Sprinting to Success: Achieving Your Goals with Purpose

Rob (00:06)

One of the challenges when it comes to accomplishing your goals is deciding what to do next. I’m often fascinated when I’m helping the advisors plan or business owners plan for their businesses. And we go through a detailed process, say, but what do I do now? Right now? Well, the most important thing you can do is take action. And that’s why in this episode of the truest fan podcast, my co host, Phil Calandra. And I will walk you through the process of sprinting, taking your big dreams, and the goals that you really want to accomplish, and turn them into a sprint and action plan. We call it the truest fan action plan, so you know what to do next. So you can be confident that you accomplish those things that are most important to you. Listen in.

You’re listening to the truest fan podcast. And now here’s your host, Rob Brown. 

Rob (01:17):

Welcome to the truest fan podcast, Rob Brown here with my partner and co host, Phil Calandra. Phil and I are going to continue our discussion today, where we’ve been walking over the last couple of episodes through what we call the truest fan podcast. 

For those of you who are watching this on video, I have a copy of it up on the screen, just holding it there my hands. But if you’d like a copy of the blueprint we’ve been referencing, go to the show notes, you can download a free copy there. And you can see the progression that we take as we help advisors go from kind of being scattered to running their business with more purpose and impact and profits. Today we’re going to venture beyond talking about dreaming big and achieving important goals and taking action and dive deeper into the process and talk about something we call TFAP Truest Fan Action Plan. Phil, you want to set up a little bit more? Speaking of teas, yeah.

Phil (02:25):

Thanks, Rob. So yeah, what we’ve been talking about is kind of this progression, this flow, if you will, that we believe if you’re not consciously focusing on that makes it very difficult for advisors, entrepreneurs, business people, dads, moms athletes, it becomes very difficult to achieve your ultimate outcome, your successful outcome without this progression. So number one, as Rob said, dream big number two goal setting. And then the third is really digging in. 

And that’s the actionable steps, the actual items of influence, you’re going to impart upon your goals and your dreams. So when we’re thinking about these kind of three pieces, dreams, goals and action plans, I would say the reason that not a reason, but the reason that people fall short of achieving their ultimate goal or their desired outcome or dream of whatever that is in their life. The reason is they haven’t backed into what we’re going to talk about today. And we call that TFAP, Truest fan action plan. 

And it’s because people leave out the actual hard work. And isn’t that what it is? Rob, when it comes down to it? It’s very easy to daydream, we talked about the consciousness of actually thinking what is most important to you. But what people leave out is the work, the hard work, that determination, and the discipline to get from where they are to where they ultimately want to go.

Rob (03:58):

Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And we have a framework is Phil’s referenced the TFAP, which is which is really kind of like a one page business plan in some vernaculars. Although I find that it tends to be a little bit longer than that when you record everything that we suggest recording on it. 

But when we’re helping a client of ours, go through a planning process, setting goals, thinking about dreams, we use this tool and it starts as you would imagine, by listing out dreams. We have some sections where we talk about goals, we take those dreams and we pull them back to you know, what specifically do you want to see happen in a relevant Another relevant period of time. 

So if your dreams go out 5, 10 years, you know, we can’t set action steps for 5, 10 years without goals that come in before that. Some of our clients like to have three year goals and one year goals. Others like to just go straight to thinking about this is what I want to accomplish in the next year. But the final piece is what do you want to accomplish? 

During the next sprint during the next quarter that we’re working together? What are the actual actions you’re going to do next, that will lead to the goals that you’re trying to accomplish in that longer period of time. And instead of trying to list them for trying to play them out for 12 months, we say, hey, let’s just play this out for three months, what do we really need to get done? 

For three months, we actually put a month in between our sprint so there’s a time to kind of finish up, maybe take some time away and get recharged for the next sprint, we really want to break it down into that short period of time and that helps for Focus on what you need to do this day this week, this month, this quarter and ultimately lead you to those goals into those dreams so that Sprint’s is a really critical part of a truest fan action plan. Phil, you have anything to add kind of thinking about the Sprint’s that you undertake in your business and practice?

Phil (06:07):

Yeah, so I think a lot about my business and the way that I coach my clients, the same way that I approach endurance athletics training for an Ironman Triathlon, which is my passion, one of them in sports, specifically in endurance. It’s called periodization. And actually, the Norwegians came up with this philosophy of training, called periodization. 

And periodization is the philosophy that when you build a block of specific training, you’re building your body or let’s say you’re running a marathon or you’re competing in an Ironman Triathlon, you can’t for six months, eight months continuously work at a specific output level, the human body can’t do that your mind breaks down, your body breaks down, you never make it to the starting line. 

So the philosophy of periodization is just like our action plans, and our 12-week sprints, it’s taking a block of time and really zeroing in on a specific activity from a sports or athletic pursuit. It’s building your base, maybe 12 weeks of building based training, another 12 week period after that might be building your top end speed. 

The final 12 week sprint in building to an endurance Ironman might be you know, fine tuning your stamina, and your resiliency for race day. So you know, to put it in a different perspective, what the 12 week Sprint’s are and to your point, there’s always a month in between there where you’ve got to take a step back, reprogram if you will, wrap up the loose ends, decompress a little bit, and then assess what the next 12 weeks, Brent’s gonna do. 

So in the business world, most of you know, we live in a quarterly, everything is measured in quarters, right, your business output, your revenue, things are broken down into quarters. And that’s what makes the 12 week sprint, I think, work really well. 

And the other thing that I’ll add in is that it takes a lot of discipline. I said in the beginning, the reason that the reason not a reason, but the reason people don’t achieve their desired outcomes or get results is because they can’t stay disciplined enough to continue to act. And when you’re not acting on your business plan, your family plan. If you’re not acting, you’re what reacting and successful people never react. Successful people always act and that’s why we like the 12 week spread action.

Rob (08:41):

Yes, I think that’s a great point.

Speaker 3:

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Rob (09:12):

One of the questions that I get sometimes from advisors when we’re putting those sprints together is well, what if something new comes up that we didn’t account for in our sprints, or in our plan? The greatest thing about having that sprint in that plan setup as you can ask yourself, 

Does this new thing that has come up, have priority in getting me to where I want to go? Right? And if it does, maybe there’s an opportunity to make some substitution. But I would say nine times out of 10 that it doesn’t it’s something that you can kind of add to the list. 

We have another list kind of at the end of the action plan of things that are important, but I’m not going to do now. And so when we’re setting up our next sprint, we can always go back to that that will we don’t forget it. So that does allow for some reaction. But the need for reaction if you do this right, is small, but stuff happens.

Phil (10:15):

Yeah, the thing that just popped into my head when you were saying that Rob is, you know, my partner in crime, personally and in business, Trish, she has very keenly over the years, 15 years, we’ve been together, pointed out that I chase shiny dots, right. And a lot of advisors, a lot of entrepreneurs do this, we chase shiny dots. 

And when you were saying that I thought, you know, I need to take this knife out of my back, because that’s reactionary. So if you’re not breaking their period, you know, creating in a periodization format, your 12-week sprints, and you’re seeing that things aren’t going your way. What do most of us do? We start searching for that shiny dot. And then we’re that is very reactionary. And when you’re saying that, I thought, Ah, I just reinforced that to myself.

Rob (11:06):

Yeah, yeah. And I think that is good to admit that none of us do this. Perfectly. You know, as a, you know, someone who coaches advisors, people on sprints, I can promise you I have sloppy sprints, my sprint in the fourth quarter of last year got way off base, because I tried to do too much all at one time, and I knocked myself off path, I still end up having a great year. But it just didn’t feel as good at the end as I would have liked it to look, but at least I had somebody to measure it against, I could see my wins. And I could see the things that really challenged me and threw me off pace.

Phil (11:44):

Yeah, and I think that’s right, because we said this in the previous podcast. If you haven’t caught up with us on the dream, big sequence and goal setting, I encourage you to go back and listen to those podcasts. But one of the things that I said, is, when you’re thinking about goals, and you’re thinking about your desired outcomes, you’re going to have to go into some uncomfortable dark places. 

When you’re in the middle of a 12 week sprint, you’re going to have to be disciplined enough to get uncomfortable, that is not a natural human proclivity. And so it’s very easy just to slip right back into what is comfortable, what is normal. 

And if you do normal things, you’re gonna get normal results, you’re not going to get exceptional outcomes. So I would encourage you to listen to the previous episodes, and then think about breaking this down, right, because you don’t eat an elephant in one big, huge bite, and Gulp, you have to break it down. 

You know, it’s the same thing with weight loss, if that is one of your goals, you have to be conscious enough, the very next meal, it’s one meal at a time. It’s one workout at a time, it’s going to one of your son’s baseball games at a time. You can’t do it all at once. So focus your energy on those Sprint’s on those short wins. And then the short wins, begin to build the mid sized wins. And then ultimately the big dream, the big win. That’s the way to be thinking about it.

Rob (13:10):

Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right. In the next episode, we’ve decided we’re going to share some specific examples of things that the folks that we’re working with are trying to accomplish in their sprint. 

So if you’re looking for some more ideas, I really encourage you to come back to the next episode. And we’ll dig deeper into some examples of Sprint’s, but today, we really just wanted to tee that up and kind of tee it up in relationship to what we’ve been talking about the last couple of episodes in relationship to the blueprint, I’ll just pop that up on the screen. Just to reference it one more time, I really encourage you to go to the show notes, get a copy of the blueprint, you can download it so you can follow along and get a copy there also have a blank TFAP. 

So if you want to start using our tool for the planning and your businesses, they’re there for you to borrow. Of course, if you want to learn more about how you might work with us and putting that together, of course, feel free to reach out. 

But this stage or the step in the blueprint is what we call building your game plan. It’s the fourth step, there’s a method to this madness, because one of the things we’ll talk about and we talk about sprinting is one area that I have a number of clients working in right now is building what we call their signature solution. It’s the anchor to their marketing. And it’s a perfect example of something to work on inside of a sprint. 

And it’s also part of building tools that you can use to grow, attract and retain your business. So it really kind of helps bring it together in the truest fan. Blueprint is my best example of a signature solution because it’s the signature solutions the process that we use in our practice.

Phil (14:56):

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more I think when you first introduce my practice my business to that signature solution for five years ago, I think it really for the first time put into perspective, how I was able to get from point A to point B. And you know, point A to point B is never a straight line, there’s going to be some type of progression, there’s going to be some type of maze that we all have to go through. 

But I think in my own practice, I think back to what you said, it gave me a systematized, consistent, accurate way to explain to clients what it is we do, how we do it, and more importantly, why we do it and why we believe getting from point A to point B is getting from, you know, the point of uncertainty and for us chaos in our financial life, to a position of clarity and confidence and purpose. And that can be drawn into any pursuit. And I think it’s a good thing to consider. 

But the biggest thing I would say, in the TFAP in action planning is that there’s the third letter, the A, it’s taking action, that’s uncomfortable for most of us. And if we don’t do it, then we’re going to slip, you know, right, it’s doing the same old things and expecting greater and greater results. That’s the definition of insanity. It’s not going to happen for people that way.

Rob (16:20):

Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And I think that does really kind of tie things together, you know, for this conversation, because as we came on, on the air to record the podcasts, we said, you know, it’s really critical for us as we’re going through this sequence to give you the listeners an opportunity to see our process in action. 

And the two best ways to think about that are what’s your blueprint, what’s your process for helping your clients get from point A to point B, we’re going to dig into that more in the next podcast. But to begin by saying, What is your sprint look like? What’s really most important for you to do right now? And is it based on your dreams and your goals and your desire to really accomplish your most important goals and put those to work inside of a sprint? So I think that, that brings it together. Phil, anything else you’d like to add? Here at the end?

Phil (17:19):

No, I would just encourage you, if you haven’t seen it, get the truest fan action plan, get the TFAP, you can download it in the show notes. If you have questions, shoot us an email. That’s why we’d be happy to coach you up on it a little bit. I think if you start thinking in terms of short sprint, actionable activity, you’re gonna see much greater results,

Rob (17:39):

your goals and your dreams are gonna come to life in surprising ways. And I find faster than you thought possible. You know, I think that’s one of the you know, one of the comments I get from people who go through this process is say, why didn’t I start this years ago? Because I’d be so much further ahead. But I don’t want to. I’ve got a great example of that. But I’m going to tease it here and say, we’re gonna talk about that during the next episode. 

So Phil, let’s let’s sign off here. 

Phil (18:10):

They better tune in the next one, then. 

Rob (18:12):

That’s right. Absolutely. Thanks, everybody, for listening in. Let us know how we’re doing. There’s an opportunity to rate the show on your favourite podcast player. Please do it. Give us five stars so we can keep this going and know that we’re doing a great job. But most importantly, as we like to say we’re rooting for your success, and we are your truest fans.