Episode 4 – William – Financial Advisor – Call 2: Pillar Review and CAP Creation

Simplify Your Strategy – Magnify Your Results Podcast

On each episode Brian Margolis helps entrepreneurs, sales pros and other professionals create a simple weekly strategy using The Pillar System. A system that's helped multiple individuals become 7 figure earners and is licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to help their teams grow through simplification Some episodes have a 2nd part where Brian helps guests review and refine their initial pillars and solidify the CAP strategies they can use to turn pillar execution into a habit.

Listen as we review and refine William’s initial pillars and help him solidify the CAP strategies he should be using to turn pillar execution into a habit.

To hear other episodes go to https://productivitygiant.com/simplify-your-strategy-magnify-your-results-podcast/

Transcript

Brian Margolis (00:00):

This is Brian Margolis and welcome to the simplify, your strategy, magnify your results podcast. We're on each episode, I use the pillar system to help a sales pro entrepreneur or other results based professional, create a weekly strategy to run a simple, more lucrative business strategy. So simple. It can fit on an index card, but so powerful. It's actually helped create multiple seven figure earners and is now licensed by some of the largest companies in the world to create strategies for their teams. If you'd like a free copy of my book on exactly how to do this, or want to be considered as a guest on a future episode, head on over to productivity, giant.com. Enjoy the episode. Okay. So we're good. We're set. And tell me what's been going on since the last time we talked about a month ago.

William (00:51):

Yeah. That's a wow.

Brian Margolis (00:55):

It's important to this program.

William (00:57):

Absolutely. That's funny. I told my better half this morning. I said, I'm this, I'm going to tell Brian all the honest, every honest thing that can happen. And she said, that's the only way to do it. So execution has been poor. But what I found was that the things that I kept trying to consistently do, which was the pillars has produced positive outcomes. So I'm very, very happy and excited knowing that if I push it even further to complete my pillars, that I will even see, see more success. And it's exciting for not only myself, but my assistant.

Brian Margolis (01:42):

Okay. So let's, let's clarify that. Dive in a little more. So you're not hitting your pillars consistently, correct? Well, you're hitting some of them. Yes. Okay. And the ones you are hitting, you're feeling like there's already some small wins, you can feel an impact. Absolutely. Okay. Let's, let's just, I just want to review for the recording, what those pillars are and make sure you and I are on the same page. And then let's talk about which ones you're hitting, which ones you're not hitting, or if it's some kind of mix. Okay. Okay. So the first pillar was reviewing your opera, shoot, excuse me, reviewing your opportunity sheet twice a week. That was kind of your followup pillar, right? Right. Ask for one introduction a week, you know, for referrals. Yep. Send three and STS 30 minutes a week of messaging. Okay. Both input and output. That means everything from referral scripts to getting in the door to when you're meeting with people, et cetera. Yes. One hour of marketing research, just spending one hour a week learning what other, what other advisors are doing in terms of, you know, bringing new clients in the door.

Brian Margolis (03:10):

The next one was planning your week. Right. Right. You had to cross that off three hours of door knocking and you had to reach out to one center of influence a week.

William (03:24):

That's what I got.

Brian Margolis (03:25):

Okay. Are there certain ones that you're not hitting and other ones you're hitting more consistently or is it a mixed bag?

William (03:36):

Yeah, I'd say it's a mixed bag. Okay.

Brian Margolis (03:41):

Are there ones that you're always hitting or ones that you're never hitting at this point?

William (03:45):

Actually there are ones that I'm always hitting. And it seems to be the easiest ones not surprising. Right. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So and so yeah, that mixed bag is definitely I kind of pick and choose. What's easy to get done. And I looked at, look at my week and say, well, I can get that done and I can get that done. So it's, it's been an interesting month. I could tell you that. So I want to really narrow it down to, to being more consistent. That's a huge word that you used. And I know my effectiveness is there.

Brian Margolis (04:30):

All right. But, so, so you're, again, I just want to get absolute clarity here. There's not specific pillars that you tend to hit each week since you started every week. Some feel easier than others.

William (04:43):

Well, definitely the one center of influence per week that was really easy to hit. So the which one? I'm sorry, the center of influence. Just one centered influence per week. Right. And the ask for one referral and definitely planning for the week. So those have been really consistent. My messaging as well. Since I'm a lifelong learner, I'm sticking to this messaging that I'm learning. But DNS Ts, the other ones are a little bit scattered.

Brian Margolis (05:23):

Okay. So the NS, the DNS Ts, the reviewing your opportunity sheet, the marketing research, all that. Okay. So let me ask you this question, then there's usually two reasons you're not hitting your pillars, right? One of two major reasons, number one, you're not actually allotting and protecting the time, right? Correct. So you have not given yourself the time, blocked it out. It's preferably in the first part of the day. And then you're actually, if you are blocking it out, you know, you're not protecting it. Right. So basically the first reason you wouldn't hit your pillars, you don't have the time because you're not blocking it. You're not protecting it. The second part is you are blocking and protecting the time. But when you sit down to actually execute on your pillars, you're getting distracted. You're going on to other things. You're letting other things jump in the way. Cause maybe you're having trouble concentrating and you're looking for excuses not to do them. So is it one, is it two? Is it both?

William (06:30):

It started off as both, but it ended up later in the month. So the last couple of weeks have been number two. I'm not protecting it.

Brian Margolis (06:39):

Well, no, no, not there's there's block. There's blocking it out and protecting it. That's the first reason the actual slots are there. The second reason is you have three hours in the morning, three times a week to do it. But during that three hours, when you start on it, you wind up procrastinating getting distracted, whatever.

William (06:59):

And that's, that's it right there is the distraction.

Brian Margolis (07:03):

So there's a number of cap strategies that, that we can implement, right? To me that, without a doubt, the easiest one, the most powerful one based on what you're saying is the cap strategy of time, blocking and routine. Okay. Meaning you've got to protect the first few hours of every day or some days. All right. And that's when you hit your pillars every day, meaning there's a few ways. What time do you generally, let me ask it this way. What time do you generally start in the morning?

William (07:52):

I'm in the office no later than eight 15. But I'm up at five every morning. Kind of looking over stuff.

Brian Margolis (08:01):

Well, but, but you don't get, you don't start working till eight 15,

William (08:04):

Correct? Yeah. Yeah. I got a long commute, so, okay.

Brian Margolis (08:08):

So let's just call it eight 30. Alright. Let's just call it eight 30 for now. So when do you do, when do you tend to schedule client meetings? Do you have a timeframe or it's just whenever they come, do you do them in bunches?

William (08:29):

I was in bunches, I would say to the my assistant, get them on the books. These are the times that I'm available and these, every other week I stay until at least seven at night. So if there's folks that can't get it in there during the day, we can at least get them in at night. But I gave her free reign on that, which kind of was a, it didn't help with my time blocking. Cause she was able to, just to go over what I was trying to achieve, which was blocking out that those times. So right.

Brian Margolis (09:07):

So to me, okay, here, here, here's what Parkinson's law basically says. Parkinson's law says your, your task will expand to fit the time you give yourself to do.

William (09:21):

Okay. Okay.

Brian Margolis (09:22):

It's the reason that, you know, the day before a vacation, when you have a flight the next day, it's amazing what you can get done because you have to get it done by the next day, right? Yeah. Cause your flights leaving. If you, if your flight was until the previous evening, you wouldn't get it all done the day before. You'd probably actually do it that day. Right. My point is, does that make sense? You, you you've experienced this, I'm living in it right now. So whether you're in the office on your non alternate week, what time do you tend to leave the office?

William (09:55):

Between four 30 and five. Okay. Let's just call it five for a second. Okay.

Brian Margolis (09:59):

Whether you're, whether you work from eight 15 to five or you work from 11 to five, I'm telling you you're going to get all the same stuff done. I know that's hard to believe, but I see it over and over and over. We just lived at this week. Yeah. And so he, so w the easiest, the, the simple, I won't, the easiest, the simplest thing to do is let's get a routine based on this law. And here's what the routine says, basically from once your meeting start, do you tend to go meeting, to meeting, to meeting? Do you have long breaks or it depends.

William (10:38):

Yeah, it depends. Okay.

Brian Margolis (10:41):

I, this is what I would do. If I was you, I would block out four days a week. Do you ever have clients who just absolutely have to meet in the morning?

William (10:53):

No. No.

Brian Margolis (10:55):

And that's usually not the case. Right? Right. So here's the way I would do it. I would block out every day from eight 30 to 11, or if you want to start out with just eight 30 to 10 30, that's fine too. Right. Eight 30 to 10 30. And then your first meeting can be at 11,

William (11:18):

If you want it to be all right. Okay.

Brian Margolis (11:22):

Just by habit. And by the way, when I say block it out, I mean, in your calendar, okay. In your calendar every single day, it's booked til 11 or 10 30, whatever time you decide,

William (11:37):

Right. It's a book. Now,

Brian Margolis (11:40):

If you want to say, well, there are certain mornings I want to do this or this. You can do it four days a week for three hours. Right. But, but what I'm getting at here is you, when you get the office in the morning, okay, you basically need to do two things. You need to plan your day, and then you need to spend the rest of that time until your first meeting, working that plan. Alright, methodically. So for example, on Monday, all right. On Monday, you might be, and it's in my book, the whole planning your day. And it's going to be part of, of this product, the planning your day. But let's say on a Monday, you plan your day and on the left column, right? In your priority column, you say, okay, if you know, if there's only one thing I could get done today, number one would be, you know, send my three and STS, right?

Brian Margolis (12:42):

Number two, review my opportunity sheet one time. And number three is one hour of marketing research, right? Let's just, you know, again, I'm just saying that. So once you've planned your day, the first thing you do is you work, you work on your MSTs. Now here's the discipline. I don't want you to get distracted. I'll want you working in airplane mode. Does that make sense? Absolutely. I don't want your phone, your email on and all that stuff. Okay. I want you to send those three MSTs and even though you might say, Oh, it should only take me, you know, 45 minutes to do that or something. If it takes you an hour and a half, because you get distracted or whatever. So be it. But here's the rule. You do not start on the second thing until you're done the first thing you've got to start training your mind to start something and finish it.

Brian Margolis (13:39):

Right? So the point is you have now from eight 30 to 10 30, after you plan your day to basically do three things, to knock out your MSTs, review your opportunity sheet one time a week and do whatever you need to do from that. And then do your one hour of marketing research. Right? Right. And the idea is even if after the MSTs, your whole entire day falls apart, the roof floods, your kid has to be picked up from school, whatever it doesn't matter, because you said that's the most important thing I have to do that day. Right? I promise you if you do that, once 11 o'clock hits or whatever time you're going to stop your first meeting, all the other crap is going to happen. The fires are going to happen. The back and forth, the emails are going to be flying, whatever. All right, you're going to deal with all that. And when you're done at five o'clock, you'll be done at five o'clock.

Brian Margolis (14:36):

I know it sounds so stupid, simple what I'm saying, but you know, there's this book called tools of Titans by Tim Ferris and another one called a tribe of mentors. And it's basically two huge volumes of him interviewing the most successful people in the world. And what's crazy. Is this the one pattern I just saw with successful people? Not ever all of them, but a pattern. Number one, a lot of them have some practice, some form of meditation, which in a way doesn't actually surprise me because all meditation is, is learning how to concentrate, right? So they're probably good at focusing on a task and finishing it. But the second one is all successful. People control the first part of their day. You know, you have CEOs that work for two hours at home before they go into the office, you got all successful people control the first part of their day.

Brian Margolis (15:30):

Okay. And once you've come, once you come on this side, William, you'll never go back. Alright. You'll never go back. I protect seven o'clock to 10 o'clock every single solitary day. It's not even an option. And it's like, I'm golfing. I'm in airplane mode. I must will be on an airplane. Right. Just will be on an airplane. At that point. I work on my first thing. I take a little break. I work on the second thing. I take a little break sometimes on those breaks. I'll check my email real quick, but I know I'm going right back to that next thing. Does that make sense? So you, you can't you know, and then maybe I've said this before, but you can't get back on track. And like, unless you actually have a track right now, once 10 30 hits or 11, and you actually start your day, you start doing appointments and returning calls and checking your email and all that kind of stuff. When you have breaks in your day, right. Between meetings and stuff, you know exactly where to go next. It makes sense. You might not want to go there, but you know exactly what has to be done next. And so your most productive days are very slow and they're very intentional and they're very methodical. Right.

Brian Margolis (16:52):

All right. So in terms of protecting your day, do you see any reason why you can't protect eight 30 to 10 30 for the entire, you know, basically ongoing. I mean, I would do it for the next year. I'd put an automatic thing in my calendar. I don't see any problem with protecting it. In fact, that's kind of what my assistant wants as well. Right. Okay. So now once you're in, so, so that's number one. And by the way, it's kind of like two steps forward. One step back, you're going to get distracted. Things are going to happen. That's okay. Bounce back. Maybe one day blows up on you and it shouldn't have, and you're mad at yourself for letting it that's all right. Do it the next day. Do it the next day. Right. Right. And then again, and now it's up to you. I don't know how many appointments you actually have, but if it's so tight that you have so many appointments, then you could say, all right, well, Wednesday is my door knocking day or my out and about day or whatever. So that morning I'm not, you know, I'll do my appointments in the morning or something. Right, right, right. But here, here, here's what I really want to say. The decision you don't want to have to decide each day, the decision should already be made for you make, make sense.

William (18:17):

Not really as far as, yeah. Can you explain that

Brian Margolis (18:20):

Decision? Meaning when someone calls you and says, Oh, that's great. Can we do nine 30? There's no decision to be made. Decisions have been made. No, I can't. How's 10 30. How's 11. Right, right. You don't have to decide each day. Okay. What do I want to do? First? You plan your day. The first thing you do. And by the way, if you want to check your email, first thing in the morning, in order to help plan your day, like, did anything come in since last night that's urgent or whatever, or that I need to know, that's fine. But that doesn't mean you have to go through all your email. You just need to open it enough to sort through it and see if there's anything that, you know, affects planning your day. Right. Correct. That doesn't, you know, so, you know, time yourself, if it becomes an issue, but do not let it send you down. So use your email plan your day. All right. Just like I talk about in the book, just like I'm going to be talking about on this product plan, your day, using that system, or some other system from eight 30 to 10 30, go to work. And if you're not working on the next thing, then you should be staring at a blank screen or taking a break or walking around the block, but you should not be doing other stuff. You should not be answering your phone, things like that. Right. Correct.

William (19:34):

Okay.

Brian Margolis (19:37):

Any questions on that? Any, any honestly, re realistically, do you see anything keeping you from doing that?

William (19:43):

Yeah, no. I mean, just going off topic here it's kind of ironic because both my assistant and my significant other think I have add, because I cannot finish one task. Right. And, and lists and everything. So it's, [inaudible] right. It's, it's stupidly simple and it's, and so, but 

Brian Margolis (20:14):

Let me, let me be very clear about something. First of all, I'm not, I don't want to trivialize people who actually have add and ADHD, and I don't actually claim to understand all that. I'm not a doctor. Right. But eight out of 10 of my clients at some point will tell me they have add no, no, seriously. It's rare that a client at some point, doesn't tell me that, because here's what I've really diagnosed you as I've diagnosed you as human. All right. Okay. You being that and having the ability to concentrate on something and then finish it, that's actually the norm, not the exception, just so we're a hundred percent clear. That is the normal more so in these times than ever with all the beeps and buzzes and all that stuff, right. Our attention span. That's, that's why I just got done telling you the most successful people in the world, basically practice concentrating. Cause you can actually get better at concentrating and they control the first part of their day.

Brian Margolis (21:20):

Right? Yeah. And so, although this is simple, I don't sit here and claim that what I'm asking you to do is easy, but it's not as hard as you think. You just need to think of your day as slow and methodical. And all you gotta do is follow the one simple rule. Once you've planned your day, you do not start. The second thing until you finish the first, you do not start the third thing until you finish the second you're you're working with a very relaxed intensity. Okay. Well that would feel better than what I'm working with right now. Correct. And by the way, I know if these we've identified these as the most important things, all right. But you have to do every, let me tell you something, the parts you're good at are the parts everyone's good at. Everyone can pick up the phone.

Brian Margolis (22:12):

Anyone can deal with something that's urgent and significant. Everyone shows up for their client meetings. Right? Everyone checks their email. Like that's the easy stuff. The stuff that separates people from the pack, Jared noticed the most successful people tend to look like they do the least like, yeah. I mean, it's some of the, you know, I've, I've been around some guys who are worth tons and tons of money. Right. And sometimes you don't understand. You're like, how does this guy get dressed in the morning? Like they're so aloof, their attention to detail is terrible. They piss people off. Right? They they're, I don't want to say they're always late to stuff, but you know, they're late to things or they forget about things or someone else is always like putting out the fires for them. Cause the stuff they've created are not worried about. Right.

Brian Margolis (23:07):

And that's why a lot of them need assistance and things like that. And that's fine. But the reason a lot of those kinds of people are so successful is because they tend to focus on the important things. They don't need to cross every T and dot every I, right. They don't get paid for efficiency. They get paid for in their, whatever their field is doing the important things. Right? Yeah. So, so it's kind of like that, but you need to borrow a little something from that. People tell me all the time they're unorganized. And I tell them, you know, being unorganized in and of itself is not a problem. You can be very unorganized and be successful. Okay. It's what is being unorganized, actually keep you from doing, that's the problem. If it keeps you from doing, you know, your pillars are the most important things, right. Then there's an issue.

William (23:58):

And I, and that's where I'm at. I mean, that's it right there is that trying to create that, that organized tasks it never flows. And so I'm glad we're talking about this right now.

Brian Margolis (24:13):

Well, listen, this is, I mean, there's a lot of cap strategies we can talk about, but to me, this one will solve 90% of the problem. Right? Okay. This one will solve 90% of the problem. And I'm telling you, you need to get to the point where if you're working during that again, are you thinking you're going to block two 11 or 10 30? What are you thinking?

William (24:37):

You know, I haven't really thought about it. I mean, I'd like to say 10 30, cause I want more of my day to do other things.

Brian Margolis (24:47):

Well, the, okay, well that's fine. So we'll start at 10 30 and see how that works.

William (24:50):

Actually, the ones that are marketing, I mean, I haven't done any of the marketing.

Brian Margolis (24:56):

No, you're, you're saying 10th. I'm saying from eight 30 to 10 30, that is when you work on your pillars and your proactive things. Right.

William (25:04):

Well, yeah. That's and that's what I'm saying is like maybe I shouldn't even use that extra half hour till 11.

Brian Margolis (25:10):

Well that's right. So, so why don't you do this? Just, just go to 11. Yeah. See, let like me, for example. And I can only speak for myself, but by 10 o'clock most days, if, if again, my, my roof flooded or everything stopped and I had to cancel all my clients for that day. I pretty much got the most important things done once 10 o'clock starts. I don't care. At that point, I'll go back to back to back with clients. It doesn't, you know, that's just something that's more of a time management scheduling thing. Right. And I can, you know, I'll just go, I'll just get after it that day and things can get crazy. But no matter how crazy they get it doesn't matter. Cause I did the most important things that move the needle that day. Right?

William (25:56):

Yeah. This kind of feels

Brian Margolis (25:58):

It's like, you have to be the CEO and you have to be the person who executes. Right. You have to be the employer and the employee from eight 30 to 11, you need to build your business, do the important things, right. From 11 o'clock. You need to start working in your business, actually executing on the things that your pillars, et cetera have, have given you like scheduled calls and all that. Yeah.

William (26:27):

You're taking me out of my element psychologically because you think that you have all these other important tasks to get done, but I can see the relevance of getting these pillars completed within that time block in the morning. And it's, it's

Brian Margolis (26:44):

Natural and it's not always just pillars. Right? For example, like for me again, my seven to 10 year, eight 30 to 11, I have my, my pillars are inside of there. Right. But there's some days where I might have to, for example, create slides for a presentation. Right. I make that decision every day. I look at my weekly index card. I look at my to do list, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And I go, okay, if I can only get one thing done today, if I can only get two, if I can only get three. And sometimes those things are pillars and sometimes they're not pillars. Right. But they're definitely proactive things. There are things that I need to focus on or else it's gonna, you know, it's going to come back and bite me so to speak. Right. Right. And so, and by the way, the other thing I'll put in there and you read about these in the book are the flash hours.

Brian Margolis (27:36):

Meaning when you, when you operate this way and you should, a lot of little things start building up, right. A lot of little things start building up. So when those, the build up to the point where it's actually straining you, you can have like the third, most important thing you do that day, a flash hour, meaning you set your clock for 60 minutes and then you just attack your to do list all the little stuff, go email. This person respond to that book, my travel. And in that concentrated hour, it's amazing what you can knock out. Right? Yeah. So I don't, I don't want you to think that it has to be all pillars in that time it's going to be heavy on pillars. And then the second thing is, I don't want you to think you can't work on this stuff after 11 o'clock when there's downtime or when you have a gap or someone cancels, you know, I'm sure you've had clients cancel on you, right? Yeah. Yeah. Probably happens pretty often. Okay. Well, most people's responses. Oh, the client canceled and they check their email looking for instructions on what to do next. Right, right. And no, you know what to do next it's, you know, it's the thing you haven't crossed off yet.

William (28:47):

I think psychologically, this is just going to help me go throughout my day when I can get a lot of the most important work that significant work done early. I, cause I know when we talk about pillars, we're talking, you know, executing them throughout the week, but I like to break it down and say, well, if I can get these done today, so I'll get my three SSTs done on Wednesday. I can do my door knocking on Monday. I just I'm all over the board that way. And this is just going to, this is going to be literally the, make your bed kind of deal and and get it done every morning. So that consistency right there is going to help me psychologically complete my days.

Brian Margolis (29:32):

So now let's talk about now it's eight 30. You've planned your day, right? You maybe you took from eight, 15, eight 30, you plan your whatever. Now it's time

Speaker 3 (29:42):

To start executing. There is like you said, the other problem was trouble concentrating. Right, right. Procrastinating, all that kind of stuff. And so let's talk about some cap strategies inside of that. Right. And one of those calves strategies, which sometimes makes people laugh. But tell me if this will help you is to change your mood. Right. Meaning, you know, if you're going to be working from eight 30 to nine 30 on something, let's just call it an hour. Right. If you're really not in the mood to do it, you're really having trouble getting started. Cause that's usually what it is. It's more about getting started, right. Once you're kind of inaction action, tense action, usually proceeds motivation. It's not always the other way around. And so you're better off. I think you would agree instead of fighting through it for an hour and struggling having 45 minutes of getting after it.

Speaker 3 (30:45):

Right. Yeah. And so what I suggest to people is change your mood. And what I mean by that is, and that's different for everybody. But like for me, there are certain trainings on YouTube, certain trainers that just get me in the right mindset, right. To get after it. So you should have those linked or you should know who those people are. I'd rather you watch a motivational training or an informative training or just someone who puts you in that mode. I'd rather have you watch that for 15 minutes during that time. And then when you kind of feel like you're ready then get after it. Right. If there's certain music, play music for awhile, right. Walk around, play some music, do whatever you gotta, you know what I mean? Yeah. For some people it's talking, you know, there's certain people like I have a partner, a PG partner, I call them.

Speaker 3 (31:36):

Right. That usually when I talk to that person, I cannot get off the phone without wanting to get back to work. Right. Cause we talk as if we're talking about getting stuff done and all that kind of stuff. Right. Crushing it and different things. You know, sometimes for some people is just getting out of the office walking or whatever it is, but change your mood. I mean, everyone always knows that the body controls the mind, the mind actually influenced or sorry, the body actually influences the mind as well. Right. It's not just mind, body it's body mind when you Tony Robbins, when you change your physiology, you change your mood. Right? Yep. And so that's, that's one strategy you should think about.

Speaker 3 (32:21):

As far as concentrating, you can improve your concentration, right? You can actually improve your, there are exercises to improve your concentration. I'm not going to go into them here, but if you Google them, they're pretty much all the same. They pretty much, they pretty much go to the fact of focusing on something for a certain amount of time being okay with distracting thoughts coming in and just letting them go right. And getting back on focus, you do that in short periods of time. And then the other thing I'll mention, and then you tell me, you know, what you think, you know, may or may not work for you or what you need help with. But the other thing is your environment. You've got to set up your environment to win. You want to win the battle before it even starts. So if you need to go to a different place in your office, just to focus on your pillars, go for it.

Speaker 3 (33:14):

If you need to turn your outlook or your email system into airplane mode, do it, do not let incoming emails come in. You know? Cause you can write emails in that mode. And then when you go back online, it'll just send them all right, you've got to set up your environment ahead of time to win. There's a great book called willpower. Doesn't work. And the title is very misleading. I know why they call it that, but it's basically an entire book on how to win the game before it even starts by setting up your environment right. Called willpower doesn't work.

William (33:54):

So

Speaker 3 (33:55):

Let me ask you any other reasons you think you aren't hitting your pillars or reasons that you may not hit them in the future?

William (34:05):

No. distractions definitely number one, not protecting that time. It, it it's literally the, the, the stuff that just got in the way. And then I felt like, well, I didn't hit my three NST this week. I'll, you know, I'll, I'll look this weekend and see what I can do and it doesn't get done. So

Speaker 3 (34:34):

You know what? I'm glad, I'm glad you just brought that up. Hold your thought for a second. Cause I got to make something clear your week should start on Saturday and finish on Friday.

William (34:44):

I was starting it on Sunday, so

Speaker 3 (34:46):

Okay here. Here's why, let me tell you why in the pill, in the world of pillars, you want your week to start on Saturday, because if you're going to work on the weekends, in your case, you want it to be a positive thing that you're getting ahead, not a negative thing that you're being punished. And then you feel that stress that, Oh, I didn't do my MSTs this week. Right? I didn't hit my pillars. So I got, I worked this weekend to hit my pillars. Right. Cause even if you don't work, you're going to feel miserable. And if you do work, you're not going to be happy. So you lose either way, right? Correct. Start your week, your week. Start on Saturday. They end on Friday. If you don't hit your pillars, you start again on Saturday. If you do three NSDs on Saturday, then you just got ahead for the next week. All right. Perfect. All right, go ahead. Continue.

William (35:34):

No, I actually, in the last month I redesigned my office literally took everything down. Replastered the walls painted,

Brian Margolis (35:42):

Made it a better feeling.

William (35:45):

So and my assistant loves the pillars by the way. So she's really focused on helping me with some of those little minute things like NSPs, which has worked. So there's no reason why this couldn't get done. It's just executing it.

Brian Margolis (36:06):

Listen that, that that's not the issue. I mean, I, when you look at the total hours, it takes to hit your pillars versus how many pillars you work hours, you work. It's actually a very small percentage. Yeah, no, I think we're on the same page with that. I just want to make sure before we finish this call, that there's nothing else you think you may struggle with with these pillars or that you can think of

William (36:28):

They're they're so specific. It was ridiculous what we did a month ago compared to what I did after reading your book. And it's very simple. So there should be no reason

Brian Margolis (36:42):

Why it can't be done. Okay. And do you feel like you have the right pillars?

William (36:48):

You know, I, I do. I was thinking I was having really success with the, with both the center of influence and the referrals. We only have one per week in there and I thought maybe I just bumped it up to, to keep us on and keep it at one. Besides that

Brian Margolis (37:08):

It's a, it's a, it's a minimum. Right? Right. It's a minimum look. The most important thing right now. Okay. The most important thing right now is not even the impact your pillars are having. Okay. Because again, we know the pillars work on the compound effect. This is an outward where you're going to be six months from now where you're going to be 12 months from now. Right? The most important thing for you right now is establishing the habit of executing on your pillars. That's the, that's when every, when everything changes for you, you know, based on my clients and my work, it's when pillars become this open loop in your head, that just has to be closed. You're not thinking about it as a work thing, as a compound effect thing. It's like, here's my pillars. I'm crossing them off. I have to get these crossed off. You should feel the same way about not hitting your pillars. Like when you drive down the road and start going, Oh wait crap, did I leave my front door wide open? Right. And you're like, 90% sure you closed it. But that little PCU, you can't shut it off until you go back and check, right.

Brian Margolis (38:17):

That is how a P hitting your pillars should feel. And the only way you're going to get there is by hitting them weekend and week out. So if anything, I'd rather you reduce your pillars, then add things to them. Right. Okay. Okay. There are minimums. You can always do more, but I want you to hit those things. Week in week, week in, week out, that habit of pillar execution is everything will carry you for years and years and years with that said, I'd only personally where I can put anything into my pillar. You told me to practice the trombone, which I don't even play for half hour a week. And I decided that was the best use of my time. I'm practicing the trombone half hour a week because not hitting my pillars is just, you know, it's just not, it's just not an option. Right. And I'm not, listen. I'm not saying every week, every year I hit my pillars. Every time things happen, you get sick, whatever. But, you know, I always know I'm clear that I didn't hit my pillars and I feel the same way about not hitting my pillars. If I didn't show up to my, you know, didn't even show up that week. Right, right. I didn't get all my work done, period.

Brian Margolis (39:27):

Any, anything else before we wrap it up for this call now I want to get to that feeling. That's really what it's about. I want to get to that feeling where I'm pretty happy on executing on all those You, you can, you can, you can definitely get there. So. Okay. So we'll wrap this one up now. Okay. You know, I appreciate you participating, taking part. Thanks for listening to another episode of simplify your strategy, magnify your results. If you know someone you think could benefit from this episode, be their hero and share it with them. If you'd like a free copy of my book or you want to be considered as a guest on a future episode, head on over to productivity, giant.com have a great day. And thanks again.