We don’t talk about it often enough, but dual career agents are everywhere. Many of us do more than real estate in our day-to-day lives. Whether it’s because of the market, the necessity to get another job, waiting for your retirement or pension to kick in, career transitions, or simply because you love what you do – you may be working two jobs.

And managing two jobs is nothing short of tricky. But we are here today to talk about how to make that work.

Enter Columbia, South Carolina real estate agent Rhonda Sweatt. While she got her real estate license in 2019, she isn’t solely an agent. She’s been a respiratory therapist working 13-hour shifts for 30 years. And not only that, she also has a very active role teaching marching band. In Rhonda’s words, her approach to her career can be described as “get up and go to work, no matter what.”

Rhonda has an Associate’s degree in respiratory. And when she was looking at next steps in that career path, she didn’t love the options. She didn’t want a career that evolved into sitting behind a desk and preferred to stay on the move. So she started considering real estate.

She reached out to a former boss who was also in real estate and talked through her potential career moves. Knowing she didn’t want to give up her career as a respiratory therapist, Rhonda’s former boss helped her set a goal of three transactions a year while working full-time in the medical industry.

She ended up doing six.

Along the way, Rhonda has found that she’s able to take traits of the medical career she loves, such as its algorithmic approach to solutions and systems and lay it over her real estate career – and vice versa. The two overlap in a way that has been very beneficial for her and she doesn’t foresee stopping any time soon.

While currently on track to close 18-19 deals this year and continuing to work full-time at the hospital, we needed to know: how does she do it?

Here are Rhonda’s tips for living the dual career life successfully.

1. Calendar everything – but allow for fluidity. Rhonda puts all the important things in her life and two careers into a color-coded calendar. This allows her to look at the day ahead, take a glance at the colors making up her day, and know what’s in store. For example, the Pivot: Shift Ahead call is purple, her hospital work is in green, real estate appointments and calls are in red, marching band commitments are in blue, and date night is colored pink. And while her approach is highly systematic, Rhonda has learned that with having dual careers, she has to allow herself the freedom to make adjustments in her calendar when necessary. Flexibility to change what’s calendared if needed is key.

2. Transparency is key. Rhonda doesn’t hide one career from the other. In fact, she’s found by embracing both careers, other people do as well. She believes the key is to set expectations around how she handles both careers up front with both clients and other co-op agents. She tells them when and how she communicates (especially because she works the overnight shifts at the hospital). She tells them when to expect to hear from her. And because she is honest with them about what she does and then shows up professionally on all fronts, she has not experienced a single instance of someone telling her one career has gotten in the way of the other.

3. Be purposeful about your lead generation efforts. Having two jobs can limit the time you have available for lead generation. With that in mind, it’s important to be efficient in the time you do have available. In fact, she’s stopped mentally clocking in and out of the two professions with beneficial results. Rhonda has found that her job at the hospital is actually quite an asset to her real estate career, as her biggest lead source is the hospital. She finds she is able to talk to others at the hospital in between their emergency respiratory work, making connections and setting appointments. And her respiratory position also results in real estate referrals.

4. People aren’t checking the time stamps of your communication. In order to balance both professions, it’s more important to have a follow-up system to prevent anything from falling through the cracks than it is to have a specific time when you send your communications. Rhonda often sends messages to her database and clients after her overnight shift. She has found that people don’t mind that an email lands in their inbox in the middle of the night as long as the job is getting done well.

5. Be boring. It doesn’t have to be complicated, but it’s important to get into a routine of staying in touch. Rhonda uses the database management system known as DTD2. This system, “Doing the Database 2” divides up your database’s last name by letters and tells you which letters to reach out to weekly. Rhonda limits her reach outs primarily to text and social media because so much of her database consists of hospital connections whose work shifts she doesn’t know. Her tactic is simple and effective: “I haven’t talked to you in a while. How are things?”

Whatever your reasons behind having dual careers – it IS possible to do both at a high level when you allow yourself to have systems, a routine, and flexibility as well as transparency with those you work with.

To access the schedule Rhonda uses to navigate her careers on a day-to-day basis (and much more), join The Inspire Collective here.