Being disciplined in your recruiting efforts equals growth, and growth equals freedom

Hey everybody, it's Richard Milligan with ForC Recruiting. I'm about to cut a podcast. I'm gonna go to it pretty quickly here. I've got a cold that's got me coughing. I'm gonna save my voice today. Thanks for watching this YouTube video or Vimeo video, wherever you're seeing it. It's an honor that you would actually invest your time and And follow me. So I appreciate that. So to all my people, I high-five you, I applaud you. You're doing the right thing by trying to further yourself and educate yourself around recruiting. And so we're going to go directly into this podcast now, and hopefully I can keep myself from coughing. I'm actually going to position my mute button here where I can see it so that I know where it is in case I need to cough. You're not lucky enough to get away from it. Because you're on camera, but that's okay. Here we go. We're gonna go live in 3 and in 2 and in 1. Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Recruiting Conversations. It's your host, Richard Milligan. This is gonna be a short podcast today for a couple of reasons. One, I have a cold and I'm gonna do my best not to hack in your ear, but a commitment that I've made to myself is that we would cut a podcast each week, and as I looked at my weekly calendar, I have a small window of time to bring a key thought to you. This key thought is coming from a recent conversation that I had, as it usually does, with someone that was struggling in this particular area. I'll be honest with you, the word that I'm about to use is not one of my favorite words. While it's not a curse word, there have been times in my season where I might have felt like it was for whatever reason. I would dare say A lack of maturity. And that word is the word discipline. There's just something about the word discipline that to me feels counterintuitive to what it actually delivers, which is, I think discipline actually delivers freedom. And that's really a line that got stolen from Jocko Willink, who has written several brilliant pieces, has a great podcast. I'd highly recommend checking those out. But he made a statement that discipline equals freedom. How it pertains to recruiting is this: discipline in our recruiting efforts equals growth, and it's growth that equals freedom. So think about this. If you're not growing a team, you'll lose people. People will move. People will go through life struggles. They'll leave you. You'll not be a great fit for everybody. That's the truth. You're going to have recruiting pressures where other people are going to make great offers to your people. And so, while we're going to do things to reverse recruit them, one of the things that I know is that if you're not growing, that lack of growth will bring unprofitability, it'll bring uninspired teams, and it eventually will bring micromanagement if you have layers of management above you. And so, a lack of discipline in your recruiting efforts will actually lead to the opposite of freedom. Now, for the recruiting leader who is actually being disciplined in their recruiting efforts and their team's growing and they're profitable, like everybody wants to keep their hands off of that individual, right? So being disciplined in the area of recruiting actually allows you the freedom that you want. And so there's a direct correlation between living a disciplined life and having more freedom available to you. Here's one of the things that I have seen and I know, not just from my own life, but from the people that I've coached, is that oftentimes that recruiting leader is a key influencer inside the organization, is a key influencer in the community at times. And so they get lots of opportunities to do other things. And those, sometimes those are great opportunities to partner with your community at a high level. To be on an advisory committee somewhere within your city, that's influence that you may not be able to pass on. You may have nonprofit organizations that identify you as a key influencer in the community, and they may ask you to be on their board. You may have inside your own organization, they may see you as someone who has lots of value to bring, and they may ask you to be on specific committees. And so, as we begin to just look at the opportunities that you're going to have around you, you are going to have to say no to many things. Good is often the enemy of great. So, when we say yes to good things, we're actually saying no to being great. So, first things first, if you're going to be disciplined in your recruiting efforts, Your time is going to be an area you're gonna have to be disciplined. Time management's gonna have to be something that you're constantly evaluating. Where's your time going? Where are you saying yes? And where can you say no? Most times I've found that where we have a team in place, it's easier to say no to recruiting than when we don't have a team in place. So if you already have a team underneath you, and most people that listen to this podcast are recruiting leaders, meaning they manage a team but are also responsible for recruiting to that team. You already have the team, and so this is going to be an area for you to really ask yourself the question: What am I saying yes to that I could say no to because it's coming in the way of me being disciplined in my recruiting efforts? Time management is going to be key for you. In my research and in the time I've invested into this over the last couple years, the number one response that the recruiting leader gives as as to why they don't recruit is because they don't have the time available to them. Now, here's what I would tell you. I do a lot of speaking events. I'm speaking every 2 to 3 weeks and traveling. I also do a lot of these one-off coaching sessions where I'll come in for a day or 2 days max, and we do a high-intensity jumpstart in the area of recruiting. And the first place that I go is I look at their calendar. I look at the individual's calendar to say, what are you currently doing with your time? Where are you currently saying yes? And here's what I know. Most people have me come in as a fresh set of eyes because I can actually see things that they can't. Now, here's a small process that you— a short process you can take yourself through. Audit your time. Seriously, look at your week, write down where all your time has gone, look at your calendar and see what meetings you said yes to. Okay, and just going through that simple process and allocating that number of hours that you're saying yes to things that you could be saying no to things that aren't in alignment with your larger goal system, your larger values system, your larger dream that you have that you want to accomplish as a recruiting leader. Like when you start evaluating, like, what are the most important things to me? And is saying yes to these things moving me closer to that? Most people would say, Yeah. Anywhere from 20 to 40% of their time is being lost in saying yes to things that don't move them closer to their central purpose, which is like leading their team well and growing their team, growing their influence. So right there is a place that I'm gonna start. So now we make the assumption that I'm saying yes to recruiting, 'cause to be disciplined in something, you gotta start by saying yes to it. Think about this. I can't just say no to bad things, I gotta say yes to good things. If I wanna get in better shape, I can't just say no to not working out, I gotta say yes to working out. I can't just say no to bad food, I gotta say yes to good food, right? If I wanna get healthy. And so, the first thing is this, we gotta say yes to recruiting. But now, let's look at this. Now that I'm gonna assume that you're gonna say yes to recruiting, Let's talk about ways that you can actually promote discipline in your recruiting efforts. The first thing that I found that's helpful in understanding is that having the right environment makes a big difference. So now I'm gonna ask myself, what can I do to create an environment that supports my recruiting efforts? Okay. What can I do to create an environment that supports my recruiting efforts? Your environment matters a lot. Look, just having your email open and just having— or just having your email closed changes the environment. It just does. Look, what they have found in studies is this, is that email occupies anywhere from 25% to as much as 40% of an employee's day right now in corporate America. That is crazy to me, like email alone. In the newest stats I saw, the average employee checks their email an average of 36 times an hour. That boggles my mind, but I've been there and I've done that before. I can tell you I felt ultra-productive when my inbox was at zero, that that was not moving me towards my vision. And my goals. So first things first, in creating the right environment, I'm going to turn off my email. I'm going to remove my email. In 2014, when I began to really make a dramatic shift in terms of my recruiting efforts, what I did was I created an L-shaped desk, okay? And I had 2 computers. One was like my recruiting computer, and it was on one corner of the L, and one was my What I would consider my full-time team-leading corporate manager hat computer, and that was on the opposite side of the aisle. And when I moved to the time spot that I put on my calendar for recruiting, I would literally have to turn my chair, turn my back on the corporate computer that had my Outlook email inbox on it, and I had to move towards a separate computer that only had the things that I used to recruit with on it. And in that just little shift, I was changing my environment enough to help me support me honoring the time commitment that I made for recruiting. So things to consider, email, it really needs to be off. You cannot focus on honoring your time commitment around recruiting if it's open. Here's another thing that I figured out. I literally had to create a barrier for people to get to me. Okay, and I mean that. I mean a physical barrier. So I went through this long process. I've talked about this in another podcast where I shared kind of an entertaining story about me getting to a place where I have a whiteboard easel in front of my door with a note on it saying, in meeting, if you need me, write a note here. When I come out— and I put the time— come out at, you know, 11:50 AM, I'll connect with you. But I literally put a whiteboard easel in front of my door with a note on it so that there was a physical barrier to people opening my door and closing my door. Okay, look, here's one. Let your team know you're not going to be available. Bring your team in to the importance of you recruiting. If your team understood how important it was for you to recruit, I promise you that they would help you honor your time. Let your team know, I'm not going to be available. And by doing just a handful of things, removing email, Making sure that there's a way, a protective mechanism from people actually coming into your office. That may mean you go to a separate office, you go to a separate location. I don't care if you go to your car if that's what's necessary to do this. We've got to protect our environment. Creating the right environment is where we're going to start. And part of that's going to be letting our team know that we're time blocking for this space. Okay? And that takes me into the second part of this. Time blocking, right? Not only blocking the time on our calendar, but honoring it, right? There's a big difference. I can write anything on my planner, I can write anything into my digital calendar, but honoring it is something else, right? And so the environment component of that will be supportive of you not just blocking your time, but also honoring it. Now, here's what I found is that most of us have a rhythm to where we are most productive. If you haven't really identified a rhythm of when you're most productive, I would just encourage you to ask yourself that question. When am I most productive? Because most people have a daily rhythm of where they get the most things done, when they're most focused, when they're actually able to do things with ease. Most of us have this natural rhythm, a biorhythm that just, hey, we're able to focus more in this window of time. Identify that and time block that on your calendar so that you're able to actually be at your peak performance when you're every single day in that rhythm. The one thing I actually ask my coaching clients is, I want this on the calendar daily. Okay, and I understand, like, hey, you know, you may have had a sales rally last week for 2 days and you couldn't put it on your time counter. Those things happen. Okay, I understand that. But as a rhythm to your overall larger calendar, your larger schedule, I would like to see this on your calendar every single day. Here's what I would tell you. If I was a golf— if I played golf, which I don't play golf anymore, but, you know, I used to play golf quite a bit until I had my C5-C6 fused. I lost some of my rotation and so I stopped playing golf. What I know about having played golf before is that every single time before I actually played golf, I would actually go get my muscle memory. I would go to the driving range. I would hit multiple buckets of balls to get my muscle memory going. I would never hit one golf ball and then walk all the way to the You know, back to the clubhouse, grab a drink, and then come back and hit another golf ball and go back to the clubhouse to do something else and come back and hit one more golf ball. Like, the fact is, like, you need muscle memory to get good at something. If you only time block one day of the week to do this, you don't get the muscle memory that you need. You don't get the mind memory, the mind mapping that you need to be good at this. You need the daily rhythm of this to be good at it. What I encourage people to do is this needs to be on the daily calendar. I'm not asking for any more than 30 to 45 minutes per day, but it's got to be on the daily calendar. You can— look, I know this. You can carve out 30 to 45 minutes per day to do this. The daily rhythm of this, the daily time blocking and honoring it, guess what? That alone will move you into a category all itself. The consistency of doing this daily will put you head and shoulders above anyone else that's gonna be in your industry doing this. So we're gonna time block it, we're gonna honor it, and then we're going to be hyper-focused. One of the reasons why we want to actually work during a time when we're most productive, when we feel most energized, is that we wanna be hyper-focused in this window of time. There's a huge difference between being hyper-focused and non-hyper-focused. 30 to 45 minutes can pass like that when you're non-hyperfocused, and 30 to 45 minutes can pass like that when you're hyperfocused. Either way, right? One is you get very little done. The other is you're extremely productive and you get a lot of things done. Okay? Now, we already know that as humans, we can get more things done when we remove all the distractions. So we've talked about that. Okay? But here's one thing that I would do. Create a hard deadline for yourself with a time limit. For example, If you want to do— if you want to research 10 people before you call them, give yourself a time deadline that you're going to research those 10 people in. Give yourself 30 minutes. 3 minutes times 10. Give yourself that hard deadline. What I know is that our mind will flip over and get hyper-focused in the doing. If we just move towards something, for example, it's just like running a race. Right. If I said, oh, I'm going to go run, with no intent, then I would run and I would probably finish it in a much larger, much longer amount of time than if I gave myself something to be hyperfocused towards versus— I mean, as an example, I'm going to run an 8-minute mile. Every single time I look, as I'm looking, I'm going, okay, there's a quarter of a mile that's gone and a quarter of a mile that's gone. How long is it taking me to do that? Pick up the pace. There's something in our mind that takes place when we say, pick up the pace, as it pertains to this area that we just get more done. So I want you to work within some shorter time allotments. One of the things that I did was I actually had a timer. I wish I could show it to you but you're on a podcast. One day we'll have the technology to be able to do this where I can show you things on a podcast. But until then, go to my YouTube channel and you can find this. But I have a— it's a sandglass and it stands. It's a really cool clear glass sandglass that has red sand in it and the red sand is 30 minutes. When you flip that sandglass over— I always call it an hourglass but it's not. It's a half hourglass and the sand will pass through. That in itself, whenever I said I'm going to recruit for 30 minutes and I flip that upside down, immediately my mind would trigger and go, okay, hyperfocus. There's just something that took place there. Create these hard time stops for yourself with time limitations, and you'll find that becoming hyperfocused is something that you can do. We've already talked about working during a time spot when you're most productive. Here's another one. Work in a place where you feel energized and most focused. Sometimes there are certain places. Maybe it's not your office. Maybe it's a conference room. Maybe it's a separate office than your normal office. But find a place where you feel energized and you're most focused. So that's environment. The other thing is this that you can do. I have a tendency that if I give myself an allotment of 50 minutes and I spend the first 10 minutes doing something that's high intensity in terms of exercise or breathing techniques or a combination of exercise, breathing techniques, drinking a glass of water, doing breathing techniques that give me an oxygen high right before I go into something that maybe is intense for me. And maybe recruiting is not your favorite thing to do. Okay. But I can prepare for a high period of productivity with some of these tools right before I move into my recruiting window of time. And that allows me to get hyper-focused. Okay. Those are some tools that will help you get to the hyperfocus. Here's another component to this. Have an established process you follow. So this is the 4th part. Have an established process you follow, the muscle memory. I always think there's 3 components to recruiting: identifying talent, making contact, and following up. How do you identify talent? There's a process that you should follow. How do you make contact? There's a process you should follow. How do you do all of your follow-up? There's a process you should follow. So identifying what that process is. So for example, when I'm coaching someone in the mortgage industry, I walk through a process of how do we do our research. I highly recommend using a data tool that is an information aggregator like MobilityRE. And if you're not familiar with a tool like MobilityRE, it's an extremely user-friendly tool that allows you to see all the production for everyone that's in your market by simply clicking a couple of screens. And if you want more information on that, you can send me an email. It's rmilligan@4crecruiting.com. I'll pass some more information along on MobilityRE. But the process would be I go to that tool, I go sort the list of top producers in my market. I then go to some places outside of my building area, like NMLS Consumer Access, like Zillow's lender review, or just a Google search with the name of the individual, the state, and the word mortgage. Like, just— and that becomes a rhythm. You go through 4 or 5 of those tools that you're going to use consistently, and that's a process that you would follow. And so there's a rhythm to it. And by establishing that process that you follow, you get more done. So I recommend that you identify and establish a process that you follow around those 3 major things that we've talked about. That is a way for you to be disciplined. Here's the 5th one. I believe that discipline is best had through creating accountability. I can remember a season in my life where I was extremely out of shape and I began to work out. I went through a season of about 18 months where I worked out 6 times, I would dare say 6 to 7 times per week in that season, and I did it with a group of guys. I did it going through P90X, P90X2. We did pretty much all the Beachbody workouts over that season. I did some Insanity. I did just about all the crazy ones that they did with this group of guys and the key thing was this, is that we met every single morning typically around 5:00 AM and that was difficult to do because we were meeting in somebody's garage to go through these workouts and I had to get up a lot of times like 4:30, 4:20 to make it there by 5:00 AM. So having— but knowing that there was a group of men that if I didn't show up would be text messaging me, Would be calling me, would be giving me some grief for oversleeping or for not showing up. That accountability is what got me there. It really was the accountability that got me there. And I think it's one of the reasons why CrossFit, the community that CrossFit builds, is one reason why it's so successful. So if you're in CrossFit, you kind of get this. I recently— my 12-year-old was at a basketball practice in kind of a gym complex where they were Running a CrossFit gym. So I do a lot, I run a lot. I wouldn't call myself a runner but it's my preferred version of exercise. I just love the outdoors and it's something I look forward to. So I'm running around this kind of gym complex and one of the places in the complex is a CrossFit gym and just the energy was there. Even when they were done, they're hanging out in the parking lot in community. Talking about the workout, talking about each other's lives, talking about their health and their food and all of these things. And so there's a level of accountability there. So here's what you got to do. You got to find someone else who wants to win as badly as you do in the area of recruiting. Let me just say that again. You got to find someone else who wants to win as badly as you. This isn't about trying to talk someone in. To holding you accountable. I preferably want someone who wants to win more than me. Okay? So selecting the right accountability partner, that's important. If you have an accountability partner that won't actually allow you to hold them accountable and that won't actually be willing to show up and do this themselves, gosh, you're just setting yourself up for a major fail. So this has to be someone who wants to grow and needs to grow as much as you. Okay, so that's the first part of this. The other part of this is have that person do this at the same time as you so that in that window of time there becomes a higher level of accountability. So I think great accountability partners a lot of times can be someone who's in a similar position at the same company. So wherever you are, someone's in a similar position. But I have also found that it can be someone who's in a similar position outside your company. So a lot of times we make these, we have these industry relationships. I mean, I can think of a number of people that in my time as a recruiting leader that I met that wanted to win as much, if not more, as me, that if I were to ask them about creating accountability and sharing in this space of being this, of holding this recruiting role down well, that they would have absolutely have said yes and stood in the gap as an accountability partner. You've got to allow someone to have a voice in your life, and it requires you to be authentic, okay? And it requires them to be authentic. That means that when we fail, we just say we failed, right? And we own it, and we move forward because tomorrow's another day. Now, if you're saying to yourself, I don't have that, a spouse, a significant other, they can play that role. Now, sometimes that is not always the best fit. Depending on the spouse's personality and your personality and their background and your background and even the dynamics of the relationship. But sometimes this can be a friend. And if it's not any of those, then guess what? Go hire a coach. It doesn't require you to hire me. Go hire some coach that will hold you accountable in this space of actually getting this done because that level of accountability is going to be necessary. for you to actually have the discipline of doing this and to sustain it long-term. So here's— I'm going to close it with this. A couple of resources I would highly recommend. Jocko Willink wrote a book called Extreme Ownership. I know some of you have listened to that book. Excuse me. He's also written what I would consider a field manual. That's called Discipline Equals Freedom. Okay, go pick that up. That's a great takeaway from this. Discipline Equals Freedom: The Field Manual. Go pick that up. Here's what I know. All of us have an opportunity for growth in this area of creating discipline. I ask myself the question, as I look into the future, as I look into what I want to accomplish for 2020, I recognize that discipline is connected to the freedom that I want to have in every area: health, Finances, spiritually, physically, mentally, personally, relationally, right? All of it's connected to the discipline that I need to have. And so you got to ask yourself the question, if I'm not willing to create discipline now, when will I create it? Because if you're not willing to create discipline right now to create freedom, there will be no better time. For you to start moving towards the dreams that you want to accomplish than in the immediate moment. I got to end the podcast because I'm losing my voice, but this just tells you I'm all in on helping you. I've got an awful cold. I love my tribe enough to show up and to actually go hoarse and coughing in their ear trying to relay an important piece that I think will help you on your journey to becoming the best recruiting leader that you can be. So I'll close it with that. I'm wishing you the best. Have a great week, everybody. If there was some value here, please share it with somebody. That's one of the things that I know is that you know someone like I do that is lacking discipline in their life that could actually grab a nugget or two from this that will help them in their recruiting efforts. So if there's a recruiting leader that you know, That's also looking to grow or also needs to improve in some of these areas. Share the podcast with them. It's the best compliment that you can pay me by doing that. And so until I talk to you again next week with a stronger voice and less coughing, have a great week, everybody. There you have it. Another Recruiting Conversations in the books. Thanks for listening, everybody. I appreciate the fact that those of you are out there want to grow, man. I totally, I'm totally with you. This camera here is propped on top of a book by John Maxwell called The 15 Invaluable— what is it? The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth. Yeah, I got the participant guide as well. And just started chapter 1 on that. I was blown away that he wrote a book on growth that I hadn't read. Came across it recently. And so if you're like me, looking for opportunities and areas for growth, then yeah, come back next week. We'll have more insight for you here on, on this YouTube channel, our Vimeo channel. And until then, everybody, have a great week. Thank you.