The Best Of Roundtable - All Things Team

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Hey, it's Mark Podolski. This week's roundtable compilation theme is going to be on team. And we all know that we're only as successful as our team, and, and building that team is so important to get to that next level and to really scale your land business because the last thing we want is to build ourselves another job. And these two podcasts where we talk about the outsourcing truth bombs and how do we pay our VAs for social media marketing are great reminders of that as well. So hopefully you're enjoying your July, and I know I am, and enjoy the team focus this week for the roundtable. So, Scott, Todd, what is our topic for the week?

You know, Mark, I kind of get my blood pumping when I see comments like this. And this is from the Facebook group. And, you know, basically someone is asking on there, you know, they feel like they're wasting their time by creating training material to do something like due diligence, for example, when, you know, they're not even quite sure, not even quite sure of what they need anyway. Right? Like, they're trying to focus on other things. And the comment in there says, like, I'm trying to be a lanavest. You're not a VA trainer. And you know, I get it, I understand it. And you know, so then what happens is they're looking for kind of someone else's VA's training material. Okay? Like, hey, any training material? Well, due diligence is one that, you know, there are people that know how to do this. But I'd love to know everybody else's kind of mindset behind how do you create training documents or how do you create. How do you train vascular to go do something? It can be due diligence or something else. So, like, how do you train VAs?

That's a great, great topic. Scott Bossman, let's start with you.

Yeah, so I'm a firm believer. I mean, I think a lot of people try to do. They try to outsource too quickly without knowing every single step in the process. So for me, I need to do it a number of times myself and I need to map out that process line by line by line, or use mind mapping software or something like that, and then be able to not only write it down, but be able to describe it to somebody. So via training video or something like that, or talking through it. So you got to dial down the process, do it. Repetition, repetition, repetition. And then when it becomes rote to you, it's time to get rid of it. But I think you need to have those processes down. And I think for me anyway, the more these things are mapped out, the more linear it seems and feels, the better people do things. And that's kind of our approach.

Totally makes sense to me. Absolutely. The technician. Eric Peterson, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, I do agree that most of the time you're going to have to have a real good understanding of how to do whatever it is that you're asking someone else to do. But there are instances in this business where it's not necessarily something that's specific to our business of buying and selling land. And it's maybe a little more general around real estate. And there are people out there that might know how to do that stuff already. So in the example of due diligence, you can probably go out to upwork and find somebody that knows how to do due diligence with without having to educate them on the entire process. I think back to when I first started, kind of like Scott just described. I would really spend a lot of time on a process and getting it all nailed down and put into a system and trying to make it foolproof before I would give something to a va. But I've really learned over time that that oftentimes for, again, the right kind of tasks, we can kind of take some of that building of processes or systems off our plate, in a sense, by potentially having a zoom call with a VA and just kind of demoing it, or maybe just recording yourself doing it and just walking through exactly what you're doing, talking about it as you're doing it, and then just taking that rather than spending all the time to fully document that and put it into something. Either hire a VA that can just do that part for you, or hire a VA that's going to do the work and actually have them build out that process at the same time. And you can obviously answer questions as they might come up, but you don't have to be the one to build all that out all the time.

Yeah, I love that answer. Absolutely. Absolutely. I'd love to know what the terrorist hunter Mimi Schmidt does. She used to manage 150 people. So this is probably, like, simple for you.

The amount of work you do in training is completely tied to how experienced the person you hire is. If you are hiring someone who is Brand new. You have to teach them from the ground up. And Eric's right. Everyone's right. You need to understand what you're doing and have done it enough that you get it right. To manage Java programmers, you don't have to know how to program in Java. Right, but you have to have a basic understanding if there's something that's not right.

Okay.

Same with due diligence. If you want to hire someone who's more experienced, you don't have to create all of these training materials from A to Z. In fact, it's a waste of time and will probably not get used. Because if you've got an experienced person, that means they probably are working with 5, 7, 10 other investors. And if you impose your program of how you want things done, I want you to use Dropbox or Google Drive or whatever CRM you're using, then they're going to be more likely to make mistakes because they've got 10 different CRMs they're expected to know how to use. Okay, So a lot of these SMEs, you need to macromanage them and let them do what they're good at and use the tools they know how to use. Right. And then all you're doing is teaching them what is specific that you have to have for your business, as opposed to teaching them the A to Z process.

I love that. I wish Mimi had a service where I could outsource my hiring to Mimi, and I could just be like, okay, this is what I need. I need a due diligence person. Mimi, be like, okay, I'll go hire him for you, because I know what to look for. What do you think, Mimi? That's a lot of work. You want to take that on? No, no.

The beach. Come on.

Yeah, that's true. The big Papa Tate. Litchfield. What are your thoughts on all this?

You know, I echo what pretty much.

Everyone else has said. Most of the time, what we're doing, it's not rocket science. You know, it's not brain surgery.

Get out there.

Look for somebody who's got the qualities and the skills that you want.

Give them a basic outline of what.

You expect and how you want them to do their job and see what they come back to you with. Right? I mean, you got to give them some opportunities to prove themselves, and I think let go on the reins a little bit. I've always said I'm not an expert on anything except hiring experts, and I believe that applies directly to due diligence. Right. I don't have a degree in due diligence or, you know, real estate or anything like that. I've learned this all from, you know, my mentors and training and experience over the years. And as a result, I've been able to share that knowledge with the VAs that I work with closely. But most of them didn't have a background in this either. So it's been a labor of love and taken a lot of time to get these people to where they're at now. And I kind of am open to their new ideas and their new approaches and new tools, and I will do whatever I need to and get whatever I need to to keep them happy and satisfied. So at this point, I trust them. They're really good. But you got to have somebody show you what you need to do so you know what the pitfalls are. And I think that's where flight school comes in. Really helpful. And then as you learn to notice these trends and these pitfalls, you can really start to outsource it to people who do this all day, every single day, and feel confident in what they give back to you.

Yeah, absolutely. So let's give Scott Todd the last word on this.

So, Scott, you know, to me, what I do, Mark, is whenever I have an assignment one, I don't necessarily assume that they don't know anything. Right. I think that's one of the mistakes that people make is they think, oh, I have to prepare the training material because they don't know anything. Well, see, the reality is that people know things. That's why you're hiring, right? Like, if you go to upwork, for example, and you hire someone that has a title abstractor, well, they know how to. How to do this stuff. Now, do they know exactly what you want? No, you have to tell them what you want. You have to tell them. But do you have to document out everything that. That you do? No, what I do is I get them on a zoom call, right? Like, the first time I'm going to do it, I get them on a zoom call just like this, me and you. And I share my screen with them, and I show them. Like, I record it and I show them, okay, this is what I'm doing, and I stutter through it. I point out things. I'm like, oh, well, that's not it. Hold on, let me see if I can find it. It's not a Hollywood production. It's me being me, right? Like, it's not polished in any way. It would be no different if you and I were in the same office together. And I Sat you down right next to me and I shared my screen with you. I'm gonna hunt and peck and do whatever, and I'm at the end, I'm gonna show them how I come up with the due diligence, right? Like, how I do it. And then I'm gonna say to them, hey, why don't you try one here, Try the one that I just did, okay? Like, I do that. Like we just did one together. I'm going to stop the video, I'm going to process the video. I'm going to give you the link so that you can watch the video and do one just like we just did the exact one. Why would I use the exact one? It's because I know what success looks like, right? Like, I can see, like, this is what I wanted so that when they send me what they're going to send me, I can compare it. Like, well, this doesn't look right. And then nine times out of 10, there's something wrong, okay? Like, I was training a VA today and I showed them how to do it. They sent me back something that's wrong. And I'm like, okay, listen, this is wrong, this is wrong. Please go back and watch the video again and figure out, like, how you got it wrong. And they did that and they came back to me, right? And I'm like, perfect. But you see, like, the thing is, is that I'm willing to invest the time with them 30x the time. And what I mean by that, I mean, like, if the task takes me an hour, I'm prepared to spend up to 30 hours training them. And not just training them, but working with them, guiding them, mentoring them, okay? Like, I don't need to write all of the policies and the training manuals. I just need to show them what I'm doing. They will come to the project with their own thoughts and mind, and they'll do it their way. But at the end of the day, all I'm looking for is this. And I don't really care what this looks like. And then I would say to them, do you have a better way of doing this? If so, do it. And by the way, please document what you're doing. Make me a video of what you're doing so I can learn from you. Because after all, I am paying them, right? Like, I'm paying. I'm paying for their brain. And when I pay for their brand, I have the right to download the data that's in there that they have. I should be able to learn from them. And if it's not just for me to learn. It's for my next VA to say, hey, look. Look at how this guy did it. Right? And maybe this guy's a train wreck. But that's also why I don't just hire one, I hire three. And I give them the same project, same video, same property. Due due diligence on why? Because one's gonna be terrible, one's going to be mediocre, and one is going to be a superstar.

Yeah. I think we got the title for our podcast, Due Diligence Outsourcing Truth Bombs.

Right?

I mean, these are a lot. I mean, this is a really, really valuable episode. And what everybody said from Bossman to Scott is really, really important. What I think is interesting is what wasn't said. Mimi Schmidt, you know what wasn't said? Just go to this company here and let them do it. Just, here's a company, this is what they do all day long. Just outsource it to them. Here's a service. I'm surprised no one's just said, hey, do that. Why not? Why not?

I think people want to train people, have people things to that are a little more focused on their business.

Right.

A little more attention to detail and customized to their business. When you use a service, they're great. There are a lot of great services. But I don't think you get that person's distracted by a lot of other things, too.

No, absolutely. I think it's the difference in philosophy of management in house versus outsourcing it. And depending on where you are, I don't think there's anything wrong necessarily going to one of these services. But ultimately, if you don't train your own team, your own people, you're not bulletproof. And you're also going to be paying a lot more in the long run as well. So, you know, when you get to be a big company, let's say, let's just use a company, they always in house counsel. Why a lot less money to have in house counsel versus going to one of these big law firms and paying for legal work every time there's a legal issue and paying 500 to $1,000 an hour versus having your own person there that understands everything intimately. And in doing that, does that make sense? Eric Peterson, what do you think?

Absolutely. I think, you know, you can definitely outsource something like due diligence to a service that is out there and offers that as a solution. But I think you're exactly right. You're going to pay more money and you don't get Kind of the customized treatment that you might want. So, you know, maybe, I don't know, there's something in due diligence that you want to pull that, you know, they don't normally do. It's a lot harder to get a service to add something that they don't typically do than it would be for you to train your own VA to just make that part of the process.

No, absolutely, absolutely. Well, I think this has been a really, really valuable podcast. So the first question I'm going to ask, and we are going to start with Eric Peterson, is, Eric, how do your VA's charge you for posting ads, say on Facebook, Craigslist, landmodo.com do they charge you hourly or they charge you per ad? And what do you recommend to your coaching clients?

So it does depend on the platform. Facebook, Landmodo, other land selling websites, those are going to be hourly. In terms of how we pay Craigslist is going to be by the stuck ad as opposed to hourly. So the reason for that, you know, Facebook and the other land selling websites, you know, it's really just the time it takes to get those ads out. And in the case of Facebook, maybe your poster is also responding to leads. And that's really an hourly task, in my opinion. But when we start talking about Craigslist, it's not really effective to pay by time because number one, we want to encourage lots of speed. But number two, some of those ads that they post are non productive, mainly because they don't stick or they flagged. So as the buyer of the person's time that's doing that work, I want them to post successful ads and that's what I want to pay for. So we kind of build our pay structure around that. That's kind of our incentive. If you get a stuck ad, it's X amount of dollars per stuck ad or X amount of cents per stuck ad. And that's the difference between the two platforms for us.

It makes a lot of sense to me. I have a feeling maybe Tate Litchfield does something differently. Tate, how do your VAs charge you?

I just ditto what Eric does. I mean, Craigslist is one of those areas where it's a performance based, right? So if you're really good at getting ads to stick, you're compensated accordingly. The other reason I like doing it this way is I've got one VA who has a terrible stick rate, but it doesn't matter to me, right, because I only pay him $10 a day because he's only paid to get 10 new ads posted every single day. So that works really well for us. Facebook and Lanmodo, it's hourly thing just because Lanmoto is super simple. I mean, anybody that can fog a mirror can post on Lanmodo. And I think that's the way Scott designed it. And you know, Facebook, it's the same thing, but we just have a kind of a schedule or protocol that we follow based on profiles and when it's time to post and renew and that kind of thing. So very similar approach to Eric. I think it's what we found to work best for our individual businesses.

Okay, so so far we're in total competition, alignment, total harmony. Terea putting in the rep. Harris, what are you doing?

So Craigslist is identical. We pay per stuck ad. And that that's just a smart way to do it for us as well. Facebook, we have both. So I have someone who posts hourly because she posts, but she also does a lot of the responding as well. And then we have someone who is paid weekly to post on all our platforms. Now we determine what gets posted and, you know, how many on each platform. So we still structure what needs to be done, but it's a weekly payment we give for all the platforms that we're currently posting on. Including deal of the week.

Including deal of the week. Okay. Eric and Tate, do you guys pay the same people for your email for the deal of the week?

My deal of the week team gets paid hourly. It's separate people that manage that process for us.

I could see Tate paying by open rate.

I was actually just looking at my open rate this today and I was thinking, what can I do to improve this? I was actually boxing the VA this morning. We need to rework this because our open rate is not where I want it to be and make some changes. That's a good idea, Mark. Maybe a little tiny bonus there, right? Yeah, You've seen that old commercial where it's like tiny bonus day where it's like, oh, it's whatever day. I got five dollar bonus.

Right.

Thinking about implementing something like that. If we can get X percentage open rate. Yeah, I'll give you a nice little bonus. We do compensate when they sell and that kind of thing as well. So. But for deal of the week, it's just that flat rate is what we pay. I think we're paying like $4 an hour for that position. Super simple.

Okay, great. The nightcap OG dude, buddy. Scott Bossman, are you in alignment with your other coaches?

Yeah, pretty much. We have a marketing manager that we Pay weekly. A weekly salary. And he kind of oversees Facebook posting. Our other, you know, land, Moto Land, Flip Land, Century deal of the week. He does those emails as well. And then he manages one other Facebook ad poster for us because we like to keep our properties separate in different Facebook accounts. So he's managing which ads are being placed in which account. So he's being paid weekly on a salary basis. What's that look for?

Mike Zano, are you confused by this? He says a marketing manager. When I hear manager, I think he's managing the team that posts the ads, but it sounds like he's the one that's doing the work.

He's a little bit of both. He's got kind of a hybrid. So I shouldn't say manager. Right. He's kind of managing one person. So we're kind of like, you know.

I thought you were looking at. Because he had a new strategy with, like, a Facebook account per property. I wanted to hear more about that. I thought that's when you started making that face, but I was confused. I like that. You gotta talk more about your strategy.

And that. I mean, whether he's the manager or, you know, he's kind of the manager, he's. He's managing the whole thing. I mean, it's a terminology thing.

Okay.

He's a working manager.

There's nothing the working manager.

Precision of language matters on this podcast.

Okay.

Okay.

Sounds expensive.

We need to be clear. So he's a specialist or a manager?

He's a specialist.

A specialist. Okay.

Yeah. All right. So that's.

So he does.

But he does manage one person.

Dress.

Correct.

So then that's fair. That's fair.

He's a supervisor.

Well, I mean.

No.

Yeah.

Because the one person he's doing the most.

The ads on the fire department. I'm a lieutenant, but I'm a. I'm a working supervisor, so I get that. I get where he's going with that. I think there is such a thing.

This is what happens when you don't work in corporate America for too long.

Yeah.

You just don't know what anyone does with their titles. I really don't know. But it's. You know, I think it's fun to stir the pot with Scott Bossman, so. And I like to see Mike Zano coming to his wrestling.

So nice of him.

Yeah.

Yeah.

There is a working supervisor. I think it's like Teria said, that's a. That's a valid term.

There you go. So, Michael, in what ambitiously lazy way do you work with your VAs to do your marketing.

I'm in alignment with what's been said so far. We have the hourly rate for all of the posting except for Craigslist, because there's such variability and getting the ads to stick and so on and so forth. Yeah, I don't know much else to add. I guess I like going first, met Mark, I guess going last now, it's like everybody, I'm feeling the pain of being last now. I guess I can't be satisfied.

Right.

Because now, like, all these wonderful things have been said. We still have to hear from Scott Todd, so I know we'll have that, but, you know. Yeah, hourly. Hourly pay for the. For the marketing team manager, supervisor and, you know, per ad with the Craigslist, so. And not much else to add to that. I'm not really loving this spot on the podcast.

Okay, well, we'll circle back on the next question. First to you, Mike. There you go. It'll get boomerang right back. But Scott Todd, you're going to be the anchor on this. How do you handle. How do you work with your VAs, charging them for ad posting?

Yeah. So you know Craigslist, you got it. You know, pay, pay per ad stuck, right? Like that. You're paying for result because Craigslist is finicky and, you know, they take them down whenever they want and whatever. Everybody else kind of falls within that hourly range. Right. Like, I don't really pay for results. I do like the concept that Tate was saying, like, pay for an open rate to someone blasting out the email, but I don't do that today. It's a good idea. But maybe a bonus for someone like that.

Anything above 10%, 12%, 20%. What would you bonus at? What's an outstanding open rate?

Well, I mean, I think it's about growth, right? You know, like, I think that you've got to look at what your baseline is today and then grow it. So, hey, listen, if you, you know, if you get the open rate to, you know, 10% higher or the click rate, right. You got to figure out which one of those metrics is important to you. Is it the open rate? To me, the open rate is garbage. Why? Because the open rate depends that they open. They didn't do anything with it. The click rate to me is more important. Okay, so like, figure out your baseline and then figure out what you want to improve it for. Like, hey, 10, you know, 10% better. I want look at your average and say, I want it better than this. But, you know, really, what it comes down to on that open rate, Mark is very simple. It's, it's the, it's the headline. Like the open rate is the headline and then the click rate is the offer. Right. Like if you're not getting that click rate 1 they didn't open it and to. They didn't take action on it because your offer is not good. It's not connecting with people. So you pull a lot of data out of just those two metrics like what people are thinking about what you just put out there.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So Tate, you got to do the. Yeah, it's not just. It's open plus click. Right. So they got to really work on that headline plus the call to action to get any bonus.

For sure.

Yeah. And I was going to say you got to know what your baseline is. So whatever your achieving currently, you got to figure out how much you want to double that or triple that percentage and go accordingly. But I'm with Scott, really it's about the clicks.

Yeah. I do think there is a general metric overall which I think if you get a 10% or above open rate, it's really good. Now I don't know necessarily in what it is in our niche because I know people have a much higher open rate. I'd imagine the click through rate is around 2% I think generally. But I could be wrong. I have to go to the Googles and the Interwebs and get some updated information. Scott, Todd's making that face like Mark, you have no idea what you're talking about.

I think it was because you said Interweb.

No, he said the Googles and that's like, I mean we just literally I just have a feeling like if you were to look at our audience retention graph right there when he said the Googles everybody just like plugged out, you.

Know, for your people. Scott, I should have said Bing. For the people that are on Bing they can do a really nice surge.

What is Bing? I don't even know what that is.

What are you.

Your surface. Does your Surface.

That's what comes on that surface.

That's right. That's baked in there. Baby.

Does not know that.

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