Leverage Mindset

I’ve done quite a bit of research lately to try to find ideas on how to help people leverage their time.  What I’ve found is that many people do not really understand the term “Leverage” or how it really works.  For this discussion I will focus on my speciality (people leverage)

To truly take advantage of people leverage, it needs to be thought of as a long term process.  It is not just something you implement once and never look at again.  Ideally the way the progression should go is something like this:

1) You work for yourself as an entrepreneur;
2) At first you are able to grow your business (working “on” the business) and perform daily tasks (working “in” the business);
3) Eventually you are no longer able to grow your business because your day is filled with working on tasks;
4) You hire someone part time (or hire a virtual assistant so you do not have to commit to an employee) to take on the daily tasks, which will free up your time to continue growing (or working “on”) the business;
5) Business grows again to a point where your part-time person can not take on any additional tasks and your day is filled with performing daily tasks again;
6) Hire your first full time assistant.

At this point your assistant should be able to handle the day-to-day tasks and you can concentrate on growing your business.  As your business grows, you simply add additional staff. 

The main point of this whole process is that you MUST get away from doing the administrative tasks and concentrate your time on growing the business, meeting more prospects, developing business relationships.  Many people start their own business because they love what they do and want the freedom to do things their way.  The reality is that owning your own business often takes you out of being the “technician” and into more of a networking/sales role.  You can’t DO the work unless you go out and GET the work.  It really is a catch 22.  If you don’t enjoy the networking/sales part of business you may want to consider continuing to work for someone else because if you don’t market yourself and your services effectively your business will never succeed.  If you do market yourself and your business effectively, you will grow your business to the point where you need to hire people leverage to continue to grow it.

If you are a real estate agent the point where you need people leverage but don’t know exactly what you need, contact me for a free Leverage Needs Analysis.  Check out my website www.LeverageResource.com to see some of the ways I help other real estate agents leverage their time.

Time study results

The results are in!  Last week I talked about figuring out exactly how you are spending your day and analyzing the results to see if you can figure out time saving areas.  I believe you have to practice what you preach, so I did just that.  All week I religiously recorded each of my activities.  At first it was cumbersome, but by the 2nd day it was habit.

I started seeing areas I could improve in almost immediately.  You would be suprised how frequently through out the day you are interrupted or your focus drifts to another topic.  I found since starting to track my time, I have been able to remain more focused in completing one project before starting another one.  The end result is more checked off of my “to-do” list and a greater sense of accomplishment.

The other time saving tip I implemented for myself was to turn off the automatic send and receive option on my e-mail.  This has helped DRAMATICALLY!!!!  Not only do I not waste time going back and forth to e-mail as much.  I found I was much more focused on the task at hand.  For some reason just knowing that there was an e-mail in my inbox was enough to distract me and cause stress, feeling the “need” to check my e-mail.

I recommend either (or both) of these suggestions to anyone.  If you would like to discuss my experience with them in more depth, feel free to send me an e-mail (twallace10@sc.rr.com).

Practice what you preach

Everyone knows what they should be doing, the question is why don’t we do it?  This goes for everything in our lives (exercise, work, home improvement projects, etc..)  You set your schedule, have a to-do list, know what your goals are and what you need to do to achieve them.  You start out strong and focused and then somewhere during about 1/3 into the project/week/day your focus starts to wane and you begin doing tasks not on your list or finding excuses why you need to do “something else”.

The only way to get back on track is to force yourself to re-evaluate where you are and what you are doing every so often.  I recently did this and found I needed to practice what I preach.  I had a very unproductive week last week and had a high level of frustration.  After looking at what I was doing and where the time went I decided to follow two of the tips more closely that I have reccomended in the past.

1)  I was still having a hard time resisting the urge to check my e-mails every few minutes, so I decided the only way I will break the habbit is to completely turn off my auto send/receive function on my e-mail.  This forces me to actually push a button to receive my e-mail which I have to do consciously.  This has helped dramatally and, as a suprising side effect, I find that I am able to complete tasks with a lower level of stress.  Not worrying about what just came in my inbox really makes a difference and helps me remain focused on the task at hand.

2)  I also decided it was time to do an activity log again to re-evaluate my work habits.  This means keeping a log of every activity I do during the day and how long it takes to do it.  Every time I check e-mails, answer or make phone calls, work on a client project, take a break, etc. I simply write down the start & stop time.  At the end of the week I will add it all up to evaluate and see if I can make some process improvements.  This seems like it may be a time consuming process, but it only takes seconds to jot down a note.  See my previous post for more detailed instructions.

I will give everyone an update on how my Activity Log turned out next week….