Hiring Help To Leverage Your Time

There are only so many things that you can accomplish each day. As the income from your business increases, you should start looking at ways to delegate lower dollar per hour tasks so that you can focus on doing higher dollar per hour tasks.

There are three things that you should never delegate: the financial controls (the checkbook), your legal (interactions with the attorney) and your marketing. Consider hiring help for everything else.

As a fellow control freak myself, I can hear all the other control freak's sphincters tightening and their heart rates rising. Take a deep breath and relax. Delegating can be challenging, but it is going to be OK.

First things first, start with getting

Follow up:

an administrative assistant. I have had some amazing administrative assistants over the years and some not so great ones. Amazing ones make you look like a superstar and can do the administrative and organizational tasks better than you can (and yes, I do think you are already a superstar at them so these amazing administrative assistants are super-superstars). An administrative assistant won't cost you nearly what you think it will and you can hire them part-time to start. I would also recommend that you let them document the training you give them so that the next one you hire (and it is very likely you will end up hiring again) will have documented systems to start from.

Administrative assistants are usually paid hourly or by salary. For almost all of them, I've paid about $10 per hour (plus occasional unadvertised bonuses - read some psychology books on why you may want to use random, unadvertised rewards if you're curious about this).

When hiring other help like someone to get your houses sold or occupied, or someone to help buy houses for you, consider making it a commission-based position. You do not need to create a huge monthly salary obligation to get help and grow your business to the level you've set your goals to.

While I started this article telling you not to delegate marketing, I want to clarify and say that it does not mean that you need to call the newspaper to place the ad or you have to put the flyers out or get the pieces in the mail. You need to write and plan the marketing, but your administrative assistant, your sales coordinator or your buying coordinator can help you actually implement it.

In my opinion, your ability to do what you do best and then delegate the rest is going to make the difference between massive success and mediocrity in your real estate investing career. Happy Delegating!

Until my next post,

James