Capturing REAL Moments in Real Estate since 1995
JANUARY 2020
VOLUME 24 • ISSUE 9
Set Goals T0
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MOTIVATE YOURSELF In The New Year WRITTEN BY RIKI MARKOWITZ
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Happy 2020! If there’s one thing you can’t say about the past decade is that it was boring. At the start of the 2010s, the entire country was still recovering from a recession, and according to the Atlantic, Texas actually began enjoying a turnaround and economic boom faster than other states. And speaking of booms, Austin’s population has experienced nothing less than an explosion over the last 10 years. In 2017, almost seven percent of people living in Austin were not residents the previous year. At the time, the city experienced “the largest rate [increase] among the top 50 U.S. metros,” said the Austin Chamber of Commerce. Forbes also crunched some numbers and found that from April 2009 to 2019, the median home price in Austin-Round Rock area skyrocketed 69 percent. These are all great accomplishments that helped escalate Austin to top spots on several best places to live and work lists, but not everyone would say the last decade was exactly easy street. A job report in 2010 ranked real estate one of the most stressful professions out there, thanks to the hours, the pressure and competition. Then mid-decade, another study found that agents had the second highest rate of depression (interestingly, after bus drivers). Finally, throughout the decade, technology forced one and all to finally accept radical changes to the way real estate professionals do business — how agents and customers find each other to how paperwork, correspondence and research migrated from paper to hard drives and then the cloud. So whether you are in the camp that enjoyed the ride on Austin’s recession-recovery coattails or had trouble adjusting to industry shakeups, now is the perfect time to start looking ahead to the future and set goals that will put you and your team on the career trajectory you want to be on. If that sounds corny to you, you’re not alone. Only about 12 percent of those who write out year-end goals actually keep any of them. But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t set goals. It just means that there’s more to achieving success than simply listing ambitions on [2020 Board Moves Forward continued on page 14]