How to Hire a Virtual Assistant for Real Estate Investing for Just $5/Hour

Ashley:
Managing your first few real estate deals can feel like a juggling act, finding properties, handling paperwork, coordinating with contractors, managing tenants, the list goes on. But what if I told you there’s a way to streamline all of that and focus on what really matters? Growing your portfolio, hiring a virtual assistant could be the game changer that takes your real estate business from chaos to control. And today we’re diving into why every rookie investor should consider bringing one on board. This is the Real Estate Rookie podcast. I’m Ashley Care, and I’m here with Tony j Robinson.

Tony:
And welcome to the podcast where every week, three times a week, we bring you the inspiration, motivation, and stories you need to hear to kickstart your investing journey. Now today we’re joined by Valentina Brega, who started as a remote assistant when she immigrated to the us, and now leads a team of over 100 virtual assistant. So Val, super excited to have you on the show today.

Valentina:
I am so excited to be here. Thank you for having me on.

Tony:
Guys, what we’re going to get into today, we’re going to talk about how to hire a virtual assistant that will help scale your real estate portfolio. Ways to filter how a virtual assistant will be an asset to you and tasks you can hand off to a virtual assistant today.

Ashley:
Okay, so Valentino, we want to learn a little bit more about you first. So tell us how you went from doing remote work to actually building out your own business of virtual assistants.

Valentina:
This is kind of an interesting story because I never thought that I would be working remotely. That was not in the plans. So the idea, like you mentioned, I moved to the United States in 2018. We immigrated here after my husband won the green card lottery. I dunno if you know this is a thing, I’m not from here. I’m originally from Eastern Europe and people from other countries can apply to get the green card here and the chances of being selected are really, really minimal. It’s a lottery. It doesn’t matter how well you speak English, it doesn’t matter how educated, it’s a lottery because they try to give everyone the opportunity to come to the states. And we’ve been applying for years, years, years. And it was like refuse, refuse, refuse. At that time when we came here, I had just had my daughter, she was two months old When we found out that we won the green card lottery, I’m like, congratulations, we got the green card and as happy as we were back then.
But it was also stressful because what do we do in the us? How do we know what we can have in Europe? What are we going to do in the us? You’re not given a place to stay a job or anything like that. So we got here, we don’t have a house to stay. Well, we did have a place to stay for a while, but we didn’t have a place of our own or something to call a home or permanent. We didn’t have a car, no jobs, no rental history. No one would rent us anything because we have nothing, no credit score because we don’t have that in our country. So we are completely like zero. Nobody knows anything about us when we come here to the states. And on top of that, we found out that we only have $400 in our pocket to rely on.
So we couldn’t access our funds from back home for, we called the bank, it’s like our credit card doesn’t work, our debit card doesn’t work. And they said, oh yeah, you should have mentioned that you’re leaving the country. You have to be here present to access that money. I was like, we’ll lose the green card if we do that, we can’t do that. So we literally had $400 in our pocket. It’s like, this is swim or sink, this is it. And then I remember this real estate opportunity I was looking on indeed, and they were looking for somebody to answer the phones and I’m like, wow, that would be great. This is work from home. That would be great. But wait, I don’t have any experience in real estate. Why would they take me? I don’t know anything about real estate. I didn’t know what the word ballpark meant.
I thought it was a park where people play ball. I just like to tell you how much of a rookie I was in real estate myself. So that tab was open on my browser for days. I didn’t have the courage to apply. And then one day I said, you know what? Worst thing they can say is say no, I’m going to go ahead and apply. So I had the interview with the CO of the company and after that interview I told my husband, this is it. This is the company for me. We were so aligned with the core values, with our vision with it was just the perfect, perfect opportunity and it was great. This was my initial remote assistant, so to say, my work from home experience, and that was before Covid, that was 2018. So it was perfect. That’s kind of how I got started.
I stayed with the company for three years and we made millions of dollars. I was promoted to in a sales role as well, overseeing the acquisition reps. I understood so much about real estate that I had other investors come to me and say, can you teach my team everything? How are you making millions for this company? Teach my team how you do that. After a while, I said, you know what? I’m not unique. There’s nothing special about me. I can find people like me from around the world who would also be hungry, who would also be motivated, who would also love to have the opportunity to work on the US market. So that’s kind of how I started finding one person to people. We had success and then it got to where we are right now, three and a half years later, and we have placed hundreds of virtual assistants with companies and they generated tens of millions of dollars for our collective clients. It was meant to be the stress that I had initially. Everything was, it was just meant to be, I think. But that’s kind of my journey, how I started here and how it got here.

Ashley:
Valentino, what an inspiration you are. First of all, just having $400 in your pocket and like you said, like sink or swim and you’re hungry. You had to make it work. So I’m curious, from everything that you have learned working for this real estate company, training thousands of people, why do you think that a rookie investor just starting out needs to hire a virtual assistant to be on their team?

Valentina:
It really depends on where they are in their journey. I have worked with so many beginners, so many rookies, a lot of people, they have their W2 job and they don’t have a lot of time. Okay, so in that case, it makes sense to hire a virtual assistant. In other cases, because you’re at the beginning of your journey, you may not know as much about real estate or you’re still in the learning process. There are virtual assistants who have done the same job for years. They might know more about lead generation or lead nurturing or how to talk to people on the phone than a rookie investor will. There’s actually two reasons why you would hire a va. One if you’re so good at your job, but you shouldn’t be doing this job, so you delegate it to someone who can do it at 80% of your level, or you delegate up, you delegate it to an expert. And if you’re a beginner, you can find virtual assistant who have done this for years. But what I said it depends on your journey is if you have the time and if you want to go through this learning process, you can. It’s just that what I’ve seen is people scale match faster when they have somebody on their team, when they have somebody to work with, when they don’t feel like an island, they don’t feel alone.

Tony:
Valentina, I guess, let me ask, when you say lead generation, there’s a lot that goes into that. So what maybe specifically are you seeing virtual assistants do within lead gen that’s maybe valuable for Ricky, who’s just getting started out?

Valentina:
I don’t think that investors should be spending their time cold calling for the reason that you would hear a lot of, no, no, no, no, no, I’m not interested. Maybe. No, no, no. Yes, right. A lot of effort goes into finding that one yes or that one maybe. And I think as a real estate investor, your time is better spent elsewhere. You need to make connections. You need to build a rapport with maybe some agents or finding deals or managing the contractors or flipping or whatever it is that’s moving the needle and bringing revenue to your company, not cold calling. This can be outsourced for as little as $5 an hour. So if you are doing this, you’re basically saying, Hey, my time is worth $5 an hour and it’s not. You could do a lot more than this. So this is something that VAs can help with lead generation.
They can cold call, they can find out who has a house they would like to sell, get some information about the condition of the property, their motivation, what’s happening in their life, or maybe they know somebody else who wants to sell. That’s just one way. Another way is some investors send out a direct mail. Again, somebody needs to pick up those incoming calls and there are third parties who offer this service, but you need somebody who follows up with leads, who manages the CRM, who makes sure that no leads fall behind. If someone says, I need to speak to my wife, call me back in one week, we need to make sure somebody does call back that seller. So this is something that a virtual assistant can do as well because in real estate investors, they have a lot on their plate and they will forget to follow up with leads. I’ve seen this happen countless times.

Ashley:
Before we jump into how to hire your first virtual assistant, we’re going to take a quick break, but stick around because when we come back we’ll walk you through the exact steps to find a vet and onboard a VA that can take your workload off your plate and help you scale faster. So don’t go anywhere.

Tony:
Alright, welcome back guys. Let’s jump back in with Valentina Brea. So Valentina, I guess let me ask because Ashley and I both use virtual assistants pretty extensively in our businesses right now, but I think there’s also a question of when is the right time? And I get this question a ton from folks as well. It’s like, Tony, when should I actually get that first virtual assistant? I always tell folks, especially if you want to scale, if you want more than one or two properties, doing it at property one is a lot easier than doing it at property 10, 20, 30 because there’s a lot more to teach and show at that point. But you’ve obviously placed a lot of virtual assistants. What do you think is maybe the ideal timing for a rookie? Should they do it at the beginning or wait until they have a few deals done?

Valentina:
Here’s a mistake that a lot of people make. I think they want to put together everything perfect. They need to have a perfect system like I’m going to do this myself, learn the system and then I’m going to hire a virtual assistant. If you’re just starting out, you are building the system from the point you are right now. Once you get a deal under contract or two deals, you’ll be at a different level. So then your system will look different from a different angle. So I say don’t focus too much on the systems, but instead focus on getting results. So I agree with you, I think you scale faster if you do it with someone else, but even if you want to do it by yourself, if you are tight on money or anything like that, actually if you don’t have a lot of money, I think VAs are a very affordable way of learning how to be a better leader and how to scale faster.
But if you want to do it yourself, the role that I personally have for me is I’m going to do something for three months before it needs to be off my plate. So let’s say for example, copywriting, I’m going to do this myself for three months, but then this is not something that I should be doing as a business owner. So it’s the same thing for you, set yourself a deadline if you want to do it on your own, at what point do you have to be and what results do you want to see at that point? And if you’re not there, you need to find someone to help you with that.

Tony:
And Valentina, Ash and I were just talking about this on a recent podcast episode, but at least for me in my business, I keep a list of the things that I don’t want to do anymore. And literally there’s a list of stop doing these things. And as I kind of find the right people, a lot of times virtual assistants, I’m able to delegate that work off to them. But I guess when I think about it, there’s kind of two ways to build a business. You have bottom up and you have top down. Top down is when you go hire some COO and you say, Hey, go build this company for me, way expensive to do it that way because you got to hire people from the beginning with a lot of skillset to do all the things that they need to do. And you’re hiring experts who know, who know how to get those things done. Bottom up is kind of what you described where you’re starting doing everything, you’re wearing all the hats, and as the business grows, you start to pull people in. So I think for a lot of folks who are listening to the Ricky Podcast, the bottom up approach probably makes more sense because it’s more cost effective. And I think leveraging those virtual assistants is a great way to pull those people in

Ashley:
Valentina. I can see a lot of listeners right now thinking this would be amazing, this is great. I’d love to have people do these tasks for me, but what is the cost? So how does the pricing differ than if they were going to go and hire someone in in-person, maybe part-time or full-time? What does it actually cost to have a virtual assistant and do you have to pay any benefits? Kind of give us an overview of the difference of hiring a virtual assistant compared to somebody that would be working in-house with them.

Valentina:
So one of the main benefits, and I hear this question a lot, like what about taxes? What about how do I do this? So are they 10 99, are they W2? And I can’t give tax advice, but as far as my knowledge goes, and I say that this is a business expense, they’re not US residents. So 10 99 doesn’t apply. It is a write off. So it’s a business expense. So that means it’s much easier for you as an employer. You don’t have to deal with so much paperwork when you work with virtual assistants, of course you also don’t have office space because everyone works remotely. The virtual assistant is responsible for the technology, for computer, for internet speed, for phones, for everything. And in fact, when we hire virtual assistants, we make sure that they have good computer specs, good internet, all of that because they say, Hey, you expect from the company to pay your monthly salary, but they also have expectations from you and the quality of your work is on you, so you need to make sure you have the right computer and all of that.
So this is so much easier for employers from that point of view. In terms of benefits, you don’t have to, but I use it for my company, I encourage you to use it, but you don’t have to. Virtual assistants are happy to get a good hourly rate that makes sense for them. And a good hourly rate for them would be anywhere between five to $8 an hour, again, depending on their expertise. And there’s a lot to talk about the rate, but what I can say here in a nutshell, just because someone requests more doesn’t mean they’re necessarily better than those who are between five and eight. But if somebody requests two an hour, they might be beginners. They might not be the talent that you’re looking for. Just something that we’ve noticed from our experience.

Tony:
Yeah, I think that hits on it for sure. Valentina. I guess there’s different ways that you can structure the payment as well. So Ashley, I’m curious for you, for the virtual assistants that are on your team, are you paying them by the hour? Are you paying them just like a monthly salary? Are you paying them by project? How have you set it up inside of your business?

Ashley:
So I have it two waves. One is hourly, so they submit their hours every week and they’re paid and it actually charges right to my credit card. So I’m getting the reward points for that. That’s

Tony:
Actually smart. I don’t know why we’re not doing that.

Ashley:
And then for my property management company, I do have one virtual assistant who’s salary. She works 40 hours every week.

Tony:
Same for us. We have some VAs that are just on salary, same amount every month, and we expect full-time work. Some of my Airbnb virtual assistants are hourly because they have different shifts that they work, and we have some that are just kind of either project based, we’re not always using them, but maybe a small thing here this month, a small thing there next month. So we’ve kind of seen the whole gamut and I think that’s the important thing for people to understand is that you don’t have to upfront commit to paying someone 40 hours a week to get started. You could start with a small project first. If we go back to the lead generation that Valentina was talking about, it’s like, Hey va, I’m going to give you 5,000 leads as a project and I want you to dial all these leads and set as many appointments as you can. And once you’re done with that, then we can maybe decide what to do moving forward. So there are ways to scale into it as opposed to just starting with full-time work to begin with.

Ashley:
Yeah, I just want to recap right there, what we’ve learned so far about a rookie being able to hire a virtual assistant is that you can just use it as needed, use an assistant as needed. You don’t need to have to commit to anything. So even if it’s just an hour worth of work each month, you are able to hire someone to do that for you. Just that one little thing that annoys you or you constantly forget about actually doing and then have to pay a penalty fee or whatever it may be. And then the second thing is the cost. It is more affordable for a rookie investor starting out to hire someone at a lower rate than you would if you had to hire somebody in the states. For example, our maintenance person, we have workers’ comp insurance, we have disability, we have payroll taxes, we have all these different things added on that actually, even though his hourly rate is I think $40 an hour above that, there’s a lot more added expense to it, plus the commitment of I am guaranteeing you so many hours every single week, even if there’s not that much work to do.
So I think those are two. One of the really big benefits is the low cost of entry to getting a virtual assistant and then also not having to fulfill tasks for them as much as you would if somebody was on salary or somebody was working for you for a certain amount of period of time for that many hours.

Valentina:
And there are different types of virtual assistants. There’s general VA who can do a lot of things. They might know things at a superficial level, so like bookkeeping, they wouldn’t know how to do something more advanced. But entries and keeping track of expenses, they can do that. So general VAs can help with a lot of things. There’s also niche VAs. So if you need a video editor, that’s all they do. If you need a bookkeeper, we have people who just only do bookkeeping, like very advanced. They know QuickBooks, they have certifications, all of that. So it really depends on what you need because if you think about this, you work with virtual assistants, they’re people, they work on themselves, they learn, they acquire. So it really doesn’t make a difference if you hire locally or if you hire internationally, just internationally, you have a bigger pool of talent.
There’s a bigger pool of talent than hiring within a 20 mile radius from your office. So if something doesn’t work out with one va, you can find someone else because the pool is so much bigger. Because this is so attractive to virtual assistants, you will have a ton of people applying to your job ad you post a job at anywhere, people will be flooding your inbox. Doesn’t mean they’re good. They apply because they want that $5 an hour and because you choose someone, oh, there’s just $5 an hour, what did I expect? Of course they’re not good quality. No, that just means you haven’t picked a good one because everybody’s competing for the role. But if you do a little more digging, you will find the right person who will just be a game changer for your company.

Ashley:
And that’s another great point right there too, is that if the person isn’t working out, it’s a lot easier and smoother process to kind of transition into somebody else and fulfilling that role.

Valentina:
100%,

Ashley:
Yes.

Tony:
So I guess I want to throw a question to you Valentina, because I’m sure for a lot of the folks that are listening, the gear is returning, right? But I think we understand the impact that a virtual assistant can have. We understand that we can do it in a very cost effective way, but I guess the next question that comes to mind is how can I actually find these virtual assistants? So where are you going? What may be platforms or services are you using to source these virtual assistants? And then what steps are you kind of taking I guess as you’re going through the interviewing process?

Valentina:
So because we are an agency, a company that focuses on that, we actually have boots on the ground in a lot of countries we hire from everywhere in the world. So we have local connections, local relationships that help us source the best candidates. But if you want to do this on your own, there’s a lot of Facebook groups that you can go into just type virtual assistants work and you will find a ton of groups like that. Also, of course, online jobs, pH, it’s very popular. You do have to pay for that, a monthly fee to get virtual assistants. If you’re looking for someone in Latin America, for example, again, Facebook could probably, Facebook groups would be a very good place for you to start. Like I said, there will be groups that have tens of thousands of people there just because it doesn’t mean they’re all good. We interview a hundred people to find one or two good ones. Our selection rate is so small, how you interview them, how you vet them, that’s where the secret lies.

Tony:
The volume I think is super important for us. The last virtual assistants that we hired, we had to hire two, and I just posted this on online jobs pH, we had over 200 people apply. I think it actually captured at 200. We had 200 applicants of that. We had I think 80 or so that kind of filled out the survey that we walked them through. And then of those survey applicants only like 30 actually completed it. And then of those 30 only, I think five of them had good enough applications like surveys for us to want to interview in person. Then we hire two out of 200. And that’s a pretty consistent thing that we’ve seen as we go to hire. So you’ve got to have a really big top of funnel. So I love your idea of not just leveraging the Upwork with the online jobs.ph, but going into the Facebook groups, having those local connections because that gives you a bigger top of funnel to get the right number of people at the bottom.

Valentina:
Absolutely, and that’s what we do. That’s what we do all day and a half people on my staff who that’s what they do, they just vet people because like you said, the majority are not good. They apply generically everywhere and they don’t pay attention to what you specifically ask. So they just go for that hourly. So it’s up to you to find a good candidate.

Ashley:
We have to take one final break, but more on the impact of hiring VA after this.

Tony:
Alright guys, welcome back to the show.

Ashley:
So how are we vetting, what are the questions we should be asking? Because I do not like the hiring process. I do not like interviewing anyone. I don’t like the awkwardness of being on the zoom call with trying to think of questions to ask. So I am awful at that side of it. So please enlighten us with what are some things to ask someone during the interview process?

Valentina:
Well Ashley, I have good news for you if you follow what I’m about to tell you. You don’t have to speak with that many people on Zoom. So this is what we do. Let’s say we put a job ad somewhere. We have a hundred people, and you’re absolutely right, Tony, like a hundred people. The funnel gets smaller and smaller. The first thing that we do, of course writing the ad, we talk about our core values. We want to make sure that we speak to the person we want to attract. So first of all, understand who you want to attract. If you want an amazing salesperson, you have to imagine that amazing salesperson and speak their language. If you want somebody to do cold calling, you have to speak that language. So we put our core values in the ad, we talk about who we are, and I actually say there, if you don’t see yourself in those values, don’t apply because we wouldn’t be a good match.
I actually put it there and then at the end I give them a task When they apply to apply for this role, send us an email at such and such email address and with the following subject line, my favorite core value is, and put blank, whatever your core value is. And a lot of people disregard this instructions or a lot of people actually got some responses like, my favorite core value is blue or orange. I’m like, okay, well maybe you’re not detail oriented or your English is not good enough. So in any of these cases, this is not good enough. That’s not so I don’t open every single email. I don’t give people a second chance because I want people who want this. So people who read the entire ad, they understand what I’m looking for. So when we get a hundred emails for example, that’s what I have one of my VAs do.
She eliminates automatically everyone who doesn’t follow the instructions. And then the second part that we do also in the ad we put to apply, send us a voice recording, especially if this is a voice position, like cold calling or taking inbound calls. I don’t even look at resumes. I don’t invite people at interviews with ai, with templates. They can have a perfect resume. I don’t want to fall in love with a candidate. I just want to keep it very simple. So then the funnel gets even smaller here and then we give them a test before we invite them to an interview. And this is a crucial part that people are missing. This is so important. You give them a little test because I can guarantee you the majority of people will bail when you give a test. They will not show up, they will not report, they will not give it to you.
And it can look different. Let’s say if you’re looking for a copywriter, you can give them a little sample to write a sample email for whatever campaign you have. For cold callers for example, you actually do have to get them on an interview and we have a role play and I give them tough objections. I’m not giving my house away. Why are you calling me? You guys are low balling me all of this. And I want to see how that cold caller handles rejection and how they handle being in uncomfortable situations. If you give them a test for whatever position you need, email management for example, you ask them, Hey, how would you manage my email? Okay, this is my situation. I open my email, I have 6,000 a hundred messages. What are your steps? How are you going to take care of that? And you can see if they use chat, GPT, you can see if they use superficial answers.
Everyone will say, oh, I’ll create folders. Everyone says that, but I need something. I need to learn something new from the person that I’m going to hire. If I don’t learn anything new from you and I’m not the expert and I expect you to be the expert, then you’re not the person that I need for this position. When you eliminate people like that, you only interview a couple of good ones that have potential and ideally the ones that have submitted your test. For example, video editing. Before I interview anyone, I give them one of my reels in raw and I say, Hey, make that look nice. Put captions, put some music. I don’t want you to work for free. I don’t want you to do the whole thing by yourself. Just do one minute 30 seconds. I want to see your skillset, I want to see how you’re thinking about this. And that’s where a lot of people bail. But then the ones who do follow through and who give me a good result, that’s the ones I talk to in an interview.

Ashley:
What a great process. I feel like everyone listening and myself included, could go through and write down this checklist of like, okay, I’m ready to start hiring. Here’s my funnel that I’m going to start going through to get to the narrow sense of candidates and how you said that you want to learn something from someone. And I hired somebody for, because I literally had a light bulb go off when I told them what I was doing and I told them how I wanted them to do it. And they were like, actually, I recommended you do it this way because you’d be saving money, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, oh my God. Wow, this is so great. You’re hired.

Tony:
So we talked a lot Valentina about what VAs can do, how to source them, how to interview them, but I guess as Ricky’s maybe think long-term and because obviously for a lot of folks listen to this podcast, they they’re working on that first deal, but some may be working on deals number two, number three and number five. So when someone wants to start scaling, I guess what roles do you see or maybe how can a virtual assistant contribute to that?

Valentina:
I always say that if something can be done on a computer or on the phone, it can be done by anyone anywhere in the world. So depending on what you need in the company, I would actually say if you especially have a couple of deals, then this works the process, you have the system, you just need to repeat it more often. So I would say the investors should focus on what’s bringing them more revenue and then delegate everything else. The little things to virtual assistance, like I said, lead generation or if they have a property management company, tenant complaints or tenant applications, that can be done by a virtual assistant as well. Tony, you mentioned the fact that you delegated things you don’t like. There’s actually an exercise for that, the four quadrants, and you put different activities that you do in different quadrants. The first one is things I love to do and I’m great at it, and I would do it no matter what.
Second one things I like, and I’m okay at this, I like it. The third one is things I don’t like, but I’m good because I’ve been doing this for so long. So for example, payroll, I don’t like the whole process and all of that, but I’m good. I’ve done it for so long. And the fourth quadrant is things I’m not good at. They are important, but I’m not good at and I don’t like doing them. So you start delegating those and you work your way backwards from quadrant four to three to two to even one. Even if you like something, you love something and you’re great at it. Doesn’t mean it has to be on your plate, but you want to get to that. You don’t want to delegate that first. You want to get through things that are important, but you’re not the expert.
Don’t focus on improving your weakness. So social media is important. We need visibility online. And you say, but I need to learn social media. I’m going to dedicate a couple of weeks to learning this. No, you don’t focus on improving your strengths, not don’t work on your weakness because your weakness is somebody else’s strength instead of you spending so much time learning something you’re not good at, which is in quadrant four in that case, right? It just makes sense to delegate it to someone for whom these same activities in quadrant one, they love it. They would do it every day,

Ashley:
And it frees up so much of your own time to actually focus on what’s going to move the needle for your business, what’s going to help you grow and scale? Where is the money actually being made, not doing the bookkeeping or doing these little tasks that can be handed off?

Valentina:
Exactly. You stay in your genius zone and you have so much clarity when you’re not in the nitty gritty because you lose perspective when you’re doing this and that and you stay busy, but you’re not productive. And how many days have we had those like, oh man, I did this. Yeah, but did that move the needle for your company? Yeah, you clean your email, you did this, you did that, but what is this doing revenue wise for you? Did you stay busy or are you actually productive? This gives you clarity and perspective.

Tony:
Valentina. I guess last question we have for you. I mean, I feel like we’ve done a pretty good job of encouraging Ricky’s or at least opening their eyes about the impact that a good virtual assistant can have in your real estate business. But for the rookies who were still on the fence about hiring a virtual assistant, what advice would you give to them to take that next step?

Valentina:
What got you here might not get you where you want to be. Your business grows as much as you grow. So if you are on the fence, where are you going to be in one year? You might grow a little bit or you might be stuck in the same position. Hiring a virtual assistant is an affordable way, inexpensive way to learn more about scaling, to go faster, to free up your time so you can work on one little moving activities. It just makes sense. You need to have a good team in place to scale. If you think of any successful companies, any companies that you look at, no one has made it all by themselves. They have a team in place, and even if they do it themselves, then I guarantee they’re leaving money on the table by not hiring a team, by not having someone on board. So if you’re on the fence, I think the risk of not getting a virtual assistant is higher than getting one. There’s always this fear of hiring people, whether you hire locally, whether you hire internationally, what if that it’s people? Whatever happens when you hire VA is not exclusive to VAs. It can happen the same thing when you hire people here locally, but it’s just much more expensive. The cost of not hiring is higher than the cost of hiring and giving yourself that chance to go to the next level.

Ashley:
Yeah, we actually had somebody local who was fulfilling the role that my VA is now, and my VA does 20 times better of a job than the person that we had. We were paying them a lot more. We had them on payroll, so there was payroll, taxes, all these different things. So for me, building my business, having these VAs have made it so much more affordable and just my operations and processes so much better. Having virtual assistants and having to worry about having boots on the ground people here all the time, giving them enough work, fulfilling all of their needs for benefits and health insurance and all that stuff. But I don’t think that my property management company would be as successful as it is without the use of virtual assistants at all.

Valentina:
Absolutely, 100%.

Ashley:
Well, Valentina, thank you so much for coming on today and giving us all this insight on hiring virtual assistants. We’re going to link your information into the show notes, so anyone that wants to reach out to you to talk more about this, they can go ahead and find you.

Valentina:
I love it. Thank you so much.

Ashley:
For anyone listening, make sure you join the Real Estate Rookie Facebook group, and if you are a rookie investor, maybe you just got your first deal, maybe you just got your second deal and you would love to be a guest on the show, to give us some insight into what it’s like being a rookie fresh in the journey of the first couple of deals, go to biggerpockets.com/guest and fill out the form to be on one of our episodes. I’m Ashley. And he’s Tony. Thank you guys so much for watching or listening. We’ll see you guys next time on the Real Estate Rookie Podcast.