I feel people are holding themselves back when they don't have systems or routines in place.

Each morning, I make time for meditation, exercise, affirmations, journaling, and I find this process gets my brain into action. And I'm ready to launch into the day before our identical twins Eva and Grace wake up.

Systems are important to me. Weekly structure or weekly cadence is Monday to Wednesday I have client-facing appointments, Thursday is admin, Friday creative or free day, leaving weekends focusing on fun and family. By having structure, I find it takes away ebbs and flows and helps us with a more consistent approach and how we can continually reach Court of the Table and Top of the Table by having these systems in place.

One of the things that I still personally use, and our advisors use in our office, is a thing that we've developed called a scorecard. So simple things, which I deem simple things, on it is activity. Activity, activity, activity. How many first appointments you’ve got for the week, how many second appointments you’ve had for the week, closing appointments, business submitted.

If we're in the risk side of the business, any claims that you've dealt with so we can monitor and track that. How many phone calls you've made, and also how many touch points you've had. So, there could be you've reached out to someone within marketing an email or what have you. And then just an overall score each week.

And by tracking that, you can see those ebbs and flows, and you can see perhaps when you may have been a little light in some of those areas. But you can also see when you have done the work, the rewards come out.

So, starting early is always beneficial. And one thing I’ve found that’s really worked for me is starting planning my annual goals in November. I got this idea when my cousin was home one year after he became a world champion in cycling, and he'd been hanging out with Sir Bradley Wiggins, a Tour de France winner, and once again a world champion cyclist.

He always used to train on Christmas Day. And the reason he trained on Christmas Day was he felt he was getting ahead of the game. And there was something that resonated with me. By planning in November, it gives us that window between November and December before we start in January to help all those goals, ideas, thoughts crystallize. Then when we do start in January, we hit the ground running, and we're ready to launch into the year, so we don't lose potentially one or two months before we come back and actually start our planning.

I have two examples that I found by starting early, which really worked. One was, actually having more quality time with my family and blocking out weekends and days where it was just family time. It was nonnegotiable. We would go out and hang out with our family.

Another example is sometimes, I'm sure like a lot of advisors, we don't know how much time we've got within the year. But by actually breaking it down and distilling it into weeks,

it helps you know when you have to be really on and focused at work in order to achieve your goals and make sure you keep achieving your goals to reach Court of the Table or Top of the Table.

Transcript

The power to boost productivity: Planning

Author(s):

Corey Williams