I’m going to let you in on a little secret: it’s not “work” when you do what you love.
I think that the easiest way to be successful as an entrepreneur is to live by that law. Think about your life and all the things that make you happy.
For me, I want to spend my time with my husband and family, travel, stay active outdoors, and make time for fun with friends and my dog. For me, it’s about building a business that takes the least of my time possible and isn’t something I feel tied to all of the time. So with Mrs. Property Solutions, I tried to design it in such a way that we are resourceful and can do more with less (money and time).
Over the years, as I’ve structured my business, I have designed each aspect to serve the lifestyle that I want to live.
First, dial in your marketing
Marketing is the starting point of each business.
As investors we usually go after the methods that get us our leads the fastest – think cold calling, texting, even mailers and bandit signs.
Don’t get me wrong, each of these have their place and are effective at generating leads!
I’ve spent the better part of my career generating leads this way but honestly, I hated it! I noticed that they took way more work than some of my other leads source channels. There was the managing the data, managing the cold callers, and more intense follow ups than with my SEO leads.
So, if I hated cold calling so much, why would I continue doing that?
I stopped and put all of my focus into online lead generation. Things like SEO, PPC and Facebook might take more time to figure out in the beginning, but once you do, it’s been my experience that those leads are just better.
They come to you more motivated and are ready to sell without you having to follow up 500 times before they are ready to sign a contract. In focusing my time in getting better at online lead generation, it may have taken some time in the beginning but now I believe it gives me more time back since these leads convert at a better rate.
Adopting the virtual model
Sales is obviously the lifeline of any real estate investors business.
If you can’t convert your leads then you are in real trouble! At one point, this was the aspect of my business that took the most time and always kept me bogged down.
Being in the Southern California market – meeting with sellers could take up an entire day and leave you with time for nothing else. With such a wide range of ground to cover and battling some of the worst traffic in the entire United States, if you had an appointment at the other end of town, meeting with a single seller could easily take up 6 hours of your day – and then just leave you grumpy from sitting in traffic all day.
As my business evolved, I started to find ways to be more effective about the use of my time.
There are a lot of investors out there that truly believe you need to meet with the sellers in their living room in order to build the amount of rapport that it takes to get someone to sign a contract with you but I have found that not to be the case.
Building rapport can be just as effective over the phone and with technology these days, it’s easier than ever to connect online and still get face-to-face time if you feel like you need it (although I have never zoomed with a customer). I also find that especially since my customers have had a chance to connect with me online first (since 9 times out of 10 then come through my website) it gives them a chance to feel more comfortable and builds a level of trust and authority.
With the virtual model that has given me the ability to be able to work from anywhere!
All I need is my phone and an internet connection and I can conquer the day. As I write this I am sitting in a park in Colorado Springs and am traveling all over the country while still working – something I would not be able to do if I needed to meet with my customers face to face.
The virtual model will bring you unlimited freedom!
