It seems like 2019 has flown by. With only a few weeks left in the year, we are taking this time to plan more effectively for 2020. Besides looking at what went right and how we reached certain goals, we also want to find out where we failed and why.

By looking at our failures, I have often found that I get more long term results than just celebrating the wins. Like the old Thomas Edison saying, he didn’t fail hundreds of times in trying to perfect the light bulb, he simply figured out the all the ways the light bulb wouldn’t work. In learning from his mistakes, he eventually developed a product that remained relatively unchanged for a century.

In reading “Atomic Habits” by James Clear this past couple of weeks, the take away is to look at your mistakes and make incremental changes to succeed. There rarely is one giant moment where everything pivots but most likely the sum of many small changes.

For our San Antonio property management company, the other challenge as highlighted by Clear is to develop consistent systems. When processes follow a consistent system, it is much more likely to yield positive predictable results. Much like our screening process, we do not deviate from our standards because those results are almost always positive. 

Some of our next goals are to make our systems more water tight. In respect to our inspections, move ins and marketing, we could still stand some improvement. That is where our systems come into play. We use Asana for project management and Evernote as well plus Google Drive but there is always room for improvement. When you start with improving the system that in turns leads you to hitting your weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual goals. Best of luck in your 2020 planning and putting those systems in place.