Episode 197: The Long Win with Dr. Cath Bishop (Part 1)
Dr. Cath Bishop is an experienced speaker and author who draws on her careers as an Olympic rower, a senior diplomat specialising in conflict stabilisation and now a business coach, to bring insights into the mindset, behaviours and culture that underpin high performance and effective leadership.
In this interview with Adam Stott, discover the path that Dr. Cath Bishop took in figuring out the definition of success and improving one’s performance whether in business or sports. In this episode, Dr. Cath Bishop talks about perfection, momentum, and the importance of our purpose in order to achieve success.
Show Highlights:
- How Cath Bishop found out that her obsession with trying to win all the time is not helping her rowing career
- Working as a diplomat in the foreign office
- How Cath Bishop helps business owners and leaders on their road to success
- The similarity of the concept of performance and results in business and sports
- How Athletes set their minds into delivering their best performance
- Perfection or Momentum
- Discovering your “Why’s”
Links Mentioned:
Big Business Events Members Network
Know more about Dr. Cath Bishop at cathbishop.com
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
Adam Stott:
Good evening everybody, really looking forward to seeing you all on tonight. I’ve got a bit of a treat for you and I think you’re gonna find it really special. We’ve got a brilliant guest on with us this evening, Dr. Cath Bishop. And Dr. Cath Bishop has just recently written according to the Financial Times one of the top 10 business books of 2020. She is a former Olympian, and they may have seen some amazing things and what she’s going to help me discussing with us this evening is we’re going to be discussing together success and actually breaking down that principle of success and how you can become more successful in your life. We’re also going to talk about how you can transfer lessons from other areas like sport and relationships into your success and create better results. Join on and enjoy the ride, we’re going to be in for a great podcast interview tonight, one that I’ve certainly been looking forward to and one I think is going to be absolutely awesome. So I’m going to bring on Cath now, Dr. Cath, so how you doing?
Dr. Cath Bishop:
Yeah. All good. Thanks. Great to be here.
Adam Stott:
Brilliant. Okay, so really looking forward to talking to you tonight, Dr. Cath. We’re gonna call you Cath for simplicity’s, we’ve pre agreed 01:17. I’m really pleased to have you on and looking forward to all the different sort of wisdom that you’ve got to drop. I think what we’re doing is we’re if we can is your why don’t we start off just learning a little bit about your backstory. As I said on the introduction that you’ve recently written a top 10 business book according to the Financial Times, which I think is really fascinating really want to try and understand how you’ve got there. And what that process has been like and a little bit about your journey, so you want to start off sharing that with us Cath, that’d be absolutely awesome.
Dr. Cath Bishop:
Sure, great. Thanks Adam. Lovely to be here and looking forward to talking about my favorite topic which is how we define success because how we define success drives the way we think, what we actually then do, how we behave, how we connect with others. So, I have been thinking about this question through all the different careers that I’ve had so I was for 10 years and the Olympic Rower. I went to three Olympic Games and the first two were not that successful, and actually sort of obsession with trying to win all the time wasn’t actually helping my performance at all.
So into a big transition in the third Olympics I went to that enabled me to win the silver medal but also you know when the world championship the year before and we’ll maybe dig into that a bit more. And then have been to Korea for 12 years as a diplomat working for the Foreign Office and involved in particularly conflict issues around the world. So, you know, years of negotiations. And again, thinking about what are the things that help you negotiate. You kind of often think it starts off it’s about how smart you are, how much knowledge you have, but once you’re in the negotiating room it’s all about people, and sort of about how you connect. And I’ve been working as a business coach, so working on building teams, exec teams, leadership, developing leaders, working on leadership programs for the last seven or eight years, and seeing inside organizations that how success is defined again can often drive people to limit themselves to compete unnecessarily sabotage people around them. For the sake of hitting some kind of metric that seems really important.
So all of these worlds I’ve seen how important it is to define success in a much broader way that enables you to actually achieve better performance out of it and challenge some of the myths that we have.
Adam Stott:
Awesome. So brilliant stuff there, you got a massive career to begin too. I’m sure there’s a ton of lessons I didn’t really know about the diplomat side of things. I mustn’t really interested in so we’ll dig into that a little bit later as well. So why don’t you talk to us about sport, you know, I’ve always been fascinated with how some of the lessons from sport are absolutely 100% transferable to business. I think that everyone watching tonight will totally agree that when it comes to sport less competitive environment businesses is the sum. Yeah. And in order to keep on top of the game along it’s gonna come down to your mindset. So really wanted to hear your principles on that how sport and business connects and give your take on it. I’d be really interested to hear for someone who won a world championship, and 04:10 expiry time will be awesome.
Dr. Cath Bishop:
Yeah, so I think we make assumptions about what competition is about, and we say well it’s competitive therefore, you know, I’ve got to be out to kind of outdo everyone. 04:20 I’ve got to be number one and we kind of pick on these sort of really simple things that we hit the playground, who’s number one, who’s the winner, who’s the loser. And before we know it we’re in quite a binary world of winning.
Again, when I started off in sport I thought you know this could be anything else that’s the simplicity of it. But actually, in order to create a peak performance, and to be able to sustain that to be able to deliver that multiple times, there needs to be a much bigger framework around the perceived of that medal that involves values, that involves a bigger meaning to why it matters, that has a sense of who else is on that journey with you. And who do you need to collaborate with, and to, you know, make sure you don’t get stuck in that sort of fear based world where everybody is an opponent the enemy that actually again if we’re in this sort of fear place fear of losing, fear of people that we’re competing against. We inhibit our performance we get very tense, we hold ourselves back to thinking about the bigger meaning behind things the purpose. Why do I want to be the best in the world at rowing? That’s a really important question to start thinking about and actually think about what happens if I don’t win a medal, because I always think that’s impossible. Who would think that, but you know this year it’s only been a few little things are happening, they didn’t happen last year you can be injured, you could get, you know, not selected all kinds of stuff happens. 05:42
We can’t control the result. What we can control is our performance and that’s what athletes get really good at is controlling all of the aspects of their performance and improving them every single day that optimizes the results that in itself you can’t guarantee it. So they get good at that improvement learning process.
Adam Stott:
You know what you’re saying I absolutely 100% agree with and it’s an awesome concept. You can’t always control the outcome but you can control your performance which I think is a phenomenal point, and something that business owners can learn a tremendous amount from as well, because in terms of controlling your performance in sharp every day you put the right things in place, you’re going to get there, you’re gonna make things happen.
Dr. Cath Bishop:
You know sports psychology has massively moved in this area over the last kind of 20 years we need to literally separate out the concepts of performance and belts, which in business we can mix up, but we have, if we weren’t really focused on our best performance in a broad sense, so again mindset behaviors, relationships, as well as, you know, just just getting good technique and getting physically stronger. If we maximize that, then we get the best result we can.
So it’s a really kind of important difference, and often from the outside we don’t see it because the media talks about the results, the interviewer is talking about the results. And we think that the athletes are thinking about the results. They want them, but they’re not focusing on them they’re focusing on their performance, they’re focusing on all the things they need to do that being in the moment and actually assessing analyzing halftime crew stuff all the time. And that’s what then enables them to win.
Adam Stott:
Awesome. And I think is massive. And one of the reasons I was really looking forward to interviewing yourself tonight. You know that sport angle. Now one of the things I absolutely loved I don’t know if you ever got to see the show The Last Dance. Did you say that Michael Jordan?
Dr. Cath Bishop:
Yeah.
Adam Stott:
It was a phenomenal program that was. And if you look to Michael Jordan’s attitude towards winning the way him boys team up. It was really fascinating. And he’s, I think you know some of the lessons and things beside that totally apply.
So what was it like going to Olympics and what was it like dealing with that pressure. So you have what you said you’re under pressure to win, wanting to win. And you know how did you manage your mindset on a daily basis it’s kind of bring that home?
Dr. Cath Bishop:
Yeah. So 08:03 brilliant to go to Olympics, it’s just like going into another planet. You know, just one of the most exciting things, you know, going to an opening ceremony and, you know, millions of people are watching and, you know, the spotlight is on you and that’s what you’ve trained for and you train for a long time for that.
But there is massive pressure and the way to manage that is to focus on what you can control them and let go of the other stuff. So let go of also kind of feel the need to be in a positive state of mind as much as possible so letting go of that sort of fear of what you can’t control and focusing what you can do and you get, I mean, actually, you know when you’re at the Olympics or the day of your races you get really kind of in minute detail focus on all the things I need to do. I need to throw my water bottle up, I need to get changed, I need to stretch and you just map out all of those things that are setting yourself up to deliver your best performance.
You’re not thinking about competitors, you’re definitely not thinking about winning and results because you cannot control that. In that moment, you can do nothing about that and that will actually take you into again a sort of a fear of, sort of, oh my goodness, you know, will I win or not. Well I don’t determine that it’s going to be determined by you know what happens how fast the others go and I can’t control that but what I can control is how fast I go and I’ve got to optimize everything that delivers that.
Yeah. And again, seeing it broadly thinking about the behaviors that are really important, you know, ways of thinking and if I get distracted by something and that happens that’s fine and you’ve got doubts coming in your mind I mean you know you’re the adrenaline is going way before you even on the water about to line up. Then, you know your all the time just bring it back to okay what do I need to do at this point, what’s going to help me, you know, and checking yourself to kind of come back all the time, what’s the stuff that’s actually going to help my performance.
And that’s what I think we get good at, you know, directing our attention. Where we direct our attention energy comes, you know, the focus comes the performance comes. So you know again we get so many distractions in this world that actually distract us from doing what we need to do for our business, doing what we need to do on a daily basis because there’s another email, there’s another post here, there’s social media doing, actually, is that helping your business you have to be quite ruthless about focusing on the things that do.
Adam Stott:
Awesome, absolutely awesome. Yeah, I love it. You know, I find it really interesting and you know one of the things that I say to people is the compounding effect to suppose is the same with professional sports in the new training every single day to improve that performance by a small percentage, you know, and that training and that continual banging the drum is what produces the end result, isn’t? And I think that that is what a lot of business owners don’t do. And I think if they didn’t do that they get much better results because a lot of people want an overnight results and the reality is an override result doesn’t exist. What does exist for improvements every single day, building on top of each other, to get you in a position where you can win? And you don’t even think about winning because the wind comes naturally, 11:02 where you come from, absolutely yeah and I speak them we train 1000s of business owners and speak to business owners every single day.
And one of the things that they say, and one of the things you can tell us if you’re watching the comments. How many of you get yourself into a place where you can be temporarily motivated. And I want to hear from you in the comments. Maybe you beat yourself up for it temporarily, you can go out there and get yourself motivated to do a little bit, but then you hit a block and you fall flat. How many of you have had that before. And what I would like to ask you put yes in the comments. We’ve been there before. What I’d like to see, to understand from yourself, Cath, is that must have had days like that. What is your process for allowing yourself to keep pushing even when you’re don’t feel like it?
Dr. Cath Bishop:
So what’s really important is to understand the difference between a sort of shallow external level requires extrinsic motivation, and the much deeper intrinsic motivation. So when we’re just motivated by external stuff, you know rewards, bonuses, medals, then it actually doesn’t enable us to tap into the deeper level of resource that we have. When we’re actually motivated by a much deeper dive into stuff where we’re making a difference. You know, what is the impact we’re having throughout business? Our purpose if you like the change that you want to see because of the products you create.
Whatever that is that suddenly unlocks a much deeper well of creativity of resilience so when you hit the block, you’re going to find a way around it because you know it matters. So tapping into that sense of purpose and also that that basic that learning process so purpose and autonomy, so you’re making decisions about how things are done, and mastery so mastery is kind of what’s termed for this sort of what I say is a constant learning mindset that we’re just all the time learning to do things differently, we know which means we’re innovating we’re trying new stuff we’re experimenting we’re taking some risks, and we’re always learning so even when we don’t get a great outcome. We’ve learned something and it’s really important those incremental gains and the learning is part of success we need to see that, and so on a daily basis when we don’t get, we don’t hit results today because they didn’t come in today. We still gained something we need to be kind of really kind of allotting those gains accruing them, you know, building them up again yeah I’ve learned something and when we get a poor outcome. 13:27 there’s masses of learning, and when we get a good outcome. there’s masses of learning, there’s always masses of learning and then we don’t go on this sort of, you know, real high low roller coaster and, oh, everything’s great, we’ve got great figures, everything’s a disaster that we haven’t. We’re actually just always learning.
Adam Stott:
Awesome and pretty much you’re saying there, I think is enjoy the journey, you know, and I think a lot of people don’t do that. This faces it. A lot of people don’t enjoy the journey and they don’t enjoy the process as much as they should. And you’re right, and I think that, especially people that are listening tonight that might be a small business or not. It’s very difficult to tell a small business owner to tap into their purpose, because right now their purpose might be how I am going to get through the week. I’m gonna make wages, I’m gonna make cash flow, you know, a lot of these challenges take business owners away from their purpose and make them unconnected and make them make the wrong decisions a lot of the time, you know, I love 100% what you’re saying is super powerful, you know if you got any tips for the audience that listening today might be how they can tap into what their purpose. And what would your tips be Cath on how somebody identifies what their purpose is.
Dr. Cath Bishop:
Yeah, you know, I think it’s fine to not be 100% clear, you know, I always think we should be constantly clarifying the purpose and reviewing it, so don’t get in a panic if you go oh my god 14:42. But you didn’t know because you are having an impact and there’s a reason why you started your business so why do you even exist as a company, what is it that’s good about your company, what are the things that, you know, deliver the results that you have had now or in the past, you know, all of that stuff is, you know, the why. Once you’ve known the why, then you know that is part of your purpose.
I think it’s good to have that as a sense of an ongoing conversation and ongoing reflection in your head about is it still the same way, and actually now things are really tough and you need to think, well, you know, is it still important for my company to be here. You know what are we going to do what we’re going to deliver people why do they still need it, and there’s some really hard conversations and discussions to be had about, maybe people need something in a different way, maybe the value of what I’ve been doing is has gone up or gone down or people can’t see it.
And so, if that helps us to get through these difficult times, by going back to that why question so even in the hardest of times it can be most important at that point because the why is what will get you through. It will give you that sense of not have to find a different way of doing something from how I used to do it because you know we’re locked down or you know whatever the kind of restriction might be at the moment, the way we’ll get around it is to know why we need to get around this difficult time. So, why questions are so helpful and they can be difficult because we can’t answer them in five minutes. But, you know, that is the heart of where your business value lies.
Adam Stott:
I love it. I love what you’re saying there and you know what the point that I really enjoyed that you said when you came on straight away, which is totally in sync with you is understanding, there’s a lot of people it’s okay not to be 100% clear, because I think you actually get two camps, right, you really do, you know, 10,000s of people. I see all the time you get these two camps, you get somebody that totally knows their why, they’re obsessed with their why, they run with it. They’re like, super channel guy.
And then you get other people that would love to feel that clarified and love to feel that but actually they’re very confused why don’t really know. You know he’s like well you know I want to achieve this maybe I wanted to spend more time with my family I wanted to build a better life for my family, but I’m not sure that’s my why, or I’m not sure it is. But I think that you can have multiple reasons why as well and I think the said it’s okay not to be clear is a really good thing for people because I think that people get afraid of it. I think people get afraid. And because they become afraid of the deep thinking what do they do they prefer to avoid it right when some people prefer to avoid the fear. Is there anything you said confirm that? Now I’ll just crack on and call some more clients there, you know whoever it is makes more money than yours if you can ask yourself those questions in a good way to do that is another point; you came up with an analogy. So, why did you start a business, and then ask yourself again you know you follow that up with another question, not just why you started your business. But, you know, all the same reasons that you exist now then decide.
And I think, asking questions of a business is really important. And those discussions you have with your team. And especially if you’re going for a big change that internal reflection is really important. So I love that so some great points there, absolutely I think that’ll help the people that are listening to podcasts or listening online tonight in a big way to get a better understanding of it.
So, okay, we’ve established that, we’ve established, okay it’s not, it’s okay not to be 100% clear, we’ve come up with some good questions there about how you can establish it. When you see a business or you see somebody that is connected to their why and they’re actually connected to their mission at a deeper level 18:15 for that person that individual and business, interested to hear your take on that.
Dr. Cath Bishop:
Yeah, so, it enables you to deal with the challenges because you know that I got to get around this because it really matters because my product is what people need, and it offers them value, but at the moment they don’t realize it. So, you know, again, it enables you to find a way around because he keeps thinking but why are they recognizing it when it’s actually going to help them so all the time it’s giving you that sort of process about why you got to find a way around something and it’s actually basic kind of behavioral psychology if we hit a hurdle, we don’t know why we need to go past it. We won’t get over the wall, we won’t get over the hurdle. So, it’s just how we’re wired. And I think it enables us then to problem solve, to come up with different ideas alternatives, because we know we’ve got to find a way, it’s worthwhile, assisting.
So it’s that creativity, it’s that kind of resilience and persistence point and ability to problem solve, in to innovate, if you like about, okay, well, how else can I do this so that people realize what it is that I’m offering and you don’t just do the same thing over and over again, if it’s not delivering well they’re not getting the value you’re offering. So it’s really that kind of mental process of finding ways through challenges, I think, is you know the real power of it.
Adam Stott:
Yeah, I agree. You know the people that seem to be connected to their purpose of why they’re running their business seem to be able to go through those brick walls, and nothing seems to stop them. like you’re somebody that struggles with the systems and struggles with 19:51 perhaps talking about, and you’re somebody that struggles with blocks, then that could be something you need to actually have a look inside yourself, how do I become more connected to why I’m doing this? I think that’s an awesome point. And that’s going to certainly help people to get over some of those hurdles. I think you certainly helped me in the past to create a very relentless focus. And I think, you know, for an athlete or for a business owner that wants to succeed, focus is incredibly important. I think you mentioned that as you come on today. Talk to us a little bit about focus and, from your perspective how an athlete creates that focus and how does an athlete or being what you do when you work a leadership team. Now, how do you get a leader within a team or an athlete to go on, and really tap into focus and push on?
Dr. Cath Bishop:
So once you know your purpose it’s much easier to focus on the things that matter. One of the things I talk about in the long way in if you like is clarifying what matters. So, some people they know their purpose. Some people are frightened about words you said that that’s fine, you know, it’s all the time for me it’s about layer after layer of building what matters because only when I know what matters can I then focus on the key things are going to be linked to that, so you create like a chain from the difference you want to make, the value you offer, the purpose if that’s the words you’re comfortable with.
And then, from that, those are the only focus on the things that are related to that if something else comes in, it’s not actually going to connect with that, then you know not to get distracted by it. And this is a massive problem at the moment where people sort of own laptops and they just do the emails that were in front of them. That’s not being focused, that’s not focused on the things that matter the things that are going to deliver the results that you want, the performance that you want to get, so again if you don’t understand what really matters the criteria that are really important. And that’s not just an out, you know, a sort of simple metric this amount of sales. What’s the impact that’s going to come from those sales and what you know where’s that going to kind of go next. And why is that important to you that you’re the person delivering it, so you need to put a bit more around it’s definitely not just a metric or sort of single number. If you don’t have that, then it’s just really difficult you get sidetracked into answering emails or, you know, doing what’s in front of you or you know webinars phone calls, and that is a disaster in terms of not putting your time where it really matters.
Adam Stott:
I think that was an awesome couple of productivity tips and we’ll jump into. We’ll talk about the book in a moment, really keen to hear on that. I think what you mentioned there is absolutely and we describe sometimes as are you a transactional business owner or a transformational one? And transactional business owners is going to do those transactional things every day where a transformational one is going to drive the result home for being a bigger thing, having a better understanding of where they’re going.
When you talk about sales and talk about marketing you know when I work with my teams. You know when I’m talking about increasing sales. I’m talking about increasing sales not because I want another sale, not because I want to bring another deal in, or because I want to have another client, because I know that by increasing the sales that brings more clients in we get to where people just part of the purpose. In addition to that, that means is more revenue which means we’re gonna spend more money on marketing, and by being able to spend more money on marketing that means that business is going to grow which is going to last the whole purpose.
I think that sometimes a business owner can be eight moves ahead of their team. And that is a problem isn’t? There’s a disconnection there, when the thing, and the business owner, a lot of the time wavelengths. So when you train leaders, what are some of the tips you give to top leadership I know you’ve got big background in leadership as well, Cath.
Dr. Cath Bishop:
Yes, a lot of my work is working with leaders, leadership teams, and teaching business school programs, and this is a really important part about the next stage of bringing purpose alive. Is it can’t just be something that only boss knows, it can’t be something that you know is somehow a complex discussion we have a different time, it needs to be part of every day, everybody at whatever level, however much they are and however much seniority or they have that will need to know how they connect to that purpose. if you want them to give their best performance, and for them to make decisions about what they spend their time on.
So if they’re, you know, again, they’re not clear. The danger is, you know, you’re paying them and they’re spending time on stuff that isn’t moving the dial for what you want. So it needs to be brought alive literally every interaction, every meeting, every conversation you have, you need to know how that’s connecting to the why. So it’s living it’s really breathing it’s helping people all the time and then when you’re not there, they’re able to make that connection and spend their time on the stuff that matters. You want to help their decision making you can’t tell them what to do it doesn’t work, and you’re not there all the time anyway. But what you can do is get them clear about the things that are most important. And then they will make better decisions about how they spend their time. And suddenly that kind of raises the collective performance.
Adam Stott:
Absolutely, set the culture. Set the culture around the why and get people following them, you know, if you don’t set the culture somebody else will. Right. And you don’t want somebody else’s culture you want yours. Absolutely great point there.
Okay, so tell us a little bit about the book. So we had a chat beforehand have written some books on it. Another 25:06 she worked really hard on it, and 25:08 accolades from it and you said you know the Financial Times, so it was one of the top 10 books of business books in 2020. So why don’t you tell everyone what the book is, and then we’ll talk a little bit about how you comes to putting that together, and some of the lessons that people will learn from the book would be awesome.
Dr. Cath Bishop:
So I mean, it’s taken about four years of writing and it was really about making sense of everything that I’d experienced in those different careers and how the way we define success drives how we think, how we behave, how we connect and then what happens that performance, and the results that come from that.
And in all of those worlds that we have is the same and I realized that we’re not often paying enough attention to how we define success, and particularly in sport there’s this shift where it’s not just how much do you want to win and we can see that in the Hollywood movies and we get kind of distracted by that. No is this performance focus? Is this ruthless learning, you know, and these incremental gains, all of the time. So, you know, I just thought I really want to help dispel some myths, dispel some of this sort of easy language about I just want to be number one, I want to be the winner, you know, it doesn’t mean anything, and get back to that, what are the things that are going to help you to explore your potential over a much longer term basis as well.
So it’s not just a short term metric, it’s not just winning a race, it’s not just this year’s results, no it’s about the impact you’re having and what happens after the race and what happens after this year’s results. Where are you going to go off to that because we’ve got really short term and how we define things? So you know the first part looks at if you like the you know the mess how ingrained it is that we all we want to be a winner and it starts in the playground and we label people winners and losers. And at that point we start excluding people who’ve got different ideas, but really good ideas, because there can only be one winner. Well this is a world that is increasingly diverse and we realized we need to harness all of the inside so let’s not kind of get into that binary thinking that discards people with great ideas, great perspective, a lot of entrepreneurs, or people who haven’t necessarily done well at school, because they had other answers they had other perspective. Exactly, so let’s not fall into that trap. Yeah but recognize that you know the history books are full of their Mighty Heroes, you know, the warriors who are the winners. That’s not what happens in the 21st century, people who’ve got nails who’ve got that kind of innovative thinking you understand, you know, people and communities and what’s needed.
So I kind of try and dispel some of those myths then I look at how an obsession with winning when it’s narrow plays out, plays out badly in business, in sport in education in politics this sort of obsession with just being number one and trampling over people actually holds us back, and then I look at the long way in the final part and how as we’ve talked quite a lot about clarity of what matters is the first step so clarifying our purpose, constant learning approach, all the time learning we value that success I’ve had a good day, when I’ve learned something I’m trying something new. I’ve gained something, I didn’t know yesterday, I’m trying something out, I’ve improved my mindset, my focus. That’s a good day, not just when I hit the numbers, because all of that good stuff is what drives the numbers, and then connection, people, you know we can’t succeed on our own. So let’s make sure we put that again as a priority and how we spend time and not just emails and tasks that actually prioritize relationships and investing in those.
Adam Stott:
We’ll talk about that in just a moment. We’ll come on to relationships because it is really important massive part of business which is massively overlooked. You know one of the things that we constantly tell our clients is that building relationships is a massive part in business and people just don’t do it, you know, people are in their own bubble or on their own island, but they don’t focus on going out there and meeting other people building relationships, that’s who you’re fighting with that mind on that path in terms of relationships, how does that play into things weird?
Dr. Cath Bishop:
Yeah, I mean I find it extraordinary why we don’t invest in it but it’s almost like again our systems. Yeah the Outlook calendar, the to do list, people don’t appear on it. Building relationships influence investing and influence, or I can’t do that Tuesday three o’clock, for an hour, you know it’s going to be part of how we go about things and if it’s not scheduled it doesn’t happen, or it’s actually we should all the time again at the end of the day, not just think that I do all my emails, did I take off my to do list but actually, who did I influence today and how? How did I deepen the relationship with the people I spoke to, because that’s when you’re really increasing the quality of what you’re doing, not the quantity we get stuck on, I’ve got to do more and more and more, actually, you know this is gonna relate perhaps to that question coming in a moment.
What’s the quality of what you’re doing if those interactions are kind of meaningful then they’re going to last for the longer term. They’re also going to yield more for you in all sorts of ways and broaden your network further broaden your learning on your perspective. So, you know, again we can chase quantity of stuff, doing things taking off tasks without putting relationships first. I think it should be, you know, a main part of how we review but had a good day but had a good week, not just all the meetings and stuff but actually, which relationships have moved on and which are going to be important next week to invest in and who isn’t at the moment in the comment of who needs to be, I’ve got a full calendar. But is it with the people that you need to be talking to and that needs to be conscious that you think about yeah, who joined me to have on this journey with me he’s gonna have value to what I do.
Adam Stott:
Absolutely really important. I built a success planner for our clients recently, and in their success planner you’ll be pleased to see it’s his five relationships to touch base with every day. There are a couple of principles that I train people on relationship both so say you’ve got to go off the business, new business for three hours a day every single day we don’t want to get lost in the tasks, you’re gonna build those relationships, grow your relationships and build constantly some amazing tips there.