Jeff Helm

I’m your typical early 80’s born man that was brought up in a middle-class home with loving parents that pushed me to get good grades, go to college and get a job. And I did, I wasn’t a very good student but I did well enough to graduate from Michigan State with an engineering degree. I got a good job, well at least I thought, making a whopping $46K per year salary. I thought I was rich! Then I quickly found out I wasn’t because after paying for rent, my car payment, and bar bills I was spending more than I was making and we all know how that works. I stayed focus on my job trying to get pay increases, and I did get pay raises but never as much as I thought I was going to get. I clearly remember the build-up of excitement every year as Christmas bonus time came around and then in the Spring when you found out what your pay increase was going to be. As a wage earner we all now that we are taxed on our pay. So after we found out the raise increase and effectivity date I would calculate to the penny what my increased take-home pay was going to be, and it would disappointedly be about $33.35 dollars every two weeks. Hey, at least my cable bill is free now, at least that’s how I use to think about to make myself feel better. After years of this, I was like how am I ever going to be able to afford to purchase a home, have a family, and save for college and retirement. It just wasn’t going to happen. At the time I was like if only I could earn $100K a year, then I would be set. So I got my master of business degree to make my self worth higher in the marketplace. I was finding it so hard to try and get a promotion with my current employer so after I completed my MBA degree I decided to leave my employer that I was at for 7 years, and thought that I would be there my entire career. Like parents taught me that you get a good job, be loyal, and stay there until you retire. I ended up leaving my secure position for a good paycheck, they were going to pay me $115,000 per year and at the time that was great. By this time I was married and I had just had a baby girl, life was on the up and up. Then I jumped to another coming that paid me a little more, $120K, and they had bonuses as it was a sales job. I thought I was going to be Rich making $120K a year. So my wife and I decided to buy a bigger 4 bedroom house, and take my big bonus and put a pool in. At the time I thought that was an investment, but soon I’d get a real education and learn that was a just a bigger liability. By the way, I can remember back in 2010 and 2011 that I was constantly coming up with new business ideas, my wife was a nurse so I thought about home nursing healthcare. Then during MBA school I wrote a paper on creating a whole foods fast business, healthy fast-food and I wanted to do that. At this point, I knew nothing about real estate. Then one day at my step-daughters softball game my wife’s friend’s husband Todd started telling me what he was doing in real estate, flipping houses and buying rentals, and it sounded really great! He told me I should look into doing, but I never did. I think at the time I didn’t understand the power of REI. BTW, during this time I was trying some e-commerce businesses, amazon affiliate stuff, a blog (I’m a shitty writer so that wasn't going to work). Again, I still had this desire to build a business but never quite had the intentions. Interesting side story, until after my daughter was born I did nothing with intention in regards to my self-education and fitness. I didn’t read books, I didn't watch documentaries, nothing to advance my knowledge. And in regards to my health, I wasn't doing anything either. Just after the new year of 2014, my wife told me about this Paleo diet, by this time I was not happy with my bodily appearance. I had never “dieted” before but I thought I’d give it a try, it seemed rather simple. Well, I really got into it and started dropping weight quickly, my craving for sweets even went away, and for me that was crazy because nothing was too rich for me, and I would eat 10 cookies or 2 pieces of cake, one was never enough. I say all this because for the first time in my adult life I realized that by focusing, being intentional, having a plan, and taking action developed discipline and the results I was looking for. This was a game changer for me. BTW the book “The Power of Habit” talks about how having an exercise habit can carry over to other parts of life. I truly do believe this, because for me as I was seeing results through the year of 2014 this feeling of empowerment came over me that I can do and achieve anything I want to. You can do. OK back to relevant items. At our family XMAS party that we were hosting in Dec of 2014, my cousin’s son brought a book with him titled “Rich Dad/Poor Dad for Teens.” Once I saw this book, a light went off and instantly flashed back to the time that Todd talked about Robert’s book, this actual book, well the adult version. Anyway, the day after Christmas I bought the book and dove in deep to really study the content. It was a game changer for me. I started googling and reading all about real estate. Then I signed up for a 3 day Fortune Builders Event. It was an incredible event, I know the company gets a bad wrap for selling super expensive systems to you while you are there. I did not purchase the system when I was there as I couldn't afford it and I’ve never used their system so I know nothing about it but I'm sure it’s a good system. Anyway, I set up my LLC I was ready to go. Ready to do what I didn’t know, lol. All I knew is that I like the idea for rental properties so I could create passive income. It took me until October at that year, about 8 months to get my first deal. Which I borrowed money from parents to buy and rehab the property. I bought it from a wholesale, my price was $17K and I fixed it up and rented it out for $750/mth. It wasn’t a big money maker because I used my Dad’s friend to do the repair work and paid him hourly, that was a big mistake. Anyway, I was in the biz, as they say, I had a rental. My second deals was a 4 unit land contract purchase I found by calling a for rent sign. I used bonus money from my job to pay the $45K downpayment, now I had 5 doors in a matter of 2 months I was rolling, right? I didn’t do much for quite a while. Why, because I wasn’t consistently direct marketing and I wasn’t because I didn't need to I had a full-time job and was only dabbling. I did a few more deals but really didn't get started seriously until I bought a great comprehensive how-to REI course in November of 2016. I spent a whopping $1,000, that was a lot of money for me, but the course did help immensely. It provided me a framework on what I needed to do to get consistent deals. And what I decided to do was write 25 handwritten letters a day, 125 per week and mailed them out. It did work, I started getting leads and deals but it was a very time-consuming activity. I did this for a while, then I bought another course and started using mail houses. Then I bought a 3rd course. I was learning so much but nothing was really teaching me how to put a system together that truly creates a business and allows me to make money but not be doing everything myself. The fact that I had to now get the consistent deal flow to pay the bills, I had to create a system. Remember, I quit my job at the beginning of 2018. I had previously read the 4-hour work week (I was now a self-learner always reading books, and continue to be today) and listen to other videos/podcast about hiring virtual assistants but never really knew how to do it. I even bought a course that talked about using VAs for REI but it didn’t have the specific task, training, and point of contact to where to hire a low-cost reliable VA. hat I decided to do was to actually build business systems to organize the workflow of my leads. . Let me tell you that this was not fun. In fact, it’s exactly the kind of thing I don’t like doing. But, it had to be done. I was now supporting my family with my wholesaling business. I spent months mapping out the processes of every step that needs to be done to wholesale a deal and evaluated tools that could be used to manage the sales funnel through the entire sales process. I chose a low cost CRM and built out the applications and processes for my wholesale business. Again, it took some time, but when they were finished, these systems completely changed my life and dramatically reduced my stress levels. I didn’t have to worry about remembering what I said to the seller last time, or what my offer was when I spoke with them last because the notes for that seller were in my lead system. I didn’t have to remember where the signed contract was because it was uploaded in my system. I didn’t have to remember the cash buyer’s email that I sold my contract to because it was in my system. My favorite part, I didn’t have to remember when to do my follow up or when to re-engage with a seller. The system told me when to do that. This last feature cannot be emphasized enough. Anyone who has been in real estate knows the importance of consistent follow up and how easy it is to forget to follow up regularly. In short, by systematizing my business I was able to be more organized and more efficient with my time which freed me to do more deals. When I first created by business systems I was responsible for every step in the sales process. Yes, I had a system to keep me organized to make sure I stayed on track, but I was the one sending the purchase agreements for signature, or pulling comps on the property and uploading them to my CRM. I was even sending follow up text messages and e-mails to my leads. I got really busy, really quick! And you know what happened? I stopped calling new leads right away and I stopped following up consistently with older leads. This caused me to miss out on a lot of deals. Finally, I accepted defeat and recognized that I needed help. I had heard about Upwork and other VA hiring sites and decided to check them out. I heard you could get very low dollar per hour virtual assistants to perform administrative tasks. I found out two things right away: Most VA’s on those hiring sites want $8-10/hour The VA will only be as good as you train them to be. Prior to hiring my first VA I was unsure of their ability to perform the tasks that I needed them to perform. My ignorance in working with VA’s and properly instructing them resulted in me overpaying for inadequate VA services. What I learned through this process and what I want to tell you about is how I found the perfect VA and how I properly screened (prior to hiring) and trained them. I put together a 9 video training series on where to find a quality $4/hour administrative VA service and how to train new VA’s. In fact, I make it really easy, because if you are setting up your business systems like mine, you can simply send your VA’s my training videos and they can train themselves. These training videos cover all the administrative task you will need covered, such as pulling comps and uploading them into your CRM, sending purchase agreements for you, performing marketing task for your wholesale deals, and on and on. I’m telling you, once your VA is hired and trained you’ll feel an overwhelming relief as you’ll have so much more time to focus on the money making activities that you actually like And, if you’re like me, you’ll become enamored with the idea of delegation, and soon find yourself questioning “whether or not this is something a VA can do?” every time you are faced with a new task.