Mastering Your Success Habits: Streamlining, Delegating, and Focusing for Optimal Results

Rob Brown  0:05  

I make sure that I schedule appointments with myself to work on things that I need to work on inside of my business to be prepared for that next presentation, that next client meeting, but is keeping it simple, what are those things that you know are important that you have to do yourself, and then making the time for them on a regular basis. And a lot of them you can have just that those daily habits. 

Phil Calandra  0:28  

And I think what ends up preventing us from creating that best routine is we don’t delegate really well. As a former firm owner, it was always hard for me to delegate certain things. But as I did as my business grew, and I was able to offload things that just became a lot of busy work. It allowed me to focus back in on the most important work that I need to be doing. It’s pretty powerful when you’re able to determine.

Rob Brown  1:03  

Welcome to The Truest Fan Blueprint, a podcast for financial advisors and other professionals looking to get the most out of yourself and your business. I’m Rob Brown, and my partner, Phil Calandra, and I promise to walk you through a journey that will allow you to take action in your business and your life, so that you can be the best that you can possibly be. Thanks for listening. 

Welcome back to The Truest Fan Blueprint, Rob and Phil here. Hey, Phil, ready to get going?

Phil Calandra  1:46  

Yeah, rock and roll. Good to be with you.

Rob Brown  1:48  

So Phil, as we were prepping for this podcast, we were, or I was reminded of a conversation that I had just a couple of days ago with a client who is really struggling with getting more done in less time because her practice has gotten busier and busier. And as I asked her about that, I asked her well, what are things you’ve done in the past that have helped you feel and be more productive. And she said two things. She said, I used to use a routine called Focus Five, which I’ve heard about before, but I’m not completely familiar with. But it’s the idea of at the beginning of the day, when you’re doing your daily planning, you pick five things that you’re going to focus on that day that you need to get done, some of them small things, some of them big things, and be able to do those in conjunction with meetings and other things that you have on your calendar. And she said the other thing that she used to do was she used Time Blocks. She used to actually set aside dedicated times each week for certain tasks, including blocking off different days, different times in different days of the week, to hold her client meetings. And so I said, Well, why don’t you just do those again. And so for two weeks, she started doing those. And all of a sudden, she got her mojo back, she got her energy back. And so I thought, you know, that’s a great topic for a podcast because there are two things there. One is, why do we stop doing things that work? And I see this all the time. And then the other one is, what are some routines that you could be engaged in that really truly help you get more out of each day to get more done in less time. So fellas, let’s tackle them one at a time. So let’s start with the second one first. When you think about routines that you’ve used in your own life and business or that you’ve mentor or coach others on, what kinds of things have you done? Yeah,

Phil Calandra  4:08  

Yeah. And it’s worth repeating what you said, when something’s working so well, why do we stop doing it? I think that’s because it’s our human nature. We become reactionary beings, instead of acting on our plan. We react to all the things that are spinning and spinning and orbiting around us. That’s why people do it. And for me, it was always, to your point, the routine was and is a combination of the personal aspects of what I wanted to achieve for my selfishness in the day, and what I wanted to do in my business and for my clients. So, as you know, other than one day a week, six days a week, I’m doing some kind of workout typically between five and 5:15am. I awake, and it’s become a habit now. And I think that’s the key word there is, when you get a routine that becomes a habit, it becomes part of your discipline, you don’t have to rely on being motivated. Because that’s why we quit, we lose our mojo, we lose that motivation. That’s a whole nother podcast topic. Motivation typically doesn’t work for the human species, but discipline does. So I always found that that personal side of things, be an early riser, make your bed and start the day off. From a business perspective, just a couple of things real quick, that you mentioned, I always time blocked, still do. I like to do my planning work pre meeting, or pre review with a client, typically a day or two before but I block time to do that. Morning and then afternoon. The other big time suck, of course, is email, and this thing that we all have floating around in our hands. So I know you’ve coached me on some techniques and strategies on how to keep that email, especially. But again, it becomes a discipline if you find the routine, follow a process, which we’ve talked about, then have the discipline to stay to it. Don’t let your human nature make you reactionary. You know, it’s like, you know, the squirrel, you know, going all over the place.

Rob Brown  6:32  

Yeah, or the hamster in the hamster wheel. Yeah. Which I think, we all get there at times. In fact, you know, I don’t know if you remember this. But when I was, I was down to Atlanta. For those of our listeners who may not know this, I was down in Atlanta for a couple of days, I had the opportunity to spend a night with Phil and his partner Trish. And when I got up in the morning, I saw Phil still in his pajamas at about 6:30. I was like, oh my goodness, I’ve screwed up Phil’s routine. And it was the end. He goes, No, no, it’s Monday. That’s, it’s not my routine. So I felt guilty about screwing up your, by staying there. I somehow screwed up your success. Yeah, because we didn’t stay up late drinking or anything crazy. Crazy like that. But that idea of that, you know, that discipline, that getting up every day, and having that same routine really is important. But it just, it doesn’t take much to throw that off kilter. Because Phil, I’m sure that if you go two or three days, for whatever reason, and miss that routine, that third or fourth day getting back to it is harder. And that’s the example of screwing things up, that are working.

Phil Calandra  7:54  

 Yeah, absolutely. And it doesn’t matter the area of our life. But when you get out of the routine, whether it be working out, whether it be your diet, when you get out of the routine, it becomes a multiple to get back to it. Same thing in our business, if you get out of the habit of, let’s say prospecting, working on your client acquisition. If you go stale, and you get out of that practice, it becomes increasingly more difficult. Just like lifting weights, right? You will atrophy, your muscles will atrophy. We all and as we get older, it happens quicker, it seems. But you’ve got to keep working it, you got to keep working it, and the only way I found that successful people do that is to have a massive amount of discipline.     

Rob Brown  8:47  

Yeah, absolutely. And I’m glad you mentioned in business prospecting, because I know with the clients that I coach who are successful business owners who are trying to get better in business and life, to be more authentic about who they are and what they do, that the two things that they will fall away from the fastest is that routine, if it’s part of their business of growing their business, you know, the prospecting, I call it planting seeds every day, you really need to have a system for planting seeds on a regular basis. And I see that, like referral routines is a great example. I was with a client a few weeks ago and we were talking about plans for the coming year for growth. And we were digging into why they didn’t bring in as many new clients this year as they have in previous years. They had a good excuse, they landed one of the biggest relationships they’ve ever had. So in a way they felt like well, we can work on this when we don’t bring in more. But what but the result of that thinking was, they had stopped having advocacy client conversations at the end of their client review meetings. And so we just needed to plug something back in, that they were doing in the past that had been successful. Right. And then that the second thing that I see, again, even the most successful people that I know and work with do is, they stop their daily planning. When I was actively an advisor, back in the days when there was a lot more telephone work than there is today, I had a, what I call it a success formula or success ritual, which was 12 by 12, two by five plan each day. And that simply meant that I was going to talk to 12 clients, or potential clients before noon every day, because talking to people was really important to my business. My two by five was I was going to have two meetings a day, five days a week with clients and prospects. So I got in front of those clients and prospects to do client service or to bring in new relationships. But plan each day was the hardest thing to do. And it was the third part of the formula. And that was simply taking 15 minutes at the end of the day, every day, to map out the next day. And that daily planning, that part of the success ritual or formula that I had is something that I see advisors, business owners kind of falling away from because they think, Well, hey, I’ve got this, I don’t need to plan today. I know in my head what I’m going to do, but they don’t create that focus, like we talked about at the open of the focus five.

Phil Calandra  11:47  

Yeah, the other thing that comes to my mind, Rob, is when you’re saying that is, what would prevent somebody from implementing that or studying that a little deeper, and then actually taking that action. And I think what ends up happening, or what ends up preventing us from creating that best practice, or that best routine, is we don’t delegate really well. I know, as a former firm owner, it was always hard for me to delegate certain things. But then as I did, as my business grew, and I was able to offload things that just became a lot of busy work, it allowed me to focus back in on the most important work that I needed to be doing, right. It’s the Stephen Covey First Things First Principle, which I like. But we get bogged down. And I see a lot of advisors talk to a lot of advisors that are just working their tail off. They’re working 60,70 hours a week, but when you peel it back, what are they really working on? They’re working on things that somebody else could be doing, or they could be delegating. It’s pretty powerful when you’re able to determine that.

Rob Brown  12:58  

Right? In fact, you said to dial back a couple of episodes on the podcast, we did a whole full episode on the importance of delegation, but I think maybe in combination with delegation is this tendency to make things more complicated than they need to be. So we think that we can’t boil our business down into a formula like, focus five or 12 by 12. Two by five, plan each day. Yeah. But when you do, what I do this all the time with clients is, I suggest my clients and their team members, do a time audit. Go back, or, or not go back, spend a couple of weeks really writing down those things that you’re doing and bracket them together in, you know, kind of common themes, and then look at what number of hours you’re spending, doing those things. And then ask yourself, which of those things were really important to do. Which of those things could I have delegated, but those things that were most important say, that can become your formula. I realized that I’m best when I have two client meetings a day, when I spend a half an hour at the beginning of the day, when I get into the office, planning out my day. I’m better off at the beginning of the week. If I make sure that I schedule appointments with myself to work on things that I need to work on inside of my business to be prepared for that next presentation, that next meeting, but is keeping it simple. What are those things that you know are important that you have to do yourself and then making the time for them on a regular basis and a lot of them you can have just that daily, those daily habits.

Phil Calandra  14:53  

Yeah, right. It’s the KISS Method, right?

Rob Brown  14:57  

Yeah, Keep It Simple, Stupid. Yeah. Yeah, well, I, I can, I can think of many times when I’ve been, I’ve been stupid. 

Phil Calandra  15:06  

No doubt we all have. It’s recognizing it. That’s the key. Yeah,

Rob Brown  15:10  

Yeah, recognizing and stopping and taking the time to do it. You know, and that’s a big part of the reason that in the work we do, you know, we have a framework for most everything, whether it’s our overall system for planning out your year or your quarter, or looking way out into the future, or thinking about your day. Is there different frameworks that you can use, that are time tested, that help you focus on those things? Don’t feel like you have to figure it out all on your own. So Phil, if you were to, I’m putting you on the spot here, because I didn’t tell you I was going to ask this question. But if you were to give one tip to our listeners, just one thing that they could do to instill or assess, you know, kind of where they are with their success, habits and routines. What would that one thing be?

Phil Calandra  16:10  

Wow, only one. I think that I would probably start to, maybe, discern what it is that’s throwing me out of kilter. Is there one thing that you’re doing that you could remove? It’s kind of like, you know, the elimination diet. If you have food allergies, the only way that you really discover which foods trigger you, other than testing, is start eliminating, eliminate the carbs, eliminate the rice, eliminate the pasta, and then it takes time. But I think that would be my tip is, eliminate, eliminate what you can and you’ll be surprised. Doesn’t mean you don’t get it done, it just might mean someone else does it. And then reprioritize, after you’ve eliminated what you think might be the problem.

Rob Brown  17:01  

Yeah, I love that. Because in, when I bring on a new coaching client, one of the first things I do is help them do some analysis to figure out what they can get rid of, yeah, so that they have the time to focus on what we’ll be working on going forward. Because if I try to put new routines, new coaching, on top of a person, a successful person’s already busy schedule, it’s not going to be a priority, or may not be a priority, because they’re just saying I already had too much to do. And yeah, as you know, because one of the frameworks we teach is the Four D routine. Item number one in the four Ds is delete, what can you get rid of? Yeah, because to focus on what’s most important, you’ve got to get rid of those things that are your distraction. So I love that as a great, actionable tip to take away from this podcast. And as we close out, I want to remind everybody, we’re launching The Truest Fan Roundtable as part of Truest Fan Coaching. It’s an opportunity to learn and use our frameworks to help you achieve peak performance in business and life. And the coolest thing about it, is you can sign up for free by going to truestfancoaching.com/free-access. truestfancoaching.com/free-access, you’ll get a full description of The Truest Fan Roundtable. And if you want to try it out as a way to develop some success, habits ,and routines, you’ll be absolutely be in the right place.

Phil Calandra  18:50  

Right, right. And I would encourage everybody to subscribe to the YouTube channel, like us, forward us recommend us. Give us your feedback if there are things that you’d like for us to touch on and cover in upcoming episodes. We’re listening to you, our audience, first and foremost. So yeah,

Rob Brown  19:10  

Awesome. Thanks. I’m glad that I turned it over to you, Phil, because sometimes I forget to remind people that we are trying to grow this audience, too. But let’s land the plane right here by reminding everybody who’s listening that, as always, by giving you these great ideas around success habits is one of our ways of rooting for your success. Take care. Bye now. 

Thanks for joining us for this episode of The Truest Fan Blueprints. If you want to learn more, head over to our website truestfan.com. On the site, you’ll learn more about becoming a truest fan. You’ll also find today’s show notes and links to the other gifts and resources we talked about during this episode. Again, thanks for listening and remember, we’re rooting for your success.