I was in a group meeting recently where we were talking with small business owners and trying to help them with some of the problems they were facing. One man, an owner of a carpet cleaning company, told a story that I’ve seen and heard countless times. His problem was growth – lots of it. He didn’t feel he’d had the time to catch up with how fast his business was growing. He was going crazy trying to get everything done because he didn’t feel like he could trust other people to do the job right. He had a reputation to uphold, and he was concerned that hiring additional employees would only serve to ruin his hard-earned image.
As appraisers, we do this a lot! We fall into the trap of thinking that if we want something done right, we have to do it all ourselves. Further, we actually think it is illegal to get help. But folks, this just isn’t the case (with the exception of a few weird state laws). If you follow the law of delegation, if you “hire slow and fire fast,” like I’ve talked about before, and if you take the time to work on your business, not just in your business – this problem will resolve itself.
There is no requirement that says you as the business owner have to do x, y, and z in every appraisal. Don’t let your business make you miserable! Take your time to hire the right people, to train the right people, and to develop your business. Don’t buy in to the idea that you have to do this all yourself! One of the biggest keys I’ve found to being a great business owner isn’t charisma or talent; it’s merely being willing to make the time necessary to make sure that your business runs smoothly.
For more information on this subject, please download and listen to The Appraiser Coach Podcast Episode:
3 thoughts on “Delegate, Delegate, Delegate!”
I keep growing my appraisal business and I’m always learning. We are now up to 15 people. Early, it was easy, I would hire one person and I would train and oversee them. Then I hired more people and got to a point where I could not work on the craft anymore, I could only work on the overseeing. Now I am at the point where it is hard to oversee all the people and I am working on training someone to oversee/quality control so I can focus on the parts of the business that sometimes get neglected when I’m trying to keep everyone moving in the right direction. Each time I have to step back and move someone out of production up the ladder, the overhead becomes a larger percentage of the business cost and I have to grow more to make up for that. Definitely hard to grow a service business and keep it lean with higher margins like it was when we were small. I can only imagine the challenge for True Footage when the investors start wanting to see the big returns they were certainly promised.
Not to worry Gary, True Footage will be paying the soccer moms of the world pennies on the dollar for their in the field inspections (desktop services), while they collect 50% from the borrowers “appraisal fee”. The question is, can your company survive on $55 desktop assignments as offered from the Protecks of the world? If you think your safe with non-lender work, think again.
Seek the truth.
Bill Johnson is a great person! Keep up the good work!