How to Work Smarter, Not Harder in Real Estate

In the real estate business, there are countless opportunities. You can be a real estate agent, an investor, a property management owner, the list goes on and on. I’m here to tell you that in many cases, you can, and should, try and do it all.  

Recently I had the pleasure of joining Matt Johnson and Jeff Cohn on The Team Building Podcast to discuss just how you can take advantage of all these opportunities. We got to talking about strategies people can use in real estate that can really maximize success across the board. So I wanted to share some of that with you today.

Become Familiar With Vertical Integration  

If you haven’t heard of vertical integration, now is the time to pay attention. Vertical integration is basically when one company combines two or more stages of production normally operated by separate companies. So for instance, we’ve created a business flow at MD Home Team where our brokerage team works hand in hand with our flipping team. These businesses essentially feed one another, thus creating a much better stronger business as a whole.

One of the biggest ways this happens is with marketing and lead generation. When we use something like direct mail marketing, we reach out to a large group of homeowners who then contact us and become potential leads. When we’re buying houses as investments, we like to flip them and sell them for a profit. However, not every house is made for a flip. So if we have a seller call us and realize that their property can be listed as is, that lead will leave our flipping side and head on over to our core real estate team. And this goes both ways. If our agents receive a lead on a house that would be a perfect flip, it heads over to our flipping team.

These leads can also provide opportunity for rental properties. That means that in the future, there is opportunity for us to create a property management group that we can feed any properties to that look like they would create solid passive income. Down the road we could even start an in-house construction crew by adding a bunch of project managers to work on our renovations and investment properties. As you can see there are a lot of auxiliary businesses you can create. And there are a lot of reasons why you should.

Benefits of Vertical Integration

Clearly there are a lot of positives going on here. But let’s break things down even further. When you are able to create a multitude of businesses that work with one another, you immediately begin to work faster, more efficiently, and overall, just at a higher level.

Faster – When you are able to handle all facets of real estate, you’re able to work at much quicker rate. There’s no time spent finding someone to send your lead to because you know where they will go. This means you’re able to facilitate shorter decision time frames, negotiate quicker, complete transactions faster, and ultimately get more done.

More Efficient – You don’t want to just do things quickly, you want to make sure you are taking the most efficient route as well, right? By integrating your businesses and building more businesses, you can create fewer errors. Why? Because you’re able to recognize and solve issues quickly. If you run three businesses separately, you’d need three different bookkeepers, three different operating managers, etc., etc. When you create businesses that can feed each other back and forth, you really are working smarter not harder.

Better – At the end of the day, you’re just able to do things better. Not only for your business and your employees, but for your clients as well. Vertical integration allows a business to work like a well-oiled machine and that truly does translate to buyers and sellers that we’re working with. We can develop much better relationships because we’re able to take care of their needs, whatever they may be, all in one office. This is a real asset to a company that relies heavily on reputation, word of mouth, and referrals.

Don’t Forget to Think Big Picture

Many people have an “if I don’t do it myself fit won’t get done” attitude. That is the quickest way to fail at business. Remember, the faster you can get things off of your plate the faster you can move on to bigger and better things. If you’re following a plan to create more vertical integration in your business, you need to focus on that big picture goal. Don’t think that this means you will have to give up on your role in your business or that this will all happen over night. Think of it like building a ladder. You start off by installing the step yourself, then you find support to secure the step and move on to the next level.

For example, something simple that we talked about in the podcast is eliminating small tasks like checking your email. Down the road, it is possible to hire an assistant to take care of that task for you. You can even use virtual assistants to take phone calls, hire interns to run your marketing campaigns, the possibilities are endless. At the end of the day you can be busy, or you can be purposeful. Take away the meaningless tasks and fill each day with purpose. Trust me, choosing to scale your business will be one of the best decisions you will ever make.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by this idea, don’t. You don’t have to do it all at once. I don’t have every single possible business in working order but I do have a plan to get there, and that’s what’s important here.

To catch the full podcast, you can visit http://eliterealestatesystems.com/vertical-integration-the-power-of-scaling-using-knowledge-to-attack-problems-wjosh-mente/