(Audio) 742 » Talking Cold Calling And Virtual Assistants With A Student » Taylor Jernigan

Joe: Welcome. This is The Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast.

Joe: Welcome. This is The Real Estate Investing Mastery Podcast. We’re just what we thought we’d do, Gavin and I were talking, we said, hey, let’s get some students and let’s turn some coaching calls into live podcasts because we can kind of kill two birds with one stone. Now why we want to kill birds with stones I don’t know? But let’s do this and we can help Taylor and we can help our podcast and hopefully what we’re going to maybe give some advice, hopefully some good advice to Taylor. You guys can listen to this and apply it in your own business. That’s the whole goal of what we are trying to do. So first I want to invite you to watch a new case study video that Gavin and I did recently and it’s called how we did over $155,000 in the last two months doing deals virtually in another market with no direct mail working with some of our coaching clients and it’s pretty cool.

Joe: If you want to get more information on that case study, go to VirtualCaseStudy.com virtual case study.com to get some more information and to watch that video about 30 45 minutes long. It’s not a big sales pitch. Gavin and I just break down step by step. There’s like seven or eight steps. Gavin, I think of how to do these deals and what we’re doing. And then if you’re interested, we will give you an opportunity at the end to apply to maybe work with us. We’ve got a workshop coming up in a few weeks here in St Louis. We do them almost about once a month where we take a small group of people, just 10 12 people roll up our sleeves and implement, set up the systems, do the marketing and partner with our clients on deals, I love this business. So welcome, welcome, welcome. We got a special guest. His name is Taylor and he’s got a little small puppy dog on his lap.

Taylor: Small, that’s awesome. A small 60 pounds.

Joe: 60 pounds he’s a big old dog. We like dogs on this show. If some of you have seen on my Facebook post, go to my Facebook wall and look at the picture I posted the other day of our little puppy. She’s about the cutest puppy you’ll ever see.

Taylor: My wife might argue that.

Joe: Everybody thinks their dog is the cutest. But cool. So this is Taylor and we sent out a message the other day to our students and said, hey, who would like to be on a podcast? We’re going to do a free coaching call with you guys, but we’ve got to, so we’ve got Taylor’s permission to put it out there. So Taylor, we sent you some questions. I’m just going to kind of read through this right now, okay. And we will do our, we’ll do our best to help you, okay.

Joe: What are one or two things you would specifically like to accomplish on this call? And you said how to fully automate and go virtual with texting, Craigslist and Zillow sellers and landlords, okay. How to automate that and go virtual with it. What kind of investing do you focus on? It’s wholesaling and lease options as well as you do some apartments. Cool. You currently do real estate full time, is that right?

Taylor: Yes.

Joe: Awesome. And you’re in the Baton Rouge Louisiana market, right?

Taylor: Yes sir.

Joe: What’s the proper correct way to say that, Baton Rouge?

Taylor: Baton Rouge.

Joe: Okay, I got it. You’re currently average about nine to $10,000 a month in wholesale fees. Is that right?

Taylor: Yeah, I’m having a couple of difficulties with like hard money lenders with some of my deals trying to close right now.

Joe: Okay. But your average profits for wholesaling at $9,000 to $10,000 grand a month?

Taylor: Yeah, it’s been about $9,000 to $10,000 grand.

Joe: Good. You know, there was a guy now, he was in Lafayette, I believe his name is Chris Rude. Does that name ring a bell?

Taylor: Yeah he’s my mentor for a wholesaling.

Joe: Cool guy, I like Chris a lot.

Taylor: Oh yeah.

Joe: He gave me an idea for one of the best bandit signs I’ve ever seen and have used and it’s just really simple. It says a, we buy houses regardless of equity. Did he talk to you about that yet?

Taylor: I have not seen that one no.

Joe: Oh, it’s a fantastic bandit sign. You should test it and use it. Everyone else out there listening, we buy houses regardless of equity, phone number, bandit signs, especially if you know how to do lease options that will get a lot more calls because there’s still a lot of people, believe it or not, even today in this hot market, quote unquote, who have very little equity in their house.

Joe: And that just kind of makes you stand out. Your current monthly goals about a $100,000 grand a month? That’s a good goal to have.

Taylor: I’ll get there. I’ll get there.

Joe: You will. What are some of the things that you’re holding that you feel like are holding you back from reaching your goals and you say unorganized? How much do you currently spend a month on marketing? About $3,000 grand, is that right?

Taylor: Yeah, because I got two cold callers that go for me.

Joe: Okay, awesome. And how many offers do you make a week on average you say? Honestly can’t say because I don’t track it. It’s one of the things you need to get better at. Is that about right?

Taylor: Yeah that is , spot on.

Joe: Cool. Let’s talk about the marketing that you’re doing right now. What kind of marketing are you doing with the budget of $3,000 a month?

Taylor: So that’s with sending my callers about 5,000 leads or people to call a month and I skip trace in I just cut that budget down actually. It was $3,400 to around $3,000 grand because my callers are I got two of them going 30 hours a week, 7.50 an hour. And they are also managed by somebody else that’s included in the 7.50.

Joe: I can see Gavin, I can see dollar signs in Gavin head. Gavin’s got some awesome things to share with you, but go ahead finish what you were going to say.

Taylor: I got them going. They’ve been going now for this week number two. And they’ve been averaging about four leads a day and that’s between either wholesaling leads or lease option. And I basically just told them because I’m getting into lease option, I told them like if any interest in selling, just send them my way and I’ll work it out from there. I’ll see I’ll put them in whatever bucket and he cut up my wire. Yeah and also a little bit of, I’m sending out some mailings for pre probate and I worked in there the scraping solutions that I pay for the month and I’m texting those out.

Joe: What CRM are you using?

Taylor: REI Simple. I was Podio and then now just moving all of that into REI Simple.

Joe: What do you think of REI Simple?

Taylor: It’s amazing. I’m still learning it, but uh, I love the, the SMS broadcast, being able to send contracts straight from there, don’t have to use Docusign anymore. Being able to just like customize it I love it.

Joe: Are you sending out direct mail yet? Like are you sending when you’re sending offers?

Taylor: Click To Mail?

Joe: Yeah through Click To Mail.

Taylor: I have not just sending them the offer and then following up with them.

Joe: Okay, good. You should think about that.

Taylor: Oh, I’m going to do that. Definitely

Joe: It’s super important. I’ve been talking to more and more students lately and people on interviews and podcasts and masterminds. And one of the things that you need to do to stand out above your competition is to send offers in the physical mail, right. But okay, cool. So you’re doing some cold calling, you’re doing some texting, SMS broadcasts to Zillow and Craigslist. They’re doing a little bit of direct mail to probates, right?

Taylor: The pre probates, yes.

Joe: Pre probates, okay. Who are you skip tracing and cold calling right now?

Taylor: What types of leads?

Joe: Yeah. Yeah.

Taylor: So I do my driving for dollars and vacant properties and that’s mainly wholesaling. I’m trying to transition into like what list I should pull for best for lease options. I have one, it’s, I know you said you don’t want anybody that’s owned a property. You want them to at least own it for a year and, and so on. And then it doesn’t really matter for the equity. So I’m thinking about pulling a list like that and then let them call that as well.

Joe: But who’s this cold calling company dialing? What number? How they get those phone numbers hat they’re calling?

Taylor: Oh, the phone numbers. I use Lead Sherpa with they’re, they have a skip trace side on there, it’s .15 cents per hit.

Joe: What list did you skip trace?

Taylor: Oh yeah. My driving for dollars list of vacant list.

Joe: And that’s it?

Taylor: And some pre foreclosures as well as like a big non owner occupied or absentee owner.

Joe: Our favorite list to skip trace and text and call are absentee owners with equity. Now if you know how to do lease options, even better because now just to pull all the absentee owners, regardless of how much equity they’ve had, as long as they’ve owned it for about a year, right.

Taylor: All right. Yeah, that’ll be a great list.

Joe: That’ll give you, you know, two to three times the amount of leads to call. Gavin, what, talk about cold calling and maybe how we can help Taylor with that.

Gavin: Absolutely. Just, a quick thing Taylor, you said that you’ve got the call is $5,000 leads each and is that what so said?

Taylor: Just $5,000 a month to the pool.

Gavin: Okay, okay. So you give him $5,000. So in that $5,000 right now is pre probate, no that’s your direct mail list, driving for dollars and absentee list, that’s what their calling right now. Well, you’ve only been doing it two weeks, right?

Taylor: Yes. So I haven’t put in the $5,000 yet, but that what I’m budgeting for as to put in $5,000 a month. So I need to, I guess, get the list that I want to do the $5,000 a month.

Gavin: Okay. Well one thing you need to be aware of when you say $5,000, which is awesome, it’s a good goal to have, but don’t worry too much about how many leads that you can get. It’s all about how many dials their doing through them leads and actually qualifying, right. So you need to be cold in the same list of multiple times.

Taylor: Oh yes, for sure.

Gavin: At least 10, 11, 12, 13 touches with the same list. That’s what we can do it up too. Does that make sense? And the other big thing is what time do they calling, your cold callers?

Taylor: So they’re calling at about 12:00 time to about 6:00.

Gavin: Okay. And their calling at the same time?

Taylor: Everyday, yeah. Monday through Fridays is when they’re calling.

Gavin: But their calling at the same time? Both of them….

Taylor: Yes. Both of them are going from 12:00 to 6:00.

Gavin: Okay. So what I would personally recommend, okay, is having one start at 9:00 and doing the morning shift and the afternoon to evening shift. So let’s just say their doing four hours, you do 9:00 till 1:00 and then you will do 4:00 till 7:00, 3:00 till 7:00, for instance. Does that make sense? And then what you’ll do that if you have separate lists, they will work them lists and then you will rotate the lists between the VA’s.

Taylor: That’s smart so they are hitting both.

Gavin: Exactly. On different times. So your audience is being hit at different times depending on shift jobs, jobs been, you know, the early people, and the late people after they have finished work. Because what we do is when we hear list in the morning and we move that to the afternoon, sometimes it can react like a new list.

Taylor: That’s true. I like that.

Gavin: That makes sense? So you call in, it’s great that you’re calling number one, right? But doing it at the same time, you’re not leveraging your call as best as you should be. Does that make sense?

Taylor: Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

Gavin: You see what works and what time. The other thing is…

Taylor: I think a light bulb just went off.

Gavin: Yes, that was a gold nugget there for you. The other thing I would say is six hours is a lot of time and again, you’ve got someone else running your VA so I don’t need to know who that is because I don’t want to knock what they’re doing. Because that’s not what I’m trying to say. With six hours without a break is intense.

Taylor: Well yeah, they take like 15 minute breaks every now and then.

Joe: Okay. Okay, good. Because what you’ll find is, is that normally the first three hours is always going to perform better than the last three, they’re going to burn out. And you only need to test it yourself. Right now people in the, yeah, it’s brutal. Right I do like 45 minutes.

Taylor: Yeah. I’m not a fan. That’s why I hired it out as soon as I could. I don’t like it.

Gavin: Yeah, exactly. So just be careful of that and make sure the other thing is as well, that you’re using the same callers, I guess you’re doing that right? You’re using the same people doing, you’re not like, you haven’t got random people coming in and you have the same two people that you know who they are, okay.

Taylor: Yes.

Gavin: Can you listen to their calls?

Taylor: Oh yes.

Gavin: Okay.

Taylor: They were just starting out and a couple of their calls were pretty cringy, but the team is working on them and I’m also giving them tips on what not to do.

Gavin: Okay, good. And that’s huge, okay, the biggest thing that you can do. I know they’re being managed by someone else, but you have to control that, right. You can still automate this business and still work on the business because you controlling them are going to get you a better quality lead to where it’s actually a good lead. Does that make sense? Rather than just sending everything in, which is great because if you’re only getting four a day, are you getting four per shift or four between 12 of them? Between 12 hours. Between two of them, sorry.

Taylor: Four per day between the two of them.

Gavin: Yeah, okay. So I feel that’s low personally, especially for a new list I would normally like to see, especially in a market like yours, probably a lead an hour for your market, right. So I feel that you can get them numbers up. Now as the list gets older, they will start to drop. So maybe that’s the ability of the callers and you’re already listening to, that’s great. And you don’t have to listen to a hundred calls, just go and listen to one. And normally if they’ve got one that way they will all follow suit, right?

Gavin: When you listen to that and it’s then the way that you deliver it, talk to them like they’re part of the team. When you are on the phone, try and talk with them before shift and after shift. How’s it going, d you need anything? A great question that I like to ask them. If you could change one thing, what would it be? Give them the voice to come forward. Does that make sense? Because they won’t tell you. There’ll be scared of you because normally the way that they are treated, it’s stick to their script. Don’t come off the script, do this, do that and they want ever hear from you, right? That’s how the normally treated. Well we want to treat them like humans, which I’m sure you are, but a lot of people don’t let them speak and let them make mistakes and be honest.

Gavin: Say, Hey, you’re struggling. What do you need? What would you change? And they’ll say, well I think we could do this. And sometimes it might would be better. It might be the same thing and it might just be a different way of doing it anyway. You’re like okay if you want to do it like that, no problem. Now they’ve made a decision in the business, now they’re even going to work harder for you. Does that make sense?

Taylor: Oh yeah, yeah I like that.

Gavin: Okay, so two things. One is the call times got to change that, right? And again, I don’t need to know who your using, but tell them that’s what you want to do because that’s the main reason.

Taylor: And it makes sense the way you described it.

Joe: Are you texting them first and then cold calling them or are you cold calling them first and then putting them on a broadcast campaign, either with REI Simple or lead Sherpa?

Taylor: So they’re just being cold called.

Joe: Okay.

Taylor: So those that are being cold called or just being cold called. And then the ones that I scraped that it get scraped off Zillow and Craigslist just get blasted texts.

Joe: You should think about doing, you know, after their cold called put them into a text campaign. I think the best thing to do might be put them into a text SMS broadcast campaign. You can do that with lead Sherpa or REI Simple. Be sure you filter out the known litigators list, right.

Taylor: Oh yeah, I do.

Joe: But then send a text campaign. Anybody that hasn’t responded, download them put them into the cold calling campaign. Does that make sense?

Taylor: Oh yeah, yeah. I should start doing that. That’s part of the organization thing.

Joe: Sure, sure. Well, you know, as you start getting more deeper into REI Simple, it’s going to make it a lot easier for you. The important thing with REI Simple is to make sure you’re updating your statuses because that’s the only way you can filter out the leads that need to be to go here to go there. Does that make sense? You can, if you, when you change the status of when they respond, you can then pull out or export or maybe you’ve been to a new SMS broadcast to the ones that never responded to your first text, right?

Joe: Or you can send out an SMS broadcast to the ones who you’re still waiting for a response out there. When I’m sending my text campaigns, I always like to end it with a question like to say something like you’re not interested maybe in other, is your house still available with a question mark? In fact, I wish I could remember there was a certain text that one of my friends always sends out and it’s really weird, it’s like a statement. It’s a statement, but he phrases it as a question, phrases the statement as a question. It looks weird but when you see it you’re like compelled to respond because it’s a simple question.

Joe: It’s like he answered a question. That’s a good way to initiate or re-initiate a new conversation with the seller, right. Does that make sense? I’m going to ask you, Taylor, you’re making some offers. Are you tracking them right now? Like how many are going out?

Taylor: So right now in REI Simple, I’ve done just three in two weeks for four in two weeks.

Joe: Why have you not been making more or are you just not tracking it yet in REI Simple?

Taylor: I might not be tracking it. I’m making them over the text messages as well. I’m just not sending them like the, I guess the paperwork on it.

Joe: One thing with texting too, I should add in the same with your cold callers, right? You don’t want them to do too much prescreening as soon as they raise their hand, get that lead into your CRM REI Simple and then call them yourself, right? Try to avoid on the by texting, try to avoid too much conversation about the numbers. You just want to give some motivation, schedule a time to get them on the phone and talk to them. Make sense? Real important because you get, that’s the only way you can find out their motivation. If they really do have a problem, try to get them on the phone.

Joe: If you call them it goes to voicemail, send them a text back. Hey, just left a message. If they have some interest in selling the questions that you can text them. You see the ones that Lead Sherpa gives you, right. Those are good responses to get back.

Taylor: Well, I’m not with Lead Sherpa on their text blast just their skip tracing.

Joe: Okay. All right, fine. But like try to get them on the phone as quickly as possible. Does that make sense?

Taylor: Yeah.

Joe: How do you feel like your phone skills are with sellers when you’re talking to them on the phone?

Taylor: They’re fairly decent with extracting information and getting their motivation.

Joe: Do you think you could send an offer to every seller you talk to?

Taylor: I know I probably should.

Joe: What’s stopping you from doing that, do you think?

Taylor: Doing it. That’s it. That’s what’s stopping me.

Joe: Yeah. Okay.

Gavin: This is important. Sorry just to add to that. Because you know when you’re obviously not scared to spend money, right? If you’re spending $3,000 a month, that’s good. And that should be, in my opinion, you should be seeing a lot higher investment that $9,000 a month return, okay. You need to be getting that up to you know, more. Let’s just say more as for your market as well. Now if you were in like San Fran or somewhere like that, then okay, probably not. But I feel the marketing now that you have gone to that money, you will generate over time a lot more contracts, okay.

Gavin: And this is the difference I guess between direct mail is that these leads coming in need you need a good system and a good follow up. So the biggest thing of organization, you’ve got to get organized and like Joe said, changing the status to what’s going on because that’s the only way you’re going to make this work over a period of time. Because you’ve only had four leads a day you’re two weeks in, you could probably piece everything together right now. But lets jump forward a couple of months, right? And you’ve got 400 leads now and if your not organized this thing’s going to be messed all over and you’re still going to be hopping at one deal a month and thinking why, right?

Gavin: And the reason is, is that you have to have the status on point. The biggest thing in there is the status. If you run everything by status, you can’t miss anything, right? And then with the follow up that you’ll be doing on a monthly basis, on the daily, depending on how hot or warm or cold the lead is. You will start to convert, you will convert leads. I guarantee the leads have come in this week, over three months, you will convert one of them, they were already in the database.

Taylor: And that’s probably why I need to learn REI Simple better to where I can do all that stuff.

Joe: Well sometimes you know, we say it a lot, Taylor, like sometimes the best automation you can get as a good virtual assistant, right? You got to get a VA to organize that stuff for you as soon as possible. And I forget if you even said that or not. Do you have a virtual assistant, like an admin VA right now?

Taylor: No like I really do need one.

Joe: Well, I would carve out $500 bucks a month out of that marketing budget and I would put that to a full time general admin VA like I would recommend VirtualStaffFinder.com and just telling you what a real estate admin assistant. Their a head hunting service you pay them $500 bucks, they’ll go find three VA’s for you. The cool thing about using a headhunting service in the Philippines is there going to give you a full time dedicated VA, not somebody from Upwork that’s working for three or four other people doing a bunch of different projects. They’re going to give you a full time one dedicated VA who just wants to work for one person. And so it helps if you can get real estate experience, but it’s not super important, it’s not required. So you can get a good general admin VA, tell them what you’re looking for. They will give you some and then you can interview them. If one of them doesn’t work out, they’ll give you three more. But I’ve had real good success with them.

Joe: I know my other students have as well. Don’t worry about them having to understand or know REI Simple. Obviously they’re not going to, but like as soon as they’re in, you can send them to the REIM Simple training videos, right. Get them familiar with it, but you need to be sure that you’re not doing the $5 an hour activities. You’re focusing on the $500 an hour activities because you already know how to talk to sellers. You just need to be talking to more of them. And get a VA to do the manual data entry stuff that’s not your strength like…

Taylor: That’s the part of that slows me down a lot.

Joe: Stop trying to fix your weaknesses. Outsourced them instead. I wish I could outsource my exercise and die, right, but I can’t. That’s the only thing you can’t outsource, okay. But in business, outsource your organizing stuff like get someone, get a VA to do that for you it’s not that hard. Get the VA to be the real estate or the REI Simple expert and, and then they can update and manage the status for you. They can make, send the offers. They can do the follow up. You’re just talking to sellers, right. And then you’re sending a Voxer message or a Whatsapp voice message to the VA after every conversation you have.

Joe: Maybe you’re a note taker, right? So you, you have a blank lead sheet and you write all your notes on the lead sheet. Take a picture of it with your phone, send it to the VA and then tell the VA, add these notes here REI Simple records, the calls, right? Have the VA listen to the recorded call and tell the VA on the voice memo, just talk to the seller mark. The status is this, remind me in a month to follow up with them. Go ahead and send them an offer for cash or lease option offer. Send them the lease option credibility kit. Send them a cash offer for $50,000. Remind me in three weeks to call him back, etc. You know what I’m saying?

Taylor: I need that in my life so bad. That right there I feel they like…

Joe: Dude, you know how easy it is to find somebody to do that?

Taylor: Because that’s what that right there holds me back so much.

Joe: That’s not that hard…

Taylor: It’s never been me. I just see so much further ahead like than that stuff. I don’t know.

Joe: So yeah. I don’t know if that was your girlfriend or your wife or your sister or your mom.

Taylor: Yep. That was my wife back there.

Joe: Okay.

Taylor: Came for the dog. I don’t know if you could hear him.

Joe: No, but like I don’t know if she can help you maybe for a little bit, but like get somebody that can do this. So first thing you’ll do, hire somebody that says, hey, you got to work. I think you’re eastern time zone. You got to work 8:00 to 5:00 Eastern time zone, right every day. And you give them an order of priorities. Number one, makes sure the marketing goes out. Number two, update my CRM, okay. Then number three, send the offers you want them to send offers for you, which is kind of related to the update the CRM. Number four, do all your follow up for you.

Joe: So that’s the only thing is they have to do. Make sure the marketing’s going out or make, you know, like if you have to, we talked about a scorecard, have them update the scorecard every day, how much marketing went out, how many came in, how many sellers you talk to, how many offers you make? So that you have a report you can review every week. You got to have the numbers there in front of you. So I’ve heard it said, and I say this to people too, but like if you don’t know your numbers, you do not have a real business, right? You’ve got to know your numbers and if you’re just floundering around, you’re going to struggle. You’ve got to know your numbers, how much marketing is going out, what are we spending in marketing? What’s our average cost per lead? What’s our average revenue per deal or profit per deal? What’s our average profit per lead source? Like what’s the most profitable marketing that you’re doing?

Taylor: Yeah I need all that.

Joe: Oh yeah, that’s just, yeah, that’s huge. So the VA is going to make sure that marketing goes out, it’s updating the scorecard, they’re going to make sure they’re updating the CRM for you. That’s going to be like 75% of their job. Then they’re going to send the offers for you in email and physical mail and they’re going to do all your follow up. So whatever that is for you. I mean, every lead needs to get followed up with at least once a month for the rest of eternity. Like forever. That’s a job that should never ever stop.

Taylor: If somebody doesn’t answer my phone call, like they were a lead them. Then I call or send it and they don’t answer my call. I call them every single day until they answer.

Joe: Yeah, that’s good.

Gavin: Yeah. We just closed one last month from a two year follow up.

Taylor: I hadn’t been in the game long enough, but that takes some…

Gavin: Yeah. And it’s not, it’s just having the systems and nothing gets missed. Two years, we did a video last week, last month on it. I mean you could see the dates right, so can’t even make it up because at the time we use in Podio, so it would date stamp everything from when the lead came in to when it actually closed. So you got to be, you know, following up.

Taylor: Yeah, those are the better…

Joe: Taylor All right. Are you going to do this? Are you going to get a VA?

Taylor: Oh yes. I’m getting a VA

Joe: When, when?

Taylor: I need to figure out a way to shave some off my budget or like to cut costs to where I can do that.

Joe: So today’s Wednesday, can you commit publically, the whole entire universe right now? Just kidding. Hello all like one or two of you. But like you’re going to commit to everybody right now saying, Hey, by next Wednesday, a week from now, I’m going to at least contact Virtual Staff Finder and get them to find me three VA’s.

Taylor: Yeah, sure thing. Yeah.

Joe: Okay. And then two weeks after that. No, that’s too long. I’m doing being too nice on it.

Gavin: I’d say by the weekend personally.

Taylor: I’ll contact them as soon as I get off this.

Joe: Good. All right, good. That’s it contact them, send them the $500 bucks. They’ll schedule an interview with you, talk to you, find out what you’re looking for. But like you need to get that ball rolling within the next week.

Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. I will definitely.

Joe: You’re just throwing your just throwing away money.

Taylor: Yeah. And I don’t want to do that.

Joe: Yeah. So cool. Yeah. I mean anything else Gavin?

Gavin: No. I mean the VA thing you need sort your cold calls out. You’ve got to get that…

Taylor: I’m going to message to them as soon as we get off here.

Gavin: Yeah and you need spread that, you know, I like to do four hours personally and I would, you probably can’t, because I know what contract you’re in. The probably want you to do six, but I would, if you can I would do three VA’s at four hours a piece, I do an extra VA and shorten those hours. Because I think there’ll be more efficient and they’ll get more leads.

Taylor: Yeah, they just actually added a third as like kind of like a relief. So it’s a fairly new company but they just texted me right before I got on this call to their training up the third as a like a relief in case I have to go somewhere or I’ll even ask her to help because these VA’s are calling for other people as well.

Gavin: Okay. Don’t tell me anymore.

Taylor: I think they are. Yeah.

Joe: So our advice when we’re working with a coaching client, we tell them you need to have your own dedicated VA working just for you, not for anybody else. And they should only be doing cold calling three max four hours a day. Like because there’s an efficiency curve. Like you try doing it yourself. Like Gavin mentioned earlier, like after three hours your brain starts melting.

Joe: Like the cells in your brain start fizzling and smoking, right. So like there’s a point where after that you just got to get them doing something else. Or if they are working for you, like maybe have them do data entry stuff or going to the county website to pulling lists of probates and evictions and divorces and tax liens that you can start maybe marketing too, right. But like, yeah, only let them do that. So like the sooner you can get, I don’t want to knock another company because, you know, obviously…

Taylor: No, all of this is great information. I’m, I’m, yeah…

Gavin: Because you’ve not named the company and don’t, I don’t want to know who they are because then we can’t be like attacking someone.

Joe: Yes. But we like to hire our own dedicated VA’s to do the cold calling for us and we like to Filipino VA’s. So, you know, Gavin, when we found our first Filipino VA for, I actually told Gavin, I said, we need to hire somebody local because somebody else said that. He was like, eh, no, I’m going to try Filipino, okay. Whatever. But then it worked like, so we put a job in Upwork, I think, but we specifically said we’re looking for somebody with mojo sells experience.

Joe: So we used mojo and so we found somebody we didn’t have to train them much. And so then every time we need a new VA for one of our coaching clients, we just go up to her and she get finds a friend or something like that. Now I think we’ve got 40, 45 VA’s working for us. But each one has their own dedicated client that they’re working for it, right. So that’s really, really important. Make sure they’re not working for somebody else. They’re working just for you and you’re going to save a lot of money to, we’re paying, what’s our average right now, Gavin? Is it five to $7 an hour for the VA?

Gavin: $5.00 bucks an hour. And if you get someone that’s really good because you’ll have the company say, well, they’ve got work, they’ve got to earn money. That’s why we farm them out to all these people because that’s how they make money over full time, right. I understand that. But if they are good at what they do and you give them some bonuses, they’ll still make more than their fulltime anyway. And it gets them even better and more hungry to perform in the allotted time. Now they would work more for me. I don’t want them to work more because I want them to be strong for the hours that they are at work. Because I’m like if I said eight hours a day and they’d all jump for it, of course. But I just know on the body of cold call in of what I’ve personally seen that it’s just too much.

Gavin: So you’ve got to control that and I don’t like, you know, I know they put a relief one in, that’s another person well is it going to be another relief. And before you know it, you’ve got all these VA’s and you don’t know any of them are and you can’t help train that if they’re going to be swapping out and the momentum is key because it’s just like anything else as well, you know, for you, when you get on a call and you have a great call, you want to get on another call because the momentum you’re taking over to the next seller, I mean the energy is there, the confidence is there, you know, you’re not going to come across arrogant.

Gavin: Your just going to be confident and you’re just going to hit it and then again get another one. Then you’ve got to go again. And then on the flip side, and this goes on the flip, when it’s just doesn’t seem to be working, you’re just not in your groove. You know them days?

Taylor: Yeah I’ve experienced that.

Gavin: I need to just go away and do something else for little bit because, and don’t force it, right? So it’s almost a mentality of when things are good you got to keep going and don’t slow and when things are not going, that’s when you can kind of like chill out, relax for a minute, go and do something, come back and try and go at it again.

Joe: That’s good. Let me give you another piece of advice when it comes to virtual assistants and Gavin is really good at this. You need to have regular communication with them. And especially at the beginning every day, first thing in the morning, maybe if you can’t, at the end of the day it could just be a text message, right? Or a Slack or Skype message. But you’ve got to have that regular communication with them. That is something that’s got to be a non negotiable, that’s got to be number one priority.

Joe: Because these VA’s one big, the biggest reason I think why a lot of investors struggle with virtual assistance is they’re not talking to them enough, right? They’re just giving them some instructions and hoping or expecting them to understand it and do it and not have any problems and it just doesn’t work that way. I mean can you imagine working in an office with assistance and never talking to them, never seeing them and just expecting them to do their job.

Joe: They’re real people. Like they love Gavin because he’s always talking to them and they feel appreciated. They feel understood, they feel heard. But Gavin is like, I need to know when there’s a roadblock what’s the bottleneck, what’s going on? Because they’re not going to come to you typically with problems that they’re having. If something’s not working, if they’re not going to come to you and tell you this stuff. So you have to constantly be asking every day how’s it going? And you got to look at the numbers, look to see how many outbound dials did they make, how much time did they spend on the phone, talk to them every single day after maybe a month. You can talk to them once a week maybe. But like that communication is so important. Even if you talk to them once a week, you should be texting them every day.

Taylor: Yeah, I messaged them on Skype. We’re in like a group message between me and the VA’s.

Joe: Yeah, that’s so important and you’re already doing this and that’s good. But when you go to Upwork and Virtual Staff Finder and you find your new VA, you got to have that communication and it could just be a few minutes, but first thing in the morning, have them send you at the end of the day, maybe their scorecard, give them their own scorecard, make them come up with it. Like I want to see what you did today put it into a spreadsheet or something for me so I can look at it and see what did you do and how much follow up did you do? And does that make sense?

Taylor: Yeah. Yeah. I’m with you completely on that.

Joe: So important. So important. Cool. And yeah try and listen you know were talking, when we checking with the VA, we know when they’re going to start, right? So if they’re on the 9:00 till 1:00 I know they’re going to message me at 9:00 o’clock so it’s not like I’m talking with them and the taking all this time off, it’s not, I just know when I know one VA starts at 1:000 and then he messages me an hour before. I don’t know why he does it, but I relentless, know he’ll message me an hour before he starts and then he will start at 10:00 he does it every day. So I already know the sequence of what they do and communicate and you’ll just see a massive, massive difference over time.

Joe: Taylor, what are some of your big takeaways? What are you going to do?

Taylor: Get a VA that’s for sure. Like first thing I’m doing and as well as switching up the hour, going to talk to them about the hours and then maybe even subbing in this and talking to them about my cold callers about saying, hey, I want them to be strictly mine. I don’t know if that’d be a deal breaker or if I can get new cold callers because I am still fresh in. If I can get new ones that are strictly mine because I don’t want them to be fatigued on a call and getting yelled at because I know that, I mean it, it bounces off me now and like getting yelled at, but being in that spiraled downward where just back, back to back. So I’m going to get that switched up and stay in contact with them, with my VA’s.

Joe: One thing I’ll recommend to you, you don’t have to use Mojo dials, Mojo sells for your outbound calling. You can actually outbound cold calling inside of REI Simple. And I’ve talked to investors that are using REI Simple or Freedom Soft for their outbound calls and they prefer it because of the quality versus quantity argument. They claim that the quality is much better. You can leave a personalized voicemail for that specific seller. Hey Jim, calling about your house at 123 Main Street. Not sure I have the right person or not, but if you’re interested in selling, please give me a call back.

Joe: Good right then while you’re in there, you send them a quick text, Hey, I’m calling about your house. At 123 Main Street. Do I have the right person? And then you can update the status. Boom, go to the next one. So you’re not going to get as many done with an auto dialer or three dialer, but the quality is going to be a little better because you can leave a personalized, unique message. You can send them a text message, maybe, you know, set up a reminder to call them again the next day or whatever. But like when you, if you can do that inside of there, even if you use these VA’s with the other service think about that. Cool. All right. Anything else?

Gavin: No I think you’ve got it. Well, not for me anyway. I think you’ve got everything that you need. You know, we always like to leave the call where you’re not getting overwhelmed. You should only have ever one, two things that you focus on because that’s just the reality of you actually doing it. If we get to be 10 things, we could be saying more things right, but a few things that you need is a VA for admin and then you need to focus on moving and separate and the VA’s that you’ve got into different time zones, call times.

Joe: You know, it’s funny, I remember I coached Chris Rude a little bit a long time ago and when he was after he was, he was kind of already started. He was getting out of, I think he owned a bunch of oil changes, car washes or something like that.

Taylor: Yeah he did.

Joe: Got a cool story and a was doing tons of deals, but I remember giving him the same advice, get a virtual assistant soon as possible, cool. All right Taylor, good talking to you. Hey everybody just wanted let you know that Gavin and I did a case study video showing how we did over $155,000 grand in the last two months doing exactly what we’re talking about here. Cold calling, no direct mail in a virtual market close to Louisiana and Alabama. How we did it, how we’re working with our clients. And if you want to watch that video and get more information about what we do, go check it out right now at VirtualStaffFinder.com Virtual Staff Finder, VirtualCaseStudy.com.

Gavin: I was agreeing with you.

Joe: Virtual Case Study, VirtualCaseStudy.com watch the video. It’s about 30 45 minutes long. You’re going to get a lot of good stuff out of it and takes notes and at the end we’ll talk about how you could maybe work with us. If you’re interested, we’ll set up, your systems we’ll give you the VA’s will do the marketing for you and we’ll help you partner with you on the deals. You come to Saint Louis, you have a two day implementation workshop. We’ll give you our business in a box and then we have once a quarter local masterminds. We all get together and we help each other build our businesses stronger and better. So cool. Looking forward to seeing you guys later. Thank you again, Taylor.

Taylor: Thank ya’ll

Joe: We’ll see you guys. Thank you. Bye Bye.