Oct 1, 2022
Welcome back to the How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Podcast today we have Greg Brooks! Greg is a partner in Rocket Station and oversees everything business development and marketing related.
[00:01 - 09:47] Rocket Station: Affordable, World Class Talent for Virtual Staffing
- Rocket Station offers affordable world-class talent for startups, passive investors, and established teams.
- They help solve the people and process problems that many entrepreneurs face when hiring virtual staffers.
- Helping Investors figure out the process whether it’s soliciting funds, finding deals, or managing properties.
- Rocket Station's team is good at starting at the finish line and crafting an ideal outcome for their clients.
[09:47 - 14:41] Total VAs nearly 250 Employees in the Philippines
- How a company can improve efficiency by hiring virtual assistants, and offering advice on how to find the best candidates.
- Virtual assistants can be used for a variety of tasks, including back-end operational work such as sales and marketing.
- Greg recommends vetting candidates thoroughly before hiring them, in order to ensure that the role is properly suited for the individual.
[14:41 - 19:46] 250 Employees of Virtual Assistance Company Put Their Skills to Use for Good
- Greg believes that VAs can perform well when processes are set up correctly.
- You can leverage talent overseas. And it's all about the time you put into finding those people
- Great technologies today are hard for anybody in real estate and Greg’s company is able to plug in and help them with their difficulties.
[19:47 - 16:54] Closing Segment
- Reach out to Greg!
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- Links Below
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Tweetable
Quotes:
“There
really isn't anything that a VA cannot do when set up correctly” -
Greg Brooks
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with Greg Brooks by visiting their website www.rocketstation.com
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Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below:
[00:00:46] Sam Wilson: Greg Brooks is a partner in Rocket Station and oversees everything business development and marketing related. Greg, welcome to
[00:00:52] Greg Brooks: the show. Hey, thanks so much for having us. We appreciate the
[00:00:55] Sam Wilson: time. Hey, man. Yeah, The pleasure's mine. Greg, there are three questions I ask every guest who comes in the show. In 90 seconds or last, can you tell me where did you start?
Where are you now, and how did you get
[00:01:03] Greg Brooks: there? For sure. So actually I started in Canada, so I now live in Dallas, Fort Worth. There was a soccer player in college. Ended up coming down here, meeting my wife, having a couple of American rug rats and, and staying here. Where I'm at, where I'm at now, Dallas Fort Worth, we run one of the largest real estate virtual staffing companies in the country.
So myself as well as my three other partners , we're based here servicing or. Clients all over the us, Canada, and a and a few overseas as well. And what, what was the last one? I'm running outta time here. . ,
[00:01:29] Sam Wilson: You're almost out. Where'd you start? Where are you now? And how'd you get there?
[00:01:33] Greg Brooks: How'd I get here?
So get here I was your your, I feel like probably like a lot of your listeners, I was your typical kind of entrepreneurial minded sales guy who kind of guy came outta college, started, sold a couple businesses, had six jobs, Left all six and then ended up, you know, with some great partners, kind of building a very unique business here, here at Rocket Station.
[00:01:53] Sam Wilson: Started and sold a couple businesses. What industry was that? Or industry?
[00:01:58] Greg Brooks: Actually, hospitality. So we kind of forgot fresh outta college. Couple years outta college, kind of was trying to figure out my next path. And me, and me and my, one of my best friends from, from college had the opportunity of, of purchasing a, a restaurant.
And we had, you know, all throughout college worked in, in restaurant management. We've been bartenders and. We're like, Hey, let's do it. We're 25, we got the world figured out. We, we can run a how hard can be to run out, run a bar in a steakhouse, and ended up doing that for a few years, which was fun. Yeah, absolutely.
And
[00:02:22] Sam Wilson: I think everybody, everybody should at some point be in the food service business. Oh one will make you a lot nicer to the people who are serving you. And two, there's just nothing quite like that grind. Where you're like, Okay, I'm getting my teeth kicked in and we just gotta keep moving.
So it's yeah, not a business. I would, it's not for the faint of heart, I'll say that. So that's that's really, really cool. Glad to hear that. Let's focus here on Rocket Station Real Estate, virtual assistant company. Five years ago you said the company was formed, or five year years ago you joined.
Yeah, so I,
[00:02:58] Greg Brooks: I joined a four years ago, Company was founded five years ago. There had been a couple other brand names and then when we decided to focus on just real estate specific staffing broke off and launched one of my partners launched the the Rocket Station brand.
[00:03:10] Sam Wilson: Got it. Tell me the challenges you guys have run into.
So what, oh, one, find out the problems you guys solve in the real estate industry, but maybe before we get there, I'd love to hear about the organic and or non-organic growth you guys have had inside of your own company. The challenges building it, the challenges finding clients, the challenges, meeting market demand, I mean, Walk us through your business
[00:03:32] Greg Brooks: and how you've grown it.
Definitely not to mention, most of our growth has come through this crazy thing called covid, which hopefully we're now finally on the other side of. But yeah, so we really, our market calling was, you know, I'm sure a lot of your listeners, I'm sure maybe even yourself, you've leveraged virtual assistance or remote employees, whether they're overseas or just in other parts of the country.
The problem with that is, When you're a real estate investor, there's a lot going on. You know, whether you're just a passive investor who you're trying to work the nine to five and do some deals, join some funds kind of in your free time, or if you are full time and you're running an office or if you're just a one or, or two woman show man or woman show.
It's, it's really tough. There's a lot going on in real estate and a lot of investors get into real estate because they are kind of. That, that go getter, entrepreneur type. Right? And, and eventually there comes a time when to really either make the money that you wanna make or to enjoy the lifestyle that most people get into for investing.
You have to hire people. And where my partners and I, where we saw a big gap was, And this came from, from Rob, our, our, our current CEO and the original founder of the company. He I mean he, he built a large team locally in Dallas about 12 years ago, you know, and kind of woke up one day and was like, I'm working harder than I've ever worked.
It's cool that we're, we're, we're knocking down all this deals and doing all this business, but I've got 80 some odd employees in an office that I'm responsible for their outcome and their wellbeing and making sure the marketing hits and making sure we have properties to acquire. And started to be like, there has to be a better way to do this.
Right. He was working harder. And really not making that much more money than when he was a 22 year old flipping houses in, in North Dallas. So that's when he really started to look at this virtual staffing piece. And, and really what we offer is number one, just affordable world class talent, right?
There's, it's no, it's no secret that VAs can be so powerful because of just the affordability of it. Whether you're a startup, whether you're a passive investor, whether you've got an established team, you can offset skill sets or hire more people than if you would typically. Hire locally and, and when done the right way, you can hire people just as talented.
But the other thing that we help to solve for all of our clients is when you hire people, and we've both done it, there's usually a lot of process and clarity that you need to provide that person in terms of what do you want them to do, and then more importantly, how you want them to do it. And the big gap that we saw having been in real estate ourselves was a lot of investors.
Had an opportunity or needed to hire someone and they went to the person first and hired somebody, rather than looking at their own internal processes and why they needed to hire it. So at Rocket Station, we not only act as your hr, you know, we vet through thousands of applicants every single month and train them on real estate specifically.
But we also work with each and every entrepreneur. And go through and document and kind of download the process, the systems, the structure that you want to hand over to your virtual teammates. So it really helps solve the people and the process problem that we're all trying to figure out as we, as we grow our investment businesses.
Man,
[00:06:18] Sam Wilson: you hit the nail on the head there when it comes to that process mapping. When it comes to bringing on, and I'm guilty of it, bringing somebody on before I really knew what they were doing. Like, you know what? I know I have this need, but I don't really know even how to get it filled. So, which is a unique, I guess, a unique challenge in its own right, cuz sometimes there are those processes that we already know intimately and we have to train somebody else on them getting that documented.
That's, I think that's an easier hill to climb than the one, And, and I'm gonna use myself, you're gonna throw myself under the bus here on this, right? Like this is a daily real estate podcast. I am not a social media guy. I don't know how to get more likes, follows. I, I, I don't know any of that stuff. So I had to bring somebody on that had a, a pretty good understanding of it and they had to kind of craft their own job, which is even a doubly, I think, harder thing to do where it's like, Hey, look, this is what I kind of want this to look like, but I need you to go out there and figure it out and bring this back and say, and we'll refine this process as we go.
Walk me through a, a, maybe a better way if there is one, to do that when somebody doesn't necessarily know what the process is, they just wanna know what the final product ought to look like. Or at least somewhat familiar with what it should
[00:07:30] Greg Brooks: look like. Yeah, no, definitely. And, and you, you kind of hit it, hit the nail in the head there.
We like to start the finish line, right for every investor, whether you know exactly what the process is, cuz you're doing it, whether it's soliciting funds, whether it's finding deals, whether it's managing a property. or if it's something that's just totally your blindside, where you're trying to offset your skill sets.
Yeah. We like to start the finish line. Keep it very simple because every entrepreneur, they know like where they want to get to. That's usually why you're hiring, right? There's an area and issue. There's somewhere that you wanna, that you're striving to get to. So our teams, what they're really good at is starting at that finish line, you know, what does the ideal outcome look like?
What are you trying to get to? What does your current team structure look like? Who currently is in charge of this, if anybody? And just start with those basics, keeping in mind that, hey, this is where we're trying to progress to. And then you're right, it kind of goes to one of two ways. If it's just one of those routine process, and we all have those tasks every day that we come in that we dread doing, or that we've got someone on staff that we know they should be doing this, but they're stuck behind the computer doing this.
That's easy. We have a team that's very good at doing that deep dive and working with you to flush out each of those clicks, software CRMs, all the technology that goes into the day to day task of doing that job. If it's the other option where you know, maybe you don't know how to, how to promote yourself on social media, right?
Or, or maybe. There's, there's gaps because you just lost your transaction coordinator and you're like, Sally, the transaction coordinator was awesome, but I had no idea what the heck she was doing. So now I kind of, I'm at, I'm at the start line. That's where our team is really good and where you get to leverage, I mean, almost 11 years of experience, five specifically in virtual staffing where we can help work through and piece that together and then, We, we see process development as always ongoing.
So not only building the initial plan to get somebody in there who's the right skillset for the type of hire you need, but then having KPIs, having tracking, having workforce management in place on our end to then tweak and calibrate and adjust as that person starts working in the role. Right? Not being totally rigid, getting a plan in place, but realizing that you have to have the flexibility to really craft something so that in a month, two months, You've got somebody who's really autonomous and can really actually take that work, take those tasks off of, off of your plate.
That's
[00:09:38] Sam Wilson: it, man. That's absolutely it. And I think it's always, I think, you know, finding the those KPIs that we're talking about, I mean, that's, where the rubber met the road for me. And I unfortunately had to burn through a couple people that I kind of assign this. And this is, you know, again, I.
To air in my dirty laundry . But it's like I had to go through a couple people where you, you know, we went through the weekly KPIs and just things just weren't getting done. It was like, okay, this is craft your own job. This is what it should look like. . I don't know how you get it to look like that. I just know that that's what it should look like.
And at the end of those, you know, three or four months of working, you know, it's like this is just not getting done. I've got a rockstar on my team Now. That understood the process and you kind of went, you know, went through that iterative, unfortunately, personnel process. How do you guys eliminate that?
Cuz that's, I mean, that's such a drag and waste of time. For sure.
[00:10:24] Greg Brooks: And a lot of that comes down to that, you know, it's the genome wickman, the traction model, right? If you don't have a number to it, you can't manage it, right? So we really help our clients and, and really, I mean, even internally, I mean, I'm there of the partners in the business, I'm sales guys, so we're probably one in the same.
Sam, where I'm, I'm good at talking. I can figure it out. I can jump in looking at the process to strategically, that's not my skillset. We have a team internally that. That helps us do that and kind of applies a little break pedal to say, Hey, it's all well and good that we need to hire 30 cold callers, or we need to hire six people for the transaction side or a social media manager, but like, what does that actually look like in a day to day?
And that's where we try to be that. I mean, break pedal in, in a fast moving real estate world is an ugly word, but that's really what it is, right? It's, it's taking a little bit of time on the front end to really put some, some KPIs, some metrics, understand what the outcomes are and what those numbers are that would show that this role was successful or this person was successful, and then back into it.
Because like you said, that saves going through 3, 4, 5 people and six months of training every time, right? You spend a little time on the front end, it sets everybody up for success, but I think more importantly, It allows you to be nimble as you tweak and adjust in the event that you're hiring a role that say you've never had before.
It gives you a roadmap where you can say, Okay, let's try going here instead of there. Maybe that's the fix that we need. And then we really work closely with our clients to really partner and really. Act as a partner where we have a deep understanding of your organization and what you're trying to accomplish with each and every one of your hires, whether it's someone doing cold calls or if it's a executive assistant who's basically running the business right there beside you, where we we're really intimate in trying to make sure that we understand what all those outcomes are.
I love it. I
[00:12:02] Sam Wilson: love it. Tell me this, Greg. You know, one of the things that I've heard, and of course I use virtual assistance gosh, I've had one. Va he was working with me for six years now, which is a lot of fun. It's great. And, and but one of the kit kind of push backs that I hear on the use of VAs is that there's only certain skills.
You know, it's like, okay, it needs to be repetitive task needs to be, this needs to be that. The other, I disagree with that cause a lot of people are a lot smarter than I am. Not very hard to do, but they are. Tell me this, what's the, what's the most complex task or complex position you guys think that is able to be filled with a virtual assistant?
[00:12:37] Greg Brooks: For sure. So I would say a lot of what we do is the backend operational type stuff. So whether it's sales, marketing you know, the, the, the executive assistant type role, transaction, underwriting, like all that stuff that takes time and has, you know, requires, you know, a heavy time investment is what we specialize in.
I, I'm in the same boat that you are, that the unique thing. Kind of coming back to your question, like scaling through covid, how have you guys grown? Coming into Covid, Total VAs, as well as our internal employees. And we obviously have a big, all of our teams are in the Philippines, so we have a big, a big office over there.
I mean, we were about a 500 person company in beginning, middle of 2019. As we sit here today, we're almost 2,700 people, 250 internal employees, and the rest all working for our clients. And we've done that. Like I said, as a fully blended multinational company where we've got almost 250 people in the Philippines that help run our business each and every day.
So, like I said, I think what, what it comes . Down to, we work with vendors as well. Guys that you know from that can code custom websites and build custom API integrated applications like this. It's not usually the skillset that that varies, right? It's having the due diligence. If you're gonna use either a service like us or go on Upwork or hire them yourselves, you've gotta be able to vet and understand kind of.
The role requires so you can get the right type of candidate, right, And, and you can, I mean, you can go online, you can get VAs for four bucks an hour, you can get VAs for 40 bucks an hour. So you've gotta look at it as, you know, not not approaching it as a cost savings method. And it definitely is. Right.
But you've gotta look at what are the skill sets, what type of background, what questions do I . Need to be asking during that vetting. In order to get somebody with the right, one thing I would say is we sometimes work with or come across clients where they like want to have a business that they just said on autopilot and they don't wanna do anything.
They just want, And, and for me, I haven't found that ATM machine yet where I can just say, Yep, go do this and make me money. Right. There always requires a little bit of work. So what I would say to everybody out there, The strategy, the vision of your company should always come from you. That's why you're the ceo, that's why you're the president, whatever title you have.
But there really isn't anything that a VA cannot do when set up correctly. And when you find the right skillset in that person where, you know, these, these borders, these walls now of, of a normal office just don't exist. Right? You can leverage talent all across the us You can leverage talent overseas.
It's, it's all about really just , the time you put into finding those people and then setting up the process. So that they can have clarity in what they do. I love it.
[00:15:09] Sam Wilson: I love it. I mean, it sounds to me like, like your, and again, you guys have 250 people that work specifically just inside of your company.
It sounds like, to me, the, the limitation that we often hear from people saying, Well, they can't do X, Y, or Z, isn't because there's not the talent out there. It's because the job has not been clearly articulated and the requirements for that job just, they're just not there from the person actually looking at the hiring side.
[00:15:34] Greg Brooks: Exactly, and, and just the time. Right? I mean, it's for a lot of people when they're hiring, it's usually one of two situations. There's either a huge opportunity that they're looking to scale their company, which means the investor's probably really busy or something's breaking and they're trying to put out fires, which also means they're probably busy.
So like what a big value, I feel like of, of a service like ours or, Or just in general agency type virtual staffing companies. Is that HR component, right? There's a reason that HR professionals and major companies make a ton of money cuz people in human capital are, it's very important. So being able to put the time in, I mean, you can find any type of skill set all across the world at a price that you can afford, but you gotta be willing to put that time in on the front end or you know it's gonna come back to bite you on the back.
Absolutely.
[00:16:17] Sam Wilson: In that, I think is one, one of the, one of the values I find in services like yours is that you guys spend the time vetting that. And again, I'm not here to, to sell you guys necessarily, but it, but it's true. I mean, cuz I've done it, I've spent plenty of time on up work hiring the wrong people.
You know, one off jobs, maybe it's fine. Like I've got a, I've got a weird Excel sheet I'm working on right now. I mean, it's really wonky. It's like, Hey man, I need a guy, whatever he is, he might be 50 or 80 bucks an hour. It's fine. Fix it, make it pretty, and then be done. But for somebody that's a long term.
Going through Upwork is just, Or I, What are some other services that are out there? I can't think of the other ones. It's, it's just kind of a, I mean, it's a gamble. Yeah. Like, Oh, okay, cool. Well that didn't work. Well that didn't work. I mean, total waste of time. So anyway, I love and
[00:17:01] Greg Brooks: unfortunately like VAs, their sold is almost like this robot in the industry, right?
Everyone's. Got a va, everyone needs a va. It's like this, but like, it's, it's a person, right? Everybody's got different skill sets. You've gotta be able to find someone who's gonna be the right fit for your company. And, and like I said, don't, don't discount that. Don't think you can just go on a job board and pick the first candidate and they're gonna be the perfect match.
You know,
[00:17:20] Sam Wilson: you certainly can't, you certainly can't tell me this. I mean, bringing on. So you said there's 250 in your company or 2,700 employees, so that's 2,450 virtual assistance that you guys have placed with other
[00:17:33] Greg Brooks: companies. How do you take care
[00:17:36] Sam Wilson: of them? Like what's your, what's your company's mission?
What's your companies, How do you take care of the people that work for you?
[00:17:42] Greg Brooks: Yeah, definitely. So the, the cool part about our business is we do have a huge investment in not just providing great jobs for, for individuals in the Philippines, but also providing back to their to their own local neighborhoods, communities, everything that they have over there.
So we have a great program called Rocket Station Cares. So every single month we do a local event. So we'll, we'll pick either a VA or, or, or a support team member, an internal team member, and we'll go to the local school in the, in the neighborhood. We'll go to a local food bank. We'll do a lot of community.
Work. The thing that's unique for us, Sam, is that we were virtual before virtual was cool, if you wanna call it. Cool now. So what we've had to do is we've always had to be very intentional because we're fully work from home. We're, we have a small office just outside of Macca, but all of our teams all work remote from their home office.
So we've always had to be intentional to get that touch in the skin, you know what I mean? Like, it's never gonna replace that. There's certain things you just can't replicate through a phone call or through a Zoom. So we do a lot of giving back. We try to do it through a, a feeling of philanthropy. We, we, we get into the neighborhoods, we get into the, to the local area of our virtual assistance or of our internal team members and give back to the causes that they care for.
So it's fun, you know, we get to get a group of 150 people together to go. Donate 5,000 notebooks or 5,000 backpacks. You know, we, we just did a program like that last month and then after that, you know, we go have the food and the drink and we celebrate and we come together. So it, it's very intentional.
It, it's something that I feel like a lot of companies are, are still trying to figure out with the hybrid or the remote or the work from home, but it's something that we really take. Pride in, and it's something that both from the effect it has on our virtual team members, but just our own internal culture, it's, it's really something special, right?
When you can go and you can break bread and I mean, we have coming outta Covid, I mean there was, I mean probably what, eight, nine months, just like over here where there was limited, nobody was going out and our company almost doubled in size and to literally, One of the first events we had have 500 complete strangers come together and they all act like they've been neighbors for, It's, it's amazing.
So it's, it's really cool. We have to be very intentional with it. You know, we're very op or you know, in tune with the fact that we do everything on Zoom and everything virtually. So we try to make it very special when we are, you know, when we are in person. That's really, really cool. I love that. I
[00:19:59] Sam Wilson: figured there was a story somewhere in there.
I mean, when you're bringing that many people on that are that dedicated to what you guys are doing, there's, there's gotta be some . Sense of camaraderie and community that you guys have built, so that's really, really cool. Tell me this last question for you. What are the top five positions you guys find you're consistently hiring for?
For
[00:20:16] Greg Brooks: sure. So top five for us. Number one would be like lead manager transaction coordination specialist. Within our pillars there's always some level of customer service, whether that's on the property management side or whether that's on the investor side. Social media management, like you mentioned, everyone knows they need to have a social media presence.
Not a lot of people have the time to really do it. And then we do a lot on the, the bookkeeping, accounts payable, accounts receivable as well. And that's tho those are honestly kind of our. Course services that we offer. I mean, from the sales side, obviously everybody knows when you're cultivating a funnel, whether you're raising funds for a deal or whether you're trying to, to find property to acquire those touch points are crucial, right?
You've gotta be able to make the 15, 16, 17 follow up and not a lot of people have time in their day or the team to be able to support that. And then we live in an Amazon world now, right? Where everyone wants a world class experience and they want it two hours ago. So being able to scale. That experience, still keeping it personable.
Using some of the great technology out there is really tough for anybody in real estate right now. So we're able to really plug in and and help with that as well.
[00:21:15] Sam Wilson: That's fantastic. Greg, if our listeners wanna get in touch with you or learn more about Rocket Station, what is the best way to do
[00:21:21] Greg Brooks: that? Yeah, for sure.
Head on over to discovery dot rocket station.com. We've got a lot of great resources, if anything kind of tickled your ears. Process development, system development screening. We've got tons of great resources for anybody who's interested in learning more about virtual assistance discovery dot rocketstation.com and we'll say we'll be able to take care of you.
Awesome,
[00:21:39] Sam Wilson: Greg. Thanks so much. Have a great rest of your day.
[00:21:41] Greg Brooks: Thanks man. You too.