Confessions of a Recovering Control Freak

We are excited to announce our new Podcast- RView where we talk about life, travel, and real estate.

People always ask me, how do you sell so much real estate and still managed to travel all over the country constantly? Whenever I run into people they say “Oh my gosh, how are you? I’ve seen your Facebook. I see you’ve been traveling. That’s awesome”. And then I’ll also say, “Oh, my gosh, Did you sell that one house? That was so beautiful”. People are definitely following me on my Facebook and know that my husband and I enjoy our RV and all the places that we travel.

https://www.instagram.com/rviewpodcast/

It hasn’t always been like this in my life. I think that we get sort of a preception of people were looking at social media and they think, “Oh, my gosh, I want to have that life, it looks so great, they’re just so lucky to have that.” I wanted you to know that I have not always been this lucky if you want to call it Luck. When I started selling real estate and, worked my butt off 80 hours a week nights and weekends.

I’ve been in the business over 15 years. It took me that long to figure out and let go of being a control freak. So I’m just going to go ahead and admit it right now- I AM A RECOVERING CONTROL FREAK!

People always want to know, how did you get buyer’s agents? And how do you have an assistant? How do you do these things? I can’t give up that control? So there’s a few things, and it took me a while, and I’ve narrowed it down to some steps. I think the first thing, just like any 12 step program-

Admit-You are a control freak and that you need to get some balance in your life. Fortunately, now there’s so many good books and programs that you can read about balancing your life and work. Just letting go of your ego, is a big part of the first step. Admitting that you are a control freak and then recognizing what your weak spots are and letting go of your ego.

Baby Steps-My biggest weak spot to start with was accounting. I can’t stand to balance my check,keep a ledger of all my expenses and I can barely stand to keep all of my receipts. All of things that I need to do. So, the very first thing I did was hire an accountant and a bookkeeper that would go through my bank statements on do my accounting for me. So it’s small baby steps.

Delegating and Your First Hire-When I started out, it was just me. When I first entered of the business of real estate, I said,” I’m only going to work with buyers. I don’t ever want listing because I can control Buyers. If I know somebody wants to buy something, I can help them go find it.”

I was Rookie of the Year and it was a good year for me, but I was doing everything myself. After I had a full-time assistant for about three or four years it got to be, again, where I was working 80 hours a week nights and weekends. I was doing open houses every week, or prospecting, networking every chance I got. Then I hired a buyers agent, then another one, and so on.

With listings it’s about marketing and bringing the people there. A lot of times, you feel a little bit out of control with listings. And that was way outside my comfort zone as a control freak. So I’m happy to say that now I’m primarily listing agent. (statistically you can manage 12 listings to every 1 buyer they take the same amount of time)

The next small step, I hired an assistant part-time. This is back in the days before they even had GPS & Google maps on your phone. I’d say, OK, I’m going on a showing. I’m going to show these 10 houses. Could you please go on Google Maps, put all the addresses in and print me out a map. She would literally do those little tedious things.It grew to be a little bit more each step… Next send Thank you notes, now, let’s put him on a drip campaign and follow up. So, I kind of worked baby steps until she was working as a full-time assistant, and I’ve had a full-time assistant since my second year in the business of my first year, I sold 22 homes.

Learn from other successful people in your field.- I learned from other agents who had built successful teams. I think about things, maybe to a fault, too much out of time. But I couldn’t understand how I could have a buyer’s agent because my clients only wanted to work with me. (Well, that’s what I thought)

I now have buyers agents that work for me and do a lot of the work on the streets. So that’s where I really had to let go of my ego and embrace imperfections in myself and in others and start to come and realize that these other people might have some strengths that I don’t have. And I need a figure out how to capitalize on those strengths.

One of my very first buyers agents, she was amazing, her name is Kandi Manguel, and she now owns her own Re/Max Brokerage and is one of the top agents in the MLS and I love to watch her success.

When she came to me and she wasn’t sure if she could do it, I started her out part-time. She was afraid to leave her job making $187 a week. It was at a gas station where she was working to go work full-time selling real estate. I offered to pay her $200 a week to do 20 hours of administrative work for me and marketing and the rest of the time she would be selling.

I think she might have sold 50 homes that year, so that’s a perfect example, all of my clients loved her. (there’s no way I could have sold 100 homes on my own) She always had rave reviews, and my buyer’s agents now are the same way they all have great things to say about them because they’re an extension of me and my team.

It’s about how I hand people over. I don’t just say, Oh “I’m going to be too busy or I’m too good to deal with you”. It’s not that at all. I let my clients know that these are people that are experts because they’re outside showing buyers everyday properties. They know the market and they have their pulse on what’s available in the inventory more than I do, because they’ve seen the inside of a lot of these houses. I’m here to help you negotiate I’m here to oversee them and we touch base all the time. It’s just how things work and people love it. And it’s been successful for me, and that was a big, hard thing to get over.

“So you recognize your weak spots, let go of ego, start small and delegate to others. You know, baby steps, baby steps and embrace imperfections in yourself and others. And you’ve got to just acknowledge that you can’t control every little thing. ” – Lisa Richart-Hernandez

Outside of my life from just real estate, I’m a Mom, and I think every Mom especially struggles with this in their life. In the morning sometimes I’d be worried how we’re going to get to the volleyball practice today and how we’re going to get to cheerleading today, who’s going to pick kids up from school and get them all the places they need to go? What turned out to be our solution is we hired a nanny works from 3 to 6 every day. We paid her $10 an hour. So for $30 a day she picked up the kids. She got their homework started, and took them to and from practices. When I came home at six o’clock from work, they were ready to go and we were ready to have family time.

I also hired cleaning ladies that come once a week, and lawn service. All these little delegations make my life easier and I have room to make more money.

So, that’s how I manage to be able to travel with my husband, who’s retired and really just enjoy life. As long as I have Internet access, I can pretty much do my job from anywhere because either my assistant is here locally, she can pick things up and drop them off, put up signs. My buyers agents work with my buyers and keep them happy. And I now have my virtual assistant that works out of the Philippines he’s handling all of my social media. So I know I’m covered even on social media when I’m not in town. My listings are getting advertised and posted and I’m not constantly all day doing those things. That allows us to just really have some great trips and vacations, which you’ll get to hear all about in some of our podcasts with my husband George who loves to plan our vacations.

I hope that this blog will help inspire you, especially if you’re a control freak. Get out of your comfort zone! If you have questions about this, you can always email [email protected] . You can follow us on Instagram were at @Rviewpodcast and we can also take You can also direct messages on Instagram. And, if you’re interested in our RV life, we also have our other Instagram @RViewfromtheroad George manages that Instagram account for all of our RV travels.

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I hope you have a great day!

Thanks so much for today, and go out there and delegate someone to do something and take a break.