A Podcast | Brian Hughes

Pete Neubig: Welcome back, everybody, to the NARPM podcast. And as promised, I have Brian Hughes, co-founder CEO of BizDev Mastermind. Brian, thanks so much for being here today.

Brian Hughes: Yeah, thanks for having me, Pete. Excited to talk to you about all things business development.

Pete Neubig: Well, Brian, I'm excited to get you on here because, you know, you and I, we've been buds for quite some time. And you just did a the webinar for VPM. I just did some speaking at your event. So we've known each other pretty good now, and we use you for my new company, Texas Lone Star Property Management, where Mohsen runs our. Runs the show there. And he was using you for a little bit.

Brian Hughes: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: And I think we had a pause because he got so busy. Now we're going to turn you back on. So, tell the folks that don't know what BizDev Mastermind is, tell them what it is. And how did you come up with actually, you know, creating this company.

Brian Hughes: Yeah, absolutely. So what we are, we're a company that helps property management companies, single family property management companies, to be specific, helps them hire and train their business development managers, their business development representatives, their their salespeople, ultimately. And so, you know, that's really what we do is, is help recruit some, you know, high performing salespeople. And then, you know, bring them to a property management company who's looking to grow. So our clients find us looking to hire their first, second, third, fifth business development manager, or they're looking to not necessarily change their staff or add anyone, but they're looking to just find more lead generation opportunities and ultimately add more doors. You know why we started the company? I myself was a business development manager, and that's actually how I met you. I don't know if you remember, but Brad brought me out to one of you guys's events...

Pete Neubig: That's right.

Brian Hughes: And I met you there. And I remember when I first got started, he even sent me some of your sales training materials back in 2015, when my first couple of days to read over. But, so yeah. Known you a while, but I started off as a business development manager there, and we grew really quickly. And my first years at BDM, we brought on 365 doors. A year after that, we brought on another 400 or so. A year after that, we brought on 420 some. So we grew really quickly. And, and Brad, the, the, you know, owner and broker of Rent Works, Larson Properties was going to conferences and things like that. And he's sharing the numbers and letting everyone know what we're doing. And they're asking him, you know, what are you guys doing to grow so quickly? And so we thought, hey, maybe we have a good formula here and took what we knew and created this company BizDev Mastermind. And that's what we started in 2020.

Pete Neubig: Okay, so you started this business?

Brian Hughes: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: And you work with property managers, mainly single family. Now, let's say I'm just starting out, and I really don't have the funds or I'm too nervous to have a BDM. What are some of the things that I can do as the owner operator, maybe before I actually am ready to hire a BDM. Like, what are some of the things I should have, like a little checklist of things that I should do prior to hiring a BDM?

Brian Hughes: Sure. Yeah, there's really a lot and we do work with quite a few clients who are in that stage, maybe managing 100, 200 units and not quite ready to hire a BDM like you mentioned. So you know, some of the basics or some of the most tried and true methods even are, you know, realtor referrals. So, you know, reaching out to realtors in your area and letting them know who you are and what you do. And if you're listening to this podcast, you probably heard that before and you might think like, well, everyone's doing that. It's probably so saturated. These realtors probably get calls all the time. Well, I can tell you they don't. And, you know, so you just doing that, you know, will lead to, you know, your first referrals, first signups and things like that. So realtor referrals is a big one. And, you know, reaching out to the agents, letting them know you can be a resource and, you know, not just necessarily asking for referrals, but explaining, you know, here's what we can do for you. So, you know, that's one of the methods or one of the kind of ways to get you to that point where you have enough doors to then maybe hire someone to take that over. Some other examples or, you know, opportunities are social media. There's BiggerPockets, there's LinkedIn, there's there's Facebook.

Pete Neubig: Meet-up groups.

Brian Hughes: Exactly. The groups. There's people, in every city. San Antonio real estate investors, there's Milwaukee real estate investors, you know, name the city and those groups exist.

Pete Neubig: Where do you come out on on purchasing lists like an eviction list or FSBO list or something like that?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, I think that definitely has some value. The key is what is your goal with that list? And you know, what are your expectations? I think if your expectation is to buy a list of rental property owners, call them all and use that to build your book of business. I think before you built your book of business, you will have pulled out all of your hair and you will, you know, be wanting to quit and throw the phone across the room. So, my advice with the list is, get it, and get a large list as you can and do kind of an initial filter. And what I mean by that is, is put together an email drip campaign. Send out a few emails to this list of rental property owners that you've purchased and see who's opening those emails, who's clicking on those links and use that as your filter to then maybe circle back and call some of those people, or take a second action with them.

Pete Neubig: Okay, so let's say I'm ready to hire a BDM. You gave me all these ideas. I'm like, I just realized I don't have time for any of this stuff.

Brian Hughes: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Right. Now, what should I do to prepare, like for a BDM? Do I need, like, a commission schedule? Do I need, like, you know, do I need to have like hourly schedule? Do I need to know what the hiring process looks like? So talk a little bit about like the foundation before actually, because I don't even know how to hire a BDM. What to look for.

Brian Hughes: Yeah. Absolutely. Good point. And you know, for our clients, that's really where we come in. And what we do is essentially handle that whole process. But if you're doing it on your own or, you know, just you want to be prepared for when that time comes. Some things you want to do is, is you do want to have a sales process in place, or at the very least have a CRM and, you know, LeadSimple, HubSpot. There's there's some others out there. There's GoHighLevel, there's dozens and dozens of CRMs that are out there. But choose one that works for you and at the very least, start putting your leads in there. It sounds simple, and you might think, well, I'll only have, you know, two leads a week or one lead a week, or even less maybe. But over time those add up. And so when you do hire a BDM down the road and it's you've been in business 2 or 3 years, you have a list of 100, 200, you know, maybe more leads that maybe didn't close that they can start with. So, you know, when you're just starting out, even though you might think it's not really worth it to save these leads. You know, I'm not going to be able to close them or they hired someone else. You know, keep that somewhere, whether it's a CRM or don't use an Excel sheet, use a CRM, but keep it somewhere nonetheless.

Pete Neubig: Okay, so have a CRM, have a sales process.

Brian Hughes: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Talk to me a little bit about sales process is because marketing is is a different process than sales CRM. We could send out drip campaigns. That's marketing. Phone rings or I'm going on an appointment. So talk a little bit about like a sales process. Give me you know, I know, look, there's lots of steps and I know you have to touch somebody 7 to 12 times before they say yes. But just kind of give like just give like an example of a sales process step.

Brian Hughes: Absolutely. And yeah, we really break this down for our clients and you know, want to kind of set it in a 1,2,3 type of scenario. So you know a call comes in goal number one. Get back to them as quickly as possible.

Pete Neubig: I heard something like seven minutes or something like that. If you don't get back to them they're gone?

Brian Hughes: Yeah. Within five minutes your chance of closing them drops in half. So if you wait that six minute your chance of closing is now 50% what it was. If you call in the first five minutes.

Pete Neubig: Even if they call after hours like on like Saturday night at 10:00, like same deal?

Brian Hughes: My understanding is that's during normal business hours.

Pete Neubig: Okay. All right.

Brian Hughes: So I wouldn't. Yeah. Not necessarily calling back at midnight or something like that, but, normal business hours. That call comes in...

Pete Neubig: Wow. Less than five minutes. That's good. Right there is the price of the download right there.

Brian Hughes: Absolutely.

Pete Neubig: You gotta call him back. So you gotta get back to him. Do you recommend that, however they contact you, you contact them that way. The same way. Like if they email you email or do you email, you pick up the phone?

Brian Hughes: I would always pick up the phone. So give them a call first because you as the salesperson, it gives you the best chance of closing the business if you're going to have that conversation with them. So that's goal number one. See if you can get them on the phone. But if they don't answer, also send them a text and also send them an email. So give them the option on how they want to respond to you. And even more in that text message in that email, include a calendly link or some other type of scheduling app so they can, you know, get your text message, click the link and schedule a meeting with you whenever it's convenient for them.

Pete Neubig: Now, one of the things that we did in Empire. That worked really well, but I don't know if it just worked well in our environment or not. We had our sales people. We actually created a video. I think it was like 15 to 20 minutes long. So it was not a three minute video. And the video explained everything that we do, the whole PMA and everything. And my salespeople, I have one sales person. She would not talk to anybody unless they watched the whole video. The crazy thing was, once they watched the video, they didn't have any questions. That was really it. And she had a pretty high closing rate. What are your thoughts on that? Did we do something? Kind of, it just worked for us. But not really the smartest thing because of this, the the length of it or?

Brian Hughes: I think it can work. And I think that's, you know, definitely a good way to kind of get your information out there. The thing I would be hesitant of is, as a salesperson, you don't ever want to tell your prospects "no", you know, or as little as possible. So saying, you know, no, I'm not going to give you the information until you watch this video. I could see that turning some people off, but nonetheless, if it works, it works. And that is something that we certainly do recommend, is creating a video presentation that gives an overview of what you do. And yeah, we do include it in a lot of our emails that are going out to clients. So if someone is, you know, midnight or whenever, just sitting, going through emails, they can click that link, watch that video and it does answer all their questions. So definitely a good tool. Maybe not force them to watch it, but hey, if it if it worked for her, it worked.

Pete Neubig: It worked for her. Yeah. Where do you come out on having your BDMs meet clients at a property?

Brian Hughes: Yeah. Great question. Um, I was actually just on a group meeting with a group of BDMs, and we were looking at the LeadSimple survey that they had done recently, the research they put out. And one of the things I noticed was the the fifth most common deciding factor on what PM they're going to hire is if they will meet in person. So the question I'm given, I'm paraphrasing this question, but the question was essentially, what are the top three factors you consider when hiring a property manager? And 19% of the respondents said meeting in person. So, you know, 1 in 5 people who are calling you, if you don't meet in person, they're, likely not going to work with you. So that stat alone kind of stood out to me. But beyond that, meeting in person gives you, you know, the best chance of closing the business. And we've seen that with our BDMs time and time again, the ones who meet in person tend to, you know, close a bit better.

Pete Neubig: It's funny. When we started, we used to meet everybody in person, and then we got away from that. I don't recall if it hurt our closing, to be quite honest with you, I can't remember. I am sure that we did lose some business because of it, but it's a risk reward thing. You know, if you're going to lose a couple of people every couple of months versus 20%. You know, and then it's like, well, if I can save money by not having to go to the property, and obviously, if you don't have a full time BDM, then that's hard. So I'm guessing for a virtual BDM you're starting to lean on. No, they should be local because of this new data or where did you come before the data and where do you come after the data?

Brian Hughes: Well, I already had, you know, my own personal data as a BDM. And then working with clients reinforce that. So I've kind of been on the, you know, let's meet in person train since the beginning. But I have seen examples where, you know, the opposite is also true. Because, you know, if you can meet in person, the next best thing is a Zoom meeting. But not every market, not every person is going to be, as, you know, willing to do a Zoom meeting as others. So, for example, we had a client in Seattle and, you know, Seattle, kind of a more tech centric city and, you know, that kind of thing. I think. I think that played a part. But nonetheless, in Seattle, it's really difficult to get around and it may take you an hour to get from one neighborhood to another. So this BDM did all Zoom presentations and he was really successful and still is. He's bringing on, you know, 20, 25 units a month, never meeting in person, only doing Zoom. So if you can make it work, it's great. But, you know, you got to be in the right market. I think, uh, and, you know, have a really good process for getting those Zoom meetings scheduled if you're not going to do in person.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. I guess my advice would be try try it without just because there's so much time that you save with the windshield time. Uh, I'm in Houston. Houston takes you an hour just to get to the other side of the city. So, uh, that's without traffic, let alone with traffic. Uh, so I've always went that way as far as not going to the property because we started there, then we didn't. But, um, I can see, like, you know, you have to be different. And if you're differentiator is that we meet you at the property, that you can close a lot of deals because not a lot of people do that anymore.

Brian Hughes: I would push back on that actually saves time because, you know, the amount of follow up you do to get a closing with people is a lot, you know, and the people are calling in months in advance sometimes. And so, you know, the, the you may spend, you know, windshield time 45 minutes getting out there, another hour meeting with them. But if you're leaving with a signed contract or at least, you know, a verbal agreement, you know that's going to actually save you time overall as opposed to following up with them. Who knows how many times having who knows how many phone conversations. So, you know, that's...

Pete Neubig: The other argument for meeting is that somebody puts eyes on the house and you're not getting a rat's nest.

Brian Hughes: Absolutely, absolutely.

Pete Neubig: So that saves time. I will say that was one challenge we did have when we stopped going to properties. We would take on a property that, you know, Google Earth looks like it looks good. It's standing there. And then you get in a property and it is, you know, an S show.

Brian Hughes: Yes. Yes.

Pete Neubig: PG13. It's an issue. Uh, and so then we'd have a very difficult time to get out of that contract. So one of the questions that I hear the most when I'm at a convention is, you know, do you use BDMs and then. Yeah, the next question is how do you pay them?

Brian Hughes: Mhm. Sure. Absolutely.

Pete Neubig: So where do you come out? Do you come out on all commission or a little bit of salary and then commission? So where do you come out on it?

Brian Hughes: Yeah. So it kind of depends on your, what your goals are. But for the vast majority of companies, they're going to be better off with a salary plus commission because for most companies they're not hiring a BDM to just, hey, I got a ton of leads coming in. I just need you to close them. That's more a scenario where you might be able to get away with just a commission only type of employee. If you have, you know, the leads coming in like clockwork and all you need is that person to close them. But for most companies they say, hey, I need you to close the leads that I got coming in. And I also want you to help me generate some new ones. And if you're going to be asking a BDM to do that, you really need to have them on salary because you need to kind of direct their efforts and make sure that they're doing what needs to be done to generate those leads. And, you know, so because of those reasons, I'd say salary plus bonus is going to be best for most companies. And that's what we help our clients put together also.

Pete Neubig: Now the challenge that I've seen with a bonus is like we're not selling high ticket items here. We're selling an, you know, average is to let's call it $200 a month in in fees. Okay. Do you bonus based on the yearly, like, how much that brings in a year? Do you bonus just on, like, the month? Like, how do you how do you typically do a bonus?

Brian Hughes: Yeah. So our our bonus structure is tiered. So it depends on what your goals are, how many units you have coming in. But just for some kind of rough numbers, you know, let's say units number one through seven. You're getting X number per unit. Say 250 just for a rough number. And then let's say units seven through 15 you're getting a little bit of a higher bonus say 350. And then every unit over 15 you know you're getting a little bit higher say 450 for example. And so this keeps the BDM hungry to push every single month, you know, gives them a little bit of a kicker if they're getting really good numbers. And so that's kind of the way we structure it is, is an increasing and sliding scale each month.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. You don't want to pay him off on a house for like as long as the house is with you, you get a percentage, right? Because then all of a sudden they get fat and happy over time, and then they're making more money in the damn company. So you're saying, hey, cut it off at the end of the month, and the counter restarts, so to speak?

Brian Hughes: Absolutely, absolutely. And yeah, you're totally right on the ongoing percentage. I've definitely heard of a couple companies doing that. And it's like you said, what happens is they get fat and happy and they're not going after the new business. They're kind of relying on what they've signed on over the years. And it kind of naturally turns them into an account manager as opposed to, you know, a hunter. So yeah, each month that restarts, they have a monthly goal. And, you know, they're trying to push past it each month.

Pete Neubig: Now in my mind, a BDM I'm a big DISC guy. If you guys are not familiar with DISC, I highly recommend you go check it out. But there are lots of personality profile stuff out there. But in DISC, a BDM is typically a high I, which means that they're people focused, they're super outgoing. They're not detailed and they're not process focused. So they do a great job of selling the sell or telling the tale numerous times with the same gleam in their eye, almost like comedians, right? They can say the same thing over and over and over, same inflection and all that stuff, and they're great at getting the the deal, especially if they have some D in them. But ask them to maintain a CRM. Ask them to do follow ups. Ask them to do CMAs. Ask them to do you know any kind of paperwork. Even just keeping a calendar could be like an act of God. So the way we solve this at Empire was we actually hired virtual assistants that were high Cs. Cs to be, to be more precise, to be their assistant. So assistant BDMs. Now, years ago, you and I didn't see eye to eye on this. Where are you today on that? On having, like, a team?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, well, I think, you know. Yeah, I agree, I think that having a someone who is more detail oriented and more process oriented to help is great. And I totally agree. You know, a natural salesperson is not going to be as detail oriented. Um, I'm going to have a tougher time with the CRM and things like that, but I think the right sales person is really, they're money motivated. They want to make as much as possible. And once you show them that these tools like the CRM and, you know, leaving notes after each call and all those things that they lead to more money, that they can kind of see the light and come around. And so that's kind of how we approach it. But if you have the ability to hire a remote team member to help and keep those notes and do those things, that is fantastic. And when I was a BDM, I had a remote team member helping out, Martin, who was certainly, you know, that and was certainly detail oriented. He would provide, the notes were two pages long on the owner's situation. So, yeah, if you can get that situation that...

Pete Neubig: They can get the PMA signed, they can get the CMA done, they can do, you know, all the comps and everything. So yeah. I'm a big fan. It helped us tremendously. Also, those folks are at the desk. So guess what happens when the phone rings or the email dings? Yeah, I'm getting with them within two minutes.

Brian Hughes: Absolutely.

Pete Neubig: Let alone 5 or 7 or whatever it is.

Brian Hughes: Yeah. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes they even book an in person meeting, you know, and a call comes in, they, they go through the qualifying questions and then say, hey, you know, you're moving in two months, everything else checks out. Let's schedule a time for our BDM to come out there and meet you. And, you know, they can even fill your calendar like that.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. So our ultimate goal was that the sales person didn't even have to do anything other than look at their calendar and go on appointments, whether and again, you know, sometimes very rarely, they would go to a house. Most of the time it was Zoom calls and they would have all the information right there in the CRM. They'd have the CMA, the PMA, all ready to go, and they would just have the call. And their job was literally just to sell. In our case, we had a whole marketing department. So they just got the the leads. They didn't have to go and do any kind of marketing themselves.

Brian Hughes: Absolutely. Yeah. That's that's a great setup to to have. And you hit on a lot of good points about what remote team members can do and how they can help, and not just for a BDM, you know, like if you are an owner, a property management business owner who says, hey, I'm not ready to hire a BDM, but you hire a remote team member to kind of help with some lead generation activities, help with the CRM, help with some things like that. You can kind of use that as an in-between from, you know, being ready. Hey, I need some help on the sales side before you're quite ready to hire a BDM. It's a good kind of in-between.

Pete Neubig: That's a great point. That is a great point. Hire the virtual team member to generate some leads first through social media or email marketing.

Brian Hughes: Exactly.

Pete Neubig: Yep. One of the challenges that we had was sales versus operations. It always seemed to be like head butting. Do you help your clients smooth that over? Is that something that you've run into with your. I see you shaking your head. For those of you that are listening, not watching, he's shaking his head like vigorously. Tell me a little bit about some of the challenges you've seen and what are some of the solutions?

Brian Hughes: Absolutely, yes. Tale as old as time sales versus operations, for sure. So yes, certainly something I've run into training BDMs in, you know, a lot of the kind of inflection points or, you know, times where that friction happens is when an owner signs up, you know, so from the time they say, yep, let's sign the contract, they get it signed to, you know, now handing that off to a property manager I've seen that's most commonly the time where there's that kind of friction. And one of the ways that we kind of overcome it. Well, you know, as far as actually overcoming it, you got to bring everyone together, you know, you got to talk through the process. But, um, you know, once you're going through it, um, a couple key points to keep in mind as soon as that contract is signed, get back to them as quickly as possible. There's so many deals that are lost kind of in that in-between. Hey, I signed the contract, but I haven't heard anyone in, you know, two days.

Pete Neubig: And yeah, speed to speed to deliver.

Brian Hughes: Yeah. One of the things we provide is an owner checklist. So the the contract is signed in either the BDM or a remote team member is calling you in right after it's signed and going through an onboarding checklist. And it's things like, is the home vacant? Have you already had a professionally cleaned. Have you dropped off the keys? Do you have a home warranty confirming everything's correct. And so they're going through that questionnaire with the owner right after they've signed. And then they can even schedule a meeting with the property manager to make that introduction and kind of take it from there. So that's kind of one of the ways to to smooth out that transition. At least.

Pete Neubig: You know, Brian, when I was at Empire, Steve, my business partner, was in sales and I was the operations guy.

Brian Hughes: Sure.

Pete Neubig: And we had the biggest fights over, you know, he would bring on a piece of property that we just did not want to take. Um, what we had to do is we literally had meetings after meetings, after meetings with everybody in the room. And the way we solved it was, one, we finally determined, what are the three things that can be changed on a PMA? Uh, nothing can can hurt a PM company more than a redlined PMA.

Brian Hughes: Sure.

Pete Neubig: Right. Because systematically, we can't handle that. So we were able to modify three things on the PMA because we were able to modify those three things very easily in our PM software. Right. So percentage lease renewal percentage, late fee percentage. That was the three things they can negotiate on. Somebody wants an extra inspection where they don't pay for it. Can't do that anymore because what happens ultimately is they get the second inspection and we charge them. And now they're really, really upset.

Brian Hughes: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: So that was the first major challenge we had. The second major challenge we had was, you know, what is a home that we would take. What is a property that we would take. And we actually had to really like you kind of know the A class stuff and you kind of know the D minus class stuff. Right. But with the B and the C was all this gray area. And so we had to come up with like, here are the guidelines. These zip codes, we don't take it. We first did if it's under you gotta remember this is years ago. If it's under $1,000 we wouldn't take it. And then what my sales people would do is they would they would they would fudge a CMA and say, oh, this is $1,100 instead of like 950. In one of the roughest areas of Houston just to get the deal because they want the commission and then the operator, the manager has to like handle this thing forever. And the salesperson would come in and just collect their commission check and leave. It's the only time we saw him in the office. And so that caused a lot of friction. How do you tell your team, your clients how to handle that stuff? Is it kind of similar to what I did or is there anything else that you can add?

Brian Hughes: Yeah, there is some. You hit on a lot of good points. Yeah. One is just saying hey, below this rental price check with me. You know, hey if it's going to be below 1200, if it's below 1500, depending on, you know, what market you're in and what type of properties you're looking for, you know, check with me. And that's one quick and simple way to cover most of that. But, on the other side is really just instilling in your team that ultimately things like this will happen. There will be a property we take on that is just not going to fit our portfolio. And we got to let them go. And operations kind of just has to be okay with that. And that's just kind of the nature of the game. But we'd rather have the opportunity with, you know, all of these different clients, then tell them up front, now we're not even going to try, because you know, you get in the habit of turning away clients. And I've seen property managers who do that. You know, they hear one thing that's nope, doesn't fit with us. Onto the next. But there's only a limited number of times you can do that until you start turning away good clients, in my opinion. But those are kind of some of the things I would kind of hope or talk about.

Pete Neubig: Where do you come out on clawing back commissions?

Brian Hughes: Sure. Well, one of the things we'll recommend for clients is after you can do one of two ways, either say after it's leased, then that commission is settled, or you can say, okay, 90 days or set a day limit. I would say typically, or what's more fair, coming from the sales background as well, is that, once it's leased, we consider that settled, because if there's going to be something that that goes on that leads them to cancel after the property is leased, it's nine times out of ten, an operations issue. So, you know, you can do it that way or do it in 90 days. But, one of those two options usually suffices.

Pete Neubig: Got it. What is one question that I may have not asked that you like? I can't believe you didn't ask that. Or is there a nugget that you want before we hit our final commercial break and go to the lightning round? What's one piece of advice you'd give somebody or one question that's burning that you're like, yeah, you need to ask this, Pete.

Brian Hughes: One thing that came out in recently in a training session with one of our clients is, and they're a, you know, managing about 300 units, really small team. It's two owners and they do most of the legwork themselves. And they don't want to hire a BDM. They don't want to grow too much bigger, but they do want to add some doors. And in working together, we kind of figured out that they are just too busy to do a lot of organic lead generation. And they don't have six hours to go to an event or anything like that. But what they do have is an hour every single week where we meet, us, myself and them, and we do the things, you know, we make the posts on social media, we reach out to realtors, we update our CRM, and we manage all of that. So just in an hour a week, we're able to generate leads for them. We're able to move the ball forward. So even if you're thinking, I don't have a lot of time, I'm not sure if I can, you know, I'm in a position to grow the company. Just with an hour a week. You can make progress if you have the right process.

Pete Neubig: It sounds like another potential business business income for you.

Brian Hughes: Absolutely, absolutely a sure thing.

Pete Neubig: All right, Brian, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. We'll be right back, everybody.

Pete Neubig: All right. Welcome back to the NARPM podcast, Brian Hughes. You are in the lightning round. Are you ready, brother?

Brian Hughes: Oh, man, I'm ready. Let's hit it.

Pete Neubig: Alright, let's see here. Do you guys actually use virtual assistants?

Brian Hughes: We do. Yeah. We actually just hired our first virtual assistant through your platform. VPM Solutions. Yes. And she's actually starting next week with us. Um, so yeah, we're really excited about working with her. And I'll, you know, hey, I use your company to do it. VPM Solutions. It was really simple. It was really easy. I don't even know if I've told you that yet.

Pete Neubig: I actually didn't know. Did you go through the White glove? Gold glove? Or did you do it yourself?

Brian Hughes: I just did it myself. And, you know.

Pete Neubig: It's so easy. Even a Brian can do it.

Brian Hughes: Exactly, exactly. The resumes came in and I took it from there. So, yeah, it was really straightforward.

Pete Neubig: All right. What is one piece of advice you'd give someone just starting out in the PM business?

Brian Hughes: One piece of advice. Just starting out. I would say don't buy leads, don't spend a bunch of money buying Google ads and, you know, paying for lead generation services. Because as I mentioned in our talk together, just an hour a week, you can move the ball forward and getting new business and getting new clients.

Pete Neubig: And it's funny, but you have to be consistent on that one hour a week, every week. You have to do it for an hour.

Brian Hughes: That is absolutely right. 100%.

Pete Neubig: Does pineapple belong on pizza?

Brian Hughes: Man, years ago I'd have said no, but now I say adamantly, yes. Pepperoni. Pineapple. Jalapeno. Ooh!

Pete Neubig: You're getting me hungry. All right. What's your favorite fast food restaurant? If you go to. If you just had to have fast food.

Brian Hughes: I gotta say Chick-fil-A. It's it's always good. Always hits.

Pete Neubig: I mean, I would have thought you said Whataburger. Aren't you, like, you're kind of close to the headquarters over there, right? Corporate San Antonio?

Brian Hughes: Well, I don't know if you knew Pete. They actually got bought out by a Chicago company, so.

Pete Neubig: Oh, uh. We're out, we're out.

Brian Hughes: I know, I know.

Pete Neubig: Pretty soon you're going to have, uh. What are they going to have? The deep dish pizza.

Brian Hughes: Oh man. I wouldn't be surprised.

Pete Neubig: What was your first job?

Brian Hughes: Um, first job was Galloway Research, which is a market research company. And I just cold called people and said, hey, would you take ten minutes to take a survey, and yeah, had some fun with it, but it got pretty boring pretty quick.

Pete Neubig: Yeah. All right. What is your ideal vacation?

Brian Hughes: Ideal vacation? Um. Somewhere adventurous, you know. Let's go for a hike. Let's go for ATVs. Let's go on some jet skis. Um, anything like that on there.

Pete Neubig: I like that. Yeah. Um, if you could have dinner with anyone alive, who would it be?

Brian Hughes: Mm. Anyone alive?

Pete Neubig: Other than Brad Larsen.

Brian Hughes: Yeah. Uh. Let's see. Oh, man, that's a good one. Um, let's go. Um, man. Let's go. Tim Duncan. I'm gonna go. Tim Duncan.

Pete Neubig: Okay. Spurs guy. Got it.

Brian Hughes: Yeah.

Pete Neubig: Alright. Um, what book are you currently reading, or what is a book that you've read that's impacted your business or your life?

Brian Hughes: I've read a couple, but to be honest, I'm not a huge reader. I'm more of a podcast listener and.

Pete Neubig: Let's do that one. What's a podcast you recommend to to the folks?

Brian Hughes: It's kind of specific to my industry, but consulting Success podcasts is a is one I'm listening to quite a bit. And, you know, some of the things you can apply is just having a framework, having a process. That's one of the biggest things I've taken away from it and you can apply to any business really.

Pete Neubig: What Disney character do you most associate with?

Brian Hughes: Oh man. Let's see. Dang, that's these are good ones here. Uh, Disney character. Uh let's go Shrek. I'm gonna go Shrek.

Pete Neubig: All right. I like that one. But last one.

Brian Hughes: Better looking, right?

Pete Neubig: At least you're not green.

Brian Hughes: Yeah, exactly.

Pete Neubig: All right. Last one. You prefer dogs or cats?

Brian Hughes: Dogs. Got a nice dog named Biscuit.

Pete Neubig: Oh, I love... Dude! I found a dog on the street. I named him Biscuit because I knew that name would get him a home, and got him a home in a couple of months, so I'm pretty sure about that.

Brian Hughes: Good call. Yep.

Pete Neubig: All right. Brian, if somebody wanted to reach out and utilize your services or pick your brain, how do they do that?

Brian Hughes: Yeah. Just shoot me an email, brian@bizdevmastermind.com. That's Brian with an "I" @BizDevMastermind.com.

Pete Neubig: And if you want to join NARPM, call them at (800) 782-3452 or go to narpm.org. And if you are looking for an assistant BDM we have plenty of them on the platform. We have over 38,000 people looking for work on the platform. We actually have training provided to you by Brian on what a virtual assistant BDM does. So we have a course on, what is it, assistant BDM course that Brian created for us. Go to vpmsolutions.com or email me direct at pete@vpm.solutions.com. Brian, thanks so much for being here today, buddy.

Brian Hughes: Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Anytime.