Quick Tip Thursday! Controlling the Chaos
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a podcast for women who want to unlock the clarity needed to put your big girl panties on and rock your real estate career like the true boss you are. I'm Joanne Bolt, your host, and together we'll dive into the things your broker doesn't teach you in order to own your own truth, disown the things getting in your way to finding your place, and stop apologizing for the obstacles you have to overcome along the way.

Welcome to the very last Quick Tip Thursday of 2021. You guys, I cannot believe that the year is almost over and we are going to be celebrating ringing in the new year very, very soon.

So I thought that today's quick tip would be a great time to connect with all of the moms out there who, like me, work from home in real estate and have kids at home. Because quite frankly, no matter how great we get at establishing our time blocks and our patterns for work, guess what?

When the kids are at home, chaos ensues. I mean, we can't help it. We go about every single week. We know kind of how we structure our days, what we do during those days. But all of a sudden, the little munchkins are home from school and they're looking at you wanting to play, wanting to have friends over. They have expectations of you as parents that quite honestly don't always work well with your work schedule.

So let's talk about five tips for establishing a way to control the chaos such that no matter if it's a week when they're in school or preschool or camp, you can do your work or you can keep the same pattern of work even when they are home for the holidays or

or the almighty summer, which is multiple weeks in a row of them pulling their hair out from boredom. The number one thing that I will tell all you boss mamas out there to do is learn to cluster your activities.

I'm going to give you a second to write that one down because it's a good one. Take some notes. Cluster your activities. What this means is determine what in your business world you do often that are very similar.

For me, I podcast two to three times a week. I interview on other people's podcast. I also do a lot of Zoom masterminds with the girls of the Real Boss Women community and other things that involve me being recording with my microphone and my video monitor at my desk. I cluster as much of that as I can onto Wednesdays because I have found that on Wednesdays,

They tend to be my least active for real estate. Fridays are for closings. Thursdays are for walkthroughs. Mondays, a lot of times we're catching up on contracts from writing stuff over the weekend.

So for me, I like Wednesdays because even if the kids have days off from school, a lot of times if they're having a long weekend, they're going to have Monday, Tuesday or Thursday, Friday off. But they only get Wednesdays off if it's a full week off of school, like spring break or fall break or, of course, the summertime.

So those times when I need to be at my desk and focus on what I'm doing and quite frankly, have some quiet time, I block all of that off for Wednesdays. And then I batch do as much as possible. If you show a lot of homes, you might want to take a look at what are your

You know, what activities can you cluster together? Home showings, inspections, closings. These are times when you need to be out the door and with your clients and maybe not have your little ones with you. The best thing you can do when you learn to cluster your activities is then hire a sitter or a mommy's helper.

Establish certain days that on your calendar, these are the days that work for you to do these activities and just keep that sitter always at your home. I know some of you just mentally groaned and thought, Joanne just told me that I really need a babysitter four hours a day, three times a week.

Regardless of if I have a closing, a showing or an inspection. Yeah, sister, you do. Because if you have that sitter at home and you establish the pattern that they will be there on those days, you are far more likely to then also get better at ensuring that you do schedule inspections, walkthroughs, closings or home showings during those times.

And if you don't have one of those to, you know, make happen when your sitter is there, you can always find other things to utilize your time with, but get in the habit of having that sitter there. Here's a bonus pro tip, by the way. If you have another realtor friend in the area who has kids slightly older than yours, like minor 11 and 13, they don't actually need a babysitter per se.

Utilize some, I don't know, child swapping almost. Have the

the other agents, older kids come one of those days a week, pay them a little bit less than you would maybe an adult sitter and just have them entertain your kids and play with them for three or four hours a day while you do some work. If they're not old enough to fully babysit, then you can't be leaving the house, but you could establish that day of the week where you're like, yeah, I'm going to do all my contract writing on this day. I'm going to catch up during emails during this hour of the day.

And when you have those sitters there and established, you can do that and get into a pattern. My second tip is time block for fun with your kids each week or at a certain time during the day. My kids know when they're off of school and I am working that there are certain times of the day that I will devote to them.

I will either shut down work at three o'clock so that we can go to the mall or go to the trampoline park or go to the tennis courts and hit some tennis balls. Whatever it is that they enjoy doing that I should devote some time with them. They know that when they're home at a certain time of the day, I'm going to give that time to them. I also time block each week for friends to come over.

I do not need a house full of tiny human beings running around with me also working. So we've established certain days of the week that are best to have friends come over and play. That way they know and can anticipate that this is going to be something that occurs in their life and they won't be asking me for it every single day during the summer, especially. And

And then I am not having to rearrange my work schedule in order to give them those play dates and that time with friends or whatever else it is that they're needing to do. Because we have already established that there's a certain day of the week that we do the big fun stuff, like going out of the house to do activities. There are certain days of the week that they can have friends over. And there are certain times of the day that we're going to sit down, play cards, and

Cook cookies, do whatever it is that they want to do that doesn't involve us actually leaving the home. Now, I will here again give you the pro tip. Know your days and that will help you establish your time block for fun. For instance...

In the real estate world, let's be honest, Fridays tend to be a big day for closing. So if I'm you, I would not plan that Fridays would actually be my get out of the house and do something big fun day because I might have a closing that would interrupt with say, going to the local amusement park or to the neighborhood pool. I might want to do those on Tuesdays when I have less activities that take me out of the house for real estate.

Number three tip for coordinating chaos, utilize the nap time. Oh my gosh. If you have little ones that are still taking naps, moms, nap time is not when you need to get your laundry done. I know you think it is. It is not.

Nap time is when you answer phone calls, you return phone calls, you make the phone calls. Why is it not email time, but rather phone call time? Because quite frankly, if your tiny humans are asleep, then they are not interrupting you calling out for you or otherwise. And that is what you need when you are on the phone, you need quiet so that your customer or client can actually hear you and understand you and you can focus on what they're saying.

If you've got slightly older kids, it may not be nap time, but you can establish quiet time. In our house, we have quiet time when mom's working every single day for an hour to an hour and a half.

During that time, my kids know, because we have already established rules, they cannot be playing video games. Why? Because my son's bedroom is right next to my home office. And when he plays video games and he has his headset on, he's super loud and he comes through the walls and it distracts me. So our quiet times, they can watch TV.

They can be on their devices, but not interacting with other kids playing games. They can be reading books. There are certain activities they're allowed to do that will keep them occupied and quiet and allow me to focus and get done what I need to get done so that then we can go back to tip number two, that fun time that we've time blocked. You can also establish, by the way, independent playtime.

Your toddlers need independent playtime. It is okay to put them in an area with activities like puzzles or blocks or things that they can't harm themselves with while you do things like answer emails. It gives them the opportunity to learn to independent play so that you do not have to be the entertainer at all times in their lives. This quite frankly develops a healthier kid too. All right, let's talk about tip number four.

Signal establishment. I know this one's going to sound kind of funky to some of you, but in all honesty, especially as your kids get older, this is going to become really, really critical. You need to establish signals to your family for times when they can interrupt you and times that they cannot.

In my home, if my office doors are closed, now mind you, my office doors have glass fronts and so I can see outside the door at all times. But the signal to my family is door closed, don't open. I'm on a Zoom. I'm recording a podcast. I am interviewing someone. I am doing something that does not need to have my brain focus interrupted and therefore please don't come in here. And of course, we all know as moms,

Our signals don't always work and you've got to be okay with that. The other day, my 11 year old literally stood outside my office door with poster post boards where she had taken marker and written things like, can I go to my friend's house to play? Because in her world, she wasn't interrupting me and yet it distracted me. So we're going to have to revisit this rule often in our home and what it actually means. But you can establish things like that.

You can, I've seen agents put signs on doors when they're on phone calls that say quiet, please, or open for conversation, or you can have hand signals. One of the things that we do in our house, if I'm on the phone or at my desk or doing anything,

And one of our children walks in our direction. If I take my hand and kind of flick at them, that means do not even come near me. Do not ask whatever you're going to ask unless you are bleeding, have a temperature, throwing up or otherwise, because whatever you're doing is going to distract me and I need to focus on what I'm doing. However, if I hold the one finger up and make the, you know, the sign for the number one, that means, hey, I'm going to

Give me a second to wrap up my thought process on whatever I'm doing right now, and then I can attend to your needs. But you got to stand in front of me and be quiet until I can do that. It does take some training of your family and some getting used to signals before they'll get the hang of it. And you may have to work with your spouse as well, because ladies, we all know that sometimes the men in our lives are just as guilty as the kids interrupting us.

All right. Final, final, final way that I can encourage you to control the chaos is know who you are as a person and understand when you do your best work and your most creative brain thoughts. That is how you structure your day. For instance, I am not a night owl. I like to go to bed. I'm

I'll admit you guys, I I'll go to bed at like nine 30, nine 45. Then that could be generous at times. It may even be before that. But I know that by about four o'clock in the afternoon, my brain has taken a mental shutdown and I don't need to be doing my heaviest creative activity at that time. That is not my zone of genius.

My zone of genius actually happens in the morning. And a lot of times it happens right after I get out of the shower because my brain's just kind of been going all morning. The coffee has kicked in. I am wide awake and ready to roll. So I structure my days and the fun times with the kids and the quiet times and all of the other things that we just discussed. I structure them around me needing to do most of my work in the morning because quite frankly, that is when I am at my best.

I know you can't always structure around showing homes with your buyers because a lot of times you have to be available when they are. I mean, they do have jobs and stuff too, but understanding your zone of genius and when you do your best work could mean that if you really do your best work in the morning, set your alarm and get up an hour earlier than your family does so that you can plow through your emails or, um,

look at doing your creative content for your social media strategy or preparing a contract or whatever it is you need to get done in order to then go show homes with your buyer. Because if your zone of genius is not in the afternoon and you're going to be showing homes to your buyers in the afternoon, then you don't need to come home from that and then try to catch up on work. You need to have already gotten it done earlier that morning. However, if

If you are a night owl and that is when you're at your best, then girlfriend, don't answer emails from me at 9am. Your brain isn't working properly. You probably do need to let it go until later in the day when you can answer those emails, respond to the voicemails, get the contracts counter offered, written up, whatever you need to do to make your business move one foot forward at a time. Do it in the afternoon, evening times.

because that's when you're at your best. Just understand that your counterpart agents who you may need to respond to stuff may not be working at eight o'clock at night or nine o'clock at night like you are and adjust accordingly for deadlines and expectations. That will make the world a better place for us agents. I am ready personally to stop being told that we have to lead generate every day from eight to 10 in the morning.

and fix everything according to this set schedule. No, for me, I do my best business when I just control the chaos around me. I work from home. My husband works from home. My kids are home when they're not in school and keeping a very steady schedule just isn't always possible. So I'm going to go ahead and assume it's not always possible for you either.

I hope that these tips help you learn to control your chaos so that your business can bloom in 2022.

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