When do I know it's time to hire a VA for my short-term rental business?

I'll tell you exactly when I knew: I was answering guest messages from the dinner table every single night, and my kids were watching me do it. The time I asked my husband to dedicate to our family, I was suddenly exempt from? It didn't sit right with me. So I hired help, so I could focus on my family when I knew they needed me.

When I hired my first Airbnb virtual assistant, I didn't hire her to "run the business." I hired her for one shift: 3 to 7 p.m. All I wanted was to eat dinner with my family without my phone in my hand.

That one shift grew to 3 to 9 so I could watch a movie with my kids. A few months later, I added mornings. Then a whole team. Today Simply Stay has coverage around the clock, and I'm not the one on call.

The signs it's time

You don't need to hit some magic number of properties or a certain income. It's about your capacity, and whether you still have room to do what only you are good at. Watch for these:

• Every guest question still comes to you. Nobody else can answer, so you answer. At 2 a.m., at the pool, at your kid's game.
• Your phone comes on vacation. If your last "trip" was answering guests from a beach chair, you already know.
• You're turning down growth. You've said no to a new owner, or quietly avoided signing one, because you can't take on one more thing.
• You're doing $15 an hour work at your hourly rate. One of my clients spent two whole days on stuff a guest left behind. Getting out to the property to pick it up, coordinating the shipping, then chasing the guest to actually pay the fee. Her words? "We just don't have the capacity to do that." And she's right, that's not owner work. That's exactly the kind of thing a VA can take off your plate.

"But my systems aren't ready yet"

I hear this one all the time, and it keeps people stuck for years. Your systems don't have to be perfect before you hire. You build them together.

Of COURSE, having systems is NICE, and they can make a big difference... but building systems, operations, workflows, processes and policies takes time. An Airbnb virtual assistant can help speed that along. While they're learning and you're teaching, you can document everything as you go :) Pro tip: record videos while you work, so they can watch them and create the SOP from the video :)

Not sure where to start? Start here: the answers to the questions you get asked most. If a VA starts with nothing written down, every question comes back to you and it feels like hiring made things worse. That's not a VA problem. That's a starting point problem, and it's an easy one to fix before day one.

Start small on purpose

Your first hire doesn't need to do everything. Pick one area (usually guest messaging) and one block of hours, the time you want back the most. Get really good at that together, then grow it.

Wondering what it'll cost? Here's my breakdown of how much a virtual assistant costs for an Airbnb business.