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Schedule Time to Grow Your Property Management Business

Posted on 01. Jul, 2009 by Aimee Miller in Business

My dad is a retired professor and a very well-read, educated and thoughtful man (who is probably reading this post!). Sometimes I’ll call him and ask what he is doing and he says “reading and thinking.” I don’t think that many of us actually take time to just think without also doing something else too. When he first said he was just “thinking” I had a few questions – what are you thinking about? What happens after the thinking? But it actually got me thinking about how fast we are all moving at work and at home and how important it is to take the time to stop and think.

It truly is the universal business problem: finding the time for the ‘more strategic’ tasks on your to-do list that you keep moving out a week because the other daily tasks (like running your business) get in the way. Making time to plan your next move or set some goals always gets shoved to the bottom of the list but this can really interfere with growing a property management business.

Here are 3 simple things you can do that I learned from a Franklin Covey Time Management class.
1 – Stop looking at your email or inbox off and on throughout the day. There will always be a new question or issue to respond to that will distract you. Instead, schedule a few times in the day that are dedicated to sorting through your inbox.  This gives you more time to focus on and finish up specific projects.

2 – Allocate 20 minutes at the end of each day to plan for the next day. Organize your task list, look at your calendar and get ready for the next day.

3 – Be diligent about scheduling specific time in your calendar for thinking and planning. Probably not during rent collection week, but actively schedule 1 hour or more each month to think of a couple activities you can do to grow and advertise your property management business. They can be as simple as:

• Join 1 new association
• Find 1 new place to market your business
• Refresh your website
• List your website in 3 local search directories
• Attend a networking event to learn from peers
• Set goals about where you want your business to be in 1-2 years
• List your business on Property Management Search, a property management company directory

Do you take enough time to think?

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Tags: business