- When you focus on the wrong activities, you’ll struggle to reach your goals.
- Figuring out what your "lead domino" is changes everything -- it's the activity that drives the most leads, the first step.
- When faced with inaction, ask yourself if you are really willing to let go of your goals simply because you don't want to act.
I recently committed to a pretty massive business challenge issued by my implementation mastermind mentor. A challenge that will propel my business into the stratosphere.
A challenge in which the prize is not just the prize being given by the challenger (that prize is pretty darn awesome in and of itself), but the real prize is in the journey. By committing to the journey of the challenge, I will change my business and myself.
In other words, whether or not I actually win said prize, I’ll still be a winner by giving everything I’ve got in the pursuit of the challenge prize.
I realized this morning that I was scared — not only to admit that I wanted to win, but to pursue the challenge at all.
Why? Because I thought, “What happens if I put all of this energy into it and really let it envelope me, and I don’t win?”
I don’t want to feel the disappointment of not winning.
The thing is, how often do we let our ridiculous “fears” stop us from pursuing something? How often do we actually analyze our reactions and our thoughts to flesh out the truth in them? How often are we truly honest with ourselves?
When I look back over my life, now that I’m aware of my self-sabotaging habits, I can see multiple places along my path of life that I stopped pursuing something because I didn’t want to experience the pain of not winning…but in reality, by not moving forward, by not trying, I was experiencing the pain of not winning!
Oxymoronic, isn’t it?!
So, for the first time in my life, I’m going all in. I’m diving headfirst into this challenge. A challenge that is actually a fantastic opportunity for me to overcome my self-sabotaging tendencies. I’m setting myself up for success, whether I win the “prize” or not.
So what am I doing to set myself up for success?
I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase that what you focus on expands. The thing is, you’ve first got to know what to focus on — and it’s not the outcome.
I already know my goal — the outcome. So I made an assessment of my assets:
- What assets do I currently have?
- How will those help me?
- What assets do I need to acquire to reach my goal?
- How will I acquire those assets?
- What do I need to do every single day (the process) in order to reach the end results?
Now, you do have to know what will actually get you to your goal. If you don’t know what you need to focus on, you’ll end up focusing on the wrong daily activities and you won’t achieve your goal.
And, you’ve got to narrow it down to the single task (the lead domino, as Gary Keller says) that brings you the end results.
If your goal is to grow your real estate business by 25 transactions and you just focus on “getting listing appointments,” you are too many steps ahead of the process and you’ll struggle in reaching your goal.
However, if you know what your lead domino is, you’ll succeed.
What’s a lead domino?
So what is the lead domino when it comes to getting listings? It’s not leads. It’s not even homeowner leads.
Homeowner leads are the result of focusing on your lead domino. You want as many homeowner leads in your database as you can possibly get, but what is the lead domino for you that brings in the most homeowner leads the most effectively?
This is the key — knowing what your actual lead domino is.
For any business, the goal is to always grow your database. It’s the same for me in my business, it was the same in our real estate business, it’s the same for you in your real estate business.
But what grows your database? What grows it with the most targeted traffic? What grows it the fastest?
In my real estate business, it was blogging. I built know, like and trust relationships quickly and easily and drove targeted, relevant traffic into our database with ease. I was able to eliminate most of the pain of converting leads because the conversion was done before the capture. In other words, before homeowners ever contacted me, they already knew me, liked me and trusted me.
This is huge. And powerful. And makes everything smoother.
In my current business, LeadsAndLeverage.com, it is still blogging. Seriously. You are reading, at this moment, the No. 1 targeted traffic driver into my business. I blog, I publish, I drive interested people into my database, I continue building a relationship with them via more blogging and emails, and if we mesh, they move forward with me.
So what is my lead domino? I write. Daily. I write for 50 minutes every, single, day. Period. That’s my “One Thing.” To write for 50 minutes every day. That’s the first thing I do when I sit down at my desk and start working. I do this before I do anything else.
How do you stay focused on your lead domino?
I also help facilitate this: I set myself up for success. Before I end my day, I make sure that my writing space is set up for the next day so I don’t succumb to distractions. I write everything in Evernote, so I make sure my Evernote topic idea folder is open. Usually I’ll have it open to a specific topic and then when I sit down in the morning, I run with it.
But what happens when I’m just “not feeling it?” When I’m messing around and not getting down to the business of writing for my 50 minutes, I ask myself the pivotal question:
Am I really willing to blow (insert goal outcome here) because I won’t sit down for 50 minutes and write?
That’s a powerful question to ask yourself. It puts things into perspective. It helps you not procrastinate, to not push off what truly is important based on your lack of motivation in the moment. It helps inspire action (motivation follows action).
As I started writing this article, I wasn’t actually “in the mood” to write. So I thought I’d start throwing out some ideas within this topic…and suddenly, it’s pouring out of me. This is a case of action creating motivation.
So, what is your lead domino? The lead domino that will propel your business (and your life) forward?
If it is writing, then guess what: I have a challenge for you. I created Get Your Blog On. It’s a (free) 5-day blogging challenge specifically for real estate agents. I would love to have you join me in the challenge!!
Click here to join the Get Your Blog On Challenge (it’s free).
Christina Ethridge is the founder of LeadsAndLeverage.com, helping real estate agents capture, convert, and close Facebook leads.
