How Do You Build a Business Plan for 2027 You Will Actually Follow?

Build your 2027 business plan backwards. Write where you want to be in ten years, then where you must be in five to stay on that path, then what the next twelve months have to deliver. The one year vision decides your daily activity. Then add leverage, meaning your numbers and blocked time, and accountability with a real cost.

Every year I stand in front of a room of agents and run a business planning session. The video above is part one of this year's session, recorded live. This post is the written version, cleaned up, so you can sit down with it and build your plan.

Here is the short version. Working harder is not the answer. You can stay busy every single day and never get one step closer to where you actually want to go. A plan is your source of truth, and the plan only works when it changes what you do every day.

Why do most 2027 business plans start in the wrong place?

Because they start with a number. Somebody picks a production goal for next year, writes it down, and hopes they somehow hit it. There is no destination behind the number, so there is nothing to work backwards from and nothing that tells you what to do on a Tuesday morning.

You hear a lot about knowing your why. I believe your why is really important. But if you know your why and you do not know where you are going, your why becomes useless. It is fuel with no map.

So the order matters:

• Vision gives you the destination.
• The plan gives you the path.
• Accountability makes sure you actually get there.

That is the difference between having goals and having a system that forces you to execute. If you want the one page format I use to write the plan itself, the GPS model is in my real estate business plan template. This post is about what goes above it and what keeps it alive.

Should you review your 2026 plan before writing a new one?

Yes. The first thing I asked the room was who had been there for last year's planning session, and who delivered on their plan. A few hands went up for delivered, and one agent said she surpassed it.

If that were me, I would want to sit down over lunch and go through it: what did you do, and what did you not do? That is what it all comes down to. Before you write a single new goal, look at the last plan honestly. Which activities did you actually do? Which ones did you write down and never touch? The gap between those two lists is your real starting point for 2027.

Are you interested in your plan, or committed to it?

There is an old saying: if you are interested in something, you find an excuse. If you are committed to something, you find a way.

I look at it even deeper than that. When you have bacon and eggs for breakfast, the chicken was interested. The pig was committed.

I am not asking you to commit to something so unreasonable that it hurts you or your family. I am asking you to commit to something you know you can do, and then be so committed to it that it becomes who you are. That is the identity part, and I go deeper into it in why real estate business plans fail.

Here is what committed looks like in practice. When I was building DirectLender, everything was on the bathroom mirror. My wife asked me to take it down. I said no. I was brushing my teeth staring at it every day, because that was who I was going to be. When we finish the plan, yours goes somewhere you see it every day: your daily activities and your goals, in plain sight.

What separates the agents beating you from the agents who are just busy?

I asked the room: are there agents in your market beating you? Are they all smarter, better looking? Some hands, some laughs. Then the real question: is it possible they work smarter?

I believe most people in that room work hard. But the people who work hard and are not successful are not working smart. I can find a way to stay busy every single day and still not do the activities I need to do.

I learned that early. When I sold real estate, my coach was Mike Ferry, and he was the hardest man you have ever met. I got on a call one day, I think I was 25, and told him he did not understand: I had five deals pending and had not had time to make my calls. He told me where I could go, hung up, and never spoke to me again. That was about 35 years ago.

What I learned that day is that busy is an excuse. Today I could have 25 deals going and it would not stop my workout or my calls. That is what happens when you keep raising the bar: your old ceiling stops being your ceiling. It becomes your floor. It feels hard at first, and then it feels easy.

What is the Accountability Loop?

My next book is called Systems Over Hustle, and in it I lay out something I call the Accountability Loop. I built it for my workouts, and I use it for my business. It has three parts.

Part	What it means	What it looks like in your plan
Plan	A very simple plan: exactly what I need to do to hit the goal	Your one year vision broken into daily activities
Leverage	Understanding the science behind what you are doing, and blocking the time to do it	Your conversion numbers, your habit timeline, time on the calendar
Accountability	Someone or something that makes skipping cost you	A coach, a partner, a penalty, a daily check-in

I dieted for 18 months with no accountability and lost 5 pounds. That is why I was bad at it. Then I put big accountability on it. I told five of my closest friends I would send each of them a video of me working out every day, twice a day, and every time I did not send one, I owed each of them $100. That is $1,000 a day on the line. I have lost 80 pounds so far.

The same thing happens in business. Put real accountability behind your plan and you will perform better and very likely deliver what you wrote down. The bigger picture of how I run a business on systems instead of willpower is in my pillar post on Systems Over Hustle.

How long does it take to build a habit you can plan around?

I ask this in every room and almost everybody gets it wrong. The answer people give is 21 days. The actual number is 66 days on average. You can build a habit in as little as 20, and some take as long as 180.

The 21 day number spread because everybody kept repeating it. I repeated it myself in an earlier book, and I was wrong. I have done the work on it since.

Why does it matter for your plan? Because if you start a new habit expecting it to stick in 21 days, what happens on day 22 when it has not? You decide you are different. It does not work for you. You cannot build habits. And you quit. Plan for 66 days and you will still be in the game when the habit finally takes. I cover the calendar side of this in time management for real estate agents.

Why does knowing your numbers keep you going?

When I was selling, I knew for a fact that every 20 calls I made would produce a closing. If you know how many conversations it takes to get a closing, it helps your mindset, it helps your calls, and it keeps you going when a day feels pointless.

The same is true for video. If you know exactly how many videos it takes to generate a closed deal, you keep shooting videos.

Here is a real one. I have a client who started with me this year and now has two channels that have each grown past 100,000 subscribers in nine months. We calculated his numbers this year: he is at $3,025 per video. That is what he earns for every video he shoots. He asked me, "Coach, if I shoot more videos, will that stay the same?" I said yes. He said, "Okay, I'm going to double up."

He is one of three clients who started with me this year and have each made more than $500,000 from YouTube in nine months, on top of their normal business, after making nothing on YouTube before. His own read on where he stands now: he is bigger than numbers two through ten in his market combined. If you want the system behind that, it is in YouTube for real estate agents.

What if your plan asks for more than you will actually do?

Then shrink the starting point, not the destination. In Tom Ferry coaching, the minimum prospecting standard for every client is the 5-5-4: five new prospects, five old prospects and four follow-ups. That is about three hours.

If you are not making calls today and I told you to do a 5-5-4 starting tomorrow, you would not do it. You would fail. But if I asked you for two or three conversations tomorrow, you would do that. Then you build.

Be honest with yourself on the way in. You cannot walk out of a planning session with a plan you already know you will not follow. You are just fooling yourself.

And believe the number you write. One of my clients in San Diego did $30 million in his first year with me. Every year I tell him the next number and every year he tells me I have lost my mind. The next year he did $100 million. Last year he did $200 million. If you go in thinking something is impossible, it is. Henry Ford had it right: whether you believe you can or you cannot, you are right either way.

Watch your self talk, even when you are kidding. I added an AI to my accountability. I upload pictures of my food every day, and I have taught it to talk trash to me. At six o'clock it tells me how many steps I am short and that I should get on the treadmill. You have that available to you now. Ask it for the best morning routine for your plan and have it check you every day.

How do you write a 10 year vision without locking yourself in?

Write it down. What does ten years really look like? Maybe you are closing $150 million a year with two buyer's agents. Maybe you own rental properties and still sell real estate because you do not want to be bored. Get specific, because this is where you are going now.

Will everybody reach their ten year vision? Probably not. Will yours be the same at the end of next year? Maybe not. That is fine.

People love to say "burn the boats," from The Art of War: land the army, burn the boats, and the only choice is to win. Most people take it to mean set a plan and follow it no matter what. That is a huge mistake. The point is that the goal is to prevail. If you hit a roadblock, you go to Plan B. If Plan B does not work, you go to Plan C.

I have spent a lot of time with Navy SEALs, and every plan they build has Plan B and Plan C memorized before they ever get in the water. It is not "this or we die." It is "this or we alter." Your ten year vision today is not permanent. Mine today is not even in the same ballpark as it was this time last year.

How do the 5 year and 1 year visions turn into daily actions?

Now you reverse engineer. The five year vision answers one question: where do I have to be in five years to be on track for ten? If the ten year goal is 100 units a year working 40 hours a week, maybe five years out you need to be at 50 units a year and growing.

Then the one year vision: to be there in five, where do I have to be in one? This is the most important part of the whole plan, because the one year vision you decide on is what determines what you do every day for the next twelve months.

1. Write the 10 year vision. Specific, personal, allowed to change.
2. Back out the 5 year vision. Where you must be to stay on the path.
3. Back out the 1 year vision. Where 2027 has to end for the 5 year to happen.
4. Turn it into daily activity. Conversations, videos, appointments, at a level you will actually do.
5. Add leverage and accountability. Your numbers, your blocked time, and someone who makes skipping cost you.

For me, it looks like this. My goal for next year is ten clients on stage, all earning more than $1 million a year, all in the best shape of their lives. I already have over a dozen clients earning more than $1 million a year, so the goal is not a fantasy. It is a plan.

When should you start working on your 2027 plan?

Today. We are a business that runs about 90 days out. Some of what you do today can still pay off this year, but mostly you are planting seeds for next year.

When was the best time to plant a tree? Ten years ago. The next best time is today. Take five minutes, write it down, get clear on the destination, build the plan, put accountability behind it, and go execute. 2027 does not start in January. It starts with what you do today.

In part two of this session, I go deeper into turning the plan into the systems, habits and accountability that keep you on track. If you want help holding yourself to it, the kind of accountability most people avoid is the place to start.

Coaching for agents runs through Tom Ferry International. Enroll there and ask for Aaron.