After being burned by numerous property managers, coupled with the rising costs of marketing and lead generation, Max knew he needed more control of his properties and business, without sacrificing his own time. As a result, he founded Real Estate Project Solutions, a full-service Virtual Assistant Agency that caters specifically to the real estate industry. His management team helps real estate investors, agents, and entrepreneurs outsource any area of their business to save on payroll costs and time to maximize profits. With today’s technology, his team can easily take the guesswork out of hiring, training, and managing Virtual Professionals for investors of all portfolio sizes. It might be easy to start a real estate company or in Max’s case a VA company, but it takes real work and determination to make these businesses really work. Max also is not doing anything that is not truly helping people. Thank you all for listening and I will see you in the next episode. When you're ready, head on over to https://easysell411.com https://billyalvaro.com https://billyssecrets.com To get some neat (and FREE) Tools | Tips | Tricks to help you in REI!
After being burned by numerous property managers, coupled with the rising costs of marketing and lead generation, Max knew he needed more control of his properties and business, without sacrificing his own time. As a result, he founded Real Estate Project Solutions, a full-service Virtual Assistant Agency that caters specifically to the real estate industry. His management team helps real estate investors, agents, and entrepreneurs outsource any area of their business to save on payroll costs and time to maximize profits. With today’s technology, his team can easily take the guesswork out of hiring, training, and managing Virtual Professionals for investors of all portfolio sizes.
It might be easy to start a real estate company or in Max’s case a VA company, but it takes real work and determination to make these businesses really work. Max also is not doing anything that is not truly helping people.
Thank you all for listening and I will see you in the next episode.
When you're ready, head on over to
To get some neat (and FREE) Tools | Tips | Tricks to help you in REI!
Billy 00:03
Welcome to Unstoppable Real Estate Investing Wealth. My name is Billy Alvaro, aka the unstoppable BA former billion dollar mortgage banker gone bankrupt turn professional real estate investor, where each week you'll learn the tools, strategies, systems and secrets myself and other highly successful real estate investing entrepreneurs use to start, grow and scale their businesses creating massive profits and how you can too, and we'll teach you how to put those profits to work. So you no longer have to get ready to finally experience financial freedom and generational wealth now let's get started. What is going on everybody? Welcome back to the episode of Unstoppable REI Wealth. I'm your host Billy Alvaro, and I am here with another episode today I'm going to be interviewing Mr. Max Fisch, go fishing Max. We're going to talk about how he started the business how we scaled this business and more importantly, how he's really killing it. Utilizing virtual assistants Max, how're you doing, bro?
Max 01:09
I'm doing great man. Appreciate you having me. Billy.
Billy 01:11
You down and you're hanging out. You're a Philadelphia guy but I understand you're off the shore. Is your house in New Jersey kind of chillin keep
Max 01:17
me yeah, there's there's a nice breeze down here. Get out of the city heat.
Billy 01:22
No doubt, bro. So listen, Max backstory. How long have you been doing this business? Because you don't I think you're a seasoned dude. Right?
Max 01:29
Yeah, I saw I started. I started back in 2002 as as a mortgage originator and bought my first property and and did it, I guess call pink carpet rehab. 2003 sold it in 04.
Billy 01:43
So it was a two year rehab.
Max 01:46
No, no, I'm saying I bought it no three and sold no four. So I got started in the business back then back in 2002 2003.
Billy 01:52
You still do mortgages. Now you're out of the business? No, no,
Max 01:55
I got I did a few mortgages. I really started getting heavy into the buying and selling flipping business. And I'd say I officially got out of that business and like oh seven.
Billy 02:07
So oh three. You did your first deal. Then what you got hooked was like the drug you got whacked in the vein.
Max 02:14
Yeah, it was actually so it was interesting. I I had. So I'm doing mortgages for six months or something. And of course, being a young guy, six months of business, I now know everything there is to know about, you know, life and real estate. So I saw a property for sale. And I called the builder was selling a model and gave me a price. And it was a good price. I bought it and I was actually it was I was planning on living in it. And as I'm doing the renovations, a guy pulls up, he's a realtor and makes me an offer. And it just the way that it went. I didn't make a huge amount of money. I mean, 38 grand, but back then that was that was pretty big. And for me I was young. So yeah, I just I just saw an opportunity. And really, I guess you could have kind of fell into it or stumbled across it.
Billy 03:04
So what is the business look like today? I know you're in Philly, tell us what it looks like.
Max 03:08
Yep. So, you know, we like we were talking before, I don't do a whole lot of virtual stuff. It's all on the ground here in Philadelphia. I have a small team of four couple acquisitions, guys, and, you know, we're just kind of doing it. You know, I guess you could say old school, we're running appointments face to face, we're, you know, really, I'm really advertising to buy the properties to renovate but we're doing, you know, four or five deals a month between, you know, the rehabs that we buy and the wholesale deals so called 50 Year
Billy 03:41
50 year goods, that's Can you do it with four people?
Max 03:43
Yeah, so I have a full time project manager, my acquisitions guy and my dispositions guy and myself and then everybody else's vas, we've outsourced everything else.
Billy 03:53
So talk to me about first off your marketing, what are you doing to generate leads in your in your market?
Max 03:59
Yeah, so not a lot has changed in our, in our, you know, the, the the strategies that we use, it's really the, I guess the the percentages, if you will, so we started off doing a lot of direct mail as that got more expensive. And the you know, the cold calling really became feasible with the dialers and technology. We shifted to that. So today I'd say we're about 80% You know, calling and text messaging and about 20% direct mail as part of our process or our funnel
Billy 04:35
or overall flow right and that's totally bad because you own a virtual assistants companies right?
Max 04:39
Yeah, that's correct. So basically, you know out I had a bunch of people in my office in a call center setup and they were w two employees it was eight people at the peak. Right had to let them go and the buddy said try try VAs and took about a year to really iron things out. But yeah, now it's become a whole separate business
Billy 04:59
and where you I spaced out on the on the VA side.
Max 05:02
What do you mean? Like where do we operate from?
Billy 05:04
Yeah, like the VA is? Where are they located?
Max 05:06
They still have my office in my office in isn't technically not Philadelphia. It's just outside of Philly. It's pronounced Ballard Kenwood,
Billy 05:13
right? But the VAs are not stationary, these virtual assistants
Max 05:17
like individual people, yes, they're remote. We hire globally. So we even have a couple guys in the States. But yeah, all over the all over the globe.
Billy 05:27
So why Why get into a whole nother business? Why this is focused on real estate investing go deep in that one, why get into a whole nother dynamic and open up a VA service?
Max 05:37
Honestly, man, people just kept asking and asking and asking. I finally said yes. And, you know, as I started to really look at the industry, I saw an opportunity to, you know, to offer better service and really, truly help people. You know, we're, our focus is really we're to the point now, where our focus is really developing sales teams and processes and focusing on training and, you know, not just saying, Oh, here's a body, right? Because anybody can go on Indeed, or something and hire somebody. So I, you know, to answer your question directly, I think, you know, for me, I've been doing real estate a long time. And, you know, I, I'm not one of these people that you know, wants to do, you know, 500 deals a year or something I'm interested in, you know, less risk, and I kind of get what I want out of it. And you know, at this point, it basically operates on its own. So I have the bandwidth, and I really, I enjoy talking to different investors, day to day. So I guess it's, you know, partly me being selfish. Because I wouldn't be able to talk to other people and do other things. And I, so I still go to properties. But you know, I, I just like to keep it fresh, I guess.
Billy 07:00
keep things going, right. You're an entrepreneur with a red shiny object. I mean, we always like to start something new about creating sales team, so is your virtual assistant company doing a lot of the sales work on behalf of you and other other investors?
Max 07:15
Yeah, so we're actually getting to the point where, you know, that's going to be our core focus is really just building, building remote sales teams, we kind of started out, like, you see a lot of these companies where we were providing, you know, the administrative side and different low level tasks, I would call them. And then Brent Daniels is a is a friend. And, you know, he, we're working with him for quite a long time. And, and he had suggested, really focusing on the lead gen side of things. So that was about half of our business for quite a while. And then I saw a real need. There's a lot of folks out there looking for, like remote acquisitions, especially if you're doing virtual business. And so we really kind of honed in on that and focused on, again, the training and kind of the processes. And so, I mean, yeah, we, you know, we take guys, most of them are either Americans or expats. But we'll take guys, we'll get them trained up with our program, and then, and then place them in either acquisitions, or even a junior acquisitions position with, you know, with with clients of ours, but that's that that niche, that sales angle is really where I'm strong and where we really add value, rather than just like I said, just another, another body and focusing on price or something like that.
Billy 08:43
Yeah, right. So give me give me like real world examples of how these VAs are driving in revenue. So they doing lead gen telemarketing? Are they taking it to the next level, where they're actually talking with the sellers over the phone and getting contracts? Like, what does that look like?
Max 08:57
So really, all the above. So in my business, for example, I have a I have two gentlemen who act is what I would call Junior acquisitions, guys. And so you know, I have my field guys. And they have a certain period of time, which is two weeks to secure a contract and after that, the lead has to go somewhere else. Because otherwise your follow up list gets unbearably long. You just can't, you can't you can't get it all done. And so these guys will then work to really nurture the lead and just really try to figure out, you know, how we get a deal without focusing solely on price, you know, you know, that so that's one, you know, that's one way to do it, you know, as part of the funnel. We have other clients who, you know, our guys had been trained up and they're the they're the frontline, the frontline person. I mean, they're, they're talking to sellers they're making offers there. have, you know they're doing it all? The key is, in a lot of these cases, these guys are Americans, right? They're just they're living abroad. So you have that kind of pay arbitrage. So just just to be crystal clear, these aren't like Filipinos or something, because you know, you have that cultural difference, and they don't understand the real estate business the same way. So it's, it's a certain kind of person that we have to find.
Billy 10:21
So yeah, I like the fact that utilizing them on the follow up side, we're doing the same thing. And it works out great, right, because our sales guys, he's the only hint they have bandwidth of x-amount, it's gonna get to a certain point where they really can't follow up with all these leads that need to get converted, it's been like in our business, it's been pivotal, having these guys just follow up, but they're not. On our end, at least they're not really closing them. They're just reengaging getting them to the point where they're like, alright, they're ready now to be closed or to sell. They go right back over the ATMs to close them up. So what I'm hearing you say is you do that, but then you also have guys that are actually virtual that act as sales agents, closers, acquisition managers,
Max 10:21
correct, Yeah, that's correct. And yeah, and just to expand on on your point about process, I would say about three years ago, I determined that follow up was was really key, especially in my market. So Philadelphia is incredibly competitive. And most of it is like virtual guys coming in to the, to the city and, and calling or texting, right. So you know, for example, my business, our average time from first touch to a close transaction is between six and seven months, and we touch that person, on average, six to eight times. So you know, if you just are calling or mailing one or two times, there's no way that you'll sustain a business in my market.
Billy 11:51
Yeah, it's very similar New Jersey in New York, the same thing, our timeframe from from first touch to contract and in the closes is, it's Wideman. Like we have a pipeline. Now, when we meet with our CFO every Friday, we already forecast what we're going to make 2013 Because a lot of this shit we have in the pipeline now is not going to be funded or flip until 2013 It's that long of a pipeline
Max 12:13
to 23
Billy 12:14
I'm sorry, 2023. I
Max 12:16
said 13. Yeah, yeah. So that's interesting. Yeah. So we, we don't work out, we do everything by quarter. So we forecast out the next the next quarter, or sometimes the next two. That's interesting, though, forecasting, not that long. I mean, you know, look, especially with rehabs. I think, you know, like, Yeah, I'm only doing five or six a year, but you know, but it's gotten to the point now where, like, for me, I we can't get in and out of projects in 90 days anymore.
Billy 12:41
No, especially if you permitting there's no way to do it. Like we know everything we get in the contract from August forward that's going to be a rehab that's a 2023 income generator like that's on the books for sometime in the future. And we just you know, we just forecasting it out. We're like I we have the first quarter of revenue what we think we're gonna make in 23 we forecasted out for the whole year and 22 and but yeah man our pipeline takes specially the whole the the renovations they just take so damn long to happen and then I don't know what it's like in Philadelphia but we have in New York New Jersey does a shit ton of title issues that we need to work through which is another holdup wherever you get the contract and when that takes you four months to clear up title it's just a complete pain in the ass.
Max 13:21
Yeah, I we I don't know if you use go require or any of those outfits to to find payoffs or things you know, little little, little courts fit for your listeners. But believe me, we Yeah, I mean, we lose by 20 25% of our deals to title issues in the city. And for that reason, we've really actually stopped marketing for those deals. 50 grand and less. Because, you know, to buy a house for 10 grand in Philly is is still possible and might seem intriguing, but you know, nine times out of 10 There's a 10,000 on credit card out there 5000 on a credit card that just kills the deal.
Billy 14:02
Yeah, and that's when you buy the credit card debt for $500 and then you get it paid off the table for 5000 You make the spread for your listeners. Yeah, we've been doing that a lot you know, we discount the judgments down but this is good I so I want to tell me with the guys how many people how many companies are leveraging you right now to for sales not for lead support but for actual acquisitions on the on the VA side?
Max 14:28
Yeah, that's so that's a good question. Just real quick. So I break down sales or lead gen call it sales teams in kind of into three categories. So you have kind of your upfront lead gen and cold calling that kind of thing. You know, you have your second tier which is like follow up nurturing, you know, all that and then you have your actual like closer, you know, bringing cash contract, whatever the whatever the situation is. So actual just closing acquisitions. You know, I don't know a dozen maybe It's not a not a big number. But again, that's, you know, that's a process that we really started to focus on this year, you know, 2022. And, you know, as opposed to be in that kind of jack of all trades, there's so many guys out there that are promoting the idea of VAs and, you know, kind of a recruiter type service, that it's, it's gotten almost ridiculous. So
Billy 15:23
yeah, because I guess it seems like it's kind of easy to set one of these companies up, right? I mean, I couldn't I have no desire to set one up. But if you're getting into it, you have vas, it seems like it's kind of like, pretty easy just to set up a website. And sorry, these people, but I'm sure you have to have a serious funnel, you have to have background checks, you have to do testing, training, like it's a process to get these people in,
Max 15:44
we will look we pay $10,000 a year for predictive index. Right. You know, so, you know, there's all that kind of personality profile stuff there. You know, yeah, we I mean, look, I got a management team of 2021. I think now, you know, I have I have an HR department with three people, and all they do is interview and review resumes. I mean, we're interviewing four or 500 people a month at this point, you know, so is it easy to set up a company to do this? I mean, yeah, of course, it's easy to set up a real estate company to but, you know, that worked out for most folks. So I think that, you know, I think that the unfortunate reality is that there's a lot of guys who have gotten into it, quite frankly, they're pushing junk. Like any other industry, and, and people, a lot of a lot of consumers or a lot of business owners have gotten to the point where they, they see it almost as a commodity. And so, you know, for us again, I kind of looked at things and thought, you know, how do we, you know, look, I'm not going to do it, if I can't add value, right? I'm okay, if I don't make money, right? I don't lose money, but I'm okay. If I don't make money, as long as I'm adding value, like, there's got to be some type of, of gain there. And so for me, you know, being in real estate a while, but also being a sales guy. I really, you know, thought that's where, where we could add value. And, and, you know, I would challenge anybody I mean, go out, you know, go out into the marketplace and try to hire a, you know, a remote salesperson. And, you know, and tell me if tell me what you think that's worth for somebody do it for you.
Billy 17:20
Right? Yeah, I, you know, we were talking offline, doing the whole virtual thing. And I'm assuming because I don't do virtual, unlike hands on I go, our team goes to the house, I'm assuming there's a lot of fallout with virtual contracts over the phone, they never see the property. Like, do you have any stats on what the fallout is of contract versus actual close?
Max 17:41
I'm not that I could not that I would feel comfortable, you know, standing behind? I mean, I don't do it. Right. So it's so it's all secondhand information. But, you know, based on the conversations I have with people that are doing virtual wholesaling, you know, the numbers are considerably higher for you know, I mean, like I said, I, you know, we lose 25% of our deals, just to title issues, you know, in my business, right. So, you know, our total, you know, total Fallout is probably, you know, I don't know, call it 30 called a third, you know, but that's because we're dealing in this market. And, you know, sometimes we're, you know, maybe locking up deals that, you know, it's like a throw it against the wall kind of thing. But in the virtual space, you know, I mean, we have we have bought properties from people who told me that they executed contracts with somebody who called them, and they don't have a copy of it. They don't know who the person is, they don't know anything. So, but we've actually bought the properties and never heard about any, any buyers or calls or anything. So. So I know. Yeah, so I know, they fall apart at a very high rate. Absolutely. Yeah.
Billy 18:56
Yes. One of the that's one of the that's one of the reasons why we want to do it, but we don't want to do because in the fall rate, and the the wholesale fee is usually a lot skinnier, versus, you know, face to face going out to the properties.
Max 19:07
Yeah, well, and that's everything right, our average fee, I told you, we just stopped kind of marketing for those sub 50,000 Our deals, our average assignment fee is is 19. It's like hovering around like 19 798 this year. Which is which is I think that's respectable. If we buy it like wholesale, where would you buy it, maybe do a clean out or just buy it throw right back on the market? Our numbers are way higher. I mean, probably three four times that and then we do all our wholesale business on margin. So yeah, for me a $5,000 deal. You know, I mean, I hate to I hate to even say it because it sounds so horrible, but you know it because it's a lot of a 5000 hours a lot of money, but you know, for our business in the way I'm set up. If we do 25,000 deals it starts to not make sense. Yeah, that's
Billy 19:57
a major high volume type is is like you have to do Serious volume and those small numbers and make it make sense?
Max 20:03
Well, our cost per our cost per deal, like our, our lowest total cost to acquire a transaction, you know, it's, it's 1500 bucks, two grand, low, depending on how things go, maybe even $2,500. So, five grand, if I pay my acquisitions Guy 25%, which is what I pay, and then give away? You know, like I said, the 2500 for cost acquisition, what are we left with? So?
Billy 20:36
Yeah, so look, Max question for you that I'm sure the listeners are wanting to get is there's a ton of these, you know, outsource companies, these VA companies that are out there, right. I mean, I've interviewed a couple over the years. Why, why your company versus the others?
Max 20:52
I would say one, because, you know, I'm in the space, you know, everything that we do everything we say all of our processes are based on experience, either my experience my direct experience or experience with, with other clients. You know, that's number one. And then number two, I would say, because of that specialization, you know, we're, we are very focused on, you know, that sales aspect, sales lead gen aspect, and that's, that's what we do.
Billy 21:29
That's right. I mean, if you're not marketing and generating leads you're out of business,
Max 21:34
I believe that that is the one area that everybody needs improvement, you know, you can always cut costs, and that's fine. But you know, at the end of the day, like, there's a floor to the amount of costs you can cut, or the amount of staff reductions or whatever, but everybody can always use additional revenue.
Billy 21:55
What would you say? I don't know, if you have the stats, average acquisition guy that's virtual, how many contracts a month is that person bringing in you have numbers like that.
Max 22:06
So it's gonna depend, there's a lot of factors, obviously, the number of opportunities, the person gets the market, he's in what his actual role is, because no two clients have an identical role. Like, even I could pull two clients and both have an acquisitions person, they both do it a little bit differently, they're either the business is different, their process is different. But
Billy 22:30
buying is different. I mean, it's a little easier if you're doing lease options, or subject twos versus, you know, straight cash deals are gonna get a lot less buying,
Max 22:39
you and I are buying to rehab, right? We're gonna pay a little more than maybe someone who's just looking to wholesale. Yeah, so the businesses are different. But with that said, you know, I, you know, I believe that every cold caller, and this is what we see kind of across the board, every full time caller should be generating or should be responsible for at least one. Maybe maybe one and a half deals per month, and acquisitions guy, you know, realistically, I think it's going to depend on, you know, on your business model, but, you know, I would, I like to see, you know, I like to see my acquisitions, guys making well above six figures. So, you know, I want to see them doing, you know, two or three contracts a month minimum, but again, remember, our average deal sizes is 20. Grand, call it 90 or 19. Grand, so, at 25%, you can do the math, so, yeah, I mean, again, it really depends on the business, but I would, I would want to see an acquisitions guy paying for himself, you know, somewhere, like, somewhere between six and eight times.
Billy 23:47
That's a good number. I mean, that's, that's higher than industry standard. That's a great number. Max, if somebody if they were to come in and hire an acquisitions person, what are these people go for in their virtual world? Yeah, is it a contract? Is it cost per hour? Like, what does that look like?
Max 24:02
So we have two different models. So we do it on a per hour basis, where we manage everything, and then we do it like a, like a headhunter where we would find the person train them, set them up and hand them to you, and we're out. In one, and in that case, it's just a one time fee. You know, you're gonna pay for us, I mean, we're like high teens, maybe 20 bucks an hour for a, you know, for a remote acquisitions person, if we're managing them. And then you know, for a placement fee, you know, you might be five to 10 grand, it really depends what you're looking for, as far as you know, the additional like training support that kind of stuff. considerably less than obviously an in house person, but more importantly, these people have very low attrition. And, you know, and they're typically committed in a way that you know, your your, your in office person may not be, in my experience, bringing guy in training for acquisitions. In this day and age, everybody has the internet. And most people, they realize how much you're making, and they go, I can do this myself better. And they leave. That's been my biggest problem. And biggest cost is that business interruption when people turn over?
Billy 25:15
Sure. Show us we got good numbers, if people what's the name of your VA company, by the way,
Max 25:21
real estate project solutions, and what's the website, the same.com
Billy 25:27
Perfect and onboarding process, if somebody was interested, they want to leverage your services, What's the process like,
Max 25:32
you know, for, for friends of yours, I would, I would handle them directly, personally, but typically people will come, they'll come to the website, or they'll give us a call, submit their information, and then they get hooked up with one of my two sales guys, that walk them through the onboarding process and get them contracted. And then from there, from there, it's, you know, it's onboarding, you know, setting up systems, whatever we need to do we, we really go above and beyond on the on the setup stuff.
Billy 26:02
And your your attrition rate for the for the BAS on the sales side, what do you think that is?
Max 26:06
That's really low man. I would say of all the, of all the guys we placed sales in the last two years. And again, you know, it might be a dozen or something, but I would say I think all but one I think all the one are still working, maybe one of them, you know is was placed elsewhere because the because the client closed up shop or something, but again, very, very low because of the upfront work personality profile matching all that.
Billy 26:38
And just to reiterate, we went over the beginning. So these people living out of the country, but English is their first language.
Max 26:44
Typically they're actually Americans. They're just they just living abroad, you know, expats. If somebody wanted an American in the states in office, you know, we could do that. But, you know, again, you get back to those issues where high turnover I mean, look nowadays, like these millennials, they don't I mean, I'm sure you read the news, they don't want to go back to work, they they're insisting to work remotely, or they want to quit,
Billy 27:08
so it's crazy. It's crazy relah stuff. This was this was a great interview Max, if people want to check you out, go to the website, and I'll have all your information in the show notes and we'll post this I appreciate you coming on brother anything you want to end with?
Max 27:24
Nah Hey, I appreciate you having me always good to chat and you know we're we're close enough that you know, you got to come see me and buy me beers. No, I'm just kidding. But we do we do got it. We do have to get together that'd be great and and do the face to face but now it was it was awesome talking and hearing about your business as well and I certainly look forward to another opportunity