We all get so wrapped up in the thrill of real estate investing (once you start buying, selling and cashing those big checks you will know what I’m talking about), that it begins to become all-encompassing. We have cell phones, so we don’t miss a call. When the phone rings at our home office we go running like a bat out of hell from the dinner table because this could be the Next Big Deal.
We take calls from contractors and suppliers at all hours and somehow especially on Sunday nights. We allow tenants to have us at their beck-and-call because we fear that if we don’t say “how high” when they say “jump”, they might move out.
Before we know it, our lives are consumed with nothing else. We left our jobs so that we could stop working for The Man, and be our own boss. Now we’ve come to realize that we are working for a much worse boss, a tyrant. That tyrant is ourselves.
How does this happen? It happens because we don’t effectively plan our businesses. I talked about planning earlier in this report. One of the benefits you will achieve from planning is you will be able to create systems and checklists to control your real estate investing business.
Once these systems and checklists are in place, you will know what needs to be done in any situation. You will look at the checklist daily, to review what has been accomplished and what still needs to be done.
You should have checklists for every aspect of your business. Here are some key checklists:
- Property Evaluation: Buying right, market analysis, property analysis
- Property Inspection: Estimating repairs, formula worksheets, room-by-room analysis
- Contractor Management: Bid process, contracts, and agreements
- Renovation Management: Cash flow, required activities, scheduling, and contractor management
- Tenant Management: Application process, move-in process, leases, and contracts
These are just a few of the many checklists and systems that you’ll need to create and use on a day-to-day basis. Then you’ll be running your business and your business will not be running you.
One of the benefits of systems and checklists is that—as you grow your business and hire people to work for you—you’ll train them by teaching them how to use the checklists and systems. You will train them to complete the tasks associated with each system and checklist. You will supervise them by revising the systems and checklists that they are working on.
This is the fastest way to grow your business.
To get help on systematizing your business, read this book, The Multi-Family Manifesto. It’s a great book that will teach you how to look at your business in its proper perspective.
If you don’t want to create all of those systems and checklists yourself, find someone who already has a successful real estate investing business and find out what they are using. The sooner you systematize, the sooner you will be free to make choices based on what you want to do, instead of what your business needs you to do.
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