Get a ?leg Up? on Planning your Commercial Real Estate Investment Activities in 2007

The holidays are rapidly approaching and I’ve managed to do most of my Christmas cards and gifts on time this year! I still have a few to go, but for me most of the pre-holiday madness is over. It is now time to focus on a strategic plan for next year and I’m in fact going to take a day out of “regular” function to get it carried out.

I’m going to go week by week, all 52 of them, for 2007. On the plan will be my objectives for the Year, the Quarters, the Months, and the Weeks. I’m taking a leading-down approach that will ultimately drive my every day activities. And I will consist of a lot of vacation time! As I contemplate this method, I can see that I’m going to have to get really very good at numerous points:

1.Delegating – You have to “let go” to grow.

2.Following Up – Whilst you do have to let go, you don’t “assume” that what you give to other people will be completed the way you want it, when you want it. Accountability is a key to effective delegation.

3.Flexibility – No plan is ideal, nor does it survive the 1st play of the game (to mangle a football analogy). Plans will need room to adjust to changing conditions, so setting aside “update time” is crucial to the procedure.

four.Measurement – As mentioned in #3, a plan is a living factor and wants to be reviewed constantly to see if you’re on track to meet your objectives. A strategy with out measurement is only a dream.

I’ve by no means carried out this just before in this manner, so I’m planning on utilizing some visual aids. 1 of them will be one of those desktop calendars … truly a couple of them. I’m going to use one to do the initial planning, so I can scribble, scratch out, take notes, and make modifications. I’ll copy the final plan to the other one when I’m carried out marking up the first. I’m also going to use colored pens to clearly mark specific varieties of activities. When I’m carried out I’m going to post it on the wall, so everybody can see it. That way, we can literally be on the “same” page. I feel I’ll also use some kind of thermometer-sort graphics or a series of bar charts to visually express key elements of the plan and the progress we make.

What about you? What will you do, besides take pleasure in a genuinely excellent vacation with your family members in some wonderful ski region or warm tropical setting, to further your goals throughout the holiday down-time? This could be a very good time to approach your commercial actual estate investment program in the exact same manner.

• You can set up some categories of issues to do, like “Real Estate Education,” “Property Analysis Tools,” ”Days Driving Neighborhoods,” “Commercial Properties Owned,” “Net Equity,” etc.

• Write down where you want to be in every single category at the end of 2007.

• From there, break every single category down by Quarter and work backwards to see where you’d have to be to reach that goal by Year’s end.

• Now do the very same method by Month to see what you have to do to hit each and every Quarter’s goal.

• Break your Months into Weeks and repeat the procedure. I suggest setting aside time in your plan each month to review your progress and permit for adjustments in the plan.

• Now take a single Week and write down what you have to do every single Day to hit a Week’s objective.

• These turn out to be your “Important-High Priority” activities … not to be confused with the Urgent ones that you think you have to do ahead of every thing else.

• The Final Step is to set aside time during each day to spend time on these “Important” activities. This is time when no one can locate you, the cell phone goes off, the GPS is dropped in a drawer, and the Radar is silent. It doesn’t have to be a long time … as little as 15 minutes, genuinely. And it has to be completed consistently.

This procedure is called “Chunking Down.” If you do this, and genuinely, actually focus on setting aside that unique time for your “Important-High Priority” activities each and every day (OK … we’ll allow you some flexibility!), you have to succeed.

It is a wonderfully basic method and if combined with easy to see visual references, it will catapult you to success in whatever you select to accomplish. This applies to commercial real estate investing, as well as your personal life. Consistency and focus is an unbeatable combination. I’m looking forward to implementing this procedure in 2007 and I hope that you will, too!