- Hey everybody, it's Mark Saunders
with Saunders Realty and the
Real Estate Brokers Academy.
So I wanted to make this quick video
because one of the top
questions that I get asked
pretty much any time
where I go out speaking
and teaching technology
to real estate agents is,
how do you do your time management,
and time blocking and how do you work
your calendars and everything.
'Cause if you've been
in any of my classes,
you know I'm a big Google fan.
So, I thought I'd make this quick video
and kinda show you behind the scenes
a little bit of how I do work my calendar.
I'm gonna show you some
tips and tricks here
to really put your Google
calendar on steroids.
This is kind of a new
process that I've been
using now for a while, and it really helps
show you the different things involved
with time management and how to stay
focused on what's most important.
This is a really big issue, especially,
I talk with a lot of new agents
and the work/life balance in
real estate is pretty tough.
I was teaching recently in class in Durham
and I had a couple people come up
and ask how do you handle
the work/life balance,
and how do you stay focused on the tasks
that need to be done.
So I though I'd make this video,
and just walk you through the process
of how you can schedule everything out.
There's a saying I heard once.
I forget where it came from, but it says
show me your calendar and I'll show you
what's important to
you, and that's so true
that a lot of times,
basically, when we get
overloaded with work and the family stuff
starts to slide, the reason
why is the family time
wasn't scheduled in your calendar,
or the items that by
far should come first,
which in my case is God,
family and everything else,
those things need to be scheduled
into your calendar first and then work
your way back out and find
a place for everything.
So, I thought I would kind of
walk you through my process.
Some of the tips that I
use in Google calendar
to get more out of Google calendar,
and make it work a lot better.
So, let me minimize my video here,
and throw myself down here in the corner.
And here we go.
So, here's my Google calendar,
and right now I don't have
any of my calendars selected.
I have a lot of calendars
on the side over here,
but one thing that I try to do is start
with the things that are
the most important to you.
So, for me, like I said, God, family,
everything else, so that's gonna
be church, and that's gonna be family.
So that's gonna be my personal time.
So what you see over here on the left,
these are my main calendars,
and the way that I have broken this..
have set this up and broken
this down is to start there.
So if you notice, I've
got these little icons
in my family and on my workout calendar.
Getting stuff done, this is the stuff
that is revenue generating for me.
So, obviously, those are the things
that I definitely want to focus on.
This is my Real Estate Brokers Academy
things to do calendar.
These are ideas and planning
and all that we go into that.
Office work and management, these are
things that I don't want
to spend too much time on.
Running your business, you can kind of get
sucked into a time drain of
admin stuff all the time.
So I try to schedule
specific times to stay
in this calendar and basically finish it
on time because if not, I can go in
to do an hour long admin thing,
and then I look up and
three hours are gone.
So, it's not really a good
time management thing to do.
So I try to limit those
as much as possible.
And then out of the office with meetings.
These are people that I'm meeting with,
could be commute times and everything.
So, the couple things I want to show you.
To get your icons on here,
which I highly recommend.
It makes your calendar much more visual,
and able to keep up with it.
You're gonna go to what's
called the emoji library.
So if you do emoji library,
it's the very first
site that comes up, is this Emojipedia,
like a encyclopedia,
I can't hardly say it.
Emojipedia sounds really funny,
but this gives you emojis
for basically anything
that you want, and one
thing that I've found
using Google Docs and Drive and whatever,
Google Calendar, is you can
use this in your file system,
which works really, really
well if you're like me
and kind of like things more visual.
So, if I was gonna create
my family calendar first,
just do a search for
family and then you could
find it, however you want to do it.
Man, woman, girl, whatever you wanna do.
Once you select it, just hit copy.
And so this is the picture that
it's actually gonna pull in.
So I'm gonna copy that.
Now I'm gonna set up a new calender.
So, if I was setting this
up the very first time,
the first calendar I
would do would be family
personal time, and the way you do that
in Google Calender is very easy.
Add calendar. Just click the
dots. Create a new calendar.
So what we're gonna do
is, for the name of it,
the very first thing is we're going
to paste that emoji at the very first.
The reason why is 'cause
Google will sort those first.
So those are gonna come
automatically before anything else.
Your calendars basically
will come, unless you've
marked them something special,
are gonna come in order
and these will go to the top.
So, on this one, family,
just like what I have,
slash personal time.
That can include church
time, that can include
whatever, family or personal for you.
Put in a description if you want.
Do your calendar or your
time and everything.
And then when you hit create,
you'll actually create
that calendar.
So let me go back, since I
already have that calendar.
So, now, here's an example
of mine when I select it.
My family time and all is personal time.
So, I go ahead and try to schedule this.
What time are we gonna wake up.
So, today I woke up around 4:30,
went to the gym, which
you can see once I click
my workout. The workouts go in, haven't
quite got there yet, but go through,
spend a little bit of
time here and schedule
all your personal/family time together.
And here's another tip, too.
So, if, let's say you always want
to have dinner with the family.
What I would suggest, still copy
in that little picture
icon. 'Dinner with family',
hit save and you can see that it's gonna
save it directly to that
calendar 'cause that's
the only one we have selected right now.
So, dinner with the family, and let's say
we want to repeat that everyday, okay?
We can repeat it at that point,
but I recommend putting
these little emojis in
'cause it sounds funny,
but then when our day
goes crazy and we start
getting really, really busy,
when you actually have to go in and delete
your family time and
there's a little picture
of a family there, it makes it
a little bit harder to cancel that.
So, if this is a
reoccurring thing, like you
see here, go to bed for me,
I've got the moon in there.
My dinner is a little fork and plate.
Sounds silly, but especially
these carry over into your cell
phone so it's really
easy to see what's there.
So I've got here, around
8 o'clock every night,
put the kids in bed, it's bedtime.
Got a little picture of our kids in there.
It just makes it a
little bit harder to when
if somebody calls and wants
to schedule a time on me,
I would have to go in here
and actually delete that out.
So, it's a little bit thing
there, but it makes you
kind of put things in
perspective and put things first.
So, personal stuff for
me, I put in what time
we wake up, around 4:30
or 5 every morning.
I always schedule in this
reading/planning time
during the day, breakfast with
the family's on the calendar,
and what I try to do is
build this whole week out
and actually fill in all the spots
before the week begins and then that way
I basically have everything scheduled
to every time's taken, it's gonna show me
my free time, like for
example, right here,
get ready for work, 7:00 to 7:45.
I don't leave for work 'til 8:15.
So, if I wanted to fit
something in that little space,
I could, or I could just drag this down
a little bit longer and plan on taking
a little bit longer to get ready for work.
So, adjust this event, and there you go.
So, it's gonna fill the
spots in and everything.
So, that would be my family, then next
would be workout for me,
you know, try to stay
in shape, try to get to
the gym as much as I can.
So, I'm gonna hit
workout and this would be
the exact same way.
So, I have a person that I work out with.
We usually work out three
to four times a week.
So that's already in there as well.
So, now you can see,
I've already scheduled
family personal time.
I've already scheduled my
workouts before I even get
to really my work
appointments or anything.
So the next thing, getting stuff done,
oh and here's another
tip I was gonna tell you.
These are all different calendars.
So you can have multiple,
multiple calendars
within your one account.
So, you need to color code
them, 'cause if you hit
go to the calendar
itself, see how that one
just popped in red, go
to the calendar itself,
clicked at the little dots, what color
do you want it to be.
Let's say I wanted my family to be yellow,
I could change it to yellow.
But because you're
stacking multiple calendars
in here, now I can't find my pink
where it was at, there it is.
Now because I'm stacking
multiple calendars
in here, it really makes
everything stand out
to what you're currently
doing or working on.
So, the next one I have
is getting stuff done.
So, these are things that I need to do
that generate revenue.
So, for example here, phone calls.
I try to do my phone calls
Tuesdays and Thursdays,
have the time already set.
Working on listing appointments,
checking voicemail, whatever it is.
So, because we have
multiple calendars in here,
say this is a listing
appointment for 123 Main St.,
when we're putting in
an event, just go down,
this is your calendars, so see
how everything carries over?
The emoji carries over,
very nice and clean,
makes it easy to really
see what's going on.
So, I would try to build this time out.
How much time possible could I spend on
getting stuff done, money-making things
because my goal, what
I'm gonna try to do here,
is hopefully, over time,
this whole calendar
will be nothing but pink, which is family
personal time, couple
workouts here and there,
and then all green items.
That means I am maximizing my time
on only money-making ideas
or money-making activities,
which that's exactly
what I would want to do.
I'm either want to spend
time with my family
or doing things that
actually generate us revenue,
which, as you'll see, that gets hard to do
sometimes when you gotta
do other admin things.
But, that's what we try to do.
The color's green because
that's making us money.
So, REBA, if I was doing things to do
for my Real Estate Brokers Academy,
call it REBA, it would go there.
Office and management, so I'm gonna plug
this in and these are
items that need to be done
to kind of run our
business, but they don't
really generate us any revenue.
So that's gray, so they can
sit out a little bit there.
I want to limit these as much as possible,
short, quick meetings with my assistants
or some of our managers and everything.
We would definitely want to, they want
to be in here and scheduled probably
a certain time every week, but we don't
want to get bogged down
and do too much in this
because, like I said,
it can be a time drain,
and then the next thing
a lot of people forget
is planning the times out of the office.
So, you can actually see I've got in here
times to leave to go to the office.
So I've scheduled in the commutes.
I've scheduled in kinda what's going on
with everything and that
way I can kind of plan it.
So, my commutes are blue,
or these are my meetings,
and the reason they're that
way is they really stand out.
So, if I need to run
some errands this day,
and so I've got a little bit of time
already scheduled here on Wednesday
that's a little bit of free
time and a little bit here.
If I have errands, or I gotta go out
and do a couple things,
I'm gonna try to book it
beside a blue block because that way
I'm already out of the office.
I'm going to be on the
road, 'cause the last thing
I want to do is book it here, come back
to the office and then turn
around and have to leave again.
So, those are the things
that as you're trying
to schedule appointments, a lot of times
in the afternoons, I
try to save those open
for out appointments, out
of the office appointments
and everything.
So, I'm gonna put some of my live events
on here so you can see that there are
things actually scheduled
in this timeframe.
So the orange are the REBA events.
So these are live events that I'm doing.
So I'm teaching in Charlotte
at the end of this week.
So that time is already in there.
I'll just have to go
in and fill in a couple
more blocks, what time
to leave, and everything
for Friday, but as you can see, I mean,
this is pretty much a full week,
and everything's scheduled out.
I kind of know where I need to be.
My wife's calendar, as
you can see I've got
a heart on that one,
basically goes in there
as well to see if she's
got something scheduled,
like our son's birthday
party's this weekend
and so it's actually showing
up on hers and my calendar.
I do highly recommend,
if you have a spouse
or somebody that's keeping
up with your calendar
'cause this business can be crazy busy
and you can get booked
up, go ahead and share
your calendar with them so that way
they know if you're going to be late
or something at the end of the time.
So, that's kind of how I
schedule out all of my calendars.
So, if you look, a lot of time spaces.
I got some spaces available
going into next week
but you'll kind of see where the spots
start forming and when you can start
scheduling different
appointments and everything.
So, one other tip I wanted to show you is,
if you're like me, one
thing I absolutely hate
is when I'm emailing
somebody and we're trying
to set up an appointment or set up a time,
and you email them and say, hey, would you
like to meet Thursday at 4 o'clock,
and they're like I can't meet Thursday,
can you do Friday at two?
I can't do Friday at two, and
now you're 20 emails into it.
I wanted to show you
kind of a tool that I use
to help get around all of
that and especially if you're
scheduling your calendar
this way, it makes it
really easy to set up
appointments directly
from your calendar, directly
from actually your email.
So, let me go in here and
compose an email real quick.
It's a free program that I use.
They have some pro
versions of it called Vyte,
v-y-t-e, and I've
actually got it embedded.
There's a ton of apps to
do something like this,
but it's Book A Meeting,
a kind of app and program.
I put it right in my email signature,
and when people click on it,
so, v-y-t-e, so, vyte.com.
Once you set this up,
it gives people access
into your calendar to
actually suggest times
that work for them and you to meet,
and it's, like I said, a huge time saver.
The way I have mine set up is I ask
for three time slots, time slots that work
for them, what are we meeting for.
We could say real estate deal,
and I'm gonna say, hey, pick a time.
So, pick a date, and now you can see
you can import all of
your calendars in here.
So, as you can see,
because I just showed you
my other side of the calendar
and how I'll schedule
everything out, it's pretty
much booked for this week.
So, there gonna have to go in and start
looking at some different weeks.
I've been pretty busy,
so they might not find
many spots for the next couple
of weeks, but here we go.
So here's some appointments.
So now they can pick
on, alright, so let's do
Monday at eight, let's do Wednesday at 10,
and let's do Friday at nine.
Now they can create those
events directly from my calendar
page, and we don't have to worry
about going back and
forth about scheduling
this appointment or anything like that.
So, I would highly
recommend vyte, v-y-t-e,
check out vyte.com to
get your calendar set up
and then that way you've really cut down
on the time to set
appointments all while trying
to focus on what you should be doing
that's generating revenue for you.
So, I hope you enjoyed the video.
I need to make this a little bit bigger.
Hope you enjoyed the video.
I would love your thoughts on this.
If this is the first time
seeing one of our videos,
be sure to like us on our Facebook page
at Real Estate Brokers
Academy, on our website.
Our website's REBAcademy.com, Facebook,
Real Estate Brokers Academy.
Would love to see your comments below.
If you have any tips or time management
or calendar blocking
or anything like that,
I would love to hear them.
I read about this a
lot, on time management
and everything, so I'm
always open to ideas,
and would love to hear your thoughts
on this or anything else.
So, thanks for watching
and talk to you soon.
