Stress sucks.
It makes you sick.
Stress makes you unpleasant to be around.
Stress threatens your ability to succeed.
There are enough monstrous threats to your real estate career right now and even bigger, scarier ones coming. You just can’t afford to let stress hold you back during what is the most cut-throat era in American real estate in centuries.
Honestly, not since the days of Cowboys and Indians have things been so scary in the fight over real estate.
All of the competition and confusion that is circulating in the industry is practically guaranteed to add to even the most level-headed agents’ stress level.
Since it’s my mission to help you thrive and dominate in your market, I want to take a step away from my normal posts and offer you some advice on reducing your stress.
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Do A Self-Awareness Check Up
Self-awareness is a skill that is not easily perfected. However, it can pay major returns.
It is important to your stress and success levels that you make an effort to become as self-aware as possible. Completing a self-awareness check-up will enable you to identify areas where you are under-performing and excelling so that you can revise your to-do list.
It is important that your schedule is filled with activities that you both enjoy, and are highly-talented at. All the rest, should be delegated to someone else. SERIOUSLY!
One of the main reasons that agents like you become stressed and overwhelmed, is that they jam-pack their schedules with tasks that they hate and are not efficient or competent in completing.
It’s just common sense that if you suck and something and don’t enjoy it, that you won’t be happy doing it all the time. As I always say, you left your previous job to create a happier life for yourself, so let other people that love doing the things you hate do them.
The majority of my clients are reasonably capable of writing blog posts. They’re very intelligent people. However, most of them hate it or spend hours - fucking hours - writing a single blog post! That’s insane, and exactly the reason they all first approached me to write their blogs for them.
If you’re worried about cost, understand that the cost of delegating is much higher for you to be stressed and less productive. “Costs” associated with strategically delegated tasks are actually very wise investments.
But first you need to complete a self-awareness check-up and identify where those strengths and weaknesses lie.
Set Realistic Goals
Straight-up I am really guilty of this one.
My entire life I have set insane goals for myself, demanding perfection from myself, only to drive myself into a frenzy of stress trying to meet, and ultimately failing to meet those goals.
This is a truly toxic pattern, my friend!
It is so important that you set goals that are ambitious but still realistic for yourself. It’s great to hold yourself to a high standard, but it is cruel to expect constant perfection.
Perfection is the antidote to production.
Let’s be honest, the less productive you are, the more stressed you are. Am I right?
So let’s stop the cycle and make a commitment to ourselves to be more realistic with the goals that we set, while still pushing ourselves to deliver or over-deliver on those.
Get Organized
Being organized is so important in real estate.
You have so many balls to juggle at any given time that it is just plain impossible for you to remain calm and productive without systems in place to keep you organized.
When it comes to getting (and staying) organized, you need to do what works for you.
If you hate doing everything digitally, then stick to traditional planners and organizers. They make some really nice planners that make organization fun these days like these.
If you are not currently organized it can feel daunting to get to that place but you need to make a commitment to taking out time one morning or afternoon this week to get your shit together.
Once you get organized, you will again be able to identify tasks and other things that are causing you stress.
If there are things that need organizing like spreadsheets, email lists, databases, etc. I strongly urge you to hand those tasks off to your assistant or virtual assistant. Those are ROI negative tasks for you as a real estate agent that consume hours of time you should be focusing on building the relationships that will build your business.
Take Time For You
If you are like me, you seriously struggle to walk away from your work.
I am not exaggerating when I tell you that it actually drives me fucking crazy to have to walk away from my work sometimes.
However, that being said, I know that it can be important to walk away from time to time.
I’m not telling you to get overly lazy or self indulgent here. What I am saying is that if you aren’t bursting with joy while working, the way I am, you need to find ways to take some time for you.
As a business owner and a leader, your business’ success is flat-out dependent on your physical, mental, and emotional health. You need to nurture your mind, body, and soul in ways that will allow you to do all that your business requires to do passionately.
Work With The “Best”
You didn’t walk away from your last job to surround yourself with shitty people did you?
It is vital that you take the time to design your ideal clients and teammates.
You are a unique person, with individual needs, strengths, weaknesses, preferences, and goals. If you want to be happy and feel like a success at the end of your career, you need to alienate the people that drain you and attract the people that fuel you.
I encourage you to create a full profile of your ideal client and team member complete with their goals and problems. From there, you should go all-in on creating content that provides value to those people and market is strategically.
This will accomplish many things including:
Attracting your ideal clients and team members
Supercharging your SEO
Increasing the resale value of your website
Reducing time wasted chasing unqualified leads
Reducing your stress
You only get one shot at living.
Don’t waste it on people you don’t enjoy spending your very limited time around.
I promise you will regret it with every cell in your body when your final day comes.
