real estate leveraging Archives - Wade Webb Real Estate Coaching

The Power Of Leverage For Real Estate Agents

Wade Webb on March 29, 2023

When real estate agents get their start in the business, they usually start by doing all their own work. Although it can be tough at first, savvy real estate agents will begin to gain traction, and produce at a higher volume.

If they continue to grow, at some point, there will be a time where they can’t do everything on their own. For someone who has worked hard to build their real estate business, adding team members can be extremely difficult.

This week we want to share the top reasons why real estate agents need to learn how to delegate and use the power of leverage to scale their work, life, balance, and productivity.

Increases ROI. – One of the reasons why so many agents love to do all their own work is they get to keep all the commission from their end of the transaction. However, if you sat down and did the math, you could see that having help with some of the more menial tasks can increase your effective earn rate.

As an example, let’s say you focus primarily on buyers, and it takes 40 hours of labor to close a single transaction. If you close a $400,000 home and split 6% with the listing agent, you will receive $12,000 in commission. Divide $12,000 by 40 hours, and you have an hourly rate of $300 an hour.

Now, let’s see what happens if you have help. Let’s say you hire an assistant at $20 per hour who handles the administrative duties for every transaction. Their services remove 10 hours of your workload on a transaction, which leaves you with 30 hours to close a deal. Here’s what the math looks like:

$12000 – $200 = $11,800
$11,800 / 30 Hours = ~$390 per hour

What if we take it a step further? Let’s say you hire a Buyer’s Specialist who helps you with the full transaction process, which frees up an additional 20 hours of your time and costs $30 per hour.

Let’s look at the numbers:
$12,000 – $200 – $600 = $11,200
$11,200 / 10 Hours = $1,120

As you can see, delegating can dramatically improve your Return on Investment while doing less work. In addition to making more money per hour, those extra 10 hours can be used towards finding more business, organizing client events, or simply enjoying some leisure time.

Which brings us to reason number two.

Improves Work/Life Balance. – Even the most passionate real estate agents need to take a break.

However, if you are handling every aspect of every transaction, there won’t be much time to enjoy yourself. When you find people to delegate tasks to, you can free up more time, which will help you relax and rest.

The better your work/life balance is, the easier it will be to stay focused during your work hours and avoid burnout in the long run. The worst thing any real estate agent can do is to put in thousands of hours of work into building their real estate business, only to burnout and move on to another industry.

Improves Scalability. – There are only so many hours in a day, in a week, and in a month, and an individual has a cap on how much they can handle in any given period.

Aside from improving ROI and providing a better work/life balance, delegation allows you to scale your outreach and increase your production exponentially.

For example, a marketing manager can handle your social media, direct mail, and other marketing efforts, and your office manager can handle all administrative tasks.

What about all those new leads? Buyer’s agents and listing specialists can be added to the team to handle leads below a certain price point (especially if your model is focused on luxury listings).

With the right team in place, your one-person real estate business can transform into a strong real estate team with virtually unlimited potential.

Making the leap from handling everything to creating a team can be daunting, but when it comes to improving your quality of life, reaching more clients, and increasing your ROI, delegation is the most effective way to do so!

How did you make that leap, and how has it improved your business and your life? How many more transactions were you able to close after making your first hire?

I recommend every agents first team hire be your administrative assistant. Use the form below to download your copy of the Agents Boost “Hiring an Unlicensed Assistant” book now.

The free download includes: reasons to hire, personality and communication style profiles, extensive list of tasks an assistant can do for you, where to find an assistant, interview questions, sample employment agreement, sample confidentiality agreement and more.

You will be glad you did!

Strength and courage,
Wade

USE THE FORM BELOW TO GET YOUR FREE COPY OF THE AGENTS BOOST “HOW TO HIRE AN UNLICENSED REAL ESTATE ASSISTANT” STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE.

The Power Of Leverage for REALTORS©

Wade Webb on October 28, 2020

Do you own a job or do you own a business? When you stop does your income stop? Then you own a job.

If you are generating business and income while you are away from real estate, then you own a business. One of the greatest challenges for most agents is leverage, automation, systemization and delegation.

This week we look at the question that all agents are seeking the answer to, “When and how do I hire a real estate assistant?” Some even go years contemplating whether or not it is the right time. Many people ask the same questions such as, “should I hire someone now?” and “can I even afford to hire someone?”

Now we know it can be scary to let someone into your business like that but in actuality, it needs to be done sooner than later. If you are constantly asking yourself if you should hire an assistant, then that alone should tell you that you need to hire someone. When it comes to affording one, if they are really doing their job, they will be making you a significant amount of money. Here we are going to break down when and how to hire an assistant through 3 different phases. Each phase comes with 4-5 questions and steps into ensuring you are using the right solution.

PHASE 1

In Phase 1 begin to ask yourself, “How do I know it is time to hire an assistant?” Like mentioned earlier, if you are asking this question, then it probably is necessary. You are clearly starting to become overwhelmed once you start even thinking about having someone to help.

Question 2, Do you stay up late doing non best use of time tasks, also known as “BUT’s”? These include very simple tasks that are more tedious than they are difficult. After a long day of meetings, going to open houses and meeting new clients, the last thing you are going to want to do is work yourself up on those simple everyday tasks you had to keep pushing aside because they weren’t a priority at the time.

Question 3, Do you have aspirations to grow beyond where you are now? If you have aspirations to grow financially or even from a team standpoint, you are never going to get there alone. The only way you are going to grow and get the most out of your potential is to have help. Asking for help can sometimes seem as a belittling standpoint but it shouldn’t be. Everyone at some point or another asks for a helping hand and so should you.

Question 4, Do you live in the clouds? Meaning, are you not able to implement in the way you need to? People who are in real estate, especially self-starters and entrepreneurs live in the clouds and you need to take this in account for needing the help with your brain storming.

Question 5, Do you know that you are losing business? The more you wait for help, the more projects you are going to have to shy away from because of how busy your schedule is. The longer you wait, the more money you are going to lose, period. Their job is not just to do the tedious and hard work, it is also to make you money. As they say, you don’t remember what you’ve forgotten.

PHASE 2

Now that you have finally agreed to yourself you need an assistant, it is time for phase 2. What are you supposed to look for when you start looking to hire?

The first thing you should be looking for is if they are detail and system oriented. In order to find someone who is, the best way is to make them follow multiple steps in the hiring process on the application. These can include: using a specific font size, only sending the application through a PDF, use a specific format, include this header and more. Now if they don’t follow the steps correctly you instantly know they are not good with following directions and are not detail oriented. In all, you are looking for a person who can get annoyed with a lack of order rather than too much detail or instruction.

The second thing you should be looking for is a naturally positive person. Now, this can be a little more difficult because in actuality, everyone is “nice” during their first interview. This is why you need to take it further and have multiple interviews in multiple settings. It is known miserable people can only act happy for so long until it takes one thing to take them over the edge. You need to be able to see how they act with more than one or two interactions with them to get their full personality and potential.

The third thing you should be looking for in a potential candidate is if they are self-driven. This person should be looking for ways to make your life easier. You want someone to anticipate everything so they can adapt to what is needed and what isn’t.

The fourth and final thing you should be looking for is someone that must be tech savvy and able to type. Now we’ve all seen how our grandparents and even sometimes our parents use a computer which is funny to us of course, but when it comes to hiring an assistant, it won’t be funny down the line when you are on a time crunch and they are still working on that first email. There are plenty of people in the world, especially nowadays with technology being as advanced as it is, that know how to use specific software and can adapt fast to new software.

PHASE 3

Moving on to the 3rd and final phase, you should now have hired someone but you don’t exactly know what to do next…

The first thing you should do is either take the time to properly train them or take the time to redo their work. You need to set aside time to be able to train them respectively because the quicker you train them, the quicker you will improve your business and make money.

Secondly, you need to give them clear expectations of what you want from them. You only have one chance to create expectation so think carefully. You want to set expectations such as what time they need to be there, the kinds of activities you expect them to do, what they should be able to do in a specific amount of time, etc. Be very clear in what you want out of them so then everyone is on the same page.

Next thing you want to do is teach them a marketing strategy to implement immediately. This is because it will shortly after bring your business making not only you feel good, but making them feel good as well. Try to teach them how to do things such as saving a search in a MLS, emailing listings, saving listings and similar tasks. All in all, they are adding to your business this way and it can only lead to great things.

Lastly, do NOT micromanage them! Many agents respond to this by saying, “but what if they don’t do it right?” Well, it is not that they won’t do it “right” it is that they won’t do it YOUR way. You need to let go of what you’ve been doing in the past to make room for the new because clearly something needs to change. Additionally, in most cases, they often do it better than you which may catch you off guard at first but you need to remember it is only making you and your business greater. You need to give them the freedom to be the person you hired them to be and let them do their thing.

If you haven’t already realized, there are only positive outcomes that will happen if you were to hire an assistant. After going through these 3 phases, you should see a massive positive change in not only the business but with you as a realtor. Now start looking for that assistant before all the good ones are taken!

Click to download your Free Guide To Hiring An Unlicensed Assistant –>> Agentsboost – Hiring An Unlicensed Assistant

Strength and courage,
Wade

What Are You Afraid Of?

Wade Webb on August 7, 2019

How does our brain create fear? What makes us afraid? Snakes, the dark, rejection, love, spiders, the unknown, public speaking, your first listing presentation as a new Realtor© flying, storms, failure — though the reasons are varied, we are all hardwired to feel fear. Or are we?

What about people who never seem to be afraid? Or the small percentage of the population that literally cannot feel fear? Why are there kids completely unafraid of taking risks and then others who seem afraid of everything? Fear’s purpose is to keep us from harm, but what if it holds us back from what we really want?

THE BIOLOGY OF FEAR

First, some facts: There is no single fear switch for humans; responding to threats involves multiple areas of the brain. We’re not 100% how, but scientists have found the amygdala—almond-shaped bundles of neurons buried deep in the brain, just above the brain stem—central to the process. “When you sense something potentially dangerous, the amygdala sends excitatory signals to other parts of the brain, effectively saying, ‘Hey everyone, pay attention!’” says Bambi DeLaRosa, a researcher on threat processing. The areas of the brain associated with language and memory also become active in the face of fear. If the amygdala sounds the alarm, the other areas help evaluate the threat level and how you respond. But people with the extremely rare Urbach-Wiethe disease have calcium deposits in their brains, making it impossible for them to process fear. Studies have found their amygdala completely calcified, so there’s nothing to signal for fear signs like sweating palms or a racing heart to begin. Researchers have identified only 400 people in the world with this condition. What’s particularly striking about Urbach-Wiethe is that fear has long been critical for human survival, so living without fear can be quite dangerous. Studying subjects with this condition has also given us insights to how we deal with emotions and drives. Since people can survive without fear, perhaps it isn’t as necessary as we’ve assumed. Other paths, like logic, can take us to the correct behaviors that help us survive.

So what triggers fear in the first place? One possibility is simply not understanding how something works. But we can’t stop fear just through knowledge alone. A 2009 study compared human reaction to sweat taken from people when they were terrified to sweat from regular exercise. Just smelling the fear sweat caused the fear centers of the brain to kick in. Other animals also share fear reactions via alarm pheromones, but this work is the first to show a similar reaction in humans. These findings suggest that just being around people who are afraid can make you fearful. And while that might not be a big deal when you’re visiting a haunted house or watching a scary movie, it can have huge impacts on your daily life or real estate business. Our reactions to others’ fear might be part of what holds particularly adults back from taking risks or trying new things, whether skydiving or applying for a new job.

CULTURAL FEARS AND MODERN LIFE

Psychological studies also bear out this idea of collective fear having a wider cultural impact. In the 1970s Roger Hart studied the children in a small Vermont town to see what they did when they weren’t under direct adult supervision, learning about their secret places for play and favorite spots where they roamed. He returned in 2004 and found a completely different set of norms. These parents, some of whom were subjects in the 1970s research, are much more concerned with the minute-by-minute facts of their children’s lives. Unsupervised play is almost unheard of and children stay much closer to home. Yet crime rates are exactly the same as they were 40 years ago. “There’s a fear” among the parents, Hart told The Atlantic, “an exaggeration of the dangers, a loss of trust that isn’t totally clearly explainable.”

But if you’re surrounded by others who aren’t afraid to let their kids roam around, chances are you won’t be either. There is power in who we surround ourselves with as well as how our culture shifts its norms. As Tony Robbins says, “Who you spend time with is who you become.” This is just one example of how fear often comes from the stories we tell ourselves; we bet you can think of more. Frequently parents project their own fears onto children or get them to repeat their own fear-driven patterns. Other stories we tell ourselves can lead us to fear everything from rejection to success. What then can we do to prevent fear from holding us or our children back?

WAYS TO LEVERAGE FEAR

You need to use fear, otherwise it uses you. Remember, bravery isn’t being fearless and unafraid; it’s being fearful and doing something anyway. Ways to use fear include figuring out what your fear tells you about your current situation and what it can teach you. One way people handle their fear is to push themselves to face extremes, whether climbing mountains or walking over coals. Just take the fire walk at Tony Robbins UPW event I attended a few years ago. Instead of letting fear win, people lean into their fear and find they can achieve anything they put their minds to. As a 45 year-old firewalker, you have to mentally prepare for the experience, “otherwise you surrender to the fear and that will conquer other parts of your life.” Fire walking made him feel like “Superman”; “It had nothing to do with my feet but was about following through on a promise.” No matter your age, you’ll never overcome a fear holding you back by walking away from it. Take courage and focus on what the fear will bring your way and you’ll be truly unstoppable.

Strength and courage,
Wade

Leveraging The B2B Side Of Real Estate

kelowna on August 2, 2017

One of the most overlooked opportunities for generating relationships and business for real estate agents is the B2B or business to business side of real estate. Every time I sit with another business owner or a service provider that I feel is a good fit with my business I am always trying to see where we can expose what they do with all the people I know and what I do. The universal principle of giving to get always has and always will work for me and my business hence the focus on me wanting to leverage with others and what they do and who they know with what I do in real estate and who I know. Imagine what a business owner or service provider would think or feel if you went out of your way to help expose, grow and enhance their business? So what are some of the ways real estate agents can leverage the B2B opportunities in today’s market place?

1) Start your own B2B business owner or service provider networking group. There are many excellent platforms out there, like BNI groups, but I liked to build and grow my own through the relationships I had made already. We met as a group once a month at a small deli in a good size meeting room at 7 am mid-week and spent time as a group sharing about each of our businesses. Sharing our challenges with each other for feedback on how to handle each of the situations. Most of all connecting as a group and sharing ways to grow our own business but help grow others in the group as well.

2) Cross marketing opportunities. Think of places where you could expose or promote and showcase other business owners and service providers. For example I had a section of interviews with each of my network group members on my Youtube channel. One of the most viewed pages on my own website was the business directory page that listed all the preferred business owners and services providers I knew and recommended. I added service providers contact info to my newsletters and every month had a discount voucher in the newsletter as a value add to my clients.

3) Review them and their business. I went ahead and gave as many of them I could reviews on google, testimonials on Linkedin, Yelp and some of them Tripadvisor without any of them asking me to do that for them. Most of them did the same for me in return.

4) Create a hard copy service directory book every year filled with every business owner and service provider I know and the ones that they all refer or recommend to me. I place everyone’s business information free and then offer one business card ad spot per category for $25 to help cover the costs of printing the small directory books each year. I get calls from all kinds of business owners and service providers asking how they could get in the directory each year. I hand the directory out to every one of my clients at the beginning of the year and use them for relocation packages, open houses and other opportunities I may meet someone new to the community as a little token gift.

5) Own your own service directory app. About a year ago a friend of mine created an app that allowed us to take the traditional service directory booklet and launch it on an app. Check out www.clientlinkt.com and load all your business owners and service providers information and any special discounts or offerings they might have and then get everyone you know to download your service directory app on their android or iphone in seconds! The app is customized to you and your relationships and your clients will love it but more important so will your B2B relationships!

These are just a taste of some ideas you can do to really tap into and leverage the B2B community out there. We forget there is this large pool of business owners and service providers out there that would just love to connect with an agent willing to help them with what they do with what the agent does and the people you know. I was incredibly blessed to have so many great business owners and service providers as a referral source to my business and I know it will do the same for you so Get At It!

Strength and courage,
Wade

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