Almost every top producing Realtor^®, sales guru, and "How-To" book on building a financially successful real estate business will tell you one of the primary keys to success is a well-designed and executed business plan. A plan is the roadmap to success. Without it you're likely to get lost on some real estate back road and end up either leaving the business or wandering aimlessly without ever getting closer to your goal. The mistake far too many agents make is developing and executing plans that end up requiring 60, 70, 80 or more work hours a week, leaving no time or energy for distractions like family, friends, community service or self-care.

If this sounds like you, you might want to think about creating a life design, not just writing a business plan.

Creating a life design means asking some powerful questions first, then building a plan around the answers:

• Start with questions like, what are the 10 most important values in your life?

• How do you live those values in your day-to-day life?

• What is the underlying purpose of your life?

Be careful here, far too many people confuse purpose and values with goals. Your purpose in life is not a list of financial and material goals. It is a statement about what you hold most dear and how you can live into it in everything you do. Your purpose is that part of you that wants to change the world for the better (even if the world extends only as far as your family and friends).

Before you learn how to use your purpose and core values in a business plan, use this tool for helping you uncover your purpose. First, think about any situation, person or action, then ask yourself, "What is important about it/them to me?" Then ask, "What is important about that to me?" With each answer, ask the question again until you drill down to its essence. You'll know you're there when you get a one word answer that you can't get below.

For instance, you might start with 'money' as an answer. Below that might be 'security for my family,' then 'freedom from worry,' then simply 'freedom.' Money is not a purpose, Freedom is. Repeat the questions for any situation that presents itself and pretty soon you'll have a clear set of core values and corresponding purposes. Hold off on writing a business plan until you have two or three or four of these clear in your mind.

Once you have a clearer understanding of your core values and life purposes, go ahead and start developing a comprehensive business plan. There are dozens of books and programs out there to help you, many aimed specifically at Realtors^®, and your company probably has resources that can help you here, too.

As you develop your plan stop at each question or stage and ask yourself:

• How does this fit into my purpose?

• How does it reflect my core values?

• How do my day-to-day activities express my purposes?"

Asking yourself these questions each step of the way will help you develop a plan for your business that takes your life into consideration. You may even find yourself inspired to expand the plan to include all the domains of your life, not just your work. Expanding your business plan to include all domains of your life is called a life design.

Many of you probably already try to build plans that leave you time, energy and resources for things outside of work, but do they actually work? Using these questions each step of the way, and not progressing further on your plan until you understand how your plan fulfills a purpose or embraces a core value, may slow the development of your plan down, but it will ultimately lead to a plan you can live with in all domains of your life.

Your plan is far more likely to include time, energy and resources for what is really important to a successful life, like family, friends, service and self-care. Using this approach to create a life design rather than simply a business plan will put more life in your life, not just more money in your bank account. A life design calls you powerfully into action and is far more likely to create the kind of successful life you want than simply writing a business plan.

It's up to you.

Published: January 18, 2005

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John Hagerman has a wide range of business experience, but it all fits together around one common theme -- energizing people to fulfill their highest potential. All of his work, whether as a speaker, writer, manager, business owner, coach, non-profit activist, or Realtor®, has focused on helping those around him unleash Natural Energy to better serve their clients, customers, constituents, and themselves. Years of experience as a business manager and owner taught John the value of raising up his employees and helping them learn how to reach beyond what they thought possible. He coached and mentored them in how to build connections with customers and how to release the Natural Energy of those relationships. His employees benefited by increasing their customer relationship skills, and his customers benefited by discovering sales people who were authentic in their desire to make sure they got the solution that served them best…and who were skilled at giving the customer a great experience in the process.