In this session of Vacation Rental Success, I’m delighted to welcome Evelyn Gallardo who I met for the first time at the Home Away Summit in Phoenix.  She was a member of a panel delivering a social media workshop over the afternoon on the first day, and had my attention from the get-go after getting the audience of 200+ to grunt like a gorilla in the first minute.  The story behind that was fascinating and in this episode Evelyn tells us about her connection with the gorillas of Rwanda, Dianne Fossey, and her ultimate move to Costa Rica as a wildlife photographer and vacation rental home owner.

I knew that this episode was going to be of huge value because of the breadth of social media reach Evelyn is achieving but it wasn’t until we got talking that I realized we’d have to break this into a couple of parts.  The value that Evelyn brings in her knowledge and educational takeaways is pure gold and I’m so happy she made time for this interview and the subsequent episodes we’ll be recording soon.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How a face-to-face encounter with a mountain gorilla was a turning point in Evelyn’s life

• How she went from sharing her passion of endangered primates with schoolchildren to educating guests in her Costa Rica vacation rental property
• The value of using virtual assistants for taking on the tasks you don’t have the skills for, or just don’t want to do
• Why responding to Flipkey reviews can create trust
• What types of video work best with prospective vacation rental guests
• Why you should be following and learning from some key internet marketers
• How Evelyn wrote a best-selling a live-like-a-local guide and how you can do it too

And here's the resources we discussed:

Discovery Beach House

Get stuff done for $5

Elance – Virtual Assistants

Odesk – Virtual Assistants

Guru.com – Technical virtual assistants

DBH on Flipkey

Royalty Free Music & Jingles

Travelling in Costa Rica – 3 Hidden Truths ( over 32,000 views)

3 Insightful Tips on Tipping the Staff at a Vacation Rental (Youtube video)

Guest video – Sloth giving birth

Lou Bourtone – for video training

James Wedmore – free video training

Melanie Duncan – Pinterest

Amy Porterfield – Facebook

Cliff Ravenscraft – Podcast Answerman

Do you have a question?

If you have a question you’d like answered on the show, pop on over to my voicemail page and leave me a message. I want to include an Owner Question feature on future shows so let me have yours!

Thank you!

Thank you all for checking out this session of Vacation Rental Success podcast

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