Set Yourself Up for Success with a Strategic Business Plan for 2024
With a new year on the horizon, many real estate business owners are revising their business plans while others may be developing one for the first time. In all my years leading Workman Success Systems (WSS), I’ve found that paying attention to the critical elements of your plan – and your business – makes the blueprint more than an exercise: It’s foundational to your success, and it starts with being intentional.
In every aspect of business, as in life, there’s that which is intentionally created and those things that happen by accident. To be good at something – business, parenting, athletics – your success comes when you put things in place intentionally and work on them thoughtfully.
To get started on your intentional business plan, envision what you see as both your ideal business and your life in five years. When you know what you want your life to look like, you’ll build a business that supports this life and avoid having a business that becomes your life! Your business should create your lifestyle, not become your lifestyle. And the better the initial creation of your plans, the more likely it is that you’ll achieve both the life and business that you want.
Once you have your five-year goals envisioned, you’ll work backwards to define one-year and six-month goals that will keep you on track to reaching your intentional long-term goals.
Writing your plan out is integral to making it a reality. You can’t just think about it and plan it in your mind. How can you revisit a plan, ensure you’re executing correctly, and share it with your team, if it’s something that you just think about? Your written plan will help ensure that you are working on the day-to-day execution activities that will lead to achieving your goals. Think of the plan as a blueprint showing you in detail what you need to accomplish.
Align Your Business Plan with Your Core Values and Mission
Once your business plan is fleshed out, you need to ensure your core values, mission, and purpose align with it. Yes, you may need to make some revisions to them, and, for some businesses, you may need to develop a clear, well-defined mission and core values. It’s always surprising to me when I meet a real estate business owner who can’t clearly articulate their mission or core values – I know that for a business to meet and exceed its goals, you have to be living your mission.
At WSS, our core values are part of daily work. We hire to our core values and are intentional about ensuring everyone on our team knows them and lives them. Visit my office and you’ll see our core values sitting behind me on my desk. And every new hire gets a plaque with the values that they can keep on their desk, so they remember how critical they are to our business.
Keep in mind that core values rarely change; though you should review them to ensure you feel aligned at least once a year. I created my core values 10 years ago, and we’ve been in business for about nine-and-a-half years, and the core values remain the same. Some examples of our values include choosing to be happy, communicating openly, showing gratitude, and persisting until we succeed.
Remember, when drafting your values, these are foundational motivations for you and your team. They are part of your governing principles that you need internally.
Next Step: SWOT Analysis
A SWOT analysis – identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats – isn’t a new idea, but how we approach it at WSS is different. Instead of looking at our company in these four areas, we begin by really looking at ourselves. Starting with strengths, we list the things that make us great. And then we do the same exercise for our weaknesses.
It’s not always easy to reflect on your strengths and weaknesses. So, as a team, don’t be humble or shy when it comes to listing what you are good at; write them out. What would someone who respects you say are your strengths? Consider asking them. Weakness can also be difficult to articulate. This is another area that you may want to ask someone whom you trust for their input. As you identify your weaknesses, evaluate if a weakness is something that you can improve. If you can’t easily improve, and only you can decide that, consider letting it go or delegating if you can. Yes, it’s hard to let go but the time that is freed up to take advantage of your strengths is liberating and impactful to achieving your goals.
With opportunities, reflect on opportunities you can identify that you’re not taking advantage of, that you’re letting pass you by, or that you’re not working on at the highest level.
Finally, for threats, think about them as things going on in your marketplace that you have no control over, but you must be absolutely aware of. For example, in the current real estate environment, interest rates are a threat as you can’t control them, but you must be aware of them. Threats can be opportunities in that when messaged correctly, they can be an opportunity to grab market share.
The Importance of the 4 Pillars of Income
With your SWOT analysis, vision, and mission statement done, you can move into developing tactical actions that will help you execute your strategic plan. In your real estate business, you need to identify your “pillars of income,” those focused activities that are lead generating, which drive results.
Focus on determining four pillars, each of which should generate 100% of your income goal if you fully maximize them. For leading-generating pillars, they should be consistent, high-activity strategies that you can control such as geographic farming or digital lead gen. Activities such as referrals are good for business but need to be thought of as a bonus, not a pillar, as they are out of your control.
Once you’ve identified your four pillars, get specific on the daily activities for each one. What will you do day-in and day-out to execute at a high level? What behaviors, when done consistently over time, will drive results? Remember, the pillars are foundational to your business as you move forward; if an activity doesn’t align with your pillars, think carefully about it before you invest any money or time in the activity. Your pillars need your relentless, undivided attention.
With your pillars defined, you’re ready to execute your business plan and embrace the opportunity to change the rest of your life. Follow your business plan, lead with your values, work intently on your pillars. Commit every day to executing what you’ve defined and being intentional as you work through your business plan. With this focus and disciplined commitment, you’ll be set up for success in 2024 and beyond.
