Hi, my name is Jen. I’m a real estate team leader, coach, author and agent in production. I haven’t worked a Sunday in five years.
Most people get into real estate or entrepreneurship for the “freedom”. Once you get into the business though, you know that this is a 24/7 kind of job unless you structure your business to accommodate having a life.
I realized my first year in real estate when I was getting calls on Thanksgiving about inspection reports that I was going to need help. This isn’t a problem unique to real estate. With technology making all of us more and more available, it is really hard to strike a balance between your personal and professional life.
So for all the entrepreneurs out there, this is for you. Here’s how outsourcing can assist you in taking back your time.
Taking Back Your Time
Work-life balance is a myth. You will never be perfectly balanced in every facet of your life. That’s why I strive for integration.
If you integrate your personal life into your work life, you start to treat your personal goals as seriously as your professional goals. Not only does it give your personal life more priority but at the end of the day you are just one person. There isn’t work Jen and personal Jen. This is a false dichotomy.
To properly integrate these parts of your life, you must become a master of setting boundaries and backing up those boundaries with sound business logic.
Several years ago I did the math. I lost $4,000 every time I cleaned my house. I calculated how much money I can expect to make per hour doing my highest money making activities. And I realized that I would actually save money by outsourcing this task.
Once I knew my dollar per hour it was very easy to come up with a list of tasks that I could outsource so that I was spending more time during the week in those highest dollar per hour activities. I then found a team who was excellent at these tasks so I knew that no ball was going to be dropped if I wasn’t the one completing these tasks.
Once you have your outsourcing team in place, then you look at your personal life and see where you aren’t measuring up.
If you want more time with your kids or spouse and then put it on the calendar. Treat it like an appointment that you can’t miss. Be accountable to your calendar. Honor the commitment to yourself and understand the importance of taking time off with your family.
In order to keep these appointments with yourself, I find that I have to be much more disciplined during the week. I have to action-block my calendar to make sure that I am getting everything done that I need to before my big Sunday with my family.
Now I’m sure you’ve heard of time blocking where you put two hours on the calendar where you are going to do social media for instance. Action blocking is where you take those two hours and you put on your calendar the specific actions you are going to take, rather than just the pillar of your business you are going to be working on during that time.
I would put in the description of my Social Media Calendar block: “Write bullet points for a market update. Write a script about an event I have coming up. Film myself answering a question my clients ask a lot. I would then use those bullet points to create 3 instagram reels and schedule those posts. Like and comment on 50 other people’s posts.” I find that you will save time not having to decide what you need to do during these blocks. That helps you become more efficient when every action you have to take is already on your calendar for you.
This is how you live a life by your own design, not one of happenstance or chance.
Know the best day to take off with your family. Put a coverage plan in place. Every success story has many authors.
Set expectations with clients that Sundays are your days with your families and who they can call on Sundays if they need to get a hold of someone.
Plan your Sundays too. Make it something that you can look forward to all week. It’s important that our dopamine centers are one of the most critical operating systems of our brains. Having that reward of Sunday and making it something to look forward to helps us get through all the things that we have to get through in a week.
Remember it is all about quality time over quantity time. These are the days that you put your phone and business away and be completely present with your family.
It’s also okay to plan nothing for some of your Sundays. Don’t feel guilty for taking a day off to Netflix and chill. You will hit the new week excited and refreshed.
If you live your life by your calendar like this, you don’t have to wait four or five months to be excited for a vacation. You have one built in every week that you can look forward to. Even Leonardo da Vinci talks about the importance of R&R in your life.
In order to keep yourself sharp and able to perform these money making activities, you have to schedule time for rest.
Your efficiency actually goes up when you are not available seven days a week and you keep yourself from burnout. Taking a day to refresh your mind, body and spirit.
You are going to be a lot more focused and less likely to experience burnout which can be much more catastrophic to your business than taking one day a week off.
As always, stay curious, live by your calendar and be awesome humans. And start taking back your time!
This guest post was authored by Jennifer Wehner
Jennifer Wehner is a nationally renowned real estate coach who has helped numerous agents fast track their businesses. Jennifer avidly works to increase the potential of those around her. She believes that everyone is an artist on some level. Jennifer’s medium is being an artist of systems and processes that allow her to scale her businesses at warp speed.
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