"What's My Next Step?" The Age Old Question, Charting The Course.

"What's My Next Step?" A question we have seen posted and heard asked a million times. A question that is also largely unanswered and frequently ignored. Why is it so hard to get a straight answer?

     "That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." – Neil Armstrong

When Neil Armstrong stepped foot on the moon for the first time back in July of 1969 and uttered those famous words, it was not merely a step he took but the culmination of a million steps. The result of millions of actions, some slight, seemingly insignificant and some huge, earth shattering actions. However on that day it was simply one small step, for Neil that is.

What’s the next step? “I have done X, Y, and Z what do I do next?” how many times have we asked that question or seen it posted in a forum, or asked at a meetup or over zoom? I love hearing this asked because you can hear the pause from the receiver, and see, if only briefly, the look of puzzlement on their face. What’s next is a simple question, but like everything else in Real Estate it isn’t an easy one to answer. It is a question with infinite answers, the answer given is usually some form of “Take Action”, and this is a great answer. “Take Action” works because it’s a broad sword and covers just about anything and everything that is the next step, however its strength is also its weakness it’s so broad that it rarely is received as the answer being sought after. After all Neil’s action that day of taking the last step on a ladder was profound, but if that ladder was in his garage you wouldn’t even know his name. Even though the actions would have been the same, one more step down a ladder, the results not so much. 

 “If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.” – Yogi Berra

The reason this simple question is so hard to answer is also quite simple, but again not easy to define. Simply stated my next step will most certainly differ from your next step, and my results from that step much like Neil’s garage ladder will ultimately differ from yours. So what’s the difference between me and you? The answer to that question is also, you guessed it, simple, there is no difference. The difference lies in the plan or lack thereof, without a plan it is hard to determine what the next step is. Much like when you take a trip you have a map, or GPS with a route laid out, you must also have a route for your Real Estate journey laid out. Without this route how will you know when you have gone off track, when you will arrive or how will you know when you have arrived at all. How many times have you day dreamed about jumping in the car and going somewhere, anywhere with no destination in mind? Now how many times have you done just that, I would venture to say never.

   “Entrepreneurs jump off a cliff and build parachutes on their way down”                                                                      - Reid    Hoffman

All too many of us start on this journey without a good plan or with no plan at all, we read a bunch of books, and listen to countless podcast. None of the books I’ve read or the podcast I have listened to have advocated taking the leap without a plan, yet that is the advice we choose to hear. Build the parachute on the way down, is solid advice but it’s not born out of a lack of planning. The Entrepreneur who jumps off that cliff didn’t find himself there by accident, their plan brought them to that cliff and it gave them the faith to jump. The question we arrive to when we find ourselves on that same cliff out of sheer happenstance is “what do I do next”. Neil Armstrong didn’t one day find himself on the moon, it was the plan all along, and when he got there I assure you he didn’t sit in the capsule asking “what do I do next”, he suited up, opened the door, and descended the ladder he took the next step in the plan.

If you’re just starting your journey and trying to figure out the next step it can be frustrating, overwhelming and a seemingly impossible task. The time you expend trying to figure out the next step will be repeated at every turn without your road map, at every mile marker you will be asking yourself, and likely others “what’s the next step”. Instead take some time to determine the last step, where is it that you are looking to go, and when would you like to arrive? Again this is no easy task but it is a simple concept, everyone gets started in this arena for a reason, what’s yours, what is your why?

Money! Cash Flow! Passive Income! Easy that’s the answer right? Well yes and no, much like the motivation behind every seller is different so is the motivation behind every investor. When you boil it all down I suppose you can say its Money, but that’s a lazy approach and does not get you much closer to determining a route. After all if its money you’re after there are far easier endeavors to obtain, keep and grow it. What is it you want that money for, what do you want to do with it, what do you want it to do for you, how much is enough, when do you want or need it by? Figure out where it is you want to be and when then plan your route.

Goals are great, we all have them, many of them. There are different types of goals, long term, short term, wildly important, SMART, simple, complex, process, performance, outcome un attainable, and impossible! Goals come in many colors and flavors the preceding list is just a sampling of what’s out there. Goals are important, they help us along the way to our destination, but they are not a substitute for the destination, a goal is something you hope to achieve through your actions, the destination is something you drive to that defines your actions! Goals can be limiting in nature, set the bar to low and you will drag your feet to achieve it in an effort to avoid the question of “what’s the next step” that short term goal becomes a long term excuse. Set the bar to high and you may burn all your gas on the way up and fizzle out before you achieve it, then self-doubt creeps in, you question your worth and start looking for another endeavor.

At the center of Rome, the “Golden Milestone” was erected to mark the presumed center of the empire, Roman road builders would place milestones on the roads measuring distance from the center to give travelers along the route a measure of distance from the destination, in some cases the distance traveled per day was just a few miles. We use the term today to mark important events in our lives, and we still have mile markers on our roads, our golden milestone is the “Zero Milestone” in DC. Milestones are important because they tell us where we are on our journey, they mark progress and give us little wins to celebrate. Milestones are also great because they don’t force us to ask “What’s Next” they tell us, they merely mark a point in our route to our destination. The other great thing about milestones is that they can be measured to, or from, it’s easy to look ahead to a milestone to see how much more ground we have to cover or look back at one to see how far we have come, each one builds on the next along the route.

“Milestones have never really meant a lot. They probably will mean more when I've finished playing and actually reflect on what I have achieved.” -James Anderson

Once you know where you want to be, plan your route, and identify the milestones along your way, those points when you need to pull over and recharge, when you have made significant progress, the points when you must shift or pivot, the points along the way where you must take the “next step”. Once you have those milestones identified you will be able to see clear as day what actions need to take place to get you to the next one. When you know what your next step is, and know what action to take when you get there the action becomes natural, when you plan to be on that cliff it’s easy to jump. The doctor’s goal was not to graduate high school, it was a milestone on the route, just as his goal of a PHD was not the destination, but a milestone along his journey.

We have a saying in the military, “if you fail to plan, you are planning to fail”, without a route to a destination you are heading nowhere, and heading there fast, you are in an endless circle of wondering “what’s my next step”. Figure out your why and start at the destination, work your way backwards, identify the milestones along the way and set a route from where you are to where you want to be. Stick to your destination, the route may change along the way but keep your eye on the milestones to guide you, if you find yourself making a wrong turn re-calculate the route and get back on track. Stop asking “what do I do next” and start asking “how do I do….” And you will see much better results, it’s far easier to show you how to do something then it is to tell you what you should do.

“If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you feed                                       him for a lifetime.” - Italian proverb.

The man in the proverb above wasn’t looking for what to do, he knew he needed to catch a fish to eat, he just didn’t know how. How is the easy part, we can be taught, shown or told how to do just about anything, again Neil didn’t wake up one day knowing how to get to the moon. It’s What that’s hard, someone telling the man above to go catch a fish would not have been very helpful, it may have reaffirmed what he already knew, but that would have been of little consequence to the hunger in his gut. He had to show up on the beach, the pier, or the boat rod in hand ready to go for someone to give him the how, his route had to bring him to that spot just as the entrepreneur’s brought him to that cliff.

Define your destination and plan your route, step on the gas, move the needles and get after it! What can you get done today?