Scaling a Real Estate Portfolio That Doesn’t Rely on You With Sonaya Williams

What does it actually take to build a real estate portfolio that doesn't rely on you? The independence that helped you succeed now will be the very thing that keeps you stuck.

In this episode, we have Sonaya Williams. She's a fractional COO who is helping us to understand why simply implementing systems and hiring people will not allow you to scale your portfolio. We're gonna break down behind the scene what actually matters and what you can put in place to build a business that does not rely on you 24/7. Women real estate investors who have built a portfolio very well, they also have not built a business that is not dependable on them 24/7, are facing right now a scaling issue because they don't have systems and processes in place. They cannot fire themselves from those positions. And when we think about systems and processes, that's— that alone is so overwhelming. So, Shania, if there is a woman listening right now and she's like, that's me, what is their next step when it comes down to implementing systems that will allow them to buy their time back?

Yeah. So I think they need to, one, change their mindset around thinking that systems aren't unnecessary. Because it's the one thing that's going to help free you up to scale your business. Even you can start by creating a checklist, right? So, create a checklist for the last transaction or deal you've done, how you did it, because then you're able to repeat that success because you know what you did like the last time around.

That makes a lot of sense. And what we've seen for a lot of these women, especially when you dissect real estate investment, it's the acquisition of the property. Renovating the property, then it's stabilizing with tenants and whatever type of tenant, short-term, long-term, and then potentially optimizing it and then potentially selling it. So there's literally multiple layers, multiple processes that go into a quote-unquote rental property. And then if you times that by 10, which a lot of these women listening have multiple properties, gets a little daunting in terms of what process to begin with. What's the first process they should begin to create that checklist that you just mentioned?

Looking at where you're spending the most of your time, right? I like to tell a lot of people to take a time log of how you spend your day or how you spend your week and see where you're spending most of your time because that's what's sucking up your brain space, your energy, all of that. And start creating that checklist around what you're doing because I like to say, if you are touching something 2, 3, 4 times, it's something that should be documented and can potentially be delegated. or it can be automated. If you look at some technology and look at how tools— and now we— everything's AI, like, how can we automate some of the things you're spending a lot of your time on? So start by doing a time check of how you spend your day, your week, even some things that happen in the month. And if you're touching it 2, 3, and 4 times, look at how you can document that process and create a playbook to potentially delegate to someone else.

You have worked with so many different women and different types of businesses. What have you seen women complicating things behind the scene?

I think they complicate so many things.

I cannot relate to that. I just can't relate to complicating. I think I complicate, have complicated the most simplest things.

Yeah, it's the simple things that get complicated. And I firmly believe the simple things get complicated because we don't remember what we did the last time. And so now we're going to try and recreate a new experience or try to make things something so much better. But when it's really the simple things that make the biggest wins, like I've heard someone say this before, it's like the boring businesses are the best businesses, right? I feel we overcomplicate simple things, like simple transactions, simple things that we probably do every day. We overcomplicate and don't really need to be spending all of our time doing that.

And how do we know which ones we are complicating? Because if we're living in, right, I don't know what I don't know. So, so what are those red flags that women that are listening can see? Okay, following those, that type of audit, for example, I think I'm complicating this task. How can they identify?

So when you're creating a checklist, right? So how we do it, we create a checklist. We want to keep it simple, right? We want to have short steps. It doesn't have to be 40 pages long, but you want to make it detailed enough so that you can hand it off to someone that can come in and run the playbook. So if there's something you're doing on your desktop or screen, you can screen record, and it makes it easier than having a 40-page playbook in the end, right? So look at how you can create simple steps, right? Overall big steps. And then when you get to actually executing on those steps, if you feel that, oh, maybe I need to I can't go into more detail on this because someone will not really understand what I need. How can you break that down into 3 more steps max?

What comes up for me when we're talking about this is that it's a continuous process. It's not just you set it and forget it. I'm literally in the middle of this right now where we hired a new team member to support sponsorship, partnerships kind of activity. And I have some of our key calls with key partners of ours to invite them to InvestorCon or to become part of our community to elevate their brand. And what I'm finding is that as we're sharing with her the process, I then have thoughts of, we need to add that to the SOP. Let's add that. And I find myself, and now this is coming from anyone that's listened to this podcast, this is coming from someone who's not like, oh my God, I love SOPs. I love processes. I love systems. They're so, oh my God, I love them. Like, I literally don't. But I do in a lot of ways from the perspective of what they can do for the business because I want to step out and I want to set this woman up for success. That's what's important to me. So, for those listening that are like me or that love SOPs regardless, how do they move through the action of actually doing this? Because what you're saying is probably not the first time they've heard that. But that's not what's— that's not what's going to move the needle in growing their portfolio. It's actually doing something with what they're hearing and taking that action. So, what have you seen to be the habit, if you will, that people have done to really put some of this in place in terms of checklists, improving the SOPs, making it simple, screen sharing, et cetera?

Yeah, you make a great point, right? You want to fall in love with the outcome or the benefit that processes and SOPs and playbooks can give you. But you're 100% correct in saying, It's an evolving process, right? We look at and update our processes probably twice a year. When we have new systems, we then are going through and saying, oh, what process does this system touch? Or when we have a new team member or the roles change, we're going in and updating them because they are evolving, right? What got you from 0 to $100,000 is probably not going to be the same team process or systems to get you to $500,000, $1 million, and $5 million. They will forever be changing. And that's a good thing because that shows growth, right? And as your business grows, you as a person grow, and you have to get to a place where you have a habit of, oh, I need to document this because this is something that we're doing continuously, or I need to document this because I know that I'm going to hand this off to someone. Like, I'm the type of person where I like to do things first because I want to understand how it gets done and I want to understand or be able to then tell the person that's doing it and check in and say, hey, you know, this should really only be about 5 minutes. Why are you taking 30 minutes to do this? Where are we? Where's the gap here? What's missing, right? So I want to know enough to be dangerous and executing the process or doing the things in my business, but I don't need to be the one doing it all the time. And I feel as women, we do a lot, we carry a lot, but we need to get to a place where we're able to like you know, shed things off and hand things off so that we can grow and do a lot of the other things that our business provides for us.

I think there is a difference between what people expect and what is their reality, right? The expectation is, and for all of you that are listening, like share, share on Facebook group, you're like, that one was me. So here's what I believe we all expect. We expect to put together directions, an SOP or training. And we assume, we do assume that all what we wrote, it's so understandable and clear to us. So it should be for other people as well. And we also assume that people read, and I don't wanna be rude with what I'm saying right now. However, we are in a culture. Where we consume content via video versus reading it. So, all those assumptions lead us to create complex, overcomplicated, and we confuse the hell out of people when, when things take too long. So, I think that the lessons that we have learned in our business is really utilize short videos to explain explain something. And the key here that I want to share with all of you is that many times those videos already exist and it does not need to be you speaking. Just research and then plug in the video that somebody else is already showing how to do whatever you want. But I do feel that people sometimes feel that what they created is so good and they attach that to who they are. They're like, what do you mean? That was so good. And there's an ego thing there. I'm not sure. What have you seen, Saniya?

I can totally understand what you're saying because I get that from a lot of people. I've done this.

It's there.

How come they just can't run the book and do the process? People learn differently. They either learn through reading, through video, through audio. So having things in multiple different formats works. And like you said, it doesn't have to be you actually recording the video. It could be something that you searched on YouTube and you create a knowledge base and you have all these links of things for your team to execute and do their day-to-day. But I do find when people— and I get it because when you spend hours creating these playbooks and creating these processes, you're like, "Oh, this is so beautiful. This is my business in a book." But then, it's so complicated that the person you want to run it or use it is just lost. You can't attach that to yourself. You need to figure out how can you simplify this because the result you want to have is this person coming in and freeing up your time. So, while it's beautiful and it works great for you, it's not giving you the result you want. So, how can we get you closer to that result?

So, for women real estate investors thinking about hiring somebody, delegating, there is a word that comes attached to that thought, which is trust. Very often I hear, how can I trust somebody to look at my books? Or how can I trust somebody to pay those bills? How can I trust? And I always encourage women to, number one, create the skillset of hiring the right people, really creating the expectations. But don't you also think, though, that they need to trust themselves? There is a lack of trust in themselves. What have you seen with the women that you have worked with?

I love this conversation. I definitely agree with you. There is a trust that you have to build within yourself to know that you're doing the right thing for yourself and your business and put again the tools and the processes in place so that this person, you're setting them up for success. 'Cause the lack of trust comes when you've had someone on your team and they haven't delivered what you needed to. And it's like, oh, I, you know, I invested so much in them. I trained them and I did this and I did that, but it didn't work out. One thing I love is a tool called LastPass, where you can give people access to your passwords and things, but they don't actually see the password. That helped me build trust because When the person didn't work, I can shut them down and it doesn't have to take like hours for me to figure out and rechange what password they had access to, things like that. So, finding tools and putting things like that in place helped me build trust with my team. When I have a new person that comes on board, we meet every day for like 15 minutes, just as a check-in. So, I know, because I need to know that things are moving along, especially with someone new. Then we have our weekly team meetings on like a Monday and a Thursday. So, it's like, Putting in the checkpoints that you need in place so that you can trust and know that that new team member is doing what you need, need them to do.

I think it's hard for women when they are in the, especially at the beginning of the process of letting go and firing themselves. You pick the wrong person and it might be not just a good fit. You might fail on the training, you might fail on the expectation. There might be a gap on knowledge. There's so many variables. And I think then the trap is you tried and then the conclusion is that did not work. And I try it, everybody, I try it. So let me take it back 'cause I can get that done. And I think throughout the years as we scale, right? 'Cause we start having bigger problems as you scale. It's so important to really create the systems and process and the skill set of the hiring. The person can have the knowledge, but it might not be a good fit for you, your personality, your, your, your business. But the most important thing is the aftertaste after you fire somebody. One habit that we have in our business is that we debrief. And the first thing that we ask ourselves is, what can we have done better from a leadership perspective, from a systems and process perspective? What do we need to get better so we either see the red flags earlier and we can also be clear on who we are attracting? But we, this debrief takes the fault out of the equation and it just becomes part of the process. Listen, it doesn't taste good to fire people and start again and again. But after last month, I'll be honest with you, last month we let go of not one, not two, not three, but five people in our business. Do I want to let go of five people all at the same time in our business? Absolutely not. Did I try a realignment a month before? Yes. Did I see the progress and the behavior that we needed to see? No. So that gave me the confidence to say, we are not in alignment here, therefore we're gonna release you. Good, good terms, not, not bad blood there. But we also came, Liz and I were talking about, our standards are different than, than where we were one year ago. Our business is different. Our mission is different. So, I always wanna encourage all of you that are listening to evaluate, and it's okay. So, Sunaya, how do women manage all those emotions that we have to go through that I don't think people talk about how, how much it sucks? Sucks in the back end.

It does suck. I will say it does suck. But one thing I was told when I first started my business that I live by, as a CEO, you will forever be hiring and firing. You need to hire slowly, fire quickly, right? And I feel like it's the nature of the beast, right? So, we came in and wanted to become business owners. And I think dealing with the emotions We're women. We have them. It's something that we will forever have to deal with. But we need to find the right people for us to share that with. Right? So who do you offload to? Like, I feel bad for my husband when he comes home on a bad work day for me because it's like, oh, you're home. And everything comes out. Right? And once it comes out, I feel better. But it's like you said, you have to— it's more than just like getting it out. Debriefing and looking at, what can you do better next time? Because there will be a next time, right? You're not in this— it's not— you're not a one-hit wonder. You're in this for the long haul. So things will happen over and over again. And what you'll notice as you grow and as you do these things over and over, you get better. So get the emotions, deal with the emotions, spill the emotions, but then look at what you can do better the next time.

And I want to say, when you're doing the debrief, And it could be debriefing with a spouse, it could be debriefing with your business partner. Use a ranking system. I've taught this in the past and I wanna just give a quick tool. As you're debriefing, Andresa and I debrief InvestorCon, we'll debrief every event, everything that happens. And we also do this where we rank and use a rating system called 0 to 10. Whereas we're debriefing, I'll say, as we're revisiting this, I'm a 10 outta 10 on this. So, I really would like to keep that, or not attached to this. I'm not attached if we change this or that, then I'm a 0 on that. And when you're having conversations and you're debriefing with people and really trying to actually improve something, it really gets very fuzzy if you're not able to be very clear on what you're attached to and what you're not attached to when you are in a partnership or you're with a team or even your spouse, if you will. I use this daily, even to the point where my kids, I have an 11-year-old and a 7-year-old. Oh no, she's 8 years old. I don't even know how old my daughter is. They'll use the words, mom, not attached here. Like they'll use those words now cuz I've taught them that importance because you can't make everything a 10 outta 10. And as you're scaling, I think that's helpful for us as quote unquote CEOs of our companies, right? Of our lives to say, okay, where am I attached? Where am I not? And we can't be a 10 outta 10. Women wanna be a 10 outta 10 on everything. We can't, just don't have the space. So have you and your clients, have you seen other ways, other practices you can put in place that are ways, right, for them to almost set themselves up for success as they're evaluating their next steps as they scale?

Yeah, so your scale brought up what we do after all of our projects or after someone leaves. When we're debriefing and reviewing something, we do something called start, stop, continue. And it's listing out things and it's what do we need to start doing that we haven't done in this project, in this process, with this person, this within this role. What do we need to start doing? It's literally in a Google Sheet. You write down what that is and you have a column and it's start, stop, or continue. What do we need to stop doing? Because it's no longer serving us. It's no longer working for us. And then what do we need to continue doing? Because there are always going to be things that you're doing that are correct, right? So it's not all in the basket, thrown away. There are things that are working and you need to celebrate those. Like, what are you doing that's correct? And then we do those start, stop, continues. And then we put in the next column a date. Like, when are we going to— especially things that we're going to start, when are we going to start doing this? And then what needs to be in place for us to get these things started? That's one practice that I've seen works really well. It's super simple. It's not going back to overcomplicating things. Keeping it very simple, and it works because you have an action plan after that.

Before we wrapped up, I just wanted to share that one thing that my, my mentor taught me, that it's a disclaimer that I give to all my team members, and they are very surprised every time that I say those things. So when I share an SOP, I said those are just guidance, and I'm not attached to how you do it. If you see a better way to do it, feel free to change it. And I wanna give you a disclaimer, and I say what comes out of my mouth, it's not always an emergency. It's not always an order to be taken. It's not always a decision that I already made. So also take that same approach when you look at every single system and process that we currently have in place. They are open to change, and I am not attached to how we're going to do it. If you have a better way, more efficient, do it. I have no ego attached to it. And I think that that was like liberating it. Because he also gave them permission to say something versus, oh, this is how they do it and I'm just going to follow because I want thinkers on my team. I just don't want doers on my team. And saying that out loud really gave them the permission to really like, okay, I'm going to tell you. And they do. At the end of the day, we also want to encourage women to think that if they are the bottleneck on the thinking process, it also defeats the purpose of delegating if people come, don't have the freedom per se to think. Have you seen that, that happening, Sonoya?

Yeah, yeah, that's more about like empowering your team to be the leaders, especially in their role, right? So I always say there's more than one way to the end goal, right? So this process, like you said, it's a guideline, it's here to show you how to get there, But you may find, like, as you're doing this, you may find a different way to do things, right? You may find there's some steps in there that are no longer necessary, or there's things that we can improve. By all means, please do, because if we can work better, if we can work smarter, that's what we're here for, right? My way isn't the highway, or the golden way, like they say. I'm glad for you to come to me and give me another way of doing things. And then I feel like there's also a— a case where team members might come to you with a problem, right? And they expect you to solve it. I like my team members to come to me with a problem and a potential solution, right? And then together we can come up with what the answer is, but I don't want to be the one that's solving all the problems because you're the owner of this role. You're the owner of this department or this process. So you should be able to solve it as well. You're just coming to me for approval.

It's leadership. And leadership is really the key to scaling, honestly. It's not just more doors, more fill in the blank. It's actually leading ourselves. So super helpful and tactical things we can do, whether we're doing them or not. The key is to take something from this episode as you're listening. And we always say, take a micro action, create a checklist. Because I know all of you heard that, but you probably haven't done it. So take that action so you can move the needle on putting what needs to be in place as you're growing your portfolio. Where can all the ladies listening learn more about you, Sanaya?

Yeah, so you can just go to sanayawilliams.com and you can find out all the details about how, where I am in the world and what I'm doing there.

Awesome. All this information will be on our show notes. Thanks so much for listening.