This is the time of year when most people in the Real Estate Industry are putting together their Business Plans or setting goals for 2007. Some will be doing their Business Plan or setting goals in writing, while others will take a less formal approach and just make a conscious personal decision to what they want to accomplish in the up coming year. We all need goals in our life and in our business. If we do not have goals and a direction of where we want to be, then we will never get there.
Can you imagine stating out on a trip to a specific location, and not have a clue as to how you were going to get there. What do you think the odds would be that you would just accidentally find your way there? Not very good I would say. So what makes anyone think that they are going to get where they want to be in life and in business without thinking it through, and putting into place a method for achieving it.
Whether your plans and goals for 2007 are in writing or a personal commitment to yourself, they need to be realistic, balanced, and they need to have boundaries and limitations. Yes I am talking about goals, but goals have to fit into our overall priorities in life. That is why they need to have boundaries and 
limitations. I have seen to many people set business goals and forget how they will affect everything else in their life. We need to count the cost of our goals, and I am not talking about dollars and cents, I am talking about the cost to other areas of our life.
I don’t know about you, but my priorities are:
- God first above all.
- My family, and not looking back and regretting that I did not commit enough time to them.
- Work and fulfilling my commitments to my employer and clients.
- Everything else does not really matter the order that it is in, because it changes as my life changes.
Having clearly identified my priorities I can now establish my goals for my worship, my family, my career. See if we just go about setting our business goals and plans, without taking into consideration the other priorities that are important us, then it would be like starting out on that trip without a map. My goals have to be put into the proper priority, that means I have to put boundaries and limits on what they can be. If my business goals are such that they will take every waken minute of my life to accomplish them, then guess what? They have just taken priority over what I have just claimed are the 1st and 2nd most important things in my life, because I will not have any time for them.
So as you put together your Business Plan and set your goals, do them within the proper boundaries. As you are writing them down or stating them to yourself, see if they are leap frogging over other things that are more important to you. That your goals are not set so high, that there isn’t anytime for other things that you feel are more important. If you do this then you will have a truly workable Business Plan. One that is balance within your priorities.
Let me use a parable that those of us in the Real Estate Business can identify with. Just as a property has physical boundary lines that it is set in, so we to need to have physical, emotional, and spiritual boundaries in our life. The inability to set appropriate boundaries in our life will only end up in us failing to achieve what we truly seek to accomplish. Don’t let 2007 be a year that of regret, but a year of truly accomplishing what is important. Draw your map and follow it so that you can arrive at the destination that you want to be, and do not let anything get in your way from getting there.
********************************************************************************************
Info about the author:
George Souto is a Loan Officer who can assist you with all your FHA, CHFA, and Conventional mortgage needs in Connecticut. George resides in Middlesex County which includes Middletown, Middlefield, Durham, Cromwell, Portland, Higganum, Haddam, East Haddam, Chester, Deep River, and Essex. George can be contacted at (860) 573-1308 or gsouto@mccuemortgage.com
Tomorrow is Sunday and I have made it a practice to stop by two to three Open Houses on my way home from Church. This practice has been a great marketing tool for me, and one that I enjoy doing. Many of the business relationships that I have formed with the Realtors that I work with have been a result of stopping by Open Houses on Sundays.
th and 8th grade math & science), so we took him out to dinner tonight instead. He loves barbecue food, so we went to this restaurant that specializes in barbecue ribs. It is a fairly new restaurant, and their St. Louis style ribs are unbelievable.
pleased with every thing, she took that opportunity to ask us to tell our friends and family about the restaurant.
Today as usual my family and I went to Church. We enjoy going to Bible Class and studying from the word that we try to live by. This is followed by our Worship Service where we listen to the Sermon that our Minister has prepared for that week, and also get to sing some hymns. Our congregation loves to sing, and since we do not use instrumental music (we sing acappella) everyone’s voice can be heard. This is unfortunate for those who are sitting around me, because that means they can also hear my voice. I have been told on more than one occasion (in a loving way of course) that my singing could clear a building faster than a fire alarm. It is a good thing that my congregation is not in Maine, because every love sick moose within hear distance of my voice would probably try to join our assembly. But that is OK, because the Bible does not say that I have to make a pleasant noise, just a joyful one (Psalm 100:2), and trust me it is joyful.
McCue Mortgage, the mortgage company that I work for, holds its monthly Sales Meeting on the third Friday of every month. These meetings are attended by our whole Sales Force, Underwriters, Closers, Marketing, and Secondary Marketing. We usually will cover new loan products during these meetings, as well as industry trends and news. Lately we have been bringing in some of our venders, like Subprime Lenders, PMI Companies, Appraisers, and Credit Report Companies.
was called by another Lender and told that the Lender that they were dealing with had passed on the information to them, because they knew that they would be able to offer them a much better deal.
he country. More and more of the loans that I am writing are on unmarried couples. I guess I am amazed at the number of loans that I do for unmarried couples, because I grew up in a time where living together was not as accepted as it is today.
long and tiresome day. My day started off yesterday at Town Hall at 4:30 in the morning, I was not done verifying all the Election figures until 12:45 this morning. I think I am still seeing Election Returns, and will probably dream about them tonight. 
orcing the advertising that you do, not to mention that this would be another great opportunity to Network with another group of people, and we all know that we can never have enough Networking Groups.
negative and nasty. Each candidate is spending less time on what they stand for and plan on doing, and more time telling us how bad the other candidate is. It would be one thing if they pointed out the other candidate’s deficiencies in an informative way, but instead it is done merely to discredit. The mud slinging seems to be out of control.
aware of what we do. I wish I had a dollar for every time I have heard someone say that someone they knew did business with someone else, because they did not know that they were in the business. What I find amusing is that they get angry with that person, when they should be angry with themselves.
