Max Fisch - Lender, Flipper, Wholesaler, Investor & Virtual Assistant Expert
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Max Fisch has done an immense amount of things in his real estate career. He started out as a mortgage originator in the early 2000's before quickly getting into flipping. Over the years, he's completed hundreds of real estate transactions by way of financing, wholesaling, acquisition, rehabbing, and long-term investing in the Philadelphia, PA area. His deals average $500k+, so he works 4-6 rehabs per year, along with 25-35 wholesale transactions. Seeing a need in his business and in the market, Max founded Real Estate Project Solutions, a full service virtual assistant agency that provides leverage to those in the real estate industry that need it. Max shares his wealth of experience with us to help inspire others looking to grow in the real estate industry.
In this episode, hosted by Mike Swenson, we discussed:
- Within one year in real estate, he completed his first flip, netting a significant profit
- Over time, he completed hundreds of transactions between financing, wholesaling, rehabbing, and investing
- The value of being creative while looking at the properties and having a consultative approach
- The importance of marketing and analyzing the property for a buyer
- The best way to make money in real estate is to take advantage of opportunities in zoning
- The importance of staying focused so that it doesn't distract you from your goal
- Virtual Assistants are the key to Real Estate growth because successfully leverage your time for you to focus on continuing growing your business
- If you're going to hire virtual assistants it is important to take your time to find the right fit
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro and overview on Max‘s career.
2:14 - Max beginning as a mortgage originator
3:52 - Finding deals and his marketing sources
9:01 - Best use of property and maximizing it
17:20 - Finding residential financing
17:58 - Developing and growing a Virtual Assistant Company
20:49 - Barriers from the past in hiring a Virtual Assistant
22:46 - VA training process
30:06 - Future growth in real estate and VA business
33:06 - Learn more about Max
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Full transcript here:
Mike Swenson
Welcome to The REL freedom podcast where we inspire you to pursue your passion to gain time and financial freedom through opportunities in real estate. I'm your host, Mike Swenson. Let's get some real freedom together.
Mike Swenson
Welcome, everybody to another episode of REL freedom. I am Mike Swenson, your host. And today we're going to talk about support and leverage and the power of having great people supporting your business growing your business, specifically virtual assistants. And so today we've got Max Fisch here, and a little bit background about Max. He started out as a mortgage originator back in the early 2000s. And one year within one year completed his first flip, netting a significant profit. Since then, you've completed hundreds of transactions between financing wholesaling, rehabbing investing. So you're based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, now you are working on virtual assistant business. Welcome, Max, we're so excited to have you, why don't you just share a little bit more about you?
Max Fisch
Oh, thank you, Mike. I appreciate that. Thanks for the intro, and I appreciate having me. Yeah, I mean, you, you summarized it pretty well, I've I've been in the real estate space, you know, quite a while I guess, you know, it seems like most folks are new, or, you know, maybe last five years, kind of getting into the business. certainly seen a lot, you know, live through the 2008 2009 call it cycle or crash or, you know, however you word it. And yet today, I'd say probably half of my time is dedicated to the real estate business, I have four full time guys in the office. And then, you know, the other half is, is the VA business. And, you know, to your point, just, you know, enjoy helping people like having conversations, spend a lot of time on the phone, you know, really working with current clients and things, things like that. So, gotta love what you do.
Mike Swenson
So let's kind of walk chronologically through kind of where we're at. And ultimately, you know, your VA business today, how did you get into real estate starting as a mortgage originator? What got you into that space to begin with?
Max Fisch
Yeah, so very early on. Maybe like, I think I was maybe like, 18, probably, probably wasn't even that shortly after my 18th birthday, I actually got into the auto business, and I was doing sales, you know, went there was always into cars and thought, hey, you know, that would be an interesting opportunity. Better than that, you know, the candy shop when I was 15, or whatever it was. And so I was working there. And a friend of mine started a mortgage company and said, Look, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta come work with me. And I and I jokingly said, you know, no way, you can't pay me what I'm making, you're making, you know, 50,000 a year or something. And, you know, just a cocky little kid, of course, but he finally got me to come over and, you know, back then the mortgage business was a lot different than it is today. And you know, we did a lot of very creative stuff.
Max Fisch
For those who have been, who were around at the time, were aware of like the, the no documentation, loans and things like that. And it just was very creative. So we were the people in foreclosure, you know, there was a solution. And it just, I really enjoyed that aspect of really trying to work with people to, to figure out problems and help them save, save their properties. And obviously, being immersed in real estate, I ended up seeing a a property for sale, and knew the numbers. And that was my first flip that you mentioned.
Mike Swenson
So then, you know, a lot of people are interested in flipping they're interested in wholesaling. How did that business develop from you from from now? I got my my one flip. And how did that grow?
Max Fisch
Yes. So the one thing that I always tell people is looking back, I realized that I got very, very lucky with that first flip. So I had arranged my own financing, I did a loan with Countrywide. For those who remember 100% financing, and the rates were very good. They were about double what they are now, even back then. So I want to say was like 6%, six and a half percent. And, you know, had things gone bad or had I kept that property a little longer, I would have been exposed to Oh, 809 Potentially, and that would have I didn't have the reserves at that time. So yeah, so So did that and worked in this outdoorsy market for a while. It wasn't until Oh man, I want to say like 767 years ago, 2015, something like that, that I decided I have to I need a bigger market. And my father has had always said if you're even a small fish in a place like Philadelphia But you're still doing really well. And so I went to the Philly market, you know, went to some RIAs met some people.
Max Fisch
And, you know, once I learned the market, I learned how to comp because a little bit different than, say, a more suburban market. You know, it was pretty straightforward. But, you know, South Jersey, generally, there's just not a lot of transactions. And of course, everybody knows a realtor. So it just was it. It's not impossible it there's a lot of guys making money there, obviously, but it's just a lot more difficult to break into than Philadelphia. And, and now we do, you know, six or seven big, you know, large rehabs a year?
Mike Swenson
And how are you finding? Because, in addition, you're doing wholesale transactions, too? How are you running across those? Is it? Is it intentional? You know, what are what are your marketing sources? And then, you know, every everybody wants to know, right, how can I find my deals? Yeah. And I learned from people who have deals.
Max Fisch
Yeah, so, you know, Philadelphia is an interesting market, obviously, a lot of diversity, but it's also a very big city geographically, there's, I think, like a million 5,000,006 people, but geographically, it's very, very large, and pretty diverse. And so, you know, we see all kinds of people, you know, economic status, you know, race, religion, everything in between. So I had originally started with, I'd pay to mentor, you know, to find out, basically short my learning curve on the marketing and, and the pitch by him was niche lists, right, so probate, tax delinquent, you know, all the stuff that we all know. And that was the focus for a little while. And then once I got comfortable at the market, and I decided I really wanted to get into the rehabbing part heavily, I decided it made more sense. One to pass on the small stuff.
Max Fisch
So the majority of the deals that die due to title issues, and there's a lot of them. In Philadelphia, for me, when I looked at my numbers were the small stuff, the deals that were say under 50 grand. So what I did was I started focusing more broadly, and I started targeting only the properties I would want to buy, renovate and sell. Right? So, so that kind of excluded a big portion. And today, the ones that we wholesale, or maybe even do a whole tale, you know, buy it do a clean out put on the MLS, our properties, for one reason or another don't fit our, our criteria. So one quick current example is right now permitting, and to take it a step further, you know, variants of any kind of variance stuff, you know, change you use, or that kind of thing is taking a very, very long time to get approval for and so, although I will do rehabs in Philly today, I'm they got to be much sweeter deals, where I've kind of taken a shift. And we focus more on the suburbs, I would say, at this point. So that's like one example. So you know, I don't know, maybe we picked up three, four or five contracts last week, I might buy one and the others will wholesale. So the wholesaling is just a product of, you know, a selection process, you know, by me.
Mike Swenson
and I think that's one of the things that, you know, as people grow in real estate, you realize, there's so many different ways to take it, it's kind of like, you know, those choose your own adventure books in the past, where it's like, Okay, what's going to be the best use for this property? And so, you know, me originally getting into, you know, residential sales, I was on the admin team for a real estate team, they're just looking at, take the listing, you know, or not, you know, and, and for you, there's so much more that you can do with that you're looking at, is it a flip? Is it a buy and hold? Is it a wholesale? Is it a development deal? There's lots of different things that you can do, and lots of different ways that you can make money. So it's really just figuring out what's the best use of that property? And how can I maximize that property to meet whatever needs that you're doing? Is that Is that right?
Max Fisch
Absolutely. You know, to take it a step further, we did, I think, two lease options last year. These were properties that I could have wholesaled but I knew that I probably would have made the same money wholesaling with the down payment on the lease option. And when I go to disposition, the property, you know, say in two years, it'll literally be worth I would guess probably three times what we contracted it for. So instead of making say 10,000 We still make the same 10 But then there's probably another 75 or 100,000, a few years down the road, and the rental income covers the mortgage by you know, I won't say the mortgage is like 700 bucks and we get a 50 and rent so there's not a lot of You stare but I got a $15,000 downpayment, put five into the house and kept 10. So yeah, definitely doing, doing looking at it creatively and taking that kind of consultative approach is definitely key. And in Philadelphia, they do a lot of rezoning.
Max Fisch
So they've rezoned. I would say, like twice in the last 20 years, not the whole city, but certain parts. I did a monster deal a year ago where it was a single family, but it was zoned RM one. And in Philadelphia, that just means you can go multifamily buy right now, there's some restrictions. Long story short, I had offers called a 20,000, our wholesale fee, we ended up making well into the six figures because a buddy of mine bought it converted it to I think, five units, or four or five units. And he actually just completed the construction two months ago. So knowing the zoning and knowing, you know how to, I guess market the property or how to analyze the property for a buyer is extremely important. And can can be the difference between, you know, a decent deal and a monstrous homerun or maybe even a deal and no deal. Yeah, I think that's really important.
Mike Swenson
Was that was that a tear down and rebuild them? Or the property, which is big enough that they are able to add units within that?
Max Fisch
Yeah, so it was a three story? No, excuse me, technically, well, three stories in an attic. So you know, if you look, you see four rows of Windows. And this was in West Philadelphia, and basically what they were doing was, and you can see it up and down the street. So, you know, it wasn't hard to identify. But what they were doing well, what this guy did, and what everyone else did was dig out the basement. So the basement ends up being a unit because there's egress in the back. And then the other three units are in the, you know, the first floor, second and third floor. And I want to say I'm pretty sure it was four units, I want to say they're about 800 or 900 square feet apiece, you know, these big three stories in Philadelphia, these three story row homes are you know, they're large, there are 3000 ish square feet with the basement, maybe 3500. So no, not a teardown at all. Just just a literally converting the use, and then, you know, a much more extensive rehab, then, you know, then just a traditional, you know, single family for retail sale, but but nothing, nothing crazy otherwise.
Mike Swenson
But and I think for some folks, they run away from that kind of thing, because they think, oh, gosh, it just seems like such a large project. But what a lot of people and smart people realize is there's a lot of money to be made there when when I can convert one unit to four units. Now my rents are a lot higher, if I ever go to resell, because I've added tenants into there, now the resale value is a lot higher. And so there's a there's a lot of opportunity there. And I heard somebody say in the past that, that is one of the best ways to make money in real estate is taking advantage of opportunities in zoning.
Max Fisch
Yeah, absolutely. So there's a lot of that here in Philadelphia, you know, the, you know, the term is adaptive reuse. And what you see a lot of times is they'll take an old factory, and is obviously an industrial use or was and they'll convert it into loft apartments. Okay, so it goes from industrial to residential. You'll see, I've seen that with office buildings. You know, you see, churches, churches is a big one. So I'm gonna buy a church converted into condos, they don't want to knock down the church, especially in Philadelphia, it might be a couple 100 years old, it's really beautiful. But if they don't do something, it's gonna get demolished. So those are some examples. I mean, I can run through the numbers real quick on that one, and you'll maybe your listeners will really have a good idea of, of why they might want to pursue that kind of debt kind of transaction.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, go ahead.
Max Fisch
So we contracted it for 100,000. And it turned out that the woman had, I want to say, like, you know, call it $10,000 between back taxes and maybe like a credit card that she had gotten a judgment as a result of and then attached to the property. So let's say we're all in for like 115. And we get to the table and you know, we show her the settlement sheet, she comes to my office to close we share the settlement sheet so you know, 100 less, you know, the 15 course we're paying all the closing costs is 85. And the daughter was there who we'd never met and she says no, no, we want 100 So she ended up walking right and I got on the phone with her because my you know, my acquisitions guy was was on another appointment, and we got to come back the next day, actually, but so we ended up paying for that. So it was 100 plus the 15 Plus closing costs are called like, kinda like one 120 Call like 125 Because there's big transfer tax and silly. So I was into 125, we did a clean out the class $3,500 Because it was, you know, Florida sealing junk. And I called a buddy of mine and we contracted for, I think it was 255 Plus closing costs. I'd have to double check, but I'm pretty sure that was right. So again, well into the six figures, he spent 250,000.
Max Fisch
So he's into it for say, a little over five called five and a quarter. And he just listed it for sale to see if he could turn it over. And if not, he's going to rent it. He listed it for 860,000, which is not a crazy number. And if he goes to rent it, I want to say he's going to get somewhere between 12 and $1,400 per unit, so considerable cashflow. So you know, you can see where as a rehabber if you're into it for you know, five and a quarter plus your holding costs, and you can sell it for even if he only sells it for 750. There's still you know, 25 30% profit margin, I mean, the profit is significant.
Mike Swenson
And for you and basically took it for 125 130, after cleaning in contracted it out for 250.
Max Fisch
Correct. Yeah, yeah. So we did you know, 120 or something like that. And that's a gross because I pay my sales guy, my dispositions guy and all but, but had we had we sold it as a single family? You know, maybe we would have maybe we would have sold it for 150 160 175, maybe, because the single families in that area are going for three, something, maybe four, fully renovated retail sales. You know, so there's big demand in Philadelphia for, you know, for those type of properties. Because, you know, the big, you know, when a guy builds, you know, 100 or 200 apartment units, you know, those are like the biggest of the big corporate players. Most guys like you and I, especially for management purposes, are interested in these type of things. And, and being that it was four units, it was qualifies for residential financing, too.
Mike Swenson
Yeah, that's, that's awesome. How did you find that one?
Max Fisch
I don't know for sure, I'd have to look, I'd say probably cold calling today. And since maybe, probably for the last couple of years, it's been about 90% cold calling. The other 10% is, is text messaging and direct mail. We don't, we don't spend more than, you know, I don't know, $2,500 a month on direct mail, because it's very targeted, you know, small lists, probates of the unreachable, and things like that. So it's a very, very small part of our business.
Mike Swenson
So let's, let's transition then and talk about the virtual assistant company and how that came to be and how it's grown for you. Yeah, absolutely.
Max Fisch
So, interestingly enough, I had, like many people decided, you know, things like the bookkeeping, you know, the data entry, the polling, the lists, you know, a lot of these things were things that I knew how to do, and obviously did well, but that I realized that if I continued to try to do it all myself, it would be really difficult to scale to I was in a big hiring push at the time. So, you know, I had interviews all the time. And so I hired a VA went okay. And, and after my horn push was done. I had eight full time people in my office making calls like a call center setup, you know, and, and when you hire, you know, 10 $12 an hour people in West Philadelphia, you know, you get people that are, you know, like the one kid was asleep in the parking lot, I caught a couple of them couple and got in a fistfight. It just, it's like insane.
Max Fisch
So I ended up letting everybody go. And a friend of mine said, Try virtual assistants, you know, maybe that'll work for you. And so we, we, I had I already had the one and I had another one put them on the phone. It was a total disaster. And you know, to summarize, it took about a year to figure things out, create training programs and SOPs and stuff like that. And so, you know, as we started to to progress and grow and expand the team from one color to two to three, I had friends of mine that would say to me, you know, how are you doing what you're doing, you know, I hired this VA last a month to disappear. And so I would tell people and eventually I had people start saying well, can you just do it for me? And that grew into what it is today, which is a full service, you know, what I call VA agency so we do a managed and then like a placement or recruiter type of solution for basically anything you can think of in the real estate business. and today I have five callers in my business.
Max Fisch
Four guys in the office, the other four are all vas, you know, doing bookkeeping, doing, you know, disposition stuff, posting ads, all kinds of things. And so it's really been great, great work ethic better than the young kids in West Philly. And then also the cost savings because my Payroll Expense was significant, but also, my workers comp. Insurance was just, it was just aggravation, you know, it wasn't a lot of it was like 1500 bucks a year, but it was just aggravating to have to deal with it all and process the payroll taxes and, and all that. So that's kind of that's kind of how we went how we transition from traditional W TOS to, to the VA business with some success and scale.
Mike Swenson
What, you know, for folks that have considered doing virtual assistants or something in the past, what do you see for barriers? You know, for you know, why I'm nervous about hiring a virtual assistant versus having somebody in the office, I think, through COVID, we've seen how, you know, workers can work from anywhere. So I think, you know, sometimes people have this hang up of, I want them physically sitting next to me, I'm listening to them make calls? Or if I have a question, I can just ask them versus having to pop into a chat. But I think that's disrupted how we our workflow over the last year or two, but what do you see for some barriers that people are like, Hey, I'm just nervous about going down that path?
Max Fisch
Well, look, I think you hit the nail on the head, you know, you and I have never met face to face. I've been to, I've been to Minneapolis, you know, a few times. But you know, here we are, you know, 1500 miles, or whatever it is 2000 miles apart, with no issue. So, you know, technology has really allowed for remote work. And not just project based, like, like, you know, like a fiver or something, but actually like what I'm talking about, which is full time employees. So look, I think that, um, you know, I think that there's definitely some things to consider, right? So, you know, you certainly the bookkeeper, for example, I didn't just hand all my financials to somebody and say, knock yourself out that that woman is here in the States, she's actually down in Florida.
Max Fisch
But she was vetted, and we started slow, and we kind of kind of worked our way into it. And I think the same holds true for really, for any position, even if it's a low level position, you know, you need to take your time, there needs to be some trust, you need to kind of get that work sync. And then also, you know, you have to have checks and balances, whether that's management staff, or systems and tools to verify, you know, like a Time Doctor or something like that. Just make sure people are doing what they're doing, you know, frankly, keep them honest.
Mike Swenson
What, so in addition to the success of your business as a result of having these virtual assistants, how have you seen success in other people's some of your clients? Businesses?
Max Fisch
Yeah, I think the big thing, especially for me was that I was able to reduce not only my Payroll Expense dramatically, and still pay people very, very well, it's just that we weren't hiring, you know, people in the states now. There's that also, I was able to reduce the time commitment on both my part, the bookkeepers part and my accountants part because we don't have to deal with payroll taxes and workers comp and all that nonsense. And so it allowed me to focus on other, you know, either higher value or revenue generating tasks. And most clients, you know, look, we have guys that come to us that are, you know, brand new and have a shoestring budget. And, and they're able to essentially get help, as a result of the reduced expenses. And, you know, look, anybody who hires people in the states nowadays, and 1099, someone they should W to them is running a real risk. And I wouldn't advise that so, you know, to be able to avoid that is really good.
Max Fisch
Also, you know, the fact that, you know, work ethic is a real real issue, you know, most people I'm sure you don't either, I don't like to make phone calls, certainly don't want to sit on a call phone for eight hours a day and make calls. So you know, finding people that are actually willing to do that, you know, with a smile and a good attitude. That's, that's not easy. So, again, all of that just allows in my mind that the business owner or the entrepreneur to just stay focused and not get distracted with stuff that that doesn't really help help them in any way in business. It just distracts from their goal, whatever that goal is.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And how does the the training process work? Are you providing some of the training and then have your clients provide some of the training are you taking on you know, 75% to 25%? How does that process work for
Max Fisch
Oops. Yeah, so look, I tell people all the time I make all my money in the real estate business, you know, I started doing this because people asked me and I, like, you know, I like helping people, anybody who knows me any clients, you know, we routinely discount and you know, give back, give them free this or free that I mean, I spent an hour on the phone with a guy and it's like, you know, I just just want to see people make money and do well. And so, you know, I think that, you know, for us, you know, the look, I, you know, I think if we, if we tried to do everything, we wouldn't be a good fit. But we're certainly there to, to offer, you know, nine times out of 10, I guess I would say we're doing all of the training, depending on the role, though, right. So for example, two weeks ago, or now, excuse me, a month ago, we placed two individuals that we identified to work as acquisitions, guys, and I'm talking full on like, talk to the seller, negotiate pricing with, you know, with the our clients approval, of course. And we took the focus of the personality match, okay, because we can teach anybody to do acquisitions, you learned it, I learned it, it's not, it's not terribly challenging. But can these guys work together?
Max Fisch
And can this individual be trusted to represent the company signed contracts, that kind of stuff, I thought that was more important. But in those cases, the way that I do it is probably might not be the same way that you do it, or one of these clients does it. If it's something simple, like cold calling or administrative work, then we typically will put them through a two to three week training before they're hired. And so we're able to bring these people to the client ready to go? Yeah. So it just depends on the role. But I would say in most cases, we do the majority, if not all the training, and not only upfront, like, but on an ongoing basis. You know, that's, that's part of the deal as well.
Mike Swenson
Yeah. And that's phenomenal that you're able to offer that service, because I know there's so many people that have struggled with, you know, finding help in general. But then when when you do talk about virtual assistants, there's a whole nother set of challenges that that can come up. And sometimes it's just mental mind blocks, right to think that somebody halfway around the world in a different timezone. Like, how does that person, you know, how are they able to support me in that way? And so some people just have to get over that, that kind of mental hurdle. But once you do, there's, there's a lot of value there. Like I know, a lot of great real estate businesses that virtual assistants are the key of their growth, because they're able to do that stuff and do it really well. And so I love it.
Max Fisch
Absolutely, no, absolutely. I mean, we've gotten to the point where we're, we really take a consultative approach. So I talked to a good number, if not all the clients, and they may start out by speaking to, you know, one of our sales guys first, but at some point, I'll get it get involved. Because as I tell people, Look, I've been around I've seen a lot, I don't profess to know everything, but you know, maybe I can help give you some guidance or some suggestions. You know, sometimes a campaign might not start out generating the kind of leads we want as an example. So I might jump in and, and kind of help out. But, you know, we have guys who have been with us for, you know, four or 567 years. And the reason why is because you have to vet them properly, and then you have to take care of them.
Max Fisch
And so, you know, most business owners either have to or want to focus on revenue, you know, they can't focus on the HR stuff, also, or, you know, wear all the hats, you know, before we started talking, you know, we were going back and forth a little bit about highest and best use of one's time, you know, and so, you know, I think it's important that, you know, if you're going to hire, hire virtual assistants that you really take your time, you know, with contractors, we say, slow to hire quick to fire. Same kind of idea, you know, because it's, it's really not just a body, you know, it's really a team member. And if you treat people that way, you're probably going to get a higher caliber person, but you'll also get them to stick with you.
Max Fisch
Because turnover is a problem. You know, and, and sometimes it happens, you know, for legitimate reasons we just had I got a client's got three VAs and his lead manager who who we brought in and trained, she got pregnant and the doctor don't really know why but the doctor said, you know, I really don't want your work and you know, she's not digging ditches but whatever you got to respect that you know, and so we had to find a replacement in two weeks and get them trained up to do lead management work and it wasn't easy but you know, we got an x Pat and guys great and the clients super happy and you know, everybody's everybody's happy for that role, you know, a lot of people like Filipinos Filipino didn't work, you know, so we got a guy, we found him in the Dominican Republic, he's an American and, and he's crushing it. So we try to, we don't just try to say, you know, hey cheap people, here you go, we really try to try to match them up. And again, that's regarding the training and the manager, all of it, just make sure that it's a good fit, because we want people to, we really want people to stick.
Mike Swenson
So where where do you see this going in the future? Both there your virtual assistant business, but then also your real estate? Business? What type of growth Do you want to see happen?
Max Fisch
Sure, the real the virtual system business, you know, we added last year, we added the, you know, that kind of recruiter, replacement product, if you will. And we did that, because there's folks that would rather, either bring them in house, or they have the infrastructure to, you know, to train and manage on their own, and they don't need to pay, you know, the way we do it is we basically mark up, you know, the hourly rate that we pay them, right. So, you know, maybe we pay them, you know, somewhere between six, maybe six and $8. And then we build, say, 10, there's clients who would rather, you know, just handle it themselves. And so we added that, basically pay a one time fee, and, you know, we're in are interviewing, like, four to 500 people a month. So we get really, really high quality people, and it's just like using a recruiter for anything else. You know, I think, so I think that's, you know, something that the, you know, the market wanted, and we're looking to enter different verticals, potentially, it would be probably be a new entity, new business.
Max Fisch
So it'd be separate from this. And me being a real estate guy, that's, that's why we started there. And, you know, as far as growth, I mean, I don't know that I have any specific numbers or anything. You know, I have, frankly, I probably have too much staff, but I want clients have the support. So I guess what I would say there is if I could, you know, if we could continue to you know, help people grow their business and produce results, whatever that means, then I'm happy. And you know, if we can employ employ more people and all that that's a good thing. As far as the real estate business, post COVID, you know, like I said, we're doing six, seven rehabs a year, we were doing, you know, six 810 at a time. Before COVID. I want to keep doing what I'm doing there. So, wholesale, wholesale rehabs, everything we probably do, I don't know, somewhere between 35 and say, 50 deals a year. I'd like to maintain that. And I've been looking because I've never been a buy and hold guy.
Max Fisch
And a lot of my friends do very well. That way. I'd like to create some type of passive income, maybe, you know, maybe start looking at small apartment buildings or something like that, but commercial buildings to buy and hold. And then of course, there's a tax advantages. So my goals are pretty loose. You know, normally, I'm pretty aggressive with my goals. But this COVID thing kind of messed us up.
Mike Swenson
Well, thanks so much for sharing, you know, but your virtual assistant company and your background for people that want to learn more and find out more about your offering and that sort of thing. Where can they reach out?
Max Fisch
Yeah, absolutely. Probably the best I'd say is either the website you know, realestateprojectsolutions.com or Facebook or Instagram, you can find me personally or the business there and you know, message or, or get our contact info.
Mike Swenson
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your wisdom. I really appreciate it.
Max Fisch
Absolutely. Mike, I appreciate you. Thank you.
