Let’s pretend you are a married and approaching your very first anniversary. Being the first anniversary, it’s special to you and your spouse. Your spouse wants to take a trip to some exotic local in South America. How do you honor that request and make sure it’s the most special day you have shared together? Surely, you wouldn’t day waiting the day before the anniversary to buy plane tickets and reserve a hotel room. You plan it months in advance. You gather all the information you need to know about traveling to South America, and then you narrow the knowledge down into a travel plan.
First, you decide where you are going? Then, you find out as much as possible about that location. Then, you discover how to travel there and how much it costs to get there. You choose the cheapest method to traveling to your destination. Then, you plan what you will do once you arrive. Where are you going to sleep? Or are you going to take showers in the airplane restrooms? You also determine what sites you will visit and plan a list of potential vacation activities.
Often times, we set goals with out consciously thinking about it. You fill up your gas tank on Sunday night to make sure you get to work on time Monday morning. Your goal was to get to work on time. You planned ahead a way to accomplish this goal. You probably thought about getting up earlier Monday morning, but you knew after a great weekend that getting up earlier was going to be impossible. The filling stations from your house to your office building are always packed with morning commuters. So, you concluded that it was best that you filled up the night before. Monday morning, you made it to work early.
Getting to work is a smaller goal associated with larger goals. You get to work on time to accomplish the goal to keep your job. You want to keep your job to accomplish the goal to receive money on payday. You want to receive money on payday to accomplish the goal of paying the mortgage. You pay the mortgage to accomplish the goal of having a shelter. Each smaller goal helps to accomplish the larger goal of providing shelter.
You want to be successful in real estate. Now, you’re going to have to learn how to consciously set goals. Each goal you set leads to obtaining what you ultimately want. To reach the top of a ladder, you have to take a step at a time. If you don’t, you may lose your footing, fall off the ladder and break something. Setting goals is a secure step towards accomplish what you truly want. If your desire is to sell two properties a year, you will have to recognize that you can’t just walk out in the street and ask people if they want to buy property. Most basketball players can’t stand underneath the basket, perform an elaborate movement in the air and then expect their dunks to fall perfectly in the baskets. Usually, they start with a running start. You have to do the same, stand back look at the goal (pun intended), assess it, then decide how to get their and make your slam dunk.
No one can pick up a book about real estate today and be a million-dollar success story in the newspaper tomorrow. And saying in Hollywood reads, “It takes ten years to be an overnight success.” Over the ten years, the actor or producer, made small moves along the way that increased in notoriety step by step. Finally, he was offered a project that gave him more than critical acclaim, but audience financial approval. How would you know if you were successful? Receiving lots of money? Receiving praise? It’s very important for you to first define what success in real estate means to you. That’s going to be your destination. Without a roadmap of what you want, where you want to go, and how you plan to get there, you won’t notice where there is nor success if if fell out of the sky spelled out with bricks.
How many times have you watched a television show interview with a superstar actor, or a grand prize sweepstakes winner and you heard some variation of these words during the conversation, “Money has made my life miserable. I just want everybody to know that money can’t buy you happiness.” It’s true. Most of the times you hear statements like this it comes from the newly rich. This happens because they person never had any clearly define goals. The only goal they had in life was to get a lot of money. Then, what? Pay your bills? You’re already paying your bills. What do you want the money for? What do you do with the money after you have it? What’s the basic human need that you want to satisfy?
Remember getting to work early so that you could keep your job, so that you could get a paycheck, so that you could pay the mortgage? The basic human need was to provide shelter for you and your family. Dig deep enough into your wants and desire you may find that you’re satisfying basic human needs. Food, waters, shelter, love, companionship, etc.
The best method to live by is setting a goal for the perfect life. What would make your life perfect? Visualize every aspect of the perfect life. Who would be there to share it with you? What are you sharing? How did you get what you are sharing? Day-dreaming may seem childish, but dreams we had as children are the very things we pursue to achieve in our adult lives. Learn to dream again.
Snap out of it. You had that dream life handed it to you in that dream world. Your adrenaline should be pumping now. Are you asking yourself, “How can I make my dream life a reality?” That’s why we set goals. We give ourselves something to strive for and inadvertently add meanings to our lives. If you’re not already mentally conjured ways to create your dream life, then you might not really want that life.
If you have a desire to accomplish a large task, it is infinitely easier to accomplish that large task if you break it down into smaller more readily achievable tasks. Completing the smaller tasks helps to achieve the larger goal. Each smaller accomplishment gets you one step closer to the larger accomplishment.
Most people don’t know how to set the right goals. A lot of times, the goals we set are too broad to accomplish. There’s no way to gage success when you’re reaching for anything and everything. In a lot of occasions, we also set unreasonable time restraints on ourselves for accomplishing those goals. Creative thinking and proper knowledge of the task at hand can eliminate misjudgments in time.
I understand the importance of setting goals. How do I set achievable goals? How do I think clearly about what I truly want? Where do I start?
A successful investor has five identifiable characteristics:
Burning Desire to Succeed
The desire to succeed is the fuel that drives your internal motor to greatness. That is the adrenaline that keeps you working later than your competition. It’s the one thing that keeps your eyelids from closing when you have to get that last chapter of that book finished. Here’s where you ask yourself the toughest questions. What about real estate do I love? What will succeeding in real estate bring to my life? What do I consider success in real estate?
It’s important that you set goals that you really want to achieve in your heart. If you love it, you can live it, and put the extra effort into making things happen. Once you narrow down what you really want and the reasons you want them, you will feel the adrenaline pumping. That desire will burn. But you have to think critically about your desires. If you really don’t want to be involved in real estate, and the fire doesn’t burn, then figure out what you do like and what you do want. The burning desire is not going to be there is you don’t receive benefits from accomplishing the goals.
Be Decisive In Nature
Try narrowing your goals all the way down to the human need. What specifically is it going to accomplish for me on a human level. Let’s say the goal is to complete your administrative work before the end of each week. You end up taking your administrative work home because you want to show as many properties as possible. The administrative work is backlogged. You’ve heard of virtual assistants that are secretaries without desks in front of your main office.
It’s been nearly a month and the disorganization is costing you business. This disorganization issue can cost you tons more business. Three weeks ago, you should have asked yourself the question. Can I do all this work by myself? No. Can I afford to use a virtual assistant? Yes. It’s best to keep constantly evaluating your business and your goals. Answer your own questions honestly. Make decisive adjustments. Don’t allow yourself to be held back by indecision.
Be Goal Oriented
Every aspect of your life benefits from setting goals. Make setting goals a habit in your life. Of course, you don’t want to overload yourself. Set one goal. Set one small goal, then accomplish it. Enjoy the emotional reward of accomplishing that goal. Have a plan so you don’t end up wandering aimlessly to nowhere.
Specialized Knowledge
It is so easy for us to want to do it all. We want out hands in every cookie jar, just in case someone else’s cookies taste better. In order to set clear and pointed career goals, you have to have more than just a basic knowledge of what you’re getting into. What areas of real estate interest you more? That’s where your focus should lie. Specialized knowledge helps to keep that desire burning. The more you learn about real estate in your specialized area, the more you can visualize those benefits.
Ever hear, “Jack of all trades, master of none?” If there is a property dispute, who will you call, an entertainment lawyer or a real estate attorney? The entertainment lawyer may know a little about property disputes that he remembers from college, but the guy with the real estate attorney is going to wipe the courtroom clean with you. You can even make yourself an expert in location. Specialize your knowledge to build your own little market area within the market. Attend any seminars in your local area that address what you specifically want to explore in real estate.
Join A Team
The best way to learn to set the right goals is by watching others in real estate. Be a part of a mastermind team that shares the same or similar goals. You’re learning from someone else right now. You’ve learned from someone else all your life. It’s how we humans pass down knowledge. Seeing someone else with the same aspirations set goals and accomplish them should motivate you to be more aware of the actions you are taking or are not taking.
Search the internet for local groups that meet once a week or once a month. Join these groups and associations. Within the associations, ask around for a mentor. Before you seek a mentor to lead you, make sure you are ready to achieve. Don’t ask someone else to believe in your future if you haven’t decided what your future will be.
Before you can set any goals, you have to first determine what it is that you want. Since you are reading a real estate course, it is obvious that you want to succeed in real estate. But, what does succeeding in real estate mean for you? Think about it further. There are many tiers and levels of real estate investing. Which areas of real estate get you excited? Would you prefer to buy and sell properties or buy properties and rent them out for steady income? Narrow down your desires to make them clear and attainable. Remember, if your goals are too broad, it makes it harder to define what needs to be done to achieve them.
Once you have made the decision of where you want to focus, then you decide what you want to achieve in this area of real estate? It’s okay to have several goals, but focus on one major goal at a time. Once you get better at achieving goals, then you will be better equipped to set multiple goals and more organized to achieve all of them. Write down the most important desire for you.
Now that you have narrowed down the major goal you want to achieve in your specified area of real estate, take the time to write down everything you believe you need to do before you will be able to accomplish that major goal. If your list is very short or extremely long, it may mean that you don’t know enough about real estate to truly be sure that these are the steps you must take to achieve that major goal. Number one on that list should be education. Take some time to educate yourself on what needs to be done in your specified area of real estate. Your goal is to be an expert in your field. You want to avoid attempts to learn everything. If you put too much pressure on yourself to learn everything, your competition will beat you every time because their clients want someone who know everything about what they want.
After you’ve done some educating on your specified real estate topic, it will make it easier for you to re-write your goal list. How long do you think it should reasonably take you to achieve your ultimate goal? 10 years? What on your list should be accomplished by year 5? What on your list should be accomplished in two years? What do you want to accomplish by the end of the first year?
The goal that you accomplish after the first year, should be a step towards accomplish your two year goal. Whatever you have set to accomplish in two years, should move you thank much closer to your five year goal. And likewise, the five year goal must be set to get you that much closer to your 10 year goal.
Break down your goals even further. What need to be done to reach your one year goal? Make a list. What on the list would you like to have accomplished in six month? Break that down even further to five months, four months, until you get down to what you want to accomplish in the next thirty days.
You have written down what you want to accomplish in the next thirty days. What can you do in the next week to get closer to reaching that thirty day goal? Find a memo pad or one of those “thing-to-do-today” pads. Each morning review your list of goals. Ask yourself, “What can I do today to make sure I meet my goal by the end of the week?” Try not to overload yourself. Make the goals small enough to be accomplished, but meaningful enough to take you to that next level.
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