On this episode of Marketing in Other Markets, Matt Muscat talks to Jess Lenovuel, also commonly known as “the Canadian who moved to the Bahamas”. 

Jess has experienced every part of the real estate rollercoaster, experiencing the highest of highs, and the lowest of lows. Each twist and turn of her journey produced valuable lessons, which she’s been able to articulate into incredible advice for anyone who listens! Whether or not you’re a Realtor, Jess is a wealth of information for advancing your career, especially in avoiding Realtor burnout. 

With Jess’ experience, there are three main reasons why people choose the real estate agent career path: ceiling-free income, freedom in daily schedules, and the opportunity to simply help people. Unfortunately, almost nobody successfully reaches a perfect balance of those three.

The only way to achieve those three goals, is to build systems, processes, and structures to take care of all aspects of your business—otherwise you’ll drown in it. That includes building a team and anticipating anything that could pop up, good or bad. No real estate agent is motivated 100% of the time. Nobody is. When your real estate business becomes reliant on your motivation, it is destined to fail; burnout is the kiss of death! Build your business on a platform separate from your motivation and excitement! At the end of the day, your clients will work with the experts they enjoy working with. If you don’t enjoy your business, your clients will notice. 

Those systems can’t exist without one thing: a vision. If you don’t know where you’re going, how are you supposed to get there? You’ll work endlessly in no direction, unless you have a single, guiding direction. That vision could be anything you want it to be; after all, it is your vision. No matter the team size or number of automations, a vision is the only way to build anything meaningful or fulfilling (and to avoid burnout!). 

Jess’ advice? Plan out a 3-year, 5-year, and 10-year vision. Make every decision based on whether you’re getting closer or further away from your goals. If you do that, you’ll be able to avoid the “shiny object syndrome”, and your progress will be unstoppable. She also follows Tim Ferriss’ advice: Eliminate, Automate, and Outsource. Eliminate time wasters, distractions, and un-important tasks. Automate anything that can be automated (especially repetitive tasks). Outsource everything else! 

However, marketing is an extremely difficult task to automate, and probably shouldn’t be automated by new agents (and likely don’t have the capital to outsource). Marketing is one of the toughest, but most important aspects for new agents to master. Understand marketing before mastering any other part of your business. Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok— they all get the job done, but they all take huge amounts of work (and that’s okay). 

Jess asked many brilliant questions in this episode: How can you share your excellent thoughts with 100,000 people instead of 1? How much are you worth an hour, and are your tasks worth your time? How can you increase your bandwidth with high-leverage activities?

At the end of our lives, no person wishes they had worked more. 

Few real estate agents build a life without regrets. 

Don’t be one of them!