We all have our own goals.  Sometimes they are very strange.

One of my summer goals was to get rid of the tan line that I have gotten from wearing a watch for nearly 50 years.

It was a pretty easy goal.  I just stopped wearing the watch.  The only problem was that I needed my watch for church.

We ended up having non-church going company for a couple of weekends so the watch stayed off for most of the month of June and all of July.

With all the boating that we have doing, getting a completely tanned left wrist wasn't much of problem.

No one told me to tan my wrist, it was something that I wanted to do that was symbolic of the change in lifestyle that I hope to adopt as I become a more effective Realtor®.

I have always been goal driven.

Each day I try to measure the number of people who visit some of my websites where I can track traffic.  These statistics help me decide what needs doing on a given day.

A few days ago, my goal was to do my first real estate podcast.  Not long after that I did a virtual tour movie with a voice over.

This week I want to get out my fourth mailing to a list that I am managing. 

When I had employees as Director of Federal Sales for Apple Computer, I was relatively famous for giving them the leeway to do whatever needed to be done as long as it got them closer to their goals.

I was also known for holding myself and other to the goals we established. 

Then as now I believed in leadership as opposed to management of my team members.  It was a great way to work.  I loved having a team that would do whatever need doing and not spend time worrying about whose job it was.

In real estate you often feel like you are on your own and competing against a lot of others.  I am lucky to have some supportive agents with lots of experience around me to help when I need it.

Maybe with the downturn in sales we need to look at some new options for delivering a great customer experience.  In the computer world adopting a team sales environment helped us immensely.  We could focus on the customer and know that we would get paid and that we could get help from other team members.

That might not work in real estate, but one of our goals as we get out of this challenging market has to be better meeting the needs of our potentila clients.  I don't have a silver bullet way of doing it, but I know it has to be done.

It is not going to be as easy getting rid of my wrist watch tan line or catching Zucchini of the sea, but it is critical to our success in the next ten years.

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Update

I did another post with more thoughts on goal setting at my View from the Mountain Blog