Goal Planning

We often hear people say, “I want to make more money investing so I can quit my job”. That’s a great starting point, but let’s dig a little deeper.

What does it mean to ‘make more money’? If that person makes an extra 10 dollars in the coming year, does that qualify as making more money? Sort of, but did it help that person achieve their true goal? That’s doubtful.

Try making a SMART goal, and then you’ll know specifically what you need to do to achieve it. Here’s how it works:

Specific: Be very specific in what your goal is
Measureable: Create an exact metric or target. This can be a dollar amount, a specific action, etc. Put something concrete here so you’ll know what you are working toward and also so you can look back on it and know whether or not you achieved it.
Attainable: What actions are you going to take that will get you to your goal? Put your project plan here, and include the steps you’ll need to take to achieve your goal.
Realistic: Is it reasonable for you to take all of the actions you have outlined in the time you have allotted? If you take the actions in the timeframe you have set, will you achieve your goal?
Timely: Set a precise deadline to achieve the goal. It also helps to set deadlines for milestones along the way so you’ll know if you are on track or if you have fallen behind.

Here’s an example:
Specific: Earn $200,000 investing in wholesale real estate transactions in 2012
Measureable: $200,000 is the target for the year, so if I average $16,700 per month I will achieve my goal. If I average $8500 per transaction, doing two transactions per month will get me to $200,000 in 2012.
Attainable: Create a leads pipeline that consistently generates 100 phone calls from motivated sellers each month. I need to convert just 10% of these calls to my pipeline, and close 20% of the transactions that enter my pipeline
Realistic: Yes, if I make it a priority. I need to follow through on consistently filling my pipeline and also achieve my monthly goal every month. If I do those things I should hit my annual target of $200,000.
Timely: Goal of $16,700 every month and annual goal of $200,000 by 12/31/12

Making a good living in the real estate industry can happen for you. The first step is figuring out what is important to you, and then setting specific goals so you can achieve those things. Try this approach to set yourself up for success!

It’s that time of year again, the holidays, baking cookies, time with family… and also time for reflection on what you achieved over the last year.

This is when people who are serious about improvement take a few minutes to analyze what they did well, what they did that did not go as well, and what actions they need to take to make sure they are more effective next year.

Look back on the goals you created last January and see how well you did on each of them. Did you hit each one out of the park, or did you do well on a few and need to refocus your efforts on others?

Maybe one of your goals was a new approach for talking with sellers, maybe one was delegating more to your virtual assistant, or maybe one was just trying to do more transactions. Whatever your goals were, if you created strong, specific goals for yourself and were diligent about checking your status, you know if you were successful in achieving them.

If you did not to create goals for yourself, think about what you accomplished over the past year. Did everything work out perfectly? If you’re like most of us, probably not. Now that you have the benefit of hindsight, what can you do differently next year to be more successful?

Download the 2009 Goal Planning Worksheet

(and set some goals for yourself)