How to Buy Back Your Time Through Delegation & Automation with Mike Abramowitz

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're diving into how to buy back your time through delegation, automation and effective team building with Mike Abramowicz. Thanks so much for joining us today, Mike.

Thanks for having me, Phil. Appreciate it, man.

Yeah, absolutely. So Mike is the co owner of Better Than Rich, where he helps business owners systematize their operations to gain time freedom while maintaining or increasing profitability. Mike now teaches other entrepreneurs how to buy back their time through delegation, automation and effective team building. Mike transformed from being $130,000 in debt with a 400 credit score to becoming an accredited investor by focusing on solving high value problems in the marketplace. So Mike, can you tell us your story? Like how did you get into helping people do this, how you were in 130,000 in debt and how you got out of this and what was going on?

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate this. I'll give the long, short version. The long short version is I grew up in New Jersey. I watched my dad own a plumbing business. So he's still 84 years old, still works six days a week answering every call. And his plumbing business, he's 84. So for almost 50 years he's been running this business in Trenton, New Jersey. So I watched him hustle and grind. I'm the youngest of eight and then I left for college to go pursue my engineering degree in Florida. And when I started working in college, I started in a sales position with Cutco Kitchenais with vector marketing. So started selling Cutco. I paid my entire way through college and my whole goal was to take the ambition and work ethic that I learned from my dad. But then when I started learning sales, I was like, oh my God. I read Rich Dad, Poor dad at a young age. And my mentors in the sales industry were teaching me like seven habits of highly effective people and how to win friends and influence people and like all these books. So I bought my first house when I was 20, and I had three rental properties before I graduated college. So I was 22, three rental properties. I, um, I was like, I'm gonna retire at 40. I'm not gonna work and grind like my dad. You know, I'm, I'm not, I'm, I'm gonna be better than the family. And all this, you know, all that was filled in my head as a young, arrogant, you know, egotistical early 20s something. So I graduated, I took a career position within Cutgo. They offered me a career position to train and teach other students how to do what I did as a college kid. So at 22, opened up my first business. I had the rental properties. And then 2008 hit and the market collapsed. So I lost the rental properties. I was negative $130,000 in debt. I had foreclosed in the properties. A 400 credit score. I was, I called the valley of my 20s, because now the rest of my 20s was just climbing out of this hole that I built. So I now was that grinder that I knew because that's what my dad was. So I just worked six, seven days a week in my sales business just trying to make as much as I could to pay off that debt. So there was a lot of consequences. My health, my. My relationships. There's no time for friends, there's no time for hobbies. Like, it was just like grind, hustle, work. Grind, hustle work. And that's pretty much what happened all the way through. I went to my first Tony Robbins event like around 2013. I walked across fire. I'm now a seven time firewalker. He said at that, at that event, he said, my message is my message. So at that event, I said, okay, what can I do? So I went on a speaking rampage. That next 12 months, I spoke for 300 hours in the school district in Pinellas County, Florida. And crafting whatever that message was, that led into nine books, that led into a nonprofit that I started, PB&J for Tampa Bay. We provided a hundred thousand meals to the less fortunate while running my direct sales organization. So now all I did was I had my sales organization, I had my books, I was speaking, I was writing, I had this nonprofit. So all I did was add on more jobs. And then I fell in love and I hired a business coach because there was no way I was going to have a relationship and a family. I was just going to be what my dad was to me, which was great. He was ambitious, he was a provider, but he was. He missed a lot of basketball games growing up. So I hired a business coach in 2016. His name is Andrew, and he had an experience in India helping scale a company from $6 million to $30 million with a team of 1400 underneath him. So he had this corporate experience. So he came to the states and started teaching small business owners how to corporatize their small business. I hired him, he helped me corporatize, meaning I brought in virtual assistants, offshore. I brought in automations and zapier and technology solutions and, you know, delegation. I pretty much McDonald ified my business to make it super simple. And then Covid hits 2020. And we just crushed it because we were doing zoom meetings and virtual and all this stuff before that was really relevant. And I'll kind of tie a bow on the long, short version of the story, but in this New year's eve of 2020, my son was born. James. He was born at 1 pound, 4 ounces at 26 weeks. So his due date was in April. He was born in New Year's Eve, and we were in the NICU with him for eight and a half months. And during that time, my office, my cut go business was able to run without me because of all those systems that Andrew helped me put into place. So that way I could work from home and be a present dad and husband. Uh, so it was like overcompensated for what my dad did. Um, and it still produced seven figures in sales, 1.3 million in sales. It still did a quarter million in revenue without me there running the day to day operations. So when we got out of the hospital In September of 2021, I called my business coach, Andrew, and I said, do you think we could teach other business owners how to do what you taught me how to do? He said, let's find out. And that was the birthplace of better than rich. So now, since fall of 2021, we've helped hundreds of other business owners in all different industries, helping them build business predictability so they can buy back time. Not necessarily do what I did, which is like, wait for circumstance to happen, but it's like taking a vacation without their cell phone or being able to just have dinner with the family and not have the phone constantly blow them up. So just have like predictability and, and, and whatever helps them buy back their time. So that's the very long, short version. We could go in any direction that feels right, but that, that's, that's essentially how we got to where we are right now.

Yeah, very cool, awesome story. A lot of correlations actually with my story as well, which is very ironic. But I want to dive in on talking about the better than rich shift because a lot of times most people listen to this show are going to be like 1 to 10 million home service business owners and they're going to still maybe be sucked in, you know, like the one to five, they're going to be sucked into things. When you work with these businesses, how do you figure out, okay, we need to fix this first in the business or where do you start with them to try to like help them get out of the day to day.

It's a great question. We get that question all the time. And we call it the lead domino. If you are familiar with the One Thing by Gary Keller, it's a really fantastic book. So the concept in his book is the lead domino, which is like the small, tiny one thing that if we just knock that one down it will create momentum for the big thing. So what we do with any business owner right now, we're really helping the home service space. And because there's so we small, like small, tiny lead domino creates massive, massive upside with buying back time and also increasing predictable revenue for these businesses. I'm sure you see that too. We figure out what that lead domino is. Usually the lead domino is in one of the, we call it the time rich six and it's in one of these six areas which is either boundaries, communication guidelines, systems, Playbooks, team or tech technology. So it's usually one of those six. And what we have found recently, it's usually going to be the systems which is number three and the Playbooks number four. Because what happens, the way we define a system is a series of if then processes. Usually it's in their talent journey or in their client journey. So the client journey is the user experience. And what I love about what you do, Phil, and with Flash is like you generate these leads. It's like you're starting at the top of the funnel with the client journey. But then it's like what happens next? What's the sales process for that client? Then what's the onboarding process for that client? What is the retention process and the maintenance process and the referral and reviews and ratings and ascension offers upserves and how to, you know, how to, how to generate more, how to maximize the lifetime value of that one client. So it's all the client journey that's after the cold marketing and then for the talent journey it's the same thing. It's like, oh, I can't find good people to work for me. It's like, well what is the ad saying? What is the interview process for them? What is the interview, the training, the onboarding process look like? How is that setting expectations because people quit or they're not good is because their experience is not meeting their expectations. So it's building all the systems, the if, then it's like a flowchart but then documenting it with videos and materials and sops and Playbooks. That's the Playbook section. So it's these business owners, especially the blue collar space like my, you know, they're, they're, they understand how to, how to do the thing, like how to fix the plumbing, how to fix the landscape. But to systemize the white collar stuff, that's where we're finding a huge upside, is to create lots of predictability for the user experience, both the owner, the talent, and also for the clients and the prospects.

Yeah, I think the systems, there's two parts of the systems that we, that I found is that the first thing is, okay, how do I document the systems and actually work through the systems? Which it sounds like you can help with. What about when you have an owner? That's like a hero syndrome. That's like, no, they can't do it as good as me. Or like, who do I even give this to, this process to do? Because I'm doing this thing in my business. Like, how do you walk them through that?

Yeah, well, that's the team. That's number five. Right. So the team is who's executing those plays. So what I would say to that person that has this hero syndrome is if you ever watch a sports team, imagine this, just imagine this. The coach is the best player on the team because he's the coach, he's the head coach. And he runs onto the field and says, hey, hey, Patrick, Patrick, you're out right now, Mahomes. I wanted, I'm going to run quarterback because I could do it better than you. Patrick is gonna be like, why did you hire me? And why are you paying me what you're paying me to run the plays that you're just gonna pull me out and run? Like it's almost ridiculous when you think about it in that context. And that's essentially with the owner of the. Imagine that's the coach, but imagine the owner is coming down from the suite from the box, tapping the coach on the shoulder, say, hey, put me in as running back. It's ridiculous. So for an owner says, for an owner of a company to say, no one could do it as good as me, you're probably right. But Dan Martel says In his book, 80% done by somebody else is 100% awesome. So we have to think about how can the owner not be. I have to be the person who does it. It's, how could the owner say, I could install someone to do it 80% as good as me. But then I could buy back my time so I can focus on these other high leverage activities. Because there's a, there's, there's an opportunity cost if I'm, if I'm turning the Wrench. If I'm doing the thing, the opportunity cost is then I'm not spiking more jobs, or I'm not hiring more talent, or I'm not focusing on other levers in the business because I'm in the middle of the operations doing the thing. So even though you might turn the wrench better than everyone else, you're not doing something, something else is not getting your attention. And that's the opportunity cost that we're missing. So we need to buy back time for the owner, install talent. But there's two different types of talents. There's experts, and then there's doers. So, Phil, this, this business owner needs to segment that. If I want to hire an expert that already is an expert to turn the wrench, they're going to cost more, which is great. But they know what to do. You want to have them doc them document exactly how they do it. So you're paying for their expertise to create predictability, and you're paying for their expertise on how to do the skill. But then there's doers. And the doers are lower wage, but they require training, they require time and patience, and you have to delegate where often these business owners don't want to have the patience to do that. Yeah, but just dump. Just go turn that wrench and do it the way I do it. But I'm not going to teach you how I do it. Just figure it out on your own. And that doesn't really work too well. And then there's this burn insurance. It's like, I'll just do it myself. So we have to install experts methodically, and we have to install doers methodically. But that's delegation versus dumping, and that requires a little bit different type of skill.

Yeah, I. I love the analogy of player, coach, and owner. I went through the same exact exercise with our team about a year ago, and slowly, you know, I can't get pulled back onto the field. I got a coach, got to own, whatever. And so I think for people that are out there, if you think about it, in that. That realm, it helps you kind of figure out what seats that you're in in the business and how you need to go to the next level. The big pushback on systems, Mike, is like, I got, you know, technicians out in the field. I'm running around doing sales, trying to do sales. I got office people in the office. Like, how do I document things out in the field? How do I make sure that my customer service reps are doing the right thing? How do I document my sales process because there's. It's not like I'm just sitting in an office with everyone, you know, and I can just like, manage it. How do you coach people to do that?

The. The easy answer, Dan Martell says it in his book Buy Back youk Time. He calls it the camcorder method. So with technology nowadays, it's a camcorder method. If you have a cell phone, you could document the process. So what I. What I like is I like Loom. Loom is a really simple resource because you can video the video exactly what's going on. And then there's a little write document button on Loom where it creates an sop. So as long as you have a video of the thing that you want to document, then that immediately can turn it into a written process with AI. And it's a free resource, which is amazing. So I would say every single. Every single process, every person in the business needs to know how to use loom, record themselves doing the thing that they're doing, and then turn that into a written documentation for two reasons. Number one, if that person is no longer available, they quit. They're sick. They're something. You have somebody else now can follow that training. That's number one. So if that person. And number two, as you scale and grow and you want someone else to learn the position that they're in, you don't want to take that person out of the field to teach this new person. You have the new person watch the videos and then shadow the person who's already experienced. So you can, you can document the process using the camcorder method with a technology like Loom, and then store them on a Google folder or Google Drive. It's real simple stuff, but we just have to think a little bit differently. We don't have to overcomplicate it too much nowadays. And back in like 30 years ago, maybe so, but not now.

Yeah, that's right. The book behind you, Clockwork, he talks about the acd, ACDC attracting. Okay, how are we going to attract people? Document that. How are we going to convert people? How are we going to deliver the goods? How are we going to collect money? That's like a very simple framework of when you think about documenting your processes.

Yeah. Mike Michalowicz. Yeah, he's. He's impressive. Very impressive guy.

So, yeah, okay, so a lot of times people push back and say, okay, well, Loom am I going to carry around my laptop on service calls? And what I recommend to people is get the voice Memo on your phone, click play, go out and run the best service call of your life, exactly how you want it to be done. Take that voice recording, turn it into a transcript, plug it into activity, get the sop and then you're good to go. And you can do that over and over again. For sales calls, service calls, 100%.

The only reason why I suggest the video if for and the video, you wouldn't be able to do that for a sales call, I think yeah, that's a little odd. But for the fulfillment part of like doing the actual jobs, I think that's where video would come into play and what I'm find what I'm finding. And you could correct me if I'm wrong here. Most of the. Most of the again, this is buy back your time. Dan Martell, he calls it the replacement ladder. So there's administrative then and marketing and fulfillment and then it's sales and then it's leadership. So sales and leadership. Most of the time these businesses, I know you said like 1 to 5 or 1 to 10 million. They really shouldn't be delegating sales and leadership. If they're running that size of a business, they need to offload those, those bottom three, the marketing and, and the fulfillment and the administrative. So those three are the only three that really need to get offloaded first in my opinion. If they try to offload sales too prematurely, they're going to have some consequences, in my opinion. So I would make sure I document all those bottom three first. Or for marketing, just offload it to Phil and Flash. So that way they handle the marketing for you.

But yeah, I actually made a video on the replacement ladder specifically. So like 1 million usually they need to have a CSR or a Rockstar CSR who manages their inbox. Then 2, 3 million. Usually at that point they already have delivery because most home service businesses, they hire techs first and they get the stuff done. To get to a million you got to have delivery. They just forget about the admin piece which he talks about in the book. A lot of times people skip that step. Then marketing. Yeah, they do that usually when they get from. When they go from 3 to 5 million, they are still the best salesperson, but they hire another salesperson or two and then to go from five to 10, they have to have rockstar salespeople and then hire the next layer of management team. And that's kind of the ascension.

But and you know this better than me, what I we have, we have a couple in that that $3 million range and, and they have a couple of salespeople. But what we are finding is they have their follow up is awful. So the lifetime, maximizing the lifetime value of a, of one client, they can generate an extra. Like they could double the entire business model without spending any more money on marketing and without hiring any salespeople just by getting back into the homes of people they've already sold to. And they could do that with upsells, they could do that with maintenance visits. But something else that's, that is really. And that this isn't accurate for every business. But here's so interesting. You may have seen this going from transitioning from residential to commercial just by asking the question of hey, by the way, I know we just did this in your house. Who do you know that might need something like this done for their, you know, their commercial business or something? And it seems like the margins are a little bit higher in the commercial. Now. The, the timeline is maybe a little bit different and maybe it's not transferable for every single home service industry. But man, it seems like a really good transition into a higher margin, larger scope of work potentially. And again, now you don't have to hire salespeople because they'll entrain because hiring and training salespeople are a little bit more challenging than hiring and training the technician and getting the fulfillment piece filled. So that's interesting in its, in itself. I don't know if you've seen that at all. But, but here's what there was a. So what there is, because what's happened, you get some of these ultra wealthy people that we've seen and they'll give like a donation of like a $50,000 holiday lighting job to their church. Yes, they will donate. Like I love this business. I do business with them all the time. And we'll, we'll, we'll, we're gonna, we're gonna pay for their doc that you know, to get it redone. And it's like they're just donating 20 to $100,000 jobs just by asking the question. It's insane. That's pretty, pretty good, right? I'll kick it back to you.

But yeah, but you know, I think it's great. I think asking the question, the biggest one is, hey, who do you know that needs this? Or do you have any friends, family members that might need this? One thing that we do at the end when an invoice is complete is send out a referral email with a little coupon on it that says give the gift of clean, give the gift of safe home. Give the gift of whatever. And it's a little like $50 off. And you can just forward the email to any friend or family member, which is really great to generate referrals. I want to hit on the, this big one, which is boundaries. Because like your dad, for example, where, how do you, what are the boundaries? Right? You're at dinner with your family. Where are the boundaries? I, this is my business. So what do you do? Tell me about this one, because I'm curious.

So, so here's, here's the saying is your business is a vehicle for your life. It's not your life that's number one. And if we understand that to be the truth, then that's going to create a different paradigm. And we built the business for a reason. And sometimes we have to just question what that reason was. And oftentimes it was I wanted to be a better. You fill in the blank. But I wanted more freedom. But sometimes we build the business and then we just have a glorified job. So the boundary, a gross example I like to use is if you're making love to your spouse and it's two in the morning and the phone rings, you answer it and I ask this question sometimes, like it depends who's calling. That's not the right answer. The right answer is, well, of course not. Hopefully that's the answer because that's out of bounds. So if that's out of bounds, what that means is making love to my spouse at 2 in the morning is a priority for me and nothing's going to interrupt that. We just have to get clear of what our priorities. So another word for boundaries is protecting priorities. So using the football field or the basketball court, out of bounds means we have to stay in bounds. That's what our priorities are. What are the priorities? I created something that I, that works for me is the, it's. It's like a little triangle. At the bottom is predictability. I want to create business predictability as the foundation and then I want to have in the middle it's, I call it BFF B. At the bottom, business predictability. And then F. In the middle is family leadership. Like I want to be able to have leadership in my family as a husband, as a, as a, as a father and just demonstrate what that means in the best way I can. No, per. Not perfect and no one is, but it's a goal. And then at the top is going to be the other F, which is bff. What did I call this? I don't remember. What I called it, but it's a financial freedom legacy. It's going to be like health that, that piece of the pyramid which is what happens beyond me. I want to have energy for myself but I also want to have like a legacy beyond me. So if those are my priorities is business predictability, family leadership and having some sort of like connection to my faith, connection to my community, connection to life beyond me with generational wealth, all of the decision making comes from those priorities. So for my dad, my dad's 84 years old. What do you think his priority is right now? I mean the guy grew up with bedbugs and roaches in Trenton, New Jersey with absolutely no money. He doesn't his, he has a very self centered type of ego paradigm that he is just so conditioned on that nobody else can do it as good as me. So my priority is survival so the kids are out of the house. He's a great grandfather at this point the only thing that matters is survival because that's conditioned in him. So all I would say to someone out there that's listening to this, if you're not 84 and you're not a great grandfather and you're still young enough to make some changes, all I could say is reevaluate what those priorities are so you can just demonstrate the leadership that's needed for your family, for your community, for your faith, for something that's bigger than just the business because the business is a vehicle for your life, it's not your life. And we just have to reevaluate some of those decision making sometimes.

Yeah, I completely agree with you. And in the book by back your time we talked about this admin piece. A lot of times I feel like the boundaries is inside of this admin piece of things which is you're getting calls, you're getting emails, you feel like you need to respond to this and do this and a lot of times you're, you know, you're out running around and then oh well when it's quiet, you know, six, seven, eight, that's when I can look at my emails and respond to things and that is a $10 task that you're doing that you should don't need to be doing that you could even filter things down and I think a lot of times people get stuck on this.

Well it's not, it's, it's all. I would say it's a, both end because there's also the doom scrolling on social media. You know, it's like late night. You know, one of Those or So it could be reaction mode. What I heard you say Phil, and you correct me if wrong is reaction mode. Like almost like the firefighter, there's a fire, something needs my attention, an email or a call or something administrative related needs my attention. So therefore I'm going to react to it. And sometimes it's that, that's what it is. But also there's distraction that shows up too. So there's reaction if there's no boundaries and then there's distraction if there's no boundaries where it's like shiny object or I'll give you an example. My dad had an idea of starting a one stop shop for his plumbing business. So beautiful idea. He spent 30, 40 grand on getting like a retail space set up. But then it's like no one is knows it exists. There's no marketing, there's no clients knocking on the door. So it was like a cool idea that turned into a distraction for his time, his money, his energy, all of his resources. So there's cool ideas which could be distractions, AI could be a distraction, you know, shiny object. And then there's a reaction of like if they don't have these systems or boundaries like we're talking about in place or administrative related. So that's where the communication guideline also ties in. That's why it's number two on that time. Rich six is I want to have parameters. What deems an email versus a text versus live call versus what needs to be in person. So I have to have these communication guidelines in place for my team, for my clients, for my prospects. If you're doing like we have a client who does million dollar jobs, I mean they do full landscape for like Barry Bonds and Julia Roberts, like high end. And it's like these clients, they have my phone number. I'm like hey, I get it. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't disagree with that. You need to have a white glove experience in some cases. And could there be an invitation for a filling out a form before they call? And there's, that's a small guideline where it's like hey, this is a request. If it's an emergency, call me. But my request is if you can wait till normal business hours, just fill out the form and you'll be the first on the list we contact. Small request inside of a guideline, they could honor it or they don't, but you at least have to put it out there to them. And then they could, then they have a choice. To honor it. But at least there's something there in place. And I think too many business owners are fearful that if it's just like they don't get in touch with me, then they're going to go somewhere else. It's like they could still get in touch with you, but could you just put a buffer, could you put a, again using that boundary around it to make sure you have a boundary protected by some sort of communication guidelines?

Yeah, I, I love the boundary idea and just setting communication parameters, all of those things. I think a lot of times it's, it's so hard because it's like your life, your livelihood and I and think you kind of got to get out of that mindset. Another big mindset for a lot of people. Like when I was in the trades, it's like, no, everyone comes to work and works at work and if the CSRs are not there answering phones and the technicians don't show up to the, to the supply house, like, no, they're not doing work. I know you mentioned offshore virtual assistants. I want to even just talk about like remote team members, like how, how do you recommend people manage if, let's just say they get a customer service representative who's in another state or something like that or something in those lines. How do they manage that?

It's a good question. I'm not going to, I'm not going to fake like I know the answer for every single business. I'm not going to say this is, this is a blanket statement that's going to work for every business. But here's, here's a couple of things that, that have, that we have seen. Number one is having some sort of project management software. So that way we can make sure that if there's someone remote, we see exactly what the tasks are that they're working on and what is the progress on those tasks. Now hearing project management software, what the hell is that? I'm a blue collar guy. I use pen and paper. Right. So that's like a, that's where that, the time Rich six, Number six is a tech solution that number five the team uses. So that way they could be a little bit better at their job. So using something like ClickUp is what we use or Asana or Trello, just a project management tool that you can see the progress and also the projects that are happening. That's just one idea. Another idea is being outcomes driven is really important more so than time driven. So we want to make sure that the metrics, the KPIs, the business owner is managing is they're managing that more so than the person. So that kind of comes into the systems thing as well, where it's like we want, I want to know the data. So if we're managing someone remote that is answering calls, I want to know how many calls came in, how many got answered, how many booked, how many rescheduled. So if I just look at the numbers, that's going to tell me a story. So there's feel versus real. It feels like my staff is not working really. Actually they're very much working. But you need more calls, you need more calls or like you need to increase the conversion rate on the back end. And there's actually a broken part of the client journey is why your people are not productive. It's because the system is broken or the client journey is not working. Not that your people aren't working. So the data and the KPIs often tell a story that is being missed. But that blue collar mentality is it's the person's fault, it's not the process's fault because they typically aren't thinking about processes in that way. So that's again, it's not a blanket statement. I'm not going to say this is perfect for every business, but this is just in general business best practices.

Yeah. The project management piece to kind of like put this together for home service businesses is like we talked about. Okay, we want to do more commercial jobs, so we want to do more jobs at a, at a church. So we need to build a list of all the churches. Okay, who's going to do this? That would go into a project management software of like, okay, we need to build a list of all the churches. Then next step is we need to craft an email or some type of outreach for these churches. That's the next step. Then we need to reach out to 10 per day. That's the next step. So now you're taking your ideas and actually documenting it out. And you don't have to be the one to document it out. You can have people that are going to create this project management, but what it is intended to do is to take your ideas and turn it into a process so that way you can actually execute on the ideas that you have. A lot of people just say, oh, we should do that. But then there's no project management and there's no team member to have there. That's kind of what you're talking about, right?

That's exactly what you're talking about. What's really nice Is some of those tasks require potentially a different skill. So using that example you just said, organizing a spreadsheet, like finding all those churches in the area and putting on a spreadsheet is one skill. And then if we wanted to market to those individuals might be a different skill. So you have different people. Different who's like a who not how by Dan Sullivan. Different who's inside that same project management software doing different tasks underneath the exact same project. And. But it's. The entire organization can see who's assigned to it. So you could assign it to a different person. You could also put a timeframe. So when you set this up, and we do this for our clients all the time, so we set it up, it's like, how long do you think this should take? How long do you. When do you want this done by? And we could put deadline. We assign it to people on our team. For us, we have a 30 to 40 person team that handles all that administrative for business owners. So like a home service business owner listening. Just an FYI, there's companies out there will just do this stuff for you. So you don't have to be the one to figure all this out, but you can figure it out and you could do it yourself and it could save you some dollars. And that's why I believe there's podcasts and resources like this. So you can do it yourself, but there's also companies, you just plug them in and they'll just handle it all for you.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that the piece of virtual assistance onshore or offshore, is that a lot of the things that you want to do or the systems that you want to put in place, that if you knew that you could solve them for 1, 2, $3,000 per month and have it completely done for you. I think a lot of times people don't know that. They think it's this big thing that they have to figure out.

No. And because especially the dollar goes a lot further in a lot of these places around the world. So like our team of 34, I mean, we have Latin America, we have India, Pakistan. The Philippines is a huge one for us. So all over the place. And the dollar goes further for them. So what might be a $25 an hour in the US task, someone offshore might do for a fraction of that. And they'd be thrilled, you know, because the cost of living, like you could, you could buy the. I did a math on this. It's actually really interesting. In the Philippines, it was like a million, a million of their currency. What is it?

They have Filipino pesos.

Pesos, so, so a million pesos sounds like a lot. It's like, oh my God, a million pesos is like a million dollars. It's actually like 30,000 USD and you could buy like a beautiful home and compound over there for that. Could, that could house their whole family. Like, because they have like generational people live there for 30, for 30,000 USD. So you think about what that means here. They're thrilled with how far the dollar goes. And however the small nuance is you do to make sure you trust people, you know, we gotta establish trust. You know, you gotta establish that trust. You gotta make sure that they're quality workers, that, you know there's a lot of scams out there. So you have to have a vetting process is what I would recommend. Especially if you're giving them some sensitive information. That's why working with a company, I'm assuming you flash, you use some, you know, offshore team. Yeah, you got to vet them. And that's, that's some of the things that again, these corner cuts that some of these folks might try to do.

Absolutely. I think, you know, there's a layer of going on fiverr and finding someone to do a task, which is fine, then people might upgrade to upwork and try to find people like that, which is fine. But upwork, as we know, you can't vet people and they might be, who knows if they're doing what they're doing. But then there's other companies out there that can help you vet specific type of virtual assistants to help you on certain tasks and even coach them through this process. And I read the book for our workweek that's behind you. And, and that's how I learned about the whole VA thing this a while ago. But literally the first person that I hired was virtual assistant to just help me with administrative things. And that showed me that our whole team is remote. So. And you know, we have some in the states, we have some overseas, but like the whole team is remote and it can be built out that way.

And one of the things I'll say is I know, Phil, you're coming. On our podcast we had a guy, Qasem Aslam, he had an eight figure exit from his company called Solutions 8. It's a Google Ads agency. And his episode, he talked about the Pareto talent distribution, like how to use the Pareto system for hiring talent. And one of the things, if you're listening to this, if you do want to try to do it yourself, which I Which I recommend if you have the capacity to do it. If you wanted to go to a fiverr and upwork. The big key here is a test project, and I think it's something that's often missed, is pay them up front for the work that you want them to do ahead of time and give it to them as a test. So let's say if you were going to say, hey, this task might take, you know, let's say you're going to hire someone $10 an hour as an example, and you give them projects, it's going to cost two and a half hours of time. You think it's 25 bucks, you tell them, I'm going to pay you double. I'm going to pay you $50. And you, here's the task, here's $50. Pay you up front, get it done for me. And here's the kicker. Inside the test project, you give them like the incorrect email or an incorrect login. So you wait and see how long it takes them before they start figuring out, number one, that it's an incorrect login. And number two, if they actually run away your 50 bucks, they might say that's a waste of money. It's actually the most beneficial use of your money because now you could test their integrity. You could test their, their reliability, their dependability, their work ethic, how fast they, how slow. If they wait till the day before the deadline that they gave you, like, all the things that go behind it. It's a really genius way to bring on remote workers just in general, or any worker just in general is using this test project concept and almost like giving them a chance to fit like you want them to fail and see how they correct themselves and in the failure, if you will, and how fast they are and do they actually ask for help and all that stuff?

Yeah. And I think, like, for us, we do it like, if we bring someone over like, hey, make this for flash, and like, do this as if it was flash, and we'll like, misspell things, give them the wrong things, and then see, you know, if they can figure it out. They don't figure it out, then, yeah, they're not the right fit. So I think it's good. I think specifically for home service business owners. A lot of times this, what we're talking about is like completely foreign to them. So I would recommend, like, I talk to a lot of these people and we talk about upwork and fiber and stuff. I always recommend go through some type of a company that's going to find These types of people and build the systems for you because you don't know what you don't know and you don't, you don't want to go six months and like go through this taxing period and just try to figure this out. If you could work with a company that knows what they're doing.

That's why we started a company. I mean, I shared the origin story is because we have found that most business owners, they do not want to do it themselves. They're too busy. And that's why we started the company that we have with Better than Rich. I mean, it didn't, it didn't, we didn't anticipate being doing what we're doing. It's just the marketplace told us like we did an event. We thought we were going to go into the event space. I don't, I don't know. This is funny, kind of funny. We did an event, it called finding your purpose for business owners in Mexico. And they were all, we thought that's what these business owners needed, leadership. Kind of like what I was talking about, priorities, like, know your main thing. So we had 20 people come out, they're like, spend like five grand each. And we did this unbelievable retreat for them. At the end, they're like thrilled. And we said, well, what do you need next? They're like, well, we got to go back to our businesses. We can't feel all fulfilled and woo, woo and all this stuff because we got to go back to business. So we did another event in March called Business Systems Mastery. So we showed them how to do this stuff in their business. On day two of the event, I said, how many guys have virtual assistants? And none of them raise their hand. I was like, oh my God, I have 12. I had 12 offshore virtual assistants just working for me. And I was like, what if my team could do work for you? Would any of you guys be excited? I said, I'll do that with five of you. And 10 of them raised their hand. They're like, all right. So I just did it as a test. March of 2022, as a test. That test launched into like a legacy product that we now have. But 70 something business owners, maybe 80 business owners. That's how we built like this virtual assistant agency because it was such high demand for it. We've pivoted since, but now we've kind of rolled it into like this GSD thing where it's like, get shit done, get stuff done. I don't know if it's a clean show, but GSD um, we want to just get stuff done for people so now we get the administrative done for them. But then we also found the higher level strategy systems, processes, all that stuff we're talking about, they still need help there. So that's why we have this top down, bottom up type of approach that we take with business owners because they really do want things done for them. And that's why I love what you guys do at Flash. If you're listening to this, you have to check out the marketing stuff that you that, that Phil has going on with Flash consulting because it's like a full done for you. Like here's leads. Like here we've solved the lead gen problem. Like that's such a huge pain point that you're solving for and I love that.

Yeah man, I really appreciate that and I appreciate what you're doing because I think there's a big need out there. So where should people go to learn more about your business, get in touch with you, see if they might be a right fit?

Here's what I'll say. You don't need to figure out if you're a right fit. We're going to do, we're doing for anybody who listens to the show a 30 minute, no BS call. So no pitch. I'm going to. We'll install four systems into your business for you and for free. So in four systems done, no pitch, 30 minutes and we're just going to show you what it means to get something done. And you could go to betterthanrich.com GSD better than rich.com GSD book a time those four systems, if you need a talent system like for hiring done. We'll build a customized playbook for your business or a sales process, we'll build that or, or a NEL tv the client maximization will build that. If you need, you know, for administrative writing, like getting your delegation of your writing style done, a 12 month email nurture sequence to nurture your current clients and also your prospects that will, we'll build that out done for you. A proposal and quoting system completely done. Customize all towards your business. So as long as you have a website, we could, we can scrape the content from your website and we could build all these systems for you in your language, in your words, with your client avatar and we'll get it all done in 30 minutes that you can take this and boom, just bring it to your team and just get that stuff done for you. And that's essentially what we're doing. For anybody that listens to the show. It's just like a gift. You don't need to learn about our services. Learning about our services, like, on the way back end. We just want to give you a win that you could take right away up front. Use it. And then if you get interested, you're like, whoa, that was pretty cool. If that's what you do for free, what do you do for us to, you know, for us to give you our money and pay. And then we would talk about, like, coming out to Florida and the St. Augustine, and we build out the system together in person. You bring your key players, and we bring our team. You bring your team, and we essentially inject our team into your business and become an operations arm of your company. And we obviously could talk about that down the line, but right now, let's just help you get some wins and buy back some time.

Yeah, I. I love it. I have a very similar philosophy and give the recipe and sell the cooking, and at the end of the day, like, it's just about helping people. And I really appreciate that about you.

Yeah, thanks, man. Thanks so much for giving me a chance to just kind of share the story and help where I can.

You got it. All right, Mike. Well, take care, man. Talk to you soon.

Thanks, Phil. It's like, know your main thing. So we had 20 people come out. They're like, spend like five grand each. And we did this unbelievable retreat for them at the end. They're, like, thrilled. And we said, well, what do you need next? They're like, well, we got to go back to our businesses. We can't, like, feel all fulfilled and woo, woo, and all this stuff, because we got to go back to business. So we did another event in March called Business Systems Mastery. So we showed them how to do this stuff in their business. On day two of the event, I said, how many guys have virtual assistants? And none of them raised their hand. I was like, oh, my God, I have 12. I had 12 offshore virtual assistants just working for me. And I was like, what if my team could do work for you? Would any of you guys be excited? I said, I'll do that with five of you. And 10 of them raised their hand. They're like, all right. So I just did it as a test. March of 2022, as a test. That test launched into, like, a legacy product that we now have. But 70 something business owners, maybe 80 business owners. That's how we built, like, this virtual assistant agency because it was such high demand for it. We've pivoted since. But now We've kind of rolled it into like this GSD thing where it's like get shit done, get stuff done. I don't know if it's a clean show, but gsd, um, we wanted to just get stuff done for people. So now we get the administrative done for them. But then we also found the higher level strategy systems, processes, all that stuff we're talking about, they still need help there. So that's why we have this top down, bottom up type of approach that we take with business owners because they really do want things done for them. And that's why I love what you guys do at Flash. If you're listening to this, you have to check out the marketing stuff that Phil has going on with Flash consulting because it's like a full done for you. Like here's leads. Like here we've solved the lead gen problem. Like that's such a huge pain point that you're solving for and I love that.

Yeah man, I really appreciate that and I appreciate what you're doing because I think there's a big need out there. So where should people go to learn more about your business, get in touch with you, see if they might be a right fit?

Here's what I'll say. You don't need to figure out if you're a right fit. We're going to do, we're doing for anybody who listens to the show a 30 minute, no BS call. So no pitch. I'm going to. We'll install four systems into your business for you and for free. So in four systems. Done. No pitch, 30 minutes and we're just going to show you what it means to get something done. And you could go to betterthanrich.com GSD better than rich.com GSD book a time those four systems if you need a talent system like for hiring. Done. We'll build a customized playbook for your business.