KGCI: Real Estate on Air - VA Power: Elevate Productivity & Scale Your Business

Episode Date: July 25, 2025

Summary:Discover how leveraging virtual assistants (VAs) can revolutionize your productivity, freeing you from administrative burdens to focus on core business growth. This episode explores the diverse tasks VAs can handle, from email management and social media to market research and transaction coordination, significantly boosting your efficiency. Learn the key benefits of hiring a VA, including cost savings, access to specialized skills, and the flexibility to scale your support on demand.Bullet Point TakeawaysReclaim Your Time & Focus: Understand how delegating time-consuming administrative, operational, and repetitive tasks to a VA allows you to concentrate on high-value activities that drive revenue and strategic growth for your business.Boost Efficiency & Streamline Workflows: Explore how VAs optimize processes, manage schedules, and automate routine tasks like data entry and appointment setting, leading to significant time and cost savings.Access Specialized Skills & Scalable Support: Discover that VAs offer a vast pool of diverse expertise (e.g., marketing, bookkeeping, graphic design), providing flexible support that can be scaled up or down based on your business needs without the overhead of a full-time employee.Key Delegable Tasks: Identify common real estate and business tasks ideal for delegation, including lead generation and follow-up, calendar management, listing management, social media, market research, and transaction coordination.Effective Collaboration & Tools: Learn best practices for working with VAs, such as setting clear expectations, using project management tools (Asana, Trello), fostering open communication, and leveraging automation tools (Zapier) for seamless workflow.Topics:Virtual Assistant ProductivityElevate Productivity VAReal Estate Virtual AssistantDelegate Tasks BusinessBusiness Efficiency VACall-to-Action:Ready to supercharge your business and elevate your productivity? Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform and unlock the power of virtual assistants today!

Welcome to All Things Flingo podcast with the Flamingo Group and myself, Beth Riley. Join us as we discuss all things to do with our community, real estate, and all things Flamingo. Welcome and tune in for a flocking good time. Well, hello, hello, hello. My name is Beth Riley and I am the host of All Things Flamingo. I am also a realtor with the Flamingo Group. And today we're going to talk to Christine DeShavez and she is our virtual assistant. and we're going to talk about the process of hiring virtual assistant.

This is something that I did about seven years ago, and it has made a huge and terrific difference in our business and in how fast we're growing and able to move. Hi, Christine. Hello, Beth. Good day to everyone. And, yep, thanks for having me. So just to kind of introduce myself, I'm Christine, and I am the marketing manager for the Flamingo Group MN.

So I've been with Beth and the team for around three years now. And mainly I handle their social media, their creatives, and yeah, the podcast, I do the back end as well and all other things that we can do to engage more people and bring more business to the group. Right. Content development, branding. There's a lot of nuance. to what you do. So that's really important to let people know what you're doing that it's not just

social media posting because social media also has that nuance of branding and making sure we have the right tone and everything that that happens with branding. So when people have asked me, how do you hire a virtual assistant? And one of the things that I really want everybody to know is you can hire a virtual assistant that sits in your off, but you can hire a virtual assistant. She does all the same or he does all the same things as an assistant does, they're just not sitting right next to you. Now, we're with EXP Realty, and so that is a virtual or cloud-based company. We are not about brick and mortar. And of course, you make more money when you don't have to have an overhead of brick and mortar. It also helps the fact that I have gone through the process

of hiring an assistant before, and it was sort of painful in the sense that you have to have a desk, You have to have the overhead. You have a location that everybody goes. It's very old school. I think the last five years in our country and the way people do business is truly changed. So it doesn't matter if you have a virtual assistant that's three doors down from you or you have a virtual assistant like yourself who's in the Philippines. It's all about the talent level and really what you can or can't do to enhance your team or your business.

So one of the things that I liked about hiring a virtual assistant was that I was able to focus on the things that I love and that I'm actually better at. And that would be I'm all about building relationships, being involved with my community, doing volunteer work, doing different things like that, which improves not only my business and, of course, the community that I'm working in. It's also to take care of the rest. When I say take care of the rest, there's a lot to do in having your own business, anything. from like you were saying social media posts. We have also a transaction coordinator and Gene who's been with us for seven years now, doing all of our contract management, things like that. There's a lot going on that's always online.

And really that is not always the best use of my time. I'm leveraging my time in a way that I can get talented people to do this for me. So that was my first thing, was really learning what does a virtual assistant do and why and how can I get a person to help me with these things? So the first thing that I noticed is that the benefits of hiring a virtual assistant is that it's really saved me a lot of time. I am not running around putting all the signatures on contracts. That's something that Jean does.

I am not making social media posts and yet that's what you do. I think we're consistent on our media. Also, it's not up to my mood that day, which is always good. increase profitability. This is also a big thing is that when you hire a full-time employee in the state of this is, I'm in Minnesota, but when you hire a full-time employee in the state of Minnesota, it is very expensive. You pay taxes.

You have to pay a lot of other overhead expenses that are just in having a full-time employee instead of a contract worker like yourself. So that also is a cost reduction because contract workers can short-time. can work for short periods of time, or they can come on like a regular employee and work seven and eight hours a day. Enhanced productivity. What I noticed is that when I did hire Jean and also when we hired you, is that everybody had their own silo.

So we were doing what we do best really well. So we actually improved our productivity because we were each doing our own jobs and our own silos. It also helped with process. So everybody had their own process. We had a process of communication and also increasing how well we could work or more efficiently. So ultimately, I just was able to focus on my core business. One of the things that I noticed that was really important to hiring somebody is understanding

what can I delegate, what can I outsource, and what's like top priority. A lot of the paperwork was top priority. needed somebody right away before they even did any of my social media. I really needed somebody to take care of a lot of the paperwork to organize my database, to make phone calls for me, to do a lot of different things. So I learned quickly, okay, this is what I need to delegate and what I need to outsource. I outsourced things like building a website. Things like that was more outsourcing because it was a very short period of time. I used organizations like Fiver and I also used some other people to build the website that I felt was a little more professional.

And then I delegated some of my other work to, of course, you and Gene. And that would be all of my transaction coordination, all my paperwork. I don't know. Lots of stuff. We do a newsletter. We do mailings. She does all of that. We do any kind of printing.

Gene does all of that. And then, of course, yourself. This is really kind of where we step off. This is really to learn more about what does it look like when we post a job description online. And what is the process for you on your side of the fence? Okay. So on this part, we are going to talk about how it is like for us, VAs in the Philippines. how is it like to find opportunities abroad as well and work with clients in the United States like the Flamingo Group?

So the first part of it is more of an internal assessment or determining what our expertise are, what are the tasks we can do, and like the desired compensation we want for the position that we're looking for. And of course, if there are growth opportunities for us as well on that position. So once we have that set within us and once we have determined those factors already, we look into different job posts on different job hunting platforms. For example, here in the Philippines, aside from social media aside from LinkedIn, we have different platforms such as Calibur, Indeed and Job Street, where we can find opportunities similar to this one. So we review different job posts and, of course, we prepare our, we prepare and review our resumes and CVs as well to make sure that, you know, the position we're applying for is something fit for us and to the past experiences and skill sets that we,

have. So once we've assessed that, we of course would want to secure an interview with the hiring or recruiting managers of the different teams that we applied for. And then usually what happens after that is there are some sort of tests and exercises that we do for the positions we get considered than two. And yeah, for example, when I applied for the position that you're offering in the Flamingo group, I was asked to do some social media exercises. So I was asked to, for example, come up with a social media post that both has a caption and an art card about buying or selling homes in the United States. So that sorts of assesses my skills and my skills. And my capabilities to write copies that are aligned with your brand goals or brand identity.

So that's one exercise that Jean made me do when I applied for the position. And of course, there are other parts of it, like assessment on how well you handle tasks or how well you work under pressure, so stuff like that. Those are another part of the exercises that she gave me. And then once we pass that first stage, we go to the next interview where you assess more of my strengths and capabilities and my experience as well. And then if it's a great, if they see that it's a good fit, we get forwarded to the final interview, which is you on this instance. So you have the final say on to whether I get hired or not. yeah um that's like how we find that um when you chose a job board or when you chose what you were

going to apply for did you find it important that the job description was clear concise and tasks attached to it maybe software programs to use things like that the more description it was to it did and of course the money you know it tells you the level of the task can you tell me a little bit about how that improved or declined your ability to pick that job description. Okay. So as a VA, of course, we also look into what opportunities or what companies are like hiring legit assistance. So for example, on Facebook jobs, for example, or even on LinkedIn, there are a lot of job posts that are not actually. job posts, but, you know, a fishing scam or whatever.

So what we do is, of course, we usually look into the job descriptions if it's complete, if it has all the things that are, that should be considered if there are detailed tasks and responsibilities for the position, if our skills match the position, if there's a fair compensation to it. And we also do background checks on our prospect employers as how you background check your applicants as well. So we look usually into your social media account, your website, and make sure that it's a group or it's a team that we would want to work with.

So, yeah, we look into those things as well and make sure that the companies were applying for are legitimate. And on our side, what I really liked is that I really prefer a video resume. So as you get down to, you went to the first hiring manager, or in this case, you went to Gene. So she was pre-interviewing everybody before they came on. And the next thing she did is you guys all gave me videos. And I thought that that was really important to my understanding, first of all, how fluent is everybody? and then also what can we do to see if that person would jog with the team, if it would just work with the team.

So the video interviews were great because I did really choose not to interview, I think, two or three people. I chose four people ultimately to interview with, but it just helped me get to the next level. The other thing I really liked was, yeah, we did get to see your posts. but I think that you also did something on Excel. There were a couple different things that there showed an aptitude for above and beyond just doing social media. And that was important for the growth of that position and the direction for it to go somewhere. So I thought that that was kind of important too, or important from our side of the table. How do we also do research on what you're doing?

So let's say you say you've worked for this company or that company, do we just check everything online or will you have all names in each of your resumes for us to contact and to verify? Okay, so references are usually given by the applicants. It's either by request of the employer or we just freely give it to you so that you can check whether we're actually employed. with that team that we put on our resumes. So what I did actually was I included some references from my previous work and from the university as well. And I provided the email addresses and contact numbers already so that you can reach out to them just to confirm any information that you want to confirm with them.

And also just to make sure that there are no... outstanding issues that I have with them, for example, and, you know, I'm ready to join your team already. So usually hiring managers do confirm with our references, but yeah, it's also just an additional layer of like confirmation or protection as well for both parties. Sure. So now we've gotten to this point where we're going to hire. you and we usually there is a contract now you're considered a contract employee so we would be doing a contract with you at that time what are some things that you found i know what i found important at this stage in the game what did you find important at the time of negotiations for

the contract itself um yeah i think the important part of the contract is really mainly the the scope of my tasks and responsibilities, the time frame that will be partnering with each other, for example, and yeah, all the other important clauses there, if there's a non-disclosed agreement or a non-compete clause there. So yeah, it's also important that we put everything into writing, the time of day that you want us online, the schedule that you want us to follow. So things like those are part of the negotiation process and part of the contract as well. Just so we know that there's something written we can refer to whenever issues arise or things arise moving forward. So yeah.

Also probably a probationary period. Is it going to be a three-month probationary period or is it going to be six? think three months is everybody knows if it's a good fit or not by that point. And that could be, you know, you saying adios to us or us saying adios to you. So, I mean, sometimes it's a fit. Sometimes it's not. And sometimes fits are just not, maybe not the right team member. I don't know. It can have, it's very, it's very nuanced in that way. And I think having that probationary period or the test period, gives us both as well a way to assess if we're the right fit for each other and like what you mentioned, it's fairly easy to assess some positions if they're the right fit or not.

So for social media, for example, if the VA is delivering like quality content for social media, for example, you can determine that on the get-go. So you can already see it's more visual, so it's easier to assess whether you like it or not for your brand. But there are some tasks, for example, or there are some other positions like, for example, transaction coordination, which is more intricate, which is more complicated, and which takes time to learn on the part of the VA. So I think a three to six month period is already a reasonable amount of time to do. determine if whether the virtual assistant can actually do the job or not. And again, on the side of ritual assistant, it's also for us to determine if it's something that we want to develop further or to learn more about as part of our professional development.

Right. I think that that also, a lot of things will come to light real quickly if it's a really well-detailed job description and then at time of performance. We should have some of the tasks and things done ahead of time so that when job performance comes up, they can do it or let's say we already knew this person needs training in this. So that's kind of, I think that it will always go back to at least having a clear understanding what the job description is and what the tasks are and to have both, let's say, in my situation, the realtor know what they're offloading and what their expectations are. I think also when we're in the actual, when we're in the actual contract itself, we talked about the hours to be worked. Since there is a difference in our hours, it's important to know

what kind of manager am I on this side of the fence. What kind of a manager am I? I'm very outcome-oriented. I like to know, okay, we already know you have these skills, I have these skills. When can this be done? Can you get this done? and if there's any problem with basic expectations of when certain things can get done, that should be made clear between both parties. Yes, that's right. And I think, yeah, that's the importance of putting it into writing as well on the contract and making sure that both parties agree. So sometimes, of course, with the time difference and stuff like that, you know, some VAs would not be willing to do graveyard shift for example. So it's important that at the onset, you know, these expectations are clearly communicated just to make sure that there will be no issues with attendance, for example, or the timings are the shift for the BAs. Sure. I think grave shift, I think, especially since we're on the other side, we're very much on the other side of the world.

I think the graveyard shift is a thing. And I do think that working, I don't know what time it would be. So you're 13 hours ahead of me. So if let's say you came in at 7 o'clock in the morning or something my time. Seven years on yes. That's our being. Yeah. I think that if I think that can be overcome somehow just by a little more flexible in your shifts.

The other thing that I think can be overcome is having. Did we talk about onboarding already? Yeah. Yeah. With onboard and we have a good training program, so where we see areas that need to be polished, that there is training for that. The next thing would be then also how are we going to communicate?

I think that having one-on-ones is important for all parties, especially myself, that you and I are going to have a different conversation than I think our other real-to, or other VAs would have. My other, like Gene does a lot of the paperwork and a lot of different things. So just having that weekly one-on-one and having that part of your onboarding too is important for setting expectations, knowing how it's going, and not letting things get crazy out of hand or ignored or whatever at some point in the stage of the game.

The other area was, is that now that you're onboarded, how are we going to communicate? You and I use teams. Oh, you have it right there. So you have, have you used Slack? Some other teams use it, and I've also used it before with other teams that I've worked with. And then Ring Central, we also use it for our other business, which is WorkoooooMeo, which is a virtual assistant business, which is what we're talking about today. So if you are interested, please get in touch with us. we'd be glad to help you out and see if we can find a virtual assistant for you.

But right now we're really giving you information if you want to hire your own virtual assistant. Feel free to do so. Otherwise, we can help you with that process. And we would do the backgrounds all the way up to maybe presenting you with three to four different options of people that might work for your business. So there we had to do that plug and get that in there. So Microsoft has been a great way for us to do business. Yes.

And it's also very, well, it's complete. It's all in. So aside from doing messaging and conference calls directly on Microsoft Teams, we can also consolidate our files, put our databases in there and, yeah, just have like different threads or different channels for different, you know, parts of the business. So, for example, we have a different channel for. all the listings and appointments, we have another channel for marketing, social media, KVCorps. So, yeah, it kind of also helps us organize our processes and make sure that the messages are on the right channels. Right. Just so we can, you know, when we backtrack on different projects that we worked on, we know what channel to refer to and what channel to visit.

So there's that advantage of Microsoft. I think that people misunderstand that they think it's a database and it's not. It's a communication platform. So it's just very different, especially when we're in a virtual environment like we are now and just the way the world is working, this is what we have found to be the best way to stay in touch with everybody, not just a ginormous email chain or 40 emails a day. That's just a different way. That's true.

It's just going to be lost somewhere on the email thread. and we can get it back. Exactly. I think the last thing is is really talking about how people are paid online. And this can be true. If you have a virtual assistant,

I think in the States, we definitely use PayPal and then Mo. Are two different ways to do it. But we're going to be working with the Philippines like you and I. We use Western Union and Moneygram are the two that we use. The least expensive way to do it

is to set up your your personal, for me, it would be my business account and it would go into your personal account. So it's a direct deposit. It's just that it goes through money gram. And it usually cost in that situation from bank account to bank account, it costs about a dollar to do that. American money. Also in the contracts before we step out on this, we also would do the contracts in American dollars. And you would translate it into our, translate it isn't the word, into Philippine pesos.

those. Yes. And I think the advantage of having or partnering with Workomingo if they would want to hire a virtual assistant is that we can do it for them. So they don't have to go through the hassle of paying their virtual assistant figuring out how to set up those payment channels. We can do it for them when they partner with WorkaMingo and yeah, all the process we have streamlines so they can count on us to do that. That's true. And then also it helps if they want to do a

contract job or if they want to do a employee. So you can test it out either way. It works. Yep. I'm great. I think we have it. Again, my name is Beth Riley and this is the podcast, All Things All Things Flamingo. I am also a realtor with the Flamingo group. If you have any information or you would like to contact us and learn more, please contact us at info.orgamingo at gmail.com. Thank you for your time. I hope you learned something. We look forward to it.