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The Power of Best-In-Class for Your Brokerage Solution
By Marc Chouaniere, VP of Marketing, MoxiWorks
It’s no accident that three of the largest and most successful regional real estate brokerages in the U.S. use MoxiWorks – which we extend to help 72 other independent brokerages as well. We pride ourselves on providing best-in-class tools and services to our clients, but what does that mean? Best-in-Class is a set of superior solutions (an entire toolbox) for a given market vs Best-of Breed which is a single tool (a hammer).
While I’m still learning about the intricacies of the real estate industry (I come from a fairly diverse software background), I am very familiar with best-in-class or best-of-breed technology solutions. Best-in-class simply means; Your product or service is what your customers revere as superior and the standard by which all others aspire to. You are the highest level of quality, the benchmark of top performance, the best of the best. Often you are the first to innovate and continually lead in your respective category. I was fortunate to have had worked at Microsoft early in my career to engrain a solid sense of high standards in building and maintaining best-in-class discipline in product execution and team leadership. However, small companies can also quickly catapult themselves to best-of-breed, as is the case with my recent experience at Icertis in the enterprise contract management space. Getting to this level takes deep focus and commitment but staying at the top can be equally as challenging. MoxiWorks was built by agents and brokers that live and breathe real estate every day to deliver one thing; best-in-class.
How we became best-in-class
Best-of-class can be achieved in many ways. At MoxiWorks, our recipe for success comes from a deep connection to real estate (being born out of Windermere), a passion for improving the experience for our agent and broker customers, and a focus on thinking about what’s the next innovation we can bring to our products. This, coupled with a leadership team that hires and nurtures the best talent with the insight to know how to shape the right course or to get out of the way when people need the freedom to push the boundaries of convention. Additionally, we think about the whole market. We align with select partners that benefit the entire ecosystem since we know that no company that is best-in-class can be a solution island.
It’s also several other unique things, like the wonderful depth of collaboration we have. I sit right next to the support desk and hear every day how we can evolve and become better. On my other side I have the development team, who regularly bounces ideas off my team to gain a perspective on how customers might receive a new feature or a change to a current product. Having the entire team under one roof is so valuable when needing to be extremely agile to create the best solutions in the market.
As with my joining MoxiWorks, we have recently been bringing different people onboard with diverse experiences to think outside the box and learn how other industries have brought innovation to their business.
What “best-in-class” means for your agents
Due to constantly having to change out old technology for new technology, agents now have major tool fatigue. Because of this they are ultra-sensitive to new tools, so they need to be thoughtfully integrated in a way that doesn’t take a lot of time or effort (or another password to remember) on their part. When it comes to technology, a brokerage’s value proposition needs to be centered around helping them grow their business and making their lives easier, putting more time and money back in their pockets. Therefore, picking the best tools and services for the type of business that your agents do and the style of your unique brokerage, while minimizing the hassle factor, is essential.
Best-in-class helps you accomplish this. Because we have a strict vetting process, you can rest assured that the Moxi Cloud tools and services are truly best-in-class and choosing amongst them will minimize the need for changing them out in the future, making tool fatigue a thing of the past.
This is all thanks to MoxiWorks having an Open Platform which allows technology and service companies to integrate and share data. Without an Open Platform you would lose a system that makes it easy to find and know when to use the various best-in-class tools and services provided, SSO (single-sign-on), and the data sharing that eliminates the need for data reentry.
Best-in-class doesn’t just mean superior tools for your agents, it means an entire ecosystem seamlessly working together, driving your agents’ success and making their day-to-day life more efficient and rewarding.
News: MoxiWorks Adds VoicePad to Cloud Open Platform
Why The Right Brokerage CRM Can Be a Goldmine
Choose wisely, and your brokerage could see agent productivity increase by 40%
As seen in Mile 62 Magazine – By Andrew Eberting
A CRM should be the epicenter of your customer and prospect data – and your brokerage. Not having the right one implemented at your brokerage, you cost yourself and your agents the #1 thing that matters most: Money.
If profitability and growing market share is not for you, no sweat. However, if you do want to own the competition in every possible competitive category, then keep reading.
1.) Ease of Use
For Your Agents: One of the biggest factors that impact agent adoption of your brokerage’s tools is its ease-of-use or lack thereof. The more approachable your offerings are, the barrier to resistance will also be lowered.
Agents want to do what they do best: create dreams for clients and win more listings. Give them something that accomplishes both, and your brokerage becomes the “it” place to be.
For You: If your current agents are excited about the tools that make their lives easier, think about the impact this can have on other areas of your business.
- New agent recruiting
- Current agent retention
- Growth in market share
If your brokerage platform offering is sound, it will result in the acquisition of more share of your local market. It is a dog-eat-dog world; which one are you going to be?
2.) Scalability and Integration/Single Point of Truth
For Your Agents: If an agent can navigate to a single point of truth for their entire workflow with their sphere, what kind of increase would that have not only with their productivity but also their quality of life?
- One place to see all their entire database
- Build a CMA powered by integration with your MLSs
- Email said CMA to their sphere
- Turnaround and start marketing current listings or themselves instantly to Facebook and other online channels
- Send automated closing gifts to clients based on transactional closing history
How much time would be saved each day to log in and find all their tools in one place vs. logging into multiple systems? How much is this time down costing your brokerage?
For You: Staying competitive also means needing to stay current with best-in-class tools. The ability to stay agile while meeting the demands of your brokerage platform (like being integrated across multiple areas of the agent’s daily life) plays a significant role in making you recession-proof the next time the industry retreats. Being able to turn on new tools or keep favorites for your agents, while sunsetting those that have fallen out of favor or compliance, also lowers your annual spend on technology.
3.) Client Success aka YOUR Success Experience
For Your Agents: It is inevitable; at one point or another we all get stuck. With this in mind, sometimes everyone needs a helping hand. Accessibility to success, training, and support is vital to getting back on the proverbial bike and keep going.
For You: A happy agent is a productive agent. Offering your agents a CRM solution that provides multiple channels and assets to help them overcome roadblocks can be gamechanger in their productivity.
70% of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) end users prefer searching for self-service help related to their issues (Zendesk), meaning an agent’s time-to-productivity can be directly impacted by their ability to resolve roadblocks.
Want to know what else to look for in a CRM for your brokerage?
Check out our latest joint white paper with Victor Lund of WAV Group:
How to Choose a Real Estate CRM
Salesforce (2018, April 03) 4 Trends Customer Service Teams Are Using to Kill the Competition.
Zendesk Customers want to help themselves?
MoxiWorks Real Estate Tech Startup Captivates Employees from Industry Leaders
April 17, 2018 – Seattle, WA – MoxiWorks, a Seattle-based real estate technology startup, has seen extreme growth in the past couple years due to their unique cloud-based, open platform concept, and best-in-class tools and services. Because of this success, MoxiWorks has been able to attract and hire business development Directors who have worked for major industry leaders, namely CoreLogic, Lone Wolf, Realtor.com, and Market Leader.
“MoxiWorks provides the perfect package for me. Great leadership and a shared vision for helping to connect the industry, a great team with a customer-first mentality, and a strong platform with lots of new innovations and rapid development cycles,” said Alex Jacobs, Director of Business Development at MoxiWorks. Jacobs came from Lone Wolf, and prior to that was part of the First American Corporation, that was then spun off into what is known today as CoreLogic. “The open platform that MoxiWorks has created allows clients to connect whatever partners they need, which creates the best possible environment for their agents. It’s why we’re so passionate about what we do here.”
MoxiWorks recently turned heads when they announced Hanna Holdings’ investment in their startup, now being owned by the three largest regional real estate companies in the nation, along with Windermere Real Estate and Long and Foster Real Estate. They also power the LeadingRE Cloud, announced at the LeadingRE annual conference at the beginning of 2018.
Georgia Perez, VP of Business Development at MoxiWorks, said, “Alex, Nick, and Bennett all came from other large, well-known tech companies in real estate, and are able to act as trusted advisers. With a truly open platform in the Moxi Cloud, brokerages can assemble all of the best-in-class products they need, having confidence that they will all work together, regardless of who the provider is. Having these three experienced and dedicated sales professionals on our team to help brokerages navigate the sea of choices is a real gift to our clients.” Perez leads the business development team at MoxiWorks not only with years of technology experience in the industry, but also as a real estate agent herself, bringing a unique perspective to the decision-making efforts behind the company’s offerings.
Bennett Hutt, whom formerly worked at Realtor.com, is one of MoxiWorks’ most recent recruits. He joins Alex Jacobs and Nick Van Valkenberg, all Directors of Business Development. Hutt said, “MoxiWorks has had a progressive trajectory in terms of where they’re taking their technology and, most importantly, the Moxi Cloud open platform concept they’ve brought to life is transforming the industry as we know it.”
Like his peers, Van Valkenberg came from a competitor. He mentioned, “Other industries that rely on technology have all moved to the cloud, use API integrations, and strive to make the lives of its users easier. While I enjoyed working for other industry leaders, I’ve always strived to be with the innovators and MoxiWorks absolutely checked that box for me. I mean have you seen the product?”
Perez added, “There is a lot of talk about technology in real estate these days, and a lot of shiny objects that glitter for a moment and become unadopted shelf ware soon thereafter. By providing a truly open platform that integrates, streamlines brokerage operations, and drives agent productivity, the MoxiWorks Sales team is able to serve brokerages actual needs in ways not previously available in the industry.”
About MoxiWorks
MoxiWorks is a comprehensive open platform system for large residential real estate brokerages that serves over 100,00 agents and 55 brokerages nationwide. Named one of the 10 Best Cloud Solution Providers of 2018 by Industry Era, MoxiWorks make brokerages more profitable by enabling their agents to be more productive, earning the highest adoption rates in the industry. MoxiWorks’ integrated tools are centered on sphere methodology that drastically increases agents’ repeat and referral business by 40%, while lowering overall technology, training, and support costs for the brokerage. The open platform, known as the Moxi Cloud, has tools from more than 40 partners that plug and play to create unique brokerage solutions. More information at moxiworks.com.
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For more information on this topic and other press inquiries, please contact Tiana Baur at tiana@moxiworks.com.
Get Off My Transaction! What Zillow’s Latest House-flipping Announcement Means for Brokers
By York Baur, CEO of MoxiWorks
Zillow Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: Z) (NASDAQ: ZG) announced they’re expanding Zillow Instant Offers to compete directly with OpenDoor and other Instant Offers companies – and that for the first time, Zillow itself will be buying homes from consumers and reselling them.
So, what does this mean for brokers? Two ways to look at it:
- So much for “we sell ads, not houses” as Spencer Rascoff has repeated ad nauseum over the years. That’s right up there with “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” Zillow of course has every right to direct their business as they choose, but this is proof that they couldn’t care less about their relationship with brokerages. Look at the revolving door nature of the staff working with brokers as further evidence (remember Chris Crocker and Nick Bailey as the most recent examples?).
- Wake up call. I attended the Swanepoel T3 Summit in Miami this week and the theme was resoundingly that if you don’t make change happen, then change happens to you. I’d rather be the one making it happen, and I think that the brokers that continue to thrive will be the ones that disrupt themselves, not wait around to get disrupted
The Power Stays with Spheres
After you’re done absorbing this news though, remember that you have one of the most valuable assets any business can possess: relationships. Those with your agents, and critically their relationships with the consumers in their spheres of influence – their “databases” as many call them. Those relationships are the most difficult things to come by, and while we are all trying to make a home sale transaction happen, we don’t operate a transactional business – we’re in the people, the relationship business.
Channeling Michael Scarafile from a panel session at T3: when you cut your finger, you go to the urgent care clinic and you don’t really care who the doctor is. But if you have a heart problem, you go see you trusted family doctor. Selling or buying a house isn’t buying the latest gadget off Amazon, it’s one of the most emotionally and financially important things that most consumers do.
Here’s the best part: each of your agents already know hundreds of people, and one out of ten will either buy or sell a home this year. For example, the 100,000+ agents on the Moxi Cloud have an average of 470 consumers in their spheres of influence. That means each have more than 40 that will transact this year, not including the impact of referrals. All they have to do is stay in touch with those people and serve as a trusted advisor, and none of the Zillow, Opendoor, Redfin, Purplebricks blah blah blah will matter, because your agents are the ones they’ll trust to guide them through their transaction.
Presence is powerful. Windermere, Long and Foster, and Howard Hanna (all of whom subscribe to the philosophy that agents’ spheres are the best source of business) collectively did more transactions last year than all the closings generated by leads from Zillow. Think about that. How did these A-list brokerages pull this off? Many reasons. But one key factor is that they have systems that allow their agents to organize, store, market to, and advise the consumers in their spheres of influence.
You can too. You can put up a mote around your relationships that will prove to be impenetrable by the disruptors. But you have to get on with it, because it’s too late to build a mote once the invaders are inside your castle. It starts with getting your brokerage, agent, and consumer data in one place. Pick an open platform, get the data in there, and choose from the many quality technology tools that provide sphere management and marketing automation. Then be relentless about getting your agents to use them and hone their ability to serve as a trusted advisor. Sound too simple? It isn’t. It works. We have the data from our 60 brokerage clients and 100,000+ agents to prove it.
Unlike the government, we’re Moxi, and we actually are here to help. Let us know if we can help you and your brokerage.
Put Money Back in Agent Pockets Without Affecting Your Bottom Line
By Maddie Jostol
We talk a lot about making your brokerage more profitable, but it would be silly if we didn’t touch on the role that agent finances make on a brokerages’ success. How? Let’s quickly break it down: you know you need to retain more agents, agents are always searching for higher commissions, and many agents often struggle to run their business efficiently. Yes, the more smoothly an agent operates their business, the more money they make, and the happier they’ll be, resulting in them wanting to stay at and promote your brokerage. Sound complicated? Don’t worry, it’s not.
Here’s the bottom line: offer resources and recommendations that will help your agents run their business more effectively and it will pay off. The beauty of this is that it often takes very little (if any) time or funding from your brokerage. This can come in many different forms, such as specialized training, sphere selling education, marketing tools and resources, or assistance with tax filing.
Take accounting, for example (an area that many real estate agents struggle with). Too often, we hear the stories of the shoebox full of receipts or unorganized spreadsheets tracking expenses. The truth is, these practices result in a huge loss when it comes time to file taxes. All of the potential tax deductions that could’ve saved some serious cash are, instead, a blow to the wallet.
For a real estate agent, this is a big deal. It’s vital that they have a profitable, sustainable business in order to stick with the brokerage they know and love. When we came across QuickBooks Self-Employed, we instantly knew it was the perfect solution to these pain points. It’s an inexpensive, easy-to-use, reliable accounting solution built for independent contractors that saves agents time and money ($4,340/year on average, to be exact).
It made us wonder: why aren’t more brokerages recommending solutions like this to their agents? It costs the brokerage nothing to make these resources known, yet they often aren’t offering support outside of the standard.
Sure, educating your agents about tools like QuickBooks Self-Employed might not seem to benefit your business at the surface level, but remember that successful agents make successful brokerages. QuickBooks Self-Employed makes agents more efficient and helps them retain more of the money they make. Remember what we said about happy, money-making agents effecting your bottom line?
Provide your agents with what they need to be successful and you’ll find your brokerage more successful in turn.
Interested in learning more about QuickBooks Self-Employed? Agents can get QuickBooks Self-Employed for just $5/month. Take advantage of our exclusive discount here.
Why MoxiWorks is growing FAST
By Ring Nishioka, VP of Operations at MoxiWorks
I joined MoxiWorks about 18 months ago and when I joined, the company had just under 50 employees and an office space of about 5000 square feet. The Little Engine that could has come a long way in the past 18 months. The doubling of our agent count has included 25 new employees and the doubling of our office space square footage.
As one of the HR folks in the company, it has been my responsibility to hire these last 25 employees along with our HR Specialist, Emily “HRSavage” Sherwood. We have hired 13 employees since the beginning of 2018 and we’re not looking to slow it down anytime soon.
MoxiWorks is based in Seattle, Washington and the market for technology talent is very similar to the real estate market – there are more buyers than there are sellers/inventory. All of the large tech companies have created more job openings than there are candidates. So recruiting quality candidates can be tough.
In the same way that the market has driven up the price of homes in Seattle, the market has driven the starting salaries for technologists through the roof. Graduates from good schools with computer science degrees and zero experience are making more than their parents. While that might sound absurd, it’s the truth. Supply and demand at its finest.
The multiple offices of Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Google, and the numerous startups including Uber, Lyft, and CHEF, to name just a few of the more recognizable names, is putting a squeeze on the little engine MoxiWorks.
So, what is a non-Microsoft sized tech company to do when it needs to fill openings? Like most brokerages, we try to entice candidates by creating a cool place to work and creating a strong brand in the marketplace, but the best thing we have done to recruit new talent is the use of our employee referral program and the use of social media.
Like most companies, we offer a referral bounty for employee referrals. We pay this bounty on the first day of the new hires employment. We don’t ask the employee who made the referral to wait three months before we pay out because it was the hiring manager and the interview loop that made the hiring decision.
Our bounty is $1500.00, which is modest by Seattle standards. We don’t want Moxians to quit their day jobs because the bounty on a referral is too high. We want to say “thank you” with a token of appreciation. Why do we want referrals so badly? We want referrals because our employees feel this is a great place to work and want to share the experience. Make the referral $10-$20K (yes, it is a thing) and folks will throw random candidates against the wall in the hopes of getting lucky.
Our employees are MoxiWorks BEST source of referrals and leveraged with Social media, we can make a serious dent in the list of open positions. And the same could be said for new agent recruits. Moxi employees know what our culture is, they know what success looks like, and they know the hiring managers. As an HR guy, what I like the most about employee referrals is that new hires that are referred by a current employee have a friend, ally, mentor and big brother / sister to watch their back. We know this is typical for brand new agents just getting into the real estate world. We all need someone to show us the ropes. These employees put their reputations on the line and are motivated to make sure their referral is successful.
To give you some perspective, the last three months at MoxiWorks looked like this:
- Our Test Engineer referred TWO technologists.
- Our Marketing Automation Manager referred our VP of Marketing
- A new hire developer liked the interview process so much, he referred his developer friend BEFORE HIS FIRST DAY OF EMPLOYMENT.
- Our CEO referred our CFO
If we went through a hiring agency using outside recruiters, we would have spent close to $170,000.00 in agency fees. We also would NOT have had organic relationships with these new hires.
We create a job posting and then our Content Marketing Manager, Tiana Baur, creates links that the employees can post on their persona LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter feeds.
And just like that, we’re swimming in plenty of quality referrals from our employees we know and trust.
Yes, we are hiring, and currently looking for:
If you’re not currently a Moxian and want to refer a candidate that we hire, we would like to say “thank you” with a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue. Hit me up at Ring@moxiworks.com.
How Facebook changed real estate marketing for better or worse
By Tiana Baur
Facebook is definitely not everyone’s favorite topic right now, especially when it comes to politics. That may not be our scene, but the Book has affected the real estate industry fairly heavily as well. It has changed the way we look at digital marketing and the way brokerages and agents alike view social media as a business tool.
In our industry, there are now specific tasks that are expected. Creating a business page and implementing property ads to your marketing campaigns are now the status quo. If you’re not doing them, you’re falling behind, and if you don’t at least update your page 2-4 times a week, you’re not doing nearly enough.
It has also become one of the hot topics to write about – every update, newsfeed changes, ad creation, features, etc. There are millions of blogs and articles giving tips of how to use the channel to its fullest (we have quite a few in our repertoire as well). It’s all due to the fact that Facebook has become the ultimate channel across all forms of social media – it’s where the world hangs out… or at least 2 billion people do. Therefore, it’s where all your prospects and clients are hanging out. So, whether we like it or not, the Book is still king, and therefore is a channel no one can ignore. Not the agents, or the brokerages, or even companies like Moxi. We’re all slaves to the Facebook Machine.
It’s also why we completely transformed our Moxi Marketing suite. Although agents know they need to be active on it, they don’t necessarily know where to start, or how to effectively advertise their listings or themselves. With over two billion active people on Facebook, we felt it was important, no, vital for agents to showcase themselves and their business on the channel in every way possible. Plus, we also wanted to take some of the pain out of Facebook, so agents can spend more time focusing on their precious spheres.
Our Facebook Ad tools, Advertise Your Listings and Advertise Your Services, are some of our absolute favorites. We’re especially excited about Advertise Your Services, the latest installment of the Moxi Marketing suite, since it has all the juicy goodness that is Advertise Your Listings, only this time it’s for agents’ personal brand and business. Like previously done in Advertise Your Listing, you can link to your personal Facebook Business Page, and if you don’t have one you can still use it. Even if you have no personal profile, even if you never ever want to have to type facebook.com into your navigation bar, you can use Advertise Your Services (and Advertise Your Listing). Talk about leveraging the Book with very little effort!
We try to not only focus on trends, but what we’re hearing from our clients. That’s why Moxi Marketing was created and why we’re rooting it on and celebrating its successes. If we can put just a few more hours back into an agent’s week – we’re happy. At Moxi, we’re only as good as our tools and we stand by calling them the best-in-class. Try these time-saving tools out today – won’t regret it.
Bitcoin or Bust: Buying homes & paying rent with digital currency
By Tiana Baur
“Bitcoin accepted.” A not-so-strange note to see anymore. Digital currency, or cryptocurrency, is hot and some of those in real estate are now using it to appeal to young renters. That means saying goodbye to mailing checks and hello to using an API that converts a digital currency payment into U.S. dollars. Yes, there are existing apps out there doing this. For instance, the app Coinbase, uses “the platform to manage relationships with their tenants,” by converting the cryptocurrencies and handling the middle man work.
Not only that, but sellers are intrigued by cryptocurrencies as well, giving an option to pay a piece of the pie with Bitcoin or other digital currencies. Some will even go so far as to only accept Bitcoin. That’s right – cash offers might even take a backseat in some unique situations. Fortune.com recently came out with a list of what the tangible value is for Bitcoin versus value amount in dollars. For instance, in Seattle (where MoxiWorks is based), 51.6 Bitcoin is the equivalent of $725,000. This varies by city and my state. We should add that, yes, there have already been closings involving digital currencies across the States.
And yet…
Digital currencies like Bitcoin are getting major backlash because they’re A.) hard to regulate and B.) get hacked more often than not. Recently, tech giants Facebook and Google banned any ads related to cryptocurrencies. And although Twitter, Snap, and Microsoft still allow them, they might be jumping on the bandwagon soon as well. These announcements were extremely damaging to cryptocurrencies, causing prices to plummet, but some experts are saying that it might help them in the long run since these policies are a step towards legitimacy. The jury is still out on it.
The problem is, unless you’re an investor or are independently wealthy and open to taking on great financial risk, or are extremely mesmerized by the crypto movement, few sellers are going to accept it in replacement of cash and putting money in the bank. As with anything, there are early adopters, but there’s no way to tell if Bitcoin will succeed or bust and since home buying and selling are some of the largest transactions in someone’s lifetime, the risk is often not worth the reward.
For real estate, you might be able to use it in a few circumstances, but there’s a long road ahead before the industry accepts cryptocurrencies as the “norm,” with open arms and little suspicion. With skeptical daily chatter and constant negativity in the headlines, one thing’s for certain: cryptocurrencies need more time to mature to be taken seriously in our market and beyond.
Goal-Setting 101: Set Yourself Up for Success This Year
By Maddie Jostol
2018 is your year to not only reach, but to exceed your business goals. If you either a) didn’t set goals for 2018, or b) have already lost track of them, making you think that maybe you didn’t go about goal-setting in the best way, then this guide is for you. Goal-setting gives you direction. It ensures all of the work you’re doing serves a purpose. There is no one thing that you are doing to make your business reach its goals. There is no silver bullet for real estate agents. In reality, it’s an accumulation of things, which is why having goals in place is so important. It means all of those little things can map to something bigger and add up to success.
Make that money.
At the end of the day, you’re working to make money. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for how much a real estate agent (or anyone, for that matter) should make. Think about how much you need to make in order for this year’s work to be worth it. What is your time worth? How much time and effort are you planning to give? What pieces of your life do you need to fund and how much will you need to make in order to do that?
Once you take those questions into consideration, begin to form your financial goal for the year. Next, calculate your GCI (Gross Commissionable Income) goal. This is important as it’s directly relatable to the day-to-day progress you’re making. Each time you complete a transaction, you can see exactly where you are on your path towards your annual goal. If you’re a Moxi Engage user, be sure to input your GCI goal in your Moxi account. This way, you can easily see your goal reflected on your Moxi dashboard, as well as the progress you’re making towards it.
Get real.
It’s really important to make your goals realistic and achievable. Of course, we encourage you to stretch yourself and reach for the stars, but make sure your goals are within reach. The last thing you want is to get discouraged and leave your goals behind altogether.
Follow through.
We’re all too familiar with the new year’s resolutions that fizzle out after a month or two. We’re hitting that point in the year when the gym is quieting down drastically after being packed for the last few months. Why? Because without a plan, it’s inherently difficult to follow through on your goals.
When goal-setting, consider the steps you’ll need to take to reach said goals. Write them down – even if it’s a rough list. This will not only help you gauge whether or not the goals you’re setting are realistic, but it will give you direction and get you on the right track as you set out to reach those goals.
Get your ducks in a row.
When your business runs smoothly, you’re better prepared to reach your goals. Part of goal setting should be getting the right systems in place for you to surpass those goals. As an agent, you are running your own business, which means accounting and tax filing take up time you could be using to close more deals. As independent contractors, most agents struggle with proper accounting since keeping your business finances sorted is such a pain. When it comes time to file taxes, you’re left sifting through a box of crumpled receipts and losing out on deductions because you didn’t have time to record and categorize everything.
QuickBooks Self-Employed helps independent contractors keep track of their finances all year, saving time and stress. When it comes time to file taxes, all of your expenses are auto-categorized to match your Schedule C and the average user saves $4,340 on taxes. With a snapshot of your business income vs. expenses, available on your app in real time, you always have a view of how your business is performing to ensure your goals are on track. Get a reliable system in place now! We’re offering 50% off your first year – check it out here.
