This week, our guest for Agent First Summit is Jamie Tulak, a REALTOR® from Raleigh, North Carolina. In the last few years, Jamie has been focused on expanding her real estate team and creating Girls with Grit, a group built around supporting women in real estate. After incredible success, she has become an expert at creating business planning tactics that really work for real estate agents.
Our Agent First Summits happen every Tuesday morning! It’s a perk for all our real estate team members and any of their guests who want to grow their real estate business. To get an invitation, RSVP here: Save Your Seat!
In this session, Jamie shares with us a new way of planning and implementing a business strategy that truly works!
Building a Business Planning Strategy
Before you begin building your business strategy, you need to look back at the past year. Name five challenges that you faced down last year and five things that you accomplished. Consider what you’ve learned about yourself and your career this year, what relationships you’ve built, what you most enjoyed doing, and who had the most positive impact on your life.
Understanding these facts about last year will help you determine what you want to focus on most in the year ahead. You need to know where you came from to understand where you want to go.
In addition to understanding how you’ve grown personally, good business planning requires you to make sure you know your numbers:
- How many transactions did you close?
- What was your total closed volume?
- How much was your gross commission income?
- What was your net income?
- How much did it cost to list a house?
- What was your client acquisition cost?
- What was your #1 lead source?
- Who was your #1 referrer?
By knowing your numbers, you can better prepare for how much you need to do to actually make a good income. Remember, building a better business is all about balancing earning the right income with pursuing your personal/professional goals.
The Pillars of Great Business Planning
There are 6 pillars to building and sustaining a truly effective business planning strategy for real estate.
#1 Mindset
First things first, you must develop a growth mindset: “the belief that personality and abilities are malleable.” Use this mindset to improve your business constantly, learn from your mistakes, and keep growing every day, every month, every year.
You can’t do the same thing over and over and expect different results–that’s insanity. You have to surround yourself with people who have the same growth mindset that you have and reflect on how you need to change your personal habits and your business to actually see growth.
Find people who are leveling up their lives and making changes that you can make too. Let friends and family motivate you to move forward and change the way your life works. If people aren’t motivating you to grow, you don’t need to spend time with them.
And while you’re at it, don’t be afraid to encourage other people in their growth too. Speaking positivity will not only change their life but will also help you feel more positive about where you’re headed in your future.
#2 Relationships
Next, take a second to evaluate your relationships. Are the people around you helping you build your goals? Are the relationships you’re in making you stronger? Consider each one:
- Marriage
- Children
- Friends and Family
- Professional Relationships (Colleagues)
- Client Relationships
Don’t chase income–chase freedom. Your time is worth more to your loved ones than it is to your clients. Yes, know how much you must make, but also know how you want to live your life. Develop relationships that will help you get there, even if you don’t necessarily make as much money as you would have working with clients or colleagues that you had to say no to.
#3 Health & Wellness
Remember that you can’t pour from an empty cup. You have to take care of yourself in order to take care of others. Take the time to build a healthier and happier life so that you can do your best work for others. Focus on these four steps to developing a fuller life:
- Work and life harmony
- Eating right
- Exercising
- Taking time away from work
You must enjoy your life and build strong family relationships. If you don’t, you’ll never develop personally and you’ll quickly burn out. Focus on building a strong and healthy body and taking at least an hour or two away from work each day to focus on your family, which is much more important than your business.
Set a schedule you can follow that includes personal development, family time, and your work. By implementing all three, you’ll build a well-balanced life so that you don’t burn out and lose focus after just a few months.
#4 Value Proposition
Perfect your value proposition by creating a “client avatar.” Figure out who your ideal client is, where they live, where they shop, where they work, etc. When you have your ideal client in mind, you can develop your niche and figure out how to properly speak to clients.
Once you’ve chosen a niche and ideal client, develop your superpower. To do this, simply figure out what problem you can solve and determine the people you can best help by solving this problem. Then, put in the time to develop expertise in the area you want to work with the most.
To begin with, you can create a Facebook group or something similar that serves your ideal clients the content they value. No matter what you focus on, you need to make sure you are vocal about what you’re doing. Even if people never like or comment on your content, you’ll still be seen as someone that holds value for clients when they’re ready to seek real estate help.
#5 Sales and Marketing
Figure out how you plan to generate leads, find lead sources, increase referrals, and retain clients. Again, find your ideal client and work towards converting them and helping them get to know you even before they work with you.
Once you’ve determined who you want to reach, it’s not hard to find ways to reach them through social media, videos, blogs, or whatever else. You have to decide what you want to focus on, pick a tactic to develop, and start working on it. Eventually, you’ll perfect your marketing strategy and start generating the organic traffic you need to grow.
Developing Self Efficacy in Business Planning
Self efficacy is “the confidence that you have the ability to perform and maintain control over your own motivation, behaviors, and social environment.” No matter what’s going on around you, self efficacy will help you continue to get things done in whatever environment.
The truth is, motivation alone is not going to get you to your end goal. In order to maintain motivation, you have to have discipline, you have to force yourself to keep going forward and maintain your habits even when you don’t want to.
Don’t blame others for your failures. Own your failures and mistakes as well as your successes. Focus on failing forward–not getting stuck in the past, but moving onward every time you fail. Be comfortable with failing and making the necessary changes to do better next time.
Don’t Focus on a Why, Focus on What’s In It For You (WIIFY)
You don’t need a huge “why” behind your work. All you need is a motivating factor, something that you want but can only realize if you follow through on meeting your personal and professional goals.
A great way to get started is to create a dream board of some kind so you can see what you want to accomplish in the future. Create a new one each year with some long-term dreams and some short-term dreams.
For example, put something on your board that you want to buy but will only purchase if you meet your goals that year. When you meet those goals, buy yourself that gift. This process will help you maintain motivation and self efficacy throughout the entire year.
10 Things You Need for a Highly Successful Business
Finally, in order to develop a business that really succeeds even when times are rough, you must implement these ten things in your life:
- VIP client list with contact information
- Appropriate business formation (LLC, etc.)
- Professional accountant
- Transaction and expense tracking sheet or software
- Profit and loss statement update quarterly
- Lead generation strategy for your niche
- Start to finish listing system
- Start to finish buyer system
- Customer retention strategy
- Time blocking basic calendar
- BONUS: your own email, not owned by your brokerage
Once you have these set up, you’re ready to go! Remember throughout your year to keep a balance between work and home life, to develop personal and professional goals, and to maintain self efficacy day after day. And with that, you’ll be well on your way to implementing the best business planning tactics you’ve ever used to make your life better!
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