Mike Bayer

You're listening to the Vacation Rental Success Podcast, and we are proud to welcome back returning sponsor, OwnerRez. Providing a powerful and flexible system for managing vacation rental properties, OwnerRez provides booking and maintenance management, payment scheduling and collection, as well as insightful reporting. OwnerRez will provide you with a long-term booking foundation that is scalable for your vacation rental business while fully managing your channel listings, but still focusing on your brand, your website, and your way of doing things. If you sign up now using the promotional code VRF30, that's VRF 3 0, you can get 30% off your first three months. Make sure you're listening to the mid episode break where you'll hear some great testimonials about OwnerRez and more about this incredible company. For more information about OwnerRez, click in the link in the description of this episode on your smart device. Let's get started. Here's your host, Heather Bayer.

Heather Bayer

Over the years, we employed numerous virtual assistants in our property management company, one of whom is still with that company after 10 years. Many, though, were not that successful, and we made a lot of mistakes in the hiring process, wasting so much time and money over all that time. Today, I'm joined by Rich Sippos from Extenteam, who's going to share with us the right way of taking the first steps, how to find the right person to hire, and make them part of the team.

Heather Bayer

This is the Vacation Rental Success podcast, keeping you up-to-date with news, views, information, and resources on this rapidly changing short-term rental business. I'm your host, Heather Bayer. And with 25 years of experience in this industry, I'm making sure you know what's hot, what's not, what's new, and what will help make your business a success.

Heather Bayer

Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Vacation Rental Success Podcast. This is your host, Heather Bayer. And as ever, I'm super delighted to be back with you once again. So I'm recording this in my basement of my house where my studio is now. And it reminds me that we started our property management company in the basement of a previous home.  That was back in 2004. And it worked really, really well. My husband and I worked opposite sides of the desk. We could come up from the basement if we needed to have a little bit of separation time, make a cup of tea and take some time out. So it was really, really comfortable. And then in 2006, we hired our first full-time staff member and we had a great couple of years. I used to make lunch every day and we'd get cakes from the bakery and pop up to the kitchen and have our morning coffee with cake every couple of days. It was just so nice. It was really nice and we enjoyed every minute of it. But a few years later, there were five of us in the very small basement and we had to make a decision, should we rent a space or could we work from home? And I loved going downstairs to work, being able to make lunch in my own kitchen, pop outside with the dog every time she wanted to chase a ball. And the thought of having to drive to an office wasn't really on the charts. It just wasn't going to happen.

Heather Bayer

So we took a leap of faith and went the work from home route. And our first hire, the one I've been talking about, she was with us from the very beginning, came on as our bookkeeper, because neither my business partner nor myself liked to get really involved with the small detail on the ins and outs of money from the business. We were quite happy to look at the outcome, but recording day-to-day data wasn't our thing and it wasn't as automated as it is now. So we hired a bookkeeper and who ultimately became our office manager. And she'd worked in a bank for 17 years before joining us. So this work from home was a completely new experience for her. She ran a dairy farm with her husband and she had three school-aged children. So it really meant some significant change for her to work in a home environment. And she had to make space for a desk and a computer. She had to tone down her husband and the farm hands when they came in for an early breakfast, because I remember trying to have a phone meeting with her with raucous laughter and doors banging and dogs barking in the background.

Heather Bayer

But it worked. We became a remote working company. And of course, that made the transition to working from home really easy when the pandemic struck. We'd been using Ring Central [telephone system], we'd been using Zoom, and we'd just moved from Skype to Slack for internal communication come March of 2020. And while everybody else was struggling to get systems in place, we were just in business as usual mode. Our staff stayed with us. Even when we sold the company. The office manager is still there after 15, 16 years or so. All of the wonderful people we hired are still there. Even the virtual assistant we hired from the Philippines 10 years ago, they're all still remotely working.

Heather Bayer

But we made mistakes. We hired based on gut feelings or because we didn't have the time to, or felt we didn't have the time to do deeper interviews. We hired the wrong people for the wrong jobs. And if I had my time over again, there's so many things we'd do differently. And first off, we'd talk to people who knew what they were doing and understood the remote working space. Which is why today I'm talking to an expert in finding the best in remote talent, and that is Rich Sippos from Extenteam.  And you know, I have so many questions to ask of Rich, so without further ado, let's go on over to the interview.

Heather Bayer

I am super happy to have with me today Rich Sippos from Extenteam, who's going to be the happy responder for all my many, many questions I have today. Welcome, Rich. Thank you so much for joining me.

Rich Sippos

Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. I'm really excited to talk with you today.

Heather Bayer

Well, it's my pleasure to have you. The first question I ask of everybody that comes on the show is, how did you get into this crazy business in the first place? What brought you into vacation rentals?

Rich Sippos

My wife and I moved to Park City, Utah, just after the Olympics that were there in early 2003. It was at a point in Park City where things were changing pretty rapidly at that moment. We moved for the climate, for the mountains, for the skiing, left our positions and came to Utah. I came as a software consultant. I was a software consultant for the previous, I think, eight years. And then I became Vice President of the Homeowners Board that we were building a house in. I'd heard so many complaints about local companies not taking care of the homes, not taking care of the reservations correctly. I thought to myself, if I don't try to do this, I'm going to regret it for the rest of my life. So it back in 2004, created a small business plan and officially launched in 2005. The rest was history after that. I ended up purchasing a cleaning company and growing that quite large too. Yeah, so I've been in the industry for about 20 years.

Heather Bayer

So you were managing properties?

Rich Sippos

Yeah. We had about 80 properties under management, both service related and rentals, about half and half. And then the company was acquired in 2014.

Heather Bayer

I love to hear from people who were there before Airbnb. There was life before Airbnb. There was life before Expedia.

Rich Sippos

Definitely. I remember them calling me and thinking like, Who is this? I don't know who this is whatsoever. Things have changed.

Heather Bayer

I know. I remember talking to Matt Landau back in 2013 or 14, and we had... It's a podcast episode I like to keep completely under wraps. I don't share the number of it, because it's that one episode that he and I were talking about this new company called Airbnb and saying it will never last. But of course it did. But anyway, so what's your role now?

Rich Sippos

Yeah. So with Extenteam, after the company had started, I met Ari [Eryorulmaz] a couple of years back, almost three years ago now at a conference, or maybe actually just a little over two years ago. And I started to be the first true full-time sales person with Extenteam. I had a lot of connections in the industry. Things took off very quickly. And then I quickly moved into head of sales last spring when we started to restructure the company. We became an EOS [Entrepreneurial Operating System] company and then things have really blossomed from there.

Heather Bayer

That's interesting. I'm hearing EOS from everyone I speak to at the moment. It's this real buzzword. I'm reading the books, I've had Traction [Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business] in my library for a long time, but out it comes. So I'm reading all the books. Now I can understand why it's become such a buzzword. So you haven't said what Extenteam actually does. So normally I'd leave this to the end, but it's so relevant to what we're talking about. Let's kick it off at the beginning.

Rich Sippos

Yeah, for sure. We're a staffing as a service company, so we really provide an option for any size company, whether it's a shared service where we're doing 24/7 coverage for their guest services and reservations, or full-time team members that are exclusive to their company, handling remote positions, really anything that can be done remotely within the business. And so we consult with the property management companies and some other vendors in the space too, and find a solution for them that fits and craft that for them and hopefully have them as a lifetime customer.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, this is great. I also said in the introduction that we as a company, my company also started in 2004, went to 2020... Well, last year, '21, '22. Gosh, time is moving on. We went to 2022 before we sold. But from around 2010, we were completely remote. We worked from home at the start, and then I didn't want to go back to an office ever again. I was working in my basement, but once we had five staff coming into the basement, that was it. I had to get them out, but I wasn't going to go into an office. So we began, we rolled out a work from home plan, and that was the way it went until I sold the business. It is still, everybody still works from their home, which is probably why they have kept the employees who've been there for 15, 10, 5, 7 years.

Rich Sippos

Amazing. Yeah, that's the way to go.

Heather Bayer

Absolutely. Okay, so now we've got the background in place. I want to talk about this whole concept of remote working and hiring remote workers because I've had plenty of experience of doing this, and very few of those experiences have been super-positive.

Heather Bayer

We've got about a lot the wrong way, and that's a lot of these things I want to explore, because I know if I was doing this all over again, I'd be doing it differently. So I'm going to be pulling on your experience to figure out how I would do it again if I was doing it. So let's kick off with the word that's been in our vocabulary for so long now, and that's pandemic. What was the biggest issue that people that property managers have had in staffing since the pandemic reduced its impact? Because I think a lot of companies laid people off and, of course, went into the work from home way of life, which, of course, was absolutely no transition for us at all. But for the most, it was. So what have companies faced since, let's say in the last year, 18 months or so?

Rich Sippos

Yeah, I mean, labor costs have just skyrocketed in every single market throughout the United States, and some quite a bit more than others. But finding those highly-qualified hires locally has become next to impossible, really. And when companies are trying to go through that process and having such a hard time or taking them very long to find the right person and then finding the right person and then having them leave two weeks later causes the amount of frustration to have them think outside of the box. And some companies that haven't thought about remote work before are now starting to think that way, which I think the pandemic has really changed that, because you can get highly qualified people if you look outside your local area. And especially in our case, when we look globally to find that talent, we're finding it in quite a few places. So I think that's been the biggest thing is the labor costs, but also just the ability to find someone locally that has the experience that actually wants to work and that would be affordable for the company to hire.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. It's interesting, I think we should touch on this. We're talking about remote workers, and I guess 10, 15 years ago, they were virtual assistants. And it was just somebody you went through, one of the online recruitment sites maybe now it's Upwork. I can't remember what the different names were over the past because they seem to change their names all the time.

Rich Sippos

New companies coming on all the time as well.

Heather Bayer

I remember it was a challenge. We wanted to find a virtual assistant. Eventually, we went to a company like yours, I guess, but that was way back 10 years ago, and found what we were calling then a virtual assistant. She became a very loyal and hard working and valuable member of the team over the 10 years, and she's still with them.

Rich Sippos

That's fantastic.

Heather Bayer

It is. But as I said, we did make a lot of mistakes. There is an issue in staffing, and I want to go back a bit more to the beginning when somebody's out there looking to hire for the first time. Usually when they're hiring for the first time, they perhaps don't want somebody full-time, they want somebody part-time. How does a manager know when it's the right time for the first hire?

Rich Sippos

That's a great question. I think it changes for different types of managers. Companies that have a great business plan for that hiring, and that's not as common as it is the other way around. But I'd say most property managers realize it's time to hire when their free time starts to diminish. They're still taking phone calls at night, answering emails, answering all sorts of questions from guests, whether it be text, email, phone, it doesn't matter. And then they start to get frustrated with those things. They start to realize they're getting annoyed, they're not providing the best services to their guests, to their homeowners, and they need to make some change. So they don't really quite know what they want. They just know that they need help. And it's nice that sometimes these people are now reaching out to Extenteam, saying, We know that others have had a great experience finding that right person, can you help us? And then we go through that whole process of figuring out what they actually need.

Rich Sippos

So I think that's the first thing. They realize their time is starting to diminish. They don't want to work 20 hours a day anymore.  They don't want to be up in the middle of the night answering a phone call that someone has a beeping smoke detector that's 20 feet off the ground. They need help. And so that's a big part of it. But then other companies that have a plan, they have a plan for when it's time to hire. It's still knowing who that person is, or what that position is or what that role could be, that's where we come in. We can help them craft those ideas.

Heather Bayer

What roles are most commonly filled by remote and outsource stuff?

Rich Sippos

Yeah, I think most common roles would be in the guest services area or reservations. Those are the two most common areas. Now, those roles vary widely. Someone could have a specific role for a reservationist, fantastic. Some might have one for guest messaging, guest problems, great. But for the most part, I think that role is a combination of those two things, plus some administrative assistant type ad hoc projects. And finding that all around worker, to put it bluntly, is difficult to find. But now we've done it a lot, we can hone in on exactly what those skills are, how we can balance the type of skills for each company, and then hire specific for the company. So the roles are very specific per company, but I'd say the majority of the roles are a combination of all three of those skill sets.

Heather Bayer

I know when we first started looking remotely, my business partner and I put a value on our time. What is our time worth per hour? Would we go out and do that job for somebody else for that amount of money? And that was quite the eye-opener because we found we were doing so many things that were worth very little and worth way, way less than we were worth. And once we'd done that, and a lot of those jobs, little jobs, were the ones that we quite enjoyed.  Posting on social media and playing around with Canva and doing those things that were fun, but were very time consuming. They were taking away from strategic planning, and that was the big thing. Once we looked at it and said, Well, they're fun, but it's even more fun to plan for the future. And that was the start of our list. This is what we need to hire for.

Rich Sippos

Definitely. What some managers start to realize, and it might take them a while, is that they have this idea in their mind that no one could do this as well as I could do this. Nobody could do this at the same level or the same passion that I'm putting into this right now. And that's a difficult thing to get over. It is. We know many managers that are like that, and you have to explain to them the experiences that others have had with bringing in more experts in those fields that have done those things 50 times more than a particular manager would have done themselves. And then once you can build that trust with them, they understand, Okay, maybe I'm not the most perfect person for that spot. But it sometimes takes a bit of convincing. But once they have that great experience, then things really start to push forward for them, and they can hone in on the skills that are most important to the company, growing the company. And to see that happen is amazing.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, you said something that really resonated with me. You probably saw me smile at it when you said, A manager will think no one can do these things better than I can. And the other thing was, I don't have time to train someone to do the things that I do quite easily. Little bits of data entry, and I thought, I don't have time to train somebody to do this. It's so simple. And I think that's a common obstacle, I guess, as well.

Rich Sippos

Great point because I think when we have some initial discussions with property managers, most of them don't have a training plan in place. And what's great about hiring someone remotely and someone that's in that position day in and day out doing those same things over and over, they can help develop the training process. So yes, you might not have that perfect training process right from the beginning, but you can have that remote worker train for that and develop the training process. That's the huge part of hiring that next person, too. When someone else is needed for a different shift or a slightly different position, but still need to learn A, B, and C from the company, and that's going to be the same for every employee that comes on, amazing. And they can help develop that. And we've seen that with a lot of our partners.

Heather Bayer

Yeah. Okay, so what's the first step? Let's say somebody's listening to this and they think, Okay, the time has come. I've got to get somebody in. What is the first step for them?

Rich Sippos

Yeah, I think the first step, especially for those types of companies, is to take a look internally, not only what they're doing that they not only are annoyed with, but as a repetitive task that can be put off to somebody else. Start to create a list like you did, and then also speak with their staff, understanding their staff on the ground, any of the maintenance personnel or housekeepers or anyone else that's working, say, as an inspector, or things that they can do that can also be taken off their plate so that they can focus on what's best for the company and best for them in their position to be the expert at that, taking that list and starting with that list, I think that is absolutely the first step.

Rich Sippos

Most people don't do that. They get to the point of, Okay, now I'm frustrated, what do I do now? And that's fine because we understand, and we've done this before, we'll help them create that list. Go through that list, figure out what those tasks are, and then also get them an idea of developing some training process for the next person that's coming on.  Even if they start it from a very high level, they can at least get moving on it and then get started as the person is hired. Those two things are the biggest things to start with.

Heather Bayer

This is what I did when we found Hannah 10 years ago, and we had a couple of failed attempts at doing it ourselves. I'm just not very good at interviews because I go on gut feeling, speak to somebody, Oh, she looks nice. I'm the person who when I'm looking for a realtor, I look at all the pictures on the websites and I go for the one that looks nicest and looks friendliest. So I was going for, This is a nice chatty person. I'll do a 10-minute interview, and yes, you've got the job. And that failed us more than once. So we ultimately went with a company that actually helped us find the right... They had us write a job description, first of all. Now, is the job description different from this vague list? I'm assuming it is.

Rich Sippos

Yeah, absolutely. So the biggest thing that we tell each partner that we're working with is we'll help you craft the job description. If you don't have an exact one that you really want to use, we'll help you craft that job description. And it comes from the list. It comes from a discussion with the staff to understand what they're looking for as well. And then we have tons of job descriptions that we've used in the past. We think about the exact type of role that they're looking for. If it's a mixture of multiple things, most likely we've created a job description that's similar to that. We can take a start from one of the ones that we already have, add in a lot of the nuances of that particular company, whether it's technology or skill set or type of person for that matter, and then put that together very specific for that job. And then we hire for that position. And that also includes a schedule. So figuring out a schedule is very important, because if a company is looking to hire someone for Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, we need to understand those hours. The people that are applying for the position need to understand those hours because we want somebody that's willing to work those hours, is able to work those hours.  They know up front what that schedule is, and we can hire for the right people right at the beginning.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, exactly. And that's how we found somebody that enabled us to have emails answered right the way through the night. Nobody ever went really very long without getting an email answered, because our remote worker was in the Philippines, still is, and was able to... 12, 14 hours, I think, difference, was able to deal with all that through the night. And then we either had early morning meetings or late night meetings for them. So that worked really, really well. But that was really important. Also to know cultural differences, I'd love to have this discussion on cultural differences, and I'm not sure if it fits in here, but let's go for it. Because you're hiring for the company culture as well as hiring for skills. So company culture is very different from somebody else's culture in another country. How does that all tie in?

Rich Sippos

Amazing question. So we also use predictive index in our hiring process. So talking with the staff that our team members are going to be working with, having them take the predictive index, having the candidates take the predictive index that we are hiring, it's so important to have a close match when you are hiring someone for a small company, especially. You're only dealing with one or two people. It's a very tight group. It's a very small group. Communication is essential. So we want to make sure that first hire that we have is going to match well with the staff that they're talking to. And we found that to be the key so many times over and over and over. That's helped us a lot. Culture? Yeah, definitely. When you talk about culture in the US relative to Canada, relative to the Philippines or Mexico. There's differences in each one for sure. We found amazing, amazing talent in both Mexico and the Philippines.  That is customer-facing skills are excellent, empathy with guests is off the charts, just understanding the hospitality world and having a hospitable culture has been great for both of those areas.

Heather Bayer

Let's put this in perspective here because sometimes I see on Facebook groups and people are saying, I heard from Vrbo or I heard from Airbnb and it was obviously somebody from another country. They know nothing about our culture and what happens here. How does that set apart from the person you hire for an individual company?

Rich Sippos

Give me a bit of an example and then I can dive into it a little bit further.

Heather Bayer

Yeah. So you're saying that they have this great empathy and customer focused and hospitality focus. Yet we hear on Facebook groups and people are talking about these remote workers who are working for the OTAs that perhaps do not have those skills. So what's the difference?

Rich Sippos

Good point. We find people that have five-star hotel experience in both the Philippines and in Mexico in customer-facing roles that deal with customers face-to-face in the past, deal with customers over the phone or via email that have that experience in those high-end hotels and in other high-end property management companies as well. Those are the people that we're finding that fit well with our company and with our partners. They have that on the ground experience of being in front of a guest that might be upset or having a guest with the problem and then figuring out how to fix it. Having that real experience in that high-end world has been amazing for us.

Heather Bayer

Your predictive index, what's it actually looking for? Because I've heard of this, I'm not absolutely sure what it's testing for?

Rich Sippos

Yeah. So predictive index tests for a multitude of things. Really, the way that you work in the workforce, the way that you perceive yourself comes out to be a particular value. And that shows well with sales positions or someone who is in a spot of being in front of a customer is going to be completely different. Then you have the people like our founder who would show up as a Maverick who is really the leader and the visionary of the company. So we find out a lot of things from those tests. If we find somebody that in a sales position, a persuader let's say, that's my predictive index. I think I'm just naturally persuader. I don't try to be, but if I believe in what I'm talking about, I think that's much easier. So testing those types of things of how you perceive yourself, how others perceive you, or how you're perceived in a position. And that's what it's looking for.

Heather Bayer

So there's others out there like Culture Index [Survey], DiSC, Myers Briggs, of course Myers Briggs has been around for...

Rich Sippos

All very similar. Using DiSC test for sales organizations was a common thing to do, even 10 years ago.

Heather Bayer

So there are plenty out there.

Heather Bayer

We're going to take a short break just now to hear about our sponsor, OwnerRez, directly from one of their clients. We'll be back to our interview in just a few moments.

Jennifer Spencer

Hello there. My name is Jennifer Spencer. I own two vacation rental properties, Lone Wolf Chalet, located in the Canadian Rockies, and a property in Maui, the Blue Hula. I like to say we go from ski to sea. I'm also the founder of The Host Approach, where my mission is to help vacation rental owners and managers with strategies, systems, and automation so they can increase bookings, improve the guest experience, and scale their business. I've been using OwnerRez to automate my vacation rental business for over five years. OwnerRez's comprehensive features such as channel management, guest communication, and third party software integrations have made it my top recommendation for anyone looking to optimize the management of their properties, while still delivering a great guest experience. One of the standout features of OwnerRez is the ability to automate your guest communication. Guest communication is one of the most important and time consuming parts of running a vacation rental. With OwnerRez, you can ensure your guests receive everything they need when they need it, but without you spending hours and hours manually sending emails and messages. Within OwnerRez, you can write a variety of guest email and message templates and then set up a trigger function to send your messages at a specified time.

Jennifer Spencer

The benefits to this automation features include ensuring that your guests feel prepared for their stay, increasing the likelihood that they'll actually follow your house rules, the ability for you to generate some extra revenue with 'gap night' promotional offers, and with all of this, you'll save so much time while delivering a seamless and positive guest experience. So there you have it. And I've only highlighted a few of the many features that make oneres such a great system. So for these reasons and more, I highly recommend it to anyone managing a short-term rental who's looking to streamline their business and maximize their revenue potential.

Heather Bayer

Well that was a great testimonial! And now back to our interview.

Heather Bayer

Let's move on to... Okay, we've selected the people we're going to talk to. How do you then interview them? Is there any tips you can give on interviewing and not going my route, which was, Oh, you look quite nice.

Rich Sippos

And sometimes that works for you, but a lot of times it does not. And the first time it does not, then you really have to hone in on your interview skills. I think hiring from a different country, the first thing that people think about is what is their capabilities with the English language? Written, verbal. That's a huge part of what we're looking for, too. It's always a prerequisite that candidates have excellent verbal and written English skills. Some may need to know more than others, or some may need to have a more minimal accent for certain companies than others. All of this can be put into our interview process, into our job description. So first and foremost, I think that's a prerequisite. But then as we go through the process, we have a full recruitment team and a full HR team that handles all of our interviewing. And, like anything else, it's trial and error as to what works and then how you hone in on that process.  I can't say exactly how we're interviewing people because I'm not there for most of those interviews, but they know exactly what they're looking for in the types of people that we've placed that have been the most successful.

Rich Sippos

So repeating those processes from being the most successful, that's what we're doing on a daily basis and learning from those. But yeah, so I can't tell you all the tips and things that we're using.

Heather Bayer

I always remember I hated going for interviews back in my younger days and being asked those problem questions, given a scenario, how would you react? And I just went completely blank. No idea, I'm sorry, but I still managed to get the job.

Rich Sippos

So yeah, some interview questions have to be putting people on the spot to make them uncomfortable in a situation, and see how they react. And it might not be the exact answer that you're looking for, but you can understand by the way a person reacts to a situation and how they would react to a problem with a guest, how they would react to a problem with a home owner, how they would react to canceling a reservation when it's the day before they're supposed to be arriving, all of those tough, difficult problems. You can get a lot from a person by asking them a completely off the wall question that they might not know about and how they would problem solve through the question.

Heather Bayer

Yes. We had one that we used over and over again. And it was a situation that had actually happened on a couple of occasions when a cleaner arrived at a property to do the changeover, to find the guest still there, but thinking that they'd booked an extra day. And so what are you going to do? Because these people think they've paid for another day. They're not leaving on Saturday, they're leaving on Sunday. And you've got guests arriving in five hours time.  I used to have a lot of fun with the answers that we got.

Rich Sippos

And that problem can escalate a lot further than you're telling them that they have to leave in a few hours.

Heather Bayer

Oh, yes.

Rich Sippos

There has to be a lot of thought process that goes through that answer.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, exactly. I always found some of those questions were great for our emergency planning sessions.

Rich Sippos

And it's great because we've all been there, too. I think that if anybody has been in this business for a long period of time, you've always run into one of those situations at some point.

Heather Bayer

Yes, exactly. We had situations with guests arriving a day early... often. "I thought my booking went from Friday to Friday," and "No it went from Saturday to Saturday", "But I've just driven six hours." Those are the sorts of questions that are really useful, actually, I think, particularly for issue facing staff, those of you those who are going to be on the end of the phone when that guest calls or when that owner calls or when the housekeeper calls and says, We've got a problem.

Rich Sippos

Or now when you get the text message that says, We've arrived, we're at the house, we can't get in. Well, you're only scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, what are we going to do?

Rich Sippos

Now it's a text conversation.

Heather Bayer

So. We've now chosen our person and we're very excited. What happens next on... And that was something else that I always struggled a little bit. What happens when you get to that morning and they're there? And of course, they're not there because this is remote. So I'm assuming you're going to say you need a plan.

Rich Sippos

You need to have somewhat of a plan. So we have a partner success division of our company, and they walk our partners through from the beginning of contract signing through the interview process, through the onboarding process. They're there for our partners, letting them know what to expect, letting them know what comes next, giving them tips on what they need to prepare for, and then, of course, having a kick off call with your new team member. So that's a big part of it. You're finally meeting the person that now will be a full-time member of your team and setting them up for all the systems that they need to get into, communication between the team and how that will all transpire. All of that is handled by our workforce team and our partner success division. And they walk our partners through all of those things. So it's important that they know upfront what to prepare for, but also getting them connected to all the proper systems and realizing that communication is essential and especially communication from the beginning, because the person is not sitting right next to them. They're not coming in and out of their office. They're not seeing them in and out of properties. They're on a Zoom video or Google Meet or whatever else that they're using.

Rich Sippos

So that's a huge part of it. Understanding the communication with the team members is essential. Starting that early, really making them to be part of the team, integrating them into the systems, and having them talk to the staff that they're going to be talking with on a daily basis right from the beginning. That's the most important. Getting anybody comfortable in a situation leads to success.

Heather Bayer

Exactly. Talking about communications, what do you recommend are the best communication platforms. You've mentioned Zoom.

Rich Sippos

Yeah. I mean, we find phone systems are very common. There's four or five different phone systems that almost everyone uses. So connecting them to a phone line, if they're going to be taking telephone calls at any period of time, forwarding, making sure that that forwarded call gets to them properly, that they have a clear sound back and forth, and the guests could understand, or the staff could understand them speaking, and they have a great connection. All important.

Rich Sippos

Slack, WhatsApp, any of the Google Spaces, etc. All of those things are used by all of our partners. So we're agnostic and we adapt to the systems that our partners are using. Sometimes we'll get asked for recommendations, and we'll give some recommendations here or there. But ultimately, a company has a preferred method that they're already using, and we'd like to adapt it to what they have. So almost always that can happen.

Heather Bayer

When we first went remote and sent everybody to their homes, there was no Slack. So we started with Skype, which worked pretty well, communications. But once Slack came on the scene, it was like game changer. And now that with all the little add-ons, you can screen share, you can have the huddles, which is just you want to speak to somebody face-to-face and it's just a press of a button and they're there. And it's just so handy that you could have that face-to-face conversation as easy as it would be just to walk into somebody else's office. And that's still the free version.

Rich Sippos

Completely essential.

Heather Bayer

Yeah, we were using the free version. Still using the free version, I believe.

Rich Sippos

It's excellent. Say if you're a property manager and you are walking into a property and you have questions for the person that's going to be responsible for sending those check-in instructions to the next guest, and you need to speak to them right away, you can do that right on your phone, right there in the property, and our extended team member is sitting there at their desk. They can connect to them instantly. So it's like they're right next to them anyway. It's just a matter of getting used to that type of communication. And once that's the case, it doesn't matter where that person is sitting.

Heather Bayer

The one thing that I was always very conscious of is having our remote staff motivated and being part of a team. Our team had been together a lot of years before we hired our first person remotely, and that was in the Philippines. And we thought long and hard about how can you feel part of a team? We used to get together and have donuts and have fun in the office, and that person is not able to be a part of that. How can you motivate them?

Rich Sippos

Really, I think it's very simple from the beginning, just like we talked about, having them feel a part of the team right from the beginning, having them as a part of team meetings, if they can be on different situations as much as possible, having them have a virtual doughnut meet up. We do this now in our own company where we do a lot of different virtual meetups. We're talking with people from all around the world every single day. It becomes very commonplace to what we're doing, whether we're eating in front of them or anything else. So as comfortable as you can be from the beginning, that's the key. And then also having KPIs for a particular set of skills that they're coming in for. Having someone work towards a goal is always motivation. So having KPIs to start with from the beginning, even if they're simple, even if they're really attainable, doesn't matter. Having that set of goals for someone to come into really motivates anyone. And then keep the goals more challenging. Everybody loves to be challenged. And so keeping those challenging goals up and having them work towards those things is very motivational.

Rich Sippos

And it also makes you develop communication. If someone's not hitting the goals or someone's close to them, coaching them, talking to them, walking through different situations on how to be better when you're doing whatever part of that job it is. And having that motivation with KPIs is the key.

Heather Bayer

That is great. Rich, this has all been incredibly useful. And I hope that anybody out there who is thinking now that, this is the time, that you've taken something away from this and you can take a next step now. But if they wanted to get in touch with you, just give us a little... You did at the beginning, a little bit more background on Extenteam and the process that somebody would go through if they decided now, I don't want to do this by myself. I don't want to make the mistakes.

Rich Sippos

Right. So the first thing is we would figure out what product fits best for them. If it's a small company and they have 10 units and they're just getting started and they really need help with 24/7 coverage, we have a product for that, it's called Tailwind. 24/7 coverage for guest services, for reservations, we can take care of them as they grow their business, then they can grow into our main product, which is full-time team members exclusively for property management companies. So once we would come up with the proper job description and schedule, we would start to place that job ad immediately, as soon as the contract is signed. And then it takes about two weeks for us to go through all of the interview process for the majority of our positions that we're hiring for. And at the end of those two week period, they would have a kick off call with their new team member, and then we would expect them to start with training with their company shortly after that. Ultimately, the process takes about three weeks' time, and they have somebody in front of them ready to go. Now, with specialized positions like revenue management, marketing coordination, outbound sales, those might take a little bit longer.

Rich Sippos

We get the partner involved in the final interview process for those types of positions, because it's a very personal choice when it comes down to something very specific. And we want that choice to be made by our partners. We help them through the end of that process. And then that takes a bit more time. It probably takes another week or two. So about 4 to five weeks when it comes to hiring something very specific like a revenue management position.

Heather Bayer

That is great. Sounds like you have a product to fit just about everybody's needs. I will make sure that the information on Extenteam is in the Show Notes, so that you can go in there and check them out, go and check the website out, and perhaps get in touch with Rich and explore your needs. So thank you.

Rich Sippos

Amazing. We're at many of the shows, of course. We'll definitely be at VRMA International. If we're not at a show, you can reach us definitely directly through our website or through me. We'd be more than happy to talk through any staffing needs with you.

Heather Bayer

That is great. Thanks so much, Rich, for joining me. It's been an absolute pleasure talking with you.

Rich Sippos

Yeah, thanks for having me again and good to see you.

Heather Bayer

Well, that was a great conversation. Thank you, Rich Sippos from Extenteam.

Heather Bayer

I had not mentioned, while I was talking to Rich, that we have another great person on our team that joined us a couple of months ago. And somehow we made such a right move when we interviewed Carolina and brought her on board. Carolina will be looking at the transcript of this before it goes out, because she does the social media for it. But I guess social media manager or yes, she is the one that puts out all the TikTok videos and YouTube videos and posts on Instagram. All these things that I would have loved to have learned. If you've been listening to the podcast over the years, you've heard me say so many times that I wanted to learn how to use Instagram, and I've wasted countless hours on courses and tutorials and watching YouTube videos, and I still haven't got the grips with it. And I really don't have to. And now we have Carolina, who is truly exceptional at what she does. And we love having her in the team. Things have become a lot easier and Carolina is over in the other side of the world, too.  But we had a great team meeting first thing this morning. It was her last thing at night. And it just felt like we were all sitting in an office together. And that's the way it should be.

Heather Bayer

So yeah, thanks once again, Rich, for bringing the whole topic of remote workforce to us, because I think it's a direction you may have to go in if you're not able to find people local to your business or your office to take the jobs that you have available.

Heather Bayer

Now we are on the other side of the 500th episode and we are motoring on to 1,000 now. We also have our new website launched. Would love it if you would go over to vacationrentalformula.com, take a look. There is a mass of content on there. The site now is like a master class in vacation rentals. And if you click on the 'Learn' button at the top, and you'll have all these different sections you could go into if you want to learn about marketing, if you want to learn about operations, or preparing a property for rental, or doing research, or hiring staff. You'll be able to go in there and not so much a really in-depth look, but long, long guides on how to do this stuff, because I don't think there's much out there that really gives you the quality of knowledge that can come from people who've been in the industry a long, long time.

Heather Bayer

And I've learned a lot. And a lot of what's in there has come from all these fantastic people who've been on the podcast over the last nine years. I've learned a ton of stuff from them and have talked to them outside of the podcast as well because they'll say something in an interview and I think, That was really interesting. I'm going to go back and ask them more. And it just adds to my store of knowledge, which I then share with you. So I'd love it if you would go over to vacationrentalformula.com, sign up for our newsletter, which is brand new as well.

Heather Bayer

There's a few newsletters I read that I think are absolutely wonderful. I open them every time. One is Matt Landau's, then there is Rental Scale-Up, it's another brilliant newsletter. The third one, outside of the industry, is from Anne Handley, the author of Everybody Writes, and I wanted to model our new newsletter on some of these to make it incredibly interesting, readable, and one that you will look forward to coming in your inbox every week. So if you haven't yet signed up for our newsletter, I'd really encourage you to go there.

Heather Bayer

The other thing I'd love you to do is to join us in the Facebook group, The Business of Short-Term Rental and Property Management. The link will be on the Show Notes. If you're not in there, it's a terrific group where owners, managers, vendors, they're all in there helping everybody out and we'd love to have you there.

Heather Bayer

So that's it for another week. It's been an absolute pleasure, as ever, being with you and I will look forward to the next time around.

Mike Bayer

This episode was brought to you by the kind returning sponsorship of OwnerRez. Don't forget, if you sign up, use the promotional code VRF30, that's V,R,F,3,0, to get 30% off your first three months of usage of OwnerRez, which is an internationally recognized leader in vacation rental software. You can click the link in the description of this episode in your smart device or head over to vacationrentalformula.com/OwnerRez to find out more.

Heather Bayer

It's been a pleasure as ever being with you. If there's anything you'd like to comment on, then join the conversation on the Show Notes for the episode at vacationrentalformula.com. We'd love to hear from you and I look forward to being with you again next week.

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