Why I Keep My Calendar Open

Hey, this is Shauna from She's Got Assets. Welcome to my live stream. I'm gonna get started soon, just making sure this is gonna work everywhere. Always fun. Thanks for tuning in. I've taken a little break, but I'm back. So, um, we have a really fun topic tonight. It's all about MTR bookings and keeping an open calendar. So I'm just gonna If anyone's here, if you can just let me know. I'm a little bit late tonight, sorry, like last minute dash getting this out. So I'm going to start in a few minutes. It's a really fun topic. Again, this is Shownif and she's got assets. If anyone is here and if you hung on while I was late, if you can just let me know if you can see me, that would be awesome. I'm just going to put out everyone. I'm really, it was kind of a last-minute topic I just thought would be really valuable because I've done a couple deals like this, so I really wanted to share these tips with you. I don't think you can see my screen. Can you guys see my screen? If you can let me know in the comments, that would be awesome because I think, oh, I think, no, I think you should be able to see it. Do you guys see it? I don't think anyone can see it. Well, you can hear my voice maybe if that works. Hopefully you can see my screen. Hopefully the software is cooperating. Can you let me know in the comments and we'll get started super soon. It looks black to me. You can't see me. Okay, that's awesome. Okay, let me— I'm gonna remove myself and try and add myself again. Add to stage. Looks like Facebook is being funky. Okay, is that any better? Can you guys see me now? It's like you're at the eye doctor. Can you see me? You can't see me. Okay, I don't know why I can't look. That's really strange. I don't know why it's not showing me. I'm seeing it, but clearly it's not working. I'm seeing an error message on Facebook, so I don't know why you can't see me. I'm going to put a link to YouTube. I think I'm streaming there, so that might just be fun technical issues. I don't have— yeah, let's just— if you can tune in on YouTube, you should be able to see me. Somebody pop that in the chat. I have no idea why it's not working. I'm seeing an error message for some reason. Okay. Well, it's kind of boring if you can't see my presentation I just put together. I'm going to roll with it though. So if you can hear my voice, I'm going to put my YouTube channel in here and you should be seeing me live here. Live. This should be showing up. Streams. Let's see if it's here. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I'm live on YouTube. So you guys can tune in there. I'm just going to find the right window. It's a really exciting presentation. Okay. All right. So I don't know why Facebook isn't letting me screen share. I see a question, Vanessa. I'll totally get to that. But you can tune in on YouTube. I don't know why. So if you look in the chat, there's a link to the YouTube. I don't know why it's not letting me— now I'm getting double feedback here. Sorry. I don't know why it's just the screen share isn't working, but okay. Thank you so much for your patience. All is fun. Okay. Well, I guess you can't see my screen unless you're on YouTube, but we're going to get started here as soon as I get my screen sorted out. Okay. And I will hang around for questions for sure. So, okay. Sorry about the technical things, but today I'm going to talk about why I keep my calendar open and how it actually gets me more bookings. So it's a strategy that I kind of stumbled on and now I do really intentionally. It's kind of counterintuitive, right? Like if your property is booked, why would you leave your calendar open? So I'm going to unpack that tonight in some short little case studies. See, my slide shares. Okay, so just a little bit about me. If you haven't come across me, I know some of you can't see my screen. So I'm just going to talk through this. So I'm the founder of She's Got Assets. I'm the podcast host, course, course, excuse me, course, course, I can't talk, author. I have the REI Playbook and the MTR Playbook. So I teach you how to buy off-market properties without door knocking or cold calling and creative financing like seller financing. I also run Cedar and Porch Properties. That's like our midterm rental business and long-term. And then Shona Buys Houses. And then I have this community and I've helped 70+ students land $6K to $9K MTR bookings. That's a little bit about me on a more personal note. Okay. I like to say I like shiny objects. If anyone can relate to that, let me know. I'll try and speed through this because we're kind of so late right now. My mouse is being funky. Oh my gosh. Just tonight is glitchy. Okay. I house hacked my way into real estate way back in 2005. It was called having a roommate back then. Now it's kind of trendy house hacking. I think I have ADHD clearly, if you haven't— can't tell that already by all the little things I'm doing. It used to be really private that I was a landlord. Now I'm really kind of out there with it and I coach students on it. I live with my family in Portland, Oregon, and we have a mix of long-term and midterm rentals. So we're operators. We're doing this every day. We're always learning and improving. I love to share with my students and communities like what is working for me. So you know how I got into midterms, right? I started flipping, tried out wholesaling, wasn't my jam, really wanted to maximize cash flow, didn't love the Airbnb strategy, like the constant turnover. Regulations can change on a dime, right? I think it sounds fun, but it's also very saturated. And a lot of cities are cracking down on regulations. So I'm a big fan of midterms. And, you know, so I'm going to— yeah. So just a little backstory there on like what I've tried and why I love midterms. Just getting my deck to advance here. So I'm going to share 3 secrets of why I keep my calendar open. And I'm sorry if you guys can't see my screen. If you're just tuning in, definitely click on the YouTube link. It should be working there. So 3 secrets of midterm calendars, why they're open. So this is a big one for me. Your listing isn't just for bookings, it's for leads, right? Even if you have just one property, I would still do this. We're actually getting lots of leads from one property, even if— so I didn't turn my phone on do not disturb. That's going to bother me. Sorry. I'm just— well, hopefully my phone doesn't ring. So we're creating opportunity even from one property, even if it's booked, right? I leave my calendar intentionally open. Strategic things, I get leads from that. Secret number 2, guests are open to other properties, right? We're looking to solve their problems. We're looking to get to know them. It's kind of like when you're buying off market, you're looking where they're trying to get to, how can we solve their problems, right? Oftentimes, I get, you know, I give them a call. I say, hey, this property, the family just extended. I say something like that, right? What are you looking for? We have other properties in the area. And then I kind of figure out what they want. And then I send them links to other properties, right? Because they're often, you know, maybe they don't see the other property they inquired about one property, they often don't know we have other properties. So I'm trying to figure out how I can possibly serve them and fit them with a different property. So guests are open to different properties, even if they inquired about a specific property, not all the time, right? But it's just a strategy that I use to— and I really think it does help the guests. I posted this in a group and I had the comment like, well, that's, you know, guests are disappointed. Yeah, they could be, but we're also helping them. We're actually helping them find a solution. So to me, that's actually serving them. So that's kind of my stance on it. Secret number 3, the bookings don't always come from the listing they inquired about, right? Just piggybacking on that. And the conversation is where the deal happens, right? Because sometimes they're able to move to a different property. They'll even end up paying more for that different property. But these are kind of 3 secrets I wanted to unpack. I have a short little case study I'm going to go over here. Lots of time for Q&A. So, and if you're watching the replay, definitely comment, leave me feedback. I'm happy to answer any questions. All right. Um, so secret number 1, your listing isn't just for bookings, right? I think it's really for getting leads, right? So here's an example of a property. Um, I live in Portland. This is Portland, Oregon. It's actually like a 3-1. It sounds bigger than it is. It's pretty cozy, right? And so I have this listing, it's open. I also, the other reason I like to leave listings open is I kind of test out pricing and see how that affects demand, right? So I want to say this one, it's a 3-bedroom pet-friendly home. I want to say it was like maybe $2,495, like in that range. And it had a family, you know, I don't, it had the guests had just extended, but you know, the calendar is always open. That's intentional, right? So this, this is a property that kind of, it's kind of like a lead magnet for me. Even if you only have one property, I would still do this because you can refer them out your network. It just helps kind of build, you know, your lead source. You can always— so you can book, you can, you can help that family find a different property, like by going to your network and saying, hey, I have a family looking for X type of property, anyone have anything? Then you can kind of lead match them, right? So you can get a referral fee. You can just do it to be, you know, to be nice, other people refer you leads, right? So it's just, there's a number of reasons why I think it's a really good strategy. So this is that property. It's a 3/1, it's pretty cozy, it's about 700 square feet, but this property is in Northeast Portland. And I talked to the lead and I asked like, what are you looking for? Kind of got to know him and, you know, what he was looking to do. And this person had just sold his house, right? Was kind of looking for a place to land that was fully furnished. He had a couple dogs, he had a piano he wanted to move in. And he really wasn't super particular about location. I said, well, hey, listen, this one is booked, but I have this other property that could possibly solve your problem, right? Like, you inquired about this particular property, this 3-bedroom, 1-bath, about $2,600 a month. But hey, I have another property, and I usually describe it. And then I say, why don't I send you a link, virtual video tours? And if it's open, I will, you know, we'll do in-person tours. I I don't love doing that, but I will if it's available. So we basically, he inquired about this property, right? But I got to know him, I understood that he was looking for a certain type of property and a certain length of stay. And then so he inquired about this property, right? This 3-bedroom, 1-bath, but I had another property available. I actually co-host this property. It's actually smaller. It's a 2-bedroom, 1-bath. But it's bigger in square footage and it has a really nice fence, private yard. It could accommodate his piano actually way better than this property. Like this property, I don't think would fit a piano. It has stairs, it's a basement unit. So we inquired about this one, but really this property over here really met his needs way better, right? So if I had, if I had turned off my calendar and just put this, you know, he only, he might not have even reached out because he was probably trying to stay under a certain budget, but it turned out this property, he went and saw it, he really liked it, had a huge basement, for his piano, his pets could— his dogs could run around. And so we ended up going from a $2,595 lead and ended up booking at $3,495 a month. And it was like an 11.5-month lead and he paid in full and he was really happy. He was so grateful because, you know, it really fit his needs perfectly. But we wouldn't have gotten this lead if we hadn't had this listing out. So that's what I do strategically. Even if you only have one property, I leave my calendar open unless it's like a one-bedroom, right? I'm not so interested in those leads. But it's more for like the larger properties that I do this. But I really feel like we actually sort of guess better by, by doing this strategy. And especially again, if you only have one property, you can still do it and just refer those leads out. But this is typically if you have a couple properties that I do this with. I just did this recently, I had people inquire about It was a different property. It was a 2-bedroom. I think I quoted them, yeah, I think it was like $4,000. And they ended moving to a different property. And it was like, I think I got it booked for $4,300. Right. And at first, you know, they weren't sure what they were looking for. And they wanted to move in right away. And I knew I could accommodate them with this other property, like immediately. Right. So then I kind of moved them to a different property. So that's the strategy Um, and yeah, if you guys need help implementing this or you have questions, I feel like having a coach is really helpful. I really hold your hand. I walk you through this, how to optimize your listings, how to get these types of bookings. A lot of people are asking me about insurance bookings, and it's more than just posting on a site. It's definitely a strategy and how you're optimizing your listing, where you're listing, and how you're negotiating deals. Um, so if you have questions or need help with that, certainly book a call. You can You can find me in all these places. And that's it. Just a quick little training. So I'm going to check Q&A here. If anyone has questions, I'm happy to answer them. I can just find that window. And I'm sorry that Facebook screen sharing was being a little bit janky. It just— yeah, I don't know why it wasn't working. I'll have to troubleshoot that, but we'll figure it out for next time. Just going to go back to Facebook. But again, you can definitely catch the full livestream in YouTube. If anyone's watching there. So I'm going to check Q&A really fast. One second. Okay. And I'll probably upload the video, um, later. So I see a couple questions. Okay, let's see, 10 comments. Okay, I'm gonna go through questions, so just feel free to pop them in here. And if you have any takeaways, I always appreciate hearing that. Okay, good. Vanessa says she'll go to YouTube. Awesome. Okay, very cool. Thank you guys. I appreciate your patience. Lacey says, are you planning on doing the entire talk in the dark? I'm actually presenting. It's just Facebook is being particular, so I'm— looks like I'm in the dark. Just— but just click on that YouTube link and you can see the actual presentation. So I'm sorry about that. I will repost. I'll probably just upload it here so anyone watching the replay isn't looking at the dark. Aside from that, any other questions? I feel like I saw another question, but I don't see it. If I didn't get your question, let me know. I think it was something about availability or something, or vacancy, I think. Yeah, for some reason, if I— it's not letting me show all the comments, so if I'm not answering you live, just retype it. Do me a favor and put it in the chat. I don't know why Facebook is having a moment like we all do sometimes. Um, yeah. Okay. I don't see any fresh questions. I see lots of comments from whatever, whatever reason I can't talk today. Whatever reason, I don't see more comments, but, um, reach out. Hopefully this was helpful about the open calendar strategy. Um, I've just said a couple, you know, I had a couple, um, These happened really recently. I thought this would be a good thing to share because I'm not sure everyone knows about it. Okay, well, I don't see any other questions, so I'm gonna hop off, but feel free to comment again if you're watching the replay. I'll probably repost it from the YouTube, and I don't know why Facebook was being picky, but, um, it was. So thanks for tuning in again. If you're watching the replay, reach out with any questions. If you're looking, um, help with coaching, how to get these set up or how to buy off-market properties, that's what I do. So reach out, happy to chat and see if you'd be a good fit. All right. Well, with that being said, I will talk to you guys soon. Thanks so much.