Tuesday Short: Moving The Needle

In this episode, Garrett discusses the importance of understanding what moves the needle in your business. He shares a story about one of his coaching clients who felt like he was working long hours but not making progress. Garrett emphasizes the need for clarity on what actually pushes your business forward and identifies lead generation as a key needle in most businesses. He encourages listeners to identify the needles in their own business and prioritize activities that move those needles forward.

Takeaways

Understanding what moves the needle in your business is crucial for making progress.
Lead generation is often a key needle in most businesses.
Identify the needles in your business and prioritize activities that move them forward.
Clarity on what pushes your business forward helps you make better use of your time and resources.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Small Talk
05:23 Learn, Connect, and Care
09:12 Conclusion

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Transcript

0:02

What is up, faithful agents? Welcome back to another Tuesday short. I am so thankful that you're here and amazed that you still want to hear me talk because even my own wife sometimes doesn't want to hear me talk. And Tyler most definitely doesn't want to hear me talk. That's why I do these episodes. He probably doesn't even know I'm doing them. But I needed more time to talk, you know, because that's what I do. And that's why I have small ears, because I don't need them. You know Now everyone can watch the video and see that I have baby ears actually, you know, here's what's funny So we had the conference as I'm recording this with a conference a week ago And we had these cool are amazing Sound guy Jared who's an insurance agent in North Carolina amazing dude. He was our sound guy He had these really cool microphones that he would you know go like the Britney Spears mic right it go over your ear and then bring this little tiny mic and overbite your mouth. Well, my ears are so small it kept falling off. He had to like really bend it up all weird and so it fit into my newborn baby ears. And I don't know why I told you that but there you go. You know, I know what you were thinking this whole time. You were thinking, man, Garrett is so perfect. He doesn't have a single flaw. Well, I have one. My ears are small. Alright, anyways, we're gonna get to today's Tuesday short that I hope is an encouragement to you. We're gonna talk about understanding what moves the needle in your business. But before we do that, two quick things. One announcement, one joke. The one announcement is, as always, please, if these are helpful, wherever you listen to the podcast, give it a five-star review. subscribe or press the follow button and share it with a faithful agent friend. This is one of the best ways that we just grow and cultivate more Christian community in real estate. So we would greatly appreciate that. And now everyone's been waiting for the chat GPT joke of the podcast. Didn't know where to go with that. Here it is. Why did the hawk sit on the church steeple? He was bird watching for the Holy Spirit. What does that even mean? I don't know what you guys think. Everyone thought my jokes are so bad, but my jokes are better than chat GPT. Let's be honest. So, you know, chat GPT is almost genius level according to its IQ. So that must make me a genius. Anyone who listens to this episode or any other episode knows that's definitely not true. The Lord uses the weak myself to help encourage the strong, which I hope is you. So. Enough dilly -dallying, let's get to the point. Today during coaching, one of my coaching clients, Nick Amarin in Idaho, if you need an Idaho referral, which I don't know, does anybody move to Idaho, send it to him. He's a great dude, love Nick so much, it's been such a joy and an honor to get to know him. But he was sharing about how sometimes, he was on the hot seat, we do a hot seat during the call, so someone just has time to share about their business and they get feedback from everyone. But he was sharing about how sometimes even if he's, working from, you know, let's say 6 a .m. to 8 p .m. He still feels like he didn't do enough, like he didn't move the needle in his business. And we were trying to help him work through that and figure that out. One of the things I told him, I said, if that's true, if you work that much and you still feel like you're not moving the needle, the problem is not that you're not doing enough work. The problem is probably you don't even know what moves the needle. It's a lack of clarity on what actually pushes your business forward. And then he said, well, for example, that could be seven hours of showings, right? That could be five hours of showings. That could be a lot of running around in this business. And so I said, well, does showing homes, does that move the needle in your business? And the answer is no, right? Showing homes is a result in the work that comes. after you have done the work to move the needle in your business, aka the Lee generation, but showing houses in and of itself is not actually moving the needle on your business. He was sharing how sometimes it's difficult, he'll get up. He's talking about maybe needing to wake up earlier. Sometimes it's difficult to get up, get into the office, and then if he reads a book or reads for an hour or whatever, he feels like it's already nine o 'clock, he's so far behind at that point. And so again, I stopped him and I encouraged him, if you understand what the needles are in your business, which we need to all be prayerful about, Lord, what are the needles that I need to move in my business, then stopping and reading for an hour could be the best time that you spend all day. I know for me, except on Monday mornings when I meet my agents, On Monday, every other morning, I spend an hour reading and I spend 15 minutes praying. That's how I start my day. Why? Because one of the needles in my business is learning something, right? How do I know that I pushed my business forward that day? It's that I learned something. It's that I educated myself. So I know that tomorrow when I show up, I'm a little bit better than I was today, right? That's moving the needle forward for me. That's one of the pieces for me. If I learn something every day, if I connect with somebody every single day, and I care for somebody every single day, right? Learn, connect, and care. If I do those three things for me and my business, that's moving the needle forward. So what are those needles in your business, and how do you move them forward? For most of us, right, if you're thinking, what in the world does that even mean, Garrett? For most of us, the needle in your business is lead generation, okay? So go back and listen to the rule of eights. If you haven't listened to that episode, the rule of eights as I break down where our attention should go in our lead generation. But how do you move the needle in your lead generation? Well, you gotta understand what is it that is most impactful, right? So let's say, for example, you look and say, well, I don't know what moves the needle in my lead generation. The answer is my response to you would be, well, you do know, you just haven't taken enough time to figure it out. Right. What do I mean by that? The reality is if you stopped and you look to say, where is most of my business coming from? You would be able to find a trend, whether you track those numbers or not. Most of the time, I would say 95 percent of the time I hear from somebody, well, it's from my sphere. Right. People I already know, past clients or referrals. It's from my sphere. Right. So that's what moves the needle most. Great. That's awesome that you know that. So then how do we move that sphere needle becomes the next question. One of the ways to do that is go connect and care for somebody today. That could literally be something as simple as picking up the phone, giving somebody in your database a call, hey, Nick, just checking on you today, brother, how you doing, man, how can I serve you today? Just something that simple. Make a connection and care for somebody. Here's the beauty of the math behind that. For example, if you're talking about how do you move the needle with your sphere, the average person statistically knows 256 people. That means if I deeply connect with one person today, one person, that means I just reached 256 people. Now, how long would it take you to cold call 256 people, right? A long time. And would you actually make a real connection? I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. That's the beauty of it, right? How do I move the needle? Well, Nick could come in and say, I wanna learn, I wanna connect and I wanna care for somebody today. Great, you spend an hour reading, you learn something. Great, you spend 30 minutes connecting and caring for somebody, awesome. Guess what? The needles in your business have already moved. If nothing else happens that day and all you gotta do is go pick up your kids and spend time with them or your wife is sick and you need to stay home and take care of her, whatever it is, guess what? You moved the needle of your business forward. That's a good day. So let's not let days pass us and we look back and say, I wonder if I did anything productive that day. Let's understand the needles in our business. How do we push our business forward? And then just do that. And my encouragement, do that first. That's why I read and I pray first. That's how I want to move the needles of my business forward, right? And then my lead generation needle is on Mondays. That's how I push my business forward. On Mondays, I do the activity that I need to to generate and care and connect with people so that they can generate me referrals. That's how I move the needle of my business forward. The rest of the days is moving my mind forward, right? Now I don't have to wonder did I do the right thing? Was today even productive at all? Understand the needles in your business and push those forward each day. Do that first and then after that, you have the rest of the day to quite honestly do whatever you want, right? To focus wherever you wanna focus, to care for who you ever wanna care for, to show houses if you want to, to take a nap if you want to, right? I'm famous for my afternoon naps. I don't know if I'm famous. I'm infamous for my afternoon naps. Point is this. If you know how to push your business forward, go ahead and do that first. And then the rest of the day, you're good, even if the rest of the day gets off. Understand the needles in your business and push them forward. I love you, faithful agents, and I will see you on Thursday.