This is a replay from our Open In Indiana Networking on Zoom meeting with featured speaker Jim Morgan, owner of Life’s Copilot
Here is a transcript:
Ryan: So at this time I would like to introduce our speaker today, Jim Morgan, who is the Vice President of sales at Re/Max Ability Plus and is one of the highest producing real estate offices in Central Indiana, so.
Ryan: Jim, I would like to yield the floor to you at this time.
Ryan: I’ve enabled the ability for you to share your screen, so take it away.
Jim: I will get to work on that. Hang on a second. OK, so. We’re going to talk about, you know there is no such thing as time management. That’s a misnomer. It’s not possible. People make billions of dollars selling snake oil that you can time manage. You cannot, but you can activity manage, OK, and so we’re going to go into that today. To give you an idea. One of the things that comes up quite often was we were talking introducing ourselves. These are the companies in our family of companies that that we represent. I am the VP of Sales for the Re/Max Ability plus real estate.
[Jim continues speaking unless noted]
I am not involved other than an advisory capacity in our insurance company or our title company or our association management, which is a residential and commercial property management, Bonfire, I am, that is a company, That the best way I can describe it. It’s the air conditioner running outside the outside of your house or outside of your business that for you for getting you here, we run the back end of people companies. We do, their marketing, their accounting there uh? Logistics, there transaction coordination, we can do all those systems so they can make their money doing what they do best. Caring transitions – I’m in that same role where I help people downsize, declutter, move, estate sales, what have you and Lifes Copilot – a brand new company that we just started this summer. Uh, where we’re basically a senior portal for all things senior to help people through that process. As downsizing estate sales. What aren’t sorry? Basically finding anybody you need to know for senior. Living. Why a white truck I’m not involved in. That is a Airbnb management company, but the fact that we do multi task that by the way, can you guys see this well enough in this size or do I need to blow it up? Is it OK? OK?
Ryan: Uh, Jim,
Ryan: It might help if you did full screen.
Jim: OK, that’s fine. I just when I do I lose. You guys, that’s why I. Was just curious so OK. Alright, come on, Do this like. All right there we. So basically, here’s what it comes down to. We’re going to talk about managing your activities. You know this is a quote from Nick Sabans – I absolutely love it, says – ‘People Assume that everyone. Wants to reach their potential to be the best they can be.’ However, I’ve concluded that most people. Only want to be average. Do just enough to get by. And when I say being average, I don’t mean being. You know average to everyone or I’m not about being only averaged to your own potential not exceeding. You know where you know getting out of your comfort zone and getting to where you can be, or realizing the potential that you have to offer. So self-test. Questions to Ask yourself when it comes to the time dedicated to your career, are you getting the most out of your hours? You know, again, like I say, I come from a real estate business. They they say that most Realtors work 10 hours a day, but they only actually do productive activity 4. Hours a day. OK so are. You getting the most of your time. Are you consistently operating at your Highest and best use? Do you know what the highest best use of your time it is? Now you you answer these questions yourself, but anyway, those are some places we can start working from. To reach your potential, You must maximize your output to maximize your output, you need to be effective and efficient. All day and through doing that is by being intentional and proactive.
Most people basically are spontaneous and reactive to their Day, you know, and then by doing that you have to implement an activity management system. Let me ask you a question. This will kind of get get us on the right track. Have you ever come to the end of the day and you have been busy? You’ve worked all day, putting out fires and running from this fire to that fire, and you get home at the end of the day, you’re exhausted. You’ve worked yourself to death. And you kind of go man, I got nothing done today. Does anyone ever ever? Had that conversation with themselves, that’s. What we’re talking about here? Most of us are spontaneous and reactive. I’m going to talk about being intentional and proactive. ‘Money is not The key asset to life, time is’, according to Gordon Gekko, he’s fictional, but nonetheless the quotes still as relevant. Time doesn’t care whether you spend it or invest it. Life has no pause button. I love that concept to think about and it’s in. It’s not extended to make up for any time. That you waste.
Most people simply react today as it appears they they kind of go into their day and they have plans. But then all sudden fires come up and they have to put out the fires and they end up spending their entire day chasing chasing spontaneity. Here is now I’m this is. Was designed for like a salesperson. If you’re not in sales, but if you’re in business for yourself, you’re in sales. So here’s where it comes down to when you’re first starting out in phase one at any business enterprise, your first. Step is the. Commitment that I’m going to do this. I’m going to be this. Is what I’m going to do here’s what I’m doing. When you first start doing it, your confidence level isn’t very high. OK, I mean can you, can you remember your first day at whatever company you’re doing and you’re having that first meeting? Your confidence was. Not necessarily off the charts we were. Just hanging in there.
As you develop your confidence, then you start becoming consistent every day you’re doing it, you’ve got. You’ve got your time. You’re going out there. And hitting the action. By the way, I can tell you something and this is for basically all small business people. If you are having cash flow problems, it’s one of those first three issues. It’s a commitment problem, it’s. A confidence problem or it’s a consistency problem, OK? So you get through level 1. Now we’re going to go to Level 2 and this is a step that most people in small business avoid. They do not do this. They try to jump. From level 1 to. Level 3, which will cover in a second and they avoid level 2. Because level 2 is work. OK, and it’s out of your comfort zone. So level 2 is starting to put. Systems into place. Everyone has, so I want. Systems, well, you know, but they don’t want to. Do the work to make the systems happen OK. So when you do that, it’s going to take the process of going through an endurance of you learning to adapt yourself to these systems to do the things that it’s going to take to repeat over and over and over again. Once you start doing that, you’re going to start becoming effective with your time. You’re going to start not wasting time doing things that you should avoid. Then you become efficient. Now also you’re operating at a high level of capacity. If you only want to be a successful salesperson. You’re not doing more. If you want to take. You to that. Entrepreneurial step where you’re going to try to start leveraging your time and your income. Your two things. That’s where it comes in next.
And this is Level 3. Now this is what people try to jump around. They try to hire some Oh my God, I’m so busy I need to hire someone. I need an assistant. I need whatever, OK? So they go out and hire someone, but they didn’t go through the process of building systems, so they hire someone they have no system to hire. to, they have no system to train to. They have no system to hold accountable to, and then they can’t figure out why that person doesn’t succeed as their employee. Well you you you. Basically set him up for failure from get go. OK so. But once you’ve gone through. That process you have those systems in place. Now you’re bringing in someone new. That new person, by the way, has not gone through those pain points of learning that system and learning to adapt themselves. To those habits. So you’re going to have to have patience to work with them to get them through it.
It’s kind of like you know, do you go in and clean your kids room or do you teach them how to do it? OK, if. You do it, it’s. Going to be quicker the first time you do it, if you can actually get them taught to do it and have the patience to get through that process, then you never have to do it anymore and that’s what we’re talking about when you’re trying to bring a leverage in on your team. Part of the process. Is you’re going to be promoting this system. Every time someone breaks down, every time that they don’t do what you want to be done, you’re going to go back and say, well, here’s why we do it this way. Here’s what the the system is, so you keep promoting that through that process. At that point. All sudden you become proficient. Now you actually have a business that is growing and can actually, you know, uh, a key to knowing whether you have a business. Or if you’re self. Employed is can you go on vacation? Your business keeps running. OK, can you go away? They say if you can’t go away for a year and your business grows while you’re gone, that means you don’t have a. Business that means you’re self employed. OK, most people don’t have businesses, so that’s what this process does. OK? He said time more. Management in oxymoron. It doesn’t exist.
But you can take an. Activity management system and build upon the time blocking and then that helps you become proactive and intentional. There’s a a. Story like that, let’s say for instance [hypothetically-speaking only], I offer All of you today $50 and for that $50 You have to go to the grocery store and you have to buy everything. Your family. Is going to. Need for the next week with that $50. You cannot spend $50.01 and anything you don’t spend you don’t get. To keep the. Change OK, you have 50 bucks now. How would you go about your Shopping? would you just kind of go in there and just walk up and down the aisles? And oh, this looks pretty good. I’ll try. This or whatever. Or would you have to really plot out? How am I going to get my family? Through on $50 this week. OK. That’s what you have, you know. Let’s say you’re working 50 hours a week in your business. You have those hours. What are you gonna do with them? And that’s what it comes down to. You can’t.
Time is unforgiving. You can’t. You can’t get it back. It’s the only non renewable resource you have. Now, so here’s part of a process to get an activity management system in place. You’re going to it’s kind of like doing a diet. It’s trying to like doing a. Money budget you’re going to need to. Sit there and define. The total hours that you want. To work per week I. Want to work no more than 50. No more than 40. No more than 60. I don’t care what your number is, what’s your Number? then you talk. You define the total career hours per day. If I want to work 8 hours a day, then I’m going. Here’s my 8 hours. You you identify vital blocks of activities. Now what LG? What I mean? There is lead generation, lead conversion. Client care and. Personal development and you block those times in your put in Your day planner. You record the initial specific vital activity. Now one of the things that you’re going to have to do is.
And we learned this the hard. Way when I was VP of Sales at Realtor. We had two things that happened. To us that really were. Extremely eye opening one our front desk person who was minimum wage. She was the least paid person in the entire company. Was a sweetheart, but she decided to go back to. College, when she left, our entire company was in disarray for months and the reason being she had taken on all these different tasks that no one knew she did. So all of a sudden she’s not there. No ones paying attention to these tasks, and they weren’t getting done. You know, so no one was keeping an activity management list for each activity or for each person and we dropped the ball big time.
We also had a situation where our construction Superintendent, our VP of Construction. He was a walking. Talking, code book. He could tell you any code in any. Just let’s finally he was amazing. He also knew where everything was at all the different construction phases of all the different homes under construction. He was in a really bad motorcycle wreck, was in the hospital for several months. We were in panic mode, you know, trying to get all that stuff that was out in his head into a system that we could operate. So all of. Us sat down and tried to create. Here’s everything I do and when I do it and if I’m if I’m going to use this, who do I call to get it done? Type List, I promise you this is something you want in here. OK, so once you have those vital time blocks then you stay engaged for the block. So let’s say you block out of time. We’ll go through our calendar here in a minute. If you learn this little trick, it will change your life. If you block out a time for lead generation, I’m going to make phone calls from 9:00 o’clock in the morning to 10:00 o’clock.In the morning on Wednesday morning. If you go into that block with your list already ready so you don’t spend 1/2 an hour screwing around trying to figure out where to make the first phone call so you’ve got your list there, you’re ready to go.
Inevitably, you’re going to get a phone call that you’ve got an emergency from a client, somebody mad, somebody hot. You know what have you, I’m Going to give. You a little secret. 99.9% of all emergencies. Will wait for an hour. Stay focused on what you’re doing. And then call back OK so so stay focused for the entire block. Refer to vital activities checklist as needed. Make sure you’re doing vital activities, not just activities. To be busy, assess progression at the end of the day so you reflect on what you just did for the day. Figure out what needs to be revised, and then you just release. Forget about it till tomorrow and you start it. Then just continue doing it. Here is a calendar. We’ve got in here that we’re going to lead generation. From 8:00 o’clock to 10:00 o’clock on that day.
OK, that’s that block of time, so you go into it with all your lists together and I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re doing phone calls, I don’t care if you’re doing texts. I don’t care if you’re sitting in it, you know I don’t care what you’re doing. For that you know you could be knocking doors, I don’t care, but that’s. Lead-gen time frame OK? Then after that’s client care, so every one of those. Fires that came up the people you need to get back with on a follow up on a on a contract that’s for. That next two hour. Time frame go to lunch. Then you know then you are. You have some little admin and follow up you do. Then you go to lunch, then you go back to lead conversion, lead generation. Go back to client care and then some other admin and follow up. This is just an example, it could be different things. But let’s say for instance you’re on lead Gen, which is the one. By the way, the reason. You do this and you time block. Is because these things the client client carry is not, but lead generation is the one that’s almost always ignored. Because it’s not urgent, it has no flashing lights going off going, you know? You have to address you have to deal. With this until you’re broke and then you have nothing in your pipeline then also you start getting some. Flashing lights but. If you focus on that during that time, ’cause that is it’s not urgent, but it’s important, so you always make sure you put that in there as a criteria that is not shakable. It is not movable.
A realtor in town that’s always been very successful. He’s getting towards the end of his career now, but Larry Rasmussen is. A friend of. Mine and Larry told me something decades ago about his career path and I just. It’s never. It’s never. Gotten out of my head. Every morning from 8:00 o’clock in the morning until 10:00 o’clock in the morning, every morning of his career, Monday through Friday, he’s in his office with the door locked. Making phone calls. OK, he has done that for his entire career and calling past clients calling you know whatever and everyone in. The office knows. That you don’t come in there during that time frame, unless the office is truly burning down. OK, well he’s never had these peaks and valleys that most people have. His business is always. Producing ’cause he’s always putting people. In to that back end, that’s what. We have to do here.
Time blocking is worthless unless you know what you’re implementing the right activities. Saying yesterday, activity always involves saying no to others. For instance, one of the agents I was coaching. She was making a lot of money. She was working herself to death. She had no Life OK? And one of the. Things I was kind of going through. Her her her vital activities. And one of the things she was doing was going. To all of her. Whenever they did a photography for the listings that they she would go there to watch the photographer and I wonder why in the world are you there? She goes, Well, you know my clients love it. They really appreciate that I’m doing this for them. I’m going, have you used that Same photographer for a long time. Yes, do you, Do you know what their quality of work is? Yes, do they know What you want? yes. Why are you there? Well, because my clients love it. Go have you ever asked your clients? Probably not OK. It was just something in her head that she was doing, but she was taking an hour, hour and a half out of her day to do something with Absolutely no value to her vital activities. OK, so don’t get stuck in sacred cows. Make sure that what you’re doing is actually vital activity. So, Potential – you want to Create potential, you need to get maximum output to, if You ever want to hit Your potential; to be that you have to be effective and efficient.
You need to do an Inte-, intentional and proactive and then through that you’re running activity management system. Recommended books, First things first. First by Steven Kobe, I Absolutely loved that book. It has gotten me through so much issues. I work for a guy who is, uh, idea guy and he comes running into your. Office all the time going hey. Here’s an idea. Can we do this? And then I always ask him. OK, I’m this far into this project. Do you want me to put this project aside and do this one first, or do you Want to put this from after this? And I almost. Never is it I have to put. One aside, OK? Because here’s what happens and maybe you’ve had this happen. You’ve got 500 unfinished prod- projects that you got started on and then never finished, and then you feel that weight on your shoulders all the time. That’s how you do it you. It’s a first thing. First thing another one, just I just read this from recently called the ‘3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family’, it’s taking this kind of a concept and moving it into your family, not just into your business which. Is a great. Tool, so let me get down to. This real quick I want to show you. Something else as another tool. This is something. That we use in our all of our. Companies to help. US stay on track. We it’s called Basecamp 2.
There’s a lot of different programs out here, but it’s just a platform that. We can build flow Charts and activity charts for. So for instance, every project has, you know, a payout chart here. You can assign to whomever you need on that project. I go here to me and it tells me what I’ve just done, what I have to do, some things I’ve just done here and I can go to my To Do List and it’s got all four companies of the different things that I’m doing and it’s got a list on there of what needs to be done and when it needs to be done. And it’s got, you know, three month anniversary. Follow up six months anniversary followups all on there and then that is my To Do List that I just you know I see I’ve got like 4 new ones here on the. Bottom I have to deal with but it is. It just keeps you on track. I get and we get an email at the end of the day telling you what’s going on. Another thing that I will say that I find. Very very helpful. Is a I’ll have to stop sharing here for a second. UH is another tool that I call that’s called Calendly. Which, if you’re not using it, I strongly recommend it. It is a tool that. When I try to book an appointment with someone, I’d rather than doing this phone tag back and forth or an email tag back and forth. You know, here’s the dates I have. Here’s the dates you have. It’s just I send you a calendar link and say pick a. Time that’s best for you and. It goes right into. My calendar my my appointment rate has sky-rocketed.
Get it, you know, and it’s and it’s. And basically I just keep getting notices all day long about different appointments. I have OK. You can set it up to however you want to do it. Mine is set up currently, but you can’t book an appointment with me before 10:00 AM. That way I know a lot of. Our company meetings. Are at 9:00 or 8:30 or 9, so I you know, does. They’ve done getting way of those in. Additionally, I know I have this back pocket time. I can cite an appointment that I need to get somebody in quicker. OK, I you can’t look at a point with me after 4:00 PM so that. Still to be done at 5. And another reason. I don’t do that is ’cause it’s like. Books an appointment for me in Lafayette or something. I wanna make sure that I’m not having to be there at like 7:30 in the morning or something. You know type thing so. This gives me room and it also gives 1/2 hour drive time between between appointments.
For a while I adjusted that because I was doing zoom meetings all day long, OK, but now I’m back on in a car. I just found out last night. That I’m actually. Very excited about this in a way I mean. It’s it’s one of those. I knew I was gonna walk out of the room happy. I actually was running for Senate last night in the caucus and I end up getting second so I didn’t have to put that into my calendar. So because I. Was going to have to adjust earlier. And later in the day, if. I was going to try to do all these different things, but. That’s kind of where that is I can give. You back your you. Know you’ve got power of it again, so any questions I’m I’m all here.
Speaker: What was the name of that app again? Which one the Calendly?
Speaker: Yeah, can you spell? That yeah, it’s.
Speaker: Or put it in the chat. There you go.
Speaker: OK, thank you.
Jim: And then the Base Camp 2 is is, you know, there’s other different programs out. Just understand it doesn’t give you a. It just gives you a platform to build your flowcharts. But, what bonfire does For instance, we run the back end of all kinds of different companies right now. For some reason we’re getting. A lot of. Business with catering businesses and restaurants. So what what we? Do is we? Build our flow charts. For that particular company, we run the back end for them, you know. So we systematize. ’cause most of all business people are not not any good assistant systems or marketing or what have you so we can run those for them. But we sit down with them and we build that structure. Then we just use. This as a platform that all of us use.
Ryan: Does anyone have any other questions for Jim?
Ryan: Jim, I think you left everyone speechless here tonight. Haha, I’ll tell
You what, I couldn’t do my day if I didn’t have these systems In place. I Would be I’d be over at Saint Vincent Stress Center with a little white jacket on.
Ryan: Awesome, well everyone.
Ryan: Let’s give Jim a hand for his presentation today and sharing.
Ryan: Info with us. Thank you guys.
