Many real estate agents believe they work full time. But do they?
Let’s define terms. In America, full time means at least 40 hours a week. Everybody from plumbers to presidents works on that model.
Now the fun part. What qualifies as “work” toward your 40 if you consider yourself a full-time real estate agent?
What counts
In real estate, two things directly earn commissions: Doing business and marketing for business.
Doing business
Doing business means you’re listing or selling homes.
- You’re driving to appointments.
- You’re at appointments.
- You’re showing homes, negotiating offers, getting deals closed.
- Taking care of your current sellers, emailing them, calling them, strategizing with them? Working.
Every hour of that counts toward your 40. That’s working.
Marketing for business
Marketing for business counts as commission-earning work, too.
- Creating compelling marketing to attract buyers or sellers, the photos, the ad copy? Working.
- Negotiating with media for a great price, then placing your marketing? Working.
- Handling inquiries from buyers, agents and possible sellers responding to your marketing? Working.
Doing business. Marketing for business. That’s it. That’s money-making work.
What doesn’t count (sorry)
- Reading about real estate? Doesn’t count.
- Attending real estate conferences? Sorry.
- Taking classes to improve yourself? No.
- Scrolling social media “for market awareness”? Come on.
These kinds of real estate activities can be valuable. They help you better represent clients, and maybe even charge more because you know more. But they don’t directly earn you commissions.
All professionals learn
Education is something all professionals do to get better at their profession. We sit through hours of training to get our license, then continuing education to keep it. And if we’re smart, we learn from other smart people how to do business better.
But doctors don’t charge for the hours they spend learning. Neither do lawyers. They may be able to charge more for what they do because they learned how to do it better. That’s where education pays off. But it’s not a direct commission-earning activity.
So learn all you can. Just do it on your own time. It’s preparation time, not production time.
It’s a workplace, not work
And here’s one more that stings. Time at the company office, or your home office, isn’t automatically time at work. A real estate office can be the most expensive illusion in the industry. So can your home office.
The fact that you are in a work environment doesn’t mean you’re doing commission-generating work. Some of the most well-read, knowledgeable agents I know struggle to pay their bills.
Oh, and 1 more thing
Vacations don’t count unless you’re doing business or marketing for business while you should be having fun. And if that’s the case, you’ve got a different problem.
You should’ve spent some of that nonproductive time training someone to keep your business producing while you’re gone.
Yes, that’s a thing. Smart agents do it.
The 4-week challenge
So, are you really a full-time agent? Are you truly putting in 40-plus hours a week directly focused on earning commissions, doing business or marketing for business?
I don’t know. And here’s the thing. You might not either.
I don’t think many agents truly know how many hours they devote each week to what is most likely to result in a commission. We don’t punch a clock. We don’t bill in six-minute increments like attorneys. We just “work all the time,” which is what a lot of people say when they’ve never measured it.
So chart it. For the next four weeks, keep a running record of the hours you’re truly doing business or marketing for business, exactly as I described above.
No rounding up. No credit for staring at your phone while thinking about real estate.
At the end of four weeks, you’ll know the truth. You’ll know whether you’re really putting at least 40 hours a week into the thing that’s supposed to give you and your family a better life.
Busy isn’t productivity
Most agents call themselves full-time. Far fewer truly are. That’s not a character flaw. It’s a measurement problem.
Real estate is the rare profession where you can stay busy all day and productive almost never, and nobody, including you, will notice.
The good news? The gap between busy and productive is the easiest raise you’ll ever give yourself. You don’t need a new market. You don’t need new leads. You just need your hours back.
4 weeks to truth
Four weeks. One chart. The truth.
I have a hunch a few of you will surprise yourselves.
One last thought. A fisherman friend of mine has the best boat, the best rods and the best stories at the dock. He also catches the fewest fish. One afternoon I finally figured out why: While he’s telling stories, everyone else’s line is in the water.
Real estate is no different. The bank doesn’t cash busy.
