January energy is real, isn’t it? Despite the gym crowds and the cold, there’s something about this time of year that gets me fired up. Maybe it’s watching agents everywhere commit to making this their breakthrough year.
After coaching real estate professionals for over two decades, I’ve noticed something: most agents, even those with business plans, set themselves up for chaos.
Why? They’ve planned meticulously for their professional goals but haven’t adequately planned for what’s most important in their personal lives. Because time is finite, business success often comes at the expense of personal balance.
It doesn’t have to be this way, though. I am creating Balanced Busy to help agents navigate this exact quandary. Here are four principles that are baked into my formula.
If these strategies resonate with you, and you would like a framework to pull them together, register for free beta access here.
Clearly define your financial and personal goals in tandem
Often, with Business Planning, even if we take time to understand where we’re going at a high level, we don’t set goals for our personal lives. Take the time to analyze your entire life and define goals that make sense for both sides.
$1 million in profit, feel like “parent of the year”
$500,000 in commissions, change the world volunteering at a charity
Sell 20 houses, complete first Iron Man
Once you’ve committed to your goals in writing, analyze both sides and refine them as needed to ensure they’re realistic and will position you to realize your longer-term goals. For most people, it won’t be realistic to envision a 50/50 split of priorities towards each goal, but be mindful of the need to always support your full self.
For example, imagine a couple who want to start a family, but not until they have paid off their student loan debt. To make this happen, these two people could create a plan that has them both going “all in” on work for (___) years until their loans are paid in full. While this is an important goal worth extraordinary effort, the couple wants to set personal goals during this time frame to ensure they still have a relationship by the time their goal is realized.
Side note about the above example, speaking from experience: One of the reasons you’ve likely selected real estate as a career is the speed at which you, with effective planning, can ramp up significant income. While there will be times in your career where you could want/ need to bury your head in work to reach a specific goal (i.e., pay off student loans), you need to remain conscious of the need for shorter-term personal priorities because the work we do can become all-consuming and addictive.
Have operational plans for when your priorities cross
One reason people don’t inherently state both their financial and personal goals is that they understand that achieving each will require mutually exclusive trade-offs.
For example, both of these are true:
Representing buyers requires being able to show them properties when they’re available, which is often in the evenings and on weekends.
Parenting requires being present, physically and emotionally, when your children are not in school, which is often in the evenings and on weekends.
This is where most agents get stuck: instead of addressing the elephant in the room, realizing they can’t be two places at once. Effective solutions here could include:
Partner with another/ other agent(s) in your firm that have similar commitments and complementary schedules. i.e.- I can show homes on ___, ___, and ___, if you can cover me on…
Connecting with agents at your brokerage that don’t have similar commitments and work out a financial model that makes sense for everyone involved.
Share your personal priorities and commitments with all of your clients and explain how you’ve structured your business to ensure your priorities don’t require their sacrifice.
Define your audience, build your relevance
One of the things about real estate that is simultaneously thrilling and maddening is that every day, when you walk down any given street, you’ll be passing multiple people who need your services. This is a blessing and a curse, though, because, unless you have a Coca-Cola-sized ad budget, it’s impossible to reach all of them.
The good news is that, thanks to the sizable revenue that is available in each sale, you don’t need to reach everyone and, in fact, you shouldn’t try. The best agents know how to niche down, by answering the following question, to find meaningful success.
Where, and to whom, are my services the most compelling?
In terms of “where”, this is probably where you’ve sold the most homes, but if you are new, this could be where you live.
Regarding “to whom”, this is likely your Sphere of Influence, and/ or a niche market.
Once you have answered these questions, build your audience to take into account-
Repeat + Referral relationships are the “gold” in any real estate business. They’re the easiest to reach (your numbers are saved in each other’s phones), but the hardest to acquire because they’re the result of genuine relationships.
Reputation clients are acquired by creating content that people in your local market will relate to, find informative, and, over time, cause them to view you as an expert.
Information clients require the most time to develop since they aren’t looking for an agent, they’re looking to learn more about a specific property or product.
Chart your path, measure your progress, outsource as needed
In my 23+ years coaching real estate agents, the #1 reason I see agents spin their wheels, even those with well-defined plans, is that they don’t know what to prioritize on any given day. They wake up motivated with a strong desire to work hard, but they don’t know what to focus on. When their business is slow, they don’t know where to start; when they’re busy, they don’t know how to fit everything in.
When organizing your time, spell out the specific marketing tasks and personal commitments you will focus on in any given week.
Once you have created your business plan, consider what a. typical week will look like, identify where things could get out of control, and how you will handle things when that happens. In doing so, be mindful to acknowledge your highest and best use.
If you’re an established agent, a marketing concierge partner, a personal assistant, or an admin, can be priceless. Even if you don’t have the budget to take on such overhead at the beginning of the year, you can define what things will look like when you’re in a position hire an assistant.
I recommend starting each week by reviewing what’s on hand for your personal and business life, and creating a realistic schedule to ensure everything gets done. Even if some items have to be pushed to the following week or outsourced to someone else, you’ll be positioning yourself to win in the long run.
If this feels like a lot, have no fear, I am building Balanced Busy to pull all of this together for agents like yourself. When it’s ready for beta launch later this month, it will be the first system designed to enable agents to grow their business and personal lives in tandem. If you have big dreams but realize that winning “at any cost” isn’t winning at all, I would love to offer you free beta access to Balanced Busy when it launches in the next few weeks. Join our waitlist here!
