2/14/17 - Small Progresses Lead to Big Successes

Tuesday February 14, 2017

I have been thinking I should blog about me and my progress in this industry. I’ve been saying it for months but been too afraid (and lazy!) to start. So here goes.

Well it’s been an interesting day. We are still working out the kinks of our “ecosystem” in how we operate together. I am an early riser and a planner. I want to know the night before exactly how my day is going to be the following day whereas right now they just wing it. I’m not okay with that. I honestly don’t think they should be okay with it but I’m restraining and trying to find middle grounds.

Corey is still in school (construction science major at the University of Tennessee) so he’s not in action today. I’m still adjusting to the time change from west coast to east cost so I got a late start to my morning. I have a morning routine I do each morning which consists of:

• Wake up around 6am (trying to go earlier)
• Go for a walk while listening to the daily EO Fire podcast
• Pushups (one more each day. I’m at 11!)
• Shower & Get Dressed
• Make bed and organize room
• Write down everything that I think I could do and sort into could, should, and must do
• I schedule four Pomodoro method sessions each consisting of 30 minutes of work and 20 minutes of downtime (I usually go over but I have noticed my productivity sky rocket if I only commit to 30 minutes)
• Create a meal plan for the day
• Get on my knees and pray the Lord’s prayer as well as ask for guidance, discipline, wisdom etc.

That whole routine takes me about an hour. And once I’m done with that I get out of the house. I find being in my house during the day like being sucked into a black hole of nothingness. So I avoid that place like the plague during the day and make the local coffee shops my office.

Anyways, I went to a local place and started to look over some properties. I wanted to create a spreadsheet that lists all the properties we are evaluating and making offers on so I created a rudimentary excel sheet that list the property info. I also added formulas and input fields that populate our max offer for each property. I’m a systems guy and even though we haven’t done a deal yet I figured it’s not too early to start putting some rudimentary systems in place like this.

I got excited about a property that came on the market this morning and we went and looked at it. To be honest, when we got into the property to evaluate it I had no idea what to do. I have read many books and guides but the truth is I know so little about construction and construction prices that it’s hard for me to do anything but just try and make educated ballpark guesses. The running joke is that I always say the rehab will cost 80k. To me it just feels safe to go on the high side. I know the only solution to this is to trust my numbers but it’s hard when a large variable such as rehab costs is estimated on gut feelings. The truth is all three of us are exactly this way. Even Corey who is majoring in this stuff. It’s just hard to know until you start doing it what moving some walls around and making a kitchen look like new will cost.

I have been working on a parts and labor spreadsheet for the main parts of the rehab (based upon the J Scott book). I’m about 75% done with that and then we will start meeting with contractors and verifying the prices. This will certainly help us get better numbers.

The exciting news today is that we signed or partnership docs and started the initial funding of the company!

Oh, and speaking of systems, we decided we are going to meet every night at 6pm and decide which properties we are going to see in the morning. Since Kyle works better at night (not me, I’m useless after 6pm) he is going to pull comps and send them to me so I can review early in the morning. We will then meet by 10am every morning. I pushed for earlier but for now I will take a 10am commitment. The more structured commitments I can get us to agree to the better in my opinion.

Overall a successful day because progress was made. I believe little progresses lead to big successes.

-Christopher