#458 – The Mail-Right – Thinking of Hiring a Real Estate Remote ISA in 2025?
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Thinking of Hiring a Real Estate Remote ISA in 2025?
Looking to hire a Real Estate ISA in 2025? You can learn how to find the perfect candidate and optimize your lead generation strategy.
This informative show discusses the advantages of bringing a Real Estate ISA in 2025. From enhancing your team’s efficiency to maximizing lead conversion rates, we cover essential factors to consider before making this critical decision. Whether you’re a seasoned agent or just starting, understanding the role of an ISA could be a game-changer for your business.
#1 – Screen For Basics
– a – Do they have a business-level Internet connection
– b – Strong English language Skills
– c – Strong Thinking Skills
#2 – Time Zone & Culture
#3 – The Right Incentives (significant)
#4 – Are You a Real Leader?
#5 – Trust Your Intuition
#6 – Final Thoughts
Episode Full Show Notes
[00:00:06.600] – Robert Newman
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen, to episode number 358, marked by the passing of one of my favorite directors of all time, David Lynch. So that’s your bookmark for you in our show for 2025. We’re going to talk today about hiring real estate remote ISAs. This is a subject that my podcasting partner, Jonathan, has selected. I’ve got a lot of experience in this area, so I’ll probably be contributing heavily to this particular podcast. Jon, as we get queued up to talk about, to have a healthy dialog about hiring an ISA, why don’t you go ahead and explain who you are to those people who may not know?
[00:00:56.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, thanks, Rob. I am the joint founder of male-right. Com. We are a online marketing platform to help you get leads in 2025. We do that mostly through the combination of Facebook and WordPress. We can provide services where we run, set up and run Facebook paid campaigns, or we offer a platform where you can do it yourself, linked to a fantastic website. Back over to you, Rob.
[00:01:30.550] – Robert Newman
All right, ladies and gentlemen, for those of you who may not know who I am, my name is Robert Newman. I’m the founder of the only real inbound marketing company in the real estate space, InboundREM. And I am a lifetime salesman Sales guy who also these days focuses on SEO. All right, without any further ado, are you looking to hire real estate ISA in 2025? And we’ve got a lot of different things, but I’m just going rapid fire, some pros and cons. If you’re lost in the mix in your real estate business and a lot of low value activities, things having to do with your calendar, things having to do with phone calls, things having to do with follow-up, things having to do with very basic types of marketing, like repetition-based marketing tasks, writing things, emails, I can go on and on. If the answer for you is yes, then I’m going to give you an equation that I’ve always used on the phone, John, for when people are trying to establish whether or not it’s time for them to hire an ISA. It’s pretty simple. You take your income for the last calendar year, 2025, and let’s say it’s $300,000, you make the assumption, and this is oftentimes not true for many of you.
[00:02:46.880] – Robert Newman
You either worked more or less, but you have to start with the baseline. You take 40 hours a week plus however many weeks you felt you worked. If you worked 50, you put 50 weeks in there. Then you go, All right, so I I worked 10,000 hours last year, divide that into $400,000. How much should I make? $40 an hour, whatever it is, whatever the number is. Usually much higher, actually, for real estate agents. Usually, you make a surprisingly high revenue per hour. Let’s just say it’s $125, which is about average across my account base. It’s $125 an hour. John, once I’ve established that, that logic, breaking it down to the ridiculous is that exercise. It was created by Zig Zigler, or as far as I know it was. And that breaking it down to the ridiculous allows you to understand very carefully how much time you’re spending. Should you be paying yourself $125 an hour to write emails? No. In case you didn’t know the answer. Not usually. Or scheduling your calls or placing follow-up calls to low and medium quality leads? Absolutely not. All those things should be done by somebody else. That is where we finally walk into, are you thinking of hiring an ISA in 2025?
[00:04:12.660] – Robert Newman
If the answer to these questions are yes, you absolutely should hire an ISA. You can get an incredibly good ISA for between $5 and $10 an hour. We’re going to explain how in this episode, The first thing on John’s list is screen for basics. Now, I would argue that if you’ve written a really good ad on Upwork or you’ve done a very good job of looking at Fiverr that you really don’t necessarily need. Number one, it does depend on the task. Many, many tasks can be run off a cell phone these days. However, if you’re thinking of hiring an ISA part time, established connection, then I think these questions are valid, which is, do they have a business level internet connection or reliable access to the internet? Strong English language skills and strong thinking skills. Now, you pulled this stuff off the internet. Am I thinking that correctly, John?
[00:05:20.750] – Jonathan Denwood
My research for this section, Robert.
[00:05:23.690] – Robert Newman
Okay, so if you had any experience where you can illustrate… It felt to me like number A, I felt like it might have something personal behind it. It was so basic. I don’t even ask that, usually. It’s such an assumption. Have you had an experience where you’ve tried to hire somebody and discovered they didn’t have regular Internet access?
[00:05:47.360] – Jonathan Denwood
No, not really. But I actually do think this is valid. I think having a checklist because there’s been nothing worse than hiring somebody and investing some time in them. And then you find that they haven’t got a decent access to internet connection. And I think you got to check. They might have good verbal English skills, but I think you got to have some mechanism to check their language skills, their written, their grammar, because they are representing you. And And I think the last one is, I think really is quite important, but you’ve got more experience in this than me, is that there’s certain And they’re not being disparaging here at all. I think there are sizable cultural differences where people… I have noticed it in the teams that I run, which are more coding-focused, and a couple of people that do help us with male right, is that certain cultures, there’s a strong need to keep you happy. I know that sounds strange, but what I mean is they don’t like any form of confrontation. So they really want to keep you pleased. So they don’t And that’s a two-edged sword because they can just do stuff which you didn’t ask for, or they can just go off and do stuff which wasn’t agreed on, and they’re not doing it out of malice.
[00:07:45.910] – Jonathan Denwood
They’re just doing it because they hope that will please you, keep you happy. So that’s my bit.
[00:07:55.720] – Robert Newman
So I have found the language and using somebody… So mostly, John, I hire from the Philippines. I have hired from Argentina, Chile, the Philippines, Mexico, Ireland, a long, long list of other countries. And what I’ve discovered is I have pretty eliminated all hiring except for Macedonia and the Philippines. And the reason I’ve eliminated everyone else is because number one, the income disparity between these countries and ours is great enough that talent can be found and hired. When I’m paying somebody $9 an hour in the Philippines, that is well above average for that country. They are making way more money.
[00:08:46.130] – Jonathan Denwood
What is the monthly average wage? I think it’s around $450 a month, isn’t it?
[00:08:54.350] – Robert Newman
Something like that. A doctor in their country makes no more than $10 or $11 an hour, equivalent US. So when you’re paying them nine, you could literally say to a Filipino, I need you to learn English better for this job. And if you’re offering them $7 to $9 an hour, that is something they’ll probably go do because it’s worth it to them. It’s a better opportunity. It’s a greater opportunity. These days, people that are going to the University of Cebu and other places are focused on on their training to be of service to people here. I don’t know how many people know this, but the Philippines oftentimes ships a great number of their human resources to the US to be nurses. They account for something staggering, like 30% of the registered nurses in the US. To those nurses, they send their money almost entirely back to their families. They look for in-home living nursing situations so that they can not pay their own rent. They eat here, they cover all of their expenses from the job, and they literally send every penny possible back to their family, and oftentimes a single nurse is supporting up to 15 people back in the Philippines.
[00:10:21.150] – Robert Newman
It is absolutely nuts. It also creates a culture where there’s a lot of sadness over partners leaving and things like that, but they’re They’re very religious in that country. There’s also a staggeringly low amount of divorce or separation, despite everything I’m saying. They don’t do it. It’s not allowed. This creates a unique ecosystem to There are people that will stay at your job that you’re offering X amount of dollars for. It is a very huge priority to them. Then, Macedonia, which is where I have my entire development team located, it’s basically a European country, but their average wages, for whatever reason, are a pittance of all other European countries.
[00:11:10.010] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it is the poorest country in Europe apart from Albania. I think Albania, Mastodonia, are the two poorest countries in Europe.
[00:11:24.210] – Robert Newman
Which creates in and at like… I’ve had the same experience in Mastodonia, except that they speak almost perfect English and that their tech skills are off the charts. All the troll farms and everything else that bothers the US that everybody’s accusing Russia of doing. When you dig down into that, John, you discover that those farms are located in Macedonia. They’re not in Russia. Russia can’t afford to hire a whole bunch of Russians, 10,000 Russians, or they’re too cheap.
[00:11:54.790] – Jonathan Denwood
I mean- Or they’ve left the country or they’re dead already.
[00:11:59.260] – Robert Newman
Yeah. When you’re looking for really talented tech people at a price you can afford, my recommendation is try Macedonia. It takes a while because most of those people do have jobs similar to the Philippines. My lead developer who is nothing short of a genius was working for… It was closely related to the Russian mob. He developed a huge of Black Hat skills. We don’t use them that way, but he’s an incredible security expert because he understands how the thinking is going when people are trying to attack our stuff. Because of all of that, and because he’s a Masedonian, he’s never once thought about leaving, or let me rephrase, he probably has thought about leaving. He hasn’t left, and he really could have based upon his talent, his level of skill. But he he prefers to stay with a single employer and build a relationship because Mastodonia, if he gambles and he gambles wrong, he’s in trouble in that country. That’s a US opportunity. It’s a huge opportunity of almost any kind. We pay them 75% less than we’d have to pay an American developer of an equivalent skill set. It is also worth mentioning that get a much better deal on these other countries in terms of money.
[00:13:36.410] – Robert Newman
But of course, if you really want to get the top value out of these people, you have to understand what you have and treat them the way that they deserve to be treated. My developers as an owner, so are some of my Filipino resources. They own pieces of the company because they’ve earned them. And just like me, for them, the golden parachute, like 100 grand in their local currency would be like the equivalent of a million to ours. And it’s a reasonable… That’s a reasonable exit for these guys, which makes a company of my size, even though I’m very small and I’m very not high in revenue. Nonetheless, it’s an opportunity for them, John. And so if you can provide anything like that, like a real estate business that you intend to sell out of at some point or something like that, then you should be thinking about building in another resource from another country. We’re We’re going to count that as number two on the list was time zone and culture, but we just talked a lot about the Philippines and culture. We’re going to say that we’ve covered that, and we’re going to go to break a little bit early, about 20 seconds early on the Timer.
[00:14:44.570] – Robert Newman
When we come back, we’re going to discuss incentives, which I dug into. Are you a leader? Trust your intuition, and some final thoughts. Ladies and gentlemen, stay tuned for us, and we will be right back with Three, two, one. Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. It’s episode number 458. John and I were just talking about… Actually, I’m doing most of the talking right now. We’re talking about thinking of hiring a real estate ISA in 2025. Let’s jump into what would you think… If it was you, John, what I’ve done is very controversial. I have had a lot of people counsel against it. What are your thoughts about incentives? Let’s just say you have some people that you think are crucial to your business, do a great job. What would you offer them?
[00:15:45.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I think I pay them. I’ve got a couple of developers in Vietnam that have been with me for about eight years now. Can’t believe that. And they’re pretty good. It’s a family operation. He’s got a couple of people work for him all the time, but then I think he’s got a host of friends and relatives. And then I’ve got a couple of other people who have been with me for five years. I think it’s that… What I gather by the research I did was that, if it’s just Just based on how many leads they can give over to you, that’s not a very good incentive. That seems because if their sales were in, they’re just going to… Or you’re just buying into a call center, and it’s the amount of so-called qualified leads that they’re going to send over to you. I think you might be disappointed, where it’s that they are really treated as part of the team, that even though they’re in a foreign country and they’re virtual, they are part of a weekly call where you’re talking to the other people that are based in the US, and they really are treated as part of the company.
[00:17:30.320] – Jonathan Denwood
And they’re given tasks, but they have also asked for their opinion, their feedback, and they’re treated with respect. That’s what I gathered from my research, where you get more success.
[00:17:48.300] – Robert Newman
My team has been incredibly fruitful, incredibly loyal. I’ve had zero turnover. Only people that we’ve lost have been people we fired. Once somebody works for me, they We have no so far, never quit. And we do all those things. We have a weekly meeting. We talk to people. I ask for input. I don’t just ask for input. I actually take input. I actually do the things that they recommend, even though sometimes I don’t feel like they’re the best thing, which is weird for a leader. But every once in a while, if you want people to get comfortable making decisions, Sean, and become autonomous, you have to get them used to letting them see the the results of decisions that they’ve made. So if it’s not cataclysmic, I let the decision roll forward and let the mistake or whatever it is happen or the slower process or whatever it is. The only exception to that is all things customer-related I handle myself. I don’t allow little mistakes there, but process and the way they go about things and occasionally bad suggestions such as, Can we use AI in our process? And I’m like, Sure, up to the point, it affects quality.
[00:18:59.710] – Robert Newman
So our AI experiment lasted less than eight days, and then we had a complaint. And then we took it out of the process. But I let the person roll with it and told them, Hey, you need to read the content. They, Oh, I promise. I will. I will. Every word. All right. Then no longer than eight days for a client to catch it, say this looks like AI, run it through an AI tool for me to turn around and go, Was that AI? The person to go, Yes, it was. And then I’m like, And now you cannot use it. Anyway, Are you a real leader? Wow, John, that’s a hell of a thing to throw into this. How are we supposed to answer that? I think I’m a decent leader. I try hard at it, that’s for sure. What do you say? Do you think you’re a real leader?
[00:19:51.860] – Jonathan Denwood
I can be when I want to be. I can be an asshole when I want to be as well. Well, if you look at Elon Musk, it’s the That’s the goddamn thing. Yeah, but he doesn’t know that he’s an asshole sometimes, does he? I think that’s about if you think you’re just going to bring on a virtual ISA on, and they’re not going to need direction and supervision and bedding down and help and guidance. If you’re just going to use them as a black box, lead generative black box, and you’re just buying a human service, and that’s your attitude. I’ve seen this with some real estate agents that I’ve been involved with. Their churn of either in-house that are in the office or virtual ISAs is a constant churn because they’re not very good at taking the responsibility of their bad leadership, or they expect the people to be mind readers and just know. They’re not going to know anything. Especially if they’re virtual, either domestic or offshore, because they’re not there with you. So they definitely ain’t going to know. But I think you’ve touched on this, that you’ve spent a lot of time writing out procedures, everything’s documented, every new person that comes into the company, you’ve got a lot of documentation.
[00:21:48.410] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s all planned out. Well, my experience with a lot of agents, they’ve got no documentation, they got no onboarding process, they got nothing.
[00:22:00.580] – Robert Newman
The secret to success is twofold, I find, if you’re growing an operation and using ISA-like resources. And that is having processes and having people that you can apprentice under. And definitely, John, in both cases, what has made me successful in both those areas is having material that is redundancy, yes, and here’s the bitch of ISA is every time and where most people fail, somebody, you, preferably, has got to be the person that trains them to do things the way that you want. You got that first person or that second person or that third person You spend a gob of time with those people, like a ton. I’ve built quite a few teams in my career, and it is more time building the team than it is getting the result. Let me repeat that. There’s more time spent building the than getting the result. Once you have good people, getting the result to everyone else around you looks like magic. But that’s probably because at some point, you took the time to elevate somebody’s skill level and temperament to close to where yours is. I’ve got 35 years sales experience. It really requires a lot of time for me to explain communication methods, mirroring, how you want to respond to people, cushioning, never say no, I can go on and on.
[00:23:33.720] – Robert Newman
All those things, yes, eventually they do get written down. You do create procedures around it. But at the same time, what’s best for new people coming in is you assign them to somebody you already trained. Then it becomes easier and easier and easier, and the operation scales faster and faster and faster. Because at this point, I’ve got three or four people who do everything that do it better than me. But I did originally train every person, and they love me for it because I taught them something new. It developed some way. It’s an incentive of a kind, and you called it out in your explanation of incentives. It’s an incentive because most of the people in these other countries, John, they get treated like garbage. I don’t think that we treat our coworkers all that great here in the US, but these guys actually get treated like garbage, like real garbage, ignored opinions, discounted entirely 100%, treated like with a rampant amount of disrespect. And yet their livelihood generally depends on five-star reviews. So they got to take it all from everybody all the time to have somebody come through the door that’s willing to teach them, train them, add them to meetings, just like you said, it’s an extraordinary thing for them.
[00:24:51.260] – Robert Newman
And of course, they respond to it. They’ve never seen it. They don’t get that. They don’t get that ever. So expect Especially if you teach them something and then tell them how they compare. Because my experience has been with these are teaching that nobody else is willing to teach. Boy, oh, boy, do they throw themselves into it, John. Or the people that I have do, they break their back. I’m talking studying on weekends. They’re already working 8, 10 hours a day. Then they’re going on the weekends. They treat my customers honestly. I wish this wasn’t true, but probably better than I do. I have 24/7 attachment to communication, which I think is a pretty good entrepreneurial thing. But when it comes to act like reactivity, I’m not available during those hours. But my team is. They’ll see something come through and respond outside the hours I normally pay them for. The only reason for that, John, I am convinced, is that they’ve been taught, they’ve been trained, they have love and respect, they feel appreciated and seen. And very rarely I have to give out what you and I might consider traditional incentive, like front somebody a loan, something like that.
[00:26:10.640] – Robert Newman
And it’s always in line with… I think the biggest loan I’ve had to front out is a few thousand dollars, which was for an extraordinary situation. So it ultimately… And I did it because I want to say yes, because ultimately my experience My experience has been that you get out of these resources what you put into it and all of the five-star reviews I have speak for themselves. It sure as fuck isn’t me, though, dude. It’s not me. Did I build a great website? You damn well know I didn’t build Squat. I didn’t build a website. I have people that built a website. Yes, I constructed the requirements in the original format. They’ve moved off it fairly heavily at this point. I They’ve started with the outline, they’ve colored it in themselves and created something really magnificent. I have no idea if that makes me a real leader. I’d like to think that it does, but real leaders also are usually more driven than me and have a different viewpoint than I do, which is more money-focused. So maybe I’m a certain leader is what I would probably say, as opposed to a real leader.
[00:27:27.300] – Robert Newman
Trust your intuition. I have no idea what you meant by this, John. Or I think I did. I mean, maybe when it came to choosing people, but why don’t you explain what you thought when you put this on here?
[00:27:36.250] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, a few people mentioned this, and I thought about it, and I agree with it. When it comes to business partnerships, when it comes to personal relationship partners, it’s normally unless you’re dealing with a real expert psychopath or a really intuitive psychopath, normally it’s all in front of you. And for business needs, you’re in a bit of a corner, you just decide or you’re attracted to a person and you give them more slack than you would. You know in your heart, in your gut, that this isn’t going to work out, but you rationize it away. So it’s normally unless you’re dealing with a skilled psychopath or skilled narcissist, Basically, it’s there, but you’re choosing not to listen to your gut and to see the obvious.
[00:28:57.970] – Robert Newman
I agree with that. Intuition plays a huge part into my people’s selection process. I really don’t choose that badly anymore, but I think it’s… I dislike strongly saying things that are egoic, but I have hired about 30,000 people over my career.
[00:29:19.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Can I ask you this question? Would you hire I had to ask you.
[00:29:37.090] – Robert Newman
It depends on what role.
[00:29:40.500] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s all right. I’ll let you carry that one. I just couldn’t resist it.
[00:29:44.840] – Robert Newman
I was expecting to say no. No.
[00:29:51.920] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re kidding, mate.
[00:29:55.480] – Robert Newman
You’d have to have the ability to have autonomy, and that would be complete autonomy. That’s how I would view you.
[00:30:04.590] – Jonathan Denwood
I can work with people. I’m not looking for an argument, honestly. When my dad said this, many, almost 35, 40 years ago, I thought, What the hell is he going on about? And he said, Son, I was running a business at before, and I was dealing with some rubbish, and he said to me, Son, you don’t have to go looking for trouble because it’s just going to find you. And he was right. He’s right, you don’t have to go look for it. It will come your way, whatever you do. So don’t go looking for it.
[00:30:52.540] – Robert Newman
I think that intuition is tough to explain to people who are very used to telling themselves. I’ll I’ll give you an example about intuition. It took me a long time to study my intuition to be a mission-based entrepreneur. I made the mistake of not being a mission-based entrepreneur all the way, like the first 40 years of my life, always pursuing the money, made lots of sacrifices, nearly got myself thrown in federal prison a couple of times, all for the sake of the dollar, the Almighty dollar. It was always, You have enough money, you’ll be happy, right? Kind of. I didn’t I didn’t really buy into that necessarily, but I bought into it enough that I made some compromised decisions. In this business, I reshaped my focus to a very Ben and Jerry’s thought process. Build a good business is good for the people that use it, good for the people that are in it, and good for the people that are around it. Make sure that’s the thing you focus on. Then, theoretically, good business will come. That’s part.
[00:31:56.600] – Jonathan Denwood
The way I rationalize it, just to finish off, because obviously, you got to be off. I’m not overstating this. I think English, British, and American culture is a bit different. But there’s a sizable amount of these type of individuals in Britain. So don’t think, listeners and viewers, I’m hoping to go America, because America has definitely got some strengths. It’s just different cultures. But there is a minority in America that I’m going to be It’s controversial here, Robert. There is a sizable minority in this culture that would sell their own mother into slavery for some extra dollars.
[00:32:42.450] – Robert Newman
Okay. All right.
[00:32:46.620] – Jonathan Denwood
Basically, that’s it. They will sell their own children into slavery to make some extra cash.
[00:32:53.720] – Robert Newman
Well, there’s plenty of that in the US, too. I think that we’re-No, I meant that in the US, but I was saying that it’s also, to some extent prevalent in Britain.
[00:33:03.750] – Jonathan Denwood
But that’s my observation. There’s a sizable minority in this culture that would sell their own mother and their own children in slavery to make some more money.
[00:33:16.440] – Robert Newman
Well, I’m going to add my final thoughts, leave it open to you, and then, ladies and gentlemen, we’re going to give you a way to contact either one of us should you choose to want to. My thoughts about ISA is that legitimately, once a real estate agent is making more than $150,000, there is very little reason that I can think of why you wouldn’t have an ISA. Most of the time, having ISAs gives you the opportunity to earn two or three times as much, not because you’re doing something different, but because they allow you to focus on activities that are more impactful to the bottom line of your business. I think agents are always surprised when all these tasks are removed, how many of them there truly are. That’s my final wrap-up thought on my end. John, what’s yours?
[00:34:06.860] – Jonathan Denwood
No, I think I’ve got nothing more to add, Rob. I think that’s totally spot on.
[00:34:12.060] – Robert Newman
Okay, so beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, if you’d like to reach out to me to talk to me about whether or not you should have an ISA or talk to me about any other element of marketing your business in the digital world that we live in, especially with things like hyper local or SEO, then you can do so at robert@inboundrem. Com or simply go to at riem. Com, and there’s obvious ways on the website to contact me directly. Jon, how would people reach out to you?
[00:34:36.230] – Jonathan Denwood
Just go to the MailRight website, have a look at what we got to offer, and then just book a chat with me and we go through everything. If you just want some general help and information on online marketing, especially with a focus around Facebook and WordPress, I’ll be more than happy to have a chat. Back over to you, Rob.
[00:34:55.620] – Robert Newman
All right, beautiful. That’s the show for today. Ladies and gentlemen, join us next Thursday at 2:00 Pacific Standard Time. You can also message me or John if you’d like to join a live stream. We don’t have that often, so we’re not often conscious of time. But if we know some people would like to participate or at least watch the show in real-time, we will join you and make a conscious effort to be in chat while we’re doing the show.