In the real estate investing industry, teams aren’t quite as uniform as other industries. You might be a one-man company or might just have one partner and you both divide and conquer. You could have a few team members locally and the rest are overseas. Regardless of your team structure, there are tools that can help with communication and management, no matter how big or small.
This blog will share some of the tools that we use personally and others that we know other investors utilize. There will be other tools out there that might be similar, but these are the ones we have the most knowledge on.
Slack is a phenomenal tool for communicating with your team. It is a messaging platform that allows you to direct message members of your team and allows you to create channels for different needs in your business.
A few channels that we use for our business are:
- Good News – We use this for any type of good news that pertains to the team and company. It’s always a nice pick-me-up to see!
- Channels between members working on a certain project – This allows anyone who’s part of the project to stay up-to-date on what’s happening. This can be for a particular deal, your rental properties, marketing, follow up, etc.
- Photos – Photos are great for social media so you can show off your business. Anytime we’re at a property or with other investors, we add these photos to this channel and our graphic designer knows to edit them quickly and actually add them to another channel, an “edited photos” channel.
Hubstaff allows us to monitor our virtual staff. It tracks time worked and also provides random screenshots of their desktop screens so that we can make sure they’re on task.
This is great for new hires especially. As we get to know their work ethic and know they’re managing their time correctly, we might opt to take them off of Hubstaff, as their performance clearly shows they’re getting the work done in a timely manner.
This is a meeting/webinar tool that we personally use but there are a lot of options out there, so find one that works best for you.
We use Zoom for team meetings and it’s incredibly helpful. We’re able to share screens and can have multiple team members on a call at one time.
We do monthly “Town Hall” meetings where all of our members join a call and we share our updates, successes, and provide an opportunity to ask questions about the projects we’re working on. It’s nice for those who are virtual to be able to see our faces and vice versa on these calls!
Think of Voxer as a walkie-talkie. You’re able to leave short messages for others who have the app. You can also share texts, photos, videos, and more.
Why is this app so useful?
It prohibits the 20-min conversations that could have been answered in less than a minute. It helps your efficiency and teaches your team not to call you unless it’s an emergency. This helps them become better problem solvers as well.
Asana is a task management tool that allows you to assign tasks to each other, create projects with other members, and it’s a great way to hold your team accountable. You can easily see who has past-due tasks and see the progress of a project.
This helps hold members accountable while you’re also able to see how well they’re handling their workload. This might give you insight on their capacity, showing you if they can handle more tasks or if they’re overwhelmed.
Your Team
No matter how big or small your team is, it’s important to have clear communication, proper self-management, and overall management. Our industry works best with team members who you can empower to own their role because there likely won’t be any redundancy.
With the right team, growth is right around the corner.
