Page 207 - Trump University Commercial Real Estate 101

I W ish Someone Had Told Me These Things

They must have their act together to provide frequent reports.
They need to have systematized their business. That involves under-
standing it in the first place, then documenting those systems and

having the people and tools necessary to get the reports out on time.
Those are all characteristics of solid companies in any industry. When
one or more of those parts is missing, you get excuses instead of
reports: “ Our guy was sick today, so that ’ s why they ’ re late, ” or “ We ’ re

training a new person to get the reports out. ” All fine and dandy . . .
for some other investor to endure. You, on the other hand, should only
go with the outfit that delivers all the reports on time, period.

It ’ s interesting that this same litmus test applies to property sellers,
too: If you have to beg and cajole the seller to deliver various docu-
ments during the due-diligence phase, the chances are, oh, 95 percent
or better that you ’ re dealing with a substandard property. The only
exception I can think of is when someone inherits a property and is
trying to sell it off. That person may not know a thing about the prop-
erty, or even who has the information about it. I ’ m good with that — as
long as I ’ m getting a fantastic price, I ’ m willing to be patient in those
circumstances.

The Three Things You Cannot Delegate

If you want to grow your real estate investing business, you must
continually look for ways to delegate. I spoke at length about this in an
earlier chapter. As soon as you understand something and it ’ s systema-
tized, off it should go to someone who can help you get it done.
If you don ’ t understand something — such as real estate law — you

must, of course, delegate those tasks. At first, when money is short,
you must be creative about using lower - cost help for some tasks.
Then, after just one or two deals, you can and should be delegating
like crazy.

The danger comes after the fifth, tenth, or twentieth deal: You get
good at delegating at the same time that you get lazy.

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