The late-night bank reconciliations were becoming all too frequent. Still, I kept thinking I needed more revenue before I considered hiring someone to assist our newly formed property management company. Then, in February of 2021, all of that changed. More details in another blog post, but after the longest week of my life that included an area-wide week-long power outage, multiple flooded homes, and a stomach bug, I knew waiting any longer to hire someone would end up costing me more than money: it was going to cost me my sanity, my family’s health, and my husband’s goodwill.
As I balanced raising young kids with starting a new business, I met a friend and fellow entrepreneur at the park. I was retelling the misadventures of the last few weeks, and she told me she knew who I should hire. She described this young woman: had her MBA, had been running a consulting firm that needed to scale back due to loss of income from the Covid era, had her undergraduate degree in math, something or other…
She sounded perfect.
I was terrified.
So much of what we do in the property management world is detail-oriented. It’s making sure the repairs are done properly, ensuring vendors are paid on time, and a million menial tasks that add up to profitability for our clients. No one gets into real estate investing to lose money and be constantly surprised with bad news, but owning property where people live is all too easy to regret without the right processes in place on the front end.
I had the vision, but lacked the time and bandwidth for execution, so I knew it was time to bring someone on board.
Simultaneously, the company wasn’t seeing much profit, and this brand I was building felt personal. It was terrifying to trust someone, a stranger, to maintain the image and reputation of a company in its infancy. How was I going to pay someone to do the job I had essentially been doing for free for the past year?
I decided I couldn’t live in fear any longer. The least I could do was meet this too-good-to-be-true candidate. I hadn’t made any job postings, so this was about as close to someone magically falling out of the sky as I was going to get.
I set up a meeting at a coffee shop (because these were days before we had our Pearland brick & mortar). We ordered our coffee and found a table. I truthfully don’t remember a lot about that conversation (maybe someday I can have Taylor write her side of this story), but I remember her saying she wanted to be a part of something she could grow. I’m sure she told me about her vast experience with business organizational skills and bookkeeping; I’m sure she said something to the effect that she loved working with small businesses because she felt like she could tangibly see the impact she had on the organization. What I remember most is when I told her I didn’t know how much I could pay her, I remember her saying she believed, “all ships rise with a rising tide,” and she’d be willing to start with less and grow with the company.
I offered her a job right there on the spot. To be honest, I didn’t even have time to take an interview. I needed her to start yesterday. I asked if she’d be willing to start immediately and follow me to my home office, where we set up a makeshift desk for her to use. (Was it a TV tray? A folding table?!).
The rest is history. She started as an office administrator, helping me track down bills, return calls, write contracts, turn on utilities, put out lockboxes and signs, and a slew of other grunt work that had to get done. I remember when we signed our first multi-door owner, I had him on speaker phone, and we took the call from my house. When we hung up with him, we celebrated!
There have been so many moments of celebration along the way, but more so, we’ve managed to keep growing, keep building, and even see a year or two where the numbers are black instead of red.
Bringing her onto our team was one of the best decisions I’ve made. Growth almost always requires a leap of faith, and while it’s natural to feel hesitant before taking that step, progress rarely happens without a little courage. Whatever “plunge” you may be considering, remember that the wins, milestones, and celebrations on the other side are often the result of choosing to move forward before everything feels perfectly certain. If you’re standing at that crossroads today, consider this your nudge to trust your instincts and take the next step.
