WELCOME

Hey y’all, welcome back! I’m home from the Tom Ferry conference and my head is still spinning in the very best way. I left there a woman on a mission and we’re going to cover that mission today.

Now, I’m about to be off the grid for a bit. I’m headed to Turkey, Italy, and Greece, and I could not be more excited. (Ask me about my suitcase situation later.) So, I’ve been busy behind the scenes getting content ready for you in advance. Just because I’m off somewhere with a view doesn’t mean you don’t still get a weekly Glennda fix. Now let’s get into it!

STORYTIME WITH GLENNDA

The Instruction Manual

First, I loved meeting every one of y’all at Tom Ferry! And I hope each one of you got as much out of the Summit as I did. Now, the short assessment is that my head literally exploded, and I mean that in the best possible way. I always leave with the kind of marching orders that up my game. However, after three days of trying to drink from the information firehose (i.e., “You need to do this, you need to do that, our industry is changing, so now we enter rooms backwards, etc.”), I realized something that I worry that most agents left the conference without fully grasping.

Let me back up: after the main event, I did a Mastermind with about forty people. Seven of us at my table, five tables total, all of us broken into small groups to create something. Table by table, agents stood up to share what they were “going to be working on,” and I feel like almost everybody’s idea sounded elementary. This isn’t because those agents aren’t sharp, because they are. Instead, it was because Tom is absolutely brilliant at giving us the big picture because he’s a big picture thinker. There’s such value in being that visionary. However, he doesn’t get into the weeds of giving out the assembly instructions to execute the vision. He’ll tell the crowd, “You need to do YouTube,” the same way he told me (and told a room full of others a few years back), “You need to do TikTok.” He shows you the toy, but he doesn’t hand you the instruction manual.

At my table, we did something different than the other groups. I had three ideas from the conference. I knew I could weave two of them together, and I put the third on the back burner because I figured we needed to focus on execution: like, what’s the actual workflow that gets these two things woven together, and how do I implement it? That’s the conversation my table had, while a lot of other tables were still stuck on, “What’s our big idea?” When we stood up to present, we (and I’ll own this, because I’m competitive and I’m not sorry about it) we absolutely blew everybody else out of the water. Not because our idea was smarter, but because we had a plan to actually build it. We metaphorically included the instruction manual.

The Smallest Credit Card First Strategy

Tom talked a lot about “the line,” meaning you’ve got to know where the finish line is, six months out, and dash towards it. And Tom, if you’re reading this, I hear you and I agree with you. But here’s what I’ve learned running my own business and watching hundreds of agents try to implement advice like this: most real estate agents are not disciplined, regimented planners. Truth is, while we’re competitive, we’re also easily distracted. Tell a room full of agents, “Here’s your six-month goal,” and try not to look surprised when they don’t actually hit it on day 180. It’s laughable how few will get there, and it’s not because they’re not talented. I can’t stress that part enough. The issue here is the goal is too far away to feel real.

So, here’s what I do instead, and it’s the same thing that made me one of the only people in a room of 2,000 to actually act on Tom’s advice to get on TikTok years ago, back when nobody else was doing it. I call it my “smallest credit card first” mentality. If you find yourself overwhelmed with debt, pay off the littlest card first and get yourself a win. A win always propels you forward. For me, I like to set a 30-day goal, a 60-day goal, and a 90-day goal. At 30 days, I’ve got that small victory and that gets the snowball rolling downhill.

At 60 days, I’ll tackle bigger goal, now that I have a little traction. That means at 90 days, I’ve got real momentum, and only then do I look back at that six-month line and decide if it’s actually the right line… or if I need to push the end goal further out. Small wins behind your sails change everything. Think of “the line” like a marathon. If you can’t yet jog to to mile 1, you’re sure as hell never getting to mile 26.2. Plus, it’s too overwhelming to think about the whole race right at once. That’s why effective marathon training is broken out into lots of little steps. (To be clear, I have zero plans on running an actual marathon, but I do know how they work.)

Attention Doesn’t Pay You, But Conversations Do

Here’s the other thing rattling around in my head since I got back, and it’s bigger than any one tactic. We live in a world where every platform, whether it’s Zillow, YouTube, your Apple Music, your news feed, etc., is curating exactly what it thinks you want to see. They all know that the longer you stay, the more money flows to them. For example, Zillow isn’t just filtering houses by bedrooms and bathrooms anymore. No, ma’am. It’s tracking your photo dwell time. (!!) So, if you linger on the backyard shot, they stop showing you houses without yards. If you spend extra seconds on the kitchen, they quietly filter out the ones with dated cabinets. They’re not showing you what matches your search criteria. They’re showing you what keeps you scrolling, because attention is the whole game.

That’s exactly why nobody turns on the radio anymore, why nobody watches appointment television, why the news you see and the news I see can be two completely different realities. We’ve all been trained to expect content on demand, curated to our taste. That has massive implications for how real estate agents need to show up. If you’re waiting for people to find you the old way, meaning appointment marketing and one-size-fits-all messaging, you’re going to lose to the agents who understand that attention has to be earned, platform by platform, and moment by moment.

But here’s the line I want you to remember, because it’s the whole damn point: attention doesn’t pay you. Conversations do. Conversion happens in conversation, and conversation happens when you actually show up as a real person people want to talk to… not when you’re chasing the algorithm. Getting the attention is step one, but it’s not the finish line. The finish line is the phone call, the text message, the person who trusts you enough to talk.

So… What Am I Actually Doing With All This?

I told you my big takeaway was YouTube, and it’s because I haven’t been intentional with my channel, and that’s changing. I mean, OMS, YouTube alone regularly captures 12–14% of all U.S. television viewing time, which is more than any single broadcast network, cable channel, or even Netflix! It’s time to get serious.

However, the real takeaway isn’t the platform. What I want y’all to meditate on is this framework:
1) Come up with the big idea
2) Break it into a 30-60-90 day plan
3) Get a small win fast
4) Don’t let the size of the goal talk you out of starting

Conferences are great for filling your toolbox, but you have to come out of them knowing that nobody’s going to hand you the assembly instructions. That part’s on you.

If you’re a real estate agent and you left a conference this year with a notebook full of big ideas and zero plan to execute them, that’s the gap I want you to close. Pick one thing. Break it into 30-60-90. Get your small win. That’s how you actually turn a conference high into a business that grows.

P.S. Here’s a deep dive on my TikTok journey!

GLENNDAISM

Today’s Words of Wisdom

GLENNDA BAKER & ASSOCIATES

MILLION DOLLAR LISTING ATLANTA

Let’s talk about what a million dollars actually buys you in West Cobb, because this one’s a flex on every level. Nestled on nearly an acre in Harrison Oaks, 373 Glynnwilde Drive NW in Marietta is 7,200 square feet of “I have arrived.” I’m not kidding—there’s a podcasting studio, a wellness room, a full second kitchen on the terrace level, espresso hardwoods, a stone fireplace flanked by custom built-ins, and an owner’s closet that genuinely rivals a boutique!

Here’s the part that gets me: award-winning Harrison High School district, three-car garage, main-level guest suite for the in-laws or the au pair, and your own private wooded backdrop off the deck. Try finding that combination inside the perimeter. (You can’t.) Homes with this much flexibility don’t come around often in Harrison Oaks.

This is the house you buy when you’ve made it… and you want the space to prove it