while we might think that we're the best at everything and we want to do everything on our own because a lot of us are kind of control freaks and I say that as entrepreneurial people who want to build their dreams, we feel like we have to do it, no one can do it as well as us, but that kind of keeps you stuck because you're doing everything. We know the building wealth comes from owning businesses and making investments. Yet why still do nearly half of businesses fail in the first five years and why do others lose it all in their investments hurt. Welcome to the wealth watchers podcast, your resource for building a massive network. We bring real stories from real people who are experts in business and investing, who will share secrets and actionable strategies to amassing wealth and achieving success brought to you by happy camper capital and now your hosts Justin Hoggatt and Adam Lendi. Uh huh. Mhm yeah. Mhm. Mhm Welcome back to the Wealth Watchers podcast. I'm your host. Adam Lendi With me. Today is my co host, Justin Hoggatt Justin how are you? Hey doing well, Adam, how you doing?

I'm fantastic man. I'm excited. You know, our guest today is going to kind of resonate what we're doing a little bit, which is scaling and growing great. Yeah, I look forward to the conversation. Yeah, well I'm looking forward to growing our business so that maybe we can get a break and uh and grow right, so that yeah, you can do more of what you did this last weekend exactly. Which is vacation on the beach. That's, I think it's the goal for all of us. Right, awesome. Well that further ado, I'll bring our guest chris bello chris, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you guys doing today? Doing fantastic. So chris, obviously you're, you're a real estate expert guest today. Um I'd love to get before we dive into it. Just get to know you a little better. So if you could share maybe a little bit about you your story and why did you do what you do? Absolutely. So the quick little, I guess what's it called, SparkNotes version is that I went to university, I went to texas A. And M. In texas, studied supply chain, got what I thought was a dream job in oil and Gas works for a big you know Fortune 200 service company in the oil and gas industry.

And I got international experience, got to work in Dubai for six months like all kinds of cool stuff. But I was finding that I wasn't very interested when I was actually at work and at the office and in the meetings I'd start to get distracted and I wasn't very passionate about it. I loved getting to work overseas and I love getting to go play beach volleyball after work, but I wasn't so excited to go into the office and do these projects and that kind of thing, you know, uh in spreadsheets all day and I love Excel spreadsheets, but not when they're, you know, something that's not of interest to me, like, oh the quality improvement for this tool or this, This process is inefficient and we got to improve it. So I learned a lot and I don't undervalue that, but at the same time I was finding, I just wasn't passionate about it, started reading books and listening to podcast that really got me thinking about, you know, what could life look like outside of the cubicle and I probably quite a little prematurely just to go all in on an idea in 2017. Um that didn't really work out, tried a couple other things that we can dive into all those things, but landed in real estate where I am now and I've stuck with it for three plus years now, and if you read the one thing, if you stick to something and you stay consistent, you will become more successful than if you're jumping from one thing to the next.

So I'm a real estate residential, real estate expert, podcast host podcast, just passed a million downloads this year actually, So pretty excited about that and really excited to be here on the show with you guys today. Yeah, well, we're excited to have you on two, and by the way, congrats on your milestone, definitely get more into the podcast and of course, you know about how you built that out in a bit. Um you know, and of course, you know, real estate isn't the first career for a lot of people, you know, for a lot of people, it's a second or even third or subsequent career. Uh so it's interesting of course hearing your story um you know, and I will say one thing you and Justin have in common is you both love itself. I just, it's so easy for tracking and creating pivot tables and charts, I don't know, but I do have a love, a love relationship with it, not even a love hate you said pivot table, and I saw a twinkle in Justin's, I I don't know if I'm too advanced in that kind of stuff, but it's fun, you can do some cool stuff and manipulate data in a way, not manipulated, but like presented in a, you know, paint a picture of what's actually happening.

We kind of talked about it before we hit record, um, that I tracked my daily goals. I've got a scorecard. I can see what I did on this day, a year ago and make cool graphs, you know, pie charts, line graphs, all that kind of stuff. So, okay, well chris, let's talk numbers just because obviously I, I've got a real estate background myself and you know, obviously it seems to me that you're well versed in business. So in the three years or so you've been in real estate, you know, talk to me how, how have you progressed? Yeah. So how I progress, I guess a lot of people start this way where it takes a little bit of time to get your feet wet. I actually started off with a wholesaling company in the Houston texas area because I looked at a couple of Youtube videos. I was excited to start putting up bandit signs are doing direct mail. And I kind of realized like, well what happens when people call me and what do I say? And I don't know how to go on an appointment. Like what's the scripts? You know? So I kind of realized I needed a mentor of some sort and he was either go to one of these weekend events and get pitched on the $50,000 a year program or just take a job and kind of put my tail between my legs even after I quit to learn from people who've been doing it for six or seven years.

Um, in doing that, I was able to get my first deal. I think it took about three months. By the time I was comfortable running cops and going on appointments and you know, having those scripts with the sellers. So I got my first deal. I think it was a $10,000 assignment on a property that had flooded before in Hurricane Harvey. And from there of course the consistency. I think that's something we all struggle with is how do we scale up and get off the hamster wheel as some people call it? I've heard Trevor mock from carrot talk about the hamster wheel where you do two deals and then you get no deals and then you get one deal. It's like a roller coaster right? How do you stay consistent and get consistent income? And so I stuck with it. I got my license a year after that kind of went off on my own parted ways you know in good terms and then I've had consistent months I think. Um I was talking with my C. P. A. And he was like did you make more Q. 1 2021 than 2020? Um Q one. And I looked at the numbers and I'm like whoa. I made like triple. I didn't even realize I had just been blowing and going, but when you stop and look back at the numbers, that's when you realize I've actually grown this thing far further than I would have expected.

So um I think we talked about it before I hit record as well. I've got five or six transactions closing this month. A few of them are referrals which is really cool. You can get referral commissions for just connecting the dots. I've got a buyer in Seattle. I've never even been to Seattle that should be like a $3000 commission right there. And so that's what's letting me operate remotely where I've got boots on the ground in texas. and then I get referral agents that I just connect the dots with nationally, which kind of enables me to live in colorado and do whatever I want without actually having to show houses myself. Yeah, in real estate brokerage has always been a fairly local business, usually kind of have to be where it is, you work, so you know, just hearing obviously that you've been able to step away from one state and do business in another. I mean it's amazing what technology can do. Yeah. And just to be completely transparent, I still am a little bit on that hand, the hamster wheel that I talked about because it's hard to predict in three months, how many transactions am I going to close? I really don't even know. And sometimes like I had a least listing going up in the day before, I said it too active in texas, the client said, hey, actually we just want to sell it.

So that went from me thinking I was going to be $1000 commission after we rented it out to a potentially $8000 commission were already under contract is set to close this month, so that's like a bonus to, we're cool, I didn't expect that a grand this month, but unless you know anything goes wrong, knock on wood, that should be closing this month as well. So I still am trying to escape that and get more consistency, but I've still had enough consistency where I feel comfortable that whether or not I closed the deal today, I know I'm going to have more opportunities coming my way. Yeah. Now obviously in, in the real estate world, you know, it is a lot of that roller coaster riding, you know, get every day through the finish and of course you mentioned finding that consistency. Now finding that consistency typically comes from you know, less, less downhills and more up hills, right, more more bumped up. So what's, what's your strategy look like for building that business at the point where it could be consistent, so to speak. Yeah, so my strategy, I know I need to implement something more like paid marketing, there's there's numbers and you're able to have KPI S on this is how many letters I send out or how many calls that get done or ringlets, voicemails.

I think the wholesaling investment side is more familiar with this strategy than a lot of the retail real estate agents, but they'll know they're copies or key performance indicators of, You send 10,000 letters a month, you get 1000 phone calls like five of them turned into deals, whatever those numbers are, whatever the conversions are. To be completely honest, I've grown my business to this point just through my own sphere. My network from referrals going to investing events, you know, real estate networking events. I think there was one or two events in Houston that I went to and I found one client who bought three or four houses with me in a year, an investor in another investor who bought two houses with me in that year. So that is an example of how going somewhere, putting myself out in front of people. Kind of teaching the topic. I talked about wholesaling at one of these events and that netted me, you know, seven or eight transactions um, and a referral. So like 10 transactions between two people From one or 2 events. That's an example of how I've been able to grow my business. It helps to be a people person if you can make friends quickly and not be awkward and you know, not how that awkward sales pitch and try to be driving the sale too hard if you make friends, you can make a sale and that's been my strategy so far.

Yeah, that's good. Um so now for, for people who aren't in real estate, you know, do you have any, any tips or anything, maybe you've learned from building this business that you know, maybe crossover and and would apply to other businesses? Yeah, and I do the same thing on my podcast too. I don't really just talk about real estate. I always try to tie it back to business in general or entrepreneurship and some of the tips that I've learned is while we might think that we're the best at everything and we want to do everything on our own because a lot of us are kind of control freaks and I say that as entrepreneurial people who want to build their dreams, we feel like we have to do it. No one can do it as well as us, but that kind of keeps you stuck because you're doing everything if you're booking yourself on podcasts and editing all your podcasts and your networking and you're trying to go show houses if you're in real estate, you're capped because you can only do so much, you can only be in so many places at once. My main tip that I wish I had done sooner and that I've gotten so good at that. Now I have so much time that I get very bored and I got to go find new problems to solve is to delegate everything and hire a couple of helpers, whether that's employees or virtual assistance.

I think I've got five virtual assistants or so at this point it kind of fluctuates based on who I need and I'll have a virtual assistant who finds more for me for specific tasks. So I'm not I'm no longer posting a job description for I need someone to edit Youtube videos or I need someone to make youtube thumbnails for me. I have my main via, I ask her, hey, can you go ahead and find someone to do this for me? She'll go out and interview them. I just pay her for that. And at that point I've got people showing houses for me editing my podcast, creating Youtube thumbnails for the videos, editing the videos, coming up with the S E. O. In the keywords. And so I'm kind of like the puppet master in a way and I'm not saying that I control them, but in a way I'm just plugging in the pieces and letting people run in certain directions. And I'm looking at the big picture and if you do that in your business you can accomplish way more because you're creating so much content, you're showing so many properties, you're getting things under contract that you've never houses, you've never even been to like the two that I have listed this month in texas. Um and that's where you're able to scale because you can be quote unquote in multiple places because it's not just you.

And what did you decide? What time did you decide to implement this? And how did you know is the right time? That's a great question. So I think this was something I heard on a podcast that you should find a virtual assistant or an executive assistant before you even need one because I was stuck in that spot. I was like, well, I'm not even really making money yet. It's not consistent. I'm just closing a deal every other month or so, what would I have them work on? And then I heard that podcast and it kind of changes my, changed my perspective and I just decided I'm going to put a post out there. I'm gonna let somebody know, hey, I want an assistant. I'm not sure what I'm gonna have you work on just yet. I just know we're going to figure it out together and if you're open to that, I'm excited to work with you. And from there, the idea started to present themselves. I was like, oh, you can do this. I'm not wearing the t shirt right now, but like there's a real estate t shirt, she ran off and did that and made it and shifted to my house. I wear it all the time and I'm like, I didn't even come up with the design logo, I don't know what provider she used, It just came to my house and how cool is that.

Um, so that's a great question. But I mean 2017 when I was still working in oil and gas, I read the four hour workweek for anyone listening, tim Ferriss talks about VHS and automating and you know, the new rich time is like our most valuable asset. And so I had the bug planted in my brain years ago, but it finally started to make sense over the last probably two years or so. Gotcha. And and where did you find your via? I found mine personally on up work and I know there's like online jobs that ph or just referrals, but I had a pretty good experience. And I also advise that people do a zoom interview if possible, make sure they're not camera shy, make sure they show up on time. You know, if those signs are there, chances are they're going to do a great job and I've already worked with my main sidekick, I call her, she's like my main personal assistant for Almost two years now. Awesome. I'm impressed by the fact that you've gotta via who finds VHS I know that's the master delegation right there, right? Like cool, my job here is done. She'll just do everything for me. She's like me when I don't want to do something, she doesn't.

So I mean obviously before our work week is a great reading. You know, it's definitely something that I think inspired me when I got into business to figure out how to maximize my time. and it sounds like you're getting to that level, but I can also understand why some people, especially if they're just starting off in business, you know, just really starting to grow their business and of course you made a great point that find an assistant before you need one. Um there is that concern over over hiring, what's it gonna cost? Do I have the revenue to support this? Am I going to be paying them more than I'm making, you know, and I guess that's the benefit of hiring the via over doing a traditional employee where you've got a lot more expense and a lot more if you have a lot of go um you know what, I guess what helps you get over that hump? Or did you even have that hump? I think I'd really have to, if I were to attribute it to one person, it would be Trevor mock from the carrot cast podcast and he's a ceo of a real estate software company. I got to go hang out with him and his team in May of this year in Oregon and learned a lot connected with some amazing entrepreneurs from across the nation.

But I've been listening to a show and it's probably, you know, it's one of those shows that I'm not even sure how I found it, but I resonated so much with what he said and how they've been able to scale to an eight figure software business. And he would always say, you know, you guys need to just get a virtual assistant, get rid of those things that are holding you back, that you should, you know, you shouldn't be doing them, but you're doing them scheduling your own haircuts, Maybe you're not, you're getting so busy, you're forgetting to eat. It's so nice to have an assistant to just be like, hey, this meal is delivered to you or put it on your desk if they're there at your office. So I have to say Trevor, mock really. His message on his podcast was very inspirational for me to just find somebody because again, we're like, you almost feel bad, like I can't have someone book my haircuts or order food for me, like I'm not above them or whatever, but once you break that paradigm, you start to outsource everything. Like, I mean, I don't even do, I feel like, I feel bad saying like, I feel like I don't do anything other than exercise and hang out with friends and play spike ball these days because everything else other than a quick zoom call, it's done by other people, even meals, I don't even cook or clean or anything.

I order food from my fit food. Pick up a bunch of plates, breakfast, lunch, dinner, healthy food, healthy snacks. That's another thing that's off my plate. But I would say that you have to start thinking this way because you may be paying them more than you're earning if you're not making any money. But how much time? Like what's your time worth? It's hard to value that. When you get started, you're like, oh my time's worth $0 because I can't close any deals. But as you start to close more, like I had a deal, I think the commission was $20,000 and I closed um last year I only spent four hours on the deal four or five hours. So when you start thinking like that and you're like, I'm worth thousands of dollars an hour potentially. If I find more deals like this, It's a lot easier to just pay someone $10 an hour or $5 an hour in the Philippines, wherever, wherever they're based out, of you can get some pretty good rates to just get rid of all that stuff. So I know I kind of Blackbeard a lot there, I probably lost the original question, but I hope this is kind of showing my thought process and why I've been doing what I'm doing with my, with my team. You make a good point. I mean there's an opportunity cost in, you say, picking up your own dry cleaning or scheduling your own haircut.

I mean it might seem small and the most important thing that is to make sure you're using that time and not just sitting, you know, obviously you have to, if you're going to pay somebody else to that stuff you have to use that time. Yeah but at the very least I'd say it really clears you up your brain space, in your capacity. I like to think of us were like a phone battery, you start off fully charged the more little things you do, the more apps you're using on your phone or even on your computer if you've got 20 browsers open or 20 windows or tabs, your computer is gonna start running a little more slowly. I don't know I have a pc that's the problem with my computer. Maybe max don't do that and I've been meaning to get what I hear somebody. Good things but as you go through the day and you take on more things like, gosh what do I cook? I don't have anything. Let me go to the grocery store, let me cook. Okay I'm gonna clean that. Just tied up two hours right there versus microwaving a plate. You only spent five minutes on it, You didn't think about it. And that's why you hear about all these people like Mark Zuckerberg, apparently they were the same thing every day. T shirt and jeans so they don't have to deplete brainpower thinking about these small things throughout the day That actually deplete your energy in your thought process.

So now that I'm not thinking about any of those things cooking, cleaning, um you know, dry cleaning, any of those things at all, everything gets automated and delivered if possible, I get to focus 120% on the problems or the clients that I'm working on or with. And I really make sure to to move the needle the most in those areas that therefore produce the commission's, that enabled me to pay for all those other things. So letting go of a lot of those tasks might be a challenge for people as well. You know, obviously commit point that no one else is going to do it as good as we will, You know, it's uh at least we think, right. Well, that's exactly it. Yeah, and even even if they are doing a good job, you know, I mean, I bet, I'm sure there's a lot of people that as soon as they delegate, you have to go check on, you know, I have to have to have to check in all the time and then at that point they might as well be doing it. Um you know, what's for you? What's your threshold of acceptability to where you can just delegate it and forget about it. Sometimes I'd say that's a strength and a weakness as I delegate to quickly where I almost just delegated to quickly and then I don't check and then maybe it gets done wrong or not as great as I'd like.

But I like to think that hey at least it gets done. So kind of my rule of thumb is if it's 80% as good as I would do it, That's acceptable to me in most areas, I don't want that to be the case with the client. You know like that. That can be a big difference if you get the sales price wrong on a contract and they're paying 15 grand more than they thought they were because like somebody out outsource this to messed up. So I checked those very high level things that are extremely important. You know I double check the contracts and bless it before it gets sent for signatures. But other things like a seller message me the other day, I think my um Transaction coordinator sent the seller net sheet with some incorrect numbers. You know the sales price was wrong and there was another fee in there and so they were freaking out about it. But that was pretty low level stuff like this is just an estimate of what you're going to net closing. You're gonna net 15 grand more because we got an offer over asking price. And so that was an example where I was like no big deal. You know, MRS client, we're going to get that fixed. I'll have my T. C. Corrected and sent it to you. You know, I'm not gonna stop everything and fix this so as long as it's 80% of the job well done, I'd say that's pretty good.

And in many cases the VHS or if you hire the right people they can do it better than you can. I was fiddling around like the first year of my podcast making thumbnails for my Youtube videos in Canada and they don't look anything as good as my VHS now and she just charges me $5 per thumbnail. So I wish I had done that sooner. For example, That's awesome. And we've, we've, uh, at least I've heard the 80% rule, the principal. Yeah, yeah. So getting someone that can help you out, uh and, and my father in law is always mentioned like when you delegate, you have to accept the outcome, you know? And so, um there's that, but, and Adam and I were just talking about this is kind of interesting because, you know, I'm gonna spot where I feel like I can't delegate without actually letting go because I'm not getting the results that I need, like, I'm having to keep following up with these people or people aren't answering the phone or people um drop the ball and then it's like, what am I even delegating for?

Because I'm starting to do it all? Yeah, like now now it's worse because I thought it was taken care of and it's not, and I got to jump into it and I got to figure out where I'm at, you know? So there too. Well then, is there is there a tip? Maybe I'm missing something? I would say it just depends on what you're spending all your time on, because even with guests, for example, I was trying to reach out and get on other shows and have people on my shows and people would email me and I wouldn't even check that email for like six days, and someone's like, yeah, I want to be on your show chris and I'd be busy with my real estate stuff now that I've got someone actually checking it, the things just get done and gets added to my calendar. And I've heard the quote, I'm sure you've heard this as well inspect what you expect so I trust, but I verify right. I let people, I let people do stuff, I let go of the reins and if the results are happening awesome, if I see podcast getting booked on my calendar with guests and I'm going to be on someone show next week and I didn't have to do any of that. I'm, I know that my, my assistant, my podcast manager is doing the right thing. Now if I'm getting random guests or like someone has no social media presence or anything or like just like they just started the show, I may have to let her know, Hey, going forward, let's put some more strict criteria because I want to make sure I'm going on shows that are going to actually be here in five months, not someone's first show and then they realize how hard it is and how much work it is and they stop.

So it just depends because the higher level activities that you do, like maybe you're outsourcing cold calling or reaching out to potential clients that may take like a little more skill. Like for me, I'm not outsourcing talking to clients because I'm I'm good at that in my clients, they want to talk to me at least for that first touch and then I'm comfortable handing them off. Like I let them know, hey, it's not gonna be me showing you houses, it's going to be either Adrian or maybe Alex, you know, I'm gonna connect you with them and they're gonna take great care of you. If anything goes wrong, reach out to me. If I just send them straight to one of them, maybe the conversation doesn't go so well or they don't get along and now it looks bad on me, right? So I mean if you don't mind sharing, we can even talk about, what exactly are you having trouble like with the delegating part is that you say calling and following up? I mean it goes into various topics really. But um the main thing is the training uh you know, you gotta get trained that person and then when you think that you've trained them and they're there to a certain level and then they're not and you're like okay, I gotta back up retrain and then and then you start to wonder is this even worth my time?

Um but then the current state of the environment of, I'll throw it out there. Covid, you know, everyone uses Covid as a reason. These days you make a phone call and they're like due to Covid, we can't answer the phone very quickly, you know, It's like really then, you know, But um, so I feel like no one answers the phones contractors, uh, you know, even when I need help from or if they do answer, they're like, I'll have to get back to you and then they don't, and then you're thinking, well they're going to get back to me and then, but then you have to follow up, you know, and so it's just a constant battle that I'm going through and I don't know. So, um and then with regards to upward, I've used up work and fiber and I've used all these services and they don't deliver. You know, I'm like why did I spend all this time interviewing, setting someone up, you know, training what we are processes and then they suck. Yeah, I don't know what's worked for me. I mean the video interview really help because I probably got 20 something applications for this personal assistant role that I was hiring for and only two or three of them were open to do a zoom call and it was very quick to figure out this person is on top of it.

She's up at five a.m. Her time booked this call, she's on the call on time. She speaks perfect english. Like it was a no brainer for me to go with her. And again we've had a really good experience. But then again it may also come down to what you're paying them Because I've gotten plenty of crap from people who are like dude, you're paying her $10 an hour, like that's that's way overpriced, like you're paying her too much, like she does a great job. It's cheaper than what I would find, at least in the U. S. I've tried to hire people in the US and we're a little pickier and we have higher, you know, I guess we're a higher maintenance out here sometimes so people don't want to do all the work that someone overseas may be willing to do for a fraction of the price, so I'm happy and she's happy so I'm paying her well and she stuck by my side and she's done everything I've asked for and more versus if I try to squeeze her and maybe say I'm only gonna pay $5 an hour, she might have balanced a lot sooner, found another opportunity. So that could be something that's very helpful if you just do the zoom video interviews or video interview in general and also just be willing to pay a little bit more and also have bonus incentives, You know, I'll say, hey, if you book great guests on my show and you book me on other shows, I'll pay you like five or 10 bucks per guest.

I think this last paycheck, I paid her like another $150 for just the month of july for different podcasts that she booked. So now she's incentivized because it's like a sales job where you get paid, there's no ceiling if you do well and you book me on a bunch of things I'm going to pay. You were, you know, handsomely and again, this is the Philippines, we're talking about $150 extra a month goes a long way, whereas maybe in the US you're like, is this really worth it for me to focus on? She's very incentivized and motivated to do it. Well I can second the note on zoom call. I I recently hired someone for bookkeeping and did a couple zoom calls and those zoom calls were pretty, pretty bad and they knew I was like this is bad and they just work through. I didn't even have to say anything. You know? Exactly. Just can that person convey a message clearly effectively? Do they show up on time? I mean that's all I'm really looking for. Like a do they show up on time to, can they communicate clearly?

And do they have like a decent setup if if they've got like a terrible mike and I can't even hear what they're saying and they barely speak my language And there were 10 minutes later come up with some excuse, like, sorry, I forgot about the beating. Okay, well you're gonna forget about my projects. I ask you to do probably next. Yeah. Now whether you're going the virtual route or, you know, traditional assistant, you know, here stateside, um, you know, once you've gotten through the interview process, I imagine the most critical next step would be to onboard them properly and give them the proper training so that you have the right expectations. Because I'm sure it's easy for people to assume that someone, especially if they're in another country, understands what they want. Um, and there's probably a lot of opportunity for missed expectations otherwise. So any insight for us there chris so again, I tend to hire way too soon and I'm, I guess I'm the visionary type, not quite the implementer. If you've read traction, there's the integrator in the visionary. I like to think I'm a visionary. Maybe I'm just not organized.

But when I brought my people on again, I brought them on before I even really knew what I was going to have them do. So we had to do a couple of calls because I didn't have any processes documented. I had no on boarding. I literally talked to that main assistant. Her name is Jenna Bell. I just call her G Bell is her nickname and I said, Hey G Bell, So to be honest, this is one of my businesses. I'm really spending a lot of time on my podcast side like booking myself on shows and coming up with the notes for Youtube. If you could figure that out and help me, that would take off so much from my plate. Right? So we started to figure things out and I had her work on a few things that didn't really end up working out for either of us or she didn't enjoy. I wasn't seeing the results. And so it's almost like let's experiment, see what do you enjoy doing that really frees up my time and what can we work together on where I'm happy to pay you that you're happy to do it. You're actually inspired to help me towards my mission. But as you start to do that, you can even delegate the documentation of processes. So as she figured these things out, I asked her to create systems and processes for them where she'll documented in google And now if we ever need to bring on anybody else, she can on board them and then I just inspect and if there's an issue, we can all get on a call and determine, Hey, this is where the ball keeps getting dropped or why isn't my podcast ready to be aired the next day?

Maybe we need to make it the due date two days before that, you know, So it's kind of like just do it figure out where the holes are and then you can fill them later. Yeah. Um, and that's impressive. I mean, I think, you know, you're to the point now where you're selling houses in texas from colorado and soon enough a team in the Philippines is going to be selling houses in texas. Exactly. And the vision is just to continue growing and getting referrals across the nation. I mean that really opened my eyes, the transaction I have closing in Seattle this month where a friend was like, hey, my brother wants to buy a house in Seattle, can you help with that? I'm like, sure did a quick zoom call, talk to a couple agents. They're connected the dots and that's going to be a $3000 referral commission for like 20 minutes of zoom calls, maybe 30 minutes. Um, so that's kind of the model that I'm going towards, which would be even more remote, right? I could be in Indonesia and maybe I have to do a call at eight PM because the client, it's 10 a.m. Their time. And then I connect the dots with them. That's kind of the model which again goes back to that four hour work week lifestyle, right? I want to be on the beach somewhere with a laptop, may be entering a couple of emails, do a quick call and go surfing.

Like that's my ideal vision for myself. And I've, I've also done referrals across the country and not a lot, probably just a couple, but like I'll point out that the agents you're calling don't actually care, they actually really appreciate the referral. So there's this stigma that at least the clients I've helped out are like, oh that's just weird, like why are you helping in that regard? I'm like, let me find you a good broker and I'll do the vetting and and refer you guys and the broker, the broker is I call, every single one of them is like, they all want to thanks for calling. Like this is Great. Yeah, I heard people talk about that too. They're like, wait, why would they pay you like a 25% or 30% referral fee? And I'm like, it's literally a free warm qualified lead that Is not going to interview 10 agents and not going to be super picky. They're going with that person that you make the introduction to. So they're happy because that beats cold calling 500 people trying to find the listing right, handing them business.

That's relatively easy. I mean, not not easy, but I'm just saying like They're motivated, they're qualified. You already vetted them. Maybe you know them you have the relationship boom, you know, a referral is probably worth like 10 Internet leads or more. Yeah, chris you're taking a little maybe different than traditional approach. You know, especially given, you know, and I'll just say, because I don't know if you mentioned you come out of the color Williams world, which is where my background is. And you know, the KW model is really big on, on expanding a team. Um, and and it's typically of agents now it sounds to me unless you have other plans, that your plan is more to grow it with virtual support. Is that fair and accurate or do you have plans to grow in a more traditional means to? Absolutely. I think that's maybe probably due to my background and supply chain, you know, we always were super lean and my projects in corporate America were to make things more efficient, eliminate waste if someone's doing something that they don't need to be doing, like have them stop doing that. And so I think that's really helped me in my real estate business to build it in a way where I don't have extremely high overhead.

I don't have many fixed costs at all other than I think Alan lee and zoom is what I pay for each month. That's like, that's like the only two things I don't even have like a Crm that I'm really using other than my Excel sheet, that tracks everything from pages I read two transactions that I have closing. And so because of that, it is probably a lot different than a lot of agents have the dream to build a team and have a huge office and I'm just like, I see fixed expenses and I don't want to have to go into a physical office and like do weekly team meeting, I kind of like flying by the seat of my pants a little bit where it's flexible, you know, I can go to the gym for two hours, I can go for a 90 minute massage on a Wednesday at 10 a.m. If I want to because everything I have is designed to be meetings in the afternoons or maybe occasionally coffee meetings in the morning, no physical office needed, no presence needed. And so I'm looking more for that lifestyle business in a way, you know, I don't want anyone to have to rely on me or be like chris I need direction, what do I do? I just kind of wanted to be like, hey you guys are doing this, these are the tasks you help me with, all the due dates and deadlines are in our tools asana, which is, I'm using the free version, have you ever heard of that?

Um, and it kind of enables me to have that flexibility to kind of do whatever I want, you know? Yeah, got it. Well, chris appreciate sharing today before we part ways, you know, I'd like to get into the wealth watchers brain pick and I think this is more questions I would ask anyhow, so Justin do you want to take that away? All right, chris five quick questions for you first one. What is your superpower or unique natural ability? I'd say my superpower is definitely making friends and connecting. Again. We kind of talked about it earlier. I don't really, I'm not awkward. I'm not like, hey you guys to join my, my brokerage or like by my program. It's just like, hey, let's be friends if we can work together somehow. Awesome. If not. No worries. So let's say connecting is my superpower, Awesome. It's a good one. If you were to go back 3-5 years, what might you have done differently that you wish you could Have? I definitely would have gotten into real estate sooner. We kind of grazed over it earlier, but I did try an invention. I spent like $40,000 on manufacturing and like intellectual property pretty much sitting in a warehouse right now because it just, I didn't see a light at the end of the tunnel.

So if I had gotten into real estate sooner, I would have had more rental properties and all that stuff would have could have should upright hindsight's 2020 but I would have gotten a real estate sooner. For sure. Yeah good. And so then where you had in the next 3-5 years next 3 to 5 years. Gosh, wherever I please. You know I'm out in colorado now I'd say 3 to 5 years maybe we'd be going on 12 month trips. My fiance and I too like spain or Indonesia. I'd really love traveling. I've been to tons of places and so I see my business running more on autopilot, doing a couple intro calls And again having everything else taken care of from other people where I don't mind getting paid 30% of a deal and doing nothing instead of having to do everything for 100% of the deal, if that makes sense? Yep, yep. Do you have a favorite book on business or money? I'm reading this book for the third or fourth time and it's a rich dad, Poor dad. I know a lot of people talk about it, but this changed my mindset so much because I'm sure everyone's almost read this probably who listens to your show, but just the way you see the examples and how the rich dad thinks versus the poor dad and scarcity versus abundance and it really just changed everything for me and it seems so common sense.

But when you're reading it, it's still like blows your mind, you're like, oh my gosh, this is so simple, but it makes so much sense and I haven't seen it this way before, so definitely check that out if your audience has not yet. Excellent. Yeah, and it's probably something I should listen to again. I do audio books, but I do that too. I do a mix books and audio. Yeah. Makes them in. All right. And then last question, what has been your biggest a ha moment, delegate, delegate, delegate, You know, you don't have to do it all. And I've almost gotten the other extreme where everything is delegated And I would advise your audience do this anytime you get a task instead of just rushing in and just be like okay let me just do this real quick. It's gonna take 10 minutes or okay, I can knock this out in 30 minutes. Think is this the best use of my time? And usually Following the parade of principle 80% of the time, it's kind of a B. S. task is going to waste your time. It's very low level, it's almost like a $10 an hour task is what I've heard it called. You need to get rid of all those $10 an hour tasks. Pay someone to handle all of that so you can focus on the $1000 an hour tasks, $10,000 an hour tasks.

Um and so if you can delegate the faster you do that, the faster you'll scale up, you'll buy yourself time back and you'll be making money from the beach. You know, like I've had deals close where I'm on vacation, I didn't even know about it. Wire hit my bank account And it's just perfect example. I'm like, dude, I did nothing on this deal. I almost feel bad for that $10,000 check and it's in the account, right? So just keep on doing that awesome. You look Like you probably sleep at night. Okay, getting those $10,000 deposits. I sleep eight or 9 hours a night, you know, perfectly. I never wake up, never have any nightmares. So, so far so good. All right. Chris um, if we want to find your podcasts, where do we find that? Yeah. So it's probably easier just to type in chris bell. Oh, I didn't realize it's kind of a long name entrepreneur motivation podcast, lots of syllables, but I'm on apple podcasts and Spotify and I also upload videos on Youtube. So if you go to chris Bellow on any of those platforms, you should find me and it pops up with a picture of my face on there. Great. And if anyone listening wants to connect, what's the best way to do that? I'm most active on instagram and my handle there is chris bello underscore as well as I occasionally pop in the clubhouse for some conversations in different rooms on there and you can also check out chris belo dot com.

I'll have to see if I can find you on clubhouse. Yeah, I always like to jump in and just listen and contribute. However, I can also do a weekly room on productivity and gratefulness for different like minded entrepreneurs. So be excited to see anybody on there. Okay, chris, well, we're grateful for having you on today. So thank you. Thank you for giving us your time and giving us some insight into how you run your business. Absolutely, thank you adam and Justin, I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks Chris, this has been another episode of the wealth watchers podcast. I'm your host Adam Lendi from my co host, Justin Hoggatt and I thank you for listening. All right guys, thanks for listening until next time. Thank you for listening to wealth Watchers. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your podcast player of choice. If you found value in this episode, please share it with one person, you know who could benefit from these tools and strategies. For more information on wealth watchers, please visit Happy Camper capital dot com. Mhm.