Latest / The Faithful Agent | Christian Realtors | Realtors of Faith | Top Real Estate Agent Strategies | Sell By Referral | Work Life Balance | Real Estate Systems | Realtor Coaching / 203 | Distraction vs. Traction: How Christian Real Estate Agents Break Free from Busyness and Build Real Business Momentum
Transcript
- 0:01What is up, faithful agents?
- 0:02Welcome to another episode of the Faithful Agent Podcast.
- 0:06Today's episode will be a little bit shorter as quite honestly, I've had a lot going on, but I wanted to get a thought out to you all today.
- 0:14But before I do super quick housekeeping, the conference is almost here, October 3rd and 4th in Greenville, South Carolina.
- 0:21Please go register.
- 0:23We would love for you to come.
- 0:24FaithfulAgent .com backslash conference.
- 0:26And because we are officially a nonprofit, this is a tax write off for you.
- 0:31So join us, I promise you will love being with your brothers and sisters in Christ who also are in real estate.
- 0:38Yes, there are other Christian real estate agents out there.
- 0:41You are listening and there are many more like you.
- 0:44So would love for you to join.
- 0:45Now, before I dive in, I'm actually going to talk about distraction versus traction.
- 0:50But before I dive in, I wanted to try something a little bit different.
- 0:53I had ChatGPT tell me a Christian knock knock joke.
- 0:56So we'll see how this goes.
- 1:00Knock knock.
- 1:01Who's there?
- 1:02Noah.
- 1:03Noah who?
- 1:10No a good place to eat?
- 1:11I'm starving after building that ark.
- 1:18so many theological reasons that's incorrect what door were they knocking on where were they gonna go eat but you know it's actually kind of funny it's been a while since there's actually been a chat GPT thing that made me laugh so I appreciate it good job chat GPT or as my seven -year -old says chat DBG she can't remember Letters okay, so let's talk today about distraction and traction.
- 1:51know what's interesting is I often ask people what's the number one reason you aren't where you want to be in your business and there's a lot of responses, right?
- 1:59Whether it's focus, whether it's intentionality or consistency, all of those things are true or clarity.
- 2:07All of those things are true, no doubt.
- 2:09But what I found to be the number one consistent answer and consistent reason.
- 2:16is distraction and then i often ask okay so if distraction is the number one problem writing we think when i say distraction what we think of the cover phone we think of social media we think of maybe someone who needs our timer attention these these these different pieces in our day that are pulling us away from where we need to be what we want to do where we want to go and when i ask what's the definition of distraction they say it's something that pulls us away again it it it interrupts our attention whatever it is and and that's true and so then the question is well what's the opposite of distraction and again often the answer is or the responses will focus or or consistency whatever it is well i'm here to tell you that the opposite of distraction So as you think about your business and really anywhere you are in life that you want to be, the question is what gives you traction and anything that doesn't give you traction towards your goal is a distraction.
- 3:21It is pulling you away from where you need to be or where you want to be.
- 3:26So as I've been talking about this today with my coaching group, with our faith and work call, as I've asked the question, Well, what then in your business brings you traction?
- 3:38It's really difficult to answer that question for most agents.
- 3:43So I'm going to ask you, faithful agent listener, what in your business brings you traction?
- 3:49Meaning what in your business is getting you closer to your goal?
- 3:52Whether that's selling 10 homes, 20 homes, 30 homes, doesn't matter what it is.
- 3:57What actually creates traction for you?
- 4:00What gets you closer to your goal?
- 4:02So for example, I was sharing this earlier today, Kip Metler, one of my good buddies who's out in South Carolina.
- 4:08What's up Kip?
- 4:09He said open houses, open houses bring traction because he can look back and see that there are a result of I've sold houses off of open houses because I've been able to get face to face and I'm really good in that scenario, right?
- 4:24I'm summarizing what he said, but because he's done open houses, it's resulted in.
- 4:29the business for him so that doing open houses is traction.
- 4:33And I said, that's great that you know that.
- 4:35Then I challenged him, go deeper than that.
- 4:38Right?
- 4:39A good business owner makes decisions off of data, not off of motions.
- 4:43And most of us, if we're honest, we make emotional decisions myself too.
- 4:48You all have heard me talk about the failed businesses that I started last year.
- 4:51Many of those were made on emotional decisions, not rational thought.
- 4:57And so we want to make decisions off of data, not off of emotion.
- 5:01And so I challenged him and said, okay, great.
- 5:03It's amazing that, you know, if I put in open houses to the recipe, the result of that will be closed transactions.
- 5:14My challenge was go deeper than that.
- 5:17Start tracking everything that you do, every nuance to your open houses and see if we can find what exactly it is.
- 5:25that is causing you to have success or not success when you do an open house.
- 5:31So for example, I said, great, you say open houses.
- 5:34Well, that's so broad.
- 5:36If I'm coaching you, I'm saying, okay, well, tell me what that means.
- 5:39Does that mean that you door knock whatever, a hundred homes before you do the open houses that you've got out 50 open house signs that you made homemade cookies to bring that it's Saturday from 10 to 12 or is it Saturday from one to three or is it Thursday night from six to eight?
- 5:54I don't know.
- 5:55But what is it, right?
- 5:57Open house is too broad.
- 5:58Tell me specifically what ingredients you're putting in so that we understand exactly how to gain traction in our business.
- 6:06So the way I always describe it is I'm trying to get us to create what I call a lead generation recipe, right?
- 6:14When when grandma has her special secret cake recipe, it's whatever three cups flour.
- 6:19I don't bake, so I have no idea.
- 6:21Three cups flour, you know, two cups sugar, butter.
- 6:24vanilla extract chocolate whatever it is right i have no concept of what it would be but whatever it is she has the ingredient list she puts the ingredients and she was it all together puts it in the oven she bakes it and then when it comes out she tasted right as she tasted and says made this is perfectly great she's gonna do it again there's a recipe but she probably says the first couple times well there's not this is not quite right i need to tweak it so she changes the recipe gives air ads in or takes out an ingredient or ingredients she bakes it again she tries it and she keeps doing that over and over until the exact right recipe and now she knows when these ingredients go into the cake it comes out and it's delicious what we need to do in our business to understand how to gain traction in our business we need to know what is the recipe so let's go back to kip if kip says Well, for every two open houses I do, I get one closed client.
- 7:22Amazing.
- 7:23That would be an amazing recipe.
- 7:25And that's a good start.
- 7:27Now he knows if I want to close 10 deals this year off of open houses, I have to do 20 open houses, right?
- 7:33Every two creates one deal.
- 7:3420 open houses creates 10 closed clients.
- 7:37That's an excellent start.
- 7:39But what if he went deeper than that, like a business owner would and said, well, every two open houses I do.
- 7:49where I door knock 100 homes beforehand, put out 50 signs and I host them Thursday, 6 to 8 PM with wine and cheese results in one and a half closed deals, right?
- 8:01Whatever it was, whatever specific it is, he's tracking it, he's figuring it out, he's trying it out, he's creating a recipe.
- 8:07Now he knows, okay, great, if I do 20 open houses, I'm actually gonna close 15 deals.
- 8:13So if I wanna close 30 deals, I gotta...
- 8:15do 40 open houses.
- 8:16Right now he's understood the recipe, he understands what the outcome is and more importantly, he understands what is traction and what is distraction.
- 8:26So what does that mean?
- 8:27Traction then in that scenario would be every time he does an open house on Thursday, that's traction.
- 8:34If there is an open house opportunity on Saturday, that is distraction.
- 8:39Right?
- 8:39It's pulling him away from what he knows gets him towards his goal, which is Thursday night open houses.
- 8:46And so that's how we start to make decisions as business owners.
- 8:49And more than that, what matters is it is too common that we sit there and wish we had more hours in the day, that we sit there and constantly feel bad that we're not working more hours because we're spending time with our kids and maybe you're a stay -at -home mom and you've got a homeschool the kids in your like man if i just had more hours i could do better in this business what that's the wrong question we've got to stop thinking that way we've got to start thinking okay i have whatever i gotta take care of the kids i got to do x y and z and now i have twenty hours a week left over for my business and now you say i want to sell twenty homes this year whatever is a set was up in homes this year I've got 10 homes to sell this year in 20 hours a week.
- 9:31Now you have the right equation.
- 9:33How do I sell 10 homes in 20 hours a week?
- 9:36Now you've got the right problem that you have to solve.
- 9:39Once you have that problem, then you say, what actually creates traction in my business?
- 9:45That's where you need to get really granular.
- 9:48Now, you know, specifically when I get face to face with five people a week, it results in 10 closed sales, whatever that is.
- 9:57Now you know exactly what you have to do.
- 10:01Exactly what you have to do.
- 10:03Can you sell 50 homes in under 40 hours a week?
- 10:06Sure.
- 10:07I've been doing that for eight years.
- 10:09Why?
- 10:10It's not because I'm more efficient.
- 10:12It's not because I'm better than you are.
- 10:14It's not because I'm more skilled than you are.
- 10:16It's literally because I did the work for three years to make sure my lead generation system was so fine tuned.
- 10:24that I knew exactly what to press on to create traction for my business.
- 10:28That means I'm not wasting time pressing on the levers of other things that don't create real traction.
- 10:35know exactly what I should be doing and I can accomplish that in a short amount of time relatively so that I still generate a lot of transactions.
- 10:44I hope that makes sense.
- 10:45You've got to understand and this applies to every area of life, but you've got to understand what is it that actually creates traction for me?
- 10:52and everything else is a distraction, I won't do it.
- 10:55What is it that creates traction for you in your business?
- 10:58You take that equation, you take that lead generation recipe, you take that equation and you go into your personal math problem that you must solve.
- 11:07I need to sell 20 homes this year and I've got 30 hours a week to do it.
- 11:11Great, how do I go do that?
- 11:14Take the lead generation recipe, put it in that equation and start to work on things.
- 11:21only things that create traction in your business.
- 11:25That's how you succeed.
- 11:27That's what traction is.
- 11:28Everything else is a diss traction and we don't want to operate there.
- 11:33You can do this.
- 11:34Focus on traction.
- 11:36Focus on gaining traction.
- 11:38And if you need help, reach out to a friend.
- 11:40They can help you.
- 11:42They can hold you accountable.
- 11:43I love you, faithful agents.
- 11:44I hope that this episode helps give you some clarity on diss traction versus traction.