Archives
October 2006
Oct. 30, 2006
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Top 10 Steps To Great Business Planning
Here are the steps to get your business plan working to give you maximum results in 2007
Start by completing 2006
1. Block The Time: Make an 8 hour appointment on your calendar to do planning for the coming year no later than the end of November
2. Gather your 2006 numbers. Research for the first 3 Quarters of the year:
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Total Dollar Volume
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# of Units
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Average Sales Price
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# hrs. worked
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Value of your time hourly
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# of Presentations made/closed
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# of Buyers worked with/sold
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Marketing Budget/effectiveness
3. Write down: What worked? What didn't? Look for trends, for places to raise standards, strengthen systems.
4. Write down: What did you learn? Asking yourself this question is a good habit to get in after each listing appointment, buyer representation or contract. Then at the end of the year, you'll just review so you can learn from it and be even better next year.
4.5 Plan the next 2 months to give it your all in the last couple of months. This helps finish the year with a bang and sets you up to have business that is going to close in early 2007! Take a calendar and identify the days you are going to take off. Then plan appropriately for the days you will be working.
Now, you can look to the future and plan 2007:
5. Create or review your Escape Plan How many years do you plan to work in real estate? What is your financial independence number?
6. Set Your 2007 Goals What goals are going to motivate you? How do they fit with your escape plan? Are they big enough to create reserve?
7. Determine the Market Segments What percentage of your goals will come from what niches or market segments? Most agents should have 3-4 market niches, such as Past Customer/Clients or Sphere, Internet Leads, Farm Area, Price Range or type property (ranches, waterfront).
Take a look at the 2006 numbers and see what percentage came from each niche last year. Then project, given strategies you will put into place what will be generated in the coming year
8. Allocate your Marketing Your marketing budget should be 10%-30% of your gross. Look critically at where it was well spent last year. Can you increase that? With the market segments you intend to focus on, where could you spend marketing dollars to increase your brand recogniton and reults? Try to creatively find ways to get known and remembered that don't involve advertsing where all the other agents are. Perhaps a moving truck, regular client get togethers, an ad in a rental magazine for first time home buyers.
9. Where are the bottlenecks that could limit you? If your goal is big enough, it will be stretching the limits of what worked structurally last year. Imagine that you are already producing each month what your goal is for 2007. What will you need to add to be able to do that? A virtual assistant? A better website system for automatic follow up? Some new tools to WOW the buyers and sellers? A tablet computer? Plan these things in your budget for 2007.
10. Relax and go with the flow. After the planning is done, allow yourself to have the flexibility to adapt to what comes at you. There may be opportunities, people or events that take things in a very different direction. Look for the opportunities all the time and trust the flow. You are attracting to you. If you relax and have trust in yourself, the vibrations you are putting out and those you are attracting will provide what you have envisioned and intended. Your biggest job is to have a very clear vision of what this should look like. Then have fun!
During 2007
10.5 Set times for monthly, quarterly reviews and course corrections Schedule these on the calendar now. Just as you'd do for any trip, check regularly with the map to make sure you are on course. When a bridge is washed out, you find a way around it by another road, instead of sitting in front of the washed out bridge crying. Stuff will happen next year. Course correct, have a Plan B and as there are shifts in the marketplace, don't be afraid to re-invent and create new strategies.
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Oct. 24, 2006
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Last Call For Cool Opportunities
Are You ready to have your best year ever in 2007?
LAST CALL for this month's Business Planning TeleConference
Join me Wednesday Morning for
Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Business Planning
11 AM EDT, 10 AM CDT, 9 AM MDT, 8 AM AZ & PDT, 5 AM (Sorry) Hawaii
NOW is the time to be planning the coming year. What should change? What new strategies need implementing? What technologies need to be part of keeping you at the front of the pack?
Join me to fine tune the planning process for yourself.
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Last Call for the October Discount for ePRO
Learn how to use technology to SAVE time and MAKE money! The ePRO Designation is one of the tools for 2007 that will help differentiate you. NAR created this certification to help you become effective in using the technology consumers expect.
The program is designed to prepare real estate professionals to make the most of Internet technology and to identify, evaluate, and implement new Internet business models.
Learn more about the ePRO Course. Register this month and get a $30 discount. Contact me for the scholarship code.
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Almost Last Call
Drawing takes place November 18 at Miraval in Tucson, AZ
Where else can you spend $20 and get $174 worth of tools and premiums?
AND
A Chance to win one of 6 fabulous package of prizes with virtual assistant services, coaching, training programs and books, blogging systems, and MUCH MUCH MORE!!!!
AND
Please just look at what is being offered...this is a no-brainer. And PLEASE HELP by passing this information along to your office, your company and your WCR or CRS Chapter. Every purchase makes a difference for another human in the world. While we may not be able to fix all the awful things that are happening, we can impact the lives of others, one at a time.
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Oct. 24, 2006
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Molly Gordon Offers Great Premiums for you CARE Donation!
Here's a letter our fellow WebWomenGivingCircle has sent out and let me share with you....
FROMMOLLY GORDON:
Before you read on, may I give you a hug?
http://www.freehugs.org/. Pass it on. (Thank you, Cynthia!)
Now, to business.
Have you ever fantasized about all the good things you could do if you only had more money?
Between now and the end of 2006, regardless of your disposable income, you can make a significant difference in impoverished communities worldwide by helping The Web Women Giving Circle raise at least $100,000 in the CARE-More Challenge.
 Research shows that educating girls and helping women establish modest, sustainable enterprises is one of the best ways to break the cycle of poverty and lead to enduring improvements in the welfare of entire communities.
The Care-More Challenge is an opportunity to make a significant contribution no matter how modest your means. If every reader of this e-zine donated $10, we would raise over $100,000 ourselves. That's what I call leverage.
It only takes a minute or two to donate the amount that is appropriate for your circumstances. Amounts that may seem inconsequential ($5. $25. $150.) can provide enough working capital for an impoverished woman to start a successful micro-business.
I Want to Give You More than a Hug
Donate before midnight November 23rd (US Thanksgiving), and you will receive valuable premiums ranging from a copy of The Courage to Succeed: A Brief Guide to Cultivating Soulful Prosperity in Life and Work, an e-book by yours truly, to private facilitation of The Work of Byron Katie or a private coaching session.
The $10, 90 Second Solution
Care to give $10? This link will take you immediately to a secure form where you can provide your debit or credit card information. No premiums at this level except my gratitude and your satisfaction at being part of a very cool thing.
 Why donate to CARE? Because CARE has a real impact on women and their communities around the world. For example:
$50 can send an Afghan girl to school for a year.
$125 can train a woman in Nepal to teach maternal and child health in her community.
$600 can keep 10 girls in Sudan in school and teach them about AIDS prevention.
$9,000 can pay for a reservoir pond for a village with 1,000 people.
If you'd like to donate but don't want to bother with premiums (or prefer to give a different amount), you can do that here. Send me a copy of your email receipt and I will gladly set you up with the applicable premiums.
Thank you!
Molly
 P.S. I'm proud to be a founding member of The Web Women Giving Circle, a group of professionals from the US that has come together to make a positive impact worldwide. We focus on equipping poor women with the proper resources to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty.
Shaboom, Inc.
PO Box 195
18718 Third Avenue NE
Suquamish, WA 98392-0195
P 360-633-4397
F 206-201-5020
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Oct. 17, 2006
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Manage That eMail
To avoid the overwhelm and wasting time unproductively scanning mail, there are three habits you should master:
Reduce Your Inbox to 20 or less
At 20 and below, you know you aren't going to have things fall through the cracks because they are buried. My friend, Marilyn Urso, of www.LIVillageRealty.com practices ZERO tolerance at the end of each day in her maximum effectiveness and reports delightful results!
Now, how do you do THAT???? Here's the answer:
Use Folders and Filters
In your email software, you can set up folders, just like you do with the rest of your data. A comprehensive filing system is a work in progress and will grow as you need it.
To set up a new file, when you are in the main screen of your email, click on NEW
and then FOLDER
You can designate where you want the folder to be placed. The default placement is alphabetical in your personal folder list. You can manipulate this a bit. A Symbol ~ or * or a number before the title will take those to the top.
Some Suggested Folders:
I have found these to be useful:
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Read Later
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Needs Reply
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Needs Action
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Folders for my Listservs
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Folders for specific topics (relo@joeann.com)
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Clients (and then sub-folders for each client)
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Travel (and then sub-folders by trip)
So, you get the idea and will no doubt have topics that are unique to you (family, organizations, etc.).
Now Use Filters
Sometimes, you'll just have the folders you have created and you'll manually drop and drag the emails from your inbox to where they belong, but the filter option makes much of this automatic! From your main screen, choose TOOLS/Rules and Alerts.
You can then set up as many rules as you want by clicking on new rule. If you are using a wildcard email account, you can have mail coming in already flagged by the "To",
so that instead of my listserv messages coming to Joeann@joeann.com, they come to RealTalk@joeann.com - and I have a folder set up called "Real Talk", and a rules set up that says "when something arrives addressed to RealTalk@joeann.com move it to my Real Talk Folder."
Those mails never even hit my inbox. You can control spam in much the same way by using an address like Tide@Joeann.com and have it moved to a Junk or Spam folder.
A good spam program will significantly reduce the mail coming in. Your use of filters and rules will reduce the mail in your inbox. Having folders will give you a place to hold and file everything else, leaving you with the ability to have a very few pieces of mail that are in your inbox!!! "YIPPEE!", you'll say, as you feel an increased amount of energy in not having to look at an overwhelming number of mails when you open your program. Goodbye busyness---Hello Productiveness!!!!!!
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Oct. 16, 2006
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How Much Do You Want Success?
The difference between a successful person and others
is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge,
but rather in a lack of will."
--Vincent Lombardi
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Oct. 12, 2006
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WCR Huntington Beach Follow up notes
A big thanks for the warm welcome at your meeting yesterday.
Here are the promised links and follow up:
1. Send me your list of 100 TO DO/BE/HAVE list and I'll send you my free 2007 Awesome Year Planning Guide
2. Larry Kendall of The Group said," Wealth is the ability to wake up each morning with the time, health, wisdom, friends, financial freedom and passion to do whatever you want that day!"
3. Here is a form to build a Strategic Team 100
4. Jimmy Buffet, my favorite philosopher said ," Fun is about the best habit there is."
5. Get more information about ePRO To register the ePRO Course with a $30 discount
6. If you want to know how to create what you really want-watch The Secret movie
7. Henry Ford said, "Whether you think you can or think you can't, you're right.""
8. To get yourself ready for 2007 I attend my Business Make Over in Tucson, Nov. 16-18
This will be the best $499 you can invest to make next year the most Awesome yet!
9. If my bag & opportunity to buy a ticket to support CARE did not make it to your table --. this is a win-win. Each ticket purchase gives you over $100 in free premiums, including My 2007 Awesome Year Plan, a negotiating program, and more,as well as a good chance to win over $20,000 in real estate tools + services.
10. "All men and women are born, live, suffer and die. what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about wordly or unwordly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringings We do not, most of us, choose to die. Nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live" Joseph Epstein
Thanks again for being a GREAT audience! I love you all.
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Oct. 12, 2006
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Best Day of Your Life
Today, when I awoke, I suddenly realized that this is the best day
of my life, ever!
There were times when I wondered if I would make it to today; but I
did! And because I did, I'm going to celebrate! Today, I'm going to
celebrate what an unbelievable life I have had so far: the
accomplishments, the many blessings, and, yes, even the hardships
because they have served to make me stronger.
I will go through this day with my head held high, and a happy
heart. I will marvel at the Universe's seemingly simple gifts: the morning
dew, the sun, the clouds, the trees, the flowers, the birds.
Today, none of these miraculous creations will escape my notice.
Today, I will share my excitement for life with other people. I'll
make someone smile. I'll go out of my way to perform an unexpected
act of kindness for someone I don't even know. Today, I'll give a
sincere compliment to someone who seems down. I'll tell a child how
special he is, and I'll tell someone I love just how deeply I care
for him and how much he means to me.
Today is the day I quit worrying about what I don't have and start
being grateful for all the wonderful things I have already been
given. I'll remember that to worry is just a waste of time because
my faith in the Divine Plan ensures everything will be just fine.
And tonight, before I go to bed, I'll go outside and as I raise my eyes
to the heavens, I'll stand in awe at the beauty of the stars and the
moon.
As the day ends and I lay my head down on my pillow, I will give thanks
for the best day of my life. I will sleep the sleep of a
contented child, excited with expectation because I know tomorrow is
going to be the best day of my life, ever!
--anon
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Oct. 11, 2006
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Work & Balance
Meaningful work and a balanced life are deep-rooted human needs.
They can be repressed or ignored, but sooner or later they’re going to assert themselves."
-- Barbara Ehrenreich
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Oct. 10, 2006
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Making a Difference-Tuesday Tip
Joeann's Tuesday Tip: October 11, 2006
Making The World A Better Place
While there is plenty going on in the world that is truly distressing, I still believe we can make a difference, as Margaret Mead put it, "one person" at a time. Last year, I asked you to consider how you could do something to "Pay It Forward" (and I have been invited to speak next week at the WCR Meeting in Chico, CA with that as the title!). Many of you that had come to my retreat or attended my talks, took some seed money and multiplied it for good.
I also have recommended that you watch the movie The Secret for some inspiration and a reminder of what you really can do if you set your mind to it! You can make a difference - Here's a story of one who did! Hugs For Free - and I'm sending one along too!!!!
Today, I have two opportunities for you that can enable you to make that difference in the world. You see, I believe you can make a difference that is unique in the world. No one else has what you have to make this difference. In my coaching, I find my clients are happiest when they are sharing their values with others by making it a little easier in some way for another human being. Most of you do this every day in many ways.
Here are two ways for you to engage:
1. You don't want to miss this amazing TeleSummit:
The 2006 World Changing Business TeleSummit:
"How To Do Great, While Doing Good", being held October 23-26, 2006 (or at your convenience by audio tape).
Learn the Formula for Success in the 21st Century:
Financial Giving +Innovative Business Practices +Value-based Leadership=Success
14 Incredible Speakers will inspire and empower you.
For the full story, visit my blog or simply visit the site.
2. The WebWomenGivingCircle in support of More Magazine's $1 Million Initiative for CARE* have created the Take an Agent To The Top Raffle with over $45,000 in real estate tools and services.
To support our initiative to raise, $100,000 this year, get your tickets now!
Every $20 ticket is a winner (there are valuable premiums just for buying 1, 3 or 6 tickets).
On Nov. 18, 6 lucky people will be awarded incredible packages from our wonderful sponsors.
(We will only be selling 6,000 tickets.)
*About CARE: CARE is a leading humanitarian organization fighting global poverty. They place special focus on working alongside poor women because, equipped with the proper resources, women have the power to help whole families and entire communities escape poverty. Women are at the heart of CARE's community-based efforts to improve basic education, prevent the spread of HIV, increase access to clean water and sanitation, expand economic opportunity and protect natural resources. CARE also delivers emergency aid to survivors of war and natural disasters, and helps people rebuild their lives. If you would like to donate directly to CARE, instead of participating in the raffle, you can do so here: CARE
You know, you CAN make a difference, but you do need to act! :>) You can read all of this and think, "that's nice" or you can click on one of the links and get involved.
You see, your $20 ticket purchase or your registration to the TeleSummit will actually help change someone's life.
And, of course, the wonderful energy that is produced when you are doing good, has that butterfly affect of rippling out, making a difference and making the world a slightly better place, which then comes back to you. Or, as it is sometimes called, The Attraction Principle.
Thank you for being part of my community of friends. I am blessed to be connected to you.
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Oct. 9, 2006
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World Changing Business Summit TeleConferences
I don’t normally do this, but once in a while an opportunity comes along that’s just too good to pass up. On October 23-26, 2006, a historic event is going to take place. This type of event has NEVER been done before…. A FUNDRAISING TELE-SUMMIT!!
Leveraging the power of the internet, the telephone, and a high-caliber panel of experts, TWO AMAZING THINGS will occur at the same time…
ONE… small business owners from around the world will gather together to find out from leading-edge experts on what it takes to be successful in the 21st Century… because, as you’ll see, it’s different than in any other time in history.
And TWO… 20% of the proceeds – right off the top – will be given to micro-development causes that help families around the world move out of poverty and into plenty. So you’ll feel good knowing that you’re helping others, while you’re helping yourself.
To learn more: http://www.WorldChangingBusiness.com/Joeann.html
The WorldChangingBusiness Fundraiser & Telesummit is 4-day event over-the-phone is designed to help small business owners learn how to blend…
- Integrate innovative business practices -- to help you double your time to success
- Values-based leadership – to make you a model others watch and follow
- Contribution to others – to ensure your model spreads good will and prosperity to all
…And create a thriving, sustainable businesses that make a difference.
You’ll learn how these three things blended together will help you create thriving, sustainable businesses that make a difference.
Twelve prominent and distinguished business leaders will share their ideas about finessing the perfect blend of WorldChanging success…
***Lynne Twist – author of “The Soul of Money”
***Tim Sanders – author of “Love Is the Killer Ap,” and “The Likeability Factor”
***Bo Burlingham – author of “Small Giants” and Editor-At-Large of Inc. maazine
***Andrew Savitz – author of “Triple Bottom Line”
***Mark Albion – author of “True To Yourself,” founder of Net Impact, and contributor to Social Venture Network
***Romanus Wolter, author of “KickStart Your Success” and Success Coach for Entrepreneur Magazine
***Matt Bauer, President, BetterWorldTelecom
***Anne & Christopher Ellinger – Zings.org
***Dr. David Simon – author of “The Ten Commitments,” and co-founder of the Chopra Center
***Michael Port – author of Book Yourself Solid and founder of The Think Big Revolution
***Kent McBride – co-founder of Make-The-Difference Network
***Kim George – author of Coaching Into Greatness
Participants of the WorldChangingBusiness Fundraiser & TeleSummit will …
* Learn what it takes to build a great business so you can make a difference in the world.
* Make the dream of having a flourishing business that positively affects the world a reality.
* Find out how the leaders of Make-The-Difference Network, BetterWorld Telecom, and the Chopra Center created businesses that embodied personal values and are now able to serve millions and reap amazing financial success.
* Find out what the “Small Giants” did differently and what it means in terms of getting through cash crunches, being in balance, and optimizing growth -- without growth being the only focus.
Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Well, it is. And you are invited to attend.
There is only room for limited participants so if you’re interested, be sure to sign up right away: http://www.WorldChangingBusiness.com/Joeann.html
You will be glad you did!
BTW-This is the brainchild of an amazing woman: Coco Fossland and YES, we are related!!!!!
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About Me
Resources, articles and thoughts on being awesomely productive and creative while enjoying a life you love! Don't forget to visit my web site at www.joeann.com for even more information and resources. COMMENTS ARE WELCOME. Please notice the Post A Comment link at the bottom of the posting.
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