Welcome to another Ask Me Anything (Ask Us Anything?) episode! Each week we’ll answer your questions on STR, real estate, OTAs, and everything in between.

Kelsey (@StayJandK) asks:

How do you set up your Workday or your work week? There’s so many things I know I could (or should) be doing, but some days it’s so much that I get analysis paralysis. How do you structure things on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis, and how do you know when it’s time to delegate tasks out to your team?

Thanks to everyone who submitted questions. To hear your voice on the show and send a question to Sarah & Annette, visit Speakpipe.com/ThanksforvisitingAMA

Thanks for Visiting is produced by Crate Media.

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[00:00:05] You are listening to the Thanks for Visiting podcast. We believe hosting with heart is at the core of every short-term rental. With Annette's background in business operation--

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[00:00:59] Hello, listeners and viewers. Welcome back for another great week. I am Sarah Karakaian.

[00:01:07] I am Annette Grant, and together we are--

[00:01:09] Thanks for Visiting.

[00:01:10] And you are listening to an AMA episode, Ask Me Anything or in our case is ask us anything I suppose. And this is where you can essentially call in, record your voice, record your question, and we are going to air it on the show and then answer it. If you go to thanksforvisiting.me, you'll see a red button in the upper right-hand corner. It's funny. We need to dial it in a little bit because we're sometimes getting people who are just like--

[00:01:32] Asking questions that are not to be played on air. But that's okay. That's okay. Nothing inappropriate. We got to get started.

[00:01:39] We got to get started. So anyway, today we've got a question that I actually really love from Kelsey Wood. And she's got a question about time management.

[00:01:49] Yeah, let her rip.

[00:01:50] Hi, Sarah and Annette. My name is Kelsey Wood. My Instagram handle is @StayJandK. So my question today is basically, how do you set up your workday or your work week? I could tell you a list-- a mile long of all the things that I know I should be doing. And you guys have been so helpful in helping us find the right tech stack and using the right tools. And I've learned so much from you guys, but sometimes I find myself waking up and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, where do I start today? What should I do? How much time should I spend on that? Should I do this today or that tomorrow?" And I get lost and maybe a little bit of analysis paralysis. So I was wondering, how do you set it up? How do you set goals for the week? How do you hold yourself accountable? How do you plan? How much time should you be spending every week? What tasks are weekly, what are daily? And then also how do you know when it's time to delegate with also I'm sure knowing your numbers and what's appropriate. So basically, yeah, just how do you get it all done? There's so many things we can always be doing, but how do you structure it, and maybe how has that changed from maybe five years ago to where you guys are at today? Thanks so much for all you do.

[00:03:11] All right. Annette, do you have wisdom to share?

[00:03:14] I do have lots of wisdom to share. The first thing is, and this is for every listener, it's like the list will never be complete. So if you just give yourself grace right there, that okay, there's always going to be things that need to be done, I think that takes a lot of weight off your shoulders. But what I heard Kelsey say, one thing that I didn't like that I'm going to advise is she said when she wakes up in the morning, that's when she starts to plan. I think that's a little too late. Sarah and I really do put everything in our schedule. So our Google calendar--

[00:03:45] Looks crazy down.

[00:03:46] Yeah. And we share it, to be honest because we're business partners. So if you have a business partner or a life partner or anyone that you share daily tasks with, I do advise sharing a calendar. That helps Sarah and I manage a lot of things because I can just go there and see if I can book an appointment or do those things. So that's the number one thing is really start to use your calendar and that's a Google calendar or a handwritten calendar, whatever that may be. You've got to get it down. You've got to prioritize your time and plan your week in advance. I think that's a great thing to do is sit down and get everything out you need to do for that whole entire week.

[00:04:26] I've been working for 25 years. In the last five years I've learned this is to put in buffer times for everything. So never do back-to-back meetings or back-to-back tasks where there needs to be a drive time or just a decompression time, or just giving myself some time during the day for a buffer, even like Sarah and I just put luncheon. This is going to sound outrageous, but we never had that. We're like, why is that not in our calendar? So what's great is if we can't get to lunch, we now have that extra hour and 15 minutes that we can get things done that if we didn't have that time. So please build that buffer time in because things take longer than you think. And listen, with hosting, there are always things that are going to pop up. So if you can give yourself calendar time for, "Oh, snap. I need to take care of the guest," if you just have that in all of your daily activities, so then if there isn't an oh snap moment, you can work on something else. So that's the start of it. But Sarah, I'll let you back up.

[00:05:28] Yeah, I think the root of the whole calendar tip is to brain dump. It sounded like Kelsey was like she wakes up the middle night because she's anxious, she's stressed, she doesn't know what lies ahead of her. And so for me, just dumping it into two things for me. And listen, everyone, what makes you tick, what makes it work for you is going to be very personal to you, and just know that. We can give you suggestions and make it work for you. I love Google Calendar, like Annette said, and I learned something which I'm sure 98% of you are like, "Yeah, I knew that." But you can if you share your calendar with your business partner or maybe your inspector or maybe you're very close to your cleaning team, they can see that you're busy. They don't know exactly what you're busy doing. So I didn't know that. And that was a Google calendar you can do that.

[00:06:12] I think I helped you with that one, Sarah.

[00:06:13] Was that you? Okay.

[00:06:14] That was me.

[00:06:15] It's like therapy. I'm not ashamed of my therapy, but like--

[00:06:20] Here's a deal. Let's say you're getting your hair done in the middle of the day, but you don't want your team to know that you're getting your hair done. Not that they should care, but sometimes privacy is okay.

[00:06:28] Privacy is okay. Anyway. So I will dial in my calendar and that's like a brain dump. But then I also love to use a sauna and there is a free version of a sauna. And all it is, it's a very easy thing to learn. People can make it very complicated. There are Gantt charts and things you can make out of it, but it really is a checklist that you can categorize. And so how you categorize is up to you. The way we categorize it is by property. And so if you have one property, maybe the whole list is just that property, then you categorize it into maintenance, cleaning, inspection, future, and then business aspects. Maybe it's marketing, revenue, all those sorts of things, and then brain dump things onto that for you. And then once you see it on your computer or on paper, if that sounds too taxing, then you can move parts and pieces around. So let's say we've gotten a lot of messages about people saying that their bookings feel down, they seem down, so maybe you want to ramp up your own marketing plan. So that's more important right now than repainting everything. So you're going to have to pick and choose. And like Kelsey said, knowing your numbers is also going to help you prioritize your to-do list. So anyway, whether you use a sauna or a piece of paper, brain dump all the things down, shuffle things around in terms of what you can afford and what's more important, what's going to drive revenue, what's going to drive five-star reviews, what's going to drive your own happiness. Annette's actually very good at this. So I'm one of those people that I like to torture myself. I'm like, I don't want to go to bed until all these things are done, but Annette makes sure that we celebrate in between.

[00:08:00] Oh heck, yeah.

[00:08:01] But that's nice, though, because it gives you something to look forward to. It rejuvenates you. So I think along with the first time, giving yourself time to reflect and pat yourself on the back also is very helpful.

[00:08:12] The next thing is your DWMs, your dailies, your weeklies, and your monthlies. So if you can just again start a list, what do you need to do daily? What do you need to do weekly? What do you need to do monthly? And one thing that we've done is like, for instance, we just had it today, we have a monthly call with our bookkeeper. And what's really helped us is when we have things that are monthly, we just try to set them for the same day and time every month for the whole entire year. If they're something weekly, just set that same time. That has helped tremendously. We only take meetings on certain days. So we know Mondays and Fridays we're never doing any meetings. So we don't even have to worry about that happening. So if you can do daily, weekly, monthlies and try to set them up on the same exact cadence, the same time, it will just free up mental mortgage like we like to say. And so that's helped tremendously too. And that's where when you do know your numbers, that's when you can start offloading some of those tasks, the daily, weekly, monthly, the ones that you're not as excited to do. Once you have those written down and systems for them, those are the things that you can relinquish to someone to help you with.

[00:09:23] I would almost guarantee that your weeklies end up becoming what your team member does when you start delegating. It's those things that you do every day to keep everything moving along. That is what you can give to your team, whether it's communicating with guests every day. That's something you can offload. Obviously, the cleaning is something you can offload. So those sorts of things that get done every day are usually the easiest things to remove from your own list. That does not mean you set it off and never look back at it.

[00:09:49] Try to verify it's getting done.

[00:09:51] Yes. And I know that's one of our favorite topics, but what you're also saying, Annette, with the whole on Mondays and Fridays, we don't have meetings. But another way to look at that is batching too. So batching is a huge timesaver. And that can be applied to your life in many different ways. But for example, in our world with the podcast, our goal is to get 3 to 5 episodes done in a day. Or if we're going to have a podcast recording, it's only going to be on Wednesdays. Maybe it's meeting with your cleaning team. And so you know that the first Monday of every month, you meet your cleaner and then you're going to meet with your maintenance person or that's when you and your business partner meet. So you batch the work so you get a lot done, and so you don't have to revisit that.

[00:10:33] Let's say you leave cards for every single one of your guests. That's something that you can just sit down once and do them for 90 days. Obviously, if you have a last-minute guest check-in, but if you can batch that where it's like, hey, I know that I have my calendar for this quarter, I'm going to write a note to every single guest, I'm going to write an email to every guest that has stayed over the past quarter, Those are things that you can do. And let's say it's like looking at your numbers, just set that. That's something I would do monthly and do that quarterly and just have that time in your calendar already set. But those are things just hosting-wise that you can batch. For instance, your power levels. Going and looking at all of your supplies, counting all the sheets, the pillowcases, everything that's there, the deck of cards, that's the type of stuff you can just batch all of that, do it in one day and just know that, hey, the first Monday of every month or every other month, that's when I'm going to go to my property. If you can start batching that or ordering from Amazon or going to Costco, whatever that might be, just know that, hey, it's the first Monday or it's the third Tuesday of every month.

[00:11:35] And sometimes you decide that it's the first Monday of every month that you can go to Costco and then you realize, you know what, I don't need to go that often, then push it back two weeks or four or two weeks.

[00:11:44] Or maybe you can go quarterly. That's one it's really awesome.

[00:11:45] Right. Or maybe you're not going enough and you find yourself running out of things, then you need to make it sooner. So with your schedule, it's an ebb and flow type of thing. And just because you find the sweet spot of going to Costco, then you're going to add another property to your portfolio and then you have to readjust it again. So going back to the beginning of this conversation, how Annette said it's kind of like never done, but that's the beauty of hosting and doing what you love. You have to fall in love with that process. And with that ever-growing list of things to do, it has to be your favorite thing to tackle every day or find a way for it to be renewed for you and your passion because like Annette said, it's never going to be done.

[00:12:22] But also, don't let the swirling and indecision be an excuse for you not to get things done. You have to plan ahead. You have to get it-- because you're going to save so much time once you start to get all of that out of your head.

[00:12:32] Another time-saving tip someone really smart to this to me is called Swallow the Frog.

[00:12:38] Oh yeah. I don't do that all the time, though.

[00:12:40] And what that means is do the thing that you always put off first, because most often than not you think it's going to take you like four hours and you actually sit down and focus, you do it, it takes you an hour and 15 minutes.

[00:12:52] I did a task today that I have been thinking about for two weeks. It literally took me two minutes. This is a trick that I've been starting to do. The things that I've been putting off, putting off, putting off, I now actually set a timer when I start to do them and I'm like, that took me 3 minutes, but I thought about it for the last two weeks, cumulatively, probably 3 hours of my time. So I'm starting to stop thinking about it and just fricking, do it. That actually makes me really mad--

[00:13:20] My previous life I was an organizer. I organized things, but I had colleagues who organized time and there's this thing called the time timer and it's exactly that, Annette. You put it on. You can see the red-- the clock turns red. And as it turns more and more white, that's the time you dedicate to that task that might be the thing that you don't love doing, but you can't afford it yet. Maybe there's no one to do that or what have you, and it just helps you really understand time so that you're not working against time or letting time give you that anxiety either. So that's another side of productivity that some of us have a challenge with. And you just have to swallow the frog, get it done.

[00:13:58] Yeah, get it done. But good question. But get all that stuff out of your head because--

[00:14:03] You brain dump it.

[00:14:03] Another tip I will tell you. At the beginning of the week, I will say I do have a virtual assistant that helps me with this. We look at my whole entire calendar the week before. We look at it every single day. I actually gray out the day before. When I get things done, I change the color on it. It makes me feel really good, but I am always looking at a few days before they happen so I can have an idea of what's coming up and what I should be planning.

[00:14:27] Can I interview you really quick, Annette?

[00:14:29] Yeah.

[00:14:30] So you just said you had a virtual assistant, just let that go out there. I want to say what I think people might be thinking, "Oh, Annette, you're fancy. You have a personal set of virtual assistant." Can you share with everybody number one, why, what you do, and how has it changed your productivity?

[00:14:50] So I'm probably very different. This particular virtual assistant, we just meet once a day for one hour, and that's exactly what she helps me do. She helps me organize my time and my emails. And so we meet at the same exact time every day. And she's my first appointment of the day, so that helps me just get started. I know that I'm starting my day every single day the same way with her, and we have that hour set aside and it's always for her. And we start first with emails. We go through emails and we have a very specific cadence that we go through my emails. And we always look at my calendar too. So we do emails and my calendar together. And so that was something that I had a lot of problems with, to be honest. And so I was like, wait, I'm not getting this done. I'm not doing this best as I could. Why not get assistance with it? So I found someone that could help me one hour a day. So that's five hours a week and it has helped tremendously. We're still making some strides there. And she's learning my calendar and helping me figure out what emails are most important. And we've set up a lot of stuff there, but that has helped me. Every single day I start with her. So I'm accountable to her. And we look at my calendar, we look at all that stuff together.

[00:16:02] So at the root of it, Annette, is she's like your accountability partner?

[00:16:05] Yes, she is. She is totally my--

[00:16:08] You don't know her and you pay her for her time, but it's worth it. So it is. I allow all of you to treat yourself to that.

[00:16:16] It's been a game-changer.

[00:16:18] Especially sometimes you'll ask a friend to be your accountability partner, but then they're not accountable to showing up for you. So this is nice. This is her job to show up and to help you. And is it affordable, Annette?

[00:16:29] Yes, absolutely affordable I will let you know that. She is in a different time zone. She's 12 hours behind. And so, yeah, it's super duper affordable.

[00:16:43] So there you have it. There's all of our secrets.

[00:16:46] Yeah.

[00:16:47] Do we still get stressed out that have so much to do?

[00:16:48] And do we still miss appointments? Oh, my gosh. I don't know how it's happening.

[00:16:52] We did it today.

[00:16:53] Oh, that is frustrating.

[00:16:54] It's frustrating.

[00:16:55] But sometimes we switch time zones. But anyways, so give yourself grace.

[00:16:59] Yeah, you're not going to be perfect, but as long as you're doing things to improve every day. All right. So with that, thank you so much, Kelsey, for submitting that question. I think it's a really important question. We haven't talked about that in the show much. And I'd love to talk more about personal accountability and how you make decisions because everyone thinks everyone has a secret sauce to doing all this stuff.

[00:17:16] I know we're talking a lot about this topic, but also, Kelsey, everyone listening right now, you know when you check out and check in are. That is especially when I would leave some of that buffer time to where you can communicate, okay, did the guest check out? You can get with your cleaning team. Did my cleaning team arrive? And then also around check-in, that's when I would really put some guardrails in my calendar to where it-- makes sure like you're not-- maybe you're not going to meetings where you can't take calls during check in and check out. And you also know our market. Fridays are always really, really, really busy. There's a lot of check-ins and Sundays are check out. So just be very aware. You know the cadence of your property too. So give yourself those guardrails in your calendar of like, "Hey, I'm not going to book anything during these times so I can be there to make sure my turnover team's there so I can make sure that the guest is checked in." That'll help you tremendously too, and make sure that you can have access to your phone or your computer, all the things you can help them.

[00:18:15] Great thought. All right. With that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

[00:18:16] I'm Annette Grant, and together we are--

[00:18:18] Thanks for Visiting.