Real Estate Rockstars Podcast Guest Spot: How to Outsource Cold Calling with Dan Austin

Mike DeHaan: [0:00] What is going on, guys? On today's collecting keys Friday focus, we are going to be posting something a little bit different than the typical monologue episodes that Dan and I do. We're doing a little deep dive into something. Instead, we are going to be posting an episode that Dan recently guested on for the Real Estate Rock Tars podcast hosted by Shelby Johnson. Shelby is an awesome real estate investor who was on our show back in episode one sixty one. Definitely wanna check that out. It was posted last November from 2023. And Dan was on the show recently. And it was a really good conversation they had specifically around hiring VAs and implementing them in your business. And we opted to share this episode because a, Shelby's awesome, and she does a really, really good job leading and engaging conversation. And b, it honestly gave an interesting side to Dan that was present without me kind of talking over him all the time and giving him the ability to show his expertise with somebody that isn't fully like, I don't know how to say like indoctrinated with our normal conversation style. Right? So anyways, say really awesome show with Dan being a guest on the real estate rock stars podcast was by Shelby Johnson. You can probably see it directly on there as well. But on their their RSS feed, you should go and subscribe to the real estate rock stars podcast as well, because they have a ton of good episodes over there and share a ton of knowledge.

Mike DeHaan: [1:20] And, let us know what you think. If you like these cross posts, if you don't like it, think it's interesting, you should shoot us a message on Instagram. I'm at Mike underscore invest. Let me know about thoughts by going this direction. But either way, I thought it was a really, really good conversation. And there's a tongue in glean from this episode. So anyways, enjoy this episode of Dan being a guest of the real estate rock stars podcast with Shelby Johnson.

Shelby Johnson: [1:44] Let's face it, cold calling sucks. So what do you do when you know you should be making those calls, but cannot stand the idea of having the life drained out of you by spending hours on the phone each day? Well, today's guest, Dan Austin, has closed over 500 transactions in four years between his agent and investor business by leveraging the power of virtual assistants as cold callers. Here's what to expect to learn in today's show. Where to find cold callers, red flags during the interview process, costs to expect, what to do once you've hired them, and stick around to the end if you're struggling to know when it might be time to fire. You're listening to The Real Estate Rockstars podcast, the show for agents who've been around the block and are finally ready to build a sustainable, scalable business. Learn the exact steps to build a business that runs like a machine, one you don't secretly hate or want to escape from. My name is Shelby Johnson. I'm a former army veteran turned real estate entrepreneur. I've closed hundreds of transactions as a solo agent, team leader, and real estate investor before hitting complete and utter burnout. And now, years later, I'm making a comeback. I am building my agent business from the ground up in a brand new city, Lexington, Kentucky. More on that journey coming soon, but for today, get ready to learn exactly how to hire a virtual assistant cold collar. Rockstars, welcome Dan Austin. Dan.

Shelby Johnson: [3:32] Okay. Let's pretend that I've got some open houses coming up, and I know I should be circle prospecting those neighborhoods. But the idea of cold calling makes me cringe so hard. But you know what? I've just decided, you know, I can fix this problem. I'll just hire a virtual assistant cold caller. What, Dan, what is step one? How do I do this?

Dan Austin: [3:53] Step one is honestly just finding the watering holes where you're gonna find these virtual assistants app. And and that I mean that because you got to go somewhere. Right? And and I'll be honest, like basic, the most basic way to do is just go to Upwork. We've all heard of it. Upwork is still produces from a cold caller standpoint, a really good pipeline. And that's because there's a lot of Egyptians on Upwork and that's one of the best places to hire cold callers. People don't know that. I did not know that. They have Egypt. So yes. So everybody thinks, Filipinos because the and The Philippines are great. We we have a ton of Filipino VAs doing different things, including phone sales for us too. But Egypt, actually, their English is one of their their they just train on it. They're really good. Their accents are really light where you'll you'll hear even with some Filipinos that are good. They'll have just like a slightly different accent that that's just a little more obvious to like a US based audience, where the Egyptians can't really. And if you go to like South America, Central America, if they've never lived in The US, their English is just it's just an accent that we recognize more as not not, you know, US based. And so, yeah, Egypt is a great spot. And a lot of times they're on Upwork, but you can find them.

Dan Austin: [5:02] I mean, we found VAs. My partner Mike found he's a Redditor. I'm not a Redditor, but he found one of some of our best employees on Reddit of on the sub boards there, not for callers, but other other virtual assistant roles. Or you can always take the easy route and just find a staffing company that'll do it for you. And those are 100% hit or miss and you can, you know, fail pretty quickly with some of those companies.

Shelby Johnson: [5:24] Okay. You've shocked me already within like fifty seconds. I'm like, dude, Egypt did not see that coming. And then Reddit, like what?

Dan Austin: [5:30] I know. I know.

Shelby Johnson: [5:32] Okay. So Upwork kinda saw that coming. And then I was going to ask you, like, you know, a lot of times people will just be like, well, I can pay this person to find, you know, just like you said, the staffing companies. Mhmm. But I guess, if we're gonna go the Upwork route

Dan Austin: [5:48] Yep.

Shelby Johnson: [5:48] Do you have like a duty description? Like, what do I need to do in order to pull in the best talent of what I'm actually looking So

Dan Austin: [5:56] it's just like any other hiring process in in reality. And you're gonna have to filter, filter, filter interview, and all that stuff. What I do is just like a super basic job description post on Upwork, or wherever I'm posting. And it's just like, need a cold caller. I'm a real estate agent. And you would not be, you will be very surprised to see that there's a ton of people that are like, oh, I worked for Keller Williams franchise and eXp franchise. I I've done all these these things and and they're gonna submit resumes. So obviously, experience is is really good, but it's not like required. Sometimes you'll get these people that are like, I worked for all these different different agents and did all these things. And that might not be good because their English won't be very well, like very good. And also they might just suck because they bounced around a ton of times. That's not always the case, but I always just look at that and say, I wonder why this person has no experience versus why this person has worked for 20 different people. Sometimes there's a reason, sometimes there's not a reason that matters anyways. So just a basic description, hey, this is what you're going be doing. You're going be calling prospects that might want to sell their home in, you know, my market.

Dan Austin: [6:59] I mean, it doesn't have to be anything super sophisticated because this is a lot of these countries where we're the watering holes where we're going to, this is like an industry, right? It would be the same thing as like posting a job ad for a real estate agent. Do you want to go be your own boss and do these? You know, you know how they are, right? Like it's so simple. Totally. Because everybody nowadays knows what a real estate agent does and kind of has in their sphere of influence knows someone that's already an agent. And so anyhow, yeah, basic job description post it and then when you're filtering it, this is the key, always ask them to post a recording of them. You can give them the script, attach a script, the script that you would want them to use for like prospecting And just attach it, say, hey, read this. Or one of the things I like the most because they can't practice it is say, hey, tell me about one of your favorite hobbies that you do in your free time. Because then they have to like come up, be creative and you kind of get their personality a little bit too. Because you know, in reality, as a real estate agent, you're probably not going to hire, most people are going to hire 50 of these people. You're going to hire one or two of them for your business. And so you can over a long period of time, you're going to build a relationship with them. So you want them to like fit into your culture.

Dan Austin: [8:08] You want them to be a cool person, so to speak.

Shelby Johnson: [8:11] Okay. Gotcha. So very basic job description. People are going to submit resumes. You're going to tell them, hey, do some sort of a recording, either the script or tell us about one of your hobbies. Do you do any like assessments upfront, like DISC assessment, Myers Briggs, any of that stuff?

Dan Austin: [8:25] Yeah. So I would recommend doing like a DISC just because like, again, if you're doing this, if you're bootstrapping this and you're like, I'm going to hire this person. I do want this person to work for me over a long period of time. And it's going be one of maybe two or three callers you have. Totally spend the time to do that and really see where they land out on the disc because for somebody that's going to be calling, this is a tough job. Like there's a reason why people don't want to do it themselves. It's tough. And people are gonna, you're going to sit on a dialer and you're going to be ring, ring, ring all day, you're gonna, you know, they go to bed hearing the ring dial tone in It's their ear, crushing. You know what I mean? And so they're doing that and then they're getting on the phone and they're gonna get a couple FUs, don't ever call me you piece of crap. Why are you doing this? And then they're gonna some conversations. And so maybe in every single day they spent eight hours calling for you, they're going to have one or two, two to three minute conversations. And that is worth its weight in gold, but that's what their job looks like. So you want to make sure that their disc, which is in my opinion, one of the best and simplest and easiest ways to figure out if a person is going be good in a, in a seat like a sales role.

Dan Austin: [9:24] And then from there, what the nice thing about doing that is, is a bunch of them won't submit a call recording. Several of them won't do the disc. And so you've already filtered out the people that would have never been good. And now you have, you know, an application in probably a day or two, you're gonna have 40 or 50 of these people that have applied to your simple job posting. And out of that, you're gonna have at least 10 people that are good for you that are just like worth your time to actually talk to.

Shelby Johnson: [9:45] Dude, I love using the requests as a way to like screen. When I'm looking for a referral agent, I'll do the same thing. I'll post an eXp in our workplace area being like, Looking for a referral agent in this area, please email me. Or something very specific, Email me or text this number. Everyone comments, everyone sends a DM and they don't follow the instructions. So I'm like, oh, cool. So from these 50 people, there's three people who can read. My job is so Totally. Much easier

Dan Austin: [10:12] It makes it so much easier just to get rid of those yahoos that aren't going do it. It's like if you can't follow simple instructions, I don't need you on the team.

Shelby Johnson: [10:18] Totally. Okay, disc real quick. What what are you looking for? What personalities? For

Dan Austin: [10:23] all the salespeople that I like, I like I like the high D and I. Typically, you're going to see a lot of VAs go in and they're going to, especially in it, this is actually cultural too. When you go into The Philippines, it's really tough to find the high Ds and high Is because they're just not that that's not in their culture. They're just like a super nice, like culture where it's like, I will do anything to support you. I want to be here for you. All those sorts of things. Like that's why they make great virtual assistants because they're so supportive. And a lot of them are really kind of on that C side of things, in the disc. And so they're just not as good on the phones. It doesn't mean they can't do it. But when you have that kind of high D high I, especially the high I, because they're just, they want to talk the high I want it. They want to be the center of the room. They wanna they wanna be on the phone and talking to these people. Those are the ones you really I I personally like.

Shelby Johnson: [11:14] I wanna know what are you on the desk?

Dan Austin: [11:16] Dude, I am I'm a weird desk. I'm Pretty like cool that. Weirdo. I'm like I'm like a high d and then I'm a high c as well. So like I'm slightly higher c, but like I'm above average on the d side. I'm like I'm like almost seventy, sixty seven on like the d and then I'm like a little bit higher on the on the It's like I'm a weird like I like to be in charge. I like to kind of like run things, but I also am like techy. Kinda like I know like techno I don't know tech based. Not like technology based, like nerd based.

Shelby Johnson: [11:47] Like Yeah.

Dan Austin: [11:47] Math. I was an engineer at one point in my life. So

Shelby Johnson: [11:51] Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. No. I actually I love the DC combo because it's like, let's get it done for the d's, but let's do it right with the c's. I'm like, wow. That's so nice.

Dan Austin: [12:01] Yeah. It serves me well sometimes. Other times, you know, not so much.

Shelby Johnson: [12:04] Not so much. Okay, got it. So we're at this point where we have their desk assessment, we have their audio recording, they've proven whether or not they can follow instructions. Is the next step interview? What is what is next?

Dan Austin: [12:16] Yeah. Basically from that point, once you've like found the people that like, if their call recording is good and they hit your disc assessment, honestly, there's they're probably going to be a good fit for you. Then just get them on the phone, have I don't really do anything scripted too much for our interviews. We're honestly, we're pretty relaxed on that piece because I'm really just trying to get to know you and get to feel who you are. So I'll just ask general questions about like, hey, give me some of your experience. I want I do want to understand what they've done. And sometimes they'll be like, yeah, I used to work for this other cold calling company. Okay. So I know you, you've got the game. Cause a lot of this is like pretty simple, basic stuff. There's not too many variations from what one real estate agent is doing to what another one's doing when they're going to be calling around, you know, doing prospecting. You can add in those nuances that you want at a later time, but they're going to have like this basic level of real estate knowledge. So that's good. And then I just like to get their personality, ask them again, like, do you do for your hobbies? What's your personal life look like?

Dan Austin: [13:11] All that sort of stuff, because that does matter too. Because again, you want them to be like a good team player. And so and really, you're just trying to see how they are conversationally, because when they're on the phone, they gotta think on their feet. Those are the conversations they're gonna need to talk. They're gonna need to build a rapport really quickly. They got like five seconds to build rapport.

Shelby Johnson: [13:28] Do you do that with them? They're like you're like, okay, dude. Love that I know about your hobby now. Okay. Pretend you're calling me. Ready, set, go.

Dan Austin: [13:35] You can. I I actually haven't done that, but I do know people that will do, like they'll do like, like almost like a coaching call with them where they'll ask questions. Like they'll act like they're, hey, act like you're calling me and I want to do this. Or they'll even like, and we have done in the past where it's like, hey, here's my phone number. I want you to call me log in to like this softphone program, whatever, like open phone or something like, Hey, log in here, call me like, like you're doing a cold call. Don't answer it. And you can do that. I personally, just because we're hiring so many for our business that we filter it, do it pretty quickly. And then if they don't work on the first week, we just find somebody else. So we're just kind of doing it at a faster pace. But again, if you're an agent, you're you're looking to hire two or three, take it as deep as you want. Just don't waste a ton of time. I I wouldn't waste too much time on it.

Shelby Johnson: [14:20] I feel like that's a really good point because it's hypothetically, if I'm listening to this and I'm looking at my first hire, I am over analyzing it. Know? I'm like looking for because it's also like a financial mental barrier that people have to get over because they feel like when they're hiring someone, they think of like, oh, I'm hiring them for a whole year. Like, I feel like that's the way most people calculate their but in reality, it's like, you're actually hiring them for a week or maybe a And if it doesn't work out, you just move on. It's like the stunk cost fallacy or like the fear of how much money is is pretty much all in their heads in some

Dan Austin: [14:52] regard. Totally. Yeah. And I think also that you're taking on some responsibility for them, maybe they have families and so you are helping them earn a living for their family and you don't want to give them false hope, Hey, you're going be here forever and they show up and three days later, you're dude, this person is not great. If that's the case, and in three to five days, you know, they're not great. They've gotten that before. They probably know that there's something going on so that they weren't as forthright with you within their background or their history when you're interviewing them. So that that usually doesn't just happen with you, unless you're a terrible boss, guess that could be possible. Do those people do exist. Some people, the way that they treat VAs is kind of unfortunate. I will say this though, with the, with the cost is it's an investment in you and your company. And so say, you know, on average, you're going pay $5 an hour for a cold call. So say it's $800 a month. It's really in the grand scheme of things. That's not that much. It can be if you're a new agent and you're just trying to prospect and build things up. And if that's the case, I would say you should bootstrap this and learn to cold call yourself until you really can feel confident in what a good cold car looks like, then you can hire somebody. But it's an investment in you and your business and in your ability to understand what a good cold caller and a bad cold car looks like. And what a good employee and a bad employee looks like. So if you had to spend $800 to get a master's class in being a manager, I would do that over a $200,000 MBA at Harvard any day.

Dan Austin: [16:13] That's just something to think about. If you have a caller for three months, you're going to learn a shit ton from that being a leader, being a manager, and also on how to grow your systems and that will help push you to do it. So it's like that stuff, don't think of it as a loss because it's always a gain. You know, it's like hiring a business coach, you know, I've hired plenty of coaches. I'm in plenty of masterminds. You could easily consider that as like a loss if you don't like, Like it, I guess. But if you go in there with a positive mental attitude, like you're going to, Hey, I'm going to crush this and I'm going to learn one thing. I'm going spend $10 to be in this one mastermind and learn one thing. Just learn that one thing really well. Same thing with, with hiring people in VAs is like, really good at that. If you want to scale your business and grow, you're going to have to learn to be a leader and how to hire people and how to prospect all these things.

Shelby Johnson: [16:59] Okay. Back in the interview, what are red flags and expectations that you give them?

Dan Austin: [17:07] Yeah. So red flags would be the major one I see is like just kind of weird. You get a weird vibe, right? Like they, like when they're, like they're not being honest or forthright. Like they're like, just hired, I'll give an example. I just hired a couple of guys and they were portraying that they were a staffing company. And I was like, well, I'm just looking, I'm looking for four more cold callers. Like, yeah. And we could definitely fill those and we would love to bring more to you and this is our contract. This is how we do it. And I was like, okay, I'll I'll look at it. They're from Egypt. And just a couple of red flags I knew at that point in time, we still end up hiring them. And like, that's why I'm telling the story. Cause like now I look back and it was a total red flag. Just them not having, great explanations on their process for how they prospect and hire people, expectations for, like how they can, like, where, where are you getting your, your like knowledge from? Like when they're quoting like big names in the industry, like it's probably because they Googled them and they're like, Oh, I work for this person. Like, you'll see that one, like where it's like all these, like their experience, they want to talk about people, especially in like the real estate investor space, because there's a lot of big brand names in the real estate investor space when it comes to like marketing and off market, like prospecting. So that actually should be a red flag and not like a, like a bonus, like, Oh, I worked for the, you know, Gary Keller. It's like, did you, did you really, you know, like something like that.

Dan Austin: [18:29] So those are red flags and they, they do this all the time because they're not in our culture. So they don't understand. They just think that that's like, that that's what would be impressive to us is to see that. So that's another red flag. Other red flag is just like them honestly not being able to carry a good conversation during an interview with you. Probably the biggest one. Can't talk

Shelby Johnson: [18:48] on an interview, like you can't talk on the phone.

Dan Austin: [18:50] Yeah, well, exactly. Right. And so like, that's like, honestly, the biggest filter. So when I go through like the bullshit, I go through the bullshit filter, like I said, like, did you really work for this person? Or did you really do these things? Because some of it sounds really great. Like it went through chat GPT on their resume, which everybody knows how to use chat GPT now, even Egyptians, Filipinos, all that. So like, kind of look at that, but then really having that conversation. If you connect well with them, they're probably going to be a great caller. And those are the three things I just mentioned. Like, I didn't get out of those guys. I hired them and then fired them literally literally a week later. They're terrible.

Shelby Johnson: [19:21] Yeah. Anyone who's hired has also had that experience though where you're like and and part of it is the hope within you. You're like, I just really want this to work out because I'm slammed and I really need this position. Like, please just work. But I thought I really liked what you said too about their inability to clearly explain their processes. Cause that's something that I found too, like with hiring. It's like there's two different types of hire. You're either hiring the person who's following into your own processes. And if you're hiring that person, you have to be able to clearly explain your process to that person. Or you're hiring a person who already has their systems and processes. Essentially, you're hiring a turnkey, like a professional type of thing. In which case they have to be able to clearly explain their processes. But either way, if there's not clarity, the relationship, the hire, it's not going to last because they're not going to know what to do, then you're going to get pissed because they didn't read your mind and figure it out on their own. And it's just a recipe for disaster.

Dan Austin: [20:13] Totally. Yeah. And I think that's right where you would kind of ask like expectations. It's like moving into the expectations, what do you expect of these people? It's you have to be super clear. And like as a leader, some of the best things you know that well, the most important things you can do is set expectations for all your staff, whether they're virtual or not. And this is where people fail is they see their virtual, whether it's a cold call or a VA or whatever, they just see them as like a tool for their business and not like a human being. Like they really are a human being and they really do want to do well for you. So given that opportunity to succeed, so provide them expectations. And then when they don't meet those expectations, just hold them accountable to it. Say, Hey, we agreed to these expectations. And you didn't meet them and here's why. And to do that, got to be present. And so those are like the three things, set expectations, hold people accountable and be present. Being present, you can't obviously be sitting with your VA because they're in another country usually, but you can do something. This is what I see people do so many times. They're like, yeah, so I hired a VA and like, I feel like they're just not doing anything. I'm like, well, how often are you meeting with them? Like, oh, I meet with them every Monday at 8AM for twenty minutes. I'm like, Oh really?

Dan Austin: [21:16] And they get enough from you during that twenty or thirty minute kickoff. Like we meet with our, like our staff, like we have a virtual staff on all different fronts for different parts of our business. And we meet with them every single day, several times a day, sometimes because we're working together in meetings, we're kicking off the day, we're setting the expectations, we're giving an opportunity to ask questions about those expectations. And we're reviewing and going over to hold them accountable to the things. When I say accountable, I'm not being, don't be a jerk. I'm just saying we're holding them accountable to what we both agreed on that they could and would do. And so that's like the most important piece is like, they are people coming to work in your business, treat them like you would anybody else. And if you're a terrible leader, just do those three things I just explained and you'll be so much better and it'll be a better experience for them.

Shelby Johnson: [21:59] It's so true. This is I can feel because I talk to agents all the time. I can feel them. They're like, well, I just want to hire someone as like a patch fix. Like, I really just want to throw money at the problem and have someone come in and make it go away. But like in reality, you are hiring someone to do a piece that will ultimately, hopefully, you know, grow your business. But that doesn't mean that it's completely hands off for you and that it's just the magic pill that's gonna come in and fix everything. It's like like you said, it takes work. You're meeting with these people all the time.

Dan Austin: [22:26] Totally. Yeah, it's like, here's a good example. You're hiring, you're hiring a virtual to do your cold calling for you. Yes, you are no longer a cold caller in your business. You are now a cold caller manager. So remember, there's some responsibility with that. So just take that with, take that with be seriously, like I said before, these are people and they might be supporting their family through your job. So just give them that opportunity to be successful and you would be surprised. And my partner and I like we've learned that we've hired, I think we've had like 70 different like virtuals just in like the back end of our business, like helping kind of build and stuff Yeah. Like And you know, as we've gotten better at that understanding that we've gotten better at hiring, first of all. The second of all, we've gotten better understanding of how to fulfill them and how to coach and train them and develop them. Because the other thing you see is people just throw tasks at them. And now you have a virtual, like, oh, I hired him as a cold caller, but man, it would be great if they kind of like manage my pipeline too. Then, Hey, could you do my invoicing? I don't want to do that anymore.

Dan Austin: [23:22] You throw too many things at them. You remember you use the DISC assessment to hire them, they're high DI, you do not want them doing your invoicing. You know what I mean? Like, you want them on the phones talking to

Shelby Johnson: [23:30] Yeah, not a catchall. Because then if you're too busy also like ping ponging tasks around, then they're not going be able to do the job that you hired them.

Dan Austin: [23:39] Exactly.

Shelby Johnson: [23:39] Okay. So at this point you hypothetically, you love them. The interview went And are you talking about money and start date? And how do you like wrap it up to move forward to the next step?

Dan Austin: [23:53] Yeah. So yeah, simple. It's usually I post in the job posting how much it's going to be an hour. And like I said, usually it's like 5 to $6 an hour, just depending on the area where I'm hiring and what I'm hiring for. But typically 5 to $6 an hour, you'll see for some higher end, like more of like a lead management or pipeline manager, you're going be like the 9 to $10 an hour. And that's usually going to be, but we have found with a lot of that for success is like South America, South America and Central America, they do really good with that stuff. Just a little bit more aggressive on that stuff. Egyptians, we've we have only used them in like team lead and calling positions. So that's where I say 5 to $6 an hour for that. And then of course, if you're looking for just virtual help, it's about 5 to 6. So anyways, going into the interview, they kind of know what they're going be applying for and then we just, yeah, start them out usually $5 an hour and then if we want to bump them up to 6, we will, if they're doing really well after several months, maybe they're kind of more in a leadership role within that calling part of my business, you bring on another junior caller or something like that. And from there it's just, yeah, we have a, we have like a contract that, I mean, can just write it up yourself, but like we just rocket lawyer this thing and you know, it doesn't have really any major bearing other than like, you're just trying to make them feel like they have some ownership in this and you have some ownership in this. So just like, Hey, here's the expectations within contract that what you're going be doing, you're going to be working forty hours a week, eight hours a day. These are the hours, be very clear about that because you know, when it comes to hours and those sorts of things, you don't want them to be like, oh, well, I thought I could work these hours.

Dan Austin: [25:24] Like, no. Like that that that's like 5AM my time. We can't be cold calling prospects at 5AM my time. So being super specific on like what your expectations are, your time zones, and they get it, they'll know it, but they're going to, they're going to always want to push the boundaries given the opportunity. So having all that laid out there and then the, just the expectations around time off and stuff too, you can do that however you want. I've seen it all over the place. But what I like to tell people like, Hey, I'm happy if there's something major going on in your life, I'm happy to give you time off. And if like, you know, some family member dies, all that sort of stuff, what you'll see a lot of times to, and to help people not get caught up in this is all of a sudden somebody will have like a mom die and like, they'll have like some thing they got to drive somebody to the hospital for, then their internet will be out. Internet out is a big one. Like all these things happen all the time. Then it's like, I'm really sorry all that stuff happened to you, but I can't have you that happening to you while you're my employee. And if you have that conversation, it usually stops happening. But that's why I'm saying being upfront with time off, how you want to work that, how you want them to request that stuff, put that all in the document that you send them. And that's how we do it.

Shelby Johnson: [26:32] Do you guys do like, let them choose essentially the holidays or do you do like US holidays or country dependent? What is the process?

Dan Austin: [26:41] That's a, that is a great point because like, sometimes they celebrate holidays that are different. Like in Egypt, I'm learning that there's different days that they celebrate Ramadan and like how that works and all that sort of stuff. So I've had to learn that. And I'm totally cool. Like if you have a religious holiday or something else, like we, we definitely give you time for that sort of stuff. And it's, it's okay. Usually it's unpaid time, but we give them time off for it. But yeah, you got to learn that if they're BSing you're not, cause sometimes it's usually around like internet failing, whatever, or, or like my truck broke down or just like, I I've heard it all, like honestly. But, just being upfront with it is super important because in you write the holidays, like giving them that you, you don't have to like line it out, like for the whole year, because I don't know what all the holidays somebody might be faced with, but they usually know what US holidays are too. And letting them know though, like what those are is helpful because they'll know that they're not gonna be working on those days usually. Like, we don't have people calling on Christmas. That's just kind of just kind of bad practice.

Shelby Johnson: [27:43] Yeah. That's a way for your company to be like, what the fuck are

Dan Austin: [27:47] you doing? Why are you doing why are you calling me right now?

Shelby Johnson: [27:50] Yeah. Totally. Okay. So that's that's the agreement. Pretty straightforward, simple. And from there, the onboarding, is that next? Next step?

Dan Austin: [28:01] Yeah, next step would be onboarding. So then from onboarding, we do are super simple. It's like, hey, here's your start date we've agreed to again in that offer letter, date, and then they just show up and we usually do zoom. And we personally, for our company, we use Slack, which you can get that. I think there's the free version. And so we make them log in every day while like a channel, hey, logging in, logging off, taking lunch break. They have like a channel for the teams, the different teams in there and explain what they're doing. And also they can ask questions. We can drop like call recordings. We could do anything in there from like a, just a digital archive as far as for the day or the week. And rest of that is just Zoom. We do our Zoom kickoffs with them. And so the onboarding is simple. It's here's all the documentation, all the tools you're going to need. They might need access like to a tool like we use batch dialer, you could use open phone, depends on what kind of calling. Are you having them do a single line dialer? Are you having them do a multi line dialer? Like you're going big where you have like a three line dialer and you want to hit like a whole zip code. It's up to you which tool you use. But getting them all those login, all that access, giving them training.

Dan Austin: [29:05] What we do for a lot of the if it's a third party system for training, this is a, this is like a total, like, you know, expert tip here. Just send them to the how, how, how to page of that tool. Right? So like, if you're using, like we use batch dialer, they have tons of YouTube videos on how to use that system. And honestly, most of these folks, if you put that in your job description, which dialer you're going to use, they'll let you know if they've used it before and there's a good chance they have. So they already have probably more experience than you do in it, to be honest. And so getting them all that training is super key. And then again, resetting expectations and what their KPIs should be and how many. So we set like, Hey, we want to have you having like thirty eight hours of call time a week. We want to have, we're looking for this many calls per day. And we don't do, we don't do lagging KPIs. We do leading KPIs. So you don't want to say, I want you to find me this many prospects a day. Cause they have zero control over who answers the phone or the phone numbers you're giving them. You could give them a shit ton of bad phone numbers. Like that's not their fault, right? That happens. So really explain those KPIs and letting them understand where they can see all those, where they can see the KPIs and see their performance. And that's really it. It's simple, especially when you're in the context of a caller.

Dan Austin: [30:15] Tools, expectations, KPIs, get going. And then obviously work schedules and when they need to show up to the kickoff meetings.

Shelby Johnson: [30:22] Okay. So open phone, batch dialer, these are not ones that I'm like super familiar with. Is this just like a call platform? Can you explain what these

Dan Austin: [30:31] Yeah. Things So batch dialer, because a lot of the calling we do is for other like real estate investors. So we that's batch dialer is a is something that's been built and has been around a long time. They do, they have an SMS platform as well. But they have a multi line dialer, which basically means you can call, say if it's a, like we use a three line dialer, you can call three phone numbers at the same time. And the first one that picks up, you answer, the other two get hung up. Right? And so you can call more people. And that's just what we use to get to more, to get to more people on our list. And open phone is just like another, that is just a softphone, basically a VoIP phone. So you want it, you have to have phones like that, right? Cause they're in a different country. They need to be able to log in and call. So you're getting calls. If you're receiving the call, you're receiving it from an internet phone, right? Something that they can have on their desktop. An open phone is one that we've used personally all the time, because it's great for other employees that are virtuals for that. So you can get them a US based phone number. And you can use that for like VAs just doing like back end work for you if they need to call the utility company or they need to call somebody for for you or your clients. It's a great tool for that, but it's also great for like dialing just, hey, here's the 20 people around the open house, call these 20 numbers today and see if you can get someone on the phone.

Shelby Johnson: [31:50] Okay. Yeah. Open phone. That sounds legit because this is something that I get asked a lot about cold caller. And then I have people that I connect with, but I don't have a cold caller personally. So this in the weeds, I don't know it. Yeah. And that's always been something So this open phone, basically, hypothetically, they're in Egypt or they're in Philippines, they can download this application on their phone and they can do all of their calls. You said a US based phone number from their desktop, but it's not. So and then how does that connect to your CRM? Or does it? Like, is it also a software for like logging notes and setting follow ups, etc?

Dan Austin: [32:30] Totally. Yeah. So yes and no on all those questions. So yeah, they, they love it. Some of them do connect it. I guarantee, like, I bet you, like if you Googled like, you know, VoIP phone that connects to BoomTown or whatever CRM you use, you'll be able to find one and it'll directly connect to it. So you can do it. It's kind of like we use HubSpot for a lot of our stuff. There's a lot of integrations for phone numbers within HubSpot as a CRM. I would be surprised if there's not CRMs out there that have it in like our CRMs that we use, have it built into it. It has dialers built in single line dialers that you can just, you can have these people call. So you basically give them a seat in your CRM and they call. And then of course that just adds right into it just shows they call, they text all their notes from the call in that leads, box within your CRM. And so definitely, and some yes, some don't. So I would say that the best place to start for that is to look at what CRM you're using and see if it has a dial function in it. A lot of them do now.

Shelby Johnson: [33:31] Okay, that makes sense. So when they're onboarding, you are getting them set up on your internal communication with them, your own team processes, and then also getting them set up with wherever they're going to be doing their job, which starting place, being the CRM, see if they have the call function. And then from there, so they're set up, they are making their dials. Actually, how, who, where, where does the list come in? You pulling it for them? Did you train them on how to pull it? What does that look like?

Dan Austin: [34:00] I would, if you have a caller, I would not train them on how to pull the list. I would do it myself. But if you, we do have for, we have our own virtuals that pull list for us. So they actually will go to, you know, and we follow that they follow our exact process. They go to the data source, they go in, they check the boxes, they do these things, they pull it out, they dump it over here. And then it gets uploaded into the dialer. It's all automated there for us with human, human, with a human doing it. But if it was you hiring a single cold caller or two cold callers, and you don't have anybody else, I would pull the data and I would get the phone numbers and do all that sort of stuff myself and then drop it into whatever dialer that they're using. And then basically from there, they have this list of, know, 1,000 people they're gonna call if you're gonna go mass quantity here and they're just gonna click through it and it's just gonna go down and go down. It's gonna show how many times they've called a certain person. If it if it was flagged as spam, it's going to do show like if they connected, it's going to show how long the conversation was, all that sort of stuff.

Shelby Johnson: [34:56] Favorite or options for data sources? If someone's like, okay, I'll pull my own list. Where do I do

Dan Austin: [35:03] that? Yeah. So it depends on what you're trying to do. So there are you I know this, like you can go out and buy data list for specific for real estate agents that have tens of thousands of people on it that were somehow opted in to, I might want to sell my house. There's that data, Google it, find it, you'll, you'll see tons of it. We specifically, because we are specifically working with agents and agent investors that want to do a lot of the work, like they want to buy rental properties. We use PropStream. And the reason why we do that is because we can filter based on all sorts of things. And it's investor friendly, it's investor focused. We can look at different financial metrics like loans and liens and reasons why that person might want to sell. We can look at everything from the type of house, the type of property, commercial, multifamily, single family. We can zone it down to a zip code. We can draw a line around the area we want to do it too. And an agent could use this as well. That's what we use specifically for, like I said, agent investors. But there's just tons of different data platforms out there now that are either investor specific or agent specific, just depending on what flavor you're looking for.

Shelby Johnson: [36:13] Okay, sounds good.

Dan Austin: [36:15] The same data It's though. Because what ultimately what you're trying to do, if you're an agent and you're prospecting, what are you prospecting for? You're looking for people that might want to sell their house. Right? And so what indicators would somebody actually show if they want to sell their house? Because I'm working with investors and agent investors, I'm looking for people that want to sell their house and then want to sell it at a discount because they have some sort of distress that's going to essentially wipe out everything they have. And so we can come in and help find them, identify them and say, Hey, we can fix your problem for you. A lot of other agents are just looking for certain reasons why somebody else might want to sell their house. Maybe it's age, maybe like age of the home, how long they've had the home. And they say, might say, hey, on average, most people move every seven years. I'm going go pull a list of everybody that has lived in their house for like six years and cold call.

Shelby Johnson: [37:04] Okay, gotcha. Yeah, and I feel like that's a whole another class. Don't I want to get too off because we're talking about VAs, but that's exciting too. It's like doing the strategy behind who do I actually want to target, because there's so much more control than I feel like the average real estate agent thinks. They're just like, Oh, I'm going to post on social media and someone will reach out to me. But it's like, no, you can actually pick who you specifically want to work with, what buyers or sellers. Then even in the sellers category, it's like, what type of problems do I want to deal with? Am I looking for the distressed situation or am I looking for It's just so fun.

Dan Austin: [37:35] Yes.

Shelby Johnson: [37:36] Fun for another day. Okay. So at this point they have the list, they're making the calls in your specific CRM system, open phone, whatever. My question is, are you With these newer hires, Are you reviewing their calls? Is there Yeah. Does that look like?

Dan Austin: [37:53] That's the accountability piece, right? And making sure that they're doing well. So every day with our calling team, we have a daily kickoff at 08:30AM. And we basically review calls, good calls, bad calls like, hey, this is why this was a bad call. This is why this was a good call. Hey, let's look at the script again as a group. We also are looking at call time and we're looking at number of calls are able to do the day before just to make sure everybody's trending and on track. So we do it as a group. Hey, everybody on this calling team did these things. This is what we're expecting. These are the goals. And and then we'll also do call reviews where it's like, just listening to the recording and saying, oh, okay, like this is where you could maybe throw in a nuance to the script. Because as callers get more experienced, you want them to kind of move away from that script. Because the goal of the script is just to get them to get certain information. So once they're really good, like we have callers where they loosely use the script and then they just spitball. You know, we have, we have an agent that looks that wants to represent people that sell land. So he has a very unique script, for specific people that may want to sell land that he can connect to developers specifically. So he needs them to ask very, very important questions like, Hey, is this land going to be developable? Is this person going to want to sell within this timeframe? He has all these things.

Dan Austin: [39:10] And so we give it to the callers that are more experienced because it's so specific and they can kind of just spitball off of a basic script. So that's the goal of what you're trying to do. And that's why we do daily kickoffs, daily call reviews, daily KPI reviews.

Shelby Johnson: [39:21] Yeah. And it kind of goes back to what you said in the beginning where it's like, if you don't know anything about this, maybe cold call yourself for a little while and get some experience because how can you do that? How can you do analysis on a call saying whether it's good or bad if you do not know? Totally.

Dan Austin: [39:35] Absolutely. And and here's the thing is ultimately, there's little nuances in the English language that you can help teach them and those sorts of things. If But you don't have any experience around like doing it yourself, it's going to be hard for you to understand what they're going through. So when they're doing those calls, it's not, you're not going to be able to give them advice or feedback or change or improve your system to make it easier for them. So I always recommend do it. Even if you've never done it, you've already got a cold call, do it yourself, do it side by side with them and figure it out together.

Shelby Johnson: [40:05] Right. Or I guess this because I know there's people sitting there being like, I do not. I want to bring on a cold collar, but I do not want this level of oversight or management. But I think this probably goes back to maybe finding those staffing companies. Because I know that there are companies out there who you can hire. It won't be $5 an hour, maybe it'll be $7 And what they'll do is they say, Hey, we have a supervisor in addition to the virtual assistant, you just tell us what you want. The supervisor will oversee. But in personal experience, sometimes that works. Sometimes you're like, well, now I have two people to follow-up with and I'm not sure either of them are doing anything.

Dan Austin: [40:38] Totally. Yeah. And that and like here, I guess I'm giving you a rigid framework of like how we do this. Like, do you need to do a daily kickoff every day with your caller? Maybe not. But if you do, can if you're doing with one or two callers, it can be ten or fifteen minutes. It doesn't have to be this big elaborate thing. The thing that you will want to do though is, and we talked about this earlier is like you want to make sure that they have work in front of them and don't just, you're hiring them as a caller, don't just dump other work on them just because you're like, well, they're not doing anything. It's like, if they're not doing anything, it's okay. It's $5. You worry about it. Go to Starbucks. My Starbucks is like $5.18 every day. So I know, like the cost of $5 is not that much if you have a VA sitting there, when you compare it to a cup of coffee. Not saying you should do that, but don't get all upset and start dumping work on them that is not calling if they're not going to be busy eight hours a day. Make them busy eight hours a day, get them information, get them data, get them going on the calling to do that. But anyways, the staffing company piece, you're right. That's where the staffing company is important because there's two types of staffing companies. There's one that will just staff and find you a VA, and then they'll just basically make margin on the hourly wage. What the hell is the point of that?

Dan Austin: [41:44] I just showed you how to go and find your own VA, and they're going to probably find you worse VAs. And then there's the other ones that actually provide management oversight. And those, some of those can be really, really great because if you're very adverse to having hard conversations, those people generally will have a manager in place over their staff member that they're putting into your company. And if you have a hard time dealing with that, like, oh, they suck. Go to that person, their manager, tell them, Hey, so and so Betty Sue over here sucks. And they, I either want to replace them or I need them to improve themselves in this category or whatever. And those people have those conversations. To me, it's always been kind of awkward because then that person comes to work the next day be like, what the hell? You just ratted me out to your boss. You know, like, it's kind of weird. So but it's a good system. It it is better than just staffing, I in my opinion.

Shelby Johnson: [42:30] Yeah. And it does depend. It depends on your own situation, how much time you have to dedicate, how much experience you have in that realm and all the things. Absolutely. So at this point they're working and I'm curious about results. Once they've started, how quickly can we see results? Anything in that?

Dan Austin: [42:48] So generally speaking, like we have callers day one getting us leads. So they should be able to, especially because again, this is a very well matured So you're going to be able to hire people that have done this for another agent that they get, they're going to see your script and like, Can I, can I change this up a little bit? Can I change that up a little bit? Absolutely. This is the market you're in, teach them some of that stuff, teach them some of the local things that they can do and say. And other than that, they should be able to hit the ground running day one. They're going be calling probably, you know, two fifty, three hundred people. No problem. And we usually see them getting one to two prospects or leads out of that day one. So like depending on how how much how how much experience they have coming in, the person you hired and how much of experience you have and making sure that they're ready to rock and roll.

Shelby Johnson: [43:32] And are they their appointment setters for you guys? Like, if is, are they, is their goal to set another phone call or what is their goal?

Dan Austin: [43:40] Yeah. So the things that beyond like the little details of the script, their goal for me is to find people that are most, most importantly willing to have a conversation. Number two, want to sell their property and want to sell their property in the next six months. Those are the three criteria we're looking for. If they want to sell their property and it's like two years down the road from now, yeah, I might put that in my CRM, but I'm not really worried about that right now because I'm going get a ton of more people that want to sell in the next six months. And the most important piece when you're having a cold caller calling people is their willingness to have a conversation. Cause you know as well as I do, could you be talking to a lead and if they're like, I do not wanna talk to you right now. It's a non productive conversation. So those are the three things that they're doing. And essentially, once they get it, it's like, okay, great. You know, I'm gonna have my boss Shelby give you a callback. Does tomorrow work for you? We try not to let them set exact time unless you have a calendar that's set for prospecting for them to dump like fifteen or thirty minute phone calls on your calendar. You can have that system. But if we're doing it mass quantity, if we're doing it on behalf of other people that haven't provided us that ability to like book their calendar, it's like, would tomorrow work for you?

Dan Austin: [44:51] Tomorrow afternoon work for you? Absolutely cool. We're gonna give you a callback around on this phone number and then we'll just ship that off, drop that into CRM as a lead and a task call back at the you know, back tomorrow or something like that.

Shelby Johnson: [45:02] You said on this phone number. So you guys can

Dan Austin: [45:07] Sorry. I mean, on on this on this number as in the number we called them on.

Shelby Johnson: [45:12] Okay. No. That's that's uncorrect. That's super cool though, because that's one of the things too where it's like, oh, I have a cold caller and now there's that phone number and then my phone number and I might have a CRM and my personal phone number and so it's all from the same number?

Dan Austin: [45:25] No, okay, sorry. I guess to answer your question, it's kind of funny that question came out is generally yes, it can be the same number. Generally, it will not be the same number. What I meant is, I'm going to call you on this number that I dialed you on like your phone as the prospect, right? And so, but you could set it up that way. It just depends on how you want to set up your system. If you want to be using the same phone number, like same login, same, same all that sort of stuff you can. Usually it's a different phone number, obviously same, same area code, but just my phone number for my CRM. I did not understand

Shelby Johnson: [45:58] and I am

Dan Austin: [45:58] so sorry. Yeah. No, you're good. It's a great question though, because some people are like, well, if it's a different number, they won't answer. Yes and no. The actual reality of it though is, is they're expecting a phone call from Shelby tomorrow afternoon. And especially if you dial in, hey, the best way to do it now, best practice if you can set this up in your system is, can I have Shelby call you at 10:45AM tomorrow? Would that work for you? Absolutely. Now they have some feel like some responsibility to answer the phone because they agree that they would be getting that call. And now they know they're getting a call at 10:45 for Shelby. So any phone, you know, when somebody tells you, Hey, I'm going to call you, you see your phone pop up, you're like, Oh, I don't know who this person is. Like, who's this number is? I know it's Shelby calling because she told me she's gonna call me at 10:45. So that's that's a best practice. That can't always be done if you don't have the system in place for them to book on your calendar though.

Shelby Johnson: [46:46] No, it makes sense. Okay. I think at this point we have gone through the whole processing, except for firing, which we could touch on. But what what else? What did we miss? You know, anything.

Dan Austin: [46:57] What else? You actually yeah. You hit on more things than I was even thinking about before we hopped on the call. So I think we kind of vetted it out and we went through how you find them. Honestly, finding them is is as simple as because I said it's a very mature industry out there. You can find these folks $5 an hour on Upwork or any other platform Upwork just happens to have, again, a lot of these, that's kind of the place to go to. The one thing I will say, cause you brought up firing. So hiring and firing. Be okay. Again, this is an investment in you and your company be okay. If you kind of suck at the first time, If you miss and you get a terrible employee and they're not good or they're not, you weren't ready for them. That's okay. Let them go start over, find another one, especially with these staffing companies. So many times people that hire these staffing companies, they seem to say like, well, they gave me this person and they suck. I don't know what to do. Call the staffing company, tell them to get you a new one. And if they're not willing to do that or they want to charge you another staffing fee, don't use them. So we work with one in particular that we staff with and we love them. They're the one that I would rec only one I would recommend right now. Not that they're the only good one, but the only one I recommend from my personal experience.

Dan Austin: [47:59] And they're like, Hey, if it doesn't work out, we'll hire you new. We're not going to charge you another staffing fee. We're just going to go and find you find you a new person. Cause we understand that sometimes people aren't meant to work in your company, like for whoever's fault it is, and we will go get you a new one. So don't be afraid to go get a new one. It just happens. I'm not saying they're throw away tools, but, find someone that's going to work for you and your business. Cause at the end of the day, you have to put food on the table. And so you need to do the right thing for your business.

Shelby Johnson: [48:27] Love it. Okay. And what are okay, so now shifting gears slightly. What are you working on? What's going on in your business? And then we're going I have some wrap up questions for you, but I just want to like, what I feel I've talked so much about just the

Mike DeHaan: [48:40] VN channel. Know.

Shelby Johnson: [48:42] Tell me about you, Dan. Hi.

Dan Austin: [48:43] Yeah. Hi. Yeah. So what what who is Dan? Yeah. So as as you as everybody's heard, like, I'm heavily involved right now in VA staffing because, know, before the show, was telling you, we had, we have just recently acquired a calling and texting company that's used for prospecting for investors. So our main focus, our main business has always been to work with off market sellers and identify like the best deals out there that we can buy and invest for ourselves. But the last few years, we've actually expanded that across the nation. So right now we're in 15 different cities, 15 different markets, working for other investors, a lot of them are agents, agent investors, or some of them are just full time real estate investors that want to grow their portfolio, want a new new pipeline into their flipping business, whatever it is. And so we go out and we prospect for them. And part of that, we did a lot of direct mail over the years. And we were staffing callers and texters through some other companies and we just decided to buy, this, this new business and bring it in house so we can kind of control all aspects of our marketing and our prospecting for our clients.

Shelby Johnson: [49:44] Wait, so does that mean listeners can go to you and you can essentially do everything we just talked about for them?

Dan Austin: [49:50] Absolutely. Yes, can.

Shelby Johnson: [49:52] Yeah. We're on this topic, where's the best place for people to reach out for you if they're interested in that?

Dan Austin: [49:59] Yeah, I mean, I would say like, for me personally, if you just wanna ask questions and and know some stuff, I'm on all socials. Instagram is the easiest to get ahold of me on, though, is investor man Dan. You can email me at dan@collectingkeys.com as well with any questions. And if you want to know about any of our businesses, gosh, we have so many stinking websites now. I would just say go to go go to backyardhomebuyers.com or simply simplileads.com.

Shelby Johnson: [50:30] Dude, is hard when you're like shit, one called action, one called action. Wait, have I have

Dan Austin: [50:34] too many. I have too many. Yeah. We need to streamline this. I think we are kind of bringing bringing our all of our business kind of underneath one that would help out because we started out, like I said, kind of staffing for, you know, doing direct mail and for our clients. And we brought in the calling and texting. And so it's like, ah, we're in the middle of that mess right now.

Shelby Johnson: [50:52] Okay. And my first wrap up question normally is, favorite book or podcast, but I'm just gonna answer it for you. Can you tell us about your podcast?

Dan Austin: [51:01] Oh, yes. The Collecting Keys Podcasting, Shelby. I love a nice little shameless plug here. Yep.

Shelby Johnson: [51:07] That's right.

Dan Austin: [51:08] Yeah. So my co host Mike and I, and that's really our passion. My my co host Mike and I, we've been doing it for 300 episodes a few years now, which is just, it's a real estate investment podcast. So if you're at all interested in real estate investment, that's what we talk about. We talk about how to find the best deals and we do it from like an operator perspective. So like we operate our own business, we operate our own investments as we talk a lot about like how to scale beyond where you're at and how to how to actually systematize things like enjoy life, do the do the things that actually matter because and this isn't like the the don't don't show up because you're not gonna get the homeless to millionaire stuff. This is like the real nitty gritty, like actual systems and processes and like how to actually be an operator in the real estate industry.

Shelby Johnson: [51:47] I love it. And if you guys wanna check out their best episode of all time, it was episode one sixty one. I was interviewed. So

Dan Austin: [51:56] Yep. It was a good episode.

Shelby Johnson: [51:58] Oh, thanks. Appreciate that. Yeah. Okay. Another wrap up question. What events are you going to in the next twelve months?

Dan Austin: [52:05] This year, I'm all in on GoBundance. So I'm sorry if you're not a GoBundance member. I just got back from the Austin entrepreneurial summit. It was pretty awesome. I enjoy the hell out of it, which was put on by GoBundance, which was actually open to guests as well. So that was cool. But I am doing some, I'm probably doing three or four GoBundance events this year on top of some of the events Mike and I are putting on for our collecting keys podcast. We're doing some of that. But outside of my stuff, it's gobundance this year, because I've gotten so much value out of that mastermind. I'm just gonna, I'm, my goal is to be there, be present and be there to pour into people and gain clarity on things that I need to.

Shelby Johnson: [52:42] The gobros. Sorry. Yeah. What's up? Okay. Anything else that listeners can do to help you in your business?

Dan Austin: [52:51] I would say just if you're interested in any of the stuff we talked about, I'm happy to share. Like the thing that helps me the most is getting in contact network and engaging with other agents, other investors, because honestly, as we all know, whoever's in our sphere of influence, it's something that can help down the road for business. So hit me up on Instagram at investor Mandan. I love to talk about this stuff. And, that's that's really the biggest thing I got.

Shelby Johnson: [53:13] Perfect. I love it. And if you guys wanna hang out with me and the owner of the show, we are the Shelby show and Aaron Muchestegi on the Gram. Love to hear from you. Hit me up if you want details about the twenty twenty five real estate rock stars Mastermind in Austin because tickets are selling out super quick, so you gotta lock yours in. And otherwise, guys, that is all we have for today. Dan, thank you so much for coming on the show. And Real Estate Rockstars, thanks for listening.