How to build an Airbnb business: Building Your Remote Team Essential Steps
With recent advances in technology we can build our “remote” team easier than ever (and there are more people in the remote working “pool” than ever before). The best time to higher a new team member is before you actually need them. There are numerous aspects to managing short-term rentals but almost all of them can be managed remotely! You can also take advantage of the differences in currencies and hire help at a fraction of the price but still with excellent skill sets. Hiring virtual or remote help is an essential step to managing our rentals as passively as possible.
This week Tim will discuss:
- The best time to hire new team members
- How remote work can help with your STR
- Where to find them
- How to hire the right one
- Tools to managing them from afar
- Check out www.restmethods.com for more info
Book references:
“The One Minute Manager” by Ken Blanchard & Spencer Johnson
“Who: A Method for Hiring” by Geoff Smart & Randy Street
Find potential team members on www.upwork.com, www.fiverr.com or www.onlinejobs.ph
Track your remote team with www.tsheets.com or www.hubstaff.com or Upwork’s built-in platform
You can find all of our links here including our website, webinar, Instagram and more!
Click Here to view Transcript
In the short term rental riches will discuss investing in real estate with a specific focus on short term rentals quick action items to wire. Scale your portfolio I’m your host Tim Hubbard.
Welcome back to short term rental riches podcast last week we talked about how a lot of the work force has gone remote and this week we’re going to capitalize on the fact that that changes happening no matter whether we like it or not and how we can benefit from it there are lots of ways lots and lots of ways that you can get remote assistance remote work build your team remotely to help with your short term rental business for one and maybe the most time intensive part of manager short terminal are the reservations but we know operating short term rentals that most the time we don’t see our guests they check in remotely and so we can hire help to handle that aspect remotely reservations it’s a great example but wouldn’t go further than that we can have part of our remote team help us with miscellaneous tasks like ordering inventory managing and responding to reviews maybe building your website so that you can take reservations off of platforms like Airbnb and homeaway they can help with marketing your rentals so through social media or 2 guests that have already stayed with you and also guest satisfaction following up with guests in hoping to you name it almost every task aside from the physical housekeeping in the physical maintenance and the physical set up of your short terminal property you can outsource almost everything else and even if you’re thinking that you don’t need help right now the best time to hire someone actually is when you don’t need the help. Because if if you need the help desperately you’re overwhelmed then we tend to hire people that may not be the best fit because were pressured into getting more help so if you have some down time right now I’d encourage you just to at least take a look at some of the sources I’m gonna mention where you may be able to find someone to join your team to help you with whatever aspect it may be or even your personal life for administrative tasks are planning or anything like that there are multiple places where you can find remote work some of the more popular ones and I’ll put these in the show notes could be up work.com or Fiverr.com Fiverr F. I. V. E. R. R.com I recently hired someone to help with our social media marketing on online jobs.P. H. and I have to say Nikki is doing a fantastic job and I’m excited to have her on the team just as I’m excited to have a lot of my team from all over the place in the coda is helping me edit these podcasts he is an audio master and he is in the U. S. but you know we’ve never actually met face to face yet but the tools on the technology that we have available now allow us to find the best help where we need it no matter where it is now if it happens to be outside of your home country like someone from the US hiring someone from the Philippines for example you can really take advantage of the fact that the US dollars berry strong right now and you can pay a great wage to someone with excellent skills in a different country and really take advantage of that so take a few moments and just think through your business think through your life where some areas where you could get a little. A bit of additional help and then check out these websites just do some basic searches and see what people are offering in there you can find some really really great people some amazing experience to help you build your team to help you manage increased workloads or or any sort of thing that you can think about hiring someone is is not that easy and it’s something that a lot of big businesses get wrong it’s something that I have gotten wrong multiple times and I learn a little bit each time and I’m still learning it’s gonna be a forever process one of the things I’m finding however is that going with your gut is not always the best way to do it yeah you want to make sure they’re good cultural fit for your organization for your company for you if you’re just working one on one with them but just because you get along with them doesn’t mean that they’re going to be a good fit and that you guys are gonna complication what you set out to accomplish so I’ll just give you a few tips that I’ve picked up along the way including some from a couple recent books that I read one is the one minute manager that’s by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson and then another book called who a method for hiring by Jeff smart and the one minute manager will have some great tips for after you’ve hired your help in who a method for hiring will give you some great tips on how to hire that person now in that book who he sets it up basically on a 4 step process so first of all you have to know exactly what you’re looking for and I’ve been guilty of this in the past you’re saying a high you know I need help with marketing on Facebook or something so I just send that out or you know I need help building my website and I want someone that can do this instead of like actually thinking through it. Real thoroughly and knowing exactly what you need to fill that position so instead of just creating a job posts without knowing or having thought through exactly what you need to spend a little bit time and consider that because if you don’t put out exactly what you’re looking for you’re not going to get back exactly what you’re looking for so the first step is just having a mission statement 3 to 4 sentences for what you are looking for in this position that you’re offering and then the second thing is if you’re gonna wanna have some outcomes or some goals something that’s measurable so that the person that you hire and yourself you can track the progress without having to micromanage someone and having now comes in again maybe 3 to 4 just with the specific target can really really help having those outcomes and having specific targets is really really going to help and that’s kind of where that one minute manager comes into play the whole premise of that is that the employee or your team members should be able to track their own progress and by giving them outcomes and goals that takes the responsibility off of the manager and so that was kind of where the one minute manager comes into play is having those outcomes the third thing that’s gonna help you search is just laying out some core skills some core abilities competencies that you require for that position you want to make sure that you don’t make them too broad you know like a great communicator if you’re hiring someone from a foreign country maybe you on me fluent in the English language for example so make sure that they’re not too broad and also make sure the. It you don’t list like 100 of them we all want to find a superstar rockstar they can tackle every little additional requirement or or thing that we’re looking for but that’s just not very common at all instead make sure when you focus on this position that you’re looking for one main task that could be an expert in wordpress expert in video editing or social media management or in copy writing or in guest satisfaction or in sales you know make sure that you are not. Trying to find someone to handle everything you can find someone and then train them as time progresses but trying to find that perfect rock star from day one is gonna be challenging and it’s probably not gonna end well so really narrow down exactly where you could use the most help and then go from there and the fourth thing when you’re hiring someone you want to make sure that they are a good cultural fit ask your other team members if you don’t really know what your culture is ask your team members have how they feel about the organization in your company is a play full is it serious you have dry humor whoever you hire doesn’t necessarily have to be best friends with everyone but they have to fit your culture I not to where it doesn’t disrupt or discourage other people that are already on your team to really consider those 4 things having a mission statement outlining your outcomes or your goals the core skills and abilities that you want this new team member to have and then also making sure that they are a great cultural fit. Now when it comes actually hiring in interviewing someone that’s a whole nother process you’ve discovered exactly what it is you’re looking for now it comes of the interview this is your time to uncover everything about this potential candidate you can a good way is to just ask them about their work history obviously but have them start from the very beginning and just get a whole timeline in the book a method for hiring Dave are there mainly talking about hiring a big like fortune 500 companies but they’ll spend like 3 to 4:00 hours a whole day almost going through the whole work history of of a potential candidate and it always on covers thanks and when you’re not sure about something keep asking the candidate until you uncover what it is that you want to now now if you’re you’re hiring for more of like a task oriented job where it’s maybe not going to be full time or even part time just a few hours there’s still some really good questions you can ask and reviewing a resume is is a good start but just remember resume is really just a list of everyone’s best accomplishments with all of the failures and all the negative things removed right so that is them at their best the best way they could present all of their work history so a great way to go beyond that is to get work references examples of past work especially if this is something you know like you’re hiring a web developer for example you can just get past examples of their website but you can also go about having a test project for someone if this is more task related you can create a test project and see how that comes back and that will be a really big help and determine whether or not they’re going to be a good fit for you and your team. Okay so you narrow down what it is that you need help with or that you would like help with any created that perfect position the outline you can check some of those websites I referenced to find them you went through the interviewing process and now at the very end of it how how do you manage someone that’s working remotely well the great thing with all the advancements in technology especially now is there a ton of tools for that some of the ones I’ve used in the past or from hub staff I’ll put a link again the show notes and not allow you to track their time but also their activity online while they’re logged in so you can actually see screenshots of their work and see which sites they’re visiting if you wanted to now that’s up to you if that’s how you want to manage it my I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it but it might not be a good fit for some people you know might seem like an invasion of privacy or seem like micromanaging so consider that before you use some of those tools but they can work really well up work has one that’s built in as well there’s other ones I’ve mentioned T. sheets in the past and that’s for some of our team that works actually on the ground physically but it’s still a good tool for tracking attracts ours it integrates with quickbooks and it also has GPS tracked so there’s more tools than ever you can just Google managing remote workers and I’m sure even more will pop up. So in a nutshell the time to hire people is not when we actually need them that’s when we get pressured into maybe bring in someone on that’s not a good fit take a second think about your work in your business your short term rentals and see if there are some areas that you may be able to get some assistance with check out these websites create the job position run through some of those higher in steps I think you’ll find you wish you would have done that a long long time ago. That’s about it for today. So next time I hope you have a wonderful day. Want to get on the fast track to financial freedom through short term rentals what all searching the properties you. You want to make sure that you fire the right. To give you my. There is no charge to you for being one of our subscribers just the rest methods. R. E. S. T..
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