In this frank and open episode, your Get Fully Booked host Sarah Orchard reflects on her own long journey of establishing The Hudnalls Hideout, a luxury treehouse short-term rental, while navigating the challenges that arise from being both a business owner and a host.

Sarah provides valuable insights on the importance of choosing a location that resonates with personal values and lifestyle aspirations. She emphasises that hospitality is not just a 9-5 job but a commitment that requires genuine passion for people and a high level of service, as guests can often have high expectations and demands.

She further explores practical steps towards achieving a sustainable work-life balance, including the significance of outsourcing tasks like cleaning and laundry, to free up time for marketing and personal relaxation, thereby enhancing overall business profitability and personal satisfaction.

Tune in for practical do's and don'ts that can help you achieve the lifestyle you've always dreamed of while successfully managing a short-term rental hospitality business.

---

Key Takeaways:

• Establish a clear boundary between work and personal life to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
• Choose a business location that you love to avoid resentment over time.
• Outsource operational tasks like cleaning and laundry so you can focus on revenue-generating activities like marketing and growing your business.
• Being in hospitality requires a genuine love for people and strong social skills.
• Setting up a successful hospitality business is a full-time commitment, not really a side hustle.
• Regular meetings with your life partner can help maintain clarity and structure in your business and avoid issues with balance.

---

Connect with Sarah:

Website

Instagram

LinkedIn

---

Are you ready to take more direct bookings?

Take Sarah's FREE quiz here to find out how ready you are with your marketing to ditch the likes of Airbnb! Put your business to the test...

You're listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard. Are you ready to master your marketing so you can ditch your reliance on the online agents and grow your direct bookings?

I'll be sharing with you exactly what it takes to grow your direct bookings and the simple marketing steps to get more profit in your pocket. Hi and welcome to another episode of the Get Fully Booked podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Orchard.

I'm here this week with a solo episode and I wanted to explore how to have a lifestyle business and still have a lifestyle. Because actually a lot of people get into the hospitality business maybe as a second career, maybe they've done something else.

Sometimes they still have their full time jobs and they're doing whatever their hospitality business is, whether that's glamping a holiday cottage or an Airbnb as a side hustle. So thought it'd be useful to sort of share my experience of setting up the Hudnall's Hideout, which is our luxury tree house business.

And my husband and I Aide we had corporate jobs. I spent 16 years in the travel industry and worked in with a variety of or in a variety of large brands such as Kuoni, Hog Robinson and Avis car rental marketing was my career and for us we hadn't really considered ever sort of being in hospitality of saying that my mum did run a bed and breakfast when I was a teenager, so I'd had some exposure to hospitality in the past. But I'm not sure whether waiting on tables in my school holidays counted for very much.

But we basically got the inspiration to set up our holiday business when we went traveling.

We spent three months in New Zealand and that's what sort of sparked our, at the time we didn't know it was called glamping, but our love of sort of staying in quirky accommodation and we stayed in some amazing places including staying in our first treehouse accommodation and once we got back to the UK we had slightly itchy feet and we decided to think about moving away from we were living in the southeast of England, quite near to London and we decided that maybe we wanted to do something different. So it's a bit of a long story so I won't go into all of it here.

Anyone who's been in my world for a while will probably know our story of how we created the Hudnall's Hideout. But we had a little help from a TV show called the BBC's Escape to the Country.

We didn't know anyone at all in this area, but it.

There were five skilled carpenters that were working on the project. It is a bit of a beast. It weighs 55 tons. It was built in woodland with no road access. It was quite challenging. Um, it only sleeps two people.

We've basically got three and a half acres of, of land. We have some woodland and we have a wildflower meadow. And basically Adrian works in the business full time. Um, I do all of the marketing.

We've outsourced our cleaning and our laundry and we have a groundsman who works for us one day a week. And we're doing on average, I mean, we're, we're fully booked pretty much throughout the year.

So there were 100 direct bookings. We have been pushing back the occupancy a little bit and taking some holidays, which I think is, is good as a business owner to actually have some down time. We do three changeovers a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So it's pretty. It's pretty full on.

So I thought I'd just sort of share with you my sort of observations of being a host over the last, what is almost nearly five years. Obviously we had a bit of a strange start because we had a global pandemic and we got shut down five weeks after we opened.

We have been very lucky to have been very, very busy.

I think my observations are that guests are very demanding and any of you hosts listening in you know, you'll know this working with the general public can be challenging. I think we generally have had wonderful guests and we've only had a few, few issues as, as typical of our industry.

And we could probably all recount tales of, of things that haven't quite gone right and guests that have done silly things and, or have been a little bit demanding, but guests are demanding.

And it's definitely not a business that you can enter into lightly because there are obviously some, some things that tie you to the business in terms of, you know, having to look after your guests and making sure that everything is right on every changeover. Guests will break things, they'll steal things, they'll break the rules, you know, all of that lovely stuff.

And I think you have to be a little bit flexible in terms of how you approach that. I think we probably took things at the beginning quite personally.

If they broke rules or broke things, it's like, why can't people sort of look after the beautiful things that we've put into the Hideout? And it's hard when you've slaved for years to create something and you've put your heart and soul into it.

It can be quite difficult if feel like people aren't respecting that. But I think you have to sort of distance yourself a little bit from that.

There's sort of people overstepping the mark of unreasonable behaviour and then there's just the natural things that, you know, you want people to relax and that means that things will get knocked off tables and things will get broken. Most of it is accidental and you just have to suck things up. I mean, when things get stolen. I've had a few things stolen from the Hideout.

We had one guest who stole a full set of toiletries which were full size bottles, even though they have a little tag on them, slate tag saying, you know, leave for the next guest to enjoy. So I just contacted the guests and said, can you return them? And if you don't return them, you know, it'll be, that'll be £44.

And funnily enough, the items got posted back to me and I've had a couple of other things that have been taken. And if I really do feel like they've taken the mickey, I will confront them.

And Adrian thinks it's funny, but you know, ultimately I had some things that were taken that were irreplaceable in terms of some things that we had in as sort of decorative items that were actually like one of a kind and they accidentally fell into someone's bag. So I asked for them back and they came back.

So if it's things that you're really passionate about and you know that they've been actually stolen in inverted commas, doesn't hurt to ask. But you know, sometimes you just have to accept that these, these things happen. The other thing is that you will be on duty 24 7.

So I, I don't think that hospitality is a side hustle.

Because of the nature of our Hideout, which is a sort of couples retreat, we do self check in, we don't go and meet and greet the guests, we don't go and, and do a demo of everything.

And actually when Aide and I go and stay in places, we can't stand that when we get sort of greeted by the owners and shown how everything works, we'd rather just get in and settle down. You know, we are adults, we do live in a house on our own and we cope quite perfectly with that.

So I don't really see the need for us to be shown how everything works in the accommodation unless it's something very quirky. But generally we let our guests get on with it. But we do send them, messages when they've arrived to welcome them.

We send them a message the morning after they've arrived to check that they've settled in and that everything is okay for them because that also heads off any issues or complaints if they're unhappy. But I do think that hosting is, being in hospitality, the clue is in the name.

It's, you've got to be really quite hospitable and sociable and that does mean that you sometimes will get phone calls at like 10 o'clock at night when someone's demanding more wood or they don't know how something works.

Even though you given them really clear instructions in a digital guest guide, they're still asking you questions when it's your Friday night and you're hoping that you're switching off at that point.

So, most of us can probably identify with that and we've probably all got our own, like I said, stories to share around unreasonable phone calls late at night and things like that. And all we can really do is sort of set the boundaries, but it's definitely not, I don't think it's a side hustle.

I think it must be quite hard if you have full time employment. I don't know how anyone would cope with running our type of business. And I mean, obviously work and Get Fully Booked and I work full time in that.

But Adrian works in the business, our Hideout business, full time. So I think it'd be quite difficult if both of us had full time jobs.

But on balance, we love running our business and we've obviously made a massive decision to, you know, leave our corporate careers behind and also to leave the place that we lived behind in terms of moving away from, from friends and family. But we don't regret that on balance.

I think with all of these things, it's definitely been a really positive experience and I think we feel very proud of what we've, we've actually created.

But I thought I'd share with you in this episode some sort of do's or do's and don'ts for having this lifestyle that you've dreamed of just based on, you know, and this is definitely not gospel of what to do, but it's just some observations of things we've probably learned the hard way as we've, we've gone along.

I'd say the first thing is particularly for people that are maybe doing what we did, which is like relocating and maybe setting up a glamping business or moving to like another part of your country, it's pick a location and a house that you love because it is actually your home. And we had to make some compromises. We didn't have a big enough budget to maybe buy the sort of location with everything that we wanted.

I have horses and I couldn't, we couldn't find somewhere that had like land and stables for the horses, but also had woodland unless we had a, like double the budget that we had. So we had to make some compromises. The house wasn't exactly what I had in terms of my dream home.

Still isn't seven years down the line, but it has potential. We did spend most of our, well, all of our money on, on building the Hideout. But as time goes by, we're sort of slowly making the house what we want.

But it is in an amazing location.

So if anyone has seen my stories over on Instagram, we have an amazing view, we have a beautiful location and the house has potential to become what we want from a home and it does suit us. So I think you have to balance up those decisions about, you know, relocating and finding somewhere for your dream project.

But don't compromise everything so that you actually resent where you've ended up. And it's totally like you're uncomfortable with it and because it's not going to be sustainable in the, in the long term.

My second sort of tip really is like, do you like people and you have to really be a people person, because guests, as I said at the beginning, can be very challenging. They can be demanding, they can think that they sort of own a strip of you because they're paying you money to stay in your holiday accommodation.

So you do have to like people. It is a people business. As I said, the clue is in the name. With hospitality, you've got to be hospitable.

And I definitely think if you're the sort of person who socially struggles or doesn't want to talk to other people or strangers, and also if you don't want to share your space with people.

So I was talking to one of my clients who has potentially has a site where they have their home and they have some buildings that they were thinking of converting and they look amazing. And actually I think it's about five buildings in total.

And I was saying to them, you realise that if you convert those, you're going to basically have people at the bottom of your garden. And this was probably going to be like, sleeps sort of like 15 to 20 people. And I said, ultimately you're going to get groups.

So you're going to get groups of people, you know, coming together probably for celebrations and parties, maybe hen dos, even if you exclude those, you're probably going to have some, some celebrations and therefore you're going to have people literally at the bottom of your garden. We deliberately liked our site.

I think because we have our own space, the guests can get to the accommodation without impinging on our property. In terms of coming into our garden, they go down the side of our house. We don't tend to really see them.

They park in our car parking area, but then they disappear off down to the hideout. And the hideout is about 150 meters from our house, but it's down the hillside. So we don't see them, we don't hear them.

It means we can sit out in our garden, we can have a barbecue, we can have friends around. We do have the lookout bar, which is close to our house, which was a new thing that we added.

And that does have some limitations, that if they're sitting in the lookout bar, Adrian's always a bit conscious that they're there. So, you know, we do. We. You do need to make some compromises.

So definitely if you're building a glamping business, for example, or you're developing holiday cottages from some maybe disused buildings on your small holding or on your location, you do need to consider about the fact that you're going to be sharing it with other people. And that has pros and cons.

My third tip about having a lifestyle business and then still having a lifestyle is don't try and do everything for yourself. I see so many, particularly in glamping, where people will do all of the cleaning, all of the laundry.

They're also then trying to do all of their business functions, like, you know, it, their accounts, they're trying to do their marketing, they're trying to do everything. And I mentioned in another episode about the benefits of direct bookings.

And one of the things is that by doing your own marketing and getting direct bookings, you can make a lot more money than what you would make by, you know, in terms of what you would save in terms of doing your laundry and your cleaning. Relatively speaking, they can be quite cheap.

Things to outsource takes a little bit of time and effort, but I have an amazing lady who does our laundry, and it's all done to a very exacting standard. We have a dog in the house, so, you know, me doing laundry at home probably means that there would be dog hairs.

It's actually a breed that moults a lot. So we'd have dog hairs on all of the laundry, which wouldn't be ideal. And she does, like, an amazing job. And it all comes back collated in sets.

So it saves me lots of time in terms of when I do the changeovers, getting the laundry sets ready for the. For the cleaners and actually for doing the changeovers.

So definitely outsourcing those types of activities, you've got to put a value on, you know what, where your time can be directed to. So your time can be directed to your marketing, which actually will probably generate more revenue.

If you can increase your percentage of direct bookings, or you can increase your occupancy by, say, 10%, that will more than offset the costs that you're paying for things like laundry and cleaning and probably some other ancillary tasks that you could outsource. And therefore you'd have more time to do your marketing. And maybe you'd have a bit more downtime as well, which I think is really important.

I've got some tips to sort of keep your sanity. Again, based on the experience that Aide and I have had with, you know, creating our dream business.

I think the first one is, is to have a shared vision. You do need to make sure that you're both on the same page.

And we often see that, particularly when couples work together in business, and particularly if you're relocating to a new location, is making sure that, you know, you do have a shared vision and you have agreement on what you're actually aiming to achieve. Because there's nothing worse than actually building your dream business and then finding out that actually you've. You now like disagree.

We probably had some things along the way where we maybe didn't agree about some things about the structure or, but we always talk it through and we've always had a very clear vision in terms of the business experience, you know, the guest experience that we wanted to create and also bearing in mind that lifestyle and why we moved here and what we wanted to achieve. So we, you know, we haven't built, you know, we haven't built masses of units here.

We've only got the one that's mainly from a guest experience point of view, but also it's from a workload point of view and the stage of life that we're at and what we want to achieve out of our businesses.

So you have to decide what's right for you and it's going to be different for everyone depending on where you are in your short term rental or glamping business journey. And it will be different. I think the second thing about keeping your sanity is about actually treating it like a proper business.

And I talked in Episode 11 about having a business plan and having a marketing strategy and we are, I don't know why, but sometimes in hospitality and particularly like glamping as well, we, we sort of don't always treat it like a proper business.

Our business is a limited company and it is actually a proper, fully fledged business and we do approach it with a structure in terms of we had a business, we have a business plan, we have financial objectives, we do treat it like a proper business. And I think when you, when you do that, you get better results and returns for your efforts then.

And also it just gives you that little bit more of structure when you're actually running the business as well.

Because otherwise you can feel like a bit like a headless chicken running around, not sure what you're actually doing it all for and what you're trying to achieve. I think the third thing for keeping your sanity is about having clear boundaries if you work with your partner.

So obviously working with your husband. Aide and I had always had separate jobs. We'd gone off to offices to work and even when I worked from home, he worked in an office.

So we didn't spend all of the time together that we do now. Living and working in the same place can be difficult and I think that if you're going to run the business together.

You do need to have clear roles and responsibilities and clear boundaries so that you know exactly where you stand. A fourth tip for you is to make time for you and your hobbies. Again.

I've heard business owners that I've worked with as, as clients when we've talked about their marketing strategy and, and they've, and I've seen this sometimes in like Facebook groups as well where people have sort of proudly stated that they've never had a holiday in like three years, five years, seven years of, of running their, their businesses. And I don't think that's something to be proud of. I think that's actually something that's actually going to probably kill you.

It's, it's going to make you probably resent your business over time. I think it's really important, as I said, how to have a lifestyle business and still have a lifestyle.

You need to make sure that you fit in time to have, don't neglect friends, don't neglect your hobbies, make sure that you have time together, make sure you have holidays. If your business is, is at a point where you financially can't do that, maybe it's not the right thing for you to be doing it.

Because I do think it's really, really important to have that within your, the business that you're running, you will need like regular time away as well. And I've sort of touched on that. In terms of holidays, I think you do need to have a break.

As I said, if you're open, some people are only open seasonally or they're very quiet in certain times of the year and that can give you a natural break. But we were working, we were running for the first three years at 96% occupancy, which basically was fully booked.

Three changeovers a week constantly. And you can't sustain that over time. You know, that is ultimately going to have a massive impact on your mental health and your well being.

If you're operating at that sort of level, it's just not sustainable. You know, you wouldn't work in a, in a corporate environment and never, never take holidays.

I think one of the other things I touched on a little bit and I forgot to mention was about having boundaries. One of the things that Aide and I do and that is actually about running the business as a proper business. Aide and I actually have operations meetings.

So we once a week we have a sit down meeting with a proper agenda. Now some weeks we don't do it. If it's not required, we don't sit down and have a meeting every week for the sake of it.

But we have in our diaries a set time to sit down and there's about eight or nine points on our agenda and it covers everything from, you know, accounting and bookkeeping and maintenance through to, like, state of the, you know, the bookings, any customer or guest issues, our marketing, you know, business development, and then like AOB. And then we will sit and have a proper. A proper meeting.

And it was actually came about because a friend of mine I was talking to about running the business and saying that there were some things that we were sort of struggling with about working together, and she said, well, do you have meetings? And I was like, well, no, we don't. And she was like, well, you're running a business, it's a proper business, so you should have.

You should have regular meetings, like, you know, your directors in your company, you should have meetings. And actually, the operations meeting that we have once a week has been a real game changer for us.

And we did it also because we found that we were talking about the business, like 24 7.

We'd sit down for dinner and then suddenly we'd start talking about a guest issue or something that has happened, or some ideas would come into our head and we'd start talking about it. And that isn't healthy. You never escape away from it. So by having the meeting, it gives us that structure.

And also what we try and do is probably not so much in the winter months, but maybe in the summer we do it a bit more. But we try and have that meeting off site sometimes.

So that actually gets us away from being in our home and we'll actually go and have the meeting in a pub.

I know that sounds indulgent, or we'll go to a cafe or we'll go to a working space, like maybe a co working space somewhere away from our home to go and have our meeting. And that for us has been.

If I can share one thing that's made like a massive difference to us working together and treating our business in a more professional way and has allowed us to be more productive and efficient in terms of our thinking as well about the business, that would be my big tip to share with you. So I hope you found those. It's a bit more of a personal episode today, just sort of sharing my learnings as we've sort of gone along.

But thanks for listening. I hope you found this episode interesting. I'd love to know.

Share your own tips, maybe reach out to me on Instagram, getfullybooked or hop over to LinkedIn and drop me a message and tell me, what you've done in your business to alleviate some of these problems. How have you found running it? Maybe you run it with your partner. Maybe they have a full time job and you're running the business.

I'd love to hear your experiences as well.

I'll be back next week with a the last episode of this second series of the podcast and I'll be interviewing a guest where they'll be sharing their marketing journey and how they've grown their direct booking. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review. You know how much us hosts love a five star review. I'll see you next time.

Thank you for listening to Get Fully Booked with Sarah Orchard.

If you want to see if you are ready to ditch the likes of Airbnb and grow your direct bookings, put your business to the test with my free Direct Booking Roadmap quiz. Head to my website get-fully-booked.com/quiz and let's get you more direct bookings and more profit in your pocket.