How do you operate your business?

Question

Curious. This is posed to all the wholesalers and rehabbers. Do most people run a one man/women shop? Are you the marketer, deal analyzer, prospector, designer and accountant for your business? Or do any of you actually have any full or part time employees that help you with day to day operation and marketing? Have you found that hiring or building a team around you has increased your business or was it a waste of money?

I've been solo for slightly over 10 years. I've had a few fly by night "marketing assistants", but they never panned out. I have came to the conclusion that you have to pay good money for good help that will see the big picture and will stick around and know what they are doing. I have now convinced myself that I do in fact need to run my business like a business and hire someone that can do the things that I lack will power or knowledge to do myself. For me it's a marketing assistant.

Any thoughts or advice on how to get a successful business to the next level from someone that either developed a team or bit the bullet and hired someone to push them to the next level?

Joel Owens · Answer

I tried VA's over the years, Odesk, etc. I am even had someone local in my area part time. None of it was what I was looking for. They had divided interests among multiple businesses.

Finally I decided to buy an office building and hire a full time employee that does nothing but work on my business all the time.

I set a salary paid every 2 weeks and then a bonus structure of a certain percentage of income for my commercial real estate transactions. I want my employee to see that the more the company succeeds from their hard work the more they benefit as well. If you just pay someone a set fixed check they are generally for the most part only trying to do what is required of them.

I worked as a teenager for Wal-Mart when Sam Walton was alive and running it. People became millionaires off the stock because it kept splitting and splitting even though they made minimum wage per hour. Workers bought into the vision of making something great and we all win in the end. Same thing happened with Home Depot. These companies have stopped a lot of these benefits and they do not pay off like they used to for employees. Some people just want to exist and that's OK but others want to achieve greatness.

My employee has been working out great so far. It took awhile to find the right fit.

Austin Faux · Answer

Personally I follow the advice in the E-Myth. I create systems around the day in and day out tasks, write up a step-by-step training manual and find a virtual assistant at Upwork for $3-$15/hour. All the mundane tasks are run by the virtual assistants and the only stuff I work on is based on the following questions I use to guide my day:

1) Did I make money today?

2) Did I take massive action to monetize existing leads today?

3) Did I generate new leads today?

4) Did I take massive action to generate new leads today?

So in short virtual assistants do the mundane stuff and I only focus on "next steps" to turn a lead into a deal, and to collect new leads.

How do you operate your business?

2 Replies