Brian Onesto & hiring Virtual Assistants for Real Estate Agents

Because if you don't understand culturally, then it's probably not going to work out for you. And it's. And people don't understand that. It's not a them problem, it's a you problem because you don't understand how things work. And then. Yeah, so I've had to, like, check myself even sometimes where I'm like, oh, I'm leading poorly. My bad team. Like, that's me, that's not you. Hey, guys.

I'm super excited to have Brian Honesto on today for a case study of how he has hired online Filipino workers to help his business. He has used the one VAOA challenge to hire five different team members for his business, LA Data Nerds, where they create original content for realtors, usually video content, and do a really good job of it. During this, Brian offers some really great pointers on how to create a Filipino friendly company culture and also how to not scare away new recruits. I see so many people scare away new potential recruits before they even get through the process. So let's jump into it with Chelaine Tuttle doing the interview. Great job, Chelain. Thank you.

All right, we'll get started today. We are here with Brian Nonesto from LA Data Nerds. Brian, we're so glad to have you here.

Hi, Chelain. Thanks so much for having me. I'm like, I'm honored to be here. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. So have we.

Ryan, tell us about LA Data Nerds.

Yeah, so we help real estate agents with their original content creation. Creation, branding, marketing, taking real estate agents from 10 to 20 transactions or 20 to 40 transactions, primarily with the video content creation that we help them with. And then we also help with referral partners to get them connected to referral partners. So for long term strategy and then paid advertising and website development as well. Yes, everything.

Basically A to Z you take care of for them. That's pretty amazing.

Yeah.

Tell us about how you got started.

I say I take it back to when I first invested in an online course, which is an Amazon course, shout out to Miles from Nomad Millionaire. And that's kind of where it started, the journey. And he said something that really stuck out to me. He said a lot of the Chinese manufacturers are selling direct to Amazon customers. And he said, they could always beat you on the price, but I can beat you on the marketing, or I could always beat them on the marketing. And so that really stuck out to me. And I thought, oh, so it's really the marketing I have to learn rather than trying to fight on price if I really want to be successful Amazon seller. And so from there I took a social media marketing course. And then from there I took a notion course, shout out to Derek and David from the SSMA blueprint. And then I took a notion mastery course from Mary Pollan, who's you could youtuber. She's the biggest one in the space. And. And then I took a chatbot course and then I took the one VA way challenge. So it's like all these things leading up to the one because Miles mentioned online jobs at ph and I thought I was like, all right, like, let me look into it. And so I looked into it and I'm so glad you guys had the course and the book, which is amazing. And yeah, super, super helpful. That's kind of how like the journey started. And then eventually hiring a VA and thinking like, all right, let me just like dive full into this and see kind of like, let's try this marketing agency thing out. And yeah, that's. That's kind of the start of the journey.

So what made you decide to go into entrepreneurialism versus, like, hey, I'm gonna just go to college, get a degree, look for that, and 9 to 5 for the rest of my life. Like, what motivated you to be your own boss?

Yeah, that's. That's a great question. I. I've always been drawn to. To business from a younger age. Even just like when we were like kids or 12, we would ask neighbors around the area, like, hey, can we do your trash cans? Or. And like getting paid monthly for that and having like a little bit of cash in our pockets and stuff. But, um, I think later on in life also, I, we. I ran a photo booth rental business. And so that was something you still do? Uh, no, no, actually, I stopped that right before Corona, which was kind of perfect timing. I think it's definitely a God thing. Um, I was. Yeah, it was, it was actually really convenient. But yeah, I've always just definitely, like the Lord has always drawn me towards business. And then I think two, three years ago, I would go to this worship nights, and they're called Gospel House. And I knew this guy and I didn't have social media at the time and I barely knew this guy. I've never talked to him a couple times and he came up to me and he prophesied over me and he, he prophesied. He's like, like, God, like, thank you so much for Brian and his life. I pray that you use him in his business, in business. That you use him, like, in all these different areas. And he started, like, speaking into my life, and it was like, totally the Holy Spirit. And I was like, whoa. Like, and I went up to him after. I said, hey, like, Logan, thanks so much for, like, your prayer. And he's like, I forgot what I prayed and I was tripping. I was like, cool. Like, that was definitely from the Lord. To sum it up, it's like, definitely the Lord pointing me towards entrepreneurship, for sure.

Do you have plans? Feeling like you are led to be where you are now? Do you have plans or a vision for what you want to create to give back in the future?

I think helping with different ministries, wherever that might be, and then also helping with. I would. I would love to help. This is kind of. It's full circle. It's kind of amazing. Like in the Philippines, actually, with. With children. So VBS is building. Helping assist in building schools or building churches and stuff. Uh, I think that would be, like, amazing. Um, that's. That's something that's always been in mind for sure.

How cool. And working from home with the flexibility of VAs, you definitely would be able to do something like that. So that's pretty neat to hear.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

I'm gonna backtrack just a little bit and ask you about when I got onto your website, and I was like, oh, this is real estate. Like, this is not just marketing across the board that you're offering to anyone and everyone. This is real estate, and it's real estate in la. So tell us a little bit about the real estate scene in LA and what it's like to work with that.

Absolutely. We. We work with agents across the United States. But it's. It's just the name. It's funny, but the. Yeah, LA market, super hot. It's. Houses are, you know, lack of inventory as there is across a lot of different parts of the states. There's. Yeah, people are just not selling their houses. People are flooding to the suburbs, moving out of the city. I have a brother who personally moved from downtown to Pasadena. And so housing is in shortage, and then people are also buying up rental or properties and Airbnb them out because traveling abroad isn't as big of a thing right now. So people are traveling locally. So, yeah, there's just a shortage of houses, and hopefully people sell their house more. Yeah, it's just. It's a problem, but it's okay.

But you do work with clients all the way across the United States?

Yes. Yeah. Florida, Tennessee, and then different parts of California.

So what would you say of all the things you listed that your company offers, what would you say is the most effective or the most popular resource that you offer agents?

Yeah, the most unique and most effective is the video content. Just had an agent the other day who said a video. We did. He actually got a booked listing appointment, which is huge. They reached out to him and they saw his video and they liked who he was and. Yeah. And they even have family who are realtors, but they liked him, so they decided to. Yeah, I know. Yeah. It's like, don't tell anyone, but this, like, called him and I was like, his name's Brian Bartholomew. I was like, brian, that's amazing. Like, are you kidding me? Like, that's. That was the vision behind this business, which is to help real estate agents tell their story better. And we achieved that with him. And I was like. I was like. It was just really encouraging to see that. So.

So why real estate?

I've always. I've always been interested in real estate. I think it's an amazing thing. I think honestly, I failed in some other. Other niches. That's kind of a better start. Um, and not really being passionate about some other niches like dental or E commerce, and then stumbling more across real estate and thinking like, let's give this a try. And I, like, I have an interest in this. And then now it's like a passion. So it's. Yeah, it's been great.

And onlinejobs. Ph, I don't know if you've seen. We actually offer some specific real estate assistance and skills as far as VAs. You can hire there and education as well. So you are.

You are.

You're aware of that?

Yes, yes. I actually reached out to John. That's, I think, how we got first in contact. I mentioned there was a specific type of real estate need that I mentioned to him if you guys offered that.

So, Brian, you employ Filipino VAs. But first I want to ask you. So you read John's book?

Yes.

A hundred percent sourcing lever. Let's see it. There it is.

Worth its weight in gold. Worth its weight in gold is such an easy read. It's just. It's. Yeah, it's really simple book. Very well done. Super, super. Like, best. Easy, easy. Like, I always recommend this book to people. I always tell them, like, hey, like, you need. You need to read this book. Like, you have to read. It's just. It's a must. It's a must.

What are your favorite parts about the book? What do you feel like you Learn the most from.

Yeah, my favorite part about the book is like explaining how you guys explain the process. And it's not like a simple, like, here's what you do. It's like, here's how you understand this like, culture. Like, here's what you need in order to be successful. When this process, like, it's not a, you do this and that. And it's like, if you truly want to be successful, you have to understand the Filipino culture and you have to understand how to work together across different cultural lines and stuff. And that. Yeah, for me it was like, oh, like that was the most eye opening part for me.

How did you come across outsourcing to begin with?

In the original Amazon course I took with Miles, he mentioned online jobs at PH and so he, I thought I was like, oh, like there must be something to it. And then before starting that marketing agency, I went, they also mentioned virtual assistants, but with fiverr and things like that. And then I, I kind of just backtracked from the original course and I was like, oh, like, let me see if I missed anything. It was like, let me look into online jobs. And then looked into online jobs, found the course which is like the, this is the least expensive course I've ever bought and the most effective and some of the most impactful.

Which was like the one VA way you're talking about.

Yes. And I was like, it's always like the least expensive things that impact you the most and it's just the craziest thing. But yeah, I was like, when I, when I got the course, I was like, I stole that course. Like, are you kidding me?

We love to hear that. That was the whole idea. Well, and if you, the book, for anyone who's watching who's not familiar with the book, it's basically you pay shipping, you pay, that's it. I remember when John started into the book and I was just help him out just a little bit. He said, I want to get this into as many hands as I can. Like, this is not about making money. This is not about anything except educating people so that they can do this. And so to hear that from you feels like a home run. So how many VAs do you have working for you right now?

Currently on the team, we have five members. Um, I, I, I, I say team members because like they're no longer assistants. They are the very like lifeblood of the business. Like they are the team. They are like, I'm just the face and the one communicating with clients and they're the ones in the background doing all of like the heavy lifting essentially, from web development to video editing primarily, since we do a lot of video content and then some administrative tasks and other things in general things.

Great. Well, and that's really neat. So they are the ones who are editing when you're talking about that video content that's so valuable to your clientele, that's going to your Filipino VAs to edit. Yes, 100% and put together. Wow, that's.

Yes. And. And you know, there, the positions didn't start like that. Cause. Cause when you're starting a business, like, everything is just kind of like morphs and shifts. And I had them, some of them. Other, like they were started in different types of positions. And then they just like, kind of like it just like happened where it's just like, hey, like, here's the direction we're going. Because there's a need in the market and no one's filling this need. So like, this is what we're doing. And like, they're so like, yeah, let's do it. It was. It was an easy transition. And you know, of course you have to train. You have to like, like give them time and flexibility and the freedom to learn these new tools like video editing that they've only had a little bit, maybe a little bit of practice in. But after a couple months, like, they've like, even today where they showed me like an innovative thing they've done and I was like, oh my gosh. I was like. And we were all in the meeting yesterday. We're like, mia like, oh my gosh. You, like, you just like evolved in your video editing. What did you do? And it was amazing. When you give someone like, the freedom to do like, hey, like, you know, just like, I trust you. And that's a really big thing. When you trust and you have trust in your business, between the team members and yourself, they trust you and they feel like they have the freedom to do that. And it's. And it's. Yeah, really, really. It's been great.

Okay. That trust is so big. Tell me about your communication with your VAs. Things that you do that you feel like help build and establish that trust.

Something in the beginning, I think we. Where we didn't. Where we kind of messed up was not meeting every day. So we aim to meet every day at about 3 o', clock, which is kind of an interesting transitional period. So it's basically the transition period from the morning shift to the night shift or the night shift to the morning shift for them because they're opposite time zone on Zoom. And so we'll talk. Well, I love to do like to, to get to know them like even more. Like, hey, what's going on? Like, what's going on, guys? Like, how was your weekend? Like, what's going on in life? And we also read the word together and then we also pray together as well. And then we communicate on like, hey, like with. All right, like update me. How is that responsibility going? How can we be better? Here's all right, here's. And I give them feedback. Here's like what I've been hearing from clients and then they're able to like implement things as well. And we bounce ideas off each other.

You mentioned training. That a huge part of like their ability to evolve and adapt to what anything you need them to do. It sounds like has a lot to do with, with training. So how specifically would you say your training is specialized to accomplish that? And what kind of systems and software.

Do you use training? I definitely invest in the education. So like I will like, here's, here's a course. Here's. Here's some material. Have a look at it, Study it. Here's the tools you need to video edit. We picked the simplest tools. So for video editing we use Filmora 9 because it's the simplest. We keep things very simple, but you could do so much in there. Some other tools we use to manage the team is Notion. Notion Mastery by Mary Pollen. Yeah, it totally changed my mindset. And even just how to organize digitally because things are flying all over the place. The para method is super, super helpful in that. And then we use slack. We use WhatsApp and Facebook messenger. And the reason you do that is because sometimes slack will be down or someone will have Internet, but they'll have data on their phone and so then they can still communicate with you via WhatsApp.

Oh, that's such a great idea.

Yeah, yeah. It's like. So we have redundancies in our communication because sometimes things won't work or the Internet will go down. We use Zoom G Suite and then. Drumroll please. We use TransferWise to pay everyone transfer wise, which I learned from Miles. Also the least amount of fees for sending over money over to the Philippines.

How do you recruit using onlinejobs? Ph, yeah.

So I followed the principles from the book and from the course actually, because I was like, I don't know how to do this. So course online jobs. Ph. Job post make it attractive. And then in the job post, when you understand the culture, you can make the job post better. So that you can attract better people. So like mentioning things like the 13th month in there, mentioning like smaller other details when, when you understand them. So and it's like oh yeah, like that seems like a good company, like I want to work for them and stuff. So and then filtering out through email and then filtering you know, according to kind of like what's, who's working or what would work for best for you and stuff. You can, and you can check their profiles also on online jobs which is really nice actually. And then the last thing, and here's the golden nugget is having them send in a loom video on just like who they are just to so you can see them talk. And it's culturally sensitive because you're not putting them on the spot. They could rerecord, they could edit, they could do whatever they want. I had for WordPress, hey, just like record yourself starting up a WordPress and go through the site and explain it. And so that was an easy way to filter kind of who and if they send one in that means they're really interested.

So how do you motivate your VAs? Is there anything particular you found that really is effective?

A company culture which is for us like God is at the center and prayer and reading together and growing spiritually career wise and growth I think as well within our company culture. And there's actually proverbs and it says water others and you will be watered. And that's actually our kind of our motto for our business. We truly believe if you pour into people, if you water them like it'll come back, it will come back in time. It's maybe not instant but yeah, so like a generous, the generous people usually prosper and yeah, so that's this kind of motivating factor and stuff. Yeah.

This is kind of a funny question but is there anything you've tried that hasn't worked?

I've had to go through two other WordPress developers because it just didn't work out out and it was a little weird like hey, like this isn't going to work out but you can tell right away within the first week if someone's not communicating with you properly and you're communicating with them and they're not getting back to you in a timely manner, then it's probably not going to work out. Like it's just straight up not. And I think also something I messed up with and I think you even mentioned in the book is trying to hire the smartest person and it's not about hiring the Smartest person. It's about hiring the people with the most humility and the people who are going to, like, respect you and also, like, who are actually, like, totally for you. And you can tell, like, pretty quickly. Like, people who, you know, if they're communicating quickly, they're getting back to you, they want to. Those are going to be very effective people. Team members in your team. Yeah, Yeah.

I heard once that people who think they know everything already know everything because they know everything that they're going to know. They won't be reaching to learn or to grow or to expand. And I love what you said about just humility being such a huge factor because then you are teachable.

Yes.

And flexible and willing to try things. So that's great advice.

Yeah. Especially with the, with the small business and you're just starting, things are going to change so much and you have no idea what's going to happen. So, like, you have to have people who are willing to go on the ride with you. Like.

Yeah, for sure. Um, do you have any other advice for someone who maybe hasn't taken the leap to hire a VA yet or is kind of on the fence or maybe just learning about it?

Yeah, absolutely. So start, like, just start. You have to, you have to get good at this if you want to be a successful online entrepreneur. It's, it's a, it's a skill that, like, it's. It's not really taught. And I think you can hire agencies to hire for you, but I think you're missing a super important step in your online journey and the skills that you need to learn to become really successful. All the great entrepreneurs, they've hired themselves and then eventually when they're too big, then they outsource it and they have, they hire people to hire for them. But I think when you're so small and you're outsourcing that too early, which is because. And especially because you're going to be working so closely with your, like, with your VAs, your team members, like, and you have to, like, get along with them. And if you don't get along with them, then it's like you're not going to be able to innovate on certain things. Because when you really, you're able to, like, understand them and their strengths and where they're going to excel at and you're able to, like, put them in and position them to be successful. So. Yeah. So just start, guys. Go ahead and start. Like, just do it. There's nothing to lose. It's like if. Yeah. If you're going to go on an online journey, you need to just start and hire a va. It doesn't work out, you can always let them go. And if it does work out, like, you're going to be wildly successful, do.

You have any other general business philosophies or motivation or ideals that you want to share with us?

Humility, I think, is, I think one of the most important things for sure. Just being able to be humble and look at yourself in the mirror and realize sometimes it's you and you're leading poorly. And it's not a they problem. It's not a team problem. It's not your clients, maybe it's just you. You're not able to. You're doing something wrong. And I think with entrepreneurship, you have to check yourself a lot and you have to like you. You have to, like, be like, hey, like, clearly I'm doing something wrong. So whether that be getting business coaching, whether that be like becoming a better leader or learning how to guide better, learning how to train someone better, that's typically like, yeah, you get checked a lot, which is, it's good and it's a good thing, but it's like, it's humbling. So you have to have a lot of humility and you have to, like, have people around you who are willing to have humility as well.

One other question that my curiosity, as well as I'm sure other people are interest, said, what do you personally like to do with the time that you feel like you've harnessed? John's whole spiel is you only have so many hours in a day, you know, like, so clone yourself. He likes to keep it to about four hours a week, which it took him. It took him time to get there. But that was.

That's the key.

That was his goal.

Yes. So I think that's the key is he's worked his way to that position that does not come easy. Like it. He's poured tons of hours into his team members so that he can delegate a lot of these things out. We're in the kind of the beginning stages of that. So a lot of these things, and we've created all these systems and processes for us. We've been able to grow and we've been able to grow as a business where we would have never been able to do those things without team members, without VAs, if we didn't have, like, the right people in place. And so in terms of the free time, I'm like, what free time? Not yet. We will get there. We will get there and I will be happy to report to you. But. And there has been times where I've been able to. I've had the freedom to go to, like, church or been able to socialize with friends. Like, and not even in an extra capacity, just on a normal capacity. Because entrepreneurs, they tend to like, overwork and over burn. They burn out. And it's not good because if you want to be sustainable as an entrepreneur, you have to keep going. That's like the number one thing. Just start and you keep going if you want to be successful. And there's been times where I'm like, I'm messaging lamoille on Slack, or I'm messaging Daniel, like, hey, I need this done. Oh, hey, this just came to mind. Make sure. Hey, is this in place? Or. I have a client call me. Hey, do we have that? Okay, cool. All right, put it in the pipeline. Um, and so it's been instrumental in just being able to work in not like a crazy like. Like where it's like, oh, I got to go back home. Sorry, guys, I gotta go. I gotta go. Like, I. This has to get done where it's like, if you have somebody there available, you have the freedom to like, to. To have a life in like, barely in the beginning as you're an entrepreneur. So that's been nice.

Yeah, that was perfect. That was so perfect.

You're good. You're good.

Brian, thank you so much for your time today. It was. It was so great to have you and get your insight.

Thank you so much. For me is. It's. It's. The pleasure is mine, truly. Thank you. Thank you so much.