Top Five Essential Roles in My Real Estate Team

Foreign welcome back to the show today. Got me just myself here.

I want to talk about and I've had some people reach out about this, but want to talk about basically what my team looks like. I did go over probably about a year ago how my team looked then and how we managed everything. But I want to go a little bit deeper, dive a little bit deeper into my team, what they do and then a couple other positions I didn't talk about before. So before we get started, just want to appreciate everyone again for listening.

I know I appreciate everyone that's paying attention, listening, watching on YouTube and obviously downloading the podcast. But yeah, wouldn't. I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for you listening. So again, appreciate that and doing the show by myself kind of gives me these one off shows by myself gives me the time to thank you guys. So again, thank you so much for listening and paying attention. I enjoy it and hopefully you do too and get some value out of this.

And with that said, let's get into it. So the top five people on my team and then we've got some, some bonuses as well. But top five people on my team are no order. And before I get into them, I want to state that obviously you got to build a culture. And we've kind of talked about this how a real estate investor entrepreneur, you know, whatever your, your position and your, your tasks and your duties and who you are has to evolve over time.

Back when I started, actually I'm just over technically, we could kind of say I started end of 2014 in real estate investing. So just over 10 years I've been in it. And back then it was just me. I did everything. I did the rehab. It was a single family rental. I did all the rehab. Obviously I found the house, did all the rehab, which was, it was at least four months, four or five months. Longest four or five months of my life. Couldn't get, it, couldn't get out of there soon enough.

It just, you know, I remember throwing hammers to the wall, just crazy things. It was not, not where I should be with my time, but I did everything, I filled the, the, the rental with renters. Fortunately, I had, I think over the course of what, five years I had two different renters, I believe at that house. And they were, they were great, but still one man band. Doing everything myself. With that said, the very first person, well, could probably go hand in hand.

Two people that I hired, I have now, number one is an attorney and let me back up really quick kind of getting to my point is don't go cheap. Don't skip on people that you're hiring, whether that's third party direct, 1099, W2, whatever they are, don't go cheap. I see too many people doing it and guess what? It costs them in the long run. It's still different than your health, right? If you go cheap with your health and eat cheap food, you're going to pay for it at some point.

It's no different with them, with your, your employees or your team that, that you're building or have built. Don't go cheap. Take care of the ones that are, that are absolutely awesome a players, A plus players. Take care of them, overpay them and also find out what gets what, what makes them tick. Yes, money is important. You know, there's a reason why people work to for money. But that's not the only reason. Right. And I'm still learning this too.

I'm still learning, you know, how to help out the people that are working for me and with us and, and how do they want to grow? Do they want to grow, you know, personally, professionally, within our company, somewhere else, do something on their own. Whatever it is, I want to help them get there. And obviously that's. You're creating team culture in doing that. So with all that said, don't go cheap. Hire great employees. It takes some time to figure out, you know, what you're. How to hire.

Sometimes you may have to hire. Hire somebody. Hire somebody. Right, Hire a third party to help you hire people. But yeah, don't go cheap. And back to my number one is an attorney. That was my number one person that I put on my team probably from day one. And you can probably slide in realtor in there as well. My first two, two maybe first three rentals I did get actually no, all my rentals, my single family rentals were from realtors so can kind of slide that in there.

Kind of forgot about that. Realtor is a, is an important part of your team. But, but for me attorney and I was fortunate enough to find a really good real estate attorney that had banking, lending background, real estate background and obviously legal background. So he's been absolutely awesome. I've had him for just over 10 years helping me with everything and also have a backup attorney as my main guy is, I guess you call him semi retired. He travels a lot but still is around when I need him.

And if it's something that's over his head, too complicated or he just doesn't have the time because he wants to travel More I do have a backup attorney. So number one on my team. And again, not in any particular order probably, actually the order is probably more or less how I hired.

So number one is attorney, number two is cpa. I've been through, I guess technically this is my fourth one in just about as many years, actually probably about three years. I did go through about a year where I went through, I think, three CPAs. And that's painful. But I, I do believe I've found one that's been absolutely great. And they're also my bookkeeper. So I've had a, a bookkeeper, a third party bookkeeper for at least 18 months now, I think. And that's been, that's been good.

It was good doing my own books for a little bit, kind of learning the ins and outs, what to look for, what to track, how things, you know, ebbed and flowed, all those things. It was good to kind of be on top of it. But at some point you got to get your hands out of the business and on top of your business and watching the overall picture and being in your day to day books and bookkeeping, you know, just wasn't. We scaled enough to where it just wasn't smart for me to keep doing that.

So number two is CPA and bookkeeper go hand in hand. And again, don't skip on this, don't try to get TurboTax and do it on your own unless you're just a W2 employee and you've got pretty simple returns. Otherwise, if you're any type of entrepreneur, hire a cpa, a really good cpa. They'll save you so much money and pain too.

Number three is my district manager. And her position, just her alone but also before her, has evolved quite a bit in the past, we'll call it three years. Because the first couple years when I was in self storage, I technically had a person in this role. They weren't considered a district manager, but they were more or less an admin assistant kind of. They answered a lot of emails for me, answered call center questions that came in, tenant questions that came in through email or through text.

And they just kind of had a, I guess a pulse on everything. All the communication going on between call center and our renters. So that was kind of where it started. And now that position is, she's full blown district manager for us. Obviously she's still got the pulse on our communication between our call center, our renters, contractors, our maintenance guy. She is basically the hub. And she's also, you know, she's Steering the ship. So her tasks and what she does is very important.

And I'm not going to list them all because it varies day by day. But basically she's directing the ship of daily operations. She's making sure, you know, if there's a problem that arises, she's on top of it. And over time we've both kind of, I kind of gave her a basic sheet of sops and over time she's added to that and put really good systems in place and yeah, it's definitely streamline things to where again she's over all the day to day and then after that is, is maintenance, maintenance tech.

And that's evolved over time as well. Initially I had basically local boots on the ground for each site. I do have multiple towns where I've got multiple sites in the same town and with those I just had one helper, one local boots on the ground. We did get away from having all these different boots on the ground. I think at some point we were up to I don't know, seven or eight and that's between, I think at the time it was like 12, 11 or 12 sites.

So we had a lot of just part time people and in my opinion one, we overpaid them. In my opinion we overpaid them for the time that they put in but at the same time they were part time and they had part time, I don't wanna say part time mentality but we ingrained kind of a part time mentality in them because it was more or less hey, pick up trash, you know, get units, rent ready when someone moves out and, and keep an eye on the property.

So it's pretty basic that now has grown to our full time person trying to get to every site at least once a week and obviously all those things turnover units, turnover of units, picking up trash, keep an eye on the property, fixing things, fixing signs if they're hanging, putting them back up. Grass, weeds, helps out with some snow. Any little maintenance, whether it's springs, doors, clasps, roofing, whatever it is, gate, fence, he takes care of probably 99 of that.

There's some things that happen with the gate. Maybe a roof repair, what else? If an entire door needs replaced, there's certain things where we'll call third party contractor. But otherwise our full time maintenance guy is taking care of everything. And that's been super Nice to have 1, 1, 1 contact and then also having the same person work at every site. So he knows our expectations, we know his expectations and we're growing too.

As far as expectations and what we want out of each other and what he can do, can't do what we're looking for and so on and so forth. So he's doing a great job. Things have definitely changed dramatically bringing him on full time and it's been great. So that is number four and then number five is kind of always had an assistant in a way and I said that a few minutes ago going back to just communication with renters and our call center.

But now I've hired an executive assistant more or less and for myself I'm still trying to, I guess the best way to put it is fit in mentally on how much she can help. And she's an absolute rock star. Just like everyone else on her team. She's an absolute rock star. She has started off with helping with social media stuff with the podcast. She's helped out with some one off tasks for our mastermind.

And then when it comes with the storage business, she's, she's helping with kind of being our district manager's backup. She's taking over Facebook advertising. She's taken over. I know I'm going to forget things actually as of when this, when this episode airs, she should be doing mailbox runs and check processing. And I know some of you are listening and saying why are you collecting checks still from renters? We do have some. It's a small percentage.

Excuse me, but it hasn't been a big enough pain to where we just want to force these people to pay by card or a, or debit card or, or whatever. But yeah, we do have checks still. So she's taking that over. So she's kind of doing a bunch of little things, definitely helping everybody, not just myself, but helping our district manager as well, which has been really nice to kind of share some, some admin responsibilities across the board with her. So she's been awesome.

And, and I can see her growing as well in this role and maybe further depending on how our company grows that goes along with everybody else.

So that's, that's the, the top five people on my team or that is my team, the five people on my team directly. And then kind of bonus, we've got, which I've talked about, we've got contractors third party, so that includes the call center. They help with obviously answering all phone calls. And we've been working with them long enough to where they do. They definitely go above and beyond for us. And that's partly, I'll give credit to our district manager in leading that.

And the call center definitely goes above and beyond what they probably, I don't say should do, but have been contracted to do, they've been great. So they are third party, but they, they act like team members, which is absolutely awesome. We actually have, our district manager has monthly meetings with them with their top five or six agents that, that answer our calls, which is awesome. And then our. Another third party are contractors. And I already kind of hit on this.

But if there's ever, you know, major gate issue, major roof issue, snow needs plowed, stuff like that, entire building needs painted, stuff like that, we'll call contractors to do that stuff. So while our maintenance guy handles 99% of everything, there are bigger projects that we need to call in third party contractors for. So that is my team. I don't think I left anybody off. I think that's pretty much it and covers everything.

I do like the fact that our team is more, is smaller and more nimble. It has grown. I do want it to continue to grow just at the pace that we needed to grow. You know, there's no sense in, in hiring just a hire to grow a team. But I do, I do see good in us hiring and building good work environment. You know, I believe we have a good work environment, a good team culture, a good place to work.

So yeah, for, for me, I do want to continue to grow and add more people for that fact. I do believe that we're a good place to work for and I believe that we overpay our people as well. So for those reasons, I do want to continue to grow and, and, and hire more people. But yeah, that's it. That's all I've got for today. Again, appreciate everyone for listening, paying attention, following. Absolutely awesome.

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