KGCI: Real Estate on Air - How VAs Transform Real Estate Businesses

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Welcome back to another episode of The Agent Goldmine, and in today's episode, you are going to learn how to clear out your inbox in three minutes, you know, your 6,000 message inbox in three minutes for free, any red flags that you should be watching out for when you're hiring a VA or a virtual assistant, and why you should not hire about 98% of the VAs that you're talking to. Today's guest is Valentina Briga, and she is the founder. and CEO of HireTrainVa.com. So Valentina Val came to the U.S. back in 2018 with her husband and a one-year-old daughter with no credit score or credit history, no rental history, and only $400 in her pocket. And she got a job as a virtual assistant and worked in the real estate industry in the VA role for a couple years before starting her own company, where now she and her team hire and train virtual assistance for other companies, primarily in the real estate industry.

So this is really an exciting topic for Allie and I because we were both always looking for ways to optimize, make our businesses, run more smoothly, leverage, delegate. And so super fun for us to pick Val's brain and you guys will get a lot out of it too. So Goldminers, please welcome Val Braga. This is the agent goldmine where you'll find real talk, shit talk, and ambition. We're here to build real businesses and be more than your average agent. We want to know what the killers are actually doing within their businesses. The reality of it.

All tactical, no fluff. So we're here to find out. Please share and enjoy. Okay. As working with real estate entrepreneurs and the VA company that you've built from the ground up, what is something that you wish that real estate agents, real estate entrepreneurs, general, what you wish they knew about the VA business? I think probably one of the biggest limiting belief that I see is people don't think that VA is a virtual assistant being overseas,

they can do the same as someone being here locally. They think VAs have a very thick accent. You know, we all get all of those telemarketing calls and they sound like they're not from here. And they think that all VAs sound like that, which is not true. In fact, when we hire VAs, we only select 1%, or 1, 2%, so out of 100 people that apply, 98, 99 get rejected. And they do get rejected. One of the main reasons is because of their accent. So we have found wonderful VAs that have a minimal to no accent at all. And a lot of limiting beliefs that entrepreneurs have, they can be crushed easily.

I can name countless companies who have had so much success with VAs. And the most important success is that you obviously know it's not as expensive as hiring someone here locally. So you can stretch your dollars further. You can put that money more into marketing, getting more deals, you know, getting more exposure, just knowing people. So you definitely increase your profit margin by considering this option by hiring someone from overseas for the same quality of work. I really want to get into how you select those that you say, you know, you only accept one to two percent. So eventually I want to get into the hiring process, how you make sure you get the right person in the right seat. But before that, what task?

are you seeing that agents need the most help with where your business comes into play? Right. So we have worked with a lot of agents. One example comes to my mind when an agent just wrote back to me and said, I can't keep up with her. She got me nine listings in one month. I can't keep up with her. It's like, okay, slow down, which is so good. So this is probably one of the most hired for positions is lead gen, which means you can call call, you can do circle prospecting, you can expire listings. They can go through MLS. They, they, That's a lot of, so think about what an agent does every day to get those leads. I'm sure a lot of those tasks are repetitive or they can easily be outsourced to someone who can do it for $5 an hour.

So if whatever you're doing, if it's worth more than $5 an hour, then you should focus on bigger things and outsource the busy work to a virtual assistant. So probably the number one task would be lead gen. And then the second one would be admin assistant or even executive assistant. They need someone who will manage their calendar, make sure there's no double booking, manage their email, respond on their behalf, even do research online, even, you know, arrange traveling. There's so much the virtual assistance can do. If it can be done on a computer, it can be done from anywhere in the world. And to loop it back to the hiring process, because I know there's so many people out there

who maybe they've even gotten over the limiting belief of like, I don't want to hire anyone, but they hire someone and then they have a bad experience. Oh, you know, they're like, oh, I'm going to do it. They bring on someone, they put in the effort, the energy to train them. And it's just like, this is not what I was. So can you talk about that? Yeah, absolutely. I love this question.

So first of all, I think people hire anyone just about anyone because they think it's just $5 an hour. It's just $4. It's just $6 an hour. And they think, well, I'm taking the risk because it's not expensive on my part. Well, here's the thing. In some parts of the world, some people make $5 a day. So when you give them $5 an hour, this is a huge difference.

Obviously, a lot of people will compete to get $5 an hour. That actually goes a long way in some of the countries. And I know what I'm talking about because I originally, I wasn't born in the States. You can see I have an accent. I actually moved to the States five years ago. And I come from a country. I'm from Eastern Europe, a country called Moldova. And I keep thinking that before I moved to the States, I would have worked for $5 an hour

because I know I would have covered my rent, my utilities, my everything. and I would have made a good living with just $5 an hour. But it's so hard to understand this concept from being an American, especially if you haven't traveled to some of these countries, they think, well, it's $5 an hour. I don't expect to have good quality. They just think you get what you paid for. And that is absolutely not true.

So because so many people compete, because they want to get $5 an hour, it's obvious, it's natural that you're not going to get the best of the talent. People are chasing the dollar. So you have to be really, really careful. and making sure you select the best candidates, and not just on an hourly-based rate, but based on what they can do.

So when we select virtual assistance, we do a couple of things. We take them through rounds and rounds of bidding process. And probably one of the most important thing that a lot of entrepreneurs don't do is, honestly, I don't care that much about the resume or even about the interview. I put them to a little test.

So what I mean by that is, let's say I'm hiring a VA to do call-calling for me. and we're going to have a role play. I say, okay, imagine your call calling. I just had a house on the market. I didn't have a good relationship with my previous agent. You want to see if I'm still interested in selling my house. Go.

And I want to see how they respond. I wouldn't be the nicest on the phone. I'm going to give them tough objections. Oh, I'm not paying 6% commissions. You guys are just ripping people off. I'm just going to list it on my own. You know, all of these objections that you hear. How does that VA respond?

How do they respond being in uncomfortable situations? how do they respond to objections and can they still be in control? This is what I'm looking for when I hire a VA. I don't care about the resume, not even so much about the interview, because people can lie in resume and interview. But when I put them to a test, I can see what they really like. And then that's how we, that's how we choose the best VAs. So if anyone's hiring on their own, do not skip the testing part.

Damn. Okay. Are there any tests? Because you mentioned lead gen and admin assistant are like your two primary. and that test sounded like the lead gen cold collar kind of test. What other tests do you do in that? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

So let's say you're hiring someone for social media, right? What I would do, I would just pull up a profile on Instagram and I say, this is the profile we have. Tell me what do you think about this. And I'm not an expert in social media, but I understand some of it, right? So if they know less than what I know, I'm not interested. I want to delegate up. When I say delegate up, meaning I'm delegating to an expert. So as an entrepreneur, you should not be focusing on your weakness.

You should be focusing on your strength. So let's say if social media is my weakness, as an entrepreneur, I shouldn't be like, oh, I'm not good at social media. Let me study it. Let me, you know, read books about it. No, you delegate up. You delegate to an expert, someone who knows more than you on this subject. So that's what I'm asking.

I'm showing a profile. Tell me everything you, what do you like, what you don't like about this profile, and what would it change? I want them to tell me, well, let me, what I want to hear from my VA is like, let me see the description, let me see the hashtags. Okay, see you're not searchable. People will not know how to find you. Your reels are not engaging. You should put captions on your reels. Whatever it is, because they can say people are scrolling through Instagram without the audio, so put captions. So I need to hear how they would approach it and what they can do for me. This is what I'm looking for. So that's for social media. Now let's say I need somebody to manage

my inbox, I just give them a situation, hey, I have 6,000 unread messages in my inbox. How would you handle that? I want people to tell me the steps, you know? And if they tell me very superficial answers, again, if they know less than me, I'm not interested. And I know a couple of programs. I know about unrolled at me. I know about Google folders. I know about tactics, how to organize it. And I'm not an expert. So I expect them to know more than this. And if they give me very superficial answers, which I see most of the time, something like, oh, well, I'll just go one by one and I'm subscribed. Like, no, this is a waste of time. It needs 6,000-100 messages. You need a bulk decision. You know, so I'm really looking for how they're thinking, the logic behind it. And that's how,

yeah, that's how we look at email management. If you have a specific maybe position that you're interested in, I'd love to explore how we could test that. In your email management, This is one that a lot of agents need help with for sure. And hearing more objections in my head from them already about, are they acting as me? And if yes, how are they matching tone? How do I trust? And so do you have like a process for onboarding that like phases that out? How does that work?

Yeah. So the way we hire VAs, we do direct hire, which means imagine you're hiring someone from Indeed. right? So this is your employee, your person. It's the same with us. We hire, we don't manage the VAs. We hire someone that's going to be loyal and dedicated to you. And we've seen the most successful companies, they grow their own teams. They don't rely on a third party managing the VAs and then asking for permission, hey, can my VA do this? Do I need to pay more? No, the way we work is, this is your person. You nurture that relationship. You share your values with that person. You want to be aligned. And this is, again, this is the recipe for success. If your team stands

behind you and they grow with you and they're loyal to you. So how do you face them? So because we do direct hire, all of this phasing, we rely on the entrepreneur to do it. So our recommendation would be maybe don't start just handing everything off to a VA, start small and have them grow into the role that you want them to grow. So for example, even when I hire people from my team, they had one responsibility and then once they mastered it, they understand my tone, they understand my values, they understand my culture, and now they can act on my behalf. They can respond to messages on my behalf. So I think it comes with practice, and you also need to trust that virtual assistant that they

will do it, right? We actually have a training for executive assistants, and the number one thing that we do is we have a session that's called getting on the same page with your executive, which means we have a list of questions that the VA and the executive will have to sit down, and they will have to make sure they get clarity on that. Some of those questions are, let's say, how do you want me to communicate with you? Is it via email, via text, you know, something like this? How do I reach you? What is your, how do you want me to respond to your emails? You know, so, so there's like 13, 15 questions that give you, they're so detailed, that give you a lot of clarity,

making sure that you and your executive are on the same page. So probably start with this. Even if you hire on your own, get absolute clarity. A VA cannot read your mind. So if you're not clear on your expectations, then there will be a lot of frustrations on both sides. And maybe you have a wonderful virtual system, but because there's no communication, you might be missing out on a good person. So do this. And then I would say the second probably would be have template. Maybe the VA will not respond to every email, but maybe there's the more common ones, have pre-approved templates and they can just send them out. or also the way you organize the email would be the VA can have a folder for the executive only to read or important. So anything they're not sure of, they can put in that folder and everything that's standard they can take care of.

You hit on a really good point. You said VAs cannot read your mind. And I do think that there are so many agents out there who are just completely slammed. They're barely keeping their heads above water and they know they need help. but they also know that help takes time, energy, or maybe they don't know. They just think that they're going to hire someone and then they get super frustrated because the VA can't read their mind and because they don't, the agent doesn't have their shit figured out enough to even be able to tell someone else what they want to do because they're just in survival mode.

What would you, do you see that a lot? Do you have recommendations for those people, those agents in particular? It's very common. This is, it's very common for every entrepreneur and, yes, for agents, absolutely. I see this all the time. So this is normal. First of all, if anyone is feeling that way, it's not because you're not doing something right.

This is normal. This is to be expected. And this is exactly why you need to hire help. And you're right. Hiring is not hire and forget. It does take some time initially to train that VA or any employee, show them the ropes. Because you will invest some time now, but eventually you're going to. going to save up so much time in the long run.

Now, the question is, okay, well, what if I invest so much time and they leave and I just wasted the time? No, because what you can do is you can record the training that you have with the VA, and that's how you create SOPs, right, standard operating procedures, but record the training, keep them in a central place, and if something happens with your employee or with your VA, if they leave, the next person that comes on board, you can just show them the training and then show them the recording, right, and then have a one-hour session of making sure they get it and asking them questions.

And so the more you invest initially, record everything, keep it in a central place, the easier it's going to be moving forward. I would also say because you're slam, don't look to offload everything at once. You will overwhelm the VA, especially if they're new, if they don't know, they might know the industry, but they don't know you. They don't know your market.

They don't know what you're looking for, your strategies. So start small and grow over time. And don't hire, I'm sorry, I always say this, don't delegate tasks, delegate responsibilities. And the reason for that is because when you delegate tasks, you will always, you're creating another job for yourself. You'll always have to come up with what other tasks you can give to that VA. And instead, when you delegate responsibilities, you let the VA figure out whatever tasks they need to do in order to give you that result. So for example, you say, hey, I'm slammed, my email is, or my calendar is crazy, I'm always, is double booked, your responsibility is to make sure this doesn't happen. You don't have to

spoon feed the VA. They will figure it out what needs to be done or they will ask you smart questions on what they need from you to get it done. How would you define that balance? So I know that you had in the beginning, you have the getting everyone on the same page. And then how do you define the or like the boundaries, the roles regarding the questions that the VAs are going to have? Because of course, they can't read your mind. What is that tempo, the normal tempo that you see with the amount of questions or meetings per day, week, you know, et cetera, going to what your goal tempo is to meeting with the VA? Yeah.

It's very individual. So when people work with us, when they select the VA, I'm actually, we're actually showing them a draft board of all the VAs that have been pre-selected by us. And it's all by categories. You can see call callers. You can see admin assistants, you can see executive assistants. And you can also see their resume, their interview with us, their personality profile, testing their skills, the hourly rate they want.

So you can see everything on the draft board. And when people work with us, they have access to this draft board. Plus, we're always adding people there. We only keep people on that board for 45 days. If someone is not selected in 45 days, they're taken out, and we add new people every so often. So that list is always kept fresh and always with the top of the top. talent. So that goes to answer your question is it's all individual because when somebody selects a virtual assistant, you already know what they're familiar with. You already know you can

watch the whole interview with us when we really grill them and we go granular into their previous experience and what metrics they had and how they approach this and how they approach that. But also the people that work with us, they can meet and greet the VAs as well and they can ask additional questions. So if you really like someone, but they don't have a ton of experience, expect to meet more often. If someone has, it also depends on personality profile. That's why we check personality profiles. If someone is more assertive, for example, someone that has my profile,

I am high on assertiveness, low in detail, so I'm more of a visionary. So to me, for example, I always, when I work with someone, I'm like, tell me what you want. I'll know how to get there, but tell me what you want. Like, show me the vision. I'm a visionary. Show me the vision, and I'll figure out how to get there. Some other people, they have their low in assertiveness, which means they need a lot more handholding. They need, show me the process, tell me step by step how you want it to be done.

So it's very individual. And my team will give recommendations when you hire a virtual assistant. But it's basically no matter how much experience they have, it's important to have at least one meeting a week. me and my team, we've worked together for years. We have two meetings a week. We have a Monday morning meeting. It's a huddle. We set the tone for the whole week. Okay, what is the number one thing you will focus on this week to move the needle? And then we have our, we call it L10 meeting, which is leadership meeting with a couple of people who discuss what issues we have or how we can solve them, you know, like all of the more detailed. So at least one meeting to set the tone.

And at the end of the day, have the VA give you the report of what was accomplished a day. Not just, hey, I'm clocking out, but I'm clucking out. This is what I worked on. This is what I accomplished. So then you know how to adjust the meetings if necessary. Are you guys doing EOS? Oh, yeah. Okay, cool.

L10, yes. Yeah, I'm about to. So I read traction years ago and I was like, this is great and then promptly did nothing about it. But now it's like phase two. And I'm like, dude, I'm going to fucking build everything out. using EOS and then do you guys use the 90 app? No. No, we use it for a while, but now we use our own system.

Yeah, it's like an Excel. Like we just keep each other accountable and so, you know, we have our own format. But yes. But we use the EOS model. So cool. I'm so excited. I'm like really excited to dive into it. But that's a conversation for another day.

I'm curious about your draft board and. or like the tool. Okay, so if someone, let's say an agent is joining, hiring a VA and they have no systems, do you have like systems like Trello or Monday? Do you have recommendations that you give out people and if yes, what are they? Yeah, absolutely.

So when an entrepreneur onboard a VA, we actually have like an onboarding package. So we give the systems and tools and some recommendations. So the number one thing, depending on where your VA is from, we'll tell you how to pay them, because this is your direct hire, right? We never charge anything on top of what the VA wants. They feel like they're being treated fairly, and it's full transparency on our end. So we're going to tell you based on where you VAs from, what platform works best for that country.

Also, we will show you how to track their time and how they report the hours, so you make sure they're actually showing up for work and doing what they're supposed to be doing. Also in terms of project management, we use Asana, we like it, but every company is different. In terms of CRMs, I get this question a lot, what CRM should I use? Or should I use a Google spreadsheet? Any CRM is better than a Google spreadsheet because it has that, you can set a task and it has the reminder. But if you're absolutely starting out, I don't want you to think about systems and processes, because you're going to create a lot of friction before it's like, oh, I'm not ready yet to hire someone. I'm not ready to get help.

I'm too swamped. I can't think about systems and processes and all of this. I would say commit first, figure it up later. So get help and then as you work with that person, you will inevitably need to have a CRM. You will inevitably need to have a tracking system or you'll figure out so much more on the go. Just don't create friction between you and your goal. moving forward. And we are here to help. And usually the people we work with, if they have any questions, how do we, what platform do you use for this? Or what would you recommend? My team is super

responsive and we give the, you know, the answer if we have it. But we're also looking for resourceful virtual assistance. I think this is very important. If there's a question, have the VA figure it out. What countries? So you, so you mentioned different platforms work better for different countries, what countries? do you mainly hire VAs from? And what platforms, I guess, are majority of the time, like, more frequently used? Very good. Yeah, very good question. So we hire, I'm going to have to give a little bit of story. So when we created the agency, I wanted us to be different. I said, why do people always hire from the Philippines only? Like, what if we open it to the whole world?

You know, and we have, there's talent all over the world. So our lesson learned from here, was there are a lot of talented people in every single country, but not every country has that culture of working remotely. And even where I'm from, you know, I'm from all of us. Like, there's so many talented people where I'm from. I can, you know, they would gladly, they would be so happy to have this opportunity. I try that, but they have absolutely no idea what it means to work remotely and work on U.S. time zone.

And people have to be educated on this remote work as well. So we're just sticking with what works. Yes, we do hire from the Philippines. A lot of people come from the Philippines, and we like the Philippines because they have that culture. They know what it's like. They don't ask questions like, well, do I have to work during U.S. work hours? They already know it's ingrained in them. Besides the Philippines, we also hire people from, let's see, what other countries have been successful.

Egypt has been very good. Jamaica has been amazing. Plus, Jamaica, they speak English as a native language, so you avoid the cultural, the language barrier. Costa Rica has been good. Nicaragua, Honduras. Mexico. So yeah, Latin American, Central American countries as well. And Guatemala, am I missing something? These are probably the main ones that come to my mind. And now the platforms that we use, I actually have a podcast myself where I answer a lot of the questions related

to VAs. It's called Built with VAs. And I do have an episode of what platform to use for different countries. Probably most people will hire from the Philippines. So I would use wise.com. It's super easy. The VA gets the payment. My VAs get the payment in the same day or 24 hours. It's a reliable source. Never had any issues with that. I have a virtual assistant now from the Philippines and I pay her via WIs. And yeah, it was so nice onboarding her too because exactly like you said, like the expectation is that she was working 9 to 5 Eastern. Like it wasn't even. And she's like, yeah, I mean, if for holidays, it's their American holidays. And like it was just, and I wanted to be super respectful, too, being like, you know,

anything in your culture and all that stuff. But like, you're totally right. And I even asked, I was like, hey, my tasks aren't time-consensitive. Like, you can absolutely work during the daytime hour. And she's like, no, all my friends and my husband, they all work at night. So I'm working. I'm like, oh, my gosh. I know.

I feel bad too. Sometimes I talk to VAs and I said, oh, it's like 3 a.m. in the morning for, oh, that's normal. That's like okay with me. So that's what I like about working with the Philippines. And I have had really, I have a couple of very good VAs on my team. They are from the Philippines. So they're amazing.

But also, if you hire from the Philippines, you will also have a lot of bad VAs too. So you can definitely find top, top, top talent, but you have to search for it. Because so many people apply from the Philippines, it is probably the number one culture in the world where remote work is so, prominent. So I'm sure that if people before had a bad experience with VAs, I would probably say maybe it's from the Philippines too. So you just have to do a better research, but I love it. When it works great, I love it. I'm curious about the, because you mentioned $5 an hour, and you also mentioned like super transparency. So how does it work with you and in your, how do you get paid? Yeah, yeah, good question. So we have a fee for our service. We can either

hire a VA for you, so kind of like head hunting, or we hire and we train them. And we only train them for certain positions. So we can train them for how to how to do sales on the phone, because I have had that experience. So, you know, how to build rapport, how to sound natural, how to have a solid introduction, how to not sound like a telemarketer that people want to hang up on, you know. So there's a lot of these things that we train the VAs on. So sales on the phone, but also we train them on how to be an executive assistant, email management, doing research online, calendar management, time management, taking minutes for meetings, like all of these that you basically become the second brain of the CEO. So we train for certain positions and we have

two packages. We can either hire for you or we hire and train. But we don't do training for, let's say, positions like bookkeepers. I don't have that experience. I don't feel comfortable, you know, teaching someone on that, but we rely on the VA's expertise to know how to do we're keeping. So yeah, this is how we work as an agency. Going back to the payment or wise.com, which I had actually never heard of, and I have a VA out in the Philippines too, is wise.com just the just to pay them? And what is the difference between like wise.com versus what do I use? Paynearer. And what other. Yeah. Please elaborate. Yes. So Payneerneer is, I, I, I mean, it works. If it works, it works. You know, don't change it. If you're happy, if the VAs happy, I wouldn't touch that. Payneur works great for countries like Egypt. So if you have VAs from Egypt, Payneur is the most, wise doesn't really work there. Remitly is that doesn't really work there. But Payneur works best. So it all depends on, I think Payneur, I don't know how much they charge you. For Egypt, it charges 1%. So if you're paying about 1%, then it shouldn't be a different.

With WISE, I'm trying to think, I think it's also about 1% if I pay in the Philippines, but also look at the exchange rate. How much money would the VA get with WISE and how much money would the VA get with Pioneer? And then decide what works best for you. But again, as long as you and the VA are happy using Pioneer, it's fine. In terms of customer service, Pioneer is not the best. Wise takes care of issues much faster.

So we had to, in certain instances, we had to look at a different provider other than Payonea. I hope they change it soon. They actually work with virtual assistants because I know when I called and customer support it was a virtual assistant, and I want to speak with the management. So if the management of Paynear is listening to this, I have better VAs than what you have right now in the company. So, yes, maybe it's a training issue. But again, if it works, leave it. And, okay, so you mentioned before that there are a lot of, I mean, there are a lot of good people and a lot of bad people everywhere.

What are some, like, easy ways to recognize that from the start? Yes. So this is probably one of the most common ways, but it really works. It works. So let's say you're hiring on your own, right? And you're putting an ad. And if you put an ad for a virtual assistant, be prepared for your email to be flooded for your inbox. to be flooded with applications.

So how do you quickly determine, and I can share how we do it, I don't mind sharing our system. So when we write an ad, first of all, we're very specific about making sure we're speaking to the person we want to hire. So let's say we're hiring a salesperson. I want to envision that person. What traits, what qualities does the person need to have? And I'm going to write an ad as if I'm speaking to that one person. It helps if maybe you know a great salesperson from a different company or maybe if you

someone and imagine you're writing an ad describing that one person. So what we also add there is to us it's very important to make sure that our VA's know our core values. So we're very big on core values, which is we bring value in everything we do. We have integrity. We improve ourselves, so we betterment. We provide everything, we do everything with excellence. And we take ownership. Ownership is also a very important thing. So we actually put our core values directly in, in the ad and we say, if you do not see yourself in these values, do not apply, you will not be selected. So that's another way to make sure that only people who resonate with our ad apply.

But also, of course, you put a little trick, like to apply, make sure you send an email with this specific subject line. It's becoming cliche at this point, but it still works very well. And one of the, I can tell you an example we had, I said, so these are core values to apply to this job, reply or send an email, email here and with a subject line be, my favorite core value is and mention your core value. And we've gotten so many messages that said, my favorite core value is orange. Or, you know, like they completely misunderstood what it was.

So what does this tell me about the VA? First of all, I'm not telling them exactly put this in the subject line, but I say put this in the subject line and add something else. So you have a task. You don't just copy paste. My core value is and you decide what it is for yourself, right? So it tells me that, okay, they read the whole application, which is good, plus one point towards them. That's good.

But then they misunderstood the question. My core value is orange. Like, what does that mean? Right? So maybe their English is not good enough or they're not detailed oriented enough, which none of this work for me. So I'm not even opening that application. I'm completely ignoring that. So to do it quick, just put something like that in the subject line.

And whoever doesn't match, doesn't follow your instructions automatically. take them out. Another thing that we add in the ad, we put in the ad is when you apply, send you video recording. I'm sorry, not video, audio recording. And that's especially important if we hire for a phone position or a voice position. So out of those people that we kept, so we eliminated the ones who didn't meet our subject plan requirement. And those that did meet our requirement, then we're going to look at the audio recording second. Not the resume, not the cover letter, audio recording. You don't want to fall in love with a candidate because of a resume

because, again, they can lie. I don't trust it yet. So listen to the audio recording and then you will automatically eliminate even more people. And those, the ones that pass your criteria, then you look at the resume and then you decide who you want to invite to interviews. So it's kind of like a funnel, right?

Because really, if you write an ad on your own, expect your inbox to be fly. So you're going to get this many people, and then this many people will follow your instructions. This many people will have a good audio recording. And then very important, before you invite to an interview, give them a test. Here's what happens. A lot of people will bail when they see a test. A lot of people will reach out to me like, am I paid for this?

They will ask you a lot of the questions. Don't have the VA work for free, but the test shouldn't be something that takes more than one or two minutes. If I'm an expert in something, I want to brag about it. I'll show you, you know, I'll tell you. like, you know, put them to a little test even before the interview. So your funnel from here is going to get to here. And I can't even guarantee that you will find the right person from the first goal. But it's worth it.

Continue again. If you don't have the right person, repeat the process again. And that's why it's easier to go with an agency because we constantly, constantly are doing this process and we have a healthy pipeline of VAs. But it's absolutely possible to do on your own if you have the time. And I just shared the exact process that we're doing, like how we get to get that 1, 2% of people. Once I've hired someone hypothetically and I put in a lot of, you know, energy up front and

there's training and everything seems to be going well, as time goes on, are there more like red flags? How? What is an indicator that maybe like it's slipping or things to look out for? Oh, very good question. You will feel it. First of all, yes, you will know something's not. right. But a couple of red flags is, so we use a program called Hubstaff, which takes the screenshot

of the VA. They clock in, and as soon as they clock in, get into the program, the program takes screenshots every 10 minutes of what the VA is doing, and it also shows you how active they are. So I use that with my team. I used that myself when I was working for a real estate company, the right people will not object to that. So people sometimes say, well, what if I need to change some information about my bank or, look, clock out, it doesn't record your screen when you're not, when you're clock out, right? Or just leave the clock out and then do your thing and then come back on. So this is very easy to report hours, how many hours have you worked, and you also get to see the screenshots exactly what they did. So this will be, we actually found some red flags.

Some people were watching TV or some people were just not, I mean, come on, you know, so that's the number one thing. But also set the expectations. Let them know, unfortunately, with when working with someone remotely, it doesn't matter if it's here or if it's international. When working with someone remotely, it's very important to set the expectations. Tell them what you expect. I expect to report. I expect this amount of work to be done per week. And if someone is let go, it shouldn't come as a surprise that they'll be let go because

they know your expectations. So depending on what role, let's say you're hiring for social media. You said, look, what I expect per week is to have five reels. and this many posts and this. So send me a report. If they don't meet that, obviously, it has to be realistic, but that's a clear indication that they're not the right person for you. But you will also see in, so yes, another red flag would be the way they,

if they're not responsive to your messages right away or, you know, within five, 10 minutes, if we use a communication platform, something like Slack, we use something similar. So, and I usually get a response within five, 10 minutes. If it's longer than that, if you have any reasons to believe they're not at the desk or working, check Hubstaff and see what they're doing. You know, so this is probably, this is a big, big discussion of stuff. That just blew my mind. I didn't know that was a thing. How much is it? Hubstaff is relatively cheap. It's like $7, I think, per month per person. It's not bad, something like that. When do you know if it's time to let go? So you mentioned a gut feeling,

which I think for real estate agents, that could vary. When does that agent know when it's time to switch a VA? Like the VA, maybe personalities don't work or, you know, whatever it is, but how long should someone continue with one VA before, you know, this is the line in the sand where they need to switch? Absolutely. So obviously there's a ramp up time. So you have to give them this ramp up time.

But eventually, a VA should be. a should be an investment, right? So people are either investments or their bills. So when you work with this VA, are they, is this investment bringing you a good R.O. Or are you finding yourself spending more time? And are they taking care of your problems or are they adding more to your problems? Simple as that. A VA should make your life easier. If they don't make your life easier, then you should not be working with that person. And when I say make your life easier, I'm not saying necessarily the skill. They can have the best skills. in the world. They can be the most skilled v. ever. But what if they're toxic? What if they're,

they're, you know, talking behind your back with the people on your team? Like, it doesn't matter how good they are. If this is detrimental to your team, let them go. So simple as that, are they, is it a good return on my investment? And are they, because even if, even if, let's say they make you money, but if they're toxic for your team, in the long run, your team will lose morale. They will not give you the results you're looking for, so you're going to lose money anyway. So that's very important. And how much time you should give them? I like to give the A's of warning unless it's an integrity issue. If it's an integrity issue, we don't tolerate that. They're being let go immediately. If it's a performance issue, if they have the right personality, a skill set can be trained.

So we give them a warning and we tell them, hey, we need to have better numbers by a certain day. And if it happens great, if not, they'll let go and they're not surprised by that. That makes sense. Okay. So in every one of our episodes, we have the guests bring in a golden nugget. And I would like to talk about what your golden nugget. Well, actually, I would like you to talk about what your golden nugget is. Yeah, absolutely.

I told you earlier that one of my very core values is bring value to people, right? So I love that. And I would like to know what your. agents need. But what I think the gold nugget that they would benefit from is I have a list of 100 plus tasks that VA can do for you. And it's very focused on real estate. So it's just to act as inspiration. Like, oh, I had no idea VA can do that. I had no idea I can outsource that. So that's the first one. And the second one is, okay, so you have this list. And then I don't want you to be overwhelmed with, oh, I can do this, I can do that. But what do I do first? I actually have a

delegation workshop, which has been so good, so popular. And so many people, you know, so many people, ask me, can you do this again for my audience? People have gotten so much good value out of this. It's a delegation quiz, so you understand yourself better as a leader, you understand what's holding you back, what limiting beliefs you have, what do you have to work with yourself to become better at trusting others. Plus, it's a delegation exercise. This is something that I do every quarter that easily saves me 20 plus hours a week, easily. If I didn't do that exercise, I'm not sure I would have had the time to have this podcast with you today. So while I'm having this, my team is taking care of all the busy work. And I want the same thing for people who are

listening to us. I want them to free up their time so they can work on bigger things. And how do you do this? I'm going to show you step by step my exact system, my exact process in the delegation workshop, which you will have access to. And I share the links. And if you can share that with your audience, they will get a ton of ton of benefits out of that. And I even share my, you know, the spreadsheet or the system, the step by step. And this is so, I wish I could do a demo now, but it shows you what you delegate first, what it delegate second, based on urgency, based on revenue that it's bringing. It's so much clarity and who you delegate it to. Who's the first person you need to hire? Or maybe you already have that person on your team.

It's super, super, super useful. And if anyone is going through that, please send me an email, please let me know how you found it. I'm very, very proud of what we build. Freaking everyone is going through this and everyone needs it. Allie, you and I are going. We're going together. I just filled it out. We're going to go. I'm excited. We're going to make all the pillars go to. It's going to be great because it's one of those things, too, where it's like,

I love my VA and what I have her doing. But I think having even a fresh set of like, these are even the things that I could consider outsourcing because, you know, you don't know what you don't know. And sometimes your brain gets in a certain mode that you're like, oh, wow, I can have someone else. else. Like I hadn't even thought of that. So, yeah, very excited about all this.

And listeners, if case you didn't know, you can go to the agent gold mine. dot com and get vows golden nuggets for free come with ali and i to the delegation workshop we're going i can i just have here one more quick thing but i think this is very important so it's good i'm giving you this list you know the delegation workshop but also have a conversation with your ving they want to provide you more value they want they want to they want to give you more so have a conversation with them like hey what role would you like to perform for this company where do you think you would shine more and have them tell you. Like, for example, I remember I have a wonderful VA right now who's taking care of my social media. And she said, I would love to do this for you.

I notice this and that. And I would love to post for you. I'd like to create the reels for you. I'd like to do this. She's completely taking this off my plate. And it all came from this conversation that what do you feel passionate about? What do you feel like you would shine in that maybe I don't even think about? And I'm really glad that we had that discussion. And they feel empowered too. They're people. We all have the same needs, the same desires, the same need to be, you know, this approval need. So they want to do a good job for you. I think that's, that's, I'm glad that you mentioned that. And yeah, because a lot of people think virtual assistant, I'm never going to see them in my life and they don't treat them like people. And then they wonder

why they're not doing the job that you want. Yeah, because you're an asshole, you know. Don't treat them as freelance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Before we had to our wrap up, what is next with hire trained VA? Like, where do you see your business going? I want to be the number one go-to company when it comes to hiring VAs. And we're working very hard on that, which means we also have to ensure that our quality is top-notch. So this is our focus. We also want to, so what's next? We're developing a very robust training session for virtual assistance. Because I think, and we always say this, like, I can give you the best virtual assistance in the world. But if they didn't have the proper training, you will never,

you will not see their full potential. I want to make sure that we give them the best training and the best, so they can give you more value. So we're going to have a very robust training and courses for virtual assistance. And so anyone can enroll in that. And even if you already have a virtual assistant and you feel like, I like her personally. And I, you know, but she needs a little bit more training. We can work on that as well. It's so the future for the company is provide so much value that we become the number one go-to company because we give value, because we are customer-oriented and because we are BA-oriented and because we're impacting lives, both on the VA side and on the entrepreneur side. I was a VA myself. I'm an entrepreneur now.

I understand both sides very well. I understand the frustrations of both sides. I know what's keeping them up at night or keeping them up a day if you're a VA in the Philippines. But knowing this and having live this myself, I want to make a difference in the space. So that's what we're heading to. That's awesome. So, okay, our wrap-up question, the first one, and I'm very curious to hear. I want this one to be related to VA stuff. What is your favorite app or tool that you use or that you have VA's use?

Oh, it depends for what role, but there's a lot. lot of, obviously, AI is blooming right now, and, you know, we like that. I mean, I like it. One of the users chat GPT, but when they use chat GPT in a very smart way, meaning that it doesn't look robotic, but they, they add that human, like they work with it, not just only, you know, use the AI. But there's a lot of tools, a lot of, I'm trying to think, let's say, for social media, I love this tool called AnswerThePublic.com, this website. So if you're, it helps you generate more content. So you just input a topic and it gives you a lot of what questions you should be talking about. So if you put real estate agent or real estate market, it's going to give you, how does the, you know,

a lot of different questions that start with how, with what, with why, how the real estate market has changed. Is it going to crash? So try it. Really, if anyone's listening to this and if you, especially if you're looking on getting more visibility, especially as a real estate agent, try answer thepublic.com. I really like it. A lot of good tools out there. I mean, if you can give me maybe one or two scenarios, I'd love to see if I can continue going. Let's say, yeah. So you mentioned unroll me. Yes. Okay. Say this scenario is email. 6,000 emails. Okay. This is why I like unrolled me.com. It's very popular, but I don't know why a lot of people still don't know about, still don't use it. But this is what happens. You don't have to go through one by one

and unsubscribe from emails. Unrolled at me, you connect your email account. It already tells the whole list of everything you subscribe to on one page or two pages, however many you have. And then from Unroll Me, you say, you keep, you unsubscribe or you roll over. So if you keep it, you decide to keep it. If you unsubscribe, it's just click, click, click, click, click, click, click, and it's very easy to make sure you don't get any messages from them anymore. You will still have 6,100 messages because it doesn't delete the previous ones, but you're not going to get any more messages from whatever you're subscribed. And it's very useful to see everything on one page. It has helped me identify some services that I pay monthly to, which I'm not using anymore. So it's like,

oh, okay, well, you know, so it's a, and it's free. It's absolutely free to use. And yeah, it's very popular. And you can always, you can also decide how often you want to get those emails. So let's say you keep some emails and then roll over or you can say, okay, I want to get emails from this company, but not every day, but just once a week or once a month. So it gives you that option too, so your inbox doesn't get flooded. Very useful tool. Yeah, I had never heard of that, and that's awesome, definitely looking into it right after this. I think a virtual assistant should know it. Totally.

So maybe your VA knows. Maybe she does. Maybe she does. What events are you going to this year? And by this year, I mean next 12 months. Yes. So I am working on getting my real estate license right now, which is going to be, that's my goal to get it by the end of March. So I love it, love it, love it, love it. I worked in the real estate space, but it was mostly for real estate investing. So ask me about flipping wholesaling, Gajan, you know, that's what I, most of my experience comes in. So the events I'm going to this year is I am attending Raya meetings. I'm attending local real estate meetings, you know, with, on, entrepreneurs. I'm also going to, I'm part of a mastermind for real estate investing, which I'm going to. And later this year, I always attend as an entrepreneur. I think it's very important

to work on my marketing. So I attend funnel hacking life every year. And that's with Russell Branson. So we learn about marketing and social media and all of that, which is, yeah, this has become our tradition. But I love events. I love being surrounded by like-minded people. And even if you know that information, but you get such a boost of energy and a boost of confidence. And when you go to events and when you're surrounding with your people, you know, you have your people with you. And it's just, I love it. I would go to any event that I'm invited to. What's the name with that mastermind? A funnel hacking life. Oh, the mastermind. Oh, the mastermind. Yes, it's seven figure flipping. Oh, nice. Nice. Okay. Next question. How can we like Shelby Nine?

and the audience, how can we help you in your business? That's a very good question. I want to know what value I can bring to your audience. And if you can help me understand what is it that people need. And I want more people to find out what we do because you never know how they might, you know, just really need the service and maybe they're not aware of our existence. Whether they go with us, whether they don't go with us,

that's totally okay. We'll never put any type of pressure or anything like that. But we have had so many situations when people would really thank us for what we do. And I love that. So any kind of, if you think that people would benefit from that. And I'm okay to do any webinars or workshops or just bring Valley to people. But if you can connect me with people who could, whom I can help grow their business, that would be amazing.

Val, and where can people find more of you? Yeah, absolutely. Very easy to find on social media on Instagram, my full name, Valentina Brega. Also, our website, hire, train, V.E.com. Super easy to remember. We hire and we train VA. So it's HireTrainVA.com. And just on any social platforms, TikTok, Facebook, my name, and YouTube.

And we also have a podcast built with VAs. Any questions about VAs, you probably will find the answer there. I love the energy here. Thank you so much for having me. It was so easy being here. So it's just you made it super easy and very enjoyable. And thank you both. What a great, great experience.

Great experience. Listeners out there, be a bro and share this show.