A real estate pro explains how he went from grinding 80-hour weeks in 2007 to reclaiming 20% of his working hours. The fix: get clear on what you want, stop doing low-value tasks, and build systems that work without you.
2007
27 homes
44 homes
You will gain 20% of your waking working hours back (example: working 60 hours → 12 hours back).
About 70–80+ hours per week
Do you struggle to make the hours you put into your real estate business worth the money that you make? You know, traditional success in real estate will have you working every evening, every weekend. And even if you rationalize somehow that you have freedom, you really don't. I've been there. I feel your pain. If you're a struggling top producing real estate agent, chances are you don't have time freedom. And in today's video, I want to dive deeper into what that could look like and how you could achieve it yourself. If you, if you stick around, I'll show you how to get 20% of your working hours back. In our Time freedom Challenge. If you like these videos, make sure you give us a thumbs up and make sure you subscribe to the channel and turn notifications on so you hear about new videos as they hit. When I first got into real estate, it was 2007. It was right before the Great Recession of 2008. There was nothing easy about my journey. Instantly I was selling a lot of homes. I figured out how to generate leads. So I became a good direct response marketer. And I was busy out of the gate. I sold 27 homes in my first 10 months in real estate, 44 my first full year in real estate. And I was top 1% of 1% of agents in my market. Instantly a successful real estate agent. The challenge with it was I was working every evening and every weekend. I wasn't present at all with my new son who was born the end of 2007. And so I really, at that time, I committed to just doing the business a different way. And I want to go through three things that you can focus on to allow yourself to build a business that gives you time freedom. The first thing is that I had a clear vision of where I wanted to go. You know, while other agents were scrambling for the next deal, I was thinking about, you know, three years from now where what could this business look like? And I focused some of my time during the week on, and it wasn't actually during waking hours, it was like 10pm to 3am Several nights a week that I would sort of envision this future business and work on systems to build this future business out. That was the big differentiator for me in those early days is that I didn't just sort of lay down to what the industry told me traditional success would look like. I envisioned like, what could this look like? How could I serve buyers and sellers at a very high level without me working? At that time I was working like 70, 80 plus hours a week, every evening, late into the, you know, early hours of the morning. And it just wasn't sustainable. I was more focused on my business than I was on being a good husband or a good father. And those were the areas of life that really mattered to me. And. And so it was that vision that allowed me to push through those early, tough times. The second thing is that, you know, ask yourself, as you're working in your business, is the thing that I'm working on right now, is this the highest and best use of my time? So, again, back in those early days when I was, like, moving a contract, you know, if there was a buyer that was under contract and I was touching paper and calling attorneys and scheduling inspections, I'm like, there's no way this could be the highest and best use of my time. So that forced me in this vision of building a business that gave me time, freedom. It forced me to hire an administrator, you know, someone that could take over all of the paperwork. They were my marketing coordinator. They were my listing coordinator, they were my closing coordinator. And that one hire and just being able to ask myself or being willing to ask myself, like, is this. Is this the best thing I could do with my time? And I. Am I the only one that can do this thing right here? And that allowed me just to shift my business entirely and gain, you know, 40, 50 hours a week back, and then just reinvest that time that I gained back into things that were going to move the business forward. And that was basically marketing systems, recruiting systems, sales systems, you know, our team growth systems, our tracking systems, all of those things, I had the time to do it. Now, since I wasn't bogged down in the things that, you know, honestly, I wasn't even good at and I didn't like doing number three, I would say, is to give yourself some leverage and leverage. There's a couple things I want to talk about there. Leverage in the form of, like, actual leverage in the business with systems and maybe an administrative hire or a closing coordinator or a showing agent. And then leverage, emotional leverage. Like, every morning you need to be motivated to get out of bed and do the thing you may not want to do to push your business forward. So for me, it was like a picture of my son as a baby or, you know, when Kendall, my daughter, was born in 2010, I would have a picture of my wife and Anders and Kendall, and I would look at that picture, and I would have the leverage, the emotional leverage to do the thing that maybe I didn't want to do. And so for you, what could that leverage look like? So if you have a vision, you know of where you're going, and then you, you apply this leverage, the leverage is the thing that pushes you through those decisions about, you know, is this the best thing I could be doing with my time? And even if you have to do that thing, you know that maybe you're not good at, or maybe you don't want to be doing long term, you have the leverage to push through to that vision. So there's nothing easy about real estate. I will say that doing it the traditional way or doing it in a way where you're building something that provides time, freedom and the freedom to enjoy life at a totally different level. And so there's really no easy path. I will say that, I will say the path of building a real real estate business is way more rewarding. And the chance that you'll have regrets in the end are so much less than just grinding out transaction after transaction. And so if you're at the point in your journey where you are not in alignment with your time, your money, and your stress, we have a Time Freedom Challenge. It's just a time where I get to coach you directly, train you, challenge you to think about your time differently. And the big claim and the big guarantee on the Time Freedom Challenge is that you'll gain 20% of your waking hours, waking, working hours, back. So if you're working 60 hours a week, I will give you 12 hours back and just go to thetimefreedomchallenge.com or click on the link below. And again, if you love these videos, I want you to share them. I want you to subscribe, I want you to hit the like button. I want you to turn your notifications on and even leave comments because I love to go back and forth in dialogue with you. If you want to challenge me, I'm open to it. Thanks again for watching the video. Until next time, go do something better with your time. Think about how you can move your business forward and not just look for the next deal. It.
