February 27, 2024 • 39 mins
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EPISODE DESCRIPTION
In this episode, Brandon and Tom are joined by Paul Davidescu. Paul is the Principal Mortgage Broker of Level Up Mortgages from Vancouver, BC, which he founded in 2019. Paul is also the Co-Founder and CEO of Tangoo Entertainment Inc., a a sales training and automation company, and the Host of the Grind Less, Flow More podcast, which covers strategies to achieve financial stability and align your time with your genius.
Paul is here to discuss: → His unique journey into mortgages and why you need to find your niche and point of differentiation. → How to make tasks fractional and the first steps to hiring a VA. → And the DAO framework and how it can help you grow in your business.
View the Customer Success document here.
Level Up Mortgages Website: www.levelupmortgages.com
Level Up Mortgages Instagram: @levelupmortgages
Level Up Mortgages YouTube: @levelupmortgages
Paul Davidescu's Email: paul@levelupmortgages.com
Paul Davidescu's Instagram: @pauldavidescu
Paul Davidescu's LinkedIn: @PaulDavidescu
Grind Less, Flow More Podcast: www.grindlessflowmore.com
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TANGO ONTARIO
📧 Email Us → ontario@tangofinancial.ca
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
you've ever wanted to scale yourbusiness to the point where you're
making several six or sevenfigures while also working less
than 40 hours a week, you probablyknow by now that in order to get
there, you'll need to hire staff.
You see, I find the toughest part
about hiring is knowing who tohire and when to hire.
That's why we have a guest on theshow today to chat all about
creating systems to hireappropriately while also going
over some different ways to lookat hiring, including outsourcing
(00:22):
work to VAs and what's called afractional hire.
If you're at the point in yourbusiness where you need to hire to
grow, or you're just gettingstarted in the business, but know
you'll be there eventually, thenyou'll want to stick around for
this one.
If you're new to the show, my name
is Tom Moffitt, and I'm joined bymy good buddy, business partner
and co host Brandon Love.
Whether you're new in the industry
(00:42):
or a seasoned vet, you will getspecific takeaways from every
episode as we strive to makeCommission Breath focused and
granular.
Let the Commission Breath podcast
be your tool to grow in yourmortgage business.
So with that being said, let'sdive into the of Commission
Breath.
Brandon Love here with Tom Moffitt
and a very special guest, PaulDavidescu.
Paul is from the podcast GrindLess, Flow More.
(01:08):
He's also a mortgage broker basedout of Vancouver, British
Columbia.
And today we are going to do a
deep dive on hiring, growing teamsand everything that comes along
with that.
So thanks for joining us, Paul.
Tom and Brandon, thanks for havingme.
I'm really excited.
Awesome, yeah.
So I originally reached out toyou, Paul, with the intention of
talking about podcasting becauseI've tuned into your podcast.
(01:29):
I love what you're doing.
And you're like, you know what?
I think your listeners wouldreally get value out of scaling
your business through hiring anddelegating.
So I'm like, you know what, wehaven't really done an episode
specifically on that.
So that's why we brought you here.
So why don't we just start off byjust kind of getting some
background, the lay of the land asto how you got into the industry,
(01:51):
where you're at today, and kind ofthe journey along the way
definitely.
Thanks so much for that setup.
Well, in a nutshell, I've spentthe last 15 years thinking about
how do you help entrepreneursgrind less and flow more?
How do you help them makesustainable income?
So what's sustainable income?Well, we see it as something that
was popularized way back in theday in a book that I think most
entrepreneurs read as their first,The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim
(02:13):
Ferriss.
He talks about relative income.
So he talks about, it doesn'treally matter how much money you
make at the end of the year.
It's about the profit, not the
revenue, obviously.
But also it's the amount of time
you put into that.
So it's profit relative to time.
So it's the efficiency of how youmake money.
And one thing we like to add on tothat is, well, how optimized are
you tracking it?And lastly, do you have maximum
happiness and zero burnout?Can you strive towards that?
(02:35):
I think especially after COVID,there was an awakening.
Values shifted a little bit.
And yeah, there's more to life
than just making money.
So I've done that in multiple
ways, and we'll get into it.
But yeah, just background story on
me.
Born in Mexico City.
Moved to Vancouver when I wasfour.
Grew up on the west side.
Went to UBC, and I have third
(02:55):
passport from Spain.
So very international.
And I think that's important forobviously how I run my business
and the different ideas and theways I put some soul into
sometimes a soulless industry.
Yeah, like professionally, I mean,
I guess my 50 minutes of fame wasDragon's Den in 2014.
We were at the time working on atech company that built a pocket
concierge for people to choosetheir favorite restaurant based
off a mood that they're in.
(03:16):
So things Spotify meets Yelp.
And yeah, that was a really coolexperience.
And spoiler alert, we did getfunding, but not in the way you
may think and save that foranother day.
Then evolved into a marketingagency.
So social media and salesautomation.
In 2016, then we evolved intothat.
Still working with restaurants.
And when I moved to Toronto in
2018, I think it was just to feelless stuck.
(03:37):
I was in the same environment forso long.
I took Vancouver for granted, Iknow.
And when you go somewhere else,especially like Toronto, great
city, but not the exact same kindof beauty or community.
Things sort of shift a bit.
But the cool thing about changing
your environment is when you aresomewhere new like that, where
it's a lot colder, and arguably,you know, physically and
metaphorically, you kind of youget shocked out of your system and
(03:57):
new opportunities come to you.
So that's when I started meeting a
lot of mortgage brokers.
I didn't really know what a
mortgage broker was back then.
Honestly, it was just like as an
entrepreneur, it's the last thingyou think about, you know,
homeownership, great, maybe one II think day.
that's mean, a sentiment right?anywhere, as an like,
entrepreneur, it's the last thingyou think You about.
home know, ownership, Maybe onegreat.
I I think day.
that's mean, a sentiment anywhere,
(04:18):
right?But especially as an entrepreneur,
you're thinking about the houseover your head, which is the place
that you rent and the staff thatyou have on board.
Met a lot of mortgage brokers andthey started expressing needs
around better marketingthemselves.
And it was just an opportunitythat I guess had to make sense to
explore.
This was like a couple of years
before COVID or really a yearbefore COVID that we started
exploring and diversifying.
And I mean, they always say, if
you can be empathetic to yourcustomer, like that's how you win.
Easier said than done.
And working with restaurants, I
had thought about opening like asmall taco stand or something and
doing some marketing on us andhaving this a case study.
(04:40):
Never quite had that aligned, butin Toronto, at least at the time,
I could do that.
At the same time, I found out that
you can get certified within oneweek, right, through a full-time
course.
And at that point, I actually had
the freedom to do that.
And this is going to go back to
our theme around staff.
I had hired, literally, he went
from an apprentice to co-founder,Santiago.
Awesome dude, really smart guy.
And I'm like, I told him, hey,
(05:01):
keep running with the company.
I'm going to do this covert
mission and get my broker licenseso that I can be the Trojan horse
case study for us.
I'm going to get the license just
for fun.
I mean, probably good to learn how
to eventually strive for homeownership.
But really, if I can be our firstcustomer, we can experiment with
me and I can be very patient andyou can give me lots of resources,
(05:22):
then that could be a good start.
We did that and we got lucky.
We got time with the bottom of theinterest rates, COVID, and just
applied a certain set of salessystems and I call them systems of
giving and just this growthmindset, which we talk a lot about
on the podcast.
And yeah, we got nominated for
newcomer of the year acrossCanada.
And then suddenly we had to workmore mortgage brokers.
It was just what the marketwanted.
And then me personally, my dollarper hour, my relative income shot
(05:44):
through the roof 12x.
As much as I didn't find this to
be as sexy as restaurants, it wasjust clear that there was a need
there.
And yeah, dove headfirst into
being a mortgage broker andhaven't looked back since.
I mean, at the same time, myagency still exists, Santiago runs
So we've got a portfolio of brandswe have under this brand, it.
I mean, called Level Up Advisors.
That's kind of our corporation.
(06:05):
And the whole goal back to what Isaid is how do you help people
build sustainable income?And that doesn't just come from
being a broker.
It comes from being a good
marketer.
It comes from health.
It comes from a lot of differentthings that, yeah, we present to a
lot of our clients.
So it's kind of a multifaceted
thing.
But my lane right now is pure
mortgage brokering.
(06:29):
We have a commercial arm and we
deal a lot with business owners,people that are especially burnt
out, people that are especially, Ithink, making a big difference in
the world.
And they're just not getting the
treatment or the understandingfrom banks and even sometimes
other brokers who need to speaktheir language and understand that
their time is so precious and theyneed lots of solutions and they
have no time.
They're, you know, managing staff,
contractors, et cetera.
So that is a bit of a intro on my
story.
And here we Nice.
Totally feel your comment thereabout your relative hours shooting
(06:51):
up to the roof with brokering.
I feel like it's such a gateway
drug when you look at it like, oh,wow, okay, I can work 40 hours a
week or even 25 or less in somescenarios and make hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
And you compare that to another
industry.
I was in farming before and
working directly with restaurants.
And there is not the value because
there's not the margin in theindustry.
So it's harder to scale that way.
(07:13):
And you touched on something there
about brokers feeling burnt out atcertain times.
And I think a lot of otherindustries, there's arguably more
burnout, but we sometimes getburnt out in the mortgage industry
because we're constantly doingsimilar scenarios, but different
people and working with people whoare high stress on the other side
of things.
And that stress can kind of get
transferred over.
And a little reset I've been doing
recently is just kind of thinkingback to those old days of having
(07:36):
to wake up at like five in themorning, go to the farm, finish
the day late at night.
And then I just have this like
intense gratitude for where I'mactually at today and all the
opportunities that this industryhas opened up.
And I found that like in timeswhere I was feeling stretched thin
or a little bit burnt out, thatthat's been a huge frame to kind
(07:58):
of reshift and then go back intothe next day with that renewed
energy.
Beautiful, bang on.
Yeah.
pivot to your first hire.
So if we're going back to, let'ssay your marketing agency, you
mentioned that you're still partof that business, right?
So then is that fully off stillpart of that right?
business, So then is that fullyoff your plate at that point?
Like your business partner ishandling that with other staffing
and then you're kind of just thefront facing with lead gen or how
(08:20):
does that work for you?great question.
So, you know, when you run anybusiness, it's very hard to be
completely hands off until it'sreally a certain level.
I'm there very strategically andone big thing is letting go.
So when I was going to go on thisToronto adventure, yes, to build
the business in a bigger, brightercity, at least that's how I saw it
at the time.
(08:40):
When you leave, like you're forced
to delegate some things and not bein the weeds or else you can't
really think about things.
So again, I started like for
years, like there's so manyamazing apprentices, you know,
interns, just young people who arenot given a fair shot.
And you know, if you have theright leadership and the right
story and you really want to helpthem level up you're gonna get a
lot of people that want tocontribute in some way but yeah i
mean you really got to findsomeone who can be an independent
(09:02):
thinker and can have the rightconfidence and you have to nurture
that and when you do that you juststart letting go more and more
things and yes ideally you are therainmaker and they are the
operator.
They understand pretty much the
whole process.
Ideally, that's documented
somewhere, right?And yeah, when I was in Toronto, I
was given the space to thinkbecause otherwise I'd be in the
weeds with customers three hoursbehind me, right?
And that just becomes, you know,not ideal for, again, flowing to
(09:23):
really having time to think andstrategize and try new
opportunities.
So yeah, he was a full-time staff
with a bit of And then equity.
I just gave him more and more
challenges and try newopportunities.
So he was a full-time yeah, staffwith a bit of equity.
And then I just gave him more andmore challenges and opportunities
and he sees it really well.
And eventually I was only really
working a couple hours there,mainly just for sales meetings,
things that really moved theneedle, things that improve not
just my relative income, but alsoSantiago's and the team's.
(09:45):
And that's how it is today still.
I mean, there's still meetings I
will jump in for.
We have certain corporate
cadences, weekly meetings,dailies, we follow the EOS
framework, great way to run yourcompany, no matter how small you
are.
That's from traction, right?
Yeah, it's a great book.
So if we're transitioning to the
mortgage side of things, can youspeak to your first hire and like
what that role was?And if you would either change
what you did, or if you wouldrecommend the same situation for
the typical average broker thatwants to make first hire?
Yep.
(10:07):
First hire for me, well, I had a
bit of an unfair advantage.
It was Tangoo Marketing Agency.
So they did all my marketing.
And the first thing I would do
really for hiring, and you can dosome of this yourself, at least at
the beginning, is really soupingup your LinkedIn profile.
Assuming you're going to go forrealtors, which you guys have
talked extensively on previousepisodes, that was a really great
one.
You got to have that front facing
(10:28):
brand.
And again, I think you can take a
course to do some of thatyourself.
But at some point, things likeinbox management, you know,
helping flag your DM, even helpingyou sometimes, you know, manage
your inbox.
That's kind of what the first
assistant usually does is theyhelp you stay on top of
communication and they cansometimes even actually act like
you and respond to basic email.
(10:50):
So I feel like the name of the
game here you guys have talkedabout extensively again is
communication, right?So if you're already on that
stuff, then you might be like,Paul, I don't need someone to
answer my email, at least not yet.
You may go for the direction of
getting like a fractionalunderwriter, which I probably say
for like most other cases, it'sgetting a fractional underwriter.
So what does that mean?Let's actually break that down to
(11:10):
two positions.
There's underwriting and
fulfillment, right?The latter, no one really likes to
do.
It's a form 10 and it's when you
got a deal closed and it's like,why am I doing this?
This is a complete waste of time.
And we're lucky we're under a
Tangle Financial Group, which ispart of M3.
And they're innovators in thespace.
They are the ones who came up witha couple of different widely used
platforms.
I mean, DocAssist at the time was
(11:31):
very popular.
And if you guys look at Lender
Spotlight, that was madeinternally by the Hennebrey
brothers.
So we used a lot of that,
actually, that was something thatwas pretty important.
Essentially, they had thesefractional underwriters.
I don't know if every broker isgoing to have it.
And it's called Tango Plus is theyhad a full time for ladies.
They're still going today.
They're awesome.
And yeah, they would do your justyour compliance part and they
would fractionalize it for a fewhundred dollars.
(11:53):
And then that was right?it, And they're very generous.
They would actually step into thedeal.
The second you get they're notjust doing the approved, back-end
work.
But I challenge them to even
handhold clients and help themfigure out their down payment
verification.
And they really go beyond.
And let's call it $400.
And let's say that's four hours of
work, not just the compliancepackage, but actually closing the
deal, even talking to lenders.
I mean, the dollar per hour fine
(12:14):
might become a hundred bucks, butlike, that's like a hundred
dollars where it's not like youjust do it all in four hours.
It's like death by a thousandpaper cuts, the stress of having
three or four or five deals on thego, each of a lender nitpicking
one thing and the client asking acertain question and everyone
being stressed.
That is a stress of four hours
that I'm happy to delegate andshare some of my commission from.
(12:37):
I think if you have that luxury,it's a huge, important hire.
If you don't have that luxury, onething that I've done, because of
course there's limitations there.
There's also the whole part where
you're front facing, you're tryingto get someone to get you all
their documents and you're nudgingthem along your pipeline to
pre-approval and you've got to dotheir FINMO application or
(12:57):
whatever you're using.
And even that at a certain volume
becomes exhausting.
So I hired a fractional assistant
overseas, actually in Mexico city,my hometown.
And I trained her to, you know,just help me organize a lot of
that.
Of course, you know, never saying
she's a licensed broker, nevergiving advice, but you know, some
client correspondence and teeingup a lot of those processes for me
is very helpful.
And again, like you should be
doing all this yourself andbuilding a process because
nothing's going to beat how you doit, but eventually can get some
(13:19):
help to fill in the dots.
And like, you know, this could
literally be anywhere from, youknow, eight to $12 an hour, right?
Grab some for five, 10 hours.
And as long as you know how to
manage them, you're getting sometime back to really do the most
important thing.
Be great with clients, talk to
your referral partners andprospect because end of the day,
this is a glorified sales role,right?
answer the You know, you want tobe a thoughtful salesperson.
(13:40):
You don't want to feel like you'rejust a salesperson.
That's of a, course, anotherdiscussion.
But yeah, I mean, I think afractional assistant to help with
the front end or the back end islike the first thing you should
look at.
That's what we had done as well in
our business.
We hired someone who basically,
once the file's approved, shepicks up the file, she submits all
(14:00):
the docs to the lender.
She follows up with a client for
any missing pieces, doescompliance at the end.
And we find it frees up so muchtime and mental bandwidth that
way.
And for people listening who don't
have kind of that internal modelthat Paul has, there are
independent contractors who dothis as like a standalone
business.
So you just have to know where to
find them and see if they have thebandwidth to take that on.
(14:22):
You talk a lot about fractional.
I've heard you use that phrase a
few times.
So why don't you go deep on the
fractional side of things?And like, are you just picking
parts of your process that youfeel you can delegate building a
system for and handing it off?How do you determine what to
allocate the budget for that task?All those pieces?
question.
So fractional it infers is not
having a full time person becauselike you need to be at a pretty
(14:43):
good volume level to justifyAlthough there's that.
a fractional way to have a fulltimetime person because like you
need to be at a pretty good volumelevel to justify that.
Although there's a fractional wayto have a full-time person.
You know, some brokers share oneunderwriter, right?
Who's paid on a salary, et cetera.
We haven't quite done that.
I've seen it been done.
Yeah, so for us, you know, who can
at a five, 10, 20 hour a weeklevel completely own something and
(15:04):
give you peace of mind to do whatyou do best?
You know, as I said, I think as abroker, like your biggest duty
that cannot be replaced or veryhard to be replaced is the quiet
confidence for clients to moveforward of speed and conviction.
So in other words, you're there tohold their hand, really, like that
is your role.
Why are we hired as brokers by
banks and monoline lenders, anyoneelse?
Because unfortunately, they do nothave the bandwidth to provide any
(15:26):
level of service.
And I'm just like, my blood boils
when I just think about like, howterrible an experience people get
from banks primarily, for no faultof their own.
If you think of the way thatthey're built and the way they're
incentivized and their corporateculture and just how understaffed
they are, like how manyunderwriters have burnt out at
certain banks because they justgot to figure out their shit
basically, right?So that's our advantage where we
again become these, I hate to sayglorified salespeople, but I would
say like glorified- TechnicalWhat's that?
I was going to say glorifiedtechnical sales.
Like you got to know the knowledgeto be able to advocate something.
(15:49):
But at the end of the day, it issales if you want to scale your
business and do well.
Totally.
And this is with any to be able Sobecause of that, you're kind of
like their coach.
And I really see me as a coach of
my teams and my brands and myclients.
And I call it educational sales.
You're educating them in a
non-pushy way.
You're giving them data and then
(16:09):
you're also guiding them to keepmoving forward.
And they're going to have allkinds of resistance, of course.
Oh, I'm busy.
Oh, there's that.
There's a lot you have to unpack.
And it's just about figuring out
the art.
Everyone's different in different
customer journeys.
How do you nudge them forward?
And again, that's on you.
But you cannot really do that with
an empathetic mind and open heartif you are just stressed and
(16:31):
slammed and doing things that donot feel you.
So again, I try to focus as muchas I am there to, of course, do
the first intake call, of course,deal with my referral partners,
build that important customerjourney.
And as you guys have said inprevious episodes, like, you know,
have that like really tightfollow-up process with my referral
partners.
It's about communication.
In a nutshell, the biggest painrealtors have and the clients have
(16:51):
with banks, no communication inthe highest stress thing in their
entire lives.
People are just shocked.
How can this be a standard whenI'm just stressed?
It's an opaque industry and itseems like they don't care.
And of course people care, butthey're just busy, right?
So you got to make people feeltaken care of.
And again, it's going to bedifferent for everyone, but I
think, yeah, you have to be justhandholding the client.
And if you can outsourceeverything else where all you're
doing is taking the intakemeeting, checking in, answering
(17:11):
questions.
And then when it's a live deal,
really, you know, reviewing wherethey're going, how do you give
them a better night's sleep?That's my line.
That's what they want, right?So everything else you should have
help on.
And again, in terms of budgeting,
like think about it, right?Think about how much money you get
to keep at the end of the yearwith taxes.
And what are some of the costshere?
Well, there's, you know, afractional assistant overseas at
$10 an hour, you know, 20 hours aweek, that's 200 times four, 800.
(17:35):
Think about your rent, think aboutyour other expenses.
Does that make sense?Right?
So you got to budget this, ofcourse, in terms of marketing
highest value that I see.
And of course, I have a bias is if
you can do biz dev and do somelevel of LinkedIn automation or
prospecting with referral partnersand have the soft skill training
to actually be on a call andconfidently ask them the questions
that make them really want to workwith you.
(17:57):
I mean, that's huge, right?And that's sustainable.
So there's the like crossroads oflead gen or referral partner
generation.
And there's obviously, I think, a
healthy mix.
But look, like if you want to do
lead gen on Google ads orFacebook, like you need minimum
$2,000 to make that work.
Truly, right?
I think, right?$1,000 for the contractor, $1,000
of ad spend.
And then you got to be amazing on
the phone and have the time tochase people around, which by the
(18:17):
way, maybe that comes later whenyou have a better process and
assistant, et cetera.
I mean, realtors, it's just
organic.
It's building relationships.
It's technically not thatexpensive.
I mean, you can figure it outyourself and go on LinkedIn and
take some like really inexpensivecourse.
And we have a course at ouragency, Tengu, all about
prospecting on LinkedIn.
That was kind of, I guess, the
course that I built by being theguinea pig.
And I think that's obviouslysomething that, you know, is
(18:38):
probably a nice little hangthrough, but on your personality.
Yeah.
So if you're going that route,
we'll do a bit of a deep dive onthe VAs.
So I assume with your program andwith LinkedIn and the strategies
there, you have some sort of theautomations done by someone
overseas through VAs.
A bit of both.
So the process there is there aresome automations.
I mean, one platform is calledMeet Alfred, someone that we
(18:58):
partner with and we've got awesomepromo code if you really want to
use them.
And they basically help you
prospect a certain segment ofrealtors.
So when I moved to Toronto, Ididn't know a lot of people.
So I actually went on the searchbar, the free search bar on
LinkedIn, and I said Torontorealtor.
And then a thousand people comeup, 50,000 people technically,
right?And counting maybe even more in
Toronto.
And basically from there, there's
(19:19):
a list.
And then you can send them a drip
campaign on that first intromessage, and then literally can do
10 drip campaigns over two monthsor three months if you want.
That can get extremely annoying,and I think people are very
sensitive to automation.
So even since 2019, things have
changed, and beyond using thatsoftware, it's about 100 bucks a
month.
We found the best conversion rates
are actually when you do apersonalized reach out, but that's
tedious.
(19:39):
And that's where you want to bring
a VA.
But are they going to know the
checklist that you go throughmentally to do it properly?
So what we've done recently is,yes, we're in the era of chat GPT.
And we found that if you canprompt chat GPT to scan their
profile and basically manuallycreate that message that the
automation does, but you do itreally quickly.
We found a lot of success of that.
Basically, it's a mix of
artificial intelligence and justusing your heart and your process.
(20:01):
So there's a mix of pureautomation with a very casual
message that's like not salesy, ofcourse, that's very general.
And then there's a level of like,you know, personalized reach out,
which you should probably startdoing yourself, you know, bang out
20 minutes in the morning withyour coffee and just do it as
tedious as that sounds.
And eventually there's prompts you
can do to then outsource to eitherchat GPT or run it through chat
(20:22):
GPT.
Or what we've done now is we have,
you know, virtual assistants orfractional assistants, however you
want to call them, that willfollow a specific script, a
specific process and either usechat GPT or their own intuition
with, of course, following aprocess, they'll spend the one or
two hours a day doing very tedioustasks that are probably not worth
your time unless you're addinglike a ridiculous amount of extra
value.
But if you got to process down,
(20:43):
you won't be that different thanthem.
And that's a good tripwire to belike, if they can do it 80% as
good as me, that's good enough.
And a lot of entrepreneurs talk
about that exact line, like DanMartell, who was on our podcast, a
lot of people.
So it's, you got to let go to some
degree and it varies per person.
I that's the challenging part is
(21:04):
sometimes you're like, oh, I dothis thing well.
And then you hand it off to anassistant or someone and you're
like, oh, I wouldn't really do itthat way.
We struggle with that.
Sometimes we'll talk back and
forth, but I'm like, did it getdone?
Is the end goal there?And we're like, yeah, it is.
So definitely love that frame.
And I think it's super important
to remember and to constantlyremind yourself of, because it's
(21:24):
one of those things thateverything you delegate, you kind
of go through that struggle of,well, I would do it a little bit
differently this way.
And for people thinking about
adding that LinkedIn layer, whenwe talk about like building the
ask muscle and things like that inprevious episodes, this is a great
opportunity for you to do that, tobang out your five to 10 opens per
day, get those asks, try to meetthose realtors, financial
(21:45):
advisors, lawyers, whoever itmight be that you're targeting.
And you'll know from doing thatsort of what works and what
prompts you're using.
And then from there, build and
refine your system out of Thefirst thing I would do as a
broker, whether you're brand newor starting your strategy
planning, is take a hard look atwhat is your niche and what makes
you different.
And truly think about that.
And unfortunately, saying I'mgreat at communication is not
(22:05):
something that's marketable.
That's more of a, you got to walk
the walk than talk it because goodcommunication can mean so many
different things.
And although that I think is the
core value prop, you can't flauntthat, but things you can't flaunt
and maybe put on your profile.
Like for me, we have, you know,
commercial lending.
People usually Google that stuff
on LinkedIn, et cetera.
And I get reach out.
And that's a very, like, it's acategorical niche that's very
(22:26):
specific and that can work.
I put great communicating mortgage
broker on LinkedIn.
You can probably tell why no one's
Googling that, nor will theybelieve me.
But yeah, I think your niche isreally important.
And that's when you talk torealtors.
They'll be like, hey, how's itgoing?
And like, look, you know, theyhave a longstanding relationship
with someone, even if they're acouple of years in, or maybe it's
a more fragile one.
It's important to qualify that.
You direct around that ask, like,who's your go-to.
And I try to say, look, one plusone equals three, right?
(22:48):
The whole is greater than the sumof its parts.
So that's when you tell them, Hey,like you're a matchmaker.
I'm a matchmaker.
The better we match make clients
and they have a team around them.
I say you build a moat around them
because what's the pain point forrealtors when they're working on a
lead for years and by chance thelead is not ready to buy and they
meet another realtor or anothermortgage worker at a dinner table
(23:10):
party and then boom, they losethem.
You want to position around theirpains of losing clients, but also
you want to be upfront around whatmakes you different.
So, hey, I'm from Mexico city.
I speak Spanish.
How many Latin clients do youhave?
Like no matter who their brokeris, I probably don't speak
Spanish.
And if you have some of those
value props and they're alreadygoing to put you on the roster,
(23:31):
right?So think about like what makes you
different in like, again, likecategorical differentiation,
commercial mortgage broker,Spanish speaking, even your
background, like, you know, aimfrom tech and marketing.
They're going to think, yeah,whose energy is going to match
Paul's number one and whosespecific need is going to match
Paul's.
And the more you're upfront about
that, I think the better.
And yeah, you know, I think that
(23:51):
on top of hitching that relativeto their pain points of clients
leaving, clients being uneducatedand then yes, saying like, look,
I'm sure you've talked to lots ofbrokers and look, sometimes the
busiest brokers, unfortunately arethe ones that make your clients
feel like the biggest numberbecause they're too busy for their
own good.
If you say little things like
that, which insinuate their badcommunication, that's where I
think you've got someone who'slike, oh, wow, this person
(24:11):
understands me and they understandmy pain points that I lose clients
sometimes because of circumstance.
And if they're basically a
salesperson for me, that's ideal.
And you guys talked about, you
know, I mean, I did this in myearly days is called up realtors.
I had all the time in the world.
And I said, Hey, who are your
leads?I'm going to call them all up.
And unlike what you guysrecommended, I had a realtor who
had like leads that were way pastsix months.
So spun on my wheels a bit, butthat's when you get to learn your
(24:35):
sales pitch.
And that's why it's probably
better to work on existing leads.
It's call them even like tire
kickers before you pay for leadgen because it's all about how
fast on the spot you can again,differentiate yourself and do the
same sort of process I talkedabout with realtors.
So just some things there arounddifferentiating yourself and
speaking to the realtor's painsand making them really bucket you
is just categorically different.
(24:56):
And then the rest of it is just
again, the communication piece andlike the hustle piece, that's just
through your actions.
So that's when you have to get a
CRM, have a cadence of follow-ups.
When you follow up, it's not just
like, hey, how's your day?God deals for me.
It's like, hey, I just saw that inthe US, they're going to be doing
this with their rates.
And because stock market is a bull
market, that means that bond rateshave to go up, which means fixed
(25:19):
rates have to go up, which thenmeans if you have clients who
have, you know, existingpre-approvals that are expiring,
they should probably refresh itASAP because here's why there's a
leading indicator that they'regoing to go up again.
And that, by the way, could ruinyour chances of getting a deal
done.
Why?
Because then people qualify forless, they're more demotivated.
So it's always back to likehelping them protect their client,
make sure the client transacts.
(25:39):
Anyways, I could talk about about
it forever so thanks for bearingwith me but it's so me but it's so
important because you're speakingour lingo and i literally just
sent out that email this morningto partner so i'm laughing
internally love it but yeah it'sfunny because you can't just say
like i'm good at communicationeven though that is their pain
point communication with brokersyou can't lead with that because
everyone else says the same thingit's like okay, okay, well, it's
(26:01):
so bland.
Whereas like you're really just
packaging it a different way, butyou're still talking about
communication.
So I love that.
To circle back a little bit on theVA portion, like if I'm someone,
this is kind of like a selfishquestion, because I've been doing
a deep dive into hiring a VA, isif you wanted to hire a VA to do
email inbox management, and evensome of like the document
collections, obviously they can'tdo any underwriting because
they're not licensed.
But if you wanted them to do those
sort of tasks, what's like yourfirst step on hiring a VA?
(26:22):
Like where can you go to get thatperson?
Yeah, great question.
And if people do hit me up later,
I have a little like two pagedocument exactly on using either
some agencies in Latin America.
There's some websites to hire from
the Philippines.
Of course, the biggest one
everyone knows about is Upwork.
But there's many other ways beyond
Upwork.
But yeah, there's certain sites
and even certain agencies that arepretty generous with what they
(26:43):
take.
So for example, a certain agency
will probably take a month's worthof income, which could just be a
few hundred bucks.
And if they've got it all dialed
in, it could save you a ton oftime.
So don't be afraid to outsource.
And then you've got, of course,
websites where, yeah, you put up ajob posting and you get a bunch of
applications and you got to bereally organized on how you filter
that.
But yeah, there's a lot of it.
Yeah.
And for you, like the one thing
(27:03):
about virtual assistants oroverseas fractional workers is you
understand the cultural nuances oflike how they're motivated,
obviously.
And it is different between, let's
say, the Philippines and LatinAmerica.
I think secondly, any person youhire, when they're fractionalized,
you're not the most importantthing in the world, even if
they're full-time, right?They've got other things.
So you've got to be really clearon their role and be really
generous of your time and yourtraining.
And you always want to offer abovemarket, right?
(27:25):
20, 25%, which might be instead of$6, you're doing $8, right?
Just think that through instead ofthinking, okay, they're well, in a
less expensive country, whichmeans obviously you're doing
right?$8, Just think that through
instead of thinking, they're in aless expensive country, okay,
well, which means obviously you'redoing it to save money.
But if you're really pushing that,then your dollar per hour actually
goes down because you're spendingso much time training someone to
do something you could have doneyourself.
That's the threshold whereessentially it's not worth your
(27:46):
time.
Any kind of delegation, right?
So yeah, for you trying to dothose tasks, a lot of people do
fulfill that.
And I think usually they're best
suited in the Philippines.
But the thing I don't like about
that they're 14 hours ahead of youif you're in BC, right?
That for me is a problem forcommunication.
Yes, you're asleep, they're awake,vice versa, they can manage it.
But I have someone in LatinAmerica running my inbox because
(28:10):
there's so many time sensitivethings that they just got to be on
it.
You got to be able to slack them
in their response.
So, you know, just some quick
things that I've seen is like, youknow, waste managing and also find
them, of course.
And if I can ask, how have you
started the process?And maybe we've got some things
you got rolling that we candissect.
you if you're We originallystarted with our old company,
Leadvine.
We are running an agency for
(28:30):
mortgage brokers.
And we originally went into, I
forget the company name, but theyhad VAs that they hired and they
were trained on the CRM platformthat we were using.
So we originally went into that.
We had them develop websites for
us and everything.
But then recently I started
transitioning to think of likesomeone that can help us with like
even social media or email inbox.
And I forget the site.
I think it's literally called likeVA for hire or something like
that.
It's one of the bigger ones.
And it's just like a bitoverwhelming when you go to it.
(28:51):
Cause like, do I hire part-time?Do I hire full-time?
Should I hire from thePhilippines?
Like all the things you justdiscussed were kind of the thing
that was getting in the way ofreally doing a deep dive on it.
So we'll put a link to thattwo-page document for all the
listeners too, because I thinkthat could be helpful.
or I hire from the But yeah, thequick answer there, you can start
minimum, I believe, for socialmedia and hours a week.
(29:12):
What are they going to do there?Hopefully you have a content
calendar template, planning yourcontent.
You have a basic process to teachthem what kind of captions are
useful, and they can just look atyour social media and hopefully
mimic that.
With the help of ChatGPT, you can
have them use that for grammar andto also mimic your tone, et
cetera.
And then really, I think the
biggest skill you want there isare they good using Canva?
Half the social media is justdesign.
(29:33):
So they have to be good at Canvaand basically good attention to
detail.
That's it. 10 hours a week, that's
enough for them to do a few postsa week, even two posts a week.
And the cadence I like to havewith my team is we're always a
quarter ahead, so three monthsahead.
So right now we're filming inFebruary.
We've scheduled everything untilend of March, and we're about to
finish April, May, June.
A skeleton content calendar.
So just bare minimum, two posts aweek, and they're already starting
to think about certain posts forthat.
(29:55):
And this is maybe getting a bitoff topic, but it's all about
content repurposing, right?So if you can get onto YouTube and
do like one YouTube video permonth, super basic.
And that can even be like thisinterview, it'd be a YouTube
video.
It obviously is going to be.
It will be.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
So then you repurpose that using atool like Opus, et cetera.
Yeah.
And then you cut that up and you
spread it out.
And just repurpose is the big
(30:15):
thing.
And you can get way ahead.
Just your skeleton, like evergreencontent.
Of course, as the weeks and monthsgo by, if you're checking articles
every day, you're then like, youknow, ad hoc, you know, grabbing
an article and putting it into aslider on Canva.
They've got to be good at justlike doing the skeleton, the
evergreen content, following somekind of a process there.
And then, yeah, as youproactively, see an interesting
(30:36):
pulling article, out a beingquote, following like, some hey,
kind of a process And then there.
proactively, yeah, as you see an
interesting article, pulling out aquote, being like, hey, put that
into our Canva template.
And that's where the communication
is important.
But 10 hours a week can do most of
that.
And you don't have to post every
day.
You can do like bare minimum, you
know, even like two posts a weekshows you have a pulse and it
(30:59):
builds your brand.
How many leads will you get
through social media just on thattopic?
Probably not a lot.
It's more of just like a branding
which tool, target market orreferral Very partners.
few clients are to social mediajust on that topic?
Probably not a It's more lot.
of just like a branding tool,
which target market or referralpartners.
Yeah, exactly.
Very few clients are on social
media.
Anyways, I'm going on a tangent on
marketing, but it is related towhat you're doing, so.
(31:19):
So Yeah, exactly.
Very few No, that's great.
And we say the same thing.
Like social media, we do it more
as if a client looks us up to knowthat we're still active and
relative to what they're lookingfor, but also we're mainly using
it as a magnet for lead partners.
So I think that's great.
And prior to hitting record today,you had a quick framework that you
kind of shared with us.
I believe you called it the DAO
(31:39):
method.
Can you just give a quick
overview?I love frames because you can
apply it to scenarios very quicklyand get a quick result.
So can you just share a little bitwith the listeners on that one?
Sure thing.
So DAO stands for Delegate,
Automate, and Outsource.
And I came up with it when Web3
was really at a big craze.
And it's coming back.
And people are building DAOs andcommunities, which I think is
(32:00):
actually really interesting.
And I think there's a lot to be
said about that.
That's for a different podcast.
But yeah, I was thinkingeveryone's chasing these cool new
technologies and models.
What about the basics of improving
your relative income?Delegate.
We've talked about if you have aninternal staff or a fractional
helper, delegate things that arenot in your zone of genius.
Just a side note, I just recentlywent on this Clifton Strengths
Finder.
It shows you your top five
strengths.
There's many personality tests.
(32:21):
This one's actually very good andtailored towards executives and
very good if you have a partner ora teammate.
Basically, what are your fivebiggest strengths?
I think it's like 30 bucksCanadian takes you half an hour.
That is a extremely eye-openingthing because let's put it this
way.
The strengths that are easy as
walking between the strengths thatare easy as breathing.
And that's a big differentiationbecause the strengths that are as
easy as breathing for you, youhave to eventually be purely in
that zone.
(32:41):
For example, one for me, like I'm
pretty good at sales, but I don'tknow if that's my breathing
strength per se.
And eventually if I want to really
scale, I got to hire a sales teamand not be like, I'm the only one
doing sales.
So by the way, that's, you know,
super important for understandingwhat to delegate, automate.
I mean, look, we haven't talkedtoo much around Blue CRM from Tom
Hall and the gang in Toronto.
Shout out to them.
They're awesome.
It's been cool to see how they've
expanded.
Set up your drip campaigns.
There's so many things you canjust automate to some degree, and
it's going to give people thatreally quick communication that's
(33:01):
important, right?And the last thing is outsource.
And that's not the same thing asdelegate or automate.
That's actually hiring an outsideagency who can help you cruise
through the learning curve fast.
They're professionals.
There's limited handholding andthey're gonna get to result faster
than you, even if it hurts a bitupfront to pay for.
So yeah, delegate to an internalteam member, automate through your
CRM and through various, we talkedabout chat GPT, we talked about
LinkedIn automation, and thenoutsource.
Find like a really value-addedagency or contractor that can just
own something that is not exactlyon your team.
Yeah, I love that.
That's a great framework to take
anything you're trying to solve inyour business.
Totally.
Yeah.
Thanks for asking about that.
Paul, do you have anything that
(33:22):
you think the listeners shouldknow about outsourcing,
delegating, the whole framework wejust talked about?
I mean, we covered a lot.
I think there's a call to action.
We mentioned my podcast, ourpodcast, Grind Less, Flow More.
If you do download that onSpotify, Apple, even Amazon,
there's some cool heavyweights onthere that are realtors, mortgage
brokers, and of course, lots ofcoaches and bestselling authors.
Tune into that.
And there are some episodes that
really directly address that anddo go very deep.
(33:45):
So that's an obvious call toaction to go deeper.
Obviously, also onlevelupmortgage.com.
That way you can find how to getin touch with which I'm sure will
me, also be linked.
You if you reverse engineer a bit
of our process there.
can, want, And you can start to
see how we're recruiting both formarketing staff, but also we are
growing our broker team.
So get in touch.
And lastly, look, I mean, followus on social media.
(34:07):
And if there's specific questions,I'm happy to provide other links
that either are within Level UpMortgages or with our marketing
agency.
And there's a lot more to deep
dive in.
But I hope today out of your large
priority list, hopefully one ortwo things that were somewhere on
that list, but not yet acted on,they've gone up the list, because
you've seen it's maybe a biteasier than you thought, you've
(34:28):
got more direction.
And that's huge, right?
Just prioritize that and juststart with one thing.
Yeah, in general, I think we'vecovered a lot.
And maybe to summarize, they'llstep at a time.
But remember, like the best wayyou will grow a sustainable
income, higher dollar per hour,less or zero burnout is going to
be figuring out your strengths,being a broker, which is really
the person that needs to justguide people to clarity and
(34:50):
conviction.
And then slowly but surely, after
you've done it yourself, to someextent, is starting to delegate,
automate and outsource parts ofthe process.
So you can be of more service topeople that just want
communication and someone to holdtheir hand.
That's the best way I wouldsummarize it.
And to get there, it is all aboutsystems.
You have to decide whether you area systems person.
And if you're not, join a teamthat is, that's got the dialed in.
(35:10):
Now, you guys are big on systems.
I'm big on systems.
Just be honest with yourself, whocan support you in that journey.
But you do have to have some basicsystems or else you will be a
victim to your own success.
And that's where I think a lot of
brokers and banks and banks arethe best example.
They're victim of their ownsuccess.
They barely have time to processan application, let alone provide
(35:33):
any level of education.
And as a differentiator, it's all
about educational selling.
And the more you show that and you
walk the walk with, of course,your referral partners, but
starting with your clients andreally dial in that customer
journey, you will be in a goodposition and you will grind less
and flow more.
You will be able to work from New
York or Austin, Texas or MexicoCity with, you know, one or two
(35:54):
hour time difference and like havea really interesting life.
I mean, this is a greatprofession.
I mean, wow.
You know, we don't have to go
knock on doors as much as I thinkthat is important and can work
remotely and have a good qualityof life, but you got to have
systems.
And that's sort of in my journey
moving to Toronto and even justhow I ended up as a broker.
(36:14):
It was systems, bringing inpeople, having confidence,
changing your environment,physical and digitally and
socially.
All those things help you level
up.
So anyways, at some rate can help
your audience and our fellowbrokers grind a little bit less
and flow a little bit more.
And I'm super grateful that two of
you had me on.
So yeah, thank you for having me
(36:38):
and I'll be actively continuing tolisten to your journey.
And I'm sure there's a lot of wayswe can collaborate with yourself
in community.
Awesome.
I appreciate it, Paul.
It was great to have you.
I know I'm going to be writingdown that framework.
I always write it down onpainter's tape and stick it on my
wall.
Wonderful.
It's going to go over therebecause not on that new wall,
buddy.
Not on the new wall, on the other
wall.
It's going wall, on the other
wall.
Thank you joining us.
It was a real treat to have Yeah,thanks, Paul.
Thank you.
(36:58):
It's a joy to be here.
Flow well and we'll talk supersoon.
you've ever wanted to scale yourbusiness to the point where you're
making several six or sevenfigures while also working less
than 40 hours a week, you probablyknow by now that in order to get
there, you'll need to hire staff.
You see, I find the toughest part
about hiring is knowing who tohire and when to hire.
That's why we have a guest on theshow today to chat all about
creating systems to hireappropriately while also going
over some different ways to lookat hiring, including outsourcing
(00:22):
work to VAs and what's called afractional hire.
If you're at the point in yourbusiness where you need to hire to
grow, or you're just gettingstarted in the business, but know
you'll be there eventually, thenyou'll want to stick around for
this one.
If you're new to the show, my name
is Tom Moffitt, and I'm joined bymy good buddy, business partner
and co host Brandon Love.
Whether you're new in the industry
(00:42):
or a seasoned vet, you will getspecific takeaways from every
episode as we strive to makeCommission Breath focused and
granular.
Let the Commission Breath podcast
be your tool to grow in yourmortgage business.
So with that being said, let'sdive into the of Commission
Breath.
Brandon Love here with Tom Moffitt
and a very special guest, PaulDavidescu.
Paul is from the podcast GrindLess, Flow More.
(01:08):
He's also a mortgage broker basedout of Vancouver, British
Columbia.
And today we are going to do a
deep dive on hiring, growing teamsand everything that comes along
with that.
So thanks for joining us, Paul.
Tom and Brandon, thanks for havingme.
I'm really excited.
Awesome, yeah.
So I originally reached out toyou, Paul, with the intention of
talking about podcasting becauseI've tuned into your podcast.
(01:29):
I love what you're doing.
And you're like, you know what?
I think your listeners wouldreally get value out of scaling
your business through hiring anddelegating.
So I'm like, you know what, wehaven't really done an episode
specifically on that.
So that's why we brought you here.
So why don't we just start off byjust kind of getting some
background, the lay of the land asto how you got into the industry,
(01:51):
where you're at today, and kind ofthe journey along the way
definitely.
Thanks so much for that setup.
Well, in a nutshell, I've spentthe last 15 years thinking about
how do you help entrepreneursgrind less and flow more?
How do you help them makesustainable income?
So what's sustainable income?Well, we see it as something that
was popularized way back in theday in a book that I think most
entrepreneurs read as their first,The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim
(02:13):
Ferriss.
He talks about relative income.
So he talks about, it doesn'treally matter how much money you
make at the end of the year.
It's about the profit, not the
revenue, obviously.
But also it's the amount of time
you put into that.
So it's profit relative to time.
So it's the efficiency of how youmake money.
And one thing we like to add on tothat is, well, how optimized are
you tracking it?And lastly, do you have maximum
happiness and zero burnout?Can you strive towards that?
(02:35):
I think especially after COVID,there was an awakening.
Values shifted a little bit.
And yeah, there's more to life
than just making money.
So I've done that in multiple
ways, and we'll get into it.
But yeah, just background story on
me.
Born in Mexico City.
Moved to Vancouver when I wasfour.
Grew up on the west side.
Went to UBC, and I have third
(02:55):
passport from Spain.
So very international.
And I think that's important forobviously how I run my business
and the different ideas and theways I put some soul into
sometimes a soulless industry.
Yeah, like professionally, I mean,
I guess my 50 minutes of fame wasDragon's Den in 2014.
We were at the time working on atech company that built a pocket
concierge for people to choosetheir favorite restaurant based
off a mood that they're in.
(03:16):
So things Spotify meets Yelp.
And yeah, that was a really coolexperience.
And spoiler alert, we did getfunding, but not in the way you
may think and save that foranother day.
Then evolved into a marketingagency.
So social media and salesautomation.
In 2016, then we evolved intothat.
Still working with restaurants.
And when I moved to Toronto in
2018, I think it was just to feelless stuck.
(03:37):
I was in the same environment forso long.
I took Vancouver for granted, Iknow.
And when you go somewhere else,especially like Toronto, great
city, but not the exact same kindof beauty or community.
Things sort of shift a bit.
But the cool thing about changing
your environment is when you aresomewhere new like that, where
it's a lot colder, and arguably,you know, physically and
metaphorically, you kind of youget shocked out of your system and
(03:57):
new opportunities come to you.
So that's when I started meeting a
lot of mortgage brokers.
I didn't really know what a
mortgage broker was back then.
Honestly, it was just like as an
entrepreneur, it's the last thingyou think about, you know,
homeownership, great, maybe one II think day.
that's mean, a sentiment right?anywhere, as an like,
entrepreneur, it's the last thingyou think You about.
home know, ownership, Maybe onegreat.
I I think day.
that's mean, a sentiment anywhere,
(04:18):
right?But especially as an entrepreneur,
you're thinking about the houseover your head, which is the place
that you rent and the staff thatyou have on board.
Met a lot of mortgage brokers andthey started expressing needs
around better marketingthemselves.
And it was just an opportunitythat I guess had to make sense to
explore.
This was like a couple of years
before COVID or really a yearbefore COVID that we started
exploring and diversifying.
And I mean, they always say, if
you can be empathetic to yourcustomer, like that's how you win.
Easier said than done.
And working with restaurants, I
had thought about opening like asmall taco stand or something and
doing some marketing on us andhaving this a case study.
(04:40):
Never quite had that aligned, butin Toronto, at least at the time,
I could do that.
At the same time, I found out that
you can get certified within oneweek, right, through a full-time
course.
And at that point, I actually had
the freedom to do that.
And this is going to go back to
our theme around staff.
I had hired, literally, he went
from an apprentice to co-founder,Santiago.
Awesome dude, really smart guy.
And I'm like, I told him, hey,
(05:01):
keep running with the company.
I'm going to do this covert
mission and get my broker licenseso that I can be the Trojan horse
case study for us.
I'm going to get the license just
for fun.
I mean, probably good to learn how
to eventually strive for homeownership.
But really, if I can be our firstcustomer, we can experiment with
me and I can be very patient andyou can give me lots of resources,
(05:22):
then that could be a good start.
We did that and we got lucky.
We got time with the bottom of theinterest rates, COVID, and just
applied a certain set of salessystems and I call them systems of
giving and just this growthmindset, which we talk a lot about
on the podcast.
And yeah, we got nominated for
newcomer of the year acrossCanada.
And then suddenly we had to workmore mortgage brokers.
It was just what the marketwanted.
And then me personally, my dollarper hour, my relative income shot
(05:44):
through the roof 12x.
As much as I didn't find this to
be as sexy as restaurants, it wasjust clear that there was a need
there.
And yeah, dove headfirst into
being a mortgage broker andhaven't looked back since.
I mean, at the same time, myagency still exists, Santiago runs
So we've got a portfolio of brandswe have under this brand, it.
I mean, called Level Up Advisors.
That's kind of our corporation.
(06:05):
And the whole goal back to what Isaid is how do you help people
build sustainable income?And that doesn't just come from
being a broker.
It comes from being a good
marketer.
It comes from health.
It comes from a lot of differentthings that, yeah, we present to a
lot of our clients.
So it's kind of a multifaceted
thing.
But my lane right now is pure
mortgage brokering.
(06:29):
We have a commercial arm and we
deal a lot with business owners,people that are especially burnt
out, people that are especially, Ithink, making a big difference in
the world.
And they're just not getting the
treatment or the understandingfrom banks and even sometimes
other brokers who need to speaktheir language and understand that
their time is so precious and theyneed lots of solutions and they
have no time.
They're, you know, managing staff,
contractors, et cetera.
So that is a bit of a intro on my
story.
And here we Nice.
Totally feel your comment thereabout your relative hours shooting
(06:51):
up to the roof with brokering.
I feel like it's such a gateway
drug when you look at it like, oh,wow, okay, I can work 40 hours a
week or even 25 or less in somescenarios and make hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
And you compare that to another
industry.
I was in farming before and
working directly with restaurants.
And there is not the value because
there's not the margin in theindustry.
So it's harder to scale that way.
(07:13):
And you touched on something there
about brokers feeling burnt out atcertain times.
And I think a lot of otherindustries, there's arguably more
burnout, but we sometimes getburnt out in the mortgage industry
because we're constantly doingsimilar scenarios, but different
people and working with people whoare high stress on the other side
of things.
And that stress can kind of get
transferred over.
And a little reset I've been doing
recently is just kind of thinkingback to those old days of having
(07:36):
to wake up at like five in themorning, go to the farm, finish
the day late at night.
And then I just have this like
intense gratitude for where I'mactually at today and all the
opportunities that this industryhas opened up.
And I found that like in timeswhere I was feeling stretched thin
or a little bit burnt out, thatthat's been a huge frame to kind
(07:58):
of reshift and then go back intothe next day with that renewed
energy.
Beautiful, bang on.
Yeah.
pivot to your first hire.
So if we're going back to, let'ssay your marketing agency, you
mentioned that you're still partof that business, right?
So then is that fully off stillpart of that right?
business, So then is that fullyoff your plate at that point?
Like your business partner ishandling that with other staffing
and then you're kind of just thefront facing with lead gen or how
(08:20):
does that work for you?great question.
So, you know, when you run anybusiness, it's very hard to be
completely hands off until it'sreally a certain level.
I'm there very strategically andone big thing is letting go.
So when I was going to go on thisToronto adventure, yes, to build
the business in a bigger, brightercity, at least that's how I saw it
at the time.
(08:40):
When you leave, like you're forced
to delegate some things and not bein the weeds or else you can't
really think about things.
So again, I started like for
years, like there's so manyamazing apprentices, you know,
interns, just young people who arenot given a fair shot.
And you know, if you have theright leadership and the right
story and you really want to helpthem level up you're gonna get a
lot of people that want tocontribute in some way but yeah i
mean you really got to findsomeone who can be an independent
(09:02):
thinker and can have the rightconfidence and you have to nurture
that and when you do that you juststart letting go more and more
things and yes ideally you are therainmaker and they are the
operator.
They understand pretty much the
whole process.
Ideally, that's documented
somewhere, right?And yeah, when I was in Toronto, I
was given the space to thinkbecause otherwise I'd be in the
weeds with customers three hoursbehind me, right?
And that just becomes, you know,not ideal for, again, flowing to
(09:23):
really having time to think andstrategize and try new
opportunities.
So yeah, he was a full-time staff
with a bit of And then equity.
I just gave him more and more
challenges and try newopportunities.
So he was a full-time yeah, staffwith a bit of equity.
And then I just gave him more andmore challenges and opportunities
and he sees it really well.
And eventually I was only really
working a couple hours there,mainly just for sales meetings,
things that really moved theneedle, things that improve not
just my relative income, but alsoSantiago's and the team's.
(09:45):
And that's how it is today still.
I mean, there's still meetings I
will jump in for.
We have certain corporate
cadences, weekly meetings,dailies, we follow the EOS
framework, great way to run yourcompany, no matter how small you
are.
That's from traction, right?
Yeah, it's a great book.
So if we're transitioning to the
mortgage side of things, can youspeak to your first hire and like
what that role was?And if you would either change
what you did, or if you wouldrecommend the same situation for
the typical average broker thatwants to make first hire?
Yep.
(10:07):
First hire for me, well, I had a
bit of an unfair advantage.
It was Tangoo Marketing Agency.
So they did all my marketing.
And the first thing I would do
really for hiring, and you can dosome of this yourself, at least at
the beginning, is really soupingup your LinkedIn profile.
Assuming you're going to go forrealtors, which you guys have
talked extensively on previousepisodes, that was a really great
one.
You got to have that front facing
(10:28):
brand.
And again, I think you can take a
course to do some of thatyourself.
But at some point, things likeinbox management, you know,
helping flag your DM, even helpingyou sometimes, you know, manage
your inbox.
That's kind of what the first
assistant usually does is theyhelp you stay on top of
communication and they cansometimes even actually act like
you and respond to basic email.
(10:50):
So I feel like the name of the
game here you guys have talkedabout extensively again is
communication, right?So if you're already on that
stuff, then you might be like,Paul, I don't need someone to
answer my email, at least not yet.
You may go for the direction of
getting like a fractionalunderwriter, which I probably say
for like most other cases, it'sgetting a fractional underwriter.
So what does that mean?Let's actually break that down to
(11:10):
two positions.
There's underwriting and
fulfillment, right?The latter, no one really likes to
do.
It's a form 10 and it's when you
got a deal closed and it's like,why am I doing this?
This is a complete waste of time.
And we're lucky we're under a
Tangle Financial Group, which ispart of M3.
And they're innovators in thespace.
They are the ones who came up witha couple of different widely used
platforms.
I mean, DocAssist at the time was
(11:31):
very popular.
And if you guys look at Lender
Spotlight, that was madeinternally by the Hennebrey
brothers.
So we used a lot of that,
actually, that was something thatwas pretty important.
Essentially, they had thesefractional underwriters.
I don't know if every broker isgoing to have it.
And it's called Tango Plus is theyhad a full time for ladies.
They're still going today.
They're awesome.
And yeah, they would do your justyour compliance part and they
would fractionalize it for a fewhundred dollars.
(11:53):
And then that was right?it, And they're very generous.
They would actually step into thedeal.
The second you get they're notjust doing the approved, back-end
work.
But I challenge them to even
handhold clients and help themfigure out their down payment
verification.
And they really go beyond.
And let's call it $400.
And let's say that's four hours of
work, not just the compliancepackage, but actually closing the
deal, even talking to lenders.
I mean, the dollar per hour fine
(12:14):
might become a hundred bucks, butlike, that's like a hundred
dollars where it's not like youjust do it all in four hours.
It's like death by a thousandpaper cuts, the stress of having
three or four or five deals on thego, each of a lender nitpicking
one thing and the client asking acertain question and everyone
being stressed.
That is a stress of four hours
that I'm happy to delegate andshare some of my commission from.
(12:37):
I think if you have that luxury,it's a huge, important hire.
If you don't have that luxury, onething that I've done, because of
course there's limitations there.
There's also the whole part where
you're front facing, you're tryingto get someone to get you all
their documents and you're nudgingthem along your pipeline to
pre-approval and you've got to dotheir FINMO application or
(12:57):
whatever you're using.
And even that at a certain volume
becomes exhausting.
So I hired a fractional assistant
overseas, actually in Mexico city,my hometown.
And I trained her to, you know,just help me organize a lot of
that.
Of course, you know, never saying
she's a licensed broker, nevergiving advice, but you know, some
client correspondence and teeingup a lot of those processes for me
is very helpful.
And again, like you should be
doing all this yourself andbuilding a process because
nothing's going to beat how you doit, but eventually can get some
(13:19):
help to fill in the dots.
And like, you know, this could
literally be anywhere from, youknow, eight to $12 an hour, right?
Grab some for five, 10 hours.
And as long as you know how to
manage them, you're getting sometime back to really do the most
important thing.
Be great with clients, talk to
your referral partners andprospect because end of the day,
this is a glorified sales role,right?
answer the You know, you want tobe a thoughtful salesperson.
(13:40):
You don't want to feel like you'rejust a salesperson.
That's of a, course, anotherdiscussion.
But yeah, I mean, I think afractional assistant to help with
the front end or the back end islike the first thing you should
look at.
That's what we had done as well in
our business.
We hired someone who basically,
once the file's approved, shepicks up the file, she submits all
(14:00):
the docs to the lender.
She follows up with a client for
any missing pieces, doescompliance at the end.
And we find it frees up so muchtime and mental bandwidth that
way.
And for people listening who don't
have kind of that internal modelthat Paul has, there are
independent contractors who dothis as like a standalone
business.
So you just have to know where to
find them and see if they have thebandwidth to take that on.
(14:22):
You talk a lot about fractional.
I've heard you use that phrase a
few times.
So why don't you go deep on the
fractional side of things?And like, are you just picking
parts of your process that youfeel you can delegate building a
system for and handing it off?How do you determine what to
allocate the budget for that task?All those pieces?
question.
So fractional it infers is not
having a full time person becauselike you need to be at a pretty
(14:43):
good volume level to justifyAlthough there's that.
a fractional way to have a fulltimetime person because like you
need to be at a pretty good volumelevel to justify that.
Although there's a fractional wayto have a full-time person.
You know, some brokers share oneunderwriter, right?
Who's paid on a salary, et cetera.
We haven't quite done that.
I've seen it been done.
Yeah, so for us, you know, who can
at a five, 10, 20 hour a weeklevel completely own something and
(15:04):
give you peace of mind to do whatyou do best?
You know, as I said, I think as abroker, like your biggest duty
that cannot be replaced or veryhard to be replaced is the quiet
confidence for clients to moveforward of speed and conviction.
So in other words, you're there tohold their hand, really, like that
is your role.
Why are we hired as brokers by
banks and monoline lenders, anyoneelse?
Because unfortunately, they do nothave the bandwidth to provide any
(15:26):
level of service.
And I'm just like, my blood boils
when I just think about like, howterrible an experience people get
from banks primarily, for no faultof their own.
If you think of the way thatthey're built and the way they're
incentivized and their corporateculture and just how understaffed
they are, like how manyunderwriters have burnt out at
certain banks because they justgot to figure out their shit
basically, right?So that's our advantage where we
again become these, I hate to sayglorified salespeople, but I would
say like glorified- TechnicalWhat's that?
I was going to say glorifiedtechnical sales.
Like you got to know the knowledgeto be able to advocate something.
(15:49):
But at the end of the day, it issales if you want to scale your
business and do well.
Totally.
And this is with any to be able Sobecause of that, you're kind of
like their coach.
And I really see me as a coach of
my teams and my brands and myclients.
And I call it educational sales.
You're educating them in a
non-pushy way.
You're giving them data and then
(16:09):
you're also guiding them to keepmoving forward.
And they're going to have allkinds of resistance, of course.
Oh, I'm busy.
Oh, there's that.
There's a lot you have to unpack.
And it's just about figuring out
the art.
Everyone's different in different
customer journeys.
How do you nudge them forward?
And again, that's on you.
But you cannot really do that with
an empathetic mind and open heartif you are just stressed and
(16:31):
slammed and doing things that donot feel you.
So again, I try to focus as muchas I am there to, of course, do
the first intake call, of course,deal with my referral partners,
build that important customerjourney.
And as you guys have said inprevious episodes, like, you know,
have that like really tightfollow-up process with my referral
partners.
It's about communication.
In a nutshell, the biggest painrealtors have and the clients have
(16:51):
with banks, no communication inthe highest stress thing in their
entire lives.
People are just shocked.
How can this be a standard whenI'm just stressed?
It's an opaque industry and itseems like they don't care.
And of course people care, butthey're just busy, right?
So you got to make people feeltaken care of.
And again, it's going to bedifferent for everyone, but I
think, yeah, you have to be justhandholding the client.
And if you can outsourceeverything else where all you're
doing is taking the intakemeeting, checking in, answering
(17:11):
questions.
And then when it's a live deal,
really, you know, reviewing wherethey're going, how do you give
them a better night's sleep?That's my line.
That's what they want, right?So everything else you should have
help on.
And again, in terms of budgeting,
like think about it, right?Think about how much money you get
to keep at the end of the yearwith taxes.
And what are some of the costshere?
Well, there's, you know, afractional assistant overseas at
$10 an hour, you know, 20 hours aweek, that's 200 times four, 800.
(17:35):
Think about your rent, think aboutyour other expenses.
Does that make sense?Right?
So you got to budget this, ofcourse, in terms of marketing
highest value that I see.
And of course, I have a bias is if
you can do biz dev and do somelevel of LinkedIn automation or
prospecting with referral partnersand have the soft skill training
to actually be on a call andconfidently ask them the questions
that make them really want to workwith you.
(17:57):
I mean, that's huge, right?And that's sustainable.
So there's the like crossroads oflead gen or referral partner
generation.
And there's obviously, I think, a
healthy mix.
But look, like if you want to do
lead gen on Google ads orFacebook, like you need minimum
$2,000 to make that work.
Truly, right?
I think, right?$1,000 for the contractor, $1,000
of ad spend.
And then you got to be amazing on
the phone and have the time tochase people around, which by the
(18:17):
way, maybe that comes later whenyou have a better process and
assistant, et cetera.
I mean, realtors, it's just
organic.
It's building relationships.
It's technically not thatexpensive.
I mean, you can figure it outyourself and go on LinkedIn and
take some like really inexpensivecourse.
And we have a course at ouragency, Tengu, all about
prospecting on LinkedIn.
That was kind of, I guess, the
course that I built by being theguinea pig.
And I think that's obviouslysomething that, you know, is
(18:38):
probably a nice little hangthrough, but on your personality.
Yeah.
So if you're going that route,
we'll do a bit of a deep dive onthe VAs.
So I assume with your program andwith LinkedIn and the strategies
there, you have some sort of theautomations done by someone
overseas through VAs.
A bit of both.
So the process there is there aresome automations.
I mean, one platform is calledMeet Alfred, someone that we
(18:58):
partner with and we've got awesomepromo code if you really want to
use them.
And they basically help you
prospect a certain segment ofrealtors.
So when I moved to Toronto, Ididn't know a lot of people.
So I actually went on the searchbar, the free search bar on
LinkedIn, and I said Torontorealtor.
And then a thousand people comeup, 50,000 people technically,
right?And counting maybe even more in
Toronto.
And basically from there, there's
(19:19):
a list.
And then you can send them a drip
campaign on that first intromessage, and then literally can do
10 drip campaigns over two monthsor three months if you want.
That can get extremely annoying,and I think people are very
sensitive to automation.
So even since 2019, things have
changed, and beyond using thatsoftware, it's about 100 bucks a
month.
We found the best conversion rates
are actually when you do apersonalized reach out, but that's
tedious.
(19:39):
And that's where you want to bring
a VA.
But are they going to know the
checklist that you go throughmentally to do it properly?
So what we've done recently is,yes, we're in the era of chat GPT.
And we found that if you canprompt chat GPT to scan their
profile and basically manuallycreate that message that the
automation does, but you do itreally quickly.
We found a lot of success of that.
Basically, it's a mix of
artificial intelligence and justusing your heart and your process.
(20:01):
So there's a mix of pureautomation with a very casual
message that's like not salesy, ofcourse, that's very general.
And then there's a level of like,you know, personalized reach out,
which you should probably startdoing yourself, you know, bang out
20 minutes in the morning withyour coffee and just do it as
tedious as that sounds.
And eventually there's prompts you
can do to then outsource to eitherchat GPT or run it through chat
(20:22):
GPT.
Or what we've done now is we have,
you know, virtual assistants orfractional assistants, however you
want to call them, that willfollow a specific script, a
specific process and either usechat GPT or their own intuition
with, of course, following aprocess, they'll spend the one or
two hours a day doing very tedioustasks that are probably not worth
your time unless you're addinglike a ridiculous amount of extra
value.
But if you got to process down,
(20:43):
you won't be that different thanthem.
And that's a good tripwire to belike, if they can do it 80% as
good as me, that's good enough.
And a lot of entrepreneurs talk
about that exact line, like DanMartell, who was on our podcast, a
lot of people.
So it's, you got to let go to some
degree and it varies per person.
I that's the challenging part is
(21:04):
sometimes you're like, oh, I dothis thing well.
And then you hand it off to anassistant or someone and you're
like, oh, I wouldn't really do itthat way.
We struggle with that.
Sometimes we'll talk back and
forth, but I'm like, did it getdone?
Is the end goal there?And we're like, yeah, it is.
So definitely love that frame.
And I think it's super important
to remember and to constantlyremind yourself of, because it's
(21:24):
one of those things thateverything you delegate, you kind
of go through that struggle of,well, I would do it a little bit
differently this way.
And for people thinking about
adding that LinkedIn layer, whenwe talk about like building the
ask muscle and things like that inprevious episodes, this is a great
opportunity for you to do that, tobang out your five to 10 opens per
day, get those asks, try to meetthose realtors, financial
(21:45):
advisors, lawyers, whoever itmight be that you're targeting.
And you'll know from doing thatsort of what works and what
prompts you're using.
And then from there, build and
refine your system out of Thefirst thing I would do as a
broker, whether you're brand newor starting your strategy
planning, is take a hard look atwhat is your niche and what makes
you different.
And truly think about that.
And unfortunately, saying I'mgreat at communication is not
(22:05):
something that's marketable.
That's more of a, you got to walk
the walk than talk it because goodcommunication can mean so many
different things.
And although that I think is the
core value prop, you can't flauntthat, but things you can't flaunt
and maybe put on your profile.
Like for me, we have, you know,
commercial lending.
People usually Google that stuff
on LinkedIn, et cetera.
And I get reach out.
And that's a very, like, it's acategorical niche that's very
(22:26):
specific and that can work.
I put great communicating mortgage
broker on LinkedIn.
You can probably tell why no one's
Googling that, nor will theybelieve me.
But yeah, I think your niche isreally important.
And that's when you talk torealtors.
They'll be like, hey, how's itgoing?
And like, look, you know, theyhave a longstanding relationship
with someone, even if they're acouple of years in, or maybe it's
a more fragile one.
It's important to qualify that.
You direct around that ask, like,who's your go-to.
And I try to say, look, one plusone equals three, right?
(22:48):
The whole is greater than the sumof its parts.
So that's when you tell them, Hey,like you're a matchmaker.
I'm a matchmaker.
The better we match make clients
and they have a team around them.
I say you build a moat around them
because what's the pain point forrealtors when they're working on a
lead for years and by chance thelead is not ready to buy and they
meet another realtor or anothermortgage worker at a dinner table
(23:10):
party and then boom, they losethem.
You want to position around theirpains of losing clients, but also
you want to be upfront around whatmakes you different.
So, hey, I'm from Mexico city.
I speak Spanish.
How many Latin clients do youhave?
Like no matter who their brokeris, I probably don't speak
Spanish.
And if you have some of those
value props and they're alreadygoing to put you on the roster,
(23:31):
right?So think about like what makes you
different in like, again, likecategorical differentiation,
commercial mortgage broker,Spanish speaking, even your
background, like, you know, aimfrom tech and marketing.
They're going to think, yeah,whose energy is going to match
Paul's number one and whosespecific need is going to match
Paul's.
And the more you're upfront about
that, I think the better.
And yeah, you know, I think that
(23:51):
on top of hitching that relativeto their pain points of clients
leaving, clients being uneducatedand then yes, saying like, look,
I'm sure you've talked to lots ofbrokers and look, sometimes the
busiest brokers, unfortunately arethe ones that make your clients
feel like the biggest numberbecause they're too busy for their
own good.
If you say little things like
that, which insinuate their badcommunication, that's where I
think you've got someone who'slike, oh, wow, this person
(24:11):
understands me and they understandmy pain points that I lose clients
sometimes because of circumstance.
And if they're basically a
salesperson for me, that's ideal.
And you guys talked about, you
know, I mean, I did this in myearly days is called up realtors.
I had all the time in the world.
And I said, Hey, who are your
leads?I'm going to call them all up.
And unlike what you guysrecommended, I had a realtor who
had like leads that were way pastsix months.
So spun on my wheels a bit, butthat's when you get to learn your
(24:35):
sales pitch.
And that's why it's probably
better to work on existing leads.
It's call them even like tire
kickers before you pay for leadgen because it's all about how
fast on the spot you can again,differentiate yourself and do the
same sort of process I talkedabout with realtors.
So just some things there arounddifferentiating yourself and
speaking to the realtor's painsand making them really bucket you
is just categorically different.
(24:56):
And then the rest of it is just
again, the communication piece andlike the hustle piece, that's just
through your actions.
So that's when you have to get a
CRM, have a cadence of follow-ups.
When you follow up, it's not just
like, hey, how's your day?God deals for me.
It's like, hey, I just saw that inthe US, they're going to be doing
this with their rates.
And because stock market is a bull
market, that means that bond rateshave to go up, which means fixed
(25:19):
rates have to go up, which thenmeans if you have clients who
have, you know, existingpre-approvals that are expiring,
they should probably refresh itASAP because here's why there's a
leading indicator that they'regoing to go up again.
And that, by the way, could ruinyour chances of getting a deal
done.
Why?
Because then people qualify forless, they're more demotivated.
So it's always back to likehelping them protect their client,
make sure the client transacts.
(25:39):
Anyways, I could talk about about
it forever so thanks for bearingwith me but it's so me but it's so
important because you're speakingour lingo and i literally just
sent out that email this morningto partner so i'm laughing
internally love it but yeah it'sfunny because you can't just say
like i'm good at communicationeven though that is their pain
point communication with brokersyou can't lead with that because
everyone else says the same thingit's like okay, okay, well, it's
(26:01):
so bland.
Whereas like you're really just
packaging it a different way, butyou're still talking about
communication.
So I love that.
To circle back a little bit on theVA portion, like if I'm someone,
this is kind of like a selfishquestion, because I've been doing
a deep dive into hiring a VA, isif you wanted to hire a VA to do
email inbox management, and evensome of like the document
collections, obviously they can'tdo any underwriting because
they're not licensed.
But if you wanted them to do those
sort of tasks, what's like yourfirst step on hiring a VA?
(26:22):
Like where can you go to get thatperson?
Yeah, great question.
And if people do hit me up later,
I have a little like two pagedocument exactly on using either
some agencies in Latin America.
There's some websites to hire from
the Philippines.
Of course, the biggest one
everyone knows about is Upwork.
But there's many other ways beyond
Upwork.
But yeah, there's certain sites
and even certain agencies that arepretty generous with what they
(26:43):
take.
So for example, a certain agency
will probably take a month's worthof income, which could just be a
few hundred bucks.
And if they've got it all dialed
in, it could save you a ton oftime.
So don't be afraid to outsource.
And then you've got, of course,
websites where, yeah, you put up ajob posting and you get a bunch of
applications and you got to bereally organized on how you filter
that.
But yeah, there's a lot of it.
Yeah.
And for you, like the one thing
(27:03):
about virtual assistants oroverseas fractional workers is you
understand the cultural nuances oflike how they're motivated,
obviously.
And it is different between, let's
say, the Philippines and LatinAmerica.
I think secondly, any person youhire, when they're fractionalized,
you're not the most importantthing in the world, even if
they're full-time, right?They've got other things.
So you've got to be really clearon their role and be really
generous of your time and yourtraining.
And you always want to offer abovemarket, right?
(27:25):
20, 25%, which might be instead of$6, you're doing $8, right?
Just think that through instead ofthinking, okay, they're well, in a
less expensive country, whichmeans obviously you're doing
right?$8, Just think that through
instead of thinking, they're in aless expensive country, okay,
well, which means obviously you'redoing it to save money.
But if you're really pushing that,then your dollar per hour actually
goes down because you're spendingso much time training someone to
do something you could have doneyourself.
That's the threshold whereessentially it's not worth your
(27:46):
time.
Any kind of delegation, right?
So yeah, for you trying to dothose tasks, a lot of people do
fulfill that.
And I think usually they're best
suited in the Philippines.
But the thing I don't like about
that they're 14 hours ahead of youif you're in BC, right?
That for me is a problem forcommunication.
Yes, you're asleep, they're awake,vice versa, they can manage it.
But I have someone in LatinAmerica running my inbox because
(28:10):
there's so many time sensitivethings that they just got to be on
it.
You got to be able to slack them
in their response.
So, you know, just some quick
things that I've seen is like, youknow, waste managing and also find
them, of course.
And if I can ask, how have you
started the process?And maybe we've got some things
you got rolling that we candissect.
you if you're We originallystarted with our old company,
Leadvine.
We are running an agency for
(28:30):
mortgage brokers.
And we originally went into, I
forget the company name, but theyhad VAs that they hired and they
were trained on the CRM platformthat we were using.
So we originally went into that.
We had them develop websites for
us and everything.
But then recently I started
transitioning to think of likesomeone that can help us with like
even social media or email inbox.
And I forget the site.
I think it's literally called likeVA for hire or something like
that.
It's one of the bigger ones.
And it's just like a bitoverwhelming when you go to it.
(28:51):
Cause like, do I hire part-time?Do I hire full-time?
Should I hire from thePhilippines?
Like all the things you justdiscussed were kind of the thing
that was getting in the way ofreally doing a deep dive on it.
So we'll put a link to thattwo-page document for all the
listeners too, because I thinkthat could be helpful.
or I hire from the But yeah, thequick answer there, you can start
minimum, I believe, for socialmedia and hours a week.
(29:12):
What are they going to do there?Hopefully you have a content
calendar template, planning yourcontent.
You have a basic process to teachthem what kind of captions are
useful, and they can just look atyour social media and hopefully
mimic that.
With the help of ChatGPT, you can
have them use that for grammar andto also mimic your tone, et
cetera.
And then really, I think the
biggest skill you want there isare they good using Canva?
Half the social media is justdesign.
(29:33):
So they have to be good at Canvaand basically good attention to
detail.
That's it. 10 hours a week, that's
enough for them to do a few postsa week, even two posts a week.
And the cadence I like to havewith my team is we're always a
quarter ahead, so three monthsahead.
So right now we're filming inFebruary.
We've scheduled everything untilend of March, and we're about to
finish April, May, June.
A skeleton content calendar.
So just bare minimum, two posts aweek, and they're already starting
to think about certain posts forthat.
(29:55):
And this is maybe getting a bitoff topic, but it's all about
content repurposing, right?So if you can get onto YouTube and
do like one YouTube video permonth, super basic.
And that can even be like thisinterview, it'd be a YouTube
video.
It obviously is going to be.
It will be.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
So then you repurpose that using atool like Opus, et cetera.
Yeah.
And then you cut that up and you
spread it out.
And just repurpose is the big
(30:15):
thing.
And you can get way ahead.
Just your skeleton, like evergreencontent.
Of course, as the weeks and monthsgo by, if you're checking articles
every day, you're then like, youknow, ad hoc, you know, grabbing
an article and putting it into aslider on Canva.
They've got to be good at justlike doing the skeleton, the
evergreen content, following somekind of a process there.
And then, yeah, as youproactively, see an interesting
(30:36):
pulling article, out a beingquote, following like, some hey,
kind of a process And then there.
proactively, yeah, as you see an
interesting article, pulling out aquote, being like, hey, put that
into our Canva template.
And that's where the communication
is important.
But 10 hours a week can do most of
that.
And you don't have to post every
day.
You can do like bare minimum, you
know, even like two posts a weekshows you have a pulse and it
(30:59):
builds your brand.
How many leads will you get
through social media just on thattopic?
Probably not a lot.
It's more of just like a branding
which tool, target market orreferral Very partners.
few clients are to social mediajust on that topic?
Probably not a It's more lot.
of just like a branding tool,
which target market or referralpartners.
Yeah, exactly.
Very few clients are on social
media.
Anyways, I'm going on a tangent on
marketing, but it is related towhat you're doing, so.
(31:19):
So Yeah, exactly.
Very few No, that's great.
And we say the same thing.
Like social media, we do it more
as if a client looks us up to knowthat we're still active and
relative to what they're lookingfor, but also we're mainly using
it as a magnet for lead partners.
So I think that's great.
And prior to hitting record today,you had a quick framework that you
kind of shared with us.
I believe you called it the DAO
(31:39):
method.
Can you just give a quick
overview?I love frames because you can
apply it to scenarios very quicklyand get a quick result.
So can you just share a little bitwith the listeners on that one?
Sure thing.
So DAO stands for Delegate,
Automate, and Outsource.
And I came up with it when Web3
was really at a big craze.
And it's coming back.
And people are building DAOs andcommunities, which I think is
(32:00):
actually really interesting.
And I think there's a lot to be
said about that.
That's for a different podcast.
But yeah, I was thinkingeveryone's chasing these cool new
technologies and models.
What about the basics of improving
your relative income?Delegate.
We've talked about if you have aninternal staff or a fractional
helper, delegate things that arenot in your zone of genius.
Just a side note, I just recentlywent on this Clifton Strengths
Finder.
It shows you your top five
strengths.
There's many personality tests.
(32:21):
This one's actually very good andtailored towards executives and
very good if you have a partner ora teammate.
Basically, what are your fivebiggest strengths?
I think it's like 30 bucksCanadian takes you half an hour.
That is a extremely eye-openingthing because let's put it this
way.
The strengths that are easy as
walking between the strengths thatare easy as breathing.
And that's a big differentiationbecause the strengths that are as
easy as breathing for you, youhave to eventually be purely in
that zone.
(32:41):
For example, one for me, like I'm
pretty good at sales, but I don'tknow if that's my breathing
strength per se.
And eventually if I want to really
scale, I got to hire a sales teamand not be like, I'm the only one
doing sales.
So by the way, that's, you know,
super important for understandingwhat to delegate, automate.
I mean, look, we haven't talkedtoo much around Blue CRM from Tom
Hall and the gang in Toronto.
Shout out to them.
They're awesome.
It's been cool to see how they've
expanded.
Set up your drip campaigns.
There's so many things you canjust automate to some degree, and
it's going to give people thatreally quick communication that's
(33:01):
important, right?And the last thing is outsource.
And that's not the same thing asdelegate or automate.
That's actually hiring an outsideagency who can help you cruise
through the learning curve fast.
They're professionals.
There's limited handholding andthey're gonna get to result faster
than you, even if it hurts a bitupfront to pay for.
So yeah, delegate to an internalteam member, automate through your
CRM and through various, we talkedabout chat GPT, we talked about
LinkedIn automation, and thenoutsource.
Find like a really value-addedagency or contractor that can just
own something that is not exactlyon your team.
Yeah, I love that.
That's a great framework to take
anything you're trying to solve inyour business.
Totally.
Yeah.
Thanks for asking about that.
Paul, do you have anything that
(33:22):
you think the listeners shouldknow about outsourcing,
delegating, the whole framework wejust talked about?
I mean, we covered a lot.
I think there's a call to action.
We mentioned my podcast, ourpodcast, Grind Less, Flow More.
If you do download that onSpotify, Apple, even Amazon,
there's some cool heavyweights onthere that are realtors, mortgage
brokers, and of course, lots ofcoaches and bestselling authors.
Tune into that.
And there are some episodes that
really directly address that anddo go very deep.
(33:45):
So that's an obvious call toaction to go deeper.
Obviously, also onlevelupmortgage.com.
That way you can find how to getin touch with which I'm sure will
me, also be linked.
You if you reverse engineer a bit
of our process there.
can, want, And you can start to
see how we're recruiting both formarketing staff, but also we are
growing our broker team.
So get in touch.
And lastly, look, I mean, followus on social media.
(34:07):
And if there's specific questions,I'm happy to provide other links
that either are within Level UpMortgages or with our marketing
agency.
And there's a lot more to deep
dive in.
But I hope today out of your large
priority list, hopefully one ortwo things that were somewhere on
that list, but not yet acted on,they've gone up the list, because
you've seen it's maybe a biteasier than you thought, you've
(34:28):
got more direction.
And that's huge, right?
Just prioritize that and juststart with one thing.
Yeah, in general, I think we'vecovered a lot.
And maybe to summarize, they'llstep at a time.
But remember, like the best wayyou will grow a sustainable
income, higher dollar per hour,less or zero burnout is going to
be figuring out your strengths,being a broker, which is really
the person that needs to justguide people to clarity and
(34:50):
conviction.
And then slowly but surely, after
you've done it yourself, to someextent, is starting to delegate,
automate and outsource parts ofthe process.
So you can be of more service topeople that just want
communication and someone to holdtheir hand.
That's the best way I wouldsummarize it.
And to get there, it is all aboutsystems.
You have to decide whether you area systems person.
And if you're not, join a teamthat is, that's got the dialed in.
(35:10):
Now, you guys are big on systems.
I'm big on systems.
Just be honest with yourself, whocan support you in that journey.
But you do have to have some basicsystems or else you will be a
victim to your own success.
And that's where I think a lot of
brokers and banks and banks arethe best example.
They're victim of their ownsuccess.
They barely have time to processan application, let alone provide
(35:33):
any level of education.
And as a differentiator, it's all
about educational selling.
And the more you show that and you
walk the walk with, of course,your referral partners, but
starting with your clients andreally dial in that customer
journey, you will be in a goodposition and you will grind less
and flow more.
You will be able to work from New
York or Austin, Texas or MexicoCity with, you know, one or two
(35:54):
hour time difference and like havea really interesting life.
I mean, this is a greatprofession.
I mean, wow.
You know, we don't have to go
knock on doors as much as I thinkthat is important and can work
remotely and have a good qualityof life, but you got to have
systems.
And that's sort of in my journey
moving to Toronto and even justhow I ended up as a broker.
(36:14):
It was systems, bringing inpeople, having confidence,
changing your environment,physical and digitally and
socially.
All those things help you level
up.
So anyways, at some rate can help
your audience and our fellowbrokers grind a little bit less
and flow a little bit more.
And I'm super grateful that two of
you had me on.
So yeah, thank you for having me
(36:38):
and I'll be actively continuing tolisten to your journey.
And I'm sure there's a lot of wayswe can collaborate with yourself
in community.
Awesome.
I appreciate it, Paul.
It was great to have you.
I know I'm going to be writingdown that framework.
I always write it down onpainter's tape and stick it on my
wall.
Wonderful.
It's going to go over therebecause not on that new wall,
buddy.
Not on the new wall, on the other
wall.
It's going wall, on the other
wall.
Thank you joining us.
It was a real treat to have Yeah,thanks, Paul.
Thank you.
(36:58):
It's a joy to be here.
Flow well and we'll talk supersoon.
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