A pillar is commonly defined as “a person or thing regarded as reliably providing essential support for something.” While developing additional revenue streams outside of your real estate career is important to building wealth, building pillars of income within your business is equally as important.
Whether you are a new agent or have years of experience, constantly developing pillars of income to support your business is essential to your growth. Relying on a single pillar or two can be detrimental. A shift in the market, regulations or a softening in that particular pillar could be tragic to your business. Developing multiple pillars of income will ensure that your business is thriving, and when things change, you can rely more on those pillars that can perform at that moment.
There are infinite opportunities when determining what pillars of income to choose, such as:
- Sphere of influence
- Past clients
- Open houses
- Online lead generation
- Community events
- Expired listings
- FSBOs
- Door-knocking
If you are a team leader or broker, you could include pillars such as:
- Recruiting
- Hiring
- Staff Development
As real estate coaches at Workman Success Systems, we coach our clients to develop four pillars every year. We put significant thought, focus, detail and intentionality into each pillar so that when fully developed and executed upon, that pillar alone would be strong enough to support 100 percent of our client’s annual income goal.
Developing a pillar to this level does not happen overnight, and that’s why you should allocate an entire quarter to develop each pillar. Start by identifying all those tasks or activities that must be completed to launch and run the pillar. Decide who will complete the defined tasks and a deadline for each task to be completed. Then time-block your calendar so every day you dedicate the appropriate time to complete those tasks on schedule. Keep in mind that this action plan or list does not need to be perfect, so don’t overthink it. Perfection hinders progress, so just act now and keep implementing.
If you don’t already have a strong SOI and past client pillar, we recommend you spend an entire quarter developing each one as a specific pillar. Once you have those two pillars running, each subsequent year you should focus one quarter on improving and strengthening your SOI and past client pillar.
Choose the other three pillars based upon an alignment of your strengths and opportunities. For instance, if you are great on the phone, you may choose circle
prospecting and expireds as a pillar. If being face-to-face with someone is your strength, you could build pillars around open houses, door-knocking or networking at events.
Despite the size of your goals, with each completed pillar, you will come closer to reaching those goals. When you execute on this strategy, imagine what your business could look like just two years down the road, when you have eight pillars of income churning out additional revenue.
In 2001, six years after serving in the Marine Corps, Mike Coke started his real estate career. In 2010, Coke opened Terra Firma Realty, and since then, has been No. 1 in lakefront sales in the South Central Wisconsin MLS, which consists of more than 3,800 agents. With his team “Workmanized,” Coke has been able to focus on continued growth for his business while also helping his coaching his clients to achieve their goals and the success they desire.
