How To Boost Your Real Estate Business in 4 Minutes | Ask Evan

Hi, I'm Evan Carmichael. Welcome to another edition of Ask Evan. Today I'm answering a question from one of our Facebook fans on the TELUS Talks Business Facebook page, John Carter, who wrote in saying, "I have a question for evancarmichael.com for the challenge series. For growing real estate investment business, what are the employee roles we should hire as we grow?" We currently have an outsourced model with marketing, web design, property management, legal, accounting, and bookkeeping outsourced. So thanks for the question, John. Congrats on building the business up to that size so far. I'm going to give you 3 pieces of advice that I hope will help you take your business to the next step. Number 1, what's core to your business? Before you outsource anything in your business, you should ask yourself which functions are core to what you do and which are supportive. For example, bookkeeping, accounting makes sense to outsource. You're a real estate company, not an accounting firm. Let them do what they do best so you can do more of what you do best. Other areas like marketing can be trickier. Is your marketing methodology a key component to your company? Is it a differentiating factor compared to your competition? Is it core to the way you do business, vital to your success? If no, then outsource. If yes, then keep it in-house. As you're building your business, think of it as an asset that you're eventually going to sell, and for a great price too. If your marketing process is indeed core to your success, then keeping it internally increases the value of your asset. You can't leverage outsourced bookkeeping, for example, to sell your business for a higher price. Outsourcing is a fantastic way to let other people do what's core to them and let you do what's core to you. Before you outsource your next function, think about what really makes your company successful and what's going to boost your growth over the next 5 years. Anything that is a key component to that success should be made core and kept in-house. Number 2: Where do you add the most value? Just because a function is core to your company's success, it doesn't mean that you have to do it. Next step is to think about what is core to you. Yes, it's time to give up control. It's easy to give away the tasks you're not good at and don't enjoy. But you'll often have to give up some projects that you do enjoy and are the best at because your time can be put to better use somewhere else. Where do you add the most value to your business? The more time you spend on those high-value activities, the more your business is going to grow. The other tasks still have to get done, but they can be handled by someone on your team. I'm constantly asking myself on the way to the office, "What can I do today that will add the most value to my business?" If you find yourself doing too many repetitive or low-value tasks, then think about elimination, automation, and delegation. 3. Make room for CEO time. My final piece of advice is to make sure you spend time on your business and not just in it. This is what I call CEO time. If you're constantly being dragged back into the day-to-day operations of your business, then you won't be able to spend any time growing it. When you're first starting out, you have to get past the survival stage where you have enough money to put food on the table and pay the bills. After that, it's time to think about growth, and it won't come with you trying to do everything yourself. Make sure you've blocked out time every week, ideally every day, where people know not to distract you so you can have your CEO time to focus on growth projects. For most entrepreneurs, it's easiest to have their CEO time in the morning before the craziness of the day hits. As much as possible, I try to build a no-crisis business where we can focus on being proactive and chasing down new opportunities instead of constantly reacting to emergencies and putting out fires. You get there by controlling your time and setting boundaries around what you will and will not accept. You have to first appreciate and recognize that your time is extremely valuable before others will. Thank you for joining me for another edition of Ask Evan. If you like the video, you want to see more, please give it a thumbs up below. It makes me want to do more of these videos for you. And if you have a question about this video or question about your own business, feel free to leave it in the comment section below or join us in the Facebook conversation, and hopefully we can feature you in the next challenge series video that we do for Teles Talks Business. [MUSIC] [MUSIC]