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

Welcome back to the short-term rental riches podcast bottom being bada boom we are back with another topic lots and lots of great things to talk about all the time in the world as short-term rentals one of the things that’s probably most intimidating to people before they jump into short term rentals or as are getting going our guest messages yeah we don’t want to be getting gas messages in the middle of the night we don’t want to be talking with guests that are maybe not pleasant to talk to all of those things can be a little challenging right and they can be a little intimidating and they can keep us from really growing in our short terminal portfolio so until we figure out how to outsource those gas messages we’re gonna be a little limited so that’s what I want talk about this week I want to talk about several ways how we can do that where we can find this help what about some of the challenges to because we just hired our 6 full time virtual receptionist and I’m super super excited we have a lot of other virtual assistants we work with remotely that aren’t necessarily full time but we’ve got 6 in house owner team and they are rock stars and I’m so excited to have them on board so I want to talk a little bit about that but before I jump in hiring our old virtual receptionist I just want to bring up the point that people want to work remotely now right I know we went through the whole condemn make you know that as well and people discovered that they could work remotely a lot of companies discovered that their employees can work remotely yes a lot of those companies are asking employees to come back to the office and we are seen an increase in a work related travel actually a pretty large increase but the fact is if given the option people are going to want the flexibility Airbnb for example back in April. Announced that their whole company is now able to work virtually anywhere they want in the world the company of about 6000 people at the moment but they had within about a month 1000000 people visit their career page imagine that 1000000 people imagine that talent that exists out in the world and we don’t have to be constrained to our borders anymore so I want to talk about that but before I do some other quick options to outsource your gas messages you can hire a manager if that’s an easy one right that’s a no brainer that’s what they do they manage your properties and everything and I’m including the housekeeping of course this is one of the most expensive options so option number 2 you can hire your own housekeepers for example and have them help you with guest communications that can work out really well I would say we want to get to this point though after we’ve automated every possible question we can I talk a lot about automation on this channel the fact is we can automate a lot of it and our guests are used to the automation that’s not a new thing anymore so it’s not like it’s creating a bad experience for them it’s something that’s becoming standard in the hospitality industry so you can hire your manager you can hire or contract a housekeeper or maybe a close to someone that can partially help you would guess messages you can also hire a third party service and that’s dedicated to answering guest questions there’s quite a few talked before on this channel about gas di and I use them for years they used to handle all of my guests communications but I’ll tell you what if you go back to add up to so the reason I left them it was because of the gas communications yeah it gets a little more difficult when you’ve got a company handling who knows how many listings in there change employees all the time and so that was a little tricky unfortunately that’s why I left I see I do really like their software though the fourth option here is to hire our own. Receptionist and that’s what I’ve done and I am so grateful for my team they do an excellent excellent job there’s a few places where we can find our virtual assistants you might have heard of up work or fiber before I wouldn’t necessarily recommend knows all that you can find good people on there but up work for example going to charge a big percentage of between you and the person that you contract a couple of the options I’ve talked about before you can go back to episode at 76 and check those out all my jobs.P. H. that specifically for the Philippines that’s where all of my virtual receptionists are best jobs.PH also from the Philippines virtual staff finder.com we’ll find a receptionist for you so you don’t have to do the work and then there’s another 1 where you can find remote work but it’s not necessarily geared towards remote work and that’s indeed.com so if you’re deciding to hire your own receptions which I highly recommend I often find that this is for people that maybe have added 1234 properties and they start getting more more questions there’s a certain point where you’re just gonna get the questions a matter whether we like it or not some things just pop up and we’ve got to have someone on the other end to answer or you know what’s going to happen you’re going to get a bad review and rightly so we have to be there for gas so those are a few places where you can find a virtual assistants couple things you want to consider when you post your job is the time change so if your listeners in the U. S. you gotta keep your timezone in mind if you’re hiring someone from the Philippines which is basically flipped now we’re also looking out to other options places like Mexico and all of our guests for the most part speak English people speak English all around the world Philippines speak excellent English even though it’s not their first language lots and lots of people in Mexico and South America speak excellent English even though it’s not there. First language that’s all you have to do is make sure when you put your job posting out there did you have English as 1 of the main requirements if that happens to be where your properties are listed in the fearless in the show I would assume that your guys are probably speaking English so we can put these things in our job description another really crucial piece to our job description is making sure that we have the schedule we’re expecting very clear and to expect someone to work for you on call all the time 247. That’s kind of difficult right you’re not gonna tracked a lot of people that want to do that in fact the latest receptions we just hired was working with someone else and that’s the exact reason she decided to resign without person because they were on call all the time and it just wasn’t realistic quick intermission I’m super excited to announce the dates for next live event live and in person in Memphis Tennessee August 19 to 20 first this is our fourth live event and they just keep getting better and better and there’s not a ton a room so I hope you can make it will go through my whole process from start to finish what I look for properties how I find them how I set them up how I manage them how I manage them remotely with my teams and how we can scale the whole operations to retake it from start to finish perhaps one of the most exciting parts we’re gonna get on tour bus and we’re going to visit some of my actual properties in action in the operation really hope you can join us you can check out tickets at rest methods.com and again it’s gonna be a live in person I’ll be flying back from Colombia August 19 through the 20 first I hope to see you there so I understand this can be challenging if you only have a couple properties maybe don’t have the budget to fill 2004 hours 7 days a week but there are times when we receive more questions than others for us that’s Thursday Friday nights and Sunday Monday is when a lot of people checking out the coming in for the weekend and check it out after the weekend so consider hiring just one shift and known again if you listen to this new S. R. dollar is super super strong right now in fact it’s the strongest it’s ever been in my lifetime it just passed the euro I want to do a whole nother episode on this because the whole idea of currency arbitrage is a real thing and I’m living proof of the values of the United States for years now is a lot of you now so that’s a good topic in itself so we have a really strong currency right now in a lot of these other places in the world we can offer. A very fair wage for $345 an hour so consider finding someone if you’re at that point where you’re starting to get too many questions or maybe get intimidating you wanna keep scaling well consider finding just 1 person for reason will shift maybe Thursday through Monday to cover your nights or your 3:00 PM to midnight once a lot of people are checking in you might have issues so consider that I guarantee you after you hire your first virtual sets and if you don’t have 1 already right now you’re gonna wish you did it a long long time ago it’s a great person to have on your team and we can’t do this alone right in fact the last receptionist that we hired was hired partially by 1 of our other receptionist day helped me out tremendously in that search and narrowing down a really large pool of candidates so if you’re at all intimidated with the gas questions don’t hesitate to jump on 1 of those sites and submit a job posting and just see what comes back now you want to make sure that your job posting is is clear as possible I’ve got other tips on that and other videos but 1 thing that you do want to make sure you have in there is the schedule 0 percent you can say things like looking for a gas coordinator for Airbnb you know what sorts of tasks they’re going to be handling that’s things like monitoring reviews accepting reservations declining reservations if you have your own website or own direct booking website maybe they’re processing payments for you maybe they’re processing refunds maybe they’re processing resolutions with Airbnb and following up on those resolutions there are so many little tasks that we can get a lot of help with to make our business machine run a lot more smoothly and make sure our gas are happier so check out some of those sites make sure you proofread your job posting both for you posted on there and do some searches the look. Through some of the mail resumes online to see what people are offering 1 other thing I would suggest when you have your job posting or when you’re doing your interviews by the way I wouldn’t recommend doing interviews right off the bat have a series of questions that you want to send back and forth and see how those responses are before you jump on a call and potentially waste your time in someone else’s that really comes out like the fifth stage I would say in terms of exchanging communication before your scheduling a call but 1 of the things that you want to bring across the person you’re hiring is stability no 1 wants to work for a company or for a person that they don’t see sticking around now for me that’s easy I am a life for when it comes to real estate real estate for a long time now and I don’t see that changing I just like it I find it exciting and interesting short term rentals are just 1 of the little niches in side of real estate right but the 1 that’s growing tremendously and 1 where I think there’s still a ton opportunity and where I found more opportunity than other niches in the last 7 years I guess men doing short term rentals now so you want to talk about stability and talk about the future and where you see things going I guarantee if you’re getting started was for criminals right now and you hire someone at this beginning stage it’s going to help you grow your business and make it a lot easier a lot of us get into real estate because we want things to be bass who want some of our time back that’s exactly why I got into it so that I could travel more and with our our fabulous receptions team that would not be possible at all so once you find your virtual receptionist you’re gonna want to make sure that you track their progress this is important they need to feed back and so you can determine what that is for you but I do have a couple episodes on this before you can check out up so 124 and how I track progress with the rest of my team but another way to track their time and also their times but on the computer. Is to use a program called help staff they clock into it it’s an easy way to track their time but also make sure that they are in fact working for you and you can take random screenshots on the computer you’re gonna need a way to pay someone after international that’s not always very easy but there is a company called pay any year that can process and facilitate these payments for you very easily that’s what I use for all my Filipino team it’s the most cost effective it’s quickest most efficient and we all find that works really really well so a lot of things to consider here I just wanted to give you an overview and hopefully encourage you to hire someone if you haven’t yet you’re at that spot so there is a lot that goes into this I actually created a course on this is called replace yourself challenge you can get tons of free content from this podcast or on our website at S. your riches or rest methods.com but if you want the whole thing scripted out for email questions where to go the work contracts and all that stuff you can check out 3 place yourself challenge at rest methods.com the 4 week program 3 weeks is all takes in my opinion to get someone on board now I’m fully trained in that program we also have all the questions the gas normally now so there’s a ton of free resources but if you want to go really in depth you can check that out and then I’m also really really excited to offer our services we’ve got a 2417 and they are excellent so if you are out there and you’re at all interested in someone else managing the virtual part as your short term rental business give us a shout you can send us an email at contact at rest methods.com this isn’t for everyone but we’re going to manage your properties like I manage of mine so that’s exciting for me and that’s gonna help us build our business while it helps you build your business so if you are interested in that send us an email contact at rest methods.com and until next time I hope you have. A wonderful day I hope you’re out there willing in deland working on your short terminals and producing more revenue than you might otherwise in a different real estate niche until next time take care. I want to get on the fast track to financial freedom for short term rentals what all searching the properties you choir you want to make sure that you acquired the right properties I want to give you my you doctor will show you how to do just that there is no charge to my gift to you for being one of our subscribers just go to restmethods.com that’s R E S T methods.com.

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