Episode #22: Working "In" the Business & Working "On" the Business

[00:00:00] You want agents to see what you got going on because you want to pay an agent if an agent fills that rental. It's worth it for you to pay one month out of your 12 months of rent.

[00:00:09] You're going to get from that one year lease or an agent to fill the unit. Because otherwise, you could wait months and you could lose money. So anyway, so I get these listings up.

[00:00:18] But already knew in the back of my head once these listings go up, there's going to be a lot of incoming tenetrafics through Zillow You know, through rent.com, apartments.com, lots of random people just look at what's in this rental.

[00:00:29] You want to see this rental? Are you giving yourself too much credit as like... I can't keep up with the demand. But I mean, literally it just stands up. It just stands up. Oh, it stacks up.

[00:00:45] Welcome to the podcast dedicated to real estate insurance and everything in between. Join us as we take you along our own brokerage building journeys with additional wisdom from our network of business experts. Welcome to Bricks and Risk. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another edition of Bricks and Risk.

[00:01:10] I'm Tim Gardy. And I'm Sean Mooney. Today's topic, Tim. We're talking about practice. Talk about practice? I'm not a fili fan that's going to run over but anyway, keep going. No. Today's topic we're going to be talking about working in the business and working on the business. Ooh.

[00:01:30] I love this one. You can teet up. I don't get us to find in terms of like what that is and how it relates to our business. Okay. Well, the easiest way to get this one started in my opinion is to really talk about working in the business.

[00:01:43] Because that's how everyone starts. So again, you started your own insurance brokerage. I started my own real estate brokerage. The reason we did that is because you got good at selling insurance and building a book of business. You're self through another company. I did the same thing.

[00:02:01] We've both worked for other people and we both had our captive audiences. And then we also had enough confidence at one point to say, hey, I think I want to start my own business, which to most people is insane.

[00:02:18] But so working in the business is really just as it sounds. All you're doing is you're selling, you're marketing, you're building it but you are delivering the customer service. You are delivering the end product whatever that is. You're following up, you need to get that review personally.

[00:02:36] You're doing every event coordination. You're doing every administrative task. I mean, your base is just like you're almost a, you know, you're almost in prison with your business. How was it going to say the five tool baseball player? They do it all. That's a good one.

[00:02:54] So, so again, working in the business is how you have to get started. But eventually if you want that business to grow, if you wanted to scale, you have to shift your mindset to working on the business.

[00:03:09] And then working on the business to me and you can tell me if you agree disagree. I mean, I know we always have our little intricate things that we go over, which is what makes us podcast awesome. Working on the business means, okay, I'm not doing everything.

[00:03:24] Like a good first step and this is what happened to me at Copperhill. I needed administrative help. I want that administrative help because I'm working too much in the business. I need someone else to be working in the business.

[00:03:36] Doing let's call it like the things that a lot of people could do so that I can continue to go out and build relationships. I can do the high-level marketing, the high-level networking, the high-level customer service, the high-level sales because that's where the income starts to come from.

[00:03:54] And I want to let this person work in the business, but more administratively. I want them to handle some of the, I don't want to call them mean you, but it's almost like some of the smaller tasks.

[00:04:06] You know, some of the admin, some of the office supplies, some of the transactional works, some of the client outreach, some of these touch points that a lot of people could do.

[00:04:14] I think I've heard it put a different ways like you shouldn't be doing $10 an hour or work. Ooh, that's a good way to look at it.

[00:04:21] You know, you really have to, I think a good way to kind of get this defined in a different way is if you're doing, let's just say, that entry. Yep. You're losing money, right?

[00:04:38] Right? Because that, that entry should be someone who's not qualified to do what I should be doing. That should be done by that person. What are you qualified to do? Tim, not much. Yeah, just kidding folks. Keep going.

[00:04:57] So I think that that's kind of a good way to look at it. Like, what, like, where do you draw the line? What should I be doing? What should I not be doing? Yeah. That's hard. And can someone else less qualified than me handle that? Yeah.

[00:05:16] Then that's what they should be doing. And it is hard because you've always done it, right? You know, we're hands on starting from scratch and building it and doing it. And again, we talked about wanting it done right and wanting it the way that we've done it.

[00:05:33] So kind of handing it off to that other person isn't always the easiest. Yep. But again, how do you grow? You have to enable yourself to give that stuff to someone else? Yeah. And it's, no, I appreciate all.

[00:05:53] I think that's a really good perspective. I love how we always have like, we always are the same. But different. The same but a little different, which is awesome. That's why there's two of us here. This is why we're having fun.

[00:06:02] This is why we're helping educate people out there as well. Because again, people have educated us. Part of the reason why we did this, as we talked about before. One thing I had mentioned before, and this goes back when we were talking about, you know,

[00:06:13] when is the right time to hire administrative help? My own personal feeling was, I felt like I was doing double-word, which I know you agreed with. And the reason it felt that way. Let's give a real clear cut example from myself.

[00:06:29] When I started Copperhill with Andrew and Ryan, Andrew Janos and Ryan Carey, we started the company together. All three of us started with the fact that we're going to go out and sell, but we're going to sell under this brand.

[00:06:42] So if we go out and sell and sell under this brand, not only are we still doing sales, like we were before, but we're building a brand. That was how we looked at it. So again, you're going out and you're doing everything.

[00:06:53] I mean, every single thing you can think of, you're doing, you've done all this. Then when you get to a point where you're like, okay, it's time to bring in our first admin. It's time to bring in our first assistant.

[00:07:05] So whether it's virtual or in person, it doesn't matter. You're bringing in help. When you bring in the help, what do you have to do? You have to have, you know, either a handbook, some SOPs, some videos,

[00:07:18] as you've talked about before, hey, I'm going to do some instructional, loom videos that show me moving around. This is where you click, you know, I'm now rating. So you have to put in all that time. That costs money to do that.

[00:07:32] It takes time to put it together and then even when you put it out there to that person, what do you have to do? You have to check their work. So you put in all that time, let them do it.

[00:07:41] Then you have to, so it's almost like you're doing triple work in the very beginning. You're still checking their work for a while until you get to a point of trust, like this person is running with it and they're doing a great job.

[00:07:52] Even if it's, again, the 80% is good enough, even if they're only doing 80% that's fantastic. So I'm going to let them run with it. So speak to that a little bit as far as, like, you know, from your perspective, because I know you kind of started out with VAs.

[00:08:06] Yeah, so we virtual assistance everyone. This because in our industry inside insurance, there's so much stuff that can be done where you don't have to be done, where you don't need to be licensed. A lot of it is filing, a lot of it is documenting,

[00:08:23] a lot of it is follow ups and fillings and that sort of stuff. So how can you fill that role of a person that it's really, you know, worked that can be done? I want to say by anyone.

[00:08:40] Yeah, I think you put it like it could be done by a third grader. I thought you put it before. Did I? Yeah, I don't know if that was correct. Yeah. But, you know, so we did. We had a VA because we trained them up, you know,

[00:08:53] they're able to get on the phone, you know, file these paperwork, file the weapon of Billings. They can make calls out to vendors and carriers and clients if need be which we had them do. And it just by doing that by bringing that virtual assistant in,

[00:09:11] it allowed, it freed me up. Right? So now I was doing half of the service that I was doing before. Yeah. So all of that extra time allowed me to do what more time for sales. This is building. Right?

[00:09:28] And so working in the business of doing all the data, doing all the sale, doing all the follow ups by pushing that off to someone else, allows me more time than to work on the business. So you're insurance broker today, moody insurance brokers.

[00:09:49] You have three people within your business? Yep. All right. So define those roles. So now that we've defined in the business versus on the business. So everyone's got our own opinion on what that means. Talk about the roles of the three people in your brokerage.

[00:10:04] So it's me as, you know, the agent broker as the talented leader. Right? And then I have an office manager who really does all of the policy maintenance, all of this service, all of the phones, kind of like everything. What we call is just, you know,

[00:10:27] the service aspect dotting ice and crossing teas. Yep. And we have a sales agent who's really just only sales sales sales. That's all he does. Yeah. And the administrative remarketing too, or it's really just not much of a sell just like I'm selling.

[00:10:46] But maybe he's not focusing on the big ticket sales. Yes. So what my goal is is to have him really humming and he's been with me for a year. So he's starting to kind of like really grasp all of our processes, all of our carriers.

[00:11:02] We work with probably 50 different companies. So just getting your arms around that can be difficult from time to time. And so he's getting there and what I'd like to do shortly is have him do all of the, you know, residential, you know, personal and short. Okay.

[00:11:22] You know, you're really being, you're getting granular. You're very specific to be like, this is what I want you to get really good at. Yep. Because again, you got to do different things. Like you can write business insurance at your company. You've done it for us. You know,

[00:11:36] you're more looking at how to go out and meet more clients who have, you've defined before. It's like, hey, maybe they got a primary in and around Philadelphia. Maybe they got a house at the shore or up in the polkanos. You know, maybe they own a business.

[00:11:51] They have two nice cars. Maybe they have some artwork or some jewelry or something like that. Like, that's who you want. Yep. That's who you're targeting. Yep. So yeah. So talk about that a little bit more. So he's, so then if he's primarily, you know, the personal insurance.

[00:12:06] And let's just say there comes a day where it's like, I don't even think about it. Like he's got a down cold. Yep. Then I'm then moving into half of my time being spent doing commercial insurance. Because that now frees me up.

[00:12:20] If I'm not doing, if I'm not doing the service and I'm not doing the personal insurance. Now it frees me up to do only commercial business insurance. And more time to work on the business. Yeah. That's fantastic. So that's kind of the direction we're going.

[00:12:38] And my goal for this year in the immediate, like, next couple months is to now add in another person that is only, it basically the in between between the office manager and a salesperson. Because it just, we're at a point now. It's just that service load.

[00:13:00] It's just too much for one person. Okay. So that person then be tasked with helping the sales agent with new sales. So like all the signatures on applications and all of that. So it's almost like your current agent takes a step up.

[00:13:13] So he becomes a little bit more on your level. But let's specific to what he's doing. Yeah. And then you're bringing in another, let's call it a junior agent. Yep. Kind of fill in the gap between you and your current agent. Yep.

[00:13:25] And then that way it's like, he's got this. And he's doing a fantastic job. So I have trust. I know it's going to go well. And then let's bring in someone else. And let's let them kind of start where he started. Yeah.

[00:13:38] So that you can scale and increase. Yep. That's really cool, man. He's them support and then, you know, who knows if that person really learns it, likes it and can kind of grow into a different position. And more on the sales side or maybe they're not.

[00:13:52] Maybe they're just like, all right. Well, we got sales coming in. So we can just pass you with like, 100% service. Hey everyone. This is Tim. Your favorite bricks and risk co-hosts. But don't tell Sean. I hope you're enjoying this episode.

[00:14:09] And I'll get right back to it in a moment. Our audience grows to word of mouth. So if you would please take a moment of your time and give us a review on the platform you're on, that would be fantastic.

[00:14:21] Please also help spread the B&R word by sharing your favorite episode with a friend. We greatly appreciate your time and trust. Now back to the show. That's awesome. Like here's a good example from my business. So we do, there's, let's just call four different types of deals.

[00:14:45] You can do a tenant deal, a landlord deal, a buyer deal or a seller deal. People say investing but again, an investor is either a landlord, a buyer or seller. So let's just call it tenant landlord, buyer seller.

[00:14:57] Those are the four things you can do in the beginning. You do everything. Just like you did just like I did. What happens? The first thing to really kind of leave your play in real estate. My opinion, my experience in at my brokerage is really the tenant business.

[00:15:12] Tenant business is probably the easiest to get someone says hey I want to go rent something. You're like awesome. Let me show you what's on the market. Let me take you through. If you like it, I'll show you how to apply for the application.

[00:15:22] I'll make sure the lease reads well. Make sure you're prepared with your move. You have everything you need. You got your tenant insurance and you're off. Yep. So that's, that's the, the lead or the client that most people want to give up as they get good.

[00:15:37] So I did this. Here's a great example. So recently one of my better business contacts. He just switched companies. He works for, you know, he was in a property management position. But for like big property management companies, you know, five hundred units,

[00:15:50] thousands of units that's what he's done. Yep. And they got a couple buildings in my old neighborhood. And he called me and said hey, here are three buildings. We have probably like 20 vacant units. I need some help. How can you help me?

[00:16:04] So I said let me do this. Let me take a couple listing a couple listings in each of these three buildings. You know, we'll photograph them. We'll do a video tour. We'll put them on the MLS, the multiple listing service because they aren't there now.

[00:16:17] They're doing all private marketing. They're just hoping someone sees the sign. Someone finds the website, which again, you can find tenants. But you're not finding everyone or not targeting towards like, Exactly.

[00:16:28] Like if you want agents to see what you've got going on because you want to pay an agent. If an agent fills that rental, it's worth it for you to pay one month.

[00:16:36] Out of your 12 months of rent, you're going to get from that one year lease or an agent to fill the unit because otherwise you could wait months and you could lose money. So anyway, so I get these listings up.

[00:16:47] But already new in the back of my head, once these listings go up, there's going to be a lot of incoming tenant traffic through Zillow, you know, through rent.com, apartments.com, lots of random people just like, Hey, why see this rental? Hey, why see this rental?

[00:16:58] Are you giving yourself too much credit as like, I can't keep up with the man. But I mean, literally it just stands up. It stands up. Oh, it stacks up. So again, you're just going to be answering emails.

[00:17:10] So before I even took these listings, I got one of our teams on board. One of our real estate teams and said, here's what I'm going to do. Every single lead that comes through, I'm just going to shuffle it to you. Shuffle shuffle shuffle.

[00:17:20] And they got four people on their team. So they divide in conquer. Basically, what happens when the lead comes in, they're the ones who call our texture email. They screen. They figure out what they want. If they really want to look at this building,

[00:17:32] they're going to take them through. And if they don't like that building, guess what? They're going to show them other stuff. So it's a great way to meet tenant clients. But you have to cultivate. There's lots of steps. There's lots of time involved.

[00:17:42] And I know I don't have that time at this stage of my career. So before I even consider these listings, I lined up my process. Yeah. To say, here are the units. Here's when this is going live.

[00:17:55] Can I rely on you and your team and the answer was yes. Now, there was a chance it would say no were too busy or no we're not interested in doing that right now. So I didn't know that going in.

[00:18:04] I'm going to have lots of agents I can talk to. But I knew that this was a good fit for them. So that's a good example. You know, kind of relating what you were doing. Like hey, I know this guy's going to run with the residential stuff.

[00:18:16] And I know he's going to get overwhelmed. So is it a point like with a rental? Like would you look at the first question is, would you have taken that if it was like one apartment? Like are you taking that on if that guy calls and says,

[00:18:29] Hey, I've got an empty unit here. Is that something you would take on or if I can take it on and pass it over here? Like how would you have handled that differently? That's a really good question.

[00:18:39] I would say if it was one, I would usually even pass that off to someone else. You take the landlord listing. Okay, you market it. You meet lots of tenant clients. You know, maybe you can find the tenant as well if not.

[00:18:51] And other agents going to bring a tenant client in. You're going to close the deal. And the owner's going to be happy. Plus you get a sign on the street. You get social media advertising. You can use in a newsletter.

[00:19:02] Once it closes, you let people know you just filled another great rental. Maybe it's in your neighborhood. Maybe it's just in a market that you're trying to work more within. So no matter which way you look at it,

[00:19:10] you're going to get paid when you work with a rental. And it's going to lead to more business and more credibility. So to your question, yes, I'm even at a point where if it was one,

[00:19:20] maybe even two from the same client, I'd probably see if someone wants those. Again, you got to almost take it a level up. Like we have lots of different agents at our brokerage. We have some people that work part time. We have some people that work full time.

[00:19:34] We have some people that just refer business. They have a license because if they buy a house or investment, they want the advantage or they like looking at properties on the MLS. They just want to be in the game. Yeah.

[00:19:44] So there's lots of different hats to wear in real estate, which is interesting. Sorry, so we talked about working in the business, working on the business. We talked about the right people, right seat. And as well as like what you do at your brokerage,

[00:20:01] as well as I do with mine. I know you wanted to talk about a book or books that relates to this. Yeah. I don't think I've read because again, you're better, you're better, you're better man. You're better human being. I am a better man.

[00:20:19] So I am a better human being. That's the truth. Can we get a, can we put that as a validate that? Can we put that out there? Don't even watch the rest of the episode folks because that alone is all you need to know.

[00:20:31] Well, no, when we were first talking about this, talking about different topics, the way I defined it or what my frame of reference was always the E-Meth. And the E-Meth by Michael Gerber, he kind of walks through how business owners should be approaching their business.

[00:20:51] And it should be in the end. It's almost the goal to have your business line up to be if you're out of the business. This thing is running like a well-oiled machine. Yeah. I hate to use the example. If you get hit by a boss, everything's fine. Yeah.

[00:21:12] And so the book kind of walks you through day one, almost like you're a business owner, you're doing this, you're doing that and it kind of walks you through like, okay, this is what you need to, one of the first things is like,

[00:21:29] all right, take every single role within your business. Right? And let's just say you make widgets, right? You have a person that takes the call, right? For a sales call. And then you have the person that gets the orders,

[00:21:48] the parts together and then you have the person that puts the parts together and then you have the person that nails them out. Like, and then you have the invoice in the accounting. So like, literally take every single role. Yep.

[00:22:00] And, you know, for me, like, on the CEO, I'm also the head of commercial, plus on the head of personal. You know what I mean? So like kind of categorize yourself by role and have everything laid out, mapped out.

[00:22:13] And then once it's mapped out, then it's like, all right, who should be in charge of this? Who should be in charge of that? And you take those roles and then you kind of like, fit them in and give you out the responsibilities. Wow. Yeah, that's really good.

[00:22:27] I think I actually own this book. But again, back to the better man. Uh, because I have already. Yeah. But um, so uh, and part of what I was talking about before was I got a call from a body of mine who reached out and said,

[00:22:44] I talked to this kid and he started this business. Uh, it was orf. Okay. And he said, um, would you mind talking on him? He's just out of college. And as this summer business down the shore and wildwood. And would you mind talking on them?

[00:23:01] They kind of like give him some framework of like, what he needs to be doing now that he's moving from like a side summer gig into like a real deal business. That's it. I said, yeah, sure. You know, I'll talk to him.

[00:23:13] Um, his name Zach from shoreline waste. So if you're in wildwood and you're looking for, or you have a need for the waste from it. He, his business model is he goes and gets your trash cans for you. Oh, down the shore.

[00:23:32] You mean like when you're not around. And he's the one who what brings put some out and bring some back into your house. Interesting. What the hell is he charged for that? I don't know. I don't know.

[00:23:44] But he, he, it's like a booming business because here's, so now, so we have people that have rentals and you have a tenant that doesn't take the trash. Yeah, forgets. Wow. Now what do you do? Now you got trash. Good idea. Yep.

[00:23:59] So we talked for like, all right, Zach. Yeah, we talked for like, like entrepreneurial like, yeah, That's a really, that's it for those of you don't know. We're in the Philadelphia market. We're talking about the South Jersey shore.

[00:24:11] We're not talking about central and north because we know where that goes. But we're talking about the South Jersey shore. Yeah. And the South Jersey shore, you know, I would say like, what? 80, 90% of the people who own property down there. They're equally rentals. Yeah.

[00:24:24] They only spend a couple weeks or a couple months down there a year. And then, you know, especially if you're doing weekly rentals down there. Yeah. Even if you have a good property manager, like this, this can fall by the wayside. Yep.

[00:24:38] So we talked for hours just like, you got to do this. You got to do that. And, you know, I said, have you, how are you collecting your leads and how are you communicating with your clients? Like, I mean, we went like soups and nuts on it.

[00:24:49] That's cool. And so in the end after we kind of got done everything, I did recommend rebook storm. Nice. And the e-meth was one because I'm like, one of the things he said was, you know, I started this out and had a couple homes.

[00:25:06] And now he's got like a couple hundred homes. Oh, wow. Where he's for him. You know, doing this maintenance on. So I kind of wanted to like plant the seed as like, okay, like, as thing get busier,

[00:25:19] you're going to need to like have people have roles and have responsibilities. Wow. And, you know, kind of, get you mentoring. Yeah. I love it. Oh, it's like, you know, having those conversations is like the best. Hey, part of the reason why we're doing this. Yeah.

[00:25:36] And the other two were so the one book was e-meth rich dad poor dad, which is another favorite of mine. It's funny. Never read it. Yeah. And then profit first. I don't even know that one. Profit first. I couldn't catch any.

[00:25:52] But the premise is he's he's an accountant. I'll watch the movie folks. Yeah. Just go to. But his, he's an accountant in his premises like the first dollar generated January 1st. This is like your profit and you put that profit here. Oh.

[00:26:11] And then the business runs like, you know, after that, very cool. So a couple of books for anybody that's looking for business, business owners, entrepreneurial type of books that kind of dive into. But he was he was super appreciative.

[00:26:26] He was like, oh, man, even the one I was like, all right, listen, you're going to need it like a CRM. You're going to need to like, away to manage it. Yeah. So I'm literally like on the computer, my hair goes to what was you doing like Excel.

[00:26:36] Google, she was. Yeah. Yeah. That's technically that's a CRM. It is. So and I always like, well, I wasn't having a lot of capabilities. I was like, well, take a look at this site and I like steer to move it like this like,

[00:26:47] I don't even know what it's it's for like, service like, you know, your it's a generic service CRM kind of. Yeah. Okay. But it ties in like texting. So like I was telling him, like, you know, how do you know someone went out?

[00:27:01] How do you remind a client that you're going out? You know, and I was like, well, you could like remind them you're going out. And you could have the guy that's doing the work like take a picture and like validate that. What did he do?

[00:27:13] Sure, you know, for the client and boom, boom, boom, and he's like, he's like, hold on slow down. Oh, I just broke my pencil. Yeah. So he was like super appreciative and he's like, I got to check these books out like just kind of like overload

[00:27:25] on information, but he was so into it and I love the, you know, I love, you know, I love conversations like that and talking them through it. And I hope I hope it takes off. I hope he's like the king of like staff jersey. That is great.

[00:27:38] I love that example and we're going to close this one out on that one folks. So thank you again for tuning into bricks and risk. See you soon. Thank you for joining us on another episode of bricks and risk.

[00:27:53] Our goal is that you walk away with one or two valuable nuggets. And we greatly appreciate you sharing your time with us today. You can find all B&R episodes on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and anywhere else you get your podcast content.

[00:28:10] Until next time, keep learning and keep growing.