Leveraging Your Time as an Investor for Maximum Profit

The key to leveraging your time as a person who invests is to focus with absolute clarity on the areas of your business that give you the highest return for your investment of time and energy. Constantly ask yourself, "What's the best and highest use of my time right now?" If you find yourself doing tasks that you could pay someone else USD10 or USD20 per hour to do, how in the world are you going to earn USD100 or USD200 per hour, let alone USD1,000 or USD2,000 per hour? Look at where your time goes each day and each week. Every day, find a way to delegate, delete, delay, or outsource one more of the repetitive activities you find yourself focused on doing.

Delegate It! Let one of your team members take over this activity. For example, let your assistant organize your files of property documents. Let your bookkeeper keep track of rental deposits.

Delete It! Don't do it at all. Why return that call from a vendor who you never asked to call you? Why tell your tenant that you would help them find a moving company to buy boxes from? You get the idea. If the activity doesn't move you toward your goals, then remember the magic word is no!

Delay It! If it's a low-priority item then maybe just let it go for a few days or weeks while you focus on more important things. You could always keep it on your "someday" list. Learning to procrastinate the right activities is a prime success skill.

Outsource It! Can an outside vender do it for you cheaper, faster, simpler, better? If the answer is yes, let them take it on (and let your assistant manage the outsourced relationship for you). For example, turn over the pre-showing preparation of a property to a cleaning company, or maintenance to an outside contractor.

23 Methods to Leverage Yourself as an Investor

Method 1: Only spend time with qualified vendors who have both motivation and situation.

Motivation: A compelling reason to sell with a time crunch to do it in.

Situation: There is a way to structure a profitable business-either the vendor has the equity to take a deep discount in price or the financing is such that you can structure a terms business where you make a profit.

Method 2: A business is only a business once you have it signed.

Method 3: Use "standardized" forms and contracts that you know how to use fast.

Method 4: Only perform your due diligence after you have the property under contract.

Method 5: You don't need to see the residence before you put it under contract.

Method 6: Always use group appointments when selling or renting a property.

Method 7: Never stop marketing a property until you have nonrefundable cash in hand.

Method 8: When doing the paperwork with your purchaser or renter, always collect the funds first, then do the paperwork.

Method 9: Value your time-hire an assistant.

Method 10: Get an assistant to take all your front-line calls.

Method 11: Have your assistant set up 15-minute phone appointments to eliminate "phone tag" and compress your conversations.

Method 12: Train your assistant how to qualify purchasers, renters, and vendors while not giving away information you don't want them to have.

Method 13: Get a private "back office" phone line. If you have a highvolume business then get a hidden "back office" line and build a screening system to sort out the important calls from the low-level urgent calls.

Method 14: Only give your back-office number to those people whose calls are most important to you.

Method 15: Be willing to request that someone not use your back-office line.

Method 16: Get and use caller ID.

Method 17: Get and use mandatory phone number disclosure on your backoffice line (if available).

Method 18: Let it go to voice mail and only call back the people you want to speak with.

Method 19: Turn off the ringer when you are working on a high-importance project.

Method 20: Choose not to return some calls.

Method 21: Outsource to high-quality vendors in a way that lowers your real cost and provides greater results for you.

Method 22: Build relationships with these vendors so that you know you can trust them and they know they can count on you over time. Switching back and forth and picking vendors solely on price is the costliest error you can make.

Method 23: Use technology to make it easy to get paid: direct deposit, auto draft and payroll deduction.