#24 Automate You Hiring with Terry Thayer
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Itunes – www.TonyJavier.com/itunes
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Guest Bio: Terry Thayer is a Real Estate Entrepreneur and Business Coach that specializes on helping you scale and automate your business through building a team. If you want to learn how to automate your business, you need to listen to this one!
Listen to the full episode at www.TonyJavier.com/itunes and please leave a review.
If you want to watch the video, go to www.TonyJavier.com/podcast.
Join 50,000+ Rehabbers, House Flippers, Wholesalers, and Agents who use Rehab Valuator, to get a free version, go to www.TonyJavier.com/valuator
More about him – https://tonyjavier.com/terrythayer
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Show Transcription:
Tony (00:02):
Welcome to today’s episode. We have Mr. Terry Thayer founder of a tab retreat. He’s a high-level, high-volume real estate investor. I’m excited to have him on the line. We actually it’s our second recording. We did our first recording for some reason. It did not quite take. And so we’re, we’re shooting this for a second time. So Terry out of North Carolina, but he’s in Mexico right now. So tell us what you’re doing in Mexico, Terry.
Terry (00:28):
What’s up, man. Thanks for having me. Of course. Yeah. So I’ve been in Cabo, San Lucas, Mexico since July wanted to get out and get away from all the chaos going on in the States and be able to focus really. So since I’d been here wrote a book had another course transcribed into another book. So I’ve got a couple of books getting ready to be launched and eBooks and courses, and just really just spending some time taking a lot of this knowledge and stuff that I’ve been had over the last 20 years and putting it into something that I can share with people. So yeah, it’s been pretty cool. And also, you know, it’s we’re grinded during the week doing our thing. And then we can just kind of like step outside in a paradise when we’re ready to, you know, instead of having scheduled vacation goes there for a couple of days, like vacations when we, when is everyday when work ends or every single weekend. Right.
Tony (01:23):
Awesome. No, that’s awesome. I was just talking to a buddy of mine. We do accountability every week and we just decided to do one day, what did we say one day a month? We just scheduled it. I think it was one day a month where him and I are just going to detach and just get away from the business, just plan think and his new motto, his motto for this year and actually coming into next year is a less doing and more thinking. So I’m guessing that that’s kind of what you’ve been doing there more has, let you been able to do is to step back from the business, make high level decisions, kind of plan for the future. And I guess just work smarter on your business, Right?
Terry (02:05):
That is 1000000% what it is. Yeah. I I’m grateful to have a business partner or that is, you know, we have different lifestyles, right? We have different things going on and it works for him. It’s like, you know, he is sorry. He is that person that he’s like, like his family, his wife’s family is like lives on the same street. They’re not going anywhere. So they, he doesn’t move out and his wife works at corporate job. It’s a completely different lifestyle. So, u, allows me to do this part of stuff. So yeah, I’m still working on my team, but I’m able to treat, get into a creative state like I am, as you can see behind me, uh ative state and do those types of things. And honestly, I think that really is more valuable than anything when you get to a certain point of your entrepreneurial career is to be able to get in that state so that you can create and things happen so much bigger and faster to where you’re not just sitting there grinding, working all day, but you’re able to make more, doing less help, more people and just duplicate your efforts.
Tony (03:12):
Yeah. They say your best ideas typically aren’t and when you’re working there, you know, in the shower or on the toilet, whatever, you know, it’s where you’re not trying to, I guess, make things happen. It’s just like, for some reason, like thoughts just come in your head and when you can get away and relax, it’s just so much you can make such better decisions than being in the everyday grind. That’s why I love being away from my business. I, you know, my business is in which it’s all is most people know. And I live in San Diego. So for me, it’s kind of the same thing. I’m not in Mexico, I’m not on vacation by any means, but I still have that flexibility of not being in the business all the time and thinking at a higher level. And speaking to that, we’ll jump into one thing that you’re doing.
Tony (03:56):
So, you know, like a lot of the people that I have on this show you’ve got a lot of things going on. You’ve got a real estate investing business, you’ve got an educational business. You’ve got all these moving parts, but one of the things that I really enjoyed about our last conversation that did not get recorded was your hiring system. So you know, for me, I I’ve had virtual assistants throughout the years. And for me now, my I don’t want to say motto, but my, the way that I look at hiring is if it doesn’t require someone to be there in person, I would rather hire a virtual assistant at five bucks an hour or 10 bucks an hour, depending on what the job entails to do that job, to do that job, because I don’t have to provide an office for them. I don’t have to have them in, in the office. It’s much lower wage, all those types of things. So tell us about a little bit about your program, how you came about it, kind of the ins and outs of it a little bit. And you know, I guess just more about your system and how you continually continue to have hiring I guess just your whole hiring method. I thought it was pretty cool. Last time We talked about that.
Terry (05:16):
Yeah, for sure. So, yeah, I’m with you as well with virtual assistants, we have a bunch of virtual assistants. We have,uyou know, cold callers and admin people. And those, we have a bunch of people overseas. Umy big view editors and Ireland like,uyou know, they’re all over the place, but then I have a bunch of virtual assistants here in the U S now, too, for my education business copywriters. And,uanother assistant, I have my marketing person, like, they’re all virtual. I love to do the virtual model where you can, but sometimes it’s necessary to have those people in your office. So, you know, one thing that I’ve tried to figure out a good way to outsource is, you know, acquisitions, dispositions, you know, virtually, and you know what, you can get some good success.
Terry (06:06):
I’ve known some people that have got some good success, but I truly believe that that requires depending on how you do it, like the way we do it, the way I feel like I’ve really perfected that model is to have that culture and have that environment where you’re in office, you’re winning. Like it’s like the locker room type, right? So like, we’re going, we’re going to,uyou know, to practice every day and we’re going to play games and Merck, you know, in the locker room with the teammate eats and stuff. And you know, that is something that I truly believe requires,uin office environment. You know, some of these other things you can hire, like I said, a copywriter, a video editor, different things like that. You can do that, like their niche to that position and they’re professionals at that.
Terry (06:52):
You don’t need them in that office environment. Yeah. You have high huddles. You’re talking to them constantly. We have this beautiful thing called zoom that we can use nowadays, but going back to ourhigher ed system, like it’s been something that, you know, it’s I’m trying to think of how long it’s been now. Probably 7, 8 years ago. Probably close eight years ago is when I really started becoming obsessed with it because, you know, I’ve been in business now for well, over 20 years, I’ve been in real estate business for 18 years prior to that, I was a contractor. And, you know, I feel like before 2008, it was easy to find help. It was just kinda, I don’t know what the difference was, but after 2008 it was a little bit difficult. So I can remember just constantly going through hire fire, hire fire, hire fire.
Terry (07:42):
Oh, I got a good one. You know, hire fire, hire fire. And it’s a lot of waste of time. I mean, it’s expensive to hire onboard, train, recruit, I mean all that stuff. And it takes a lot of time if you don’t have a system in place. So I’ve developed a system that is like, well, before I developed the system, I was like, I hired this coach hired this coach. I just, like, I kept hired all these different coaches. Like, please give me the blueprint, give me the answer. Like tell me how to do it. And nobody could truly give me those answers. So I became obsessed with trying to figure out how to do this. Andyou know, it, it took a lot of years trial and error going back and forth. That would get a little bit from this person a little bit on this person, but develop a system that actually, it takes me on average, just under two hours total. From the time I posted an ad to the time I, the interview process and everything just under two hours typically per hire with the system.
Tony (08:47):
And that’s cool. And one of the things that you do, if I remember right from last conversation is you always have your hiring on, even if you’re not looking for somebody you want it on, because that right person may come into the picture where it’s like, man, that person is legit. Like I need to get that person in my organization, even if I don’t need them right now.
Terry (09:11):
Yeah. Two reasons. So, yes, for that, I haven’t hired anybody in two months now and I keep my recruiting going. The other thing is like, what if I have to let somebody go? What if they quit? What if they move away? What if they, whatever the case becomes terminally or whatever the case might be. Right. And I need to fill that seat. If I’m always recruiting, I might be down like the last time this happened was a few months back where it was actually like, we have the system with our wholesaling team, we have acquisitions and then we have junior acquisitions, follow-up managers, right? And the followup managers, they have a certain criteria or certain things that they have to do to earn the acquisition seat. One of my guys comes in and literally in two and a half weeks busted every record and ended up in that position.
Terry (10:02):
I wasn’t ready for him, but I was because I was always recruiting within. So we recruited him up to acquisitions. So I had to get another person to fill his seat. And I think it was less than 10 days. So all I did was I just went back to my recruiting. You know, I short, I loosened up my criteria slightly in my CRM that they flow through that scores, them, sent them off a message saying, Hey, send me a quick video. You know, it’s got all these different requirements on that and got a whole bunch of, I think it was like 12, 13 videos. I got back the next day and were like renewed this one guy. And he was like, this is the guy renew, you know, we know it, like we know by that, by these instructions that we’re giving them in this one minute video that we’re requesting, we know exactly who’s going to fit into our culture.
Terry (10:54):
Who has that drive? Who’s like, literally is the right fit. All the rest is just formality. Right. We’re doing a phone interview and we’re doing an in-person interview. We’re doing all these things just because you should write, you should go through all of it. Because every once in a while, that video ends up, like you meet the person and you’re like, Oh, this is the perfect person. Then you interview three people. And you’re like, Oh, that person went from one to three, three went to one, you know, it does happen sometimes. So, but anyways, we renew, it was that person re-interviewed three people, just like we always do. And we ended up choosing that person. He didn’t have a job luckily, and was able to start that next Monday. He was like eager and ready to go. So we were like, I think it was like a 10 day or nine or 10 day downtime where we didn’t have that position filled. And it wasn’t even that let me correct that because we always start fresh the first event a month. So that person went into the next my other junior acquisition went into the acquisition. He earned that where like a couple days prior to the month being ended. So it was like four days. I had four days of recruiting. So really I was like down five days of the next month. Does that make sense?
Tony (12:07):
Yeah, totally. And, and had you not had the ad out and had it automated? It probably would taken what a good 30 to 45 days as what I think it used to take me to put the ad out, to go through the resumes and all that. So just, I’m going to put my spin on it and then you can kind of refine it a little bit. So your, I think your system’s a little more refined than mine is, but,uI think they’re very similar. So for those of you looking to hire, if especially right now, if you put an ad out on indeed or any job site right now, you’re going to get anywhere from 50 to 200 resumes probably sent your way. I mean, there’s people that are probably just going through jobs and just hitting, submit, submit, submit.
Tony (12:49):
They’re not even looking at the job title. Right. And so for me, I put instructions, which I know you do as well, Terry. So I put instructions that say, okay, before you submit your application, read this whole post and follow the instructions at the bottom. And then I give them instructions at the bottom that tell them what to do. And with virtual assistance, I go one step further. And sometimes even in-person hires and I’ll have them fill out a Google form that has them rate themselves for different things, answers questions, and then has them send a video. I think that’s the biggest thing that I do that I think you’re the only one, the only other one that I know that does, this is actually have them do a video of themselves answering some questions, because that allows you to see how they act, see how they interact.
Tony (13:38):
It just tells you a lot, like you can, I mean, you can take that video and, you know, it’s hard to judge a book by its cover a hundred percent, but you can get a pretty good feel for that person. Are they interacting well? Are they confident? Are they, you know, did they even follow the instruction to do it right? And so I guess kind of tell us your process a little bit from, from A to Z, how much different it is and what you do to make sure that you’re finding the right person, I guess. And you’re cutting the work that you would normally do getting someone in by 97%.
Terry (14:13):
Yeah, absolutely. So what we do is, so I’ll create an ad. There’s a whole bunch of things that happened even just to get to the ad part on how recreate, like the perfect ad copy and then repost it on. Indeed, I, then I have a way of linking indeed to this particular CRM that I use. Right. So when they go to apply, they’re not on, I never have to go back. Indeed. Again, I post an ad, I turn it on. And then when I went to go shut it off, which I don’t ever shut it off, but I repost. I start over every single month, a person a month at the end of the month, or first in a month, I shut off the old one. And then all I do is just like recopy, if it’s the same position and start it back up.
Terry (14:56):
So there’s way you can just say, Oh, start from an existing template or a new one and just do the same one over and over and over. Right. And so when they go to apply, it takes them through our CRM. CRM I call it a CRM, it’s a system, right. That they come in and they they’re basically filling out an application, you know, name, all the things of what’s on their resume. They can add a cover letter. They can add the resume, all that stuff. Then the next step that it puts them through a test. Okay. So it’s roughly, it takes them 12, 15 minutes. It’s part of it. There’s a small part of it. That’s like timed like two or three minutes. And then from there
Tony (15:39):
Terry and I are both getting over COVID or actually he’s pretty much over it. I’m at the tail end as well. So
Terry (15:46):
Yeah. Excuse me. Sorry about that. So yeah, so there is from there they score. And so then for me, it gives a score one to a hundred, right? So for me, if I’m really needing somebody I’ll lower my criteria to remember, I said a minute ago, to 60. If I don’t need anybody, I’m just recruiting. I put it to 70. So anybody comes in 70 and above. I just go over like click, click, click, click, click, all the ones that hit. I put a, put a date, which is the next day. I have a whole script that I just copy and paste. And it basically is saying, you know, send me a, a video at 60 seconds last I’ll make it a step full of point video. We have fun with it, you know, instruction, instruction, instruction, instruction, right? Like some different things.
Terry (16:32):
And then I’d say, I say, you know, please have this back to me no later then. And I always have the next day, whatever the next day is Friday. I put Monday at 5:00 PM. And then I boom sends it, sends it automatically to all those people, one shot. Right. So I just click on them. And then in the note section, I put the date of that I’m looking to receive. So in every single morning or afternoon I go in there, I go in there at 5 o’clock or after 5. And I see, okay, who sent me a video? The ones that sent me a video, I just put, received the rest of them. I just it’s. It’s got like three little lights red, green, and yellow. If they didn’t meet my criteria, boom red. If they’re under the 70 requirement, I just red it. I don’t even think about it. Just boom. Right. They’re gone. If they are, if I request for a video, I put yellow. If they, if I received the video I just received. And then if I, the only time they ended up being green is if I hire them. So then I’m looking at the video, okay. In the video, did they follow instruction 60 seconds or less? That’s one of the instructions. If somebody gives me 20 seconds, 30 seconds, they can’t give me enough to tell me a little bit about themselves and why they’re the best person for the position. They’re probably not going to fit our culture. Right. We were a fun, upbeat, like, you know, I’m not looking for these little hermit sitting in a corner, just not our culture. Right. It’s like, maybe it is for Google or Apple or something like that, but it isn’t for us.
Terry (17:59):
Right. We need, and most of these people I’m hiring the sales, so they need to have that personality. Right. And then if I have other people that just ramble on for three minutes, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they’re just ramble and ramble, ramble. And I don’t, I cut those out too. They didn’t follow the instructions or the it’s pretty much telling me if they’re going to come into my office and just all the district, they’re just going to be up everybody’s ear off. They’re not going to get anything done. And I just don’t from experience. That’s what ends up happening. So there’s all these different pieces that I’m looking for. I’m looking for. Okay, does this person’s personality look like it’s going to fit well with our culture, our team, our, this, they have the drive, have the motivation.
Terry (18:40):
Like I’m not really looking for, it depends. I mean, if it’s a project management position, obviously they have to have experience. Right. But if I’m looking for a call center, I don’t really care if they work the Applebee’s for the last four years. It’s the project manager worked at Applebee’s for the last four years and didn’t build houses. I don’t want that person. You know what I’m saying? So there’s a couple of different things. I don’t really look at resumes until I’m getting ready to sit in front of them and have a an in-person interview because it means nothing to me. It’s really, for me, the resume is just for a conversation starter in a interview. Right. So the whole thing that I look at with that, and I like how it manages in the platform that I have. It just, it, it just, it makes it simplifies. It’s like, if you didn’t hit this, you’re gone. If you did, you’re in. And then like, we’re just talking about if I have to quickly recruiting, like right now, I’m recruiting, I’m set at 70. If something happens, I have to let somebody go, they quit, or I need to bring somebody new in, I dropped the 60, I paid for these leads. Right. It’s just like our real estate business we paid for these leads we’re follow up. Right. I’ll even go back to last month. I didn’t hire anybody last month either. I’ll go back. Hey, you’re still interested. You know, did you fill the position or not? Did you fill the position? Did you get a job? We’re still looking to fill the position and and just re re-engage with those people and send out. And so I can have probably, you know, in the last two months I could probably gain 30. If I decided today that I wanted to do this, I could probably gain 30 new videos by tomorrow by sending out to probably a hundred people from last month or this month, maybe even more videos to choose from. And then we can check through them real quick and then decide who we want to phone interview and decide who we want to in-person interview. Yeah.
Tony (20:35):
And there’s some people that teach doing like so many levels of like hiring, you know, there’s a guy named Brad smart. I can’t remember the name of his system, but I mean, he goes into doing, I can’t even remember how many interviews, it’s like at least five interviews. And by using the system that you and I use, like most of those interviews are don’t even need to be done because that’s their interview process. Like they need to follow instructions. So I just put out, or my team just put out an ad on indeed for someone that we’re hiring in person. And we got over a hundred resumes. And out of all of those hundred, some resumes, there was only one person that followed the instructions all the way through to the end. And so my team said, we’ve we found someone. I said, Oh great.
Tony (21:26):
So, and, and so I was on the CA team call with them and I said, Oh, we only had one person go all the way through. Is, are we just hiring this person? Cause that’s the only applicant or because they’re highly qualified. And they’re like, no, this person is highly qualified, follow the whole process. There’s they actually had some other applications that they kind of saw that, you know, we’re okay. But it’s like, this person followed it through all the way to the end. So that’s the person that we want on our team. We want someone that is going to follow instructions, follow through, do it, do what we ask them to and take it all the way to the finish line. So it just cuts out so much fluff. Right. So what else? So, Oh, go ahead, Terry.
Terry (22:11):
Yeah, it cuts out. It makes it so much more efficient for us and for them and it just, you know, it gets right to the point because look, if they’re not willing to jump through hoops to get this position or follow instructions, what are they going to do if you hire them? Right. And most people hire off of resumes and interviews. It’s like, okay, if you get, you said a hundred, I typically get 3 to 600, depending on a month, 3 to 600 applicants every single month for an average position, it’s a niche position. It’s more like 75 to 150. Right? Like the project manager that I mentioned. Uso if I were to get 3 to 600 resumes, every single month, I’m basically going to be just like, okay, I’ll look at this one, this one, this one, this one, you know, maybe I look at 30 resumes, 40 resumes, a hundred resumes.
Terry (23:00):
Who’s going to look at three to 600. I me, it’s just not possible, but that’s how most people hire. It’s crazy. So they’re looking at all of it, and they end up having like these giant HR departments, all these people, like you can eliminate so many, so many things by having a system in place or, or you don’t have time because you’re a solopreneur or you’re trying to scale your company, but who has time to do all that? Right. So if you have a system you can flow through it. So it ends up being a very efficient way of of doing things for everybody and really get you that top person. Because if you’re looking at three to six, or if you you’re receiving three to 600 and you only look at 30, well, maybe your top person is one of those other people that are in that batch that you never even looked at, but you didn’t have a system that kind of funnel them through and then go into your point about Brad. I agree with his system for higher level. If you’re looking for a CEO, COO like a high level type of executive and employee hire a person to come into your company. Yes. I, want 100% like go golfing with them, get, get their spouse together, go to dinner, go to lunches. Like spend time with that person, have your team meet with them and interview them. Just make sure that there’s not something that we’re all missing. See how they interact with the other people too.
Tony (24:24):
Yeah, absolutely. You know, team building is, is something that a lot of people don’t talk about. And I think it’s I mean, I guess people do talk about it, but it’s really, it’s one of those things that’s, that’s not sexy, but it’s really important. You know, there’s a book called what’s it called the shoe, not the, how I think is, is what it is by Dan Sullivan. Basically what it comes down to is if you need something done in your organization, wherever it is, figure out who can do it or who can get you there, right? Like there used to be, you know, this thing, that’s like, you know, you need to go in and you need to figure it out and you need to grind. You need to dig in there and make, you know, certain things happen, which is, which is the case in some things. But when you’re wanting to really scale your business, you have to look at who it’s, who can get me there. And when you have a really good hiring system that that can fill your, who, it can really help exponentially grow your business. Just like you said, it’s like, you know, a good hire can cost you a lot of money, but a good hire could just make you a lot of money as well. So we can swing, you know, in one direction or the other based on who you hire. So you just really have to have have to have a good system. So what else do you want to share with our audience, Terry? We talked a lot about hiring and the systems behind that. What else can you share in your 20 years of being a, an entrepreneur and growing to the level that you have that you would say maybe are some good learning lessons from the past that you could share with our audience?
Terry (26:03):
I mean, the list, I mean, how much time do you have, right. You know what I mean? It’s like, there’s so many mistakes that I made that literally I could go back to, you know, 2000, 2002, when I got into real estate, I would have cut the curve down to almost nothing had I known now what I know, you know, had I known then what I know now, and a lot of it really just comes down to like three words, systems, processes, and people, and not trying to do everything yourself. Like I, used to always try to do every, Oh, nobody can do it better than I can do it. If I can’t. If, I can’t hire somebody to do what I can do, then why am I hiring it? Why am I gonna spend time recruiting all this other stuff?
Terry (26:44):
So I think the biggest thing is, is hiring, making sure that you have mentors, make sure you have coaches that help you cut the time down because like time, right. We can make more money. We can spend more money, we can do different things, but we can never get more time back. So how do we cut time? How do we duplicate time, how to recreate a time machine and it’s mentors what do you call it? Going to different events and, and masterminds, different things that help you level up in so many different ways. So it’s like whatever you are looking to do, find the person who’s doing it at a high level and try to connect with them, follow that person and and do what they’re doing. So you can cut that learning curve down. I’d be much further along in life. Had I done that early on? I didn’t learn about mentorship and all that until like 2012, I believe. Yeah. 2012. And I was like, man, if I could just really, I mean, if I could have done that in early 2000, I’d be in a whole different place that I, yeah,
Tony (27:49):
That’s interesting. You say that. Cause we got into real estate about the same time I got in, in 2001 and it wasn’t till about 2010 that I started hiring coaches and getting mentors and joining masterminds and stuff like that. So I, wish I would have gotten, I mean, if I would’ve gotten into high level masterminds and, and gotten mentorship and coaching in 2001, when I first got started, man, I, it, things would be exponentially different. Uso that’s a good, that’s a good nugget, you know, the who isn’t just hiring people, but it’s also surrounding yourself with the right people being in the right circle, asking the right questions to the right people and helping them get you there. So,uTerry has a course that he’s put together for,uhis hiring system. So we’ll put a link down below,uin the,uin the show notes. Uany last thoughts, Terry, you want to get to our, a gift to our audience before we jump off here?
Terry (28:46):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s you know, the other thing is like a lot of people I, that I talked to, it just a mindset, right? The mindset was the other piece. It’s like, you know, hire coaches and then change the mindset, be around the right people that are doing it because it’s all possible. There’s, nothing’s impossible. So it’s like, you know, when you think it’s impossible, you just go find it. Somebody else has done it it’s possible. So it’s, you know, just using the mindset to get, get yourself to that next place and position yourself to be the person that you want to be. And you can do many things that you want to do.
Tony (29:23):
Totally. Well, I appreciate your time, Terry. I didn’t mean to take you away from your vacation in Mexico. Terry’s been there. I can’t remember if he mentioned he’s been there. What five months now? Four or five, five months. That’s a lot of good time to disconnect and work on your business and have some fun. So thanks for taking time out and look forward to connecting again. And we’ll see you again soon, man.
Terry (29:45):
All right, man. Thanks. Take care.
Tony (29:46):
Bye man. Bye.