patience, right? Really easy to come in guns ablazin. And so I love your commentary and kind of wisdom there, Rashmi. It's gonna be hard, but sit on your hands a little bit. Watch, observe, ask questions, learn as much as you can. This is what we see successful executives in Fortune 500 companies do. You get in trouble if you come in and just try and change everything. People are gonna be like, who the heck is this person? So, again, a little bit of patience, deliberate thought, and then evolving things with your team over time, I think is just gold. And in terms of 2026, maybe we can end on like kind of goals and tomorrow, literally, we flip the calendar, it's a new day. One of my goals. I think Micah for the podcast that we've talked about is we want to invite in through our podcast, right? People getting to know us, hearing our story, somebody that's sitting on the sideline thinking about boutique hotels. Can I do it? You've heard us already say this before, but don't do it alone. There is a community already established. It's called Boutique Hotel Secrets. So again, DM us, check the show notes. There are ways to get connected, to discover a little bit more about this, to see if it would be worth your while. But again, we have one-on-ones, we have weekly calls, there's content and coursework, there's recordings, there's people like Micah, myself, Rashmi, Joel, Isaac, others that will help you be successful. Again, a year ago, I wasn't sure what I was gonna do. I joined BHS, now I own a hotel. So again, my goal for 2026 is to have 12 people join us by Micah and I. They found us, they heard our story, and they got off the fence and they said yes to Boutique Hotel Secrets, and it began their adventure as a future hotel year. So that's my shot, Micah. One person per month for the first year, 12 people joining BHS, making our community stronger, bigger, and again, more successful. So any shots you guys want to call before we wrap up.
SPEAKER_01No, I double down on that. I believe we can do it. I think it might happen before month 12.
SPEAKER_00So let's go. I love it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love it. Rashmi, how about you? Any shots you need to fire? Get down 2026?
SPEAKER_00Come follow Micah on I, follow me at Toasty Indian, follow Micah at Micah Invest. Do you guys have a recall Instagram social media page?
SPEAKER_01We have one. It's the Wesley Hotel on Instagram, but there's nothing on there yet. So I'll be sure to at least post the O. Yeah, that's true. Amazing.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Thank you, gang, for again showing up today. It's New Year's Eve. Again, you can be with family, you can be working on your business. So appreciative that you joined for this conversation. I always really enjoy these. I learn a lot every time. I love the engagement. And thank you, the listeners, for tuning in, for paying attention to the end. So again, clearly you've got some intentions and aspirations in this game. Let's make 2026 the best year yet. All right, that's it for today on the official Book Geek Hotel Secrets Podcast.
SPEAKER_01If this helps, be sure to follow or subscribe and send it to someone who needs that bigger push. And if you want the community or the resource and playbook behind what we're learning, the link is in the show. Quick note we're BHS community members sharing our own experience. And if you have questions or topics you want us to cover, reach out and let us know. We're building this show for operators just like you. Catch you on the next one.