WE ALL HAVE TO START SOMEWHERE

Are you a company who hires Virtual Assistants needing "Experienced in Real Estate" on CV/resume before

taking them in as part of your team? Or a client who wants a Virtual Assistant who has the knowledge and

"experience" working Real Estate before you consider interviewing them?

For companies endorsing Virtual Assistants in this industry that require applicants to be experienced

before they are allowed to join the team, the question is, "If you can't teach Real Estate, how can you

guide and support your VAs properly in their everyday tasks and transitions?"

For clients looking to hire experienced Virtual Assistants, we get it! We worked Real Estate for years

and we understand the time needed to teach/ train assistants. The time you don't have!

The reality is, every office or in this case, brokerage and licensed agents have different ways of how

they want things done. The processes are different and representations vary. Tools and software

also differ. All these considered, even experienced Virtual Assistants need time to learn your

processes, tools, documents and the entirety of your business to be able to provide the services your

teams expect from them. If you think about it, the "learning curve" they need is like teaching an

assistant from zero anyway! Some who have the experience are so set in their own ways that they

are not interested in learning your way of doing business regardless of the consequences or worse;

may have lost the passion to do the work so performance will suffer.

We can then agree that while knowledge and experience give applicants the edge, these alone don't

make great assistants. So what exactly is it that need when hiring?

A great foundation and yes, the right attitude and correct mindset! They must at least speak

Real Estate, knowledge of the complete flow and structure of the business, the right attitude and

mindset towards work and the passion for making the partnership work!

That foundation! That passion! That attitude! That mindset!

For my anniversary month blog, I think it would be fitting to touch on this topic because of

how I started in this industry. My story will show you that if an assistant (VA or in‐office

employee) has the right attitude and mindset towards work and success, as long as you

don't set them out to fail, "nurture" and not experience that will make that assistant an

amazing performer.

MY STORY:

I was hired as an Executive Assistant to then one of the top Real Estate Owned (REO) Brokers in

Houston, Texas.

If you're knowledgeable in the Real Estate business, you know how difficult it is to work REO

properties. It's way more complicated than doing the traditional sale or resale transactions. For one

who didn’t have any knowledge in the industry, you can just imagine how scary it was for me to take

on the role as his Executive Assistant when it was offered.

He was aware of my lack of knowledge and experience but he hired me. This guy didn't just give me

chance to work the process as an individual, he later gave me the chance to manage a team doing

the process I had no clue how to do. Did I mention this guy was doing REOs??? I did my research so I

am sure you can understand why I said, "NO". But Stacy wasn't taking, "NO" for an answer. I thought

to myself, "This guy is certifiable!" (If you know him, you'll agree but that's a story for another day).

So I became and to date, I am. A Manager, I mean, not certifiable. I learned, did the work and went

the extra mile!

There are ways to acquire knowledge. You can be taught or you can do it on your own. Once you

have acquired the learnings, you need to be able to apply what you learned or everything is a waste

of knowledge and time. It just takes that "ONE" person to give you a chance. We all have to start

somewhere and if there is no one there willing to give you that chance, where do you go?

In my case, I found that "one" person before I have acquired the knowledge. It was learning on my

own as I apply which was a bit more complicated. So began my struggles and sleepless nights. I had

to learn because I had a team to manage, I had my client's business to take care of and I was never

one to shy away from challenges. And it was a big challenge because his answer to the first question

I asked immediately told me, I was on my own. I asked him if he has a company flow I can study to

know how his business and operations work. His answer was, "No because Real Estate is a

complicated. You'd be pretty smart if you can create one for this company." In three weeks, I was

able to do exactly that and more! I have been doing Real Estate including Property Management

since.

These days, I have a team of experienced Virtual Assistants teaching incoming VAs a total of 160

hours of Real Estate. Does it matter if the applicant knows Real Estate when we take him/her in?

NO! We don't need the VA to know or even have the experience, we will teach the VA everything

he/she needs to know about being a partner in the operations of a Real Estate Agent. It doesn't stop

there as that is just the foundation. When they get hired, we provide guidance and assistance to

both the VA and the client during transition and onwards.

In the world of Real Estate or any other industry, if you can't teach the language, how can you even

brag about the ability to communicate properly?

With Summit VA Solutions, we have the knowledge, experience and more importantly, the ability

teach our VAs not just the language but how to speak the language properly. And just because

knowing it is not enough, we'll continue to guide and support them to be best of our ability towards

success. We're confident in what we train VAs on that we don't need already trained or experienced

VAs to be part of our team!

We hire attitude and then we nurture!



If you want to know more about our process of teaching and what we train our VAs on, email us at info@summitvasolutions.com or call us at 877-561-2778