I regularly talk with real estate entrepreneurs who are trying to grow their portfolios while still managing the daily pressure of operations, partnerships, and market uncertainty. In this conversation, I sit down with Christina Kovacs, a real estate investor who started in lending at just 20 years old and has built a diversified portfolio that includes multifamily, private lending, and joint venture partnerships. We talk about what she learned early in the lending world, how she evaluates deals today, why she focuses on the often-overlooked 5–50 unit multifamily space, and the systems and partnerships that help investors scale without losing control of their time.
For a complete guide on optimizing and scaling your real estate investments, download my Time + Freedom Starter Pack! This essential tool walks you through ten key steps for organizing a profitable property portfolio. Click here to get your copy today!
Hello everyone. I’m Adrienne Green and today I’m really excited to have with me Christina Kovach. Here we focus on how real estate entrepreneurs break free of the grind using leverage, support and smarter strategies. Let’s dive into Christina’s story. Christina, thanks for being here today.
Hey Adrienne, thank you so much for having me.
Now for listeners who are meeting you for the first time, can you give us a quick overview of your real estate world today? The types of assets you invest in and your current portfolio.
Sure. Right now I’m very diversified within real estate. Some of the things that were flips early on became long-term rentals instead of the flip. I decided to hold them. I have a short-term rental. I sold off a few in the past and realized that my passion lies in one true love and not juggling multiple of those. Then multifamily. I have a lot of LP positions and I am also a JV partner as GP in multiple acquisitions throughout Missouri and a little bit in Pennsylvania. I also do some private money lending and I have an RV park that I invested in a couple years ago.
If you are a real estate entrepreneur who feels stretched thin, buried in admin, and wondering how other people seem to scale faster without burning out, this is the story of how I changed the trajectory of my business. I share exactly how I integrated virtual assistants into my real estate agent business, how that decision multiplied my production in a brand new market, and how it ultimately helped me build a business I could sell. This is the behind the scenes of what actually shifted when I stopped trying to do everything myself.
For a complete guide on optimizing and scaling your real estate investments, download my Time + Freedom Starter Pack! This essential tool walks you through ten key steps for organizing a profitable property portfolio. Click here to get your copy today!
Hello and welcome. I’m Adrienne Green and today I’m excited because I’m going to share my own story of how I got started with virtual assistants as a real estate entrepreneur.
This is something I’m really passionate about, helping other real estate entrepreneurs use virtual assistants within their business. I want to show you why and tell you how transformational it was for me. I first brought in virtual assistants to my real estate agent business before I brought them into the investing side. It really was what led me to go from a solo agent to a team leader to then having a business that I could sell. It was transformational in the amount of income it brought in and the amount of impact I could have for the people I worked with. That is why I love helping other people get virtual assistants through my virtual staffing company, Workergenix.
I’m going to share that story from the very beginning. If you want to evaluate the difference this could make in your own business, head over to my website, adriennegreen.com. I have a Time and Freedom Starter Pack. There is a free download you can get that walks you through exactly how this could work in your business so you can evaluate whether it would be a good fit for you.
Let’s dive into my story of how I got started with virtual assistants.
For those of you who don’t know me, I was a real estate investor starting in 2013. Being a real estate investor led to me becoming a real estate agent in 2018. I was a solo agent at first. I was in the Northern Virginia market and had a pretty solid business there. I was averaging about five million in sales volume. I did 12 transactions a year. If I had a closing a month and always had one under contract, that brought me around a hundred thousand in income. That was pretty good.
I will note, shout out to my husband Harley. During this time period he had read The Four Hour Work Week and suggested I could use a VA to help me as a real estate agent. I did not listen. I dismissed it. I said I did not need to do that and questioned how it would even work.
In 2020, I met an amazing team with Keller Williams and they convinced me to join. This team used virtual assistants. It was my first time working in a business that used virtual assistants. I saw for myself how helpful it was. It lightened my load as an agent and allowed me to focus on what I do best.
After joining that team, my husband and I decided to relocate from Northern Virginia to Chattanooga, Tennessee. I did not stay on that team very long, but I appreciate what they gave me. It was huge in helping me build my own business once I moved to Chattanooga because I had seen how they used virtual assistants.
That takes us to the end of 2020. In January 2021, I was ready to start being an active agent in Chattanooga. I had my licenses for Tennessee and Georgia and was ready to roll. It was a challenging situation.
I was in a new market where I had no sphere. I knew one person in Chattanooga and she was a real estate agent. A lot of real estate agents get their clients from people they know, people they went to high school with, people they are in the PTA with. I did not have those long standing connections.
I was also moving from a market where the average price point was around five hundred thousand to a market where the average price was around three hundred thousand. If I wanted to do the same amount of business, I was going to have to do roughly twice the work.
On top of that, I had three children between the ages of zero and five. I was starting a business from scratch without connections and during a time of life with significant personal demands.
What would you be thinking in that situation? How would you set up your business to succeed?
I was lucky enough to have an amazing coach who was a friend of mine. We sat down and came up with two key pieces of my strategy. The first was that I was going to niche down to helping real estate investors. Real estate investors were my passion and how I got into real estate in the first place. It was an area where I could differentiate myself from other agents because I was an experienced investor.
The second piece of that strategy was that I was going to hire a virtual assistant. I was going to need to do twice the number of deals just to make the same amount of money, and I wanted to make more. I knew that meant more paperwork, more back end work, and more lead generation because I did not have a sphere or past clients. I needed to free up time for lead generation and marketing. That meant someone helping with operations and the logistics of marketing was going to be transformational.
There are many reasons to hire a virtual assistant. The affordability, because they can be much more affordable than someone in person. Greater selection, because you are pulling from an entire country rather than just the city you live in. High education levels, where I could afford someone who was college educated. The ability to have multi use employees who could help with operations, marketing, and bookkeeping. Flexibility in scheduling.
One thing that was huge for me was that I did not have to figure out payroll, W2s, 1099s, or overhead. I wanted someone full time. I needed forty hours of work a week. That was not going to be an independent contractor. I would have needed to set up payroll and handle all of that legally. I did not want that additional paperwork and overhead. With virtual assistants located abroad, I did not have to deal with US employment laws, tax withholding, or insurance. It made it much easier to commit.
What did the virtual assistant do?
I hired a VA full time. It was harder because Workergenix did not exist yet, so I had to figure it out myself. I break down what they did into three main pieces.
First, they did eighty percent of my computer and phone based tasks. Eighty percent of what you are doing on the computer or phone can be handled virtually.
Second, they did my bottom eighty percent tasks. We all know the eighty twenty rule. The top twenty percent of our tasks make eighty percent of the difference, but we spend time and bandwidth on the bottom eighty percent. They handled those.
Third, they did tasks I could not do.
For the computer and phone tasks, they handled contract to close tasks. They managed contracts, ordered and sent client gifts, and took care of tasks that were not my top twenty percent. They helped with emails. After consultation calls with new clients, we would send email introductions to lenders, property managers, or general contractors. We had template emails for each scenario. I would provide the details, and my virtual assistant would customize and send the emails. They set up buyer searches and handled the back end after a client connection.
For the bottom eighty percent tasks, bookkeeping and accounting were major. Many real estate entrepreneurs do not have up to date books. My virtual assistant kept everything updated. Every Friday during my business planning block, I reviewed a Google Sheet they updated with year to date income, outstanding liabilities, credit card totals, bank balances, assets, and commission under contract. I had a clear financial snapshot every week. They also handled compliance and contract prep so I could review rather than create from scratch.
For tasks I could not do, they handled video editing, graphic design, and event planning. We started hosting real estate investor meetups. After the first event, my VA created an SOP and checklist so it became repeatable. All I needed to do was select the date and time.
What was the effect?
I brought on a virtual assistant in January 2021. By August 2021, I had done fifty four real estate transactions in a new market where I had no sphere. That was ten million in volume. In eight months, I did five times more transactions than I had previously done in a full year and twice the volume.
I was so busy that even with a full time VA and showing agents, I needed to start a team. The virtual assistant handled so much of the back end that I was able to focus on lead generation and marketing, including YouTube. I would record a video and my VA would edit it, create the thumbnail, add captions, upload it, and promote it. That marketing brought in clients. I would not have had time without a virtual assistant.
In August 2021, I started a real estate team. We had agents, and virtual assistants did all the admin work. Over two years, we typically had three virtual assistants: one focused on contract to close, one on video editing and marketing, and one on general admin. Annually, we did about twenty seven million in sales volume and about one hundred thirty transactions.
We were able to run a volume based business because virtual assistants handled so much of the admin. We consistently ranked in the top ten percent of our market center. I was selected for the Agent Leadership Council in 2023.
Beyond the numbers, having that help allowed me to have time with my family. I went to little league games and school events. That was a huge part of it.
In August 2023, I attended a mega agent camp and realized I was not excited to implement new ideas for the team. I felt it was time to sell. I made that decision in August and sold the team at the end of October 2023.
Having virtual assistants helped with the sale. First, they lowered our costs, which increased net income. If a virtual assistant costs twenty four thousand a year instead of forty eight thousand, that increases net income by twenty four thousand. With a two or three times multiple, that increases the valuation by forty eight to seventy two thousand.
Second, the business was less reliant on me. When valuing a business, buyers ask how much leaves when the owner leaves. Because virtual assistants handled systems and procedures, contract to close and client experience remained intact even when I stepped away. The business maintained more of its value.
After selling the team, we started online businesses and began traveling full time. I initially focused on how I used virtual assistants in my real estate agent business. After that success, I brought them into my property management and investing business. We also started Workergenix because we saw how transformational it was and wanted to make it easier for other entrepreneurs. I had learned lessons the hard way with VAs quitting or having issues, so we built Workergenix to solve that.
It was transformational. It allowed me to go from being a solo agent working for every dollar to building a team that became a saleable asset that paid me even after I stepped away.
If you have questions, put them in the comments below and I will check and answer them. If this was helpful, share what resonated with you.
If you are a real estate entrepreneur who has closed a few deals but still feels the pressure of doing everything yourself, this conversation will resonate. I sat down with Cameron Philgreen to talk about what it actually looks like to grow from one house to a 25 property portfolio without burning out. We discuss contractors, capital, delegation, guardrails, leadership, and what it means to build a business around your investing instead of just chasing the next deal. Cameron shares practical systems, honest lessons, and a bigger mission that drives his decisions. If you want your portfolio to grow without your life feeling heavier, this is one to watch.
For a complete guide on optimizing and scaling your real estate investments, download my Time + Freedom Starter Pack! This essential tool walks you through ten key steps for organizing a profitable property portfolio. Click here to get your copy today!
Hello everyone. I’m Adrienne Green and today we’re here with Cameron Philgreen. Here we focus on how real estate entrepreneurs break free of the grind using leverage, support and smarter strategies. So let’s jump in. Cameron, thank you so much for joining me today.
Thank you for having me, super stoked to chat.
Well, to set the stage for our listeners, can you give us a quick snapshot of your real estate portfolio today?
Yeah, I’m about 25 properties, something like 35 units. 80% is residential, about 20 to 25% commercial, depending on how you calculate, whether it’s square footage or units. I have about 60,000 square feet of commercial space, less square footage of residential, and I’ve been on the real estate investing journey for about six years. From one owner-occupied house to about 25 to 30 properties in six years. It’s been a great and super fun journey.
When you’re building and scaling a real estate portfolio, it’s easy to assume that more data equals better decisions. In this conversation, I sit down with Kevin Shtofman to unpack why that isn’t always true. We talk about how institutional investors think about data, how individual investors can avoid costly blind spots, how to use AI as a strategic partner instead of a shortcut, and what it really takes to build trust with capital partners. If you want to scale with more clarity, stronger systems, and smarter decision-making, this is a conversation you’ll want to listen to closely.
For a complete guide on optimizing and scaling your real estate investments, download my Freedom Blueprint! This essential tool walks you through ten key steps for organizing a profitable property portfolio. Click here to get your copy today!
Hello, everyone. Welcome back. I’m Adrienne Green. And today we’re here with Kevin Shtofman. Here we focus on how real estate entrepreneurs can break free of the grind using leverage, support, and smarter strategies. And Kevin, I know you’re going to talk about that a lot. So as we get started to ground the conversation for listeners, how does your work intersect with real estate investing today?
I mean, I’m living in it.
With my day job, I’m the head of corporate development for a software company that sells into large real estate institutions. So think sovereign wealth funds, the real estate arm of a bank, the real estate arm of an insurance company, publicly traded REITs. And then outside of the day job, I’ve been slowly, methodically building a real estate portfolio myself with a handful of friends.
If you are a real estate entrepreneur trying to scale, this conversation will resonate with you. I sat down with Fuquan Bilal to unpack what really happens as you grow from a few properties to managing multifamily portfolios and raising capital at scale. We talked about underperforming assets, broken capital stacks, seller financing, diversification, leadership structure, and the systems required to grow without chaos. If you have ever felt the pressure of bigger deals, more debt, or a growing team, this discussion will give you clarity on what it actually takes to scale responsibly.
For a complete guide on optimizing and scaling your real estate investments, download my Freedom Blueprint! This essential tool walks you through ten key steps for organizing a profitable property portfolio. Click here to get your copy today!
Hello everyone, I’m Adrienne Green and today we are here with Fuquan Bilal. Here we focus on how real estate entrepreneurs break free of the grind using leverage, support, and smarter strategies. Let’s jump in and see how Fuquan’s done it himself. To start, can you give us a quick snapshot of what you focus on in real estate today?
Well, we have two strategies that we focus on. One is a rental strategy, which is multifamilies that we acquire in the southeast, primarily Alabama and Georgia, anywhere from 40 to 150 units. And then in New Jersey, where I’ve been investing for the last 27 years, we do luxury spec homes that we build from the ground. We build an addition and put those back on the market to quickly sell. So those are the two verticals that we raise capital for. And that’s our business model. It’s real estate asset management.
I sat down with Ann Dela Cruz to talk about something most real estate investors overlook when they’re trying to scale: community. In this conversation, Ann shares how she built a thriving investor network across the Asia Pacific while living overseas, why most investor events fail to create real momentum, and how intentional connection can unlock confidence, deal flow, and long-term growth. If you’ve ever felt isolated as your portfolio grows, struggled to find aligned investors in your time zone, or wondered whether building a community is worth the effort, this episode will completely shift how you think about support and scale.
For a complete guide on optimizing and scaling your real estate investments, download my Freedom Blueprint! This essential tool walks you through ten key steps for organizing a profitable property portfolio. Click here to get your copy today!
Hello everyone. I’m Adrienne Green, and today I have with me Ann Dela Cruz. Thank you for being here with me.
Thank you for having me.
Here, we focus on how real estate entrepreneurs break free of the grind using leverage, support, and smarter strategies. Let’s jump in. For listeners who are just meeting you, can you give us a quick overview of your real estate investing background and where you stand with that today?
Absolutely. I’m a serial entrepreneur specializing in real estate investing. I started my journey in 2004 by buying homes I wanted to live in, getting a roommate, which is now known as house hacking, and then converting those single-family homes into rentals. In 2008, when the market crashed and most people were running away, I saw it as an opportunity to start scaling my portfolio.
Internet is one of those things most real estate investors treat as a box to check. As long as it works, we move on. But in this conversation, Adam Bell completely reframed how I think about internet, infrastructure, and scale in multifamily investing. We talked about why internet is no longer just a utility, how poor connectivity quietly creates friction across your entire operation, and how intentional design decisions can unlock real operational and financial leverage. If you own or are scaling multifamily and want your properties to run smoother without adding more to your plate, this is a conversation you need to hear.
For a complete guide on optimizing and scaling your real estate investments, download my Freedom Blueprint! This essential tool walks you through ten key steps for organizing a profitable property portfolio. Click here to get your copy today!
Hello everyone. I’m Adrienne Green, and today I’m here with Adam Bell. Adam, thank you so much for joining me today.
Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
To ground everybody as we get started, can you briefly explain how you work with multifamily real estate investing today?
Certainly. The company that I run is called Internet Subway. We provide internet services for multifamily communities. That’s an oversimplified version. We’re really an experience provider, and that experience unlocks value for the property owner, operator, and resident in a number of different ways.
I have been in real estate long enough to know how easy it is to drift from the original reason you started. In this conversation, I sat down with an experienced investor who has been through multiple cycles, strategies, and shiny objects and ultimately found clarity by simplifying instead of adding more. We talk about mission-driven decision making, how to evaluate opportunities without emotion, why most investors are overwhelmed, and what it actually takes to build a real estate business that supports your life instead of consuming it. If you have multiple doors and still feel scattered, this conversation will challenge how you think about growth, deals, and freedom.
For a complete guide on optimizing and scaling your real estate investments, download my Freedom Blueprint! This essential tool walks you through ten key steps for organizing a profitable property portfolio. Click here to get your copy today!
Hi everybody. I’m excited today to have a great guest here with me. I want to set the stage and start with a simple question. Can you give us a quick overview of what you focus on in real estate today?
Thanks for having me on the show. I appreciate it. Our focus today is getting back to basics. We have been in this for 17 years now, and we have seen so many things in the real estate investment space. Wholesaling, construction, flips, rentals, Airbnb, and more. We are just getting back to basics. We did not get into real estate to become a guru or chase everything. The goal was to get involved with real estate, make investments that make money, nothing too crazy, nothing too difficult, and something that could have a return in a relatively short amount of time. Rinse and repeat. It is simple.
The real estate world is very large, and it is easy to get caught up in a hundred different rabbit holes. In reality, you end up becoming incredibly distant from why you were here in the first place. I think back to when I first got into real estate after reading Rich Dad Poor Dad in 2008. I got the email, went to the seminar, and went home to my wife and said this looks like another investment vehicle that could make money better than what we were doing in the stock market. That is where it all started. Very simple. Then I look back and think about how far we deviated from that over time.
I sat down with Frank Iglesias for a deep, honest conversation about what really happens after you’ve been in real estate for a while. Not the beginner phase, but the stage where opportunities are everywhere and clarity starts slipping. Frank shares what 17 years of investing taught him about shiny object syndrome, mission drift, deal selection, and why most investors don’t fail from lack of opportunity but from saying yes to the wrong things. If you’ve ever felt stretched, distracted, or unsure whether your next move actually supports the life you want, this conversation will resonate deeply. Watch the video before you chase another deal.
For a complete guide on optimizing and scaling your real estate investments, download my Freedom Blueprint! This essential tool walks you through ten key steps for organizing a profitable property portfolio. Click here to get your copy today!
Hi everybody. I’m Adrienne Green, and I’m excited to have Frank Iglesias here with me. Get ready for insights to help you create more freedom with your real estate investing.
So Frank, what I would love is to set the stage. Can you give us a quick overview of what you focus on in real estate today?
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Our focus today, we’ve been at this 17 years now, so we’re actually getting back to basics. We’ve seen so many things in the real estate investment space between wholesaling, construction, flips, rentals, Airbnb, and more. We’re just getting back to basics. We didn’t get into real estate to become a guru or anything like that. The goal was to get involved with real estate, make some investments that make money, nothing too crazy, nothing too difficult, and something that can have a return in a relatively short amount of time.
I sat down with Lane Kawaoka for a grounded, honest conversation about what actually changes as real estate investors scale. We talked about why deals that used to work no longer pencil, how cash flow expectations need to evolve, and the mindset shifts required when moving from single-family rentals into larger, more passive investments. This conversation is especially relevant if you already own properties but feel like scaling has become more complicated, riskier, or harder to manage than it should be. Lane shares real-world experience, not theory, and offers insight into how seasoned investors are adapting in today’s market.
For a complete guide on optimizing and scaling your real estate investments, download my Freedom Blueprint! This essential tool walks you through ten key steps for organizing a profitable property portfolio. Click here to get your copy today!
Hey everyone, I’m Adrienne Green, and today I’m here with Lane Kawaoka. We’re diving into insights to help you create more freedom with your investing.
Lane, can you walk us through your current investing focus today and how your portfolio evolved from single-family rentals to passive investments?
Today we focus on commercial real estate, primarily apartment buildings, mostly in the B-plus to A range. We avoid luxury builds and focus on workforce housing. The reason is simple: the wealth gap is widening, and the lower middle class continues to grow. That demographic creates consistent demand.
