S2Ep28: How to Consistently Take Action on Your Top Priorities

In today’s episode, Allan welcomes Brian Lovegrove. Brian is a certified coach, author, and speaker with the John Maxwell Team. He is also an Amazon best-selling author. Brian discusses why entrepreneurs should not equate activity as an accomplishment, and the difference between prioritizing what is important vs what is urgent. Brian has spent hundreds of hours coaching and he is committed to helping others consistently take action on their top priorities. Allan discusses the importance of incorporating deliberate practice, and why this concept is crucial to business and personal success. As an entrepreneur, it is important to pick one goal, implement it and get it done!

To signup for Brian’s Masterclass, text the word results to 77948

Become Unstoppable Registration Page (5keysofsuccess.com)

Allan has started and grown several multi million dollar businesses, his mission is to help you do the same. Welcome to the Business Growth Pod, building the future one entrepreneur at a time.

And so you really need somebody who’s a third party that’s outside that is invested in you. Which means you need to pay somebody to do that for you. Because again, mentors are good, but mentors. That’s kind of the difference between mentors and coaches. Mentors are good, because they will show you the way. But usually they’re showing you the way that they did it. That may not be your style, that may not be the way that you want to do it.

Hey, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Allan. I’m a family man and attorney and an entrepreneur. Each week, we provide resources and advice to help build your business. Are you ready? Then? Let’s go. Everyone, welcome to the show today. Before we get started, don’t forget to hit the subscribe button. But I wanted to introduce you guys to Brian Lovegrove. Okay, check this out, guys. Brian is a certified coach, trainer and speaker with the John Maxwell team. Most of my listeners, if not all of them have heard about John Maxwell. And man, what a god I mean, legend. So that’s awesome that you’re affiliated with him. He’s also the Amazon best selling author of the book, the abundance factor. And I’m actually gonna ask him about that he’s got right there. So anyway, welcome to the show, Brian. I’m excited to have you. Thanks, Allan. Great to be here. So what did I miss, tell us a little bit more about your background that I just didn’t go deep enough into?

Well, there’s a long story, and I’m going to try to keep it as short as I can. I got introduced to personal development at a very young age. My father was a commercial real estate broker. And this was back before the iPod, the noise cancelling headphones in that great, wonderful device that many of us grew up with the Sony Walkman. I got stuck listening to the tape cassettes that he was plugging into the tape deck whenever we went on a long trip. And so I got introduced to the greats like Jim Rohn. Earl Nightingale, my favorite Zig Ziglar. And so this was in junior high. And we did this all the way up through high school. And so I’ve got introduced early on. And I also, when I was 17, I spent my own money on my first program from Tony Robbins called unlimited power. And I wore that tape series out. And, you know, fast forward a number of years, I actually ended up working as a promoter of Tony’s programs for one of his franchises help promote and put on seminars, as well as just continuing to dive deep into this. But my biggest challenge was that even though I’ve been listening, I mean, I’ve got buckets and boxes full of hate series that I’ve bought, gone through all the programs, bit of a seminar junkie, and I’ve learned it all, I read all the books. But the problem was is I wasn’t getting the level of success that I needed. And the thing that I really got my first eye opener was when I invested significant amount of money into a program that had a coaching component as part of it. And with that, basically we met once a month for six months. And so we work together, we set goals, and I would do more, I actually got more done in those six months than I had in the previous five years. And I found that I actually did more in the week before that monthly coaching call than I did the other three weeks. And it wasn’t until it was over. I was like what I got so much done. But then after that it fell to the wayside. I lost the momentum, I didn’t have that person holding me accountable to what I said I was going to do, and I didn’t have somebody helping me move forward. And so that was my first real introduction to coaching. And that’s when I was in 2014. I was trying to decide, okay, what I want to do for the rest of my life, my kids were getting ready to graduate high school in college. And I was like, Where do I want to go? What’s going to fill me up? What do I want to spend the rest of my life doing? And I came back to the thing that I love to do, which was coaching and training. That’s how I got hooked up with the john Maxwell team, as a certified coach, trainer and speaker of the john Maxwell team, which means basically I’m licensed to teach and use John’s material as part of my coaching methodology. And I’m also a certified coach with the Anthony Robbins group called Robbins Madonna’s training. And so I’ve spent probably easily 350 to 400 hours in coach training. And so I steadily went out there to say because I saw the biggest challenge that I saw was a lack of follow through at all. Almost every level, it didn’t matter where you were, if you were at the bottom, or if you were up at the top, there was what I referred to as the performance gap, the difference between what we know and could do and what we consistently do. And that was the problem that I saw that everybody had. And I can help them do that. And one of the ways that you do that is through coaching.

Yeah, I recently read a book by Anders Ericsson. This guy’s he’s the expert expert, right his entire life. He’s dedicated to understanding why people become experts. And he talks about this concept that he coined this term that he coined this concept called deliberate practice. And you just mentioned, hey, you know, I was I was going through the motions. But then once I got a coach, that six months, I got more done than than anything. And it reminded me of this book and this concept of deliberate practice, which is these experts, they’re doing some of the same things. They’re just doing them in a different way. And the fact that they’re doing them in a different way, makes all the difference. It’s those little distinctions, that as you continually move forward, you spot them and you recognize them.

That’s actually a big component of my incredible results. 91 Day Challenge, which is specifically designed to help you do one thing, to consistently take action on your top priorities. The left side of the page is about you setting those priorities, and scheduling that into your day. The right side of the page, is that evaluated experience, where you’re stopping and say, Okay, here’s what I got done. What did I learn today? And then what am I going to do differently tomorrow to be better? And through this process, we consistently Have you evaluating your experience, what worked well, what didn’t? And how do I make sure that tomorrow is better than today?

Yeah, this is fantastic. And it’s right in in line with, you know, this concept of becoming an expert, right? There’s a lot of people that go play golf, right. They’ll go play around, they’ll play several rounds a week, and they wonder why they’re not getting better. Well, golf experts, they don’t get better by playing golf. They get better through their deliberate practice, right? They spend an hour practicing a single shot. Right. And it sounds like there’s some corollaries there. Absolutely. I feel like a lot of entrepreneurs don’t put their personal growth in that high priority level, that high priority position that it needs to be in, because we are so busy training, coaching, motivating doing this for others. Right, right. Is that something that you see, as kind of getting put on the backburner when it really shouldn’t be?

Well, absolutely. One of the things that only mentions in his business mastery class is that our business’s growth in life in general, is 80%, psychology, and 20% mechanics, which means if you want to grow your business, you want to take your business to the next level, you need to focus on your psychology and growing yourself. Because it’s something that I’ve shared as well, which is you cannot produce the results you want in your life, until you grow into the person who can produce those results. Because if you could produce those results, today, you’d be doing it you’d be following through you wouldn’t be you run into what john Maxwell refers to in the best selling book on leadership ever. The 21 irrefutable laws of leadership that he wrote over 25 years ago, is law, number one, the law of the lid, which is you cannot lead beyond your capacity. And that’s the first law and they are put in order of priority. And so with that, what he’s telling us is that growth is the number one thing we should be focusing on. And the biggest challenge for small business owners, entrepreneurs and professionals, is they’re so busy running the business, they don’t take the time to focus on building the business, and therefore building themselves along the way.

Yeah, I love this concept of look at you’re not going to create a company, you’re not going to lead a company to do things that are above your level, right. And as entrepreneurs as business owners, I feel like myself included, all spend my wills thinking, you know what, maybe if I just spent more time reviewing the financials, maybe if I got, you know, better help in, you know, in this department, which those things do make a difference. But it’s tough, as you said, to get you know, when you have that ceiling to get beyond it without that personal development. So what’s an entrepreneur to do? We’re so busy, we’re so caught up in in just getting stuff done. What is an entrepreneur to do to one find the time necessary to find the resources necessary for that personal development?

Absolutely. Well, first off, we need to make sure that we are not equating activity as accomplishment. Those are not the same things. Yes. We also need to make sure that we are focusing on those things that are important, but not necessarily urgent. Right? Stephen Covey talks about it in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. That’s right. It’s also known as the Eisenhower box quadrate to however you want to call it, it’s basically those things that are going to move the needle for you. But there’s real no pressure or deadline to get them done. Yep. But because we’re spent too much time in quadrant three running around, dealing with things that aren’t really important are not in our sphere of excellence. Very well, a lot of things that entrepreneurs are running around doing that they shouldn’t be doing. If you’re doing a $25 an hour task that you can pay somebody else to do and you go make $100 an hour, please go hire somebody to do that. $25 an hour task. You know, that’s your social media experts. You know, so much of this is available through virtual assistants, one of the people that I coach, she runs a virtual assistant agency. I also interviewed in my big summit that I did, beginning of the year, john Jonas, who runs online.ph. And he has he works about four hours a week, managing about 17 va s who run his entire business.

Yeah, and I think that’s part of the problem, right is that as entrepreneurs, we spend so much time on things that are urgent, but not important, right? And we have to push ourselves, it’s rich, really tough man, when you have all these emails, and you have all these people coming to you. And so, as entrepreneurs, as business owners, we have to put things in place that we have to be very, very deliberate about our time. And we’ve really got to go after that personal development. Now, one of my issues personally, honestly, is, what are the resources? You know, there’s so much out there? How does an entrepreneur find the information and this kind of practice that they need to increase their level of personal development?

Well, it’s one of the things that I use is kind of a separating thing that separates me from a lot of different coaches, is because the methodology that I use, there’s a lot of great information out there. But people struggle with the implementation of it. And so I actually went on doing my workshops, and primarily, that’s why I’m more of a coat. I call myself a leadership developer and results coach, I help people get the results they want. And that only happens through implementation. And that’s the big key. Yeah, you can go read, you might have heard or read a book a week. That’s the wrong way to go about growing, you want to learn information, that’s the right answer. But if you want to grow, you need to take one book, and read it 50 times, and then do the things it’s telling you to do. That’s the big problem. We don’t have a learning problem. That’s easy. Learning is easy for us, we have a doing problem. Because whenever we go out there, and we try this new thing, it’s hard. And when it gets hard, because it’s outside our comfort zone, the big ugly monster fear shows up and says, Hey, what are you doing outside your comfort zone, get back over there. Yeah. And that prevents us from following through to continue to do it long enough, until we get good enough at it. And that’s why the longer time you spend at something, using whether it’s a that’s why my incredible results. Anyway, the challenge is 91 days, you practice the trainings a couple hours. But if you were implementing for 91 days, you have weekly group coaching calls, you get on and you learn how to do it, because I can tell you right now, nobody has done 19 one day straight out of the gate, it took me a year and a half to get it right the first time to where I got nine one day straight. Because it’s a learning curve, you got to learn how to do it, you learn how to implement this habit into your life. And so through this process, you’re consistently practicing the activity, you know, that’s gonna move the needle for you. You know, for example, sales is a great analogy. You know, we all know in sales, you need to be making cold calls, or reaching out to prospects. So you need to reach out, you know, is it 10 contacts a day is 50 contacts a day, however many it is, pick your number and then do it. How many people consistently do those numbers consistently. There’s a reason why there’s usually one or two guys that in the top office, and the rest of the 80% are like way down here. The other guys are up here. Everybody else is down in the crowd is down here. These are guys. They’re doing the calls. These guys some of the time. And if you want to move up, you do the calls.

Yeah, I mean, I want to rewind just a little When you said, as opposed to reading 50 books, read one book 50. I could just feel like the seismic activity of heads exploding for my listeners, right? And now I’m kind of the read 50 books type of guy. And my listeners know that. Right? But I think that’s an awesome concept of, hey, what difference does it make if you learn something if you never do anything about it? Right? Absolutely. And do we really know something? If we read it, but we don’t know how to do it? Or we don’t even know if we know how to do it? Because we’ve never tried, right? Yeah. So what are the practices? What’s an entrepreneur supposed to do with this knowledge? Like, you know, what are the practices? What does something like that look like? What do you recommend for him?

Well, first off, you need to set a priority, you need to set a goal on what you’re going to do pick one thing, don’t try to do all 12 at once, pick the one thing that you know is going to move the needle for you. And make it’s an activity goal, just like the salesperson make 10 calls a day, make your 10 calls a day. Because again, you already have a full schedule, okay, you’re not going to be able to carve out an extra two hours, hell hours out of your schedule, unless you really know what you’re doing. And you’ve got help doing it. Because again, this is where it’s like, okay, but I’m doing all this quadrant three activity? Well, you got to learn how to deal with that, you have to manage that. And we go into that in the 91 Day Challenge. Because again, it comes down to what’s important, gets done. Okay, so, and I can tell very quickly by looking at two different things on what your priorities are, I can look at your schedule, and I can look at your checkbook and see what’s important to you and what your values are, and what you are deeming important. And those are the results. If only looking at the results you’re getting is intentions don’t count. They’re nice, but they don’t count. They don’t get us across the finish line.

Yeah, I love this intentions. Don’t count folks. Like that’s great, right? Because we always say, Hey, I’m going to work on my business, I’m for my business, hey, I’m gonna hire better people, hey, I’m not going to get caught up in, in the minutiae of putting out fires, I’m going to work on my personal development. But then where does the rubber meet the road? Oh, what are you actually doing? Right? And you said, Hey, I’m gonna look at your checkbook, I’m gonna look at your schedule. Where are we putting our time? Right. And that speaks volumes, that’s a lot more important than whatever we want, right? Because that’s what we’re investing in.

And that’s something that we talk about is you got to know where you are. And not sugarcoating reality, but also not making it any worse than it is. There’s a lot of people out there who think that they’ll never get there, because they’re looking at things a lot worse than they really are. And so from a financial perspective, when we look at the financial statements, and we sit down and say, Okay, here’s reality, here’s, you know, either you’re losing money, you’re breaking even, or Hmm, but a lot of people are running around with blinders on La, la, la, la, la, la, yep. Because they don’t want to look at it. And that is actually something that sitting down with somebody that they respect, and that they are willing to listen to. And see. That’s one of the big things. As a coach, when I’m actually sitting down, I actually offer a free consultation, we call it a discovery session where I sit down, and I’m finding out where they are and where they want to go. But I’m also evaluating is this person coachable? And I work with this person? Is this somebody who’s gonna do what I asked him to do? Because I’m sitting there based upon their answers, and based upon how they’re reacting with me, I can tell whether or not this was going to be a good fit for me or not. Because, you know, I’ve fortunately I’ve only had a few times, where I screwed up, and I allowed somebody in that should not have gotten in. And it’s been a pain. It’s like, man, I committed to this person. And again, because once I’m in I’m, I go all in with my clients. And it’s like, I gotta get, but it’s kind of like you’re pushing them up the mountain. And they’re like, I don’t want to go, I don’t want to go out and go, look, I can’t take the journey for you. But I will definitely take the journey with you. And one of the things as part of that is trying to figure out what reality is, is we struggle because we are actually in the picture. We can’t see the whole picture because we’re in the middle of it. Yeah. And so in order to get some true reflection of what reality is, it’s getting some honest feedback from somebody who’s outside looking in.

Yep. 100% How do we do that? Who do we look to provide that feedback, I just read a book, what got you there won’t get you or what got you here won’t get you there something like that, that totally. And he talks a lot about can’t remember the name of the author, he talks a lot about getting good feedback and acting on that feedback. He talks about how business owners have a tough time because you know, the scary boss. And so it’s tough for them to ask their employees, hey, what can I do better? You know, what things do I need to work on? So what does an entrepreneur do to get that feedback? Because I think honestly, Brian, I think sometimes we’re not honest with ourselves, right? We’re like, Hey, I’m actually a good leader. And I’m a really good listener. And, yes, somebody else and they have a different opinion. Who do we get that feedback from? How do we get it so that we can get kind of on this track of, you know, improving ourselves,

right. And actually, that brings into the five keys of success. And key number four, is get accountability. And that’s actually through finding a coach that will hold you accountable to what you’re doing. And you want to make sure that you find somebody that because again, you mentioned several different things there. I’ve been part of programs that were I’ve invested in and, and they had accountability partners. Well, my partner was another student, they were going through the same program I was, which means they were getting the same kind of results, they were making the same excuses. I was they were telling the same stories I was, which means they were buying into my excuses. Because if they wouldn’t buy into my excuse, they couldn’t then buy into theirs. Right? Right, exactly. So you really need somebody who’s a third party that’s outside that is invested in you, which means you need to pay somebody to do that for you. Because again, mentors are good, but mentors. That’s kind of the difference between mentors and coaches. Mentors are good, because they will show you the way. But usually they’re showing you the way that they did it. That may not be your style, that may not be the way that you want to do it. Whereas a coach, their focus is on helping you do the things you probably already know what to do. Rarely Is it a lack of knowing that’s the problem that holding us back. Right. It’s the lack of doing that holding us back.

Yeah. And I think a lot of times, you know, we need that outsider perspective, right. I was watching the NBA playoff game the other night, and Dwayne Wade was on the sideline, and a player went over to him and he was telling him things. Now, it’s arguable about whether Dwayne Wade was a better basketball player than the person that he was talking to. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was that outsider’s perspective, he saw the entire game, right? He was watching different players. And he was watching things that that player couldn’t see. And so it’s so necessary for us to find, you know, that third party. Yeah, absolutely. to kind of say, give us a little dose of reality.

Right. And you mentioned a great point there. When I work with somebody, I don’t tell them what to do. My job as a coach is not to tell you what to do. A lot of people have that misconception. It’s not telling you what to do. My goal as a coach is to ask you the right questions, the questions that cause you to think and to go deeper and to look underneath the surface at the root causes of what’s holding you back. And then identify what those are, potentially give you the ideas and strategies to help you move past those. And then to move forward. A great coach will always be helping you move forward through asking you questions. As an accountability coach, my job is really to ask questions, and say, Okay, what are your action items for this week? What are you going to get done? And then we get when, next week when we get on the call, it says, Okay, great. What’s your celebration for the week? Okay, great. How’d you do on your list of things you were going to get done this week, when we did this and this and this. And this? Well, I didn’t get as far as this. This is okay, what happened there? I didn’t say why. I said, What? Because there’s a significant difference in those two words, in the way that we react to those in the grand scheme of things. My job as a coach is to basically ask the right questions.

I think that makes sense, right? Because scenarios change. And the person that has the most information about their company or about their personal development is the person that’s coming to you. You don’t have all the information, you have this outsider’s perspective, which is helpful. But you can’t necessarily jump into my shoes and then run my company, right like this. Absolutely not. You are the expert in your business. Exactly. And so you’re saying, Hey, you know, these are the questions that need to be asked, here’s some ideas so that the next time something comes along, the scenario may not be the same. So me telling you what to do in that exact scenario doesn’t really help you, me kind of, you know, helping you progress and learn about you know, how that these tools can help you in analogous situations. That’s really what can help Somebody gets to the next level.

Absolutely. And well, it’s kinda like, Okay, how could you do that? Okay, that was a bad experience. Let’s say you’re working with an employee, and you know, it did not go well. Okay, we sit back and say, okay, going back to your golfers, some of the excellent pros, if they screw up a shot, if you watch carefully, they will actually go back and they’ll take the swing again. So what they’re doing is they’re going back says, oop, that was not the shot I wanted. And they will basically go do this, the right swing, and do the visualization aspect of it being the perfect swing. Because practice doesn’t make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. And so having that coach who’s helping guide you to make sure, okay, what worked, what didn’t, and there’s some great stuff that we don’t have time to dig into. But there’s a lot of great stuff out here that help you grow. Because at the bottom line, if you’re committed to taking your business to the next level, you have to grow into the person that can do it. And one of the things that we help people the most with is helping them make that transition to go from being the operator in the business, to being the business owner, the owner in your business, where you’re not doing all the work, but you’re making sure all the work gets done. And those are two totally different mindsets, and different skill sets.

100%. That’s excellent. running short on time here, Brian, what else do people need to know? What are some of your closing thoughts on this?

Well, we’ve touched on several things that I actually want to circle back around. Number one, we don’t have a learning problem. Learning is easy. That’s probably why your people are listening to this podcast is they’re trying to learn, they’re wanting to get better. Exactly what we don’t have a learning problem, we have a doing problem. And that’s where having a coach can help people with that. And yes, there’s a lot more stuff that I could have gone into that we didn’t even really talk much about fear, which is a another book that I wrote called unleash your fear. And we didn’t even touch on the abundance factor all that much. And so in the grand scheme of things, there’s a lot more that I wish I could have had time to share. I’ve actually done a about a two hour masterclass called become unstoppable. That if your audience wants to learn more and wants to go deeper, because again, there’s so much about our subconscious that I talked about in that program that we really just little anybody touched on. That allows you to take a deeper dive because that was really one of the biggest aha moments for me was I learned that my subconscious was working against me. It was preventing me from reaching the level of success I wanted. And it was only when I understood how my subconscious was working, that I was able to truly solve that and turn that around to where he was on my team. Instead of working against me, he was helping me grow. And I talk about that in this masterclass called become unstoppable. And for those of you that are listening and want to be able to quick and easy way you can text, the word results to 77948 text the word results to 77948 to be able to watch that masterclass. Or you can go to become unstoppable dot info. And we’ll make sure that the links get put in here somewhere.

Yeah, there will definitely be links where we post this on social media and also in the YouTube content. So well, it’s a pleasure, Brian, I can tell that the depth of your knowledge in this in this area and wanted to have you on because it’s something that I’m struggling with right now. And I’m about to get to that point where I take the plunge and get some outside help get that kind of unbiased third party that can say, hey, Alan, these are some things you need to work on. You know, here are some questions that need to be asked. So pleasure having you, you know, I encourage my listeners to reach out, you know, and my listeners, you hit the nail on the head, they’re listening to this because they’re trying to get better, right. But as you said before, it’s really tough in some scenarios, because we don’t really know what we need to get better at. And that’s why we need that outside help. So

right and many times we are overlooking things that we already know the fundamentals, john wooden boats, winningest coach in all of college sports, that was focused on the fundamentals to the point where he actually taught the boys how to put on their socks and to tie their shoes.

Love it. start with the basics. Great with the basics. All right. Well, it’s a pleasure. Thanks for joining us today, Brian. It’s my pleasure, Allen. Take care. Have a great week. All right.

If you’ve enjoyed today’s podcast, please leave us a rating and for daily inspiration and business tips follow Allan on Instagram. Until next time, remember we build the future one entrepreneur at a time.

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