Richard discusses how being disciplined in your recruiting efforts equals growth, and growth equals freedom!

Hi everybody, welcome back to another episode of recruiting conversations it’s your host Richard Milligan this is going to be a short podcast today for a couple reasons, one I have a cold and I’m gonna do my best not to hack in your ear but a commitment that I made to myself is that we would podcast each week, and as I looked at my weekly calendar have a small window of time to bring a key thought to you and this key thoughts coming from a recent conversation that I had as it usually does with someone that was struggling in this particular area and I’ll be honest with you the word them about to use is not one of my favorite words, and well 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 Willings 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 if you’re not growing a team you’ll lose people. People will move, people go through life struggles they’ll leave you, right? You’ll not be a great fit for everybody, that’s the truth, like you’ll you’re gonna have recruiting pressures where other people are gonna make great offers to your people and so while we’re gonna do things to reverse recruit them. One of the things I know is that like if you’re not growing that lack of growth will bring unprofitability, you’ll bring uninspired teams, and it’ll 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 they’re recruiting efforts and their teams 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 at discipline 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 as 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 you know be on an advisory committee somewhere, you know within your city is that’s, um you know 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 that may see you as someone who has lots of value to bring, they may ask you to be on specific committees and so as we begin to just to look at the opportunities that you’re gonna have around you. You are going to have to say no too 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 discipline your recruiting efforts your time is going to be an area you’re gonna have to be disciplined, time managed was 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 found that where we have a team in place, it’s easier to say no to recruiting then when we don’t have a team in place. So, if you already have a team underneath you and most people that listen 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 gonna 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 being disciplined in my recruiting efforts. Time management is going to be key for you. In my research and at the time I’ve invested into this over the last couple years the number one response that the recruiting leader gives 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 two to three weeks and traveling. I also do a lot of these one-off coaching sessions where I’ll come in for a day or two days max and we do a high-intensity jump start 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 use short processing take yourself through on at your time seriously look at your week write down where all your time is gone, look at your calendar and see what meanings you said yes to, okay? And just going to that simple process and allocating then 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 value system, your larger dream that you have that you want to accomplish as a recruiting leader, like when you start evaluating like wait what are the most important things to me and is saying yes to these things moving me closer that, most people would say anywhere from twenty to forty percent of their time is being lost in saying yes to things that don’t move them closer to their central purpose, okay? Which is like leading their team well, okay? and growing their team, growing their influence.

So, right there is a place that I’m going to start. So, now we make the assumption, that I’m saying yes to recruiting because to be disciplined to something you got to start by saying yes to it, right? Think about this I can’t just say no to bad things I gotta say yes to good things if I want to get in better shape I can’t just say no to you know to not working out, I gotta say yes to working you know I can’t just say no to bad food, I gotta say yes to good food, right? If I want to get healthy and so the first thing is this, we got to 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 but you can actually promote discipline in your recruiting efforts. The first thing that I found that’s helpful and 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 okay look just having your email open and just having or just having your email closed changes the environment, it just does look what that what would they 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 your corporate America, that is crazy to me. Like email alone like the in the newest stats I saw the average employee checks their email an average of 36 times an hour, like that boggles my mind but I’ve been there and I’ve done that before, and I can tell you I felt ultra-productive when my inbox was at zero, get that was not moving me towards my vision and my goals. So first things first in the creating the right environment, I’m gonna turn off my email I’m gonna remove my email.

In 2014 when I began to really make a dramatic shift in terms of my recruiting efforts well I did was I created an L-shaped desk okay and I had two computers while most like my recruiting computer and it was on one corner of the “L” and one was my that are my full-time team leading corporate manager hat computer and that was on the opposite side of the “L” 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 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 a.m. I’ll connect with you, but I literally put a whiteboard easel in front of my door with a note on it so that 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, okay? Bring your team in – the importance of you recruiting right 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 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 gonna 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 to 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 write anything into my digital calendar but honoring it is something else, right? And so the environment component of that will so be it 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, and like if you haven’t really identified a rhythm of when you’re most productive I would just encourage you ask yourself that question, like when am I most productive because most people have a daily rhythm of where they get the most things done when they’re when they’re most focused, when they’re actually able to do things with ease, okay? And most of us have like this natural rhythm, a biorhythm that just say we’re able to focus more in this window of time, identify that and put 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, and the one thing I reckon, I asked my coaching clients is I want this on the calendar daily, okay? and I understand like hey you know you may have had sales rally last week for two days and you couldn’t put it on your time calendar those things happen, okay? I understand that but as a rhythm to your overall lagers 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 play 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, and I lost some my rotation and so I stopped playing golf, and what I know about probably having played golf before is that every single time before I actually play golf I would actually go get my muscle memory okay I would go to the driving range I would hit multiple buckets of balls to get my muscle memory going, right? 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 in another golf ball, go back to the clubhouse to do something else and come back and get 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, and so 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 and you can look I know this, you can carve out 30 to 45 minutes per day to do this, okay? And so 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, okay? So, we’re going to time block it we’re gonna honor it and then we’re going to be hyper focus right the 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 want to be hyper focused in this window of time. There’s a huge difference between being hyper-focus and non-hyper-focused, 30 to 45 minutes can pass like that, when you’re non hyper focus and 30 to 45 minutes can pass like that, when you’re hyper focused 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 or the time limit, for example if you want to do if you want to if you want to research ten people before you call them, give yourself a time deadline that you’re going to research those ten people in give yourself 30 minutes right three minutes times ten give yourself that hard deadline what I know is that our mind will flip over and get hyper focused in the doing, okay? if we just move towards something for example it’s just like running a race, right? if I said oh I’m gonna go run with no intent okay 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 hyper focused towards versus I mean as an example I’m going to run an eight-minute mile, okay? and every single time I look as I’m looking I’m going okay there’s a quarter of a mile it’s gone and how a quarter of a mile is gone how many how long has it taken me to do that pick up the pace, right? 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 with in some shorter time allotments one of the things that I did was actually at a timer. So, I wish I could show it to you but you’re on podcasts and one day we’ll have the technology 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 it’s a sandglass, okay? And instead Stan’s it’s a really cool clear glass and glass that has red sand in it and the red sand is 30 minutes when you flip that sand glass so over okay I was called an hourglass but it’s not it’s half hour glass and the sand will pass through, that in itself whenever I said I’m gonna recruit for thirty minutes now I flip that upside down, immediately my mind would trigger and go okay hyper focus there’s just something that took place there, okay? So, creates these hard times stops was time stops for yourself with time limitations and you’ll find that becoming hyper focus is something that you can do, okay? We’ve already talked about working during a time spot when you’re most productive, here’s another work in a place where you feel energized and most focused, there’s just sometimes there’s certain places, maybe it’s not your office, okay? Maybe it’s a conference room maybe it’s a separate office okay then your normal office but find a place where you feel energized and you’re most focused, okay? So, that’s environment, the other thing is this that you can do I have a tendency that if I give myself allotment of minute 50 minutes, okay? And I spend the first 10 minutes doing something that’s high into city 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 Isn’t 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 hyper focus.

Here’s another component to this okay have an established process you follow, okay? so this is the fourth part have an established process you follow the muscle memory okay I always think there’s three components to recruiting identifying talent making contact and following up okay how do you identify talent, there’s a process that you should follow okay 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, okay? I highly recommend using a data tool that is an information aggregator like a mobilityRE, and if you’re not familiar with the 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, okay? And if you want more information on that you can send me an email @[email protected] have some more information along a mobilityRE but 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 mobility like NMLS consumer access like Zillow’s Linda 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 four or five of those too if 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 three major things that we’ve talked about that is a way for you to be disciplined here’s the fifth 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 begin to work out I went through a season of about eighteen months where I worked out six times I dare say six to seven times per week, in that season and I did it with a group of guys, I did it going through p90x p90x – we did pretty much all the Beachbody workouts over that season 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 a.m., and that was difficult to do because we were meeting in somebody’s garage to do 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 a.m. and so haven’t 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 her 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’re going to get this I recently my my 12 year old was at a basketball practice in kind of a gym complex where they were running a CrossFit gym, and so I’m 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 that’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 like even when they were done they’re hanging out in the parking lot, like you know in community talking about the workout talking about each other’s lives, talking about you know their health and their food and all these things and so there’s a level of accountability there. So here’s what you gotta do you gotta find someone else who wants to win as badly as you do in the area of recruiting, let me just say that again, you’ve 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 it 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 but the other part of this is how does to have that person do this at the same time as you. that in that wind 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 crania accountability and sharing in the space of being this holding, this recruiting role down well that they would have absolutely have said yes and stood in the 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,s spouse, a significant other they can play that role that 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 in if it’s not any of those then guess what go hire a coach, he 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 accountability is going to be necessary for you to actually have the discipline of doing this in to sustain it long term, okay? So, here’s I’m gonna close it with this, a couple of resources I would highly recommend Jaco Willings likes wrote a book called extreme ownership. I know some of you have listened to that book, excuse me and these are also written of 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 a 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 we 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 there’s a plan 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, okay? I got it in the podcast coz I’m losing my voice but this just tells you I’m all in on helping you, right? Like I’ve got an awful cold I love my tribe enough to show up and actually go horse coughing in their ears trying to relay an important piece, I think we’ll 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 was lacking discipline in their life that could actually grab a nugget or two from this that will help them in the recruiting efforts. So, if there’s a recruiting leader that you know that’s also looking to grow or also need 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.

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