I found out pretty early on in the business that doing the work on the properties wasn't going to work. I wasn't made to be out there doing plumbing, electrical and dry wall work and was busy with my full-time job and the real estate market.

In the beginning, I bought a lot of the tools and tried to do a lot of the construction work myself. I can remember sweat running down into my eyes and on my glasses one day when I was laying on the floor underneath the sink in the bathroom trying to tighten up a leaky pipe. I just became so frustrated and realized that I needed to start hiring out that kind of work. And, I needed to do it fast. Now, I hire out all that work and have learned that I like to do some carpentry. I like to be around when all the rehab work is going on. I'm the guy running to get the materials and keep people working.

Now, the people I hired back then to help out were at the very bottom of the pole as far as contractors. These are the guys with the rusty old trucks without a company name, doing business working alone or one other guy with them. They were cheap and so was their work, which was a problem. And, I had problems with them showing up. I'd give them money to buy materials and they wouldn't show up. Sometimes I would only give them half of the money, but that still didn't matter. They'd go buy the material, drop it off and then leave without finishing the job. Some of them were lazy. Some of them were thieves. Some of them would say they were good at everything. I eventually figured out that was a bad indicator, because I learned that I wanted people who were more skilled in certain areas.

I learned along the way that I needed to work with the folks who had a higher skill level without hiring right out of the yellow pages - that was too expensive. I didn't learn this early on, but figured it out after a few years in the business. So I would hire a middle-ranged licensed electrician, a licensed plumber and I would have a general contractor to do demolition work, tear out old carpet and cabinetry and to do the dry wall and put in new cabinetry. I would hire a roofer and another person to do landscaping. And someone else still would clean the property.

I learned though, that hiring someone to do the work for me - even professionals - wasn't without complications. The woman I hired to do cleaning was the woman that cleaned my own apartment and her husband is probably one of the best carpenters I've ever had. They worked as a team together. In the beginning, the three of us became friends. We had a good camaraderie and then something weird happened. When I got my personal residence - a big beautiful home and nicer than the one they were living in - they weren't interested in being friends any more. I don't know if it was jealousy or what happened but it was too bad. I valued their friendship, really like the guy and he was a heck of a carpenter.

So, that's a little bit of what I experienced dealing with renovations in the first few years.