Ep 605 – Virtual Teams And Systems For Property Management With Real Estate Investor And Entrepreneur Dan Butler

This is the no Closer show where you get the latest developments in distressed note investing and learn the secrets of how you can control millions of dollars worth of property for pennies on the dollar. Get educated and entertained by someone who has closed thousands of deals and lives to support you in achieving the same. Now, here's your host CEO of We Close notes, Scott Carson.

Hey, no nation. Scott Carson here. We're excited on this episode. We've got our buddy Dan Butler joining us from Tennessee. Not only is a very successful real estate investor, but he's also done a really good job systematizing his activities to learn how to re outsource them to virtual assistants. Dan started off like a lot of us do, working and trying to do everything yourself during the week and the weekends while still working full time. And it's been a 15 year challenge, in his words, being able to build a life that he now enjoys as a real estate investor. Instead of swapping one job for another one, he's learned how to put his systems in place and overcome that control freak, that inner engineer mindset that he has in real estate. So I think you're going to enjoy this episode coming from somebody who's struggled and who's done a great job of fighting that struggle to learn to delegate. God knows we're all inner control freaks and we all need the help we can. So stay tuned for this episode. Make sure you take some notes and we'll see at the top. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening everybody. Welcome to this episode of the Nope, Closed show. As always, Scott Carson, excited to be here today and always excited to have a guest on who's doing some amazing things out there that can really bring a lot of content and tips to our audience across notenation out there. And I don't care where you're at in the country, we're often, especially in the note space looking to buy debts outside of our backyard notes and putting teams together in different areas. And we've got an expert on here today who's going to share some great insight and has been doing this not only for himself but also helping other investors put teams together and really help delegate a lot of the sources and take a lot of that scare factor to that might keep you up at night. If you're an hour, two hours, three hours away from where your properties are and where your deals are, that can also become a bit of a stress ball for you and add a little gray hair, take away a little hair. So we're honored to have my buddy Dan Butler. He's the co founder of 6am Corp Collective, the parent company Crestcore Realty. This guy is doing stuff on an amazing basis. He started as an early entrepreneur, he's been rocking and rolling and he's also co founded Crestfour Realty in 2012. Manages 3,000 plus properties across Tennessee, Memphis and other areas. And he's doing a lot of stuff with local and international investors. So we're honored to have you join us here today on the Nucleus show. Dan, how's it going today?

Good man. Thanks for having me. Glad to be on the show. I enjoy listening.

I'm glad to have you here too. So let's talk about that. I mean 3000 Doors is a lot of doors. I'm sure you're not the only guy managing there. You got some team going. Could you kind of talk about what kind of size of team and people you have in place to manage that many type of properties and investments?

I think we have. Well, it's hard for me sometimes it gets muddy on just with the collection of companies. But I think property management, we probably have 20 employees and then probably 40 remote team members. People that are working remote mostly in the Philippines. So probably 20 that are on site in the different. We got three different offices in Memphis, Jackson and Dyersburg, Tennessee. We have you know, 40 plus that are supporting us remotely to just to do all the kind of the back office back end stuff that we do.

That's probably less than most people were thinking, which is a good thing because you're, you've learned to delegate and really utilize VAs to help you do a lot of the heavy lifting for you, right?

Correct. Yeah, we, we've been on a journey on that several different iterations and yes, we finally got over that hump. You know like we all have of delegating letting go, especially letting go to somebody that's four or five thousand miles away. That's a whole nother ball game. So that's been a journey that's been a lot of fun. We enjoy having them as part of our team. You know, they're one of us. That's why we call them remote team members, not VAs. We kind of switch that a little bit just because they're on our team, you know, they're part of. I mean their emails say crestcore.com you know like they're not some third party service or anything like that. So yeah, it's been great. We get on screen teams, meetings with them, video conference calls, all that good stuff. They we do traction on if you're familiar with traction entrepreneur operating system. And they've got rocks. They've got scorecards, just like everybody in Memphis and Dyersburg and Jackson. So we hold each other accountable and try to keep this business growing and moving forward.

That's really cool.

Yeah.

EOS is a phenomenal system to put in place. It takes a little time, but it's so well worth it in the long run for it to really kind of pull out, identify I don't say weak links, but weaknesses to help making sure that everybody's doing the rolling the same direction and doing the most productive things thing that they're really identified to do in your. In the system. You know what I mean? Your businesses, right?

Yeah. Well, and one thing for us is I think we've kind of settled on. We track a bunch of stuff, but we're trying. We're really pushing down to where every single team member has one number so that when they wake up to go to work, they know that one number they had successful day or not such a successful day. And then your rocks and your scorecards behind that or your rocks behind that. If you're not getting that goal that we need to hit, they're putting stuff in place to hit it. So that's been fun journey, but like you said, it's been a ton of work, man. It's not just flip a switch and make some numbers up and off you go. That's not what it is, man. It's a grind. But I think it's. Every entrepreneur should consider it. Anybody that's trying to build a business, whether it be a note buying business or property management, it doesn't matter. You got to have these systems and processes and, and EOS is one of the key components for us now.

You know, when you Left corporate in 2014, how many years you've been working in real estate before that or did you make the jump cold turkey?

That's a great question. Yeah, I started in 2001 buying rental properties while I was in manufacturing operations. And so I did a dual path for 13, 14 years where, you know, I was working nights, weekends, lunch breaks on the rental properties. And then during the day I was focused on making plants run efficiently, you know, profitably and all that stuff. So it was as part of my story, you know, I think it's what led me to, you know, be able to quit and just keep that W2 as long as I could while I was building something. So definitely a long journey on that. It was worth it.

Now, when you, before you left, did you already Were you already utilizing virtual teams, virtual teammates, or you were doing a lot of that stuff yourself up to that point?

Yeah, I mean my partner and I, we were up in 14. We were, I mean it was, it was just he and I and I think we just had a couple of people back then. So we were doing a ton of the work. That was one of the reasons we started a property management company was we had our own portfolio and we were doing leasing calls, maintenance calls, managing contractors, paying invoices. We're like, man, if we're going to ever build something that's sustainable without us, we got to do something. So that's what we started managing for others. And when we did that, it created some fee income to pay for somebody to manage ours as well. The downside of that was we were highly leveraged with people from local employees and it was hard. And property management, I don't know if you really just Google it and Google profit margins, property management. And you'll see it's one of the lowest industry that you could pick is property management and profit margin. So having the virtual side of it years later helped us hone that in and get our profit margin back. And also I kind of equate it to like the military. Like in Memphis and Jackson Dyersburg we have the officers and then we got the troops, you know, in the Philippines making things happen. So we got strategic thinkers, goal oriented vision, that's what we have at the office. And then we got the tactical, you know, get after it is kind of our virtual side.

Now I'm willing to bet that you and your partner's families were probably a big cause for wanting to outsource a little bit. Imagine like if you're like any other type of investor out there, lot of control freaks. You know, we got to keep our thumb on the pulse. Right?

Right.

And it's hard to delegate that aspect unless a B, you're just burnout, A, you got the family like hey, every vacation is you're still on the phone taking phone calls and things like that. We've all been there, done that. So what were some of the first things thinking back here that were the things that you offloaded your plate to your virtual team that really made a big impact. And it may not just be profitability, but maybe a little quality of life or allowing you to sleep a little bit or really get things done on your end that you may on the back burner.

So the biggest thing that I would say is we were always putting processes in place and they would last as Long as that employee or as long as we kept our thumb on that employee. When we added the virtual, they really want guidance and they want written documentation and they want to be held accountable. This is how I do this job. And so the repeatability, the sustainability of your standard operating procedure shot up for us. It's kind of like the Titanic, you know, that's what it felt like. You try to put these things in place and you're poking holes, poking holes, and then a new hole show up and you're just reactive. And so with the virtual, we were actually able to add more people on a, on a person per unit count, if that makes sense. Like there's industry standards of how many people you should have per 100 units or whatever. And so we were able to reduce that so we have actually more coverage per unit than we did before. So that allows us to not miss any of the things that would get missed in normal property management operations. Because there's some, you know, you talk about transactions and moving parts, property management and maintenance, part of it. There's thousands a month. So. Versus like owning notes or. We have a lending business and that lending business, the P and L, is one page and it's like money out, money in a couple employees. That's it. You know what I mean? Like, it's pretty clean. It's a. I think that's, you know, it's a whole nother story. But I think that's why we're in the lending business is all these other businesses allow us to be in the lending business. So we kind of have to, kind of have to have both for us to exist. But anyway, just a side note there.

No, no. And think it's, it's so relevant. I mean, it's exactly relevant because I think obviously we, as real estate entrepreneurs, we met. We're doing a couple things to make things happen, you know, primarily in the note space. But I still end up with property, still end up with reos. I still gotta work by getting those properties sold or keep them as rentals in there. So we're always constantly juggling two or three balls. It's when you start juggling four, five, six, and then not only just yours, but other people's at the same point where you can really. Stuff gets dropped, right?

Well, yeah, and I think where things get dropped too is. And this is something that took several years, you know. And I'm trying to teach my kids to think differently than I did as far as, like, I just would grind, grind it out, you know, Like I would Just, just do it. And then you look up your day and you realize how worn out you are. A lot of it's because you spent the day doing stuff that number one, you're not good at or number two, you hate doing, but you just do it because you're there and you're the business owner, you know what I mean, or the manager or whatever. But that doesn't mean you have to, you know what I mean? Like so some of it's self awareness to realize, wait a second, if I offload these things, my life is gonna be so much better. Even if it cost me a little bit of money. Now I can put on the stuff that I'm really passionate about that I love to do. Your business is actually going to thrive and probably make more money even though you just spent say $20,000. Hiring a virtual employee, for example, you've delegated stuff that just you don't like. But somebody else, if you pick the right person, they love it. Does that make sense? Like accountants for a reason. You don't put an accountant on a call center phone line. That just doesn't. You can envision that. Right. It would be the worst thing ever.

Be the worst thing and the most overpriced assistant ever.

That's right. So, you know, we've just tried to learn those lessons is what I'm a point.

So I think you hit the nail right in the head there. Talking about how if you're doing something that you don't enjoy, it does, it is physically draining. It can take the energy away. And that's, you know, we always say that to people, hey, that the most important hire isn't you, it's your first assistant. To take a lot of that stuff off that's draining of you. And yeah, you may pay that first assistant 20, 30, 40 grand depending on whether they're there locally or remotely. But it's the most valuable hire you can have because now it allows you to be in the most productive person on your team, hopefully to go out and really do those income producing activities, right?

Yeah, absolutely. And I'll tell you what, we've been doing the virtual thing for several years now and I literally just took the deep dive into having my own personal virtual employee who's living in my email that's helping me keep my charts up that I have to report on every week, you know, and setting my calendar. And I can't tell you how good it is to say I can be on this show and know that my email is being watched and then I'LL have a quick summary of anything I need to worry about, you know what I mean? Like, talked about this earlier on another show, but we eat our own cooking. So I want to be able to eat my own cooking and do this experiment with myself to show that I can be exponentially stronger by offloading some stuff and having somebody help me on the back end. So that's been very helpful.

It's like having your own personal guardian angel watching over your shoulder, isn't it?

Oh, absolutely. Keep me out of trouble. That's right. So we use Culture Index. I don't know if you're familiar with that. It's a behavior based survey that we use to call out people that we interview and hire for. So the whole point is trying to put the right people in the right seat. So my personal, you know, my virtual employee that's helping me has a high detail. And me as an entrepreneur, I have a low detail. I can't stand details. I just want to solve problems and move on. So it's a good mix. Right. She's keeping me elevated, keeping me up where I'm weak and where it was draining me. So, like, I could do the detail. But man, it just, it'll take me twice as long as somebody that enjoys that detail. So that's what's been advantageous for me.

I think that a lot of entrepreneurs deal with that struggle initially because if you've ever read the E Myth, it always talks about that aspect of that. We as operators, we do good in going out and being innovative and finding new things. If we've got to go back and be detail oriented or go back in the R and D side or the customer service side, doesn't mean that we're bad at it. Just that means it's not our most effective. And that's really.

Right.

A great analogy is a Titanic. You want to keep that ship moving forward versus a standing still or going in reverse a lot of times, right?

That's right. Absolutely.

Now, you have done a great job, not only managing your own teams and increasing number of doors, but you've also put together systems and opportunities for other entrepreneurs to come on and be using your team too, Correct?

Correct. Yeah. We actually staff virtual employees for some of our competitors locally, which is pretty cool. You know, it's been fun to be on that journey of, you know, and serving others and recognizing, you know, when I first started out, say 20 years ago, I was real close to the vest. Thought I had the secret sauce. And that Grant Cardone really talks about it, really Well, I mean, it's just the hustle, the drive, the grind, the passion, the execution. You know, we're. No, none of us are smarter than the. You know what I mean? Like, there are smarter people, but if you just put us, you know, face to face is the person that gets after it. So we've enjoyed helping our competitors get stronger by, you know, supplying them with virtual employees. So that's been, that's been a fun journey as well.

Well, but that's also the more your team, your virtual team is working together, not only just work on your stuff, but their stuff, it's also builds a stronger team as well too. Probably a little bit of a stronger community too. With your peers or competitors too, huh?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, we, we've definitely taken down the walls. That whole fierce competitor, like beat each other up. We'll call each other and let each other know when a client's calling them about maybe, you know, switching to one of us or, you know what I mean? Like, because we really ultimately feel bad or just maybe not feel bad, but just have the courtesy to give each other a heads up. And so that's been a very good side part of all this, you know, is just helping each other, you know, like that was that givers or takers? You know, that book, that's an awesome book. I mean, it's one of my favorites. Just always giving, always trying to help others, you know, and not focus on what's in it for me. You know, like, if you do that, it's gonna come back to you tenfold.

So, yeah, it's that total servant mindset, you know, given. It does come back and give. And that's. I think so many people fail to realize that or people come from and we. Look, real estate can be very cutthroat, you know, hey, you're not going to share leads, you're not going to share marketing sources because you want somebody going over and stealing your deal flow. And I'm still the biggest believer that there's plenty of deals going around, especially the market increasing. There's plenty of deals, but we're going to see a lot more deals here in the next six to. They're coming 12 months, right?

Yep, Yep. I've been saying that. Yep.

Yeah, you and I both been saying, I think real estate's overpriced the last 12 months. You know, start getting ready to pull some money back and make those connections. Right?

That's right. It's coming.

What are some of the things that you're kind of putting your team Your virtual team starting to plan for, you know, I won't say maybe the tsunami, but that rainfall of defaults, foreclosures that we know we're going to see here probably in the next, you know, at the end of the year, probably not the next 60 days or six months, but after that, once the government figures out what the heck they're going to do and how things are getting bailed out with all the numbers taking place.

You know, two things I would say that come to mind is on the businesses themselves, we've really said, hey, let's take this time to really tighten ourselves up, you know, so. And with us working virtually, we're actually much more efficient. You know, we don't have people coming in the office. There's, I mean it's super quiet, people are just working. So we're trying to button up, getting ready for when there is going to be expansion. The second part of that is, you know, for ourselves and what we're coaching our clients like, man, get your lines of credit ready, get your cash available ready, because it's coming. Something's, you know, I don't know when, I don't have that crystal ball but you can look at history and just see, you know, when you have times like this, there's a 12 or 18 month lag, but there's going to be the stuff that comes out of this for on the note side or foreclosures or short sales, all that stuff's coming back from 08. I mean that's just, I don't know what the magnitude of it is. I mean I thought collections and leasing and all that stuff, I thought we'd be almost shut down and it hasn't done that. So. But you look at the hotel industry, we run with a guy from that works at corporate at Hilton because Hilton's based in Memphis and they're 30% occupancy right now. 30% you can't sustain. They were single digits so they've, they've climbed up, you know, three times what they were, you know, two months ago. But 30%, that's worldwide. That's a worldwide number. Not just, that's, that's worldwide. 30% occupancy.

Crazy. We haven't seen hotels on the Detroit debt side for some time now. Now we're, I mean that's gonna be the. We expect to see that and then. Yeah, oh yeah. Commercial office space. Yeah, I'd say college, you know, student housing too as well is gonna be hurt. I know I've got some buddies that they went away from the traditional apartments and went straight to 100% student housing. And I'm like, who's the bank on your debt? So I can call and try to help it and buy the debt out at a cheaper price?

No. Wow. Yeah, that's. Yeah, that's gonna be interesting. Like I said, I just think you need to tighten up. You know, I'm watching every expense like I never have before. I'm challenging ourselves to say do we really need this? And then you know, brokerage is figuring out how to market 10 times more than they did before and knowing that if they keep sustaining that, trying to find those buyers and the houses now think how coming out of that is going to be that much better because you created some systems and processes that, that can scale and then bring in the volume. When people are ready, they'll be ready, basically.

Well, that makes sense too because now's the time to be planting those seeds. If you've got a 60, 90, 120 day, 150 month ramp up to where we think things are going to end up happening. When that first round of forbearance agreements kind of come and do those when and people have gone through their savings, they've gone through stuff you've planted the seeds like hey, be in the place that they can turn to for help, for assistance and either a helping them, you know, take the property down or getting it sold faster or working in a variety of the retention strategies too for you is a good thing to keep in mind too. You know what, you being in the Tennessee market, Tennessee has been a very competitive market over the last few years. Would you agree to that primarily or no?

Oh, absolutely, yeah. It's know it gets a lot of national attention for price to rent ratios and these turnkey guys that you know that we're friends with, that we don't do turnkey so to speak, but we, we're friend with those guys. We manage stuff that comes off the turnkey from some providers. So yeah, those guys have done a really good job marketing and marketing Memphis. So yeah, it's been, it's been hot.

Memphis is such a unique market too compared to a lot of other. With being such a high percentage of rental units. Correct. For the most part it's a little bit above average nationwide. I've heard numbers where it's like 80, 85% rental markets. Is that still accurate or.

Yeah, great question. We're probably 55% rental in Memphis, so. But think about that. If you got three. So the national average is probably 35, 36, let's do round numbers, call it 35, that's 20% increase. So we have 300,000 parcels in Memphis. So that's equivalent of 60 on an equivalent size market or city. We have 60,000 more rental units than another city of similar size. So that just tells you, I mean that's a lot of units. That's a lot of people investing. California, New York, all those guys are coming in here, moving money west to east and north to south. That's kind of how you see the money flow.

Well, that's because I think property in Tennessee is see the same things here in Texas is a lot more affordable and that you have a higher rent ratios compared to the west coast and the Northeast. You know, we talked about that before, you know.

Absolutely.

Cash flow, something above a 4 cap. Whereas if you did got a 4 cap in California, you're going to slice your grandmother's throat for it. You know what I mean? It's kind of crazy.

They're in two cap, you know, I mean that's, I mean New York is like 01. I mean zero to two. But the thing that we have to be careful for and I'm sure the same thing in the note business is like the people like say from California see these houses that rent for 600 for 30, $25,000 and you're like used to, I would sell anybody anything just to try to help. But then you realize by helping them you're hurting yourself and eventually hurting them because the numbers just don't work. Like they think they're going to work. They think they're 20% returns and sometimes they're single digits and zero because turnovers and late pays and maintenance and vandalism and all those things that come around with those kind of things. So I just try to make sure people understand that going into it. But I think that's, that's something that gotta be aware of. And I'm sure the same thing with notes. You see a note and it looks so juicy and if it's so, so, so juicy, like there's gotta be something wrong with. You know what I mean? Like there's gotta be some peel back the onion and figure this out a little bit more.

Exactly. There's a total rolling back the layers of the onion and undercover what's going on because we've had deals we thought were going to be modifications or reinstatements that turn into disastrous foreclosures as far as length and just pain in the ass borrowers that didn't want to work with. And those that we thought we'd have to foreclose on were some of the best easily modified, easily reinstated deals out there. And it just depends. But that kind of brings me to a point. You said this a little bit earlier about how quiet the office is. You've got people working efficiently and effectively. I'm sure you're spending time with your virtual teams identifying. You talked about, hey, they got one number, but also making sure that they can cover other things that you don't need to hire local employee to do. That saves you on overhead and insurance, other things like that too. Correct. And really kind of maximizing or filling that teammates capacity cup to full level. Right?

Yeah. I mean, I think that there's two ways you could have look at this COVID pandemic. It's like it is what it. I just believe it is what it is. What are you going to do about it? So what are we doing about it? We're trying to say, all right, what are we never going to do again? You know what I mean? Like, we've had the office closed for two and a half months. We have not had a single resident in this office. We haven't had a client in this office. We've signed 100 and now 160 leases in two months without anybody being here. You know what I mean? Like all docusign and all that stuff. So we are not, we're not going back. You know what I mean? So we're just trying to say, you know, like out of this kind of environment, entrepreneurs thrive and come up with creative ideas. There's gonna be all kinds of stuff that come out of this that we should never go back and do. This should free us up, you know, hopefully, you know, I hope there's a balance too, and I'm kind of tangent, but that we use that time for our families and for ourselves and have some health around that part too, not just fill it up with something else. Does that make sense?

Totally makes sense. I think you hit the nail on the head there, Dan. But hey, whatever you're doing now that you can outsource, that you never have to go back to doing again. Now you freed up that time to do whatever you want to do. Spend time with the family vacation side hobbies, side ventures, focus on another niche of your business that you can capitalize on. Like you talked about, going to the lending side, going to the property management side and all that other stuff is an important aspect to do it. Now, what are some of the things when you're Looking when your virtual teams helping out with the properties or leasing or things like that, are they doing a lot of the marketing? Are they doing a lot of the tenant screen? Maybe a little social sleuthing to make sure you've got a good, better quality tenant in place versus just somebody off like a Craigslist ad or something like that.

So, yeah, I mean, they're helping to syndicate to all the sites they're putting on Facebook, which has been a tremendous apartments dot com, all that kind of stuff. They're helping with taking calls. So in pretty much all the businesses, they'll take a cold lead and turn it into warm. And then we have somebody in Memphis that closes the deal for the most part. So, yeah, I think it's a whole mix. I mean, anything like I said, from a virtual standpoint, and I think with you being at home and working from home, can understand that, you know, like all of us now, like, they can do anything that you just don't need to be at that house or that apartment for anything that you don't need to, like, be inside and see a wall or whatever they can do virtually. So it's opened up some people's eyes to say, wow, you know, like me, even bankers. I had a bank lunch with bankers the other day and they were like, we're trying to figure out how to close loans and all that stuff virtually now as well. They've been hesitant on the docusign and all that stuff. They've been that way for years. But it's made them, you know, and that's the thing.

DocuSign, but also the virtual notary thing now where, hey, bring a virtual notary on. That's so awesome. We just started implementing that too. Or having my virtual assistant, when we do send out loan mods or something needs to be signed, we don't send it via snail mail. We send out, you know, hey, a virtual or a link to that aspect. Say, we're not waiting for you to. We give you a day and you take two weeks. We want to get this done in two hours and speed things up as fast as you can. So that's. It might cost a bit more, but the money it saves you in the long run is so beneficial, isn't it?

Oh, and, you know, I was telling my attorney, one of our attorneys other day, and I said he was talking about that same thing, and he's like, but, you know, I'm just worried they're gonna try to knock me down on cost. I'm like, man, take 50 bucks off you know, like, I was challenged him. Like, just because you got the speed, you can go do something else. Like, don't think of it, like, I'm gonna have to reduce my fees. Look at how many more you can do or what other things you can work on, you know, like, don't think of it that way. Like, don't have anybody back in this office ever again is what I was pushing them on. That's an extreme, but I was with the analogy.

Yeah. You can spend. You can save 50 bucks by doing your own oil, or you can take the two hours to go fishing. I would rather go fishing. Right?

Oh, yeah. The last time I changed the oil, I forgot. I put. I left the two. The gaskets. I left the one from the old one with the new and drove off my truck. And all of a sudden I saw this oil just all through the driveway on behind me. I'm like, okay, maybe I wasn't supposed to be the one that changes my oil. And I haven't changed my oil since. So that was two hours of cleanup to your point. And just, you know, who knows how much oil and damage to the environment and everything else. So.

That'S awesome, Dan. I mean, we've all done stupid shit like that. We should have had somebody else do for us. But you guys, you've put together a package or a team to help investors out there. So if you guys are listening and dealing with a lot of issues or pulling your hair out because you're trying to do it all, you've lost that quality of life. Looking for love in all the wrong places as you're unclogging toilets and doing things like that. Dan, how can people. Because you've got a team. You've got systems in place for people to be able to take advantage of all the work you put in. Let's talk a little about that. What you can offer up.

Sure, yeah. I mean, we. On the virtual side, we can offer up. You know, we sit down with clients, we find out where their pain points are, where they need the most help. We get them to tell us what the top five things they want somebody to work on, and then we can take those duties. We can recognize what pattern of person. We have the profiles I talked about with Culture Index. We'll go find Those people, take 100 applicants, get it down to those two and say, here you go, and you hire one. And then we have a coach behind them that's helping you pull extract from you, like what you need done and how that process should flow and and then they're holding that employee daily to the accountability to they have to report every day what they did, how many they did, or what you know, and weekly and monthly and daily reports. So it's been a very successful venture on that side just because, you know, I think that's our value add is that screening, that coaching, that ongoing back end support to make sure that you're successful with the person that you've hired. So that's been a fun journey to see others have relief when they've been able to offload stuff that helps them focus on bigger stuff, you know, so that's been good.

What are you seeing as far as there's. Is there minimum hours that you're putting teams together for people that they need to kind of expect on or you're not saying just five hours, what you're probably looking at least 10, 20, 40 hours. Is it what's kind of the bandwidth?

That's funny. Most people say, man, I just don't know about 40 hours. And they'll start out well, you know, and we know, we recognize that, so we'll do 20 hours. And then within weeks to a month, guess What? They're at 40 hours, you know, they're full time, you know, because they just realize, oh wow, this is working. What else can I offload and what else can I, you know, to your point earlier, like, hey man, if that frees up an hour or two at night, then now I can just do what I want to do or be with my family or you know what I mean? Like that's might be worth 20 bucks, you know what I'm saying? Like just, you got to get over that hurdle and realize what your time is worth. I mean there's, you know, there's one podcast with naval that I've listened to that's really good. It just talks about at some point you get in your life where you gotta, every stage of your career you gotta see what, what is your time worth per hour? Break it down. You know, when we first started outta college, it was probably 20 bucks an hour or whatever, you know, at some point. And his extreme example was he ordered something from Amazon, it was the wrong size, he just threw it away because it wasn't worth his time to go package it up, go to the UPS store, he would go make a thousand bucks doing his business versus go spending that hour sending that shirt back. Does that make sense? Like, so you gotta be thinking those types of weird, different angles and mindset versus being frugal or whatever you want to Call it, there's. You got to break that barrier. Does that make sense? Like, because I'm, I'm one of the tightest people you'll ever meet. But I had to get, get over that hurdle and say I can add more value. My time per hour is worth more doing these three things, you know. Strategic coach Dan Sullivan, if you're familiar with him, I recommend your listeners to, to hop on that bandwagon and listen to what he says. And it's been really good for me to figure out my two or three strengths that I just, if I'm in, I could do it all day long and just take things to the whole next level.

So we always talk about that as real estate investors. We look on return on investment, you know, roi. Right. But a lot of investors that are doing it all themselves, when they look at really what their rot, their return on time time, they're making less than flipping burgers at what burger would pay or McDonald's, you know, and so that's right. That's one of the big things I talk with the listeners out there. Like, if you want to make 100 grand a year, figure out what your hours worth. And that's your parameter. Anything that's gonna cost you less than that, delegate it. Anything that cost you more, try to do it yourself or focus on those activities for the most part to help you identify the things that you don't need to do, like changing your oil or filling out your calendar if you need to, or other things like that.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, I have always used that phrase, you know, when you're looking at this. Automate, delegate or eliminate. Everything you're doing, you should be thinking, can I automate it? Delegate or eliminate. If you can have that mindset, that will help you tremendously too. Because I was right there with what you're describing. I was picking up signs, I was checking signs, I was cutting grass, I was picking up rent. I mean, you know what I'm saying? I was just. All that grunt work, if you asked me, one of my biggest regrets, it wasn't leveraging others faster. Yeah, I mean, that's so. And you could do that. What I call what my partner, I call low cost experiments. You know, like you were talking about that 20 hours. So I mean, call it 10 bucks an hour just for simple math. 20 hours, was that $200? So 800 bucks and you try it for three months, that's $2,400. Try it for three something. I'm just saying that example, try that for three months and see, wow, did I get $2,400 worth of work and time and all that stuff. But if you never do it, you'll just get stuck in that grind and you'll keep on, you know, doing that hamster wheel.

Well, that's the thing. You find one deal that makes you 20 grand. You just pay. You find one investor that brings 50 grand or even 20 grand to the table for something you just made up for it. And imagine now what they're doing is you work your numbers backwards to figure out their KPIs, their numbers, as you talked about, you know, the traction EOs, those specific things. You can implement some of those things be like, why didn't I do this a whole lot sooner?

Right? Absolutely. Yeah. I think people look at what they're sending out the door versus what they can bring in. I think you got to flip that. Think, what can I bring in? You said it really well, like, what can I bring in? I outsource this and focus on bringing in more. You know, it's just one more deal. You know, in your example, like, for a wholesaler, like, bring in two more deals, or you don't know what the profit margin is on a note, but two more notes a year and you paid for that person. You're like, oh, my gosh, wow, two more notes. I only have to do that once every six months. I mean, surely I can figure that out. Does that make sense?

Like, totally makes sense.

Break it down. If you break it down in simpler terms, it doesn't become as an overwhelming.

Exactly. Where most people like, oh, my God, I'm gonna add $800 to my bottom line each month. I have to hire this individual. Well, that $800 that you pay. If you don't pay, you're missing out on 50 grand or 100 grand or 20 grand or 10 grand or even 2 grand in profits if it's worthwhile for you. What's the best way for our listeners and kind of wrap it up here? Best way for our listeners out there to connect with you, to talk with you or your team about bringing on the virtual team or expanding that and adding somebody to their team?

Yeah, I mean, the website is www.coresist.com. my email is danoreassist.com and my cell is 901-289-7888.

Awesome. We'll have all that in the show notes, but corassist.com is the main website right there.

Dan, again, yep, absolutely.

CoreAssist is spelled exactly like it sounds. We'll have all links out there for you. Man. It has been awesome to have you on the no Claire show. Thank you for bringing such knowledge and nuggets and share an experience. God knows we don't always like to say about the times when we were our own indentured servitude but you know, a lot of us start off that way. We have a passion. We are control freaks. Nobody can do it as good as I can. And hey, you don't need it as good as you. You need it 70, 80 cents on the dollar as good as you do to get that full thing to get it done and complete and allow you to focus on what you need to do. So thanks for being a part of the nuclear show today, Dan.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Enjoyed it.

Awesome. All right, guys, that's going to wrap it up for this episode of the Nookers. Go check it out Korassys.com and learn to start delegating. Start making your time more valuable by delegating and eliminating the things that just suck your energy or take away your profitability. Go out and do that, guys, and we'll see you all at the top.