Ricardo Bueno

Online Marketing Strategies for Real Estate

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Ep. 2: Using Better Time Management & Positive Affirmations for Business Success With Selena Vidya

As humans, time management bleeds into both your business and personal life.  

How do you implement better time management strategies to help you manage the chaos and why do you need to implement more positive affirmations in your day to day to set yourself up for business success? 

To answer those questions, I’ve asked productivity ninja Selena Vidya to impart some of her wisdom. 

Selena Vidya is a digital marketing consultant, host of the PermissionLESS podcast, creator of the MAP Planner, and actor/producer. 

She helps businesses with strategy creation and implementation to grow their visibility online, and individuals with taming chaos, taking inspired action and mastering their mindset. And she’s gooood! 

Join Selena Vidya and I as we discuss:

  • Why (and how) you need to employ positive affirmations & journaling to start your day if you’re looking for hypergrowth 
  • How to prioritize your day better by identifying what’s a “need,” and a “want,” and a “should” 
  • How to set boundaries, time blocks, and “do not disturb” to wrangle your day (in both your business day & your personal life)

… and more! 

Click the flash-player below to listen now: 

⚡️Giveaway Alert ⚡️

Selena Vidya is going to give away 5 FREE copies of the MAP Planner, here’s what you have to do to get in on the action:

Selena’s going to choose 5 winners at random on Wednesday!

Show notes: 

Other Ways To Listen In:

Transcript:

Ricardo Bueno (00:25):
I spend my day consulting with some of the best agents in the industry, which basically means I have a front row seat to the behind the scenes of world-class marketing campaigns and marketing strategies, and I’m here to unveil some of those strategies and tactics with you. Listen in as I share what’s good in real estate and the world of marketing.

Ricardo Bueno (00:52):
All right, so what’s up everybody? Ricardo Bueno here, and in this episode I’m joined by a good and longtime friend of mine, Selena Vidya. She’s a digital marketing consultant. She’s a rockstar, that’s all I can really say. But she’s the host of the PermissionLESS Podcast, look that up in your favorite podcast player, and she’s the creator of the MAP Planner. And I’ll let her get into detail on what that is, but right now I think we’re in a world of sort of chaos.

Ricardo Bueno (01:26):
For most of my career, and I know for most of Selena’s, I’ve worked from home. For me, adjusting to things, I live and work by my calendar. I have some semblance of structure to my life. But right now, when we’re being forced to be indoors and live the quarantine life, for people that aren’t used to working from home, this is a challenge. I do want to talk about, how do we manage the chaos, not just in our life, but in our work and in our personal life, and how do we manage the chaos amongst this chaos. And I think she has some excellent advice for you, some very practical and tactical advice that you can implement in your business.

Ricardo Bueno (02:07):
And the reason I say Selena’s a rockstar is because there’s few people in the industry that are true consultants in the sense that you’re trying to build a brand. And building a brand in sort of a crisis is even more so important, because we don’t know how long this is going to last, the financial implications of this. Is it going to last for two months, three months, six months 12 months? How does it impact my business?

Ricardo Bueno (02:34):
Well, Selena isn’t just a pro or an expert at productivity, she’s also an expert at building, creating strategy and building branding strategy for businesses so that they can grow their branding and build their visibility online. Without further ado, Selena how are you? Welcome.

Selena Vidya (02:58):
I’m good. Thank you for the amazing introduction. How are you?

Ricardo Bueno (02:58):
Good, good. Like I said before this call, it’s a little bit of chaos. I can’t believe … By the time you’ll listen to this show, the month of March will have been over, it’s April 1st, but I can’t believe, March seemed like an eternity.

Selena Vidya (03:13):
It seemed like an eternity and it also just seemed like it didn’t exist. It’s like this weird pocket of time. The other day, because towards the end of March I was like, “Is it April yet?” And I think it hit March 29th and I was like, “Is this month over?” But then it didn’t even feel like it happened.

Ricardo Bueno (03:30):
It just, April 1st, it didn’t seem close enough, and I’m still in shock that it’s only April 1st.

Selena Vidya (03:38):
Yeah, yeah 2020 came in hot, and not in a good way.

Ricardo Bueno (03:43):
Tell us, for those of you that don’t know, just tell us who you are, what you do. I know I kind of introduce people, but tell us who you are, what you do.

Selena Vidya (03:53):
That’s a big question. I guess the easiest way to lead with this is, I’m both a creative professional, and I’m a business/consulting professional. I’m very much a hybrid of the two, and that’s how I take my day-to-day. I started my marketing career as an SEO consultant. I was very much in the weeds with companies. I was doing a lot of the tactical execution work, and over time, as I started working more in marketing, I expanded that and I started working more in outreach, more in content, and then ultimately strategy. I’m 10 years plus working on the SEO and content strategy side.

Selena Vidya (04:34):
But over that period of time, I’m a creative being at heart, so I’m always creating things. I love helping people. And one of the ways that I’ve found I love helping people is by educating and entertaining them. The PermissionLESS Podcast came out of that. I wanted to inspire people and motivate them, and so did the MAP Planner, so I guess that’s kind of a roundabout way. I also love coffee, so there’s that. That’s literally my brand is coffee drinking.

Ricardo Bueno (05:02):
Do you make your own cold brew coffee?

Selena Vidya (05:04):
I don’t, yet, but thank you for that because now I’m going to have to.

Ricardo Bueno (05:08):
Good hobby to pick up. I threw away, unfortunately, my Japanese cold brew coffeemaker, and I’m regretting making that decision, but that’s awesome.

Selena Vidya (05:17):
I’m going to have to look into whatever that Japanese brewing thing is that you just mentioned.

Ricardo Bueno (05:22):
I’ll look it up and send it to you, it’s pretty awesome.

Selena Vidya (05:25):
Yes, please do.

Ricardo Bueno (05:28):
A lot of people are stuck. They’re working from home now, and a lot of people are in that mindset of, “Holy crap, school’s closed for the rest of the year for my kids.” As if working from home wasn’t already … Here’s what people don’t realize. Let me back up. Some people look at working from home or make fun of working from home as, “Oh, that must be so nice.” And what people don’t realize is that oftentimes, working from home actually is twice the amount of work. And when you have the kids’ schools being closed and you have a family, you can multiply that sucker by about four, six or 10x.

Selena Vidya (06:08):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ricardo Bueno (06:09):
There’s a lot of people who are saying, “I don’t know how to manage what I’m doing.” When I go on social there’s so much leadership and crisis management advice that’s being spewed out. There’s a lot of work from home advice from quote-unquote, “Experts.” Who’ve been living the work-from-home life. Honestly, I found some of it super useful, but then on the other end of the spectrum I find some of it, “Well that’s just not realistic.”

Ricardo Bueno (06:36):
I think maybe we should, this is a great opportunity, you and I talked offline about the MAP Planner. What is it and how do you just find, how do you make sense of all of the chaos in your life? How do you start to wrangle that beast that is chaos? And just being a creative person, wearing multiple hats and not knowing where to start, but also we’re in the middle of a pandemic, everything’s closing in around me. How do I add structure to my life?

Selena Vidya (07:01):
Yeah, so the MAP Planner was born out of something I needed. I tried planner after planner and nothing worked, because I think as humans, time management really bleeds into life and time management. It’s not just, “What do I have to check off my task list.” It’s, “How do I manage all of that with family, with a partnership?” If you have kids, with kids. And so I wanted to structure something that helped us really get in touch with our own thoughts, helped us empty the clutter from our heads, gave us a place to really have positivity with affirmations. But also a place to structure, what are my priority items? What are the things that absolutely have to do? And I like to say it’s the pin strategy. Put something on a Post-It note, you probably aren’t going to get it done.

Selena Vidya (07:51):
What I wanted to do with the MAP Planner is give somebody a space to be introspective, do mindset work, and a safe space to just empty their brain, but also be able to wrangle the chaos of what they need to do in their everyday business life, what they need to do in their creative life if they’re trying to move projects along. It’s kind of a hybrid of the two of those things.

Ricardo Bueno (08:12):
It sounds like a coaching program is what it sounds like.

Selena Vidya (08:16):
I know. It’s kind of like a coaching program in a planner. It’s a do-it-yourself thing if you’re not ready to jump into a coach.

Ricardo Bueno (08:23):
Let’s talk about mindset work, because right now, mindset has always sort of been important. Mindset has always been uber important. You either … Especially if you’re in sales. Especially if you’re an entrepreneur. Especially, and right now, you and I, and anyone listening to this show, if you chose real estate, if you chose sales, talk about choosing a career that deals with facing rejection, and then getting up and going after it again day, after day, after day, after day. If you don’t have the right mindset to be able to handle that, or if you don’t have the right growth mindset so that you’re setting really high goals, but clearing the self doubt and everything else, then I’m afraid to say, you’re just not going to get very far.

Ricardo Bueno (09:13):
In a hot market it’s easy for even the inexperienced people to have some semblance of success. But if we run into a difficult market or a drought, it becomes even more important to have not just systems and processes, but the right mindset. So how do you tackle that? Because when we talked about the MAP Planner, you talked about certain sections of it handle affirmations. Why are affirmations important? Why are doing daily journal prompts important? And why are some of those things important and how do you tackle that to handle your … and clear your mind?

Selena Vidya (09:51):
Yeah, so there’s two boxes on the daily MAP page, which is essentially your day-to-day planner. And one of them, and please excuse the woo word. I know it sounds woo but I really believe in this word. There’s a section for manifesting, there’s a section for affirmations, and then there’s a journaling box, which I call the power prompt, basically.

Selena Vidya (10:11):
And I think with mindset, like you’re saying, in a hot market you can sell all day even if you’re not that experienced, but what do you do when things aren’t that great. While I believe in positivity and optimism and having affirmations to remind yourself of things that you need to know about yourself … One of the examples that I use is, I always want to work on being a better communicator. And one of the affirmations that I write all the time, it’s been in my daily MAP I think for a month now, is, “I’m an engaging, entertaining, magnetic speaker.” Because I want to remind myself that I have that.

Selena Vidya (10:49):
But the reason that the journaling prompts come into play is, you can be positive all day long, but I think what a lot of people neglect to do is figure out what the darkness and the shadow is. And what are the things that they’re really having trouble with? And learn how to implement that, as opposed to pretending that they don’t exist.

Selena Vidya (11:10):
If you can set your day up with affirmations and positivity that you want to lean into and that you know about yourself, you’re still going to wake up with doubts. Using that little journaling box to say, “I really woke up thinking about this, I just need to get it out of my head, get it out of my mind so I can move on with the day.” Whether that’s doubt, whether that’s a dream that’s creeping into your morning that maybe you’re not good enough, so that’s how I work with those two specific things.

Ricardo Bueno (11:37):
And that happens daily. We have to deal with that sort of self-doubt daily. We have to release it daily.

Selena Vidya (11:45):
Yeah, and there is a book that I am about halfway through because it’s a thick book, it’s called Becoming Supernatural, and in that book, I believe it’s Joe Dispenza, he talks about how when you wake up in the morning, if you are immediately jumping into your doubt, or things from yesterday that you didn’t do properly, or maybe not meeting a certain sales quota, whatever it is, you’re already bringing that into your present day. And if you don’t have a space to just empty that out, you’re going to continue to repeat that narrative throughout the day.

Selena Vidya (12:15):
Having some place to just acknowledge that you have it, it’s cool to acknowledge it, it’s good to acknowledge it, but you also have to be able to write it down, get it out of the way and then move on with just a new clarity for what you’re going to do during the day.

Ricardo Bueno (12:28):
Move on- [crosstalk 00:12:29]

Selena Vidya (12:29):
That was a very long answer.

Ricardo Bueno (12:32):
Move on with being the badass that you are.

Selena Vidya (12:37):
Exactly, yeah.

Ricardo Bueno (12:37):
Okay, let’s talk about how to wrangle your sort of chaos. A good mentor and a thought leader in the real estate space, for a lot of people, is Tom Ferry. And so, one of the things that he always says is, “Master your time management, and your productivity will skyrocket.” For me, I’m a creative person. For a lot of realtors, we’re entrepreneurs that wear so many different hats. I live and work by my calendar, it sort of dictates, “Here’s what you’ve got on the day.” But I don’t have opportunities to do deep work, so I have to calendar off that time, and for me, it takes about 30 to 40 minutes to get in the zone of that deep work, so when I do schedule my deep work I do it in larger time blocks. How do you handle this or how do you wrangle that in your own business? What have been some of your experiences? And then how do you tackle that, maybe in the MAP Planner?

Selena Vidya (13:40):
Yeah, so there’s a couple ways that I tackle that. One, time blocking is something that I do too, because with a lot of the consulting work I just need time to really think through problems, get my thoughts down and it’s just a whole, it’s a deep work process.

Ricardo Bueno (13:54):
It’s a process, mm-hmm (affirmative).

Selena Vidya (13:55):
Yeah, so every day, and it may not be the same chunk of time every day, depending on what’s going on, but I do believe in time blocking heavily.

Selena Vidya (14:03):
I also believe in day blocking. One of the things that I do is, I keep my client calls as much as possible, to two specific days. I keep them to Tuesdays and Thursdays, and this can be for meetings as well. It doesn’t have to just be client calls. But that way, I can go into the day with the mindset of, “Okay, I’m going to be communicating with people. I need to have my stuff together.” And I know that deep work probably isn’t going to happen on that day, because following up calls you have followup work that you need to do and stuff like that. Time blocking day to day, and then day blocking.

Selena Vidya (14:36):
I also keep one day where half of the day is completely dedicated to something creative or a side project that I need to work on, so that time is not disturbed ever. And Friday’s always been a great day for that because it’s usually quiet in my inbox. Most clients aren’t around on Fridays and things like that.

Selena Vidya (14:55):
And then the other method that I use, is I think a lot of people confuse a, “I should do this.” “I need to do this.” And, “I want to do this.” And then they try to just put all these things on their schedule because they can’t prioritize them.

Selena Vidya (15:10):
What I mention on the MAP Planner is the Post-It not strategy section, the pin section. You’re going to have certain tasks that, one, move the needle. Whether your goal is monetary, whether it’s relationship driven, in real estate moving things along, open house, whatever it is.

Ricardo Bueno (15:26):
Your revenue producing goals or your-

Selena Vidya (15:28):
Yes.

Ricardo Bueno (15:28):
Yeah.

Selena Vidya (15:29):
So those are items that are going to be, basically you need to do these. These are very important, so you put those done. If I have anything that’s like a should do, for example, I need to check in over email with someone. I should set up this appointment. There’s a specific section on the planner for that. In between deep work, if I have, let’s say 15 minutes, and I just want to take a break, I’ll check off something on that list, which is usually a should.

Selena Vidya (15:57):
And I think the quote, “Want to do things.” Those are always great. Usually they don’t necessarily move the needle in some way, shape or form, it’s just something you, deep down, really want to do. For me that could be something like writing, things that are just longer term. Those are my lowest priority items, but I do keep a specific day where if I want to work on those, I’ll put those in there.

Selena Vidya (16:22):
I guess to recap, time blocking, having a couple of hours of deep work. Day blocking, so if you have a very meeting heavy job, picking specific days where you can put all those together so that you can focus on just communicating in meeting. And then also figuring out what your absolute priority items are, and scheduling those in. And then figuring out what your should and want items are as well.

Ricardo Bueno (16:49):
This is all super good. One of the apps this is reminding me of, and I use this in my business right now, so I use it both on my phone and on my desktop, it’s called Things 3. And what I use it for is I have little mini projects or even followup appointments, bigger appointments, I have stuff created into groups, and then when I add or upload a new task, what I did is I created a filter or a tag, and so every task has a tag and what I did is, “Is this task going to … How much time does it require?” Can I get it done in less than 15 minutes? Can I get it done in 30 minutes? Can I get it done in an hour? Or is it going to take longer than an hour? And so when I’m shuffling between appointments, for you and I, we need space to think and do deep work.

Ricardo Bueno (17:44):
If a task is going to take me longer than an hour, that’s a deep work task that I need to carve out a morning for. If it’s something that’s going to get done in less than 15 minutes, then it’s small, it’s tedious, but it’s something that I can knock off right away, that’s something that I’ll do in between appointments.

Ricardo Bueno (18:02):
What I love about Things 3, is that everything is hooked up to my calendar, and as I’m shuffling from appointment to appointment it says, “Heads up Ricardo, here are four tasks that you can complete today.”

Selena Vidya (18:15):
Oh nice.

Ricardo Bueno (18:16):
And then I just filter between, show me everything in other words, that’s going to take less than 15 minutes, and I start to kind of just chop away at it.

Selena Vidya (18:24):
That’s pretty cool. I have Things 3, but I haven’t used it, mainly because some of the items I need to add people to, and Things 3, it doesn’t let you collaborate, which I’m hoping they roll that out. So you use Things 3, and I use two different systems for managing my work, and I think this might be helpful going back to our previous question too of managing things.

Selena Vidya (18:45):
I have Asana which is for consulting work, anything that I have team members working on, so that’s quote-unquote, “My business and consulting management platform.” But I also use something called Notion for my creative projects, which helps me separate my brain from business, because if all of it’s in Asana, and I tried this before it didn’t work, as soon as I open Asana I get overwhelmed with deeper work tasks where I know I have to do them, and I can’t get creative, so I actually keep two different management platforms for my tasks.

Ricardo Bueno (19:17):
Nice, so you had mentioned, what are some things that people can do that are not used to managing their own time from home?

Selena Vidya (19:28):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ricardo Bueno (19:29):
We talked about sort of how you can tackle your calendar. We shared maybe some apps and tools. I’ll link to these tools in the show notes guys. I’ll put them in the show notes. Things 3, I probably have read that sucker from beginning to end, their blog, and looked for best practices, but what are some things, some practical things that people can do now, as they’re transitioning to working from home, to set boundaries in their work calendar and whatnot?

Selena Vidya (19:58):
Yeah, so I think, like I mentioned before, people may not realize that scheduling in their life activities is really beneficial, even if it’s just for you. I think you and I had talked about this before, if it’s not on the calendar it doesn’t exist in life at all. I suggest if you have self-care activities, especially if you’re working out, if you’re meditating, schedule those in the calendar. Make sure they’re on there so you don’t just get overwhelmed with work and forget to take care of your mental and physical health.

Ricardo Bueno (20:26):
Just to be clear you guys, this is uncomfortable for some people.

Selena Vidya (20:29):
Yes.

Ricardo Bueno (20:30):
Or it’s weird for some people, and that’s okay, schedule it anyway. I’ll tell you why. I’ve been scheduling walks with my wife. She says to me, “Did you really just send me a calendar invite?” And I’m like, “Yes, because I need to add some semblance of structure to my day. We need to add some semblance of structure to our day.” And the calendar isn’t just for work, it’s okay to schedule the self-care stuff. In fact, I think it’s more important now than ever before-

Selena Vidya (20:59):
Yeah.

Ricardo Bueno (20:59):
As we’re dealing with all of this.

Selena Vidya (21:02):
I agree and I think a lot of people don’t prioritize themselves either, and it’s just a symptom of how, what the work environment is like now. Going back to scheduling self-care, or basically anything, I think when you’re working from home, looking at yourself as a priority and saying, “I’m a priority. What do I need to function day to day?” Put those on your schedule. It’s going to be work. It’s going to be self-care, whatever that is.

Selena Vidya (21:26):
And then I think the other thing is communicating. If you live with a significant other, if you have kids, whatever it is, or even team members that you’re going to be meeting with, I think you have to prioritize communication with people, because nobody knows what is happening when you’re working from home.

Selena Vidya (21:46):
Depending on your company, they may be a little bit more a tyrant about what you’re doing and they want to know all the time. And it’s unfortunate but that’s how it is, so making sure you’re communicating, “Hey, during this period of time I am X, Y, Z. If I’m not responding over email or anything, this is why.” And it doesn’t have to be defensive communication. It’s just basically a, “Hey, this work from home thing is new for me. Here’s how I’m structuring things. Just as a heads up, I’m trying to make this work.”

Ricardo Bueno (22:16):
It’s so … Over-communication.

Selena Vidya (22:18):
Yes.

Ricardo Bueno (22:19):
It solves a lot of problems.

Selena Vidya (22:21):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ricardo Bueno (22:22):
In business, in personal life. And right now I think it’s one of those moments where it’s okay to over communicate, that’s important too. [crosstalk 00:22:31]

Selena Vidya (22:31):
I agree.

Ricardo Bueno (22:31):
For the sake of your own sanity and everyone else’s.

Selena Vidya (22:35):
Yeah. And I think the other thing is, the word routine isn’t very sexy. I don’t even use the word routine, I use the word ritual, because I just … There’s something about the word routine that’s mundane and boring. But if you’re working from home, I also suggest trying to find some kind of routine, because you’re not driving to work, you’re maybe not getting up and getting dressed right away. What are two to three things you can do every morning that sets the stage for your mindset, your happiness, maybe it’s something you want to learn, whatever it is. And then have a time proximity of when you’re going to jump into work, and make sure you have something that definitely transitions you into the work mindset.

Selena Vidya (23:16):
It could be some people, I don’t dress in real clothes from day to day, but I know getting changed into something more outside wear is a signal. Sometimes going into a different area of the house is a signal. So what is that going to be so you can go to work mode?

Selena Vidya (23:32):
And likewise, when you’re ending the day, it’s going to be really easy for work to just flood into the rest of your life, because you’re in your house. But you said, you take walks, so maybe for some people taking a walk ends their workday, it shifts their mindset.

Selena Vidya (23:49):
For me, I work in a home office in here, so I shut the door and I leave, and I don’t come back in the office. And that’s how my brain knows, “Work time is over.”

Ricardo Bueno (24:00):
My morning ritual, not routine, ritual-

Selena Vidya (24:03):
Yes.

Ricardo Bueno (24:03):
Would probably be, I come upstairs to the home office, I have my Rockstar or my Nespresso coffee. I have one of those neon sort of lights that says, “Hustle mode on.” I turn that sucker on, I put some house music, I look at the calendar and I just, it’s I get into that Monday morning mindset. I used to think that affirmations were kind of … I used to think that they were silly. I used to think that-

Selena Vidya (24:30):
Me too.

Ricardo Bueno (24:30):
Yeah, so I used to think that they were silly, but right now I’m finding them super helpful. And so it’s one of those things, just get it out, reframe your day and get in that right sort of an … It’s just giving yourself good energy you know?

Selena Vidya (24:47):
Yeah.

Ricardo Bueno (24:48):
And then when I try to wind things down, like you, I leave the office, I shut everything down and I actually leave my work phone upstairs on silent.

Selena Vidya (25:00):
Nice.

Ricardo Bueno (25:01):
If you don’t get ahold of me, that’s why. But you do, you do have to set boundaries for yourself, for your own sanity, otherwise work is going to bleed into that home life, 24/7. And yeah, sometimes that’s okay, because you’re hustling, you’re grinding. But guys, right now I think your health is just as important, if not more so, so you have to be able to be comfortable with setting boundaries.

Selena Vidya (25:30):
Yeah, and I think we are also all going to have to practice more forgiveness for ourselves, and I know that just sounds very … I don’t know. People when they hear the word forgiveness for themselves, it puts them in just a really emotional space, but really, you’re doing the best you can, so if you’re getting used to working from home, and you’re going to have times where you’re just not productive. And instead of beating yourself over the head about not being productive, I think you just need to assess, what was the issue, and try again. I think that’s the biggest thing is, you may not be productive all the time, but as long as you’re aware of that and you can make adjustments, that’s important.

Ricardo Bueno (26:07):
That’s so good.

Selena Vidya (26:08):
And going back to the phone thing, I haven’t had work email on my phone for probably two years. And if-

Ricardo Bueno (26:16):
Oh wow.

Selena Vidya (26:17):
I know. And if you knew me before, that’s unheard of. I was married to my phone and I was looking at email at midnight. It was awful, in my past life. And I think if you’re working from home, I don’t know how many of you listening have work email on your personal phone, but maybe this is a bad advice, it worked for me, but I suggest taking it off of your phone for a little bit and keeping your work email within your work times.

Selena Vidya (26:40):
It’s going to be super tempting when you’re in your house and the environment just stays the same, to be like, “Oh, well I’ll just check my work email right when I wake up.” But you have to set that boundary. Try taking it off for a day or two, see if there’s any fires. And if there are, I’m sorry, don’t come at me. Forgive yourself.

Ricardo Bueno (27:03):
That’s awesome. I’m sorry, don’t came at me. Now, this is one of the things that I decided early on when I started dating my wife, my rule was, I’m one of those, I’ll answer your question no matter what, get in touch no matter what. And the problem is, when you go on a date, you’re always on your phone then. One of the rules I made to myself is, when it’s dinnertime, when it’s date time, when it’s going out for a walk, all push notifications are off, work phone is down and it’s just quality time with the family.

Ricardo Bueno (27:40):
We’re married, she’s six months pregnant, we don’t have kids yet, we don’t have a big family. And yeah, work is a priority, but it’s also, so is that family and that quality time. That’s a priority too, and so I set that boundary. I’m okay setting that boundary. It might be hard for a lot of people, but I think it’s important.

Selena Vidya (28:03):
Yeah, and I think especially when you are in a relationship, and number one, congratulations-

Ricardo Bueno (28:09):
Thanks.

Selena Vidya (28:09):
Of having one on the way. And yeah, I think people have this thought about setting your phone down and focusing on their partner as, it’s just viewed in a weird way, but I think it’s powerful. I think being present, even if you live with a person and you’re with them all the time, it’s still important to give them your full attention. And likewise with work, try to give your full attention to that. I think if you can be present in whatever you’re doing, and it’s way easier said than done, there’s so much power and you can get way more stuff done if you focus and you’re not doing a million things at once.

Ricardo Bueno (28:45):
Okay, so let’s shift to … Let’s shift a little bit. One of the things that I posted today … And what did I say? Let me pull it up. I said that, “The steps you take during this down time can either pay off when this is all over or leave you playing catch up.” Some people are using this, I’ve told all of my clients, “Use this as an opportunity to double down on the content that you create, because the content that you create between now and the next six months is planting seeds for building your know, like and trust factor out in the community.”

Ricardo Bueno (29:26):
A lot of people are using this down time to consume and learn some of things that they’ve otherwise been putting off, but I’m also seeing this sense of overwhelm “I’m home, all I’m doing is consuming webinar, after webinar, after webinar.” It’s like at some point all of that consumption needs to stop, because there’s overflow and your minds going to explode. And then the next thing you know, you’ve executed on absolutely nothing because you’ve consumed way too much, you have all of these ideas and you’re just all over the place. How do you manage that?

Selena Vidya (30:02):
Yeah, so for one, I’ll start by saying, I’m an eternal knowledge seeker. I’m always reading, learning and things like that. And before we hopped on here, we were talking about how when they were recommending that we start staying home, a lot of people were offering free webinars, a couple of organizations that I follow are opening up all of their courses for free and I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to sign up for this. This is so great.” And even for someone who works from home, I still had extra time because I wasn’t going out to do other things.

Selena Vidya (30:34):
But then there’s the overwhelm. I think right now, you have to realize that there are so many eyeballs online, and there are so many people consuming. You have an opportunity to put stuff out there, and there’s more people now than probably ever that are looking for that.

Ricardo Bueno (30:48):
100%.

Selena Vidya (30:49):
Yeah, and for me, I’ve basically pocketed time where I let myself rabbit hole. I have one to two hours a week where I’m like, “You know what, if I want to learn something, do something, read something in depth, this is a time where I’m going to do it.” Usually it’s on a weekend where I’ll block off the time. And then the other times where I really want to consume something, I’m forcing myself to produce something instead.

Selena Vidya (31:15):
I’m getting back into doing more PermissionLESS episodes. I’m trying to write. Even if I’m not putting something out for the world to consume, I’m trying to channel that into just creating in general. And I think creating is a muscle. It’s really easy to consume, consume.

Ricardo Bueno (31:33):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Selena Vidya (31:33):
But you want to be on the other side of that, because you want to be somebody that people are consuming information, and education, and entertainment from. And right now, you really have a chance to do that. You have extra time. There’s a lot of change going on in the world. I think people are open to learning new things and just finding new people who are interesting, so you need to take advantage of that.

Selena Vidya (31:58):
I guess as a quick, short answer to your question is, I really block out time to consume, consciously, so I know that’s what I’m doing. And I especially block out more time to create things in the time that I would previously be consuming.

Ricardo Bueno (32:15):
Yup, no, that’s super important. Like I said, I like your phrase, rabbit hole time. I created a separate calendar on my calendar. And so I color code my calendars. I have in green is my creative time, and that’s what I use when I’m blocking off time in my weekly calendar, my creative time is my deep work time, it’s my time to sort of work on something and it’s usually along the lines of content production. If you’re listening to this and you’re wondering, “Well, what the heck do I communicate? What the heck do I create?” Right now everything’s kind of crazy.

Ricardo Bueno (32:59):
There’s no playbook for communicating in a crisis. But that doesn’t mean we need to panic or jump into panic mode and get stuck like deer in the headlights. I wrote an article yesterday, and so I’ll link to it in the show notes, and the article was titled Steal a Page Out of Zillow’s Playbook. And I found that this was interesting. On any given month prior to the pandemic, Zillow spends about $50 000 a month advertising and running ads on Facebook, housing ads promoting specific listings or specific neighborhoods. The ad that … And to be clear, I’m going to share this one, two step strategy. It doesn’t matter how you feel about Zillow. Put that aside. This strategy is smart. What they’re saying is, they’re running relevant ads and the ad, I’ll read it to you really quickly, “Home is a sanctuary, a place of comfort and connection, and that has never been more important than now. That’s why we created a resource center with timely information to help you make sense of the things.”

Ricardo Bueno (34:00):
And then the ad is just an image, “Never has home been more important than right now.” And what it links to is a resource page that says, “You have questions. We can help.” Sub-headline, “Keeping you informed on how to handle buying, selling or renting, not just nesting at home, as we adapt to life during COVID-14.” And all it is, is a list of FAQs that a buyer might have given what’s going on in the market, that a seller might have like, “Can I really sell my house during COVID-19? Can I show my house virtually?” Et cetera, et cetera. If you’re a renter, what do you need to know? Or heck, if you’re not even thinking of doing any of these things, here are 10 different ways to create more comfort in a small space, or to make your home feel more homely.

Ricardo Bueno (34:50):
I guess what I’m saying is, you have to create your buyer personas. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes, literally. And the content that you’re going to create is just addressing those things, because right now, we all have questions. It doesn’t mean … We all have questions, and you should have answers. Just make sure that you’re talking to that right sort of customer profile. And I think that’s super, super, super important.

Ricardo Bueno (35:17):
And then like Selena said, if you’re not used to this, it can be difficult. Create that time on your schedule, and stick to it. Hold yourself accountable and stick to it, because if you don’t, if you’re just going to say, “Oh, I’ll get to it later.” I promise-

Selena Vidya (35:34):
You’ll never get to it, yeah.

Ricardo Bueno (35:35):
I promise you, yeah you’ll never get to it. That’s why I tell my wife, I’m like, “Hey … ” She says, “Can we do this?” I’m like, “Yeah, can you do me a favor? Can you send me a calendar invite?” “Why? We’re just going to go get groceries.” Or, “We’re just going to go do this.” I’m like, “Yeah I know, but can you please add a calendar invite?” Because it helps me get in the right frame of mind.

Ricardo Bueno (35:56):
We need now, more than ever, to use all of these different things, techniques, hacks, whatever you want to call them, to add structure to our lives. So yeah, I don’t know where I was going with that.

Selena Vidya (36:10):
Well, I think when you were talking about calendaring and your wife asks, “You really want this on the calendar?” We carry around so much mental clutter in our heads without realizing it. We don’t realize that it’s there, but everything that we are trying to remember, even if it’s days down the line, even something as simple as getting groceries, that sits in there. If you have a place to process those things, and just put them on a task list, put them on the calendar, write them down, your brains going to feel so much better because you’re not carrying around the burden of things that you don’t even realize you’re thinking about.

Selena Vidya (36:47):
One of the things that I like to do is just write down all of the things that are in my head. And then by the time I get down that list, there’s like 20 things, and I’m like, “Holy shit, no wonder I can’t … No wonder I’m having trouble focusing today.” And then I feel so much better.

Selena Vidya (37:02):
And I wanted to touch back on what you were saying about Zillow. I saw that page yesterday actually, and I think it’s fantastic. And this is more marketing, so hopefully this doesn’t derail us a little bit, but there’s been a really fine gray area with marketing right now. And I was having this conversation with a client a couple days ago, because we’re trying to figure out what are the resources that are going to be really helpful. How can we can continue to build trust even if people aren’t necessarily going to sign up for this service? And I think, like you mentioned before, building trust right now is great. People may not necessarily want to buy, but they’re still looking for information.

Ricardo Bueno (37:44):
Correct.

Selena Vidya (37:44):
You can still build that trust factor, and then down the line, you’ll be somebody or a brand that they remember.

Ricardo Bueno (37:48):
Correct, 100%. Just because they’re not going to buy now, doesn’t mean they’re not looking for entertainment or education to make a buying decision in Q3 or Q4.

Ricardo Bueno (38:02):
Okay, so you said something right now, and maybe this is where we can kind of close the loop. But right now, people are busy, we consume a lot on a day-to-day basis. You said something earlier before we popped on the call, that if you ask somebody what they learned today, chances are they won’t remember.

Selena Vidya (38:18):
Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Ricardo Bueno (38:20):
How do you sort of go through your day and blog all of these ideas that come at you from a million different directions? [crosstalk 00:38:28]

Selena Vidya (38:28):
Yeah, so I use the MAP Planner for that, and before I created it, I was just writing it down in a notebook. I have two areas. I have a back burner page, so if I read something and it inspires a thought, I put it on a back burner page so I can process that later, put it on a task list, whatever I need to do. And then I also, at the end of the day, almost every day, I’m human so there’s some days where I just don’t do this, but I write one to two things that I actually learned today. And if I can’t remember anything at the end of the day that I learned, that means I’m not consciously consuming. I’m not consuming with intention.

Selena Vidya (39:04):
I think sitting with yourself at the end of the day and saying, “Can I recall one to two things?” If you can’t, it probably wasn’t that important. And then consider whether you should be spending your time consuming that anyway.

Selena Vidya (39:16):
And if you realize you just didn’t have time to consume anything, but you are somebody who loves seeking knowledge or is trying to learn something new, then maybe consider setting 15 to 20 minutes, consciously, and then revisit that at the end of the day and say, “What did I learn during this period of time where I was reading this thing, doing this thing?” That’s how I tend to handle it.

Ricardo Bueno (39:36):
Awesome. Selena, where can we find more about, where can we learn more about you, your PermissionLESS Podcast and the MAP Planner?

Selena Vidya (39:46):
Yeah, so I’m Selena Vidya on any social platform, so you can find me there. That’s where I spend the most of my time, not necessarily on the brand accounts. You can find the MAP Planner at morningactionpapers.com. And then PermissionLESS, you can find Permission_LESS on Twitter and Instagram, and the PermissionLESS on Facebook.

Ricardo Bueno (40:05):
Awesome, thank you so much. That was awesome.

Selena Vidya (40:08):
Yeah, no, thanks for having me. I love talking about this stuff, and I could probably talk your ear off for days.

Ricardo Bueno (40:15):
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly Boost. If you got value out of this episode, do me a favor, head on over to iTunes to subscribe, and leave a review so we can reach more people and change more lives with this content.

Ricardo Bueno (40:28):
Oh, and one more thing. Do you want to know how effective your online marketing strategy is? In order to succeed in real estate, you need to learn how to market yourself well. Find out how your marketing strategy stacks up against the competition by visiting ricardobueno.com/audit, answer a few simple questions and get an instant audio course on how to level up your marketing today. Again, that’s ricardobueno.com/audit. See you next time.

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