The Topsail Island Bellhop Boys

Transcript

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Welcome to the Topsoil Insider podcast, where locals, vacationers and those looking to relocate to the greater Topsoil area can hear all about the wonderful businesses and events in our beautiful coastal Carolina towns, including Hampstead, topsoil Beach, surf City, north Topsoil, holly Ridge and Sneeds Ferry.

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Coming up.

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This episode is for the wonderful folks that choose Topsoil for their vacation.

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There is a great service here that allows you to start your vacation as soon as you pull in the driveway of your beautiful beach rental.

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No more struggling to lug everything from the trunk up those stairs.

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Let Topsoil Island bellhop boys do the work for you while you check out those ocean views and settle in.

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Experience a new level of luxury on Topsoil Island at Saltwater Suites in Surf City, north Carolina.

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With no nightly minimum, you can enjoy short getaways or an extended stay.

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Each suite features luxury bedding, full kitchens with dining tables and dishwashers, and all suites other than the 3 ADA suites have full-size washers and dryers and, of course, ocean views and 24-7 self-check-in provides a hassle-free and seamless experience.

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Saltwater Suites is the perfect choice for your next beach getaway.

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Book your next Topsoil visit at saltwatertopsoilcom or call 910-886-4818.

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Saltwater Suites Topsoil Island's premier luxury hospitality experience.

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Hello everyone and welcome to the Topsoil Insider Podcast.

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My name is Krista and I am your host.

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Today I am interviewing Mr Damien Mulcahy.

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He is the father, he is the leader, he is the mentor.

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What else could you?

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You are.

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I guess I'm just a guy with a decent idea.

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You had a very good idea.

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Krista, thank you for having me.

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Yeah, welcome.

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I'm so glad that you're here.

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He is the man behind the Topsoil Island bellhop boys.

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No matter what you want to call him, he came up with a really great idea.

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You saw a need on the island and you found a way to fill it.

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In my opinion, you also provided a really great gift to your kids and their friends as well, so thank you for joining me today.

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I think the name of your company explains itself, but let's go ahead and tell the listeners what your business is about.

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So it's essentially a bellhop service.

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We greet guests when they arrive to the island.

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We'll carry in all of their luggage, all of their coolers, all of their groceries, all of their beach gear, Pretty much anything they can bring.

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we will bring up to the actual room that they're staying in and make sure that they're all set once they arrive, and that's really nice in our beach town because most of the houses, especially right there oceanfront, they're all elevated and there are a ton of stairs and multi-levels, sometimes three, sometimes four levels, and people coming here that are older or have any type of disabilities.

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I think this is such a great service, even for people who are just tired right.

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Yeah, it's a long trip to get here.

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Folks have been in the car for a very long time and they're focused on enjoying their vacation and it's our focus to ensure that, when they show up, that they're comfortable and that all of their stuff gets taken care of.

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Greeting the guests is probably the best part of it.

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Okay, so tell me how you came up with this idea.

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So we always knew we wanted to be part of this community.

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When we moved here three years ago from the Raleigh area, we felt like it was a great place to raise our kids and we wanted to be connected to the community.

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And what we realized is that this community is not just locals, but it's also a tourist destination and there's folks coming in and out of here all the time and we saw this as an opportunity.

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There's a post on the Topsell TLC page.

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I'll give a shout out to our first customer, miss Alex.

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She had asked for this service, asked if this service was available on the island, and I saw the post.

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I thought to myself I've got two teenagers at home, one young man that's willing and able to work and a daughter who at the time was 13 years old, and we just felt like there was a real need here.

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So we responded to Miss Alex said yes, we'd do it.

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We asked how much it would be and we threw a number out there and she said that's not enough, you need to make more.

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I love her.

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So we agreed that she would pay the initial fee and if she felt like we did a good job we would accept the rest in tips.

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Nice, and yeah, she showed up.

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I think there was probably about nine people in her party her parents, her husband, her in-laws and we were a little apprehensive at first.

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We didn't really know how much stuff they were going to bring.

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I think we had a lot of faith in my son and I showed up and we went to work.

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We knocked it out probably in about 40 minutes.

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It was a three-story house and she was just over the moon with service and we were happy to help.

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So we created a Facebook page.

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We started just putting the word out there that we existed and it's really just snowballed, kind of gone viral.

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That's cool.

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How quickly did you launch the business on Facebook after that initial?

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job.

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After the first appointment we had the confidence level that we could actually do this.

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I think it was probably within a week or so.

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We launched the Facebook page.

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We used the Facebook business suite to schedule all of our appointments.

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We do all of the communications through Facebook business suite and I think after we started the page we probably had our next appointment within two or three days, I think the first weekend where we had actually scheduled appointments.

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We probably had six or seven by then.

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That's amazing.

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That's so crazy that it went that fast.

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Tell me how busy you are during the peak of the season.

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During peak season, we probably schedule anywhere from four or five appointments in the morning and four or five appointments in the afternoon.

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You said scheduling your appointments on Facebook, and I didn't even know that was a possibility until you mentioned that in our pre-interview and I went and checked it out last night.

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It's a really cool feature.

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I do want to point this out to our listeners.

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You go to their Facebook page and you can reserve your time slot for the bill hop service right there.

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But you're going to have to go to the page.

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You're going to click on Services and then you're going to click on the Personal Bill Hop Service button and you're going to choose your date and your time right there.

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I love that.

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You can schedule an appointment on our Facebook page or you can just send us a message directly.

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Typically, when we receive an appointment request, we'll respond with some information as far as our rates and the details how to schedule us, how it works and finding a time, and gathering the information as far as address, total number of guests and time of arrival.

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So on there.

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I know it's 30 minute intervals that you're booking, but what if you have like a party of 10 or 15 people?

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Can you do stretch that out based on the number of people Sometimes.

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So I think the bigger challenge is the distance.

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If we have an appointment all the way on the south end and the next appointment all the way on the north end, plus traffic, we may space them out in our piece, but typically our appointments are scheduled every 30 minutes, beginning at 4 o'clock all the way until we're done in the evening.

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The following Saturday we'll typically start at 7 am and go until 10 am, which is checkout time, but you'd be surprised how quickly we can load in and load out.

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We're running when our hands are free and we're taking as many bags as possible.

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That's a workout.

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It certainly is a workout.

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I think I track my flights of stairs on my watch.

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Yeah, I think my highest was 71 flights of stairs.

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Oh my gosh.

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And bear in mind, you're climbing all of those stairs typically with luggage in your hands.

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Yeah, as an example, a party of 10.

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We can load them in probably in about 20 minutes.

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That would give us another 10 minutes to make it to the next job.

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Okay, that's really fast.

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You just mentioned that the Saturdays there's a check in and a check out time.

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That's generally consistent on the island with these beach house rentals.

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But what about other hotels?

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Or are you working on Sundays or any other day of the week, or is it just Saturdays primarily?

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So we do work at the C Vista Motel quite often and Topsell Dunes where there's condo rentals.

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And yeah, most of the rentals on Topsell Island are Saturday to Saturday, although they do schedule some Sunday to Sunday visits on the south end to alleviate a little bit of the traffic on the Surf City Bridge.

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Okay, that's good.

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The traffic is really bad.

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Yeah, and that's one of the biggest challenges we have is we sit in traffic all the time.

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I bet you did.

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Yeah, it's really challenging when we try to get onto the island by around three o'clock in the afternoon.

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It's the day tripping traffic that usually holds us up on the way off the island.

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Yeah, okay, tell me some of the Drain, just things that you've had to take up those stairs.

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We carry all sorts of stuff.

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I'd have to say the strangest thing we've ever carried in is a sewing machine.

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You'd be quite surprised that a lot of folks come to the island to relax, and there's a few that find relaxation in sewing.

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Whatever makes your vacation better, bring it on.

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Do you have any like really Funny or unusual stories that you could share with us while you've been doing the service?

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I don't know that there's that many funny things, but I can't tell you that quite often We'll bring things into the house that the guests didn't intend for us to bring in the house.

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Bear in mind.

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We go there and we bring everything up, and when we say everything, we mean everything.

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Oh my gosh there's been a few times where we've had to bring things back down that we shouldn't have brought in.

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We've literally carried somebody's ice scraper up to the kitchen tools.

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Roadside repair kits.

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Oh, that's funny.

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Okay, I just think that this is such a gift.

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This is something that you have created for your children and I think it's so important.

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You've given them a good learning tool and it's giving them so much, and so much so, that my kids 8 and 11 and I'm sitting here like I got to do something like this.

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I've got to come up with a way, because you're teaching them about entrepreneurship, you're teaching them how to manage their money.

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On the money topic, all the money goes to the kids, right?

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They're?

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correct at the time of putting the stuff away or loading it back into the car and its tips, and it's their money that's so important.

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Kids today, I think, could learn a lot from something like this and how to save up their money and how to have Goals and priorities and how not to spend.

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Mine are terrible already just spending that cash.

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I really I got to do this.

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So tell me about some of the other benefits that your children have gained by doing this with you.

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Yeah, I'll start from the beginning.

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I will say when, when we first started this, that cash was burning holes in their pockets.

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Oh, it was okay good.

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Wait to get out and go out and spend that money in that's normal, yeah absolutely, and they've both done really well with it.

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My son, Ethan.

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He's 17 years old.

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He's a student at Topsell High School.

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He's gonna be a rising senior this year.

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He's done an amazing job with this.

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He not only goes on these jobs with me, but he also will take on jobs on his own.

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His friend Wesley helps him out as well.

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They do an amazing job.

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They've been very responsible.

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They're kind to the guests, they greet them with smiles, they're courteous, they're respectful and they're good kids.

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And if you read the reviews online, oh, I read them, by the way, and they are Glowing.

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I'm gonna read some in a little bit.

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I want people to know about these reviews.

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Yeah, the overwhelming amount of positivity has come from our visitors.

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We've gone viral on Facebook.

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We've even been contacted by Facebook asking if we're creators.

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Oh, really, yeah, because our page has grown so quickly that it must have fallen into some sort of Facebook algorithm.

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They recognize us as creators.

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We're really.

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We're a service provider.

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Yeah, we just share really positive feedback that we get from our customers.

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That's great.

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How has this affected his confidence level?

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I think it's been incredible for his confidence level.

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He's really good with adults.

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He's respectful.

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He does an amazing job.

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When we greet guests, when we show up, we're typically there five minutes before they arrive.

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I'll normally take the lead.

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Hello, my name is Damien.

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This is my son, ethan.

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We're your bell hops today.

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Go in, relax, choose your bedroom, make a drink.

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We'll take care of everything.

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Nice, now it's to the point where Ethan is taking the lead.

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Oh really.

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Introducing himself, introducing his dad and explaining our service to everybody.

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That's great.

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I really like that.

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Are you hiring because I've got a son coming up?

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No, no, I know the answer already we're not necessarily hiring.

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But I have asked myself is what happens to this business after my kids are grown?

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I was asking myself that last night and I was talking to my husband, I'm like it'd be great, like his son is gonna graduate, and then what are they gonna do?

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I?

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think that the most important thing for the guests and the spirit of the topsoil and bell hop boys Mm-hmm, would probably be to pass this on to somebody else that can take this work on and Continue the tradition of the customer experience.

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I hope somebody does so.

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How is he gonna continue doing this through its in your year?

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He will he will will continue.

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We work on season off season.

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Off season is a bit slower than the on season, but he'll be leaving for college after his senior year you poor thing.

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He'll be home for summers.

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We'll continue to keep him busy.

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So school's going to start and I was wondering what happened to the business.

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So he just keeps working on the weekends doing this.

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That's right, that's right and we get a lot of weekday requests for people that are staying for short term.

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It's a bit challenging once the boys go back to school to continue to schedule appointments during the week.

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So once school starts, we'll primarily be working weekends only.

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Both of the boys run track for topsoil high school ethans and cross country as well.

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Yeah, that's right.

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Yeah, so the extracurricular is going to kick in, Okay.

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And studies first for us.

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It should never impact their ability to get what they have to do done at school 100%.

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I was wondering if it had impacted his grades.

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Not at all.

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Not at all, but I do think that there's an opportunity for him to include his experience with the topsoil and bellhop boys in his college applications.

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Oh my gosh, yeah, 100% he should.

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I'm assuming that you're meeting people from all over the state, for sure, all over the country, perhaps.

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Yeah, a lot of folks from the northeast visit the island, a lot of folks from western North Carolina, charlotte West.

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We get a lot of folks from central Virginia, some folks from central South Carolina.

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We meet folks from everywhere.

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We've had folks all the way from Alaska.

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Oh wow, visit the topsoil island.

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All right, I'm sure they appreciated the weather here.

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Yeah, without a doubt.

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Without a doubt, speaking of the weather, it gets so hot.

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It has been this year too, incredibly hot.

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How does that impact you guys?

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Running up and down those stairs.

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It's important that we stay hydrated.

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The stairwells are narrow, they're hot.

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Yeah.

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We always enjoy doing load ins and load outs where the stairwells are on the outside versus the inside.

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Oh, yeah, I bet.

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Makes it much easier for us.

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A lot of the new builds have elevators in those things.

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Yeah, we have a job coming up and it's a party of 21.

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And this home we did a little bit of research before we took it on, just to ensure that we had enough boys with us.

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And it does have an overwhelming.

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We talked about the reviews earlier and your reviews are incredible.

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I want to talk about the customer service factor for Bill Hop Boys, because you do get great reviews regarding your customer service.

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Tell me about some of the things that you employ to make sure that they're getting just a really great customer experience.

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That's what it's all about.

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It's about the experience of using the Topsoil Island, bill Hop Boys.

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We greet the guests with smiles where they're on time.

00:16:43.292 --> 00:16:54.207
We're flexible when they're late and we really want them to come to this island and get the best impression that they possibly can when they first show up.

00:16:54.207 --> 00:16:58.222
We want to represent Topsoil Island to the best of everything it is.

00:16:58.222 --> 00:17:01.671
We want to be friendly, want to make them feel welcomed.

00:17:01.671 --> 00:17:06.069
We want them to feel at ease and we want them to be able to relax.

00:17:06.069 --> 00:17:07.354
It's the beach.

00:17:07.634 --> 00:17:08.959
Yeah, absolutely so.

00:17:08.959 --> 00:17:10.403
Let's talk about some of those reviews.

00:17:10.403 --> 00:17:13.233
Let me just rave here for a minute.

00:17:13.233 --> 00:17:17.463
Here's a couple of reviews that I pulled down from your Facebook page.

00:17:17.463 --> 00:17:22.644
So the Topsoil Island Bill Hop Boys will get your vacation off to a great start.

00:17:22.644 --> 00:17:26.862
Save your back, your legs and your energy because they do all the work.

00:17:26.862 --> 00:17:34.627
It's such a nice luxury after packing it all and driving for eight hours and realizing there are 30 steps in our condo.

00:17:34.627 --> 00:17:40.164
They were so friendly, punctual, speedy and very accommodating to our late arrival.

00:17:40.164 --> 00:17:47.203
So just speaking about that late arrival, damien, sometimes I'm assuming if you're driving you run into issues.

00:17:47.203 --> 00:17:49.789
I know I have when I'm taking long road trips.

00:17:49.789 --> 00:17:53.568
What happens if they aren't there when they're supposed to be there?

00:17:53.568 --> 00:17:56.038
Do you go home and then come back later?

00:17:56.038 --> 00:17:56.765
What's your plan?

00:17:57.471 --> 00:18:01.912
Because we schedule these appointments every 30 minutes, we actually have a little bit of flexibility.

00:18:01.912 --> 00:18:05.561
If a guest is running late, we can always shift them to the end of the line.

00:18:05.561 --> 00:18:08.157
Most are understanding if they're running late.

00:18:08.157 --> 00:18:11.211
We don't leave the island until everybody's loaded in.

00:18:11.211 --> 00:18:18.950
There may be some downtime in between appointments if somebody's going to be late, but we'll typically try to fill it in with the next available appointment.

00:18:19.211 --> 00:18:22.766
Okay, honestly, it's not that bad of a place to have some downtime.

00:18:22.766 --> 00:18:24.171
I'll just go for a walk on the beach.

00:18:24.330 --> 00:18:32.174
Yeah, really we're usually just sweating really badly very thirsty and sitting in the truck and just wait for them to show up.

00:18:33.478 --> 00:18:33.798
Yeah.

00:18:33.798 --> 00:18:35.663
Okay, here's another one.

00:18:35.663 --> 00:18:38.433
Where have you been all these years?

00:18:38.433 --> 00:18:40.317
I love that one my knees.

00:18:40.317 --> 00:18:43.923
Thank you Very polite and fast.

00:18:43.923 --> 00:18:44.993
I love that one.

00:18:44.993 --> 00:18:46.519
I know a lot of people.

00:18:46.519 --> 00:18:50.172
Just the fact that who was the lady that reached out the very first one?

00:18:50.172 --> 00:18:56.601
Miss Alex, miss Alex, the fact that she reached out I'm just shocked that someone else hadn't reached out prior to that.

00:18:56.601 --> 00:18:58.651
But, yeah, I'll say where have you been all these years?

00:18:58.651 --> 00:19:01.078
And here's the last one.

00:19:01.078 --> 00:19:12.333
If you and this is not the last one I found on your site, but I had to limit myself If you have a bad back having these guys take care of all your unpacking is an absolute blessing.

00:19:12.333 --> 00:19:14.458
They're super friendly and you're in good hands.

00:19:14.458 --> 00:19:16.852
I will use this service from now on.

00:19:16.852 --> 00:19:19.940
So I'm assuming you get a lot of repeat clients.

00:19:20.340 --> 00:19:20.642
We do.

00:19:20.642 --> 00:19:26.598
I'd say probably 65 to 70% of our current business is repeat business.

00:19:26.598 --> 00:19:31.855
Nice, it's challenging at times because we only have so many 30 minute slots.

00:19:31.855 --> 00:19:39.203
One of the hardest parts of what I do in the scheduling and the interaction with the guests is having to say no.

00:19:39.484 --> 00:19:40.167
If we don't have them?

00:19:40.167 --> 00:19:40.710
Have you had to do that?

00:19:40.869 --> 00:19:45.520
quite a bit, we have we have had to say no in the past and it's always disappointing.

00:19:45.520 --> 00:19:52.954
I always, if we have to say no, I'll typically ask for a phone number, make a phone call and explain to them that we simply don't have availability.

00:19:53.836 --> 00:19:58.032
So in my podcast, I always like to finish off with final thoughts.

00:19:58.032 --> 00:20:10.713
What is it that you just really want the listeners to know about the Topsaw Island, bill Hop Boys or perhaps it's just you, damien, and your family what is it that you just you really want everyone to know?

00:20:12.057 --> 00:20:16.666
We are so grateful and appreciative and our hearts are full of love for all of our customers.

00:20:16.666 --> 00:20:21.005
We like to represent the Topsoil community in the best way possible.

00:20:21.005 --> 00:20:24.061
We make booking on Facebook easy.

00:20:24.061 --> 00:20:29.538
You can schedule your appointments right on our Facebook page and send us a message with any questions.

00:20:30.435 --> 00:20:35.227
I am going to give out the contact information for the Topsoil Island Bellhop Boys.

00:20:35.227 --> 00:20:39.403
You can find and follow the Topsoil Island Bellhop Boys on Facebook.

00:20:39.403 --> 00:20:48.286
It's at wwwfacebookcom, but you can just do a search and you'll find them quite easily.

00:20:48.286 --> 00:20:50.039
You don't have a website.

00:20:50.039 --> 00:20:53.222
You use the Facebook page as your website.

00:20:53.482 --> 00:20:54.045
That's correct.

00:20:54.045 --> 00:20:56.402
All of our business is done through Facebook.

00:20:56.974 --> 00:20:58.942
There's not an actual email address.

00:20:58.942 --> 00:21:08.862
They do all of their electronic messaging through that same Facebook page and their phone number is 919-791-7953.

00:21:08.862 --> 00:21:09.903
Is there anything else?

00:21:09.903 --> 00:21:10.984
Did I miss anything?

00:21:11.465 --> 00:21:12.508
No, you covered it all.

00:21:12.508 --> 00:21:13.288
Thank you, Christa.

00:21:13.449 --> 00:21:14.375
Awesome, all right.

00:21:14.375 --> 00:21:16.605
So thank you, listeners, for joining us today.

00:21:16.605 --> 00:21:18.461
Thank you, damien, for joining me.

00:21:18.461 --> 00:21:19.357
I appreciate it.

00:21:19.855 --> 00:21:20.538
Thank you for having me.

00:21:21.055 --> 00:21:25.565
It's been a pleasure speaking with you today, and I wish you and your family the very best.

00:21:26.026 --> 00:21:26.366
Thank you.

00:21:27.295 --> 00:21:30.104
Hey, thank you for joining me today on Topsoil Insider.

00:21:30.714 --> 00:21:40.917
If you liked today's episode, please hit the follow or subscribe button so that you can get the Topsoil Insider podcast delivered automatically to whichever podcast platform you're listening on.

00:21:41.855 --> 00:21:45.825
And if you're a business owner and you wish to set up a pre-interview or you want to advertise.

00:21:46.654 --> 00:21:50.144
Please email me at TopsoilInsider at gmailcom.

00:21:50.144 --> 00:21:52.961
Please also find and like the Topsoil Insider.

00:21:53.001 --> 00:21:53.703
Facebook page.

00:21:53.703 --> 00:22:02.625
I provide links to the new podcast there each week, as well as providing photos of the businesses that I'm highlighting, along with any of their upcoming events.

00:22:02.934 --> 00:22:04.561
So, hey, let's do this again next week.

00:22:04.561 --> 00:22:06.038
I'll see you around Topsoil.

The Topsail Island Bellhop Boys

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