Re: Thinking Big- How to expand business? - Posted by Ronald * Starr(in No CA)
Posted by Ronald * Starr(in No CA) on January 10, 2003 at 18:27:00:
Daniel Rodriguez---------------
I think you are asking the wrong persons here. How are we to know how you do your business now? I think you have to ask the question of yourself, or perhaps other people who have seen you working your business.
I have worked for a man who makes over $1Mill a year. Here is what I have observed.
He continuously changes how he does things. His goal is always to do more with less time and money. He will try try things to improve his business, but if they don’t work, he ditches them and tries something else.
He takes every part of his business seriously, so he as soon as he sees a “problem”–read inefficiency–he puts into action something to correct the problem. Immediately. In the middle of the current day, not waiting until tomorrow.
He is very brief on the telephone with everybody, even to the point of abruptness. He immediately asks questions to find out what the person is calling about and get to heart of the matter. Then he makes his decision and response and hangs up the phone and is on to something else. No thinking about things usually, just make a decision, boom, done.
He never sits around much. He is constantly working on something. Talking to workers, talking to people applying to work, talking to people applying to rent apartments, talking to renters about problems. On the computer cutting checks, entering incoming checks and money, entering time for workers. Never a wasted moment.
But it is not like he does something extraordinary. All of his steps are ordinary actions anybody could be doing. He concentrates on his business. There is no “thinking big” here. There is only thinking efficient. And only doing deals that have a big payoff for the amount to time and effort required.
When one phone rings and he is on another phone he answers the ringing phone, asks the people to wait and finishes up as soon as possible with the existing call.
He is focused. He eliminates most properties by being narrow. If a property is not in his category of what he buys, he rarely will even consider it, let alone spend much time doing so. He has one main business, foreclosure auction buying, and does some preforeclosure solicitations–for targetted situations, not every default. Sometimes he buys threatened juniors. When other people suggest other ways of making money, he ignores them. He tends to his knitting.
He works long hours. Probably about 60 hrs a week now, down from maybe 70-75 hrs a week before he had a child.
Now. Have you pared down your operation to a “system?” Have you got other people to do what you don’t have to do? He does not repair properties. He goes and looks at the job and tells people what he wants and may offer suggestions of how to do the work, but he does not do it himself. The office staff does what they are to do, he does not do it.
The truth is that most of what he does is boring work. It just generates gobs of cash. He eliminates actions that do not pay off. He tries a few new things similar to what he has alredy done, then continues them or stops if they don’t pay off suitably.
So, look at yourself and see what you can do make changes in your operation.
Good InvestingRon Starr******