Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / Overcommunicating with Your Team to Get Through Hard Times with Nick Ron

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Overcommunicating with Your Team to Get Through Hard Times with Nick Ron · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  What's more challenging is when you're struggling and no one else is that that's
• 0:03
  that's a hard sell to your to your team, but when they see the whole industry, is struggling
• 0:08
  and you're communicating with them frequently, what you're doing to to, to get through these
• 0:13
  difficult times or what you need from them to help you get through that makes things a lot
• 0:18
  easier.
• 0:18
  People have buy in, and they know that there's a vision.
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  There's a direction.
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  There's a game plan.
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  It's when you don't say anything and you're not with them, what's going on and how you're gonna
• 0:28
  fix it.
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  That's so when people start to get nervous.
• 0:31
  3, 2, 4, 0 ignition, liftoff.
• 0:39
  Ending small business failure.
• 0:42
  Welcome to the small biz chat podcast with the number one small business expert, Melinda
• 0:47
  Emerson.
• 0:48
  Melinda's goal is to end small business failure.
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  And she'll give you the information you need to succeed and live the life you dream of.
• 0:57
  Now here's your host, the small biz chat lady herself, Melinda Emerson.
• 1:05
  Are you a new shine on a national still age?
• 1:08
  Join me in Philadelphia, September 21st to 20 for brand in demand live.
• 1:13
  I wanna teach you how to become a national sought after brand in your field.
• 1:18
  It time for you to take Hi, everybody.
• 1:26
  I'm Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady.
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  America's number one small business expert, and I am so excited to welcome you to another
• 1:35
  episode of the small biz chat podcast.
• 1:38
  Now if our current economy is stressing you outright, you're in the right place, One of my
• 1:44
  guests has suggestions for weathering the storm and what we need to be thinking about going
• 1:50
  forward.
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  Now here on the small business chat podcast, We talk about how to start and grow a successful
• 1:56
  small business.
• 1:57
  We give it to you from different angles, and it is sage advice that you would have to pay lots
• 2:02
  of money for otherwise.
• 2:04
  The way we look at the small business chat podcast is that we are a peer to peer mentoring
• 2:10
  program.
• 2:11
  Now the mission of small business chat is to end small business failure, and that is always
• 2:17
  our focus.
• 2:19
  The small biz chat live broadcast can be seen on my YouTube channel or on my small biz lady
• 2:25
  Facebook plate.
• 2:27
  Please go there and watch us and subscribe and share the stream.
• 2:31
  We want lots of people to get the information about all of my experts today.
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  Now it's time for me to introduce my guest, Nick Ron.
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  He is the founder and CEO of house buyers of America.
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  He is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience as a real estate investor.
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  He founded the homebuyers of America in 2001, throwing homes through his hybrid real estate
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  model that balances technology with human on the ground expertise.
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  Nick took the homebuyers of association from 0 to $50,000,000 within his 1st 3 years of
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  business operations.
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  Nick is an earnest and young entrepreneur of the year award winner and has been featured in
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  USN Day in the Wall Street Journal and the US News Rural Report To name a few for more
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  information, go to homebuyersofamerica.com.
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  Nick, welcome.
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  Need to be here, Melinda.
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  So tell us, how did you get started in business?
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  Cause you still look kinda young for somebody that's grown a $50,000,000,000 business.
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  So Did you start when you were 12 and what, you know, tell me what what's going on.
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  How did you start your business?
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  I appreciate that.
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  Well, if you think I look young now, I looked a lot younger.
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  22 years ago.
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  I was twenty six years old.
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  I started, you know, shortly after college, about 3 years after college.
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  But, you know, started, really, my entrepreneurial days started when I was growing
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  up.
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  We had to hustle.
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  Me and my 3 brothers and sister We, grew up really poor.
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  My mom was on welfare.
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  And so we had to hustle just to buy things that we wanted we you were collecting cans, delivery
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  newspapers, landscaping.
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  So we we just learned the grind early on and learned to Chase after things we wanted because
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  nothing was handed to us.
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  Coming out of college, they had a great job, selling software, east of the Mississippi.
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  I was traveling a lot.
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  Doing a lot of business development, learn a lot about marketing technology, then I read a
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  book called Rich Dad Poor Dad, and that lit the spark in me for for real estate.
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  I knew nothing about real estate.
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  Didn't even own a house, but I said this sounds exciting.
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  Sounds like a great way to make money and to, to build wealth.
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  And, basically, this book teaches you how to make money work for you rather than you work
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  for money.
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  And so I love the whole, you know, concept of passive income and and wealth creation.
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  So my initial goal was to buy about a 100 rental properties over, like, 10, 15 year
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  period and eventually retire off that and had no intention of doing what we do today.
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  And so I started when I was twenty years old.
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  And, actually, I was working full time, and I get home around 5 o'clock and do my real estate
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  business from 5 to 9 and did that.
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  Nights nights and weekends, bought 26 houses our 1st year.
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  And I said, well, I started making more money part time than full time, so I say, Simon, quit
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  my job.
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  So I did that in September of that year.
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  Next year, we bought a 100 houses, 3rd year, 250 houses and did over 50,000,000 in annual
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  revenue.
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  And so very fast growth rate, but started from just renting houses, and then I quickly shifted
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  to to the buy fix cell miles flipping houses.
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  Been doing that ever since.
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  So your business grew very fast.
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  What were your biggest challenges as your business is growing?
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  Well, just inexperienced.
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  I was young.
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  I was, started hiring people, early on.
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  In fact, My first two employees worked at the basement of my house.
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  No joke.
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  Finally got some office space and but I was hiring people literally.
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  Bushed my age and, yeah, I I lacked confidence.
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  I didn't know how to manage people older than me.
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  And so I had to get over that.
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  I trusted some people too much.
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  Some not enough.
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  And I had to learn how to hire people.
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  Right?
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  So we made a lot of bad hiring decisions, made a lot of management mistakes.
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  So that was probably biggest one.
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  I also knew nothing about real estate, so I had to learn that over time.
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  And, but I did find that my lack of real estate experience, helped me because we could look at
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  the industry with fresh eyes.
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  And so we were constantly trying new things.
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  Rather than trying the old tried proven ways in the real estate industry.
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  And and back then when we started, although, you know, doing what we do now is is pretty
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  popular, and they have HGTV.
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  But back in 2000 and 1, probably count on one hand, number of people are buying houses at
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  scale.
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  And so we had to figure everything out.
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  There was no textbook.
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  There was no seminar you could go to to learn how to do this at scale like we were doing.
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  Those are some of my biggest challenges.
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  So when you were, you know, you said you bought 26 houses the 1st year, a 100 houses the 2nd
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  year, 250 How's this the 3rd year?
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  Did you do that with your money, or did you do that with other people's money?
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  How did you finance all of this growth that you had in your business?
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  Good question.
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  You know, we did some owner financing, some hard money lending, and, yeah, I came into the
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  business, you know, I'm very successful per in business development.
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  So took some of my own cash, put it in the business, and I was always, you know, re, you
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  know, reinvesting money into the business.
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  But, yeah, I there's no way I could've bought 26 houses, with with my piggy bank.
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  That wasn't gonna happen.
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  Yeah.
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  I I completely completely get that.
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  So right now, the, real estate business is kind of interesting right now with real with
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  interest rates going up every 5 minutes.
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  How You know, how do you reassure your team when things start getting a little a little
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  sketchy?
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  Well, thankfully, for us, we went through 2008 and and and this is not thing compared to that.
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  So we've been pretty fortunate.
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  We've actually been growing quite a bit during this the downturn in real estate market the
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  last year.
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  And so while everyone else is retrenching, we've been growing However, you know, back in
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  2008, you can tell you things were not that great, you know, the 1st year during that
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  transition, and we just We we learned early on.
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  You just have to communicate, overcommunicate your team, let them know what's going on.
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  And and people are dumb.
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  They read the headlines.
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  They know that everyone's struggling, not just you, What's more challenging is when you're
• 8:30
  struggling and no one else's, that that's that's a hard sell to your to your team, but
• 8:34
  when they see the whole industry, is struggling and you're communicating with them frequently,
• 8:39
  what you're doing to to, to get through these difficult times or what you need from them to
• 8:44
  help you get through that makes things a lot easier people have buy in, and they know that
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  there's a vision, there's a direction, there's a game plan.
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  It's when you don't say anything and you're not communicating with what's going on and how
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  you're gonna fix it.
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  That's when people start to get nervous.
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  So you talked earlier about how you had some staffing issues kind of early on.
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  You know, how did you get over that?
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  Did you hire an HR person?
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  Like, how did you get to
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  the point where you started making good hires.
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  Yeah.
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  Just I've always been big on reading a lot, getting a lot of advice, hiring consultants.
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  And so just talking about you, I had an 8 HR consultants that have had, you know, hired an
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  HR manager.
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  And, you know, just constantly tweaking the formula.
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  I just think that's so important for any entrepreneur.
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  You just caught, you know, you're always you're always trying to find a better mousetrap,
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  better way to do things.
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  And so we developed, you know, job descriptions and, you know, questions for each position and
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  really systematize our process so that way it was a little more rigorous.
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  And we learned what we're looking for, what kind of skills we're looking for, what kind of
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  attitude, what kind of culture fit.
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  And so initially, you know, if I met someone who sounded good in the interview, I was ready
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  to hire them right away.
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  I learned, you know, that there are a lot of people who are very good at interviewing, very
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  slick in the interview process, but they're not very good at doing the actual work so I had to
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  learn the hard way and how to ask the tough questions and and be a a little skeptical, if
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  you will, in not not just listening to what they're saying, but also tried dig dig a little
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  deeper in their background and trying to find out, you know, what were their past results?
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  I learned the hard way, you know, the past performance is the best predictor of FERC
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  teacher performance.
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  So just asking the questions and verifying and validating and we do assessment testing now.
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  So we have a pretty rigorous process, and and we've been able to make some fantastic hires
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  over the years after we figure that out.
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  Now is there a particular category of hire that you found the toughest?
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  Was it the guys that were fixing the floors?
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  Was it the salespeople?
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  Like, who
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  was who's toughest read higher.
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  You know, I would say we never had a tough time hiring.
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  I mean, you know, you always have to be patient and wait for the right person, but I think
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  during COVID was just brutal because it there was there were very few people out in the
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  marketplace in the real estate sector construction.
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  Real estate was booming.
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  Everyone knows what's happened the last few years in the business.
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  So trying to find good project managers, good purchasing managers, those kind of folks was
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  challenging Sales people was not as challenging in some of the operational people, but
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  construction and purchasing was was, was tough.
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  But you just had to be that much better.
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  So Wait.
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  You really started to grow.
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  How did you engage your team around feedback?
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  You know, as a young CEO, I'm imagining that, you know, some of the people that were older
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  than you might have had some good ideas to share with you.
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  Like, how receptive were you of that at that time versus how receptive you are to something
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  like that now?
• 11:49
  Yeah.
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  I was always pretty receptive.
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  I think you have to pretty humble as a CEO.
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  Even if you've been doing that, point 2 years into this, and I'll listen to anyone on my
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  team, even the younger staff members, they They have ideas they've had experiences that I don't
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  have.
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  So you just have to ask, and you have to genuinely show that that you you want their
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  opinion.
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  And I always tell people, just be brutally honest.
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  If I know they, you know, maybe they they can tell me something I don't wanna hear.
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  I'll tell them, you know, just just just give it to me.
• 12:15
  I'm I'm ready for it, and I've got thick skin, and I think if you're honest with them about
• 12:19
  that.
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  And and if you're really eager to hear the truth, they'll tell you.
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  So I just asked them to do one on ones.
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  With them.
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  I'll take them out to the breakfast.
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  I've done that in the past.
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  And one of my favorite questions is if you were CEO, what would you do differently?
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  And it really gets some thinking, and they'll pause, and and they'll they'll, they'll give me
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  some good feedback.
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  Hey, that one point hired an executive coach, and he would engage with my staff.
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  And sometimes he could hear things that I wouldn't.
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  And so I was able to get feedback that way.
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  And we have all hands meetings and curt and we will do break out sessions where the team
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  without a manager will discuss certain issues or challenges and come up with ideas and and
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  present it to to management.
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  So we've done that as well.
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  And so we've we've always tried to find creative ways to get feedback from people.
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  Good stuff.
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  Well, when we come Ray back on the small business tab podcast, we're gonna talk more
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  with my guest, Nick Ron, about how he's grown his business and how you can do the same.
• 13:15
  Hi there.
• 13:15
  Here's today's boss tip.
• 13:16
  If you're trying to figure out pricing on a contract, did you know that you could actually
• 13:21
  go to Google and hit training company pricing?
• 13:25
  And see what Google has for you, you'd be amazed how much information there is out on the
• 13:31
  internet and think about putting dot pdfand.edu, that might get you there faster
• 13:36
  too.
• 13:37
  Welcome back to the small business chat podcast.
• 13:39
  I'm Melinda Emerson, your host.
• 13:41
  And I'm here with my guest, Nick Ron, from the homebuyers homebuyers of America.
• 13:47
  And, Ron, I'm real Nick, I'm really interested to ask you, what are the 3 biggest mistakes you
• 13:54
  think that small business owners make?
• 13:56
  I see a lot, times small business owners aren't building systems and processes.
• 14:01
  A lot of times, the visionary runs it to see their pants, their ideas, people, and and, they
• 14:07
  they have an idea a minute, but putting systems and processes and, you know, the boring details
• 14:12
  of building the business, they don't wanna get involved with.
• 14:14
  So that's that's big.
• 14:15
  I think the second thing is you have to measure results if to track everything.
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  See, you know, track and see what's working.
• 14:22
  Every employee of your company should have a number.
• 14:25
  What are they being measured on?
• 14:26
  What's their performance metric.
• 14:28
  So you need to need to have a scorecard where you can see the business at a snapshot and see
• 14:34
  how is how is the business to be able to predict issues down the line rather than
• 14:38
  waiting for the problem to happen and then trying to reactively correct it.
• 14:42
  I'm hiring people.
• 14:43
  I see a lot of mistakes with that.
• 14:45
  People just hiring the wrong people, maybe even hiring friends and family.
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  That's a that's always a big challenge.
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  You know, It's tough to manage your buddy.
• 14:56
  Oh, I saw people all the time.
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  Don't hire somebody.
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  You can't fire.
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  It's bad for business and bad for you.
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  I'm a big, big, big, big, big proponent.
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  Give him a check.
• 15:05
  Not a job.
• 15:06
  Don't do it.
• 15:07
  Please.
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  Don't do it.
• 15:08
  Yeah.
• 15:08
  I mean, I I cosign you with the hiring 100%.
• 15:12
  Those are big ones I see over and over.
• 15:14
  If you get those 3 things, right, I mean, people are the most important part of your
• 15:18
  business since your greatest asset.
• 15:19
  It really is.
• 15:20
  It's not just a cliche, but, you know, if you get the right people, you know, 90% of your
• 15:25
  problems will be solved if you've got 8 players on your team.
• 15:28
  They'll figure out the other, you know, how to how to solve the problems.
• 15:31
  And and they'll, you know, they'll they'll be working, you know, to to to really, you know,
• 15:36
  to improve their performance and to better the company.
• 15:39
  It's just in their nature.
• 15:41
  If you hire the right people, you know, that's that's 90% of it.
• 15:45
  How important is it to share big and to really celebrate big and small wins?
• 15:51
  What's huge?
• 15:52
  It's like winning the sales of your team And so I think we're always looking to share successes
• 15:57
  as part of our all hands meeting that we have every month and just part of a day to day, you
• 16:02
  know, people are working hard and they wanna know that What they're doing matters and making
• 16:06
  a difference.
• 16:07
  And so tying that success back to their individual, you know, their individual role and
• 16:13
  what they've done recently and being specific, hey.
• 16:16
  Here's what you did, and here's why we're able to sell this house for more money or do this or
• 16:21
  do that.
• 16:21
  That's really important.
• 16:22
  And so we're driving it down to the individual as well as the team and give giving credit for
• 16:28
  the success.
• 16:28
  It's it's it's huge.
• 16:30
  Alright.
• 16:31
  Last question.
• 16:32
  What is the best business advice you've ever gotten?
• 16:35
  That's business advice I ever got.
• 16:37
  I would say be Slow to hire, quick to fire.
• 16:41
  Evelyn initially had mentioned earlier, take your time, hiring people.
• 16:45
  Don't rush it some time of the week 6 months to hire someone.
• 16:48
  They'll be be patient, be picky, trust your gut.
• 16:51
  If something tells you, this person might not be the right the right fit, even though the
• 16:55
  resume looks perfect, Just wait.
• 16:58
  You might lose that person by waiting, but trust your gut.
• 17:01
  And if someone's not working out, you know, there are some things people can fix.
• 17:05
  You can fix skills.
• 17:06
  You can fix things that that are teach you know, the people can learn.
• 17:10
  They're teachable, but you can't fix people's attitudes.
• 17:13
  If mom and dad couldn't fix I can't fix that.
• 17:15
  You can't fix people's work ethic.
• 17:18
  Can't fix, you know, character.
• 17:21
  Someone's hot honest like I said, mom dad can fix that one.
• 17:24
  I'm I'm not gonna be able to fix that.
• 17:25
  So
• 17:26
  Yeah.
• 17:26
  Saturday.
• 17:27
  And treat where he's a little hard to teach.
• 17:30
  You gotta leave it that way.
• 17:31
  You're little.
• 17:32
  For sure.
• 17:32
  For sure.
• 17:33
  Well, thank you so much, Nick.
• 17:34
  I I've really enjoyed learning more about you and your business.
• 17:38
  And hang tight.
• 17:39
  We're gonna bring you back in a little bit.
• 17:41
  Or a little panel, but I have really enjoyed learning about your story.
• 17:45
  And and your advice was very helpful.
• 17:48
  And when we come back, we're gonna be talking with a sales expert about how you should be
• 17:53
  putting your buyers first.
• 17:55
  I'm Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady, you're watching the small biz chef podcast, and we
• 17:59
  will be right back.
• 18:03
  Are you a new shine on a national stage?
• 18:06
  Join me in Philadelphia, September 21st to 23rd for brand in demand live.
• 18:11
  I wanna teach you how to become a national sought after brand in your field.
• 18:16
  It's time for you to take the spotlight that you deserve.
• 18:26
  Thanks for listening to the small biz chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 18:31
  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday for more
• 18:36
  fantastic information and interviews.
• 18:39
  You can find more sources and small business success strategies by visiting Melinda's
• 18:43
  website succeed as your own boss.com.
• 18:47
  Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.