How to Scale Your Real Estate Business with Virtual Assistants Featuring Adrienne Green

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Real Estate Explainer podcast, where we talk about anything and everything real estate. I'm your host, Brian Kickswell. Thanks for joining me on another episode of The Real Estate Explainer. Today I've got Adrian Green on the podcast, and we're going to be talking about building teams for your real estate investment business. But more than just building teams of property managers and plumbers, it's actually building teams of virtual assistants that can help you really grow and scale your business. Let's jump right in. So thanks for joining me on the podcast today.

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Sure. So my name is Adrian Green, and I have been real estate investing since 2013 when I started with house hacking, my primary residence. And I started out, I think like a lot of real estate investors, very DIY, doing it all myself, like with that kind of mindset of this is how it is, because I wasn't raised with real estate investing. And back then, I don't even know if bigger pockets was a thing. There wasn't a whole lot of research. And so it was just like a few people that I had met along the way who did real estate investing. And I lived in Northern Virginia outside of DC, which isn't really a great real estate investing market. And if you do things like pay a property manager, you're gonna be in the red every month. As it is, it was tough to find properties that even with self-management would be breaking even or cash flow positive. So I started off very DIY. I remember going to one of the condos that I had as a rental between tenants with my little like baby daughter in her pack and play, because I had to repaint it between tenants with a friend of mine that I had enlisted to help. And my daughter was going to be in her pack and play while we did that. So that's where I started. And then in 2019, I bought a long-distance short-term rental in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. And I realized I could not do it. Like I could not have this property in the same way I had done the rest. I lived eight hours away and I would need to have a team, right? I would need to trust a cleaner. I would need to trust a handyman. I would need to trust these service providers and empower them and work with them rather than doing it all myself like I had been. And this was in hindsight a huge blessing because I realized that I didn't have to do it all myself, right? I don't have to do it all. I just have to make sure it all gets done. And that was the start of my transition to realizing that to really be a business owner, I need to not be doing all the work. I need to have a team of people who are helping do that work so that I could be doing my top 20%. So with real estate investing, that can be the boots on the ground, right? That contractor, that handyman, even like real estate agents or property managers to do things like the showings or checking the property. And then it's also a virtual assistant team to help with all of the other operations, anything that can be done on a phone or on a computer. So now I have a virtual assistant who does all of my bookkeeping and accounting for my real estate investing. And I have a virtual assistant who is my property manager and executive assistant helping with a lot of those things. And between these boots on the ground teams and the virtual team, I'm able to run my real estate investing portfolio in anywhere from one to five hours a week. And my teams are doing the rest. And because of that lifestyle, I'm able to travel the world. I travel full-time with my family, my husband, myself, and our three kids.

SPEAKER_01 3:28

That's pretty amazing. I would say that a lot of the clients that I have, they buy and sell real estate all across the country. And they are very good creating income, building wealth when it comes to the real estate side of things. But where I've seen them really fall down, and I know I have in the past, it's then they're also doing everything else as well. They are doing the bookkeeping, they're creating their own websites, they're taking their own photos, they're uploading photos or doing their own media post. So there's so much more to building a team than just the boots on the ground. Because you're right. I mean, painting a condo with your baby and a pack and play is one thing. And then moving that over and starting to build property managers, and then you've got your plumbers and everything else, that's all for the real estate business, the day-to-day operations, or I should say the property management day-to-day operations. But what we're really talking about here is building a team that can handle everything else for you. So when you're building a team, one of the things that I've struggled with in the past, and I think I've got pretty well dialed in now, I'm still working on it. I've got a small team in the Philippines and in Nepal, and I'm expanding because what I found is let's call my implementer, the guy that I'm trying to train to be me, and he's doing a pretty good job at it, but he is not me. And also, I am still doing a lot of the task that just takes a little bit more brain power. So what I've realized, and I don't mean that in any disrespect for my team members, I just mean it's a different skill set. For example, I have a bookkeeper, but now I've realized I need a CPA as well. So I'm bringing a CPA on board next week, and I know that I don't know everything. So I need to hire people that are better than me in a lot of the areas. So how do you get started? What is the process for starting? So someone is listening that knows that they're overwhelmed with the amount of work they're doing. What do they need just to start the process?

SPEAKER_00 5:36

The first thing, and honestly, if somebody is overwhelmed and they feel like they're against a wall, the first step is really making the decision that you are going to get help, that you're going to use this leverage of somebody else. And I say it can be a good thing if someone is overwhelmed because honestly, it's really sometimes when we've hit that rock bottom of being like, oh my gosh, I can't make it to my kids' performance, right? Or I am up until midnight handling this paperwork, right? I do not want to live that way. It's really when people hit that rock bottom that they make that decision and they are forceful enough to get out of their comfort zone and do something new and different and make a change. So the first piece really is that mindset piece of being like, what got me here isn't gonna get me there. And I need to commit to leveraging a virtual assistant to help with these things. Because if you've never done it before, it's out of your comfort zone, it's new, it's scary, and our minds are going to try and keep us from doing it, right? So you've got to make that decision and have that mindset piece. Once you've done that, the next step is to figure out what tasks you want somebody to do. And the easiest way to do that, because that can totally overwhelm people, the easiest way to do that is to start tracking what you're doing, how long you're taking to do it. And I would also add how does it make you feel, right? Because you may spend eight hours a week running numbers on properties, and you might love that. That might be like, that is a 10 out of 10, that is a highlight of my week. That's not what you want to hire a virtual assistant to do because you love it. And so maybe something you can keep. But if you're instead spending eight hours a week running numbers on properties and go like, oh my gosh, it's so tedious, it trains me, then that's something you want to hand off. So the list isn't gonna look the same for everyone because it's gonna be based off of what you're spending your time doing, how long you're doing it, how it makes you feel, and if it's something that gives you energy or drains your energy. But that's the first thing. So then you know what kind of person you want to hire because you know what they're gonna need to do.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

So that's something that I've had to kind of come to grips with is you have to understand the task that you're gonna hire them to do and not expect them to be great at everything because you don't want to hire them to replace everything you do. You want to hire someone for their strengths as well. And I tell my team members this all the time: like, hey, if you really love video editing and that's your thing, let me know because I don't really want to do it. I don't have the time to do it. And if you have an interest in it, I'm not gonna take away your other role, but I'll open this up to you so you can do that as well. So I think what you just said is knowing that you need help, number one, and then hire someone to take over the things that make you brain damaged at the end of the day. For me, it's staring at Excel spreadsheets until my eyes literally want to explode. And my eye doctor will yell at me because you know, it's like take the four eye drops a day, wear the warm compress on my face in the morning and at night. And it's just the reality. It's like we're all staring at computers so much. And if you're trying to do everything, yeah, it's gonna definitely burn you out. How do you determine when it's time to expand from, let's say, just one team member who can handle, let's say, the social media to someone else who's the bookkeeper to another person who's responding to emails on your behalf?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

I think you made a really good point there. You want to hire people in their zone of genius. I typically recommend start with somebody who's gonna be like your executive assistant, right? Somebody who's gonna take work off your plate and they can do a little bit of everything, right? They can maybe do your bookkeeping and accounting in your social media and some admin work, as long as those tasks are in that same kind of zone, right? You don't want somebody who's gonna be doing your accounting to be the same person who's like cold calling leads for you. Those are very different tasks that take different personalities. And so you're gonna start with that one person in that one kind of sphere. And really, I'd say when they are up and operational and you feel comfortable with them and you realize you've got enough tasks in this other area to bring on a second person, that's when you want to do it. It's like when you're investing, ideally, right? You're going to master one area before you jump to another area, right? You don't want to switch from long-term rentals to short-term rentals when you're still learning about long-term rentals, because then you're not going to master either. They're both going to struggle. So I'd say you work with one virtual assistant, you get them set up, mastered. That doesn't mean you're not going to continue to give them new tasks or it's not going to evolve, but you're going to feel like they're pretty solid. I recommend doing like a 30, 60, 90 day plan. And typically it's a minimum of 90 days for somebody to feel pretty comfortable and secure in that. It could be six months, a year, longer, depending on your business growth. But you want one person to be secure in everything you're doing. And then you can move on to hiring another virtual assistant as you have enough tasking to necessitate that.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

So when you're doing this, are you creating SOPs or standard operating procedures when you're bringing the team member aboard and saying, hey, this is what I need you to do. But in addition, I'm going to have you start looking at these other items.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

So a lot of people get hung up on the fact that they don't have SOPs right now yet. They don't have any kind of system in place. So like, I can't hire a virtual assistant because I don't have anything written down. It's all in my head. I just do it, right? You can bring on a virtual assistant and that part of their job is to write those SOPs, to make that full. I like to have a task list, right? But I don't start with it. I don't start with it at all. I'm kind of like, okay, I've written down what I do, I've done that inventory. I know that I need somebody pretty much to do like operations, to handle like my hospitable and all my short-term rental communication because I don't like responding to guests. I want somebody to handle all of these kinds of operations and admin stuff. I have that general idea, but I don't have any SOPs. I don't have anything written out. And so you don't need to have that written out. You just need to know enough about the task so that you can hire the right person for that task. Then their job is to help you write those SOPs, to make all these systems to put them into place. And the way they're going to do that is if it's something you're already doing, which is what I recommend starting with, because that way you're going to see a lot of time freedom right away because they're going to pivot to this VA's plate. But if it's something you're already doing, it's really simple now with technology and AI to transfer that task to the virtual assistant. If you're doing it on a computer, all you do is you go into Zoom or Google Meet and you go into like a personal room where you're the only one in there, you share your screen and you record. And you just narrate through. You don't need your camera on, you don't need your look great. You just record a video of what you do. You open up whatever program you use and you walk through. When you say I do A, I do B, I do C. You just walk through how you do it, you record it. Then your virtual assistant can take that video. They can get a transcript of it, which, depending on the program you use, it might already have a transcript. Worst case, you can use a transcription AI tool, pop the video in it, and the VA can do that, get a transcript. And then the VA can go into ChatGPT. They can say, hey, here is a transcript of a video. I'd like you to draft a procedure based off of the steps that are outlined in this transcript. And what I also do is I have a template outline for my procedure format. And it kind of has some details in there about this is what goes here, this is what goes here. And I upload that to ChatGPT as well, or in my VA do it. So pretty much a VA could put into ChatGPT, here's a transcript of doing something, here's a procedure template, write up how to do this in this procedure template. And ChatGPT can format a great draft of that procedure, which your VA can then take, watch the video, fine-tune the procedure, throw in some screenshots, because we are visual people. So I would say add some screenshots in there. And then the virtual assistant has a procedure that they can now do every week, every month, every quarter, however often this task needs to get done.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

That's great because it's one of those specific tasks you're talking about is something that you don't do every day, but it is a little bit more hands-on and you do it once a week or once a month. And if you're anything like me, you've totally forgotten how to do it by the time you need to do it again. So you're relearning what you need to do anyways. And I think this is a key point when you do hire that virtual assistant or assistant, or you're building your team, make sure that you understand at least baseline the task that they're doing, or if they've modified and changed the task, that you have, let's say, a workflow so that if you have to replace them or if you've got to step in because they're sick or on holidays, you can actually do it. And I found myself in that exact position where I do rely on my employees to help out on tasks that I'm no longer doing, but it's so key. Actually, before we jumped on the podcast, I was printing out depreciation schedules because there was an error in the math. And it was kind of baseline. It's like, okay, well, where was the error? Why did they make this mistake? And I'm looking at it, it's like, well, maybe it's because they don't understand the underlying math. So it's like, okay, well, I've got to go back and give a math lesson on why we're calculating depreciation in a certain way and why you can't always rely on Excel or Google Sheets to do it for you. And you were talking about GPT chat, and my wife wants to strangle me right now because it's kind of my new best friend, but it's a really smart and a really dumb best friend. So any of the information that you have it generate, you still have to really read and make sure that it didn't miss a step. And what I've realized is like I always create new iterations, like, hey, I want you to do this, and then I want you to change it, and I want you to do this and modify it. And then ChatGPT will come back to me. And it did the last three things I said perfectly, but it forgot to do the first dozen parts of the process. And I realized that it's not probably the computer's fault or my virtual assistant's fault or my employee's fault. It's my fault for not being able to ask that question, or at least instead of just throwing information at it constantly and asking for these modifications and changes, it's listing it out kind of step by step. So anytime I'm adding something or building something, I need to go back to that original SOP, if you will, standard operating procedure and say step one is this, step two is that, step three is it. It's concise. They know how to follow it. Otherwise, people tend to make mistakes. I'm talking about the computer, in this case, the robot. But when you're working with assistants as well, you just have to realize that they are going to make errors, they are people, they are going to take breaks, they are going to go on holidays, they are going to get sick, and you should really treat them with respect. When you're looking at hiring and really scaling your operations and your virtual assistants, how do you get over the fear of saying, okay, well, I need to add another person? Is there any specific formula that you use when you say I need to grow? Or is it just kind of as it comes at you? I'd like to thank today's sponsor, CostSegRX, a cost segregation company. If you're interested in getting a cost segregation study, or if you'd like a free estimate of benefit, log on to realestateexplainer.com and click the cost segregation link at the top of the page.

SPEAKER_00 17:11

Great question. I think I don't really have a formula when there's enough pain that I realize, hey, I need another person to help with this, right? One thing I like to do is with the tasks, right? So let's say I'm a property management executive assistant, right? As we develop all of what his tasking is, part of what I like to do is I have a Google sheet that just always lists what his tasking is. And so I have like, hey, this is what this job entails that, and this is built out over time. One of the columns I have on that sheet is how long does it take to do this when you do it? That's something I like to keep track of is like in general, when you do this task, does it take an hour, two hours, something like that? So then I can kind of do the math and figure out how many hours are this person's regular job requirements. And then similarly, I use Monday.com as my project management system. So every task that a virtual assistant does is in Monday.com, which I love. It's a very robust way to manage tasks. It has automations where if it's a weekly, monthly, you know, recurring task, when you mark this task down, it automatically creates the next one for the next time. There's a lot of things in it. And one of the things you can do in Monday.com is you can have a column that's a time tracker. And so my virtual assistants, when they do these tasks, they're tracking how long they're spending on each task as well, which it's very important if you're to do something like this that is never used like in a punitive or like big brother way. I make sure that my virtual assistants always know, hey, I'm doing this so that I can make sure I'm not overloading you. I want to make sure, like, hey, if I'm asking you as my video editor to edit eight videos this week and each one is taking you like 10 hours, obviously that's not gonna work, right? Because then you've had an 80-hour week. And so that's where I like to do that time tracking. And so that's part of knowing when to grow as well. So I like to use the data to see how busy is my current virtual assistant, how much more bandwidth do they have? And when I'm starting to step in because they don't have time to do all the work I want them to do, that's one of the key things where I'm like, okay, no, I need to bring someone else on. And it is a fine line because I do think there's a lot of value to hiring a virtual assistant full time if you can. Because when you hire them full time, they're only working for you. If you only have them five or 10 hours a week, which sometimes you've got to do it, but you've running the risk that they're also got to be hustling out there to get other jobs, right? Or they're not able to really feed their families. Or if they get an opportunity to work for someone else 40 hours a week, they're gonna say goodbye to you and go take that 40 hour a week job. So that's one of the things I'm mindful with as we grow is I really want to be at the point where ideally, if it is something that I ever need 40 hours a week of, or if I can partner together a few different responsibilities so I can get somebody 40 hours a week, I like to do that.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

I'd agree with you there with the time so on both of them. So the first one was using the software Monday.com as a project management tool. And I started using it a couple of years ago. I moved away from HubSpot because HubSpot's great as a CRM, but then I felt our projects are so complicated that I really needed a project management tool. And Monday was robust enough to handle it. And then for time tracking, I don't use the time task in Monday. I use Hubstaff. So HubStaff tracks time and it does screenshots. So you can make sure if they're working on a specific task, you can see their screen. Now I've told them the same thing. I'm using Hubstaff to track you in your hours so I can pay you payroll, but I'm not necessarily going in and looking at every minute that you work. I actually encourage them because of the nature of what we do, it's engineering, it's math, it's like I said earlier, it's just a lot on your eyes. I encourage them to work for 25 minutes, then go walk around the block, get back to work, just so that they're fresh and they're working as effectively as possible. And I found that that was a good solution. I also like the idea of keeping them full time, but I will also tell you that if you're only looking for someone part-time, there's plenty of virtual assistants that want to work part-time. I've actually I have a team member, I've asked him if he wants to work full-time because I didn't want him going somewhere else. And the reality is his primary role is taking care of his kids. And I'm like, okay, well, if that's what you do during the day, you want to take them to school, that's perfect. I don't need you to work full time. Work the hours you can. Here's a set of tasks that I know that I always need to have done. Go ahead and run with it. So, and that's exactly what they do. What I wanted to transition into, because this is a personal thing that I don't know how to deal with, is I go nuts when I'm on vacation for long periods of time, let's call it a week, two weeks, three weeks. Weeks, I have a really hard time sitting down and actually getting back to work or looking at emails or any of it because I just feel it's going to pull me back into work and I'll be cheating on my wife because I'm not on vacation with her. I'm actually with my team trying to manage the business. And at the beginning of the conversation, you said that you travel the world and you do with your family. How do you handle that, let's say, separation where you've got your team that's managing your business and you're able to take the time that you need with your family and not check in? I don't know, like for me, it'd be every day if I let it be every day, but I don't. I'm either all in or I'm not. And that's what I'm trying to figure out is how do you find the balance?

SPEAKER_00 22:42

You know, I do think it can be important to take time completely away. So I do build that into my calendars. Soon we're gonna actually go to Sri Lanka for just a week as we make the transition from Asia to the UK. We're gonna spend a week vacationing in Sri Lanka. As soon as I knew that was there, which was six months ago, I blocked off that week for no calls, nothing, and no work during that time. So I do think it's important to block in time where you totally do step away and let your mind totally be off of work. And that is fine and valid to do. Now, personally, because we travel full time, I can't do that every week, right? And I wouldn't want to. I'd go crazy. I enjoy the work that I do. And so for me to have that separation, because yeah, I'm with my family a lot. The kids are homeschooled, we're all together. It really comes down to time blocking and respecting those time blocks. So I have time blocks, and while we're here in Asia at the moment, 13 hours ahead of Eastern time, that tends to be the evening. I mean, we're recording this call, it's 1:30 in the morning for me now. It's really having time blocks and respecting them. So I'm gonna start my time blocks because we're in Asia from usually 7 p.m. until 2 a.m. at the latest. I might wrap up at midnight some days, but that's what I do. And my kids know like that's my focused work time. But then during the day, now granted, because I stay up late working with the schedule, I sleep in. Once I get up, like all day is family time. And so we do all of our stuff today. The kids, we went to a toy museum and a like firefighter museum, because we're here in Tokyo at the moment. And then it's like we have dinner, we come home, and then I'm doing work, my husband's doing work, and that's the kids' homeschool time as well. So it's their time to do their work. And that's one thing I would say you talk about on travel, you don't want to feel like you're not giving your wife the time she wants. A lot of times we don't actually all want to be together 24-7. That's the reality, right? We're gonna want some time. Maybe she wants some time to go to the spa or have a bath or read or just Zoom scroll on social media, even, you know? But she wants some time for her own downtime. Typically, I don't know your wife, right? It can be that's what it looks like. And you guys agree beforehand, hey, on this trip, right? You said you were in Thailand recently on this trip. Hey, what is our tentative schedule gonna look like? I'd like to have maybe a couple hours twice in the week where I kind of just check in and make sure my team's doing okay. When would be a good time for me to do that when you may want to do your own thing as well? Having that conversation beforehand. So that way it's a win-win for both.

SPEAKER_01 25:19

Okay, I think that would be good for my overall mindset because I wouldn't be breaking away or trying to field calls at random times. I would just say, hey, on these days, I am going to be taking calls or let clients know that on Tuesday and Wednesday I'm available from this time slot. If I look at my current schedule, I don't take any calls before noon and I shut them off hard at 5:30. And I typically don't take calls on either Monday or a Friday, just so I can get real work done. Why wouldn't I do that when I'm on vacation as well? Now, of course, like you said, if you're going away for a week and it's a dedicated week, then take the week off. It's a holiday. But if you're looking for longer, extended time periods, then that makes perfect sense, is really to time block it and let everybody know that you're with that's what you're really going to be doing. So it's not a surprise. So I think that's great advice. So with that, before we wrap up the podcast, I just want to say, is there anything that you'd like to add? I definitely appreciate your time. I was just in Thailand, so I know the time difference can be very difficult. So thank you. And then certainly what's the best way for people to reach you?

SPEAKER_00 26:24

Right. Well, I think we've covered a lot here that hopefully will help your listeners, which is always the goal. And if anybody is interested in learning more about virtual assistance or in running their real estate investing like a business, head on over to my website, adriangreen.com. And there I have the Freedom Blueprint, which walks through the 10 real like systems or pieces I put in place in my business to have it run like a business so that I could do it from anywhere in the world. Part of that is virtual assistance, part of it is tech and systems and some other things as well. So head on over to adriangreen.com and grab your Freedom Blueprint. You can see what can help you have time and financial freedom and whatever your dream is.

SPEAKER_01 27:03

Thank you for being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

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