Re: broker investor team - Posted by Penny
Posted by Penny on July 10, 2007 at 08:57:03:
It sounds like you are active in several areas. The definition of the “next level” for you should be in your business plan.
I don’t know your market, so I am not going to give specific advice in that direction.
However, I would suggest a current analysis of your development, investment and brokerage activities to determine where you are most successful versus time spent. You may have already found your niche but it is obscured by the variety of activities you have going on.
Identify your strengths and weaknesses. This should shed some light on how to best utilize your wife’s license. Are there areas where a lot of time is spent for not much return? Maybe your time is better spent on the areas that yield the best results and it is time to stop doing some things that aren’t producing results. This should be feeding into your business plan updates - a roadmap to get to the next level and beyond.
You say your time is spread thin. One way to expand in business is to leverage Other People’s Time. There are pros & cons of hiring employees versus independant contractors depending on your business needs.
If you are spread thin, are there routine tasks that you could hire an assistant to delegate to? What are the key tasks that require your time or your wife’s time versus things that need to be done that do not require your level of expertise? If you are using $100/hr time (yours) to do $10/hr tasks, then hiring some help is one approach to help you focus your time on the most cost effective tasks. Consider hiring people who like to do the things that you don’t like to do, e.g. assistant for your wife in the brokerage activities.
Another thought is to look at your business processes. They should be written down and/or have checklists for others to follow - this helps with delegating when a business expands. Can you automate some of your marketing and analysis tasks using software or other office tools to free up time and improve your efficiency? Can some of it be delegated or outsourced? Are there things you continue to do because you’ve always done them, but you could stop doing them and have no impact?
Sometimes, in order to get to the next level, you can’t do it all by yourself. At the risk of sounding like a business seminar junkie, there is the working hard versus working smart approach.
Best of luck, hope this helps.