[INTRODUCTION]

Welcome to this episode of the Elite Advisor Blueprint Podcast with your host, Brad Johnson. Brad’s the VP of Advisor Development and Advisors Excel, the largest independent insurance brokerage company in the US. He’s also a regular contributor to InvestmentNews, the Wall Street Journal, and other industry publications.

[00:00:27] Brad Johnson: Welcome to the Elite Advisor Blueprint, the podcast for World Class financial advisors. I’m Brad Johnson, VP of Advisor Development at Advisors Excel, and it’s my goal to distill the best ideas and advice from top thought leaders and apply it to the world of independent financial advising. On today’s podcast, I’m talking with Chris McChesney. Chris is the global practice leader of execution for Franklin Covey, where he serves as one of the primary developers of the 4 Disciplines of Execution. It’s a book, New York Times bestseller, as well as a framework for accomplishing strategic business goals and creating lasting organizational change. Chris has led many of the most noted implementations of 4DX, including Marriott, International, Shaw Industries, Ritz Carlton, Kroger, Coca-Cola, Comcast, Frito-Lay, Lockheed Martin and Gaylord Entertainment to name just a few. And I first came across his work through Michael Hyatt, who called the 4 Disciplines of Execution his gold standard for his team, and it’s one that we’ve implemented as well on our team over the last handful of years. 

Today, I’m honored to have Chris on the podcast to talk about how to simplify what’s really tough for a lot of financial advisors to execute on, and the tools and techniques you can use to inspire your team to help them not only meet your goals, but their own as well. In today’s episode, you’ll learn three things. Number one, how to apply the 4 Disciplines of Execution, focus, leverage engagement, and accountability, to your business in order to achieve your most important goals, and how to make time for the work you’ve been putting off for months, weeks, years, or sometimes even decades. Number two, the story of how Chris helped a major hotel cut luggage delivery time, from 112 minutes all the way down to 20 minutes in order to boost customer satisfaction, and how much the same principles apply to financial services and your practice. Number three, how to motivate your team to break decades of bad habits, make people feel like they really matter and hold them accountable without feeling like the micromanaging boss you never wanted to become. 

[00:02:26] Brad Johnson: Okay. Before we get to today’s conversation. Chris and his team are super generous, sent me a box of autographed copies of his book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution, which has all of the details to execute on everything we discussed today. And I’ll be mailing them out until they’re all gone. So, here’s what to do next if you’d like your free copy. Number one, all that I ask is that you leave an honest review out on iTunes for our show. To make it easy, there’s a graphic right at the top of the show notes, BradleyJohnson.com/63. Just tap on it. It’ll take you right where you need to go. Or if you happen to be listening on a mobile player, just simply tap on the episode, scroll down into the description. There should be a link right there. Number two, once you’ve left a review, just drop us an email via [email protected] with your iTunes username and a mailing address and we will drop you a copy in the mail as a thank you. That simple. 

Also, quick apology to our international listeners outside of the US who’ve been kind enough to leave reviews. We appreciate you but due to crazy high shipping prices, we can only ship these domestically so please support Chris and just go grab a copy of 4DX at your local bookstore or out on Amazon. So that’s it. As always, thanks for listening in and without further delay my conversation with Chris McChesney.

[INTERVIEW]

[00:03:45] Brad Johnson: Welcome to this episode of the Elite Advisor Blueprint Podcast. I have Chris McChesney here with us today. Welcome to the show, Chris. 

[00:03:53] Chris McChesney: Thanks, Brad. Great to be here. 

[00:03:55] Brad Johnson: So, your official title, Global Practice Leader of Execution for Franklin Covey? Did I get that right? 

[00:04:01] Chris McChesney: Yeah. 

[00:04:02] Brad Johnson: Cool. And it’s fun how this conversation came to be. The first time that you were ever put on my radar, Mr. Michael Hyatt, who I was in a mastermind group with handed me your book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution, and at the time, we were growing our team internally. And it was just, as you know, anytime you have a growing team it’s tough to execute. And coming from a guy like Michael who devours all kinds of content, he’s in multiple mastermind groups, and he basically said, “This is the gold standard for our team.” So, when I have a guy like that, that I respect at that level, I’m like, “I better read this book quickly,” and I did and it was gold. And what I loved about it was the fact that you really simplified what is really, really tough for a lot of teams and companies and businesses to execute on, which is how do you actually inspire a team and lead them all in the same direction to hit a goal. So, to say that I’m excited for this conversation is an understatement, so thanks for joining today, and I think we did like a 30-minute podcast before we actually started recording the actual podcast.

[00:05:07] Chris McChesney: I know. Right? That’s a very kind introduction. I really appreciate that. And Michael Hyatt is an amazing executive coach so that’s a high honor for sure. 

[00:05:16] Brad Johnson: Well, let’s dive right in. So, as we were kind of talking a little bit on your background, you have a fun story of how you actually got into Franklin Covey. Do you mind just kind of opening and sharing how that came to be? And then we’ll dive into the 4 Disciplines of Execution. 

[00:05:29] Chris McChesney: Right. We’ll get the embarrassing stuff out of the way first. 

[00:05:31] Brad Johnson: Perfect. 

[00:05:32] Chris McChesney: Yeah. So, it’s so funny. I tell the story and everybody reminds me that there’s an episode at Seinfeld with the exact same plotline where Kramer starts going to work for a company he doesn’t actually work for. The only difference is they fire him at the end and they kept me at Franklin Covey, but they wouldn’t interview. It was the Covey Leadership Center. And I was I was a college kid and I was obsessed with Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits and more than anything, I wanted to work for him, and they wouldn’t interview like anyone, let alone me. And so, I sort of pretended to work for a newspaper. I said I’m writing which was true. I said I’m writing an article for the local paper on up and coming companies and asked if I could interview Stephen Covey. And so, in that process, and the newspaper was nice enough to publish the little story I had written, and then I told them that I needed an internship which also might have not been true. So, long story short, four months in, I’ve been coming to work every single day. I ended up as Stephen Covey’s publicist while being an unpaid intern at the Covey Leadership Center. 

One day, they figured it out. They said, “Kid, you can’t do this. There are laws. You don’t actually have a job here. We know there’s no internship. What are you doing?” I think out of guilt, they said, “We’ll give you $6 an hour.” They didn’t have the heart to tell me to go home. So, yeah, that’s my very illustrious beginnings 29 years ago.

[00:06:55] Brad Johnson: Wow. And how old were you when you just took this leap of faith? 

[00:06:58] Chris McChesney: 23.

[00:07:00] Brad Johnson: Twenty-three. Wow. Okay, so then there’s a fun story, too. So, you were actually the publicist at Franklin Covey, when Covey’s 7 Habits actually hit the number one bestseller. Was that the case?

[00:07:11] Chris McChesney: Yeah. Again, completely by accident. This was during the controversial interim period because they had let go of their publicist one week and they were looking for a new one, right when 7 Habits hits number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and there’s literally no one to do the amount of work they had. And they said, “Well, what about him?” He said, “He’s from New York. Let him call New York.” So, I’m on the phone with Good Morning America. I’m calling all these news outlets. I don’t even really work for them. So, I got to travel with Stephen Covey, and it was just one of those right-place-right-time kind of thing. Yeah. So, it was just a weird wrinkle in the universe.

[00:07:50] Brad Johnson: He must have seen something in you because, obviously, you were a go-getter at that young age. What was it like to be in Stephen Covey’s presence? What was that like as a 23-year-old as you’re first kind of entering that world?

[00:08:01] Chris McChesney: I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that question before. You know, I think the thing I was most surprised with was how real a person. You know, we think of these people, someone like a Dr. Covey, that’s now one of the most influential people of the century, you know, and he’s written the bestselling business book of all time. And we put them on this pedestal and just how human they are and how much they’re like – he was a goofball. I have these crazy stories of things that he did that I don’t even tell people because they wouldn’t believe me. Great relationship with his kids. He was funny. He had these weird quirks. I bring him a set of questions for an interview, and he would never look at the questions. He said, “No. I want to be spontaneous,” like stuff like that. A huge broadcast, he didn’t want to see the questions ahead of time. He wanted to be authentic and deeply spiritual person at the same time, and really, really humble about these were not his principles, that there are God-given laws in the universe. And if you can understand them and their consequences, you can live a much better life. And so, yeah, I just adored the man. So, thanks for the question. Brad.

[00:09:11] Brad Johnson: Yeah. Do you have any one untold story you want to share with the audience here?

[00:09:16] Chris McChesney: Oh, yeah. Okay. So, I’ll go, I’ll stand the Stephen Covey thing. Okay. This will probably kill our audience and any credibility, but it’s so wild. Now, that you’ve asked, I got to say it. 

[00:09:29] Brad Johnson: Okay. 

[00:09:29] Chris McChesney: He would talk all about how much time you should spend with your children and being balanced and then he was a workaholic at the same time. Well, one of these kids, David, who’s a dear friend of mine to this day, decided to take his father on. And while his dad was on a call, he got out a jar of peanut butter and Dr. Covey has this famous bald head, and his dad was trying to ignore him and he started spreading peanut butter on his father’s head. And it got worse. Then he went and got the jelly and then he slapped a piece of bread on his dad’s head. So, it’s this hilarious story, but they actually it was this great inside joke about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on your dad’s head. Anyways, and I guess the funniest part it was like he never acknowledged that this was going on like he never broke stride the entire time. So, I just love laying that visual over a man that talked about some of the most important life-changing principles. I just think it’s great. 

[00:10:31] Brad Johnson: We’re all just human beings when it’s all said and done. We’re parents where our kids act up. They throw food at the dinner table. It’s funny how that works. 

[00:10:40] Chris McChesney: Yep. It’s just a guy that just didn’t take himself that seriously, but took his mission very, very seriously, dedicated his life to one idea of restoring the character ethic in the United States and really spread around the world. I mean, he has incredible status to this day in countries all over the world and found out that these principles, they’re not American, they’re not US. They’re in every culture.

[00:11:04] Brad Johnson: Yeah, it’s a testament to building a business that outlasts you, right? He left a legacy behind in the business that he built. 

[00:11:12] Chris McChesney: That’s a great statement. He was very deliberate about that, Brad, and really built this organization along with the book and really wanted, yeah, to be a change agent and to create something that was intergenerational. Yeah, that was a very deliberate thing.

[00:11:26] Brad Johnson: Well, with that in mind, that’s a good transition to the 4 Disciplines of Execution and as you start to think through our audience, a bunch of independent financial advisors all across the US, I think that’s one thing where I start to see a little bit of a hurdle that oftentimes is tough to overcome, because most people that get into our business, they’re like the 1%, 2%, 5% that didn’t wash out where 100 people came in to their sales organization when they were that 23-year-old kid that stuck around and worked and grinded and came out the other end, and were actually successful. But the hard part is that was all based on them. And now how do you start to translate that to a team and a business, especially if you want a business that’s going to outlast you and leave a legacy behind? So, I’m going to cue up 4DX. I’m going to let you just kind of what is 4 Disciplines of Execution, if you don’t mind, kind of laying out the 30,000-foot view, and then we’ll just dive in wherever that takes us.

[00:12:23] Chris McChesney: Okay. Perfect. And I want to play off of what you just said. The fact that you’re dealing with an audience that we’re talking to an audience right now of people who are the 5% means that these principles will not be uncommon. And maybe the terminology might be new with a way to frame them but a lot of what we are talking about might be what we sometimes call subconscious competencies. These are things that your listeners do intuitively on their own very, very well, but might struggle to educate their team members on because it’s a subconscious, something they’re doing. They don’t even know. They don’t even think to articulate. It’s sort of inherent in them. And a lot of great operators, a lot of high achievers in sales organizations, the trickiest part of replicating that is understanding that so much of it is subconscious competencies. It’s why great players don’t always make great coaches. 

[00:13:14] Brad Johnson: Yeah. 

[00:13:16] Chris McChesney: And so, before diving into the disciplines, we’ll hit those very quickly, let me start with the one dynamic that seems to be at the heart of this whole thing, and resonates with everyone. It’s this tension between things that are urgent and things that are very important but don’t have inherent urgency in them. In other words, there are critical activities that will not act on you. And truthfully, you could do those this afternoon instead of this morning, and you could do those tomorrow instead of today. And no one’s going to get in trouble. There is no immediate accountability for certain activities in the moment. So, that’s the first problem. You’re logically sound in saying, “I could do those this afternoon, I could do those tomorrow,” and tomorrow can never come. And then you can pile that with the fact that there’s this human tendency to always move to urgent activities. Even if you’re on the most important project of the year, you’ll catch yourself going, “What am I doing? Why did I answer that text message? Why did I pick up that phone? It can’t be four o’clock already.” 

All right. That little tendency, that move to urgency, let’s call it, doesn’t seem like a huge challenge because we can override the tendency, so we think. The problem is that anything that you’re trying to do that’s strategic, you have to get through that wall. That includes your team, that includes your own behavior. You’re never not fighting this tension. And we call the urgency, we call the whirlwind, and it represents everything that you have to do just to maintain your operation today just to get back to the clients. All the things that are going to bite you right now if you don’t do them and people can stay 100% consumed and busy on those items and never get to the most strategic components that actually make you successful. 

[00:15:12] Chris McChesney: And that one dynamic shows up in every line of business everywhere. Can we put energy against strategic, non-urgent activities? And it is like developing a muscle and all four disciplines go right at that problem. So, before, Brad, any follow-up questions or added clarification you want to add on that point before we dive into the four disciplines? Because that’s the why these disciplines exist.

[00:15:38] Brad Johnson: What it reminds me of, Chris, is those days that we’ve all had, where you go home and your spouse was like, “How was today?” and you’re like, “Busy.” And then you look back and you’re like, “I don’t know that I actually got anything that mattered done.” And that’s that whirlwind and that’s what really hit home with me when I read your book. I was like, “Yeah, that’s why this stuff works is you’re focusing on the stuff that actually matters.” So, yeah, let’s dive in.

[00:16:06] Chris McChesney: Okay. I know, I’m driving you crazy. Let me go one more point on this because you got to get to the human, you got to get to how this feels. There’s a great irony in acting on the urgent. In the moment, it feels good to act on the urgent, and it feels bad to act on the non-urgent. As a matter of fact, you have to convince yourself that you’re not wasting time. When you have to convince yourself you’re not wasting time when you’re actually working on the most important thing you could be doing but we’re so addicted to urgency that it doesn’t feel important. Have you ever had to talk yourself into something into putting energy into something that should be inherently obvious this is what you need to be spending your time but you’re feeling this weird withdrawal symptom from urgency? So, in the moment, here’s the point, in the moment, the urgent stuff feels good all day long. It’s like it’s an itch you’re scratching. 

[00:16:55] Brad Johnson: Yep. 

[00:16:55] Chris McChesney: Until the end of the day, when you’re talking to your spouse or your kid and they have no idea what you’re talking about when you say, “I killed myself all day. I’m not sure I got anything done,” like that sick feeling at the end. And there’s a great quote, I think it’s Jim Rohn. He’s a motivational speaker but he has this great quote. He says that the pain of discipline is better than the pain of regret. And so, there is just a little bit of pain associated with all four of these disciplines and it’s far better than the pain of regret when you’ve been busy all day and you haven’t had anything done. Okay.

[00:17:30] Brad Johnson: And I have a hunch. I’m going to let you confirm this, because you’ve been doing the 4DX work for how long now? 

[00:17:36] Chris McChesney: Seventeen years. 

[00:17:37] Brad Johnson: Seventeen years. So, very, very pre-iPhone, pre-smartphone. I’m going to guess the whirlwind in your work with all of these different companies, pre-smartphone, pre-iPhone whirlwind to post-smartphone whirlwind, how much worse has it gotten? 

[00:17:55] Chris McChesney: Well, here’s the thing. This is not from us. This is everybody we talked to. Fifteen years ago, 17 years ago, people didn’t think you could get any worse like we were just warming up. This is a personal whirlwind device right here. The ability to be distracted has gotten so intense and people’s attention spans have gotten so small that, yeah, if this problem was an issue 15, 17 years ago, yeah, it’s so much worse than that today. So, you’re right. We’re at a whole new level of urgency addiction that we didn’t even think was possible.

[00:18:28] Brad Johnson: Yeah, we were standing in line as a family the other day at Chipotle and my son’s like, “I’m bored.” I’m like it’s gotten so bad that we can’t stand in line for five minutes without some sort of stimulus in our society.

[00:18:44] Chris McChesney: I’m feeling you, right? You’re not even making the food. I know.

[00:18:49] Brad Johnson: Yeah. 

[00:18:50] Chris McChesney: It’s epidemic. That’s right.

[00:18:52] Brad Johnson: Alright, so let’s dive in there. Like what the heck are the four disciplines so let’s get those. 

[00:18:56] Chris McChesney: Okay. So, fastest overview ever. I’m just going to stay at a principle level. This is how I think about it. Think about flying an airplane there’s four rules, there’s lift, thrust, weight, and drag. You box one of those rules, the plane comes down. Same idea. Only it’s not lift, thrust, weight, and drag. It’s focus, it’s leverage, it’s engagement, and it’s accountability. Focus, leverage, engagement, and accountability, and they are as unforgiving to execution as lift, thrust, weight, and drag are to flight. 

[00:19:29] Brad Johnson: Focus, leverage… 

[00:19:31] Chris McChesney: Engagement and accountability. And they play off of one another. You know, lift, thrust, weight, and drag are not independent ideas to an air flight, right? They’re all acting simultaneously. And this seems to be, this metaphor really stood the test of time. It really seems to be a great way to think about focus, leverage, engagement, accountability. And focus is really getting clear on what’s whirlwind. What’s life’s port? And what’s the critical game-changer in my operation? And if those two things get mixed together, you spin, and urgency takes over, you’ve got to create delineation between what is the one thing and it’s not your highest-level objective. It’s not, you know, it’s not total assets under – what’s the term that’s that used in financial? Right? 

[00:20:26] Brad Johnson: Yeah. So, yeah, I’ll give you a real-world example. So, number one, focus. Focus on the wildly important goal. So, I’ve done goal setting now with our clients for the last 12 years. It’s the part it always goes to which we’ll take us probably into point number two here in a bit. It always goes to, okay, I did 5 million of new assets last year. Now, I want to do 10 million this year or my revenue was 500,000 as a firm last year. Now, I want to get to a million. 

[00:20:53] Chris McChesney: That’s right. 

[00:20:53] Brad Johnson: Always focused on the big number of typically assets or revenue of the firm.

[00:20:58] Chris McChesney: Right. And what I want to do is I want to create in the minds of everyone that’s listening, two different types of objectives, okay? That it is totally fine to have an objective to go from 5 million to 10 million. That’s fine but that is not an executable goal. If the goal is – what we try, I’m going to introduce the term just because we have to have one of them, a term we call a WIG or a wildly important goal. And it’s not the most perfect term, but it’s the one we chose, and we’ve stayed with it but here’s what this means. The wildly important goal is the goal that is a subcomponent of the big objective but it’s the difference-maker. It’s the part that’s not part of the day job. Okay. And if we could do that, if we could increase the amount of business per client, if we could decrease client churn, if there’s a particular category of investor that we could improve, if the title of the book is to go from 5 million to 10 million, what’s the most critical chapter in the book? That’s the wildly important goal. 

Because if your critical goal represents the sum totality of all the work you do, then you haven’t narrowed your focus. Right? So, don’t just look at your high-level goal and think, “Done with discipline one.” No, no, no, no, no. Focus on the wildly important means. Yeah, look at your highest-level goal, but then choose what’s the critical chapter. Where am I going to put disproportionate energy? That’s what strategy’s about. There could be 10 chapters to the big number. Where do I put disproportionate energy? And it’s got to have a starting line, it’s got to have a finish line, it’s got to have a deadline, it can’t be conceptual. It has to be in the form of a target. That’s discipline one.

[ANNOUNCEMENT]

[00:22:49] Brad Johnson: Hey, all. Sorry to interrupt the conversation but Chris, actually, the next handful of minutes walks through a diagram he prepared specifically for applying four disciplines of execution to financial services going through all the details, lead measures, lag measures, exactly how they applied to setting goals and motivating your team. If you want to check that out, simply go down to the show notes, click the link right at the top. That will take you to the YouTube video version of this conversation. And by the way, if you want to catch our episodes out there, it’s as easy as subscribing in the lower right-hand corner. Catch you on YouTube. 

[INTERVIEW]

[00:23:30] Brad Johnson: Okay. So, maybe we’ve got some case studies or stories. And by we, I mean, you, Chris. So, that’s the big goal. Looking at maybe some service firms you’ve worked with or maybe some financial firms that you’ve worked with, what might be a subset of I want to double my revenue or I want to double my assets gathered, that might be an example of a wildly important goal?

[00:23:50] Chris McChesney: Great. Can I grab the screen? 

[00:23:52] Brad Johnson: For sure. Yeah. 

[00:23:52] Chris McChesney: Okay. Let me just show some… 

[00:23:55] Brad Johnson: And real quick for those of you listening in on audio, where Chris and I are on video right now. So, if you want to check the show notes, there’s a YouTube video where you can actually see what’s on Chris’s screen here.

[00:24:08] Chris McChesney: And, Brad, what I’m going to do is I’m going to drop two levels. 

[00:24:11] Brad Johnson: Okay. 

[00:24:11] Chris McChesney: So, maybe the highest-level goal or objective of the team is to increase total assets from 5 million to 10 million. And you could say, okay, we’re going to increase what we’ve termed pervasive clients, from 34% to 46% as an example. So, what we’re saying is, is we’ve created a category within our client base of a particular type of client. I like to call this the Bachman-Turner Overdrive Principle. You remember that song? I’m going to sing some of it right now. “Any love is good loving so I took what I could get,” is the line that we’re playing off of and you know, any revenue is not good revenue, like some revenue is better than other. And so, you know, this particular advisory group is saying, look, there’s a type of client called pervasive clients and these are the ones that have multiple lines with us. These are the ones that have insurance and there’s a particular category of client we want to grow.

[00:25:14] Brad Johnson: Cool. A lot of times our firm will call that like an avatar client. That’s the ideal client. Is that the same? 

[00:25:19] Chris McChesney: Yes. 

[00:25:19] Brad Johnson: Okay, cool.

[00:25:20] Chris McChesney: Yep. So, there’s a category. You want to move that particular category. And you’ll really have to almost do a business case on this because you say, “Look, if I’m going to put disproportionate energy against that objective, by the way, the person that taught me that term, his name is Tim Tassopoulos, and he’s now the President of Chick-fil-A and you want to look at an organization that executes on a phenomenal level. A freestanding Chick-fil-A will do five times the amount of revenue as a McDonald’s across the street working six days a week instead of seven.

[00:25:51] Brad Johnson: So, real quick, because that’s a fun story. And I think most people have a Chick-fil-A in their market. So, let’s say I’m going through the drive-thru and there’s a guy on an iPad standing right next to the board. Right? And I’m like, “Oh, is your board broken?” “Oh, no, sir. It’s just we found it’s a little bit faster and more convenient because we’ve got this kind of rush hour. So, if we come out here and take the orders for you so you get your food quicker.”

[00:26:16] Chris McChesney: Yeah. And he took your credit card too.

[00:26:19] Brad Johnson: Yes. Yeah, literally paid right there.

[00:26:21] Chris McChesney: Yep, yep. And then they…

[00:26:22] Brad Johnson: I’m like that is a company right there that gets it.

[00:26:25] Chris McChesney: They handed you the – right. And the kids they hire, right? They’ll tap into half a dozen families, honor students, and then they’ll network off of half a dozen families and those are the kids that they’ll hire. And it’s like a whole different, right, it’s every aspect of that operation. So, 15 years ago, Tim Tassopoulos was working with us on some of this and I reminded Tim of this, he kept using this term, “Where do we need to place disproportionate energy?” And if you don’t do that, you don’t have a strategy. Strategy is about saying, “Look, all right, there are 12 chapters and I know they’re all important, but what am I going to double down on?” That’s really what this…

[00:27:09] Brad Johnson: Just sharing. I mean, if this isn’t proprietary information, like everybody knows Chick-fil-A story. What did they decide this is where our disproportionate energy goes to?

[00:27:18] Chris McChesney: You know, it’s 15 years ago, but it’s the things that you would expect. For one operation, it might be speed at checkout or drive-thru time. I remember, we were out there working with them when they came out with the shakes, and those ridiculously great-tasting shakes, and for the next, it wasn’t anything amazing. It was just the next thing. They had such a great whirlwind, that they could just pick the next battle. So, the mindset is really whirlwind plus one. Where you get yourself in trouble is where you try and go whirlwind plus three. 

[00:27:52] Brad Johnson: Yeah. 

[00:27:53] Chris McChesney: Right? And differentiate in your mind this is the stuff can – if you don’t get anything else from the podcast, get very clear in your mind on this is the stuff that has to be maintained. Maybe that eats up 80%. The disproportionate energy may only be 20%. And what we’re saying is the disciplines, the four disciplines of execution are not what you use to run your operation. That’s the 80%. That’s the part you already know. The disciplines of execution are what you do, how you focus the 20%. So, discipline one, like you can see in this model is chunking down, okay, pervasive clients. And to do that now, if on a team level, I’ve got to increase qualified hires, like there’s a type of team member that’s going to work really well with that group. And you know what, I know that pervasive clients come out of a particular category type. 

They have certain economic demographic markers and we’re going to categorize that. And they have a certain, I can’t remember what this one meant, but there’s certain and the constructs you’re looking at right now is what we call fewest battles to win the war. This goes back to the – you probably heard the book, The Art of War. It’s like 1,000 years old and it’s this idea that if the big goal, and it’s not even the biggest goal, but the first wildly important goal as pervasive clients, there’s probably some battles to winning that war. If those can be divvied up among different parts of the team, you’ve now created even more focus so that’s discipline one right now and we call those L-A-G, lag measures.

[00:29:37] Brad Johnson: So, real quick, and I want to make sure I’m understanding this. So, every successful financial services firm, they’ve got whirlwinds that they don’t ever turn off, right? It’s the basic work every day, the new clients coming in, all of that, the client experience. But what I heard you just say is, okay, take 80% of the team’s effort, maintain that. Now, the 20%, let’s put it towards this one wildly important goal, that’s going to take us to the next level, the 5 million to 10 million or the 500,000 in revenue to a million. And it actually reminds me a lot of Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach, like some of his coaching, where you’re working in your business. 

[00:30:15] Chris McChesney: Yes. 

[00:30:15] Brad Johnson: And then you have a day where you work on your business. Same concept where you can go…

[00:30:18] Chris McChesney: Yeah. Very, very similar. Yes, he’s getting at this, he’s scratching at the very same itch because in your business will consume you and you will feel like you can’t be any busier than you already are. But as Peter Drucker said, work is like a gas. It will fill the available space you give it. If you push it from 100 to 80, that life support, you’ll find that there’s 20 that you can put towards strategic energy. And some of the listeners they do this automatically. They do it and they don’t even know they’re doing it. They just know to do it. And what we’re doing is we’re giving you language that says, look, everything we’re showing you right now lives in that magic 20%. Strategic focus is not about what you do with the 80. You don’t get a choice on the 80. You got to maintain that stuff. It’s what you do with the discretionary energy. The deliberate energy used against discretionary time and some of your listeners are thinking, “I don’t have 20%.” Folks, you do. 

If you’re sitting in a boat, and the boat had a hole with it, you could convince yourself that you have no time to do anything but bail water. But the truth is at some point you got to put down the bucket and you got to work on the hole. And, yeah, it’s going to be a little bit nerve-wracking when you see the boat filling up with water while you’re working on the hole. But that’s working on the business is working on the hole, not just baling the water. I wasn’t sure that analogy was going to stand up

[00:31:46] Brad Johnson: I almost about ready to just tell you your analogy game’s on point but I was like, “No