All Forum Posts by: William Allen

Terry Burger a close friend and associate of mine is a self-proclaimed data geek and his super power is understanding the retail consumer and how to find opportunities in current data trends. He understands how to look at the right data to make sense of and predict real estate patterns. One of his favorite things to say is ‘humanize the data.’ Data simplified is a reflection of human behavior and the external factors that are influencing it. Data that reflects real estate opportunities is nothing more than the measurement of the common and uncommon activity of people seeking to meet one of their core needs, shelter and housing.

Recently I sat down and had a conversation with him about where the REI marketing is going and I thought I would share my biggest takeaways with you guys.

Fact vs. Fiction in Today’s Market

When discerning the truth of what the data is telling us, it is important to ask these 3 questions:

Have we reached the peak and where are the opportunities lying in this market?

It is important NOT to compare data from this year to 2020. Why not? 2020 data reflects one thing and that is the anomaly of the pandemic. It was a year when all bets were off and the numbers reflect that. The media itself has also become a competitive market and the way that facts and data are relayed from 2020 reflects the media’s desire to ‘hook’ you into their publication with sensationalism.

Who is our customer?

If you are flipping or wholesaling houses you have to understand who your customer is. The current date reflects that who is buying right now, are people under 40 years of age. What can you understand from this? What price points are the under 40 age group buying at? When you look at the data from last year, you see millennials looking for deals and voting with their feet moving to places with affordable housing like Detroit and Austin.

What do we Define as Pandemic Induced Behavior?

The overwhelming trend is people are moving out of big metropolitan areas to medium or small metropolitan areas. Even within large metro areas people are moving to suburbs because they no longer have to commute due to covid. This is based on the data from change of address forms. People from mid metro areas moved farther out into rural areas and people in rural areas tended to stay put.

To support this data Terry looked at data from a large moving company, Atlas. People are showing a trend from moving from high tax areas to low tax areas because they can with the advent of remote work.

Additional Questions that Assist in Market Predictions:

Are cities coming back?

Terry projects cities will come back, it is just a matter of time. Human beings have short memories and once the pandemic is behind us people (particularly young people) will want the convenience and excitement of big cities.

Job Market Complexities

There are currently 9 million job openings and 9 million unemployed. How are these job openings not matching with the unemployed? In short, people desire to work remotely, want to change jobs and industries, and feel no sense of urgency to get a job due to unemployment benefits. There are also massive shifts in industries that up to now were fairly steady such as the hospitality industry. 70% of workers in hospitality/service industries are looking to change industries due to the insecurity of hospitality/service with the pandemic.

The Future of Work

Smaller firms expect employees to fully return to work. Bigger firms expect only 1 out of 3 workers to return. Smaller businesses tend to be ones that require physical presence and labor such as restaurants, tree trimming etc. Another data point that will affect the job market is that 42% of employers are going to require a vaccination and this is going to cause a legal battle.

So how does this Affect Real Estate?

Forbearance Opportunities: Kicking the Ever Changing Can Down the Road

The Eviction/Foreclosure ban is now at an end, however the deadline for first legal action or the banks sending a note of foreclosure is 180 days from 7/31/21. In an effort to learn from the 2008 recession banks have put into effect ways to work with people before foreclosing such as loan modification. If you are aware of these options you offer them to potential sellers and come up with the best solution for people on all sides of the market. Ultimately we in the real estate market are benefited by people not losing their homes in mass quantities.

You can inform people at risk of going into foreclosure that it is possible to modify your loan to today’s interest rate which will help avoid a complete recession. A mortgage holder can also apply for forbearance until the end of September that will allow for six months of help. There is also a 3 month one time extension for forbearances applied between July 1st to September 30 of 2020. These fail safes are put in place to keep the market from dipping too quickly into mass foreclosures and destabilizing the market.

This benefits you as a buyer if you can find people in forbearance and work with them to buy their homes, saving them from the bad credit of a foreclosure.

Let’s go back to one of our Original questions ‘Have we reached the Peak?’

If you look at Google trends from the last five years and throw out 2020 (for aforementioned reasons) the 2021 market resembles the flourishing real estate market of 2018 and 2019.

There was however a problem in the 2018 2019 market; it was an inventory problem. The banks were not lending to builders and investors as backlash from the 2008 recession. After 10 years this shift translated into an inventory problem. The issue in our market today is not a pandemic problem, it is a continuation of the inventory problem that was created from the last recession. In essence the market has stabilized by returning to what it was in 2018/2019.

Mortgage Opportunities

Mortgage applications are going down and have been since May 2020. People are choosing to spend money on things besides real estate if they don’t have to move. You have to watch mortgage data over many weeks to notice trends. Currently applications are going down and listings are going up.

Pro-tip:

A great tool to find current data of your nearest metro area is Redfin.com

To conclude, take a look at the hundred most emerging markets in Real Estate. Interestingly enough a city in Montana is at the top of this list. Why? Data shows that people are moving from big metro areas to small rural areas because they want low taxes and affordable housing so the market reflects places where people can meet these requirements and get away. The pandemic has given us the ability to do that with remote work.

We hope this helped give you some tips on understanding what data to look at for emerging trends as well as some helpful predictions for the future of real estate.

Mike Simmons is an important part of our 7 Figure Flipping team. He also has been a part of a successful business partnership for many years now. However, it wasn’t his first or even his second or third partnership. Through the failures of his earlier business partnerships and the success of his current one, Mike has identified the benefits of partnership, the requirements a potential partner must meet, and insights on what it takes to be a part of an exponentially successful duo. We’re going to lay it all out for you here.

If you are thinking about taking on a partner the first question to ask yourself is…

Why partner at all? Why bother?

This is a moment in which you need to be brutally honest with yourself. Do you want someone to talk to, to bounce ideas off of and celebrate the wins with? We understand if it is, because entrepreneurship can be lonely. Having a partner is having someone who is in the trenches with you, but that alone is not a good enough reason to get a partner. It’s expensive to take on a partner when you want a buddy. We are talking about splitting all your profit and control of your business right down the middle.

That being said, there are undoubtedly benefits to having a good partner.

3 Benefits to Partnership:

Benefit #1 Have a True Sounding Board

If it’s the right fit you have someone who is on board, understands the vision, and problem solves with you. That can make you feel less alone, but let’s be honest, you can also join a Mastermind to get support and feedback.

Benefit #2 Freedom to Take Time Off

With a partner you can go on vacation and you know someone who cares as much as you do about the business is making sure everything runs smoothly. Mind you, you are splitting profits 50/50, so there is a price to getting that time off.

Benefit #3 Exponential Increases in your Business Potential

In the right partnership you can exponentially increase your income which is why it becomes valuable. If you are merely doubling the profit of your business it isn’t worth it, because you are also giving half of it away. So why put up with all the potential liability of partnership? You want someone who does more than double your profit. You want a partner that through what you both bring to the business your profit becomes 4 or 5x more than it would be if you went at it alone. You don’t want a 1 + 1 = 2. You want a 1 + 1 = 8.

How do you find this Partner that Rockets your Business to Exponential Heights?

Mike Simmons came up with these requirements after 10-12 years of having partnerships that did not work and ultimately finding one that really does.

4 Requirements when Partnering:

Identical Risk Tolerance.

If the person you are partnering with doesn't match your risk levels, and what is scary to one of you is the starting point for the other, you are going to have conflict. Imagine someone pushing on the brake while the other is pushing on the gas, it just doesn’t work.

Alignment of Goals

Make sure you have the same final destination in mind. If you don’t, somewhere around mid-journey you are going to start heading separate ways. From day one make sure you have the same end goal in mind.

Common Hunger

If one person has the drive to work around the clock, burns the midnight oil etc, and the other partner turns their phone off at 5pm, takes weekends off and monthly vacations, the workload will quickly become imbalanced, resentment will build, and you will need to dissolve the business.

Complementary Skill Sets

Don’t partner with someone just like you. Look for someone who is naturally good at areas that are challenging for you. An example of this is sales and interpersonal relationships. Mike talks about how he is more naturally an introvert who doesn’t enjoy sales calls. His partner is naturally extroverted and for him the sales and interpersonal relations are easy and seem effortless.

Here’s the deal…

When you are doing this awhile and start closing a lot of deals, people will approach you to partner and it will be tempting. The attention necessary to understand who you are partnering with is not unlike hiring someone. You have to be ruthlessly discerning.

Insights (lessons learned) About Partnering

1. Partnering is a LAST resort.

Most of the time when people feel like partnering what they actually need is to hire someone. There is something they are struggling to do themselves that isn’t an inherent strength and what they need is to hire someone to take on that job.

For example Mike originally hired his current partner to be his sales manager. Don’t partner with someone just because you need help, hire someone. You partner with someone when they bring something to the table that will make your business improve exponentially.

Before you jump into a partnership, work on a few projects with them and see how it goes. Partner with them first as collaborators not 50/50 business owners. People can say one thing when you are working together, but actions speak for themselves. Put the partnership through a healthy trial period. Take the time to see how they work.

2. Use Personality Assessments

Know your strengths and know your weaknesses. Mike Simmons uses personality and assessment tests to know his own strengths and to see how his potential partner compliments him based on those assessments. And if you are not a 100% match, you know you will have to hire someone to cover the weak spots you both have.

3. Have clearly defined roles.

You have to know where your responsibilities lie in the business and draw those lines clearly so when something goes wrong there is accountability and there isn’t confusion about who is in charge of what.

4. Review Roles and other aspects of the partnership at quarterly meetings

You have to look at what is and is not working in your job responsibilities. When you review it, you are consistently assessing to avoid resentment and improve on efficiency. This allows you to constantly adjust and improve. We recommend a quarterly review.

5. Create a Buy/Sell Agreement

A buy-sell agreement, also known as a buyout agreement, is a legally binding agreement between co-owners of a business that governs the situation if a co-owner dies or is otherwise forced to leave the business or chooses to leave the business. This is not an agreement to make when one of you decides to leave what is now a 10 million dollar company.

Create this agreement when your business is smaller and revisit it once a year.

6. Join a Mastermind

You have a partner but widen your range of support together. Your business will profit from the additional influence of other entrepreneurs. It isn’t beneficial in any partnership to put the entire weight of your support needs on them. Create a community that benefits the you and your business and your partnership will flourish as well.

7. Trust your Gut

If your gut is saying don’t do it, listen. Have you ever noticed when something goes belly up there was a little voice inside of you that was saying ‘this just isn’t the right fit?’ Most people hear that voice and ignore it. Save yourself a great deal of time and money and trust your gut. It is never wrong.

We hope Mike Simmon’s Masterclass on partnerships will help you avoid unnecessary, unsuccessful partnerships and discern an exponentially profitable one!

Steve and Kayce Tackett are wholesalers in the Columbia, SC area (they also happen to be Altitude members) When I heard they had doubled their profit margins and were on track for $1,000,000 in income in 12 months, I decided I needed to share what they are doing. So I sat down and talked with them and from that conversation I pulled ou a few of the most surprising (and lucrative) things they are doing to maximize their profit in our current market.

The #1 Most Important Tip:

Keep your finger on the pulse of the market and adjust. The market will tell you what to do. See opportunity in the challenge that the market offers and stay flexible.

Kayce and Steve were ‘just’ wholesalers who were consistently not closing on deals they thought were going well. They started giving higher bids to buy and finding ways to maximize profit and create new leads on the selling side.

For example, sometimes they will buy from landlords with the tenants still in the house, let the lease run out and then flip it. There was not enough of a market to just wholesale so they adapted and created another exit strategy for those deals that were still great deals. Below are a few of their adaptive strategies that allowed them to flourish in the 2021 market.

Creative Solutions:

Creative Marketing.

On the day of closing put a ‘For Sale by Owner’ sign in the yard immediately after the deal is confirmed. The sign is simple, an 18 x 24 yard sign ‘For Sale by Owner (phone number inserted underneath)’ and a space for a rider that says ‘Flip Coming Soon.’ This attracts immediate attention from anyone interested in buying either retail or wholesale, as well as from real estate agents.

Pro-tip: Every morning we gather our team and do a dispositions meeting. For 15/30 minutes everybody involved in dispositions gets on the same page so every step of the process runs in a smooth and timely manner.

Utilize every contact made from that sign in the yard.

Even if you get an offer on the property, leave the sign in the yard and develop relationships with the real estate agents and interested buyers who contact you.

You can keep the information of everyone who calls and build your email list of interested buyers and agents who agree to be put on the private ‘Buyer’s List.’

Use ‘Supply and Demand’ to your Advantage.

The amount of interest this sign draws also will help you know if a neighborhood is hot. If the demand is incredibly high in a neighborhood but the supply is low, (say you have one house and 15 potential buyers in one neighborhood), you can then isolate the neighborhood for a marketing campaign such as EDDM (Every Door Direct Mail) to everyone in that area and perhaps get another lead in that ‘hot’ neighborhood.

With these new leads you can make higher bids on properties because you know you have a waitlist of interested retail buyers.

Pro-tip: To maximize your time, on properties in ‘hot’ neighborhoods, create limited showings (say a Friday from 1-5pm), and put a boundary of a few days on when offers are due.

Private Money:

These great deals are locked down with private money. It allows you as the buyer freedom to buy properties from landlords that need minimal fixing up and keep a tenant for six months without paying high interest. When you are not racing a clock and watching your interest you have more freedom to get creative with deals and make those adjustments that make you the buyer they close with.

Pro-Tip:

Having up to date comps are important when you are showing your property to your investors and the market has just shifted in your favor.

Free Marketing Platforms:

Zillow and Facebook Marketplace are the two that Kayce and Steve have used with great success. Once you own a property outright you can market it on Zillow with a ‘buy now’ and ‘buy later with work done’ prices. In the details you can specify the stipulations on these different selling prices as well as what type of buyers you are looking for (loan or cash).

Facebook Marketplace is free advertising.

You can create a spreadsheet of all the industry groups in your local area or even areas nationwide as people are often looking to move. Groups without rules allow you to post immediately, and groups with rules you can have a VA or employee post for you at the specified time. Investors as well as buyers respond on Facebook and once you field their questions and develop a bit of a relationship you can potentially add these buyers and investors to build your Buyer's List.

Pro-tip: When fielding all the responses from Facebook Marketplace there are ways to shorten your response time. Most people ask basically the same questions and you can pre-write responses and create ‘shortcuts’ in your phone to quickly and efficiently answer and narrow down these responses to legitimate buyers. For example typing ‘xym’ into your phone as a shortcut can instantly paste a four paragraph introductory letter into your messenger or email. These ‘shortcuts’ are also available on your computer with a program called Text Replacement.

These are a few of the many solutions Kayce and Steve have discovered and implemented into their new business. Stay tuned as we continue to share methods you can utilize to change challenges into opportunities!

Last year we were Virtual but this year we are back IN PERSON for Flip Hacking Live 2021.  Come join us as we dive into What's Working Now and What's Working Next!

Orlando, Florida

October 14-16, 2021

We hold nothing back and share everything with the attendees.  All the systems, marketing tips, strategies, etc... we are all using as flippers to close hundreds of deals per year. 

www.fliphackinglive.com

@Doug Spence, I always recommend asking questions around your core values to start it off.  The culture and core value fit is so important.  

The first question I always ask on an interview is simply, "while I pull up your resume and information, can you just tell me a little bit about yourself."  And I leave it at that as I want to see what they are going to talk about.  Their family, hobbies, interests, work background, how do they define themselves.  

Our core values are Stewardship, Hardworking, Integrity, Personal / Professional Development, and Extreme Ownership.  The next series of questions are usually designed to see if they have these values.  An example would be, "tell me about the last time you lost a deal" if I was interviewing a sales rep.  Do they blame the other investor, the homeowner, or do they take ownership of all the things they could have done better?  

Good luck!

Over the years I've hired hundreds of different people between my real estate company, military career, and 7 Figure Flipping. I've also worked with hundreds of real estate businesses to scale their REI companies. One of the biggest things we see over and over again is people being unsure who to hire, when to hire, how to hire, and how much to pay them. Thy key to smoothly scaling your business is nailing down all of these.

Below I am going to break down what its like to hire in the early days when your doing just a few deals a month - these hires can be crucial to the success and growth of your business.

I am then going to jump into what to do once you start to scale and are over 40+ deals a month. (or at least in that ballpark)

Look at your business and be really honest about what you like to do and are good at and what you don’t like and aren’t good at. What you don’t like to do is usually where the bottleneck is happening in your business. For example if attention to detail isn’t your strong suit you may be overlooking important things that are slowing down contracts and keeping you from closing deals quickly. The area you are procrastinating in is the area to hire someone for.

The Early Days (A Few Deals a Month)

Hire:

Generally, as you are expanding your real estate business the first person you hire is a lead manager, a transaction coordinator or someone to assist with admin. You are spending money on marketing and you need someone to follow through on those leads and help convert them into deals. ‘No lead left behind’ is our motto. You have to nurture each lead to begin closing deals.

Cost: 

There are benefits to hiring someone local as they will be familiar with local landmarks etc. however you will be paying more (starting at $15/hr) whereas if you hire an overseas VA you will most likely pay ($5/hr). Terry Burger (a 7 Figure Flipping board member and REI professional) hired someone to answer calls live and paid them $12 an hour with a bonus if a deal closed. You can find talented people for not much money if the job allows them to work from home, or if you can't yet pay your people a larger salary you can tie them to the net profit which is a great incentive for them to close deals.

30-40 Deals a Year

Hire:

If you have scaled your business to the point where you are doing 30-40 deals a year, hiring a bookkeeper will save you a huge headache come tax time. You want to find someone that works with business owners and preferably someone who understands real estate and has real estate clients. If they don’t you run the risk of them doing your books wrong.

Cost:

You will probably pay around $20-30/hr at 10-15 hours a week.

40+ Deals a Year

Hire:

Once your business is scaled to 40+ deals a year you would hire a dispositions person who we argue is as important as an acquisitions person. If you are flipping and start doing multiple projects you can hire a project manager. Many manager have a general contractors license and can actually build a house. This role can potentially make a huge difference on your team. If you find someone who really owns the projects and is well respected, good with people, etc. they will build a strong team of local subcontractors and change the way your business is run.

Cost:

Project managers start at $40,000 unskilled to around $65,000 with additional skills. This is another position you can tie to the net if that is what they choose.

Hire:

When you are turning a high volume of houses, make sure you have a good realtor to work with.

Cost:

There are different pay structures but one example I really liked was how Terry pays his realtor a flat fee of $2,750 rather than a percentage of the sale because he is bringing him a large amount of listings that it requires absolutely no work to acquire. Generally, it is a 3 percent commission but with multiple listings that can eat into your net quickly.

Pro Tips:

When you hire it is a good idea to find out what your hires want, and then leave some room to grow and offer raises or part of the net as bonus incentives.

Your pay structure needs to be able to scale. Look at what your starting pay is and multiply it by ten. Does it still make sense? This can especially come into play with commission-based sales positions. If you make the commission really high when you are doing less deals and then you start doing many it is difficult to then lower the percentage for that employee. The average commission percentage for your salesperson is 10 percent.

If you are at the point in your business where you think you need to hire someone it is probably overdue! So get out there and hire the person that is going to cover the area you are weakest in. We hope this hire/cost perspective on scaling will help you take the next step in growing your business.

In real estate, your inventory is hundreds of thousands of dollars so people often think it’s not a business but it is and it follows the basic principles of any business. The truth is, real estate is just the vehicle for the business, and people fall in love with it. That passion however can shift to leadership, your team, how to build up who you hire, and how you create your vision.

The Fundamentals of Business are the same whether it is flipping houses, wholesaling houses, or running any other business. When I first started in real estate I read J Scott's book The Book on Flipping Houses: How to Buy, Rehab, and Resell Residential Properties. I used this to flip my own house and over the years I have worked to refine its implementation at BlackJack Real Estate. Doing over 200+ flips and wholesales a year has definitely given us a solid practice field to implement and tweak J’s ideas

Essential REI Business Lessons

The biggest mistake you’re making in your life today is not saying “No” enough.

Many of us want to do everything and therefore we say yes to everything. The problem is, many of those opportunities we are saying ‘yes’ to don’t contribute to our success. Even if they do pan out, if we say yes to everything we are spread too thin and we won’t actually accelerate any one venture. In the early days it is important to turn down things that take your focus away from pursuing your #1 goal.

Most people think success has to do with having a unique idea. I don’t agree. I believe 80% of ideas are neutral and the execution of that idea is what makes it amazing.

Saying no allows for successful execution of one idea rather than mediocre execution of multiple ideas.

Remember, if you are saying yes to one thing you are generally saying no to something else. So make sure what you are saying No to isn’t more important, like time with your family. People respect your ‘No’ when you are solid in why you are saying no.

You can also say ‘yes’ while putting boundaries around the request and making sure the compromise focuses on your needs.

Money is not the goal – it’s the currency you use to achieve the goal. Until you realize that, you’ll never feel settled.

Money is simply the currency to help you accomplish whatever goals you want to achieve. When you start making money you realize that the money doesn’t make you happy, it’s a safety net that allows you to feel confident, and a tool that moves you towards a purpose. When you are clear on that purpose you know how much money you need. What is important to you defines how much money you need to be making.

Some great questions to ask yourself are: What are you using the money for? What are you providing for your family, yourself, your friends?

It’s unlikely you’re going to make money doing something just because you love it. It’s unlikely you’re going to make money if you don’t love what you’re doing.

You can love what you are doing but that can’t be the only reason you are doing it. There is a balance needed between practicality and passion. When a new project comes across your desk ask yourself ‘Would I enjoy doing this? Does it present a challenge I will enjoy taking on?’ If the answer to these questions is yes, go deeper into what opportunities the project actually presents before deciding if you will take it on or not.

Figure out what’s going to make money, and then ask will I love doing this? Is there passion? Because if there isn’t passion, you will quit when the going gets tough.

Your desire to look wealthy is a detour on your road to being wealthy.

If you spend so much time trying to portray a lifestyle, a personality, or an agenda, you aren’t putting in the effort to actually build the reality of that lifestyle etc.

Don’t try to look like you know it all before you do; the reality of being a beginner is compelling. Don’t be ashamed about the fact that you are starting out. If you are afraid to be authentic your ego will keep you from continuously growing and learning through the process.

If the amount of money you earn is limited by the number of hours you work, you will never be wealthy.

This is the difference between an employee and an investor or entrepreneur. If you are earning your money hourly no matter how lucrative your hourly rate, you are still a slave to your time. People that are truly wealthy are those generating income in their sleep. There is active income and passive income. The only way to get to passive income is to create active income first. You can then take money from your active income and invest it to create passive income. You trade your time for money till you have enough money for that money to earn money on it’s own through investing. Figure out what your active income streams are and then figure out what your passive income vehicles will be. Work on both of those simultaneously.

The Fastest Way to Build a Successful Business is to Copy off Someone Who Has Already Done it, (and No this is Not Unethical)

So many people think the only way to be successful is to the first person marketing a completely innovative idea (an Elon Musk). That is one way, but if you really want to be successful find a business model that works and copy it. That being said you do want your business to have a competitive edge. If 10 million people are doing it, find something that maybe a million people are doing and find a way to give it that ‘something extra.’. Tried and true models will help you reduce risk. Don’t reinvent the wheel where you don’t have to. Test, modify, and adjust. You can use someone else’s template for success by adapting it to reflect you.

At the end of the day, being a successful entrepreneur boils down to only two skills:

1. Building a great product and 2. Being able to sell it.

People waste time on minute details like cards and websites. Ninety percent of your time needs to be focused on creating a great product and how you sell that product. The details can come into play later as you start to need more structures to refine your business. Trying to figure out the ‘how’ can sometimes get you stuck in analysis paralysis. The most important thing is to get out there and do it; make your first deal, flip your first house.

In business and investing, there are two main sources of leverage: Money and People. If you’re not using both, you’re under-performing.

You have to value relationships as much as you value the money they can give you. You can expand your business quickly by using your network. Too many people try to go at it alone and do everything themselves instead of being the person in leadership delegating. Get a great team of people that are working in their genius and leverage their talents. You can also be a tremendous team leader and not know how to leverage money. Find your weaknesses and allow other people who are really strong in them to fill that space so you have time to invest into leveraging your own genius.

Want Lots of Money? Stop focusing on your problems and start focusing on other People’s Problems.

Good real estate investors are in the business of solving other people’s problems. If you are buying a house for under market value, it is usually because you are solving a problem for the seller that is more valuable than money. The great deals you make are a result of people ‘paying’ you to solve their problems.

Give credit, take responsibility Not the Other Way Around.

This is the single most important motto I run my business by.

If anything goes wrong in your business, it is your fault. Taking ownership is key to being successful. If you take ownership of anything that isn’t working, you can see where you can do things differently in the future and immediately implement them into your business. If you do not, you put yourself in the position of victim and are likely to repeat the same mistakes again. A good rule of thumb is anything that goes wrong is your responsibility as the business owner and anything that goes right the credit belongs to the people who you are leveraging. If you run your business that way you will get the respect of your customers, employees, vendors, and contractors.

I hope you will use these gems to inspire you and propel your business forward!

They have made a huge difference in my life and how I run my company!

HOUSE FLIPPERS & WHOLESALERS...GET CONSISTENT DEALS EVERY MONTH AND ACCELERATE YOUR INCOME... IN 2 DAYS?!

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JULY 23-24, 2021

Having the right people on your team can propel your business to the next level. What is the best way to find those ideal employees? One of our Members, Waylon Lewis, works for Indeed.com and gave us the inside details on exactly how to to find and hire a top level team.

What I learned has helped my real estate company so much I thought it would be valuable to pass these lessons onto you guys. Spending time to get the right candidates on your team is an investment that pays back in spades.

How Do You Get the Right Candidates in the Funnel?

Indeed is a hiring platform with a variety of tools that can help you attract great candidates. Another cost effective option is to use your social media for hiring which shortcuts you to candidates that are already interested in what you do and familiar with your work.

On Indeed.com, employees have more power than they used to and it is currently what we call an ‘applicant’s’ market. The average person searching for a job now has a huge variety of jobs to choose from and can apply for multiple jobs with the click of a button.

How do you set yourself up to be the business that the best candidates want to apply for?

The best people are going to want to work for the best companies. They want to work for people that have a lot to offer them. A job posting is an advertisement. You are marketing to get candidates. You can’t compete with big names like Google, but you can market what you offer and people interested in getting in on the ground floor with smaller companies can see exactly what opportunity you are offering them. What can you do to show people that by working with you they can be a part of something special?

How to Standout:

On your page post videos that distinguish you as a company. For example, you can post a video of charity events your company has worked on showing the current team in action working together for positive change. Spend time building an attractive company page that tells your unique story.

Research your competitors:

See what other companies are offering and how they word their job descriptions. This is a great way to use what has already been done and adapt a format you like into your own job description instead of reinventing the wheel.

Write a Great Job Description:

In your job description lead off the top with what is in it for your candidates. If an employer begins a job description with what they offer their employees and not what they themselves want, it is a good sign that this employer cares about their employees.

Keeping the length 2,000 characters or less, works for entry level jobs. Keep in mind that many people are accessing these descriptions through a phone or ipad. Higher level jobs such as a COO can have a more nuanced and lengthy description. If the job description is cleanly and concisely laid out with the company's story, what the company is looking to offer employees, and lastly what they are looking for in an employee, it goes a long way to engage potential candidates.

Choose the Best Job Title:

Stay away from job titles that are too ‘cutesy’ if you want your job to come up quickly in the search engine. Searching titles for the job you are hiring for yourself to see what sequence of words come up first in the engine is a great way to see what job titles are currently getting the most hits. The tighter your job description matches your title the more applicants you are likely to have.

Exception to the Rule:

Using a title like ‘Work from Home’ can get you a large response because the value to the applicant is present in the title before they even click on it.

You simply want to avoid clickbait titles on professional platforms.

The Follow Through: How to Get more People Engaged and Less No-shows on Interviews

It is a competitive market for Employers and to cut down on the amount of no-shows and ghosters, you want to be one of the companies people are excited to interview for. Your strategy on who you offer interviews to will change based on how many applicants you have. If you have a large number of applicants and need to whittle down your interviews, you can put in an assessment or DiSC profile as a requirement for applicants to complete in order to move into interviews. If you are not getting traction with a large number of applicants, make the process to apply as easy and attractive as possible.

Keep in mind extra requirements for applicants may limit you to the people who have time to complete the extra step, which could be those that aren’t currently working as opposed to top talent you want to hire from other companies.

Pro-Tip:

Be proactive by actively sourcing using the tools on your platform of choice. You can go into the database of a platform like Indeed and search for people that have skill sets you are looking for, target them and reach out to them directly.

Building a solid team is key to taking your business to the next level! We hope these tips help you attract and hire the best candidates for your company.

We are sharing our hiring strategy because we know from experience the difference panic hiring vs. planned hiring can make on your business. The more you panic hire, the more likely you are to make poor decisions that will cost you.

What is Panic Hiring?

As a business owner you can sense when you need to hire. You might have a feeling that there are just one too many things on your plate, you know your business can expand, but you are nearing the limit of what can get done with the employees (or simply yourself) currently on your roster. If you ignore this, you are heading toward overwhelm which leads to panic hiring. When you don’t act on that initial instinct, you start losing more and more control of our business and panic sets in. When you first feel that twinge of knowing it is time to act.

Step 1: Define exactly who this employee is.

We recommend creating a Role Scorecard which is a hiring strategy from the book Who: The A Method of Hiring. Define who this person is: what they do, the character they bring to the job, and what their personality is with a ‘score’ or number next to each quality. This takes about an hour or two. We recommend starting this card, and giving yourself space to add to it.

Step 2: Create the job description/ad from your role card.

Your job ad is translated from the Role Scorecard you built. If writing isn’t your thing, you can hire someone to create the job ad. Post your ad on any of the job hiring websites such as Monster, Indeed, Facebook Hire, Wise Hire etc. (Wise Hire is a software based service that is month to month that gives a disc profile with all your candidates).

Pro Tip: No matter how many platforms you post on, direct everyone back to one link (say Indeed) so all your candidates are in one place.

Step 3: Create an Email/Survey that Filters out Applicants

The most important thing after all this is done is to be fast. Go in once a day to your platform of choice, select all the candidates and send them an introductory email. You can create a template for this. In this email put a mandatory survey or question that will deepen your knowledge of the candidate. This creates a self filter; if the candidate doesn't complete the survey/disc profile or respond asking questions they are automatically disqualified from the next level of selection. You want the applicants that are interested in the job, detail-oriented, and will take the extra effort.

Pro-tip:

On Indeed you can ask questions. One of our favorites is:

‘What do you bring to the job that no one else can, what is your superpower?’

Those who answer the question you keep.

Step 4: The Screening Interview

For the screening interviews, it is easiest if you time block one day a week. These interviews shouldn’t take more than 20 minutes. If so, the candidate is most likely on to the next interview. You can have someone else do these interviews or do them yourself.

The screening interview is 4 simple questions:

1. What are your career goals?
2. What is your superpower?
3. What is your kryptonite?

(This one we like to elaborate on by inviting people safely into describing what they aren’t inclined toward such as long team meetings,etc).

1. If I were to call your last five bosses what would they say about you?

This has a red flag built in. If they don’t want you to call their last five bosses and can’t be open and transparent about why, it is a sign that they are not a fit. If they can vulnerably and openly explain why they didn’t get along with a former boss it can actually be a sign of a great employee.

Step 5: Set up a final interview.

This interview is an extensive 60-90 minute walk through their occupational and personal history to really get to know who they are by asking questions that dig deeper into who they are in multiple situations.

We start the interview by saying something like ‘Every job is a chapter in your book and we want you to walk us through yours so we can get to know you.’

We start off by asking questions such as:

Who were your influences growing up? What about them inspired you?

When they are talking about themselves and their history you can ask follow up questions that will show you their character and values. For example if they have been driven and successful for most of their lives from high school sports/clubs to their last job, they will most likely be successful in your company.

Now you Hire that Perfect Employee!

In our experience this method will get you to the perfect hire 98% of the time. We refined this hiring strategy from making costly mistakes. Remember to listen to that little voice that warns you now is the time to plan ahead and start the hiring process. We promise you this strategy will save you a great deal of time and energy and get you a fantastic employee!