Let’s face it! Outsourcing has had a bad rap across all industries. So how do the top 1% of real estate agents strategically use Outsourcing to grow their business?
My guests are Daniel Lee, Director at Plum Property (and one of the funniest agents on social media), and Kevin Dearlove, Director at Stone Beecroft.
They will share their firsthand experiences of how they used outsourcing to scale their businesses and helped them achieve unprecedented growth and profitability.
Gain practical insights and actionable tips on how to:
This webinar is sponsored by Wingman
Let’s face it! Outsourcing has had a bad rap across all industries. So how do the top 1% of real estate agents strategically use Outsourcing to grow their business?
My guests are Daniel Lee, Director at Plum Property (and one of the funniest agents on social media), and Kevin Dearlove, Director at Stone Beecroft.
They will share their firsthand experiences of how they used outsourcing to scale their businesses and helped them achieve unprecedented growth and profitability.
Gain practical insights and actionable tips on how to:
This webinar is sponsored by Wingman
And I am excited today because I've always said it the pilot doesn't serve drinks on the plane. They can if they want. I'm sure they've got the ability to do it but they know that there's a more important job to get done and for that pilot it's to get the plane from A to B safely. And in real estate, the pilot is the Lister, the negotiator, the dealmaker, the person that is actually doing the $100, $200, a $1,000 an hour job, and that they have a flight attendant. Well, not a flight attendant, but today you're going to hear about the remote professional. The remote professional that's going to help you 2X may be 3X your income because all of a sudden, you're doing the right actions, not the easy actions. You're doing the things that either get you a listing, help you make a sale and building a personal brand.
Tom Panos:And with me today we have got the owners of Wingman, both Jonathan and Nick, and we've also got Daniel Lee, who is a client of that business, and many of you know him because you know how I feel about his videos the ability to actually laugh at our industry but, at the same time, be valuable. You nail it there, daniel. And in addition to that, kevin D'Lubb, who is one of you those of you that are watching every day. He's listing and selling and he's going to talk about his experience on dealing with a remote professional, but let's bring him in Firstly. Jonathan and Nick, good to see you.
Jonathan Bell :Thank you, I had last night.
Tom Panos:Yep, you were there last night at the REB. You guys are throwing yourself in everything in the industry. You're on everything at the moment, every event. You're on Zoom, you're on webinars, because you're making an impact and I think I'm really proud to have a relationship with you guys because you have come up and solved a problem. You are a panadol in our industry and we're going to talk a little bit about it. And also, daniel man, I'm watching from afar. You're doing great stuff. You're building an incredible brand and business and, just for the audience, tell them who you are, what you do, just in case they're not aware of you. Yeah, sure.
Daniel Lee :Thanks for the intro, tom. Everyone, my name is Daniel Lee. Started in sales in 2007 as a sales associate for about a year and a half when I was young, 22 at the time Graduated to sales agent, worked at that LJ Hooker business for about almost 10 years. Was pretty successful there, ended up leaving and starting my own business in 2016. I've been growing that for almost eight years. That's become pretty successful. That's Plum Property in Brisbane. And now I've got a third business which is Plum Partners, which we help agents to take that next step and progression in their career in starting their own brand and business and we run their back end. So similar concept to Urban X, except where 10 times better.
Tom Panos:Well, there you go. That's what I like about Daniel. He's straight to the point. He doesn't use Amway language. He doesn't. There's no cryptic dialogue. It's, this is what it is. We're good. They're not as good. I get it, alrighty, thank you. And, by the way, everyone follow the great man, daniel on social media. You'll get a laugh, but I actually think you'll get some ideas. I think you actually get some ideas that might actually help you have this unique, authentic approach to social media and videos. And then, kevin, how are you, kevin? Very well, tom, thank you, good to see you. So, kevin, tell everyone about who you are, what you do. So they've got a background on you.
Kevin Dearlove:Yeah, thanks, tom. Pretty similar journey to Dan, actually. So this is my 21st year. Started as a university freshman. As an associate, I was in my graph for 10 years, which was a great learning pad, and broke away and opened up stone businesses in B croft and then subsequently cast a kill and epi in 2017. So very similar sort of pathway. Look, we're on the selling principle. I'm on the ground. As you see it, I'm listening to selling every day, as well as managing the team, and we're about 50 to 60 staff now, and a really solid group of humans.
Kevin Dearlove:So, yeah, looking forward to adding some value to you.
Tom Panos:And Kevin, can I just confirm you are a selling principle. You run your own BU, but you're also the principle of the office. But I would assume that most of your time is spent. Is it listing and selling, and is that more than half?
Kevin Dearlove:the time, yeah, half the time, and no question. So the listing is selling on the ground, so very active in that selling role. So what I love to do, and then pretty managing the sales agents my wife and the leadership group manage operations side as well as the PM side.
Tom Panos:Alright. So, jonathan and Nick, since our first video that we had, I noticed a number of clients who became aware of you have started telling me that they've you know, they're in the process and they've joined up and they're all really, really excited because often they had a view that they were in. They were stuck. They were stuck. I'll tell you why they were stuck because they agree 100% that they should not have been sitting around mucking around doing database work and doing admin base work, but, on the same token, someone need to get it done and often they just couldn't process the concept.
Tom Panos:I'm going to spend $75,000, $85,000 on someone that's going to help me, but often they were only making just a little bit more than that themselves, so it wasn't really an option. So often they would find themselves in a stuck state and that people would ring me and say, tom, I just feel like man, I'm at capacity and I can't do more than two, three sales a month because I'm already stretched and wingman has addressed that issue. So can I just ask you both are both these gentlemen, both Kevin and Daniel? Are they clients of yours? What's the relationship? Yeah, help us understand what's your relationship with them.
Jonathan Bell :Yeah, well, I actually so. When I was 17, I saw a job advertisement up for Plum Property that I was going to apply for, so I always looked up to Dan Lee. He's quite well known in Queensland and builds a really good reputation, so that's how I knew Dan from years ago. We've been working with Dan Lee for over 12 months now. He's got 13 of our remote professionals in his business and become good friends. And then Kevin Dealove I met about 18 months ago at a conference and we got along really well. He actually came into our business in Brisbane and got to know what we do, and then I went to his business as well and we built a good relationship and he's got a few of our remote professionals in his business as well. So both clients and good friends now as well.
Tom Panos:Okay, and that's what I like about this session, because when you speak to the company, they'll always tell you what they'd like you to hear. But I think you guys are different. I think you I mean, I've known you enough over the last, say, four or five months to know that you generally want to make a dollar, but you actually want to deliver more value than what someone is paying because you want to do a long-term, sustainable model. So, to kick it all off, I want to ask I'm going to spend the next 15 minutes maybe talking and you can chime in Nick and Jonathan but I want to talk to the guys that are actually using these remote professionals. By the way, that's the term we're using remote professionals. We're not calling them, you know, assistance PAs remote professionals, because they are professionals. These are not people getting their first job A lot of the times and you might want to confirm this to me, jonathan is they're highly credentialed people with undergraduate, with university at undergraduate level completed. Is that right?
Jonathan Bell :Yeah, every single person we hire has a university degree or some sort of certificate in what they do and arguably have the qualifications that a lot of Australians don't have. And you know, one of our staff members is a solicitor and actually doing data work for us and has a degree in law. A lot of them do accounting as well, so very educated people.
Tom Panos:Okay. So, daniel, tell me the sort of work these remote professionals are doing for you. What are the activities they do?
Daniel Lee :Yeah, sure. So first of all, I've been with Wingman for almost two years, johnny, so get that right for now. So I was a salesperson for many years. I hung up the boots a couple of years ago when I was able to take a step back from being full-time selling principal, but for many years I ran the business and I sold at the same time. So I had a team of three four, you know with associates and marketing assistant on my team, but we also had a remote professional on the team while I was a sales agent. So I developed a process whereby every single listing and sale that I got, we would do certain prospecting tasks.
Daniel Lee :This is nothing any agent hasn't heard before, but all of those time-consuming preparation tasks around prospecting that usually an associate or someone else in the team would do, and they would waste their entire day doing, instead of actually doing, calls and actual activities that bring business in, we would get outsourced to a remote professional. So things such as like as soon as we listed a property, we would find the hundred closest properties most similar surrounding that property, get a list of them using RP data and various sources. The remote professional would do a data search for all of those owners phone numbers, emails. They would deliver that in an email to the associates. Here are the hundred closest properties, most similar, so we're not bothering a five bedroom homeowner about a two bedroom unit we've just listed. We would always target specific properties that were very similar that would be most likely interested in our information, and so that took away that preparation of having to find numbers and waste four hours of someone's time doing searches and things like that, so that the associates and myself could just get on the phones. They would then prepare a templated email about that listing, which would be all company branded and would be sent to all of the email addresses. They would prepare a templated text that would be sent by text to all of those owners that we could get mobiles for, and then they would prepare a letter templated on letterhead that would be sent to us and they would use the CRM just to prepare those letters and send that in a PDF and there'd be, you know, could be every address, residential address that we had for all those owners and those would be printed and sent in the mail. So we were hitting every owner that had a similar property when we listed something. Every owner that had a similar property. We get a text, an email, a letter in the mail and potentially a phone call from us as well, hitting them from every single angle.
Daniel Lee :And so using the remote professional took out all of that preparation time of having to do all of that stuff, which if someone in our office was doing it, it would cost us, you know, as a team, 80 grand to pay that person to it and plus that person would probably hate their job because, you know, australians are very picky about what they do, whereas the remote professionals are very happy to sit there all day and do what we think are quite mundane tasks, but for them it's a really, really good job. They really appreciate it and they're very focused and efficient at that kind of thing. So that's how we really use them as a sales person and then inside my business. Now I've got other sales people in the business doing similar things, and some sales people have different tasks that they get them to do. Some of them use them for CMA creation, you know, preparing market reports, preparing templated emails for the month to go out to their whole database.
Daniel Lee :There really is a whole range of things you can use a remote professional for, and so what I've done in my business now is with a lot of roles in the business. We look at someone's role and if we see all of the tasks that they do, anything that done from someone working from home that does not require a physical interaction with someone ie an inspection somewhere like it requires a physical body to go there and anything that doesn't require one-on-one communication with a client Any other job in my mind can be done by a remote professional. So that's how I sort of see it and over time I've just found little parts of my business where I can go. Well, does someone here in our office need to be doing that, or can we teach someone overseas to do that and maybe we just check the final approval before it goes out? You know.
Tom Panos:Daniel, you, you, you raise a very good point because we all know, particularly in the first half of your real estate career, when you're not an attraction agent, you do need to be reaching out and prospecting and essentially getting the attention of people that both you know and may not know. We call a prospecting and one of the problems, Daniel, is that, like a real estate agent goes to a conference and hears, go do 20 phone calls every day and then they sit down, they sit down and they sit in front of the computer and they say who do I call, what do I say? And before you know it, this phone prospering session that you visualized was going to be I'm on the phone, talking to people ends up becoming this ad hoc admin creator list as I go type thing, and what you're saying is that one of the core duties is that they're providing you I priority lists of people provided for you so you can get straight into what I call the golden hours. The golden hours is when you make your calls. The platinum hours is when you're doing your preparation to work out who you're calling and what we're saying is the remote professional can do that and a hell of a lot of other things, including what you just said, the text messaging templates and what have you.
Tom Panos:I'm going to raise this to you, Kevin. What about yourself? What are they doing for you in your business and maybe in your EBU?
Nick Georges:OK, Tom we're pretty integrated.
Kevin Dearlove:So when we met John, I think that their business was quite advanced. So we are deeply integrated at the moment. So our front office manager, our reception for our entire group is a remote professional. So we have Ivory. She's an absolute star.
Kevin Dearlove:Look, dan actually touched on it when he said the word teach and that's probably the one point that I would raise is you get a remote professional. It's literally what you put into them. You get out of them like any staff member or any team member, I think. Base here You've got to spend the time to work with them and train them how you want them to work within your team and then there's a natural skill up and level up over a certain time. So our first point of reference in our business is Ivory and she's based overseas. You never know us with the technology we have available and she's beautifully well spoken. She can handle, she's trained now to handle a lot of those phone calls at first instance, rather than just delegating that to the PM team or the sales team. So she is heavily integrated with us. That's the first step and that's a big step. That's a big step for a business to take, especially when you've got a core center type of experience, like maybe Optus or what have you, where it's all based overseas and that can be a terrible experience. So we were very conscious and wary of that as a business. So that was a huge tick box and that kind of led the way flowing on from there.
Kevin Dearlove:We've got remote professionals in EBU's, just as Dan mentioned very similar task driven, data driven, template driven, but the data is probably key there. I'm a big fan of that. The huge part of that role, which I imagine John Owen and Nick will talk about, is the integration through the PM team and we talk about profitability, we talk about return on investment and what we are now finding is that great property managers based in Australia are gold and they're hard to come by. So when I went and saw John Owen's business in Brisbane, what I basically saw that Tom, to put it in sales terms was an EBU structure around a lead PM and that was mind blowing.
Kevin Dearlove:That was to our light bulb moment he talked about that moment. It's like that is A grade, it's profitable, and these guys were managing numbers of properties that most principals or directors would dream of having and the start members that we met certainly were stressed out of their minds and hating their job. This was a team based PM structure. That, for me, was a game changer, and now we have now we are now all systems go down that path, and so we have got a remote professionals backing up and assisting our lead PMs, who we can now pay more. Let's get to the nuts and bolts of it and the return on investment and scale of yield is far, far better.
Nick Georges:That's not even touching on the.
Kevin Dearlove:BEM side, which I'm sure the guys will lead into Okay, that's gold.
Tom Panos:A few of the you know, the deep dive type questions people I know would be asked right now as they're thinking, and obviously one of them is the hours that these remote professionals work and the sort of investment. You can chime in, Jonathan and Nick, if you want to chime in. But you know I want to ask the guys like what hours are Daniel, are they putting in? What time do they start? I think there's a time difference in the Philippines of either three hours or four hours or thereabouts, depends on whether it's daylight saving.
Tom Panos:And, by the way, everyone I'm so excited because Jonathan has told me we're going to be hitting off to the Philippines to see things with our own eyes in September and I can tell you, apart from it helping you commercially, mentally and spiritually, being able to go to a total different place and see how what people have to live with helps you come back and just say to yourself man, we've won the birth lottery big time. And I can tell you, a happy agent is always a successful agent. Not a successful agent becomes a happy agent. And yeah, so, daniel, what hours do they work Like? Yeah, what's your investment per remote professional?
Daniel Lee :Yeah, they work full time, so it's 38 hours roughly and yeah, there's a little time difference, but it's not bad. It's two hours, two or three line with your business. So if you need the business time they can do that. We're really flexible with ours. We treat them like employees, like they're on the ground here. They're part of our family. They've got families, they've got kids, they've got school drop-offs. We let them work around that sort of stuff.
Tom Panos:How do you communicate it, Daniel? Do you use Zoom or do you use an iMessage? What's your main way that you're talking to people?
Daniel Lee :Yeah, so Zoom or Microsoft Teams really easy. We even give them an email address for our business. We treat them, we give them the same resources, really, that our own employees here have. They are an employee to us, we work around them. We've got ones that they'll take from two to three-thirty off because they go pick up their kids and then they'll work a little later in the evening. But there will be a remote professional out there that will suit your business hours, so you just need to talk to the team about it.
Nick Georges:The business hours is a really big point of difference for us. So one of the big things for anyone on the call who's been to Manila, it's actually quicker to walk in Manila than actually get public transport. A lot of the Filipinos who live on the outskirts of Manila are commuting two, three, four hours every day to get to work and our model is a work-from-home model which does allow them more time to spend at home with their families. The Filipino culture is a very family-orientated culture and we find we get the best productivity and the best efficiencies from our team by having that model and ultimately they're doing better work and they're much happier. So it's a win-win for everyone.
Tom Panos:Can I ask Jonathan, nick or anyone roughly, what's the investment if you took someone on, like Daniel says is a full-timer, which is what do you consider full-time, 35 hours.
Jonathan Bell :Yeah, 40 hours a week. The approximate investment is $500 a week and that's for them to come through our training academy including our fees, so it'll work out to about $12 to $14 per hour.
Tom Panos:Okay, so just touch on that for a moment. You're telling me that the training is done at your end, not just at the agent that's hiring them. Is that right?
Jonathan Bell :Yeah, so we put them through. A big thing that we focused on is because agents are so busy and they've got so much going on. There's a lot of grunt work to training that we take on. So we do three months of training with the remote professionals before going into a business so they're fully trained in the CRMs.
Tom Panos:Sorry, are they getting trained for three months before they start or they're getting trained on the job for three months once they start?
Jonathan Bell :Before they start. So we've got 70 people right now in our training academy, so they actually sit with the wingman community for three months. We train them on Australian culture, we train them on real estate, on CRMs, we fully train them in everything. So by the time they come into Dan Lee's or Kevin's business, they have a fundamental understanding of the industry. They know how to create agency agreements, they know how to create documents. I would argue they would know how to use the CRMs better than Aussies. And then it's up to the agency to put their personality and to actually take them from being a really good quality person to a irreplaceable staff member.
Tom Panos:Okay, what can I ask Kevin? What CRM system do you use for sales side of the business?
Jonathan Bell :We fully trained on every single CRM you could think of. So it depends, so we basically trained them on whatever.
Tom Panos:Kevin, which one do you use? Kevin, which one do you use?
Kevin Dearlove:Which CRM Tom I use. We use Agent Box and Property Meet.
Tom Panos:Okay. I want to ask Jonathan so are they aware of the systems? You're saying to me this is exciting because I've got to tell you you know you hire someone here. To me it feels like you know it's actually. I just worked out why the model is so good. Because the traditional real estate agent that puts on an assistant, puts it on and believes that that person should have mental telepathy. That person should have mental telepathy and understand the CRM system and understand exactly how the agency agreements work, how digital proposals work, this and that.
Tom Panos:And then what actually happens is they work out. No, they don't know how to do it. And then they think, shit, okay, well, I better train them. And then they get the shits because they're not listing and selling and they just feel like, hey, I'm a manager and they're not managers anyway, they can't manage a staff right. Or they can't train the staff because they've always just been listing and selling and convincing people to give them their property. And that's where we end up getting this, this, this blockage right, where the, where the lead agent says, tom, she was hopeless, I had to show her everything. I didn't have the bloody time Like you were always gonna fail. If that was your model. It was all. It was never gonna work right. So, jonathan, most of the systems that we use in Australia and slash New Zealand, they're aware of it. Your academy's aware of them, correct?
Jonathan Bell :Yeah, but do extensive training. So I would argue our remote professionals would be better than 90% of agencies in regards to their training in Agent Box. They would know Agent Box better than most people, so they actually like a lot of in a lot of our businesses they actually run the CRMs for the agents. For me personally, I don't have I don't even know the password to my property me account and my CRM system. I just asked my offshore team to be doing that for me. Nick was in the car with me. I got a video of it yesterday. He was speaking to his EA in the Philippines saying hey, anne, can you send an email with this, this and this, can you add it into the CRM system and can you set me a reminder? For a week's time and I've got a video of it on my phone. It blew me away.
Tom Panos:It's just sorry you got. I was gonna say tell me. I was just thinking is this a stupid idea? Can you send them, you know, just an iPhone 5, for instance? Just send it out to them and that you know that you can be using iMessage with them and FaceTime with them? Because I know that sometimes in a lot of countries iPhones are not the default phone like they are in Australia. Does that happen, or is that just a stupid idea I came up with in my head just then.
Jonathan Bell :No, we sort that out. We've got clients doing that. Me personally, I use iMessage, and so it's all about replicating the system that the current agency is using. So we do that in our business. We use WhatsApp as well, like a lot of agents use WhatsApp and then Teams. So, yeah, absolutely Whatever software or devices the agency needs, we can deliver those to their clients.
Tom Panos:Susan, if you don't mind in the background, would you please put in the chat box and also on Facebook in the comments the URL, because I think that there may be a few people on this. Thank you, susan. That are probably thinking to themselves. Hang on a second. It's 24 grand for the year. It's 12 grand for six months. Man, like that's a listing. That's a listing, right, that's a listing. So I just think to myself 500 bucks a week, that's tax deductible to me is an absolute no brainer if you don't have a professional at the moment. I wanna ask you, kevin, can I ask what are some of the do's and don'ts you've worked out with dealing with these remote professionals? Things that work, things that don't?
Kevin Dearlove:I think that you touched on the biggest don't, tom, in the sense that the bring somebody in and expect that it's all gonna be. Just this is gonna go smoothly from day one. I think the I think best practice would be to have someone in your office who's gonna guide and lead and lead this integration.
Tom Panos:You're exactly right.
Kevin Dearlove:Most lead agents are not managers. They are great catch and kill transaction focus. The best ones are relationship focus, but they are busy people. I think the best agencies will lead these guys and becoming great managers and great leaders and they need to be, I suppose, integrated with the, whether it's Wingman Group or what have you. The remote professional has to come part of that team of communication is key. We use Microsoft Teams. They are part of that team.
Tom Panos:These are not just people on the other side of the world.
Kevin Dearlove:They are massively innovative the EVU, the problem management team or the business. They are team players just as down alluded to. The biggest don't is to sit back and hope that they deliver. They have to be part of the team, with open arms and with respect that goes according, like any other member of the team locally.
Tom Panos:That's the biggest, I suppose, don't man do.
Kevin Dearlove:From my side, it's a planned change of process for your business moving forward. We're not financial advisors, but there's things such as payroll tax Tom becomes your play here. There's other factors that directors and principals may be facing as they grow into a much bigger business. So it's a much deeper conversation and strategic decision. And we haven't even touched on the PM business, which is huge, as that goes through some change around. Yield and profitability is going down as costs and business go up. So I would say this is a big strategic change for most businesses and if you're going to do it, you're all in and it's a full integration.
Tom Panos:So, kevin, you talk about property management and I just can't get over. By the way, the other thing, and look, we've got great people that work and live in Australia, but I can't get over. Jonathan and Nick, how many of my clients are telling me these days that the mindset and the narrative of many employees is that they feel an entitlement to the role they feel like. Quite often they're being told because there's been a labor shortage in the country for a while. They have employees that are saying give me five reasons why I should come and work for you and what are you going to pay me? Whereas when you listen to the tone of the conversation of these remote professionals, they're actually. They're treating it like a privilege to have this opportunity, a privilege to be able to work from home and provide for their families, a privilege to be contributing to a bigger thing. They're actually.
Tom Panos:You know, you actually can really feel these people here. They care and I've got to tell you everyone, every lead agent, needs another person behind their back that cares about their business like you care about your business. I think that a lot of these people that have been brought up through challenging and adverse conditions, they are highly, highly, they've got a total attitude, a gratitude for being able to work for someone. And I want to ask Daniel the same question, because you've had so many remote professionals working with you for the last two years. What are some of the dos and don'ts? What are the things that you've learned two years down the track that can help people?
Daniel Lee :Yeah. So the first point is the training. Okay, you have to. You've got to treat this person like a brand new person in your business. You know, if you're a salesperson and you get a new associate in your business, they're not actually good for you in the first month. In fact they're a bit of a drag. You get a new sales associate in the business. They say the wrong things on the phone, they don't know how to do a CMA properly, they stuff up all the time and you're consistently having to hold their hand and sit them next to your computer and show them everything. But you know that in a month's time they'll be better, in two months' time they'll be even better and in three months' time they'll be great.
Daniel Lee :You've got to go into it with an attitude like that, the first month actually, with your remote professional. Although they're skilled up at a reasonable amount of things, your business is different to everyone else's business and they've got to learn your processes, your procedures, so, and you've got to invest time either yourself or someone in your team needs to be that person's buddy to invest in that and invest the training. You invest the training, it comes and it pays back, and I would say at month three. After three months you will see wow, we've got this person working full time. They're not making any mistakes, they're an absolute asset to us. So number one is training.
Daniel Lee :Secondly is that they don't all work out. Okay, and that's the problem with the past thing. A remote professional and that word VA, virtual assistant it's very robotic. A lot of people just say, oh, that sounds great, I'll go get a VA. I've heard they're also go get a VA and then just think that it's a robot. You're not walking in and getting a Tesla which every single model is exactly the same. They're human beings and they're not all the same. Okay, I'll say that, yeah, I've got 12 now, but I've probably had to let go of three or four over the past couple of years because they didn't quite work out, they weren't showing up or they were making way too many mistakes and I just had to talk to the wingman team and let them know look, this remote professional probably isn't going to work out in the long term and it was very easy for me to switch over and get another one which another great person which would then fit in and would be awesome. So they don't all work out.
Tom Panos:So I would say if you do get one and it doesn't work out, don't give up, you're not going to raise a good point, daniel, because I often find the block of the stopper is someone is saying to themselves man, what, what if it doesn't work out? I'm a for 80 grand. Well, no, you're not. What happens is you're going to know in three months time. Is this the right person? That investment in three months time is six grand? Right, six grand. Don't try and make it bigger than what it actually is. And, as you've said, if you end up not being getting the one that you want, you address it. And you now, I presume you're happy with your current team by the sounds of it.
Daniel Lee :Yeah, yeah, very happy with my current team and when I have had a problem I have had a few issues with some not many, I would say one in five that we get. I eventually say it's probably not a good fit for our team and we will get someone else, but that's probably better odds than employees that I get here.
Tom Panos:Okay, I'm reading a question that's come from Aaron Brooker. It's asked to Jonathan and Nick read the commercial sector. Do you have many commercial agents using these services? I'm taking note about the training and searcher, which I suspect is applicable if residential commercial course. Yes, 100%. I'm not sure whether you've got people in commercial, but I can pretty much tell you I was doing, I did two commercial conferences yesterday.
Tom Panos:I was in Melbourne doing and I got to tell you. I said the guy said to me, tom, I'm letting you know that these guys are not Resi agents. And I said no problems. And at the end of it he turned around and he says sure, I didn't realize that you do commercial training. I said well, I said all I did is I replaced the word with factory and house he goes oh, but everything is exactly the same. I said it's not only exactly the same. I said you probably realized that the top 5% in residential are far more progressed than the top 5% in commercial. They've got structures and they've got processes and they've got checklists and they run it as a business unit. But do you do have commercial clients? And is it applicable? Does Wingman? I would presume it would.
Jonathan Bell :But yeah, absolutely Like the property sector. So even mortgage-broken, we have financial planners, we've got anything in that field. Our training is specific to real estate, with property management and sales. About 10% of our clients are in commercial.
Tom Panos:Okay, Jennifer. Hi, Jennifer, as asked, what about confidentiality when they have total access to the CRM system?
Jonathan Bell :Yeah, so no different to any staff member. They signed an employment agreement with Wingman. The security system that we put them onto is actually an external server through Australia, so they can't actually download anything off their computer. It's fully secure. We've actually compared it to a lot of Australian businesses and it's stronger than Australian businesses. So very much security and data privacy is the forefront of everyone's mind and we want to be markedly leaders in that space and confidentiality. They're signing employment agreements and we've got solicitors over there if anything ever happens, but we've never had that happen.
Tom Panos:And to me that's the other big advantage. I actually think, guys, because often what are the world's people is oh, what form, what contract did they have to fill? How do I do their super? All that side of it is taken off because the relationship the agent has is with Wingman. And you're doing all that stuff. You're ensuring the paperwork I dotted the I's and the T's across and that an agent is not in any way breaking any law to do with HR or what have you.
Jonathan Bell :Yeah, yeah, that's a big part of it. There is a lot of cultural differences and there's a lot of HR and things that we have to sort out in the background, but that's our value add. We want to provide really good resources, help train them, help the Australian business use them and give them really good feedback, and we want to look after the rest.
Tom Panos:Petters asked how do you effectively document the procedures? Is there a documentation of procedures? How does that all work?
Jonathan Bell :Every business is different. That's the biggest thing we've noticed is we're not here to come and tell an agent this is how you have to run your business. We're very much more like hey, Kevin, let's have a discussion around how your business runs and how can we implement a really good quality staff member into your business? We don't want a white-label real estate. I think that everyone's got their own brand personality. But in saying that, we very much are on a journey that if someone wants assistance in building out processes and systems, we're happy to help them do that, both in property management and sales, the likes of Dan Lee and Kevin. They've already got very successful businesses and they needed help actually with resourcing and implementing into their business, not us telling them how to run their business.
Tom Panos:Okay, petters asked the question. And what are the major software you're using? Well, peter, you may have jumped in later they're pretty much trained in all the major CRMs. Daniel, what CRM are you using in your business? We use Box and Dice, box and Dice. Are they trained up on Box and Dice?
Jonathan Bell :Absolutely.
Daniel Lee :Right and property management.
Tom Panos:Listen, guys, I'm excited. Susan, you have shared it, you have shared the landing page that they can go. And, out of curiosity, nick and Jonathan, what happens now? Like let's assume someone says, man, no brain, I'm doing it. They go to that and just tell me what does the onboarding process look like? Let's assume you decide today, I'm doing it. When will a person start getting their remote professional to start working with them?
Nick Georges:So the first process for us is to do a discovery session with the client, with the agent or with the business, really try and understand the problems they're trying to solve. Once we have that information we will go whether it's one, two, three remote professionals. For this example. Let's say the lead sales agent wants to put one sort of sales remote professional in their EBU. We will go into our academy and find the best two or three that are currently being trained and put them in front of that lead sales agent so they'd get a video, an English speaking test, a personality test. So we do a whole bunch of testing on the remote professionals and provide it to the Australian client. Once the Australian client goes through those and selects one, we'll set up a Zoom call with the remote professional and the sales agent. If that's all good and they want to proceed, then our onboarding process starts from there.
Nick Georges:We don't make any apologies about that process being structured and very methodical because we know that from a skill set level that we can get them to a certain level. But we also know that the relationship and the personality needs to click with the Australian business. Once the agent selects the remote professional, then our onboarding team will set an onboarding date. We'll do some fine-tuning training a week or two before they start and then away we go. But we're also very, very conscious of host onboarding date. So we are a business that is not here's your remote professional and you never see us again. We're very involved after that process too and we want to be involved in the growth, whether it be a lead sales agent, someone who's starting off or a big business like Dan and Leigh Hub. We want to be part of the growth of businesses across Australia and really make an impact in the industry.
Tom Panos:Yeah, and I can tell you, if you're not aware of it, nick Georges is arguably one of the great thought leaders in the PM space. He was a national executive for one of the very, very big brands, overseeing their rent roll, and Jonathan Jonathan's claimed to fame is he's got to be the fastest grower of the rent roll. I've ever seen how many properties you got 2350 now, and how long?
Jonathan Bell :4.5 years.
Tom Panos:Okay, so if you are, and is that all organic? You didn't buy much of that, did you?
Jonathan Bell :I bought about 150, so 2,100 and something is organic.
Tom Panos:Kevin, you got a big rent roll, Kevin.
Kevin Dearlove:Yeah, we're about 750 now, Tom, so a little bit jealous of Jonathan's numbers, that's 750 properties.
Tom Panos:There's still a big juicy check at the end of the month in your area anyway, because they're not cheap properties.
Kevin Dearlove:So yeah, that's good, don't worry, we're spending a lot of time on organic growth. Chat with Jono. That's an aspect of focus.
Tom Panos:Gentlemen, it's an absolute pleasure. Wingmangroupcomau forward slash Tom Panos is the easy access. Yes, I have an ambassador relationship with the guys. I don't get paid a commission for everyone that comes in there. I believe in the concept, I believe in letting agents know about it and I don't like it when I see real estate agents be overwhelmed and stressed, selling two properties a month, majoring on the minor. There is a better way. There is a better way. So thank you so much, daniel, great to see you. I'm watching from afar what you're doing there, growing fast and well done. And, Kevin, I haven't spoken to you in a long time and I just say pumped to hear three of your offices and smashing it and congratulations, well done, just thank you. I much appreciate it.
Jonathan Bell :So we've got a lot of New Zealand clients on here. Is this available?
Nick Georges:in New. Zealand.
Jonathan Bell :Yeah, absolutely yeah. I'm looking forward to going to New Zealand. So if there's some businesses here that give me a piece to go, I'm happy to go.
Nick Georges:As long as you're next to a golf course.
Tom Panos:Alrighty team, you don't have a date yet for the Melmilla Conference.
Jonathan Bell :It'll be mid-September, Tom, but keen to start talking about what that looks like.
Tom Panos:Alrighty team. Thank you so much Thanks guys, thanks a lot.
Daniel Lee :Do you have anything else that you'd like us to?
Tom Panos:do