Welcome to The Get Real Podcast, your high-octane boost and in the trenches tell-it-like-it-is reality therapy for personal, business and real estate investing success with your hosts, power-preneurs Angela and Ron. It’s time to get real!

Angela: Hey everyone, thank you for joining us. This is another episode of The Get Real Podcast. I’m Angela Thomas.

Ron: Another great episode.

Angela: That’s Ron’s line. All great. All great. So I’m here with Ron Phillips and you know, like Ron said, it’s going to be a great episode. If you listened to our last episode, which I hope you did, it’s titled. The Breakup, How to Create a Culture of Growth in Your Company.

Ron: Can we do a show where we get on and it’s, can we do a crappy show?

Angela: Well, we’ve done so many great ones. I don’t know if we know how, but we can try sometime.

Ron: I think we should do it.

Angela: This ones going to be crappy.

Ron: I think we should try to do, not this one. I think we should try to do a crappy one sometime though. I should come back on and just try really hard to do a crappy one.

Angela: All right. I mean, that sounds fun. I’m down if you are. But yeah, in the last one we revealed some kind of large news that I am going to be transitioning my way out of Ron’s company and starting my own venture. And this episode is kind of a continuation of that. We talked all about how to do it correctly, how to do it the wrong way and how to attract and keep entrepreneur type people in your business over the longterm. So if you haven’t listened to that, go listen. But this is continuing off of that.

Ron: We’re going to realize it’s a great episode.

Angela: It was a great episode. It was awesome. Amazing.

Ron: I think we’re just, everybody needs to understand they’re all great.

Angela: They’re all great. Okay.

Ron: I’ll remind them every time that they’re great episode and today it’s going to be another great episode. Angela is going to tell us all about starting out. So if you’re out there and you’ve never done a brand new startup venture, Angela is going to tell you all about it. We’re going to get real today about the emotional ride. This thing is the kind of work it takes to get it up and running. I don’t know, maybe we’ll get into some overcoming doubt. Who knows, who knows where the show will go.

Angela: Maybe we’ll cry a little bit. You never know.

Ron: There’s no show notes for this. That’s not true. There are some show notes here, but no show notes on that. I can

Angela: We really don’t have many show notes. Let’s be honest. We put like, you know, three things up on the screen and then we just talk.

Ron: Literally. If you guys couldn’t figure that out already. This is literally Ron and Angela just mucking about on subjects that we want to talk about, really.

Angela: That gave me the best mental image. I hope it did for some others as well. Us mucking about.

Ron: Mucking about. Okay, so today we’re going to muck about.

Angela: In a great way I might add. Okay.

Ron: Always in a great way about startups. And how awesome and exciting and scary as all get out. These are and all the good stuff. So Angela, this is going to be fun because I’m going to interview Angela today and I’m going to ask her hard questions that she may or may not want to answer, but this is The Get Real Show. So she has to answer them.

Angela: And I just want to say I don’t know what these are and I have no cheat sheet.

Ron: There’s no phone a friend in this episode. So Angela’s just going to have to suck it up.

Angela: Can I skip questions? No?

Ron: No. This is the Get Real Show, there’s no skip the question.

Angela: Come on. I just wanted to see what my options were. All right fair enough. Okay. I’m excited let’s do it.

Ron: It’s like she doesn’t even know me. Okay. Let’s do this. So, so first off, if you listen to last show, you understand that Angela has been thinking about this for years, right? Not this particular…

Angela: Not this business, but…

Ron: Just wanting to own her own thing. Do your own thing. We talked about where that comes from and you know her, you know, special kind of individual that you can have inside of your company.

Angela: I thought you were going to say a special kind of insanity because it’s a little of that too. But…

Ron: A little tiny bit. So let’s talk about the insanity that it takes to, to want to do this. So, like, so what’s the first when you actually came to the conclusion that this is what I’m going to do, I’m going to go do this. I didn’t know, right? So you’re sitting there however many weeks or months ago and you’re like, I’m really going to, I can’t, I’m going to go do this. So what are you feeling when that happens? And then like walk us through the timeline of what’s taken place up to when you told me because I kind of know what’s happening now, right?

Angela: Yeah. Yeah. You got a good idea now. This is actually an embarrassing story that I wasn’t planning on sharing. To me it’s a little weird.

Ron: I didn’t even ask her hard question yet.

Angela: I know it’s already getting embarrassing. No. So I have, you know, I’ve had this like need to build my own thing as long as I can remember. But the last three years or so, I’ve, every year when I write my goals at the beginning of the year in January, I’ve had a goal to figure out a business that I could build and to get it started. And I know that’s kind of scary for you to hear Ron, because you’re like, well you know you’ve been in my company that whole time. But I was super dedicated to your company at the same time. But I was kind of trying to come up with some crazy, awesome idea that I knew I could scale and build into this, you know, empire, whatever.

Angela: So I would like rack my brain and try to be creative and I did all these different things to try to have this amazing idea just, you know, hit me. Which I don’t know why I thought that’s how it was supposed to go down. Because I’m sure that’s not, Ron, you’ve told me your story. I know that’s not how it happened for you, but I have been waiting years and years for this idea to hit me that I just knew I could get behind and that would be amazing. And that I could grow to be this big thing, you know, that’d I would be proud of. But then seriously it was October, you know, Ron and I are both LDS and we have a general conference twice a year

Ron: So guys, this is where the church leaders come and speak to us. Like it’s like if you were in Italy and the Pope came out and spoke to you guys, it’s kind of like that for our church.

Angela: Except it’s on TV. Yeah. We don’t see him…

Ron: Except it’s on TV. You don’t have to go to Italy and you know, yada yada.

Angela: You don’t get to go to Italy.

Ron: But she’s there. Okay. So good. I didn’t know this was where she was going to go.

Angela: I know I didn’t actually tell Ron this, but, oh man, I don’t even remember which speaker it was or anything. So I apologize for my lack of detail. But there was something someone said in that conference that was basically like, and I don’t know why it hit me there, that anything that you’re not happy with in your life, you can change. And I’ve heard that before, but for some reason, the way they said it was like if there’s something that you’re unsettled with and you know you’re not feeling good about in your life, why aren’t you taking steps to fix it yet? Maybe you don’t know what the path looks like or what the ultimate result will be. But you got to take steps, you know, just start taking steps.

Angela: And I was like, Oh my gosh, why have I been writing this down in my goals for years? And not just taking like, there’s something I can do right now, you know, I don’t know what amazing business I could start. I don’t know how I’m going to be the next, you know, Mark Cuban or anything that hasn’t come to me, but gosh, dang it. There’s something I sorry for my ridiculous, you know, Utah swearing there, but there’s got to be something I can do here. And you know, it’s an emotional, weird thing because I said in the last episode, I did not want to leave this company. I love this company. I’ve helped build it. I’ve been here forever. I love working with Ron. I love our team.

Angela: So, you know, that’s kind of been pulling against me. So the thought I had was I need to just figure out how to replace my income and separate myself from this company because I’m so absorbed in it that I don’t really have time to work on anything else and build something for myself, okay. So instead of thinking what brilliant business idea could I do, I just thought, how can I quickly replace my income? What would people pay me to do that would replace my income? And that is kind of how I came to this. So it’s not a very sexy story. I didn’t have a lightning strike in the shower and think of some brilliant idea, but that’s what happened. I was just thinking, this’ll be a temporary thing at least that’ll make it so my family’s fine while I figure out what I really want to do. Does that make sense?

Ron: It does, it does make sense. So I mean, just because somebody is doing something and they know how to do it doesn’t necessarily make it a business. So why did you think that this stuff could be a business? Because, look, I don’t want people on here to think that, you know, if you love crocheting that all of a sudden you can massive business out of crocheting. Maybe you can, I don’t know. That was a horrible, I don’t know. I don’t know anything about crocheting.

Angela: People do sell it on Etsy, but it would take quit a few…

Ron: People sell it on the Etsy, see it probably is a business.

Angela: It would take quite a few to replace my income.

Ron: Oh, I don’t know about scaling it, you know, if you’re doing it by hand, but whatever. Okay. So you came up with this idea, like I can do this thing here, but how did you figure out that this is actually a business you could start?

Angela: Okay. So, yeah, I, so that’s how I came to it, which was kind of a weird way for me. It wasn’t some brilliant idea, but I was thinking about the things that I do that are valuable in this company and that I see other business owners struggling with out there that I know people would pay for. And the reason I thought of it is because I have had several business owners come to me that Ron and I both know and as well as several personal friends that are business owners asking me how to solve these issues in their company. And I see that they have been wasting like so much money and time on this stuff and it comes naturally to me and I really, really enjoy it. And because it’s such a huge problem in these business owners, companies, I know they would pay well for it and I know I could save them money compared to what they’re doing now. So I mean, I did see this hole in the market, but it wasn’t like I thought it was some brilliant business idea. It’s like, oh, I can help these people that need me and replace my income at the same time.

Ron: Perfect. So a business is born, tell everybody what it is because I think, I mean this is a good place to tell everybody that your idea is right. So Angela is really good at this and so it’s no shock to me that this is what you came up with because there is a hole in the market. I mean high level guys that you would not think guys and gals that you would not think would have a problem with this kind of stuff that Angela thinks is easy, but that is not really easy to somebody who doesn’t know how to do it. And yeah, they, you know, they call up and ask for help and you know, as good, you know, the good Samaritan, Angela, you know, usually just helps them out, right. So.

Angela: Yeah, and I’ve been just helping them all, you know, obviously free of charge because they’re friends and whatever. But I know this is a problem if that many of our business owner friends are having it, right. I also backed this up, I don’t know if this is when he wanted me to talk about this, but I did some research on it obviously before deciding to actually go out and start this. And it has confirmed that business owners are wasting a lot of time and money trying to solve technology issues on their own or with untrained help. Business owners often try to use their admin or management staff to build, manage tech projects and to troubleshoot tech things, assuming that they can just go figure it out. By the way…

Ron: Which is really comical because if you listen to the last episode, you’ll realize that Angela was the admin person when this stuff got dumped on her. And because she is an SE serial entrepreneur or an entrepreneur minded person, when I gave her the task, she didn’t just do it like most people that business owners have tried to do, she actually went and learned how to do this stuff and then started doing it. And the like, the cool thing to like rewind to last show is that because she did that and she came back and had done this stuff and I’m like, Oh my gosh, you could do this. That means you could do marketing and that means you could do this and this and this.

Ron: So Angela just kept learning all of this really cool next level type tech stuff inside the company because every time she came back she had done this project and learned on her own how to do it. That’s not what normally happens in businesses. Normally we dump this on the admin person. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing. They are not entrepreneurial minded, so they’re not equipped to go out there and try to figure this stuff out, but not very well. And Angela has a natural aptitude and really likes this crazy stuff, which I’m grateful for.

Angela: I enjoy it.

Ron: But it’s not my deal. And I don’t think it’s very many people’s deal on our team. Right. So…

Angela: No, and since I have leveled up in the company and been the president, we have tried because you know how it happens. Since Ron is really, really good at sales and it comes naturally to him, he’s like, what the hell is wrong with these people that can’t just sell, just do it. What’s your problem? It’s not that hard. Well, I’m the same way with this text stuff. I’m like, you Google it. You learn how to do it, it’s not that big of a deal. And it turns out everyone’s not like that. It’s really weird. We’ve tried to replace me in the company so many times.

Ron: Look, here’s the thing, it’s not easy, Angela’s making it sound easy it’s not easy. Because I Google crap because I’ve watched her do it. I’m like, this is not, like Angela’s on vacation this is not hard. I’m going to Google this case in point. Case in point. I have this phone. So we changed phone systems, right? I have this stupid phone that is programmed on our old phone system an I texted Angela and I said, can I use this desk phone because I actually like the, you know the actual phone and she goes, yeah, I don’t think anybody on our team uses this. I’m like, I want to use it. Can I just, can you just help me figure this out? And so she sends me the instructions on how to do it and I follow the instructions and it didn’t freaking work. Okay, so here’s the thing. This is what happens…

Angela: And now you need to fly me out to where you live.

Ron: So this is how it works. What we should do, we should put a link to the technology guy on Saturday night live from back in the day. It was so hilarious. I’m going to find it.

Angela: You’ll have to share that.

Ron: I’m going to find it. I’m going to put a link to it is hilarious.

Angela: Put it on Facebook.

Ron: This is what happened. Angela was like, this is so easy. Like you just do these instructions, right? So I do the instructions and it didn’t work. That’s what happens when you’re a business owner and you Google this stuff and you get the answer and you do the answer and it doesn’t work. So now what do you do? Now I’ve pissed away. I literally pissed away an hour trying to get this stupid phone to work and it still says inactive. It doesn’t work. And I finally got frustrated and said, this is ridiculous. I don’t even care if I have this phone. It’s now plugged in. It’s still sitting here. It doesn’t work. It says it’s inactive. And that is what Angela is talking about. Angela had this phone working in like 10 minutes.

Angela: And the worst part is Ron. I mean you only wasted an hour. I actually have a business owner friend. This is funny that one of their, well they called me up yesterday because their head office manager person had spent the entire day trying to format a PDF correctly and save it the right way so it would work with they’re form. The entire day.

Ron: Get a MAC.

Angela: But even with the right software, she just didn’t know what she was doing and she was going about it totally the wrong way. And how much did he have to pay her for that whole day? And how many other days have there been like that?

Ron: So it’s, so let’s get back to what, let’s get back to the timeline here. Because there was a fun, um, that was a fun way for me to tell everybody that. Yeah…

Angela: Thanks for throwing yourself under the bus.

Ron: This is ridiculous. Anyway, it’s stupid fun. Now I’m now, I’m sitting here playing with this phone and I’m pissed about it. Okay, so here and I don’t remember where Angela was when I was doing, were you in freaking Disney when I was doing this? That’s probably what it was.

Angela: I probably was.

Ron: I was trying to figure this out while she was in Disney and so it didn’t work. Anyway it’s still sitting here nonetheless. Let’s get back to it. So you come up with this idea, you think, okay, I do this stuff, I’m really good at this. How can I turn this into a business? Well, business owners I know need this because they’ve been calling and asking us for us, you know, high level people who should have somebody on staff who does this. But the reality is they don’t, right? Because this is a weird thing, unless you’re an IT company, you probably don’t have an IT person in your office.

Angela: No unless you’re a really large company. And then you probably would hire someone like this, right?

Ron: So does that make any sense to have a full time or a part time it person to handle this stuff? But there’s a bunch of this crap that needs to be done that, that if somebody knows how to do it can be done very quickly and you can educate the other person on how to do it very quickly. It’s not that big of a deal. And so you’ve dreamed this thing up and now you went and did some research. I think that was a really critical step to make sure that there’s not a whole bunch of businesses out there that already do this. And even if there are a couple of them out there, you still need to research, you know, what’s their pricing, what do they actually offer? That kind of stuff to make sure that what you’re doing as a competitive advantage.

Angela: Ron, we both know I’m really good with Google. That’s, you know, that should be on my resume. So I have searched for companies like this and can’t find anything. And you know, I don’t think that’s because there’s not a market for it. I think that nobody has figured out how to package it correctly to turn it into a business and been able to market it because there’s, in this technology space, there’s IT companies like you talked about, they mostly come out and fix your hardware. They don’t do any of this online stuff. There’s marketing companies, which I thought about doing for a little while because I do love marketing but what they do is they consult with you, they help you write your message and they figure out the best ways for you to spend money and send it out across the internet or whatever your venue is.

Angela: You know, if you’re doing events or mailers or whatever. And then there’s copywriters, there’s a bunch of little niche companies in here as well that do one thing really well, like logos, copywriting, that kind of stuff. But I could not find a single company that helps business owners with all the crap, the tech crap that is holding them back from reaching their goals, which is usually, I mean it’s usually little stuff that they don’t realize is little. Like, you know, updating their website with new information or adding, you know, a chat or a plugin or building they’re automating their sales process that they have on paper, turning it into an actual sales funnel with automation that sends out emails and texts and reminds people to do what they need to do, that kind of thing. There’s no one that helps people set up software as a service programs or CRMs and nobody knows which one’s the best.

Angela: I mean, you can look up lists of, you know, the top 10 CRMs or whatever it is you need, but they’re all different, right? So even finding you can waste days looking for the right software that fits your needs. Where somebody who has been in this space for a long time and used them all could just quickly tell you what it was. Setting them up and training your staff on it. I mean, sometimes if you buy some of the bigger accounts on some of these software programs, they’ll have someone set up your account and train your staff. In our experience, that’s usually a waste of time and it doesn’t give you the actual…

Ron: And you pay a fortune for it.

Angela: You pay a fortune for it, and it doesn’t give you the real world knowledge of how to use it. Usually it’s kind of a high level overview. Right, so setting up things like that, you know, all these tech problems you have. Like I actually had a friend asked me, they had broke their website trying to switch it over to a new domain because they hadn’t set up their DNS records correctly, so they broke their website and their email.

Ron: If you’re like me, if you’re like me, you’ve heard some of these things that she’s talking about, you know what the hell any of that is, right? Whatever. I’m like, okay, whatever. And you fix it because I don’t really want to know what a DNS server is or what it does or I find it or what I do with it when I find it. I don’t want to know any of that crap. I don’t know what it is. I just want my stupid website to frigging work. And I want when somebody puts their information in there that I capture it and I have a lead so that my sales team can use their automated thing and they can do their thing. And so I can sit over here and do what I want to do and I don’t want to do any of that crap. That’s what I want.

Angela: And that is how this was born because some of us enjoy this crap as you call it. I honestly love it and think it’s fun and it’s cool that there’s people that need this since I enjoy it so much. So it’s really cool that something I enjoy doing can actually help people and help their businesses be more successful by, you know, allowing their team to do what they’re actually hired to do. Saving them the time that they’re wasting and that their team is wasting and saving them all the resources that are wasted on, you know, getting the wrong software or paying somebody to spend time trying to learn how to do this stuff.

Ron: I’m going to, now I’m going to, now I’m going to ask Angela another question that may help somebody else out there who is either tried to do this or wants to do this now, you know, create some kind of a business of their own. Angela, so you go through this process, you come with this idea. I can tell you’re excited about it. I think everybody can, you’re talking about it and you’re pretty animated. You’re pretty animated about liking this crap that nobody, right. Okay, that’s good. So Angela is animated about all this stuff but, and this sounds all super positive and you’ve got this awesome idea and you’ve even built collateral for it. You have a website for it, you have all this stuff that you’ve built all in the background. Okay, moving forward. Fast forward, we tell Ron bam, break up episode happens. Now all of a sudden this thing gets real. So we go from concept to what happens with the, yeah, exactly. What’d you say? Because that’s exactly what I was thinking.

Angela: I said oh shit. And then to quote Bridesmaids you’re supposed to say, Oh yeah oh shit.

Ron: Right now it gets real and I want, I just want for you to tell people because this is The Get Real Show. I want to tell people what really happens when the rubber is supposed to actually hit the road mentally and emotionally on this deal. Because I think there’s a lot of people out there, Angela, who get to the point where they’ve got a really cool idea. They actually probably go out and create some stuff and they get all excited about it. But then when it’s time to actually implement this thing, the same thing that is hitting you hits them. And I’m, what I want to know is A, what does that feel like? And B, because I already know what it feels like, but I want you to describe it. And then B, what actually makes it so that you go from concept to, I’m actually going to go do this now. Like this is legitimately going to happen. How do you do that? Like, and so what does it feel like? And then how do you get over the hump?

Angela: All right, if I forget any part of it, just remind me. But first of all, how it feels. So I, going back just a minute, I had casually in my spare time, put up a little website and started trying to figure out some messaging, you know, trying to take some steps towards this. And then I decided to tell Ron way the hell before I was ready. I mean, I had just, it was a concept, okay. It was just kind of, it was there.

Ron: Ah, this is so good.

Angela: And then I don’t know, I got the feeling from Ron he wanted to talk about my future with the company. So I felt like it would be really, you know, unethical and not something I wanted to do to pretend I saw a future longterm there. So I kind of felt like thrown into it. But I also, I think I wanted to kick the ladder out from under myself a little bit too because I was sick of not making anything happen when this has been a goal of mine for so long. So I just freaking bit the bullet when everyone would have told me it was stupid to and told Ron and then, you know, Ron was excited for me and stuff, which was great. But I also felt a little sad he wasn’t devastated I was leaving his company because it’s been my thing forever.

Angela: Not that I wanted him to have a hard time or anything. It’s just weird that the company goes on and plans without you and you’re not a part of its future when it’s been your baby and your life, you know? So that’s freaking weird. So that’s crazy. And then thinking about moving forward with this without a foot in that company is strange and not being in the even, you know, Ron said he’s going to be my first client, which is freaking awesome. Thank you Ron for the trust in me. But I’m not going to be involved in discussions about, you know, the company’s the direction it’s taking and what’s going to happen in the future and all that kind of stuff. Hiring and firing and management and all that stuff is, you know, has been part of who I am. So it’s really weird.

Angela: And then the second time I talked to Ron, you know, he talked about in the last episode, he kind of challenged me to move up my timeline cause this had been a, I’m going to take steps towards this. Not Ron’s like, just freaking jump out of the nest baby bird. I’ll kick you. Here you go. Is that a good visual?

Ron: Yeah, I think so.

Angela: Baby bird fly damn it.

Ron: Everybody can see you falling now.

Angela: Yeah. I’m falling out of the tree and, and I was like, Oh crap. Like, I mean, I told everyone, not any details, but I told like my husband and sisters and stuff, I was like, man, I’m going to be working on this late at night and I’m not going to have time to do anything. I’m going to be gone for a while. Sorry. Because oh crap, I have to figure out how to actually get this up and profitable way faster than I planned on and with, you know, I’m not one of those people that goes out and tries to get a bunch of investors or funding, especially in a business like this.

Angela: I just want to build it correctly and not have debt and not have a bunch of partners because you know, I’ve seen how that went for Ron. So the oh shit is from realizing I have to get this thing profitable and fast. And that means getting my message out to enough people that I can help in a way that doesn’t involve spending money on a bunch of advertising or marketing, which I love doing, but I don’t have the budget for that yet. So there’s just a lot that goes into, a lot of things you have to think about starting up a new company to get it to the point where it can be profitable. I wanted this to be, you know, an extremely valuable service for people. So I wanted to do it the right way. I didn’t want it to just be like a casual side business where people, you know, tell me what they need help with and I figure it out.

Angela: I wanted to actually have different account levels set up. Have a system in the back office of my website where people can easily submit problems and organize them and see how their projects are coming along and when they’ll be done. Basically integrating a good project manager type thing with my website. So that this would be an easy and valuable thing. Because the last thing I want to do is have this feel like a burden or like it’s going to take up more time for business owners that are already wasting time trying to solve these tech problems. I want it to make their life easier by making it really simple for them to transfer these problems over to me and letting me handle them. So anyway, I don’t know if that answers your question, but…

Ron: 100% so if you’re out there and you want to start a new business and you have come up with the concept and you’ve been playing around with it a little bit and then it’s kind of rubber hits the road time, there’s a whole bunch of emotion that hits you because you’re going to be excited, but you’re going to be scared to death, right, Angela?

Angela: Yeah, I didn’t say that, but yeah, I’m a little, I’m a little scared to death. I know this is valuable for people, but the pressure of having to actually get people to believe in you and be some of your first customers and getting this all off the ground, how I envision it without, you know, having to eat food storage or anything is a lot, you know.

Ron: That is a play on…

Angela: That is a play on Ron.

Ron: You have to go all the way back to like the first or second episode. I don’t even remember when we’d said that, but that’s what I had to do when I started.

Angela: Yeah, because Ron didn’t plan to go do his own thing.

Ron: Ron got kicked out, literally got kicked out. Ron just got eliminated and life financial life was over and he had to start over again. But, and there’s a part of that, we actually had a conversation on the phone about that where I said, do you remember back here when we started this thing? Part of the reason that we did it so fast is because we didn’t have a choice. We had to do it and we had to do it quickly. And I think there’s a, I think there’s a benefit to that sometimes. And I told Angela, I said, you’ve got to burn the boats. You cannot have a retreat plan. You have got to burn the boats and you’ve got to march forward and plan on just kicking some serious butt. Angela has a few legs up where some people may not. There’s a lot of business owners that know Angela. Some of you may be listening to the show.

Ron: They know her because she’s been in all these rooms with, you know, pretty high level business owners who have talked to her about this stuff and then have subsequently called her about this stuff and they know she’s very capable. So there is a, there’s a piece of this where, you know, Angela said she has to prove herself, but with a lot of people, she doesn’t have to prove herself. She just needs to get those people to understand she’s doing this now. But secondarily to that, yeah, you got to be able to get your message out and you’ve got to be able to do it quickly enough that you can get enough people in that you can have the money that you need. The reality of the situation is that it can be done and it can be done. And I work best and I think I know Angela well enough to know that she works best when there’s just a little tiny bit of pressure where it’s either, I mean it’s so it’s kind of crap or get off the pot time. And Angela got off the pot so we’re…

Angela: I said sink or swim and I was going to swim but sure I’ll get off the pot.

Ron: I’m not sure exactly which way is best because I think you’re supposed to…

Angela: I think crapping is actually the correct thing to do.

Ron: So she crapped. Okay. And then you get off the pot. I’m not sure which one it is.

Angela: Oh my God.

Ron: She did the right one.

Angela: Yeah, whatever it is.

Ron: So I’m super pumped. This business that she’s created is, just so you guys understand, the business that she’s created is a lot of what she did. I mean, there was, she listed a whole bunch of other things that she’s going to miss about over here. But this piece right here, she really enjoyed and did a great job in our company. And so it’s kind of a natural slide for me to go. Yeah can you just keep doing that over here please for us? And then let’s add some people to it. Anyway I’m super pumped for you. This is going to be great. And I know that this is a needed business because I’ve needed it. Had I not had somebody who could just run with the fall and make the thing happen, I would have drowned several times trying to find people who could actually make this thing happen.

Angela: Yup. Yeah. And you can’t assume that just because somebody is young or even has a marketing degree or a IT degree or whatever it is from a college that they know what they’re doing. Because we’ve hired those people and you know, it’s not true. But yeah. So how this works real quick is that you just pay a flat monthly fee, which is less than a minimum wage employee and you get unlimited tech support and tech projects that you can submit through the back office and through email and texts and whatever it is.

Ron: Some people when they hear tech though they think one thing.

Angela: I know, I know.

Ron: What does that mean cause this cause this is because I got, I got, just so you guys know, I got my proposal yesterday and what I thought actually in my original phone call with you and you said tech, I thought one thing and then when you, when we talked…

Angela: What did you think? I know this is the wrong form.

Ron: I think tech stuff, I think tech stuff is like, you know, problems with like the dude that broke his website. I, that’s what I call it.

Angela: And that is covered. That is part of tech support.

Ron: It is. However, the thing that’s way better for me is that it says in there that you can help build the sales funnels and stuff like that with this automation, right. In my mind, while I know that’s tech, that doesn’t show up as tech in my mind, that shows up as part of marketing, but it’s not, that is actually really techie stuff to make sure all of the things happen the way that they’re supposed to happen. And building those funnels and building the pages and building.

Angela: And making all of your software, talk to each other and integrate.

Ron: Yeah, I mean that’s all. She’s done, all that stuff inside of our company anyway. And I already knew all that stuff got done but it didn’t register. So when you’re, so yeah, there’s a host of things that are included kind of in this quote tech thing.

Angela: So yeah, there’s kind of two sides to it. So for one flat monthly fee, you have kind of a tech support desk at your disposal that gives support for anything you’re doing on the internet, whether it’s your website or you know, issues you’re having with Google Drive or you know, getting your freaking Google business page to show up correctly. You know, you broke your website.

Ron: Does my phone qualify?

Angela: Yeah. Online as long as it’s VOIP stuff. I mean, you know, we’d have to get on the Zoom with you but so it includes tech support, but the other side is unlimited tech projects which covers, I mean everything except the creative side. So the difference between us and a marketing company is you have to actually have an idea of what your messaging is and what kind of pictures you want to put up and, you know, how you want your sales funnel to operate or your marketing funnel and what the pieces are. So any business owner though, and I think this is smarter rather than hiring, and I’m sorry, this is my opinion. A marketing company. I think business owners know their own business better and they should have their messaging figured out because it’s their baby.

Ron: And I’m just going to state for the record, having hired many marketing companies that we do know our message better. And the thing that we never could figure out how to do until Angela figured it out is all the quote tech side of that. How do you make the funnel actually work? Well that’s the part that she’s connecting here. So you can take your messaging that you already know is going to work and plug it into something that, you know, that works in an automated fashion, right?

Angela: Exactly. Or in your social media or wherever it is that you’re marketing and you want your message to appear. So we do everything but the creative side, you have to already kind of know your messaging and you know, the image you’re trying to portray and then my company will put all the pieces together for you and make it all function properly, which is the piece most people struggle with.

Ron: Who doesn’t like that? I think if you’re out there and you’re wanting to build a business, I think that Angela, I think that’s been really helpful because it gives people an idea of are you normal? If you get to the moment when you have the, oh my gosh, am I really doing this moment, that’s normal. Everybody has that, everybody has fear when they’re moving into something that’s outside of their comfort zone. The thing is you just got to hit the fear head on. And I am proud of you for doing that. You’re actually, you’re hitting it head on and making progress and pushing really, really fast through this. And sometimes you just got to run.

Ron: And I, you know, we’ve been I’ve talked many times on here about how cool life is where I don’t have to really do that now, but the shows in the beginning, we talked about like, when you’re starting, you literally have to run like Forrest Gump coming around the corner. You’ve got to run and it’s really, really, really important. And you’re doing that. So look, if there’s anybody who is on here and they’re a business owner and they’re going, Oh my gosh, this is, I would love to do this, shameless plug. How do you, how do we get ahold of Angela and your company?

Angela: Well, thanks for that Ron. You can visit a V as in Victor, A as in Apple, Techs.

Ron: Wait a second. It’s not apple, it’s alpha. It’s A for alpha.

Angela: Sorry, I thought you could just pick whichever.

Ron: No, it’s not. No, it’s absolutely not that way.

Angela: Is that the military, because I was never taught that.

Ron: I was in the military and you need to actually get it right if you’re going to use Victor. You can’t start with Victor and then go to Apple

Angela: I didn’t even know Victor was correct. How about victory, Apple, techs.com? So the website is V for Victor, a for Apple techs with an S .com. So TECHS.

Ron: You still did apple.

Angela: Oh really, Oh my gosh. Okay. You do it. I can’t, I can’t.

Ron: VA Techs, people.

Angela: .Com and the email to reach me directly is a Info@VATexs.com

Ron: And let just for everybody out there who doesn’t know how to spell, don’t be ashamed if you don’t. It’s V a T E C H S, not T E K S.

Angela: And no K.

Ron: Yeah , no K. It’s T E C H S.com VATechs.com.

Angela: Thanks Ron.

Ron: Angela, I’m super pumped for you. This is going to be awesome. I’m super pumped for any business owner who’s listening that actually contacts you because I can personally vouch for the fact that Angela does know what the hell she’s doing. She’s very good at it. And crazy enough, she actually likes this crap.

Angela: I do. I do. I love it. I also wanted to say real quick before we end that if you’re a bigger company and you want to just make sure you hire someone correctly that can do all this. Visit my website as well. There’s a section for you on there. There’s some things to look for and a lot of them are actually in our previous episode. Because a lot of the people that can solve problems like this are entrepreneurial minded because having a marketing degree or a even a programming degree does not mean they know any of this. My brother is actually a really good programmer, a well-paid database programmer, which is like, you know, the craziest worst thing I would never want to do. And he doesn’t know a lot of this stuff. So that’s not what you look for.

Ron: So let’s end with this Angela, if you’re okay with it, Angela knows some really cool Ninja crap. Okay. I mean, so we kind of glossed over the fact that she does all this tech stuff, but more so the people who called, we’re trying to figure out like what is the cool Ninja stuff you know about Facebook marketing? What’s the cool Ninja stuff you know about how to get these funnels to actually operate correctly. There’s some really cool stuff that she knows that a lot of people who are in that business don’t even know.

Ron: So it’s not as if she just understands how to do the, you know, plug this wire into this thing over here and make the thing work. None of that’s applicable, but you get what I’m saying, it’s not like you plug it in and make it work. It’s, she knows some really cool tricks that not only make it work but you know, make it work very, very well and betterthan most people understand how to do it. She’s very capable in this particular field and a lot of other ones too. But in this one particular, she knows a lot of really cool things.

Angela: Shoot Ron, you’re embarrassing me. We better end now. So thanks for that. That was very nice. Real quick, you know, we appreciate you listening. If you’d like to give us any comments, feedback, future suggestions, visit, GetRealEstateSuccess.com. I’m not going to spell that one out because I’m sure I’ll do it all wrong, but you can also visit us on Facebook or Instagram at Get Real Podcast.

Ron: Make sure you leave Angela a whole lot of love on this episode. She jumps out there and starts flying as she’s, you know, falling out of the nest, it’s great.

Angela: Thanks Ron. Thanks for listening everybody.

Ron: Alright thanks. See ya.

This has been The Get Real podcast to subscribe and for more information, including a list of all episodes, go to GetRealEstateSuccess.com.