Automate your business and be the master of your own time.

1. Automate Your Business to Increase Income and Still Get
Home On Time!
2 Hour CE
Terrence Yonker
Course #0018793
2 CE
Provider: #0007266

2. Course Objectives
1. Determine if you are ready for automation in your business
2. List the steps that we can take to increase our productivity
3. List the items that can we delegate to an unlicensed assistant
4. Describe the three main types of Virtual Assistants
5. Explain how to find and train a Virtual Assistant
6. List the ways that your clients benefit by using Virtual Assistants
Timeline
Introduction 5 min.
Are you ready for automation? 5 min.
How do we prepare to automate and delegate? 10 min.
Permissible activities to delegate 10 min.
Three types of Virtual Assistants 20 min.
Step by step process to hire and train Virtual Assistants 30 min.
How the clients benefit when administrative tasks are delegated 10 min.
Conclusion/Questions 10 min.
Total 100 min.
(2 hours CE)

3. Introduction
Without a doubt, the biggest challenge any agent faces is the time crunch. Many times, it isn’t
about building a team in your own office, but simply about recapturing time spent in tasks that
don’t directly sell homes. “Checking” and responding to email, marketing activity (both
traditional and digital), and many aspects of the due-diligence phase of a sale simply take up
time that could be spent creating new relationships with customers. The truth is that there are
a fixed number of seconds in each day and the more you make of each one of those seconds,
the more time you have for your family, yourself, or your business.
At the same time, no matter how efficient you are, there is simply a point when you cannot
scale any more if you don’t take steps to effectively make more time. Therein lies the beauty of
the Virtual or Personal Assistant. They can provide you with a skilled outlet to replicate the
exact systems you find most critical in your own business while providing you with the time
savings you need. More importantly, highly skilled Virtual Assistants can be sourced from
nearly any market in the United States or the world and often can be deployed affordably. This
is a new level of delegation far away from the traditional office systems many of us have grown
used to and, as we will see, it can be far more effective.

4. Are You Ready for Automation?
In a slower market or with lower production, most of us can get by okay without help. We do
all of our advertising, bookkeeping, showing homes, prospecting, everything! But at some point
that is different for each of us, things start to fall apart.
• We start missing family activities. Our business is one where ‘time is of the essence’
and as we get busier, not only does our business suffer, but our family life suffers as
well. This balance between personal life and business life is crucial for long term
sustainability in this business.
• We start neglecting our health. Hours spent doing administrative work where you are
neither helping your clients, your family and friends, or even yourself benefit nobody.
Time to care for your health is of paramount importance, especially as we get older. But
what can we do? Newsletters must go out, listings have to be entered. What is going to
give? Often it is you. When your health breaks down everything suffers, including your
work.
• We spend less time communicating with our customers as we are backed up in
paperwork. Our customers look to us as the experts in our field. We provide guidance
and expert care in our dealings with buyers and sellers. The more time we spend
processing paperwork the less time we can spend fulfilling our promises to the public
that we serve. More activity is good, it means more business for us! But when it comes
at the expense of the public that we serve, something else must be done.

5. How Do We Prepare for Automation and Delegation?
Changing the way we work is not the easiest thing to do! The best way is always to train or
work with someone that has done it successfully using Florida programs and tools.
Programs like automatedagent.net or even courses like these from education providers can
save time and money successfully implementing automation, delegation, and assistants.
Whether you do it with help or on your own, there are still three main steps to follow.
1. Prepare yourself for this change. For most of us this is a different way of working, we
need to share some of our documents and let others do some of our tasks in order to
improve. It can be difficult! To improve on what we do, we first must be aware of what
it is that we actually do during the day. To that end, the next step is to clearly document
what tasks need to be done on a daily, weekly, or even a monthly basis. These tasks will
become the actual training steps and the basis for the core jobs to be done by your VA!
2. Prepare your systems! A side benefit of automating and working with virtual staff is
that your business will need to become cloud based! There are great tools, many of
them already often supplied by your broker, association, or online to lever already.
Having a paper on your desk won’t help you when your virtual assistant needs to email
it somewhere!
3. With that in mind, there must be a clear understanding that simply hiring a VA and
expecting them to immediately know how to do the tasks asked of them is fruitless.
Neither party will have a satisfying experience and the demands upon the agent will not
be lessened. Thus, the need for systems. Reviewing the list of permissible activities that
non-licensed VAs can do and comparing them with the list of daily, weekly, or monthly
activities that need to be accomplished is where you begin your delegation. At the same
time, the agent must be able to clearly train the new VA in how the process works. This
aspect cannot be impressed upon enough. Shortchanging your expectations and
training in the beginning will result in a lack of efficiency in the end – exactly what you
are seeking to alleviate.

6. Permissible Activities
Florida Real Estate Agents are held to an extremely high standard when it comes to the rules of
engagement. One of the most critical parts of utilizing a VA in your business model is a clear
understanding of what they can and cannot do. Below is a comprehensive list based on the
latest guidelines for unlicensed assistants in the real estate field. Of even higher importance is
that the agent understands how these tasks can be used in conjunction with modern tools
maximize time spent in tasks critical to the benefit and security of their clients.
Permissible Activities of an Unlicensed Assistant
Revised and approved by FREC 09/15/2009
Unlicensed assistant is defined as support staff for a real estate corporation or other licensed
individuals.
• Answer the phone and forward calls
• Fill out and submit listings and changes to any multiple listing service
• Follow-up on loan commitments after a contract has been negotiated and generally
secure the status reports on the loan progress
• Assemble documents for closing
• Secure documents (public information) from courthouse, utility district, etc.
• Have keys made for company listings, order surveys, termite inspections, home
inspections and home warranties with the licensed employer’s approval
• Write ads for approval of the licensee and the supervising broker, and place advertising
(newspaper ads, update web sites, etc…); prepare flyers and promotional information
for approval by licensee and the supervising broker
• Receive, record and deposit earnest money, security deposits and advance rents
• Only type the contract forms for approval by licensee and supervising broker
• Monitor licenses and personnel files
• Compute commission checks
• Place signs on property
• Order items of repair as directed by licensee

7. • Prepare flyers and promotional information for approval by
licensee and supervising broker
• Act as a courier service to deliver documents, pick-up keys
• Place routine telephone calls on late rent payments
• Schedule appointments for licensee to show a listed property
• Be at an open house for:
o Security purposes
o Hand out materials (brochures)
• Answer questions concerning a listing from which the answer must be obtained from
the licensed employer-approved printed information and is objective in nature (not
subjective comments)
• Gather information for a Comparative Market Analysis
• Gather information for an appraisal
• Hand out objective, written information on a listing or rental

8. Three Types of Virtual Assistants
By far the most common way that an agent gets help is with an in office assistant. In the not
too distant past that was the only option that many agents had. With advances in technology,
the use of a virtual assistant has become more economical and feasible than ever! The main
drawbacks of having an in-office assistant versus a virtual assistant are:
You must provide office space and perhaps pay additional franchise fees. There are physical
constraints that you just can’t get around!
If you live in a higher cost of living area your assistant will be more expensive than necessary.
Extremely talented people often live in lower cost areas of the country or the world. Previously
we did not have access to them. But we do now.
Independent Contractor vs. Employee. This benefit is slightly beyond the scope of this course,
but check with your tax expert on whether your in house assistant would be classified as an
employee or independent contractor. The answer may surprise you. Please refer to IRS
publication https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1779.pdf.
These and other factors have led to the explosion of the Virtual Assistant Industry and Real
Estate Professionals have benefited greatly from this explosion. Services such as
automatedagent.net have evolved to take you through each step of the process, or you can
decide which type serves your purpose and jump in on your own. There are three main types
of Virtual Assistant services available.
1. Project-Based One Time Services
a. These sites provide a platform where contractors offer their services to anyone
on primarily a one-off basis. Tasks such as design a web page, write a resume,
create a flyer can all be done here for as little as five dollars per job!
2. Task – Based On Demand Services
a. This is a relatively new service that agents can now take advantage of. Tasks are
broken into smaller 20 minute chunks. These are often US companies that use all
US Virtual Assistants. They break tasks into 20 minute ‘orders’. Any task that
can be done remotely, such as research flights, find the best deal on printing
business cards, research, order and send closing gifts can all be done here.

9. 3. Part of Full Time Integrated Assistants
Example: Direct – Upwork.com
Example: Agencies – Literally hundreds of different options!
Integrated assistants are often the most appealing option for agents for several reasons:
a. Many of our tasks are repetitive, which means that once someone does the
documented task a few times they become competent at it and can do it for you
indefinitely!
b. Upwork.com is the largest online workplace. The site allows us to access a talent
pool from all over the world. Most of what takes up our time are administrative
tasks, not tasks that require our unique expertise or knowledge. These tasks can
be done by people who are experts at administration and administrative tasks.
These are important jobs to be sure, but they often detract from the agent’s
main job, to work with the customer.
c. We always have the option to work with one of the countless agencies that have
filled this need, after all it is still better than doing everything yourself. Typically
the agencies add little value. Often, they will charge the client double and still
leave the client alone to train, succeed, or fail on their own. The rare exception
is when you truly have a team that provides an office, internet line, and people
that can step in should one falter. Among the agencies, this is the most optimal
setup.

10. Step by Step Process to Hire and Train a Virtual
Assistant
Of the three types, we will focus on hiring and training the part time integrated assistant, as
that is the best place for a first-time agent to start.
So how do we do it? The process starts by preparing your training first, before you hire the
Virtual Assistant. You want to be clear on what they will do for you from the moment that they
are hired.
You do this by taking the recordings of yourself doing just two time-consuming tasks out of your
“every day” job tasks. From a technology point of view, this can be done through a free screen
capture site such as Screencast – o – matic.com which simply records the screen and your
description as you go through the task. Once you record yourself completing the task, and it
may take two or three times, you will then have the basis of the training videos that you will
give to your VA that you will hire. By doing this first and providing a clear idea of what they will
do BEFORE you hire them, you will save time and headache in the training process once you
have hired your VA.
The next step is setting up your VA with the proper credentials to access the files or systems
that you use when completing your tasks. Basic time savings can be garnered through email
organization, appointment scheduling, or dozens of other tasks – all dependent upon the agent
and their specific business. These can all be delegated and, more importantly, as the VA
becomes skilled in how to do it effectively, your trust of their work – and, let’s be honest, their
integrity – grows. Now, you can utilize your VA by training them in other tasks. The actual
work required of the agent? Experience shows that well-trained VAs save you approximately
80% of the time you formerly spent on any given task. The agent maintains control checking
and approving the final product before completion. The agent gets the desired output without
doing every portion of the task themselves.
Of greater importance is to understand that this is largely “on the job” training. Should you
need to hire another VA, the training starts all over again with the videos and training materials
that you have already done. In this way, you have the beginnings of a training system for future
VAs, personal assistants in your office, and other employees that you may use in your business.
Think of this not so much as training an individual but in developing a training system.
With all that in mind, where do you go to find a VA? While there are several local choices,
technology gives us a valuable tool to deploy if the agent chooses. The first critical element –
that of understanding what they can delegate – has already been taken care of. By using the
internet and any number of websites that offer freelancing services, you can research, hire, and

11. train your new VA in the exact pieces of your own puzzle that you need
them to ultimately take control of for your daily tasks. In this area, the
website UpWork seems to have a great selection and clearly states the
hourly fees and experience – much like a job posting website except all
the “applicants” are freelancers or contractors. There are many other services that can help
you to locate a skilled VA as well. These generally offer services as a monthly package of hours
and handle some of this research and vetting for you. You may pay more for their service, but
in some cases, it may be worth it as they add a layer of management and accountability to your
job.
In almost any example out there today, international VAs with bilingual language skills and
college educations can be had very affordably. At the same time, skilled freelancers in the
United States, without the overhead of office space, working from home, can often be found
for a reasonable $10-$13 per hour.
Assuming you are not using an agency model for sourcing your VA but instead looking for an
independent contractor through a website like UpWork, the steps are simple – join the website
and then post a job opening for your new VA in a relevant category.
Below is the very basic methodology to get you started with criteria for posting a job on a site
like UpWork:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Category: Admin Support / Personal / Virtual Assistant
• Job Description: Please use a cover letter beginning with 'I love Florida Real Estate!‘
• Job Name: Real Estate VA needed
• Describe the work to be done:
‘I am looking for someone to help with my daily tasks as a real estate agent. These tasks
include but are not limited to: calendar management, email management, posting online ads,
transaction management. We can provide full training, attention to detail is a must!’
• Skills Needed: Administrative Support, Virtual Assistant, Email Handling, Calendar
Management
• How would you like to pay? Hourly
• Estimated Duration: 6 months
• Estimated Workload: Less than 30 hours per week
• Desired Experience Level: Entry
• Marketplace Visibility: Give my job maximum exposure

12. From this point, interested freelancers will reply to your posting (just like a
“help wanted” advertisement) and it will be up to you to determine if they
are the right fit for you. Again, this is a virtual world and your “interview”
may feel a little strange, but follows the same structure as a face-to-face. You’ll invite
candidates to an interview, review the job, review their ability to do the job, and, if they appear
to be a good fit for the position, you can retain their services.
During the last several years of deploying VAs in business, there are some questions that seem
to provide great answers within this model and they are:
● Question 1: What did you like about your last job and why?
● Question 2: Tell me about your workspace (this can provide you with critical
information about the technology they are using and their expected
competence with virtual systems).
● Question 3: Give me some examples of the coolest stuff that you have done at
other jobs.
If they pass your test, then hire them! Different sites have different hiring processes, but
generally, the website will utilize a hold on a virtual payment (dependent on terms) and only
pay when you are satisfied with the caliber of the work. Not to trivialize it, but if you’ve ever
bought anything on eBay or Amazon, the site is indeed a business and the products are the
freelancers who use the site. Poor work on their part will result in action from the website –
from restriction of their access to it to refunding any payments you might have made.
Once you have your VA hired, a critical step must be to establish an email connection with them
through email. Gmail offers a free solution to this and a huge benefit of Gmail is that you can
create a branded email from your office. Clients receiving an email that originates from your
company – even if your VA is thousands of miles away – will not be concerned about security.
At the same time, this allows you to easily monitor the VA and change any access they may
have as you deem appropriate.
Earlier we spoke about training and processes and now is when they will come into play.
Recording your training on systems like Screencast-o-Matic or even YouTube allows you to
record once and make that accessible to your VA anytime they may have a question – on tasks
they may rarely have to do, for example, without having to reach out to you for anything other
than clarification and communication about job related functions and questions. At the same
time, free software like Google Docs can allow them to edit working documents or processes
for your attention at any time.

13. Managing someone often for the first time can be challenging for an agent.
Communication is a key part of a successful relationship with your Virtual Assistant. One of the
reasons for a dedicated email address for them is that line of communication is kept open and a
critical component is daily email. With that in mind, the daily email should include:
• What did you do today?
• This tells you what they have done, and keeps both of you on the same page
with expectations.
• What difficulties did you encounter?
• Often assistants will not come to you when they need help because of fear or
shyness, so when they can write it as a part of a daily check in it is often
easier.
• What can I (the agent) do to help?
• This showed shared interest and responsibility in their success. It’s not just
asking them what is wrong, but brings you into the picture as the ‘boss’.

14. Client Benefit of Using Virtual Assistants
The overriding purpose of going through the sometimes-difficult changes in our business is to
better serve our clients. Clients are the lifeblood of our business. The more time that we can
spend with them and less in necessary administrative paperwork, if it is being done properly
with administrative help, the better.
Your clients will appreciate:
1. Increased time with them to look at houses, provide face-to-face updates on the sale of
their property, and just general relationship building.
2. Time to take more classes and stay current with the latest trends and laws in the
business. Our business is constantly changing, and if we can be freed up to stay current,
we do our clients a huge service.
3. Improvement in accuracy and consistency of our administrative tasks done on behalf of
the client. When the same person does the same task repeatedly results in proficiency
in that task. With the help of a CRM or project management software the accuracy of
that task can be honed even further. Emails get sent out on time, calls get made and
follow up on things like loan approval are done on a more consistent basis.

15. Conclusion
The result of taking this journey is not simply to train one individual to do menial tasks from
your day-to-day, but to create a replicable system to train individuals as Virtual Assistants for
you in your business model. By clearly documenting the tasks and developing a means to easily
train those tasks, you can ensure that you never get stuck in a “training” cycle and instead, you
record the process once and simply make sure that your follow up is robust. In terms of time
savings, agents who have used VAs only to alleviate daily tasks save, on average, 8 hours a
week.
That’s another whole day in the field, meeting customers, interfacing with new clients, and
being home for dinner. Imagine how an extra day or even two each week spent in the actual
service of your clients can impact your own income and it’s easy to see why deploying a VA is
among the most cost-effective returns on your investment.
Just as importantly, by creating a system to utilize VAs in your own business, you’ve effectively
created a route to maximize your primary skills. Real Estate Agents provide the most value to
their clients through sharing their expertise and knowledge with their clients face to face.
Virtual Assistants help you to spend more time doing these critical tasks to help protect and
provide a valuable service to the clients that you serve.
Recommended Resources:
Automatedagent.net – The complete guide to Automation and Virtual Assistants for Florida
Real Estate Agents
Upwork.com – World’s Largest Source for contract talent