How is your “occupation” going?
No, I didn’t mean “Business”, but if you tell me how your “Occupation” is doing, I bet I can tell how your Business is doing. Too often, we spend too many hours attending to the busy work of the business, leaving us a day behind and a dollar short of our goals.
What’s on your to-do list for today? Are these items the ones that will get you closer to your goals, or are they just things you HAVE to do? I can almost bet that if you wake up every day and simply go through a seemingly endless to-do list, your business may be “surviving,” but you’re not “thriving.”
An important way to know if you are doing a busy job or not, is to ask yourself the following questions:
What goal will completing this activity bring me one step closer to?
– Can someone else do this for me?
Sometimes things really don’t need to be done at all. And sometimes you have to do things, but not for you.
You will need to prioritize items that you need to do yourself. If the majority of your business over the next five years will come from leads generated from referrals and sphere, then the “musts” are clear: contact and serve that group of people well. Invest your time and money in that quadrant of contacts. Stay away from the annoying “to do” list that says you need to update the expired system which he drafted two years ago and has yet to implement.
Next, ask yourself some tough, honest questions about yourself and your business.
– First, can you achieve your goals alone? To reach the numbers you have proposed, do you need to expand your human resources?
– Second, do you need a different business model than the one you are currently using? (I told you these were tough questions!)
If you are looking to increase your production by half in the next five years, perhaps you can achieve your goal within the status quo. But what if you’re looking to double your business in five years? Or quadruple it? Is it reasonable to think that you can be successful in the same way and with the same number of people as you have in the past?
You already know the answer: definitely not. In fact, this can often be the turning point in the decline and/or failure of a business, when you don’t realize that you, alone, cannot be the chef. Y bottle washer Y grow your business. A team or staff to support you can become essential when planning your future goals
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Business Don’t Work and What To Do About It, by Michael Gerber, talks about this at length in his book.
It’s all about numbers today in terms of goals and in terms of human resources. Plan accordingly.
That’s why Part 9 of my 17-Part Business Planning Workbook is all about the numbers. You need to figure out what kind of production you will need over the next 1-5 years to reach your personal goals. Your business is about secondary his life; should not be his life.
If you’re stuck on hustleyour business has become your life, and it is no longer just supporting it.
A question I get a lot during my training and talks is “How do you get the “numbers?” Maybe this will help:
WRITE THEM.
Next year’s goal: what is the magic number for closed production (in millions?) for your 2 year goal? For 3, 4 and 5 years? What about the gross and net closing commissions? average selling price? Number of transactions? Number of listings? You should plot each one and write down the number.
For the next year and the next four, what is the magic number for new listings, for example? Where will the business come from? What is the main source? Remission. Sphere. Website. Farm. Expired. What about the sales generated by the buyer? Where will that business come from? What are the sources of lead? As you define these categories, you begin to identify your target market and where to spend your marketing dollars (and your time!)
The numbers tell you a lot about your business. By focusing on your numbers and hitting your goals, you can plan your priorities, staff your business accordingly, and stay out of the hustle and bustle.