Distraction and Traction

Summary

In this episode of the Faithful Agent Podcast, Garrett discusses the critical difference between distraction and traction in the context of real estate business success. He emphasizes the importance of identifying what truly brings traction to one's business and how to create a lead generation recipe that focuses on data-driven decisions rather than emotional ones. The conversation encourages listeners to reflect on their own practices and to seek clarity in their business strategies.

Takeaways

Distraction is often the main barrier to success.
Identifying what gives you traction is crucial.
Decisions should be based on data, not emotions.
Creating a lead generation recipe can streamline success.
Open houses can be a significant source of traction.
Understanding the specifics of your actions is key.
Focus on what truly drives your business forward.
Time management is essential for achieving goals.
You can achieve more by focusing on traction.
Accountability can help maintain focus on goals.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Conference Announcement
01:45 Understanding Distraction vs. Traction
04:57 Identifying What Brings Traction
09:57 Creating a Lead Generation Recipe

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Transcript

0:01

What is up, faithful agents? Welcome to another episode of the Faithful Agent Podcast. Today'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. But before I do super quick housekeeping, the conference is almost here, October 3rd and 4th in Greenville, South Carolina. Please go register. We would love for you to come. FaithfulAgent .com backslash conference. And because we are officially a nonprofit, this is a tax write off for you. So join us, I promise you will love being with your brothers and sisters in Christ who also are in real estate. Yes, there are other Christian real estate agents out there. You are listening and there are many more like you. So would love for you to join. Now, before I dive in, I'm actually going to talk about distraction versus traction. But before I dive in, I wanted to try something a little bit different. I had ChatGPT tell me a Christian knock knock joke. So we'll see how this goes. Knock knock. Who's there? Noah. Noah who? No a good place to eat? I'm starving after building that ark. so 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. know 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? Whether it's focus, whether it's intentionality or consistency, all of those things are true or clarity. All of those things are true, no doubt. But what I found to be the number one consistent answer and consistent reason. is 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. It is pulling you away from where you need to be or where you want to be. So 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? It's really difficult to answer that question for most agents. So I'm going to ask you, faithful agent listener, what in your business brings you traction? Meaning what in your business is getting you closer to your goal? Whether that's selling 10 homes, 20 homes, 30 homes, doesn't matter what it is. What actually creates traction for you? What gets you closer to your goal? So for example, I was sharing this earlier today, Kip Metler, one of my good buddies who's out in South Carolina. What's up Kip? He 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? I'm summarizing what he said, but because he's done open houses, it's resulted in. the business for him so that doing open houses is traction. And I said, that's great that you know that. Then I challenged him, go deeper than that. Right? A good business owner makes decisions off of data, not off of motions. And most of us, if we're honest, we make emotional decisions myself too. You all have heard me talk about the failed businesses that I started last year. Many of those were made on emotional decisions, not rational thought. And so we want to make decisions off of data, not off of emotion. And so I challenged him and said, okay, great. It's amazing that, you know, if I put in open houses to the recipe, the result of that will be closed transactions. My challenge was go deeper than that. Start tracking everything that you do, every nuance to your open houses and see if we can find what exactly it is. that is causing you to have success or not success when you do an open house. So for example, I said, great, you say open houses. Well, that's so broad. If I'm coaching you, I'm saying, okay, well, tell me what that means. Does 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? I don't know. But what is it, right? Open house is too broad. Tell me specifically what ingredients you're putting in so that we understand exactly how to gain traction in our business. So the way I always describe it is I'm trying to get us to create what I call a lead generation recipe, right? When when grandma has her special secret cake recipe, it's whatever three cups flour. I don't bake, so I have no idea. Three cups flour, you know, two cups sugar, butter. vanilla 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. Amazing. That would be an amazing recipe. And that's a good start. Now he knows if I want to close 10 deals this year off of open houses, I have to do 20 open houses, right? Every two creates one deal. 20 open houses creates 10 closed clients. That's an excellent start. But what if he went deeper than that, like a business owner would and said, well, every two open houses I do. where 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? Whatever 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. Now he knows, okay, great, if I do 20 open houses, I'm actually gonna close 15 deals. So if I wanna close 30 deals, I gotta... do 40 open houses. Right now he's understood the recipe, he understands what the outcome is and more importantly, he understands what is traction and what is distraction. So what does that mean? Traction then in that scenario would be every time he does an open house on Thursday, that's traction. If there is an open house opportunity on Saturday, that is distraction. Right? It's pulling him away from what he knows gets him towards his goal, which is Thursday night open houses. And so that's how we start to make decisions as business owners. And 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. Now you have the right equation. How do I sell 10 homes in 20 hours a week? Now you've got the right problem that you have to solve. Once you have that problem, then you say, what actually creates traction in my business? That's where you need to get really granular. Now, you know, specifically when I get face to face with five people a week, it results in 10 closed sales, whatever that is. Now you know exactly what you have to do. Exactly what you have to do. Can you sell 50 homes in under 40 hours a week? Sure. I've been doing that for eight years. Why? It's not because I'm more efficient. It's not because I'm better than you are. It's not because I'm more skilled than you are. It's literally because I did the work for three years to make sure my lead generation system was so fine tuned. that I knew exactly what to press on to create traction for my business. That means I'm not wasting time pressing on the levers of other things that don't create real traction. know 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. I hope that makes sense. You'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? and everything else is a distraction, I won't do it. What is it that creates traction for you in your business? You 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. I need to sell 20 homes this year and I've got 30 hours a week to do it. Great, how do I go do that? Take the lead generation recipe, put it in that equation and start to work on things. only things that create traction in your business. That's how you succeed. That's what traction is. Everything else is a diss traction and we don't want to operate there. You can do this. Focus on traction. Focus on gaining traction. And if you need help, reach out to a friend. They can help you. They can hold you accountable. I love you, faithful agents. I hope that this episode helps give you some clarity on diss traction versus traction.