Tip On How To Build An Effective Team For Your Business

Hey, everybody, this is Scott Bossman. It's not Mark Podolski. And this is the Roundtable podcast. We do not have any usual suspects on the call today, except for Eric Peterson and myself. And we called in Matt Forbes because. How awesome is that? Mark or Matt, you're at home, you're working today, and you know that's a benefit that you have. You get to work from home, but you just must not be too busy this afternoon. You're able to hop on the call with us and it's very much appreciated.

Yeah, why don't you just call my boss, let him know that I'm here. That sounds really good. Thanks, Scott. No, I'm psyched. I had a 3 o' clock meeting that just canceled, so this is great. Happy to be here.

Perfect. And for those who don't know, Matt's nickname is the Fortune 500. Matt Forbes. So welcome to the Roundtable. Eric Peterson, the technician. How are you today?

I'm good. I'm so happy that Matt's here with us and that he has a nickname, because if he didn't have a nickname already, we would have had to come up with one and that I'd rather just have it done for us.

Yeah, makes sense. Outsource that. I like it.

Outsource it. I don't think very well on the spot like that. Unless it's nightcap and I have a bourbon in my hand. I do better than. So right now I'm a little nervous. But anyway, so everybody else is playing hooky. Mark is in St. Louis, which props to Mark. He flew into St. Louis for mother's Day to surprise his mom, which I thought was pretty awesome. Zaino's at the firehouse. Scott, Todd and Teria are off doing other things, and Tate's on vacation. So it's just us Here we are three that are working here.

We are just us girls. I love it.

So we had to come up with a topic quickly, and we thought we would talk about a question that we get a lot. And I don't remember talking about this on the roundtable for quite a while. So it's always good to revisit things now and then. But one of the key aspects of this business is that really over 90% of this can be outsourced and automated. And you can get to the point where you're working a few hours a week in your land business, but you have cornerstones in this business. You have mailing and marketing. You need to create a machine for those things. I think Land Geek helps you do that. But the other main aspect of this business is, and Mike Zano says this all the time, it really is a team sport. So we thought we would talk today about how do we build this team? And for the beginner just getting into this, it is maybe a little bit of an overbearing thing to think about or an overwhelming thing to think about is, well, how do I get to this point where I have a team operating my business for me? So I thought we'd just talk a little bit about that today. How do you build a team, Eric, what are your thoughts? When do you start thinking in that regard, and how do you chip away at that?

So, you know, it's not uncommon for me to start working with a new coaching student and them to be in a position where either none of their business is outsourced or very small portions of their business is outsourced. And, you know, a lot of times it just comes down to not really knowing how to get started. How do I. How do I teach somebody how to do this particular task in my business? How do I actually go out and hire that person? How do I make sure that I'm hiring the right person for that job? So, in all honesty, I mean, I think that we just have to take it one step at a time. So Scott Todd talks about pain points in your business. So it's a great place to start. What do you absolutely not like doing in your business? If that's posting ads on Facebook, if it's, you know, writing copy or any other thing in this business, you know, identify that thing and begin to wrap your head around what it takes to do that particular process. In the example of a Facebook ad, you know, you've got to log into Facebook, you've got to go to Marketplace, you've got to post that ad. You might have to write the ad if it doesn't exist. And then after that, what do we need to do? We need to respond to those people that inquire about it. So we begin to kind of plan that rough outline. We can then maybe record ourselves doing that process and kind of talk through it, which might seem kind of weird and feel a little awkward as you're doing it, but in doing that, you're going to produce content that your team, your future team, can use to learn how to do this process. And you don't have to spend the time going forward, you know, teaching each other, new person in this role how to do that. A tool that that's commonly used to record that type of content would be Loom L o O M dot. I think it's dot com, is it not?

Yeah, it is.

And that allows you to record your screen to kind of talk about what you're doing. And that's, that's a really easy way to communicate with your team and kind of demo how to do something. So, you know, I guess beyond that, there are kind of done for you services out there, teams of VAs that already know how to do some of the regular tasks in our business. And those, they're probably a good place for many people to start because there's a little less training. But it could also be a crutch because if we go to one of those services and we don't have to do the training, we're not really helping ourselves in the long run because inevitably sooner or later there's going to be a task or a process in your.

Business that you're going to have to build.

So you might as well get the reps in early and begin to learn those processes.

Yeah, One of the best things I ever did was I upgraded my Loom subscription from free to paid. I used the free one for a long time and I tried to cut down all of my instruction into five minute videos, five minutes. And it became very frustrating because I, you know, I'd have to create basically part A, B, C and D for one task and then try to organize it on loom and whatnot. But listen, when I upgraded and I don't know, it's not much, right? It's like nine bucks a month or something like that for unlimited videos, man, that really helped, really helped my business. And you can stay nice and organized in Loom and create folders and categorize all your processes. So I love Loom as a tool and it's been very beneficial for us. And I totally agree with you, Eric. You got to pick and choose these major pain points. Another factor in all of this when you're trying to build a team is that a lot of us have very limited time when we're getting started in this business. And that on top of building the team is another challenge. So what I encourage people to do is just, you got to continue to have a few focused hours a day or one focused hour a day, two focused hours a day, and make a priority list for that day, knowing that mailing and marketing are not an option. Like those are things that need to be done. Absolutely every single day. Once those are done, what's next on your list that you can spend a little bit of time on Today And a little bit of time on tomorrow to eventually get off your plate. And it's a process. It's a process for so much of this. But, Matt Forbes, what are your thoughts on building a team?

Well, since Eric partially taught me how to do it, it's tough to be like, dude, you're wrong. He's right about everything he said. He always is so frustrating. I think the other part of this, though, for me is my. My business changed, and I was outsourcing way prematurely. Like, as you know, Scott, like, it was not the best. So when they're like, don't do it too soon, what they mean is, don't do it too soon. It can be bad. That's how I did it. But swimlaning, finally, Scott Todd made me swim lane, and I hated every second of it. Best thing I ever did by far.

Far.

Because it was just obvious. It's undeniable. Like, wow, look at that. I do everything, huh? Here it is. And so I think for me, for a long time, it was, hey, outsource the thing you hate. Like, no problem. But I hate so much of this. It's so hard to pinpoint what I hate the most. And we did outsource stuff, but the swim lane made it really, really apparent where I was in the business, which was we were doing everything because it's my wife and I, so we, you know, we have more hours to put into this. And that was a huge mistake. So as soon as we swim lane, it became really, really clear what we had to outsource because of where we were, you know, with that swim lane. And we, I mean, I'm not making this up. Hand of God. We were swimlaning today again, for the 87,000th time. I bought her a remarkable for Christmas or her birthday or whatever, just so we could swim lane, like, you know, sitting on the couch. But we were doing that for like, an hour earlier today. Not during work hours.

Yeah, I mean, this is how geeky Matt Forbes is. He brings his whiteboard with him on vacation in the family rv. I did swim lane for breakfast.

Well, look, if you're swim laning in the rental house, the rental house is expensable. So that's what we did. It was great. And I'll have you know, you don't know this Scott Bosman, but there's a much bigger whiteboard over there. I can just imagine Office Max was going out of sale or going out of business, and I'm like, what's the largest whiteboard you have? My wife's like, no, please, no, no.

No, no, no, no.

No more of these things. I'm like, yes, I want the 8 foot whiteboard of death. So it's awesome. She has to stand on a stool. She's like trying to draw the lines. She can't even get all the way across. It was good.

All right, I want the dimensions on that thing. What other dimensions?

It's bigger than me, so it's pretty huge.

All right, well, there you have it. Everybody get yourselves a whiteboard and work on your, on your swim lanes. Awesome. Any other parting words of wisdom there, Eric?

I think.

You know, the best thing.

I would say is just get started.

Because, yeah, you know, if you're going.

To continue to do this business, you're.

Going to work yourself into a full.

Time job if you don't start outsourcing this stuff as, as you're learning how to do it. You know, as I mentioned earlier, I see people come into coaching where, you know, the land business is a second job for them and that's not why they got into this. They, they want to build a business that can more or less run on by itself and that takes outsourcing, it takes building team, it takes software, it takes automation, all of those things. If I were to give one tip.

About.

Creating content to train your VAs or teach them how to do a process, I would say segment those videos as much as possible. In other words, don't go out and create a half hour long video on how to, you know, post an ad on Facebook as an example. Break that down as much as possible because if you need to make a change later, the last thing you want to do is rerecord a half hour video walking through the entire thing. If you, if you can rerecord a two minute segment as opposed to that entire 30 minutes, you'll be much happier and it'll get done much faster.

Awesome. I think it was Terea once recently was saying she now has VAs that create training videos for her. So if there is something that she's trained, the VA is on, that changes. The VA then is in charge of updating the training video, which I thought was really awesome way to keep things updated in your business.

It's very slick. John Burnett does the same thing. In fact, he trains his VA sometimes by simply having a call with the va. Literally they set up an hour long call, he talks about it, then he hits record, then he does it with them like live doing it and then sends them the video and says, okay, do it like this and he does break it up into sections. Because you're right, Eric. Things change. But most important thing, right, is you gotta get out of the business. Right? You gotta not quit.

Right?

I mean, you guys are in coaching. You guys see it all. I just know friends who have started this and quit. And I know friends who have started and stuck with it. But the easiest way to really wanna be out of the business, to quit, to say forget it, is by doing everything yourself and then having a second job. And it's a disaster. Because there's a lot. Like, it's a lot. It's hard. There's a lot going on. And training Vas. It's not that it's difficult, but there's a little bit of an art form to it. You gotta get good at it. You might as well get good at it now. Because the more you outsource, the faster you're gonna go, the more time you're gonna have to work on the business, not in the business. And you're gonna hit that hockey stick inflection point much, much sooner if more work is getting done. So.

Awesome. Very good, guys. Well, appreciate it. Anybody volunteer for the tip of the week? Anyone?

Eric Peterson does. That's great, Eric. Thanks.

I am not prepared to offer a.

Tip of the week.

And I've been looking a little bit.

As we've been talking today, and. And so far I have been unsuccessful in allocating a useful tip. So I'm going to have to pass for today.

Oh, you're gonna have to pass. Okay. Yes, I see how you're. All right. Well, I think we've already talked about one, and that's loom.com. so I think that's a great tip of the week is to utilize loom.com. but I have one that I found this week which I thought is kind of cool. Now, you may have to be a Mac user for this. There's an app that is called Session. And have you heard of this, Eric?

I don't know. It sounds vaguely familiar, but you're a Mac guy.

So. This is an app for time management. If you have problems with focusing or getting distracted or whatnot. Basically, it's kind of a pomodoro tool that enables you to segment your day. So let's say you have something on your priority list, and that is County Research. And you need to sit down and spend some focus time on county research for 25 minutes today. Well, you go to your Pomodoro timer. You can block out all the other apps on your computer. Type in County Research. Set the timer for 25 minutes and there you go, you have that focused time. But then what you can do is you can segment your day and at the end of the day you can see where you've spent your time. So I think it's kind of. And it does integrate with your calendars as well. That's a paid. I think that's a paid service. I just have the free option right now, but you can kind of break your day up in little segments. Categorize your day using a Pomodoro timer, and then at the end of the day, see where you spent your time. And I thought it was kind of a cool tool.

So session is that call is the website. Stay in session.com.

Well, this, it's a, it's a, it's an app on the app store for Mac.

Mac.

Okay, come on.

Who uses a Mac? Come on.

Let me see if I can find the. I think, yeah, stay in session.com is the. Okay, the website.

Yeah, that looks pretty cool. What's intriguing to me is the idea of being able to look back at the day or the week and see how you logged your time. So when we start working with coaching students in reference to getting out of their business, using a tool like that could really give someone a real good look on the amount of time they're spending working in the business as opposed to on the business.

All right, I'm gonna go get my, my answer to that.

Hang on one second. Oh, your answer to that. Okay. Did I actually have a successful tip of the week and no one's here. That's not fair.

Only you, Bosman. Only you.

Matt's about to tear it apart, though.

Yeah, he's.

He's got a whiteboard that works better.

There's your timer.

I have the IBM answer to that. I bought this because I found myself doing tasks for land that I liked. I liked doing this, I liked doing that. Then I would spend like two, three hours on it. You literally take it and it counts back and it gives you the little red dial. Interestingly, what I found is in my accountability group of a couple of other land geekers, both of them have the same clock, which I had no idea about. One of them was for the same reason, although it was much smaller. John. And then the other one had it for their kids, like their two year old. But it's a great way to be like, okay, I've got a half an hour. I'm going to go do X. Whether I hate it or I love it and I want to limit it or make sure I get it all in. It doesn't matter. Just do something. The session thing is cooler, but it's for a Matt.

Awesome.

What's that clock called? Matt for those that are listening.

Best clock ever on Amazon.com I told lady I have no idea. Countdown clock 25 7. I don't know. It's just a dumb clock. Dumbclock.org I don't know.

I like it though. And it has a timer on it.

Yeah, it is a timer. I actually, I wish it wasn't a timer. I wish it would just get to zero. Like I get it. There's a big red thing and when there's no red thing, I'm out of time. Like I. I don't need it to ding and to tick. I just need it to go. I actually turn red. Yeah. So I.

When you're out of time, not when you have time.

That's how much time you have left. Right. So it counts like what you have left. But if you can hear it like literally it's a clock. I don't.

Yeah, right.

I opened it up and I tried to take the bell out and then I broke it and I had to put it all back together and now it's. Yeah. So session.com is the tip of the week.

Big clock. Well, it's not session.com it's stayinsession.com.

Whatever. It's for a Mac. It's lame. Don't worry about it. It's cool.

Anyway, I thought we had a pretty successful roundtable without the usual suspects. Except thinking back, I did not do a very good intro. So Mark's going to haze me on that, I'm sure.

Well, he can go back in and cut it in then.

Yeah, why don't you do that?

Do we have to do a sponsor buy?

Yeah, I think we should probably do. We should probably talk about the sponsor for today's roundtable and that's flight school. Land geek Flight school. What's Mark's site? Transform your life in 16 weeks with Scott Todd as your Sherpa. He'll lead you up the land investing mountain and you'll be doing deals in no time. The next flight school is June 30th. June 30th is the next flight school. Another important date that people should put on their calendar I think is the next boot camp, which is live in Las Vegas. The first time we've been live in over a year and a half. August 12th through the 14th. And I believe registration is open for that now. So you can go to thelandgeek.combootcamp and register. There's a block of rooms available, and I think it's going to be a pretty amazing boot camp. Orb, is you coming?

It's going to sell out so fast. Everybody wants to be in person.

I think it's going to be a good time. I'm sure it's going to be a little bit different than it used to be, but, um, I want to go. I.

We're.

We're debating. We have something else that weekend, so I'm trying to figure it out, but I've been to, like, seven. I'm a big fan. You know how much I like boot camp, so I'll be sad to miss it.

We would be sad if you were not there. So.

Last time I saw Eric Peterson might have been Las Vegas. As he sat waiting for his plane by himself with his, like, headphones on, trying to make sure no one knew who he was because he was so exhausted. It had been a boot camp. The guy's, like, flat out going to fall asleep, dead tired. I was like, oh, he really gave it his all. Let's go poke him, talk to him.

I might have a hood on, too, and was. Was hiding underneath it.

That's good stuff. All right, well, keep it on your radar, folks. All right, we're going to do this.

Matt Forbes, we got to.

You ready?

I'm going to mouth it so that no one can see. It's going to be great.

No, you can't mouth it. Uh, oh, sure I can. Can you guys hear me? Okay.

Oh, no.

Oh, no. Okay. I had a phone call come in, and I thought it disrupted things. All right, you ready? 3, 2, 1. Let.

Let freedom ring. Why do you guys go so slow? Why don't you just.

I know that one was super slow. I was waiting.

For five years, I've not understood this. Honestly. Just say the words. Just let it go. Just let freedom ring like that.

All right, listen. You didn't say it that way, so say it that way.

That's how it should be. Do you like. I mean, I have a degree in technical theater. Do we need to have a lesson at the next boot camp? Is that what you do? I think we do.

Yeah, maybe.

That was a terrible lead. Freedom Wing. That's definitely probably top. Top 20 worst.

I mean, just saying. Yeah, it could definitely have been better.

It's gotten to the point where you guys are, like, well attributed to my poor leadership. Freedom. Like, you're like, what are you doing?

Just okay, you know, like I said.

Attribute it to my poor roundtable viewers everywhere. Just say the words.

Okay, well, try to do better next time.

Actually, technically, lately it's been going really well. Honestly.

All right, thanks everybody for coming, and we'll see you next week. Thanks, Matt Forbes. You bet.

Thanks, Matt.

You bet.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income Podcast. Start your journey at www.thelandgate.com and www.scotttubb.net. rate and review the podcast and email supporthelandgeek.com your screenshot for a free Passive Income launch kit.