Reframing Costs as Investments: A New Way of Thinking
As a REALTORⓇ, your business starts and ends with you. When you work for yourself, it’s easy for daily life tasks to interfere with your work tasks. Instead of simply ‘trying harder’ to accomplish your task list, which often leads to a cycle of shame or defeat, there may be an opportunity to outsource tasks that fill your schedule without accomplishing goals. A SMART strategy to employ is to calculate any expenses as investments.
The practice of calculating any investments for tasks or services will bring light to how to more productively spend your time. Start with determining your hourly rate. Though you may not view your job as hourly, calculating what you would charge per hour in an hourly position helps give monetary value to your hard work and time.
To calculate your hourly rate, follow the formula below:
What monetary amount did you make in real estate last year?
Divide it by 2000
With this new number in mind, think of a few time consuming tasks that are not work related. Tasks like cleaning your house, grocery shopping, meal preparation, laundry, dog walking and others. Think about work responsibilities too: making appointments, responding to emails, coordinating paperwork, social media management, etc. If the simple thought of these responsibilities overwhelms you, take a deep breath and take a moment to calculate the investment of these activities.
How much does that activity cost you?
Time x Your hourly rate = Investment
Now, consider the opportunity cost of those activities. In other words, what are they keeping you from accomplishing? Perhaps start with one of the responsibilities that sticks out as time consuming and stressful. Think about what you would do with your time if that was taken off of your plate. If you didn’t have to do that anymore, what would you do instead? Would you be able to focus more on growing your business or yourself? Spend more time with what matters most to you? If offloading these tasks would free up your time so you can focus on growing, then it should be viewed as an investment.
A quick Google search or chat with trusted mentors or fellow REALTORSⓇ could shed light on opportunities to outsource one or a few of these tasks. Gather some pricing for the task you’re hoping to outsource and decide if the cost of your time outweighs the investment of outsourcing.
From our perspective, it is a SMART task to declutter your brain, take a couple of things off of your plate, and open up your schedule and mind to more business opportunities, time for self care, or time to focus on what matters to you. If you’re interested in other ways to scale or grow your business, let’s connect!
