Episode 059 - STRR - How and Why You May Want to Theme Your BNB

Adding a Theme or an Experience to your Airbnb can be just what you need to set you apart from the crowd… ESPECIALLY if you’re in a saturated city or somewhere out in the Boonies.  Your Guests need a reason to choose you and we will tell you all about adding a theme and one Critical Mistake that could end with you sitting in a courtroom and how you can avoid it.  Plus, adding an Experience is a great way to pull in extra income doing something that you love to do already.

Transcript of this Episode:

Hi, it's Michelle, the master of money mindset, and you are listening to BNB dash boss podcast, and it's Friday.

Friday are repeat days. And today we are going to be doing themes. We're going to be talking about themes, especially because we just had that wonderful interview with Erica. And so I thought this would be a great followup. So we're going to talk about themes and experiences with our BnBs. I'm going to be listening in going along with you guys off.

I need to pop in here or there I will. And I'll come in at the end and go over things with you. This is from our short-term rental revenue. And it's talking about how to theme your B and B. I want you to listen to Erica's interview that was on Monday. This type of theme is a theme theme. It's not just the name.

So some themes could be like, ah, we want it to be like an ocean, or we want it to feel deserty, or we want it to feel like this. And some themes are all out theme. We're talking about those themes. Okay. We're going a little overboard here because sometimes theme house is really rule when it comes to making money in certain areas.

And so this is all about themes. Take a listen, and I'll pop in at the end. Enjoy. We're going to be talking about. B and BS. This is a great way for you to earn some extra income or attract new guests and customers to your BNB. If you're living in a place that's out of the way, or maybe there's a lot, a lot of competition.

So if you're living in a place like Florida now, where you just find more and more and more and listed, you can stand out from the crowd, having a fee. BNB. So I'm going to go over a bunch of themes and I've got a bunch of information for you guys about them. Okay. What's really cool about themes is if you're living in a place like Florida, where there's a lot of competition going on, you need to find a way to stand out.

Now it used to be before Airbnb, almost all vacation rental properties in Florida looked exactly the same. I mean, everything was based. Or with a very light pink, you could pretty much switch one person's couch for another person's couch and not be able to notice they had those either the Wicker furniture with a big tropical print.

I mean, it was pretty, pretty standard. And for a while, when we were buying in the nineties and even two thousands, you, I mean, you really couldn't tell any place from another. You could have picked you up and set you anywhere in the Orlando metropolitan area. And you couldn't say you're like, I can't even tell you where I am, but nowadays everything is changing the old neighborhood.

As long as they're close, people will stay in those, but the farther away you are, the more you have to offer people because people have a lot of options. There's so much competition out there that it keeps the prices nice and low for the people who are staying there. So you can't pick up a really nice property and expect somebody to drive all the way out to Davenport.

And I'm using Florida as an example, but you can probably fill in the blanks to almost any location. So let's say we're over in California and people want to go to the beaches or go to Disneyland or go to Knott's Berry farm or something. And you're like, oh, I've got this great place in Huntington beach.

That's great. Well, you can't expect people to drive from a burb that's farther away. You know, you're going to charge all this money for it. And you're wondering why you're not getting anything location, location, location. Okay. Especially when there's a lot of competition, the number one thing when you're purchasing a BNB or renting out a BNB is going to be location.

People want to make sure they're close to whatever. Activity that they're going for. Okay. So if they're going to a place and let's say they want to attend a seminar and they're going to be at a convention center, they want something close to the convention center. They don't want to have to drive a half hour.

And if they do, they expect to pay a lot less than if they didn't. If you are, you know, your, your property is far away from any amenities. You're not going to get that top dollar, just know that more so in a BNB than any other thing. Now, when you're buying a property to buy seller flip, it's totally different.

Every neighborhood seems to kind of hold its own. And as long as you're, you know, getting the value of the neighborhood, you're like, oh, this is the value of it. Property, not so much with short-term rentals because short-term rentals are honestly, it's the number one thing is location. Whatever you want to go there to enjoy whatever they are visiting your city for, they want to be close.

And so when you are renting or buying a short-term rental location, location, location, that statement can not be more. Okay, but here's the deal. Now there's so many places that are extremely saturated with B and BS that the competition is getting more and more, you know, it's just getting tough out there.

Right? It's getting tough out there. You're going to have to really put a lot of makeup into it. And that means you're going to have to get great pictures. You're probably going to want to pay more, having your property decorated by profession. And those are going to be things that make you stand out, but even more so now it's coming, becoming more and more popular to have themed areas.

And so when I was checking this out, I was looking into all these different themes and I was like, this is freaking fantastic. Now I know of a guy in Florida and he has several large properties. We're talking 10 bedrooms and more unsolved his properties. So there's a lot of, a lot of room to work with.

And he rents them out for a lot of money so that people can run them and have entire families go in. So maybe a family reunion or maybe a business where you get a group of business, people on you're doing some team building activities, things like that. So you can have all kinds of themes. I love the idea of team building activities and renting out to big groups of people and doing team building activities like rope challenges and things like that.

Those kinds of activities, those kind of themes. Make your property more desirable and make you stand out, especially in area. Where there is a lot of competition. Now, also, remember we talked about this. If you're an in an area that's way out in the middle of Timbuktu, nowhere, you've got to have a reason for people to come out to you.

So yeah, maybe you've got a cabin in the woods and that's, well, that's kind of scary, right? Kevin in the woods. Um, one of my favorites. But if you have a cabin in the woods, that's a good enough reason for people to come out and your place is a destination, right? So that's kind of cool, but get this. If you have a theme, it brings even more desire.

People will travel out to you. So let me give you an example. There's a lady and she's out in the middle of the desert, right? Between Arizona and California in the middle of nowhere. Right? You take the 10 out and you drive. I mean, there's nothing out there. Just desert, desert, desert. And I don't mean desert with pretty CAC die.

I mean, desert, I quit nothing, like say a desert and this lady, she has a house and what she did was she's an artist and she tiled it. It's just this really cool, you know, Dicker paused everywhere and tiles, different tiles everywhere and super amazing. So she made her. A visual, just like this it's eye candy.

It's absolutely beautiful. And there's a reason for you to go out there. People will go out there specifically to stay at her property because it's so unique and that's what you want. So if your place is saturated or if you're way out in the middle of nowhere, you want to give people a reason to go and find you and themes are a really great reason.

So, what I did was I went searching for all these different themes and holy cow, it was so fun. I found so many fun places to go. And I was like, I got to visit this place. I got to visit this place. Oh my gosh, this one I've got to go. I've just got to go check it out. But if you look online and you, especially, if you go to like YouTube, And you take a look at the videos that are on there.

You're going to see a ton of awesome themes. And then we started coming up with some ourselves. Now, when you look at Walt Disney world and the Orlando area, there are two basic theme parks that are competing for everything. Obviously there's SeaWorld and Busch gardens. Two is out there and those are great theme parks.

If you want to go to them, but the two busiest and best. Theme parks in Orlando are going to be the Walt Disney world theme parks and the universal Orlando theme parks. Both of those have multiple parks. Disney world is not like Disney land. As I used to love to argue with my father, you know, he would go, oh, you're going to Disneyland again.

And I would roll my eyes and go Disney world dad. Big difference between Disney world and Disneyland Disney world is 40,000 acres. And Disneyland, you can fit all of Disneyland in just the parking lot of the magic kingdom. Oh yeah. Done drop the mic and walk away because Disney world is massive, huge, and there's like a competition that goes on between the fans of both of them.

But as a Disney fan, you're like, okay, look, you can't compare the two. There's also four major theme parks. When you go to Walt Disney world, you have Epcot center. You have the animal kingdom, you have the magic kingdom and you have the Disney studios, which used to be MGM studios, but no longer years ago, it was so slow there for the longest time.

They basically had just a few rides that were really, really good. The tower of terror and the rock and roller coaster. And then they added toy story. Yeah, it was. Little ride where you pull this little chain on a baby cannon and you, you play like you're inside of an arcade or something. And so it's super fun.

And that was really great for a while, but now they've added a lot more stuff. So the new toy story land opened up, and honestly I found it underwhelming. I was like, I mean, they had some, a couple of great rides, but there's no stores, no nothing, which is really weird because almost every Disney ride ends in a store.

And you're expecting way more stuff and it was kind of boring, but the star wars land opens up and that's going to be incredible. And hopefully it will do to the studios. What avatar or pen Dora did to the animal kingdom, because the animal kingdom used to be kind of boring as well. You know, I mean, it's animals and it's a lot of fun and it has Everest, which was a really great writer is a really great roller coaster ride.

But it was like, eh, you know, after a while, you're just like, okay, I love going on the safari, almost all my kids. It's like, let's go on the safari. Let's hit this ride, this ride. And then we're out. I mean, like we don't have to stay there all day at all. And one of our favorite places, they shut down that we used to love to go and eat at.

And we're like, eh, now they don't have that. And if you saw the river show that they have at night, if you saw it once, you're like, whatever, I don't need to see that again. It is to me, it's underwhelming as well. And it's definitely not worth the crowds and definitely not worth sitting in the heat and humidity, watching with a bunch of people so that you can mush together in a giant mobbing go outside.

But last year, They opened up Pandora, which is like from the movie avatar. And I'm telling you, okay, first you get to go on the river ride. And the river ride is really cool. And you're like, oh, beautiful, beautiful. Right. You go through it. And you're like, okay, this is really cool. I like this. Then you go on the real ride, the avatar ride, where you're riding on a banshee and I'm telling you that ride is the best.

In any amusement park, anywhere in the world is my favorite ride. My son's favorite ride. We got off that ride. We looked at each other, we basically started crying. You were just like this, this, the most beautiful ride I've ever been on. It's like, it's amazing, man. It's so cool. You can not explain it to me.

And I'm one of those Disney people. I'm there all the time because I I've had, uh, Disney annual pass for years and years, and I have a universal annual pass and we go all the time. And when you go all the time, you're kind of jaded. You're like, I'm not waiting in line people. I'm not, I don't go on weekends.

You know, there's no way I would go on weekends and there's no way I go during busy times. I only go during certain times of the year and I never wait over 10 minutes when a ride is more than 10 minutes long. I know. I'm going to be back and I can go on it again and I'll just walk right on. I'm not going to waste my time.

We sat there and all of us were like, I would wait an hour. They were like, what? You wait an hour for this ride, mom. And I said, yes, I would have waited an hour. And they're like, would you wait an hour and a half 90 minutes? Yes. Yes. I would wait 90 minutes. It was like a game to see how long I was like, okay, two hours.

I would wait two hours for that. And it was like, you know, how many notes can you sing this? And I was like, I would wait two hours for the, the Pandora. Right. It's like, because it is such an amazing ride, but what it did for the park was tremendous. It brought an influx of people back to the animal kingdom that it had lost.

It was kind of, you know, it, it kind of lost its um, an after you had been there a while, you're like, eh, it was basically like a zoo and it's cool. I mean it's, it's super cool. Not that it's not, it just, you know, after a while, you're just like, eh, do I want to go? It's kinda hot out that, you know, there's going to be lines, but Pandora brought that back for everybody.

And that was pretty cool. So anyways, now the new star wars land is opening up and that's inside of the studios and that should bring another influx of people. Now, on the other side, if you go up the four, just a little ways, you will hit universal studios. My kids adore universal studios. It's basically the favorite of almost everybody.

Like if the family took a vote, universal wins hands down to Disney. And the reason why is the kids aren't babies anymore. I mean, there's not, when you go to the magic kingdom, it's like, you know, there's a lot of little kids stuff and it still does. And then you get those people who are Disney freaks, where they just buy everything Disney.

They just gotta be there every day. And they've got a million Disney ears and I don't know what that's all about because I don't get it. I'm like I don't get it. My kids don't get it. We're fans of Disney. We liked Disney, but by no means, are we like we have to have everything Disney, not to say that if you don't walk in our house, there's a ton of Disney stuff.

There's always a ton of Disney. Because it's cute. Right? So you'll pick something up, but we don't have to have everything Disney and we don't have to have every shirt. We'll still wear universal shirts inside Disney and Disney shirts inside universal. It doesn't matter to us. We don't care. But one of the best things we like about universal is the Halloween horror nights.

And you guys have probably heard me say that once a year, I spend an entire month at my place in Florida and. We stay there for the Halloween horror nights. We're there for something called the rush of fear, which is the first three weekends. We go every single night that it's open for three weekends and it's so much fun.

We D we go during the day and we do something called the lights on tours, where they take you through the mazes, um, like six of the mazes with the lights on and you get to see how they do everything. And we've done the rip tours, which is the rest in peace tours. It's like a VIP version at Halloween rip, like rest in peace.

But the rip tour has like a front of the line thing ever since we've been going and we've gone for a long time. We started at the universal in Hollywood and then we switched over. We just, you know, it it's easier. Now this is funny because we're only like a five-hour drive. LA when we're at our house in Phoenix, but when we would rather drive and I would rather drive than even fly so that I can have my car and I can take my business stuff with me and my computers and everything.

I take everything with me, load every, get everything up and I drive all the way to Florida. And I do that several times a year to stay at my place. I absolutely love Florida. I would much rather be in Florida than the heat of Arizona, especially in the summertime. And my husband loves Arizona. So we keep residents in both places.

And if we had to choose, I would definitely choose to stay in Florida and he would definitely choose to stay in Arizona. But when it comes to theme parks, that's like one of the things people love those themes, right? What is the biggest draw? At universal when it's not Halloween, it's going to be the Harry Potter world.

And it's because Harry Potter in universal Orlando, there's two theme parks. So you have islands of adventure and you have universal theme park. So you have two theme parks and each of them have two different parts of Harry Potter. One has Hogsmeade and the other has London. And Diagon alley and then the train transports you back and forth to both.

And the train is its own little ride as well. And so there's a lot, a lot to do there. It's a lot of fun and both parks are so much fun. I mean, there's so much stuff to do at both of them. I wasn't really fond when they took out a couple of my favorite rides. Or my favorite, even when they remove jaws, we were like, what they're taking jaws out, but then they put London in and you're like, ah, okay.

I'll, I'll kind of miss jaws. But then when they put Jimmy Fallon in, I was like, seriously, this Jimmy Fallon Ryan is lame, may as well go back to, uh, Jimmy neutron. But they've got, because they take Jimmy neutron out to put the minions and I was like, okay, I'll take minions. Jimmy neutron, but I definitely would take Jimmy neutron over Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Fallon ride, but I'm like, all right, whatever.

I think they just had to get Jimmy Fallon in there. Maybe they paid him a lot of money, but those are all owned by the same companies. Right? So here's the deal, lots and lots of people are doing these themes and I've always been waiting for these theme parks to crack down on the people who are using their themes without permission, because a lot of times.

Have the characters in there, like the princess themes. Ooh. They use that Disney princess. I wonder if they got permission to do that or they're using the Harry Potter theme or they're using the monopoly fame from the game monopoly or they're using whatever, do they have permission to use that?

Especially when they're advertising it out there because when people see it. Then that's part of their intellectual property, you know, Milton Bradley or Disney or Warner brothers or universal studios. I mean, all of these things belong to a company, so you have to be incredibly careful about what you use.

And honestly, I would go through the trouble if I were going to do a themed, you know, room or house or whatever, I would go through the trouble of writing. And getting permission to use the things that I was using in my advertising and say, I am doing a themed room. I'm using fat head stickers. I don't know if you guys know what those are, but fat head.com is this place.

Especially with five kids, believe me, they have enough of my money, but they basically make these big wall stickers of characters from different movies or star wars or. Um, hockey players and sports stars, and they're big they're size wall art just kind of stick on and you can peel them off later. But my kids have been using them for years, years.

They've had their little so they're trademarked and they, I have permission from all the different companies to use, use those themes, but you copying their art or using their intellectual property to market. Your property in order to sell it and book it is absolutely illegal to do so there are ways to go around it.

For instance, instead of drawing or painting a picture of Harry Potter, you can theme a room around Harry Potter, so they don't necessarily own a castle theme, correct. Or a train. But as soon as you put a logo or something that makes it unique to Harry Potter, then you are, you're basically taking away from them.

So when you take your pictures of a property, let's say you do have a train. And then on, there is the Hogwarts express. You want to make sure that you take a picture of the train, but not the logo that says Hogwarts express. Do you understand? So the train itself, they don't own, and you can market that as your property.

However, if you market it as Hogwarts express that part of the picture, if that's in your listing, you can get in a lot of trouble if you don't have permission. So you want to make sure that any part of a picture that you have posted on your listing does not have anything with somebody else's intellectual property on it.

I'm not really sure where the stance is on. If you have purchased something like from fatheads and you put that on the wall, that seems to be fine. And they seem to be okay with that because that property is already licensed and you purchased it through a license. But marketing it as your property and selling it as that is entirely different.

So instead, just be very careful how you take your pictures and how you post your pictures, that you are not using someone else's intellectual property and therefore you won't get in trouble for doing it. A theme can be still a theme without using someone else's intellectual property. And you can get very vague if you want.

So for instance, if you want a copy of the board game monopoly, you could take all the property cards and just make a, you know, a nice big square up there and then have the colors, but not the words. Gives the idea of it, or you can black it out or blur it out. I would definitely make it so that they could not tell that you at the house, you have the words on there because when you put park place on that square with that color behind it, that definitely is monopolies.

So Hasbro owns monopoly and you don't want to go against their intellectual property. So when you. Take a picture of any piece of that. You want to make sure that nothing can, it's like, oh, that kind of reminds me of monopoly, but you don't want to use park place. You don't want to use, get out of free jail card.

You know, that that corner pieces, you know, pass go collect $200. You don't want to, you don't want to use those things. You want very vague, vague things. So colors, color schemes, things like that. In the pictures. Okay. Now, when they get to your property can be as Harry Potter or as monopoly as you want, but when you're marketing it, the pictures that you have must be very vague.

Okay. That would be using their intellectual property to sell your product. Or to market your property. And that's a no-no Disney. I know that one time a daycare used a bunch of Disney characters and they had an artist paint them on their wall and they had something in somewhere, I think, where they were on a television station for something.

And there were the pictures of the Disney characters and Disney went after them. And you're like, really? It's a daycare Disney, come on. Really? There's a bunch of kids there and stuff you're going to make a daycare pay you, but okay. So they did, they made them paint over it or something else. And actually all they had to do was go and buy those fat head stickers and they could put the fat head stickers all over the place, but you don't want Disney coming after you.

That's just the, you know, the main thing. And I have another friend who does a podcast and he used a logo in his podcast that was very similar to. The Starbucks logo and one of his episodes, he was like hit. The first thing he played was the recording of the attorney for Starbucks, contacting him about his logo.

And he had to change the colors a little bit, but it was really funny because it has nothing to do with coffee. They're not in direct competition, but for some reason, Starbucks thought that maybe he shouldn't use something that was too similar to what they did. And I, and his podcast was about having coffee and a conversation and stuff.

So whatever, sometimes these guys can go after you and sometimes not so themes that are safe to use or no one would come after you would be themes that are generalized. Right. So if you had an ocean. No one from the ocean is going to call you not Aqua man, not king Triton. Nobody's going to call you and say, sorry, we want your vote.

You know, you've got to have our permission to use this ocean logo. So you want to use generalize things if you're not sure, or if you plan on really advertising the crap out of it, right. Just be careful again. What's cool about those is they might not care. That you're advertising for them because they might take it as you're advertising for them.

But who knows? It's definitely one of those things where I would just be more careful and say, Hey, I'm going to be doing this. And they're going to be doing a, maybe a local show is going to be doing a quick story on us. So I just wanted you to know, or maybe get permission from you or to have it. Be shown on television or whatever, but if you're using just generalized stuff, you could totally get away with it.

Just remember there's times where you get close and times where you go over, whether or not you need permission. And a lot of times you're not going to need permission, as long as you're not advertising it in such a way where it makes it you're using their stuff without their permission. So just be careful.

Oh, you know what, let me tell you the story. I absolutely love, love, love Joe Vitali. And I've been a fan of his books and his programs for many, many years and a few years back. I'm trying to think maybe a decade back. It wasn't too, too long ago. He started, he wrote the book called zero limits. And it was all about Dr.

Hulin, who was a doctor who studied in Hawaii and he did this, um, meditation called ho Pono Pono, and the meditation actually cured an entire hospital of patients. And anyways, with ho upon a porno, Joe got really into it. Right. So he started doing these trainings with Dr. Hulan. Doing all this whole old Pono Pono stuff.

And he got together with a friend of his Matthew Dickson and they started creating music together. Joe Vitaly actually is amazing, amazing at guitar. Actually, he plays a bunch of different instruments and his friend, Matthew Dixon, equally as genius. And the music that they made together has this vibration.

Cleansing vibration with a whole open opponent. It's absolutely beautiful music. And I began listening to zero limits and a bunch of others. I mean, I have every single one they've ever done together and they're absolutely amazing. And so when I first started doing my seminar, You have to get the license, the music that you play at your seminars licensed, you have to pay to play any music at any of your groups.

And I, you know, I was playing songs and you're like, okay, here's a song this and night, you know, I was like, ah, this, the music was just like, it was something you had to have. I mean, it helps people at re raises their energy and helps them. To get into the mood, but at the same time I wanted something more.

And one time I was doing a meditation and I was using their music. Joe Vitaly is music and Matthew Dixon's music. And I was like, you know what, I'm going to write them and just see if they'll allow me to play their music at my seminars. And so I wrote them this letter, this lovely letter, and I I've never met them in person actually, which is really kind of weird because I.

Done all kinds of work for all kinds of people and especially in the seminar industry and why I have never attended or gone to a Joe Vitale one. I do not know because he's one of my favorites and it's just never come up and I've never had the opportunity. It's always at the same time something else was.

So I never got a chance to, so here's a guy I never even got to meet. And I wrote a letter and I told him just how moved I have been by his books and his music. And would it be possible if I could please have permission to play his music at my seminars? And if I did, you know, I would, I would definitely promote them.

And he, like, they wrote back this amazing email to me and said, yes, of course, please do. Like, it was, there was no limits on it. It was just the most giving, loving thing. Yes, please, please. And, and if you listen to their music, um, if you come to one of my live events, you'll, you'll hear it, but it's absolutely beautiful.

I'll actually put some links on inside the site or inside the notes here for the show notes. But when you listen to their music, it's so amazing. It's very calming, especially for somebody like me. Who's like all over the place. But their music is extremely calming and here was just a loving gift, but the request was answered in such a great way.

So a lot of times I think it's just better to ask, just ask permission. The worst that they could possibly say is no. Also, I mean, if they do say no, you can find out, I'm sure we can find out how far is too far. I mean, if you're using licensed things like fat. And you're going to a website and you're buying licensed materials that you're putting up on the wall.

Then how is any of that illegal? Everything has inspired anyway in one way, shape or form. So how much leeway do they really have? How, what is the rule? What is the, their arm's length to reach you and tell you to use or not use their products? There's only so much they can tell you to do. If I, if I go out and I paint walls to look like ice, I mean, there's ice all over the world doesn't necessarily mean that it's from the movie frozen and I could even make it look like a nice castle and it doesn't even make it from frozen.

It could be from anything. But when I take the frozen girls, the two princesses on an Elsa and I buy them off a fat head and I placed them on the wall. I've actually purchased licensed products. So how far can Disney go and saying that I can't show that or use that you're not selling that you're selling the rooms.

So it's one of those things that need to be interpreted by law. And there was no precedent to it anyway, so whatever, but I just want you to be careful. So really quickly, I'm going to go through this cool list of a bunch of different BNB. And BNB scenarios and themes that I found on the internet. And I'm going to put these a ton of links in the show notes.

You guys are going to love this. If you go on, you'll be able to see some of these places and get some ideas. And then if you find some, you post them there too, we'll put them on the Facebook site and we'll have a bunch, just a bunch of fun, finding more and more with different themes because some of them are really, really cool.

I found a ton of Hobbit. All over the world. And some look extremely similar in you're like, Hey, that looks like the one that's in Indonesia. And this looks like it. I mean, they're absolutely really cool, but everybody takes something that means something to them and really goes forward with it. And you can to anything, I think that you can have a theme, anything that you want and it will work so you can, you know, school houses and whatever.

I mean, it doesn't really matter horses. If you love horses and dogs. It doesn't matter. Firehouse subs used firehouses and they, you know, people love their subs and they love going there. So, I mean, it really doesn't matter where you pick a theme, just go with a theme and sell the theme. So here are some of the themes.

I think I've already mentioned a few, but here they are, again, Oreos Coke, Pepsi games, including board games, candy, land, monopoly, risk of video games, Mario brothers Pac-Man things like. Theme parks. You could go Disney and with Disney, you can go all the princesses, all the movies, lion king. I mean, you can hit Aladdin.

You can go through, um, the Marvel comics. You can go through superheros, universal studios. You can go through again, more superheroes and you can also go through king Kong movies that they use at universal, the minions or Harry Potter. You can do castles tree houses, the habits, the habits series, right?

Lord of the rings, ninja turtles, Batman safaris, honeymoons, the ocean 50 shades of gray. Yes. There was a house with a 50 shades of gray room and that was I ex um, yeah. Yikes. Uh, rock and roll. So you can use fifties themes, seventies, eighties, the roaring twenties. There were wine cellar themes. Um, you can use all kinds of Venice, so you can use destination themes, Paris places, right?

Las Vegas, uh, cruise ships. You can have little portals, you know, portholes, like if you're on a ship, right. Farm and sustainability. So people were having people come to their place and learn how to plant and pick vegetables. You know, get the eggs from chickens and things like that. So you can use that Halloween circuses, carnivals, Funhouse, outer space, soda parlors, arcade rooms.

I mean, literally guys, anything you can think of. Anything you can think of, you can use. And I mean, if you're an artist, you can have people come in and you can not just have a themed house, but you can actually have themed activities because Airbnb does all these new experiences. So you can do Airbnb experiences and actually have people come and you will show them how to do something.

So if you're an artist, maybe you can show them how to paint. Or make clay art or ceramics, or you can, if you're really great with a destination, you know, the history of your city, maybe you're in El Paso, you can take them over to the Alamo and take them on a tour and give them a really detailed tour of your city.

Something you're extremely proud of. Or maybe you love your university you're by the university and you want to give him a tour of the university. Those are really great for people who are coming in with her parents. And they're like, okay, where do we stay? Where's a good place to buy an apartment or a house or rent one.

And you can say here's where all the restaurants are. Here's where the kids hang out. Here's where all the bookshops are. You can do all kinds of things. And create all kinds of experiences to go with the places that you live hikes. If you're out in the middle of nowhere, right. And you're like, oh, there's a beautiful trail.

That's right by my house. And you could take people on hikes and they'll pay you. Pack a little lunch and go with them and charge extra for those things. These will bring in more and more income and they'll draw people to you and they'll draw people, not just to go through your experience, but stay at your place as well.

So it's a great, great way to make more money, earn more income, and get more people to stay when you have a place that. You know, very heavily populated and there's a lot of competition or you're out in the middle of nowhere and you need to get people drawn to you. So themes are huge, and I want you to use them.

I want you to go on our website. I want you to go on our Facebook page and post some pictures. And if it's not your place post some ideas or maybe post some videos of places that you've seen that were really cool. This is a great idea. And I think it's the new and upcoming thing. People are more and more people, more and more hosts are paying people.

Take their house, a step above everybody else because as the competition gets heavier, we need to stand above the crowd. And remember we never compete for last place because somebody can always knock us down, knock us down, knock us down until we can't cashflow property. Our job is not to compete for last place ever, ever, ever, ever.

You always want to be in competition with your. And you want to compete for a better and better price. How can I improve the value of my property? How can I make my guests experience better? How can I make it more worth while how can I give them a better product so that they will be willing to pay more?

What value can I add? What more can I do right. These are the questions you need to be asking yourself, not what can I skimp on? What can I save money on? You know, walking over those dollars to save dimes, not going to work. You never ever compete for last place. You are not fricking Walmart and you never want to be.

That does not make a good business plan. Okay. You need to add more value. He need to add a better experience. You need to add something special, you know, something unique or something that just makes your property above everyone else. Raise your standards. That's what you want to do. I got to say this sometimes themes are really fun.

I like theme parks, right? So when you go to theme parks, you. Harry Potter world or Dr. Seuss land, or, you know, when you're in Disney, you've got tomorrow land and things like that means street USA. Those things have a theme and it's a lot of fun to play with themes. So sometimes themes really, really work.

It just depends on where you are. But we wanted you to have this theme talk because themes were a really huge thing before COVID and I think a lot of times themes are coming back. I've seen some people do some really interesting themes lately, and I thought those were pretty cool. Hope you enjoyed this episode and they'll go have a great weekend.

God bless you. Have a great day.  Go and grow.