"I Built a Team of 12. Why Am I Busier Than Ever?"

0:00Hey, Alex. >> Hey. >> Hey, my name is Landon Dory. I sell brokerage and advisory services to owners of outdoor hospitality properties like RV parks, marinas, campgrounds, mobile home parks, etc. >> Um last year we did 1.3 in revenue and my problem is that in 4 years we went from just me to a team of four to starting the company and now we're a team of 12. So >> I used to stay plenty busy just servicing my clients and handling my pipeline. Now I'm dealing with managing tax, legal, all this stuff I haven't had to jack with before while we're rolling out the consulting side of the business and I'm letting way too many things slip. So I'm trying to figure out

0:40>> What's the consulting side of the business? >> I'm sorry? >> What's the consulting side of the business? >> Uh helping it's it's really framed as helping somebody prepare their property for a more profitable exit. >> Okay. >> I've underwritten a ton of properties and probably 5% I've sold. >> price that? >> So we're still working on that. The idea is an upfront $10,000 which we would apply to the commission at close if they decide to work with us on the broker side. And that would allow us to do a full audit on their property, give them a full playbook on how they can go implement that and then that would be our opportunity for an upsell to actually step in and offer advisory services to partner with them in that implementation.

1:14>> Yeah, cuz you probably take just a bigger take on the on the commission side. >> Which would be hugely advantageous to us because I own the company and normally like my competitors they work for a broker so they have a house split and I am the house so >> Yeah. So what's stopping you from doing that? >> I'm wearing too many hats. My plates are that are spinning are dropping left and right and I'm trying to figure out how to put these fires out. >> Word. So uh what's taking the majority of your time right now?

1:39>> Um servicing my clients and then trying to manage my people and grow the business. >> When you're servicing your clients post is it just people who are in process of sale or post sale you're continuing to service >> Correct. My clients are someone who who they've hired me as exclusive agents to represent their sale on the property and I have to get them from that point to finding a buyer, going through the contract, closed diligence, and then getting them off into the next phase of their life. >> And so then what's your team doing? >> We have uh six agents. They're doing the exact same thing that I am. We've got my COO. She's here with me. And then we've got three VAs in the Philippines who are doing One's my executive assistant, one's my marketing person, and one is doing buyer engagement, basically screening uh unqualified buyer leads.

2:17>> If you had um an in-person assistant rather than a VA, do you think that that person Basically, you have your six agents. Is there anyone that you could take under your wing and say you're just going to be junior me for like a year or two, and then that gives you way more leverage on your time? >> Potentially. And I've got one that's in an informal capacity like that right now. We've never really put a structure around it, but potentially, yeah.

2:44>> What are margins? >> Um last year the net was just over 500. >> Okay. So, you have enough cash if you needed to to buy some time back so that you can Because fundamentally, you doing the most valuable thing you can do is closing deals, right? And so, I would just say like, here's my stack of things that I can do, promoting and closing, top two. Anything that are not that, how can I get somebody to handle all of this stuff? And I think you need to have a little bit of a handoff of like, hey, you know, uh I'm going to be taking care of you or this is Johnny, and he's going to be handling coordination between now and then, but believe me, where you like, you don't want me in the details cuz I'll [ __ ] be terrible at it. But, you will want me in the close because that's where I will make you the most money. And if I was dealing with cuz then you have to frame it of like, imagine if we're in the middle of a close and I'm getting texts from somebody else that I'm working with, that wouldn't be a good use of your time or mine. And so, I let Johnny here handle this. He's Johnny-on-the-spot.

3:38And and then you just close. But fundamentally, you're just dealing with a an issue that every entrepreneur uh has to go through, which is that you have to buy your time back. And like this is the game, and it literally never ends. And so, I think it's more about being very clear about what things that are on your plate, and knowing that when you buy your time back, you have to go buy it back. Meaning, if you get the time back, you now got to make more money than it cost you to buy it. And then that process really never ends. But, what stops you from doing that right now?

4:04>> I mean, we're we're trying to do that. I I'm new to management, and I've made a lot of management mistakes in the last 12 months. I'm making some right now. So, it's just figuring out what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong. And I have to make I basically have to make three decisions to figure out which two are wrong, stick with the one that's right, and then make three more. >> The entrepreneurial journey. I will say that the longer I've been in business, the more I index on intelligence as a general principle of who I hire.

4:30I just want really smart people, and if you have really smart people who are generalists, they can usually figure out things pretty quickly. Um a lot of undue process gets created when you have people who are just lower intelligence, and there's nothing wrong with that. We love those people, probably just not the best case for your business. And so, if you look at your team, the people who are coming in, you want to make sure they actually raise the bar, and there's probably some elements of the day-to-day right now that are draining your time, and there's probably one person on your team that's draining your time that you wish they just disappeared and your life would be better. You should get rid of them.

5:01Um even if they perform, it's still not worth it, because the thing is is like you are the most valuable person in the business. You're the highest revenue never to generator. So, imagine for example, you had your number one producer by a long shot, who has this other person on the team who makes significantly less, but more than some of the other ones, who's bothering them all the time, and you know if if your highest generator like just didn't have to worry about that, they would be able to produce two or three more times, what would you do?

5:27>> Get rid of all the problem children and >> Right. And you would be ruthless about it. But, it's cuz you'll do it for somebody else, you won't do it for you. And so, you just have to pretend like not pretend, like you are that person. And so, you need to go take care of you, so that you can take care of the whole company. And so, it's not being like a spoiled brat, it's actually you putting the business first, so that it can feed everyone. >> That makes sense? Appreciate it. >> You're are to graduate through it. >> All right. Appreciate it. Thank you. >> If you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling road map, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so, we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so, I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information, and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page, you can book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help, and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.