WS350: Making Time to Do Work that Matters with Steve Rozenberg

In today’s episode, we are joined by Steve Rozenberg to talk about how he can work a full-time job while simultaneously running a property management company. His rise to the top has not been without challenges and having made some tactically poor decisions in the past, Steve and his partner found themselves in trouble.

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

However, through some coaching and mentoring they have since been able to find huge success. A large contributor to this success is that he is a self-proclaimed ‘master-delegator.’ This means that he realizes his limitations and finds the right people to do the work in areas where his strengths do not lie. Doing this has meant that he has more time to do what a real business owner should be doing — thinking and strategizing. Too often, people are caught up in the weeds, doing work that is consuming their energy, which is not a scalable or efficient business model. Steve shares some of the ways in which he delegates, the kind of systems he has in place to make this delegation possible and much more. For this valuable insight, join us today!

Key Points From This Episode:

  • How 9/11 changed the trajectory of Steve’s career and led him to real estate investing.
  • Having a coach or mentor in any field, not only real estate, is critical to success.
  • The best thing you can do is listen to people who are smarter and have more experience than you.
  • Admitting that you are not smart enough to do everything is a big challenge for many people.
  • Before assembling the best team, it is important to establish and concretize goals.
  • An explanation of the difference between goals and strategies.
  • Real estate investing is not about the physical structure, it’s about the creation of a business.
  • Some of the key structures that Steve has in place in his current business model.
  • The importance of getting the right people in the right seats.
  • The tasks that Steve outsources to other people and how he applies the 80/20 rule.
  • Insights into the necessary conditions for successful outsourcing of tasks.
  • Some of the techniques that Steve uses when training his virtual assistants.
  • Why Steve uses VAs from Mexico rather than other places around the world.
  • The importance of having iterative, flexible systems in place, especially when growing.
  • Helping people has allowed Steve to grow even more exponentially.

[bctt tweet=”Four walls and a roof is not going to make you successful. It’s not going to get you wealthy. It’s the business running inside that four walls and a roof. — Steve Rozenberg” username=”Whitney_Sewell”]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:

Steve Rozenberg

Steve Rozenberg on Instagram

Steve Rozenberg on Facebook

Landlord Survival Podcast

Lion’s Leadership Den Podcast

Failing Our Way to Millions

About Steve Rozenberg

Steve has owned a 39-unit apartment building as well as over 40 SFH. He has wholesaled over 100 Properties. He is a commercial Airline Pilot who turned investor after 9/11 threatened his “secure” livelihood. After meeting his business partner Pete, they failed miserably as investors thanks to terrible tenants, worse neighborhoods and zero structure. It took them years, but with help they have figured out how to leverage each other’s strengths. Steve is Currently on 2 Podcast shows. Landlord Survival; where he actively helps the regular landlord overcome day-to-day problems and Lion’s Leadership Den where he and his co-host help the more seasoned investors find the leader within. He has the opportunity to travel across the US and even to Australia and New Zealand sharing his passion to educate the “at home” Landlord on how to be successful in the ‘business’ of Real Estate.

Full Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Real Estate Syndication Show. Whether you are a seasoned investor or building a new real estate business, this is the show for you. Whitney Sewell talks to top experts in the business. Our goal is to help you master real estate syndication.

And now your host, Whitney Sewell.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:00:24] WS: This is your daily Real Estate Syndication Show. I’m your host, Whitney Sewell. Today, our guest is Steve Rozenberg. Thanks for being on the show, Steve. 

[00:00:32] SR: Thanks for having me, Whitney. I appreciate it.

[00:00:34] WS: No, I’m honored to have you on the show. Just from a little bit of our discussion,

I’m excited to get into our talk today and learning more about you and the success that you’ve had and how you’ve got there, because I know this can be very valuable to the listeners. Now, I wanted to remind the listeners before we get started to go to Life Bridge Capital and go to the contact us page and sign up. I’d love to have a call with you. And through that, we’ll schedule a time to speak and help you anyway I can.

But a little about Steve, he’s a commercial airline pilot who turned investor after 9/11 threatened his “secure” livelihood. I think a lot of us can relate to that. Just thinking we’re in the secure corporate position and wanted to try to move into real estate. Now, that we’ve got greater understanding, that it’s not as secure as we thought. Now, he’s on apartment buildings and many, many single-family homes and wholesaled over 100 properties. He’s been in this real estate game for a while now and just really crushing it.

After meeting his business partner, Pete, they failed miserably as investors, thanks to terrible tenants, worst neighborhoods, and zero structure. It took them years. But with help, they have figured out how to leverage each other’s strengths. He’s currently on two podcast show, Landlord Survival and Lion’s Leadership Den.

So, Steve, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate your time this morning early and being on the show. I wanted to tell the listeners also. I wanted to give them this, because Steve has a property management company that’s managing over a thousand properties, while working full time. And so, there’s not many people that I’ve heard that can say something like that. So, Steve, give the listeners a little more about who you are, and let’s jump in to how you how you manage something like that while working full-time.

[00:02:13] SR: Sure. Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. And yeah, I’ve learned how to be, I don’t want to say, a taskmaster. But I would probably say a delegate master for delegating stuff. So, yeah, my story began on 9/11. I was an airline pilot, and I still am. I work for a major airline. And basically, the safe, secure job that I thought I had on September 10th of 2001 pretty much evaporated on 2001, 9/11. And what I realized was that a safe secure job was anything but, because on September 13th, about 3 days later, I was delivered a furlough notice that basically was saying, “thanks for playing, but we don’t think we’re going to need you anymore, your services. You’re going to be out on the street with 100,000 other airline pilots just like you.”

So, I realized that that safe, secure job really was anything but. As a matter fact, it was actually more dangerous because I was so specialized in what I did. I really didn’t have skills to do anything else. And so, luckily, I never did lose my job. I came within 30 of the bottom of getting furloughed. But it taught me a very valuable lesson. While I still am a pilot and I still love flying and I love everything about that, I also know that it’s a job. I know at any point, I could get a notice that says, “hey! We’re going out of business. We made a bad financial move,” whatever it is.

So I’ve realized how vulnerable you can be, which is why started buying real estate, and I started flipping properties, wholesaling properties and got a lot of –  Did very well with that because I was really negotiating really. I wasn’t actually taking possession. I was wholesaling in contracts. I got enough money and bought an apartment complex with my business partner still to this day. We sold that, and then I started buying some houses and made some very tactical errors on that, kind of the, “we’re the smartest kids on the block, because we just made a lot of money selling an apartment complex.” Kind of challenges what we had, and we started buying a lot of stuff. And they really were not good properties that when I say not good properties, they were low-income properties. And it’s not that those are bad. They just did not fit our business model. Because we didn’t have a business model, it didn’t fit anything.

And so, we thought they would be passive, and they weren’t. Anyways, that led to us having to figure out how to manage them, which we did. That led us to getting other investors wanting us to manage their properties, which we did. And one of the best things we actually did is we got a business coach before we even realize we had a business and basically just did everything that the business coach told us. It was very big in investing in ourselves’ self-development, understanding business model structure, and grew a company within 7 years.

We manage about $160 million in assets. We collect about 1.6 million in month in rent. It’s all single-family properties, which obviously has its challenges geographically. We’re in 3 cities. We’re in Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth, Texas. We’re just growing really through sound business structure. The way that we’ve been able to do that like we’re talking before the show is we’ve understand the use of leverage, and I’ve understand how to put right person, right seat in any structure. The way that we do that is we offload things to virtual assistants, and we offload specific tasks that we need done, which everyone knows VA, virtual assistant, is kind of the buzzword nowadays.

But we’ve actually learned how to master it from an operational level, which is very, very tough. So that’s kind of where we’re at today, and we’re just plugging along, growing leaps and bounds, and dominating this as much as possible.

[00:05:32] WS: Awesome! Wow! There’s so many things that I’d love for us to dive into. I know we won’t have time to get everything. But this – You had a need, right? You had a need, and I think you partnered with this guy, and you all had some problems, right? It pushed you to learn this business a little better, pushed you to get a coach. We talked about that on many shows, just the importance of having a coach, a mentor or somebody like that. I mean, it’s so crucial. Some of the top players in any industry, they all have a coach and sometimes 2 or 3 coaches, right?

[00:06:04] SR: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you look at Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan. I mean, all of the best in the world. Were they the best because they were the best, or were they the best because they were coached? And so, you can say it anyway you want, but the reality is this is not a singular sport. Investing is not a singular sport. Running investment properties is not a singular sport. It’s a matter of – It’s like a general. A general doesn’t win a war. His troops do.

And so, people need to – I think the biggest challenge we all have when we get involved in real estate or syndication or anything, everybody thinks that what they do is relative to how smart they are or how good they are. It’s not – People mistake progress for movement. I think a lot of us think that because we’re busier, we want to be the smartest in the room. Sometimes, that’s not the best position to be in. Sometimes, shutting up and listening and taking smarter advice from people that have been down that path is the better way to go. Or, at least, for me it was.

I’m very humble that if I see someone smarter than me, I am at the front of the row, and I’ll be their best student. I want to learn from those people, because they have done something that I haven’t, and I am not the smartest person. I’m an airline pilot. I tell people. I mean, I’ve been fortunate enough that we’ve grown our company. I have a lot of the ability to travel. I do a lot of speaking around the United States, as well as Australia on property management, on investing. But the reality is the only reason I can do that is because I have the team behind me, and I was smart enough to say, “I’m not smart enough. How do I do this?” That’s something people have a challenge with, I think.

[00:07:36] WS: Yeah. I’m not where I’m at because I’m the smartest person doing everything that we have to do, or it’s not possible. You have to figure that out at some point that you’re going to hire people to specialize in certain parts of the business. But I’d love to get into how you’ve started to do this. Help us to be that master delegator like you were talking about. You all learned to understand how to delegate, making sure the correct person is in that seat. How do we do that?

[00:08:03] SR: Sure. Well, it sounds boring, but it starts with the basics of really what is the goal. People get involved in investing, and you know as well as I do, people get involved in apartments or houses. And nobody really has a goal or an end destination as to what all of this real estate does for them. So, when I ask people, when people come to me and they say, “Steve, I want to start investing,” I’ll ask them, “why like what’s the reason? Because you’re a doctor, you’re an engineer, you’re whatever. It’s not for the money right now. So, what is it? What is that going to give you?”

If you don’t have a goal and you don’t have a final destination, I can’t help you get there, because buying apartments, buying houses, flipping, those are not goals. That is the strategy that is going to carry you to that goal. So, I think a lot of times, our definitions are mistaken where we think owning an apartment complex is the goal. That’s not the goal. That’s the strategy that eventually is going to get you somewhere.

And so, I think that very, very rudimentary, I would say, sit down before you even buy a single door and figure out, “why am I doing this?” What is the goal in life? Is it to pass down to my children as a legacy? Is it to live off the cash flow? What is that, and identify that. And then from there, once you know the goal, then you create the strategy to get you to the goal. So, for example, if you said, “hey! Our goal is to get to Disneyland today.” I would say, “okay. The strategy is what freeways we’re going to take to get us to Disneyland, because Disneyland is the end destination.”

So, a lot of people don’t do that. I was one of those people that I just got on the freeway and started driving northbound when Disneyland was westbound. I was just driving along, and I didn’t know where I was going. They said, “where are you going?” I said, “I don’t know. I’ll figure it out on the road.” Well, you’re going the wrong direction, which means you’re spending a lot of time doing movement without being progressing towards the goal.

Again, I think thinking is more important than doing. A lot of times, people are so focused on the, “how do I do it?” They don’t really think about the why. Why am I doing this? I think that if people did that more, that would be the basis to even just start this whole thing off from there. It would be a very – I know it doesn’t sound fun. It doesn’t sound sexy, but that’s the reality of investing.

[00:10:19] WS: Yeah. I couldn’t agree with you more. And I tell people or like when we’re speaking at meet ups or groups or events or whatever, when I talk about your why and I always say –  A few years ago when I heard somebody get up and talk about the importance of your why and figuring out why you’re doing this, I was like, “come on. Let’s get to the meat and potatoes. Teach me something here. I’m going to go network for a while.”

[00:10:40] SR: [inaudible 00:10:40]. I don’t want that stuff [inaudible 00:10:41].

[00:10:43] WS: Well, tell me how to do it, right? That was my thought process. But after a few more years, I’m better understanding. I’m not there yet. None of us have arrived, right? But I have a much better understanding of the importance of my why and just being able to remember every day like, “why am I doing this? Why am I spending this many hours making this business happen and doing all of these things?” It’s so important. But I love how you started with the goal and then figuring out why are we doing this. Then you’re going to reverse engineer it, right?

[00:11:14] SR: Absolutely.

[00:11:14] WS: You’re going to figure out, “okay, how do we get there?” Like you’re talking about, the road signs and figuring out what road to take. A lot of times, that coach is going to be that help. It sounds like you’re coaching people in that saying, “okay, why are you doing this?” Helping people think through just the importance of that, because I didn’t have that initially until I had to hire a coach as well.

[00:11:33] SR: At that point, once you know your strategy and you know what you’re doing, then when you’re looking at a deal, you can, first of all, decide, “does that deal align with my goal, and is that in lien with my strategy?” So, you do the syndications. People always ask me, “well, should I do it or should I not?” I’m like, “I don’t know what your goal is. If you’re going westbound and your goal is northbound, then I would say don’t do that.”

The other thing I think a lot of times people get involved in deals, especially partnerships, and I ask them too. I go, “have you guys talked about the divorce, meaning have you had that discussion of if we have to divorce, what we do?” They say, “oh, no. This is my cousin. We’re related.” I’m like, “that’s even more of the reason that you need to have that discussion.” That’s like, “this is business.” I think a lot of times, where I’m going with this is people don’t realize that when they’re owning a piece of real estate, they are buying a business. Now, a lot of times, they don’t realize it’s a business, and that’s what it fails.

But I tell them. I say, “four walls and a roof is not going to make you successful. It’s not going to get you wealthy.” It’s the business running inside that four walls and a roof. If you do not feed that business correctly and you do not leverage it right and you don’t do the right things.” I don’t know if you’ve ever had this, but I have. When you have a lot of real estate and it is not going well and you have bills due and you don’t know how you’re going to make those bills and pay them, it’s not a very fun feeling. That’s the, “hey! Let’s figure it out as we go,” model, which I did.

I tell you what. I tell people, “if you’ve never been in that position, and you’ve never bled that or walk that walk, it is not a nice place to be.” So, I want to avoid people by saying, “look, think before your money goes hot, and you actually own something.” You go, “oh, my God! What did I do?”  So that’s something that I think is very important when it comes to real estate.

[00:13:18] WS: Give us a couple pointers how you have structured that business model now. I know we can’t elaborate on everything, but give us a couple very important things to help us get our business structure in place and develop that system like you have.

[00:13:32] SR: Sure. So, one of the biggest things I’ve learned is right person, right seat. So, we have been able to scale our business. When you own a business and you have staff, which we don’t sell widget. We sell services when you own real estate. We’ve understood that staffing costs could be the most expensive thing. So, understanding the roles, understanding the job duties, understanding KPI, key performance indicators, all those things help you identify the role.

Once you can identify the role, then you can look and say, “okay. Who needs to do this? Does this need to be me? Can this be someone else, or could this even be a virtual assistant?” So, we’ve learned how to scale our business by using virtual assistance. And in our company, we have about 60% of our business is outsourced through virtual assistants. We get them from Mexico, which is different. A lot of people get them from the Philippines, Asia, India, all those other things. We like that.

Actually, we started a company that we actually placed them for people, but it really is a matter of bringing your cost structure down and having something that’s scalable that you can deliver the same level of service. So, for example, if I own an apartment complex, doesn’t make sense for a tenant to call me to say, “I’m locked out of my house?” Probably not the right person they should be calling, but it still needs to be answered. So, we’ve learned how to take that. I don’t want to pay someone $70,000 a year as a property manager, whatever you pay them, to answer that question, because the real question behind that that they never get to could be a potential lawsuit that’s coming or something that has to be answered.

So, it’s a matter of right person, right seat and getting that scalability with whether it’s virtual assistance or how you want to do it. It really is a matter of really thinking about the business model and go, “okay, is that the right person to do that role?” If not, your expenses go up and now our profit margin goes down.

So, with use of virtual assistance, I have found or we have found that we’ve been able to bring our cost structure from 59% of payroll down to 33% of payroll. So, when you’re looking at the amount of revenue we’re doing, the number gets large. So, it’s really a matter of what’s the best use of your time and how should you be spending your day doing or thinking. I think for us and everyone probably listening to this podcast, they should focus more on the thinking part and not as much the doing part. That’s just my opinion, but that’s how I’ve learned to be more successful.

[00:15:51] WS: So, I’ve done numerous shows on VAs even personally, because I’ve used them for a long time. So, I’m not going to ask the questions about when should we hire one and those things, because I tell everybody, “you need one today.” 

[00:16:03] SR: Absolutely.

[00:16:04] WS: But I do want to ask you the tasks. Give me some tasks that you outsource that just really taken that burden off your shoulders. Give me numerous tasks that you are able to outsource even to people in another country like Mexico.

[00:16:19] SR: Yeah, sure. To give you an example, our whole maintenance division that answers calls from tenants, talks to the vendors, talks to our owners is in Mexico. Everything is handled in Mexico. Our property managers do not even deal with maintenance. So, we get about 900 service tickets a month, and it’s all done Mexico. All lease inbound inquiries in Mexico. All new investor leads, we get about 200 leads a month that come in for people that want management services, they go to Mexico. Mexico takes them. They upload them to the CRM system. They create the management agreements. They do the CMA analysis. They upload them to the profile so that the salesperson can just go close doors.

Anything that has to do with tenant ledgers, owner ledgers, all basic accounting is done in Mexico. They don’t hit the enter button. That’s done up here, but they take care of all the ledgers. As we know, it’s so very time-consuming doing that. We also – Any tenant relations, whenever a tenant calls, they are the forward-facing part of the company. So, whenever a tenant calls, “how do I log into my portal? Why do I pay my rent this month? How I do this?” That is done in Mexico.

So, it’s the 80/20 rule, because 80% of the stuff that comes in, I don’t want to say is a waste of time. It has to be answered, but it doesn’t have to be answered by the property manager. Because what happens is the property managers, they’re very reactive. So, a five-minute interruption, so a five-minute phone call is equal to 23 minutes of lost time. So, if a property manager gets 10 phone calls a day, that’s 230 minutes. Half the day is gone through interruptions. That’s when you go, “what do you do all day?” They say, “I don’t know. I’m just busy answering calls.”

But the reality is that they’re not focused. So, a lot of these things, they have to be answered, but not by them. So, like I said, maintenance, leasing, all of our social media, all of that is done in Mexico, and people think that, “nobody could do it as good as me. No one could do this.” The reality is that they probably don’t have the right systems, and it shines a weakness on their own company and a weakness on their own lack of systems and structure. That’s why they can’t outsource it.

So, it’s a little humbling, because when you outsource it you have to hand that over to someone, and you have to give them a nice, clean bow wrapped up and say, “here you go.” If they don’t have that, they’re not going to be able to do the task, and you go, “oh! It doesn’t work. Give it back. I’ll do it myself.” The reality is that you probably did not train them correctly, and you did not give them the right skill set.

[00:18:45] WS: You read my mind. I was going to ask you about training them, because all these tasks are very important, right? If we don’t train them just like you just said, I mean, it’s not going to be done well. Then we’re going to be doing it again. Then all of a sudden, our time is gone again, and we’re not spending time on the thinking and important stuff. We’re back to doing those tasks.

So, give us some tips on training them to do these very specific tasks. Are those delegated to specific people or can say one VA do numerous of these things at the same time?

[00:19:14] SR: They can. So, they can do numerous tasks. What we’ve learned is the bigger you get, the more vertical that VA should be, meaning if they’re one task – So we have one VA, for example. All they do is lease violations, because there’s enough in there with a thousand properties to just handle lease violations. That’s their life, right? We have another one that does tenant collections. That’s all they do is tenant collections.

But to answer your first question, how do you do it, the first thing you have to do is you have to know what is the system. So, you have to actually take a flowchart and flowchart out what happens when in this system. This happens. Then this happens. Then this happens in a flowchart. After that’s done, then you have to say, “okay, what actually is done when you say contact tenant?” Let’s say it’s an eviction, right? And the fourth of the month comes, and now eviction notices go out. What does that mean? Who does that actual task?

That is the expanded version that actually details the job description of how to actually send out a notice to vacate. Now, what happens is is that is actually the start of your systems manual. So, you have a flowchart that just says, “send out eviction notices.” Behind that, you have the systems manual that actually details that out.

Finally, that is all wrapped up in a checklist format that you can have a check list item, so that you can go through, just like in the airline industry, just like in McDonald’s, just like anywhere. You can systematize your business through the use of checklists. If they don’t know how to do a certain task, they look up the systems manual. In the systems manual, it’s written. You have a video that actually shows you walking through how to do it from a screen video, and then you do screenshots.

So, I always recommend three things in the systems manual, written, video, and screenshots. That way, if for some reason that person leaves, it’s very easy to retrain the next person. Here’s the flowchart, here’s a systems manual, and here’s the checklist. Let me know if you have any questions. If that’s their vertical and that’s what they do and that’s all that they do, it’s going to be very good.

So, we’ve learned that the value of going deep and not going why. So, for us, it’s helped us, but it just depends on the size of the business. If you have one apartment complex, we have 18 virtual assistants. It may not make sense to have 18 VA’s on staff. It may just be one, and they’re going to be doing multiple tasks. So, it depends on the size, obviously.

[00:21:34] WS: Why Mexico?

[00:21:35] SR: Good question. So, we’ve used them from all over the world. The biggest reason I will tell you is a few. Number one, same time zone. So, we’re not working on the backside of the clock. Number two, 50% of the VAs that work for us have either been to the US or have lived in the United States at some point in their life. They get the culture. They get the jokes. They get the verbiage. They understand what Chase Bank is.

When you’re dealing with people in Asia that have never seen a three-two garage, they don’t even know what means. They know the words, but they don’t know what that actually is. So, there’s a lot of communication challenges with VAs on the other side of the world, because they just don’t understand what we’re saying. They could be smart, they could know English, but my perception for what it’s worth is when you hear that phone click and you hear someone with an Indian or Asian accent, you know it’s good to be a VA on the other side. And all of a sudden, you go, “I’m not talking with this company. Now, I’m talking to an outsource.”

When you’re dealing with someone from Mexico, you really don’t know. I mean, honestly, they don’t have much of an accent. If you hear someone with a little bit of a Spanish accent, you probably wouldn’t even think twice about it. More importantly, they are very proactive in their jobs. If they see a problem, they will actually come back and say, “hey! The manual says this. I did this. It didn’t work, so I fixed it. I revised the manual, and this is the way I think we should do it.” And, I’m like, “okay, sounds good.” I could never get that done when I used those VAs in the Philippines.

So, the fact that they’re proactive getting things done, and just as you said, you hire one and that one then trains the new ones that come on. So, it’s a scalability model. That’s why we did it. I mean, we’ve been doing it for several years [inaudible 00:23:12]. We started placing them for other people, and it’s just been fantastic, because it really is a way that people feel comfortable scaling. I mean, we have them. They actually come to our office. Like they’ll come up for training for a week or two, or we’ll go down there for a Christmas party.

So, we’re able to actually interact with them personally where they come up, and they kind of understand the operation. They’re seeing it. So, it really does help the communication and the training level as well.

[00:23:36] WS: Some great tips right there. I love that. And so, something we use, and I don’t know if you all use this video portion, is Loom.

[00:23:44] SR: Yup.

[00:23:44] WS: It’s a free – It’s free, and you can make a video of your screen and yourself and your audio and make some great training videos to be able to handoff to VAs. Now, great tips there. So, do you have somebody in the US that’s helping manage all the VAs?

[00:23:58] SR: Yeah. We have someone in the US. We also have someone in Mexico. We actually created a corporation in Mexico. So, we have people down there that find them, recruit them. So, we hire them based on disc profile. We do English fluency tests. So, we make sure that the person we’re placing either for us or for other companies, it is exactly what that person wants.

So, we’re able to really nail it down as to what the role is. Whether it’s a social media. Whether it’s accounting, whatever the case may be, we’ve had fantastic, just phenomenal results by placing them with other people. All of a sudden, they say, “man! I cannot believe how much time X or Y took me. Now that I’m not doing that, it’s amazing how much free time I have to think or to just scale my business.”

Look, you and I both know that a lot of times we get caught up in the weeds of stuff, right? You don’t realize it until you’re out of the weed going, “man! I cannot believe that I did that all the time.” Then when you’re out of it, now you can do what a real business owner does, which is think and strategize and be that leader, as opposed to being the doer.

Again, sometimes it’s baby steps. Sometimes, like I have one that she is my personal assistant, so she takes care of all my flights. She handles my calendar. She takes care of anybody, anytime, emails me. She will take care of it. She will set up the meetings or she’ll set up someone else. Just those minutes of me answering emails and not, it’s amazing how much time it actually frees up. You don’t realize it.

[00:25:22] WS: What should we plan to pay these VAs from Mexico and to do the things at this level that you’re talking about?

[00:25:28] SR: Depending on the role, you’re probably looking at anywhere between six and nine dollars an hour for the job. So, depending on the level and role that you’re doing. But if you plan that, you’re going to be in good shape.

[00:25:39] WS: Great, and that’s cheap. I mean, that is cheap to get that stuff done, right?

[00:25:42] SR: Yeah. Depending on where you’re at and what state. I mean, it’s – Yeah, it really is. It’s truly a way to scale. Like I said, we took our payroll from 59% down to 33%, because we are able to outsource it. So, the model works. It’s just a matter of it works as good as the preparation in creating the model for success.

[00:26:02] WS: Great! Well, we’re about out of time, so just a couple more questions, Steve. But what’s a way that you’ve recently improved your business that we can apply to ours that we haven’t talked about outside of VAs?

[00:26:11] SR: I would say one of the ways that we’ve improved our business is we do the ‘look back.’ So, a lot of times, we’re so busy working. You forget what you’ve done. We’ve gone back and done like a – I wouldn’t say a 2.0. I’d say a 3.0 and revised. So just because you did it once, what worked for us at 500 doors doesn’t work at a thousand now. So, you got to go back, right? There’s always a circle back. Never think you can set it and forget it. The fact that we’ve gone back and revamped and revised systems and, “Oh! That worked back in 2016, but that’s really not relevant now,” that has really helped us get the kind of hose through the pump even more. I guess you could say a volume.

So, going back and revisiting old systems, old marketing plans, old strategies really is helpful. So sometimes, you got to go backwards to go forward is what I’ve learned.

[00:26:59] WS: What’s the number one thing that’s contributed to your success?

[00:27:02] SR: I would say I’d never giving up, without a doubt. Never giving up. I’ve just been fanatical on never quitting. I am just one of those guys. I don’t quit. I mean, I am a hard worker. I bust my butt. I do a lot of it. I wrote a book. I’m an airline pilot. People say, “how do you do it?” I’m like, “I do not give up.” I will never give up. But I also – I don’t think I need to be the hardest worker in the room. I’m good at leveraging, and I’m good at doing that, but I’ve never given. I’m never satisfied with where I’m at.

[00:27:29] WS: Wow! Well, amazing interview, Steve. You provided some just great content that I know the listeners and I’ve learned a lot from and really motivating us to outsource more, right?

[00:27:38] SR: Yeah.

[00:27:38] WS:  Which is so important to growing and scaling quickly and making sure everything is still getting done. But tell the listeners how you like to give back.

[00:27:46] SR: One of the ways that we give back is we give back to veterans. We actually do a thing where we donate in Houston. Here in Houston, Texas, there’s a thing called Camp Hope. And so, they help veterans with PTSD. So, every time we meet with a client, we donate a meal to feed a veteran.

So, every time – Whether we get the client or not, doesn’t matter. Every single time that we meet with a client, we donate a meal to feed a veteran, and we give it to Camp Hope. They come to our office. They come to the meetings. We have them present at events who they are, what they do. We just feel it’s the right thing to do, and we are fanatical about making sure that we can put them as high as we can on the pedestal to thank them.

[00:28:26] WS: Wow! I appreciate you sharing that, and I appreciate you giving back in that way, being a veteran myself. I’m grateful for that.

[00:28:32] SR: Well, thank you for your service.

[00:28:32] WS: Yeah. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Tell the listeners how they can get in touch with you and learn more about your company.

[00:28:32] SR: Sure. They can find me. I’m all over social media. So, they can go to rozenbergsteve, R-O-Z-E-N-B-E-R-G on Instagram. They can find me on Facebook, Steve Rozenberg there. They can also go to my website, steverozenberg.com. Again, it’s R-O-Z-E-N-B-E-R-G. There you can find I have manuals. I have systems. I wrote a book, Failing My Way to Millions. I’ll send you a copy, Whitney, so you have it.

[00:29:02] WS: That would be great.

[00:29:03] SR: But it’s actually on Amazon. But, yeah, I’m out there. I’ll tell you what. I have so many people that reach out to me, and I always get back. They ask me questions. They find me on Messenger, on Instagram, all that. I’m always available. Look, I don’t need to make money off someone to help them. Because no one was there to help me, and I’ve always made it a point to always say, “if I ever got to that point, I would never forgot where I came from. I will always get back to people that asked me for help.”

So, I’m very helpful with people just that they have a question here, a question there. Absolutely. I just love doing it. To me, it’s helped me grow even more exponential.

[00:29:36] WS: Awesome! Thank you, Steve.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[00:29:38] WS: Don’t go yet. Thank you for listening to today’s episode. I would love it if you would go to iTunes right now and leave a rating and written review. I want to hear your feedback. It makes a big difference in getting the podcast out there. You can also go to the Real Estate Syndication Show on Facebook, so you can connect with me, and we can also receive feedback and your questions there that you want me to answer on the show. Subscribe too, so you can get the latest episodes. Lastly, I want to keep you updated. So, head over to lifebridgecapital.com and sign up for the newsletter. If you’re interested in partnering with me, sign up on the contact us page, so you can talk to me directly. Have a blessed day, and I will talk to you tomorrow.

[OUTRO]

[00:30:18] ANNOUNCER: Thank you for listening to The Real Estate Syndication Show, brought to you by Lifebridge Capital. Lifebridge Capital works with investors nationwide to invest in real estate while also donating 50% of its profits to assist parents who are committing to adoption. Lifebridge Capital, making a difference one investor and one child at a time. Connect online at www.LifeBridgeCapital.com for free material and videos to further your success.

[END]

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

Join the Real Estate Syndication Show Community:

Related Posts