What does it take to be successful in the real estate business? Whether you’re considering a career opportunity in real estate, or are just starting out with a new brokerage, or you’re wanting to make some changes that will impact your current business, here are five keys to success you will want to read.

You are the boss and the employee. Set specific long-term goals as well as attainable short-term goals to help keep you on track in your daily tasks. Create a personal reward system tied to certain milestones in building your business. Reward yourself often and always focus on the small victories–those are the ones that end up building the bigger victories down the road. It’s about building careers worth having, businesses worth owning and lives worth living.

Managing your time can be difficult even with easy tasks. Each day or the night before, create a schedule that you willing and able to follow. Include personal time, errands, follow-up activities and pro-active activities you would like to complete. Take 2-3 minutes and review your upcoming schedule. In each section of blocked off time, ask yourself, if this particular activity, task, phone call, etc. serves your bigger purpose and your goals? If the answer is no, shift things around so that your focus is on money-making activities, no matter how big or small the task may be.

The willingness to learn, grow and change sound easy when they’re on paper, but often these are the toughest aspects of business to embrace. We all want an effective routine, or an efficient system in which we work. Once we start firing on all cylinders, it’s hard to stay open to change, and to new ways of doing something. The ability to accept new information and put into action relevant training is your ticket to life of abundance. It’s the willingness to read other industry-related blogs, attend conferences and seminars, keep up to date on technology trends, and embrace training from your market center.

It can feel stressful when you are responsible for all aspects of your business, not to mention accountable for the success of your efforts as well. To avoid feeling overwhelmed, implementing systems, processes and personnel support is key to your success. Whether it’s creating a calendar of monthly events, implementing client management software or hiring an office assistant, you want to be able to manage all the daily tasks in a way that feels easy and effortless. Remember, the reason behind these systems and processes is to ensure not only that you are able to manage your business, but also to ensure your clients experience the highest level of customer service available.

Communication in real estate has many different aspects. As an agent you learn to communicate to different personality types who also have unique communication styles. Fostering a professional and meaningful relationships with clients of all backgrounds, communication styles and personality types takes intentional effort and practice. From a business standpoint, communication also means learning to ask the right questions to your clients and other parties in each transaction. With that, learning to listen to the information given and asking intentional follow-up questions can impact each buying/selling opportunity. This also takes practice and the wherewithal to stay in the moment and really listen, not anticipate the answer so much that you don’t hear the fine details of someone’s request.