New People and Services

Well, we knew this day was coming and it finally did! Mom RETIRED! She is 75 (ish) and has worked since she was 14…for the record, so have I. It‘s just how this family is built. This was a GIANT step for her! Our emotions are all over the place, excited, scared, nervous, proud. But she’s not really retiring. She’s coming to work for me! So this post is not about her, so much as it is about me, hiring my first employee, creating work for her, paying my first set of taxes, and figuring out how all of that works!

I went into real estate to help myself, originally, more so than to help other people. I wanted to build a career around selling homes for others but mostly buying them for myself to create passive income. Along the way, I realized that I have a service heart. I really love helping people achieve their goals, whatever they are! I enjoy sharing the benefits of homeownership with people similar to my story who didn’t come from a family with financial literacy. What I found is that sometimes that goal is just to have an independent place to live. I have certainly been there too. Some clients need help taking care of themselves and their families now to build the skills to get to home ownership a year or two or five down the road.

Enter my Momma! She wanted to retire, but was worried about money, because she has no retirement or wealth (other than her home…you can see what I mean about not learning these things from an early age). I have been really busy the last 2 years helping clients and want to focus time on the parts of the business that I enjoy, like writing this blog. I would also like to expand in a few other ways, like coaching new agents and entrepreneurs, growing a Lake Norman office, and building my own portfolio. So I asked Mom to come work for me to free me up to do more!

There are many reasons why that simple invitation is a miracle. Our relationship, probably like many parent/child relationships, was strained in past years. Life is not always rosy in that garden. But in my 40’s came great wisdom! She did the best she knew how. The same way I do the best I know how with my girls. It is not perfect, but it is my best. Most importantly, it is not for anyone to judge! Myself included! I realized a few years ago that if I didn’t find it fair that I judge other Mommy’s or let their judgement of me feel painful, I couldn’t judge my mother either. There is a book called Mother Hunger that the Red Table Talk has been focusing on for a while and I was really interested because I am a mother and my relationship with my mother didn’t seem strong. What I decided is that identifying that is all well and good, but the value is using it to grow into a better me.

As a Real Estate Assistant, she can take a lot of things off my plate, freeing me up to really spend time on the things I enjoy and that make me the most money. But maybe even more importantly, she can help renters so that they can become buyers. This means we can help renters find homes by learning the tricks and streamlining the process for them. Her and I both see a real need for help with this process. She has worked with people in her previous job that struggled finding suitable housing so she is well aware of the lack of affordable housing in Charlotte.

We are also going to extend our services to include rental property management. Again a service that I otherwise would not have time to staff or manage. I’m most excited about this service because this is my end goal long term. I want to own rental properties and manage them ourselves so we have passive income. It is such a great way to grow wealth! That will also include vacation rental property management. Again, a service I intend to do for my own rentals, so the ability to do it for others is a bonus. There are actually tons of vacation (or short term) rentals in and around Charlotte. And there are plenty of regulations, issues, and things that can be outsourced to a management team like us.

As with any growth there are always growing pains! It has been a struggle to figure out her pay structure. Since she is retirement age, she gets her full Social Security, which is under $20K (who could live off of just that?!). If she makes more than $52K per year in combined income, the federal government (and probably the state) will go back and tax that $20K so she would have to pay taxes, which she had to do last year. We decided it’s just safer to make just under that threshold and avoid taxing the SS income. We’ll see if that philosophy changes as we grow and move forward. Researching all the regulations for that, salary, and taxes has been difficult and I’m not sure I have all the answers, but I have a plan! Of course, I could hire a pay roll company. There are plenty out there! But I like doing things myself. Lets hope thats not a huge mistake!

Our biggest challenge has been training and job description. It has taken me 4 years to get to where I am in the business, so teaching someone else how to do what I do is pretty difficult. But I am a teacher at heart! I sat down last weekend and created an Assistant Manual for her. It’s a giant 2″ binder with everything she needs to work this job in writing. It comes complete with a monthly and daily suggested schedule. I dedicated a page for each computer system that I use with log in information, what it’s used for, and what her responsibility for it would be. I sprinkled in a little life philosophy like dream casting, life lists, and volunteer work. And then I wrote out as many tasks as I could think of that she might complete. I remember working jobs in my life where I had no idea what I was responsible for because there was no job description. You can’t hold people (even children, BTW) responsible for something if you never told them what that is.

We made it through her first week! And she has already reminded me to return emails I would have lost and gotten marketing postcards completed in record time. I am so excited for what we will do together! I am so excited for the additional number and types of clients we can really help! But most of all, I am proud that I can take care of my momma like I always said I would. I am also very nervous about that one, if I’m being honest.