How to Scale a Title Agency with Delegation & Virtual Staff | Ep 9

beauty in longevity of employees. And it works also for our people here at MyOutDesk and our customers who have experienced that. Their business is forever changed and we become indispensable to them and kind of the glue inside their organization to help them achieve massive growth. In a world where change is the only constant, Mo Shamil stands at the forefront, guiding title professionals to not just grow their businesses, but to master the art of innovation. With every episode, you're handed the keys to unlock unparalleled growth and stay ahead of the curve.

Get ready for a transformative journey. Welcome to today's episode of the Pilot Agents podcast. I'm your host, Mo Shamil, CEO of Alltech National Title. And joining us today is a special guest, my good friend, Daniel Ramsey, the founder and CEO of MyOutDesk, the leader in virtual professional services. Today, Daniel will share his expert insights on leveraging delegation and automation to scale businesses efficiently.

Get ready to dive into the strategies that have helped countless of businesses in their operations and achieve new levels of success. Stay tuned as we explore the power of effective outsourcing with Daniel Ramsey. Daniel Ramsey is an entrepreneur, founder and CEO of MyOutDesk, a company that provides virtual staffing solutions to businesses in various industries. He's a longtime entrepreneur who has run and sold several businesses throughout his career. In 2008, Daniel was inspired by his own time management struggles to create MyOutDesk.

Welcome, Daniel. Thanks, Mo, for having me. I'm excited to be here. And by the way, we like to call you Mo Money. You know, that's really what we like to call you.

Well, you and I are very good friends. And I think the world of you. And I'm really very happy and very impressed with your success. Daniel, can you start by telling us the story about how the inception of MyOutDesk and the core mission drives your company? Yeah.

So like a lot of kids, I was lost in college. I wasn't sure exactly what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to be a business owner. And so I got a degree in finance, went to work for a bank. And the managing partner of the bank actually gave me a one percent raise one year after like working my tail off. I was like I was a W-2 employee and I'd really worked really hard the year prior to that raise.

And so I resigned immediately and entered the real estate space. I was a real estate broker, mortgage person, never gotten to title like people that are listening today. But I was a mortgage guy, a real estate person, and I own a construction company. And then 2007 happened and the Great Recession and everybody in the world was on fire and we're all trying to figure out ways to survive. And I hired my first virtual assistant back then in 2007.

I was actually at a First American conference, which is funny. So I was at a First American conference. They were pitching real estate brokers to outsource, and they had their own group in India at the time, and they were charging $35,000. And a good friend of mine who was in San Diego said, hey, I'm thinking about signing up for this First American thing. I need help.

I'm really busy with REOs and short sales and investment purchases. And I turned to him and I said, hey, I actually am already doing this. I have some folks in the Philippines. And he goes, could you get me some? And so our first customer was literally at a title conference, First American conference, which is super cool.

That's awesome. After you banking, you started into real estate, right? Yeah. So I was in banking and then I became a real estate broker, mortgage guy, construction guy, and really it was just opportunistic. I'm an entrepreneur and a customer was like, hey, could you help me get a loan?

I was like, yeah, sure. How do I do that? And I became a lender. And then somebody was like, I need a remodel. And I was like, yeah, sure.

We can figure that out. And so I got a contractor's license. And so I was very client led with how we approached business. And the same is true today with my out desk. We're very client focused.

Feedback is amazing and it's a gift and we treat it like that. And so if you fast forward, we had our first customer in 2008. And today we have about 2,500 virtual assistants and, you know, very large publicly traded companies and to this very small title company that is a small single shop kind of place. So you've worked with a variety of different companies, different industries, but your focus early on was real estate and you branched out. I don't know if you had a different conversation throughout the years, but diversifying the real estate.

Yeah, I knew real estate. So it was very easy to grow in that space. Plus we're a very entrepreneurial kind of group, whether you're a title person, a mortgage person or contractor or real estate, you know, whatever. We're very entrepreneurial. So we're willing, that industry is very willing to take risk and try something new and back in 2007 and 2008 when we were getting started, it was a very new concept because prior to the four hour work week, it was prior to Upwork.

It was prior to all of the like excitement that is happening right now in the industry. In fact, this is a funny story, Mo. I was at a conference and I gave a presentation on virtual assistants and I just assumed everybody in the audience understood what they were and a lady, very nice woman walks up to the stage and says, Daniel, I learned so much about the, you did such a fantastic job. I loved your energy. I loved everything you said, but I have one question.

What's a virtual assistant? And I was like, Oh, so that was literally how the business started. I was educating the world and it was actually a lot of fun. How COVID shut down, locked down, negatively impacted you then positively, probably just kind of exponential growth after that period I was down for a few months that were probably stressful for you? Yeah, well, I think it was stressful for anybody in business.

I think we were on a spectrum. We weren't the worst affected. I think if you are a restaurant or an event space or a movie theater, I mean, they're still feeling the effects from COVID, but we certainly were affected. 25% of our customers raised their hand in one way or another and said, Hey, I need help, I need to either pause my service or, or cut hours or get a discount of some sort because they had no revenue coming in. In the first 90 days, it was a really crazy time.

We did a lot of education. PPP was coming out at the time. We ran a bunch of webinars internal. We had CPAs on, bankers on, focused on our clients' health and helping them figure out what to do. But I always tell people because we're a long-term contract subscription-based business.

One of the objections we get is, well, I'm locked into a contract. I'm like, don't worry. Even during COVID, we were humans serving humans and we did what we needed to do for the benefit of our customer's business and our business. So we worked with our clients that were having challenges. What advice do you give to title agency owners that have a hard time with delegation or even professionals that have a hard time with delegation?

Do you know how nobody does it better than me? I don't do it. It's like that wrong. We kind of as a baby stepped into a delegation. Well, there's a lot.

First of all, the mindset of nobody does it better to me is absolutely true. But the problem with that statement is that means you have to do everything. And the issue as an entrepreneur or a title professional is the real measurement for what you should be doing is the stuff that only you can be doing. So, and that's what we try to teach our customers. And really when I'm speaking on stage, that's the message is like, hey, as the CEO, as the head title person, as the person in charge of the escrow, whatever your title is, what are the things that only you can do?

And that's the key. What are the things that only you can do? Like as the CEO, I need to connect with other CEOs. I need to make relationships. That's a thing CEO to CEO.

That's as challenging to delegate, but doing the financials, writing the marketing piece, like this conversation is, it doesn't have to be me, but it's better if it is me. How has effective delegation powered growth for your clients? Can you share an impactful example? They come to stop your head. Well, yeah.

So everybody talks about growing and scaling and it's interesting because we've had the opportunity over, you know, the last 17 years to have an inside track with about 1500 customers. When I say inside track, we're kind of, we're unique in the sense that we get an org chart. We know their, their technicals, like what their IT stack looks like. We meet all their managers. So we're meeting all the players.

We understand, you know, what their marketing message is. And so we get a really interesting view into their world. And the idea of scale is simply this. As an entrepreneur, leader, CEO, what you want to do is delegate everything you can, so you get your days back. And then you want to focus on the things that drive revenue and make big impacts for your business.

Whether that's M&A, whether that's revenue growth, dealing with the largest clients, creating new campaigns, whether it's brand or conversion campaigns. So there are things that only you can do as the leader of your organization and you want to delegate everything else. But the mistake people make is they want to delegate everything they can, and then they want to go play golf or they want to go play chess or go work out, which I think all those things are good. It's nice to have hobbies. It's good to work out.

All of that is important. But as a CEO, and if you want to grow your revenue, what you do then is you give away everything you can, maybe 70, 80%, and then you focus on those. There are things that only you can do as the leader of your organization, and you wanna delegate everything else, but the mistake people make is they wanna delegate everything they can, and then they wanna go play golf, or they wanna go play chess, or go work out, which I think all those things are good. It's nice to have hobbies, it's good to work out. All of that is important.

But as a CEO, and if you wanna grow your revenue, what you do then is you give away everything you can, maybe 70, 80%, and then you focus on those initiatives that really drive revenue, and really make impact in your business. And that's the definition of scale, because you probably can't delegate opening up a new market. You probably can't delegate hiring your senior VP of sales. Those things are harder to delegate. It's possible, but if you focus on the stuff that only you can do, and then you focus on growing revenue, that's the definition of scale.

And so, we teach that every day for our customers, and we're very strategic. Probably my best advice around that is attach your financials to initiatives inside of your business, and ask yourself, if you're not growing, how much are you spending to grow? If you're not efficient, how much technology is in your business? Are you spending to make your business efficient? There's very clear math that can be done most of the time that people just don't wanna do.

So the message is focusing on high-dollar producing activities and delegate the rest. Yeah, and also, after 17 years, I wouldn't have said this five, 10 years ago, but I think now I see it. There's a lot of things developing in the technology world. AI is a big topic. Machine learning is a big topic.

Technology is just taking over the world, right? As the CEO, you kinda almost have to see around corners. You have to think about what's coming, what's happening in our industry. And I understood that, but I really learned that lesson with the Great Recession, because I didn't track home sales, and I was in the home sales business. I didn't track mortgage rates, and I was in the mortgage business.

New home starts for construction, I didn't track that. It's kind of amateurish to not know your industry's information and what's happening with the economy. I mean, that's important, but it's also about seeing where your industry is going. Consolidation is happening right now in the title world at a faster rate than it's ever happened, which is interesting. And these large companies are losing competitive advantage because they're large companies.

So I think there's a lot of cool macro trends that are happening. So I wanna say two things. Your CEOs, the focus is driving revenue, and then the secondary focus is just having vision and steering the company culture and the direction for the company. Those are like the three things that you have to focus on. What fundamental principles should businesses adhere to when they begin to delegate tasks?

Oh God. There's a lot. Logan question. Oh my goodness. This is your world, so that's why.

Yeah, yeah, totally. I mean, there's a couple of fundamental things. Number one, probably over-document and over-communicate in the beginning. What do you mean by over-document? Well, I think my favorite story around this is most marriages fail because of money.

And that's like on every kind of, you know, like every therapy, everybody talks about that. Money is the number one thing that causes marriages to fail. But the second thing is expectations. And so expectations are the second driver for partnerships failing, marriages, partnerships. And so I would encourage people who are delegating to really have clear expectations about how fast somebody is gonna come up to speed, what impact they're gonna make, what's the training gonna look like.

The funny thing is I'm in a bunch of peer groups like yourself. And last week I had one of our peers, one of my peers say, hey, Daniel, you know, it takes 18 months to onboard an executive. How long has it been? I'm like, ah, six months. And they're like, well, you got another year's worth of work.

My expectation was somebody could be in and up to speed in a year. And they're like, no, no, no, it's 18 months. And so this mismatch of expectations is usually where delegation fails, like having a clear timeline and a clear training program. But you asked a clarifying question, documentation, everything in writing, everything in video, everything recorded, we like to follow play, pause, do here. So I'm doing the task, recording the screen, and I'm talking about the how, what, and why while I'm doing the task.

And what that does is it gives somebody the context because see, there's so much context that people don't understand. And they're like, well, here's how you enter a lead into our CRM. Well, maybe, but there's like five different lead types. So are you gonna talk about the context for all the different lead types? Like, is this a real estate agent?

Is it an investor? Is it a commercial title? You know, like there's all these different things that you gotta think through, right? And so most people miss that how, what, and why, the context that is so rich in our industry. You're in the title real estate world.

So there's local rules, there's state rules, there's federal rules. Then you have your own technology platform. Well, there's rules in the technology platform. Then Mo runs his business different than I would run my business. So there's business specific context.

So most people just missed all of that beautiful, rich context to help somebody get up to speed. And they have unrealistic expectations about results and time. What are some common hurdles businesses face when scaling? And how does Mildest help address this challenge? Oh my.

Well, people underestimate what they can get done and they overestimate how long it's gonna take. And that combination, we go back to expectations. So if you're an organization and you wanna accomplish a new marketing thing, people are like, ah, it should take us two months. And the reality is it's probably gonna take four months and then the results are gonna land two months after that. And so understanding exactly what the expectations are, that's always the stuff.

What we do is we'll help with the doing portion of all industries. So we help in sales, marketing, ops, and customer service. Those are kind of our four offerings. And if you need doing, done, that's what we do. My favorite story, a customer came in and said, hey, I need some customer service folks and maybe some accounting.

They started with five people. We have almost 600 with them now. And they measure on NPS, which is a cool score. When we started, we were at 84. Today we're at 88.

Net promoter service? Net promoter? Net promoter score, yeah. And what's crazy about that is we got from 84 to 88. We did that in the first nine months with brand new people when the internal team had on average five years of experience.

So whether it's accounting, sales, marketing, customer service, operations, if you need talent, that's kind of what we do. That's the sweet spot of kind of our world. What are common mistakes companies or entrepreneurs make when they hire VAs? They decide to hire VAs. And what are some of the common mistakes that you experienced throughout the years and thousands of VAs and clients work with?

I mean, just, you know, it goes back to, do you have the right setup? So training is probably the number one thing that everybody gets hung up on is, you know, how am I going to teach them? Now you'd mentioned earlier that COVID was a hard thing for our business. And then it was a supercharger. Well, you know, if you asked me five years ago, what's the hardest thing?

It was like this idea of virtual work. Like how is somebody going to help me when they're living in another country in another time zone? They don't know my local market. That was the biggest objection that we would get. COVID unlocked all of that.

And so our customers now understand Zoom is a thing. We're on Zoom right now. My 75-year-old father-in-law now can do a Zoom call. Everybody knows how to do it. So that was what it was.

How do I work remotely? And then the very close number two was how to train somebody remotely. And then the third and the important one is just not having the right setup. We have a lot of accounting virtual assistants who are helping with ARAP, bookkeeping, and just kind of collections and bill paying. Another world that we're in is healthcare.

So healthcare is a big market for us. And there's a lot of reimbursables for billing that has to happen. Like this makes you fill out 12 different steps. And if you only do 11 of those 12, you don't get reimbursed. And there's only 45 days to get reimbursed.

So if you're on the 46th day, you're out. So we have a ton of folks that are helping in that accounting world. Well, if you have QuickBooks and it's the desktop version and it's not in the cloud, that's a problem. We can't help, right? So making sure that they have the right setup, whether it's password protection, the right kind of systems, the right kind of tools to work remotely or in a blended office, which is what we call it, like where some of your staff is in the US doing the most important work.

And then 70, 80% of the doing is done in our case in the Philippines. We started doing outsourcing for our cloud company about eight years ago out of necessity. It's exactly the same reason, very hard to find skilled talent. I would say, why don't we let our people in the US focus on the higher intellectual thinking, underwriting task and let the data entry, the mandate task, somebody else do it instead. Yeah.

Well, you asked the question about growth and scale and the things that our clients have done really well. There's this interesting thing that's hard for me to describe. I'll do my best to do it, but our customers that have been with us three, five, 10 years, they get their virtual assistant in, they start helping them do two tasks and they're just delegating like the low level entry stuff. And then, your intellectual thinking, underwriting task, and let the data entry, the mandate task, somebody else do it instead. Nick Neumann Yeah.

Well, you asked the question about growth and scale and the things that our clients have done really well. There's this interesting thing that's hard for me to describe. I'll do my best to do it, but our customers that have been with us three, five, ten years, they get their virtual assistant in, they start helping them do tasks, and they're just delegating the low-level entry stuff. And then what happens over time is they start learning the business, then they start learning the industry, then they start learning the internal teams, and then what happens is they start anticipating your business needs and start delivering at a much higher level than just an assistant. And I've seen that play out in our own business because we have somebody in the Philippines who runs, for instance, all of our paid ads, and she's managing a budget of $150,000 a month of paid ads, which is insane.

And she didn't start as that. She started as an assistant. And then she took over another part and then another part. So there's this beauty in longevity of employees, and it works also for our people here at My Out Dusk. And our customers who have experienced that, their business is forever changed, and we become indispensable to them and really kind of the glue inside their organization to help them achieve massive growth.

Stig Brodersen How do you install or answer the question about security? You know, in this day and age, cyberattacks, hacking, security is very important, especially in the type of industry where major targets, so what are some of the best practices to mitigate? And so I'll kind of answer that question with that hurdle. Nick Neumann Well, technology plays a big deal in that. Technology and training are the two kind of antidotes to this.

Number one, we have different layers of security when it comes to their physical computers. So the virtual team members can actually own their own laptop and use that. We can purchase one for them. And sometimes the clients purchase like a company-owned laptop. We also have virtual desktop options for customers.

So if inside of your own IT stack, you want to give them a license and have them have access to your internal networks where there's a firewall, where there's rules about what websites you can go, they can't download stuff. So my first line of defense is always the technology. That's number one. Number two, the second is just training. We're a HIPAA certified.

We also have a PPI certified kind of organization. So we have all the training that most large title companies need. And hopefully that title company has their own training too. Like the reality is our people go through some training, but you need to give them specific training on silly things. Like don't click on the email that says, you know, can you send me some wire?

You know, like that's not a good idea, right? In this day and age. And then, you know, another thing that we like is customers who have some sort of internal security testing that they go through. We've been certified with a company called Coral that our network is secure and that our training is right. And we do pen testing and a bunch of other things because, you know, you just have to in these days and age and everything is stored.

We try to put everything on Amazon, third party, they comply with all this stuff. So that's another thing. And then fifth is just great insurance, cybersecurity, that if there is a breach or something happens, there's some sort of third party insurance that kind of, kind of jumps into that space. But that's all of the things really. Well, I know you have a podcast, Tail the Podcast, one of my favorites.

It's very short and sweet. A lot of tips, a lot of insight. Can you talk a little more about it? And as some of the teaching you, it's very educational, very targeted to entrepreneurs I'll talk a little bit about it, sharing the wisdom of the podcast. So what happened about five, six years ago, we wrote a book, Scaling Your Business with Mod Virtual Professionals.

So it's our company branded book. And all the things that I've talked about are in that book. And you can just jump on our website and grab a copy. It's completely free. MyOutDesk.com forward slash scale.

But I remember the draft of it. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it was a big old thick thing. Believe me, if you've never written a book, it's like it will drain you like revisions, like, gosh, do I want to put that out in the world? And it was a long three year slog.

But we got the book out. And then my intention with a podcast and also YouTube channel is, you know, after 20 years of being in business, I've made all the mistakes. That's what's crazy. Like every dang mistake you can imagine from hiring the wrong person to building the wrong systems to onboarding technology when I wasn't ready, like just everything you can imagine. I've got a couple of million dollar mistakes, actually.

And so the intention was like, OK, if we can do a podcast talking through things to avoid, you know, things to not do, plus things that have been really super successful and just be super transparent about it. Like our topics are real. Like I'm not making up the content. That's the other interesting thing. I'm not an influencer.

I don't make any money doing this. That's the wildness around it. It's real stuff. And so I'll talk about customer concerns and challenges and how they overcame them, as well as things that have really impacted our business. And also, the funny thing is my daughter is the third most popular video on our YouTube.

So I interviewed my 11 year old Georgia that Mo knows, and she is quite the character. And that's it. And she did a great podcast about what it means to be an entrepreneur's daughter, which I think is interesting because entrepreneurs, we do think differently and we have different expectations and the world is it's just different for us. And so I think our kids are affected by that. And we had a really real conversation about what that felt like.

And make copycat that idea of Zach on a podcast. I think it would be great. I think Zach's amazing. Next, what I'll talk about is Mastermind. You and I are a member of the GoBundance Mastermind.

That's how we met about 10 years ago. And how impactful was that? And it was massive in my life. The Mastermind is very impactful and amazing people that I've met, like yourself, and became lifelong friends and brothers. So how impactful is that?

How important in your life did you grow and success you've had so far? Well, what's interesting is I think this is a good question to think holistically as you're building a business. Some of the mistakes that I've made as an entrepreneur is not having enough resources surrounding me when I'm going through the struggles of growth. So the challenge is there's all these roadblocks as an entrepreneur. Getting to $1 million in revenue is really hard.

Getting to $10 million is really hard. Doubling from $10 to $20 and then to $50 and then $100 million is hard. So there's these areas of challenge as an entrepreneur. And in each of those areas, in between spaces, the badlands. You mishire.

You're not sure what you're going to do. There's just all these traps that'll get you. And a lot of books, by the way, written by academics and people who study business, but they're not actually in business. So they give you all this advice. And then it turns out it doesn't freaking work or it's good entertainment.

It's theory. Yeah. It's not learned. It's learned wisdom versus lived wisdom, which is a big deal. So some of the things that I like, number one, I see a therapist.

I see a spirit coach. I have a personal trainer. We have business coaches that we employ at the business. I'm in two different peer groups and for much different reasons. The GoBundance, the one that you and I are both in, that's more holistic.

It thinks about the whole human. And then I'm in another business kind of leader peer group that is really about supercharging growth and scale. And that one challenges me as a leader. And so you've got these different masterminds and different support structures that really are the difference makers. And every time I've stepped away from them or done less, spent less time, I see the business results like kind of die off.

And I was like, ah, I got to get back to it. It's like you got to get back to the gym in January when the new year rolls around. So yeah, I've loved my experience with peer groups. They call me out when I'm making bad moves. And then they encourage when things are hard.

And it's a good place to share wins because it's hard to share wins in your personal life. I don't know if I heard this in your podcast or in the conversation you and I had that for the last three to five years, I mean, you scaled tremendously. And you said, I'm very proud of you. And you said that you're working less or working smarter, not harder. And that kind of like, can you talk a little more about how you focus on higher priorities?

How can you make those very impactful that hour on a task that has a bigger impact than just kind of spending like 20 hours at the office because it doesn't serve you. And you're a coach. You have a lot of times on your family, a lot of times coaching wrestling team. And yet you're scaling a massive level, which is very, very impressive. Want to touch on that?

Yeah. So I'm working through what it means to be an entrepreneur and convert to a leader. And what that means is as an entrepreneur, I'm used to doing it all. Like I'm used to doing sales, marketing, ops, finance. Like I'm just used to it all and building an executive team over the last several years, three to five years.

And you're a coach, you have a lot of times on your family, a lot of times coaching wrestling team and yet you're scaling a massive level, which is very, very impressive. Want to touch on that? Yeah. So I'm working through what it means to be an entrepreneur and convert to a leader. And what that means is as an entrepreneur, I'm used to doing it all.

Like I'm used to doing sales, marketing, ops, finance, like I'm just used to it all. And building an executive team over the last several years, three to five years has been really eyeopening because I've made mistakes and hired the wrong people. And I've made some home runs and hired people that have made huge impacts in the business. So what I would say to people, like the one thing is just don't give up. Most people, if they take a step and that step turns out not to work out the way they'd want, then they step back and they just don't take any more steps.

I'm perfectly comfortable with taking a step, not knowing what's next and failing or winning. I just view the failure as an opportunity to learn, not as failure. And so I would say the biggest thing that I'm focused on right now is building really great teams here at my outdesk, teams to deliver for our customers, to deliver for our internal virtual assistants. That's what's unique about our business too, is we have these multiple different audiences. We have clients that want us to behave a particular way.

Then we have virtual assistants who are a huge piece of our business. We got to keep them happy too. Then I've got internal employees that they're the revenue engine and the marketing engine for the business. And so then you have this forces outside of your control, which is like the market and competition. So it's probably some form of balancing those positive and negative energy or risk and reward kind of measurements and then building a team.

I mean, everybody at every stage, whether you're a million dollar or a hundred million dollar business, it's about the people on that team. One thing that I've learned, I think this is a probably a good piece of advice. You know, I've had talented people come through who were amazing, who didn't work out here. And I've had average people come and really make impact. And the one thing in both of those equations are whether or not I can work with them to build the business.

So once you get to a certain level, it's less about the skillset of the human, although really smart people are really important in order to grow and scale. But it's more about how the team performs together. Like are we all on the same page? Are we all focused on what matters? Are we all rowing in the same direction?

Can we all get along? Do we all share values? So it'd be- Is that culture? Yeah, it's absolutely culture, but it's more of like how it is culture, but that permanates in the entire company. At the leadership level, it's more of like, is this the team that's going to get me to the NFL, to the Super Bowl?

You know, is this the team that's going to score the goal? And I've had some really smart people who just aren't great team players or aren't great teammates for me. And so that's kind of new in my world as we're building out this leadership team. That's awesome, man. Any last advice for our audience as far as delegation automation and scaling?

Yeah. I mean, we haven't touched on automation. I think that's a big part of what the future conversations are, but a lot of people look at that in a fear way, but I'm old like you, so I got a cell phone right here. I remember being in business, like when I first started a company 20 years ago, like there was only email and we had a fax machine and a pager. And we didn't have smartphones.

And so I had to be in the office at eight o'clock every single day because that was just how you did business back then. I couldn't open a real estate company without a physical commercial building to occupy. Like the world is just completely shifted. So I'm not afraid of automation. I'm not afraid of AI.

It's not going to kill my business. It's not going to kill title business, but what is going to happen is that the business is going to shift and it's going to change. And so my best advice is just be ahead of that curve. Know what's coming down the pipe, have watched lots of podcasts like this, and actually just get involved in your industry. Stay up with the tech, what's going on in the tech world, what's going on with the largest customers and the largest providers in your industry, because that will help you figure out the roadmap for how you're going to win.

But yeah, I think like the cell phone, automation, AI is going to increase productivity, but there's still going to be a spot for us humans to help humans because that's just how it is. Yeah. That's what I tell people. Either they're afraid of AI. Well, AI is simply a tool right now.

In the future, it may evolve to type terminator, but right now it's simply it's a tool. It's not that they can over any jobs or instill in that human intelligence still at the end of the day, kind of to vet the outcome of whatever query you ask or prompts you ask. You still got to vet it to make sure it's accurate. There's some cool stuff happening in that AI world. And the other day I was underwriting, it was like building an apartment complex because one of my worlds is being a developer.

And so I actually put in the detail of like, Hey, this is how many rooms, this is what the rent would be, this is how long it would take, this is what the construction costs are. And I had chat GPT build out an entire P and L three years out from completion of project. And that same math would have taken me like a whole day and I would have needed my controller to help and maybe our CFO cause they can do the formulas. But in like in an hour and I have a finance degree, so I kind of, I know enough to be dangerous. Right.

Or I had an entire P and L of this development opportunity. And I think that I just saved two internal employees a full day of working on a spreadsheet using this tool. So I think those are the things to think about when it comes to automation and delegation. I would be teaching your individual contributors. This is another funny story.

You're, you know, I like telling stories, but I'm on with my peer group. And one of the guys is a doctor, very smart guy, has a million dollar practice. And he's like, I need a nurse practitioner and it's been really tough to hire. And you've been talking about this for three months. I'm sick of hearing about it.

Like I don't want to hear any more about how you can't find somebody. What's holding you back? And he's, well, I don't have a job description. So I just jumped on chat GPT and I was like, Hey, make me a job description for a nurse practitioner in the Bay area that has this many years of experience and is focused on ear, nose and throat. He's an ear, nose and throat doctor and back.

And then the guy is blown away. Yeah. Bap. He's got a job description. And then the guy was like, well, I also need an advertisement.

And I'm like, okay, take chat, take this job description and create an advertisement. Here's the name of the company and here's how to apply back. And he's like, well, what about a 90 day launch program? I was like, yeah, no problem chat, you know? So when you think about delegation, it's like shifted a little bit as a leader.

Now it used to be, I need to hire somebody to do this. Now it's like, Hey, could I use a tool to kind of get a framework? And then could I hire somebody inside that framework and then empower them to go and do the checkbox stuff that this computer system set up? You know? Like, I mean, it's, I'm excited.

I mean, that, that excites me. Like AI, a lot of people kind of, they're afraid of it, but you have to embrace it. I mean, you have a choice. Yeah. That same doctor is now on vacation with his family.

The nurse practitioner is inside the practice and he's got, he's delegated, you know, 75% of his practice that can be handled by a nurse practitioner. So that's what we do for people is they are like, Hey, how do I do this? What do I think? We're like a strategic kind of consultant where we'll one time look at all the org, what the technology is, where you're at in revenue, who you need on your team to win and then craft a solution. And sometimes it's hire us and we'll help.

And sometimes it's like, go get a nurse practitioner. And he was like your virtual assistants help. I'm like, I don't think you need that kind of help. I think you just need to hire somebody. Let's get somebody, you know?

And so that's what we do is we're like a third party sanity check to who you need on your team in order to grow and scale. Awesome. What's your favorite quote? I love all the quotes, man. There's some want to send out either you are the assistant or you hire one.

Like I can't tell you how many, yeah, I can't tell you how many CEOs we have a good friend who runs a $30 million company and he just finally hired his own assistant. And I was like, dude, it's been like 20 years. What's taking you so long? And it's wild to me how many really successful, motivated, skillful leaders don't freaking have executive assistants. Like it just blows my mind why they're making that trade off choice because I think it is a choice.

But yeah, I would say get the help you need so you can go to the gym, spend time with the family and do the things that actually matter. That's what's allowed me to own multiple businesses and not work 80 hours a week. Do you have a favorite book of all time or a favorite book you read recently? You know, cause I'm on this leadership journey of the hard thing about hard things is a fantastic book about growing and creating a business with value that probably right now. And I have a whole YouTube video about, so if you, it may be in the show notes, you can throw that.

Cause I actually went through all the books I've ever read and then I put them into four different categories. Like these are what you need when you're growing. Do you have a favorite book of all time or a favorite book you read recently? You know, cause I'm on this leadership journey of the hard thing about hard things is a fantastic book about growing and creating a business with value that probably right now. And I have a whole YouTube video about, so if you, it may be in the show notes, you can throw that because I actually went through all the books I've ever read.

And then I put them into four different categories. Like these are what you need when you're growing a company. These are what you need once you've have a successful company. This is what you need to like scale a massive company. And once you're rich, these are the family legacy books that you need to read.

So you understand. And so that in the show notes, I think it'd be great for your audience. Love to. Awesome. Thank you so much.

That was an insight. Appreciate you. Yeah, man. Thank you so much. And if you, what's the best way for our audience to listeners to find you?

I'm on all the places. So whether it's YouTube or LinkedIn, but just jump on our website, especially if you're thinking about getting leverage or delegation, or you need some support, myattest.com is the best place to find me. I'm there every day. Thank you, Daniel. And that's a wrap on today's journey with Mo Shamil from the Title Agents podcast, reminding you that mastering the art of innovation is key in the title industry's fast-paced world.

If you're finding it tough to keep up with the changes and challenges, remember, you're not alone. Our calendar is open for you. Find the link in the show notes and let's connect. Make sure to hit subscribe to not miss out on strategies that elevate and insights that empower. Together, we'll navigate the future of the industry.

I look forward to our next meeting in the upcoming episode. Keep pushing, keep innovating, and see you in the next episode.