Setting Goals - by Becky Sanders

This article was inspired by Cameron. It's a new year and, for me, I'm making it a new start. I decided that it is not enough to determine how many deals I intend to do this year or how much money I intend to make.

We've all heard over and over how important it is to put your goals on paper. Well here's what I think each of us should be asking ourselves.

Where are we are today in our business? What have we already accomplished? What areas do we need to expand upon, increase, improve, or get started on? What are our financial goals for the year? What do we need to do to get there? Or more specifically, HOW DO WE NEED TO SPEND OUR TIME on a yearly, monthly, weekly and daily basis?

Shoot high! It's easier to find 40 deals a year then to only find 2 because, if you're doing everything you should and could be doing, then more deals will come your way than you thought possible. If you've only found 2 deals, then you're either brand-new to the business (as in doing everything right for less than 2-3 months) or you haven't been running this as a business.

Let's say you intend to do 24 deals this year and you want to make $500,000 this year. That's an average profit of $21,000 per house. Let's break this down monthly because we need to look at what we'll do this month to get there. We need two houses this month. How many sellers do you need to talk to or make offers to get your two? This varies for each of us so I'm not going to answer that. But what do you need to do to get there? Look at your advertising, your Realtors that you work with, your mailings, your signs, and your networking and decide what you need to do more of. Decide how many sellers or how many bids you need to make each month in order to get your two.

Once you have enough motivated sellers on your plate, you need to close your deals. Do you have the knowledge, confidence, and resources to close these deals? Confidence is the easy and hard part - read my previous posts. Confidence will come in the doing, so just do it. As far as knowledge, you know where to get that - it's sitting in those manuals on your shelf. Resources come from networking. You need your team and support system which is compromised of other investors, Realtors, mortgage brokers, attorneys, title companies, hard money lenders, and private lenders. And if you're rehabbing, you'll need some good contractors. If you don't have your support team lined up, then you need to set goals to finding good people to work with.

You'll probably be selling most or all of your properties. Do you have a buyer's list of wholesale and retail buyers? Start now and make goals regarding when you're going to do this and how many names, minimally, you're going to add each month.

Time is something we always seem to be short on so you need to schedule the time each week you're going to spend on the business. Do you have "business hours"? Maybe you should. Break down your annual goals into monthly goals and then weekly goals. It's what you do weekly that will have the bottom-line impact on how successful you become. Specific goals and accountability will set your business in motion.

Here's an outline I made for my own goals for this year:

AMT I INTEND TO PROFIT THIS YEAR:

NO. OF DEALS I INTEND TO CLOSE THIS YEAR:

AVG. PROFIT PER DEAL:

1. EDUCATION

a. bootcamps and conventions this year b. courses I'll buy this year
c. # hours each week listening to tapes and reading courses and books
d. # hours each week spent on Cameron's board ;^)

2. ADVERTISING/MARKETING

a. # hours each week or month spent placing ads, putting up signs, and/or sending out mailers, etc. for findings sellers and buyers (don't forget to make it a habit to give everyone you come across your business cards!)

3. NETWORKING/EXPANDING SUPPORT TEAM

a. # hours each week or month finding, calling and/or developing relationships with: Realtors, other investors (potential buyers or leads), attorneys, hard money lenders, private lenders, money partners, mortgage brokers, title companies, appraisers, and bird dogs
b. # of association meetings or events I'll attend month and minimum of how many new people I will meet and get cards from each meeting

4. STREAMLINING THE BUSINESS

a. set up better filing system this month
b. research and buy software for property tracking/deal tracking, recordkeeping and bookkeeping
c. decide what things you want to delegate and put that person or system in place (i.e. bird dogs, realtors to do find deals and/or do comps, answering service, 800 number, someone to sell your houses, etc.)

I tried to be somewhat generic here and I know much more could be added to this list and yours should be custom-made by you. But I want to say something here about accountability. I met an investor from Atlanta at the convention (Johnna Lodge) who really made a good point about accountability and it really hit home for me because I had (until now) been prone to procrastination.

As you know, when we have a job, we're accountable to our boss. In this business, the boss is you and it's sometimes hard to overcome our inclination to procrastinate when we're not accountable to someone else. As you know, Paul Andrews on this board did Ron LeGrand's $5000 challenge and this is a form of accountability, but the consequence is a year away. Johnna suggested that we be accountable to someone every week, so that's what she and I are doing beginning this week. We will be accountable to eachother.

I challenge each of you to find an investor friend who you can be accountable to. Every week, tell them or email them your weekly goals and then tell them or email them what you've accomplished at the end of the week. I'm not just talking about your results, I'm talking about how you spent your time. Did you talk to 30 sellers this week like you intended to? Did you get your filing done? Did you get your ad in the paper? I think you get the point.

Happy New Year to all of you and let's reach our goals for 2002 together!