Are You Optimizing Everything?
| | Monday, March 01, 2010 @ 08:21 PM EST
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Contributed by: Jason Hanson
Jason Hanson Properties
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When I first started in this business I was doing deals in Baltimore, MD and in Stafford, VA. Now, I live in Oakton, VA which is right in the middle of both places. Baltimore is about an hour north and Stafford is about 45 minutes south. And when I was a newbie I did a ton of driving because I didn't plan out my routes. I would meet with one seller in the morning in Baltimore and then drive 2 hours and meet another seller in Stafford.
I don't remember how much mileage I put on my car that year, but it was thousands of miles. Many of them wasted. Even worse was all of the time I wasted in the car, simply because I wasn't optimizing my business. I almost burned myself out. But then I started using common sense and scheduled all of my Baltimore seller meetings one day of the week and all of my Stafford meetings another day. This saved me hours of time, a lot of money on gas and also kept my sanity in check.
And since time is our most precious asset, you should start asking yourself on a daily basis, "is this the best use of my time?" I started asking myself this question every time I would drive down to a rental property to show it to a prospective tenant who never showed up for their appointment. That's when I started utilizing the lock box method so I no longer have to show rental properties.
The biggest optimization breakthrough I ever had was when I hired a virtual assistant. I realized that if I wanted to grow my business and do more deals, then I couldn't spend the majority of my days addressing envelopes and talking to unmotivated sellers.
So want to know my favorite optimization technique of all? I already referenced it above and it's called "batching." This is when you schedule all similar activities at the same time and the same day. For example, I only run errands once a week. This is when I go to the bank, check my mail, and do any shopping which needs to be done. I do all of my important telephone calls on one day of the week. If possible, I try and schedule all of my seller meetings on the same day.
The more you "batch" activities in your life, the more time you free up to spend on high dollar activities. So, if you want to be more productive this week, look at how you spend every minute of your day. Are you spending your time like an investor who makes six-figures a year or one who’ll be lucky if he does a deal or two?
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