Do You Communicate With Your Partner As Much As I Do With Mine?

Scott Costello All, Blog, Featured 15 Comments

If you have read my blog for any amount of time you know I’ve got a real estate investing partner.  I usually don’t like to mention his name on my blog because he likes to keep some on the down low for when sellers search out his name on Google.  His name is the name we use on our marketing pieces.  I respect that so I keep his name private, although I may have slipped up a few times in the past, so if you know his name…shhhhhh!

What was I gonna talk about?  oh yea, partners.  It’s great having a partner to share some of the responsibility because there are a lot of things to do on a daily basis to become a successful real estate investor.  Those tasks are even harder to accomplish when you work a full time job and have a new family to take care of.  With out my partner I’m pretty sure I’d still be struggling and deal-less.

Having a real estate investing partner is like a marriage, in order for it to work you have to trust the other person, you both have to pull your own weight and you have to be honest with each other.  The other part of it is you have to be in constant communication to make sure you are always on the same page.  We do this in several ways that I will out line below…

1. SI Lead Manager:  We use a special version of my software that has a cloud database.  This way we both are accessing the same data.  He can see all the leads that I’ve uploaded into the system and when I mailed them out and I can see who has responded and all the new notes.  It’s a system that is working well for us.

2. Weekly calls:  Every Monday at 12:30pm (over my lunch break at my 9to5) we go over everything that happened last week and what we plan on doing over the next week.  This is very important and we make every attempt to have this call every week.  If something comes up on Monday that makes it impossible to have the call, we reschedule for Tuesday.

3. Annual Meeting: This is our in person meeting, I like to call them the “Board Meetings”.  Once a year we get together at Starbucks and review how our past year went in regards to our goals, the good the bad and the ugly of it all.  We also set new goals for the  year to come.   We are actively trying to setup a meeting day now.

We definitely don’t have the system down perfect, and I suppose we never will but we keep tweaking things here and there.  Like we may start having our “board meetings” 2 or 3 times a year.  The reason behind that is it will keep us on our goal path better.  About half way through the year we always veer off path and it takes us a while to realize it.  If we met and reviewed our goals more frequently it would help us identify the problems quicker and we could correct them.

For those people that have partners, how often do you communicate and meetup?

 

Scott Costello
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Comments 15

  1. Hey Scott –

    I have never had a partner, but I worked in two businesses with my daughter so she was like a partner in some ways. It was great to have someone to bounce things off of, and two minds are better than one when you are trying to figure out a problem.

    I recently interviewed someone for my blog that talked about having a partner. James Vermillion was actually in the air force in another state while his partner was in the state they invested in. He said that communication was the key to making it work along with having different skill sets. Great info Scott.

    Sharon.

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  2. Scott, I am actually pretty shocked about the limited amount of time you spend with your business partner.

    I have a partner (we both run our RE biz full-time which is probably the reason for more communication). We meet in person 3-4 days a week, we make an effort to meet to discuss biz once a week (usually we are driving to look at property), we Skype daily and probably 4-5 phone calls a day, we typically have a more formal meeting with an agenda twice a month.

    Are you part of a mastermind group? That has been really helpful for us.

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      You are correct, the reason we don’t communicate more is that I spend 10 hours a day (including commute time) dealing with my 9to5 job. Kinda gets in the way a bit.

      We do email all the time during the day though.

      How organized are your “business meetings” with your partner? do you follow an agenda or just bring up what’s on your minds?

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      1. Scott –

        We have a meeting and typically follow an agenda twice a month. Some meetings are centered around just one topic. Some meetings we take a to do list, usually more menial tasks, and just work through them together.

        I truly believe formal and informal time working with a partner are really important. Sometimes there is stuff the agenda doesn’t cover.

        Steve

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          completely agree Steve. meeting in person absolutely takes on a more serious tone and we are much more productive. Lately I’ve found that during our weekly calls we kinda just go through the motions. So far we still haven’t had our annual meeting because two weeks ago my partner got the flu and tomorrow is cancelled because of Hurricane Sandy knocking out power all over NJ and it’s impossible to get gas without waiting on line for 3+ hours.

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  3. I really like the idea of having a partner to do weekly calls. It seems like it would be a great way to stay motivated and on task. I like many others I am sure tend to get off track or go in different directions. You got me thinking now about what strengths to look for in a partner that would compliment my weeknesses.

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      Having the right partner can be a valuable thing, but the wrong one can hinder your progress greatly. Just makes sure you both have the same goals and values. Having the same values is really important!

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  4. Scott,

    When working on a potential deal I talk to my Partner every day. We talk about strategies, road bumbs, and anything else to reanalyze the property as the deal progresses or falls apart. When we aren’t actively pursuing a deal we talk about once a week. We are buy and holders, and are targeting multifamily properties so we don’t have a large lead funnel to have to maintain or market too. We email almost every day. A Rythm has arisen in our phone calls. First we discuss the immediate issue, then any ancillary issues, and at the end of the call we make sure to assign and confirm our personal goals and actions to the next call. And then on the next call we recap our actions/results before getting into the newest issues. Of Course, the fact that my partner is my mom helps a lot.

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      I didn’t see that last part coming (about your mom being your partner), but that is great. I appreciate you taking the time to let me know how you communicate with your partner. It’s great to compare how other people work with the way we work. Good Stuff!

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