Cole Ruud-Johnson (00:00):
Today's episode you guys are gonna love this is all things virtual assistance, which, you know, can take your business to a whole nother level when done and implemented the right way, you know, so as always, I'm going right in, there's no fluff in this episode, but it's all about how we use virtual assistance to crush all of our businesses. So, without further ado, let's get right into it. Let's go. People don't fail at real estate because they suck, they fail because there's too many ways to succeed. That's why I suggest you focus on the most important skill and all of real estate, which is finding deals. I'm Cole Ruud-Johnson and in this podcast I share the exact steps. I've used a source 400 deals by age 24. And this will allow you to do three things, control your deal flow, make unlimited income, and build your empire as an off-market operator.

(00:54):
Virtual assistance, hot trending topic these days. Everyone talks about virtual assistance on social media, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, offshore talent. Offshore labor is a huge, huge, huge thing. A hot, hot topic people are talking about specifically in real estate right now. So I feel like I'm, I'm pretty experienced and well-versed in the world of virtual assistants and have a lot of knowledge to share on that topic. I've ran a call center about 6 years now. We've hired trained, staffed, um, I would say roughly 500 cold callers. Uh, and that's one really specific way to use virtual assistance. But in this episode, I'm gonna be sharing with you guys all kinds of different ways that you can actually use virtual assistance in your business. I've, I've put out an episode before on, you know, buying back your time and moving up that ladder from admin to fulfillment to marketing, to sales to leadership and your company.

(01:44):
And virtual assistance is a big way. How you guys can climb that ladder and, you know, spend your time doing what we talked about. And you know, Dan Martel talks about in his book a lot, you know, your production zone tasks, right? You know that for me that's creating content, that's hiring the right people, that's creating systems around our offers and that that's my production zone. So I'm, I fill the rest with virtual assistance or with, you know, stateside employees that can do the rest. So today I'm much about talking about, you know, how you guys can source, hire, train and manage virtual assistance for your business, for any role in your company. So this could be for data, this could be for skip tracing, this could be for comping underwriting. Like we've, we've experienced heavily with virtual assistance underwriters and I think it could work great in any business in 2023.

(02:24):
So first use case obviously is cold calling. And I've already made a huge podcast on cold calling one of the first shows I released on this channel. And so I'm not gonna go way into depth into cold calling right now, but the first way you can, hi, you can use virtual assistance is for cold calling. You know, you can go on upwork.com and you can hire someone from the Philippines or from Central South America or from Egypt or or parts of Europe. The cold call for you anywhere from four to $6 an hour we're, the problem with that is the reason I'm not gonna be talking a ton on this podcast about cold calling specifically for virtual assistance, it's because of the fact that it's the hardest position to fill. People think cold calling means you take a list, you sl it on a virtual in the Philippines, but you guys don't understand there's gonna be roosters in the background that if you don't treat cold calling like a separate business from your core business, you guys will never have good traction.

(03:08):
And so that's why I don't really recommend people just diving in right in and hiring their own cold callers. And yet I am biased. I do wanna call center, but there's a million different call centers out there. I'm not, I'm not even gonna market mine right here on the show. I just more meant like it is a hard thing to hire for your business. So what isn't though is admin work. Okay? So if you guys are on real estate companies for your underwriting, your skip tracing, your C R M work and your KPI tracking, all that kind of stuff is very easy and very hireable out of countries like the Philippines for any kind of admin, customer service. I think the Philippines is incredible for this. And there's a bunch of different services that'll do this for you, like Growth Assistant or a Shepherd, a a million different companies that have kind of some kind of a virtual assistant package they'll sell you.

(03:47):
But for you guys, all you really need to do to hire a good virtual assistant is use a site like outwork.com, okay? Use upwork.com, create a very good job posting surrounding what you need done. If that's admin, that's website work, whatever that is. And then you create a simple job ad the way you wanna screen talent, you guys is have them send you a five to 10 minute video on who they are, their experience, why they wanna work for you. Now 10% of the people that apply for your job will actually send you in that video. Out of the five to 10% of people that do say you get 40 applicants for that job from the Philippines, you'll get a lot of applicants. And from other parts of the world, you want to optimize and I guess angle yourself for at least a level seven outta 10 English speaker.

(04:23):
Cuz they're also gonna be able to write and understand and communicate with your team and you'll be able to get a gist of that from their video. So, you know, seven outta 10 means they can have a conversation. You probably know they're from some other country in the US but they can have conversational English stability. So that's the second part of the hiring process. And third is speed of communication. So once you start going back and forth with them on Upwork or wherever you're chatting with them, if they're taking long than 30 minutes to respond, you know, that means it's not an insistent you want, you want a virtual assistant for your company that's very responsive, that is very on the ball and not working for eight different companies. We pay them hourly, okay? I don't recommend putting them on salaries. And we have virtual assistant specifically, you don't wanna treat them like they're internal employees.

(04:58):
You don't wanna treat them any differently than a stateside employee, otherwise they're not gonna perform the same. And these people are very educated, very talented and very loyal. And uh, we've had virtual assistance from the Philippines and other countries that have worked for us for four or five, six, even seven years now since I was 18 and I'm turning 25 here in a few months. So you guys, you can build the real estate company into that virtual assistance, but I think it's one of the best ways to start buying back your time and moving yourself up that ladder and your real estate company. So the way you wanna hire these people, you guys again, I, I've worked and then you wanna have a playbook for them. So say the task is they're gonna be doing some data specific tasks like skip tracing for you. Okay?

(05:31):
So all you're gonna do is you're gonna create an s o P for that, okay? You can't train someone with an S O P, but you need an S O P database, which is standard operating procedure database, which we call a playbook in our companies, which is a place where when you bring someone on and once they're in the job role, they've already been trained, which I'll talk about training in a second. An S O P is a procedure for them. So they know how to do an individual task. So say the task is pulling a list out of profiting for you and skip tracing it for marketing campaign. So every single S O P needs a few things. The first thing it needs is a trigger. So what's gonna trigger them to be able to do that task? Okay? That could be the first of every month.

(06:03):
That could be you tell them to, that could be it's Tuesday, whatever that trigger is. But let's say the first of every month you want 'em to pull that list from prop stream. Cool. Second thing is a video explanation. So it's you doing the task cause that's gonna be two to five minutes of you actually doing the task yourself. Awesome. The third part of that is going to be a step by step. Okay? Step by step is a nuanced list of every single action they take to do that. I recommend using the Google Chrome extension scribe for that. It records your screen while you do that, organizes it right away into a very detailed pretty s o p. And then you can take that and copy that as the third part of it. So now we have trigger, we have video explanation, we have step-by-step and then you want a checklist.

(06:40):
A checklist is a higher level checklist. The overarching things that have to happen for that task to be done. Okay? Beyond that there's a definition of done. So how do they know the SOP is done? Is it when they upload a list to your list Decker? Is it when they tell you in Slack, how do they know the debt task is done? And the last part of a good SOP is the direct report. Who needs to be reported to that that task is complete. When, what's the cadence for that? Did they report to you every day, every week, every month having some kind of reporting channel, like a reporting channel in Slack for them to report to you? Cause that's the way that you manage that scale without micromanaging as you have direct reports that report you wanna schedule a period. That's, that's a huge thing that I've learned running the companies we've, we've ran over the past couple years.

(07:14):
Second part of that is training process. Okay? Now that you have SOPs around a task you want a virtual assistant to do, how do we train them? Okay, so I am a firm believer that you can't bring someone in. And I learned this from my buddy Jordan Ross who runs ADF and helps a lot of 10 figure entrepreneurs is you can't train a new hire, whether it's virtual assistant or stateside with SOPs, you have to train them with an actual training manual. Okay? So when someone onboards under your team, you can't just hand them SOPs and say get to work. They need a training manual that has what times they start work, who they report to, how to get an email created, how to get their cloud phone created. Every single thing that happens part on as you onboard an employee has to be in that training document so you can scale your training up.

(07:52):
So I recommend using Trainual or a Google drive or something streamlined when you onboard someone that you can put them through to actually train them up. Cuz you can't just give someone an s o p or a checklist and say, or a playbook and say, Hey welcome to the team. You have to have a a dedicated training manual, which we save ours in notion and when, then when someone joins, we make that shareable to them to their email and they can go through and they start getting onboarded then headed in the right direction. So that's a big thing you guys. And also, you know, with virtual assistance, most people treat them like they're not employees. You guys, these people, yes they're in a different country, but they're real people going through real life situations who you want to build a culture with, right? For our virtual assistance, we've helped them buy cars, we've helped them, you know, achieve what achieved their individual goals for the life and stick with you forever.

(08:33):
And they learn your business and they relieve a lot of headaches cuz they're, you're very smart, educated people. And so you still want to have checking calls with 'em. I recommend just a weekly direct report end of week call. So if you have an admin, virtual assistant every single Friday, let's say you have a your 30 minute block where you sit down with them, you go over things they're working on things they're struggling with, how you can make their job easier, how you can be a better leader to them and they will give you feedback. And that's another thing. And also countries like the Philippines, the work ethic a lot of times outpaces anyone from the US they'll work 14 hours a day without blinking for three years straight. One of our call center managers at our BLE Philippines offices is we have Egypt offices, Philippines offices and Beliz offices.

(09:09):
They'll be in the office 20 hours straight for three years without taking a day off. And that's just the culture down there and it's, it's incredible work, incredible labor and the money is meaningful to them as well. So you guys, as you start bringing virtual assistance into your business, your your business will change forever. Okay? Once you see this, it is addicting. It is addicting to have someone come in for $4 an hour, which is also great money to them and take a lot of stuff off your plate that allow you to do higher leverage things in your business like we talked about a lot, which is your production zone. You know, virtual A systems have changed our business in its entirety and, and all of our companies, and I'll give you an example of that. Well I've had a virtual assistant Warren that has worked for me since 2018.

(09:46):
So five going on six years now. And Warren was a guy I met on Upwork a long time ago. At the time I had no idea even how to hire and train, but it's a couple softwares I need to master instead of me. You know, I am a systems guy but my highest and best use of my time now isn't going to mastering software. So there's ever now to this day a software I need to master or a process I need to implement or a tool I need to learn. I don't go learn it myself. I have Warren go and learn it and he gives me the high level, what do I need to know about this platform in order to use it for our company and train other people on it. That's just one use case guide. You can use virtual assistance for research, you can use them for data entry, you can use 'em for KPIs, you can use them to study the new hot tech.

(10:22):
They're like a use case right now I would say is give a virtual assistant who's smart, an insane amount of reading and watching on, on Alva AI tools out there and ask them, say, come back to me with use cases for our companies on how we can use ai. And I would, I would recommend all of you guys who are listening to this that you start directing all of your staff virtually and stateside on giving you weekly reports on AI tools and saying, Hey guys, take an hour a day and learn some AI tools and tell me at the end of the week how you guys can use this in your role to be more productive and be more efficient. And that's gonna do one thing that'll alleviate their time. I think we're gonna go through a period here, especially in the US where employee satisfaction's gonna go up a hundred x, okay?

(10:58):
Because people can use AI now in their job to do their job three times faster and more efficient and have way better work-life balance. And most employees guys, especially if they don't run your business, they're gonna be more productive if they're working four concentrated hours a day than eight to 10 hours a day that are messy jumping off calls, working on graphic design when now AI can do it. So definitely have your staff start doing their own digging on how AI can make their job more efficient. As long as the quality stays where it is, you should be giving your staff free reign of that. Who cares if they work a few less hours, especially if you're paying them hourly At the end of the day, efficiency is efficiency. So quick one today guys wanted to uh, just run you down on my thoughts on virtual assistance.

(11:35):
We use them for everything for a long time in our company and it's alleviates a lot of man hours. Automation plus AI plus offshore labor, you guys is freaking incredible and you guys don't need to break the bank and go pay someone a placing fee for this. You can go higher off Upwork and find very talented people to come and be your executive assistant, right? Run your inbox, run your calendar, do your travel, do your bills, do your invoicing, data entry, k p i tracking. They can do s o p creation, they can do some QuickBooks. We train 'em on that. Anything you guys have in your business that's, you know, below your pay grade, you guys cuz because busy, especially in 2023, the entrepreneurs that crush it aren't the busy entrepreneurs, the entrepreneurs that know how to hire, how to work through other people.

(12:15):
And I think we all hit these kind of plateaus entrepreneurs. You know, you get to a couple hundred grand a year and if you don't know how to delegate at all, you're gonna be stuck there. Let's say you learn how to delegate, you get to a million, 2 million a year at that point, you're gonna really have to learn to work through other people. I mean not not just delegate tasks now, but your higher level stuff. Learning how to train and manage and work through other people that might take you to five, 10 million a year at that point. You're gonna have to get really, you know, growing leaders in your companies. You know, ceo, CEO, CTOs, building out a C-suite. And that's kind of where I'm headed in all of our companies towards building out really good leaders. So I can spend my time just on what I'm great at, which is producing content like this across all my platforms, growing an audience, growing distribution, and you know, creating new systems, processes, offers, tools, as well as a hiring more and more a plus kind of level 10 players in our company.

(12:56):
So thanks you guys for hanging out with me for the last 13, 15 minutes of your time and hope you guys really, really, really take to heart. You know, hiring virtual assistance, man, it makes the real estate company so much more scalable. You guys really need to focus on two things, which is more resources for your business, right? That could be investors, private money could be learning, going to conferences, another, your other job as an owner of a company. Well, as you go from hustler to operator to architect, you know, hustlers, you know you got that 300 K, right? The hustler is you're banging the doors, you're hitting the, the phones, you're putting out the band at signs, you're not good at delegating, then you get good at delegating, you become an operator, but you still don't really know how to train, manage and hire the right people.

(13:31):
Once you learn that, you move to architect. And I want you guys all to get to architect. And the way you do that is by starting to get rid of tasks right now. And a lot of times entrepreneurs won't do it cuz they have to slow down and they have to make the so p they have to make the training manual and if they feel like they're losing money, but in the long term you guys, that's evergreen work that's gonna benefit you forever. So please, please, please even take an hour a day, you know, wake up an hour earlier and spend an hour each morning documenting SOPs and, and creating playbooks for your companies and you will thank me. So I hope this episode help you guys and I'll see you uh, next time here on the off market operator.

(14:05):
Man, that was one of my favorite episodes. I, I just can't, I can't get across enough to people that the amount of use cases virtual assistance have in your business, especially combining offshore labor with tech tools we have like AI and machine learning, which I talk about a lot across my social media. So I think you guys definitely need to be putting this in practice and your companies here in 2023 and beyond. So hope you guys enjoy this episode. As always. Please, please, please a light, uh, share on your socials a review here, whatever that is that you guys have, you know, five minutes outta your day to do for me means the world. I'm trying to really grow this show here on 2023 and help more and more people become off-market operators and learn how to the magic of sourcing off-market deals and what that can do for their life, their business, their companies, and their financial future.

(14:47):
As always, please guys, go ahead into your listening on on Apple podcast. Click that plus button and save and download and subscribe to this Spotify. Same thing there we're on all of your favorite streaming platforms. Also, if you guys prefer the video, the visuals over on YouTube, I post all of these talking to you guys directly and man, as always, please hit me up on social media with any feedback. I'm still kind of beta testing this kind of shorter form content and style of quick hits and real useful tactical items for your company. And please, I do do take your feedback to heart. So until next time, you guys are only one deal away.