I like free stuff that can help with my business and I am sure that you do too.  If you follow my blog, you’ll no doubt know that I have a a Category devoted entirely to Cool Freebies.  If you poke around in there you will come up with a wide variety of things that can help you earn more money or get more time or help your clients better.

Keeping that in mind as I want to talk to you about planning out your 2017.  Some of us enjoy the planning process and others would rather have a root canal then go through writing a business plan.  But, one of the truths that I have learned over the past 30 years is that agents who have carefully thought out business plans, and who actually follow them usually make more money than those that do not have  plan, or those that do have a plan but don’t follow it!

So, here are a couple of FREE resources that you can use to create a plan for a better 2017!

First up are a few resources from real estate tech company Placester.  There is a great article at https://placester.com/real-estate-marketing-academy/real-estate-business-plan-template/ that will help you get going,  What I really like about their approach is that they start with you defining your ideal client, and then they give you the resources to do so in the form of supplemental article.  Read this one and then be sure to read the customer persona guide to to learn how to define your ideal client: https://placester.com/real-estate-marketing-academy/customer-personas-real-estate-marketing/

Further down the initial article they offer you a FREE Excel spreadsheet to help you calculate the numbers.  You do have to give up your contact info, and they will probably contact you to buy their services. 

Having a plan is only part of the process though.  If you don’t take action once the plan is written, then all you have is a piece of paper.  So, you need to be able to break the plan down to actionable steps that you will do every day.  Fail at that and you fail the year. 

I found a good resource to help you break your plan down to action steps at http://therealestatetrainer.com/2014/11/23/real-estate-business-plan/  There are a TON of other great resources there as well, so do take a few minutes to look around and see what else is on offer there.

My final suggestion is to get and READ some books on the business of setting up and running a real estate career.  My all time favorite book is “Less Blah Blah, More Aha” by Ken Brand.  You can get this book at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Less-Blah-More-Ah-Preferred/dp/0615462421 and I suggest that you do so right away.  Go ahead, click the link and order it.  Then read it.  Then apply what you have learned.

I think 2017 is going to be a fantastic year for real estate agents who are prepared to take on the market.  Will you be one of them?