What I Actually Do Starting at 05:45 as a REALTOR®
Most people think real estate agents spend the day being GLAMEROUS driving around in an expensive car, wearing Christian Louboutin shoes, drinking expensive coffee and wine and lounging about the Selling Sunset set!
Mine starts in my basement in my little home gym and usually ends with a handshake at a restaurant somewhere between Blackstone and the Old Market, Council Bluffs and Woodbine - IOWA yes I am licensed there too!
Between those time slots, there is market research, pricing strategy, contract review, inspection negotiations, lender follow-up, appraisal concerns, seller emotions, buyer anxiety, title questions, tax explanations, and a whole lot of me quietly preventing disasters people never even know almost happened.
The best agent in the room is usually the one listening closer, asking better questions, and doing the actual work while everyone else is busy performing for the commission.
So, what is it that I do differently?
05:45 —07:45 - 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… feet on the floor before my brain can file a complaint. (Thanks Mel Robbins)
I work out because my brain is a loud little committee and movement is how I get everyone back in their seats. Gym time move stress out of my body and makes me a happier human. This is also when I set up my current day, reflect on the prior day, project the remainder of the week, pray, give thanks and simply be grateful for life.
08:00–09:00 — Getting ready and getting in
Shower, coffee, a little brekkie (breakfast) and the drive in. This is when I actully look at my day planner, well not while driving. YES I still use a paper day planner and my phone calendar and sticky notes. Yep, it is like a drunk monkey up in my brain and I need as many ways as I can use to remember and recall things and stuff I need to do.
09:00–09:30 — Handwritten notes
Thirty minutes, pen on paper, writing actual notes to actual people. It's the least efficient thing on my calendar and probably the most important. I mean come on have you received a note from me? I have impeccable hand writing, Drop me your address in a text or email and I will get one sent off to you!
09:30– 10:00 - Realty ONE Groups Sterling has a 30 minute daily meeting. Stop in sometime it is not all real estate much of it is mindset!
10:00 - 10:!5 Meeting with my accountability person at the office. Did you do what you committed to do and if so yeah your and if not all hell breaks loose. A blog for adifferent time!
10:15 - 11:15 — The unglamorous stuff
An hour of paperwork and accounting that produces zero income today. There's a useful distinction business owners borrow from outside the real estate world: working in the business versus working on it. This hour is squarely in it — necessary, invisible, and the kind of work that separates agents who run a business from agents who just run around.
11:30 - 12:30 Lead Generate
This is the part nobody glamorizes either - see a pattern here? Debunking the myth! This hour is me on the phone working my database like it owes me money. Quite frankly this is where my monety is made 95% of my busienss is from referrals and past clients!
My hour looks like check-ins with past clients, a few calls to people in my actual sphere, and following up with the person who said "maybe next spring" back in 2011.
I gave up on hoping a stranger secretly needs to sell a house a long time ago. Hope is not a business plan.
12:45–13:45 — Lunch with someone worth knowing or catching up with
Lunch is rarely just lunch. It's usually with someone I want to actually know and a realtionship I want to nurture. HAve we been to lunch? If not call/text 402.215.1529 or email angela@thehomegirlne.com and lets get a date on the books!
14:00–16:00 — CEO time
This block is where I work on the business instead of in it — strategy, planning, laying out my database updates and putting processes amd tools in place to help my be more productive and grow my business. This is the time for decisions that don't have a deadline but matter most over a year. It's easy to let this time get eaten by whatever feels urgent or good. Protecting it is its own discipline and one I struggle with most.
16:00–19:00 — Sort of the stuff myths are made of...
This is kitchen-table time, except half the time the table is in a different kitchen.
With sellers, it's price, timing, repairs, showings, and the gentle art of explaining the difference between what they hope the market will do and what the market is actually doing. (Spoiler: the market does not care about your renovation budget or your feelings about it.)
With buyers, it's a different conversation but the same job — walking through houses, talking through what's negotiable and what's a dealbreaker, explaining why that "great deal" has a sewer line older than I am, and helping someone make a good decision not soley based on emotion. Half my role here is translator: lender speak, inspection report speak, and "what the hell I can't make this up."
Three hours, two very different audiences, same underlying job and it's the job people forget I actually have. I am not just there to open doors or fill out forms. I am a fiduciary, which means my obligation is to my client, not to the sale, not to the commission, and not to whoever's easiest to please in the moment. Loyalty, full disclosure, confidentiality, reasonable care — that is not marketing language, that is the actual standard I am held to. Ha click it and read it!
That's the part of "Realtor" that doesn't show up on a yard sign: guiding people toward the decision that is right for them, even when it is not the fastest or easiest one for me.
Tucked in that time frame above — Dinner and the long game
Most nights end with dinner with someone, or a Chamber of Commerce event you know some networking to round out my day.
- None of it produces a closing tomorrow.
- All of it is the slow compounding of being known and trusted in this city
- And yes I worked with a family for THREE - 3 years to get them into a home
It's not a glamorous day. It's just a deliberate one — and deliberate beats flashy almost every time!
So next time someone pictures me driving around in an expensive car, wearing Christian Louboutin shoes, drinking expensive coffee and wine and lounging about the Selling Sunset set..jjust know there is a paper day planner, a stack of handwritten notes, a few hard conversations, and three years of patience hiding behind that aforementioned myth!
Here's to the work nobody sees and busting myths!
Angela Peters | REALTOR® | The Home Girl Keeping it... real estate. Omaha, Nebraska & Southwest Iowa NE 20110578 | IA S73434000 | 402.215.1529 | www.thehomegirlne.com
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