How to form a successful partnership as real estate operators, what are some of the important tools and processes to make your company run smoothly? Amy Johnson, managing partner of Y Street Capital, shares her knowledge.
Read the interview here: https://tinyurl.com/bddxjmvv
How did you partnership come about?
My husband and I decided to get into the rental game market of residential houses and we turned our own little primary house into a rental and moved into an ugly, disgusting house and kept doing that over and over. It was difficult for us to scale, to keep doing individual residential house: get the loan, qualify, find the right property, all of those things and we knew we wanted to continue to grow. Fast forward, we acquired a great amount of properties, and decided to sell some of our portfolio and roll those into some larger assets. And one of those assets, we were an LP or a limited partner in some self-storage and saw the power of that.
Then we got into land development, I needed some additional support, and that's where I met Victor Menasce, through a different mastermind. I paid him as a consultant on a project. As we were bringing on different projects, I had brought on some others and we just had a really good working relationship with different things, and they had some skills and knowledge and different things that I needed. I realized, that if I wanted to scale this, I couldn't do everything on my own.
How did the conversation start so people can understand where values come from? Why would you both want to do that?
Both companies were very successful before and I think that it is like a relationship, because partnerships are a good relationship. Instead of coming for a spouse or boyfriend having a cup that's half full, and expecting your partner to fill the other half, both of you come with a very full cup and come together, and then you get to create something even bigger. It wasn't that one person came in and tried to save or rescue or take over, that is not a great partnership. Now, that can be a business move. I have looked at other companies where I could see where I could add value. It doesn't mean you can't add value to them, but you're going to come together full and create something bigger, so that each has one cup and, together instead of making two cups, you make three.
What tools have you implemented? What has been the most helpful to your company and how do you manage and oversee everything?
One of the systems that we utilize is our EOS system, our rocks and our wigs. It is aligned and doing our level 10. If you have a good EOS system, it's because you have your priorities straight. When you have a company that is only handling emergencies or firefighting, you're not putting your priorities in straight and that's where you're not growing as well. Another system for us is Asana, but that's more for our project management standpoint. I used to use Google Doc to make my to-do list, and I'd share it with my assistant. Good tracker, but there's more accountability with Asana.
Some individuals say, "The last thing I want to do is taking four meetings a year of two days each, plus every single Friday for two hours to go over our rocks and wigs and our issues lists, and things like that. If you're busy, sometimes that can seem overwhelming and I was grateful for the structure. There were times that I was like, "I'm so busy I don't have time for this." You need to make time so that you can create it.
Amy Johnson
amyj@ystreetcapital.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-johnson-358217162/
