Blog / Time Management
Dan Neylan, Making Your Business Vision a Reality
Operating an agency every day can easily become an automatic instinct, however there are times when it is good to stretch to achieve the vision you have for your business.
Dan Neylan from Noosa real estate agency Dowling & Neylan took the time to really think about what it was he wanted to achieve in business and how he was going to motivate himself and his staff to make those goals happen. The result was Dowling & Neylan’s business plan vision document, something that is now used as an essential tool in the agency and an example for other real estate principals.
Mr Neylan said the document resulted from conversations with Real Estate Academy (REA) CEO Lee Woodward about how the business could be taken forward. “While I had some idea and structure on what I wanted to happen, I really didn’t have anything in writing. I didn’t have a plan set out ready to go. I had a lot of ideas but they weren’t really put together,” Mr Neylan explained, and he set about creating that plan.
A document that took more than 80 hours for him to prepare, this business plan followed an REA template. It gave Mr Neylan the structure he needed to categorise his ideas and change the sections around to suit his business, but also gave him inspiration from what had worked for others in alternate industries.
“This is something you can’t expect to do during work hours; you’ll never get it done. You’ve got to commit to doing it late into the night. I rehashed it about three times over that process,” Mr Neylan explained, adding it could be beneficial for some to completely remove themselves from their business for a few days to work on such a document and then keep going back to it over a number of days and nights before completion.
Defining the Offering
A lot of the time spent putting the plan together was in understanding where Dowling & Neylan fitted in the Noosa marketplace, Mr Neylan said. “I think the hardest part was really understanding what our market was about and putting that in writing. And equally, what do we offer the marketplace and who really are we? So that’s a great part of the process.”
The method involved in writing the plan actually showed Mr Neylan where the agency shone as a market leader - and where it fell short on expectations.
“I think we found it a little bit of an eye-opener because in some areas we weren’t exactly who we thought we were, and that’s been addressed in this business plan. But in the main we have a pretty good idea of our identity, so what’s come out of this business plan does directly reflect how we do business, how we want to be seen in the community and how we conduct ourselves,” he said.
Staff Buy in
All Dowling & Neylan staff have been given a copy of the business plan to allow them to see the company’s vision, but also make them part of that vision. It helps all staff members see exactly where the agency is headed and where they fit into that picture, but equally shows them how they are expected to perform and conduct themselves as part of the business. “I like to think that through a business plan like this we can excite people and infect them with passion,” Mr Neylan said, noting each copy of the plan was numbered and coded so it could be returned if someone left the business because it contained Dowling & Neylan’s intellectual property.
The business is also used as a recruitment tool, testing potential staff members’ enthusiasm. “You can really get a feel for how genuine they are about being part of the organisation by finding out how well they’ve read that document.”
Open-Book Office
A business plan such as the one Mr Neylan has prepared doesn’t just look at where the business wants to be in five years, but also its history and the numbers that build the foundation for the vision. Sharing this information with staff members gives them an insight deep into the operations.
“I think if you’re going to be in an environment where you’re going to be asking people to have faith in your vision and your beliefs, it’s great for them to know a little bit about you, where you’ve come from and what you’ve achieved in the past. It goes a long way to explain why the business looks like it does today.”
And on being completely honest and laying bare the numbers behind the business vision, Mr Neylan said many staff were part of incentive programs so they received a percentage of the revenue. Knowing the profits showed them what the business, and in turn they, could achieve.
“One of the statements in this document says that we want to be an industry-leading company and we want to run the company in the industry-leading manner; that’s a big ask. I know it’s a big ask and I thought long and hard about it before I ever put it in there,” Mr Neylan explained.
His plan outlined a number of objectives that must be achieved for Dowling & Neylan to recognise its five-year vision and now staff, right from the management level through the agency to the most junior PA, understand the thinking behind those tasks, they can work towards them knowing exactly what their achievements mean to the business.
This business plan and vision will be shared across the REA membership as an example of how to plan ahead, setting a goal that will drive business towards the future.
← Go back
