How To Be Productive & Efficient While Investing

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how to be productive, from Youtube viewers and even some of my friends. They keep asking me, “Well, you worked a full-time job, 40 plus hours a week. How did you manage to get things done while you were so busy at the same time? Like how do you find the energy to make things happen?”

It’s relatively easy. You have more time than you think. It’s all a matter of how you manage all of that efficiently. Everything I did happen one way or the other simultaneously. I leveraged a lot of technology, plans that were available out there. It all came down to three helpers, technology, Amazon, and Freshly. I’m going to tell you how I managed to use all of them. It’s no surprise that technology had made their lives a lot easier. It can also be very distractive if you don’t know how to leverage technology for your benefit.

I’ve been getting a lot of questions from Youtube viewers and even some of my friends. They keep asking me, “Well, you worked a full-time job, 40 plus hours a week. How did you manage to get things done while you were so busy at the same time? Like how do you find the energy to make things happen?”

It’s relatively easy. You have more time than you think. It’s all a matter of how you manage all of that efficiently. Everything I did happen one way or the other simultaneously. I leveraged a lot of technology, plans that were available out there. It all came down to three helpers, technology, Amazon, and Freshly. I’m going to tell you how I managed to use all of them. It’s no surprise that technology had made their lives a lot easier. It can also be very distractive if you don’t know how to leverage technology for your benefit.

How To Be Productive With Your Phone

First, I searched for areas to invest in the comfort of my home. Even when I was on the train, on my way to work, I have a one-and-a-half-hour commute each way, which means a three-hour commute daily. I had a lot of time on my hands when I was on the train. I wanted to make the best use out of it because I knew that three hours were taken away from me, and by the time I got home, chances are I will have a lot less time to get things going from my end. With technology, I learned how to find areas and where I can invest my money.

Every time I got a contract, every time my realtor will reach out to me, of course, there’s always a form of communication, email for everything. If some of the people are comfortable, you can even text them as well. It just makes communication a lot faster. You don’t have to get on a call.

We live in a society where we’re always on the go 24/7 and don’t always have the opportunity to pick up the phone. If you could, that’s great, but if not, there’s still email and texting. There are other tools called DocuSign. DocuSign, it’s an app that you can download on your phone, you create an account, and then every time there was a legal document that was coming my way, I would just sign it right away. If you can’t afford DocuSign’s membership, you can even use an app on your phone. 

That was one tool that I leveraged. The second tool that I used was QuickBooks. Eventually, it got to be a lot to start managing. I needed to get copies of my receipts. I needed to start tracking my expenses. There’s going to be blog posts on taxes sometime in the future, so just hang on tight. 

You can’t just simply walk around with, like a pack of receipts, that’s like the old school way of doing things. When you do that, you tend to lose your paperwork, maybe missing a receipt here and there. It just became a lot more challenging to track that, especially with a portfolio of 24 rentals. So, what I started to do, I simply went on QuickBooks, and I asked, “Hey, I’m managing 24 properties. What deal can you give me in terms of membership?” Because I need one account for each different rental that I have because you need to keep track of the expenses separately. They worked out a plan with me, where they say, “Well, here’s an application that you can download.” It’s so simple to use.

All you’ve got to do is every time you get a copy of the receipt, you’re going to pull your application, you snap a picture of it, you’re going to record the vendor, how much you pay and the date, and you hit save, and that’s all you needed to do. Then, when it’s time to file your taxes, all you’re going to do is just pull that report and just give it to your accountant, and they’re going to go ahead and take care of your taxes right away, all from the comfort of your phone or even your computer depending on which way you prefer to get things done.

Technology has made it great. Same thing with Google Maps. I’ve made an excellent reference for using Google Maps for a quick search. If somebody comes in, let’s say your realtor picks up the phone, says, “Hey, I have this deal, are you interested in?” And you want just to get an idea of where it’s located. You go into Google Maps, you type in the address, and you start zooming in, and you can see the area’s surroundings. 

Another great tool I love to use is a scanning tool. Not all of us have access to a printer. You have to have a printer and a scanner in your home, but let’s say you’re on the go, and not all of us can afford to have a printer at the comfort of our hand when we’re like rushing from one place to another. So, there’s another app called Genius Scan

You don’t even have to pay for software like Adobe. Eventually, when you’re doing this by the masses, you’re going to need to, but if it’s a copy of a one-off or maybe two documents, an amendment, or something that you need to sign quick and you need to send it over to your realtor or your attorney.

how to be productive
I had a lot of time on my hands when I was on the train. I wanted to make the best use out of it because I knew that three hours were taken away from me.

Amazon

Now, we’re going to go into Amazon. I know a lot of people talk about Amazon. I’m going to remove all of that noise. I’m going to focus on what Amazon has done for me that has been very beneficial and helping me get things done remotely from the comfort of my phone.

Ads

So, first off, there’s the Prime membership. I think the Prime membership is the best thing that they could ever create because I can get anything I need to be delivered to my door. I could be out at 07:00 in the morning on my way to work, and then by the time I come back, I have all the boxes delivered at the comfort of my apartment. I could just simply go in there and get the stuff that I need, anything from paper towel, shampoo, soap, dishwashers, books, markers, chalk, like the way I use it. I get everything from Amazon.

Then, with the Prime membership, you can get it delivered as fast as two days, sometimes even overnight, if the warehouse is nearby. I think it is a service that is worth investing in just because it will save time. Now, you might think, “Oh, well, why would I want to do that if I can just simply walk over to the store and get the stuff?” Yes, you can do that, or you can just drive to the store, but think about it.

By the time you get to your car, that’s like a five or 10-minute walk. Then you turn it on, and then you drive to the store. Assume that the store is about a 10-minute drive, then you have to go in, walk all over the aisle and then try to select, “Okay, what I want to buy, what I want to do here, what do I need in the house. Make that phone call, ‘hey, what’s missing in the house.’” That’s going to take time, that’s going to take away at least an hour of your busy schedule. With an hour, you can search for properties, and you can do offers, you can talk to your realtors.

There are many things in your queue that you’re going to need to take care of. This is simply one of those tasks that are not worth investing so much time when you can do it more efficiently. When I’m on my commute, again, I have an hour and a half. It’s so easy just to come up and pick it up. You don’t have an hour and a half commute, or let’s assume you drive for an hour and a half, how about your lunch break? When you take your lunch break, you pick up your phone, do the app, go through all the things you need, and just get things done. Some of you do coffee breaks. When you do a coffee break when you walk into the store, and you’re waiting for your coffee, go into Amazon and select the items that are needed in your house, in your household and then you just simply click the buy button, add that to the basket and just check it out. That’s one.

AmazonFresh

The second is AmazonFresh. Same thing. It takes time for you to the grocery store, especially with the long lines. I’m pretty sure most of us have only time to go to the supermarket either after work when it’s late in the day when everyone is trying to get their groceries done at the same time or the weekends, also when everyone is trying to get things done at the same time. Going to the grocery store, some of you might say, “Oh, but I find it relaxing. I get to pick and choose what I want. It distracts me for a little bit from things that I needed to do.”

But what about when you get to that waiting line or that checkout line? The same story, you’re going to have to wait at least about a half hour for everyone to check-out their grocery shopping when you can just do it from the comfort of your home, from your car, from the train. To me, it’s just simply a no-brainer. You go online, hit AmazonFresh, just simply select the groceries you need on the week. You pay $14.95 for a month to get all of the groceries delivered for you. You can choose to have it dropped at your door, or you can choose to have them delivered at a specific time while you’re at home so you can receive the products.

It’s very well taken care of so you don’t have to worry about things getting rotten at the door. If you live in a state where the weather tends to be warm, they make sure they insulate everything, and they put ice and all of the necessary layers so that the groceries are fresh by the time it’s delivered to your house. You don’t even have to worry about when it is going to be delivered. They’re going to give you a whole time window where you’re going to get to choose how and when your groceries will be delivered.

If you think you’re going to get home close to seven o’clock, then there’s a window that goes from 05:00 to 07:00, I guess. Then if you think you’re going to get home past 09:00, there’s another window that goes from 07:00 to 09:00 PM. To me, again, it’s a no-brainer. It’s effortless, saves time. Everything saves time.

All I need to worry about is getting up, commuting on my way to work, getting things done during my commute, then get to my job, do the things that I need to do, I need to deliver while I’m doing my job, and then by the time I leave my office, then on my way back. I take care of all the other stuff that I couldn’t take care of during the day, whether it’s signing documents or sending a text or responding to an email to my property managers or simply ordering groceries,  and ordering items are missing from my home. For you to have Fresh, you have to have Prime, I believe. I could be wrong, but last time I checked, you need to have that.

how to be more productive
You have to wait at least about a half hour for everyone to check-out their grocery shopping when you can just do it from the comfort of your home.

Audibles

Now, moving on to the next Amazon tool, Audibles are, by far, my most favorite tool that Amazon has ever come up with. For Audible, you don’t need to be a Prime member. It’s a membership where you pay $14.95 a month. When you first signed up, you get two free books that you can get to listen to or select from their collection of books, and you just listen to it, a 30-day trial. Then after that, you can either decide whether to stay or drop-in or drop-out. If you want to opt-out, no problem. You just simply give it a try, and you decided that you did not like it, but if you did like it, it’s the best thing that you can leverage to “read a book.”

I have to admit. I’m the kind of person who prefers a book. I like the smell of the books, flipping through the pages, making notes, doing call-outs whenever I need, putting little Post-its in parts of the books where I think I want to, or need to refer back. Realistically speaking, given such a tight schedule, it’s nearly impossible to want it to get to that, but I still needed to learn all there was about real estate. I needed to expand my knowledge, and basically, I had to figure out another way to do that because when you’re at your work, you can’t just pull a book about real estate and let me just start reading all about it and not care whether I get fired or not. You can’t afford to do that.

I also needed to build time in for exercise. I don’t want to sound shallow, but exercising is very important because it helps with my back pain, and two, it helps clear my mind. Sometimes, we’re so embedded in work, and you’re like sitting down 24/7 in your cubicle and then coming back home sitting down in front of your computer trying to get things done, making deals happen.

Ads

Every time I went to the gym, was thinking, “Well, this is about an hour and a half that I’m taking away from stuff that I could be doing and working on my deals, or I could be talking with people on the phone and stuff like that working out here.” Guess what? I managed to do everything while I was still at the gym, and it was all thanks to Audible.

I downloaded any book that I needed to learn on real estate. I was able to learn how to listen to them at a much faster pace. You don’t have to do that yourself, but eventually, if you want to get through as many books as you can, you can increase the Audible speed, and you can listen to a lot more books than you think. While I was working out, I put my headphones on, and I listened to any possible book that was out there available on real estate. That’s how I managed to learn.

During my breaks, what I did was I would check my phone to see if my property managers or my realtor, anyone has sent me a message, even the lender, did I get an email from a lender telling me that there were things that they needed me to complete. I would do that within like my 30 seconds, or like a minute, so I’ll just go ahead and reply to them.

Then I’ll just put my phone and continue to listen to my book. I think it’s a great tool. You can’t go wrong with it. That’s not to say that it’s going to replace reading a natural book. You can still do that when you’re on a plane or when you’re taking a vacation, and you want to enjoy a good read. In the meantime, if you’re trying to be effective and efficient with your time, that’s the best thing you can do. I think that’s one of the best alternatives.

how to have a productive day
I downloaded any book that I needed to learn on real estate. I was able to learn how to listen to them at a much faster pace.

Freshly

Then bring it down one step further; there’s also the cooking part of it, right? Yes, you can have your groceries delivered at your doorstep. That saves you time from going to the supermarket and getting stuff done. What if you don’t have time to cook? That was one of my things. I love cooking, but I realized that every time I got up and cooked, it would take at least 45 minutes away from my time. Funny enough, I found cooking very relaxing, but then when I realized that 45 minutes have gone and I still haven’t gotten things done, that would create a lot more stress.

I had to figure out a way to build more time into my 24-hour day, and so what I did is I decided that during the weekend, I’ll take care of some of the cookings, but during the week, I had to figure out another way to be more efficient, and that’s when Freshly came in. Now, I have a saying, “You are what you think, you are what you eat, and you are what you say about yourself.”

If you don’t take care of you, you cannot expand, you cannot help others, you cannot take care of your loved ones. For me, exercising was a way to take care of myself. Eating healthy, it’s also another way I care about my health and myself because if I get sick, guess what? I’m going to be knocked down in bed, and I won’t be able to do anything, so having a healthy diet was very important for me.

By healthy, I don’t mean I have to eat lettuce every day and carrot sticks and stuff like that. You could if that’s your favorite. From time to time, I do that, but what I meant by eating healthy is a well-rounded diet that will give you the energy, the antioxidants, and the fiber you need throughout the day, the week. So you can have energy and continue going. You eat doesn’t necessarily mean you’re getting the best nutrients out of every meal because the ingredients have to be of good quality. You have to obtain a well-balanced diet to have everything incorporated within your diet.

Eating a slice of pizza, although that is delicious, it’s not going to give you all the energy that you need versus when you eat a meal that contains salads, a good portion of protein, rice, water, fruits. I noticed that I was able to target everything that I was looking for and have that meal delivered with Freshly. The way they do it is that they charge you $60 a week, and they’ll deliver you exactly six meals, one for every day, Monday through Friday. What I did, I will take those to lunch. A lunch on average costs about $15, so to me, this was a no-brainer, $60 for six meals, I was paying $10 a meal.

They were all under a certain number of calories, so if anything, I lost some weight without feeling hungry. The meals that they serve are very fulfilling. They’ve helped me feel extremely energetic. I was able to get things done, even at a much higher quality, because I was focused, I was getting all the nutrients that I needed, and losing weight and gaining energy, to me, that’s again, it’s a no-brainer. They have a decent menu. I think about 20 options if I’m not mistaken. Some of them, they have vegan choices and vegetarian choices for those that are vegetarian. It’s packed nicely, and a nice box is delivered every Monday to your doorsteps. It’s insulated. You don’t have to worry about the food going bad if you can’t make it home on time. You can still come home at the end of the day, and the box of meals will always be right there if you work from home, fine. You just simply put it in your microwave, and you just heat it. It only saves you time, and it’s not one of those bad frozen meals that are full of chemicals to prevent that from going bad. It’s a fresh meal delivered every week to your doorsteps, and it’s delicious, so check it out.

RESOURCES & LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

– DocuSign: https://www.docusign.com/
– Genius Scan: http://bit.ly/geniuscan
– Quickbooks: http://bit.ly/quickbooksNVR
– Amazon Prime: http://bit.ly/Amazon-Prime-NVR
– Amazon Fresh: http://bit.ly/AmazonFresh-NVR
– Audible by Amazon (30-Day Free Trial): https://amzn.to/2T8SWUw
– Freshly ($20 OFF coupon applied!): http://bit.ly/2TWREgy

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