How to Hire a Great Transaction Coordinator (LA 1824)
How to Hire a Great Transaction Coordinator (LA 1824)
Transcript:
Steven Jack Butala:
Steve and Jill here.
Jill K DeWit:
Hello.
Steven Jack Butala:
Welcome to the Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
Jill K DeWit:
And I’m Jill DeWit, broadcasting from the Valley Of The Sun.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today, Jill’s going to talk about how to hire a great transaction coordinator. All week this week, we’re answering questions or doing topics on frequent customer service requests from our staff.
Jill K DeWit:
Yep.
Steven Jack Butala:
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the landinvestors.com online community. It’s free. And I hope by now we have a full blown commercial printing company to get your offers out to owners. It’s called offers2owners.com, the number two. Jill and I set this company up several years ago out of pure frustration with dealing with regular commercial printing companies not understanding mail merges and how our business works. So we decided to do it ourselves.
Jill K DeWit:
Take matters into our own hands.
Steven Jack Butala:
Fast forward to today, we do between 700,000 and a million offers a month for other people to buy land and houses and other stuff. Check it out.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
support@offers2owners.com.
Jill K DeWit:
Ty wrote, “Got my first check today. Net, 79,000 bucks.” Nice job. “I’ve had a lot of challenges this year, both in and out of Land Academy. Glad to get my first deal completed, under my belt, and glad it was significant enough to make it all worth it.”
Steven Jack Butala:
So as you can imagine, congratulations, by the way. As you can imagine, this Discord, everybody in the group was really-
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Really supportive of this.
Jill K DeWit:
Isn’t that great?
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a subsection in Discord called success stories.
Jill K DeWit:
Success.
Steven Jack Butala:
And that this was posted in there. Hey, if you want to check out Discord, go to landinvestors.com. We embedded it. You can’t play with it, but you can just look, you can-
Jill K DeWit:
Look around.
Steven Jack Butala:
You can view only and check out, you’ll see this question. Actually all the questions come from there.
Jill K DeWit:
So does it take you right into Discord, you can click around? Or is it just that window, what pops up in the window?
Steven Jack Butala:
You can click around on the stuff that the general people can click around on, the general Land Academy members.
Jill K DeWit:
So you have filtered content that they can see and stuff they can’t see?
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. Like for Career Path and all that, you can’t see it.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. I just curious.
Steven Jack Butala:
And you can click through, but you just can’t ask any questions or add anything.
Jill K DeWit:
Cool. Noted.
Steven Jack Butala:
Today’s topic, how to hire a great transaction coordinator. This is why you’re listening.
Jill K DeWit:
Okay. The first thing about hiring a great transaction coordinator is not, “I’m going to steal Jill’s.” That’s not-
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
That is not how you do that.
Steven Jack Butala:
Our entire staff gets a lot of job offers
Jill K DeWit:
Had that happen all the time. I used to get job offers when I was first working with you and doing deals. That, and I got wedding proposals, but anyway, marriage proposals.
Steven Jack Butala:
Did you get one of those recently?
Jill K DeWit:
Not yet, not recently, no.
Steven Jack Butala:
Did you get one this year yet?
Jill K DeWit:
No, no. You know what’s kind of funny?
Steven Jack Butala:
I don’t get any of those.
Jill K DeWit:
I don’t wear rings at the gym.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, geez.
Jill K DeWit:
Side note. And I don’t share personal stuff that much. I’ll talk about traveling or things like that, but I don’t say who I’m with or what we’re doing. So it’s starting to happen again. I can see.
Steven Jack Butala:
“You’re a target.
Jill K DeWit:
I can see. There’s one guy in particular, I’m like, “Oh. He doesn’t know that I’m technically, might as well married.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Do you want me to come to the gym and explain it to him?
Jill K DeWit:
No. That’s kind of funny. The gym people know, my people know. So anyway.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh my God.
Jill K DeWit:
The trainers know.
Steven Jack Butala:
You show up in this great sports car and everything.
Jill K DeWit:
I know. I don’t have a ring on. And I’m losing weight. And I show up in a nice car. It’s bad. Although I have no makeup and, boy, does my face get red. But anyway, that’s a whole nother thing. Okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
So how do you know this guy is checking you out?
Jill K DeWit:
I could just start to tell.
Steven Jack Butala:
You can feel it?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. We have girl spidey sense. And well, you know what? Because one of the girls at the gym just got engaged. And I know this because I was making a joke because one of the other guys was talking, there’s another guy that’s engaged. And she’s like, “Well, what day do you guys have planned?” And he’s like, “I don’t know.” I was making a joke. I was like, “Typical guy. Doesn’t know what his anniversary is. Doesn’t know what day this getting married on.” “I don’t know. She’s going to tell me.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, they’re up there together?
Jill K DeWit:
No, it’s separate, two separate couples. And one’s newly engaged, picking a date. And she was asking somebody else like, “Hey, what are you guys getting married?”
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, I see, I see.
Jill K DeWit:
And he’s his response was, “I don’t know. There’s a date. I just don’t know what it is.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Does he know the year?
Jill K DeWit:
I don’t know. So here’s the funny thing. In my head I’m thinking to myself, “Typical guy. He probably can’t tell you the day, but he could tell you how much it costs and that’s what it’s going to be.” So this other guy piped in like, “I don’t have that problem.” And I’m like, “Oh, was that for me?” Hmm.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, I see.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, anyway. So back to the topic. How to hire a great transaction coordinator. Number one, don’t steal mine. And don’t don’t you think that it hasn’t happened. And we have a thing. My sweet person is my sweet person. And I’m going to make sure she never leaves. She’s said that. We both are. Honestly, this kind of ties to this too, when I first hired her, we connected and she really nicely said, “I’d like this to be the last job I have.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Boy. That’s how to get a job.
Jill K DeWit:
I know. And I said, “I’d like that too.” So that’s where we are. So you could have those conversations. I am a fan of professional environments for this position. Some positions you can go out there and do interns and groom them and things like that. Not for a position like this. I would say Indeed or LinkedIn. Those are my two favorites right now. That could change. But those are the ones that I love. You want them to have experience doing escrow transactions. I’ve tried all kinds of different people in all different pieces of this. One person I thought would be really good, they kind of were a transaction coordinator, just kind of pushing deals through and wearing different hats, but they didn’t have this escrow piece and that broke them. They couldn’t solve those problems. And do you remember this one girl? She was just over her head.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah, I absolutely remember her. She was great.
Steven Jack Butala:
She was.
Jill K DeWit:
She was a really great person.
Steven Jack Butala:
She really tried and she just quickly got in over her head. Like, “I don’t understand this. I don’t know what to do about this.” And some people, I want to say too, I want to make sure they don’t have to, because some people, heck, like me, I’m not afraid to pick up the phone and learn and I’ll make notes and I’ll remember and I’ll go, “Oh yeah, I had that situation. I’ll know how I solved it in this county and who to call, what attorney, fill in the blank, how to talk to them.” So some people can get there, but if you want to make it easier on yourself, someone that has that experience is the best.
So, I was thinking of one person. You’re thinking of a different person. We had one that had the escrow experience, but didn’t have the volume that we had. So we know where to find them. Now we’re talking about, what am I looking for on their resume? You want them to have some experience, but you want to also ask them this question? How many deals have they done? And how many can they average in a month? I think the person, a different person that we’re talking about, that we had a while back in California, she just wasn’t used to doing the volume that we did. And so she knew all the escrow part of it, but it was like, “Hold on a moment. You want me to do more than 10 a month?” “Yeah. I need way more than 10 a month.” And she was like, “I can’t. No. I’m out,” kind of thing. So that didn’t work out.
So now we kind of know who they are, what the experience they have. “What do I need to do? I need a great person, Jill. I need someone like you have.” Find out what motivates them. For a lot of them it’s not money.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right. For most of them, it’s not. I was going to make that comment.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s often not money. It might be flexibility. It might be time off. And it might be money. So don’t go at it like that. I hear a lot of people in Land Academy are like, “Okay, I’m going to give them this much bonus if I close here and this much if I close this, if they close it within this many days.” Some of the stuff’s out of their control, by the way. They’re only as good as a person who’s doing the dealing is.
Steven Jack Butala:
The escrow agent that they hired.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. And that’s not on them. So I’m not a fan of if you close it within 10 days or five days or three days, you get X amount of money, because it’s kind of impossible. So, but they want that too. They want to get these deals, the right person wants to see these deals going through. They’re self-motivated. They want to see them open and close. They don’t want to see them hanging out there. They don’t want to talk to the same escrow agent for six weeks straight too. They’d like to have three weeks in and out or less, kind of thing
Steven Jack Butala:
On the motivation, I’ll just add this.
Jill K DeWit:
Sure.
Steven Jack Butala:
On a personal note, the transaction coordinator that we have, Jan, has a very elderly mother who lives with her and needs attention. And so it worked out great for us because she needs to give that attention.
Jill K DeWit:
At times.
Steven Jack Butala:
And she’s also very capable, like 30 years of experience. So she’s very capable of working at home and all that was primary versus money. And it’s just worked out great. Most of the people that work for us don’t work at home.
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
They work in an office in Scottsdale.
Jill K DeWit:
Right. But we connect though. We have a good thing too. That’s a whole separate. It’s hard to hire. You can hire that though.
Steven Jack Butala:
Just meet them from where they’re coming. That goes with all employees.
Jill K DeWit:
Make sure you can communicate. You taught you. Or at least sit down. This is a whole separate little subsection, but yeah, with every employee have some conversations with them, find out how they think. I’m a fan of, as a boss, as a leader, I need to find out what motivates them and how they like to communicate. And then what’s interesting is a good transaction coordinator does the same thing with an escrow agent. My transaction order even taught me this. Like, “Hey, when I go into escrow and I’m dealing with a new agent, ‘Do you want phone calls? Do you want emails? How do you want me to communicate with you?'” I’m like, “That’s smart.” And that’s what I do with my person.
So couple things that I don’t do. I’ll tell you right now, is I don’t use a VA. I know people will have the thought, “Well, why not just get a VA in the Philippines or wherever and have them be my transaction coordinator.” I’m not a fan of that. Not that they can’t, but there’s just things that have come up along the way that, my person has done deals in this country for so long and really understands the nuances, that has made a difference. I don’t think a VA would do that, do as well. Same as due diligence. I talked to someone recently about that. “Well, can I just hire a VA, have them do all my due diligence and tell me if I should buy it>” I went, “Whoa.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Somebody said that?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Of all the things-
Jill K DeWit:
I’m like, ‘Whoa.”
Steven Jack Butala:
-that you can sub out. And there’s a lot.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Which makes this a very attractive lifelong career.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Due diligence and transaction coordination are not things you should sub out. I mean the due diligence part and pricing and stuff, you got to do that stuff yourself.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s the thing. And I understand where it was coming from, because this person was saying, But it takes me so long to do this and this and this.” So what? You’re going to get good at it. I’ve done many training things. And I was thinking about doing one again, by the way, bringing it up. I can show you how to do it, 15 minutes or less.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. What takes so long about it?
Jill K DeWit:
I think they dive too deep.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh.
Jill K DeWit:
They go too deep. You need to do 15 minutes of less of level one due diligence. Then you have a decision. Then you go in and do more if you need to or kick it to the curb. That kind of a thing. But the point is we still do our own due diligence. There’s a few things that we do and that’s one of them. And as you go along, you’re going to to get your own due diligence down to five minutes or less a property. Hang in there. I promise it will happen.
What’s interesting is the right transaction coordinator is going to learn what you like.
Steven Jack Butala:
That’s right.
Jill K DeWit:
They watch these properties because they intake them from whoever’s answering the phone. And they’re inputting this stuff into the system for you to review and they’re going to start going, “Oh, I see. If it doesn’t have access or it’s in a flood zone, Jill always kicks those to the curb.” So my transaction coordinator does a little bit of a high level due diligence before it even gets to me. So it’s really nice. When I go in and look at stuff, I have notes already there. “You’re probably not going to like it. Here’s why.” And I’m like, “This is great.”
Steven Jack Butala:
I love that.
Jill K DeWit:
And I go in and I go, “You’re right. Congrats. Thank you.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Wow. Then it never gets to me. That’s beautiful.
Jill K DeWit:
No, no. We do a lot on it. And so right now we have different deals, kind of normally we always have different deals that we’re working on. So you’re working on some. I’m working on other ones. We don’t have to talk about it unless it’s a whole lot of money or there’s just like, mm. And maybe once a month, once or twice a month, I go, “Can you look at this?” Or you might want another pair of eyes.
Steven Jack Butala:
If she’s on the fence about it, I get involved.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. That’s it.
Steven Jack Butala:
If it’s just a slam dunk, most of the deals we do are slam dunks these days, I never know about it.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah. Let them run. Well first, actually, before I do that, my second to last note is be patient. If you are introducing, which you probably are, new systems. So they came out of working at XYZ Family Escrow, and now they work for you. And now you’re saying, “Great. I’m so happy to have you. Here’s Airtable. Here’s this, here’s that. How great.”
Steven Jack Butala:
Good luck.
Jill K DeWit:
“See you. Let me know. And I’ll look for those tomorrow morning.” Hold on a moment. Because they have may have had 10, 5, 10, 15 years of this system, and for all of us too, by the way, myself included, there’s going to be a little bit of a learning curve. Set them up, get them some classes.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
There’s all kinds of great things like Udemy, Wall Street Prep, whatever. Hook them up with some classes. You might be learning some stuff together. Eventually they’re going to come to you and say, “I changed the whole thing, because the way you built it wasn’t working for me.” I’m like, “Great. Because you’re in there seven hours a day. I’m in there one,” kind of thing. So there we go. Let them figure that out.
And then the last thing is, let them run. Give them the power. Let them do what they do best, which is get these dumb deals closed for you on the buy side and the sell side. And the best ones will start finding things that they could do for you. Like, “D you want me to find a broker for you in this area?” “Are you kidding me? Heck, yeah.” They’re like, “Yeah, I know what’s going on here and I saw that guy fail. I know why he failed. You and I talked about the whole thing. I’ll find us a new guy.” Excellent. Or they’ll come to you and say too like, “Hey, we got 35 deals right now in the works. I can do double this. What do you want me to do?” Like, “Oh yeah.” That’s a great transaction coordinator.
Steven Jack Butala:
I’ve been doing this for 30 years. Here’s some real world advice and you can expect this to happen to you. When you post a job for a transaction coordinator, 900 licensed real estate agents are going to apply for it because the word real estate is in there. Do not hire a licensed real estate agent. They’ve never done a deal before. All they’ve done is talk. That’s it. And when the deal gets ready to be done, they make you sign a bunch of stuff you don’t want to sign. And then they send it to an escrow agent who actually completes the deal and does the real work, number one.
Number two, the first person that you hire is not going to be your for life transaction coordinator. In fact, you’re probably going to go through about five of them to find the one that really clicks with you.
Jill K DeWit:
Maybe more.
Steven Jack Butala:
For us, this is probably number 10. It’s probably the 10th or 11th transaction coordinator that I’ve hired full time. And she probably is our last one.
Jill K DeWit:
She’s our last.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah. If you’re new, do not sub this out. Do it yourself. You can do at least 10 deals yourself. You should be looking for a transaction coordinator because you just can’t do it anymore.
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah, you’re too busy.
Steven Jack Butala:
You’re doing your own due diligence. You’re doing the stuff. You’re doing mailers or pricing mailers. I go through all that. What you should be hiring out and what you should be doing yourself.
Jill K DeWit:
Right.
Steven Jack Butala:
At great length in the programs and in Career Path. They should do, comfortably do, 30 deals a month for you. Anything more than 30, I think, is leaning towards slave driving. But ask them, like Jill said. Ask them. “Where’s your happy place.”
Jill K DeWit:
We can do more than 30.
Steven Jack Butala:
Oh, really?
Jill K DeWit:
Yeah.
Steven Jack Butala:
Okay.
Jill K DeWit:
We can and have done more than 30.
Steven Jack Butala:
At the point, and this is my last point.
Jill K DeWit:
It’s the right person
Steven Jack Butala:
At the point where you really need a transaction coordinator, it means you’ve done been doing a lot of deals. Well, all of those deals you’re doing with escrow agents. Ask them if they want a job. It’s a pressure cooker job, being an escrow agent, and honestly they don’t get paid very well. And so if you can pay a little bit more and meet their lifestyle, whatever their lifestyle is, solve some of that, like maybe they have an elderly parent and live at home or whatever. They’re going to be with you, really loyal, and be with you for a long time. So if you have escrow agents that you like, ask them if they want to come and work for you.
Jill K DeWit:
If you get too busy too, you can have your TC hire more. They can hire in help. They know what they want and they know what they need and let them do it. Let them tell you what they need. So, awesome. Happy you could join us today. Five days a week, you find us here on the Land Academy Show.
Steven Jack Butala:
Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy Show is called the definition of equitable title in real estate. You are not alone in your real estate ambition. Our customer service people are getting a lot of questions about how to take title. I don’t know why. But we’ll address it tomorrow.
Jill K DeWit:
That’s okay.
Steven Jack Butala:
Yeah.
Jill K DeWit:
Sometimes I think that it’s in the program. Like I have to go back like, “Redo chapter three.”
Steven Jack Butala:
A good escrow’s agent’s going to tell you how to take title.
Jill K DeWit:
Hey, that’s true too. Hey, thanks for tuning in. Jack and I are very aware, by the way, that not everyone has a hundred grand lying around and buy some land. So not to worry, not only do we have some funds, but so do a lot of members in our community. But here’s what you do. There’s a couple ways. You can go to landfunding.com and fill out the deal funding section there. It’ll ask you all about the property. Everything that I need to know. It sends it right to me, basically. I review it and we take it from there. So check it out. In our community, we have, oh, my, I don’t even know how much money we have.
Steven Jack Butala:
It’s limitless.
Jill K DeWit:
It really is.
Steven Jack Butala:
There’s a 0% chance if your deal’s good, that you will not get it funded.
Jill K DeWit:
Even if a group has to do it.
Steven Jack Butala:
No good deal should go to waste.
Jill K DeWit:
We all mean that. That’s true.
Together:
We are Jack and Jill.
Steven Jack Butala:
Information-
Jill K DeWit:
And inspiration-
Steven Jack Butala:
To buy undervalued property.
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