Tuesday Shorts: Buy Back Your Time

In this episode, Garrett discusses the book 'Buy Back Your Time' and shares specific ways for real estate agents to buy back their time. He emphasizes the importance of leveraging tasks and hiring support to focus on dollar productive activities. Garrett suggests using a showing assistant, hiring a transaction coordinator, and delegating administrative tasks. He also shares his experience with hiring an intern and an executive assistant. The key takeaway is that buying back time allows agents to spend it on activities that truly matter.

Takeaways

Leverage tasks and hire support to focus on dollar productive activities.
Consider using a showing assistant to save time on showing houses.
Hire a transaction coordinator to handle paperwork and administrative tasks.
Delegate tasks like putting up lock boxes and signs to an intern or assistant.
Invest in an executive assistant to handle various tasks and free up mental space.
Buying back time allows agents to spend it on activities that truly matter.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Importance of Buying Back Time
03:22 The Challenge of Being Busy and the Need for Leverage
06:06 Using a Showing Assistant to Save Time
08:21 Hiring a Transaction Coordinator for Administrative Tasks
10:32 Investing in an Executive Assistant
13:17 The Benefits of Buying Back Time

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Transcript

0:00

What is up, faithful agents? Welcome back to another Tuesday short episode. Today we're going to be talking about the book, Buy Back Your Time, and I'm going to share with you some specific ways as real estate agents you can buy back your time. So you're definitely not going to want to miss, it's hard to say, today's conversation and today's discussion. Well, I guess the conversation is just with me, so maybe you do want to miss it. But a quick reminder before I give you the chat GPT joke. if you love this podcast, if it's been helpful to you or encouraging, which we absolutely hope it has. That's why we do all of this work to serve you, the Christian agent. Will you please, wherever you listen, will you please rate and review? Give us a five -star review wherever you listen. Leave us a review, a written review, and then share this with a friend. That's one of the best ways that the word gets out about the ministry of the faithful agent to serve Christians, to help us be more excellent in business. more excellent at home and passionate disciple makers of Jesus. We would greatly appreciate if you would do that for us. So I asked ChatGPT something a little bit different this time. I said, tell me a funny thing about Christians. So you're going to hear what it says along with me live. So here we go. Here's a lighthearted observation about Christians. No matter where you go, you might find them gathered in small groups, whether it's for coffee, Bible study, or just a good potluck. They might be the only group where you can hear people discuss deep life mysteries and the best recipe for potato salad in the same conversation. You know, that's awesome. That's what chat GPT thinks about Christians. All right. Anyways, moving on. That's fantastic. How do you buy back your time? Use chat GPT to come up with your jokes. It's not even funny. I love it. All right, so I just finished reading this book buy back your time by Dan Martell Mar te ll buy back your time with Dan Martell He's not a believer from what I can tell it's not a Christian book But it is extremely helpful and valuable and I love reading one of the things I do Almost every single day is read for an hour It is so helpful for the development of your brain for new thoughts ideas all those things. I'm highly encouraging I encourage you to start reading if you aren't and would love to talk to you about that and how I got started because I wasn't a reader but I knew that I wanted to be. So, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, phenomenally good book. I'm working through his workbook and his worksheets right now so I'll have plenty more to say on that. But one of the questions and one of the common challenges that we have in the real estate industry that I run into all the time as a coach, is people who say, well, I'm just so busy and I don't know how to stop being so busy. We've heard, we've had so many conversations on this podcast about the idea of the scoreboard, right? Well, when we have this scoreboard of here's what I wanna make, here's how much time I wanna spend with my husband or wife, here's how much time I wanna spend with the kids, or here's the other things that I wanna do that aren't just working. Well, one of the challenges that I hear often that we run into is, well, I just don't know how to do that, right? I'm selling 20 homes a year. and I'm putting up the lock boxes and I'm showing houses and I'm writing contracts and I'm responding to emails and I'm doing all of these pieces and it's just so difficult. How in the world do I have time for other things? It just seems impossible. Well, I want to share with you a few quick tips on how to gain leverage in your real estate business, right? Because here's the truth. If you don't have an admin, then you are an admin, right? And for most of you listening, being an admin, which is a great thing, right? If you're an admin, but if you're a real estate agent and you're a salesperson, being an admin also is not a wise dollar productive use of your time. One of the quick ways that you can do this. So let's just do some very simple math. Let's say last year you made a hundred thousand dollars and you worked 40 hours a week for 50 weeks. Okay. If we just look back and say, okay, of those 40 hours a week, how many hours did you actually spend generating? business. Okay, so let's say you spent five hours a week generating business. So that would be hang with me. You made a hundred thousand dollars. You spent five hours a week for 50 weeks. That's 250 hours lead generating last year. Okay, those are the dollar productive hours in your day. That means if you do a hundred thousand dollars divided by 250 divided by 250 hours, that means while you were lead generating your dollar per hour that you were bringing in was four$400 per hour $400 per hour you can do that very simply how much did you make how much time did you divide it by how much time you spent lead generating last year how many hours that's your dollar per hour while you're lead generating so this person $400 an hour while they were lead generating Should that person also then be responding to emails that are $10 an hour task should that person then? be the one driving around and putting up lock boxes, which are $20 an hour task, right? There are so many ways that we can buy leverage, but most of it starts in our heads thinking, right? That why would we ever pay someone to do this? Why would we can do it ourselves? Why not just do it ourselves, right? We need to get over that thinking. One of the best ways for us to spend more time in the places we want to spend, whether that's with our family, whether that's in your business, growing and scaling your business, or whether that's serving in the church, is to be wise about buying back some of our time. So here's a couple of quick tips. Number one, use a showing assistant. Use a showing assistant. If you find that you're showing so many houses and you just don't have time or you're running around, you got home inspections and walkthroughs and everything to go to, that is just taking up so much time. Find an agent in your office. There are tons of them who you say, hey, I need help showing homes. Well, I will pay you $30 an hour if you help me show X, Y, and Z homes, right? And here's how the process would work. It'd be super simple. You're sitting down with the buyer. You say, great, looking forward to seeing or working with you. Here's how this process works. I've hired X, Y, Z agent. or XYZ agent is on my team and they're going to show you houses. Once you find a house that you really love, right? Because you didn't hire me to see nine out of 10 homes you don't want, you hire me so I can get you the home you do want. They're going to show you around. They have a lot more flexibility in their scheduling than I do. They're going to show you around. You're going to love them. Once you find a house that you love, they will let me know. You can let me know and then I'll get to work and negotiate that for you. Home inspection walkthrough. They'll show up. and do those pieces with you, everything dealing with your money, that is all me and we'll take great care of you, right? So now what you're doing is let's say it's 10 hours of showing houses during that process of the transaction. So $300 total that you paid this person. Well, the average commission is $10 ,000. Is $300 worth buying back 10 hours of your time? Absolutely. Just look at the math. Your time is worth $400 an hour while you lead generate.$400 an hour. If you spend all 10 hours lead generating, that means you made $4 ,000 and you traded$300 for it. That is the easiest math equation in the entire industry. Absolutely. You should do that all the time. Now, what if you even said, I'm going to buy back 10 hours of my time and I'm going to lead generate for five of them and then I'll spend five hours with my kids. What a great use of your time. Guess what? Five hours at $400 an hour is still $2,000. You still made way more money doing that. than you did out there showing houses. It's just a math equation. So find a showing assistant. Some people don't want to do that and I totally get it. Maybe that's the time you love to develop the relationship with your clients. So what about other ways? First and foremost, hire a transaction coordinator. If you're going through and doing all the paperwork yourself, that is a waste of your time and that is a waste of your gifts. You should not be writing PICRAS. You should not be writing addendums. You should not be worrying about who has all the documents and is the lawyer ready to close on time. That's not your job. Your job is to find business, get it under contract and close the business, right? Everything in between should go to a transaction coordinator. Reach out to me. I can give you some resources, but there's so many good ones that cost you maybe 350 bucks for the entire transaction. Think about that. The freedom of your mind, buying back not only your time, but your mental space. for 350 bucks so that you can then go focus on whatever else you want to focus on. You don't got to worry about all the moving pieces. That is incredibly helpful. You should go hire a transaction coordinator per deal. You don't have to have a full -time employee. That's okay. Hire a transaction coordinator per deal. When it comes to lock boxes and signs and anything like that, I've hired in my own business, I use an intern at my church. And she was 18 when she started. She's 19 now. She's super reliable. I pay her 20 bucks an hour, which is a great, great value to her. And she saves me a ton of time. I just put on a listing that was an hour away. Well, I don't want to drive an hour there and an hour back to just put up a sign. That's 40 bucks. I get it. We're talking about real money here, but two hours of time I could lead generate, right? And I could make way more than 40 bucks. Two hours of time where I could just sit there. Hanging out with my family, hanging out with my wife, hanging out with my kids, and the work is getting done. If I ask my wife, hey, should I spend $40 so that I can buy back two hours of my time to be with you all? The family, she would say, absolutely you should, right? Now everybody's got to make their own decision. My point is, there are tons of ways for you to buy back your time. I also have set up an executive assistant, Kay, who I love, who's a believer. She's based in the Philippines and she gets paid $6 an hour. She's a full -time employee. And before you think, wow, Gary, you are totally ripping her off.$8 an hour is what they pay a surgeon in the Philippines.$6 an hour is a really good wage for someone out there. I made sure of it because I want to make sure she's taken care of. She works 40 hours a week. She spends... Takes time and and and reads my email. She responds to things. She does scheduling for me She helps us with the podcast. She puts on things for the website. She does our mailers for our real estate business She does social media post. She does a lot of things and we're talking about six dollars an hour right two hundred and forty dollars a week to buy back 40 hours worth of time for me That's how you grow, that's how you scale, that's how you effectively spend more time with the people you want to spend time with. Agents, we cannot continue to try to be all things to all people. You're either an agent or you're an admin, you're not both. If you want to be a phenomenal agent, you can't also try to be a phenomenal admin. It's not going to work. Here's what I want you to think about. When you buy back your time, how do you fill that time? So when you buy back your time, fill it with some more lead generation that could be making new relationships, right? For me, that meant spending more time at coffee with people in my database. That was a huge thing that was spent more time in thinking about how do I grow my business? That's more time reading so I can learn and have new thoughts and new ideas that's allowed me to create the faithful agent in the podcast and do all of these pieces. Why? Because for a very cost effective way, in a very cost effective way, I have leveraged my time. my personal business and you can do this too and you don't need to go do all of it. But here's the steps that I would take if I were you. The first thing I would do, go find a transaction coordinator. There's tons of them out there. I will happily give you a resource. Find a transaction coordinator. That is significant. They're good at it. They do it all the time. It is absolutely the number one most worthwhile cost in your business. Number two, then I would get an ad or an intern, excuse me. Stop running around putting up lock boxes and signs. That is a waste of your time. You are talented enough where you can go do more valuable activities. Number two, hire an intern. 20 bucks an hour. Number three, a showing partner. Once you have enough showings going on, once you're busy enough doing that, hire a showing assistant in your office.$30 an hour to a real estate agent. It's a blessing to them because it's cashflow. It's a blessing to you because it's buying back. your time and fourth, I would be thinking about an executive assistant. I found mine through referral, right? Which is how I do my business. I connected with Kay in the Philippines, hired her for $6 an hour and she is awesome. There are so many ways for you to find leverage in your life. There's so many ways for you to find leverage in your business. Think about how do you buy back your time and don't be afraid to trade $20 in an hour. for a $400 an hour value in your lead generation or whatever it is that you're going to do. This is how we grow. This is how we get better. This is how you buy back your time so that you can spend it in the ways you want to spend it. If you're making a hundred grand, 200 grand a year, and you're saying, I can't spend $300 or transaction. You need to check your heart about your money. That's the whole point of having money in the Lord's kindness is to give us the ability to leverage out of all the things that we don't want to have to do and be consumed by so we can show up where we want to show up and be present where we want to be present. Use the money for what it's there for. I hope this is encouraging. Go check it out. Buy back your time by Dan Martell. I'm not perfect at it, but I've been doing it for a while. I would love to help you in any way that I can. I hope this encourages you. Agents, we can be better. We can do better in. our businesses. I will see you on.