New investor in Olympia, Wa looking to build team

[Ben Harrietha]

Hi all,

My name is Ben Harrietha. I am a brand new investor looking to get my start near the South Puget Sound area, Olympia, Washington. I've been interested in the world of real estate investing for several years while I was going through pharmacy school, but I finally made time for real estate and investing education this last spring. Since then I've been heavily influenced by Bigger Pockets; reading a couple of their books (How to Invest in Real Estate, The Brrrr Book) and have listened to dozens of BP podcasts. I also just finished Rich Dad Poor Dad, the seemingly official bible on entrepreneurship. Meager starts I know, but you have to start somewhere.

The main niche I am interested in at this point is the brrrr method and have been saving reserves to make this possible. I am at the point where I am looking to start networking and working towards building my core four (agent, lender, contractor, and property manager) and was hoping I could get some pointers or referrals to investor focused professionals in this region who want to find a win-win that leads us all to growth. My wife is also all in with me on this path, but will be more of a behind the scenes partner in our endeavours.

Even more exciting news,I just found out a week ago my wife is pregnant with our first child and there is no greater motivation for financial freedom than wanting to not be tide down to a full time job so I can watch my child grow.

I am excited and motivated to begin this next phase of my life, both personally and financially, and look forward to forming relationships with some fantastic people.

[Steve Rozenberg]

Congrats on the baby!!

By now you are realizing that if you are serious about growing your real estate portfolio and achieving your goals you really do need to have a team, otherwise you may end up running yourself into the ground.

Something that is very important to remember is that the people you start out with on your team will most likely not be the people you end up with.

Some people may not agree with your business model or concept of the vision of where you want to go and that is perfectly ok.

Sometimes people will phase into and out of jobs or careers and to be honest sometimes the skill sets needed from certain roles will change at the different levels you will be operating at along your journey.

Remember the person you are today, and the people you are around will most likely not be the people you are around when you become your future self of who you want to become.

It is always important to assess and reassess the people on your team as well as the people in your life.

People on a team will follow a leader, and they will stay with that leader as long as he or she has a vision that they can see, one that relate to, most importantly one that will invigorate them to want to be a part of because they believe in it. If not then they may be a sub-par team mate or just change teams to be lead by someone else.

I see many investors hire property managers, contractors, realtors etc.. and they only think about how it will help themselves win and achieve their own goals, this makes it a very one sided operation. Now I understand that you are paying them for a service, but money alone will not create long term partnerships.

When a person is constantly going through different members on their team I know several things are going on.

Either it is not a win / win situation for everyone involved or the person is not being a leader and inspiring people with their vision and communicating it with them correctly.

Now don't get me wrong, I am also a realist and believe in capitalism. Just because I am talking about leadership, vision and communication does not mean I do not understand that whoever you use as a part of your team needs to be compensated for their services.

Their business has needs, such as expenses, profit margins and goals of their own that need to be taken care of and these are their priority.

You have no control of how they run their business and how to ensure they have a successful model.

Many times I have seen smaller business owners which is what you will normally be working with especially in the beginning get either lazy or greedy when they get comfortable with getting steady flow of income from a client.

This makes absolutely no sense to me that they decide to overcharge their most loyal client, this is the exact opposite of having a team mentality and concept.

The only way you can potentially mitigate against this from happening is to have an initial expectation conversation with them, Let them know what you want and expect out of the business relationship and as well as finding out what they want and expect out of it as well for them.

This is also the time and place of letting them know your policies and procedures of how you operate, when you will be paying them, as well as what is considered acceptable grade work and what is not.

One of the most important things for you to discuss with them is what your plans are for growth and how they fit into those plans.

If after this conversation you realize this may not be the perfect fit for your team you are better off waiting to find the person or company that is a fit.

It can be more stressful and expensive fixing what someone else messed up then just finding the right person the first time.

This is why you do a lot of this work in the beginning before you own a bunch of houses and have a huge problem on your hands with bad team members or subpar work and service.

One of the challenges when you are building something the first time is that you do not know what to look for or what questions to ask.

Nor do you know what your needs are going to be until you actually start needing them.

Remember the more you plan, prepare, execute and evaluate the easier it will be to notice if someone is not being the right fit for your business and should no longer be on your team.

Test and measure along with key metrics aligned with your strategy and goals are key for long term success.