Welcome to Cleveland Real Estate Investor. On this podcast, you'll hear about every aspect of the real estate investment business. You will talk to your rockstar investors about their businesses, how they built them, where they came from, and where they're going. Who am I? I'm Joe Lieber and I've made millions of dollars from the real estate investment business over the last 20 years. If you're ready to hear the good and bad from a guy who's learned this business from the school of hard knocks and get educated by some bad ass entrepreneurs, then put your helmet on, strap on your chin strap. Let's ride.
(00:54): What's up guys. Thanks for tuning back in. I appreciate you. I want to talk to you guys today about hiring and before I do full disclosure, I'm terrible at this. I am terrible. I have heard so many people in my masterminds. Talk about this stuff. Gosh, they are so good at it and I am so terrible. It's embarrassing. I shouldn't even be doing a show on this, but a request of one of you cats emailing me. I'm going to tell you how I do it. I'm not telling you I do it the right way. How I do it the wrong way probably. But I do have some long-term employees who I think they love me and think I'm great. You have to ask them. I think they think I'm great. I've heard people on masterminds, dude. They give these people, what are they? Colby tests, personality, disc assessments.
(01:53): They have core values written on their wall. When they come in, these are our core values. Look at them. They have a company culture. I don't have a company culture. I'm sitting in my office right now and there's not a soul in here. I love it. That's how I like to do it. And don't think of hell, no, a bunch of employees. I do. They're not here. Not because of COVID necessarily. It is a little bit, but because I don't want them in here. Look, I mean, nothing makes me crazier than a bedbug than paying someone a salary, a couple grand a month. And they're out there putting their makeup on talking to their boyfriend. Ah, if you don't think I've done that I have gives me crazy. Like I just think though, like I'm so stupid that I think like you should work in like I do, right?
(02:43): Like grind in baby, like eight hours. You're constantly working and people don't do that. Hell, I don't do that. I don't know what it's like in corporate America. I've never worked in corporate. America is so you guys know, you probably do know ever since I've been 18 years old, I've always just kind of been, self-employed never really worked for a big company where I got a paycheck, always been on commission. So, so I don't know how that's structured, but in my head, I'm thinking if you're paying someone a salary or they're out here just, you know, grinding all day on that in my world. I haven't seen that. Maybe they do. I don't know. Maybe that is a lot of higher, but whatever. So here's what I've done. Let me tell you some stories. First of all, I have a real estate brokerage. So I think I have like 17 agents now.
(03:30): I really don't honestly know maybe 15 agents. I don't know, but they're all 10 99. So I don't have to worry about where they're at or what they're doing. You know, they have to eat what they kill. They have to go, you know, make hay, whatever. So I don't have to worry about it. I don't care if they're working or they're not. They do a deal. They bring a check in, they get their commission, that's it. But for 16 years I had to have an operations manager for that brokerage to deal with all those agents. Now that lady who ran it for me, she actually passed away in her sleep on January 20th of 2020. This year, she was with me, 16 years sucks. I still have not been able to replace her position. She was the best man. She was the best she worked from home.
(04:21): She managed all my agents and she did it because she had heart. It wasn't about the money. It was heart. Let me tell you how I paid her. This is what you'll find interesting. She was task driven. So if there was a status change in MLS that she had to do for an agent, the agent will call her. She did the status change. I pay her 10 bucks. She would just keep a running sheet. And then at the end of the month, she would send it to me and I just pay it. But I would absorb that cost from my agent. If the agent had a new listing, wanted it in MLS, she would work directly with the agent. I would absorb the cost. It was a minimal it's 50 bucks for her to put the, make sure all my documents are in compliance. You know, get the agent, what they needed, make changes, whatever $50 to put in the MLS.
(05:12): When it goes to pending 10 bucks, she would make they'd call and say, we're in contract. Boom. She changed the pending 10 bucks. She was a task driven employee later on. I started having her do my own transaction coordination for me, which was awesome. Now is paying her big bucks, big bucks. I was paying a bigger money, obviously thousand dollars a deal. I was parents do that. That was grateful. Cause she was on it. I mean she never treated it like a job. She treated like, like she was a partner almost like she would literally work from 8:00 AM to 10:00 PM. Like whatever it took, she'd just sit in her home office and you know, fax us over, take care of this call on this escrow. It is hard to find people like that. It's probably a why it's December right now. And I haven't replaced her.
(06:02): It's probably why very hard she was licensed. So she'd produce a little bit too, you know, a little older. So she wasn't trying to, you know, knock it out of the park and buy a mansion. She was just trying to, you know, enjoy her life. And she did, they went on some vacations and task-driven whatever I needed. We kind of had a, like a little thing. Occasionally I'd have her call utility companies for me or something and I'd just be tasked 10 bucks, easy, easy. Hey, Ron, grab this lockbox for me. Twenty-Five bucks. She just put it on there and she'd take a lot of initiative too, which was cool. Cause she understood the business. So that was great. That ran my brokerage for a lot of years like that. And I'm incredibly forever grateful for her service. But moving on, let's talk about my disposition team.
(06:52): Now my disposition agents, their job is when we have an event like that's their game, right? From preparing the information to go to the attorney. Yo tell you something, you know, you used to be able to do your own evictions and you have to have an attorney. If you had an LLC, you could go downtown file the eviction and go to court yourself without an attorney. Those are good days. I got to have an attorney on every deal because the house isn't in out, I'll see and they're on it. And you gotta like give you a rental registration when you file. And you got to have proof of the LLC when your file it's so different. But before that I would have them do everything. They will prepare all the three-day notice the eviction complaint. I'd make them drive downtown, file it. And then back in those days, I would just show up myself on the day.
(07:42): I'd just show up and say, yeah, I'm the owner and they're not paying now. They still do that. So now what they do is they get the three-day notice ready? They get the lease ready. They send it over to the attorney. He files it. They follow the whole thing through they're in contact with the tenant. If they're cooperative, let them know, Hey, move out to come in all the way down. They scheduled the bailiff's there on site. When the bail shows up there, they have locks. They do the lock swap out before it goes off to the project manager. But that is a task person. I don't want to say employee, they're not an employee or 10 99 contractor. And that's what they do. Self-Employed a lot of more agents. A lot of them are licensed agents, which is cool. Cause they just supplement their income.
(08:31): So what they're really doing and I like it. I don't have to worry instead air about overhead. I've been there. I've been there when you have thousands of dollars a month in overhead office leases. And I still have an office, but office leases and utilities and all these salary people and I'm like, we gotta sell these houses this month. This we have to do this. I got to make payroll. And before you know it, you're coming just to make you want me times I've come in just to make payroll made enough money. I'm like, ah, I feel relieved. Cause I made enough just to pay my employees in the overhead. That sucks when you're coming into work for pay them. And there is many times I've walked out without a check. Many times, those days are over. That's it. I'll never do it again.
(09:19): I haven't done it in years. Let me tell you about those tasks. So like that disposition person, manager, whatever you want to call them coordinator to do that. Like give the three-day notice. Well, we pay $15 to deliver a three-day notice because usually it'll do four or five and you know, it makes it worth their time. I mean, I'm not asking you dig ditches. You're driving around in your car, listening to Howard stern, deliver in three days. And a lot of times they're going to pay once they get it. So no I'm not going to pay you $280 to go deliver some three days or whatever. So they deliver the three-day 15 bucks. They filed the eviction late with the attorney. They get 40. Now they're going online with the courts. You have to go down there anymore. I pay 50 to go downtown plus the parking. So usually about 65 bucks I pay. And a lot of times they'd get a meter, put two quarters in still charging 15 bucks, but I was controlling it. I'm trying to control it the best I can. It's going to be perfect, but it's pretty good. And they see the whole thing through that make couple hundred bucks. They handle any eviction for me. It's cool. It works.
(10:30): Who else can I tell you about obviously all your plumbers and your roofers are all subcontractors. My tax accounts, subcontractor. I mean, right. He just does my taxes when I have meetings and this and that, the attorneys are all basically subcontractors for me. Right? They're not staffed. Don't need them to be staffed. My project manager who handles everything now he gets a small salary, small. I say, because a lot of it is commission-based for him too. We hook them up. You know, he has a company car and all that. Company's cell phone pay for his gas. That's my guy, one little expense. But he's more, commission-based kind of guy, but he has heart that dude will do it because he has heart. And that's what you're really looking for. Right? If someone who has heart, I always say, if you care, man, that's 50% of it.
(11:23): If you've got heart other 50%, I'll teach. If you don't care, then we're screwed. So police have some heart for me. That's what's worked for me all these years. It's kept me from going to bankruptcy. Gosh, I remember those years like, Oh five Oh six. I was salaried up for awhile man. And it was like, good. Cause those are good real estate years. But you still look down. You're like, I'm working a lot. I'm not making what I really want to make. Well, yeah, cause you got this huge salary expense and I know it works for a lot of businesses. I'm not the smartest guy in the room. All right. I'm just telling you guys that I know you probably some are listening and going, dude, what do you mean? Do this? Do that. Yeah, it works for you. Cool. I'm just telling you I lived it and I didn't like it.
(12:09): I just didn't like it didn't work for me. I don't want to do it. Yeah. I can probably do that. I can probably salary up and make 10 times the money. Maybe. Maybe not. I don't like it. I don't like it. I just want to chill. Enjoy the ride. And I sit here and Fred about, well, we got to catch up. Now we had a slow December and I'm down 15,000 salaries this month. Let's go make sure we make 30,000 just to be even at the end of January now I'm cool. You can do it. I'll watch you call me. If you have anything you want to wholesale me how it I'm cool. I'll just chill at my desk. You cats and go out there and take on all the overhead and wholesale houses to me. You can make whatever you need to make on it. That's fine. You got to stress. Make the money. I don't want to deal with it. Well, there's my little thing on hiring told you. I'm not an expert. Not good at it. I'm not there to listen to you. There's plenty. Better find somebody. Oh, I hope you enjoyed the show. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for tuning in have a great day.
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