Every year we enjoy watching the Tour de France, especially when fellow Austinite, Lance Armstrong, is racing.  The Tour de France is a grueling race that lasts for days.  The racers travel around the French countryside, climbing two mountain ranges.  While the goal may be to win the “yellow jersey,” on any given day there are a multitude of steps that the riders must take just to stay in the race.  The lesson here is that success doesn’t depend upon the ultimate goal — it is contingent on a multitude of actions the riders take each day.  While winning is the goal, in order to win, the riders must stay focused on the steps within the process.

The same is true for your real estate business.  When you focus on the process, rather than on the outcome, you greatly increase your likelihood of success.  Your success or failure in the long term will result from the actions that you take today.

If you want to make your goals a sweet reality, the following five steps can help you do so.

1. Clean out your goal list completely.  If you have had the same goal for more than one year and have not reached it, declare it complete no matter how much or how little you actually accomplished.  To do this, write each goal on an individual slip of paper.  Next, “clean the slate” by burning the slips of paper in the fireplace, burying them in the backyard, or ripping them up and throwing them in the trash.  Be creative — cleaning out your list of goals opens the door for new things to come into your life.

2. Write down five activities that supported you in feeling great about yourself during the last six months.  What really worked for you?  Be specific.  Keep these activities alive during the coming year, because they work.

3. Eliminate at least one activity that doesn’t make you feel great.  We all engage in behaviors that help us cope in the short-term, but have detrimental effects in the long term.  An example of this may be eating a chocolate bar when we’re depressed.  Unfortunately, this behavior often results in guilt.  Many people use guilt as a strategy to change behavior — “I know I shouldn’t eat this chocolate bar.”  A better approach is to be honest with yourself and take responsibility for your choice — “I am choosing to eat this chocolate bar.”  Notice there is no guilt or explanation.  It’s simply an acknowledgement of the choice.  When you say that you are choosing this behavior, surprisingly, it becomes easier not to choose it.

4. List your goals for 2011, and then eliminate 50-75 percent of them.  If you find yourself resisting this strategy, look carefully at your past to determine how many goals you actually set and then what percentage you actually achieved.  Setting too many goals can reduce your overall success, since your energy is scattered in too many directions.  In contrast, when you keep your energy focused on achieving two or three core goals, success occurs more easily.  Once you reach or discard your current goals, add new ones.

5. Make small changes over time.  Achieving goals is easier when you work with small steps over time.  Instead of setting a goal to save $10,000, it’s usually easier to take a series of small steps.  For example, “I’ll use coupons at the grocery store since it can save me up to $20.00 per week and I will put those savings in my bank account.”  It is easier to take action when working with small changes than when working with big changes.  By reducing the number of goals you have and by making small changes over time, your likelihood of experiencing success increases dramatically.

Finally, celebrate your victories each day, no matter how small.  This helps you to stay on track for the bigger goals you set.  As Lao Tzu once said, “A journey of 10,000 miles begins with a single step.”

During the last week, what did you postpone until tomorrow that would have been better handled today? Prospecting? Calling past clients? Saving for a rainy day? Going to the dentist? Paying your bills? Calling a loved one? A physical check up?

One of the great ways we create stress and struggle in our lives is through procrastination. When we say, “I just don’t have the time (or energy) to deal with it now,” we “pay the price” of our procrastination in several different ways. First, when we focus on a task and decide not to act on it, we’ve wasted time we could have used to complete the task or to work on something else. Second, the more we procrastinate, the more difficult it becomes to take action to complete the task. Third, delaying the task often increases the “cost” of completing it, much like paying a credit card late increases the cost of carrying the debt.

What can you do to reduce the procrastination in your life? Here are five simple strategies:

1. Increase your awareness of when you procrastinate. Note how often you decide to postpone tasks as well as how you feel when you make the decision not to act on it now. Notice which types of tasks you normally complete as well as those where you consistently procrastinate.

2. If there’s a consistent area where you procrastinate, it’s probably time to delegate it or dump it. Many times we’re trapped by our own belief system that tells us we “should” engage in a particular activity. For example, you may believe you have to bake a homemade cake for a special birthday when one from the market would be just as good and would be a lot less effort.

3. Tackle the simple items first. If you try to stop procrastinating all at once or tackle the hardest items first, you’ll only create more struggle and stress. Instead, start with what you can easily handle and then move to the more difficult items.

4. Put a “time limit” on what’s not handled. For example, if you don’t read this month’s magazines, put them in next month’s stack. If they are not read by the end of the month,  discard them. Allowing them to pile up is a constant reminder of your procrastination and only makes you feel worse as the pile continues to grow.

5. Prioritize what’s most important and focus on completing those items. The 80-20 rule says 80% of the benefit comes from the top 20% of our activities. Conversely, the bottom 20% produces less than 1% of benefit. For the next week, eliminate the bottom 20% of your activities that produce the least benefit. Reducing how much you have to do frees you up to deal with the important items you’ve been procrastinating about doing.

Reducing procrastination requires a series of small steps over a long period of time. If you’re ready to stop procrastinating, how about completing one item right now that you’ve been putting off?

One of the things about being with the BASB is that the Bureau has carefully screened all of their speakers. The quality is definitely there, but what about the bloggers, the panel members who sound great, or the IT folks who have in-depth knowledge? Having mastery in a content area is great – it has no relationship, however, to how well the person can convey that knowledge in front of a group.

Today, anyone can proclaim that they are an expert. This seems to be particularly true in the areas of social media and distressed properties. Just because someone has a certification or is blogging or writing about a topic, doesn’t mean that they can deliver that material in front of the room. The question is how to distinguish those who have both the content AND the platform skills that will provide the best value to your audience.

With money being tight right now, it’s tempting to go for the low cost alternatives. The question is, what is the value to your audience? If you cut corners and go for a second tier speaker who has the knowledge but can’t hold the room, everyone loses. The audience is deprived of the skills that could have helped to build their businesses. REALTORS® vote with their feet and when they don’t like something, they leave (and often don’t come back next year!). Furthermore, with the advent of social media, feedback about the quality of the session is instantaneous. There’s nothing that can kill your future attendance more quickly than having negative posts all over the social media about how lousy a session was.

To keep this from happening to you, ask for references. If the speaker or trainer doesn’t have a video tape, request that they make one. Search the speaker’s name on Google as well as on the major social networking sites such as Twitter. See what the speaker’s reputation is online.

Even more importantly, ask their references about how easy the speaker was to work with – the big ego off stage translates into big ego onstage. The bottom line is that if someone doesn’t express gratitude for the opportunity to speak before your audience, then they’re missing the most important point of all – speakers and trainers are there to be of service, not the other way around.

It’s 2010. Chances are you made some New Year’s Resolutions [last January]. A good question to ask is, “Are you paying attention to what really matters?” To determine what matters most in your life, answer the three following questions:

1. Name the three most memorable events in your life.
2. Name the five most important people in your life.
3. Name three things you wish you had more time to do.
4. Name three people you would like to spend more time with (and include the activity where you would be together.)

Did any of these include work? If you’re like most people, probably not. Unfortunately, our society often portrays being a “workaholic” as something noble—”The market is really tough. I have to 16 hours a day if we’re going to succeed!” “We both have to work—the kids would be stuck in a lousy apartment and a lousy school if we don’t!” “My clients need me—I have to be available when they call.”

If you look back on your past, chances are pretty good that your most precious memories are not of work—they’re of times spent doing special things with those you love or times you’ve taken time for you. So the next time you’re considering missing time with loved ones to stay at work or putting off caring for yourself because work is more important, remember what matters.