← The David Greene Show
The David Greene Show
Behind the Scenes STR Reveal Part One with Angela Heydorn I Episode 105
01:11:39
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome to Real Talk Real Estate, the show where we cover how to build wealth in real estate with no fluff, no BS and no sales pitches. I'm David Green and I've been doing this for over 10 years. I've seen the ups, the downs and everything in between. This is the show where we pull back the curtain and show it to you too. So if you want to build wealth through real estate or you just love learning about it, you found your home. What's going on, everybody? Welcome to Real Talk Real Estate. This is the David Green show and I'm sure glad that you're here. I am joined today by coast to Coast Getaways property manager Angela Haydorn who manages all of my properties as well as the properties that we manage for other people. And we are going to be giving you an in depth breakdown of one of the cabins that we manage, what it was doing and how it's been turned around. We've got before and after pictures for you. We've got some data points, we've got some cool stories. So if you are someone who is a short term rental operator or somebody who loves one, you might want to check in on them because it's a rough time out there. You'll probably enjoy today's show because you'll get some ideas of how you can get your cabin doing better. If you're someone who's looking to hand it over to somebody else to make it perform better, we're here for you. And if you're not a short term rental investor but you just kind of want to put your eyes in the window and take a look and see what it looks like in there, you should like today's show. Angela, how are you?
- [01:16]
B
I'm so good because after looking at these numbers, I am pretty excited to share this story.
- [01:23]
A
Now we can hear some paws in the background. Would you like to give Cash a little cameo before we get started here? Will he jump?
- [01:30]
B
Cash, come here.
- [01:32]
A
If you guys are not listening to this on Spotify or YouTube, you won't be able to see what's going on if you're on Apple, but if you are Angela, her, her dog is the mascot of Coast Coast Getaways. There you go.
- [01:44]
B
All black German Cash after Johnny Cash. Not because we like Cash Flow, although we do like that too.
- [01:49]
A
Yeah, I don't, I mean, I'd be okay if he went by Cash Flow. You should get like another dog and name that dog Flow. You have Cash and Flow. You like a girl dog. But Flo is Flo like the girl from the progressive commercials.
- [02:00]
B
No, we're not doing that. Absolutely not.
- [02:04]
A
All right, so let me. Let me lay the foundation for the story of what we're going to be getting into today. I purchased some properties in the middle of a 1031. They were managed by a different property manager. And I found out later from that property manager staff why my numbers were so bad and they were doing unscrupulous things. There's a lawsuit going on right now, so I can't share any of the details about it, but they were keeping money that was supposed to be mine in several different ways. And this property manager sort of sold us on their method that they get guests directly. So rather than focusing on keeping your property performing well on the online travel agencies, this is Airbnb VRBO booking. Agoda. Am I missing any there, Angela? The big ones?
- [02:58]
B
Nope, you got them all.
- [03:00]
A
Which is how most people look when they're going to go book a property. This company would. Would basically pay money to generate sort of organic. Well, I guess it's on organic if you're paying money, but search engine optimized leads. And then people would go to their website and book a cabin, or they would call, and then they put them in your cabin, and they sell this. Like, this is a supplement to what's happening on Airbnb to fill in all of your orphan days. And then what we found out was they do this because there's nowhere for a guest to leave a bad review when they're getting terrible service. If this happens on Airbnb or vrbo, you lose your status, you lose your super host. Your reviews go down, you drop in the algorithm, it's harder to compete, which means if you're going to do it the right way, which is where the guests are booking, you got to be good. You got to do this full time. You're a slave to your phone. This is far from passive income. You have to have a lot of patience. You have to pay a lot of attention to what you're doing. But that's the most profitable way to do it. Well, this company had figured out a way to get cabins filled without using those mediums. But what they're not telling you is all the complaints were resolved by throwing money at the guest. And guess whose money they're throwing at them. Wasn't their money. It was the person who owns the cabins. That and a lot of other things were found to be going on. So, long story short, they refused to give me the cabins back. I had to go change the locks and Take them back. And they then kept my money. And we had to include this in the lawsuit to be able to get the money that had been been collected from the guests. And we are in now in the short term rental management business. So instead of having several property managers across the country, I'm now managing these properties myself. And there was a. There was a lot of cabins in the Spokies. And then there's also properties in other areas. We've got some in Hawaii, we've got some in South Florida, we have some in Georgia, got some in New York. And instead of having different property managers in all those areas, I hired Angela and a couple other people and they were put in charge of managing my properties as well as a couple other things. And we just took them all like, hey, we're going to do the smoky cabins, but we're going to do these other ones as well. And Angela, who had some short term rental property management experience managing her own properties, got dumped into. Now you're going to manage all of them. And we're going to have to figure out how to build systems and how to do this efficiently and how to improve them. Well, we looked at the numbers from what these properties were doing when they were managed by someone else, and they were pretty horrifying. And if you're someone who's listening to this, you probably would have been paying closer attention to what your properties were doing than me. I had several people at the time that were working underneath me that were monitoring this and not reporting it very well to me. But for example, the cabin we're going to show you guys today is a complete turnaround that we're doing here. Made $52,000 in gross revenue when it was managed by the company. Let me know in the comments what you think I kept of the 52,000. So I'm gonna buy you guys some time, not give you the answer right away. I want you to put in the comments how much you think came to me out of the $52,000 of gross revenue that I received. And keep in mind, when the management company is doing all direct bookings like they were, there's no transparency. So you don't see where the money's going unless you're looking at a statement for every single cabin. So go in the comments and let me know what number you think I kept or what percentage you think I kept. If you're lazy while they're doing that, Angela, can you just introduce yourself a little bit and share how you got into real estate, what you like about it what it's like managing properties, etc.
- [06:30]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So like most people in real estate, I accidentally fell into real estate. I was, oh gosh, I don't even know how old I was, but I was living in a house where my, the, the guy that owned the house was selling it and he gave me like two weeks to move out. And I was looking for a place to rent and my mom was. My mom said, well, why don't you just buy a house? This is in 10 years ago when real estate was still cheaper and this is in Salt Lake City. And then I looked into the numbers and I realized how much of a down payment I needed for a condo, which was not very much money. And yeah, so I bought it for. Actually, I'll give you the numbers. I bought this really nice condo in Salt Lake City, one of the best neighborhoods in Salt Lake. And I bought it for 150. I think I put like $8,000 down. And it has probably almost tripled in value since I bought it. And I spent five minutes looking at it and when I was ready to move out, I had kind of outgrown it. My agent at the time said, well you could, you don't have to sell it. You could buy another property and rent this one. And got my wheels turning. And she kind of mentored me into showing me how to do that and roll it into the next property and then insert the addiction to buying real estate. So I was doing the brrrr method, admittedly before I started listening to you, David. So I'm sorry for that. I was accidentally doing it. And so that was how I bought my first couple properties. Bought my first short term rental during COVID just like everybody else. I don't know what episode that was on, but if you go back a couple episodes, you can see that whole story. I won't get into it. And I had a really good system going. And then once I bought my first short term rental, it slowed me down a little bit. So I'm just about back on track with investing in real estate. But that's kind of my story. And I actually accidentally started self managing my own properties. I moved from Salt Lake City back to the east coast and I didn't really have a choice. I didn't know it was a. I mean I knew property managers existed, but I was confident I could do it myself. So learned about property management software and kind of took it on myself. And now I also still self manage all of my own properties.
- [09:05]
A
So you're self managing your properties. You're managing all my long term rentals from across the country, at least almost all of them. And you're doing the short term rentals and you're also, boy, you're doing a whole lot more than that. You run my calendar, you are helping get our website up and running. Right now you are acting as my go between for the properties that I'm selling with other agents and learning how to do that. You're getting licensed in real estate right now, I believe in the state of Tennessee and anywhere else?
- [09:33]
B
Just Tennessee for right now.
- [09:34]
A
Okay. Possibly Pennsylvania in the future. I'm going to push you about that. So you're going to be a real estate agent and a property manager and an investor and you've been drinking from a fire hose for the last, what, 12 months or so?
- [09:47]
B
Yeah, December will, I mean, if you're talking about this whole thing, then yes, the last December will be 12 months. So I'm really excited to dive into that data because now we have a full year of experience and everything.
- [10:01]
A
So. Yeah. And we're going to give you guys some really good specifics of properties data before and after pictures as well as the stories that went into it. What we did right, what we did wrong, what we learned, what worked, what didn't work. But before we do, I just want to ask 12 months of getting thrown into a crazy real estate experience, sort of helping me with everything when a lot of the other people that were working for me, basically like the market got bad, we couldn't sustain, keeping everybody around. People went their own way in a lot of ways. What is the biggest thing you'd say you've learned in 12 months of total immersion into basically all forms of real estate? I mean, you even had some processing experience working with the one brokerage at one point and working with Kyle. You were working with Kyle Reinke as a real estate agent assistant.
- [10:48]
B
Yes, I think the, the biggest lesson. Well, so first of all I want to add one thing is that most of what I'm doing for you and what we do for our clients, I've done myself for my own properties. So yes, I'm drinking from a fire hose. But I, I taught, I was self taught in the property management side and all of the stuff that we've been doing. So granted this is a much bigger scale. But you know, we don't do anything, we don't do anything for other people that we haven't done for our own properties, which I think is important to mention. I think the biggest thing with the last 12 months is being in this business, you have to one, you have to have really thick skin and you can't make a big deal about anything. Like, we've gone through some crazy scenarios with guests, with properties, with cities permitting you selling properties, buying properties, and everything in between. And I think the one thing is you can't stay stuck on one thing for too long. I was actually just having this conversation with someone else. And if you stay stuck there in our business, you're going to get behind on all of the other 50 things that you have working. So especially in the short term rental space, you have guests there for, say, three to seven days, whatever it is, and you got to. You got to move fast. You can't move slow. So efficiency and productivity, I think were the biggest. Yes, I would say those are the biggest keywords over the last 12 months.
- [12:20]
A
A lot of people believe they work hard. And by working hard, what that means is go to work. Okay. What they do when they're there, from my perspective, is often not the most they're capable of doing, but they would believe that they work hard. And I'm not going to speak for you, but you had a job before this, and then you had. Actually you have. In some ways, you're still working other jobs in addition to being a property manager. It's obviously not going to work if you just go at the same pace that you went before. So what have you learned about yourself? For the people listening that are. I know a lot of them are just thinking, I suck, I can't keep up. But they probably are just getting things done too slowly. They're not anticipating problems. They're handling what comes their way rather than being organized. What advice do you have for the person that really wants to scale something and they just need to be more productive in the day. They don't realize it.
- [13:10]
B
If we're talking about productivity, this is going to go beyond real estate. So first of all, take notes. If you don't take notes, my head has a million different things going on all at once. If I don't take notes, if someone says something to me and I can't get it to write, then I'm going to forget. So take notes. I use the basic notes app on the iPhone. And the great thing about this is we can share notes, which I love because I can see your updates. You can see my updates, I can send them to other people. So we're both working on the same document. The other thing, have a routine. If I start, if I wake up and the first thing I do is I start doom scrolling. My whole day is ruined. And so I, when I wake up, I have to, I get up and I actually will read, I'll read the bible, I will pray, I will go to the gym. Going to the gym is a huge thing for me. I think everybody should be doing that or walking or some sort of activity. But have a routine. If you don't have a routine that sets the tone for your whole day and if I don't do that, then the whole day is kind of a mess. That sounds a little bit dramatic but I actually don't think it could be understated.
- [14:23]
A
That's pretty good. Okay, so overall you think most people just need to take their, their opportunities a little bit more seriously and just get more intentional about what they're doing in the day, whether it's working out, getting the ground running, building momentum, etc.
- [14:36]
B
Yeah. I also think now different things are going to work for different people. If you go to the gym at night. Go to the gym at night. I'm not saying that, I'm just saying you need a routine and you need to stick to it because if you, if you don't have a plan for your day. This is something you taught me, David. Like the night before, write down my list for the next day and so I don't have to think about it. And this is the problem when I wake up at 3 o' clock in the morning and I have 50 things on my mind and I don't want to forget these things. So the night before I write out my list. Of course that check changes during the day but I have my non negotiables for the day and then I have the other bigger projects, the things I'm going to work on. So every person is going to be different. Whereas like I can get these small little necessary tasks done first thing in the morning and then move on to something. If it's going to take a couple hours then that's something that doesn't. Might be a little bit more mindless. I can do in the afternoon so I know I'm way better in the morning so I'm going to make those important tasks in the morning.
- [15:32]
A
It's good advice too, but did you have something else to say?
- [15:36]
B
No, I just, I feel like I'm a self help book.
- [15:38]
A
You had to take a big breath there because that was a really good monologue. She's got so much value to give and only so much time to do it. Okay, so let's get into the situation. So we take back 12 cabins as well as several other properties at the same time. And we realize, oh my gosh, there's crazy deferred maintenance. The Decor is from 1997. The decks are in really bad shape. We have no Airbnb. We have the brand new Airbnb account that we have to put these listings all in. We have no reviews. And this is all happening a couple weeks before Christmas, which is typically when you want to have. Already have bookings. Just terrible, terrible timing. What do you remember about that phase and what were you thinking about that you didn't tell me? I.
- [16:29]
B
It was pure chaos. Because I don't know how much I can say of the stuff that we had to do, but it was pure chaos. And I feel like if we have a lot of pictures and video evidence from our cameras and stuff, but it. I feel like we were in a movie and we were doing this crazy thing. I think I had so much anxiety at that time about, because I, like you said, I have experience managing my own short term rental. And so I think my anxiety that I didn't tell you was that if something comes up, we don't have the bandwidth to fix it if a. If a guest doesn't have heat. And actually that did happen and we fixed it, of course, immediately. But if something big happens, like we don't have the bandwidth, we're a small team, we don't have the bandwidth to fix it. And with all the deferred maintenance, we didn't know what we didn't know. And so I was trying to downplay how insane all of that was, that I was very concerned that something crazy was going to happen and we wouldn't have the bandwidth to get it fixed.
- [17:34]
A
Okay, and do you remember anything specific about the trip that you were like? I didn't think it'd be this way. This surprised me that it worked this way. Something about yourself or the team that you learned when we got there.
- [17:47]
B
Yeah, I think that was a big lesson in planning out your day. And this, this could be specific to the Smokies, where if your audience is familiar with the Smokies, nothing is really close by. So these cabins are all. They're not super spread out. They're all in really great locations. But driving from one cabin to another could take you probably about 30 minutes. And so you just don't realize. You think, okay, I can hit all 12 cabins in a day? Absolutely not. You might be able to hit four cabins a day.
- [18:20]
A
Just the pure driving distance.
- [18:22]
B
Yeah, exactly. And that eats up the driving and the traffic and all of that stuff eats up so much of your day. Additionally, we had snow. We had a lot of snow and ice, which we weren't thinking. We didn't even think about stuff like that. We didn't really. We didn't prepare for. But I think that was the biggest thing is thinking we're going to get all this done in a short amount of time. And that was not the case because the driving distance. So you just. You really have to plan out your day and how much. Be realistic about how long each task is going to take you.
- [18:57]
A
Okay. We gave people long enough to put in the chat what they think or in the comments. The money that I received from the property manager was. This is a great reveal, Angela. The year before we took it back, how much money did I get of the $52,000 that this cabin made?
- [19:18]
B
You made $4,477.
- [19:26]
A
However.
- [19:29]
B
That number is in red. So you lost about $4,400.
- [19:38]
A
So what she's saying here is I paid $57,000 and I made $52,000. I lost about 4,400 bucks on a cabin in that year due to the crazy maintenance fees that the property manager charged me. Now, you need to understand, the property manager was the agent that helped me buy the property property, and they were the ones recommending you should take it over. This was one that they had been managing for someone else, so it was in their care before I even got it. So this wasn't like I went and bought a complete pig and handed it to someone and said, I need you to fix it. This was bought at the. The guidance of the property manager, and he had been managing this cabin before it was given to me. It was also given to me with numbers that were much higher than 52,000 that they were supposed to make about 20 to 25% more than what actually came in. So imagine my shock when I find out that this $52,000 went all to them and the mortgage company. And I paid about $4,400 for the right of owning a cabin after I dumped all the money into it. So, wild story. Now we take the cabin back, and it's going to be tough to be worse than that. It's going to be tough to be worse than $4,400 lost on the deal. The problem is we're taking it back. I don't think we got a Christmas booking right. It was like, pretty much too late to get those.
- [21:03]
B
Yeah, we. We had a lot of Christmas bookings. But again, I don't think this was.
- [21:08]
A
One of them, though.
- [21:09]
B
We're kind of on the edge of our seats. What was gonna happen.
- [21:13]
A
Right. So we get it back, and Christmas is kind of the last hurrah. The holidays and the Smokies, and then it's dead for January and February. It's. It's ice, it's snow. There's not a lot of people visiting. The trees are all dead. It's not pretty. There's people that go. Not nearly as many. This is not the time that you want to be trying to take over a property and figure out how to manage it on your own. And we have no reviews. There's nothing people can see that would make it show up in the algorithm. And I'm going to show you guys what it looked like in a second here. These were the pictures that the property management company was using to advertise the cabin to the people that were coming to them. Do you mind just sharing any details about how people should understand what we're about to show when it comes to the months of January and February for this area?
- [21:59]
B
Yeah. So, I mean, you're going to get Christmas bookings and the end of December, maybe, if you're lucky, you'll get New Year's. But occupancy in the Smokies is pretty low, even from Christmas to New Year's. Do you want me to share those numbers?
- [22:16]
A
The numbers for our property or the numbers overall?
- [22:18]
B
Overall, for this?
- [22:19]
A
Yeah. Yeah, that'd be great.
- [22:21]
B
So occupancy in the Smokies from really even beginning of December through January is only about 34%, meaning only 34% of these cabins are booked. And we're starting from way behind. And January and February are the slowest months of the year. It's cold. It's kind of. I actually wouldn't even say it's ugly. I think it's pretty in its own way, but those are the slowest months of the year, so not a great time to be starting. Or maybe it is a good time to be starting listing, because.
- [22:55]
A
Well, the problem is you're not building momentum on Airbnb and vrb. Right.
- [22:58]
B
Right. You're not getting reviews.
- [23:00]
A
You're not getting any reviews. You're not getting bookings. You need them to get them because you need them, and you need good ones to get yourself up in the algorithm. And it's sort of a game of winner take all. If you sit at the top of the algorithm on the online travel agencies, you crush it if you're lost in the shuffle. And no one ever Finds your property. It could be gorgeous, but no one sees it. So those properties tend to only book when all the good ones are taken, and then they just naturally go up the algorithm. But the people that are doing really good in any market are the ones sitting at the top. They figured out how to get really good reviews, get a lot of interest, get their property saved as far as people that like them. So this is a really bad start. All right, I'll go through the pictures, and then when people see what it looks like, then we'll tell them this is about how much money that it made.
- [23:46]
B
Can I add one additional thing to that?
- [23:48]
A
Yeah, go for it.
- [23:50]
B
So also, these bookings, when you start a new listing with Airbnb, they give you an option to give the first three guests 20% off. So we're trying to get bookings, but they're discounted bookings. And I'm sure most of your audience knows what happens when you give a discount. It unfortunately invites not our favorite guests. So that's an added element of complexity to this whole scenario.
- [24:19]
A
Good call there. Okay, so here's what it looks like. This is how it's being advertised when we get the property. The driveway is pretty steep. You can't really see that from the picture. It's not an ugly cabin, but, like, that's a terrible angle to get a picture of, right? Angela, doesn't everybody know that you don't take a selfie with the camera held beneath you looking up at your face?
- [24:40]
B
If they don't, I hope they will listen to your podcast. And now they know. So, yeah, you're welcome for the free selfie advice.
- [24:47]
A
This is the picture of the double chin. This is the cabin's double chin. That's what we're looking at right now. Not a great angle. Especially because, like, the. The up. The downside of this cabin is that you got to go up a steep driveway just to get to it. And then it's not huge, and it's not, like, super upgraded. The upside is it's private, and it's in a beaut on a beautiful lot. You. You don't see anybody else around you. It's secluded. It's really nice. You can't see any of the upside of this property in the way that it's being marketed here. So these are the pictures that the property manager company is using. You got your bare bin front and center right there. You got these, like, railroad tie blocks that are not in very good shape. You can see some green, but it's just not an Impressive view of this property whatsoever. Like, the main feature you're noticing is the stairs that are walking up the side of it. Here's the inside. It's a little bit smaller than most of the properties that we manage and that I have in the Smoky Mountains. So that's not a terrible shot. But, like, that's basically two couches and the kitchen and the dining table. That's the whole open space. The benefit here, or the positive side of this cabin is the big vaulted ceilings, which you don't get in the first picture that they're showing. Right here's the deck. You can kind of see there's a bit of a view, but it's also not a great angle. And you're. It's like kind of dark and shadowy. So I don't think that that's super inviting. That's another angle there of the. Of the family room. It's not terrible. You can see a little bit of where the light's coming in. So you're getting into where you're getting better shots that. What's your thoughts when you see this bathroom?
- [26:26]
B
I love a good bathroom shot.
- [26:28]
A
Yeah, but I mean, how do you feel about that shower curtain and that fuzzy rug?
- [26:35]
B
Just reminds me of my childhood grandma's house. She had those fuzzy rugs with the things that go around the toilet and the bath mats.
- [26:45]
A
That's what we're looking at. It looks like grandma's cabin. That's the problem. So you've got this ugly valence on the top of the window, which is blocking the nice greenery that you do want to be seeing. You've got this. The really old fishing pictures on the wall. And then not only do you have an ugly shower curtain, but it's reflected in the mirror. They could have just opened it and shown the shower, but they're amplifying the ugly here. If I'm a guest, I'm already done. I don't want to see this cabin anymore. I'm done. Four pictures in. I've given up. I'm moving on. Here's what the kitchen look like. It's not terrible, but it's not big. The appliances are a little bit older. The ugly valence, that just stands out to me. If it was white, at least it would match the appliances and would look like it's not tight end, but it's not. There's a picture that shows a driveway a little bit more steep, but still, like, I don't know. Put that at the end. Don't flaunt your property's worst feature and turn someone off who's already looking for a reason to leave. Another bathroom picture. There's the bedroom. This is the master bedroom, which is actually kind of an impressive space when you walk into it, but it has outdated rugs, an outdated comforter, and outdated curtain. So why don't you just share, like, part of what we felt when we saw that this is the way that they were designed and what we did in the new pictures they're going to see to improve that.
- [28:02]
B
Oh, where do I start? When? Before we started managing them and I knew about these cabins, I was really excited. And then you see the photos and you see the condition that they're in, and it just leaves a lot to be desired. And fortunately, there's a lot of ways where you can upgrade these that aren't expensive. But it really did feel like it was straight from the 90s.
- [28:29]
A
Yeah, there's nothing inviting to me about that comforter. It looks scratchy and itchy. It's. It's got the bear theme, like a Native American, like it belongs in a teepee. The rug, you can tell, is dirty from the picture, and it's very old. There's nothing about that that makes you think this is, like, a nice, fresh place to stay. It looks like it's frozen in time from 1998. Now, you and I look at cabins constantly, seeing what the competition is doing. And there are a lot of properties out there, a lot that look like this. So if you've got a rental and you're like, man, I need to figure out the secret to the algorithm. I need to find a person that has secret sauce. But that's what it looks like. Let me just tell you, friend, it's not going to get booked. You need to make it closer to what the guest wants and not look for, like, the workaround where you don't have to spend any money, but you just do something to, like, change something in the listing description. Like, what's the special word that's going to get me to the top? It doesn't work that way. This needed to be changed, and we did change it. Here's another picture of the front. That's a better angle of the bedroom. It kind of shows how big it is here. But again, that this is, like, 30% rug.
- [29:41]
B
Also, why are we using oriental rugs in a Cabin in the Smokies? And something else for your audience. If you own a Cabin in the Smokies and you look at this comforter and you say, this looks familiar, and then you realize that it's also in your cabin. Everyone uses those same bear quilts. So there are, like, there's a variety of. I think about three of them. So if you still have those and you haven't changed them out, please call us.
- [30:11]
A
No, I think this angle would have been a better angle to start with if I had to pick what picture to do, because there's some white in the fan that gives me a little pop of color with all the brown. And then you can see the bunk beds here are not the bunk beds, the day beds here, which are kind of cool. So it says Yogi's den and Boo Boo's den. And they created basically, a little, like, kids beds here that you can have young toddlers sleeping in the same room with mom or dad. I don't like. There's something in photography called the rule of thirds, that a good photo breaks into three pieces. So this one would be, like, one third rug, one third wood siding, and then all the rest of the features that you like are squeezed into, like, the tiniest part of the middle. You just don't want that. Right? You want to find a way to get a better breakup and get the property's best features featured, which does not happen here. The third picture of the driveway that's steep. They're just like. My thought is, when somebody takes the worst part of a property and shoves it in the front, that's a property manager who's trying to cut back on the amount of complaints they get. That is not a property manager who is trying to get as many bookings as they can get for your property. So what we do is we mention to the guests when they book it that there's a steep driveway. And if they want to cancel, now's the time to do it. And we don't just say steep, but, like, we explain, hey, in the rain or the snow or the ice, you need this kind of a car to go up it. And if it's summertime, you're going to be fine. So we don't hide this from people. But I'm not putting the worst parts of your cabin, the warts. In the beginning of when people are clicking through the pictures, there's another, better angle. I like this one. It kind of shows the fireplace. You get the. The light coming in on the vaulted ceiling. I think the photographer should. Should have gone up the stairs a couple so that a bigger percentage of this would have been light and there wouldn't just be as much wood because you only kind of see this tiny triangle of light, but it's still a better view. You can see the greenery outside. That's one of the better pictures, I thought. Here's what the deck looks like. It's kind of got like a half the debt. The cabin is wrapped around, not the full thing. Oh, there you go. Another driveway picture. Make sure you know where you're going. Now we get to the bathroom. It does have a soaking tub, but it just. It's old. That valence doesn't look good. You don't want gold faucets as much as you can help it. The decor is a little bit older. This is the arcade game. That looks very old. That looks like it smells like. Like cigarettes and disappointment. That's what that looks like.
- [32:42]
B
It also looks like you're grandpa built it. Yes, that's exactly right on the sides.
- [32:49]
A
That's exactly what it looks like. Yeah. And he's like, just sit here and play this game. I don't want to deal with you. It doesn't look fun. It doesn't look inviting. It doesn't look colorful. It definitely doesn't look modern. And it's wood on top of wood with this picture in the background. So you are technically showing that you have an arcade game. But none of that makes somebody want to go play it. That doesn't make me click book now. That makes me think like I'm clicking through and I'm hoping there's some reason to do it now. This is what I thought was our best picture from the pictures we had. You got to remember, folks, when we're talking about to getting this property back, these are the pictures that we have to work with. This is what we got to try to get bookings with. This is what the property manager had been using that had managed it before. I like the angle of the hot tub. I like the overhang of the hot tub. I like how you see all the green and you can still see what's going on the deck in the back while seeing the nice clean tub. This was our hero shot. This is the best one we had. You have anything, you want to comment on that?
- [33:50]
B
No, I think this is a. This is a good. This is a good angle. And we did recreate this one. But like you said, it shows the deck, shows the hot tub, the greenery. It's a good shot.
- [34:02]
A
This is showing your kitchen table there. Pretty straightforward. That's a better angle of the day beds that I told you about for the kids asleep in. Kind of cute. They have little curtains right here so you can close those I don't think that's a terrible picture. You're also not seeing as much of the oriental rug in the shot, so it looks a little bit better. There's your hot tub. This is the front deck. So when you come walking up to the cabin, again, that's a better picture. But you got this bear print that we just don't like. I don't. I think it needs to be more contrasted with the brown deck that all blends together and then these brown chairs which are not bad, but they are not welcoming. That doesn't make you think, I want to put my butt in that. It just makes you think like, man, any port in a storm, like if this is the best that we got, then maybe we'll book it. But imagine how bad the competition has to be before that is the cabin that you say, hey, I want to go pick. And that's what we were given. That's the pictures that we had. So before we get into some of like the progress pictures, what are your thoughts on what people should know about when you take a property over? When you first put up a listing? What are some things people should know about being ready when you launch a short term rental?
- [35:16]
B
O there's a lot. First of all, when you look at a property and you look at their numbers, that's not really accurate. There are a lot of things that you can look at. There's. There's so many different variables in a property, right? Like you just went through a ton, we went through the, how many bedrooms. There are the features, the hot tub, what's. What we have, what we don't have. The big thing is the pictures. If you're using cell phone pictures, which admittedly sometimes you need when you're updating things. But I think pictures are the big things. And then look at value add and amenities because so much of what people bought in the last five years. There's this common theme that people think short term rentals, you're gonna make a ton of money and I can set it and forget it, I don't have to do anything. And that's completely not accurate, as you know. So I think you have to look at it from a lens of all the different. If you basically have a bunch of different pillars and you can look at pricing, you can look at minimum night stays, you can look at the again amenities that are available or their arcade games. I mean, in the Smokies it's hard because your, your buy in is a hot tub and arcade games and a pool table. You have to have that if you don't have that. I mean, this one doesn't have a pool table, but that's okay.
- [36:45]
A
Different market, but probably the only cabin I think I have that doesn't. No, there's two. Two out of the 12 don't have a pool table.
- [36:52]
B
Yeah. But you understand what I'm saying? So there's. You're looking at amenities. You're looking at location, unfortunately. Location. You can't change location once you own a property, so. Yeah.
- [37:06]
A
All right. So those are the things that we inherited. Now, we did get a photographer out there and got some, like, emergency new photos that were taken. And so these were way better than what we had before. But as you can see, they're taken in winter time because it's not summer yet. So that's a. Probably a better picture than the one we had last time, but it's not great. You still just see deadness everywhere. They did a better job getting the camera up. Right. It's not up looking down like you want when you're taking a selfie, but at least it's even. You're not really, like, looking up nostrils from this angle. You can kind of see the glass up here on the top, which is pretty. Is one of the cabin's better features. But it looks so worn out. You've got moss all over the railroad ties. You've got the stairs that look like they're falling apart. It had just rained, so the property looks like it's, like, broken when it's really just wet. That's a little bit of a better angle. I. I like this one more. I didn't love the. The power lines, though. It doesn't look great when that's what you're seeing. But you still can kind of see, like, the top of the house. You see, it goes back a little bit further than what most people were thinking. It looks a little bit nicer. That's. That was our best one right here. Now, the only thing I don't love about this is, like, the car that's still parked at the bottom is probably the cleaner or something. But it's cool how you see this is a big lot. And, like, you can kind of tell that there's another property, but there's a bunch of trees blocking it. The sun's hitting it just right. I thought that was a much better picture than what I'd been working with before. These. I like these. Even if your property is not in it. The thing that shows the surrounding area and you put it in early for a Guest to see. I consider this an intrigue picture. This is a picture that makes you say, ooh, I'm now interested in this thing. It doesn't tell me about it, but it makes me want to know more. You got to get one of these in your top five or close. My opinion, I think you want to add about different ways that you've seen that we've used the intrigue piece. Pictures.
- [39:06]
B
Yes. The one thing you didn't mention. Whoever's doing your photos, make sure they do drone photos. If they're a good photographer, it is either included or does not cost that much extra to have drone photos. A good photographer, even a lot of mediocre photographers, they already include it and they know how to do drone photos. So if you're picking a photographer that doesn't do them, then you need to find somebody else because obviously that's how they get these. And I think they're super important to have in your listing, whether your property's in the Smokies or it's in. My property was in a beach market. I had drone photo to show how far the property was from the beach.
- [39:44]
A
Water. Yeah.
- [39:45]
B
Super important. So make sure that's the type of photographer that you're finding.
- [39:49]
A
Great point. Drone photos in almost every case are non negotiable. You need them. Now you can see. I think this looks a little bit nicer than the one did before. It's a better angle. You can see the furniture. It's more focused, but again, it's dreary outside. There's nothing the photographer can do about this. It's just overcast and ugly. Now you can see some of the changes that we made here. You've got upgrade upgraded drapes there. I think we probably should have had the blinds that were open, but they're still not bad. You've got the Love never fails sign that is in white. What we basically did was we added as much white to the decor as we could in contrast to just the brown everywhere. So I feel like we're already having an improvement. But it's not enough to get someone to be like, oh, I'm booking that one. But it probably is enough to keep them from getting turned off and just quitting. Here's another angle you can tell, like, rest of the cabin. Not super impressive, a little bit dark, but they look way better than the pictures that we had before. That's a good shot. I like that. That's a good angle. It kind of shows the stairs going up the banister and the railing is really Nice. And it shows from this angle. And then you've got the thirds, right. You've got the. The top one third. And then the bottom two thirds is the actual downstairs. And then you can see a third here is the couches. A third would be the hallway and then another third would be the kitchen and the dining room. So that's like a photographer who understood this is the right way that I want to split up how this thing looks. This is the game room. So people haven't seen this one yet. I don't think we had pictures of this in the last one. In fact, I think we only had the one bedroom in the other picture. So this is a God. I guess it would be. It was a two bedroom cabin with the game room. This was a game room. This is why Angela said it doesn't have a pool table. It wasn't big enough for that. It's big enough for an air hockey table. And thank God they were able to get the bear rug in here that everybody wants. We added a couple things like the lodge sign. We added this American flag cross. We. I guess you can't see this. It says stay a while right here above the arcade game. Anything you want to add about what the room looked like when we first got it? I hate it. You hated this cabin. You really did hate it. You would have wished it had never been born.
- [42:04]
B
It has. It has grown on me and I've spent a lot of time there. But there's just nothing made any sense. Like they just put things on the wall just to put them there just to like take up space. And it just the placement, the everything. I don't want to get on a soapbox here for your sake.
- [42:25]
A
But you just thought the room was cramped. You didn't like it. It's a crappy game room.
- [42:29]
B
Yeah. It just doesn't make any sense.
- [42:32]
A
Yeah. Now this TV I had added when I bought it, I said to the property management company, hey, let's put a really big TV on the wall. Like, let's try to spruce this game room up. But as you can see, like, they didn't even have the game room advertising the pictures. And then these, we added these after. So we put in the design that says the bear den. We've got this game that's like a wall chest that. I liked the game room and adventure signs to try to spruce it up a little bit here. So it definitely looks better than it did before. It's not a wow picture though. The TV's not. It doesn't look very Big. I swear, in pictures, TVs always look smaller. Wouldn't you agree? That's a really big tv.
- [43:10]
B
When you're in person, it is a really big tv. And I agree with you. For whatever reason, they look smaller in the photos.
- [43:17]
A
Yeah, I don't know. We don't know what it is. It's got to be the angle, because, like, the. The front here of this air hockey table looks very big. The TV looks small. We added the sound bar, so I put that in to make it a little bit nicer in the room. This is the other bedroom that people haven't seen yet. You can tell that we came in and we replaced the comforters. So we've replaced the drapes, We've replaced the comforters. This is a new picture that we put on the wall. This is new wall art. We already had the white fan. New TV was put in here. And the only thing that I don't like about this is this rug. I just think that we need to take the rug out and put in something a little bit brighter. But in my mind, this white works really nice against all the brown. If you've got an incredible amount of siding and you don't have a lot of money to go and fix it, you go and get decor like this, and you spread some white all over it, and you just make it look nicer newer. Anything you want to add on that?
- [44:12]
B
I just. In my head, I'm wondering, how long has that rug been there and not been replaced? Now, I'm not saying you need to replace your rugs every single year, but. Yeah.
- [44:25]
A
Well, here's the thing. If you're thinking that what you're getting at is the person who's booking your cabin is thinking the same thing when they look at it.
- [44:32]
B
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've stayed in a lot of Airbnbs as a guest with my family and nieces and nephews and brothers and sisters. Like big cabins and big beach houses and everything. And so obviously, I look at things from a different lens now, but I'm just thinking, how many people have stayed here? How long has this rug been here? I'm sure it's not cleaned on a regular basis.
- [44:54]
A
There you go. So get rid of it. Get something nicer in there. That would have made a big difference in these photos. You'll see when we get to the. The final photos that we're going to share. We just got angles taken where that's not showing up in the picture. And here's another angle of the bedroom. If this was what you guys had, I would tell you maybe you don't even include this in your listing. The bed looks small. The room looks incredibly cramped. It looks like the closet door can't even open without hitting the bed frame. None of the good features of the property are really like highlighted at this angle. Sometimes the pictures just come out like that. You cannot always control the way that it's going to look. My philosophy with the properties that we're managing for people is rather than putting every single picture you have in there, you put the pictures that make it look the best in there. And then you leave some intrigue so that people have something to look forward to when they get there. Here's the bathroom. Pretty much nothing done whatsoever at all other than the soaps and the towels. But you see, they just opened the shower curtain. To me, just opening it stops that ugly shower curtain from dominating the picture. Right. We could have opened the blinds a little bit, but hey, it's not green outside, so it doesn't look good. It's. Nothing was done in the bathroom but purely opening and like minimizing the ugly parts of the property. Stop it from being overwhelmingly grandma's bathroom. That's what it looks like from the view of the master bedroom upstairs. We haven't replaced that rug yet in these pictures, but you can tell new comforter. These are not expensive. We didn't go buy crazy expensive comforters. Right. This is just got rid of that God awful bear thing and replaced it with white. Put a throw over it and added a better together sign. A little bit of white. Right. That's it. And to me that's a better looking picture than what we had. A little bit more of the bathroom too. So you see some of the white of the. The toilet there. Anything you want to add?
- [46:54]
B
Yeah, like you said, we didn't do that much to this property before we had these photos because these photos were, gosh, a month after we had taken.
- [47:02]
A
It was like an emergency. Like we need new photos. These are hideous.
- [47:05]
B
Exactly. So we had somebody go down and shoot them. And again, these are very basic.
- [47:12]
A
They did great. They did the best they could do with what they had. We didn't have time to get hardly anything done other than the quick, easy things, which is like wall decor for the most part.
- [47:22]
B
Yeah. And those linens. And linens. And just having new photos taken and a throw blanket and that was kind of it for emergency photos. Just to work with something better than what was there. Huge difference.
- [47:37]
A
That's right. There's the kid dens. There's the upstairs bathroom. Almost the same angle. That's a nice little shot of the hot tub. Or not the hot tub. The soaking tub looks a little bit nicer than what we had before. All right, that's what we have for the second round. Now we're going to show what I call the progress pictures. These are the pictures that you and I took and we kind of used while we were getting it ready for the final pictures. Is there anything that you want to add before we get into that?
- [48:08]
B
No, I think we. You hit on it already?
- [48:11]
A
Yeah, I do that. I talk a lot. It's a good thing I have a podcast. I'd have nobody to talk to.
- [48:17]
B
I'm just glad that we are at the place we're in now with this property because it's the smallest one, so you feel you don't, you know, these things need to be changed and updated. But it's a small cabin, so it's easy to say it's the smallest cabin. It doesn't matter. When you see the afters and the numbers. After we made all these changes, you realize it's a huge deal whether it's a small cabin or not.
- [48:45]
A
That's a very good point. Now I should highlight for everybody. We did not go in and spend a hundred thousand dollars to get the property looking better. There wasn't that much money to spend. So almost all the things that we've added here were done on a budget. Buying them used Facebook Marketplace on sale at Hobby Lobby. What we could scrounge up. So this is not like, hey, here's a boom, amazing. Blast you with the nicest looking thing that you could ever see. This is how, frankly, I would recommend that most people start when they're trying to get their property turned around. So here's a picture of the game room we. This is taken with the cell phone. So these are still not the professional photos. Moved the air hockey table from long ways to this way. We added a bunk bed into this room, which was very fun. Trying to get in a narrow hallway. Do you remember having to take it apart and then put it back together and try to figure out what we're doing there?
- [49:42]
B
I love taking apart bunk beds and putting them back together. And the fun part is I think when we put it together, you had an emergency somewhere else. And so I had to put. I had to figure out those bunk beds are. They're child bunk beds. So they're not like that big or they're twin size heavy. But I had to put. Figure out how to Put the one on top by myself. So you're, like, moving it a quarter of an inch, and then you go to the other side and you gotta.
- [50:11]
A
Lift it and hoping it doesn't collapse on you.
- [50:13]
B
Yeah, yeah. And then moving it in, thinking you can fit it through the doorway, and then you can't. And then you have to take the whole thing apart. So it's all an adventure, I guess.
- [50:22]
A
So here's the plan. By putting bunk beds in here, we've now got a bedroom. So instead of saying we have two bedrooms and a game room, we have three bedrooms and a game room. This is one of the hacks that we like to use. When you have a game room and you want to increase your sleep count is you put bunk beds in the game room. Because kids don't mind this. You would never want adults sleeping in a place like this, but kids don't really care. So we move the sign that was on the wall over to here. We took that old multicade, and we kind of put it in this space around some other colors so it doesn't look as terrible. We added these LED lights to the top here. Maybe 20 bucks to do that. And we added two arcade games, which we'll show you, as well as some better shots. So here's the chess game that was moved over to the side. There's the tv. That rug. I don't have we changed that yet. I want to say we have.
- [51:12]
B
Yes.
- [51:13]
A
I guess we're going to find out. Okay. I thought so. Added a Mortal Kombat arcade game and a Ridge racer, which I got super lucky finding because these things sell for, like, 500, 600 bucks, if you could find one at all. So it's kind of like a game where you actually get to steer the car and use the. The pedal. That was hard to find. Was able to find that for, I think, 300. So I was very happy about it and kind of revamped the game room here. That's what it looks like at night. Oh, yeah. A new rug. There you go. You're right. I do remember getting that one. Now that all blends together sometimes. So that's kind of a cool picture of what it looks like when you turn all the lights off. There's another angle that was probably better. I believe you or Angela. The one that hung that sweet dreams sign up there on the bunk bed. And this is what it looks like with the comforters. And you get the rug taken up more of the picture. It looks a little more fun. It went from what it looked like before to this. There's your close up of the video games. That's another good angle. And then we've got the TV and the sound bar with the air hockey table. It is a respectable, cute game room at that point. Now, I didn't talk about this before. This is like the back of the cabin. So if you walked past the hot tub that we showed you, you go down these steps and there's like this little backyard. Useless. I like to look for useless spaces in properties and go, what could I put here that would not cost a lot of money? If you have a lot of money, maybe you put like a cowboy pool and you build a deck around it and you put some cafe lights over it or a sail shade. And now you've got a cool thing. But I don't know how well that would do in the mountains when you're just surrounded by bugs and branches falling into stuff. So we took this backyard space which previously they had a park style grill right here. And that was about all it was. It was kind of useless. Like no one's ever gonna go back there. They're not gonna do anything with it. And we did that. So this was not. That did not cost that much money. Each of these landscape timbers are probably eight bucks. I think there's probably like two stacked right here, one here, one here. So like a total of five of them. We bought these oak half oak barrel things from Home depot. They're about 45, $50 each. So there's about $200 of those. These four by fours, not that expensive at all, that were put into the bags of concrete. And then we put down this mulch and we got these Adirondack chairs. I think they might have already been on the deck. Am I right? We just moved them from the deck down to here.
- [53:46]
B
I believe so, yeah.
- [53:48]
A
And then we put a fire pit, which was also maybe like 70 bucks, 80 bucks that we bought on Amazon somewhere. And now we've got. You don't see it in the picture, you'll see it in the other ones. An actual fire pit in the cabin that did not have one at all for, I mean everything including labor, probably less than 1200, 1500 bucks. So you took a space that had nothing. Now you've got that picture, which when you remember the pictures that we saw at first, this is a nice improvement over where we were before. And these are cell phone pictures. This is me standing out there in a rush, irritated because I have to go do something else, snapping a picture when I'm not The best at it. But even I know that you get up high and you look down, you don't get underneath the chair looking up like the pictures that we had from before. So this is bear cub in. We put up our. Our coast coast getaway sign here. And then I put some mulch. I think that's what I'm showing. I put some extra mulch in the. The flower bed that it didn't have it from before.
- [54:51]
B
This was such a big improvement from.
- [54:54]
A
Where it was before.
- [54:56]
B
Yeah, like I don't know if you. We probably have one somewhere. But doing an actual video and showing that whole space and then seeing what it looks like now is just. It was a huge improvement. And I think one thing I can add is finding the right people. You and I can do. We can spread mulch, we can save some money in some places. But find. Finding the right people that will work with you on your vision on what to do. Like you said, we didn't spend very much on this fire pit, but we had the right person in place that was like, hey, yeah, I can do this. And actually I can save you some money because I can do it this way instead of doing it that way. And that's, I think another issue. When people are managed are self managing and they don't live there. It's really hard to find those people. And it's really competitive in the Smokies and it's super easy to take, be taken advantage of. So I think we're very lucky that we also have the right people that are in place to do that type of work too.
- [55:49]
A
It took a long time to find them though. Man, there's a lot of crooks out there. So here's like a side by side of what that looked like before versus now with the fire pit. Here's some pictures. Angela took her favorite as Luke Combs. So she likes to put him on the TVs when she's working in the cabins.
- [56:04]
B
And it's my go to.
- [56:06]
A
That's it. Rock out.
- [56:07]
B
You can't dislike Luke Combs. So it's.
- [56:11]
A
This is Angela setting records on Ridge Racer. She's a wiz.
- [56:14]
B
I do love that game. I didn't know you were taking that picture. That's how I was just in. I was into the game.
- [56:23]
A
I believe you about that. You had no idea I was doing it. All right. Now once we've got all the work done, we've added some other rugs. We finally get the new pictures of this property. Bear cub in. Look at that. You got A hero shot right there. It's green. It's a good angle. He used the drone like a pro. You barely see that same electrical line that runs through it. It just looks like tree branches. Because the angle he got. I love that picture. What do you think? Is it just me?
- [56:59]
B
No, I love this picture because before, it looks like I'm from Pennsylvania. We have. I'm gonna say this. So we have a. Some. We have a cabin in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. And it's just a box and those old.
- [57:14]
A
That's a real place. That's where the groundhog's from, right?
- [57:17]
B
Punxsutawney, Phil, is a real place. I want to tell. I'm very tempted to tell more, but I won't. I will spare you. But we have this small cabin in punk Saudi, Pennsylvania. And the before pictures is kind of what it reminds me of. It's just like this sad looking cabin. This looks like a luxury cabin hidden in the woods, secluded. A place I actually want to stay and know that I will have running water and hot water, unlike my cabin in Pennsylvania.
- [57:49]
A
He's got the Peekaboo right here with the hot tub right between. Angela went and ran these cafe lights. We put them everywhere. They don't really pop at the morning time like they do at dusk. So what we did was we just used like a photo editor to come in, and we made the lights a little more pronounced for the picture. And this becomes the hero shot that we're using now. Like that. When I say that, I mean the first picture that we. That we put on VRBO and Airbnb and everywhere for people to see immediately. Like, the only thing I don't love about it is the bare bin. I don't know what to do, but, like, the. The mulch that I put in here makes a difference now. I'm actually glad that I did it. You can see it when you're looking up at the cabin. You can't see of that. This, like, is really impressive with the beams that are up here at the top. It looks like kind of like the. A frame style. And you can see the light on inside by the fireplace. It's very inviting. That's what you. The. It's the same cabin, but this is so much more appealing to get someone to click on it and be like, well, what else does it have? Is it worth booking? And that's what you need in your first shot. You need to make somebody care. Next picture. This one's also pretty good. Like, you get the. The nice Background, you're a little bit closer. I feel like that just sucks you in even more. Like, okay, I want to keep looking. Show me else. Show me what else is there. I think the only thing I'd have done different would be to add some flowers in here to get some color. Problem is, they die when you get into the. The winter season. We did talk about that. This is the. The deck on the side. So there's your hot tub. We added this table with this umbrella, which the photographer very wisely put up there. You ran these cafe lights all the way around here and up above the hot tub. The plan was to run them like this all the way across. And Angela said, hey, if it's me who's staying here, that's fine, but, David, if you're staying here, you're going to run into these things and have them choke you. So we didn't feel like there was enough clearance to run the lights the way that we wanted to, but I think it still came out pretty, pretty good. You can also tell that you're, like, in nature. It still looks secluded. I don't know how he got this thing for some reason. That just looks cool. That one tree branch right there. What do you think?
- [60:01]
B
I like it. I love this shot because it doesn't even look like the same cabin as the other shots. And it's just a completely. It's the same house, but it's just the angle that he got just completely magnifies this property in this back deck. Yeah, he did a great job on these.
- [60:18]
A
This is a very good photographer. When we manage cabins for other people, we sort of insist that they have to use this guy to get new shots if they're not good. It's a really good roi. Here's the same picture that we have of the front of the cabin that we showed you earlier, where they had that ugly bare brown rug on top of the deck, and they had the ugly furniture we just added. Angela, what is this design? Would you like to share for people what this is?
- [60:45]
B
Yes. Buffalo plaid.
- [60:47]
A
Buffalo plaid. And Angela one time protested not having buffalo plaid laid down in front of my truck and would not let me back up until I agreed to do it. And they actually does come out pretty good. I didn't think they'd look as good in person as they did online.
- [61:02]
B
I'm proud of you for admitting that. I did fight pretty hard, and I'm so happy that you came around.
- [61:07]
A
Well, if you guys watch more of these videos, you're going to see that we have them in more of the cabins. They're in a lot of them now. Now, really good angle that he got on this one. You can see the. The cafe lights here. That's another thing we do. If there's not a lot you can do with the space, it just is what it is. And there's not a lot you can do to fix it up or you don't have the money to do it. We just put these lights all over it, blast it with lights, and just make it look much more inviting. Here's another outdoor rug that we added. And the idea here was we had a lot of wood deck. We wanted to add color. We wanted to give you something to look at and be like, oh, that breaks up all the brown that I'm looking at. He did a good job here with all the greenery. This is why we wanted pictures taken in this the summer, not in the winter. And you've got your outdoor grill and you've got your outdoor seating. Both of them have colorful decks. It's not an amazing shot. I mean, you could even see that. Like, we didn't talk about this, but when we got the cabin back, the decks were all rotted out. No one had said anything about it. It. So like, we had to go replace them with wood. It's weird looking, but when you put it, like, with these rugs, it sort of does. Your eye isn't drawn immediately to. It's not all uniform. So that picture is not as ugly as I think it would have been. There's a shot of the hot tub. Again, he did a really good job of showing. Like, you could be sitting here looking out with all the trees over you and enough. There's your thirds. Right. A third of the roof with lights, a third of the greenery, and a third with the hot tub. That's what you're looking for in your picture here is what the fire pit looks like. With his picture, I ended up putting down, like, a fireproof mat underneath the actual part where you burned the wood. Just because I wasn't sure what the mulch would be like. And if, like, an ember came off, I wanted to make sure that nothing bad happened there. But what a good shot. That looks a billion times better than this little spot spot that we had in the backyard before with just mossy ground. Would you make a s' more in that, Angela?
- [63:05]
B
I would definitely make a couple of s' mores until I was in a sugar coma, which is not hard to do.
- [63:12]
A
Yeah. But for like, a cute little cabin, not a huge One right. Three bedrooms. Now he opened up the blinds. You can kind of see like a peekaboo into the room here. I really like how that picture came out. And here is what the inside looks like now. So better angle. We wanted to get that valence replaced. I think we just missed it. Like, that catches my eye every time. I wish it was white, but it's not. It's not terrible. But I think that's a. That's a pretty good shot there. Here's another one. Make. See how we opened up the blinds this time? All that green. God, that looks so nice compared to where it was before. Just not being winter time. Such a big difference. Like, who wants to go look at a bunch of dead trees from inside the cabin? But this makes you think, if I'm sitting here, I'm still in nature, but I could be watching the game with a fire while somebody's making me a s'. More. And I was. I was trying to figure out what it is about this picture that made it come out good. I think it's the very top of the couch. It's framed really nicely where you have this one this way and this couch this way. I think that we probably, if we really wanted to, could replace these pictures. I don't think we got around to doing that. They still look a little bit old. That shot might look a little bit nicer in the future if we just go update some of the decor. Maybe that lamp could get replaced with something more modern and replace that light fixture. And that alone would probably make this, like, a completely different shot. But this is fine for now, but I think that, like, it could be even better. We were just in a rush to try to get these pictures scheduled. There's the same angle that you saw before. What a difference, right? A couple place mats or place settings on the table. The appliances were replaced from the white ones with stainless steel. And the new decor in the cabin, that's not a turn off anymore. It's not amazing. You're not like, I really want to go sit in that table. But you're getting more of the texture of the table. With the way that it looked, you can tell that it's, like, actually pretty expensive table. And I think it's much more inviting. That valence is just ruining this for me here. I need to stop letting that ruin my life. You see how in this shot, we don't have that ugly rug. That's just the photographer either taking advice from you or recognizing, like, the angle to be taking it. So the. The blinds Are open. You see the green. You don't see the rug. You can see that there is vaulted ceilings. But it doesn't feel overwhelming. It doesn't feel like the property is old and that the rug stinks. Same thing here. So we replaced the rug, as you can see. But it doesn't need to be in the picture. Right? And I think this one came out much nicer. There's your hot or your soaking tub. This is the bedroom. He didn't include the TV in this shot. I kind of like that. It's just like, poking in there because you don't have all the wires that were showing up in the other one. And it looks newer. You got the white drapes, the white fan, the white in the horse picture, the white comforter. And what is that design called? I remember buying it, but I don't know what it is.
- [66:12]
B
Is that supposed to be some sort of cathedral silhouette, like a window thing?
- [66:18]
A
I think this one looks a lot nicer than the pictures that, like, we had taken ourselves or what we inherited. And that's a pretty cool angle, too. So now you can see the tv. You can see the sign. Was it you that picked this one? You wanted it to be like, what do you call this? The notebook room. I choose you again and again. Oh, it was between that and if you're a bird, I'm a bird.
- [66:39]
B
The notebook. And what was the other one? Oh, Sweet Home Alabama. I think there's another quote.
- [66:46]
A
Yeah, there is one in Sweet Home Alabama. But let me know in the comments if you can remember the line that we are not remembering about. Is it so I can kiss you anytime I want? Yeah.
- [66:57]
B
She asked why he wants to marry her, and he said, so, I guess kiss you anytime I want. I thought that those are our two favorites to put in cabins and smokies for some reason.
- [67:06]
A
That's a cool picture, though, right? That's not a super impressive bedroom. You guys saw what it looked like with the angle of the person standing by the TV shooting the closet. And I'm like, I just better not to put it. That is a much more inviting picture. You're getting mostly the bed. You can see from looking at the thing looks a lot better. Here's the game room. How's that? Pretty. Pretty nice. Now, we would have taken the couch out. If you guys are wondering, why did you put the couch in there? It's cramped. I know. We tried to take it out of there. It would not fit through the door frame. We would have had to literally disassemble a couch and carry it out together when it was dumping rain and had a bunch of stuff to do. And so we made the executive decision to just leave it. Do you have any regrets about this, Angela?
- [67:51]
B
No, I never have regrets when we quickly realize we have to burn the cabin down to get the couch out. Let's leave it and figure it out and move on to something else.
- [68:01]
A
Yeah, it's not terrible. Um, a couple things that I would change about the picture. As you notice, we had these comforters put on because they're a little more kid friendly. I think if he was a little bit higher, you'd see a little bit more of them. Uh, it's not bad, but I do like how those look. I'd probably put like a Pac man decal or something on this. It's just a little magic. Now it's too much brown. No, we can put something. There needs to be some color on this. I think that would make a big difference. I like the way that the lights came out. I don't know enough about photography to know how they make them pop like that, but that looks really good. But that's a good angle, I think. I think, like, if you're a mom, that's inviting. Like, other kids would like that. Look at that. So much better than what we tried to figure out on our own. I mean, that. That came out so nice. I would just change this game room sign. I'd put something up different instead that was a little bit more modern. Change out the lamps. But the point here is not to say we are perfect. It's to say even when you don't get everything right. Even when I look at this and I'm like, we were at a mad dash to try to get this thing turned around so that we could get it booking and just not be bleeding money constantly. We're going to share the numbers in a minute here. Even with. We just did the best we could in a short period of time. Look at how much better this is right now. We can go back when we have more time and we can change out the lamps and we can change out the artwork and we can add something else that would look like. It'd be nice if we had adventure on one side of the TV and then we had something on the other. You know, hiking Rome, whatever the case would be. But it's just. That's. Now the property is getting bookings, and it's just a little bit of improvement. The bunk bed was 150 bucks included. The mattresses. The wall art was probably a total of 150 bucks. The sound bar I bought used for 50 bucks. So we're at like $350. Was there anything else in here that I'm not? Oh, the rug. Rug was probably 70 bucks. So we're under $500. Oh, no, I'm. I'm way off here. We had the arcade games. Two arcade games that were added. That was 500 bucks total. So we're at what was I, 425 plus 600. Probably less than 600, but yeah, we're at about a thousand bucks to get this big of a difference in the pictures for this room. And that's what it looks like from the other angle. So I was very happy with how this, this picture came out. Here's the picture that Angela mentioned that we had recreated, like, just right over the top of the hot tub. All right, folks, we've got so much details in today's episode that it's going long. And because I don't want to make you listen to an entire hour and a half podcast when you got a lot of stuff to do, we're going to cut this one off and next week we're going to pick it up where we share part two of the Bear Cub in Transformation, including details before and after pictures and stories of what you can do to get your property doing better, as well as specifics that you can look for when it comes to design, photography, and even a conversation about pricing that you probably haven't heard from anybody else before. So stay tuned. Thank you. Leave a comment, Let us know what you thought about today's show. Subscribe and check out part two next week. We'll see you guys next week on the David Green Show. Sam.