Brad Johnson: Welcome back to another episode of Do Business Do Life. We’re back with another solo episode. These are kind of getting fun. Shout out to Dave Zoller, who a few months back said, “Hey, Brad, your Process Versus Product episode that you did on your old show, I really valued that. And I think you should do more solo episodes.” And then James Conole kind of echoed that. He said that that episode had been super impactful for him. So, we’re going to do a few more of these. They seem to be resonating with you all. And this one is an extension of Episode 81.
So, if you’re diving in right now, it might be worth rewinding watching Episode 81, where I shared a calendar, a calendaring methodology inspired by Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach, and really modified over the last couple of decades in finance that I’ve seen help a ton of financial advisor offices really maximize their time, maximize their revenue, and really solve the Swiss cheese calendar of having like stuff all over the place where they’re multitasking all day, every day, kind of cure the chaos for lack of a better term. So, with that, there was a concept that I teased in that episode that a number of you reached out and said, “Hey, Brad, can you share this 15-minute warning knock? What’s that all about?” And so, that’s what we’re going to dive into today.
So, first, I’m going to just start with the story that I’ve seen to be a really common theme, and this was an advisor years back. And actually, it was more of it driven by his team because his team’s like, I won’t share his name but, “We can’t ever keep this advisor on time. You know, we start out with the best intentions. He’s got a 9 a.m. and by the time we get to his 3 p.m., he’s running 15, 30 minutes late for the meeting. He’s kind of running in last second, not ready, you know, fully prepared, getting his, you know, the financial planning, the conversations, any illustrations, any sort of data needed to walk into that.”
And it kind of reminds me of my experience at the doctor’s office where if you flip to the other side of the desk, which is I think is really important in finance, to kind of secret shop your client experience or prospect experience, oftentimes, you’ll find like, “Wow, that would be a really sucky experience if I was actually going through that myself.” And go back to the doctor’s office, I think most of us that have experienced that, your appointment’s at 11, you’re typically still in your chair at 11:15. They’re always running late. And it’s not a good experience. It doesn’t feel fully professional. And like it’s dialed in and they have it all together. And I will say you lose credibility.
There is psychology in any sort of trust or sales sort of relationship where if you’re missing expectations along the way, such as being late for appointments, your credibility, you’re already digging yourself out of a hole when you start. So, this calendar hack is the one that solved it for this advisor, helped facilitated by his team. So, this would be a good episode as well as Episode 81 to share with whoever runs your calendar in the office, whoever is kind of on the upside, the appointment setting side. And this one has been an absolute game changer.
So, we’re going to call this the 15-minute warning knock episode. There’s really three big things I’ve seen this do for the offices I’ve worked with over the years. Number one, it builds ACE. I’ll tell you what that means in a second. Number two, it keeps you on time all throughout the day. And number three, it makes sure the last 15 minutes of every appointment are the best 15 minutes and I’ll unpack that and share what that means. So, let’s dive in. So, first off, 15-minute warning knock. I’m going to do a little screen share here. This will look familiar because I’m kind of just leaving or starting where I left off Episode 81. So, let me just do a quick share here so I get this going. And there we are.
Okay. So, this was kind of the image that we left off for the calendaring episode. Green means revenue producing, working in the business. Yellow is more working on the business, building it, team meetings, getting everybody aligned. Red is reserved for the weekends, which is off the business. So, if we come over here to a clean calendar, 15-minute warning knock. The first thing that I kind of shared in the last episode is really having set appointment times. So, let’s say in this example and, by the way, I recommend taking lunch instead of just grinding through it. I know a lot of advisors over the years just grind through lunch, which you can go through seasons of that but at the end of the day, you kind of need I’ve found like a little reset at lunch. Get out. Get some fresh air. Clear the head. So, I don’t recommend working through lunch.
So, on this calendar, basically, what I’m doing is this would be a four-appointment calendar. You’d have a 9 a.m. set time to meet, an 11 a.m., a 1 p.m., a 3 p.m., you’re out of the office by 5. And if we once again say we stack the appointments here and what we call this is preventing the Swiss cheese calendar. If you’re not sure what that means, go back to Episode 81. But basically, I’m just going to lay this out. This is an example calendar and what this would look like if you stacked appointments Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday that I’ve seen has been a common trend in most top-performing firms, this would mean you have 4 times 3, which is 12 appointment slots for the week. I found that to be that’s a pretty good number for a lot of offices.
There’s opportunity for Monday and Friday spillovers, but let’s just say this is the kind of standard calendar we’re trying to operate by. Now, another concept here, I’m just catching up a little bit is standardizing the appointment time. So, a first, a second, and a third tend to be a similar calendar block because it’s a lot easier for the team to stack Legos as opposed to one appointment is an hour, one appointment is an hour and a half, another one is two hours. Now, it’s just a mishmash. And if we do this, now what we can do is we say, let’s just say, you know, I’ve seen appointments run between one hour and two hours standard in our industry.
So, let’s just split the difference and say the standard appointment in this office is an hour and a half, which means we go here, right? We’re filling the first half of that hour. I’m going to share why this matters because we’re going to get to the 15-minute warning knock. So, let’s say we go ahead and just fill in this right here across the bottom. So, these time slots are now, switch back over here. These are now 90-minute time blocks here all the way down. So, now as we do that, we’ve systematized these time blocks and now this 15-minute warning knock, it is going to occur at the 75-minute mark. So, high level, here’s how it works. You’re in the conference room. You’re in a first. You’re in a second. They’re all 90 minutes.
And at the 75-minute mark, your receptionist, your Director of First Impressions, whoever runs the actual calendar is going to knock on the conference room door. They are going to peek their head in and they’re going to say, “Hey, Brad. So sorry to interrupt. Just wanted to give you a heads-up. You’ve got about 15 minutes left before we need to excuse you so you can help, so you can start preparing for your next appointment.” Very simple language there. Very easy to coach and teach. “Hey, Brad. So sorry to interrupt. I wanted to give you a 15-minute warning. You’ve got about 15 minutes left before I need to have you step out and excuse you so you can start prepping for your next appointment.” Shut the door. Leave. Come back 15 minutes later.
Now, here’s the first hack. These are in your conference room, not in your office, these appointments. The reason we do them in the conference room, you can be excused from a conference room. It’s hard to kick you out of your own office. So, now you’re excused from the conference room. What happens there when they come back in? “Hey, Brad. Where do we take the Smiths from here? What are the next steps with the Smiths?” And you’re then going to say, let’s say it’s a first, “Hey, yeah, looks like we were able to get through some opportunities where I believe we can help The Smiths. We need to book them to come in for a second visit.”
And Sally over here or whoever is coming to meet, she can handle that. So, she or he is bringing in the calendaring software. So, if that’s on an iPad, if that’s on a laptop, bringing that in, excusing you, kicking you out of the room. Now, they’re taking it from there. They’re booking them into the next meeting and life is golden. So, as we do this, here’s the first thing it does. Listen to that language and unpack that language. I need to excuse Brad so he can start preparing for the next appointment. So, ACE, here’s what that stands for. So, the first thing the 15-minute warning knock does, it builds ACE for you, Authority, Credibility, Exclusivity. I’m going to share another story and I’m going to switch colors here.
Let’s say you’re just, all of us can go back to when we first started out as an advisor. Unfortunately, our calendar did not look like the one below because it probably had a lot of empties. You weren’t just slammed with people to see. So, let’s say your calendar, I’m scribbling over with red here, let’s say it actually looks like this. That’s what we call the Swiss cheese calendar. There’s a lot of holes in it. So, let’s say the purple looking color I just colored over there, let’s say that is what your actual real calendar looks like. Well, here’s what I’ve seen tends to happen when you give an advisor an open calendar. It’s kind of like the gas in a room. It expands to fill the space.
So, if there’s not another appointment backing up, I’ve talked with advisors over the years, they’re running 3- and 4-hour appointments. Think about watching a 3 or a 4-hour movie. That has to be a hell of a movie to hold your attention for that long. And that’s Hollywood. They get paid to hold your attention. So, imagine 3 to 4 hours of talking through finance and just the capacity for another human to absorb all that information. From my experience, they don’t have it. So, anything that’s going over an hour to 90 minutes is probably going in one ear and out the other from my experience.
And I will tell you, I’ve been to a lot of conferences, when sessions go over an hour to an hour and a half, I’m in the audience and I’m tapped out. I need a break. I need a refresher. So, what we’re actually doing is saving you as an advisor from being your own worst enemy by kicking you out of the room and it’s keeping you on track. If your meeting is 90 minutes, it needs to be in 90 minutes. It needs to be systematized. That’s how you can replicate it and add multiple advisors to the team. The other thing, back to ACE, think about take yourself out of this business, and let’s just say you’re having health issues. Let’s say, unfortunately, it’s a hard issue.
You go to your general doctor like, “Wow. Yeah, you need to see a specialist. You need to see a heart surgeon because I think there’s some stuff going on.” So, of course, something as serious as that, you say, “Well, who’s the best?” And let’s say they refer you and they’re like, “You know what? This is urgent so I’m going to get you in.” And so, this doctor calls his friend that’s a very high-end heart surgeon, renowned, well-known, does great work, experienced, has ACE, has authority, has credibility, has exclusivity. You can’t just get on his calendar. So, he gets you in a week later.
Now, you sit down with this heart surgeon who how you arrived to that meeting was, “Wow. I kind of had to pull some strings to get in here.” And let’s say he sits down with you at 9, asks you how things are going, and the next thing you know, you look up and it’s noon or 1:00. You’ve been there 3 or 4 hours. You’re probably thinking one of two things, “Damn, I’m in a rough spot. I might not live if I’m meeting with this specialist for this long,” or two, and more likely, “Hm, I thought this guy was in high demand and I thought he had a lot of people to see. I’ve taken half of his day. Is that really the case?” You start to have these little questioning thoughts inside of your head. And I will tell you, anybody whose time is very important, they control it. Time is their most valuable asset.
And so, if you are there, what you will actually start to do if you extend into like 90 minutes plus, you will start to hurt your own credibility. You will start to hurt your own authority. You will start to hurt your own exclusivity. So, even though you think you’re there to serve and you’re going two, three, four hours, what you’re actually doing is hurting your own sales process. And they’re saying, “Hmm… Does anybody else need to see this person? Are they really in that high of demand? Do they really know what they’re talking about?” So, you’re hurting your ACE.
On the flip side of that, you’re scheduled at 90 minutes. You show up on time, right at 9:00. At the 75-minute mark, so in this case, at 10:15, there’s a knock on the door. “Hey, Brad. So sorry to interrupt. Just wanted to let you know I need to excuse you in 15 minutes so you can start prepping for your next appointment.” And then at the 15 at the 90-minute mark, you’re now excused and you’re on to the next. What is that prospect thinking now? “Wow. Brad’s structured. He was on time. He exited on time. I need to value his time because I do have limited time with him.” It completely changes the dynamic. So, that’s the first thing that is an absolute game changer. And this will actually increase your closing ratio in sales done properly.
Okay. Let’s move on to number two. Keeps you on time. I’ve kind of already hit all over this. But back to I’m going to rewind here. I missed one point on ACE. So, let’s say this is your real calendar, the purple looking thing here. So, by the way, if you’re listening to this on audio, I think you’re probably well aware by now, you should go watch this on YouTube. So, if you’re not on the YouTube channel, just search: Do Business Do Life Brad Johnson. It should pop up our channel and all of the interviews I’ve done in the past are there on video. So, you’ll want to watch this one, not listen to it, most likely. Okay. So, let’s say this is your real calendar. Three appointments for the whole week. Now, I do think being true and authentic and truthful is always key in business. So, that is my disclaimer here.
With that being said, this is a huge help if your calendar is not full of building credibility. If this is my calendar, I’m going to draw a box around it here. This 90 minutes here, this is my first appointment for the week. And now think about that verbiage, “I need to excuse you so you can prep for your next appointment.” Now, what they’re not saying is your next appointment isn’t until the next day, Wednesday afternoon. They’re just saying, “I need to go excuse you so you can prep for your next appointment.” So, what this will actually do is build that ACE, that authority, that exclusivity, that credibility, even when your calendar is not full. And it will protect you from yourself, which is really we say it all the time at Triad, “What brings them to you is what they expect from you.”
So, if you’re constantly doing three and four-hour appointments, guess what? You’re training your future clients to expect that. If you’re super structured and doing 90-minute appointments and then that’s now what they expect also going forward. So, you’re training and you’re building this expectation into your future client behavior and now you’re showing them your time is very valuable and they get 90 minutes when they come in for an appointment, even if you only have three appointments for the week. So, I wanted to tie that together. And from a straight psychology standpoint, they’re always hearing, “Wow, Brad’s in demand. There’s always somebody waiting to see him.” So, this also does help manufacture some of the authority, credibility, exclusivity.
Okay. Back to number two. Keeps you on time. The biggest. One of the things I’ve seen, especially with advisors that do appointments in their own office, you will have this expansion of time. And trust me, I’ve done enough coaching calls over the years. I’ve been guilty of this myself on coaching calls with others. “Hey, just one more thing.” You’re at the 90-minute mark. Your appointment time is over, but they’re extending into the next person’s appointment time with the “Oh, one more thing.” How this keeps you on time is you’re literally taking that control out of your hands. Your team is now managing that. They’re now shepherding you out of the room to keep you on time.
And if you look here, I’m going to do this in red, this time right here, that is buffer time between appointments. So, that’s a 90-minute meeting. Now, your 11:00, you’re out of that first meeting at 10:30. Your next appointment does not start until 11. So, now you can go use the restroom. You can go do a mobile assistant and dictate notes. You can go to circle with the team, shoot off a quick email for next steps on the planning side. You can grab, this is revolutionary, you can grab and review the notes for your upcoming appointments so you’re prepared before you roll in there. So, it’s a beautiful thing when you really start to incorporate these systems and it will really help protect you from yourself.
So, you’ve got a little 30-minute buffer. A lot of offices I’ve worked with in the past, they’re like, “Hey, 15-minute buffer is good.” The nice thing here, a lot of the firms I work with will have a startup routine. Maybe you get to the office at 8, so you’ve got an hour to kind of get the coffee, get set up, return some emails. You can also have a shutdown, which here we’ve got 30 minutes at the end of the day, so you can kind of get things closed up, power down before you head home and call it a day. So, that’s a beautiful thing. And you’re taking the control out of your hands because your team is the one handling this, “Hey, I want to excuse you from the room.”
Actually, real life story. I had a firm. Greg, if you’re listening to this, I remember you sharing this story with me. They incorporated this 15-minute warning knock, and his team member came in and said, “Hey, you know, Greg, need to excuse you so you can get to your next appointment. Where do we need to take it from here with the Smiths?” Before Greg could even talk, the advisor, the Smiths go, “What do we need to do to move forward? We’re ready to engage you guys and move forward as a client.” So, they literally closed themselves. And so, what you’ll start to see is some of this framing will work really, really well when it comes to structuring and next steps as they progress from the prospect to the client journey.
Okay. Last one. Number three. The last 15 is the best 15. And I kind of teased it already with, “Hey, where do we take it from here?” But okay, back to the 15-minute warning knock. You’re at the 75-minute mark. Put yourself in the prospect’s shoes. They’re sitting. They’re hearing the same conversation you are. “Hey, so sorry, Brad, to interrupt. You’ve got about 15 minutes to be wrapping up, and then we need to excuse you so you can prepare for your next appointment.” They’re hearing that also. Think about how human psychology works when you’re like, “Oh, 15 minutes left.” Immediately, it’s like, “Oh, well we haven’t gotten to this thing and it’s really important.”
So, let’s say this is a first-appointment fact finder. “Hey, I know we’ve talked about fees. I know we’ve talked about income during retirement. But one of the big things we were curious about, you know, from your radio show, your TV show, from the educational experience we heard you talk about, we haven’t even gotten to taxes yet. That’s our top priority. That’s one of the number one reasons we came in to see you. We think we have a big tax problem. We want to make sure to dive into that.” So, consistently, one of the things I’ve heard over the years is the last 15 is the best 15 because the biggest pain points, the biggest hot buttons, it’s almost like this one needs to go to the top of the list. It’s going to come up in that 15 minutes because you’ve now framed it where there’s only 15 minutes left. They know the clock is ticking.
So, that creates an urgency factor where now the most important stuff is going to come out and get to the top of the list. So, that, when I’ve heard, is it’s almost like a prioritization when it comes to pain points or problems you’re trying to solve as a financial advisor, it actually really quickly helps you figure out what’s most important to them. And as an advisor, what better way than to know the most important problem that they need to solve that’s going to help give them peace of mind in retirement. So, that is the quick and simple. This episode went on a little bit longer than I was thinking because I expanded on a few thoughts, told a few more stories. But if you haven’t listened to Episode 81, make sure you go back because these two really tie in together. You can’t really do the 15-minute warning knock without kind of a calendar structure to go around it.
But this is kind of an extension of that conversation, part two. So, I hope it serves you all. I know it’s been a game changer for a lot of offices I’ve coached over the years. And, yeah, let me know how it goes in the comments. If there’s something below, primarily on YouTube I know is where most of you leave comments on the video. So, if there there’s questions, I do read the comments. I’m happy to jump in there. If there’s something similar you’ve tried or a different twist on this idea, I love to hear that as well. And other than that, I hope this brought value to you, and I’ll catch you on the next solo episode. We’ll see you guys later. Take care.
