Nerf and End of Year Recap with Erica

[00:00:02] Speaker A: This is Short Term Rental Management, the show that is all about short term rental property management with your host, yours truly, Luke Carl. Short Term Rental Management with Luke and coach Erica from She's a Short Term Shop. Full disclosure, she works at the Short Term Shop and one of our coaches and wears many hats around here. So we're just going to dive right in because we had a great pretty pre chat and we were discussing the fact that the Essentials amenity tab on Airbnb and this is not the topic of today's program, by the way, but we're just gonna roll with says because here's why I keep getting dinged for having it or not having it on certain listings, basically. And in other words, Airbnb is like, you need the Essentials, blah, blah, blah. And so if you go look at it, it's in your amenity section. It's towels, bed sheets, soap, and toilet paper. Okay. We should definitely be providing that. [00:01:05] Speaker B: But that's not the picture. [00:01:06] Speaker A: But go ahead. [00:01:08] Speaker B: The picture is a toothbrush, a comb, and toothpaste. So I'm guilty of it. I have never pressed the essentials button because I've just looked at the picture and I've been like, I'm not providing that and I've never pressed it. So apparently none of my properties have bed sheets or paper towels or toilet paper. [00:01:23] Speaker A: All right, you're making me feel better because I also did not have this selected. At most, I think I had it at one or two. I'm also thinking that there was a point in time that the description was different than what it is now. In other words, why if it. If it said towels, bed sheets, soaps, and again, this is a Airbnb only here. If it said towels, bed sheets, soaps, and toilet paper, the last time I listed a property, I would have noticed that and I probably would have selected it. Something tells me me they've changed it. Yeah. [00:01:56] Speaker B: And nobody updated the picture. [00:01:58] Speaker A: And the picture is still the same. The, you know, like the emoji picture. Yeah. [00:02:03] Speaker B: It kind of makes me want to go through some of the other amenities that are maybe a little. I don't know, I. I'm gonna have to check my list. So that's gonna be. That's gonna be on my end of the year to do list is go. [00:02:13] Speaker A: Through my amenities about today and check. Sorry. And. And the problem is is these things do change quite frequently. And I'll be honest, now that I noticed that I'm going through and changing a lot of things that I'm like, wow, that is so outdated. Even stuff in my. About this, you know, property or whatever in the description, you got the part at the bottom there, like other details to note, which used to be other things to note. So even just that has changed the name of it. I remember vividly it said other things to note. Now it says other details. [00:02:49] Speaker B: That is a change. [00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a change. [00:02:50] Speaker B: So because I still say in my coaching sessions, I'm always like, make sure you check your other things to note. So now I'm going to have to change my linguistics as well. [00:02:58] Speaker A: And I will say I used to use that section pretty extensively with a lot of stuff and now I'm transitioning to keeping it very minimal because I figure most of that stuff is also listed in the amenities. And if it's a, if it's a red tape type of a thing, I, I'll put it in my house rules, of course. [00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I moved a lot of my note stuffs to my rules. Yeah, yeah. I just tried to keep it smaller too. And I, I always go through all of my stuff and I try to make sure it's all like scannable and not readable text because I know people aren't going to read it. [00:03:40] Speaker A: Absolutely. And just so everybody's aware, we are going to do a 2026, you know, new year new you launch very soon, within the next month, I would say we will probably release a 2026 how to Be successful type of a show. We may even do that with a live audience. So be on the lookout for that. It'll probably. Well, at the recording of this session, it's difficult to say. I will, I will say that will probably come out by the end of January 2026. I don't know when you're listening to this podcast. So with that being said, Erica, let's. Well, hold on. I want to. Before we get into a year end recap. Yes, I do want to mention that the other day I was made aware of a situation with a photographer friend of mine in the Smokies. He was photographing a rental cabin. And he said, he called me. He actually called me. He's a close friend of mine. And he called me and he said, you're never going to believe it. This cabin has a Nerf gun wall. And I said, that's Erica's cabin. He said, no, it's not. That's not who hired me. Because he knows you. [00:04:48] Speaker B: Yes. [00:04:50] Speaker A: And he, and it was a gentleman. He said the gentleman's name, whatever it was, I don't remember. Let's say his name was Tom or whatever. And I said, I don't think that's Erica's husband. I don't know. Whoever this is stole it from Erica. So I'm gonna go ahead and let you take credit for that. And I do want to hear your Nerf gun wall system. [00:05:12] Speaker B: No, yeah, it's. It's funny you mentioned that because I am hearing it more often and I'm seeing it more often in people's listings. So I don't know if I can take credit for that or not, but it's definitely becoming kind of a thing. And it was just one of those, those instances where I have one at my house in my basement. And we have, I think my son has 15 nerf guns. And I mean, it looks like a serious war. [00:05:39] Speaker A: How old is he? [00:05:40] Speaker B: He is 13. [00:05:41] Speaker A: Okay. I was gonna say, because mine's 5. And I was like, he, there's no way he would lose them. You know, like, he has several Nerf guns. We have a bullet drawer, you know. [00:05:51] Speaker B: Yeah, but. And that, and that was. [00:05:53] Speaker A: My son's not ready for that. [00:05:55] Speaker B: No, but that was how, like we thought, okay, how do we bring this like down a level? Because, yeah, my son will have his friends over and there's these, you know, giant battles going on in the basement on a regular basis with all these 13 year old boys. So I'm like, okay, they have so much fun. How can we bring this to our listing? So we obviously do not have any of the high powered automatic Nerf gun rifles that shoot, you know, so many, or we don't have any with the little really round balls that are really hard. Either they're all the soft Nerf bullets and we have six shooters or I think 10 shooters. And we had them in the cabin and that was working perfectly fine. But then we built up our outdoor space and we decided we were going to move them outside. So now we have this outdoor shed and the back wall of it is a Nerf wall and it's got the guns and a basket with bullets. And my cleaners have never complained, even when it, you know, we had them in the house. Finding one or two when you're cleaning really wasn't that big of a deal. And we never had a complaint from guests and everybody liked it. And now that it's outside, it's also really one of those things where my, my cleaner will just go in the bucket in the shed. If it's empty or low, she lets me know. We keep a couple extra rounds in the well house. She'll head over there, get those refill. Um, I even mentioned to my guests, like, you know, at checkout time, I'm like, don't, you know, if you, you know, don't find all the Nerf gun bullets, don't worry about it. But if you want to have a fun game, send your kids on, you know, a scavenger hunt to find as many bullets as possible. Kind of just, you know, make it a fun way to help out with the amenity. And we've gotten good reviews on it, and people like it, and apparently it's going other places, so. Cool. [00:07:49] Speaker A: I have questions on the home system and the rental system, as a matter of fact. So the home system with the. Just the children playing at home, do they keep score? [00:08:01] Speaker B: They put themselves into two teams. And we have a lot of beanbags and stuff around the house, too. So I think it's. I don't know what kind of rules they have. I know that I've heard things yelled up from the basement before. Like, hit 10. See, I think if you get shot 10 times, oh, okay. You're out. That's what I'm kind of assuming is going on down here. A couple times when I've walked down here, I've been shot, so I just kind of. I still. We have a very long basement, so there's a lot of crossfire going when you try to come down the stairs, because they're right in the middle, so, I mean, you're going to get hit. [00:08:36] Speaker A: I want to. That sounds like so much fun. We do it occasionally as well, but like I said, my kids are. My son especially. He's young. He's five, so, you know, he. He can't even, like, pull the thing back half the time on his own. Now, they do make fully auto Nerfs now that. Yes, I've got a couple of those. And they take batteries, and those are really cool. [00:08:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:08:58] Speaker A: But the downside there is that you run out of bullets in, like, 10 seconds. [00:09:02] Speaker B: Yeah. And from a. Yeah, from a rental perspective on that, too. Like, I didn't want to have to tell my cleaner then to also change batteries. So I was like, we'll just. And. And you can find some. Like, some of the five shooters are pretty easy to handle for, like, little kids. So we have those lower on the wall, and then some of the, you know, more difficult ones are higher up. [00:09:22] Speaker A: How many are on this wall? [00:09:25] Speaker B: The one in the shed is just 5. So 2. High powered, if you want to call them, but they're not really high powered. 10 shooters. And then the three lower ones are on the lower level. I might add more as we go, so. Because we just. We just kind of started this not too long ago. So I'm watching it and seeing, you know, if we want to evolve and maybe we'll put a laser tag in the shed. Laser tag at night? I don't know. [00:09:56] Speaker A: When you say shed, this is like some sort of thing in the backyard at the rental. Yeah. [00:10:00] Speaker B: But it's only the size of an outhouse, so it's not large. [00:10:03] Speaker A: And like one of those Home Depot sheds. [00:10:06] Speaker B: Yeah, but we had it built by a contractor out in the Smokies so that it does look like an outhouse intentionally. [00:10:15] Speaker A: I see. But it doesn't function as one. [00:10:16] Speaker B: No, no. And then we just. We put a little outline of Bigfoot on the front of it with a circle, you know. Yeah. [00:10:23] Speaker A: Do we have any indication as to how often they're being used? [00:10:27] Speaker B: My cleaner picks them up on a regular basis. One or two or three from the playground. But she does say all the time the guns are put away. One of things that I do have in our checkout instructions is I have a picture of the shed, how it looks when you arrive. And I do ask my guests, you know, if you have the time, please just, you know, put it back the way you found it. And most of the time people have to, you know, because the bags, boards are in there also. And like football is in there. And we have an outdoor shuffle board as well. So the stick things, I don't know what you call them, the stick things with the discs are in there too. And so it stays pretty well kept by guests. We really. We've only had one thing broken. Having given everybody all these things to play with. [00:11:18] Speaker A: Do you think it's getting you more bookings? [00:11:20] Speaker B: I do because it's in our reviews. And we had someone actually who booked this was just a month ago who came out and she said in her booking message, she goes, I just want to let you know that, you know, I booked you because of your outdoor activities in your outdoor space. She goes, I didn't see anything else like this around, so I know, I know it is, and I'm happy that we decided to do that. I'm not one who's going to put slides out my windows. I just. That's just not me. But I do think investing in an outdoor space in the Smokies, where a lot of people are spending time outside, was a good, good choice. [00:12:00] Speaker A: Are you looking for a change? Well, the short term shop is hiring realtors. If you live in or want to move to one of the best vacation markets in the United States, we want you to join the team. We are a small family owned business, but we are one of the biggest real estate teams in the world. We are looking for new team members. Please contact [email protected] careers the shorttermshop.com careers. Do you replenish the bullets or they. Okay. [00:12:45] Speaker B: Yep. [00:12:46] Speaker A: They're getting lost in things sometimes. [00:12:48] Speaker B: I, when we started this, I bought two 50 bullet tubs and we were just there last week and both of them are still in the well house and the basket in the shed is still full. So that's several months now. And I have not had to buy any more darts. [00:13:14] Speaker A: Well, because now, you know, there are two kinds of Nerf bullets. They just came out with the new version. I would assume you know that. But I did a bunch of things I do not. [00:13:24] Speaker B: Well, I know you got the round ones that really hurt when they shoot you, and then you've got the, the regular, like tubular Nerf bullets. And some of them have like different types of tips. So those can hurt more depending on which one you shot with. [00:13:39] Speaker A: Well, no, you know, we did a. We had a Nerf party at our house for the kids birthdays with all the grandparents and, you know, grand. The granddads and stuff. And I did some research and they just came out this year with one called the N. It's the N series bullet, which is supposed to be more accurate. In other words, it has a little nub on the backside of it that slides into the receiver, basically, or the bolt, if you will. On the Nerf gun, instead of just having a large flat surface on the back of the bullet, it's got a little nub that kind of holds it in place. So it's supposed to make it more accurate. It's not more powerful. [00:14:13] Speaker B: Okay. [00:14:14] Speaker A: And they're moving towards those, from what I understand. I think the old ones are called just. I don't. They might be called elites. [00:14:24] Speaker B: Yes, they are. I believe they're elites. [00:14:26] Speaker A: The blue ones, I think are called elite. I don't know that they're doing away with those or if it was a business decision, like, hey, we need to sell more bullets. So let's come up with two different kinds of bullets or whatever. [00:14:37] Speaker B: Well, that's calibers, if you will. I was gonna say, are they, you know, are the. The old ones not going to be compatible with. Okay. So you're gonna have to know what. [00:14:46] Speaker A: You'Re Ordering N series guns and Elite series gun and the regular guns. [00:14:51] Speaker B: Good to know. Thank you. Yeah. Because that's going to matter come Christmas time when the new guns come rolling. [00:14:56] Speaker A: But as of right now, they are both available. In other words, they're not phasing out the original bullets, to my knowledge. Okay, that's a ridiculous conversation. But I had. I did a test, I will be honest, and I watched some YouTubes. I got really into this around my. My kids have back to back birthdays. I watched some YouTubes. There are several YouTubes about the elite versus the N. I think it's the N1 or to N2, whatever it is, Bullet. And the overall consensus that was that the N series is maybe slightly more accurate. And I found that to be true as well. I literally stood in the house pointing at the back door because it's glass and you can kind of get a good idea of where you're hitting. And I did find that the end bullets were just slightly more accurate. [00:15:44] Speaker B: You have to get this thing. I'll have to look it up and give name of it, but it's a circular target, but it actually has tubes that come up and they blow air. And then there's these foam Styrofoam balls that sit on top of the air tube so they're floating and you've got to shoot those. Super cool. [00:16:06] Speaker A: That is cool. [00:16:07] Speaker B: It's so cool. [00:16:08] Speaker A: I need that. I need that. We have a target. It came from an old bow and arrow set that the kids got, you know, plastic when they were really little. And they still use it for the Nerf guns, but it's definitely far. It's very inferior to what you just mentioned. [00:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that thing's fun. I have not put that at the cabin yet, though, because it only comes with so many of those little styrofoam balls, and those are going to be gone in a second, but it would be cool. I should put a target up. [00:16:36] Speaker A: I'm actually excited about this right now because I will forget. I have another podcast right after this and I will forget. So I just texted her. Nerf makes a target with floating balls. So we got to get that. That's cool. All right, let's talk about year end. Recap the year. I would like to discuss what you did well this year, what you would like to improve on in the new year. [00:16:59] Speaker B: Yeah. So a couple of things that I always do at the end of the year is I review my reviews. So I. I mean, I don't sit and go through every single one, but you know, I'll filter and I'll see. Maybe I got a four here or there, what was it for? And then I'll also go through and I'll look for the things that got complimented the most and I'll think about how can I make that possibly even better. So those are like, I, I haven't gone through them all yet, but I've gotten through quite a few. And one of the things that I did notice, one of our really positives that we get all the time besides outdoor stuff is our view. And when we were there last week, I did notice that some trees and stuff are starting to grow in quite a bit in the back. So on my list of to do's we got our tree guy getting him there as soon as possible and we're going to clear out some additional area to make that view even better. So that's on my list from, you know, looking at what people like and how I can do that better. And then sometimes we will get a complaint once in a while about bugs not in the cabin, but around the cabin, you know, the carpenter bees and stuff. And all that. Sometimes that'll show up. And I've talked to my pest control guy, but honestly, carpenter bees and the smokies are like, you know, Romeo and Juliet. Nobody's going anywhere and the cabin and the bees are going to die together at some point. But I, I don't really have a plan for that. So what I started to do is I looked into my messaging and now in my check in message when I know it's the season, I have a little paragraph that's going to be set that just kind of introduces them to carpenter bees because they really don't sting and they don't, they're not aggressive and they'll. Personally, I kind of like them. [00:18:46] Speaker A: They will, they're beautiful. [00:18:48] Speaker B: There they are. And they will hover like right in front of you and like watch you. And like I remember one time I was grilling and this one just stayed there like the whole time watching me grill. And I started talking to him. I know it seems ridiculous, but you know, I just, they're, they're friendly bees. So I made it a point to kind of put that out there. I think you always refer to it as the purple apple. Like look, if there's going to be something, I'm going to make sure that I'm going to put it out there and try to put a positive spirit spin on it. And so I review my reviews. And then the other thing I really like to do. [00:19:19] Speaker A: I'm sorry, can I go? Can I, Yeah. Questions there. It's not in your guidebook. How are we? It's simply in your check in message. These are, these carpenter bees exist and be aware of them and they're not harmful. [00:19:32] Speaker B: Yeah, just a simple message like that. And I even make a joke. I, I write in there. You know, we, we've grown fond of them and we call them like Mo, Larry and Curly. You know, just. I find when in my messaging when I include some sort of humor in some way, it sets a mood. So even, even in my rules. Yes, my rules are clear. But I mean I, one of them, one of my rules is like an extra charge if my cleaner has to clean up bodily fluids and then I like follow it up and I say, because yes, I know it seems silly to say this, but come on, we shouldn't have to, but here we are, you know, so just trying to put a, a nice vibe spin on my rules. And that's what I'm going to do with the carpenter bees. [00:20:23] Speaker A: Yes. We find that people in general, again, we're just talking human nature. People don't like things they don't understand and they've never seen before. They just, the instinct is to think that it's a negative. It could be any, it could be anything. Could be the toothbrush you use, it could be the car you drive. You know, like this rental car. You know, take that for instance, land at the airport and if this is the first time you've ever rented a car, the instinct is going to be this door doesn't open right, this turn signal is not working right, the shifter is not in the right place. I don't like this car. And that's 90 plus percent of America, of people, of humans. Now people that travel all the time understand that this car is not the one that they drive at home. And it's different because they had one that was different than their car at home two days ago. But not everybody is well traveled and experienced with the world. And I think that we as hosts forget that because most of us are a little bit more savvy with the way of the world. You kind of have to be to be able to afford an extra freaking house, you know, so that's the, you know, people, I hate to say it, but they're a little small minded at times. And that's what's going on here. You got to, you got to kind of again, purple apple. You got to warn them of anything that may be different than something they do. In their daily lives. Now getting them to actually read it. That's a whole nother conversation. [00:22:03] Speaker B: It is. I did think about getting. Because I'm a big one for little funny signs in the cabin. [00:22:08] Speaker A: Oh, you are? [00:22:09] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Not like rule sign. Like on our bathroom, I have, you know, someone a little instead of the man and the woman symbol, you know, on regular bathrooms, it's a, you know, a man and a woman and they're like holding themselves to not go pee on our bathroom. And then I also have just funny like, you know, typically you'll see something that says, you know, don't dump certain things down the toilet. Well, mine says like, you know, don't dump your husband, your children, your. All of those kinds of things down. [00:22:37] Speaker A: You found this somewhere or you created. [00:22:39] Speaker B: I mean, I made them on Etsy. [00:22:40] Speaker A: Oh, cool. [00:22:41] Speaker B: Yeah, it just. I. [00:22:42] Speaker A: Plastic. [00:22:43] Speaker B: Yeah, they're plastic. And you can buy ones that also have just the adhesive already on the back. So I custom made, custom made, have the message in there, ship it off to my cleaner and she'll go and stick it where I tell her to stick it. [00:22:55] Speaker A: We have those and you know, above the toilets for the septic purposes mostly, you know, but we do. We do them at the beach houses as well. Because you just never know. [00:23:05] Speaker B: I'm thinking to do a. [00:23:06] Speaker A: Certainly not clever. [00:23:08] Speaker B: I'm going to do one for the bees and have that, like out on the deck too. Maybe a couple of funny pictures of bees with some type of, I don't know, joke to go with them. Like, happy to see you this morning or something like that. [00:23:18] Speaker A: Always hesitated. Mostly because of the Tesla song. You know, sign, sign everywhere sign. Breaking up the scenery, but blocking my mind. Do this, don't do that. Can't you read the sign? And it's a little bit like I don't like being told what to do all the time. [00:23:32] Speaker B: Right. You know, but I'm not telling them what to do. [00:23:36] Speaker A: Gotta tuck my long hair up into my hat to go in and ply and apply for the job, you know, anyway. And also I worry that somebody's gonna crack the sign and it's gonna be broken for three months before anybody tells me about it. But I haven't run into that either. Never had that. [00:23:53] Speaker B: No, because they're like. They're hard plastic. They're not like glass or anything like that. They're like that. Really. I don't know if it's pvc. I don't know what it is. And they're not huge. They're usually like A five by seven or something like that. So they're little. I mean, someone would literally have to be really mad at my sign, punch it and break it in half on the wall, drunk and fall over. Yeah, I mean, that could certainly happen too. I mean, I guess. Yeah, the bathroom would be one place to be drunk and fall into the wall. [00:24:26] Speaker A: If you're thinking, you know, been there for a good 15 years. But anyway, yeah, I do have one where it's. You know, the Florida swimming pool thing is a real nightmare. And I have a QR code next to the door because everybody says, your alarm's going off this, the cops are gonna come. And it's like, no, dude, you open the back door, there's a pool back there. And that's how it is in the entire state. Either you have that or you have a fence. And I don't mean a fence around the yard. I mean like an actual safety fence around the pool. Like, that's very common in Disney. But up here we don't do that. We do the buzzer on the door, which is so annoying. And if you have a window. If you have a window on the first floor, egress floor towards the swimming pool, you have to have an alarm on that too. Oh, wow. Now, luckily, my house, that. That has the big pool, which is actually being redone right now. It was built for rental. Most of them are down here. And it does not have any windows on the back of the house. It's got. It's got doors. Like, there's no. There's no window in the kitchen. And I would assume they did that because they didn't want to bother putting an alarm on it, you know, so I'm glad they did. [00:25:36] Speaker B: But, yeah, I think you have to have those alarms in the Smokies too, for swimming pools. [00:25:43] Speaker A: Yeah. See, I'm out on the smoky swimming pool. Where do you stand there? [00:25:48] Speaker B: I don't want one. And I know people. I know people who have one. And I know that it, they. I'm sure it gets some bookings. I have no doubt about that whatsoever. But the amount of time spent on an amenity, that's just too much time for me personally. [00:26:10] Speaker A: Yeah, I just, the maintenance, I don't. I don't know. I'm scared of it, I guess. Back to the. Back to the rental car thing. I don't know anything about an indoor pool, and it's just not something I'm psyched about. But it makes people have them. They seem to love them. [00:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah, it makes me nervous too, though. You're right when you say that. It does. It scares me. And it scares me because I don't. I don't know what I don't know. And then if I'm calling a maintenance person to take care of something, you know, they could tell me that your lug nuts aren't working in the pool. And I'd be like, oh, really? Let's fix those. Yeah, I don't even know how a pool is put together. [00:26:42] Speaker A: Oh, you live in Chicago. 20 grand. [00:26:45] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So I was like, no. [00:26:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Wait, what were we talking about? Reviews. Hey, speaking of, you made me think of something. Could I put my Airbnb listing into chat? I bet the answer is yes, by the way. Into chat GBT and say, can you comb through my reviews and tell me the keywords that are coming up repeatedly? I bet. [00:27:04] Speaker B: Oh, I'm sure you absolutely can. Yeah. Chat. Like, I am a huge fan of Chat GPT. [00:27:12] Speaker A: It annoys the crap out of me occasionally. Don't. Don't get me wrong. There's sometimes where I'm like, you are not doing this right. [00:27:18] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. Some. I had a one time. I always tell people in my coaching sessions because sometimes we use them to change pictures just a little, like throw pillows, blankets and stuff. And then every once in a while, all of a sudden, you know, an elephant is in the middle of the room. Like, I didn't tell it to do that. [00:27:35] Speaker A: Wait, you're putting your. Your photos in chat GPT to add throw pillows? [00:27:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:40] Speaker A: Wow. [00:27:41] Speaker B: Yeah. So I just had a session. Yeah, I just had a session yesterday where someone was. Hadn't gotten a Christmas booking yet and had no pictures of Christmas decor. So we chatgpt in a Christmas tree Christmas, throw pillows and throw blankets. And it looked great. Same room, just different stuff. [00:28:00] Speaker A: All the photographers now hate your guts. [00:28:02] Speaker B: I'm sure they do. Don't tell. [00:28:05] Speaker A: That is so cool. You know what happened to me was I got a notification from the. The new price labs, whatever it is, the listing analyzer deal. And it said it gave me a C on something because I had a. An up close photo of the electrical panel. And I'm like, what is this thing talking about again? It's AI. So I went and looked and what it was was the. It was the picture of the washer and dryer. The washer and dryer is a stack. It's a very tiny house, like 900 square feet house. Stackable washer and dryer in a little closet that has just the washer and dryer on the Right. And a water heater on the left. And it's maybe, you know, it's, it's, it's dryer width wide. This whole room like the dryer takes up the whole room. But the, the electrical panel is on the wall right next to the washer and dryer. So we, we only had one choice to get the picture of the washer and dryer which included this electrical panel. I never didn't even think about it. I'm like, well, we have to show the washer and dryer. I could throw that in Chat GPT and have it delete the electrical panel. [00:29:07] Speaker B: And then it'll take it out and. [00:29:08] Speaker A: It'Ll just be maybe bring me back. [00:29:10] Speaker B: To an A grade because that's what's most important. [00:29:14] Speaker A: Look at this world we're living in. Isn't this crazy? Imagine explaining this to me, you know, or I'm a little older than you. Ten years ago when I first started and nobody even knew what a cleaning fee was, you know, so. [00:29:28] Speaker B: Yeah, and then you think, okay, well what is it going to be in 10 years? Because we'll both still be in this at that point. Imagine where it's going to be then. [00:29:36] Speaker A: Oh yeah. 100. I look forward to having an, a long term relationship with most of my property, especially my short terms. You know, I walk into it and I say, well, you son of a. I'm stuck with you. You know, you better knock this shit off and we're going to be okay, you know, we're going to fix this thing or whatever and you know, if you got a pull problem or a leak or whatever. All right, cool. I love that Chat GPT. The photos to fix any issues, that is. Why didn't I think of that? That's brilliant. I love it. All right, what else? And the reviews, or the reviews in Chat GPT. So what else are you doing for the end of the year? [00:30:19] Speaker B: Like I said, the other thing I'll do is I'll go into price labs and in the neighborhood data that top graph. I'll make sure that I look at last year's pricing, which I think comes up in little blue dashes. And then I'll look at the black line, you know, that's showing where I'm priced for the year and I'll just make sure that that is above. Even if it's just $10 above. I want to make sure that that new black pricing line for the year is higher than where my blue pricing was last year. I always like to make sure, you know, I, I Set myself up to do better. And I never want to set myself up at the same level because then if I do have to lower my prices or something like that, then I'm. I'm lowering from an. A previous baseline, and I'd rather lower from a higher goal, if that makes sense. [00:31:11] Speaker A: I'm looking at it right now. My last year bookings. There's my blue line. Okay, cool. Got it. Now, you do find that most of the time, you're still lower than the red in the. The red, right? [00:31:25] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not the Taj Mahal. That's what I call the. The really high light pink one. I call those the Taj Mahals. I don't hang out in there. There's the Taj Mahals and then there's the midterm, like, and that's the middle ground. And I forget what I had. I. I had terms for them, and now I can't remember. [00:31:45] Speaker A: The red line is not fluid, though, right? It's only, like, little chunks. [00:31:49] Speaker B: The red line. Hold on. [00:31:50] Speaker A: It's showing chunks on mine. We're doing this in real time here. [00:31:53] Speaker B: Are you talking about the blue line in chunks? [00:31:55] Speaker A: The blue line's also chunky on mine. The last year bookings. [00:31:59] Speaker B: Sorry, the blue lines will be. Yeah, the blue lines are your last year's bookings. So those are going to be in little chunks. Unless you booked the whole year, every single day. Congratulations. And then you're gonna see, you know, everything across the line in blue. And then your green ones are your upcoming bookings. But are you talking about the, like. [00:32:18] Speaker A: No, no. You just explained it, right? That's what I was looking for. [00:32:20] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. So that's something that I'll do just to try to. I always want to try to do. [00:32:29] Speaker A: Better at all about the Taj Mahal. I don't think I do. [00:32:34] Speaker B: I don't really. I just. I've. When I can go back and look at my previous year's stuff, too, and my upcoming stuff. 1. Once in a blue moon, I will pull off a booking in the Taj Mahal. And those are really only for. It's happened on New Year's on a regular basis, so I'll keep that high. And it's happened on the 4th of July. [00:32:57] Speaker A: If you see that your black line is slightly lower than, say, chunks of your green or. Well, I guess it would be more important. Your blue. What's your protocol? Because I would assume you have multiple base rates. [00:33:11] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. I have custom season profiles, so each month is a different base rate. So. So I'll Kind of look. Let's say I see that then I'll look at, let's say let's pretend it's happening in June. If I see that on one of mine then I'll look at the other blues surrounding it and if I see that it's a trend for that month then I will go and I will up my base rate in my custom season profile. If I see that it's just a one off, like I don't know, maybe I, maybe I wasn't getting that week booked or something, you know and I had to last minute lower something. So then I'll just go in and I'll, I'll just black line those days to make that a little bit higher. [00:33:50] Speaker A: Got it. I like that. Do you want your June and July? You know I say that because of the time of year it is right now we're at Christmas time. So like let's say next June and July is very valuable. I would assume you want your black wine to be quite a bit higher than your, your blues because it is further out. [00:34:08] Speaker B: I do. And here's. So I just had talked about this in a coaching session. Somebody asked if they're really far out. Day should be significantly higher. I do have a setting in my price labs. I don't follow the rule where that they preset in there. The default rule which I think ups you by like 20% over. I think it's after 120 days or something like that. I have a gradual increase built into mine but not until I believe 190 days. And that's just for me. I, I like what I call the Goldilocks rule. I don't need to have my prices so high in the future so that when I'm approaching those dates now I'm spending a bunch of time, you know, lowering them and trying to catch up on my bookings. But I also don't want to be so low that my June and my July are already booked. I want to be just right. I want that Goldilocks rule. So for me I go in and my gradual settings are. I think I increase up to 12% where I know price labs. I think increases you up to 20 on those far out dates. So my far out dates will gradually increase only up to 12% because I feel like going too far. Then I'm just going to have to pull that number back over time and end up right where I started kind of a thing. [00:35:40] Speaker A: Fascinating. [00:35:42] Speaker B: That's my thoughts on it. [00:35:43] Speaker A: You got me playing around with this right now. I'm Like, I'm so distracted now because I want to dive in and attack my stuff now. So thank you. It's inspiring. [00:35:51] Speaker B: You're welcome. [00:35:52] Speaker A: Also, if you're brand new, don't get overwhelmed here. This stuff is really. At the end of the day, it's not that hard, right? [00:35:56] Speaker B: No, no, it's not. I. I just showed. I was coaching one of our clients on yesterday in the morning, and I just showed. [00:36:06] Speaker A: Probably. [00:36:07] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. She's, I think, or take five months in. [00:36:10] Speaker A: Okay. [00:36:11] Speaker B: And I showed her this and, and she didn't even know that it was a thing, but it only took her two seconds to learn and she goes, oh, this makes total sense. And I'm like, yeah, it's just when you're new, you don't know what you don't know and you don't know where it is. [00:36:22] Speaker A: And Price Labs is completely overwhelming when you're new. It's got, it's got too much stuff going on, too many bells and whistles. But the truth is, you don't really need a lot of them. So just disregard how complicated it looks and just use the stuff that you need. Speaking of, you're hospitable, right? [00:36:38] Speaker B: Yes, I am. [00:36:39] Speaker A: You played around with their new pricing tool at all. [00:36:43] Speaker B: I like my Price Labs. [00:36:44] Speaker A: Yeah, it's cool. I think it would be a good thing for certain new candidates, for sure. Just throwing that out there, shooting the breeze here. It's definitely not sophisticated. You can't, for instance, change the dates of certain months. You, you can't, you know, you can change close in prices, regular prices, and far out prices. That's pretty much it. So it's handy and I think it would be great for just a, a regular, you know, maybe like a doctor that's just doing this on the side with their rental house, you know, that they. Their second home. But it's certainly not something I'm going to be looking at. It's just not. It doesn't have. I mean, I need, I need the monthly base rates. This, the custom season. [00:37:31] Speaker B: I love that. I love the custom season profiles. [00:37:36] Speaker A: Once you, once you have it set up, it's so simple. [00:37:38] Speaker B: Yes. Yep. And it only takes a little few tweaks here and there and it's, it's great. [00:37:43] Speaker A: Especially on a beach house. Before they, before they rolled that out or before we discovered how to do that, because we, we kind of created that thing. You know, Price Labs never really had that multiple base rate thing in mind. They need to change the name to multiple base rates. [00:37:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that Would make much more. [00:37:59] Speaker A: Sense, you know, seasonal base rates rather than custom profiles, because that's how people are starting to use it now. And prior to that, pricing a beach house was a nightmare. You can't price a beach house that's like $100 in January and eleven hundred dollars in July. Like, for real. I will have pretty close to that. Maybe, maybe 150 in January and 1100, maybe even more in the Fourth of July. You can't get one base rate to do what you needed to do when you have those giant seasonal swings. So setting up Those, you know, 12, 14 base rates is a pain in the rear end, but it's very effective. [00:38:42] Speaker B: It is. It's so worth it in the long run. [00:38:44] Speaker A: Your life so easy after that, you know, you can just. And I have less to worry about. Used to be back in the day, around February, I would be looking at my beach calendars, and I'm panicking. I'm like, oh, my God, June is not high enough. February is way too, way too high. I can't get the. The lows low enough and the highs high enough. But since you can do those custom seasons now, makes it way easier. [00:39:10] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. And I like it, too. This is one other thing I showed someone in there, and I'm sure you already know this, but, you know, you can have. You can change those black. If you need to black out something, you can change a fixed or percentage. And if you change it by percentage, then that it still allows it to fluctuate. And so I love that I can control it, but it still watches it. And it, let's say, like Taylor Swift decides to come to town. Even if I've put that, you know, black line on there, as long as I'm using a percentage, it's going to still make that adjustment. [00:39:40] Speaker A: I will do the percentage occasionally for stuff further out. I generally won't do it for things that are getting close, but. And it's pretty rare. I. I used to use them a lot, the percentages, and I, I think I just, I'm too controlling. I'm like, I want it to be. But, you know, further in advance, I. [00:39:57] Speaker B: Need to be this $199 to the dollar. [00:40:03] Speaker A: But, yeah, further in advance, you can have some flexibility. All right, so what do we got for goals? What are we looking for next year? [00:40:12] Speaker B: So, like I said, I want my pricing to be a little bit higher. After reviewing my reviews, I'm going to clear out some trees. My husband came up with this wacky idea. I don't know if we're going to fly with it, I put it all on him. He wants to put a crow's nest, like, next to our roof, and he's thinking about getting some quotes on it, like, we got one and it wasn't that bad. And I'm like, oh, man. I mean, it is an exceptional view if you get up to our rooftop level. So I don't know. We'll see where that goes. But he's already got a flag to fly for the top. [00:40:46] Speaker A: Oh, he's into it. [00:40:48] Speaker B: He's totally into it. [00:40:50] Speaker A: You might not be able to stop. [00:40:51] Speaker B: That crow's nest, and it's going to have a pirate flag. [00:40:56] Speaker A: He's full of steam ahead. He's filled with diesel, and he's ready to go. [00:41:00] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:41:01] Speaker A: That's how, dude. That's how we dudes do things, man. You know, you get stuck on something and even, you know, well, I'm going to do this, and if it sucks, we can change it, but we're doing it. [00:41:11] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It was just like a light bulb moment for him. I remember he, like, just kind of woke up one morning and goes, we should put in a crow's nest. I'm like, what are you. What are you talking about? [00:41:21] Speaker A: I like that. [00:41:22] Speaker B: So, yeah, I don't know. We'll see. But then I did put on my. On my list is to try to spend a little bit of time manipulating my messaging to try to boost a few direct bookings. Actually, just got one yesterday, so I was really happy about that. And so one of the things that I try to do in our messages, like if someone sends an inquiry or if someone sends, you know, a booking, I always just say, thank you for booking such and such cabin and the name of our. Our little company. Our little cabin company, our llc. And I'll put that in there. And then I just added a message. Yes. Yesterday, a couple days ago at checkout that says, you know, thank you for staying with us. And then I have a little promo code in there. And, no, you can't use that promo code on Airbnb. But they don't know that. And so it just kind of sets a stage of, hey, look, if I come back, I can get a discount. And if they were to reach out to me either on the platform or, you know, they have my contact information at that point because they've already stayed. Well, then they've also got this promo code that I can use in Hospitable and have a return guest at a discount. So just sort of a way to to sweeten their stay. And it's also a nice thing to walk away with, you know, like, because I can't give someone a thank you for coming gift when they leave the door. But here's something else that I can do to give them a good feeling when they, when they're leaving, like a thank you for staying. So and I hope that that might drive some of my direct bookings too. So that's something I'm going to give myself some time to sort of work on pushing that in my messaging a little bit more. But without saying go book off platform. [00:43:10] Speaker A: No, I'm not. [00:43:11] Speaker B: So you cannot, cannot do that, but. [00:43:13] Speaker A: You can get be their cut. [00:43:15] Speaker B: Oh yeah. I love Airbnb and I love vrbo, don't get me wrong. But I love having multiple avenues of potential income as well. And have you looked at stay, you. [00:43:29] Speaker A: Know, the guy from HGTV or whatever? [00:43:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw that, Scott. I actually, I watch his show. I've watched his shows for a really long time. Yeah, I love his show. [00:43:39] Speaker A: So why are you on there? [00:43:41] Speaker B: I had a talk with one of their reps last week and I do like what the idea behind it is, which is it's not like they're not charging you. It's a one time fee for a property and if you, you know, you have more properties then that becomes less. And what they really do is you have like a splash page on their website and you can brand it and everything like that. And then they basically market this whole catalog of direct booking properties out to multiple people. And for the price, I personally think it's kind of a steal right now. [00:44:36] Speaker A: I don't even necessarily need to integrate with management and pricing because it's using the website from my management software. [00:44:42] Speaker B: Yes. [00:44:43] Speaker A: This is what Zillow should be doing. [00:44:46] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. [00:44:49] Speaker A: All Zillow needs to do is create a button next to the for rent button on their website that says vacation for rent and do this and implement, you know, here you just pay us monthly to post your website. Why they haven't done it? Because, you know, I mean, I talk about this all the time and Zillow loves to be up everybody's rear end about everything, real estate and be like the grand poobah of real estate estate. But for whatever reason they don't care about us and it's a little weird. [00:45:20] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I, I don't know, but maybe Flo picked up the, picked up the slack there. [00:45:26] Speaker A: Why didn't you do stay, may I ask? [00:45:28] Speaker B: I haven't, I just haven't Done. I just. [00:45:30] Speaker A: You will. You think? [00:45:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going to, I'm absolutely going to. I just haven't done it because I. [00:45:35] Speaker A: Spending on marketing is my question, like how. Why is it worth it? Are you guys spending money? [00:45:40] Speaker B: So that is also probably a question I'm going to ask. I was only on the phone with him for maybe about a half hour, 40 minutes, so I didn't have a whole lot of time because that was when I was out in the Smokies working on the cabin. [00:45:51] Speaker A: Pretty simple process. [00:45:52] Speaker B: Yes. So they, they hook up with a ton of the pmss. So they'll pull everything from your pms. Hospitable? Not yet. That's coming I think in two months. So. But you can also hook up with your ical and, and it'll pull everything. [00:46:09] Speaker A: They're going to integrate with hospitable directly. I mean, why would I need that? Can I just put my. Yeah, my ical on my website or whatever? [00:46:16] Speaker B: Yeah, you could. I. It seems like there might be a little bit of you can get more information from the, the PMS if it's integrated. So it might, you might get more things to be able to add to your splash page. Again, like I said, I still have some more questions, but overall I really liked the idea behind it and he did tell me that on average per property for direct bookings you can get they. That what they're seeing since they're just kind of starting out is they're seeing maybe 10 to 12 direct bookings a year. But again, for what you pay, like I think I mentioned that I would probably be bringing like five properties over and it was $120 per property. So for me, I think about that and I'm like, that's paid for in one direct booking in one. Like why wouldn't I do this? So yes, I'm going to do it. Yeah. I still have another follow up meeting with them but for me, again, even if I just got one or two direct bookings from having a property on there, it makes up for what I've paid into it. [00:47:32] Speaker A: Got it. All right, I'm going to look into it, especially if they're connecting my management software. Be easy. [00:47:37] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:37] Speaker A: All right, I gotta let you go. You're awesome. Okay, how do we find you? You're a coach for short term shop plus we can, we can get. Schedule a session with you and come hang out with you. But. [00:47:50] Speaker B: Yeah, so you go to the short term shop and then there's information about sts. Plus you can sign up there, you can get coaching sessions, so you can find me there and, you know. Or you just call the shop and ask. [00:48:04] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. And if you're a short tip shop client, Erica might be randomly calling you just to check. [00:48:09] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, I get. I get that, too. Sometimes they're like, aren't you a coach? And I'm like, yeah, I am. Yes. [00:48:16] Speaker A: Multiple hats. Well, we're happy to have you. Thank you so much. And we'll talk to you soon. [00:48:20] Speaker B: All right, thanks, Luke. [00:48:21] Speaker A: Later. [00:48:22] Speaker B: Bye, Sam.