Hello, welcome back to another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.
Annette Grant:I'm Annette Grant, and together we are, Thanks for Visiting and this is the Hosting Hotline.
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Annette Grant:Yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna put a, I'm gonna, I seeing this right now. If you've been listening to the show for a while, please do us a favor.
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Sarah Karakaian:Yeah, it's helpful.
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Sarah Karakaian:And today we're gonna help @susanbotha6016. So Susan Botha 6 0 1 6, and she asks, I'd love to learn from your experience, how do you go about attracting new homeowners to list their properties with you? What's worked best for you when trying to grow your portfolio? So it sounds like Susan is a property manager, a co-host.
Annette Grant:Or aspiring.
Sarah Karakaian:Or aspiring. She's asked what's worked for us. We'll, we'll, we'll share some things there and we'll also share what's worked for some people, um, in our sphere. But you wanna treat it like building any professional business, right? Because you are a professional host and you are growing a portfolio. So outreach and market, like your business depends on it because it does.
Annette Grant:Mm-hmm. And you have. To ask. It seems really simple, but you have to put the offers out there. You have to ask people, so you need to be ready to hear no a lot. You should go for no.
Sarah Karakaian:You should go for no.
Annette Grant:If you have not read that book, everyone read the book, Go For No Persistence Matters, and I want you to, I want you to be the sales person that you're, and I want you to, um, do some analytics here. So as we go through some of these other things, I'm gonna circle back on how I want you to do your analytics. I want you meeting people for coffee. I want you to going, going to meetups. I want you building new relationships. I want you talking to real estate agents. You've gotta play the long game here.
Sarah Karakaian:Long game.
Annette Grant:This is not Hi, I'm Annette. Sign a contract. There's gonna be a, this is, um, the cycle for the relationship can be very long, but also very quick. All right. The easiest thing, and this is where Sarah and I first started to see instant success, is you've got to make sure everyone in your circle knows what you do. That you're opening to managing and hosting more properties.
Sarah Karakaian:And you think it's so much in your head. Like obviously you're here on YouTube and you're asking this question 'cause it's probably in your head. So you think you're talking about it a lot because you're thinking about it a lot, but you're not. You're not.
Annette Grant:Because guess what? People ain't paying attention.
Sarah Karakaian:They're no right. It's so important to us, but it is not important to anyone else. So you need to go, you need to say it ad nauseum. They actually say that if you are not getting at least 10%, no, you're not asking enough. So you actually wanna get an email back once in a while that says, Hey, you've been talking about this way too much and you're annoying, right? Because that means, okay, I'm now starting to scratch the surface. So I just wanna give you that, Susan, of you, don't be afraid to talk about your offer, especially 'cause I know you watch our YouTube channel. You are one of the best co-hosts out there. You care very much. People need their properties managed by you because they'll be safer. They'll be more beautiful and those guests will have the best stay ever when they stay with you. So you have to talk about it often. I will share a quick story about how I found my biggest client, and it was by sharing behind the scenes on Instagram via Instagram stories. And I will tell you this, you'd think now, you know, Instagram has been around for, in the grand scheme of things, not a long time, but, for my professional career pretty much since, I mean, what, like my early twenties?
Annette Grant:Oh yeah. Ooh, girl. I know. I'm taking it back. Well, you're not in your, your early forties now, dear you.
Sarah Karakaian:Yeah, I'm proud 'cause the al the alternative is I'm dead, so it's all good. But I will share the biggest business movers and shakers today. Some of the things I, I keep hearing them say, you cannot post enough content, you cannot post enough content. Keep posting content. So that is a great way, Susan, to attract new homeowners. It, it worked for me and I wasn't even posting as much as I obviously could have. You can always do more, and we're not saying work more. You can work smarter when it comes to posting content for sure, but posting content and especially behind the scenes, what I would do. I would have my Instagram up and I would be in, even if I didn't, I don't even know if I had that many clients at the time, but I was in my own housekeeping closets of my own rentals and I was just sharing how important it was to keep, you know, the sheets stored in a certain way, or you could see how all my shampoos were organized and the labels were facing forward. And I would get dms from people who were like, Hey, I have a short term rental. I love how organized and on top of things that you are. Could we hop on the phone to talk? So things like that. Posting behind the scenes, posting your what, what you believe in, you know, what some of your brand standards are and that will attract other people who believe in what you believe in. And you'll have a great relationship because you're basing the start of that relationship off of those shared beliefs.
Annette Grant:And listen, it doesn't have to be Instagram, it can be Facebook.
Sarah Karakaian:Yeah. Wherever you want.
Annette Grant:It can be TikTok, it can be, uh, LinkedIn, it can be your own newsletter. Um, and if you're not gonna do it. You need to pay somebody to do it. Mm-hmm. To hold you accountable or help you do it. That's very important. And so you also mentioned this, so we want you to attend the meetups, maybe sponsor some events, ask to speak, become the expert in your area, connect with people, the fortunes and the follow up. But, so what I want you to do after saying fortunes in the follow-up, but I wanna circle back here. All of these, um, you know, circles that you're gonna be, you know, swimming in with these folks. I want you to make, you need to have a sales funnel. You need to have your own quota. You need to see how many people do I need to talk to in order to sign a client. And then we just gotta know the numbers. Do I need to talk to 10 people to get one client? Maybe it's 20 people, maybe it's five people. And your conversion rate's gonna get better over time, but really you need to track. How many people, and you can't just track, like I went to coffee with this person. I showed up at the meetup, I sponsored event. I want you to track how many people you asked. Do you have a home that I can host? And you made the actual ask. You've got to make sure that that you communicated clearly. You would like to add their home to your portfolio. All right, so track that data there.
Sarah Karakaian:Let's take it a step further, Susan. And when you have that ask, then what are they gonna do when they say, actually, yes, I'd love to learn more. Then what happens now? And it doesn't have to be thing fancy, you can go on and start a Google form. And you text them the link, they fill out the form and they hop on a call with you. Whatever that is, make sure that onboarding experience, because these people have large assets and they are interviewing you as much as you're interviewing them, and how put together are you with that experience of exploring if you both are a good fit. And so if it's hodgepodge, if it takes for a while for you to get back to them, some other co-host is gonna beat you to them. So while I don't want it to overwhelm you. I do want you to understand that that engagement, that first impression of how you handle that experience, it's just like with your guest, you know, how you communicate with them. That check-in experience, what's that? That's like, make sure that's dialed in too as you start, go putting yourself out there.
Annette Grant:Mm-hmm. And we wanna share, um, inside our coaching program we have, um. Owner operators, and we do have co-hosts. And I wanna let you know, some of our co-hosts have been in there for years and they have went from one property to five properties to, I was just talking, interviewing someone this week. She started with us. She had 10 properties. She has 45 properties that she's co-hosting now.
Sarah Karakaian:That's amazing.
Annette Grant:We have another co-host and, and who's actually a coach inside now, and she had. Like 15 when she joined us, she actually slimmed down her roster because she learned that they weren't all fits for her, and now she's back up to 30. So we just wanna let you know, stay in the game. It doesn't happen overnight. Let us be very clear, this will not happen overnight, but you know what will happen overnight? Once you start to get traction, you are gonna start telling clients no more than they're telling you no, I'm telling you that has happened with every co-host that we have ever coached. They, you know, they started marketing, they got traction, then they realized. They had to start saying no, they had more leads than they could handle because you are gonna be so awesome that your clients are gonna start referring you out. Competition in your area is, we cannot tell you in, I wish we need to start a, a, a graveyard of property managers here in, um, Columbus. Like they have just after COVID, they have just. All fell off. The biggest ones, the ones that touted their numbers, the one that gave the vanity metrics online, they are not even in business anymore. So I'm telling you, there is enough for anybody that wants to be a co-host out there. You have a giant pool of potential clients, but you have to ask them and you have to go over it.
Sarah Karakaian:And you have to play the long game. This isn't a get rich quick situation. Mm-hmm. This is, this is a career changing decision and it's an exciting one, and it's a profitable one, Susan. But, and remember when you even, even when your, when your roster is full, you are always marketing yourself in your brand. Because if you lose a client. You know, maybe they have, uh, maybe they wanna sell, maybe they're moving on, they're exchanging to something else. You don't wanna have to start from zero either. So just when you figure out this system, how can you make sure that even when your roster is where you'd like it to be of sweet spot?
Annette Grant:You can list, you can have a wait list open.
Sarah Karakaian:Have a wait list.
Annette Grant:And I'm telling you a wait list.
Sarah Karakaian:Like baller.
Annette Grant:I have no room my list portfolio right now, but I'd love to add you to my wait list.
Sarah Karakaian:Bam.
Annette Grant:Yes.
Sarah Karakaian:Yes.
Annette Grant:Love that.
Sarah Karakaian:All right. Susan, keep us posted. Let us know how this goes. And just remember that growth equals visibility, but you also have to be persistent and you have to get into the community. Either create one or get with other people who want what you have to offer, and make sure you're sharing that offer as much as you can. If you're interested at all. In joining, Annette and I in our coaching program, we have the doors open right now. Perhaps you, you have, you, you've heard about what we're have, what we have to offer, and you're, maybe you're thinking about it, you have more questions. We'll put a link in the show notes so you can find out more, get your questions answered. The opportunity is not going to last long. We close the doors so we can focus on our clients and help them get results. So definitely click the link in the show notes if you wanna find more about working with Annette and me and being a part of that closed door community. And with that, I am Sarah Karakaian.
Annette Grant:I'm Annette Grant, and together we are. Thanks for Visiting.