Steve V2: We recently had a mastermind in which we call it
the short-term rental nerds.
We did it just before the streamline event.
in this mastermind is something that we dig into.
Very specific topics that we think are
relevant to our industry.
At this mastermind, we talked about something called flowered fields.
. When I drove through Kansas, I saw brownfield after brownfield of
wheat over and over again for miles.
And then suddenly it came across.
This beautiful flowered field of magnificent colors, where people were
stopping and taking photos and even had some professional photographers out there
recently I was going through Airbnb and I saw.
Brown condo after brown condo after brown condo . And then suddenly one
listing just popped bright colors.
Cool amenities and it really caught my attention.
At that point there reminded me of those flowered fields and what it takes to make
sure that you send out from the crowd.
. . We discussed what the flower pilled concept was and how we define it.
And get our homeowners to buy in so that not only they can make
more money, but also we make more money too, as they rent more often.
The summary of that mastermind is unscripted.
So it flows through different conversations between all of us.
And I think he'll get something out of it.
I'm Steve Schwab.
And this is CasaCast.
Speaker: It's the CasaCast.
We've got Orange Credo.
The CasaCast.
Our company's neat o.
The CasaCast.
Created by CasaGo.
It's time for the show.
Let's
Speaker 3: So the definition of a Flutter field was the property that creates a
vision in the guest's that makes them look that property over others, right?
Speaker 2: Or is it what makes that property completely
unique to anything else?
Those to me, those are two different things, right?
I think so.
It's like, cause you guys were saying, everybody went down the rabbit hole of
let's look at the pictures and let's see how we make the pictures better.
Here's making them better.
Right.
I think that's where
Speaker 4: I got tripped up.
Yeah.
We should have just thought like,
Speaker 2: like one of those, I mean, crazy, one of those nude things that
you have, you know, those like things in Europe where they have like the nude
statues and they have like all the, you know what I'm talking about right now?
You
Speaker 5: see?
Speaker 3: I don't know if the flower field necessarily
has to be something so unique.
To the point where nobody else has it.
I think the flower field is something that is different than what the market
is doing right now and makes people stop when they see that listening.
Oh, wait, that's different.
That's cool.
I can see myself taking photos of myself against that wall.
I can see myself doing those amenities.
I can see my kids doing.
Something in that backyard above every other backyard.
And that's why I'm going to book this property as opposed to all the other ones.
Not necessarily like a one off.
Now, look, the home run once in a lifetime type property that has, , some
sort of theme that's unbelievable.
Speaker 4: The Airbnb Polly Pocket.
Yeah, the
Speaker 3: Polly
Speaker 2: Pockets,
Speaker 3: or
Speaker 2: wherever that is.
Pull up an Airbnb page.
With what, with pictures and say, make one thing stand out above all
the other ones here and, and pick what, pick what that would be.
I
Speaker 3: would tell you this, that to bring up lost and loneliness in a field of
brown condos, literally hundreds of them.
To have the only one that's brightly colored painted white pop colors that
are modern . And a patio that's actually furnished unlike anybody else's.
And I'm not talking about spending 100, 000 on a patio.
I'm speaking specifically to just having a well arranged patio.
That's the only one out there that makes it more valuable than anybody else's.
There's nothing unique.
About that.
That's not one of a kind.
It's just one of a kind in that resort and suddenly when somebody is going
to Las Palomas, I'm certain that when they see my patio and my place, it
looks clean because brown looks dirty.
Now, brown used to look very like almost kind of like a warm feeling because it
was earth tones right back in the 2000s.
Now it looks dirty to us.
Great.
Because our minds have changed because we see white everywhere, right?
To go in and modernize the colors, some of the furniture to make it look fancy,
put up a hero wall and put something else that nobody else has in that community
makes that the flower field when you're going through Los Palomas Brown, Los
Palomas Brown, Los Palomas Brown, Los Palomas, you know, ground floor, empty
patio, ground floor, empty patio, like you all say, like, that's different.
Speaker 2: Hang it up then.
And be the, the, the, and they
Speaker 3: can't to me paint it.
I would say just that for whatever reason, the star Wars
condo just being different and
. All I did was I had that, I had some custom art done star Wars in Katrina's
and signs made with basic on it.
And a couple of things I got from Disneyland and some presents
from the local staff who had some things painted up for my birthday.
And it's printing better.
Why?
Because it's different than everybody else's there.
It's, If everybody has a Star Wars condo there, it wouldn't make any sense.
. It's just that you figure if there's one out of eight people who are going to stay
in that condo who happens to have a little Star Wars nerdism in them, somebody's
like, ah, Steve likes Star Wars.
We should get that one.
. I think
Speaker 4: especially when you're like those kind of
places, you're going to a condo.
I could to Mexico.
I'm going to have a great time.
All these condos look the same.
Like, what's that one little tweet that's, that's it?
Like, the Star Wars, oh, I'm gonna go there.
Like, yeah, these all look good, but this one had that one little thing.
, Speaker 3: it's something that makes it pop, or stand out.
Speaker 5: I was just gonna say, your Las Palomas unit is a one
bedroom, so that's the one little thing that's holding you back.
So, think of things that couples can do.
Speaker 3: What's the story we're going to tell?
We're going to speak there specifically to young couples, maybe young couples
with kids, or maybe like a group of young kids, like a group of two couples,
whatever it is, but that's maximum.
It certainly narrows it, but the whole point of that is if you make
it different than everybody else's, it's not so much about demand.
It's about supply.
Narrowing yourself to the lowest supply of what you are down to one will
get you a lot more bookings because like you look at Princesa, right?
Princess only has three ground floor, one bedrooms in the entire place.
They book like crazy.
Why?
There's not that much demand for ground floor, one bedrooms at Princessa,
but there's only three of them.
So they rent like crazy because it's, it's the lack of supply in that.
I think that if you take the flower field concept to the point of what
differentiates me from the rest of the group, that makes me stand out completely
different, whether it's through an amenity, through a story being told, you
know, through style , , or an upgrade.
I think that's where you end up with the highest value of driving bookings to
you instead of your competition set of all the other one bedroom ground floors.
One bedroom upper floors for me.
Like I'm not competing against any two bedroom or three bedroom.
I'm competing against every other one bedroom in Las Colomas, and
especially the other two or three ground floor one bedrooms there.
Speaker 4: One thing that is, I mean, there are homes around it, but no one
else is doing it, is I take the dang bikes out to the freaking waterfall
that's two miles away, have the empty bike pictures near the waterfall.
That, I mean, it's not anything I'm doing to the house, but there
isn't, we didn't see that the house is pretty basic, but cause I can do
all the things in the house, but no one else is getting that waterfall.
And those section of homes that are that close to the
waterfall, no one's getting that.
Is that
Speaker 3: that has a lot of value, but that goes back to the 10 X list.
Right.
If you think about it and we're, there was conflation happening
in this conversation day.
You're talking about like staging stages.
Great.
That's part of that's part of the 10x listing process, right?
So specifically what about the property itself can make it the flower field
and then you put the 10x listing on top of that You've got a you
got a home run happening Hopefully
Speaker 4: because one of the bunk room need to be changed up, but it's like
we're making it a game room a lot of them since I never have that so that's
not One up above everybody else's
Speaker 3: maybe a further definition is what can you do to the property itself
that would give you the top 10 percent of demand for your competition set?
Speaker 4: Well, I have a homeowner that's done it.
All of his homes are decked out with decor.
There are no garages, all game rooms, like full on game rooms.
And I mean, his homes are stocked.
They have cool pictures.
They have cool decor.
And then there's a freaking gamer.
It's not just talking to ping pong.
It's it's three things.
It's pool table ping pong shuffleboard It's like each garage has
Speaker 3: and how do they get compared to other units?
It does
Speaker 4: really well again.
This is an owner coming that did it himself So he knew kind of what people
wanted and then came to a program But so he's his homes are doing way better.
So
Speaker 3: his property itself is the flowered field Yeah, 10x listing
on top of that, that's the bikes.
That's the staging.
That's everything else.
That's the great descriptions That's All the things that go into that,
that's where you start to get the magic of like, I'm starting with the
foundation of a property that will create the top 10 percent of demand in
this market against its own competition.
And then how do I market that in a way?
It's almost
Speaker 4: taking your top home.
So I have another three bedroom home that I mean, it's cute, but
it's cute, clean, allows pets, air conditioning, hot tub, but it has all
the top five amenities, plus it's cute.
So that thing So what was your biggest takeaway then?
My biggest takeaway is I mean, that's the takeaway, but I just
think I don't feel like I'm doing enough as a property manager.
Like if I were to sit and think about like, I have to do this to all my houses.
That's a lot, but I just feel like, you know, I have homeowners.
So what can I do with my house?
I think I'm holding back.
I'm not giving them enough answers because I'm thinking.
Through their lens of, well, nothing that you're going to do because
you don't want to add anything.
But I think I'm judging them based on previous thing and saying, well,
yeah, if you want to stand out, I can absolutely tell you how to do
it by stuff that we learned today.
I think so much we overcomplicate our problems.
It's always like what new software, what algorithm is going to make our
home show better than going back to the core of the product, which is the and
how a client is going to see that home.
Speaker 3: I, I agree.
What about you, Jasmine?
What was your takeaway?
Speaker 5: Biggest takeaway?
I, I really liked the free flow of conversation and ideas, but I think any
home could be this home with some, I mean, you mentioned that the, the home
was cute and the, the house that we were looking at didn't have any personality.
Nothing made it cute.
There was a bed with an empty end table and so when we talked about
staging because there was no little nothing made it Cute looking there were
certain pictures that showed a room in a way that made it look inviting
But it just needed those little
Speaker 2: Extras, what about you fellas?
I just think everything is on images I think you can differentiate and
create make a unit unique through the images I could accomplish 90 of the
goal which is stand out By doing the things such as staging I can make it
stand out and I can make it be unique.
If you took a
Speaker 3: brown condo and a sea of brown condos or a bear styled home with
all the bears that everybody has, like in these cabins, and you say, okay,
I'm going to just stage it differently.
You think that becomes?
I would,
Speaker 2: the way I took the pictures, remember, you're looking at all these
pictures, bears, bears, bears, bears.
If my picture now focuses on something completely outside of dark colors,
bears, I'm just saying, I'm saying is that you can, a lot of this can be
accomplished with minimal work, right?
I mean, even what you said, paint one room white, the most important room
that you can really focus on, right?
You've just differentiated yourself.
So I just, I'm just saying that you can accomplish a lot to make
yourself unique with very little work.
Speaker 4: I think you said that with the Star Wars thing.
It's not like it was a lot of work.
It was a few things,
Speaker 3: a little bit of design, design and storytelling.
I think it was a big thing.
I do.
What about you?
Speaker 6: The main thing has to be the, the fact that you can do, I mean,
I think we've all alluded to it a little bit, but that you can do a lot
with so little, you know, and then the different types of homes and the
different types of homeowners that you, you know, you have to tailor it to.
I mean, for example, we had the investor one, the investor email, which was great.
Cause it spoke to numbers.
It spoke to like, and it was like saying big things, like it said a hot tub, you
know, and then you had the, the, the, for example, the one that we did the,
The legacy homeowner, which was smaller stuff, but things that, for example,
you know, adding accessories to pools that transform the S experience and also
gets you to look at the property too.
So you can do a lot with little.
Speaker 3: So I think for me, the takeaway was for years, I've been
afraid to have a conversation with homeowners about their style.
Because I didn't want to offend them and there's been this mindset of if
the owner meets our minimum quality standards, then we're going to
maintain the quality that it came with.
And accept whatever they bring in, and I think we're doing homeowners
a disservice to that mindset.
We need to be educating them on, you know, the property is clean.
It's safe, it's cared for, but in today's market where supply is outpacing
the demand, we could be coaching the homeowners on what's going to make them
become that flowered field, you know, that that field where everybody stops
and looks and takes the pictures, you know, and for them, where everybody stops
and looks and makes the reservation.
Right.
I think there's only one reservation away from, you know, being the flower
field, or they just have to be able to put the style of story into a property.
A little bit of love.
And I don't think it takes very much just to get there, you know,
differentiate yourself by 15, 20%.
I think you're going to change your competition set by 80%.
That's my takeaway.
Speaker 4: Well, I think too, like going back to the game room thing,
throw a ping pong table in a garage.
This is not.
What we talked about today, it was more like you have to turn that garage.
Yeah.
You know, and I think that's what people think.
Oh, cause you'll tell him or you need a game.
Okay.
I'll throw a ping pong table in the garage.
No, we're talking about you paint the dark.
Like one of my owners has like red ceiling red.
I mean, it looks like a bar in his garage and that's what people want.
Speaker 3: Um, ping pong table in a garage.
Doesn't tell a story.
A garage turned into a.
Pseudo pub, that's really cool to hang out in with you and your pals tells a story
that you want to be part of in your social media or just hanging out with your, your
buddies, you know, when you go to the back and tell everybody what you guys did.
Speaker 2: So I was like, I'm like, even I was thinking, I'm
trying to think of things on the, in the condo in Rocky point.
And I'm like, you know what, I might want, I might get a photo
booth and put it in the corner.
Right.
Actually make it so that the photo booth stands out in my picture so that people
like get excited that they're going to get to go and do photo type stuff.
Speaker 3: What if we changed the narrative and said, it's
not about the property telling the story, which is part of it.
But what if the real goal is making a property that makes people
want to tell stories about it?
Yeah, right.
Speaker 4: I think it's good that people are going to tell your house's story.
Speaker 3: Right.
If you build, you know, a narrative in Greenland style, and when they
go back, like, ah, we stayed at this house and it was so cool.
And they had this, you know, this amazing, they had this slide or this
photo booth or, you know, this really cool bed that, you know, like custom
built or whatever that looks like.
And they're back telling the story.
I think that those end up on reviews.
I think those end up in on social media.
I think those end up in what becomes the legend of this property where
people go back and get that place attachment where they have these
good emotions that are tied to you.
This property and end up going back over and over again.
I think that might be the difference here.
Speaker 4: Well, we always get reviews from like some of our worst houses
and people give it a five star review.
They loved it.
We're just like, you just don't know what their story was that
made them love that property.
And we always put our own story on it, why someone should love this property.
And I like the idea of having other people.
Like from their view because yeah, there's so many other views out
there of why a property is good.
Speaker 3: Alright guys, well thanks for sharing your thoughts.
Appreciate it.
Speaker: We got orange credo.