A good business needs a good staff, just like a good sports team needs good players. That’s common sense. I have a dream team and that makes my life much easier.

My staff includes my acquisitions manager, Kevin. It is a delight to have him with me. He is a key component to my business. I must say that I am very fortunate to have a good one. In a nutshell, Kevin implements my system to buy houses. He also uses my system to sell rehab houses. Having someone who is good at that job is crucial for real estate business just as having a good power forward is good on a basketball team. Let me share some facts about Kevin. He’s worked shoulder to shoulder with me for over five years. He’s the best expert in the world on my real estate business systems and office management techniques. He knows buying and selling techniques like the back of his hand. He knows my staff of dream teamers well. He knows how to work with them. He understands lead generation for buying bank repo homes and lead generation for selling wholesale property fast. He has rehab insights and step by step check sheets to take the chaos out of business. He has owner financing techniques. He is my trustee. If you have questions about dealing with employees, he knows when to hire and when to fire. He knows file management, my bill paying system, invoicing, tenants and getting rent. He deals with contractors everyday. We have all had contractor pain, and oh what a pain it can be some times. He knows how to evict tenants the pain free way. He knows the fundamental logic on insider secrets of running the business. He is a valuable asset to my team.

I also have a great administrative assistant. Here name is Donna and she is a valuable member of our team. She keeps us going and implements my system to avoid chaos. Donna was a member of our Air Force, but retired a few years back. She applied at my office and we brought her on. She had a lot of travel under her belt from her years with the Air Force and had seen a lot of the world. But she was a native of Ohio and was happy to be working back home. One of the best things about Donna was that her military background included putting procedures together. The military is big on checklists and following rules and regulations. I certainly saw this experience with check sheets as a big reason to bring her on. In my office, there’s a check sheet for everything. It generally saves people from forgetting something that would have created chaos.

When new hires come in, Donna gives them the check sheet. We do not miss that element of the training. Donna trains them on how to use the check sheets and they end up with a solid understanding of my systems.

Donna is also great to have for duties like payables, receivable and collecting money. The accounting program that I have been using, and suggesting you use, is Quick Books Pro. Donna’s accounting experience was all military. Since her work with Quick Books Pro was so crucial to our success, she attended a two day educational seminar on Quick Books Pro. I was out of town during her second week in the office. She was well trained by then and knew how to use the program. I guess the training helped her, but Quick Books Pro is also user friendly. So, don’t be afraid of it.

When you’re hiring people, you might have someone come in who is already trained. You might also have someone who is not trained on the specific programs you use, but you can see that they are capable of learning. You might have to cough up some training fees to bring them up to speed on things like Quick Books Pro, but it is worth it to have a good performer on your roster. They have to learn your system. That is imperative. Someone might have learned Quick Books Pro in another business and that’s their comfort zone. But if you throw them into our system, they become uncomfortable. We tend to do charts of accounts and other things differently. They need to be trained on your specific system.

I have a team of attorneys. I don’t use just one, I use a team. I don’t stop with one attorney. I have a bank of attorneys. I do business with Prepaid Legal Services, I have my SEC attorney Ralph and I would highly recommend that you get one if you have private lenders. I have an attorney who does my closings. I actually have attorneys in two different offices and I have another one that just does evictions. As you can see, I choose to have a bank of attorneys and I don’t use the same attorney for different areas of legal services. For example, I use Prepaid Legal for reading my contracts and other attorneys for other duties. Take your time finding the right attorneys. You want attorneys who are experienced, skilled and serious about helping you in your business.

I’ve got an insurance agent. When it comes to insurance, I have found that it makes it easier for me to work with one agency. My one agent gets everything insured for me.

You need a good sales team as part of your team. You need a good administrative assistant on you team. You need good attorneys, and insurance people. Your dream team is crucial to your success.

I like using this sports metaphor here. If you want a good business, you have to have a good team. My system will allow for a good team to work together well. You need to know which positions to have on your team too. When I was getting started in the real estate business I made a big mistake, I didn’t get an education. There are books and boot camps like mine available. I lost ground by not taking advantage. Nobody else was teaching my techniques at the time. If there was, I would have been better served by taking advantage of it.