029: Success and Failure in 2015 Plus My Goals for 2016

Earlier this week I posted an article about my goals for 2016 and how 2015 went. On this episode of the InvestFourMore Podcast I go into more depth on my goals and what I want to achieve in 2016 and why. I also talk a lot about 2015 and what I learned from the last year. People see my success on the blog with my rentals, flips, real estate team and cars, but it doesn’t always go perfect! I had a lot of setbacks in 2015 and I am making a lot of changes going into 2016. The good news is that I had a lot of success in 2015 as well. If things always went the way we planned them, life would not be nearly as interesting and the wins would not be nearly as sweet.

What were my biggest setbacks in 2015?

I am not going to rehash everything I said in my goal article, but I will touch on a few topics. I had some really big plans in 2015. I was successful in some ways and not so successful in other ways. I had big plans to reduce the amount of time I spent flipping and that was a huge bust. I hired some new people and thought everything was set up for success, but it did not work. This was partially my fault for not having better over-site. I also did not buy as many rentals as I wanted too and my real estate team did not sell as many houses as we hoped too. However, I still bought five rentals and we still sold 127 houses in 2015. So while I did not hit 7 rentals or 200 sales it was still a good year!

Why are goals so important to achieve success?

I have been setting specific and aggressive goals for over three years now. Every since I started setting goals I have seen massive amounts of success and I have been a happier person. The great thing about goals is they give us a destination and a target. If not have no goals, you have no idea what you really want in life. If you simply want to “be comfortable” or “be financially secure” that does not mean much. In fact those broad statements mean almost nothing. Being comfortable could mean having a roof over your head to some people and to others it might mean having a 100 million yacht to sail around the world in.

If you want to be comfortable, what does that mean? Does that mean you have $5,000 a month coming in without working or something completely different? You will never be comfortable if you never define what comfortable is. On another note, I think being comfortable is a horrible goal to have. Who wants to sit around all day being “comfortable”? The most fun and memorable things in life come from being extremely uncomfortable and experiencing new things.

Too many people also rely on the start of a new year to make goals and resolutions. For goals to be successful you have to think about them and review them all year long. Not just one time of the year. Most people make resolutions, never write them down and quickly forget about them a couple of weeks later.

In order to keep your goals fresh in your mind and motivate yourself here are a few tips:

• Write down your goals where you can see them and review them as often as possible (one year I put my income goal on the door to my garage so I saw it everyday I left the house).
• Tell others what your goals are and how you plan to achieve them. This gives you accountability and it is not as easy to forget about your goals.
• Make big aggressive goals and then break them down backwards to see exactly how and what you have to do to achieve them. A goal does no good if you have no plan or idea how it will be accomplished.

Be great in 2016!

Whatever you decide to do in 2016, make sure you give it your all and do not give up. It is much better to have tried and not reached your goals than to have not tried at all. I know my biggest regrets in life involve not trying or being scared to do something, not things I tried to do, but was not as successful as I hoped. This episode as a lot of information on goal setting exactly what I am doing in my business and how I am going to make 2016 awesome. I hope you enjoy it!