Your 2024 Growth Plan - Grow Your Business While Putting Your Life First

New business development appointments, which is first time appointments with buyers and sellers to sign them as clients, negotiating them under contract, executing the contract, and then building systems, everything else. Just think about it. All the other stuff you do is not going to earn you 250, 500, $1,000 an hour. You just got to do the welcome Real estate business builders. This is the time of year, my favorite time of year. Yes, it's the holidays, but more importantly, this is the time of year where we get to think about what's possible for our future. So I'm going to put out a series, probably two or three episodes here where we're going to cover just how to think about the future. How I've thought about the future when I was in my heavy growth years, when the market was crumbling around me in the Great Recession years, 2008, 9, 10, those were my biggest growth years in real estate. Then 11, 12 and you know, went from 44 transactions in my first full year as a solo agent to 453 transactions a handful of years later. And I only had 10 producing agents and I worked like 40 days that year. You probably have heard me said all that, say all that in the past, but I do just want to reiterate that I've been there. I've been doing this for a long time. Ten years in to real estate, B school. Thousand plus agents have been through our world. But this is not about me, it's all about you. So let's get after it. If you're not in my free Facebook group, it's the same title as the podcast Real estate business Builders. There's a handout called putting your life first, the step by step guide to a balanced business and life plan. So you definitely want to get in there, grab that document. I think there's a post in there, may even be in the file section in that group. We've got lots of free giveaways and weekly trainings and all that good stuff. So you can find that. I think there's a post where you just put my life first. Make a comment, My team will get that out to you. So if you've been following along for any period of time, I am all about helping you guys increase your net worth so you can take more time out, time off and ultimately put the things that matter most in your life. When I was new to the business, my son Anders, who just started driving, he's 16 now, but back in 2008, well, 2007, November 2007, that's when I got my first part Year in real estate, and it was sideways. I learned how to sell a lot of homes. Very simple process, generate leads, have conversations with them, meet with them, sign them up as clients and sell them a home. 27 homes, my first 10 months in real estate. But it was sideways. I was working all the time. You know, the year 2008, Anders turned one and I was working even more than seven days a week. I almost think I rationalized that I didn't work Sundays, but in reality I worked Sundays. I was on my phone all the time. I was not where I needed to be. And that really did motivate me. And I told my wife at the time, you know, that I left a pretty cozy corporate job when we, just as we were getting married, I made this decision to pivot from multiple six figure corporate job, including stock options and all that good stuff, awesome benefits to get into real estate as the market crumbled three months after I got in. So I was just like, trust me, honey, I've got a plan. And ultimately I'm not going to go into my background story, but I did not have a cozy upbringing. My dad was a bit of an entrepreneur, but he also struggled with addiction through alcoholism and a lot of chaos. So I wanted to be able to show up in business as a husband, as a dad. Like he was not able to. So like I said, this is not about me, it's really about you. We have to ground your plans. Whether it's a three year vision, a one year plan, 90 days, we'll talk about all that. We have to ground it in what your. Why is the first business plan I wrote, it was 2000, late 2009, I decided I was going to just geek out and build this really extensive plan. I started with a blank piece of paper, but I had a lot of. I didn't have any of this in my life, but I just decided what my life was going to be three, five and ten years out from a production standpoint and from the hours that I worked and the lifestyle and vacations and how much money I saved and how much money I gave and all that good stuff and what it was going to take to do it. And then every year since then, I've had slightly different versions of plans. Now I follow more of a life planning system where I've got. It's probably like a 12 page document. And I have 10 areas of my life where I'm very intentional about how I want to be remembered, what my personal vision is, what my priorities are. I have, like when I wake up. These are the things I want to think and this is why I do what I do. And I want the same thing for you guys. So the question I have as we kind of kick off this planning series is do you have a plan in place to achieve meaningful goals in the areas of life that matter? I'm not talking New Year's resolutions, you know, where like three days after you post on Facebook, you know, you're eating like a McDonald's adult Happy Meal. I think they just came back with a big shake and it's like hashtag, you know, New Year's resolution fail. Right? That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a process in place to actually get after your plans and actually achieve the goals that you set for yourself. And if you do, is it working? Is the more important question. So let's get into why planning matters specifically. It is a crazy time we have in real estate. A lot of us are married, a lot of us have kids, we're in real estate. So we have clients that are really demanding. It's like all out of bounds, all the time, evenings, weekends, all the insanity of it. And so there are all these competing priorities. On top of that, we're in information overload. It is absolutely the most extraordinary time ever. Whether it's I suffer from, you know, going down the YouTube rabbit hole on a daily basis. I've struggled with Netflix, I don't struggle as much with social media, but I know a lot of folks do the 24 hour news cycle, I've been in that sort of tailspin. I was out of it for like 12 years. I got into it for a year around like, you know, post Covid and just all the insanity. But it's all designed to get us out of doing what we want to do in our, in our lives. So on top of all of the other roles we have as a parent, a spouse, you know, God forbid we want to work out and you know, have any self care time or you know, travel or spend time with friends. Real estate on top of that almost takes all of that opportunity away from us, right? We have to play a different game. And I think the reason I was able to scale my business to the point where I was working minimal amount of time in the business and I was making a seven figure income, I played a different game. So I just viewed it as a business where like, of course I needed to figure out how to generate leads and then I needed to have conversations and warm up those needs, leads and nurture those Leads and set appointments, meet with buyers and sellers, you know, convince them to become, become a client of mine, deliver on the promises I made. And then if I did all of that in the right way, they would, you know, this virtuous cycle I would create where the client care process actually turned into a lead gen lever. So we have to play a different game and then also realize that. And we're seeing this now big time, I think. NAR National association of Realtors is estimating 25 to 30% of agents will get out of the industry in the next 12 to 24 months. Generally, we're a commodity. There are too many of us. The bar to get into real estate is really, really low. And you know, we have to, even if you're not one of those agents, even if you're the 10% that are just pro level, you have to realize that we're viewed as a commodity. So let's. And that's important because when it comes to planning, you know, you need to consider like, what is your marketing strategy? Is it, you know, the me monster, the image advertising that most agents do? That's not what the public wants. So let's talk about how we get there, number one, and you guys have heard me talk about it before. As you consider the next 1, 3, 5 years, you have to calibrate and make decisions about what your worth is. So number one is to know your worth. There's a calculation we do in real estate B school, it's called the Business Freedom index. Essentially what we look at the amount of money you make for per unit of time you put into your business. It is possible. It took me a few years to crack the code to get to 250, 500, 1000, 2000, and I got up to over $3,000 per hour in my real estate business. So you have to know what your number is now and what you want your number to be in terms of Business Freedom Index number two is that you need to be really honest with yourself about are you being productive versus just busy? There's a really good definition by Dan Kennedy. Productivity is the deliberate strategic investment of your time, talent, intelligence, energy, resources and opportunities in a manner calculated to move you measurably closer to meaningful goals. So if you were to measure your productivity on a daily basis with that definition as the backdrop, what is your score on a. On a regular basis? There's only five things that make you money in real estate. It's new business development, which comes in two. It's an acronym, P L A N S Prospecting lead, follow up, that's new business development appointments, which is first time appointments with buyers and sellers to sign them as clients, negotiating them under contract, executing the contract and then building systems, everything else, just think about it. All the other stuff you do is not going to earn you 250, 500, $1,000 an hour. So we have to calibrate our goals in our business around that. Number three is that there is absolute freedom in struct, there's absolute freedom in structure. And so when we think about our future, I challenge you to begin with the end in mind. The reason I was able to have the kind of income and lifestyle and time off and all of that is I was constantly, and I still do this on an annual basis. I'm constantly looking out three years. So ask yourself the question and write down the answer. Where do I want to be three short years from now in your business? The hours that you work in your relationships, in your physical body, your spiritual journey, write all of it down. It's not rocket science. There's no complicated, it's just a vision. Just write, paint the picture for yourself of what you want it to look like in the future. And then we break down the three year vision into an annual plan. And ask yourself what must I accomplish this year so that I'm leaving no chance that I won't realize that three year vision? So paint the picture in every area of your Life for the three year vision. What must you accomplish in the first year? That's 2024. And then we break it down, we construct our quarters. So we begin with the end of mind. It's three year vision. We create an annual plan, that's the annual plan. Chunk down that vision into tactical specific, measurable, you know, we've got a smarter acronym, I've done some training on that. And then we break out the first quarter. So the first quarter of next year, what has to happen for you to be on track to achieve your annual plan and to realize your three year vision? And then we break it down into weekly what are your top three for the coming week based on the quarter, which feeds into the year, which feeds into the three year vision. And then we dominate your days. You're looking at your top three for the week, you're looking at the commitments you made for the quarter, which feed into the year, which feed into the three year vision. Now I know I'm going through this pretty high level, this is the process though it's not all that complicated. So I know I've gone through it Quick, I want you to go back, pause. If you're looking at this on YouTube, just pause the video, pause the podcast and take the time to do this stuff. There's no urgency on this, but it's massively, critically, life changing, important, I promise you. And then cash follows your calendar, right? What you do on the daily, if you don't, if you haven't been through some. I think we did a time Freedom training in the Facebook group. So go over to the Facebook group, Real Estate Business Builders, where I actually lay out what an ideal week looks like. If you're on the YouTube video, you can see it on the screen. But I just lay it out. This is what it has to look like. I have not met a single person, I've not coached a single person that didn't have massive financial and time freedom because they time blocked and they honored those time blocks. Right? So the fourth thing here, so let me review here. The third was freedom and structure. We talked about the 3190, the weekly, the daily. The second was productivity. Be productive, not busy. And the first was to know your worth. So number four here is Thinking Systems. You know, there's the founder with Michael Keaton. It's the story of Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's. His view about that speedy system. There's a scene if you go to YouTube and you look for Speedy System, the founder, where they're designing the business on a tennis court and granted we're not flipping burgers, but if you think about your business as a system of systems, it will help you sort of calibrate what you need to do to build a better business that doesn't necessarily. Every little thing runs on you and your efforts. Really good quote from a great book called Atomic Habits. Actually, if you're watching, watching this 1% better every day is one of his sayings. You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And then the fifth part here is that you have to regularly assess. So you have to have a feedback loop, right? The three year vision, the one year plan, the construct your quarters 90 days when your weeks is the weekly dominate, your days is the daily. They all feed into each other and we need to sort of be honest with ourselves about what we're doing against that plan. You have to have some emotional leverage, right? You can't. For me, it was having young kids and not wanting to be like my dad. He failed in business, failed as a husband, failed as a dad. And I just didn't want to be like that. So I was highly motivated, and I thought about that quite often. And then when it came even to something as simple as working out, I thought about how my dad, his life ended. He had a five year slow death, had a stroke at age 69, I think, and died at age 74. And it was a painful, painful five years. He essentially died when he was 69. And, you know, just to see him just lifeless for the most part, for five years, that motivated me in a weird sort of maybe somber kind of way. But it was easy for me to go work out when I thought about my dad and how I had to bring my kids to see him every Sunday. And it was just so depressing, and I had so much angst over it and unresolved stuff. And I was just honest with myself, and I used emotional leverage. And then the last point here, I think this is the last point. Six is to run your race. Do not compare yourself to others. What's the expression? Comparison is the thief of joy, something like that. In real estate, it's easy to look at, like, oh, that agent seems to have everything together. You know, they're putting. They do a ton of production. They take vacations. You don't know anything about their life. You don't know if their marriage is strained. You don't know if they're working every second of that vacation where they post that picture perfect snapshot of their family. My wife actually just wrote a book called Picture Perfect based on this concept. You need to focus on yourself and then the game. And I just talked to this. Had a conversation with my son recently. He's trying to train hard enough and get good enough at volleyball to go D1. And I told him, I said, it's just you versus you. Sometimes they'll have a bad game or they lose a game or. I said, it really doesn't ultimately feed into the game that you're playing, Anders. Yeah, you want to win. You want to be a great teammate to me, you want to lead on the court. You want to do all those things, but you're playing a bigger game like your. Your goal, and it's his goal. I don't really push him, but he's so motivated to go D1. I said, it's just you versus you. And I said, there are going to be times where you feel like playing video games and you probably should do a workout, right? That's just you versus you. There's nobody in that moment. I'm not going to make you do a workout. It's like you need to make the decisions to do the kinds of things that you need to do to achieve the results that you say you want, right? So just be honest with yourself. Are you putting goals out there that maybe you're not doing the things required to achieve the goals you set for yourself? I was willing back in the early days, I was willing to do whatever it took. I was highly motivated and I was not going to let my family down. And so I was able to actually do the work of a salesperson on a regular basis and just know what your next right thing is. So your next right thing isn't to go on radio or do billboards because like an agent that sells 500 homes in your market does that. All that stuff's not profitable. I know it. I, I've looked at more than a thousand businesses and some of these are big businesses that do those things. So don't think like, oh, I got to do billboards, stupidest thing ever, right? I got to get on tv. You do not need to get on tv. I need to be in the movie theaters because this agent, those agents aren't making money, right? It's your next right thing. So use that process. I want you to take a little bit of time to contemplate a three year vision. You know, construct that one year plan. Think about the 90. All I have to offer you if you guys ever want to do anything deeper with real estate. B score. I've got a program called the Million Dollar Agent Method. And you can actually go to million dollaragentmethod.com I think there's like a seven minute video on the page. It'll give you all the information you need about. It's a 90 day program. It is amazing, but it all starts with the conversation. So go to milliondollaragentmethod.com if you want to learn more. We take you through this whole process. We dial everything in your business. We install all of our lead gen systems, all of our lead conversion systems, our consultation frameworks, all of that stuff. So head over there. Much love, much respect. I will be back next week with an add on training. I think I may have one or two more along this theme of sort of annual planning vision, how to break down your marketing for the year and all that good stuff. So much love, much respect. We'll talk to you soon. Be good.