From my 14-year-old daughter, the very girl that brought you “Louis Vuitton and the French Revolution”, and the (unpublished) account of a local police chase which, according to Emily, resulted in the bad guy “varnishing a weapon”, we have her weather report: A chance of participation. We call her our little American Idiom.
So I am here with my New Year’s resolution: Participation. Ardell warned me, in response to my coming-out acceptance speech when asked to join the Bloodhound gang:
Welcome to “the juggling act”! Let’s see…my blog, their blog, my blog, their blog eenie meenie minie mo…
Oh, youthful exuberance! It has become clear that time management is becoming critical. Unlike Greg, I am not a Broker-Owner, just a Broker Associate. Unlike Russell, I don’t have a multi-level office support structure in place; my organizational chart includes Steve and myself. Unlike all of the other contributors (Cathleen excepted), I don’t have a wife. I am the CEO, COO, CFO, IT and Marketing and Business Development and Human Resources Departments, the wife, the mother, the orderer of the take out dinners, and the cleaner of the litter box. So Ardell’s prophetic juggling act has me, at present, precariously poised on a high wire without a net below.
Despite this, I, like Dan, am committed to more frequent posting of substance (the “of substance” part being the operative) and more consistent and meaningful commentary. Somehow, amidst all of this madness, Steve and I will continue to represent clients in 40 to 50 transactions a year – Pathetically modest by Russell’s standards, but as Greg would say, a respectable amount of Ramen.
Along those lines, I endeavor to accomplish the following in 2007:
- Bring more structure to my work day. Being a notes-on-the-back-of-a-cocktail-napkin kind of girl, I have hit the glass ceiling of efficiency with this approach. I need to set times to work, times to play and times to blog. And I need to set some boundaries.
- Produce those podcasts rattling around in my head. I vow to have a how-to library completed by year’s end for consumers, available on-line and on disk for potential clients. I am ever hopeful that James Earl Jones is available for voice-overs.
- Be more attentive to past client follow-up and be more attentive to friends. In many cases, these are one and the same. I often say that real estate agents make crummy friends. Non-conventional work hours and work weeks, not to mention the on-call nature of the business, often result in canceled social engagements and suffering relationships.
- Get back to running. On a personal note, competing demands have swallowed up my “me time” (the 7:00 AM 5-mile runs), which are not only important to me physically but mentally.
I, for one, am looking forward to the frenzy that will be known as 2007. I predict Bloodhound Blog will continue to morph into the on-line authority for real estate analysis and dialogue, while I just might be able to return my own little blog to its roots of delivering statistics and observations of local interest. I can’t wait for the ride.
It seems that everyone surrounding me meets this “competing demands” challenge head on, with grace and ease, and without breaking a sweat. If there is anyone out there like myself who is pulling it off with smoke and mirrors, I would love to hear about it. And, if you have happened upon the answer to the having it all dilemma, please do tell!
Blue skies ahead, and Happy New Year!
Russell Shaw says:
Truth is I was very proud of my stats when I hit the level you are now at – and you have already achieved the status of being in the Top 1% of all agents in the United States. (this would be true on units and volume). Also, based on your price range – I’m thinking quite a LOT of Ramen, as you would have a volume of about 25,000,000 a year.
50 deals a year is about where a great agent without “hired help” will max out.
The next step – if you want to take it – is to get rid of $15 an hour work. Jeff had a wonderful post on this subject https://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=768 that anyone wanting to go to the “next level” may want to review again.
The fact is that your time – right now – is worth about $250 an hour. This is for both of you and could be divided by two, and you still get $125 an hour each. So every time you do anything that someone making $15 an hour could have done for you, you wasted a minimum of $110. Just gone, spent on nothing. Assistants do NOT “cost money”. They make money for you.
Not to mention “little” details like not living like a pop tart because “someone just now called”. After all – what could be more important than blue skies and writing for a blog!
January 2, 2007 — 1:18 am
Kris Berg says:
Thanks, Russell, for the nudge. Steve will be the first to tell you I am more than a little control-freakish. I have some difficulty delegating, and therefore am my own worst enemy. Add that to my list of resolutions. Regarding volume, in our market it equates to more like $35 million.
Love the “pop tart” analogy.
January 2, 2007 — 7:51 am
Cathleen Collins says:
Along the same lines as Russell’s recommendation… hire yourself a “wife.” Like you, I know no one can do things as well as I could (if only I had time). And I’m unwilling to give up on having an orderly home just because I don’t have time to keep it in order. So use those cleaning services you’ve built relationships with, helping your sellers clean before the grand opening Open House and giving your buyer’s a fresh start after the sellers move along, to clean your own home/office, too.
As for the litter box… our nine cats share seven! Those plus the back yard “facilities” for four productive dogs and the front yard desert-landscaped-litter box for our feral colony put me on doody-duty about an hour each day. Most days, though, I hire this out to neighborhood children, helpers I’ve found on Craigs List or pet sitting services. I’ll keep one or two days of duty a week just to make sure everything is done to my standards… I’ve learned the hard way that cats won’t use litter boxes that aren’t kept clean to the cats’ satisfaction, and cats’ standards are usually higher than teenagers’.
Still, you and Ardell amaze me with how much you’re able to juggle. Like you, I’ve resolved to manage my time better, and I know that to do so I’ll be relying on systems as Russell recommends. Best of luck to you!
January 2, 2007 — 11:48 am
Steve Berg says:
For the record, my title acronym in the Kris and Steve Executive Organizational Chart is Senior PP (Potted Plant). In case anyone wondered what I do…
January 3, 2007 — 8:20 am
Kevin Boer says:
Throw in electronic signatures and you’ll save 5 hours per transaction, minimum. At your level of production that equates to 250 hours per year, or about 4 weeks of work for one of you. Better yet, train your soon-to-be-hired assistant how to use electronic signature and you’ll save another 2 hours per transaction. It all adds up.
January 5, 2007 — 12:50 am