Thoughts on Leadership: How’s That Business Plan Going?

Last week, we rang in the real estate new year, and this week, I want to dive deeper into ways you can prepare and plan for a strong 2024. Ideally, you should complete your business plan in October; but if you haven’t started yet, you can download the Business Planning Essentials here.

Why plan in October? As I mentioned in last week’s post, real estate works on a 90-day cycle. What you do today will pay off three months from now, and concurrently, what you don’t do today will cause suffering and headache three months down the road.

Planning a full 90 days before the start of the New Year means that as soon as January 1 rolls around, you’ll already be running when you hit the ground. A business plan allows you to prepare for expected and unexpected challenges. It ensures the busy holiday season won’t stop your momentum in 2024. As the famous Ben Franklin quote goes: “A failure to plan is a plan to fail.” (Heard that one before, JT?)

A big part of business planning is planning your schedule. Once you plan your schedule, staying on your schedule is by far the most important thing you can do.

This weekend, aim to schedule out every day for the remainder of the year, including every single day off, and every day you’ll work for the rest of 2023. Make sure on those days you work, you work. On your workdays, follow your schedule, do your prospecting, and complete every task that will turn into business for you.

Then, from now to the end of the year and if you can carry it throughout the upcoming year, review your schedule for your upcoming day the night before. Every week, review your weekly schedule the Sunday before. And every month, review your monthly schedule the day before a new month begins. Having a schedule, and more importantly following your schedule, will have the biggest impact on your success.

Plus, part of business planning and scheduling naturally involves articulating your goals, and writing down goals has been proven to positively correlate to a person’s likelihood of achieving them.

In 1953, Harvard conducted a now-famous study on goal setting. Researchers asked Harvard MBA students about their goals. Here were their responses: 3% said they had clear, written goals; 13% said they had goals, but they were not written down; and 84% said they did not have goals at all. Ten years later, the study examined the success of its participants and found that the 13% who had non-written goals earned on average two times as much as the 84% of people who did not have goals. Most impressively, the study revealed that the 3% who had written goals outperformed everyone in the study by earning ten times as much as the other 97% of participants combined.

So, what’s the message? Scheduling helps you meet your goals, and goals are key to success. Plan and schedule yourself out now, so when everyone else is working or scrambling to business-plan over the holidays, you’ll be ahead of the game and on your way to success.

This article is adapted from Blefari’s weekly, company-wide “Thoughts on Leadership” column from HomeServices of America.