The 4 Habits That Change Your Next Year

You know, your success this year, I don't care what year you're seeing this, has absolutely nothing, nothing to do with what happened to you last year. So if you're seeing this in January, February of '26, I literally don't care what happened to you in '25. In fact, it doesn't matter what happened to you any prior year. If I chose to go forward after the real estate debacle of '08, when I was in my head for 4 years mentally based on what happened in the past, I never went forward. Okay. Super, super important. Hey, it's Chris Prefontaine. Welcome to this week's Motivational Monday. I want to help you set up in 2026 properly because it's going to be a blink and we're going to be sitting at December of '26. And I don't care again, if you're seeing this, you know, halfway through the year, it doesn't matter. You draw, draw a line right now and say, okay, for the next year, right? Doesn't matter. Forget that January just has to be a year from now. I want to help you set up your next 12 months to be absolutely amazing so you can look back and say, wow, I nailed my goals and my plans and I'm so glad I took massive action and set things up properly after I saw such and such video. Right. So 4 things I want to give you today for no priority order whatsoever. Just have a few notes I want to make sure I go over with you guys and I'm going over them with our mastermind group this week. So for some of you that follow both, great, you're going to get a repeat. Guess what? It's a nice gut check. Am I doing what the heck I saw in the video? All right. Number one, it does have nothing to do with what has happened to you in '25 or any other year. Rather, what you choose to be. You can't look back. You need to choose to be someone, something, somewhere. Right. I have a suggestion for you, actually. At the end of the year, I tend to go through more mindset books. At the end of '25, I went through Happy Pocketful of Money. Sorry, I don't have the author right in front of me here. No, but Happy Pocketful of Money. If you put that in Amazon, it'll come up. Great. Just reset mind thing, money thing for me. And I hope it can be for you. So that's number one. Number 2, I said something similar to this, what I'm about to say at our QLS Live event in Boston in October of '25, and it struck a nerve. So I'm like, okay, that must be worth repeating because I just said it wasn't even in my notes, right? And what I said was, you're not nailing your goals with certainty and predictability. You, you not doing that because I know majority of you watching this, a majority of people in the United States are not nailing their goals every year. I know that. Google it when you're off this. It's just a fact, sadly. But it has nothing to do with who you are. Imagine that. It has absolutely nothing to do with who you are. It's 100% about who you think you're not. Think about that, right? A little brain teaser there. It's not about who you think you are. It's about who you think you're not. So your thinking is stopping you or slowing you down because you're never going to rise. We all— this is a scary thought here I'm about to say— we will never rise above our thoughts and the stories we tell ourselves. We won't. I was stuck. In my case, I was stuck for 4 years after the crash. 4 years in my head. The stories I was telling myself. Can you imagine that? So this begs, how do you change your thinking then? Well, things come to mind for me like exposure. Things come to mind like people, exposure, people, other exposures, events, you know, being around people. It can be 2 or 3 person event, could be a mastermind, could be mentors. Doesn't matter. We, in our case, we have like the apprentice program and the associate experience levels, right? That's exposure. Reading, listening, exposure. It's unbelievable what happens. I had a meeting last week, you guys, with a gentleman that buys and sells a lot of businesses. He might not be the best known as far as social media goes. It's sort of like Smart Real Estate Coach is one of the best-kept secrets and we're getting there. But so he's not one of the best known. But my 2 meetings I had with him, I had one long over last week, but I had one prelim and I'm going to have another one. My meetings with him changed my thinking entirely about what it means to buy and sell businesses and how that works. Like there was mental blocks with me or I would have already done it, right? Amazing. So exposure is pretty cool and I'm going to leave it at that because if you just work on that one for a little bit, as my point number 2, I think that's going to help you Crank this year. Be very conscious. Like, make no doubt about how important that is. The exposure to people, to events, to things. All right. I could go on and on. Number 3, ideally this year or for the next 12 months for you or in 2026, set up more routines for yourself that are sort of aligned with your goals and your plans. Why do I say that? Because I was thinking literally this morning, I'm like, I'm going to film some stuff. I'm thinking about my morning routine. I get up after I do my, my new puppy. I take her for a walk, etc., and put her back in her place. I go through my routine. And my routine is a workout. It's reading or listening depending on what workout I'm doing, right? That allows me to read or listen to an Audible. And then it's meditation. And then it's going through my journal with— after I shower, it's going through my journal for the gratitude. So there's a routine there, right? Routines help us with clarity and focus. Right? They, they do a bunch of things. They simplify and they literally reduce the amount of decisions we make that clog our process and our progress. Think about it. I get this. I'm not sure what that— how about you set up a routine for it? And every routine you set up, you know, if you start with one a day, right? Just one feeds your plan. Notice I didn't say goal. I'm big on goals, but the goals have to be supported by a plan. That's predictable, that has accountability, that has someone working it with you, etc., etc. Okay. So ideally in '26 or the next 12 months, set up some routines for yourself. Fourth, and I could keep going here, but I want to give you some simple, full-bang things that we can nail, right? I just alluded to number 4. I want to urge you to work on plans versus just goals. I'm not saying don't work on goals. I'm a huge believer in goals. But work on plans and goals. What do I mean by that? Well, a plan is— think of this. A plan is— let me think of someone in our community. Rick. Doesn't matter. I could pick a number of different people who've helped leave their job. A plan is Rick comes to me and says, hey, I've been working for the government for 18 years. I got 100— no, sorry, 20-something years or 30 years maybe. I think it was closer to 30. I got 180 employees working for me. How in the world can I transition to real estate When I have this kind of like busyness going on. And I said, do you really want to do it? Yeah, I really want to do it. Okay, so how about if we get a plan? We worked it through. Long story short, we got like a 24-month plan. That 24-month plan we nailed. I forget if we're 2 months short, 2 months longer, but it was really close. Why? Because the plan was like whiteboard and we put Post-it notes on the wall. We planned all this out like we do with every single one of you that wants to come in our community and say, I want to leave my job. If you truly mean it and you're committed and serious about it, we put a plan together. We did that with him. He left his job. He's now a coach. Well, that's not him saying, hey, I'm going to dip my toe in the water with you guys over here at Smart Real Estate Coaching. I got to— I got this cool goal of maybe leaving my job. Well, great. Then it's December of the next year and you go, you look back and I didn't do it. No, I'm saying have the goal and then put a plan in place and have a team that can Hold you accountable to it. We can do it. Anyone can do it. And I'm not saying it's going to be easy, guys. I'm talking about it because we do it every day, but I'm not saying it's going to be easy. What is, right? You actually like you need challenges. You want you want to know the truth, and you need curveballs. Welcome them. I heard it. I don't know one of my audibles talking about how trees need wind, and the studies they do with trees that just they get planted and they get they get like protected from the wind, and then one wind comes in it. Blows them away. I'm being— I'm simplifying this analogy, but we need the challenges to strengthen us, right? Well, so you get the challenge, you get the curveballs. What do you do? You go to the coaches or you go to me or you go to someone in the community because we've got a huge community now and you just ask, what's next? How did you deal with this? It's rampant in our community. Like, you can't think of something that you can't get an answer from in the community. Promise you. Now, if you're not in that community, I'm not pushing you to join the community. That's your choice. If you're committed and serious, you'll find your way in here. And if it's meant to be, you'll find your way. If it's not us, who is it then? Who will get with you and go, yep, I've been on that path you want to walk. I can show you. Here's how we can hold you accountable. Here's the checkpoints. That's what you need. Whether we ever talk again, ever. That's what I would suggest that you do. Okay. And then think about when you're kind of going through your plans and some of these 4 points I just dropped on you, think about This statement. I heard this in Audible too. It's where I get most of my stuff. I'm just glancing down at my notes. An amateur practices until he or she can do something right. This is what the book said. An amateur practices until he or she can do something right, but a professional practices until he or she can't get it wrong. Think about like the Michael Jordans, the Kobe Bryants, the Tom Bradys. I'm not huge in every sport, but I can tell you The books I've picked up, like, of them, that's their mentality. It's an obsession, right? So when you're going through these 4 points, don't, like, teeter around with them. An amateur practices until they can do something right, but a professional practices until they can't do it wrong. It's not even possible. They've just nailed it that many times. Not sure where to get started? Go to smartrealestatecoach.com/getgoing for free books, strategy calls, and a whole bunch more. We're going to help you get going the wicked smart way. We've been after this for over a decade doing exactly that. Guys, I could keep going on this riff. I hope you enjoyed the Motivation Monday. Please subscribe. Please share it with someone that you think it could help this year because there is zero, zippo reason you can't accomplish all your goals in whatever it is you're doing. I don't care if you open a restaurant, doesn't have to be real estate, but if it's real estate, for goodness sakes, take a look at what we're doing. You know, get our free books, go on smartrealtycoach.com. Go on the— you're on YouTube now, Motivational Monday. Go check out Deal Structure Sundays. There's probably— I've been saying 400 for a while. There might be 500 deals now. I don't know. There's a lot of deals. Check out what those deals look like. And if this— and it looks like an avenue for you, then get after our master's class. I think it's smartrealestatecoach.com/mastersclass. It's 30 minutes, for goodness sakes. 30 minutes for you to go, yeah, not for me. Or, hey, That I think I could do that. I want to go ahead and find out more, and I'd love to meet you. Make it a great week again. Subscribe. Make a comment on here if you want us to answer you, and go ahead and share it with others. Let's go ahead and change the world with real estate, doing it the new way versus the old, boring, non-profitable transaction on a treadmill way. Make it a great week.