Are you old enough to remember what it was like to write something? With a pen or pencil? Other than signing birthday cards or checks, we pretty much type (or text) everything these days.
And I’m not sure how much longer checks will be around.
Anyway – if we type everything these days, wouldn’t it be great to find ways to type more efficiently? Real estate investors should be spending their time doing deals, not just sitting behind a computer typing.
There are many things an investor writes over and over again. Instead, you should be able to type just a letter or two and have the following magically appear:
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A direct mail letter
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A lease
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Letters of instruction to your tenants or potential tenants
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Contracts
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Your email signature
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HTML for your website
For instance – type ‘lease’ and a full lease comes up on the page.
Not just that. But the lease would have all the appropriate boxes highlighted and ready to be filled in.
Wouldn’t this make you a lot more productive? A lot of other people think so. That’s why there are several programs that ‘expand’ what you are typing and save you lots of time.
The programs are not just for word processing programs like Microsoft Word or Apple’s Pages either. They can also work to fill in blog posts, text files, spreadsheets, file paths and pretty much everywhere else you type on your computer.
Text Expander for Mac
Mac users will be happy to know that the original (and probably the most popular) ‘text expanding’ software is made for the Mac. It’s called, naturally, Text Expander.
Text Expander does everything we just described above. It creates ‘snippets’ of text that correspond to a much larger block. You can access the larger block just by typing a few characters.
For instance, say you want to be able to insert your address anywhere. All you have to do is:
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Set up a snippet in the list on the left hand side of the screen
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Name the snippet (in this case ‘hhome’)
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Put your address on the right side of the screen.
From that point on, every time you type ‘hhome’ (no quotes), your address will populate in whatever program you are in.
Of course you can turn Text Expander off any time and type ‘hhome’ to your heart’s content, but why do that?
You can also create forms, like leases, that will automatically show up when you type a certain number of keys. The form will have all the blanks you need to fill in to really personalize or customize it.
The form has all sorts of ways to make it easy to customize:
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‘Fill in the blank’ single line fields that allow you to type a name or a number in it – something short
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Drop down menus for specific selections (‘today’, ‘tomorrow’ or ‘1 week’ for instance)
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Check boxes that you can select to add certain text or leave it out
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Multi-line fields that allow you to add all the extra text you want
Once you fill everything in and hit ‘Ok,’ your custom document is ready to go.
The software costs $34.95, but there is a free download to try it out. If you don’t mind pop-ups and ads, you can probably get away with just using the free version.
Text Expander also has an app to share its capabilities with all your other Apple devices for just $4.99 as of this writing.
There are also books on Text Expander to teach you how to really exploit all the capabilities of the software.
If those prices seem a little steep, you may want to look at some other apps for Mac that can provide similar capabilities.
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AText has many of the features of Text Expander but is an App for only $5
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TypeIt4Me does not have fillable forms, but otherwise does most of what Text Expander does. Once again the app costs $5
But What about a PC?
Not to be outdone, there are several types of software that expand text on PC’s.
Phrase Express is an affordable and powerful text expansion software.
Affordable because it’s free.
Powerful because Phrase Express learns the patterns of what you type and can then autofill a bunch of phrases for you.
The drawback to Phrase Express is that large snippets take a long time to fill in, unless you do some tweaking to the program.
If you are willing to pay a price similar to Text Expander for Mac, you can purchase powerful software called Breevy.
For about $40, Breevy has almost all the features of Text Expander, but can also launch apps such as your internet browser, Microsoft Office tools (Word, Excel, etc.) or other programs you may have.
All of these software applications also have spell check that will work on any program – not just word processing programs.
Text Expansion is here and can make you a lot more productive. That way, you can spend more time in front of buyers and motivated sellers. And less time in front of your computer.
Tech Tips?
What do you think about this tech tip? Do you have any to share? Leave ‘em in the comments section below.
Standardize – If you have standard applications, leases, contracts and other forms, it makes it very quick and easy to get the forms done. Plus, you can show you are treating everyone equally when running your business.
Do More with Less – Just do this one. Period.
Create Processes and Follow Them – The most successful investors do this well. Processes allow you to be very productive.
JP Moses
is a real estate investor in Memphis, TN, with experience ranging from land lording to note buying, rehabbing, and wholesaling. However, wholesaling is the area that he enjoys most and where he bring the most experience and expertise to his students.