I’m confident most of you didn’t get into real estate because you wanted to manage a team. And yet, as you experience success and growth, you inevitably find you can’t do it all yourself.
What happens next is all too common… either balls start dropping and you start losing customers, or at minimum the respect of your co-op agents… OR, you rush to hire without a clear idea of what you need, and end up with someone LIKE you, with the same strengths and the same shortcomings, and the issues you’d hoped would go away don’t.
Even seasoned agents with existing teams face similar challenges when needing to grow. They saw how much adding other team members helped, and they think just adding another person will produce the same great outcomes.
Take a timeout.
There are 4 critical things you need to consider before you pull the trigger to expand your team.
Get clarity on what is preventing YOU from accomplishing your highest and best purpose. I walk clients through this process often:
• Make a list of everything you’re doing. Keep this list with you for a week and add to it every time something new shows up.
• At the end of the week, estimate how much time you spent doing each of those tasks.
• Now go through and identify whether each item is a high-dollar activity or a low-dollar one.
• Then, go through the list again and highlight the tasks you don’t enjoy doing.
• Do you know your hourly rate? If not, take the total amount you want to gross this year, divided by the number of hours you want to work to earn it. For example, if you want to gross $500,000 this year, and do it working 50 hours a week, 40 weeks a year (2,000 total hours) then your hourly rate is $250/hour. ($500,000 divided by 2,000 hours.)
NOW… The important question: What eats up the most of your time, that you don’t enjoy, that you could pay someone else much less than your hourly rate to do?
In looking at just the list of items that are low-dollar tasks that you don’t enjoy doing, what would you be willing to pay to have them off your plate? And what will freeing up that time do for you, in terms of either making more money or improving your quality of life?
If you can’t confirm a significant benefit to you (and your existing team, if applicable), then you’re not ready to hire.
Once you’re clear of your substantial benefit, and before you jump to hire, consider what type of help you need. What’s on your list might be project based, in which case you can contract someone to complete just that project.
If the activities are ongoing tasks to be done again and again, a Virtual Assistant (VA) may be the best solution. And if those ongoing tasks involve local or in-person needs, you may be hiring an employee (full- or part-time, depending on how much you have to hand off).
While you may have used it in the past, “baptism by fire” as your training methodology does not set you up for the greatest possible outcomes. If you or someone on your team doesn’t have the clear commitment to formally train the person you bring on, don’t hire.
You’ll be setting the person up for ultimate failure, and you may lose weeks, or even months, deciding how to untangle yourself from the mess you created. The actual process of hiring is a key part of success when expanding your team. Call on the experts at Pro R.E.A. Staffing to ensure your success!
And if you’re unsure whether you’re ready to expand, reach out to me for a 15-minute strategy session – it will be my pleasure to help.
Amy Stoehr
Founder and CEO | Real Estate Masters Guild
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