Why do you think most investors get into real estate to begin with? Is it because they like wading through 3 feet of trash inside of dilapidated junkers? Is it because they savor talking on the phone so much that they found a way to make money doing it? Could it be because they enjoy leaving their families at the dinner table in order to spin tires and get a deed signed by a seller who waited until the night before the auction to finally do something about their problem?

The odds are that if you’re anything like me, you don’t take on the demands and risks of real estate investing just for the fun of it. The odds are you’re doing it for the money. Of course, there are the benefits of helping people and there are those feelings of accomplishment after finishing a rehab or selling a house. But if you’re investing primarily for those reasons, go join the Peace Corps, or get a contractor’s license, or become a Realtor.

The only reason I can conceive of someone wanting to invest in real estate is for financial gain, which is not an impure motive. Money is what buys us the freedom to do, well, whatever the heck it is we want to do. But what do we end up doing? We end up working like crazy and not doing the things for which we’re investing in real estate to begin with.

For example: When I started investing, I decided to try to buy as many houses as I could in order to avoid having a full-time job that consumed all of my time. I planned on spending my time at that point writing music (one of my dreams). Now fast-forward three years. I had become a full-time investor running a fast-paced money machine doing deal after deal every month. Guess how many songs I wrote during those three years? Zero…point…zero.

Finally, I realized that I had to find a way to get my life back again and create the time to do what would make me happiest in life, rather than filling in the time with more work. I had been using assistants to do some work for me, but decided to start delegating as much as humanly possible. That’s when I went from working on 40 hours per week on real estate down to 3 hours per day, and so can you.

The secret, of course, is to get some hired help, which everybody knows they ought to, but few actually do. And even fewer still do it right. Some people try it once, have a bad experience hiring the wrong person, and conclude that "you just can’t find anyone good enough." I think more people never even take the first step and consign themselves to a life full of tedious, bothersome chores.

These are the main excuses for why investors don’t get with the program and take control of their lives again by hiring help:

"I’m not doing enough deals yet." Who says you have to be? Hiring an assistant does not have to be a huge deal. You could always find someone early on to put in 2-3 hours/week for you doing simple tasks, like putting up signs, taking calls from buyers, and licking envelopes for your mailers. In fact, getting someone else to send mailers for you (which we both know you would procrastinate doing yourself) will get you more deals than you otherwise would.

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