In today’s video and blog post, I want to talk to you about perhaps the most important thing I could ever talk to you about. And that’s how to improve your time management skills.
Now, this is not a new idea but what I have found is that as recently as today is that most people are frustrated and most people are challenged with the idea on even the concept of time management. So it’s important to note that your time is the only gift that you have that you can create a life out of and that would include a business. The time that we have is the time that we have, we are not going to get any more of it, and we don’t know when it’s going to be over.
All we know is that the day starts and the day ends, and then the 24 hour clock resets. And what can we do to be more productive? That’s the big question.
Why Time Management is Critical to Success
Now, the reason I’m coming at this is becauseI’ve watched it. I’ve watched marriages get wrecked because of time management not being understood. I’ve watched people work harder and longer to the point of exhaustion and stress when they don’t really have to. I’ve watched people wait 20 years to get done what they could have done in two, three or four years if they really understood this. I have a lot of people that come to our coaching company to be coached because something is not working in the area of time. It’s that straightforward.
And so the reason why I want to do this is because I want to talk about how do you marry up the idea that you can’t even really manage time, because time’s a constant and manages to change or manage the outcome of something. You can never change a minute and get five, or manage an hour and get two. You just can’t do it. So the only thing you can control is the decisions you make with the time that you have. And so to me, it’s like, I want to go to the marketplace and I want you to hear me real quick, real fast right now at the front end of this, and then I want to give you three ideas on what you can do.
How to Truly Turn Time into Money
We had 1,300 mortgage professionals on a webinar just last Wednesday. And during that webinar, I launched three polls. Poll number one was entitled, The revenue poll. I asked, “How much revenue would you realistically like to add in the next 12 months?” The number one response, one out of two people on the webinar said $120,000. So the question would be, and they go higher from there. But just in that one, one out of two. The question would be, what would you do with an extra $10,000 a month? Okay. That’s poll number one, question one.
Poll one question two. How much more would you like to make per hour? The largest response was adding $250 an hour. This is going to become very important when you understand what I’m going to do in this video, $250 an hour. So those are the two questions in the first poll.
The second poll is the perfect week. How many hours per week would you like to work? The largest response, 47% was 30 hours. That’s a good… I like that. What do we need to do to get a work week to 30 hours?
The second question of that poll. How many days per week would you like to work? The number one answer to how many days per week, 56% of the respondents said four. So for me, the perfect week would be four days. Third in that poll was, how many more loans per week do you need to hit this goal? And 43% said five, so that’s 60 loans a year.
Poll number three was the lifestyle poll. Question one. How many more weeks of vacation would you like to take per year? 51% said four. Awesome. Question two. How many more hours would you like to spend with your family every day? How many more hours would you like to spend with your family every day? The biggest response, 30% said four.
So the reason I share these with you so far is because it’s like data and you’re falling into these categories. And then here’s the final one. 41% to the question, within how many years would you like to have the option to retire? The number one answer was within 10.
So I’m setting this up with you because this is what people are saying and our plus and minus polling data is just like CNN’s or USA Today. We’ve got enough people responding to these poll questions to tell you this is what the industry’s thinking.
So the three things that I would do to start to correct this, number one is I would measure my hourly rate. I would get very clear, very quickly on year to date, month to date paycheck to date, how much am I averaging per hour? Because here’s the drill, and I need you to hear this. I really do. I’m just going to slow down for a sec because this is what is going to buy your life back. This is what is going to buy your time back, this decision right here, the first question changes everything, everything.
And so if I go back to that first poll and we talk about the $250 increase per hour, I want you to think that if that represents a tripling or a quadrupling of what you’re already making, then you could understand how if it was four X what you’re making, you could actually work less time, refocus attention to the money making activities, and then do in 10 years what people take 40 years to do without recognizing this thing.
Time Management is Important in Your Personal Life as Well
I’ve consulted three guys and two women in the last week whose marriages are in trouble. And I’m telling you right now, it’s not because they don’t love each other. It’s because of the pattern of abuse of time. Its promises made and not kept, it’s events scheduled and not honored. It’s promises that I’m going to change and no change.
And I’m just going to read you a couple of things real quick here because I want you to understand this is where my heart is. I spent an hour and a half two weeks ago with a top producer and his marriage was in trouble. And so I sent him a pretty long text after our meeting and a model on how to heal. And then this past Monday, I hadn’t heard from him yet. And I said, “You went silent on me. Is everything okay?” And he goes, “My apologies. My wife and I are 10 X better. I laid out what my best life looked like with her and what I really wanted, and got her to do the same with me and what she really wanted. We are clicking on all cylinders all of a sudden.”
You look at that and you go, so this is somebody who starts to realize that we have got to get our dance together. We’ve got to get our dance together. And I have said forever that it does not matter how many hours you work. It matters what you earn in those hours. At the end of the day in the world in which you and I live, that we are straight commission people, that’s what matters. So let me go back to the polling question because I asked somebody, let me just give you the date real quick so that we can be spot on here.
How to Accurately Calculate Your Hourly Rate
So this initial text was on, let me just tell you right now because I don’t want to date the video. It was one week ago. And so I said to this guy, I said, “Hey man, I’m doing something cool today. What was your hourly rate? What is your hourly rate year to date?” And he goes, “Hey man, dropping the kids off at preschool. I’ll calculate that for you as soon as I’m back. If that works, probably 30 minutes.” And I said, “No problem at all.” So then about an hour later I get this number, $405.28 an hour. And then he said, “Just to remind you, when I began understanding the value of time I was only earning $12 an hour.”
So I think if you do the math real quick and you take $12 an hour and you times it by 2,080 hours, I think it’s like 25 grand a year. But if you take the same hours just for a direct comparison and you take 2,080 hours and you times it by $405 an hour, you’re now at over $800,000 in income. So the first thing you have to do is you have to measure the hourly rate and then you have to make sure that you’re executing income producing strategies.
What’s the second thing you should do? By 10 o’clock in the morning you should do all of your prospecting and make all of your qualification calls and talk to every borrower you need to talk to, and every referral partner you need to talk to. By 10:00 AM, you should make your money for the day. I’m not saying stop making money at 10. But what I know is if you put making the money first and you put the blinders on the code of silence, you get ready and make the calls, and move people down the field a little bit, your conversion rate is going to be consistent. You’re going to go home happy. You’re going to do the most important things first before they get pushed aside and procrastinated on. And that becomes the revenue generating opportunity of the day.
There’s only three things a mortgage professional should be doing if he or she is in charge of originating loans and making it rain. Number one is talking with referral partners that can refer the buyers you need to talk to, that’s number one. Number two, having the bulk of your day around borrower consultations where you can do the High Trust Interview. You can find out what people are looking for and you can convert at a higher level. The third thing you should do is make sure your operational efficacy is off the grid, that the customer experience is off the chart. You should meet with your team in the morning, meet with your team in the afternoon. Those are the things you should be doing.
And if you do that and you do that consistently, the more time you do that per day, the more business you will get. So if I talk to four borrowers and convert one, I get a deal. If it’s worth 3,500 bucks, and I do that in an hour, I’m 3,500 bucks an hour, but if I don’t generate any revenue for the next seven hours, then the 3,500 gets divided by the eight hours and the revenue per hour goes down. So the more you do the things that generate the highest revenue in the time you have the better off you’re going to be. That’s the second thing.
The third thing is to begin to look at the attitudes of your business that aren’t getting addressed. One of them happens to be the nurturing of your database and what I want to talk to you about time efficiency on your database, and we’ve got a bunch of other videos on that, is the more that you work your database, the more your database works for you. And the reason why this is important is the highest conversion referrals you’ll ever get are the referrals coming in from buyers that have used do previously. The lowest conversion is talking to a buyer that you get a lead gen, a lead on and you call them without any previous knowledge of who they are, not any direct referral to them.
How to Increase Your Hourly Rate
If I’m working with a financial planner and the financial planner tells the client to call Todd, he’s the guy I use for all my clients for mortgages. He’s going to do the best job for you, give you the best advice and recommend a mortgage plan that we can manage together. That referral is going to convert at a much higher level. So when you take conversion up, you work less hours. Like if I have four borrowers and I convert one that’s great, half hour each, that may take two hours.
Well, what if I want to double my loans per day? Well, I can either talk to eight people, add four that takes now four hours and leave the conversion at 25%. But I still get two loans or I could keep the four during the two hours, instead of going to four hours, I could take the four, 30 minutes each at two hours and convert at 50. So now I get two loans for the same four hours instead of adding four more hours to get two more. See what I’m doing?
And so what would happen if you got to a point where three out of four at some level apply and close 90% of the time? You’re now four hours but you’re getting three loans. At $3,500 each, you’re making $14,000. And so $14,000 if you divide it by four hours, that’s pretty good hourly revenue. So $3,500 an hour, that’s pretty cool. If we don’t make any more money for the rest of the day, we’re at $1,750 an hour for the whole day. That’s a good hourly rate. This guy’s only at $405.
So do this, okay. I want you to become vigilant. I want you to start looking at where your time is going. We know right now that only 2% of loan officers do a monthly time journal to find out where their hours are going. If you don’t do the time journal you’re not going to figure out where you’re spending time, that you aren’t generating top line revenue that maximizes the hourly rate. It’s that straightforward. It’s that simple.
Free Guides to Help You Win
Let us help you win. If you want to download some of the documents on how to get conversion up faster, they’re there. One is called the High Trust Interview Guide, and one is called, TALK Less, SELL More. We’re here to serve you. My social handle is ToddDuncanOfficial. Reach me anywhere on any social platform with that, except for Twitter which is toddstweets.
I’m here to help. I’m here to help you win. I hope this video is the game changer for you.
Want More Personal Help?
If you like these concepts, but want it to be fine tuned to your wants, needs, and desires, I highly recommend joining our coaching program. Talk about turning your time into money, our coaching members are able to increase their hourly rate like crazy.
Book a Free Coaching Consultation with us to see if coaching is right for you.
We look forward to helping you turn your most precious resource (time) into even more revenue. See you soon!
