Want to flip more houses faster? Try outsourcing these tasks…
If we want real change in our lives, schedules, and finances, we have to take control and design our lives and business models. We can’t let our time, systems, and roles be dictated by antique habits or the old status quo. We’ve got to do things differently if we want different results. This is true for getting out of the rat race and into house flipping, as well as growing your house flipping business to the level you really want to be at.
One of the most important factors in making these leaps is maximizing your time and efficiency. You’ve got to be vigilant about your time and the tasks you allow yourself to do. You have to guard your time and delegate everything else which doesn’t absolutely require you do it. Delegate out everything which isn’t delivering the absolute maximum ROI on your time.
One of the best ways to do this both as a solo house flipping or as the CEO of a house flipping business is through outsourcing. It enables you to leverage others, hack time, and have a team, without having to pile on a lot of fixed overhead or take on more risk. In fact, this is how the fastest growing companies and top entrepreneurs in all industries are working today. Uber, Apple, hospitals, and more are all outsourcing. It’s easy to say “outsource everything.” Yet, few real estate investors and small business owners are actually outsourcing enough. So whether you haven’t started, or you are outsourcing a little; here are seven roles to make sure you are delegating out, if you want to see bigger and better results.
- List Building
List building is one of the most important parts of flipping houses. You need lists of motivated sellers, buyers, and maybe private lenders too. There are organic ways to do this. You can build your own funnels with landing pages and emails and whitepapers, and social media ads and PPC campaigns. Those can be great strategies. Another option is to either hire some assistants to get contact list info for. A low cost virtual assistant can help. Or just tap into existing databases, lists, and real estate software tools that let you instantly create marketing lists of targeted prospects.
- Content Writing
Unless you are an accomplished, confident, and quick writer (which most real estate investors are not), then spending your own time writing blogs, articles, website content, emails, reports, and other marketing materials probably isn’t the best use of your time. Get a pro to handle it for you. Then you can get on with actually closing the deals and making the money. Upwork.com is a great resource for finding experienced real estate marketing copywriters.
- Pulling Comps
Pulling real estate comps is an important part of flipping houses. You need accurate comps to make profitable offers and deals. However, they can also be very time consuming. Pulling comps on hundreds of properties a week can soak up all of your time for actually negotiating deals. Look for technology, agents, or assistants who can pull and evaluate comps for you.
- Screening Buyers & Sellers
Generating lots of buyer and seller leads is not the hardest part of the business. However, getting to talk to the qualified and viable leads can be a completely different deal. You can run a vague ad or send out a mailer with a big promise, and you can get hundreds of calls. That doesn’t help if 99 out of 100 calls are junk. Especially not if you only make it through the first 50 calls a day. You may never talk to the real deals. Having an outsourced assistant who can provide some basic customer service and pre-qualify those leads before handing them off to you can ensure you are only talking to the most profitable leads.
- Transaction Management
Once you get into real estate and start doing some deals you realize that getting to a signed contract is really just the first step to closing a transaction. There can be a lot of time consuming back and forth in between. That includes arranging inspections and appraisals, coordinating contractors, providing documents to the title company or closing attorney, and providing updates to everyone. If you want to be able to do more than a handful of transactions at a time, you need to outsource as much of this as possible. Real estate agents can help. So can professional coordinators, title company staff, mortgage processors, and your own assistants. Find a good team and system.
- Social Media
Social media is one of the best things to happen in the real estate world. It connects you with leads, allows for easy marketing and providing updates, and helps to build relationships. It’s also a huge distraction. You could spend 100 hours a week on social media networks and never do a deal. Or you could watch your time, have someone else manage your profile, postings, moderating comments, and responses. They can funnel you the real leads and keep up good engagement online, without you being dragged down by it. If you are already hooked on a platform like Instagram, make that your one thing, watch when you spend time on it, and then let someone else handle Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google+ for you.
- Answering the Phone
Have you ever tried getting Warren Buffett, Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, or Donald Trump on the phone? Very tough to do, even for those within those elite circles. Why? Because they fiercely protect their time, focus, and mindset. They can’t let others disrupt that or control their time. So, they have gatekeepers. They may even have several levels of gatekeepers to get through to get ahold of them. It is important to connect with the front lines, to know when to be accessible, and to be open to new information. However, it takes an intense level of focus to achieve top level results. Have someone else provide customer service via the phone.
