How to Scale and Automate your Business Through Virtual Assistants | Daniel Ramsey

Most people stay in the I do. It's 96% of all businesses. So to give you some stats, there's 20 million businesses in the US roughly 96% are are in the I do at stage and never cross a million dollars in revenue. And so, what's the differentiator? It's always system and process. Welcome to the action Academy podcast staring back while I celebrate freedom, the show where we help you achieve financial independence with the mindset methods and actionable steps from guests who've already earned their freedom flag the freedom fly. Choose to do what you want, what you want, with who you want, with who you want, when you want when you want with another episode today. Now, here's your host, Brian Luebben. what's up what's up? Welcome back to another episode of the action Academy podcast. I'm your host, Brian Luebben, bringing you the mindsets methods and actionable steps from guests who have already earned their freedom for you to apply today in this week to get freedom back in your life. And that's literally the specialty of today's guest, Daniel Ramsey, Daniels, a serial entrepreneur, started in cut his teeth in real estate sales, and then went into the development side. And now he's in tech. So he has built in exited multiple businesses, and now is the CEO and founder of my out desk, a virtual assistant platform that allows entrepreneurs and business owners to outsource and scale as much of their operations as humanly possible. So why is this important to you? And why should you listen today? What are you going to get out of it? Today's episode is really, really focused on helping you figure out how to build systems and processes around your business, whether you're a real estate professional, whether you have a team around you, or whether you've got stuff in your day that you just don't enjoy doing. This is really going to help you be able to figure out how to outsource systematize and scale, anything that you're doing. And an example of this practically is I have a virtual assistant that works for me from the Philippines who worked for the podcast and she does cold outreach for me cold email, and things that free my time up to really focus on prepping for interviews, recording the interviews and doing the marketing myself because I really enjoy doing it. So he's gonna help you go from the I do stage to the we do stage. And then finally, hopefully to the day do stage where you have your business fully automated and outsource to where you are no longer an operator in your own business and you haven't bought yourself another job. So as always, if you find value in this episode, or if you find value in the show, please leave us a rating and review on Apple podcasts. Screenshot us shout us out on Instagram, Facebook, follow us on action Academy podcast on Instagram and share with a friend if this really resonates or you think it'll resonate with them. And without any further ado, Mr. Daniel freakin Ramsey. Daniel Ramsey, how are you my friend? I'm good, man. Thanks for having me today. Man, I'm so excited to have you on. Um, you are actually one of the ones I don't believe we've had the pleasure of meeting in person maybe if we have was briefly. No, I've heard I've heard a lot about you from Matt. And I've heard a lot about you from a lot of the different guys that we kind of run with. And man they say great things. So I'm excited to get to know you. Obviously, I'm going to have an intro section for you before this so you and your team can run through that with a fine tooth comb and have met have that nice and ready for you. But brother, who is Daniel Ramsey, what's your story? I'm I'm like a lot of entrepreneurs, I figured out that you could trade candy bars for lots of money on the school bus in the seventh grade. So I'm I wanted spending money and I had the Snickers, right? So I had a Snickers bar and I'm on the bus and it's Friday, and it's my last Snickers and I'd sold all these candies and this kid comes I want to buy a Snickers and I was like, I'm not selling this one. Nigga any like, shoves a $20 bill in front of me, you know? And I'm like, okay, and then I swapped a Snickers for a $20 bill and I was like, Okay, I'm hooked. And so I was that one kid in middle school and high school college. I always knew I wanted to own a business. And so, you know, I feel like I was lucky. So I went to school for finance. Started a real estate practice in my early 20s bought a house and the real estate guy was an idiot. And like, like, mailed me keys, right? He's like, Hey, what's your home address? I'm like, why he goes, I'm gonna send you keys. You can't use them until I tell you it's okay. But and like so this guy makes six seven grand selling a house and he won't even bother to drive over and hand me keys and celebrate you know, and so I got done with that experience going Gosh, that's a lot of money. That guy made a lot of money. And he would he mailed me the keys. So I thought, well, I, I can probably do that job. You know, and and that started my go ahead and do it better. Yeah, totally. And so I started a real estate company that a mortgage company, I'm a general contractor, I developed a bunch of properties. And then at some point, I hired a virtual assistant and hired a virtual assistant. She was fantastic. And, you know, now, I think we're gonna close the year out at like 2000 virtual assistants placed in businesses in the US and Canada. Man, that is fantastic. That is that is a heck of an origin story. So I'm always curious. Two questions that come to mind when you say that the first question, and I think Gino Wickman is writing a book, one of his new books, author attraction, I think he's written a new book on this where it's do you feel like entrepreneurs are more so nature or nurture? Do you think they're born? Or do you think they're bred? I don't know. You know, it's funny, because I have three little girls, and I'm going to Brit breed them to do well, you know, like, I don't really care if they're entrepreneurs, or if they're performers if I don't really care what they do. But I, I can tell you, from a father's perspective, this question is interesting, because I'm just going to give them the tools that I never got as a kid, like, I never got an understanding of cash flow, good debt versus bad debt, I didn't understand what it meant to save money. Like I just, I didn't know any better, right? So whether or not my my kids become entrepreneurs, or build businesses, or, you know, ultimately become CEOs, you know, I don't know if that'll happen. But I will educate them so they can play the game. So they know how to play the game. And, you know, hate them or don't hate them. Trump taught his kids business. And then he taught him politics, right. And so and I'm not a Trump fan, and I'm, but I recognize, you know, a guy who's mastered business, and also politics, the two power plays, you know, in the world. So I don't know if that answer your question. I answered it pretty well, I think that was telling because I always listen to see if people are gonna mention game. Because in the beginning, everything is so serious. And then you realize this is all just a giant game. Yeah, I think may be the differentiating factor between children that are raised from a very serious A, or in an aura of business in children that are raised from like, Hey, this is a game, Dad's playing this, this is fun. It's not just about the stress. It's not just about it's not just about the waiting for the next bill to come in to pay. This is actually fun for me. And that's why I wanted to bring you on because I feel like what you're doing and what you're creating with my out desk is actually bringing time back into your day. So it can you can have more time for the fun stuff like so everyone listening. Daniel is the CEO of my out desk. They do virtual assistants. And like he said they just have he said 2000 Yeah, where it will add by the end of this year 2021 will be at 2000. I think we're close to 1800 right now. Perfect. So right now we're talking to the CEO of the company right here on a podcast. Because this is probably something where now, obviously, it's I've heard you in a lot of podcasts, this is where you're like, hey, this is my highest and best use everything else I'm gonna delegate. So can you kind of take us on that journey about how you've, like grown from your first assistant to what it is now and then kind of hit on virtual assistants in general, for people that may not know that they exist? Yeah. So in our book, and I'd love to give it away. If you're listening, you can go to my app.com forward slash scale. So s c a l e, that's our website. And you can download the book, but in the book I talk about, I, we they write the three stages of growing a business and I stage you're basically learning like, you know, who's my customer? How do I manage cash, you know, like, you know, how to write a marketing plan, like how to build an org chart, right? I mean, the wildness around how to incorporate even like, where should I be, should I be an entity in Wyoming or Nevada, like, just these little questions in the AI stage? Your entire focus is around learning. So what do I need to do? You know, I like what you're doing which is interviewing entrepreneurs and CEOs, your, you know, two years down the road after a couple 100 interviews, your IQ around business acumen is going to be fantastic. This is a great example of, you know, learning basically interviewing somebody who's done it before. So, real life MBA? Yeah, well, it's actually valuable, because an MBA is like, you know, may or may not be, yeah, it may not be valuable. So in the I do it stage, you're learning in the we do it, you're building systems and process. So most people stay in the eye, do it 96% of all businesses. So to give you some stats, there's 28 million businesses in the US roughly, and 96% of them are below a million dollars. So most 96% I mean, that's an A plus, right? So 96% Are, are in the I do at stage and never cross a million dollars in revenue. And so what's the differentiator? It's always system and process, right? A system can be something as simple as, you know, a online platform where you have, you know, all of your recorded steps in order to do your business and or could be a CRM, it could be project management software, I don't know, you know, it could be QuickBooks, if you're a CPA, right? It doesn't have to be overly complicated. But a system is some technology platform, something that you're doing. And then a process is like a checklist, like a step by step checklist, right? And this is boring. By the way, if I if I came up, if you're listening right now, and you're zoning out, this is the boring stuff. You know, you asked earlier, you know, like, how are you successful? Yeah, it's not sexy. It's not it's not a new AI thing. It's not a new lead magnet, you know, like, it's just boring, right? And challenge manual, I would actually tell, I would challenge that. And I'll challenge anyone listening. You say you say it's boring, because that's gonna be like the common we all think, okay, systems, processes, checklists, it's the day to day it's the blocking and tackling what you would call it. And a lot of people, if you look at it at face value, you're like, Yeah, this is boring. It's like going to the practice before the game. practice every single day before the game. But the more systems and processes you have, the more airtight they are, all of a sudden become sexy, because now you've got time, you've got freedom, because you can systematize and outsource all those things that you didn't want to do. And all sudden you have your time back. I think that's the sexiest thing ever. Brother, you're preaching? Well, that's because you're in business. I mean, here's the thing. When I say it's not sexy, the thing is 96% of businesses never get over a million dollars. we all we all join in the the race or the game, as you said, to become millionaires, right? So how do you become a millionaire, you make more than a million dollars a year on a consistent basis over time, and you have a little bit leftover, so you can invest right and become wealthy? Well, the problem is 96% of people don't you know why? Because they think it's boring. And I'm not saying it's boring. It's not boring for me. And you. It's we know, it's, it's, it's it's as important as practicing, you know, if you're an athlete, you need to practice in order to win, right? But it's not the new technology, it's not the new lead thing. It's not the easy way. It's not that can I just buy myself out of this paper bag? Like that's, that's a mindset that we run into a lot? Like, how about I just pay you to do it, I'm like, well, it doesn't work like that you can't pay somebody else. So you can be successful. It just, it's, it just does not work like that. So in the we, in the we do it your learning systems and process, as well as your you're beginning to build a championship team, right? You're you're surrounding people in your organization, and saying, Hey, can we do this together? And so that's, and that whole leverage conversation is what we've done really well, and also screwed up a lot. So, you know, fortunately, we're, we can talk about all the mistakes I've made around that. But, you know, the moment you bring somebody in, now, all of a sudden, you you've got to shift your mindset, because you can't tell them, hey, our goal, my goal is for me to be rich, can you help me be rich? Like, that's just, yeah, it doesn't sound good, right? So it's your first opportunity at casting vision and helping people you know, build something that's bigger, you know, the sum of all of us working together is going to be so much more powerful than if I do it by myself or you do it by yourself. And so that's when you start to get a taste of, you know, creating a vision, creating a mission and kind of bringing people with you on your journey. And then you get to the they do it, where you have a team that's running a lot of your day to day, and you're not in the day to day of the revenue generation within your business. So those are the three stages. Can you hit a little bit about it? I don't know what systems that you are using for onboarding new team members. You Friends with Dirk and Berg flow and all that. Yeah, no, yeah. Yeah. So I'm curious about like, what system that you're using to onboard people? Because it's what is it? It's like, you have your visionaries, you have your integrators, different personality types, you have some that are gonna all be about driving everything forward, that's gonna be normally your CEOs. And you got to have your operations person, do you have any advice for anyone coming on here that either has a business running that's in that 96%? Or maybe it's that real estate team, where you were before? A starting off, and maybe it's just them? And they're maxing out their book of business? And they're like, Okay, Daniel is preaching, I'm listening. How do I get to that? We do it so much, because I feel like that's where most of the friction is gonna be. Yeah, you're right. The best advice I can, I can give somebody in that space when you're finally taking on leadership, right? The the challenge is, we always wait too long. And I waited way too long, like I hired out of necessity, when it was too late. Meaning we were so busy, that it was hard for me to focus. And I felt like it was a distraction to hire this person and train them up. Because I had all this money that I had to get, right. We're building this business, I was driving revenue, I had to go after that those clients and those customers and build programs for them. And then all of a sudden, I realized, wait, I need an ops person, I need somebody to take over the day to day. And the reality is I was so I waited too long. So my best advice, if you're listening right now is if you're consistently growing revenue, hire early pay way more than you think is necessary. Somebody comes to me like I'm thinking about hiring somebody, and I want to pay him 25 bucks an hour. I'm like, so you're just gonna get a high school kid and pay him 25 bucks an hour? Like, what? How do you go out and find a 35 or $40 an hour person and say, Hey, we need to make it worth it so that I can afford to pay your salary. So we're gonna work together to build this business so big that there's opportunity for both of us here. And that is it if if you can hire early and and get the right people that that'll be a game changer for you. Yeah, I love that. And then also, I think I think you've partnered with bigger pockets team before, right, haven't you? I think I've hung out with them before. Like, I've heard some mention of you or either you advertise with them or something. But Brandon Turner at that last event, he was talking about the two things that he would recommend people to do. If they were to go back and start from scratch if he were to go back and start everything all over again. And for those listening, Brandon Turner's the host of the BiggerPockets Podcast. Yep, he is a successful real estate investor, he said he would build a team and play a team sport quicker, exactly to your point. And he said that he would hire a mindset coach and hire a coach quicker. So for me, I'm kind of in that first round, where I'm kind of been the solopreneur. And then some for me building my quote unquote, team out has been, it's the process of it's kind of a bitter pill to swallow for a lot of us is when you realize, hey, you know what I'm doing works. But will that yield 10 million? Well, you're 20 million? Well, you're 30 minutes? No, I can't do that the person that I am is not enough to do that. I either need to become a different person or start hiring those people. So can you hit a little bit about? So you go from the we do? And then they so you go when you hire your virtual assistant, your first assistant, and then what context was that? And can you hit a little bit about that journey? Yeah, oh, I want to get into that. But I think he said something that I want to punctuate because it's important. My one of the first hires that you want to have is a coach to your point like the the reality is, I remember when I hired my first coach. He sat down with me and created an org chart. And I'd never done an org chart. I had no idea. He's like, Hey, do you have a strategic plan? And I'm like a strategic what, you know, and I, here's, I'm a business guy, man, I went to business school, I got a degree in finance. And you know, what they didn't teach you is how to read a strategic chart. Or an org chart. Yeah, or an org chart. Or, or, you know, it's funny as they all you know, you're you're in this college experience because they expect you to go get a job right afterwards. And so, when I did accounting classes, they didn't audit a small business like we most like the economies are ran. I mean, you know, there are More small business owners than large business owners. So in accounting, public accounting, what do they do they have you audit like Coke and Ford and like pull out financials. And I'm reading these things, and I don't know anything about it, I start my business. And I'm like, Gosh, what's a cash flow statement? You know what Scott analysis is, though. It taught me the hell out of that. They were like SWOT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. I was like, well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's it. Well, and you know, it's funny is, they do that, because they are trying to teach you how to be an employee. Right. And that's the thing that's different is a SWOT is something that an employee would bring to a meeting so that the group could make a consensus about making an investment and a particular division or a new marketing strategy, or a new product or whatever, you know, an employee, they have to protect their downside. Entrepreneurs, we're building stuff, we don't care about downside. We're thinking about how do I take that hill? Right. And so in college, they don't teach you anything about actually running a business or starting a business or any of those things. So yeah, I say, invest early. On, sorry to cut you off. But to your point about risk conversation. Yeah, I feel like what you just said in the tie everything up that we just said with a bow, I feel like the way in business to mitigate your risk is to hire the freaking coach, hire someone that's been there, done that, hire the coach, hire the mentor, you're not paying $25 an hour, you're paying someone that's got sweat equity, and whatever they've done, and then that's going to be your that's going to be your risk assessment. That's how you mitigate it. Yeah, I think you're right. But I also want to make sure that if you're listening right now, you don't do it wrong, because I know so many business people who do it wrong, right? If you can't play, what do you do you coach, right? So why have I have a real inversion to hiring somebody as a coach who's never been in the fight himself or herself. And, and that's a challenge for me. And so, and I'm, I'm, I'm not a super religious guy. But I do like the Bible talks about experience, there's learned experience, and there's lived experience, right. So if you're going to hire a mindset person, you're going to hire a coach, you're going to hire somebody to help your business, you want to find somebody who's lived that experience, and therefore they have wisdom. And they've not book learned it, or read a pod, or listen to a podcast like this, you know, you have some crazy guy with a beard talking about virtual assistants, like it's somebody who's lived through the experience that you're trying to create for yourself, for your business, for your life for your family, and has the wisdom to know the path that you're on. And so I got lucky, I hired a guy who actually had been an entrepreneur had ran a business, and had really good success in both as an employee, CEO, as well as an entrepreneur, so I, I just dumb locked into it. Right. But looking back now, it's really important who you allow to penetrate your mindset, and, and and help set your, you know, vision for the future. And so just find somebody who's done it before. Do you have any actionable advice about the vetting process that because he just said how to go about the wrong way? He said, just dumb luck. You You lucked out. That's awesome. But we know for the 96% That's not the case. And honestly, they probably wouldn't even consider a coach, do you have any kind of actionable advice that we could take to go about the vetting process for a coach? Well, I mean, just make make sure that that person has done it before and not like cells conversation, done it before. Like, you know, you're talking to a person and they have the perfect sales line. You know, we've all interviewed somebody like that, or talk to somebody, you're like, how you doing? Oh, I'm doing good brother. I'm making people rich with X, Y, and Z. And you're like, Oh, I actually wanted to know how you're doing, you know, how the kids? Yeah. How are the kids? Tell me about your family, you know? So, my advice is just to get get on a real level with him and really vet their experience and their wisdom and make sure they've walked that path. So authenticity. Yeah. Well, I don't know if I would call it that. I, you know, again, I would just, I would really have them help you understand their experience, and just let them know that you're looking for somebody who's done what you're about to do themselves, you know. And it's funny because in business we have, we have this perverse idea, that if there are good things person, they may be a good coach. Whereas any of the other professions, it just doesn't work like that you don't go to a hospital and practice, you know, being a doctor with somebody who's never been a doctor before you like, like, you're with doctors who've done that surgery. And it's illegal to actually practice law in an area of law that you've never practiced before. You can't go into family law, if you were an investment lawyer, you know, like, that's actually illegal. But in entrepreneurship, we don't have those same rules, you know. So what we need to do, and Alvin, one of one of Daniels, assistants, right hand guys on here, maybe what we need to do is find a way to hack every single sales profession sales company CEOs inbox and get a copy of this, and Dropbox it straight into their inbox. Because every single sales organization seems to have this theory that it's been proven wrong over and over and over again, that we take the top performing sales reps, and we throw them into a management role, right, it's gonna fit the gloves gonna fit. And exactly what you just said, just prove the point. 1000 times over again, is not the case, sales skills is a skill that's learned and developed and accumulated. Just like coaching and mentorship and being leadership is a skill that needs to be like communicated taught. That was a huge point that think you just made thank you for making that. Well, and and your first question was the virtual assistant I, I'm, I'm a big fan of compound leverage. And it's, that's something that's in the book, and I talk about it, like if you can build systems and process in your business, and system can be just a checklist, it could be just a numbered list. I mean, it can be simple as hey, do this. And then after you're finished with that, do that, like it can be very simple, right? Sometimes some of our systems are just in a Google Doc. But compound leverage is you put it into a system in a process, you delegate it down, somebody else does it, you train them properly, right, train them properly, that's a really important part fully, to, you know, so that they say I'm trained, you say they train, you've verified their work, and it's 100% done. And then you can take that hour that you just bought back, right, you're gonna buy back some of your time. And you focus that on getting new clients, creating projects within your business, or, you know, maybe going to the gym, seeing the family, like whatever it is in your world that you need. But the idea of leverage and hiring somebody, you know, it's 100%, get the stuff off your plate, that that anybody can do, and then just focus on the things that only you can do. And you made that, that point here, podcast is our company, you know, I, it's my story, as an entrepreneur, there's not a lot of this and you know, wildly enough, this could be leveraged like somebody else could do this interview, and it would have been fine. But this is that one area that I still love and enjoy within the business, which is meaning guys like you and tell him the story of the company. And it's a it's another whole week and a couple episodes before we talked about light tasks and heavy tasks. And so you try to delegate all the tasks that feel heavy, and then all the tasks that feel like that they're still enjoyable. That's what you want to focus on. So I think that a lot of people that are listening to this, if we want to create an immediate impact, especially for something like this, where we're going to be having such an in depth conversation about systems and processes. Yes, we're going to be in the real estate field. So these are gonna be realtors are in the mortgage business to where they're a one man show and they're starting to expand and grow just kind of how you weren't before. So I really want to tie up CES, the concepts of systems and processes in a bow. Can you maybe create a real life example about where in your business as a real estate professional, or as a mortgage professional, you go and you create? This is what a system a fictitious system looks like. And it's what a fictitious process looks like. So they can really digest that? Yeah, sure. Um, first, I want to say, even though we're talking about real estate right now, and I'm happy to do that, because I'm a realtor, I love the business and I still kill and if you're listening, you'll laugh a little bit. My wife will she'll catch me in the in the front room, I'm on my iPad. And she's like, are you looking at house porn again, and like, at night, looking at all the commercial properties that are selling in the area of houses, I'm like, Oh, there's another one. Look at this. This is a nice one right? And I pull the car over for open houses. I still I love that world and how drives so much of our economy. So every time a house transacts, there's about $70,000 of general services that get bought and sold, whether it's insurance furniture, it's amazing how many people buy a house, and then need a new wardrobe, a new car new furniture, like, it's, it's insane. So housing drives our general economy. That's why housing starts interest rates. They're a barometer for how the economy is doing. And so I just, I love the industry. And if you're in that space, whether it's mortgage title insurance, whatever, or realtor or an investor or developer, like I would say, what's your one? Okay, so billing systems, what's your one thing, right? Are you going to grow your book of business, meaning, if you're a lender, how many people are doing loans with you, if your realtor, how many people are listing houses with you, so you're going to either grow your book of business, or you're going to grow your company, which means I'm going to go out and recruit like 1500 agents to join my business. And then I'm going to create a model around that, and I'm going to sell a bunch of different services to those agents, right, and I'm going to make money in those two worlds. So you have two paths to go. And the problem with going in between is you get squished like a grape on the on the train, right? You just really can't do one or the other, you want to focus on one get really good at that create some, you know, revenue and systems and processes. And then if you decide to do the other, that's okay. But you just can't chase both of those at the same time, unless you've got pockets and you want to pay somebody to own one or the other side of your business. But you know, so a system and a process around those two main strategic goals, like I'm going to either grow my book of business, or I'm going to grow my company, and recruit agents would just be a system around generating leads a system around generating recruits, right. And so an example is pesos. So you have paid earned social or organic traffic. Those are website traffic's, and I like marketing. So I'm a little crazy with marketing. But peso is an acronym that you can always use, like paid advertising, earned advertising, anytime you're on a on the news, or anytime you're mentioned in the newspaper, or maybe a podcast or a local speaking event, that's an earned example. And then social, obviously, it's cheap to be on social media, and highlight you as a crazy realtor, you know, doing something silly. One guy know, I think, you know, to Pat Heibon. He, it wasn't it's Tim robes 10. Rhodes used to he had a commercial on TV. So that's a paid example, where he he was in a suit and a tie, and he's about to jump off a bridge, I'll do anything for my clients. And then he jumped off the bridge, right. You know, he was the number one guy in his market, and because of that, he got lots of revenue. And he's retired and he's been retired for, you know, almost 15 years now. Can the good ones skin every day? Exactly. And, and because he went to the height of what he was up to, his whole world was build a book of business for himself listings, right. And so, um, you know, he was really good at creating paid advertising. That was funny. That's, that's the key that a lot of people miss, you know? Like, we're not, we're all we're all probably busy. But well, if it's something funny, we'll We'll watch it right. And so he intuitively knew that and he made some funny commercials. So a system and a process would be, you know, figure out pay. So try to be funny, and build systems around getting people, your ideal clients to raise their hands, whether that's, you know, recruiting team members on your team, or building your own book of business. Have that that's, that's an example, I guess. Okay, that was awesome. So, I love Tim, by the way, Tim just goes and he just wants to go ski in the woods every day. And that's what he does. And I'll have him he's gonna come on this podcast, too. So he's gonna tell his stories. That's gonna be fantastic. So Daniel, I've got so you've got a person coming in? Hey, Daniel, I've got a I've got a business. I don't think I can afford an assistant. I thought that's what only really rich people get. Yeah. What is your answer to that? Yeah, it's a great question. I think somebody and I have no idea who said this, but I like it. They say if you want to go fast, go alone if you want to go far, go with others. Right. And so it really depends what you're trying to build. I mean, there was a time in my life where I was I you know, did have a huge team and I was making lots of money. And I was young, kind of like you're young right now. And it was, it was a fantastic time in my life. I mean, it was a fantastic time in my life, I didn't want to build a team out, I didn't want to do assists I wanted, I wanted a lifestyle business. And that's what I had. So I think it all goes back to you know, your why and what you're trying to build and what you're trying to be up up to, you know, but if you're intent on building, you know, wealth, and if you're intent and crossing over that million dollars, Mark, and revenue, you're gonna have to build a team. And so the question isn't, you know, when can I afford it? It's when would I, when when I make the choice, that it would make sense for me for my business? Because here's the thing, most people are like, well, I could hire somebody, and I could give them all, you know, all my stuff to do. But then what would I do? Hmm, that is the question to figure out. Like, if you gave away a million dollar question, yeah. If you could give away 70 80% of your day, then what are those activities that are so valuable? That if you turn them from 20% of your day to 100% of your day, like we're all you did was focus on that? Could it create enough value and scale inside of your business? To make that worth it? Hmm. No, that's, that's very interesting. So you hit on something before that I want to come back to and that's you hired your coach from and this can be applied, this is what going past the coaching conversation, this could be applied to an assistant conversation as well, when you hired your assistant, or you hire a coach from a place of reaction, so you're being reactive instead of proactive? So I feel like that's where 98% of the people are going to hire their assistant. It's from a place of reaction instead of ProAction. What tactical things do you think people can do to be like, what kind of I'm trying to think about how to generate an aha moment for someone that's not to the stage where the volcanoes blowing? But they're like, Okay, let me be proactive about this. Can you kind of give, does that make sense? Yeah, it does. Look, there's a lot of different types of businesses. There's a lot of different types of business owners. And, you know, for me, I just knew I wasn't doing it, right, if that makes sense. And so, like, a lot of people were like, like, Okay, well, I mean, here's a good example, right? I'm, I'm I own a business. I'm rich, and I was depressed, right? And literally, I'm depressed because I, I feel like I'm doing something wrong. Like, I know that it's not going the way it should go. I feel like my business owns me versus me owning the business like it just didn't. So I think this is more of a feeling piece. If you can imagine it's more of like, you know, how are you feeling about the future? How are you feeling about your career, how you're feeling about your bank account? How are you feeling about your customers and who you're serving? How do you feel about your industry? You know, and it's so, you know, I, I help a lot of young kids, I'm a wrestling coach in high school. That's why Matt King and I get along because he wrestled in high school, too. Yeah, I wrestled too. Okay. All the smart ones do, I'm listening to this, and you're not a wrestler, I'm sorry, you can still win, too. It's just going to be harder for you, you know, wrestlers were beat up as kids. And so I'm looking an entrepreneur is like, it's like second hat to us. But um, so I help I mentor a lot of kids. And they asked that question like, Hey, Coach, in fact, there's a guy right now. He's in the Marines, good wrestler, came out, went into the Marines, and I've been kind of coaching him on on the side. And I just, you know, coaching him in life, I guess. And he's like, Well, I don't know what I want to do with my life. I don't know what I want to be. I said, Well, you don't have a lot of experience. So this makes complete sense. You're also only 22. So it makes a lot of sense, right? And so my advice to him was, go out and find a lifestyle that you want to live, like, weather if you're if you're an investment guy, guess what, you have five days off a year where the markets closed, right? If you're working on Wall Street, the market is closed five days. Most people that are in the market, do holidays around those five days and that's their time off. Teachers get the whole summer off if you're a teacher, right? So find that find the industry or the person that you want to kind of be like or you want to live that lifestyle, and then find out what that Intel's, like, if you're a teacher, guess what you're pretty on during the school year, you know, 7am start times three in the afternoon in times, my wife's a teacher, by the way. So I, that's fine. A little bit about it. Um, but my advice to him is, you know, find the world or the lifestyle that you want to live, right? And then find a mentor, and then really interview them. Find out what's going on in your world. We're talking about Coach, mindset people, you know, business coach, invaluable. Mindset coach, invaluable. Those are two different people. The different Go ahead. That's the two different people on your team. Yep, exactly. Now, another person on your team might be a mentor, somebody who's had the level of success that you've had, that you connect with and identify with, who you have a reciprocal relationship around, right? They mentor you, you provide energy and excitement and that young vibe that, you know, is always good. There's it's a reciprocal relationship. So, you know, find mentors, find out who's going on. And if it feels like you're not doing it, right, you're probably right, you need to reach out and find somebody. Yeah, it's like, the funny thing is like society kind of, it's clearly like bananas, when you think about the fact that society is like, hey, yeah, go to school, come out, figure it out, like you'll know what to do. And then when you graduate, you realize no one knows what the hell they're doing. And then that's when it kind of starts to feel okay, because you're like, okay, no one really knows what they're doing. I'm just gonna figure it out and go about it as I as I wish and just kind of let the cards go. So that was great advice that Daniel just gave is kind of take a set seat back, I don't if you're starting a business, if you're working for a business, if you're thinking about starting a business, think about what do you want your life to look like? What do you want to design your life like, and then also, what fuels you and what gets you going, you know, because it's, it's really, really easy, because it's sexy, to be an entrepreneur. Now, it's very, very easy for people to buy themselves another job, and create another job for themselves. So now, instead of going from your W two job where you're working 40 hours a week, you're a sexy entrepreneur now, and you're working 90 hours a week, well, here's and here's the other thing, you're taxed at a worst tax bracket, that's the other. You know, when you're an employee, you're about 40%, you become a self employed, basically, employee of yourself. Now you're at like, 50 60%. So you're stepping into an entrepreneur world without the tax benefit. And people don't realize that they, you know, then then you're giving your whole life to it, this business, and without the opportunity to transition from a small business to a large business. Without that opportunity, you can feel like you're stuck or frustrated, or you're not sure what to do. And that can be more damaging than just staying in the W two job. Hmm, I agree. And I also want to be a little bit conscious of your time here, because we're just going off on a tangent man, you're just dropping bombs, Daniel dropping bombs, dropping some knowledge. We didn't know about virtual assistants at all I know. Exactly. So that's all when I got it to now is, so the CEO of my out desk is going to tell us about virtual assistants and how he went from one to 2000 and how they can directly benefit all of us. Yes, ma'am. Just throwing out. You know, it's funny as Yeah, if you're listening, yeah, it's funny, we've set the stage, right. So that one, if you're feeling frustrated, or you're not sure where to go, or even better, I mean, we help some really large businesses, one of our customers just got an LOI and it's a, you know, $90 million business that is about to exit. And that's exciting. And another one of our customers just raised $300 million in seed round seed money. So like, that's freakin exciting. Like he's got to this guy. Imagine this, he's got to hire 100 People in the next 90 days in one of the most difficult markets ever to exist with a pandemic. And he's about to hire 100 virtual assistants on top of it. So we're gonna lay he's gonna layer 100 us people and 100 people from my out desk in the next 90 days onto his company right now and so that you don't have to this doesn't have to be like that frustration porn. You know, what is Gary Vee call it a hustle porn? Yeah, this isn't hustle porn. I mean, this is just leverage, right? Every CEO, their number one concern if you're a real CEO, is your team who's on my team? What's the talent? What can we do together? How do I keep them motivated? How do I keep them in? In culture? What's my, what's my goal? Who do I have on my team? You know, what's that look like. And so, hiring a virtual assistant, we like something called the sticky challenge, which literally is just taking a stack of stickies and following yourself around all day long, writing on that stack of stickies exactly what you're doing throughout the day. So I spent an hour on a podcast, you know that that's dollar productive, I spent an hour reviewing financials, not dollar productive. Yeah, non dollar productive, important. But gosh, if you're spending 80% of your time on non dollar productive stuff, then you you've got a challenge, right. So you know, first do a sticky challenge, where you're writing down everything that you're doing inside of your business, and then you start putting them into piles like this is client facing facing dollar productive, this is non dollar productive, and it has to do with operations, finance, whatever it is, right? And then you can start to build a kind of an outcome statement or a job description around the things that you know, you need to have done, but they're not super important to your business. Once you've identified them, then then you can say, hey, is this a job that can be virtual? Meaning I don't have to have somebody physically in my office? Or is this a job that, you know, can't and so I gotta have somebody in my office doing it. And that's kind of where virtual assistants come in, we do four different areas. So sales, marketing ops, and customer service, those are our four kind of areas in our companies split about 5050, half her operations, minded, you know, folks help keep the processes going and systems up. And the other half are client facing, you know, like sales, marketing, all that kind of stuff. Awesome. Yeah, I remember, I actually applied a kind of makeshift virtual assistant process when in my w two. So an example of that is I'm in sales. So COVID COVID hit and this ties in perfectly. So I went to like, just Upwork kind of situation. But I was in I was in WTO sales, and it was COVID was hitting and every the world was shutting down. Were like, Okay, how is this gonna even work? How's this gonna happen? All of your yearly goals are fiscal ended in July, or June one was our fiscal. So I was like, Okay, we're all the goals are toast. And now it's like, Okay, now, like, let me figure out like some sorts of leverage because everyone's backing off. And it's like, when you get punched in the face, either back off, or you back in you lean right? And so I just post on Upwork. I was like, you know, how we gonna pivot is probably sanitation. I was like, so if I can create an email list of all these clients in these zip codes, and all these businesses, as I, if I can just take my CRM list, and then just outsource it to someone else, and then have them come through and then just give me it was something simple, monotonous, that wouldn't have been necessarily dollar productive. It was business name, CEO name, email address, yeah, in three columns. And so that was a nn. So I had my entire son then. And when the world shut down, I had this entire email list, I could email directly to the leadership and say, hey, you know, we're pivoting to this cleaning service. And then I set like the company record for a fortune 500 company for a sales quarter. And when it started, yeah, and then I quit the company later on with having hated. Yeah, I think that's good. And you illustrate a great point. You needed, you needed that information in order to win, but you knew that you didn't have to be the one to compile it. And that is an example. And there's just it's I got a question. We do this client indoctrination every month, like when a new new customers come in, we do a webinar and I walk them through all the things to be successful with a virtual assistant. And one of the questions was like, Hey, what should I be thinking about? What can a virtual assistant do and we gave you that link in the in the notes, but it's my favorite question to ask is, what can't they do? Which sounds ridiculous, but anything that's on a computer screen anything that you know, they can't come into your office and open mail, they can't make coffee, they can't. There's things that they can't run errands for you if you got to go somewhere in the neighborhood, right? But there are so many services out there now tasks Rabbitt where you can, you can have somebody you know, run your dry cleaning and go take your car and get an oil change. And, you know, you can send your mail now to a virtual mailbox, and they'll scan it and send it to an email. There are companies out there that are doing all kinds of things for you, where you can fully automate your life. And I'm a big fan of only do the things that you only can do. There's lots of people in this company. And there's a lot of things that they can do. And there's only a certain amount of things that only I can do. And so the more you think about it, there's just a lot that a virtual assistant can do for most people, whether it's projects like yours, or helping them grow and scale a business. Yeah, that's that's kind of that's my, you just got the whole preach right there. The whole thing. Oh, that's what we're here for. We're here. We're here to get we're here to get I love it when people get that smile on their face. And I could just tell that they're about to let it rip. Yeah, I was like, he's about to let it rip. Man. That's, that's fantastic. So like I said, I want to be conscious of your time I fit by if it'd be fine with you, I think we absolutely need to do another episode down the line. Because this is just been freakin fantastic. This has been a real life MBA for anyone that's thinking about starting a business or that are in their business. And they don't want to be that 96% They want to be the 4%. So where what are the resources? So I know Alvin just sent me the link, it's going to be my out desk, my out desk, bat.com backslash scale, and I'm going to put that in the show notes. And then that's where you can get a free copy of the book. Is there any other resources or areas that you want to direct people to to learn more about you? And my out desk? Daniel? No, I think the I mean, definitely jump in, grab a copy of the book. I, I it took way too long to write that thing, like four years and yeah, no, I didn't. I was like, I had to, like do it myself, which is I we did use a writer, but holy moly, like, it was a it was a hard lift to do this book. And I what the reason is because I wanted somebody to read it. If they were a business person in that I we transition or the we they and get value. Like that. That's that was the whole intention was here's the path, here's what I screwed up, here's what you don't have to screw up. So definitely get a grab a copy of the book, if you wanted to, on the website, you can get a consultation. We do. It's 100% Free where we'll sit down with you look at your chart, look at their systems and process look at where you have gaps what might be missing and really create a specialized plan to not only you but your industry, you know what you need help with and whether or not a virtual assistant can help sometimes we get folks in and we're like, hey, we just can't help you man. You got to hire a coach or you got to get a consultant or something. And then other times you know we you know we're like yeah, we can do you know we can do that job. Let it let us take it over so grab a consultation grab a book and we we love to help people grow and scale really. And and I know a lot of you that are listening right now you're not you're not witnessing the genius that I'm witnessing right now with our man Alvin in the background. He's He's over here sending all of the links. Send a cliff notes for every single bit of this every single link shout out to you, Alvin. I see I see you back there. See in the in the background, man. This is just a perfect example. Man. This is This is amazing. And he sent me every single link to everything. Perfect poetry emotion. Well, Mr. Ramsey, thank you very much, sir. I think this has been fantastic. And you man, you've got me fired up. You've got me one to go create word charts for fun on a Tuesday afternoon, man. I think they're sexy, sexy. Put some lipstick on. There you go. Well, yeah, it's it's been fun to connect and chat. And I'm looking forward to your audience and growing over time and hopefully helping them serve by giving them a virtual assistant and getting rid of some of that busy Ness that's in their world. Heck, even maybe me and you maybe we wind up talking to as this grows, because then I'm gonna have to start outsourcing things as well. So we'll probably haven't you need an album. About to say well, we'll be in touch my friend. Yeah. All right, brother. Thanks for your time. Appreciate it. This is Brian Luebben and Daniel Ramsey with oh and Alvin, with my out desk, signing off. You've been listening to the action Academy podcast helping you have to choose what you want with who you want. When you want. You've been given the gift of freedom. Don't turn your back on that. We hope you've enjoyed the show. And we hope you've gotten some practical useful information make sure to like rate and review the show will be back soon. But in the meantime, hook up with us on social media. Remember financial independence is freedom. The freedom fly