6 Productivity Hacks for Real Estate Agents That Actually Work

Do you struggle to get it all done every day? Being a real estate agent is the most insane job you can ever take. There is an endless amount of work that you could possibly do and if you try to do it all, you will suffer, your family will suffer. You probably won't even make the kind of money that you actually want to make in your real estate business. In today's video, I'm going to reveal the top six productivity hacks that you must employ as a real estate agent if you want to grow your sales and scale your business. Hey there. My name is Lars Hedenborg. I'm the founder of Real Estate B School and the creator of the Million Dollar agent method. Over 2,000 agents have been through Real Estate B School since 2013. We specialize in helping agents build sustainable businesses based on systems and not paying for leads or cold calling or door knocking or begging your family for business. Now, if you know you need help implementing these systems, whether it's lead generation, lead conversion, or the sales frameworks in your business so that you can add an additional 2 to 3 plus transactions per month in 90, you definitely want to check out milliondollaragentmethod. Com. In 90 days, we'll help you build out all the lead generation levers, all the lead conversion systems, all the sales frameworks you'll need to add two to three plus transactions per month to your real estate business. So just go to milliondollaragentmethod.com to watch a seven minute video. If you like what you see, book in a time to chat with my team. All right, so let's get into the six productivity hacks for real estate agents that want to grow their business without losing their life in the process. The number one productivity hack before you do anything is to know your worth. So in Real Estate B School we have something called the Time Freedom System. And an element of that is what we call the Business Freedom Index. It's a simple calculation that measures the amount of money you make divided by the hours you work, essentially your hourly worth. I still do this exercise. I made a commitment early on that I wanted to make a seven figure income working as close to a thousand hours a year as possible. Doing do the math on a thousand hours with a couple weeks vacation, it's working 20 hours per week. So I wanted to work 20 hours a week or a thousand hours making a million dollars. So my time is worth in that equation $1,000 per hour. Took me many years to get to $1,000 per hour, but I did make A commitment that I wanted to make an unreasonable amount of money in a reasonable amount of time. And most real estate agents are making less than 20, 30, $40 per hour. Now, if you want to double, triple, quote, quadruple, get to 250 or 500 or even a thousand dollars per hour in your real estate business, you have to be willing to make the commitment to just doing a simple calculation and then eliminating things that don't get you closer to that number, right? So my first number was I wanted to make 500,000 working 2000 hours. So a normal 40 hour work week. And I wanted to take home net 500,000. 500,000 divided by 2000 was 250 per hour. Do you think it's worth $250 per hour when you install a sign in someone's yard or you hang a lockbox, you even go show a home, right? There's so many things. Over 80% of the things you do as a real estate agent aren't worth the kind of money that you probably want to make as a real estate agent. So do the calculation, decide what you want the number to be, and then look at what the number actually is. And just make the commitment to see your business differently and where you spend your time differently and make the commitment over time to get things off of your plate that don't make you the kind of money that you want to make. Number two is time blocking. Boo. I can hear the boos right now. Like, Lars, are you really going to tell us that time blocking is a productivity hack? I would argue that 99% of real estate agents do not time block. You are going to have a really tough time building a business that allows for time and money freedom and reducing your stress. Not working evenings and weekends unless you time block. I live by my time blocks. At this point, money is not the motivator for me. I just want to do all the things, things that matter in my life. I want to tend to my physical body. I want to spend time with my kids and my wife and I want to do my morning routine. And I have this whole crazy infrared light system and a PEMF mat and E watt and cold plunging. And I couldn't do all that stuff if I didn't time block, right? So time blocking is something that you cannot dismiss it. Pause this video. Pull out your calendar right now. Look back the last seven days. Did I time block and did I follow those time blocks? There's only five things that make you ridiculous amounts of money in real estate, and there's simple acronym. And as you look at your calendar, I want you to see how many time blocks were spent doing these five things. So it's simple, it's P L A N S. P is for prospecting. We call it new business development. It's a little bit sexier than prospecting. Agents don't like prospecting. But new business development is just sitting still for three hours a day and generating new business. It's the lifeline of your business is to generate new business. That's the P. The L is lead follow up. So 90% of folks that you talk with for the first time, they're not ready to transact right away. So what's your lead follow up sequence? What's your lead nurture sequence? Are you actually calling these folks 30, 60, 90 days after you have that first conversation? So that's another time block in your calendar. A stands for appointments or consultations. As you're doing your follow ups, as you're doing your new business development, time blocks you're setting consultations with would be buyer and seller clients. So that's A N is negotiating deals, getting a home under contract for your seller or your buyer. Not negotiating repairs, not negotiating appraisals. This is negotiating, negotiating that first deal, that first contract. And then S is for systems. Are you actually blocking out time every week to build systems in your business that allow the business to scale outside of your own individual efforts? P L A N S. Go back and look in your calendar. How many hours last week of the 40, 50 hours, 60 hours that you worked were spent doing those five things. Number three is what we call the daily top three. So these are three things that you must get done that will move the business forward. If you remember from the P L A N S that S stood for systems, these top three are related to the systems you're building out in your business. So every day you're going to make a commitment to do three things that move the business forward. From a business building perspective, a business is simply a system of systems. Now if you're the one doing everything all the time, nothing's documented, nothing is built out in a productivity or a workflow suite. Nothing is written down. You have no checklists in your business, then you don't even have a business. So every day I want you to make commitment to write down three things that are going to move the business forward. Now this is not prospecting or lead follow up or appointments or negotiating deals. These are three things that are going to move the business forward. From a systems standpoint it could be working on your database. It could be building out short form content. It could be building out an expired postcard series or handwritten letter series or your for sale by owner sequence, or your motivated seller or your social proof system. All of those things, those lead generation levers, all the lead conversion systems, all of your sales frameworks, your presentations and your buyer packets and listing packets, those are all systems that you have to build out so that you could scale the business, make an unreasonable amount of money in a reasonable amount of time. All right, the fourth productivity hack is to review your goals daily. Now I use an app called Ticktick T I C K T I C K to review my goals daily. You could see here. So I go through a daily prayer. I have some personal goals and habits. I've got my real estate B school, I've got my revenue share organization, my financial goals there, my vision for 2027 and some prayers around how I want to show up as a leader. So I'll give you an example of my personal goals and habits. And these, I read these every morning, right? I want to give a hundred percent of myself, 100% of the time. I want to check myself when I'm triggered. I want to treat my wife with abundant love and extreme care. I want to do a daily devotion and meditation with my wife. I want to read the Bible for 15 minutes. I want to meditate and pray. I want to do some sort of personal development. I want to have meaningful connection with my kids. I want to focus my work Monday through Thursday, reasonable hours. I want to weigh 178. I want to track my food intake, workout out five times a week. I want to cold plunge. I want to do my superhuman protocol and I want to stop watching the 247 news cycle. So that's just one category here. And I've got the same for my real estate business or my real estate coaching business, my rev share business, my financial goals and my vision for 2027. And you can see this is not like a little bit of stuff here, right? So deciding in advance. And you could do this on like a notes app on your phone or I like like tick tick. I use it for a lot of things. But you have to review your goals daily. And I didn't do this forever. I did this really in my high growth years in the real estate team, I had 20 copies every year of my business plan and my personal focus areas laminated. I had like little versions of them and big versions of them. I had them in my, the shower in My closet, in the car, in the office, everywhere. I was constantly reminded. And I would review these on the daily and I would have them with me, laminated physically with me so that I couldn't forget why I was doing what I was doing. And this broke down the five or 10 year, you know, the bold, audacious goals that I had. But also into the three year vision and the one year plan, and the quarterly and the monthly and the weekly and the daily. You know, the things I'm doing today feed into where I want to be in the future, right? So there's no random things that I'm doing that don't have a direct link to a goal that I'm working on now. Some of you might say that's like not spontaneous. That's not the thing. If you're not where you want to be financially in your real estate business, or you don't have the time to enjoy the work you're doing, or your relationships are strained, or you're not tending to your physical body, or not spending time with your creator, where you're just stressed out all the time, chances are you're not slowing down to simply write down where you want to be in the future, right? So a three year vision is where you would start. Go through every area of your life that's important to you and just write down some things, your one year plan, right? Break down your business, where do you want to be one year from now? And other areas of your life, and then break it down into the weekly and the daily. If you don't do this and you don't review it every day, you will literally forget why you're doing doing the things you're doing. I'm willing to do the hard work today because I know it feeds into where I want to be in the future and the impact that I want to have in the real estate agent space. So review your goals daily. Trust me, this will change everything for you. All right, Productivity hack number five is a weekly planning session. This is 60 to 90 minutes recurring in your calendar. You could do this Friday afternoon. You could do it Saturday, early morning before the kids get up. You could do it Sunday evening, which is my preferred time. Basically, you're looking back on the week that has passed and also looking forward to the week that's coming. And you're asking yourself what worked last week and what didn't work last week. Look at your time blocks. Look at, did you get your top three done daily? You know, were you not available for your family on nights where you should have been, were you not present? Were you on your phone when you should be with the family? Right. So what didn't work, but also what worked, what went well last week and then looking forward, what should I start or stop doing based on the week that just happened? You know, we make these commitments and we plan and we have a vision and. But we rarely slow down to actually check in on that vision and basically ask ourselves, are the things I committed to, the things I want in my Future, whether it's 10 or five or three or one year out, am I actually doing those things on the daily and am I actually slowing down enough every week to just make sure I'm doing the things that are going to move the needle in business and life and the things that really matter to me? So weekly planning session, in my opinion, is a non negotiable. Do it now. Open your calendar, put it in as a recurring appointment every week, same time, sit in a den or away from everybody. You'll have your planner with you, you'll have your notes app, your vision, your goals, and you'll just review everything, what worked, what didn't work, and what am I going to start or stop doing going forward? All right, Productivity hack number six is a daily gratitude practice. Now, some of you are thinking this is a little like woo, woo or you know, kind of out there. I will tell you though, if you take every day and it could be the beginning part of the day, it could be the end part of the day, I've got a rhythm that I'm writing down the top three things that I'm grateful for in the first part of the day, in the last part of the day, I write down the top three amazing things that happened during the day. So even if it was a tough day, I'm forcing myself to find three amazing things that happened. And even if I wake up grouchy or I didn't get a great night's sleep because our new puppy, true story, like, gets up three times a night and we've got to let her out. Even if I wake up on those mornings, I'm forced, forcing myself to write down the three things I'm grateful for. You know, so having this attitude of gratitude will instill this feeling of contentment. So even if you're not where you want to be financially or in your business or in your relationships, you can still have this feeling of I'm getting there and I'm doing the work because you're not so worried about where you're not. You're focused on what is actually happening in your business and in your life and the progress that you're making. Thinking it's this psychology of fulfillment that will give you a sense of peace about where you are, knowing that you're doing the work to get you to where you want to go. So my hope for you with these six productivity hacks is that you will get some clarity around what you're worth and where you should spend your time. And, you know, a weekly planning session or, you know, working on projects or systems or, you know, having some level of gratitude just for getting to do this work, for not having to go and work for someone else. We get to work for ourselves, which is a scary thought sometimes. We are the worst boss ever because a lot of times we let ourselves off the hook. We're not doing these things that we know we need to do. So start slow. Don't implement all of these at once. And like I said earlier, if you know you need help implementing systems into your business, go to milliondollaragentmethod.com we are not going to force you into our program. It's only 90 days that we work together. Heavy implementation. We basically build out all the Legion levers. You will need to add two to three plus transactions per month in 90 days or less. So go to milliondollaragentmethod.com and we'll see you on the next video.