Christian Catron is a Managing Partner and Business Development & Operations Executive at Redeem Realty Solutions, a premier real estate solutions company in Cedar Park, Texas.
Since their inception, they have helped homeowners improve communities in each and every city they work in with their extensive knowledge of the business, network of resources, and years of expertise, and pride themselves on their reputation for working one-on-one with each customer to handle their individual situations.
The Challenge
‘
Happy wife, happy life.’
To have Christian explain what first brought him to BELAY, he’d likely defer you to his wife – his wife who, incidentally, gifted him a Michael Hyatt book for Christmas. Her subtlety was not lost on him.
So to hear Christian explain it, his wife was the impetus for reaching out to BELAY.
“She [would] refer to herself as the victim or as an innocent bystander in this chaos that we call life,” Christian explains, “between a teenager, a full-time job and the real estate investment stuff.”
More succinctly, he says, “I enjoy being married and I intend to stay that way.”
With hats in the rings of commercial multifamily, acquisitions, renovations, cash-out refinancing for accelerated returns, and mitigating risks, Christian was in the weeds.
Then there was the small matter of his other role as a real estate investor.
So to hear him explain his situation, it eventually became evident that if he were going to scale what they were doing without adversely impacting his personal life, then he really needed someone to help shoulder all of the administrative tasks he was juggling.
The Solution
Enter: BELAY Virtual Assistant Sabrina.
“Sabrina has full access to my accounts, access to manage my email – sorting, filing incoming messages,” he says, “with the goal to get to the point where she is able, equipped, and knowledgeable to be able to respond on my behalf.
“A lot of her support or has been planning and coordinating events, doing research, filing and sorting.”
But, as would be expected from someone with many irons in the fire, Christian is also working with Sabrina on new initiatives, too.
“There’s a quote by Abraham Lincoln where he says that, ‘If you give me six hours to chop down a tree, I’ll spend the first four sharpening the ax,” Christian says. “And over the course of this pandemic, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing – sharpening our ax.”
“Sabrina has been very helpful in terms of helping me develop and prepare the launch of something called the Redeem Team Mastermind,” Christian says, “to prepare for the opportunities that are coming. The pipeline that we have now in terms of acquisitions is more full than it was before COVID. So that’s one of the ways that we’ve been ‘sharpening the ax.’”
But that’s not where Sabrina’s story of serving Christian ends.
“We increased hours,” he shares. “I continue to maintain my full-time job and was beginning to source for positions that would help me scale. It became apparent that I could train Sabrina to be those very things that I was going to hire somebody to do.
“And so while she didn’t necessarily come with the skillset or the experience that that was needed, I felt confident we could get her trained and up to speed. It’s been a good thing.”
But while Sabrina’s role grew, many weren’t as fortunate so Christian and Sabrina collaborated to provide relief to tenants who were financially impacted by the pandemic.
“There are some tenants of ours that have been affected, but they’ve been loyal to the payment plans that we’ve developed,” Christian explains. “We’re really looking out for the best interest of those tenants who are affected to ensure that they don’t feel any added pressure that exacerbates their situation.
“We want them to know that the owners and those managing the properties where they live are rooting for them and are supportive of them.”
The Results
The result? Not only is Christian supported so he can continue to ‘sharpen his ax,’ but he’s been able to (re-)invest in his marriage and family, too.
“There’s this thing called ‘maintaining your marriage’ that says you have to dedicate energy and time,” Christian jokes, “which I really liked doing.”
And his professional priorities are fully supported, too.
“Just looking at the number of things that I would otherwise be needing to do that she’s doing on my behalf is very, very nice, and gives me some breathing room and some capacity to spend with the kids and my wife,” Christian says.
“So for me, it’s worth spending two hours [meeting with Sabrina] to get my schedule in order for me to have many more hours back.”