You’re staring at that blank template right now, aren’t you?
The one with all those neat little boxes asking for your daily call targets, weekly appointment goals, and monthly GCI projections. The one that’s supposed to transform you into a top producer overnight.
Let me guess how this usually goes.
You write down some impressive numbers that make you feel good. Fifty calls a day. Ten appointments a week. A million in GCI. Then you stick that plan in a drawer and never look at it again.
Or worse, you actually try to follow it.
For about a week.
Until you realize you hate every minute of it because none of it aligns with how you actually work.
Do you want to know why most business plans are dead on arrival?
It’s because the real estate industry is obsessed with templates.
Purchase offers. Marketing scripts. Borrowed systems. Most of all, copying what works for others.
Here’s what usually happens.
You see a top producer closing 30 deals a year through cold calling. So you write a business plan focused on cold calling, even though every deal you’ve closed came from open houses and sphere referrals.
Or you watch another agent crush it on Instagram, so you plan to post three reels a day, even though you’d rather get a root canal than dance on camera.
Or you hear that “successful agents” make 30 calls before 10am, so you set a goal to join the 5am Club even though you can barely form sentences before your third coffee.
See the pattern?
You’re not building a business plan. You’re writing fan fiction about becoming a completely different agent.
Instead of failing at putting together a business plan this year, let’s start with reality instead of fantasy.
Grab a piece of paper. Write down where your last five deals came from. For example:
- Deal 1 – Open house visitor
- Deal 2 – Past client referral
- Deal 3 – Open house visitor
- Deal 4 – Instagram lead
- Deal 5 – Open house visitor
You have 3 solid deals from open houses, 1 referral from past clients, and 1 random lead from social media.
What does this tell you?
Open houses work for you. Past client care pays off. Social media might not be worth the effort.
But I bet your business plan looks nothing like this. I bet it’s full of arbitrary cold calling goals and social media quotas because that’s what you think you should be doing.
So how do create a simple business plan, and more importantly, one that we can stick with?
Track Your Reality
Pull up your last 90 days of activity. For each lead or deal, write down:
- Where it came from
- What you did to get it
- How it felt (natural or forced)
Find Your Pattern
Look at where business flows naturally. Example:
- Monday open house – 3 leads, 1 buyer
- Tuesday cold calls – 0 leads, 2 hours wasted
- Wednesday open house – 2 leads, 1 seller
- Thursday social posts – 0 leads, 3 hours wasted
- Friday open house – 4 leads, 1 buyer
The pattern is clear. But most agents would still write a business plan focused on cold calling because some coach told them to.
Create One Focused Business Plan
Pick your most natural lead source. The one that already works. Create three simple steps to do it better.
If it’s open houses:
- Hold three strategic open houses every weekend
- Perfect your follow-up system for every visitor
- Create a simple nurture plan for leads not ready to buy
That’s it. No complicated strategies. No trying to become someone else. Just doing more of what already works for you.
But wait… !!
“I want to get better at phone prospecting. I want to add it to my plan so I can build that muscle. That’s valid, right?”
Here’s the problem.
Most agents try to rebuild their entire business around a new skill overnight. They go from zero calls to planning 30 calls a day. That’s like deciding to run a marathon tomorrow when you’ve never jogged around the block.
Instead, let’s be smart about this.
Take your current plan – the one built around what already works for you. Now carve out one small block of time to develop this new skill. Maybe it’s 30 minutes, three times a week, for pure practice and learning.
Your business doesn’t depend on these calls yet. Your mortgage payment isn’t riding on them. You’re just building competency in a controlled environment.
Here’s what this looks like:
Monday: Practice calls for 30 minutes (builds the skill)
Tuesday morning: Practice calls for 30 minutes (builds the skill)
Wednesday: Run your proven open house (pays the bills)
Thursday morning: Practice calls for 30 minutes (builds the skill)
Friday: Run your proven open house (pays the bills)
Saturday: Run your proven open house (pays the bills)
Sunday: Run your proven open house (pays the bills)
* Note that on the days you’re not running open houses, you’re not just practicing calling and calling it a day. There is a lot of important prep work you should be doing if you’re focusing on open houses, like marketing, phone calling or door knocking, market research, preparing handouts, etc.
See the difference? You’re not betting your business on an unproven skill. You’re developing it systematically while your reliable lead sources keep the lights on.
This is how you actually grow – by building on your foundation, not by trying to pour a new one.
Your business plan should feel like a natural extension of how you already work, not a complete personality transplant.
If reading your plan makes you feel exhausted before you even start, that’s your gut telling you something’s wrong.
The truth? You don’t need a 50 page business plan with fancy charts and graphs. You need clarity about what actually works for you and the discipline to do more of it.
Talk to your broker or a trusted senior agent to help you create a business plan that works for you. If you don’t have anyone to help you, I provide mentorship on all aspects of running a successful real estate business.
Start there. Build on that. And watch what happens when you stop fighting your nature and start amplifying it instead.