Million Dollar Agent
Million Dollar Agent
Daily Habits of Top Real Estate Agents: Non-Negotiables for Success
The significance of structured time management through the implementation of an "Ideal Week," the hosts aim to equip agents with tools to enhance their daily operations.
As Easter weekend coincides with auction schedules, they explore the complexities of timing and public holidays and their impact on real estate activity.
They highlight the importance of routine, planning, and balancing work with well-being. Tips include managing energy levels throughout the day and integrating personal time to stay productive. With nods to Dr. Fred Grosse and AREC insights, it’s a practical chat on staying organised and thriving in the industry.
Tom Panos, john McGrath, troy, malcolm, million Dollar Agent, the podcast in a week leading up to the Easter long weekend. It's a great hey, listen, everyone loves this time of the year, that loves sport as well. It's got a good feel to the air. There's a lot of stock. I'm actually auctioning a property tonight, troy, and there's auctions tomorrow. I think there's a lot of people that are doing the auctions before the Good Friday, the long weekend. Yeah, good to see you both.
Troy Malcolm:You well, good to see you, tommy. I've got auctions tonight and tomorrow night as well.
John McGrath:Yes.
Tom Panos:Never better, Tommy.
John McGrath:Yeah, Very, You're right. A lot of agents asked me six weeks ago should we do auctions on the long weekend? I said, look, to be honest, I think the answer is no, because it's just another risk factor that could go wrong and if you're standing there with no buyers and no bidders which may not be your fault they'll blame the long weekend and you shouldn't have let me auction on the long weekend. So I think that's, Tommy, why a lot of people are doing it.
Tom Panos:Yeah. So I think that's Tommy, why a lot of people are doing it. Yeah, well, I agree On the contrary, but I also agree long weekend Easter, yes, but not election weekend. Elections take five minutes to vote. Anzac Day is interesting because Anzac Day is on Friday next week. Can I ask, troy, is the McGrath Group? You've got plenty of auctions on the Saturday.
Troy Malcolm:I would envisage that you've got some auctions. Yeah, we do, we do, tom, speaking to the auction department, there's still, yeah, quite a number of auctions going on the 26th yeah, well, it's a different day.
John McGrath:I agree. I agree with you, tommy, about the election. You know I think that's overhyped. You know it takes you five minutes to vote. If you've got an auction at 11 o'clock you're going to get there. So I think that's less of an issue than perhaps Easter, where you've got religious overtones and you've got people away for the long weekend. But I think the election is fine. But today we are talking about ideal weeks.
Tom Panos:Yeah, and the reason I brought this subject and it was my suggestion weeks, yeah, and the reason I brought this subject and it was my suggestion is that I was saying an agent was telling me he doesn't know how the day goes so quickly and he goes at the end of the day, feels like he hasn't achieved anything. And I said to him are you using a structured day, week? And he says what are you talking about an ideal week? I go, yeah, he goes, oh, mate, that's 1980s stuff. I said well, I said I said it was out in the, it was around in the 1980s, it was around in the 1990s. I said whether the word's been around so long. But I said you know, I look at an ideal week and I look at an ideal day. I mean I go in and out of airports, I go and I have a look.
Tom Panos:If there was not an ideal day at an airport, there was no screens, there was no times, there was no structure, there'd be just chaos there. People would be going all over the place. And I think that a lot of real estate officers not many of the McGrath ones, I'll say that they're a lot more orderly, but there's a lot of real estate officers that are in absolute chaos mode. There's just people running around busy, being busy and I said to this agent I was speaking to, I said, listen, your ideal week shouldn't look like a prison.
Tom Panos:You shouldn't be looking at your ideal week and think to yourself do I actually have time to breathe or eat? But I think an AM PM operating structure and putting in the core activities that are repeatable, that are weekly or daily example a vendor meeting on a Tuesday makes sense to block off Tuesday 2 o'clock to 4 pm. And I know that Amit Nayak from Parramatta does it brilliantly where he does his Zoom vendor meetings right in 15-minute chunks and he just knows they're the times I do that minute chunks and he just knows they're the times I do that. So, troy John, your view of ideal weeks and like what are the sorts of things you should be putting in there and what are the do's and don'ts of ideal weeks?
John McGrath:So fun fact, troy and John, you both may know this, you may not, but most listeners wouldn't the ideal weeks within Australia was the concept was first released in the very first ARIC. Bob Bolin and Dr Fred Gross and Bob Wolfe came out. It was a big part of their success. They were at their time the best on the planet at what they did and they were very much advocates of the idea week. And in fact Dr Fred goes as far as saying if you don't have an idea week it is impossible to be at peak performance productivity. And I agree with him. So it actually started back then and I break it into a couple of things, troy, so idea week, and then I talk about morning ritual. So morning ritual is kind of how do you kick off the first two hours of the day? If you have a good first two hours of the day, you probably have a good next seven or eight hours into momentum. If you have a slow, distracted week start to the day, that's probably going to be how your day finishes. So you know dr fred talked about and I'll credit him we love dr fred and he said look, what you've got to decide, john, when he first coached me is you know what are the things you do that are actually dollar productive, meaning you know it's talking to a buyer or a seller that can actually wants to and can do a deal. That's dollar productive. Going down the road having a coffee, it's not dollar productive. Photocopying contracts is not. Chatting to your buddies in the office is not. But on the phone, prospecting on the phone, negotiating a deal face-to-face with a buyer, showing them a property all dollar productive. So he said what you've got to do is, before the week gets busy when every week can get busy is you need to put in place the things that are non-negotiable. And for him it was very much Troy, as you remember, around prospecting, very important. It was around. You know, for me daily vendor call, as an example, was the way to start the day. So I agree with you, tom.
John McGrath:A lot of people they get the mistake with ideal weeks because they try and over-engineer and make it minute by minute. 15-minute increments here's what you do at 9, 15 years. And for most people, because salespeople are kind of you know, they're sort of energy type people, they don't want to be tied down to a 15-minute increment plan. But if you say, look from 8 till 10,. Here are the five things I'm going to do every morning. And you have to fall in love with the routine. Again, a lot of agents they try and break away from routine. I've got to tell you, to be mega successful, you have to fall in love with, to a degree, routine. So I think you know, chunk it into what do you do from 8 till 10, for example, what do you do from 10 till 11? And then for me it was, you know, from 7am. I was an early starter. From 7am till 10.30, I was doing a number of activities, including daily vendor calls, including hot buyer calls, including hot pipeline calls. So I had three or four incredibly dollar productive activities that I did. And then from kind of 10, 30, 11, troy, as you know, because you and I used to work closely together, it was out face to face with qualified buyers. The goal was at least five qualified buyer or seller appointments per day and it became an incredibly successful ritual which a lot of our people, as you know, Troy, have through the group, a lot of our top agents. They have followed that and still to this day Friend of mine and I'll pass over to you, troy, but a friend of mine and I think you both know him.
John McGrath:He's now a billionaire and he wasn't. He was just a kid from Marrickville at some point in time and he and his business partner started a software company, took it to America, floated it and they took away over a billion dollars. Each One of the greatest activities or rituals that he puts it down to was his ideal week, and he said it was probably the number one thing that he did is he would say what are the five things I've got to do on Monday? Right management by walking around. I've got to walk around the building, check the pulse, talk to the people you know, recognize good performance. Number two was I had to call my top three clients. Number three was and so forth. So I think it's… it's not only recommended, I think it's essential if you want to be a highly productive, highly successful agent. Troy, you coach it a lot and you live it a lot. Talk us through your experience.
Troy Malcolm:Yeah, I mean I think I was very fortunate.
Troy Malcolm:I got to learn the ideal week structure, john, from yourself and Dr Fred many, many years ago and what I have realised is, while it provides a lot of structure, it actually provides flexibility, because if you have that focused allocated time once you perform that task and you do have a little bit more freedom, you can really get that balance right. What has happened, john, as well as we've discussed over the most, you know, last 10 years, is that people have really evolved the ideal week. So, tom, you mentioned earlier about the AM and PM energy that's definitely become more of an open kind of AM in the office and PM face-to-face, as John said, five face-to-face client meetings. But it's also started to incorporate personal activities. So if you did want to go to the gym or you were a swimmer, or you're taking the dogs for a walk, or you wanted to take the kids to school, we started to allocate that into the ideal week.
Troy Malcolm:And I think, given the modern agent is a lifestyle person and it is a lifestyle being a real estate professional, that's definitely flowed into the ideal week and that's actually seen the most successful have a lot of balance in their life and it's created opportunities for them to have that flexibility while they're still focused on productivity, which is um, which is pretty amazing, considering it's a very similar yeah, I reckon troy and tom, I reckon, uh, phil, harris and eric a number of years ago is the first place I publicly heard ampm energy and I think it is.
John McGrath:It's a great concept. You know you've got certain energy when you get to the office and you know really leverage that energy and then as you're out and about, you almost pick up energy because you're on the road. But if you stay in the office and try and make calls for me anyway in the afternoon, I find that you know, I sort of start drifting off and dozing off even, whereas if I make my calls and I'm high energy in the morning and then I go out and I do my meeting after meeting, I find that that creates a whole new energy. So what are the non-negotiables? For me it was daily vendor calls, really critical. So, first thing, I like if something's really important, I like doing it. First thing, I think, as I mentioned before, hottest buyers and Tom, you've always taught a few real estate gym members mentioned before. Hottest buyers and Tom, you've always taught a few real estate gym members. You know that great and simple sheet. You know who are your current vendors, who are your hottest buyers and who are your hottest pipeline sellers. That's almost the only lists you need. You know that really sets you apart. So I think that you know if you follow that, your pipeline vendor calls your hot, buy calls obviously any properties under negotiation, you do those things.
John McGrath:I always look back on yesterday's diary and then I look forward to today's diary and I say what have I got to review, preview what I have to prepare? And I found that and to be honest, it didn't ever get much more complicated than that. It was seven o'clock till 10.30 and then 10.30 till dinner time. Four or five groups of people I called in the morning and a lot of people say what about your prospecting, john? Well, most of my career, once I built Momentum, most of my career, most of my prospecting was in campaign. So I'd be, you know, regularly handling 10 or 12 auctions simultaneously and from that I was getting an average of 50 to 100 buyer inquiry over a two to three-week period. And so servicing those people, helping them out, finding a property for them, really was my default prospecting. So that was kind of why I didn't necessarily. But if you're not handling 10 to 12 campaigns and you need to build up some momentum, definitely add prospecting in there at least an hour a day as well.
Troy Malcolm:The other thing, john and Tom, that I've noticed with an ideal week is that it reduces that decision fatigue. You know, as you're starting out and there's a million things that are happening during the course of a day, you revert back to that ideal week and, john, I remember you used to coach it very early on in the Edgecliff days. We used to have our ideal week in a color-coded format, laminated and on our desk. It was always easier to take away what comes next. It was always taking away that decision fatigue and just leaning in and going okay, my ideal week on a Wednesday I know that I'm doing, you know, prospecting or I'm setting up the open for inspection kits on a Thursday morning. So it actually allowed you to have that kind of strategy to get to the next day and if you didn't have anything to do, you could always go back to the ideal week as the guide. I thought that was a really important step in my career development as well.
Tom Panos:So why don't we just finish and give some people some of the people that might get inspired listening to this to think you know what? Maybe I'll revisit it, maybe I'll get myself out of chaos into order? Here are half a dozen of things that are repeatable, that are predictable, that you could easily put into your ideal week, even though you might say, oh Tom, you don't get it. It all gets messy and crazy in our town. Here are the things. Number one John, you taught me this at actually you didn't teach it directly. You came to News Corp one day and you said nine calls before 9am Three new business calls, three current client calls, three culture calls. Culture calls are friends, family or suppliers. That's something that you could put into your week.
Tom Panos:A directions meeting in the morning with your team on the one I'm showing as team huddle, like every morning, 8.45 to 9,. Sit down with the team. What are we doing today? What are today's appointments? What's exchanging, what's settling, what marketing that can be done, your prospecting 9.30 to 11.30,. That can go in your vendor meetings, your vendor phone calls. You're open for inspections, your sales meeting.
Tom Panos:All of a sudden you begin to realize that they have patterns. Weeks have patterns. I mean someone said to me, if they wanted to shoot me, they know where they'd find me. They said you're pretty much watching footy on Thursday night, friday night, saturday night. We know we'll get you there. You're having coffee in the morning at this time and I agree with what you're saying, troy. Not having to make choices saves a lot of brain calories. Like draining, you get what do they call it Decision dementia. You just get tired having to work out what are the plus and minuses of this decision. So if you can just be an actor in a script that has already been written for the day, and if you can stick to it, I reckon 75% is a good compliance number for an ideal week. I think you've got to allow for the unexpected, but 75% you should actually drift in the direction of the day and the week you've designed. That's what I think.
John McGrath:Yeah, it's critical, tommy. They're great points and they're easy to follow. I remember reading an article about. It was an interview with Bill Gates and he said by 9.15, if I went home, 9.15am in the morning, if I went home, I'd still have a good day, because all my key activities are done in the first hour and a quarter of the day, and if I therefore, after that, the things are far less important. So he's very much about front-loading dollar productive activities, key meetings, key conversations, key calls and so forth. So I think there's a lot to be said about that. I know we've got to wrap up that. I know we've got to wrap up.
John McGrath:But um final piece of advice for me, troy, is put it in the diary. Treat it like an auction or an open for inspection daily prospecting, daily vendor calls. Don't just think I'll do that early each morning. Actually treat it like an appointment and make it non-negotiable. So hopefully that helps everyone. We'll see everyone at aric. We'll talk to you before, but, eric, 25, 26th of May, tickets are about half sold out 25th, 26th, 24th and 25th I think it is John 25, sorry, 25 and 26.
Tom Panos:No, you're right, 25 and 26, and I've just had my flights booked, so I'm pretty pumped and excited. That's like six. That's like six. Seven weeks to go. That's not long now. So go to the website, ericconferencecomau and um looking forward to seeing you both there. But we'll be talking together next week. Thanks, see you.