All diets work, even the gimmicky ones. You want to spend the next six weeks eathing nothing but cabbage soup?  You’ll lose weight.  Nothing but carbs?  You’ll lose weight.  No carbs, just protein?  You’ll lose weight.  Grapefruit, nothing but luscious grapefruit?  You’ll lose weight.  And of course, if you actually do something smart like simply control your portions, restrict calories, and exercise a little, you’ll lose weight.

The point is – they ALL work.  Why?  Because any plan is better than no plan.

The reason is that when you commit to any diet, you do three important things that you were NOT doing when you weren’t on the diet: (1) setting goals for yourself, (2) tracking what you eat, and (3) monitoring your results. That’s why all diets work, even the stupid ones — because they get you to commit to doing things that you weren’t doing before, behaviors that are generally associated with weight loss.  You’re always going to be better off when you’re tracking what you eat than if you’re just eating whatever you want.  Just the act of thinking about what you’re going to eat makes you more disciplined in your diet.  In other words, diets, even stupid ones, almost always work better than just “winging it”.

The same is true when you’re trying to make changes in your business.  For example, lots of agents have started lead generation campaigns, usually after they’ve attended some sort of coaching or training program, where they set up a “prospecting” schedule and commit to making a certain number of calls or contacts every day.

Like diets, all those programs work.  Any sort of plan to build your business is going to make an impact, regardless of whether it involves cold calling or FSBOs or online marketing or sphere development.  Why?  Because that lead generation campaign is a plan requiring you to (1) set goals, (2) track what you do, and (3) monitor your results. In other words, your campaign, like a diet, is a plan.  And any plan is better than no plan.

That said, lead generation campaigns, like diets, only work in the long-term if you internalize the methods and make them part of your habitual routine.  The “plan” you adopt has to be something you can stick with, that spurs permanent changes in your behavior, and ultimately becomes second-nature.  Then, it actually stops being a “plan” and just becomes as natural to you as brushing your teeth every morning when you wake up.

But all big changes in your life have to begin somewhere.  A plan, any kind of plan, is a good place to start.

This post is part of a series of what I call the “36-1/2 Rules for Client-Oriented Real Estate Agents,” a collection of short takes on the CORE concept that I’ve developed over the years of discussing and teaching the system.  We’ll count up to the 36th rule over the next few months, and then the 1/2 rule.  You can get the full list of rules by clicking on the “36-1/2 Rules for CORE Agents” category on the blog – scroll from the bottom if you want to read them in order.