← The Boostly Podcast
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- [00:00]
Mark Simpson
Want to take control of your bookings and find some independence from Airbnb? Meet StayFi, the game changer in guest data collection and marketing. Now, Stayfi been around for a while, I've talked about a lot, but let me just delve into a little bit more about what Stayfi is and it does. So remember the last time you went into a coffee shop and you wanted to use the WI fi? What did you have to do to get the WI fi? You had to give him your email. Stayfi works exactly like that, but for your short term rental or your medium term rental business. And the beauty of it is that you don't just get the lead booker's details, you get the whole party. And this is fantastic because of a stay of maybe four people coming at your property, you've not just got one email, one piece of data, you've got four. And this is so important to boosting your direct bookings is to build a solid database. Now, after the Stay stay fight, encourage you to keep in contact with your guests and they give you the tools to do so as well. They've got email, they've got sms, you name it, they've got it and it's all automated. Now I reached out to Stay Fi and I asked them, what can you do for the Boostly peeps? What can you do for the Boostly crowd? And they have given us 50% off your first three months. Now that's an exclusive. Now to do that you need to go to stayfi.com forward/boostly b o o S T L Y. Stay Fi is S T A Y F I dot com. When you're signing up, you've got to put the discount code in Boostly B O O S T L Y. Then you get 50% off your first three months of every vendor, every supplier, everybody that that we have recommended over the years. The ones that everybody comes back to me with and saying that was the one, it was Stay Fi. I'm a massive fan of them and I'm so happy that they've agreed to sponsor and partner with this podcast and this show. And now it's time for you to reap the benefits. Go to stay fire.comforward/boostly. Use the discount code boostly and you get 50% off to your first three months. Right, let's get back on with the show.
- [02:06]
Liam
Hi and welcome back to the Boostly podcast. This is the podcast that gives hosts the tools, the tactics, the training and most importantly, the confidence to get more direct bookings. On this podcast, we don't just talk about direct bookings. We love to have it as a question but we also like to dive into anything hospitality and we do a mini series called the Boostly Spotlight series where we shine the Boostly spotlight on people, services and people that you just need to know about as a host wherever you are in the world. And today we've got a special guest. We've got Matt Metros. He is the founder of a company called CS Outsource. And we're basically diving into just a conversation all about overseas staff hospitality. We don't know where the conversation can go, but I really enjoyed. We've recently had Matt on for another show within our Boostly community and we could have filled much more time. So we thought, you know what would be cool? Let's do a podcast. Let's jump on here and give our listeners loads of value. So Matt, welcome along and thank you for joining me.
- [03:04]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, absolutely. Just to introduce myself, my name is Matthew Metro. I help short term rental and midterm rental operators outsource and build virtual assistant teams. So the way we got started in the business was helping out with the guest communications, vendor communications, you know, scheduling vendors, disputing negative reviews, helping with the turnovers and cleaning process, ordering inventory and supplies, helping with, you know, Airbnb claims as they come in, listing optimizations. You know, when a new listing comes in, you need to get a photographer, you need to find a new cleaner, a whole new handyman, all that sort of stuff. So that's where we got started in the business. And then over time, operators started asking for things like digital marketing. So email and SMS campaigns, retarget pass gas, graphic design, social media posting. Then they started asking for things like bookkeeping. So sending out those owner statements on time, setting up a trust accounting process, reconciling the accounts, remitting the local lodging taxes and then we also do appointment setting and business development. So we're fully end to end outsourcing and virtual assistant service for SDR operators.
- [04:20]
Liam
What I love about this is obviously coming at it from a host point of view yourself. You've got the experience of a host so you kind of know what the audience needs. And also you've got the experience of having a team of of overseas staff and virtual assistants. But before we dive deeper in, what do you want somebody to take away from this episode? So if they listen to this, what is the kind of feel or the kind of experience that you want them to take away from listening to this podcast?
- [04:46]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, I would say, you know, the, you Know struggles and challenges of hiring, training, managing, retaining and compensating. Vas I know a lot of people think you can just go to online jobs ph and you know, set up, put out a job description and you know, lo and behold, you have an awesome vi. It doesn't end there. Vas come and go. Training them takes a lot of time. You have to be very meticulous about that, managing them. You know, you're almost like a part time psychologist. You know, if they break up with their girlfriend or boyfriend, like you know, that's going to have an impact on your business and you know, retaining them for the long term. You know, get creative with how you compensate. Performance based pay, deferred pay, there's all sorts of things you can do. But the reality is VA just come and go. When you bring somebody on, you're now a manager, you're now doing hr, you're training them so you know, be prepared for that sort of stuff. And you have to prepare ahead of time.
- [05:49]
Liam
With most hosts, what would you say the normal journey is? So do most hosts that you talk to, are they getting a virtual assistant literally when they start their business, are they getting it when they've got 10 places? Or when do you find is the moment for most hosts where they go, do you know what, I need some help with this. And then I've got a follow up question to that afterwards.
- [06:10]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, so it's a gray area for sure. You know, I was just on the phone with somebody and you know, they are locked in, they quit their W2, they're at six properties and you know, they rely on this for their, you know, income. So I said, you know, probably don't do this right now. Get to a place where you feel like you need one and a half people, you know, but it's going to vary based on your business goals. Um, you know, if you have a full time job, you know, maybe get started a little sooner. But if you're all in, maybe want more properties on your belt so that, you know, it's, it's not, you know, financially stressful on you. My rule of thumb is for really any recurring expense that you're about to take on in your business, like a virtual assistant, you, let's say it costs, you know, 1500 for somebody 40, 50 hours, right. I want to have a plan on how I'm going to get that 1500 in my business, right. To cover those expenses. So what I encourage people to do is, you know, start doing business development, marketing, bringing on more properties at least get, you know, 30 to 50% of the way there before that person comes on, so that when they come on, you're not feeling that pinch. Right. You're ready, are in. You've already like built up the momentum of building in that new revenue for the business. So that's always my rule of thumb to make sure that, you know, operators are comfortable and they're not bringing in a VA into what could turn into a toxic situation because financially it's struggle for them.
- [07:49]
Liam
Yeah, yeah, that's really wise advice. I mean, ultimately, I like that, that quote, which is like, make sure you've got enough jobs for one and a half people. You know, like, just be slightly too busy before you hire. Because ultimately if not, I mean, the worst things I see hosts do is, is they hire somebody and then they're going, I'm trying to find jobs for my virtual assistant. And I'm like, well, you're probably hired too early if you're at that stage. But at the same time there is for me, certainly when I first hired my very first virtual assistant, I suddenly felt I was busier. So I was like, hey, I need to hire somebody to help me. And then, because I then have the extra job of them kind of like training them, I was like, oh my God, I don't have time to do both. Do you find hosts fall into that trap and is there any ways they can avoid that?
- [08:35]
Matthew Metro
Yeah. So is the question more, you know, managing my time, bringing them on and not having enough for them? Yes.
- [08:42]
Liam
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [08:43]
Matthew Metro
So, so I mean, I, I think in the beginning it really comes down to, you know, your job description and, you know, making sure you're like uber specific as to what they're actually going to be doing. And if you can't get clarity there, don't even get started because there's too much ambiguity. And if you haven't found like the high value things that you want to take off your plate, you know, bringing on somebody is, might just be a waste of your time. So I always recommend just do like a little time study on yourself. You know, start, you know, for at least like a month. Right. Because you want to capture those before the, you know, at the start of the month tasks and those end of the month tasks and keep just outline what you're working on. And if you find yourself, you know, looking at Facebook or Instagram or whatever, Twitter during that test, it probably means you don't enjoy it that much. So that's like a great candidate for outsource, for outsourcing. To somebody else. But overall, if I take a step back, it's always just get really, really clear on the responsibilities of this person and then also get very clear on how you're going to manage your new time. You know, just because you have new time, it doesn't mean, you know, go to the beach. It's probably go time to start acquisitions of new customers, new properties, you know, getting started on actual marketing process. But really where I encourage most people to spend their time is on the business development side of things. Because one, you want this person to pay for themselves. And, you know, if you're doing it right, like, you're getting out of operations, right? So there should be plenty for somebody to do. But don't, you know, like, do not go into this without like a clear understanding of, like, where you want to be in the future three months from now. Because it does generally take around three months to get someone in a, you know, fairly comfortable position where, you know, you're not having to check in on them all the time. You know, at the beginning, there's lots and lots of training.
- [10:46]
Liam
That's absolutely wise words. And I think that business development and especially acquisitioning new opportunities, you know, whether that is if you're a host who is purchasing properties, or if you're a host who is doing arbitrage or a host which is managing for others, then there's a lot of work just doing that section, let alone managing the guests, the communication, you know, like the cleans, the changeovers and the ops. So ultimately I now look at every time I'm taking somebody on, I'm not actually looking at their wage. I'm looking at it going, how many, how many units or how many customers do I need to pay for this extra person? And once I've got that, then I'm able to grow faster because I'm not doing whatever those tasks were, which, which is offset. And there's not one time when I've regretted hiring somebody because ultimately it frees me, it pushes you to the next stage, and it also identifies if your operations are actually good enough. Because sometimes when you then train someone, I actually found that I was like, hey, we do it like this, and then we do this. And they're like, well, why do you do it like that? I was like, why do we do it like this? You know, like. And they help you to go, well, actually now I'm not just doing it myself and with your blinders on, just going about my daily business, suddenly I'm trying to show somebody else, and it's got to make sense to them and they bring things to the party and it gets to the stage, doesn't it, where you've got a team of people who actually are better their areas of expertise than you are as a host. And it's getting absolutely.
- [12:14]
Matthew Metro
I couldn't agree more with that. You know, I have one thing to say on that. When it comes to hiring people, I used to do all the interviews, right? Then I brought on somebody that really knew how to do interviews and, and filter for, like, quality people. My mind was blown. I was like, all right, like, now we're bringing in better people for operators and my life gets better because that's not something that was ever my strong suit. Like, business got more fun for me. I agree with that entirely. Change your life, really.
- [12:49]
Liam
It really does. Because as soon as they're in their area of expertise and you're able to go, well, what is, what's my area of excellence or expertise? Go and do more of that and get the, you know, the people who want to do the other stuff in those kind of roles and it is just really good. But for hosts listening to this, should they just hire out the tasks they don't want to do, or what is your advice around actually choosing the tasks for, for them and the responsibilities that they really should be? Outsourcing?
- [13:20]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, I love that question. You know, for me, there's a delicate balance between, like, I'm always thinking about, my rule of thumb is like, what is the customer impact? If it's like very sensitive, that's typically something I will keep, um, to myself. If it's like super high value task, that's also something I keep in house. Um, and for me, that's generally something around sales and business development. Like, that is, that's just something you really can't outsource. Um, the way you speak, the way you talk, talk on topics, you know, in 2024, you know, your personality, like who you are on the Internet is a lot of your company's brand. Personal branding is huge. So that stuff, I do not delegate. But, you know, the bottom line is you have to look at your business and see, like, how risky is this? What is going to be the client impact if something does go wrong? You know, and there's, there's like hybrid models, right? Some people, they come to us and they're, they want to do digital marketing, but they, you know, they have rules around how, you know, we outsource with them. They want to approve the messaging before it goes out. They want to see all the designs, they, right, they have so much brand control. But when it comes to the tactical execution of graphic design of the copywriting, that's on us. But you know, at the end of the day they have guardrails in place to prevent, you know, us from just sending, sending, sending. So there's hybrid models, there's fully outsourced models where you, you know, like, like your accountant, you know, most, some of us, we just here, take the Excel sheet, give it to your account and they handle the rest of it. But yeah, you have to really look at your business and see like how risky is this and look at, you know, your, your brand. Like, does it call for being outsourced? Does it call for, like, I really need to own this in house.
- [15:26]
Liam
I know this is a question and I completely agree, by the way, especially on the sales point you just made that ultimately that's the last thing. If, if I'm getting a new client, then I am talking to that person, you know, like, as in it needs to be me, especially, you know, in our side businesses. But, and maybe one day it will be somebody else. But for now that's something which I want to hold on to and it's also something I enjoy doing. You know, like it's one of the, there's a buzz for when you get a new client, agrees to come on board and where they give you the trust and where, you know, you've, you've perhaps got a guest who's got a high value booking. You know, again, I'd ask for things like that to come to myself, but there's so many things that you can outsource as a host. Like you say, the bookkeeping, the guest comms, you know, the operations of managing your cleaners, daily messages, you know, all of that sort of stuff is really cool. But there's also that time where perhaps with the new world, and I know I've asked you this when we saw you the day. But with the new world, there's a lot of AI out there, right? So do I really need to hire a virtual assistant or can I just replace that need for that person? Should, should virtual assistants be worried?
- [16:34]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, yeah. You know, my, this is the way I think about it. You could talk to, you know, an AI expert, they'll have a whole different opinion on the world. I think right now, in the near term, and I'm just talking about the near term, I don't know, five years from now, like I might even turn into AI at that point. Who, who knows what's going to happen. But in the near term for sure, I think some of the low level, tedious tasks, like, you know, basic guest communications AI is going to play significant role in that. But at the same time, you know, answering the phones, adding that human touch. I don't think we're there yet. And you're still going to need a virtual assistant to do things like that. Also, a lot of the tools we use are very fragmented, right? Like your cleaners on WhatsApp, or maybe you're communicating with a vendor over email and the chats are coming in through, you know, your pms. You're still going to need someone that's going to be able to connect all the dots there and make sure that messages get through at the right time, at the right speed, you know, with the correct undertones, all that sort of stuff. So my rule of, like of thumb here, how I think about is one agent is going to be able to do more, you know, you'll be able to have more properties under one agent. Right. Right. Now generally how, what I see is one agent can oversee around 20 to 30, you know, 35. So, you know, obviously depends on what is the scope of their task. If they're just doing guest comms, you know, it's going to be on upper hand there. But you know, with AI, who knows, maybe that goes to 40, you know, you know, so it's, it's like the perfect match made in heaven. You know, you have humans working with a tool that just makes them smarter. And also what I like about AI is a lot of the times I'm always finding, you know, that I have to like check on people. Did they do this, did they do that? And where I think AI is going to like really be able to step in is it's going to provide that level of oversight. Like, hey, no, you missed this. Like you need to, to check on this. Because it does have that brainpower to do it. So, you know, be able to provide some supervision, just overall make, you know, one agent that much better in your business, that much more productive, effective, et cetera.
- [18:58]
Liam
100% agree. I mean, I've used it where I've, I've got a member of my team who in the past I was sometimes a bit worried. Not because they'd always make the right decisions, but sometimes their tone, and they didn't mean to sound, but their tone when they, the written tone didn't sound as nice as when they talk like they're talking, you know, really nicely like we are. But on email you'd Think they're really angry at you all the time, despite actually not meaning to sound angry. But since having ChatGPT, like we just, hey, just run your messages through ChatGPT and it sounds so polite, so professional, you know, like, and, and it's matching the tone of your business, isn't it? And ultimately you can even get the CHAT GPT bottom to understand the tone of your business. And however anybody talks, the tone can be the same. Especially if you've got multiple virtual assistants talking to multiple guests. They might just see you as one person, they might see you as the owner of the company that they're talking to. But ultimately maintaining that tone, you know, with, with AI is, is really helpful. So 100% think that the connection between a good virtual assistant plus AI together is, is a pretty potent way to help your business.
- [20:06]
Matthew Metro
So I agree.
- [20:07]
Liam
When it comes down to the things that can be outsourced to your VAs, I know we talked about some of the common ones. Is there anything that genuinely you just, you can't outsource? Is that just the sales stuff or is there anything else that you can think which wouldn't be right to outsource to a va or can pretty much all your tasks really go across to them?
- [20:29]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, well, aside from anything that requires you to be physically there. Right. You know, that's a, that's a good question. I mean, you're talking to the VA person. Like I, you know, I have about, we have about 130, you know, agents on our team and I outsource just about everything. I don't even like, I even outsource things with banking. Um, you know, obviously I've guardrails in place, but just about everything I, I outsource. The only thing that I really just don't outsource is my personal brand. That's it. But you know, I do have people that help me with their, like sales assistants, making sure we follow up with people, you know, managing the CRM and that sort of stuff. But generally my personal brand is the only thing that I really hold tightly. But yeah, everything else I do outsource. So I wish I had more that I could say for this business. But yeah, your guest communications, vendor communications, finding new vendors. I mean also you have to, you know, like there's different levels to VAs. I mean, you know, you can have a low level VA that's, you know, not that skilled and then you could have a rock star that has like a PhD. Like they exist and I come across them all the time because in their Countries, they're just not getting that level of work that you know, pays well. So they're willing to, you know, do short term rental, you know, virtual assistants and oversee a large operation. So there's great talent out there. There's so much more to be discovered on what you can do when you find the right person. So don't let like any preconceived ideas of what you heard about virtual assistants limit you on what you can do. Remote work is here is, it's growing and it's becoming, you know, I, all the entrepreneurs that I know right now, they're starting their businesses on the Internet. So we're all like theoretically vas all working with each other. So I wouldn't limit yourself like talent and experience is everywhere and there's somebody that can get the job done completely.
- [22:48]
Liam
I, I, I follow a chap called Daniel Priestley and he was talking about exactly this, that there was the age of like the industrial revolution where you'd have to have big factories and you know, before that there was the agricultural age where you'd have big fields and there's lots of people involved. And then we've kind of hit this digital age and more and more we're seeing businesses actually only consist of anywhere between one and like 15 people. And actually they can be massive, great big brands because of the Internet. And you know, like, like you say most of these people can be literally anywhere in the world. You know, they don't have to be in a certain place or even in the same country. You know, it's very cool. So it's exciting to see.
- [23:27]
Mark Simpson
This episode of the podcast is brought to you by Hostfully, the leading property management software in the short term rental industry. Now according to Hostfully's research is property managers who upgrade from a basic PMS to top tools like Hostfully see at least an 11% boost in revenue. That's because Hostfully saves you time, letting you focus on growing your business with features like channel management, free listing on Google revenue management tools and discounts on integrations. But don't just take my word for it. Hostfully has plenty of success stories. A property manager I know in Manchester saves about a day's work each month thanks to their advanced owner report generator. Another in Liverpool has cut guest communication issues by a third and somebody that I know in Miami went from six properties to 50 in just a year. Now you listening to this podcast and you being part of my world, you get a special deal when you sign up. All you need to do is go to www.hostfully, which is spelled H O S T-F-U-L-L-Y.com forward slash, boostly. There'll be a chat box. Start a chat, mention that you're part of the boostly world, and you'll get a unique discount. Now, I recommend Hostfully to many, many, many people. And we've built over a hundred integrations with our websites into them. And I know firsthand how much people love working with them. I love working with them. I'm so proud that they are sponsoring this podcast. So I would encourage everybody go and check it out. Www.hostfully.com forward/because loosely. Right, let's get back on with the show, shall we?
- [24:59]
Liam
Whereabouts for CS outsourced does your majority of virtual assistants come from? But is there also other places which you'd consider hiring from as well?
- [25:10]
Matthew Metro
Yeah. So I started in Pakistan. That's where we started the business. And then over the past year, we started shifting a lot into Latin America. And now we're also exploring South Africa. So I personally do not care where talent comes from. I think you can find good talent everywhere. So I'm not married to the Philippines or India or Pakistan or, you know, Argentina. This is where to me, I just want good people on our, on our side. But what I did notice, there were some pretty substantial differences between my Asia outsourcing experience and my Latin America outsourcing experience. You know, I'll start with Latin America. I find that the time zone alignment is really, really helpful, right? Because eventually what happens is if someone is working the complete opposite time zone of the rest of the people in their culture and life, it does actually end up impacting them. And you'll see it come through in the work, right? People have obligations during the day. If they're working all the time at night, you know, there's going to be, you know, there's going to be a coming where, you know, something is going to, you know, know, crack. So the time zone alignment is really nice. And then the proximity to the United States, so you get people that really understand the culture. They can read through, you know, chat messages and really understand the undertones of a conversation much more natural. And our operators, when I started doing a lot more work in Latin America, they were, you know, started saying to me, like, hey, like, this actually feels like somebody that's in the local office with us. Like, they're a proper teammate. We're cracking jokes. They, like, they, they totally get it. Like, they're not a VA the way I thought of VAs. In the past, when we were doing work in the Philippines, like, they properly, like they have family in the States or they've gone to school in the States, there's just like some sort of relevance that makes the conversation that much more natural, which is awesome for hospitality mentality because, like, we're. It's a communication, like a part of. A huge part of what we do is communicating. So, you know, now that operator is able to think outside the box of what they thought they could do with the VA where like, oh, they can actually speak to my customers, or, you know, they could speak with our vendors and help us vet them and find new vendors and stuff like that. So it really opened up the doors for a lot of them. So you have the communication side of things, the core cultural side of things, you have the time zone alignment. And I also just found that there were just less hoops to jump through to find quality talent. And I think that's really because in Asia, the outsourcing industry has existed for longer. So you really have like, top firms that are taking the talent immediately. Whereas Latin America, I just haven't run into that as much. I'm able to run into really well, like over way too qualified for the job. And whereas, you know, in Asia, you know, I definitely had to go through way more resumes to find that right person and then bilingual. Right? Like, that's just an added benefit if it works for your market, for your business or for your gut. You know, a lot of the vendors we work with, you know, they speak Spanish. Or if you're down in, you know, know, Miami, for example, you know, big Latin community there as well. So that's just an added benefit. And when I was doing. I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with Asia outsourcing. I'm just saying it's harder to find that quality person that's going to stick around for the long run. My success there was more around procedural things, things that were like, do this, then do that, do that. But anything that really required more creative thinking or something that really required someone to read between the lines and understand the undertones of a conversation and be able to just get it. Like, you know, I found myself saying that a lot, like, why don't you just get it? But, you know, that stuff I struggled with more in, in Asia, whereas Latin America, I found people could read through the lines a little bit better and stuff like that. And then I just think, one more note on this is there is a little bit of like a toxic side to Outsourcing in Asia, where it's this, there's almost like a mentality of, I wasn't told to do this, so I did not do it, so you cannot fire me. Right. And I know I'm not the only one who has experienced this. Hundreds of other people that I've spoken to have. Have experienced this. And it just makes you want to, like, rip the hair out of your head with that mindset, because there's only so much you could put in an sop, right? At the end of the day, like, every house we operate, every hotel we operate has a different nuance. It's a similar situation, but it happened in a different way. Yeah. I can't literally put everything in an sop, so you need to be able to think on your own, come up with solutions, you know, And I just find, you know, more success with that in Latin America.
- [30:23]
Liam
You know, it's really interesting and especially thank you for the insight because so many people wouldn't necessarily know. And it's also interesting what you said that you know, that you now start source in South Africa, because when that issue you mentioned with the time zone comes up, I personally am a firm believer in that you need good family time. You need. You need to have the time you need as a person, as a human. And if my virtual assistants are working overnight, all the time, every night, I'm very conscious to make sure I give them, you know, they've got gap days and things like that. But ultimately I'm very conscious that across a long enough timeline that usually people are working during the day from a background of department store management. And the people who have a happier balance tend to work for longer. And the longer an employee works for you, the more skills they build up, the more they know your systems in many cases, and that ultimately the more effect they've had on your business across a long enough period of time. So it's really interesting what you're saying about especially the night workers. And having that choice on where to source from is so important because, like you say for us in Europe, you know, South Africa certainly interests me because it's a lot more aligned to the time zone than it would be for, say, Latin America or the Philippines or, you know, Pakistan, you know, like this. It's just very interesting. So one of the things you also the, the.
- [31:47]
Matthew Metro
The. I don't know if the right word is the dialect, but they call like, I call vacations vacations. You guys call them holidays, right? South Africa, you guys share the same.
- [31:58]
Liam
I know it.
- [31:59]
Matthew Metro
You know, Terms. Yeah, that's cool.
- [32:01]
Liam
That's cool. But and these are the, the different sort of nuances in, in each each place, isn't it? It's really interesting to, to find out on that. So you've obviously been very good at scaling a large team and for people who are on say one va, there'll be people listening to this where, yep, I've got a VA or I've got two VAs. When does the challenge come? When scaling. So for instance, I talk to companies who are approaching like 100 properties and things and they're needing to take more and more staff on. When can you make that step between having just VAs who help you with the business to actually VA management or overseas management to help you with growth of your company?
- [32:43]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, yeah, no, it's a good, a good one. You know, like I'll have some people reach out saying like they need a supervisor or somebody to oversee operations, which I believe is what you're asking.
- [32:57]
Liam
Yeah, yeah.
- [32:58]
Matthew Metro
Like when do you reach that point? You know, again it's a bit of a gray area. You know, it's going to depend on where you see yourself and, and kind of revenue coming in and you know, so what I, what I can talk on a little bit better is, you know, how you do that actual switch. I'm a huge proponent of hire like giving, you know, allowing your top current agent that you have to take on a more supervisor type of role and promoting within. One, it's really good for the culture. But two, this person already knows your business. You've built up the rapport with them and you know, if you're on that, if you have that type of relationship with them, you know, it's going to make the transition a lot easier on you, I think. You know, I get asked a lot, you know, how do I know? Totally. Like I need someone to supervise and do all the things that I'm doing because I right now I'm checking on all my agents. I'm doing all the, you know, reminding and I'm like a full time reminder over my team and you know, if you bring on somebody who's going to, you know, be in this middle management layer and they haven't actually worked in your business, well, they're kind of useless. They're going to end up relying on your existing team and then your existing team is going to be like, this guy is an idiot, like he doesn't know anything. I'm basically just doing everything at this company. So that really doesn't work. So, you know, if, if you know that your current team doesn't have the skill set to become that supervisor, the next best alternative that I could suggest is, well, create a job description for this supervisor role. Bring somebody on board that has like, you know, those qualities that you're looking for, but get them started as at the agent level, in the trenches, doing the guest comms or you know, vendor communication, whatever it is that the rest of your team is doing. But you got to start them at the bottom because they need to feel that pain. They need to understand your brand voice. They need to experience like what it's like when a situation comes in and how to triage it, how, you know, the impact that it has. But they need, you'll quickly see if this person is worth their weight. Right. Because a lot of people are really good at interviewing, especially for these like middle management roles. You know, a lot of people that, you know, I worked here and there and there and there and there. But the best way to actually see if they're, if they're going to be any good is put them in the seat at the agent level. Are you as creative as you said you were? Do you have as much grit and determination as you said you do? Are you as you know, you know, creatively thinking as you showcased in the, in problem solving, as you showcased in the interview? So I'm a huge advocate of like, I want to see you work and then once I can see that then I'm like, okay, let me come up with a plan to slowly start giving them higher level responsibilities. But I, I've seen it time and time again, not just in short term rentals, but really, you know, any, any business you bring on middle management and they know nothing, they do nothing, they're just like, they're highly paid delegators and I mean that just makes me mad and it helps nobody out.
- [36:31]
Liam
Yeah.
- [36:31]
Matthew Metro
So put them in, in the seat.
- [36:34]
Liam
The idea that you've put them in the trenches and then they get the respect of the other members of staff before they progress as well. Which is quite cool because they go, well look, I've been in know exactly the job role you're doing and, and now this is where I think we need to take the team did. I mean like it's, it's quite a cool way of looking at things like that. So a couple of other questions I want to just squeeze in, which is we talked about, you mentioned characteristics and qualities of the VAs and we talked on our chat the other day about make sure you're hiring the Qualities of the people you want, because you can train them on the, you can train the skills if you need to, which is important to hire on the, on the person. You know, you can't, you can't teach motivation. You can't teach, you know, people who just get it. Exactly what you said. You know, the people who are very good like that when it comes down to the mindset of some hosts. So looking at the host now, do you think that hosts need to have the right mindset when they're ready to hire? Because there's hosts which I see which hire and nobody can do the job like them. Nobody can do it as good. So it sort of suggests to me that they're not ready to hire. Have you seen like examples of this? Is this something, Is this something that's common in the industry?
- [37:51]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, yeah. I would say right off the bat, if you're bringing on any employee, I don't care if you call them a VA or remote worker, anybody, they're not going to do the job like you. They're not the business owner. They're not going to care as much as you. They're not going to have that level of attention to detail. And if you think they're going to have all these attributes just like you, you're going to burn them out. And it's just, it's just unrealistic, right? Like, no, what is the thing? Like, nobody cares about your business as much as you do. I mean, there's so much truth to that. I always tell people, like, good is sometimes great. I love that saying. And especially when you're bringing someone on board, get comfortable with good. You know, obviously we all want to strive for perfection. I get that. It's very important. And you're always driving the company to that. You know, North Star via KPIs and trainings and your documentation and your systems, right? That stuff should drive you towards, you know, perfection. But, you know, the reality is, you know, some. The way when you look at how a situation happened and, and you think about, oh, I would have responded this way or I would have just been so quick and proactive and, you know, this would have never happened. Get used to that stuff happening because it's going to happen and it's the only way to grow, right? You have to rely on people. People are the most important vehicle to getting you to that higher level in life. At the end of the day, realistically, a company is just a group of people at this point in time, at least. Who knows, with AI, it might be you know, all, you know, technology that, you know, creates a business, but right now it's just a group of people. So, you know, get comfortable with what's good and just have processes in place to give feedback. And it's very hard. I still get very emotional when I see a big bomb happen, and I say, I would have responded this way. And, you know, you're. You know, you're not reading between the lines enough. And. But I'm getting better at it. I'm also getting better at apologizing. I'm getting better at, you know, realizing the bigger picture of, you know, like, the. I'm doing the right things. I'm getting myself out of operations, and I'm learning to trust. And over the time, like, as those, like, you know, troubles happen, those bombs come in. Like, just imagine your. Your company is at the gym and getting stronger.
- [40:25]
Liam
Yeah.
- [40:25]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, right. And that's what I always envision in my head. All right, all right. We're at the gym right now, and. And we just got stronger through that.
- [40:34]
Liam
I love that metaphor. That metaphor, because it's like, you know, like, when you're tearing your muscles a little bit, it's like sometimes. Sometimes there's breakages, but when you repair them, you get better. Sops, you know, like, suddenly it's done, isn't it? So I completely get that.
- [40:46]
Matthew Metro
Exactly. Exactly. And honestly, you know, I've been, you know, CS Outsource is, you know, a little over a year old, and, you know, I've been outsourcing for the past three years, and, you know, I've. It's just taken me so much time to get to where the company is today, and we're still not perfect. And I had to go through loads and loads of people. Right. Extending my trust out, you know, trying to close my eyes a little bit and letting this thing just grow. And so many mistakes were made. But when I look at where we're at now, I see this core group of people that I have that are irreplaceable. And I look at all the, you know, the people that just, like, they could have been on the journey, but, like, they didn't meet the mark. And it's just a very natural thing that you're going to have to go through. You're going to go through lots of people, lots of bombs, lots. The mistakes. It's a very normal part of the process, but you. You have to do it. There's no other way.
- [41:51]
Liam
That's great advice as well. Just that moment of stepping back when you see mistakes and going, do you know what? This is a learning opportunity. It's not, you know, and it's very easy, isn't it? When, especially from when you've got a little bit more time to have that overview, to have a look at what people are doing and you're going, oh, I wouldn't have done it like that. And now I purposely go, yeah, but I'm not having to do it, which is the entire point. What I should be doing is not looking at that and actually putting my attention over here and getting the next opportunity and all that and really pushing the business forward. So, last couple of questions, Matt, is, is there one tool that you would say is really important for hosts when having a virtual assistant? Is there a kind of piece of tech, a tool, an app or something that you kind of go to each time go, do you know what that's been really useful just for when you've got a va?
- [42:38]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, yeah. There's a couple of things here. So I'll kind of keep it towards like short term rentals. Just you know, one, make sure you have a pms, right? You want to centralize as much data and information and tasks as possible. You want to keep people in one system. You know, I have a friend that says this all the time. He says context switching is the most expensive operation, which is really like if you're switching tabs and you're switching applications, you don't realize how much that actually like impacts productivity in a human being. Right? A new screen, a new layout, a new thing they have to log into is so much wasted time. Try to centralize everything into one application. So you know, keep your pricing in price labs, keep your, you know, communications and test management as much as possible in, in your PMS. You know, use things like asana, Monday.com airtable. These are great databases where you could build, you know, or, or notion where you could build wonderful documentation. You know, have like one centralized place where somebody can go see the properties, they could see the emergency contacts, who are the vendors, right? And all their contact information, where you're logging all the maintenance tests, you know, all the FAQs, loom videos, whatever. It is just one place where somebody can just click around. They have everything they will ever need about the properties and operation, right. So I know I just list out a couple of tools but you know, just to recap some of them, you know, for test management, I love Asana, I love Monday.com, you know, for documentation purposes. I'm a huge fan of notion. If I'm doing Any sort of screen recordings, which I highly recommend. If you're doing documentation, written documentation, you're missing so many things it takes forever to do. And most of us never get to the point where we're writing documentation out. Just record yourself. Loom is, you know, my favorite. You know, you have your pms that, that's more of a personal business decision, you know, pricing, you know, I would also say it's more of a personal decision. Price, price labs and some of the other ones. And then when it comes to your day to day communications, I would say Slack is the number one on my list. Then I would look at discord. And then, you know, if I have my agents communicating with vendors, you know, you have things like WhatsApp, you have Google Voice and you can also, you know, have a more professional service like Open Phone, you know, give people a localized number.
- [45:20]
Liam
That's cool, that's cool. And I've definitely taken something away from that, you know, like try and reduce the different places and what you just said there about the human condition, switching tabs. You're absolutely right because ultimately the more you can get something into one simplified system, you've got more time for people to learn that system, get used to it, be better with it. You can then plug more things into it. It's just, just the best way. So yeah, that's, that's awesome. So Matt, this leaves us with. Can you share the details? I'm sure there's a lot of people who are listening to this, all the info you've shared and I've certainly learned a lot. How do we come and find out more about CS outsource? How do we hire a virtual assistant?
- [45:59]
Matthew Metro
Yeah, so you know, you can always reach out to me. My name is Matthew Metro, so I'm very active on Facebook. You'll find me on some sort of social media platform. Just send me a direct message. My email is matthew.metro csoutsource.com or just visit our website csoutsource.com and submit a form. So that's how you can get in touch with me. And then generally the process is I would have a one on one call with you, kind of go through, you know, some of the pain points and really focusing on like building a job description right after that, you know, I'll set you up on some interviews. I do, you know, a ton of interviews and checking resumes. Our team does all of this for you and then we just present you the candidates that we think are most appropriate for the role, for the type of operator you know, responsibilities, those sort of things. But you take some interviews and once you find somebody that you really are jiving with, you know, move forward with them, you know, and be quick to move forward with people because A plus talent, rock stars, like they don't sit on the bench, like they just don't do that. So, you know, make sure you move quickly on people. And then, yeah, you know, we get started with the onboarding process, you know, logins, you know, basic tasks that we want to get them going with. Guest comms, working in the pms, reviewing historical conversations. They have a supervisor, they have a trainer. So you know, we're doing a lot of the, you know, being the psychologist for them. You know, when something happens and they're not really happy, we're doing a lot of the training, providing that oversight and we're really like trying to move operators outside of that because bringing on an agent, like I said at the start of this conversation, like hiring them, managing them, training them, making sure they're happy, retaining them, right. It's like a full time responsibility. Like you're taking on so many different roles. So we really try to push people out of that position and we take over that. Right. So if you're not happy with something or you know, you notice the way they wrote something isn't great, like you can just reach out to us and we'll implement that training. We'll, you know, start monitoring for that specific thing. And what happens over time is, you know, somebody gets a second agent with us, a third agent with us, they start having us do their bookkeeping and digital marketing, right. And we act as the integrator in the business and they can just come to us and say, you know, you know, here, here's the strategy. Here's know what I'm thinking? Hey, like I want to implement revenue management, some sort of process for our VAs. Like could you help us out with that? I don't really know how to do that. Like, yeah, you know, we can help out and create a process and work with you on stuff like that for parts of the business that you just generally don't have knowledge on. So yeah, you know, that's, you know, we kind of are in this middle layer of, you know, keeping you focused on business development or marketing, whatever it is that you know, you want to do with this new time.
- [48:57]
Liam
I like that.
- [48:58]
Matthew Metro
And one more note, there is like, we bring continuity in the business. The agents disappear, right. Like this has happened to me. Like we have backup agents, right? So we, we really make sure that, like, no matter what happens, the core business operations never stop. Right. And you know, when you're just at like five to ten properties, like, you're not really thinking in that lens. But once you're at like 30, 40, 50, 60, continuity in operations is huge. Right? Because now you have a brand, people know you in the market, and you don't want to have a bad reputation. And that could happen if your VA just disappears, you know, God forbid.
- [49:39]
Liam
100. And what I love about that is there's so many people who are listening to this. And if you have been the creator of the business, often you're the visionary person and that you need people around you who can implement your vision. And that sounds exactly what you know, that you can get through having contacted, you know, CS outstores.com at the end of the day, if you bring on the right people and you've got people who will continue with your business, or if not, there's people who can step in, then that sounds really like a win to me. So, Matt, this has been really fun. Thank you so much for coming on the Boostly podcast and spending your time freely with us and our listeners. For you listening to this, if you've picked up just one piece of information that you think another host or a friend would be able to get some value of, please share this podcast with that other host. And Matt, that leaves us with the final question we love to end on, which is, is there a mantra or a motto that has resonated with you during your time in business?
- [50:38]
Matthew Metro
Yeah. You know, you said when we first started chatting, you know, that you're going to ask this. I was like, oh, yeah, it's kind of a tough one. I, I have a, I have a lot of these, you know, but one that really, you know, I hold true to my heart is, you know, give away all your secrets and you'll have everything in life. And what I really mean by that is, you know, in, in business, it's very easy to get like, cagey around what you know and how you operate, how you do things. And the way I've grown, my business is just being super transparent about everything with my employees, with the community, just, you know, giving as much free education and knowledge on how I'm doing things. I, I'm an open book. And what I've found is, like, one, I have the respect of, you know, my employees because I'm very open book about everything. I'm attracting the right customers that really value knowledge and education. These are really professional operators. And you know, I don't think I would be where I am today if I didn't have that mindset to just give as much value everywhere, anywhere. It doesn't matter. Take every phone call. Give everybody the time of day. Just be like, the nicest person. You'll be happier. Like, people are gonna like it. All this stuff is like a snowball effect and it comes back to you in weird ways in the future. So resonate.
- [52:17]
Liam
That definitely resonates with me, especially because at the end of the day, especially what you just said at the end there, where it. You actually get more from it that people are going, hey, why are you giving all this away? You actually. Well, this is for me. I actually get more from doing this. And the world does give it back in droves, doesn't it? So what a very cool sentiment to. To end on. Thank you so much again, Matt, and thank you, too, for listening to this on the Boostly podcast. We'll see you on the next episode.
- [52:42]
Matthew Metro
Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. Cheers, Liam.