The Power of Time Blocking Your Day To Succeed Better In Your Real Estate Business

What's up, Business freedom Podcast listeners, today we're going to dive into something that you have never heard of before. It is called time blocking. I'm totally kidding. This is one of those common sense is not always common practice. And I challenge you to really dig into this simple concept. It is the fact that we must time block our day if we're to show up at the highest levels as a husband, as a father, as a business owner, as a man of God, in our friendships and our men's groups. And I'm talking obviously from the male perspective. And if you're a female real estate agent or team leader, you have it even harder than we do as men because it's likely, if you're like most of our female members, you don't get a pass on all the things that go on at home. Just because you're kicking serious ass in your real estate business doesn't mean you don't have to get all the kids together and corral maybe even an additional kid in your husband and all of that. So I've got a lot of respect for a female real estate team leaders. My mom, when she left my dad when I was age 4, she spent about a year not running her own business, but then she basically started her own business when I was like five, six years old. My sister was six or seven, she bought a building and ran a business. It was called the Hair Place. She was a hairstylist. So I definitely have a lot of respect. What she went through as a business owner and sort of seeing her do all the jobs that it would take to run a successful business for many, many years. And I'm pretty sure that you all have heard of the power, the importance of time blocking. I will say among all the productivity strategies, habits, tools, systems that I use that I've gone through here on the podcast over this extended. I didn't want to call it a series, but it really has been a series on productivity. This one is like it's the game. It's like it's most of the game. I don't want to say it's the entire game. And if you don't, if you're not really clear on what you're supposed to be doing at a given moment, how could you possibly know, like, where to spend your time? Like, it's the difference between being 100% reactive all the time, like putting out fires. I'm in my email. Whatever's in my email, I'm going to do. I'm on my phone. So I go into Facebook because there's a notification and all of a sudden it's like, wait, what, what promises have I made to my family? You know, so when I'm away from them, I'm being a really good steward of that big block of time. If you think about it, for a real estate agent team leader, you're spending way more than half your waking hours, really in the business, doing the work in the business. If you think about 168 hours in a week, if you're getting eight hours of sleep a night times seven, that's 50. What is that, 56? Can't do math without a calculator. So roughly about 110 hours you have waking hours. And my guess is that if you're running a high level real estate team, you're probably working more than 55 hours a week. I would guess 50 to 60 hours is probably on the low side of most members when they come into real estate B school. That's what they're seeking relief from the most, the insanity of the amount of hours. And the truth is, when you're not in the business, like really doing something, you're probably home, you're probably sneaking, you're thinking about the business, you're stressed about the business, or after dinner, when you know the kids are getting settled, you're probably back in email, you're probably texting all the time. If you're with your family on a Sunday afternoon, you're in your phone, you're in your email, you're texting, you're taking phone calls. So it's probably even more than that. So more than your more than half your waking hours are spent in your business. And here's the thing, I want that to be. In real estate B school, we talk about a lot about time, money and stress. I made a commitment with the amount of money I wanted to make from for a unit of time that I put into my real estate business. That first number was $250 an hour. Took me five years to get there. So it took me a full five years from starting in March 5th. I think 2007 is when I left my corporate job all the way to about 2012 is when I got my hours down to the point where the money and the time worked out. Took me another five hours to make about $500 an hour. That was my second number. And so that's about 10 years in. So that was probably about 2017. This is not exact, probably four or five years for each phase. And now my big push is for $1,000 an hour. I want to work 1,000 hours a year and I want to make a seven figure net income. And this is only possible because I time block. Like I have mastered this skill of time blocking. Like nobody you probably will ever meet if it's not in my calendar, even my wife, I'm like, I can make anything. You know, we definitely have a division labor in the house. My wife is really good with details and she's really good at managing the kids. And they're both in soccer now and Anders is also in a fishing club and Kendall is also in our production, like our drama club. And so we have some things going on. It's not totally unbearable because they're not in like competitive sports. They just play soccer with their school. So a couple times a week, and if it's in my calendar, I will be there. I will get everything moved around. I go through a process where I move stuff around to accommodate the things that I've committed to that are really important. In that same weekly planning process. I get the things off my calendar that aren't worth doing, that maybe I committed to in a time where it felt good to commit to it. And then it actually comes time to do it and it doesn't feel like a good thing. So last episode, if you missed it, we talked about mastering our mornings and really being intentional about our morning time. So I'm not going to repeat that. For me, it's six to seven is my sort of morning routine. Seven to eight is kind of with the kids. And depending on how the kids are going, if they're doing their own thing, I can get a workout in 8 to 8:30. Is that buffer time? I don't ever take ever. I really try to limit any. I work from home for, you know, three days a week and I go to the real estate team one day a week. And Friday, Saturday, Sunday I have off and even Thursdays I'm working on taking a little bit more, more time off. And I don't take like an appointment out of the home on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. To me, that is just a complete waste of time, you know, driving somewhere to meet for a cup of coffee. When what's the point of the cup of coffee? Like, is it moving the business forward? Is it, you know, is it, you know, most of the time those cups of coffee or let's grab lunch or any of let's grab a drink after work, it's not really moving you closer toward your meaningful goals. So when you look at your calendar you need a process of picking the most important things to do consistently and making room for those things in your calendar. And if you're at the point where you need to focus on dollar productive activities, which is really everybody, well, the first thing I want you to do is commit to put on your calendar, your electronic calendar, the times where you are not working. Like, be really intentional and have some standards around your time and get your clients to agree to. To the times that you're not available to work. For me, there was one evening time slot when I really figured the first couple of years it was all over the place. When I really figured out that this thing could consume everything, I really got it down to one time slot in an evening. Monday through Thursday, Fridays was a family night, and then Saturday mornings, if I could go on three good appointments, I would. And this was for probably about three years, nine, eleven, and one where I just said as long as I was set up for an appointment, a listing that I had a really good shot at taking, that was really well qualified, I would go out on those appointments because my team at that point really needed me to do that. I was the only listing agent probably for about two years. First two and a half years I did, you know, 90% buyers and then I trends. Then I got that off my plate and then I figured out how to do listings. And, you know, it was a. It was not a great market. I actually got up to 92 active listings at one point and none of them were selling because it was the crappiest market that you could ever be in. It was like 2009, 10, 11 is when I was our listing agent. Well, mostly 9 and 10. So focus on dollar productive activities. What does your team need you to do right now that's going to move the business forward in the most significant way Right now. Those things have to be time blocked in your calendar. For most real estate agents, it has to be that first part of the day. Eat that frog. Right? I did a podcast episode on that exact thing. What did I call it? I think I called it the Truth About Frogs. Right. The truth about frogs is that in real estate, we have a few of them every day. New business developments, calling people that have never heard from you before. Follow up is talking to people that you've had one or two conversations with and you're moving that relationship forward. Those are the two biggest frogs you must do every day as a real estate agent and as a team leader. If you're going to move the business forward. Maybe you're at a Point where you're not as heavy in production or you're working mostly sphere, you still need to be intentional with calling your sphere every day. And you probably are the main recruiter for your team. And if you're not spending a lot of time developing a deep bench of folks that want to join your team, I promise you, your real estate team is, you're probably putting it in a very vulnerable position because you're not developing a deep bench. So we have to think about work. The plan and I covered two of them already. And this is for your real estate agents on your team. You should go through plan number one is prospecting. We don't call it prospecting, we call it new business development. But the acronym is easy to remember. So plan is prospecting is first lead, follow up is number two. So we do 8 to 11 on our team is prospecting and 11:30 to 12:30 is lead follow up. That's number two. A PLA is appointments. These are consultations only, not appointments to show a property or an appointment to present an offer. This is just a new consultation. You're meeting with a buyer, potential buyer client or a potential listing client for the first time. That's a appointments, which we on our team, we call it consultations. And then n is negotiate a buyer contract or a seller contract. That's not the same as negotiating repairs or negotiating an appraisal. We actually believe that those aren't dollar product, they're dollar productive activities. But not for a salesperson on our team. So if you're getting caught up in a lot of those things, maybe you can get some leverage through a licensed transaction coordinator that can take over some of those tasks. So prospecting, lead, follow up appointments and negotiating contracts, those are the only things that you get paid for as a real estate agent, As a real estate team leader, prospecting for talent and following up with talent and then appointments, recruiting appointments. If you're not at the point those should be filling up your calendar. If you're at the point where you're out of, you know, buyer and seller production, you're still probably in a team recruiting type role. So when I look at my calendar and I'm actually going to pull up my calendar and look at it, you know, I use Google Calendar and Friday, I call it a clarity break. No appointments from 8:30 to 6, from 6 to 9 every night is family time. I typically get into our bedroom at around 9 o'. Clock. 8:30, 9 o' clock is 8:30, kids are down is the goal. My startup time Monday through Friday is 6 to 7 is Bible study and meditation, family time and get ready seven to eight and I'll sometimes get a workout in there. Then I have buffer time every Monday of every week I have a 90 minute weekly startup where I'm doing just some things I need to get done. I'm watering the plants in my office. I'm doing a weekly prep in my planning process where I'm picking a weekly big three that I want to accomplish. We do weekly team feedback because real estate B school is virtual. So we do feedback from the week prior. I review our scorecards in both businesses and I'll add any issues into our meetings of the week. We have functional meetings and then we have bigger team meetings and leadership meetings that happen every week. So I'll add issues to those agendas. And this is all sort of virtual. It's either in a Google document or in a Trello board is how we manage those businesses. So that's one recurring appointment. And then I have meetings from 11am to 2pm every Monday. Tuesdays are team day so I go physically go into the office where we have our leadership meeting for 90 minutes from 8:30 to 10am we have our weekly team meeting 11:30 to 12:30 we do personal development as a team. 12:30 to 1:30 we have our weekly team meeting for real estate B school 11am on Wednesday. So all of these things are recurring. So for you it's probably protected time 8 to 11 every morning. Get your morning routine in your electronic calendar. Get the email checking email. Email is the biggest time suck you could possibly think you're being productive. And when you're in email you're typically responding. You're reactive to what's going on outside of what you committed to focus focusing on for that time block. So time block email and turn email off when you're not in it. And that's really about it. So the challenge is to really commit to time blocking and set some standards around when you're available. You know if you're in production your afternoon should be probably a 1 and a 3pm or 2 and a 4pm for consultations. You know that gives you Monday through Friday 10 consultations, 10 new buyer consultations after you already got prospecting and lead follow up done like it's that's plenty of time where your clients can hopefully you're not showing homes. If you're a team leader you should have some showing agent leverage. There's not a lot of showing homes is not a dollar productive activity. If you're trying to make $250 an hour, which is 500,000 a year, divided by 2,000 hours, that's $250 an hour. In most markets, being a showing agent is a $25 an hour activity. And so the margin between what you want to make and what you can pay a showing agent and the fact that you'll be spending a ton of time in the evenings and weekends showing homes, huge leverage point that we teach in real estate B school. You do not want to be showing homes. You can find someone who can do it and take care of your clients probably even better than you can, because they love doing that thing. So look at your calendar. Open it up. How well organized in it is your personal life time blocked in there? That is the big challenge to you. You must live in your calendar, live in the time blocks. And then the question is, this is same as the last episode in terms of mastering our mornings. You know, common sense, right? This is common sense stuff. And is it common sense? Is it common sense that you're not doing or is it common practice? Right. Common sense isn't always common practice. And I want to make sure that you're actually doing the things that I know in the deepest part of my being that this stuff done at the highest level will change everything for you. They'll bring a level of normalcy to your life and your spouse will feel the stress melt away because you are exactly where you're supposed to be. And you can share your calendar with your spouse so you can live off the same calendar. That's the biggest thing I see with a lot of real estate team leaders. They're not on the same page with their spouse. And that creates all this sort of tension at home, which then when the real estate team leader is doing real estate, they feel like they, they're taking away from their family. When they're with their family, they feel like they should be doing real estate. And they're never in one place at a time. They're never physically present. Well, they're physically present sometimes. They're never mentally present. They're always somewhere else. Your team feels it, your family feels it. It's a lose, lose all around. So my prayer, my hope for you is that you take this little bit of training seriously. And if you're at the point in your business where it is not running smoothly and you know you need help, you have people on your real estate team that are depending on you to bring some normalcy, to bring a cadence, to bring some accountability and structure. So that they can succeed at a really, really high level. And that'll help you succeed. You've got to reach out. You know, we've been doing this for six and a half years as of the recording of this podcast. This is like late 2019. And so this is not new for us. We help real estate team leaders build out a business that's profitable, systems driven, sustainable for the owner. You know, where your hours come down, your income goes up and your stress comes down. It's all about time, money and stress. And we want your business to scale, we don't want your stress to scale, we don't want the hours in the business to scale. Right? And so we want to detach time and money and stress and have that equation look better for you. So if that's you and you need help with this process, the only thing I can offer you is a conversation about your business. Go to realestatebschool.com a 45 minute business growth strategy session is all we've got to offer. It's obvious on the website how to take a next step there. And I will see you over there. And be good, do the work here. Commit to time blocking. We'll talk to you soon. Bye.