My professional purpose is to help you, the broker, maximize your production and help you become the best version of yourself. Why? Because happy brokers sell more real estate. I do that by helping you solve problems that you face every day. If you can effectively solve these problems, you'll be more productive and you'll be happier in your business and in life.
Today, the problem I want to help you solve is to create a "one sheet,” 10 easy steps, for the "visioneering" process that you can reference over time.
First, I want to remind you of the importance of having a vision/goals and a plan to support them. For me, the explanation of the "Harvard Study on Goal Setting,” when I heard it for the first time a decade ago, was a pivotal moment for me. It surveyed the graduating class of MBAs from 1979. At graduation, they asked the graduates a question: “Have you set written goals and created a plan for their attainment?” 84% had no goals set at all, 13% had written goals but no concrete plan but 3% had written goals and a concrete plan to attain them. The results? 10 years later, the 13% that had goals but no plan were earning 2x more than the 84% of those that had no goals or a plan. The 3% (ELPs) who had both written goals and concrete plans earned 10x that of the remaining 97%. The 3% had clarity of vision, they knew what they wanted, and they had a plan for how they were going to achieve their goal. When I read this study, I knew that I had to get serious about the goal setting process. It became non-negotiable for me a decade ago and I'm pretty happy with my personal results.
The following are 10 steps involving the basic to high performance. I want to lay them out for you today for you to consider:
- A vision is basically the "movie trailer" that brings to life "How you want to live and who you want to become." You bring your full range of senses into your vision.
- You don't need to focus on longer term goals. Most experts feel that 3 years is the ideal timeframe. I explained my Life Planning process on my last call using a 9-year horizon and my intent was not to confuse you. Stick with 3 years and stack 3 year winning stretches on top of each other. The stacking process is what makes up Life Planning.
- Don't "annualize" your goals. Think 3 years and break them down into quarterly segments and execute on them accordingly. Goals need to be set to support your vision.
- You must get emotionally involved with your vision so executing on it every day becomes second nature. You need to review your vision at least every day to create that feeling that it already exists. It's the feeling that will motivate you not the "thing." Thoughts create feelings - > feelings create action - > action is what creates the results.
- "Thinking" is underrated. Take 15 to 20 minutes a day with no distractions to meet with yourself. You can thank me later.
- Create 3 to 5 action items that you will execute on every day that support your quarterly goal.
- "Gamify" your action steps. Gamify means to track those action steps in order to create personal accountability.
- Celebrate! You must celebrate your successes each quarter and especially when you hit your 3 year goal.
- Adjust as needed. Your lifestyle will change as you evolve. You will need to adjust as you better define who you want to become and how you want to live.
- Commit. This process has been proven over centuries. This is not my content. I'm just filtering to you what has worked for me.
These 10 steps are the "Holy Grail" of high performance. What I have observed over the last 10 years coaching, training, mentoring and managing real estate brokers is that if one does not go through this process, production levels will stall and plateau at some point. It's the brokers that know where they want to go, execute on the small things every day, and it will be the brokers that see big, sustainable growth over the long run. Type A personalities, which most agents are, tend to think this process is fluff and like to move right to action and skip the "visioneering" stage. That was me 15 years ago and it cost me mightily.
Your vision picks your circle of friends, it picks your clients, it picks your lifestyle, its picks your investments and how you spend your money. It picks what you eat and if you exercise or not. It picks your environment and who you spend the most time with.
You'll find in coming weeks, that your vision even picks when you wake up, how dialed in your processes are and how you relate to those that support your business. Your vision literally becomes the filter for your life.
There is a reason why 3% of those Harvard MBA grads made 10X that of the remaining 97%. They had a vision, they had goals, and they had a plan to execute on those goals.
