How To Make 2024 Your Best Year in Real Estate

“Accomplishing a goal has three phases: deciding to do it, determining what specific actions are necessary and in what order, and executing those actions.”

– Michael Masterson, Best-selling Author and Entrepreneur

By Realttorney^®

From my family to yours, we wish you the merriest and happiest Christmas! It is ten days before Christmas day, and everyone is busy preparing for the holiday festivities. Excluding today there are only eight working days left in 2023.

As we close the year 2023, we look expectantly toward 2024 and the vast opportunities it brings to be of service to clients, friends, family members, and our community. We want to “hit the ground” in 2024 running and shake off the effects of a long holiday break.

I am sure most of us were unable to accomplish all our goals in 2023. Hence, we look to the next year to continue our quest to finish what we started in 2023. For those who have accomplished all that they set to do in 2023, we congratulate you for your tireless and focused efforts.

So how do you make 2024 your best year in real estate? Here are three (3) steps we suggest you do.

First, CONDUCT A YEAREND REVIEW. Go over your physical or digital daily planner to see the numerous activities and projects completed and uncompleted during the year. If you have a journal where you list all your goals, then read them and determine why you succeeded in a particular goal or project and why you failed in another.

I am old school, so I have a traditional To Do List which is not really ideal from what I have recently read in articles and watched on YouTube over the past month. But, my Life Plan is on my laptop and it serves as a compass in the journey of my life, as a husband, father, attorney, real estate broker, and a law-abiding Filipino.

It is a great activity to do especially towards the end of the year. It only takes 20 minutes or longer, depending on you. With a pen and paper, find a quiet place to sit back and reminisce on the year that is about to end.

Take note of the goals, projects, and tasks that were not started, started but not concluded. What could have been the reasons for such failures or missteps? Reflect on these reasons.

Oftentimes, the number one reason for me not accomplishing a particular goal or project is the lack of time. Another is over enthusiasm which leads to setting too many goals and thinking it can be accomplished all at the same time.

The second step is what I call GOAL-ORIENTEERING. This is the time to set new goals or to re-orient your existing goals. Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of “Psycho-Cybernetics” likened a human being to a bicycle: we maintain our balance only while we are moving toward something. Trying to maintain balance while sitting in one place makes us feel shaky and, ultimately, we fall.

Dr. Maltz says that if we have no worthwhile personal goals, it is easy to conclude that life itself is not worthwhile. It is only by establishing specific attainable goals that we turn our servomechanism into a success mechanism.

There are dozens upon dozens of self-help books discussing how to effectively set goals. I have written about goal-orienteering in a previous article.

But, Dr. Maltz emphasized that setting goals that are fulfilling and achievable requires a SMART approach –

S-pecific

M-easurable

A-chievable

R-elevant

T-imebound

Taking the SMART approach, make a list of all your goals for the coming year. Don’t worry about how long your list will be. Just write down all that your heart and mind desire.

Then, prioritize these goals based on your core values and beliefs. Choose 2 to 3 major goals for the year that will improve your health, wealth-building abilities, personal or intellectual development, and family or social relationships. This approach is a suggestion of Michael Masterson, the creator of Early to Rise, which some have fully embraced.

Write your goals down and be SPECIFIC. Thereafter, break down your yearly goals into monthly goals. Then break down the monthly goals into weekly goals. After identifying your weekly goals, create your DAILY PLAN OF ACTION. Determine how much time you are willing to commit to fulfilling each and every goal in your plan.

Set specific deadlines for achieving the goals/completing the task and lay out the details of the plan to achieve these goals. If it’s too large a goal, break it down into sub-deadlines and write them down in order. It is important to organize the items on your list into a plan by placing them in the proper sequence and priority.

Next, set aside time every day to work towards these important goals. Dwayne Baptist in his book “5 Secrets of Goal Setting” says FOCUSED ACTION is the basic key to achieving success. Set aside at least an hour of your day to follow what is suggested above to come up with a plan that you can implement for the entirety of 2024. And, with your Plan of Action in place, you are ready to execute it with focused action.

The third step is to CREATE A FEEDBACK MECHANISM. Monitor your progress by keeping a journal of every action taken towards achieving your goals. I just purchased a simple notebook to use as my journal for this purpose.

It is extremely important to set up a structure for how you will record your daily efforts. Keeping a record in a Goals Journal (for example) of the many steps you achieved is a must so that you can review your accomplishments a week or two before the end of every quarter. this could be in written or digital form. It is up to you.

I do a quarterly review of my progress. Why? Failures will abound. This I know very well. In the last two decades, there have been a lot of unaccomplished goals for me. So, plan to fail. Not everything will go well. But, focus on the journey and how you will be transformed by the entire process.

For this coming year, I will take a less active role in litigation and plan for more content creation as a service to licensed real estate brokers and accredited real estate salespersons – rookies and veterans alike. In 2024, I plan to publish and launch a minimum of three books. In 2024, I plan to be active in real estate brokerage as well as begin and finish the development of some real estate projects in Indang, Cavite.

My motto at the beginning of 2024 is “If you want different results… start doing things differently.” Follow the 3 steps listed above and welcome the New Year with renewed vigor. And, for a more detailed approach to creating your ultimate real estate prosperity plan in 2024, you can click on the underlined words.

But, I leave you with a warning. Executing your Plan as you designed it following the 3 steps here is hard, hard work. So, aside from planning to fail, plan for some rest and recreation as a reward for yourself and your family with every major success you will have.

Let me know what your grand plans are this coming 2024. Happy holidays. Enjoy the company of relatives and friends in the last 2 weeks of 2023.

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Atty. Jojo is a real estate attorney, an estate planning attorney, a licensed real estate broker, and a PRC-accredited Lecturer/ Speaker for Training Programs in Real Estate. He is committed to helping new and veteran real estate service practitioners be well-informed of the latest laws, rules, and regulations, and information relevant to the real estate service sector.