Big Damn 2009 Goal Post, Part 1.

A lot of times, I’ve written down goals.  It’s a big step, and it’s important.  It’s not something that you do lightly, but in my case, my goals never mattered to me.   Not one day that I was a full time real estate agent did I give a shit.   Not one day that I was a lender did I care.   Oh–let’s be honest.  I’m great at generating leads.  I’m reasonably personable, and reasonably honest (by reasonably honest, that means I’d never let anyone get screwed over).  

I set goals–sell x units, do y in volume.  But I never felt it.  The big ’so what’ was always behind that.  I couldn’t make myself give a crap about any of it.  Sell another commodity house here in CMH?  Sure.  Happy to serve.  No, really.

I got jazzed about the marketing: doing something that generated leads.  And I had a tsunami of leads.  But I saw myself as a (just) six figure guy, and that’s what I did.  Oh, I sustained a bunch more in ‘05, but we all did.  I had the gig from 01 to March of this year.

If I felt I had enough listing appointments, I’d flake out on people, cancelling them.   I only wanted so much work, and I didn’t realize that.  Since I was great at generating leads, I could always pick from the easiest and nicest people to work with.

Each quarter, there I was, netting out what I needed as a Realtor, letting leads and deals rot on the vine.  When leads are abundant, I didn’t value them.  (Hey, kids, they are still abundant).  Rather than work with an asshole it was, “Here, here’s your listing back, sign this mutual release, and I’m out of there.”   I didn’t care, couldn’t care, and still don’t see the anxious need to produce the nothing that makes up a lot of the Real Estate Practice.

Still.  Still there are good reasons to love the business.  The reason I still orbit it is this:  if someone is willing to take a 100% commission job, they value freedom over security.  That must be nurtured, period.  That spark is sacred, and part of the best within the American spirit.  If you can do your job better for them,

Life went on.   I would then pretend I loved the business after being geeked by a MFO event or something like it.  And in lieu of creating what I wanted to (leads), I got stuck as a practitioner.   And I would set goals I couldn’t care about each year.

60 houses.
$350k average price
$550 GCI.
$350k net.
1000 hours prospected.
Etc.

Yawn.  Possible?   Sure.  But money doesn’t lead, it follows.  You don’t start with an income and then build a life around it.   To maintain it, I had to ingest so much poison I almost became that guy.   And I didn’t have the right ethos then to really get after it.  I didn’t have acute needs, till the IRS gave me the Rodney King treatment, I was coasting, if that.   I didn’t love what I was doing.  And that’s a way to waste your life.

Not saying you can’t.   Not saying it’s not possible, but I ratcheted it all down to mere numbers.  Numbers do matter, but only when you’re chasing something that also drives you.   Right now, i’m driven to write, driven to lose weight, driven to help people get efficient, and I’m driven to get out of debt.   I’m carrying a net worth of roughly -$65,000 that I want GONE.  Money comes easily enough for me.  I don’t need to make that the end all/be all.   I want to make Right Right now into a practice of some sort.  A couple people asked what my BIG DAMN GOALS were:

1. I will weigh in at 175# before March 1st 2009. My ultimate goal is 159#, but I won’t be thinking about that for a bit. I want to think about all the milestones I need to pass through first.  Friends, that’ll put the total weight loss at 97#.  That’s a gymnast.  I’ve already lost a bunch.  Only standard is to get to 175#.
2. Next E-book, f-therapy, does 10,000 units. I’m getting it started (this is the first time I’ve talked about it) at http://f–ktherapy.com  It’s a strident treatise about uncluttering your life, your mind, and ignoring the toxicity of our society.
3. I will get “subprime” published and collect an advance of $50,000 or more. Again, I’m already stacking the deck in my favor.  The quality of the writing & insight matters, but I’m making it such that I’ll get the most receptive audience possible.   I don’t know if it’s a meritocracy or not, but if it’s not, that benefits me as I like to win, and I’m competing to win right now.  I stack the deck with stuff that makes it hard to ignore me.  Just watch.
4. To be debt free in 500 days. I have my debt pegged at $65,000, most of it being the IRS’s suff.   It might be a little less, and I’ll tabulate it next weekend.   My budget/burn rate is something like $2500/month.   Gross THAT up for taxes, and I’m at an income need of $4,000.    365/500 =73%.   73% of $65,000  = ~47,450.   Gross THAT up by 30% for taxes = $62k.   Divide that by 12, and we’re at: 5200 month for debt retirement.   Add that to $4,000 and we have a need (without savings) of 9200/month.  This puts me at 108,000 for the year, a number I can hit in my sleep, doing this stuff.

That’s pretty much what matters.   I put a $$ on the advance because I want to have it taken reasonably seriously–I’m not necessarily going to just take the first person to write that check, I’m going to make it have the best chance at a real live widespread audience.   I know times is hard.   I don’t want to be in a ‘need the money,’ point in my life.  And I won’t be.

A lot of other things are ‘nice to do’ next year:  I wanna read about 100 books, 40 fiction/60 nonfiction.   I want to run a 3:30 marathon.   And to make $108k, I’ll need to divide my income somehow–ebooks aren’t a ‘guarantee’–I need to pursue the courses that I have taught, and the rest of the stuff that I regularly do.  I think that if I rely on the consulting gigs for the income and make everything else ‘fun,’ we’ll be juuuuuuuust fine.

I have to rewrite it fully (or therabouts, there are great scenes) by Feb 1, 2009, choose the best representation by 6/1/09…and catch lightning in a bottle.  I can do ll this stuff, things like this always happen quickly for me.  Someone next year will sell a breakout debut novel, lose a ton of weight, and do a kicking e-book.   Why not me?

Dashboard comes up tomorrow.

Related posts:

1. Big Damn 2009 Goal Post, part 3, Inputs.
2. Big Damn Goal Post. Part 2, a Budget
3. A Year Is Too Damn Long
4. More Daily Goal Tracking with Google Docs.
5. Have Big Damn Goals: Declare War On Mere “survival”

Tagged as: Achieving Goals, audience, crap, irs, marketing, meritocracy, More, net worth, novel, real estate, realtor, sleep, VA