You’re trying to grow your business.
Trying.
In between scrubbing lists, answering phone calls, and visiting houses, you try to create processes and train your team. You try to increase the number of deals you do every month.
But let’s be honest…
…you’re exhausted.
You’re burnt. You barely have time to keep up with the current number of deals you’re doing, let alone grow your business. Not to mention that you rarely spend time with your family — time where you’re not thinking about work.
The whole thing feels pointless, devoid of meaning.
Why did I decide to build this business, again?
That’s the bad news. You’re stuck.
But there’s good news: the only reason that you’re stuck is because you’re trying to build your business the wrong way. I know — sucks to hear. But accept it and move on.
Because the sooner you do, the sooner that you can start building your business the right way, where your business can grow without lengthening your work-days.
Hell, you could grow your business and work 20 hours a week, 15 hours a week, or even 10 hours a week.
Because business growth doesn’t depend on how many hours you work, but on what you do while you’re working.
Here’s my 4-step process for working less and growing more.
Step #1: Fire people and fill in the gaps
Look — we all make bad hires. When you’re interviewing a potential employee or freelancer, you can’t know how they’ll perform until they’re actually doing what you hired them to do.
You can make educated guesses, ask great questions, and cross your spiritual fingers, but in the end the truth is the same: sometimes, you’re gonna get it wrong.
And the faster that you correct those hiring hiccups, the better.
In the words of Inc. writer, Paul Spiegelman,
“Hiring a problem employee is bad. Not firing him is worse.”
Why’s it worse?
For several reasons. First of all, with an unproductive, inefficient person on the team, your good employees are more likely to quit. And considering how difficult finding and hiring those superstars is, that’s a consequence you want to avoid.
Also, it’s expensive. A bad hire will take your money and produce little to no results.
And most importantly, it destroys your ability to create a well-oiled team that continues to function when you go on vacation or take an off-day. If you’re going to grow your business and work less, then you need A-players, and zero tolerance for anything less.
Once you’ve cleared out the weeds, it’s time to plant a healthy crop.
You’ll never (literally, never) grow your business and work 20-hour weeks if you don’t hire the right people and put them in the right position with proper training.
Up front, it seems like a huge time investment. And it is.
But it’s an investment that will pay you back many times over if you do it right. Here are some tasks that you should consider delegating to a team member:
- Marketing (direct mail, bandit signs, Craigslist ads, Facebook ads, etc)
- Sales (phone answering — consider Call Porter — house visits, follow up, etc)
- Data (CRM management, list scrubbing, data pulling, etc)
- Deal oversight (an Acquisitions Manager is perfect)
Step #2: Hire robot slaves
To compliment your high-performing team, purchase or subscribe to as many time-saving tools as you can get your hands on.
Whenever you can delegate minutia-type tasks to robots, do it. It’ll save you money, allow you to squeeze more production out of the team you already have, and automate the stuff that nobody wants to do.
Here, for instance, are a few tool types you might want to consider.
- CRM — This will help manage your prospects, making your sales team far more effective with their time.
- Project Management Software — Tools like Asana and Trello ensure that all your team members are on the same page and working together to meet deadlines and close deals.
- Real Estate Calculator — Whether it’s a calculator that helps with running comps or with calculating an offer price, use it. There’s no reason that your team members should spend time doing this manually when a tool (usually free) could do it for them.
Google for “Tools for real estate investors” and you’ll find loads more of helpful tools that’ll save you and your team precious time.
Step #3: Steal money from ROI-positive services
Along with the robot slaves, also consider using services that makes sense for your business.
Here’s the question I ask myself when I’m looking into a service. It’s simple and straightforward:
Will this service be ROI-positive?
That is, will the service make me back the money I pay for it and then some? Will it make me more profitable?
For some service types (like content marketing or SEO), that question is harder to answer, while other service types make it easy (like paid ads or direct mail).
Still, use your best judgement and make an educated guess.
Call Porter LLC is one such service that saves hundreds of investors time and money every single year. You can schedule a demo over here.
The more ROI-positive services you use, the more time you’ll save and money you’ll make.
Step #4: Focus on growing your business and enjoying your life (that’s the point, after all)
You’ve hired the right people and fired the wrong people.
You’ve found helpful robots and made them your slaves.
You’ve stolen money from as many ROI-positive services as you can (like Call Porter).
Now, what the hell do you do with your time?
Well, there’ll still be plenty of employees to train and inspire, plenty of processes to clean up, and plenty of vision to cast.
Then, once you’ve paid your top-of-the-ladder dues, it’s time to relax. Time to spend more time with your family. Time to cross some items off your bucket list. Time to enjoy your life again while your business sits and thrives.
That’s what entrepreneurship was about in the first place, anyway, wasn’t it?
Freedom.
And while it’ll take some intentional change to how you’re doing business — to the amount of control you maintain over each step of the process — the freedom you taste after implementing the above four steps will be euphoric.
It’ll remind you why you became an entrepreneur in the first place.
And the result of your efforts will be a hard lesson to forget.