Episode 26

How To Eliminate Tedious Work And Get More Of Your Time Back With Lisa Piatt

When it comes to running a successful business, how much time are you wasting on minimal tasks instead of hyper-focusing on what's most important?

The life of an entrepreneur/real estate professional can be very busy, hectic, and fast-paced.

Lisa Piatt, a high powered virtual assistant, works with busy professionals across different industries such as music, comedy, ministry, and real estate. Today she tells us about what a virtual assistant can do for your business and how the services she provides can help your business scale much more efficiently.

You learn how a quality virtual assistant can do way more that make cold calls. A good virtual assistant can even help you make marketing materials!

How much more business could you do and how many more deals would you be able to close if your virtual assistant took over your day to day tasks?

Reach out to Lisa to learn more

-----------------------------

Lisa's Website Here

Lisa on Facebook Here

Lisa on LinkedIn Here

----

The real estate industry is undergoing a lot of changes. Most real estate agents, real estate investors, and real estate entrepreneurs are struggling to keep up with the most effective trends and marketing tools.

Things are moving too fast. The REmarketing Book will help you gain a competitive edge by teaching you what you need know to leverage tools like social media, email marketing, lead generation, lead conversion, remarketing, and retargeting strategies to attract new leads on autopilot!

Our strategies are all about implementation and we will help you generate more leads from your marketing than ever before by using proven techniques that work today. You'll learn how to use these tactics yourself or learn how you can delegate to others effectively and efficiently.

Click the link below to get your copy of REmarketing - Real Estate Marketing: Insider’s Secrets of Successful Advertising, Lead Generation, & Marketing Implementation For Real Estate Entrepreneurs:

📌📌📌 https://remarketingbook.com/

- Your Digital Real Estate Strategy Team

Transcript

Okay. And we are live everyone. Welcome everybody to the remarketing podcast, where we cover, uh, issues surrounding tech, real estate, business, business leadership, uh, systems, mindset, and all sorts of things related to being a successful in business and running it. Successful real estate, uh, business for being a real estate agent.

Uh, I'm your host for today? Scott selector. And I am very happy to welcome on Lisa P. She is a virtual assistant who works with a number of high level professionals and a variety of different areas, uh, including, uh, ministry comedy, real estate, uh, media. Uh, so Lisa, welcome to the podcast. Um, would you like to tell our audience and our listeners a little bit about yourself before we go onto the interview?

Just give everybody a, Hey, how you doing? Yeah. Yeah. I've been a virtual assistant for about five years now. Um, I work with, as you were saying, many different people. Um, I started working with mainly musicians, uh, but now more and more, I find myself working with real estate agents more than anyone right now.

Okay. So, um, I don't know. so how did you get, so how did you get into doing the, the remote assistant type of work? Um, I know you actually, I was doing volunteer work for a ministry, uh, a Christian artist named Carmen. Okay. And his assistant abruptly quit out of the blue and it just kind of landed on me. So I just basically got thrown into it about five years ago, so, and then I had to learn everything really quickly.

So what was it? So what was that like? Like you just gotta thrown on your shoulders and. but like, what was your biggest challenge going through that? Because I could imagine to turn to juggle so many. Would be, yeah. I went from knowing nothing to having to handle contracts and learn editing, uh, video and audio, social media, mass emailing.

I went from knowing zero to having to know everything within really like a day. Like I took crash courses with him seriously. Like it was a day I had to learn how to use MailChimp and everything. So he just started throwing everything at me and I just juggled. Oh, so that the whole thing was a challenge.

And you did it all in just one day. Yeah. I had to learn it all in about one day. I'm not even kidding. It was about one day so crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't do a great job, but I did as the best that I could on that day. All right. And then after Carmen, where did you go? Um, you know, I balanced a lot of, um, like ad hoc jobs in between, and then I went on to comedian Jack Vale.

So I work, I currently work with Jack VA. Alrighty. And so now you're starting to bridge into real estate. So what, um, what inspired the change over from musicians to ministry, to comedy now over to real. Well, I had a chance meeting with our friend Jerome Lewis. yep. Good friend. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, and just knowing him, people started noticing me on social media and who I worked for.

Some people, some real estate agents are fans of Carmen's even, and Jack. So they started throwing me work. So that's really how I got into it. Now, most of my clients are real estate agents. That's really cool. And, and, you know, I think this is something that comes up a lot, uh, a lot. Old investors, old time, investors are a little hesitant to pass off, uh, some of the responsibilities on the other people, but in this growing like digital age, you can do far more deals.

And I think the younger real estate investors coming and are realizing is they're looking for people to take on those tasks, like sending out mails, answering emails, even doing initial calls is something that some of our, our people do in this field, which would be, uh, you know, just a cold calling can take a lot of time.

And sure. We start in real estate. They typically start off cold calling by themselves cause they don't have any money, but once they have some deals that are getting done, cold calling takes up a lot of time. It really does. Yeah. Yeah. You're talking about probably like making a hundred phone calls and maybe only 10 of them are something worth pursuing.

And so that's a lot of positive. Yeah, absolutely. I've had to cold call churches for different ministries and I could call about a hundred churches and maybe get one or two positive responses, you know? So that's, it's a lot of. That's so do, do you have any like tools or systems you use while you do that to make it more effective?

I don't really too much experience with, I actually utilize people find someone's fan base or their base, and I utilize those and put to work. So I'm about typically about manage about 15 volunteers underneath me, so, wow. So that's that's so I typically use, um, people . Okay. that's yeah. Yeah. It works the best because they will help you cold call, you know, if they believe in what you're doing, they will jump behind you and help you, man.

So you're good at recruiting, which is something I'm very good at recruiting. Yeah. I don't think I've, I've heard about any virtual assistant that I've, I've ever talked to a real estate investor about. Usually they are you're handing off assignments, but, uh, VAs, what. From always from what I heard, I haven't used one myself.

Don't usually take on a leadership type position of recruiting their own people. Multiply their effective. That's really, that's a wonderful service supervisor. Yeah. Yeah. I just find out who, um, who is really a believer in, um, the ministry or the person like family friends I'll recruit. And then I juggle them along with other things.

So I'm really good with dealing with volunteers. I had about 15 volunteers under me for a solid two years working almost full time for free because we believed in the mission. So, yeah. Wow. I love doing that. That's awesome. That's really awesome. Yeah. Um, how would you, uh, apply that to real estate? Do you think you think that's true?

It would be different with real estate because, um, yeah, I couldn't do that real with real estate might be, you know, I dunno, I would have to think about that's a good question. Like, because I know not everything that works in entertainment is gonna work in real estate. So I would, as I would do other jobs for people in real estate, um, So, yeah, I can't really answer that to be honest.

well, I, I know that you could, you probably don't have a fan base in real estate, but you know, well, you could that's, that's not necessarily umactually. I can give you some resources. There's a bunch of real estate YouTubers out there, and there are audiences, other real estate investors. So there. Oh, see.

Yeah. Think like if have any kinda following any kinda social media following, I can actually utilize any following for anybody. As long as they have a following, I can utilize it. I'm very good at that. For example, our, our mutual colleague, Rome Lewis, he has a following and they're all real estate professionals.

So see, I could utilize all of them. yeah. So I think you absolutely be able to transfer your skills over to that when you connect with the right people and you get those clients. Uh, under, underneath your wing. And I think it's gonna be really interesting. I know you're just sort of starting to bridge out into the real estate space with some, some investors doing their yes, uh, marketing materials, but I am familiar with your social media content and you have great engagement, so I'm sure you might even be able to build a, a fan base for them.

If you took someone on and that would be a huge benefit to somebody. Oh, absolutely. I'm very good with hopping on their pages. And because I get to know them well enough to know the types of responses they would would say to people. So I'm really good at engaging their fans and their fans think they are literally talking to that person.

So. Oh, wow. Yeah. I'm really good with that too. That is awesome. So let me dive into a couple of our, our interview questions here. Okay. So that way we can get more information out to our listeners, uh, about what you do about who you are. And, and one of the things I'd like to talk about later on too, is why having a virtual assistant is so important for business.

Uh, that would be a really good thing that maybe you can speak more on since I, I haven't used one yet myself. Uh, so let's do our first question, which is, uh, what's one thing your, your business venture did that you didn't expect. Um, like sort of what we covered earlier, just I got thrown into it. So literally everything was unexpected.

I didn't realize how, how much a virtual assistant actually needed to learn how to do and actually do so. So I would say all of it was really surprising to me. okay. So yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, it sounds like you handled it pretty well. Like you're one of those people that adapts very quickly to change and learns very quickly.

That's like, yeah, it half on your side. It was like a 15 hour day. I was in tears by the end of the day, but I, I had it figured out and I did it and then I became really good at it, but it took some work. Success and say, I don't know that I can do that. Like all of that all at once I be, I was crying. I was just like a, you know, a woman in her house.

oh my gosh. I you've got some determination there, so yeah. Yeah. I love Carmen and I believed in his work, so I'm like, I don't wanna be your assistant, but okay. Let's do this. And then 10 hours later, I was crying on the floor, but I had things figured out oh my God. I mean, I'm with certain things. I think in that situation, I would be a slow to learn type person.

I know the, the previous job I worked in, which was with, uh, disabled children. Sometimes my boss would throw me into a case without even telling you what to do or how to do it. And I was just kinda left there to figure it out on my own. Um, I did, but not in a day. Not, not nearly as quickly as you did. It's okay.

I had to, um, because my boss traveled, so I had to figure out, like I had to work with travel agents and book flights, and then, um, and I had to like send contracts around to churches and I had to do it all on day one. So there just wasn't really a lot of time for training. Yeah, it was a lot, so. That's insane.

I can't believe that. That's awesome that you were able to do that though and learn that quickly. That's something that is, is extremely valuable, especially in real estate, because real estate is changing every day. The market shifts, the market moves absolutely move. I mean, if you look at, I don't know, say like five, 10 years ago, direct mail was much more effective than it is today.

Now it's better to do things digitally because the majority of people who own a Homer are selling a Homer, doing things online. and it's just the nature of, of how our, our markets work and how society changes over time. So it's, you have to be adaptable in real estate. That's going to be a strength that you pull into this.

I know your clients that you already have are gonna value that as you move forward with them. Absolutely. Let me ask you this. What's a common myth about your job. Um, a lot of people just assume I'm I do secretarial work yeah, but most spiritual. Yeah. Like maybe they do a little secretarial work. We're trained to do a little bit of everything.

So like I'll personally come into an organization or ministry or get behind a person and I'll handle all the non-core activities so that the person I work for can, you know, focus growing his or her business. So I do all of the other stuff while they do the. Stuff. So I think that's pretty important to do so I've done everything from booking travel, like travel coordination, social media, you know, editing audio and video, just everything.

So I'm trained in a little bit of everything. I think everyone that works and everyone is a virtual assistant. Does that. So we're definitely not just secretaries. Like we'll give up at 3:00 AM and fix your problem. wow. Yeah, that, that actually answers the thing I was talking about earlier, which is why it's so important for a successful business to have a virtual assistant, uh, working for them because you do it all.

You do the marketing. If there's travel involved, you can do that. Answer emails, cold call. You don't need to hire like an inhouse person to do. These tasks, you can hire me like hourly or per task or even flat rate. You don't have to pay for full-time employee to come into your place of business. You can just hire someone like me to do that.

It's cheaper actually. Oh, oh yeah. Absolutely. Cause there's no buy a lot. Yeah. You can run your business completely remotely, which is where we, we think the trends are starting to go anyways. Especially since COVID where everybody has kind of converted to remote. Even office spaces have started doing all that in order to do this pandemic.

Excuse me. It's okay. But yeah, that is, that's so important. you know, to not have to pay for the insurance, to not have to pay for the office space, to have your, your administrative assistance come in. Mm-hmm they can hire you work completely remote through phone. Yeah. I'm already trained in what you need.

You don't have to spend money on training me. Um, you know, so we're all trained in whatever you guys pretty much need, so excellent. Excellent. So let me ask you, uh, what is the most important lesson you've learned while being a virtual a. I would say, don't let your emotions get in the way of your job.

Like, no matter what you're going through personally, you have to keep moving forward, you know, with people depending on you and everything, you really have to stay the course, no matter what. So I've had bad days where my boss has. Upset me or angered me and I would have to still, I would still give them a hundred percent, you know, a hundred percent everything.

So, you know, it's just all about, don't let your emotions get in the way of your work. So I think that's the biggest lesson I've ever learned. Well, I think you, I think you'll enjoy real estate investors a little bit then because we, in order to be at least a successful investor, you have to have control over your emotions.

Absolutely. You really. You know, I can be a little emotional personally. the business you can't tell. My boss will never know. I have a bad day. I I've always exactly. I'm proud of that fact. I run it so seamless that even if I'm having the worst day of my life, nobody knows. I just deal with it and I focus on work.

So exactly. Exactly. Mm-hmm , that's how you have to. That's how I was professional. That's how, that's how I was everywhere I work, you know, at least at least life at, at the door, I'm here to do a job. Yes. A complete separation. Yeah, absolutely. That's that's a really important lesson across the board. It doesn't just extend to being a virtual assistant.

I don't, yeah. It's like life. That's a life lesson right there. Yeah. Like you, everyone has to do that. Yeah, definitely. So, in, in your opinion, what is the, the most important personality trait that someone would need to work as a VA? I would say three things, flexibility, loyalty and discretion because your, you know, your clients are on different projects.

So, and sometimes different time zones. So you have to be flexible. Like I can work 24 7, you know, um, And I set my, I set little alarms too in their time zone, so I can remind them when they need to do stuff. Um, so you just need to be flexible. Um, and you have to be discreet because you're handling a lot of their personal information and sometimes very private things that they're going through.

You're aware of. So it's always very important to be very discrete with their. With their issues. So, um, and loyalty, if, you know, if you have their back, they're gonna have your back, so, and then they'll give you more work. So I think those three are the most important things you can do. Okay. Yeah. I definitely, I agree.

Loyalty's huge. I always do the best work I can by my clients. And I honestly, even if I can't help them, I'm very blunt upfront with them telling them that I, I don't think I can help me too. If I feel like I can't do that, I will help them find somebody that, that can't, you know, so, and I'm always very upfront about that.

Like, Hey, I don't really understand how to do that. I'm learning as quickly as I can. Let me, um, send you to a colleague. Yep. That I aim to do the same thing. I think that's the ethical thing to do. And you know, that mm-hmm, that plays in the loyalty, cuz if you're being loyal to your clients, you're also being honest with them.

Uh, flexibility is a huge, huge thing. For me. It's a huge thing for other real estate investors because this business does change. Especially say, if you get hired by someone who's doing rehabs, they're flipping houses, you know, a project can change in a minute. They can find an issue. And maybe if you're working for this investor, they have you call the contractor.

So you have to make calls to contract. Yeah. You have to think on your feet, it can be a little high stress because you really have to think on your feet and you have to change your schedule to match theirs a lot of times. So they're the boss. Yes. I'd imagine you're pretty good at juggling a. Multitask. I am.

I'm very good at, uh, going from one task to the next and I call it switching gears. You know, I'm working with ministry one minute, then the next minute real estate, then maybe the comedian. So I'm trying to do three different things. I have to ship gears and I have to get into work mode for each person.

So it's tricky, but I do it. Do you, do you have any, uh, tips or strategies that you use to help you switch gears? Oh man. I try to take it 10 minutes in between, because then you, cuz you really have to get out of that mode and then to that mode and they're all different personality types. So you have to know this, person's more professional.

This person's funny. You know, this person is very, um, very strict and very hard to deal with. So you really. You just gotta kind of go into it with that. I would say take 10 minutes in between clients at least. okay. So take the time between clients mm-hmm . Is there anything mentally though, or do you just kind of think about what you're going to need to do?

Um, I'll go for a walk and like blast music in my ears. So yeah, I'll take a few walks a day. All right. Yeah. You know, that sounds very similar to this book. I was reading called the alter ego effect and essentially the author was talking about kind of that idea, how people, aren't just one solid thing. We wear multiple house throughout the day, depending on who we're talking to.

If we do, it'll be your clients in their area of expertise and where, how, where they're running their business, you know? But you also, if you have family, you wouldn't talk to your mother the same way you talk to your children or exactly. You wouldn't talk either of them the same way you talk to your employer.

Right. Like, we all do wear multiple hats throughout the day, but it seems like for you that you're having to wear multiple hats throughout the work day as well. In addition to life, it's a good thing. I got all these personalities. Oh yeah. Imagine its difficult at times. Like what is that? Like having a switch it's hard.

All right. Alright. Right. I had that with Carmen though, because he had like, you know, he, he could be a little emotional, so I had to switch gears with his mood. So he kind of prepped me for all the different things. okay. So it was good training then. Yeah. If you can work for Carmen, you can work for anyone.

I always say, oh my gosh, that's too funny. Is that was again with the, the previous, uh, my previous employment before getting into doing his full-time. Uh, the, my first student that I worked with, if you could, if you could work with him, you could work with anyone. She gave me the hardest person. Right. And at that primed me for everything.

It was great. I was glad that I had it, but she kind of threw me to the wolves kind of like you did in your, your situation. I was like, I dunno what I'm doing. Oh. But, but you figure it out and then it's really good that you've done that. So let's, uh, move on to this one. This one's, uh, I love this. So, what is one thing about being a VA that almost no one agrees with you about or that's, uh, involved in being a VA?

You know what, honestly, people, um, they don't agree with my. How cheap I am. Actually. I know that's a whole different thing, but okay. So I argue mostly with a lot of people about how I undercharge for my services. So like, I think I'm right on target and other people I undercharge. Okay. Mm-hmm and, and you think you charged the right amount.

So can I ask you what stops you from charging more? If other people are willing to they're valuing you at a certain, right? Why not? That's my opinion. Why not charge? 'em what they, they think you were let, 'em let 'em say. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I, I know that's right. So, but that's the one thing I argue with about certain people about that.

So I guess that's really the only thing people. Think I probably, you know, I argue with most about with my job. Okay. Other than that, I'm always right about everything else. oh, OK. You're there's no argument. I don't think I'm wrong. They're not allowed. They're telling you you're doing a great job and it's worth more.

I just, I would consider be like, okay, well maybe someone new, maybe not them, but someone new. Coming along. Yeah. Yeah. Like people coming in now, um, and plus I'm gaining more and more experience with real estate, so it's gonna be a more value. So I'm a little bit more new with the whole real estate thing.

So I have more to learn. Oh yeah, sure. I mean, we're, I'm always learning and I've been doing this, like I've been doing the note industry for three to four years now, and then still involved with people with real estate and I've, I'm still learning. There's so much to business and there's so much to real estate with laws that come.

Right. And it's still a lot to keep up on. I can't imagine what you guys go through actually. Mm-hmm . So since you're starting to get into real estate, or have you considered maybe getting your license too, as a benefit to your clients? Absolutely. I think about that often actually, because I might as well.

Okay. I think it'd be more helpful and I think it would make me more valuable in the community. If I could get my real estate license, at least. For for sure. And there's, you know, the educational component because you have to take the classes and pass the test and then absolutely. So that I think, yeah, that would be really beneficial to your clients as well.

I know even a lot of investors. That aside from investing, they also get their license. They don't ever really practice. They have to hang their license with a brokerage somewhere, but they don't really ever go out and act as a realtor or an agent, but they, they have the licensing there. They have access to the MLS because of that.

Right. So they have that benefit. They don't go to cuz when we go to websites like realtor.com or Zillow or resend, you're getting like a, a modified limited access. Right. Whereas if you're an agent you're licensed and registered in your state, you can just pull it right up. Exactly. Exactly. And you know what?

I've always really loved, um, real estate. I, I like to go sit on Zillow and truly at I've always kind of wanted to flip houses for some reason. okay. I could, I would really good. I think in real estate, I would find, you know, besides being a virtual assistant, there's probably other things I could do in real estate.

For sure there is, there is a lot of, uh, positions in real estate where you can find some type of event profession or service, or, you know, you can flip houses, you can wholesale, you can, you can do the virtual assistant and do more of the administrative and, and market. Yeah. Cause I love to help people. So I think being a VA is good just to help people.

I love helping people. Okay. So do you think you're going to get into flipping in the future? Like what has stopped you from. Taking the plunge and giving it a shot. I just need to probably just jump into it. So yeah. You know, you just get busy with your day to day activities and, you know, work and your kids.

So, um, I think you just kind of life takes off on its own. So it's up to you to really stop things and pause and do other things. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Is there, uh, something you use to help you like stay on track with that kind of thing? Cause I, I do my own, I have my own way of doing it. I know everyone's got their own.

What's your way of doing it. I make lists and I schedule everything on my calendar. Yeah. I email myself because every day I check my emails and if I see something come in from myself, it catches my attention really quickly. okay. Nothing catches your attention really quickly is to Lisa PA from Lisa PA.

So like, so it's like, go like, wait, I emailed myself for a second. I'll be like so yeah, I like that's my thing, but yeah, I Don. I don't let too many things fall and I juggle a lot and I don't drop the ball. So, and that's one thing my bosses will tell you, Lisa doesn't drop the ball. So there's reasons for that.

Excellent. Excellent. Well, that's great. And that's what we need. That's what anyone who needs an assistant needs is someone who's gonna be on top of things. And schedule everything out, have it? Yeah, because they'll forget things and I'll, I'll remind them like, Hey, you have an appointment today, you know?

Or, you know, because they don't, they're, they're juggling so much themselves that they'll forget little things. So I'll send people a text and say, Hey, do you remember how you have this interview on this day? Or you need to go do this on that day. So, and I'll even set an alarm. So, you know, I think it's just important to kind of keep up on top of people.

That's what an assistant does you assist them? Oh, exactly. For sure. I probably will need an assistant one day. I may become looking for you. Okay. Or move out because I know I'm gonna have business meetings. I even now with my schedule. I have my day packed hour to hour and everything's planned. That's the reason why I use the calendar.

Cuz the calendar sends me an email and an alert. It's like, oh, you gotta work out now in 30 minutes, you better get ready. Oh man, hold on. Lemme get ready. That's smart. Yeah. Yeah. You, you gotta have a calendar. I mean, everyone has to have a calendar for me. I just email myself. So, but as it works, . I mean, because I don't have the assistant now, but my calendar's my assistant for the, for the time being.

Right. Right. But I know things are going to become much more hectic, especially we've done a, a marketing campaign that, uh, remarketing helped me out with. So I will be having an influx of, of leads to handle coming in more than I had before. So I'll see what that looks like once that starts to pick up and I'm, I may be overwhelmed.

I may be like, I need to have, bring someone on to help me. So you'll be the first person I reach out to that's for sure. That's me. that's for sure. And anyone else who needs an assistant who's listening on here today and, uh, starting to scale their business up, having a virtual assistant. In my opinion.

And I, I believe the opinion of a lot of others is one of the best ways to help you scale. It lets you focus on finding deals and making deals and then closing the deals. And yeah, you don't have to worry about emails, calls, anything like that. Um, you're free. You're free to focus on the important parts of what you wanna do and growing your.

Yeah, that's that's I can't, I can't stress how important that is for busy entrepreneurs and successful business owners to have their, well, not just that to get their time back too. Time is valuable. Absolutely. Absolutely. And, and their business can only grow if they have more time to focus on finding more business and making more deals.

Yeah. So, and that's what I do is I give you time. So yeah. Oh, I mean, they'll be grateful too. I'm glad you're Bing into real estate. I know we've kind of, yeah, that's interesting do that. Um, me and Jerome, cause we, we work on similar things together, so I'm excited that you're going to start doing that.

Hopefully. You'll keep doing it and move over completely. Absolutely. I think I'd be good at it. So, so let's ask a couple personal questions. So I listen to, you know, who Lisa is. Um, so what is your favorite childhood memory? Well, I grew up in, well, I spent some of my childhood in a small mountain town, so it would snow about nine months out of the year.

So, uh, me and my brothers and cousins we'd get up and have like, you know, snowball fights. So it would start out as like friendly competition and get up straight up street fighting after a while. Oh, no, like straight brawling or just snow. Like I got, I'm still getting emails from cousins saying you almost murdered me and I'll be like, what?

Oh my God got that bad. Yeah. Love those times in my childhood. So. Hm, up in the, and I stole a horse. I know you wanna talk about how I stole a horse. okay. I mean, you can tell that story. Go right ahead. I love that story. Well, my friend left a horse unattended near me and I was mad at him, so I took his horse and then he had the nerve to stalk me to get his horse back.

Oh my God, you know, I didn't go to jail for it. I was a kid. I know, I know. I mean, I can't, I don't know that I've ever stole a horse though. That's that's quite the story. You did something crazy. I stole a go-cart, but it was for a good clause. What was the cause? Uh, a kid stole my friend's go-kart so we went into his yard and stole it back.

Oh, okay. Okay. That's good. But we did walk into his yard and steal a go-kart. I dunno if it's stealing, if you're just taking it back. Yeah. I mean, we were trespassing technically we're on their property. It's private property. Yeah. I'm trespassed a lot. Oh, Oh boy, with the horse, with the horse and the other times oh my God.

Oh, that was too funny. Okay. So let's, let's ask you this one. If you could be, remember, let that one go yeah, no, please. Please. Don't press any charges. I've said that a few times. Just kidding. Oh, no, one's gonna hire me now. uh, we know you're kidding though. I'm very professional. Yes. Yes. I mean, we've, we've known each other for a little while.

I've seen you work as well. Yeah. Very, very organized, very, um, very, yeah, very on top of things, very on top of things as well as I am, as well as you have a talent for design. Yes. I love to design websites. I do websites, business cards, you name it, and I love to design it. Yeah. Yeah. Talk about that a little bit.

Yeah. I've been doing websites for. I guess a few years okay. So, um, I would say I design a website every week or two. So as you start to finish and one day I don't rush through it, but I don't procrastinate. Like I get it done. So. They actually will do an entire website in a day or two that's CR because I know people who use five will use five or freelancers to a website.

And that's a really unique skill as a virtual assistant. I don't know too many that do web design or do marketing material design. Like I know you've done business cards. Uh, business cards are as part of our marketing material. Absolutely. Most of the VAs that I'm, I'm familiar with people using a VA to do, you know, answering calls to cold call in answering emails, but not like marketing materials.

That is that's very unique. It's because of Carmen . He was, um, he got me on the phone one day and said, you're gonna learn how to build a website. And he sat on the phone until I figured out how to build that website. And, um, he didn't like it, so we didn't end up using it. but I, he was like, learn right now.

Oh, wow. So from there on my own, um, you know, he hired someone else to do a website, but I was like, oh, this is something I wanna do anyway. So I went ahead and started, you know, learning how to do it, watching YouTube videos, tutorials the whole nine yards. That's how I am. I am self taught with most things.

I'll just go and try to figure it out. And I'll ask for help. You know, like I know a lot of professionals like Jerome and you, if I have a question or I'm a little confused, I'll ask you guys. Oh, yeah, for sure. For sure. With our level of experience, I, I do because me and Jerome work on some of the same things together, I know nothing about marketing, so I have to ask him a lot of questions.

yeah, he's really good. Like I, I learned the most from if I had a, if I could say one thing, he's, he's been a really good mentor for me, Jerome. So I know that's not one of the questions no, no, no, no, no. We, but professional mentor, Jerome Lewis. Right. And as what he does for, for real estate professionals, with their digital marketing, you know, I've hired him to, to do mine as well, because really he knows what he's doing and he's taught me a great deal and shortcut that learning curve.

But you, the fact that you're able to have the creative side to it, you don't have you're, you can take a business card and make it look professional and yeah. To, to help a person get their name out there or create their website. There are some in the, the real estate space, we always say you get a website as soon as you can.

e. Yeah, but I mean, we're in:

So, um, because they don't always wanna have me there day to day doing it for them. You know, it just depends. So I'll teach, teach some of them basics. Um, but I do social media. See, I would, I'm not a big social media person, but I know it's necessary for business. Absolutely. That is where everything is right now is social media.

Right. So I think that's one of the most important things you can utilize is social media. Yeah. And that's the way business in general has, has moved first moved to, okay. We have websites now. Everyone needs a website too. Okay. Now there's also social media online. So not only do you need a website, but you need a social media presence as well.

On pretty much every platform you can from LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, like across the, yeah. Like I see, it's funny because like I have a TikTok account and I see like Carlos on there. I see like so many people on there in real estate. I'm like, that's cool. They have like these little videos for real estate.

er I graduated high school in:

So I know I do. And a lot of people do they'll, they'll get your name and they'll check you out and see, okay, what's this person doing? You know? So it's almost like a resume is Facebook. So you have to be careful. So you hear that people need Facebook management. Absolutely face Facebook management is important engagement with your people.

Yeah. All of it. uh, I think Jerome talks about it sometimes as well about making sure you are. Your, um, he has a video that's gonna come out in our newsletter as well about the difference between a business Facebook page and a personal page where we talk about the importance of having them reflect each other.

So they compliment each other. You don't wanna absolutely some pictures of you out having a, a night with the girls or the boys. and then have your business page because people are going to look at both and draw certain inclusions about how you run business. Yeah. They will judge you and you can lose jobs.

You can gain jobs, you can lose jobs from your social media presence. I've had that happen to me before, so I try to be careful what I post. So I have a pretty loud personality, so I don't know. All right, let's move on to our next question. If you already remembered for one thing, what would it be? I would like to be remembered that I have a really good heart and, um, I always have other people's best interests at heart.

That was like the biggest compliment I ever heard is somebody called me pure hearted. And I really like, okay, I loved it. and I was like, that is me because I always have people's best interests at heart and I never have motives anything like that. So that's what I wanna be remembered most for. And maybe my weird personality.

That's I guess that's it. Okay. I, I think you'll find real estate. Good. A lot of the, the people in the real estate space are very generous, especially to the people they work with, who do good work and are focused on. I actually prefer the people in real estate because they're so nice. And they've been welcoming to me.

Yeah, that was, that was one thing when I first got into real estate and knew nothing that I noticed right out of the gate was that people were so nice and willing to, to teach you certain things, even for free, especially if you join. Well, I was very surprised by that, you know, coming from gospel where nobody really seemed to do much as far as help you go, you know, to real estate where everybody's helping and they, you know, really caring.

So it's really been interesting for me to see the differe. So I actually prefer to work in real estate right now. That's great work. Excited to be. Have you take on more work? Cuz I, I said, I know I'll be coming for you once more leads come in and I can't handle it. I'll be like, Hey, do you have any time?

Absolutely. I'll make time for sure. And everybody else I would recommend you do so as well, I've seen Lisa's work before she does a very good job on things. So let's go to our. Or not last personal question, then we have our closing table. like the lightning round. So if you could go back in time to your 18 year old self and give one piece of advice, what would it be and why?

I would tell myself don't put your eggs in one basket. And let me explain that. Okay. Yeah. this is important. And I know a lot of people cover this one, but. For 15 years, I worked mostly with one man in one ministry for 15 years, and he suddenly died about a, a little over a year ago and it kind of left me feeling a little overwhelmed and in crisis okay.

You know, I put my entire. Life into someone else's work. I never marketed myself. I never focused on myself. It was all about this one thing. And so when it abruptly ended, I was left thinking, okay, what do I do now? You know, I had side jobs, but it just wasn't the same. My passion and my ministry was gone.

Second. So I really like if I could go back and tell myself anything, branch out, you know, uh, try everything, you know, connect with more people, don't just limit yourself to one thing. So that's my advice. Okay. Yeah. That's a good piece of advice. Um, yeah, I know. I have certainly done that with certain areas of my life career wise, putting all my eggs in one basket.

Right. And sometimes you discover things that you didn't know you were good at. So recently I. Contract to do copywriting and writing work. Cuz apparently it's something I'm very good at that I got good at in college and didn't realize it really was a talent. So right. You know, sometimes you, you find a talent that you have.

You were leaning on one skill, but you find out you have talent for another and yeah. Explore everything. So OK. That's definitely limit yourself basically. Exactly. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I wholeheartedly agree with that. Yeah. Don't limit yourself for sure. So let's move on to our closing table. Since we're in real estate, you go to the closing table to close a deal.

Okay. Let's go to these questions. Here's kind of like our lightning round. Uh, so what are three books you'd recommend to our audience and why? Okay, Jerome, Lewis's he just put out a book and I'm telling him to read that I'm plugging Jerome. My copy. I should have brought the book out here. Yeah. You know, Jerome's so brilliant and he's young, so he's like cutting edge with everything.

You're gonna learn a lot if you read his book. So same with his girlfriend, Danny, she's a health and wellness coach. So you know, she, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's a life coacher and she's really good, so. Okay. But. Honestly, what I love to read is true crime. I've been reading true crime since I was like 10 . Oh my gosh.

All right. Yeah. So, you know, that's just how I would unwind. Not that I have time for reading a lot lately, but those are my choices. So do you have a favorite true crime? Uh, true crime novel? Yeah. It's um, called bitter harvest, so, and, um,

Do you have a copy and the encyclopedia of serial killers? okay then. So, but you know what a lot of people really like true crime. So I don't know. I don't think I'm too crazy. no, no, no, not at all. I mean, I like 'em cuz they're more psychological. My background. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's nonfiction and I like to see how a brain works.

You know, what. makes people tick sometimes. And there's, there's not always good people in the world. So I think it's important to kind of learn things from something like this. Yeah, there's it. Remind, it reminds me of a funny story, uh, psychologist that I follow on YouTube shared with his audience and, and had a, a speech where he was talking about his time in school, where he went to a, in a prison, basically a prison ward, and he was meeting the therapist there.

And he was going to understudy with the guy and the guy left him in the gymnasium where all the, the criminals were, you know, working out weightlifting and he had this real fancy outfit on. So they like circled him, like how? And he was like, man, these guys were like monstrous compared to him. Yeah. And then this little guy comes out who actually brought him to the, the gymnasium.

It's a little short guy, maybe like 5, 2, 5, 3. And he said the guy was really unassuming. Okay. And so that guy came and he felt relieved. Yeah. Or he took him to the, the therapist. And when he talked to the therapist, he goes, oh yeah, you know that guy who just brought you over here, the stuff that he told him that that little guy did was completely unspeakable and make your stomach sick.

Oh wow. Never know someone that small. Yeah. What he did. And I was like that, that blows my mind, like the psych, the psychological side of it is, is interesting. I know when I was taking my psych courses, we did abnormal psych. So we touched on some of those things. It was very interesting. And I still, like, I'm still interested in psychology now, how do we brain hacks?

I'm really into like, how do we oh, absolutely. After our lives for better performance, better sleep, you know? Yeah. I think it's, it's important to learn how the brain works, you know? Right. Absolutely. Um, so let me think here, what else do we have? Um, is there anything ver uh, we, we haven't covered that you would like our audience and our listeners to know about you about, uh, the virtual assistant work and the, the services that you provide.

Um, you know, I think we covered everything, why it's important to have a VA, um, you know, and what all we do for you guys. So I think we covered everything. Okay. Do you have any questions? Um, I can't think of any offhand, some coming in from our listeners. We'd love to have you back on to, to hash that out.

Yeah. If there's any questions, you know, I could do a Q and a or something, you know, so. Okay, so then last but not least as our closing question, where can our listeners find you online? How can they reach out to you if they wanna hire you? What's the best way to get in touch with you? I have a website, Lisa hyat.com.

You can find me on Facebook. So what I say about Facebook, Scott? Yeah, I know social media. Mine's tweaking. I may hire you to do that. I know. So you need me I, I do. I do need, I do need a VA for sure. Yeah. I need, I need social media management. Uh, we will be putting all of the links to reach out to Lisa, uh, in our show notes.

So you can go right to her Facebook and any other social media profiles. Do you have a Twitter or a LinkedIn? I do have a LinkedIn, so I do have a Twitter, Instagram. Okay. So, um, So, yeah, I can send you all those links and you can post them, right? Yeah, absolutely. We'll put those links in there. The links to your website and the show notes.

Highly encourage everybody to reach out to her. If you need a virtual assistant, she can take so much off of your hands and free up a lot of your time, so you can focus on what's important. Um, so with that, we're gonna close it out. Thank you again, Lisa, for coming on, we look forward to seeing you in the future and, and keeping in touch.

Uh, what you're doing and how you're building your virtual assistant business out and the types of projects you're working on. Thank you for having me. All right, guys. Have a good one. Bye. Was it done?

About the Podcast

Show artwork for The Real Estate Marketing Implementation Podcast (The REmarketing Podcast)
The Real Estate Marketing Implementation Podcast (The REmarketing Podcast)
Marketing Implementation For Real Estate Agents, Coaches, and Investors by Jerome Lewis

About your host

Profile picture for Jerome Lewis

Jerome Lewis

Jerome Lewis is the author of the book REmarketing - Insider’s Secrets of Successful Advertising, Lead Generation, & Marketing Implementation For Real Estate Entrepreneurs.
He is also the founder and CMO of Digital Real Estate Strategy, a tech, and marketing agency that helps busy but serious real estate entrepreneurs implement, structure, and systematize their tech, lead generation, marketing, and business systems. Jerome has helped over 5000 real estate entrepreneurs from more than 40 states and 4 countries. Jerome has shared stages with some of the real estate industry’s best national experts including names ranging from Vena Jones-Cox, Krista Mashore, Marc Halpern, and many more.
Jerome is a bold introvert, father, and former IT professional. In 2021, Jerome won eXp University’s Instructor of The Year Award. He is also the host of the Real Estate Marketing & Social Media Mastermind, where he teaches real estate investors and agents tech and marketing implementation.