Original post at: FlippingJunkie.com
I guess you need a little background for what the heck a Flip Pilot is and why I am asking you if you are one.
If you listen to the Flipping Junkie Podcast, you should be aware of what it means to be a Flip Pilot and hopefully already consider yourself one or hope to be one.
If Melissa and I had been Flip Pilots from much earlier on in our real estate investing, we’d have had more time and energy to do a lot more than we’ve done. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve are super grateful for what we’ve accomplished.
…but knowing what we now know, we could have had it a lot easier!
What is a Flip Pilot?
What we’ve realized over the past several years is that we no longer work as much in our business as we work on our business.
There’s a huge distinction there. It’s the basis of the book, ‘The E-Myth’… which I had read years and years ago when we first got started flipping houses.
…but we didn’t implement what was taught in that book back then… We had lots of excuses for why we didn’t implement what we had read in that book.
I’ll share those with you later in this post because I’m betting you have made these excuses. 
At the most basic level, a Flip Pilot maintains a 30,000 ft view of their house flipping business. In this way they are always looking at the systems and processes.
A Flip Pilot spends more time documenting and tweaking those processes so that they are always remembered and improved upon.
I don’t know how many times I had to relearn hard lessons after making the same mistakes over and over again.
Why didn’t I remember the lessons and avoid the mistakes?
…because I never documented them.
Why did I always have to take valuable time considering the proper course of action for different situations that we faced multiple times?
…because I never documented the situations and decisions on how to handle them.
A Flip Pilot knows that hiring help is the key to true freedom and much greater success at flipping houses.
A Flip Pilot knows that others can do much better than us at specific tasks…even if we incorrectly think nobody could do better than us.
A Flip Pilot uses KPI’s (key performance indicators) to know how well their business is doing at all times.
A Flip Pilot has documented processes and work flows that constantly get tweaked to become more efficient.
A Flip Pilot knows they won’t do it exactly right the first time, but does it anyway.
A Flip Pilot is a true entrepreneur.
We Pushed Back on Being Flip Pilots
Early on, we had excuses for not wanting to bring on help. We didn’t want to hire anybody because we didn’t want to be responsible for other people…meaning if we wanted to slow things down, we didn’t want to have to let people go.
We wanted to be able to take long vacations without worrying about keeping the business going.
We thought that by keeping it simple, we would be able to turn the business on and off as we pleased.
We could make more money because we received all of the profit.
Besides, nobody could do as well as me at getting a house under contract with a motivated seller….right? (turns out I was wrong)
Nobody could care about our business as much as we do…right? (turns out I was wrong)
We Were Dead Wrong
We thought were keeping things simple but we ended up wearing all of the hats.
We would put on our marketing hat and generate motivated seller leads.
We would then put on our acquisitions hats and try to convert those leads into deals.
We would then need to put on our rehab hats and focus on the rehab of the properties.
We would then put on our sales hats to sell the rehabbed house.
Phew…
By the end of the process, we were no longer generating many motivated seller leads and we’d have to start the whole process all over again…
We’d put on our marketing hat….you get the idea.
We were dropping the ball left and right.
And when we wanted to do more deals, things would fall apart very quickly as we were trying to wear too many hats at the same time.
We couldn’t go on vacation because the pipeline always needed to be filled. When we took a chance and left for a week, we’d end up on our phones half the time. ARGGHGHGHHHGH!!!!
We were working more than we did when we had jobs…
So, let me ask you, “Are you still thinking doing everything yourself is the way to go?”
I get it, in the beginning this is almost out of necessity and I do think everybody should learn how to do everything well enough to be able to train someone else to do it.
Flip Pilots get that but also have the goal in mind to offload what they don’t enjoy doing, then what they don’t mind doing but do anyway, as soon as possible.
We Became Flip Pilots
Melissa and I decided that we had enough of the inconsistency and having to do everything. Yeah…embarrassingly enough it took probably 8 or 9 years to get to that point.
But, we got to that point nonetheless and we committed to let go and allow other people to help us.
We first partnered with another investor that was wanting to learn the business and that lasted about a year. It was a great learning experience.
Since then, we’ve hired and let go of several people but learned a lot each time. We currently have a lead intake and acquisitions manager (that actually does so much more and basically helps Melissa run the entire flipping operation).
Melissa focuses the majority of her time working ON the business. Planning new hires and building out the processes. She does still handle the rehabs, but mostly because she loves it so much.
I am now in more of a Visionary role. I sit in on the meetings every Monday morning and consult with the team about specific deals and plans.
We’ve been joking lately that Melissa is the real Flipping Junkie at this point.
Since we’ve made these changes, we’ve been able to do a lot more with our time. I now spend a lot of time working on building the real estate investor software (LeadPropeller (real estate investor websites) and REImobile (real estate investor software system)).
When we go vacation, the business doesn’t stop. It’s awesome to get texts from our acquisitions manager telling us that deals are being put under contract while we are relaxing and spending time as a family.
We love being Flip Pilots. We are focused on running our business, not having the business run us.
Are You a Flip Pilot?
If you’re not, I hope that you will consider becoming one. I hope that you will commit to making a plan to focus more on your business and what you are doing.
We can’t expect to get to a completely different place in our businesses overnight, but we can decide to be the pilot and point our plane in the direction of that idea. We can point our planes in the direction of true freedom…
…the financial and time freedom most of us set out to achieve when we decided to make a go of flipping houses.
Are you with me?
I hope so. As a Flip Pilot we want to collaborate and work with other Flip Pilots, so we set up a closed Facebook group.
Since you’ve read to the end of this article, it shows that you are serious and so I want to extend an invitation for you to join the private group!
Click here to request an invitation to join the closed Facebook group