Speaker 1: Investing in and operating short-term rentals is a team sport, a team business. We have to communicate with lots of different people and I started using a new tool recently that I have to share with you guys. I know I'm using new tools all the time, but this one's really good. You may have heard about it already, but if not, I'm gonna cover all the main features and the reasons we're using it and loving it. Stay tuned. Welcome to Short-Term Rental Rich's quick actionable ideas to help you along your real estate investment journey, but with a specific focus on short-term rentals. Welcome back to the Short-Term Rental Rich's podcast. I love doing these, I gotta say. It's fun, it helps get good information out to you guys, but also helps me reinforce things that I'm learning, things that I want to learn. We appreciate all the feedback and we actually just launched a new website. I'm super excited about it. It's shorttermrentalrichs.com. On the website, you can dig into different categories of topics that we've covered and we've covered quite a lot now. I don't know, we're on 70, 75 episodes. We've got a lot of information. It's really well organized on there. You can search for whatever you need to and it's gonna be a really good resource if you're just discovering the podcast or if you want to go back and review one from the past. All these topics, most of these are topics that are gonna last for a long, long time. Even though the short-term rental industry changes quickly, a lot of the tools and real estate fundamentals don't change that quickly. So check it out. It's strrichs.com and leave us a comment if you haven't already. We really like that, we appreciate it. And on the website, you can request a topic. So it'll come straight to us. We'll make sure to cover those in future episodes. Okay, without further ado, I want to talk about a new tool that we've been using. You may have heard of it already. It's called Slack. It's been around for a long time. A lot of big companies use it and I actually was using it with other groups before, but for some reason or other, I never implemented it with my business. And now that we're working with people in multiple countries, I think I work regularly with people in five different time zones. And I'm usually in a different time zone pretty often, multiple times throughout the year, traveling around. So WhatsApp and email, which is what I'd been using prior, and I still use a little bit of it, but we're phasing out of it. Slack can take the place of these other tools. So we used WhatsApp to send text messages, attach documents, do all that. And then email is email, you know. We've been using email forever, but Slack really can take the place of both of these. So I want to cover the main features, the reasons why I really love it, and why I think it could be helpful for you guys as well. So we'll cover just a little bit. What is Slack? We'll cover the main features, what specifically we're using it for, some things that it integrates with. It integrates with some really cool tools that you're probably already using, and then what it costs. So we're just gonna do in a nutshell what is Slack, why I think it's helpful for you guys. Let's get started. So Slack is a messaging application, but it's very intuitive. And the beautiful thing about it, is it allows us to share permissions with multiple, multiple people, no matter where you are. You can set notification schedules. So we work with people on the other side of the world, they might not want to receive a message in the middle of the night, just like I don't want to receive messages in the middle of the night. And with so many time zones, and in today's age, with the ability to work with people remotely, easier than ever, this tool is super, super cool. A couple of main features. You can create what's called a channel. So a channel could be multiple people in one topic. For example, we could call it a topic. So like we have housekeeping in so-and-so city, housekeeping in another city. That way we can communicate with the people that are working in that city, and we're not sharing information with other people. But it allows us to be very transparent. So those are some of the common channels that we use. You can do the same with maintenance, you can do the same with bookkeeping, you can do the same with guest reception. So you can do it really with any aspect of your short-term rental business with the operations. But you could take it further than that. If you're investing in real estate and you have partners that you work with, you can communicate with them there. And you can share Google Drive links, you can upload PDF files, you can attach images, you can attach videos, you can do tons and tons of cool things. So the main benefit though is having channels where you can group people together. Now within those topics, let's say housekeeping in so-and-so city for example, that could be a really big topic and you need to kind of narrow in on one section. Well then Slack allows you to create what's called a thread. So you have one general topic, which is a channel, and then you have a thread, which are individual conversations within that channel. So you can split those off. This might sound confusing, but I promise it's not. It's super easy and it's fun. You can do little things like add emojis. So if someone sends a message confirming a guest reservation for example, you could send the thumbs up emoji, the smile emoji. It allows us to be more of a team. Before I used to just put my phone on do not disturb when I was going to bed or when I wasn't available. But now I just let Slack do that for me. It sets my hours and I can easily log in and catch up on all my messages a lot quicker and at the same time. So a few other things that I love about Slack are some of the integrations. So I've been using Zoom to talk with a lot of my team members in different parts. I'm enjoying doing the face-to-face videos now. It used to just be phone calls, but it adds so much. So before I used to log into Zoom, create a Zoom appointment, send it over via WhatsApp or schedule it and send it via email. Now I just go right inside Slack. I hit forward slash Zoom enter and it sends a message right to someone and starts a meeting for us. It's so much, so much easier. So that I love. Even though it's something small, it saves a ton of time, makes it easy for all of us. That's a beautiful integration. It has a Gmail integration. So if I'm in my email and I decide that whatever email I'm reading would be really good for one of our other team members to see, I can hit a little Slack integration and it can send a direct message to whoever I want on my team with that email and I can leave some notes there. So I don't have to forward it and then we can keep it all in the same spot. So it also links with your Google Calendar and it links with your Google Drive. So if you use Google Drive for a lot of files, you can integrate it right with Slack too. Now as with all tools and all new software, usually they have a cost, right? We're actually using Slack for free right now, which is also great. It has other levels that you can subscribe to and the price gets more and more expensive. But so far we've found that the free version is working really well for us. So I'm sure it'll work well for you guys too. Just a little note too on the cost. I thought it was interesting. I'm still in Brazil and a little thing popped up and it said 40% discount for joining from Brazil or something. So if you guys have a VPN, virtual private network tool, where you can switch your internet location, you might try switching to Brazil and get yourself a discount if you need the discounted model. So I'm not affiliated with Slack in any way, like most of the products that we talked about. But it's been super helpful for me and I think it'll be really helpful for you guys, even if you're only working with one other person. I think it really has a place and it helps build your team and your communications, makes things more transparent, and most importantly, it's gonna help you save time. So check it out if you're not already using it. It's called Slack. Just Google and get started. Until next time, have a wonderful day and don't forget to check out our new website strriches.com. Let us know what topics would be helpful for you in the future. Until next time, have a wonderful week.