Power of Productivity: How to design a bullet-proof weekly calendar

This recording, because now it comes down to being productive. Now it's about putting in the right work, if you believe what I just said, now it's about putting in the right work so you can get the message in front of as many people as you possibly can and be productive. So you're not working 90 hours a week.

So let's talk about why advisors struggle with productivity.

Number one, most of you are wearing multiple hats. I bet you a lot of you are not only producing, you're an account executive, probably of your own book. And you're also a leader. Maybe you own your agency, Maybe you're a sales director. You're the employee benefits practice lead, whatever that might be. You play multiple roles, and that can be very challenging, especially when you are mentally playing all three roles all the time. One of the things I'm going to teach you for anybody who falls into this category right here, time blocking and chunking time is going to be massive for you. If you struggle with productivity, you can't be all three roles or all two roles all the time. It's not possible. And I'm here to tell people multitasking is a myth. There's only multi. There's only task shifting. There's no such thing as multitasking.

So that's number one. We're going to focus on number two challenge. You're assigning every task equal weight.

So you look at all your to dos and you say, but, Andy, they're all important. Okay, well, here's some truth, guys. If you have more than three priorities, you have none. You can't have multiple priorities more than three.

And when every priority has equal weight, you will always do what is easiest.

You know what's easy? When you're supposed to be producing, you're at your desk checking an inbox.

Getting your inbox down to inbox zero, feeling good about the fact inbox is zero, but you haven't sold a damn thing in two months.

Guys, you've got to let things go. You've got to understand what's most important. I know this sounds very, very obvious, but you'd be surprised how many producers right now aren't hitting their sales goals simply because they're not putting in the act of selling.

I'm going to help you do that today, the third challenge, and this can be the biggest one you're negotiating with your calendar. Even if you plan a good day, you get up and you go.

I don't know if I really feel like doing that. So. So instead of doing this.

You'Re doing this.

You can't negotiate with the calendar.

If you really want to make productivity easy, put things on your calendar. And then you have one job. Follow the calendar. Let your calendar be your boss.

Now let's have a little fun. How many of you since the post Covid world are sitting on this workshop right now looking like this?

You've got your suit coat and jacket or shirt on the top, wearing your pajamas and your in your underwear in the bottom. Some of you would look like this. These days. You're working from home and you're not being productive, right?

But here's the reality, and this is the shift I want to help you guys make today. When we're trying to hit sales goals, we often look to external things for the reasons we're not hitting it or how we're going to hit it. Andy if only I had better prospects. If only I had better products to sell or I need. I just know I need to go find a better pitch. And this is why we always all search for the silver bullet script. It's none of that.

Hitting your sales goals comes down to these three things. Discipline, focus, and consistency.

And I keep saying sales goals. Your goals might not be sales. Your goals might be growing your agency or hiring two new people, whatever it might be. Your goals come down to those three things you see on the screen right there.

And by the way, these are often things you can't teach, right? I can help you go find better prospects. I can help you find better products and create a better pitch. But do you have the discipline, do you have the focus and do you have the consistency to wake up every day and every week and do the same thing over and over again?

My story, my life changed. Guys, I want to share this. I was that producer that would always set great sales goals at the beginning of the year.

Never create a plan to get there. And by April and May, I'm looking up at this lofty goal going, I have no clue how I'm going to get there. I was the guy negotiating with my calendar. I was the guy standing by the water cooler talking about the Monday night football game. Never really actually doing anything to hit my sales goals. It's. It felt great to talk about them, but I never hit him. And so when I moved out to Colorado in 2014 after struggling for about a year, one of the first investments I ever made myself was what you see on the screen right here. I don't know if anybody here knows who Darren Hardy is. It's a guy, he's. I could Say he's my first. Outside of my boss in Wisconsin, he was my first mentor. Never met the man, but I came upon this course online called Insane Productivity Gain. The ultimate success advantage of, I think it was like 900 bucks. It's like a six, nine week course like this Sounds cool. And I bought it. And it was here where I really started learning what it meant to block time, how to get a crapload of stuff done in a short amount of time. And I'm here to say that was nine years ago. I've never looked back from a productivity standpoint thanks to this course. So number one tip, guys, this course still does exist. If anybody wants to buy it, it is an amazing course. Darren Hardy has some amazing tips. But this is where it changed for me. I said, all right, I have got. If I'm going to have success moving out to Colorado, this is a chance for me to kind of reset my career. I need to be more focused and more disciplined. And so I bought the course and I really started noticing a shift that I was able to get to a lot more things because at that time, by the way, I was a producer. I was also the account exec on most of our large clients and I was in a way, running the large group team.

And so I really just had to become good at all three of those and saw a big change in my results when I started leaning into this. Because here's what I learned.

Successful people do ordinary things for an extraordinary amount of time. One of the biggest things guys you will have to start getting okay with is doing boring things for an extraordinary amount of time.

I just got done reading a book not that long ago for my marketer, my marketing minds in the. In the call. If you ever want to read a good book. Million dollar one hundred million dollar leads. Alex Hormozi.

He shares a story in here that I absolutely loved. And I think it's very appropriate to a lot of producers. He was growing a gym business early in his career and he had a mentor who was helping him grow his gym business. And so one of the things his mentor said is what I want you to do. If you want to generate more leads for your business, more memberships, I need you to go out and pass out, put flyers on people's windshields, spend a whole day walking around town putting flyers on windshields. So he did, came back at the end of the day. Nobody called.

Nobody, no messages came his way. In fact, out of that first batch of flyers, I think he said he generated one lead and he was Ticked off. And so when his mentor checked in with him, he's like that, that stuff doesn't work. We only generated one fricking lead out of that whole thing. Flyers don't work. And the mentor said, okay, how many flyers did you send out? How many flyers did you put in windshields? We put 300. And the mentor looked at him and goes, we don't even start tracking data until we have put 5,000 flyers on windshields. Moral of the story, guys, I guarantee one of the reasons you're not having success if you're not is you're not doing enough of the activity. It has nothing to do with the activity itself. Whether it's calls or emails or drop ins or LinkedIn content, I don't care what it is. Often the answer is you just need to do more.

We talk about this for my folks. A cold call, right? It takes 18 calls to get somebody on the phone today just to get them on the phone. That's 180 calls to get 10 people on the phone.

You need to do more today to get the same results we used to get. So the answer is sometimes you just need to do more of the ordinary.

Don't go chasing a new strategy. It might just be you have the right one, you're not doing it enough.

A second book. I'm going to share a couple books today for my readers. Another book that changed my career around productivity. The one thing. Read this in 2016 if anybody wants to get this. One of the best quotes in there is there can only be one most important thing. This brings it back to challenge number two. Giving equal weight to all to do's and all priorities. Guys, there can only be one most important thing in any given time. So when you look at your calendar every day I want you to ask what is the most important thing I could be working on right now that is going to move the needle the farthest?

And one of the things I'm going to mention here in a few minutes, and I know it's going to irk some of you, is not every email you get from a client is an emergency. I understand you want to overvalue or over leverage your service and how great it is. But replying to every client 10 minutes after they email you is also what's keeping you back from growing your business.

Just telling you the truth. So not everything is an emergency. There can only be one most important thing in the moment. So here's what we're going to do guys. Now we're going to go into the workshop side. Anybody tell me what these are? I forget the name of these things.

I always call them nesting dolls. Nesting dolls?

Yeah, tchotchkes.

Yeah, I think they're Russian marionette dowels or something like that. But with these dowels, right, you lift up the one and there's a smaller one. You lift up the one, there's a small one. We're going to do the same thing with your productivity guys. We're going to peel back the layers and we're going to get it down to this little doll here. The most important thing you need to be doing, I am going to help you plan a fricking amazing week. That's the goal. So we're going to do some six month planning. July 1 is what, next Monday? Not next Monday, the following Monday is coming up.

Let's look ahead and let's start doing some effective planning. Okay? If I do this right, I want you guys walking out of this workshop in the net in 43 minutes feeling clear about what you're going to do every week. But remember, successful people do ordinary things for an extraordinary amount of time. So let's start here.

What's your six month revenue goal? Write that down. By the way, if you're on the call and revenue is not your priority, whatever that six month goal is, write it down. What's your six month goal? But for my producers, what's your six month revenue goal?

Or maybe you do it by number of accounts. Either way.

Now, next question.

What is the average size of each new client? So if you've got a revenue goal, if I want to sell another 100 grand in the second half, what's the average size of every win for you? Or a goal for average size?

Once you know that.

Divide the total goal divided by the average number and you should come up with how many new clients or how many new wins? How many new policies do I need?

However you track it could be AORs.

Maybe you sell life insurance. Life insurance policies. Maybe you sell homeowners. Homeowners policies. Whatever it is. How many new accounts do I need?

We've already peeled back a couple layers. Big goal. What's my average win? Gets me to what? How many wins I need. Now we're going to keep peeling it back.

To do that. How many proposals do you need? Let's just use the basic sales process here to get the number of wins you need. How many proposals? So I want you to think about what your closing ratio might look like. Is it 30%? Is it 20? Is it 50? Take your number of wins divided by that percentage. And that should help you come up with how many proposals you've got to give to hit your wins. And I define proposals as you are asking for the business.

So we've got revenue goal, how many biz, how many new accounts you need to hit it, how many proposals you need to hit it as well. Now we're going to peel the onion back one more time.

To hit that number of proposals. How many intro meetings do you think you need to have? How many connections do you think you need to have? Or discussions?

How many doors do you have to open to hit the number of proposals you need?

So why did I do it in this order? Here's why. I feel this is very important.

If you're like I used to be and you set this lofty sales goal but have no plan to get there, all you ever do is look up at that goal. And the later in the year it gets, the more you start sweating.

We just broke it down now from what your goal is to how many doors do you have to open to hit the goal? Right? What I want you to do at this moment is get rid of that goal way up here. And you only have one number that matters. How many doors do you need to open?

Just look at what's right ahead of you. How many doors do you need to open? Because if you, if your numbers are right, you go open those doors, you should hit your ultimate goal. If all the numbers play out.

Now, it becomes a game of how quickly can I hit that number? How many doors can I open? You're going to start seeing where this makes things more clear. Guys, I have six months to open 20 doors. Okay, how are you going to do it? What activities are you going to put in to hit the 20 doors? And we're going to talk about that. But this is the number I wanted to level set with this number right here.

If you are a partner, agency owner, sales director in your agency and you have producers on your team, this is the number you should be tracking the most. Guys, we know that if you open these number of doors, you're going to hit your sales goals. I watch too many agencies just focus on the revenue number. And they keep saying, well, why aren't you hitting that? You got to get it back to the basics. Starts with opening doors.

Now here's the next tip. Another great book for my people who are readers, Traction. If you have not read this, I highly recommend you read this.

Traction is something I started doing even when the business was just me and my executive Assistant. Technically this is a process you use. If you have multiple employees, a million dollars more in revenue. But I started doing this. They have a model called, they have a process called the Entrepreneurial Operating System eos. Some of you probably heard of it, maybe you run it. We run it here. Guys, I'm here to tell you our business would not be where it is today without this system.

Everything we do is systems and processes and our business is built on that. It's what allows us to grow without having to hire a ton of people.

But that's not why I'm here to talk about this. One of the things I love about traction is they force you to operate in 90 day periods. So here's how I want you guys to start thinking productivity wise. We just set your six month goal, broke it down into the number of doors you've got to open in the next six months. Now I want you to operate in 90 days periods. How are we going to do it? Number one.

Looking at July, August and September, what are your quarterly sales rocks? AKA what are your biggest priorities for your quarterly sales? So for the next three months, what are your biggest goals? Biggest rocks. As it, as it relates to sales, I again maybe your goal is I have to hire some people. What are your biggest priorities.

When it comes to hiring people? Hiring two new producers, whatever that goal is, write those down. What are the most important priorities?

Now once you've got those priorities, maybe you have 2, 3, 4.

What are the to dos you need to do to get there?

Start to make a short list of to do items that you would need to accomplish in order to hit those goals. So maybe your one of your rocks is your sales goal broken out into one quarter. Broken down into I need to book so many appointments. Cool. What are the to do's that you need to do in order to hit that rock? Hit that priority.

To do's lead to priorities. Priorities lead to goals being achieved.

It.

Now.

Let'S turn this into a weekly and effective weekly strategy. Here's where we're going to start guys.

What have we done up to this point? We have.

Gained clarity around your six month goal.

We have broken that down into a number that you're going to focus on. For most of you that's going to be appointments. How many new meetings do I have need to have? Then we looked at ahead at the next 90 days and I know we're doing a condensed version here because of the time of the workshop, but looking at July, August and September, figuring out what your priorities are and then Making a list of the to do's that are going to support you hitting and achieving the priorities.

Now I want you to think about.

Who you're targeting. So if we're going to put effective marketing plan together, effective weekly prospecting strategy, who are you targeting?

If you've been through my stuff before, guys, if I've worked with you, you know we do the five star prospect profile. I want you to think about this. Let me, let me break it down a little bit. We'll go through a real quick exercise. I'm gonna, I'm actually gonna go more tactical than I planned on. Write this down. Number one, who is my favorite client today?

Write down the name of your favorite client.

If it's a business, write down the name of the business. Write down the name of your main contact there as well. If you sell individual products, write down the name of the favorite client individually, the person.

We're going to open more doors. Why not open more doors with people like them?

Second question, why are they your favorite?

The only answer you can't give is because I make the most money on them. Why are they your favorite?

Are they in a specific industry and you specialize in the industry?

If you're an employee benefits advisor, is it because they have a certain number of employees or they're self funded?

Maybe you target CFOs or maybe you target HR director.

But also make a real short list. Again we're doing a condensed version, a short list of why are they your favorite psychographically? Who are these people between the ears? What do they believe? What do they stand for? How do they make decisions?

And then the last part of the five star, I won't go through it all. The last part I want you to consider for because we're going to go try to open more doors.

What problem do you want to own?

Better said, what do you want to become known for? Think about what you sell.

What do you want to become known for? Do you want to become known as the captive person? Do you want to become known as the go to thought leader in a specific niche industry niche? Do you want to become known as the advisor who moves people from fully insured to self funded? The commercial producer who knows, who helps uncover gaps in risk better than anybody else? What do you want to become known for? I'm going to encourage you guys. If you're going to have success, stop trying to be all things to all people. Become known for one thing.

That's how we create explosive growth.

Even if you sell, if you're on the Financial planning side, you sell life insurance, di and annuities. I guarantee there's one of those that you are probably best known for your best at.

Now, once you know who your ideal client looks like or your favorite client and who you're trying to attract, the next question is what are you going to say to them to get their attention so you can book more appointments?

I want you to remember our brand script story selling formula.

You want to read another book? Go read Building a Story Brand. Because every story, every marketing message that is effective is told the same way. Guys, your job is to go out and tell your prospect story.

If you want to get the right attention, go tell your prospect story. There's a hero with a goal who has a problem that needs a guide with a plan to achieve success and avoid failure.

Go tell the story of what your prospect's looking for. What are they trying to achieve? What's the problem keeping them from it? What's your plan to help them fix it, solve it, and how are you going to help them have success? That's what I want you to put in your marketing. Whether it's an email, a cold call, a LinkedIn post, a podcast, a webinar. Tell your prospect story. Identify your ideal client and then tell their story.

See what happens when we hit the latter part of the year and we're way behind our sales goals.

We get desperate.

And we start trying to tell talk to anybody we can.

Guys, that is not the way you're going to win. Prospects sense and smell that desperation. I want you to be clear about who you're trying to attract into your world, what you're going to say to them. Because now we can build the rest of this plan of how you're going to go out and attack the market every week. That's why I included this in this workshop. It's just not about planning a good week. You got to know who you're going after, what you're saying to them. And the last part is, where are you going to say it?

Who, what and where? Who are you going after? What are you saying to them and where are you going to say it to get their attention?

So I want you to look at this little chart right here.

I have to take give credit where credit is due. I also got this from this book here. $100 million leads. I thought it was a great way to illustrate how we prospect. Guys, there are four ways we prospect. Cold one to one.

Warm one to one, warm one to many and cold one to many.

Cold one to one is the traditional way we've all been taught cold call, cold email. And I'd even add the. The the old school drop in. Stopping by the business, try to get a hold of the owner or the decision maker. Right? That's cold one to one. I can only reach one prospect at a time.

Warm one to one could be a personalized email campaign. So everybody gets the email like it's just coming to them. Referrals. How many of you right now just aren't asking enough for enough referrals?

Referrals are the quickest path to cash.

I could also add networking as warm one to one as well.

And then we've got warm one to many, which I think is the most overlooked part of a prospecting plan. That would be social media content or just social media activity. Webinars podcasting. If anybody here has a podcast. Public speaking. Guys, there is nothing that turns a cold suspect into a hot prospect as fast as public speaking. Anybody here wants to make speaking a part of their game plan. Go find associations where your prospects hang out and try to get in front of them and speak. You do that, you will create a lot of good activity.

And then Cold one to many is probably not utilized as much. But that would be like paid advertising, right? You're paying to go put your name in front of cold traffic. Cold audience. I put public speaking there as well because I think you can walk into a room of cold and turn it hot with prosp with public speaking.

Now here's how I want you to think about this activity. Guys, looking at this chart, everything on the top half is what I would refer to as asking. Right? If I make a cold call, I make a. I send out a cold email. I drop into a business. What am I doing? I'm asking for an appointment.

Warm one to one send out a personalized email blast. Referrals. I'm asking, right? Still a form of asking, the warm one to many is what I would refer to as giving.

LinkedIn hosting, webinars, hosting a podcast, going out and speaking that is giving. You are delivering value to people.

Today you have to have a combination of both. You can't just have an ask based prospecting plan and you can't just have a giving based prospecting plan. The reason warm to one to many is underneath is I feel like it supports all you're asking. Does LinkedIn content create overnight wins? No. Does a webinar create overnight wins? No. But it supports when you do go make the ask because you've built more awareness, you've built more Credibility. So when you do make the calls and the emails and the referrals, people know who you are. It supports.

But a good strategy. A good prospecting game plan today guys encompasses both ask and give.

So what I want you to do in looking at all these activities.

Which ones speak to you the most? If you were to put together the perfect weekly game plan, which of these activities would you embark on? Maybe you are a cold caller. You love picking up the phone. Okay, that's going to be part of it. You're going to pair cold calling with some cold emails. Cool.

You can't just do the warm one to many guys. You can't. Well, I'm going to do some LinkedIn content. I'm going to host a webinar. You got to do the asking too. But I want you to make a list of what activities. You don't have to do all of them, but what activities feel like. You.

Remember drop ins can be in there as well. Cold one to one networking in the warm one to one.

But I want you to make a list of the activities you want to embark on every single week.

And I get. Not every one of them is going to be every week guys. Public speaking, if you want to do that, you're not going to be speaking every week. I get it. But what activities on a weekly basis, typical weekly basis do you want to use? And there's no perfect answer.

But the only thing I'm going to tell you is you got to have some from the ask and you got to have some from the give.

If all you do is ask, eventually you become an and we don't want you to do that.

Buyers are more susceptible of sales pitches today, guys than they've ever been.

So what we've done now in review, who are you targeting?

What are you going to say to them?

Where are you going to say it?

Which leads to which of these activities are you going to focus on?

Now I will share a little nugget where the one warm one to many can become really effective.

Is if you find yourself strapped for time.

Warm one to many can become a very effective part of this game plan. Why? Because warm one to many allows you to get one message in front of a lot of people at one time.

This is what makes cold calling difficult these days. Because if it requires 18 calls to get one person just on the phone, I gotta make a lot of calls to get a few people on the phone and I can only call one person at a time.

Warm one to many I can get in front of a Lot of prospects at once. And that's a really good use of my time.

I'm here to tell you guys, based on my experience, nothing will change your production career like speaking. If you really want to put time into becoming a better speaker, nothing will change it like that. Because all of a sudden you find yourself in a room speaking to 20 prospects. Four or five of them come up afterwards like, hey, we need to talk. Nothing will change your production career like that.

And you spent one hour talking to 20 people. Very good use of your time.

Because most of us don't have much time, especially if we're playing multiple roles.

So let's plan the perfect week.

That's step one. This is a six step plan to plan the perfect week. First step, pick a time to plan your week. Okay? Before you can put in the right activities, you actually have to plan your week. So here's what I'm going to urge everybody to do. If you struggle with planning your weeks effectively, start by picking a time to plan your week. I plan my week first thing every Sunday morning when I wake up, no matter where I am, I plan my week.

Pick a day of the week, you plan your week. And I would suggest a Friday, a Saturday or a Sunday. I want you waking up Monday morning with the game plan. Planning your week on Monday morning is too late.

And then be religious and consistent with that. That's your time block every week where you sit down on.

What'S the world I'm looking for unblocked to plan your week.

Step two, time block your role. So these are. This is for my folks who play multiple roles. If you're a producer and an account exec, you're managing your own book. You're a producer, an account manager and you run the, you run your agency, whatever that might be. Time block your roles.

You can't be all roles at the same time. Remember what I said. Multitasking is a myth.

My simple advice for my producers and account managers, split your days in halves. What part of the day are you going to be a producer? What part of the day you're going to be an account executive.

I used to do production in the morning and then I do all my follow up in the afternoon because I knew if a client emailed me at 9 o' clock and I replied to them by 1:30 they're not going to be mad. And if it was urgent, they will call.

I focused all morning on production, afternoon on account management. If you also are a leader on your team or you run the agency, we call that CEO time block time throughout the week where you specifically play CEO.

But you can't do all three, all the time or all too.

So just look in your calendar, go, where am I going to do what?

Step three.

Now you go back to your quarterly rocks and to dos. Again. We did a condensed version today. I understand, but what are your big priorities for the next 90 days? And then what are the to dos that need to be completed to support you hitting those priorities?

And the things that fill your calendar gang, have to be tied to your rocks.

Your priorities.

This is great advice by the way, for agencies that have agency wide goals. Everything on the calendar should somehow tie back to your big priorities and it's your to dos you're going to fill the calendar with.

So if you look at these activities, these are going to be a lot of your to dos.

Because step four is you're going to fill the empty spaces in your calendar with your sales to dos.

And what I mean by empty spaces is hopefully you are entering your week with meetings already on the calendar. Right? You maybe have a meeting with a client. I know you probably have internal team meetings. You may have some prospecting meetings already scheduled, maybe a networking event. Everything else is empty. You gotta fill the empty spaces in your calendar with your sales to do's. Guys, this is what my calendar looks like every week.

Now I know everybody here is trying to look at who I work with. Oh, who's Andy's clients? Who's he talking to? Here's what I want you guys to look at with this calendar. I am not showing this to Brad. I am showing you what a calendar should look like. Notice the first thing color coded. First piece of advice I'm going to give you with your calendar is color code the calendar.

Each different activity should have a different color. Number one, anything that's pink in my calendar is personal. Pink E equals personal. Yes, you can look at all my workouts. My workouts are all on the calendar. If any of I, if I have any exercisers in here, put it on the calendar.

If it is green, it's a client money time green.

If I am giving a presentation, purple.

If it's personal or professional development, yellow.

And then anything else that's prospecting will be dark blue.

Maroon. We have a certain color scheme we use with the different type of sales calls. The reason we do this though folks is when I go to my calendar, I can go boom. I know exactly what everything is.

Now the part I want to stress the most and I haven't discussed yet is those Blocks of time that are royal blue.

The blocks of time that are royal blue is the white space you got to fill in.

Here's what's happening for a lot of you right now that don't feel productive. You don't fill in the white space, you don't block time with yourself. Therefore, you're leaving it open for other people to put their priorities in your calendar. And before you know it, your week is made up of other people's priorities. And guess who's not hitting theirs? You.

When you've got white space, this is where you fill it in for the to do's. For me, that might be create content. That's one of my priorities. But on Friday in this week, I had speaking opportunities. I was looking for speaking opportunities. That's a to do. But that white space has to be filled with the time the to dos you need to do to get your 90 day priorities.

I want all of your teammates, if you have them looking at you saying, listen, you have an intimidating calendar, it is hard to get on your calendar. Yep, I know. That's the point. Don't let your calendar every week look like a bunch of white space because before you know it, it'll be filled in by other people.

Step five.

Once you plan a good week, review tomorrow, tonight. Never go to bed.

Until you look at the next day.

Whether you do that at the end of the day before you wrap and go home, or at night before you go to bed. Never go to bed without looking at tomorrow. You have got to know exactly what the game plan is tomorrow.

Because what happens, believe it or not, is when you go to bed, your brain starts going to work.

And step six, guys, then don't negotiate with your calendar. If you go to bed and you know what the plan is tomorrow. Because you plan the week.

You go to bed, you know exactly what the game plan is. Tomorrow your job is to wake up and run the plan.

I know this sounds simple, guys, but this is how you create insane productivity.

And here's the best part, guys. When you're planning your week and you're filling in that white space like you see here with my royal blue times blocks of time, your TO DOS can adjust. There's going to be days you don't get to all the to dos. I get it. Just put them in the next day. Wherever you've got that block of time dedicated for you, put them in the next day. Just adjust.

But the biggest thing is you can't negotiate with your calendar.

So that's my advice for you guys. If we're going to have a record breaking year, second half of the year, guys, it's not some new sales pitch you've never given. It's not some new product you just found. It's going to be found in discipline, focus and consistency.

Doing the activities every week is not sexy foreign. It's about consistency.

So let me see, we might have some questions here. Nope. So far, no. Oh, how do you block for Calendly meetings? Do you adjust Calendly on a weekly basis? Restrict available times further? Great question. The thing about calendar links, guys, URLs that's great is you can set it and say hey, I have access. I'm going to make myself accessible using a Calendly link on Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 9am to 5pm if there's a, if there is a meeting already in place, Calendly is going to recognize that and make sure you're not available at that time. If somebody wanted to set us a meeting with you. So whoever asked the Calendly question, you don't have to constantly tweak it every week. Just make the parameters what you want them to be. Because you're integrating the calendar with Calendly. Calendly will always recognize when you have a meeting and you're not available.

But I do, I do highly suggest folks using some sort of calendar service if you're not because that's how you control your calendar. You gotta own your calendar. Do not let it own you.

Can you send a list of books reference? Yes. Recommended calendar service? Nick, great question. I am. We use Calendly guys. It is the oldest one out there, I think. I know there's ones tied to Microsoft now and things like that, but the one we use the most, if anybody here uses HubSpot, I know it has, Nick. I just say Calendly man. It's super cheap. You get one for free if you want multiple links. I think it's 110 bucks a year, very easy to use and it's one of the older ones out there. So I, I would say it's one of the more reliable ones out there for sure.

Now one more thing I want to mention guys, before I roll. I hope this was helpful. Guys, again, this isn't rocket science. I'm not sharing anything you probably haven't heard before.

But use these six steps.

Block time every week to plan the week time. Block your role to do's the prospecting activities that are going to give you the best leverage in both time and getting in front of people. But be clear who you're targeting, what you're going to say to them, and then just get after it. Every single week. I am here to tell you there is no perfect prospecting blueprint. Anybody who tells you there is is full of bs.

It's doing what you want to do, but doing it repeatedly. And right now, if you feel like something's not working, it just may be you're not doing enough of it.

So that's my advice to you. Now, last thing, I'm just going to share, if anybody's interested, two more things. Excuse me. If I have my planners in the room looking for a good day plan or a good planner. Guys, this thing is freaking awesome. The clever Fox planner pro. So if you're looking for a new planner, this thing is awesome. You plan your week, you plan every quarter, you plan every month, and then you plan every week. It's. It's phenomenal. It is. I've used this for almost three years now and love it.

And if you're blocking your time. Good enough. Guys.

You'Ll remember this number one. Most people cannot handle the monotony of success. Guys, success can be boring.

And the people who achieve extraordinary results don't achieve them by working more hours. Don't feel proud you're working 90 hours a week right now. They achieve them by getting more done in the hours they have.

This isn't about working harder, guys. But if you work hard and smart.

As Darren Hardy says, you will be insanely productive. And that is the whole point.

And if you time block well enough.

You'Ll have time to think about our next social media sales academy. And I'm going to let you guys know about starts July 10th. One of the one warm one to many that we preach here is LinkedIn. I know I talk about it until I'm blue in the face, but guys, our next session starts July 10th. We are taking enrollment right now. If anybody wants to know more. I just wanted to share some people you may know these people who have been in it.

Miranda just joined us. Our last one. I love this quote she gave us. Guys, a lot of people still aren't buying into LinkedIn and I'm here to tell you it has to be part of your game plan today. Unless you live in an area that is so rural that people aren't even using the Internet, you need to be on LinkedIn.

This has been a game changer for a lot of people. It's not going to be your only lead generator. It's supporting everything else you do. But I am going to tell you. If you want to know more about it, just go to our website. Click the click to learn more.

Schedule time with us. We'll talk to you about it if you're interested. But this thing, I wanted to share this because leveraging your time wisely, social media can be a big part of that. So this one starts. Our next Academy starts in three weeks, July 10th. So if you want to know more, go here. We will be providing the recording of today's workshop for you. So for those who want to go back and do the exercises, just know that the workshop is recorded and will be to you later today. We might actually have a couple more questions here before I let you. Crystal, Wendy said she uses Tidy Cal for her calendly. That sounds good. Christine uses. You can book me. That's good.

All right, guys, I hope you found today helpful. Give me a thumbs up if it was helpful. Flip me off if it wasn't.

Here's the thing, guys.

Productivity is what's going to help you hit your goals. Just get consistent. That's why these three things are sitting behind me right now. Every time I'm on a coaching call with a client and they're not having the success they want, I go right here because they're either not being consistent enough, persistent enough, or patient enough.

You can't just hit a list of prospects one time, guys, and think things are going to happen. You gotta consistently and persistently hit them over and over and over again. And I'll wrap by saying where I started.

If you truly believe in what you're selling.

And you truly believe you can help people with it, you have an obligation to tell as many as you possibly can.

And I don't want to make it any more simple than that. The more people you tell you can help guys, the more opportunities you are going to create.

Any fears of being salesy or pushy, let it go. Because if you truly believe you can help people, it's not about being pushy. You have an obligation to tell them. Otherwise they're not going to get your help. So I'll leave you with that. Guys, if you have questions, you know where to find me. You know where to find Chris. We will probably do another workshop late August. Hope you guys found this beneficial. Let me check the Q and A before we go. Thanks, bud. Nope, no questions. I will also send out this list of books so everybody has it. And until next time, my friends, go kick some ass.