Podcast: Scaling Your Real Estate Business

As a real estate professional, there are several things you can do to successfully scale your business. On today’s podcast with Daniel Ramsey of MyOutDesk, we discuss the specific activities to focus on when growth is the goal. Daniel also provides examples of how his highly trained virtual assistants have helped top teams boost sales while drastically cutting costs and explains how they can help you raise your bottom line. Don’t miss it!

Listen to today’s show and learn:

Dan’s real estate career [5:09]
The moment that sparked Dan’s interest in virtual assistants [12:27]
The value in virtual assistants [15:31]
Ways virtual assistants help agents do more for less [16:42]
How MyOutDesk changes lives via charity work [20:51]
The opportunity to start a new business [26:40]
Dan’s book, Scaling Your Business [29:20]
Dan’s top tips for scaling your business [30:30]
How to ensure success with business scaling [34:07]
Why MyOutDesk virtual assistants are so skilled [35:20]
How to get Dan’s book for free [41:45
How to break through your goals.
Plus so much more.

Daniel Ramsey

After several years working in the Real Estate industry, Daniel realized that realtors spend too much time doing tasks that are necessary but highly administrative, routine, and time consuming. Working overtime becomes necessary in order to finish all these tasks and keep in touch with clients and generate new business.

In 2008, MyOutDesk was founded with a vision to provide realtors with indispensable leverage through our Real Estate Virtual Professionals to aid them in regaining time and freedom, have the ability to grow their business, all while reducing costs.

From the beginning, Daniel and his team’s mission was to set the standard in real estate outsourcing. In an industry that is typically project oriented and without ongoing support, they believe your Virtual Assistant will become a vital and invaluable part of your real estate team. They believe their process makes it easy and desirable for anyone to outsource prospecting, marketing, and administrative needs. Daniel’s goal is not just to provide great service but make it affordable for everyone.

Daniel’s team provide services to help you in three major areas of your business. Marketing, Administrative and Prospecting. Their Real Estate Virtual assistants are put through a stringent screening process and a high skills training regimen thus ensuring that they will be able to be an asset to you and your business.

Real Estate Virtual Assistants have become an increasingly popular choice for many realtors, as they can do anything that doesn’t physically require them to be in your office, since much of the tasks that need to be handled by a realtor can be done virtually, reducing costs of office space and everything else that comes with an in-house staff makes a Real Estate virtual assistant a great choice.. MyOutDesk has become the premier real estate Virtual Assistant company realtors trust to help them with their outsourcing needs.

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Read the Full Interview

Aaron: Hello, Real Estate Rockstars. This is Aaron Amuchastegui, back and getting you to chat with my good friend today, Daniel Ramsey. Daniel is a friend of mine that I met through GoBundance. We have actually traveled the world together. We’ve been to Dubai, Africa, Japan. Our families get to hang out. We mastermind a lot. We get to share business ideas back and forth, and he is the founder of MyOutDesk. He just released a new book about growing and scaling through virtual professionals. You guys have probably heard us talk about MyOutDesk so much on here. Last week when I was talking to Dan, I was thinking, “What a great time to actually bring him on an interview.”

You hear about his real estate tips, what he did as a real estate agent, and really what MyOutDesk does. Why would someone want a virtual professional to help them out and what that really means? Virtual professional people are sitting out like crazy. Today we’re going to dig into all of that. We’re going to learn so much, Dan. Hey, how’s it going, buddy?

Daniel: Good, man. Thanks for having me today.

Aaron: I’m so glad to have you on here. Let’s just start by going back to so it’s Real Estate Rockstars. Most of our listeners are real estate agents or probably new real estate agents. You were a real estate agent. What was that process like for you? What was your real estate career?

Daniel: It was cool. What happened is I was 23. I was working for an investment banking company. It was called Barclays Global Investors and they’re one of the largest pension fund investment houses. I went to school and got a finance degree, and I was working and I hated it. I just hated it. I was behind a desk in a cubicle with really annoying bosses who didn’t love me. I bought my first house because that’s what you do. You go to college, you buy a house. The RE/MAX agent and if you’re on here, nothing about RE/MAX. We love our RE/MAX people. In fact, Aaron, you and I have a mutual friend who’s a great RE/MAX agent. He called me up one day, and he said, “Hey, what’s your home address?”

I’m like, “Well, why do you need my home address?” He goes, “Well, because I’m going to mail you your keys. You can’t use them until I tell you, but I’m just going to send them to you.” This broker who made $7,000 selling me my first home, literally mailed me keys. No celebration, no congratulations, Daniel. He just sent him through the mail. Then, I’m sitting at the closing table, and I’m looking at the mortgage person and looking at the agent and together they made $12,000. Here I was, I had a finance degree working for a huge company and it took me four months to make that same amount of money.

Both of them spent five hours with me at best. I’m thinking, “Man, they’re making thousands of dollars an hour, I want some of that action.” Literally, that’s how my real estate career started. I bought my first house and thought I can do that for a couple of thousand bucks an hour.

Aaron: I think that’s why so many people first get into real estate. They go, “Hey, I like the idea that money.” They’ve seen a transaction, they’ve heard it, they hear about how the commission’s work and they go, “Hey, I can do that.” Hopefully, they’re people that go, “Hey, I have a great personality. I like helping people, the service.” That’s so much the big draw to real estate is being to be your own boss, manage your own commissions and make money. After you got your license, what was that like? Were you your own boss and you started making a ton of money selling houses?

Daniel: Well, that’s the funny thing is, I got a quick education about how difficult real estate is. I love this story because so I went to immediately in California, back then, if you had a business degree and you had certain classes, you could actually just get a broker’s license. I went ahead and took the classes, got a broker’s license, opened my first office. Back then we didn’t have virtual offices. That just wasn’t a thing. It was early 2000s. I opened an office, set up. I became a mortgage person. I got a contractor’s license, and I did some development stuff. Early in my career, and what we’re going to talk about today is really scaling your business.

That’s the thing that I’ve learned over the last 20 years being in the real estate game. Early on, this is how naive I was. I’m going to help one person a month. That’s what I thought, Aaron. I was just going to help one person a month, buy or sell a house and that was going to be plenty of money. I was like, “I’m going to make six figures. I’m going to have a great life. I’m not going to work too hard. I’m going to be my own boss.” That was my whole world. Then, September came, and it was my first year in real estate. September came and I had a deal blow up. No-fault of the seller. No-fault of the buyer. It just blew up.

Then October came, another deal blew up. Another deal blew up. All of a sudden, I’m sitting here my one house a month conversation that I had with myself, I was like, “Well, crap, I got to have five a month.” That was what sparked my original journey for scaling real estate practice.

Aaron: You got to have that backup plan. It was the same when I was investing, it was like, we always managed like, “Oh, we’ve got this one ready to close next month, and this one ready to close next month.” My worst year, in 2013, when I really lost everything, we had three houses scheduled to close next month. Then one got postponed and then another got postponed. All of a sudden– People talk about it too, with real estate as you try to start from being in the rat race and just getting widgets and daily income on how you make that safer, and how you’re not reliant on that deal and how you make sure that you’re growing into a place where it’s

a more secure lifestyle.

Daniel: What’s crazy about that is you just don’t know when you’re new. You just don’t understand that a deal could blow up, or it could get postponed or revenue– I guess, I really thought that if I worked hard and I knew enough people I would be okay. That just isn’t the truth about business.

Aaron: If you’re new at real estate, don’t count that money before it closes. You start to go, “I’ve got this one in escrow, this one in escrow, this one in escrow. I’m going to do so great next month.” Make sure you take it all the way through and then make sure you’re ready for that month after. How did you get your first virtual professional? What is a virtual professional? What does that do?

Daniel: We’re going to continue on the journey. After I had those three deals blow up, I realized that I had to hustle. I needed to have five deals in contract or in the works every single month. That was my goal in the beginning. It was how do I get five? What that forced me to do was really hire people. I had to hire assistants. I had to hire somebody to do the paperwork. I had to hire someone to do my website, get my CRM all set up. I couldn’t get to a point where we were doing five transactions if I was doing all that. The funniest thing is one day the landlord of our office came by and wanted to talk about the cleaner, and I looked down at my calendar and my day was full.

That person came by and I ended up talking to her for an hour and a half. Afterwards, I was like, “Oh, my God. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t waste an hour and a half of my most valuable time.” It just simply came down to I needed help, I wanted to grow and scale. I knew what the most important thing was which was getting clients and talking to people and hiring people, and figuring out how to spend my money, but I needed help. The story, it’s not revolutionary. I’m on my honeymoon. I’m in Guatemala.

We’re at this Francis Ford Copolla spot. I’m at a bar working at 1:00 in the morning. If you’re in real estate, this is the reality. Vacations are funky, anniversaries, birthday parties, there’s just not a lot of time.

Aaron: You’ve got to take the call. It’s like, “I don’t know. If I miss this call, I miss the deal.” When my wife and I were looking at houses yesterday to buy a new home, and one of the houses that we were hoping to show wasn’t available yesterday. Now, that house is off the list. They’re like, “No, you can come back Monday.” All right, boom, that one is off the list. It’s little things like that, you miss one day, you miss a million-dollar deal.

Daniel: I’m on my honeymoon. I’m in this rainforest with monkeys all around, I’m working at the bar, and there’s this Hispanic guy and he starts making fun of me in Spanish. He’s literally making fun of me because he’s seen us, my wife and I, she’s hot, and we’re on our honeymoon, everybody knows we just got married, and I’m sitting there working at 1:00 in the morning while she’s in the bungalow sleeping. He’s like, “Dumb gringo. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. Why can’t he relax on his honeymoon of all time?” I’m sitting there thinking, “Oh, my God. He’s right.” It was at that moment that I knew that I had to shift exactly how my business was run.

We started putting processes and systems in, and we really started focusing on the things that mattered at that time. That was what started my hunt for virtual talent. The wildness is the world is really big now. We’re on a Zoom call, right? You’re in Texas, I’m in California and it makes almost zero difference. The one thing you and I can’t shake a hand or give a hug, but we can have a great conversation. That epiphany happened for me back in the early 2000s and we started hiring virtual assistants. The reality is I couldn’t get my agents to call leads. We’d pay for these leads and they wouldn’t call the leads.

We had some transaction coordinators in-house, one of the challenges we had three different offices. One in San Jose actually, one in Sacramento, and then one in Northern California in a little town called Redding. I needed to centralize our operations. I needed more support staff in Sacramento so that my agents in these other offices didn’t have to do any of the paperwork because no salesperson wants to do paperwork or wants to do the boring stuff. They want to meet people and get in front of people and have fun. We started hiring virtual assistants to fill the operational and marketing and administrative roles within a real estate practice.

Aaron: Now, how many people are part of MOD in the Philippines? How many employees do you guys have in the Philippines?

Daniel: We’re at 1,250 right now. We have 1,250 folks in some administrative or operational role for the top 100 to the top 500 teams across the country. Why I say the top 100 if you look at the top 100, more than half of those folks are our clients. Everybody that’s been on the Real Estate Rockstars Podcasts and video stuff, everybody that partners and have been in the game for a long time, they are our clients in one way or another.

Aaron: Listen to that. If it’s a top 100 real estate company in the US, they hire MOD. They hire MyOutDesk. They use virtual assistants. They’ve found that they can get there. The biggest value of virtual assistants is you get the same caliber quality at a fraction of the cost, right?

Daniel: It’s always a cost thing. It’s always a cost thing. It was for me. When I was a real estate guy, I could hire– I had an in-house operation person, her name was Sarah, she was amazing. Bright, licensed, she grew up in the business, her dad was a broker. She was the person that held the office together. She was supported by a team of virtual assistants. It was because, honestly, it was a 60% to 70% savings compared to hiring five Sarahs which is what we needed.

Aaron: Saving $1,000 a month when you’re a new agent is huge. Saving $2,000 a month when you’re a new agent is huge. That’s the thing that I’ve heard from so many agents when they get started. They love getting the contract done, they love getting the offer. They love showing a house to their client, going, “Now we’re going to make this.” Then actually dotting the eyes and crossing the tees and making sure that the addendum gets written up, they love having a phone call to negotiate the request for repairs, but actually, them typing it up and all that those are the things your virtual assistants do.

Daniel: As a company, in my real estate business, we created a bunch of systems and processes that allowed virtual assistants to really help real estate people. I’ll give you an example. That’s a perfect example. We would have conversations, we wouldn’t have conversations over a cellphone, we’d do a Zoom call or Skype call and the assistant would join so the agent could negotiate, but the assistant could actually do the paperwork. Or it was recorded and you could just forward it on to the virtual assistant.

Little things like that is a shift for a real estate agent where you record your negotiations, you record your interactions so that your assistant can come behind you and do all the paperwork that’s required, and you don’t have to repeat yourself. Those are small little tips or tricks that we use so that it feels right to have somebody in the Philippines or anywhere in the world really working for you.

Aaron: Before we jump into more details on that, I just want to brag about you for a second or force you to brag about yourself for a second.

Daniel: Oh, no.

Aaron: What does MyOutDesk do to get back in the Philippines? I have seen the videos and the things and even you inviting me to go out there with you. Tell me a little bit about what you’re doing to change lives in the Philippines, not just your employees because they are now having these great careers and this advancement but what else? How are you changing the world?

Daniel: Well, the first thing is, we set up our model. In the real estate world, there’s a model that prevails. If you’re an agent and you work for a brokerage you get a certain split, and then if you have employees that work underneath you, they might get another split, and you’re getting a little piece. Our model is purposefully set up that we play a lot of money to our virtual assistants. The vast majority that we collect from our clients goes directly to them in health care benefits, vacation time because when you get the best people on your team, you can grow on scale. Turnover is the enemy of scaling a business, and most entrepreneurs know that once they’ve had a couple of people leave them.

Every entrepreneur in the world has had a couple of people leave them, and once they do, you realize how important it is to find the best people and then keep them a long time. Our charity movement is all about finding the right people, paying them well, giving their families, their people health benefits, vacation time, treating them well, but at the same time finding opportunities for them to give back and do charity. Two years ago, we built an orphanage for 50 kids which was a huge thing for us. I really love that project.

In 2019, we built an old folk’s home for 60 folks. We took people who were literally sleeping outside and moved them to a real shelter with showers, bathroom, and kitchen, and beds that they can sleep not outside. That was a big deal. We also got to build a house in Guatemala. We sent 100 kids in Texas, low-income kids to a business camp basically helping them learn what it’s like to be an entrepreneur. We just did a whole bunch of stuff to give back and the way we involve our clients.

This is what’s crazy, our clients contribute money because that’s what they can do, our people contribute their love, time, and energy, and then us, MyOutDesk, the company we manage it so 100% of the donations go to actually creating impact. It’s our impact charity model which’s a big deal. When you think about most charities, about 50% of the money actually goes to somebody and nobody really measures if it was good stuff, right? For us, it’s all about how many lives did we impact, how many dollars did we put into the community and how long will that actually last.

We focus on long-term effects in our charitable contributions and our people get involved. I don’t know if you’ve paid attention, we just had an earthquake happen, actually a volcano [crosstalk]-

Aaron: Yes, there’s ashfall now.

Daniel: A volcano erupted near Manila which’s the main city and it’s about 45 minutes away. What’s crazy we’ve had some of our– We have two companies get-togethers, in fact, this week I’m flying to the Philippines and doing our year kick-off party. One of the resorts we’ve had this kick-off party is right there where the volcano erupted. We’ve got a significant amount of people in the metro Manila area, about 50% of our folks are in that area and they’re affected and so we’re reaching out, we’re organizing.

Right now, actually, we’re organizing water and then shelter, food, and who can’t work and who can work, who needs to get relocated to another area. We’re right now in major, I don’t know, I guess crisis mode through our charity.

Aaron: That sort of stuff is so inspirational. I think when agents are getting started and thinking about growing and people are going what next? Some of the most fun I have had in life after reaching success is the experience of things and bringing my kids to go experience stuff like that and also, it’s to give back. How can you actually do something where my hard work today which’s what I can give really well can help out other people that need different things. I think all the stuff you do is awesome.

I think people should find you on Facebook and on social media and see some of those videos and some of the stuff that you guys do. Starting an orphanage, starting an old folk’s home, that stuff is fantastic and it’s always something that gets to light us up.

Daniel: You know what else I would point out is too, there’s a business case for this, and our clients the folks that come to us and actually hire virtual professionals from us, they can utilize our charitable work inside their value proposition. Right now, 2 million licensees you’re going for a listing appointment, what differentiates you from the last three people that came into the room? Your sales skills obviously matter, everybody focuses there but to be frank, you need to be different.

This is another avenue to add into your value proposition is that you support international charitable foundations. This is something that a lot of our clients are actually using in their presentation that, “Hey, we’re part of this charity, this is some of the work that we do,” and it’s a big deal.

Aaron: That’s multiple benefits. You’re not just changing the world but you’re giving the opportunity for your clients to change the world and your employees to change the world. Let’s jump back to scaling our business. You hired your first virtual assistant, how did you turn that into a business, and then I want you to tell me about your book?

Daniel: It was accidental. Here’s the cool thing. Any time you solve a business need, you have an opportunity to build a business.

Aaron: That’s huge, that right there is huge. You solve a business need, you can build a business off of that if you want to.

Daniel: Well, that’s a thing, as a real estate person, you’re solving a need for sure but there’s two million of us, right? I’m a still broker, I still carry a license, I just closed on a deal couple of weeks ago. I still love hunting for property, buying property, helping others find stuff. I can’t help it, it’s in my DNA, right? There’s a lot of us out there and so as an agent, if you solve a problem for somebody, there’s an opportunity to build a business. I solved my own talent needs and then a friend of mine said, “Hey, can you get me five?” I was like, “You want five?” At that time, I had two and he’s like, “Get me five.”

He was the biggest broker in San Diego, he’s doing thousands of transactions and he’s like, “Yes, I want to transform my office into this blended model that you shared with me.” I was like, “Woah, five, okay.” That’s really hard, that’s what I told myself, “Look, hey man, this is really hard to do to find great people it’s hard, so I have to charge you if you want me to do that.” He’s like, “Yes, just take care of the paper, take care of the NAD stuff. I want you to operate in the Philippines legally, I don’t want to get into trouble.” I was like, “Okay.”

We actually flew over there, set up an entity, started a recruitment forum. He ended up hiring 17 of our people. He whacked $100,000 every two weeks off of his payroll. He repurposed a bunch of his internal staff to be more sales focused and more referral-based, and really to help them drive revenue, and then we took away all the paperwork from them and all the marketing tasks and all the initial phone class. Literally, we whacked $ 100,000 off his payroll every two weeks. That’s how the business was built.

Aaron: I’d love to have you on again just to talk about what’s like when you land in the Philippines and you’re like, “Okay, I’ve got this idea now how am I going to hire more people into that?” I want to talk about the stuff where people just scale now. What’s your book called?

Daniel: Well, it’s called Scaling Your Business with MOD Virtual Professionals. What happened is I kept having to repeat myself over and over. Every time a new client who’s never hired a virtual assistant wants to do that, what they’re creating is what we call a blended model where their sales staff is here in the US hustling, they have the relationships, they’re building revenue, and everything else is done virtually. Most businesses out there require some setup.

They require some forethought about how are you going to train them, what systems you need to have success? What’s the difference between having somebody in your office and not in your office? What do you need to do differently? I kept having to tell people the same things and I was like, “Why don’t I put this in a book and give it to our clients so that they can win and have something to reference what it’s like to scale with virtual assistance?” That’s what we did.

Aaron: If you had your top two or three tops to scale and it could be about virtual assistance or it could be just as people are looking to scale

their business, what are three things they absolutely need to know?

Daniel: Well, the worst thing is, and I don’t know about you, but my calendar is so blocked every single day, dollar productive stuff happens. Typically, it’s more than half of my day. Even as a CEO operator, I’m either talking to a client, I’m trying to hire somebody, or I’m figuring out how to spend our money. Those are the three things that you should be doing as a CEO, as an entrepreneur. The challenge is, when we’re newer, we think we should do everything. We also have this control freak thing going on.

I say this with all love out there, everybody who’s listening, I love you, man but you need to give up the rock. Hand it off. They’re like, “Well, they just won’t do it like I want it done.” You can put a system and a process together. It can be done right. Those are the things that really matter. I’m hyper-focused on dollar productive activities to a fault, to a tee, schedule, organize, get that figured out, and then put systems and processes in place, so that other people can do it just like you. The challenge with that Aaron, as you know, is we don’t love that stuff.

I don’t love to put a system together, but it doesn’t have to be hard work. In the book, we talk about how to build a system and a process. You and I talked about this a bazillion times. We literally will record a video, put together a Google Doc with step by steps, hand it off to somebody to actually do it, and record a video doing it talking about the how, what and why. Then we’ll compile that into basically an SOP, a standard operating procedure. Once you do that hard work, then you get a couple of repetitions, do it 5 or 10 times, and then go back and review and edit and make it bulletproof.

You’ve just built a system and process. To be frank, that’s what it is to be an entrepreneur is helping others win in your business, and do it just like you do so you can grow and scale.

Aaron: That’s the ultimate hack when you’re really trying to scale. When you first get assistance, whether it’s virtual assistants or a new person in your office, or whatever, as you’re trying to train people, we became successful entrepreneurs because we did it ourselves. I have to remind myself, so I use Screencast-O-Matic but there’s a lot of stuff out there. I use that two or three times a day. Anytime I get to where I’m going to do a task more than once like, “Oh, I need to update insurance on these three properties.”

I always make sure I’m going to use the recorder. I’m going to record it one time. I’m going to talk through why I’m doing it and then I’m going to send it to somebody else. It really only takes you maybe twice as long to do it the first time to record that video. That’s the ultimate hack as you first start to scale and grow. It’s like record it and send it to somebody. Record it and send it. If there’s a task you’re not going to do the rest of your life the next time you do it, record it.

Record the video of it, because then there’s a chance that that will be the last time you do it. If you record the video properly, it could be the last time you get to do that task. Then being able to take it a step further, especially bigger businesses take that into a standard operating procedure or a formal document. Then you guys are able to use that to help lots of different businesses because a transaction coordinator for this company is going to work a lot like a transaction coordinator of this company.

Now, what training do your modsters go through before they get to be a virtual assistant? What sort of classes or coursework things like that?

Daniel: Well, there’s two things I want to point out, first, I want to go back to the SOP real quick, because in real estate, we all know the term compound interest where you add money, and it doubles over seven years and at a particular interest rate. There’s a big deal with compounding interest. That’s how you grow wealthy. In business and entrepreneurship, what we just talked about was compound leverage, meaning if you give away all the things that just don’t drive revenue, and then you focus on driving revenue, hiring the right people, and spending your money wisely. If you do those things, then you can’t help but scale.

I just want to reiterate this, because if I could go back 15, 20 years into my younger self, and somebody told me this, it would have changed everything. We’ve reached twice the size we are today if I’d gone back 15 years and just started by doing this system and process stuff. What was your– I just can’t help myself because it’s such an important point.

Aaron: What’s next with MOD. I guess the question was, what training do they go through?

Daniel: When we first started, we tried to build a lot of people. My address we’ve been around 13 years. This is our 13th year.

Aaron: Awesome.

Daniel: It’s crazy. It completely blows my mind. In two years, we’re going to be 15 years old, which is a huge thing. Most businesses don’t last past five years. Most fail within the first 5 and to be 13 is super exciting for me personally. In the beginning, we tried to build people, and we tried to train them and educate them and we still do a lot of that. We have SMEs, subject matter experts. We have people who have been transaction coordinators. People who’ve been prospectors.

What we’ve shifted in the last couple of years, probably three or four is that if you’re calling right now, and you call us and you need a virtual assistant to help you prospect, we’re not going to go out and try to build a prospector. We’re going to go out and try to find a prospector, who was prospecting successfully for a long time for another US-based customer or a client. We’re simply going to move them in front of you and say, “Hey, interview this person.” Or if you need a transaction coordinator, we’re going to find somebody who’s a project management type who can get deadlines, who’s organized.

We’re going to take that person who was a project manager, maybe for someone else, and we’re going to bring him in and say, “Okay, now you’re a transaction coordinator,” which is a very similar or like task. Same thing with marketing. We hire people who’ve done it before and then we give them the real estate understanding. We spend two weeks prepping them for clients and understanding of what the industry is like, and who are all the players in the game. The on-the-job piece, when they’re in your office, that’s when all the magic happens.

We do have 200 training videos. We have a MOD university where we go over how to do a particular task inside of a particular system. We have SMEs. We have folks that are there to help them get up to speed. The reality is we heavily, heavily, heavily rely on our clients to do that first 30, 60, 90 days of training, so that they can get up to speed. What we’ve found is entrepreneurs who are focused, who know the long-term vision of having somebody do all their paperwork, or take all their non-dollar productive tasks away, those are the people we want to be in business.

Aaron: That makes a lot of sense. 5, 10 years ago, you had to train and hire people in the Philippines to do US-based business. Now there’s tons of them. I have a lot of employees in the Philippines. I have graphic designers. I have accountants. I have transaction co-or– I have a lot of people in the Philippines that work for me. It’s been really great because it’s because they’re also highly educated. My accountant has a master’s degree in accounting. He’s a CPA, and he gets to do all my stuff for half the cost of a regular bookkeeper.

Daniel: Maybe a third. If you’re thinking about getting a CPA, you’re going to spend $100,000 for a licensed CPA to work directly for your business. Sometimes it’s a third of the cost.

Aaron: It’s a great savings and great value. One of the other things I think is cool about overseas is you can either have somebody work your hours because there’s a time zone difference. They can work at night at their time, which is your time. They can work at the same time you work with your employees and your teams. That’s really cool for real estate and things like that. My graphic designers and my software engineers, I have them work my nights their day, so we can send them projects at the end of our day.

At five o’clock Pacific Time, I can say, “Hey, here’s what I want to get done,” and we go to sleep. When we wake up, it’s done. We get it. They’re working at our night. Now we have like this 24-hour Work cycle, which that’s pretty cool about. That’s just like an added random benefit of that.

Daniel: We have a lot of clients, and this is another example. We have a lot of clients who want seven day a week coverage on their website or on their phones. They’ll hire three or four of our people to rotate them through so they have coverage 7:00 AM to 7:00 PM, seven days a week. When the lead comes in the door, somebody’s picking up the phone and saying, “Hi, this is Daniel. Hey, Aaron, how are you doing?” That’s a really big deal, because I’ll give you a great example. We had an air conditioning go out over the summer. We called four companies. Zero people called us within 24 hours.

Within 48 hours, one of the four companies actually called us back and my wife is like, “Do they want business?” We’re sweating here. We’re in California. We need this thing to work. There’s just so much value to having a blended office, where you’re focused on driving revenue, and we’re focused on everything else. It’s time, freedom. It’s compound leverage. These are the things that

help you drive and scale a business.

Aaron: That’s one of the things we talked about at the beginning, right? If you miss the phone call, if you say, “No, sorry, you can’t come see the house today,” they miss out on the $50,000 commission. Having this team helps you not miss the phone call, to be the first one to call to get there. We’ve only got a couple more minutes of your time. I really just wanted to be able to get you on here to talk about stuff. Do you have any last things you really want to have everybody learn about what you do, about what they should look for?

Also, give them the phone number they can text you right away to learn more if they’re thinking, “Hey, I’d like to know what it costs to get one?” Or “I’m small. Do I need one?” What the last things you want to say and how can people find us?

Daniel: The thing is one of the things we do if you’re listening right now is, we do a consultation where we actually drive who’s on your org chart, how many leads do you generate, what are your systems, what’s happening right now in your business? Then we try to get a future of how would we double it. In real estate, this is a very, very common practice. Most of our clients report that they’re really rapidly growing. Our conversations are always focused on where are you at right now and then how could be double?

If we can double, then there’s opportunity together. I guess my first thing is definitely grab a copy of the book. We’re going to give away a copy of the book for free. I’m holding it up. If you’re listening on the podcast right now, I’m holding it up on video. We’re going to give it away 100% for free. You can find it on Amazon if you wanted to. Pat Hiban, and I, we’ve been buds for, gosh, since my real estate career started. A funny story about Pat, we’re at a conference together and he’s like, “Hey Daniel, you want to have breakfast?”

I’m like, “Yes, absolutely.” He goes, “How does 6 AM sound?” I was like, “6 AM? We’re in DC.” At that time, we were in DC, so 6 AM DC is like 3 AM my time. He’s from the east coast and I’m from the west coast. I’m like, “Hey Pat, you really want me to wake up at 3 AM?” He’s like, “Yes.” I said, “How about seven o’clock? Let me get to 4 AM.” We met a long, long time ago. I’ve always really respected what he’s done. This podcast is amazing because it helps so many people with new concepts like virtual professionals, like scaling your business.

If you’re listening right now, we can give you a text code. You just text Hiban, H-I-B-A-N, to 3-1-9-9-6 and you’ll get a free copy of the book. You can request a consultation in there where we’ll go over your plan to double. I put 13 years of my heart, blood, soul into this dang book. It took two years to write, which is funny because it’s only a couple of hundred pages. It’s really a small book that is rapid-fire read, so you can get through it in an afternoon. Most of my friends tell me it took them a couple of hours to plow through it.

You know what’s crazy? What’s crazy is we’re number four in Japan with this book. I don’t even know how it happened, but if you’re listening from Japan, thank you for downloading our book. I don’t know why you did it, but we’re number four in Japan right now.

Aaron: That’s awesome. I’d love to be able to see sample chapters as you’re writing it, and you would text over some of the stuff and getting to see what’s there. I love that rapid-fire. Two hours you can learn a bunch from it. Again, let’s say it twice because there’s going to be people driving in their car writing this down. It’s text Hiban. Text H-I-B-A-N. What’s the number we’re texting to?

Daniel: It’s 3-1-9-9-6.

Aaron: 3-1-9-9-6. Text Hiban to 3-1-9-9-6. You’ll send them a free copy of your book. You’ll reach out to them if they want to be reached out to, to get that consultation and they can go– If you’re out there and you’re listening and you’re thinking, “Maybe I want a virtual assistant. I’m thinking about it. Could a virtual assistant even help me because this is my size?” Don’t wonder. Have an expert from Daniel’s team call you and ask you about your business and go, “Yes, you could use us.” Or “No, you don’t need us yet. Here’s what you should do first.”

Daniel: One of the things that’s in the book is we’ve served, literally, over 5,000 real estate professionals in 13 years. When I say served, we know their org chart, we know how they generate lead. We know the systems that they use, the phones, the CRMs, the lead generation. We know what they’re team looks like, how they’re structured. I’ve even had a lot of our clients share with me their financials. We’ve got a view into 5,000 different real estate companies.

Everybody on this podcast who hires virtual assistants has either worked with us or we’ve worked with them in the past or they’re current clients. When you have that kind of knowledge or lens into so many different businesses, we put together something called the Seven Figure Business Road Map, which outlines the path for every single real estate person out there to basically, net seven figures. That’s part of the book. We break down what you have to focus on, what your team has to look like, what it feels like.

We have every single step of, “I’m a brand-new agent,” to “I’m no longer working inside of the business and it’s just paying me every single month.” Absolutely move forward. If you want to buy it on Amazon, it’s actually $25, but you get for free because we’re here with Aaron.

Aaron: Yes, that’s freaking awesome. Yes, you can go buy it and help him hit that rating and become number three in Japan next with the– Instead, text Daniel. I’ve read the book. You will not be disappointed. Go through there. It has so many tips and tricks to help grow your business. Dan, thanks for coming on today, MyOutDesk. I’m been so impressed to have watched you grow and grow and grow this thing over the last few years. Then seeing you also have a servant’s heart where you’re not just growing it to grow it. You’re growing it to change the world and change lives. I’m just so lucky to be your friend. Thanks for coming on today. This was a ton of fun.

Daniel: Thanks, Aaron. It was great to be here.