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The New Year is here, and no doubt you’ve thought long and hard about your goals for 2023. But are they SMART goals (S-specific; M-measurable; A-achievable; R-realistic; T-timely)?
In order to realize your SMART goals, you’ll have to get into a healthy business routine. Here are seven habits to consistently practice every day to make 2023 the best year for you and your brokerage.
1. Praise your team for their efforts, not results. Everyone thrives on praise. Praise encourages, motivates, and inspires people to achieve greater heights. But how you praise people is key.
- Praise your agents on their individual and group efforts. Never assume their talents or smarts are a given. Otherwise, they may think, “What if I don’t get a deal done next time? Maybe I’m not as smart as you think. Next time I might fail.”
- Praising effort creates a work environment that values growth and improvement. Strive to create a culture where agents think anything is possible.
- Regardless of whether a deal closes, provide encouragement such as, “I have total confidence in you. I’ve never seen you give up. I know you’re going to get there.”
2. Be calm and unflappable, regardless of what happened before you walked in the door. You are the broker—the leader. Your mood sets the tone in the firm every day. Being calm enables you to sit in the driver’s seat and focus on your priorities to get things done. Calm brains are hardwired to perform.
3. Do not check your email in the morning. If there is an emergency, you’ll know or find out about it immediately. No one finds out about an emergency in an email.
- Give your best, most productive hours of the day to your own goals, not someone else’s as stated in their email.
- Set yourself up to act on an email, not react to it.
- Do not allow your priorities and goals to be hijacked by an email.
4. Only do what’s important.
- Complete your planned activities first, and ask yourself whether anything else is essential.
- There is a direct correlation between your use of time and your output, which is driven entirely by hours spent on your planned activities.
5. Make any and all distractions go away. Distractions are “culturally-generated ADD,” according to Ed Hallowell, former professor at Harvard Medical School and author of Driven to Distraction.
- Change your environment by changing your behavior. For example, try working for an hour at home in the morning so that you won’t be interrupted every five minutes with a question or email.
6. Create a consistent routine. Routines work because they become automatic; you don’t have to think about them.
- Apply the 8-2 rule: Of the 10 things you do each day, only two of them are really responsible for the success of your company. Figure out what those two things are and do them every day. Try to eliminate doing the other eight things.
7. Define tomorrow’s one or two priorities or goals the night before.
- Make those goals SMART.
- Write them down.
- Take that list with you in the morning.
As long as you are clear about your SMART brokerage goals for 2018, these seven daily habits will help your firm—and you—make 2018 your best year yet.
