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[00:00:00] Sarah: Hello listeners, welcome back for another great Week. My name is Sarah Karakaian.
[00:00:03] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we’re–
[00:00:05] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.
[00:00:06] Sarah: And this is the–
[00:00:07] Both Annette & Sarah: Hosting Hotline.
[00:00:08] Sarah: If you want to ask a question to the Hosting Hotline, just go to hostinghotline.com. Ask your question. We will share it here in the podcast, and you will help thousands of hosts with the answer to your question. If we don’t have it, we’ll leverage our amazing network. Again, that’s hostinghotline.com.
[00:00:23] Annette: And help yourself. Let’s go.
[00:00:25] Sarah: Let’s go. We got you. Today we have a question from Samantha.
[00:00:29] Questions: Hey, ladies. My name is Samantha and I am calling to ask about our off-season. So we are super slow right now and with the exception of trying to figure out how to fill my units, is there anything you recommend that I can do to better prepare my space for when we are busy? Do you guys have suggested preventative maintenance or maybe you guys use that time to update your listing? What do you guys do during your off-season? What do you recommend?
[00:00:58] Sarah: Oh, the off-season. We’re in ours right now.
[00:01:00] Annette: No, there’s never an off-season.
[00:01:01] Sarah: No, it’s 100% occupancy.
[00:01:02] Annette: We’re always booked.
[00:01:03] Sarah: Booked and busy. No, we’re in off-season right now, and every year it comes, and every year we prepare, and every year it is still sad. Actually, we’re doing much better this year with our occupancy, but it’s still our off-season.
[00:01:14] And actually, it should very much be a part of your operations. And while you’re not bringing as much revenue you are in your high season, that does not make it any less important to make your high season that much more smooth. There’s so much prep work you can be doing during your off-season.
[00:01:32] Annette: This just happened to us last week. Sarah and I have not spent the night in the property that we share together. Actually, we’ve never spent the night there, I don’t think. We had it on our calendar. Luckily, we got booked. So number one, plan some overnight stays.
[00:01:47] Sarah: A guest–
[00:01:48] Annette: Because Murphy’s Law, someone’s going to book it. We are, this winter, at some point in time, going to do an overnight stay and a two full days of deep cleaning, pressure testing, all things. Sarah and I have kept a laundry list of things that we would like to add or we could just zhuzh, and we worked on that last week.
[00:02:08] And of course when you do that too, it opens up a whole other can of worms of things that you see and want to dust, and clean, and deep clean, and order. Got to look at your budget. But if you have the time, if you have the opportunity, to actually go stay in your property, check out what’s going on with your HVAC, experience your hot water pressure. See is your oven really preheating at a good pace? Does that microwave work? How is your coffee makers? How are those working?
[00:02:38] What’s going on with all of those subscriptions that you have? So off-season, not only in your property, but we last night had a networking call in our membership, and we were talking about going through all of the subscriptions. What are you using? Your tech stack, reaching out to all of them. Can you get a better deal? Is there a way that you could work on the pricing? Taking a look at your insurance policy.
[00:03:01] This is definitely a time to do that. Taking rest too. It’s okay. If you know it’s your slow season and you can have the luxury of maybe blocking the calendar, not having to go to the property, and maybe giving yourself, if you don’t have a team, a little bit of R&R. If you know your numbers, you know that there’s this week or two that normally don’t ever get booked, I think rest is really important too.
[00:03:29] Sarah: Co-hosts out there, now is a great time to ask yourself, are you optimizing all of the areas in which you can bring in revenue to your business? Right now we’re doing a lot of that. How can we optimize the work that we’re doing to offer supplies to our owners and to our clients? Are those the best pricing on supplies? Really just that nitty gritty. Am I charging my owners the right price? If you are in a state where you have to have your license to operate, how are you doing on your CEs?
[00:04:05] Is there other ways that you can leverage your license? Maybe you want to partner up with another agent to bring you other owners, and in turn you can be a consultant if they have investors who want to buy and/or sell short-term rentals. So it’s just a great time to work on your business because I don’t know– I know, listeners, right now you’re, like us. You’re not quite big enough to always be working on your business. That’s the goal. But there are times, especially in your high seasons where it’s all hands on deck.
[00:04:38] Annette: You’re just answering the next– what’s next? You’re like, defense, defense, defense. This is time to play some offense.
[00:04:44] Sarah: And I don’t care how organized you are. I’m giving you permission right now, listeners. Annette and I pride ourselves on being incredibly organized. We are very good at marketing. We are very good at bringing in new leads and nurturing the people who are in our world.
[00:05:00] But it is still very much go time when it is your high season and it’s all hands on deck, and then you have to be– and honestly, working in your business is a great way to expose weaknesses, so that’s also a good thing. So I digress.
[00:05:13] Your slower seasons is a great time to work on your business, to zoom out. Yes. Get in your physical property and, like Annette said, look at all the different things that your cleaners aren’t going to be able to do quite the way that you would or look at the way you would, but also to look at your profit and loss statement, your balance sheet. Is your CPA still something that you relate to?
[00:05:36] How about your bookkeeper? Those other vendors that you work with is now the time to make sure that you have the best relationship and pricing with them. Not only your tech stack, but the people who actually help you in your business. If your off-season is right now, or if it’s coming up, schedule a time to do those things.
[00:05:55] And I also want to give a shout out to our partners at Breezeway. They have templates inside of their software that will help you with off-season preventative maintenance for maintenance tasks. Also off-season tasks for your inspectors, for your cleaners. And of course, you can create your own template.
[00:06:15] So if you’re listening to this episode right now and you are inspired and you’re putting pen to paper, seeing different ways that you can work on your business and not in your business, you could create your own checklist, whether it’s in Breezeway or just good old fashioned piece of paper or a Google Doc, but write those things down, and then schedule them on your calendar, time block, and then every year you can add on to it. You can perfect it, and your property and your business are going to be in the best shape of their lives. So Samantha, great question. Annette, anything else you want to add before we sign off?
[00:06:46] Annette: If you have a team, this is a time to also thank your team, get together with your team, and see how you can improve in the next year. Also, maybe go side by side, do some of the work with them and see how you can help them.
[00:06:58] Sarah: Thank them. My team, thank you guys. Love you. Mean it. With that, I’m Sarah Karakaian.
[00:07:04] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we’re–
[00:07:06] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.
[00:07:07] Sarah: Talk to you next time.
