How to Create a Bullet Proof Business

As entrepreneurs, we all think we can do it all by ourselves. But there are only a limited number of hours in the day so for you to scale your business you’re going to have to delegate. In this episode, Mark goes through why and how you should be delegating in your business. Delegation involves hiring and trusting the best people, building processes around them that will be consistent and training people properly. If you haven’t delegated to your staff properly yet then you are aren’t leveraging your time effectively on the tasks that are the most important for your business. We’ve all had the thought that we can do it better ourselves, listen to this podcast as to why that is not entirely true. Key Takeaways Delegation and passing tasks along the chain is a huge thing in business. We only have a limited amount of hours in one day. In order to build businesses properly, you need scale. You need to delegate to other people and build an effective structure within your business around those people. We realised we needed more corporate structure in our business after we started with a more laissez-faire approach. We employed someone who knew how to set up the right structure for us as our GM. We have 60-70 staff with a GM who leads them, and various departmental heads, who manage 7-11 individuals each. Tasks then get passed down and up through the chain. We have a lettings agency, who is run by a partner and we have a development company I manage by myself, with an assistant. Each has its own structure and hierarchy. I may as well do it myself, is a common misconception. If you get someone good and train them properly they might be better at the task than you. Even if they are 80% as good as you then you will have freed up your time so you can concentrate on income-generating activities. Leverage your time, to ensure you are scaling your business. It’s important to have processes that are structured so that you have clear, consistent outcomes. We have several processes for different aspects of our business from letting agent, to tenancy management and marketing. Try to automate processes where you can, so they save time and you make outcomes more consistent. You can have simple things like process manuals or checklists for everyone’s job in your company. For when people are on holiday so learnings stay in the business and things don’t get missed. You can see then if there is any duplication in the business as well. This will prevent people from amending them as they go along and creating inconsistent products. Hire employees you trust. If you pay more you will often get more out of them. Good employees will give you back multiple times their salary. Rehiring new people probably cost near 20,000, through their time, staff time to do their induction. Make sure you hire the best. Make them feel valued, give them lots of benefits, and retain them. Two-way training processes and feedback are important. You need a meeting like a 1:2:1 to get two-way feedback from staff, to understand what the issues are in their role, what training they need and are they happy. This should be a feedback loop in managing people. Tracking results and performances are important if you're going through a process you need to make sure you measure the outcome. Make sure to test and measure in a pilot and then interrogate the numbers after that to see what was effective. Check where it has worked in reality. Each process and system needs to be tracked through numbers. Things will go wrong sometimes. You might be outbid for a property, you might lose out on a property. New business have numbers which are very tight, you have to expect that the law will change and make sure you have some money spare to pay for any issues that might come your way. It’s really important to have that in the background with the economy being in a difficult place. Best Moments ‘In order to build businesses you need scale.’ ‘You need structure.’ ‘I have this habit of not letting go of stuff, I may as well do it myself.’ ‘You need to let go.’ ‘You can’t do everything yourself.’ ‘Get people who are right for the job, with the right experience. So you can trust them.’ ‘Automate your processes, where you can.’ ‘Each process and system needs to be tracked through numbers.’ ‘Two-way training processes and feedback are important.’ ‘Hire employees you trust.’ ‘You will get the investment back if you pay for better, more experienced staff.’ ‘Things will go wrong sometimes, so leave some space in the numbers.’ VALUABLE RESOURCES https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/mark-my-words-podcast/id1165370399?mt=2 The E-Myth - Michael Gerber ABOUT THE HOST Mark Homer Mark Homer is an entrepreneur investor.  He has worked with investment since he was 15 years old using the laws of wealth! He is a spreadsheet analyst with an impressive following from major publications including BBC Radio, The Wall Street Journal, The Independent, as well as co-authoring the UK’s best-selling property books.  Mark has always looked for the best investment vehicle, and at the end of 2007 with Rob Moore the co-founder of Progressive Property his joint portfolio produced more profit than any of the other investments he’d tried in the last ten years, combined. CONTACT METHOD [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhomer1 https://www.facebook.com/markprogressive https://twitter.com/markprogressive ‘Brought to you by Progressive Media’: https://progressivemedia.uk/