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3 Time Leadership Tips for Real Estate Investors

A Follow Up Exercise to Goal Setting for Real Estate Investors – A Class Offered By Lifestyles Unlimited®

    by: Lynn Murrow,
    Executive Vice President,
    Lifestyles Unlimited, Inc.®

    We constantly hear tips to improve our “Time Management” skills. Today, I want to suggest that you reframe the problem altogether and think about developing “Time Leadership” in your life. 

    Management consists of controlling people and things to accomplish a goal. Leadership refers to your ability to influence, motivate, and enable others to contribute to your goal attainment. Influence and inspiration separate leaders from managers.
    You can apply this Time Leadership concept to yourself as well as your family, your work and your real estate investment team. For 35 years I have studied leadership, and I believe that adopting a Time Leadership approach will help you successfully accomplish goals that have been unattainable in the past. Your mindset is a powerful tool that can work for or against you.
    Here are 3 quick Time Leadership Tips to help you change your life for the better this year:
    1. Focus yourself and those around you on your most important goals.
    Achieving your goals is not isolated to your personal efforts. You will need the input, effort and support of others to succeed. In order to inspire those around you to spend part of their valuable time working toward YOUR goals, you will need to be focused and able to quickly articulate WHY your goal is worth THEIR effort as well as your own.
    What is your BIG Dream? WHY do you want it? Define this in detail and you can create a short “elevator speech” that will inspire you, and those around you, to consistently work in support of YOUR goal. When you transform your BIG Dream into a goal, and then break that goal down into a series of smaller steps you create a roadmap. Now you have the focus you need to determine:
  • What you need to learn to reach your goal, and who can teach you.
  • What resources you need to reach your goal, and who can provide them.
  • What actions you need to take to reach your goal, and who can help you get it done.
    When you are focused on a well-articulated goal, and others see you constantly taking action toward it, you will inspire them to help you succeed.
    2. Create progress not activity.
    Each day begins with many “to do” items. Start each day by reviewing your BIG Dream, your WHY, and the roadmap you have created to break your BIG Dream down into a goal and a series of steps to get there. Now, take your “to-do” list and ask how each item on the list moves you forward along this route. Some of these items will be necessary to maintain your daily life (grocery shopping, laundry, outings with your family); others, will be necessary to maintain the income you need to fund your journey to your BIG Dream (your work, your real estate investments); but there are items on your “to-do” list that need to be crossed off or delegated to others so you have the time and energy to focus on your BIG Dream today.
    Making a BIG Dream a reality requires you to take at least one step forward each day. Whether this step is something you need to do yourself, or it is something you will inspire someone else to do for you or with you, making it happen MUST be your top priority today.
    3. Live in the moment and learn to say no.
    To achieve and remain in a winning mindset you must leave the past behind. Live in the moment, not the past or the future. It is the actions you take right now that will ultimately determine your success or failure. You can’t change the past, and the future is largely unknown. Living in the moment provides the freedom to change, to become the person we need to BE to obtain the life we desire.
    Reliving your failures or allowing negative self-talk, will prevent you from making your BIG Dream a reality. Commit to the mindfulness necessary to catch these negative thought patterns as they occur, and intentionally replace them with something that will inspire you to succeed. Recite, out loud if possible:
  • the details of your BIG Dream;
  • your WHY for persevering until you succeed; and
  • the details of your roadmap, focusing on today’s steps toward your goals.

It may sound silly, but this approach to controlling and improving your mindset is probably the biggest component of your success. If you are not comfortable reciting these positive thoughts out loud, then repeat them in your mind until you break the negative self-talk cycle. Soon you will find you experience much less negative self-talk, and your mind begins to focus on seeing opportunities instead of obstacles.

    Saying “no” is a companion skill to controlling negative self-talk. Each day we are presented with numerous requests and demands on our time and energy. Saying “no” to those things that are not critical to maintaining your daily life, maintaining the income you need to fund your journey, or progressing you along your roadmap to your Big Dream, will give you the time and energy you need to make progress toward your goals each and every day.

In order to create the lifestyles you desire you must learn Time Leadership, and apply it to every area of your life. You cannot accomplish the journey alone. You must inspire and motivate others to help you along your road map to your BIG Dream.