286 | What Should You Actually Be Spending Time on as a Real Estate Agent?

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"A lot of what you're doing is only important in your head." 

If real estate feels like both a blessing and a burden, this episode will hit close to home. So many agents are trying to scale a real estate business while feeling overwhelmed, stretched thin, and unsure why their effort is not translating into real growth.

In this episode, we break down one of the most important shifts you can make if you want to scale a real estate business without burning out. The truth is, most agents do not have a time problem. They have a clarity problem. You are likely not doing too little. You are doing too much of what does not actually matter.

This conversation dives deep into what actually moves the needle in your business. You will learn why lead generation and relationships are your highest-value activities, and why so many agents avoid them in favor of tasks that feel productive but produce little to no income. If you have ever found yourself busy all day but wondering why your business is not growing, this will give you the clarity you have been missing.

We also walk through a practical way to calculate your dollar per hour so you can start making real business-owner decisions with your time. When you understand what your time is actually worth in lead generation, it becomes obvious why doing low-value tasks is costing you more than you think. This is where most agents get stuck, especially when trying to grow a real estate agent business growth strategy without systems or support.

You will also be challenged to evaluate everything on your calendar and ask a simple but powerful question: does this actually matter? Many of the things you are doing right now only feel important. This episode will help you identify what to eliminate, what to delegate, and what to double down on so you can build a more efficient and profitable business.

We also introduce a simple framework using four quadrants to help you identify what you love and are good at, versus what you should stop doing entirely. If you want better time management for real estate agents and a clearer path to growth, this exercise alone can transform how you operate day to day.

At its core, this episode is about building a referral based real estate business that allows you to grow with intention. You do not need more strategies, more tools, or more hustle. You need clarity on what actually produces results and the discipline to focus on it consistently.

If your goal is to scale a real estate business while protecting your family time, strengthening your faith, and creating real margin in your life, this episode will give you a practical roadmap to start making better decisions today.

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Transcript

Episode 286

 Your highest and best use as an agent of your time is really simple lead generation and relationships. That's it. Everything else is secondary because no leads equals no business. And yet most agents spend less than 20% of their time on lead generation. Why? Because it's uncomfortable. It's uncertain. It requires consistency. So instead, we default to tasks that feel productive but don't actually move the needle. One of the biggest reasons agents feel overwhelmed is not because they have too much to do. It's because they're doing too many things that don't actually matter. And the hard part is, most of these things feel important. Answering emails, tweaking your CRM, designing a new logo, posting on social media, redoing your time blocks again for the third time this month. None of those things are bad, but if we're being honest, a lot of agents are busy all day but then wonder why their business isn't growing. So today I want to help you answer one of the most important questions in your business. What should I actually be spending my time on? And just as important. What should I stop doing entirely? Because if you can get this right, you don't just grow your business, you get your life back. About a year ago, I was leading a book club. A virtual book club in the faithful agent community. Some of you listening might have been part of that book club. We had maybe 20 to 30 agents, and I remember I was pushing it. I was excited about it. I was really adamant about it, trying to get us on calls every week, super excited. Thought it was super, super important. But I then was listening to another podcast and I remember somebody saying, whoever the guest was challenging and saying, we often think that all the activities and the things that we do are so important, we inflate them in our mind because we want to feel like the work we're doing actually matters. But he challenged us. Most of the things that we do don't actually matter in our business, and they don't matter to other people the way we think that they do. And so he challenged. Is there something that you're doing right now that maybe doesn't actually matter to anyone? You've convinced yourself that it does. What would happen if you just stopped doing it? Would anyone even care? And I remember listening to that and I said, okay, I'm going to do that with my book club, this virtual book club. I thought, you know, 20, 30 agents, they're excited about it. They need me to show up there. They're intentional about it, right? They need me to do this. And I took his advice and I said, you know what? Maybe it's not true. I wonder what happens if I just canceled this week. And so I canceled the call, and then I never say anything about it ever again. And guess what? I canceled it. I canceled all the other calls. And not one person to this day has ever asked me about it. And I'm not offended. It's like it didn't actually matter, but I was spending energy and I was spending time, and I was convinced that it mattered so much so that I was spending way too much mental time, way too much physical time, way too much energy on getting this book club to happen. When? Guess what? No one actually cared. How much of your own business is the same thing happening that maybe, just maybe, there's stuff you don't actually need to do in the first place? All right. No Faithful Agent podcast would be official or full without a Christian dad joke. The Sunday school teacher asked the children to draw Christmas pictures. She goes over to one student and sees he's drawing a picture of four people on an airplane. What is this? She asked. Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus on a flight to Egypt, he says. Well, who's the fourth person? That's Pontius, the pilot. Most agents don't have a time problem. They have a clarity problem. We've been trained in our industry to think, if I just do more, that I'll make more. So what is the standard agent response? We start to stack more marketing, more systems, more tools, more strategies, or maybe just a bunch of activity that we don't actually have a strategy for, if we're honest. And eventually our business just turns into a giant pile of activity, but very little of it is actually producing results. Because the truth is, not all work is created equal. I've coached for eight years and I've come across consistently agents, even agents with the good business. Right. You've heard me talk about we need to shift our mindset from being an agent to being a business owner and make business owner driven decisions, make data driven decisions. Because, as I said, not all work is created equal. But I've coached agents for eight years. It doesn't matter if you're a newer agent or you're a successful agent. Almost every single one comes to me with some complex strategy of, here's all the things that I do to generate business. I do open houses, I do some cold calling, I post on social media, I'm starting a YouTube channel. I work by referral. I'm also active in the community right there doing all of these things. And the reality is when I say, okay, well tell me where your business came from last year. They don't know number one, so they're just guessing which okay, that's okay. But we want to operate like business owners. So we need to know where does your business actually come from. But when we start to nail it down. When we start to get into the nitty gritty and we realize, let's say that you did 15 transactions, 20 transactions, 30 transactions last year, almost every single agent, the vast majority say 80% of it came from their sphere, right? It came from working by referral, came from relationship, maybe not working by referral, maybe just getting referrals. Right. They weren't actually working by referral, but generating referrals. But then when we actually start to look and we say, well, what are you spending your time on? While I'm also doing these social media reels and open houses and all the things I mentioned earlier, and then I asked the question, well, how many deals did you get on social media last year? And the answer is none. Then what in the world are we doing? Why do we keep showing up for that? Why do we keep spending time on that? Not all work is created equal. I know that everyone around you makes it seem like you got to be a social media influencer, or you got to do open houses on the weekends, or you got to be cold calling, or you got to be using AI. You've got to do you've got to do whatever it is. And so we just start to do all of this stuff because we think that's what it takes. That is totally untrue. The reality is, your job is to figure out what is actually working and go all in on that. If it's referrals, go all in on that. Become better at it. Become more excellent. Master it. If it's social media, awesome. Go all in on that. Become a master. Excellent added post more often. Create better reels, whatever the scenario is. But most of us, we don't actually have strategy. But if we actually said we had a strategy and we would write one down, we'd say, well, I'm going to do all of these things and hope that it turns into business. That's not what a business owner does. Not all work is created equal. I guarantee you that there's a lot of stuff that you're doing that just doesn't matter. So we've got to pay attention and understand what is actually going to move the needle. We're going to talk about stop doing things later. But we've got to understand first what actually moves the needle. So my question to you is pretty simple. In 2025 or whenever you're listening to this last year or in the last three months, six months, 12 months. What strategy that you did. What lead generation method that you did. What actually created business for you? Because some things grow your business. Some things generate income. Some things create opportunities. Other things maintain your business or support your business. Or honestly, lots of things just distract you. And if you don't know the difference, you're going to spend your best hours on your lowest value work. So we've got to have clarity. What actually moves the needle in your business? Go do more of that. You all have heard my story, but when I came into the industry, I did all the classes on open houses and cold calling and door knocking and all the things, and I realized that the only thing that makes sense to me is working by referral. So I never did any of that. I've never even done an open house in 12 years in the business, having sold over 700 homes. I've only done referral. I'm not from this area. I just went to master the one thing that was going to make a difference in my business, and because of that, it's created this awesome business for me. The Lord has been incredibly gracious and I want that for you. I have spent all of my lead generation time on the one thing I know that actually moves the needle. How do I create generate, be more consistent in my relationships so that I care for them well, so that when they have friends or family thinking about buying or selling, they send me referrals and that's all that I do. It is simple. It is easy. It is beautiful. It is highly productive. I'm not wasting time doing other things that don't actually matter. So we've got to understand first and foremost in clarity what actually moves the needle. Second, I want you to think about this. I want you to calculate your dollar per hour. Now, I'm going to ask you to do math, which I get it for agents. We don't like doing math other than we can do 3% of everything. Right. But but we need to make the shift. We need to understand again, stopping an agent. Start thinking like a business owner. You need to understand your dollar per hour. How much is your time actually worth? Because this is how we start to make better decisions with where to spend our time. How much is your time actually worth per hour when you're generating business? Okay, because most things in your business, most of the activities that you do don't generate business. They're a result of generated business. What do I mean when you're lead generating that's generating your business. When you're showing houses, that's not generating business. That's a result of the business that you did generate when you're writing contracts. That's not generating business, responding to emails or text or whatever it is. That's not generating business, that's not actually making you money. It's result of the money making opportunity, which in our industry is called lead generation. So you need to understand what is your dollar per hour worth in lead generation. And it's a really simple mathematical equation. So let's say in my experience of coaching agents, the average agent, if they're honest, does two hours a week of lead generation. That's it. Two hours a week of lead generation. So say you did that for 50 hours. All right. Stick with me. I know it's a podcast, but let's let's think about this math. Two hours a week for 50 weeks equals 100 hours of lead generation in a year. Okay. Two times 5100. Now imagine that your gross commission income was $100,000 last year. We're going to make these numbers super simple. All you need to do is take gross commission income and divide that by how many hours you lead generated in the last three months, six months, 12 months, right? Doesn't matter. But you're trying to figure out how much. Is that our worth? Okay, so in my example, you made $100,000 last year and you worked. You lead generated for 100 hours 100,000 divided by 100. Your time in your lead generation was worth $1,000 an hour. Okay, now let's say you lead generated for 1000 hours. You would be one of the most diligent agents ever, right? That's a lot of lead generation, 20 hours a week. That's amazing. But let's say you did 1000 hours and you made $100,000. Your time was still worth $100 an hour. Okay, I hope you've tracked that math. Take whatever your gross commission income was and divide it by how many hours you estimated that you generated. Now, here's where it gets uncomfortable. Okay, now you've got your dollar per hour amount. If you're doing tasks that someone else could do for 20 bucks an hour. And let's say you're let's just make this simple. Let's say that your time is worth $100 an hour. Okay. It's definitely worth more when you're lead generating. Right. But let's just say for for our scenario, let's say you brought in $100,000 and you spend 1000 hours lead generating. Again, that would be insane. Most agents never do that. But let's say you brought 100,000 and you spend 1000 hours doing it. Now your hour in your lead generation time is worth $100 an hour. Okay. That this is the number we're using. So if you're doing tasks that someone else could do for 20 bucks an hour, you're literally losing $80 every single hour that you do it. Right. Because when I'm deciding in that particular hour or on that task, what I'm deciding is, should I go pay myself a hundred bucks because that's what I'm worth when I'm generating? Should I go pay myself a hundred bucks, or should I go pay somebody else 20 bucks? Right? Why would I not accept that extra $80 every single hour if I could pay them 20? So I earn 100. I'm going to take that change every time. That's a win. I want to earn more each hour. That's the only way that I earn more money without working more time. So. Think about this. Let me pause. I know it's a lot of math. Every time you update your CRM manually, you write your own contracts. Every time you chase paperwork or you build files, flyers, or you organize files, or you set up an MLS portal, or you go show houses, or you go through a walk through all of these things. And I get it. And everybody has questions. And there's so many, uh, false ideas out there. You guys have heard my story. We'll talk about that one day, or if you want to talk about it now, just text me. It's it's in the show notes of how even as a 700 total deal referral agent, I've given all of that business to my lead agent, Jesse Wright. I didn't have to show up to any of those things because they're not committed to me. They're committed to the standard of service I represent. That's a that's a side note, right? But every time you're chasing down paperwork, which is $20 an hour work, you are choosing to do $20 an hour work instead of $100 an hour work. And that doesn't make sense. And most agents never actually get help because they're too busy doing the $20 an hour work. So what should you be doing instead? Your highest and best use as an agent of your time is really simple lead generation and relationships. That's it. Everything else is secondary because no leads equals no business. And yet most agents spend less than 20% of their time on lead generation. Why? Because it's uncomfortable. It's uncertain. It requires consistency. So instead, we default to tasks that feel productive but don't actually move the needle. My friends, if we want to be excellent in this business, if we want to be excellent in this industry, which we should because we're believers in the Lord's standard is excellence, then we've got to understand we are wasting time on things that we tell ourselves is important that we have to do because it makes us feel good, like we're being productive. But we'll also complain that our business is not growing and at the point where we can actually provide for our families, that it's growing to the point where we can give more to the people in our church that it's growing, where we actually have the freedom to go on a vacation for a week because we're not worried about the income, because we've done a good job spending time on the right activities. Friends, we've got to understand what moves the needle. Where is where am I getting the best return on my time? It's in this lead generation. If it's $100 an hour work and you did 1000 hours last year, what would happen if you gave 1000 hours to let somebody else do it? And you bought that time back for 20 bucks an hour? So that's $20,000. So you spent 20 grand to buy back 1000 hours, I get it. That's a big number. But those thousand hours you lead generated, guess what? You made 100 grand. You made a net profit extra of $80,000. This is how business owners think. Spend more time in the time. In the hour that's going to produce the highest return. No. Your dollar per hour work. No your dollar per hour value and run every decision through that. Hey, I need transaction coordinating. I could hire somebody for 400 bucks. And if you don't know a good company, I'll introduce you. Text me. I need a good company. It's 400 bucks. Whatever the amount is, let's say it's 400 bucks and it's going to take me on average, ten hours to do all of that work. Okay, I get it. That's 40 bucks an hour. I totally get it. If you're generating a hundred bucks an hour, great. Instead of saving 400 bucks if you generated for those ten hours, guess what? You just made $1,000. That's a $600 swing. That's what a business decision looks like. Make that decision. All right. And finally, what do you need to stop doing? And this one I think is going to change your business. Because if you're not sure whether something matters, then just stop doing it. Just stop and see what happens. Right. I told you the story at the very beginning. Did anybody notice? Did it affect your business? Did anything break? Because a lot of what you're doing is only important in your head. Let me say that again. A lot of what you're doing is only important in your head. And I get it because I do that too. But it's not important in reality. And until we create create space, we're not actually going to see what matters. So ask yourself, look back on your calendar from last week. What did you do that you propped up in your head that, hey, this is going to matter for my business because you wanted to feel like you were productive. But it didn't actually matter that nobody actually cared, that nothing broke when you left your phone for two hours, that nobody noticed and said, hey, hey hey, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. I, I noticed that you stopped doing X, Y, and Z, right? So in 2016, in my business, I started doing a joke of the week. Imagine that for my real estate team, I started making a video that was a maroon group joke of the week. And I would do jokes and over and over and over again, and eventually, over time, my wife knew that I was getting really tired of doing jokes. I mean, golly, it was over and over and over again. Anyways, so my wife comes to me one day and says, hey, you know, you don't have to do jokes anymore. And I was like, what do I really not have to? I felt like I finally got permission to not do jokes. And so I said, okay, I'm not going to do them anymore. And guess what happened? My clients, who I didn't know cared, started messaging me. Hey, what happened to the jokes? You need to bring the jokes back. Oh guess what? I stopped, I got feedback, and so. Oh, you guys care now I don't want my ego to take over. Right? So if only one person cared, that's a dumb reason to do something. But a bunch of people ask me about it. Oh, sorry. Let me start doing some more jokes. So boom, I jump back in. Right. I gave you the example earlier. I thought that this book club mattered, and so I stopped by, or so I kept doing it and doing it and doing it. And then guess what? When I stopped. Guess what? Nobody cared. Nobody said anything. It didn't matter. So what are the things in your business that you aren't sure actually matter? Just stop doing it and see what happens. All right. Now, I want you to refine it one step further. The four quadrants. Okay. Again, this is going to be hard to explain in a podcast, but I'm going to try to paint a mental picture for you because I want you to not only know what produces results, but know what you're actually designed to do. So I want you to think in four categories. You've got a box and there's four different quadrants. So in the top left box. And if I'm you and you're in a space, I'd stop what I'm doing. I'd actually draw this out real quick. And you can fill it in. Right. It won't take you about a few minutes, but I want you to think of the top left quadrant. I would just write the word love and good things that I love, things that I'm good at. Right. This is your sweet spot. You should spend most of your time here. Things that I love. Things that I'm good at. So for me, could be relationships, right? What do I love to do? What am I good at? I'm good at speaking, so I should do more of that. I love podcasting. Don't know how good I am at it, but. But I love podcasting. I'm gonna put that in there. Right. And then that's that's the top left. The top right is things that I love. But I'm bad at them. Okay. Love and bad. Okay. So one of the things that I really love but I'm kind of bad at him then on the bottom, left right. And I don't even know what those things would be. Uh, pickleball, I love pickleball. I'm okay at it. I don't I wouldn't say that I'm bad. Right? What are the things that I'm bad at now? Hopefully you don't spend a ton of time doing that. Maybe it's social media. I, I don't love social media, but if I did, I'm definitely bad at it, right? Bottom left box. Things that I hate but I'm good at, right? Things I really don't like to do. But I'm actually pretty good at it. And in the bottom right. Things that I hate and I'm bad at. Right. So. So now you got this box, this quadrant, top left, things that I love. And I'm good at top right things that I love. And I'm bad at bottom left. Things that I hate. And I'm good at bottom right things that I hate and I'm bad at and just filled those in. Think about what you do in your business, right? What do you do on a given day, in a given week? What are those things? Is it showing houses, is responding to emails? Is it texting people back? Is it getting on phone calls? Is it getting on zoom calls, whatever the scenario is, and fill those boxes in a good business? Look, this is this is the simplest thing for you to do if you want to hire somebody first and foremost, ever. You keep the love and good at box, and then you take everything else in the other three boxes. You say, here's my job description. I need somebody to do this right, because you are wired for those things in the top left box that you love and you're good at. And the more that you do those, the more that you will be fired up, the more energized you will be. That's kind of the same thing, the better you'll be at it, because the Lord wired you to do it, and the more your business will grow because you're spending time in the place the Lord wants you to spend time in. Hello. He gave you those desires, those passions, those excitements, those skills, because he wanted you to have them. So you should go use those. That's your job. When I built that out for the first time a couple of years ago, I realized I just need to keep aiming for the top left box, keep aiming for the top left box. And the more that I'm doing stuff and any of those other boxes, I need to get rid of it as fast as I can. Who can do this? Does anybody need to do it? And if somebody needs to do it, who can do it? And it's not going to be me, right? So do I need to bring somebody in? Or maybe it just doesn't matter. Let me get rid of it completely. Spend time in the things that you love and are good at. Right? And I understand I'm painting the picture of an idealized business. We don't always get to do that. Of course not. But aim to spend 80% of your time in the top left box. I promise you, that's your highest return on your time. That's the best dollar producing activity that you can do. It's what you're uniquely wired to do. It's what the Lord created you to do. And the more time you spend there, the more money you make in less time. And you can go home and spend time with your family. That's what I care about. How do you make more and miss less? Well, you got to move to the top left box. The goal is not just to grow your business, it's to build a business that actually fits you the way the Lord made you. If you feel overwhelmed in your business right now, there's a good chance it's not because you're doing too little. It's probably because you're doing too much of the wrong things. So here's your action plan. Calculate your dollar per hour. Identify your highest value activities. Start eliminating or delegating the rest, and then focus your time on what actually moves the needle. Move towards the top left box. You don't need more time. You need better decisions about how you use your time and if you can get this right. My friends, you don't just grow your business. You create margin, freedom and presence at home. And that's what I want for you to make more and miss less. But if this is something you've been struggling with, I'm doing a free training on April 29th, where I'm going to walk through exactly how to build a business that grows without taking over your life. You can register at Fayetteville. Com you should absolutely come as faithful agent, even if you can't make it go to faith. Or maybe you're hearing this after the fact. Go to Faithful Agent and we can get you a replay. And we'll be doing more trainings in the future because this is what I care about. How do I help the Christian agent be equipped to make more and miss less? And it's understanding pieces of our business like this. You can do it, my friend. You are capable of this. The Lord desires you to be excellent in your work and excellent in your home. And so when you're out there 80 hours a week hustling, missing every single important moment in your family's life, that's not what the Lord desires for you. Yes, working hard is good. And this is not a health and wealth that's not real. That's not true gospel. But the reality is the Lord is calling you to show up. Well, for those he's called you to show up well, for that's your family. That's your kids. That's whoever's important in your life. You know, I don't those people in your life. Not that you just work 24 over seven. The only reason we'd work 24 over seven is because we aren't good at understanding this. Do the things that matter show up better for the people in your life? Earn more money. Be more giving. Show up better. Take your family on good vacations and show your computer. That's an amazing thing. Invite people over for dinner. Send them on vacation. Do the things that we can do because we are blessed to be a blessing. But it's only going to come from you making hard decisions like this to head to the top left box. I'm here to help you. I hope you come. Faithful agent calm. Come to the free training. If it's after the fact, that's fine. Still go there. We'll help you. Or text me. It's in the show notes. I want to help you because I care about you. But I care about your families, and I care about your communities. And if we can be better, we can impact all of them. The ripple effect is huge. Let's do that together. I love you, faithful agents. I'll see you next week. Hey, Christian agent, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If it resonated, would you take 30s and share it with another agent who's also trying to grow their business without losing their faith, family, or peace? That's how this message spreads. And if you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss future episodes. I release new ones each Thursday to help you build success that actually lasts. It genuinely fires me up knowing this podcast is helping you pursue excellence to the glory of God, both at work and at home. I'll meet you back here next week for another episode of The Faithful Agent.