LET ME ASK:
Do you have a “True North” when you set out to conquer the day?
I mean this. Are you locked in on your values and your non-negotiables? Do you have vision for where you want to go and a way to make decisions on what to do and what not to do?
Have you thought through the actions needed in order to advance you towards your vision?
WELL SAID!
“An unintentional life accepts everything and does nothing. An intentional life embraces only the things that will add to the mission of significance.”
— Intentional Living, Maxwell, J. C.
THE STORY
I am blessed to talk with many people about success and habits. What I love most is the wide range of how people define success in their own lives. This is why coaching is so personal. There is a season for everything.
A couple days ago I had coffee with a friend whose non-negotiables are showing up at the gym 7 days a week and walking on the beach every day. This is what lights him up and fulfills him. He has a successful career and will continue to work as long as he wants. He is financially well off and money is not what drives him right now.
On the flip side, I worked with an agent team once whose non-negotiable was spending 80% of their time on their business. They were always at it and never slowed down.
One of my clients hired me not to grow her business but to help her sustain it around $50MM per year, and help her create systems and rhythms so she could have more of a life and be able to disengage more.
And of course, many I come across are looking to grow their businesses.
Some lead with philanthropy, others with faith or family.
And sometimes, multiple opportunities converge to light up different paths simultaneously.
These opportunities come in all shapes and sizes, yet need to be evaluated as mission-critical or distractions.
Here’s one more example of True North that I come back to often, and it has nothing to do with real estate. Jerry Seinfeld’s True North, early in his career, was almost absurdly simple: write jokes, every single day, no exceptions. He didn’t set out to “become a great comedian.” That’s too big and too vague to act on. He committed to one small, non-negotiable practice — write today — and he protected it fiercely. To hold himself accountable, he kept a large wall calendar with all 365 days on one page and marked a big red X over every day he wrote. As the days added up, so did the chain of X’s, and his only job — as he put it — was don’t break the chain. What I love about this is that he measured a controllable input, not an unpredictable outcome. He couldn’t guarantee a joke would land, but he could always guarantee he showed up to write. Over time, that small, repeated act compounded into a body of work no single burst of inspiration could have produced on its own. That’s mission-aligned action in its purest form — know exactly what you stand for, then reduce it to one thing you do without fail, regardless of mood or motivation.
THE TRUE NORTH CHALLENGE
Have you thought about your Mission, Vision, and Principles (M.V.P.) recently? There are a million different things to choose from each day on where you put your time and attention. Do you have a good filter by which to make these decisions?
From there, have you determined the most important things to work on each day?
THE TRUE NORTH FRAMEWORK: M.V.P. — APPLIED TO YOUR BUSINESS RIGHT NOW
Let me give you each part of the framework and the honest question that goes with it. These aren’t rhetorical. They’re the ones I use in coaching sessions that tend to create uncomfortable conversations but productive outcomes.
1. MISSION — Know your reason for being.
People who can name their “why” in one sentence make faster, cleaner decisions than people who can’t*. That’s not a mystery — it’s just math. When you know what you’re actually for, you spend far less energy relitigating the same decision every time a new opportunity shows up. The people without a mission end up saying yes to everything, which is really just another way of saying no to what matters most.
*You’ve probably seen this by now, but if you are one of the few who haven’t, check out this TED talk Simon Sinek classic, Start With Why.
In real estate, this means your mission isn’t “sell houses.” Everyone sells houses. Your mission is the specific reason you get up and do it — who you serve, why it matters to you personally, and what you refuse to compromise on to get there. Agents with a clear mission close differently. They walk into listing presentations with conviction instead of a script, because they’re not selling themselves, they’re representing something they actually believe.
Herb Kelleher built Southwest Airlines around a mission so simple his people could use it as a daily filter: be the low-fare airline. It became famous in business schools as a case study in operational clarity — whenever a new idea came up internally, employees could ask a single question: does this help us stay the low-fare airline? If the answer was no, the idea died on the spot, no matter how good it sounded. That’s what a real mission does. It doesn’t just inspire you — it makes decisions for you.
The question: What’s your version of “be the low-fare airline”? If you had to boil your business down to one filter question you could run every decision through, what would it be?
If you can’t name it in one sentence right now, that’s not a failure. That’s your starting point.
2. VISION — Picture the future you’re building.
Vision is different from mission. Mission is why you exist. Vision is what you’re building toward — the specific future state you’re working to create. Without it, effort has no direction. You can work extremely hard and still end up nowhere in particular, because hard work without a picture of where it’s going just produces motion, not progress.
In real estate, this means thinking past this quarter’s closings. What does your business look like next year, or in five years? What does your life look like? Are you building something that outlasts you — a team, a reputation, a body of clients who refer you for decades — or are you just working the next transaction? Agents with real vision make different decisions today because they’re already living partly in the future they’re building.
In 1980, long before most people owned a computer, Bill Gates and Paul Allen were already stating their goal out loud: “a computer on every desk and in every home.” At the time, the total number of personal computers in existence was next to nil. It sounded absurd. But that one sentence gave every decision Microsoft made for the next two decades a direction to point toward.
The question: What are you building today that your future self will actually inherit — and would it still sound reasonable, or a little bit crazy, if you said it out loud?
3. PRINCIPLES — The daily non-negotiables that keep you honest.
Mission tells you why. Vision tells you where. Principles are how you actually get there — the specific, repeatable, non-negotiable actions you commit to regardless of how you feel that day. This is the part almost everyone skips, because principles are unglamorous. Nobody gets excited about a checklist. But a mission without daily principles behind it is just a nice sentence on a vision board.
In real estate, this is your version of Seinfeld’s calendar and red marker. It’s the specific number of prospecting calls, database touches, or follow-ups you do every day without exception — not when you feel like it, not when the market’s hot, every single day. The agents who build sustainable businesses aren’t the most talented in the room. They’re the ones who never broke the chain.
Jocko Willink, the retired Navy SEAL commander turned leadership coach, built his entire philosophy around one line: “Discipline equals freedom.” His point is that the freedom to hit your goals, run your business the way you want, and have the life you actually want isn’t the opposite of discipline — it’s the product of it. The people who feel the most in control of their day are usually the ones who protect the same few non-negotiables every single day without debating themselves about it.
The question: What’s the one thing you do every single day, no matter what, because it’s core to who you are and where you’re going — and do you actually have a way to track whether you did it?
What is your standard? Are you becoming the person you need to be to achieve your vision? Are you doing it in alignment with hard work, honesty, treating others with respect? These are all principle level questions.
THE POINT
As agents and leaders, we don’t drift into a business we’re proud of. We build it, one intentional decision at a time, filtered through a Mission we can name, a Vision we’re working toward, and Principles we actually keep.
Mission says know your why. Vision says know where you’re going. Principles say do the small thing today that proves you meant it. All three have to work together — a mission with no vision has no destination, a vision with no principles is unsustainable, and principles with no mission behind them are just busywork.
Simon Sinek put it simply: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.” Your daily actions are the proof. They’re the only evidence anyone, including you, ever actually sees of what you claim to believe.
PUTTING IT TOGETHER: FROM CLARITY TO CALENDAR
Here’s the honest truth — most people already have a rough sense of their Mission, Vision, and Principles floating around in their head. What they don’t have is the discipline of writing it down, and then translating it into something they actually do on a Tuesday.
So don’t just think about this. Brainstorm it. Set aside 30 minutes this week — alone, with your spouse, with your team, or with me — and get it out of your head and onto paper. Write a rough draft of your Mission in one sentence. Sketch your Vision as if you were describing it to someone five years from now. Write down the Principles you will uphold as you advance towards your goals. Then, list three to five actions you’re willing to commit to daily or weekly as appropriate. Don’t polish it. Just get a first draft down. You can refine it next week.
Once you have a draft, here’s how to actually keep it alive, week after week:
- Every Sunday, spend 10 minutes reviewing your Mission and asking one question: did last week’s calendar actually reflect it, or did I drift?
- Post your Vision somewhere you’ll see it daily — your CRM home screen, your bathroom mirror, the inside of your planner. A vision you don’t see, you don’t chase.
- Pick your calendar — literal or digital — and mark every day you hit your non-negotiables. No zero days. If you miss one, don’t spiral, just get the next X.
- Every Friday, run a quick “distraction audit.” List anything you said yes to that week that didn’t serve your Mission. Decide now what you’ll say no to next week.
- Find one person — a coach, a partner, an accountability group — and tell them your M.V.P. out loud. A True North nobody else knows about is easy to quietly abandon.
Pick your letter — M, V, or P. Sharpen it this month. Watch what happens.
Sources referenced: Southwest Airlines mission-as-filter culture, widely documented in the Stanford Graduate School of Business case study by Charles O’Reilly and Jeffrey Pfeffer; Bill Gates and Paul Allen, Microsoft founding vision, first stated publicly circa 1977–1980; Jocko Willink, Extreme Ownership, Ch. 12, “Discipline Equals Freedom — The Dichotomy of Leadership”; Simon Sinek, Start with Why.
Want to go deeper?
I work with real estate professionals and leaders who are ready to build businesses that don’t require them to start over every January. If you’re serious about implementing systems and habits that actually stick, let’s talk.
Email me at [email protected] or schedule time on my calendar.