November is here, and there’s a direct correlation between those who are doing high-level business planning right now and those who will see great sales numbers next year. But here’s the often-missed piece of the puzzle: true success hinges on getting clarity around your numbers.

If you’re in business, you simply cannot afford to be flying blind. While the market still has a ton of opportunity, the challenges are real. If you are bleeding resources and money out the back end while bringing in resources on the front end, you’re not moving yourself anywhere.

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The Undeniable Power of the P&L (Profit & Loss)

The foundation of clarity is the P&L statement. How can you possibly know the health of your business, or plan and budget for next year, if you aren’t tracking the numbers?

If you’ve never put a P&L together, or if you’re curious about how to use yours better, it’s time to find a workshop or a mentor (like Jason and Lauren mentioned here) and get involved in the discussion.

💰 Your Business Spending, Simplified:

1. GCI (Gross Commission Income): This represents your top-line revenue.
2. Everything Below GCI: This is a direct draw on your bottom line (your actual profit).

You must account for everything: what you pay yourself and others, splits with agents, transaction coordinators, marketing, technology, and all other overhead.

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📈 The MREA Playbook: A Quick Hack for Getting Started

One of the fastest ways to put together a meaningful P&L is by using a trusted industry resource like the MREA (Millionaire Real Estate Agent book).

If you go to page 157 (in the newest edition), you will find a breakdown of all the different expense categories and their typical percentages based on industry averages across the United States.

• It gives you benchmark budgets for marketing, rent, technology, phone, car, and more.
• Use these benchmarks to go back into your own accounts and see what you are actually spending.

🔥 A Real-World Example: If the industry standard is to spend 14% on labor, but you are spending 32%, you need to ask yourself tough questions:

• Are you happy with that number because it reflects paying a living wage? That’s fantastic!
• Or does it mean you have too much labor, or perhaps too little GCI?

You need to be real about these numbers—not just let them happen.

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✂️ The 5-10% Challenge: Find the Hidden Cash

I challenge every one of you to go into your gross expenditure budget and try to cut 5 to 10 percent.

If your annual budget is $50,000, find $\$2,500$ to $\$5,000$ in cuts. Where is this money hiding?

• Forgotten Subscriptions: That software you bought but never use.
• Commingling of Funds: That streaming service you threw on your business account.
• Excessive Spending: Take a close look at your meal budget. Is it truly serving your business, or is it a hidden personal cost?
• Unused Memberships: The gym membership on the work card that you haven’t used in months.

There are plenty of places to find this. Do not waste any money. These are not the years to have extra money to waste.

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🔎 How to Find Your Numbers: Go Line-by-Line

How do you even determine these numbers in the first place?

The practice is simple, but requires discipline:

Print your statements and audit them.

Go to your bank statements and your credit card statements—literally line by line by line. You can often export a CSV file and sort it to quickly spot recurring charges or excessive spending in certain categories. It’s less intimidating than you think and it reveals the truth about your cash flow.

• A Quick Hack: If you are carrying significant credit card debt (e.g., $5,000 or more), your 5-10% cut is likely right there in the interest you’re paying. Pay it off as fast as you can.

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🗃️ Next-Level Organization: Creating a Chart of Accounts

As you go through your accounts, you are creating the data for your Chart of Accounts. This is the categorization of every dollar spent in your business.

Tools like QuickBooks Online (which I highly recommend) allow you to:

1. Create your categories (e.g., Marketing, Office Supplies, Automobile). The MREA model can be a great starting point for this structure.
2. Set up rules so that repetitive charges (e.g., “ABC Photos” for listing photography) are automatically funneled into the correct category (e.g., Marketing Subcategory).

This system allows you to generate weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports, measuring your specific spending against your GCI.

Why do we do this? Because otherwise, we are just guessing.

The Big Picture: GCI vs. Profit

This entire financial picture—your GCI weighed against your Profit and Loss statement to show your Profit—is how you measure your business.

Many agents boast about a $200,000 GCI, but their profit is only $120,000. And worse, many are living as if they make the full $200,000. You need to run a P&L and get real about your math.

As Jason shared, an audit of his personal budget found over $600 a month in cuts—a non-lifestyle change that amounted to $7,200 a year. That’s the equivalent of a down payment on a first-time home!

🎯 Final Advice: Set Up 2026 for Success

If you haven’t read “Profit First,” that should be on your list. Make it your December goal to set up 2026 for success. It provides the steps to truly understand and roll your profit down to what you actually have available to spend.

Don’t wait. Secure your resources now, reinvest your time and money back into your business, and get on track to meet your biggest goals.