Get Your Life Back with the Time Freedom System

What is up business Freedom Podcast listeners? Today's podcast, it's going to be a pretty, pretty thick one in terms of content. So. And I do want to take the time to go through this and slow down a little bit. This is something I am truly passionate about and something in real estate B school that we call the time freedom system. The fact that we're all given the same amount of hours in a week is about the coolest thing I can imagine when it comes to being an entrepreneur and building a business. It levels the playing field in terms of your ability to do all the things you need to do in business, and then hopefully you're not sacrificing every area of your life to be great in business. You know, I joke with folks, you know, business is one of like. It's actually one of like 10 areas that I focus on. Let's call it six, though. There's basically about six life areas that you need to make sure you're achieving consistently. Um, so that you don't get out of balance, right? It's sort of basic wheel of life, wheel of business, Tony Robbins, 101 type stuff. And I think a lot of guys and a lot of girls that are building a real estate team, they get the whole thing out of whack where they don't make. They don't create standards around what they're willing to do with their time. They don't commit to only touching the things in their business that are like, off the charts in terms of dollar productive activities. And I'm going to go through a lot of concepts today, and hopefully there's a ton. Not hopefully there's going to be a ton of value in this. And for some of you, it's going to motivate you to take a next step with real estate B school because you kind of like, you're kind of lost when it comes to this thing. And this time freedom system, to me is about. I'd like to. I say it too much. In fact, I say this is. This is the entire game. I probably said that about a couple dozen different things on this podcast. You sort of know that I'm using it just to be dramatic. And I really do believe this is the entire game. So the question I have for you as we kind of open up this topic, is to ask yourself, are you making consistent progress towards meaningful goals in the areas of life and business that really matter? Think about that for a second. Consistent progress toward meaningful goals in the areas of life and business that matter. So are you kicking ass in business, and you're falling short in your faith walk, or as a husband or a wife or as a parent or, you know, in your church. You know, are there areas that you're falling off because you're giving too much time to your business? And the reason why this topic and why I really do believe, if you get this right, that's why we called it the time freedom system. If you get this right and you organize your time in a certain way, you focus on the things that are really going to move the needle for you, you get massive freedom of time because you're not spinning out, you're where you're supposed to be all the time, because you've predetermined some of these things ahead of time. So the cool thing, like I said, is that time is finite. You can't create any more of it. There's 168 hours. Hopefully you're getting at least, let's call it with sort of prep, you know, for bedtime. Hopefully you're getting a minimum of seven solid hours of sleep per night, but let's call it 8. With prep time, 8 times 7 is 50, roughly about 100 waking hours. So you've got a lot to do if you're going to show up in all the different areas of your life with those hundred hours. And I don't make light of the fact that these are extraordinary times in terms of just the overwhelming amount of information that we have coming at us all the time, and the responsibilities of being a parent and a spouse and a friend and being involved in your church and maybe, God forbid, you have a hobby, right? Like, there's just a lot going on social media and the numbing out that we do and binge watching Netflix and all of those crazy things that happen. So the struggle is 100% real, and I honor it. And if you're at the point where you're just feeling frustrated and you don't think there's an extra minute in the week, then you've got to hang on in terms of just really embodying this training. I don't know if embodying is the right word. Embracing this training. And I do believe there's freedom in structure. You know, when you look at my calendar, I'm not going to share something super personal. I pretty much schedule everything, and if it's not in my calendar, there's a good chance it's not going to happen. So if it's important for me to show up for my wife a certain way and to do her honeydew list on Saturday mornings and to make sure we have a family dinner with my mom and the kids and to make sure that we have a date night every week to make sure that, you know, I'm getting my workouts and I'm getting my morning devotion and meditation time and I'm in the Word and I'm reading the Bible and that's time blocked. And then all the other business responsibilities that I have, I know they're going to get done because all I need to do is look at my calendar. So there's freedom in the structure. And here's the thing, there are no secrets when it comes to any of this stuff. You've got, you know, all these things, you're just not doing them and that's where you're falling flat. And there's a really simple exercise I went through and I just want to briefly go through it. We call this the Business Freedom Index. And I don't know if I've covered this in a podcast before. It is so it's just a simple calculation. It's basically the amount of pre tax income that you take home in a given year divided by the number of hours being honest with yourself that you work. So let's say you took home $300,000 pre tax after all your expenses pre tax before you paid yourself 300,000. Let's say you work 60 hour work weeks on average and you took two weeks vacation. 60 hours times 50 weeks 52 minus two weeks vacation, 50 weeks 60 times 50 is 3000 hours. Your $300,000 income divided by your 3000 hours leaves you at a business freedom index of 100. Here is the cool thing. 250, 500. $1,000 per hour is possible when you set your business up the right way. So when you look at what you're currently making in terms of your Business Freedom Index, what you want to be making, you need to make some really intentional decisions about where you spend your time. So I can't go into all of what those decisions are and the activities that make you money in your business. That's essentially what we do as a coaching company. You just need to know what your number is. If you want to make $500,000 and you want to work 2,000 hours a year, your business freedom index is 250, right? 500,000 divided by 2,000 hours is $250 per hour. If you're working on things that an administrator can do and you're doing that 20 to 30 hours a week, you have no shot at making $250 an hour. So calculate what your number is currently and then what you want it to be. And what does that gap look like? For me, it took me five years to get to $250 an hour. It took me another five years to get to $500 an hour. And now I'm in that third five years where I'm working toward getting to a thousand. And I think I actually have a shot at it this year. And it's not to say that money is everything, because it is not even close to anything. It is a score that we keep in the program so that we know where you're at in terms of the amount of money you're making in the time that you're committing to your craft. Hopefully you've read the book by Brian Tracy called Eat that Frog. We've all got frogs. And the hint here around your dollar Productive activity is probably the thing that you don't really want to do, but you know, it's the thing you have to do right now to move your business forward. So you have to stop and think consistently about what you're spending time on and if that's the highest use of your time. And this is a question of productivity, not busyness. There's a really cool definition of productivity. This was Dan Kennedy who just passed away about six months ago. I got really deep into direct response marketing when I first got into real estate. I'm still all about direct response marketing. His definition, though, of productivity is really awesome. And this is worth noting, or maybe even writing down. Productivity is the deliberate strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals. And that is a mouthful. But if you really think about everything, time, talent, energy, resources and opportunities, are you just busy all the time or are you actually being productive? There is a really cool quote and a great book by James Clear called Atomic Habits. The quote that I love is you do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. And creating a time management system. This is what we call the Time Freedom system. You can get it all done. You just need to make sure you're adopting this one system. So it starts with a calendar. We recommend all of G Suite. Google Calendar is shareable, it syncs with all your devices and it's free. Even G Suite is only five bucks a month per user. And and so it is critical you build this thing out in an electronic calendar. And we're going to talk about what the perfect week looks like. Establish your hours with your clients, your family and friends and think about an ideal week in terms of what a Monday through Friday looks like a Saturday and Sunday. Maybe you're at the point where you still need to be in production, but what are your business hours? Do you have one late evening every week? Put that late evening into your calendar. Recurring, right? Do you have a non negotiable family dinner? A date night? Sundays are off limits. Saturday afternoons I don't work. I went for years where I did work Saturdays by appointment only and it was a 9, 11 and a 1 appointment. So as long as I could have a quality a qualified listing appointment on a Saturday and I can rack up three in a row, it was game on. I was totally fine doing it. I would prefer if and if I only had two, I would want a nine and an eleven. I wouldn't want to. The one o' clock was only reserved if I had the other two slots filled with high quality appointments. But this is also your morning routine, right? What are you going to do every day in the morning to get a jump on making sure you have the best chance at showing up into the day? I didn't say that exactly right. You get my point. My morning routine is I get up, I make this amazing coffee. It's a bulletproof K cup with some vanilla protein powder and a scoop of almond butter mixed up and super frothy. And it is about the best time of my day. I'm typically up ahead of everyone else. I go right into a meditation on headspace. I go from there into an abide meditation where I meditate on scripture and then I read the Bible and I'm doing The New Testament 260. It's a five day reading plan. Over the course of a year I'll read the New Testament, so that's about 45 to 50 minutes. And then I spent about an hour with the family and then I'm into my startup ritual for the day. So what does that look like for you and is it time blocked in your calendar? Everything is time blocked in my calendar. If you're in production, you know, and you still need to lead, generate or you need to call your database or you need to recruit, all of those things most team leaders still need to be doing. That is new business development time. That is not negotiable. We call that protected timing. On our calendar it's 8 to 11 Monday through Friday with 50 minutes on, 10 minutes off. 50 minutes on, 10 minutes off, 50 minutes on, 10 minutes off protected, a little bit of a break after that, then an hour of follow up every day and then appointments in the afternoon. 90 day, 90 day, 90 minute time blocks that are in your calendar even if there's nobody in that appointment. And in between you have time for email and if you don't book an appointment with a potential recruit or a listing appointment, you have an additional time block to work on a rock or a project that you're working on. You know, and the last point, if you're building an actual business, you need time for systems work, working on the business. If you missed the last podcast I covered that, that was one of the five reasons you need a coach. Because you need to know what to do during those working on the business time blocks. We recommend three 90 minute time blocks where you're just working on the business, you're building tools and systems in the business. So that is talks about hours and time blocking and the ability to master time blocking. I'm not going to dive too deep into dollar productive activities really as a team leader it's you know, prospecting for talent or new business. It's lead follow up with talent or new business. It's appointments with prospects, seller prospects, maybe buyer consultation, seller consultations and recruiting prospects and then negotiating deals and that's pretty much all you get paid for in real estate and then building systems and casting vision and managing people and those sorts of things. So the last part here is that once you have this ideal week built out, the next step is to dominate your day. Actually stick to the time block that you built, the time blocks that you built in. We have a simple process. It's a one sheet piece of paper that we use for our members to make sure that they stay on track and don't beat yourself up. There's a really good video online. If you go to YouTube and type in 1% better everyday James Clear, he talks about like the trajectory, the exponential growth that's possible if you just focus on getting a little bit better every day. So when it comes to your time management system, and I know you can't really manage time, so semantics there, that's what we call the time freedom system. The exponential impact of just getting a little better at something every day. When you look out, you know, a quarter 90 days from now or four quarters from now, or three years from now, you know, it'll be a different world. The next thing I want to cover, this is what we call, you know, it's called the Eisenhower Matrix and it's the four Ds and you can, you can easily pull up a blog article about this way of prioritizing, basically prioritizing the onslaught of tasks that keep coming at you every day. They don't care. Your inbox doesn't care that you have this predetermined sort of ideal day. Right. Or these, you know, they don't care that you're running a time freedom system. And so there the quote from Dwight Eisenhower, he's the 34th president, was that what is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important. So if you look at this matrix and it's worth googling, there's urgency across one access and then importance across another access. And there are just not important, not urgent things that we do that we shouldn't be doing. Shouldn't be playing around on Facebook, we shouldn't be watching Netflix or any TV really. And I say you shouldn't be doing those things. I only say that if you actually want to achieve in the areas of life and business that matter. Like I'm assuming you're listening to this podcast because you are a person that wants to achieve at a really high level in areas of life and business that really matter, it's okay to have some downtime every once in a while. When I travel, sometimes on a plane, I'll watch a Netflix series or a movie. I love movies. I've eliminated social media 99% of social media. I just use it a little bit for business. I found myself, I know this isn't horrible. I spent 2 hours and 44 minutes in a week on Facebook on my phone. And when that happened, and I think it was up from like an hour and a half to a week before. So I would actually go into Facebook, I would check our members group, I would add value in there. And then I found myself getting away from that and just swiping up and looking at stories and looking at everything that everyone else was doing. So I got away from it. That was not urgent, not important. I had to delete it. That's the first D. Not important, but urgent are things that you delegate who can do it for you. Not urgent and important. Those are the things that you schedule a time to do and then urgent and important stuff that comes at you. It's urgent and important. You have to do it now. Those are stuff that are not pre planned but they come into your world. They are important. They are urgent. You have to do it now. A not urgent, important example is like working out. Do I need to work out today? Like I'm not going To I don't think I'm going to have a heart attack today if I don't work out yet. If I don't work out for 10 years in a row and I don't take care of my physical body, that not urgent thing, you know, it is really important, even though it's not urgent. And then what's a good example of something that's urgent but not important? Like, a lot of the tasks that come up in a real estate transaction, they're urgent, but they're not important, like for you to actually do them. And so my last point here is we go through a process and I picked this up from. I think. I don't know where it was from. It was from the book Traction. Gino Wickman is this concept of a clarity break, where it's just once a week, you get away from it all, no technology, and. And you ask yourself the question, what's working and what's not working in the areas of your life and business that matter? So you go through your business, you go through your finances, you go through your spiritual life, you go through your emotional wellbeing. What's working, what's not working, Your relationships, parent and spouse, your physical body, and then any fun family stuff that you have obligations that you want to fulfill on. And so it's just in your calendar, it's out of the office. And you don't. If you're going to move it, you don't delete it, you can move it. I like to do these on. I did them for a while on Friday mornings. I've been taking Friday mornings off. So I move these to think they're on Thursday mornings after our kids have an assembly at our school. And then I go right into a clarity break after that. So y'. All. I know that was a lot. I know that was a lot. And I wanted to get it all done in a single podcast. I didn't want to separate this out over a bunch of podcasts. Hopefully you get a gist of what the Time Freedom system is and how it can help you. If you're at the point in your journey where, you know, you want to build an amazing business that doesn't rely on you, and you've already started down that path, you've already achieved. You're beyond traditional success in the industry, which is two, three, four homes a month, maybe you have an administrator, you have a small buyer agent team, and maybe even you have a medium or large size team. 10, 12, 15, 20 members. You know, we had a new member Come on, that'll do.5 million in GCI this year, and we have members coming on at 500,000 GCI. All the principles are the same in terms of setting your business up foundationally correct so that you can have a business worth owning to fuel a life worth living. And so one is there to serve the other, not vice versa. A lot of folks, you know, are living to work or working to live, whatever the saying is. So if that's you, and you know you're at the point where you need to have a conversation about some of these things and talk through some of these things, the only thing we have to offer you is a conversation. And so go to realestatebschool.com, click on any button that says apply now or I want to grow my team or our 30 day pilot program. Those things will bring you to a page just to make sure you're in the right place. And then you fill out a simple application where you get on the phone with a business coach and we'll kind of unpack that. Where you are today, where you want to go, and what's holding you back. So if that's you, take action right now, go to realestatevschool.com and we'll see you on the next episode of the Business Freedom Podcast. Y' all be good.