The Mindset Shift from Busy Advisor to Focused Advisor

Travel advisors need to learn how to escape the busy trap, Jackie Friedman, president of Nexion Travel Group, told a packed room at last month’s Travel Market Place in Vancouver, Canada.

Being busy isn’t the same as being productive, and, in fact, gets in the way of business success.

To escape the busy trap requires a mind shift that focuses on thoughtful, strategic planning.

“You guys wear so many hats…,” Friedman said. From managing their agency and keeping the books balanced to selling travel and doing social media marketing, advisors have a lot of going on. Add to that being a slave to email, and there’s less and less time in a day to get ahead of the business.

“You spend more time reacting and less time leading,” she added. “That pressure to do it all can really become overwhelming.”

When advisors spend most of their time reacting, they end up wasting time on activities that don’t have a lot of (or any) actual impact on business growth.

“Success comes from doing what matter most,” Friedman said.

To get away from the busy trap and shift their mindset away from reactive tasks to business-building activity, Friedman said advisors need to start being more conscious about their decision making, and that starts with planning.

Wheel of Focus

Friedman said the first step is to look at what she calls the Wheel of Focus, which she compares to early education’s three Rs (reading, writing, and arithmetic), which are the building blocks of early learning. So, too, is the Wheel of Focus the building blocks of business growth, she said.

The Wheel of Focus comprises, results, relationships, and recharging.

“All three of those are equally as important,” Friedman said.

Wheel of Focus – Results

Referring to the 80/20 rule, which stipulates that 80% of sales typically come from 20% of clients, Friedman extended it to include the supposition that only about 20% of an advisors’ daily tasks are driving 80% of the results they’re looking for in business.

“Is that where you should prioritize your attention? Absolutely,” she said.

Wheel of Focus – Relationships

Next on the wheel are relationships, whether that’s with clients, supplier partners, or business peers.

Friedman called these relationships an advisor’s “greatest asset,” and said keeping them healthy is a key part of business growth.

“You want to make sure that you’re nurturing those relationships,” she said.

Advisors should ensure that at some point during every day (or every week at the very least), that are taking the time to reach out and make those most important clients feel important and valued.

Time should also be given to reaching out to supplier partners. Make sure the local BDMs for the suppliers you ae selling or want to be selling know you.

“Reach out to them. Let them know that you’d love to sit down with them. Schedule some time to really figure out how you can grow your mutual business together.”

Finally, advisors should be making time to network with peers. This can include other advisors or other business leaders in your local community.

Wheel of Focus – Recharge

Perhaps the most ignored part of the Wheel of Focus is the piece that requires people to look inward, find time for themselves, and recharge.

“If you’re burnt out, tired, and exhausted, are you any good to anybody?” Friedman asked. “As you look at prioritizing, don’t forget those moments that are oh-so-important where you can recharge.”

Busy Advisor vs. Focused Advisor

Friedman offered a comparison of two advisors, one who is busy working hard in their business, the other also working hard, but in a way that’s intentional and focused on their business.

For instance, the busy advisor starts their day with their inbox, immediately reading and responding to their email. The focused advisor starts their day with intention.

“They prioritize those things that are going to have the greatest impact on their business,” she said. “They make sure, that if they do nothing else, that these things are going to get done today because they are important.”

The busy advisor tries to serve everyone who comes their way, while the focused advisor serves their ideal client – even if that means saying no sometimes.

“You might not know the word no,” Friedman said, adding that it can be “very empowering when its used in the right way, because the reality is that sometimes no is the appropriate response.”

The busy advisor multitasks throughout the day, jumping from one task to another, then back again. The focused advisor has learned how to batch similar tasks, like posting on social media, answering emails, or invoicing. When possible, the focused advisor even automates (or delegates) some of these tasks so as not to be repeating the same tasking manually over and over again.

Most importantly, the focused advisor knows the difference between working on the business and working in the business and ensures that they’re working on the business at least once a week. As a result of this intentionality, the focused advisor, Friedman said, feels that they run the business, rather than the business running them, often ragged.  

Tips to Shift Your Mindset from Busy to Focused

1. Start Your Day with a 3-3-3- Daily Focus Framework

When setting your daily schedule, Friedman said it’s important to keep the three R’s in mind, starting with results.

Make sure, she said, to have three results-driven, revenue-driving tasks on your daily schedule. Things like sending out trip proposals or follow-ups, making phone calls to close sales, etc.

“These three tasks, when done, will result in business. Will result in revenue,” Friedman explained.

Also, on each day’s agenda should be three relationship-focused tasks. Things like picking up the phone and calling a customer you haven’t talked to in a while, having lunch or a Zoom meeting with a supplier BDM, or attending a local Chamber of Commerce networking meeting, all count as relationship tasks.

The final three tasks should fall into the recharge category and can be as simple as taking a coffee break between other tasks or going for a quick walk or playing with your pet.

“Whatever it is, something that will recharge you and help you find the balance,” Freidman said.

2. Adopt the 10-Minute Rule for an Overdue Task

When looking at your daily task list, especially later in the day or looking back the next day, find the overdue tasks and ask yourself, “Is this something I can do in 10 minutes or less?”

If the answer is yes, do it right away. If the answer is no, you need to decide how important the task is. If it’s important, add it to your task list for that day or later in the week and commit to doing it. Alternatively, if it’s something that’s not actually that important, ask yourself if you can delegate it or just skip it all together.

3. Batch Similar Tasks

Rather than multi-tasking and flipping back and forth between disparate tasks, batching similar tasks can speed up efficiencies.

Examples of batching similar tasks include only checking email at specified times a day or picking two times a day to focus only on putting together and sending out quotes.

“You may even want to schedule certain days of the week for certain types of tasks,” Friedman said, like making a two-hour time slot on Mondays the only time you work on administrative tasks. Or perhaps on Fridays, you batch and schedule all your social media posts for the next week.

4. Use the “Delegate or Delete” Test

This tip brings the three R’s of focus back into play. For each task on your to-do list, ask yourself: Does this grow my business? Does this deepen a relationship? Does this energize me?

If the answer to one of these is yes, do it. If the answer is no to all three, seriously consider delegating it to someone else (like a virtual assistant or even AI) or simply deleting it. It may not be as important as you think.

5. Adopt the “One Touch Rule” for Email

Letting emails pile up can be distracting for anyone. Knowing that there are 10 or 15 or 20 emails waiting for you to take action on is stressful. Instead of letting them pile up, act on each email as you open it. (Even if you’re batching email reading, following this guideline can help.)

Acting on an email might be as simple as deleting it. Or it can be flagging the email, which might be full of useful information that you don’t need at that exact moment, to be read and processed at a later time (maybe you’ve designated a two-hour window on a Tuesday for education). If you’ve got other people working for you, acting on an email might mean assigning it to someone else to respond to. If it’s an easy email to answer and can be done quickly, answer it. It could also mean assigning it as part of a larger task you have set up, like putting together multiple quotes on a Wednesday afternoon.

6. Automate at Least One Task a Month

Are there tasks that you do over and over again throughout the week or month? If yes, are there ways to automate them? For instance, is there a program you can use that will automatically send out a happy birthday note or trip anniversary email? Can you set up a new client welcome email sequence that automatically gets triggered when you book a new client? Can you set up an automatic review request email?

For each task that you tend to have to repeat, look for ways to automate it. That might mean reaching out to your Host agency or consortia to see what tools they offer. It might mean asking AI to help you.

Ultimately, the more you can automate, the more time you have to work on the business-building tasks that will help drive your business.

7. Identify Your Top 20% Clients

Knowing who your customer base is goes a long way to understanding how to grow your business and which relationships to nurture. Find a simple metric or metrics that works for you – revenue, referral activity, responsiveness, joy of working with – and determine which clients are your top 20%.

Once you’ve done that, create a system to provide them with VIP touches. That might be a loyalty perk, allowing them to jump the proposal queue, or simply sending a hand-written card telling them you appreciate their business.

8. Commit to a Weekly CEO Hour

Circling back to the idea of working on your business, Friedman said advisors need to put aside time outside of the daily grind to think about the business and what comes next. These periods of time should be put on your schedule and not left up to chance.

Tasks typically associated with working on your business include goal setting, analyzing your revenue and sources of revenue, reviewing your business pipeline, checking which tasks delivered quantifiable results, and intentionally planning out the next week’s tasks.

9. Honor Your Boundaries

Busy advisors are often frazzled. They don’t know when or how to say no. They let work bleed into their down time. Part of the mindshift away from busy to focused is knowing what boundaries to put in place and then sticking with them, Friedman said.

If you work from home, pick a daily end time. Set expectations with clients upfront. Let them know that it can take up to X number of hours to reply to an email (generally within 24 hours).