Short answer: Set one annual goal that is an income number, built around the life you want, not a volume or deal count. Then break it into a weekly activity number and three daily non-negotiables, put those in protected time blocks, and give someone else the job of checking on you every week. Top producers on Keeping It Real with D.J. Paris agree that the goal matters less than the daily habit it turns into.
By D.J. Paris, host of Keeping It Real with D.J. Paris. Updated November 2026.
Why do most real estate goals fall apart by March?
Three reasons come up again and again on the show. The goal is the wrong kind of number. It never becomes something you do on a Tuesday morning. And nobody is checking. This guide covers getting from the annual number to the daily calendar, and keeping it there. For the income math itself, use the monthly-income worksheet in our guide to writing a one-page real estate business plan.
What should your annual real estate goal actually be?
An income number, set after you decide what your life needs to look like. Not a sales volume or a deal count.
Michael Opyd is a real estate mental performance strategist who spent ten years as a brokerage owner running over $200 million in annual sales. In a live coaching session, he asked Julia Linquist, an @properties agent who works Chicago, the North Shore and the northwest suburbs, whether her real goal was the $20 to $30 million in volume she’d named, or the income behind it. She said income. His answer:
“Don’t focus on the 20 to 30 million because you got to focus on what is going to take care of the life part of what you want to achieve.”
Michael Opyd, Perfect Mom or Perfect Agent? (June 2026, at 33:28)
He then laid out the levers. “We know there are only three ways that you can hit your income goal” (at 41:29): work with more buyers and sellers, delegate or refer out part of the work, or raise your price point. For Julia, with three young kids, more clients wasn’t the answer. Delegating and price point were.
Lindsay Dreyer, founder of Happy Agent Company and broker-owner of City Sheik Real Estate in Washington, DC, goes one step earlier. She starts with your life, not your business:
“So traditional business planning or traditional real estate advice tends to start with your business first. And so we kind of flip that on its head and we start with your life first. So we look at what kind of life do you want to have and what really makes you happy. What do you want your schedule to look like and then we back the business into that dream or that vision.”
Lindsay Dreyer, Why Every Real Estate Agent Needs A Joy Audit (April 2025, at 11:20)
How do you work backward from an annual goal to daily activity?
Five steps. The first two take an afternoon. The rest become your week.
Step 1: Put your personal non-negotiables on the calendar first
Dreyer’s own are her son’s baseball games and a daily meditation she does not miss. Block yours before any work goes in, or a showing request will take their spot.
Step 2: Set the income number and pick your lever
Use the business plan worksheet to get from monthly take-home income to closings, contracts and clients. Then decide which of Opyd’s three levers you’re pulling this year: more clients, more leverage, or a higher price point.
Step 3: Chunk the year down to a weekly number
Dreyer describes working back from a big number (her example was a $400,000 down payment goal) to your commission per deal, then asking “how many appointments do you need to get a client and how many people do you need to reach out to? And so you can chunk it down so granularly that you know every day I have to focus on these three, four habits” (same episode, at 22:21). The annual figure becomes, in her words, “now I need 10 appointments this week or I need to have 50 conversations this week to make this happen.”
How the levels stack (an example to show the shape, not a benchmark):
| Level | What you decide | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Year | Income goal and the lever you’ll pull | Income goal from your worksheet; lever: more listings |
| Quarter | Closings and signed clients needed | From your worksheet, divided by four |
| Week | Conversations and appointments | 50 conversations, 10 appointments (Dreyer’s example) |
| Day | Three non-negotiable activities, time-blocked | Two hours of calls, follow-up, one open house booked |
For the conversion math, see how many conversations it takes to close a deal.
Step 4: Name your three daily non-negotiables
Chris Wolfe got his license in 2024 after moving to El Dorado Hills, California, where he knew nobody. He closed 33 transactions for $510,000 in net commission in his first year (per D.J.’s introduction, at 03:33). He runs every day on three tasks:
“So I have to do three things today. I call my critical tasks. And these are like the three non-negotiable things per day that are building my business. And that is not researching AI. That is not checking the MLS. That is outbound, uncomfortable prospecting to people, right?”
Chris Wolfe, The Daily Routine Behind 33 Deals in Year One (September 2026, at 22:01)
The test: does it put you in a conversation with someone who might buy or sell? If not, it isn’t one of the three.
Step 5: Time block them, most important first
Wolfe is in the office by 8 a.m. and on the phone by 8:30. For about the next three hours he prospects and follows up with earlier leads, and only “once I’ve knocked that out, then I can go make videos and post on social” (at 22:58).
Dr. Erin Helle, a Realtor at eXp Realty and a coach who hosts our Grow With Me series, gives a simple order for building the week: set your working hours, list everything you need to do, prioritize it, put a time on each task, schedule the most important things first, leave some white space, put it in your calendar, and stick to it. The hard part is sticking to it:
“Protect your time. Don’t let your time slip. If you scheduled 30 minutes for content creation, for social media, when that 30 minutes is over, you got to be done.”
Dr. Erin Helle, Time Blocking Secrets For Real Estate Agents (March 2024, at 09:58)
For anything that keeps sinking to the bottom of the list, she asks: “Is this making me money or is it contributing to a money making activity?” (at 14:11). If not, cut it. If yes but you hate it, hand it off.
How do top producers stay accountable to their goals?
They stop relying on discipline. Ben Lalez leads a Chicago team at Compass that D.J. describes as doing hundreds of deals a year. He told us call reluctance was his biggest challenge for years, and what fixed it:
“the biggest trick for me, and you said it earlier, was finding an accountability partner. For me, that was hiring a coach… And one of the KPIs was how many phone calls did you make? And each week, you would ask, and we would log it.”
Ben Lalez, The Follow Up Strategies Of Top Producers (June 2025, at 10:56)
It didn’t stick right away. “It really took until probably week 26, where it became a muscle” (at 11:52). His calling block was 9 to 11 a.m., every day.
It doesn’t have to be a paid coach. Lindsay Dreyer says “accountability can be systems. It can be technology. It can be people” (at 26:04). For her, it’s often her own employees. It can also be a friend, your CRM, or a Zoom call where you and a colleague work side by side. What matters is that something asks every week: you said you’d do this; did you?
A simple version: every Friday, send one person your weekly numbers (conversations, appointments, people added to your database). Our guide to the metrics top producers watch covers which numbers matter most.
What should you do when you keep missing your daily activity?
Change the question you’re asking yourself. Paul Salter, a mindset and performance coach who hosts The Inner Game of Real Estate Success on our show, put it this way:
“Instead of asking, why do I keep falling short of my goals? Consider asking, what’s one daily action I can take to build the version of myself who hits those goals?”
Paul Salter, Priming Your Mind With Paul Salter (May 2025, at 24:16)
His exercise: set a timer for 20 minutes and answer questions like “What are that version of myself’s non-negotiable habits?” Then compare the answers to your calendar.
And make the hard block smaller instead of skipping it. Wolfe’s toughest block is circle prospecting high-end neighborhoods. He doesn’t drop it. He does it “on a daily basis, just in smaller increments” (at 26:46), the same way he got over his early fear of calling expired listings.
When should you set your real estate goals for next year?
In November or December, so January starts with a calendar already built. Check the weekly numbers every week and the goal every quarter. As Dreyer put it, “You don’t do it once like most business plans.” Run a year-end review before you set it, so next year’s goal is built on what actually happened.
Frequently asked questions
Should my real estate goal be a volume number or an income number?
Income. When Michael Opyd coached an agent who had named a volume goal, she agreed she wouldn’t be upset hitting her income on less volume. That makes income the real goal.
What’s the best way to time block as a real estate agent?
Put personal commitments in first, then your most important business activity at the time of day you focus best, then small tasks in the gaps. Leave white space, and stop when a block ends.
Do I need a coach to stay accountable?
No, but you need someone. Ben Lalez hired a coach and logged his calls every week. Lindsay Dreyer says accountability can be a person, a system or technology, as long as something makes you do the work you’d rather skip.
How long does it take for daily prospecting to become a habit?
Longer than most people expect. Ben Lalez said it took him until about week 26 of weekly coaching check-ins before calling felt like a muscle.
Listen to the full episodes
- The Daily Routine Behind 33 Deals in Year One, with Chris Wolfe
- Why Every Real Estate Agent Needs A Joy Audit, with Lindsay Dreyer
- Perfect Mom or Perfect Agent?, with Michael Opyd and Julia Linquist
- Time Blocking Secrets For Real Estate Agents, with Dr. Erin Helle
- The Follow Up Strategies Of Top Producers, with Ben Lalez
- Priming Your Mind, with Paul Salter
Keeping It Real with D.J. Paris is a podcast for real estate agents, with more than 790 episodes of interviews with top-producing agents, coaches and industry leaders. Here’s how to listen.