{"id":381,"date":"2014-03-11T10:47:34","date_gmt":"2014-03-11T14:47:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/?p=381"},"modified":"2014-03-11T10:47:34","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T14:47:34","slug":"are-you-wasting-time-and-losing-thousands-of-dollars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/are-you-wasting-time-and-losing-thousands-of-dollars\/","title":{"rendered":"Are you Wasting Time and Losing Thousands of Dollars?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Wasting<\/a>Time is the most important part of our life that we can never get back.\u00a0 When I started as an Investor back in 1998, I worked a full time job as a legal secretary, was married with 2 children ages 2 and 6, a step-son age 20, and worked part time in my real estate career. Time Management was very important to me as I needed to be able to earn 1 year\u2019s salary before I was able to quit my job and work a full time real estate career.\u00a0 Just like most new investors, we attended numerous boot camps to sharpen our skills and take that leap of faith into the real estate arena.\u00a0 I chose this article about time management because I do a One Day Safari with my individual students by coming to their own home to evaluate how they are spending or wasting their time and how can I help them improve their production in addition to reviewing multiple other marketing and business systems to move them forward.<\/p>\n

As I write this article, I need you to \u201cact as if<\/strong>\u201d I am sitting in your home, evaluating your production and asking you, ARE YOU WASTING TIME<\/strong>?\u00a0 The most important part of your business is to make sure that you have a designated workplace separate from all of the noise and interruptions of your life. \u00a0Well?\u00a0 I tried having my office upstairs so I could keep track of my children when I quit full time\u2026that didn\u2019t work.\u00a0 I had a private phone line and a business line set up at my home.\u00a0 When the business line would ring, I used to grab the phone no matter what time of the day it was.<\/b>\u00a0 I was hungry for a deal!\u00a0 After trying this for a couple of months, I decided it didn\u2019t work because as soon as I would get on the telephone the kids would always want something and I literally would have to run into the basement or my bedroom and lock the door.\u00a0 However, the kids still followed knocking on the door and wanting something!\u00a0 Even though I was working full time as an investor, I had to put my kids in day care and\/or work around their schedule (i.e. naps, bedtime).\u00a0 I decided it was best that I would set up my office in the basement.\u00a0 I got tired of running to the office phone for deals, so I decided to work normal business hours 9 to 5 p.m.\u00a0 However, if you hunger for deals, you may want to answer the phone every time it rings, day or night.<\/p>\n

So \u2026 where is your office in your house?\u00a0 Do you have the following things to conduct a business:\u00a0 desk, file cabinet, printer, copier, scanner and dedicated fax?\u00a0 Before I would come out to my student\u2019s house, I would ask them to provide me with a time sheet of what 3 normal days looks like for them.\u00a0 They would need to fill in from 5 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.\u00a0 Many of the students didn\u2019t have this time sheet filled out, so I knew they were in trouble!\u00a0 If I don\u2019t know them well, I make sure they have a DISC test filled out for my review which tells me their strengths and weaknesses.<\/p>\n

A book called \u201cThe Hamster Revolution\u201d obtained over 20,000 surveys and interviews.\u00a0 Here are some key findings:\u00a0 40% of the workday is now spent on email and email related activities.\u00a0 Right now I want you to look at your emails and see how many you have in your inbox.\u00a0 If you keep all your emails in your inbox just looking at your inbox every day is overwhelming.\u00a0 I would recommend that you set up files on the left side of your emails.\u00a0 For example, Gmail calls them Labels.\u00a0 Create a File Folder\/Label that states Buyers leads, Sellers Leads, Bills\/Invoices, Real Estate Events, etc.\u00a0 I love Outlook because I have 3 different email accounts that all run into my Outlook and I just create a file folder on the left so I can keep track of everything.\u00a0 For Example:\u00a0 If a \u201csuspect\u201d Seller Lead turns into a prospect, I would open a subfolder underneath the Seller Leads folder as follows:\u00a0 Sellers last name, first name, full address.\u00a0 This allows me to put all emails relating to that particular seller in that file.\u00a0 In addition, I take this same concept and I create a file folder on my desktop which states Seller Leads, then a sub folder with Smith, Mary, 123 Main Street, Winter Springs, FL 32708.\u00a0 Inside this folder I put all the paperwork that I have sent to or received from the Seller.\u00a0 I also create a PICS sub-folder under Smith and all pictures of the house go in this folder.\u00a0 Pictures are taken as follows:\u00a0 I take a picture of the address first, then the front of the house, I go into the house and take pictures in a clockwise direction, then I go outside of the house and take a picture of both sides of the house and the back of the house.\u00a0 When I load the pics into this folder, I would immediately rename each picture, as I want to be sure I remember each room.<\/p>\n

Now during my picture taking, since I work on short sales or even if I am going to flip the house, I am going to take close-up ugly pictures and note them on the Repair Bid Sheet which I provide to you as a student.\u00a0 Those pics are later used to help create a Repair Bid.\u00a0 I also create a sub-folder underneath the Smith file named BPO Packet.\u00a0 Inside this file is where I save the repair bid that I did during my walkthru along with a Synopsis of the house.\u00a0 The ugly pics are incorporated in the repair bid so that the BPO Agent\/Appraiser can see which pictures they need to take for their BPO\/Appraisal when they come out to the house to obtain value.\u00a0 Last but not least, I create under the Smith folder another sub-folder and it is named \u201cSale.\u201d\u00a0 This is the most important part of your business and this is where you would put your purchase agreement for when you are selling the property to another person, the approval letter from the banks, homeowners association discounts and other lien discounts that you obtained and title work.<\/p>\n

In addition, if you have too many emails in your inbox you can change your set up and create direct paths to instruct your emails to go directly into your subfolders without you even having to look at them and then next to the folder you created on the left there will be a number, for example:\u00a0 Seller leads (1), which means you have 1 unread email in the Seller lead subfolder.<\/p>\n

Statistics show that 75% of workers feel colleagues overuse \u201creply to all.\u201d\u00a0 I can attest to this.\u00a0 I always ask my students to email only one person in my office versus emailing the admin, Kristen, and myself.\u00a0 That is a waste of everyone\u2019s time, as the email was only supposed to go to one person, not three.\u00a0 15% of workers admit that they themselves overuse \u201creply to all.\u201d<\/p>\n

70% of workers often receive email with vague subject lines.\u00a0 I always recommend if you are emailing someone about a particular property that you put the address in the subject line this way, in the future, you can search your emails more efficiently, if you don\u2019t file them away.\u00a0 I often use the subject line as a quick message, so it would read:\u00a0 \u201cNeed copy of Seller info sheet for Smith.\u201d\u00a0 Then there would be nothing in the body of the email.\u00a0 However, I was informed by one of my students, his phone does not allow him to see all of the subject line, so I quit doing that as much.<\/p>\n

How much time do you spend on your emails?\u00a0 I have an AOL account from when I first started as an investor.\u00a0 Everyone got my email address and they just started sending me every promotion they could.\u00a0 It has over 11,000 emails in it, as I only go and clean it out every 4 to 6 months.\u00a0 I no longer use this AOL account due to the overuse of people sending me promotional emails.<\/p>\n

I would recommend that you set up your emails and files as I have explained here, and your life will become easier.\u00a0 I use a setting in Outlook that allows me to see if someone has received my email as I get a \u201cread receipt\u201d returned to me.\u00a0 I use this specifically because of the banks and students, as I want to be sure they received the emails.\u00a0 However, it does fill my emails back up but then I don\u2019t have to worry about the fact that I had a deadline and wonder if they didn\u2019t read or receive my email.\u00a0 This option doesn\u2019t work with all email accounts, so I have also included this text as the last sentence of my important emails:\u00a0 \u201cPLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE RECEIPT OF THIS EMAIL, THANK YOU!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

The first thing I do in the morning is quickly scan thru my 3 email accounts that are all inside of Outlook and delete all the junk email just by looking at who it is coming from and the subject line.\u00a0 This takes a total of 5 minutes.\u00a0 I then scan a 2nd<\/sup> time just focusing on who they are from and making a decision to one open it and\/or flag it to be opened based on my schedule of the day.\u00a0 The most I spend on emails per day is no less than one hour.\u00a0 And when I do use email, it is because I am working on a file and I am not sending a chain letter around to everyone or a funny little story.\u00a0 Not that I don\u2019t need a joke or two, however, I am at work and I can always look on my Facebook and get a laugh.<\/p>\n

You must use \u201cTasks\u201d as reminders and a Calendar for all of your appointments.\u00a0 Your cell phone should sync up with this system so that you will have it with you always.\u00a0 Therefore, when I have a task due, I can set it to remind me that day or if it is a mentor call, it pops up on my screen that in the next 15 minutes a student is going to call in.\u00a0 Which also tells me I have 15 minutes with my existing student call, so if I need to conduct a three way with a Seller and close the deal, I need to move quickly, as building rapport with Sellers takes time.<\/p>\n

I hope this article helps you at least set up your deal files, emails, tasks, and calendar so you too can be more productive in your business and make thousands of dollars. \u00a0TIME IS MONEY!\u00a0 If you are interested in learning more about my One Day and Three Day Safaris, please email my office and we will send you information on how I can come to your area, organize you, analyze your farm area, call Sellers to get them on board with you, and submit offers to close deals.<\/p>\n

Happy Negotiating!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kimberlee Frank<\/strong><\/p>\n

www.SellFastRealty.com<\/a><\/p>\n

www.ForeclosuresGonewild.com<\/a><\/p>\n

www.RealEstateJunkie.com<\/a><\/p>\n

www.ShortSaleNegotiating.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Like me on www.facebook.com\/foreclosuresgonewild<\/a><\/p>\n

Like me on www.facebook.com\/sellfastrealty<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time is the most important part of our life that we can never get back.\u00a0 When I started as an Investor back in 1998, I worked a full time job as a legal secretary, was married with 2 children ages 2 and 6, a step-son age 20, and worked part time in my real estate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-free-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realestatejunkie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}