The Daily Schedule Every Real Estate Investor Needs

Accountability helps there too, you guys. If you feel yourself slipping, it's the accountability with your coach or someone in the community. All 3 coaches talked about the 7 steps they were taking because we were hearing in the community some people were sending out offers ahead of time and just getting the steps out of sync. So that, Lorraine addresses that. Um, but in the meantime, let me prioritize some things that I think you should be doing. And I'm only going back to when I started because I literally needed a check, right? I like, it was not going to pay bills in 60 days coming up. So first block of time is obviously your outgoing calls, right? How generic can we put into your day for sellers? I would treat this appointment as I say it all the time as a doctor appointment. Like it's not one to be changed. Without this, you have nothing. You might as well shut everything down. And I know it's, I'll call it repetitious boredom at the beginning. I know it is. I, I literally used to call and I was so bored. I'd be writing repetitious boredom, repetitious boredom, repetitious boredom. It was a Michael Jordan thing. Um, just to keep myself busy or making hash marks about my dials just to keep my brain from going cuckoo. Like I know it's boring at first. But just know that when you put your VA in place, it gets, it's the next level of fun because you're calling warmup calls. And then once you get, uh, a business where Rick's point is where you, you have a team running it, then it's even more fun. But at first you gotta get the ball up the hill a little bit. Time to get started in it. This comes up always. What time should I call? I, I'm talking all the way back to the '90s when I was a realtor. I only cared about my schedule. Um, I'll give you some details on that because I, My logic was that they're motivated, they'll call me back, right? So I didn't try to time it where there were going to be more people and like that. Now, having said that, I would set up what I called off-hour slots. Like I tried you 3 times. I thought based on the motivation that I know you have from either the lead sheet or when I talked to you, I thought, you know, before I throw this away, I'll try one more time what I call off hours. And I would stick that on a night or a Saturday morning. That's what I used to do, especially when I first started. I was afraid to throw things away if I knew they were somewhat motivated. So I did use that slot only because I knew I could probably get them on a Saturday morning or a Wednesday night. Right. Um, but other than that, you go by your schedule. I would start as early as 8:30 in the morning and I just start dialing. I'm not a night person. So for me, it was start as early as I can. Now, the good problem to have. Okay. Deb's at it right now. Okay. I'm going to start having some buyers come to me now. So what, uh, buyers and follow-up, that's to come into play here. So then, because you're brand new, you guys are just doing outgoing. Now, follow-up and buyer calls. Here's how I— there's no wrong answer here. Here's how I fit it in. The follow-up calls I used to like doing, like say this slot here is, uh, 9 to 9:50, 50-minute slot, 10-minute break. I would come in at 8:30 and do a half hour of follow-up.

Why?

Because the follow-up was a little warmer, a little more positive sometimes, gets me going, warms me up. But no matter how many follow-ups I had, I'd stop at 9:00. In this example, I'd stop at 9:00. I'll tell you why, where I come back to it. Because we get really good at what I call creative avoidance. And letting things creep into the slot because it's easier. So you got to be faithful. I got a doctor's appointment at 9 o'clock. I got to stop. And I mean that literally. If you're on a phone with someone before 9 and the call's dragging, you go, look, I got a 9 o'clock. I'm sorry, I got to run, but I will get you back this afternoon. You got to protect your time as if it's critical. It is critical. Then, by the way, why earlier for the follow-up? Because the follow-up, and I don't They probably would love to hear from you. Same with buyer calls. I would actually start buyer calls even earlier if they creeped in the night before and get the buyer calls out of the way. Because again, I needed to check and I didn't have Nick yet. So I'd get in there and do the buyer calls first, then the follow-up. And then this slot didn't change. If you do have the luxury of having 2 back-to-back slots and you don't have deals yet, then I'd be doing 2 back-to-back slots of 50 minutes each. I did 3. I used to go from like 8:30 to 12. Uh, but I would do 2 back to back. So this is 10 to 10:50.

Outgoing. So outgoing. Okay.

And then generally speaking, everybody's day is different, but somewhere in the afternoon you would have a hypothetical block for appointments, right? And when you're brand new, Phil, you're booking appointments, but let's say Rick didn't have one yet. What should he do if he already blocked his time slot this afternoon for appointments? More outgoing. As boring as it sounds, when you're, when you're brand new, you gotta get that rock up the hill. There's nothing else. Just playing around the database, all the other crap, you're not gonna make 10 cents. This is where your focus should be. When you do have some leads and you're making a good mess, great. Good problem to have. Now, you'll have a slot here before your appointments.

I'm not putting times because everybody's different.

Call it admin. Yeah, this came up with you because you started picking up on more stuff. And I'm like, you gotta have a slot for admin so that doesn't creep into here. And the admin would be what, by the way, guys? So when you're done your outgoing, you're probably going to be sending some emails, right? They're not during your call. They're when you're done. That's what I used to do. So if I talk to Rich and he's a lead, I'm putting LHC right next to me. And I'm gonna keep dialing. And then at the end, I'm gonna send my sell doc and my email. I'm just keeping this very basic for you guys.

Now, so if you have the time to do even 5 or 6 hours, do it in the beginning as an outgoing.

I would do at least 3 back-to-back time slots. If you do 3 time slots, cuz you have the time, you're going to have shit to follow up on. No way around it. If you, if you're doing your call critiques. Right. And doing what you're supposed to be doing. Because in these time slots, you guys, if I call Tara and during this time slot and I left her a message and I'm still dialing and Tara's a seller and she calls me back, I'm not picking up. I'm just doing outgoing. I want to control the conversation. And too many times I've heard call critiques where that seller, in this example, Tara calls back and then you guys have fumbled.

Who, what property?

You're not in control. They are in control. You want to be in control of every conversation. So you want her to leave a message. You want to hear it, hear their tone, hear just their general stance. And then when you're doing your follow-up, or if you have no appointments, you're going to call them back then. Or you're going to call them back in this next outgoing slot because they called you back and on your 15-minute break, you figured it out.

Okay. So it's not something where, as you're doing your cold, you see an inbound and you say, hey, I'm going to call them back right away. I'll pull it up and—

'Cause it's just gonna smack your whole session outta whack.

Yeah.

I used to, my W-2, I knew people went to lunch at 12:30 to 1:30. However, I had a lot of people reporting to me, so 9 times outta 10, that time it'd be a fire drill. I'd always be busy working lunch. So I'd have a backup time slot. So for those times that I missed, but I'd also have between 4:30 and 6:00 PM. Or sometimes 4:30 to 6:30 that I'd be doing dials.

Which is probably, if you can block that again, you're going to reach more people, you guys, on those off-hour slots. But I can tell you over time, your hot lead flow is going to be about the same because the hot ones call you back, right? You will talk to more people, more chances at bat, but your lead flow, generally speaking, in the month is going to be about the same. Believe it or not. Generally speaking, you guys, does this help? You have questions on this? I'm trying to simplify.

Because like for me, I keep, I have ADHD or I do something that I don't. So when I start call, I don't stop. And then my problem is I'm exhausted and I don't follow up. And I've been, I've been losing a lot of leads.

Leads.

So doing this, maybe just call new expires every morning and then stop and then do follow-up and then keep going.

Yeah.

And these 50, these 10-minute blocks, if you're exhausted or anyone, like those are important refreshers, whether you listen to something, whether you go walk outside and get some sun for 5 minutes, those will help. Uh, in Rick Morado's case, I told him when you've done work, you stress the max of work. I said, when you're done work, just go outside for 5 minutes and then come to real estate. He was coming to the real estate seat going, oh, I'm ready to kill everybody at work. And it showed in his calls. And that one little thing, he's different mindset. So use these 10-minute blocks faithfully, like use them to take care of you.

Um, any reason why I'm just wondering why your follow-ups are first before your outgoing calls? Because what popped into my head was making that after your outgoing calls, because then you could both call back people that called you while you were doing outgoing calls and your follow-ups kind of in the same block.

Me personally. I think I said it maybe right before you walked in. It was just a warmup.

Okay.

I didn't always get through them because if you're doing enough calls, you get them more. Right. So then you could have a, uh, in your, uh, after your outgoing, you could have a day or you could have admin because you don't have admin yet.

Yeah.

The appointments you get, there's a lot of places to follow up. Yeah. While you're driving, you could do a follow-up call while you're driving because you don't need as much prep or focus. Yep. Um, again, just general. I was just trying to protect your outgoing slot. That's all I'm trying to do.

I never thought of follow-up as a separate block. So that's an aha for me.

Yeah.

Cause you know why?

Cause we'll. We'll all get caught up in follow-up. Everyone does it. And then you don't do any new calls. And before you know it, the well is dry if you weren't at it long enough yet. Like Deb, I don't, I don't know. You said how many hot you have, but you have a lot of leads in your system because you've been at it. So she's kind of greased the, greased the funnel now. Now I'm not telling her to stop calling, but she can regulate that now that she's done. Oh, I ran into that.

I had 13 follow-ups yesterday and it was almost half my dials, but then I realized how much time it took up because I was Some of them were, if it doesn't sell, call them. So I'd have to look it up and look at it. And that takes more time than you think, rather than a 30-second to a minute phone call where you're leaving a message.

You brought up something good though. I personally don't look up statuses ever for that reason. Don't look up what? Statuses.

I don't on outgoing, like originals, but if it's a follow-up and they say, well, if I haven't sold, give me a call back.

So that's another thing.

Okay.

As long as it's not, but don't go checking other stuff.

Okay.

Like crime rate and— oh no. All right.

I'm all set with that.

You have to laugh.

How did you look into everything? You looked at me when you laughed and you heard.

Um, yeah, you've been guilty of that in the past. I hope you're better now. Checking everything, like who lived there and was there relatives of her.

Um, that was really helpful. I, I think, yeah, yeah, really. I know you always say like, protect your time, but I can see how, yeah, you really did. And that's been some of the follow-ups is it seems like it's important, but when to fit that in. Like you say, I think just setting a block where even if it's not used, it just becomes cold outbound for now, at least it starts to be there.

And yeah, and don't beat on yourself. You said something made me think of this, Dave. Um, like I hate all the coaches hear this. Um, oh, I'm so behind and they start beating on themselves. What do you mean you're behind? Well, my VA got me like 8 leads. I didn't call. Who cares if you didn't call them yet? If in fact, better, like it's, if they're motivated and you're calling them, they're going to call you back immediately. Don't, don't beat yourself up. That follow-up can wait. And if they're motivated, they're chasing you. And you'll get that if you're out bad enough, you'll get these people calling you back. So I'd say to Kim, I left a bunch of voicemails tonight. I remember when I first started, but I, I know predictably tomorrow, 6 or 8 will be calling me back. Right. And those are the ones I'm going to chase down, not worrying about the other ones.

One thing that I was guilty of, and I hear a lot, is like Manchester, New Hampshire. If I had a lead in Manchester, I'd think, okay, there are some bad areas. What area is that in? And I'd go looking that up. It doesn't matter what area it's in because you don't have to buy it. It's contingent on a buyer anyway. So you go on the appointment, you say, oh, this is not a good area. Don't buy it.

Or if it needs too much money. So Chris, my world exists more in the afternoon. So basically what I would do is, did you You know, normally I try to do start real estate around 4, 4:30. Yeah.

A lot of W-2s do that.

So, so what I end up doing is, is, um, you know, follow-ups first. I'll go with, you know, outgoing calls, the same thing.

Just—

Yeah. Just later in the day.

Yeah.

My big thing is that I see there is I don't have a, um, I don't have an admin. I don't have an admin block, you know, cuz it's, I, I'll just go after I finish doing my outgoing calls. If I have emails, you know, sell doc and stuff to send, I send it out afterwards.

Well, your, your block is after your block of calls.

But my admin is adding all the other things, all the other things that I need to do, which I'm gonna call admin as far as, um, you know, working on website and doing some of the, these other things.

Uh, yeah, but that should be, uh, short-lived, right? You're not working on your website every day.

No, those are no, no, that stuff should, that admin is maybe even to create a block. Maybe it's a half hour or anything, you know, so anything admin, that's even, I'm thinking even more admin, whether it could be, it could be sell, you know, not sell docs, but it could be website. It might be anything. You know, recording, it might be why, it might be—

Yeah, it's a catch-all. I told Deb that because something was building up on her. She's just, you need a catch-all so you're not beating yourself up that, oh, I didn't hit my slot because I did admin. Um, by the way, when I said earlier to Dave, you know, listen to scripts driving, um, if you work out in the morning or if you drive in the morning, would it be a good idea to do that before this? Ideally, yeah, absolutely.

Yep.

Let me ask you this. The character building's better in the mind.

Updating REI BlackBook workflows, you set that right away? Like, set the time to call them back in the future or send a letter, or do you just take notes?

When I'm in REI, because MJ and Sue run most of it, I'm just looking at what calls I have to do. I do set the next task. Uh, you know, I'll say, Sue, send the, uh, realtor letter. It takes 2 seconds. Yeah, I do it right then on the call just because we've been using that. But for years I didn't even have that, right? I just did calls, but yes. Not sure where to get started? Go to smartrealestatecoach.com/getgoing for free books, strategy calls, and a whole bunch more. We're going to help you get going the wicked smart way. We've been after this for over a decade doing exactly that. Any questions on scheduling and priority prioritizing? You think we're good? Uh, let me ask you this. Any change out of that that you think you're going to make?

Anyone?

Blocking follow-up as a separate block.

Separate. Who else?

All right.

Just being more diligent about creating the blockouts.

It is the, it is most people's challenge, just not doing it.

I set the blockout every day to make the outgoing calls, but I don't have one follow-up. I don't have the admin catch up.

As long as they read, I don't jada those.

Yeah. So it's And again, that goes hand in hand into my comfort zone is no structure.

All right. So here's the thing for everyone. Whenever I say something like this, then your brain, I hope eventually will get in the habit of saying, um, that one piece I'm not good at, so therefore I'm going to have an accountability partner for that. Example, I can't think of anyone in the presence of the call, but, uh, Rob, Rob Zichelli had, you know, he lost his dad, then his mommy's putting him in assisted living, and now he's moving to Florida. That's a lot of stuff going on. You guys had a lot of stuff going on. So I said, all right, Rob, you kept missing the slots. I said, do you have the time? I don't want to impede on some of that high priority family stuff. He said, no, I have the time. I just get stuck. I said, okay, so every night when you do your nightly with me, I want you to say I hit my slot or I didn't. And Dev, we were doing this with your schedule because if it's a challenge and you need some help with it, You're not superhuman. You gotta have accountability partners around this. That's all it is.

Question.

Yep.

How, um, so those templates, it's, it goes to, um, for you to send like emails. Sometimes they ask me for emails. So how, what do you log or study? Because you need to study your scripts and all go to. QLS, and then it allows—

It's like education time?

Yes.

I would put another slot for it. Some of you, it's driving. Some of you, you get to sit down. I just gave these because these are high priorities, but I would work like the issue of going and reviewing deal structure videos. Um, I don't know where it fits in everybody's day, but I put that 6-minute or 8-minute or 10-minute slot somewhere, do a video and move on. I'm, I, and I'm, I'm happy to help you guys or one of the coaches. With this, as well as the 15-minute diary exercise, which I encourage y'all to do.

I, I blocked out like, uh, time for ARK, time for seller calls.

That's how I use it. Maybe I should do that. Is there any ARK in ARK? In you both.

I'm just kidding.

Um, you gotta block time for everything, guys. Here, here's another way of looking at this. You know how someone said they have a lot of to-do lists? I think it was Kevin. I got, Zach actually got me on this habit. I have my to-do list now is either in Asana with a team, that's a platform we use, or better for me is in my calendar. So, 'cause what I found was I was rewriting before we had the systems, I would rewrite my checklist almost every day and the items would go from today to tomorrow, but yet what I was on the calendar got done.

Oh.

So now I don't have the list on my desk. I have the shit in my calendar when I'm supposed to do it. And it gets done. I would try incorporating that if you don't already do that.

I have in my calendar, but I miss a lot of them and the, and the, the reminders come up too because it's in my calendar.

That's the opposite of me then. I needed the calendar to work. If you, if your checklist works better than whether it's electronic or personal, then that's what you use, but don't have 2. That make sense, you guys?

Yeah, 2, don't do 2.

Yeah. If you like tech and you want a hybrid, I use the Todoist app.

I know a lot of people love that.

Where you have your to-do list and then you can drag it into time blocks once you reach your chronic current pace.

Yeah, sounds cool. Our team doesn't use it, but that sounds cool.

You guys, that's—

anyone use that? Anyone else use that?

What's it, what's it called?

Todoist.

Todoist.

Video, I have seen a lot of YouTube videos and stuff, people showing how you use it if you want to. Reach out to me if you're curious. I, yeah, I've moved everything now, time blocks that I used to do, I moved it all into the app so that it's all in one spot that I have. A way of organizing it with a bunch of folders for things I'm doing this week, next week, next month, and I'm shuttling things along until I get them done. But you gotta, yeah, don't do 3 different things. That's what I've learned. If I don't, you know, I put it all into one place so I know that's what I check every day religiously. I get into trouble where if I lose my process for a couple weeks, then everything just becomes a, I don't know what to do type of thing too.

Yeah.

But yeah, which, uh, accountability helps there too, you guys. If you feel yourself slipping, it's the accountability with your coach or someone in the community.