How to Hire Virtual Assistants for Real Estate Without Getting Burned Again

On Accredited Investors Only, host Peter Neill sits down with Anna Li, founder of Outsource Your Tasks, to unpack a topic that matters to almost every busy operator, investor, and entrepreneur: how to hire virtual assistants for real estate and beyond without wasting time, money, or momentum.

Anna’s perspective is especially valuable because she did not build her company from theory. She built it out of frustration. While working full time in pharmaceuticals and living in Switzerland, she wanted to launch a wholesaling business in the United States. She needed help with cold calling, lead follow-up, and admin work, but the agencies she tried kept letting her down. That pain eventually became a process, then a course, then a company.

Her story is part immigrant success story, part real estate systems playbook, and part leadership lesson. It also offers a practical framework for anyone considering hirin virtual assistants for real estate, whether the goal is lead generation, marketing, calendar management, bookkeeping, or reclaiming more time.

Anna Li’s path from immigrant to operator

Anna was born and raised in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic, and moved to the United States at 21 with her husband and essentially nothing. In her words, they arrived with negative $3,000. Over time, she built a career in the pharmaceutical industry, rising into senior leadership over a 15-year corporate run.

That corporate chapter mattered. She did not treat it as a detour. She treated it as training.

During those years, she learned how organizations function, how people work together, and how hiring, managing, and developing talent really works. Those lessons now power her staffing business. It is also why she pushes back on the idea that corporate experience is somehow wasted if the end goal is entrepreneurship.

For Anna, entrepreneurship was always there. She remembers trying to “watch” parked cars as a child near a market and charging people whatever they felt like paying. The instinct to spot opportunity was already in place. But the corporate world gave it structure.

How a bad outsourcing experience turned into a business

The original goal was simple: get more real estate deals.

Anna and her husband were already investing in real estate. While living in Switzerland on assignment with her pharma company, she wanted to start a wholesaling business back in the U.S. The problem was obvious. She had no time.

So she did what many investors do when they begin exploring virtual assistants. She hired outside help for tasks like:

Cold calling
Lead follow-up
Marketing support
Administrative work

But the agency model kept failing her.

She found that many agencies had high turnover and poor incentives. In one case, a VA disappeared, the agency could not locate the person, and weeks later, the same worker came back asking to be hired directly for $4 an hour. Anna had been paying the agency $12 an hour.

That revealed the core issue. The problem was not necessarily virtual assistants. The problem was the system around them.

She identified three broad ways people source remote help:

Hire on your own
Use an agency that recruits, trains, and places workers with markup
Use a recruiter who sources talent, but the hire works directly for you

Anna became convinced that the middle option often created the most friction. Workers were underpaid, turnover was high, and quality suffered.

The one-hour course that accidentally became a company

After figuring out her own hiring process, Anna kept getting the same questions from people in her mastermind groups.

How are you finding good people?

Why do your hires stay?

How are you avoiding the usual VA problems?

Eventually, she got tired of repeating herself and recorded a course over a single weekend. It was not meant to become a business. She simply wanted a faster way to share the process.

She used Loom, and because the free version limited each recording to five minutes, the course became remarkably efficient. No fluff. Just instructions, templates, and clear steps. The whole thing was about an hour long.

She shared it with people in her network and asked for feedback. The response was immediate. Some members followed her process and reported getting around 80 candidates within three days.

That led to the next question: can you just do this for me?

That was the birth of her staffing company.

What virtual assistants actually are and what most people get wrong

At the most basic level, a virtual assistant is someone who works for you remotely.

But Anna says one of the biggest misconceptions is that VAs are somehow low-skill, uneducated, or only useful for repetitive admin work. That is outdated.

Her company typically reviews about 100 applicants for a role and presents the top three candidates. That means the conversation is not about hiring random low-cost labor. It is about sourcing from the top slice of a global talent pool.

For people exploring virtual assistants for real estate, that distinction matters. You are not limited to someone who can answer emails or update a spreadsheet. Depending on the role, you can hire people with real training, experience, and domain knowledge.

Why the Philippines became a major source of virtual talent

Many people associate virtual assistants primarily with the Philippines, and there is a reason for that.

English is widely spoken there, especially in major cities, and over the last two decades many large corporations in the U.S., U.K., Australia, and New Zealand outsourced business processes there. This built an enormous BPO, or business process outsourcing, infrastructure.

That shift created a huge workforce of educated professionals who worked in call centers and support roles. After the pandemic normalized work from home, many of those workers left centralized office setups and began working independently as virtual assistants.

The result is a deep labor pool that includes people with backgrounds in:

Customer service
Admin support
Sales support
Marketing
Bookkeeping
Technical and professional functions

Anna also notes that accent matters more than many Americans want to admit. In customer-facing roles, communication comfort affects outcomes. That is one reason Filipino talent became so widely adopted by Western companies.

What virtual assistants for real estate can actually do

One of the most useful parts of Anna’s framework is that she thinks beyond the stereotype of a VA as “just admin help.” If a task can be done virtually, there is a good chance it can be outsourced.

For virtual assistants for real estate, common use cases include:

Cold calling and lead generation
Inbound lead follow-up
CRM management
Calendar management
Email organization
Marketing support
Presentation preparation
Bookkeeping support
Data entry and research
Transaction coordination support

But Anna’s broader point is bigger than real estate. She believes most people underestimate how much of life and business can be delegated once they stop assuming everything requires a local, in-person person.

Her company has expanded into hiring talent in Latin America, Egypt, Africa, the U.S., and even specialized cases like a Polish-speaking employee in Poland for a U.S.-based business owner.

Where the limits actually are

The clearest limitations are physical tasks that require someone to be present, such as:

House cleaning
Nannying
In-home cooking
Other location-dependent services

Even then, Anna challenges people to think creatively. Some services can still be partially outsourced through planning, accountability, scheduling, or remote guidance.

She even mentioned exploring virtual fitness coaching paired with nutrition expertise, where the real value is accountability rather than physical presence. That mindset is what separates people who stay overwhelmed from people who keep buying back time.

What virtual assistants cost in different markets

Anna shared rough hourly ranges to help reset expectations. These are not rigid rules, but they provide a useful starting point.

Philippines: around $5/hour for entry-level admin support
Latin America: roughly $5 to $7/hour
Egypt: roughly $5 to $7/hour
Some African markets: as low as $4/hour in certain cases
United States: often $20 to $25/hour or more for experienced remote executive-style support

In the U.S., she often sees highly capable remote workers who are not looking for a traditional full-time office role. Think experienced executive assistants or skilled professionals who want flexibility, often parents who want to work around family schedules.

That makes the market for virtual assistants for real estate much broader than offshore hiring alone.

The next frontier: fractional professionals

One of the most interesting developments in Anna’s business is the move beyond general VAs into fractional specialists.

Sometimes a business does not need a full-time employee. It needs access to expertise for a limited number of hours over a limited time period.

Her example was a startup supplement company that might need help navigating FDA-related requirements. Hiring a full-time chemist would be overkill and too expensive. But hiring a subject matter expert for a few hours a month for six months could be exactly right.

This same logic applies across industries. It opens the door to flexible access to high-level talent without the full burden of permanent headcount.

The best framework for deciding what to outsource first

One of Anna’s strongest ideas is her simple but powerful prioritization method.

If someone is not sure where to start, she recommends journaling daily activities for about a week and splitting tasks into just two buckets:

$10/hour tasks
$200/hour tasks

She intentionally avoids too many categories. The binary forces clarity.

For example, if a real estate syndicator is having direct conversations with prospective investors, that is probably a $200/hour task because trust and relationship-building drive capital. But preparing the presentation deck for that meeting? That is likely a $10/hour task.

This framework is especially useful for people considering virtual assistants for real estate because it eliminates emotional guesswork. Instead of asking, “Can I let this go?” the better question becomes, “Should I be the one doing this?”

Use a joy filter too

Anna adds a second filter most people forget: joy.

Some tasks may be low-value but still personally energizing. She loves doing her own taxes. She also enjoys shoveling snow. Most people would outsource those things. She would not.

That is the point.

Do not outsource everything mechanically. Keep the things that genuinely fulfill you. Delegate the things that drain your energy or pull you away from your highest-value work.

Why so many VA hires fail

According to Anna, when a virtual assistant ghosts an employer, the first place to look is not the worker. It is leadership.

Yes, there will always be a few bad actors. Humans are humans. But most failed hires trace back to avoidable mistakes by the person doing the hiring.

The three biggest reasons virtual assistants quit or disappear

Bait-and-switch pay
You advertise one rate, attract candidates at that rate, then try to negotiate downward. That destroys trust before the relationship even begins.
Poor onboarding and training
You assume they will “figure it out” with little guidance. They won’t. And even if they could, they should not have to.
Mismatched role expectations
You hire for one role, then pile on unrelated tasks that require completely different strengths.

That last point is especially important.

A strong bookkeeper is not automatically a good salesperson. The traits that make someone excellent at detail-oriented financial work are often the opposite of what makes someone effective in sales. If the job shifts from bookkeeping to calling prospects, the worker may not push back directly. In some cultures, especially in the Philippines, avoiding direct disappointment or confrontation is common. Instead of saying, “This is not what I signed up for,” they may simply disengage.

That is not ideal, but understanding the cultural context helps explain the behavior and prevent it.

The rule of seven: the leadership habit that changes everything

Anna’s favorite training principle is the rule of seven.

Borrowing from marketing, where people often need to hear a message multiple times before acting on it, she believes leaders should expect to repeat new instructions seven times before the information really sticks.

This shifts expectations in a powerful way.

If a new hire asks the same question for the third time, that is not automatically a sign of failure. It may simply mean you are at repetition three of seven.

When leaders enter onboarding with that mindset, a few things happen:

They become less frustrated
Workers become less afraid to ask questions
Communication stays open
Retention improves
Training becomes more realistic

That does not mean repeating everything endlessly. A qualified hire should already possess baseline skills for the role. You should not need to teach a bookkeeper how spreadsheets work or explain basic concepts of their profession.

But every business has its own quirks, classifications, preferences, and standards. Those business-specific details often need repetition before they become second nature.

It’s okay to ask me the same question seven times.

That one sentence can change the entire emotional climate of onboarding.

How Anna structures her offers

Anna’s business now supports clients at different levels depending on how hands-on they want to be.

1. DIY course

This is for people who want to hire on their own. The course includes templates, job descriptions, and copy-and-paste tools to simplify the process.

She uses tools like Google Forms to screen candidates efficiently so people do not waste time manually reviewing every applicant. Even so, reviewing and interviewing the final pool still takes time, which is why some people eventually want more support.

2. Done-for-you sourcing

This is the service for clients who want Anna’s team to handle the recruiting process for common roles such as admin and marketing support.

3. Professional and fractional placements

This covers higher-level needs such as managers, directors, C-suite roles, and specialized fractional experts. These placements are more customized and usually involve a minimum engagement period.

What real estate taught her about leverage

Real estate was not just the reason Anna discovered outsourcing. It was also the place where she learned how much leverage systems and people can create.

Her husband had started with a small flip in Philadelphia after his company began struggling due to sanctions affecting its business. They bought a modest property with savings, and before doing it, they agreed on a mindset that would shape everything that came next.

If they lost $20,000, they would treat it as tuition.

That first flip ended up making money, around $15,000 on a roughly $50,000 acquisition, but the bigger win was psychological. They were ready to pay for the lesson and got paid instead.

Later, while Anna was working in Switzerland, her husband continued flipping remotely in the U.S. He found deals through channels like Hubzu, Auction.com, and the MLS. He had gotten his license, and Anna’s father served as local boots on the ground, acting as project manager and handling in-person oversight.

Most of the business happened from Europe.

That experience reinforced a central idea: you do not have to quit your job or be physically present all the time to build real estate wealth. With the right systems and the right people, a lot can be done from anywhere.

The hidden mindset shift behind outsourcing

There is also an emotional side to outsourcing that Anna talks about honestly.

Many people, especially those who came from scarcity, struggle to delegate even when they can afford help. Sometimes it is about money. Sometimes it is about control. Sometimes it is distrust.

She gave a simple example from her own life. For years, she resisted outsourcing house cleaning because she liked things done a certain way. Once she finally did it, she wondered why she had waited so long.

That is the deeper lesson behind virtual assistants for real estate and outsourcing in general. It is not just a tactical move. It often requires unlearning old beliefs about self-worth, control, and what it means to be responsible.

At some point, the better question becomes: how do I maximize the quality of my time?

How to think about virtual assistants for real estate going forward

If there is one takeaway from Anna Li’s story, it is this: outsourcing works best when it is treated as a leadership skill, not a shortcut.

Hiring virtual assistants for real estate can absolutely help investors create leverage, recover time, and grow faster. But success does not come from finding the cheapest person online and hoping for the best.

It comes from doing a few things well:

Defining the role clearly
Paying what you said you would pay
Matching tasks to the right skill set
Training with patience and repetition
Protecting your highest-value time
Delegating work that drains you or distracts you

For operators in real estate, that can mean the difference between constantly reacting and finally building a business that has room to breathe.

And sometimes that leverage starts with one simple decision: stop doing the $10 tasks with your $200 time.