Building a Remote Workforce: How VPM Solutions Is Revolutionizing Property Management

Pete is the CEO and co-founder of VPM Solutions , an online platform that connects the real estate industry with team members virtually . He has won awards and he has sold companies . He's very successful in what he does , so we're going to be talking to him and everything that he's up to . So , Pete , thank you so much for joining me .

Curtis , thanks so much for having me Appreciate you . Why don't you start off by telling the listeners a little bit about yourself ?

I moved to Houston , texas , as a young adult I am no longer a young adult , curtis , now I am an older adult , in my 50s , and I moved to Houston . I said I was going to live here for one year and I was back in 1995 and I'm still here . So I , like Texas , I like Houston , took a job opportunity here .

I didn't start my entrepreneurial journey until I was 41 , where I started a property management company . I was in IT before that for like 25 years and moved into , went into a completely different field in property management . And the reason I started my property management firm was because I was buying properties .

I was an investor and my partner , steve Rosenberg , and I bought about 31 properties in about 18 months . I had all single family . I had also purchased in partnerships three apartment complexes , and so I had lots of property and did not know how to manage them .

So I realized oh man , I better start managing these properties correctly , because I wasn't collecting rent . Maintenance was atrocious . All the challenges that happen when you don't manage properties . So we started a management company .

The anticipation was that we would just have the management company for our properties and somewhere along the way we started doing what's called third-party managing or managing investment properties for other people , and that was actually profitable . So we ended up building that business . I quit my full-time job in December of 2012 .

And I started at that point a full-time Empire Industries property management and we ran that property management firm until October 2019 . So about eight years and we sold it . We were in three markets Dallas , houston and Fort Worth and we were at about 984 single family homes managing for over 600 investors .

And we sold that business , took a job with Mind Management who purchased us and as I was working there , I started building what became VPM Solutions , and I have three partners in VPM Solutions . I'm the co-founder and CEO and it's kind of like a full circle .

I was in IT , went into a bunch of real estate , became a broker , a realtor , investor , property management , and now I'm back in IT and I own a company that is a platform or a marketplace that connects property management and real estate companies with remote team members or virtual assistants in 150 plus countries and that's about 30 years and about six minutes

there , Curtis .

to keep growing to to be able to afford , to be able to get profit right . And then what happens is your team gets stressed because you keep growing the company and then you have to hire more people , and then you were profitable .

When you're profitable , you're stressing your people out , and when you hire people , you're not profitable , and it's this like seesaw that goes back and forth . And so back in about 2016 , I realized that there are jobs out there that just do not require a lot of experience and a lot of unique skill sets . These are kind of like your startup jobs .

But I couldn't afford hiring people in the us , especially with employer taxes and and the salary that people required and the people that would take the position I found like even though , like I found , I was paying , you know , a higher rate than I really , than what the job role could afford , and I was also getting people who just saw the job as a J-O-B ,

not as a career , people who had challenges outside the company and would bring it into the company . Maybe their car would break down or they had some challenges family issues that they would bring into the business .

And what we've found is if we can hire people for a fraction of the cost but still have you know , they're bilingual , they're highly educated , they are getting even though they're getting less money here that we're paying , they're making more money than they ever made in their life or they're making really good money compared to where they live in .

You get people that have a different mindset . They don't see it as a J-O-B , they see it as a career , and so you get highly competent people for these kind of lower skilled jobs and then you can hire more of them .

So anytime you have a company that requires lots of people because there's lots of tasks , obviously the lots of tasks , obviously , the more people you can hire , the more tasks can get done . And that was a concept that I had when I said let me create , when I hired the remote team members , more people and my salary went down from 56% of revenue to 34% .

So a huge change which allowed the company to run profitably , allowed me to pay my people in the US more and allowed me to give bonuses , healthcare , lots of other perks . And so when I was thinking about building VPM , I was thinking how can I help other service-based companies , especially the property management industry ?

And so that's where the marketplace was born , and with VPM , we have about 40,000 candidates or people looking for work , and if you're a company in the US , you can create a free profile . You can search all those candidates . You can then invite them to a job . You can post a job .

We have an algorithm that will connect , that will match people on the platform to your job . You can then interview them and then hire them through our platform , all for free . The way we make money is , once you hire them , they enter time on the platform and you pay them through our platform .

So we have time cards and we have reporting , we have training and , of course , we have the database

of candidates . So we feel like we're kind of all in one . You can source , train onboard , manage and pay all in one spot . And the way we make money is we charge the candidate , or , in this case , the virtual assistant a percentage . It's called a platform fee . We charge 10 .

So if you hire somebody at 10 bucks an hour , they're going to bring home nine and vpn will take in one dollar and we're seeing huge success with that . People are reducing their payroll costs . They're able to hire multiple people .

We're seeing people get out of poverty in these second and third world countries and we're seeing companies have a much higher profit margin . So pretty exciting stuff , absolutely .

Those are kind of the two big ones . So the first thing is how do you know what they can do ? Well , just do a time study and if you have a bunch of items that you're doing on a daily , weekly , monthly basis that you don't like to do , you literally can just create a job description from those objects .

The other thing you can do is if you're a bigger company and you have different processes , you can say you know what , I want to hire somebody to handle this process . So , for example , in property management , we have like a lease renewal process . So I hired somebody to handle just the lease renewals with the annual inspections , and they can own that process .

Once you have a really good understanding

of what you want that job role to be , now you know exactly . Okay , that's kind of like the rules of the game . Right ? Those are the instructions to the seat . Next thing is okay , I want to make sure I hire the right person in my organization . So what are your core values ? If you do not have core values , your company does have them .

They're just maybe not the ones that you want , right ? So core values have to start at the top and get pushed down , so you can't allow your team to create your core values . For example , if you have a company and everybody comes in late , well , your core value is that you could come in late .

That's just like that ends up becoming a value right , and a lot of people they'll create core values and they'll put them on a nice little poster board and put it on the wall to talk about it one time , never to be heard from again . You have to live those core values .

If you are creating core values and you don't really resonate with those values and you're the owner of the company or you're a top , you know a C-sweeter in the company . They're never going to get pushed down . You have to live those core values . They have to be you .

So once you know your core values , now you know the type of person that you're looking for . Your organization this is whether they are going to be in an office next to you or they're going to be in a state , one state , two states over , or if they're going to be 12,000 miles away in the Philippines .

You need to know the type of person you're looking for . Then , with the job description , you need to know what they're supposed to do . But , more importantly , they need to know what they're supposed to do . That's why the job description is so important what they're supposed to do , that's why the job description is so important .

Then every job description in your organization should have a personality profile attached to it , and what I mean by that ? There's a lot of personality assessment programs out there . Predictive Index is probably the most famous one .

I'm a big fan of DISC D-I-S-C , and personality profile tells me this is the type of person that will be the best fit for this role . So think of like the person , like the core values , is a ticket to get on the boat right . To get on this boat , you need to have these core values . You need to be this type of person .

This is the person I want to be in the foxhole with . This is the person that we're going to go to war with . Okay , then I need to put the right person in the right seat . Well , how do I know what's the right seat ? I need instructions for the seat . That's your job description , now I know .

Okay , now in this seat , I need , you know , let's say , I need the real skinny guy in the front yelling row , row , row . Well , that's going to be a different guy than in the back , the big guy that's going to be , that's going to be the anchor to the , to the rowing of the boat . So who's the right person ? Well , that's the personality profile comes in .

So now I have the instructions to the seat , the job description . I have the personality profile , which is going to be your DISC assessment . So now I know the type of person , the personality profile and the job description . The last thing I need to know is how they're going to row , and those are key performance indicators .

So every job role in your organization should have key performance indicators , and if you have like 14 , that's too many . The less is more . Approach should have one to three KPIs , more than three , and then most likely you need to split that job role . In my organization today , a VPM , no one has more than three KPIs . If we can get it down to one .

It's one KPI . And now the KPI is like your scorecard , right ? So every like we all went to school , my sister loved getting her scorecard or her report card because it was good . I didn't like getting mine that often , but I knew where I stood .

People like to have an idea where they stand and the key performance indicator allows them to , you know , to try to achieve those goals . And then there's a bunch of rules on how to set up the KPI , how often to look at it and all that good stuff . But once I have that , now I have a very good understanding of what I'm looking for in a person .

Now , the only difference between hiring local and hiring remote is when you hire remote , you have to look at their computer , their internet speed and their workspace , and so those are only three different things . So when we hire a remote , we actually have a scorecard .

We have a 10-point scorecard and we score things like responsiveness , computer and internet speed , and and appearance and office . Those are a few things that we look at . We also look at skill education , english proficiency .

That's the other one you have to look at is English proficiency , because you are hiring people where English is their second language in most cases . But other than that , everything else is very similar . And then the next question is okay , so now , pete , I hire this person . Well , how do I train them Right ?

So they have the job description and how do I train them ? And we find it actually easier to train through Zoom and then record the training . And so what we do is and I'm not saying this is the best way , curtis , this is a way and it's probably it's worked for us for quite a while .

But what we do is , anytime you hire somebody new , we spend a lot of time with them up front Every day , hour at least minimum , if not more . We train them through Zoom and we'll record it . And then they have to watch the Zoom and build their own user manual .

And the way we do , even if we have our own , we have a user manual or a process manual we want them to build their own , because I made a mistake early on where I built like 110 page maintenance manual and not only did anybody not read it , but they didn't even know how to like how to search through it when questions came up .

So with these videos we train them . You learn by listening , watching , writing down and then kind of training , regurgitating right and letting us know .

So what we do is we have the video , they then they , they listen , then they have to watch the video , then they have to write it down in a , in a you know , in a process manual and then they have to basically teach you the next day .

So when you have to teach right , where they say the best way to learn something is is actually teach it , and so we do that . Most job roles take between two to four weeks to train .

Some of them take a little bit longer , but usually within four weeks , usually you can let them move on to the next level and we always say the first , you know , 60 days everything gets escalated . You kind of work in conjunction with you and then over time , less and less get escalated to the point where it's only like 10% get escalated .

And so you kind of you redirect them when they ask a question like hey , how do I ? You know , hey , how do I do this ? Well , how would you do this ? What do you think the answer is ?

So instead of answering like , instead of becoming a superhero , getting in case of superhero-itis and answering every question , you redirect and ask them well , what do you think ? How would you do this ? And so that's your training piece . And I know that's not easy , I get that , you know .

But once you do this the first time , then you have your training database , then you have somebody else that can actually train . So when you have to hire the next person , the person you trained can train them and or they can go to those videos .

And if you do the videos and you put them on YouTube and um on , you know , you , you make them , um , private versus public , and tag them , right , they , they can use that . And so that's how you train . And then the next piece is how do you manage them ? Right , and people are worried .

They'll say Pete , I'm worried that you know , this $6 an hour guy that I hired is going to steal time and he's going to go to the bathroom for two hours and he's going to leave early or whatever it is .

Meanwhile they got a guy in their office next to him , makes a hundred thousand dollars a year , comes in late , takes two smoke breaks , takes a long lunch , leaves early , and they don't care about that . That guy's stealing so much time but you don't care about that . But you care about the $6 an hour guy that's going to the restroom for an hour .

So there's three ways to manage people when remote . You can manage them through micromanagement , you can manage them through abdication , or you can manage them through delegation , and so the first way , the micromanagement , is basically write everything down that you do . I'm going to use the software to screen capture you . I want you on video all day .

No one wants to be micromanaged and it's a great way to burn somebody out really quick . Plus , do you actually have all that time to micromanage somebody Like you ? Hire them to do the work , let them do the work .

The opposite side of that spectrum is you have somebody that abdicates , and what I mean by that is they hire somebody and they say oh man , I've been so busy , here's all the stuff that I do that you need to do now .

And then they don't give them any direction , they don't train them , they don't check in and they pat themselves on the back saying man , I'm not a micromanager , yeah , but you're not a manager at all , you're not managing them . And what happens there is you don't know what they're supposed to do . They don't know what they're supposed to do .

They've never been trained . They get frustrated , you get frustrated and then you say this doesn't work . Or worse , they leave and say that guy's crazy , that doesn't work and they go find another job . And then the one in the middle is the delegation or the management . The way I manage is I look . The first thing I'd look for is availability .

So we create policy in our organization to make sure that we create policy Like if I Slack you or text you , you have 20 minutes to Slack me back , or 30 minutes , I think it is . If I email you , you have 20 minutes to slack me back , or 30 minutes , I think it is . If I email you , you email back in two hours .

If I call you to call back in 30 minutes . So we create policy because the first line of defense when somebody is remote is availability , all the available . If they're not answering emails , phone calls , text messages , then most likely they're not working . That's just kind of common sense .

The second way we look at this and we manage is when you have a meeting , you're on camera and you are in your home office . We're not taking meetings from the beach or from , you know , starbucks . You're in your home office

and you are and you're on camera and you're dressed appropriately . So that's the next thing . The next thing is I look at escalations , internal and external . Am I getting escalations from clients stating that you're not , you're not available , right , different availability , internal versus external .

Or am I getting escalations from people internally saying , man , every time I ask so-and-so to do work , they don't do the work right ? So I'm looking at availability and I'm looking at escalations . And then the last piece is KPIs .

If somebody is hitting their KPIs and they're available and I'm not getting escalations , my opinion is I don't care if they're working 40 hours , 60 hours or 20 hours .

I pay straight 40 in most cases and if you can do your job in 30 hours , I'll pay you for 40 , especially if you're hitting your KPIs and you're available and there's no escalations and the work's getting done . It doesn't matter to me , but that's the way we do it and the way we manage it is .

We have a weekly meeting Now on a small team , you might meet your . You know , if you have an executive assistant , for example , and you hire somebody in , like Costa Rica , you're probably going to meet with them every day , maybe multiple times a day , and that's great .

But you should have one day a week , a specific hour at a time where it is a specific agenda , because when you talk to somebody every day , it's just kind of like , you know , task-based , or I need this question answered or I need this thing done . What we do is we have a , we have an agenda .

We meet the same time each week , so the same day , the same time each week , and we we go through . We start off with a feel good so tell me something good about your personal or business . Then we go through a KPI review . Are we hitting our numbers ? If not , is it ? Does it need to go on a challenge list or is it ?

You know , like I was out last week , so of course we didn't hit our KPI . That makes sense , you know . So if there's a reason and it's not a challenge , then we just move forward . Then we look at tasks from the last week . Did you do the tasks that were done ? If not , do they have to go on a challenge list ?

And then we get to the challenge list and those first few , those first things , are just five minutes each In a challenge list . As the business owner and manager , you're asking the question what can I do to make your life easier ?

Right , so our jobs as business owners and managers are just really to get the tools and the training to our team and then get out of the way . So what can I do to make your life easier ? What can I do so that you hit your kpis ? What can I do right ?

And then the biggest thing is I don't like people every day slacking me , like if they have an escalation or challenge emailing me or slacking me or call me every day . What I do is tell them put on a challenges list and it will go over next week , unless it's like DEF , con five , right , then we'll talk about it .

But what happens is 80% of those challenges that they put on during the week , they've they've figured out a solution , which means that , okay , so now they're figuring out the solution , so you don't have it's like you're not the bottleneck , they figured it out .

And the 20% now that's a training opportunity or it's something that you need to do , like maybe they don't have rights to get access to something . You have to give them rights to give them access , and they just couldn't do that until they got with you .

But it also might just be like they need an answer on a question and you could turn around and say well , if I got hit by a bus or if I won the lotto , I like that one better , but if I won the lotto , what would you do , um , if I wasn't around ?

And a lot of times you know it might not be the right thing , but you get them thinking and then you can kind of , you know , um , lead them to a certain answer . So by having these weekly structured uh meetings allows you to keep that management right . You're looking at the kpi , you're solving any challenges . Imagine if you could solve one challenge a week .

That's 52 challenges a year . That's a pretty good year . The last thing we do is we ask what is your stress level on a scale of one to 10 ? If the stress level is a 10 plus , 10 plus , 10 plus , then that's a red flag , because it could be either A you have the wrong person in the organization .

It could be B you have the right person in the organization , but they're in the wrong seat . It could be C they're the wrong person in the organization and they're not in the right seat .

Or it could be like it's seasonal , like in property management in the summer , leasing is really , really chaotic and it's you know you don't really hit your KPIs right , and so it could be seasonal it's just a stressful time or it just could be you're just not the right person .

Or it could be like you don't have the right KPIs and they're stressed out because they're not in the KPIs person . Or it could be like you don't have the right KPIs and they're stressed out because they're not in the KPIs .

But I promise you , if somebody is a 10 plus multiple weeks in a row , that is a good indicator that either A they're not a good fit or B they're looking to leave because what you're asking them to do doesn't align with their personality , and they get stressed out pretty easily . So those are kind of the things that people ask a lot about .

Like , you know , how do I find them ? You can find them on VPN . How do I pay them ? You can pay them through VPN . How do I hire them ? We went through that . How do I train them ? We went through that . How do I manage them ? And I went through that .

So that was a long-winded answer to your original question , but your question could have been answered in so many different ways .

If your balance sheet is messed up or your P&L doesn't look right , that's going to hurt . So that's the first thing . The second thing is you have to know how your business gets sold . Is it sold on EBITDA ? Is it sold on times revenue ? What are the ways that people are going to look at your business ? And then you want to try to solve any challenges .

It's like selling an old house

. Right ? If you have a house and you know that the foundation is messed up , you know people are going to ask for a discount because the foundation is messed up . So you fix the foundation so you can get top dollar . What are the holes or what's broken in your organization that you can solve ?

And a lot of times , if your business is dependent on you , then a lot of times that's not a sellable business . So one of the reasons why we were able to sell at a higher valuation is that we had processes and people in place and the business wasn't contingent on me or my business partner .

The other thing that we did is we did not take a lot of money out of the business . We invested a lot of money back in for growth . So we built , we did not . What's the right way to say this ? I didn't kill the golden goose , I guess . I just kept investing more money .

And when you grow , a lot of times growth takes investment and which means that you have to delay gratification in the form of getting paid . So I didn't pay myself very much money for all those years because we kept building the business , building the business , building the business , and then we were able to sell .

Now the bigger question you asked is how do you prepare yourself after the sale ? And this is really interesting because there's like economics to it , right . So you have to prepare yourself . Like when you sell , what are you going to do to , uh , to mitigate taxes ?

And there's a bunch of stuff there and I'm sure you can get some CPAs on and talk about that . But what was really more more meaningful to me is the mindset , curtis , when I sold my business , I had over a million dollars in my bank account .

For the first time ever , I was getting paid more money than I ever got paid because I stayed on with the company and I took a job with them and I was the unhappiest I've ever been in my life . So I want you to think about that . I had more money than I ever had , making more money than I ever had , and I was the unhappiest I ever was .

And it is true like money doesn't buy you happiness . It helps , and it is true like money doesn't buy you happiness Helps , don't get me wrong , but it doesn't buy you happiness . And what happened was when we sold I did not know what my next move was . My business partner he knew what his next move was and we sold .

He started a business coaching program and he was happy as all get up . Because I didn't know what I was going to do and because we sold at what we sold at , I didn't have enough money to retire .

I could have retired for a year , but then I would have had to start doing something else and maybe even like finding a job , and so I ended up just taking the path of least resistance and I took the job for the company that bought us and because I didn't know what I was going to do .

So , if you're looking at maybe selling your business , understand and know what is the next thing you're going to do , because I didn't know .

I took the job and I was depressed for about a year and a half , and it's so , so funny that I became undepressed , if you will , curtis , when I realized I'm going to start building VPM and I started building VPM in 2020 , but I didn't get out .

It didn't come out until 2021 of June , which is when I left the company that purchased me , and I realized pretty early on that I was unemployable .

I'm not a good employee anymore , I'm a better business owner and I'm an employee now , and so , yeah , so knowing what you're going to do next and having a plan , and so if I could do it all over again , I'll kind of give you a peep behind the curtain If I could do it all over again . Number one is financially .

As far as the sales price , I got a very fair deal when I sold my company , so there was no negotiation to be had , and it was , honestly , it was a pretty good deal . The second thing I would have done , though , is we took the money out over three years , so we got 60% the day we sold , and then we got what is it ?

20% year two , 20% year three , and year two was a clawback year , and then year three was not Meaning like if they lost clients while we were operating . The first year they would take money back from the 20% that they owed us , and then the last year was nothing no clawback and then I took 20% of the sale in stock .

Well , if I could do it all over again , I would take all cash upfront , no stock and I would take less money to get my money on day one . So let's say they wanted to pay you a million bucks , but if you want all your money on day one , they're going to pay you $950,000 .

I'll take the $950,000 all day long and move on , and I would not have taken a job with them . I would have had an idea of what I was going to do next . I would have got the funds , and I would have started investing in that next venture time and money .

So I had to talk to him about focus . And so I'm a big of focus , meaning like I only do one thing at a time and I know that makes me pretty boring , but I want to be really . I want to be the best at one thing versus average at many

things . So when you say what's the next thing I'm working on , it's , it's just VPN . I'm like , literally I , I , I eat , breathe and think and dream of VPM and we're coming out with a couple of cool things inside of VPM .

But I've had numerous people come to me and look , curtis , you know this like as a successful podcast like yourself , as you get more successful in life , you have more opportunities and those opportunities can really pull you away from what your core is right , what you're supposed to be doing in life . I'm supposed to be building VPM .

That's what I'm supposed to be doing now , this is the season that I'm in , but I have opportunities all the time and they ask me like , oh , you , we can do this and we can do that , and you know we could . Uh , whatever it is . And , um , I've been offered CEO of excuse me , of property management firms . I've been offered to .

You know , people want to pay me for coaching , consulting . Um , you know , people want to , you know , start another business with me and uh , all of that it's like Nope , I just want to . I have a vision of what I believe VPM looks like . I also have the vision of August . I have a vision of what I believe VPM looks like .

I also have a vision of what that looks like on the software side . I have a vision of what that looks like as far as an organizational structure side , and I have a vision of what that looks like as far as annual recurring revenue valuation and what the exit looks like . And I have a kind of a year plan there .

And if you don't have a vision , it's hard to . If you don't have a vision of where you're going , it's hard to get there , it's hard to get the step to get there . So , to answer your question , vpm is building a couple of cool things right now .

We're building a where we charge a platform fee to the contractor and we're building a piece where the company could take on a percentage of that fee if they like . So I'm really excited about that . We're adding to our LMS training , our learning management system training . I actually got two or three courses that I'm reviewing .

Just got off the phone with a few other people that they want to add courses and then we just kicked off a recruiting . So the VPM platform is built as a do-it-yourself .

We then created a white glove service where it's a do-it it with you and we don't charge for that , and we just kicked off a do it for you service called our gold glove , and with the gold glove there's a fee for that it's $1,500 , but we do all the work and what we're realizing is , man , there's a lot of , there's a lot of inefficiencies throughout that

process , and so we're starting to build efficiencies in our gold glove process . That will then um , once we get it tested and and and um and true , you know , tested and proven , we'll then move that over to our do it for you and our do it yourself , uh service . So like we're going to have like a self interview uh , for everybody we're going to have .

We're going to have a better , better searching . We're going to have a self-interview for everybody . We're going to have better searching . We're going to have templates built in where you can message a bunch of candidates all at one time . You can build your own templates . So that's all the stuff that's coming down the pipeline .

So we're pretty excited because we do believe that we have one of the better recruiting systems out there platforms and we just keep adding to it and just going deeper . And that's what happens when you stay focused , you can go much deeper in your craft .

Um , I'm a big , I'm a big soul , I'm a big email guy still . So it's pete at vpmsolutionscom . Or you can just go to vpmsolutions dot com and check out our site and you can create a profile for free and browse around .

So I would just say this okay , if you are a business owner and you are looking to reduce , you know costs and there are jobs out there that do not need to be , you know local , not need to be you know local think about using remote team . It will any . Anytime I've asked , I've told anybody about the remote team and they've done it .

They come back and say , man , I should have done that sooner , so that that would be the , that would be the , the , the parting shot , since I since I do own a marketplace- All right .

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast , visit wwwcurveball337.com . Thank you for listening and supporting the show , pete . Thank you for all that you and your company are doing , and thank you for joining me . Thanks for having me , curtis . For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast .

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast , visit wwwcurveball337.com . Until next time , keep living the dream .