Goals, Plans, Action

Mark is a renowned property expert, public speaker and founder of a website with an embarassingly similar name, YourPropertyExpert.com. I thoroughly recommend you signup for Mark's excellent free newsletter at his website. This article first appeared in his newsletter in March 2005 which Mark has kindly contributed to this site - Ranjan Bhattacharya

Before I gave up work, I had the priviledge of working with some of the UKs largest companies, on some very exciting projects.

For three years, I worked in the construction arm of a major oil company, where I was responsible for IT across Europe for a new joint venture. The joint venture had a simple, focussed vision - to reduce the cost of building petrol stations in Europe by 40% without compromising on quality or safety. It took just over 2 years to acheive this, and ended up saving the company $200m during that period (compared to the previous cost of building petrol stations), and set a new benchmark for cost reduction for the next five years.

Now, it is most unlikely that anyone reading this newsletter (apart from me) will ever be involved in building a petrol station in their lives. To me, however, it demonstrated very clearly that a simple, focussed, well-communicated vision can drive performance that is outstanding in any area I can imagine.

The joint venture in question had about 250 people working for it, in 17 countries. It is fair to say that a large proportion of them had been involved in building petrol stations for many, many year, and already thought that they did an excellent job of it. It was, for many people, hard to believe that savings of 10% would be possible, let alone the 40% that was a target. However, at the core of the organisation was a small group of visionaries who not only believed that it was possible, but dedicated every minute of every day to focussing on the thing that would be required to deliver those hundreds of millions of dollars of savings.

Over the first year, a key target was to spread the message, and spread the enthusiasm and belief that we could make the savings. As the first countries began to hit interim goals - 10% saving, 20% saving, 30% saving, the rest of the countries began to ask two important questions - how did they do that? and how can I do that?

In the context of a large organisation, the company then did a very, very, clever thing. It made the bonuses of the country managers only partially dependant on the performance of their own teams, and partly dependant on the performance of the joint venture as a whole. Suddenly, everyone was motivated not just to ask for help, but to offer that help.

If we sweep aside the technical detail of what was done, we can see an underlying process. It is not a complex process, and it is exactly the same one that allowed me, in my investing career, to get to the stage where I could give up full-time work at the age of 32.

1: Have a clear vision of where you want to be.

Whether it is saving 40% a year in an area of your business, or building a passive income of £10,000 per month, you need to understand what you are trying to acheive. Otherwise, it is impossible to tell whether a particular action or investment will support that or hinder that.

Make the vision demanding, make the vision motivate you. It is just as hard work to aim for a 10% saving as to aim for a 40% one.

Visualise in detail

2: From that vision, set some goals.

Those goals can give you clear things to aim for. The subconcious is a surprisingly powerful thing, and will answer pretty much any question you set it. If you ask how to make more money, it will tell you to get a paper round. If you ask it how to build £100,000 of equity, it will give a different answer.

3: From those goals, set a strategy.

My own wealth strategy has been primarily around Buy To Let. However, I needed to break that down into a set of annual, monthly, weekly and daily action plans to achieve those goals. Most people do not plan to fail, but most people fail to plan.

4: Take action.

There is phrase for a well-intentioned goal that is not then acted upon - the phrase is New Year Resolution. We all know that planning on its own is not enough. There need to be action, and, ideally massive focussed action. This is why setting a clear vision of what you want to achieve helps - it motivates you to make that phone call or view that property. A phone call that you can see as the next step on that path to your Lotus Esprit, or your Bently Turbo R is far, far easier to make.

5: Keep on course.

The way that a missile keeps on course is not to point at a target and just go for it. The way that a missile keeps on course is to constantly receive information about where it is, and where it is heading, and what needs changing. Be prepared to accept that your initial strategy can be improved upon, and that taking in more information to make better decisions is a sign of success, not a sign of failure.

Ok Ranjan, I want to know more about your Proven Property Investment System.

• Tell me more about the Build Your Property Empire Home Study Course
• Tell me more about your one day seminars
• Tell me more about your 1 year property investors mentorship programme

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