You go and you'll sign up for a $10,000 coaching program, but you won't spend $1,000 on marketing.

Why is that?

I'm back.

These are five things I used to say no to, but now I say yes to.

Number one was using a CRM, super important. And then number two was managing my books. I don't do that anymore because I actually never did do it to begin with. All right. So number three is this is weird. Hiring a local U.S. based assistant. I remember again, Todd Tobak, I keep on talking about him a lot.

I owe a lot of my success to him. If you guys don't have friends that can push you and give you good

advice and help you with your business, you need to get some better friends. Anyway, so Todd Tobac,

I remember I had two or three virtual assistants in the Philippines,

and I was making good money, but I was like, I felt like I was at a ceiling. I felt like I was working way too hard. I don't remember what my numbers were, but I felt like, yeah, I should be making a lot more money based on how hard I'm working. And he said, Joe, you need a local US-based assistant. because how did he know that?

Because he did it himself, right?

And I said, well, what does that mean?

I said,

I said, Joe, you need a local U.S.-based assistant. Because how did he know that? Because he did it himself, right?

And I said, well, what does that mean? I said, that's scary because they cost a lot of money. I said, no, you just need to hire a U.S.-based local assistant. Take my word for it. Trust me on it. So I said, okay, what does that mean? What does that look like? So I found a lady who was a friend of ours from church, hired her. She's been working with me ever since, probably close to 15. Is that right? My goodness. Now, probably 12 or 13 years now. And so then what I did is I hired her and I paid her very good money. She could work from home. I did later have an office, but that would only last for a couple years. But basically what I told her was I said, I don't have the time or the bandwidth to do all of these different things. I have these three VAs that are doing this stuff. I want you to manage the VAs. And if you need to hire more, that's fine. But this is what I want done. And this is how I want to do it. So help me figure it out.

And so I made her in charge of the VA. So instead of me talking to the three or four VA's,

I just talked to her and she kind of managed all of that. Right. So what happened was my income and

my productivity tripled. It was amazing to me how much more time I had, how much more money I was making doing this.

And so you may think I don't need a local assistant. I can do fine with just virtual assistance.

I'm telling you, if you're doing over 200, maybe over 500 grand a year in revenue, you need a local

U.S.-based assistant. And you may think I'm crazy. You may think I'm stupid, but I'm telling you it will double or triple your productivity. And it's not that virtual assistants are not any good. There's something about a U.S.-based assistant that just understands things faster. And it's also like, because it was local, it was somebody that I could meet with. I would meet with her once or twice a week.

And I would just give her things to do. You're much more productive. It seems like in person. So, yeah, it just is great. Now, she now lives in Florida. So we've not, she's not been in St. Louis for over 10 years. So that's kind of how it works. And you'll be glad because they handle your communication. They understand your culture. They're kind of faster with getting things done. And the reliability is a little better. And then, again, I had her manage my overseas team. The fourth thing that I used to say no to, but now I say yes to. And it's spending a lot of money on marketing. I used to be afraid of spending money on marketing, right? And you guys

know what it's like. You go and you'll sign up for a $10,000 coaching program, but you won't spend $1,000 on marketing. Why is that? You're just afraid, but here's the deal. We're not in the real estate investing business. We're in the marketing business. I am in the coaching business, but guess what? in my coaching business, I spend a lot of money on marketing. I spend a lot of money and time on

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