291 | How to Sell More Homes by Referral (Part 1)

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75% of real estate transactions come through relationships. Yet most agents spend 80% of their time chasing strangers. Something doesn't add up. In part one of this two-part series, Garrett makes the case for why your database — not Zillow, not cold calls, not the next shiny system — is where your business is hiding, and what it actually takes to unlock it.

Using the story of his very first client, Nick Vogel, Garrett reveals that intentional relationship-building isn't just good for business — it's good for people. He challenges agents to rethink how they spend their time, why familiarity beats competency in the consumer's mind, and how to build and qualify a database that actually generates predictable referrals.

This episode isn't about tactics yet — that's next week. This one is about the conviction you need before the system can work. Because if you don't believe relationships are your business, no amount of strategy will stick.

Key Takeaways

• Referrals don't happen automatically — systems make them predictable. Being a good agent and a good person matters, but it's not enough. Most agents are missing referrals not because they're unlikeable, but because they have no intentional process. Start by writing down every person you've ever sold a home to and everyone in your personal world. That list is your starting point.
• Ask the one question that qualifies your entire database. Before you invest time, energy, and money staying in front of people, you need to know who's actually in your corner. Ask everyone in your sphere: "If you had a friend or family member thinking of making a move, do you have an agent you'd refer them to?" The answer tells you exactly who belongs in your database and who doesn't. Yes, some people will say their sister is an agent. That's okay — better to know now than to spend years nurturing someone who was never going to refer you.
• Get all three contact points for everyone who says yes. Phone number, email, and home address. You need all three. Each one unlocks a different way to stay connected — texts and calls, email campaigns, and handwritten notes or pop-bys. If you only have one, you're limited before you even start.
• People don't hire competency — they hire familiarity. Consumers don't know what makes a great agent. Studies show the average person understands most industries at a two-out-of-ten level. They're not evaluating your negotiation skills or your market knowledge — they're asking themselves two questions: Do I trust this person? Do I feel like they care about me? Familiarity is built through repeated, authentic interaction. That's it.
• 80% of your business comes from relationships. Give it 80% of your time. Most agents Garrett coaches generate the vast majority of their deals through relationships — but spend only 10–20% of their time intentionally building them. That's the core imbalance. Before you spend another dollar on leads or another hour on cold outreach, ask yourself: what would happen if I just went deeper with the people already doing business with me?
• Stop communicating like a brand. Start communicating like a person. Templated emails, polished-but-generic social posts, and robotic client check-ins don't generate referrals — connection does. People refer agents they feel close to, not agents who look professional online. Drop the corporate tone. Remember details. Follow up on things people told you months ago. Show them you were actually listening.
• The best touches have almost nothing to do with real estate. You don't need to constantly remind people you're an agent — they already know. What you need to do is remind them that you care. Show up with a book you thought they'd like. Remember their kid's birthday. Check in after a hard season. The real estate referral follows naturally when people feel genuinely connected to you.
• Inconsistency is what kills referral businesses. The math is simple: consistency equals consistency, inconsistency equals inconsistency. Most agents try a system for three months, don't see immediate results, and pivot to something new. Relationships don't work that way. Pick a system, commit to it, and trust that showing up over and over is what makes it work. Boring? Yes. Effective? Absolutely.
• Humans are wired to refer — they just need to be reminded. When was the last time you told a friend about a restaurant or a Netflix show? You did it because it came up naturally. That's exactly what happens when you stay consistently present in your database. You become the name that surfaces when someone in their world starts talking about buying or selling. Your job isn't to push — it's to stay close enough that they think of you first.

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Transcript

Friends. Don't let friends work with an agent who's not going to care about them. Your job is to let them know, hey, I've got a boat, and if you ever need it and you want to swim somewhere, you can swim to my boat. I'd love to help you with real estate, but if you don't tell them, you are actually doing them a disservice because they're going to use someone, they would use you if they knew about you. One of the biggest misconceptions in real estate is that referrals just happen, that if you're a nice person, if you work hard, if you do a good job, then referrals will naturally show up and listen. Being a good person matters. Doing great work matters. Serving people well absolutely matters. But here's the truth most agents are dramatically missing out on the number of referrals they could receive. Not because they're not likeable, not because they're not good agents, but because they don't have a system. And in this two part series, I want to walk you through the exact framework that has helped me build a business that has sold 50 homes a year the last ten years in a row, exclusively by referral, not by buying leads, not by cold calling all day, not by chasing strangers, but by intentionally staying connected to people. And over these next two episodes, I'm going to break down exactly how it works. Let's dive in. Well, this wouldn't be a faithful agent podcast without a Christian dad joke. Mrs. smart was fumbling in her purse for her offering when a large TV remote fell out and clattered into the aisle. The curious usher bent over to retrieve it for her and whispered, do you always carry your TV remote to church? No, she replied, but my husband refused to come with me this morning, and I figured this was the most evil thing I could do to him legally. My very first client in real estate was a man named Nick Vogel, a six foot four marine, and I'm five, six and three quarters and not a marine. We were very different people. Every morning, Nick would send me a list of 20 to 40 homes that he wanted me to research. He was thorough, he was exacting, and since I was new, I was eager to impress. For five and a half months, I hustled, I chased leads, I sent information, and I wondered if I'd ever close a deal. Well, when we finally found Nick, an investment property, the commission total was a whopping $4,500, which, after splits, left me with $2,000. But more importantly, I discovered something. Over those five months, Nick and I had become friends, and I started to wonder, could intentionally investing in relationships, not just transactions, be the foundation of my business? So over the next decade, Nick sent me more business than anyone else in my entire sphere. He personally transacted four times with me in those ten years, and throughout that decade, I systematically checked in, invited him and his family to events, brought gifts, genuinely cared for him on purpose as part of my system. But there was always that voice in my head. Shouldn't I be cold calling? Doing open houses. Is relationship building really enough? Or am I just fooling myself? Because if I'm honest with you all, I wasn't sure if being myself caring deeply would really work in a business sense. And the truth is, everyone around me told me it wasn't going to work. Well, then in 2018, as part of my system in routine, I picked up a book that I thought Nick would love. I grabbed my vanilla chai latte at Starbucks because what good agent doesn't run on coffee? And I drove out to this beautiful waterfront home in Virginia that Nick had. I remember walking out of the door, the sun washing over me, feeling grateful for this moment and the opportunity of who I get to help. Well, Nick's not home, but his wife. Sue answered the door after I rang the doorbell. We chatted and I handed her the book. She smiled and she said, Garrett, he will really like this. Actually, it's his birthday this weekend and his friends are coming down from Delaware. Then she paused and said something that I will never forget. Because Garrett, you probably don't know, but you're like his only real friend in Virginia. I was humbled and amazed. I had no idea. And being intentional with my business, I'd built a real friendship. The mission, the system, was the relationship that was the intent. But the byproduct of that relationship was plenty of business. Yes, that that's true. But again, far more importantly, a deep rooted connection that mattered. 

And that's why working by relationship matters in our business. And it's possible. Most people, when they hear a 36 touch system, they think, oh, it's just another one of those, right? It's just another marketing system. It's just more stuff for me to do. It's just another guy talking about the same thing. But but this is different, right? Because here's what I know to be true. Most agents aren't generating the deals that they should be with the relationships that they have. We've been taught that we must do all of these other things in our business, and so maybe we're giving 20% of our time and energy to the relationships that we already have. Maybe we're giving 10% to the relationships that we already have, but if we're honest, we're generating 80%, 90% of the business through those relationships. So if we just stop and look at it as a whole, why is 80% of our business getting 10 to 20% of our time and energy? That doesn't make sense, right? You are generating deals because you are in relationship and those people want you to win. Right? Referrals happen when people remember you and trust you and emotionally connect with you. And then they remember that you're a real estate agent. But most agents fail when it comes to consistently being in relationship and letting people know what it is that you do. They either disappear after closing. Maybe the agent only reaches out to ask, do you are you ready to buy a home or or communicate in a way that feels corporate and transactional? So I want to fix that. I want to I want to fix this today. And we're going to talk today about an overview, a mindset of perspective. And then the next episode I'm going to tell you straight up, this is exactly what I do and exactly what I would tell you to do to generate more deals through your relationships. Because we have to remember places like Zillow, they don't sell you a business. They sell you hope that you can put money in, and if you put money in, they'll give you a business back. Well, that's not how it works. They sold millions and millions and millions of leads in 2025, but only 4 million deals happened. Millions and millions and millions of leads, and only 4 million deals actually happened. Zillow is selling, you hope, even according to the National Association of Realtors, 75% of transactions came through relationships. So we have to understand this is where the gold is. It's not in the new system. It's not even in AI. It's not in all the other things. It's in the personal relationship. This is where most agents struggle because they tend to communicate like a brand, not like a person. Their emails feel templated. Their social media feels polished but disconnected, like you just bought it off of some system that told you what it should look like, which is absolutely what happened. The client communication feels robotic, but referrals don't come from polish. They come from connection, right? People refer people that they feel connected to. So the question then becomes, how do I become more personal at scale? Okay. Now, now let me clarify something. Being personal doesn't mean sharing your deepest, deepest secrets, right? It just means being human. Uh, remembering details, uh, following up, intentionally, showing genuine care, allowing people to know you remember the mission is for you to go be in relationship and care for people. Well, every important relationship in your life has been turned into a system because you want to make sure it happens over and over and over again. We need a systematic way to care for the people in our business. You know, one of the the biggest mindset shifts I had years ago was realizing that people don't hire competency. They hire familiarity. Here's what I mean. The average consumer doesn't understand what makes a good agent. They don't. They? You know, there's so many studies that will prove that the average agent or the average consumer understands a business out of two out of ten level, right? I've said this many times, but when I if someone asked me, do I have a good dentist in town? Yeah, I love doctor answer. But if they said is Doctor Archer the best dentist in town, my honest answer would be I have no idea. I don't know what it takes to be a great dentist, right? I don't understand that industry and more than a two out of ten level. And so we are being taught to compete as if we need to be the number one agent and convince people we are the number one agent. But that's not how they think. They have no concept. Instead, what everything will prove is that here's how consumers actually make decisions. They make decisions as quickly and easily 

as possible, right? The brain doesn't like to make complex decisions they make decisions off of. Do I feel like this person is trustworthy and do I feel like they care about me? That's that's what the decisions are made of. That's why there's people in your market still getting deals, and they take pictures with their cell phone. And if that's you listening, go hire a photographer. But why are they still hiring them? Because they don't know what makes a great agent. They just feel like they can trust that person. That that person cares. People don't hire competency. They hire familiarity. And familiarity is built through repeated, authentic interaction. That's why this 36 touch system that we're going to talk about next time, that's why this matters. Because the goal is not just frequency. The goal is relational consistency. Hey friends, we're pressing pause on today's episode for a second, because if you're a real estate agent feeling buried by pressure chaos, feeling like you're always on and constantly chasing the next deal, this is for you. So many of us agents are doing everything we're told to do. Cold outreach in this training's non-stop hustle. But we still feel stuck wondering, okay, now what's next? We're changing that through this three month group cohort designed to help agents build a business fueled exclusively by referrals. No fluff, no vague motivation, just the exact step by step systems, strategies and support to help you grow sustainably and finally do business differently. This is the exact step by step system strategies and support that took Lindsay's business in Wyoming from 15 to 43 sales in just one year. So if you're ready to stop operating from pressure and start building a business that honors God with clarity and confidence, check out the show notes of this episode to book a discovery call with the team and me. So the truth is, we've heard all of these things before. What does that look like? Right. Handwritten notes, video tags, client events, pop bys, check ins, birthdays, all the things. Right. We've heard all of these things. And I'm going to make it simple for you in the next episode. But. But here's the key. The best touches usually have very little to do with real estate. And I think that surprises people because agents think that if I want referrals, I need to constantly remind people I'm an agent. No, I don't think that's true at all. You need to remind people that you care. The real estate part comes naturally over time, and it starts with creating and setting up the database correctly. And so here's what I mean in my world and my training. And the way I would teach and coach anybody is that you have to set up your database. Well, first, that's step one. The reality is most agents who I've ever met when I'm teaching or I'm on stage, whatever would say, oh, I work by referral to. And if I ask them, well, tell me, what does that mean? What are you doing to generate referrals? They, they look at me like ask them the hardest question in the world. And that's not a difficult question. My point is, just getting a referral occasionally doesn't mean you work by referral. And I think one of the biggest areas where agents have swung and missed and and it's been the industry that's taught us this is they haven't built their database the correct way. And by that I mean is you need to sit down and figure out who's a list of everyone. I've either sold a home to everyone I know in my world, and then you need to go ask them this question. If you had a friend or family member thinking of making a move, do you have an agent you'd refer them to? That's the qualifying dialog. And when you ask that question, you're going to find out who in my database, who in my sphere are people that are actually going to work with me, support me, refer me, and some of them will say, well, it be you, Garrett. Great. What's the best way to stay in touch? Phone number, email, home address. You need all three of those. Well, once you once you have that once that's built out. And and here's the hard part. You're going to get rejected. There's going to be people that say, well, actually my sister's an agent. And so, you know, I go with her and you thought they were going to work with you and it hurts a little bit. I totally get it. But you got to start there. You've got to figure out who is in your database and will they support you and what you're trying to do. Because why would you spend time, energy and money on someone who's literally going to refer to someone else? It doesn't make sense, but it happens all the time. You got to start by doing the hard work. This is the single hardest part. You've got to build the database appropriately. I've got to know 

who's in there, right? If you had a friend or family member thinking of making a move, do you have an agent you'd refer them to? That's the qualifying question. Once you've got that squared away and now you have a database of people, just people who said they're going to support you in your business. You've got their phone number, email, home address. Now, you've already explained to them that you're an agent. You've already triggered their mind, their reticular activator, to think about you when they hear people talking about real estate. That's what we're trying to do. That's why, as I back up to what I was just saying, we don't have to constantly remind people we're agents, we have to show up and care about them, because I know my dentist is my dentist. If he not that he calls me right, that'd be weird. But I don't need my dentist to call me and check on me, right? And I mean, he doesn't, right? But if he called me and checked on me and he says, by the way, this is your dentist skin guard. No. Anybody needing dental work, right. Like that would just bother me. At some point I'm going to get annoyed by that. But I know he's my dentist, so just staying in front of me keeps in the front of my mind. Hey, here's my dentist. And it triggers in my mind my reticular activator. Which is the same reason why when you buy a white car, all of a sudden you see white cars, your brain is tuned into those things. What happens is when he shows up, I'm reminded, just in relationship. Here's my dentist again. Oh, I wonder if anybody in my world needs help with their dental work, right? Whatever the scenario is, and it tunes me back. And that's what happens in real estate too. You don't need to overcomplicate referral lead generation, right? You don't need to overcome. You don't need some manipulative script. You just need intentional relationships. Because at the end of the day, they want their friends to win just like you do. So your job is to build that database, ask the qualifying question, put them in there and then just care for them. That's your job. I rarely if ever talk about real estate. Now if they ask me about it, of course I will. But very, very rarely when I'm doing my reach outs, when I'm engaging with people, you will rarely hear me talk about real estate ever. But yet we're selling 50 homes a year. Why? Because we did the work up front, and now we're just intentionally building those relationships, right? The clarity that we need the. It's not pushing us, right. It's just clarity. They I know a lot of agents are afraid to ask their friends if they have an agent they'd refer because it feels salesy. Right? They don't want to remind you. We don't want to remind them that we're in real estate because it just feels off putting. And and I get it right. We don't want to be annoying. We don't want to be the person that just bothers people. I totally get it. I felt that way too. But let me reframe it for you because your friends are going to work with someone, right? They're going to work with somebody, and you want them to work with you because you know that you're going to actually care about what's going on. And so we have to do the work to let our friends know, I'm here to help you. I live in Virginia. In Virginia. There are two rivals, right? Virginia Tech and University of Virginia. And I grew up as a tech fan. Right. My. Both my parents went there. And so there was just these, you know, both of them had shirts that would say, uh, friends don't let friends go to UVA. Friends don't let friends go to Virginia Tech. Right? Well, friends don't let friends work with an agent who's not going to care about them. Your job is to let them know, hey, I've got a boat. And if you ever need it and you want to swim somewhere, you can swim to my boat. I'd love to help you with real estate, but if you don't tell them, you are actually doing them a disservice because they're going to use someone. They would use you if they knew about you and said, we start there. Let your friends know I'm in real estate, right? If you had a friend or family member thinking of making a move, do you have an agent you refer them to become that agent and then implement a system that keeps you in front of them consistently, right? One of the biggest mistakes that agents make is inconsistency, right? You disappear for six months and then you suddenly blast off to your database. Who do you know looking to buy or sell? And that feels super weird, right? Instead, and we're going to talk about this next week. The goal is steady relational communication. You stay top of mind by staying consistently present. They already want you 

to win. When was the last time you told someone about a Netflix show or a restaurant that you tried? Humans are wired to refer. We want to refer. We just need to be shown how. We need to be reminded to do it, and we are reminded by staying in front of them. Right when you're sitting there talking to friends and you hear someone talking about buying a home, right? Your mind is tuned into it. It's exactly what I said earlier. It's the reticular activator in your mind. We want our database to think that. So when they're sitting there having conversations, you know, nobody talks over a water cooler anymore. But you get my point. When they're sitting there talking, connecting over the water cooler. And someone's talking about thinking about buying a home. You want them to say, oh, you know what? You should talk to my buddy Garrett. He'll take good care of you. And then they'd introduce you. Your job is to be an intentional relationship with them. It's not harder than that. Consistency is the hard part. Most of us are so inconsistent. And I'll give you the easiest math equation in all of real estate. Consistency equals consistency. Inconsistency equals inconsistency. If you do the right thing over and over and over again, you will win the succeeding. In this industry, it's not hard. It's actually quite simple. It's just boring. Right. And because it's boring, we don't do it often enough because it's boring. We change our focus because it's boring. We do something for three months and then we say, well, that didn't work and we do something else. That's not how this works. If you believe business is built on relationships, then make building them your business. Scott Stratton said that years ago. If you believe business is built on relationships, then make building them your business. The focus is the question is how much business are you already getting from relationships? What percentage? The second question is what percentage of time and my spending trying to build those relationships. Like I said, most agents I coach 80% of their business relationships 10 to 20% of their time on that actual piece of their business. That doesn't make sense. If you're getting 80% of your business, you should spend 80% of your time or 100% of your time to actually do that with excellence, because there's so much more there, so much more there. Right. We want to build real relationships. We want to communicate clearly, consistently and as a friend. And next episode, I'm going to break down the actual actionable piece, the system that we can implement that you can implement. Now that's the key word. You have to take action without taking action. Nothing changes, right? Hope is not a business strategy. Taking action is a business strategy. But I'm going to tell you the actual system that I've used that I teach to consistently generate referrals. Right, because the goal is not just to get more referrals. So that is the goal. The goal is to build a business where referrals in your pipeline become predictable. And if this is something you want help implementing, you've thought this whole time, I wish I could build my business on relationships. That's who I feel like I'm supposed to be. But I've tried cold calling and door knocking. I'm doing all these things that I don't love. It's because relationships just didn't work for me and my broker owner and my my boss, my, you know, whoever told me that I couldn't just work by relationships. I'm here to tell you that's not true. I built my entire business on relationships, started with 40 people in my database, and now have built a consistency. Ten years in a row, 50 deals. You can do that too. You just need to be shown how. And you need to be given a system that you can implement right away. That's what I'm doing. I want to help you with that. Go to the show notes. Grab a time to talk with me. I'm launching a cohort of agents, ten agents only, where we're going to do some group coaching together, and we're going to build this out. I hope that you will be part of that. Agents come back next week when we talk about how do we turn relationships into predictable referrals. I will see you next week. Hey Christian agent, I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If it resonated, would you take 30s and share it with another agent who's also trying to grow their business without losing their faith, family, or peace? That's how this message spreads. And if you haven't yet, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss future episodes. I release new ones each Thursday to help you build success that actually lasts. It genuinely fires me up knowing this podcast is helping you pursue excellence to the glory 

of God, both at work and at home. I'll meet you back here next week for another episode of The Faithful Agent.