Fall Back in Love With Real Estate

Feeling disconnected from your real estate business? Like the spark is gone, and you're stuck in a loveless relationship? This episode is here to help you reignite the passion and joy you once had for your career. It’s time to reconnect with what you love most about your work!

In this episode, we’ll cover:

• 💌 The 90-Minute Business Audit: A step-by-step process to evaluate everything in your business and rediscover what you love.
• 🎯 The Three Zones: How to categorize your tasks and relationships into what brings joy, what drains energy, and what’s worth keeping or cutting.
• 🛠 Streamlining & Delegating: Tips to eliminate, automate, or outsource the work that doesn’t light you up.
• ✨ CEO Dates: The weekly habit that keeps your business aligned with your goals and values.
• 🛑 Setting Boundaries: Why saying “no” is the ultimate act of self-care for your business—and how to stick to it.
• ❤️ Recommitting to Joy: How to create a long-term plan to love your business and avoid burnout.

If your business feels like a grind right now, you’re not alone—but you can fall back in love with it. Grab your favorite drink, a cozy spot, and let’s dive in.

Don’t forget to subscribe and share this episode with a fellow agent who needs a little love in their business!

Let's stay connected!

💼 Coaching with Lindsay – Get personalized strategy, support, and mindset shifts to scale your real estate business without sacrificing your joy.

🎓 Happy Agent Academy – Your go-to resource for freebies, on-demand courses, templates, and tools to help you grow a thriving real estate business.

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📲 Let's Connect on Instagram or Facebook – Daily tips, inspiration, and behind-the-scenes of what it really takes to create success with joy.

Chapters

• 0:00 Rekindling Passion for Your Business
• 15:21 Rediscovering Love for Your Business

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:34

Happy Valentine's Day week. I know I know not everyone is a huge fan of Valentine's Day, but it really is one of my favorite holidays, because who doesn't like expressing love to the people who mean a lot to them? Now I'm not sure how you're feeling about your business, because that kind of is an entity that we need to love, and today we're going to dive into falling back in love with your real estate business. I have a 90-minute business audit that I love to lead people through, and this is going to give you a fresh perspective on your business and hopefully help you fall back in love. So, if you have been feeling disconnected from your real estate business, like you're stuck in a grind or you're just what am I doing? Like, did I sign up for this? This episode is for you. So let's clear out those distractions. Let's reconnect with the parts of the business that bring you joy and success, and success is money and happiness here, people. So why is Valentine's Day the perfect time for a business audit? Love is in the air and I think sometimes you need to take a step back, reflect and refocus and reignite the passion, like remember when we first got into the business and we were so passionate about it. That's what I want you to feel like, and I am all about life-first business planning around here, and that means making space for what you love, and that means both inside and outside of your business. If this is your first time listening, I am Lindsay Dreyer, a real estate coach. I own a real estate brokerage in the Washington DC area and I am a busy mom of three. I love helping real estate agents build businesses that support their lives so they can make a bigger impact in the world. I do that through one-on-one coaching, online courses and retreat. So now that we have that out of the way, let's dive in to falling back in love with your real estate business.

Speaker 1: 2:46

First things first, we need to set the mood for this audit. I know, I know I get it. You are a busy person, you have a life, you have a business, but this is a really fun and can be a relaxing way to cozy up, get your favorite drink, turn on your favorite playlist, and you need 60 to 90 minutes uninterrupted to reflect on your business. This is not some like in-depth, crazy planning day. This is a happy business audit. Now what do you need? You are going to need your calendar, your to-do list, a list of all the tasks that you complete. I highly recommend having sticky notes. So get those post-its, because they are going to come in handy and you are going to be doing a big old brain dump and reorganization. So that is it. Set the mood, get a nice location, nice big table, get those post-its, get your tea and coffee, whatever you need to sit in, tuck in and spend 60 to 90 minutes with you and your business. Okay, you are ready to dive into this audit.

Speaker 1: 4:01

We are going to list all of the ways that you have been spending your time and energy in your business. I like to think of them in categories, so it could be your marketing, your administrative. I also want you to figure out what clients you have had in the past year or two. We are writing down everything in your business. So this is everything you do, all the people you spend time with, all of the vendors literally everyone. They are all on the table and they are all getting evaluated today. I want you to think of this as your just totally unfiltered, judgment-free brain dump, and the reason we're doing this is because we want to get a full picture of your business. We want everything out there. So then we can move on to the next step, and the next step is analyzing all of these things.

Speaker 1: 5:06

So we are going to rate every single one of these things, every single one of these sticky notes, on a scale of one to ten. One is it does not contribute anything to your life you actually hate it or them if it's a person. And ten is oh man, this. I totally enjoy this. This is absolute joy for me. I love this so much. I could do this all day long and I would never get tired of it. So you go ahead and rank all of these sticky notes from 1 to 10. Then we are going to divide these sticky notes into a few categories. Now we are going to have 7 and above, so we are going to segment those into your 7 and above category. Then we are going to have five to seven and then anything below five. Now these are our three zones, so anything below five is your unenjoyment zone.

Speaker 1: 6:07

These are things that you do not need to be doing in your business. If you can help it, this often is unnecessary busy work. It could be tasks you've outgrown because you're just operating at a higher level in your business. These are the things that steal your time. They steal your energy and your love for your business. So, if you can, you can either delegate them to somebody else, you can find ways to make them more enjoyable, or you just stop doing them altogether. And I think that sometimes we don't give ourselves permission to stop doing things or really take a look at things that maybe we just really don't need to do anymore. So this is our way to get really in nitty gritty about our unenjoyment tasks. This is our unenjoyment zone.

Speaker 1: 6:58

Let's talk about our seven and higher. This is your zone of enjoyment. This is where we are going to fall back in love with our business. So the more time we can spend with our seven and higher tasks people, vendors that is going to result in a more enjoyable real estate business. So finding ways to really spend the most time in your zone of enjoyment is going to really help you. Now, the five to seven category that one can kind of be what are you feeling? You could either move down into the enjoyment zone, you can move it up into the enjoyment zone, but we're really looking at ways to try to clear out the five to seven, because that can oftentimes be those just like every day. It's just a drag, and so those ones can either stay or go, but we're really trying to either get them out of your life or we're trying to make them more enjoyable. So when you're able to focus on your seven plus category in terms of enjoyment, these this is like going on a date night with your business every night. This is what is going to keep the romance alive. So I really really want you to try to find a way to lean into these activities and these people and these members.

Speaker 1: 8:19

Let's talk a little bit about streamlining and delegating to make more space for loving your business. So I am a big fan of eliminating what's draining that relationship, and this really is what can you stop doing altogether? And again, we can either stop it or we can outsource it. But whenever you are saying no to something that is low enjoyment, you are saying yes to what you actually really love and what you actually enjoy. So, delegating the tedious stuff, if it has to stay in your business, that is your opportunity to outsource your tasks.

Speaker 1: 8:57

There are so many different ways to outsource in real estate. I love that so much and we have very outsourceable things to do, so marketing is very outsourceable Anything admin, transaction coordinators, virtual assistants. Even technology can automate your follow-ups or your processes. So really that can free you up to focus on the parts of your business that bring you happiness and joy. The other thing is task switching can be such a hard and energy suck for real estate agents. So if you can group similar tasks together so you're not constantly switching gears, it can be so helpful. So, for example, if you have three listings coming live having one day be just photo day or marketing day that means you can bang out the MLS listing, the brochure, your social media posts, whatever you are doing, and if you're not outsourcing those, you could just F1. But if you are doing that yourself, grouping similar tasks together can be so time-saving and it also means that that saves your energy and your time for other important parts of your life or business. So batching can be a really powerful tool to help streamline your business.

Speaker 1: 10:21

All right, so we have ranked everything from one to 10. We have our three zones and hopefully you have started to figure out a potential plan for being able to spend more time in your enjoyment zone so we can fall back in love with our real estate business. Now that plan needs to be specific. So I want you to go ahead and start putting in some actionable items that you can commit to, either in the short term or the long term, to really work towards being able to operate in your zone of enjoyment. I like to hold myself accountable with a CEO date, so we are going to plan for some long-term love with our business here and we are going to create a weekly check-in. I love, love, love, love, love creating a weekly CEO date with myself because, just like any great relationship, your business needs regular attention too.

Speaker 1: 11:18

I say block out as much time as you can afford. So, whether that's 15 minutes an hour, two hours, whatever, you can commit to start small if you don't feel like something big is worthwhile or that you can do it. But it really helps to reflect on what's been working. How are you doing in terms of focusing on your zone of enjoyment? What's not working? Do you need to pivot? Do you need to bring in some outside help? It is just a really great way to get intentional about focusing on your business and making it enjoyable. The other thing is just recommitting to having an enjoyable real estate business. I think a lot of times we don't think that that's a metric that we should care about or that's a metric of success, but honestly, I think that's one of the biggest metrics of success is that you have a business that you love. So, remembering what you love most about your work and having that biggest, bigger purpose of why am I doing this every single day and we're really lucky, we actually make a really big difference in people's lives. So remembering that and just committing to oh, I actually am making a big difference and I'm actually enjoying what I'm doing.

Speaker 1: 12:32

I also think that setting boundaries is really important because it is very easy to let scope creep come back in. So if you have decided that you don't want to work with these types of particular clients or you're done working with buyers I'm only doing listings but then a buyer comes along and you feel bad saying no, that is when you are violating those boundaries that you have set. So once you have decided what your enjoyment zone is whether that's tasks, whether that's clients, whether that's vendors the key to that protecting that relationship with yourself is to have boundaries and say no. No is a complete sentence. That is my favorite thing ever and I think it's important to be able to say I'm not working with buyers right now, but I have someone on my team that is incredible and will take great care of you, and that is okay. If you have decided you're just working on listings, because that's what's going to afford you the life and business and enjoyment that you deserve. So there is your blanket permission to set boundaries to protect that loving relationship with your business, because if we don't protect that, that is when burnout creeps in. That is when our resentment of people and our business creeps in and it's a really, really shitty place to be. Yeah, I know we've all been there, but this is a really great way to get clear on what you enjoy, what you like doing and what you're not going to be doing. So, if you get anything from this audit, that's what I'm hoping that you get, which is this is what I'm going to be doing, this is what I'm not going to be doing, and I'm going to stick with it, because setting boundaries is crucial to having a real estate business that does not destroy your life or your health or your energy or really just everything.

Speaker 1: 14:38

So let's recap those steps we are going to set the mood for our audit, put it in our calendar. We're going to plan for it. Make sure you have all the materials. Then you are going to do your brain dump. We're going to plan for it. Make sure you have all the materials. Then you are going to do your brain dump. You're going to lift all your activities and then you are going to grade them on enjoyment from one to ten. Analyze the three zones the below five, the five to seven and the seven plus. Decide what's worth keeping, what's not. Maybe you need to rework something. Then you will streamline, delegate, set some goals, some action items, some ways that you're going to make your business more enjoyable, and then you're going to plan for long-term love, with some boundaries and a CEO date.

Speaker 1: 15:21

So I hope this Valentine's Day you give yourself the gift of clarity. Take 60 to 90 minutes this week to reconnect with your business, to discover what you love most about it. Real estate is one of the most flexible careers, so there is a way for you to love this business, I can guarantee it. If you found this episode helpful, I would love it if you'd share it with a fellow agent who maybe needs a little help falling back in love with their business. And please don't forget to subscribe. I hope you all have a very happy Valentine's Day and thank you for spending a little bit of time with me diving into love.