Sell More and Stress Less: Buy Back Your Time with Remote Workers

Stephen S. (00:02.677)
Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast where we interview all pros in real estate, the nation’s leading real estate entrepreneurs. So if you’re joining us for the second, third or hundredth time, you’re in for a treat today. And if it’s your first time, you’re also in for one because we’ve got Andres Palma in the house and we’re going to be talking about how you can buy back your time with remote workers. So just remember at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors.

service providers and real estate entrepreneurs, two to five X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. being said, Andres, welcome to the show.

Andres (00:42.498)
Thank you, Stephen. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Stephen S. (00:45.253)
I’m super excited to hop into today’s topic because it’s a it’s a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, which is setting up your business and your life in a way that you can buy back your time without having to have a super expensive local team in your office with a bunch of buildings and all that kind of stuff. So we’re going to hop right into it. But before we do that, I know you’ve been in business founded. I nimble here a little.

just shy of five years ago coming up on five year anniversary. Tell us a little bit about what got you into this space, how you saw a need for it and how you’ve gotten to where you’re at now.

Andres (01:23.662)
Well, Steven, started, I’m an attorney. So I used to work for a personal injury and work as company attorneys and estate planning attorneys. And one of the most expensive costs are every business is operational and overhead costs on building, as you said, building and teams. And it’s really hard to find the right time. It’s really hard. It’s like,

finding gold, It’s really hard to find the right team and it’s also expensive to retain them. So if you want to get your talent to a point that they spend one year, two years, it’s really hard if you’re not competitive enough in salary, right? So that’s how we came up with the idea of hiring someone remotely in Latin America. I’m from Venezuela, so…

That’s where we started. then my boss told me, hey, can you do this for a friend? And can you do this for this friend? And then that’s how we started. We started just before the pandemic and now we’re almost five years. And then what we did is we built a system where people can hire, manage, and pay remote employees at a fraction of the cost.

Stephen S. (02:46.873)
so it sounds like you didn’t necessarily fall into it by accident, but it was almost like there was a need for friends from where you’re originally from that were like, we need to work, and you were able to set up something to actually give them access to potential employers they otherwise wouldn’t have access to.

Andres (02:56.11)
Yeah.

Andres (03:05.08)
Correct, correct, yeah. That’s exactly what we did. I mean, it’s a win-win situation. There are really good professionals, high standard professionals, and that they need the job. And here, there are really good business owners that they need to cut on business expenses and operational expenses. And so it’s a win-win situation for everybody.

Stephen S. (03:32.041)
Yeah, that’s awesome. You know, it’s kind of funny too, because one of my really good, one of my best people I’ve ever hired was a remote worker from Venezuela. So that’s kind of funny. It wasn’t through your company, but that is kind of funny because I’ve had an incredible experience with all the remote workers that I’ve hired for various tasks and needs in my businesses throughout the past few years. So now what are some of the top ways that

What are some of the top ways that businesses, real estate investors, providers, et cetera, what are some things that they’re missing that they think cannot be done that has to be done by somebody in-house that you guys are really solving as like real problems in their business for a fraction of the cost it would take to hire someone domestically?

Andres (04:22.114)
Yeah, well, first of all, what I really see is the need of the follow up with the customer journey. So once you onboard a prospect, you need to follow up with that person to help them with the documents, their requirements, the documentation that they need to follow through the process with you guys. then once they start doing that, mean, the business owner

is in charge of getting the first contact, right? Or getting out there in advertisement. But then you get that prospect and you need to pre-qualify that prospect. You need to help that prospect with the documentation and follow through the whole process on customer journey. And that takes a lot of time. And sometimes you do all that investment in the whole process and then you don’t close the deal and then you lose ton of money on an assistant that is

doing calls for you and then if they don’t get closed, then you don’t get paid. But you do have to pay that person. So imagine if you can do that at a fraction of the cost, then of course you’re going to pay, but you’ll pay 30 % or 20 % of what you’re usually paying here in the United States and you’re still getting the job done. to be honest, you can do everything on a phone call or a Zoom call.

And we’re recording this remotely too. So it’s something that nowadays is the way that people are comfortable enough to work with. I mean, you get a call and you have to win that trust throughout a call. And then you do a Zoom call and you use remote tools to get in touch with your customer. So you can lower your operational costs just by hiring someone remotely, but at the same time,

given the high standard and a great customer service while you’re focusing on getting more clients.

Stephen S. (06:24.789)
Yeah, 100 % freeze up your time to do more money making activities. 100 % agree with you there. What are some of the things that differentiate what you’re doing at iNimble? Because I think at least from what I’ve seen, VA companies, remote work companies, like they’re becoming a really big thing that wasn’t as much utilized 20 years ago. But nowadays it seems like you run out to an office park, throw a stone and you hit a VA company.

Andres (06:28.78)
Yeah, yeah.

Stephen S. (06:53.461)
So what are the things that you guys do to really differentiate yourselves in the marketplace?

Andres (06:53.686)
Yeah.

Andres (06:59.49)
Yeah, so first of all, there’s three things if you want to grow a business, there are three things that you need to be aware of. we partnered with coaching companies that work along our customers to make them grow. So first of all, we established the right strategy for the client for them to grow. I mean, if they grow, we grow, right? So that’s…

the first step that we take, we need to organize or establish to have a look and analyze the business and say, hey, you need an intake person or hey, you need a manager that will take care of all these appointments centers or you need technical colors. That’s what you need. And then we establish them, we establish the process based on the personality perks that you need on that team. Because not everybody’s made it.

to be a sales person or not everybody can be a good marketer or a good virtual assistant. I mean, need to specific the personality traits to align whatever you need, whatever goals you have to that talent. And we take that very seriously. So every time that we align and we match this business owners with.

with virtual assistants and assist in sales and, and sales rep marketers. What we do is we take a look on their personality. We do a pre-vetting process. So, so we make sure that the process that we put in place in the beginning are aligned with the personality of these people. So you’re not getting, you’re not, you’re just not getting someone all of a sudden that is in another country. You don’t know. We pre-vet them and we make sure that they’re equipped.

with the personality and the experience they need to get to the goal. And after that, we set up the system, we align the person and the personality and the experience with the right goal. And then we check the results. And month to month, we check with the employer if we’re getting the results out of this team, and if we need to correct something or to train something or…

Andres (09:18.456)
to equip them with a specific software, we review that and we apply that and then the whole process start every month. So we’re not just matching you with some random VA in Latin America. We’re taking ownership and accountability on what we’re putting our work with. So we’re taking ownership on, we want you to achieve the results. We want…

your team to get there and we’re going to make sure they do it.

Stephen S. (09:52.021)
What are some of those unique ways that you like that workers before they get placed?

Andres (10:00.192)
We do, we develop a system based on AI and this assessments, personality assessment and therapy assessments. And what we did is we developed this AI tool called Olympia. And what we do is everybody that goes, that applies to our company, we put them through this, all these tests. we, once they finish this, we put them through this Olympia system that we created.

And now they will have a whole picture of the personality of this person. So we know the whole, we have like a X-ray of that person. once we know that we match that with the human factor of the business. That’s what it calls. So we develop, right. So we need someone with cells and you know that cells drive, right?

you don’t want someone introvert, you don’t want someone like technical, you want someone who is good at talking, who is reliable, who is likable, right? So that personality trait is really specific, right? So all the vetting that we do before we do interviews and before we put them in front of an employer, what we do is

We vet them and we do this process on determining what’s the X-ray, what’s the X-ray of their personality. And once we know that, now we put them in front of an employer and align them with the goal.

Stephen S. (11:43.337)
Yeah, absolutely, that’s super smart. What makes you really passionate about what you do?

Andres (11:49.294)
What makes me really passionate is being able help people in both ways. As we started this interview, mean, it’s a win-win situation, I mean, it’s just we’re cutting operational costs for business owners. And I myself, as a business owner, I know that’s the most difficult thing to do. I mean, to be able to make money, but at the same time save money, it’s like…

you have to spend money to make money, right? That’s what everybody tells you. But if you want to really grow your business, you don’t need to spend that kind of money if you’re smart, if you find ways around, right? And that’s what makes me passionate about to be able to help business owners and at the same time help professionals in Latin America that are really high standard. They’re really good people and they’re really talented.

and they just need that opportunity, that work opportunity to be able to grow as professionals. So that win-win proposal and that win-win situation, that’s what makes me the most passionate about it.

Stephen S. (13:02.941)
Yeah, and what are some of the challenges you see in your business when somebody is maybe skeptical about hiring a remote worker versus someone local?

Andres (13:13.73)
Yeah. Well, man, to be honest, it’s accountability. Is my remote employer really working? Are they just in front of the computer and watching Netflix? I mean, those are the questions that you get if you’re hiring remote. You get that’s why it’s inevitable to think that because you don’t see that person in front of you.

So you’re just depending on results. And that’s why the way that a remote environment needs to be put in place is based on results and based on processes that has regular checkings and regular results or regular products of a work that you can continuously check. And you will definitely see the results.

from both sides, from your employee and from the sales perspective. So at the end of the day, that’s actually the most difficult part, but at the same time, that’s our biggest differentiator, accountability. So we have been able to grow this way because we offer accountability. We offer

hey, these people are actually working for you. mean, they’re not watching actors, they’re not, you know, clocking in and then stepping away. They’re actually working in giving you results because at the end of the month, we’re going to provide you with these results. We’re going to report to you and check with you these results.

Stephen S. (14:55.667)
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense because, you know, like I have a personal experience where I hired a remote worker one time and it was completely my fault. Like that I wasn’t more…

more adamant on some of the accountability, but I also didn’t work with a VA company at the time. This was a person that had worked with some people in the past, had a great reputation. And, we hired, we hired her and she was actually primarily supporting one of the people on my team. And we, they worked with us for, you know, a little over a year. And it finally came to where my accountant was like, Hey,

Andres (15:14.126)
Yeah.

Stephen S. (15:39.509)
You know, you have this person, what is it that they actually do for you? And I was like, honestly, I don’t know. And so we did an audit of the actual time being spent and we were still paying them full time, but they were only working about 40 hours a month because we just didn’t have enough or didn’t put enough for them to do. So how can working with a VA company, a virtual professional company, remote worker company,

Andres (15:56.685)
Wow.

Stephen S. (16:08.041)
kind of save people from that with the accountability, for example, when they don’t know how to say this task should take this long. And since it’s by the hour, you’re like, think photography, for example, or not photography, but like digital design, things of those nature where it’s like, well, I don’t really know how long this thing takes. Like how can having those checks and balances through a remote work company help them actually save themselves from spending.

Andres (16:23.79)
you

Stephen S. (16:37.109)
1500 bucks out of pocket for work that’s actually not being done. They just don’t even know about

Andres (16:40.27)
Yeah.

Yeah, so we experienced that ourselves. So we’re talking from experience standpoint. That’s why we developed our own tracking system. So the way that we started living ourselves that situation and then we find out, hey, we need to track time and we need to check when they’re clocking in and clocking out, right? We need to know if they’re working on.

or not, right? And we need to develop a KPI system, which is every time that they complete a task, even if it’s a small task, they need to report it. And at the end of the day, we’ll check all those tasks because we know at the end of the day, all those tasks need this amount of time. So the five years, five years after that initial idea, we develop a system where we set up an implementer.

with someone who will just check with that person, with that business owner, that will list all those KPIs and the amount of time that they need to be investing in those KPIs. And those KPIs will be put in our software and you will be able to see it real time. And then you will log in, you just click and time tracker.

you will see that person is connected and is working. At the same time, will be able to see if that person has completed those KPIs in real time. So at the end of the day, you just need to monitor if the work has been done in the amount of time that you requested. And that’s actually the best way to determine if someone is working, is doing the job, is by the results. Because even if someone is sitting in front of you and they are

Andres (18:38.894)
quote unquote, working, they can be actually pretend they’re typing. And actually there’s a joke in the office, in the series office that the guy is just typing and thinking about going on a trip to the Bahamas. And that’s what actually happens. mean, even in a regular work environment, there are a lot of people that just pretending to work and then

they’re not doing anything because they’re just locked out. mean, they’re just thinking another thing or worry about what are they gonna do on Friday night or whatever. And that’s why you need to focus on the results, on the management on your team. Even if it’s a regular work environment. If someone is working, if you have a whole team and the team is working for you,

And you’re watching them. I mean, you can see them working. You can see them in front of the computer. You actually need to check if they’re working because at the end of the day, you need as a business owner is results. And what they want to give you results if they want to keep working with you, right? So it’s a win-win situation when you focus on results, not in just

the person sitting in front of the computer or just sitting in a chair. You want that person to be able to perform and give you results. So that’s the best way to approach anything. Remote team, of course, but any team is establishing a list of KPIs, a list of a strategy and the amount of time that needs to be added to those tasks. And at the end of the day, at the end of the week,

At end of the month, check the results.

Stephen S. (20:35.445)
Love that, absolutely. So, Andres, if people want to learn more about what you’re working on or they want to connect with you, where should they go for that?

Andres (20:47.262)
They can go to my Instagram, it’s Andres Palma. It’s Andres Palma, like my name just with it’s at the beginning. So add it’s Andres Palma.

Stephen S. (20:58.613)
Well, y’all go drop him a follow and check out what he’s got going on Andre some super grateful for you showing up today and and doing the recording with me here and Everyone I hope you enjoyed today’s show and if you’re like me, I know you got a ton of value from it We’ll see you on the next episode

Andres (21:06.702)
Thank you, Stephen.