What are your real estate marketing opportunities for 2022? Will inflation change people’s plans? Will prices continue to rise, or stabilize? Could politics create more or less stability? How will these things affect your business? It’s time to prepare your 2022 real estate business plan!
Life & Business Goal Setting
Our free planning tool provides a detailed set of five spreadsheets, with ample prompts for you to analyze, strategize, and develop a killer plan for 2022. Below you’ll find the link to the planning tool, plus several fun goal-setting exercises you might enjoy for 2022.
Enjoy, and please share this post with Realtors you know…
The Real Estate Business Plan
Discover Your Business Again
Our detailed planning tool will help you…
- Build on previous successes
- Identify market opportunities
- Prepare for potential threats
- Expose process gaps that need to be corrected
- Explore difficult questions: What behaviors will you need to change? What skills do you need to gain? What systems do you need to build?
The planning tool will help you analyze your key numbers (past and future), and help you see in stark reality what you’ve been doing right and wrong. Ultimately, it’ll show you what actions you need to take in order to achieve your income goals for the year.
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Grab the 2022 Business Planning Tool Here
“Wait, why am I doing this?”
Goal, goals, goals
You’re eager to get started on your business plan. But before jumping into the numbers and strategies, take a step back and look at the bigger picture. Think about what drives you, not just your business.
How do you keep going when the going gets tough? What gets you up in the morning filled with purpose? Which values do you hold most dear?
Start your plan with your dreams
For example, imagine you have a goal to “make $200,000 this year.” Why $200,000? Are you raising your income so you can start a family? Do you need to build your kids’ college account so they can go to the best schools? Is it important for you to retire in the tropics? Will $200,000 make your father proud? Is $200,000 what you need to meet your obligations? Whatever the reason, it’s your reason, and it’s extremely important to you.
Those dreams and values and life goals are what drive and motivate you. The clearer you are about them, the more dedicated you’ll be to your business plan.
Here’s one goal-setting exercise that can help you get in touch with those life dreams, and let them guide your planning process.
10-5-3-1 Year Goal-Setting Exercise
If you’re looking for a life goals process to guide your business planning, my favorite is called 10-5-3-1 Year Goal-Setting. Here are the simple steps:
1. Block out time & settle in
Grab pen & paper (goal planning is better on real paper than on an electronic device), then settle in a comfortable place with no distractions. Block out the time so you’re not disturbed. Prepare to spend time in your imagination. This is dream time, not numbers time.
2. Brainstorm life in 2032
- Brainstorm about your life in ten years. Start by stating how old you are ten years from now, using the present tense. (“I’m 43 years old.” “I’m 61 years old.”) This puts you in the right frame of mind.
- Then describe each of the following items in detail ten years from now, using the present tense again: Your house, family, closest relationships, work, income/finances, car, body, and mental health. This is the dream picture of your life in ten years. You can also carry this out 15 or even 20 years if you like. This process of imagining can take minutes, hours, or even days for some people.
- Convert each of your dream images into concrete goals in the present tense: For example, In ten years … “I own a house in the tropics.” “I am a beautiful, fit 50 year old woman.” “I look at my husband with love every day.” It’s up to you, based on where you want to be in ten years.
3. Repeat for life in 2027 (5 years), 2025 (3 years), and 2023 (1 year)
Follow the same process outlined in step #2 above, working backwards from the next 5, 3, and 1 year. You’ll discover the closer in time, the more specific your goals become.
4. Convert your 1-year goals into action steps
Finally, take your 1-year goals and break each into objectives and action steps. Below are some thoughts about creating meaningful action steps.
Toss your goals into the wood chipper
Have you ever seen a wood chipper? It’s a simple machine. You toss large chunks of tree into the hopper at one end, and sharp teeth instantly grind it into a flying column of wood chips out the other end.
Imagine you have a big goal chipper instead of wood chipper. When you toss your goals into the hopper, a bunch of actions come out the other end. The wood chips are the constituent parts that made up the tree, just as actions are the constituent parts that make up your goals.
Here’s how you can break a goal down into the details so they are manageable. Under every goal, there are an increasing number of details the further you drill down, as illustrated in the pyramid here:
How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time!
(As the old joke goes.) To accomplish a goal, first break it into more manageable objectives. Objectives are mini-goals that contribute to the primary goal.
For instance, if your goal is to get 30 listings this year, objectives could include: create 30 ready-to-go listing packages, practice your presentation, start a neighborhood farm, etc.
There’s no hard and fast rule about when something is a goal vs. an objective. Starting a neighborhood farm might be a goal for you, or an objective.
After breaking a goal into objectives, next break the objectives into discrete tasks.
For instance, if the objective is to create 30 ready-to-go listing packages, tasks may include gathering example listing packages, analyzing them, deciding what goes into yours, printing materials for your own presentation, and so on.
Brainstorm, Prioritize, & Plan Your Tasks
A good way to identify tasks associated with completing an objective is to brainstorm them. Make a list, without worrying about what comes first, second, etc. Once you’ve thought everything through, then you can prioritize the tasks in the proper order of execution.
Finally, map your tasks to a calendar. By what date do you want to have the objective completed? Work from that date, deciding when will you do each task so your objective gets done on time.
Reverse-engineer your goals
If you don’t know the best way to complete a goal, you might be able to reverse-engineer it using a mind trick.
Reverse engineering allows you to see how something was built by taking it apart piece by piece. It’s easier to see how something was done by reverse engineering it than to create it from scratch the first time.
To reverse-engineer a goal, imagine you’ve already completed the goal, then ask yourself how you did it.
For example, suppose your income goal from your real estate business plan is to make $200,000. Imagine it’s the end of the year, and you successfully made $200,000. Soak in the win. Next ask yourself, “How did I do it? How did I make $200,000?” Then describe what you did. “Well, first I did this, then that, etc.”
As I said, it’s a mind trick, but it might work to help you identify tasks.
A Mind Trick
Here’s an example many of us can relate to: Imagine your goal is to “lose 20 pounds in 2022.” You know what you need to do to lose weight…you need to exercise and stop overeating. But how do you execute that strategy? You reverse-engineer it to find the best approach for you.
Tell yourself what you did: “When I lost 20 pounds, i exercised 3 times a day for ten minutes each time, using my trampoline for ten minutes, my stair stepper for ten minutes, and yoga for ten minutes. I also did a lot of research to craft a menu plan i actually liked. I made a game of it using a weight loss thermometer.”
Subconsciously you are picking tasks that work for you. It’s not a cure or magic pill, but it is another way of helping yourself move in the right direction.
A Real Estate Business Plan + Life Goals = Success
Life and business goals go hand-in-hand. However, even if you only have time to fill out the real estate business plan by itself, you’ll still be miles ahead of agents who do no planning at all. We designed our planning tool so it can stand alone, too, making it ideal for independent agents who want a living, practical real estate marketing road map for the year 2022.
Grab the 2022 Business Planning Tool Here
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