One thing I’m passionate about is this very simple concept that business can be fun.
We all got into real estate with a vision for what we thought our lives would look like when we were established. Most of us pictured having quality work-life balance.
We thought that we would have a great salary...some of us even thought that we would have investments and create a world for ourselves where we were able to start enjoying some of the amazing things life has to offer!
What we didn’t realize is that this business can be HARD. Real estate success is not a complicated thing, but it is definitely challenging! It requires you (and me) to be brutally honest with the amount it takes to build it.
Managing to balance your current client load with your ongoing responsibility to bring in new business is often overwhelming. Add on all the administrative crap we have to keep up with and the projects we envisioned to get our business to grow to the next level and it can lead agents to working ridiculous long hours and feeling burnt out.
This business has burnt out many agents who had high potential, because they never figured out how to master their time.
Here's The Truth
👉🏻It is possible to have a growing, even thriving business, and have fun doing it.
👉🏻It is possible to enjoy time off or to be present with your family.
👉🏻It is possible have a successful business.
BUT... you need to make it a priority and be sure to hold yourself accountable to making it happen!
Now, I’m not going to bullshit you and say that you can slack off and good things will come your way because you’re beautiful and you deserve a break. You’re going to have to work hard. You’re going to have to be ten times more disciplined than you were before. You’re going to have to be creative and determined.
But you can have it. I did in my team when I was selling, I’m doing it now as I’m building my new company, and I’m coaching my clients on how to do it for themselves too.
The secret to creating a world with Time Freedom is that it all starts with your mindset. We just did a webinar on time freedom, it was friggin epic!
Time freedom is a choice.
You need to decide how you run your business and you need to build your business to reflect your commitment.
When we're new at something (or even seasoned at it), we have this conditioning that tells us we should be at the mercy of our customers and clients at all cost, even at the cost of your own family. We see it as some rite of passage that being at the beckon call of our clients is just part of it, it's not. Yes, you need to accessible, yes you should be responsive, but not 24/7, we don't expect other professionals to be available to us whenever we desire, same goes for you. Set those boundaries early and set them firmly.
This can be hard for some people to get used to, but the reality is, that it all starts with a simple mindset that it’s okay to say no. What’s amazing is that once you start doing this, you’ll begin to lead your clients so effectively that you don’t even find yourself saying no very often… More often you’ll just find that you are slotting people into times convenient for you and it just becomes part of the normal routine in your service.
Here's A Trick
Instead of saying No and explaining why, start saying Yes and explaining how: “You know what, I can definitely meet you, but I won’t be able to make it there until around 4, would that work for you?”
Moving beyond client meetings, you are likely missing a lot of the meetings which you schedule with yourself. If you were booked for a $3,000,000 listing presentation, would you show up late because you got distracted on social media or decided to go for a coffee instead? In business our first priority should always be to serve our business, followed by providing exceptional service to our clients. So if you wouldn’t skip a listing appointment to go have fun, why would you let yourself skip an appointment with yourself to grow your business?
Like I said, you can have time freedom, but it isn’t free. You earn it by growing your personal discipline.
Discipline, It's Almost A Curse Word
Ugh, discipline sounds exhausting. Isn’t there a better way to get time freedom?
I know this isn’t as sexy as you might have hoped, but I promise it’s worth it.
Here’s Why:
Discipline is a 2 way street. Once you become disciplined in the way you use your 'business' time, you will be more productive during the time you give to your business, which means you won’t need as much time to run your business. So it’s not that you’re working harder all the time. You are working harder when you are working and this gives you time back in other areas.
There are three fundamental areas of time:
Time for you
Time for growth
Time for productivity
By being more effective during your productivity time you get to take back time for the other two.
The concept of time freedom doesn’t mean that I’m creating excess time and “giving it to you for free”. It means that you are creating free time by managing the time that you have better so you can choose what you do with it.
Let’s talk about some ways you can be more effective during your productivity time.
1: Make Yourself More Valuable
I love this because this is foundational to why so many of us were brave enough to get into real estate and start our own business. We wanted to raise the value we were able to assign our time and use that as a way to better our lives.
The problem is that so many of us focus just on doing more, as opposed to getting better at what we do. Think about it. Why couldn’t you instead get better so you didn’t need to work as much.
Think About This...
if you speak to 100 people every week, say canvasing for example, you will likely get 1-2 leads. This is a 1-2% conversion rate which is typical for a new agent without any experience. That same agent if they ask great questions, rehearse what they are going to say and maybe use a preexisting dialogue will more than quadruple their results. The same agent can generate as much a 4-8 leads per 100 conversations. The cool thing is that it doesn’t stop there. The same agent will get more appointments from those leads, sign more of them to list and lead more of them to a successful closing.
If something that takes 20 minutes a day can completely transform your results, why are so few agents doing this on a consistent basis when they spend hours every day struggling to grow their business? Raise your skills, raise your value… period.
2: Hold Your Time Accountable
You know how old you are, don’t you? You know how tall you are, right? Maybe you know how much you made last year and what your goal this year is… hopefully. So if you know these things, do you know how much of your time you spent in your business? Do you know how much of your time you spent with clients vs generating leads? Do you know how much personal time you spent disconnected with your family enjoying yourself?
If you are serious about getting more quality time with your family, then it starts with you measuring how you use your time AND being honest with yourself. If you put lead generation in your calendar and you sat down and responded to emails for half of it, you got a zero.
To have more time freedom you need to start by actually understanding what you are doing with the time you have currently.
3: Stop Living For “Someday”
Have you ever said:
🚀 “When I reach goal, I’ll be able to ______”?.
🚀 “When I bring in a buyers agent I’ll be able to take a day off on weekends”.
🚀 “I don’t have time for (fitness, meditation, church, family get togethers, etc) because I’m too busy with clients”.
Here is the deal. The secret to creating time freedom for yourself is first to actually start taking it. Don’t live a life where you will "someday" get to have all this magical stuff. Someday never comes, make someday today my friend, stop waiting for it, create it now!
Here's what happens when you take massive action to create the life you want right now. You’ll find is that the other stuff just starts to fit in.
If you go to the gym every morning at 6am you’ll likely watch less TV before bed. No loss there!
The client who couldn’t find time other than the weekend attends an open house or sees the property with a colleague
That person who always has a last minute fire to put out will resolve it on their own when it takes you a few hours to respond.
Like I said in the beginning:
"Time freedom is a choice"
It is possible for your business to thrive while you live a life worth living and frankly, the challenge of making it all work is part of the fun!
Be creative and develop the discipline to TRULY live by your calendar. It seems restrictive at first but the freedom you create through it is truly incredible.
Thanks for investing your time to read this, I know how valuable it is.
To bigger and crazier dreams,
Sean
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