What I've learned about hiring.

I'm in shock when I think about how good our team is.

When Yoel and I started this company in 2017 we didn’t have money to hire people so we had to do everything ourselves. Sourcing deals. Due diligence. Emails with bankers to get loans closed. Hiring, training, and supervising on-site employees. Installing manufactured homes. Dealing with cities. More emails with bankers to get loans closed. Dealing with contractors. Paying bills. Doing the accounting. More emails with bankers to get loans closed. Finding investor capital.? Did I mention more emails with bankers to get loans closed? It was all the things. ?Just the two co-founders. The work was relentless.

After 5 years on this entrepreneurial journey, we’re finally at a point where we have highly competent people in every key leadership role.?

I’m humbled.?And I'm still pinching myself.? I feel like....wait...we have a best-in-class COO? Well, yes, we do. His name is Corey Wikstrom, and he is an industry leader who has operated hundreds of manufactured housing communities across the country, and he decided to join Three Pillar Communities this month. Yahoo Finance covered the story here: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/three-pillar-communities-announces-coo-233700679.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=tw&tsrc=twtr

<< By the way, if you’re an Accredited Investor interested in investing in our new mobile home park fund, check out www.threepillarcommunities.com/fund2 >>

And we have a CFO who’s both a CPA and an attorney??And a VP of Acquisitions who’s a bona fide real estate private equity expert? And a Director of Manufactured Home Sales who used to sell single-family subdivisions at DR Horton? And a Director of Real Estate Development who has built skyscrapers? And a Director of Construction, a Director of Financial Planning & Analysis, a Director of Business Development, a Director of Human Resources? Plus all the people who report up to them?

And wait...I am lucky enough to have an amazing Executive Assistant who helps me with so many things every day?

When I think about all the things that Yoel and I *don't* have to think about on a daily basis because our team is skillfully handling them, I fill up with a deep and inordinate joy.

As an entrepreneur, there should be a specific word to describe that moment when, after years of hustling and grinding, your business finally has enough income to hire a competent team and you finally feel…covered.?

Covered. Supported. Ready for whatever comes. Because you have bench strength.? Resilience. Redundancy (in a good way).? If A, B, or C goes wrong, you know it won’t torpedo the company.? The trains will keep rolling. And you as the owner won’t have to sacrifice your day/week/month to deal single-handedly with the crisis du jour.

A recent example: We had to terminate our regional manager for Washington due to an employee conduct issue.?This person oversaw roughly $100 million in assets.?In the recent past, this would have been a minor crisis.?Yoel and I would have had to put growth initiatives on ice while scrambling to find a replacement.?But this time, Corey, our COO, said, “Don’t worry. I got this.?This will be a blip.?And we’ll come out stronger.”

Knowing what I know now, if I could do one thing differently, I would have built this team in Year 1 or 2 instead of in Year 4 or 5. ?If I had a time machine, I would go back and give up some equity in our early deals in exchange for a pot of money in Year 1 to go make great hires. Props to my dear friend Jack McCarthy, founder of Goldleaf Agriculture, who developed a very cool model to do exactly that.

How do we source top talent? Our best hires have been sourced from my personal direct outreach via LinkedIn.?

Our screening/interviewing process is based on a method developed by my business school classmate, Jimmy Holloran, who's an expert in human capital. He’s a partner at a private equity fund who spends all his time making sure they put the right leadership talent into the right roles in their portfolio companies. Jimmy was kind enough to share his hiring methodology with me.

In hiring, I’ve learned that job experience matters more than I thought.?My previous life at McKinsey taught me to trust in the power of smart generalists.?Now, as a business owner, I have seen the power of hiring people who bring their own playbook and know how to implement it on Day 1.

When you’re building a business from scratch, every new hire feels like adding a new tool to an empty toolbox.?It's like, we used to just have a hammer.?Now we have a drill! Oh, now we have a wrench.?Now we have a saw.?Wait, how did we ever get by without a saw??When we used to have to cut things, what did we use??And when we had to grip things, how did we do it before we had a wrench?

This begs the question: What’s the next hire I’m going to look back on and ask, “How did we ever survive without that role?”?And then the follow-on question, “Why didn’t we invest in creating that role sooner?”??

At this point in our growth trajectory, I suspect the answer is an investor relations person.? The goal (as a founder) is to get to the point where you do not personally have primary responsibility for any particular function.? Investor Relations is still a function that Yoel and I do ourselves.?It’s hard to let go of (because talking to our investors is one of the things that I love most about our business).?But discipline requires letting go. And finding someone who will do this better than we can. So that we can keep thinking about what is next and what we can do better.

Invest in our new fund (Accredited Investors only): www.threepillarcommunities.com/fund2

Connect with me on LinkedIn:?https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/daniel-weisfield-33940613/

Follow me on Twitter:?https://twitter.com/danielweisfield

Join our email list?to see future manufactured housing investment opportunities:?https://www.threepillarcommunities.com/mailing-list?