Overcoming Real Estate Agent Burnout

Burnout is the norm in the real estate industry. But why is that? And could there be a better way? You know, this rise and grind culture that we're in, I think it's completely ridiculous. And especially in real estate, it leads to, you know, missing out on things that matter more than selling the next home. I won't say that my early days in real estate, you know, had a whole lot of balance in them. It was enough, though, for me to realize that I couldn't keep up with that pace. In 2007, you know, my first year in real estate, I sold 27 homes working every bit of seven days a week. My son Anders was born in November of that year. And I remember, literally remember holding my son, looking at him and thinking like, I cannot let you down. You know, I left a pretty cozy corporate job to get into real estate. And I went from making a couple hundred thousand dollars working no more than a 40 hour work week, to working 70 hours a week, seven days a week. And that first part year in real estate, I made $14 an hour. I'm not kidding, $14 an hour. And I was totally burnt out. And so I had to look for a different way to do it. I didn't have time. Freedom. That was the thing I was looking for when I left my corporate job. And there just had to be a different way to go about it. Make sure you stay tuned to the end of this video. I'm coming up with a challenge. I call it our time freedom challenge. And I'm going to share the details with you in just a bit. If you like the video and you like the content, hit the like button. Subscribe. Subscribe to the channel and turn notifications on. Turn notifications on and leave your feedback in the comments section so we can challenge each other in our thinking. So now that we admit we have a problem, you know, what can we do about it? What are the few things that we can work on to break this cycle of burnout? You know, I've been there. I feel your pain. And you may be at the point where you may be getting out of real estate or thinking getting out of real estate, or you might be running a good sized real estate team, but it's set up the wrong way and you're working more than you used to when you had a small team or you were a solo agent, or the stress is completely unbearable. The first thing that I challenge you to do is to take care of your physical body. And there's four things that I focus on consistently and I'm not preaching at you. I've just learned that when I take shortcuts in these four things, I'm just not where I need to be physically. I'm not energetic. I'm not bringing my best self to my business. And at the end of the day, I'm not a good dad, I'm not a good husband, and I have no margin to be anything else except super tired and ready to go to bed. So the four things in your physical body are hydration, sleep, exercise, and diet. And there's nothing fun about most of them. And I wish there was a simpler way, a more direct way to be physically energized consistently throughout the day, throughout the week, where you can achieve at a high level. So some of these things, you may be off the rails. You may be sleeping four hours a night. You may be drinking a gallon of coffee a day. You may be eating like crap consistently and never working out. I challenge you in each of those areas to take just one step closer, you know, to forming habits in those areas. I use a simple app on my phone called Strides. And there's nothing magical about it. I just identify the habits I want in my life, and then every day I just say whether I've done them or not. There's no judgment. I don't shame myself if I didn't do them. And anytime I want something to change in an area of my life, I just put a habit in Strides and I just see it. And if I dismiss it, you know, too many days, I start to think, well, I put it in there for a reason. Maybe I should get to work on it. So your physical body, it has to start there and just sleep, hydration, diet, and exercise. So now that we've taken care of your physical body, let's talk about the business itself. It 85% of real estate agents don't have administrative support, not locally, versus even a VA in a different country at a lower wage. They're doing all of the administrative tasks in their business. Here's the thing. The job of a real estate agent is 80% administrative. You know, on our real estate team, we sell hundreds of homes per year. We have six administrators on our team, roughly one administrator for every every 50 families we serve in a year. Every 50 sides, we need an administrator on our team. And if you want to sell 50 homes or 100 homes or 150 homes and not work, you know, multiples of the hours you're working right now, you have to consider the areas of your business where you can use a little Bit of leverage. Where can I build a system and have an administrator take over that system? You know, our last two hires in Real Estate B School were VAs and they were hired both out of the Philippines, both for less than $6 an hour. And they're full on full time team members that are having just as much impact as other members on our team. And so this belief system around I can't afford an administrator. I think you're kidding yourself to think that there is opportunity to bring someone on to help you with administrative tasks, to organize your email, to keep your calendar, to help you process paperwork or get packets ready for buyers or sellers, or to help in all your marketing, your listing coordination, all those different things. There are tasks that you can offload, delegate so that you can elevate in your business. And then the last thing I would tell you and challenge you to do is have a planning system. And this is pretty basic, you would think it's common knowledge. If you're saying you want to achieve at a high level in your business, you don't have an actual system to get you there. You know, we use a system called the Business Freedom Planner. And I use it myself personally. We created it based on all of the years of failure and success. The good, bad and ugly of everything that we achieved as a business went into this Business Freedom Planner. And it allows us just to break down, you know, you've probably heard me say it before, a three year vision, a one year plan, 90 days at a time. You know, the monthly, weekly, daily, hour by hour cadence that you need to be able to just make better decisions and to see attach the thing you're doing right now to the vision you have in the future. You know, I was willing to show homes an hour and 15 minutes away from my house back in 2008, 2009, because I knew I was building a system to help buyers that one day I wouldn't have to be the person doing that thing. And so challenge yourself, you know, to think differently, but also to make sure you have an actual system in place where you're moving closer to doing the things that are worth more money in your business. You know, so you're, you're able to elevate out of the things of your business that you don't love to do. I know it's not easy to make this leap from, you know, overworked, underpaid real estate agent to, you know, working one day a week, full free business owner. And so a lot of times we see that gap and we just get discouraged. And so my encouragement today is wherever you are in your journey, you know, it is the same question I asked myself back in 2007, 2008, I was seven days a week. I had a new marriage that I wanted to be successful in. I had a new child, so I was learning how to be a dad. And it was the same question I asked myself back then that I want you to ask yourself now and is, how do I need to think about my business differently if I can't do every position in my business? It's the franchise prototype question from E myth Michael Gerber. If I had to replicate my business 10,000 times, how would I think about my business differently? Answering that question systematically, you know, month by month, quarter by quarter, year after year, will help you avoid burnout in your business. You there's not an easy way to do this and I feel like if we just slow down a little bit, we can play this long game in business and just play a different game. To me, the fun game to play is this constant adding more value to my clients, adding more value to my team members so that I can be the one that sets the stage for success on both internally and externally in the business, so that I can achieve what I'm looking to achieve with my business and my life. Now. I'm not saying it's easy to make the leap from, you know, agent burnout to business freedom. It simply starts with a commitment in your mind to shift your mindset around what's possible to think about your business as a system of systems where I could use a little bit of leverage from even a part time administrator. What would it look like to bring someone into your world that can take the things off, off of your plate that aren't dollar productive to begin with. So they're not giving you time freedom and they're not giving you money freedom and they're making you stressed out. So it's a lose, lose, lose situation. If you're at the point in your journey where you know, you're trying to make sense of this all we have a Time freedom challenge. It's thetimefreedomchallenge.com or click on the link below. We spend 21 days together. I'm gonna push you and challenge you. I'm gonna train you up, going to answer questions live. It'll be an awesome 21 days together. And if you like the video, hit the like button, subscribe to the channel, turn on notifications and comment below. Constructive feedback helps fuel me for the next video. I know.