Realistic Goals…How To Set Them and Why – Real Estate
Realistic Goals...How To Set Them and Why
Sue and Chuck DeFiore
So many people want to start a business today and be rich tomorrow. Sorry, people it doesnt happen that way. If it did, everyone would do it. There is no free lunch...it takes hard work, determination and realistic goal setting.
Think about the businesses you have worked at, look at the businesses in your community. I mean really look. When you go to the dry cleaners, how many other people are there also. Think about what it takes for that dry cleaner to open every day. How many people he needs to come in with their dry cleaning in order to make a profit. OK, dry cleaning doesnt excite you. How about that specialty shop you want to open! You want to open a retail store that caters to people that buy Hummels, knick knacs, bric-a-brac. Will you only handle certain types How many will you order of each type What are the best sellers How many will you have to sell to make money for yourself, and to also keep that shop open, or will you sell them by mail order only from your home
Want to do business on the web The same principles apply. How many visitors to your web site do you need to make a sale How do you get them to visit How do you get them to stay You get the idea. You need goals in order to measure any progress in your business.
Realistic goals come from a well thought out mission statement, which leads to a very good business plan, which leads to a well thought out marketing strategy. You should have short and long term goals. The short term goals will cover the upcoming 6 months to 2 years. Your long term goals will go further out, lets say over the next five years. Remember, you need to give a business at least two years in order to give it a real chance. Not all businesses make a gigantic profit immediately.
Lets say you want to start a house cleaning business. Your initial plan is to work it yourself, and add independent contractors as needed. You decide on your mission statement, you make up your business plan. You want to make $500 per week, working six days per week, 10 hour days. Your marketing will include advertising in your local paper, flyers, and mailers. You can clean 3 houses/apartments per day at $25-$50. You also have to decide your price points, what will you charge for a 1 bedroom, 2 bedroom, or a house with 3 bedrooms 2 bathrooms, etc. After all this is done you can better determine how many of each type you will need each week to meet you goal of $500 per week. These are your short term realistic goals. Your long term goals are to eventually hire independent contractors to do the work. Obviously, the more clients you market for, the more independent contractors you need, but also the more income you can generate. You will make up long term goals for the third, fourth, and fifth years of how many independent contractors you want to add and how many clients you want. Your marketing plan will reflect what you need to do to get the numbers you are projecting.
Realistic goals can and must be set, you just need a plan. For example, in Lease Purchasing, as in any other business, goal setting is of paramount importance. You need to follow a plan, a plan for success. Short term goals and long term goals are part of this plan. Like many franchise businesses that have an outline for their franchisees to follow for a successful business, the same should be done in lease purchasing.
To set these realistic goals and to obtain a good foundation, you need a program that provides you with support in the start up and running of your business. Using our own Lease Purchase Coaching Program as an example, we schedule consultations that cover all students need to know to get started. We role play with students and have specific assignments giving them certain things to do, and certain goals to meet. If they follow the program, and do their deals, they will be able to run their own successful business. We work with our students to accomplish the above and to help them set realistic goals.
An example of goals in Lease Purchasing is the number of deals you want to do, and how many calls or contacts you need to make to do that number of deals. How many consultations do you want to do, again, how many contacts you make will determine how many you get. Lease Purchasing like many other businesses is a numbers game. Make so many contacts, and/or calls and get so many deals. However, in order to do this, you have to make some goal making decisions and set realistic goals, not farfetched ones. Making a million dollars by the end of six months is not a realistic goal. Making so many calls per day, per week, per month is, and then from the number of calls/contacts you make, realize you are going to get so many responses, and from those responses make so many deals. A realistic income working full time the first year is $50,000 to $75,000.
Following a proven method is of the utmost importance. You dont hear of many Burger King or Taco Bell franchises failing. Why, because they follow the corporate plan. The company will tell them there are no short cuts. If they want to succeed, they need to follow the companys proven formula.
The people who fail in business are usually those who dont listen; dont want to follow a proven program; want to take short cuts; and who dont set realistic goals.
So remember, no matter what your business is, if you want to succeed you need to set goals for yourself ... and make them realistic.
Copyright DeFiore Enterprises 2002
About The Author
Interested in having your own successful, home based creative real estate investing business Chuck and Sue have been helping folks start successful home based businesses for over 17 years, and we can help you too! To see how, visit http://www.homebusinesssolutions.com for the latest FREE tips and tricks, educational products and coaching in creative real estate investing and home based businesses. No time to visit the site Subscribe to our FREE "how to" Home Business Solutions Digest, its like having your own personal coach: mailto:subscribeHBS@homebusinesssolutions.com
coaches@homebusinesssolutions.com
Women Get Ready, Get Set and Go Global – Women
Women Get Ready, Get Set and Go Global
Laurel J. Delaney, MBA
Today, women are starting businesses at twice the rate of men and becoming a major force both in the traditional and the new global e-business marketplace.
In November, The National Womens Councils Interagency Committee on Womens Business Enterprise prepared and presented to the 2000 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Conference a case study http://www.nwbc.gov/oecd.pdf on successful public and private initiatives for fostering entrepreneurship among women. It notes the significant role women have played in the recent economic prosperity and affirms the fact that "countries with high levels of economic activity and with the highest start-up business rates are the ones where women are well-engaged in entrepreneurial activity." More intriguing still, small businesses owned by women and minorities are focusing more intense efforts on exporting than those owned by non-minority men. The U.S. Small Business Administrations SBA Office of International Trade, in a statistical report released last year, indicated that "America
How To Realistically Set Your Fees – Part 2 – Real Estate
How To Realistically Set Your Fees - Part 2
Sue and Chuck DeFiore
Effect of Expenses
The last article examined how to calculate your realistic billable hours. If you remember, we arrived at approximately 1100 hours in a year. To earn our mythical $46,000 per year, you needed to bill at a rate of $42 per hour. Now we need to take into account the expenses of running a business and see where those put our hourly rate.
Most costs fall into three general categories: business and office expenses; salary and personal taxes; and, benefits and profit margin. In this article, we will concentrate on the first category, business and office expenses.
Everyday expenses are part of doing business, and these must be reflected in the prices you charge or you will not be in business for long. Expenses to consider are rent for office space. If you are home-based, you will still have an increase in utilities, such as gas and electric over your regular household bills. You will have telephone costs, postage, copying costs, stationery, office supplies, subscriptions and possibly, membership dues.
You will also need to make periodic upgrades to your office equipment and furniture. Items such as computer hardware and software; fax machine, copier, filing cabinets, telephone headsets, etc. All of these items add to the hourly rate you charge for your services. You must have a good estimate of what these costs total each year or you will end up cheating yourself. If you do cheat yourself, you are going to drastically increase your stress levels and lose much of the enjoyment of running your own business.
Lets plug some numbers into our costs and see how they affect our hourly rate.
Rent $600 per month x 12 = $7200
Utilities $100 per month x 12= 1200
Telephone $100 per month x 12 = 1200
Postage $100 per month x 12= 1200
Copying $50 per month x 12 = 600
Stationery $25 per month x 12 = 300
Supplies $50 per month x 12 = 600
Upgrades $150 per month x 12 = 1800
Furniture $50 per month x 12 = 600
Yearly Total = $15,300
The yearly total comes to $15,300, divide this by 1100 billable hours and you get approximately $14 per hour. Now add this to the original $42 per hour and you can see that you need to charge $56 per hour to cover your hoped for $46,000 per year income plus your expenses. If you are home-based, you can subtract the $7200 per year in rent or about $6.50 per hour from the $56 above.
I have made a number of assumptions in arriving at these figures, your costs may be more or less, but this will give you an idea of what to look for and how to calculate your expenses. If you have any questions, write to me or give me a call and I will go over your situation with you.
Remember, in order to be fair with yourself and your customers, your prices must reflect the true cost of doing business. Do not ever apologize for your prices. You need to charge enough for you to live on and enough to stay in business to service the clients that have come to depend upon you. If some of your customers cant understand this, change your customers, not your prices.
Copyright 2003, DeFiore Enterprises.
About The Author
Interested in having your own successful, home based creative real estate investing business Chuck and Sue have been helping folks start successful home based businesses for over 17 years, and we can help you too! To see how, visit http://www.homebusinesssolutions.com for the latest FREE tips and tricks, educational products and coaching in creative real estate investing and home based businesses. No time to visit the site Subscribe to our FREE "how to" Home Business Solutions Digest, its like having your own personal coach: mailto:subscribeHBS@homebusinesssolutions.com
coaches@homebusinesssolutions.com