The Personal Wellness Assessment: What Does Your Annual Planning & Goal Setting Look Like?

Welcome back to Real Estate Team Builders podcast. I am Lars Hedinborg, the founder of Real Estate B School. And today we're going to dig into what does your annual planning process look like. It is actually January 1, 2022, as I'm recording this episode and typically I'm a little bit more ahead of my planning game than the first day of the year. So I'm a little bit behind this year. But I do this process every year and I want to run you through what the overall process looks like. I want to offer you a free gift if you send me an email and just ask for it. It is our personal wellness assessment. Because I really do think just slowing down a little bit and taking time to look at the areas of your life that matter to you the most is something that very, very few people do. Most of us, especially in the real estate space, especially if we're getting after it and we have sort of a growth minded orientation and we can't help ourselves but to want to grow all the time, we don't slow down enough, we don't think about what we want the future to look like. And I've made all the mistakes that you could possibly make in every area of business, in every area of life. One thing I've done really well over the years, and this is going back to 2007, leaving my corporate job. I was worked for an aerospace company in acquisitions and strategy. And I left that job on March 5, 2007. Everyone thought I was crazy cozy corporate job, multiple six figures to get into real estate. And people are like, wait, you're going to be a real estate agent? You were like traveling around the world. I think I visited 30 countries and we acquired 42 businesses in the seven years I was with this company. And probably looked at 200 companies in the process of acquiring those 42. So really, really cool job. And that was coming off of a job I had in Wall street as a corporate financial analyst in acquisitions and strategy. And so leaving some of those high level, sort of more traditionally thought of as successful careers to come into real estate. People thought I was crazy. But back to my point is that from the beginning I was clear, at least after those first 10 months. So March 2007 through the end of 2007, I sold 27 homes. And it was instantly out of bounds in terms of the amount of stress one person can endure, the amount of hours I was working and out of bounds in terms of evenings and weekends. I wasn't really working evenings. I traveled a lot for my corporate job, but I wasn't working evenings and weekends. And so I was just thrown into this world that I didn't know what was going on. And Fast forward to 2008. I sold 44 homes, which was even more out of bounds. I did get some leverage with a licensed administrator in 2008, God bless her soul, Tia Wilson. And then we went to 2009, and the end of 2009, I started building, building the team. I only went from 44 to 58 size in 2009. Then 1181-782483-12400 plus. And so that was my sort of five, six year journey. And I was always willing to slow down to make sure I was clear on where I was going. And not just in business, but in the areas of life that mattered to me, which was being a good husband, being a good father. You know, my son Anders was born in November 2007. And that's when everything started blowing up and I was full stride, top agent, quote, unquote, traditionally successful agent.

Right.

And it's just, to me, traditional success in our industry isn't worth having. So this process allows you to. And I'm going to get to it. So I just want to give you a little bit of context around it. This process allows you to slow down and really figure out where you are and where you want to be in the future and then just get after it. Right, get after it this year. And so the first thing I want to go through, and this is me teaching me this first thing, because I actually wrote my notes here in terms of what I was going to teach in this podcast, in terms of laying out an annual plan and the context around it and how it fits into your vision and those sorts of things. And I actually forgot this step. So for me, it was like right into Take the Inventory Personal Wellness Assessment. What are you going to start or stop doing? Then I was like, no, number one is to begin in gratitude. Go big B. I G. Begin in gratitude. Take some time with a cup of coffee. If you're watching the video, I'm sipping on a cup of coffee here. And just take an inventory. Actually, don't go to the inventory part. Well, take an inventory of all the great things that happened in 2021 or the year prior. If you're doing this and, you know, listen to this episode in a future period and just slow down and give yourself credit for the challenges that you overcome, the challenges that you are in, that you are persisting through, go through, you know, in your marriage, what Were some wins in your parenting? What were some wins. Were you able to take some time off this year? Were you able to increase your net worth this year? Were you able to connect with friends in a meaningful way? Did you do a Bible study this year? Did you take care of your physical body? Did you, you know, what are all the things. Did you increase your business? Did you install systems in your business? All the things that you can give yourself credit for in order to increase your confidence moving forward. That's. That's the real benefit of. Of all the time on a daily basis. But for sure, as you go into your annual planning, take an inventory of, like, man, look at all these awesome things that I did in the past. If you do this weekly, you could do it weekly in the past week, in the past month, in the past 90 days in the past year. It is amazing what we go through and the successes we have that we never slow down and actually say, man, that was really an amazing year. And just thank. I thank God for it. I thank God for my challenges. You know, this year for me was a really challenging year in a lot of personal ways and in some major business movements that I had this year. And I thank God for all of it. Ultimately, it brings me closer to God. And, you know, I know there are a lot of the listeners maybe that don't share my faith, and that is totally fine. But you really need to have an appreciation for all the challenges that come up in your life, because they do force us to get better, and they do force us to step up and take a stand and commit to maybe building new capabilities or getting things off your plate or stopping certain things that are not serving where you want to be in the future. So that's, number one, is just to write down all the things that happen that you're really grateful for, things that you appreciate, people that have helped you, and maybe reach out to a few of those people and say, man, as I'm looking back on 20, 21, or as I'm looking back on this last year or this last week or month, I really appreciate how you helped me do this or through that issue or challenge I was having. So that's, number one, beginning in gratitude. Go big last thing on that. If you're a current leader, right, you have others that are following you. This is a great practice to start every interaction with. So let's say I was meeting with myself. I would say, lars, what's up, man? Tell me something good. Like, in the last week. What's one great thing that happened in business and what's one great thing that happened in, in your personal life, you know, and then you share, then I, then I share and then we get into business.

Right.

So it just sets the tone for like man, I really did a couple things in the last day or week that I should be thankful for, that I should be grateful for. So really, really powerful tool. So number two is to take an inventory. This is something that we do in real estate B school and I do personally every month, the first Monday of every month at 11am in our time zone, all of real estate B school members are encouraged to do this. I don't think everyone does it, which I hate. It's to take an inventory of the areas of life that matter to you. And I'm actually going to give you a copy of this tool if you will send me an email. And I've done this a few times before. I did that four part time management series where I offered like three or four tools and a lot of you emailed me for copies of the time study and the business freedom planner and all the little bits, the ideal week exercise that we went through. So if you missed that series, I forget what numbers. I think it's like 4:45. I've got the podcast pulled up here. It's like 4:44 to 4:46, seven somewhere in there. No 440. Passion versus pay. The key to setting up your ideal week, how to break your three year plan. Everyone has the same number of days, so 439 to 443 somewhere in there. And so if you missed those, you definitely want to go back and consume, consume those. Because a lot of that fits into some of what, like right into what we are going to go through today. So in terms of a personal wellness assessment, step two and taking an inventory, you know, it is really looking at the areas of your life that you deem important. And I'm going to give you a copy of this tool. Actually for those of you that are on YouTube, I'm going to share my screen so you can, you can see it and you can jump over to YouTube to see it before you email me and email me@larsalestatebschool.com to get a copy of this. Every month we go through areas of our life that are deemed important to ourself.

Right?

We get to decide these areas. But we put this tool together for real estate B school members, emotional and spiritual. So we just answer questions, you know, and look back, you know. And in this case it's a Monthly assessment. But for the year, as you're doing your annual planning, you could just ask yourself the question. So emotionally and spiritually, you know, in terms of quiet time and taking an inventory of things I'm grateful for and encouraging others and limiting screen time and taking breaks to clear my mind, how did I do last year? And just think about it. And I like grading myself. I like the actual number, the objectivity of the number. But as you're taking an inventory for the purposes of annual planning, you're just grounding yourself in what you're going to start or stop doing in step number three. And then step number four is where you're committing to no more than six goals for the year. So emotional and spiritual in your marriage, right? Are you doing date nights, quality time? Would your spouse agree? You're balancing your time and focus in your family. Are you spending time with your kids? Are you prioritizing your family, your personal finances? Are you doing profit first, which is a great system for moving money around and increasing your net worth? It's by Mike Michalowicz. Does your money management reflect your goals and values? Have you taken steps to reduce consumer debt? Are you tracking your net worth? Important fun and recreation. Have you made time to enjoy, uh, fun things?

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Do you have fun with your family? Uh, those that are close to you, would they say that you let yourself have fun? This is a hard one for me. I still grade pretty low on this one. Uh, then accountability and growth. Are you surrounding yourself with people that push you to become better in all areas of your life? Uh, are those closest to you, Would they say that you've grown as a person and a leader? Are you maintaining healthy transparency, transparent relationships with a peer group? Do you have an accountability partner? Are you reading books that help you grow and then fitness? Are you working out? Walking or aerobic? Are you doing weight bearing exercises? Are you feeling great physically?

Right.

Nutrition? Are you diligent in eating healthy, balanced foods? Are you drinking water? Are you eating a green salad every day? Are you not abusing sweets?

Right.

Then rest and retreat? Are you sleeping seven plus hours? You building margin? Are you taking time off away from work and away from electronics?

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Are you, are you, do you have a silence and solitude process or practice? And are you resting and retreating and is it in your calendar? And so that that really going through those areas of your life? And this is also something that when I did a lot of work with Tony Robbins at his highest level of coaching and he simply calls it the wheel of life, I think he has like six areas and you grade yourself a scale of one to 10. And the concept here is that if you're as you're looking back for the purposes of the annual planning, you're looking back one year and then you're looking. I'm going to stop the share here. And then you're looking forward. You can't. If you're crushing your physical fitness, meaning you're working out four hours a day and you're crushing financially, you're like a top, top agent, but you're married and have kids. And so let's say you're working 12 hours a day and you're working out four hours a day. Everything else is going to rank low. So you may have to bring down your fitness focus and your focus on business so that you can focus on the other areas of life that maybe aren't as strong and you are not making those areas a priority. There is a saying in C12, which is a Christian business owner's group that I belong to, and I love this, and I think it is so convicting all the time in a good way. It is a saying. It says, priorities are what we do. Everything else is just talk. So think about that and think about where you spent your time last year. Priorities are what we do. Everything else is just talk. So it's one thing to say you want to feed into your marriage and you want to spend time with your children, then just look back on the last year. Did you actually do it? So priorities are what we do, Everything else is just talk. So you're really out of alignment with. Really, you're out of integrity with yourself if you're saying I want to do these things and then you're not actually making them a priority. And unfortunately, me too. I make time for things. Like, man, I don't. I think I'm. I'm caught up fully on, like, five series on either Netflix or hbo, Max or Showtime right now. Like, five of them. I'm fully caught up and I'm waiting for the next episode. That's not. That's okay. But I know I'm. I'm failing in other areas that I'm claiming to be priorities.

Right.

I'm not spending as much time as I should with my kids. They're a little older now. They can take care of themselves. And I'm, like, sort of hoping that, you know, that they turn out okay. Which I really have the opportunity now to dig in and to push in and lean into those relationships even further, even if they're not as Rewarding when they're a little bit older. And so that's one area for me I know I'm going to focus on more in the coming time period. All right, so that's step number two. Email me if you want to copy that. Personal wellness assessment, larsealestatebschool.com it is a valuable tool. It's a monthly tool. 11am in your time zone, every first Monday of every month. You go through that, you look back one month. So now you only have a month where you can be really out of alignment. And ultimately we do this exercise on a regular basis so you can avoid regrets. All right, so number three, based on that assessment, what should you start or stop doing? Right, based on, you know, are you accountability? Do you have accountability? Are you growing gifts? Are you tending to your fitness, your nutrition, your rest and retreat, your personal finances, your family, you know, your role as a parent, your marriage, emotionally and spiritually? Based on that, what should you start or stop doing obvious things. For me, I have to stop eating after 7pm I do really well during the day. I was on a tear with intermittent fasting and I would go 16 to 18 hours of not eating and doing sort of a bulletproof coffee in the morning, which didn't take me off fast. And then what would happen was I'm like ravenous at the end of the day and I think also I sedate with food. And so I do carry stress because I'm trying to achieve at a high level in every area of life. And I get into a rut where I'm eating late and then I'm watching TV and then I'm snacking while I'm watching tv. And this is just a chronic thing that happens often for me. And then I stay up a little bit too late because I'm watching tv. Then I get up later in the next morning. And so that's one thing for me that I know I need to stop doing that and I need to start going to bed, sleeping by 10:30 the latest, it's been like 11:30, so which doesn't seem like a big difference, but you're robbing an hour, I'm robbing an hour at night and I'm getting up an hour too late. I'm getting up at 6:30 in the morning and I should be getting up at 5:30 in the morning. And so that's one thing I'm going to start doing. Another thing I need to start doing is that I need to start. This year, I've been horrible at moving key Projects forward in the couple businesses that I'm involved in now. Meaning like I'm the person that needs to put a system in place or build something out for the business and I'm not getting it done over the course of the year. I don't think I did a whole lot of new projects, new systems, whether it's a landing page for real estate, B school or for my EXP organization. It could be like. It took me a long time to build out a training platform for folks that have joined me at exp and as of yesterday it was like 800 and it was something crazy. 865 people have joined me at exp and the cool thing about that is that only you talk about leverage. Only 35 of those people were directly with me. So 35 turned into 865, which is crazy. So there's a lot of commitments I've made to those folks that have partnered with me at EXP that I want to make sure I can deliver on them. And one was just to build out this platform, this training platform where they can invite their friends in to EXP and earn residual income without it coming off as sleazier, cheesier, multi level marketing or whatnot. I finally finished that project. It was a project I named in the early part of 2021 and I literally sent it out to my organization like three days ago. Like December 28th.

Right.

Because I need to make a commitment. First part of my day. First 90 minutes. Like I'm talking about waking up at 5:30 and by 5:45 I'm sitting at my desk and I'm working for 90 minutes on my most important projects.

So.

So that's a start doing for me.

Right?

What's another one? Start or stop doing? You know, if you're not. I gotta get back to more, more diligent with my working out. I feel great when I work out regularly. So that's, that's a start. Start up again. I mean, I've been at points where I do really good with that. Stop. Yes. Stop having crappy food in the house today. Actually, it's New Year's Eve, a New Year's Day. As I'm recording this, I'm going through my pantry. It's going to drive my wife crazy. I'm going to empty out my entire pantry and I'm going to throw everything out that is not serving my health and my energy levels. All right, so that starter. Stop doing. And you are just keeping track of this in a journal. I have got these little journals like I will show you all of them. I have four of these little journals. They are actually for different areas of my life that I'm trying to focus on. And they're probably like a hundred pages. They're not 8 and a half by 11, but you can get them on Amazon. And you're just taking notes and writing these things down. It's not a complicated process. You don't need to read a book or do any of that stuff. It's just start or stop. Just think about your life. I need to start date night. I mean, I do date night, but for you, if you have a spouse, you need to start date night, right? You need to stop. Maybe. I always get feedback, not great from this one. You need to stop watching four football games a weekend. If you have kids and a spouse and you're watching like 10 plus hours of football in a weekend, chances are you need to figure out a way to stop that. Because if you're claiming you want to succeed in business and areas of life that matters, your. Your marriage and in your family as a parent, and you're doing those things on your free time, you're probably losing. You're probably losing out on the things that matter most and you will have regrets later in your life. All right, that's my public service announcement. And I have those things that I numb out too. So mine is Netflix and all the awesome series that are out there now. So that's my football. So there's not a criticism as much as just hopefully there's an awareness for you. Where are you placing your time? Is that in alignment with your priorities? All right, last thing are commitments. Six things you're going to commit to going into 2022, and you're just going to write them down. I'm going to let you know what mine were. I didn't do great in terms of some of my annual goals this year, but I do have a weight goal. So I'm. Right now I'm in the, like, mid-190s and I want to be in the mid-180s. So that's going to be an annual goal for me. I have an annual goal about the size of my exp. Organization. I have an annual goal for the revenue in real estate, B school. So that's a. That's a separate business.

Right.

I have some goals around. You know how I want to spend time with God. I'm going to read the New Testament. I'm doing a plan. I think it's called. What is it called? New Testament. I think it's foundations to 260. So it's really slowing down and journaling around the New Testament and there's a workbook that's associated with it. So that's going to be something that I commit to and then I'm going to get through in seminary. I'm actually in seminary right now, which is crazy. I'm going through a program called the Journey. It's a year long program that goes through biblical foundations and then your personal foundations, your core values and kind of what made me me. So that's going to be a commitment that I make for this year and then I break down those, those commitments until smaller sort of habits and things I need to focus on like drinking more, you know, drinking a gallon of water per day, two weight bearing workouts a week, two cardio workouts a week. I do a sauna, eating more greens. All of that stuff in my marriage. It's, it's getaways with Julie, it's date night and those sorts of things. So bigger commitments and then little sort of habits and rituals that support those commitments and just journal this stuff out and just spend some time with it. It may be more than one session, so probably went a little bit longer than I was planning on going today. I am really hoping that this serves you. The overarching last thought I have here is don't beat yourself up, right? I tend to beat myself up because I'm never where I want to be. Meaning. And this I learned from strategic coach. It's called the gap. And so we have this ideal in any area of our life. Let's just pick business where like you're always setting goals to sell more homes and grow your business and it's always a moving target, right? If our goal is to get from, you know, 50 to 100 sides, we or 25 to 50 sides and you get to 50 sides, you move like it's, it's like you're on, on an ocean and the horizon, you can never reach the horizon. So that's an ideal we set for ourselves and we never attain it. And it leads us into being discontent and never feeling fulfilled. And so my, my wish for you, my prayer for you is that you realize this and don't beat yourself up over it. The antidote for what they call living in that gap where you're never quite where you want to be. The antidote is exactly how we started out this training here, this podcast in terms of gratitude, gratitude and recognition for where you've come from. You know the expression, and I think this was was in a men's group that I was in. We're not where we want to be, but we're not where we once were, right? So we are making progress. And so don't measure your progress by how far you set that ideal in front of you. Measure your progress by the actions you have actually been taking.

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Let's say your physical body is completely in disarray. You are 100 pounds overweight, you haven't worked out in 10 years. Don't measure your progress by losing 100 pounds and being able to run a marathon. Measure your progress by the fact that you ate a salad today and you went for a 10 minute walk. That is how you feel motivated to keep pushing on. You will demotivate and you will feel a lot of anguish and a lot of shame potentially. If you are looking at the 100 pound weight loss and the fact that you want to run a marathon, that's not going to motivate most of us. Okay? So my friends, I'm wishing you an awesome 2022. I just have so much love and respect for y'.

All.

First of all, showing up and listening and hopefully taking action. And if you ever need anything at all, send me a personal email@larsealestatebschool.com and if you would feel so inclined to ever give us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify that helps us in all the ways with organic traffic and all that good stuff. The podcast is consistently at 10 to 12,000 downloads per month, which is, I think it is unbelievably awesome. I know it's not a gazillion downloads a month. I take a lot of pride in putting this out to help and serve all of you. So much love, much respect. Let's go crush this next year. We'll talk soon.