Team Member 12- Hard Money Lender

A hard money lender is a type of financier who specializes in properties that traditional lenders would often avoid, usually due to the condition of the property. The presence of a hard money lender on your team validates you as a serious player in your market because it allows you to pursue deals that other investors might walk away from and therefore allows you to reach more potential clients. In addition to allowing you to produce more revenue for your business, hard money lenders also help refine your evaluation of potential deals. These financiers will only fund a certain percentage of the property’s value so it also helps establish you as a better negotiator.

Team Member 13- Private Mortgage Lenders

This Team member is a big difference from the Hard Money Lender described above. Maybe you’re one of the fortunate few who has plenty of your own capital to invest in your own business but many investors (including myself when I got started) are lacking in this area and need to work to raise capital as part of their business development. Private mortgage lenders are vital to credibility for two key reasons.

First, if you can sell the concept of your investments and your business model to those who might provide you with funding, you can certainly sell it to your clients. Pursuit of private money gets you thinking differently about the upsides of your business and this will make you more effective as both a salesperson and as a negotiator. Second, the ability to immediately produce capital to fund a particular deal gives you tremendous leverage, and this value cannot be overstated.

Team Component 14- Assistant (Live or Virtual)

When businesses get busy, some sort of day-to-day help is inevitable and the process of bringing on an assistant can be critical to the business’s ongoing success. When you think about it, this is all about maximizing the time you can spend earning. Let’s discuss both factors. First, there’s the basic element of business productivity. You can only do so much yourself, and if the need to hire an assistant becomes real for you, then it probably is an indicator that things are going well enough to justify doing so. Believe me, you’ll thank yourself in the end for doing it. There are various kinds of help you can utilize. There is of course the person who comes to the office and helps with phone calls, filing, and knocking out things on the so-called ‘to do list’. There are also virtual assistants, who handle things from afar and can be great for taking incoming calls, responding to emails, monitoring web activity, etc.

At some point, your time will become too valuable to be doing the things an assistant can help with and having a perceived ‘staff’ will also bring valuable respect to your business by offering the appearance of a larger organization than may actually be the case. You don’t have to create the image; people will perceive what they will and, if that gives you a boost, so be it. My suggestion is to look at this team member as a time saver and revenue builder first and foremost. If and when you do take the leap to bring on additional help, you’ll wonder how you ever got by without it.

Team Component 15- Support Network

Your support network is your friends and family who support what it is you are doing as an investor. They are also professional colleagues who are following similar paths to success and who equally appreciate the challenges and hurdles encountered along the way. It is vital to have some sort of support network and also important to recognize that it may not be principally composed of those closest to you. I’ve met many an investor who have told me that unfortunately those closest to them are the ones that challenge or question why they were pursuing real estate. In the absence of a good professional support network, this kind of input can be, at a minimum, demoralizing and, in more extreme cases, prone to drive otherwise motivated investors right out of the business.

The importance of a support network is not just to get pumped up and stay motivated. You should be able to fuel your own fire, at least to a certain extent, because that is just a part of being in business for yourself. Consider this, professional athletes make the big bucks because they are the best at what they do and because they are self motivated people. You need to strive to be the same way. That said, recognizing that external support is important is a critical part of being successful in business, you must get that support wherever you can find it. Maybe it is on the home front and, if so, then you’re fortunate to have it. Maybe it’s from a professional mentor, someone who chooses to take you under their wing to help you grow in your own business pursuits. Maybe it’s a mastermind group of like-minded businesspeople who meet with some regularity to challenge each other and help fuel each member’s own success.

Your team is important to the long-term success of your business. If you don’t already, you should view yourself not as a CEO, but rather a CLO, Chief Leverage Officer. Your professional team is depending on you to leverage their skills, which in turn creates a win-win relationship. First, a team expands your effective level of experience. Many investors find that a lack of experience is a drawback, especially when a client asks ‘How long have you been doing this?’ With a solid professional team, you as an investor can cite that your ‘team’ has _____ years of experience and boost your own credibility without having to emphasize your own lack of experience.

Second, a professional team establishes an overall level of reliability by demonstrating that you have ready to go resources available to you. It adds a definite level of professionalism to suggest that paperwork will be reviewed by an attorney, properties will be managed by a company dedicated to doing so, and that closings will be handled and managed by a licensed title company or closing attorney. Clients love the feeling that the situation is handled at all phases and I feel it looks better to have team members involved, rather than presenting yourself as a one stop shop.

Like it or not, your clients (buyers or sellers) are your customers and they need to have trust in what you do and must want to do business with you. An investor who is able to delegate many parts of the purchase and sales process to their team has the time to do what they do best, which is to focus on the human side of the real estate business. Trust me, your clients will notice this level of attention to their needs, will see it as a validation of your reputation, and this will translate into more deals and more consistency for your business.

Interested in learning more and how to utilize all your support team members? You need to check out my real estate investing tools. Go here:

www.freemakemoneygift.com/Invitation.html