Junk Remover to Full-Time Employee: How to Hire the Right People as a Real Estate Investor
Hiring people is going to become an important segment of your plan to grow your real estate business. You will need all the help you can get when it comes to field work and it’s important to find the right people to be by your side. The last thing you need are issues with your own workers holding back the progress of your income property investments. Hence, it’s important to get things right from the start and learn how to find A+ employees. Here’s a story of how I turned a junk remover into a full-time employee written through individual steps you need to follow.
#1 Finding the Right Person
Step one is to put in the time it takes to find the right person. When I was going to build up a team of contractors for a renovation project, I went through 40 people just to find someone to do demolition and junk removal. These might seem like simple tasks that anyone can do but, trust me, you don’t want to hire someone right off the bat. I spent time searching through Kijiji and other online sites and I ended up finding a gentleman and his wife who were willing to drive 2 hours just to do this 1 hour job of junk removal.
#2 Recognizing Value and Hard Work
He said pay me $15, which is minimum wage in Canada, and I offered to pay them $16 just because they’re driving that extra miles but they said no. It was interesting to see someone deny a raise but I accepted the offer. They made the drive and within the first half an hour they accomplished more work than the previous junk removal guy had done in an hour or two. They were very hard working people and it was easy to get along with them. After they finished the job, I was so impressed with the work ethic so I said let’s see what else we can do.
#3 Providing an Opportunity
Step one was just getting them in the door, I did the work to just find them. I could’ve said yes to someone right away but I didn’t. I continued looking until I found the right one. Then, I had to recognize the extra skills and the work ethic they had. Being able to recognize that is important. After that, the next step is to find what else they can do to keep them around. Once you find hard working people who are going out of their way to get the job done, you want to keep them around, expand their horizons, and help them feel comfortable with the work they’re doing.
#4 Helping them Adapt
We quickly found that this gentleman is the jack of all trades. He’s good at more than just junk removal - he did the flooring and drywalling, painting, and so much more. He ended up working with us 180 hours on that project when it was supposed to be only 2 hours. We kept him around because of his good work ethic and the fact that he was always in communication, texting, sending photos, keeping us in the loop, which is important for us when we’re not on the site. It is important to mention that he did get overwhelmed with keeping up with all the tasks so we helped him adapt by giving him a software to organize jobs and stay on track. Now we hired him full time for 40 hours a week and he’s our best maintenance guy.
Start Growing Your Real Estate Business
Whether you’ve already started your real estate journey or you’re just making your first steps, keep in mind that you won’t be able to reach the top on your own. You will need a team of experienced people by your side to help you with a wide variety of tasks, from maintenance and renovation to marketing, administration, or legal questions.