In real estate, there are plenty of activities you can do each day to keep yourself busy. Unfortunately (or, perhaps fortunately for those who have found a better way), we are not paid by the amount of action we take, but rather by the results produced. It is critically important then, if you want success and prosperity in your business, to carefully assess and define what is the highest and best use of your time.
Life is too short to perfect your weaknesses! And the payoff for doing so is not nearly as great as when you focus your energy in using the strengths that come naturally to you.
Once you are very clear about this, you can make sure you are get the things off your agenda or daily schedule that just suck time. You can shift your activities to the dollar-producing ones. I’ve heard the average agent spends less than 10 hours a week on dollar-productive activities. I challenge you this week to keep track of what you do and determine for yourself how many hours you spent on dollar productive actions. And how many hours are you spending on things that are not the highest and best use of your time. This may yield some very interesting insights.
Now, I don’t mean to ignore the activities that must get done, because we all know the transaction coordinating, the paperwork, the envelope stuffing and the e-mail correspondence are necessary and important, but are they something you should be doing?
Use these two questions to discover how you can shift your effectiveness:
- Where are you working for less than the highest and best use of your time?
First, what is your time worth? Or, if you are really working a considerably less than your potential and your vision, what “should” it be worth. Let’s say that figure is at a minimum $50-$60 an hour. What activities are you doing you could pay someone $10 or $12 and hour to do? A full time assistant who is a whiz at details would be one solution for this. Or, I am seeing more and more agents outsourcing or delegating to 3-5 others who have a narrow expertise, such as a mailing house, a transaction coordinator, a computer techie, or someone to do paperwork &/or follow-up. Instead of being full time employees, this team of people may each only work a couple times a week for you. The benefit to having many people to delegate to makes the replacement of any one less painful than finding a new full time assistant.
Secondly, what strengths do you have that are unique and where is your brilliance best accentuated? If you are a person who relationships and caring about others is a passion of yours, specializing in helping first time homebuyers or seniors would be a better use of your time than working with investors. If you love horses and know all the criteria for a good ranch property, your passion will come through in a way that won’t be evident when you are selling tract homes. Where are your passions and your gifts and have you built niches to accentuate what you love instead of trying to be a generalist?
Both of these shifts also take a shift in thinking. When a fear-based thinking that there is a limited amount of business is most prevalent, you will stop yourself from turning down the wrong kind of business and you will try to do everything yourself. Nobody cares whether Mozart could balance his checkbook…what was important was that he focused on composing and giving the world his best.
Let go of everything that someone else could do more cheaply or better and use your brilliance. A new abundance will be your reward.
- Are you taking enough personal time and having enough fun to feel rejuvenated, excited and centered when you are working?
You wouldn’t expect your car to take you anywhere if you had no gas in the gas tank, yet, I talk with agents every day that are working 50-60 hours a week, taking no days off and can’t figure out why they can’t be self-disciplined enough to do what it takes to be more successful. They are envious that the top producers seem lucky and they don’t understand why these people are making more than them because they don’t put in as many hours. Yes, this is EXACTLY what this article is addressing: working smarter not harder.
You have a business to fund your life and your life isn’t about business and business alone. Yet, many agents think they need to be personally available 24/7. Please stop it. It has been reported that your effectiveness decreases when you work more than 40 hours a week. The person working 60 hours a week, working at 60% effectiveness is working the equivalent of 36 hours at 100% effectiveness. Wouldn’t you like that other 24 hours back to play, have fun and do other things?
The key is to designate your rejuvenation time each week by giving yourself at least 1 full day off and other chunks that you will reclaim as personal time. Then, if something shows up to displace this time (it will, most certainly), reschedule it on your calendar, just as you’d reschedule any other appointment with a client.
The second important component is to focus yourself 1-2 days a week on your dollar productive activities-so you ARE working at 100% effectiveness when you are “on.”
It is much easier to do this when you have had that rejuvenation time and you aren’t feeling burned out.
Working smarter, instead of harder, is an ongoing process that must be re-examined on a regular basis, as you and the markets change. Start today to check on the areas pinpointed here to give you a great foundation to save yourself time, to use your strengths more effectively and to use tools and delegation so you are doing the things that are the highest and best use of your time.
Published: March 4, 2002
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 Joeann Fossland ePRO, GRI, MCC, PMN, SRS is a dynamic, international speaker and business coach. She personally coaches a small number of extraordinary agents who want to leverage their production results and have a life they love! She was recognized as one of the 25 Most Influential Women in Real Estate in 2008 by Stephan Swanapoel. Subscribe to her free Tuesday Tips, attend Fossland's Forums, free monthly tele-seminars, and find out about classes delivered by email and personal coaching by visiting Joeann.com or email her at . You can also connect at Facebook and Twitter.
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