If you’re just starting to invest in real estate, you may be feeling overwhelmed with all the things you think you should be doing. Take a deep breath, relax, and let me share my experience with you as someone who has been there before and has helped others get started on the path to becoming a successful real estate investor.
With almost any business venture, there is always more to do than you can do in a single day, so you’ll need to learn to prioritize your tasks. Knowing how to prioritize comes from experience. Over time, you will see that certain things are more important than others. If you haven’t already learned about the 80/20 principle, also known as the Pareto Principle, I suggest you take 5-10 minutes to familiarize yourself with it. Basically, it states that a large part of your results, 80% of them, come from a small number of things you actually do, from only 20% of your work.
This tells us that focusing on the most important things will make the biggest difference. You should eliminate any time-consuming but unproductive tasks from your day because they have very little impact on your business. Avoid heavy lifting that consumes your time without improving your results.
Here are some guidelines based on what I have found to be the most important things to prioritize for real estate investors.
First, raise money and serve your existing customers. If you have a home that you need to fill with a tenant or sell to a buyer, rent to collect, or motivate sellers to call you back from the marketing you’ve posted, do that first.
The next most important thing to do is marketing to attract new business. In fact, I’m tempted to put this above my previous group of things to do because without marketing, businesses fail. It’s that important.
So what does marketing include? In my opinion, it’s finding more motivated sellers if you’re buying. If you are looking for tenants or selling, you are posting ads and logging out. If you need partners or private money, post ads and talk to people.
What’s left of your day’s time you can spend on the other 80%. Some of these things are important, but they won’t give you the greatest return on your investment of time. For example, learning and continuing your education is important, but let’s be honest, it won’t immediately make you money in your business that day. The other two things I mentioned: collecting money/serving customers and marketing.
So if you’re feeling some anxiety about all the things you think you should be doing for your real estate investing business, take 5 minutes. Write down all the things you could do and then prioritize them. I would put things that bring in money today at the top, and then marketing at second. I would focus on the most important thing at a time until it was done and then move on to the next thing. Look at the big picture and focus on the things that bring you tangible results.
