Time is widely considered to be the most important asset of any business. How you spend it will go a long way in determining how effective your actions will be. Too many new investors will not properly allocate their time and end up with scheduling conflicts or too much on their plate. As an investor, you need to prioritize which tasks you are best suited for and what tasks can generate the greatest return on your time and money. It may seem counterproductive within the big picture of your business, but sometimes you need to take a step back to take two steps forward.
This can be accomplished through the acquisition of help. There are still many people who are underemployed and looking for extra money or looking to keep busy. You can use this as an opportunity to hire someone to handle the grunt tasks that eat up your time. For a relatively small expense, you will find that this can free up more of your time to close deals and will actually help you bring in new ones as well.
When you are in business for yourself, there is always a fine line between doing things yourself or hiring someone to do them for you. While it may be cheaper to do things alone, your time is most likely better spent elsewhere. Nobody knows yourself and your abilities better than you do. If you are the kind of person that will get bored with an email or letter campaign and lose focus halfway through, you should hire someone to do it for you. It may take a few weeks to train a new hire how you want things done, but this can be the best move for the growth of your business.
You are only as good as the people around you. Your realtor, attorney, accountant and anyone else you hire to grow your business are an important part of your success. It is your job to use those people where and when they are best needed. You only have so much time in a day and you need to prioritize what will make you money.
The investing business is a continuous cycle of getting new leads coming in, breaking down the strength of those leads and pushing them towards closing. This is only the first half of the transaction. If you are rehabbing or renting, you need time to make sure you can generate cash flow or the highest return on your investment. This takes great organization and discipline. In some cases, it will take years to develop a system to be as efficient as possible. Instead of going through years of trial and error, hire people that know what they are doing and can help you improve your efficiency and productivity.
Don’t just hire people for the sake of hiring. Take the time and hire the right people. If you have to spend time every day explaining what you need done, you are not really saving much in the way of time. Once you have a staff that knows what they are doing, your business will flow and everyone will have a defined roll. You will enjoy the business more and will be much more productive. Hard work is an important part of success, but working smarter will always beat working harder.
