Sound Off with CEO of NexusPoint Mike O’Conner
In the latest episode of the Dailey Blend Show, we jump back in our Sound Off segment with a captivating conversation featuring Mike O'Conner, the Co-Founder and CEO of NexusPoint. Mike, a seasoned entrepreneur, delves into insightful discussions about his operational strategies and execution approaches. The episode provides valuable insights into why he chose to launch NexusPoint and the vision that propels the organization forward. NexusPoint's unique mission revolves around connecting small and medium-sized businesses, along with solo entrepreneurs, with global talent to optimize back-office operations. The diverse services they offer, including virtual and executive assistants, bookkeepers, social media managers, operations managers, AR/AP management, project management, data entry, and research, are a testament to their commitment to enhancing business efficiency. For those interested in learning more about NexusPoint and its forward trajectory, visit their website at nexuspt.io.
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Connect Online
NexusPoint and Mike O'Connor
Website - nexuspt.io
LinkedIn for NexusPoint - linkedin.com/company/nexuspt
Instagram - @nexuspoint.io
Facebook: NexusPoint - facebook.com/nexuspoint.io
LinkedIn: Mike O'Connor - linkedin.com/in/mikeoconnor-
Transcript Discussion with Mike O’Connor CEO of NexusPoint
Welcome back to The Daily Blend Show with me, Reed Dailey. I am absolutely thrilled to be doing this show intro. It's been a minute since we've done a Sound Off segment with a guest on The Daily Blend Show, and, we've got a really great conversation with the founder and CEO of Nexus Point, Mike O'Connor. Nexus Point is a BPO-focused organization that connects small and medium-sized businesses and solo entrepreneurs with global talent from around the world. They focus on all things from back office operations, including, but not limited to, virtual and executive assistants, bookkeepers, social media management, operation, managers, arap management, project management, data entry, and research. All the back office things that you need to operate and execute at a high level around the clock. For the modern, executive and team on the go. Mike is a very dynamic entrepreneur. during the conversation, we talk about a number of his past ventures, things he's still involved with, what he's done to operate and execute, where he sees the world headed in 2024 and beyond, and why he's bullish on all things BPO, and why he's thrilled to be talking about his latest venture, Nexus. Before we jump in the show, I want to remind you that the show is available on Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. And wherever you get your podcast, we are available. You can also, like, follow subscribe to Daily Blend on X or Instagram at, dailyblend.com. And, of course, head over to Dailyblend.com to read all the show notes and get to the links from today's episode.
Speaker B: With that said, let's jump into the show.
Reed Dailey: So, hey, everyone, we are here with Mike O'Connor. We are going to be talking about his background as a serial entrepreneur, some of his past experiences, standing up companies, operating companies, and what he is working on today, as we always do. Mike, tell us where you are and give us a little bit of background on who you are.
Mike O'Conner: Yeah, good to be here, Reed. Thanks for having me.
Mike O'Conner: I'm located in Inlet Beach, Florida, right now. So for those of you in the Southeast who are familiar with 30 A, I am about a mile off that. For those of you less familiar, it's in the panhandle of Florida. So it's, the middle of August right now. Oppressively hot, excited for the fall to come around. we'll talk about this in detail, but I've been a serial entrepreneur since 2013. a lot of the businesses I'm in are real estate or real estate tangent, as it relates to home services companies, construction companies, flooring real estate related companies like property management. I've played a role in, actively starting and scaling businesses and passively investing and advising in businesses and kind of everything in between. My, current passion is I have a BPO where my partner and I are connecting small and medium sized businesses, with back office operations help, specifically from the Philippines and the Dominican Republic. We're having a blast with it. It's growing quickly, it's solving problems. It's a fun thing to, you know, excited to dive into, everything we've got going on.
Reed Dailey: So, you know, you mentioned what you're working on now, but maybe just give us a background of what was your first venture and how did you kind of decide to jump into that, and what were some of the early lessons learned as a first time entrepreneur, getting into the mix?
Mike O'Conner: That's a good question. So I graduated from the University of Georgia back in 2011, and, my first job out of school was a corporate one. I worked for a capgemini. That's where you and I met. did a stint there, went to Ernst Young, then, went to a small real estate consultancy, and I kept job hopping. And I realized at the third spot that this wasn't a job issue. I went to various different companies, various sizes, various cultures, and the only common denominator there was me. And it kind of dawned on me that I was meant to be doing my own thing. So, in 2013, a, partner and I went and bought a rental property. Just kind of on a whim, as a passive side investment. Didn't think too much of it, and sat on that for about a year. And then we quickly realized how much we enjoyed it. I'm talking one standalone home. Not much to it, right? In, 2015, we kind of took that passion and got a little more aggressive with it and started buying what I would call small multifamily apartments, 100 units and below. we started flipping houses. We started really going heavy into this kind, of small, multi real estate world, and most of it was in the affordable space. So C and B minus, working class apartments, mostly in and around the Atlanta area. We, had some forays in South Georgia, and we did a little bit in Indianapolis. As you know, that wasn't as much a business as much as it was an investment vehicle. We didn't know it at the time, but we invested any period of the cycle where it's hard to miss, right? We got in very low, and the market was just continuing to rise and increase, so it was hard to miss. Unlike times now, we have to be an extremely good operator to come in by and find the asset and operate it effectively. we quickly realized, talking about starting a small business here, we quickly realized we had enough scale, enough units of our own, that it was crazy to be outsourcing this function and paying this money to a third party management company. So the first business that we actually started with A-P-L outside of our investments was a property management company that, again, focused on, first and foremost, our own assets, and then others.
Mike O'Conner: People started to look to us as experts in the space. They would come to us for guidance and thoughts and input and connections. And we thought, hey, why don't we do this ourselves?
Mike O'Conner: to your question about lessons learned, I feel like every day you learn something new when you're in small business. property management specifically is a very challenging business. Right. there are so many moving pieces. You have field services aspects, you have leasing aspects, you have the asset itself. If you're doing third party management, you're dealing with customers and clients and oftentimes government fares. And so it's a really tricky business. And having your back office operations put together is important. Having your front end sales folks put together is important. And really knowing what you're doing, is critical, because small mistakes in that business could lead to really big mistakes. So, I'm not sure if I dove too much into a lesson learned, other than the fact that it was hard.
Mike O'Conner: And you don't really see the fruits of your labor for the first couple of years. It takes a while to stand up and scale it.
Reed Dailey: So let me just kind of drill into a couple of questions, and obviously, we're friends, and I knew a little bit about the background of your business. So what made you guys feel comfortable as you went from owning it as an asset and putting together a property management company to manage your own assets, then to go and feel comfortable to work for others? And how did that sort of scale up over time? Because I imagine transitioning from just serving yourself to servicing one or many customers, there's different complexities there.
Mike O'Conner: And that's actually a good question. I've got a pretty specific answer on that one. So, at the time that we started buying real estate, it was coming fresh off of the housing crisis. not everyone, but a lot of people in the property management space had parlayed from being realtors or transaction agents to managing real estate during the downturn, because they needed to figure out a way to make money. So, again, not everyone, but what you found was there's a, surplus, of, companies out there that were created by people who didn't necessarily know how to own real estate. They simply knew real estate in the process, and then began managing it.
Mike O'Conner: Matt and I had this epiphany that we can do this better than 99% of the people out there.
Mike O'Conner: And it's a fragmented, highly, competitive market.
Mike O'Conner: It's not like there's one or two big players in the space. we were unique because we were owners first, and that's not too common.
Mike O'Conner: A lot of people will get into property management and then learn how to buy an asset and do that. We owned, we operated, we oversaw. We actually learned from the management companies that were managing our assets for a long time, and that allowed us to come in, with what we call an owner mentality, which I still think serves our customers very well to this day and operate a PNL better.
Mike O'Conner: We knew what the Pitfalls were. We knew what owners were thinking before they told us, and we were able to get ahead of it. So that was a key to our success and is still a key to our success, because, when we sit here and say, hey, we would do this, it's not because we read it in the book, because we've actually done it.
Reed Dailey: So going from learning, basically, because you are a customer, and then sort of taking those lessons learned and applying them to building your property management business. How did you make the leap from the property management business to kind of your next venture? Because you had a toolkit of assessing a market and kind of understanding your strengths, weaknesses. how do you start to think about, okay, I'm leaving the real estate and real estate management or property management space, and then what do I want to tackle next? Because the world is large, and there's many things to do.
Mike O'Conner: So, another good question. and for this one, it was pretty clear cut. my partner and I would basically look at our P L every month.
Mike O'Conner: We're doing our financial reviews and keep in mind and kind of put this in perspective. And this translates well to people who are touching other various industries as well. But in real estate, you're managing properties. You have the physical asset.
Mike O'Conner: Well, you've got to deal with the leasing and the people and all the things I talked about earlier in the show. But there's all the servicing aspect of it, too.
Mike O'Conner: Construction needs to take place. Work orders need to happen. Landscaping needs to take place. new houses need to be purchased and transacted for these investors. So we quickly realized that there's a lot of vertical integration that could take place in the business, and we simply would look at our PNL, and where are we spending the most money, right? Okay. We're spending thousands of dollars every month on landscaping. Well, we've got the scale in the infrastructure.
Mike O'Conner: We've got 400 lawns in the Atlanta area. Why are we not in the landscaping space? We're already doing it. We're already managing these subcontractors to come and do it, and our clients are paying for it. Why don't we get into that space? and so it wasn't actually landscaping that was the first one, but we started a construction company to service all the turns, all the maintenance, all the work orders that would happen. A lot of management companies will do this. and they will do it under the same umbrella as their management company. We, labeled it as third party because we viewed this not only as a way to service the management company and to service the management company's clients well. But we've got the foundation to go out and then start servicing third party business outside of the management company. And that's what we did with that. That's what we did with landscaping. those were kind of the first foray just because it was simple to kind of plug in. from day one, we had a base, if that makes sense.
Reed Dailey: Once you started expanding, what were some of the kind of things that you need to do as an owner operator now? Because now you've built your book there's only 24 hours in a day. What were some personal things that you had to do in terms of delegation or delineation of responsibilities?
Mike O'Conner: Yeah, so I've always been someone who likes to have my hands on things. And, it's not necessarily in a controlling manner, but I like to know what's going on. I like to be apprised on the happenings of things. And so learning to delegate at the beginning was actually challenging for me. But once you learn how to do it, it's actually quite freeing. we started by just looking at the things that weren't adding a ton of, everything adds value. So it's perhaps the wrong word, but how can we help grow and scale this business?
Mike O'Conner: My partner and I were the two people who could best do that. And so we need to be focusing on activities that allowed us to scale and grow, as well as implement strategy around how to best run the business. Anything else? I've got a friend who says below the shoulder activities were the first things that we outsourced. so we started looking at things that took up a lot of our time. Maintenance took up a lot of time.
Mike O'Conner: You got all these houses around Atlanta. Again, they're older, vintage homes. So things are constantly popping up. So we are constantly receiving dispatching and managing work orders. That was the first thing that we outsourced, to some folks in the back office. We then took the leasing, the tenant communications, the financial aspect of it. So you slowly kind of strip it away. But at the end of the day, as a business owner, you have to be touching all these things. You have to have a beat on what's going on in every aspect of the business. But to try and do and touch it all, it's going to be failure to launch or, scale is not a possibility, if that makes sense.
Reed Dailey: No, that makes perfect sense. And I think it's a really good segue to kind of talk about your new venture when you kind of reached out to me to sort of give me the overview about what you are going and kind of jumping into with the new venture.
Reed Dailey: For me, it really goes to the quote you just said, which is kind of the below the shoulder activities, and really, how do you maximize your time and efficiency? So maybe walk us through kind of a little bit about the new business and talk about kind of how you went about standing it up, but what were you seeing in the marketplace that just said, you know what? I definitely want to jump both feet.
Mike O'Conner: In on this 1100%. So I've been using outsourced help in my back office operations for five or six years now, and I've relied on it.
Mike O'Conner: The quality is extremely high. the cost is very advantageous. And we're in a world of connectivity today where whether you're remote in Chicago and I'm in Florida like this, or you're in the Philippines, or Mexico, or wherever, it doesn't so much matter. So, my business partner, Brandon, and I have been just shooting around some different ideas that we had. And towards the end of 2022 or the middle of 2022, we had this idea on, just talking about outsourcing, right? Who's doing it, who's not doing it, what's going on in the world? And it was off the tails of talking about COVID Right. So, COVID has come in, completely disrupted the way that the education system is working, the way that we operate in a corporate setting, in a couple of different ways. One, people are remote, and they expect to be remote now. So, to my earlier point, if you're remote, it doesn't quite matter where you are.
Mike O'Conner: and I don't see that changing anytime soon.
Mike O'Conner: There was always an element of remote and people being on Zoom, but this now became normal and acceptable. So that was a really big component to this. the other aspect is a lot of the younger kids that are coming out these days. Right. perhaps the work ethic isn't quite what it is. When you and I graduated, and when our parents generation graduated, speaking of the parent generation, a ton of baby boomers are leaving, the workforce.
Mike O'Conner: A lot retired early with COVID boom. So there was just this vacuum of need in the workforce.
Mike O'Conner: And so what I realized was, I'd been using this for many years, but when I talked to other people, other entrepreneurs like myself, it was this black box. There was a lack of trust, a lack of understanding how to do it. And it is somewhat confusing. Right. It's not an easy thing to do. It's been a challenging business to set up and do. And to do it just one off is not easy either. Even down to how you pay the people, it's not always as easy as the PayPal or putting them on payroll. It's more complicated than that. And so we saw an opportunity. we quickly realized that because I've had so much success using outsourced help, and because so many people really don't understand how to do it, that there's a need for this business. And again, you want to talk about a fragmented, highly competitive business. It's out there.
Mike O'Conner: It's not like two people run the show, somewhat a dime a dozen, which I like.
Mike O'Conner: Because then what do you have to do? You have to outservice them, outwork them, which is what we do. so now we're focusing on all things back office operations. Right. It's not just virtual assistants. Everyone uses the term VA or virtual assistant too much. Just like in the United States, you have assistants, right. But you also have operations managers, paralegals, social media managers, and everything in between. People who are running your accounts receivable, accounts payable. So we tag ourselves as a full service back office operations specialist. Virtual assistants are one of the things that we can do. And, we're really enjoying it because we're helping. It's one of those businesses where everybody wins. We win as a business because we're growing. Our clients win because they're able to scale with high quality talent.
Mike O'Conner: The talent is phenomenal. These people, that you're outsourcing jobs with, they have college degrees. They love to work. They work hard. specifically, if you're looking in the Philippines, it's a very Westernized culture.
Mike O'Conner: They've been speaking and writing English since they were in diapers. and then lastly, the employee wins, right. Which is just as important. as opposed to being working in some massive company like Morgan, they're working with the small and medium sized businesses that we are partnering with, where they're having an impact every day. So it's been a blast. We're hoping to change the lives of not only people we're working with as resources, but our businesses and show them what I've been doing for the last ten years, is achievable.
Reed Dailey: So, I mean, for me, just listening to it, it really feels like it's the evolution of what you did with your real estate business. You had a property management that kind of taught you how to fish, and then you built a business around that. And in a similar vein, you were using services already and kind of started your company. as you guys, get the company up and running, and you start to have conversations with people who might benefit from the services, how are you positioning to them? And what are things beyond you can augment some of the work kind of below the neck, but what are ways or frameworks that you guys are using to say, hey, you probably are only thinking about us or our services, for these sort of smaller activities, here's a framework to think about, for a broader set of use cases.
Mike O'Conner: And I think I understand where you're going with this.
Mike O'Conner: So, push back if I'm going the wrong direction, but within our service offering, we like to think of ourselves more as consultative in nature.
Mike O'Conner: Every person I talk to, my service might not be the right solution for them, or it might be a me plus others.
Mike O'Conner: So one of the coolest things about this is I'm talking to entrepreneurs and business owners every single day. It's fun, it's exciting, because you talk to entrepreneurs and business owners all day.
Mike O'Conner: It's like there's a certain level of energy that comes about talking to these people because they're passionate about it. and so, in these conversations, we realized that, yeah, sometimes it's a combination of what we can do at Nexus Point and artificial intelligence, or digital marketing, search engine optimization, paid ads. And so my business partner, Brandon and I have made it kind of a core tenet, of this business that we're not going to let our service get in the way of providing whoever we're talking to with the best guides. And look, I'm not an AI specialist, I'm not an SEO specialist, but because of the network we have, we know all these people, and we've been using these tools.
Mike O'Conner: So we can quickly jump in with some of these folks, especially as they're younger in their, maturity as a business, and help point them in the right direction, whether it's a CPA or not.
Mike O'Conner: So, we're looking at ourselves as full service advisory, with what we're doing. I think I hit the point of that. What you're going for?
Reed Dailey: Yeah, 100%. I mean, it really sounds like you're putting together kind of a set of I'll call it use cases or examples and almost sharing those across your, customer base, as well as doing some solutions with your customers.
Reed Dailey: Hey, I have a need. Trying to figure out what to do. So maybe talk to me a little bit about if I'm someone interested in this, how do I get going with you? What's the process to kind of, for all intents and purposes, have a consultation and figure out a starting spot.
Mike O'Conner: So, first off, you would just reach out, and I'm sure we'll facilitate a way for that to happen should someone be interested in it. And, we have people coming to us with varying level of understanding of what they need.
Mike O'Conner: let's just assume someone thinks they have the need, but they're not quite sure. The first thing that we do is we sit and we talk. I get to understand the business, I get to understand the entrepreneur and what it is that they're doing and whether or not we can help them. And assuming that we can, we have this very casual dialogue to understand what they're looking for, again, with a focus on their back office operations, as an organization, we then help them put together a job description. and I think the most important thing is off the bat right. Not overdoing it.
Mike O'Conner: So I've had people come to me and say, hey, I think I need five VAS. It's like, let's start with one or two. Really get your processes down, and then allow those VAS, or I should say, outsourced employees to train the rest.
Mike O'Conner: So, we figure out what it is that they need, put together the job description, and then we go to market, right? We go out and we recruit for this talent, just like you would for a US based job. we screen candidates. we do basic aptitude testing to ensure that they are, fit for the job. English writing, basic arithmetic. we have our recruiting team that does the interviews. I personally screen every single person that comes through just to make sure it's someone that I would feel comfortable putting in the organization. And then we have our clients screen them. And then that's just the first and honestly, the most basic part of this. the thing to me that gets overlooked most often is really in this space specifically, right? This is more mature on, onshore hiring, but we verify with all of the past employment, right? And we get, letters of recommendation and assessments. we do personality tests so we get an understanding of what motivates these people. we had maybe three weeks ago, interviewee get, rejected by a role. On paper, this person was perfect for the organization. He checked every single box. But from a personality perspective, he couldn't have been more of a polar opposite, right? So we really try and avoid those scenarios by doing these personality tests. And then that helps you understand what motivates your employees, what demotivates your employees. And we do all the simple stuff, right? Background checks, identity checks. we set them up with computers, headsets, VPN, networks, so that they can come in and day one, get rocking and rolling. so it's a fun process. I will say, at the end of the day, they're coming into your organization. You need to have a training program ready for that individual. It's just like a person on shore. If you come in with no guidance or direction or structure, you're going to get out what you put in. so we'll work with you, too, on that just to make sure that you understand how to onboard this employee, especially if you've never onboarded someone before, much or less remote.
Reed Dailey: So you talked about kind of the evaluation process of trying to do some personality assessments and math. I really think the onboarding thing is something that I certainly didn't think about walking into this conversation. and it makes total sense.
Reed Dailey: as you guys sort of grow in scale and you start to think about bigger teams and augmenting larger organizations, what are some things that you guys are already starting to think about, of terms of capabilities, process, and technology that you're going to need to kind of support your business down the road?
Mike O'Conner: That's a great question, Reed. And we haven't fully flushed that out.
Mike O'Conner: I would say first and foremost, it starts with the people that we bring on. Right. we're already looking at bringing on more operational support, specifically people with a slant towards recruiting, and people who have a slant towards, hiring, like HR manager type stuff.
Mike O'Conner: Because I'm personally screening every single person that comes through. And it takes a lot of my day right.
Mike O'Conner: A year into this business, five years in, that's not going to exactly be possible. so the people are the first thing. The second thing is the artificial intelligence aspect. And I'm treading lightly, right. Because I don't want to be a late adopter of this, but at the same time, I don't want this to be just a new buzzword and it goes away in a couple of years, which, by the way, I don't. we're talking with folks and Reed, I know you connect me with a gentleman who's been great to, interact with on just ways to enhance what we're doing in the back office through technology. So I don't have a clear answer for that yet.
Mike O'Conner: Although these are the things that are on our mind. having a proper CRM system, while it sounds so basic and rudimentary in today's world, we've been doing CRM for a long, long time now.
Mike O'Conner: Right. You can't manage this out of a spreadsheet anymore. Right. There's customers that need to be cared for, there's prospects that need to be followed up with, there's employees that need to be tracked properly.
Mike O'Conner: So, those are the things we're looking into. I know it's kind of a vague answer of sorts, but we haven't really fleshed that out yet because it hasn't quite hit us. We're focused now on the people and having conversations around the AI space and the AI. By the way, let me hit on that. That is both a way for us to operate more efficiently, but then also allow for our, resources within organizations to operate more efficiently.
Mike O'Conner: A differentiator, if you will, to just allow us to be more effective.
Reed Dailey: Yeah, I mean, I certainly see it on both lenses for your business, just as an outside perspective. Right. It's just how do you operate and execute your own business more efficiently through technology, and then how do your VAS leverage those technologies to get the task done faster and more efficient? So, yeah, it'll be interesting to hear. I almost would love to do like a check in a year from now and kind of talk about kind of what are lessons learned and kind of what are people doing a year from now? Or what have you kind of learned or seen from your customer base over the last year? That'll be super interesting.
Reed Dailey: I want to talk about, just as we kind of close out on your business and really talk about. Just the entrepreneurial spirit. You've gone and started businesses, and obviously you're starting the new virtual assistant business. What are some things that folks that are listening to this that are thinking about getting into a new business or evaluating different businesses to either start to buy? What are some guiding principles that you use constantly to say, I'm going to jump into this, or, you know what? I need to go get some more data and maybe I'm going to pass?
Mike O'Conner: Yeah. I'd say first and foremost, trusting your gut is always an important thing, right? There's no science behind that. But your gut is usually right on whether or not something makes sense or not. the second thing is making sure it's in a space that you know and understand, right? Don't get too far ahead of yourself and think that you can go solve a problem because guess what? Your competition that's doing it, they know it already, right? So just be very careful in how you jump into that. the third thing is I see a lot of times people over I don't want to sound like I'm talking out both sides of my mouth in this comment, so forgive me if I am, but so many people overanalyze opportunities and things, right? And they think of where they want to be in five years without thinking about what it takes to get there. And to be an entrepreneur is scrappy, right? It comes with abusing your time.
Mike O'Conner: Like, you start a business and you're working on it. You're not paying yourself, right? You're working for free. So I think, when I'm looking at things and thinking about what I got to do and then as advice I would give to others, it's like, make sure you keep the future state in mind because that's why you're doing this. But realize that it takes a slog of work to get to that point and be willing and ready to do that.
Mike O'Conner: and then most simply, right, it doesn't have to be something massive, right? Start off and do something small. Just get activity, get things going and doing it in a space, again, that you know and understand that is tangent to you.
Mike O'Conner: activity leads to breeds activity, right? And even if it's small activity, small accounts, small dollars coming in, if that's not ultimately what you end up doing and working on, I guarantee you that that activity, that, creativity, what you're thinking about, the actions you're doing are going to lead to something bigger and greater, as long as you keep pushing. And that's something I've always just kind of taken along with me, right? I've had great success in some things. I've had some terrible and I'm happy to talk about that if we want to dive into that terrible investment in business, adventures, right? And you got to learn from the bad ones and the good ones for that matter. and just be smarter as you keep marching forward.
Reed Dailey: Yeah, I would love to dive in, in terms of just maybe a couple of the sort of honestly, I'd love to start with some of the bad ones and then maybe discuss some of the good ones. But yeah, walk me through some of the bad ones and kind of how you decided that it was time to exit, or how they kind of came to an end, if you will.
Mike O'Conner: Yeah. And I will avoid using company names, just for obvious reasons. Because what I did was I got into, the franchising world, and I had, a lack of success, for that matter. And what I found was I started getting in the franchising world in around 2021. So not that long. About two years ago, right? Maybe two and a half years ago. So late 2020. And it's coming off the tail and having a lot of success with my personal businesses, with the real estate businesses, with side investment deals that I made.
Mike O'Conner: And part of that was the times.
Mike O'Conner: It's hard to miss from 2013 to 2020, I spread myself a little bit too thin ah. And invested in a couple of different franchise concepts, and we brought in the wrong operator. we weren't entirely focused on it, because we had five other things going on. we bit off more than we can chew. It was in a space that we didn't fully understand, and lo and behold, all of these things were losing us money. And what happened was, I not only realized I was losing money in these businesses, and I said, losing money, it's not like, breaking even. I'm literally writing a check to fund the account operationally month after month after month. But not only was that happening, but I was spending time trying to get these in the black. And to your question, my point of being like, okay, this isn't working, is when I realized that the things that were making me money were starting to slip, because my attention was over here on, a non cash flow, positive aspect of my life, by the way. It became a frustrating aspect, and all of the things and so the things that were working were starting to hurt. And I kind of finally looked at myself in the mirror and talked to some of my partners in this and said, you know what? It's time to cut bait, right? This isn't working. Even if we did get this working, it would, A, take a long time, and B, the potential upside is not that significant. Let's cut our losses. We'll call it a great tax write off, and let's go back to the things that are working. and so I look back on that, and no one ever wants to lose money or waste time or any of that. But I'm actually really grateful that it happened, right. Because I came from a period of time where I was having success, and it's easy to kind of i, don't want to say get full of yourself, but get overly confident. And it was a fantastic reality check at a perfect time in my life, perfect part of my, entrepreneurial journey. If I had waited ten years longer, the losses would have been ten times bigger, maybe.
Mike O'Conner: And so it's kind of like I got a Street MBA, and it just reminded me to come back and focus on the core things that I know that I understand, and that are worth it.
Reed Dailey: Yeah. And I love that story. And I really thought your statement of from 2013 to 2020 was really hard to miss. And I think certainly in the last six to eight months, with inflation, and the cost of capital going up, it's been harder and harder to just take, just blatant swings, and it's becoming more difficult.One of the things we talked about before jumping on the call is network building
Reed Dailey: One of the things we talked about before jumping on the call that I'd love to hear more about is what are you doing to surround yourself with I'll call it network or mentors. As an entrepreneur, sometimes it's challenging because you're at the top, sometimes you're a team of one, sometimes you're a team of many. But, what have you done and what's been successful for you in terms of surrounding yourself with one or many people to be guideposts?
Mike O'Conner: Yeah, a few things there. First, I enjoy very much helping other people.
Mike O'Conner: So I'm always quick to, go out and just with nothing to my help other people out. So that leads to a lot of conversations and connections and helps kind of build the network. I'm very intentional about having lunches, coffees, drinks in the afternoon with as many people as I can.
Mike O'Conner: Whether they're older, younger, same stage of life as me. I just feel like surrounding yourself with people, that are making things happen, but also that have different experiences or at different points of the journey is huge.
Mike O'Conner: Because you learn things right. Or you could pass wisdom on. Or even if you're talking to someone who is younger than you and with less experience, and they ask a question a certain way, it could peak your, thought process. Or they're doing it in a more efficient way because they're more adept with the technology or something. There's just value in having these meetings and these interactions and conversations. And then, more formally, I've recently joined a group, and I was telling you this before we got on, called Go Abundance. It's, a network of people across the world, actually, of, entrepreneurs with a focus on real estate. I think that's kind of the core tenant for a lot of the guys there. and there's certain requirements to get in. You have to pay for the group, which some people think is that's interesting. But what it does is it sets a bar and people that are willing to make that payment and then interact and engage and have a certain requirements, to get in. It's great, right, because you're surrounded by a bunch of people who are making things happen. It's an area where you can be vulnerable. You've, got groups, we can sit here, and I just started this, right? But our group, they start the conversation off every week with wins and losses. Let's talk about something that's going great. Let's talk about something that you're struggling with, and everyone kind of helps. And so, going into an environment like that where you can be vulnerable, talking to people who have similar experiences, better experiences, less, it's just awesome. And it keeps you evolving.
Reed Dailey: I love the wins and losses thing. I wrote that down. It's kind of a takeaway. Years ago, I had, a supervisor on an engagement, and she would always talk about wins and losses, and she framed them differently. She called them, successes and opportunities for improvements, which is a nice, framing, I suppose, but I thought it was really good. And I think people oftentimes want to pat themselves on the back, and I actually learn more from the losses than I do the wins, or probably, more critical. I know more recently, I had a loss, and the person who decided not to move forward with us gave me really good feedback. And it was not like that we did something bad. It was just they did a bad job of explaining what they wanted and went with someone who just offered more. I was like, all right, cool. Good framing, good way to think about things. But I love that wins and loss things. And that's pretty cool that you've got that group. once again, I think, as we go into this year end check from now, I'd love to hear how your experience in that group has evolved and kind of what you've given and what you've gotten from that, and if that changes. absolutely.
Mike O'Conner: The laws are important, right. And people don't talk about them, especially in public settings.
Mike O'Conner: And with social media these days, everyone's always broadcasting the good, the good, the good. Look at me. And it's dangerous, right? Because you got people consuming this content or information or whatever it might be, and they only see the good, and then they set themselves to this bar. And you got to realize, if you're an entrepreneur, you're getting your teeth kicked in every day.
Mike O'Conner: Right. you're jumping from fire to fire. And there's a lot of good in there, right. But it's not all roses and rainbows.
Mike at Nexuspoint IO welcomes feedback on virtual assistant and beyond
Reed Dailey: Well, tell the folks where they can find you and your company and, how they can connect, with you to explore a virtual assistant and beyond.
Mike O'Conner: So you can feel free to reach out to me via email. It's simply Mike at Nexuspt IO. You, can find us at nexuspt. IO, or, you know, look for Nexuspoint IO on Facebook and Instagram. Feel, free to reach out anytime you want, or be happy to chat with you or just even consult and advise or have a conversation. So look forward to hearing from folks.
Reed Dailey: And what we'll do is part of the show notes on the website. We'll put all the links to Mike and Nexus Points information. so don't be nervous about that. And Mike, thanks for, joining us and really appreciate it. Look forward to talking in a year and hearing how the business evolves and, kind of how you continue to evolve as an entrepreneur.
Mike O'Conner: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Reed.
The Daily Blend sound off edition features Nexus Point CEO Mike O'Connor
Speaker B: Hey, everyone, thanks for tuning in to the latest episode of The Daily Blend Show sound Off Edition with our special guest, CEO and co founder of Nexus Point, Mike O'Connor. If you like what you heard, go head over to Nexuspoint IO, that is their website. You can also find them on LinkedIn at And as a reminder, the Daily Blend show is available on Spotify and Apple podcast. You can listen and rewatch the show over on YouTube. Don't forget to like, follow subscribe to the show and check us out on X and Instagram and of course, Dailyblend.com. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you on the next episode of The Daily Blend Show.
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