People are usually curious how a full-time real estate agent schedule looks like, since time is being managed by them freely and they have the rights to choose when, and when not to work. Here’s a glimpse of my typical week.
My schedules are usually packed and yet spaced carefully for more opportunities to appear as the days unfold. What could have helped me and made all these even possible? These are the tools which I’ve embedded in my daily life.
Calendars
The default calendar works well in my iPhone and Macbook but I’d usually love to spice it up so that it looks colorful and fun. (Would be nice if any app dev does something that breaks down the different calendar to show the number of hours utilised!) This is extremely useful when you’re cooperating with your team mates since you can invite them and vice-versal.
The apps I use are WeekCal for my iPhone 6 Plus that syncs with iCloud. I do use Sunrise occassionally which syncs Evernote and phone reminders in as well for a great quick overview of what needs to be done for the next 3 days.
Rose, my abled assistant also takes care of my working partner Bruce and my time by managing a shared calendar on our personal and joint events.
Evernote
People who knows me know I’m a strong advocate of Evernote. I practically use this to keep track of all my leads, forecasting, team manage and remind myself of the tasks and big picture ahead. The functions are endless and practical, but these are the most important ones.
Search Box
Search box allows me to find my things very quickly as a very heavy EN user. Everything in my way gets into a notebook and it gets special attention when I have time to rearrange them later. People don’t really have to know how messy you are as long as you are fast to recall or could get to your documents fast. As the notes get very heavy, tagging is useful.
The OCR recognition has time to time proven it’s worth as well since the team mates and I share a common notebook with articles. These articles are essentially good for us to keep up with the history and latest of what is happening on the search subject and allow us to communicate better with our clients.
Reminders and Checklists
I tie this down with both Sunrise (as mentioned in Calendars) and Swipes to manage my daily to-do tasks to remind myself what lies ahead of me. Swipes also allow me to break down each individual task to micro steps which could be useful in case you miss out any important steps.
Reminders is vital since most of us are always all over the place.
From prospecting to completions and following up even after the completion, a master copy of check list on to-do’s are created for individual cases. This way I follow a strict flow of follow throughs so I do not miss important steps. This is where Swipe becomes really useful since it allows Evernote exports on checklists and they can sync both ways.
Value added steps are also added along the way as it revises my system of business conducts. These little boxes are extremely useful. My Team mates are encouraged to use this as part of their goal settings (and mine) too.
Voice Memo
I’ll use this to take down voice notes and write down in points during the conversation even whilst I am recording down the full conversation. This way no important information is being left out, and yet it allows me to refer to the voice memo a few times summarising what is important throughout the recording.
This is extremely useful for you to figure out the mannerism of your client too to know whether he/she has a genuine need for you to serve through the tone of the conversation.
Moleskin Notebooks
Moleskin notebooks are just lovely. They are expensive but they have a way with me as I do enjoy beautiful written notes in classic notebooks (they just know how to make them). These notes are also taken down with camera on Evernote so I will not lose notes and can access them instantaneously (and remember since I write legitimate words, the recognition function of Evernote will work in this instance too)
I do teach these in classes as well when conducting trainings for SRI5000 as these are useful insights of how productivity and closings are essential skills on how you plan your time ahead.
Last but not the least, the importance of loving or cultivating the love for what you do is the most crucial part to your productivity. Both body and soul works hand in hand. As the old saying goes, no health, no wealth! Insert aplenty of rest, drink loads of water and exercise as regularly as you can!
I wish every aspiring new Realtors a productive year ahead! (ps. it’s week 18 for 2015 as this post is being articulated.)
