Unlock the Secrets of Medium-Term Rentals!

Wow.

I just got off a 1 hour and 30 minute zoom call with Mr. Reuben Kanya. Reuben very kindly jumped into our community and he walked us through medium term rental strategy for the insurance world. And the cool thing is about this is that we had a room, 50% Americans, 50% people based in the UK and the tactics that he shared, everybody can use. So wherever you are in the world, if you are looking at the 30 day stay plus and especially with the insurance companies, this is one not to miss. This is 90 minutes of pure gold and I'm going to clip it and I'm going to add it in because I want everybody to see this. So Reuben, thank you so much for allowing me to do so. Thank you to everybody that took part in the call. I know how much they got out of this and I'm excited to see what your takeaways are. Please leave them in the comments. But most importantly, let's go and implement them.

A right.

Without further being said, let's flip over to the Zoom Call with Mr. Reuben Kanya.

It's such a pleasure to be here. What I do is I just surround myself with, you know, stand on the shoulders of giants, right? Like having Mark here, Dave, you know, he's been on the pod constantly just extracting knowledge. That's why I have the lab coat. Because you know, it's an experiment and you know there's, there's a method to the madness, there's a proof of concept and what I love to learn is proof of concepts and then go deep, deeper and deeper. And it's not, it's, it's, it's not anything. Like I said, it's, there's a proof in the process. So my goal is to learn it from those proximity, everything and be able to go deep and that's what I've been able to do. And, and still learning in the midterm mental insurance niche that I've gotten a chance to really dive deep in. But that's me in a nutshell and I do love unconventional methods of doing things. I think it allows you, in order for you to be able to identify that you have to have a change in paradigms. And I love to go deep into those rabbit holes and find a thing that can work for us and then help others do the same.

So just give us a little breakdown of your portfolio right now. How many properties do you have that you are doing on a medium term rental basis, how many of your properties you're doing in a short term rental basis and everywhere else in between?

Yeah. So we own half a dozen properties, but we'll manage up to just a dozen. Then we have a national network that we launched with the help of boostly. Of 30 plus properties. We're 90% occupied in this midterm rental insurance niche. The only time we do short term rentals. And again, I'm a short term rental, I should say baby or graduate. We use that as a hybrid and now we just go all in and work directly with these insurance companies. And there is, it's one thing to, like I said, to get one booking. I think if we've been in the space long enough, we've probably gotten an inquiry. But the goal is how do we continuously get them over and over and over again. And that's kind of the rabbit hole. Slash a method and framework that I get a chance to experiment in daily and get a chance to see others in my community win as well as we've kind of taught the model with our network with a bigger purpose, of course, because there's strength in numbers, which I'm looking forward to talk about, especially for those of you guys who have a more than one property or have a network or a management.

So for everybody who's not aware of. Can you just sort of break down when the MTR strategy became popular in America and in Canada and just, just very quickly explain what it is? Because in the UK we have it the same, but we don't, we don't call it mtr.

Yeah, yeah, we had a good chat about that last time. Right. About the methodology. But the concept is the same. Right. So midterm rentals is another form of, of saying a 30 day plus day. Right. When we think of short term rentals here in the US I can speak on what I know. It's, it's 30 days or less. So you have multiple guests, aka Airbnb or short term rental. Right. That's more or less the concept. Multiple guests, again, you can charge a premium for it, as you should. But I always thought, you know, how can you have your cake and eat it too. Right. And so with that model, they're furnished accommodations, transient. Yes. Are coming in for multiple different reasons. And what we ended up falling into is the midterm niche. But most people who know the mid term rental niche are thinking, or at least what's most prevalent at this time is the travel nurses and the professionals that are coming in and they're staying for 30 days plus etc. And that's fine. But we went down, you know, a layer deeper in order to, to be able to tap into, you know, less turnovers, less headaches and more money. And it's so funny because I feel like I'm like on a late night like show of like, hey, do you know that there's a strategy out there that does that? But that's really what we wanted. Because I don't, I don't want to say we've been burnt down, but we talk a lot of, a lot about return on investment and, but I like to talk about return on, on peace of mind as well. Right. And doing the math. Part of the reason why I wear the lab coat is because I'm always doing the math. Before you guys might know, it was bigger pockets and I was looking at, you know, oh, okay, like traditional rentals, 1% rule, etc and then the same asset type, which I love to talk about is, can be looked at very differently. Right. You can look at one single family home, one can see it as a long term rental, one can see it as a short term rental, one can see it as a midterm rental and we see it in the lens of a midterm rental insurance niche. So to give some context, Mark, and for everyone here is what is midterm rental insurance? Exactly. So here in the US And I'm sure very similar, wherever you might be watching this from, is we have homeowners have what we call the primary residence, which is where you live, you have a home insurance that you pay. If you have a mortgage, it's baked in. So typically you're paying a premium either monthly or, or annually. And it's baked in, it's required because the insurance company, the mortgage company that lent you the money, wants to make sure that the home is insured should something happen. Now, when we talk about these instances that happen, they're not as extreme as you might think. We're not talking about floods or it includes floods, it includes fires, includes trees falling on a home. But it doesn't have to be actually that serious. It usually means if it is water damage, I usually had, I had a gentleman that came and had this washer kind of was unhooked properly and it just created a bunch of damage on the floor, need to rip off the floors, etc. So we're talking about those kind of things where, when you're a home, when you're a homeowner and you have an insurance policy, what happens is you now are eligible to tap into what we call loss of use or additional living expenses or coverage. D so if you look at your Home insurance policy, wherever you are, you might have this depending on if it's a primary residence or not or an insurance. If it's a. If it's a rental, you'll see it's loss of rent. So it's not the same thing. What you want to look at is the loss of use, because that's what we tap into. And these insurance companies are actually paying on behalf of the family to relocate them into a furnished accommodation. And the thing is, these insurance companies are like a trillion dollar industry. They have the money and for them, this is the biggest thing is what is their alternative? They don't really have a less costly alternative than you. You're actually become a deal to them. Because I always like to use the case study, right? And you probably heard me say this many times, is if there's a family of five with two dogs that need to relocate, the hotel is not ideal. They have a dining room, they don't have a kitchen, et cetera. They don't have a backyard where the dog can play. So even if they were to go the hotel route, the lifestyle is not the same. And if you got to relocate for three months and renovations actually end up always taking longer, where do they turn to? Where are the options? Well, there's not that many options because most people are doing Airbnb, so the calendars are not available. But those who know and are aware of these databases and optimize their properties effectively, are able to get these inquiries from these insurance companies that will then increase your profitability and occupancy, where you can get booked by a premium. So that is the niche that we've tackled in and this is why we're geeking out about it.

Nice. So obviously, like Ruben was saying, he's niched down on insurance. But what we're going to talk about, especially with the marketing tactics and experiments that we're doing here, you can bring it into your niche and your location. So let me just get a quick feel for the room. Thumbs up or thumbs down, who is already adopting what is known as an MTR strategy into their business. 30 day plus, thumbs up, thumbs down. So we've got thumbs up, thumbs up, thumbs middles, Fantastic. Okay, fantastic. So you already understand the process. Now, first thing that I would love for you to talk about is how you tackle the listing sites, most obviously Airbnb. How do you do it and run it where you can have an effective Airbnb strategy so that you are visible when people are put in? 30 day plus stay requests in your calendar yeah.

So the biggest hack from today, because I truly believe that if you're on Airbnb, it means you have furnished accommodations. You probably are familiar with systems already. You're using dynamic pricing. I think I see Price Labs hat on there. So I know you know, you have literally the foundation, and you're only a few tweaks away. Now, this hack is a hack, but this is the beginning of many other that you can do, right? And it's just a strategy. And what we do, we duplicate our listing. We duplicate our listing because the reality is the following. When I'm a relocation specialist. So just to give a context, I'm like, Ruben, I heard you say insurance, and now I'm hearing relocation specialist. Which one is it? Let me break it down. If you're working with State Farm Allstate farmers, those are some of the big insurance companies here in the US they're not the ones. Right. If Mark's family is displaced, they're not the ones saying, hey, Martin, no problem, I got you, brother. I. I'm going to go ahead on Airbnb or. Or Furnish finder, and I'm going to go and find something for you. They don't have time for that. They're big companies, very similar to corporate. It's like having a headhunter. So what they do is they'll work with temporary relocation companies whose job is to do just that. Now, the reason why that's critical is that those companies have relocation specialists. And there's two ways that you can basically have a family find a furnished accommodation for temporary housing. Number one is either the insurance company will say, hey, listen, or the relocation company, I should say, right? I use those interchangeably, so just keep me honest. The relocation company might say, hey, listen, go ahead, find something. And when you find something, we'll have the insurance company reimburse you when you find something. Which means that if I'm the family member and I'm looking for my family, I'm like, guess what I'm doing? I'm going on Airbnb. I'm going on Zillow, maybe. And I'm looking for furnished accommodations. I'm not typing that in, but I'm looking for furnished housing. And so that's one way to do it. The alternative is the relocation specialists themselves. They a have a database, so it's in your best interest to live in their database. And there's many. And I know I'm talking to the chat GPT king over here, so I'm not even going to try to mess around, but I'm sure Mark could. You are well equipped here for Mark to show you how to do that. And I've done it multiple times to say find like properties in this. In this city, or properties find like temporary housing relocation companies like Blank. In my city, Blank could be like our Sears and ALIE Solutions. You get a bunch of lists. You want to make sure you live in their databases. The reason why you want to make sure you live in their databases is because they like to go there first. Because they know that these homeowners who have furnished accommodations know that they understand their business. Because their alternative is they have to go on Furnished Finder and Airbnb and they have to pitch themselves. And believe it or not, a lot of homeowners who are not aware of this or investors, I should say, by furnished accommodations will be like, is this a scam? You're going to pay me? I've never heard of you. You have a family. You're relocating to stay in my home. Scam, missed opportunity, right? So one of the things we can do is when we duplicate our listing to bring it full circle, is we're giving ourselves an opportunity to then be found by A, the relocation specialist or B, the homeowner. And that in itself, team is one of the best optimizations things that you can do because most operators, right, if you guys are here and you have your one listing is it's getting booked, hopefully, and it is here, and we just had Thanksgiving in the US that means you had your Thanksgiving booked out. Which means that if I'm a relocation specialist or family looking last week to relocate a family for three months, guess who's not showing up? You are. You're not not showing up because you were booked for Thanksgiving. You're a book. Maybe you're already booked for New Year's. Maybe you're already booked for December. And I think naturally, the question might be, well, Reuben, what happens next? And I'm happy to get into it, Mark, but I know you're. You're doing a good job of kind of navigating the conversation, but your natural question might be, well, Reuben, what happens then with that second booking if I am full, right? And that's where I get out, let's dive down it.

And if you've got the ability, if you've got things you can show on your screen, be my guest to bring it up. But yeah, let's dive into this because this is, this is big. And again, I think these are the sort of things that will really separate you out, especially if you've got dates in your calendar that you know are coming up that are being booked, you know, and maybe you're thinking, hey, can I just grab hold of a free formal walking, but it's, it's not visible, etc. So let's, let's dive into this and sort of like geek out on this little section because it was really valuable.

Yeah. So let's, let's take a step back. So availability. So I really want to bring this point home that if I'm searching for availability for the next three months and you have a booking on January 15th, but, but you're available between those times, you know, like I'm in that market that's slowing down, only got one booking out. And then you need to really start thinking about your lead time. Right. Because I'll get to the lead time in a second. But you're not going to be available. So if I'm looking, you will not be available. And I really want to bring this point home because that's the best, most effective thing you can do is duplicate your listing today. Now, what happens is when you duplicate your listing today, you might say, well, Ruben, what happens if I get an actual inquiry? Well, here's the hack. You duplicate your listing, you remove Instant Book. That's just Airbnb, by the way. That's one of many other areas where you should exist. Right. But let's cover the Airbnb because we know we love them, we hate them, It's a love hate relationship. But let's be honest, there are still one of the most most powerful OTAs. That's what people think of going first when they think of Airbnb. So we want to leverage it. And I know I'm getting bounty points with Mark on this one, but it's 100% true. We don't use Airbnb. We leverage it. We leverage it as a marketing tool. Now, if I'm going to pull up one of my listings so you could see it. But before I do that, I just want to make sure we're super clear. Maybe I don't know if we're using this time. If someone has a question about muting, we'll do it after. But I want to be clear on why the importance of duplicating your listing and so that you can be found. Is that cool?

Yeah. So I was going to say. Sorry, just to jump in if anybody does have a question. There is a hand raise option on here. I've turned chat off, but if you want to raise a question Just put the hand up on the. On the little emoji. I'll bring you in at the opportunity time. Cool. So good to go.

And there's a disclaimer on if you're thinking of. Okay, Reuben, how do you duplicate your listing? Airbnb actually recently took down the button. There used to be a. This was like, literally two months ago. They had it. I don't know why they. I didn't. But I don't pay too much attention to Airbnb because we're doing things a lot offline now. But that was just the thing. Now you'll have to do it manually. The reason. Here's what happens when you duplicate your listing. Now, you can get an inquiry. Now, when you remove instant book, that inquiry is a contact point. Right. And I know you reposted this story, and I'm happy to. Let me actually see. I'm gonna. I'm pulling it up right now so you can kind of see the way these inquiries come in. You couldn't make this stuff up. Guys, I'm actually going to show you one right now that just came in because. And it came in through. Perfect. I'm gonna share my screen. Yep. So let me know what you can see. My screen. Okay.

Yeah, we are good.

All right, so this. You see this little thing right here? So anytime we look at our listing, you see how it says MTR and str? That's internally. So we know what listing this is coming from. The only reason this up is because we're wide open. So we open up our calendar. Wide open for this MTR listing.

Right.

Like wide open. Because we want to give our chance to have these. Now, as they come in, look at this. Hello, I'm CRS Temporary Housing. We assist families with temporary housing for insurance purposes local to your area. These are the kind of inquiries that we get all the time because we're properly optimized. Right. Which I'll get to in a second. But I want to show you the power. Duplicate your listing, because then duplicating your listing is one thing, but the MTR copy. And I. And I. I got you, Mark. I got one side by side. I got one listing that's STR optimized with copy, one that's MTR optimized for copy. Side by side. The exact same property, different images. Lay it out. That's what you want to do. Because the best form of marketing. You know this, Mark. The best form of marketing is being very direct of what you can offer to your avatar. These are families. Right. So If I'm a family, if this is maybe the father, maybe the mother, what are they looking out for? Well, they're uprooting their family and relocating somewhere. What do they want to know? Do you have, by the way, flexible extensions? Call it out. By the way, can the pet come? Call that out. It's no longer about the whole. And I'll show you this in a second, but it's no longer about the whole experience. We have a game room and out there, this is about four functional you want to be. How functional is this for our current situation? The copy that you're going to use for this is very different. We'll get to the copy and marketing in a second. But I want to just show you right, whether when you take a screenshot or not, this is actually a feature that Airbnb has where they will have relocation company specialists introduce them the guest. They'll reach out on behalf. It's called for work. How many of you guys are familiar with that? Airbnb for work, have you heard of it? So they'll come in and reach out on behalf and then introduce the guests. I don't know how they. I don't know what the interface looks like. I'm sure they have some kind of agreement. Maybe it's a corporate thing. Pretty neat. But this is how you know you're speaking to them because they can see and this is how they respond to your listing. I have a bunch of other things that I want to see if there's another example, I want to show you. That. And again, I have tons of these, but I want you guys to just see how it looks.

While you're finding. I was gonna say. Well, while you're finding that Ruben has said something really key is that when you have a listing for a short term random. When you have a listing for an empty arrow or a longer stay, it's such different copy. It really is different pitches. And again, I would even go to the extent of that. Say, for example, you're looking to get more healthcare workers. You'll get a Google Map image of where your property is and just literally, in layman's term, put an arrow where the hospital is, where your property is, or if it's like the local school or whatever it is that you're trying to target because the sooner they can recognize how convenient, which is a great word that you use. Convenient is for them. It's not. It's so different to a short term rental stay, because short term rental is about experience. It's about the luxury it's about all those cool things that they can't get when. When they're at home. But with, with something like this. This is those whole comforts and convenience that they need. And you really do need to highlight that.

Yes, yes. So again, here's another one. This is a. And again, I'm just showing you an example. You see this? This is another property in house. We name it mtr. It shows you there's. I'm all about showing receipts. The MTR listings work. Good afternoon. I'm trying to see if you would be interested in at least a two to three month rental that would be paid insurance company. By the way, when we see this stuff, we're foaming out the mouth and we're drooling. I'm like, oh, did you say insurance? Because this is exactly what we're optimizing for. Not the B2B, not the B2C, but the B2B. Of course, we will. Gladly. So what do we say? Of course we specialize. And again, in case they don't know, let them know. Your profile people will click around. Because keep in mind, even if it's a family, maybe it's the mother, maybe it's the father, whoever, they're going to be like, look, don't, don't get it twisted. It's not like. You're not the only one who's doing the screening here. They're screening you too. So when you click our profile, we're letting them know, hey, by the way, we actually work with insurance companies. Peace of mind. Great. Thank you. Because I had no idea. I've never worked. I've never. We've never had such a circumstance before. And we're really hoping. Because you would be surprised right to. When you. What's the saying? Right. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That's how a lot of these operators are. They're like, no, no, no, we, we do vacation, we do families. This will CRS Luis guy. You know what's crazy about it? The Louise guy did look a little sketch. Because if you think about it, if you click this profile, you've never heard of this concept. Five months on Airbnb, nothing to show this is a scam. No, it's not, Right? No, it's not at all. Because we know this. We're partners with these guys. We know exactly who they are. We actually had just closed another contract. Direct booking. Now that's a whole nother thing, right? The database. Live in their databases. They'll email you directly. You don't even have to go through this, but we still optimize this at the same time. Makes sense, right? So it's not Reuben, do I do one or the other? It's and be on Airbnb optimized 30 day minimum state remove instant book, be available for the rest of the year to get increase. Because you know what I've done too in the past, I've said, hey, you know, I've contacted with somebody and I'd have to dig deep in here. Maybe there's a control. Fine, you know what? I'll pull up my LinkedIn so you can see it. I told them, reach, reach out to us on LinkedIn and guess what's consistent with LinkedIn. I'll show you guys. We'll get into the weeds of it here. I'm going to stop sharing just for two seconds. But you know what else needs to be consistent? This is a big tip. Whether you're a corporation like us, we use our logo. Our logo is searchable. So you go on LinkedIn, guess what, you see my company logo. Why? Consistency. So if you're not a business, what I always advise and maybe Mark has some different advice. But we're here to kind of put our heads together. I'm in the belief that if you're not a corporation, you don't do this on corporation. Pick the same picture that is on your Facebook, on your LinkedIn and on your Airbnb. Because if I'm talking to, let's see, Lisa and I see Lisa's profile, she's hiking somewhere in Greece. And then I try to look. Lisa says, hey, connect with me on Facebook. Then I'll go to Lisa. And Lisa's wearing a red dress. I'm like, is this the same Lisa? I'm not sure anymore. Remember, I have my guard up, too. I'm like, why do they want me to book offline? Ah, there's something not adding up. I'm gonna move on. Any risk, any flag, move on. But if Lisa is consistently smiling in the same airbnb profile picture and then I and she tells me the link go on LinkedIn and she has the exact same picture on LinkedIn. And then why I use LinkedIn because people can just go directly and message you directly or Facebook. Now, you've consistently built a brand that's consistent that someone can trust, right? So the reason I bring this up is I had a gentleman from, he said, how can we connect? You know, on Airbnb, you can't drop all the names. I'm like, hey, look, Us up, first of all, now we can do look us up. We're on Google, right?

Google.

It's available to everyone. I advise everybody, if you have a business, create a Google business page because you can just say, look us up at company name and guess what they'll do? They'll look you up and guess what. You have your phone number.

So, so just very quickly, I just need to jump in because you're dropping so many gems and we just have to like signpost these as we move on. But number one, number one, you cannot obviously put in your URL, your domain on Airbnb because they will flag it instantly and you will get into trouble. In that message that you showed us before, you didn't even put your phone number in. You spelled your phone number out, which was genius. So again, Instead of doing 07943, etc, it was, it was spelled out where you spelled out 0, etc. That is another big hack. And again, consistency, consistency, consistency with online branding. You will notice that I have the same profile pic every single channel. And it's there for a reason. Because when you go from one to the other and it's got the big orange background, you recognize it and then you know, is that daft Andy Warhol open mouth? But people recognize it and they, and they, and they trust it because you're, you're 100% true. Because they can't get a domain, they have to literally type it in to find out who you are. It's really good to send to LinkedIn, especially when you're going to go down this route of the MTR strategy. Because LinkedIn is for business, businesses, for LinkedIn. Right. It is where you are professional. It's where I would send people 100% of the time. And again, most of them will have the LinkedIn setting or they're paying for LinkedIn so that they can send you a cold DM even if you're not connected. So, yeah. So again, three absolute nuggets. We've signposted it. Let's move on.

All right, so I just want to show you what it looks like, right, this gentleman. Hey, Joshua, pleasure with you on Airbnb. Do you have a number for us to connect? And that's how it was. And I was trying to find. I have it in one of my slides. I don't have it right now. We're doing it in real time. But this is a gentleman worked at Dynamics day. He had reached out to me. Very nice. Two day bookings. They reached out to me on LinkedIn Consistent can follow same picture everywhere. Now, in my case, obviously, I, you know, I, I actually, you know, on the LinkedIn, I have the company, right. So you see. Oh yes, Invested Escape is the Rubin guy. I was talking to Consistent.

Right.

So then I use the company. Company brain. Right. So I wanted to bring that point home because that's important. But I then definitely want to get to the optimization, which I get really excited about. But I want to pause for a second just in case there, there might be some, some, some questions around this.

We've done, we've done a good 30 minutes there, so let's have a little opportunity to ask any questions. Again, don't be shy. We're all, we're all friends here. Just literally raise your hand, we'll let you unmute and then you can ask away. Here we go. All right, Ruta, nice to see you. Okay, so when you're ready, on mute and fire away.

Hi, I just wanted to ask a.

Bit more about this duplicate listing. So how do you put it on? Do you do inquiry only with open calendar? And how do you optimize it? Because you say you optimize it different.

Differently to short term rental versus medium term rental.

Yeah, we're gonna get there. That's the next thing I actually wanna show. But to answer your question first, it's, yeah, you wanna make sure that you're using Airbnb now as an ad, right.

So.

And as a lead generation. So your goal is to get inquiries. And here's what we've done too. So to answer your first question is yes, remove instant book. For that reason, you do not want to get into a pickle where you had somebody in your SDR and then someone booked on the second listing. Now you're, now you have, you're in a mess, right? So to avoid that, you duplicate your listing, set it for 30 day minimum and you open it for the rest of the year. Open it wide open. Because remember, if someone is looking for a six month stay and you only have it open for three months, well, guess who's not going to show up?

You.

You're not going to show up. And also, please, for, for those of you, I hope at this point we're all pet friendly. And if you're not, just know that you're making a decision that you're decreasing your chances of getting these. Because one of the number one things and number one problems, remember at this, you now have a product and there is a demand and you are the supply. So if you've ever gone, maybe on, you know, I'm sure there's multiple equivalents regardless of where you are in the world, whether it's furnish, finder, Airbnb, you name it, any database. You do a search, do a search without pets and then do a search that's pet friendly. And watch what happens to the denominator. It drops by about 50% because most people like, ah, don't want to deal with pets. That's okay. We're willing to solve that problem, be paid a premium for it. So just want to put that out there. That, that is one big, big. Call it a necessity to, to offer to the marketplace.

Yeah, so go on, Rita. No, no, that's fine.

We cater for pester.

That's fine. So ST and MTR optimization.

How do you do that? What's the difference? We're going to get right in. We're going to get right into. I want to do a real life example, actually.

Yeah, we'll do a real life example next. Lisa, is your question along the same lines of what Root was asking, or is it slightly different? Can we tackle this before we go into a live example? Sorry, I'm getting you to quickly move and unmute. There we go.

Slightly different.

It was, it was just about. It's just a quick question, really.

It's probably a simple answer, but what.

Do you normally do if you do.

Have some small bookings in?

You've got two separate accounts, you've got.

One or two in those months. What do you do with them?

Perfect. Do you have more than one property or is it just one property? Okay, so here's what I do. I want to be a five star white glove service and everything that I do. So this is, I'm telling you what we've done and we've never received any pushback. Now we have multiple properties. So the cool thing you can do in Airbnb is you can always refer out to another property that might be available. Right. And when I say that, I do a business decision, right? So let's say get an inquiry, right? You get an inquiry and you're actually occupied for you have two more bookings. That inquiry is very lucrative, Lisa, like you and I are looking at this could change the game. So now we're in a position where, okay, what do we do here? Do we honor these two bookings or do we, you know, move them around and cancel? We never cancel because now we're already decreasing our chances of being optimized for Airbnb because we get paid less for that. So what we do is we find alternatives. We do White Club servers. Now we turn into a concierge company and say, listen, Lisa, I want to reach out to you. I know you had booked this out for the next three weeks, but due to unforeseen circumstances, unfortunately will not be able to host you. However, we went out of our way and found something within budget with the exact same type in the exact same zip code. We did work for you. Here are three options. It's in your best interest to actually cancel the booking so that you can quickly find an alternative. And in the future, should you come back to stay with us, we please will honor to have a return again discount. So for us to be able to host you when you go down that far. I don't know if you've seen customer service as of late, but I don't know too many people who are going out of their way when there's an. There's an issue to then be able to, wow, give me an alternative. And you're able to be apologetic. Can you give us a heads up? We've done this many, many times, Lisa. People appreciate it. They appreciate that we've gone ahead. Now, remember, we're in the business to serve. So we went out of our way to do all that. And that reflects. And therefore they're like, no problem. Thank you for letting us know. We'll cancel what we've also done. And when you have multiple properties, we love finding alternatives. Hey, there's another property. It's a little. It's actually a little. It's larger than the one that you're in now. It's a little bit worse now, but I think you'll appreciate it. Most people who have a good relationship with the host are either too. I don't want to use the word lazy, but it's an inconvenience to look again on Airbnb. I already had done the work. I looked you up. You are trustworthy. No problem. Move us to the other property. Thanks for letting us know. And Airbnb actually has a button. And again, I don't want to just focus on Airbnb, but this is just the Airbnb completion component that we're talking about that will allow you to actually have one button where you can actually change the booking to your other listing without any intervention of having the cost.

Just to quickly piggyback on this really, really important. If the guest agrees to move, you cannot cancel that booking. The guest has to do it, because as soon as you do that, your algorithm tanks and all of those cool.

Things, and they'll ask, too. You just say, hey, it's actually best practice. And I've also called support and I told them the situation. They'll appreciate it to call in and be like, hey, I'm trying to do right by the guests. And even if you had a cancellation policy where you would penalize the guests, you say, hey, I want the guests to keep their money. Yeah, I just want to make sure. And. And it works. You're in a relationship business now, and you have to look at Airbnb like your partner to. In that case, should. Should they not want to move or whatever the case had any pushback then on anyone that.

That you've done it to zero.

It's all about how you. How you deal with it. Now, I'm not guaranteeing that everything's gonna go smooth, right? But. But it's. When you go out of your way, it's all about. I think even you've seen this. If you've been in Airbnb space or short term rental space or hospitality space, it's. It's how you deal with the issue as it comes up. If I were to just say, hey, you know how you're supposed to stay in two weeks, sorry, it's no longer available, please find another booking. That's crazy. But if it's like, hey, listen, we are so. We know what it's like to plan a trip at this time of the year. So there for this reason, boom, boom, boom, boom. You're like, all right, you have empathy now. You're like, wow, what a good host. Right? So go the extra, extra mile.

Yeah. And call them as well. Don't do this on email. Don't do it. Oh, yeah, because everything. Everything gets lost in text. But, yes, you'd be amazed. You know, the first time you do it, you'll be a bumbling mess. Trust me, I was. You know, but the more you do it and the more you can go down this route, then it'll just become second nature. And just remember, at the core of all of this, we're. We're in the hospitality business. And if you need a bit of a sort of a reminder of this, go read Unreasonable Hospitality. I will. Will. Will. Get Good. I can't pronounce it. Fantastic book. And it gives you a nice little reminder. Great question, though. And that was one of the ones I was going to ask later. But Mr. Dave Goodfellow, before we go into this live example, what can you bring to the table, sir?

Yeah.

So I've got a question, but Just firstly, Lisa, if you're worried about what to do when you're moving things across, I've done it loads of times. It's all about positioning what Ruben said. They're about making sure that you give them options. You offer a free upgrade, you do that, you do the hard work for them.

It's not a problem.

I've done it hundreds of times. So my question, Ruben, and good to see you, my friend.

It's been a while.

So we've got a number of properties which you know, and we have a relationship manager within Airbnb who we were in contact with all the time. Now, if I was is doing duplicate.

I've not done this before, so it's.

New music to my ears to listen to this tonight. And I'm making a load of notes.

You never stop learning in this industry, so I love this. So thank you so much for.

For bringing this up today. If I was to put a duplicate listing on, though, are they going to like that? Are they not going to like it? When we're doing our conversations with our. With our. Our relationship manager there, would they. They have a problem with it, you think? Or is it.

Yeah, that's. That's interesting because I've had someone in one of my boot camps bring this up and I would say, let's do your own due diligence on this. Our properties. Here's what I've heard. Our properties have actually multiple. We buy very like, you could have to prop two homes in one. So we actually, by default, we're already duplicating our listings to offer an upsell. It's like literally part of our strategy. We can do. Hey, would you like that guest suite, too? Here's the other listing. So we technically typically have three listings for each of those properties. This was especially when we were deep into the SDR space. They even had the button themselves. I would find out why they took it down. And then again, we do everything by the book. So if there's a reason we. We've had no issues with it, if there's a reason why they would feel some type of way, let's. Let's ask them and find out. Especially if you have a relationship manager or find out what the terms are to allow you to duplicate listing. They used to have button. So why they took it down, I'm not sure. And I can't speak on behalf of Airbnb, but again, we're just. This is one of the many strategies that we use. So I don't want you guys to think this is an Airbnb dominant strategy. Yeah, there's, there's. I, I want to really focus in on. We leverage this. We have Zillow Rental Manager, we have Furnished Finder. We do the same thing. Furnished Finder, it's not an ota, so it's even perfect because you get leads that way. But from the Airbnb, I would speak to someone in house if you have the connection and find out, hey, why did you guys recently take it down and what is the rule around duplicating your listing? Because, you know, to, to, to most of us here, you know, you don't want to be the operator that gets dinged and, and then, you know, we all do our businesses differently and so I think it's important to find out.

Is Furnish Finder a US thing? Yeah, it's not a UK thing yet. They are trying to come over here because they've got a massive need for it, but it's not, it's not currently yet. It's not a big thing yet. But keep an eye on Furnish Finder. But what you could do, again, you could, you could give us an option. You could create a second profile. Second profile, but you know, obviously with Dave's name or Harry's name or whatever and you can set it up under there if you are worried about it. But again, don't forget when you create this list, yes, the addresses will match, but it's going to be such a different listing that an account manager looking, looking like a very, like just very quick 60,000 foot view over your. Over your account might not even spot it. So, you know, never overestimate the cleverness of the people Airbnb, they're not all Brian Chesky. So you can definitely get around it. Again, I've always gone by the methodology of never ask for permission but beg for forgiveness and you can definitely do that with this tactic as well. But just give it a go. Just like find like a couple of your properties and just test it out, try it out, totally change the copy, change the images and all that good stuff and just, and just see. And just see what flies. I think it's a great idea. And listen to Ruben. Loving what you do, my friend. So, yeah, we'll have to catch up soon. Thank you very.

Yeah, Dave, much respect, brother. Thank you.

Okay, I'm very eager to get into this live example, but I see Lindy has put their hand up and being very patient and Andy's there as well. So Lindy, just before we unmute you and go for the question is it, is it different to, to what we're talking about or is it sort of touching onto the live example?

No, it's touching on the nuance of what we've been talking about. I've been investigating the midterm rental market for a while and didn't have any bookings until New Year's and so I, I blocked everything off after New Year's. I'm, I'm wondering what happens if I duplicate my listing. If I have the original short term rental listing, I just block off the dates.

So is, is the, is the go ahead? I don't know if you're finished or something.

There's instant book on the, on the short term rental listing. And if I want to keep my place open for the options of the long term of midterm rentals, I'm going to run into the problem that I've had this last two months here where, you know, I've got this two day booking for New Year's and that's it. And I could have gotten somebody in in the beginning of November and that could have been here for three or four months. So how is it if just block off my short term rental listing dates when I open up and I open up the second listing? That's my question.

Okay, so I think, I think I know what you're asking and correct me, please jump in if I'm completely missing the point, but it sounds like what you're asking is you want to get the best of both worlds. And you're thinking, well, if, you know, do I need to block out my short term rental in order to only optimize for longer stays so that you, you, you're, you're keeping your short term rental listing available. Is that kind of like the idea? Lindy?

I'm actually thinking I'm going to do a whole lot better in the midterm rental market. And, and so I'm trying to, I'm to trying, trying to make a shift.

Yeah.

And also one of the things I heard that I thought was very useful is somebody had said, you know, the problem with the vacation rental market is, is it's catering to what, what people want instead of what people need. People need, need housing.

Yeah. So. So, Lindy, based on what you told me I would do, I think you can have your cake and eat it too. I would do the best of both worlds. And what I would do is, so if we want to get tactical, what you end up doing is, okay, well, Reuben, you're telling me that you know to have this midterm rental booking. Great. But what happens if I get a bunch of spotty bookings until February, right, Or or even March? Well, what we do is we'll leverage, see this? Toby is wearing the hat price labs, right? We'll leverage the dynamic pricing tool to decent advice. So let's, let's, let's make sure I want to bring this in here. You have two listings, right? You have the short term rental listing, you have the long, the midterm rental listing, the short term rental listing. What you're doing after a month out, right? Or with respect to whatever your leading time is, your lead booking time is in your marketplace. That's just a word for how far out do people typically book your property? If, let's say it's 30 days, then what I'm going to do is after 30 days on that short term rental listing, I'm going to make it very expensive. But I'm going to use the dynamic pricing tool to make it very expensive so that I don't have to come in every day and do it by saying, Hey, 30 days out, right? 30 days out, it's going to be very expensive. So that I'm decent advising them to book out in February or March because if they do, Lindy, I want to make sure that they're doing that at like 3x price. That way I'm still like, okay, I'm filling up my month. As the 30 days goes on with bookings, they come. Because, guys, the worst thing we want to do in the short, in our short term rentals place or any hospitality form of business is having the plane take off with empty seats, right? What's the point? It's, it's a waste. You already have the asset. So while you're there for the month, get those bookings as they come. But if you get a midterm rental booking, right, or inquiry, I should say, then it's easier to navigate and maybe move people around for two weeks out. But it's, it gets pretty complicated to do that for three months now. So what you want to do is on the short term rental listing, limited to after 30 days out. Let's say that's your lead time. I don't know your lead time. So I would have to get into your specific market. But let's say it's 30 days, make it super expensive on a short term rental list thing. So that way you're not dealing with these peppered bookings, as we call them. And on the midterm rental booking, keep that one Wide open and keep it as an ad and keep it as instant remove, instant book. That way you can get the best of both worlds. Because I don't want you to just. No one can guarantee if you're going to get a better rental booking comes with the demand, the need, etc. The timing, some luck. But can you increase your chances? Absolutely, you can, by being optimized. And that's what I want to actually show you. So does that kind of answer your question a little bit?

Yeah. And I'm looking forward to hearing your next piece, so thank you.

Absolutely.

All right, well, Andy lowered his hand. So let's jump straight into this live example, because as we are alluding to, Airbnb is a very reactive strategy. And I do want to get into a couple of proactive strategies before we. We finish today, because I know it's getting. Getting close to the hour. So let's go ahead, share your screen please, my friend. Let's look at these live examples, and then we'll. We'll finish off with some proactive strategies that you've been testing, and then we'll call it a night. But I just want to say thank you so much. This has been great so far.

Are you guys having fun?

Looking forward to the second half.

Let's get it. All right, so I really like this example. What happened to my other. My screens are playing games here. So give me one second. I'm gonna just do a large here. Oh, yeah, perfect. I'm gonna make. I'm gonna make this one easy for you guys. All right? All right. Can you guys see the second screen here?

We've got you private pet friendly family haven with office in Adu.

So it's funny because at this part, this is what our even short term rental looks. We just changed the name, but usually it was like Golf Haven something. It's close to the Golf, but we're like, you know, forget it. All right, we're all in. But typically, we. Before this, actually, this was called Golf Haven. And it's true. This is three minutes away from a golf course. You know, you got a foosball. We were not in a luxury market where our model is not luxury by any means. It's just clean, comfortable, gets the job done. Right. Respectable. Right? But I want to kind of show you, right, because here, like, discover the perfect getaway for families visiting Atlanta to catch an exhilarating Braves game. This is definitely chatgpt for sure. But it's true. We're close to the braves, right? Baseball, 10 minutes away. The battery Shopping, food and restaurants. Also a short 10 minute drive. Golf enthusiasts will rejoice. The Fox Creek Golf Course. I'm calling out all the fun stuff, right? Peace of mind, comfort, unwind, recharge, you name it, right? But let's take a step back because we're going to do a side by side analysis. Same property, right? Same listing. Look at the, look at the temporary stay listing. First we're calling out that it's pet friendly. Then we're calling out that there's a profit private office, which is work from home has completely changed the game. All right, we see Mark, he was in the booth in the studio. I mean, shoot, if I'm traveling, I'm even asking. You got, you got a second monitor, but I believe we do. You see it right here? This is actually a stand up desk. You see how we just went from experience game room to functionality. And you see how here there is the grill, chilling chairs, and here there is the, the entire. We focused on the fact that there's green for the pet run around like the same property. You see here how there's the living room, dining room table and here I'm showing you that there's a Tesla Charger that comes with the car. So very same property, different approach. And I'm letting you know, flexible temporary stay. So this is actually a very important piece of real estate that we waste all the time. And the thing is, Airbnb has made even harder for us because they're like, oh yeah, let's give these guys two characters, right? It's like really like every time I check in it's like there's like less characters to work with, right? So yeah, this is this key right here, guys. Like we want to use this and, and we actually just optimize for both. It's funny because I, I should have changed it for the interest of this, but we were like, no, we gotta just optimize anyways, right? But this is the one thing pictures optimized based on functionality and need not wants, right? So that's number one.

Yeah. Well, number two, I'm gonna say just it's. It's night and day. Night and day. Yeah.

Look at this. Now this is key right here. We want to keep pushing our company, you know. You know what we could even do Invested Escapes dot com. I'm pretty sure we can get away with that at investors@invested escapes.com. shoot. Stick name of our company. I don't know. The detail control. Fine. Do they. I don't know. We might have to change this but this is regardless. This is the name of our company at invested in Scapes, we offer flexible stays. Remember, the easiest, simplest form of marketing is being direct. No fancy words, no nothing for those encountering home repairs and or relocation. We also work directly with insurance companies, policyholders in need of temporary housing. What do they tell us? I think this is actually from Mark's book, right? What's the best. That. One of the best things that we did after I read Mark's book, book direct, I'm pretty sure was in that one dual control find of the keywords used in all your. Your reviews, right? And then use that. That's the market. That's the language that they're speaking in. Do you remember what they said? Hey, do you offer temperature? Do you offer insurance? I'm like, do we let them know that's what you do?

Yeah, absolutely.

You have to and. And think about what they're worried about.

Well, the cool thing that you can do now, obviously I wrote this book in 2022, but the cool thing you can do now is take the reviews that you've got or take any reviews that you can see that. Okay. Around this, paste it into chat GPT and it will tell you so you don't even have to control F anymore. Let. Let the bot tell you.

So I can't keep up with you, Mark. I'm gonna need a whole new boot camp every month just to refresh my technology knowledge. So I'm talking about.

This is something that Zoom do. Is that a thing? Somebody's.

What a time to be alive.

Somebody's drawing on the screen.

That wasn't me.

That wasn't you. It was Zoom user. Okay, hang on a second. Who can initiate new whiteboard in the meeting? Host only. Tell you what, we're just gonna have to live with it. We're just gonna have somebody drawn on the screen and just be done with it.

What a time to be alive. I'm excited about all this. So. But here again, just so you're clear, one of the things you want to focus on is school. Right? People want to know when you're relocating. You're. Now you're thinking about how far were you going to be from the school's work access? I'm letting them know what schools are around. What? Because remember, we're not. We can't disclose the. I mean, you shouldn't disclose your. Your address, right? I think you. I think you can. For some. We choose not to. Right? I think. Is that a feature you could, right, disclose your address.

You. You can you can zone in? Yeah, absolutely.

But it's own in, but we don't disclose the address. But what's important for them is the school zone. What school zone? Oh, we cover elementary, middle school, high school.

Yeah.

Let them know because they're thinking, like, are you gonna relocate? How close are we gonna be from the school? This kid is cool. Then other things to know. Invest escapes. We can work directly with you, the person relocating, or your insurance company admin staff representing you on our behalf. Right. We're letting them know you can work with us. I'm sorry, Airbnb. I'm not sorry. You can work with us directly. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. I'm letting them know. Right. That's one part of that. Right. And like, if you look compared to this, very different. Right. I don't even think this is probably a good copy for even an SDR. But hey, we don't really use SDRs. How we do book direct. Right. And it's better on our site that Mark created for Steam created for us. Right. But here's another thing that we can't let the, you know, let it go to waste. And the only reason why I actually haven't even refined this a little bit more is because wouldn't even let you have more than this kind of text. So they were like. Or else I would have added the word insurance in here. But I'm like, ah, we got grandfathered in. Just keep it. But we're letting them know where the property managers they want to know of invested escapes. I'm dropping a name here again, local. I'm letting them know what we do at least nationwide. Provide corporate housing for professionals and families for short term and midterm stays. I'm letting them know. It's so important. Let them know. Right. So those are. I want to stop here for a second because I know I kind of covered a few things, but I think if you think about the keywords and you look at this. Sorry. I'm trying to figure out how to go back now.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, there is open up a new one. Yeah.

You good?

These. These are when I say you're only a few tweaks away. You really are guys like real estate prime picture placement description. And if you do control. Fine. You will see there's a lot of keywords that we use here that are strategic. Right.

Just a quick. I was just gonna say. Sorry. Just quickly in the zoom. Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs middle. Can you see you doing this within your setup? Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Did that answer one of the main questions that you had in your mind when you were asking about this. Yeah. Fantastic. Andy, I know you've got your thumbs up. Fantastic. You've got your hand up. So let's. Reuben, if you call, let's get Andy's question in and then we can, we can move on, my friend.

Sure.

Go, go, Andy, go, go.

Just real quick. And I guess that it depends on the area too. So when you like, if you do co hosting or if you're managing a property, I know they're a little bit more lenient where I live with short term rentals, when with long term rentals you need to be a broker to legally manage a property for somebody. But they're more lenient with short term. How does that work with midterm? Yeah, sure. So you might want to check. Right. Your area. Right. Because I think that's more of a state rule. We're licensed in Georgia. If you're going to hold on to security, there's laws about that. Right. We do have security deposits when you book direct. There's laws around that. So I would be very. I guess I would ask that question to like maybe call it a closing attorney or I would get legal advice just to be sure. I don't want to give any kind of legal advice that changes in from state to state. I'm talking about like me even in Georgia. Right. So under 90 days for Georgia there's a tax. After 90 days there is no. No tax. Right. So little things like that, you can go on Avalara, I think, or just speak to a professional for your specific area. But. But that's a good call out, especially when you start getting direct bookings and you're writing contracts. And are you a co host or a property management company? I think being very clear and doing your due diligence on what's required in your state or country or region is part of the business to take. Right, right.

Okay.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

Great answer. Great answer. We don't want to be going getting sued on here.

So. Yeah, it's a business. Absolutely.

Absolutely. Dana, let's go. Let's go with a great question.

I had a question about your pricing.

Strategy for the midterm rentals.

I saw between the screens that you had a slightly different price and you had mentioned price labs. Do you optimize that through your dynamic pricing or how do you. Or do you let it kind of be dictated by your insurance contract?

That's such a good question. Okay. That's a very good question, Dana.

Great question.

So what we do. On the short term rental side, we use price labs. On the mid to mental side, we don't. We use one fixed price. Because we're actually, what we do is we charge a premium. So we'll be like, hey, like, this is the price. And like, we're happy with that. Like, if you can, you know, now you could say, Reuben actually want to do dynamic pricing on your long term.

Yeah.

By any means do so. Because maybe your factory in December and, and etc. And you want to make sure you're charging a premium so you can do both. We have multiple listings, so we're like, our MTR1 is just a marketing play for us. It's not really, because most of the time when they inquire and they're like 30, 60 days, I'm like, can we take this conversation offline? And we don't even really use Airbnb, honestly. Now at this point we just have direct, just direct email marketing and they find us in their database, which happy to talk about our furnished finder. You have the email there, you call directly. You basically, we do contracts and we like wires. Just wire us the money, will you? Because even there, stripe's got to charge me 3%. Right? Like, I don't want that stripe fee. Send me direct. Let's. So we do contracts and we work in corporate is so easy to work with, guys. It's. It's a different avatar. You're so used to when we'll take the booking. So this is another thing too. If you get a month booking, make sure that you extend offline, pick up the number and call and be like, hey, this is what we specialize in. We have contracts again, to Andy's point, with respect to your rules and regulations of what you can and cannot do as far as, you know, collecting security, etc, do your due diligence on that, wherever you are. But you're leveraging this so that remember when you get a booking on Airbnb, if you're going that route, you have their phone number and be like, and. And I have so many stories educating the homeowner. I had a specific. I'll give you a quick little story of a. It behooves you to have this kind of information because now you can actually help homeowners. I had one homeowner, I'll make this quick, that was getting squeezed by his insurance company. And I asked him, I'm like, have you looked at your insurance policy lately? He's like, no. Because do you guys look at it? No. No one Looks at that. You buy your home, right? So I'm like, look at it and let me know what you see under loss of use. Because his insurance company was like, hey, your budget's been. Now is going to be. Oh my gosh, it was ridiculous. It was like a hundred. It was like 140 a day. And I'm like, dude, are you kidding me? This actually was one of this property in this. It's a really nice neighborhood in Georgia. And like, dude, there's no way in this neighborhood, in this area, because I know you're being displaced in the zip code. There is no way that they squeeze you for that one. So end up. He's like, no, I don't know what that is. Ends up looking at his insurance policy. Guys, just so you guys know, you know what it said for loss of use? This is a real thing. Any, any guesses? No, there's no chat here. Okay. So it said unlimited. That means that whatever the cost is, the insurance company is liable to pay for that. So when I found out that a. I educated the homeowner where to look, then I said, pass me the, the phone number of your insurance adjuster. I want to speak with them. I speak with them. I'm like, hey, so I got your family here and they're coming up due, but they're saying that their budget has changed. Is there a reason why? Oh, well, I had a family on that home in that area for much cheaper. I'm like, really? Just, just so you know, remember, you're the prize.

Guys.

Fully furnished utilities on 4 bedroom home, 80U, private office. I just want to let you know that this is what, this is where they're staying. Oh, yeah, but I had a family stay there in that area for much cheaper. I'm like, all right, listen, you let me know on behalf of the family because I don't want to have to, you know, terminate this family or they're going to be leaving at the end of this Sunday. And I just, I hope that they really have a place to say about our place. They can always stay. I just want to get the approval from you guys. 20 minutes after, text me back, approved, 300 a day. Now I call back the homeowner and I tell him, hey, by the way, we're good. And he's like, oh, you did it. He's like, yeah. I just, look, I know the law. It's like, man, these insurance companies, like, it's unbelievable. So I, because I had this knowledge, I was able to help the homeowner get an Extension at a premium. He thanked me, was thankful, and now he's educated on how it actually, actually works. And then the insurance guy, lo and behold, I call him back, like, is there any other friend we can help now that we're friends? Because I'm sorry, you know, you need to know your right. So I say all that to say this. I picked the price. I pick it at a premium. It's a marketing play, but you're more welcome to connect it to a dynamic pricing tool, should you want to, for all your listings and let it do its thing as well. Just set a higher base price because like I said, I can always negotiate down, but I can't negotiate. Negotiate. Awesome.

Thank you so much. I'm. I'm actually launching my first midterm I.

At the end of the month.

I know it's a weird time. End of end of December, actually. We're finishing construction on it. And I've always been a little on the fence, but now I think I want to take the short term and.

Make it a midterm. I'm like, play both. You can have your cake and eat it too. Dan.

Absolutely.

Thank you so much. It's great, great information.

Good, good, good. All right, let's jump into Lindy's question. I think it's going to be about rules, regulations, etc, but then we'll go into proactive for the last 23 minutes and then we'll call it, call it a night, call it a day. So, Lindy, your question, please.

So I've been listening to a lot of podcasts. I can't remember who told me this, but they were saying that, well, I'm.

Sorry, Lindy, are you listening to my podcast?

No, no, this is not yet.

I'm just saying you now you need to listen to my podcast. If I've earned that from you. I'm just saying. Lindy.

Ruben, I'm gonna be all over you.

Real estate experiment.

Lindy, he's a married man. Just calm down for a second here, okay?

What, what they were saying is that when you, when you get into the midterm rental market, that doing security deposits is a real pain. You have to. The money has to go into an escrow account and then you have to give it back. And there's just a whole lot of bookkeeping and transferring and then there' the arguments about whether or not, you know, well, you did these damages. So I'm not going to give you all your security deposit back. And people get all angry. So the way they get around that is that when you, when you come to stay at our place, you are joining a club, and there is a. There's a membership fee to be a member of this club, and it's, it's treated like a move in fees. My first person that I had, I said, okay, you know, you want to be here. There's a $400 move envy, and then there's the monthly rent, and it works really fine. It seems to get around all of the nonsense of anything that might be a potential contentious headache.

Is that a. Is that. I love that. Thank you for sharing that. Is that a refundable membership fee or is it actually just an upfront fee?

It's an upfront fee. And the nice thing about it is if somebody's there a week or, or five months and they. The room needs to be repainted or you need a new mattress, you've got. You have it high enough so that you can take care of those expenses.

Yeah, I like that a lot. That's. That's awesome. I like that. I might.

I can see the. I can see the brain thinking. I can see it. All right, so to finish off, we've got 20 minutes of your time, and this has been fantastic. Let's finish off with a couple of proactive marketing tactics that you've been testing. Tweaking, experimenting with. Have had some. Some cool results, please.

Yeah, yeah. So one of the ones that is major for us, it's. It's actually pure psychology. It's when you're in these databases. So one might ask everyone get into database. Like, if you're here in the US a good one is like alesolutions.com. right. So it means that you go on Ale Solutions, you enter your property in the database, and then they'll reach out when they have some. Have something. Right. But that's one way to do it. And I'm gonna say two things, because one of the ways that they'll reach to, to get in contact with someone is that they'll reach out to you. And once they do, there's two things we like to do. All right, so I'm going to actually write these down so I don't lose my train of thought. One way is like, when they reach out to us, there's a very specific way that we respond to them. But I want to give you both. Right. Kind of almost like the inbound. And then I want to give you the outbound strategy. So the inbound strategy is when they reach out to us. Great. You save their information, put it in the Database, Right. So our database is growing constantly for this specific reason. Because when we reach out to them, we always a like the call. That's where I get the most data. But if you're not a caller, it's okay. All right. To each, each everyone's own. Right. But what you can do is be very direct. I think we're just, I think we're in a culture where I think maybe we're afraid to ask for what we want, but there's a way to ask for what you want by asking for what they need. And so you ask for what they need because we're in the service business, so it's not like, yeah, properties, can you fill them up? No, it's, hey, you know, are you looking to relocate anybody in my ex. Specific area? Right. And how can I, you know, how can I help? Now being very direct is key because then you give them options, right? I do this in real estate all the time. We always do make two offers because when you make two offers, people pay attention to what offers that you made them. Right. It's weird psychological thing. It's like, oh, forget what I think. I've been served two offers, I got to pick two. So I like to give two offers. It's. It's when I reach out and I say, hey, is there any family that you're looking to relocate in X specific area? Name your marketplace and if not, right? So the option number one, you tell me. If not, could you, could you please forward this to one of your colleagues? This is key because people need to be told what to do, right? It's like this, it's like the realtor that says, hey, let me know if you're interested in buying house. Too passive. Be direct. Who do you know that's looking to buy a home? Now that's a more direct approach rather than passive. So you want to be very direct. Do you have a family that's currently look need to be relocated here in this specific zip code? Direct, not passive. Don't ever do this. Let us know if there's a family that is the most passive way to write copy right. Now the second part is most important because by nature these are small teams. You work together that when you ask the second question, you're kind of coaching them to forward the email to somebody who might be in need. And when they do, we get this all the time. Hey, got your email from Mark. I actually do have a family that's willing to relocate. So that simple call to action. Now what happens is now I have Mark's info and I had that Mark to my database and I do the exact same thing with Mark. And now you just exponentially grow your database by having a very, very direct call to action that's actionable and you're giving them guidance. That is how we've grown our database.

Very quick one, what tool CRM are you using to create or collect your database?

So it's interesting because my team uses HubSpot which I don't know how to use that. It's very fancy. But there's actually one that we used for quite some time and that people, I don't know if people know this. I'm a Chrome Extension nerd kind of nerd is too much credit. Maybe I like Enthusiast.

Right.

Google Streak. If you have a Gmail Google Streak, you can add a Google Street Chrome extension and it will do the trick if you're like a little bit overwhelmed, etc, right? So just use your Gmail. It doesn't even need to be that serious because it's not even a quality. It's not even a quantity game. It's a quality. Like if you have three reps that respond to you that will then be the advocate in these small businesses. A lot of these, when I say small businesses is relative. These are not Google like companies. These are like 70 employees companies. I want them to, you know, my first name, middle name, last name and maybe the last four digits of my social. Right. Because the goal is for them to be talking about me during the coffee break. Hey, by the way, I'm trying to place somebody in Georgia. You should talk to that company, Ruben, that guy from Invested Escapes. That's what we're constantly doing, right? Oh yeah. Thank you Mark for doing that. Google Streak is super simple guys. It allows you to just maintain a database. Your, your. It's like a CRM built in Gmail and everybody has Gmail, right? That's pretty international, right?

Yeah.

Okay, cool.

I'm cool.

Because I don't know people still using Yahoo. Is that what we're doing? No, I'm a Gmail guy. But that's the inbound strategy. So inbound strategies, when they do reach out, I like to call and or remember ask them for permission to whether you're doing this on the call. By the way, is this is. Is a okay for me to reach out to you, period. Periodically ask for the permission so that you don't feel them and then maybe your guilty conscience is gonna be like, oh my God, I'm spamming. That's not the case. You're actually helping them. They will. I've. No one has ever said no because you know what they do for a living. Remember, this is not State Farm Allstate. What they do for a living is they need to place families in multiple cities. So if you tell them, hey, by the way, what help if I just kept you top of mind, they'll be like, yes, now I'll give you another hack. I'll give you another hack that I learned. Because what I do, guys, like I said, I ask questions for a living. So what I do is I hey, like what's, what's. How do you guys look? For us, it's such a simple. Some of the best questions or some of the simplest ones. How do you find furnished accommodation? Like just ask the question. Well, they said, well, we look into the database. We'll look at XYZ, website, etc. Right here. If you're in the U.S. zillow, rental manager, finder, etc. Corporate housing by owner. But. But then we'll look into our emails. Well, natural path of progression is. How do you search your emails? Well, do you have a hot sheet? I don't ever make the assumption I know what they're talking about. What's a hot sheet? That's actually one of my best lessons. Don't ever make an assumption. Yeah, I know what that is. No, you don't. No one knows. Everyone has a perception of what something means. Always say, please enlighten me, tell me more. Hot sheet is like a. Basically it's like a brochure, etc. So then I asked the question. Okay, so do you want me to attach the hot sheet to the email or. And, or include the property details in the email. So Ruben, do both. Put property area, city name and subject line, say temporary housing, midterm, rental housing, furnished, pet friendly, whatever you want to put in the sub line. So it will pop up in their control find included in the body as well. You can use mailchimp. Use mailchimp too. I forgot about that. Mailchimp is a good one. Mailchimp because it's a one to many. So I'm sorry, that's an autoresponder, right? There's a difference between CRM. So you asked me CRM, I give you a CRM. But autoresponder is mailchimp HubSpot. And what was I saying? Oh, then so include it in the subject line. Be very clear. So if you're in Austin, Texas, say furnished accommodations in Austin, Texas, furnished accommodations pet friendly. Available in Atlanta, Georgia. Include the details in the body or email and then make an attachment. Now you got the. You guys, my whole thing is about increasing the chances. Don't you want to increase the chances? Subject line, body and attachment. When they do a control. Fine. And they do. Georgia, they're gonna find us because we're not missing a beat. Shoot. Right. So that is one of the best inbound strategies. Now for outbound, I want to give you a. A tool that everybody. Oh, my goodness.

I'm saving the best for last.

And my assistant actually is the ninja that kind of goes through this. But I'm going to try my best. I'm not going to do it.

Reuben, before you, before you drop the. Reuben has just given you an absolute game changer on how to optimize somebody's inbox. I don't know if you missed this, but it's, you know, you've got to write this down. This is how you optimize somebody's inbox. And this is so key because if you think about, as Neely said, we've been doing direct booking summit this week, as Neely said, you are. You are writing and you are thinking with the. The person on the other end in mind, right? How can you make their life easier? Right? Because they will have targets, they will have their own KPIs of relocating people, etc. They need to be able to go into their inbox, which is a very busy inbox, because bearing in mind you're not going to be the only person contacting them, right? There's going to be many more Rubens that can be on the phone to this person. Right? So how can you make their life so much easier? And if you can follow what he just said, then you have optimized their inbox perfectly. Fantastic. Thank you for that. Right, let's bring it home. Let's do the Hail Mary.

I don't know. Are they ready?

It's the four Finnins final. Here we go.

Let's do it. All right, so this is. All right, so some people like to sit on the sidelines of. Wait, I'm not that guy. I like to go get it. Right? So I'm actually looking here. What I'll be able to do is pull it up. I'll be able to do it in real time. We'll find out in two seconds. Because I don't know if my, my, my assistant actually does this now, but it's the same concept. So. But let me show you something. I want to go and get the deals, right? And so people like Reuben how do I get their contact information? Where do I go? Where do I begin? Guys, there is. You just saw. Someone was drawing while I was talking on Zoom, right? It's time to embrace technology and just grab it by the horns. I've never said that before, but kind of cool. That's so American to me. I'm not even American. You any guesses? I'm actually French. I'm European and I just said the most American thing. Grab it by the horns. You have.

You have lost that French friend. You have lost that Frenchness.

You guys, can you see my screen?

Yeah, you're good, you're good.

Okay, first of all, wherever you at, like, if you're. Does everybody have LinkedIn? Like, please don't tell me they shut down LinkedIn. Like, this is a global thing. Maybe. Do they have that everywhere?

LinkedIn is.

Sorry. Because it's a good database for companies. Corporations, right? So this is an example because ALA Solutions is one of the biggest, number one temporary housing relocation companies in the U.S. right? We all have equivalents. So just ask Google, ChatGPT and then do this. Come in LinkedIn and look these guys up. Speaking of small companies, 6K tiny. But guys, look at this. They're literally handing this on a silver platter. And this isn't even the best part. I'm just showing you, like as you're going through this, look at all these other companies you can use. By the way, Fleet Core is the same company. All these companies are starting to buy each other. Crs, that's another one of our partners. Assured Relocations, Temporary housing. We have contract with these guys. They're just never ending. And you know what happens? I bet you if I click these guys, they're going to show me more of the same guys. Gals show all. Oh God, they're making guys. I think you have no excuse these days. The success is just us. Look at all this. And I didn't even type this in chat GPT. So that's one thing. That's. This is easy peasy. That's not even the point that I'm trying to make here. The point I'm trying to make is the following. Okay, there it is. Apollo's here. You guys want to grab this chrome extension? I told you it was a chrome extension, nerd. This guy right here, Apollo IO. It's a chrome extension. Apollo IO. Has anybody heard of this? Thumbs up if you had.

No, but I've used something similar in the past. But yeah, this is very cool.

Mark, we gonna have to have another session, pal. No. So this is a chrome extension that will verify and scrape the data so that you can reach out and call. You see this? It's verifying that the phone number and email. So right now as I am here, I can click this and it will just show the phone number. Now what I want to do, I want to call the national sales manager. So what I want to do is do this. Pretty sure there's a search box assistant usually is able to do this when we're doing these. There's a search box that can. Sorry, it's a little clunky. Right now there's a search box that allows you to look for the right name. Right. So if I do, I'm not seeing it now and I know, I don't know if we're not in our main account, but there's a thing where you can go and see housing coordinator. I don't probably don't want to reach out the housing coordinator. You want to read. Ah, there it is. You want to find a relocation specialist. And there's actually a toggle where you can toggle. And that's what we call them here in the US because if I do this, it'll search, view contact and right now it's verifying the contact. So what I can do is get the phone number and email and be like, hey, here's, here's, here's the easiest things. People are going to freak out, be like, oh my God, how am I going to let them know I got their contact? I can't be like, this gentleman told me about Apollo I.O. i used it and now I'm reaching out. Kind of awkward, right? You don't need to do that. Remember, these people relocate families for a living. So what you can do is reach out and say, hey, my colleague Dave, you know, you have to name, drop the name. My colleague Ruben. That's right. You can even use my name if you want, but you don't even need to. My colleague. I got your information from my colleague. That's true, I am your colleague. Just so you guys know, you have full permission to use my name as your colleague if they ask. If they dare ask. No one's ever asked me. Who's your colleague? Remove the limiting beliefs. No one will ever ask you that. Right? But hey, my colleague Ruben told me that you guys, you not you guys stay away from you guys. Be very personal. You, Amy, are constantly looking to relocate families. Therefore I wanted to reach out as a furnished accommodation provider. I usually don't even based on that. That serious. I Don't say furnished accommodation provider, but I'm just giving you guys some context. We at Invested Escapes provide pet friendly homes and I want to reach out to see if, going back to the old script, if you are currently looking to relocate a family in my city. If not, would you be kindly able to forward my information to one of your colleagues? The response might be either you don't hear anything or oh, yes, absolutely. Or you might even hear from the colleague themselves that yes, I actually have. Matter of fact, thank you so much. Keep in mind these companies guys, there is a shortage of inventory. Most Airbnb hosts do not know about this, etc. So when they find homeowners that are actually available to become partners, they're happy because their job literally is to be online and look and call and the rejection that they get is, nope, we're not pet friendly. Nope, we do only 12 month stays. And oh, by the way, if they do dare to look on Airbnb, guess what? There's peppered calendars because you didn't duplicate your listing. Did we bring that full circle? Mark, what's up?

Yeah, 100. Can we all just please give Reuben a massive round of applause and just say thank you very much for. That was a 90 minute absolute mass.

There's no way did we really for 90, like, is that how time works? I'm losing tracks.

Time flies when you're having fun and everybody who's here in the UK with me, it is 10:30, so 10:30 at night, it's a late one, so. But it's been worth every single second to have to have that. And I was so proud just listening and just watching you go and ramp up and it was amazing to bring it, to bring it full circle. So you've got some homework, You've got some homework. I know brains are going to be wearing. There's going to be light bulbs going off. I literally just went on. So those of you in the uk, I just went into chat GPT and said, what is the UK equivalent of Ale Solutions? And it's given a couple of names here. Some of them you already know, some of you won't. Yeah, icab, Rent Assurance, others like that. There's definitely some proactive things you can be doing right here. The most simplest one that you can do right now, go ahead and duplicate your listing. Just give it a go, give it a test. Use. Use AI to tweak your copy, change the pictures, always have the person in mind. And then, you know, go ahead and go down the proactive route. Get on LinkedIn, start finding, start using AI to find these solutions. And Ruben mentioned a couple of times, my team, my team, my team. It's very, very, very easy when you start off on this thread of thinking as, how am I going to do this? Right? The, the trick is, is to go, who can I help me do this? Who can I bring into the business? Who can I help do this for me? Because we are very busy in our lives and our businesses don't try and go, how am I going to do this? Try and think, who can come into your company can do this? Because this is. If you can train somebody to do this, you can find someone you know in the Philippines, in Venezuela, who, you know, charges very less, very minimal amount. But the bookings that will come in will massively help, you know, cover their costs and any other future costs and be able to bring in a lot of capital so that you can go get property number two, three, four or five. So, yeah, this is really, really cool. Love it.

And can I make just one last little comment here? Remember, this is a relationship based business. It's quality over quantity. Even if you think, oh my gosh, it's overwhelming, so many companies think about building a deep relationship with one person is what I tell my relationship manager. Focus on the relationship because they will be your advocates for you in house as well. So think about that. That's where the advantage is. And being early is going to pay dividends because once you have a good relationship with someone, you hold on to it. And even if this newbie comes in, who's coming in after they've heard of this information, like, no, okay, I'm cool. I got Dana, I got Toby. Right. I got Dave. I'm good. Indeed, I'm good. She's my, she's my connection, right? So think about that. The relationship build early before it gets flooded. And Mark, can I ask for a huge favor, man? Because I feel like this group's got some good energy, right? Can you do me a favor? We're really cranking up our YouTube guys, because I just want to serve it and give so much more content. Can you just please go and hit the subscribe button? Because we're trying to crack the thousand subs and we're like 20 away. Can I get some love in? Can I do that? Can you, can you, can you figure it out and send it to them and if you got value from this, that'll be. That would mean a lot for me.

All right, let me share my screen. This is the channel 20 away. Right?

Yeah, man. Quit playing with me.

Come on, Instagram, we've got 16. Apart from me and you, we've got 16 on here.

Guys, drop me some love, please. That's the only favorite that I ask, if you got any value.

If you didn't get any value, everybody got value, trust me. So, real estate experiment. Go and tap that in on. On. On the. On the YouTube.

Yeah.

It's been phenomenal to watch the growth, and I'm excited for your 2024, my friend.

All right, thank you so much for your time.

With that being said, everybody, please go ahead and subscribe. I'll send up links. I'll do all the cool things like I did yesterday. I'll do it tomorrow morning because I am. I'm gonna collapse into bed any second now. So we will do that. I'll get all the links out onto the email tomorrow, and I'll see you back in the summit tomorrow.

But.

Yeah, that was unreal. Thank you.

Thank you so much, everybody.

Thank you. Thank you. Have a good night. Good morning, good afternoon.