Do You have (a) 20/20 Vision?

Do You have (a) 20/20 Vision? 2020 seems so far away and yet it is just five short years away. I remember spending New Years Eve 1970 with some family friends and thinking how far into the future the year 2000 was, it seemed like an eternity away and I remember thinking I would be lucky to live to see it.

Well that came and went pretty fast, and even though the days still have just 24 hours in them, somehow time seems to have a way of speeding up the older you get. So, what is your plan for 2020, or do you even have a plan for this weekend. If not it might be time to sit down and evaluate where you would like to be in 5 years, because I guarantee you will not get there if you do not know where you are headed.

Pretend you are going on vacation, you know where you want to go, but you are not quite sure how to get there, you have a very good start by choosing the end result, it is always best to start with the end in mind. You could fly, drive, travel by train, hitchhike, but at some point you must decide and then pack, get organized make sure business is covered while you are away.

So pick out some goals that you would like to achieve, then start backtracking on how to get there, if it is to lose 25 pounds, well that is only five pounds per year, or a pound every 2.4 months, well that does not sound to difficult. that is less than an ounce a day.

Lets say you want to be earning $400K per year in 5 years, that is just a little more than $1000 dollars a day, if you can figure out how to generate $250 per hour you can do this by working 33 hours a week. You must now figure out your dollar producing activities, what can you do for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week that would generate this kind of regular income.

You could start by focusing on a higher priced market of homes, selling $1M a month in homes would get you close to your goal, depending on your splits and fees, so you can choose to sell 10 $100K homes or 1 $1M home every month.

You could invest in property yourself that generates income for you, or perhaps invest in fix-n-flip properties and sell them yourself. You could start your own brokerage if you haven't already and bring on other agents that you share in their production. Or a combination of all of these things.

There are many ways to achieve your goals, but the first is to sit down and figure out where you want to go, what you want your life to look like in 5 years. You can then map out your strategy to give you a road-map to follow, and guess what, if your goal was to hit that $400K mark and you only made it to $300K, that does not mean you failed, you just have not fully arrived.

I remember reading about a study that was done years ago on a group of Harvard Freshman (might have been another school I can't recall), but they asked each of them how many had written their goals down, how many had actually taken the time to plan out their next 5-10 years and beyond. Only 3% of the students had, and when they circled back around with this group some 20 years later, this 3% had a greater net worth than that of the rest of the graduating class combined. I think that speaks volumes.

Make a plan, no matter how small, look at it weekly, make it yours. I love sitting down with agents and helping put together their unique game plan, we take into consideration, their personality, their values, their dreams and desires and their current financial situation and we devise a plan, an actual living breathing plan that they can look at every single week, and adjust as needed, because if you get off course or get thrown a curve ball, you can get back on track by having a plan, if you have no plan, then as Lewis Carroll said "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there".

 Some great advice I heard years ago, was to Make a plan, Put a date on it and Go public.