How to Outsource Your Real Estate Business

Can the 4 hour work week be real for busy REALTORS®?

That’s the question I had after reading the Timothy Ferriss book entitled: The 4 hour work week

His book is among my top 10 books of all time due to it’s impact on my business life and ultimately my personal life… because it showed me the ultimate leverage – technology & people working as a group for a small business.

The notion of only working 4 hours week isn’t real for 99% of agents, but I can show you how to save 10-20 hours a week.

More Time = More Money

It’s real. I started with outsourcing admin & marketing tasks that I was doing but really didn’t need to be doing. As a test I started with small projects on a pay-as-you-go basis.

For example a “listing marketing kit”. When we listed a new property I was the one who made all the marketing materials, so I thought what if I out sourced just this part. That would be a good start.

So I posted a project on Odesk (now called Upwork) and asked for a designer to make me a marketing template for my future listings. It included feature sheets, social media images, posters, classified ads, video marketing & a blog post. I paid a flat fee to have it created.

Once the branding and style matched my direction I had it saved as a template. Going forward when we were about to list a new property I’d simply email the designer the MLS description & images. 12 hours later I’d have it all done and sitting in my inbox!

The set up cost ($50-$100 range) and going forward it was a flat fee ($10-$30 range). We would just pay as needed… we didn’t hire full time or part time.

After that I started hiring part time help that specialized on one thing: bloggers, SEO, database marketing, farming, etc.

I never hired someone to do things I didn’t myself understand. My view was… any help I get should be to relieve the daily tasks I’m personally doing. I need to free that up. Not create future work for systems not yet created.

Outsourcing can be a scale-as-you-go, safe & rewarding experience. In the webinar I do with Kelley Skar I’ll be showing how I find my talent and the tools I use to work virtually as a team or with virtual assistants.

See a list of tools I use with virtual assistants.