Hiring VAs For Your Note Business | Real Estate Notes Show

Episode: Hiring VA's For Your Note Business w/ Rudy Casanova - FULL Dave's Goals and Plans: - Running the Diversified Mortgage Expo (DME) on June 2nd and 3rd with focus on connecting different sectors - Finishing a 10-week advanced note investor course starting in April covering due diligence calculators and filters - Building bridges between note originators and note buyers who don't currently know each other exist - Transitioning discussion to virtual assistants as solution for scaling note businesses Nathan's Goals and Plans: - Encouraging focus on bringing actual deals from DME, not just business cards - Planning to do due diligence work in back rooms during the conference - Noting that people don't realize the work involved in note investing beyond weekend guru classes Key Recommendations: - Hire a VA and train them properly upfront - initial time investment pays back tenfold in bandwidth and profitability - Don't grow your work, grow your business - work ON the business not IN it - Attend diversified conferences like DME to connect with originators and investors across residential, commercial, and seller financing - Attend the 10-week advanced course to master due diligence and build accurate non-performing note calculators - Recognize that falling behind in tasks prevents you from making offers and networking effectively Topics Discussed: - Hiring virtual assistants to increase bandwidth and enable family time - Diversified Mortgage Expo speakers and sessions (commercial notes, seller financing, capital raising, tax planning, insurance strategies) - The gap between note originators and note buyers in the market - Scaling challenges when growing a note business - The E-Myth concept of delegating and systematizing work - Due diligence processes and non-performing note calculations Guest Insights: - Rudy Casanova is introduced as guest expert on virtual assistants (appears to be just joining when transcript ends) it's it's the I do it better Factor right I do it better I understand it better I can I can work through this better than other than anybody else can that's great and and you know what maybe that is the case however there's only so many hours in a day you can only do so much if you employ the use of a VA and on the onset you train them properly right now your bandwidth is increased and your ability to earn and or spend quality time with your family is increased right and those are the things you have to consider yes like I said I'm not gonna you know I'm not gonna sugarcoat it in the beginning you're gonna be like I don't have time to do this I don't have time to train I don't have time give me a couple days of training and I will give you all that time back tenfold right I don't make this a better operation for you I'll make you more profitable I'll make you have more time with your family [Music] [Applause] good afternoon everybody they put some jkp Holdings alongside Mr Nathan Turner how are you amen good morning to you very good thanks so it's I'm getting some spring weather I don't know if you out there in Canada but New Jersey's getting 63 degrees today I heard I'm excited I gotta get outside we're it's early spring here so it's it's below freezing in the morning overnight and then it goes above freezing during the day one of those kind of things we've had a mild winter um for the most part we haven't had more than inches snow which is amazing for us Northeastern wow um snow blowers hadn't come out we're open to look for it open to full soon uh we're getting ahead of ourselves out um but we wanted to um kind of just make sure that we are you know follow along with everything went on um we've had some internal talks about stuff yeah and make sure that this is good um what we've been doing internally has been talking a lot about these Rock loan stuff um and what has been happening with it why is it good why is it bad um and also um you know educate those that are making to make them sellable yeah so I think for most people they don't get it uh yet right and that's okay yeah but in the most part when we look at stuff like this we want to worry about making sure that we understand and we kind of get the people around us to help us understand it alongside of us and probably you know hopefully kind of teach us uh what that looks like so yeah let me make sure that I see that the Facebook feed is showing nothing I got some reports that I thought I got to make sure that we got that going on I'm sure that is happening in a second about it guys it's almost like you need yeah I need yourself assistant or something yeah I think we're gonna get around this topic rather fast uh quickly today uh given the fact that uh I'm already having some issue so I'm excited about what we're gonna be talking about today and making sure that we all kind of get the same page understand the whys of what's the house all that good stuff um in the meantime I'll plug Diversified mortgage Expo again DME June 2nd and 3rd get your tickets we've got some amazing speakers and sponsors it's I'm really excited this is going to be a good conference uh some really really good content um it's gonna be a good one yeah I highly encourage everyone to go yeah so with that said I mean what are you seeing with people coming and what are going to be going on uh who we expect to be there and what kind of people are we going to be seeing we've got so I'm just looking at my list of people that I need headshots from that's just this list oh God uh somebody from commercial notes he's going to talk to us all about commercial notes and and why commercial notes versus residential uh we've got a couple of guys here talking about seller financing how to structure them properly so that they're sellable uh we've got somebody who's kind of newer to seller financing uh and some of the things that she's going through and some of the revelations that she's had in in her journey we've got Ira company there Quest we've got Dan zatovsky talking about raising capital a guy called Brent Kessler talking about money multiplier this is a very interesting thing that he's talking about talking about making an insurance policy that you can borrow against uh very interesting stuff some note education we've got uh Nate Dodson talking about raising capital I got his cup right there crowdfunding lawyers they're going to be talking they've got all kinds of guys there oh John Hancock probably not a lot of people know this guy he's awesome yeah so what he's doing is some really fascinating stuff I mean I think people don't get things to completely with the stuff um but I think it's definitely a need um for people to understand so share a little bit about what he could be doing um and why it's important to know what he's getting up to so his panel he's not even panel he's going to do a presentation by himself the presentation is uh talking about death and taxes about the two most inevitable things in your life he's gonna tell to talk to us about how to prepare for those things and how to protect ourselves from taxes and what to do Upon Our eventual death and how to protect your assets so that it can go forward and and create a legacy for those that you're leaving behind so that's going to be a really cool one uh all about just money management what are you gonna do with all this money you're making with notes so one of the fascinating things that I think people and I think we're live against our fathers guys who were last second getting in here um the thing about DME for me and one of the major reasons going inside and running it is the fact that it's not just no investor buyers coming here and seeing the same people over and over and over again and that's the part I think people don't get is that it's not just us all hanging out which you know I kind of encourage Nathan to make sure he doesn't focus on just that right yeah I know it's a diversified mortgage Expo so we're running in all pieces all different things that you can do with notes outside of notes money management bringing in seller finance people that I don't think anybody else is doing uh just bringing everyone together I really want people to walk away from DME not just with a stack of business cards but like actual deals so come Monday you know where I'm gonna start due diligence on this asset that kind of thing so it's amazing the DME to have not just us there well we're gonna actually be doing deals in the back room kind of thought process oh yeah and and it's not this you know hedge fund talking to us investors and saying I need 10 million to do deals these would be Mom and Pops and small Originators who are riching seller finance notes who are just learning about the fact that us note buyers exist yeah so um which is very exciting for both sides yes for the notes originator is gone I can sell this and for us yeah we have a private group we talk on Wednesday and some of the people are joining us now saying you waited I've been struggling to raise capital and Banks won't refinance me and I just need to get some money out of here and we talk numbers these guys get it and they just need money to get into another deal so us coming in and funding it is amazing these are Originators rap wound creators all kinds of sectors that don't know anything about us and know worlds like this are worlds like this they know each other here we know each other but we never Bridge together and the amazingly one of the first stops of doing that of bridging this Gap and you're shaking people you've never heard of before you may have even seen them on Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever you you want to be at um very exciting stuff we've got somebody from Mortgage Bankers Association coming talking about she's the VP of research so she's going to bring in all kinds of information like latest up-to-date this is what's been happening in the market this is what we foresee coming up uh in the near future so that's that's a big deal I mean it's it's going to be a really good one really good one so check it out make sure you grab your tickets they won't last forever so yeah we'll be uh it's in June guys get down to National Check It Out take a look at the website um but I just as I I'm sure people on Facebook are probably sending messages I'm getting some messages from people we know I apologize I don't know what happened in the transition here I was working fine for a minute and then boom technology right yeah so um when we talk about these world of you know bringing new notes and as you grow your business as we'll both contest to it gets overwhelming it gets busy and I think that's a big thing that maybe people don't realize when they go and take their their weekend warrior class with some Guru is there is work involved like this is not just a it's not a get rich quick by any stretch uh there's definitely work involved in it can get to be a lot uh very quickly so you need help but when we talk about needing help it isn't just buying from new investors and talking to investors it's really about making sure that you can do the work and keep up with things so you don't fall behind right because falling behind is the worst thing in the world to do it because then if you're behind on everything you're gonna start seeing acid passing you can't make an offer off right and networking is a huge thing we have a huge space for our sector and networking is big on us however one of the another big issues is that when you're growing you don't you don't actually grow your business you grow your work so you're working on in your business not on it and I get it we're all beginners you kind of things your way because you can't really hire someone you can't do anything and then when you get large enough the problem you run into is you don't know how to hand it off yeah how would you the e-myth book and for those who know about it how do you hand it off right and we talk about this we just finished we're finishing up our 10-week course for uh the advanced note investor group so if you haven't looked at that please take a look at that on our website we'll be probably starting off in April um we'll be talking about that the first five weeks we'll be building a big calculator understanding due diligence weeding down filters but building a true non-performing calculator not performing one with a lot of accuracies that are just make it better yeah but all that to go as you grow it is extremely difficult to understand it is there's there there's a lot of stuff and stuff like it's it's and in fact for the gurus that are teaching um I don't even fault them for not being able to tell you everything because there's a ton so it's it I've heard that before before people take class and they're like oh well I didn't know about this I didn't know about that yeah I you know and in every situation is different and it's extremely difficult to try to predict and prepare for every single eventuality that being said there is a ton of stuff that's the same thing every time and you can't learn everything on a weekend guys well as you get into the thickened things and if you probably already are you're probably in the weeds and you've hired this person or that person I have and it didn't work out for one reason or another and it gets to the point where we're not good people are hiring people we're a good investing that's all we're good at right nowhere Lane so what we wanted to do um as I transitioned Meridian here is we want to talk about this idea of this VA virtual assistant right uh this this magical person that comes into your world and takes over for you and beloved so you can go on vacation and spend the time on the beach right Rudy welcome a man Rudy you're on mute still yep and Rudy's off mute how are you today so this world of virtual assistants let's back into it how did you get involved in it before we dive into details so um started over 16 years ago going on 17 years ago now so um not a new to the game per se and uh the way we started um I was um I had a Mortgage Banking consulting firm called Rainmaker Solutions uh one of my clients who worked for UBS mortgage had a small call center operation doing introductory calls for mortgages basically saying hey your mortgage with UBS you uh you need to send your payment here this is when your payments due this is your payment amount that's it right they had six people in the Philippines doing these calls he was interested in moving to the Philippines and taking this to the next level asked me to partner with him and as such um we are now an 800 person organization in the Philippines in four different locations and we have 70 onshore staff in Burlington North Carolina so um we've grown through multiple verticals um and you know that that way that we started we started with six people um six people turned into 2020 turned into 50 50 turned it into 100 and again 17 years later we're at uh 900 odd people at this point so um like I said we're not new to the game we've been in it a long time we've definitely seen the Ebbs and flows of the business um we saw the downturn of uh 0809 and 10.

uh we went from about 350 people down to 20 people overnight because of the stroke of a pin of uh the government and Fannie and Freddie saying no more offshoring uh which now Fannie and Freddie have changed their tune and they do allow offshoring for uh non-legal back office work so uh that is a big feather in our cap again um and like I said so the real estate market is very in tune with what we do and how we do it and in fact um you know most of the big banks have offices down the street from our operation uh in the Philippines um you know Chase Bank of America Wells Fargo all of those big Banks were there uh taking advantage of the offshore uh operations and the cost savings and benefit of doing such wow that's awesome and you're saying yeah we were talking before and you said roughly half of your office deals with real estate um actually in total about 70 percent of my office deals strictly with real estate-based transactions about 50 are in uh the single family rental and Property Management space along with some multi-family that we touched there as well uh we have about another 10 percent that are mortgage default related dealing with the the Foreclosure the bankruptcy the eviction processes associated with mortgages um we have about another 15 percent that are in mortgage origination about another 10 that are entitled and then we have um some other uh offshoots which is uh strictly working for accounting firms doing their uh tax-based accounting uh we also do recruiting uh working with recruitment firms and then we do some uh back office related to uh medical billing and medical placement of nurses so we do have multiple verticals but uh we were born of the real estate market and we are very in tune with the real estate market so fascinating when we say real estate market you know we're very small Niche node space in the real estate market what are traditionally they used for are they used for you know running values are they use or you know marketing social media what are they typically doing you know so we do a lot of all of what you just said so you know I find it interesting when you were talking earlier you were talking about how you don't have time to get to everything that you need to right the whole premise of a virtual assistant is to help your highly compensated individuals your brain trusts individuals do more of what's going to make you money right if you don't have to spend your time keystroking your data entry uh trying to find values trying to find comparable sales comparable listings trying to do that sort of menial work as it were your time can be spent analyzing the deal right so if you're VA if you train your VA properly and get them to give you the information that you need to then simply look at a deal and now instead of processing two deals a day you're processing 10 deals a day right so your Roi goes up dramatically as a result of employing this individual so let the va's do the work that you don't need to do right let them data stroke let them keystroke let them go through and and do the research associated with each of these um assets that you're trying to acquire so that then you can spend the time analyzing the metrics of the deal and then moving it forward to either saying yes or no that's amazing I mean you're right because the time energy and money is made up in the time energy money that you don't have to spend doing again and it's the fact that you could spend more time in your family too like oh that's huge absolutely and so I mean just think about it you know like I said if you can double triple quadruple Your Capacity to be able to work on deals on a daily basis right and not having to do that at night anymore right and so now you're getting back to the quality time with your family you're getting back again a better Roi and for the cost of a VA versus your own personal time you know you're gonna make that money tenfold because again you're you're spending your time making deals happen versus trying to figure out if the deal is viable or not right so any of that back office function and you know I can get granular but I don't I don't think you really need to in this sense because you know yeah okay hey one two three anywhere Street I need to know what the comparable sales what comparable listings are on the area and let me know what the true value of that is these guys are filling in forms right it's not rocket science everybody has their own little bit of Secret Sauce as it were to how they determine whether or not the deal is viable for them but the work going up to that point is all the same give me value let me know property condition reach out to individuals that are going to get me that and information so that I don't have to spend the time doing that I don't need to spend the time on the phone I don't need to spend the time you know again keystroking let me go ahead and make decisions as to whether or not that deal is going to be profitable for me or not and that's where you're going to gain your biggest Advantage related to having a VA and having them help you not to mention you know there's other aspects of your business if you want to start something else you know you want to go down another business line that VA is going to free up your time to be able to do that and again you know the cost of a VA is is minuscule in comparison to what you're going to gain in earnings as a result of their assistance so if there's a new task a VA has to learn is there a good process or way or how do you advise clients say well I need them to do something a little bit different than they've done before what is the best strategy at hand on that so here you know I I mean I can tell you about how you know how we kind of structure it and there there is going to be some some time suck if you will in the beginning right or in the beginning we're going to create a training manual and that training manual you're gonna have to give us your intellectual knowledge to be able to to let them know steps one through a hundred on what they need to process on a daily basis but then our training team is going to take your information create the manual for you because I'm quite certain you probably don't have that it just all resides in your head today right yeah they're going to create that training manual and as you continue to grow and and those opportunities continue to gain you need to get another VA or you want to hire somebody you know Stateside again to be able to help process and help you workflow that process manual that is your intellectual property now is going to help you get to that next level because now you can sit somebody down and say okay here's steps one to a hundred this is the way we do it and this is how we're going to this is what I want you to do on a daily basis the you know the day or two of time that it's going to take you to create that manual and again you're not the one creating it my staff is creating it for you right then they're going to have you you're going to send it back to you and say hey is this your process as you understand it Dave steps one through a hundred and you're going to say absolutely this is what we do and then you know in a month you say Hey you know we had an industry change or we had a market change and steps 50 through 75 are going to change but here's the here's the addendum to that then our team goes through and they train so if you want to add a staff member then they'll be able to train to it now you're not having to spend your time training are people trained so to train the trainer concept right so once you impart your intellectual knowledge to us and again there's a little bit of a you know a pain point in the first day or two of doing it but once you've done it then they know what you expect and what you need on a day-to-day basis and now they're Off to the Races right um you know in the Philippines you know being a VA is a coveted job you know these these kids go to school two bvas and they go to school in the interest of you know I think 85 percent of our staff is two to four year college educated the remaining 15 percent has years of experience in the VA business so that they are again you know this is something that it's it's a position that they want to have it's a position that they want to grow with and in a company like ours there's vertical movement right there's the opportunity to go to a team lead and a supervisor and a manager and a director because of our size right so now we've created an upward path of Mobility for those individuals so they want to stay with us the other part is if are people if if they're out they call in sick or they you know decide that they found another opportunity well we have a bench step that we're cross-training right and that binge staff is now going to take on your work because when you contract with a VA you're not only Contracting for that that one VA or that FTE that full-time equivalency but you're also trying to whatever workflow that they can process in a day if we agree that they can do 10 widgets a day whatever those processes are then every day those 10 widgets will be done if this happens in your operation today that work doesn't get done or if you're if you have another individual you're paying them overtime to get that done right so again now you've you've alleviated those costs because those costs won't be borne by you they're born by us right and the work is being done and allowing you and your team to do other things and become more profitable so we're Rudy here talk Casanova I'm talking about va's jumping in here talking about these to help your business along um I've worked with MBA workers and coders right it's in the little higher level people and what I want to make sure people understand is that when I first got into I felt bad hiring these people heard such you know low-paid things they do a lot and when I finally got one asked I work with it for about eight six eight months and he says what do you guys like should I be feeling bad and he says can I be honest with you I said sure he goes some of the people here are making five bucks a day so when I'm like whoa like the low rate people are making almost nothing so making five bucks an hour to the lower wage person is astronomical so is from what your experience is is that the reason that this job is so coveted because of fact it is a higher paying job than they would traditionally get in their country it's a higher paying job it's an office job it is a job and you know there there are there are two different types of va's right there's one there's work from home va's and then there's work from an office VA and depending on the complexity of the nature of your business and what you do there's advantages to either right um one of the advantages of being in an office is you have at least in our operations right you have redundancy of of power so you have backup generators you have um in our office we have we're ISO 27001 2013 data certified so it's international data standard um and so our people are walking in and they're putting all of their personal belongings into a locker room they're biometrically scanning into the office all of their data ports are locked down all of their ports of entry from an internet perspective are locked down except for whatever the portal of entry is for your processing so whether it's a Citrix connection VPN connection web-based portal access connection our folks are are relegated to doing your work so they're not surfing Facebook like the U.S based employees today they're not on Twitter they're not you know they're not on those things except during their breaks right so the level and quality of work is raised right and so there's a lot of advantage to doing that when they're work from home uh you know we employ the use of a of a software that monitors keystrokes that monitors movement that monitors all of these things to ensure that the workflow that they're contracted for is being done on a daily basis not to mention the fact that all of our clients get a daily work report that says hey today you sent 10 widgets and Rudy did all 10 widgets today you sent 12 widgets and Rudy did all 12 and and now you have a daily tracking mechanism for how much work is being sent how much work is being done and it helps you understand then whether or not you need to send more work or potentially hire another individual because you're sending too much work right so there's there's a lot of ways to to do um to enhance what you do there and again you know back to what you said originally you know I encourage people look at you know Global strategics uh Facebook pages right we have our team that is um they have dance teams and they have dance offs and they have um parties and events and we have uh an employee activity committee where we're doing you know annual parties and events since doing things to help help our staff um maintain continuity in what they do but also make sure it's a fun environment and it's an environment that they want to stay at um during the pandemic uh the onset of the pandemic we actually housed 60 people in our office for 90 days oh we have showers we have events that they were able to stay working right we were able to deliver to our clients the workflow that they needed to be done because everything was shut down here right yeah we had we took my fives we took um computers and delivered them before the the entire country shut down so that work could continue and these people were great and they were ecstatic because they were being paid when no one else was they were getting work done when no one else was um so yeah this is a it's like I said before it's a coveted job it gives them the opportunity for advancement in their society and that's huge for the common person like we are what is the biggest struggle for them to make this from doing it themselves working in their business and on the business same time to hiring a VA what is typically the biggest struggle and how do you guys help with it's it's the I do it better Factor right I do it better I understand it better I can I can work through this better than other than anybody else can that's great and and you know what maybe that is the case however there's only so many hours in a day you can only do so much if you employ the use of a VA and on the onset you train them properly right now your bandwidth is increased and your ability to earn and or spend quality time with your family is increased right and those are the things you have to consider yes like I said I'm not gonna you know I'm not gonna sugarcoat it in the beginning you're going to be like I don't have time to do this I don't have time to train I don't have time give me a couple days of training and I will give you all that time back tenfold right I'll make this a better operation for you I'll make you more profitable I'll make you have more time with your family all things that are very important to me in my life for sure so then can is it always uh like when you're hiring somebody is it paid by the hour or can you also off to do it by project so you can opt to do it by project um I try and shy away from that a little bit more now we we have plenty of people who do so don't get me wrong but the reason why is I like creating subject matter experts and I think when you hire people internally in your office you want to have people who are knowledgeable in what you do and understand your process and buy into your process by hiring a full-time individual that gives them the opportunity to begin to learn and grow with your business and as they learn and grow with your business they're they become better at what they do for you which increases your opportunity to be better and that's my perspective and again but if you want to you know if there's a short-term project you know you've got a big uh npl tape that came in and you need analyzation of that npl tape sure my guys can jump on it they can go ahead and do that for you given the right set of parameters right you're giving the right training yeah um they can analyze that for you and get that over to you and then it's done you know and and we move on to the next deal but again if you want to have continued uh success I would very highly recommend creating your own subject matter extra creating somebody who's on your team that is your person who understands you and your workflow yeah because I'm thinking like you know I'm analyzing tapes on a regular basis but not every day you know and so so analyzing a tape uh you know once maybe twice a month kind of thing or possibly more often but but certainly not every day so it it would kind of be part-time work in that case and that would that work as well that wouldn't work as well but what I would encourage you to do there is have them do that part-time and then the other part of the time there are other facets of what you do that they can learn and they can assist you with and again give you the give you additional bandwidth to go down different to seek out more tapes to seek out more you know to do other business lines you know um not all of us are are in one business line right we have multiple verticals in the interest of you know trying to capitalize on on some form of income stream from each of those verticals let them help you with those right they they're not one-trick ponies they are again they're college educated kids who are hungry and want to want to go through and and um it's a job that they they want to succeed at and and as such they're going to do everything that they can to make sure that on a daily basis that's occurring on your behalf I think for me you know my nervousness too is like I don't know what I need them for and I'm sure once you need them like oh man so there's things like me and they love all time about like our website something that like no investors we're not website people but people are saying hey it's something broken you're like I had no clue but it's not a day-to-day maybe not even a month a month situation like I had a situation the other day where i'm just reaching out for anyone who can help me you know those are things that get thrown at us that are like kind of fires over here that it's not in our our manual books we don't ever touch it but we right we fixed but younger college kids probably have an understanding of that stuff how do we go about finding that VA that can kind of be good at certain things but also have maybe a strength here or strength there that may help us as well I I think that they're so you know again when they're in the Philippines they go to college for various things right I mean you know they they can go down you know the hotel franchise industry they can go down the accounting industry the bookkeeping industry they can go down you know specifically doing uh recruiting like there there's all of that you're you know it's no different than hiring a person here in the United States right you're you're that individual may be really good at task a but task B they're gonna have wherewithal and they're gonna have ability to be able to get outside of the box and and be able to help you in other endeavors and as you develop a working rapport with them and begin to let them know what you need and what you're looking for delivery you know they're going to be coming back to you and they're going to say you know hey David I've got you know I finished my work for today what's next and you say well you know what I I've had a problem with the website or can you take a look at it and give you some in ideas as to how to enhance that again you know they're they're they're smart individuals they're you know the I think people think you know third world country right and they think that that those individuals aren't as Savvy necessarily as as the Americans are right um You can't think in that in that sense you know um and and the way that I liken it is I love going to uh hotels in other countries and the front desk clerk speaks 10 languages right yeah we we have trouble here in the U.S uh kids speaking more than one and that English at that right um and you know you got the front you've got the death clerk that that speaks 10 languages because they're striving to excel right these guys want that my point is they want growth they want to learn and they're going to try and go out of their way to make sure that that you're happy with their workflow and what they do so you know we go ahead I was just gonna say so let's say we we sign up with you whatever that looks like uh and then hire a VA is that VA just specifically for me or is that person working with other companies as well in our model they are specifically for you if you have a full-time individual that individual is yours again I I I talked about the subject matter expert earlier we want them to be your subject matter expert we want them to know Nathan Turner and everything that he does and and become your go-to person right um there are other va's there are other firms that do that operate on a pool basis we just personally feel that um having that pool basis doesn't allow for experts to be created in the same manner so that's why we do it on a FTE perspective interesting interesting I'm saying messages I'm thinking about questions in my head that we can ask because I think so Rudy Casanova they'll be here joining us all about va's for those uh are tuning in and I find it's fascinating um you don't know you need to be until you try it out you're like oh and our problem is we hire badly and I think what you said before with the manual which is hard to build I'm consuming but tells a person what to do is a big big part of this giving a Playbook to somebody else saying hey take over these tasks and this is how I would do it yes I had a friend of mine who said five years ago that he couldn't automate stuff uh maybe listening so I apologize and he eventually says today's automating over 85 of the stuff now because it's the Mind graph the Mind map goes through and says if this happened and this happened this happened do this right and there's going to be scenarios where they don't know so when the demonstration maybe they'll respond to email and they're not sure what to say how are they trained not to fake it so that that's the one advantage that we have uh especially in the the Filipino mentality as it were um they don't they don't fake it right they they you know I think here in the U.S we we tend to have that I can't say I don't know so I'm gonna just fake through it right um there they're gonna come back and say I don't I don't know the answer to that however I will follow up with you and get you the answer you need and then they'll contact their their person they'll contact David and they'll say David I had a call today you know in their daily work report you're gonna see uh 10 items came through nine were processed the one that wasn't processed is gonna say it was there was an issue and we need to have we need to address that and then tomorrow they'll follow up with that individual and then they'll get them the answer that was needed in order to um take care of the issue or concern or uh point that that person had so again you know they're they're very um structured and measured in what they do hence the the manuals are a great processing tool and it helps them understand and then you know again a lot of if then statements right if you have a more complicated process then just put that if then statement in in the manual and again as they become your subject matter expert as they begin to understand your business because they work with you and your account alone those answers are going to come to them because they've handled it in the past they've handled it you know maybe those aren't everyday issues or every month issues but they're going to remember that two months ago hey I had this problem this is how I handled and this I'm gonna handle this one right and so now it alleviates that from coming back to you and your desk excuse me for that answer so um you know again it comes down to these you know these guys are looking and again I encourage you to look at our our Facebook feeds and and see the people that that work for us and you're gonna get you're gonna get to understand you know there there's a definite difference in the 20 odd year old in the States versus the 20 odd year old in the Philippines right um the Philippines again it's this is a way for them to pull themselves up and make themselves a successful person here I think our mentality for those more line level jobs has come to you know I don't have to work as hard as I need to to keep this job because they just need my body here right there they want that right and um and that's the other thing is is as you know it's tough to hire today guys it is it is what it is it's tough to hire in the US right yeah those line level jobs and you know everyone wants to be the CEO right well great you can be the CEO of your own company but not of my company I need you to learn the ropes and these guys are willing to learn the ropes and and figure out who you know we have plenty of uh of our uh clients that pay annual bonuses and and monthly bonuses and to to these guys for the performance that they've done because they realize the value add that they've given and how much additional Revenue they brought to their companies it seems like probably the first step in all this is to to take a step back and look at your own business and say okay so this is what I do here are the processes of everything that I do this thing and this thing and this thing I can give away and that's that's a great way to look at it Nathan because you know the the simple matter is you know you can talk to somebody like me right um and with without the sake of plugging only Global but you can talk to a VA provider right and say hey guys here's what I do how have you helped others like me right I'm gonna go through and I'm gonna send you a one sheet of everything that we've done in your space okay you know you and I are going to talk for a few minutes you're gonna say okay on a daily basis I do X Y and Z right and then I'm gonna say great for other companies like you we do Y and Z all day long can't do X necessarily but we do Y and Z all day long and we're going to send you that those functions and then you're going to say okay I can do this this and this oh and wait I didn't think about this function in this function yeah and then we're going to send you a redacted Manual of those functions and you're going to and we're going to help you create the wheel as it were and we're going to say here's a redacted manual how you know one of our other clients handles it does this fit your model how would you update this to fit your model and then now we're we're part of the way home on that creation of that manual that workflow and the training associated with getting that individual on your team it's awesome that makes sense yeah yeah I want to make sure people too know this when I first got into the B world I'm saying these guys in Philippines they can't speak English right and what you find out is they do fairly well with actually sometimes exactly what I understand they can speak it and when I get a phone call with them some are a little bit the accent right but for the most part no problems so I jokingly say one of my sales guys is from is from North Carolina and we we always say that his accent is ten times heavier than the accent of our Philippines yes uh our Filipinos are are you know the the language is not a barrier there uh in fact I um there was a company out of India um that was a recruiting firm who actually had us do all of their Voice work for them so it was a it was an Indian firm that contracted with the Filipino firm to do all the Voice work um and we we you know had a long-standing relationship with them for almost 10 years um they they built a bot a bot is a bill to operate transfer and finally after 10 years they they found office space and created their own entity which we then transferred over uh those individuals because we knew that was always on the horizon um but my point is the English the English speaking there you know these these kids are taught English from elementary school um from the time they're in kindergarten up they're taught they're taught English um and in in offices like ours uh our offices English speaking Reading Writing only uh Tagalog is the native language uh they don't uh speak that during when while they're in the office um and um you know there there's also differential I mean if you wanted somebody who was a voice premium um you know it doesn't cost that much more um but in most instances I don't ever see the need for voice premium unless they're on the phone 24 7 but if they're just processing you're going to be able to speak it's not much different than you and I talking now to be honest with you uh you know heavy New York or heavy Jersey accent you've just matched the Filipino accent you know it's funny too because I also got used to understanding they work on our schedule too right they're not on their hour sometimes they'll work on your hours so they'll work late into the night because it's daytime for us so that that's a great Point thank you for saying that um yeah so we have we have shifts that are 24 7.

um we literally have staff on Call every hour of the day there's somebody in our office working so um there's there's various split shifts there's there's uh you know true nighttime differential uh from the uh East Coast uh right now there is a 13-hour time difference East Coast um so there in the future so it is uh What uh 1244 p.m during the day on the 18th there because they cross the International Date Line yeah um so daytime um working I'm sorry am I am it's 1am there sorry it's 1am there right now it's 1 45 a.m there or 12 40 12 45 a.m there I'm stuck in Central Time uh 12 45 a.m there so their night time is our day time and we can work and it all depends on your business model um we have several people who want the analysis done during the day there so when they get in in the morning here they have their workflow ready to process absolutely there are others who want somebody to be able to they they want to be able to call their VA and talk to their VA everything's voice over IP so there's no there's no Telco charges um you can go through and get your people set up you know if you don't have a ring central or something of that nature then we can instruct you on how to get that set up and now you've got a direct line into your VA uh on a daily basis or a nightly basis there so all of that is available it's so easy to say yes right and I know we're getting top of the hour here um and there's a form inside the uh the LinkedIn and Facebook link this will be recorded and put on YouTube just FYI too um and if you want to get you know Rudy's information fill the form out you'll get an automatic email back from us with all the information there so we're getting to the really important question here right the one with the elves in the room for those that tune in really from a range right it's hard to say exactly what is the hourly cost for these guys I'm talking we're looking at like you know probably 60 100 an hour right usually trained professionals yeah I'd love to charge 60 to 100 I don't however uh so our our rate I'll tell you straight up our our globals rate uh per FTE per full-time equivalency uh per month is nineteen hundred and fifty dollars so one thousand nine hundred fifty dollars gets you a full-time employee dedicated to your team and your processes and that's it there are no up charges you know there there are various va's out there firm VA firms I should say that charge death setup fees and computer charges and all and Telco charges and all this we don't it's 19.50 a month one thousand nine hundred fifty dollars and that gets you a full-time employee dedicated to you and your process now is that 40 hours 30 hours that is that is that is 40 hours yes so it's 40 hours week working through um again on your processes during the hours that you stipulate and uh the only uh the only difference on that is if you felt that you wanted a premium voice it might be a hundred dollars more uh a month if you wanted uh an accountant it might be 200 more a month if you wanted a CPA you know might be 300 a month but the CPA test there is a CPA test here so um that is uh interchangeable and uh you know we even hire paralegals there I mean there's there's all facets of individuals that are available there for our employment uh the only thing I would say is we don't at least in our operation we're not big programmers we don't do a lot of the the data programming uh for computer uh programs uh but that is readily available but I would then point you into other uh parts of the world uh Croatia Serbia things of that nature tend to have a little bit better code writing than the Philippines does if if someone came to use the lesson I don't need full-time right I'm looking for and sometimes for us that transition is hard so like boy I don't know if I want to spend two grand for someone full time and I want to hold on a little bit because I know what you're going to say here is once you get a taste of what they can do it it makes it's a no-brainer but I still wanted to start with like 20 hours does the feed change at all or is it going no it's just it's just a it being right I mean yeah 20 hour maybe whatever that 1950 is it's it's just over 11 an hour is what it comes out to uh it's like 1103 an hour I think is is the is the number so 20 times 11 and there's your feed um and we are willing to do that and and we generally speaking it's because we know that once you've had a little taste um you're going to want to you're going to want to go full time you're going to want to go ahead and go full board so um and we and we do that with a number of of entities in this in the um uh with PMI um which is a big Property Management uh company we do um we have a special deal with them where we do offer you know quarter and half ftes um because multiple um franchises are using those bodies um but yes so the answer is yes we're willing to do it and then I think once you see the value add then you're gonna go from one to two two to three Etc yeah that's right um so interesting I guess our biggest issue is that finding that VA right knowing which one to go with is it that you guys pick which one fits our system and what we're looking for or is it the next man up we get assigned to no we we will typically pick um we go through and depending on your skill set and or what your function set is I should say um we will try and hire accordingly um with their skill set so we're not going to try and put a hotel franchise individual into an accounting box right they don't Max so we go through and and we do we have a pretty stringent interview process where we may interview five or six individuals in in the interest of finding the right person for your job and you know here's the other piece is we always maintain a bench staff right we always maintain people in the wings that we have cross-training so we give them uh we have a pretty we have a pretty deep uh training program called global global University so we're training them on mb101 Mortgage Banking 101 single Property Management 101.

we're teaching them some of the buzzwords because you know in Property Management they may not know what a uh sump pump is right because they don't have some pumps in the Philippines right so we're teaching them this and and helping put them shovel ready for the next available position that comes up so we do hire staff and keep them on board and then if if you know we just had a big uh retraction in the origination industry right we had 135 individuals with uh one of the top um origination companies in the country uh here in the U.S and we lost about 70 of those seats um because of the retraction in the industry right people just weren't writing as many mortgages well we didn't let those people go we brought them onto the bench and then we began to put them onto other accounts and put them in other endeavors as we were bringing on new clients because we don't want to lose our subject matter experts we have time and dollars in the training of those individuals and we don't want to lose those assets and so um again we're constantly training constantly making them better constantly having them understand various lines of business to be shovel ready for you and your business so awesome you know very interesting Rudy it's something that I've been saying for a while I needed and we've tried hiring it you know with indeed and whatnot and fine U.S person and he beat your head against the wall because it's that manual that we don't know how to put together that brain steps we struggle with and we don't know who to hire for what we think we need them for this but we realize don't need we need for this and this and we just start figuring out saying I'm tired of trying to hire somebody and that's becomes a burden for me to go I'll just pick this person because whatever reason and we just do a terrible job so having someone that we can share our thoughts and what were are what we think we'll use them for with someone with yourself and kind of drive us down that road to be able to get our solution to free up our time energy and money so that we can do other things such as marketing or whatever or they can do the marketing part and we can focus on just raising Capital buying deals raising Capital buying deals so that's a fascinating thing so um so again we're talking to Rudy here from uh Rudy Casanova and again everything you'll see in the link you can get information um Rudy before we let you go um I know you've been intending a lot of the no conferences are you going to be attending anything upcoming soon um matter of fact I will be at the imn um multi-family conference Monday and Tuesday or Sunday Monday Tuesday uh in Dallas I'm actually located in Dallas um I'll be speaking on specifically what am I speaking on I am speaking on data guided Property Management employing insights to increase employee efficiency so I'll be moderating that panel um and I will be also attending the imn uh single family retro conference in Miami uh which is the latter part of May um I will be attending the pit bull conference uh next weekend uh in Miami as well or in Key Biscayne to be exact uh so yeah I mean I there are a lot of conferences that uh that I get into and I attend um I'll be attending the uh the NBA's mortgage Banker association's chairman event uh in early June uh so um and then I have a trip actually I'll be heading out to the Philippines uh mid-april uh for a week and a half uh to see our staff in our locations and and uh visit them there so um yeah I'm always around I'm always speaking at conferences I'm always um at anything industry related and you know if anybody would care to me face to face I would I would love the opportunity I know I see Nathan out and about all the time and so I'd love to do that again we did get a nice compliment over quiche uh on LinkedIn post the fact they really appreciate bringing content on um and reusable information we appreciate that and guys we when we put all these webinars this isn't stuff that we know about this stuff we want to learn about as well so that's why we may look like we're you know interviewing for first time it's because we are right it isn't corrupt stuff so happy we're really honest in meeting Nathan and David are they're signing up seats this week I'm gonna I'm on them yeah so they now realize the value and they're gonna they're gonna jump right on board they'd be awesome very interesting stuff yeah and Nathan and I actually met um outside of this piece of the business they he met through my Consulting business and and we did some uh REO work together yeah um back in the day so yeah um I I've I've got a long and varied past in Mortgage Banking um and I've been with I've been executed with several large companies uh in title mortgage uh mortgage bankruptcy work mortgage foreclosure work uh so I've been around the industry a long time and uh my My Brain Trust is is uh not quite what it used to be but it's good you know it is still you know worth picking it at times so yeah yeah very cool and I know we're talking about uh having so many people come up to DME as well so that's awesome and I do intend to be attend your conference as well um if I'm not there then one of my people will be so yeah it'll be great awesome very interesting stuff Rudy this is uh I know we've like you say we talked about REO stuff back in the day and then uh I think it was just last year I saw you at an IMM conference and we're talking about about this about doing va's so yeah absolutely we'll definitely tune in um a little bit everyone out there to kind of check out what we're doing with this stuff I think this is where we're gonna be moving towards to help with some of the other stuff uh and we're gonna push some of you guys towards this because we know a couple you guys by name really need this service um we shouldn't let help you let go doing it myself mentality the e-myth book so so do you see Rudy do you what changes do you see um you mentioned like the origination side kind of dropped off somewhat what changes are you seeing in the U.S market based on how you're hiring in the Philippines well you know I mean right now we're we're starting to see an increase again in the um mortgage default Market yeah um they they have not seen the increase in foreclosures or loss mitigation files that they were expecting thus far but uh because of the pandemic so many of these Mortgage Banking entities uh the mortgage law firms the mortgage vendors associated with default related work um the the the the the grass cut guys the property preservation guys um all of them have they cut their staff right they cut their uh their teams in their office space and and all of that in the interest of trying to stay viable during uh the pandemic and as such now those individuals are coming to us and saying hey I'm starting to see an uptick in volume um I don't have the office space I had I don't have the staff I had can you help me so we're starting to offset some of those seats that went away from origination and title and we're starting to put them into the mortgage default space as a result uh Property Management you know as as you guys know is has been exploding now for for several years um and you know that is a trend which is continuing and so we're starting to see a lot a lot more property managers I mean you know four years ago we were at uh you know 20 of our staff was doing property management and single family rental related work um now you know like I said up to 50 of our staff is doing that work because we've seen that much of an increase in um the uh Property Management space um you know right now my my team is touching over 150 000 doors Nationwide for various property managers right and that that market is continuing to grow rents are still going up um and as you know having been a long-term mortgage default guy um as you know interest rates tick up you know the the reality of it is affordability goes down so you know the the while we still have a lot of equity in our properties right now because of the the extreme growth that we've seen in the last four or five years um people are gonna have to start deciding you know hey my property is you know was worth 500 000 a month ago now it's worth 450 am I willing to sell it for 450 but because that individual who wants to buy it can only afford 450 now they can't afford 500 so right values begin to decline and as values begin to decline we're gonna get to a place in some certain areas not all um where those values start to nominalize and the individuals who bought high now are gonna start seeing they're going to be worth less right yeah so and again if that's not going to apply to all markets but it's going to apply to some of the markets that are out there and as that occurs then then you know the rent aspect of things is gonna is gonna be huge because people can't they you know they got foreclosed on they can't take a mortgage out again they're gonna have to go to rent um and I do see a continued uptick in the rental market going forward um and I am sorry I was just uh at the bill to rent um two weeks ago in uh Nashville and the bill to rent you know there's there's a lot of of companies that are putting their money forth in that building rent market and uh you know trying to get those um on the on the books and trying to get people there because people do want to have their single-family home versus having the apartment lifestyle right so I I do see that still still coming pretty on pretty strong for us so that also would be the same kind of thing for anybody doing seller finance they can either rent it or they can sell or Finance it yeah that's correct seller finance but uh but still this story is the same it's uh they'll rise together 100 I agree with you Rudy I appreciate you coming on this Friday I guess afternoon now for you um and spend some time sharing about this VA work um again if you have any questions and Link inside the chat but also we'll put into the YouTube you can always reach out to us at uh jkp Holdings um but I appreciate reading spending at least now with us share a lot of stuff that people need to learn and be able to trust in and believe in to transform the business to grow it to the next level um this is especially for those who work in W-2 jobs who are working full-time can hire a VA to do work while you're making money other ways as you grow your business so uh I appreciate you guys having me on and inviting me thank you so much yeah you bet it's it's the I do it better Factor right I do it better I understand it better I can I can work through this better than other than anybody else can that's great and and you know what maybe that is the case however there's only so many hours in a day you can only do so much if you employ the use of a VA and on the onset you train them properly right now your bandwidth is increased and your ability to earn and or spend quality time with your family is increased right and those are the things you have to consider yes like I said I'm not gonna you know I'm not gonna sugarcoat it in the beginning you're gonna be like I don't have time to do this I don't have time to train I don't have time give me a couple days of training and I will give you all that time back tenfold right I don't make this a better operation for you I'll make you more profitable I'll make you have more time with your family [Music] [Applause] good afternoon everybody they put some jkp Holdings alongside Mr Nathan Turner how are you amen good morning to you very good thanks so it's I'm getting some spring weather I don't know if you out there in Canada but New Jersey's getting 63 degrees today I heard I'm excited I gotta get outside we're it's early spring here so it's it's below freezing in the morning overnight and then it goes above freezing during the day one of those kind of things we've had a mild winter um for the most part we haven't had more than inches snow which is amazing for us Northeastern wow um snow blowers hadn't come out we're open to look for it open to full soon uh we're getting ahead of ourselves out um but we wanted to um kind of just make sure that we are you know follow along with everything went on um we've had some internal talks about stuff yeah and make sure that this is good um what we've been doing internally has been talking a lot about these Rock loan stuff um and what has been happening with it why is it good why is it bad um and also um you know educate those that are making to make them sellable yeah so I think for most people they don't get it uh yet right and that's okay yeah but in the most part when we look at stuff like this we want to worry about making sure that we understand and we kind of get the people around us to help us understand it alongside of us and probably you know hopefully kind of teach us uh what that looks like so yeah let me make sure that I see that the Facebook feed is showing nothing I got some reports that I thought I got to make sure that we got that going on I'm sure that is happening in a second about it guys it's almost like you need yeah I need yourself assistant or something yeah I think we're gonna get around this topic rather fast uh quickly today uh given the fact that uh I'm already having some issue so I'm excited about what we're gonna be talking about today and making sure that we all kind of get the same page understand the whys of what's the house all that good stuff um in the meantime I'll plug Diversified mortgage Expo again DME June 2nd and 3rd get your tickets we've got some amazing speakers and sponsors it's I'm really excited this is going to be a good conference uh some really really good content um it's gonna be a good one yeah I highly encourage everyone to go yeah so with that said I mean what are you seeing with people coming and what are going to be going on uh who we expect to be there and what kind of people are we going to be seeing we've got so I'm just looking at my list of people that I need headshots from that's just this list oh God uh somebody from commercial notes he's going to talk to us all about commercial notes and and why commercial notes versus residential uh we've got a couple of guys here talking about seller financing how to structure them properly so that they're sellable uh we've got somebody who's kind of newer to seller financing uh and some of the things that she's going through and some of the revelations that she's had in in her journey we've got Ira company there Quest we've got Dan zatovsky talking about raising capital a guy called Brent Kessler talking about money multiplier this is a very interesting thing that he's talking about talking about making an insurance policy that you can borrow against uh very interesting stuff some note education we've got uh Nate Dodson talking about raising capital I got his cup right there crowdfunding lawyers they're going to be talking they've got all kinds of guys there oh John Hancock probably not a lot of people know this guy he's awesome yeah so what he's doing is some really fascinating stuff I mean I think people don't get things to completely with the stuff um but I think it's definitely a need um for people to understand so share a little bit about what he could be doing um and why it's important to know what he's getting up to so his panel he's not even panel he's going to do a presentation by himself the presentation is uh talking about death and taxes about the two most inevitable things in your life he's gonna tell to talk to us about how to prepare for those things and how to protect ourselves from taxes and what to do Upon Our eventual death and how to protect your assets so that it can go forward and and create a legacy for those that you're leaving behind so that's going to be a really cool one uh all about just money management what are you gonna do with all this money you're making with notes so one of the fascinating things that I think people and I think we're live against our fathers guys who were last second getting in here um the thing about DME for me and one of the major reasons going inside and running it is the fact that it's not just no investor buyers coming here and seeing the same people over and over and over again and that's the part I think people don't get is that it's not just us all hanging out which you know I kind of encourage Nathan to make sure he doesn't focus on just that right yeah I know it's a diversified mortgage Expo so we're running in all pieces all different things that you can do with notes outside of notes money management bringing in seller finance people that I don't think anybody else is doing uh just bringing everyone together I really want people to walk away from DME not just with a stack of business cards but like actual deals so come Monday you know where I'm gonna start due diligence on this asset that kind of thing so it's amazing the DME to have not just us there well we're gonna actually be doing deals in the back room kind of thought process oh yeah and and it's not this you know hedge fund talking to us investors and saying I need 10 million to do deals these would be Mom and Pops and small Originators who are riching seller finance notes who are just learning about the fact that us note buyers exist yeah so um which is very exciting for both sides yes for the notes originator is gone I can sell this and for us yeah we have a private group we talk on Wednesday and some of the people are joining us now saying you waited I've been struggling to raise capital and Banks won't refinance me and I just need to get some money out of here and we talk numbers these guys get it and they just need money to get into another deal so us coming in and funding it is amazing these are Originators rap wound creators all kinds of sectors that don't know anything about us and know worlds like this are worlds like this they know each other here we know each other but we never Bridge together and the amazingly one of the first stops of doing that of bridging this Gap and you're shaking people you've never heard of before you may have even seen them on Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever you you want to be at um very exciting stuff we've got somebody from Mortgage Bankers Association coming talking about she's the VP of research so she's going to bring in all kinds of information like latest up-to-date this is what's been happening in the market this is what we foresee coming up uh in the near future so that's that's a big deal I mean it's it's going to be a really good one really good one so check it out make sure you grab your tickets they won't last forever so yeah we'll be uh it's in June guys get down to National Check It Out take a look at the website um but I just as I I'm sure people on Facebook are probably sending messages I'm getting some messages from people we know I apologize I don't know what happened in the transition here I was working fine for a minute and then boom technology right yeah so um when we talk about these world of you know bringing new notes and as you grow your business as we'll both contest to it gets overwhelming it gets busy and I think that's a big thing that maybe people don't realize when they go and take their their weekend warrior class with some Guru is there is work involved like this is not just a it's not a get rich quick by any stretch uh there's definitely work involved in it can get to be a lot uh very quickly so you need help but when we talk about needing help it isn't just buying from new investors and talking to investors it's really about making sure that you can do the work and keep up with things so you don't fall behind right because falling behind is the worst thing in the world to do it because then if you're behind on everything you're gonna start seeing acid passing you can't make an offer off right and networking is a huge thing we have a huge space for our sector and networking is big on us however one of the another big issues is that when you're growing you don't you don't actually grow your business you grow your work so you're working on in your business not on it and I get it we're all beginners you kind of things your way because you can't really hire someone you can't do anything and then when you get large enough the problem you run into is you don't know how to hand it off yeah how would you the e-myth book and for those who know about it how do you hand it off right and we talk about this we just finished we're finishing up our 10-week course for uh the advanced note investor group so if you haven't looked at that please take a look at that on our website we'll be probably starting off in April um we'll be talking about that the first five weeks we'll be building a big calculator understanding due diligence weeding down filters but building a true non-performing calculator not performing one with a lot of accuracies that are just make it better yeah but all that to go as you grow it is extremely difficult to understand it is there's there there's a lot of stuff and stuff like it's it's and in fact for the gurus that are teaching um I don't even fault them for not being able to tell you everything because there's a ton so it's it I've heard that before before people take class and they're like oh well I didn't know about this I didn't know about that yeah I you know and in every situation is different and it's extremely difficult to try to predict and prepare for every single eventuality that being said there is a ton of stuff that's the same thing every time and you can't learn everything on a weekend guys well as you get into the thickened things and if you probably already are you're probably in the weeds and you've hired this person or that person I have and it didn't work out for one reason or another and it gets to the point where we're not good people are hiring people we're a good investing that's all we're good at right nowhere Lane so what we wanted to do um as I transitioned Meridian here is we want to talk about this idea of this VA virtual assistant right uh this this magical person that comes into your world and takes over for you and beloved so you can go on vacation and spend the time on the beach right Rudy welcome a man Rudy you're on mute still yep and Rudy's off mute how are you today so this world of virtual assistants let's back into it how did you get involved in it before we dive into details so um started over 16 years ago going on 17 years ago now so um not a new to the game per se and uh the way we started um I was um I had a Mortgage Banking consulting firm called Rainmaker Solutions uh one of my clients who worked for UBS mortgage had a small call center operation doing introductory calls for mortgages basically saying hey your mortgage with UBS you uh you need to send your payment here this is when your payments due this is your payment amount that's it right they had six people in the Philippines doing these calls he was interested in moving to the Philippines and taking this to the next level asked me to partner with him and as such um we are now an 800 person organization in the Philippines in four different locations and we have 70 onshore staff in Burlington North Carolina so um we've grown through multiple verticals um and you know that that way that we started we started with six people um six people turned into 2020 turned into 50 50 turned it into 100 and again 17 years later we're at uh 900 odd people at this point so um like I said we're not new to the game we've been in it a long time we've definitely seen the Ebbs and flows of the business um we saw the downturn of uh 0809 and 10.

uh we went from about 350 people down to 20 people overnight because of the stroke of a pin of uh the government and Fannie and Freddie saying no more offshoring uh which now Fannie and Freddie have changed their tune and they do allow offshoring for uh non-legal back office work so uh that is a big feather in our cap again um and like I said so the real estate market is very in tune with what we do and how we do it and in fact um you know most of the big banks have offices down the street from our operation uh in the Philippines um you know Chase Bank of America Wells Fargo all of those big Banks were there uh taking advantage of the offshore uh operations and the cost savings and benefit of doing such wow that's awesome and you're saying yeah we were talking before and you said roughly half of your office deals with real estate um actually in total about 70 percent of my office deals strictly with real estate-based transactions about 50 are in uh the single family rental and Property Management space along with some multi-family that we touched there as well uh we have about another 10 percent that are mortgage default related dealing with the the Foreclosure the bankruptcy the eviction processes associated with mortgages um we have about another 15 percent that are in mortgage origination about another 10 that are entitled and then we have um some other uh offshoots which is uh strictly working for accounting firms doing their uh tax-based accounting uh we also do recruiting uh working with recruitment firms and then we do some uh back office related to uh medical billing and medical placement of nurses so we do have multiple verticals but uh we were born of the real estate market and we are very in tune with the real estate market so fascinating when we say real estate market you know we're very small Niche node space in the real estate market what are traditionally they used for are they used for you know running values are they use or you know marketing social media what are they typically doing you know so we do a lot of all of what you just said so you know I find it interesting when you were talking earlier you were talking about how you don't have time to get to everything that you need to right the whole premise of a virtual assistant is to help your highly compensated individuals your brain trusts individuals do more of what's going to make you money right if you don't have to spend your time keystroking your data entry uh trying to find values trying to find comparable sales comparable listings trying to do that sort of menial work as it were your time can be spent analyzing the deal right so if you're VA if you train your VA properly and get them to give you the information that you need to then simply look at a deal and now instead of processing two deals a day you're processing 10 deals a day right so your Roi goes up dramatically as a result of employing this individual so let the va's do the work that you don't need to do right let them data stroke let them keystroke let them go through and and do the research associated with each of these um assets that you're trying to acquire so that then you can spend the time analyzing the metrics of the deal and then moving it forward to either saying yes or no that's amazing I mean you're right because the time energy and money is made up in the time energy money that you don't have to spend doing again and it's the fact that you could spend more time in your family too like oh that's huge absolutely and so I mean just think about it you know like I said if you can double triple quadruple Your Capacity to be able to work on deals on a daily basis right and not having to do that at night anymore right and so now you're getting back to the quality time with your family you're getting back again a better Roi and for the cost of a VA versus your own personal time you know you're gonna make that money tenfold because again you're you're spending your time making deals happen versus trying to figure out if the deal is viable or not right so any of that back office function and you know I can get granular but I don't I don't think you really need to in this sense because you know yeah okay hey one two three anywhere Street I need to know what the comparable sales what comparable listings are on the area and let me know what the true value of that is these guys are filling in forms right it's not rocket science everybody has their own little bit of Secret Sauce as it were to how they determine whether or not the deal is viable for them but the work going up to that point is all the same give me value let me know property condition reach out to individuals that are going to get me that and information so that I don't have to spend the time doing that I don't need to spend the time on the phone I don't need to spend the time you know again keystroking let me go ahead and make decisions as to whether or not that deal is going to be profitable for me or not and that's where you're going to gain your biggest Advantage related to having a VA and having them help you not to mention you know there's other aspects of your business if you want to start something else you know you want to go down another business line that VA is going to free up your time to be able to do that and again you know the cost of a VA is is minuscule in comparison to what you're going to gain in earnings as a result of their assistance so if there's a new task a VA has to learn is there a good process or way or how do you advise clients say well I need them to do something a little bit different than they've done before what is the best strategy at hand on that so here you know I I mean I can tell you about how you know how we kind of structure it and there there is going to be some some time suck if you will in the beginning right or in the beginning we're going to create a training manual and that training manual you're gonna have to give us your intellectual knowledge to be able to to let them know steps one through a hundred on what they need to process on a daily basis but then our training team is going to take your information create the manual for you because I'm quite certain you probably don't have that it just all resides in your head today right yeah they're going to create that training manual and as you continue to grow and and those opportunities continue to gain you need to get another VA or you want to hire somebody you know Stateside again to be able to help process and help you workflow that process manual that is your intellectual property now is going to help you get to that next level because now you can sit somebody down and say okay here's steps one to a hundred this is the way we do it and this is how we're going to this is what I want you to do on a daily basis the you know the day or two of time that it's going to take you to create that manual and again you're not the one creating it my staff is creating it for you right then they're going to have you you're going to send it back to you and say hey is this your process as you understand it Dave steps one through a hundred and you're going to say absolutely this is what we do and then you know in a month you say Hey you know we had an industry change or we had a market change and steps 50 through 75 are going to change but here's the here's the addendum to that then our team goes through and they train so if you want to add a staff member then they'll be able to train to it now you're not having to spend your time training are people trained so to train the trainer concept right so once you impart your intellectual knowledge to us and again there's a little bit of a you know a pain point in the first day or two of doing it but once you've done it then they know what you expect and what you need on a day-to-day basis and now they're Off to the Races right um you know in the Philippines you know being a VA is a coveted job you know these these kids go to school two bvas and they go to school in the interest of you know I think 85 percent of our staff is two to four year college educated the remaining 15 percent has years of experience in the VA business so that they are again you know this is something that it's it's a position that they want to have it's a position that they want to grow with and in a company like ours there's vertical movement right there's the opportunity to go to a team lead and a supervisor and a manager and a director because of our size right so now we've created an upward path of Mobility for those individuals so they want to stay with us the other part is if are people if if they're out they call in sick or they you know decide that they found another opportunity well we have a bench step that we're cross-training right and that binge staff is now going to take on your work because when you contract with a VA you're not only Contracting for that that one VA or that FTE that full-time equivalency but you're also trying to whatever workflow that they can process in a day if we agree that they can do 10 widgets a day whatever those processes are then every day those 10 widgets will be done if this happens in your operation today that work doesn't get done or if you're if you have another individual you're paying them overtime to get that done right so again now you've you've alleviated those costs because those costs won't be borne by you they're born by us right and the work is being done and allowing you and your team to do other things and become more profitable so we're Rudy here talk Casanova I'm talking about va's jumping in here talking about these to help your business along um I've worked with MBA workers and coders right it's in the little higher level people and what I want to make sure people understand is that when I first got into I felt bad hiring these people heard such you know low-paid things they do a lot and when I finally got one asked I work with it for about eight six eight months and he says what do you guys like should I be feeling bad and he says can I be honest with you I said sure he goes some of the people here are making five bucks a day so when I'm like whoa like the low rate people are making almost nothing so making five bucks an hour to the lower wage person is astronomical so is from what your experience is is that the reason that this job is so coveted because of fact it is a higher paying job than they would traditionally get in their country it's a higher paying job it's an office job it is a job and you know there there are there are two different types of va's right there's one there's work from home va's and then there's work from an office VA and depending on the complexity of the nature of your business and what you do there's advantages to either right um one of the advantages of being in an office is you have at least in our operations right you have redundancy of of power so you have backup generators you have um in our office we have we're ISO 27001 2013 data certified so it's international data standard um and so our people are walking in and they're putting all of their personal belongings into a locker room they're biometrically scanning into the office all of their data ports are locked down all of their ports of entry from an internet perspective are locked down except for whatever the portal of entry is for your processing so whether it's a Citrix connection VPN connection web-based portal access connection our folks are are relegated to doing your work so they're not surfing Facebook like the U.S based employees today they're not on Twitter they're not you know they're not on those things except during their breaks right so the level and quality of work is raised right and so there's a lot of advantage to doing that when they're work from home uh you know we employ the use of a of a software that monitors keystrokes that monitors movement that monitors all of these things to ensure that the workflow that they're contracted for is being done on a daily basis not to mention the fact that all of our clients get a daily work report that says hey today you sent 10 widgets and Rudy did all 10 widgets today you sent 12 widgets and Rudy did all 12 and and now you have a daily tracking mechanism for how much work is being sent how much work is being done and it helps you understand then whether or not you need to send more work or potentially hire another individual because you're sending too much work right so there's there's a lot of ways to to do um to enhance what you do there and again you know back to what you said originally you know I encourage people look at you know Global strategics uh Facebook pages right we have our team that is um they have dance teams and they have dance offs and they have um parties and events and we have uh an employee activity committee where we're doing you know annual parties and events since doing things to help help our staff um maintain continuity in what they do but also make sure it's a fun environment and it's an environment that they want to stay at um during the pandemic uh the onset of the pandemic we actually housed 60 people in our office for 90 days oh we have showers we have events that they were able to stay working right we were able to deliver to our clients the workflow that they needed to be done because everything was shut down here right yeah we had we took my fives we took um computers and delivered them before the the entire country shut down so that work could continue and these people were great and they were ecstatic because they were being paid when no one else was they were getting work done when no one else was um so yeah this is a it's like I said before it's a coveted job it gives them the opportunity for advancement in their society and that's huge for the common person like we are what is the biggest struggle for them to make this from doing it themselves working in their business and on the business same time to hiring a VA what is typically the biggest struggle and how do you guys help with it's it's the I do it better Factor right I do it better I understand it better I can I can work through this better than other than anybody else can that's great and and you know what maybe that is the case however there's only so many hours in a day you can only do so much if you employ the use of a VA and on the onset you train them properly right now your bandwidth is increased and your ability to earn and or spend quality time with your family is increased right and those are the things you have to consider yes like I said I'm not gonna you know I'm not gonna sugarcoat it in the beginning you're going to be like I don't have time to do this I don't have time to train I don't have time give me a couple days of training and I will give you all that time back tenfold right I'll make this a better operation for you I'll make you more profitable I'll make you have more time with your family all things that are very important to me in my life for sure so then can is it always uh like when you're hiring somebody is it paid by the hour or can you also off to do it by project so you can opt to do it by project um I try and shy away from that a little bit more now we we have plenty of people who do so don't get me wrong but the reason why is I like creating subject matter experts and I think when you hire people internally in your office you want to have people who are knowledgeable in what you do and understand your process and buy into your process by hiring a full-time individual that gives them the opportunity to begin to learn and grow with your business and as the....