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 Karloff’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/
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 Karloff’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/
Brian Margolis (00:00:00):
This is Brian Margolis. And welcome to the simplify, your strategy, magnify your results podcast, where 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.
Karloff (00:00:40):
I just like to all right. Show a face real quick. Nothing. How are you doing good.
Brian Margolis (00:00:50):
Alright. I have the little, I have the little tape above mine.
Karloff (00:00:54):
No worries. I've got a little sliding window. That's actually, you should get that.
Brian Margolis (00:00:58):
You go video on and off. All right. So it's been seven weeks or so since we put together your pillars, right? Yup. And at the time we put together eight pillars, which is a lot usually. But a lot of them were, you know, small blocks of time. So as a whole, they didn't take up a ton of time. And so based on our two second talk, before we started recording in complete honesty, you're going to tell me that you're going to tell me what's been going on in the last seven weeks, right?
Karloff (00:01:38):
Yeah. So you know, the good, good things, right. So when I started following the plan,
Brian Margolis (00:01:46):
Your system, was it a summertime?
Karloff (00:01:48):
And I put together a kind of like a pillar strategy, a new view, and I reviewed, but the one before we spoke, it was already in, in, in in the process. So, which is a good thing. So what happened was as a result of following that process I got really busy to a point where I kind of slacked off the, the pillar system where one day I would, I would follow it next day. I just couldn't because I was inundated with work. Right. So for instance, I, I just, I, I just started a again today and I got one touch phone. I call my mom because I was three family touches for the week. And I haven't spoken to anyone in seven weeks.
Karloff (00:02:41):
But you know, for the holidays, I believe Thanksgiving, I did speak to, to the whole family, which is great. But so and now I'm in reactive mode before because of my my activity level was, was pretty low and I was trying to drum up business. I followed my touches, my 25 a day. I did I did some target marketing and they all came to fruition and then I went to a couple of events and then the wheels came off. Right. I couldn't write a big proposal, dude. That's a couple million dollars. I've got opportunities. I got meetings that had to go downtown. I got an office now in the city, which I didn't have before. So now this travel time and I kind of fell off the wagon. So that's where I'm at right now.
Brian Margolis (00:03:28):
Good. Alright. I appreciate, appreciate the honesty. So, so, so here's the thing about the pillars, right? If you remember from the book, you know, you have the three categories, right. And one of those categories is the urgent and significant meaning, you know, it's significant to your income. And it's urgent cause it has to be done at a certain time or by a certain time. Right? So by a certain time, let's throw that under proposals and, you know, prepping for meetings and things like that, that you've scheduled at a certain time, you know, actual meetings, right? You mean urgent, significant, correct? Yeah.
Karloff (00:04:14):
Those are meetings that I set in my calendar. It was a weird prospects, either demo, a pro a discovery call or a presentation. Those were the three categories.
Brian Margolis (00:04:24):
Well, we'll right. But the other thing that falls under the urgent significant category is something that has to be done by a certain time. Careening, you know, you have a proposal due next week, or before your meeting next week, you have to prepare and do a, B and C or you know, all the stuff that's causing you now too, in a lot of ways run around. Right. Correct. That doesn't mean they're not significant because these things obviously are what you get paid on, right? The meetings, the sales, the proposals, all that kind of stuff. So where I'm going with this is as you start finding out, and this is pretty much everyone's experience who is consistent with their pillars at some level is the pillars, which are in the proactive category, tend to drive the urgent significant category. Right? Correct. They tend to fill up your calendar with hopefully in a good way. Right. Which is kind of what you were experiencing from, from basically doing the pillar system before we talked the first time. Okay.
Karloff (00:05:25):
Yes, exactly. That's exactly what happened. I used that system to fuel opportunities that became urgent and significant. Correct. And so that's a good thing. It's a good thing.
Brian Margolis (00:05:38):
But what I want to talk about right now then is there's a couple of things I want to talk about. Right. Sometimes there are seasons to a business. Right. You know, and I don't mean like seasons of the year. I mean, you know, you're prospecting, you're marketing, you're, you're trying to fill up the funnel. And then at some point that funnel fills up and all of a sudden, now you're inside that funnel. You're doing the meetings, the proposals, the selling, the demos, all that kind of stuff. And then you get so caught up in that world that right around the corner, if you're not careful things dry up again. Right. Yep. And it's kind of this cycle that you repeat. So that's, that's what we want to avoid with the pillar system. Right. Which is, you know, for me, for example, in my own business, I know we had to, excuse me, reschedule this particular call and I'm jam packed.
Brian Margolis (00:06:39):
I'm doing client meetings on new year's Eve. I'm doing client meetings next week. I just have nowhere to fit people. Right. And that's a good, that's a good thing. Yep. But I am also continuously prospecting. Right. Because two things happen when you continuously prospect, even when you're busy, number one, obviously you avoid that desert coming down the road. Right. and then number two is, as your demand gets higher and higher, you eventually can raise your prices. Right. And when I say, raise your prices, you're not going to raise the price on the product for you. For example, in my case, I actually raised my prices. Right.
Karloff (00:07:23):
Consult, do you mean your consulting hours? Right? Do yeah.
Brian Margolis (00:07:26):
What people pay me, what packages I offer, you know, what I'm willing to do for that money? You know, my prices go up, as my demand goes up, just like, you know, economics one Oh one. Right? Absolutely. And so ultimately believe it or not, by continuing to prospect, even when I'm extremely busy, doesn't mean I take clients just so we're clear. I get people in the pipeline. Sometimes I tell them, Hey, we can't work together for two months. Right. But I'm constantly prospecting. But in your case, when I say raise your prices, what I mean is when your pipeline's filled and you constantly have things in the pipeline and things like that, you raise your prices in the way where, you know, you can start only focusing on maybe larger accounts or closer accounts or more ideal accounts. Right. You can now be a little bit,
Karloff (00:08:19):
Be more selective.
Brian Margolis (00:08:21):
Th that's exactly it. That's what I mean by raise your prices. Meaning, you know, on day one working for this company you're with, and some guy that, you know, maybe isn't the most serious prospect. Can't really, you're not even sure they can afford your, you know, what you're selling them or whatever. You might take the call anyway. Right.
Karloff (00:08:40):
Alright, let's talk, maybe take any call. Right. And you're right. You'll take any call, which is by the way,
Brian Margolis (00:08:46):
The smart thing to do at that point, right? You're nurturing things for the future. You're taking lower percentage shots, all that, but as time goes, and I think you're following what I'm saying by keeping your pipeline filled and not going through the ups and downs of busy, then slower prospect, prospect busy. It started that cycle over. You can keep your prices high. Right? You can continue to be more selective. It doesn't mean you're rude to people doesn't mean you ignore people. But you know, when you, when, when someone asks you for a demo or says, they're interested and you genuinely tell them, listen, everything's going great. I can't complain. And it's only a positive thing from my end, but I have about, you know, two straight weeks worth of demos, a lot of interest right now, you know, can we connect at the end of this month? You know, you could, you lose that business. You might lose the business, but that's a great place to be. Right?
Speaker 3 (00:09:43):
Yeah. And, and, and there's no way I could lose that because I do have a team that can take on those demos
Brian Margolis (00:09:49):
Even better. So you have more bandwidth, correct. Perfect.
Speaker 3 (00:09:53):
Our team. And I could just say his name is Austin. Say, Austin, listen, I really can't do this demo. Why don't you do it? And then if there's bubbles up, then let me know and I'll get involved.
Brian Margolis (00:10:03):
Sure. And again, that goes under the banner of raising your prices. Right? Correct. Meaning now you can push things that you would have never pushed to him. You can now push those things to him. Okay. So, so then the question becomes, if, you know, cause when you're, when you're firing on all cylinders with your pillars, here's ultimately what happened. Phase one is, you know, your pipeline gets filled. Your, you can ultimately raise your prices. And then the other thing down the road is you actually wind up reducing your pillars. Meaning right now you're getting to the point where yeah. Aha moment. Right? Yeah. You're getting to the point where, okay, I need to spend 30 minutes a week working on my stories. I need to spend, you know, I need to do this many prospect touches. I need to do this and that. But you might get to a point where, you know what, of course my story can get better, but right now apparently is good enough because sales are extremely high.
Brian Margolis (00:11:09):
Right. My prices are getting higher. My sales are high. Of course I could. I'm a seven and I could become an eight or I'm an eight. And that could become a nine. But honestly the opportunity cost of doing that is too high. Right? Correct. I work with some people who are Uber successful. They basically have two pillars a week, two to three pillars a week. And basically it's like, as long as I do a, B and C, everything else will take care of itself. Okay. And so I'm not saying we're there yet, but that's, I want to talk about not necessarily reducing your pillars right now. We can certainly talk about that. But I want to talk about structuring your week using some of those cap strategies we talked about. So maybe right now you can juggle both. You can hit your pillars, but also handle the workload. Right? Right. And so the, the first cap strategy that strikes me all right, is the one in the book I talk about with time blocking and routine, correct. Where, you know, I address Parkinson's law and Parkinson's law basically says, listen, the time you have to complete a task, right. That task will expand to fit that time. Okay. So what that means to you practically on the ground is control your mornings, right?
Speaker 4 (00:12:39):
So task to fit, you would subconsciously, if you will, a few allocate 30 minutes, it's going to take you 30 minutes. If you allocate 10 minutes, it's going to take time. It's the same thing as budget,
Brian Margolis (00:12:53):
Right? If you give yourself the whole day to do it, it'll take the whole day. Exactly. Think about, think about when you go on vacation, right? If you had a, if you got a flight tomorrow morning and, and you and your, is it your wife? Okay, so you and your wife are going on a vacation. You have a flight tomorrow morning. You, you know, and you decide to stay home from work today to get ready. So you have this whole to do list, right. Of stuff. You got to do, get the dog to this person, hack this prep that you know, all this stuff you have to do before you go away for two weeks or something. Right. I have to button this up, set my email on autoresponder, whatever. If you woke up this morning and started doing that, you'd probably finish up tonight. Right? You get everything done. Yeah. But I,
Speaker 4 (00:13:45):
I don't, I wouldn't allocate that much time. No, no, no, no.
Brian Margolis (00:13:48):
I understand what I'm saying is, but if you actually worked a full day today and got home at three o'clock to maybe you left an hour or two early or something, you would still get everything done to make that flight. And if something happened and guess what? You, you know, my, my point is you understand where I'm going with this? Yes, yes. Everything will get done. And when stuff doesn't get done, when you literally run out of time, the things that don't get done are honestly the things that shouldn't get done. Right. You might've thought they had to get done, but in the end it was like, you know what I want it to, but I didn't. Right. Okay. So relating that to your sales business, to your business. It's the reason I talk about in my book, why I work seven to 10 every day is my time.
Brian Margolis (00:14:36):
Right? That is when I, every day I can tell you twice this year, maybe three times, if I'm not thinking of something, but I can think of two times where I had a scheduled call or meeting before 10:00 AM in the morning. Right now, again, that, that doesn't count my travel. If I'm traveling to do an event that's different. But when I'm working from home, which is most days, most weeks, seven to 10 is just, it's not available. It's already blocked out in my calendar. Right. Do I ever get a client that, that makes unhappy or a prospect probably. Right. But here's what I know from seven to 10, every day, that's 15 hours a week. I work on my stuff, my pillars, building my business, getting the proactive things done from 10 o'clock till whenever everything else will get done. At that point, I can book my day. I can be reactive. I can deal with fires. I can go. All right, whatever happens happens by the end, by the end of the day, I'll get everything done that needs to be done. And all that little stuff that should fall through the cracks does fall through the cracks. Right. Okay. You take care of the big rocks first. That's exactly. That's exactly it. And so for someone like you now, again, I'm going to say this and it might not seem realistic, but what time do you normally get into the office in the morning?
Speaker 3 (00:16:00):
So that's an interesting question. I I I'm a creature of habit when it comes to physical things, meaning like my physical health. Okay. So I've got a, a prescribed regimen and it might be the same thing. From Monday through Friday from wake up Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, I go to insanity and that's from six to six 45. So I get up at five 15 to prepare, okay, get my, get my gym stuff. You know, get some food and get a cup of coffee. So Monday, Wednesday, Fridays that, and then Tuesday, Thursday, I do heavy lifting so that I get up a little later. So at five 45, I get up because that doesn't stop at six 30 and incidentally, I have a trainer. Do I need her? No, you show up. It makes me show up and I'm consistent with her. So I got results that I need because of her and people are always like, you know, Karloff, you don't really need her. I'm like, ah, no, I do. Because if I don't, if not for her, right. It's only 30 bucks a session, which isn't, it's affordable,
Brian Margolis (00:17:12):
But you don't need her to teach you what exercises to do. You need her because you're not going to let her down. You're going to show up because you're paying for it. And she's waiting for you.
Speaker 3 (00:17:21):
Yeah. Like if I go out the night before I have a little hangover, I know myself the next day, I'd be like, I'm going to get some sleep, forget about it. The world post is, I know I have an appointment with her. I'm up and I'm ready and I'm going to the gym. But anyway so that's, that's that the morning. And then, you know, your question was what, the time I get in the office. So then I take my kids to school and then I'm back. I sit around 7:30 AM. I technically could be in the office. Okay. And I say, technically, because
Karloff (00:17:51):
Not all the time I want to go to the office. Like I I'm at the house and my office is in the house. So I, you know, I might read the paper.
Speaker 5 (00:17:59):
Well, let me, let me just clear something up here. Your office is in the house.
Karloff (00:18:03):
Yeah, I have, I have a home office as well.
Speaker 5 (00:18:05):
Oh, I thought you okay. I thought you said that you have an office in the city now.
Karloff (00:18:10):
I do, but I don't need to go there at a certain time. Like today I got here at 10.
Speaker 5 (00:18:16):
Gotcha. Okay.
Karloff (00:18:17):
So, and I'm not here tomorrow. I'm going to be at home. And then the last two days I was at home and then Monday I was here.
Speaker 5 (00:18:26):
So what art do you do? Do you do a lot of onsite appointments?
Karloff (00:18:32):
I try to it's one of the that's one of my goals is to set up taking a call. I, I I'm in the city. I say, let's, let's meet. Right? Cool. Let's have a cup of coffee or let's, let's meet at your office. So yeah,
Speaker 5 (00:18:43):
Absolutely. Okay. So here's, you know, here's, here's, here's what I, here's what I would say in a very simple way. Now, again, this is simple. It sounds easy. And we'll talk about how to do it, but I'm guessing you're based on what you've told me. You're the number one solution for you is probably going to be to control the first two hours of your Workday. Right? Okay.
Karloff (00:19:14):
That's that's something I'm learning. Okay.
Speaker 5 (00:19:16):
Right. Me, meaning you, you know, if you, if you technically are ready to go at seven 30 in your home office, then, is it easier? I'm guessing it's easier to get in the city if you leave a little later, right?
Karloff (00:19:34):
Yeah. So the mornings always the trains are crowded people running around. Sure.
Speaker 5 (00:19:39):
Okay. I could actually work from home. Yeah. Go a bunch of things.
Karloff (00:19:44):
And then, then go into the city. Unless there's an appointment I have to do at nine, which it, which is seldom. But when I do, I have been out to come in at eight o'clock train. I didn't have to come in earlier, but now I have, I have an office to go to.
Speaker 5 (00:19:57):
Yes. So, so here's so here. So here's what I'm thinking. Okay. This would be me seven 30 to nine 30 every morning should be a standing appointment with yourself. Right? You should own seven 30 to nine 30. That is, that is you. That is you building your business, working on your business, right. That is you hitting your pillars essentially. But you can do other things during that time. Right? I'm not talking about check email and little stuff. I mean, you know, the, the stuff, basically your pillars, or if you do have to work on a proposal, you know, whatever it is. Right. But you should own that time. If it's prospecting, prospecting, whatever it is, what then mentally should happen to you over time. Like it has to me and a lot of my clients is you get real good and you actually start believing the truth, which is you control your schedule Karloff.
Speaker 5 (00:21:04):
Okay. Are there exceptions? There may be. But as long as that's exactly what they are there, exceptions, they're not the rule. Meaning when you have a client and you're excited that they want to talk to you and they say, Hey, how's nine 30 or how's nine. You don't even have to look at your calendar. Although you should pause for a couple of seconds like you did, and you should go, you know what, actually, that won't work. Could we do something later in the day? Oh, I can't do anything later. Okay. Then what about the next day or the following week? Right now? This sounds like blasphemy to some salespeople, right? Yep. But the net, the amount of business you can, you will actually lose by controlling your own schedule. Okay. Is negligible. Right? I always ask people for an example of when that happened, the people who swear they can't do this and they can't name one. Well, let's pretend it happens. Let's pretend you lose an account one, maybe two a year because of this. Right. Which I don't even think that'll happen, but let's pretend it happened. The amount of money in sales you will make because you own, your morning will far outweigh that. It won't even be close when we're talking about, you know, pebbles and boulders here. Okay. And so to me, and again, I know this seems a little crazy, but that's it
Karloff (00:22:34):
Actually, it doesn't Brian
Speaker 5 (00:22:36):
To me, seven 30 to nine 30 should be your time. And then again, if you're going to stay at home that day, then obviously you can do a nine 30 call. If you're going to go into the city, then you know, you know, the time it takes to get you there, your first call, shouldn't be til 10 or 10 30 or whatever it's going to be. Right.
Karloff (00:22:56):
Right. But it's 40 minutes of train time. Now, do I keep the seven 30 to nine 30 inclusive of the train time? Or is that a 39? 30. Okay.
Speaker 5 (00:23:03):
Seven 30 to nine 30. And is you working? If you're not the train, you can find a way to make the train productive or you can use it to rest.
Karloff (00:23:16):
It's funny, you mentioned that I listened to books and I listened to music on that train.
Speaker 5 (00:23:23):
It actually fuels me when I get off the train and I'm ready to go. And that's actually good. You know, one of my, you read one of my cap strategies was change your mood, right? Yeah. You know, I sometimes listen to trainings before I start coaching people. If I'm not in the right frame of mind, I will take the time to listen to certain audios, listen to certain trainers, listen to certain music because I'm much more effective when I'm in the right state of mind, obviously much more productive, right? Yeah, absolutely. Here's the other thing. This is also when you should be doing your most critical work, meaning the work that requires the most mental energy, which is working on your stories, which is prospecting, which is sharpening the ax. Right. Which is doing research. You're gonna listen. If you, if, if starting at 10 o'clock or 10 30, you have six straight appointments one day, right? Some are phone, some are in person. However, it's laid out. Here's what I promise you. You're built like me. You're going to get it done. You're going to do your six appointments. Right. It's not like, you're not going to show up to them. No.
Karloff (00:24:37):
Oh, that's right. That you've committed to it.
Speaker 5 (00:24:40):
But, but, right, right. So my, my point is I don't care how mentally tired you get as the day goes on, you're going to do what you have to do. Right. And even if you're mentally tired, have you ever noticed you rise to the occasion once you're on the phone with a client or when you're in front of them, of course you do. Right. Of course you rise to the occasion. The point is the way you should be thinking is look, if after nine 30, my entire day falls apart, my kids have to be picked up from school. My roof leaks, my whatever. I still had a great day. That's right, right. That's how you want to be thinking. I don't know if I told you this, it might've been someone else. And so we'll hope, hopefully the people who wind up listening to these recordings down the road, don't, they're gonna hear me say the same crap over and over. But you know, there's a series of books by Tim Ferriss tools of Titans and tribe of mentors. What is it, Tim. Tim who? Tim Ferris. F E R R I S. He was the guy who wrote the four hour work week.
Karloff (00:25:44):
Oh, I knew. I recognized that. I I read that book. Yes.
Speaker 5 (00:25:48):
And you're still not working a four hour work week. Imagine that, so, so hero. I love it.
Karloff (00:25:54):
This color is covered yet. A red
Speaker 5 (00:25:57):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I can, well, I'll tell you the story offline about that book and why it was so successful. But the,
Karloff (00:26:04):
So he's got two books
Speaker 5 (00:26:06):
He published not too long ago. They're like these tomes, one's called tools of Titans. One's called tribe of mentors. Right. And it's basically, he has one of the most downloaded, if not the most downloaded business marketing sales entrepreneur podcast in the world. And he's interviewed everybody, right? Th these books are just summaries of those interviews. Right? Extracting all the great stuff. The idea being, if you like, what you're reading in those little, two page summaries or whatever, then you can go listen to the full audio, the full interview I did with you. Right. Right. And so
Brian Margolis (00:26:44):
The pattern that winds up emerging from these books that I just couldn't ignore about really successful people was number one at some level, not all of them, obviously, but most of them, at some level, they control the first part of their day. Right? Whether they're a CEO that doesn't go into the office or whether they work from home for the first three hours, or whether they have some kind of morning routine where they do this, they work out, they go to a coffee shop, they blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, before they start doing calls or whatever. Right. So almost all of them control their morning at some level in different ways. Right? The other thing that stuck out to me was how many of them practice some form of meditation. Okay. And the reason that is significant to what we're talking about is because if you just learn basic what they call it, what's it called transcendental meditation or TM.
Brian Margolis (00:27:46):
I might be saying that wrong, but, but the basic practice of meditation, this idea of focusing on your breathing or focusing on a certain word, and then when distractions pop into your mind, that's fine. They come in, you let them go. You back to focusing on your breathing. However you want to think about it, right? If you were to go to a performance coach tomorrow and tell them you have trouble concentrating, right. Working on a task and seeing it through to completion what that performance coach is going to tell you, he's going to give you exercises. And they're pretty much meditating. He won't call him meditating, but he'll tell him, he'll tell you, look, I want you to focus on this for three minutes. It's okay. If you're distracted, if something pops in your head, just let it go get back. And it's that practice of putting yourself back into focus, back into focus that actually strengthens your concentration right over time, like working a muscle.
Brian Margolis (00:28:39):
And so it didn't surprise me that these people practice that because it's not only do they control the first part of their day, but it's their ability to start a task. Once they decide where their time should be spent and focus on it until it's completed, right. Without getting distracted, without being pulled in 38 directions. And so for someone like you, based on what you're telling me, this seems to be the cap strategy that you need. Right? When you say cap strategy to CAAP custom accountability program, ah, that's from the book. Yes. So I have a bunch of different cap strategies. This, this one for you, I think is, look, you can do a lot of appointments from 10 o'clock on 10 30 on, right? If you need to, you can do plenty of appointments. You can be reactive for the rest of the day. If you choose to right. That's up to you. But if you take those first two hours every day to work on your pillars or anything else you see as a proactive priority, not checking
Speaker 5 (00:29:42):
Your email, not doing this and not doing that. Everything will change for you and I here. Here's what I can also tell you. It's not going to be easy at first. Okay. Like, like in my calendar, I've already blocked out the whole year, right. Seven to 10 is already blocked out the whole year done. It's it's in my calendar. I would do the same thing. If I was you seven 30 to whatever time you think you can take your first call, let's call it 10 or 10 30. I'm going to try and write 30. Well, you're saying you're going to go till nine 30, but if you can take your first call at nine 30, that's fine. But block it out seven 30 to nine 30. Okay.
Speaker 4 (00:30:20):
What do I call that? Going to put it on my calendar right now for tomorrow,
Speaker 5 (00:30:23):
You can, you can put pillars. I put the word pro pro, right? Because that's my proactive time. My proactive significant time are usually pillars, but sometimes other things
Speaker 4 (00:30:42):
Alright. Seven 30 to nine 30. And I'm going to actually put a pro no meetings because what happens is people schedule meetings in my calendar. Right. So when they see that they'll go
Speaker 5 (00:30:56):
That's. I think that's why I'm saying if, if you don't think you can do a call till again, I don't know what you use the city for, if you go in every day, but no, I don't. Yeah. So you don't want to have meetings. You don't want them scheduling meetings at nine 30 if you're heading to the city that day either. So,
Speaker 4 (00:31:11):
Right. So I would I acknowledge it like that and I could tell it to move it, but I'll, you know what, I'll buffer it. You're right. Let me buffer it for 30 minutes. So make it to 10. So I'll work tonight 30, but I know I have a buffer of 30 minutes.
Speaker 5 (00:31:26):
Yeah. And again, if you can get to the city by 10, I don't know, but
Speaker 4 (00:31:29):
No, I won't. I won't be, I will, it'll take 40 minutes. It takes a 55 minutes door to door. So I will have to buffer an hour for the next call would be 10 30.
Speaker 5 (00:31:44):
Right? So, so again, I don't know how often you go to the city or if it's for certain things, but on city days you should buffer travel time. You should put nine 30 to 10 30 travel right now. So the first part is great. Now the discipline is, can you protect that time? Right? It's that, that ability to say that won't work. Can you do it at a different time, right? Or that's going to be hard because typically, cause you're trying to be service oriented, flexible customer focused, all that. Correct?
Speaker 4 (00:32:26):
Correct. But, but I could say, I could say this with confidence that first of all, if I sit in my calendar and my, my SDR, which is my my person, that books appointments, he looked at my calendar and he
Speaker 3 (00:32:40):
Says, you know, Karloff can do this demo at this time. And he'll see that I'm off at that hour. So that, that takes care of him. However, if I have a customer sends me an email and says, Hey, listen, we've got this important decision to make. I have the whole team coming in. Can you make it at nine o'clock on Friday? And I'm going to say, yeah, let's make this a nine o'clock Friday.
Speaker 5 (00:33:03):
All right, well, hold on. So, so this is what I would do if I had that, right. I can say, look, I can do nine. I can, John. I can actually do nine 30 if that works. But if not, let me know and I will move. I will, I will move my nine o'clock or I will make room at nine o'clock. Cause sometimes when they say, can you, I have the whole team coming in, can you do it at nine? Don't assume. That's the only time they can do it. Right. They might have the whole team coming in, but the whole team's coming in for the entire day. Right? So I could say what I'm saying is it's just a matter of following up a little bit and saying, look, I can, right now I can do nine 30. If that works, that would be perfect.
Speaker 5 (00:33:59):
If for some reason it has to be nine, John I'll make it work. Right? I'll I'll move stuff and make it work. And that what a normal human being is going to do, if nine 30 works, they're going to say no, nine 30 works. If they're like, no, they're leaving at 10 o'clock. They have another place to be. Then that becomes what I call an exception right now. Again, if that's the only time you do that, when someone says, this is the only time we can do it on the decision making is critical. Well, that's a good exception to make. Right. But I don't think there's as many of those as you think.
Speaker 3 (00:34:41):
Oh no, no. I've just brought up the only time that would happen. I that's the only scenario the other ones I could be, I could always push back. Right. For instance booties Moody's is one of my customers. And Chris Thomas is the guy that's the executive there. He tastes go, occasionally. He says, we need email and says, Hey, listen, we were looking at these things. Can you come in? What time can you make it right? And I always tell him, well, you know, whatever, I can make it. So I don't, I've definitely not say, Hey, I'm out tomorrow at nine. Cause I know I have my pillar strategy between seven 30, nine 30. So I could always tell them, Hey, anytime after lunch works for me, what do you, so it fits. It works.
Speaker 5 (00:35:25):
Yeah. I mean, look you, in your business, you are both the CEO and the sales professional, right? Yup.
Speaker 3 (00:35:33):
And finance and marketing. Right? So the,
Speaker 5 (00:35:38):
The point is you need to, that's where salespeople get caught up when they're only the salespeople and they're not strategic and they don't think about stuff. And they're not thinking, you know, a month ahead, two months ahead, three months ahead of, you know, marketing, prospecting, planting seeds. Now that's when they get themselves into trouble. Right. And so
Karloff (00:35:59):
They become truly re
Speaker 5 (00:36:02):
Person and your business starts to fall apart quite frankly, 100%. And again, now sometimes I'll implement another cap strategy, which you can think about. I call it the, if, then rule, right? Which is you can have certain pillars or whatever, where you say, if this happens, then this rule instantly applies. Like for example, I have workout pillars for myself. I have a basic rule that says, if I'm traveling then whatever it is, this counts as a workout, right? Like something I do in my hotel room or something. So you can have if then rules built into your pillars. Right.
Speaker 5 (00:36:46):
Or, and you can have, you can have, if then rules also built into your scheduling. If, if I miss my two hour or if I have to give up an hour of pillar time, then I add it somewhere else. Right. Yup. And this is at Friday or the following Monday or something becomes a three hour window. Right. So you saying that this in this two hour window, you can get all your, all your pillars done. Yeah. That's that gives you, even if you can't, it's going to give you that 10 hours, that 10 hours, because you're doing that every day. Right. That's right. That 10 hours will give you enough of a head start that you'll be able to complete your pillars during, you know, in between meetings, things like that. Right? Yeah. So this is exciting.
Karloff (00:37:45):
So I could see myself completing a lot of stuff,
Speaker 5 (00:37:49):
You know, quickly, quickly I might. And I might gain time back. Well, listen, you're I can tell you right now you have one hour, two hours, three hours, three and a half, three 45. So let's just call it four hours. I'll round up. Right? Because all except two of your pillars are based on spending time doing something, right? So you have four hours worth of pillars. In addition to 25 prospecting touches from the sequence and three family connects. Right? So in theory, I don't know what 25 prospecting touches takes and the three family connects, but an hour, an hour each. Okay. So that leaves you five extra hours.
Speaker 5 (00:38:40):
Does that make sense? Like you can actually look at how long your pillars are going to take. Now that doesn't mean just so I'm clear, that doesn't mean from seven 30 to nine 30, you can't take a break. I'm a big believer in breaks. Right? I, I teach clients to work with what I call a relaxed intensity or actually with a former coach of mine called a relaxed intensity. But you know, with a relaxed intensity, meaning you're slow, strategic, methodical, you start something, you finish it and you take breaks, right? So if you, if you go into my book and you look at the part about planning your day, all right. What I would suggest to you in terms of planning your day is that, you know it now you might use it. I use, I put my calendar down on my legal pad every day, right?
Speaker 5 (00:39:35):
Starting at 10 o'clock my appointments start. And what I'm suggesting is outside of that in the left, the left column, you would write down the three things, you know, you want to complete that day. Right. And then, you know, without getting into a whole training here on that, but by the way, I'm going to do a demo of that for this product. So you'll have access to that. But basically, you know, let's say you list four things proactive that you want to get done that day. Right? Let's and let's, I'm just going to go in order of your pillars. Let's say the four things are, I want to do 25 prospecting touches. One hour of demo practice, 30 minutes of stories, 30 minutes cleaning my office, right? Yup. We'll then for the first, so you start working on your 25 prospecting touches and lets, you know, you don't want to get interrupted, but if you happen to get weak and you get interrupted or you allow something to interrupt you a moment of weakness, that's all right, Ben don't break.
Speaker 5 (00:40:38):
And let's say, it takes you an hour and 15 minutes to do your prospecting touches. Okay. Then you take a 15 minute break and then you do a half hour of your demo practice and now it's nine 30, right? Then you have a nine 30 call, well do your calls and all that stuff. But here's the thing when you're done your calls and the next set of downtime, you have, you know exactly where to pick up. You got to do your next half hour of that. Then you have to do 30 minutes of stories. Right. Then the idea being that the rule is very simple. You don't start the second thing until you're done. The first thing you don't start. The third thing until you're done. The second thing, it's a very slow, methodical way of doing things. Does that make sense? That slow methodical, but sequential, sequential. Cause you'll wind up getting way more done. Right? Let me ask you if everyone does this. I think everyone will be super, super
Speaker 3 (00:41:35):
Successful. I mean, this doesn't seem like rocket science of course. And this is what you've done and this is why you're successful.
Speaker 5 (00:41:43):
Well, here, here's the funny part. Just like you, I think both of us would have considered ourselves relatively successful before this. Yeah, this is, this is
Speaker 3 (00:41:55):
What'd you say? I agree. I I'm laughing because yeah, I do consider myself very successful.
Speaker 5 (00:42:02):
Right, right. So, and you probably, and you probably are. And just like when I teach the pillar system, look, you can get pretty far just based on skills, natural talents, winging it, work ethic. Right. But you almost always get to a plateau. Right.
Speaker 3 (00:42:22):
Plateaued out. That's why I read your book.
Speaker 5 (00:42:24):
Right. And so the next law, if you truly want to go next level. And when I think of, I mean, I'm very specific when I think of next level, I think of next level, like the second level of a house. If you want to get to the point where your floor is now higher than your previous ceiling, right. You're just on a different level. Right. Okay. Okay. The third thing you have to incorporate, you gotta add to work ethic and add to your skillset and your talents is an actual strategy, right? Because we're not very efficient with our focus. I don't care about our time. As you know, for my book, we're not, our focus is limited and we wasted on things that don't move the needle in a big way. Once, by my way, getting to my side where you execute on your pillars every week it's become habitual.
Speaker 5 (00:43:20):
It's like an open loop that has to be closed. All right. When you get to that point and then the other way I am, you know where my seven to 10 is precious and I'm not saying that won't ever change it. Won't ever become seven to nine or 60, whatever. But right now it's been seven to 10 for years. Once you come to this side, you'll never be able to go back ever. It's talking about next level. I couldn't get back to the old way of doing things. If I wanted to, I cannot believe that I used to not plan my day, every day using my current system. I'm like, what did I do all day? What the hell did? And I know what I did. I used to work from morning till night, right?
Speaker 3 (00:44:02):
Yeah. Because it's like Oh look, shiny, penny, penny,
Speaker 5 (00:44:09):
Or an Eagle. Like, like for me, someone's are laughing the other day. I said something and they're like, wait a second. You don't have email alerts on. And to me that was so far. And I'm like, why in the world would, I want to know every time I got an email that would be the most counter productive thing in the world. I can't think of it. Like it's like purposely putting hot. You're trying to lose weight. And you constantly have Buffalo wings going in front of you. Right? Like you're smelling hamburgers. Why would you do that to yourself? Why would you turn that button on? How do you turn it off? What? Email notifications? Yeah. Come on, man. I got to turn that off. What do you use outlook? I use Google. Okay. So I don't know how you do it, but Google it. You know what?
Speaker 4 (00:44:58):
I could turn off email alerts between seven 30 and nine.
Speaker 5 (00:45:03):
What a freaky concept. I also listen, if you're prospecting, right? If you're doing during, from seven 30 to nine 30, if you're prospecting, okay. If you're prospecting and you need to use email to prospect, meaning you need to write you, you should turn your email. You turn it on. What I call airplane mode. I don't know the official name of it, but every system has an airplane mode where you won't get any new incoming emails. Right? Correct. And so you can craft all the emails you need to do. And then when you're done, you can go back online and it'll just send them all right. That's right.
Speaker 4 (00:45:42):
It's an offline mode. It's called.
Speaker 5 (00:45:44):
Yeah. I just call it. I call it operating an airplane mode period. I have a function on my cell phone, right? The environment you got to set up your environment to win. The, my cell phone has a function where even if my Ringer's on my alert, whatever, if I, if I put it face down, I don't have to press any buttons. As soon as I put it face down, all that stuff turns off. I have no idea how the phone knows it's face down. I'm sure it's an easy technology. I'm still amazed by it. But as soon as I turn my phone face down, I don't get any messages. Nothing comes through. I don't have to constantly turn off notifications. Turn, I just turn my phone face down and it's over. Right. I call that working in airplane mode. And I'm not saying don't ever take breaks and I'm not saying don't ever check your email. But I mean, let's be honest. What is email is really instructions from everyone else telling you what to do next, right? Yep. The world's most successful people control their day. There are very thinking of the most successful people you ever hear about how many of them do you think are in reactive mode? So I watched sharp.
Speaker 4 (00:46:56):
I think everyone was every day. I love that
Speaker 5 (00:46:59):
Show you, you know, I have a lot of clients who have been on that show, right?
Speaker 4 (00:47:02):
No, I've never, I didn't know, but that's good to know.
Speaker 5 (00:47:07):
Well, I guess it depends, but go ahead.
Speaker 4 (00:47:12):
Yeah. So I know that the four that's on the panel,
Speaker 5 (00:47:16):
Mr. Wonderful Mark Cuban.
Speaker 4 (00:47:22):
I forgot the other two guys' names, but I got ya. Okay. They, they seem like they, you know, the reason why I liked that
Speaker 3 (00:47:30):
Show, cause it looked like they were so, so much in control and my, my life is in chaos compared to them. Yeah. I'm trying to emulate them. Because it, it just seemed, they are a thousand percent in control. Any deals that they proposed they're it's in control. There's not an emotional is always a rational monetary benefit for them in order to even get to a deal. But to get to that state of mind. That's awesome.
Speaker 5 (00:48:02):
It was just like in pro football, the people who do, it's not that there's not talented quarterbacks coming out of college. It's their inability for the game to slow down for them at the pro level is why they don't can't function. The guys who the game slows down for eventually, they're the ones who are successful, right? Because there's a million quarterbacks who have never made it, who can throw as strong or as hard or as accurately as any other quarterback. Right. Right. But the game never slows down for them. And so look, everything I'm telling you to do, by the way, this is not human nature. We are designed to survive. Right. We, we are designed to be reactive. There is a dopamine drip we get, when we hear the buzz of our phone or the, we want to scratch that itch. That is our natural state of mind.
Speaker 5 (00:48:53):
It is, you know, so, so you're not like most of my clients at some point will tell me, they have add, I'm telling they all do. At some point, they all crack and go. I think I have add. And I'm not saying there's people who don't genuinely have a medical condition like that. It's I don't know enough about it, but most of them are just human. Right. They just think that everything else, everyone else is somehow more disciplined or in control. I'm like, no, I have clients that are Uber successful and they're a mess. Right. Which by the way was me. I mean, I'm not, I didn't, I wasn't born this way. I became this way. And when I first developed the pillar system completely for myself, I never had any plans of being a consultant or coach or anything. When I started sharing it with just people I knew, I was like, I, it was, it opened my eyes as to how everyone operates like this. Right.
Speaker 3 (00:49:50):
Yeah. But you said something that it's in your book also the, you said that there's people who don't even know how to manage washing their clothes. There. They're always in a state of chaos, but then how do they manage everything if they also,
Speaker 5 (00:50:07):
How do you mean, how are they successful? How are they successful? No, what I said in the book is there are plenty of people who are unorganized. They're unorganized messes, and they're Uber successful. And the reason is because what they do focus on, they don't get caught up in the details. They don't worry about every little scenario, but what they do is they focus on the things that make them money and move the needle. Right. So there, and some people are there are people who are naturally that way, where they only see the big picture. And so if you'll ever notice people like that, what happens is there's always someone or a staff or something who in a way is kind of cleaning up their mess. Right. Who is like, you know, they don't know every detail. They don't know everyone's names. They make mistakes, they this and that.
Speaker 5 (00:51:04):
But they see the big picture and that's what they focus on. Right. Wow. Does that make sense? Yes. It seems like I've been focusing on the wrong things. Well, we all are because again, look, what, what does it feel better to do cross 30 things off your, to do list or cross one thing off 30? Yeah. You feel more accomplished, right? Yeah, absolutely. But see people like that, don't think of it that way. They're like, okay, I need to get this deal done. Which means I need to make John happy. Right. They don't get caught up in all the details and all the little things they focus on making John happy and then everything will take care of itself. Right. Getting John to sign, getting John to believe in his vision. So he gives him the money, the VC money he needs, or, you know, whatever it is. Right, right. They don't get caught up in all the little things. They probably couldn't even tell you what's on their website. Right. It's starting to make sense.
Speaker 3 (00:52:08):
Yeah. The way I'm looking at it is I have to close a deal I'm working on and I've dropped everything because all I'm doing is focused on grabbing that deal. So it's just some succinct,
Speaker 5 (00:52:19):
Listen, it's okay to that. Again, the idea of flash hours that I talk about in my book. Right? So when you start operating this way, when you operate, where you control your mornings, and then you plan your days and then you methodically go through your days. Right. And you're not going to accomplish a lot of things in terms of number of things you cross off, you're just accomplishing the most important stuff. Right? Right. The result of that is a lot of the little crap builds up and, and it is stuff that has to get done. Don't get me wrong. But the answer is flash hours, meaning you like right now, I'm looking at my to do list for the day. It's the middle column in my, on my list. Right, right. I'm looking at my to do list and, and it's, it's, it's long. There's a lot of just little things I have to do get back to this person, do that, do this.
Speaker 5 (00:53:13):
Right. I won't even touch that to do list till four 30 today. The next time I touch it will be four 30 because after call with you, I'm working out. Cause that's one of my pillars right after I work out, I have a three o'clock call. That's going to go for one hour. Then I have a four o'clock call. It's going to go to four 30 by four 30, I'll be mentally exhausted. And then all I'll be done. I'll be shut down. Like I won't be answering calls and won't be whatever. I'll just be knocking out this to do list. Boom, boom, boom. And it's amazing when you focus for a half hour on these little things, you can knock most of it out and a half hour to an hour. It's when you let them take, when you're focusing on them all day, that it seems like, you know, they're taking too long. Does that make you know?
Speaker 3 (00:54:02):
Yeah. It makes sense then it does. I'm wondering if I should put a pillar of closing deals. Right. And that's a goal.
Speaker 5 (00:54:12):
Yeah. Cause you don't, you don't, you don't control how many deals you close.
Speaker 3 (00:54:17):
No, but I do know if I'm working on like say the end of my quarter, quarter, quarter, excuse me, is my New York accent. And I know I'm working on five deals. I go to my pipeline and look at my Salesforce and I got five deals committed. So my, I want to close all five between now and January. It's still a goal. Okay. Nevermind.
Speaker 5 (00:54:40):
That's a goal. But is there something more you're you're saying you could be doing to close them that you might not be doing right now? No, they're just
Speaker 3 (00:54:49):
This things, there are steps in the process of closing a deal. Those steps are, as you know, I have to get paperwork out. Right. So I have the legal contracts, right. I have to get an NDA or an India before that process starts. I have to make sure I have to re I have the contract all completed, meaning there's one order form that talks about the description of what they're going to buy and the quantities and the services that go with it. They can't sign that until it's complete. So I've got to get them T's and C's it's terms and conditions. And I got an order form. Those are the two most important pieces.
Speaker 5 (00:55:22):
So you have deals right now that could close, but they're waiting on you.
Speaker 3 (00:55:27):
No, they're waiting on a technical win. So a technical win is where we go through the process of ensuring that they're comfortable, that the solution that they potentially could buy is going to meet their needs.
Speaker 5 (00:55:40):
Right. Okay. So, but I mean, if you ever get to the point where deals are waiting to close based on you, that's not a good thing.
Speaker 3 (00:55:47):
No, no. What I do is I drop every well, that's the thing. It's not a goal. I got to say, listen, I've got to, you know, that the customer is waiting for it's urgent, insignificant and significance. I'll just put it on a calendar and say two, o'clock get Moody's or Lazard or JP Morgan chase, order form, complete updated, revise, get, get get them to, to review and acknowledge that their contracts, folks who agree. And once they agree, then they need to sign it or we need to sign it first. That's the process. It's not
Speaker 5 (00:56:21):
In my system. Okay. My planning
Brian Margolis (00:56:24):
Your day system, that would be in the middle column under to do lists, right. It wouldn't go in my calendar like two o'clock, like you said, it would be in my to do list. The only difference would be, I would highlight it in orange, which means it needs to get done by the end of the day.
Speaker 4 (00:56:40):
Oh yeah. I saw that. I do that.
Brian Margolis (00:56:42):
There's a con or there's a consequence. Right? The other thing I do on my daily planning that I think could help you with this is when I have something on my to do list. If I do my part, but I'm waiting on someone else, which I imagine happens a lot for you. You send something that you're waiting for them to confirm it or reply or get something back to you or whatever it is that I don't actually cross it off my to do list. I just put a check Mark next to it with a circle, which means I did what I had to do. I'm waiting on something else or someone else. Right. See my whole to do list is based on the fact that it's about getting crap out of my head so I can keep my bandwidth to do important things. Right.
Speaker 4 (00:57:31):
That makes a lot of sense.
Brian Margolis (00:57:33):
I'm going to send you a video when this call's over or, or by the end of the day, I'll send it to your friends. What time we wrap up here. But there's a, I saw, I saw him live a few times, the guy, Darren Hardy, he used to be the publisher of success magazine. He he wrote the compound effect that one of my favorite books, he has this training that I've seen twice now live. And I've watched it on YouTube a few times called super achievers versus overachievers or something of that nature. And he basically talks about what you and I talked about today, which was being a super achiever, not an overachiever and overachiever. Someone who gets a lot done. Right. A super achiever is someone who moves the needle in big ways. Okay. Yup.
Speaker 4 (00:58:23):
That's that's the 10 X factor that cordovan writes in his book.
Brian Margolis (00:58:28):
I think it is. We could be wrong.
Speaker 4 (00:58:31):
You've read that book. I have. Yeah. So I listened to it very often because first of all, it's type of speak his speech patterns and his, his tone and his it's matches mine. So it's a very easy book to listen to. But I, I know that's, that's the kind of X that he talks about in his book.
Brian Margolis (00:58:53):
Yeah. So, but yeah, so, so there's a lot of the stuff you and I are talking about today. It's just to me, it's about a 90 minute talk and it's the best success summary I've ever heard. Like if you're going to live, if you're only allowed to listen to one thing for the rest of your career, to me this 90 minutes, it just incorporates all the things we're talking about. So I want to get back to two actual pillar stuff. See, there's only two reasons you don't hit your pillars. Number one is you don't have the time to hit them, right? Because of what you're saying, number two is you have the time. But during that time you find yourself procrastinating, getting distracted, doing other things. And so there's cap strategies that address both of them. What I think is happening with you, at least on the surface at this point is you're not protecting the time, right? You're not prioritizing and protecting the time. And that comes down to some of the logistical stuff like we talked about, but it also comes down to, you know, just the belief that these things that you have as pillars are as important as showing up for your meetings, right? They might not have the consequence that day, but from a building your business standpoint, not hitting your pillars should feel like not showing up to meetings like this is how you build your business.
Brian Margolis (01:00:22):
And it's, you know, that proactive versus reactive stuff that we keep returning to. Right? So
Speaker 3 (01:00:30):
That's a perfect example. I have daily planning on my calendar, seven 30 every day. Initially I hit it. And it's only for 30 minutes, seven 30 to eight initially when I was really super jazzed about this. And also when I had a lot more time, I was in my basement. I was doing my, I have a notebook. I flip it open. And I, and I, and I carve out the notebook in four columns. I put the schedule in left, I put the pillar stuff. I want to get done next away on the, on the right then on the right of that is Mike to do, to list. And then on the right of that is my personal stuff that I have to get done. I gotta have to go to the dry cleaners. I'll have to think up
Brian Margolis (01:01:13):
Like, like basically my system. Exactly,
Speaker 3 (01:01:15):
Exactly. The system copied it completely the same. And then every day I get into, I get an alert, you know, daily planning. I know besides at seven 45, it's eight, o'clock eight 30, all of a sudden it's one o'clock in the afternoon and I didn't get it done. So I have to treat my cap time seven 30 to nine 30, but with my daily planning as urgent and significant,
Brian Margolis (01:01:45):
It has to look like to me. Yeah. And, and I think eventually it becomes not just language. It becomes real because I can't, I can't function correctly if I don't plan my day. Cause once in a while, if I get caught up in a mess or a storm or whatever, it's like, I'm all over the place. I'll actually stop what I'm doing. Plan my day and then move on. Because I think it's Dan Sullivan that says this, but you know, strategy doesn't actually take time. It makes time. Right. So Michael, the same thing is in your book. Yeah, no I'm quoting Dan Sullivan
Speaker 5 (01:02:20):
In the book. I think I give him credit. So, but yeah, Dan salt, like when you hear that, it makes sense by you taking 15 or 20 minutes or even a half hour to actually plan your day and figure out what truly is important and all that. And then work, you will get so much more done than if you just jump in right. Then if you just jump in, you know, give me two planned hours versus three to four non-planned hours. And the two hours will win every time. Again, not in terms of crossing things off, but in terms of moving the needle the most, getting the, getting the furthest. Right?
Speaker 3 (01:03:00):
Yeah. And it's funny that I should know this because like, I, I, I am religious when it comes to me going to the gym, religious, right. I don't skip a day. And my, you know, I have a 32 waist and I still wear large shirts. So, you know, lean, but a must, I have muscle and you don't get that, like skipping your gym. You don't get that by not having a routine. And I can't believe I can't transpose what I do physically to my mental capability. I don't know why
Speaker 5 (01:03:34):
You, cause, cause you're pro it's, it's a priority to you. See here's here's the, let me explain what, what could be happening here without playing armchair psychologist. Your identity is that of a fit person. Right? Right. You like the idea of being a fit person. Okay. That's your identity. It's not like your, your wife's going to leave you if you gain five pounds, right? No it, you know, it's not like you're looking to score a date. It's not like, you know past that. Right. And, and I am too. That's why I'm saying it, but that's your identity. Right? And you like that identity, one of the cap strategies for hitting your pillars and read this section again is changing your identity. In other words, I remember that section. Yes. Most people, all right. Most people are the way you are. The way I used to be the way most of my clients are when they first start talking to me.
Speaker 5 (01:04:37):
Okay. One of the things I did early on was I actually wanted to change my identity. I wanted to be a person who hit their pillars. I wanted to be, I wanted to be that anomaly that other people just assumed were more disciplined or assumed had it all together. Right. That was my identity because I was so far in the other direction that to me, it was easier to make a complete change and become that person than it was to put a bunch of hacks in. I want to be the person who tells people when they ask me for a meeting at nine o'clock. I love saying no, not in a malignant way. Right? Not with malice, but I love the fact like I'm proud of saying can't do it. How's 10, right? Like to me, it's this is my identity. This is how I operate.
Speaker 5 (01:05:31):
I hit my pillars. It's what I do. It makes my life easy. I know I have four pillars right now. I know if I hit my pillars every week, everything else takes care of itself. Right. That's that's a good, it's just, that's my identity. I hate working out, which is not a good identity, by the way. It's something I'm thinking about changing, but I just don't like working out yet. I work out more consistently than 90% of this country for one reason. And one reason only it's one of my pillars and I hit my pillars. Right. I am working out after this call more because of my pillars then for the health benefits.
Speaker 4 (01:06:12):
Oh really? Yeah. I hit my pillow this morning.
Speaker 5 (01:06:15):
My workout. I started. Yeah. Well your, your workouts are more habitual in a way. They almost don't even have to be pillars. Cause you don't have to focus on them.
Speaker 4 (01:06:23):
They're not even know my political, I should say. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (01:06:26):
But anyway, so for me it was about changing my identity. Every time I was like, Oh man, you can't control your morning or to, I was like, yeah, that's what everyone else is saying right now. And I don't want to be that person. Right. So, so to me, that was, for me, that was a cap strategy that, that worked out extremely well. Extremely well. Any, any, anything else?
Speaker 4 (01:06:51):
No, no. This has been pretty eye opening by the way, just to let you know, I bought your book and I gave it to my wife as a gift. So now she's reading it,
Speaker 5 (01:07:02):
The, the double pillar killers.
Speaker 4 (01:07:06):
Well, you know what? She started seeing a change and she asked, what are you doing? I said, Oh, it's hard to explain. Let me just, let me give you what I'm doing. And I just, I bought it for her.
Speaker 5 (01:07:18):
I'm going to cut that audio out and use it to promote my book.
Speaker 4 (01:07:24):
Well, I can tell you the book actually says you need to have people
Speaker 5 (01:07:29):
We'll support you. Of course.
Speaker 4 (01:07:31):
So why not have her read it? So she understands when I tell her I can't do that between nine, seven 30 and nine 30. And she'll ask me why it looks like you're open. I'm like, I'm not, I'm doing my job.
Speaker 5 (01:07:42):
Right, right. Oh, okay.
Speaker 4 (01:07:44):
You got it. So can you, are you available at 10 30? Yes.
Speaker 5 (01:07:48):
Yeah. My, my, my, my, what I call the PG partner in the book. My PG partner, if me and him ever had a falling out right where I kicked his dog or something. And although knowing him, he'd be fine if I kicked his dog. But no, if I, if we ever had a falling out, I would be, it would make my life very hard. Cause I count on having that open line of communication with someone
Speaker 4 (01:08:12):
Who gets it. Right. Yup.
Speaker 5 (01:08:16):
Who gets it? Who knows they got it. That's critical. I, you should not be doing this on an Island. No.
Speaker 3 (01:08:22):
And that's why I bought the book for it. As soon as I've read that part, I said, I got to show some a change. I've got to show some success. And when did she notices it? I'll explain it. But I'm not going to explain it. Cause she's going to probably say God, it's just another fact you going through,
Speaker 5 (01:08:36):
You know what it might be. We'll see how it holds up. Right.
Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
I hope it's not, I can't, I can't afford it anymore. They have a fat in it.
Speaker 5 (01:08:46):
Well, you gotta be careful. This thing works on the compound effect. I mean, I want to read that book. Yeah. It's a great, it's a great book. And, and, but this works on the compound effect. And so sometimes it feels like your pillars are getting you nowhere. And then down the road, when things start changing for you, you kind of looking in the rear view mirror and you go, yeah. Now I get why things are changing. Because week in and week out, I'm doing my prospecting. I'm tightening up my messaging. I'm the, you know what I mean? Oh yeah. I actually,
Speaker 3 (01:09:17):
I could say there's a a hundred percent that my day has been completely filled because of all the proactive things I'm doing. Absolutely.
Speaker 5 (01:09:28):
And I'll, let me, let me kind of leave you with, this is the part in the book that talks about this a little bit, but Ben don't break. Meaning if you don't hit your pillars one week, not the end of the world, right? Don't the goal is never miss twice. Right. But, but I think I call it rewarding the comeback in the book, even if you're in your whole day falls apart on you and it's one o'clock in the afternoon and you still haven't even planned your day, stop what you're doing. Plan the rest of your day, execute on those few things. Like that is what I mean by bed. Don't break, don't throw in the towel like, Oh, this doesn't work or I'm never going to do this. Or it like, if you're, if you're counting on being perfect at first that ain't gonna happen. No until pillars become a habit until they genuinely feel like an itch that has to be scratched. And it's not even logical anymore until you get there and you will, you've got to have a bend don't break.
Speaker 3 (01:10:32):
Yeah. And that basically gives you the, the the amount to ensure that if you do break, then you give up. But if you bend and don't give up, you have the opportunity to come back. So I've, I forgot in, in in engineering is so a word for that when you, when you design things
Speaker 5 (01:10:55):
Oh yeah, yeah. You design them so they can have failure points.
Speaker 3 (01:11:00):
Yeah, exactly. And, and, and you, you don't have a contraction and yeah. Plasticity, there you go. Thank you.
Speaker 5 (01:11:10):
Yeah, no, I a hundred, a hundred percent. And I've been notorious. I've done that in the past when I've like tried to lose weight and stuff where you eat bad for like one weekend or something. And you're like, ah, I'm never in, you throw the whole thing away. Right. And it's, it's not the way to go. So
Speaker 4 (01:11:26):
The opposite side of the spectrum when people hate me for it, but I have to reduce my cardio and I have to eat more. Also, I'll get too thin,
Speaker 5 (01:11:35):
Add another person to the list of people who hate you for that. Thank you. So, so do me a favor, give it about a month. Okay. And just check in with me by email or something. And I'd like to hear where you're at and see if we need to jump on a call again.
Speaker 4 (01:11:58):
Oh, I definitely do I have your email?
Speaker 5 (01:12:04):
I don't know. I imagine since we emailed back and forth multiple times, it's on there.
Speaker 4 (01:12:09):
No, cause I, yeah, I invited you. I have to have your email to put you on my invite. So I have it. Okay. All right. Bottom month that would give me the,
Speaker 5 (01:12:18):
If not just going to productivity, giant.com, you can grab everything there. You're going to send me something at the end of the day. I'm my, I have on my, to do list now to send you the the Darren Hardy video. Okay. And however, it's not in orange, so although I'd like to do it and I will do my best to do it, there is a chance it won't happen. And I'll be okay with that. Okay. Right. And again, I'm not saying that to be, I'm saying, that's my mentality. Like, okay, this is something I do want to do, but I'm not going to stop what I'm doing to do it. And I'm saying that not because you care, I'm saying for the sake of this lesson, it goes on my to do list, but I let a lot of people, this would divert them. Right? Yeah. Go, they'd look it up. They'd start listening to it. They'd send it. They'd see another video. Right.
Speaker 4 (01:13:12):
I'm on YouTube. And I think I found it. Okay. Yeah. Compound effect. Audio book complete by Dan Hart.
Speaker 5 (01:13:19):
No, no. What's the compound effect. I'm talking about super achiever versus over achiever. It's a 90 minute video. It's alive. It's alive. It's a tape of him alive. Okay. So you may be able to find it. I'm going to send it to you anyway.
Speaker 4 (01:13:33):
Perfect. I really appreciate this. I'm going to send you an email and it's on my to do list and I'm gonna put it on my calendar. Cause then there'll be a urgent, significant to send you an email in 30 days. Sounds good, man. And I really appreciate this time, Brian. This is this is very valuable. It's invaluable.
Speaker 5 (01:13:53):
I appreciate you participating. This is great. Have a great holiday. Thank you. You too. Happy new year. You as well.
Speaker 4 (01:14:00):
Thank you again. Take care.
Speaker 5 (01:14:03):
Thanks for listening to another episode of simplified your strategy, magnifier 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.