From Corporate to Canines – Building a Dog-Friendly Holiday Business with Carl from Woodfarm Barns

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Welcome to the Pet Grooming Business Podcast. With me, Bill Betts, where we give. Practical business advice to help you grow your pet grooming business. This podcast is sponsored by Low Pay, the low rate payment app that gives you more. So without further ado, let's get going.

All right, welcome, everyone. Welcome back to our next episode and this, this one is not really grooming related, but it's all for. For your benefit. I am joined by Carl, who is the owner of Wood Farm Barns and Barges. Welcome, Carl, how are you? I'm good, thanks, Bill. Hello. And hello, everybody. And you actually joining us from Tuscany, which is where one of your properties is. Yes, yes. So not. Not to try and squeeze an advert in or anything that. But, but yeah, I just happen to be over here for the week as, as I get over here as much as I can.

The wonders of Zoom always. I always have to pinch myself. You know, I speak to people from all over the world. All due to Zoom and how Zoom has made these things possible. Yeah, frightening really. So I'm sitting here in a pretty cold office. It's minus five today. What's it like out in Tuscany today? It's been about sort of. I haven't actually been outside yet today. It's a bit misty outside. I'm. I' of high up on the side of a valley and all I can see is olive trees and mist.

So that's a bit. Normally I have a wonderful view from here, but it's been about. I've only been over here for a couple of days, but it's been about kind of 9 or 10 degrees. I think I just escaped the UK as the snow was coming in. Yeah, you've done that well, time that well, apparently. So. So tell us, it'd be really interesting to. To find out your journey and. And what inspired you to set up Wood Farm, Barn and Barges. I always like this. I always like to get behind the companies that like advertise their services.

So you are part of the dog grooming business help and support group and there is currently an offer out there which we'll talk about later for, for pet groomers to come and use your. Your, your properties. But it's always nice to get to know the person behind it, the face behind the business as well. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so my background was predominantly in the corporate world, which I had just simply had enough of. I got to a stage where I was just fed up of just being pushed for KPIs and targets and all the rest of it and a lot of it without any real thought and without any real meaning.

And I set the business up, I left that world, spent a number of years renovating period properties. So my, my passion is in properties. And so I'd spent a number of years kind of renovating properties, selling them on. And I kind of then thought, I don't want to just keep doing this forever.

And how. I kind of stumbled into it really, where I had a tiny little place in Suffolk that I had renovated and the market just crashed. This was kind of 90s and the market crashed and I was kind of stuck with this place and I was. Stumbled into the holiday let industry from that perspective. And I just thought if I, and I really enjoyed that and I enjoyed having that and, and I just thought if I can kind of multiply this and make it a. Excuse the pun, cottage industry, then I could potentially do that for myself.

So when I sort of finished deciding I didn't want to be doing lots and lots of renovations anymore, I, I found Wood Farm, which was a derelict farmhous, completely dilapidated old barn and some land. And I just kind of had this thought, this vision, if you like, that if I could create somewhere with multiple properties that I could then create something where people would want to come and stay. We provide the best quality kind of product that we can, the best quality accommodation that we can, and kind of just have people leave wanting to come back and to recommend us.

And it was as simple as that because I just thought if I can do that enough times, I will make money. And I kind of didn't care if I made as much money as I did in the corporate world. And irony is, you know, that's, that's way behind me now. But I then hit on the, the dog owner market, which is kind of where our link comes in, I guess, because I'm not a dog owner. My. And I pitched it to the dog owner market as somewhere and I think as I've said to you, it's not rocket science, but somewhere with fully enclosed gardens that kind of welcomes and embraces dogs rather than just tolerates them.

And although I'm not a dog owner, over the years I've kind of learned to kind of accept and understand what dog owners need when they get away.

And that's the, the, you know, the safety and the security of the dogs and welcoming the dogs and, and that feeling that they, they're embraced and welcomed rather than just simply tolerated and something. Where you've, I suppose you've had to learn to move with the times in that respect, as you've been, you've, you've been running your houses for a long time, aren't you, like 16 or so years? And dog ownership is just like it's gone through the roof. But also how society, I suppose, treats their, their pets, treats their dogs like the, the days of kennels have kind of gone and you got pet sitters now.

But then there's a. But when you go shopping on the high street these days, there's Normally like the 2.4, like the nuclear family, as it were, plus a cockapoo, plus a dog, you know, that goes out with them. Yeah, no, absolutely. I remember when I first started the business, I don't know what the stats are at the moment, but I mean, there was something like 9 million dog owners in the UK or something. And I just thought that's a big market. And my experience of dog friendly places was that a lot of them just, they might have been dog friendly, but they weren't very human friendly.

And where we built our reputation to start off with was having somewhere that was dog friendly, but also being nice and clean and, you know, not just giving the sense that you're staying in a kennel, which a lot of them were. And I know that because I've stayed in them.

So that was the kind of, the big surprise. When people arrived, guests were kind of going, wow, this is really nice. And I used to have not so much now, but I used to have so many stories from guests when they arrived of, oh, we stayed in a place that was just horrible and it was dog friendly, but it was just, you know, it wasn't very nice, et cetera, et cetera. And I kind of made it my mission to make somewhere that was really human friendly, but also embracing the dogs, making sure one of the most common asked questions I get is, is the garden secure?

And it just is because what's the point of it not being, you know, and, and I think the other thing is I've grown and developed an organic understanding of dog owners, though not being one, but also because I'm a small business owner, I understand what's important to people when they need to switch off. And a lot of my guests are small business owners, self employed people and know that obviously is, is very much your community as well. So. Yeah, definitely. And a lot of people will also resonate with the corporate background.

I speak to groomers all the time that have, that have just burnt out in the corporate world or they've looked for a change and they've come to, to pet grooming. They followed a passion that they've had all their lives and decided to give up the corporate world and, and come into, come into pet grooming. So lots of people resonate with that as well. Yeah. And I think, you know, kind of life's too short as well. I know it's a cliche, but just, I mean, it's been 17 years now since I was in the corporate world and I'm unemployable now.

I just couldn't ever imagine going back to that kind of life. I just can't. You know, you learn to kind of discover who you are and learn to be much happier, I think. Yes, we have the stresses and strains of being self employed and owning a small business, but that's just, you know, the pros far outweigh the cons, I think. Yeah, definitely. And do you find like when you, when you have developed your cottages over the years, was there a lot of talking to your customers about, I suppose you were saying earlier about if you take a dog on holiday, you can't maybe you expect a downgrade in the accommodation because obviously the owner might not want to get everything muddy and messy and smelly and stuff.

But, but yours, you're kind of like going this one different. It's going to be like top quality accommodation plus your dog kind of thing. Yeah. And I mean we, we have a limit on dogs because we don't, we don't want to be completely. There are places out there that will just have limitless dogs and we don't want to do that because we want to keep that human standard up as well. So when I first started we, we welcome two dogs and lots of people kept saying but we've got three.

So I kind of, I stretched it to, to three and I will now stretch it to four or five. But I don't want 1718 because, you know, with the best will in the world, that's just not going to stay human friendly for too long, in my opinion. And it, that's just, it's just the way I like to run the business. This podcast is sponsored by Low Pay. Low pay is half the price of sumup and zettle. So you keep more of the money that you earn. Rates start at 0.79%.

I, I always unpopular opinion probably on this but actually I like to go on holiday to get away from my dogs.

We've got five and I, I sometimes would like to go on holiday to get away from the kids but you know, I just can't do that at the moment. They're too young.

But yeah, we quite like to go away without the dogs because it's nice sometimes to have a break from that. That sort of continual like walking them, feeding them, looking after them. Yeah. And not all of my guests are dog owners. You know, it's just, that's, it's quite interesting. When I, when I first started as say, we got this feedback and what I used to do was I, we were dog friendly but I didn't like to shout about it because we didn't want to upset people that weren't dog owners.

And in the end we just found that we were getting so many dog owners. I kind of thought, let's just really push this because there are that many dog owners looking for somewhere nice to go and stay that I just thought, do you know what if I upset a non dog owner by being dog friendly, I don't care. And I probably get now two communications a year from people saying, you're way too dog friendly. I will never come. So what I think I replied, I replied to one person a number of months ago and I said, thank you for your opinion, but the dog owner market is far bigger than the you market.

And it's as simple as that. It's a niche that we've built a strong reputation in and word spreads.

But as I say, we probably have somewhere around about kind of 5 to 10% of our guests aren't dog owners. But that come because they know that it's suitable for humans as well. You know, it kind of like the, the community, the dog ownership, the dog owner community. I saw it actually when we put the details out on the Facebook group. There's quite, there's a few people on there. It said they'd already looked at it or had already stayed there because the community talks, don't they? The pet owner.

Because if you are a dog owner and you, and you want to the pleasure of going away with your dog, you're going to be looking for recommendations and asking other dog owners like you. Say, yeah, and we get tons and tons of guests because they have, let's say a schnauzer and they're in, you know, ton of schnauzer groups on Facebook or other communities. You know, things exist outside Facebook, but if you take the example of a schnauzer, we have guests that come because they were recommended by someone in their schnauzer group or cockapoos or whatever, you know, German shepherds, whatever it might be.

There are communities within the dog Owner community. There are, there are breed communities and we get kind of promoted across those communities as well. And I actually had a guest last weekend with a schnauzer who's been before and which is why schnauzer came came to my mind. But they know other guests of mine because they've seen them comment on my things on Facebook. They recognize their names from their schnauzer groups on Facebook. They communicate and they're talking about coming and having like a schnauzer weekend. Schnauzer meet up.

A schnauzer meetup. But the point is they, these people have that common thread, they have that dog breed in common. So that's a market we wouldn't tap into if we weren't dog friendly. You know what's just sprung to my mind about the new market to tap into? I don't know if you've considered this or looked at this yet, but we run a, a community pub in our village where we, we change, we, we turn the village hall into a little pop up pub for a weekend and we had a remembrance, remembrance day and all the funds go to the village and stuff.

And then someone turned up and came to the bar and said, would it be okay if I bought my cat in? And we're like, oh, here we go. Yeah. And we're like, of course. You know, obviously it's your responsibility. There are dogs in here as well. But if you bring your cat in, make sure that it's like on a lead or. And she bought this big Maine coon in. It was a kitten in the end, but it was on a, it was on a harness. It had a lead and it had.

And you also see some of these cats and these like transparent sort of backpacks and stuff being carried around London. Is that a new market for you? The cap.

The reason I say no. In the really early days we had cats a couple of times. Yeah. I had to replace sofas. Oh no. Stressed. And they clawed at the leather sofa and just kind of ruined it. So they are a different beast. And I'm not anti cat, but I think a cat dogs are kind of in the main used to being put in the cars going places. Where is it? Cats just have their thing going on at home and you know, feed me, whatever, go away.

You know. But the, the only two times I had cats they caused quite a bit of damage and I just don't want that. No. No. Okay. Well, I thought there may be a new market for you. The cat friendly, the cat friendly place. But maybe not yeah, thank you for the thought. And it. It is a good idea. But the practicalities of it, I just thought it's actually quite difficult. We have had gerbils, hamsters, parrots, cockatiels, cockatoos. Yeah, we've had Hick Me, Hedgehog.

So these are all animals that come in little pages and what have you, but they've all been to stay. Yeah. That's crazy. So tell us a little bit about your. Your barns and barges and, you know, what came first, the barns or the barges? And what made you. What made you take on the barges?

I'm a boaty person. I kind of always have been. And so I had the barns and. Which we have. I had to think then we've got eight barns and cottages and they are all in the same place in Stonomaspel, right in the heart of Suffolk. And I started the business and then after about that was kind of 2009 that I set it up, and around about 2016, 2017, I was kind of getting a bit twitchy for wanting to expand it a bit. And I thought boats was the obvious answer because I couldn't.

I didn't physically have the land to put any more properties, and I had my own boats. And so I decided to go down the Dutch barge route and bought. I went through the process of buying one Dutch barge and then somebody said to me, you do know that there's another one for sale over here? And it was near. I. I was at the time, I had my own boat in Woodbridge at Yacht harbor there. And just as you come out, there was a. A barge for sale right by the slipway.

And somebody said, if you're buying a barge that you're buying, did you know this one was for sale? And I ended up buying them both within a fortnight of each other. And the one at Woodbridge is still where it was when I bought it. So that's right by the Tide mill in Woodbridge. And the other one is at Snake Maltings, which is a. A superb kind of Suffolk location. And that's a much bigger one. So I've got one that will sleep up to eight and one that will sleep four.

And then all of the barns and the cottages are for couples. All right, excellent. And the barges, because I was looking at this the other day because I quite like the idea of going and trying out the barge, because I think there's something completely different and I think the kids probably would probably love that as well. So I was trying to work out, are the barges static or can you take them, take them anywhere or is it just a place to, to sleep and chill out in?

So I always say to people, think of them as floating holiday cottages.

They don't go out, they can physically move. I've had them both out to sea, but I'm not lacking the big one weighs 120 tons and it's 94ft long and I'm not letting anybody have the keys to that.

But yeah, kids absolutely love them. They're really good for kind of families and kids, but also kind of groups of friends or extended families to get together as well. They are quirky, they are very different. People need to understand how the tides work. You know, you know, we. You're accessing via gangplanks, which kind of do that, you know, guys and down and I can't do anything about that. That's the moon. And what, you can't control the moon? I'm sure that's a one star Google review.

Yeah. So. But they are really quirky but very, very, very different but really, really cool. The interesting thing is I tend to get people from closer to home because I might get people, someone come and stay from say Ipswich and it's. Because it's so different to where they live. You know, it's just, it's just a little bit different. And yeah, so they're, they're very quirky. And then. Yeah, I've got the place then over here in Tuscany and the mist is now disappearing. I can see the top of the next mountain.

So it's, I'm looking on the website and it's quite a, it's quite a remote area in Tuscany that the property's at. Yeah. So it's 20 minutes outside Lucca. So if the, if the mist is clearing on the other side of the property, I'll be able to see Luca. So it's a 20 minute drive but it's right up the side of a valley and so fly into Pisa and It's kind of 45 minutes from Pisa airport. So it's very convenient, easy for me to get to. I just come over from Stansted and yeah, it is a remote area but again it was just something was really just me wanting to expand the business but into somewhere I wanted to be.

Somewhere where you wanted to live for a little bit. Yeah. What's the community like around? There is a, you know, is there villages nearby that you can go and visit or like markets? Yeah, yeah, there's. So Luca is the nearest city which say is only 20 minutes away, but it's a small city. It's a kind of a medieval wall all the way around. It takes you about an hour to walk around. It's about two and a half miles round or so, but you can walk around the top of the walls.

It's very wide, so it's like bikes and joggers and all the rest of it going around there. But there's lots of lovely little villages nearby as well. And this is right up. I'm right up in a hamlet here and. But I've got friends up here who are just very hospitable. I'm out for dinner tonight, tomorrow night with some friends who live in a house just down there. That's an Italian guy and a French wife and. But luckily they both speak perfect English. And then I'm meeting another friend tomorrow in Lucca who's an English person, but.

And I've got English friends out here as well, so. But it's been actually quite easy to make friends over here, which is fantastic. So I can come over here and fill my diary if I want to or just spend time chilling out and enjoying the area. And the, the property in Tuscany, is that a one bedroom? That's a sort of couples a dog's welcome out there. It's a, it's a pain to bring to get dogs out there, but. Yeah, but we've had people do it. So you can drive and you can fly and.

But I, I've got a fully enclosed terrace on the side of the house. So that is completely enclosed as well as. Got some sort of extra gardens, but the terrace itself is fully enclosed. So. So yeah, it's, you know, I've kind of made that dog friendly as well. But yes, it's, it's a one bedroom place, so I won't be staying here when you do. Okay, cool. I take it there's some great walks for all the, all the places where your barns and your barges and. And the place in Tuscany are some great walks to, to take the dogs on.

Yeah, absolutely. I haven't. I've only been here a couple of days this time, but the last time I was here, I walk. We are 300 meters above sea level, but you can walk up to almost 1000 meters above sea level from here just right up into the forest. It's absolutely amazing. And there's wild boar around here, porcupines, and it's fantastic. And then as far as the barges are concerned, there's great dog hawks in either direction from both of the barges. So along the River Deben in Woodbridge or along the River Auld at Snake Maltings and then at the barns we've got a fully enclosed two acre meadow as well.

So dogs can just go and run around. But again in safety and security at the barns, but also just up and down the lane. We're just down a quiet little country lake. So it's really cool. Amazing, amazing. And you very kindly extended an offer to the community, to the dog grooming community perch. You can tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, so what, what I did was there. There is a page that perhaps you can share the link.

It's available to all of your community which is a 15% discount of out of season. So sort of October, November, December, January, February, March sort of thing. So five or six months, but through the autumn kind of winter period.

And there's a, a code on that, that page that people can use to get a discount and what the rationale behind it is not that we want to be winning customers by giving a discount all the time, but we realize times are quite tough at the moment. You know, the, the, the global economy is a little bit. And so what we decided to do was kind of just give it as an incentive if you like, for people who, and I know because I've been there, you're just too stressed to take a break.

It's just like, let's just do it, you know. So, so yeah, if you want to share the, the link to that page perhaps in the notes or whatever. Yeah, yeah, we'll share that because you know, the pet groomers are working hard so it's always nice to have a little break and outside of season can work really well because sometimes January or February can be quite quiet for pet groomers. So why not take advantage of a little break? Yeah, absolutely. And as far as the cottages and the barns are concerned, you know, all of the barns have got underfloor heating plus wood burners and the two cottages have got a full central heating system plus open fires.

So they're nice and cozy and warm. The barges have got a full central system. I've got an aircon heating system here. But you know, this is more. We tend to be busier in the summer over here. Yeah, excellent. So perhaps let the listeners know your how to get hold of you and your website as well. Yeah, so it's woodfarmbarms.com and the numbers and everything are on there. But I'm fully contactable you. I think there's links to WhatsApp me and there's a chatbot thing that comes up as well and what have you.

But. But I'm happ for you to put my mobile number in the contact details. I'm more than happy for anybody to WhatsApp me or call me because, you know, if. If people have questions and people often say, oh, this might sound like a really silly question and the answer is no, it doesn't because I've had it before, whatever it is, you know, so I'm more than happy for people to get in touch if they've got questions and also help them book, you know, look at dates or whatever, or choose the right property for them as well, because I don't want anybody coming to a property that's not going to suit them.

And, you know, we've got properties on two levels. On one level, most of the seven of the eight cottages and barns have got private hot tubs and that's for humans, not dogs. But we do have baths for the dogs and hot and cold taps outside as well.

We purchased a hot tub last year and we sometimes sit in it and the Labradors are like resting their noses on the. Because like, Labradors and water go hand in hand, like it's only a matter of time before one of them works out how to get in. We're going to be getting out rather quickly and then having to like drain it and wash it out probably. Exactly. And flush all the hairs out of. Yeah, all the, all the fox poo and stuff like that. This comes on the Labradors.

Remind me not to join you in your hot tub. No, I was just thinking that maybe before we clean it out, perhaps we should just chuck the blabs in there just to like wash them off. Because we take them down, down. We take them down to the horses and we've got one of them, she's just adamant on like covering herself in all sorts of fox poo and everything. So anyway, we digress. So thank you very much for coming on and sort of telling us about the Wood Farm barn and barges.

Yeah, go and check out the website, Wood Farm Barns and I'll put the link to the offer and the discount in the show notes and we'll make sure we put it back out on the. On the Facebook group as well. So, yeah, it's great to get to know you and it's always nice to speak to the person behind the business. I think that's really important. Gives us a face to the name and some value around that. Yeah, I call it the cheers effect because remember the old program and it's just like when everyone walked in and they knew their name.

But I think it works the other way that people like to feel, you know, we like going to a pub where they feel like they know us and we know them. And I kind of, you know, that's a. A basic human thing. There's a bot ticked, isn't it, that we like that, so. And I've gone to great lengths to make the brand quite personal as well, which has helped. And. Yeah. So I'm more than happy to talk to anybody. Yeah. I think we're lacking a bit of customer service these days, aren't we?

Like with the chatbots and the online services and stuff like that. I think businesses are, but hopefully we'll start to revisit the customer service and how important. Customer service is something that I teach my clients. You know, the good old customer service is quite often what people are looking for. Picking up the phone and speaking to someone. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, we take advantage. I use AI and we use chatbots and we use all sorts. If you don't get on board with all the time. Yeah, I think you'll get left behind.

But I kind of, you know, my phone will go if somebody messages the chat bot. But if I look and the chat bot's doing a good job of answering them, I'll let it continue. But if it looks like they want some help, I'll just go, hi, it's Carl. Just jumping in and I'll dive in on it. Yeah, yeah. Rather they had their question properly, fully answered than kind of. Well, that wasn't very helpful. No, that's it. That's it. That's great. That's great to hear. So brilliant. Well, thanks a lot, Carl, and hopefully catch up soon.

Mick, you're welcome. Take care. Great stuff. Thanks, Bill. Cheers, Bye. I hope you've enjoyed this podcast. Please make sure you give us a. Like or a review to help people find it. The podcast is sponsored by Low Pay. Head over to www.lowpay.com to find out more about their payment solution.

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