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Jamie Shilanski  

Ever meet somebody who’s got a wishbone where their backbone ought to be? Well, then this podcast is going to be for you, because we are going to talk about how we rise above challenges and what makes the difference between people that are optimistically successful and people that just sit around all day long dream scrolling and thinking that they can wish themselves into success. Welcome back TPR Nation. This is Jamie Shilanski, in an episode of Worlds to Conquer. And first massive shout out to all of my southerners out there. You guys have the world’s best expressions. Every time I talk to a Southerner, I need to put myself on pause and just listen the whole wishbone backbone if the creek don’t rise, because all that employees, good worker, but sometimes meeting the guild the lily. I mean, everyone knows a bless your heart. I grew up knowing that as a big joke, but man, is just the tip of the expressions that the South comes up with. I’ve never seen anywhere else. I absolutely love it. No other region in America wraps an insult inside of a compliment. It makes it sound so pretty. Everywhere else us northerners, we just tell it like it is straight shooting, right? So what prompted this conversation? Well, a lot of times, when I talk to people, they say, Wow, I can’t believe you can do everything, and you know you’re so successful, and all of these things, how do you manage your time? How do you manage your day? And there starts to be this misconception that people that are successful are somehow smarter, faster, better than everyone else. No, no, I am made up of the same fiber. The people that I know that sit in the echelon of success, they are made up of the same fiber too. But we have two things incredibly in common when you want to achieve success. There are two characteristics that really differentiate. In my mind people. There’s people that dream about success, and those two characteristics are optimism and grit. Optimism and grit. So let’s talk about the theory of optimism. Optimism isn’t just cheerleading. My baby brother, Micah Shilanski And I used to get into this a lot, because he’s very pragmatic, he’s very logistical. We are a great combination, because he brings a lot of decisive discernment to things, and I bring a lot of but what if it could happen? Let’s see what the possibilities are. Let’s just try, you know, and that kind of thing. And when we were first starting out our careers, he he would just be like, Oh, you’re just such a cheerleader. You’re just always seeing the positive. But I do, and there’s a place and a time for that. I’m not saying that. You know, unicorns are going to start flying. I just got an argument with my four year old niece. I told her, we went to this festival, and I took her around to see the little Shetland ponies that they have, and she got to pet the pony. And I was talking to her about a couple days later, I said, Yeah, remember, we went to the festival. You got to pet the pony. And she goes, No, there was no pony. And I was like, yes, there was a pony. And she said, No, there was only a horse. And I said, No, that little thing that was like your size, it was a pony. And she said, No, they don’t have the point on their forehead. She thought ponies were unicorns, because that’s what she’s seen on TV. I love how she stood her ground on this. It was incredibly cute woman. No point on its head. It’s not a unicorn. I did not see it. All right. Now, you don’t have to go around believing that ponies are unicorns to be optimistic. Rather, you could just believe in the possibility of these things. Now, belief isn’t just enough, though. You can’t walk around wishing for things to happen. The difference between a wish and a goal. It’s a plan. It’s a plan. Show me your plan to make these things happen. And I truly believe they can become they can become reality. You can make those things happen not by wishing them into existence, but rather working towards achieving them. And so as a galvanizer in different organizations that I work with, especially in our RIA Shilanski and Associates up in Anchorage, Alaska. I want to find people that maybe, you know, I would love them. I would love them all to have some type of miraculous skill set that I could just hire them right off the street and put them in a role and they’re going to excel at. But I’ve never once seen that be the case. And you know, I get asked this, especially at conferences, people say, Hey, how are you finding talent? Which is a comment I absolutely love, because when you say the word talent to me, I’m going to imagine, you know, Ringling Brothers, big circus, Tencent, you know, bringing out the talent, the oddities and things like that. That’s just what pops up into my mind. I’m very visual that way. I don’t think that you can hire rock stars. Maybe you can, maybe you can. There are anomalies out there, everywhere. For the most part, in my experience, I’ve had to train those rock stars, and training them is a lot about believing that they are capable of these things. I will never ask an employee in any organization across any industry to do something. Wait, hold on pause, except for if it’s medically related, I’m not going to go do surgery. But for the most part, I don’t ask employees to do something I would not be willing to do myself. If I’ve asked you to do this work, it is because I believe that you can get it done. If I do not have faith, if I do not have belief that you can do this, that you are smart enough and capable and confident enough to do this work. I’m not going to ask you to do it, because I’m not in embarrassing people and setting them up for failure. I don’t like to see people do that, but I do like to see people succeed, and sometimes, especially if you’re a galvanizer, especially if you’re that leader of that organization, if you are the CEO of your own company, if you’re a financial advisor out there right now, listening, and this is not something that you do, well, go hire somebody else to galvanize your troops. Because what you might do well, like my baby brother Micah shilanski, is really see the innovation. He can really see the past and the processes and what has to happen. Now, one of the things that I do really well is I can understand the mission, and I can, if you show me all the steps that have to take place, I can start peppering in different ideas and thoughts about like, oh, wait, actually, hold on. This isn’t gonna work this way. We need to do it that way. But then I can really rally, get the troops and get everyone on board. I hope you are picturing Braveheart running up and down the horse line right there. They will let her take our freedom. See, I told you, I’m so visual in my head, and no, I don’t have ADD but if you don’t have a galvanizer, and you tend to be more pragmatic, and you’re thinking, go hire somebody else, because what’s going to happen is you’re going to get incredibly frustrated. You’re going to get so frustrated with your entire team, because you’re going to understand what needs to happen, you’re going to lay out a process. You’re not going to give them any why concept. You’re not going to make them believe that it’s possible to achieve these things, and then later you’re gonna say really, really jerk comments like, Do you have a brain? Are you capable of thinking? How come you didn’t give me this particular outcome? And if you make those type of comments, that’s not going to inspire people to achieve more, that’s going to have them hitting, indeed, every night when they’re looking on their list to see if there’s another job out there. And today in this country, in the United States of America, and to my friends across the pond in the UK, we have a labor shortage. We have a skilled labor shortage in both blue and white collar industries. So if you think your employees won’t leave you for the prospect of something better living in fantasy land, it can and it will happen. Now this is not what I am referencing. I am not meaning that you need to go in every single day and say, hey, you know, what can we do for you today? Do you need more time off? Do you need more gentle parenting and employment role? Do you need lunches brought in for you? That is not what I’m saying. I am a big, big fan of radical candor and constructive criticism. In fact, I was just talking to one of our Gen Zers that we onboarded an incredibly bright young man, but he’s in a brand new career for him. He studied in the sciences industry and anatomy and stuff, and so now he’s learning everything he needs to know about finances. And I have corrected him on this one little thing constantly and habitually several times. And the reason that it’s so important to me to correct him on this, and I told him, I said, Listen, I know that. I keep bringing it up to you, and I’m going to keep bringing it up to you until you decide to make a change, and I’m going to bring it up to you publicly. Why? Why does it matter if I don’t correct this every single time I see it? Two things are going to happen. One, you’re going to think it’s not that big of a deal. You’re going to think it’s not that big of a deal, and you’re going to continue to continue to do it. Two, you are going to start thinking in your mind, oh my gosh. She’s in that kind of mood. She’s just being the B word today. She’s just being fussy today. Whatever those concepts are, if I let this go and do not correct you every single time, that is the only pathways your brain is going to think it’s okay to do this, and she only corrects me when she’s in that type of mood. Now, why do I do this publicly? The first two times I did it privately, I’m a big fan of that. I will bring you in and I will, you know, we always talk about scolding private praise in public. I’ll bring you in and I’ll say, Hey, listen, this is what’s going on. This is what I see. Could you please correct it? And in this case, it was just something in this gentleman’s wardrobe, he is of the age where they all have 1000 keys on their key chain going to things they probably don’t own anymore or have any idea what they go to. And it is on a long and dirty lanyard, and that lanyard has a bunch of pens. And so where does this go if you don’t, if you don’t carry a man’s purse, it goes inside of your pocket. And do you want it up and have that whole thing sitting in your pocket? No, you have a lanyard draping down your pants. And when you are walking around my office and you are presenting yourself as a financial professional and you are choosing to dress like a janitor, I’m going to have a problem with that. Now, if you want to be a janitor, that’s a noble profession. I don’t care. Go do that job. But if you’re going to come into my conference rooms, if you are going to be meeting clients, I don’t think you should have a lanyard going down your business sucks. And so the first two times I told them, I told them very privately, I said, Hey, you’re doing this. Here’s what it means, here’s the representation you’re giving. And I think that you need to correct it also, when you have your keys in your hand, or your pocket. For gentlemen, it’s the pocket most of the time. But women, when we have our keys in the hand, what are we signaling to the person that we are speaking with, that we’re going to depart, that we want to leave, that we you’ve caught us in the middle of something in which we are about to escape from, and so we want to be conscientious of these signals. Now he wasn’t correcting it. So then I escalate, and I started bringing out in front of his peers and his coworkers. And then finally, we went through his etiquette class. And I’ll tell you all about this amazing etiquette class. I think it’s great if you have any professional that has not had a business professional etiquette course, you need to listen to that episode because it’s going to be impactful. I did it for the young professionals in my office that are under the age of 30. But man, if it didn’t resonate with my 40 to 45 year olds tremendously. There were things that they just didn’t know about, proper business etiquette, and I’m not talking about manners. I’m not talking just about how we set the table. These are different things that happen in a business environment, and what they mean, and how to be conscious of them. So make sure you listen to that episode, especially if you’re raising young ends, if you’ve got young professionals. And I would say at this time, anyone under the age of 60 is going to be in that category to listen to this. So as I began to talk to him about this, he showed up at this business dinner with his lanyard, with his janitor piece, and so I literally called him out in front of it, in front of the whole party. And it wasn’t that I hadn’t brought this up several times, and then I told him. I said, Hey, if I don’t correct you on this, if I don’t bring it up every single time I see you doing this, then you’re only gonna think two things. You’re gonna think it’s okay to do, because clearly you think it’s okay to do because you’re doing it again. Or two, you’re gonna think I only do it when I’m in a bad mood. I’m not in a bad mood, I’m in a great mood, but I have to keep correcting you. And he said, You know what, I never thought of it that way. Yes, okay, thank you. I’m done doing this will not happen again. And you know what? I trust him that it’s not going to happen again. And I think it’s so impactful that, and I don’t care if he’s doing it in his personal life, when he’s going to sporting events, he’s doing other things. I sure as heck care when he’s in a three piece suit and he’s showing up for business function. I really do care how we present ourselves. Matters. It does. I am just as smart as I am in a dress as I am in jeans, at a hoodie, sitting by a bonfire, drinking a blonde beer. But you know what? Nobody’s writing a million dollar checks at that bonfire. Nobody’s doing it when I’m in my hoodie. How we present ourselves matters if you think it doesn’t, if you think it doesn’t matter to your respective audience, do you go see your heart doctor? And cardiologist. Words matter. Words matter. We want to make sure that the professionals that we are trusting, because this isn’t just about exchange money. This is about trust, that we are trusting, hold themselves to a certain caliber. Do you all remember? Of course, you remember when Sarah Palin shocked the entire country by getting selected for the vice president nomination. There was this amazing article in Psychology Today, and it said Sarah Palin is just like us, which is why she’ll never win the vice presidency, which is why they wouldn’t go on to win the presidency at that time. And this article, you know, my big takeaway from it was that it talked about how she was so relatable, how she was your aunt, she was your neighbor, she was a politician next door. Now what most of you may or may not know is I live in Wasilla, Alaska, and was Alaska is used to be home in the Iditarod, and now I tell people, hey, it’s my Sarah Palin, and that instantly resonates and puts a memory together for them. And Sarah Palin started out doing different political things here, and she was our mayor, and guess what? She was a good mayor. She was good mayor. She was a great governor. She ended up giving up the governor’s seat because their office got so flooded with phone calls from Associated Press and different journalists and media, they couldn’t get any state work done. And so she did end up giving up that position and moving on to someone else. I don’t know if that was the right political move. I would have told her not to do it and showed tenacity to stick through it, but I was not her political advisor, nor anyone else’s. But it really, she really was a kitchen table politics kind of leader, and that resonated for this small town community and this small town state, because Alaska might be the largest state that we have in the union, here in the United States, but we’ve only got around 700,000 people. I mean, that’s not a lot of people. In fact, one person who worked for the government census, he said that if you took all the people in Alaska and you shoved them into one part of the state so that they all lived, you know, relatively the same area, and gave each person who was a resident one acre of space, it would take up less than 2% of the land in Alaska, because it’s different up here. It takes a different type of grit to live up here. It takes a different type of resiliency, and it has and you really can’t like city life, and you don’t like the sort of those urban things happening, and you have to be okay with that. There’s something that you have to compromise to live off of the land and to be in this type of environment. And not that we don’t have stores, but a lot of our stores run very low on stock, and so we have a higher rate of subsistency here in the state. When we hunt and fish, it’s to put it up for the winter. It’s to make sure that we have supplies that will last us through the winter. So this is just different than most people are used to. In fact, one of the reasons that I think that Alaskans live in Alaska so long, besides the landscape and the culture and the communities, is so that we can tell everyone else just how tough we are. So when I talk to you about employees and making sure that you believe in them and optimism. Trust me, I’m not coming from a place that’s like, hey, gold stars for everyone. Everyone gets a trophy. That’s not how we operate. That’s not how we think up here at all. Not everyone gets a trophy, not everyone gets a reward, not everyone gets promotion, not everyone gets a pay raise. Why? Because you’re not all doing the same amount of work and you’re not all showing up with the same amount of effort. And so when we look at our organization, you can be optimistic and critical. Those two can be very, very hand in hand. A lot of leaders have a hard time with this, because if you are a super optimistic person, chances are people always say how nice you are. And when somebody says, Wow, that person is so nice, I hear that and I cringe inside, because what I hear is that person is concerned about your feelings. They are too delicate in the way that they speak to you to actually deliver the type of candor you need in order to succeed. Nice people seldom ever tell you what they really think, because they are so wrapped up and emotionally involved in your feelings that they forget that they should be there to support and help and guide you and point out when you get things wrong, because every single day of my life I’m not getting things right, and I’ve got really trusted people to be like, Hey, Jay, you completely screwed the pooch on. You completely messed that one up. You kind of stuck your foot in it, etc. Now, luckily, I’ve got those type of people in my life that give me that feedback and remind me when I do something wrong, but they also give me grace to get it right, because I’m not going to be wrong about something and then bury my feet in the ground and not recognize the role I had to play in it. And so when I misstep, and it happens, I messed up a lot, when I messed up, when I say the wrong thing, when I speak out of turn, when I deliver the wrong process or give somebody the wrong details, I take accountability for it. Now it’s not some big shaming session where I’d rather hundreds of people together and say, Harry, Harry, I have made a mistake. Rather, I just roll with it. I accept mistakes as natural part of my day, and the way that this is different, and this is actually happening with it. It was somebody in my organizations right now, they have a leadership role, and a lot of the communication I’m getting from team members is, you know, this person says that they’re accountable, but they seldom ever admit when they’re wrong or have a mistake, and they get really fostered, they get on tilt, and they make it very noticeable to the rest of the team. And so I’ll give you an example of how I would take a mistake and versus this person. So this person, they made a mistake, and they misspoke. They miss said something, they gave the wrong information. They didn’t they didn’t have, well, no, you were supposed to do and then so all of a sudden they start getting defensive, and they start projecting whose responsibility it was to have done something in the first place. Now here’s the difference. When somebody says, Hey, Jamie, you know, you gave me this instruction, I did those things, but now you’re wanting something completely different, because that happens a lot, I think a lot of thoughts. And so sometimes I’ll change my mind, or sometimes I’ll say I’ll get something done, and I’ll be like, Oh no, let’s not do it that way. We should have done this. You know, I just started a really great marketing idea in which I’m going to increase the number of questions that we get from our niche market for federal employees. And as soon as I got it done, as soon as I got all as soon as I gave the instructions to the team, and they got it completely functioning, took them about, you know, three or four days to get all the moving parts working. And they got it done, they presented it to me, they said it’s ready for testing. And I said, Oh my gosh, why didn’t we do it that way? We should have done it this way. And they’re like, we follow the exact instructions that you gave us. And I said, you guys, I’m so sorry. Thank you so much. I Let’s roll this out. Let’s use it for the next 30 days, see how it works. But I really should have told you to do this. That’s on me. And they’re like, oh, okay, no problem. We’ll move on. And nobody’s sitting there getting frustrated or upset and saying, Jamie, we just wasted three or four days out of my time doing the wrong thing, because the wrong thing wasn’t that detrimental. I’m looking at things and saying, in fact, I just told an employee this in a review where they’re not they’re not expressing as much confidence as I’d like to see them having their role. Because she’s incredibly intelligent. She knows the right answers oftentimes. Because when I come back and I start asking her questions, she’s already prepared reports and has answers for me and has analytical stuff. And when she doesn’t, she’s really upset with herself, and she’ll get, like, kind of quiet and embarrassed. But for the most part, she’s very, very competent and capable. She just doesn’t trust herself to be a decision maker. And so I gave her a filter and said, All right, listen when I’m making decisions or when I want you to decision does involve money or deadline? Is somebody else’s involvement imperative in this decision? No, okay, great, then why don’t you make it and until you’re able to gain the confidence, why don’t you start off every you know, meeting every email to me with this is the problem. This is my recommendation for my solution. And then give me your substantiated information, then give me all the facts and details afterwards. Don’t bury your solution down at the bottom, because if you do that, I’m going to have read your entire piece, and I’m going to already see in my mind what needs to happen. And by time I get to the end, I may or may not agree with you, but if you start off the conversation and you say, Hey, listen, this is the problem. Here’s my recommended solution, and here’s all the supportive information, I’m going to read that supportive information with your solution in mind, with your solution in mind. Now that doesn’t mean I’m always going to acquiesce and agree with you, but that means now I know how you’re thinking and you’re coming to me with a problem and a solution. That’s a floydism right there for you. Floyd always raised us, which makes Micah and I laugh today, because when we were kids, he’d say, Hey, don’t you ever come to me with a problem unless you’ve thought of at least one solution doesn’t have to be the right solution, but you have to come to me with a solution, and we laugh about it now, because we’re kids, we don’t know the solution, we don’t know what it’s supposed to be, but it put us in the mindset. It gave us the mental capacity to be thinking that problems are meant to be solved, not sat in. Problems are meant to be solved not sat in and so now I’ve empowered this team member, and then I can also give them a little look into my head. And so when I read this and I say, Hey, listen, this is your solution, it was fantastic. But here’s a couple of things I would tweak about and go forward. And now I’ve given them the ammunition the next time, they know what to do with it. They know how I’m thinking, they know how I’m problem solving. They know those extra pieces. Or sometimes they say, Listen, I really appreciate your solution. It’s wrong because here’s what here’s what you’re forgetting, here’s what you’re not thinking about. On that side of things, I find too many leaders are so concerned about hurting the feelings of employees they are no longer responsible and giving feedback. And then what happens is you get somebody totally stagnant at their dog. They’re not growing, they’re not learning, they’re becoming bored or complacent, which is terrible, terrible places for the human condition. And then that employee has the audacity to ask you for a pay raise, and your mind is blown because you’re like, I can’t believe I’m paying you this much for the work you’re doing now. But whose fault is that? Whose fault is that because you have two problems, either you are not taking ownership and being a good leader and a good steward of your organization your employee by providing them with radical candor and feedback, because you’re so wrapped up in their feelings, you’re not their diary if they have feelings about what you have to say, and you’re not being a jerk about how you’re presenting it. You are not their boss. You are trying to be their friend, and you can be one. You cannot always be both. You must decide which one to be. That’s one of the pieces of advice I give all new parents, is we’re so concerned with being our kids friends, they don’t need you to be their friend. They need you to be their parent. And when it comes to employees. They don’t need you to be their best friend. They need you to be the leader of the organization. And if you’re holding punches, if you are not giving them the type of radical candor and criticism that allows them to grow, shame on you, shame on you, because now you have bridled human being from breaching their potential, and you have the responsibility when you started that organization to make sure that everyone around you rose up also. Does this naturally come easy to everyone? No, it’s something that you have to condition yourself for. It’s something you have to step into. Don’t start tomorrow. Just radically everyone’s mind with things that annoy you. Inch your way into it, right? If you draw a diagram of a pool, not everyone should jump in the deep end. Sometimes people got to inch their way in the shallow and get comfortable with the water before they choose to sweat. So make sure you’re inching into this, but be disciplined about it. Now, the second factor that distinguishes the backbone from the wishbone concept is the discipline is a lot of people think success is just natural or comes easy. Tony Robbins has a great quote, and I think about it all the time, at least once a week, people are praised in public for what they have practiced for hours in private, people are praised in public for what they have practiced for hours in private. And you really have to let that sink in. You really have to think about the discipline and the tenacity and the grit that really is going to define your success. Because all the time I am approached, especially by people that are under the age of 45 in which they are wishing to make a million dollars a year and they are unwilling to be disciplined about doing that actual work that comes along with that. And this isn’t work that is just exclusively Jamie and Micah and Matt. This is work that belongs to everybody and everybody’s face you can be disciplined. And that is the biggest difference. When people look at me and they say, oh my gosh, how do you have How do you have time for this, this and this? And I’m like, because I make time, we all give them the same amount of hours. I don’t have an extra bank in which I’m stopping the clock and doing all these different endeavors. I’m getting up every single day and I’m prioritizing the things that are going to prepare me for the future that I want to have. So let me ask you this TPR nation, when you wake up in the morning not feeling like PD, anymore, poor Kesha, she can’t catch a break. But when you wake up in the morning, are you prioritizing the things that are going to prepare you for the future that you want to have, or are you opening up your email inbox, your slack, your chat, your text and seeing how you have to react to your day instead of being proactive, instead of filling yourself with accomplishing the things that set you up for success in six months, in eight months, in 12 months, are you instead bogging yourself down with all of the things that have to get done because they’re all these little fires that you have to put out, and you’re the only one that can do that, but Jamie, that’s the work that has to get done. Well, of course, it has to get done. But what occupational space are you allowing it as part of your day, if the very first thing that you are doing in the morning is being reactive to everybody else, do not lament to me that you are unsuccessful in six months, 12 months, three years, five years, because you spent your entire life being reactive to everyone around you, instead of grabbing your destiny, doing the hard work and getting your done first thing in the morning. Here’s a great example, marketing, marketing, marketing. I get so many comments from Amber, our podcast curator, that people email in across the nation lifestyle@theperfectra.com Hey, I love Jamie’s episode on marketing. I love it when she talks about marketing and team building. How do I do this? How do I do that? And so we come up with great content. We’ve got phenomenal content. If you are not a member of The Perfect RIA and you want more step by step guides on how we are building multi million dollar enterprise practices, dude, what are you doing with your life? Sign up for your membership. Stop wishing for things to happen. In fact, if you’re not a TPR member, if you’re not putting your money where your mouth is, then you know what? You’re probably the person who’s got a wishbone where their backbone ought to be, because, you know, is possible, and you are choosing to be mediocre. It’s a choice we all get to make it, and there is nothing wrong with a mediocre life. If content is what you are in pursuit of great there are a lot of complacent roles. I would tell you immediately to sell your practice. In fact, we could line you up with somebody that probably wants to buy your practice or help you sell it at lifestyle@theperfectria.com, but you don’t want greatness. You don’t want greatness if you are after being complacent and content 100% okay, everyone’s on their own pursuit. And if that is the case, you should not be a business owner, because you are doing a disservice to yourself, your family, your employees and your clients. You must have a hunger and a drive to be a business owner. You must believe in every fiber of your being that you were put here for greatness, and you will go achieve that greatness, and it won’t be yours alone. You will share that greatness with others and watch as they become their best and better selves. So how many of you are committed to that? How many of you are getting up proactively? I would love, I wish this was a show of hands. I would love to see it. I would love to see all of us being honest and saying, hey, the first thing that I do in the morning is, here’s my morning success ritual, and then I get up and I tackle the thing so that I can be who I want to be in six and 12 months. I am so gosh darn excited to meet the woman that I’m going to be in six months and 12 months and three years, and five years, 10 years, a little shade in me. I don’t know what she looks like, but, but I can visualize and I can see that person, and I am so curious to meet her, but I’m so curious and passionate about meeting her that I’m not going to fail today. I’m not going to forget to put one foot in front of the other and do the things every single day with strategic discipline to get to where I want to be. Now, what about all the other work? What about all those other things? Do you just put it by the wayside? No, absolutely not. But how many of you out there are playing office? Come on, how many of you are playing office? And if none of you, if every single one of you are like, I never play office. Golde, you’re lying to yourself, and now you’re lying to your colleagues. Because we’re all guilty of it. We have to catch ourselves. I catch myself. Micah catches himself, Matt, for sure, catches himself. And when we decide that we’re playing office, we immediately recognize it, call it out for what it was, and then we move on to something else. We give ourselves the grace to not do those things. So what is playing office? Playing office is pretend work. Playing office is hitting refresh on your email as if it wasn’t populate automatically. Anyways, give me a break. So those things are playing office, spending too much time reading newspapers, spending too much time, you know, doing any one task, spreadsheets. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, gone. We’re all guilty of this one. I’ve spent so much time building spreadsheets and then trying to make them look pretty for no one but myself. For no one but myself. In fact, I was just talking to one of our financial advisors, and he’s also guilty of that, and so he’s like, how do you stop yourself? And I was like, oh, you know, that’s really difficult, because I want to put a filter on it, and I want to say, what is the outcome of the spreadsheet? Who’s going to see it, and then who needs to understand it? And so who needs to see it? Who needs to understand it? And if I’m just doing it for myself, cool, I know what my brain is thinking, and I’ll make it look equally like I want to do. I will not spend more time than necessary doing and I will move on. Now, if I’m going to, if this is client or business professional, or if I’m, you know, sharing a spreadsheet with somebody else, then I also need to make sure it makes sense, and I need to make sure that they have that if they look at this, because a spreadsheet is often like a roadmap inside our brain. We know what we are thinking, but other people don’t know those correlations. And so I will make sure I have my keys. I’ll make sure that the terms, you know, everyone understands what the cell, if there’s text inside of there, how we got to different formulas. I’ll put comments and notes in there, but I’m not going to spend a ton of time making it a whole bunch of different colors, you know, and doing things to make it look present ready, when oftentimes it’s not going to be presented to anyone, except for internally on my team. That’s a one way we are super guilty as financial advisors of playing office. And so when you catch yourself doing that, immediately being able to stop, put your computer down, walk away, clear your head and then come back and focus on the things that you need to get done that day to get ahead. I have all my tasks inside of my calendar. And so when my team members from any organization need something from me, it gets calendared on my day. When it gets calendared on my day, that means I have dedicated time to go in there and get those things done. Now, one thing that I changed this last year, and I’m super glad that I did, was I stopped giving away the best part of me during the day. So I am a conqueror. I am a GSD. I get done, and I get up in the morning, and after I do my morning success ritual, I am ready to frickin smash and I know that I can get more work done in a half a day’s time than most people are going to get done in a week. And I can just powerhouse through that. But what I found myself doing, you know, around 2020. Was that I had from seven in the morning until, you know, noon, open slots for appointments. And all those open slots for appointments, and those were appointments, not just client facing, not when we were in surge or out of surge, but they were they were vendors, and they were professionals and centers of influence and team members that needed my time, all these kind of things. Well, what ended up happening was the more open slots that I had on my calendar, the more people took up. And they took up for no really important reason. And so I started creating an agenda saying, Hey, if you want an appointment on one of my calendars, you can do that, but you got to fill out this agenda form ahead of time. You got to fill out this meeting request form ahead of time. And that really became a barrier to entry, where people are like, hey, I really want to meet with you, but I have to fill out this form. And fantastic. Then it’s doing its job. And then I stopped, and I said, Hold on a second, if I know I’m going to get the most work done between, you know, I get up at five, so I spend the first couple of hours learning out of my day. That’s what I’m really passionate about. I love to learn, so curious to know different topics, and I know that I’m going to start working about 630 or 7am every day. Then if I instantly go into meetings, I’m giving that best part of myself to somebody else. Instead, I carve out that time from seven to nine, and I only do proactive activities. I don’t do tasks, I don’t respond to email, I don’t do the things that the work that I will get done, but doesn’t deserve the best part of me necessarily. I need to be proactive in getting the things done that I need for who I’m going to become in the future. And so segmenting my day to prioritize it that way gives me the discipline to keep the ball moving. And then when I close that part of my day out, and I go into my different meetings, and then I go into my different tasks, and yes, I respond to my emails and do all of those things that are expected of me. It doesn’t need the highest energy Jamie. It needs a medium energy, Jamie, and I can bring that and still get done things efficiently without neglecting the most important part of who I’m trying to become. And so when you think about discipline, you really need to think about that. You need to think about what is it that I want, what I willing to sacrifice to get there, and then what are my steps that I’m going to take? And that is one big thing missing from this picture today is that success looks so easy. It looks so tangible. We see all these people on podcasts, on YouTube, on influencing and we’re like, man, everyone is like a next door millionaire, and that we forget about the sacrifice that it takes. Guess what? All of those people that you see online on YouTube or doing the podcast or whatnot. It takes a ardent amount of discipline to do those things, because you have to continually come up with content. And for a five minute video, they probably have three to four hours of shooting and editing and captioning and doing different things to post and doing different AB testing and changing out their thumbnails. It takes a ton of energy, and I have this conversation a lot with youngsters who are like, hey, I really want to be a creator. That’s a new role. We’re creating for different platforms or creating to feed YouTube. And we see these people that are creators doing what we think are nothing. Why? Why does every female put on their makeup or lotion to get you to pay attention? And why do we pay attention when they’re doing it? It’s so strange, but we watch these people in action, we think that that success is so tangible because those people are doing quote, unquote nothing, but you have no idea what their day looks like. Every single moment of their mental energy is probably spent thinking of, hey, that content. Hey, that’s content. Hey, that’s content. And whipping out their cameras, sacrificing their connections with people, because they’re constantly recording content, and then they’re doing all of this film editing, and then they’re doing all this posting. They’re reviewing to see what worked, what didn’t work. They’re tweaking. They’re changing. It takes up. In fact, if you don’t listen, if you are on Youtube, and you are using that as one of your mediums for marketing. Mr Beast is phenomenal, but he will tell you he doesn’t wish that his career on England. He says, Absolutely, do not do this. Do not do this because it takes up all of my mental energy. I have breakdowns two to three times a week, and I am obsessed with working. I am obsessed with working constantly. And so he is a workaholic. But when you watch his videos, it doesn’t look like he’s a workaholic. It looks like he’s just having fun. And I mean, think about that in our office and in shilanski and Associates at benningridge, Alaska, we operate with a certain level of intensity that’s not suitable for all audiences. But when you walk through that door, when you come into our lobby, we will set the tone that everything is calm. It’s comfortable your only client in the world that we are here to serve, and we will be very, very moderate. We’re very deliberate in how we deliver that intensity, but they have no idea that when they lift the curtain behind the machine, I’ve got a team members, a level, team members that are just grinding and pushing and driving themselves to become better. Just because you see the remnants of somebody’s success and it looks incredibly tangible, don’t for one second think that they are getting successful without being incredibly disciplined. You must have both. You must have both. TPR Nation. This is Jamie shilanski, an episode of Worlds to Conquer. Go find people who share your values and change the world.