As I was thinking of all I’ve seen, and what successful businesses have in common, as well as what struggling businesses are missing, this powerful word comes to mind. It’s a word that can make or break a business and a real estate investor’s ability to succeed. In fact, it even answers some of the top questions I get from real estate investors on what seems like a daily basis. And it’s what I want to talk to you about today.

#1 Most Asked Question: Why isn’t my business growing?  Lack of ____!

#2 Most Asked Question: What’s the secret to success? _____!

#3 Most Asked Question: How do I turn my business around? Take massive _____!

With this word being so incredibly relevant to our investing business and what it takes to succeed, as well as what can cause it to fail, I decided it should be my focus word for 2020.

My 2020 vision word of the year is: ACTION!

We’re moving full speed towards 2020, and it’s going to be a new decade with endless opportunities. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited. This is the year that you can take your business to the next level. There’s plenty of room for exponential growth when action is involved.

Action is at the root of successful business decisions, opportunities for growth, and it provides opportunities for you to scale your business. On the flip side, it’s also at the root of failures and setbacks when we choose not to take action or ignore the fact that it’s needed.

As we move into this new year, my goal is to help a record number of real estate investors to find success in 2020 in growing their businesses. And I’m starting with this article, which is perfect for real estate investors who are:

• Wanting to take their business to the next level in 2020.
• Having trouble growing their business or feeling stagnant.
• In need of external motivation to reignite their passion for this industry.
• Searching for ways to streamline processes and maximize their efficiency.
• Desiring a better work-life balance this coming year.
• Looking to fast track their success and jump the line.

If you see yourself in any of the above categories, keep reading as I’ll be sharing what signs of a successful company looks like, how to spot trouble ahead, what lead mining is and why you need it, and how to get out of your own way and stop working in your own mine.

How to spot healthy business signs from trouble signs.

Some signs that your real estate investing business is healthy include increasing the number of deals you’re closing, the size of the deals you’re closing, your overall annual profits, moving into new markets, and the list goes on. At the end of the day, your business should be growing continuously.

However, if you see the opposite of these signs occur, if you’re stalled out or backsliding, closing fewer deals, and losing income, then your business is waving a bright red flag in the air begging for help and hoping to catch your attention. When you get to this point, there’s no riding it out hoping for a better year in 2020. It means you need to take massive action to get your business moving in the right direction again.

Success requires action and help.

There is an infinite number of ways to take action in growing your business or pulling it out of the weeds. But for the most part, you can’t do it alone.

Utilizing the right help, the right systems, and the right services is just plain smart. There is absolutely no reason why you should try to do everything by yourself. In fact, in future articles I’ll dive in more on the why that type of lone ranger thinking can lead to failure. But for now, let’s look at what actions you can take to help your business.

You should…

1. Commit to a Morning Routine.
Nothing is more important than how you start your day. Even if it means getting up an hour earlier before the kids, this time to yourself is critical.

Read Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning for an amazing method.     |

2. Nix the Notifications.
Turn off all notifications on your cell phone.  Emails, texts, instant messages.  Everything except for calendar appointment notifications.

3. Social Media Diet.
Giving up social media completely is hard to do. And it’s unnecessary.

Instead, restrict yourself to no more than 30 minutes of social media “scrolling” and looking at friends post and only after 6 pm.  You’ll still get to see what’s going on, but you’ll soon realize you aren’t missing a thing.

If you need to post on social media or run ads, feel free to continue that, just no mindless browsing.

4. Hire a Coach
The highest performers in the world, athletes to execs use performance and accountability coaches. They aren’t just there to tell you what to do or how to do it, they help make sure you get it done and they have your back when you need it most.

5. Grade Yourself. 
Give yourself honest grades your year in these areas: 

• Lead Generation
• Lead Follow Up
• Delegation
• Negotiation skills
• Organization

If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

So, get really honest with yourself and decide which areas need improvement.  Seeing it on paper might be the catalyst you need to take action in certain areas.     

6. Audit your Actual Leads.
Many times, when we’re working with our investor members to help them manage and close their leads we look at their CRM and find that there’s a lot of decent leads who haven’t been followed up with or sometimes even called.

Go through your leads and instead of thinking you need to spend money on new ones all the time, ask if there’s an opportunity to reengage older leads and see if you can generate any interest now that a little time has gone by.

7. Establish your KPI’s.
Do you run your business or is your business running you?

Your KPIs are key performance indicators and they tell you if you’re ahead or behind in the critical areas of your business. Examples are the number of new leads per month, the number of responses per 1000 mailings, etc.

Once you have your KPI’s you can have clarity on where your focus should be.

8. Decide on your EAD’s. (Eliminate, Automate or Delegate)
If you’re managing everything in your business, you’re going to burnout.  Even if you have assistance, it’s easy to do work that we should be delegating.

Make a list of EVERYTHING you’re doing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. If you’re doing it, write it down, even personal things, not just business.

Ask yourself if it’s possible to Eliminate it altogether, Automate with software or Delegate it to a team member, assistant, vendor or someone else.

Anything left over that you’re doing should be high value and revenue generating activities

9. Give the Future You Advice To the Current You.
Write a message from you on Dec 31, 2020 to you right now. What would you say?

Give a mix of motivation and congratulations on all the things you did this year, then list out all the things you did one by one.

You see, you already probably know what you need to be doing. So have your future self, write a letter to your current self, thanking them for doing it all because you wouldn’t be where you are at the end of next year if you hadn’t done them.

You might just find it easier to do all those things after your future self, thank you for doing them already.

These are success-proven actions that you can take to help your business grow or recover. Whether you’re at a place where you’re doing everything, or you’re ready to hand your daily operations over to a full-scale enterprise services team, success still requires action. And as your business continues to grow, you must grow with it as well.

Take the time to create your action plan for 2020 now.

By taking the time to plan now, you can set yourself up for success in the new year. Even if it means writing down a simple bullet point list of what you want to achieve in 2020, having something concrete and tangible gives you a point in which you can measure your progress by.

On top of looking at where you want to be, it’s important to look at where you’re coming from too. Once you have your list of actions for 2020, take a moment to review how 2019 went. Are there any actions you might have missed taking? Is there anything you need to make up for in the new year?

Successful investors know when massive action is necessary, and they take it…

Action isn’t easy. Simply look back at what it took for you to jump into this industry in the first place. We all have a story about our start in this business. Jumping all in required massive action. It was hard, but worth it. Right?

Taking massive action at pivotal growth points in your real estate investment career is the key to success. Just like you had to take massive action to dive into this industry, you need to continually make these next level action moves to keep your business growing. When you don’t, your business will eventually hit a wall. And when you do, your business will flourish.

If you need help creating your 2020 action plan, check out some of the resources on RealEstateInvestor.com. In the meantime, stay tuned as I continue to share more tips on how to take action and make 2020 your best year yet!