Productivity Hacks For Brokers With Kids

Having kids enriches life but it does bring added responsibility – it can be hectic juggling broking and parenting duties. Two brokers explain how they maintained productivity while raising young children.

Shift your day

Lisa Maxwell often worked from home when her son was young and now begins work later – after the school drop-off – which means finishing later too.

Viktor Desovski was a full-time Dad when his son was a newborn and got paperwork completed between 3-7am while his son slept.

Schedule priorities

You do need to have good time management and prioritisation skills,” Lisa said. For her, diary management is key to not missing milestones with her son.

“I just use the calendar in Outlook: all my appointments are in there, anything I need to have time-off for is in there too. You don’t want someone booking an appointment for you when you need to be at a school assembly.”

Become detail-focused

Viktor said that being ruthless with your time requires planning. He often books multiple meetings in advance and emails clients clear instructions on what to bring. “Preparation is one aspect and then educating the customer to work with you and how that’s beneficial to them. It’s beneficial because there’s fewer delays, there’s fewer errors – they can respond quickly, they can be prepared.” He advises setting an agenda for every call or meeting and not straying off-topic.

Go digital

Viktor uses digital tools such as Google Drive, Dropbox and Slack to make collaboration easier. He uses Zoom for video-conferencing, Salesforce for customer relationship management, and DocuSign for email signatures. “They save you time, they save you printing costs, they save you in compliance, record-keeping and accessibility.”

Let go

Forget work when it’s family time.  “I make a fairly conscious effort when I walk in the door to switch off my work brain, if I can. I avoid looking at emails. Because clients are so emotionally involved – it’s sometimes difficult to not get involved yourself. I just tell myself that if I know I’ve done everything that I could do and should do, then I can sleep at night comfortably,” Lisa said.

Discover more insights from Viktor and Lisa about balancing broking and family life in the next edition of the MFAA’s quarterly e-magazine, PROSPER, available February 2018.

(Source: www.mfaa.com.au)