How to Leverage a Remote Team to Grow your Business

John Harcar (00:00.948)
Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and we’re here today with Pete NeUbig. And what we’re going to talk about is how to leverage a remote workforce to really grow your real estate investment business. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, you know, we help real estate investors, service providers, and really all real estate entrepreneurs, 2 to 5X their business.

Pete Neubig (00:01.24)
Hey guys, welcome back to the show. I’m your host John Harcar and we’re here today with Pete NeUbig and what we’re going to talk about is how to leverage a remote workforce to really grow your real estate investment business. Remember guys, at Investor Fuel, you know, we help real estate investors, service providers and really all real estate entrepreneurs 2 to 5X their business.

John Harcar (00:23.848)
by giving them tools, giving them resources to help build the businesses they want to build and develop the lifestyles they’ve always dreamed of living. So Pete, welcome to the show.

Pete Neubig (00:24.078)
by giving them tools and resources to help build the businesses they want to build and develop the lifestyles they’ve always dreamed of living. So Pete, welcome to the show. John, thanks for having me on. Really appreciate it.

John Harcar (00:34.962)
No, man. Yeah, you’re very welcome. And I’m super excited. I know that, you know, I’ve used a remote workforce and I’m excited to talk about that. But before we get into the weeds, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about yourself, you know, where you’re from, how you got into real estate, et cetera.

Pete Neubig (00:38.613)
I know that I’ve used a remote workforce and I’m excited to talk about that. But before we get into the weeds, why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about yourself, where you’re from, how you got into real estate, et cetera. Yeah, I’ll give my 50 plus years in about five minutes. How’s that? There we go. We just digested it. So I grew up in New York City in the Bronx. I live in Houston, Texas.

John Harcar (00:57.716)
There we go. Reader’s Digest version.

Pete Neubig (01:07.468)
When I was growing up, my family always told me, go get good grades in high school, go to college and then go get a good job. And I got okay grades. I went to an okay college and I got an okay job. And I did that for many years. And I just kept thinking there was more to it than just going to work, going home, drinking beer and just hanging out. And in 2000, I graduated college in 92 and 2000, I started buying properties. And at the time,

John Harcar (01:14.772)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (01:28.83)
sure.

Pete Neubig (01:37.327)
I wanted to own a business, but I didn’t really know, I didn’t think I was smart enough to own a business. So I’m like, well, I’ll just learn how to buy properties. And I was very fortunate in Houston, there was a local investment club and I joined them and they kind of helped me through the whole process of buying my first properties. And then I bought a bunch of properties and I bought so many that I couldn’t manage them. So I then created a management firm and I quit my full-time job at age 41. I started my management firm.

John Harcar (01:49.223)
Okay.

John Harcar (02:05.332)
Okay.

Pete Neubig (02:06.574)
The management firm started managing third party. So we were managing for other people. At the time I owned 31 homes and two apartment complexes and still not making any money, still needed my full time job. And it wasn’t until I started third party managing where I was actually started making money, realized quickly that the homes I bought were the bad ones. And we can talk about that a different show about how I lost money on my apartment complex and the homes and that I started making money on the management firm.

John Harcar (02:19.742)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (02:35.656)
Hmm.

Pete Neubig (02:35.854)
And then what I realized is as I was building the management firm, the management firm, for me to be profitable, I had to really stress my team out. And then when, right before somebody would leave, I would go and hire somebody else. Like, hey, let’s add to the team. And then I’d be like cash negative again. And then it was on the seesaw. And that’s when I realized if I can hire remote team members,

John Harcar (02:51.764)
Sure.

Pete Neubig (03:00.792)
for a third of the cost, I can hire more people, get more stuff done, and I can be profitable. And that’s when I ended up really supercharging my business, growing it to three markets. We were in Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and we then sold that company. And then I took a job with the company that bought us, and I realized that I’m no longer employable.

John Harcar (03:06.419)
Mm-hmm.

Pete Neubig (03:26.446)
So I’ve been 10 years out of the workforce, got back into the workforce, like this isn’t good. So I decided what am I going to do next? And I’m like, well, let me help people that with remote team members, cause that’s how I’ve literally made my company profitable. So I created a VPN solutions, which is a marketplace that connects real estate with the real estate industry and really focusing on property management with remote team members in, I think we’re in 120 countries.

John Harcar (03:31.155)
Mm-hmm.

Pete Neubig (03:54.627)
that we can find them and hire them. that’s about 50 years in three minutes. So there you go.

John Harcar (03:54.802)
Wow.

John Harcar (04:01.492)
Kind of the nutshell. Got it. New York to Houston, big change. Was that for school?

Pete Neubig (04:07.758)
No, actually got had a job opportunity and I Thought like I’d be in Houston for a year. I call Houston the Roach Motel you check in you don’t check out, you know Houston’s a great place to live. It’s a terrible place to visit and When I moved down here, I was still a young man and I’m like, well, I’ll just you know I’ll just polish get my resume going. I’ll move back and yeah next thing, you know, I’m like

John Harcar (04:13.319)
Okay.

John Harcar (04:20.884)
Yeah.

Pete Neubig (04:36.238)
buying houses, I couldn’t do that in New York. I couldn’t buy the houses in New York City. Because the price or because? Yeah, the price.

John Harcar (04:41.14)
Because the price or because I mean, is that type? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So in 2000, you’re buying homes. Obviously, we know what comes eight years later, right? How did you navigate that? You know, the fall of the market? I mean, were you were you holding properties still then? What were you doing?

Pete Neubig (04:58.774)
Yeah, you know what’s funny and okay so in 2007 right before you know and up to 2008 I was wholesaling properties and We were doing really well I was so you know I basically would wholesale or optioning at the time was called is I’d find somebody who wanted to sell the property I would negotiate down with them. I would negotiate a price right I needed to have some

John Harcar (05:08.245)
wow, okay.

Pete Neubig (05:20.782)
something in it for me and then I would turn around, I would sell it or option the contract to an investor. And what I realized, the end of 07, early, early 08, I was getting way more sellers and no buyers. All the buyers were gone. And then I came up with this great idea, why don’t I buy all the properties? So I found a bank, local bank. I don’t have to have local banks anymore because my local bank I’ve bought like three times since then.

John Harcar (05:26.845)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (05:35.154)
buyers. Interesting.

John Harcar (05:45.657)
Maybe our credit unions or something.

Pete Neubig (05:48.595)
I ended up connecting with this investor. He’s selling a bunch of homes. I bought a bunch of homes from him, all low income stuff. The bank, it was crazy. I walked into the bank and I’m sitting there and this is the first time I’m getting a commercial kind of bank loan because I’m buying a package of six houses, right? Everything before that was done through your normal mortgage lender. Whereas by the way, with the mortgage lender, even back then before, wait, when you didn’t have a pulse like

John Harcar (06:05.651)
Okay.

John Harcar (06:11.048)
Right.

Pete Neubig (06:16.558)
But still back then you had to have like, had to give them everything, like all the information. So I go on this bank, they get my driver’s license, they make me fill out, I think like four slices of paper, right? Four pieces of paper. And like, okay, thanks. I go, what happened? I just bought six homes. It was like the easiest deal I’ve ever done. So then I got crazy and I’m like, okay, well hell, let’s go buy more like this. And so in 08, I was buying properties.

John Harcar (06:16.628)
you

John Harcar (06:32.692)
Yeah, Yeah, why not buy another 20?

Pete Neubig (06:43.95)
Cause I had the, cause I had means to, to, uh, to cash and yeah, I held them and, that, but, but because I bought all those properties in Oh eight, by the time 11 rent came in, um, I owned 31 of them and I was buying John, was buying bad properties. Okay. Like, like in the MLK area and everybody here is MLK. It’s like the worst area town. Typically not always, but typically, uh, I was buying $30,000 homes back in 2007, 2008.

John Harcar (06:46.812)
And you were holding or were you selling? You were holding.

John Harcar (06:58.397)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (07:01.822)
Yeah, like a real,

John Harcar (07:09.63)
Well, there’s usually places you don’t buy.

There’s usually two places you don’t buy on number streets and on president streets. know MLK is not a president street, but close enough is what my thing always was, right? You you find those areas that have the MLKs that have the Washingtons that have, it just tends to be, you overall. But anyways, so you’re buying, so you’re doing that, you got a mentor, right? Tell me about the mentor and tell me how important that was for your growth and success.

Pete Neubig (07:31.996)
Yeah extremely important so when I when I hired when I went with the you know Lifestyles Unlimited is the name of the company that was there still they’re still around They were around 20 years ago still around and I had a mentor and that mentor was the number one reason why I went why pulled the trigger and bought my first property because I was so scared

John Harcar (07:48.871)
Okay.

John Harcar (08:00.82)
Mm-hmm.

Pete Neubig (08:01.194)
to do it. I was just so unknown dealing with residents and dealing with maintenance and toilets and taxes and tenants. my, you know, I just had no idea how to do it. was an IT guy for my life. I didn’t know what to do, how to do it. And they really, you know, was able to kind of be there in case something did happen that I didn’t know. They were like a safety blanket.

John Harcar (08:08.424)
Yeah.

John Harcar (08:25.588)
Mm-hmm.

Pete Neubig (08:25.846)
If you’re listening to this and you’re thinking about getting into real estate and you just need that nudge, go find a mentor or find a real estate investment group and find like a meetup group. I promise you, what is it the old saying? Hang around the five people you want to be the most. Start hanging around with those folks. And what happened was I went from being scared to own a home to like now it was just like, hey, how many do you own? The mentality, the mind shift was really crazy.

John Harcar (08:41.799)
Right.

John Harcar (08:53.684)
Yeah, and that’s the biggest part. That’s big part of this industry too is when you’re getting into it is having that mindset. And I know in my experience, I’m mentors help tremendously as well.

Pete Neubig (09:05.87)
Yeah, also the also like it’s a talk about relationships and connections right with the real estate group You’re finding people who are looking to sell homes because they want to go to apartment complexes or they’re they’re selling homes because they’ve got all the depreciation out of them They have there’s reasons why they sell on you know, just and then you also meet the insurance agents You also meet the mortgage brokers. You also meet the maintenance teams You’ll you you meet the VA guy the virtual assistant guy, right? You meet everybody through those relationships. So highly recommended, you know meetups and

John Harcar (09:10.45)
Yeah.

John Harcar (09:20.116)
Yep.

John Harcar (09:27.123)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (09:32.126)
Yeah.

Pete Neubig (09:34.862)
investment groups if you have them. know, and back in 05, 07, internet wasn’t what it is today. So, you know, in real life was really important.

John Harcar (09:36.582)
yeah.

John Harcar (09:40.74)
No, no, there’s so many ways you can fail. And there’s so many, so many pitfalls and, know, that, and there’s so much information out there nowadays too, is that, you know, finding that mentor is going to help guide you on that right path.

Pete Neubig (09:55.407)
Agreed. You retired at 41 you said? Well, I call it retirement, but honestly, I quit my job. I was an IT guy for a retailer and I was, I was like the senior systems engineer and I left that job to start Empire Property Management and I went from making, you know, six figures a year in 2011 down to $12,000 a year.

John Harcar (09:56.564)
You retired at 41 you said?

John Harcar (10:05.78)
right?

Pete Neubig (10:25.55)
because I started a business, but I have my real estate license at the time. I slung real estate on the side, made about $80,000 for the year, which is not terrible slinging real estate. But the main thing was, the reason why I felt like I was retired, John, is I owned my time. I had my time and I didn’t have a boss anymore. it’s good and bad, right? Because the buck stops with you, but the buck stops with you.

John Harcar (10:32.041)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (10:43.838)
Got it.

John Harcar (10:52.848)
Mm hmm. But the bucks out with you. If you’re not working, you’re not working or you’re not making if you’re not working. Yeah.

Pete Neubig (10:58.796)
That’s it. And, you know, I’m a big believer in, in mentors and coaches. So I actually hired a business coach before I quit my job. I had a business coach, because I was starting the property manager firm while I was working. So another thing that I think a lot of people do is they get sick of their job or they listen to a podcast or they read a book and they go, my God, I’m going to go ahead and start my new life. And they quit their job. And then they’re like, okay, now I’m going to go try to build something or try to start something.

John Harcar (11:23.604)
quit their job.

Pete Neubig (11:28.97)
I literally built Empire for over a year while I was working. And it just kept taking more and more time. All of sudden my weekends were gone, my nights were gone, my lunch hour was gone. Now I’m like in between meetings working on stuff for the property management firm. So it was evident that it was going to be something. I didn’t know how good it could be, but it was evident that it was gonna be something. So I probably quit my job a little too late.

John Harcar (11:32.658)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (11:40.208)
you

John Harcar (11:44.809)
Yeah.

Pete Neubig (11:54.767)
But if you’re thinking about quitting your job to become a full-time real estate investor, you need the job to get the real estate unless you have private equity or private money. just be very careful and be very mindful. Don’t leave the job too soon. I’d rather leave the job later than sooner. And I left my job later. I probably stayed about eight months too late. Or at least make sure you have enough to do. Right.

John Harcar (12:01.971)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (12:10.717)
Yeah.

John Harcar (12:16.432)
Or at least make sure you have enough reserves. So you’re so now you’re doing this and when did the whole VA thing come in? The virtual assistant part come in or when did you start using remote people?

Pete Neubig (12:29.215)
I started using them. I want to say 2014 2015 timeframe and the reason why I was using them is you remember back then everybody had with this thing called an office right so we had like brick and mortar we had these things called office spaces right and if you think about it it’s so weird to think about it now but back then like you know I don’t

John Harcar (12:42.344)
What’s that?

Pete Neubig (12:52.524)
I know you’re in Idaho, so you probably don’t have as much traffic as we do in Houston, but I can promise you, 20 miles away from an office during the week is over an hour commute. Easily. And so if you think about it, I’m trying to pick from a pool of people that live less than 20 miles from the office. So that really, really reduces the pool. Secondarily, we were a startup firm with

John Harcar (13:03.548)
An hour drive.

John Harcar (13:17.832)
limits you yet.

Pete Neubig (13:22.222)
not private equity backed and we had no money. It wasn’t like we had millions of dollars that we were investing. I was bootstrapped. And so we have a lot of these oil and gas firms here. We couldn’t compete with them. So I’m looking at hiring people at a lower cost. A maintenance coordinator doesn’t deserve $60,000 a year. It’s a $30,000 a year job, but people don’t…

John Harcar (13:31.561)
Mm.

Pete Neubig (13:50.489)
people couldn’t work or don’t want to work for that amount. And I don’t blame them because it’s below poverty line. I get that, but that’s what the job role can afford and that’s what the job role was paying. So now when you do get somebody that takes the job for $35,000 a year, whatever it was, you’re getting kind of a lower quality person. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully, but typically they’re GED, don’t have a high school diploma or just a high school diploma, no college.

John Harcar (13:54.76)
Right.

John Harcar (14:11.685)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Pete Neubig (14:18.88)
And typically they had challenges outside their outside in their personal life outside the business that would bring it in. Car doesn’t work. They can’t come in. The baby daddy, you know, can’t can’t watch the kid. They can’t come in. It’s always something going on. Right. It’s always something going on. So we were getting this these these lower type folks and they just sort as a J.O.B. They didn’t see it as career.

John Harcar (14:27.006)
Sure.

John Harcar (14:30.9)
Yeah, yeah, my mom I’m watching my I take care of my parents or whatever.

John Harcar (14:48.808)
Mm-hmm.

Pete Neubig (14:48.812)
Right? And so it didn’t matter to them. Like just come in when they could, when they, when they wanted to, so to speak. And so, what we just, what we found is like, Hey, we can hire people, in Mexico at the time for about six to seven bucks an hour. Today, those same people are probably worth, they’re probably gonna, you’re gonna have to pay about 10 to $11. Right? It’s, it prices increased everywhere around the world, not just in the United States, especially for labor. But let’s talk about.

John Harcar (15:09.385)
Yeah.

John Harcar (15:13.972)
Mm-hmm.

Pete Neubig (15:17.198)
So instead of paying somebody 35, $40,000 a year, I can pay somebody $6 an hour. Well, I can afford to hire three people for that one person. And these three people are obviously bilingual. They have college education and at $6 an hour, they were making more than their parents or more than anybody else. They were getting paid equal to or better than the market. So now I’m paying market wages. And so now I’m getting much better talent.

And now they’re seeing this as a career, not as a JLB. So I’m just getting better quality people and I’m getting more people. And if you know anything about property management, the tasks are like water. They come in all the time and you have to basically get them out and get them shipped out and turn around as quickly as possible. And if you have bad communication, you are going to have churn. People are going to leave you.

John Harcar (16:02.323)
Yeah.

John Harcar (16:13.011)
Yes.

Pete Neubig (16:13.034)
And so if you have bad communication, you’re typically running a reactive business. And that’s what exactly was happening to me. I was running a very reactionary business. I was trying to grow. Our churn rate was huge. People were unhappy. Residents weren’t staying. It was a, it was a, it was a cluster. It was a nightmare. And then I ended up, you know, basically hiring a bunch of remote team members, getting rid of some of my bad apples. Cause by the way, the bad apples stay, the good apples leave.

John Harcar (16:30.003)
Mm.

John Harcar (16:40.114)
Yep, that’s true.

Pete Neubig (16:40.492)
Right? And I didn’t believe that until it happened to me. Right? I had one of my top performers comes in hands me a resignation and she basically said, I’m leaving because you did nothing about this other person who is a poor performer. And my business coach told me that was going to happen and I didn’t believe it. And it happened. And I’m like, that’s it. I’m in the business of making sure that I only have high performers and I get rid of the poor performers. And so we changed our whole business around. So I’ll give you quick numbers.

John Harcar (16:53.044)
Hmm.

John Harcar (17:03.624)
Yeah, yeah.

Pete Neubig (17:09.806)
52 % of our revenue was payroll. When I hired the remote team members, it went to 36%. The average for a service-based company should be between 30 and 34%. But think about it, 56 to 34, 36, call 20 points, every dollar saved is a dollar earned. Unlike if I invested a dollar in marketing, I get 20 cents back, right, 20 % profit margin.

John Harcar (17:18.312)
Wow.

John Harcar (17:35.731)
Right.

Pete Neubig (17:35.875)
So that was the first thing. The second thing was our churn rate went from 34 % down to 20%, which 20 % is industry standard, 34 % is incredibly high. So this showed that we had more people, less portion of our revenue, and we’re providing a better service, which then allowed our referral rate to go up and allowed us to do more…

John Harcar (17:54.964)
Mm.

Pete Neubig (18:03.822)
We could expand our services. So we were able to expand our services, which brought in more revenue, which now all of a sudden, now our profit margin is much higher. And now everybody’s happy. I’m happy, the team’s happy, the clients are happy, the residents are happy, everybody’s happy.

John Harcar (18:06.396)
Yeah, offer more offer more

John Harcar (18:19.956)
How did you find these remote folks? mean, is there, I mean, did you just go online and look for remote work or how did you get these guys?

Pete Neubig (18:29.048)
Yeah, so back then, excuse me, back then there was a company that I found that was in the industry and they had a company in Mexico and that’s how I found my first folks through them. Today, internet’s way better than it used to be and there’s companies like Upwork and like VPM now that today if you needed to go find a remote worker, I highly recommend going to vpmsolutions.com, especially if you’re in real estate because our platform

John Harcar (18:41.14)
Okay.

Pete Neubig (18:58.954)
is geared for real estate. And what do I mean by that? Well, we advertise real estate type companies and jobs so that people create profiles. And then we also have courses that candidates can take that are property management, real estate specific. We also have search criteria that you can search by specific real estate, know, softwares, you know, and skills.

John Harcar (19:15.442)
Hmm, okay.

Pete Neubig (19:26.798)
And then we also have resources for the industry that we give away free. So we have KPIs and job descriptions and company training. We have a training on disk. We have a training on how to hire a remote team. We have a training on insurance. So they’re not for virtual team members. They’re for companies as well. So today is easier than ever before to find remote team members.

John Harcar (19:29.948)
Okay.

John Harcar (19:38.366)
Awesome. Awesome.

John Harcar (19:44.254)
How?

Yeah, I know it sounds like how are you a remote or these VAs trained? Are you hiring people that already have this knowledge in real estate that I’ve already maybe, you know, had the training of speaking with sellers? I mean, how do you find these?

Pete Neubig (19:59.215)
Very few, you know, there’s billions of people out there in the world and not everybody in Philippines has has experience in property management or in real estate so we get people that are interested in that through our through our targeted marketing and then what we do is we have We have some courses that they can take so so like for example, we have we have this 12 our our signature courses our property management 101 we have

John Harcar (20:02.388)
Sure.

John Harcar (20:07.997)
Right.

John Harcar (20:18.322)
Okay.

Pete Neubig (20:26.862)
One through twelve. It’s nine hours of content. You can take those twelve courses get nine hours of content Does that mean you’re gonna be able to get hired and be a property manager? Absolutely, what it means is you get hired and you understand what D D D o means you understand what the language means you understand the life cycle of property management so that way when they do train you you you have a base and So that’s what we try to do. We try to train them on

on all things real estate so they have a base. And John, honestly, I’m a big fan. Every time I’ve hired people with experience, never worked out. We are not sending people to Mars here. I’m not trying to build the next spaceship. I’m trying to get somebody to do maintenance coordination. I’m trying somebody to do appointment setting. I’m trying to get somebody to do lease ups. I have processes and policies and procedures.

John Harcar (21:05.839)
No.

you

John Harcar (21:20.178)
Hmm

Pete Neubig (21:24.447)
If I can get you the right attitude and I know you’re the right, you know, personality profile with some training so you have the ability to learn, you’re gonna be a good fit in the organization.

John Harcar (21:36.42)
I know in my past experiences and I’ve hurried around and how are you combating, you know, especially if you have these VAs that are calling for investors, right? Calling homeowners. How are they dealing with, or how are you teaching them to deal with the emotional intelligence? Right? Because we both know that if I, call me and I say, yeah, for a million bucks, I’ll sell my house.

We know that’s a not that’s a joke, right? Whereas these other folks, you know, in my experience, some of the A’s, they don’t know that difference and they can’t read that. So do you help teach that or, know, do you provide a way for these folks to learn that?

Pete Neubig (22:11.729)
Yeah, we have we have an English test on our platform that’s free that people can take and so, you know Yes, there’s a difference between I understand English and I can speak it and it is understand There’s a difference of understanding the colic wisdoms or the little you know the little you know as Yeah, and so the English test will help with that, you know

John Harcar (22:29.402)
nuances of yeah, yeah, no, I get

Pete Neubig (22:36.714)
I will say, I’m painting a broad brush here, John, so take this with a grain of salt. What I’m finding is people in South, people in Central America and Mexico have a much better understanding of our language than somebody in Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia, they’ll speak it, but they don’t get the jabs, they don’t get the innuendos.

John Harcar (22:55.335)
Okay.

John Harcar (23:02.1)
Yeah. Yeah. And I was going to ask if there is, because I’ve heard all, you know, from all sides, you know, where there might be better VA’s, you know, what come from maybe South America, maybe the Philippines, and you kind of maybe just answer that question.

Pete Neubig (23:15.096)
Well, again, it depends on the job role, right? So again, I’m going to paint a very broad brush here. in the Philippines, it’s a bad they get a bad. They get a they get a they get a kind of a bad name in a way, because I was like, well, just the Philippines and they don’t do X, Y and Z. There’s a lot of people out there. And if you do have a good hiring process, you’ll weed out the ones that aren’t a fit for your company. But broadly, broadly, you know, talking the people in the Philippines are great.

John Harcar (23:17.617)
On the job, yeah.

John Harcar (23:27.227)
Bad rap.

John Harcar (23:38.985)
Got it.

Pete Neubig (23:45.391)
for detail work, back office work, stuff that has to be, you know, happened the same thing over and over. And broadly speaking, they’re not really good talking to people and kind of having to learn on the fly, right? They’re very good with structure, right? And of course, when somebody in the United States hears a Southeast Asian accent versus a Hispanic accent, well, the Hispanic accent, they think they’re in Houston, right? The Southeast Asian accent, they think they’re in a call center in the Philippines.

John Harcar (23:53.214)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (24:01.278)
Got it.

John Harcar (24:14.052)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Pete Neubig (24:14.636)
So there’s a little bit of that. There’s a little bit of that, but I will tell you this. My customer service person at VPM solutions is from the Philippines. So I literally just said, like, don’t hire somebody for customer service Philippines. And that’s who my guy is. And so just because, you know, you hear Philippines is bad, just let everybody apply, let them go through your hiring process and then let the best person win. And you’d be surprised. There’s some really good people out there.

John Harcar (24:27.991)
It’s job specific, yeah.

John Harcar (24:39.092)
Yeah.

Pete Neubig (24:44.226)
Just like in Mexico, you can have property accountants. That’s not what they’re known for, but you can have them and they work out really well.

John Harcar (24:47.892)
Sure.

John Harcar (24:52.5)
What are some mistakes people make when looking for a VA that you can help avoid?

Pete Neubig (24:56.814)
Yeah, okay. got a bunch of them here. All right. Number one mistake is, okay, John told me, Hey Pete, John called me. He told me I need a VA. So I’m to get a VA. Okay. All right, Fred. What, is the VA going to do? Uh, I don’t know. The first mistake is not having a complete job description, right? Having a job description that says answer phone calls. All other duties signed by management is not a job description. You have to be detailed.

If you don’t know what they’re supposed to do and you’re just going to hire somebody because they’re cheap, that’s the wrong way to go about it. If you don’t know what they’re supposed to do, they have no idea what they’re supposed to do. So job description is the number one challenge. Number two challenge is I have no core values. Right? So I’m hiring, but I have no core values. And I know it sounds kind of hocus pocus like, my God, core values. What all it means is

What are the type of characteristics that you want in the foxhole with you? Who’s the type of person you want to have on your team? And if you don’t know and you don’t have any and you have a team, you have core values. They’re just not the ones you want. They’re just coming up. They’re bubbling up from the team up. Core values must be from the head down. And if you’re just a real estate investor and you don’t have a team, you still have personal core values. Those are the ones you have to push down. So I need to know the type of person

John Harcar (25:55.572)
you

Pete Neubig (26:20.578)
that I want to give a ticket to get on the boat. The job description is the instructions to the seat on the boat and the personality profile. I’m a big disc guy. If you’re a realtor, you probably know disc. I’m a big fan of that. Whether you use predictive index or predictive index or anything like that, I only know disc, but that then tells you, okay, this is the right person for this seat. If you have those three things down,

John Harcar (26:34.099)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (26:45.852)
Right, right.

Pete Neubig (26:48.974)
The chance of hiring somebody is going be more successful. The next mistake they make is they don’t know how to create a scorecard. I hire somebody and they don’t know what success looks like. I don’t know what success looks like. What is the key performance indicator for that job role? And then are they hitting it? And then the next one after that is training. I want to hire somebody with experience because I am lazy and I don’t want to train my person.

John Harcar (27:01.288)
Mm.

John Harcar (27:12.296)
Yeah.

Pete Neubig (27:19.042)
Right? So just want to hire somebody and I want to abdicate. So the next mistake after that is management. I’m either going to abdicate, delegate and manage, or I’m going to micromanage. And I find it very funny when I have somebody in my office making $80,000 a year and they come in late, they hang out by the water cooler, they go to lunch late, they leave early and I don’t give two craps about that person.

John Harcar (27:30.932)
Mm.

Pete Neubig (27:47.865)
But I’m paying somebody six bucks an hour and I want to know everything they did. want to, I want to have their screen capture. They may, if they went to the restroom, how dare they like, like, like I’m worried about stealing time. Meanwhile, the guy still making 80 grand a year is stealing. He’s stealing six hours a day from you. So, so that’s, so then the other side of that is I’m going to advocate meaning, okay, John, I hired you. I give you basically an hour of training and that’s it. Good luck.

John Harcar (28:01.285)
Right.

still in time all over the place. Right. Incredible.

Pete Neubig (28:18.57)
And then I say, I pat myself on the back, man, I’m not a micromanager. You’re just as bad because people want to be managed. They need to be managed. Whether they’re remote or not, they need to be managed and you need to have a structure. You need to spend a lot of time with people up front. If you’re working 12 hours a day, great, you get to work 13 hours a day now because you have to spend an hour training this person over next two to three to four weeks. Then after that,

John Harcar (28:26.44)
Yeah. They need to be led.

John Harcar (28:44.636)
Mm-hmm.

Pete Neubig (28:45.528)
You have to have a weekly meeting with them and meet with them and you have to have an agenda. Don’t meet with them just to say, Hey, what’s going on? How the, you know, the Mets are doing great. Like, no, you have to go in and say, here’s the agenda. Here’s this, here’s that. And you have to go over your KPIs. have to go over challenges and your job is to make sure that you get rid of all the challenges for them. How do you make your job? How do you make their job easier? So lots of mistakes that I went through a bunch of them. So.

John Harcar (28:54.1)
you

John Harcar (29:08.785)
easier.

Yeah, I think a lot of the mistakes I hear, you know, how people give up on on VA so quickly is like you said, they don’t train, you know, they don’t they don’t make them accountable. They don’t teach them these things. They don’t they don’t put the effort it needs. They do an hour. I’m good. Goodbye. You know, so how or what resources would you recommend to someone that’s going to that’s looking to hire a VA outside of calling your company?

Pete Neubig (29:40.479)
Outside of calling my company, don’t know. mean, honestly, I think we have a different solution and a much better solution than anybody out there. But I think the first thing is create your job description. Find out what, you know, know, I think that’s the main thing. Like, what does that look like? OK, so how do I know what what can a VA do? Right. And so my answer to that is always like.

If they don’t have to be at a property physically and they don’t need to have a license, they can do anything. And so the way you, the way you come up with the job description is a couple of different ways. One way could be, I’m just going to do a time study. All the things that are low level, low enjoyment tasks or things I don’t like to do, I’m going to create a job description. So that’s the first thing. Right? The first thing is like, okay, before I even know where I can get a VA, what can a remote team member do for me and my organization? Right?

John Harcar (30:29.683)
Mm-hmm.

Pete Neubig (30:34.542)
And so the next piece is if you’re a little bit bigger and you have a few processes, you can just document a process and then create a JavaScript from that process. So I think that’s the first thing you need to do. There are other resources out there, but I’m not gonna use my time to give my…

John Harcar (30:44.66)
Okay, there you go.

Okay.

John Harcar (30:52.193)
No, no, of course not. Well, in that being said, Pete, you know, I, this has been a lot of great information. If people do want to get ahold of you and they are looking to hire a VA, they want to reach out, how do they do that?

Pete Neubig (31:04.002)
Yeah, they can actually email me directly. Pete at vpmsolutions.com. I actually answer all my emails, so I do not have a executive assistant that answers my emails. Or you can go to our website vpmsolutions.com and you could book a demo.

John Harcar (31:22.068)
Okay, cool. Yeah, we’ll put all your links and everything down in the show notes.

So guys, I hope you got a lot of good information today about the world of remote workers, how it can grow your business. I would definitely reach out to Pete and his company to talk about how they can help you grow your business. Once again, Pete, thank you for all the good nuggets, man. There’s a lot of cool stuff that I think our listeners can grow off of. And I hope everyone, you all had a good show today. So Pete, thank you again. All right, guys, have a good one.

Pete Neubig (31:27.95)
So guys, I hope you got a lot of good information today about…

how it can grow your business. I would definitely reach out to Pete and his company to talk about how they can help you grow your business. Once again Pete, thank you for all the good nuggets man. There’s a lot of cool stuff that I think our listeners can grow off of and you know I hope everyone you all had a good show today. So Pete, thank you again. Thanks John. All right guys have a good one.