I’m going to share some advice that if you take to heart, will increase your chances of succeeding in your farm. And if you’ve taken any of my training, you may have heard me talk about it. If you want to succeed at farming you need to S.T.A.R.T.

You’re probably thinking “Ryan, of course you need to start! You can’t farm if you don’t start.”

I know, I know… Everyone knows you need to start if you want to succeed. That isn’t really a mind-blowing piece of advice. But hear me out though. What I really mean is that you need to S.T.A.R.T. taking action! (If you haven’t realized yet, I love acronyms haha)

S.T.A.R.T. stands for:

• Specific Actions
• Time For Actions
• Accountability
• Rewards
• Try

So, getting back to it, when you are trying to build your farm, it’s important to put all of these aspects into play. By changing your mindset and your actions around the “S.T.A.R.T. framework, you can ensure you will increase your chances of success drastically. Let’s discuss each one.

Specific Actions

You have to get very clear on what actions you are going to take when it comes to your farm. It’s easy to come up with a ton of creative ideas, but if you don’t narrow down what you are going to do and when you are going to do it, the odds of you succeeding drastically reduce. I use a program called Evernote on my phone and I am always using it to do brain dumps for all my ideas. But that’s only half of the recipe for success. If you want to succeed, you must take it further and get specific about the actions you need to take. Laying out a clear plan with specific actions will help you actually reach success. If you haven’t been successful with your farming so far, maybe its time to look at what goals you are setting and what actions you are taking.

Time For Actions

So you’ve got a list of all the ideas and you come up with a list of specific actions you need to take. But do you actually have time to accomplish them all?

If you don’t, you may need to work back to the most important tasks (your 20% of the 80/20 rule) and not spend all your time on the “time suckers”. If you are getting positive results from all your actions, great! If you are getting results but and you find yourself running out of time, it may be a sign you need to get some extra help. Let’s be honest, the most successful agents are the ones who know what their time is worth and can focus their time on the highest dollar producing activities. So maybe it’s time to offload some of the work. Whether that is hiring an admin, hiring someone to take over a specific task (i.e. build your website, design your marketing etc) or finding a way to automate it.

I always like to try to automate things before I pass it off first if I can. Automation forces you to look at your systems and find any weak links and it also forces you to re-look at how you run your business. You can automate things like email follow up, video, social media, research etc. So, go back to your tasks and see if you will actually have time to accomplish them yourself. If you do, great! If you don’t, S.T.A.R.T. planning for how you can leverage your time better. You’ll thank me later!

Accountability

This is one of the keys to success in any business. Some agents have a really easy time with personal accountability over their goals and time. Others, like me, struggle with staying accountable and need an extra push. There is no right or wrong, but you must figure out which camp you are in. When it comes to accountability you can hire a coach, you can partner with a colleague, you can find a friend to help you… but one thing (from personal experience and wisdom of others) I would not do is to try and get your spouse or partner to hold you accountable.

When it comes to work/professional accountability, something weird happens when you and a partner try and hold each other accountable. It may seem like a great idea at first, but it can end up frustrating for one or the other or both. It can actually even end up pretty toxic. Even if you have the healthiest of relationship!  

I’m not going to write a whole lot about HOW to hold yourself accountable as there are plenty of books and resources about it, but it’s important that you are prepared for real accountability. Especially if you want to succeed at a high level. High levels of success require high levels of accountability. You can’t avoid it.  And lets be honest, real estate can be very tough on you mentally and there are going to be days you may want to give up. That extra accountability could be the difference between success and failure.

Rewards

I honestly believe that it’s important that you reward yourself. It’s important to remember that each agent will respond to different things. What drives me to succeed may mean nothing to you. And what could drive you to ultimate success may not even get me out of bed in the morning. Regardless of what drives you personally, I think it’s a very important part of staying successful in the long term.

So what’s my suggestion? Personally, I like to break my rewards down into 4 categories or “levels”.

The first level for me is weekly rewards. These are usually simple and easy things I can reward myself with for doing something throughout my week.  For you, it could be a nice snack, a walk by the lake, a “pat on the back” or whatever you want it to be.

Next, I like to create monthly goals for myself. I like to look at my weekly accomplishments and set up a monthly plan for them and set a goal to match. If I hit my weekly goals consistently, I should hit my monthly goal. For me, it’s a bit bigger of a goal than my weekly but still meaningful. For you, maybe a nice dinner out or a new pair of shoes or night out at the movies.

Next, I like to look at my quarterly goals. In my experience, I find that a lot of people jump from monthly to yearly goals. I think quarterly goals are really where the sweet spot lies, in my opinion. It gives you enough time to track your progress but still give you time to shift your actions as you move. The reward for this could be a weekend away, maybe a nice new outfit or what ever works for you.

And then I like to set yearly goals. Obviously, this will be a much bigger reward. But the key is you have to be honest with yourself. If you DON’T hit your goal, you shouldn’t reward yourself with it. Otherwise, you really weren’t committed to the goal in the first place. The reward should be big enough that it drives you to do more and painful enough that if you don’t hit your goal, you’d really hate to lose it.

Now, this is just how I look at rewards, you obviously can develop a time/scale that works for you, but if you aren’t building rewards into your business, you really should be! Even if you don’t think rewards are enough to drive you, you still should be acknowledging your successes, big and small!

Try

The last part of the success of the S.T.A.R.T. framework is to try. I’ve seen so many agents fail because they just don’t try. They literally don’t “start”. I’ve talked to agents who say they would love to farm and then a year later, they are in the exact same position. They are hoping to start farming but haven’t done anything but wished they could start.

There aren’t many things you can count on in life, but one thing I can guarantee is that If you don’t try, you definitely won’t succeed! As the great Wayne Gretsky once said “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take”.  And as the great Old Mac Donald once said (at least I’d imagine him saying this…) “You miss 100% of the crops from the seeds you don’t plant!”.

If you aren’t willing to try and aren’t willing to get out of your comfort zone, you wont grow. And your farm won’t grow either and that’s the last thing I want to see happen to you. So, go get into action!

Conclusion – S.T.A.R.T. Now!

What is it going to take to get you to S.T.A.R.T. farming? I can’t tell you what that will be for you specifically, but now you have a great framework to begin with. If you aren’t farming yet, S.T.A.R.T. If you are farming, go back and reevaluate at what you have been doing and S.T.A.R.T.!

Happy Farming!

Ryan Smith – Founder/Creator

Launch Your Farm

www.LaunchYourFarm.com

Be sure to check back on our blog and show to get awesome information about geographic farming!

Blog – http://www.LaunchYourFarm.com/Blog

Show – http://launchyourfarm.com/category/interviews