My professional purpose is to help you, the broker, optimize your productivity and help you become the best version of yourself. Why? "Because Happy Brokers Sell More Real Estate". I do that by helping you handle challenges and opportunities that you face every day. If you can effectively manage certain situations that arise on a daily basis in your business, you'll be more productive and live a life that is the best version of you.
Today, I want to discuss a concept I use to stay focused on my current initiatives and give you the tools that I use to stay consistent in my efforts to run my brokerage offices and coaching business while making my family a priority.
If you know me well, you know I like "simple", I like "boutique" and down deep, I just want to live a peaceful yet productive life. I've put in a lot of boundaries that protect that type of lifestyle and I say "hell no" way more than I say "hell yes".
I read a book last year that provided me with a simple decision making process. Rory Vaden who wrote a book called "Procrastinate on Purpose. 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time". In Part 2, he discusses a thoughtful decision making process called "The Focus Funnel". It's a simple, decision making process that goes like this:
- Do I need to do this? If no, "eliminate" it. If yes, ask yourself the question:
- Can I "automate" this? If yes, implement the automation, If no, ask yourself the question:
- Can I "delegate" this? If yes, delegate it. If no, then it has to be done by you. Then ask:
- If I have to do this, does it have to be done right now? If yes, it's considered an emergency and you need to drop everything and "concentrate" on the task. If no, put it to the side to come back to later, meaning you would "procrastinate on purpose". When you come back to it, put it through the "Focus Funnel" all over again.
The goal of a highly evolved real estate broker is to build a business that evolves to a point where the lead agent only focuses on "making the phone ring" and negotiating offers.
Using this decision making process is a masterful way to delete, automate or delegate anything from your day that is not an emergency. So many people are unproductive because they are working on things that just don't matter, don't have a high ROI or are premature based on what stage you are at in your business.
So as we spend these weeks on the concept of "consistency". Use this decision making concept to avoid putting effort into things that are not a priority, as least now. I highly recommend you add the book "Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time" by Rory Vaden to your reading list. It will give you more insight on this concept. It's a terrific book for those of you trying to build and scale your business. It was one of my favorite reads of 2021.
Now to get to the question, I was pinged with consistently last week: What planner do you use? Well, I am going to take it a step further to discuss all of the productivity tools I use. I am not suggesting you all run out and buy all of them. They work for me after years of research, testing and tweaking based on how my mind works and they support me in executing on my "12 Week Year" business and life planning process:
- Evernote: Journal/note taking
- Document Storage: Dropbox
- Phone: Iphone through TMobile
- Social Media: Instagram followed by Facebook
- Quicken: financial software
- Banking: Chase
- Personal credit Cards: AMEX Platinum for everyday, AMEX Bonvoy for Travel, Chase Mileage Plus for non AMEX takers. Paid off monthly. ( I rarely use debit)
- Business credit card: Chase Ink: Business Cash
- Email: Outlook for professional. Gmail for personal.
- Audiobooks: IBooks
- Podcasts: Apple Podcasts
- Coffee: Mobile ordering, this saves me 15 minutes a day....lol
- Spreadsheets: moving off Excel and into Google docs/sheets as we speak.
- Virtual Contract Work: Upwork
- Email Marketing: ActivePipe
- CRM: Cloze
- Planner: I purchase my planner from a company called TUL. I bought it originally at Office Max and I really like that I can create the make up of the planner to fit my needs.
So, all of these productivity tools were chosen with care, research and testing. When it comes to my productivity, I look for every little efficiency. Again, I am not suggesting you run out and implement them just because they work for me. Do your research and make sure your choices meet the needs of your life and business.
I get this question a lot: "Jim, how do you keep it all straight? I don't know how you do it."
As we move through this series of MMPT's that focus on "consistency" and "productivity", I will answer this question and you should have a better feel for how I operate. Again, not that you will do exactly what I do but rather the mindset behind high performance and how a high performer operates on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly basis to hit a 3 Year Vision.
So, if you found this helpful, re-listen to this episode and take the time to evaluate your systems, processes, habits and routines. You can follow my content primarily on my Instagram at @askjimmiller, apple podcast and my website askjimmiller.com.
