Back in 2012, I am not sure too many people had heard of Jet Xavier. Now, it is a totally different story. Basically, if he is not one of the speakers at a real estate event, I would be stunned.
So back then, I was looking to go to the next level. Not only as a real estate agent, but also, as an inexperienced real estate business owner. I rang up a few coaches that I had seen, but none were as impressive and had the no-bullshit attitude like Jet Xavier. I had no real issues in the skills department; it was more on keeping focused and learning how to control my mindset.
When running a real estate business (selling, growing a rent roll and a team), you get dragged all over the place. The challenges you face are challenging to say the least. Learning how to have some work-life balance and becoming less reactive were the keys to becoming more successful.
Jet and I would catch up every week to see what had been achieved from the previous week and what was the plan moving forward. This coaching strategy suited me, entirely having to be accountable to someone and completing my weekly training like you would in any sport. When someone first told me to get a real estate coach, it made sense to me. I was training as a boxer at a high level at that time and of course I had a coach for that. It wasn’t a big leap to take on a coach for my business, too.
One of the challenges that kept coming up in my real estate business was staff affordability.
It was still mainly a start-up and the reliability of the staff I could afford wasn’t great. This makes running a business very difficult when you are continually picking up the slack.
One day, Jet mentioned that he was talking to a bloke who uses real estate virtual assistants. Naturally, I asked him what a real estate virtual assistant is and how much do they cost? He did not know a vast amount about it, but said in his no nonsense way – “Look, they are affordable and don’t take up space in your office, so it’s worth exploring. Call this guy.“
So that’s exactly what I did. And then I started to look more into it. I found out that you could build a team of staff that are located in someone else’s office in the Philippines. The Philippines’ cost of living is far lower than it is in Australia, so it made a lot of sense that the wage was also more economical. I quickly found there were many different setups to utilize Filipino staff members to support my real estate business.
It didn’t take long before I jumped into outsourcing. It was a steep learning curve at first, which you can read about in my eBookThe Offshore Tipping Point. But it revolutionised my business and I haven’t looked back since.
I am very grateful to Jet that we had that conversation way back then. It was just a small chat, but it was a big idea. And once I mastered offshoring, it became the foundation for fast growth for my business.
It is all a bit scary but if you are like me, you can see it quickly makes sense. So take the plunge and give it a go. If you would like to have a chat with me in any more detail about offshore staffing solutions, feel free to reach out on LinkedIn.
