How is your Busyness Doing?No, I did not mean “Business” but if you tell me how your “Busyness” is, I bet I can tell how your Business is doing. We too often spend far too many hours attending the busy-work of the business, which leaves us a day late and a dollar short of our goals.
What is on your to-do list for today? Are these items that will get you closer to your goals, or are they just things that you HAVE to do. I can almost bet that if you are getting up every day and just plowing through a seemingly endless to-do list, that your Business may be “surviving,” but you are not “thriving.”
An important way to tell if you are doing busy work or not, are ask yourself the following questions:
1. Which goal will doing this activity get me one step closer to?
2. Can someone else do this for me?
Sometime things don’t really need to be done at all. And sometimes, things need to be done, but just not by you.
You will need to prioritize those items that have to get done by you. If the majority of your business over the next five years will come from leads generated from referrals and sphere, then the “have-tos” are clear: contact and service well that group of people. Invest your time and money in that quadrant of contacts. Stay away from the nagging “to-do” list that says you need to update the expired system that you drafted two years ago and have failed to implement yet.
Next, ask some hard, frank questions of yourself and your business.
• First, can you reach your goals alone? In order to achieve the numbers you’ve put forward, do you need to expand your human resources?
• Second, do you need a different business model than the one you are currently using? (Told you they were hard questions!)
If you are looking to increase your production by half-again as much in the next five years, perhaps you can obtain your goal within the status quo. But what if you are looking to double your business in five years? Or quadruple it? Is it reasonable to think that you can succeed under the same manner and with the same number of people that you have been previously?
You know the answer: undoubtedly not. As a matter of fact, this can often be the tipping point of decline and/or failure in a business, when you fail to realize that you, alone, cannot be chief cook and bottle washer and grow your business. A team or staff to support you may become essential when planning for your future goals The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Business Don’t Work and What To Do About It, by Michael Gerber, talks about this at length in his book.
It’s all about the numbers today in terms of goals and in terms of human resources. Plan accordingly.
That is why Part 9 of my 17 –Part Business Planning Workbook is on the numbers. You need to figure out what kind of Production you will need over the next 1-5 years in order to hit your personal goals. Your business is about supporting your life; it should not be your life.
If you are caught up in Busyness, your business has become you life, and is no longer just supporting it.
One question I get a lot doing my coaching and speaking is “How do you come up with the “numbers?” Maybe this will help:
WRITE THEM DOWN.
Next year’s goal: what is the magic number for closed production (in millions?) For your 2-year goal? For 3, and 4, and 5 years? What about gross and net closed commissions? Average Sales Price? Number of Transactions? Number of Listings? You must chart each out and write down the number.
For next year and the four to follow, what is the magic number for new listings, for example? Where will the business come from? What is the lead source? Referral. Sphere. Website. Farm. Expireds. What about buyer-generated sales? Where will that business come from? What are the lead sources? As you define these categories, you begin to identify your target market and where to spend your marketing dollars (and your time!)
Numbers tell you so much about your business. By focusing on your numbers and reaching your goals, you are able to plan your priorities, staff your Business accordingly and keep out of Busyness!