How to hire in your wholesaling business without training your competition

Do you need help in your wholesaling business but you're afraid to hire - because you just might wind up training your competition. If so, you're not alone, In this post I will share easy 4 ways to get what you want and not what you don't.

Picture this, you're at [fill in the blank] guru's seminar watching a speaker somewhere on the east coast ( cause that's where are the gurus live, lol ) give a compelling presentation to a group of small to medium size wholesale real estate investors/entrepreneurs. They convey a compelling message to "Work more "ON" your business and less "IN" it.

He pretty much says, in so many words that we all have our heads stuck in the sand if we think we're gonna get anywhere by continuing to wear every hat in our business and are missing the whole point of owning a freaking business in the first place. Then from the corner of your eye, someone stands up and says what most are thinking but are too chicken to say:

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What if I hire someone, teach them the business and then they leave shortly afterward to start their own company and compete with me?

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This is a common fear, and the same reason why less than 1% or businesses in the U.S reach $1 million or more in revenue. Here are four ways I banished my fears of hiring and replaced it with a growth mindset the took our company to the next level.

Transparency about your expenses & struggles.

I love listening to podcasts about entrepreneurs success stories, however my only beef is that when discussing how much they make, people mostly talk in terms of gross revenues. To the untrained ear, when you hear someone is making 100k a month you think - Wow! that’s amazing! But what you may not realize is that they could be spending 80k to produce 100k in revenue. Gross and net #s can be two very different lifestyles.

My point here is that, we should be vocal with key team members about what it takes to run the business. They should have a basic understanding of our fixed expenses such as overhead, marketing and payroll. This transparency will help those who have never run a business appreciate the amount of risk you sign up for every month. Without this context your team is likely to think that a 100k goes directly in your pocket

Make sure you're adding value to your team.

One day I was interviewing a candidate who applied to be a closer in our acquisitions team, he applied because he was unhappy with his position at another investment company.

I asked him why was he unhappy where he was at? He told me he was getting paid to cold call all day and dig for leads with commission only with no base pay. I asked him why that made him unhappy? He explained that once he found a lead, he was responsible for opening and closing the lead to a contract. I pressed some more and asked why didn’t he like that. He revealed that when he acquired a contract, his company would sell the deal and keep 90% of the profit. I asked him if the leads were warm when he got them, he said no, they were cold. I asked if he meant “cold” as in “old” he said no - cold as in, a raw list of homeowners names, address and phone numbers.

We concluded together that the only thing the company provided him was a raw list names and numbers, and he did everything else Acquisitions, so i had to agree with him and that 90/10 split was a raw deal for him - especially with no base pay. In this scenario he was unhappy because he did 50% of the work prospecting in ice cold lists while the company gave him 10% of the profit.

Now, there's nothing wrong with this arrangement if both parties signed up for this, but once a person realizes that pulling an ice cold list is dirt cheap, then they won’t need or want the company anymore. The value scale in this case is tipped too far much in favor of the company, and the arrangement won't last very long.

In our company, our closers have a base pay, and we give them warmed up leads that have shown intent to sell, making them far more valuable and closable. The value we provide the closer makes more sense, since it would be challenging for them to reproduce a steady stream of warm leads on their own, they want to work for us. The result is a healthy value balance, this is just one example.

A true test to determine if you're adding enough value to your team would be to ask yourself "if I were them, would I work for myself" if the answer is not a resounding YES, rethink your structure and ask yourself how could you provide more value.

Tie team members to your company's success.

Get the personal best out of others when they are tied to the success of your company. My best example of this is a time when I told me team we would going to double our revenue and go from 2-3 deals a month to 4-6. I was super excited to share the plans with them. I stayed up all night and created a fancy PowerPoint to share the step be step implementation process. I knew they had what it took and I had the marketing all figured out - this was going to be great, right?

To my dismay, that morning my presentation fell flat. When i was done the room was silent and my people looked uninspired and uninterested. At the time I didn’t I understand why. To double revenue would be awesome yes, but for who? I later realized that from their perspective, I simply told them I wanted them to work twice as hard for the same pay. That experience has shaped the way I structure keys roles today. Now, when our stretch goals is meet or exceeded, key team members get a bonus. An example of that would be the following.

• A team goal bonus
• A percentage of gross profit bonus
• A contribution bonus, such as a bonus when you get a signed contract or closing.

Make sure to tie pay or bonuses to the company’s goal so growth efforts also grow key team members income. This will garner total buy-in from your team and make your success their success.

Get over it!

Look, I must level with you. your fear of hiring and training your competition holds some validity but it's largely benign. Let's turn this thought process around here. What if we hire someone to come work for us and they help me make few hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in the next couple of years? Then what? Are you mad that you showed them the ropes? Do you regret teaching them how to get, convert or close leads? - Absolutely Not! Our brains really good at imagining the worst case scenario would happen. but the odds are in our favor that they won't when you key the points I've pointed out here in mind.

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