Do you run a business or is your business running you?

Real estate agents, they get so transactional, right? And that's not necessarily to say that they are generating one transaction and simply moving on to the next one. They are also cultivating relationships, but more transactional from a sense of they have to be present through the entire process. Sometimes they can leverage that out to transaction coordinators, business administrators, whatever the case may be.

Business Infrastructure

Creating business infrastructure allows Real Estate Agents to analyze opportunity costs. It allows them to analyze finances. When you look at opportunity costs specifically, you can say, okay, it takes me this time in this activity and it generates me X in revenue. And then you can compare that to a different activity that generates a different level of income. And then you can decide where you're spending most of your time. You can't do that unless you have business infrastructure.

So profit and loss management, budget forecasting, do you have technology solutions that you're capturing this information? The data, when using the data, it tells a story. And we use that story to create efficiencies within business.

So that's why business infrastructure as a whole is so important. Because a lot of the times what real estate agents do is they run around, they're at this showing, they're at this home inspection, they're at this appraisal, then they go to this settlement, and they're so in the weeds of the transaction that taking a step back, getting a 50,000 foot view of their business, of where they want to go. Is it attached to why they're doing it? And is that in alignment with where they're trying to go? And if that's not the case - it's going to create burnout.

So the business infrastructure allows you to take a subjective look at your business and say, am I actually doing what I'm supposed to be doing to achieve my goals?

Strategic Growth Management

I think it goes back to that transactional standpoint. If you have to stay in your business for it to function, are you really creating a business? Like, what is your legacy there? Because if you remove yourself, your business stops running, right? So top producing real estate agents, they produce on what? They produce on their name, they produce on their reputation. It's all about them and what they do in the market. If they remove themselves from that, what happens to their business? It all goes away.

So having sound business infrastructure allows the data to tell you a story, to create efficiencies so that you can then generate passive income, remove yourself from the situation, or remove yourself from your business, and it still be as effective, if not more effective, than with you in that seat.

Because what's the goal? Is it leveraged time? Leveraged time for what? More time with your family? Or is it you want to go do a mission trip in Africa? Or is it you want to be at your beach house? Or is it the kids lacrosse game. Like, what is it? So if you don't have the infrastructure to capture the data to tell you the story, you're just going to run a transactional business.

Time and Money Allocation

We all say that we don't have enough time. Well, is it that you're just not aware of where you're spending your time? Is it that you are not effectively time blocking? Is it that your opportunity cost hasn't been looked at? Are you spending too much time in activity that doesn't generate revenue? And if you don't have the mechanism to capture that, then you don't know. You also have to put a time money analysis on it, right? So my time is worth how much? And then if I'm spending this much of my time in a particular activity that's not generating me revenue, are we looking at that as an opportunity loss or are we simply saying I don't have enough time? Profit and loss, right? Do you even know it like, even though profit and loss is a lag indicator, do you know your percentage of profit? And if you don't, then how do you know you're being successful? When you file your taxes? What insights are you getting on a consistent basis to tell you whether you're being successful in your business or not?

If you don't have profit and loss statements, you should probably push pause on absolutely everything that you're doing and put in the mechanisms to track it. Atlas provides the system and processes and accountability to put all of those things in.

What to dig deeper? Let's connect!

Matthew Brown
Director of Operations
REALTOR®️
Atlas Premier Realty
[email protected]
443-562-3220
Owner of MB Business Consulting
Former Treasurer Maryland Addiction and Behavioral-health Professionals Certification Board
Former Practice Advisory Governance Member for the City of Baltimore
Former Advisory Board Member: Mechatronics Technology of AACC