Hard work is a highly-overrated activity. It will not make you rich; however it will make you very, very tired.
I asked a Realtor® friend how business was; her reply? “Busier than I want to be.”
You never know how long this market will hold or when it will correct and decline, so we must be opportunists and maximize the opportunities we have right now. How do we do that? How do we take advantage of this totally fabulous market that has been handed to us, sell as much real estate as we can and make more money without working ourselves half to death?
I don’t want to be busier either. But I do want to increase my income. The key?
Become lazy. Laziness is the key to success. Leverage is laziness in action. Leverage is the opposite of hard work. Leverage is simply doing more with less.
There are several ways of “leveraging” yourself:
1. People
2. Product
3. Money
4. Technology
Hire people. Most agents don’t leverage themselves via people for several reasons;
1. Probably the worst reason; they see help as an expense
2. They don’t know how to attract and hire skilled people
3. They don’t know how to delegate
4. They are trapped by faulty thinking. These are some of the thoughts that keep us from enjoying life, enjoying our profession, enjoying serving our clients;
“If it is to be, it is up to me”
“If you want it done the right way, you have to do it yourself”
“Nobody does it better than me”
“My customers want to hear from me.”
“You can’t find good help.”
What you are really hearing is this: “I don’t know how to get the right people to do the right thing at the right time.”
If you stopped working today would your income stop? Do all decisions have to be cleared by you? Do you perform administrative tasks?
How many hours per day do you spend on Income Producing Activities (IPAs) versus administrative tasks? Who is on your team?
Think what it would be like to have someone handle all your paperwork; return phone calls; handle contract-to-closing, inspections, schedule showings, communicate with closers, Realtors, lenders, etc., etc. and you focused all your energy into appointments.
What would happen if you took all the time you spend on admin and converted those hours to IPAs? How many more transactions could you close? How much more income would that produce?
How leveraged are you now?
How much more leveraged can you get?
How can you continue to do more-with-less to the point almost everything gets done while you do practically nothing?
It’s a mental shift in thinking. In the Industrial Age, we exchanged labor for money. In the Information Age we exchange ideas for money. Take your business from the Industrial Age to the Information Age by utilizing the Generalized Principle of Leverage.
There is nothing wrong with making a commitment and working hard to achieve it. Building an organization by applying the Principle of Leverage is hard work in the short term. BUT when it is built, you are free from the struggle of simply “earning a living” over the long term. Hard work is an old, Industrial Age idea; let it go.
Business is a team sport. People want to belong to something. People want to connect, to contribute, to add value and be valued. What better platform than real estate?
You job as the owner is to manage resources; time, money, energy. Spend less of each; receive more in return.
Apply the Principle of Leverage; put a team together, systemize everything, create customers for life, enjoy building something that runs without you. Watch the magic happen. Enjoy yourself.
Why struggle?