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Category Archives: Our Team

The Fate of the Rattlesnake’s Name and Construction

Technically, this one was across the road. But, it’s from around here.

The Rattlesnake, Rattlesnake, The Annex, Lady Rattlesnake. All variations of the name that describe the house under construction that will be my future house. Several people want to know if I will rename it once I move in. The answer is yes. The name will be changed. However, the “Rattlesnake” part will still be in there.

People have laughed, and truly been afraid for me. Let me assure you, we are in venomous snake country around here. The last country house I moved from had copperheads. It was infested with them actually, and they were pretty territorial and mean. When they claim a territory, it may be the entire property and you are trespassing.

Fans, family, and friends, please take Rattlesnake’s name to heart. Get your pet the vaccine against the venom, and always expect to see a snake. I never panic, because I expect snakes to be everywhere that there are rodents, water, heat source, shelter, or any variation of these things. “Constant Vigilance!” Every house in this area is “The (Insert Venomous Snake) House.”

The progress and me

I could never express how it feels to walk into a shell of a house, hear your footsteps echo, hear some of the things done to it, and feel the emptiness. Then one day you walk in, and that echo is gone. That echo is replaced by sheet rock, insulation, doors, windows, etc. And your visions and daydreams are no longer only in your head.

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Another Anniversary!

Here’s someone wondering how she can go home early.

I was looking through my Facebook memories for May 18th, 2017, and I found out that one year ago I wrote my first blog here. I think that’s pretty cool! It was all about my first month and office supply shopping with Sue Ann. I had this great picture of my desk that was all cleaned up. Man so much has changed in a year. First, I am positive that my desk has a top to it, but I haven’t seen it in a while. Office hack! Cover your desk with papers and it doesn’t get dusty! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

In that first post, I was still in that mode of searching for things to do because you can only move so fast while learning. I had a day of each week established as cleaning day. It was Wednesdays. I vaguely remember that. It isn’t that I have lost how I feel about taking pride in the office appearance, it is just about hours in the day. Work load definitely increased, and I don’t spend time on the search for something to do. Rattlesnake takes up a good bit of my time right now, but that is the role of a project manager. She serves multiple jobs actually. I know a lot more about structural integrity, budgets, contingency budgets, looking for contractors, ordering merchandise, and returning merchandise than I did when I started this.

I have contributed just a couple of things to the office.

What I’ve Learned in a Year

I had to learn a new way of time management, and also to remember that this is an aspect of the business that Lee has told me that he wants me to learn, so it really is okay for me to spend time on it. I then have to make sure bills are paid and we stay on, or as close to on schedule as possible. I still have to take care of things like hiring (or attempting to hire when they do not show back up) for various maintenance jobs that need to be done between the properties.

I also do some things for Hermit Haus Redevelopment specifically, and am working on a project now that has taken some time, but it’s rolling! That is a project that I’m sure we will pass on for later announcement. It isn’t just a huge secret, but suspense can be fun.

I became a notary, and I keep up with the refresher emails that are sent out to me about laws and things.

It’s also about time to do some more office supply shopping, too. My desk calendar runs from June to June, and this baby only has 2 pages left on it. Besides my 2 legal pads, my desk calendar is what keeps me straight, and reminds me from month to month when to pay what. I also have my in and out boxes, and my accordion file that keep the bookkeeping data straight until it gets into the online files. My accordion file serves as reminder 1, and my desk calendar is the fail safe for that.

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MLS Mondays

We need to find ourselves another one of these! Or two, or three.

The past few weeks Russell has been working hard on MLS Monday, in which he combs through the Multiple Listing Service looking for keywords like. This is a great job for someone :

  • Fixer-upper
  • Handyman special
  • Investor
  • Flip
  • Rehab
  • As-is

You get the idea. He is finding some pretty interesting things! I get all excited about them, but due to that pesky full-time job I have, I don’t have the bandwidth to do the analysis, get comps, and figure out if they are potentially good deals. It’s been part of our history that a home gets sold before we finish figuring out if we want to bid.

How do other people do this? Usually there’s a staff person who is in charge of just analyzing potential deals and determining whether to make an offer or not. Often these same people write up and submit offers, if they have the experience. Or, the team discusses the potential purchases at daily meetings, then the offers get made.

For us, Lee has committed to being the analyzer each week, and he is doing as best as he can. He often has financial commitments to handle, though, and his job as our primary money-watcher is also a very important one!

We thought of asking Anita to help us out, but her work has gotten way more busy in the past few months, which, of course, is good for her income. Mandi is totally full up on the other work she’s doing for us (and project management for Rattlesnake).  My sister is helping out by writing the postcards for our foreclosure search, and we’re grateful for that, but it’s about all she can do. So…

We need someone to back us up! We’re first going the ole nepotism route and seeing is Carol and Russell’s daughter’s interested. However, let us know if you’d like to do a couple hours’ worth of work each week for us.

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Has it really been a whole year?!

This was the view from my desk before I started. Man! It’s hard to believe!

It really has! It’s hard to believe that a year ago, I walked into the office terrified. I hate being new at anything, especially a job.

Now, I take kids to school, get on the conference call, walk into the office wearing pajamas, drink coffee (beyond normal humans I would like to add), do office work, sometimes put on real clothes, run errands, pick kids up from school, and come back at some point in the evening, and office work some more after my pajamas are back on, go home and sleep, wake up, and do it all again. I actually really enjoy it.

Weird, right?

This of course is what the office looks like now that I have been here a year.

I can’t tell you what all I have learned in this past year. I know it is a lot. I can only pull up so much data at a time in my head, and I don’t really know how to re-say all the things I have already said in other blogs about loving what I do.

Instead, I think I will share some funny stories and memories because those can be told many times!

“My Stapler” (a tape dispenser)

Sue Ann took me shopping last May after I had been here a couple of weeks to get office supplies. We went to several stores, and bought basic office supplies that I would need, like a desk calendar and a tape dispenser. A beautiful tape dispenser! While shopping at one store, we saw gold office supplies. We really just laughed as a reaction. I picked up a gold stapler and said something along the lines of anyone having a gold stapler thinks their job is way more important than it really is. Now we have a running joke of, “Hmmm… that person has a gold stapler on their desk.” when we run into some of the more not so nice folks in business. Thankfully, that is not often.

It goes purple, pink, blue, yellow, and green depending on the angle you look at it from. It is also reflective.

Dreaming

Sometime soon after I started, I had this bad dream that I had accidentally transferred $12,000 into my payroll account. In the dream, Lee didn’t believe it was a mistake and fired me. He rehired me a couple of weeks later, but my pay had be drastically reduced. I told him about the dream and he laughed and explained that it wouldn’t matter if I did because he had to approve my payroll before my checks are done anyway. Then he told me about an old boss that he had who fired someone and then called them the next day, very angry because they were not at work.

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Celebration Is Important

We hadn’t been celebrating our wins as we originally had planned to. We’d closed on a number of properties since we enjoyed a celebratory glass of bubbly.

A sleeping angel.

Well, that could NOT go on forever, plus we need to regroup and make new plans. We decided to have a meeting of the directors and Ray Ramirez, to talk about the lessons learned from the Oakridge project. Since the meeting was at the Bobcat Lair, Anita was also there.

Plus there was a very cute visiting dog named Pattycake. She did not sleep the whole time. She was a bundle of fun, but darned well behaved for a doggie in a strange place, surrounded with strangers.

Lessons Learned

So, Lee and Ray had a long discussion about what our profit was, and why it wasn’t just the amount of the check we got back at closing. We’ve learned that we have to pay back the expenses we incurred during the renovation that were not just what the contractor charged, such as all the holding costs (insurance, mortgage, etc.). Plus we had to pay back the hard money lender and their hefty interest. That was one of the harder lessons learned, and did not lead to great rejoicing for a couple team members.

Our team, along with GC Ray Ramirez, toast the completed Oakridge project. There were no photos where everyone’s eyes were open. 

But, we learned a lot about the model of having the contractor be one of the financers of a project. Ray covered the remodeling cost, then got a percentage of the profit. This is good incentive to finish a project on time and under budget! The more you save, the more you profit. We might try this again on another project.

We also were proud of the job Carol did managing the project, using the systems we’d learned to get it done in 88 days! Two days ahead of the 90-day goal! We did spend quite a bit on staging and landscaping, but that may well have been why we ended up with multiple offers and selling above listing price.

Public Celebration!

Of course, we enjoyed our bubbly, even if some of us were driving and didn’t drink any. We even sent off the information on our “win” to the folks at FortuneBuilders. Russell got a nice email back, and it made us all feel good when he read it to us!

Onward and upward now. We’re still evaluating prospects for our next few projects. Suggestions welcome!

 

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