The Only 5 Meetings You Need to Run a Business

0:00They didn't have a process for the meetings that they need in their business. And I believe you need to have five meetings to run your business.
You must put your ego to the side and you must be tied to how is the CEO looking at the assets of the company, i.e. your time.
If we're going to have a meeting and someone is not giving me what we're talking about, I can tell you the minute I sit down I'm like, what is the agenda? And if they don't report to someone and they're not having any formal meeting, you're not in the game. That person is going to leave, there's no structure, it's chaos. Many people in business are losing so slow.
They think they're winning. And in other words, if you're not tracking it, you don't know that you're just slightly losing. Welcome back to the Be Wealthy podcast where we help real estate agents, investors, and entrepreneurs make more money and then show them what to do with it in a way that's actually helpful and not mumbo jumbo speak that's out there on the internet today. It's not mumbo jumbo, hey do this, bur roast, whatever. So, if you're if you're if you're watching this episode or listening to it, do not miss last week's episode where we talked about Brandon Turner torching $15 million investor

1:04money. Go back and watch that episode.

And before you do that though, leave us a review. Your review is the fuel that lights our fire. Please, please do me a favor. Stop what you're doing, put the squat rack down for a minute. We're going to hit the delts here in a second and leave us a review. Okay? Write a comment. We read every single one of them and that's how we share this content and we help more people.
I love that you make the joke of put the squat rack down. I can't tell you how many of your private clients will text me like, listening to the podcast crushing it this morning and it's a picture of them in the gym listening to the podcast. It's very real.
And I'm talking to my people.
Diego specifically and you've done that,
and right now you're in the middle of squats, you know what I'm going to tell you? Go First of all, do a couple things. Go buy a lottery ticket cuz you're going to win. I mean, that's the first thing you need to do. When you get out of there, all right, so let's take it. I want to talk about We had a group in here. We're here at Apple Mountain. We're on our first We're living out here in northeast Georgia. And we've lived here almost 3 weeks. We've had two events here, workshops, which have been awesome. Right behind us, we got set up in here and we didn't put them in the pirate ship, which we

2:05could have. And that's coming to a close. I I've got to extend my trip slightly, but we had a group in here. Katelyn, and we go around and we're asking their biggest challenge. So, when someone comes to our one-day workshop, right? It's This is about them. It's not a Normally, I'm going to present when I speak, it's going to be 8 hours. It's a workshop. It's an all-day thing. I'm going to present or a mastermind and I'm going to talk for 8 hours on a variety of topics.
Yep.
The workshops we're doing are different where you bring in your problem. And I'm going to teach and I'm going to go around the room and I'm going to get your biggest challenge, your biggest opportunity. I'm going to teach a little bit, then we're going to coach one-on-one right there.
So cool.
Your situation and we're going to go through it. And so, some of this came out of there. The biggest problem I saw at our last workshop was people didn't have a leadership process. More specifically, Katelyn, they didn't have a process for the meetings that they need in their business. And I believe you need to have five meetings to run your business.
Okay.
These are throughout the year. Some of them happen frequently, some happen less frequently. We'll get to them. But, you've got to have a process. And so, as I asked one of the folks in there, "So, what's your meeting process? What's the

3:06leadership? What's the management structure that creates outcome in your business?" Go ahead.
So, your your I will say this, you are a polarizing to most people when you talk about meeting structures because you say you don't do large meetings. So, like those big all-hands-on-deck
hate meetings.
You hate meetings. Let's start this episode that's all about five meetings with how do you feel about meetings?
Well, so first of all, when I started my career, people told me to have a lot of them. So, I had meetings about everything. I had sales meetings, I had Everybody in the room. You got to get them in and you got to get them all in here and you got to get everyone's opinion and you really got No, you don't. I find it completely exhausting and I don't want to do it. And so, I think there's a much better way to do it. Now, meetings need to be highly purposeful. Highly intentional. A meeting without an agenda, I will tell you I I disrespectful. I really do. If we're to have a meeting and someone is not giving me what we're talking about, I could tell you the minute I sit down, I'm like, "What is the agenda?"
Well, you even want it in advance. Send me the agenda in advance such that I can review it and be best prepared to make the most of our time together. That's your script.
Or if I find the agenda stupid, I'm not going.

4:08
Well, we don't tell them that when we ask for the agenda. We say, "So we can be best prepared." But eventually, you look at it and say, "Nope. Skip."
Like if So, the first idea I want everyone to get here, like when you're walking into a meeting, what goes through my head is the outcome that I need to create at the end of this meeting is what? I actually open the meeting when I'm meeting with someone like, "Katelyn, thanks for coming down. I'm excited to meet with you today. Uh I'd love for you to share what makes this great for you and what outcome you're looking to create the next hour. I would like to share with you what I'd like to get out of this. And if it's okay with you, I'd love to maybe kill the small talk for a little bit and why don't we work on your thing first? And then I want to work on my thing. And then the time remaining, let's talk about your fantasy football team. I'm super jacked. But I really want to get to purpose, right? We got to have purpose in our meeting. So, the first thing I think you need is you've got to It's a meeting with yourself. Every Sunday night.
So, you say, "Hello, self. Are you here for the meeting?"
by saying, "What's up, self?" Now, Sunday night, I want to review I want to do a little review. I want to look back at the week before.
Mhm.
I always say, "What happened? What were my wins? What were my losses?" A little reflection, okay? If you got a journal and you want to I think this is a great

5:09way to do it.
Mhm.
I'm looking for a little reflection and little planning here.
Okay.
What were my wins last week? What were my losses? I also have my goals right there, so I know the big projects I'm working on. Did I move forward last week? The things at the pace that I wanted to move forward?
Yep.
And as I told you, the reason I'm extending my trip at Apple Mountain is I set big goals for myself while I was here and I did not achieve in the last week some of the things I wanted to.
Mhm.
And I want to stay another week to achieve the things I said. It's just it came out of my reflection. I'm like, "Look, I I I know that I do this I I got a great thing. I had to move a a golf tournament I was going to play in, which is a bummer. I'm sorry, brother Heggen. But uh it's all good." And he gets it and we'll play in the next one and we'll go crush and we'll obviously win the next tournament. But, I got it came out of reflection. So, then Katelyn, I'm looking at the week ahead going, "Okay, what what do I have on? I know that I missed some of my goals last week." I look at the calendar ahead, and I go, "Well, I don't have a lot of time in my calendar." But, I'm immovable on my goals. And so, I've got to look at my calendar, what things can I maybe move, get rid of, delegate, kick out. I've got to make changes cuz I'm going to live a purpose-driven

6:10life, and I'm going to make sure that I'm on track for what I wanted, not filling stuff that occupies time.
You asked me last night to join you in this process for this week. So, you said, "Katelyn, we have some joint things next week that we have on our schedule. I've reflected over, you know, here were the things I wanted to accomplish. I want to make sure that my status updates are correct. Is there anything else that I'm missing for what I have coined as Brett's role right now, which is facilities?"
And if you want me to tell you, at the peak of your career, if you get to be the facilities person at a resort, it is a delight.
There's a real reason you're facilities, right? It's because those are some of the huge infrastructure pieces here. You have 19 septic tanks. I think you should definitely help to determine how we will manage the 19 septic tanks.
I'm a wastewater specialist. I'm certified
I am uncertified in the wastewater sewer, just like our non-official sponsor, Vuori. Uh I'm not certified in that, and they're not our official sponsor. Cool. What I'm

7:11saying is if they were, I'd love to talk about how great their clothing is cuz I'm wearing it all right now. But, they're not our sponsors, so I'm not going to talk about it anymore and say how great this hoodie is.
Perfect.
Um but, you were talking like we've got
So, you asked me to come and said, "Hey, let's let's sit down together. I want to review. Here were my big goals. Is there anything that I'm missing that you see that I have not accomplished while I'm here beyond these There were four things." And I said, "Actually, yep." And then, it was we got to look at some post office box locations, or some other things that we need to add into that. Great. So, you re- recalibrated there, set the new goals for this upcoming week for yourself. Then you said, "Katelyn, you have put two appointments on my calendar for two back-to-back breakfasts Monday and Tuesday. And I do know time like I want to spend time with these people because I love them. You know, it's our head pro and it's our you know, our head greenskeeper over at the golf course. And we want to spend time with them, but you said, "I'm not willing to go in there without a very clear agenda of what I want to accomplish in the conversations with them. Their time is so crazy valuable. I want to be sure

8:15that I supply them the agenda in advance, they know what we're going to cover, and that when you and I leave that breakfast, we've made the absolute best of that hour or hour and a half to move the businesses forward and to help both of them in what they need to accomplish." And so, we sat there and just said, "Cool. Here's what it looks like. Here are the things that we want to talk about." So, the Sunday night review is absolutely I it is something you're so habitual about.
I I it it's the way to do it. I mean, you even yesterday you think about this. So, we had our folks in in terms of preparing for a meeting and how you and I do things a little different. We had our group from Arizona, the resort we own in northern Arizona. They were out here at Apple Mountain. We did a training for our entire team. They all came in and we taught the principles that we teach, three of our models, that we to run in our companies. And we had every one of our team members out here went through a full day of training with us. Same way we run our mastermind, we're training our people using the same tools. It's one system. We actually teach what works. And before though, it was interesting. So, we were we actually went a little hike cuz we're in is who knew that there are 20 waterfalls within

9:20an hour drive of Apple Mountain. It's insane.
And we're not talking little waterfalls.
If I show you a picture of Kauai
Chasing Waterfalls, absolutely fantastic.
I'm going to put this out there, Cole, and I don't know how we would do this. We should I've got two pictures. I'm going to do we'll do Kauai or northeast Georgia.
Side by side.
We're going to do a side by side. I'm going to give this a call. We're going to side by side. I'm going to say, is this Kauai or northeast Georgia? And I don't think any of our Euro viewers will get it right because it's you literally think you're in Kauai. And so as we were doing this though, we were walking down there with our GM of our northern Arizona and we I happen to have torrential rain. Cole, you don't know this. We're out there and I say when it starts raining, I had a rain jacket but when I 4 minutes before it was sunny. We got down to the Tunnels Gorge and I'm talking torrential. Cole, it was at the point where the my underwear, okay, on the inside of my pants. I know I wasn't just wearing my underwear on the outside. On the inside of my underwear started dripping into my shoe.
Well, technically halfway up the the hike you said to me, I said, oh my gosh, it's raining pretty hard here and you

10:23turned to me and you said, Katelyn, I'm okay. My underwear is not wet. And then we got to the end of the hike and then you're telling me that it's dripping into your shoe, you know.
I just wanted to keep you I just wanted to keep you updated on the weather on the on the water conditions.
for the culture of our group as we were going on the hike.
So, we were supposed to go to dinner after that to have a meeting with this group we were on the hike with and we had to come back and change because the reason we just talked about. But at that meeting, we actually pulled up a meeting and an agenda while we were and I think our server thought we were crazy but we were going through
She was right. We are crazy.
20 items to lower our direct operating expenses at the other resort. But that meeting while a fun dinner and we did a hike and we we still have fun in business, the point of the dinner like ended up being let's create some great outcomes together and four you have four smart people working off an agenda to make it happen. So, you've got to start having better better purposeful meetings. So,
So, Sunday night you're doing two things. Number one, you're looking back. What did we accomplish last week? What is our reflection? What could we have done better, different

11:25to optimize not only the performance of the business but to use time in a better way, right?
right.
And then now we're going look forward, right? We're going to look through the windshield. What does next week look like? Are there any appointments on here or meetings that don't have a direct outcome that we're driving? If they don't, that may be okay. Time equals love sometimes. But could we reshape these meetings or potentially move or cancel them to optimize our time to drive towards specific outcomes? The next thing that you do is you look at it and you say, "What are the compounding activ ities this week I'm going to work on the business." This is what you challenged me with just 6 months ago and it changed the trajectory of my productivity. We even talked about it last night. You were like, "It's at a whole different level today." Well, it's because you asked me then every single week to put the time blocks in my calendar to solve problems in the business that compound. Problems being it could be an opportunity for additional income. It could be a marketing plan you're putting together. It's something that's not a

12:26hand-to-mouth problem. It's something that once solved, once implemented, will have exponential results either for the positive, meaning it in- increases income, or it reduces what I call with a lot of my coaching clients the friction or stress in the organization. So, you should have compounding time blocks inside of your calendar in order to do in order to achieve those. Those should be 90-minute blocks working on the something that will either repeatedly increase revenue or repeatedly reduce friction or stress in the organization. So, once you've established that and looked at your time blocks for the week, that's when that Sunday night ritual's set. Fair?
Com- me- completely. And so, Katelyn, also just to add on to this point on the Sunday night review, this assumes also that you're working off a calendar.
Oh, meaning hold on, I have to be very clear. My sister, I couldn't love you more. However, you do not mean the calendar that is in my sister's kitchen that is the paper calendar that has cats and all kinds of stuff on it where all

13:28her kids stuff's written on.
Listen.
That is not the calendar I'm talking about.
love myself some Rod Tanner, okay? And he says he has never had a calendar.
Her business calendar is great, but we're not talking about that. We're talking about no paper calendars. Her business To be clear, she's going to roast me for this. Her business calendar, she runs a huge practice and is
believe it's one type. It's all of it.
But her kitchen calendar, you cannot have that.
My dad does it off of just a written and then you know, the human brain can remember five dates and just pick five that really matter. And that's a different time in a different place. I would not call it a digital calendar that encompasses your life.
Okay. Personally and professionally.
I don't see you I I we had this at the workshop. I don't view that I have the I view that I have one life. And in that life, I do business and I do personal things. And I just it's all one thing. The other day we had the as a workshop we were here. My family, I was happy to be waterfalling the day before. They were here
Don't go chasing waterfalls.
That's a Keelin does it every time we see a waterfall, I get to hear that incredible tune.
My favorite voice.
My family was here though, they got to experience part of our thing. And it was

14:29it was like am I so is that personal because my family was in the room at the at the workshop? Like I I just don't look at that.
just personal over to the right, but the rest of the room was business.
But I do you just have life, right? So there's no business or personal. You need to have everything in a calendar. The next thing about your calendar is you have to live it.
Mhm.
Like what I mean by that is when I wake up in the morning that's what people are like, well like what do you have going on? And I go a whole variety of thing. And I wake up and I live my calendar.
Mhm.
I don't wake up because I've looked at the Sunday, I know what's coming. Now I don't memorize it all because I just know that I've already agreed that things are on there. I think that I want to
remember all those meetings.
You know, I don't know in a given week between the things that I'm responsible for. There might be some days might have seven or eight meetings. And then you can take that times five days. You know, so you got 40 meetings. I'm not going to remember all but I can look at them and see this makes sense. You've got to live it. I think a lot of people I see people's calendars and I'm like, I'm going to wake up at 5:00 and then I'm going to journal from 5:00 to 5:15. And then I I red light therapy. But like but that's in their calendar. I'm like, okay, I don't know that your morning routine needs to be in your calendar.

15:30But because you just it's just kind of just something you just do. But like your thing you should one of the guys he says I said do you have a calendar? He goes, yeah. I go, well, let me ask you a different question. What percentage of the items do you do?
Oof.
And he goes, 60%. I go, well, then you're not doing then you're not in the game. It it the purpose of it is you do it all.
So, on Sunday night you're looking at it and now you're going to review what meetings do I have. You're going to recommend four meetings with others. Sunday night it's a meeting with myself. Hello self, let's look at the calendar. Right? So, on Sunday night you're looking at it and now you're recommending these four types of meetings which may or may not happen on a weekly basis. We're going to go through that. Some of them are annual and some of them are monthly.
That's right.
And then you're also going to be looking at the time blocks upon which you're growing the business, whether that's the compounding activity of revenue growth or the compounding activity of reduction of stress or friction in the organization.
Because I live a calendar and because I have goals, I look at where am I going to put the time in there to go work on the thing that gets me my goals. And so I

16:31got to go, well, I need two 90-minute blocks to work on this project. Well, I've got to go put them in there because again, I'm going to wake up and live that day. I'm not going to go like and I think most people just well, I'll just get to it when I get to it. Well, first of all, that never happens. Your your time expand like your task expand to the time allotted. And so I'll have all of our listeners, have you ever gone on vacation? It was two days out and you had 9,000 things to get done and somehow
I'm the most important person.
Before you
excuse me, the most important. Guys, you can capture that and just use it against me till the end of time.
Katelyn, you are the I want you to know right now you're the most important you are the most important.
the star of my own show. That's right.
You're the
I'm the most productive person.
Right before you go on vacation.
Right before I go on vacay.
But what Katelyn what Katelyn meant to say is that um
is So so but we're all the most productive right before that she had a drink in her mouth right then that would have been the third I mean her third speech.

So but you've got to go and you have to

17:35have time in there to accomplish your task. So the first meetings I look at so I do all my one-on-ones on Monday. And so I believe you need a one-on-one with your direct reports especially in the early days right when you this is if you know once people have been with you 5 10 years you could decrease the frequency of the structure but let's just assume in the beginning that your leadership and management you're new to it. So every direct report if they first of all everyone in your company reports to someone. And if they don't report to someone and they're not having a formal meeting you're not in the game. Like they're that person's going to leave there's no structure it's chaos. So I look at I want to do on Monday for the same reasons because I also want to look at I want to look talk to the person about the results from last week. We talk about the results that I we expect we're going to go get this week and then I want to go through things. So I want to walk through like what that meeting I call it a one-on-one. Katelyn I believe there's two types. I've got an operations one and a sales one and so I'll start with the operations one. The format's the same in the beginning and then the content we're going to go over is going to be different. So from an operations standpoint let's just pretend that it was you and it was an ops meeting and

18:38you would come into my office and it's the same way I coach which is Katelyn tell me the great stuff. What are your victories in business since we last spoke which was last week. And you're going to tell me the great things that are working. Hey I so I from an operation perspective I I this system's done this project's completed I've moved this forward right it's kind of an update in on the things that you've accomplished. And I'm like that's awesome. Now my job in that I'm trying to see how do we go do more of the things that are working. So what are the what are the victories how do I help you do more of it? Next question I'm going to Katelyn what's the biggest challenge in the business?" Now, this is a form that you would have sent to me in advance. You would have already typed all this, but I would say, "Katelyn, what's the biggest challenge?" Now, you're going to read to me what you wrote. Again, I have not prepped this meeting. Katelyn has. And so, she's going to say, "Well, my challenge is this." Now, my job when I hear the challenge is to remove it for you. I'm going to either remove the roadblock, I'm going to give you a different way to think about it. Again, I always use the example, it's really hard to see the label I don't know if that has a good label on it, but it's really hard to see the

19:39label when you're inside the bottle. And so, I'm able because I'm not doing the work itself, you are. When you have a challenge, I might be able to see it differently just from my vantage point.
Sure.
And just in the same thing a coach does for me, right? Like they're like, "Well, why haven't you just tried this?" It's like, "Well,
Cuz I didn't see that.
cuz I didn't see that. I was so locked into the one way it had to work. So, you're going to go through that. Then, we're going to have a what's called the hot topic. So, Katelyn, that'll be all the things that you wanted to ask me throughout the week. "Hey, got a minute, Brett? Can we meet for a minute? I have a question for a minute." If it's not urgent, but still important, I would ask you to put it on there and we're going to go over it once a week cuz I want to be more efficient. I don't want to have a 75 meetings a week. I want to have one. The size of this op meet ops meeting is in the length of it is the size of your business.
Okay.
So, when you and I were doing this, Katelyn, early on when you were reporting, you still we work together now, but it's the the different way we work. But, when it was really like this reporting structure, you and I got to a point where it was over an hour.
Mhm.
An hour every week, and we it took that long to run through the different business units. So, as you took on more

20:40responsibility and more
It increased in time.
We it's just more time to run through the numbers. And so, you know, you're going to go hot topic, then out of that, we're assigning four action items, four things that you're going to complete in the next week. And I'm going to assign those. And I'm going to type That's my part. I'm typing that up. At the end of that one-on-one, Katelyn is leaving with four things that she's agreed and it could be six, but it's around four things that she's agreed with total clarity to accomplish by the next week when we meet.
So, let me let me step in for a second. So, from Brett's vantage point, that's the structure, that's the model. So, now I I'd love to share it from the operations standpoint and
Now, you share your how you you prepare.
how I look at it. So, first, I look at it, you know, I I have the luxury of coaching a lot of operations team members in the the entrepreneur and business owner coaches with you. And so, I get to hear from their vantage point of how they're able to optimize this meeting as well. So, this is more than just my thoughts and ideas. These are all of the other operations uh chief operations officers and director of operations that I speak with. So, first

21:43is most of the time when this is first starting, they find that the CEO tends to shy away from this meeting. They say, "Oh, I just uh you know what? Let's catch up this afternoon." Or things got crazy. It's the number one meeting polled against my coaching clients that gets moved on their CEO's calendar. It's the number one meeting. They would rather save pickleball with Larry than do this meeting. And so, I thought back, what are the reasons why a CEO doesn't do this meeting? So, what are the like the death traps of why they say like, "Abort. I would rather not do it." Number one is that they believe they have to do the preparation for the meeting. And if you're the CEO, your ops person, a highly performing ops person, has a huge world and a huge organization. And you may be looking at it going, "I don't even know what she's doing over there." So, you don't want to do the prep. That's the number one reason that they don't want to do it. Number two is you talk all the time. When you and I were having this same style of meeting back then, we would talk four or five times a day on different hot topics that are

22:45happening in the business. You'd call me in between two coaching clients, "Katelyn, can you get with Streamline Business Solutions about this thing with our financials?" Cool. Bye. So, now all of a sudden, you have these repeated conversations to sit down in this formal way in the office almost seems weird. And so you have to go, it is. It should feel different. It absolutely should because it's what the ops person needs most and I'm going to get to that in just a second. The third reason that people tend to move it is that they feel as though the conversation could turn into a I'll just say the word a fest. Fair? So they feel like it could turn into there's 46 things wrong over here. The sales people constantly tell me the printer's not working. You're putting pressure on me to accomplish
of personal stories coming here. A lot of personal You don't understand. I mean from an ops perspective the CEO The CEO doesn't want to come in there cuz he's like, I'm just going to hear a bunch of excuses, stories,
things about

23:47
negativity about their personal life, the business. Sarah did this, Pete did this.
And And all these all these things happened and and the CEO is going to try to put pressure on the operations person to help grow the business, right? Your whole goal when we would meet was, Katelyn, if I 2x the productivity in this business and I 2x the actual revenue going through it, where's it going to break? And we need to go fix that now. I don't always want to talk about that because I got 4,000 fires behind me. So how do you put the structure in this meeting that I don't bring my 4,000 fires in and I'm able to clear my mind and use this meeting to my benefit? So here's the big pivot that happened with most of my coaching clients. Number one, and we have some awesome clients that are out of Wichita. I had a call with him and I had a call with her. She's the ops person, he's the CEO. Both of them to make sure are we on the same page of what this meeting is. She told me on my last coaching call that he literally put our word in the front of it, immovable, meeting with, you know, her, right? Immovable one-on-one with

24:51her every single Monday. It's immovable. It has to happen. So that's number one. Both of you have to agree. Ride or die.
First time the CEO moves it, you just told him it's not important.
Correct. Ride or die. That meeting has to happen. Number two, the meeting has to be the resource. It has to be viewed as the resource for the operations team member. It is not a top-down meeting where I'm going in and I'm waiting for Brett to tell me all the things that are going to happen. I view this meeting and my clients view this meeting as they're going in as this is the hour or this is the 30 minutes where I can come with true logical, educated, fact-based information to help my CEO remove my roadblocks so I can crush the dang week. And if you go in with that mindset, so now you've filled out the action plan that Brett just talked about, those four action items that were from the previous week. You go in and you put all your information in there, the links to the spreadsheets, the solution to the problems that you're seeing. Fill out

25:54that victory with what really worked. What could we double down on? Start thinking the way that your CEO's trying to get you to think. And come in loaded for bear such that you're driving the meeting, in essence, to get what you need to move the business forward. So, I'm crystal clear in that meeting. Brett, I have four things that I need to go over that I need you to help remove roadblocks for.
And those would be in your hot topics though, right? You'd be organized cuz you're organizing this.
Yes.
Right. So, victory, challenge, hot topic. We're going to hit your items.
Yeah, 100%. So, you got victory, victory, challenge, hot topics. You have the four action items, and then you should Go ahead.
Well, the the next part I like to go to is, as you know, I'm a big priority guy. So, I want your projects organized in order of 1 to 10, most important that you, based on what you believe, my current priorities are.
For the organization, correct.
well, based on what I've told you and based on what we've said, and I'm going to tell you over all of our viewers and listeners, this is the part

26:56alignment. I think I'm crystal clear as a CEO. What I find is that I'm not as clear as I think I am. And so I say, "Katelyn, I want to see your top 10." I've also have the top 10 that I believe they are. And you and I are in very good sync, but sometimes it'll be number you've got number four is number two. I'm like, "Hey, this one's just a little more priority for me. Something happened this week that you weren't aware of." So it doesn't mean you're wrong, it's just I didn't You and I can't spend every waking hour together in business so you knew everything that's going on, and I can't do that with you either. So we this is our time to get re-aligned. So Katelyn, these priorities for me. And by the way, we've got number 11 that wasn't even on your list is now number two.
Yep.
Because I had something happen that was
We're not doing I don't even know what I was thinking about number seven.
seven stupid and just
alert, that will happen and that's okay.
But that's So that meeting, Katelyn, is our time to get re-aligned. We're talking about what happened last week. We're going through the the alignment items. Then we're going to go through the projects. I want to go like whatever project management software right you're doing it like either depending on the project, it's largely going to be in Asana or some spreadsheet at this point. And we're going to go through that though. Where are you at? What's the

27:57next step? When's that going to be done by? And so I'm I'm looking through all of that.
project or every priority has to have three things when you meet them leave the meeting, right? It's the ROD is what I'll call it. Number one, you have to have what resources do I have in order to work on this project? What are my resources? What do I need? It always is funny to me. I'll think I have certain resources or I need something different, and I'll share it with you and you give me a different way to think about it, right? Oh Katelyn, did you realize you could use AI for this? Or is there a technology component that could help you? Or Katelyn, just hire someone on Fiverr. This is not This is not a problem. So number one, what resources do you have for that priority? Number two, what is the outcome upon which you want to achieve?
With total clarity.
Total clarity that we both can say back forth to each other. Sometimes Brett says this and he says it in a fun voice, so it makes it more fun, but he'll say, "I get what I just said. Will you say back to me specifically what what we're trying to accomplish?" Only because he wants to be sure, did I hear it in the

28:59exact way that he intended it? Not because I'm deaf or hard of hearing, but because sometimes you're thinking about something else and it noodles around different. We've got to be crystal clear. What resources do I have or need? What is the outcome that must occur? And then the D in ROD is what is the deadline upon which it has to happen? And if you leave that meeting though and you say, "I've got my four priorities for the week." and you don't have those three subset clarities, the meeting is a failure.
And to me, the deadline I also need to clear is time and date.
Correct.
not Thursday.
No, cuz I'm crystal clear on your thinking about the time.
I I'm very clear if it's 10:00 on Thursday, I need it I I've cuz I've wanted to my calendar and planned around getting the information I needed by the timeline that we agreed upon. And that's why I like I I see things that are very loose, right? Why this goes wrong is we have no clarity on the project.
Do you find it charming when I ask you the specific time zone?
Yeah, what now we do?
talking my time zone, your time zone? Are we talking the same
time zone I'm in is the answer of the deadline.

29:59
And so, look it up in my calendar. Where are we?
Look Look it up, you'll see where I am. But so that meeting, Katelyn, if we do it that way and if you're leaving this and if you just started those meetings and your direct report prepares in the way you described for them.
Yep.
And you're going this is your operations person, victory challenge hot topic, review the top 10 priorities is come up with four things to do by the next week and you do this every single week. Now, the reason why this is so as the CEO, you now have more visibility and more access to information to align priorities and make sure your people are doing the things that you believe. That's The CEO's job is to organize
Mhm.
the labor. Right? I got vision, you got you got resources, right? I Your job you got labor's a resource, you got capital's a resource, right? You got technology's a resource. Your job is to take your resources and allocate them best to accomplish your goals. That's the CEO's job. So, I I have a direct report, which is it's a resource. I want to make sure that we've got you working on the right things in the right way in the right time because it also that's how you're going to accomplish your goals.

30:59
You know what's funny, Brett? I literally I say this on my one-on-one calls. I say, "Sometimes they will say, he's not clear, she's not clear on her priorities." And I think this is the most important thing and they seem to have forgotten about it completely, but I'm 90% done with it, so I want to wrap it up before I jump into something else. This is the friction point that starts, right? It's they don't get it. I'm working on these pieces because this meeting's been moved or priorities are cloudy or they don't have those three subset variables of of clarity for the rod on each project or task, right?
That's right.
And I have to say this to the operations team member. Do you trust when your CEO makes an investment in a property that they allocate the financial resources of the organization to optimize the rate of return? They're like, "Oh my gosh, he is like a wizard. It's absolutely incredible, his ability to underwrite assets. It's so awesome. He really understands how it works. It's so great. I would invest money alongside." I'm like, these are the questions I ask, "Would you invest

32:00money alongside him? Like, if you could get in on that flip and you had an extra $100,000, would you invest it with them?" "Oh my gosh, yes, I wouldn't work here if it was otherwise. Like, I totally believe in that mission." Then I say, "Great. The other resource of the company is you. You are an asset of the company. You must put your ego to the side and you must be tied to how is the CEO looking at the assets of the company, i.e. your time. It is the asset of the company and it is the CEO's direction to determine whereupon which you spend your time and how you allocate your time. And so, if they flip that script to go, 'I'm an asset. Where do you want to appoint me?" He may see things or she may see things on the field you don't. And so rather than pushing back, push for don't push back for pushing back's sake. Push back to get what resources do I have, what specific outcome do you want to do, when do you want to buy, and if you're me, what time zone?
Yeah. So that So that's the ops. That's how you do it. Let's go to sales.

33:02Same process is the same. So victory, challenge, hot topic, and then the difference is I'm not going to go to the projects they're working on, the top 10 alignment. What I'm going to do is I ask this question. And so the point of a sales one-on-one is to help them find a deal.
Mhm.
Okay, when you're coaching a salesperson, there's only one purpose to meeting with them one-on-one. Let's find a deal. I want to help them make money. So I go, "What's your victory with Hey, I did a If you're a real estate agent, hey, I did an open house. I did two open houses last week and I actually got three pre-calls." I would go, "Whoa. How many people came to the open house?" Which one did you do? Well, it had more traffic than ever. We had 20 people come in. And you got a a buyer out of that? You got two? That's awesome. Uh can I ask you a question? Have you thought about doing another one there? Maybe it's Maybe those signs in the traffic of the street or what Whatever.
Mhm.
What if you did five of them? You know, like so you're just How do you expand that idea? So I'm going to ask him I'm going to work through what How do they do more of what they're doing? Same same victory, challenge, hot topic. Now with a salesperson, what I want to do then, ask the question, "If your family were abducted by aliens,

34:04and I literally ask the question the same way every week, and the only way we get them back to the next week is we got to put a buyer in escrow or we got to take a listing." Whatever the metric is in your business that drives it. I got to get a three pre-calls out. I've got at least four appointments.
Whatever their KPI is.
Whatever would be a great KPI. And so I'm asking, "What's the deal? Which one? Let's Let's pull up your top 10." So I'm going to the CRM, and I'm going to say, "So this is the deal." They pull it up, the first one. And I'm like, "Okay, so is Tom Johnson and you have not talked to this person in 30 days. And are you sure
And you say you don't like our wife and
So, you
We don't need them back.
The family's out partying with the aliens and we're going to let them sit in
to be groovy.
They're going to have two We for sure know they're sitting out there two weeks now. So, then we go to the next one. And then you're like, "Okay, we got to deal. It's very close." Okay, what do you think your next step is? Well, they were this or there's some straight What would it look like if you called them right now and said this?
Okay.
Could you do that, Kaelan? Could you go make that call at the end of this meeting? And then by the end of the day just shoot me a text and let me know what the outcome of that. I'd like to So, I'm finding the deal, giving you the

35:06resource, giving you a path forward, and helping you find the priorities in your pipeline.
Are you looking at the standards of the pipeline? Like we have in and Cole, will you upload again that laws of the pipeline link so that they have it? Like Brett, you established
Oh, yeah. If you go to bewealthypodcast.com,
The resource The resources will be available for you.
Yeah.
So, the laws of the pipeline, you have, you know, we have stages of hot, nurture, watch. We have standards that everyone has to have a follow-up task associated with the urgency of the, you know, the stage that they're at in, you know, whether it's hot, nurture, or watch. You have to have the notes, uh no outstanding tasks that are past due. So, you have those standards. Are you going over those at this meeting as well? Or is your first priority I'm going to find them the deal and then let's go through that.
So, now as well as There you go. So, I pick that first They're picking the top 10, right? This is
They're picking their top 10.
They pick the first one. So, I look at the first deal and I go, "Look, Brett, you're Okay, so obviously these ones are going to be hot in our standards." If it's a real estate team, this is going

36:07to be a customer that's going to transact in the next 90 days. So, our standard, if someone's going to list their home or buy a home with us, would be that we have to talk to them voice to voice over the phone, put all those notes in the CRM every single week.
Okay.
So, when I when I they say this is your number one person that's going to get your family back cuz we're going to put them in escrow and we're going to bring them to have a listing taken or it's an escrow, the buyer, I'm going to look at the communication. So in that example, if they haven't talked in 30 days, number one, they've violated our standards of our laws of the pipeline. So why are we not communicating with this person? So then I'm going to look I'm going to go through their 10 and make sure that they're following the standards.
Okay.
Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to pull random leads at random.
Ooh, I hate when you do that. It's so uncomfortable.
to do cuz so everyone shows you the 10. You use the 10 after they do this about three or four weeks, the 10 are going to be dialed in. Right, they're on it. They're doing the But then you're like, let's go to you. Scroll down, scroll down. That one. And so then I just want to see, are we following the system? And you And no one's CRM is perfect.
No, of course
Never. It's an impossible goal. But it should be 80 to 90% accurate and you're doing the

37:09thing, right? We all get behind on the CRM.
you celebrate that, too. Hey, this looks pretty good. You got a few things to tweak on here. I love it.
We're always looking for better in the CRM. But it gives you that opportunity. You're there to find a deal. You're there to check on the laws of the pipeline. So this meeting is designed to be 30 minutes. So the better the salesperson gets at knowing the priority, showing you the deal. By the way, when they start doing these things, they're already getting the result. So when they're coming into the meeting, the meeting They're preparing it. They're preparing it's getting shorter. Meaning I don't The first time you do it, you're like, how do I ever get this done in 30 minutes? About 60 days in, you'll need about 15 minutes for this meeting. You still keep it at 30. The next 15 minutes is how do you improve their life? So in the beginning they're like, hey, I got some questions about this. I'm thinking about doing this. Like, look, we're not even forget all that. We're not there yet. Your first mission here is we got to fix your business. You need to be making money. Once we've got your business and you're making money and you're making the right amount of money based on your goals, Katelyn, the time that's left over in this meeting is your time. How can I help? How can I add value to your life?
Now that your family is coming back from the alien abduction, how should we help you and your family?
the failure. Are you guys looking to buy another rental? Or what's your

38:10next step on your on your wealth plan? Let's look at your balance sheet. How are you paying down debt? How are you thinking about these things? And then I I want to go in there and help them accomplish their goals. And we've got a very specific way we do that. So you've got that's the first meeting, the one-on-one. Every week, never changes. Ops for sales, your direct reports. Now, by the way, if you have a sales manager, your meeting with the sales manager might The way I would do that is I'm going to pull up three random agents at the sales manager because they're supposed to be doing this with them. I'm going to look at the pipelines, the active sales pipelines of the sales people. And then I'm going to say, "Dude, what are you doing over here? Like, why are they not following the laws of the pipeline?" Pick the random ones there. The sales manager should be having the one-on-one same format. Just what I did. So, it goes through your entire organization. All right, the next meeting. This is if you're solo, this is
reports every single Monday, all your direct reports.
All of them.
Inmovable, has to happen, kick starts the week.
They should be set up back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back.

39:11No breaks in between is the way I like to do it. So, I'm going to do a 3-hour session. I'm going to just grip and rip. And if someone were to knock on my door with a closed door, I expect at 2:30, "Come on in." And I would I always And I do the same thing. "Come on in, take a seat. We're just wrapping up." And then I let the person know, "Yep, and we got that, and the action plan's in your inbox."
Zip zip zoom.
Go make it happen, and I'll see you next week.
Okay, so that's a weekly one. Now, you have What's the next one that we look at?
We're going to look at financial review.
Okay.
And I believe this is done approximately the 20th of the month for the month prior. So, you know, whatever, June 20th, we're going to review May's full financials. This if this if you're solo, it's a meeting with yourself. If you've got a leadership team, it's you, your executive assistant, your leaders. I love putting it to paper, and so I want a couple different reports. I number one want a summary P&L, just the general items in our chart of accounts.
Sure.
And I'm going to And we'll talk about what we're going to do with that in a minute. I want a full detail, which is the backup behind the numbers. So, on your on your financial statement, you might have marketing. But behind the marketing in the detail

40:13is all the the 39 charges that represent marketing from Zillow or realtor or whatever you're doing, right? Whatever those expenses are. I'm going to want to see a balance sheet. I just want to make sure that that's in line, that I agree with the numbers and for that time
Or that I even understand what's on it. Sometimes I see a balance sheet and I say, "What is that?" And we get to discover it together because sometimes your accountant or your bookkeeper's putting things on your balance sheet.
They just journaled some entry something on there 3 and 1/2 years ago and it's just sitting there.
And it's just sitting there and we can clean that up.
Yeah. And so then I want to look I want to look at different trends over time. I want to look at how am I performing this May versus a year ago's May, right? A year-over-year comparison is great. Especially in any business that has seasonality, it's good to just see, "Hey, we're up 20% over year." Then I also then I want to have a year-to-date number. Like how are we comparing the year-to-date like if we average where we're at in the year per month, is this a little better, little worse based on that? And so that real financial review meeting in my opinion, depending on the size of your business, this is a 30-minute meeting. It could be

41:16an hour. An hour would be a lot.
Yes.
Right? So like you would In our case it's an hour because we're reviewing like 30 P&Ls or something. Um because once you do this the exercise is quick.
Yeah.
Right? You're going to you're going to go to the P&L, you're going to run three numbers, right? What's what's my net profit margin? What's my expense ratio? What's my cost of goods sold? We'll film a whole podcast on on that stuff later. But you're looking at those numbers and is those numbers were in line, they're better than they were a year ago, they're what we thought they would be because we have targets, cool. Then I'm just running through the detail going cuz you make money by managing the expenses on the revenue you already have. You do People get lost on that.
in hand though. You do the detail and so on one side of your desk you have the detail and the other side right next to it you have the trailing 12. And the trailing 12 shows you January, February, March, April, like all of the 12 months and you literally are going line by line, not by summary, not just marketing. So it might be like marketing and the subcategory of that's like direct mail, CR or technology, like whatever that might be under there.

42:19You're looking at each of those lines and know you go straight across with your finger and you're looking for any crazy trend differences. Did income go exponentially up or exponentially down? Like, are there peaks and valleys? And then the same thing with expenses. If you find those, you go, "Take me to" and you open up you say it out loud to all of us and then you open it up on on the actual P&L detail. "Take me to marketing. Something's off. I need to see what it is." And then you say, "Help me understand why we have four Mailchimp accounts. I don't get it." We had three last It's two last months and now all of a sudden Mailchimp's outrageous. Or, "Hey, our Google ad spend seems completely off compared to what it was. Did we reap the, you know, that was a lead indicator. Did we, you know," Anyway, you get what I'm saying. So, you utilize the trailing 12 trends going through that and it's pretty quick. I mean, you've gotten to the point that it takes you a matter of moments to look through and you can easily spot a peak or a valley and then you go and do the research on the back end. So, really it doesn't take a ton of time. It's a

43:22matter of learning how to look at it in a way that allows you to see the issues immediately.
And and here's why it matters so much, Katelyn. I I I had a private client and we it was early he was new to me and we're doing his financial review. So, I'm like, "How often do you do this?" He's like, "Well, I never do it. I just do the end of the year when my CP files my tax return." I'm like, "Okay, well, that's not what we do it. Your P&L is a tool to"
Let's Let's actually say this though.
The first time he's seeing
Hold on. The first time you're seeing January 2025's financials is when you're filing taxes in April of 2026.
Could be worse. Could be October.
Of 2026. So, 18 months later you're looking at a lag indicator.
Yeah, we had a tough January. 18 months ago. Ah! What? That's what most people do.
problem? so you know, we we started there. Then it was, "Hey, I lost money 2 months ago or a month ago." I'm like, "Oh, well, when did you realize that?" He goes, "Today." Well, I go, "I'm going to show you something that's like wild." We actually can predict what you're

44:24going to make in the next 30. In real estate, you can actually know exactly what you're going to make in
businesses you can.
In most business Well, in the real estate business because of sales cycle right, your most of your transactions are put in escrow. So, you're 30 days. You might add a cash transaction or get something, but largely 30 we know, you know, if you're we're if we're June 1, we know what we're going to make in June and we kind of know what July's shaping up to look like.
Totally.
Like so the point here is to number one not have 6 months go by and we've got a bunch of expenses that don't make any cognitive sense that are just torching money. Number two, should we make some decisions? Do we have things that are working we should double down on? Right? Whoa, this is performing better than I thought. I'm going to start watching that a little more. I might over invest in that today. In So, this financial review meeting, if your P&L is not a tool to make business decisions, you're doing it wrong. The P&L tells you you go, "I have a new idea." Well, what does your financial statement say? But what do most people do, right? Well, I'm going to post it on some forum or some Facebook group and ask them what

45:26they do. Who the hell knows if that should be the good idea or not? They might be losing money in their business, too. So, you've got to actually know that you're making money so that you know how you can make more money, right? So, there cuz there's only three ways to make money, Katelyn. You sell more widgets. You sell more expensive widgets. You sell more widgets to the same person. Right? There there's not thousands of ways to do this and our financial statement is very simple. There's no reason that every business owner should not master it. It's simple addition and subtraction. It should be taught in schools. It should be taught in the real estate school very specifically. I mean, it's not. And it's very easy to do. And so, make sure you're understanding that meeting. If you don't know, get with a bookkeeping company like you know
We love Streamline.
We love Streamline Business Solutions. I love them for a couple reasons. Number one, they balance they reconcile your bank account. So, they're going to go in there, they're going to reconcile your bank account. Number two, if you wanted, they'll have a call with you.
I was about to say, they're education so that you can learn how to do that.
Like hey, when you open your P&L, what do you look at? They're like, I don't even know.
unbelievable.
They're going to walk you through step-by-step what to do.
What you should look at.

46:26
This is what you should look at. So, so that's a meeting, okay? 30-minute hour, that's a meeting once a month.
So, that meeting though on its own is good. That meeting paired with the meeting you're just about to talk about is is the absolute gold in a business because the financial review is going to be your lag indicator, right?
It's all the stuff that happens, it's facts.
It's already happened. So, if you wait to just have that financial review, right? Like let's say let's say from the point a lead comes in, you get a new lead that comes in, and then you have to call the lead, follow up, show them homes, and then they get under contract, and they close. Let's say that life cycle of a client at best is 90 days. Okay? So, lead comes in January 1, at best that money is hitting your bank account in what month, Brett? If it's 90 days, they come in January 1, what day is that hitting?
Oh, I mean, the one where I actually if it's a 90-day cycle?
Mhm.
Oh, I mean, I'm getting the money January 1, I'm getting the money in

47:28middle of April. I'm reviewing that 20th of May.
Okay. So, there you go. So, hold on for just a sec. So, you're reviewing that 20th of May. The challenge is on the 21st of May, you're going to make some changes that something went wrong in the business, right? So, maybe our expenses were too high, or there was an issue with the lead flow, or we're looking at something so far in the past that the change we make on, you know, April 21st, now we're making that change for the new set of the cycle. So, now we have another 90 days before the change that we made actually impacts our business financials and our income. So, now go I'm in April, let's go. I'm like a kindergartner, right? May, June, July. We're not going to see any of that again, the the results of our choice until August. So, something could be broken in your business on January 1 and you actually can't do something to fix it.

48:29You won't see the results of that fix, I should say, until the middle of August if the only thing you're looking at are your financials. Now, here's the crazy part, Brett. Half the people we've talked to in the last couple weeks at our workshops haven't even been looking at the financials in that way. So, first you got to start there, then don't stop there. That's the big key. Don't stop there. You now need to go into this other part of the meeting so that your cycle of changing your business, your ability to move quickly as an entrepreneur in a small business, that is one of our greatest assets, right? One of the greatest things about us is this ship, you know, Brett's world, we can make a decision and change something right away. AT&T, it's got to go through months of like board of directors and all kinds of things, right? In your business, one of the greatest advantages of small business is the ability to pivot quickly. If all you're looking at are your financials to make your decisions, you lose your ultimate advantage in the marketplace. So, now this next meet

49:31meeting that Brett's going to go over is the ultimate advantage point for every single CEO that's out there. So, I'll let you kick it off. Obviously, you know this is my one I'm most passionate about.
Well, I it's we found a way so as how this came about is we built this this KPI, this flash report that we came up with because we're running multiple businesses. And I thought each business, oh they're so different. You know, we had a cryotherapy, we're going to be the franchisor back then. And so the data around a franchisor, you know, from cryotherapy, is going to be different data than a real estate team versus a mortgage business versus a roofing company.
Or even a title company. Right? You would think, "Gosh, it's got to be crazy over there. That's a totally different business."
you realize all businesses are the same. We've got leads, we've got things that we do to leads in terms of effort. We call them, we text them, we get an appointment, we show them value, whether that's Zoom or that's live. And then they have some point of a contract, and then we do more things, and that creates a sale. And these are all like markers that we can see. And so if we laid your business out on the leading indicators. So you talked about the lag indicator, which is your P&L. These are facts.

50:33
lag indicator is P&L.
is what we want, but we can't go just get more dollars in our account tomorrow. There's a lot of things that we just discussed we got to do to get the dollars.
Correct.
And so the flash report, we're going to capture the leading indicators. We're going to get some lag indicators, too. But we're going to have the leading indicators. So in most businesses that we run, we're going to look at how many leads came in last week. Gross leads. 100, 300, five, whatever. Then I'm going to do, what's the next step? Would be the next major milestone in most business to be some sort of an appointment set. We set 12 appointments this week. I love that. And then I want to know how many appointments did we hold? How many times did we get to sit down with a customer and show them our value? And then I want to know from there, there may be something like a pre-qual or something in between a contract, but it might just be a contract. And what we're looking at, Katelyn, is in between these things, from a lead to an appointment set, there's going to be a ratio. So I need 10 leads to set four appointments. I need four appointments set to have two held. I need to hold two appointments to have one closing.

51:34And if I knew that data, at that moment, if I knew and I knew that the leads cost a thousand dollars in this example. So leads are a hundred dollars each. I I that my cost per closing, my cost to acquire a customer that turns into dollars, is $1,000.
Mhm.
Now, depending on the widget factory that I'm running, that might be awesome, and that might be terrible. But I know the math now. So, then I would look at okay, if my marketing expense is 10% of like let's assume that I cost me but I get a $10,000 commission, it only cost me $1,000 to get it. Would I be willing to spend $10,000 to go get $100,000 in revenue? Does that make sense? Most real estate teams, Keatland function if they're doing it right off a 30% margin. Now, if you don't know your financials, it's kind of like Alice in Wonderland. Like where are you going? Well, I don't know. Well, then go whatever road you want. It doesn't matter. Do anything. Buy this, do that, sell it, don't sell it. It doesn't matter. If you don't know where you're going,

52:35you don't know the numbers, it's just gambling anyway. Take it all to Vegas, throw it on black, little 18 11 13 black outside, why not? And that's what most business owners doing. They're gambling with their future. Instead of creating a predictable outcome that's so logical and so easy to see. And so if I again in that example, if I knew that I was investing $10,000, and that was built into my budget and made sense and that equaled 30,000 in profit. Well, would you be willing to spend $10,000 to net 30? Probably most people would.
Sure, but how would you know?
How So, now these ratios, let's say that you knew it was the ratios I just described. So, 40% of leads book an appointment set. 50% of appointments set go to appointments held and 50% of appointments held go to closing. Let's say I knew those ratios week in week out. And then one week someone comes in and we have we go to 60% appointment set, which is a 50% increase from the 40. And I mean this has been months of this.

53:38I would go I would sit down with the seller like, "What are you doing? What I mean, what's going on? How are you doing this? And they're like, "Oh, I added a different follow-up." I'm doing this. I'm shortening the time for appointment set. I was actually instead of setting up a week out,
I'm setting them 2 days.
I'm setting them tomorrow, and it turns out more people show. Okay, great. So, you learn
the ratios of what works. You know,
Seems a lot better than the Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter tea party approach.
are single-digits to two-digit numbers in a spreadsheet that we And so, this is all done weekly, these numbers. And so, when I talk about a flash report for a business, uh it's no more than 20 numbers. I'd like it to be less numbers, not more. It's 15 critical driving numbers that tell me the health of my company. And so, when I have a meeting about this, and usually this meeting is going to be a part of the one-on-one if they're a division leader.
Sure.
And it could be it if there if it relates to the division. If it relates to me, I'm doing it's just a meeting on my calendar where I've got to review those numbers. And it takes me sub 60 seconds to know where I need to spend my focus cuz I'm scanning my eyes across a page where I know what the averages are

54:41historically. So, it's like, "Oh, we we're supposed to have 10 and we have 10. We're supposed to have five and we have five." But if you get over here and you're like, "Wait a minute, I'm supposed to have eight of those widgets, and I've got two." Something broke in the machine. So, then you just go to, "Well, okay, well, where is that Where is that data housed?"
Sure.
And then I can go fix the problem in my business cuz all businesses have little things that break. It could be a form that broke on your website, so the leads aren't coming in. Stuff happens. The key is catching it every single week and putting back on track. Every business gets off track. Everyone. The key is how long are you off? Most people are off track to your example earlier, you're off track a year. Well, you're tell You just blew your year out. You're tell If you can stay on track like you're Every business plan I've ever had, at some point in the year I was off track for a week or two.
Sure.
But then I was able to course correct and put it back on track, so I still hit the goal. You get off track for 6 months in a year, you you're it's just kind of game over.
You have a great quote around goals. You don't miss your goals
because you didn't have a great plan.
You miss your goals because
you had no check-in point along the journey. And you started running and

55:43there was no check-in point to go like and I used the example in our in our our seminars and I I I've never run a marathon, but I know a lot of the training a lot of our friends do. They run these. And I always ask someone so if you ran a marathon they're like, "Yeah." I go, "What if there was no mile markers?" And I want you to imagine the road you're running on. It's just tree-lined. It all looks the same. And you're on you're factually on mile 16, but you don't know that. You don't know your pace per mile. You don't know anything. Is there I asked you know this it was the girl that was here earlier this week and I said, "Would you know if I asked you factually where are you at? Would you know you're at mile 16? Would you know your pace per mile? Would you know anything?" She goes, "I would have no idea. I would definitely think I'm further than I am." Right? Cuz you're running like, "Oh, I'm got to be almost at the end." Well, you're not. It's the same way with our financials, right? We're flying blind with no scorecard. How do I make changes? I I can't even fix the business, Katelyn. It's worse than that. I And if the data's wrong, so there's two issues here. Number one, I see people have incorrect data and then they make a decision. It's even worse than not having any. Right? If you if you're not going to

56:45have any information, you're just gambling, do it. Don't put the wrong data in there, have someone else do it, and then make a decision based on it.
Let me ask you I've I've two things I want to mention on this. Number one, at Be Wealthy call what is it? Be Wealthy Podcast Resources Be Wealthy Oh, I should be able to
Katelyn Katelyn, I would think it's it's the name's crazy. It's it's the name of the podcast. It's Be Wealthy and then you say podcast with it. .com. You don't have to go be wealthy resource backslash five meetings backslash awesome.
I don't I don't know how fancy it is out there. So, Be Wealthy
One of the greatest technologies
Podcast.com is what they tell me. You can go there and you're going to see a sample of our flash report. And it's very simple. Across all business lines it looks exactly the same. Simple spreadsheet where you have tabs for each of the months and then you have a summary tab at the front. Each tab has what month it is, and then it's the weeks overlaid on each other, and they specifically are overlaid in the way that you're going to see it, and then it goes from lead to lag indicator across. Sometimes my clients will try to like reinvent it, and I'll have to

57:47explain the way you can read it is that you can actually see the trends week over week and month over month. That that's really important. But, people have come to us. I mean, we've been using these flash reports since the dawn of time, right? Like, they have not changed since Bill Gates decided to drop Excel that we've been running this.
Yeah, we're we This is not a new thing for us.
my question for you. Why have we not moved everything to a dash to a fancy levers and reds and greens and here's how, you know, we got speedometers and all these different things. Why have we been so you have been so concerned not concerned, but like adamant that we continue to use this same report showing the actual data in a static way, like you have in financials, where it doesn't change, and you can see week over week versus you can just see are we revving up or we revving down? Why did you keep this versus moving to some of the fancier dashboards?
Yeah, I see people that have really beautiful dashboards. I mean, it's like wow, this is something. It is This is

58:50impressive. I love the green bar, and I love the red dial, and because it doesn't I don't think flat flashy dashboards are what make businesses work.
Well, RS technically has a term flash in it.
have the word flash, but it's just an Excel with I mean, cuz at the end of the day I I want to I need to see the historical data. That's exactly And it's really hard to see this in this little bar chart that shows me a real-time snapshot. So, I'm not saying those things aren't cool, but I will say this, and I think there's the danger, Katelyn. I think a lot of people are using AI or they're using things to make what I call cat memes. Right? They're like they get get data. They're like, "Brad, this flash report's a really great idea, but look at what my AI did. It has clouds in it. And it's got lightning bolts, which apparently represents something that really good in the business. I guess lightning's good.
Lightning strikes.
And I was like, I
Hopefully more than once.
But we're looking at we're talking about 15 numbers in a spreadsheet where we need an average The easiest way to display this information is in a crystal clear It's in a spreadsheet. It's just the best way to do it. If there was a better way to do it that made it easier to make the decision, I'm not tied to it.
It also helps your team see it. So now

59:53you're I consider it a
I also the spreadsheet doesn't break. It doesn't. The dashboards all do. And then the data feed and your Zapier and Coconut You got a webhook and 19 other things, Cole. And it's just not that complicated. I just need to know how many appointments we set last week. Like I don't need a dashboard that goes green, red, yellow, purple. Yeah. And so make it simple. Your business So I did this selfishly to make it easier on me as a CEO to run the 34 different businesses we have. They all look the same. They feel the same. So as I'm going meeting after meeting on my review,
It's easy to see.
I can instantly I mean it's it and
So whether it's a title company, a real estate business, an investment business, or an apartment complex, you're looking at the data in the same format, so you can make the decisions across multiple business lines.
And the last level of this is the person if you have someone doing this for you that's creating the flash report, they're reviewing it with you. Once you do this enough times, they walk in already of fixing the data.
I highlight yellow issues.
Katelyn's like, "Hey, you're going to get to sell You're going to get to see 23

1:00:55
question
to get to see 23 and you're going to hate it. And I've already fixed it. Let me tell you the three things I've done, and it's all handled." And I'm like, But then
Perfect.
That meeting goes like this, "What would you like to talk about?" I'm all good. And now all I'm doing there is assessing do I agree with your answer to the problem. Hey, we're off by 30% and then you're going to tell me the three things you're going to fix it or whatever it is. And all I'm asking as a CEO, do I believe that what Katelyn just told me, based on my experience, will fix the problem? And sometimes I tell you, "Hey, great job, Blair. I love it." Sometimes I'm "Hey, I don't see respectfully, I don't see those three things getting us there. I think you're going to get halfway there."
I was I was just talking to Shay this week. She's now putting She gives She sends her flash report to her CEO. And she actually says, "Here's the three things I think you need to see in the business and my suggested changes to fix them." And that's Imagine that. You're the CEO. Your ops team is putting it together for you. They sit down and show you that difference.
It is the leader I could tell you as the CEO when your people come with solutions, right? So, for the ops people listening this,

1:01:57all the CEO wants is someone else to have thought about the problem and bring them potential solutions. You give that to a CEO and go, "Hey, here's I've run it all."
Here's a Here's a fire on your desk and here's four different extinguishers you can choose.
Here's four options. I'm going to give you them all. I got pros and cons of each. I'm going to tell you that I like one. Here's why I like one. And you And instantly I can go, "I love one. Let's do it."
So, Blair, I was on with our ambassadors this week. And I was going over with them one of the the hot topics came up is a lot of them have huge real estate businesses, right? And they're running these flash reports for their real estate business. And they love them. And they're bragging about how great they are and they're fantastic. And then I was going over some wins with them and they were sharing with me some of the wins in their investment business. So, now that they you know, they have a huge real estate team, but they're looking to go ahead and generate additional income inside of their investment business that they can then get take and go create generational wealth, right? It's what we teach. So, they also have done the math because we're working on it with them together

1:03:00where maybe they net, let's call it $400,000 in their real estate team. They're like, "That thing's noisy. It's crazy. We have all this reporting to keep track of it, but I love it. I now have clarity around that." And then I ask a question like, "Awesome. What's going on with the lead and lag indicators?" So, we'll talk about what's happening in the marketing at your uh for your investment business. How is that performing? How many appointments did you set? How many you know, and then how many contracts did you write? And then and I have uh between the ambassadors and my private clients, some behemoths in business, right? They're running really large businesses and they're great at it. But then for some reason, when it comes to this investment arm that they're launching, they've put a business plan together that they're going to do, call it seven or 10 flips this year. And it's going to make more than this real estate business net, correct? They tell me they don't need reporting over here because Katelyn, it's going to be a lot of ones and twos and zeros and threes because there's not as much volume in that business, right? I put some direct

1:04:02
What's making more money?
But it's So, why wouldn't you have even more intensity around it? And they say, cuz I can kind of keep track of it, right? It's ones and zeros. And I say, kind of think of it like code, guys. Like it's just ones and zeros, but think about this. You're going to sit in our next mastermind with Brett and he's going to say, I love what you did this year. Congratulations, that's your best income year. We're going to go invest it. Now, let's look. Where did we make the money? You're going to tell him that you crushed it in your investment business. And I'm going to do spoiler alert, at our mastermind in this October, when you tell him that, he's going to say, cool. How do we double it next year? And you're going to say, gulp, I don't know because you don't know any of the lead and lag indicators for that business. So, even when the numbers are zeros for the week, we should know that we sent out direct mail and no leads came in. We should know that we did Google ads and no leads came in or two came in or you went on one appointment. Did it convert? Did it not? Did it convert the next week? So, is our life cycle of appointment to contract written? Do we know that's a 7-day period? We have to know it from the launch of the business.

1:05:06So, no matter how small your business might be or one of your business lines right now, you might be a single agent on here going, "I got it. I'm running and gunning. No big deal. I kind of get what's happening and you know, here I am." If you're feeling that real estate roller coaster or you have a small business line that you're launching, this reporting is more important than than ever. So, I would encourage you if you're listening to it going, "I'm good. I'm just running and gunning." Absolutely not. You have to start tracking. You have to start tracking it immediately.
100%. So, build your flash reports out, get those KPIs and understand the ratios between the break points all the way to contract. All right, last meeting, Katelyn. The last meeting, it's once per year.
Okay.
I like doing this. I kind of start this process around October.
Okay.
And it's the annual business planning that I do
You for
for myself. And so, the one I do is I do I do a goal on the passive income that I'm going to create the next 12 months.
Okay.
So, what do I have now? And so, that is how much additional passive income I'm going to create. That's the one goal. So, I'm going to

1:06:07make I want to create an extra $10,000 a month in passive income in 2027. So, I would do that at the end of this year. I would go create I would create that. That's the one. What are the three ways I'm going to do it? So, I use a tool called a 1 3 5. I took it from Gary Keller. And And it's to me, it's the easiest way to clean up your thoughts. But what it does is all the items in here, spoiler alert, go into the flash report that we just covered. So, any item So, the one goal, the three priorities, the five strategies for the goal for the for each priority. Each one of those must be able to be an item we can measure in the flash report. So, once you're done with this, and we'll go in a little bit a minute, once I've done the 1 3 5, Katelyn, I've got the data that I want to track, I can actually throw away the whole business plan. I don't need it anymore. The purpose of the 1 3 5 was just to set up the tracking.
To get clarity of what to put on our flash report.
What am I going to measure? How will I know cuz I want 10,000 a month in passive income. And how do I know if I'm on or off track to getting it? I can't wait till the end of the year and go, "Did I get it or not?" Well, no, you didn't do anything, so you didn't get any. So, the three ways might be I'm going to

1:07:10I'm going to buy two duplexes. I'm going to do two seller finance notes. I'm going to buy three natural gas royalties. Whatever the things and the widgets the way you make the passive income is is your choice, but I can measure then what are the leading indicators to get me to that. So, that's for me like on my on my wealth then as it relates to each company, each business leader in our world is going to create their goal the number one being profit.
Profit in that business line.
There is no other goal in business, right? I know it gets very confusing out there online, but the purpose of business is to make money. So, on your real estate team I want to make a million dollars in next year. Cool. That's the one. Million dollars.
And you can say I want to make a million dollars, which means I will serve 323 families. You can tie those together, but if you just say serve 323 families,
that doesn't do it.
You've missed the point. Yeah.
100% it's the million dollars and that equals 330 houses sold. I love it. Then I would go to what are the three priorities? What are the three ways I'm going to do that? Well, of those 330 families, I think there's going to be 160 of them are buyers.

1:08:12
Sure.
Cool. 170 of them are going to be sellers, whatever that is. And then I'm going to have it like, okay, what are the people, process, system, tools, and things I need because I set a big goal. Like if I was making 500,000 the year before and I'm going to a million,
Sure.
I I need an additional person. I need an additional process. I need a different system. So, all of that is going to be put into this 135 format, which again we'll put on bewealthypodcast.com and you can get this format. Very basic. Katelyn, it's not bewealthy resources.
for those who are with me, be wealthy podcast .com.
There, you nailed it, Katelyn. You're back.
so much.
And so, you go to this 135. Again, the point of it is just to establish what you're going to track. So, Katelyn, we've covered a lot in the last, you know, hour-ish you're together. We talked about the five meetings you need to have. Sunday night reflection and review. You've got to go to your your one-on-one meetings. You've got to have the financial review. You've got to have the weekly flash report and you've got to have your annual business planning. If you're not doing these things, you're not really running a business. And the fear I have for folks, Katelyn, I see people that I'll say this kind of aggressively.

1:09:13I think that they're they're losing so slow they think they're winning.
Say it again.
I think many people in business are losing so slow
They think they're winning. And in other words, if you're not tracking it, you don't know that you're slightly losing. And here's how the way you might be perceived to be winning and losing. If your marketplace is up 30% in transaction count, and your business is up 10%, you're losing. The market's outperforming you. The lift you got was the market. You would want the market to be up 30 and you to be up 50, which means, Katelyn, the things that you're doing are better than the market. The market is your pace car. Right? You see agents today or some real estate are making more money because prices have gone up. So, they're selling less homes from But, that's not long-term not a great strategy cuz then we got to always have prices go up so we make more money. Instead, we want to build a great business around the economics. And then if we get the market lift, too, now it's just more money than we thought. But, so we want to build our business around the

1:10:15numbers, the goals, and know that we're on or off track. All right. Go to be wealthy podcast.com, get the tools. That's Katelyn Mitchell. I'm Brett Tanner. This is the Be Wealthy podcast, and we'll see you back here next week.