1185 » Simple Steps to Find, Hire & Train Virtual Assistants – Part 1 with Vance Courtney

Joe: What’s going on, guys? Joe McCall, the Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. Hey, hope you’re doing well. Got a great show today. You know, I’ve been using virtual assistants since 2008, and I remember being really scared because I read the book Four Hour Work Week. I bought the book Four Hour Work Week and he was talking about using VAs. And I think at the time he was using a lot of virtual assistants from the from Pakistan and India and stuff like that. And but, man, that terrified me. And I thought, no way. But I knew I was trying to do deals, working a full time job, getting really frustrated and struggling with trying to do it all. And I knew that marketing or I wasn’t in the real estate investing business, I was in the marketing business and I needed to get a VA, a virtual assistant as soon as possible to give me more consistent lead flow. Because I was in this vicious up and down cycle of getting hungry, needing money, doing a lot of marketing to get a bunch of leads and then getting busy and then stopping the marketing, doing the deals, making money, but then turning around and my pipeline was empty. So I knew I needed a virtual assistant to do all of my marketing for me. And sure enough, within figuring that out and knowing how to do it, I was able to do a lot of deals consistently because I had delegated out the things that were really important that I couldn’t do myself. I tried time blocking. I tried doing it in the mornings, in the evenings, after work, trying. I remember so vividly trying to get this marketing done for me and, you know, trying to do the marketing, but I couldn’t do it. So I figured out I got to get it done and it’s one of my favorite phrases done for me in spite of me. All right. And you need to be thinking about that as well in your business. How do you get these really important tasks done for you in spite of you? So you can focus on the most important things in your business, which is talking to sellers and making offers. Right.

Joe: Okay. So we got a guest today, Vance Courtney. We’re going to be talking about that and we’re actually going to dove in to one of our favorite websites and create a job. And he’s got some really cool things that he’s going to give to you so you can do the same thing as well. We’re going to go down to basics. We’re going to go back to basics doing the ABCs of how to find, hire and train virtual assistants that you can use in your business. It’s one of the most requested things that I get from students that I’m working with is Can I use one of your VAs? You know, no, you can’t use one of my VAs. You crazy? I want to reach across the webcam and smack you for even asking, but like no, you can get your own Vas and there’s a lot of them out there that can help you with that. All right. Okay. Real quick. This podcast is brought to you by my new book. Check this out. And I don’t like the cover. I’ll just put my hand over the cover. It’s called Simple Land Flip. And I just finished this book, 10K in 10 hours how you can do $10,000 a month working just 10 hours a week, flipping vacant land. And this is something that I’ve done with my sons. You’ve heard me talking about it for a long, long time. Are you can get this book for free just by going to my webinar. Simple land class dot com. Simple land class dot com. Get this book for free. And on this class I’m going to show you. And this sounds spammy and hype, but it’s not. I’m going to show you at simple land class dot com how you can make 10K in 10 hours really simple by flipping vacant land. And once you learn how to use virtual assistants like we’re going to be talking about in this podcast, you can get VAs to do like 90% of this business for you. And Vance is going to be talking about that on this. It’s going to be a really good show. We’re actually going to be sharing my screen. Vance is going to be helping me walk through creating a job post, what to search for, what to look for, how to test them to make sure that they’re the right kind of VA to hire. And you’re going to get a lot out of this. So if you’re listening to this, awesome, but you might want to jump to YouTube to watch kind of the behind the scenes as we share my desktop. Okay. So thank you for listening to the audio podcast. I really appreciate you guys, but you’re also going to need to go to YouTube. But I’m sorry, I’ll do my best to explain what we’re doing for you audio listeners, but you might need to go to YouTube later on after your workout when you’re done driving to kind of see the step by step details that we’re doing. You can find my YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and do a search for Joe McCall and get it there. Okay. And in the meantime, go to simple land class dot com to get my new book, learn how to flip vacant land. Learn how you can do it with your kids. Cool. All right, let’s bring Vance on. And Vance, how are you doing, man? Are you there?

Vance: Hey, what’s going on, Joe?

Joe: Glad you’re here, man. Thank you. And it’s good to see you again. I just saw you a few days ago in Orlando, Florida. What?

Vance: Oh, yeah, at this awesome Internet Marketing Workshop.

Joe: Yeah, that was so much fun. It was a great workshop. Yeah. And thanks for being on the show. And tell us a little bit about you, Vance, Vance, Courtney and where you live right now. Where are you from?

Vance: Gotcha. So I live in Augusta, Georgia, and I’m from was born in California. We’re kind of raised in Kansas. I claim both very extreme, but yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe: Okay. So what brought you to Georgia then?

Vance: So I actually I was being in the military and then getting on getting out after four and a half. I took a contracting tour down in Augusta, Georgia. I am just and pretty much been here ever since 2008.

Joe: So being from the military, that explains, I think maybe your love for systems, right?

Vance: Oh, my goodness. Yes. SOPs, right? Standard operating procedures. All right.

Joe: So what why are systems so important?

Vance: It allows you to do the simple things over and over and over consistently. That’s what I like about it.

Joe: With the same results.

Vance: Yeah, the same exact result. Right. That’s, that’s the biggest part. And it’s really simple. I like to keep it where if I do it three or more times. But anyway, I’m about to automate or systematized that process, you know.

Joe: So cause I started hiring more and more VAs and I started hiring local assistants to manage my virtual assistants, right? I started making my, my team, my assistants create the SOPs for me.

Vance: Oh, we could go on that easily, but 100%, that’s actually a little bit of what we’re going to talk about is think before they hire, they have to have all these perfect calls. Oh, no, do not do it. That perfect process. But hours and days you’re gonna spend on it won’t be used. Yeah, it’s. It’s crazy.

Joe: And it’ll be changed in six months.

Vance: Exactly. And you’re going to want to have somebody else keeping up to that. Otherwise you’re just going to turn into this process procedure you engineer and never actually getting revenue going.

Joe: Let me scratch my head here. And what you’re saying is like, you could go and I’ve done this before and tell me if this is legit. I bought a guy’s course once on how to bid on HUD properties and I didn’t have the time to go through it, but I wanted to start bidding on HUD homes, foreclosures, right on HUD. So I gave it to my assistant. I told her to go through it and she did, and she started doing it and learning it. And then there were certain parts that I wanted I didn’t want her to do. They were like $5 an hour activities. I want her to focus on $100 an hour activities so I can focus on the $500 an hour activities. Right. So I told her, I said, I want you to start training VA’s do it. And we had different ways to do it that were a little different than what the guy teaching the class would do. Different things that we were looking for. Right. So she created the SOPs, right? She created the stuff to give to the VA is to do the work. And it was beautiful because, you know, and she would update me regularly and that’s important. The communication, we can talk about that for a long time, but like there was regular communication. She updated me, showed me what she was doing, showed me what she was learning, starting seeing the results. And then I told her, Good. Now we’ve got I think, I don’t know, we had one or two VAs kind of doing this and they were reporting to her regularly, but I did not. Here’s my whole point in all of this. I did not create anything. I didn’t create any SOPs or procedures or systems. I just found somebody that I knew could do it for me. And then I held them accountable to it. They created the SOPs, and then as we went through different VAs, all we did is just gave the new VAs the same little processes. So we didn’t have to spend a bunch of time retraining all of them. Does that make sense? Is that legit?

Vance: So here’s what I’m going to tell you. Focus. People ask, what are those hundred dollar, $5, $500 an hour activity? Right there is like a great example of the leadership, right? When you step in the $500 an hour activity is true leadership and you actually worried about effectively delegate. And one of the big things, when you use a funding word, people will say delegate versus abdicate and simply means that people will hand over something and not want to be informed. They want to just step away from it. Don’t tell me about it till it’s done and that’s not affected. And you talk about how you are staying up to date, and I want to capture that because that’s the most important part. You’re still involved. When you weren’t doing the thing, you were supporting her or him. That was fantastic.

Joe: Well, this is one of the keys to success when you hire virtual assistants, is that regular communication? And at the beginning, I’d say you have to talk to them every day. Doesn’t have to be for long, but especially at the beginning. Checking in. How is it going? Is this working? I try to give them goals. I want you to send 20 of these things out every day and I want you to go scrape 30 of these things every day and then to create. Here’s the thing I tell the VAs, I want a scorecard. I don’t even create it for them. I’d tell them, you create the scorecard, send it to me every day and I want to see these numbers. But this is tell me what? Instead of me talking because you’re the guest.

Vance: No, no, I’m this is your name.

Joe: So these daily VAs, I mean, these VAs that you’re talking to daily in the communicating. And we’re going to show you guys real quick how to find these VAs really easily. Why is that daily communication important and why is like the accountability or the numbers and the scorecards important?

Vance: So this is perfect. I’m going to use our final quick example. When I was overseas in the military, the enemies were constantly trying to attack one thing, one thing first, so communications tower we could take our communication. You can destroy an entire military, you can destroy business communications. The most important thing, this is in a Senate in a once, once a week meeting. It’s a they call it a daily huddle for a reason, a daily stand up for a reason. And it’s super important to have that constant communication, even if it’s just. Uncover blockers and issues that will help them move forward. My favorite part about accountability is I want to talk a little secret about accountability already. You can’t hold somebody accountable. That’s not a real thing, right? Because if it wasn’t you saying go do this, you would never have to come back to it. The way you do is you get them to buy into their accountability. You ask them questions. This is why they get to set their own numbers, because that’s buying. And then you ask them like, how do they plan to achieve it? What can you do to help? That is buying, right? That is not for themselves accountable. What happens if you don’t get this done? Ask them what they would do. Right. That’s accountability to really holding themselves accountable. And you’re just there as a teammate to help them move it forward. That’s a huge part.

Joe: That’s so good. And I don’t know if you can hear the landscapers. I forgot to call it such a nice day to day. I forgot to close the window downstairs and the door. So they’re all open down there. So my apologies for the noise. Okay. Let’s talk about your real estate experience, Vance, real quick, because we’re talking specifically to realtors and real estate investors right now, right? Yeah. So how did you get started in into doing deals?

Vance: Oh, it’s really funny. I’ve been buying since 2008. I was in the military. I got advice to like get to retirement military and to pick up your properties. Just move every two or three years. You know, the government will pay for your homes, just hold on to them. So I started doing that in 2008, right? Yeah. Every few years moving around 2018, I’m like, this is very slow. How do I screw this up? Right. I’m in Augusta, Georgia, fantastic rental market, but I didn’t know anything about real estate and I was like, Where can I get the best deal possible? So I went over to Detroit to see how the story goes. Right. I got a turnkey property.

Joe: What year was this?

Vance: This was in 2018. So this was after the crash here in 2018. Detroit. My backyard is still really good. I bought a turnkey property for 60,000, rented for 950. It had a tenant in place. Well, here’s where it gets fun. Two months later, tenant leaves, copper stolen, gets flooded out because they jacked their water heater and found out their foundation issues. I didn’t know about because I bought it without looking at it. Lots of mistakes may have put 20 into it. Had to sell for 40, lost 40K on it. I’m like, I’m not doing that again. How are these turnkey providers finding deals? So then I went into the figure I found wholesaling. Yeah, well it’s really funny about wholesaling is because wholesaling is has very like doesn’t really have a lot to do with the actual asset you just now that we’re marketing and sales company and when I realize I’m marketing, you repeat it over and over, I click, but I’m like, this is just a system which is just a system behind this build out a team. And that’s what we did at the very beginning of 2019 and in a couple of years scaled up very quickly because we had people in the place within a year.

Joe: All right. So what was before we go into how to find the VA’s? This is really simple and we got some cool things that we’re going to let you guys have for free that Vance gave us. What are some of the things you have the VA’s do for you in the real estate investing business?

Vance: Perfect. That question gets asked, right? I have them do from anything for marketing, anything that’s really done on the computer. And I’d like to really simplify this here. Everything but talk to the seller more or less. What you’re doing in the real estate besides talking to the seller can actually be done by a through a virtual assistant transaction coordination and marketing. Those will be the two biggest roles that I would see, or even just an acquisition assistant. How helping you get data on the CRM, right? Not playing on the CRM, picking up the phone and calling and then through your your like VA gauntlet that you’ve had. Right, which is a fantastic episode is getting a voicemail to your head to go do the back end things.

Joe: What you’re talking about is an episode I did a long time ago with Tom Krol. I probably did this episode seven or eight years ago. It’s one of the most popular episodes I’ve ever done, and you can go look for it and just go to real estate investing, master e-comm guys, do a search for Tom Kroll. And I’ve done three or four podcasts with them, but one of them was called The Best Uses of Virtual Assistants. And they’re really, really important, even though it’s old, technically, kind of it’s really, really good. So it’s about like figuring out, here’s a thing, you know, if you’re behind the computer, you’re not making money. You make your money when you’re on this little thing right here, this phone, you make your money when you’re on the phone, when you’re talking to sellers, when you’re making offers, when you’re following up. And so you’re absolutely right. Anything that’s done behind a keypad or keyboard, you can get a virtual assistant to do for you. And this episode, that pod that Tom, when he was first talking about this, I have heard of VAs before and I’d use VAs, but the way he was doing it was so awesome and amazing to me. And I’ll just recap it real quick here, because this is kind of where we’re shooting for this is what we’re this. We’re aiming, right? Basically, most investors, most wholesalers, they’re stuck behind yellow pads of paper. They’re buried in Post-it notes, and they talk to a seller. And then 4 hours later, when they’re finally at their computer, they’re putting in the information into the CRM and they forgot or they told that seller, Man, I did this so many times, okay, I’ll send you an offer. I’ll get back to you and you look into it. Let me look at my numbers and I’ll follow back up with you. I’ll send you something and then you forget. Because you got ten other sellers that you just talked to. You’re looking at different houses, different deals, and things start falling through the cracks. And if you are not quick to put that stuff back in the CRM, you’re going to lose that momentum. You’re going to lose all of the rapport and the relationship you built with those sellers and buyers. So anyway, what Tom started doing was he found himself like again, way behind this computer, way too much. So he got a virtual assistant and he said every day, Mr. VA, Miss VA, I want you to send me. And he gave us he got a special email address that only that VA had. First thing every morning, the VA would send him three emails, and then each email was all the information about the next lead that he needed to call the seller’s name, the seller’s phone number, the address, any links to Zillow or whatnot, any information. And then Tom would look at the email. I would call the VA from his cell phone or whatever he was using, and then chicken scratch notes on a piece of paper, and then immediately using WhatsApp like a tool like WhatsApp or Voxer would message the VA back saying, Hey, Jeannie, I talked to so-and-so. They said that the listing expires in two months and I should call back then. They’re open to negotiating, they’re motivated, blah, blah, blah. All these notes remind me in three weeks to call them back and follow up with them. Go ahead and send them a thank you letter for thanking them for their time to talk on the phone or whatever. And again, remind me in three weeks to call them back, boom, to send that message, then delete the email, go to the next email, call that seller, talk to them what message of the. Okay, so they’re not motivated, give them a one out of five motivating writing thing. Go ahead and send them an offer for $30,000 in the mail and then add them to our make them a cold lead and add them to our call. The follow up campaign, boom, guess who does all that manual work and putting that stuff into the Sierra? The VA does. Right. And what does Tom do? Makes the phone calls, talks to the sellers chicken, scratches his notes, deletes the emails. And when he’s done message, is that VA back? All right, send me my next three things that I need to do. Real simple, because, again, getting those Vas to do that kind of stuff for you is going to save up so much of your time. So you’re not the one behind the keyboard. Yes. You want to add anything to that?

Vance: Now, the only the only addition, I would say is. We actually still use a very similar process to this because it’s effective as soon as you’re done with the appointment, as soon as you’re done. It’s all in your head. And what we tell them is walk through the very beginning, all the way to the end, and just voice literally our thoughts like what you’re what it is, because it’s just motivational points, key, you know, important factors for needing to move, meeting this, needing that. Right. And you don’t want to forget it.

Joe: Yeah. So write down all your notes because then your VA can take that voice message and attach it to that property record in your CRM so you can see the history and all of that. And we used to even do this where all of the calls would be recorded inside of Freedom Soft, and I would tell the Vas to listen to that and keep the notes from that call into the notes section of that Freedom Soft.

Vance: But anyway, that same thing actually. Yeah, that’s awesome.

Joe: So important. I was just having with some friends last night walking our kids or younger kids down these residential neighborhoods go trick or treating. And this guy is a senior level executive at a big international company, and he’s presenting a budget for his department to his senior executives over him. Right. Anyway, he told me, he said, Joe, I want to sneak in to my budget. A line item for my own virtual assistant. I said, all right, nice. Because I talked to him about it before. Right. And I said, Do you think they’ll let you do that? And he said, I think so. And I said, Well, you just got to think about it in terms of how much more productive can you be focusing on the revenue generating activities if you don’t have to do the little administrative stuff like for him, you know, just stupid stuff like scheduling meetings and making sure the agenda is set in their meeting minutes or sent or whatever. Like if he could have a virtual assistant with him actually in on those calls, taking the notes just for meetings, how many hours a week would that save him? Probably four or 5 hours a week. In taking notes, setting descending the agendas, updating the minutes, tracking attendance, making sure everybody’s notified, confirming everybody can be there. You know what I’m saying? Yeah. So I hope we’ll find out in the next week or two whether he gets approved for this VA or not. But I told him, I said, listen, if it were me, I don’t care. I would hire VA out of my own salary and pay them to help me with this because it would make my job performance so much better if I worked for somebody else.

Vance: So I got a little nugget about that. Anybody who’s earning over six figures and doesn’t have an assistant, I promise you, you’re paying yourself $5 an hour on top of a higher rate because somebody else should be doing those things that are super, super mundane. Right. And simple like that. You’re talking about if you are a six figure earner, even in a 9 to 5, a virtual assistant is like you’ll still benefit from that. At minimum, that will help with what you’re doing today. Can’t help you with the future on the real estate.

Joe: So good. And well, then somebody is saying, well, listen, I’m new, I’m just getting started. I’m kind of overwhelmed because I bought Joe’s program and I’m going through it and there’s like a lot of stuff here. I’ve got a full time job. Should I just hire a VA now or should I wait? So when do you recommend to new investors when they should hire VA?

Vance: Perfect. So one of the first things I’ll ask is are you look at your time, right? What, what you don’t want to do is go spend money to go bring on a virtual assistant and then just go do absolutely nothing. That’s a mistake that people will do is like they want to get to 10 hours a week getting everything over. So if you’re at 40 hours a week or more, you’re already at that point. Right. And that’s going to be most everybody, if you’re working 40 hours a week, coming home, taking care of some other things, running through your email. Right. Trying to take care. At least that’s the time to immediately start bringing on the support. I have a really good tip that I like to work is like, you don’t have to bring somebody on 40 hours a week to get started. You can just do it on a per project basis that you just don’t even like. I have an example, like we had a great team. I have to get some videos transcribed. I don’t want to give that to all of my team members and that’s a short term project. I’m going to leverage Upwork and put put it out there and somebody else will run through and transcribe it. But they do really well with that and maybe other tasks that how you find the time to bring on and bring them full time eventually.

Joe: Yeah. So if you’re just getting started, you don’t need to hire a full time VA, you could hire VA’s just to do simple tasks for you. You can hire part time VAs. What kind of budget do people need to be prepared for if they’re starting out? They just need a part time. VA What kind of budget should they expect to spend?

Vance: So just it’s five bucks an hour, 20 hours a week, right? So it’s really that simple, about 100 bucks for every week that you’re going to want to use that. But I’m telling you, they kind of save up that much of your time, right? That’s just a minute. Like that’s just, I think, a starting point because you should then immediately be getting a revenue that beats that. Right. You’re spending five. You should be. That’s why as soon as of that time it frees up do not feel that with more admin tasks like cleaning up your podio and replacing that time is not effective. Replace that time with the $100 an hour task. It’s a $500 an hour test. There’s a very simple way to find out what that dollar an hour task is, talk on the phone or do sales bring in revenue? That’s the number one thing you want to do when you’re outsourcing it. And that’s how you get an ROI. And it’s not a cost. Right. Want to make that clear? Here is an investment. A virtual assistant is a part of your team. Don’t just treat it like an automated robot. That’s where people fail. They are a person and they are a team. If you treat them well and respect them, I’m telling you, your whole world will change.

Joe: But that’s so important. I mean, just the things we’ve talked about in these last five, 10 minutes have been so important. People that struggle with Vas who have I’ve even heard this, you know, I hired VAs. It didn’t work. I went through four VAs. None of them were good. Yeah, 90% of the time. The problem is lack of communication and they don’t treat them like an employee. They just give them some assignment and then think that they only need to talk to them maybe once a week. It’s not like that. It has to be more involved with that. That’s why for me, I’ve got a big business, but I hired local assistance to manage the virtual assistants for me.

Vance: Right? Oh, that’s good.

Joe: Okay, so, Vance, we wanted to share my screen and I wanted to show people how to find and hire these VAs, these virtual assistants. One of our favorite sites is Upwork. And I’m going to share my screen here. We talk a little bit about Upwork and why you like it.

Vance: Oh, yeah, it’s a first off. It’s a great tool to trust with hiring a vet. Because as they do the work, all their stuff is being recorded. You’re paying through Upwork, not directly to them. So I built this like a third party trust, as we call it, kind of like how we use PayPal to make payments to somebody else. Upwork is like that from the overseas. You don’t have to wonder, how do I get U.S. dollars to some foreign currency? It’s just almost like a software that you just get right on into and it’s massive, massive.

Joe: That’s really important. The other thing is I like about Upwork used to be called Odesk, but yeah, it will. You can see people’s virtual assistants reviews that they’ve gotten received from other people in the past. You can see the kind of their job history. You can see if they’re their own individual. VA Or do they work with an agency. And then you can I recommend my personal preferences. Don’t work with agencies work directly with VA. Right. Right. So then the other thing is it will you just link your checking account to your credit card or your PayPal account? And when your VA can clock in, they clock out. It tracks their time, it records their screen, it takes screenshots. I don’t know how often, but screenshots you can see if they’re actually doing the work they say they’re doing. And then when the when their week is done, you have a small window. I don’t know how long it is a few days where you can review the work. And if they’re not doing what you paid them to do or what they’re saying they’re doing, you can dispute that. And then Upwork will get involved. So it’s a safety net that, you know, they won’t be paid unless you approve the work that they’ve done and then it will pay them. You don’t have to worry about making them a W-2 employee. It’s just a it’s a it’s a marketing expense that you write off to. It’s an expense in your checking account, but it’s business checking account and QuickBooks over to Upwork. Does that make sense?

Vance: Yeah, that’s what’s awesome about it.

Joe: Yeah. All right. So I want to share my screen here and what you see is Upwork. Upwork dot com. Oh, by the way, everybody, if you go to Joe McCall dot com slash Vance, I want to just mention this real quick because Vance super gracious and he said because I said, listen, I want to do this. I want to do this podcast kind of like a class. I want to teach people how to find and hire a virtual assistant. Let’s keep it really, really simple. And he said, Great. So we’re going to demo it right now. But Vance is also giving us a couple different things that I want you guys to get your hands on. The first one here, and I know you can’t see it that well, but it’s a VA job description. Step one So this thing is we’re going to copy and paste this real quick that kind of explains a job description when you’re doing this for a general real estate virtual assistant. Right. And then the other one is a list of job descriptions. So you can get these two documents, just copy and paste how we’re doing, what we’re doing. The other thing is Vance gave us two Loom videos and explain what are in these Loom videos. They’re like tutorial videos, right? So explain what they what.

Vance: So you’re going to get to one videos one is on of how to post the job description as if you’re trying to go and hire for a full time position. Right. And then the second part is actually, how do you actually get any talent to come to you? And so it’s a two step process, and you have both videos there on how to go and hire a full time. And then what we’re going to go over is like going over, finding like a part time or specific job or task that you’re trying to get done. And that should help you with just getting started right away.

Joe: So I’m not sure I’ve got the right loom video right now. I just clicked on the link. And what’s not? Well, you check that again. We’ll get the link. Right. So there’s two little videos that are going to. But we’re going to go through this pretty fast. But Vance is going to have another video that kind of just simplifies it. And what your the step by step of that is. And here’s the other thing, too, because we’re not going to have time to do this in the podcast. When you create the job, you’re going to go find people, invite them to apply for the job, and other people are going to apply. And you might have ten, 20, 100 different applications coming in. And the video that we’re going to give to you for free at Joe McCall dot com slash vance is going to show you how do you filter out the 50 or 100 applications that you’re getting in and how to test them and make sure that you’re hiring the top tier talent? All right. So let’s go through this again. This is this is Upwork. And you guys can see my screen if you’re watching right now on YouTube and I’ll do my best for you listening on audio to kind of track here. But this is my now I already have an Upwork account. This is going to look different for you. If you have a brand new Upwork account, you’re going to see different options, a little bit different. Our goal here right now is we want to we want to post a job for a full time virtual real estate assistant. Right. So walk me through the steps to your.

Vance: All right. So we post the job. So this is for the full time bring them on. Not a specific task, right? Okay. You’re going to bring them on in this case, we’re gonna go with the long term work because we’re looking for more than 30 hours. All right.

Joe: Longer term work, continue.

Vance: At the job plan. This is what we’re going to cook. Just real estate. Virtual assistant.

Joe: Real estate.

Vance: Virtual, yes. And then right off the bat, the job. Category where the selecting general virtual assistant should automatically pop up if it doesn’t.

Joe: I see. Right there.

Vance: Yep. So that’s.

Joe: Okay. And then I click next skills.

Vance: Yes. So after we click Next Skills, it’s going to pop up. It’s going to say out of the ten skills. Three and five really is just fine. So let’s click virtual assistant.

Joe: There I’m just clicking that.

Vance: You’ll see it and then I will add in administrative support to see that. Right. And then I like to search for the word real estate, virtual new street, virtual assistants, virtual assistant. And then.

Joe: What we’re doing is you type these things, little dropdown menus come up and you can, you can add those in. So we have three selected skills right now, real estate, virtual assistant, virtual assistant, administrative support, anything else?

Vance: Those are the main ones I will want to head off of because we’re really looking for that in general support. Okay. We’re really targeting hopefully if you have some real estate experience, which would be great.

Joe: Nice. What next?

Vance: And then we’ll just go to click on next. So I actually don’t want to focus on any of those other categories.

Joe: Because you don’t worry about virtual assistant focus.

Vance: Skills. None of them really matter.

Joe: Okay, we’ll click on Scope next. And let me zoom in a little bit here. Sure. Sure. That will help estimate the scope of your work.

Vance: So we’re going to put more than six months. And then the kicker here is and we’re going to I like to use it just made a pop up after you click it and it’s asking what level of experience really intermediate as a way to go everywhere, even if you’re looking for an entry. We’re not one entry to Upwork. I’m wanting entry into maybe my job and not into Upwork. So that’s why I really like intermediate is my go to the.

Joe: Three options were entry intermediate and expert so we pick the middle one intermediate.

Vance: And then this job contract the higher opportunity. Yes, because that’s what you’re going to be looking for. This is looking for a full time opportunity.

Joe: This is important. So this means you’ll start with a contract, then later explore a full time option with the talent. Your answer helps us better support your hiring needs. So we’re going to say yes, this is a contract to hire. Yep. So next is location, U.S. or worldwide?

Vance: Worldwide. That’s the benefit of what’s coming here to all right.

Joe: Regions.

Vance: So for the regions, I do like to source from the Philippines. So if you’re getting started, just go with Philippines. And one of the main reasons is their cultures as close to as the U.S. for understanding and how we operate with the exception of entrepreneurship. They just bring a lot of loyalty in general and they already are familiar with working with U.S. based people. So when getting started, just select Philippines.

Joe: All right. So I selected the Philippines. And budget?

Vance: Next on the budget. All right. So here’s where I’d like to put the hourly rate. I want to put 3 to $9 an hour. I know it seems weird, but we’ll get to it later on. Why? I’m going up to nine when we’re like, I thought it was $5 an hour. They are. People want to put much higher rates, but they’re willing to come down much, much lower.

Joe: Oh, yeah, yeah. Any time. Also two, when I do project budget, like if I wanted to do a little project or a spreadsheet or build a little software or something, I’ll put a budget of 500 bucks. It’s funny how many bids come in at $500. Yeah, but every single time when I message them back saying, All right, this is what I want to do, is $500, the best price will always come back. Say, no, no, we can do it for this. We can do it for that. So.

Vance: Joe, that is our negotiating right there. And when you when you put in the project the project budget, that’s like for the single class that you’re doing, you nailed it. And you’ll be surprised when people start putting in offers. You come in lower, some will come in way higher. Everybody’s negotiable. Yeah, sure.

Joe: All right. So we’re doing 3 to 9 hours and then we do revert review job post.

Vance: Yep.

Joe: All right. So my title, I should probably capitalize. Real estate virtual assistant. And now we need a job description. Oh, guess what? We have one, don’t we?

Vance: Yes.

Joe: Because we went to Joe McCall dot com slash Vance, bam. All right. So I’m going to copy this one right here. Now, I’m not going to worry too much about you. Want to go in word it. Go here. Boom. Here you go. Paste it right there. Now, let’s just kind of review this real quick S.O.S. Home of our or whatever you are your company, Joe McCall, Home Office, looking for a full time virtual executive assistant. You will be fully trained, but you’ll also have your own responsibilities.

Vance: You also own your responsibilities.

Joe: You’ll own your responsibility. This means that we will train you, but you will be an integral part of our team who will be responsible to hit our targets. We are a real estate acquisition company. We buy houses in several markets. And, you know, let’s say Missouri, you’ll be responsible for marketing, admin, management of lead and other duties as design you are not looking for. We are not looking for a team member who just communicates by email. We are looking for a highly engaged team member who wants to be part of our team. You must be available to work full time. This is good. Monday through. Friday 9 to 5 your time zone. Four for me, I would do Central Time. Why is that important?

Vance: That’s because we’re setting expectations here, right? So why is it important that they’re available from 9 to 5? Because that’s what our team is working and we want them to feel like they’re part of the team. Nice. And also they’re also in a different time zone. So if you just put 9 to 5 that really maybe 9 p.m. to 5 p.m. your time or 10 p.m. to 3 p.m. your time was seven or eight. Like, Yeah, you don’t know. So you got to be clear on the time zone.

Joe: Cool. You must be available to participate on our sales meetings on Zoom Monday through Monday, Wednesday, Fridays at 10 a.m. Our core values are important to us, and if you think these represent you, we would love to interview you. Please look at the attached word. Document will train you on all functions, but please familiarize yourself with job duties when applying. All this is really good. All right. I love this. When applying. Please write. I have reviewed the job description attached in the first sentence of your application. I would add this. Yeah. And add a smiley face.

Vance: But I love that you added that because I’ll even add in. Sometimes stuff like that phrase doesn’t matter. I don’t care if you put I have reviewed the job description for the longest time. I said I will apply it. Please write Purple Monkey Jumping.

Joe: Yeah. Okay. Now, why do you do that? What’s the point? Perfect.

Vance: Because that means that they’re actually reading the job description. And number one, I want somebody who’s paying attention to detail in third is Quicken apply that already how to write first because part of our core values right is over here striving for better and integrity. Right? So I want them to read it. And then if they put that in there, it also becomes a nice filter when you’re scrolling and they don’t put that as a first response. Fast filter.

Joe: Yeah. Good. You want to make sure they follow instructions.

Vance: That’s it.

Joe: We’re detailed core values, selfless ownership, strives integrity. I love that project type ongoing. You’ll be asked to answer the following questions when submitting a proposal. So you’re asking them three questions. Are you available to work Monday through Friday, 9 to 5 Central Time? Whatever. Is your internet fast enough to participate in Zoom and what is most appealing to you about this position?

Vance: So that last question is where it gets really fun when you want to deep dove the fact that they may have read it. But what if and this is where we come up to par, you have attached your file and now it’s time to add in the job description. Are they taking the time to click on the job description, the job requirements of what the job entails? All right. What’s most appealing? And they only talk about core values. I know that. That’s all they read.

Joe: All right. So I’m going to I need to download this other document that’s a Google doc right now, and I’m going to save it as a word, doc. Okay. You know what? I’m going to save it as a PDF either one.

Vance: I like PDFs more as well. Right?

Joe: Then from here I’m going to attach that file I just downloaded. Where do you get that again? Vance?

Vance: Joe McCall dot com slash Vance.

Joe: Okay. And what I’m doing now is I just uploaded an attached the PDF of this list of job requirements. Just real quickly, you know, they need to manage to sort respond to emails they manage its calendar, confirm appointments, manage CRM, manage monthly drip campaigns, coordinate client events, help with transactions assistance, scheduling a travel responsible for profit loss receipt management, budget management, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is all important. I’m not trying to.

Vance: No, no, this is perfect. And feel free. Like if you get this, remove things that if you’re like, well, what about this that I do about a problem? It’s not a perfect thing. It’s a high level overview.

Joe: All right, cool. And so then the file has been attached. It will be scanned. Category preferences, locations, Philippines, 3 to $9 an hour. Now looking for one person. Do you have any additional screening, screening questions or.

Vance: I actually don’t do any of these optional things because of what we’re about to do in the next stack, which is the invite, the collect, which is going to be done automatically. We’re going to post the job.

Joe: So I’m going to post it right now.

Vance: Yeah. And that’s your big step one. You get the job out there.

Joe: That was easy.

Vance: It took like five, 10 minutes and just get outside your comfort zone, right, and just go post it and we see who applies, even if you’re not ready to go. Like, let’s just take that first step and just post. Yeah.

Joe: Okay. So let me explain something to you. When you create your Upwork account before your post a job, it’s probably going to ask you to verify that you’re legit, right? It’s going to ask you to link to your business checking account so that when somebody does work for you, then they can get paid. Okay. All right. So we we’ve got this job now. I can click on View Job Post or I can invite freelancers. What should I do?

Vance: Yep so to automatically move us and invite freelancers? And this is where people will mess up. If you keep scrolling, you’re going to see people are going to say, oh, invite the job, invite to job. That’s what I did. Yeah, yeah, let’s not do that. Let’s go all the way to the top. This is why this is one of the magic happens and filters.

Joe: They’re right here. There’s a bunch of filters.

Vance: All right, now, here’s what we’re looking for, for English level. I want native or bilingual or bilingual. I want them to be able to communicate with me no matter what. So. I will select that earned amount. I want 10,000 plus dollars earned.

Joe: Okay. What does that mean?

Vance: So that means how much of they earn through Upwork. So in other words, that they earned over $10,000 working with other people. So the big benefit here is I’m not going to get newbies that I haven’t earned a dollar. I don’t know if they’re going to be working or how. Well, I don’t want brand new people on the platform. So the best way to get seasoned people are the ones that are earning money right on the platform they’ve been working and are getting more and more work. So I got 10,000 plus earned.

Joe: Okay, job success.

Vance: 90% and up. But Joe, they changed it. It used to be where you could actually check 100%, but they don’t do that anymore. And we’ll still tell you how you can do that. I want people with 100% job success.

Joe: And that means they’ve been reviewed before by other people that have hired them.

Vance: By multiple people. Now, hourly rate. I want $10 and below so create that filter. Now hours billed, a thousand plus hours billed.

Joe: Bam!

Vance: So what this tells me is and I want within the last six months.

Joe: Man, this is way, like way more granular than I’ve ever done. This is awesome.

Vance: This is how you filter the big because everybody is using Upwork. So this is how I filter it. And then at last activity I want within two weeks. Within two weeks. So like last activity was another call them two weeks tells me that they’re actively working. But we talked about this, Joe. Right. Only freelancers. We don’t want agencies.

Joe: So what? We don’t want agencies. Why is that?

Vance: Well, because an agency is going to be somebody who’s going to collect, like in other words, they have a team of VAs that they’ll start working and assign to it. And they’re not going to be real employees and working with you. All right. And you get less and less, I think, less control. And I don’t mean that in a negative way. Right. But I don’t want an extra layer of me connecting with what I’m going to see as my employee.

Joe: Okay. All right. Good. Knowing all we’re doing now, again, is filtering out all of the people that they’re suggesting we invite. Yeah, right. Okay.

Vance: Yes. And that’s my favorite part about this now in the category. Yeah. Let’s go and select the dropdown here. And this is where it really matters if you’re about transcribing or doing anything. In this case, we’re gonna go with admin support admin virtual assistant. At the very bottom.

Joe: Admin support virtual assistant.

Vance: That’s the category we’re looking for somebody who can just help us with virtual assistant jobs. Now, now you think you’re still ready to scroll and click invite, I do one extra step, Joe. Okay, so let’s go ahead and scroll down. It’s 2 seconds to do this. I want you to click on his profile picture, the very first lead we see or the person we see where I click on it.

Joe: Okay.

Vance: We’re going to glance at it. So it’s 96%. That’s a no. So back out of there.

Joe: Why is that a no?

Vance: I only want to work with people have 100% success rate. Somebody who’s who said who gave a bad review. When I’m talking top talent I want somebody to work blind. Got 100% success because they’re going to work well for me.

Joe: All right. So back out.

Vance: Back out. So this takes a little bit of time, but you also only have 30 invites. So let’s take our time on the upfront, save on the back end. So we’ll click on the next person, 99% back out.

Joe: Oh my gosh.

Vance: I’m there because they’re there. You don’t think they’re there, but we’ll click on them. We’ll go through along, 96 back out. So it is a little bit of an extra step that I do here. 100, bam.

Joe: Now this guy’s in Pakistan. Is that all right?

Vance: So for me, it is okay. We could have. Here’s how we can fix that. Let’s actually back out of this. That’s a good point. So I forgot what extra stuff I got overly excited here, Joe. We’ll scroll back up to the top. And the last part was like there was about.

Joe: Locations.

Vance: Or. Yes, locations. Thank you.

Joe: Type in Philippines.

Vance: Yes. So that way we can stay there. There we go. Now we’re going to scroll down and start the same.

Joe: Some people saying, well, I thought we said we wanted the Philippines, but this is that was filtering the people we’re inviting.

Vance: Yes, there we go. Exactly. That’s the difference. So let’s go and click on that first picture, Crystal.

Joe: Crystal 100%.

Vance: And here’s another tip I look at. So scroll down just slightly and it’s like, you know, you’re going have a really good candidate, let’s see sometimes and it’s not in this case. So we’ll just go back up. What I’ll tell you is how fast they respond, too.

Joe: Oh, yeah.

Vance: If they have 100% success rate the set invite. So we click on invite, quick invite and you have 30 of these. And I just read the default, which is fine and just an invitation because we’ve already done all the front end word of filtering for top candidates.

Joe: All right. So then we’re looking at Ramona, who’s next. Now she says $10 an hour, 100% success, no problem.

Vance: Here’s why. So actually, great to scroll down and let’s look at her hourly rate of what she’s actually been doing. She says she wants ten.

Joe: $6 an hour.

Vance: Yep, $6 an hour, and then fixed price, 5 bucks an hour.

Joe: Yeah. If you can give her a consistent 20, 30, 40 hours a week of work. So they’re willing to negotiate on their 100%. Right. Even though she’s saying ten.

Vance: Yeah.

Joe: So very cool. So I click invite.

Vance: Yeah.

Joe: Send invitation. Now you have 30 you can you get more invites if you upgrade or whatever.

Vance: Now if you pay for this is just for the free account. So you can actually do this and get set up a 100% success rate.

Joe: Six dollars an hour.

Vance: And that’s all right. And again, when you even look I like here’s what I really like about her is if you can slow down a little bit, she’s got over 28000 hours work, 153. Here’s one thing I don’t like about her. So let’s say you see a lot of 100%. It’s like we’re doing the three day fast response time like that. She may take two weeks to respond. It’s three plus days and then it’s less than three days and the best option is less than 24 hours. Okay, response time. So if you got to kind of way that out. So I really like to do a double check where I can 100% with less than 24 hours. So if I have a little bit of extra time, I don’t mind spending filtering here.

Joe: This guy says he’s available now.

Vance: So he’s really going to have a much lower 100% success rate. So down to slightly sometimes I’ll have it and he doesn’t have it. So it’s not it’s not consistent on what the response time is. I notice.

Joe: Cool. I’ll invite him. Now, one of the thing that I’ve done before and I don’t know if this is good or not, but there’s sometimes in here a keyword search and can I do it right here in the search?

Vance: Yes. So I actually recommend that when you’re hunting for specific jobs, like.

Joe: Let’s say I want somebody with freedom soft experience, type in the word freedom soft click search.

Vance: The more filters you can do on this front end Joe, right, like we’re doing here, the better chance you have for talent. So in this case, it didn’t find it.

Joe: It didn’t come in, but another one could be maybe zero.

Vance: Yeah, there you go.

Joe: If you want to. Somebody who is an expert in Zillow, for example, or you have anybody. Yeah, boom. There you go.

Vance: And then so we’ll click. And that what it’s doing is when he searches for Zillow, it’s actually looking at a lot of like their job experience or history. So this one looks like it’s been a transaction coordinator, 100% recovery, 16,000. She’s done seven jobs. Yeah.

Joe: Awesome click invite. All right. Now, real quick, because we’ve got to wrap this up. My wife already texted me and reminded me that I need to go pick up my girls. I already have four proposals.

Vance: Those are your those are your invites that you set, right?

Joe: Oh, no. These are people that.

Vance: That are already coming in. I’ve already replied already. So here’s how I felt, I’m glad that we got this already. So 100% job success is what I’m looking for.

Joe: This one, the first one is 100%.

Vance: Yup, but the next one immediately. No, I don’t want an 86.

Joe: So I give him a thumbs down.

Vance: Right. I will not be in work with him even though this next person here’s what I like. Remember your criteria still. So let’s look at the top person on a percent job success and earn $10,000. Awesome. That’s going to be a great candidate I chat with.

Joe: I can thumbs up her you that kind of like short lists her right.

Vance: Exactly. This is your fast way of filtering.

Joe: Now, Abigail’s got 0 hours earned. What do I do with that?

Vance: I personally wouldn’t go with that because we don’t know what. Like, again, we have these criteria. This is where we differentiate between A B and C.

Joe: This 100% job success, but doesn’t say how many hours.

Vance: Right. So here’s a cool thing. Just click on her.

Joe: She’s associated with VA House also.

Vance: That’s an agency, so let’s click on her. That’s a good point.

Joe: You want to click on her name?

Vance: Yeah, click on her name or profile picture. I think the should just pull it up top right across it. So it looks yeah, I don’t have any information.

Joe: I don’t like agencies.

Vance: Now this is a great example of like let’s not say we did on there.

Joe: That this might be some stats of the agencies.

Vance: I think so, this is where I don’t only filter through the agents as soon as I see a chance of who they were, I just filter for that.

Joe: Yeah, you could look into that because she’s got a video here. Yeah. I wonder if, like, if you looked into that, that, that would tell you more about her.

Vance: And you’re given a really good tips here. Take your time on the up front part here. You’ll save yourself from all those concerns because this is where take the time to triage, right? Take that time.

Joe: Yeah, I’ll short list her. And that just means that I can I can interview her. Let me refresh my screen here, see if I’ve got any more.

Vance: When people are active.

Joe: I have two short listed and I got 96. Yeah I already got some more that have that have been this guy Onic 96% job Bangladesh.

Vance: And I’m just a stickler with that.

Joe: You’re a stickler for that 100%.

Vance: I am when I’m hiring somebody at the very end, when you’re learning too, right.

Joe: All right, I’ve got to hurry up and go here.

Vance: I’ll keep you here all day.

Joe: This is so good, so good, maybe we should do a part two. Vance, would that be all right with you?

Vance: I would love that.

Joe: Part two, because let’s talk about once they’re applying now, how do you pick one? Yeah, there’s some really cool things I like to do. I like to see what you do with that. But in the meantime, we’re going to do this one part two. So in the meantime, you guys go to Joe McCall dot com slash Vance Joe McCall dot com slash vance to get the free stuff. We just talked about the job description, the requirements and then the loom videos. Vance would do have two videos in there that kind of walk through step by step, how to get through all of that. All right, Vance, got to go. Appreciate you being on the podcast. I’m looking forward to part two this will be really good. Thank you so much, man.

Vance: Thank you for having me on. I appreciate it, Joe.

Joe: I’ll see you guys soon, everybody. Bye bye.