Category Archives: Virtual Investing Information

Integrating A Virtual Assistant Into Your Business For Best Results

Remote outsourcing offers you many advantages, such as the ability to choose from a far greater pool of talent than if you had hired locally. You may even find talented people at extremely competitive rates when you outsource globally.  Our Virtual Assistants at  www.VA4REI.com are pre-trained!

Tell them Duncan Wierman referred you and get a hourly discounted rate!

But the problem is that the freelancers aren’t in the same room with you. That means you can’t look them in the eye to see if they really understand the project. You can’t closely monitor their work (or closely monitor the time they spend working, if they?re being paid by the hour). And they may be more reluctant to ask all the questions they need to ask, for fear or “bothering” you.

End result: You may not get the resulting you were expecting. So how do you deal with these sorts of issues?

Continue reading Integrating A Virtual Assistant Into Your Business For Best Results

Creating Your Outsourcing Plan

Many people ask me what should they outsource?  I say that you should outsource the most repetitive, tedious, and/or unimportant tasks that someone else should be doing while you focus on making offers!

 

Before we can sort this out, we need a frame of reference. So let’s take another quick step back.

How do you see the dollar value of your time? What price do you put on your most valuable asset?

  • $10 an hour? If so, there are alternatives for you.
  • $25 an hour? May be enough to replace your current job.
  • $50 an hour? That’s $100,000 a year for a 9-to-5’er.
  • $100 an hour? $500 an hour?

It’s hard to do this arbitrarily, so let’s run a quick calculation.

Fill in the blanks:
$ ___________________ (your target yearly income)?÷ 52?÷ ___________________ (your target working hours per week)?= $ ___________________ (target dollar value of your time)?It doesn’t seem so far out of reach when you break it down like that, does it?

Now that you’re aware of the target value of your time (TVT), it’s easier to determine whether any daily task is worth your time. Say your TVT is $240 an hour ($500,000 income-per-year on a 40 hour-per- week schedule).

  • reading the news for an hour in the morning worth $240 to you?
  • checking & responding to email a $240/hr task?
  • commuting to work (rather than working from home) worth $240?
  • driving around to put out bandit signs for 4 hours worth $960 (4 hrs x $240/hr)?
  • licking, addressing, stamping, stuffing, and mailing envelopes for your probate campaign worth $240/hr??

For most of the things you fill your time with each day, you’ll find the answer to be “no.”

In case you haven’t picked up on this pattern yet, frequent “stepping back” is a common trait of the architect. Several times a day, stop and ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. Get some altitude on the situation. Does what you’re doing have an immediate, measurable impact on your desired results? Is what you’re doing the highest & best use of your time? If so, proceed. If not, stop and delegate it to someone else.

For some of these the answer may be “yes,” but also remember that there are mental and emotional costs to some of these tasks as well. Putting out bandit signs for 4 hours may certainly be worth $960 to your business, but is it worth the stress of waking up at 4am to do it? Of not having a clear head when analyzing deals later that morning? Of not spending that time with your family instead?

These are the questions you should be asking yourself all day. Does what you’re doing have an immediate, measurable, positive impact on your desired results?
Is what you’re doing the highest and best use of your time? If so, proceed with the task. If not, stop and delegate it to someone else.

With practice, it gets easier to make these decisions. Soon, for each task that presents itself during your day, you’ll be able to determine in a split-second whether to do it, delegate it, or dump it.

And just remember that every time you say “yes” to one task, you’re saying “no” to another (one that may have a more direct impact on your desired results). As an architect – a business owner – “no” should be your default answer to most things that demand your time.

You’ll need to master the art of delegating, eliminating, and simplifying. This is critical to reaching and exceeding your TVT.  In reality, there’s probably a big difference between your TVT and the current value of your time (how much you’re making right now). But simply having your TVT as a frame of reference is important when prioritizing and delegating tasks throughout your day. It helps begin to create the gap between your time and money. The gap that means freedom.


Outsource-able Tasks for the Savvy Investor

Regardless of your TVT, what are some of the tasks that may not be worth your time or the mental/emotional effects (stress, frustration, tediousness) they have on you?

Below are some suggestions. As you’re reading each task on this list, ask yourself if it’s worth paying someone else $3/hr to do it for you…

Marketing for Sellers?

  • Go to the county courthouse (or log onto the courthouse’s online subscription service) weekly to pull the newest probate, divorce, eviction, pre-foreclosure, & incarceration leads, and then input them into your contact management system or generate mailers?
  • Post classified ads on Craigslist, Backpage, Oodle, Vast, and Kijiji directing sellers to your seller lead generation website?
  • Screen Craigslist, Backpage, Oodle, Vast, and Kijiji daily to look for deals.
  • Screen Leads properties to look for good leads, and then saving them for your review

Marketing for Buyers?

  • Post classified ads on Craigslist, Backpage, Oodle, Vast, and Kijiji directing buyers to your  lead generation website
  • Screen Craigslist, Backpage, Oodle, Vast, and Kijiji daily to look for potential landlord buyers, and then contact those buyers
  • Screen Online Lead Finder cash buyer leads, and generate mail campaigns twice a month
  • Lick, address, stamp, stuff, and mail envelopes for your cash buyer mail campaigns
  • Use Postlets.com to blast your listing across the internet or Post properties for sale on Craiglist, Backpage, Oodle, Vast, and Kijiji?
  • Send broadcast emails to your buyers list
  • Lead Capture and Analysis
  • Take inbound phone calls from buyers and sellers
  •  Make outbound phone calls to buyers and sellers
  • For each of your leads, put together an analysis package for your review:
  • Go to your county website, find the property, take a screenshot of the property information, and attach it to the lead inside CRM
  • Go to 3rd-party comparable sales sites, take screenshots
  • Capture images of the home (either physically or virtually)
  • Run preliminary comps and note an estimated ARV
  • Making Offers
  • Make offers on leads that match your specifications, and meet a minimum criteria of offers made daily (“5 offers a day and we’re on our way!”
  • Administrative
  • Monitor your buyers list for bogus email addresses, and cleaning your list regularly
  • Manage your Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn and other social media accounts
  • Update your blog?
  • Coordinate your paperwork and closings?
  • See a few things on this list that you’d rather not do yourself?

“Yes. All of the above, and more?!” I know you said it. 🙂  Good. Let’s outsource…

College Grads Who Work For $4 to 5 an hour, Love The Work, and Love You

The “virtual” in virtual assistant  simply means that delegated tasks don’t require face-to-face interaction between you and whoever is doing them. And in the Internet age, this describes most tasks. In fact, it’s amazing the extent to which the Internet makes virtual business possible.

Virtual business is entirely possible. Granted, with a real estate investing business, there are a few tasks where you need feet on the ground in your market. Putting out bandit signs, taking property photos, dropping off paperwork to a seller… all require a physical presence. It just doesn’t have to be yours. In the next 30 minutes, you could use Craigslist to find a personal or virtual assistant to do these tasks for you.
But the majority of your business – most of the tasks listed above – can just as easily be run by Virtual Assistants in the Philippines for $4/hour as they could by you or a local $25/hour employee.


Objections for hiring such a VA are usually Amero-centric and include:

• I worry about English communication issues”?

The Answer: Filipinos experience English from a very young age, and most speak it better than you’d believe. English is MUCH more prevalent in the Philippines than it is in India, China, Pakistan, and other countries that are commonly recommended for outsourcing.

• “$4/hr seems like slave labor”?

The Answer: Minimum wage in the Philippines is $2.50 an hour. Most virtual assistants with college degrees and real estate experience are happy to work for $4 USD an hour. Older virtual assistants with a higher level of experience are typically $5 -10 USD an hour.

Especially in the current global economic climate, whether at home or abroad, good talent can be had for less. Much less. And in going overseas, to the Philippines specifically, the English and the economics simply work. It’s the perfect outsourcing destination for an American real estate investor.

Recommended Sites for Hiring Virtual Assistants

www.craigslist.org
One of the Top 10 most visited websites in the world. Provides local classifieds and typically quick response for anything you’d like to outsource.

www.protmc.com
Great service that provides dedicated closing coordinators to manage your transactions from contract through closing. An incredible time & energy saver.

www.VA4REI.com to use the same team of VA’s at $4 hour!

How to Hire
Keep the hiring process as simple as possible. In fact, if you have a husband, wife, friend, or current employee to do your initial applicant screening and just give you the top 3 candidates, do that. Hiring can be a huge time-suck, so remember your TVT.

My typical hiring process (for a site like Elance) goes like this:

1. Post An Ad
Something to this effect:

Wanted: Virtual Assistant with Real Estate Experience
I’m a looking for a full-time VA to help with my real estate business.
** Responsibilities Include **

  1. Screening buyer & seller leads daily
  2. Addressing, stamping, and stuffing batches of 100 mailers on a regular basis Running comparable sales and determining value
  3. Understanding my buying criteria & recommending a course of action
  4. Receiving inbound calls and making outbound calls (I’ll provide the call script)
  5. Coordinating paperwork and closings

Please respond with your availability, samples of past work,

Also, notice I don’t list all responsibilities. I just picked out some of the most tedious and complicated. If they can do the hard stuff, they can do the easy stuff. If you mention all the easy tasks (monitoring your Facebook account, for example), applicants may latch onto those things and stamp themselves qualified, despite the fact that they have no idea how they’ll complete some of the more challenging tasks.

2. The Responsiveness Test

Also notice I left out a few other things out of the ad, like compensation. This is intentional.

Say I put out an ad and get 50 applicants. I can think of about 900 things I’d rather do than go through 50 résumés trying to determine which applicant is most qualified.

So the very first thing I do is have one of my other VA’s email all 50 applicants with a quick response (if you don’t have someone to do this for you, you can do it yourself… doesn’t take long). The email can be short:

Thanks for responding about our VA opening! We’re going through a ton of applications & we’ll be making a decision this weekend. When can you start, and what rate do you bill at?

Their billing rate is important, but I don’t really care how they answer my questions at this point. We can negotiate the rate later. What I’m watching for here is simply responsiveness. I want a VA who gets back to me within 20 minutes. Anyone who responds after 18-24 hours is immediately eliminated from consideration.

This little exercise will cut your applicant pool from 50 to 15. You’ll be shocked. And you’ll save hours that you would have spent sifting through 35 extra applications from people who are slow to communicate.

3. Final Cuts

At this point I, another VA, or one of our lead developers (depending on the position we’re hiring for) will cut our list of 15 down to 3 top candidates, and I’ll either communicate with those 3 via email or phone. Don’t worry about responding to the other 12 either. They’ve probably applied for a handful of other VA positions besides yours, so it’s not a big deal if they don’t hear back from you. Remember, your time is the most important thing here. I like to jump on the phone with the final 1-3 candidates because I want to see if I get a different vibe from any of them over the phone than I did via email. Picking up the phone is just a personal preference; you don’t have to do it. ?I’ll make these phone calls to no more than 3 candidates for no longer than 10 minutes per call.

4. Trust Your Gut!

Again, I usually hire more on gut instinct than I do on their paper qualifications. Not saying it’s the best strategy in the world, but it works for me. ?Remember, if you mis-hire a $3 an hour employee (even a $10 or $15 an hour employee), it’s usually not the end of the world. You’ll be able to tell quickly whether your VA has what it takes or not. Keep your other top candidates in your back pocket just in case your first hire proves to be a flop.

If I’m hiring a $60 an hour developer, I’ll spend a little more time on the hiring process. But not for a Virtual Assistant. It may be wise to have your VA sign a Non-Compete/Non-Disclosure Agreement. Sometimes I ask for this, sometimes I don’t. If it gives you peace of mind, do it. You can download an agreement for free from www.duncanwierman.com/forms

Training

Good training is essential. Bad teachers can’t blame their students for failing. Bad parents can’t blame their kids for being ignorant. And bad business owners can’t blame their VAs for incompetence. Let’s be clear here. Good training requires that you know what you’re talking about. It’s extremely difficult to train someone on how to do something you don’t know how to do yourself. And you can’t shortcut the acquisition of knowledge or experience.

What you CAN shortcut is the transmission of your knowledge, and we’ll help you with that below. In general, outsourcing a task involves: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Recognizing a Repeatable Process in Your Business

Documenting that Process (either written or by video) Transferring Documentation to Your VA?Ensuring that the VA Fully Understands & Completes the Process Correctly the First Time Eliminating that Process from Your Mental To-Do List & Replacing It With a Task of Higher Value Receiving Periodic Reports from Your VA to Ensure the Task Continues to Get Done Correctly

In the own business. Feel free to copy and distribute within your business to your heart’s desire. following pages, I’ll provide you with sample documentation you can tweak and utilize in your documentation is meant to serve as a starting point. A template and guideline to get you started creating a Virtual Assistant Training Guide for your own company, with an overview of your business and instructions for each of the specific tasks you’d like to outsource.
Virtual Assistant Training Guide For <Your Company Name>

About Us
Welcome to <Your Company Name>!

Let’s not waste any time…
First, it’s important for you to understand the full scope of our business, why we do what we do, and some of the important tools that you’ll be using on a regular basis.

We are a real estate solutions and investment company located in <Your City & State>. We’re in the business of buying, managing, and selling houses, and the great thing about what we do is that we’re able to help a lot of people in the process.

In our area today, houses are typically on the market for 5 months – and can sit up to a year or more – before being sold! For someone who needs to sell fast, a better solution is needed.

By purchasing properties fast at a reasonable investor discount, we can help save a homeowner:
• Agent Commission. This amounts to thousands of dollars.
• Repair Costs. We buy all houses in as-is condition.
• Time to Show the House. No need to schedule multiple showings every week and have their house ready on-demand.
• Negotiation Process. This can typically take days or weeks as offers and counteroffers are communicated through agents. We make a firm win-win offer and close fast.
• Stress. We can typically get a house under contract within 24 hours!   We create solutions where everyone wins. We’re the perfect option for many people, but to continue growing our business and assisting as many people as possible, we need help.

That’s where you come in! ? We run the majority of our business in an awesome web application, which you’ll be utilizing daily. Make sure you memorize this login information:

http://SITE ?Username: <Your Username> Password: <Your Password> ? Go ahead and login now. ?After logging in, the first screen you’ll see is our dashboard. We’ll need you to familiarize yourself with the entire interface, but…

 

… First Things First
We need to make sure you understand the full scope of what we’re trying to accomplish, and the best way to do that is to read our business strategy / model

Our business essentially follows the model ……. After you’re finished reading it, please let me know and ask me questions about anything that’s unclear.

Get Up To Speed

Next, please watch the Quick Start Video. You’ll find it in t by going to
Classroom > Training & Tutorials > Quick Start Video.

In this video, we walk you through the process of adding your first lead, running comps, generating a contract, then emailing the contract out. This is a process you’ll be doing every day, so you’ll want to make sure you understand it well.
It’s best if you follow along and do the same steps we’re doing in the video. Go ahead and add a lead. You won’t break anything. 🙂

Watch the Rapid Success Training
Next, please go through our 6-Week Rapid Success video training series. You’ll find this at Classroom > Training & Tutorials > .
These videos will walk you, in-depth, and provide further detail on our business. Again, as you’re going through the videos, feel free to follow along in our web application. It’s important that you know our system  inside & out, but don’t feel overwhelmed! You’ll find that much of the app is self-explanatory.
Once you’ve watched all these videos, you should have a great understanding of our business.  At any time, you can pull down the video training bar for further help, or you can visit Tools > Virtual Classroom for Tutorials & Quick Tips.

That’s basically the initiation process. I know it feels like a lot at once, but trust me, the hard part is over! Let’s talk about your regular tasks…

To Be Completed Daily
Screen Online Classifieds for Seller Leads
• Go to the <Your City> Craigslist site then click “Real Estate for Sale”
• At the top, search for keywords that signify motivation such as “great deal” or “must sell” (include quotes around the keywords)
The best leads for us are:
•By-owner, not by-broker, but we’ll still look at by-broker leads
•ULTRA-motivated sellers (“moving out of state” is motivated… “moving out of state because mom is dying and I’m going bankrupt” is ultra-motivated)
•Single-family homes with 3 bedrooms, around 1200 square feet, block construction
• When you find a potentially good motivated seller lead, go to Sellers > Add Lead in our web application and add as much information as possible about the property
• If you have time or are unable to find enough quality leads on Craigslist, feel free to use similar sites such as Backpage.com, Oodle.com, Vast.com, or Kijiji.com ?

To Be Completed Weekly

  • Post an Online Classified Ad to Generate Seller Traffic
  • Post an ad on Craigslist, Backpage, Oodle, Vast, and Kijiji in the “Real Estate for Sale” section directing traffic to our seller lead generation website at <Your Website> Do not post this ad on the same day you post the buyer ad
  • Online Classified Ad to Generate Buyer Traffic
  • Post an ad on Craigslist, Backpage, Oodle, Vast, and Kijiji in the “Real Estate for Sale” section directing traffic to our buyer lead generation website at <Your Website> Do not post this ad on the same day you post the seller ad
  • Run a search for all cash buyers with Online Lead Finder:  In <Your City>?
  • Select the “Cash Buyers” campaign template and email
  • Clean Our Buyers List
  • Inside the web App, go to Buyers > Search
  • Go through all buyers who registered this month and make a note of buyers who seem to have bad email addresses
  • For each buyer with a bad email address, view their buyer profile
  • If we don’t have any information on the buyer besides the bogus email address, simply delete the buyer
  • Re-Send Buyer Confirmations
  • Go through all buyers who registered this month, view their profiles, and re-send the confirmation email

Time & Priorities 

Feel free to set your own schedule. The most important thing is just that we’re making a minimum of 5 offers daily. I’d recommend creating a calendar now with your daily tasks for the next 30 days.

How to Contact Me
I typically check email twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon. Please feel free to email me at <Your Email>. No question is too novice!

Closing Thoughts
Now’s the time to outsource.  Post a job ad or start screening applicants right now.
Start finalizing the VA training guide for your business now. Remember, you only have to create this once. Start placing a higher value on your time now.Start simplifying your life and creating freedom right now.You’re in this business for freedom, and this is how you create it. No more excuses, just do it!

I hope this Outsourcing Guide has given you more than a few “a-ha” moments and that it has opened your eyes to creating freedom through systems, automation, and outsourcing.

VERY few entrepreneurs can grow their businesses & thrive as lone rangers.
There’s a point where you simply HAVE to start exercising only your strengths & outsourcing all your weaknesses if you want to grow. Anything short of that & you’ll be bleeding productivity every day.

Two advantages of going virtual are:
1. Cost-effectiveness. As applicants compete for positions on a global platform, small businesses win.
2. You can choose the best talent on the planet without being limited to your local pool. If you think about it, very few tasks actually require face-to-face anymore.

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“How to Find & KEEP the Perfect Virtual Assistant”

One of the most important things to finding & keeping a great virtual assistant is running a business with integrity. I know you may not put that in your blog because it seems like a given, but many people/companies do not.

I would like to thank you for being a person with integrity and running your business the way you do. Here are 8 specific keys that are critical to finding & keeping the perfect VA:

1. When you hire, decide the type of work you would like them to do and be very clear about your expectations. This will guard against a VA who is going to “balk” at new assignments. If you need a VA who loves variety, challenge, and new assignments, make that clear up front.?.

2. Decide how much time is needed up front. This goes along with the above, just to let the VA know what is expected of them. Clarity of expectations is crucial to a happy VA.?.

3. Work closely with VA during the first few weeks to iron out kinks and predict potential problems. This is also important for you to get an overall idea of how the VA works and the VA gets a good idea of what is expected from him/her. When I first started working for you, I have to say I had never had another employer pay so much attention to my work. In the beginning, I thought you were going to be over involved 😉 But as it turns out, the close involvement made me feel more confident in the work that I was doing for you and, when the time was right, you pulled back and left me on my own. I think this time was crucial to the work relationship that has developed.?
4. Don’t throw a lot of last minute work at your VA. I think some emergency work should be expected, but throwing 8 hours of work at a VA and saying “I need this tomorrow!” is a bit much. If this is something that should be expected, make it clear upfront.?

5. Set up regular tasks and systems they can count on. .

6. Keep a manual on how to run your business. A good VA can manage this once she has a grasp of your systems.?

7. Pay your VA on time. “As requested” sounds like I could ask you to pay me at anytime and you would have to comply! Setting up a payment schedule and sticking to it definitely breeds trust and loyalty.?.

8. Show appreciation to your VA. This one is necessary to keeping a VA happy. It doesn’t have to be monetary, though the bonuses and thoughtful gifts I’ve received are a nice reminder of your appreciation; a simple “thank you for all you do” once in a while really makes a difference. You have been great about that and I’d like to say “Thank you”

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So there you have it.

At this point, we’ve reached a level of trust where I’m completely comfortable with our VA managing PR, running customer support, and paying herself bi-weekly through our Paypal account. It takes time to reach that point, but it rocks to be there.

The bottom line, I would say, is that perfect VA’s emerge when you’re the perfect boss. Work on yourself & your company culture first, and good assistants will not only come, but they’ll thrive under your leadership. And in return, you and your business will thrive.

How To Research Markets To Invest Virtually

Great real estate markets exist all around the country. If you are not investing in other markets, you are probably leaving a ton of opportunities on the table that savvy investors are scooping up… or you’re investing in the completely wrong markets to begin with.

Doing proper real estate market research is key to your real estate investment strategies.  The research will let you know your chances of making money and the soundness of your investment in a particular location, property, or city. Real estate market research is perhaps the most overlooked part for new investors and experienced investors alike. In this article, we discuss the  many ways you can go about real estate market research.

Continue reading How To Research Markets To Invest Virtually

Coaching Call – Working With A Virtual Transaction Manager

This months call is critical to your success. The one person on this call is a HUGE team player that you want to put into action as soon as possible.  A Virtual Closing Co-odinator.  They make your life not only easier, but richer!  The best part about them is that you can basically get them for free! Listen in…

 

Continue reading Coaching Call – Working With A Virtual Transaction Manager

Take your business to the next level with Virtual Assitants

Are you ready to take your business to the next level?  Do you want to have more time ?

Virtual Assistants are the answer! Lets be realistic. We got into real estate investing to have the lifestyle of our dreams, NOT to work harder. Today, with the technology and communications that are available to us, there is no reason not to get a virtual assistant! Why?

You need to have the mindset that you should be working ON your business and not IN your business. Your job is to make offers and market only. These are the only two actions that produce revenue. Anything that does not contribute to revenue creation.. you have to outsource it!.

Here’s how: Continue reading Take your business to the next level with Virtual Assitants

Virtual Wholesaling and the Local Quick Market Analysis Tool

This is a great tool for you to use in major metropolitan markets to see the activity of the housing and rental market graphically. This tool makes it very easy to spot the trends and the numbers. You can see rents, sales, movement of people leaving areas, going to other areas. This little "trick tip" will give you confidence in how to beat the market! Attract a multitude of BUYERS by knowing what your competition is doing.Very clever, I must say so myself..

Continue reading Virtual Wholesaling and the Local Quick Market Analysis Tool