The Simplicity Trap: Unraveling the Illusion of Easy

Rob Brown  0:00  

That behavioral part of what they’re doing is allowing the simple process that you’ve put in place for them through their plan, and just sticking with that simple discipline, and ignoring the complications that come. So, simplicity and easy, really is something that takes some time to think about. But when you identify it, it can make all the difference in the world and whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish. 

Phil Calandra  0:34  

You should be looking for the ways that you can make your business, your life, your work with clients simpler. But please recognize that that does not mean it’s easy. It is going to be complex. Just use the clues, use the roadmaps, use the framework, look for things that can help make the path of least resistance for you.

Rob Brown  1:02  

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. It’s time once again for The Truest Fan Blueprint. Rob Brown with my partner, and co host, Phil Calandra here. Welcome to the podcast, Phil. 

Phil Calandra  1:48  

Hey, Rob, good to be with you, as always.

Rob Brown  1:52  

Well, as we threatened in the last podcast, we want to talk about simplicity today. When we were talking in last week’s episode about comparison being a thief of joy, the idea of simplicity, and how being simple or simplicity, and being easy aren’t the same things. And as Phil and I got talking about this episode and that idea, we thought it was really important because we come across this all the time. And sometimes people get really angry when we suggest to them that we want to make what they’re doing simpler. And I think it’s because there’s a lot of noise out there, especially like you’re scrolling your Facebook or your LinkedIn feed and this program is for sale. And it says, you know, we’re gonna make, you know, the hardest thing you’ve ever thought of doing simple. And you’re like, BS to that. That just is not the way that it works. But then, when Phil and I start, we realise, you know, that’s a big part of what we do when we’re working with people. We’re trying to help them simplify their businesses, create simple steps, simple plans, so that they can get to where they want to go. But it doesn’t mean that there’s not going to be work involved. It doesn’t mean that it’s going to be easy. Simple and easy are two different words that mean two completely different things. I think I’ve got that right, Phil.

Phil Calandra  3:29  

I think you nailed it. And you’ve seen this quote, “Simple but not easy.” Warren Buffett used those terms when he said investing is simple but not easy. You have the Arnold Palmer quote, right, about golf, I think.

Rob Brown  3:49  

Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated. Right? So and depending on how your golf game or how your last round of golf went, you could feel either side of that.

Phil Calandra  4:02  

Yeah, so this idea that things can be simple but not easy because they’re complex is absolutely true. So if we’re an entrepreneur, if we’re a business leader, a firm owner, financial advisor, how do we then break this apart so that we make our business our life simpler, go for simplicity, recognising that it’s not easy. One of the things that came to my mind is when I graduated college 100 years ago, I had a fraternity brother that went to work for one of the major brokerage houses. I went to the corporate side of the world, but he went into one of those major brokerage houses. And that was back in the day before the Do Not Call list. And it was very simple for him to make it as a stockbroker. This is in 1989, 90. It was simple, they gave him a list. have potential clients. And they said, Here’s the phone, it was probably a rotary phone. A lot of people don’t even know, you put your finger in the hole and you spun it around. And he made about 500 calls a day. Pretty simple. That’s the business plan. But damn, that is not easy. Most people couldn’t do that for 15 minutes, let alone eight hours. And my friend, he absolutely did it. And he’s a multi multi seven figure earner with one of the biggest Wall Street firms. But he did it. It was simple. The training manual instructions were simple. But it was not easy. And you could go on and on like this of all the different examples of simple but not easy. So what we try and do in our coaching, and what you should be, those of you listening to our voices, are watching this on YouTube today, you should be looking for the ways that you can make your business, your life, your work with clients simpler. But please, please recognise that that does not mean it’s easy. It is going to be complex. Just use the clues, use the roadmaps, use the frameworks, use the you know, go to the truest fan coaching website, look at the round table, look for things that can help make the path of least resistance for you. That’s how you get to simplicity. And then the last thing I’ll say, Rob, when I think of that is it’s our human nature. It’s the way God made us, to make things overly complex. That’s why Warren Buffett said investing is simple, but not easy. The reason it’s not easy is because your own human intellect, your human nature has failed as an investor, yeah, hard for people to recognise that.

Rob Brown  6:48  

Yeah, because in, so there are really kind of two steps in this, Phil. It’s like identifying how to simplify something, and then how to act on it. You know, if you go back to your example of your Wall Street friend, making all those dials, and I did that, too, back in the early 80s. I think we had to use pigeons or something. We didn’t use rotary phones. But anyway, you just made those dials. That was hard work. But I was talking with a client of ours the other day, and we were talking about how he got his business started. And he didn’t do cold calling, he did cold walking. And his goal was to come up with 25 prospects a day, going office to office or door to door, but he said, You know, I didn’t mind doing it because the person who was mentoring me pointed out that if he got those 25 leads and did it, you know, four weeks a month, for three months, he’d end up with, you know, hundreds of leads, at the end of three months, that he could then work from there to build his business and wouldn’t need to go out and do the same volume of cold walking and cold knocking. So there was a means, he saw it as a means to an end. And he has clients, you know, 20 years later that he met in some of those original cold walks in Knox. And, but that three months’ worth of simplifying and activity, sticking to it even though it wasn’t easy, made all the difference in his business. And Phil, you see this, and as you think about that Buffett quote and taking, you know, that out a bit further, you know that in the work that you do, because you’re still working with investment clients and planning clients on a daily basis, that the number one biggest obstacle to your clients achieving their goals is that behavioural part of what they’re doing is getting, allowing the simple process that you’ve put in place for them through their investment portfolio, through their plan, and just sticking with that. That’s simple discipline. Yeah. And ignoring the complications that come from what’s the noise in the news, the talking heads on CNBC. Yeah. So simplicity and easy, really is something that takes some time to think about, but when you identify it, you can make all the difference in the world and whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish.

Phil Calandra  9:38   

Yeah. And I think one of the things that you and I were talking about in prepping for the podcast, and yes, folks, we actually do spend some time prepping, that’s not always winging it. One of the things we were talking about Rob was this, kind of this culture, kind of this state of affairs, this kind of state of being that we exist in today in the year 2024. And we’re looking for simple, I’d say that generally speaking, people look for the path of least resistance, dare say that they’re lazy. I’m not going to talk about millennials or Gen Z. My sons fall into that category, your daughter’s. They’re looking for simpler, they’re looking for this easier way. But they didn’t make the connection, that that’s kind of a human fault. What I consider laziness, I mean, if you want the success, then you got to do the work. You’re gonna have to figure that out. Some people figure that out at young ages, and some of us never figure it out. But I think it’s kind of this world that we live in, we want everything to be simple. And I dare say that some things in life have always been simple. You were talking about investing and working with clients. I think investing is really simple. Achieving your most cherished financial goals when I work with clients, if they trust the planning process, and they trust me to be their wealth strategist, they’re going to achieve financial outcomes. I don’t claim that their investments are going to outperform anybody else’s investments, but them as an investor will outperform the vast majority of people, because as Warren Buffett said, investing is simple, not easy. And to me, that speaks clearly to behaviour. It’s up here, it’s in the way we view things. And that correlation is to young people. It’s simple. It’s simple. It’s just not easy. And you better not be lazy thinking that it’s simple. Two different things. 

Rob Brown  11:41  

Right. Yeah. And that’s maybe, you know, just the way that you were describing that, Phil, is why these two terms can be so complicated, because we can just talk about them together. And what we’re encouraging is the simplicity of discipline, as you approach different endeavours, whether it’s your investment portfolio, whether it’s growing your business, or growing your family, we’re not talking about the simple that is easy. And I think that’s the cultural thing that you were describing is, I almost wanted you to leave the word simple out. Yeah. Because the mindset can be, and I don’t think it’s a generational thing. Because there are plenty of people of my generation, who I see and have seen do the same thing. They’re looking for the easy, they’re looking for the easy way out, they’re looking for the easy button. And that’s the thing that is so different. And that’s one of the things that we really want to encourage through the coaching work that we do, the mentoring that we do, the things that we write about is, what is it you really want? And how can you simplify your path to get there, and in simplifying that path, you’re creating discipline, you’re creating steps, you’re creating processes, that may not be easy, some of them might be really painful, like making 500 cold calls. And yeah, you’ve got to say, well, that’s okay. Because that simple activity, it’s like, you know, and I probably shouldn’t be speaking this way, because I need to lose a few pounds myself. But you know, most diets are simple. You know, it’s just like, eat three good meals a day and avoid these things and only eat these things. Yep. Simple instructions. But yeah, there’s the discipline behind doing that. That is not always easy. But if you stick to it, you’re gonna get the results that you need. 

Phil Calandra  13:46  

Yeah, the diet example. I mean, most people that know me know, kind of my trajectory as an endurance athlete. And I tell these stories, because it just helped me be immeasurably more successful. When I remember back in 1996, I was a few years out of college and a few pounds over the weight that I was in college.

Rob Brown  14:09  

I saw the picture, I saw the picture …

Phil Calandra  14:11  

And I couldn’t run a 5k, I couldn’t even run a mile. And I wanted to run a marathon. I ran my first marathon in 1997. And I was the typical, you know, couch to 5k, and then 5k to marathon. And how do you do that? Well, it sounds really simple. It’s only 26.2 miles of running, about four hours for most people. But damn, it was hard if you can’t even run a mile without being winded and carrying an extra 20, 30 pounds. Then fast forward that over a number of successive years of training and getting the passion of endurance sports, go from 26.2 miles to a full Ironman, which is only, the marathon is only 1/3 of the event. And people would say to me all the time, that’s impossible. How could you do that? I could never do that. And after I had completed my first full Ironman, my response was yes, you can. It is simple. It has been proven to be simple. Follow these steps, don’t make these mistakes. It’s not going to be easy. You know, that’s the whole thesis there. Rob. That’s the whole thing. That’s what we talked about in the roundtable. That’s what we kind of talked about in the last podcast. And now we’re bringing it back full circle. Look for those areas in your life. It could be diet, you don’t have to be a marathoner, it could be with your kids, it could be with your church, this type of thinking, and thought and process, it will improve your life.

Rob Brown  15:54  

Oh, absolutely. And I was just thinking about a really simple business example. So speaking of simple, here’s a simple business example. You know, I believe very strongly that our clients get their best and biggest clients through referrals and introductions, right. But there’s a lot of noise out there that says referrals don’t work. But I could prove it does work time and time again. What doesn’t work when it comes to referrals, is not having a simple process for getting them. And I was working with a client a few years ago, who was struggling with growing his business, was struggling with getting referrals. And we came up with the simple idea that he was holding five client review meetings every week. So 20 a month, 60 over the course of three months. He committed to having a professional, elegant referral conversation during each of those 60 meetings. He walked away with more than 100 referrals. And by the end of the following quarter, he had hit his goal for growing his business for the whole year. Just took a simple idea, right? Did something that wasn’t easy, because he wasn’t comfortable with that referral conversation. He wasn’t making it part of these meetings that he was already having. So another great example of saying, I’ve got something that I want to do. I know a simple way to get there. I just need to create the discipline, the pattern to do that. And that’s something that, you know, we could probably come up with dozens of examples on …

Phil Calandra  17:42  

Yeah, I’m sitting here thinking of dozens.

Rob Brown  17:47  

Yeah. It’s because we do that every day. I mean, when we’re working with our clients, that’s what we’re doing. We’re saying, Okay, let’s figure out what it is you really want. How do we simplify it? And then what’s the discipline that goes with that simplification that makes it happen? So that’s what, as we close out this podcast, that’s what I want to encourage our listeners to do. What is it that you’re really trying to accomplish over the next few months? You know, in our coaching work, we call it The Three-Month Period of Time, we use a tool called The Truest Fan Action Plan. And we take that action plan and we come up with the simplest strategies to get towards the most important things that you’re trying to do over the course of a 90-day period of time, knowing that that will successively help you grow faster. So if you’re listening to this podcast, think about what is it that you’re really going after that you can simplify and create discipline steps to get there. If you need some help with that, go to truestfan. coaching.com. And you can join the roundtable. It’s a new roundtable. First two weeks are free. It’ll actually help you identify simple strategies that you can use in your business that will get you to where you want to go. All right. And with that, Phil, let’s sign off and let everybody know that we’re rooting for your success. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining us for this episode of The Truest Fan Blueprint. If you want to learn more, head over to our website, truest fan.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.