Setting Goals is the Key to Success in Property: A Guide to SMART Thinking
Every successful property investor follows some sort of road-map, plan or blueprint. Whether it's written on the back of a napkin or laid out in a colour-coded spreadsheet, it doesn't really matter, the key is to have something in place that you have really thought through.
This all starts with setting goals.
In today's video, I share with you the 5 Steps required in your Goal Setting to achieve success in your property business whether you're looking for one simple buy-to-let or looking to build a property business.
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Goal Setting
Hello and welcome.
In today's video, we're going to be looking at how you can use goal-setting as a way to help define and give you a bit of a roadmap and a blueprint of what to aim for with your property strategies.
Whether you're looking to build a portfolio properties, Whether you're looking to maybe just add one or two properties to your portfolio, as a good long-term pension plan or Whether you're maybe thinking more along the lines of growing a property business and you want something more akin to a bit of a roadmap or a strategy for something that you can develop and build and structure more long term.
Goal setting is going to help you do that
It will help you as well regardless of your location and the particular strategies that you're going to be using as well within your portfolio building or your property business and grow.
SMART
What I want to do, just give you a bit of an insight in terms of the actual, the method of goal setting that we typically use within our business and when we work with clients as well.
Which is something called SMART. This is something you can use regardless of whether you're thinking weekly, monthly, six-monthly, even yearly or longer goals.
It just gives you a bit of a definition to what you should maybe look to set out for or you put down on paper really what you want to achieve. It's an acronym. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-bound. It gives you a bit of a guide on what you should maybe set out for with individual goals so you're not ... Or you can be a bit more descriptive with what you're looking to achieve.
Specific
The first part of that analogy SMART is specifics. You want to try and choose something that you can define quite well.
Instead of saying, "I want to maybe buy one property", "I want to buy properties that are going to help me achieve cash-flow" or, "I want to build a property portfolio", you should to be a little bit more specific, in terms of the details, behind what you want to achieve.
For instance, "I'd like to buy one property in this particular location" or "I'd like to have a property portfolio, spread over these areas, using this strategy".
Or whatever it might be.
Something that's a little bit more drilled down in terms of the detail of what you are looking to do. Then, you can further build in that with the other parts of the goal setting and they come after that.
That's the first element, being specific or a little bit more tailored in terms of what you're looking to achieve.
Measurable
The second thing is being more measurable. Again, if you've maybe got a cash flow strategy, and you wanted to achieve a certain income level.
Instead of just saying, "I want to earn money to plan my retirement" or "I want to be wealthy and have a flexible lifestyle", then do some things that are a bit more measurable.
"I'd like to have a cash flow of 500 pounds per week", or 3000 pounds per month, or 20,000, 50,000 - whatever it might be per year - set a target. That will give you an idea of something to aim for.
It's a lot more measurable so that you can know easily if you've obviously achieved it, or if you've missed that target. It gives you something to set out and aim for as well when you're developing and building on your particular property strategy.
Attainable
Then, the third one is going to be attainable. You need something that you know you can actually go out and physically achieve. If you're in the early days of growing your property portfolio, or in the early days of maybe building a property business, then it might be hard to know what might be attainable. You don't want to set these goals too low or too high on something that's maybe unrealistic.
Giving you an idea of what really attainable is good to help set the scene a little bit really. To do that, in the early days, what might be good is, or we typically look out for with new clients, is something that sets out what assets you have to bring to the table. You can see if it's physically going to be attainable or not. It doesn't have to be cash flow. It doesn't have to be a great credit history. It doesn't have to be large deposits for mortgages. It could be a whole range of things.
If your assets are time, then that's great. That's something that you can bring to the table. Other investors are not the competition one necessarily have.
Obviously, you can then develop your strategies specific to what assets you have available. That could be, as we said, it could be time. It could be cash flow. You could have money that you're able to invest in terms of to market and find particular deals. It could be large deposits you are able to actually finance those initial purchases.
It could be a whole host of things, good credit history as we mentioned. Contacts, the people that will be able to raise finance, do joint venture partnerships with. It could be exiting contacts with letting agents, mortgage brokers, estate agents. There's a whole range of things that could help you or assist you with growing your property portfolio and help you find those deals.
Giving you already that head-start with your property strategy.
Something like or attainable that we build into the goal-setting for you. It gives you a bit of an idea on what assets you've got and then, helps you understand what kind of strategies might go alongside with it really.
Realistic
Then, the fourth part of that is going to be realistic. You want something that you, again, something that is achievable and as much as you know people that have already achieved that goal. Friends and family are perfect because you can see a direct correlation between what you're hoping to achieve and what you want to mirror and how you can see other people that have done it.
If you're trying to set out something that's completely unrealistic, you want to build a property portfolio, a hundred properties within the next hundred days, that's going to be quite tricky if you're starting from scratch and you've got nothing to bring to the table and to start with.
On the other side of the coin, if you know somebody that's building a property portfolio, you know somebody who has just had that one or two properties that they've done well over a number of years, or they've added it as their pension plan and that's what you want to mirror, that's what you want to achieve. Or build a property business. It could be a letting agent. It could be mortgage brokers. It could be a refurbishment team.
Anything that's associated with the property industry. Anything that's associated with what you specifically want to achieve. If that's a growing portfolio, if that's buying one or two properties, or that's building a property business, and somebody that's achieved that you can see, that you can speak to, that you can keep in touch with and you can help, or they can assist you as well, as you go along, is fantastic. It helps to keep that part of the goal-setting realistic for you.
The four elements that we've looked at so far are going to be of SMART. It's going to be specific, measurable, attainable, realistic and then the fifth one is going to be time-bound.
Time-Bound
You want something that's set within a structure in terms of a time frame.
Building a property portfolio is a great idea. Building or adding one or two properties to your investments as a pension plan, again another great idea, but it's hard to know when you're going to achieve that if you haven't set out those initial four elements, but then also in terms of a time frame for that. Whether that's going to be a weekly, a monthly, yearly goal as we mentioned, how you want to develop that.
If you want to set out your goals as how many leads you generate, how many viewings you maybe go on with the state agents, or with vendors if you are maybe generating leads directly. How many offers you're putting into the properties, how many offers you got accepted, how many properties you buy, whatever it might be, try and put a time frame on that. As I said, that could be anything. It could be based around the weekly time frame, a monthly time frame, even a little bit longer. Six monthly or year time frame. You want to try and have that element of time-bound and it just helps keep it specific as we said within that structure.
Below this video, I'll list out the details in terms of some more specific elements to maybe consider, if you are looking to grow a property portfolio or a property business. Obviously, we'll run through those different elements again, we mentioned, so that's SMART acronym and give you a bit of a download as well that you can take away and you can help, goal setting and those different elements. I'd always recommend, like weekly goal setting is great because it gives you something to focus on, on quite a regular basis. It allows you to look at either the beginning or the end of the week and just gives you a bit of an overview of what you should be hoping to achieve, and help keep you on track as well.
If you're maybe setting out to do ten viewings a week, and you don't have that goal set out, that you're looking at and beating on a regular basis in terms of keep reviewing it, then it's easy for that to slip. Whereas, if you look at it at the end of the week and you see that, well, [I've only three 00:08:03] viewings this week, and that's not going to help me achieve what I want to do. Then it helps you get back on track and make sure the next you'd go out there and make the effort to get those viewings arranged. [Gather media 00:08:14], if it's going to see those properties and pull those offers in, and actually get some way in terms of growing that property portfolio.
Weekly goal setting is great. Monthly goal setting is perfect as well because it gives you a little bit more time to achieve those more or larger goals, that's more attainable as well in terms of the time frame. If you're busy, if you've got a limited time or resources that you're going to be able to develop to it, a monthly time frame is fantastic for that. Sometimes, as well, maybe more, six month or twelve months give you a bit of a longer time frame as well.
What I'd also try and do is, have mini goals within those larger goals, because that gives you something you can maybe set on a weekly basis, a monthly basis, and then more medium to long-term basis as we set out towards the end of the year. It just helps you give a little bit of definition, a little bit of a framework, a little bit of a structure really to what you're looking to achieve with your property strategies, and really where you're headed to make sure you're heading in the right direction.
Hopefully, that will give you a bit of an assistance, a bit of an insight in terms of how you can start developing your property portfolio. How you can maybe start getting involved with property investing by setting out initial goals and some early goals. Then, in the next couple of videos, what we'll look at is, some ideas in terms of different property strategies, and how those strategies can tie in and relates to goals that you're looking to achieve, as well.
