Summary

Why don’t business plans or New Year’s resolutions help you reach your goals?

1. Your business plan is too vague. The more specific and detailed you are about how you’re going to accomplish a goal, the better your chances of achieving it.
2. You set it and forget it. When you set your goals and then forget them, they don’t drive your daily actions and focus. You then lose direction of how to reach your goals.
3. You give up too easily. No matter how great your business plan is, if you easily give up with every small mistake or failure, you will never succeed.
4. You don’t do what you say you’re going to do. Lack of commitment is the number one cause of failure. When you don’t commit 100%, you still give yourself the option to fail.

Decide on what you are committed to accomplishing in your business and in your life this year. Figure out what it takes to achieve those goals…and do it! No shortcuts. 

If you want to win in this tough market, come join me for my free masterclass on the Victory Protocol for 2023. It’s not a business planning class. It’s a dynamic, powerful masterclass where you’ll get actionable strategies that you need right now in order to get & convert more business in 2023. Save your spot HERE.

Full Transcript

All right. Welcome to the beginning of 2023. It’s coming. It’s here, New Year’s here. Do you have a business plan?

Hey there, it’s Kevin Ward, the founder of YesMasters Real Estate Success training, helping you get more yeses and more successes in your business and in your life. But your business plan probably isn’t going to help you do that. 

I’m going to talk on this video about why most real estate agents’ business plans suck and why your New Year’s resolutions probably suck too. In fact, you may be one of those agents right now listening to it be like, “Well, I don’t even make business. I don’t even make resolutions anymore, because I never keep them.” And my friend, that’s part of the problem. Same thing with business plans. Business plans for most real estate agents suck. It’s not because the business plans suck. I’m just going to be honest. It’s because you suck.

So I’m going to talk about why business plans suck and how to fix it in this video. So first, understand that nothing worthwhile is built without a blueprint. You ever sold a house that was built without a blueprint? No. You ever seen a house built without a blueprint? Me neither. But it would probably suck. Right? You always start before you build anything that’s worthwhile. Before you build anything of significance, you always start with a blueprint. Same thing with your business. Same thing with your year. The problem is most real estate agents don’t have a blueprint.

Now, they may sit down for a one-hour business planning class or something like that. I used to do business planning webinars, and people would sit down and draw out all their goals, set goals, and then that’s it. Then forget about it. 

Now, how to win in 2023 matters because we’re in a tough market. In fact, I’ll just go ahead and say this. I want you to invite you to a free masterclass I’m doing on the victory protocol for 2023. It’s not a business planning class. It is dynamic, powerful, actionable strategies that you need right now in order to get more business, convert more business in 2023. So you can click on the link in the description or go to yesmasters.com and register. But let’s talk about why business plans suck.

I’m going to give you four reasons that business plans typically suck and New Year’s resolutions suck and what to do about it. Okay? 

Why Business Plans & New Year’s Resolutions Suck

1.Number one, the first reason your business plan does not help you reach your goals is because it’s too vague, too generic, too general, and it’s just simply not detailed enough. It’s just kind of like, okay, here’s goals, goals, goals. Here’s my strategy. I’m going to do this, this, and this every day, and that’s it. Now will that work? It can work, but the more specific and the more detailed you are about how you’re going to accomplish a goal, the better the chances are you’re going to get there.

2. But number two, the second and even greater reason why most business plans suck is because you set it and forget it. Now be honest. How many of you have you ever created your business plan, set your goals for the year and then never looked at it again? Or you looked at it maybe once or twice or every couple of months and then, but it really was not driving your daily behaviors. It was not driving your agenda for where I’m focusing my time, where am I focusing my energy and my business today? And this is the difference between high achievers and low achievers. Low achievers don’t have a clear sense of direction and a clear roadmap of how to get there. Why? Because it takes time.

Here’s the thing, guys. For you to create a powerful business plan, one that will actually steer your energy and your agenda and your actions and drive toward results, it takes time. An architect does not spend 30 minutes creating a blueprint for your house. Why? It would be a bad house. It takes time not only to execute, but it takes time to plan correctly and powerfully to help you reach your goals. So number one, you’ve got to have more detail. It’s got to be more powerful. Let me tell you something else. You can’t set it and forget it.

3. Number three. Number three is you give up too easily. Now, every step that I’m going to tell you here, number one, your business plan’s too vague, not clear enough. That’s a small reason your business plans don’t work. 

Second one, you set it and forget it. That’s another one. But here’s the third one and this one now we’re getting down to the nitty gritty, and we’re getting important here. You give up too easily. 

This is it. You give up too easily. You may have a great plan. You put a schedule, you put it together. You start doing, you start doing it, and then you get some resistance or you hit a couple of failures and what do you do? You stop. You give up.

This is the number one reason that real estate agents fail, not only with their business plan, it’s why people fail with their New Year’s resolutions. Let’s face it. People fail because they give up too easily. They make one mistake, they get off track and then they just blow it away. They just blow it off, forget about it, not going to do it anymore.

And then here’s the fourth reason the business plans suck and they don’t work. And this is the killer. This is the most important. 

4.You don’t do what you say you’re going to do. This is the reason. You say you’re going to do something. You don’t do it. Now, I just want you to stop right now and think about this because this is not a fun video to be watching. You’re like, “Well, I want tactics. I want this.” I get it. But you don’t need tactics if you’re not keeping your word. Just gut level here, straightforward, honest conversation. If you are not willing to do what you say you’re going to do, there is no plan or no path, no business plan, no blueprint that is going to get you from where you are today to the success that you want.

When it comes right down to it, the number one cause of failure is a lack of commitment. We say we’re going to do something, and we don’t do it. And the reason that you failed, the reason, if you did not reach every goal that you set this year, the reason you didn’t reach those goals was most likely and most dynamically, because you did not keep your commitment. You still are giving yourself an option. 

Look, I get it. This year the market changed dramatically. So there’s a whole lot of outside forces that could have impacted you achieving your goals this year. But at the end of the day, you can’t control the markets. You can’t control interest rates. You can’t control inflation. You can’t control layoffs. You can’t control housing prices. You can’t control any of that.

What you can control is your commitment to achieve a goal. And when it’s not working and you’re not getting … If the commitment is high enough, then you adapt, you adjust, you assess. You look at it and go like, okay, I got to make some changes here. And you adjust and then you attack again. Or you do what most agents do and you just give yourself an option and you back out. 

The Key to Making Your Business Plan Work

Guys, I’m going to give you the real simple key to setting your business plan and making it work, and that is you commit.

You decide what you are committed to having in your life. You decide what you’re committed to accomplishing in your life, in your business this year. You just figure out what the price is that you got to pay to achieve those goals. 

And then my friend, you have to pay the price. There is no shortcut. 

I want to hear from you on this. What I want to hear from you is the reason you’re not achieving your goals. Are you blaming it on the bad business plan? Are you blaming it on the market or things outside of your control? Or are you taking and putting the ownership and responsibility for your success squarely on your shoulders, squarely where it will be, where it should be. And say, if I am going to win, it is going to be up to me.

My challenge, my friend, is for you to own it. You own the plan and you own the results. It is the only way that you are going to win in 2023 and beyond. 

If the video’s been helpful for you, make sure you give it a thumbs up. Type your questions, comments, rebuttals, anything in the comments. Love to hear from you, and I’ll see you in the next video.