The top executive of goal setting has been well attested and passed along so before you jump over this point because you’ve heard it all before I’d like you to consider how well you are doing it. I’m a firm believer that you don’t truly visualize something until you are making out it.
If you are an thirsty goal setter you will want to read this to learn some specifics related with real estate investing. If you are not a steady goal setter please read on and consider that setting goals really is a powerful tool, does have some conjuring trick about it, and is crucial to your investing success.
Consider the following instance. In 1953, research workers questioned the graduating class of Harvard University about their career goals for the future. It was seen that only 3% had written goals and specific plans for accomplishing them. Twenty years later the researchers re-interviewed the class of ’53. They discovered that while all students had shared the most recovered education money can buy, the 3% with wrote plans for the future were deserving more, in financial terms, than the other 97% combined. Whilst this only seen financial or career goals I believe it illustrates the actual power of written goals.
I’m tempted to provide some goal setting up basic principles here but for the sake of briefness, all I’ll say is that your goals should be: specific, most-valuable, real, in writing and have a deadline. Know also that they will acquire over time so you don’t need to worry about getting them perfect; just begin with something!
With respect to real estate, you need to first figure out what your primary investing objective is:
i) rapid cash / equity
ii) cash rate of flow
iii) quality development
Note: There is a discussion regarding the function of these different objectives in the handbook Investing Secrets of the Property Professionals Discovered.
Let’s say, for the sake of an example, that you want to focus on cash flow properties. View the difference in the following goal statements:
I want to invest in some real estate that will addendum my income and help me retire faster.
or
I will acquire sufficient property in the next 12 months to produce an average of $4,000 per year of supplemental income.
That’s a good deal better because it is getting specific, is certainly crucial and has a deadline. It is also practical and in writing. But when you go to see a realtor or other mass who will help you acquire that property they will ask things like, “in what area?” and “what type of property?” so as you learn more you need to add those details.
This is another very important point about setting goals for your real estate investing. Once you have these clear goals, people such as realtors will on the spur of the moment deal you much more seriously. Even if you don’t have all the answers; imagine walking into a realtor’s office and hitting them with those two goal statements. Which one will get you further? Even if you don’t know which area or what type of property they won’t treat you like a tire kicker. They will ask those important calls into question of you and you can learn from them and go away and make your goal even clearer before getting back in touch with them. And the next realtor you visit won’t even know that you hadn’t thought about that. They’ll just see someone who knows exactly what they want and will be able and willing and able to help out.
The concluding point I want to make about goals is more to do with the measure part than with specifying them. I know that sounds tedious but it can be really exciting. The most successful companies in the world track their progress against their goals because it is effective to do so. Think putting a simple graph on your surround that has the months along the last axis and the cash flow you’ve developed on the vertical axis. You can draw a red line across the graph representing your target of $4,000 per year and then you can draw an angled line that adds another $333 to the cash flow each month. This gives you some very good feedback as to how you are advancing and motivation while there is still time to do something about it. That’s evidently much better than just seeing how you went 12 months later and finding that you only acquired property that produces $1,000 per year. It’s a very simple and powerful tool.
If you are really groomed you can take this one step further and use the same approach for the activenesses that grow the final results that we are measure on the other graph. This really helps ensure the result. For example, if you know you need to evaluate 100 properties and make offers on 10 to acquire that amount of property then you could graph those drivers as well.
