Time vs Money
Time vs money. I think most real estate agents will agree it’s a neverending battle between your two most important resources. Let’s face it, we never seem to have enough of either. They also have a direct effect on how much of the other you’re going to have at the end of the day. For example, if I waste a lot of time and don’t do my productivity activities, it’s most likely I didn’t make much money for the day.
On the other side, if I spend the whole day diligently working on productivity, then I should expect to see more money in my near future.
If I spend all of money, I have less available to grow my business… However, if I don’t spend any money on my business, eventually I won’t be able to grow. (More on this later) And what if I spend my money and get so busy that I run out of time?
So what do we do???? Seems like I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t. Let’s dig deeper into this battle and see how we can find the balance we all seek between the time vs money argument.
Which is More Important?
I think most of us will say money is more important because we spend the majority of our lives trying to make sure we can pay our bills, save for the future, take care of our families, etc… so for that reason, we tend to focus more of money than time. This is a mistake. Here is a simple fact you can’t forget….
You can’t make more time, but you can always make more money!
That’s right! If you use your time wisely, you can make the money back. When I spend a dollar, it’s gone but I can always get it back. Example… I spend $350/mo on leads from Zillow or some other lead generation site. I can take those leads, convert them, and make back that $350 and hopefully more. I can invest in real estate and watch my investment appreciate and eventually sell it and make my money back. Right?
Well, we can’t do that with time. If I spend 3 hours watching my beloved New York Yankees (yeah, I’m a Yankee fan, deal with it!), there is no way for me to get that time back. Period, end of story. When I spend time, it’s gone forever and that’s why I believe you have to focus on your time before you focus on money. Please, if you get nothing else out of this post, remember this… You can’t get time back once you’ve spent it!
Finding the Balance
Time and money are a pretty elaborate balancing act. The more time you spend on productivity, the more money you make, but the less time you have to enjoy it. The more money you spend on productivity, the more time you need to spend on the opportunities you’ve purchased and now your life is nothing but work. Basically, it means most people either have a lot of time or a lot of money. Very few have the balance in the image below
Even worse is the poor unfortunate souls who have no time AND no money! How does that happen? Simple, a LOT of bad decisions. If you are in the unenviable position of having no time or money, please get some help. This is a symptom of not spending your time and/or your money properly and usually some good coaching or consulting can literally change your life in positive ways you can’t even imagine! I know what you’re thinking right now… “I don’t have the time or the money for coaching or consulting!” Well, there are lots of great articles and videos on this website that are free, there are more in other places, and if you don’t force yourself to take the time to learn what you need to change then nothing will ever change, so just get it done and stop making excuses for not having the time.
Leverage is the Key to Balance
When a person starts their lead generation career they usually have a lot of time (because they haven’t generated or converted any leads yet) and little money (also because they haven’t generated or converted any leads yet). Because this person has a lot of time and little money they should be focusing on prospecting activities… (click here to learn more about Prospecting and Marketing and when to use them). Prospecting activities include things like calling your sphere of influence, knocking on doors, open houses, networking events… basically anything that puts you visually or verbally in front of people. Prospecting is action-oriented and allows you the opportunity to ask for business AND spend very little money in doing so. Think about it, it doesn’t cost much to make your calls, knock on doors, or go to networking events. Another huge benefit of prospecting is it generates a quick monetary return on your time investment. Action-oriented tasks such as the tasks you perform while prospecting almost always show a return on investment faster than non-action-oriented tasks like marketing.
If you prospect properly and consistently, it won’t take long until you hit the 2nd stage of Time vs Money. It’s the stage where you suddenly have money as a reward for all of your hard work, but you have now run out of time. What happens in this case? Well, most real estate agents will STOP doing what made them busy in the first place and replace prospecting with customer service. This puts real estate agents (or anyone in a lead generation business) on the roller coaster ride!
Check out the graphic above. The green lines signify your time spent lead generating, especially prospecting. The more you prospect, the higher the line goes. The blue line to the right represents the amount of business you will do 3 months later, almost certainly as a result of the lead generation activities over the previous 3 months. As you can see, the first green line tops out and 3 months later, the blue line also tops out. What happens when the blue line (the amount of business generated line) tops out? The green line (the prospecting line) starts to go down, meaning most lead generators will abandon the very thing that got them busy to deal with the business. Seems like a good idea until you watch what happens next. As the 2nd green line goes down, you can see the 2nd blue line also going down 3 months later. Once the blue line bottoms out (in other words, business has disappeared because the lead generator stopped prospecting, she starts to lead generate again and then business starts to go up again. This becomes an ugly cycle… Lead generate until you get busy, stop lead generating to deal with the business and when the business bottoms out, start lead generating again. In short, this is a bad plan that most mid-producing lead generators follow whether they realize they are doing it or not.
This is a great example of staying out of balance. Your whole life becomes either having not enough time, or not enough money. Unless you make changes, this will be your life. Doesn’t look like a whole lot of fun, does it?
I think most people in the lead generation industry can relate to the first chart, but what about this second one? This is showing a very different look and it’s the key to balancing your time and money! Let’s examine the chart above for a minute…. What’s changed from the top chart? First and foremost, you can see that the green line (the lead generation time line) stays nice and steady. It never gets too high, it never gets too low. Next, look at the blue line (the line representing the amount of business you do 3 months later) It starts to increase slowly and as time goes on, it shoots straight up and that is when you found the balance.
So what happened there? Well it’s pretty simple actually. It goes back to everything you always hear me saying:
- Consistent lead generation will make your business explode if you stay with it.
- Systematic lead generation strategies will make you more consistent.
- This is a marathon, not a sprint. Build a solid base (a good lead generation system) and you can build it up as much as you want.
How Do I Find the Time to Lead Generate Consistently?
Here is the most important thing I have to teach about time management….
You do not have a time problem, you have a priority problem!
It’s true. The fact is that everyone has the same 24 hours in a day. No more, no less. Some people are way more productive in those 24 hours than others. It isn’t because they can slow time, it’s because they focus on the high-priority items first. They move their “Big Rocks” first… .In other words, they don’t let the small things get in the way of the most important lead-generation activities that will drive their business and the balance of time vs money that we are all looking for. Think about your day. I challenge you to try a very old trick.
CHALLENGE:
Go to your cell phone at the beginning of a work day and set an alarm every hour through the entire work day. Each time that alarm goes off, write down what you were doing at the moment of the alarm. Check out the results at the end of the day and it will give you a really good idea of where your time is going. I think the results will surprise you.
When you finish the challenge, figure out what you can do to make yourself more efficient. Here are the most common issues we have in being productive. What can you do to change the items that you relate to most?
- “Plan your work and work your plan” – If you don’t know what you need to accomplish every day then you probably won’t be very successful in being efficient. How can you work a plan when you don’t even know what your plan is? I used to make a “prospecting” calendar for myself at the end of each month for the following month. I knew every day what I had to get done. My calendar did not list specific times, it was just a list of what I was doing and how long I would be doing it each day. For example, on October 16, 2004 I was going to spend 2 hours calling my sphere, 1 hour cold calling, 1 hour preparing for Expired visits, 2 hours visiting expired, and 1 hour of writing letters to my absentee owner niche.
- “You can’t plan what you don’t know” – If you don’t have a strategic system it will be impossible for you to make a plan. Get educated on what you need to do. Decide on what lead generation activities you’re going to do and how you’re going to carry them out. Are you going to do my plan? If so, get on the blog and read, watch the videos, set up some coaching or consulting, or just check out our productivity plan and let us do it for you. I really don’t care which one you chose, but pick a path and get on it as soon as possible! If you’re not going to use my plan, that’s fine as well… Get on someone else’s plan and learn it, set it up, and do it every single day. Just remember that the longer it takes you to get productive the longer it’s going to take you to get the balance between time and money.
- “Get away from the nay-sayers” – I say this all the time. In fact, I even have a “Mindset Corner” section of this site because I think Mindset is just that important! If you don’t believe you’re going to create and work a productive plan and see great results then you will not. If your mindset is that of someone who is going to fail, you will almost certainly fail! Most people with a negative mindset tend to hang around others with negative mindsets. They spread the “disease” back and forth making it worse and worse. Don’t do that. Hang around with positive and productive people, and when you notice those old feelings of negative mindsets or limiting beliefs creeping back in, go do something positive instead. Read a self-help book, look at some positive quotes, go for a walk or a jog… anything that will get you back In a positive space. I’m going to say this and make the letters big and bold….
If you fail at having a positive mindset, you will almost certainly fail in a lead generation business.
That’s it… I know it seems real basic and things as complicated as “Time vs Money” can’t be solved with something that basic, but here it is… Before you just roll your eyes and continue to look for a better reason to fail, give it a try. I promise you it will work if you learn a plan, create the plan and work the plan BEFORE you let the little things in life get in your life and you will have found a great balance between time and money.
Comment below and let me know what your limiting beliefs and negative mindset is saying after reading this whole article… And by the way, congrats on reading this whole article. It’s a long one!
