Welcome to our monthly feature, Close-ing Time – in partnership with TheClose.com.
In this episode Chris Linsell from TheClose.com talks about how to keep moving strong through 2021 to achieve your real estate business goals. Chris spends time discussing workflow and structure as the most important strategies. Last, Chris provides tips on how to manage your sphere of influence and the systems you use in your business.
If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!
Chris Linsell can be reached at chris@theclose.com.
Transcript
D.J. Paris 0:00
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Welcome to keeping it real, the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Paris. I am your very sweaty guide and host through the show. If you’re listening, you won’t know how sweaty I am. So you should thank yourself for not having to see how sweaty I am. If you’re watching me, I apologize. I just came from the gym. So sorry about that. Not super professional. But today is a professional episode here with our monthly series called closing time with Chris Lindh Sal from the closed Chris is very much he’s a much bigger, better professional than I am. This is a partnership between keeping it real in the closed.com. But let me tell you about the clothes. The clothes.com is a kind of real estate website designed to give agents teams and brokerages actionable strategic insight from industry professionals and they cover real estate marketing, lead generation, technology and team building strategies from the perspective of working agents and brokers who want to take their business to the next level, please visit the closed.com That’s th e c l o s e.com and read their articles also subscribe to their newsletter, you can get notified every time they publish a story and their stories are incredible. They are not the simple short blog posts, you’re used to seeing about five ways to improve your marketing for 2021. They go into detail their long form articles with actionable strategies. It’s the, in our opinion, the very best website for agents looking to grow their business. So again, the clothes.com and with us as always is crystal and Sal. He is a staff writer and real estate coach for the close. Chris is the closest resident expert on real estate topics ranging from marketing, lead generation transactional best practices and everything in between. He’s a licensed agent in the state of Michigan and Chris has been part of hundreds of transactions from modest modest rural, sorry, rural starter homes to massive waterside compounds. When he isn’t writing, you’ll find Chris fly fishing or performing on the stage of his community theaters production. And Chris Welcome once again to keeping it real. We’re excited to see you again.
Chris Linsell 2:43
DJ, thanks for having me. I gotta tell you that you are not that sweaty. I mean, maybe a little. I mean, was that your passion?
D.J. Paris 2:52
If I if I start I’m dabbing right now. So if you i What do they say what women say they don’t sweat, they glow, I’m glowing.
Chris Linsell 3:01
Your baby. I mean, it’s just excited to talk about real estate which I can’t blame it.
D.J. Paris 3:06
I’m definitely excited to talk to talk to you because Chris is always is one of our my favorite people to have on the show because he is one of the most well informed industry experts and that’s one of the reasons why he’s here. But he always has great insight into what’s going on. So what do you want it now that now that I’ve set you up to create some great content? What are we going to talk about today?
Chris Linsell 3:29
Well, you know, I’ve got a couple of things I’d love to chat about. But you know, I guess I just want to first start off by telling people if you’re not paying attention guys it’s March hello I mean I’m not sure exactly when this episode is going to is going to hit the airwaves here but if you’re watching live right now you know it’s beginning of March the year is almost 25% over like and then incredible how you doing on your goals How you doing on the on the things that you said you’re going to do better this year. I was telling DJ before we got started, I was telling you I’m just booked a couple of new coaching clients and I’m really excited to get started working on with and one of them said to me and my first console with them I said I really am not where I want to be and I just set these goals for myself I can’t be this I can’t be behind already. And the good news is you got tons of time to catch up you got you got tons of time to make it to where you want to be. But you got to get started right away. So if you’re listening to this, you know this is separate from what we’re talking about today. Other than guys, there’s time get after your goals. You know they’re not running away from you. DJ look at him he caught his goals that’s why he’s so sweaty right now.
D.J. Paris 4:43
So we should also by the way, thanks yeah, thanks I the reason I’m I am late is one of my goals. Well not late but just sweaty. Well and a little bit late, was because I wanted to get in shape for the first time and it really I mean, I guess maybe a few other times in my If I considered that I’d been in shape, but I hadn’t really created a structure that was going to produce a really predictable result, I wanted to see what I would actually look like if I actually exercise on a regular basis, with a high level of intensity. And I, I was the guy, I mean, I’m the guy that would never choose to go to the gym ever, you know, I play tennis, I do a few other things like that. But I would never on my own, just go, you know, I think I’m gonna go to the gym and workout. I know, there are people that do that are like that I am not one of those people. And so I had to really structure this. And so it for me, it’s during the day. So I actually get it done, because it’s on the calendar. But before we get into that, I do want to mention, because you meant you talked about coaching. And we know I don’t know if you’re open to getting more clients as well on the coaching side. But if so, can we give a little plug to your coaching business?
Chris Linsell 5:49
Yeah, absolutely. You can check me out websites really easy to remember, it’s just crystallin sel.com CHR is Li n s e double l.com crystallin sell.com, go check it out. You know, here’s, here’s what I do. I work with real estate agents, I actually work with a couple of non real estate clients as well. My goal is to help you reach your goals. And I have a lot of expertise and experience in the real estate industry. And in orbiting industries like inspection and appraisal. Even when it comes to marketing, things like finance, I don’t have a specific finance experience, but you know, talk to all those different folks. And my goal is to help you understand where your goals are, and what strategies you can use to get to them. So I’m definitely accepting new clients right now, you know, sometimes, sometimes coaching lasts one hour, sometimes it’s a single consultation and say, Hey, I just need some advice on X, Y, and Z. Let’s sit down and talk about it. I love having those conversations. Sometimes these are, you know, ongoing relationships with people we meet, and we talk once a week, or you know, we’re emailing a couple of times a week, I love that sort of thing to my goal in in my career, and in this business is to help other agents find the success that they want. My personal brand, I’ll just share this with you. And you, you guys can do what you want with this, my personal brand, my personal mission statement is that people should be in charge of their own success, you as a real estate professional should be in charge of your own success. That’s the why that’s why I do what I do. And the way that you get there, the way that you get a hold of that, that success is through tools, training, and opportunity. And if I can provide one or two or three of those things, then we gotta go, we got a good match. So come find me, Chris loewenthal.com Be happy to happy to help in any way I can. And sometimes,
D.J. Paris 7:45
too, it’s a lot about accountability. And, you know, I know I mean, I’m going back to the workout example, I would not go on my own, I pay a fortune to the gym that I that I but I’ve been paying that monthly fee for years and years. And finally, last year, I said, you know, the only way I’m going to I had to have a hard look in the mirror and say, I think the only way I’m going to get to the gym is if I hire a personal trainer, which I didn’t want to do, because it’s quite costly as anyone who’s who’s explored that knows. But I thought, you know, but if it gets me to the gym, yeah, it stinks to have to write that check. But, but maybe I’ll get the results I want. And here it is coming up on a year, I guess I’m nine months in, and I just might my physical body looks completely different. And I’m really, it’s almost kind of shocking. And it sucks every time I walk in there because it’s gonna be hard. But it’s probably the some of the best money I spend. Because it actually gives me that accountability. And I know coaching a lot of it is is hey, you know, not necessarily always telling somebody what they don’t already know. But helping them get it done. Yeah,
Chris Linsell 8:55
yeah. In fact, you know, that actually kind of leads into what I wanted to chat with you about today, which is, you know, I, I have conversations with real estate agents all the time, about how hard they are working, and that they’re not seeing the results that they that they think that they deserve, that they that they should get their their, you know that their time should be yielding more. And one of the things I always ask them, when we have these conversations is tell me about not just how you’re spending your time, but tell me about how your time is distributed? Are you setting for yourself a schedule? Are you setting aside time for the tasks that matter? And are you accomplishing those tasks during those times? Or are you just kind of grabbing stuff off the wall and just kind of jamming it in the hopper and you know, maybe you’ll work until two in the afternoon and maybe we’ll work until two in the morning? Who knows? Tell me about your workflow and most often the agents who are struggling with success? are the ones who have no workflow? They don’t they have no idea if I told if I asked them, Where are you going to be on Wednesdays at 3pm? They have no idea. Like, I might be in the office, I might be with a client. I might be at the movies, probably not at the movies right now. But I might be taking time for myself, I might, who knows where I’ll be, maybe I’ll be asleep in my bed at this point, because I was up until five o’clock in the morning working on stuff, right? Those are agents who are struggling. And so if you’re listening to this, or you’re watching this, and you cannot honestly answer the question, Where are you going to be on Wednesday at three o’clock? There’s a systemic issue here. And the most successful real estate agents, they can answer this because they have set aside time, regular time for the tasks that move their business forward. And that’s what I’m encouraging folks to do in coaching. And just in general, right now, like, let’s do some evaluation, what are the tasks that move the business forward? How are you prioritizing those tasks? What kind of time are you setting aside for him?
D.J. Paris 11:07
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I’ve, you know, it’s a lot of agents who are struggling or who really want to get to the next level and haven’t quite found their way to that end goal. Yet might be might be thinking, well, if I just had more leads, that would get me there. And of course, we’d all like to have more leads. But I don’t know that leads are the number one reason why people exit the business. That’s the most obvious reason why somebody might leave the industry, because they don’t have enough leads, they don’t generate enough business and they don’t generate enough income. And of course, they go do something else. However, I wonder if the real issue is they don’t have the structure in place, because this is a job, that really, most firms are not going to create that structure for you. And I think the hardest part of this job isn’t even lead generation. It’s its structure, or at least for a lot of agents, it’s probably structure.
Chris Linsell 11:57
Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. And here’s, here’s a good example of this. Like, I’m right now I’m working on writing a bootcamp all about creating marketing calendars. And one of the one of the principles in this marketing calendar, bootcamp is establishing consistency. In terms of your rollout of certain marketing pieces. Let’s use postcards as an example. If you send one postcard, just once the effectiveness of that postcard is very small, right? Like the the people who are responding to a single touchpoint from you, especially if these people don’t already know you. I mean, you could send out 1000s of postcards, you really genuinely might not get any response.
D.J. Paris 12:50
If you’re, in fact, it’d be more unlikely to get a response than likely
Chris Linsell 12:54
that’s a hook, you just do one if you just die, right? That’s exactly right. So your effectiveness is near zero. So what does that tell us? Well, we know that that direct mail marketing does still work, it is still an effective means market to markets, it’s different, but we know that it can still yield business. And so if we know that one touch point isn’t going to do it, we know that multiple touch points is the natural next step. But I can tell you, your effectiveness is going to remain near zero, if your multiple touchpoints don’t have a sense of kind of cadence and rhythm to them. Because even if people are throwing your postcards away, the first three times they get them, if they’re getting them at the same time, let’s just say in the month, they start to realize they start to see that postcard faster, it will make it onto the fridge quicker. If you’re they’re getting it on a regular rhythm. So just using this as an example, to talk about the end of the equation here. But the start of this equation is if you’re not setting aside the right time that you need, in order to produce these postcards to get them in the mail. You know if you’re doing these yourself, or if you’re hiring a service for it, if you’re not setting aside the right resources, meaning your time in order to execute this, the effectiveness of the strategy is going to remain near zero. And so what happens here, real estate agents, they don’t prioritize the time. They don’t set the schedule up correctly. The strategy doesn’t work the way they want, they’re not getting the results, they feel like they deserve. And all of a sudden they’re like, Oh, well, this is a worthless strategy. Or maybe real estate isn’t for me. Whereas it’s just a matter of time management. We just haven’t set aside the right time and the first the first part of the equation here. So of course the second half isn’t going to execute itself.
D.J. Paris 14:57
So how do we structure our day? That’s a good question. And how do we think about what tasks should I be focused on? What should I schedule? What should I not schedule? You know, just to give some some pointers to our listeners?
Chris Linsell 15:10
Well, there’s two things I would say. The first is, every real estate agents business is different. So I’m going to give you some pointers on this. But take this information and put it through the lens of your market of your clients of your prospects. The second thing I’m going to say here is, this is a lot of the pointers, though, a lot of the priorities I’m going to give you here are not the fun like Bravo TV priorities here. So if you’re expecting that, to come out of this, like putting on sunglasses and just heading out and to get near convertible, you’re gonna be disappointed. So just forewarning. The first thing I’m going to say is, the number one source of misleads in the real estate business is your sphere of influence, and your your past clientele, the people who know like and trust you. So as an agent, as a full time agent, my first priority, and something I suggest to a lot of people, people set aside, set aside an hour every day, to be paying attention to your sphere of influence to the people who you have influence over. Whether this is phone calls, to them text messages, to them, emails, to them, planning automated marketing to these people, you should be spending an hour a day talking, communicating or planning communication to your sphere, in a pursuit of maintaining those relationships, and generating new ones. I mean, we shouldn’t, you meant we should literally the first hour of your day, if you start your day, at eight o’clock in the morning, this should be eight to nine, don’t do anything else. Don’t let other distractions come in. This is the time for this, it’s got to be an hour a day, five hours a week, is what it takes to maintain this successfully. In my experience,
D.J. Paris 17:04
I’m sorry, I was I was gonna jump in earlier on, I apologize, I got excited because I was thinking about a time where I was, I was moderating a panel of top producers at at a local association event in Chicago here. And somebody raised their hand and said, you know, one of my I, one of my best friends just went with another realtor. What did I do wrong? Now, of course, we nobody on the panel had enough information to be able to share, you know, here’s, here’s what you didn’t do, or here’s what you did too much of. But I think what Chris just said really solves a lot of those problems. And of course, are you going to get everyone in your sphere of influence every time they need a real estate transaction? No, of course not. Maybe Maybe their cousin becomes a realtor or their sister or brother or you know, maybe somebody else close to them that they’d give business to so you’re not going to get everything. But the question, we asked back to this, this woman and it wasn’t to embarrass her because this happens to everybody. Every realtor goes through this. And we said, well, how often were you communicating with this client? And because she asked this client, why did you not use me just out of curiosity? And the client said, Well, I just assumed you were too busy to take take me on I didn’t think and so you know, that was a really interesting answer. So I think Chris has absolutely right, if you can spend an hour a day, and that’s five hours a week, that’s what 20 hours a month, that is in that is probably the best hour of the day you will spend for lead generation, because you’re going to be you know, contacting your sphere of influence. And if you’re wondering, well, what should I be talking about? In these tax these emails, these phone calls? Well, there’s a million things, you could talk about real estate stuff, or you could talk non real estate stuff and just check in and see how they’re doing. And, and or comment on a post on Instagram that they you know, went to dinner. And you know, now that we’re back in restaurants, some of us, you know, maybe things like that, or maybe someone went on a vacation, or maybe their children are back in school finally, or they just got vaccinated or whatever. Just reaching out and saying, Hey, I noticed that you’re doing this, or hey, by the way, have you thought about X, Y or Z? There’s, I mean, it doesn’t have to be a sales pitch. And in fact, Chris would probably say, don’t make a sales pitch. Just do anything you can so that people don’t forget what you do.
Chris Linsell 19:17
Yeah. And DJ in the same way that you hired a personal trainer here, guys get get consistent, commit to this. And if it’s hard for you, good, it’s supposed to be hard at first until you get used to it. There are some tools that you can use. So that is not so hard. You can go to the clothes. This is totally free stuff. You don’t have to pay for this with the clothes. The clothes has, I want to say I don’t have it up in front of me. But I want to say we’ve got a dozen articles that have email templates, text message templates, phone scripts, I mean, there’s literally 100 conversations on the close and just just scroll through, go to the search bar type scripts, type templates. You’re going to find all sorts of stuff now most of those are Gonna be geared towards real estate. But those are great. Those are great places to start, like DJ hired a trainer, you guys get some resources, if this isn’t easy for you get a resource that’s going to help keep you in the groove here. Because this is this is a must, you know, most of the agents that I talked to that say, you know, this is my last year in real estate, if I don’t cut it, I would say nine times out of 10, those real estate agents, that’s me, sorry about that. You’re popular guy, I guess. So nine times out of 10. The agents who say this is my last year in real estate, those agents have not closed a single deal from the deal from their sphere in the last year. So don’t let that be you. Yeah, and the second priority that I was going to mention to you guys, too, behind managing your sphere, is managing your systems. And here’s what I mean by that. You don’t have to spend an hour a day doing this. In fact, that would be I think, a little soul crushing for a lot of people. But you need to spend daily time thinking about how your real estate systems are working. And here’s a good example of this. If you are not checking the insights on your Instagram, you don’t know how people are responding to the stuff that you’re posting. You don’t need to spend an hour a day on this, you could spend literally five minutes a day on this. You could say Monday, I’m gonna, I’m gonna look at my Instagram insights Tuesday, I’m gonna look at my Facebook Insights. Wednesday, I’m gonna look at my website traffic. Thursday, I’m gonna look at my email marketing performance Friday, I’m going to look at whatever I mean, fill in the blank here. But spend five minutes a day thinking about how your systems work, because these are, these are the gears inside the engine that are turning you closer and closer to a commission. If you don’t open up the engine compartment every once in a while, take a peek, make sure everything is fitting together there, of course, you’re going to break down, of course, you’re going to be delayed getting to where you want to go pay attention to that stuff. And I guarantee you, you will feel more empowered to be successful because you know how the engine works. Don’t be afraid of that stuff. Get into it. This is your business, you got to take control of that stuff with some daily attention.
D.J. Paris 22:16
Yeah, that’s really smart. I mean, when I started just as a color eye example, when I started, I finally implemented a budget for me personally, which is embarrassing to say that I’m 44. And really, two years ago is the first time I implemented an actual budget. But I finally did one and I use a service called UNITA budget, which is why nab.com It’s excellent. It’s like 100 bucks a year. So it’s absolutely worth it. But it doesn’t do everything for you. It does most things for you. And so I thought, oh, gosh, now I’m gonna have to spend time every single day looking at my budget. And they said, no, no, it takes about 30 seconds today, once you get it set up, and I went, Oh, I got but now I have a structure. So every morning, I mean, I’m the guy that never had a budget, I look at it, I just go okay, everything looks good. Just like Chris and I look under the hood, I make sure my finances are in reasonable shape. And and then I go okay, and I check it off the list. And I check it the next day, if I didn’t do that, I would have no idea what I was spending what I was earning, you know what my net, you know, investments and savings were for the month. And this is just it’s just dramatically improved my life. And at first I’m not a naturally a finance guy. So I thought oh, this is this is a big arduous task. It really wasn’t. And we’re really talking about the same thing is just looking under the hood, make sure you know what’s going on with your systems and looking for inefficiencies. I’ll give you a personal example. For me, we have this this actually isn’t an inefficiency for me because I’ve I’ve identified it as about one of the most important things I can do. Now it’s easy for me because I sit at a desk all day, I’m not out there running around like like Realtors do. But whenever I’m a recruiter, so I recruit real estate agents, whenever somebody fills out a form on one of our websites to say, to raise their hand and say, I’m interested in learning more about your company. I do not let more than about five minutes go by now if it’s 11 at night, I’ll be sleeping. But if it’s during a regular day, I do not let more than five minutes go by unless I’m doing a show like this before responding. And you would think well, of course I can. I’ve been doing this for 11 years, I cannot tell you how many people who are agents who raise their hand and go I want to I’m interested in maybe going to work at XYZ firm, go you know, DJ, you’re the only one that got back to me. And not just five minutes later, I sent out five requests two days ago, and you’re the only one that got back to me. And I’m like that is shocking to me. But that just means somebody’s not in charge. Their their systems are inefficient and they haven’t solved that problem and they’re losing business because I respond faster.
Chris Linsell 24:46
Totally, totally. I mean it is honestly it’s like a it’s a punch in the stomach when you are a real estate agent and you discover that I mean And, like, honestly, it gets me worked up just thinking about it. Because, as an example, in my local market, the average transaction is a little bit more than $300,000. So let’s just say the, you know, typical, you know, sell side commissions 3% on that. So we’re talking nine grand for every transaction, it is, it is just a punch in the stomach to realize to look under the hood and realize, like, I just, if, if I hadn’t, if I had looked here, two weeks ago, three weeks ago, there were three transactions I could have picked up. In the next three months, we’re talking about $27,000, that is going to be in somebody else’s pocket because I couldn’t take five minutes a day to look at how the systems were working. Here’s a great example of this. I love your example of the budget here. This is a place that I have found for agents, specifically when it comes to paid lead generation. Zillow is the example that comes to mind right now, Zillow can pump out a whole bunch of leads to you, but those leads are worthless if you’re not following up effectively with them. So whenever I’ve got an agent that I’m working with, it does pay lead generation through Zillow. The second thing we do is we talk about how much they’re spending on Zillow, the first thing we do is we talk about what their process is for following up with their Zillow leads, I want to know exactly what the agent does what an automated service does, what their assistant does. Tell me what happens in that system. And we ultimately, we would just draw out a piece of paper, what is the system follow up here? What is the machine just for your Zillow follow up, because each of your systems has their own little machine, and they all kind of plug together to make the whole machine but you can pull out one system at a time and look at and say, Okay, this is what we do for zillo follow up. If that machine isn’t working, the problem isn’t the leads. The problem is you. And it’s so often that is the case, like the problem isn’t isn’t your social media. The problem is you the problem isn’t your email marketing. The problem is you the systems aren’t or the or the where the flaw is not the strategy. And that’s kind of a tough pill to swallow. But the luck of the good thing is just like your budget, once you get into it, it just takes five minutes a day, it’s gonna take you a little bit to get set up to get into that mindset. But once you’re in there, five minutes a day, I mean, easy.
D.J. Paris 27:31
Totally easy. And and the you know, if you think about like this back to the example of the woman who said, you know, I lost this deal to a friend who chose another realtor. Yeah, like we said earlier, obviously, you’re not going to get every one of your friends to use you. But if you could lay your head on the pillow, even though you lost that transaction and said, Well, you know what, I contacted that person 12 times in the last six months in various forms, you know, maybe you keep track of it in your CRM, I sent some text I called I checked in on them, I sent some did some social media posts, I did a reasonably good effort to stay in touch. And you know what, you can’t win them all, you’re going to feel a lot better, it won’t feel as much as a gut punch, as if, oh, I kind of dropped the ball on that one that was on me. You want to minimize the self inflicted wounds as much as possible. And look, we all nobody’s perfect. We’re all we all struggle, and nobody’s life is imbalanced, everyone’s imbalanced. But if you can just structure as Chris said, the most important part of your business, past clients sphere of influence people you know, who know like and trust you, those are your gold, those are the gold people and you need to take such good care of them, you almost need to treat them like you treat your family, or at least the family members you like because those are the people that are going to be your advocates, not only are they going to use you themselves, they’re going to tell other other people about you. And because if you think about that, I just want to make one one last point about the consumer. So I’m a consumer, right. I’m technically a realtor, except I don’t use my license. So the last thing I wanted to do in this process of where I just bought a place, I didn’t want to go look for a realtor and I’m in the business I wouldn’t have had to but oh my god, it’s stressful enough just finding a property. The last thing I would want to do is interview five different realtors or three different Realtors even I want to just go Who do I know who’s good? Or if I don’t know anyone, I’m going to ask my friend who did you use? Were they good? I don’t. People don’t really want to interview I mean, some do but most don’t want to interview realtors. They just want to go with somebody they know like and trust. And so you already have people like that in your in your database. Don’t Don’t forget about them.
Chris Linsell 29:42
Totally, totally. And you know, to kind of bring this together we could talk about the important systems they important. The important thing is you need to set aside time for ad nauseam. Like there are there are so many things we could talk about. But I do think it’s important to kind of bring this together to say and if you kind of call it the thing One of the two things that I mentioned when I said you got to set aside time every day set aside an hour for the sphere set of set aside five or 10 minutes for those systems. If you pick the five things that are moving your business forward, whether it’s paid lead gen, whether it’s email marketing, whether it’s sphere of influence, who knows, everyone’s business is a little bit different. But I bet you could pick the five things that are moving your business forward. If you pick those five things, and you said, I’m going to set aside time, every day or every week, to handle this, you’re going to start to realize like, Oh, I gotta set aside a lot of time. Real estate is not about like, this is this is where people get disappointed in this message for me, but it’s just the truth. Real estate is not a no alarm business. People think they get a real estate license. And they’re like, Yeah, I don’t have to be in the office until I feel like nobody. No, I’m not gonna get in trouble for going in at 11 o’clock in the morning. Yeah, you’re right, you’re not gonna get in trouble with anyone except for you. Because you got to pay the mortgage, you got to pay the light bill. This is not an industry, this isn’t a job. This is not a career that you just don’t set alarm clocks for. Maybe some people operate that way. But those people don’t do a lot of business. Right? What I’m telling you is, if if you’re setting aside time for five things, you got to start blocking out your time, you got to start creating a schedule for yourself. Now you get to be in charge of that schedule, which makes this process totally different than if your boss was was, you know, forcing you to follow their schedule, you get to be in charge of how you’re doing this. But if you’re not setting aside that time, what ends up happening, and this is just heartbreak, what ends up happening is at midnight, on a Wednesday, you’re like, Oh, I haven’t checked in on how my email marketing is gone. And three weeks, I better get into this. And you open it up when you should be, you should be in bed, or you should be relaxing with your family or your friends. And then you’re working until two o’clock in the morning because you’re like, oh, I have not been set aside time. And I just thought of this. And this is an emergency. And all of a sudden, you’re doing these things. At times, that’s not productive for yourself. And so maybe one week, you end up working 70 hours a week, because you’re like, Oh, I gotta catch up on all this stuff. And then you’re totally burned out, and you only go into the office once the next week. And all of a sudden, you have no rhythm, you have no cadence, you have no time blocked out for these important things. Guys, I don’t want to live like that. I know, you don’t want to live like that either. You want to have a life outside of real estate that you can depend on, because that’s what we’re doing this for. Right? So figure out a way to set aside these times, protect that time, get invested into the strategies and into the systems that are moving your business forward. That way, you don’t have those midnight moments, nobody wants those, those moments should be those moments that should be so rare, should be saved for emergencies that like literally the house is on fire. Those are midnight moments Other than that, email marketing is not a midnight moment. Yeah,
D.J. Paris 33:16
it’s structuring every part of your day, which sounds very constricting, and confining. And, and sort of contrary to the the nature of being a realtor, however, and of course, everything’s going to be in flux, everything’s going to be moving and adjusting. But if you know, for example, the first hour of the day, you know, seven to eight, eight to nine, whatever that you’re going to spend working on that sphere of influence. Or maybe it’s I’m going to be replying to phone calls and emails or whatever those Chris said, identify those five most important things, structure it so that as much as possible, those don’t move, those are set in stone in your calendar as best as you can. Then you’re going to minimize those midnight moments of oh my god, I haven’t been checking X, Y or Z over you know, the last month.
Chris Linsell 34:04
It’s it’s a process. It’s doesn’t happen overnight. But it’s it’s doable. And you ask the top performers in your market, where they’re going to be on Wednesday at three o’clock. They can tell you without even looking at their calendar.
D.J. Paris 34:18
I asked a top producer once I don’t know if I’ve shared this with you before. It’s such a simple thing. We’ll say it and to wrap up one of the top producers here in Chicago and when I say top producers, there’s about 44,000 brokers or 45,000 I think now anyway, she’s in the top 10 People of producers. And I said what do you think? Why do you think you’re so much more successful than all these other agents? Do you think? Are you more capable? Are You Smarter, are you would you work harder? And she’s like, I don’t think any of those things are true. She says I certainly work hard. I’m certainly consider myself intelligent, and I’m organized. However, she goes you know what, it’s gonna sound so stupid. If she was embarrassed to say it, she goes, I make sure that every single one of my clients gets called Every single week, and I went, Okay, and and she went, No, that’s it. I said, interesting. And then I thought, No, that’s a system. That’s a structure. And she said, DJ, you would be shocked. Most agents don’t do that. And I said, really? And she said, yep. And and again, I’m sure she does a lot more than just that. But I thought What an interesting, small, simple idea. That’s a system. That’s a structure. And it’s going to minimize the her midnight moments of Oh, my gosh, this listing hasn’t, you know, haven’t received a showing in two months. And I haven’t really been staying in touch with the seller because I’m a little embarrassed. She just says I just call everybody every week and say, here’s what’s going on. So just a quick little tip as as you start to think about what are those activities for you? You know, you need to have that customer service policy in place for yourself, how often am I you’re communicating back to marketing? How often are you marketing? How often are you doing outreach? How often are you staying in touch with your sphere? What about, you know, handling client requests, customer service stuff in the middle of the day? What’s your policy for that, create one, and then see what happens in the next, you know, nine months that we have left here,
Chris Linsell 36:05
can’t wait, can’t wait tons of tons of time left to be successful guys, the year is just getting started. And it’s just starting for you right now you’ve got you’ve got nine months, you’ve got nine months more than that you’ve got almost 10 months, until the end of the year, get after these goals that are there that are there, you set these goals for yourself, everybody ended 2020. And they said I’m gonna do something big and 2021 This is your time. Don’t be discouraged, get after it right now.
D.J. Paris 36:36
And everybody, please visit also the clothes.com because that is a great source of inspiration, motivation, and just great strategy and just strategic insight really on how to actually grow your business so that when you go, you know, gosh, what what am I supposed to do with this particular task that I’m not totally sure the clothes probably has an article about it. So go to the clothes.com. Also, check out the clothes dot coms pro subscription model, which gives you access to additional coaching courses, and even additional content premium content, and it’s absolutely worth checking out. So go to the clothes.com. Once again, Chris, we will say thank you for being on the show you provide amazing information to our listeners and viewers. We appreciate your participation. And on behalf of everyone of course once again we say thank you and on behalf of Chris and myself to the audience who continues to listen and watch and support our show. We also say thank you and we will see everyone on the next episode. Thanks, guys have a good one.
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