Entrepreneurial Blues

A good entrepreneur finds balance. Image by: Bitmoji

This post originally appeared on the Hermit Haus Redevelopment website on 2016-04-05.

Warning: This post can be construed as whining. If I hadn’t promised to be as honest as possible about our journey, I wouldn’t post it. It sounds like whining to me, and I don’t like whining. Feel free to skip it. But if you want to know what it’s really like to run a small real estate redevelopment company, I guess I’m writing this for you.

When you’re getting started—and possibly even after you’ve been doing redevelopment work for awhile—you don’t have a huge staff to rely on. Some of the many tasks required to keep a company like this one working include but are not limited to the following (presented in no particular order):

Finding money Budgeting Plowing through the MLS Prospecting for buyers, sellers, contractors, handymen, etc. Reviewing contracts Signing contracts to buy, sell, and finance projects Keeping the books Finding money

Monthly, quarterly, and annual financial reporting Paying contractors, assistants, lenders, suppliers, etc. Communications (blogging, Facebook posts, one-off letters, advertising, etc.) Marketing, marketing, and marketing Crunching numbers Estimating repairs Finding just the right wine

Finding money Managing contractors and vendors Setting policy and defining procedures Negotiating with buyers, sellers, contractors, suppliers, etc. Record keeping (physical and electronic documents like permits, licenses, contracts, etc.) Envisioning, inspiring, and directing operations Finding just the right whine

I believe in job creation, but I also believe in profits. So there are only four of us working on this enterprise, and we each have unique roles and skills. To oversimplify: Russell works on finding deals and keeping the back-end systems running. Carol is our real estate guru; she keeps all of our preliminary numbers realistic, is our numero uno marketeer, and manages projects. Sue Ann is our social media expert, editor in chief, and networker. That leaves most of the boring business stuff to me. I love what I do, but...whine!

We do have assistants—virtual and otherwise—who handle most of our secretarial work: printing, copying, and mailing marketing materials. But the other listed tasks (and many, many more) fall to one of the four principle investors.

What set off this whine-arama is that I spent almost my whole day for the last two days chasing down random bits of paperwork for lenders and title companies involved in two of our current projects. In a perfect life, this would have been work I delegated to a file clerk. Unfortunately, I am the file clerk (technician level, in Kiyosaki’s quadrants).

Now you learn in investor school to prepare for this by keeping the most commonly needed documents in a folder on your desktop. This I do. However, each transaction we do adds to that list of documents. My “Commonly Needed” folder now runs just over 8MB, compressed. I’m waiting for some bank or title company technician to balk at looking though it and ask, “Why don’t you just send me the documents I need?” But so far, they always find just one more document to request.

My advice: Keep smiling and telling yourself it’s all a brilliant learning exercise that you’ll get through and eventually have it all down and a staff to delegate it to. That or learn to “play the guitar on MTV.”

Millwork

I know editing documents isn’t as hard as millwork or (un)loading trucks. I’ve done enough of those to know that editing is much easier on the back and pays better.

Photo by: Clay Enos

Then it’s me and my machine

For the rest of the morning

For the rest of the afternoon

And the rest of my life

—James Taylor

So this whole week has involved staring an Word documents, technical references, and Flash presentations in an effort to improve some outdated training materials for ALE. The good news is that they authorized a little overtime. But it has been a long, brain-deadening week.

Friday Feast

Appetizer: What is your favorite carnival/amusement park ride?

Even as a child, I didn’t really like amusement park rides. They were all either too scary or too boring. (Yes, I was a wimp.) If I had to choose, I remember liking bumper cars the best. You were in control. You could run into things, and you wouldn’t get hurt.

I think my dad ruined bumper cars for me. He wanted me to treat the cars like practice for driving a real car. Where’s the fun in that?

Soup: How do you react in uncomfortable social situations?

Like Suna, I try to avoid them. Harmony is very important to me, but I won’t sacrifice my beliefs for the sake of conformity—except maybe where Dad is concerned.

Salad: On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being highest, how much do you enjoy discussing deep, philosophical topics?

4. Not nearly so much as I did when I was trying to figure out what I believe. Like many philosophers (as opposed to philosophists) I think the questions are usually more important than the answers. I would rather ask and listen than argue. Hmmm. That’s my favorite teaching style, too.

Main Course: Did you get a flu shot this year? If not, do you plan to?

No. No. I am phobic about flu shots. I have no problem with other inoculations.

Dessert: Approximately how many hours per week do you spend watching television?

Too much. 15-30 hours. At the end of the day, my brain and eyes are usually too tired to do much reading.