You can’t do anything in business or life without intent. To grow a great business you’ve got to have something that drives you. Whether you call it goals, a dream, vision, a purpose, mission, whatever it is, it needs to be the number one thing that drives all your activities. Josh Phegan explains what needs to come next to make those dreams realities.
Anxiety is created when we look at the ideal and realise just how far we are away from achieving it. If you want perspective, though, the best thing you can do is to look at where you started and realise just how far you’ve come.
With any coaching client, the best thing to start with is a list of achievements. As you achieve things every week, write them on a list on your phone. When you get to the end of the year review the list, and you’ll realise just how much you’ve done.
Once you’ve written out your achievements, it gives you the launching pad to decide what you want. Often the things you achieved last year are similar to the things you want to accomplish this year. There may be some variance: new goals, new aspirations, new ambitions. Sometimes they’ll be entirely new.
How you write the goal is just as important. Do you speak in specific outcomes, or do you list the action that needs to happen? ‘Going to the gym’ isn’t a goal to me; it’s an action item. The outcome – flat stomach, ideally between 65 and 70kgs, the ability to run 5km in under 20 minutes – now that’s a goal. It’s specific, it’s measurable and you can work out straight away if you’ve achieved it or not.
‘Financial freedom’ is vague. To pay off $5,000 from your credit card debt and save $40,000 for a deposit, that’s specific and measurable.
The only reason that a goal isn’t achieved is that you don’t have a system for it. Once you design the system, you need people to run the system, to produce the result. If you’re not getting the result you want you have to rework the system or retrain the people.
Simple systems set you up for success. ‘Cue, action and result’ is one of my favourites. The cue is the bottle of water; the action is to drink it just before you go to sleep. The result, you’ll get out of bed straight away in the morning.
So what’s the cue you need to inspire the action to get the result?
It starts by asking two critical questions: What does success look like for you? And how will you know when you’ve achieved it? The answer to those two questions will rapidly change your world. To write more in fees, to grow a business, you have to focus on four numbers: Average sale price, Average fee, Volume, Annual leave days taken.
What’s your plan for 2018? Will there be price growth? How will you be more valuable? Is there room for more market share? More transactions? And is it possible to do more and take more time off? The more time off you take, the more you’ve let go, the more you’re now running your business on systems with great people.
No dream, no team: it’s that simple. There’s not a year that goes by where I don’t grow. That’s what I love about the game of business; being in a position where you get to learn about how to adapt to the conditions of the day.
The most important asset you’ll ever have is your vision for yourself. Without a goal it’s difficult to score, so no matter what level agent you are remember this: there’s already someone out there who’s achieved what you want to achieve. All you need to do is get close to them and learn their systems.
Think: an agent who writes $100,000 a year has $100,000- type systems, someone who writes $1,000,000 a year has $1,000,000 a year-type systems. That’s all it is.
The quality of life is measured by the experiences you have and the people you get to share them with.
If you don’t get clear about what you want, then you’re waiting for someone else to decide what it looks like.
