So the big question is this, how do recruiting leaders like us who have 12 to 15 other job responsibilities win at this game of recruiting? How do we build a system that allows us to recruit effectively in a minimal amount of time while motivating recruits towards meaningful change? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Richard Milligan and welcome to Recruiting Conversations.

Hey everybody, welcome back it’s another recruiting conversations with your host Richard Milligan. We are coming into a year end. It’s 2020, as i’m cutting this. I think that what i’m going to give you here today is probably applicable to any year end, and when i think of the questions that i’m getting the week between christmas and new year’s, a lot of people are asking for help around establishing goals, building a business plan for the upcoming year, casting a vision to the team. Creating a daily or a weekly or monthly scorecard as to what their day-to-day activities should look like. So, I want to share with you a recent coaching session that I had with someone who came in and said i’ve been asked to present a business plan, and i’m unsure how to actually create this business plan. So, this is something that’s very practical that everyone can actually pull nuggets from. I always look at the vision plan from a vision perspective, and i think a vision my definition of vision is the road map to what we want to achieve and a lot of people think vision is almost like a goal that they want to accomplish but when you think of goals, a lot of people just come up with a number, and say this is what i’m going to do. And i’ll work hard to get that number to accomplish it, but there’s not a real specific plan associated with accomplishing the goals. So, over the years one of the things i realize is that if vision is going to be accomplished, vision has to have a road map attached to it.

So, one of the things that I do inside my own organization is that we review that business plan, that vision, that goal, okay? So, I like to use the term vision in place of all those things and I like to build the roadmap out under our understanding that the roadmap can change. Think about 2020 as an example because in march of 2020 some things happened that were outside of all of our control that created a scenario we had to revisit our vision for the year one of my uh part of my vision for 2020 was was tied directly to traveling and speaking at live events well immediately that was gone, that couldn’t be accomplished based on something that was outside my control. So, when that happened I went back to the vision, and revamped the vision for the year, and so typically in a normal year this hasn’t been a normal year but typically in a normal year what I will do is I will review it quarterly, and i would take a lot of time towards the end of the year to review it and take a lot of time at the end of the year to establish where are we going in the upcoming year. Now, I have a larger 10-year vision and we’re now moving into year 4 of that 10-year vision and so the year 4 part of the vision is tied to the larger 10-year vision that we want to accomplish in 2027. We started this organization in 2017 and we were way ahead of where i thought we would be at this point so it makes a lot of sense for me to review it annually and to recast the vision for where we’re going to go in the upcoming year and so those these things can change but if you don’t have a larger vision, there’s no way that I think you can clearly establish a one-year vision. I love, I think it was John Maxwell that once said “we we accomplish less than what we think we’re going to accomplish in the year but we accomplish more than we think we can accomplish in the decade” and I buy into that i believe that i think we we fail a lot of our annual goals that we set because we think we can accomplish more in the upcoming year there are things that are unpredictable that get in the way sometimes we get in the way we’re the ones that get in the way sometimes life gets in the way, I mean right now I have a kid sitting at a doctor’s office getting tested for COVID because he’s lost his sense of taste and smell, that’s outside my control to some degree and these things are happening to lots of people right now, and so inside that i’m aware that there are things that we control, there are things that outside of our control but but inside the things that we control, we do need to have those tied to a larger vision as much as we need to have them tied to the upcoming year’s vision and so there’s some things around that that I think are critical that I want to share with you all and part of what we’re going to share here is a coaching session I recently had with one of my clients and we’ll share parts of this won’t share all of it, but there’s nuggets I think everyone can glean from in how you build out the vision for the upcoming year and some ideas that will probably force you to innovate and to act like you’ve never acted before. One of the things that most people leave off when they’re developing their goals or their business plan is they leave off some things like where do I need to grow personally the thing that i say to myself all the time is this the current version of me is not even hireable by the 10 year better version of me, well what does that mean, it means that I have to grow the challenge is that I need to grow to accomplish this larger vision the version of me that sits in this chair right now. Cut this podcast can’t exist in 10 years, if i’m to accomplish that larger vision which is why I have a 10 year vision, it challenges me to grow. I’ve had to learn how to have more influence on social media, I’ve had to learn how to write good content, I’ve had to learn just the platforms, some of the platforms that have really challenged me like instagram is one that’s really challenging. I’ve had to learn that platform i’ve had to learn new tools and technology, I have to be constantly interpreting the data as it comes in around recruiting to see what things are changing it forces innovation but it forces me to constantly grow personally so as part of this I encourage people part of your larger quote, unquote business plan or goals for the upcoming year is challenge yourself where are you going to grow, make it practical like what things do you need to learn what books do you need to read, what influencers do you need to follow, what podcasts should you be listening to, what industry event should you be attending what non-industry event should you be attending I attended a non-industry event in 2020 and when i say non-industry, I typically coach in three different industries. So, this was way outside of that i went to this so that i could actually be challenged to bring some things back to the people that I coach the people that i lead that would force innovation so go outside your industry to attend an event uh virtual events have just blown up in 2020 what virtual events can you attend that can be part of your larger personal growth plan you’re going to hear me sharing this inside this coaching session but you’re going to hear me presenting this to you in terms of pillars, what I call pillars. So, when you think about a house, it’s built on these cornerstones, right? It’s built on a foundation if you go to any house that’s built on a on a beach or in a place where there’s a marsh it’s always built on these pillars right it supports the larger house this idea is that there are these pillars that need to exist in order to support your larger business plan and you need to identify what those things are what are the pillars that are going to support you being successful in accomplishing whatever the plan is whatever the goal is, whatever the vision is for this upcoming year. I’m going to share with you what those pillars could be and will give you some insight into how you can actually develop your own business plan for success in 2020. So, with that said we’re going to go to that coaching session now here we go with your business plan, okay? uh well we just we could also call it goals that’s how i’m promising they’re thinking of it how i’m thinking of this as vision what’s the larger vision well how i would want to know how does 2021 play into a larger vision, okay? That’s that means you’re going to have to think really big and it’s gonna force you to do some things you wouldn’t otherwise do, okay? But this is how this looks in real life is that, there are pillars that support this and these pillars are our daily activities our daily behaviors right and so what they’re looking for in essence is what are the pillars that are going to support the goals, or the business plan, or the vision up here, okay? And so part of this is going to be influence how are you going to create more influence in 2021 that’s a question you’re gonna have to answer okay linkedin’s part of that influence, facebook is part of that influence, where else are you going to go is it going to be instagram, twitter, tiktok, um you’re going to create your own blog where else are you going to create influence, okay? There’s all kinds of ways to go about this. You know, how I started creating early influence. I started writing articles for Scotsman, okay? I said “hey i’m a mortgage recruiting expert” I loved I reached out it was intentional reaching out to the editor of the magazine to say “I’d write articles for you they said submit us a couple of articles we’ll take a look” I submitted several articles both of them got published anytime I want to get published as scotsman’s guide. So, that was part of that part of this influence concept where how and how can i create influence, okay? For me, it was a podcast, it’s a youtube channel, it’s a vimeo channel, it’s definitely my linkedin content I started writing articles on medium.com, okay? Influence you’re gonna have to answer that question and look building that influence in the first three years has required a lot of me, I mean like i want to throw up when i say a lot because i wrote some of the scotsman’s guide articles um i had a couple of opportunities with Scotsman’s guide where they said hey we need to fill space can you get us an article in 48 hours and I stayed up and pulled an all-nighter one time to write an article and that was one of the hardest things i’ve ever done but it got published I got more recognition out of it i was able to create influence through that article that I wrote so these are all places nobody wants to talk about this but influence is one of those things, okay? Daily activities are part of this and this means the phone is part of this okay this does mean you know linkedin um is gonna be part of this uh connecting communicating to people. You know text is gonna be part of this, what other tools are you going to use, are you gonna use bombbomb are you going to use. So, you’re just going to you you have something else that you want to use maybe you’ve got a activity tool like a daily ai or something like that that you’re going to put on your to-do list you’re going to go learn you’re going to integrate into what you’re doing but I mean the daily activities most people want to see, how many phone calls are you going to make, how many linkedin messages are you going to send, how many texts are you going to do. You know what’s your follow-up look like that’s got to be part of this, okay? How many people are gonna follow up on a daily basis because basically recruiting is pretty simple, it’s identifying talent, making initial contact and follow-up that’s all, it is okay. So, activities need to be part of this now some of this needs to be internal. So, we’re talking a lot about external but internal, okay? So, you’ve got the external now you’ve got the internal what are you going to do internally to engage people are you going to send an email a week are you going to ask for leads in local market that you can follow that you can call are you going to have a 15-minute meeting every couple of weeks with all the managers you’re serving so that you can do a pipeline review and find out what’s going on in their market are you going to provide them with some training resources on the partnership between randy and them, right? So, for example my podcast is a great training resource you could take nuggets out of that and say “hey i’d love for you to listen to this richard’s talking about what the agenda for a first meeting should look like” So, you’ve got these things you don’t have to create these things but these things are things that you should be providing because this is an internal perspective of what your business plan is again what they’re looking for is what is the day-to-day going to look like for Randy. So, we can hold them accountable, right? That’s measurable, okay? So, what are the things you’re gonna do internally to bring value, okay? So, these other things are external then internal right so what you’re doing is basically this is the plan what are you these are supportive mechanisms of the plan okay now i think there’s four pillars here you know the question is what’s this other pillar, I don’t want to fill in the blanks to steal any creativity from you but just know that what wraps around all of this is a big big framework and it’s called um some of the things that you might think about that could be external ideas that are outside the box are you know maybe industry events where you’re going to have a presence got mortgage mastery. So, it could be events and some of these could be even virtual events that you’re identifying and you’re participating in but you’re having a presence there um one of the things to think about that could be an additional pillar is an innovation pillar and if you’re going to innovate what are you going to do that no one else is doing that’s brand new, right? So, innovate means first to act not first not next to respond first to act meaning no one else is doing this so what is that i don’t know I want to see us kick off a virtual open house visit, I want to see us kick off. I want to see us kick off, a monthly webinar where we’re inviting people outside the company into almost like a virtual open house where our ceo gets on the talks for 15 minutes and our head of secondary gets on talks for 15 minutes and you know but what would fall in that box that no one else is doing that, we could do it might even be some of the innovation could be around.It could be internal, which is that i want to hold once a month a one-hour recruiting event where everybody comes live into zoom and we all say here’s what i’m going to do in the next hour and we go keep everybody alive on zoom and mute and everybody does it together right like you’re gonna make you’re gonna make 25 phone calls an hour great mute it, and now you’re dialing and you’re waving to people while you’re doing it you’re giving people thumbs up and you’re jumping the chat box going I just set an appointment for next week maybe once a month, you have a regional um hour that you come in you do it live together right and someone and and i don’t know maybe someone you know you take turns and you hear what the other person’s saying and you bring people into this you really challenge people to improve in some of these areas. So, how can you innovate, maybe part of the pillar around this is like we need to innovate in this area. We need to bring more energy to this area. Part of your success is going to depend on the amount of internal synergy you create around recruiting. If you have none it’s all on you you’ll have limited success. If you can get other people on board with this then there’s no limitation on the amount of success that you can have, okay? And so around this big circle of accountability and how are you gonna hold me accountable to this is a weekly recruiting scorecard and I will turn that into you every friday, okay? You can expect me to be innovative to create more influence to have my daily activities in place internal to be of influence and then for me to be outside external creating influence as well in some of these events there’s also part of this but then what wraps around all of this is accountability around this and so what does that look like, well you’re going to get a weekly scorecard and then what i’m asking for is someone sit down with me quarterly and review this I don’t want to turn this in and have someone you know at the end of the year ago, how’d we do, I want to sit down with someone quarterly or even monthly or maybe both okay to make sure that these things are on track. So, in terms of industry events right i’ll report to you what those are maybe between now and turning this in you’ll already know what those are what are the industry events you’re going to attend what virtual events have you identified and maybe you’ll turn this in every quarter i’m asking that every quarter that i have at least one virtual event that i’m attending, okay? Or maybe that’s monthly, I don’t know, maybe it’s monthly that you’ve got one virtual event that you’re attending these things pop up on linkedin all the time,okay? Where Dave Savage just had one, a couple weeks previous Cindy Ertman had one. I could think of top bookspan recently did one so these things are popping up all the time you can show up and be of influence in these virtual type events be a connector for people and even if it’s a i’m showing up to help you promote this todd book spam what can I do to help I saw your event i’d love to promote it internally within my organization Dave Savage i’d love to promote it, internally inside my organization Todd Duncan i’d love to promote it internally inside this organization, okay? These are all things that you can do and so um but really map this out like quarterly, what am i going to do monthly, what am i going to do weekly, what am i going to do i’m going to answer these questions and of course annually, yearly, what am i going to do that you can hold me, you can hold me accountable to this is the only way you’ll execute on all of these things is if you put it in your business plan and it’s almost like hey my business plan is 12 pages long, or maybe it’s only four pages long, and every quarter i’m going to tear the sheet out i’m going to hand it to you for accountability this is q1 q2 q3 q4 and then what are the results I expect that we would get around this that’s the big question mark because that’s what they all want to know what are the results, well it’s it’s kind of like licking your finger and sticking in the in the wind, right? Recruiting is, it’s not as it’s a combination of science and art science is predictable art’s not right, it’s a combination of both and so a couple of things one i’m always asking myself, there’s two parts to me one is the dreamer and one’s the reality guy you know the idealist and the realist, okay? The idealist is anything’s possible and it is right, the realest says okay how do I take how do i really create some realistic expectations around this. You can start doing the math and you can start seeing what would it cost to have an external recruiter in this position so you start looking at this and saying am i making it with this number right here 24 am i making sense in terms of the ROI of what i’m being paid versus what would someone would pay external because they pay about 10 bips on production to hire that person that’s how you come up with that math. So, internally I’m saying is there an ROI, is there an ROI and  and you should be able to hire and look and I start thinking about this at a team level. I mean the average team that I brought on was somewhere around seven people. What does it look like if I went after teams? So, that’s three to four teams per year can i hire a team per quarter oh absolutely I can okay, i’m not yeah i’ll i’ll look for loan officers but i’m going to primarily focus on on on teams and so let’s go find the team i mean if you hired two teams like 12 people on the team, you’re there is that realistic it is, and I need this tension internally myself to know whether i’m winning or losing, and i need something to drive me and stretch me so it’s always scary to come up with this number but the truth is that, man this is really going to require you to innovate. It’s really going to require you to be real intentional with your time in this upcoming year, and if you execute on this you will be one of the you’ll be a one percenter. I think how you present it matters I trust that there are a few nuggets that you could glean from that time i spent with one of my coaching clients the challenge for you now is beyond that and developing the business plan your goals your vision for 2021 is one key ingredient and that’s the accountability part of this there’s something I go to from time to time that is known as pearson’s law, and I believe in this with everything in me pearson was a was a scientist in the 1800s, he developed a law that said what we measure we improve, and what we measure and report we improve exponentially, what we measure we improve, what does that mean, well we do need something to track something to measure the day-to-day like it’s actually like keeping score like am i doing these lead things not lag things lagging hires number of hires that we have it’s a lagging metric, what is a lead metric number of contacts that you make number of messages that you send, right? The things that actually engage people in conversations are lead metrics. You should be measuring those okay what we measure we improve you got to measure those what we measure and report we improve exponentially, okay? So the reporting component for us comes into the form of accountability who can we actually bring into this that we can actually give this to on a weekly basis that will hold us accountable I work with a couple of top brokers in the real estate world and they are on opposite sides of the united states but there’s a partnership between them where there’s a level of accountability they’re actually holding each other accountable to the things that are going to move their business forward into 2021. So, who will you report it to it can be someone internally it can be inside your organization, it can be someone externally, and that can be a coach, it can be a friend, it can be I have actually meet every Tuesday with a group of entrepreneurs and I have for going on seven eight years, it could be that someone inside that group, or it could be that group for me but you need someone to hold you accountable and what does that mean, we literally have to open our hands and ask for accountability that word it just for a lot of people it reeks of like micromanagement like someone’s standing over us and telling us what to do on their terms, not my terms, but honestly accountability is where we get the exponential results, right? It’s when I don’t want to actually produce and perform because i don’t feel quite right today or i had that one bad engagement with a client or someone on the team and that just wiped out my energy for the day do I leave mentally or do i stay engaged mentally, the accountability component is what will challenge you to press through those things 2020 has been a challenging year could have given up all of us could have given up early on and and called it good right back in march when things really start to start to kick off with the pandemic accountability doesn’t allow that to take place, and so it’s really critical when you’re choosing an accountability partner that you actually pick someone that will not accept your excuses alright we’ll call them reasons I need someone to actually step up and go that’s actually an excuse i’ve got all kind i’ve got four kids, three dogs, two horses, a wife several businesses like I mean like there’s all kinds of excuses all over the things that i’m speaking around right now that could keep me from actually executing anything in a single day. I need someone that can actually speak life to me around that and to say you said you wanted X you were willing to sacrifice X, but you needed to do x and you’re not doing it and your larger “why” as to why you’re doing that is this I need someone to remind me of those things. So, who you choose the challenges to choose carefully because not all accountability is created equal to someone, that’s okay with me.Eating the chocolate cake and not drinking the protein shake is not going to make a good accountability partner. So, in this it could be partnerships or it could be someone that you just actually have as the accountable accountability person you need that you’ve got to have that or all of this would be in vain. I hope as we go into 2020, that you’re inspired to do more in 2021, big challenges lie ahead for all of us that are leaders who also recruit we’re up for the challenge. I know that I’m here to bring you more value in the upcoming year, we’re in the middle of launching a second podcast, I’ll have more information on that soon until then everybody has a great new year and we will see you in 2021.

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