My advice to hiring staff is to know what you what them to do. Its great to make sure you have tasks for them everyday, but what I have found and have been trying my best to do is to develop automated tasks for your staff. In essence, its going to take for you a deep understanding of what *you want to do* in your real estate career. Yeah it sounds like its easy to know like... I wanna own a whole bunch of properties by next year. However, its important to think about strategy and methodology, because as basic processes become automated, you begin to see how much more of the entire investment function can be automated. What do I spend the most time on and what do I spend the least time on? And what part of my overall program can only I do?
In the past I spent so much time thinking about a specific property, analyzing the local market, going to the property, bringing in third party contractors, getting construction costs, looking for tenants...... etc, I haven't had time to think about what direction I'm headed and where particular properties fit in my overall portfolio. What was my vision? Where do I want to go with this? In the past it was one property at a time, and more and more it became important for me to look a bigger picture.
Its important to look at your real estate career as your own REIT. Starting with your vision and your objectives, you can break it down further, one step at a time. Your company has basic functions that can and should automated, for example, primary is book keeping and accounting, things like investor relationships and maintenance, and property management (or other asset management). Once these things are covered, another thing that can be automated is the investment analysis and due diligence, and deal negotiation and closing.
One thing I had to think about was what is the major contribution that only I can provide? Its basically deal sourcing (schmoozing with people with property - like bankers), vision and decision making (composing the portfolio with properties), and for fund raising, whether its guaranteeing loans or raising funds from rich people. These things require my personal credentials and credibility and thus cannot be automated.
When I hired someone last year, I was struggling - it was a lot of soul searching. I was forced to really think about what my desired outcome was, in specific terms. How many properties of this type do I buy, and how about of this property type? And how about by area? By coming up with a specific plan including how many properties I wanted to invest in, along with an amount of capital I needed to raise, I was able to more clearly see what I needed, and so could my staff. Its a bit scary but my staff all know what my personal real estate investing goals are and I am glad that they know because when they see our company buy a property they feel security knowing we are doing well, following our predetermined path.
With the help of my assistant we now have a written and reproducible process for collecting rent, sending receipts, documenting NOI, taking out fees, sending money to investors and owners, monthly, quarterly reporting on our website, (website for investor relations and 3rd party contrators saves tons of work-hours). We have become more efficient I think because our schedules are now more predictable. We can schedule tasks because we know how long they may take. In addition to daily duties, my assistant is now well versed in investment analysis. I can throw her a list of 30 properties and within a day have full reports of all the properties, including photo, ARV and values at various cap rates. She can take it to the next level now, working with contractors to assess the properties physically, (we developed a process for that and only work with contractors that know our method and who have worked with us before), so that she doesn't even have to leave the office.
