Obsessive Calendar Scheduling (HA 1175)
Obsessive Calendar Scheduling (HA 1175)
Transcript:
Steve and Jill here.
Good day.
Welcome to the House Academy Show this time, entertaining real estate investment talk. I’m Steven Jack Butala.
And I’m Jill Dewitt, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.
Today Jill and I talk about obsessive calendar scheduling, and if you haven’t guessed it, I wrote this title.
And if you couldn’t tell, I hate this stuff.
Everybody’s got a different way of being successful on a day-to-day basis. My way is relying on my calendar pretty much obsessively.
Obsessively.
To the point where I think it annoys a lot of people.
Yes it does.
It’s Jill’s number one annoyance. So we’re going to talk about why.
Hi Greg, it’s me Dharma.
I want to talk about why it works so well for me, and I think Jill’s probably going to share why that’s just not how she operates at all.
No.
And I’m going to … We’ll talk about it in a minute.
Okay.
Before we get into it, let’s take a question posted by one of our members on the houseacademy.com online community. It’s free.
Dan says, “Hi Land Academy. My wife and I are fairly new members. Finally got our first mailer out and have a lot of sign purchase agreements mailed back and lots of positive calls.” Yay. “People are accepting our offer of $4 520 for 40 acres, and there are multiple similar properties advertised for sale between $18 000 and $19 000.” That’s awesome.
That’s how it’s supposed to work.
Right? “Until eight days ago, an investor advertised a similar property for $8 299. I was going to ask $11 500. Should I offer just below his by $299? I appreciate any advice you can give. Thanks, Dan.”
You go first.
Well, my first thought is, that other guys probably in our group.
Yeah, he is for sure, or he’s in a group like this, or he just wants to sell it quickly. My advice is, and it’s less than one sentence. Stick to your plan.
Mm-hmm (affirmative). I wouldn’t change a thing. That’s what I was going to say also. You’re doing it all right. Big deal if there’s two of them out there for very similar pricing, I would just maybe stick with your 11 000 people might … One of his is going to sell, yours is going to sell, it’s going to work out fine. There’s two way below all the other available property, and I think that’s going to be great.
Keep in mind that these people that buy these properties are going to use them. If you and your spouse are looking for a house, you don’t, the rock bottom price property is not the one that you’re going to buy, because she has to live there. She’s going to pick one out that has finishes she wants. She doesn’t care about price, or he, or however this works for you, with what you have going on.
That’s true.
Having the cheapest property … Picture this, a couple of guys had been saving their money for a lot of years and they want to buy some hunting property, maybe put a cabin on it. That’s the kind of property we’re talking about. They’re not going to look for these absolute cheapest ones. They’re going to go out there and say, “Well, this one for 14 grand is way better than this one for eight grand for how we’re going to use it.” So $5 000 more, doesn’t matter.
Well and let me tie this together. This is the House Academy Show. Even though it’s kind of a land question, you could think of it as a couple of ways. This could be a total infill lot, so now it applies to House Academy. Maybe that’s what you’re doing, buying property for builders. Or you could just change your gears a little bit and … Guys, will you give me the question again? Change your gears a little bit and he’s buying it for 145 000 kind of thing for a three bedroom, two bath, and everything else is 189 000 for a three bedroom, two bath, and someone else came in closer to his kind of number. This all applies. It’s all the same thing.
That’s right.
Regardless of the property type. The difference is, for houses we’re not doing them at half, but we’re doing at way below its current market value, if you will. That’s the thing. And selling them below the current market value, because of all the reasons that we spell out in House Academy. Does that make sense?
Yeah.
Okay.
Completely makes sense.
Thank you.
Price is not … We talk about price and value so much, I guess I understand why you’re asking this question, but it’s not the end all be all when it comes, certainly when it comes to houses. People buy houses, and even wholesalers or landlords, buy houses for a lot of reasons. And it’s-
Mm-hmm (affirmative), the lot, the school, how close it is to mom. There’s just some things-
What’s the square footage? Because landlords, if you talk to any experienced landlord, they will never have any four bedroom houses for rent. When they have a four bedroom house that goes up on the market, it’s taken and they live there forever. And if they don’t, they re-rent it or re-lease it in 25 seconds. If the square footage is the same, but it’s four bedrooms, not three bedrooms, that price is not going to matter that much, or as much.
Thank you.
Today’s topic, obsessive calendar scheduling. This is the meat of the show.
Okay, so why are we talking about this? Because this is not my favorite topic. I got to say.
Every day. Here’s why we’re talking about this.
Okay.
Every single time Jill and I have a live event, this topic, it gets, and probably in everyone’s opinion, including mine, over-discussed.
They say, it starts like this, “So you guys just did this live event.” It usually happens at the end of the live event, “How the heck can you guys do a daily show, run … ” I think we have nine companies now, “Have time for this live event, and still kind of remained calm and buying some real estate and the whole … That’s ridiculous.” And my answer is always obsessive calendar scheduling.
And now it’s over-talked.
In my life, this is what I do. I wake up, I go to my inbox, which is a disaster just like yours is, and I start reading down my email inbox, or my phone messages, or whatever inbound stuff is reaching me, maybe it’s Skype messages from people that work for us or whatever. And I take all this inbound traffic and I either make this decision, I need to deal with this now because it’s pretty fast and it’s no big deal, or put out this fire. Which, if you’re at the top of your company, even if you’re a one or two person company, those things are far and few between or they should be now. The fires are for when you’re new at it and you’re making mistakes. I either deal with it right then or I schedule it.
And what I do is I take the content of whatever the message is and I say, “I’ll deal with this at 3:00 o’clock today or 2:00 o’clock.” Or I’ll put it in a, “This is a thing on Thursday because I need to have Jill’s opinion because it involves the stuff that Jill’s better at than I am.” And on, and on, and on.
And so my email inbox for example, goes to zero. I never ever quit working when there’s stuff in my inbox, ever. In this day and age now with Microsoft 365, you can take the content of the email, copy and paste it and put it in that schedule part, and send yourself all kinds of notifications so you can’t, you have to do it. All you have to do is one thing, stick to that schedule, take the stuff, put it in there and stick to it.
I woke up this morning, this is the day that we record podcasts, Jill and I, and the day that we do live events, live webinars, and I know exactly what’s going to happen today and I feel great about it. I feel great about today and the amount of work that I’m going to get done, and I have a bunch of stuff scheduled for tomorrow and it’s okay. Everybody knows it because they all got a notice that we’re going to talk about this tomorrow, not today.
I could never ever do what we do so successfully without obsessively using that calendar, and the notification component to that calendar for everybody else that needs stuff from me, ever. Is it kooks? Yeah, and Jill’s going to tell you about that right now.
It’s okay. I like to think on the calendar spectrum, where you’re, where on a scale of one to 10, you’re a 12. I think I’m a five. I think I’m a pretty good five. Because yes, we have employees, we have people, I have you, there’s things that have to be scheduled and have to be followed. But I like the freedom, and that’s part of why I talked about, when we were talking about on the show yesterday, on the Land Academy show, why am I here doing all this stuff and working my butt off? Because I like the freedom of my life. I like to book trips to New Orleans with my girlfriends.
But put it in a schedule, don’t put-
Well it is in the schedule, that’s my point. But I like to … But even then I want to make you do a last minute thing. I don’t know. I want to wake up today, or maybe tomorrow and just decide what I want to do. Here’s what I sneaky do. Here’s how I handle obsessive guy.
I know this girl’s [crosstalk 00:09:10].
I book things that aren’t real things, but you can’t tell. But I booked my day off just to have fun. It’s a fluff day.
You don’t need to hide that.
Well, it doesn’t matter.
I book my free time too.
Well, whether or not you, I know you would approve, but it just looks better on the calendar with everybody if like, “Oh, Jill’s got a big meeting day apparently.” No, I don’t.
She’s getting her hair done.
It’s like, I have to, exactly. I got to have some me time.
That’s the other-
By the way, this is, let me back up. A lot, for me, honestly, the underlying theme here is sanity. You got to get this stuff done. We all know that. How you do it best, and maintain your sanity is up to you.
For him, it’s like he needs to have it so scheduled out that it’s like he doesn’t have to think about them. He doesn’t have to remember things, “Oh yeah, I got to call that guy.” Whatever. He just schedules it and that’s fine.
For my sanity, I can’t look at a calendar that’s packed and busy. I can’t handle, make this call here, do this here, send this email. I can’t do that. I have the big things on the calendar and the little things, I actually have an old school kind of a list and I get to them and it’s fine. And my email inbox doesn’t go down to zero, but I maintain my sanity. It works for me.
I hope that your takeaway from this is, figuring out what’s right for you, knowing what’s there and choosing what’s best to be the most effective and maintain your sanity.
That’s beautiful. That’s a beautiful take on it.
Oh yeah, here he’s going to, now he’s going to rip holes in my whole thing. Go for it.
No, I have to ask you this question, and I’m really not throwing you under the bus, but I want you to-
It’s okay.
To answer me and not take it personally or anything, but how much of this, how much of your way, and I’m not knocking your way because I think it works great for you. And we wake up every morning and we’re like, “Wow, this thing really works.” All of it. How much of it, of your sanity do you have because I’m crazy about scheduling and getting the mechanical information, not inspiration, stuff done?
Oh, I would still do it the same way if you weren’t here. Is that what you’re asking? I wouldn’t change it.
Yeah. Do you think you’d get half the stuff done that you get done?
No, I think it’d be the same. Honestly, I really do.
Wow, you think you’re just as effective with your touchy feely way?
Well, it’s not all touchy feely. Let me back up. Here’s something you may or may not know about me. Remember, I used to carry around a Franklin Planner, by the way, I always had those. I learned it from my dad, he always has them. My mom still has them since he passed. Every year he had one of those little spiral bound, day at a glance kind of things. Not kidding. And the guy used it like a diary. I grew up watching that.
When they first out of those electronic organizers, I was one of the first people that had them, way before we had cell phones. I’m dating myself, I realize this. But I carried around that. I remember one of my boss was going, “What is that? What are you doing?” And I would put little reminders in there. I’d put things in there and they’re like, “You’re weird.”
You’re just as crazy as I am.
Well see, but I don’t take to the same level because I don’t feel like I need to put sex on the calendar.
Wow. Where did that go?
I’m just saying.
Where did that go? It’s like part of the week.
There is my … No, just … Good, it made you laugh. But you know what I mean? I’ve had that too. I just, maybe to you Steven, maybe I was so much that way, and now I’ve realized, and it was hard, but I don’t want to be that way. I like to be a little bit free flowing and whatever. That’s just how I operate best.
Okay.
Okay, is that bad?
No, no. Whatever works. This all, there’s no-one that can argue that this, whatever this is, and the amount of years that we’ve been doing it together, it works, so why dramatically change it? It’s just little improvements from this point on out. The other thing I should say about these calendar environments, that’s really different than, let’s say a Franklin Planner or a PDA or whatever, or just walking around with a notebook in your backpack, you’re sharing all this stuff with everybody else that’s in there with you that matters, like your clients, your customers, your employees, your partners. If I get an email from somebody, like let’s say it’s even Jill that says, “This thing that we’re working on is kind of going sideways and you asked me to tell you if it’s going sideways. So what do we do? And here’s the problem.” What I do is I go and schedule a discussion or a meeting or whatever, usually that day, later that day or the next day, depending on what the schedule is like, and she gets a notification and she can accept it or decline it. She can say, or say maybe.
And so now she knows about it. It’s in her calendar. I know about it. She’s going to come. She’s not … Or she says, “I’m happy to meet with you, but it’s going to be better at a different time.” So now everybody becomes on the same page.
With product launches and all this other stuff, everyone knows where everyone else is. And if you want to, I don’t choose to do this, this is what would make me a 12 versus a nine, I can see … Jill can see my calendar, I can see hers, and if we wanted to, we can see everybody’s that works for us. Or for that matter, anybody who lets us. I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in just saying, “Hey, we need to meet on this. Does 3:00 o’clock work for you?” Bang.
I understand. Happy you could join us today. Every Tuesdays and Thursday you can find us right here on the House Academy show. And for more exciting conversations, and well, a lot of this kind of goes together by the way, so I hope you’re listening to us over on the house … Excuse me, on the Land Academy Show, and that’s Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Tomorrow, the episode on the Land Academy Show is called, How to Pull a Title Report in TitlePro247. You are not alone in your real estate ambition.
You know these dogs behind us?
I’m listening.
I hope this is getting picked up on the mic and on the camera. I don’t know why it’s so funny for me, it’s just such a source of humor when these dogs along the strand here just get into it with each other.
I do think it’s kind of funny. Usually it’s the little ones picking on the big ones.
As long as they don’t get hurt, which doesn’t seem like they ever do, but they just go nuts, and it doesn’t seem like it’s a specific-
Breed?
It’s not every single dog, yeah.
A lot of them are good.
Can anybody, can you shed any light on that? Because I don’t know.
When I was a dog, that was two lifetimes ago …
You just had a bunch of dogs. I never have, so I don’t know.
[inaudible 00:15:52] Led to believe I really know the inside mentality of a dog. Thanks.
We’ll put it in the calendar and talk about it tomorrow.
Yeah, I guess we will. The House Academy Show remains commercial free for you, our loyal listener. Wherever you’re watching or wherever you’re listening, please subscribe and rate us there. We are Steve and Jill.
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