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As you settle into the new year and take stock of what worked and what didn’t, consider starting an annual January tradition: rereading The Millionaire Real Estate Agent and using its four fundamental models to build a better work/life balance. The first three models – economic, lead generation, and budget – give you the tools to build your business from the ground up without reinventing the wheel. The Economic Model lays the groundwork for success by giving you a formula to figure out the number of daily activities you need to participate in to reach your larger goal, while the Lead Generation Model shows how working your database will keep your business growing. The Budget Model offers a path to profitability and financial freedom, and then the Organizational Model gives you the tools to scale up your business exponentially.
When it comes to putting MREA models to work in creating a better work/life balance, KW agents Vanessa Barnes, a rainmaker for her team in Celebration, Florida, and Hudson Warren, a KW MAPS and BOLD coach and team owner based in Tampa, Florida, have learned from experience. Below, the two offer their strategies for building a balanced 2022.
Contents
The MREA Models in Action: Three Steps to a Better Work/Life Balance
Bring on the budget.
Numbers can strike fear in the heart of anyone, but they’re crucial to knowing where you are now and where you can grow. If budgets aren’t your strength, instead of drowning in extra work you loathe, consider leveraging this one out to an accountant, like both Warren and Barnes have done.
“I hired an accountant, and every day, he lines everything up for me, so I always know exactly whether I’m in line or if I need to cut some fat here and there,” Warren says. “Or, some of you might be so profitable that you do have some room to add leverage or add advertising.”
That’s what Barnes found out when she dug deep on her budget with an accountant. Not only did she end up finding out that her budget allowed her to add leverage in the form of a transaction coordinator, but she also found out it was time for a raise – for herself.
“It’s shown me that I was actually underpaying myself,” Barnes says of the Budget Model. “So we’re running lean and mean, and I’m paying myself more this year. I’ve been in the business for almost 20 years, and I paid myself more this year than I ever have before, and that is pretty amazing.”
Related reading: 5 Choices of Operational Leverage
Lighten your load with leverage – no matter how small.
When Warren began hitting 50 transactions as a solo agent, he started to feel like the wheels were falling off. “I never intended to work 24/7,” he recalls. “And I started feeling like I was working all the time and I started to notice I was making mistakes – you know, missing an appointment or two. I realized that if I wanted more, I didn’t want to take my foot off the gas, so I needed help.”
Today, Warren is a dad of five children, but back at this time, his only dependent was a small dog with an even smaller bladder. So the first thing he ever leveraged in his business was hiring a dog walker.
“I would go home every day in the middle of the day, and I didn’t live right around the corner from the office, so that alone gave me hours a week back, and then I started to open up to other things,” Warren says. “There’s having somebody clean your house or having a family member or friend pick up the kids once in a while. That’s all leverage because leverage is anything that gives you some of your time back.”
Keep coming back to it.
The MREA shouldn’t be something you read once and let collect dust on your shelf – or digital reader – forever after. As your business and personal life evolve, so should your relationship to this book and the four models within it.
“I really think going back and rereading the book at different stages of your career and personal life, you’re going to take different things from it,” Barnes says. “I’m going to be transparent; I hadn’t read it for a long, long time, and I picked it up 24 months ago and was like, ‘Wow, I wish I had been reading it every year.’”
It took a personal struggle marked by deep feelings of overwhelm for Barnes to hit the book again, but she recommends that every agent revisit it and get back to the basics.
“Just pick it up and say, ‘I’m going to block an hour today or an hour tomorrow and start reading this chapter,’” Barnes says. “If you have a team, sit down with them, or sit down with the team leader in your office, and say, ‘Hey, I want to go over this book with you because this is something I want to implement in my business.’ It’s never too late to start implementing these models.”
How about you?
How often do you read the MREA? What are the lessons that you keep coming back to? Which of the models has made the greatest impact on your business? Let us know in the comments section.
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