GAIN TRACTION in your Real Estate Business: How to master time management, build a productive team
Okay, welcome everybody to the probate mastery weekly group coaching call Kat. I didn't see that you got our podcast from yesterday published. So I'll start with that. One thing I want to point you guys to, if you didn't watch it already, did it call yesterday with one of the, leading professional and conversational AI and the real estate space, Structurely. We talk a lot about scripts and lead nurturing, and looking for ways to supplement what we do from a marketing standpoint.
And we had the unique opportunity to pick the brain of a tech guy. Who's been able to record and analyze over 4 million real estate conversations and writing. A lot of folks claim to have true artificial intelligence. What they have are just simple chat bots, and these guys actually have, true empathy and linguistics built into their platform. So it was an opportunity to just talk to somebody that's a leader in that space and hear what they've learned in seeing 4 million conversations across all different lead types and all different markets.
So if you haven't had a chance to check that out, I think you might find it interesting. And that's about all I have for the week. If anybody has any questions, anything we can help you with how can we serve you? Chad, this is Eric. I was just getting off the the call with you and Nate Joens from yesterday. And man, just so many, a part of me feels like this technology portion is literally taking over the psychology of how humanity responds and why they're so guarded. And I really liked some of the key points that you guys pointed out in there.
And I'm definitely going to listen to that one over and over again. But with that being said I'm looking for some real human non-negotiables that I can start making a daily part of my probate business that can get me off this feast and famine rollercoaster. You, you talk so freely. So what, tell me more about what you're looking for. What are the, non-negotiables what it explained, what I kinda find myself still tending the fires that, that are needed to be resolved, whether it's like drop everything and go after a lead, which is obviously the most highest and best use of my time versus saying no matter what's going on, you guard this 90 minutes a day, you spend time working on better processes, better systems. Like absolutely non-negotiable from this time, Eric, I don't care.
What's going on in your life. You are to do this every single day Tony Robbins has a course. It was originally called RPM wrap the rapid planning method. And I think it evolved into the time of your life, but that course talks about and it's very valuable in all aspects of your life, but in business and personal life, but it talks about the target. So you basically have a bullseye, which is what you're focused on and what Tony has personal application of that is 65. Excuse me, if you can imagine an X and a Y axis, and the two variables are on those axes are urgency and importance.
And we tend to focus on the things that are urgent and unimportant more than anything, like email, text messages, the stuff that social media, the stuff that seems easy, it's like it's unthreatening. So let's focus on that. Let's burn 30 minutes on Facebook, anybody ever done that? Anybody ever wasted guilty? Yeah. So it's those two variables that you're managing and in, and Tony's personal goal was to spend 65% of his time doing the things that are non-urgent, but important. For me, those are things like being able to leave my freaking cell phone and go for a mountain bike ride, go back to my family farm and help with a livestock obligation that I don't really care to do, but it's important to those people in my life, right? Like I don't want to be a cattle farmer, but they do. So it's important for me to contribute to that because there are people I love and want to support.
Things in business tend to be, we have important and urgent things, and that's a closing that's prospecting. Like it's urgent to prospect your probate list. It's also important to prospect that list. So those are things that you must do and what you, what your goal is to delegate, or just rid yourself of anything that is not urgent and not important and those things. So that's one way to look at it. And there's a cheat sheet.
I was trying to figure out. If I was going to do a video on this, or if I was going to write a long form blog here is basically a summary of the very comprehensive course. I think the course is designed to be taken over 10 days. It's broken in the 10 segments. It's worth every penny of the whatever 500 bucks or whatever that they charged for it.
But that summary sheet will kinda give you each of those areas or the dimensions and the dimension of fulfillment as Tony calls it as the things that are important, but not urgent. And those tend to be more personal things. So recharging your batteries, spending time with your kids, going to that baseball game, even though, your team's going to lose like those things. So I would encourage you to look at that for look for some inspiration, if you want, like a long form education on time management and planning, that's probably the best resource I know of.
There's another really good book that I'm failing to come up with the author's name. It's called Getting Things Done. There's some nuggets in there, I just can't think of the author right now. The name of the book is getting things done.
And then the last thing is what worked for me. I made some vows with myself in 2012, 13, I was running multiple real estate strategies across an investment brand, a real estate team brand. And I just, there was literally more things to be done in the worst seconds in the day. And I hadn't learned to delegate well, but what I ended up doing to reign it in was I made my calendar, my CEO and I made a vow to myself that I would give it that authority. And I started to live and die by Google calendar.
And that really changed things for me. So w with what my goal was 12 hours of prospecting. So each day from eight 8:00 AM to 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM to 6:00 PM, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, those were sacred prospecting blocks.
So that gave me 12 hours a week to prospect. Now in between those blocks on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, that was transaction coordination or office work that was chasing paperwork, scheduling inspections, anything that needed to do to process a deal. So what that gave me was three solid days in the office. I did not MAKE appointments on Monday. I only took appointments on Mondays and Fridays, whether they were buyer appointments or listing appointments or acquisitions Seldom make exceptions. It scared the hell out of me to try that because I'm like, oh, people are going to think I'm lazy or I'm going available.
And it's, this is going to hurt me, but it got to a point where I was willing to try it. What I learned was what was really surprising to me. People respected my time. And by limiting access to me, people took me more seriously, especially buyers. You know how buyers, and I know you're not really working the buy side of brokerage, but a lot of people on here do, and they will run you ragged.
What I found is I would show after I started this, I showed an average of two homes to a buyer. And before, the market average was probably right. But it was because they had, I was more structured than what I did.
They respected the boundary that I set. So something, it could be as simple as that, like literally make your calendar, your CEO B, be diligent about making sure everything goes in there. And the way I use calendars, I have a personal calendar that I share, like a family calendar. Then I have a calendar for this business, a calendar for that business. They all flow up in the one calendar, but on the left you can toggle them on and off. So you have one for this business, one for that business, one for your kids, one for your wife.
Things like that. But if you, as long as when that thing pops up and says, Hey, Eric, you need to be doing this. If you consider that if I don't do this I have to fire myself. I have to quit because if I'm not responsible enough to take direction from who I've appointed as my CEO, which right now is going to be the calendar, just to build a habit, then how good am I in anyways? And that was something that I just came up with on my own.
I tried a lot of different things. That's the one that really kept me on track. And those became sacred time blocks that could not be violated you, they weren't repurposed ever. And it's tough sometimes.
Like when there's fires burning all around you and everybody's wanting more and more of your time. Guess what, that's only getting worse. It's not getting better. How many text messages do you get a day? How many emails do you get a day? It's always going to grow. And this type of, culture that we've built. So the electronic distraction is only going to get worse and worse.
So it's more important than ever that you get a system in place for yourself. So those are the best resources I have. You could, just try to be more diligent and be really serious about your calendar. Use Calendly, quit publishing a phone number, use Calendly. And instead of having somebody inbound call you every time you're interrupted, it's about 15 minutes for your brain to get back on track. Like limiting inbound calls is scary as hell for any salesperson, right? Whatever do that.
That's insane. However, it's quickly norm, I started using Calendly in may of 2019. When I came back from spending a month in the POL completely off grid, I was just fricking bombarded.
I literally had thousands and thousands of messages that I couldn't get to. And I was like, there's no way out of this. Like I'm never going to recover. So I started to pull my phone number off of it. And everybody, including friends and family have to schedule into my calendar because it's.
So I fully committed to it at that point, where in order to have access to me, it's through a calendar so I have a podcast link. I have a personal, or after hours call link and, surprisingly even with friends and family, they're like, oh, okay, this is cool. I don't have to chase you. And I hate your damn voicemail. Cause my voicemail basically says don't good luck. Cause I just can't keep up with it all.
So inbounding making things, making your outbound effort, come to you like inbound those out the outbound calls that you need to make, if you can inbound those. So while you're doing transaction management or you're prospecting, people can be looking at your website being on the, on your landing page, responding to your direct mail piece, but their call to action. Isn't calling distract me and get me off track for 15 minutes.
Their call to action is respect my time. And find a place to have a conversation with me. And I think what you'll find will be people actually do respect those boundaries. They don't credit. I got, I was just, I've never had anyone go, I'm not easy to get ahold of, but people don't really get mad at me about it because I give them alternative ways to have access to me. Okay.
So just to recap, there's been a few people popping in and out like the master's degree in this would be Tony Robbins' RPM or time of your life. There's someone actually back me up, David Allen is the name of the author. David Allen, getting things done. And yeah, so Rosie recommended E-Myth revisited. That's one of the books in the probate mastery reading list, that books incredibly good on taking even the most complex business and boiling it down to a franchise prototype where everything is systematic and documented and you have, and it also makes it really easy to hire and delegate if you get your business to that point.
So those are the pointers that I have. Fantastic. I will start there and I definitely love the calendar idea. That's stuff. Beautiful.
Yep. Now there's lots of folks on this call and I'll tell you guys went last. Week's call was amazing. And my team, in our team meeting this morning, people comment on how nice it is to watch you guys coach each other and support each other. And that man that warms my heart.
So there's a lot of folks on there who have built and scaled businesses. And Jonathan, for example, I'm sure you've struggled with time management as a single pastor in a church when your whole congregation wants access to you. If you guys have any advice to share with Eric, please jump in. I think honestly, it's training people. It's, you are congruent with your values and what you really hold to be true. I've just found having an ideal week spent I think production is more biology and vision.
Then anything else, meaning that if you're not eating, if you're not drinking, if you're not sleeping, really not going to do much. And so I'm like you, Chad, my, my Google calendar is my CEO. I don't have a, to do list.
Everything goes there, just like a budget. And my voicemails that I have at trains agents saved for calling after 7:00 PM. I'll return your call the next business day. Those are the kinds of things that I'm, I've had to do. And and are doing right now. Otherwise it just would get consumed.
Rosie, you got something that Rosie, okay. This is my favorite topic actually. I don't know how much this would be helpful for everyone. But my buyers' agent is, and I, we do 105 transactions a year between two producing agents. And most of my team is admin.
Yeah. And we often compete with groups that are 70 DJ and I would love to share that my buyer's agent sells maybe 40 to 50 buyers cause actions on my team. And she takes four vacations a year, had a baby and stays with her daughter at home and has a very high quality life. And a few years ago when I was running separate my, a SUV driving around all the time. One day I just gave up.
I was like, I can't do this. I'm much more useful than taking phone calls and driving around one day, all around all day. And a couple of strategies I used is number one, I came up with three DS in my business. So everything I got to do in my day, I wake up in the morning.
I just write it all down or I'd write it all down a day before. That's the ideal sleep that night. Next morning, I start highlighting them into three things, dump it, do it or delegate it if it's not important and it doesn't move my business forward or my growth forward, I literally moved to the bottom of the list. If I don't get it to it in months or two, it just gets deleted. IMIA was never important. It was just a creative idea.
And the second one is delegated. This part took me the hardest time because I had a habit of sitting on things because delegation also requires a clean head because sometimes anytime I was copy pasting more than a couple of times, I made sure I hired someone to do it for us. The three D's of do it delegated and dump, it has gained a lot, has allowed me to gain a lot of time now what I can gain helping or in case, in terms of phone calls, anybody who's asking us a question. Hey, is this house still available? Does it require my expertise to answer. I think anybody who can look up metrics and say, it's actually, it can answer that question.
So any redundant information, have you received any offers or anything that a normal person can answer without a real estate license? I made sure I'm not a part of that anymore. And it was a very conscious decision. Like I got tired of it by hitting balls. Couple of time, Chad, this was helpful.
So dump it delete it and delegate it. What I can use help today on Chad is that by doing so by time blocking and following as close to the calendar as possible. There's one thing that bothers me when I get a call from someone they're like, oh, I'm so glad you're talking today. I know you're very busy. I know I'm very busy, but you and I both know we're busy with the work that they have given us. So I'm making productive.
So I'm not sure why it challenges my values and somebody calls me busy because I'm truly trying to be available to them. So I would love to know how you guys handle it when people, or is it okay for people to call you busy? I just need a little mindset change on this, on how to beyond receive it when you're following your time blocks. That's what happened when I started booking things, pushing people to my calendar and when I changed my voicemail and to me, that's a really good thing because it's like, Hey Rosie, I know you're really busy. Thanks for taking my call.
That is, to me, it's a signal of respect. They're acknowledging, I'm grateful for your time. Let's get to it. And I can't think of a better outcome for you. Like I said, what was surprising to me is I didn't lose respect or social capital.
I gained it. I established a boundary and it was clear how to still have access to me within those boundaries. But people appreciated my time more and were more competent. And so I think what it's just your perception of it. I think it's a good thing for you. Not a bad thing.
So I want to go back to your 3d and I want to know when you dump, are you dumping into a catch all so things don't fall through good ideas, never fall through the cracks. And I know that as a visionary, I have literally hundreds upon hundreds of folders and notes of things that I there's whole businesses and in my notes that haven't ever been started. And there's just a ton. So do you have a catch-all or do you just, do you truly purge that and move on? So before we approach it, it sits in this DuPage checklist for few weeks. Right? And oftentimes the things that get dumped are the ones that I need to find partnerships. And I need to move that project forward or it's just not relevant.
So what I do is if it is in regards to the business growth, like adding new parties, like redesigning and picking up the colors for the new logo. I, I have an opinion on the end product, but I don't think I'm a candidate to walk through the journey. So sometimes that task gets delayed and delayed.
And at some point I have to make a decision that, okay, who do I need to partner up with? Who do I need to hire as an expert at, based on one to make decisions on this. So they don't get just deleted forever this little pocket. And we carefully pick the things that actually going to move the business forward. Otherwise we just didn't do it because I don't know, you're a visionary. Your brain is on the go all the time. There's so many ideas that are coming to you and you want to put it down so you can focus on what's important.
And it was a challenge for me do it. And another thing was challenged for me was emails. Like I read an email. I don't really know, smell. How about I glance over it. I look over the keywords and sometimes I tend I'd read you read it and tell me what's going on because if it's too long, I don't want to lose focus.
So I engage people who are more Bijan oriented with me. What I've done really well to overcome that is voice notes. So I literally, if there is an email that's important immediate response in the morning, I get four hours a day by delegating property. So I literally would voice notes on my phone. So my team can understand what I'm seeing because I typed wrong a lot too.
And these are honest mistakes I'm making. So if you see me typing wrong, my fingers will much faster than my brain. And it's sometimes too. So I record what I want my team to do, and I tell them, do things happen first because I'm cutting it short.
My team doesn't feel that I'm being rude. Like sometimes I say, do it, what I'm saying is do it, but they might hear it, do it. So I like to just create those voice notes and send messages on slack. That's my tool that I use in my team.
It's free guys. You get literally, and I switched them rather than telling what happened. I screenshot the message and I get it to the person and they know what to do next. So I found little shortcuts like that, voice notes, screenshots slack. And it really helps you gain time.
So you can do thinking. I have four different things that I want to say at the same time, swirling through my head. I'm going to start with, we'll go back and we'll finish on your 3d. So on the delegate part, and there's some conversation happening in the chat right now, Rosie, and I think you just elaborated, you probably answered some of those questions, but as far as how the hell do you delegate when you're a solo person? What do I do? I can't afford full-time help.
And I want to come back to that, but before rosy answers that, like how you delegate as a, as an early stage entrepreneur or a solopreneur, I want to point you to a book. And this is also in the probate mastery reading list. Dr.
Ben Hardy who has a lot of good advice and some really good YouTube videos on time management. And one of the things he does is 10 minutes before. When like no electronics for 30 minutes.
And then 10 minutes before bed, you sit and recap what you got done today, what you didn't get done today and what your priorities are for tomorrow. That's to me, I don't usually offer that kind of advice mainly because my personality doesn't stand up to it as a visionary. I'm like, Nope, that feels too much like discipline to work and the hell with that. I'm not a great meditator. So I have my own versions of meditation that are not as it's not like traditional TM, but it's, it works for me.
So if you're one of those, if you have like more of an operational, like an ops mindset that, and discipline works for you, for me, it just doesn't like it's, it ends up me. Criticizing myself because I ran on a willpower three months then. But Ben Hardy has a book called who not how, and as far as the D the delegating D and Rosie's 3d, if you haven't read who, not, how today's the day, like you, you should go get the book and it will give you the idea that doesn't specifically say, here's exactly how you find the person to go make phone calls for you, or do this, or that it's a higher, it's a macro level conversation about that, about how procrastination and overwhelm oftentimes are signals of success.
It's it means you're doing things right. There's activity in your life. And rather than looking at procrastination as our parents or teachers or anyone else would tell us that it's a bad thing, you just need that you need to find your grit and go get it done, actually. Yeah. His mentor actually said, suggest that, procrastination is a really great thing because it's an indication of where your either your time or your skill sets coming up short. And it's a clear indication of what you need to delegate.
So if you haven't read who who not, how I would recommend doing that, So Rosie's really good at leveraging virtual assistance and, gig workers to really take her out of those unimportant urgent tasks that are in present in every business. What's your best advice to Dan on that? That's a great question, actually. So Jan is absolutely right. Currently. I have both my team with VAs but prior to , I had someone in house that I worked with and The two things I realized is either I was moving away from pain or I was moving towards pleasure. The few things that I ran towards me and I felt great.
Like one thing I had learned in eight years of my business is that you got to become great in tune with yourself. Because if you're not in tune with yourself, you might find yourself doing busy work and finding yourself productive, but you don't feel fulfilled at the end of the day. So I became very conscious of what things I do at the end of the day. If I still have plenty more things to do, I'm still walking around and being like, Hey, I did it. So anything that doesn't make you feel like yay and not that's your item then you need to done.
I, what I do is I'll give you a simple example. Going back to original days, you probably aren't calling a lot right now. And when you're calling work creates more work. So when you have calling, you gotta have molds I'm not into Nordson stuff. But I need a reference job conversation again.
So the simple thing you can do is if you are using any kind of dollar, any dollar is coming up with recordings now, right? Most your dialer has recordings. So what I did is in the beginning, I'll make the phone calls. I'll have my VA upload the list and I'm done with my dialing at the end of the hour.
I want them to hear all my recordings and write down the bullet points of the conversation and set my next phone call based on. I got out of that management system. So I only did what I enjoy. So to answer your question as a sort of nerd your paperwork and your busy work, optic prospecting is probably consuming most of your day. And when I say people work means writing an offer and it'd be all think about it. Offer is literally a nine pages on a contract.
And we all know we write the same thing again and again. And I have actually come up with a checklist, not a checklist. I have my team come up with a checklist. I give them ideas that they come up with a check.
I visit you, tell them, Hey, this was earnest money. This much price. This is the title company appraisal waiver.
So once you slow down and think, what did he do? And come up with those 12 items you're constantly doing again. And again, next time you will spend less than five minutes on it and you would apart. So to answer your question and looking things that volume dump and hiring D and very global VSPs are everywhere.
You want to know how I hired my first year? I got so tired of work and next morning I was getting ready. I was like, God, give me an answer. I don't want to wake up and do this today. And some email cares for me about the days for help.
And I just called and got connected. And since then I have built a right now we have five active VA's and one part-time we're used to teenagers in the front. So go online.
There is listings of VA Facebook groups you can go to PAMS consultancy once you go to these tools, resources on Google, you will have so many of them. And these are my primary, the areas I go to look for me. Where are you in the country? Oh, I have an Austin, Texas, Austin, Texas.
That's great. 21 Selma Hughes drive. That was our old place.
Let me know when you want to visit your old place! Thanks. I appreciate that. Yeah. The VA stuff it's it's difficult to find a good VA, right? So it's like finding a good girlfriend or a good boyfriend, right? Sometimes you got to go through a little bit to find one that, that just clicks and works and it can be frustrating. But once you go through the pain of finding that person and you can hand the stuff off and know it's done great. I, if I could find someone to just give this stuff to, and I know it's done great, I would add something to that.
And this is probably going to you guys are very dear to me and I promise not to show up any less than authentic with you all. So this ride going to some harsh. I'm about to say next. I have heard that a lot even before I hired VA's, but I always chose to make things my experiential truth. If we, as our hard to meet it, I want to know it for myself.
Why they're really hard. Here's why I'll tell you the truth. You're working with an employee who doesn't understand your culture. They're really hard working people.
They don't want to let you down. Okay. They want the job. So can we agree? Like they need the job and you have a job opportunity. So that part is satisfied. But what we built overlooked is we overnight once somebody to be a replacement, right? And that is a lot of expectation for someone who's willing to work for four or $5 an hour at job, we can not expect people to replace us overnight.
We, first of all, become, must become very clear about what is it that we need help with because anytime things don't work out, there are only two things that were wrong. Either the system fail or the skill fee. So before I pointed the finger at myself or at the other person, I first went to the system. So you fail to do this task because you don't understand me right.
Or is our communication system wrong. So I do a lot of zoom calls and I would share with you, like in last year and a half, since I have really established my VA team, then there has not been a single day that I missed my team meeting. And the reason I bought Ms. Matti meeting is not because I enjoy it. I honestly don't enjoy it. I don't want to show up, but I know the amount of time and the movement I may by.
So I had dedicate 30 minutes to the operations team, which is all of your team. I have one person just handling phone. I have one person just doing listing transactions. I want person gesturing leases because I have investors who buy with us and they want us to rent it. So she runs all my leases, like without my, any involvement.
Now I only get to see the final result at the end. And there's one person who was just uploading clean sheets, downloading team sheets, dining, and just sending emails and marketing and whatever needs to be done. So I made one thing, the one thing for everyone. So I have clarity when I go to this person in slack, I'm only talking about it.
I'm only talking about investments. So you've got, these buckets really helped me. So I would say when you work with VAs, see if you can emphasize on systems and skill before we be hard on ourselves, that we are not doing a good job at hiring, or we're not finding right people. And between these two, you may be surprised how much they're willing to do for you. I have people who are willing to work at Memorial day for me.
And they're like because I took some time off and I needed help that Monday and they actually volunteered to work. It didn't have to do it. So they're very giving people they're very culturally kind and I think it takes time to understand them and use.
Yeah. So just to summarize then, and she just gave you the nicest SmackDown you've ever had. Like it's not the VA yeah, no I know I've used the VA's before, and I know a girl who ran really ran her whole business, built the thing in the whole damn thing, ran with VAs.
Yeah. But she was a drill Sergeant. She was very disciplined and she was very structured.
She worked for Dell. Like she was a manager there. She was a hard hitter.
My personality is a little bit more laid back than that. So for me, it's I need to get more structure. Yeah, maybe structure and they manage all your views for you. A couple of things that I wanted to circle back to the four things that were swirling around my head. This is an amazing conversation. Thank you, Rosie.
One of the things that I did that I forgot about or take for granted, like when I first hired my, I chose not to hire a virtual assistant. I chose to hire locally because I wanted to be able to use her for, instead of me going to a home inspection or me going to we have what's inflow and infiltration, like the water authority, we have a mandatory inspection there's there. They always pass.
Like it's just, someone has to show up. And so I wanted to be able to have, local services from that employee as well as, as virtual. So before, like when I made the decision to hire, I was processing all alone as a solo preneur. I was running about eight, 14 transactions a month is what I was averaging.
When I finally made that decision, it was eating me alive because it was just like Rosie said, work begets more work. And it was just every day that I did a better job. I had more damn work to do the next day. So what I would do is I would go home in the evenings.
I had developed checklists for everything. So I came out of, if you remember, I came out of resort real estate, like we were spoiled as hell. We worked for a developer. We had a big office on kind of poly beach. I drank a beer and made friends with millionaires. That was what I did for a living.
And everyone else did the transaction management and all the busy work. Like I was fortunate enough to be in that environment. However, I got my ass handed to me when I stepped into your old world. When I came in the residential real estate, I'm like, whoa, holy smokes. There's a million moving parts.
So I very quickly, we moved to systematize everything in my business. So a buyer appointment, how to checklist of a buyer contract had a checklist, a seller phone call had a checklist, a seller appointment, had a checklist, a listing upload how to checklist a listing, marketing, how to checklist. And these are all things I literally just opened an Excel spreadsheet, put in put made a little. Box and made it where it would print on one page and I would adjust the format and the font. So I had all these checklists to keep myself on track. What was fascinating, amazing to me is when I started working with the local title companies, I sent closing instructions and I sent the checklist.
So it was literally proved that everything on this transaction had been done in a linear fashion. They were blown away. They're like there's 3000 real estate agents around here and we've never had anyone do anything like this.
And I'm like, I don't have fucking time for you to be chasing me on the phone. If I drop, if something falls through the crack, you shouldn't have to be chasing me. I should have caught it.
So the checklist is the first thing. If you can document every process in your business or the lack thereof of it, we'll show you where some of your time is being wasted or where you're not being as efficient. Yeah. I took that to the next level. When I decided to hire an assistant and I'm like, how the hell am I going to train in the system? I was literally working 16, 18 hours a day, seven days a week.
I was processing over 150 transactions alone. As a solo preneur, it was eating me alive. So I'm like, how in the hell am I going to train this person? I got to have the revenue. I have the money, but, and this was you guys. Might've heard me talk about the metaphor of, I was riding a lion, so it looks sexy as hell from the outside, but I knew the first time I had to pee, I was stepping off that line's back and he would buckle around and eat me. So it was, I was in a conundrum.
What I did is I took every time I would do one of those checklists or buyers agreement or a listing agreement or a purchase agreement, everything that I did for about a three-week period was screenshot. Corded on my laptop. And I didn't know who I was talking to a job application hadn't been posted, but in the course of my normal business, I just started to document my daily processes. Here's how I manage my email inbox.
Here's how I put leads into the CRM. Here's how I review a contract and present the offer to the seller. Here's how we fill out pre-fill listing agreement before our appointment. Here's how we do a preliminary title search to make sure that this short sale is not messier than we think. And it was it. I literally just made video after video and at night, when things calmed down at two o'clock in the morning, I would upload those into a YouTube playlist.
And then I would go, I created a system, CRA assistant@gmail.com. I would take the YouTube video. I would go into the calendar of this future mystery person who I hadn't even posted the job for.
And then I would say buyer contract training, and it would be a three. However long that video was, is how long that block was. So over a three week period, I booked 60 days of intensive virtual training using nothing but YouTube and Google calendar. And when Stacy, so Stacy was her name, she moved from Iowa.
She was running a, an REO department. She was responsible for about 110 Oreos at a time. So she was the right person to thrive in that environment. I literally gave her Gmail username and password and said, I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be here to train you personally. And let me know if you ever need any input.
And 60 days she never wants said, I don't know how to do this because there were checklists and Dropbox folders. There were YouTube videos, length in the calendar and little, I know it's a long story, but there's little things like that, that I've taken for granted how I was able to get myself out of that damn mess. Cause it was, it was, it felt impossible at the time, but I just, w there's little things like that, that you can start to document the processes, how you do it, why you do it that way.
Audio recordings, video recordings, get it into a calendar. And that's where back to the VA and the cultural differences, the biggest challenges and Rosie, you hit the nail on the head. It's a methods I'm using insight like. We have unrealistic expectations for people who really have not been conditioned and trained in our culture and our business culture. It's very different.
Imagine hiring a Spanish VA, like that would be a nightmare wouldn't it was like, what do you mean you're going to sleep for three hours? It's two o'clock. But but th these people are extremely hard workers. It's we have to take accountability as leaders. And if they're falling short, we need to look inward and say, what the hell did I, what could I have done to help that person to a better set them up for success? So those are just some pointers from things that actually worked for me, where I was able to just in the course of normal business, build a library of corporate training videos, and that's back to the E-Myth revisited. That's why I picked that up. I always strive to have a franchise prototype and document the processes in the business.
And surprisingly that, that helped me train station. No all that said, if you don't want to do this, there is a company called MyOutDesk. You might, you probably aware of them. A few of you've worked with VAs. Daniel Ramsey is a friend of mine. He's the founder of that company.
He literally built a family in the Philippines. So he goes in and build big facilities. He treats these people like, like the treats them with respect and dignity and pours his soul into them. And there's no surprise why he's been as successful as he is, because he actually cares about that cultural difference. And it's important to him that he. Creates good careers for these people, not shitty VA gigs.
So if you're, if it's time and you're ready to commit to at least 20 hours a week you will not find a better managed group of employees that will stay with you forever, but you've got to be at a position in your business where you can bite off, a minimum block for it to make sense because Daniel is protecting their culture and his stances. I'm going to make sure I create a career for this person. And to have somebody say, wow, I'll try them out for five hours this week and maybe three hours next month. He's protecting his family. He's built, he's protecting from that. So if you're at a certain level where if you have 15 to 20 man hours a week, at least then mild dusk is as is I can't give them a better endorsement.
Like I know Daniel personally. He's a great man. He treats his people well. And the rates vary based on the skill set, but.
They're pretty heavy in real estate. The vast majority of their virtual assistants are trained in real estate, but they go through linguistics training. They go through inflection training, like how like cultural, the idioms and the things that us American Jews and they work us hours.
If you don't want to tackle that mastering, that skill set like Rosie has, Rosie's chosen the DIY method, which is commendable. It's hard. It's a lot of work and they VA's come and go. People pokes them off of you. When they find out you've got one that's doing well in the real estate space. And then they find out that they can make an extra $3 an hour.
You don't even know there's a problem until they quit answering your emails. And that's the constant that's a huge pain in the ass, but my dusk will alleviate some of those problems, like having the training, the cultural training and the, and the English like English with barely any accent managing the HR components of that, the payments, a lot of the ins and outs. So if you have that much work, that's my suggestion is okay.
Yeah, give my desk a call there's. Daniel and I there's some stuff on YouTube where he and I went long form and talked about this and what it looks like to use of VA through my desk. If you search if you go to YouTube and do Chad Corvette, Daniel Ramsey or mile desk, you can probably find that in interview. But man, so many good pointers in here from this is a good conversation.
This is stuff that, I don't know, we've thought about theming these calls, but if we do, it's like w we really have uncovered it. I don't think most people have systems in place that are repeatable. I think, most of us are single unit people and it's like a thrash to get the next deal where I don't have enough systems in place to give them the training or, I don't have, I don't have some repeatable process to give them, I have all these odds and ends things to give them.
And I agree, it's, I know they want to work harder, I don't doubt that by any means, but my message isn't clear to them, so Dan, can you make a commitment to everybody here that you'll start to document your business processes? You will come up with checklists and just start to let me ask you this in the form of a challenge, let's find let's I'm trying to make this not depressing. I don't want to make you terminally ill. Let's say you, you want a six month trip where you get to travel. The world.
Ritz Carlton just issued you at six month trip, all expenses, but you have to accept in the next seven days, can you get your business processes documented where they're duplicatable by a capable person in the next seven days? Can you at least document what it is you do in the business? So what is your job description? What do you do? What do other people do? What are like? And I think if you can get in that mindset and connect with that exercise, if I was going to travel the world for six months without a cell phone, and I had seven days to prepare how in the hell would I do that? And still have this business be alive when I come back. Interesting story. When I cut Stacy loose, when she finished the last block on her training calendar, I was getting, I literally put seven deals in an escrow in one day and I was doing, I was ratifying contracts as I got on an airplane to fly into Northern Canada and 18 days. I came out of the woods and I was like I wonder if it burnt to the ground. Cause I literally just realized on the calendar and YouTube, the trainer and I was up till four o'clock in the morning.
And I flew out at six. I laid down for two hours because I ratified seven contracts in a bay from start to finish. And I was just, I was here. And th and so when I came back, I talked, I called the title company first and I'm like, Hey, can you tell me, like, how bad is it amazing.
I love her. Can we like, just work with her? And you get the hell out of our way. I'm like, yes, it worked. So I I didn't even think of that when I challenged you with the exercise, but I lived that.
I literally trained her and disappeared for almost three weeks and came back. She did not drop a single ball and we closed, I think we had 14 closings while I was gone. And she was at the closing table. Like she went there and greeted my clients then like the title companies loved her from that moment on.
But there's a lot of good. We've thrown a lot at you, but I think if you can just, and maybe it's not a seven day commitment, maybe it's over the next 30 days. If you can commit to just forcing your yeah. Not forcing yourself, but challenging yourself to document those processes, whether it's in writing on video, however, you might do that.
You'll start to see some of your own blind spots I think, and where you really need help. The next thing I would encourage you to do is once you've done that, go by and put a check mark beside of everything, you hate everything. You don't enjoy doing the things that are urgent, but not important. That becomes your job description. And that might be the job description of one person or four people.
But regardless, they're the things that you need to get rid of because you're not you're they're keeping you from dollar productive activity. So the exercise is fold one. It helps become a training manual, your franchise prototype to, it becomes a job description for your key hire. So I think it's, for me, it's probably three-part process because, looking at it this way, I don't have enough. I don't have a repeatable day.
I don't have repeatable processes and that's my fault. I don't have enough of a structure to hand that off to somebody. Yup. And I, that's a bad thing for me to admit, but I'm sure there's other guys on this thing in the same boat, we've all been in your position. If anyone on here says they haven't, that means they haven't really, they haven't been successful enough.
You haven't gotten your ass handed to you yet. You'll get there. We all will none of us are immune to this.
It's just, it's a muscle. We just have to learn how to build it. And it's a little different for all of us. I'll go back to Rosie, I think was the one that recommended the E-Myth.
It sounds to me having talked this conversation through a little bit more, that suggestion is even better than it was when she made it. I think you're going to get a ton from that book. The, if you like, do you like audio books, Dan? That's the only kind I can read. Cool. Gerber, actually, I think he self narrated that one, he has a George Carlin voice. It's a really pleasant audio book to listen to, but Yeah.
Yeah. That's that one's investor specific. I don't think I've read that one.
I've read the original multiple times I guy, that's one of those books that I revisit. All right. You've got the whole library, man. Sorry, go ahead.
I was going to ask those look like pretty crisp copies. Are you using the osmosis method or are you actually see that's some of the issue? I, there's so many things that I need to do sometimes. You're just like, okay, I am, I want to do this, but wait a minute, I'm not really prepared. I have to do this. And then you're just in this cycle of chasing my tail, that your income where you want it to be, oh no. Nowhere near my income.
Is it my income is a dwindling Schwab account. That's what my income is. Do you have high months and low months or is it you're just living on savings right now? Yeah, I do. Okay. I but I'm really new. I'm really new in this business.
I was a tech guy for 30 years and this is a whole different game. It is for sure. But the good news about you being a tech guy is you have an operational mind, right? Like you don't recoil from those things.
I do. Like I can make myself do it and sprint, so I can make myself be an ops guy, 30, 60, 90 days at a time. But eventually I'm like, I've got to run away to the woods and camp by myself for months.
But so what I would do. I want you to focus on the urgency and the importance of getting foundational systems in place in your business. And I would say of having had this conversation, reading that book, like seriously, reading it with a highlighter in hand and notes.
And when you get inspired, when you have an idea, put the book down, write that down and come back to it. I did this in 20, but before the story of documenting each and every little process and making YouTube videos, I did it. I remember clearly it was new year's day. I was home alone. I chose not to do anything on new year's Eve or on, I kept that day open for just planning and clarity for the start of a new year. And this was, that was the same year, right before I went to Tony Robbins UPW the first year.
But I sat down with E-Myth revisit. By the fireplace and I committed to reading it cover to cover. In one day it took me almost 16 hours because I had so many ideas and so many lists as flashes of inspiration. This was the second or third time through the book.
It's still, it's usually it takes me six to seven hours to read a business book cover to cover. It took me almost over twice that time, but it was, it locked in the lessons that I didn't hear the first time. I didn't notice the first time.
And. It's it, the reason I was so thorough that time is frankly, because it fucking mattered more than ever. And I was living off of savings. I didn't have the revenue that I needed. Like I had revenue, but my net was terrible.
I was spending more, too much of the revenue I was earning and it mattered. And right now it sounds like it matters. And in your situation.
So I would, if you can commit to whether it's that or something else, but you've got those books and you've heard. Our suggestions on how much of a difference they were able to make for us. I would think that's the most important thing you can do in your business right now is lay down that foundation where you do have you are clear on what needs to be done on a daily basis. You know what the rhythm is, then you will begin to learn how to, you can delegate that in the parts you hate and the part that you love and the parts you want to celebrate. And like Rosie said, those are the ones you want to keep.
The rest of them become job descriptions, delegation. But if there's we've put you on the, in the hot seat and hammered at you. But I would say that's the most important thing you can do.
And the next month is really focused on whether it's the E-Myth or some other system. There's one more thing. Geno Wickman wrote a book called traction and there's a parable version called get a grip and that teaches the entrepreneurial operating system or EOS.
These books are also in the probate mastery reading list that has been like the next evolution moving away from Google calendar in a way from from the first iteration of things that helped me get my processes in place. The next iteration of that when AllTheLeads began was moving that over to the EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system. And there's a piece of software that, that I still use and. I probably should own stock in this company as many people that I sell it to, but I just dropped in the chat. There's a 30 day trial. I, this is, I'm not an affiliate.
I just grabbed that off the Google result, but that will help you reign in the daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual activities. And when you read the EMF, what'd, you're going to, one of the biggest takeaways for me from that is you need to visualize who you are 10 years from now. What's your business looks like 10 years from now and then start to document your way back and you create right. And that's what, that's the fun part about business. And it's hard when you're in the state that you're in right now.
It's yeah, I don't want to be creative. I want to make some damn money. I gotta pay bills, but give yourself the space like that to to tap into that creative genius and look out there 10 years and then come back and a good place to capture that. Or the best place I've found is not in Dropbox, not in.
A million different word documents had the ninety.io software has really helped me keep all that. And Rosie, back to all the way back to the, when you first began talking one of the questions I asked you about dumping your last D the dump. The, what I use is you have long-term and short-term. Issues as they're called within the software and with an EOS and what I use long-term issues for the catch-all. So when something, a short-term issue is the things that need to be talked about on a weekly meeting and each of those should be dispositioned off and there shouldn't be anything left there.
Anything that the disposition is what you're talking about, delegate, do or dump. And you just you either delegate to another team. You delegate to yourself and do it, or you dump it into the long-term issue. So that way it's never lost.
There's always a record there of your best ideas and inspirations. And oftentimes you'll come back in six months and be like, that was a stupid fricking idea. I'm glad we didn't spend time on that, but then you can always delete the four D right.
So you can dump and then so I guess I use like the 40, like delegate do the dump or delete would be the way I use that system, but that's something as you jump into this, Dan, it may be helpful to start that free trial of ninety.io. And as your vision develops for what your business looks like and what those processes are, all of that is documentable right inside of that software without the software EOS. It's impossible to keep up with the no amount of discipline. And I've watched hundreds of guys go through this. And I ended up being, like I said, that made the joke about 90 because I've helped so many guys get there, like small to medium sized businesses up to 25, 39 bucks, help them get everything back on track and reign in the chaos by using that software.
So it's just a simple tool. It's $12 per user, but it's worth its weight in gold. So that's my last piece of advice and I know Ronald and Eric and Justin have been waiting to to jump in. Eric, I interrupted you earlier. We'll start with you. I actually just wanted to see if Rosie might be willing to have a conversation just about how she does some training with her ISA just about culture.
Cause I think one thing that I've really identified is my guy is too polite at times. He's too apologetic. Not brash or abrasive or rude, but he's definitely a little bit apologetic at times. I feel so. I just want to know if she might be willing to have a conversation, even if it's not today offline, sometime I'll go ahead and speak for her rate is $1,500 an hour.
It runs through my Stripe account. That's fine. I'd pay it. I love it. I love that Chad thank you. You're absolutely right.
They are very polite and they are very like sometimes they're very timid in terms of, they don't want to say that we didn't get right. So one of the cultural things that when I hire people, you know in addition to understanding their skillset not to attach to what they know, but how they do things like that has been my consistent theme in hiring people. My buyer's agent who is such a top producer right now, in my opinion, is she's doing really well for herself. She was leaving the real estate, if we can change our mindset, maybe try trying it in your personal life and your business, rather than hiring someone on what they do, what they have done, mommy, more attached to how they are going about things, and if that isn't fit with your personality and business. So that's number one thing I did with VA, I asked them, how would you go about if something like this happen? So a lot of those questions were asked when I interviewed them and.
Another question I asked them, is that in your career, what has been an ideal supervisor for you? Like when did you feel most productive and most growing and most joyous at your work? And I figured out, I wrote down those traits for those people and consistently across the board, all of these gave me one response. They said they had zero political interaction with their main person who hired them and they just didn't know if they were doing or what was truly needed. And I'm a visual person. I, my audio book kind of flies over my head. I have to read something.
So I actually, to be honest with you, I don't even talk to my me if there are none of us caught on a video. So I have all my views on video. I want to see the crunch or the timidness. I want to see the body language when I see something, how you receive it. And that really.
It gave them get, give me a lot of leverage, always doing a video call with them at screen-share and showing them because how do we know? Are they kinesthetic? Are they more visual? Are they more auditory? Like at the best? My best liberation has been, it is not important that people know what I want to get done. It was more important to me that I know how the people I hired get things done because then I can navigate my business properly. So this really helped me to do a zoom video call and asking a of hard questions on what has been their best experience when did felt fully trained and fully useful on the team.
So when you find those core qualities and you're willing to foster the talent and say they may not have strong sales skills, but they've got a really, they've got these core qualities that really may work well with you. And you're like, this person can be trained over time. So it's not so much about just finding somebody who's super strong in sales, but finding somebody who may have. On good customer service background, or knows how to reroute the conversation and kind of get it back then. Yeah. Yes, that's right.
And Eric, you and I both know that in our business, the highest dollar producing activities, having a conversation or moving a transaction forward, like if somebody is on a fence, their homework, or if somebody has been a prospect, the fact that I hear the word right in you, and I can tell that fires you too. So I think the highest dollar producing activity on my clock, I want it to be dedicated the last in the row. First I want to dedicate all the minimum BJ activities.
the reason I want to do that is so that I can become more dollar productive per hour. So the sales part was not even my expectations. I said, you don't have to sell a single thing. I want you to do everything but sales, because more time I had to mess, the reason we don't like lead generation is because all the people were creeping up in the back of her head is scary. Then the moment I'm going to put this phone down. I have to attend to all those monkeys that I have been jumping on my emails and on my phones.
But it's still keeping that down. I find myself having fun with prospecting. All I want to do is just talk to people and make deals, but having this ad, that is where we forget what you're hiring people for.
My biggest there are two things. Somebody I was really inspired by in real estate. I always watched people were very bigger producers than me and I always tried to reach out to them and see how they respond. They will always answer my important question, but if I'm just checking on them, they didn't respond. It means they're busy doing their thing.
So I always like to mimic them. And there was two things that someone told me. I forgot the second thing now, but I won't remember the phone. He said I've entered that. My great friend had Andy. I said, Andy, you do so well for yourself.
Like I know what are the right things to do, but I'm not able to do it. He said it's not important enough to you yet. The day becomes important enough to you. You will figure it out. So it became so important for me to figure it out with them.
That I had to figure it out, how these people work best so I can plug my system to it. And Walmart is a big, and guys, I know Walmart is hated and all those things are McDonald's are heavy then. But what we're hearing is our opinion about it. But in essence we look at it from far away. They're running good businesses. It is much harder to find high quality talent because the high quality talent is going to want to learn, grow, and move.
And that's the best compliment. A high performing talent can give you right for high-performing talent to survive our world has to be big enough, so their world can exist within our's then we are working with VAs. They can be average talent, but if you give them a sharp system, they can look like high performers. The word that I use to describe about something becoming important. I use the word conviction until it becomes a strong conviction in my heart.
It's not going to be front and center. So that like literally summarize my question at the very beginning of the call. I need to be more convicted of what my non-negotiables are. And it sounds like it's just prospecting and building processes for everything that might fall to the wayside, but still has to be accomplished. So that's my big takeaway. Yes.
And the second thing I just remembered it. The second thing was, I learned it from Chris' boss, actually, Chad yeah, but Brian has been quite a few times. I love I had gotten a lot of opportunity to meet Chris Voss Brandon Voss and Derek Gaunt at a couple of events. And they told me one thing, they said never be so attached to an outcome that you won't take anything better along the way.
So I never get attached to what idea I started the business with because I've been a victim of that as business and entrepreneur or entrepreneurs. We think that if I set the vision and if I change the vision, where are people going to think about me? I thought about that all the time. And one day I was like, you know what? Not no more, maybe I want something better. So I'm the first one to tell my team.
I don't know what I'm about to say, but you guys are better at building systems. So hear me out and tell me what I should be doing then. And Chris wants me to base the flow for me.
He said the smartest person in the room is the person who knows how to use everybody's brain. So I shut up and I had my team talk because then my team knows what they think matters. And the more you empower them, the more powerful you'll be. Thank you, Eric. I've already emailed you the invoice, so be sure and pay that.
Thank you, Chad. I appreciate that one. All right, Ronald.
You're up next. Thank you. I've got a question for you, Chad, and just to give the question a little context I'll let you know that I. Are remind you that I became an agent in January and no income. I've been living off of savings for months.
Finally, we're getting our first listing. We've been working on this particular property for more than a month, trying to get everything together. We're signing the listing today.
That'll be our first deal going forward. I'm excited about that now, as I want to probate, that's a probate deal. Yep. And it was through an attorney referral. I was excited about that.
Then I met with another attorney bought his lunch on Thursday of last week. I told, coming up, I've got this thing I'm excited about. So he promised that he was going to refer somebody to me. I've referred somebody to him already. It's starting to happen. My, my question though, my, my issue here.
That I am, have not had any success
2021-06-26 16:45
