You Must Know What Your Time Is Worth In Real Estate

What's up, Business Freedom Podcast listeners, I cannot be more pumped about today's podcast. I'm going to dig into something I did really early on in my business growth journey, which, and this is the title of the podcast is we must know what our time is worth. We must know what our time is worth. And it's not so much that I want you to get into the mindset of trading time for money. This one thing that I'm going to really take my time to unpack with you today on this podcast is going to help you wrap your mind around the fact that you can delink time and money. So a little counterintuitive logic there, because I'm going to. I'm going to challenge you to come up with a number for what your time. Literally what your time, what, what you want your time to be worth and what it's worth now. And so I went through this process. This was early, early on. Like 2007 is when I got into real estate. I was nine months that year. 2008 is when I hired my first administrator. And then I hired my first buyer agent late 2009. And I don't say it in a bragging kind of way. My journey was, you know, the year I hired my first buyer agent, I did 95% of the 58 units that year. And then we went on to 118 units with a couple other hires, 178 with a couple other hires, a second administrator, two 48s the year I did one transaction. And throughout all of that, I have very specific driver of mine was what is my time worth? What is my time worth? What is my time worth? So I did a calculation. I came from an environment where I didn't quite. I think I made just about multiple, multiple six figures, about 200 grand. And I didn't really work more than 2,000 hours a year. So I worked a pretty consistent. It was a corporate job. I was really well paid. I was in charge of acquisitions and strategy for an aerospace company. And so there just wasn't an opportunity for really, for me to decouple my time and money. Like, If I worked 50 hours a week, it wouldn't matter if I worked honestly, If I worked 30 hours a week, it probably wouldn't have made a difference. And I worked pretty consistently about 2000 hours and $200,000. So 200,000 divided by 2000 is $100 an hour. That's roughly what I made in my corporate job, which is really good pay for a corporate job. And I did that the work was great, and I really couldn't figure out a way in a corporate environment to delink those two. You know, my boss probably made, I don't know, three, 400 grand. He probably worked more than I did, but didn't make much more than a hundred bucks an hour. The guy that ran our division, I don't think he made a million bucks. And he was working, you know, probably 3,000 hours. So he was making like $300 an hour. And my number one, I got into real estate. I remember this clearly. I came off making $100 an hour. I'm like, if I'm going to take on all this risk and get into sales, I'd never sold anything before. Figure out how to manage people, build systems, become a marketer, like all of this stuff, I better be making 250 bucks an hour. And the calculation was simple. It was $500,000 divided by 2,000 hours. Unbeknownst to me, I didn't realize that real estate agents don't work 2,000 hours. So that number, the denominator was probably 3,000 hours. I was working 60 hours a week earlier on in my. In my career, and I didn't make $500,000 for the first few years. And I was probably working 3,000 hours making 150 to 200,000. And I was like, oh, man. The math went against what I was making before, making less than I made before. And the number, though, was significant. The aspiration. This is one of those times where, you know, knowing where you want to get to, not one of those times. Always knowing where you want to go is the most important step in getting there and the mindset that you wrap around it. So for me, it was 500,000 divided by 2,000 hours. $250 an hour is what I had to make to make this even worth it. And my number has since changed, but I remember that $250 an hour was something that I memorialized it. I held it up, a goal of mine, you know, where I wanted to make more than $250 an hour. And what it forced me to do is the mindset of looking at the business and what jobs that a real estate agent has to do. Let's say there are. There's more than eight, but let's say there are eight jobs. There's probably 12 jobs that a real estate agent does really, like, one or two of those jobs are worth $250 an hour. When you really think about, like, you know, running stuff around town, what can I hire that out at that's like 10 to $12 an hour in my market. And I'm in a major metro, Charlotte, North Carolina, a marketing coordinator, that's like 15 to $20 an hour in my market. Maybe 25 for an exceptional marketing coordinator. You know, what about showing homes that's $20 to $25 an hour in my market. What about a buyer agent, like full on takeover buyers, 30 to $40 an hour when you blend out their hours versus the amount of money that they make. And a listing agent, what does a listing agent make me? 75 to $100 an hour for a really good listing agent you can give them that works, you know, consistently. And so this mindset, I was like, man, there's what is there that I could do that could earn me $250 an hour? And I determined it's building systems, it's creating content, it's mastering the marketing side of the business, leading and managing folks to achieve an outcome in the business that I didn't need to be involved in. So that's what makes a lot of money in that business. And the year I didn't get to a seven figure income this year, but I remember that I worked 42 days and it was about 18 to 20 thousand dollars a day I made in this one year, the year we did over 400 transactions and I got down to one day a week and I traveled for 10 of the 52 weeks. It was like 42 days. And so let's say it was a 10 hour day, which I don't think it was. I got up to like it was over in that business. It was over $1,000 an hour. Yeah. For that business and because I just, I made a commitment to this one number. So the question I have for you, there's two questions based on your last 12 months or even last year, your adjusted gross income, your AGI from your tax divided by the number of hours you worked. If you're working a 50 hour workweek, it's 2,500 hours. You made 250 last year. Take home. I'm not talking gross commission income, I'm talking take home. $250,000 divided by 2,500 hours is $100 an hour. Most team leaders aren't making $100 an hour. They're working way more than 50 hours a week. And they're not taking home that great money. And so the opportunity, I would say there are plenty that are making hundred dollars an hour. So that's not meant as a, as a dig on or a jab at team leaders. The challenge though is to calculate what it is based on actual data. And then what would it take to go from 100 to 250, from 250 to 500, you know, from 500 to 1,000. My number currently is $1,000 an hour and I want to work less 1,000 hours a year. So I want to make a seven figure income. Only working 1,000 hours a year, which is 20 hours a week. I'm not there yet on my time. I figured out the income part. I have not figured out the time part. So I'm not quite at $1,000 an hour for the amount of hours that I want to work. And so the. What do you do with this number once you decide, like what do you do with. Okay, I want to make $250 an hour. The goal is to look at your business. What are the things you can get out of that aren't making you anywhere close to the number you determine and find people who are going to fight for you achieving this number. So there's a lot of support people there are showing agents that have SC supportive s is a steady sort of personality. Then they want to, they want to help. Administrators are SC personalities that want to help. There are so many folks out there, some of which have real estate licenses, that would love the opportunity to support you in getting in your sweet spot more often. If we can get you in plan, it's prospecting, which we call new business development prospecting, lead follow up appointments and negotiating deals. Those are the only four things that you get paid, paid a lot of money for in real estate and you should be coaching your agents on those things. If you're a team leader, you really need to get out of those things and you need to be recruiting and onboarding and coaching your team, building systems, you know, becoming a world class marketer, those sorts of things. And so the question for you is, where are you in the journey? What's your actual number? What's your aspirational dollar per hour number? And what's holding you back? And you need to find people who are going to fight for that number. And a bunch of people aren't going to fight for that number. You're going to let agents into your world that could give a crap that you're wanting to become the manager and the leader and the visionary of your team. You need to find people that actually want to help you achieve this thing that you're setting out to achieve. That's a different podcast vision. And getting Team buy in on a vision. When it relates to your dollar per hour, you need people that are going to be supportive of getting you in your sweet spot. Getting you in your sweet spot, naturally, will help you earn more dollars per hour. And then, bottom line, you need to do an inventory of all the things we call this delegate and elevate. Every 90 days, you take an inventory of all the things you do on a regular basis. And what things are either you don't like or you marginally like. You're not good at them and they're not adding a lot of value. You need to delegate those things off of your plate consistently. And you know you'll find if you do that every 90 days, you'll be left with more dollar productive activities. We call them DPAs. And if you do it for four quarters in a row, you'd be surprised the things that are sort of annoying to you now. You know, there was a time where I listing appointments was the thing. You know, if I could just go on 10 listing appointments a week, life would be great. Until you figure out that there's a better leverage thing you could do than listing appointments. And you can get someone else to do those appointments because. Because you have higher and better uses for your time. So that is the challenge, my friends, is to know what our time is worth and fight to put yourself in a position to do the activities that gives you a better shot at earning that wage consistently. So, like I said, for me, maybe for you, it's $100 an hour to start, and then it's 250, and then it's 500, then it's 1,000. And if you keep pushing that number and you're constantly looking for ways to better leverage your team and you're not attached to doing a certain thing on the team. And this is not about you getting out of production. So I want to make it clear, just because I built a business that allowed me to get out of production, maybe God created you to be on listing appointments. Maybe you could do it in a way where it doesn't disrupt your personal life and you build leverage into your world. Either way, we need to set up the business where it doesn't destroy your life and you need to better leverage people around you, even if it's a key administrator and a couple buyer agents that do showings for your buyer clients so there's more leverage. I did that in the beginning as well. Even though I worked with buyers. The year I did 66 transactions, it was 33 buyers and 33 sellers. That was the most production I ever did in a single year because I had a goal to get out of production. Like, specifically, I was going to give away my production at the right commission split. So it was still super profitable. The 33 buyers, I didn't show many homes. I just had my buyer. Agents really get paid 20 bucks an hour plus $250 if they got a buyer of mine under contract. And they were thrilled with that kind of money because it was guaranteed money. And so look for ways to better leverage your team. That's the action item here, is that you've got to be looking for opportunities to shed activities off your plate that isn't anywhere close to the amount of money that you want to make per hour. So that's all I've got for you. If you're at a point in your business where you just really don't know the next step, you know, you're running a team, you've let other people into your world. You have this vision to do something. Maybe you're unclear on what it looks like, or you're unclear on the way to get there. We've got a very specific process that we follow at Real Estate B School. The first step is literally just a conversation. You know, go to the website. It's Real Estate B school dot com. There's a obnoxious orange bar across the top to schedule a business growth strategy session. And we'll see you there. I'll unpack. What's working, what's not working in your current business, where do you want to go and what's holding you back? And if a conversation makes sense about Real Estate B school, I'll let you know about our pilot program, which is 30 days of free intensive coaching. It's a full immersive experience where you get 30 days of free coaching. We'll talk about the pilot program as well. So go to real estatebschool.com. we'll see you over there.