Work/Life Balance (and why typical training for real estate agents make it impossible to achieve this)
Thu, Feb 28, 2013
“By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.” - Robert Frost
You don’t have to wait for a new year to make resolutions. In fact, if you continue to struggle with work/life balance, today is the best time of all to set the biggest kind of goals there are – the kind that have to do with the quality of your life. Any of the other goals you set such as implementing a certain program or reaching a certain sales number are really only pieces of the overall puzzle. Underneath it all is your wish that somehow, if you can manage to put all these pieces together, your happy, perfect life will emerge. Of course, I’m a big advocate of these puzzle pieces as this is the way I've been able to coach so many thousands of agents to much better lives. It really is as simple as following the simple steps we lay out for you: a) run a few low or no-cost ads to build your prospect pipeline; b) parrot the script we give you to convert these leads to appointments; c) copy my buyer and seller presentations to sign the most qualified clients, etc. etc. But overriding all of that should be your own personal vision for what it is you want to get out of the riches that will follow. Typical real estate training courses simply don’t help you with this at all.
You failed to escape
The paradox of our business as entrepreneurs is that most of us chose real estate as a way of escaping the rigidity of corporate America. We wanted to be own boss. The trouble is that most agents beat themselves up with long hours and impossible to-do lists to a degree that is at least as bad, if not worse, than they would have been subjected to working for someone else. The initial drive for work-life balance that led you to choose to work for yourself is driving many of you into an early grave. You know that’s true. According to a recent Harvard study, “a connection between bad bosses and bad health has long been suspected but has been hard to confirm. Now, new research shows that a manager’s approach to work-life balance predicts just how likely his or her employees are to have a heart attack or a stroke. … Ratios of 2-6 times the likelihood of multiple cardiovascular risk factors were found in workers whose managers were rigid about work-family conflicts. … The study of almost 400 health-care workers and their managers found that inflexible managerial practices predicted – with startling accuracy – the cardiovascular status and sleep patterns of staff.” [Globe and Mail]
You can’t blame the boss … you are the boss
How many family meals, hours of sleep, kids’ performances, vacations, nights out with your spouse did you personally miss last year because you were chasing leads, babysitting buyers, worrying about money, doing paperwork, stressing about the future? To make things worse, you can’t even blame the boss . . . because you are the boss. Consider the following statistics from a recent Small Business Watch survey:
| Entrepreneur | Avg Worker | |
| Work 6 or more days a week | 61% | 22% |
| Work more than 10 hours a day | 39% | 20% |
| Always or most of the time work on holidays | 57% | 31% |
| Have postponed or cancelled vacation time due to the economy | 56% | 45% |
| Define a day off as not working at all | 27% | 54% |
Incidentally, these percentages are rising for small business owners who are whipping themselves even further into submission in an effort to rebuild their business after the recession. According to the same study, in 2009 “only 29% said they had taken a vacation in the past year that lasted a week, down from 40% in May 2008 and 41% in May 2007.” And just exactly what is a day off according to small business owners like you? Well, of the 73% who didn’t define a day off as not working at all, “37% said a day off means not actively working, but available for calls and e-mails; 25% defined it as working an hour here and there; 7% said it’s working all day, but from a remote location; and 3% weren’t sure how they would define a day off.”
The real question you have to answer
If you can’t even remember what it is you’re working for, it’s time to take a giant step back and redefine exactly what balance means for you. Ask the thousands of agents who have successfully implemented my system to build their own perfect, happy lives. These agents are not among those who have become so owned by their businesses that they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be human. The question isn’t whether I can help you get “there”. The real question you have to answer is what is your “there”. What do you want your real estate business to give you? Once you re-figure that out, the rest is just simple execution. We’ll supply you with the puzzle pieces and show you exactly how to put them together. The fastest way to change your life is to attend one of my 3-day SuperConferences because we immerse you in all part of the system and surround you with agents we are actively making their lives happen.
Here’s a real live example of a couple from Florida who took the leap and made this happen for themselves: “We started our business from scratch about eight years ago and were familiar with direct response marketing through Dan Kennedy. We contacted Dan Kennedy and asked him who has really mastered this in the real estate profession and he said, Craig Proctor. When we started using your system, we basically started our business from scratch. We just started with RE/MAX at the time and all of the other agents there seemed like they were trying to figure out what ad to run, what postcard to run, that type of thing. Having the Craig Proctor System, what that enabled us to do is we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel, so if we wanted to target FSBOs, we just pull out the FSBO campaign and there was the cover letter and there was the report to go with it and the website, etc., so it was just a turnkey for us.
“We were on the verge of leaving the business before using Craig’s system. Last month, our Real Estate business paid us (profit!) $30k. Title and Loss Mitigation another $20k. So we are making 60-70% MORE on every deal than if we just had a regular real estate business. Best of all we have a great team which we’ve trained to run (somewhat) without us, allowing us to take lots of vacations. “In fact, we just go back from a two week super-awesome vacation in Europe, and this time for the first time we didn’t take our laptops! We visited Paris , Venice , Athens , Ephesus (Turkey), Crete , Sicily and Rome. I’m attaching some photos of our trip. There were 11 of us, all family and we had a blast. It was really cool to be able to show my parents Sicily where my dad’s family came from. This was a big dream I had that someday we would be able to do this together… And we did! “The best part of all of this was that, while we were away, closings continued to happen, leads got converted, clients were followed up on and checks continued to come in as if we were here. As a matter of fact, two homes that we didn’t think had much chance of selling, SOLD! “So for the first time in the history of Johnson and Johnson Team, Tim and I can honestly and proudly say that we own a REAL business. We don’t just have jobs anymore. Thank you for showing us the processes and systems that would enable us to build our business and a legacy for our family.” – Tim & Rosangela Johnson, FL
What are you missing out on by not getting your own business in order … to allow you to actually live the life you dream of? It is possible. You can test drive my ideas and systems absolutely free by signing up for Free Weekly Training which includes live weekly webinars, a monthly newsletter and priority invitations to free half day training events. This Free Weekly training will expose you to inexpensive and highly effective methods of lead generation (with no cold calling) -- what I call “Reverse Prospecting”, where qualified prospects actually hunt you down rather than the other way around, and then how to follow these leads through to maximum GCI via proprietary lead conversion and prospect presentation systems. This is the easiest way for you to find out with no risk or obligation what my system is all about and how it can help you profitably grow your real estate business and vastly improve your quality of life.
JOIN MY FREE WEEKLY TRAINING PROGRAM HERE