2019 Ultimate Planning: Taking Your REI Biz to the Next Level

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New Year’s resolutions... love ‘em or hate ‘em, they are pretty popular. The tricky thing with New Year’s resolutions is that many people don’t keep them—and that’s mainly because they don’t create quantifiable, detailed, written goals. When it comes to your real estate investing business, simply having a thought or a wish to succeed won’t get you very far. It takes MUCH more.

So, how did 2018 shape up for you? Did you accomplish your REI goals? More importantly, did you have written goals for 2018?

Maybe your goal for the entire year was to do one property flip. And that’s a great goal to have—don’t get me wrong— but is that a tough goal to accomplish? Probably not. In this case, maybe your goal wasn’t as big as it could have been.

The key parts of goal-planning are: to write them down and review them on a daily basis, so you can make progress. If you don’t write them down, they’re not tangible and you can forget where you were planning to go with them.

So, let’s take a closer look at the ways you can create solid, achievable goals, and the steps you need to take to accomplish them.

2019: Ready, Set, GOAL

As we start fresh in 2019, it’s important to be strategic with your goals and planning for this year—regardless of whether you have personal or professional goals. (You should definitely have both, BTW).

If you have a dream, make sure you convert it to a goal. How do you do that? Easy. Just write it down, and then break it into smaller, achievable steps that you can take throughout the year.

If your dream is to own a vacation home in Miami, then break down the actionable steps you need to take (and when you need to achieve them by) in order to accomplish that goal. If your goal is to drive a Ferrari, write that down. If your goal is to donate $100,000 to charity, write that down. You get the idea here.

Another important part of your goals: they need to be quantifiable or measurable. “I want to make a ton of money in 2019” is not a goal. What the heck does that mean, anyway? A “ton” of money means different things to different people. Put a number on it.

Once you have a clearly-defined, measurable goal, it’s time to break it down into steps. Let’s say your goal is to make $300,000 a year doing real estate deals. That’s fantastic. But $300,000 is not going to show up on your doorstep. That ain’t gonna happen, folks.

So, to earn that amount, first outline the types of deals you’re going to invest in—will you pursue wholesale deals, buy and hold, buy and flip, vacation rentals, apartment complexes, etc.?

Next, determine how many deals you’ll need to complete in one year in order to make $300,000. Let’s say you decide to go the wholesale route, and you estimate that you’ll average a $10,000 profit on each deal. That means you’ll need to plan on wholesaling 30 properties during the year to reach your $300,000 goal. That’s 2.5 properties per month (so, shoot for 3!)

Then, outline your marketing strategy. How many mailings will you send? How many networking events or REI group meetings will you attend? How much private money do you need to raise?

Get super-specific! The more detailed you get with your tangible steps, the better chance you have of actually achieving the goal.

And be careful to avoid “shiny object syndrome” (SOS). Don’t try to be an over-achiever in every area of the business and pursue every strategy just because it seems like it will lead to awesome results.

Instead, get really, really good at 1 or 2 “sectors” of real estate investing—whether it’s buy and hold, fix and flip, apartments, wholesaling, or anything else. Because, if you start spreading yourself too thin, you won’t be successful.

Now, let’s take a glance at a technique that has proven to be extremely beneficial for goal planning: the 6-Step Peak Performance Success Formula.

Mastering the 6-Step Peak Performance Success Formula

This is what we do in our Mastermind groups, and it really helps investors clarify their goals as they begin the planning process.

Here we go:

Absolute Clarity of the End Result (ACER):

What does the ideal life look like for you? Imagine what your day would look like, how much money you would make, what you would do in your free time, how would you spend your money, etc.? These don’t have to be materialistic things (although those are fine to include).
Strong Enough Reasons:

What is your “Why?” Why do you want to achieve the vision that you laid out in Step #1? Who else would be impacted if you were able to achieve your vision?
Acknowledge Bad Behavior:

Be honest with yourself about your challenges or bad behaviors that might be holding you back from reaching your goals. They might be personal obstacles (bad marriage, fears about the future, etc.) or professional challenges.
Create Your Action Plan:

This is what we talked about above. Define your goals, write them down, make sure they’re measurable, and then define the steps you need to take to achieve them.
Decide:

It may sound corny, but you have to believe in yourself. If you don’t have the right mindset, it can be very detrimental to your goals. Make the decision to pursue your goals, and continue to work toward them throughout the year.
Take Massive Action:

The most successful real estate investors always have one thing in common: they don’t dally when it comes to taking action. They’re out there finding leads, making offers, and raising capital without hesitation. They focus on revenue-producing activities (RPAs) and let others take care of the non-RPA tasks.

So, what’s holding you back from taking massive action?

Address these issues now, clearly define your goals, and break them down into tangible steps... and—if you do this—you’ll find that 2019 will defy all your expectations.