How to Never be Late Again

Summary

For most people, showing up late is a habit. It tends to be a pattern that repeats. But the problem is not time management. It’s the choices we make.

It’s crucial to fix this problem because when you’re always late, this tells people that they can’t trust you. You gave them your word that you were going to show up at a specific time, but you were late. It also tells them that you don’t respect them enough to be there on time. It reflects the choices you make that put you in that position.

How do you never be late again?

1. Commit to perfection that you will never be late again. Believe that it’s possible. For example, professional athletes never show up late for practice or for a game. Don’t make being on time an option.
2. Plan to arrive 5-15 minutes early.
3. Assess the surrounding time commitments you have. Are there other appointments before it? Be sure to have enough time between commitments.
4. Account for other factors. E.g. traffic, your spouse or kids. Allow for other responsibilities and things beyond your control. Plan ahead
5. Only calendar appointment times that are mandatory for you. Decide what you put in your calendar and treat them as commitments.
6. Give yourself 2 months of perfection. Keep showing up on time so you rewire the habit.It takes on average 66 days to create a new habit.

Mastering time is the master skill of all skills. Train with me at Agent Mastery Live 2020 and learn how to get more done every day. Get you tickets at  https://www.agentmasterylive.com/

Full transcript

This person that I’m about to meet for the first time, this agent who wants me to entrust them with the sale of my $800,000 house or $2.5 million house, my largest asset, and they can’t even keep their word when it comes to showing up on time.

Today, I want to talk to you about how to never be late again. That’s right. How to never be late not how to rarely be late, but how to never be late again. Because, when you are late, you lose credibility.

When you show up late to an appointment, when you make a commitment and you show up late, people feel they can’t trust you. In fact, I train my coaching members that this is the fastest way to lose a listing in two minutes and never even know why you lost it, and that is show up two minutes late, because you made a commitment. You told them, I’ll see you at 2:15. I’ll see you at 5:00, and at 5:00 you’re not there. And they’re like, “This person that I’m about to meet for the first time, this agent who wants me to entrust them with the sale of my $800,000 house or $2.5 million house, my largest asset, and they can’t even keep their word when it comes to showing up on time.” So, if you want to maximize your credibility, never be late again.

Now here’s the key, and here’s the reality, and I’m going to talk about how to stop it, how to never be late again. But first you have to understand that showing up late, most of the time, is a habit. Have you noticed that people that show up late to an office meeting tend to be the same people every week or every month? They show up late time after time. They’re the same exact people. It is a pattern. It tends to be a habit and it is not a time management issue. Somebody goes like, “Oh, I’m always late. I just got to learn to manage my time better.” It’s not a time management issue. It is a choice management issue because it’s not that we don’t manage our time, it’s that when we have a commitment, if you have an issue showing up late, when you have a commitment, what is happening is you are making a series of choices that puts you in a situation that causes you to be late.

It’s not the time, it is the choices that you’re making to do this little thing, or, “You know what, I can make one more phone call.” or “I can do this one more thing.” or “I can run this one errand.” or “I can go do this.” or “I’ve got 10 minutes.” “I’m good, I can…” And we make a choice and another choice and another choice and we stack those choices, and all of a sudden we get out there and we have no margin for error and traffic’s a little worse than we thought or whatever and all of a sudden we’re late and it adds stress to our lives, puts pressure on us, causes people to doubt us and wonder and you don’t want to walk into an appointment with somebody wondering about you like, “Well where were you?”

And I know you’ve got a story and there’s always a story, right? Every time there’s a story, because when you show up late, you know, before you get there, you’re going to be late. So what do you do now? Now instead of thinking about helping these people make a decision and helping them do what’s best, you’re having to create a story to justify why you didn’t keep your word when you told them you were going to be there at five o’clock and you’re not there at five o’clock.

So how do you stop that? How do you never be late again? Realtors are notorious for being late. How do you never be late again? There are six steps that I’m going to give you today that help you chain break this pattern and never ever be late again.

Number one, commit. Commit to perfection in this area. Commit to never be late again, ever. No excuses, no exceptions, and commit to it and believe that it’s possible. You see, the reality is there are some people who are never ever late, and if right now you’re building a case and you’re like, “Yeah, but what if or what about” or whatever, then already you’ve already lost because now you’re already justifying and building a case for why you can’t be on time every time. And yet there are people that are on time every single time.

For example, professional athletes, they’re never late. Have you ever seen a professional football player show up late? And the reason I know this is I have a good friend of mine, Tim Adams, who used to be a coach for several professional sports teams, including two NFL teams and one of the things that he told me about that I thought was very interesting was that in the NFL there was a league mandatory $10,000 fine if a player showed up late to a practice, not to a game, if they showed up late to practice it was a league mandatory $10,000 fine. Now obviously you’ve never seen a player show up late to a game. What about showing up to practice and I ask him, I said, “How many times have you seen a player actually show up late to practice so they have to pay this fine?” He says, “Never. Never happens because they know they have to be on time. It is important. You set the value, set the standard and they always perform.”

So you can do the same thing. You make the commitment and you set the supreme value on being on time and you can always be on time. You just have to, first, you have to make that commitment. I’m going to be on time and I’m going to keep, when I give my word, I’ll be there a certain time, I’m always a person of my word. I always make it happen.

Number two, so number one you commit, number two is plan to arrive 15 minutes early every single time. Always arrive early no matter what. Now if it’s right across the street, you may plan on arriving five minutes early because there’s not really a lot that can happen when you’re going across the street.

But if you’re having to go across town, the further the trip is you want to give a bigger cushion. So if you’re just having to make a 15 or 20 minute drive, plan on getting there 15 minutes earlier and that way if anything happens, you’re covered. Even if you have a flat tire, you can still grab an Uber and get there on time. You are not in danger of jeopardizing your commitment. Plan to arrive 15 minutes early and when you show up early, it’s not wasted time. It’s not dead time. It’s prep time. Now you’re getting, you’re present, you’re getting your mind there. You’re there physically. Now I get my mind there. Park out in front of the house at least five minutes before your listing appointment, before an appointment, so that when they peek out the peephole or they look out the window, they’re questioning, “Can I trust this person? Are they actually going to be here on time?” And they look out and five minutes before you’re sitting out there in your car and they’re going like, “All right then. This person’s showing up.”

Then you don’t need to make a big deal about it. It’s just a standard of professionalism that you always respect people’s time and you always keep your word.

Number three, number three is always, when you have an appointment, always assess your surrounding time commitments. Before you book an appointment, assess the surrounding time commitments. I’ve got an appointment at 2:00 I’ve got an appointment at 4:30. Well, do I have time, if I book an appointment at 3:00, do I have time? Well, you got to assess that 2:00 appointment.

If I do the 2:00 appointment, what are the odds that it’s going to run over and cause me to be late on my 3:00 appointment? And if there’s any chance at all, you can’t do it and you’ve got to be aware of that so that you can manage your choice to not put yourself in a position that one commitment runs over into another one. Commitment runs over into another commitment. Is there enough time, a time gap for you to make that appointment work? Okay, so you got to make, always assess and as you get better at this, then you know, it takes me this long to do a listing presentation. It takes me this long to do that. I can assess how long is it going to take. I know this person’s personality, it’s going to take longer.

I know this is going to happen, so assess what’s going on around it with time commitments that you can do that.

Number four is account for other factors that can affect your time. Account for other factors that are beyond you. It’s not just a matter of your calendar now and this appointment and the next appointment, and the next appointment. What are the things outside of your control that can affect you showing up on time and doing what you say? Things like traffic, right? Traffic’s outside of your control. If you are in a place where you ever get stuck in traffic you know it happens all the time. I live here in LA. Traffic is an all day, everyday reality so you got plan for it and you can’t ever show up late go, “Well you wouldn’t believe the traffic.” And they’re going like, “Are you kidding me? Were you born last night? Did you just land here?”

It doesn’t even ring true, right? So traffic, your spouse, your significant other, kids, okay, another meeting, somebody else you’ve got to wait on, whatever it is, if there’s other factors besides just you and your commitments that are going to, could throw you off your time, you got to be aware of that and you’ve got to take that into account.

Number five, number five: only schedule appointments in your calendar that are mandatory for you. Okay? If it’s not mandatory, don’t put it in your calendar. The moment you schedule it, it’s got to be mandatory. And what I mean by that is when I put it in my calendar and I say, “Okay, I’m going to do this from two to three.” Well, are you? So don’t put something in your calendar that says, “I’m going to go to the gym at 6:00.” And then you don’t go to the gym at 6:00 because your subconscious mind now knows when Kevin puts something in his calendar half of the time he’s full of crap.

And so your subconscious mind doesn’t believe you’re serious. Your own subconscious mind discredits your calendar and your time commitments because it knows that you put stuff in there that doesn’t count. So you only put it in your calendar if it counts. If you commit to be at a certain place at a certain time, whether it’s something, a personal commitment or it’s a commitment for a $10 million listing appointment, you treat the commitment with the same level of weight and that is that “my word is law.” I put it in there, I’ve given my word, I’m going to be there so only calendar appointments that are mandatory for you and you decide what’s mandatory and if it’s mandatory, you put it in there and you can do it.

If it’s working out every day, if it’s what time you’re going to show up at the office, if it’s what time you’re going to be home at night to spend time with your family. Whatever those time commitments are, when you calendar it, you keep your word on it and it’s such a powerful thing when you now realize I control it. I control my time. It’s one of the most liberating and empowering realizations is when you are in control of your time.

And then number six on how to never be late again is give yourself two months of perfection, minimum.

In other words, if this is a new thing for you, you just set the date today and say for the next two months I’m going to make sure I never, I always show up on time. I’m going to be there early for everything and you commit and give yourself two months with no failure. And what happens is that gives you time over a two month period, 60 days to rewire your habits, rewire your pattern. And so, if you’re conditioned to show up, just always squeaking in and showing up a minute or two late sometimes showing up at a sales meeting and guys, how you do anything is how you do everything.

If you show up late to a sales meeting, you’re going to show up late to a listing appointment. And I know what you’re saying, you’re going, “My sales meeting, if I showed up five minutes early to our weekly sales meeting or office meeting, I’d be the only one in the room. We don’t start for 10 minutes or 15 minutes after.” And you know guys, I hate it when I go and speak to a real estate company and they tell me I’m going to start at 10:00 and at 10:00 nobody’s there. And I’m like, “What’s up?” And at 10:10 people start trickling in a little after 10:00 and then 10:15. By 10:15 the broker says, “Hey, let’s give everybody about 10 more minutes to show up.”

And I’m like, “Okay, whatever dude.” Because I know they’ve conditioned them to be amateurs. They’ve conditioned them to not keep your word so you’re going like, “If I show up on time for my meeting, I’m going to be sitting there wasting my time for 15 minutes.” No, you’re not. You’re not wasting your time. You are leading. You are making a commitment to yourself and you’re creating the pattern for you and lead. Be the change that you want to see in the world. So when you do it, yes, you may have to sit there. Just have your phone. You can answer some text messages, answer emails, you can do whatever. Turn that in productive time, but you always be early from now on, for the rest of your life. If it’s worth scheduling, it is worth being there early. It will change your life.

Look, mastering time, mastering your day. Maximizing, making, squeezing every opportunity out of every moment. Carpe diem. Learning to do that is one of the most powerful skills of all skills. In fact, at Agent Mastery Live, our event, one of the things we will be doing is we’ll be doing a whole segment on training on how to master your day, how to maximize your time. How do you get more done in a day than most people get done in three or four days? We’re going to train you on how to do that at Agent Mastery Live, so I hope to see you there, but I hope this video has been helpful for you. If it has, give it a thumbs up, put any comments or questions you have down below. Subscribe to the channel and play to win. Always be early and always expect YES.