MERRIAM-WEBSTER’S – the promised land : a happy place or condition that someone wants to reach : a place where dreams or hopes can come true
The Real Estate Promised Land – working the amount you choose while making the money you need to achieve your goals
In a busy market like 2021, finding work-life balance for many Realtors can feel like a story only available on the fiction shelves of the local bookstore. In addition, with many industries becoming volatile due to COVID, there has been a large influx of new entrants into the real estate business who are now struggling to even make a living.
There has always been lots of chatter around creating passive income (money that comes in while you don’t have to work), but the truth is, there is nothing passive about passive income. It takes a huge amount of effort to either acquire the capital to invest, or a huge amount to time to maintain the systems over the long-term, which funny enough, is the opposite of passive.
Gary Vaynerchuk is famous for saying:
“There is no such thing as the passive income, no magic formula. Historically there are only two areas where you can throw your money in and create something that comes close to passive income over time: Public Stock Market and Real Estate [owning real estate].”
There are however, proven, consistent ways in the real estate industry [helping clients buy and sell homes] that have allowed Realtors to build businesses that allow them to take as much time off as they desire and/or to create retirement or transition plan for their business.
For Realtors, the 4 steps below produce the highest, consistent returns on their time invested, and the most consistent financial returns for their long-term freedom. Implementing these steps consistently, and strategically, will give you the opportunity to work the amount you choose while making enough money to achieve your goals.
This is how you find the Real Estate Promised Land. Read more…
Step 1 – Be 100% Client Focused
There are 2 parts to this.
First, make sure the time that you spend in your workday is 100% focused on adding value to your current and prospective clients. Helping clients through the selling and buying process has predictable returns that are calculable based on the level of your marketing activities. Adding value to your clients has a higher return on your time and financial investment than any other activity that a Realtor can engage in. The available time you have after your workday should be focused on family, friends, relationship and personal endeavors to recharge your batteries.
The second key to being 100% Client Focused, is to choose a brokerage that shares the same values. Their marketing, brokerage initiatives, tools and efforts should be focused on making it easier to add value to your clients.
What campaigns does your brokerage offer? What local content do they produce? How are they helping you add value between transactions? What activities can they automate for you? Are they encouraging you to be 100% Client Focused or do they have other agendas?
Your brokerage support and services should free up your time to allow you to do more for your clients in less time. They should support you in being 100% Client Focused and as a result take you closer to the Promised Land.
Step 2 – Re-Invest into Your Business
There is no better return than investing into your business in the form of marketing and client care. 3x, 5x, 10x returns or more are possible, and are consistent, for Realtors when a portion of your commission earnings are reinvested back into your business.
Consistently tracking your marketing activities, researching and implementing the best practices, and hiring the right marketing service providers, will lead to huge returns and more business than you can handle.
Step 3 – Invest into a Balanced Portfolio
This is the most proven consistent way for people to become financially free. Putting compound interest to work for you is harnessing on of the most powerful forces on the planet.
The speed at which your financial freedom happens is based on two things:
- the amount of income you generate while focusing on your clients; and
- the standard of living you are willing to sacrifice today to ensure you can live a great life tomorrow.
In other words, grow a great real estate business, spend modestly, invest heavily in proven investment vehicles.
The extra money you make over and above what you spend, after investing into your business, needs to be saved in a balanced portfolio of stocks, bonds and other common investment vehicles. The word “balanced” means that you are essentially invested across enough industries that you are receiving the average returns of the market. It has been proven time and time again that even the best money managers in the world cannot consistently beat the returns of the market average. If you wish to take a portion of your savings and buy a revenue property, you have that option, but only if it fits into the rest of portfolio. Remember that Gary Vaynerchuk quote?
The alternative is investing an “unbalanced” amount of money into one industry, or worse, one company’s stock. This strategy is essentially gambling with your life savings and your family’s future. It has cost millions of people, billions of dollars in losses each year.
Step 4 – Delegate or Transition Your Business
The final step in finding the Real Estate Promise Land is to delegate tasks to free up your time, and/or eventually transition or sell your business completely. The opportunity to delegate in any business, including the real estate business, ranges from hiring someone to take your listing photos, to hiring a CEO of your real estate company and having every task being taken care of by someone else. The level you can choose to delegate is flexible and has no boundaries.
To free up your time, and still increase the number of clients your serve, and ultimately increase your income, you must start delegating out lower value tasks. This will allow you to spend more time on high value tasks and will ultimately increase your revenue. In the end, you will have the option to transition out of your business on a part-time or full-time basis.
While sipping cocktails all day, every day on a beach in Mexico sounds appealing, after a year or two, many people are left feeling unfulfilled and discover that some type of meaningful work on a part-time capacity can keep their brains engaged. The real estate business gives you the option to pull back to whatever level you desire, provided you have created trusted systems and have delegated responsibly. Your other option is a complete sale of your real estate business and an exit all together.
The Real Estate Promised Land is Within Reach for Everyone
By implementing these 4 steps, you will find the Real Estate Promised Land. Regardless of where you are at in your real estate career, you can make progress to get a taste of, or completely settle into this state of freedom. The first step in the process is staying focused on your client’s needs. It is a beautiful thing that helping your clients achieve their goals is the only way that you will be able to achieve your goals.
