Buy, fix and flip automating

[Timothy Brillant]

Can some of the seasoned and newbies share some insight how they have automated their business, I'm looking for ways to grow without hiring another person on at this point. We're looking to expand and grow but have hard time with the policy and procedures to set us up to be ready to hire the employees. Thanks in advance for any help!

[Dell Schlabach]

If you can be a little more specific as to what you do, or what your objectives are it would help.

I had basically the same question three years ago, and the previous posters answers while valuable depending on what your strategy is, it wasn't what I needed.

If I could answer in a nutshell, define exactly what you want, then break down steps of what it will take to get you there.

I don't use Vas, I don't do any marketing to buy or sell. I buy 90% of properties off the mls, and use the top realtor in our area to sell (at a significant discount).

For me to go from a 1 man operation swinging my own hammer, and wielding a paintbruch, to three years later. Not so much of that. Most of my time is spend on planning, organizing, coordination, training, lining things up for the crews, (we now have four, plus a bunch of good subs) securing funding, designing houses, staging houses, finding deals, meeting with crew leaders.

My core team, I have one key private lender, a good accountant, a part time bookkeeper, a realtor, an attorney, four crew leaders and an assistant.

I don't want to elaborate too long if your main need is how to automate your marketing .... Two examples of how I operate delegate today vs a few years ago

Three years ago I used to be on the jobsite all day

Two years ago I used to visit the jobsite daily

1 year ago used to visit jobsites two three times a week

Today I do a walkthrough once a week unless my guys need me there prior.

I have meetings with the crew leaders, at the end of every week for two hours in the conference room, where we review progress on each house, make plans for the next week and solve any issues they forsee.

I used to spend a lot of time walking through Lowes or Home Depot picking out the items for every job, It would sometimes take me days, seemed like weeks, to get the design materials decided and all materials picked up.

Today I spend a couple hours in a house, by myself and make basic design décor decisions, then I do a walk through with the crew leader who is running that project, and his assistant. I can review the design plan and answer their questions in about an hour. They spend another four five hours finishing the scope of work and material list, and I go find more deals or whatever is most needed.

Today we have a material list on a spreadsheet, categorized, with item numbers, where they just fill in quantities and we submit to Lowes, and get a min of 20% discount on all items. Lowes delivers to the jobsite for free.

There are a lot of other things we have done to go from a one man operation doing three houses a year, to doing a few houses a month.

If you have specific questions about what you are trying to accomplish, what your bottlenecks are, post them, it will be easier for people to give you more specific advise.

Wish you all the best