Happy Monday, {{ First Name | team }}.

It's October in Phoenix, which means the stores are full of pumpkins and it's still ninety-nine degrees in the parking lot. I ordered my first pumpkin spice latte of the season last week. Iced. We do what we can.

This month's theme is Planning Ahead, and here's what most agents get backwards. Next year doesn't get decided on January first. It gets decided right now, in October, while you've got nine months of real data in front of you and enough runway left to act on it. Wait until the last week of December and you'll be planning between holiday parties, with a plate of fudge in one hand and a fuzzy memory of how the year actually went.

So this issue is about building next year from the numbers you already have. We'll start with what your business really costs to run. Then we'll turn that into a target you can break down to a single day. And we'll make sure the plan leaves room for the life you're working so hard to fund, because a plan that ignores your life won't survive past February.

Grab your year-to-date numbers and a cup of coffee. Let's huddle up, team.

- Steve

Most agents plan next year with a goal. "I want to make two hundred thousand." Great. Two hundred thousand of what? Commission? Profit? What actually lands in your bank account after taxes? Those are three very different numbers, and the space between them is where a lot of good years quietly go sideways.

Start with clean data. Pull your profit and loss through September 30. If your books aren't caught up, that's your first job this week, because a plan built on guesses is just a wish with a spreadsheet attached.

Now look at your total expenses for those nine months. Divide by nine, then multiply by twelve. Say you've spent $36,000 so far. That's $4,000 a month, or $48,000 a year to keep the doors open. While you're in there, go line by line. The subscription you forgot about. The marketing that didn't produce a single lead. The CRM you're somehow paying for twice. Cut what didn't earn its keep before it rolls into next year.

Then work backward from what you want to keep. Say you want $90,000 in your pocket after taxes. If you set aside about 25% for taxes, you need roughly $120,000 in profit. Add your $48,000 in expenses, and your real target is $168,000 in commission after your broker split.

That's your number. It's not the one that sounds impressive at the team meeting. It's the one that actually pays you.

Quick reminder, this is "tax prep light," not tax advice. Your set-aside percentage depends on your situation, so if anything looks off, loop in your CPA or get a second set of eyes on your numbers. A budget built from real data tells you the truth, and the truth is a lot easier to plan around than a hunch.

A big annual goal is motivating for about a day. After that it just sits on a sticky note, staring at you. The fix is to break it down until it fits inside a normal Tuesday.

Take that $168,000 target. Now find your average commission per closing after your split. Pull it from this year's closed deals, not from memory, because memory is a generous bookkeeper. Say it comes out to $7,000. Divide, and you need twenty-four closings next year. That's two a month.

Keep going. Look at your own conversion rates. If about one in three appointments turns into a closing, twenty-four closings means seventy-two appointments, or six a month. If about one in ten real conversations turns into an appointment, you need around seven hundred twenty conversations for the year. Spread that over fifty working weeks and you're at roughly fifteen a week. Three per weekday.

Three conversations a day. You can do that. You can track that on a notepad by your coffee maker.

Two adjustments before you lock it in. First, build a cushion. Deals fall apart, and here in the Valley the summer slowdown is real, so plan for a few more closings than the math says you need. Second, check where this year's closings came from. If past clients and referrals drove most of your business, aim your conversations there, not at the cold leads that ate your budget and your Saturdays.

Big goals don't close deals. Daily activity does, and once you know your daily number, you'll always know whether you're ahead or behind before it's too late to do anything about it.

Here's where most plans miss. We spend hours on the money and zero minutes on what the money is for. Then we hit our number in November and wonder why the whole year felt like a treadmill.

So before you finalize anything, ask yourself one honest question. What do you want next year to feel like? I don't mean what you want to earn. I mean how you want to live. More dinners at home? A vacation where you actually leave the phone in the room? Coaching your kid's soccer team? Your number should fund that life, not compete with it.

Then do something most agents never get around to. Open next year's calendar and block your non-negotiables first. Vacation weeks. Anniversaries. Birthdays. The school play. Put them in before a single client gets a time slot. Business will fill every empty square you leave it, and it has never once asked permission.

After that, block your business rhythm. Prospecting time every morning. A weekly money review, say Friday at 3 p.m., where you check your numbers against the plan. Treat it like a listing appointment with your future self, because that's exactly what it is.

If you've got a spouse or partner, plan with them. Sit down over coffee, show them the number, and show them the calendar. It's a whole lot easier to push hard through a busy spring when everyone at home knows the week off in June is already on the books.

This part of planning feels soft, but it's the part that keeps you going. A plan you're excited to live is a plan you'll actually follow.

If this issue's math felt familiar, there's a reason. Gary Keller laid out a version of it years ago, and agents are still building businesses on it today.

The heart of the book is a set of models, and two of them fit Planning Ahead perfectly. The first is the economic model. You start with the net income you want, then work backward to the commission you need, the closings that takes, the appointments behind those closings, and the leads behind those appointments. It's the same path we walked in the Business Booster section, just laid out in more detail and with plenty of examples from agents who actually did it.

The second is the budget model. Keller's point is simple. Agents who grow tend to treat every dollar they spend as an investment that has to earn its way back, and they decide where the money goes before the year starts instead of reacting all year long. That lines right up with the expense review in the Accountant Angle.

A fair warning: this is a big book, and some of it is about building a team you may never want. That's fine. Skip around. The economic and budget chapters alone are worth the price, and they'll give you a framework you can reuse every October for the rest of your career.

Who it's for: any agent who's ready to treat their practice like a business instead of a string of transactions. If you've been in the business a few years and feel like you're working hard without a clear plan, start here.

My favorite takeaway: your income is a result of your plan, and your plan is only as good as the numbers underneath it.

👆 Go ahead and click the image to order the book from Amazon 👆

✅ Reconcile through September 30 by Friday, October 9. Your plan is only as good as your books, so get them current first.

✅ File by Thursday, October 15 if you're on extension. That's the deadline for 2025 individual returns that were extended. Check with your CPA if you're not sure where you stand.

✅ Build next year's budget by Friday, October 23. Run your expenses, your target, and your daily conversation number, then put all three on one page.

✅ Check your tax set-aside against your year-to-date profit. If it's running light, top it up now so April doesn't sneak up on you.

✅ Block your 2027 non-negotiables by Saturday, October 31. Vacations, birthdays, and anniversaries go on the calendar before any client does.Reconcile your books through August thirty-first so your numbers are real