Every January, real estate agents post the same thing: “New year, new goals.” Then February hits, the market does whatever it’s going to do, and the plan quietly disappears.
Nate and Josh have both been through enough cycles in California real estate — to know that the agents who have good years aren’t necessarily the ones with the most ambitious plans. They’re the ones whose plans actually survive contact with reality.
In this episode, they break down the 5 steps they each use to plan a year that holds up.
Why Planning Matters (and Why Most Agents Skip It)
The honest version: most agents don’t plan. They set a vague income goal in January, work hard for a few weeks, and then react to whatever comes through the door for the rest of the year.
That works until it doesn’t.
A real plan isn’t a vision board. It’s a short list of activities you’re willing to do consistently, tied to numbers you’ve actually looked at. Nate and Josh both start their planning in Q4 of the previous year — not January — because waiting until the new year already puts you a month behind.
Step 1: Look Honestly at Last Year’s Numbers
You can’t plan forward if you don’t know where your business actually came from.
Pull the data. Past clients, referrals, sphere, open houses, online leads, agent-to-agent — whatever your sources are, sort the deals by how they came in. Most agents discover one of two things: either one or two sources are doing most of the heavy lifting, or the business is scattered across a bunch of channels without a clear leader.
Josh talks about his “pillars” — the categories that consistently produce. For him, past clients and a strong referral network are at the top. Knowing that changes what he doubles down on the following year.
The common mistake: Skipping this step because the numbers might be ugly. The numbers are the numbers either way. You only get to fix what you actually look at.
Step 2: Set Goals You Can Do Today, Not Goals You Hope For
“I want to sell more houses” isn’t a goal. It’s a wish.
Real goals are daily activities you control. Nate’s version: two meaningful connections a day, two hours of prospecting. That’s it. If he does that, the deals follow. If he doesn’t, no amount of January motivation is going to fix it in July.
Break your income goal backwards. How many transactions does it take? How many appointments per transaction? How many conversations per appointment? Once you get to the daily activity number, that’s your real goal. Everything else is the outcome of doing it.
The common mistake: Setting outcome goals (closings, GCI) without setting the input goals that produce them.
Step 3: Know What You’re Actually Good At
This is the one most agents won’t admit to themselves.
Josh figured out early that door knocking and face-to-face conversations were his thing. Cold calling wasn’t. He could have forced cold calling because every coaching program tells you to, but he would have hated it, done it badly, and burned out.
Leaning into your real strengths isn’t laziness. It’s the difference between doing the work consistently and doing it for three weeks before quitting.
If you light up in open houses, do more open houses. If you’re better one-on-one over coffee, build your year around coffee meetings. If your writing converts, lean into content. The plan should fit you — not the agent the coaching guru wants you to be.
The common mistake: Copying someone else’s playbook instead of building one around how you actually work.
Step 4: Build an Outreach Rhythm You’ll Actually Keep
Consistency beats intensity every time in this business.
Josh reaches out to his VIPs and past clients every month, and he makes sure every touch has some kind of value attached — a market note, a useful link, something specific to them. Not a “just checking in” text that everyone can see through.
The cadence matters less than whether you’ll actually do it. Monthly is great if you’ll do it. Quarterly that you actually keep is better than monthly that you abandon in March.
The common mistake: Over-engineering the outreach plan, then doing none of it because the system is too heavy.
Step 5: Stay Open to the Conversation You Didn’t Plan For
The plan is a map. It’s not the only road.
Nate tells a story in the episode about a conversation with a contractor that ended up connecting him to business he never would have found through any of his planned channels. That happens constantly in real estate — the deal comes from the side door, not the front.
A good plan gives you a default mode for the day so you’re not starting from zero every morning. It doesn’t lock you out of the unexpected coffee, the random open house walk-in, or the conversation at your kid’s soccer game.
The common mistake: Treating the plan as the whole job instead of the floor.
The Bottom Line
A real estate business plan that works isn’t complicated:
- Look at last year’s numbers honestly
- Set daily activity goals you control
- Lean into what you’re actually good at
- Pick an outreach rhythm you’ll keep
- Stay open to business that doesn’t fit the plan
The agents who have consistent years aren’t smarter or luckier. They just do the boring version of this list every week.
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