A good friend of mine owns around 50 houses and apartments, and does 95% of the work himself. He is super smart and impressive, however he is his own limiting factor in his growth. He literally can’t keep up with the work and refuses good deals. Learning to lead others effectively is key to growth in real estate investing and it’s a hurdle many unintentionally self limit their growth.

Many people self running a real estate business are interested in a sustainable income, not necessarily growth.

At 50 properties, your friend probably could start leveraging a team and either get more properties and more income or simply get more time for himself and still have enough income. But, a lot of people will have topped out at 10 or so properties, if you're paying other people to do the work there, you may not be making enough income to grow your assets.

This is not just an issue in real-estate investing. This sounds like it is a general principle that can be applied across-the-board. A lot of small business owners/franchisees fail because they don’t know how to create processes and delegate. A good book on this is The E-myth Revisted.

> Learning to lead others effectively is key to growth

My personal pet-peeve: In 99.9% of cases, when people talk about "leading" in the business context, what they really mean is just "managing". Let's not infest our language with corporate newspeak.

Leading is a core part of managing. Or at least managing well.

Leadership is about making people genuinely want to do things. Jesus, Napoleon, Lenin, Steve Jobs - they were leaders. Managing, on the other hand, is about handling employees, who are doing what you tell them to do only because you pay them.

2 of those 3 were happy to use guns and violence to get what they want and that makes a compelling reason to do as instructed too.

Edit: I’ve just realised that your 4th example was Jesus, and you weren’t started with a curse - I’ll leave my error as I like it.

No, they were managers. They just understood that good management is being a leader. Trying to micromanage and compel people to do what you want is inefficient compared to inspiring people to want the same things as you, and helping them coach them so they grow into more effective, productive versions of themselves.

> Trying to micromanage and compel people to do what you want is inefficient compared to inspiring people to want the same things as you,

I generally agree, but I have never ever seen that in a business world. What the business owner wants - maximum profit - is in a direct conflict with employee wants (maximum salary for an easy and/or fullfilling job), so I can't see them ever wanting the same thing.

In general, people are willing to forgo their immediate interest (high pay, interesting tasks) only if they believe they're doing something for a greater good, and that does not happen in companies. Even if you're crunching on some innovative product that will make the world better (which is the claim that is often used to motivate people in startups), the main reason for the crunch is that you're trying to beat X other companies that are also working on the same innovation. So, even in such case, you're mostly killing yourself to make the owners rich, as the world will be a better place regardless of whether it's your company or your competitor that manages to win the race to the market.

The way to achieve that, in my opinion, is to try to align the person's career objectives with the company's objectives. Find out what motivates them, money, recognition, etc and illustrate how they can achieve those goals by achieving the company's goals. Then people motivate themselves.

The other part is being a good coach, which is not about giving advice, it's about helping someone take responsibility for their tasks and helping them learn how to improve.

That's just my opinion, and I'm not a manager so maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about.

>We saved at least $10,000 by building a retaining wall ourselves. We mixed up over 6 tonnes of concrete in a 200 L concrete mixer.

I have done it both ways...

Concrete trucks are about $80-120 / yd. mixing bags of concrete, assuming you have free aggregate and sand, is about $200 / yd

Well, if you're building a wall yourself, you can't use a whole truck load of concrete all at once. You pretty much have to mix it incrementally.

I am trying to understand your post. Is it cheaper per yard to hire a concrete truck than to mix concrete (with free aggregate/sand) yourself?

Presumably, to get the truck pricing you have to buy by the truckload which is too much concrete for some projects. If doing it onsite was cheaper at quantity, you'd never see a concrete truck on the road -- all the big construction sites would be saving money by mixing onsite.

Your father sounds kind of like some of my family. You can rent the equipment to dig the holes if he ever wants to learn how to do that. If you are the general contractor you can save whatever their markup is (at least twenty years ago).