Stop Making Resolutions And Ditch Your Goals. Do This Instead.

We challenge the cult of New Year’s resolutions and show why commitments beat goals when growth, freedom, and consistency matter. Clear standards, daily actions, and simple systems turn property management targets into predictable results.

• difference between resolutions, goals and commitments
• why resolutions fail under pressure
• goals as direction without execution
• commitments as non‑negotiable standards
• examples for adding doors and freeing time
• small daily actions that compound
• planning for obstacles and recovery
• reflection prompts for 30, 90 and 365 days

Shoot me an email at tony at onyxformula.com
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Transcript

Welcome And Purpose

Tony 0:00

Welcome to the Property Management Success podcast, where we interview leaders in the industry to uncover the secrets of profitability, efficiency, and achieving true freedom, whether it's your time, money, or lifestyle. I'm your host, Tony Klein, and I'm here to help you build a wildly successful property management business. Let's get to it. I hope you don't set New Year's resolutions this year. Now, that doesn't mean I don't hope for a better outcome for next year than what you had this year, but I want to give you some distinctions. There's something that's been really important for me in my development. I wanted to share it with you because I think it's been really impactful. There's a difference between a resolution, a goal, and a commitment. So a resolution is a decision that's made in the moment. It's emotional, it's reactive. There's really no basis to it other than it feels good to say in the moment. So a resolution sounds like this year, I'm finally going to blank. There's no structure behind it, there's no cost attached to it. So there's nothing that we have to give up in order to get that. It just feels good to say in the moment. There's no system that forces any sort of follow-through with it. And so resolutions feel good to say. They're easy to abandon when pressure shows up, when it makes it hard to get to the gym or uh stick to a diet or record in a journal or something like that, whatever our commitment is, or whatever our resolution is, we say, I don't know, it's it's a little harder than what I thought. I was excited in the moment. I wanted to see this life change, but I don't know, it's getting hard. So push back, right? There's no, there's no thing that keeps you committed to it. So a resolution is one of those things that a lot of people do at the beginning of the year. They say, okay, looking forward, how do I want my life to change? But they don't really figure out what it would take to actually make those changes. And so typically only a small minority follow through for the full year. And there's been some studies out there that suggest that only about 9% of people feel that they successfully kept their New Year's resolutions by the end of the year. And so most resolutions are forgotten by February. And there's actually a day called Quitter's Day, and it's the unofficial name given to a day in mid-January, and it's typically the second Friday. So in 2026, that will be January 9th. And that's when many people stop following through on their resolutions. So again, I hope that you don't set any resolutions. So people say, okay, well, if we're not going to set a resolution, then maybe we'll have a goal. And a goal is better than a resolution because a goal is an outcome that you want to achieve. It's more thoughtful than a resolution. A goal has a target, maybe a number, maybe a timeline associated with it. But a goal for property management might be I want to grow to 500 doors, or I want to grow and add 10 doors a month this year, or I want to hire an operations manager, or I want to get out of the day-to-day management. I want to get out of the weeds so I could actually run my company instead of having the company run me by the things that it says that I have to do each day. So goals give us some direction, but they don't really guarantee any sort of execution that goes along with that. So without any structure, goals sort of sit on maybe a whiteboard or a sticky note on your monitor, and we say, okay, well, we want to we want to add 10 doors a month, but we don't actually go about doing anything to break old patterns. And so when something shows up again, like with the resolution, it gets hard. Now we've set a little bit more of uh framework that this is what we want to do. Maybe we'll put some things into place that says this is what I'm willing to give up to make that happen. This is the cost I'm willing to pay for it, but it's it's not quite the same. So let's say that I I want to have a goal to add those 10 doors a month. So it means I'm gonna be a 120 doors bigger than I am this year. Obviously, there's churn that is involved on the back end, but we're we're gonna we're going to grow by a gross number of 10 doors a month, so 120 doors. And if we get to 100 doors, we say, well, we had a goal out here, but it was pretty good. We we almost made it to our goal, we should feel good about that. And a lot of people will set goals, and a lot of people fail to hit those goals because I I I really believe that when most people will set a goal, it's it's something that's nice to have, it's something I'm willing to put effort into, but it's not something that I will give up everything to hit this. I am willing to commit, I'm willing to change who I am, I'm willing to change what I do, I'm willing to to set aside and give up things to make this happen. And that's where a commitment comes in. So for me, the difference between a goal and a commitment is a goal is I'm shooting for that. I'm gonna try to achieve that, I'm gonna do my best to hit that. But if it doesn't work out, hey, we we tried. A commitment is something that you know when you make it, you can feel in your gut, you can feel that when I make this commitment, I will do everything possible in my power to pull this off. I will die before I don't achieve this. Now it's a little extreme, but having that level of dedication and commitment and desire to achieve that outcome, you're gonna see much better results. So a lot of times when I'm working with my clients and they work on their 90-day goal or their one-year goal, we really break that down and we try to break the habit of having goals in the business and making commitments. Commitments are things that we have a standard that we refuse to violate. We will absolutely hit this and not just a goal on a spreadsheet or on a scorecard, but a commitment is this is what we accept, and we do not accept anything less. Some people will call, they'll have a goal and then a stretch goal. So a goal is what they're aiming for. A stretch goal is if things really worked out, they would hit that. That's not what I'm talking about here. A commitment is I will do this. So in in my running and my training for my long distance runs, if I have a training plan that my coach has put together, there are things on that training plan that I have made a commitment to to be able to accomplish those things. So I know here's the desired outcome, and here is what I'm committed to do to make that happen. So when you're looking at 2026 and you're trying to decide what am I willing to do to change, what am I willing to give up or to start doing to have that future that I want in 2026, it's better to look at what am I willing to commit to do. And if you say, okay, well, I I could do two things. I could commit to walking for 60 minutes a day, or I could commit to walking for 30 minutes a day, or I have a goal of 60 minutes a day, but I will commit to 30. So some people will say, well, I had a goal to walk 60 minutes every day, but I didn't get it done. Or I'll make 10 cold calls a day as my goal, but I only made eight. No. When we work together, when we talk about what we're trying to achieve, and the same thing with me and my coaches, it's a commitment. What are you committed to doing? No excuses, no matter what. So if you can only commit to walking five minutes a day or making two cold calls a day, I'd rather have you make that commitment and stick to it than have a big goal where we're trying to accomplish something big, but then fall short of that because you can count on commitments where goals are just sort of out there that we're working hard towards, but at the end of the day, we're willing to accept something less than that. So I wanted to just kind of go through that with you and share what I think the differences are between a New Year's resolution or any resolution, a goal and a commitment. So I want to have as we wrap up, I want to have you ask yourself, what am I willing to commit to in 2026 to have a better year, to have a better life in 12 months or 90 days or even 30 days? What am I willing to reorganize in my life, in my business? What am I willing to set aside time for to become better at, to be able to accomplish something more? And what am I willing to make that commitment to? Not a resolution, not a goal, but a commitment. Commitments are not just motivational or inspirational, they're operational. It's a part of the system. And with a formula where you have committed to certain outcomes and certain actions to receive those outcomes, your success is already predetermined. So I'd love to hear what you have to say, what you're working towards. Shoot me an email at tony at onyxformula.com. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for tuning in to the Property Management Success Podcast. We'll be back with another value packed episode to help you level up your property management game. If you've got something valuable out of today's episode, please share it with a friend or colleague. And don't forget to subscribe and leave a review so you never miss out on future insights and strategies and tactics. Until next time, it's your success.