#29 Hiring Virtual Team Members In Your Rental Business

0:04This community particularly is made up of rental property investors what are some of the tasks that you think people from from my community might commonly hire someone to to take off their plates yeah definitely so say if you're in the in the Str space so the short-term rental space I mean as everybody finds out when they buy their first rental property and get it on vbo and Airbnb you very quickly own a hotel right customer service like there's one when you have a long-term renter and there's a plumbing issue right they got to live there they're going to take care of it they're going to help you through it when you've got someone who's got a three-day vacation and all of a sudden there's a leak or there I mean all of a sudden you just wrecked a core memory right and nobody wants that so a big thing in the in the short-term space is just a lot of the the client you know resident relation type Communications so whether it's like managing your posts

0:52Managing your listings across all your platforms or or within your booking CRM all the back and forth communication you know we have lots of clients that they'll you know they'll do courtesy calls right to 24 hours prior to check-in walk through kind of the hey what to expect where to go where to eat that you know just that type of like when you really want to create that experience so you can get the five star review and hopefully get another booking just all that really you know time conducive communication pieces on the on the long-term side both in single family as well as multif family I mean we made a hard pivot about three years ago in to focus more on the management side of it just because so much operationally that happens when you're running a property management company regardless of scale it could be five Co five properties it could be 50,000 doors I mean a lot of it is you know CRM customer leasing Administration type

1:41Work so the big two that a lot of our clients start in on the leasing side is like a leasing administrator so you know everyone's got a good leasing agent or maybe they have their property manager that also has a certain leasing component well it's always the paperwork piece that slows it down well you pay for technology it does you don't have to be sitting there locally in order to you know put somebody through a tenant screening or in order to to you know set movein dates move out dates so all that leasing administrative piece we we find great success with our vas and then obviously anything on the maintenance side both from the resident relations side Fielding tickets calls you know getting back to people checking in on on progress of work and then also on the vendor management side right just all of that from getting the initial inquiry all the way through to job completion and vendor paid there's a hundred different steps right it's the same steps every time but

2:30It it really that's you know a hard the hardest part for what we find a lot of managers to scale that you know where you're you know they typically are asking a lot of their property manager you know to to handle a lot of those touch points whereas we can complement them get them a more affordable resource in the form of a VA to take on a lot of that and enhance the experience create a better experience get paid faster get the proper paperwork out of your vendors and handle you know the 500 touch points that it takes when somebody files one work order yeah and what's what's the line for for a task that makes it more like as we moved away from like the Industrial Revolution where you're doing the exact same thing every day a workers hired to like just push a button or whatever you know and they're doing the same thing and we moved more into like the information

3:18Economy where it's like you get paid for being thoughtful and being able to think deeply and creative you know and so those two ends of the spectrum I think there's like a a middle ground I think where I've struggled with where it's like does a task cross the line to where it's too creative to assign to somebody else and it you know because because like you said like it could just be a maintenance thing that comes up but then it requires maybe thinking through like the other aspects that are going to be impacted by a decision that's made like every time there's a decision may there's other people other workers within the company the bigger the company probably the more secondary

4:08Impacts are going to occur so how do you decide where that line is and which which work to assign to a virtual assistant and and what to keep on your own plate yeah and I think maybe even just take a step back because it's something we hear a lot like how much can they do right and and I get why people ask that but I mean that's a tough question to answer you know what I mean because just from us from a recruiting standpoint we're recruiting people we're recruiting people that are three years removed from college we're recruiting people that are 20 years removed from college who have managed teams and operationally so for us when it comes to actually plugging somebody into that seat it's always on a case-by Case basis it's like what are you looking for that's why we go through that process mapping to really scope out like is this more of an operational role or is this more of like a strategy like Problem Solver type role and then we you know we fit the correct person what

4:56What I'll say is is a lot of people try to hand off especially if you've I'm sure this resonates with some of your listeners if they've tried to hire before the way vas are sold as the magic button right get a VA your life's easier they try to unload too much what what I will say kind of our methodology is we like to start and be have very concise Glide paths for the roles and responsibilities when the person starts and a lot of what our clients leverage our vas for is the operational side of it right those tasks that need to be done day in day out you know the leasing administrative process the maintenance coordination the following up with vendors the you know account reconciliations like that's the type of stuff that we love to start with a client especially when they're new because that's the stuff that a is probably falling off the table or falling between the cracks right

5:45Now and B it's it's where the VA can have a lot of impact they can really jump in now and I'm I'm kind of G to play both sides of the fence here we have clients that have had vas for four five six years through us where I mean I was just talking to one of the clients last week at at a convention they've got two vas one's their VP of operations the other one is is their director of operations and they make decisions they but that came with time it came with understanding you know how their company worked so what I will say is is Vaas are just like any other employee I'll say if you're trying to hire a a a strategy mind I typically tell people hire that locally just because from local market nuances obviously maybe for you as the owner wanting to have somebody there close right that you can work on strategy don't look to hire Vaas for that but right

6:33Out of the gate all of the operational task kind of based work that's very regimented that stuff that vas can come in and crush and then keep in mind treat your VA just like any employee those vas are going to grow with your company they're going to want to take on more I mean for for those of you that that aren't familiar with kind of Filipino culture like super hardworking people eager to learn and and and what happens there is is a lot of you know a lot of our clients move that VA up through their organization so so from the beginning I like to keep things in a very tight box in terms of hey I need you to do these seven things and here's how we do it but through the same coaching mentorship you know having them integrated with your team they certainly you know can take on more to where they can be those those decision makers that you know that we're all looking for and do

7:21Most people start with one well I guess how do how do you decide when it when it is time to hire somebody like how do you know that's the Tipping Point that you should bring bring someone on and then do most people start with one and then how do you see them progress over over the years is does it very quickly grow into multiple yeah no definitely so it's always on a case-by Case basis for us part of going through that process mapping is part of what our our process development team does as we're scoping out these roles and this is just having you know the the the longevity in the industry that we have we can look at let's just use the maintenance coordinator position again we can look at that and be like how many tickets how many filings vendors that they manage how many doors you have under management and really before we even get on that first process call we can say hey this is probably going to need two people or a full-time and a part-time person and that's

8:09Just kind of knowing the numbers and the workload that comes from how many doors or how many properties that you manage but but no it's very normal for us where somebody gets on a call looking for hey I just want some we offer a part-time option so hey I just I think I just need someone for 20 hours a week and they kind of get on you know with maybe having read the 4 Hour Work week or book like that and they're like yeah I just need them to like answer some emails maybe get through some like lease agreements and send out some renewal contracts like that's it and then very quickly they go through our process and they start to kind of uncover well I'm also not doing that or oh I forgot to do this or it'd be great if I could enhance this experience how do we do that and our team walks them through that and then I mean the biggest thing I think is kind of the aha moment and keep in mind we've all gotten a lot more used to this platform right the zoom kind of Zoom running our world

8:58But I think before a lot of it was you get on you you know you go through interviews for us we bring you candidates where you you get to pick from a pool so we kind of bring you varying skill sets experience personality types all custom match to your role but really kind of giving you options so that you can fit them into the culture that you want and I mean really for us it's usually once you SK that through that first couple weeks where they're like oh wow okay this is just like hiring somebody in the office and they totally get this and here take this on here do more you know it's just it's a natural kind of progression once it becomes tangible and real where a lot of clients start to finally realize like a this is way more efficient to operate like this and then B given the support of having like the process documentation and having our management teams there it just becomes so

9:47Much more easy to H or so much easier to hire than it would you know when you typically got to go to indeed and create a job description and all that stuff that it takes to hire somebody locally by yourself got it yeah and and what is that that process mapping process to be meta what does that look like in in terms of like time that it takes and the process of that and then what does the train up look like once you select a team member yeah definitely and I think just bigger picture if anybody's looking to hire vas themselves don't disregard scoping out the work the role what you want them to do and how you want them to do it and that takes on many forms it can literally be hey if if you want them to do I don't know your a book keeping an accounts payable function like record yourself doing the work ledgering the accounts you know going through the GL codes that you want

10:35Matched up like always have something don't rely on yourself to be the trainer because a that doesn't really free you up from doing the work that you're hiring the person to do but then B we've all been students before we've all sat there in a lecture hall and the teachers describe something on the Whiteboard or the chalkboard depending on how old you are and we've said oh that makes sense and then we go to lunch and we go out to dinner and all of a sudden we have a test the next week and you're like we don't remember anything right so having that resource material allows them to selfstudy and it gives them points of reference but but for us typically like time span when you're hiring with us it's typically going to be about two and a half weeks to go from first mapping call to VA starting to work for you and over the course of that time usually we're spending about you know two to five hours on live calls with you to

11:23Help scope this out for you and I think for a lot of people there's almost like this fear around like hey I'd rather just have someone and plug them in and let them go figure it out than me have to like sit here and like write out each step and what I want them to do and how I find these resources so we we make it really easy for our client we literally sit on there and it's almost like an interview you're working with you know if if you're if you're a short-term property or for short-term property manager you'll work with a team who specializes in in Str Str so regardless of what platform you're you're you're utilizing regardless of your technology stack regardless of how many doors you have your working with a team that knows hey if you need this position here's the seven things that you know most property managers need and that we're going to need to get out of you in order to create that process so we it's it's literally led by us we

12:11Go through and and walk through step by step by step on that video recording so like I said a couple couple calls about an hour hour and a half each and then what our team's typically doing we're typically spending about 30 to 40 hours actually doing the documentation creating video training checklists for every action item and really formalizing that that video that that interview that we did to get the process out of you and creating beautiful Sops and checklists and training documentation all built customed to you that then you get to keep and retain for forever so we we try to make it very easy just because coming from our experience we know how for some people like the documentation like that's what they don't have time for right the number of calls I get on you know Kirby every week where someone's like you know how how are your processes are they oh yeah we we've been working on that like

13:00Everyone's always working on it right we've got a team that knows the industry knows your businesses and will very quickly be able to hone in on exactly how you're operating and then more importantly they're the ones that have the time to organize it in such a way that the up trining of your VA is very painfree for everybody involved a