Step By Step Business Planning Guide to Help You Crush Your 2025 Real Estate Goals

So there's no doubt in my mind you're being bombarded with all the business planning for 2025 YouTube videos that are out there. I will tell you, though, very few of them allow you to grow your business and expand your lifestyle, meaning make more money in less time with less stress. So in today's video, I'm going to break down how to do it the right way, how to fit in all the things that have to happen in the business for you to double, triple your production, but also have the availability for your family for things outside of real estate. The last thing I want for you is to build a business that just engulfs every part of your and you're going to lose out on the things that really matter. After serving over 5,000 families in my real estate sales journey, and at this point, helping over 2,000 agents grow and scale their businesses without losing their lives, I definitely know that there's a right way and a wrong way to go about business planning. And here is the preface to all of this. When I got into real estate, my focus was, yeah, I wanted to sell a bunch of homes because I knew that there was money there and I wanted to create a lifestyle for my family that, honestly, I didn't even think was possible at the time. But I had a very clear vision that I wanted to make a million dollars, take a year, but I only wanted to work definitely less than 40 hours. But my real target was working a thousand hours a year. And do the math on a thousand hours. Take out a couple weeks for vacation, so 50 weeks that I'd be working, and that's 20 hours a week. So that's a tall order to make a million dollars working a thousand hours. The math on that is that every hour I put into my business, I wanted to make $1,000 per hour. And even at 2,000 hours, which is a reasonable work week, 40 hours per week, that's still $500 per hour. So. So how do you craft your business? How do you make priorities in your business that allow you to make that kind of money? So how do you plan for that? It's nice to say that you want to make a lot of money for every hour you put into your business, but what does it actually look like? So the process I'm going to take you through is a proven process, and it's based on the premise that you may have heard of, you know, the big rocks in your life and the big priorities, and then the pebbles and the sand and the water, this analogy that. And it's been played out where if you had, let's say, rocks, pebbles, sand and water, and you were to put all, all of the sand and water in first and then the pebbles, there would be no room for the rocks. And so how this plays out in business is that, and in life is that. So before you start your year, you have to decide what the big rocks are. These are the priorities, the non negotiables in business and in your personal life. So that come the end of the year, so 12 months from now, not only did you crush it in business, but you have maybe the lifestyle or the bank account to show for it. And you're also winning in all the areas of life that you want to win in. So my initial sort of entrance into this business, I left a very cozy corporate job where I was making with stock incentives, a multiple six figure annual income. And I left that to get into real estate three months before the shift started happening in my market. Looking back June 2007, you know, inventory shot straight to the through the roof. The end of 2008 was the onset of the great financial crisis and I didn't do it. All right, I will say I made all the mistakes that you could make, yet I was very clear on what my priorities were. So for me, the big rocks, you know, when you look at the 30,000 foot view, the big rocks for me are being a good husband, being a good father. My spiritual journey came a little bit later. But taking care of myself physically, I will say I sacrificed some of that in the early days and then business. So, you know, how do you get it all done? You know, I got into real estate and we just had gotten married in 2006. We had our first child in 2007 and then a couple miscarriages unfortunately. And then our second child, Kendall came in April 2010. So I had just gotten into real estate March 2007, trying to figure out how to be a husband, figure out how to be a dad, and scale a real estate business. Sold 27 homes in my first 10 months. 44, my first full year in the business. Then 58, 118, 178. And the year we did 248 transactions, I had built out all the lead gen systems, all the conversion systems where I was able to actually step out of production completely. And if you never want to step out of production, all of this planning, this process, this guide we're going to go through is going to be really helpful for you. So let's dive in on the business side of things. The first Thing we need to nail down are, you know, where are you at in the business in terms of what was your production for this year and what do you want it to be next year? And then figure out what was on average your monthly revenue. So let's say you did 12 deals this year and your average commission check was 10,000 per commission. That would be $120,000 of gross commission income for the year. Let's say you want to double your business, you want to do two deals per month at 10,000 average commission, that would be $240,000 of gross income. So big lift to go from one deal per month to do two deals per month. Little known fact that there's only 1% of agents that sell more than 25 homes per year. Most of our members scale way beyond that. And if you want to have a conversation ever about that, just go to million dollaragentmethod.com we build out all these systems for our members, but that's where things start. You know, what do you want the revenue to look like going forward based on where you just came from? What does that equate in terms of the number of clients that you served last year and what are you going to do this year? You also want to document where did the business this year come from and where could I maybe eliminate some lead sources that weren't very prolific and where can I double down on things that worked well? First two things we work on with our new members are your database touch blueprint, the agent brand authority builder, which is your digital footprint, and then usually our expired direct mail system and our FSBO system as well. Every one of those. Ultimately, this is why less is more. They're each good for one to two plus transactions per month once they're fully operational in the business. So you have to view the business from that standpoint. So the money makers are what activities? And there are very few activities that make you money in real estate. But looking back this year, where did you spend your time in terms of true money making activities? Now, the highest and best use of your time is in what we call new business development. And there are two sides to this. The first side is new conversations with hopefully leads that are generated organically inbound. That's the focus of what we do. None of what we do is cold calling. It is soul sucking. It's not begging for referrals, right? We have systems in place that allow people to reach out to us and then we just have conversations. So how many hours each morning are you spending on new business development. And then the second most dollar productive activity is what we call lead follow up. So the two aspects of new business development are those new conversations which we call prospecting, lead generation, and then lead follow up. And just be honest with yourself. You know, on an average this year, as you're looking at what you could do next year, how much laser focused time did you spend in new business development and what does it need to look like Now? Granted, you may not have the lead flow coming in, so that's part of your issue and that's a separate thing that, you know, we can even have a conversation about. But when it comes just sitting down and focusing on new business development, what did you do this last year and where do you need to focus your efforts this year? And are you even following a calendar? Right, Those are the big rocks. Those are the activities that have to happen consistently for you to get the success that you're looking for. The next set of big, big rocks that we're looking to identify moving forward is the personal stuff. And we break this down into the weekly, the monthly, the quarterly and the yearly, you know, weekly. Are you doing a date night with your spouse? Right. Is that in the calendar? Is it immovable? Every Saturday I do a date night. It is a weekly, non negotiable. Every Friday my wife has some time for herself. It's in the calendar. She typically goes to the park. We say, quote unquote, the park. It's South Park. It's a really nice mall. Those are things that are in the calendar that are big rocks that are priorities that we make sure we hit. Church on Sunday mornings is a big rock that we make sure we hit quarterly. You know, we want to get away at least once a quarter. You know, I'll take my wife somewhere and just the two of us will get away. Same thing with our family vacations. Yearly we want to do one epic trip as a family and we also go to the beach for a week, we go to the mountains for a week. So these are things that are in the calendar. They're going to happen. You know, there's no chance like those trips are already set and where they're already booked out. So those are the, the freedom aspects that you should focus on. As far as the big rocks, then we have the pebbles, right? So if think of this analogy of, you know, rocks and pebbles and sand and the water, right. If you go in the wrong order, you're not going to fit it all in this container, which is there's only so many hours in the day. And so if you're just have no rhyme or reason and you haven't focused on any of the true priorities and you haven't thought about these things, chances are that the sand and the just getting caught up in like the daily grind of like in your email, in transactions and there's no rhyme or reason. It's, it's not going to end well. Maybe you could do it for one year or two years but we talked to agents that are eight, 10 years in the business. They may be doing okay production but it is seven days a week and it's evenings and weekends included. So in terms of the daily activities that has to happen, this is, you know, are you time blocked in your calendar where there are five things the pebbles that we count in a real estate business on the, on the business side are what we call and I already covered two of them but it's P L A N S prospecting, lead follow up appointments with new buyers and sellers, negotiating those clients under contract and then building systems. So the acronym P L A N S those are the daily have to be in your calendar. You're using your mornings to do prospecting and lead follow up. You're setting appointments, consultations, you're negotiating deals and then anytime you don't have a consultation booked for the afternoon, you're just building systems in your business or doubling down on new business development. So are you like in a rhythm and a cadence in terms of the pebbles and then you've got the sand which is, you know, the birthdays and the hobbies and the family events and the things that are just going to happen. You know, training and personal care. I get a two hour massage every Friday. You know, it is just part of my ongoing routine that has to happen. I plan once a week, every Sunday I have a planning session. You know this routine and this cadence. You know, the professional side in terms of, you know, what are you doing on the weekly or the monthly, what masterminds are you in or coach programs, you know, are you being led to build a real business? Right. Versus just reacting all the time and, and sort of haphazardly tripping over business. You know, what friendships are you going to nurture this coming year? Also make sure you look in the description below and you grab a free copy of the PDF that I'll go through at the end of this video. It's called the Annual Plan Organizer and it's going to walk you through step by step exactly how to do this for your business and your personal life. So you don't miss a thing and you have the best year ever. And then, and I'm going to show you this here. You know, I, I, I've got, have you actually, have you actually sketched out the entire year? Right. So this is a big ass calendar. I can only say that because that's literally what it's called. And in the, in the worksheet here that you'll have access to is basically a year on a single page and it's just making sure that the rocks are in there and you're sort of preloading your year where there isn't a chance you won't have the kind of year because you've already pre decided what it's going to look like. And I'm going to run through that in a second. And you can get a free copy of this annual plan organizer. Getting all of this in a single page, whether it's a big ass calendar or it's a single page, which I'll go through here in a second. You need to just make sure that you are planning your life. You know, we spend way more time planning a week long vacation than we ever do planning our actual life. So this gives you the ability just to sit down and make sure that you're not doing too many trips in a given month or you know, that's something that I can fall, you know, prey to if is with my daughter, my wife and my son. My daughter competes in horse shows. So you know, five or six times a year we're traveling for that. My son is playing volleyball at a competitive level and that's 13 or 14 trips away. You know, in different states we're jumping on planes for a period of time and then I'm traveling for business some and I'm traveling for personal. And so I need to make sure and look at the entire year, make sure there's not too much going on. And so make sure you, you take the time to do that. And then at the end of taking a little bit of time just to sit with some of this I, you to think about, you know, what takeaways, what actions, what conversations do you need to have with people in your world. Maybe it's, you know, a conversation with your spouse about what the plan looks like for next year. If you don't go through something like that with your spouse or your administrator, if you're starting to build an actual business, get them on the same page with the priorities, the rocks, the pebbles, you know, they can help you stay in those time blocks to make sure that you're doing new business development every day. The prospecting, the lead follow up, you know, time blocking the afternoon for appointments and negotiating deals and building those systems. And another one of the big rocks is what systems are you going to build out this year? You know, and that's where honestly, in terms of your ability to do this in your own business, if this is not your thing and you've been at it for a while, maybe you've achieved the six figure mark of GCI in your business. But you know, there's another level of growth, whether that's 2:50 or 500,000 GCI, or even a million GCI. Go to milliondollaragentmethod.com and just book any conversation with us. We'll build out all these systems with you on your tech stack. You won't ever pay for a lead or you will never pay a referral fee to us. This is a 90 day build out, heavy implementation. Will you have everything you need via three or four lead gen levers built into your business? So if that's for you, go to milliondollaragentmethod.com and book in a strategy session. Like I said, if you want a copy of the annual plan organizer, just go to the link in the description and grab a copy of this. So you'll recall I talked through some of this just a second ago. The big rocks, the money makers, you know, what did this year look like, what was, you know, what went well, what didn't go well? The money making activities, how frequently you need to do them. This is where you put your P, L, A, N S and where do you want to be the end of next year? Just take a little bit of time to think through those things. And then on the personal side, the freedoms, you know, what, where and when are you going to do things that provide that level of freedom? Is it a massage, is it a date night, is it church weekly, you know, on the monthly, is there a mastermind that you can participate in? Is there a men's retreat that you might go on? You know, quarterly Is a trip with your spouse, a three day weekend every quarter. The annual trips or even men's retreats or women's retreats. Like what are the things you can do on the annual? If you don't think through these things, they'll never happen. Then it's the pebbles, right? So the PLA and S, specifically what are the things you need to do to build a business, a real, real estate business? Put those in there and you know the frequency of those different things and then you've got the scene professionally and personally, the development, you know, personal development, you know, planning days. What is that going to look like? If you're running a team or individually, what is your, your training look like? The family events and all that good stuff. And then have some version either of a, like a wall calendar where you can put the whole year on a wall, or a sheet like this where you're just going to start to fill in the different, you know, things that you're going to focus on in trips. And then as you go through this, I want you to print out this PDF and think about, like, what are the takeaways from this training, things that you've maybe missed in the past, what specific actions are you going to take? And then who do you need to talk about the specific, specific communications you need to have? So my hope for you as you go through this is a heavy lift sort of video. Now there's a real action item here to grab the PDF, print out a copy and then sit down in solitude and just think about where you've been, what's been going well, what hasn't been going well. You know, what do you want next year to look like? What do you want a few years from now to look like? And then just get to work on the weekly, on the daily, you know, doing the things that you know you need to do to get the results that you want to get now. Now, if you need help implementing these systems, that is what we're here for. In 13 weeks, we're going to implement all the lead gen levers, all your lead conversion systems, all your sales frameworks, and even leverage around client care. So if that's you, go To Million Dollar AgentMethod.com if you know you need help with this stuff and we'll just have a conversation. If you're a fit for what we do, we'll talk about it. If you're not, that's totally fine too. We'll point you in the direction of a free resource that might be a better next step step for you. So much love, much respect, and we'll see you in the next video.