Inside Our Operations
Property Management Insights, Virtual Assistants, Writing Tools, and More!
Business
Do you have an interest in virtual assistants?
I am thinking of doing a training covering what our team has been up to lately from an operations standpoint to show how people from around the world help run the business for $5-$10/hour
If you’re interested in that,
Can you reply with any questions or topics you’d like to see more of?
Writing Tools
Hemingway
Not a sponsored post,
I was just really impressed by this tool.
If any of you struggle with writing (like I do) you might really like this tool.
It will review something you have written and tell you how you can simplify the sentences or make changes to make it more readable.
For example,
This sentence highlighted in red was reading at a 14th-grade reading level.
Studies show that retention is higher the easier something is to read.
If you write often or have pre-written copy you want help with,
Hemingway could be good for you.
It’s good for situations where you can’t use ChatGPT because the messages are too personal.
Don’t Believe The Airbnb Bust Noise Fam
If you analyze your properties well,
Operate them well and focus on customer experience, you can avoid the ‘airbnbust’.
This is one of our Hospitable Views (our favorite property management software) and as you can see we are doing okay in what is our ‘slow season’.
We maintain this by:
Constantly updating pricing
Reaching out to realtors/brokers
posting in FB groups
updating our amenities
polling our guests to improve their experience
collecting guest information so we can market directly to our guests
You can still make great money with furnished rentals and in many cases,
It is the only way to still cashflow in markets.
Do Not Be Afraid To Go Off Platform
Over the next few weeks and months, I will be documenting our journey to creating direct booking sites for all our properties.
If you have any recommendations or specific questions you want to see covered,
Just reply to this email.
But even before we set up direct booking pages,
We are maintaining a good amount of direct bookings through Realtors, and Facebook Groups.
You can either start on a platform like Furnished Finder where you will have direct contact with guests and be able to market to them in the future or you can just funnel guests off Airbnb or VRBO as direct bookings once they book your property.
You can also move them off before they book but that’s a topic I’ll cover next week.
Be Clever With Your Marketing
There are always ways to find deals.
Here is one I saw on Facebook this week and had to share.
Join more Facebook groups and network with people.
You will be amazed how often deals get posted in Facebook groups, Reddit forums, or WhatsApp groups that never see the light of day on MLS.
You can also make some posts like our friend Scott here.
Personal
Duolingo
But a little different
I love Duolingo - it’s how I’m learning Spanish. But a friend gave me a tip on how to use it better and it’s been helping a ton.
(I don’t like to brag, but I do happen to be on a little heater these days 😤)
For every single prompt, I say the sentence out loud
Before I would just fill in the words and move on but I realized I needed to actually SAY the words
I normally swing around 115, and carry the ball 290.
This pictures were after 1 week on the stack.
The problem was, I guess I’m weaker than I thought,
Because I started having sharp pains in my wrist and my shoulder.
The shoulder pain went away with rest and doing some stretching/pushups,
But the wrist pain stuck around for a few weeks.
Grip Trainer
I thought this was only for the hardos at the gym who hit every single muscle on their body,
But who knew, its for weak golfers as well!
So I guess my takeaway here is that speed training for golf can be really helpful,
But as Scott Fawcett of Decade talks about, you need to strengthen your body first.
That’s all for today.
Thank you for reading!
Jonathan Farber.
