[00:00:00] All right, Jeff, Quinten, welcome. Yeah. So, Brian, how are you, man? I'm doing great. How are you?
[00:00:06] Good. It's an honor and a pleasure to be here. Appreciate it.
[00:00:09] Yeah. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:11] You know, I look at your topic here, the best time hacks that changed my brokerage forever. And it takes me back to I think it was about a year ago you didn't have a brokerage, but you had a team actually acquire a brokerage, which was an amazing thing for me to hear. I love that we have the same background. By the way, your your numbers are bigger than mine, probably.
[00:00:35] But so we got we got the screens always there, always swept across for sure in our conference room and in our reception area.
[00:00:46] Very cool. So tell us about we get to talk about time today. And I mean, time is really our most valuable asset as as people, as business owners. Time time is the most valuable asset we have. It's way more valuable than money.
[00:01:06] And I think that's the reason that health is such a valuable asset because health gives us more time.
[00:01:12] So true.
[00:01:13] So I'm I'm excited to hear about your time hack's today. I'm just gonna let you kick us off and we'll just dove in with questions from me and from all of our listeners.
[00:01:24] I appreciate that. So thank again for it's an honor, a pleasure to be here and and to be surrounded by all that amazing talent you have and what you guys do. So so, you know, it's been it's been awesome. Know, I just worked on 12 things really for time hacks or or let's just call it time management habits, whatever it may be. Things that really have worked for us and our real estate team are over these years. And I've been doing it a while right now, so I've been doing it since nineteen ninety two. So I learned a whole bunch along the way.
[00:01:51] And as you mentioned, you know, we in the real estate space, we don't get paid for our time ultimately on an hourly basis, like many other industries where we charge an hourly rate to wherever it may be.
[00:02:02] So it's important that we maximize what we do every minute, every day, every hour that to get the most out of it. So every 10, 12, 12 points, you just hit them and just kind of go through it. And they're very basic. Not just is not going to be crazy, like, you know, the secret sauce is very basic, very, in my opinion, simple, but not easy. OK, so first, no one is right done really is doing the most productive thing possible for the first 30 minutes of every hour. All right, doing the thing that's most productive, the first 30 minutes of every hour. Just imagine if you worked in a in a 10 hour day, right. Or an eight hour day, whatever it is for you. And you just took the very first 30 minutes of every hour from from 10 a.m. to 10, 30 from 12 to 12, 30. I'm going to put together right now and be super hyper focused on the most productive thing that matters the most for me to do. In that half hour of if it's all distraction for you, sometimes you get more done than half hour than you do on a typical day. If they don't, every our first 30 minutes know if you're working eight hours, you get four productive hours in an actual day for productive hours. In any business, you're going to triple and duplicate quadruple your income or your production.
[00:03:18] Yeah, absolutely. Just being consciously aware of those first 30 minutes will for sure double your production, double double your efficiencies, I should say, whatever.
[00:03:30] And you know, it sounds easy, but it's not right. Sounds simple. Very simple, but it's not easy sometimes.
[00:03:35] Do you have to go off every hour on the hour? I mean, is this is this something that's in your calendar, Jeff?
[00:03:40] You know, it's not it's kind of more it's become a habit more or less than what I like to do. And it's more or less it's kind of more like forty five minutes. Forty five minutes on, fifteen minutes off. Taking a little bit of a break, but starting out.
[00:03:53] It's like, OK, and the next 30 minutes I am going to be the most productive I can be. I'm going to do what's it's going to matter the most. It's going to get me the most out of it right now. Now what we used to do is before we became a habit is yes, just to set alarms before actual alarms. And the reality is they go way back here before they even cell phones, whatever we used to have. Egg timer is going to be on egg timer. You just you turn it right. We have this on our desk. We turn it for 30 minutes and then would ring and then, you know, OK, that I'm starting it now and I know what it's going to end.
[00:04:23] So we've been doing this since before we had that were very involved, at least in 1992. I had the old bag phone in the car phone installed. Right.
[00:04:35] Ok, OK, awesome.
[00:04:38] So number two is is this is, I think so important as far as the time hack.
[00:04:43] And it's understanding that at the beginning of every year. And this is a great time to do it as we continue to look at our business plans for twenty, twenty one. And we're working on this in our business planning event, which is going to be the end of this month, the twenty ninth. But we have all of our team do this beginning of the year and planning for the year to determine how many days you're actually going to work. Right. You determine how many days you're going to work. You're going to determine how many days you think you might actually be sick or not feel very well, just like out just just you know, there's going to be those days just never. But ultimately, what you do is you take an annual calendar at a glance and you line out your entire year. Right. So what you're going to do is basically you have month by month in front of you. You take a and marker that you can wipe it off with because it's very flexible. But you want to map out basically when you're going to work. So on the days you're going to work. You leave them and the days you take off, you put it four for off. So if you're going to work a five day work week and and Sunday off and put those on those days, you next then go ahead and be put in there basically a V for vacation, start to think about, OK, the upcoming year when we normally take vacation or when would I like to if I haven't already planned it.
[00:05:55] And maybe that's, you know, on the first quarter, maybe that's in April and you put a V there for the entire week. So now you have your year, you got the DaGian, they're going to take off, you've got the days, you know you're going to go on vacation. Maybe it's in September, maybe it's over Christmas, whatever it may be. You put it in the schedule. Now, you may not have booked it, but at least it's there and you can see it next. You want to take a look and say, OK, and the ISA's for education, like going to conferences, attending conferences like this is not virtual or or you're going to go to a one day event for a regional event. Whatever it is that you're going to do, you got to put set aside for for for e for education. Right. You know, Nickelodeons will be have negative every year from the unit we attend. So I know those dates and events go online, get this dates put in and there is an E you're going to travel there, you're going to come home, you've got to block it out.
[00:06:47] Then you got a blackout. Like I said earlier, the days. You just don't feel like maybe that maybe you're going to subtract five percent of the year for that. Who knows? Now, in front of you, you have an actual year at a glance that knows how many days you're going to actually work. What happens is when you when you know the days you're going to work. Ultimately, when you're working those days, you have in front of you, everything accelerates, everything becomes a little more urgent because you limited. We all think we have three and sixty five days a year. We don't in most cases, you know, if you're taking two days off a week, you're working five days a month, which equates to twenty days a month, which becomes to 40 days a year. You don't have 365 days of 240 work days. Then you take your vacations, then the days you don't feel like it, you know, then ultimately you look up and say, I only worked 10 days this year. I got a lot I need to sell X number of homes.
[00:07:39] I'm going to get to work. So it compresses, accelerates.
[00:07:43] I think what you're looking for that that is such great advice if.
[00:07:48] If you don't schedule your time off, if you don't schedule your vacations, those will not happen. They will become work because somebody else will fill up your calendar. The question is, do you want to fill up your calendar? Do you want someone else to fill up your calendar?
[00:08:03] I love that. And the urgency around it is I actually started working an hour longer every day and getting up earlier when I learned that I could add two months onto my year by just adding an hour to every day.
[00:08:19] So you add, you can add if you have you start an hour early and you and you finish an hour later, two additional hours a day if you're working, five days a week is 10 hours more a month times the amount of weeks you work, you actually add almost three months to your entire year. That is, I'll tell you. Right. What is the secret sauce? That's been one of the things that's always that's been my secret for production. Why does Jeff and his team do more than anyone else? Well, they start a little earlier. They work a little later. And instead of working a 12 month business plan, we let people work 12 months. We're working 12 months, but we're getting done in 12 months as if we're working 15. Right, exactly where we really are. And it's a very simple thing, getting in the office an hour earlier or seeing an hour later and just one hour throughout the entire year, it will add so much more to production, you know, so we're down number three. This is just something I would as you know, having a precise schedule ultimately can solve almost every production problem that we have.
[00:09:25] Provided we follow it.
[00:09:28] Having precise schedule can solve almost every production problem the nation has provided, they follow it. So if we just start to say, OK, here's my ideal schedule, and by the way, as you mentioned before, about other people or your or your your schedule getting filled up, well, what happens a lot of times is our schedule gets filled up with every ounce, everyone else's issues or problems that you typically work on and never gets filled up with what's most important for us. Women tend to do things and then other issues come up that we have to solve. And then what's important matters to us gets pushed back.
[00:09:59] Right? Really taking taking no to to the next level. Number two, we're scheduling out. This is work. This is vacation. This is learning now. We're scheduling that work day. What does it look like? What is eight to nine look like nine to 11, etc.. And if it's not in your calendar, again, talking about productivity, your productivity is going way down. Is that what I'm hearing?
[00:10:25] Correct. If it's not in your calendar, it just doesn't exist. Yes, that's that's our motto. That's what we work well and that's what we live by. And some people say, oh, man, you know, you're so you're so you're so disciplined.
[00:10:37] Well, the reality is it is. I mean, and I've been fortunate enough now that I have an executive assistant actually runs my calendar, because if I actually did it, I would be screwing it all up. And so I actually delegate this now to someone. And if I have to plug in a meeting, an appointment, a podcast, whatever that is that I need to do, let me have Jessica reach out and she runs it for me, keeps me on track. Otherwise it gets you got to manage to manage it because it could be filled up with things that aren't aren't productive.
[00:11:08] I'm sure that needs to be her. Number four, I wrote down and this is a part of that, is that your daily schedule should be kept in a place where it's seen by everyone. The accountability by that is critical. So having a schedule that you put together is is so important and you have to post it everywhere.
[00:11:26] In other words, if you're at your office and and you whether you work in a private office or you work in a cubicle or whatever it may be, and you actually go to the office, you have your schedule out and say, here's my activities that I do during a certain time. If I'm going to leave GenerationOne in noon, well, I'm going to let the world know this is a time I don't get distraction. This is this is the distraction part of my day. Like, here's my schedule. I would talk to you if you're available between one and two. This is one hour. I'll be available tonight in noon. I'm tied up. But give it to whether it's your broker at the office or any agents in your office that are next to you. I give it to our clients. I give it to our sellers. If we're sitting here in front of a seller at a at a listening presentation, we show our schedule and say to Mr. and Mrs. Seller, here's what our activities are each and every day to get your home sold. And I give it to them. If you if you happen to call me at eleven o'clock in the morning, unfortunately, I'm unavailable. I will be prospecting up trying to find a buyer for your home. I'm doing certain activities at this time that's out there promoting your property to get you the Best Buy.
[00:12:32] But I'll tell you, if you call me right now at eleven, you can leave a message certainly, or my assistant will help. You guys don't have assistant and you just have to train them and discipline them. No, I return calls every day at twelve to twelve thirty. Let me know the best number to reach you. I'll call you that when you do that and you give this schedule, the people one is they they held you accountable to it. You say you're going to do. And then secondly they, they tend to work around what it is for you. Right. They work around it. OK, great. No problem. I appreciate that. So now I know I can call you at 12:00 noon if I need you. Otherwise I know what your activities are, whatever that may be. So it's giving it to people out there that your your your wife, your kids, your husband, whoever that is, that you know, that, OK, in my world, these are the people that are going to distract me the most important times. Give me your schedule, guys. Here's my schedule. This is what I do. This is when I do it. And by the way, you might want to tie into it the results of the schedule, what it provides and will provide events that can maybe link it together.
[00:13:37] Ok, awesome job number five.
[00:13:42] One thing to think about is with regards to time hacks, time management, keeping track of your time. If you haven't ever done this, guys, what they recommend is hour by hour for, let's say, two weeks, identify what you're doing, OK? And you can go online. You can download every 15 minutes, basically starting at 7:00 in the morning till seven o'clock the next day, and you start jotting down what you're actually doing. And if I stood next to you in your office and watched what you did on 15 minute increments and jotted down what it was, I studied that say for hour by hour, for two weeks at the end of two weeks, if I looked at you guys and said, OK, let's analyze what you actually did. Let's identify your strengths, your weaknesses, your time management, what your systems like.
[00:14:26] What of that amount of time was actually income generating versus income servicing? You'll be amazed. And so taking that little moment in time to try to get a timestamp or analysis of what you do. It's mind blowing to actually see how much work you actually got done and what you did. OK, great help from number six, what we find right now is, is when it comes to time management, if you don't have a strong enough personal goals, it always creates a time management problem. Right? There's nowhere to go. Nothing. There's there's not a lot of things to do. There's not an urgency behind it. So not having strong personal goals or objectives always causes a time management issue. So number seven is to basically create a stronger focus for personal motivation, time management. Three things I think that an agent can do and get very, very, very focused on this.
[00:15:23] Number one is layout places I want to go, places I want to go, things I want to do. And then things that want to have some of that list, three things, places I want to go, list five things in them, right.
[00:15:38] So have places I want to go. A, B, C, D, e.
[00:15:45] Things I want to do, a, b, c, d, e, f, whatever. Five things are things I want to have, you know, places I want to go. Well, you know what? I've always wanted to go to Dubai. I've always wanted to go to, you know, wherever that is for somebody. I've always wanted to go to Germany. I always wanted to go to Sweden. I've always wanted to go to Bora Bora, whatever it is, things I want to do. Well, you know what?
[00:16:11] One of the things I always want to do is when I go to Dubai, I'm going to go to that one hotel that looks like a sail again, like a sailboat. And at the top. Is that really this thing up there? I want to go play tennis. Have haven't already bought it. One time I had a tennis match, a tennis court up there. Right. Things I'd like to have. Do I like to have start writing those things down. This will actually create a stronger focus around what's important, my personal goals, my objectives, and all of a sudden my motivation to do things and my management, my time speeds up because I have things I want to accomplish.
[00:16:46] So I was like an exercise that I mean, that's definitely going to build your vision and exercise that every leader should go through and then have all of their team or our employees or, you know, their business go through, right?
[00:17:00] Yeah, I agree. And if you're an individual agent, you know, do it for yourself and do it with your family, do with your kids if you have kids, your significant other, and sit down and say, you know, I just want to do three things, a very simple place I want to go to and have things I want to do. Right. It's a great thing, especially this time of year, you know, looking and focusing on twenty, twenty one. Revisit that and you'll find that also if you start to do that and maybe if you put a date next to each one and post it around your workstation, now all of a sudden your manager at the time says, well, OK, I said that I want to go to Dubai and I've got a deadline on it. It's twenty twenty one or twenty twenty two. All right. Well, let me focus on this, because I got to I got to make some money. I got to get motivated. But having a time when it really works, OK, you know, I guess the next next point I just wrote down, really about time management is understanding the master, your morning routine, master your morning routine and, you know, ultimately call this is money time, OK? This is the time that you wake up until 12:00 noon, the time you wake up until 12:00 noon, understanding that this is there's nothing more important in your personal or business life that can wait that can't wait until after 12:00 noon. So if you could just concentrate on the time you wake up to 12 noon every day and get your lead generation and get the things that are actually going to make you make you productive, get them out of the way, it's so important.
[00:18:33] That is your money time. So understand that. What do I do in the morning? Well, obviously, waking up at a certain time, that's consistent.
[00:18:42] Waking up, maybe, maybe seeing some affirmations, reading a book or two or single podcast that will motivate you, inspire your your your thought, get you motivated, eat something healthy, get your body in motion with some type of exercise. This will get you going mentally and physically, you know, get yourself ready for the day. Get to the office at a certain time. It's consistent, right. You want to basically get in momentum. It's almost like this by you know, when you wake up in the morning, if you can picture a rubber band. And every time you do one of these things, we talk about the rubber band, you pull back a little bit. So waking up and say five o'clock at five. Thirty people back listening to a good a good book or podcast, reading good books, a couple of pages full back, eating a healthy breakfast, full back, get some exercise in full back. You know, maybe at that point you want to roll, play or start some of your work on some of your skills. Pull back. Well, the moment that when now after you've done all these things and now you're ready to hit the office and hit the ground running, what happens when you release that rubber band? It's your momentum is all there and phone. You're off and running right into the office. So it's mashing that morning money time.
[00:19:51] Hey, just Jeff question on that.
[00:19:57] I've had a few people tell me and I started doing this, you know, I used to think the routine started. Maybe, you know, you get up, maybe shower, go to the gym, whatever it is. But I've had several people tell me and I've started doing it seems to make a difference, actually putting a bottle of water next to my bed before I even get out of bed. Morning routine starts with drinking. That water is right.
[00:20:23] Is that how soon the routine should start or when when should that start to to your morning in real reality should start the night before, just like your day shift. So all of that preparation is all the night before to mention having it, having an eight ounce or a glass, a glass of water or a bottle of water on your nightstand ready to go. If you look at my my. Actually, in my life, in my bedroom, I mean, I probably have one or two sit in my house and she's got four or five.
[00:20:50] I mean, have them or drink, have fun. She's weird, but she's got she's got there's always one or that. Right. And that's one of the things I do. And actually I put Lemon.
[00:20:59] So I love that you say it starts the night before because really it's about knowing your schedule the night before so that your subconscious mind can be planning out your day and planning out maybe certain meetings that are big deals. And you want a certain outcome that can be happening in your subconscious mind as you go to bed if you're envisioning a successful meeting. Right?
[00:21:24] Hundred percent. I mean, and it goes as far as not only having a bottle of water next year, next year, but if you have gym shoes, having your gym shoes and socks at the foot of your bed. So basically when your feet come out of bed, you're almost your feet, almost land on your gym shoes as a reminder, like, OK, I have to put them on. Now, you start to put your gym shoes on and socks on. Right. That is going to emerge. That is going to get you in one step.
[00:21:48] That's going to get you closer to getting to where it was to get to versus you're waking up out of bed, then having to go to the closet, you know, and all of that. If you could just have everything right there. Put your put your gym outfit on rock and roll right away. It's all.
[00:22:04] So while we're talking about the day, I thought this might make sense to discuss, Jeff.
[00:22:09] What do you do when time is not enough for the responsibilities of each day? I think we have this list of a thousand things we need to accomplish. Those aren't always, well, maybe what we should accomplish.
[00:22:23] Well, I think it all comes back to being clear on what those responsibilities are and then breaking those responsibilities down and then compartmentalizing them for the time block of that. Right. So so we talk about, OK, well, what what is the most important? What is what is the day look like? Maybe maybe we can discover that, you know, understanding what a typical good routine of a day, a productive day looks like. And then every look, everyone has a different deal. Everyone has different children that at different ages that need to be either at school or home, school or whatever it may be. But there's one thing that we do know for the ages that are most productive, and it's those ages right now that mastered their morning and getting what is most important done in the morning. Right. So here's the thing to think about. Right. So the march, the morning from the time you get up until 12:00 noon, that's going to be most important. So let's say that, you know, whatever your morning routine is, you get up at 6:00 a.m., 6:00 a.m., as I mentioned, to make sure you're going to go ahead and read a good book, drink a glass of water. You're going to go ahead and get to the gym. You're going to do some form of exercise. Maybe it's a walk like you're going to go ahead and eat something good. And then at that point, basically, you're you're feeling really well. If you can get to the office, let's say let's just call it.
[00:23:38] One of the things you might want to consider doing is get your role playing, practice your scripts, get a role play partner eight thirty to nine. You're going to go ahead and practice whatever that is for the day. Maybe it's your calling, your database, your center of influence. Maybe it's your calling expired listings because it's the thirty first or the first of the month, whatever it may be, role play the scenario. Without objection, Hubert's warm up, get it warmed up, get your voice down and then say nine o'clock, then you're going to jump on the phone. Right. This is your lead generation. You better go ahead. Then they generate prospects between, say, nine noon. The goal is be make thirty contacts, thirty outbound contacts where you're actually talking to decision makers and create that number. And then basically at 12:00 noon at this point now, now what happens after 12:00 noon can be a little more flexible, at least the point I've gotten everything I need to get done. It's most important in the morning. So my responsibility, number one for the day is create my morning schedule and make sure you have to make sure that happens. Because here's what I know. If I mascia my morning and create and do everyone supposed to do everything else is going on. My world is going to be perfect. I just know I can almost prospekt my way out of any problem as long as I'm able to regenerate because I know that I'm going to create my income and that's going to help me create my life and fund my life the way it is.
[00:24:56] So let's say that 12:00 noon now, what do I do? Well, you want to probably you're probably hungry, right? You want to maybe eat lunch, relax just a bit. You're going to have some messages or return some calls. So let's say you eat lunch at twelve to twelve. Thirty, twelve thirty to say one o'clock, you return your calls, you do a little admin work, whatever it may be from the leads that you've created already from the previous days. Now you get to do some lead follow up. It's very important. So maybe this is now between one thirty and two thirty lead follow up to thirty, maybe three o'clock. Now you have to do maybe some admin work, whatever that may be right now from three o'clock to say, seven o'clock. This is where you go and appointments. This is the appointment time of your day. If you don't have any appointments, then go back to prospect. Maybe it's then you want to go preview some property, but basically your entire day needs to be broken down and segmented. So your morning routine regeneration, your afternoon routine is lead follow up and then your later in the day is appointments to admin in the middle. And then later in the day you want to schedule your appointments now and then production.
[00:26:01] Jeff, I mean, these are running if if if somebody is not in production anymore, these are really things they want to lead their team to do. And you still have your bag that you have. You have exactly what you need to get done that day. And if you have eighty items, maybe to answer that question, maybe choose your top three because you can have a successful day by getting your top three accomplished. And if you start it with a morning routine, that's going to give you what you need to successfully get those top three accomplished, whatever that is, and move that needle for you, those top priorities, you got to get them done first.
[00:26:37] And people say, well, well, why don't you do it first? What can I do? And later that afternoon, there's simple, in my opinion, experience. The one reason why you want to do what's most important first is because of energy. And we know that in the afternoon your energy is less and things show up. You know, things in life show up that will distract you. Kids are home from school, whatever may be. The problems happen typically in the afternoon. What's cool is if there's a problem that happens in the morning and you're not attending to it if. You actually attend to it in the afternoon, sometimes that morning issues are being resolved by someone else, something let's keep going.
[00:27:15] I want to make sure we're short on time. We have three minutes left. I want to make all these tracks out there. And then can you post in the channel just your list of 12 afterwards? Because people are asking for the list as well.
[00:27:26] Yeah, for sure. You know, we that's pretty much of the 12. We kind of jumped through a little bit.
[00:27:32] Understanding the last one out of this is that, you know, working a five day workweek is normal. OK, it's not. Do we work a lot? Yes. But working seven days a week isn't always have to be, I would say, more at minimum. It's not normal for a real estate. Like make sure that you can you can take that time off. You can have that balance, but schedule your time within those five days or a five day work week. We're doing a four day work week, if you can. You'll notice that when you actually, you know, basically the work it's done in the time allotted. Right. And it's like every time before you go away on vacation, how much do you get done the day before your entire world's accelerated? It seems like basically before I go on vacation, I have more buyers and sellers that want to meet with me that day and more leads happen. And then you're just like, oh, my gosh, the world is aligning with me and I don't have enough time. Right. Act every day as if you're going on vacation tomorrow. And that wants to speed up and have that mindset, you'll see that you'll be able to double or triple your production if you really keep that keep that that focus or that intent.
[00:28:47] I don't know. Jeff, thank you so much. I don't know if this is true for everybody or it's just it was for me when I was in real estate, but I remember I was always pushing it right before I go on vacation because I couldn't afford to be gone, which made it so that I was always putting two or three people under contract while I was on vacation. Always. So it eats into your vacation, but it also adds to the productivity. So, Jeff, those are amazing items. Thank you for sharing those. If you would please post those into the Facebook group so everybody has access to those 12.
[00:29:22] That would be amazing. All right, thanks. Great seeing you again. We'll catch up later this hour. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.
