Time Management Tips from Beth Azor

“How do you manage your time?”

That is probably the question I am most asked during my bootcamps, workshops, and during individual coaching sessions. My guess is, that since I’m constantly giving a lot of ideas on how to improve skills and habits, people think, “Maybe she knows how to get more done in a day.”?

I’m not an expert in time management by any means but I can provide some tips that have worked for me, and other ideas I have picked up along the way:

Getting Up Early

As of today, I am at day 29 of a 30-day personal challenge. Hal Elrod, author of the book The Miracle Morning, recommends getting up an hour earlier than you normally do every morning and complete six things that will contribute to your personal development and future success. In his book, he recommends we do six things every morning: (1) meditation, (2) affirmation, (3) visualization, (4) exercise, (5) reading positive material, and (6) journaling.

Since I haven’t seen any obvious impactful results yet, I’ve decided I’m going to do it until the end of the year. I want to make sure I give it my all. I don’t want to be like the people who say, “Oh, canvassing doesn’t work,” after doing it only once, so I’m going to double down and look forward to seeing the benefits.
Gary Vaynerchuk said he’s been waking up 30 minutes earlier than normal in the last few months and can’t believe how much more he’s getting done.

When you get an extra 30 minutes to an hour in the day, you want to do something with that time you think would be beneficial to you. I’m not sure the visualization or the affirmations are working for me just yet, so I may substitute it with planning my day or more writing. You can also educate yourself by listening to a podcast or reading a book.

Time Blocking

What is “time blocking”?

If there is a specific time-consuming task I need to get done, I will allot time to it and plow through. For example, if I need to work on Pipedrive (my CRM- which is something you should all have because certainly, that helps with time management!) I will “block time” to input notes. I will set an alarm on my phone for 20 minutes and then you can guess what happens when the 20 minutes is up… Yep! I’m so engaged in the task that I’ll do it for another 30 minutes, which is fabulous. It’s a little mind trick that works for me.

VERY IMPORTANT: While doing tasks, don’t answer phone calls. I put my phone on airplane mode to keep it from ringing while I’m working on something that requires my attention like an LOI or a lease. If you have an office door, close it. Get rid of the distractions. The time you allocate to a task is for that task only.

Top 3

Another trick that works for me is scheduling my top 3. My goal is to get 3 important things done every day. So, the night before, just before I go to sleep, I will put the 3 important things I want to get done the next day on my calendar

9 times out of 10, those things are follow-up phone calls. If they’re on my calendar for 7:30 or 8:00am, I can usually get them done after I drop Mario off at the bus stop. So, by the time I get to the office, either they’re all done, or I’m 2 out of 3. Not bad!

Find More Time

I highly recommend you do this exercise that I lovingly call the “Exercise of Torture” once a year, where you time log all your activities.

Complete a time log of every activity every 15 minutes for one week, starting at 7:00 AM or 8:00 AM on Monday morning until Friday night at 6:00 PM. I’m sure you will see things you shouldn’t be doing, and you should be able to free up an extra 2 to 3 hours in your schedule. If not, send it to me and we can walk through it together and I promise we will find extra time!

Virtual Assistants

We’re presently looking for a Virtual Assistant to log information into Pipedrive for us. When we go to workshops and we collect business cards or postcards from people who want free giveaways, neither Josee nor myself should be doing data entry into Pipedrive. We would rather pay a VA $10.00 per hour to do this. Our hourly rate is too high for that activity.

Are there any tasks that you are doing that you could pay someone a lower hourly rate to do for you?

If you’re washing your car on the weekends and you don’t like it, can you hire someone? Are you still cleaning your house? If your hourly rate is $100 an hour and you can hire a cleaning person for $20 an hour, shouldn’t you be doing that?

If you want to spend more time with your kids, but you’re busy running to the grocery store every other day, then you should be using Shipt or Instacart. I’ve been using Shipt for two years and it literally has saved me 3 hours a week, not to mention the money it saves me from the lack of impulse buying! 😊

So, wake up earlier, list your top 3, do the Exercise of Torture, time block, shut off distractions and leverage your time with other people. Those are my tips for time management. I’d love for you to share your time management tips with me!

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Learn More:

Canvassing and Rejection

Maximizing Renewals

How to Break Out of “The Funk”

When Do You Have Leverage in a Deal?

Do Something That Scares You

Don’t Be the First to Say No

Most of us are silently saying no to prospects before we’ve asked them a single question. “They won’t be interested.” “They’re too small.” “They can’t afford our rates.” These thoughts show up automatically, and we listen to them without even realizing it. I think this comes from how we’re raised. As kids we hear no constantly, and we’re taught to just accept it. So as adults, we do everything we can to avoid hearing it again. One way we do that is by saying no on someone’s behalf before we ever give them the chance to answer for themselves. The flip side is just as damaging. When we do hear no from a prospect, some of us swing the other way and refuse to accept it, pushing and pressuring until it feels like a hard sell. Neither reaction serves you. Both come from the same place, an old discomfort with the word no that has nothing to do with your business today. The fix is simple, even if it takes practice. Ask the question you’re avoiding. Let the prospect answer for themselves. If they say no, thank them and move on. If they say yes, you just found a deal

July 20, 2026

Ask What They Do Now

Early in my career, a man called about my vacant 6,000 square foot end cap in Lake Worth. He said he wanted to open a video store as a prototype before franchising it. I laughed, told him the space was built for a restaurant, and filed his info a year out. I even wrote “Video Store, Ha!” on the sheet. That man was Wayne Huizenga. One year later his video store had 40 locations. It became Blockbuster. I didn’t lose that deal because of the space. I lost it because I never asked one simple question. From now on, ask every prospect these two questions before you do anything else. What do you do now? What made you call on my center today? These two questions tell you in thirty seconds whether you’re talking to a time waster or your next anchor tenant. Don’t skip them just because a prospect sounds unusual or too small to matter. Rockstar Tip: Never assume you already know how a call is going to go. Ask, then listen.

July 13, 2026

Stop Answering For Your Prospects

My first day in commercial real estate, my boss left me alone in the office with a pile of onboarding papers and zero training. I didn’t know a rent roll from a hole in the ground. I just knew I was supposed to prospect. So I called the only company I could think of with more than one location, a print shop I’d passed on my drive in that morning. I asked if they were looking to expand. They said yes. We signed them for their new corporate headquarters, and I went from rookie to Leasing Agent within weeks. I got that deal because I asked the question and stayed quiet long enough to hear the answer. I didn’t decide for that prospect that they weren’t interested. Most agents lose deals before they ever pick up the phone. They see an established business and assume the owner is happy. They see a struggling business and assume it can’t afford to expand. They see a national brand and assume it already has a broker. Every time, they’ve said no for a prospect who never got asked. Your job is to ask, not predict. Every business on your route is a lead

July 6, 2026

When You’re on a Deadline, Change the Game

If you bought a shopping center with a short-term loan—bridge, mezzanine, or hard money—you probably have one mission: increase NOI fast so you can refinance. When that clock is ticking, your leasing strategy needs to change. The first mistake I see owners make is misreading the market. If the market rent is $15 but you’re holding out for $20 because an online report told you that number, you’re wasting precious months. When you have a deadline, you must know the real market—by walking properties, talking to leasing agents, and confirming vacancy levels yourself. If the market is soft or vacancy is high, sometimes the smartest move is to get aggressive early. For example, you might offer a discounted first-year rate that steps up over time—$8 in year one, $12 in year two, and market rent by year three. This helps you fill space quickly and grow NOI, which is what your lender cares about. You can also create urgency with your leasing team. Instead of the standard commission, offer short-term “bounty” bonuses for specific spaces that must be leased by a certain date. Large REITs use this tactic all the time to move stubborn vacancies. Finally, remember that timing matters.

June 29, 2026

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