Work 20 Hours or Less in Real Estate
Hello, hello, Queens! 👑
If you're working the "standard" 40 hour work week...or worse, over 40 hours, we need to talk.
If you joined real estate for the freedom, only to find you have less freedom, I'm going to show you how we can turn that around.
You CAN have freedom and flexibility in real estate.
The first step: you have to believe that's possible for you and take steps towards it.
When I was working countless hours with no days off in my real estate career, I wrote down what I really wanted:
- Make Six Figures and Beyond
- Work 20 Hours or Less Each Week
- Be Referral Based
- Travel 12 x out of the year (i love travel!)
When I wrote this down, I had no idea this was possible. It felt impossible considering I had been overworked, not getting referrals and still barely making $50k.
But, I knew I had to do something because my business wasn't enjoyable, profitable or sustainable.
In that first year of getting clear and going for it, I completed all three.
(check out the previous blog post "design your dream real estate career" for more on this)
So I started lessening my working hours, getting really, really secure around my boundaries with my time and what I'm actually doing.
I was able to drop my working hours down way less than 20 hours a week, and I continued to do that consistently, continued to lessen my working hours.
I was able to do that by making sure that I'm getting rid of anything that is just busy work and anything not actually serving me or my business or my clients. I got rid of a lot of things that were taking up time.
Then I delegated.
It's important to look at first what you can get rid of and what you don't actually need before delegating things that are unnecessary, and then you're just going to probably paying for it to delegate something that isn't necessary. Look to see what's you return on investment. If it's not giving you a good ROI - get rid of it, and delegate every single thing else.
I brought my working hours down to 10 hours or less each week, and that's on average.
Some weeks, I honestly wouldn't need to do any type of work at all. Or maybe it's just like, two to three hours for the whole week. Other weeks, it may end up being a little bit more depending on what I'm doing. Or what the clients are like during that time, that's always going to ebb and flow a little bit. But the main thing was knowing that I'm not just putting in hours just to put them in, I knew exactly the activities that needed to be done.
Once I completed my money making activities, then I'm done. I don't need to do all this extra stuff to feel busy. I did my money making activities and I know that those attract, and bring in clients.
The rest of the time I am taking care of clients and doing client appointments and doing showings, if I am doing that.
So let's say right now you are somebody that is working around a 40 hour work week, I would be curious to know how often or how many of those hours are you working face to face with clients?
How many of those 40 hours are face to face in seller buyer consultations or showings things that are really face to face with your clients?
And how much of that is marketing? How much of that is just busy work something else maybe it's emails, calls, whatever? How much of it is lead generating?
Break it down, figure out what that is.
For most people you're face to face time with your clients probably isn't going to be over 15 hours a week, assuming you're not spending more than two hours per appointment with clients. That's saying that you're working with all seven or so of your clients if you have seven active clients at once, all in the week.
If you have longer appointments than that, let's look at why are they longer.
For some people, I know you are driving further, and your market is just more spread out. So for those with spread out markets, a lot of that is with driving. Even with that, let's call it 20 hours a week or so that are face to face with your people or have to do directly with your clients.
If you're working that 40 hour week, what is happening the rest of the 20 hours?
As you break it down, you may see that a lot of that is busy work and if it has to do with you having that many clients amazing, we love it. Let's look at how can we support you so that it's not 40 hours of just working with with clients, that's the time to bring in showing assistant, a buyer's agent, anything that can help you with that time to support you in closing more deals.
If you're working with like five clients or so at once, and it's taking 40 plus hours a week, then there's something happening there that we need to figure out. Is it something about the client process that needs to get refined? Is it just busy work that we need eliminate?
If you're someone who is carrying about 10 clients, or less at a time, you absolutely can bring down those working hours.
Even as you get above, working with 10 clients at a time, there are just things that you can put in place, you delegating different pieces, so you can still bring down the working hours.
If your goal is to work 20 hours or less each week, that is let's call it 10 hours, or even 15 hours, working directly with your clients and 5 hours can go towards your money making activities.
It really doesn't have to be more than 5 hours lead generating. In the real estate industry, people always tell you that you have to lead generate two to three hours per day and doesn't have to be true! Decide to choose money making activities that align with you and your time.
If the strategy is there, you will get more business even working those couple of hours per week, or even bi weekly, than if you were to constantly just like hammer the phones or whatever, two to three hours a week.
If you're doing lead generating 2-4 hours a day, that's amazing. And you're probably able to get a lot of business. It's just.... is it sustainable? Is it something that you enjoy? Is it actually how you want to build your business?
If your strategy to build your business is something that you hate to do, or it's something that requires you to be working constantly, the minute that you aren't able to do that much lead generating, or that you kind of let it go, or you're busy or something happens or you go on vacation -- your business dips! Is that really what you want?
You want to build a system, having a strategy that brings you business, even when you're not working it all the time. Just like how you want to create passive income, so that if you ever want to take time off working, you still have money working for you and income coming in, you want to create a passive lead generating system.
Get passive leads coming in even when you're not working.
If you want to work 20 hours a week, let's say 15 hours is with clients, 5 hours is your money making activities.
If you want to bring it down to 10 hours or less each week, let's call it 5 or so hours working with clients, and 5 or so hours doing your money making activities. And sometimes it'll just be client work that week and you don't have to do anything with your money making activities.
I love to have the freedom. So sometimes I'm not doing any work for three out of the four weeks of the month. Then one week of the month, I'm doing my money making activities. It feels so good, so freeing, to have that time and to also know that it doesn't have to be this huge hustle thing, that if you have the right strategy in place, you're still getting the business coming in.
That is what is so beautiful about referrals.
Building a referral based real estate business is so much easier than you've been taught or that you've heard.
It is so easy to build because the people already know like and trust you. It's staying top of mind, it's staying in front of them in an authentic way so that they are telling everybody they know, that is buying and selling, to work with you.
It's going to take less time overall because you're getting the lead and you are going right away into the buying and selling process usually, because when you're working with cold leads, you know that a big part of your time is probably filled with follow up follow up of just calling all of these cold leads and continually trying to get them to work with you.
The referral process is so wonderful because when you're looking at what it looks like to have a 10 hour 15 hour or less work week, it's literally just the times that you're working with clients while you're doing your money making activities, there's so little follow up that you have to do, because they come ready to work with you.
The follow up is a barely a piece I think about, because it's just not something that I need to do as clients are ready to work with me and they keep me updated. I'm happy to follow up, but it's not like I have this big list of 100 people per week that I have to follow up with and try to get a response from.
Ready to start working less and making more as a referral based real estate agent?
Join Rich & Referred Membership!!
The Rich & Referred Membership is all about this building a wildly successful dreamy referral based real estate business. And it is going to be focused on the strategy of how to do this in a sustainable way for you and an enjoyable way for you.
So together, we will nail down the strategy for you, give you the step by step and the accountability to complete it. Whether you have a lot of past clients or you don't have a lot of past clients yet, we will tailor this to you to your business.
Not only will we be just talking about the referral strategy and bringing in referrals, we are also going to talk about manifesting and your money mindset around your goal income and receiving those referrals.
By joining the Rich & Referred Membership, you will figure out what your specific money making activities are, create a plan, put it in place and begin to receive those referrals to become that referral based business while having the type of lifestyle that you desire.
Click here to join Rich & Referred!
