Supercharged! with Jordan Samuel Fleming
Supercharged! with Jordan Samuel Fleming
Season 4, Episode 6 - Building a land purchasing machine with Podio
In this superb episode we're joined by Matthew Bailey of Bailey Real Estate. They focus on buying and selling land and have built a Podio powerhouse to control their complex processes and communication needs.
This is a great episode to listen to someone who has been there and got the t-shirt on Podio growth and is continuing to push his system forwards.
We talk about how Matt has built in communication management into his system, how he's brought his team with him throughout his changes and how the flexibility of Podio really lets him continue to refine his business processes.
A must listen if you're in Real Estate, but also if you're just keen to learn more about how to bring a process-driven business into Podio and make it thrive!
Show Links:
Drop Matt a line at: https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/MBailey
Check out the awesome email integration with Podio
Try out smrtPhone for 30 Days
Watch this episode on YouTube
Welcome to Powered by Podio - Automation is everything. Supercharge your business with Podio. Get ready for another episode of supercharged with Jordan Samuel Fleming, your weekly dive into the awesome impact workflow and automation you can have on your business when it's powered by podio. Join us each week as we learn from the top podio partners in the world as we investigate system integrations and add ons and hear from real business owners who have implemented podio into their business. Now, join your host Jordan Samuel Fleming, CEO of Gamechangers for this week's episode.
Jordan Fleming:Hey, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of supercharged, I'm your host, Jordan, Samuel Fleming here to talk all about the power of workflow and automation, when your business is powered by podio. Now, this week, I am joined by Matt Bailey from Bailey real estate. And Matt is a really interesting case his business buys and sells land, not houses, but land. And because of that, it's very process driven businesses, a lot of steps that need to be done from due diligence to contacts to applications and forms that need to be filled in details to be checked, etc. And we talked a bit about how he developed his podio system, how he's brought a lot of that process into podio. And that journey of kind of building it, figuring it out, helping to refine the process, etc. And one of the things that we focus on is communication, because communication, of course, in most businesses, but particularly in real estate, when you're trying to communicate across sellers, buyers, and of course, the different departments that you may be interacting with, in terms of getting permissions, etc. Having proper communication fully integrated, is a really, really powerful thing. And we worked very closely with Mads team to bring both of course phone calls and text messages, but also emails into their system. And we talked a little about what that journey was like for both Matt and the team of some of the maybe the disruption that happened, the ways we had to adjust and tweak the process to get it right and working for them, but also about how the team was able to, you know, see the benefits and the payoffs of integrating that communication. And what it brings to them. It's really interesting episode, because we did dive into the way polio can really interact with you via processes, the way it can manage processes, the way can help guide teams into doing steps in the right way. And the way that by integrating communications properly, you can really streamline and have transparency and visibility all around it. It's great chat, Matt, and I get to catch up a little, we talk a bit about podio concepts, as well as getting into the sort of more intricate details around communication. And I think people will really be able to get a lot of knowledge from that journey in podio. And the way his system has developed over time, so let's dive right in. So yeah, but easy conversation, we'll start off by actually, I always like to start off by asking everybody how they found podio in the beginning. How'd you find it?
Matt Bailey:Yeah, so I found podio. You know, I was, you know, doing real estate investing, and I needed some sort of a CRM to keep everything intact. So, you know, the kind of real estate investing I do is similar to house wholesaling, where it's just highly transactional, and you're doing a lot of deals, and you need some way to keep tabs on everything. And you know, like a shared Google Sheet, or like an air table or something, it's just not going to cut it. So I tried a couple of different platforms before I found podio. And I really liked podio because it's super customizable. That's like, something that was really important to me, you know, I'm big on procedures and doing everything in a certain kind of way. And there are other, you know, real estate investing platforms, like, you know, that that use podio but they're, they weren't customizable for, like what I needed. So I just like the ability to set everything up. Exactly. So you know, I do land investing, we buy and sell, you know, parcels of vacant land. And it's not quite the same as all the house guys. So, you know, we needed more specific process and procedures, and I like that custom customization. And then when you combine that with globey flow, the, the process is you can create and the workflows are just really really, you know, beneficial, and you can leverage so much time savings through all that. You mean.
Jordan Fleming:You know, like I think that the the time The time saving elements of the workflow automation is something that I think people don't. I think they underestimate sometimes just how much grunt what I would classify as grunt work, you can have the system do. So give me a little sense about the types of ways of, you know, a workflow automation built on on Citrix. pw a, aka globey flow. Give me some examples of of those, and and how they're helping.
Matt Bailey:Yeah, so we, you know, like I said, we're highly transactional. So last month, we had, you know, 15 properties that were actually we had 21 properties coming in through acquisitions, and we had 15, and some level of dispositions are being sold or whatnot. So when you have that many properties going around, if you think, for instance, our transaction coordinator, her job is to try to get properties through the closing process, either buying or selling as efficiently as possible. So she gets a tonne of documents. You know, she's got to save preliminary title reports. And she's got to save settlement statements and all sorts of different things. So whenever those documents come in, she can hit a button that says, you know, preliminaries title report has been received, she hits that button, we put in the title that she should label that. So every single file gets the exact same title format. So it'll merge, you know, the sellers last name, their parcel number, our reference number, and then it'll tell her, you know, go ahead and save it. And, you know, if we want to save to, for instance, Google Drive, we put that hyperlink. So it's just a clickable, it says g drive, it's underlined, she can click it, it opens up in a new tab, she can save it there and close it, so she doesn't have to go. Okay, now, let me type in this title of reports, name is going to be title report, and what's the guy's last name, and what's the parcel number and all that kind of stuff. It's just, hey, copy, paste, and you're done. And you know, it. Also, you know, when those preliminary title reports come in, we'll double check that the taxes match what we've researched, when we, you know, we're doing our due diligence, so a little pull the information that we pulled from that due diligence application that we have, and it'll put it right in front of it. And we'll say, Hey, we're expecting to see $500 a year for taxes and $700 of delinquent taxes. And she looks at her title report, and it says there's $2,000 of delinquent taxes, she knows there's a disconnect, but she doesn't have to navigate away from her pain, she can just have it pop up in front of her, everything looks good Copy, Paste the name, save it, click done, you know, and that kind of stuff. Like, it seems so easy. Like, I'll just title it with the preliminary title report and the guy's name. But that stuff adds up when you're doing I mean, she's managing the add those two numbers up, you know, 35 transactions a month, either in or out. And you just, you can be so much more efficient, if you can just have that information placed in front of you than if you got to put it together. And it's your right people underestimate how much time savings that actually is, because it's like, what, it's two seconds, I'll just do it. Yeah, it's two seconds.
Jordan Fleming:It's the old adage of, you know, looking after the pennies in the, and the, well, in the UK, look, after the pennies, the pounds take care of themselves with the dollars, I guess it would be a morale one. But I mean, it's amazing how much little little incremental things add up, so that at the end of the month, you're you know, if you've saved 15 hours, at the end of the month, where you can do where you can execute other things, or, or whatever it is, that that is an enormous thing. And, and you're you're doing it by live TV, you know, it's not like you're, you know, saving 45 minutes each time on a task, you're saving those little bits of time, that just makes it not only make your day easier, but also makes the task flow easier for what you're doing. And I know in your system, you know, you are a very process oriented guy. And so you've sort of got a very linear type of structure to your podio what you know, where you've got such defined processes? how, you know, was it that ability to sort of map things out on a linear view as a pass through apps that really first got you hooked? Is that kind of how you came to it?
Matt Bailey:Yeah, so you know, I, I was able to kind of recognise pretty early on that this kind of highly transactional type of real estate investing, as opposed to maybe some people who were flippers you know, maybe doing one or two properties a month or a quarter or whatever. It's not quite as important to have so much process but with what I'm doing is you need to do volume if you're not doing like 510 more deals per month. Just kind of your your monthly recurring costs kind of eat up things. So, you know, when I was doing it, I started just needing process so that I could very quickly do my checklist and then be done. And make sure I didn't miss any steps and not be thinking like, Oh, just I'm not sure that I got everything. So I started really documenting my processes. And then once I realised, okay, this needs to be, you know, that higher volume, I need to get this outsource to people, you know, I, again, took those processes that I needed for myself, really tightened them up, and then I was able to hand that to somebody else. And when you want someone else to be doing those activities for you, you know, like, I trust my team to make good decisions. But at the same time, the more structure you can provide somebody, I think it helps them, right, if they're just sitting there doing I think this is how I'm supposed to do it, versus just being able to go back look at our procedure, or follow a process in podio. I think that that really helps helps people out. So that's kind of I think, if you're gonna start outsourcing things, the simpler you can make it for people the better. And through your procedures and through podio workflow, like you know, click this button, then click the following buttons, and then it's done. And they don't have to worry about whether or not they did it, right, because it prompted them with the checklist. That kind of stuff makes it really powerful, I think.
Jordan Fleming:Yeah. And I think, you know, it's interesting, just the thing that occurred to me, while you were talking about that is, is, you know, back in the day, I used to do a lot of work in franchising, and you know, a successful franchise, you know, and even one where the output of that franchise may seem like quite a high end thing, or, or whatever, right, like a food franchise where you go in, and it's not just a Burger King, or I don't mean disrespect to Burger King, or KFC, but you know, where it's a restaurant chain, you know, but the fact is that, that there's a process there that, that that that you can run to make sure that it looks the same, it acts the same, it tastes the same, the quality is the same. And you know, and this, and that, you know, when you do that, and you do that, well, you're giving people the blueprint for success, you're giving people the guided experience of how you can make this restaurant greatly successful by just following the steps. And when you know, with the type of business model you're in, I which I think is also the same for wholesaling. Although they're very parallel, for sure, possibly not as much due diligence done at the wholesale level. As, as I as I think I've gathered from your system, it's still that method of you know, if I give you this exact, you follow this every time, then we'll be able to get through this efficiently, quickly, we'll be able to maximise how much we can do make as much money as we can, and make sure that the quality of what our output is consistent. And that's, that's really an area where podio can chime.
Matt Bailey:For sure. And I think another thing that's really nice about having well defined procedures that people also overlook is through management. You know, if somebody follows a procedure, and we don't get the outcome we want, it's really nice just to be able to say, all right, there's the procedures fault, let's go update the procedure. Versus, you know, if they miss a step, you can say, Hey, can you double check out this procedure works, you know, and if it, if it doesn't have this step, go ahead and add it, and then they can go back to the procedure. And I think they'll recognise like, Oh, yeah, skip that step. You know, and there's like, a little bit less of like, Hey, you didn't do this, the way that the way that I thought you were going to do it. Because it's all pretty much outlined exactly how you're supposed to do it. And I think that a lot of people kind of, if you don't have those procedures, there's a lot of middle ground for, it wasn't done correctly. Whereas if stuff is really well defined, and if it's in podio, you know, for instance, we'll have like a Category field has basically just a checklist like, you know, do this, and 1234, and they click on each one of those when those are accomplished. And if you've clicked all those buttons, then you've, you know, checked the document thoroughly. And it's done. So I think, you know, when you add all that process, that accountability kind of takes care of itself. And that kind of like reframing of like how you want a job done, it just doesn't happen because you have that process, you have it built into your system.
Jordan Fleming:How do you balance? You know, I think though, the one danger area that I think is potentially possible with a system or what you're describing in podio is the potential to over engineer to, to restrictively engineer a process in podio, where you are either causing what you know that there's too much information that they have to navigate through and do all these things, or you're restricting their ability to actually go with the flow of, of reality because sometimes, sadly, you know, shit does happen the way the process says here, you know, we want it to happen, it just doesn't work like that. And you, you find yourself sometimes being restricted by a system that doesn't allow you to do X, Y, and Zed. I had this experience the other day where I was trying to verify something in the US, and they, they, they, they wouldn't let me swap the order of my verify the D IDs. And it was like, and the system just said, No, and they're like, and then and you had to stop and like the whole world grand was stopped for something so stupid. It wasn't even funny. How do you or how have you approached? How's how's your insight changed? How have you developed it over time? And the balance between the human the process, the sit, you know, this the podium architecture? How is that evolved as you've been doing this?
Matt Bailey:Yes, that's a really good, that's a really good question. Because I am super heavy on the process, I want everything documented, I want to know exactly how you're doing it. And then, you know, if you are following that process, I can then go back and look at that process and go, Oh, well, this should be a clicking on automation, and then I can save you time there. So like, the more detailed that my team can be in keeping those procedures up to date, the more effective I can be and making their lives easier and adding automation systematisation. That's not a word systemization. So, you know, I started with putting everything into a process, right. And the one area where I found it doesn't make a lot of sense to do that is for our acquisition managers, when people are talking to the sellers who call in and want to sell their property. Because that's, I mean, it's a live phone call, right? That call is going to go in one direction, you can't be like, No, no, no, you have to answer the last question I wanted you to answer. So what I've done is I think that I've tried to let our people know which fields have to be filled in, and why they have to be filled in. So there's certain fields that our acquisition managers really do need to get, because our transaction coordinator or the person doing due diligence, needs to, for instance, know, who are we talking to? And how are they related to the person trying to sell the property? Like, do they actually have the authority to sell the property? Are we talking to a gatekeeper? Are we talking to the right person? Do we need to go through probate or courts because somebody is deceased? So I let our acquisitions people know, look at these fields, you really do got to fill in. But for instance, on that acquisition, they fill out a little bit of a questionnaire before they call the people. And that's like, look up the property, you check out the typography, does it have access, these are like basic things that you need to know, just to sound educated, when you're talking to somebody on the phone about the property that they own, you know, you need to check these things. And for instance, if there's red flags, you need to bring that up. So that when you call me in to say, Okay, here's the seller, here's our situation, you know, what's our offer price gonna be? I don't want to have to be like, Well, did you ask them about the access issue? You know, that's part of their checklist is check the access. And if there's an issue, it'll prompt them to say, make sure, you know, so that they know, okay, I better talk about this access issue, so that I don't have to ask Matt for an offer price. And then he's gonna say, Well, you didn't finish the access part of the process. So go, call him back and get that question cleared up for me. So there's certain questions that they have to fill out. That will make sure that they don't miss things on the call, so that when they come to me, I have a full picture, I can just give them an answer, and we move on. But what I used to have is all of those questions they'd asked, but then sort of populate the scripts down below, like, here's all the questions you should ask and what you should say, to make sure that those things happened. And I have a, I have a coach who, you know, I was talking to, and I was like, frustrated, because these acquisitions managers, or, you know, maybe weren't selling in everything exactly how I wanted. And he's like, Man, you, you hired this person, because they're really good at talking to people on the phone, and like building that trust and having that kind of conversation, to get people, you know, interested in selling their property. He's like, you hired people, people, but you want them doing process. He's like, they're just those kinds of people. They're not hardwired like that. There's process people, there's, you know, people, people, there's decision making. So like, you know, when we hire, we use, you know, disc profiles and personality assessments. And quite literally the type of person you want, like a salesman type person is not the kind of person who does checklists, they go, they hunt, they get deals done, I get to the next on the
Unknown:opposite quadrant.
Matt Bailey:It's exactly in the opposite quadrant, right? I was like, Oh, my gosh, you're right. Like, I'm upset that the person who I hired because they're excellent at one thing is not excellent at the thing that they're supposed to not be excellent at. Right. So okay, so what I did is I backed off there, and I said, Okay, these are the fields that you need, because they linked to other fields in podio. And they're also really important for making sure that the deal gets done properly. You know, fill out your checklist before you call somebody, but all that other stuff, like, don't worry about, you know, so I think, I think it's important to know what is required and where you want to flag people and notify them in the process. And also, what really isn't important and kind of like, separate those two and so that's That's kind of been my path of like over putting too much processing, and then backing it off to saying, Okay, these are the ones that we need, because they loop back into the system. And they're the ones that make people's lives easier. So make sure those get done. These ones are optional to help you if you want to fill them in to remember things, but you don't need to do them. Well, no. And
Jordan Fleming:as you know, I think it's a good point about the sort of, you know, if you've got, if you've got someone who's really good salesperson and connects to people and can, and can develop a good rapport in that way, you also, you know, it's great, if you can close every deal on one call. That doesn't always happen. And it often usually doesn't, you know, that, you know, there's rapport building, there's all these things that don't fit into structured boxes. And, you know, I always think is, what is the outcome I'm really looking for here, like, you know, if the outcome I'm looking for is, first and foremost, let's make sure this person kit gets this person warm, like keeps the lead warm and happy and get it and get some so hold over, we can get the we can have a follow up call, or you can say, Great, I can't wait to move forward, I just need to get a few bits of details off you once you've established a relationship, what are the outcomes you want? And if you're slavish Li trying to tell people? No, no, you need to get here, you know, you need to use these steps to get this outcome. You're it's not always going to work, which is what you're describing.
Matt Bailey:Yeah, precisely. So what I'm trying to do with our system now, and it's always evolving, is I'm just trying to figure out what are the must haves? What exactly like do I need to what boxes need to be checked for me to, you know, purchase a property close on it feel good about whatever. And I'm making sure that those are put front and centre so that before we check off an item that is fully complete, we just have the summary that says, hey, do we fill all of these things that if we miss one, we might run into a problem. And then the rest of the stuff is kind of you know, beneficial and helpful. But I think kind of having that clear delineation of before this is done before we can send a wire to purchase a property, we need all of these boxes checked. But also that's the ticket.
Jordan Fleming:I also like I want to follow up with that bit as well as, as a sort of offshoot of that conversation. Because I know because I you know, obviously you and I know each other because we work together, we've. So I do know your system a little I'm not nearly as educated on it as other members of my team, but I know it a little you know, and I know that one of you know, to me, a great offshoot of what you've just described is great, you know, fill in these box because we need this information. But that's also an area where starting to better integrate your communication streams with people will make sure that information is trackable in a way that is easily accessible as well. And I you know that I of course have a vested interest in people in linking their phone systems into into podio. But also, of course, email and you know, the to me, communication streams being tracked within podio. It's just one other way of making sure that our boxes are checked, our information is readily available, it's efficient, because I can see the history, etc. Now, that's a process you're working through right now. How is that? You know, I mean, there's good, there's bad, there's other there's difficulties bit, there's frictional bits? How is how is that been approached? How's that been going? What have what have you been finding in terms of that? the good and the bad?
Matt Bailey:Yeah. So I think it's super important to be able to get that communications into podio. You know, like leaving podio, to go to Gmail to find an email, and then you got a different email, and you got to go find it. Okay, who's this supposed to belong to? Which application does it belong to which item in that application does it belong to, then you open it up, it's just there's a lot of back and forth between communication systems that used to exist that I think is now getting, you know, a lot more streamlined, it's just nice to like, open up an item, see where you're at, hit the Email button, shoot someone an email, and then that email is automatically uploaded to an activity log. So we do at least we do an activity log where you know, each email or each text or whatever communication kind of just strange through there, and it looks like you know, a Facebook feed or whatever, just have all of your different communications kind of integrated into one multi line text field. And that's been super helpful. I think that every time you know, something new clicks with communications for my team, they're, like really stoked about it. So you know, when we first started doing emails, I think the way that it was set up that you had, it wasn't exactly the same way that like my team uses emails. So we had a little pivot there and a couple of nuances, right because you're Do an email in podio. It's like Gmail is like super duper, you know, Ferrari of email stuff, right? So people are so used to it, it's got everything,
Jordan Fleming:but like really well podium as well. Like, it's not it's not the, you're either the there's going to be frictional change between whizzing around Gmail, and doing email and podio. There has to be.
Matt Bailey:Yeah. And, but, and it's like, okay, people are so used to Gmail, so used to following these habits for emails that they've used forever. When you get over into podio, it's like, Okay, you got to unlearn one or two things, because of how podio integrates together. But then once you once it clicks, I think everybody's really kicking a lot of butt right now. And it's just, it's really nice to have all of those emails and texts and everything just be in one place. You know, we're, we're trying to, it's one of those things where you got to like, rip the band aid off, you just got to dive full into email with podio. And then you figure it out, there's a little bit of a learning curve, and then, but now everything is so efficient, you know, it's like, all your emails are in the right place. I can like, check anybody's emails, like our transaction coordinator is, you know, she was out Thursday, Friday, and then Monday, and she'll be back late this evening. But I was able to just go into the email app, see her emails, one or two things were stuff that I could sign and get done, you know, that was time dependent stuff, everything else can wait for her. So I hit those items, and then we just keep rolling. So it's nice to have everybody kind of in one place. And, and as those emails come in, they automatically go to the right application. So if I, you know, I'm supposed to follow up on something, I can open up that thing, I can see Oh, well, an email came in, you know, and, and I can see it even though it wasn't sent to me, it's on that item. And I can see, okay, this is where we're at in the process. So I think, you know, integrating text call, email, it's one of those huge leverage points, and we can trigger those inbound emails or, you know, triggering other notifications for people, it's just really something else to be able to get them all in there.
Jordan Fleming:What's really pleasing to me about this, is it wasn't easy. I know that sounds dumb. But it you know, I think, you know, your story, there is a really instructive one, about not powering through, because that's not the right way to look at it. Like, it's not, it's not about just like putting your head down and powering through on something. But it is about understanding that a change of system is going to be friction to people. Any change of system, whether you're coming into podio from something else, or whether you're changing something as fundamental to our lives for the last 15 friggin years as email, right. Um, you know, I, and I know, and I watched you guys go through this. And I wondered whether you get at the other end of the, you know, on the other end, in the way that I hoped you would, because of course, I believe 100% in integrating these communication screens to podio I bill, I live it every day. But I also know it's not, it's not as easy as just being like, Oh, well, it's set up now. So therefore, everything's gonna be perfect. And everybody thinks that, you know, everything's gonna be roses, etc. But you guys fought through that, in a sense, and made tweaks, this isn't quite right, let's adjust it how we want great, because everybody's different. But you've come out with a way of integrating these communication screens, that's giving you the outcomes of transparency, visibility, of clean efficiency of linking things to the right things. And you've, you've approached it, you found a hurdle, you got around the hurdle, by adjusting the process in the right way, and adjusting the system that we'd set up, the way we do it, and it just didn't work quite right now it's setting up the way you do it. So I really love that because it shows that it's, it's it's not about powering through, but it is about understanding, we know the outcome is that we want this, how do we get how do we be flexible to find our way? And you guys had that experience? I think, particularly female?
Matt Bailey:Yeah, for sure. I think something that helps there is obviously like, huge shout out to my team, they, you know, trip through because they're, you know, for instance, our acquisition people they like depend on email and, you know, constant contact with people. So like, I think for them, they're trying to close deals, you know, their Commission's based, it's like, if I don't get this email, and I don't talk to this guy, maybe we lose that deal or something. Right. So it's really important to them. But at the same time, you know, I think that you, like I said, shout out to them for hanging in there through that kind of growth. It's one it's certainly one of those, like, one step back for 234 forward because it's so much better when it's done. But they had kind of seen that a little bit when we, you know, switched over to smartphone too, right. So we had an old phone system, it was working fine. Everybody knows how to use a VoIP system. And now I'm like, Okay, well, we're using a different At one, it's integrated here, you know, these calls are coming through. And you know, you work through that just a little bit. And now they're like, I love just being able to send a text in the comments bar, you know, and stuff like that. So, my team, I think that they have a lot of faith that when I tell them, Hey, this is going to be worth it this automation or whatever, they always see that reward eventually, right? So we'll, we'll change a process, and they'll be like, okay, you know, what's going on here, but then a month later, it's like, all ironed out. And they're like, yeah, this is great, it's so helpful. So I think that they kind of knew that, you know, me buying into, it was probably a sign that like, hey, when we do figure this thing out, it's gonna be, you know, a lifesaver. And I think that it has been just being able to integrate those communications, it's just so handy, you know,
Jordan Fleming:well, and I think, you know, community, you know, if you're in any sort of sales role, or, you know, your, if your business sells or supports, or as customers, or has constituents of any type where you're going to communicate with them, which, let's be honest, is every business I mean, unless you're, I don't know, selling things to androids, somehow, you know, the communication and understanding the history. And, and, and understanding the whole picture of communication with someone is, I think just so, so critical. And it's just, you know, and where you are siloed into a bunch of systems, like, I've got my phone system over here, I got my email over here, I've got my CRM here. And I if I remember to log that I made a call or take a note, great, but chances are, I don't, because I'm working so fast. When it's siloed. Like that, I think it is, it is just, it, it opens you up for just such bad relationship building capabilities. And by but if you get it right, where you can see it, and you can, you know, you see it as a problem. And then you can just look and see the whole communication stream of emails and texts and phone calls. And you can see the call notes. And you can see that, you know, and all that, it allows you a very clear and transparent view of the things that have happened. I see this sometimes on an acquisitions point of view, because I'll get people who say, Oh, you know, my guides are telling me that they're making so many phone calls, but they're not logged in smartphone, what's going on Jordan? And I'm like, when I log in a smartphone, they're not making those calls mate, or, or they're using their their cell phones or something. Because, you know, and suddenly that, you know, the guy suddenly sees the transparency that actually, so and so's only making 1010 calls a day. Hmm. Because I can see it, I can see the the the the execution. And I think that is, I think, to me, that's one of the most critical things.
Matt Bailey:Yeah, that's a good point there, being able to see that history is really helpful. So if I go into our acquisitions person, and they say, hey, Matt, how much can we offer for this property, and I'm missing just a little bit of information, I can go through and like, look at a couple texts, look at a couple emails, and maybe get that information without having to get that acquisitions person on the phone, or on, you know, instant message or something and say, Hey, what's going on? You know, you asked this question, I can just kind of see it, you know, the calls, obviously, they got a lot of their call notes, you can't see those, you know, we have, you know, recordings of certain calls, so we can go back and listen to those, but being able to see texts and emails and a little bit more of the context, without having to get other people involved to tell you that is pretty helpful. And one other thing that I kind of lost, my train of thought didn't round out that that last thought about going through, like the growing pains, is you guys have been super helpful and super patient. Because a lot of the a lot of the issues that you know, my team runs into might just be like, very specific, you know, podio things, right? Like, this is how automations work, it's maybe not quite fully intuitive. So that, like, if you do a particular action, it's going to behave in a certain kind of way, because you know, there's there's text tags in those emails that link them to the right things. So, you know, my team might be like, Hey, I would have expected this email to be uploaded. And then we can just say, Well, the reason it didn't happen is this. So you know, going through those growing pains, it's like, it's really nice, you guys have been super helpful and super patient. You know, we try not to use you guys as tech support. If we're like, Hey, we're not really sure what's going on, you know, I try to get to the bottom of it for the simple stuff. But nevertheless, you know, if we're having an issue, you know, we've just raised a ticket, you or Sandra, you know, chime in, and we get to the bottom of it and just kind of iterate on everything. So, you know, shout out to you guys for being super helpful and responsive and also patient with us because I'm sure some things are your like, it's like a very simple tech support thing that you guys are like, Well, of course that makes sense. Right? But, you know, for us on the other hand,
Jordan Fleming:I don't think like that, I think I'd say Shout out to Sandra, Andrew and Lenny and matching the team. Certainly I don't get any shout outs on that side of things, because they do such a great job. But I do, I think it does make an interesting, you know, I, without sounding self serving, I do think that sometimes people there is a benefit to getting involved, and having a resource that can sanity check. And that can, and that can give guidance on your podio development sometimes. And with a lot of people with somebody, it was simple systems, everybody, you know, you can learn it yourself, you can build a great, but when you start trying to scale something, there are a network of podio partners of which we're just one and people who really understand it. And I do think there are times when, you know, it just makes sense. Because you can then be like, hey, I want to try and achieve this. And and and and then know that there's a team out there that can go Okay, well, given we've done this 250 times, we actually think you should think about it like this, or Yeah, no problem, here's how it can be done. And it's a very, it can be a very fruitful partnership without being an overwhelming one, either. And there's lots of people out there. Let me ask, you know, obviously, you integrates email and, and phone calls and text messages and all that. Are there, you know, if you're What do you feel is the next kind of integration element that you're going to be exploring? What do you feel like you're missing right now? You know, in terms of your own system, you've obviously got good processes, you have good people, you've integrated your communications, where do you see now that you're here? Your next steps? Was your appetite taking? You think?
Matt Bailey:Yes, great question. So over the last couple months, we've we've really hired out all of our positions. So we've got four full time, you know, employees, and I've got, you know, one family member helping out to so that's really five different people who all have separate accountability. So now that we've really staffed everybody, and everybody's more or less trained up in their role, the next stages is implementing, you know, KPIs, and things like that. So if you've read, you know, the attractions a really good book for that type of stuff. I think that KPIs are the next thing that we need to do. Everybody right now has a general understanding of what their job is, why they're doing it, and like how they can help improve, right, it's generally we're trying to close deals more quickly, decrease our due diligence time, decrease our time doing trends, you know, being in escrow on properties. So, I think that, you know, we've already started to do this a little bit is talking about KPIs and tracking, we have our aggregator app, which is like our CEO, 20,000 foot view, like, Where am I needed? Where are things falling behind. So integrating all of those those types of flags that get raised, you know, if we're expecting something to happen in the transaction process, and it hasn't happened by a week, to have a flag raise for our transactions person that says, hey, you should, you know, reach out to this escrow agent, because she should have given you a document by now. So let's kind of hold their feet to the fire a little bit. But then just in general, for each role, it's important to have KPIs where you can track people and let them know, hey, you're, you're hitting your numbers here, or this has taken too long. It also helps as an owner, just to know, you know, where we can make improvements. You know, I'm never looking to point blame for these KPIs, it's more of an indication that things are going a little bit off the tracks or balls are getting dropped. And then I see it as an opportunity for improvement, you know, where can we create a flag that lets somebody know, hey, you know, this is too many days past due, you know, I just want them to have that flag on their dashboard. I don't want to come in and be like, hey, you missed it again. Right. So those kind of KPIs and overall view is really the next stage. So that just for everyone else to have their own accountability, they can look at their dashboard and see where their KPIs are getting dropped, that maybe suggest edits for themselves, but would make that not happen for them.
Jordan Fleming:I'd be interested in your, your, your, your thoughts on this, because I am, you know, I, I view KPIs in the same way I view process implementation in podio. In that, it is very easy to go too far. And be restrictive. And be or be, you know, like, be that micro it's not even, it's not about being micromanager. It's what is valuable data versus what's just fucking data. And like, like, you know, like, great. I know that we're, you know, great. We're 1.8% down as of yesterday. What are we talking about here? And I think, you know, KPIs is something that everybody talks about. And everybody it's like, it's like a thing that, you know, it's like, God, I gotta measure our KPIs. And I agree with that, by the way, I'm not against that. I agree with that. But I also always fight feel like there has to be an understanding of, of what what are, you know, what are company KPIs that matter? What are personal KPIs that matter, ie, what our company goal KPIs that really give us understanding, and insight, and then what our role or personnel KPIs, to make sure that we are that that person is performing to the ability that they can, or identifying weak points, identifying places for more training, etc. but but there is a balance there, because you can go really silly very quickly. What, how do you feel like where do you come in on that? Because it's, it's an area that I do feel there's people run business owners run a lot of times, way too far to the, to the right, so to speak. And, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna measure everything. And I think there's a balance, what are your thoughts on that?
Matt Bailey:So when you started, you know, explaining that I was ready to reply, and then I don't think I could do a better job than you did where there is the two, right, like you explain that, well, if people are unsure, they should rewind and listen to that, again, there are the KPIs that tell the business, what is the business's health? What does that look like? Those are I think, the really important KPIs, then there's the management KPIs, right. So we would expect that, you know, if we get a new seller lead, I would expect that our acquisitions, people reply to that person within 24 hours, or 24, you know, one business day, whatever. Same thing with transactions, right, we might be able to tell our transaction coordinator, we want all of our deals closed within 30 days, if they go over 30 days, you know, we might review those, but then it's easy to say, well, it's not your fault that this seller needs to go through probate. So there's like, there's certain KPIs. So that transaction coordinator might be able to track the average time it takes to close a deal that doesn't have any issues. And then like that can be a number that she can reference to say, look, you know, when when I started, it took us 35 days to close deals now, on average takes us 30 or something. So I think that, you know, what I'm kind of looking to do is those kind of personnel, KPIs, like those I can use to make sure that people are getting things done as they're supposed to be getting done. At the same time, before I ever have to micromanage them, I think it makes sense for like them to have like a buffer day or a buffer two days, or something where it's now a flag on their dashboard that says this thing has officially gone, you know, too long, you should follow up on it or something like that, where if it goes for like three days, and something still hasn't happened, they haven't taken action on it. That seems to be to me something like where a manager should get involved and say, hey, it's been three days past when we expected this photographer to tell us that he's finished his photos, and you haven't followed up with them. So now we don't know if he's even done photos yet, like those kinds of things could be helpful to make sure that we don't start, you know, taking too long on our due diligence before, you know, we're ready to go to title or things like that. So yeah, I think that you need your KPIs like, how much direct mail are we sending? What's our response rate? What's our average, you know, deal numbers looking like, especially those leading KPIs like the marketing dollar that has to be spent. That's, that's something that needs to be managed. And then there's the management KPIs, where it's, hey, are these people following up, you know, if we have an acquisition manager, and they're not calling people back within a day, that's something that we need to start talking about. So that's, I think I really explained the two types. But I, you're right, I want to have a buffer day there, where it pops up on their dashboard, like, Hey, you probably should have hit this already. And then they can go address it. And if they don't address it, then then we have like a management type issue where we should come in and say, Hey, what's going on with your dashboard? You know, this was a flag for you yesterday, and it didn't get hit. How can we make this more evident to you? You know, did you just not see it? Or is there something more that that we're having an issue with?
Jordan Fleming:And I wonder, I wonder, just to follow up on that. And, you know, I've had these kind of deeper conversations around this before, because it's an area that I'm concerned with, like it's an area that I think, weirdly a lot about, about the you know, the differences between flags and KPI, right. One is a notification that you need to do something. The other is an understanding of how performance has been over a historical period of time, which should give you insight into what to expect or what to change. And I wonder if sometimes KPIs aren't used enough at the personal level, ie like your acquisitions or whatever, to inform gaps or problems in the process. They will, I think we we often and I'm not, by the way, I'm not pointing my finger at you here. But I think as a general rule, a lot of people use KPIs as the stick to beat or the, or the, you know, the it's sort of the, oh, great, you're you're ahead of your, you know, you're in the green, oh, man, that's clearly everything's great. And like it or you're in the red, you're clearly an idiot. And sometimes, I think KPIs, which should give you a historic view of the balance, are great opportunities for your team to use them to tell you where things aren't also writing a process that says, because, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's very easy sometimes to apply a KPI and say, well, you're not meeting those KPIs. And actually, what sometimes is, is that the process is not promoting, is not going to allow them to do that in a way that's going to be efficient. And there's a balancing there. To me that that is a really interesting one. And it, isn't it, there's no broad brush, there's no one size fits all, every business is going to have to kind of figure that out a bit. But it's fascinating one.
Matt Bailey:Yeah, for sure. And I think that's that kind of links all the way back to what I had mentioned earlier, where, when things aren't getting done, I like to point to the process first. Because I think if you go to your, if you go to your employee with the mindset of this KPI wasn't hit, this wasn't done, you know what's wrong? And then you find out? Well, it's because the lead that they're not getting back to within a day isn't a different application, we should probably put that in the one that they look at every single day, you kind of look like a jerk. So I always, I always come from just like a place of curiosity as like, why it's not why didn't you do this? It's why, you know, I'm curious what was going, you know, what were you looking at that led to this type of thing? Or let's go, Hey, can you check the procedure, and then that always comes back with a point of learning. And, and nobody's feelings get hurt, and everything, like the process gets better. So I just think is just general management practices, you got to come from a place of curiosity, and presume, from the start that it's a systemic problem and not a personnel problem, because we hire people. Because, you know, we know a lot about them through our, like I said, personality tests and just profiles on stuff. The type of people we hire are the type of people that fit our culture, and they work hard, and they want to, and they want to do well. So you know, everybody's doing their job to the best of their understanding. And if it's not getting done correctly, perhaps I didn't frame it correctly in the first place. And they are just, they think that they they executed it properly. So it's not that they're negligent,
Jordan Fleming:bad. Yeah, it is, there's a disconnect there, that that's what we're trying to find,
Matt Bailey:yeah, we're not trying to put blame on people, we're not trying to, to, you know, say you did this wrong, it's, our process clearly isn't good enough. Like, that's the first place that we go to, let's improve that clarity, let's add some help text, let's, you know, put this in front of your eyes more evidently, through colour or a podio app dashboard or something. And then we'll stop that from happening again, and it's those course corrects. And I think approaching your, your errors and problems like that, that staff is gonna particularly respond well to, and like, nobody's feelings get hurt. And, more importantly, the process gets improved, and then that problem doesn't happen again. So I am totally with you on that.
Jordan Fleming:Well, and you to bring it all back full circle to podio. And how podio is helping your business, you know, when we when we think of this whole conversation around, you know, your business model being a very sort of transactional volume based one, process based one. But also people based one where, you know, communication streams and process needs to be followed and giving people guide marks and roadmaps and also making sure that the right information is collected. All of this comes together to show where podio has been a really good fit for you. Because, you know, I can't think of any other system where all of these different vectors we've just been talking about can happen in the way you want them to happen. I can't I can't think of it and I, I know I'm a bit of a podio cheerleader. I'm also a critic at times when I get pissed off about performance and all that. But when it all comes down to it, listen to everything we've just talked about today, and all these different points. There is yet there's just nothing that can do these things in the same way. Like
Matt Bailey:100% I think If you if you go back and you listen to this package, just think about how many times like, we've just made a minor tweak, we've added a button, we've changed a colour, like we've added a hyperlink text, you know, like I said, you can we can customise the help text that pops up on a field, I can add a little help button underneath it that they could click on, which will put a hyperlink into the comments section, which takes them to a Google doc or a procedure. So that kind of that's level of customization. It just doesn't, I don't think it exists anywhere else. And
Jordan Fleming:that's summarization, you know, twinned with automation, and that's the present is that is the knockout fucking punch, is I can drop a new button on with a colour on it, and then I can go over to globey flow. And I can go now this button, does these 15 things? And, you know, and you I mean, your system, you have done a great, I mean, yes, there's no question that my team is obviously helping working with you right now. And, and we do a lot in your system, and all and all that, but you also did a lot of stuff. And you were able to get it to a very mature point. yourself without, you know, you by just figuring it out. And I think that's also something people should take away from this is that, you know, well, I said earlier, you know, it's there's benefit to working with people external. And I think there is, it's also great to know that you're able to take the system to a very high level, and that it's running your business on your own.
Matt Bailey:Yeah, I think that that's been super helpful. You know, I did a lot for four years before I came to you guys. And, and, well, yeah, thank you. And so I mean, I don't have huge software development experience. I mean, I was aerospace engineer. So like, I, my, my coding is like MATLAB and like, things like that, where it's like, it's very light coding, but like, I understand coding logic, if then statements and how things generally should work and the structure of defining, you know, variables and stuff. So I'm far from a software developer, but you know, globey flow or Citrix pw a, that, you know, is very point and click. So, like, you can do a lot from that. And this past year, as I'm hiring, and I'm training, I've, you know, when Christmas came around, and you guys were like, Hey, you can buy, you know, a billion hours of software support, whatever I was, like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm making the conscious decision to, you know, write a check and say, you know, you guys, here's, you know, 200 hours or I forget how many hours I paid, or a pre purchased. Because even though I can do a lot of this stuff myself, and I suggest that people do start that way is how to add things yourself, understand how it works, because there's a lot of simple stuff that I just don't need to bug you guys for, like, I need to add a button and add that button creates a comment and a hyperlink, like, you want to just know how to do that simple stuff. But you also want to know, when you might be met, when I might be messing up your stuff. But, you know, at this point of my career, it's like, yeah, I can do a lot of that development stuff. There's a lot that I can't do. And you guys do that hire and stuff super well. But it's nice just to be able to, you know, do the little things myself. And then when I'm like, you know, it'd be really cool. If x, y, z could happen, but I have no idea if that's even possible. And I just write a ticket. I'm like, hey, wouldn't it because you guys like to structure something like this? And you're just like, yeah, we could do that. And then you guys do a really cool, really cool flow and, and everything works. So yeah, being able to do the small stuff yourself, I think is really important. And then it's at a certain point, you have to know when it's important to hand it off to someone else, because you know, my time is better spent improving a process or training an employee than it is doing software development. So there's, there's a trade off there. But I think people really do need to just get in there and tinker around. If someone's looking to start in podio. It's just get there. Put all the fields in the right location that you want start messing around with. Look, it's
Jordan Fleming:a new video, you see exactly you listen to a podcast, like supercharged with Jordan Fleming. No, I but I think your your point, you know, I think the point is really valid. I think everybody should be educated enough. Even if they're engaging a company like ours, I think you should be educated enough to understand a what we're doing even if you can't do it, because the dirty secret is, I can't do it either. I don't know. Fucking half the things my Sandrine magic and Lenny and Andrew do I'm just like, Oh, looks great. But but but I'm educated enough, right? Like I started out in doing it, and as yourself, but we all have to decide where our time is best spent. And the question is, are you a real estate company that's meant to make money? Or are you a podio? FinTech? Are you a podio guy, and there's a balance there, but I do think it's critical that people have a base understanding of what's going on and this is them. And I really think people should just get in there and start, you know, get in there and give it a shot. And then once you've built the first version, and it's interesting, but not as good as you want, then you can think about it.
Matt Bailey:Yeah, and it's through that beginning, you know, doing it yourself and writing a little bit of the pw a stuff and some of those flows. Once you've done that, you can then start to speak your language. So like when I asked for a support ticket, you know, I can use every single word that's correct to say, I want when this application has this item, and this field and this multi line text field, you know, I can use all of the right words. And then I know that you know, Sandra, and those folks are, they're just going to get it done. versus if I'm just like, hey, when this button happens, I just want to happen. tell you that, I don't know what's going. But so like, when and same thing, when Sandra comes back, and she shows you the back end that she's done. She was like, Hey, I created this flow. It does these kinds of things. I can recognise that, you know, when I click a certain button, something's going to happen. And I understand why it's happening. I think without that understanding of the why I think you could be setting yourself up for a lot of frustration, because you don't have the foundational understanding of, you know, when things are happening, this is why they're happening, or logically, they might be happening because of these triggers changing. So getting in there understanding it yourself, I think goes a long way, even when you're not doing it yourself anymore.
Jordan Fleming:I 100 agree. Listen, Matt, I've kept you even longer than I think I originally promised you. And I really appreciate it. It's been a fact. I mean, I always enjoyed speaking with you. And it's been fascinating to get your insight. Just to round this off. Can you just make sure you tell everybody, you know, obviously you're in real estate, you buy and sell land, just give a little shout out about your websites, or where people can find you what markets you're in if case people are listening, and they're looking for opportunities.
Matt Bailey:Yeah, so I think, you know, at this point, you know, we we try to stay really focused and avoid what you know, is commonly referred to as like shiny object syndrome, like doing things outside of your core competency. So, you know, as far as opportunities and things like that go, I think that we almost prefer just to completely control our marketing by sending direct mail to the markets that we completely understand. But what I think, you know, could be good is just networking with other people who are building businesses, and who are building systems and teams and like, that's what's next for me. So if anybody wants to get ahold of me, you know, I'm on bigger pockets as a real estate forum, I think that would be a great place just to reach out, have a conversation, I'm looking for people who are building scaling companies to kind of have some, you know, conversations with and develop and grow like that. So I'll go ahead and I'll email you, you know, my bigger profit, bigger pockets, you know, profile ID, you can put that in the show notes. And then people will, they can just find me there. I think that's just the easiest thing. And, you know, happy to happy to talk to people. You know, I think that everybody gets further together. So those kinds of conversations are always interesting to me. And I think that's probably just going to be the best for us is, let's just get in contact, the people who are listening to this are going to be, you know, the types of folks that are similar to me in mindset right there. They're building their systems, they're, you know, taking it seriously versus, you know, just kind of the one man show type things potentially. So, yeah, I'll go ahead and I'll get you that and then happy to chat with anybody.
Jordan Fleming:Absolutely. Well, listen, Matt, thank you so much, and everyone listening, please remember to like, share, and give us a review on all these different you know, iTunes, etc, etc. It really does help spread the word out. And, Matt, it's your pleasure. As always, thank you so much, and have a fantastic week.
Matt Bailey:Thanks for having me. I'll talk to you later.
Narrator:You've been listening to supercharged with Jordan Samuel Fleming. Subscribe today on iTunes, Google Play, or Spotify for your weekly dive into how you can supercharge your business by making it powered by podio. Be sure to check out our website we are game changers.com where you can learn more and arrange a 30 minute call with Jordan daleview understand how podio supercharges you
