If You’re Answering Your Own Phone, You’re Doing It Wrong

If you’re a real estate investor and you are answering your own phone, you’re doing it wrong…

… and there’s going to come a point in your business where you will stop growing, stop making the money you want to make, and maybe even burn out.

Let me explain…

A lot of investors get their start something like this: they send out a bunch of direct mail (letters or postcards) to sellers and then those sellers pick up the phone and call. And the investor answers, talks to the seller, and closes the deal.

Problem is, what happens if someone calls while you’re hanging out with your spouse or kids? Do you drop whatever you’re doing with them to take the call? (If you take calls from sellers, you probably do). That’s not what you got into real estate investing for, am I right? You got into it to make money and get some FREEDOM – not give up more of your freedom.

Or, what happens if you’re on the phone? Or in the shower? Their call goes to voicemail, where they may or may not leave their message. All of that direct mail spending goes to waste whenever someone calls but doesn’t leave a message.

This is just part of a massive problem that many real estate investors don’t even realize is a problem…

It’s called “scaling”. Scaling is your ability to grow your business… but more importantly, to do it at a rate that doesn’t require more of your time and effort!

Frankly, it’s easy to grow any business by just putting in more time or effort BY YOURSELF but that’s a recipe that leads to burnout. The better option is to scale up in a way that doesn’t require any more of your time or effort – in other words, to build a business that runs (and grows!) on its own without being directly tied to the amount of effort you put in.

Answering the phone (as I mentioned in the title of this blog post) is just one part of it. But there’s so much more: who is viewing your properties? Who is picking up the hammer to do a demo and rehab? Who is marketing your properties? Who is finding tenants and vetting them? Who is connecting with potential buyers? YOU can only do so many of these pieces yourself everyday. And if you want to grow, the answer is not to do more of these yourself.

The answer is to build a business that can scale up in a way that is not directly tied to your time and effort.

In the early days, it’s not a bad idea to be hands-on and to learn how it all works but you should make it a goal to systematize, automate, outsource, and hand-off these functions to allow your business to grow. For example, instead of answering your own phone when sellers call, you should use some other technology or a team member… for example, a virtual assistant (VA) who answers your calls for you.

You may not realize it but choosing to do it all yourself is actually HURTING your ability to grow your business. But if you get out of your own way, and build a business that is designed to grow without your constant time and effort, you’ll be able to grow your business as big as you want it… without hitting a ceiling.