To be perfectly honest, I reward myself by shutting my phone off at a certain time in the evening and quite often on weekends.  Very rarely is something so important that you must answer their question immediately and if the client really is your client, they will wait for you to be available.

Your time is as important as theirs and they should know you are worth waiting for, not to mention it is always better when you can focus 100% of the attention on the client and not on your husband yelling at the kids.

Unless, your phone rings every ten minutes (I am assuming it does not ring that much) I think your friends are being rude. Maybe you should sit down with them and have a heart to heart, explaining how you feel about this. They might not realize just how insensitive they are being. And if they can't understand it, maybe you should look at making friends with some fellow realtors.
But also, to address the comment above, there is a happy medium somewhere in this and you can compromise a bit too. I one had a realtor who kindly told me that she did not take calls between certain hours, unless it was an emergency. Most clients are very understanding, as they have families too.

I love this post!  Good one!  In the previous years when the market was hot and getting hotter by the minute, everybody and their mom got their real estate license.  Anybody and everybody either knew a loan officer/Realtor® or was one themselves.  Now that the market cooled significantly, these people are going back to their day jobs treating their real estate careers as a hobby.  I see this as a great selling point when competing for a client's business.  I'm in this business FULL TIME.  I answer my phone when you call, and if I don't I'll call you back ASAP and tend to your needs.  Real estate is my passion, my career and my job...not a hobby that I pick up and put down when I only have the time for it.

Well I am referring to the fact I have my phone on when I am expecting a call on a counter offer or about an inspection things like that. I don't have my phone on all the time, only when there is a need. BUT when you have kids it is better to have the phone on because of an emergency also.

We could be playing cards and another friend at the table will have her phone ring every 5 minutes- her grown kids call to fight with her about money or baby sitting. The hosts will get angry and then expect me to turn my phone off because someone else has aggravated them. I tell them right out I am not turning my phone off.

My clients know not to call me after 8pm. That is my cut off time. they are understanding-

Ryan- When you have kids home for the summer, you lend up spending more time working from the home office or for another example- have to ever heard of an Agent that doesn't work Saturday or Sundays? Well the kids are home on the weekends and so is the husband so am I not to take calls on the prime time of real estate because my kids or husband can not seperate me for 5 minutes as a professional rather than mom or wife?

Thank you Chris-

I feel the same way and I am glad you see my point of view.

I think that fact that we (meaning y'all right now) don't punch a time clock means that we have to take more control over our time. When we don't set boundaries between work and family time and "me time" it all runs together and we can get burnt out pretty quickly.

It might be a good idea (for most of us) to have established business hours and make them known to our clients. If we (still y'all) are calendaring contingencies and other items related to the transaction or client relationship then we prevent fires that need to be put out immediately.

As for the friend that made the comment about getting a job, it was rude but probably made out of ignorance. People without entrepreneurial mindsets will never understand us (this time I mean me too). However, I do hope you and your friend have made up.

As for the other friends, they are probably right. I know you don't want to hear that. But when we have committed to spend time with others then we should honor that commitment. Clients can leave a message. Especially if it's outside of establish business hours. :-)

There are times when I put my phone on vibrate , wedding, funeral and a few other events. I will return the call as soon as possible. I do work full time but I feel there are times when my time is my own for a little while.