Episode 13: Should You Invest in Hiring Virtual Assistant? with Amy Ransdell

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ah right, I think we're live. We all live, all right, guys.
Good morning, Happy Wednesday, August fourth to eleven am. Coffee
with closers, myself, Gavin and Don. We are happy to
bring on Amy rans Dell today. And Amy is with
Riva Global and amongst Reva Global other things. And she

(00:21):
was actually just telling us about that and we got
a good chuckle out of it. So great way to
always start the show. Amy, welcome, thanks for being on.
This is a live show. We encourage audience interaction, and
if you don't mind, let's just start by learning a
little bit about who Amy is and then how you
transition into you know, being a part of Rivah.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
I'm okay, not for where to start, so cliff notes.
I've been in real estate for about twenty years, so
I am a licensed broker. I have a brokerage that
supports real estate investing agents as well as investors will
get their license, and I'm an active investor. But years ago,
we've been the CEO of the company who's Bob the
Chance I encourage our ready to follow Bob. Bob and

(01:04):
I have been in the coaching arena for all those years,
like we just were natural coaches and so we ended
up in those buckets in different programs over the years,
and it's pretty high level programs together and the coaching students
would have the same challenge as we were having over
and over again about trying to find the right virtual
as systems to work with and having challenge after challenge

(01:25):
after challenge, and how do you build a business. What's
the best way, right is to find a gap in
what the market offers or to find a niche where
you can solve a problem. And we saw a huge
problem to solve and that was the birth of Reva Global.
So Reva Global is a real estate virtual assistant company
that supports real estate entrepreneurs, any entrepreneur. Really, we have

(01:45):
whole medical division. Like people don't even know that, but
a lot of our real estate entrepreneurs is where we
got started. And so we've been around for about eight years. Now.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
Wow, you guys have a medical division too. I did
not know that.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
Yeah, whole medical division. So again small business owners, right.
So in the medical side, just because it's interesting, you know,
insurance verifications, appointment setting, appointment follow up. We've developed an
entire hippocompliant process where virtual assistants can save small business owner.
Doctors with small practices can hire a VA for you know,
one third the cost of a local hire, so it's

(02:18):
huge for them.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Wow, that is huge. That is amazing. So I have
a VA that has been working with me for oh man,
it's probably three months at this point from Riva and
she's kicking butt. Really really enjoy working with her, and yeah,
it's going really really well. So I'm really happy that
we get the opportunity to talk to you today, Gavin

(02:42):
Don You guys got some virtual assistance at this point
as well too? Or is it all local people or
virtual people but local to the US. I'm curious both
both both nice.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah, yeah, I run everything virtual, but we have probably
seven vas that are out of the country in the
Philippines and then my or my team of virtual in
different spots, my in America people. So yeah, so a
huge m VAS.

Speaker 4 (03:13):
For me.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
I think it's you know, the first thing you should
ever outsource or the first time you should ever make
is a virtual assistant in my opinion, and it's the
it's a thing when you are depending on where you're
at with you know, in your business, is whether it's
on marketing, whether it's on admin to free your time
up at a cost effective way to start outsourcing. Again,

(03:36):
it is first for me, and it may be multiple
of them to start with before you bring in you know,
the people on the ground or your American team that's
going to cost you more money. That's just my take
on it. So yeah, I think it's great that Amy's
aren't using her experience and we all have them as
well that we can chip in. So I guess I

(03:57):
have a question aming how many do you actually, I
mean your business? How long have you been using virtual assistance?

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Okay? So to do all the things I do, I'm
also a mom. Like there's all these things, right, I
couldn't do them without virtual assistants. So to the point
that I've almost gotten to such a point that I
don't even say how, or I just say who and what?
BA can do that for me? Like everything, I mean,
no matter what comes across my desk. Oh, can I
bea do that for me? Yes? Okay, cool, great, hand

(04:24):
it to them.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
Right.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
So I have a personal assistant, who's just my personal
personal assistant? You know, we have somebody who helps with
the brokerage and the communities we run a small coaching community.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
Here.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
We have I have two virtual assistants that support acquisitions,
so I have you know, they're just doing a data
skip tracing, They're doing text message marketing and follow ups.
They do some outbound cold calling. We have an entire
cold calling team, right But the reality is that again
we have a take that back or not take the back.
I want to add I also have to to do
a lot of social media marketing for our marketing team, right,

(05:00):
So just about anything can be done by virtual assistance,
is what I want to make the point of. So
you know ninety percent of what we all do can
be done by phone in computer, right, Well, if we
can do it by phone or computer, well, then that
means that a virtual assistant can do it just like
we can, and sometimes honestly can do it better. So
I truly like there are some things that Ron does

(05:21):
for me as a personal assistant that I would just
never ever handle well or timely or consistently, but he does.
So I need to give a little bit of a picture.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
You can go deeper.

Speaker 3 (05:32):
Yeah, no, are you? Are you the one that is
training the V eight or they do They go through
a training like schedule before they get hired, like, how
does that look?

Speaker 2 (05:44):
Excellent? Question? So we have a global is uniquely different
in the world of virtual assistant companies. So I'll describe
that just briefly and then really kind of like really
answer that question because that's probably one of the most
difficult and challenging questions with clients, is that one thing. Right, So,
when virtual assistants come through REVA Global, they're pre trained

(06:06):
and pre certified and screened, Like we hire them onto
our staff and they're given weeks of pre training, especially
in the real estate arena, Like they're learning all kinds
of things to support the most common needs and common
tools used by our real estate entrepreneurs. So when we
place a VA with a client, they have lots of understandings, right,

(06:27):
But the reality is that they're not going to do
exactly what you want them to do the way you
want it done, unless you're going to take the time
to create some trainings, some processes, and some systems with
that VA.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
Right.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
So, just like you're going to hire someone in your office,
you would want to do the same thing with your
virtual assistant.

Speaker 1 (06:46):
Now you're not going to just hire someone in your
office and handing the keys and go to lunch, like
you're going to have to be like, here's the file cabin, here,
here's the computer, Like you're going to have to do that, right,
you know what?

Speaker 2 (06:57):
People do that all the time with virtual assistance. It's
one challenges, right. We hear it all the time, like, well,
I hired a VA, it should just be done for me.
I'm like, it doesn't work like that, Like they don't
know what to do. So you have to do that.
You have to work with them just like a team member,
you know, check in with them daily, affirm them, grow them,
get challenge them, give them performance reviews, do it just

(07:17):
like you would do with a traditional hire on your
team and that and with Riva Global, our virtual assistants
are team members for you. You're going to hire someone
that's going to be an acquisitions lead manager. They're a
team member for you.

Speaker 3 (07:29):
Right.

Speaker 2 (07:30):
So if you do that, this is not a contract
for hire a thing. You're not giving somebody one task.
They do that and complete it. That's not how we
place VA's area.

Speaker 3 (07:39):
Yeah, I think.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Go ahead.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
No, I'm just going to say I think you've absolutely
nailed it. And uh and everyone that I work with
and when they say well, the virtual assistants, they don't work.
The big thing is, and everyone listening to this that
huse them, it's you that don't work, right, you as
in me, as in and all of us on this call.
You have to look at yourself exactly what Amy's just said,

(08:05):
because that is the most common thing. And if you're
not willing to communicate with them, And we communicate with
ours every BA twice a day at a minimum before
and after the shift, depend on their test and our
admin ones can be four or five six times a
day throughout the day and then meetings on top. Again,
and I'm just reiterating because it's such a good point,

(08:29):
is that you've got to be communicating and training and
they are just as important I call them in my
B line. Right. They bring in all like probably ninety
five percent of the money comes in from a virtual assistant.
They are the front line of the business. They are
creating the leads.

Speaker 1 (08:47):
You are the front line of the business and often
the backline too, right.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
Yes, transactional coordination like all that stuff too. Yeah, they're
holding everything together. I want to highlight something you said
about checking in with them, right, like just like we
would again someone in our office, we're going to be
checking in with them all day. Do that with your VAS.
There's everything. So with technology as it is now virtual formats,

(09:12):
I can talk to my VA all day as if
he is sitting next to me, right between video and
instant chat mechanisms. We use Glip personally, it's what we
use in our office, but we're just communicating with them
all day long.

Speaker 4 (09:24):
Now.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
One cool thing at RIVA, we do help you guys
out with that too, though we do have client service
managers assigned. David, you probably experience this, so you're communicating
with your VA all day, every day as much as
you want to, but you also have a client service
manager that's also checking in with your VA and checking
in with you to help with engagement, to make sure
everything's working well. They have everything they need, You have

(09:45):
everything they need, so they're not an island alone scenarios.
So you actually have additional assist with REVA. It's almost
like they're getting a team, not just one virtual system.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
YEP, that's exactly right.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
I have a quick selfish question that you just said,
and I'm googling it as I'm asking this, but you
said Glip. I'm not heard of that looks like it's
something like it's Ringless Central. Is it an arm of
Ringless Central?

Speaker 2 (10:11):
It is, so we happen to also use ring Central
as our phone system. You don't have to though, to
use the Glip application, but it is. It's an online
chat forum, so you can file, transfer and share, you
can do live video chat between each other, and you
can put people in unlimited groups within the Glip platform.
It is an app on your phone as well as

(10:33):
usable on your PC. So we love it. So like
all of my different teams, my whole cold calling team,
my text message launch control team, my marketing team, that
they're all in different groups inside Glip and the cool
thing that I love, like, for instance, my acquisitions team.
I also have on the ground team members here in
my Atlanta market that are on my investment acquisitions team.

(10:55):
They run all of my listings and my acquisitions for investments.
They work with das right, so like Grant, for example,
Grants the leader of that team. Grant works with Oz
and Ron. Oz is the primary text control uh VA
for a text message VA for us. They're in a
Glip group together that I get to see, so I'm

(11:16):
watching their conversation as much as I want to. I'm
watching end of business and startup business reports go back
and forth between them all in one simple, simple application,
which makes it awesome.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
So it sounds like a bit like Slack. Len I
use Slack.

Speaker 2 (11:33):
We use Slack as well for our launch control vas
as a corporate team, and it's also fantastic. So yeah,
you guys, there's so many out there. But absolutely is
it the same as Slack?

Speaker 4 (11:47):
Is it? Does it have differences? Is there reason to
use both?

Speaker 2 (11:51):
I like Glip because I like the online platform much
more than I like what Slack provides. So from my PC,
I'm mostly on my my laptop right, I can do
everything from my laptop so much faster, And that's just
why I like GPS. Lip seems to be very universal
and how it can handle. It's very simple, user friendly.
I can add and remove people from groups very easily.

(12:11):
So that's that's a reason for me, and not because
it's a tied to our phone at all. It just
seemed to be a great application online.

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Interesting, that's all good.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Yeah, I just want to Yeah, I'm not out of it,
so I always like to see what everyone's doing.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, No, And I listen to clients ask that question
all the time. You know, they come through the intake
process at RIVA and they're like, well, how am I
going to communicate with my VA? Like they don't even know,
they haven't thought about that, right, So we turned them
onto programs like Slacker, Glip or so forth all the
time so that they have an instant way to start
that stream streamline communication.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
Yeah, and I think for anyone listening as well, you
just pick one platform. It could be Sky, it could
be Voxa. Just have one central communication is the key.
Don't have five different ways of messaging each other because
that's how everything gets missed and it breaks down. So
you should always have one central location.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
Which is if I screenshot my blip for you guys,
you'd love it because it's all in one place. And
so every group has got a title, right, So if
I want to go just talk to the marketing group
for a minute, or the sales team, I just click
off the sales team. Everybody that's in that team is
in that group, and then I can communicate with people
one on one individually, but it's all in one place,
so it's just on one call, on one place. Everything

(13:26):
every file we send to each other everything. It's amazing.

Speaker 4 (13:29):
And we have to have a rule in our company
that you cannot email or text the conversation. You have
to conversate and slack and if you email or text it,
you have to document it and slack because if we don't,
there's that that that chain of communication gets lost. And
you're like, well, I think we had that conversation or
made that decision, but I can't find the email and
it's a whole thing, and yeah, so it has to

(13:50):
be documented.

Speaker 2 (13:51):
I so feel you. We did the same thing with attachments,
right like you might throw it into a drive folder.
That's great. I still want to see the attachment sent
over end clip makes way again, I can I can
go to one place, you know, Gavin, you and I
were just talking earlier about some traveling. You know, I
was in my RV for nine days and I didn't
have to do any going to look anywhere except for

(14:12):
one app, you know, just one place, because we have
those rules. So Donnie, I love that. I'll did on that.

Speaker 3 (14:18):
Yeah, really really good, really good. Before we ask the
next question, guys, we are warming up with people watching us,
so welcome. This is coffee with closers. With myself, Don
and Dave. Okay, we have Amy joining us, and if
you are watching, give us a like and give us
a share. If you can share wherever you're watching on
YouTube or Facebook, share the post. We want to get

(14:40):
as many eyes as we can watching us to get
this outreach. So if you can do that, we appreciate
you and yeah we can now carry on. Just want
to throw love in there.

Speaker 1 (14:53):
Awesome anyway you guys have you guys have one hundred
plus tasks that you can have done for you by
virtual assistance. And essentially I'm gonna drop the link here,
Guys in the chat you go over to coffee with
Closers Live on that page, there is a link to

(15:14):
connect with the Virtual assistance over at Reva Global And
I personally use these virtual assistants as well in my business.
They have one hundred plus tests that can be done
for you. I'm trying to pull that spreadsheet up to
review some of the items that the VAS can help

(15:35):
you within your business. And really the reality is is
they can help you with anything in your business as
long as you are willing to put in the time
to teach them. Is that what you were saying, Amy.

Speaker 2 (15:46):
Well, Yeah, if you're willing to put in the time,
you're willing to get out of your own way and
let go of things. Okay, so that's important. I think
that's another big objection I have to deal with client
for I'm like, let go of that and allow the
VA to do it for you. One hundred tasks us.
If you go to the link that David is giving you, guys,
you can download a list and really what it was.

(16:06):
It's just a brain dump list of things that we
know virtual assistants have done for clients or that we've
had you know, our client service managers have let us
know that their vas have been asked to do by clients,
so that we just kind of started compiling this list.

Speaker 4 (16:21):
Right.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
It's meant to give you a place to be creative
and think outside of the box of all the things
that you could have done for you, because sometimes we
just don't even think about it. Most of the people
will go through this list and they will have, you know,
kind of epiphany moments of really, I could have a
VA do that for me, like they hadn't even thought
about it, right, So this is to help you think
of that. So I tell people go through with a

(16:41):
yellow highlighter and start highlighting all the things that are
like just those those wow moments for you of oh man,
I didn't think about giving that to someone else to do.
So then when you come to talk to our intake team,
they can help you figure out how to bucket the
right hires for potentially truly taking some of those things
off your plate if you're ready to train them over.

Speaker 4 (17:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:01):
Absolutely. I mean the first the first VA I hired
was is still with me today. He's one of my
good friends. His name is Dennis, and he has he
was with me basically, i'd say about six and a
half years at this point, give or take. I had
started in this business full time amy and I think
I made it three months before I hired a virtual assistant.

(17:25):
I was just overwhelmed, and that was the reason that
I brought a virtual assistant on. I think as of
today I have nine or ten total. But what I
first started out with was was having him help with
follow up emails and follow up calls. Literally I was getting,
you know, getting rushed with so many new leads, and

(17:48):
I knew, and I know today and I knew then
that the money is in the follow up that I
needed to basically pick one or the other. I needed
to focus on my follow up or I needed to
focus on the new leads, and that I just really
couldn't do both. I just there wasn't enough time in
the day, right, And so he started helping me with
the follow ups, and then it morphed, and it morphed

(18:08):
into him basically at this point being my lead manager.
So I don't even see the leads at this point
unless he vets them. He calls them, he determines motivation.
If those leads are not ready yet, he puts them
on follow up and he helps maintain that amongst some
of our other team members. And then when they are ready,

(18:30):
which is is crazy. It could be four or five months,
it could be four years. When they are ready, he
then puts that lead in front of me. So it's
such a really, it's just such an awesome thing knowing
that you know that he's their working and we have
a great team, and but yeah, he's there working, helping
me whenever I'm out doing other things. I mean, it's

(18:52):
it essentially allows me to be in you know, five
or six places at the same time. So follow up
is really awesome. Outbound cole call I have three coal
callers right now that are virtual assistants calling lead cultivation
follow up. We talked a little bit about that. Just
some of the things on this list here, guys, I
know people that use virtual assistance to manage properties, especially

(19:15):
those that are doing the that are doing the airbnb.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Business short term rentals.

Speaker 1 (19:21):
So many. Oh my goodness. Yeah, my buddy George, I
just saw he hired like his fifteenth or sixteenth virtual
assistant the other day.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
I was just messaging with George yesterday.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Okay, cool, Yeah, that was amazing. He's doing like one
hundred and seventy thousand in gross revenue in his airbnb
business and it's awesome.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
But he's outsourced so much of it to virtual assistance.
I would say that's probably one of our biggest requests
over this last year has been investors who have decided
to add to their inventory air There's just so much
that can be handled by the VAS. You know, when
somebody's doing a booking, they can do booking confirmations, they
can answer the booking questions. They can answer questions about
like you know, where things are in proximity do the

(20:00):
Airbnb When people call and ask those questions when they're calling,
even asking for the security or alarm codes, like, all
those things can be handled by the VA. They can
coordinate the cleaners, they can coordinate everything. Like one hundred
percent your Airbnb business can be automated through a virtual assistant,
So I highly recommend people doing that. And follow up calls.
Oh my gosh. Follow up follow up period is the

(20:21):
one thing that we're all the least consistent with, even
though we know one hundred percent it's the biggest money
maker for our business. We just get busy, we're reactionary,
we're managing other high level decision making activities, and so
the follow up will fall off and it won't happen,
even though we are smart and we know how important
it is. We have a follow up VA, an ROLM
remote lead manager, and that's all that VA does. But

(20:44):
that's guess what, because that's all they do. They're really
freaking good at it, and they never drop the ball
where I might because I'm going to be reactionary for
something else. That's all they do all day. So I'm
so excited. Grant texted me this morning. We got one
under contract. It's been in the follow up nurturing pipeline
for quite a while. When they were finally ready to transact,
he had it sent over to him as a ready

(21:05):
to ready to transact warm lead Boom. We have it
under contract, right, But all that in between was not
managed by Grant or me or not all automated through
a virtual assistant and tools like you know, some RBM
and texting and so forth.

Speaker 1 (21:19):
Yeah. So, I mean, guys, there are so many things
that you can do. And it's actually kind of funny
because just the other day, you know, I was I
was kind of having some struggles because I felt like
I wasn't trying to think of a good way to
word this. Not valued in my own organization, I'm the boss, right,

(21:39):
but that I wasn't really contributing, right. And my good
my good friend Chris Arnold sent me this book called
The Big Leap, and I read it, and it's basically
just about the fact that you know, it's okay to
basically let these people that you hire in your organization
that are basically doing the job better than you do

(21:59):
it it and be okay with it and not have
a struggle. I was having some really internal things going
on because some days I won't work work an hour
or two, but like we'll send five offers and somebody
on the team will go run an appointment or two
and then a bank reef I gets signed and it's
like all the wheels in the business are spinning, but

(22:20):
it's not necessarily me doing it, And it's a blessing
in disguise, is really what it is, right because I'm
no longer stressing about thirty different things in my business,
which is it's really really amazing. That's in this book.
If you guys are looking for a new book or
a good book, it's called The Big Leap, and it
talks about the upper limit syndrome. And the upper limit syndrome,

(22:41):
you know, is just something that basically, if something good
happens to you in your life, people often you know,
do something stupid or bad to bring it back to reality, right,
and you don't need to do that.

Speaker 3 (22:51):
You know.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
So some of the things that my virtual assistance, I mean,
I could go through this list and almost check everything
on here, which is pretty awesome, right, But when it
comes to outbound marketing, you know, we have cold calling, uh,
we're doing listings, we have appointment setting. Every appointment that's set.
It's done by one of my team members, that's virtual.

(23:12):
Whenever we're marketing a property to sell, I try not
to spend as much time in my CRM, which sounds
kind of funny, but like you know, I literally try
to spend as the least amount of time in there
as possible. I built an amazing CRM not because I
wanted to suck all my time out of me. I
built it so my team can communicate and manage these

(23:33):
these leads that we're that we have and nourish them. Right.
But that's the whole point is that my team's doing it,
not me. So I try to spend as least amount
of time in there as as possible. All inbound calls,
all inbound calls. If you call you know my company
right now, you're gonna get a you're gonna get in
a virtual system that's going to answer that.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Here. Ron answers all the inbounds.

Speaker 1 (23:54):
So everything right, uh. Building my cash buyers list contracts,
my team sends anywhere from one to three contracts every
single day, you know, every day, you know, literally six
days a week, one to three contracts every day. Some
days we'll send four or five. Those are all done
by my virtual assistance. They may read, they may reach

(24:16):
out to me in the CRM or in Slack and
just say, hey, does this look like a good offer,
And nine times out of ten, it's great, and I'm
like send it, do it, you know, And that's a
ten or fifteen minute task. And I look at that
for twenty seconds, which is amazing.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
Right.

Speaker 1 (24:30):
We do have some some bookkeeping and some management that's
done with our virtual assistance, and then social media management.
You know, we I have three three vas that are
that just help with the branding of social media, podcast, YouTube,
all that type of stuff. And you know, one person
can't do it all. It's just if you want to,

(24:52):
you know, do a lot of it, it just doesn't
work that way. You've got to build a team around yourself.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
You know.

Speaker 1 (24:58):
Obviously there's a couple other things in here that you
can have them do. But again, the reality, guys is
there's an infinite amount of things that you can have
them do because it's a human and you can train
that human to help you. And one of the cool things,
and this is the last thing I'm going to say
here because I don't want to rant for too long,
but one of the most amazing things about having a
team of vas, and again I think I'm nine or

(25:18):
ten strong at this point, is my vas will notice
when there's inefficiencies, they will notice when we can do better,
they will notice when I'm doing something stupid, and they
will call my butt out. Yes, And it's amazing having
these people that all share the common goal of driving

(25:41):
the train forward, which could be different things for different businesses, right,
having the team members is amazing. One of the cool
things too that I really love is that REVA offers
health insurance, which is going to help a ton with
you know, keeping the team members on the team, they
have no reason to want to leave.

Speaker 2 (26:01):
Well, that's just let me speak to that. So you
said that, you said something really important there too. I
want to just highlight that they are. These are people
with college educations, and I mean, these are brilliant people
who live on the other side of the world. So
they're they're just as smart as us and a lot
of things, and sometimes smarter than us.

Speaker 1 (26:19):
Most of the time they're smarter.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
So let them tell you where the efficiencies are. And
I will tell you another tip. Guys, if you train up,
I'm sure you've done this David with your teams. If
you've trained a VA to do really well where they
are in a they are really ascend to a management level, right,
then they can run a team and you can recruit
additional vas that you don't even have to train that

(26:42):
the lead VA trains the other VA's right.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
I mean, yeah, that's how it is with our cold
callers at this point. We have at different times, I've
had four and even five of them. When we bring
you people on, I'm like, hey, just shadow this guy
for two or three hours, let me know if you
have any questions, and then boom they hit the ground running.

Speaker 2 (26:57):
Absolutely. Our cold call team has an operations manager quality
analysts that they run everything. So like I don't even know,
I feel something bad because there will be a new
name in the pool, and I'm like, who's that, right,
So it's not it's just it's really empowering. So but
REVA is really unique. So I remember I said at
the beginning that we set out to solve some problems, right.
One of the problems that we heard a lot of

(27:18):
in the industry is that is the retention issue. Not
only were the clients not always sometimes great about really
doing all it takes to manage a team building relationship
with their VA. But the other side was the virtual assistance, right,
So we wanted to create an environment for virtual systems
at our company that once they are there, they would
never ever want to leave, like they would love it.

(27:39):
So are all about culture and core values. We have
a core value of family first, and coming from that
core value, it means that we provide the virtual system
something a lot of the companies that Philippines do not
and also that they can't get by being independent, and
those are things like health insurance benefits, paid time off,
We give scholarship programs, credit repair programs, like We're doing

(28:01):
all these amazing things so that there's really almost that
there is a waiting list of talent to come be
on the REVA payroll. They're also guaranteed on our payroll.
Once somebody gets through the screening process at RIVA, which
is not simple, it is tough. We go through tons
of personality screenings, profficiency trainings, all kinds of things to
really get a feel for what they are as a

(28:22):
as an employee. Once we bring them onto our payroll,
we're guaranteeing them a position. They're a RIVA, right and
that's something else that they don't have that guarantee going
out there being independent. So what does that mean? That
means that they're not going to want to once they
get in the door, they're going to want to stay.

Speaker 1 (28:38):
Yeah, is going to be through the roof. Guys, they're
getting we're industry credit repair. Yeah, they're getting all these
additional benefits that you're not going to typically find if
you going straight to work or something like that, and.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
We're doing it not you, Right, you don't have to
worry about any of that. You're not worried about payroll expenses,
You're not worried about any of that. We're doing all
of that. All you're got to worry about is doing
really awesome stuff with your VA. Right, that's it. So
but but yeah, we're industry disrupting on retention percentages like
it's it's it's crazy what we've been able to accomplish. Now,

(29:11):
let me add to that, we also screen our clients.
Right when people come through the intake process, we're also
eliciting from them what their needs are and what their
their their golden directions are, right, I mean, they are
they going to be a client that's also going to
stay long term with the VA. I mean we're also
doing that because we wanted to be a long term,
healthy relationship.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
So yeah, I love it. I love it. I absolutely
love it. In terms of in terms of, like your
real estate business, what are the vas that you have
doing for you right now? I'm just curious for me.

Speaker 2 (29:43):
Personally, Yeah, think of sharing some earlier. So we have
all of them. For the brokers, for example, I have
someone that helps manage a lot of the managerial administrative
things there. We have someone that can do contract for clothes.
We have a social media assistance on the acquisition side,
so we have a team that's doing cold calling, doing
all of our text message campaigns. So we do a

(30:05):
lot of texting right now while that's something we still
can do, and so we have VAS managing all of that.
All of the follow up nurturing is managed by a
VA team.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
So I'm here, here's.

Speaker 2 (30:16):
The hot lead, and it gets direct transferred to one
of my guys here in the office, Dale or Grant
or one of them. If the lead is still not
ready to transact, it gets kicked right back over.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
And yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Because their highest and best use is to negotiate contracts
of kitchen tables. That's where I want them. I don't
want on the phone doing dead calls all day. That
burns them out. So we have all of that managed
by virtual assistants. I also have a community, so for example,
our coaching community for what I do around the brokerage
investment side, actually coaching again, that too is somebody administratively

(30:51):
inside that community helping manage things.

Speaker 4 (30:54):
Right.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
So my point goes back to what I was saying earlier.
I'm addicted to this that this point where anything that
comes up, I'm like, cannot be done by a VA
great who right?

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Yeah. But on the flip side, you know you were
you're providing a ton of jobs for people. You know,
this is truly a win win, So I don't want
anyone that's watching to think, like, you know, anything negative
about it. I mean, you're you're you're basically helping other
people find work and they're getting paid well and then
on top of that they're getting benefits with that.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
Right.

Speaker 1 (31:25):
But Amy, I agree completely though, Like, how can I,
you know, be the visionary in this business and keep
this train going in every week or every month at
a train car to it? You can't do that while
you're driving the train, you got to have a team
behind you to help you expand and to help you
do all these things. And really, essentially the way I

(31:46):
look at it is how do I be in two
or three or twenty places at the same time. It's
by having a team that has that common goal.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Absolutely, and you will get attached to them, and you
will you will bond with them as team members, right
Like I do. I tease Oscar all the time because.

Speaker 4 (32:02):
I want to.

Speaker 1 (32:09):
Losing you.

Speaker 2 (32:09):
So yeah, okay, hope.

Speaker 4 (32:14):
We're good.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
You're back.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
The other thing too, you said some back. Okay, yeah, no,
you will bond with the VA's right, like, yeah, relationship
if you will. And they they are they just they're
just excellent. They're excellent resources. I'm all about numbers. I
love numbers too, So like I'll just share, like, for instance,
just one texting campaign for just for for one of

(32:37):
our one of my partners. Basically is that during the
month of July, right he had a fourteen percent response
rate on his text campaigns. He was able to get
sixty one leads during the month of July. Forty eight
of those were hot right now, of course, they go
into the pipeline. They come out where they come out.

(32:57):
But he did get they have seven under contray on
six closings in July, supported by two virtual assistants and
almost entirely managed by the two virtual assistants. Right, so
from a cost point, all he had was the cost
of two virtual systems, the investment of two virtual insistance,
and investment of the data just to generate those sixty
one leads. But I mean he didn't do any he

(33:18):
was running other things. Well that was happening for him, right,
He shared those numbers with me yesterday, So I mean
that's just one month.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
That's awesome. You know, I trained my I trained my
virtual assistance to bring me solutions, not problems. And it's
such a great thing because it used to be like,
you know, okay, they have cold, they have dialers, or
we're using some texting platforms and guys. You can learn
more about those over at Coffee with Closers Live as
well dot com. But essentially, if if something doesn't work right,

(33:48):
it's the systems down or the servers are down, or
there's that they're having a critical air. It used to
be that they would hit me up on Slack and
be like Hey, Dave, you know, just here's an FI.
What's going on now? I don't even hear about the
issue until it's fixed.

Speaker 3 (34:00):
You know.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
Essentially, what they'll do is they'll say, hey, something was wrong.
I contacted support. They walked me through the process of
fixing it, and we're back online, and it's like, awesome,
you guys are kicking, but thank you for getting the
system back online, versus them contacting me and then just
sitting there like, well, what I do next? You know,
it's just like all the all the wheels in the
tag are constantly spinning, which is just such an amazing feeling.

Speaker 2 (34:24):
Although I will encourage everybody listening, make sure that you've
communicated that that's an intention you have, like when you're
hiring and working with the VA, make sure that you
tell them Listen, I'm empowering you to.

Speaker 3 (34:36):
Go do that.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Absolutely, and they absolutely will.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
They absolutely will. Yeah, it's I was listening to Bob yesterday.
So Bob the CEO, he actively runs acquisitions as well.
They do a kick ass amount a volume wholesale and
listing side, and he was just talking about that with
his with his team of virtual assistance that they they've
kind of teamed up together to work on correcting and
finding solutions, and how awesome and that's been for their team, right,

(35:01):
So they've scaled their volume big this year and really
almost entirely on the VIA is being initiative driven like that.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
So I love it.

Speaker 3 (35:10):
Yeah, I just want to say it as well. I
you know, I've worked with them for five, six, seven
years and most of minor in the Philippines and in
the culture in the Philippines is there to please. So
as business owners, as living in America, they're there to please.
So you have to watch that you allow them to
have a voice. So you have to give the opportunity

(35:32):
to speak, to have their say, and you've got to
make them feel comfortable because they will not just come
and tell you that we need to fix this, this this,
It isn't going to happen. It's not in their culture.
So you have to work on that by saying, hey,
if you think there's a better way, let me know, Hey,
what would you do here, If there's one thing you
could change from today, what would it be? All these
questions allows them to have a voice, which will then

(35:55):
help you develop and train and go. Actually, this is
a cool place to work these people and not just
talking down to me like most people get treated, you know,
in all the countries. So that will go a long way,
and that's how you're going to actually develop them in
my opinion.

Speaker 2 (36:11):
That's what That's what I was saying. Set that intention
right clearly, because you're right, they are a pleasing society.
They want yes, yes, yes, right, So they don't want
to ruffle feathers. That's they don't want to do that.
So you have to empower them to understand that you're
welcoming that from them, and then celebrate when they do,
like really acknowledge an affirm when they did take the

(36:32):
initiative to do something. Really send that home, celebrate that
and they'll do it again.

Speaker 4 (36:37):
So yeah, it's a challenge. That's the challenge. Even in
the interview process. You know, when you're asking questions, there
definitely will be giving you the answers that you want
to hear. And I've had that conversation with them even
in the interview process of I'm looking for somebody that's
going to challenge me. I'm looking for somebody that's going
to help push my business forward. I'm looking for somebody's
going to bring fresh ideas and identify obstacles and you know,

(37:01):
you know, can you be that person, can you be
comfortable telling me when you feel like I'm going the
wrong direction? And you see that that fear of saying
yes to the to the answer that question. And I
appreciate that and admire that so much, but it takes
a while to get to get it. Took me a
year to get one girl I work with to get
comfortable telling me when there's an issue. So that's definitely

(37:22):
something that that that does take a moment to overcome.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
It's a great point. Yeah, that's a great point.

Speaker 2 (37:27):
That is a great point in the process. I absolutely
agree with that. I myself have experienced the same thing
even as long as we've been working with the virtual assistance, Right,
I smell it quickly and I will tell them say, listen,
you don't I don't want you to tell me what
you think I want to hear.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Yeah, yeah, that one. I want you to tell me
the truth and how you feel. Right, absolutely, And that's
also a great way to figure out if somebody isn't
going to be a good team member. Yes, right, right,
And that's okay, you know, that's great, Like, let's let's
get on the same page. I don't want anyone to
not like what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
Well, that's no differently again than hiring someone in your office,
Like we forget, it's the same.

Speaker 1 (38:06):
Thing, the same thing. Yeah, it's not. It's not that
different at all. Who cares if they live across the
world or if they're you know some I have. I
have friends who have virtual assistants that live in the
neighborhood they live in. I don't see that person ever,
and they live like two blocks away.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
But you have to have an interview process, right, it's
the same interview process. You still want to have a
set of expectations that you're hiring for, a clear avatar
of who's going to fit that. You want to go
into the process of hiring just like you would somebody
in your physical office.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Love it, Love it all right? Cool? We got a
couple questions here. I'm going to try to sprinkle these
in as we are talking. This is great conversations. Every
single person here has and uses virtual assistance, So it's
such a great uh, a great place for you guys
to ask questions. So if you have questions about virtual assistance,
how to find them? We can help you with that.
Go to coffee with closers live dot com. There's a

(38:54):
link over there to download a free one hundred plus
task that you can have done for you and learn
a little bit more about REVA. One of the questions
that we just got is how do you work with
someone that's just starting out in this business? And I'm
gonna let Amy answer that. So, Amy, if somebody comes
to you, you know, over at even they're looking to
hire their first VA, you know, but they're kind of

(39:15):
new at the business. You know what, you guys, haven't
anything that you can add to that.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Yeah, So the ENTIG team will ask questions to try
to help you figure out what that's going to be.
But I'm just going to share with you right now.
You know, the first things that we take off our
plate are generally the things that we are not the
strongest at that we are. Maybe you feel yourself procrastinating
to do that are the overwhelming things that things that
backlog on you, the.

Speaker 1 (39:40):
Things that you find yourself procrastinating doing. You have nailed
it with that one sentence, because if they're not getting done,
your business is done to a hale.

Speaker 3 (39:51):
Going to say what.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
My procrastination is training the VA.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
But you know what, you could always you can always
delegate to another team member in your office if they're
responsible for training to Yes, I don't and I don't
mean that lightly done because I am I'm busy and
the kids, and I don't really enjoy doing that. But Grant,
for example, Grant in charge of training the acquisition VA
is not me right when we adopted the new CRM
last year, I don't even know how to log in,

(40:23):
I truly don't. Okay, so but is really good at
it now? He trained them right? So absolutely, But it's
the things you don't want to do that you procrastinate
at the backlog. Those are generally indicators of the things
to take a good out of your way and take
off your plate. Now, you still need to be cognizant
of what in your business are the highest, most important
revenue and decision making activities. Those are likely ones you're

(40:43):
going to have to keep on your plate, and if
you're procrastinating that those we have a different issue. But
the smaller things, administrative type stuff and so forth, that
backlogs almost always that can be handed off to VA
and so have that conversation with the intape team. Right now,
I do a whole consulting thing sometimes with people where
I help them walk through things that they should eliminate

(41:05):
from that list that they don't need to be doing
at all. And that's that's a whole other conversation.

Speaker 4 (41:09):
But yeah, thisegts to a question we had earlier. They
were asking about creating SOPs before they hired, and I
wanted to respond to that since we're here, because that's
a yeah, that's a procrastination thing too, right, that's a
busy work that you do to avoid hiring somebody that
you're going to want to avoid training. So what I

(41:31):
would what I would do is I would hire the
individual and let them know that part of their job
is to develop the SOPs for their position, and you're
going to work hand in hand with them to do that.
Get that off your plate.

Speaker 2 (41:42):
Yes, they can create the procedural manuals for you, right,
that capable process. Absolutely, they can be a part of
the solution.

Speaker 3 (41:52):
Right.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
It doesn't mean you have to be a perfection itist
and have everything figured out because hey, by the way, guys,
we all know how business works. We can never be
a perfectionists because in the process of doing things we
learn how things don't work, what's wrong, where we're missing
something that happens through doing, so you're gonna end up
having to rework some of your sop anyway, okay, because
it's the process of doing that highlights those challenges. So

(42:14):
just get started right.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
One thing I would mention too, man, is you know,
I've I've been there in terms of like you know,
procrastinating the training of the vas. And one of the
best ways that I've found to do it is just
to do a just to zoom or a Slack screen
share and not even train them necessarily, just say hey,
here's what I'm doing. Twice a week or three times

(42:38):
a week, just watch, do you have any advice on
how we can do this better? And nine times out
of ten they're gonna say, yeah, you could go do
something else and let me do this. This is so
stupid and simple and it's just you know, something that
just but he has to get done and it needs
a human touch. You can't completely automate it with the
software boom, you know, and that's it. So I think

(43:00):
a lot of it, you know, when it comes to
the training, isn't necessarily like creating catalogs or somebody just
ask another question here, you know, are there videos that
can be used to train vas? Absolutely go into YouTube
and type in you know how to train my VIA
to cold call or whatever that may be. But I
would highly also also highly recommend to record yourself training
them again U zoom or whatever the case may be,

(43:21):
and you drop that onto YouTube so you have your
own internal library so when you bring people on, they
can watch those or have the vas that are doing
it already help train those other people.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Lose Kujabi as a place to host training, which is
what we've done. And so but I have a habit now,
and it's a habit you can create where everything I do,
I do a quick screenshot. I use something called snippets.
This is toll I like, but I'm just screenshotting really
quickly what I'm doing, and it records my mouse moving around,
records me going from one tab to another, it records

(43:52):
my voice, so I can walk through and every time
I do something, I keep them always between three to
ten minutes, like that's the average. And so if I
have a process or I've got to do like four
or five videos, I'll do four or five that way.
If I ever want to change, like step three, I.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Don't have to worry.

Speaker 4 (44:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
I like short videos too. I do it under five
minutes even, right, and.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
So then I'm only re recording one section of the process.
And for the VA, if they could, this is what
I love about training videos. If they get stuck somewhere
in a process, guess who they're not bothering to ask
how to do it?

Speaker 1 (44:22):
Right?

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Rewatch the video again. That's what you're going to train
them to do so they can re educate themselves. Right,
so you can therefore spend your energy doing those highest
revenue income producing activities. So record everything.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
I love it. We got what we just real quick,
go ahead.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
I'm just gonna say one thing that we do we
do one step even easier is that you know it's
quite dawn into set a time when you're busy for
training and you don't want to do it. We just
actually record our screen with the steps that you do
on a day to day basis, and that becomes the training.
You don't even have to meet with the VA on Zoom.
You don't even have to schedule that. You just go

(45:05):
about your business or anyone in your court team now
and just record the step by step things that they
do that becomes a training because they're doing it anyway, right,
and then they refer to that to use as the training.
So it's actually something that you do. You just literally
use loom, screen, costematic, whatever you want to record your
screen tal do the steps training is doing.

Speaker 2 (45:26):
And that's that's literally what I'm saying that I do Govin.
It's the same thing. Like I'm not with the VA
when I do that, But when I go to do something,
I just I turn and slip it on real quick.
It's a habit. I record myself doing it and I
can throw it in Kujabi and then it's there, right,
so if they ever need it later, I love that. Yeah,
just make it a habit, guys, to just record yourself
doing the things you do.

Speaker 1 (45:45):
Yeah, what automated system should we have in place before
hiring a VA? And really you don't need any is
kind of my two cents on that, you know, like
it depends on you know, what you're really referring to
in terms of automated systems. Are you referring to your
cr M that's got automations? Are you referring to you.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Know, I mean, I mean, yeah, and they should be
managing the automation if anything.

Speaker 4 (46:15):
Yeah, look, I mean as your business grows. For instance,
you know, I added team members to my business. We
use Podio now as a CRM, and it put it
was like Chinese to me, like I can't get in
there and get in there and do a little bit
of damage. But that's about it. You know, your your
business is going to evolve past you, and then you
know you're gonna look up one day and you're gonna

(46:35):
have s ops and team members that are doing things
that you don't even know how to do. And there's
there's a freeing feeling to that. And I'll admit there's
a scary feeling to that because they're all up today,
I would be lost.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Yeah, absolutely right, That's what I was talking about earlier.

Speaker 4 (46:50):
Yeah, but but but there's there there, there's something really
really cool that, like they said, there's something really cool
to that, something really freeing to that, and and that
should happen in your business. There. Eventually, like Amy said,
she does the videos or you do the loom, but
eventually that va does their own video. This is the update.
This is a new process and pretty sooni your vas
are doing the videos. I had somebody leave my organization

(47:12):
that wasn't a viation that worked in my office, and
I went through as we're replacing her, and the amount
of SOPs that she had built out for my company
I didn't even know were there. It was just mind
blowing and it was it was amazing, And like the
position was documented, multiple editions or organization were document multiple
workflows are documented, and it was they They had created
it in the business and I never even told him

(47:34):
to do it.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (47:35):
It was amazing.

Speaker 4 (47:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Yeah, yesterday I went and played pickleball eight point fifteen
in the morning and went with my buddies. As I
was walking back home from the park ause I walked
up there, I had cold callers on the clock calling.
I had a guy following up with people as well
as doing some outbound texting. I had two contracts that
were sent between like eight and nine thirty when I

(47:59):
was out playing pickleball with my buddies, right and my
social media team was sending me, you know, some clips
and some ideas for some other things. So there was
so many things that were happening, but it allowed me
to go play pickleball. It's such a dumb example. But
it's such a great thing because, like I went on
a walk this morning with my wife. I'm gonna probably
go to the park again this afternoon. I don't I'm

(48:21):
not stuck in front of the computer trying to do
all these tasks. And you know, when it comes to
creating freedom, it's funny. There's kind of a paradox here.
Maybe that's the wrong word, but like people get into
real estate because they're tired of that nine to five.
But what ends up happening is they go from working
a nine to five to working, you know, a six

(48:42):
am to ten pm. It gets worse because they're juggling
all these things. So if you really want time freedom, guys,
you have to build a team around you. Period. You know,
there's only so much you can automate with the microchip.
You need to.

Speaker 4 (48:56):
Let's hammer to send out. You built that. It took
a little bit of time you invested in to it.
You're where you're at right now because you took the
time to pour into these individuals and build the initial
foundation of it. I want to make sure that you
can't just somebody watching this. I don't want them to
think that they're going to hire the age and they're
going to instantly be free. It takes no not at all.
I want to let yeah, yeah, no, let.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
Me follow that up. I spend anywhere from twenty five
minutes to two hours a day communicating with my virtual assistance.
But the beautiful thing is I can communicate with them
when I'm on a boat or I'm out at the pool,
you know, from my cell phone. So yeah, I don't.
It's not completely hands off by any means. But if

(49:37):
you want to spend four hours a day cold calling
and you're the one doing that, that's four hours a
day that you're not sending contracts or following up or
running appointments. So to be able to do all these
things and have a system, yes, you need to have
team members and you're gonna have to spend time training
them by all means. I'm not trying to neglect that.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
I just want to highlight Don's then too, because he's right.
There is another challenge some some people hire vas is
that they just think, well, okay, it's all going to
be done for me. It's just done right, like overnight,
and then and then they're frustrated ninety days in because
they're not having results, and a lot of it comes
because they still have to grow that individual and grow
that particular position and make the adjustments that we make

(50:16):
this business.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
And empower them to help you empower that feedback. We'll
be afraid I'm not going to fire you for tying
something I'm not going to like. Sometimes I may need
to hear the thing I might not like, you know.

Speaker 3 (50:28):
I think this also, though, goes through the whole team
right as a as an entrepreneur, as a sole entrepreneur,
where we all start. We are the best at everything
right because we do everything. We are the best marketers,
we are the best acquisition we we know the buyers
so well we think that we get the best prices.
But the thing is is that's why everyone's on a

(50:49):
roller coaster. You can only do so many deals yourself.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
There's a feeling without heaving and if.

Speaker 3 (50:55):
Somebody, if you take someone and they dedicate one hundred
percent of their time in that one area of the business,
is always going to outperform your thirty minutes of this,
an hour of that, it's always going to outperform that
by doing one hundred percent on that one focus. When
you take an acquisition manager and all they do is
talk to people on the phone all day. They're going

(51:16):
to bring in more contracts than you because that is
their whole focus. They're not worried about dispo and marketing. Yeah, right,
like you would be. So when you build your team out,
you've got to be thinking about that. That's something that
you know that we do is look at someone that's
as good as you, better than you, or runs at
eighty percent of you.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
I love it, man, you nailed it all right, gun.
There's a great question do they have an accent and
does that hinder their success? And you know, here's the thing.
They do have an accent. Even my guy, that's the
best guy that I've had, he's with me for six
and a half years. He has a super slight accent.
But what I've found is that if they have good energy,
the accent isn't necessarily going to be a game a

(51:55):
game you know, a game changer or you know, break
the break the relationship that they've may have or you know,
for the most part, So some of my vas have
a higher level of accent than others, and those people
I choose to have them do tests that may not
require phone calls, but they're still great people. But then
there's people that you do want on the phone, and
you're gonna obviously want them to have less of an accent.

(52:17):
But even if they have some accent, again, I'm gonna
repeat this one last time. I have found that having
a good level of energy will always trump that no
matter what.

Speaker 2 (52:28):
And I well, I was gonna say at Riva for example.
So we've talked about virtual systems and different locations. The
majority of our virtual assistants are in the Philippines. Okay.
So and the Philippines, you have their their native language,
English is really one of their primary languages. Okay, Spanish
is one of their primary languages, although we don't guarantee
and offer Spanish speaking virtual assistance, but we do put

(52:52):
them through language proficiency testing and they when they in
the intake process when we are hiring them. So when
you come through intake, you if anybody's listening and you
want to get a VA on board, great, let the
intape team know what you're going to have them do,
because they're obviously not going to want to place you
in the interview process because we do custom placing, like
you're not just going through a warehouse a resumes hoping

(53:14):
to find the right person. We're doing like a match
dot com for you. We're interviewing you as to what
you need, and then we're going into our talent pool
to find the right matches for you by disprofiles, you know,
predictive index their skills, their background and so forth. One
of those would be language proficiency. So if you need
somebody that's going to be on the phone, then having
somebody with a heavy accent, it's not going to work.
But if you want somebody to just do data entry

(53:36):
all day and and do macro formulas on Excel spreadsheets,
well who cares what their accent is, right, So make
sure the intape team knows that so that you have
the right placement for you that we work extra hard
to do that.

Speaker 1 (53:49):
Love it.

Speaker 4 (53:50):
I just want to add. I want to add that,
you know, it was this was a a mindset thing
for me, a mindset roadblock for a long time. I
didn't add VAS for a lot of years because I
was worried about with an on the accent.

Speaker 5 (54:00):
Will be an issue when talking to you know, some
of the people that we work with, and I actually
had to overcome that, you know, because communication is huge
in our business right and through after hiring vas and
having them to be some of our vas, some of
our lead managers, they do have stronger accents and they're
having conversations with sellers. And to be honest with you,

(54:23):
I've seen sellers. You know, the seller is going to
be a jerk to somebody or have an issue, So
these accent is generally going to be a jerk to
somebody when they don't have an accent to that's that's
typically you're going to see that the same attitude from
a seller, regardless. It's it's their disposition, it's the mood
that they're in, they're having a bad day, whatever, you know,
they will come on the wrong side of the bed.
They're gonna have an issue with the y they talk to.

(54:44):
I've also seen a lot of sellers primary men obviously
flirt with the das to have accents more than some
of our girls who work in our office. On the phone,
so listen, because I've listened to a lot of calls
here recently, so it's interesting to see. The one thing
I will say is it's hire Nbas has helped my business.

(55:05):
I haven't seen her hurt my business in any way.
Shape or form having the right placement. It's not just
the accident that the placements also identifying. Like I was
hiring somebody, I was interviewing somebody for the phones, and
I realized in the interview and by looking at her
profile that she was not somebody that was going to
want to be on the phone's long term.

Speaker 4 (55:22):
She was not going to be happy on the phone.
I ended up hiring her for a position outside of
like an opposition, outside of the phone, and she's done
phenomenal in our business. So having good interview skills and
recognizing you guys do a great job filtering, but sometimes
somebody slips through and may not be right for the
position you're hiring for, but they could be great for
a different seat in your organization. You got to be
able to learn how to identify that as leader.

Speaker 2 (55:43):
Yeah, it comes back to having an interview.

Speaker 3 (55:46):
Yeah. I was just going to say as well. I mean,
I'm in Alabama, right, So if it works in the
Deep South, then no one anyone else has got an
excuse anywhere else in the country. I am telling you now,
so the conversation faces that I'm allowed. I have the accent,

(56:08):
so like.

Speaker 2 (56:08):
I'm in Atlanta, deep South too, right, and so and
half my brokerage are people from all over the world,
people here from Africa, from Brazil, from Argentina, from Puerto Rico. Like,
we have every accent in the world in my office
and these guys are crushing it in high volume.

Speaker 3 (56:24):
Right.

Speaker 2 (56:24):
That's no different than a virtual assistant. Okay, And going
back to you know again, as long as you let
our intape team know, we're gonna do the best we
can to find those that have least accent, I will
be honest. I have a couple of virtual assistants. I'm
a little I feel very blessed, but I have a
couple on our team that they sound like they're from
southern California. And in fact, one of our virtual assistants
has so so much no accent that people come in

(56:48):
my physical building all the time here in Atlanta, and
the first thing that they'll ask is they'll say, well, hey,
where's Ron.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Yeah, I went in an appointment yesterday and they say
where's Dennis, And I'm like, well, Dennis works for me?
Is actually you know he's not local? I didn't.

Speaker 3 (57:02):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
I don't usually tell them, right, I just say he's
not local really, And they think he runs the business,
which is great though that's his job.

Speaker 2 (57:10):
Absolutely, and and and then and Ron doesn't have any accent,
so they don't think that he wouldn't possibly be here
right now. I don't sound Southern, but he definitely doesn't
sound Filipino, so let the intake team know. And and
but like I'm with Don too though, I mean seriously,
like I just described, my professionals on the floor here
in my brokerage have accents from all over the world

(57:30):
and they're killing it. People don't have this as much
expectation as people used to think they do about hearing
an accent on the phone. And with you hire vas
from the Ukraine or from Russia or Poland or wherever
you're hiring vas from, guess what, You're gonna have the
same thing. But you're going to get a talented, highly educated, skilled,
dedicated person for a nominal amount compared to what it

(57:52):
costs to have the same talent locally. So that right, all.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
Right, we got time for a couple more questions. Guys,
If you have questions, wrap them into Facebook or YouTube
or wherever you're watching this at. We are here to help,
all right, Carolyn says, what are the tasks that you
feel you personally need to be responsible for? And Carolyn,
it's funny because three years ago I would have had
a list like ten, ten to fifteen things long, and
today I don't think that I need to necessarily be

(58:18):
responsible for anything. I empower my team and I trust them,
and if they screw up, we address it, and sometimes
that leads to replacing that person, but very rarely. I
think I've maybe replaced a virtual assistant once or twice.
Ever in the in the seven years that I've been
with you know, my team and doing this full time,

(58:38):
that won't happen. But of course, you know you want to.
You want to obviously be aware of that, but there's
really nothing that I personally need to do at this point. Instead,
I want to oversee everybody and make sure that everybody
is doing you know, their jobs, and that they're being
successful at them. What do you guys think?

Speaker 3 (58:55):
I think it depends on you know who's asking the question.
They are in business right now. I know Caroline, so
I know Carlin's newer, and for that reason, I believe
that you need to be outsourcing things around you, the
things that you should not be outsourcing. Is the phone is,

(59:16):
you know, running on obviously going on appointments, if that's
what you're doing, even making offers to start with, I
think they're the things that you need to be doing.
And the follow up. The first thing for me is
the marketing to be outsourced, so leads are coming in
some of the follow up and assisting in the admin
role of sending contracts. So you're spending your time on
the high dollar and our activities, which is talking to

(59:37):
quality prescreen sellers to be obviously get deals done if
you're new. And then obviously if you what Dave's just
said is very correct, but he's also down in the business.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
You're you could not have said that better, thank you.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
So we have this conversation with clients a lot too
soon as we have to kind of come in with
a you know, a role of coach. Right, whatever is
your highest, most income producing, revenue generating activities and highest
decision making activities. Now you may say I don't know
what they are, Okay, I totally feel that when you're
early in the business, but those are generally the things
you're going to keep on your plate, right, So it's

(01:00:15):
all the other things that you can give a va
to do. I walk people through what I call my
four buckets of efficiency. So it's what you eliminate, then
what you automate, then what you outsource, then what you delegate,
and we go through the everything's on your plate and
go through each one of those tiers and we come
all the way down to what's left. And generally it's
what's the highest and best position for you in your

(01:00:36):
business based upon your strengths, your experiences, and what you
have to work with resources, time, money, manpower, energy. Right right,
you can tell I have this conversation a lot as
a coach and so but that so for Caroline, like
that going through that exercise, and then by the way,

(01:00:56):
you're going to want to go through that exercise again
and again and again. So to David's point, right, like
that's what happened. He was here at one point and
then he went through that exercise, whether he realized he
was or not, and he's like, oh, well, I really
still don't need to keep that on my plate. That
can now be eliminated or that can be outsoorting most of.

Speaker 1 (01:01:12):
Those things were taking off my plate because my team
told me that they could do it. Better or or
more consistently. A lot of it has to do with
just being consistent in these activities too. But yeah, Amy,
you nailed that one. Here's another one we got real quick.
What are the top five responsibilities your vas have? The
first being the most important. I would actually say there's

(01:01:33):
only three responsibilities, not necessarily five, that are the top
and those are just very simple marketing, making offers and
following up. That's kind of like my QBR right, that's
that's basically the things in my business that are the
highest importance. They are the money making activities. Gavin said

(01:01:56):
this a minute ago, right, focus on, you know, the
activities that are gonna make you money. Or maybe it
was Amy, and you know, bring in the help to
support that, right well. Marketing to get leads in my system.
We're real estate investors here, guys, right, that's very important.
Making offers is as important. If you get a bunch
of leads and you don't make any offers, you're never

(01:02:17):
gonna buy anything. You never gonna be able to wholesale anything,
never gonna be able to control anything. And following up
is where the money's at, because it usually takes four
to six months when the lead comes in to convert it.
So those are the three main things, right. If you
want to outsource all three of those right away, all
the power to you. My advice would be to outsource

(01:02:37):
one or two of them, get that person doing really,
really good at it, and then slowly take more and
more things off of your plate. But don't try to
blitz it. Don't try to just hire four people tomorrow
and expect that everybody knows what they're gonna you know
what they need to do or you know how to
do those things. Start with one, then scale your way up.
You know, I'm at nine right now. I think I
was telling Amy when we started working together, you know,

(01:02:58):
four or five months ago. I don't see any reason
why I won't be at twenty at some point. It
may take another four or five years, but like you know,
I it helps me, you know, in my analogy with
the train, add cars to my train, and we're all
moving in that same direction. So it's just you know,
we're starting another business. My partner Mike and I just
bought two Tesla's. We're going to start written them out

(01:03:19):
on Turo and it's like we have vas that are
helping with all of that at the same.

Speaker 2 (01:03:22):
Time, all that we have so many clients having their
turow businesses managed by their VA's. It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
I have another example. Yeah, airbnbs are great examples.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Do so I want to say something you said so, well,
I don't know. I guess I'll just compling that follow
up to me is the number one. So, like when
someone comes to me to hire a VA wherever they
are in their business, like, that's generally the first thing.
I'm what I did first. It's where money sits that

(01:03:53):
we don't touch right now.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
You already spent a lot of money on marketing to
get the lead, so at this point you're not really
spending more money to get the lead. You're just having
to spend time. But unfortunately we again we talked about
this earlier. Time is what we're seeking. Yes, and the
follow up is super time intensive. It's so for marketing.

(01:04:15):
So those are the two things that I would definitely outsource. First,
maybe you leave the offer making to yourself, right, but
then eventually your team's gonna say, hey, I've seen you
do this one hundred times, let me do it. And
you can go to the park and play pick a ball.
And I'm like, Okay, this is amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
And follow up is one of those things where you
can instantaneously pull revenue out of an existing lead base
you've already invested capital to have, and that revenue can
cover the costs of the investment of that VA for
a year to come. So if so, if you think about, yeah,
free labor for a year, yes, from working leads, you
already have that.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:04:53):
Yes. So one of my students closed like a twenty
thousand dollars deal a couple of weeks back, and we
we literally had this conversation. We're like, how long will
that fund your cold caller? And we did the math
and it was like, I think it was like twenty
seven months. And I'm like, would you rather spend forty
hours a week for twenty seven months, you know or
whatever the number was like doing this or would you

(01:05:15):
rather invest that into this cold caller and then step
back and just get leads and work the good ones?
And you know, it's like a no brainer. Yes, you know,
so love it all? Right, Amy, we got time for
one or two more call our questions here. I know
you're busy, so I don't want to keep you. But again,
we really, really really appreciate you coming on, guys, go
to Coffee with Closers Live dot com. I'll put the

(01:05:36):
banner up here at the bottom, and over there you
can you can get some free resources that we have
right we Actually there was a question that came in here.
Let's let's group this together here because this makes perfect sense.
Chuck Brown said, where should I go for lists for
the vas to call and then of course scripts for
them to use. We have some lists. Actually, you can

(01:05:58):
get five thousand property leads for free with batch Leads.
They offer seven day free trial guys, so I would
highly recommend you go to batch Leads for the for
the lists, and again Coffee with Closers Live dot com
has some links to actually get those those five thousand
free leads.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
And it's batch Leads io Slice Closers.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
There you go, right again, go to golf Coffee with
Closers Live dot com to uh to to see all
those things. We also have contracts. We have a wholesale
contract of an assignment agreement, a joint venture agreement, a
seller lead sheet which you can also use as a script.
Think about it, guys, the lead sheet is what you're
looking for to fill out. So if you can build
a script around the lead sheet, just ask those questions, right,

(01:06:42):
I know Don and Gavin probably have some some scripts
that they would be willing to share with you guys
as well. And then also on that page Coffee with
Closers Live dot com, you can learn more about the
Reva Global Virtual Assistance and all the different tasks that
you can have them help you with in order to
grow and be more efficient in your business. All right,

(01:07:04):
so Chuck, great question. Let's see here we have another
one here here. It is do you offer incentives to
your VAS to progress up the ladder or your business?
And what dollar amount do you start per hour? And
what is the top end of the pay for the VIA.
That is a fantastic question, Amy, I'm gonna le you
let you have that one.

Speaker 2 (01:07:23):
So it's that's gonna be a relativity question. Can you
offer them incentives? Absolutely? Absolutely, just like you with someone
in your office, right, you can offer them bonuses, production bonuses,
you know, performance review bonuses, whatever it is that you
want to do. You can offer them salary increase incentives.
You'll do that yourself on top of what we do
at Revo Global. So if you hire through us, you're

(01:07:45):
going to pay us our standard. We keep it a standard,
but that that doesn't change. But you can do whatever
you'd like. And there is no top end pay there
just isn't you know.

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):
What is the view? That's a great point.

Speaker 2 (01:07:57):
You know, I mean like this, I mean, I mean
if you close up fifty one thousand dollars colesale deal
net fifty grand and that VA did all the work,
if you want to give them a pick ass bonus
and sign up for that, yes, please do that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Absolutely. We send bonuses to our virtual assistance all the
time because it not only shows them that we care,
but it encourages them to not only work harder, but
be more efficient at it.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
Absolutely, and you want them to be more initiative driven
and all these things we've talked about today, Well that's
going to incentivize that quite a bit, especially if you
think about the cultural difference of what that amount of
money might mean there compared to what it means here.
So so absolutely, bonus your vas as much as you
want to. Okay, and that's totally on you.

Speaker 1 (01:08:40):
There's no cap love it. Amy. Thank you so much
for coming on today, Altra. Grateful for your time. And
I know that we've shared a ton of information with
our audience and our viewers. Today, guys, go over to
coffeewin closers live dot com to get a free report
of one hundred most common tasks that you can have
your versevirtual assistance do for you and uh and again

(01:09:03):
over there as well on Coffee with Closers live dot com.
There is a link to just learn more in general
about REVA Global. Amy, Thank you. I just love you.

Speaker 2 (01:09:13):
I love these three gentlemen. So you guys, I love
Coffee with Closers. All three of you are amazing. Thank
you for having me. This is totally a total honor.
I hope our team will push this around as well
and anything I can do to help or serve, So
connect with me. If you're watching this and you have questions,
I will take the time away from what I do
to get you to the right person to help you.

(01:09:34):
We have a powerful intake team at REVA Global. They
can answer every question you have very quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:09:39):
So don't love How do people? How would somebody connect
with you?

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
Amy?

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
What's what's your preferred methody?

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
The best way is to catch me on Instagram or Facebook.
Just go ahead and send me a private message. Fair warning,
I have a virtual assistant who helps me with all that.
So where are you? Maybe the price? So you may
think it's me replying, It may not be. It may
be my virtual assistant. But don't be afraid to go
there and ask questions. If you can't friend or follow,
just send it. We will get you to the right
party very quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
I love it all right, guys, thanks for watching today's
episode all about virtual assistance. We encourage you, guys to
explore this path if you want to find that time
freedom that we are

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