What’s The First Step & Activity That Drives The Most Leads?

The first step in figuring out what your “lead domino is changes everything. It’s the first step and the activity that drives the most leads.

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.

Recently I committed to a pretty enormous business challenge issued by my implementation mastermind mentor. It is a challenge that will drive my business into the stratosphere.

This is a challenge in which the prize is not just the prize that is given by the challenger (that prize is pretty darn awesome in and of itself), The journey is the real prize. I will change my business and myself by committing to the journey of the challenge

With that being said whether or not I actually win said prize, I’ll still be a winner by giving my all in the pursuit of the challenge prize.

This morning I realized 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 effort and energy into it and let it really envelope me and I don’t win?”

I don’t want to feel the letdown and disappointment of not winning.

Here’s the thing.  How many times do we let our ridiculous “fears” stop us from going after something? How many times do we actually analyze our reactions and our thoughts to flesh out the truth in them? How many times are we truly honest with ourselves?

Facing our thoughts can be scary, but it is essential in order to be successful.

Now that I’m aware of my self-sabotaging habits when I look back over my life, I can see numerous places along my path of life that I stopped pursuing something because I didn’t want to feel 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?!

Now for the first time in my life I’m going all in. I’m plunging headfirst into this challenge. A challenge that is actually a terrific opportunity for me to conquer 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 truly get you to your goal. If you don’t know what you need to concentrate 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 end goal is to grow your real estate business by 25 transactions and you just concentrate on “getting listing appointments,” you are way too many steps ahead of the process and you’ll end up struggling in reaching your goal.

You will succeed. However if you know what your lead domino is.

What Is 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 to bring in 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. It’s knowing what your actual lead domino is.

For any type of business, the goal is to always grow your database. It’s the same for me in my business. It was the exactly the same thing 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 our real estate business the lead domino was blogging. I built know, like and trust relationships easily and quickly and drove relevant, targeted traffic into our database with ease. I was able to remove a majority 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. It makes everything smoother.

In my current business, LeadsAndLeverage.com, it is still blogging.

Seriously.

You are reading, at this moment, the No. 1 targeted driver of traffic 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. Every single day I write for 50 minutes. Period. That’s my “One Thing.” It’s to write for 50 minutes every day. That’s the very 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 following day so I don’t knuckle under to any distractions.

I write everything in Evernote so I make sure my Evernote topic idea folder is open. I’ll usually have it open to a specific topic and then when I sit down in the morning, I run with it.

A Powerful Question To Ask Yourself

But what happens when I’m just “not feeling it?” I ask myself the pivotal question when I’m messing around and not getting down to the business of writing for my 50 minutes:

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 and it puts things into perspective. It helps you to not push off, to not procrastinate what is truly important based on your lack of motivation in the moment. It helps inspire action (motivation follows action).

When you focus on the wrong activities, you’ll struggle to reach your goals.

As I started writing this article I wasn’t honestly “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.

I Have A Challenge For You

So, what is your lead domino? The lead domino that will propel your business (and your life) forward?