The Frustrating Realities Of Being A Real Estate Agent

Could there be a harder job than being a real estate agent? Long hours, not a lot of respect from our clients, not really paid all that much money. It's super frustrating. In today's video, I want to really just be honest about the realities of being a real estate agent and how to overcome those frustrations. You know, like I said, being a real estate agent is really, really hard. I remember back to my early days where I was heavy in production and I was working with buyers and sellers, and it wasn't quite coming together. You know, the amount of time I put into the business wasn't reaping, you know, tremendous financial rewards. And I was stressed out all the time in my real estate business. I remember a conversation I had with a difficult client, and at this point, my skin was pretty thick. I was in my car with Julie, my wife, next to me, and I put it on speakerphone to let her hear this client just go off on me and just how I handled the conversation and how I didn't let it get to me. And at the same time, those conversations are really hard to have. And I just remember smiling at Julie while I was talking to the client. And it was a fond memory that I don't miss those days at all. You know, if you're at the point in your journey where you're struggling to make the time worth the money and the stress is like, just crazy. We have a time freedom challenge. I'm going to tell you about. If you hang around for the rest of the video and I want you to like the video, if you like the video, I want you to subscribe to the channel and I want you to turn notifications on so you're the first to know about future videos and comment in the comment section so I can keep, you know, putting out videos that are relevant to where you are in your business growth journey. You know, just because every other real estate agent and every team leader, you know, is running around with their heads cut off like a chicken, right. It doesn't mean that you have to take that same approach in your business. And so I want to break down what you could do to go from chicken with your head cut off just like every other real estate agent, to taking steps to building a business that runs like a business. And a real business is not like a job that you have to show up for. A real business has a life outside of the business owner. And I want to also talk about members of ours, Kristen and Chris Holloway, who came to me, a couple of chickens with their heads cut off and they were doing pretty good production, yet they had nothing financially to show for it. And they agreed to measure growth differently than it's typically measured in our industry. So they actually haven't grown that much in terms of the number of families they serve each year in each of the last three to four years that we've been working together. The biggest shift though is that they've tripled their take home income. And Kristen, who's the main producer on the team, has taken her hours and stress from a level 10 hours in stress down to a level 4 or 5. She used to have every incoming call come into her cell phone and she had to respond to every lead to every client inquiry. She was doing about 80% of the production herself. They had a small team back 10 that back then they didn't want a big business yet. They wanted the freedom that having a true business would afford them. And so we just got to work and we did a few things that I think you can replicate in your business and they're not really that complicated. The first one is to set standards for yourself. Standards about when you're willing to work and when you're not willing to work. And this is as simple as time blocking your calendar. You know, in my professional part of my life there are certain things that are just non negotiable. Certain times where I'm willing to work and certain times where I'm not willing to work. And I wish I would have realized it earlier on in my journey. If you let your clients dictate your schedule, they don't have a lot of respect for you. Think of any other industry where you can get in touch with the most trusted advisor in that industry. Accountant, financial advisor, attorney, like think of like all of the advisor industries and can you text them at 9:30 on a Friday night when they're with their family and hey, just can you jump on my file and stop doing what you're doing with your family time? Right. It's the craziest thing and somehow we allow it in our industry and Kristin allowed it back in those early days when we started working together. You know, she was doing a lot of production. She allowed all of her clients to dictate when she worked and when she didn't work. So we rationalize, you know, that we have freedom because we can take an hour off on a Friday afternoon, yet we worked every evening that week and we had to work both weekend days. Right. So there really is no standards around our time. So creating a standard with our time and then sticking to it with time blocks. And then the second thing I would mention is to put the personal time. There's personal, personal time blocks into your calendar before you put anything else in your calendar. And to do this with your spouse, if you have a spouse, right, to get on the same page with your spouse so that they will know when you're working and when you're not working. And then you have to, then you have someone you're accountable to and you have to honor that commitment. For me, in the early days, you know, I had an agreement with Julie that I could work two evenings and I could work Saturdays. It ended up being a little bit. Sometimes I would sneak out of bed at like 9 o' clock at night to respond to a lead. I don't think she knows that I was doing that. Sometimes I would, you know, sneak in a phone call when I should have been spending time with Anders, you know, when I was a new dad. And so I cheated and I kind of worked around the rules. Sometimes I did it though, because I had an eye toward building a business and Julie didn't know what to think in those early days. And our members typically come to us, like Chris and Kristen, where they're working like all the time. And there's no division of personal life and professional life. So setting standards and then putting the things that matter most to you in your calendar. Blocking off time. To this day, I still have time blocked off in my calendar. Family fun nights on Fridays, date night on Saturday, church and quiet time on Sunday, you know, breakfast with the kids on Saturday morning. My Fridays are blocked off the whole day as a clarity day where I'm not going to work. Thursdays are content days, you know, and my morning startup, I try not to start work until 10 o' clock on Monday. Wednesday and Thursday and Tuesday is still my real estate team day. And everything is in my calendar. You know, 4 to 5pm on every day is when I wind down. I do all the emails, I make sure that anything that has to get touched is going to be touched. 5 to 10pm I'm doing my workouts, I'm eating dinner, I'm spending time with my kids and I'm spending time with my spouse. So I've just made those commitments and I'm sticking to those commitments. So that's what I would say is the second thing, the last thing, and you've heard it said here before, if you followed anything that I do, is that you must eliminate low dollar productive activities both in your business and in your personal life. You know, one of the first things we have new members do when they come into our world is a 14 day time study. Not because a time study has anything to do with fun. It might be one of the most challenging things we ever put you through. It allows you to face the reality of where you're spending your time. And so if you want to make more money in less time and experience less stress in your life, but you're not willing to be honest with where you're spending your time, you know, how much time are you spending on media? Whether it's news, social media or watching Netflix, right? How much time are you spending quality time with your family? How much time are you spending in self care with your working hours? How many hours are you spending working on your business versus working in your business versus working on all the administrative activities in your business? So just being honest with yourself about where you're spending your time and then eliminating the things that aren't leading you closer to achieving in the areas of your life that are meaningful to you. And so if you are the one responsible for cooking and cleaning in your home and you want to, you know, make $500 an hour and you want to be a great mom or dad and a great husband or wife, and you still want to have time for hobbies and like, there's no way, in my humble opinion, I give you permission to not do housework. It's just not the thing that's gonna. Unless you love mowing the lawn or you love doing the dishes or you love cooking, that time can be better spent. And in my opinion, there are people that would love to do those things in your business and also personally. So I have taken this to the extreme and sometimes, I'm not going to lie, it drives my wife crazy that I still get bonus points when I do it. But for me to do like chores around the house, like change light bulbs and like, you know, it's just, it goes against every grain in my body to do those things. At the same time, I do get credit. I do have a honey do list that I 60 minutes a week. I allow Julie to tell me anything that she wants me to get done. The concept and the point I'm trying to make is that you have to make decisions about where you spend your time and what is high dollar producing activities versus low dollar producing activities and what you really love to do in your business and what you don't really love to do. Sometimes what you love to do may not pay that well and sometimes what you don't love to do may pay really well. And so we have to begin to look at our time and make better choices with our time. And I'm not saying this journey is easy. I tell our members that it's gonna suck either way. Being a traditionally successful real estate agent, working seven days a week, not having anything financially to show for it, and being constantly wrapped up in the drama of a real estate deal. And trust me, this, there is tons of drama. If you do enough real estate, you will take on the drama of your clients. So no time freedom, no money freedom stressed all the time. That is really hard, really painful, and not sustainable. Our approach is to look at your business differently. How can we look at the business where it can be sustainable? We can double, triple, quadruple our income and take our hours down and take our stress down. It just takes a different approach. If you're at the point in your journey where you know you need a different approach, you know that this is possible, you're inspired by what I'm telling you and you just want to take another step with us, the next step, go to thetimefreedomchallenge.com we get to spend 21 days together where I'm going to train you, coach you, push you, answer your questions. And I'm just going to show you a different way about going, going about your real estate business. Go to thetimefreedomchallenge.com or click on the link below. As with all the videos I create, please hit the like button. Subscribe to the channel, Turn on your notifications so you're the first to know about a new video and leave comments so we can have a dialogue. We can push each other, challenge each other, and maybe I can bring content that's relevant to you and where you are in your journey. And I love bringing this content to you. I love and I'm passionate about helping you look at your business differently. And freedom is possible. Business freedom is possible through real estate. We'll see you on the next video.