Is Your Life Truly in Balance?

Today I wanted to speak with you about the importance, and the challenge, of balancing work with your personal life. No matter what stage of your career you may be in, real estate tends to be that type of profession that can really seep into all areas of your life. If you’re busy selling homes, your schedule is certainly busy and hectic. On the contrary, if you are not producing, the stress of inconsistent income and lack of results will seep out into your personal life.

To help keep the two facets of our lives separate, our entire team practices fundamental tools and strategies around time management and time blocking. Time blocking is probably the best thing you can do for yourself. For those growing their own business and don’t have the luxury of having a team prospect and setting appointments for them, this can be especially difficult. To handle this, we have tracking systems and other tools that allow our agents to organize their time and turn off their business when they leave the office so they can spend time with family and friends.

You should have a schedule that includes critical tasks you need to complete for the day like prospecting, lead follow-up, showing and listing appointments. The area you must consider is leverage in the form of technology, marketing, people and systems. The agents on our team are highly leveraged in these which helps their work-life balance so they can avoid handling small tasks at inconvenient times.

If you want to sit down with me to optimize your schedule so you can produce more, or if you’re looking for a different way to practice real estate, we are always look for top talent. Our buyers agents will close 40-45 sales per year on average and our listing agents will sell from 50-70 homes. I would love to help you and your business grow and our meeting would be confidential.

Thanks and have a great day!

Are Your Goals Set for the New Year?

It’s that time of year again; it’s time to talk about goals! In real estate, we’re selling 30-45 days out and our team is going through the process of goal setting. We have 6-7 buyer’s agents, two listing partners and a group of inside sales people that are all in the process of goal setting as well. 2008 was my first full year in the business and I’ve managed to grow my team to sell 325+ homes this year. To do this, I’ve always had a roadmap for success that is broken down into quarterly, monthly, weekly and daily goals. This helps me stay accountable to myself.

The importance of goals really boils down to some level of accountability. If you’ve been in the business for a long time and you’re not achieving your goals or if you’re new the business and have big plans, you have to do a few things really well. We go through a process with most of our agents in which we identify four pillars or areas where they get there business and we focus on specific action items in each of those areas.

Doing this also helps to give you a clear vision of what you want your life to be like. It’s not all about business; if you don’t have an idea of what you want your life to look like, you won’t get to your destination if it isn’t laid out ahead of time. Everyone’s heard of goal setting but to actually go through the process and writing down concrete goals. I like to use the old acronym, S.M.A.R.T. (specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and timely). Make sure your goals fit that criteria or else attaining them will be a frustrating process.

If you would like to get together confidentially and go over your business plan how I can help achieve your goals, please contact me. Take some time to view the article below for six reasons why you need to set goals. Have a blessed holiday season!

On The Importance Of Goal Setting: 6 Reasons Why You Need To Set Goals

How Can You Maintain a Personal Relationship With the Increase of Technology?

Today I wanted to cover something that has really come about in the last 5-6 years as the increase in freely available real estate technology and tools online for both buyers and sellers. How does the immergence of these tools impact our position as an expert advisor and if personal relationships with buyers and sellers even matter anymore? This is actually an awesome thing for us as experts (not every real estate agent is an expert). If you have your skillset dialed up with more information online, consumers need someone to figure it out for them. Technology does not impact our business one bit.

With the online home evaluation tools like Zillow, everyone thinks they know the estimate for their property. However, this doesn’t affect our ability to come in as a pro and do an equity evaluation on their property, educate them on the different ways to value property, how the market direction and interest rates can factor in, showing reports, price bracketing, tax analysis and a square footage analysis. We look at everything way more than Zillow or any other site can ever look at.

This goes for buyers as well. Every buyer has their go-to website they look at but this doesn’t mean they are able to go through the 200 homes that are they favorites, what they want/need, what they can afford, potential appreciation in their property and where the market has been. I think it is an awesome opportunity with the new technology that is out there to serve our clients on a personal level and deeply impact their lives and the lives of their families. The Lars Group has all the tools available to consumers allowing them to come into our fold and establish a business relationship. Many people fear technology and feel that the business is going away but we embrace it; we use it every day.

If you have any questions, call me at (704) 800-1200 ext. 106 and we can see if I can help you with your business of if you’re a fit for our team. God bless and go sell some houses!

We Invest So You Can Succeed

Today I wanted to talk to you about how we utilize technology to further our business. Early on, I learned a fundamental business principle about how to get people to take action. To do so, we use direct response marketing. The challenge when you’re a new or struggling agent is marketing your personal brand, but that’s not the basis of the business. Our marketing is done through a few channels; one of them is Boomtown, which we spend $3,000 a month to generate leads and appointments for our agents. The other channel is a newer option called Commissions Inc. This platform costs another $3,000 that has a great interface for generating leads as well.

This year, our average buyer agent will sell 35-40 homes and our average listing agent will sell 50-75 homes. We’re a really productive team and we attribute a lot of the success to the tools we invest in.

If you have any questions, feel free to call me and we can grab a cup of coffee. God bless and thank you!

Great Reads for Great Agents

Hello and welcome to my new real estate training and coaching video blog! On this blog, I will share with you the keys and strategies used at The Lars Group that have given us the advantage to dominate our market. The Lars Group is always looking for ambitious, hard-working agents to join our team. If you are interested in becoming a member of The Lars Group, give me a call at 704.800.1200 or email me at Lars@LarsRealEstate.com.

Today I wanted to go over books we have used because they’ve proved to be very helpful. The first book I wanted to mention is a book we just recently went through together and it’s called The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon. This book outlines 10 laws or rules to get the most out of life and work to ultimately build a team environment. This book was a hit in our office because we have many agents who are competitive and sell a lot of homes, but in the end it’s all done for the good of the team.

The second book is called The Traveler’s Gift by Andy Andrews. It’s an awesome book that details 7 decisions that determine personal success. This book is a quasi-guide that we use to hire agents with. What’s special about this book is that it reads like a fable, so it is very easy to grasp and it provides a very cool way to run our team. Another book, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, is the cornerstone of personal development books and encourages you to turn your thoughts into reality.

Our last book, one that we really work through as a team, is called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick M. Lencioni. This book also reads like a fable and is really cool because it relates your team to family, which we are here. We appreciate open communication, challenging each other and accountability.

Check out the website, learn about the team and contact me if you would like to get a cup of coffee. Thanks again and check back in for more tips to sell some houses!