The Follow-Up System Justin Nelson Built With Virtual Assistants

Host1 00:00

Most average business owners were not innately like skilled to manage people.

Host 00:04

I think the people that will be the most successful will have the largest communities of people that trust them.

Host1 00:09

I personally believe that that's more important. The bigger things in the relationship are probably bigger for me. Do the AI videos establish trust? With the advancement of AI, you know, and all kinds of craziness in that world. Gifting as a strategy, like strategically for building relationships. I'm a big believer and it doesn't have to be some big expensive thing, but it's always thoughtful, right?

Host 00:29

What up everybody? Grant Wise here. Welcome back to the Partner and Profit Podcast. Excited for the conversation today. I've got Justin Nelson on. Justin has been so much fun to watch over the last several years since he's built an incredible company, and I'm excited to dive into that. Justin, man, thanks for spending some time with me today.

Host1 00:45

Yeah, thanks for having me, man. It's uh last night would have been a thunder, a lightning show here in Dallas in my background. So it's a clear day, sunny skies, and I'm excited to be here, man.

Host 00:54

Yeah, yeah, man. I'm I'm pumped for this. So for the people that are listening and don't know much about you, just give us a bit of the backstory. How'd you get to where you are today?

Host1 01:01

Yeah, so to give you the quick abbreviated version, uh been in real estate since I was about 15 years old, about to hit 30 this year. So almost hitting my 15-year anniversary in the real estate realm. Started off by supporting a real estate team way back in the day when I was 15 and couldn't get my license, even though I wanted it so, so bad. Uh, was working for my father at the time. He had just started in real estate when I was 15. So brand new to the industry. Long story short, uh, went play played some college football real fast and then uh moved into you know running his real estate team at the age of 19, dropped out of college, did that for a few years, you know, loved working for my family. And uh, but at the other side end of it, I wanted to, you know, kind of fly out of the nest and see, you know, if I could go create something in the at the time, you know, coaching and education world, you know, in regards to marketing, uh, not necessarily real estate at the time. And that kind of led me down a weird path over a few years of traveling the road to uh finding, you know, almost six years ago now the term virtual assistance. You know, I uh it had been pretty popular since 2010, 2012 in the real estate space. A lot of big teams were using virtual assistants, and you know, I thought there was some, you know, archaic things to the model right around, you know, 2020. So decided to try my hand in it. And then that's really where I've been the last six years. Um we, you know, grew to almost, I think as of today, 12,000 virtual assistant placements across about 5,000 business owners. Um, and so, you know, we started off with real estate and now we place virtual assistants in anything as small as a, you know, a solo real estate agent that's needing their first assistant to go on their growth path all the way to, you know, a Fortune 500 that might need 50 to 100 virtual assistants for their support center. So it's kind of our quick abbreviated version of, you know, what I've been up to the last, you know, 15 years.

Host 02:43

That's awesome. That's awesome. And I know that you primarily grew the company to start, if I'm not mistaken, through events, right? You would travel around and you would speak at events like crazy.

Host1 02:52

Absolutely, yeah. So it was really much a it was I know obviously with your podcast, you know, partner and profit. Like it was really, you know, events are really just a form of partnership, right? You know, we were, you know, uh, you obviously have the form of partnership where we might go to pay to sponsor an event, right? An expo, a mastermind. You know, that was obviously a big part of our journey. Um, but there was also other times, you know, when I first got started, I didn't have a lot of capital to just go spend $5K on a sponsorship or 10K on a sponsorship. And so we would always find unique ways, you know, where we could partner even on like affiliate type basis, you know, where it might be like, Hey Grant, can I come sponsor your event? You might ask me for five grand, and I might be like, Grant, I don't have that, but I have a great service, so can we go 50-50 on any earnings from this event? So really spent my first two years, you know, when I didn't have money for paid ads or, you know, the risk tolerance at the time, you know, really put yeah, you know, my body on the line, should I say, you know, he said probably doing about 150 events a year in some type of sponsorship form or uh partnership form, should I say?

Host 03:48

Yeah, that's awesome. So awesome. Okay, so I don't know if you can ask this question a lot. I'm curious because I know that a lot of people use virtual assistants to make calls and do those types of things in like an ISA capacity, but specifically on building relationships, how can how do you use ISAs to build relationships, or how can people use virtual assistants rather to build relationships with people?

Host1 04:12

Yeah. So one of the best ways that I can kind of give you an example is early on in my career, I was probably almost 18 years old, and I had gone to a big, like at the time, I believe it was Sync, which was a big real estate platform back in the day. And we went into their headquarters and, you know, I got to walk around and, you know, someone at the Sync headquarters, I think it was in Arizona, their training center, there was a high-level executive assistant. And, you know, she was an in-person assistant to some executive at the company. And, you know, I got to meet with her. And after I after I left, you know, I started to get like a personalized email. I got a, you know, check-ins on my birthday. You know, I every once in a while they'd send me a card in the mail. And these were like personalized touches, right? These weren't just like on some drip campaign. Very, very personalized. They at the time wanted to keep stay in relation with me based on the number of contacts I had in the business world. And so, you know, whenever I kind of went from there and moved into the virtual assistant realm, you know, I saw a lot of people using VAs for cold calling and, you know, transaction work and things like that. But one of the most effective hires that I made for myself and what I teach other people to do as well, especially if they have like no team members or looking for their first assistant, it was I decided, hey, how can I get a virtual assistant? You know, in our case, we we sourced from the Philippines, and how can I replicate a lot of what that awesome lady did and following up with me and staying, you know, relationship-based with me. And how can I duplicate that with someone that may not be working in my office or sitting right next to it and so you know, I kind of took, you know, I started looking at things like, oh, she sent me a card in the mail, you know, that was personalized and handwritten. And I was like, Can I do that from the Philippines? Right. You know, and most people would immediately go, No, you can't do that. You know, and so, you know, I found a company in the United States that you literally just send an email to with what you want. They actually handwrite it and they send it, right? And so, you know, when I first hired my first virtual assistant, I was like, hey, every time I get done with a meeting, you're gonna email this company, you're gonna spend three dollars to get this handwritten email out, you know, or message out in the mail, and you're gonna send it, right? You know, and then from there, next step, I want you to research the meeting I just had and I want you to learn all about them, right? You know, so like for example, today, Grant, if I were to try and get into further relationship with you or I had to connect it in forever, I might have my EA jump on your Facebook after this call, scroll for five to ten minutes, see what you've been up to, and really be able to, you know, whether it's through a gift or through connection, you know, be able to do that. And so I would say for a lot of people, you know, we go to networking events, we go and we meet these people that would be great connections for us into things we're doing, but then we forget to follow up, right? We forget to continue the relationship. And so I'd say, you know, there's a lot of things in the VA world that our VAs are doing, you know, it not all phone calls, phone calls are important, right? But through gifting, especially when the gift can have my name attached to it, right? You know, or the handwritten letter and things like that. So, you know, at probably the most basic level, you know, those are some of the things. Now, obviously, with the advancement of AI, you know, and all kinds of craziness in that world, you know, a lot of our EA virtual assistants now are going as far as like taking a clone of me and actually typing out a script to be like, hey Grant, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. They put that all into a system and then could send that video to you from my cell phone, right? And these are people, you know, across the country, you know, and across the world that, you know, it makes it look like I'm doing it, which is, you know, really keeps a good personal touch. So um there's a few little basic things we do with the VAs to imitate that.

Host 07:24

Is it hard to teach a VA how to do that stuff? How do you go about making sure that they understand exactly what to do or that they, you know, quote unquote speak like you or any of these other things?

Host1 07:34

Yeah, so it's really interesting. You know, I always like to say, no, it's not easy, right? And what I mean by that is a virtual assistant, a lot of things a lot of times people think, oh, they're from the Philippines, you know, can they speak like you, the English ability, you know, and things like that. And I remove all those barriers and I go, you as a leader, how well do you manage people? Right. A lot of times when people get virtual assistants, it's the first time they've ever managed anybody, right? And so whether you're managing a virtual assistant or a US-based person in your office, it's the same skill set, right? Do you have the ability to articulate a clear vision of what you need? Are you willing to write down an SOP? Are you willing to have patience when it doesn't work the first time, right? Do you have good hiring skills? There's a lot that go into this formula of making it work, but I always like to say, you know, most average business owners we're not innately like skilled to manage people, right? Like none of our skill sets as entrepreneurs are usually to manage people. And so I always tell a lot of people, um, when they feel some rub, is it easy? No, it's not easy, right? But the thing I can tell people, it's like a it's like working out, right? The first time's not easy, but the time you do it a hundred times, some of the best business owners I know, they had 10 executive assistants in their first 10 years or first five years, and now they've had one for the last 10, right? It's not like they all of a sudden got a better assistant, they just got better at managing people and different things along those lines. So to answer your question, you know, how would I do it? You know, it's no different than how I would do it in the United States, right? You know, whether through it's through documentation, through showing, through process. I also find, you know, Graham, in full transparency, this is something that someone I respect used to say is when you go to hire someone, you're either hiring them to train them or you're hiring them because they have batteries included. And that's a big thing that we talk about when hiring people, right? You either hire them to train them. So, like I have a position I uh many years ago, I had an executive assistant, but I didn't have a lot of money, right? The business was growing, I was sinking it all back in. So the uh the the executive assistant in person that I had, because I needed someone in person at that time, I could only pay 15 bucks an hour. Well, the 15 bucks an hour I had to pay that that represented someone in high school, right? And so when they came in, I had to train them a lot, right? I was not only teaching them about life, but I was having to teach them about, you know, hey, can you open Excel? They're like, Well, what's Excel? Right. Yeah. Now, for example, I'm hiring an executive assistant in person that I'm gonna pay a hundred thousand dollars to. And she's like, Hey, I just want you to know that like I only have my latest certification in Excel from last year. It's not up to date now. And I'm like, that's a completely different level kind of conversation, right? And so I always tell like to tell business owners, you know, remember where you are in your journey, right? If you're early on in your journey and you're hiring someone, you might have to be a little bit more scrappy, right? You might have to repeat yourself a few more times. You may, you know, not be able to pay a premium and it may feel like, you know, a little bit of friction, but that's normal, right? You know, but it's getting through that pain is where it really becomes on the other side. Your business grows, your revenue grows, and then on future hires, you know, you might be able to pay a six-figure salary, right? Compared to $15 an hour. So it's all just kind of dependent on where you are on your journey. And so I always like to say if you're early on in your hiring journey, you're getting a virtual assistant, an in-person, any kind of hire that you make, if it feels like there's some friction, I always tell people take a step back, remember where you are on your journey, see where you're paying them. If you can't pay them a premium, that's okay. There's nothing wrong with that, but you're just gonna have a few more friction points compared to a CEO that might have unlimited budget, right? You know, to pay for someone. And so I always like to say if there's friction there, it probably means you're doing things right and you're, you know, you're you're you're on the right path.

Host 10:57

Love it, love it. We talk a lot lately about building and establishing trust in a relationship because uh it's I think it's everything right now with just how social media is going, how AI is going. I think the people that will be the most successful will have the largest communities of people that trust them. And so I'm curious how do you or would you establish trust in a relationship using some of the leverage that you've got with virtual assistants? How do you build that up and then how do you maintain it long term? I would be curious because in my mind, I'm like, do the AI videos establish trust? You know, talking about like that just one tactic, and I know that's just one example, but how would you guys do that or how do you do it?

Host1 11:39

Yeah, so I think for me, you know, I'm in a unique position where I'm always telling people about how I leverage, you know, it's because when I'm in contact with other business owners, right, you know, they a lot of them dream to the to have the desire of leverage that I have or systems and processes. And so, you know, I'm I'm never going to tell someone, oh no, that was actually me, right? Or, you know, or another I think for me where I build my trust is whenever I go above and beyond to help them with something, right? And so, you know, I would rather spend all of my effort hidden behind a computer pulling off a big partnership, for example, right? You know, if I say, Hey, Grant, let's partner on something, and you're like, all right, we're in and we we sign an agreement. I would rather spend eight hours, 10, 12, 15 hours a day pulling off that partnership than I would be sending an email with my own signature on it, handwriting a card that I actually signed, you know, actually shooting a video message to someone that I met at dinner last night, right? I'm willing to sacrifice some of those things that, you know, maybe would build a little bit more trust in order to fulfill on the partnerships and fulfill on the big things that, you know, are going to if I go pull that partnership off with me, I uh, you know, with you, we have trust for life right there. Right. You know, I I I personally believe that that's more important. The bigger things in the relationship are probably bigger for me. Like I'm a man of my word. If I say we're gonna get this thing through, we're gonna get this thing through, right? And if someone, if I lose trust with someone because uh they figured out, oh, your assistant sent me a cookie with a signature on it and it wasn't you, you know, I really don't think for me that's my crowd, right? Because I'm usually associating with higher level people that understand leverage and understand, you know, that there's not enough time in the day to run the size of business a lot of us run to do that, then they might just not be my people. And I, you know, and I'm okay with that. Like my, you know, my employees know that I have someone that's a professional gifter in my organization, right? We have 150 employees. I literally tell them the gift is from me, but Tina is the one sending it to you. She picked it out, she did the research. And so for me, my team, I mean, last year they fucking loved it. They're like, this is the best effort. Because if I were to buy them a gift and there's 150 people, I'm just gonna be like, I think you like Barbies, I think you like AirPods, I think you like baseball, but where Tina can go and spend 45 minutes and call their spouse and text their kids or figure out what they actually need, right? We had an example this year where she called someone and they're like, Well, I don't need anything, I just want to donate to charity. Well, that was the best Christmas gift we could have ever given for that person because we donated to their charity, where I felt that built more trust with me and that person than if I were to have gifted myself and just just due to limitation of time, not that I didn't care, you know, wouldn't have nearly have had as thoughtful of a gift. And so I think it's just a little bit of perspective change on how you look at it. Now, I agree. I think if you're like, hey, did you get the video I spent hours making for you last night and I, you know, put extra attention on and you fluff it all up and they figure out that it's AI and you put no attention on it and you have no clip, you know, then I think, you know, obviously, just like anything in the influencer world or business world, you know, there's plenty of people full of smoke that you know you'll eventually be sought out.

Host 14:43

Yeah, I've heard you mention this a couple times, uh, gifting as as a strategy, like strategically for building relationships.

Host1 14:50

Yeah, 100%. And you know, we do a ton of little gifting, right? I I'm a big believer and it doesn't have to be some big expensive thing, but it's always thoughtful, right? So, like I'll give you an example, you know, how many little things can I do? And this goes back to my real estate days, like in our real estate transaction on our real estate team, we used to do like a hundred micro wins, right? So if someone we get under contract, we'd send them a gift card in the mail for fifty dollars to hey, go out to eat, you know, on us to celebrate, right? So that'd be like win number one. Then they'd get through inspection, right? We would send them a bottle of wine, hey, take a drink after that hard inspection period, right? And then it'd be like, well, now we're through the lending, you know, whatever it might be phase, you know, we're through appraisal, you know, have another dinner on us. And, you know, while it wasn't a $250 gift at closing that we gave them, we gave them all these little micro gifts, right? And it just fell we kind of do the same thing, even with like our virtual assistant clients, people that come and hire us for virtual assistance, right? We give them a gift immediately upon sign-up, right? It's like, hey, here, here's a free book that I know you need to read, right? It's expensive for us to do, but I need you to read this book because this is going to help you be a better employer, right? And then it's like, cool. When they hire their VA, we send them another gift. And it's just these little things that, you know, along the way. So we're really good about micro gifting. You know, you rarely will see me stroke a thousand dollar gift to someone. I might like with donations and things like that. It's a whole bunch of micro gifts that kind of make the person feel, you know, special. A great actual, like thoughtful example of this would be uh someone's kid the other day, you know, is getting into uh sports card trading, right? And so for $75, you can go on eBay and buy a sports card, you know, signed by someone that's not in their collection. And, you know, so yes, um, we do a ton of micro gifting. And to be honest with you, I think most of us as CEOs and entrepreneurs and owners, we don't have time to be effective. And that's actually what a lot of what our VAs do too, um, as well as you know, help with that micro gifting. We use a lot of eBay back in the day. You know, if I found a sports fan, I'd go on eBay and be like, hey, find the cheapest, you know, you know, signature card you can do, right? Or, you know, whatever that person's interest was and get it shipped directly to them. So a lot of that.

Host 16:51

That's awesome. All right, man. You've you've kind of taught us how to build relationships, create trust. Now, how do you turn those relationships into revenue?

Host1 16:58

Yeah. So for me, obviously it in the VA game, right? You know, there's obviously at the end of the day, I have two ways to make money in my business. And I think for a lot of business owners, you have to determine how do you make money, right? You know, and just like what how what do I do? Like in real estate, there was one made it there was one way, and it was I gotta sell more homes, right? That was pretty much either sell more homes or I gotta refer business. In in my world, I determined I either have to find business owners that need virtual assistance, or I need to tap into their network to do so, right? And which I think is kind of a lot of what you need to do nowadays with you know everything. I think it's so good and it's taking off so well. It's for me, it's like, okay, cool. If you grant or I'm in a relationship with and you don't need virtual assistance, how else can I, you know, for lack of better terms, use your relationship to further profit? You know, it's going to be through partnership. Now, when I in my early days, I didn't understand affiliate commissions, I didn't understand, you know, win-wins, right? So I'd go, hey, Grant, like you need a VA? You'd be like, nope. And I'd be like, hey, Grant, you know anybody that needs that needs a sponsor at an event? You're like, not right now. And what I would do is I'd just kind of throw it to the side and be like, well, I guess I'll go find some more people that need something, right? And it wasn't intentional. It's not like I didn't like that person or, you know, but it was just like at that moment they didn't have anything. I I think I would be a lot further than I am now if I had kept them in my corner and checked in with them regularly and went along those lines. And so the way, the best way that we profited over time is I'd go, okay, cool, Grant. Well, the switch was, okay, you don't need a VA. You don't need anybody now, but can I stay in contact with you? Can I give you access to our portal? Can I give you a link that when you do come across someone that needs a VA, when you do come across an event, can you just send that over to me? And anytime we make a sale off of that, you know, we're obviously going to share in that commission with you, right? And what I found was that was a great opportunity. I would always say, Hey, this is how I can make a win-win for us. Um, a lot of people feel uncomfortable with that because, you know, when the person says, Okay, well, I don't know, you know, I don't need anything, that's totally fine. So usually my next question would be, is there anything I can do to help you make money? Right. And now I know 2,000 people. I have 2,000 clients. I can't take every opportunity and be like, yeah, I can help you with that or I can be a partner on that. But my goal is anytime anybody says, Yeah, you can help me by finding more this. My immediate goal in that relationship is to go find that person, that person. So I had someone in the office yesterday and he said, I said, he's like, What can I do for you? And I'm like, you know, exactly what I said. If you need a VA, we're here. If you know people that need VAs, we're here, let me know. He's like, Cool. I don't earn it this second, but I'll remember. And then I said, Well, what can I do for you? He said, Oh, I need I'm trying to break into the residential real estate game. He's a contractor, he builds roofs. He's like, I build roofs for commercial buildings, but I, you know, I really want to build roofs for real estate agents. I said, Okay, cool. I know one of the largest agents in Dallas. Can I connect you with him right now? Two seconds after walking out the door, boom, boom, boom. I didn't put much thought into it, connected him. Honestly, that's a win, right? It's kind of when if you're if you're keeping score, which I don't believe in keeping score, but he will, right? I have one, he has zero, right? And if you kind of, while I don't believe in keeping score, you know, in the opposite direction, my goal is to always outgive. Someone named um Steve Harward, uh, you know, it's prime, uh, and one of the biggest affiliate, you know, gross I've seen, he went from zero to you know over a hundred million dollars a year just on affiliate relationships. He always said, you know, my my goal is to outgive you, right? It's just to outgive you. He's like, I'm not keeping score. If you never give back, you know, I don't think less of you for doing that, but I just want to outgive you. If you give me something, I want to outgive you. He's like, if all my relationships, I outgive, and it doesn't have to be monetary or expensive gifts, but if I can outgive, he's like, it's always gonna return, you know, over time. So take that. That's awesome.

Host 20:36

Creating win-win relationships and outgiving people is uh it's a successful strategy. Man, this has been it's just been awesome, dude. I I love getting to talk with you and I really appreciate you taking the time. I want to respect your time. I always like to ask this last question is how can we as listeners of the Partner Profit podcast, how can we partner with you? What's important to you right now? How can we help you grow?

Host1 20:56

Yeah, so I I think you know, you kind of heard a little bit of snippets of it, right? You know, my business is made with two ways to make money, right? People that need virtual assistance, obviously, you know, we're here to help them with that, but then also people that uh know other people that need virtual assistance, right? I know it's right up the alley of what you're doing right now, or no different than you know, how people can use your platform to come in and you know use affiliate partners and earn revenue off of it. We do the same thing, right? You know, just in the just only down to virtual assistance that, you know, if you have an influence, you have a network that needs virtual assistance and they need a place to go get that done, not only can you get them a good place to do it, but you can also earn some pretty good revenue off of those referrals. And, you know, I'd like to say I had something revolutionary, some new software, some new crazy thing. But unfortunately, we found no matter what you try and go to, affiliate relationships, one-to-one, you know, referral networks can be some of the best money, you know, and most steady, you know, the most fun business to do business with. So those would be the things.

Host 21:53

Awesome, man. We'll we'll make sure that we link up the ways people can connect with you in our show notes. And if you're listening to this, I highly encourage you to do so. Justin's great businessman, but more importantly, a great guy. And I know you won't go wrong if you set something up with him. So, Justin, man, thanks again for spending some time with us today.

Host1 22:07

Yeah, thanks for having me, man.

Host 22:08

Yeah, yeah. And thank you all for continuing to listen to the Partner Profit Podcast. This has been another amazing conversation. I'm excited to see you on the next one. Peace.