The Bandwidth Lie: How Agents Grow by Firing Their Bottom 10%
(80/20 Sales & Marketing, Ch. 18–19)
The Hidden Paradox of Being “Too Busy to Grow”
Every real estate agent knows the feeling: you’re not busy enough to justify hiring help, but somehow you’re too busy to grow. You’re running from appointment to appointment, answering emails and texts at red lights, modifying contracts and sending stuff out for signature at 11pm, and wondering why the business feels like a treadmill instead of a staircase.
C’mon… you know what I’m talking about if you’ve been doing this for any period of time with some success.
Perry Marshall names the villain behind this cycle: the bandwidth myth.
The Bandwidth Myth Agents Believe — and Why It’s Wrong
It’s the belief agents hold onto with religious intensity:
“I’ll hire an assistant when I’m big enough.”
It sounds reasonable. Responsible. Even humble… for those who’ve admitted they’re control freaks and know they need to let go (but often won’t).
But it’s dead wrong.
Because hiring an assistant doesn’t happen after you grow.
Hiring an assistant is what allows you to grow. And if hiring an assistant is too much of a leap, at least hire a transaction manager or use the service if it’s offered by your office/broker.
Agents don’t fail to scale because they’re lazy.
They fail because they drown in work that never should have been theirs in the first place.
The Sand That Suffocates Your Business
The uncomfortable twist is that the tasks keeping agents stuck aren’t the “big” ones. They’re the tiny, invisible grains of sand that fill every crack of the day — the follow-up email you rewrite five times, the lender document you resend, the MLS edit you adjust, the social post you tweak for the third time, the time wasted on Canva creating images or pretty documents.
None of these tasks are harmful on their own… but together?
They smother your earning power.
Perry’s formula is brutally simple:
If a task drains your energy, requires no special skill, or could be done 80% as well by someone else, it does not belong to you.
Not now. Not when you’re bigger. Not ever.
And too many of you think that whoever you hire has to perform at the same level as you. Trust me… I’ve heard it when my assistant posts a social image with an error and people in my office get all over my case about how she’s not doing a good job or how I need to hire someone else or I need to oversee everything she’s doing better.
But I look at the fact that she’s honest, hard working, fixes errors quickly, and saves me at least 12 hours of my time per week.
That’s 624 hours per year — nearly four months of my time annually.
The Real 80/20 Breakthrough: The Bottom 10% Purge
The real breakthrough from Chapters 18 and 19 isn’t just about delegation. It’s about the courage to perform what Perry calls the “bottom 10% purge.” Most people think this means firing an employee. In real estate, it means something far more personal — and far more liberating.
It means firing the bottom 10% of tasks that make you resent your job.
It means firing the bottom 10% of leads that will never convert.
It means firing the bottom 10% of clients who treat you like a concierge instead of a professional. (And if you think I’m talking to you when you read this, I am… and you know who you are.)
And yes — it means firing the bottom 10% of habits that quietly eat your potential alive.
Why the Bottom 10% Creates 90% of Your Stress
When agents finally examine their work honestly, they notice something shocking:
The bottom 10% creates almost all the frustration… and almost none of the income.
Read that again and think for 60 seconds about what frustrates you about your business, and you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about and which tasks create your pain.
It’s the late-night Canva tweaking.
It’s the dead leads you guilt-keep in your CRM.
It’s the inbox you treat like a slot machine.
It’s the client who drains your sanity and energy before you even get to the negotiation table. And if you’re not sure who that is, think of the person whose email you see and decide you’ll get back to it later… or when your phone rings and you see their name appear and you decide you don’t want to deal with that person right now.
Eliminating Drag Creates Space for High-Value Work
Cleaning this out is the real 80/20 breakthrough.
Because when you eliminate the lowest-value 10%, you instantly elevate the value of everything else.
You create space for the appointments, conversations, negotiations, and opportunities that actually generate money.
You stop being reactive and start being intentional.
And most importantly — you feel like a business owner again instead of the overworked intern of your own company.
Hire When You’re 30% Overwhelmed — Not When You’re Drowning
This is why Perry insists that agents should hire when they feel 20–30% overwhelmed… not when they’re already drowning. By the time you’re underwater, you have neither the clarity nor the time to climb out. But when you hire early — or when you ruthlessly eliminate your bottom 10% — you create the breathing room that allows your best work to emerge.
That’s the irony:
Agents think they’ll hire once they “get big.”
But an assistant is the only reason they ever get big.
The Work Only You Can Do — and the Courage to Release the Rest
If you want a business that grows instead of gasps for air, the path is clear:
Stop believing the bandwidth lie.
Stop waiting to “be ready.”
Stop doing work that you secretly resent.
Stop holding onto leads, clients, and habits that drag you downward.
Your business rises the moment you stop carrying the work that weighs it down.
And your income rises the moment you begin protecting the work that only you can do — the strategic, relational, high-trust, high-value work that turns chaos into closings.
Your Assignment: Fire the Gravity Holding You Down
This week, your homework is simple:
Identify the 10% of your business that has no future… and give yourself the freedom to let it go.
It’s not about firing people.
It’s about firing gravity.
And when you do, you will feel — maybe for the first time — what it’s like to be lifted.
