Investing in and operating short-term rentals is a team sport team business we have to communicate with lots of different people and I started using a new tool recently that I have to share with you guys I know I’m using new tools all the time but this one ‘s really good you may have heard about it already but it’s not going to cover all the main features and the reasons we’re using that stay tuned.

Welcome to short-term rental riches will discuss investing in real estate with a specific focus on short term rentals quick actionable items to wire. Scale your portfolio I’m your host Tim Hubbard.

Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcasts I love doing these I gotta say. It’s fun and helps get good information out to you guys but also helps me reinforce things that I’m learning things that I want to learn and tools that we’re using and my business and and our business so thank you to all of you guys out there that have been listening loyally every week we appreciate all the feedback we actually just launched a new website I’m super excited about it it’s S. T. R. riches.com on the website you can dig into different categories of topics that we’ve covered with covered quite a lot now I don’t know we’re on 75 episodes we’ve got a lot information to really well organized on there you can search for whatever you need to and it’s gonna be a really good resource if you’re just discovering the podcast or if you want to go back and review one from the past all these topics most of these are topics that are going to last for a long long time even though the short terminal industry changes quickly while the tools and real estate fundamentals don’t change that quickly so check it out S. T. R. riches.com and leave us a comment if you haven’t already we really like that we appreciate it and on the website you can request a topic so it’ll come straight to us will make sure to cover those in future episodes okay without further ado I want to talk about a new tool that we’ve been using you may have heard of it already it’s called slack it’s been around for a long time a lot of big companies use it and I actually was using it with other groups before but for some reason or other I never implemented it with my business now that we’re working with people in multiple countries I think I work regularly with people on 5 different time zones what sap any email which is what I’ve been using prior and I still use a little bit of it but we’re phasing out of it slack can take the place of these other tools so we used what sap to send text messages attached documents to all that and then he. Allen’s email you know we’ve been using email forever but slack really can take the place of both of these so I want to cover the main features the reasons why I really love it and why I think it could be helpful for you guys as well so we’ll cover just a little bit what is slack will cover the main features what specifically were using up for some things that it integrates with its integrates this really cool tools that you’re probably already using and what it costs so we’re just going to do in a nutshell what is slack why I think it’s helpful for you guys let’s get started so slack is a messaging application couple main features you can create what’s called a channel so a channel could be multiple people in one topic for example we call it a topic so like we have housekeeping and so and so city housekeeping in another city that way we can communicate with the people that are working in that city and we’re not sharing information with other people but it allows us to be very transparent so those are some of the common channels that we use you can do the same with maintenance can do the same with bookkeeping you can do the same with guest reception so if you’re working with new reception us so you can do it really with any aspect of your short term rental business with the operations but you could take it further than that if you’re investing in real estate you have partners that you work with you can communicate with them there and you can share Google drive links you can upload PDF files you can attach images you can attach videos you can do tons and tons of cool thing so the main benefit though is having channels where you can group people together now within those topics let’s say housekeeping and so and so city for example that could be a really big topic and you need to kinda narrowed in on one section well then slack allows you to create what’s called threats you have one general topic which is H.. Channel and then you have a thread which your individual conversations within that channel so you can split those office might sound confusing but I promise it’s not it’s super easy and it’s fun you can do little things like Adamo Jeez so someone sends a message confirming the a gas reservation for example you could send the thumbs up emoji the smile emoji whatever you want the check marks and then other people can also send the same one so it allows us to be more of a team than we were before before you know I get messages hall all the time you know depend on what projects we have going on because I’ve been growing and expanding and and working with different time zones so before I used to just put my phone on do not disturb when I was going to bed or when I wasn’t available but now I just let’s slack do that for me it sets my hours and I can easily log and catch up on all my messages a lot quicker and at the same time so the those are the big things we create channels create threads within those channels and it provides a lot of transparency what our whole team and and I stress with our team all the time that it doesn’t matter if we’re in California foreign Tennessee or wherever we are we’re all working towards the same team if we have all of our properties under one Airbnb profile and we get a bad review in one city it’s going to affect us in the other city it really well so it really is a team operation and this will just facilitates that beautifully. Hey Hey just want to ask you guys real quick favor if you haven’t already left this review if you wouldn’t mind heading over to iTunes or Spotify wherever you’re listening to the podcast and just leave us a quick review we really really appreciate it and if you know someone that you think would find value in any of the episodes that you’ve listened to you could just take a screen shot send it over to that’ll help them but it’s also going to help us grow a little bit too and lastly we’re on YouTube so if you prefer you to you can head over to short term rental riches and you can find us there as well thanks for listening in and thanks for all your great feedback. Let’s jump back in. So a few other things that I love about slack are some of the integrations so I’ve been using zoom to talk with a lot of my team members and different parts I am joined doing the face to face videos now it used to just be phone calls but it adds so much just doing a quick video call so before I used to log in to zoom craters M. appointment send it over via what’s app or schedule it and send it via email now I just go right inside slack I hit forward slash resume enter. Sends a message right to someone starts a meeting for us it’s so much so much easier out so that I love even though it’s something small it saves a ton of time makes it easier for all of us that’s a beautiful integration it has a G. email integration so if I’m in my email and I decide that whatever email I’m reading would be really good for one of our other team members to see I can hit a little slack integration and I can send a direct message to whoever I want my team with that email and I can leave some notes there so I don’t have to forward it and then we can keep it all in the same spot so that’s beautiful I really am hoping to get away from emails much as possible I think this tool is definitely helping out already some excited to see where it is and and maybe a month or 2 from now so it also links with your Google calendar and it links with your Google drive so if you use Google drive for a lot of files you can integrate right was slack to now as with all tools and all new software usually they have a cost right we’re actually using slack for free right now which is also great it has other levels that you can subscribe to and the price gets more more expensive but so far we’ve found that the free versions working really well for us so I’m sure it’ll work well for you guys to just a little note to on the concept that was interesting I’m still in Brazil and a little thing popped up and said 40 percent discount for joining from Brazil or something so if you guys have a VPN virtual private network tool where you can switch your internet location my try switching to Brazil and get yourself a discount if you need the discounted model so not affiliated with slack in anyway like most of the products that we talk about it’s been super helpful for me and I think will be really helpful for you guys even if you’re only working with one other person I think it really has a place and it helps build your team in your communications makes things more transparent most importantly it’s going to. You save time to check it out if you’re not already using that stalled slack just Google and get started until next time have a wonderful day and don’t forget to check out our new website S. T. R. riches.com let us know what topics would be helpful for you in the future. There’s so much money to be made the short term rentals but it all starts by having the right property if you guys haven’t yet seen my free ebook on our website rest methods.com head over there and get a copy it’s going to break down what I look for in a property in some great short cuts so that you don’t have to spend hours and hours researching at over rest methods.com and you can grab your free copy there if you want a crash course in everything I’ve really learned to short term rentals in over 5 years managing over 15000 Gasol recorded on our last live event I am happy to say we broke it down really nicely into a bunch of different modules that you can watch at your own pace it takes you from start to finish from finding a property we talk about analyzing the property but then also some of the more important pieces how to find your team and how to set up everything so that you can run your operation is passively as possible and free up your time you can find that it rests methods.com forward slash virtual.

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