When to get help
Over the last couple years, I have spoken to hundreds of small business owners in the real estate space. These are typically people who are required to wear a lot of hats every single day, and have a very particular way of doing thing. This leads to many of them being a bit of a control freak when it comes to how they handle their clients.
The curse of success, however, is you cannot do it all yourself. Anyone who has accomplished wild success has had to give up control. They had to hire people who could pick up the slack so the owner can focus on the high dollar activities to grow the business.
Jared James often says that the idea of everyone having 24 hours is a myth. If you have 10 employees working 8 hours per day, you don’t have 24 hours, you have the infrastructure for 104 hours every day. If you have 1,000 employees, you now have 8,024 hours.
The question is when 24 hours alone is simply not enough. How do you know it is time to get help.
The first thing is to figure out if you can outsource anything WITHOUT ANY RISK. There are some companies who offer services only when the job is completed. For instance transaction coordinators in real estate often only charge Realtors when the deal goes through. This is a a hired employee and does not cost you anything unless you get money in the door.
You also see this happen a lot with commission-only salespeople. You do not have to pay them unless they get a sale, so they are practically zero risk to bring onboard. Just be sure the compensation and demand is great enough that they can make a living, otherwise you will have really high turnover and spend a lot of time training people.
There are some other companies that offer help with “money back guarantees.” Always be careful with these, because some have loopholes you can fly the space shuttle through. However this is a great way to get help that you know will work out.
The last option is when you have to hire someone for a salaried position. This is usually for people who will do your marketing, bookkeeping, janitorial work, or anything else that is not your high dollar activities.
How do you know you need to hire? I have two good rules to look at.
25% Rule
If you have been reading this blog for a while, you have probably heard me talk about Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose. You freedom matters, and you cannot spend all of your time working without risking massive burnout. You need to decide, with a firm number, how many hours you are willing to to work each week. Let’s say that number is 50 hours. If you work 62.5 hours (25% more) for three weeks in a row, you need to find help.
Three Strike Rule
Let’s be honest, we have all dropped the ball in the past. We had too many things going on at once and we missed an opportunity we would have been perfect for. The problem is that for each one of these that you notice, two or three others probably fell through the cracks. The Three Strike Rule says that if you drop the ball three times you need to get help. The reason is simple, if you notice that you dropped the ball three times, you probably really missed 9+ opportunities. By taking some of the things off your plate, you are less likely to miss these kinds of chances.