Skip to content
Home Blog Real Estate Marketing

How To Find The Time To Do These 10 Crucial Real Estate Marketing Activities

Jason Hanson
4 min read
State Of The Real Estate Market
Image by dalechumbley via Flickr

Would you like to know how someone can go from a part-time investor to a full-time investor? I sure hope so because I’m about to show you in very detailed form.

If you read my post from last week, it was a 10 question test which would help you become more successful (or determine why you’re not already successful). Well, I got a lot wonderful feedback and one person stated that the plan was aggressive and he didn’t see how someone with a family and full-time job could do it. So you’re about to see how.

First off, let me say that part-time investors become full-time investors by following the guidelines I laid out in the earlier post. And secondly, everything else is just a bunch of excuses.

People use their job as an excuse to why they can’t market more; they use their spouse, their family, etc. But guess what? That’s all it is, just an excuse. Because thousands and thousands of investors who have a wife, kids, and full-time job have gone onto real estate success because they took action while other people wouldn’t.

When I hear people tell me that they can’t do their marketing, all they’re really telling me is that it’s not a priority. That living life on their own terms is not that important. If you haven’t noticed I can’t stand excuses. Winners don’t make excuses, plain and simple. Anyway, I got off course a little bit, but here’s what I’m going to do.

I’m going to show you how to find the time and make the time so that you can make the transition from part-time to the good life (full time).

And I’m going to use the same 10 test questions from last week. Here we go:

  1. Have you identified your target market – This is the most important thing you do. You only have to do this once. To find your target market find out where the other investors are (just ask them). Find out where the bread and butter houses are, which will cash flow. This task shouldn’t take long at all. I’ll allocate 1 hour….and remember you only do this once and you already probably know the answer.
  2. Sending out 1,000 pieces of direct mail a month – This could take no time, because you can hire companies to do it for you. It can take 10 minutes for you to upload your material to click2mail. Or, if you want to do it yourself do 50 letters a day. Break it up to 50 a day and this will take you less than 30 minutes.
  3. Getting a mentor – Talk to your network, find out who’s good. This you only have to do once, but take your time with it. This is one of the most important things you will ever do.
  4. Attend at least one networking event a month – If you can’t find 2 hours per month to network then you don’t deserve success (and before the excuses start, just remember all you’re saying is that it’s not a priority for you).
  5. Get on craigslist.com everyday and send 5 emails -This should take 10 minutes a day max. I have my template email and all I have to do is copy and paste it into an ad. Piece of cake (I don’t do this, but my assistant does).
  6. Spend 4 hours a month driving for dollars – If you can’t find one hour on the weekend to drive for dollars (you know what I’m about to say) you don’t deserve success. However, if you’re a brain-dead person I’ll tell you in a minute how to find that hour.
  7. Read at least one book per month-Read 10 pages a day. That should take 15 minutes at most.
  8. Getting on BiggerPockets.com daily and networking and asking questions – This all depends on how many questions you have. But at the very least (and I mean very LEAST) take 10 minutes and see what’s new on the site.
  9. Make a “to do” list every night before you do to bed – Takes 5 to 10 minutes.

Time Management: Now I will tell you where to find extra hours:

  • Don’t watch TV. Nothing good comes from TV. Did you know that I don’t even own a TV? It’s true. I get my information from reading the newspaper and the Internet
  • Get up an hour earlier. One of the keys traits of all successful people is they get up early and do their most important tasks while lessor mortals are sleeping.
  • Make sacrifices. Don’t go play pool with your friends, or go to happy hour or any other unproductive activity.

When you want something bad enough you’ll make it happen no matter what.

Several months ago there was a woman on Oprah who had five children. And not only that, she was a single mother! Well, this woman told her amazing story about how she went through medical school as a single mother of five (and some of you complain that you can’t get a few postcards or letters out…shame on you!)

One more quick story for ya. One of my close friends has been complaining to me a lot lately about how she wants to go to the gym and get in better shape. But that she doesn’t have the time, yadda, yadda, yadda. Finally, the other day I stopped her mid-sentence while complaining and said “Jenny, stop making excuses. All you’re really saying is that it’s not a priority for you to go to the gym and you really don’t care that much about getting in shape. Because if you really did you would go to the gym, plain and simple.” Now go do some marketing!

Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.