How To Know Whether You’ll Achieve Your Goals

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I'm Jennifer Myers, Founder of Agent Grad School and host of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent, The Agent Grad School Podcast.  My goal for each episode is to give you actionable steps you can implement today to grow your real estate business.

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Whenever you set a goal for yourself, how certain are you that you’ll actually achieve it?

One the one hand, we want to set big goals–goals we wonder if we can actually achieve.

But, on the other hand, why is it that when we set goals that scare us a little, the immediate next thought is something like, “Can I really do that?”

Sometimes we won’t even admit or declare what we REALLY want.

We do this to protect ourselves, of course.

Then, at some point along our way to reaching the goal, thoughts like this inevitably pop up:

Can I really pull this off?…

How the heck am I going to do this?…

It’s going to feel hard…

I have no idea what to do to get started…

I’m going to fail…

I don’t really want that…

Other people can do this, but I just can’t…

Don’t let these types of thoughts talk you out of moving forward. These are just normal thoughts we all have when we are about to do something we’ve never done before.

It’s part of the process of goal setting when we are willing to set goals that are bigger than what we’ve done in the past.

So, first step is proclaim a big, audacious goal that you wonder whether you can achieve. Be honest with yourself. What is it you ACTUALLY want. Make THAT your goal. Be willing to proclaim and declare that’s what you want.

For many of us, that is the hardest part.

Next, comes the “how” part. We often get so stuck in the “how” and the “I don’t know” and “I’ve never done it before” that we talk ourselves out of even trying because we just don’t know how.

That, of course, is a way to keep ourselves safe too.

Don’t let getting stuck in the how stop you. Don’t worry about the how just yet. Instead, at this stage, your job is to become certain that you can achieve what it is that you actually want in your life.

The how will come. Once you truly believe you can accomplish the goal you’ve set, you will be amazed at how many ideas you come up with about how you can make it happen.

Next step, is fail ahead of time. What that means is tell yourself all the things that are going to happen on your way to reaching your goal before they happen.

For example:

All the things that you are thinking about why you might not be able to achieve your goal–they might be true. They might happen.

But here’s what you need to know for sure: It will be impossible to avoid things like failure and rejection along your way to reaching your big, audacious goal.

There is no way to get from here to there without failure. So, accept that it’s part of the process and get going.

Instead tell yourself:

It’s going to feel hard…and you’ve done things that are hard in the past. You can do this hard thing too.

I have no idea how I’m going to do this…but I’ll figure it out. I’ll try things that won’t work at first and I’ll keep adjusting and trying again.

I’ll fail many times…that’s just part of the process of learning how to do something I’ve never done before. If I’m failing, I know what doesn’t work and I try something else. It doesn’t mean I’m a failure.

I will take longer than I planned…and I’ll keep working towards my goal until I achieve it, even if it takes longer than I want. It will be worth it.

I will hit many roadblocks and set backs along the way…and I’ll figure out how to navigate those along the way too.

Next step–start trying things that you think will work. Go all in.

Fail, try something else.

Then keep doing that until you get to the finish line. Even if it takes double the time you thought it would. Keep going.

Why? Because it’s in the pursuit of our wildest, most audacious dreams that we become the version of ourselves that can create anything we want. And that is worth everything it took to get there.

So, what is your big audacious goal? What do you really want? And who do you GET to become on your way there?

To your success,

Jennifer


Episode Transcript

On today’s episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent, You’ll learn How To Know if You’ll Achieve The Goals that you’ve set for your real estate business. Welcome to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. I’m your host, Jennifer Myers, listen in, as I share exactly what I did to go from not being able to sell a house for years to becoming one of the top 1% of agents in the US even opening my own brokerage full of agents helped me serve all the clients that were coming my way. I taught those agents the same strategies I use in date two became top producing agents. Now through this podcast and The AgentGradSchool.com, I’m sharing those same modern marketing and business strategies with you. Most of which I learned from looking outside the real estate industry, no fluff, no theory, no outdated sales techniques or paying for leads, just the exact steps to get you the real estate business you’ve always wanted. And the life outside your business, you’ve always wanted to let’s make it happen and dive into today’s episode. As of the recording of this episode, we are turning the page on a brand new year, and I don’t know about you, but even if I don’t like declare a goal or write down my goals for the year or something like that, there’s still this little tiny thought and seed that’s planted in my mind at the end of the, at the beginning of a new year about what I want to accomplish that year. And if you also, or maybe you haven’t even thought of your goal, I’m going to give you just a moment of silence to either think about what you want your goal to be as it pertains to your real estate business this year. Or if you haven’t thought about it yet, just give you a, maybe pause this and give yourself a minute and ask yourself, what is it I want to, what are my goals for my real estate business this year now for most of us inside our real estate business, it usually has to do with really one of a handful of things. It’s usually, you know, I want more clients or I have an income goal. I want to set a, sell a certain number of houses. And then as your business starts to get kind of busier and busier, then your goal, some usually switches to, you know, how do I get more help or higher that, you know, assistant, or how do I get more time? How do I put more systems and structure into my business? Whatever your goal is for this year. Just put, I’m going to pause for a second. And I want you to think about that goal and I don’t know about you, but when you think about whatever goal you’ve set for the year, the immediate next thought I have always is, can I make it happen? Is it possible? And we’re going to explore that and how to know whether or not you’ll achieve the goal that you have in your mind for this year. We’re going to explore how to know with certainty, whether or not you’ll achieve it. So that’s what today’s episode is about. But before we begin today’s episode, I want to let you know about a couple of things we have coming up inside Agent Grad School first and foremost is we are in the middle of a discounted enrollment period. We only have, we’re only going to be having three of these a year starting this year. So normally our to enroll as a student inside agent grad school, it’s $797 per month. But during these three limited time enrollment periods, we are discounting enrollment to $497 a month. So you can save $300 a month off enrolling in inside Agent Grad School. So if you like what you’re hearing on this podcast, and you have thought about becoming a student and want to work with me every single week on your real estate business to grow it or systematize it or scale it to multi-six figures, or eventually you could get to like me a million dollar over a million dollars per year. If those are your goals this year, then think about becoming a student, go to Agentgradschool.com/enroll, and you can save on enrollment. And when you go to that link, I’ve also put a sneak peek inside agent grad school. So you can see what it looks like and what you get and all that fun stuff. Now, one question I get a lot about Agent Grad School is how long is it? It’s self-guided. So the minute you sign up, you get the core curriculum, the kind of six pillars that I teach within inside agent grad school. And then every month you get a bonus training and every week you get live classes. And I designed the program to be a one year program. If you stay for 12 consecutive months for the year, then you gain what’s called lifetime access to the program, which means you don’t have any more payments after a year. And you keep access to everything, including any updates I make to the program. And I’m always dropping in kind of new guides and new things, new marketing materials you can use inside your business. And we have new bonus classes every single month. Now you’re there. There’s no obligation for you to stay that long. You can cancel any time. So there’s no contract or anything you can join for one month, three months, however many months. But if you do make it to that year, then you’re a lifer and you have access for as long as agent grad school exists, including all the updates we do to the program. Now, whether or not you’re thinking about becoming a student, I want to invite you to a free training called 3 Secrets to Having clients Come to You in 2022. And the way that you get the invitation to that class is you join the inner circle. So, if you’re already an Agent Grad School Inner Circle member, which is totally free to join, then you will get the invitation to this and you can register. And it’s totally free. If you aren’t already an inner circle member, go to agentgradschool.com/innercircle right now, because the webinar is this free class I’m doing is next week. So I think that’s all for announcements. So let’s dive into the meat of the episode, how to know if you will achieve the goals that you set out for your real estate business this year, when it comes to goal setting, most of us fall into one of three categories. We set a goal and we think the first thing we think is, oh my gosh, can I do this? How am I going to do it? And we kind of start wondering whether or not what we want for our life in this case, our real estate business, so that we can have certain things in our life, right? We start questioning whether or not we can achieve it. So that’s kind of category one, category two, when people set goals is they’re like, I’m totally going to do that. And then they realize how difficult reaching that goal is somewhere along their journey. And then they don’t get the results that they think that they confidently thought that they would achieve. Right? So for many of you, it might be, you know, I want to sell when you quit your job and became a real estate agent, you might’ve thought like me, you know, I’m going to sell a house a month. I confidently thought that I knew how to do that, or at least thought that that would be the results. And then when I actually went off to do it, the first couple of times I tried, it didn’t actually happen. So the third category of people is they set goals that are pretty easy to achieve so that they don’t have to go through the difficult emotions or the difficultness of achieving a goal high enough to actually surprise themselves on what they can achieve. And then of course, there’s those people who set a goal and then achieve it. But I truly don’t know anyone that like sets a high enough goal, a goal that they don’t think is necessarily like possible or a goal. They like you don’t, you wouldn’t set a goal of doing the same exact thing you did last year. Right? Usually when we set goals, we want to do something new that we’ve never done before. That’s the whole point of the goal. So really ask yourself when it comes to goal making, after you’ve made the goal, what kind of goal keeper or goal thinker are you for me? I always tend to fall in that category where I usually go between one of two places. I usually either set a goal, like a high goal that then is very difficult to achieve, but I think I can achieve it. And then I realized how difficult it is along the way. And then I kind of beat myself up along the way and make it much more difficult on myself. Or I tend to set goals that are kind of safe, things that I think I can achieve. And then the goals that I set for myself that feel impossible, that feel unachievable, the goals that I truly should be setting for myself. The first thought that comes through my mind is can I actually do that? Or I don’t know how to do that, or how do I do that? And I start almost telling myself that I don’t believe in myself and my ability enough to actually go off and make that happen. And so I think first and foremost, when we think about goal setting for the year, think about, are you setting goals that are big enough, that you actually are a little bit scared by them? Those are the types of goals. If we want to always be striving and always be pushing to that next level, set a goal for yourself that actually has you wondering whether or not you can actually achieve it because it’s in that achievement or the striving or the pursuit of achieving that goal that we actually become like fascinated with our abilities and with ourself, we start to impress ourself. Now, if you’re somebody who sets a goal and ask yourself, how am I going to do that? Is this even possible? I want to give you some tips today. I don’t have those. I keep, you know, as I was thinking about this episode, I kept writing down other things to be thinking about. So I think it’s seven or eight tips that I want you to want to give you so that you know, whether or not you can achieve your goals. So first and foremost, here’s the biggest obvious answer to whether or not you will achieve your goals. The simple answer is at first, you have to believe that the goal that you set, that what you want to accomplish, what you’re saying you want in life. The first step is you have to believe that it is possible for you. I know that sounds super simplistic, but I work with students every single day, who set a goal from themselves, tiny goals from themselves, selling a house a month. But at the end of the day, what’s standing between them and actually doing it is actually believing that they can handle that, that they can actually do it. So the first thing that you have to do is be super conscious about how you think and what you’re telling us about yourself. When it comes to achieving your goals, set a high goal, and then be excited that you don’t know how to figure it out because it’s in that figuring out that is where the fun is. It’s also, what’s really difficult, but when we start putting ourselves in difficult situations, we are, we become like impressed with ourselves. And then we were like, what else could I do? What else is possible for me? So become aware of how you think your thoughts truly, truly drive everything. One thing I thought of thought about a lot during the break, the holiday break, when I was just taking some time away from teaching my time away from Agent Grad School, time away from this podcast. One thought that just kept popping into my mind is what is the difference between the students that achieve the goal that they set and the students given the same exact opportunities, the same exact curriculum, the same exact access to me, what sets the ones who come into Agent Grad School and reach their goals in like a month or two, or a year or two, and those who never do. And as I started thinking through all the students that I’ve worked with over the past decade, I started thinking about what really is the difference. And I can tell you with, as like, as certain as I am, that my name is Jennifer Myers. I can tell you what separates the ones between the ones who actually achieved their goals. Even if it takes longer than they originally set out. And the ones who never do it is truly believing that they can do it and believing that what they are being told to do actually works. Right. I have the proof, I have the proof for myself. I have the proof from the students that went before them, but yet some, some of them still don’t believe that either it’s going to work or it’s going to work for them. And so truly over and over again, I see students, the biggest thing in their mind in their, in their way is their own mindset. So it becomes crucially important to understand and really consciously think at that, look at what are you telling yourself? Are you telling yourself, you have no idea how you’re going to sell 10 houses this year. Are you telling yourself you’re going to figure out how to do that. It’s only 10 houses. There’s thousands of people buying and selling houses in your marketplace. And you only need to find 10 of them, which one of those people is most likely to achieve the goal. The one who sits there and just keep saying, I don’t know how, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do, or the person that says I have no idea how to do this, but I’m going to figure it out. I’m going to sell 10 houses, another perfect example of how you think really determining your results and whether or not you accomplish your goals is I’m going to give you a couple of examples. So many real estate agents I heard last year saying, oh, the market’s so competitive. It’s so hard. My clients can never get a house. And yet my clients got houses. People bought houses. Why did your clients not buy houses? If you don’t believe it’s possible that you can help them get a house, even in a competitive market, then you’re not going to be a very good real estate agent. Or I can remember back in 2008, 2009, 2010 when the market was falling. So many real estate agents got out of the business because they said, oh my gosh, the sky is falling real. Estate’s no longer something people want. I can’t be a real estate agent. And my thought was, this is a amazing opportunity for all the people that I serve, which is first time home buyers, because they can actually get a deal now. And there was all those first time home buyers programs. And so instead of thinking, oh my gosh, nobody wants to sell houses. There’s all these short sales. And there’s all these foreclosures, which was absolutely true. I decided to think what a wonderful opportunity for my first time home buyers, who’ve been outbid all this time. And they get the $8,000 that I think the administration was giving to first time home buyers at the time. That’s the, that’s how I looked at it. And that’s why my business tripled during those years, instead of getting out of the business, another example of really thinking about how do you think is how you overcome rejection and failure in your business. You cannot be a successful real estate business without a ton of rejection and a ton of failure. There is no way you can get to success without failure in this business. So when you go on a listing appointment and you bomb it, what do you tell yourself? Do you tell yourself that you’re a failure that you’re never going to get it, that you’re the worst real estate agent ever. There’s people that they’re students of mine. That that’s what they say. And I’m like, well, then you’re not going to get better at your listing appointment. So you have a choice right now. Do you want to get better at your listing appointment? Then you should see this as a positive thing. You went on a listing appointment, you know how hard it is to get a listing appointment. That’s amazing. And you realized that you’re not good at it yet. Now is your opportunity to get good at it. Here’s how, when I would, the only reason I know exactly how to get listings and exactly how to get buyers to work with me is because I failed a hundred times and created a script and not a script that like I’m a robot, but a script, an outline of a script that I know exactly. I know how to anticipate what they’re going to ask. And I know how answer their questions. I know what I have to say. And the only reason that I know what I have to say, and I share it with all my students is because I failed at it so many times, embarrassingly so many times. So in those moments, be very conscious of what you’re telling yourself. And there’s three things that I always tell our students and that I think about every time there’s a failure. We’re really, we’re really a success. It’s what do I want to do differently next time? How can I improve? And what did I do well in every listing appointment, whether you got the listing appointment or didn’t get the listing appointment, ask yourself, what did I do? Well, what do I want to change next time? And what do I need to work on? What do I want to improve on between now? And the next time? So many of my students, they go on one listing appointment. They don’t get the listing. And then it takes them months to get another listing appointment. No, you should get another listing appointment as soon as possible. So you can fail again and get even better and better and better. And knowing all along the way that you can handle it, that you can handle not getting listing appointment. All it is is an emotion. It feels like shit. It feels like crap to be rejected. And to be told you’re not the chosen one, but you can handle that and you can get better. And pretty soon, if you can handle that enough and get better over time, you become the person they choose. Now, the next most important thing after being super conscious about how you think in any circumstance, when it comes to your real estate business, the next most important thing you need to do is decide like, if you want to sell 10 houses, or if I want to, like one of my goals this year is I’ll share a personal goal with you. I want to lose 20 pounds. That feels literally impossible to me. Every single day. It feels impossible. But I have to do decide that one year from now, I’m going to be 20 pounds lighter, right? Versus telling myself I’ll never lose the weight. I can’t control my eating. I don’t want to work out today. Or I could decide that I have to take the actions of somebody who’s 20 pounds lighter than I am now, which means doing things very differently, over a long period of time, consistently over and over and over again, to be that person who’s lost 20 pounds and keeps it off. Same thing with our real estate businesses, right? You need to decide here’s what I’m going to do this year. I’m going to sell 10 houses and I have to be and do actions of people who sell 10 houses. If you want to make over a hundred thousand dollars a year in your real estate business, first and foremost, you’re the first hundred thousand dollars that you make in your real estate business will be the most difficult money that you have ever made in your whole life. But the minute you hit that six figure, mark, you can do it again and again and again and again. And you can do it easier and quicker. And that’s how you get to multi-six figures. But you first have to decide what you want. And then you have to do the actions to make it happen. You have to be willing to go all in on what it is that you say that you want. You cannot be half in half out. You cannot be 80% in and out. You can’t do 80% of what it takes to sell 10 houses. You have to do 110% the first time, 200% to get that first, that first goal, the first time it’s going to be the whatever your goal is, it’s going to be the hardest to do it. The first time. The next thing is to take full responsibility for the outcome and results that you have full responsibility. It’s not the market’s fault. It’s not the competitiveness it’s nobody’s fault, but your own about the results that you have in your business. And I think fault is too strong of a word, but just take full responsibility. Like I didn’t like, for example, if last year you had a goal of selling 20 houses and you didn’t do it, then say like, I didn’t do it because other people have sold 20 houses. You just need to say, I didn’t do the things to sell 20 houses, but I will this year. I know what not. I know what it takes not to sell 20 houses. Now I need to do different things to actually sell 20 houses this year. So take full responsibility. Do not blame the market. Do not blame your clients do not blame anything, whatever, whoever you want to blame, just say like, I didn’t do it and then move forward from there. And if you don’t like your results, go back to, how are you thinking? Start becoming really aware of those thoughts and what you tell yourself. Do you tell yourself? I don’t know how I feel so overwhelmed. Those aren’t going to get you to your goals, those thoughts. Do you believe that you can actually do the thing that you want to do? No matter how scary it is or how many times you’ll get rejected or how many times you’re going to fail along the way. Right? Become aware of the thoughts that are there. And so like, for example, somebody who sells 10 houses, if you sit and I don’t know how to do this, that’s not the right question to be asking the right question to be asking is what do I need to do today to get a client? Not what do I, how do I figure this out? What do I, I don’t know how I feel so overwhelmed. That’s not going to get you to your goal. You need to be asking yourself, I need one client right now. How do I go get one? The next piece is, and I’ve kind of alluded to this, but I really want to hear, I want you to hear this as its own stepping stone on the way to whatever goal you want to achieve, you will fail. So many of my students will say to me, I don’t want to fail. And I will. Then you’re not going to make your goal. You have in this business and really anything in life, you have to be willing to feel the emotion of failure. That’s all it is. Something happened and you feel bad about it. You feel like a failure. You aren’t a failure, right? Don’t make this about who you are. It’s not who you are. You aren’t a failure, but you tried something and it didn’t work. And now you just have to get up and try something else. And so it’s really, it’s really important that you don’t take failure personally. It doesn’t mean anything about you. It just means you tried something. It didn’t work. Try something else, try it again, try it differently. And the other thing that I really, I learned this from taking a class about goal setting last year, and I that’s really changed my, the way that I think about reaching a goal. And that is, you know, so often we say, I want to sell, you know, 10 houses this year, whatever the goal is at this year. And I know we’re always taught to be very specific with how we set our goals, but I would tell you to take the timing out of the goal. So for example, instead of saying, I want to sell 10 houses this year, say I have decided I am selling 10 houses, right? Once you get to the point, even if it takes you two years to sell 10 houses, you have then learned how to sell houses 10 times. And if you’re able to sell 10 houses, you’re able to sell, sell 10 more. And for what it took you like what you learned during those first 10 houses that you sold will equate to being able to sell the next 10 more quickly. And so oftentimes remove that deadline or don’t beat yourself up. If you don’t achieve your goal by the deadline, you’ve sat, you still can achieve the actual goal, even if it takes you a little longer. So when I first started my real estate business, it took me two years to sell my house for my first house and another two years to sell my second until I figured out how to actually get clients and sell houses and put it all together and do it over and over again. If I had quit in year three, I wouldn’t be standing here today. I wouldn’t have, I wouldn’t be teaching the way that I, that I sell houses. I wouldn’t be teaching that to hundreds of students throughout the country. And so I would never, at this point, give, I would never remove that struggle. And those years that it took me to figure it out because it’s in that, figuring it out that brought me here today to be able to talk to you about how to do it, talk to my students about how to do it because I’ve been there. I would never take that away. And so my goals in the beginning were to sell a house a month, but it took me four years to get there five years to get there to a house a month. I’m so glad I didn’t quit in year two. And let me tell you, I mean, I did not have any money. You guys know my story. I was like slinging dollar beers. I mean, putting things on credit card, this wasn’t easy. I didn’t have, you know, anybody. I was single. I was young. I had nothing to fall back on. So it was difficult every step of the way, but it was worth it. So if you don’t meet your goals the first year, just tell yourself I’m still going to, I’m still going to sell 10 houses. I’m not going to quit until I sell my 10 houses. Once I sell my 10 houses, then I’ll decide if I want to quit, but reach your goal no matter how long it takes. And remember that it’s not over until you say it is keep going, despite wanting to quit or thinking that you should quit or thinking you’re no good at this. Keep going and you’ll get better at it. Now I can fail. I failed more times than I can count. It took me so long to understand how to be successful. And it was one of the most difficult things that I’ve ever had to endure truly. And I would never train it for the world. And so I’ve come to realize that the struggle that’s put in front of us is there for a reason. In hindsight, it’s always there for a reason. It’s there to teach us something. It’s there to change something about ourselves or the way that we think about ourselves and every failure or roadblock that has ever been put in front of me. When I go get to the other side of it, I realized what a blessing and what a gift that was, even though it was so hard to overcome. And so my wish for you is that you’re one of those people this year, who just keeps going, doesn’t make failure personal and achieves their goals, no matter how long that it, how long it takes. Because when you get on the other side of it, you become a completely new and frankly improved version of yourself. You become somebody you don’t even recognize from before. And then you start to build this confidence about what you’re capable of. And then you start to realize that really truly you can do anything that you set your mind to. So as you’re starting to think about what you want to accomplish this year, and you start to get to that part where it’s hard, just remind yourself that this is where it, like, it’s kind of like going to the gym, right? You can’t lose weight and gain muscle without it feeling like it’s going to hurt. And that’s part of the process. And that’s what I keep telling myself. I’m losing these 20 pounds is I’m going to feel it’s going to hurt the whole way and it’s going to be uncomfortable, but I can do it. And even if I don’t do it this year, if I end up losing 20 pounds and it takes me two years, I’m still really happy that I did it. So no matter what comes your way this year, I want you to consciously decide what you want. And I want you to consciously decide to keep moving forward, no matter what life or real estate or the market or your clients throw at you. And they want you to start believing in your own abilities to make what you want to have in your life happen because you have whatever it is that you want. I truly believe that if you believe that you can accomplish it, you can, it’s going to be harder than you thought it’s going to take longer than you thought. But the fact is that you have this feeling that you can accomplish it. So go make it happen. Thank you for listening to this episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. We purposely keep this podcast sponsor and commercial free so we can focus solely on providing real estate agents with the content that will help them grow their real estate business. And how about life? They love out of business too, but we need your help to get this podcast in the hands of other real estate agents. So please, if you liked this episode, leave a review on iTunes or wherever you’re listening, and also tell your agent friends to listen in to thank you so much for supporting the show for being a listener and supporting other agents along your way to success. That’s what this is all about. See you next time. On another episode of Confessions of a Top Producing Real Estate Agent. And until then come hang with me over at agentgradschool.com. I’ll see you there.

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