Dave Lorenzo (00:00):
You want to get more done in less time? We've got the solution for you today on this edition of the Inside BSS Show. Hey, now I'm Dave Lorenzo. I'm the godfather of growth and I'm here today with my partner Nicki G.. Hey, Nico. Nicola, how are you? Hey,
Nicola Gelormino (00:17):
Dave. Fantastic. How are you?
Dave Lorenzo (00:19):
Good. Well, there's a saying that goes, if you want something done, ask a busy person. So I'm going to ask you how you get everything that you do done. Today, we're talking productivity for entrepreneurs. That's what this show is all about. So Nicola, you do a thousand things a week, you get it all in there. You have the same amount of hours as everybody else, but you remain physically fit. You're in excellent shape. You are the picture of health. So you eat well, and you also do a shit ton of legal work, and you work with me in our entrepreneurial venture and you're part of the University of Miami Citizens Board, which is a volunteer organization, which requires time. You are the partner with me, you're a partner with me, you're the group leader associate for Miami three, which is the largest networking group in provisors. You're the group leader for the attorney Affinity Group for Florida, which is another time sock. You are a wife and a mom, and I mean, you got other shit that I don't even know about that happens. So how do you get it all done? Tell the people what's your secret?
Nicola Gelormino (01:37):
We'll use this week as a good example. This was a really busy week, and a lot of those things you already mentioned were actually captured just inside of this week. A lot of those things that you already mentioned were captured. So I had Canada interviews for another group that we were assisting with on their growth in the advisors organization. We had those together. I had interviews for the business. We're building together with you. I had two presentations, one for the opening meeting, the national launch meeting of the Florida Lawyers Affinity Group for advisors. I had 59 people on that meeting. That was a lot of prep work to make sure that we
Dave Lorenzo (02:13):
Had, Hey, congratulations, Mickey G.
Nicola Gelormino (02:15):
Yay, thank you. But there's a lot of work that went into that, and even that day of, there's still a lot of prep. We had our kickoff meeting for the citizens board at the University of Miami this year. I mean, that's our signature annual event, a you have to go if you are a Citizens board member. That was a big event, the lunch and spot this week. What else did I have? I had court hearings this week. I have a case that is set for trial and a few weeks from now. So every week is a ton of trial work. So how am I getting through all of this? Here's how I'm getting through all of this. It's focusing on those basics that I've spoken about before. So it is one, making sure I am as efficient as I can be every time I'm sitting down to do something.
(02:52):
So I know exactly what my calendar is ahead of time. I've looked at it for that week and I know exactly how I'm going to approach it, and I'm going to be as efficient as possible, minimize my distractions to get through each day. I'm also going to make sure that I am prepping ahead of time, especially if it's a really busy week. I'm doing some more prep on Saturdays and Sundays. So with those presentations, I did a lot of work for the presentations Saturday, Sunday, I get most of that legwork done. So you're just polishing when the week comes around and you don't have the time to do that anymore. So I knew I would not have that time during the week to get those done. So I did that ahead of time during the week. I'm making sure that I'm resting. That is big because if you are not well rested, you're not going to perform well, and I just couldn't afford to have that happen with any aspect of this week.
(03:38):
So I made sure that I got my work done, had a hard cutoff so that I wasn't staying up super late and getting my rest and the days I could wake up and get my exercise in. I did that because again, that's prioritizing the things that are important for you, that helps me function better, that helps me be more productive and then helps me also have a good mindset to approach the week and continue with that energy to get the whole way through it. So those are all the things that I would say the high points as to what I'm focusing on to be able to get through a week like I just did. And you know what? Today I feel great, and here we are and we're doing our recordings.
Dave Lorenzo (04:12):
Second conversation that happened this week, a friend of a really good friend of ours said to me, I'm going to be out of town and I have a bunch of interviews scheduled. This is last week, a bunch of interviews scheduled for my group in Provisor, and the people who are interviewing don't know how to describe the provisor value proposition. Well, would you be willing to help out? And I said, sure. And then I roped you into it too, in case I couldn't make some of those, but it turned out to be like five interviews. So it's five half hour interviews on Zoom when I got to be in front of my camera and each of those interviews, if the interviews are a half hour, then you have follow up after the interview. So arguably another five hours worth of time that I wasn't planning on spending, so that's eight hours.
(04:56):
That's a full for a normal human, that's a full workday of unplanned time. Here's how I adjusted to that from a productivity standpoint. What I did was instead of getting up at 5 15, 3 days this week, I got up at four 30 and I could do an extra hour's worth of work from four 30 to 5 15, 5 30 when normally I would get up at five 15, I would spend 15 minutes drinking coffee, adjusting to my world. I get up at four 30 and I'm off to the races. I got 20 minutes of meditation and then I'm off to the races. I mean, that's what I did. I got up an hour earlier every day, the days I drove the kids to school from four 30 to five 30, I worked five 30 to six 30, walk the dogs six 30 to 6 45, gave the kids breakfast, and then we're in the car and I'm back at the house at eight 15 to do whatever it is I got to do. I mean, it's like there was one day you called me, it was like one o'clock in the afternoon, and I'm like, listen, I'll call you right back. I got 15 minutes to take a shower. I haven't showered yet today. It's true. It's chaos. It's organized chaos.
(06:07):
And the way to get through all of this, if you're listening to this today and you're like, all right, Dave, what's the solution? The solution is saying fricking no, saying no to the things you can't do. And it's not your friend's stuff, it's your work stuff. It's the work stuff. What are some of the things that you have said no to Nicola or that you're going to start saying no to?
Nicola Gelormino (06:32):
I have already started saying no to a lot of one-on-one meetings, and I just politely tell professionals, look, and I mean for networking purposes and relationship building, and I've just been telling 'em, look, I have a very, very tight schedule right now with this case effort trial and the other things that I have going on. I'm not across the board, I'm just, I'm not. I'm pausing rather on one-on-one meetings, but please, I'd love to connect with you once I get through that period. So be patient with me. Let me go out a few weeks and then I'll come back to you and we'll get together. But I just can't take those on right now. I've also limited if I'm being asked to speak, let look. I also have to be mindful of what I've got going on professionally. I have a lot of hearings on my calendar, a lot of depositions, so I have to look out for those.
(07:16):
And if there's any potential conflict, I just say, look, I can't do this peak engagement now, and I'd love to do one in the future. I haven't had to fortunately turn too many of those down, but I am saying no, and that's important. You've got to do that. I need to say no maybe to a little bit more of some of these engagements. The speaking engagements are a little tough because your calendar tends to fill up so quick, and it's not just the time that you're presenting, but it's the prep time and then it's the attendance time, and then oftentimes there's follow up when you're a speaker, people are going to email you and you have to respond to those emails. And I had, my inbox was full from the events I was at this week and the speaking engagements, and I can't ignore those, so I'm a little behind in responding to them, but you better believe I'm responding to all of them. So saying no to at least one of those engagements could have pulled back on some of this crazy week in terms of what was going on.
Dave Lorenzo (08:10):
I was listening to Alex Her's podcast and he said something that has changed. It was one of those things that just hits you in the mouth and just changed my thinking. What he said was, if somebody emails you or they call you and leave you a voicemail or they send you a text, that is a request for a response. It is not a guarantee of a response. And I thought about that for two days because I feel obligated to respond to everybody that emails me. That leaves me a voicemail and that sends me a text. But I listened to it like four times because the guy who was interviewing him, he drilled down a little bit and what he said was in the follow-up, he said, look, if it's your best friend, then you call him back. If it's somebody at work and it's an issue that has to be addressed immediately, you call him back or you text him back.
(09:13):
He said, if it's somebody who you don't have a relationship with or somebody, he said from a speaking and somebody emails me from a speaking engagement, I don't owe that person anything. I don't owe them a response. I don't owe them any follow-up. And he said, if they decide that they're not going to do business with me because they were one of 300 people in an audience, and they email me and they don't have the presence of mind or the professional sense to understand that half of the people in the audience are emailing me. He said, I don't want to work with them. He's like, think about it for a minute. I'm speaking to an audience of 300 people and if 150 people are sending me emails and they all expect a response, it's not physically possible. So you and I are in a more intimate situation.
(10:08):
Provisor is this community of people that is very collegial, and you and I are both people who pride ourselves on our responsiveness, but we have a high profile in the organization, and I get 15 emails a week from people in pro advisors who want advice from me and who want to do one-on-ones with me. If I did a one-on-one with all 15 of them and it was only 30 minutes, that's a full day. That's eight hours. Can't do it, cannot do it. Even just responding to those 15 emails, each email takes five minutes to write. That's an hour and a half of my time just responding to those 15 emails. So what I started doing, I heard this two weeks ago on the podcast, and honestly, I started ignoring those requests. I just started ignoring them. The people who I know because I shook hands with them at a breakfast or I was in a breakout room with them on Zoom.
(11:06):
Those people, I just respond, I would love to, but the next three weeks are crazy. I just don't have time. Reach out to me in October. If they remember and they reach out to me in October, I'll make my best effort to connect with them. The other thing I've done, which is fantastic, and for people who are like, for example, people who are in our group in provisors, those people are my priority. So I try to call 'em back the same day. If I know my week is busy and I can't call 'em back the same day, I'll say, can I call you on Saturday? And then they don't respond, and somehow the issue magically resolves itself. I like that. So I was responsive. Can I call you after? This is another one, Nicola, try this one too. Can I call you after hours? One out of five people will say yes, and then I do call 'em. I'm fine.
(12:02):
My kids are of an age now where they're doing their homework until like eight or nine o'clock at night. If I have to call somebody at seven thirty eight, no problem. I'll talk to 'em at 7 30, 8 o'clock while my kids are doing homework, they're not hanging out with me. So I'm okay with doing the after hours thing, but what do you think about, I'm curious as to your thought process. You can tell people, don't call me, but then you're a jerk. But if you're in a speaking engagement and somebody calls you and they're not a lead, they're just somebody who wants to pick your brain, and we get a lot of that in improvisors too. I want to pick your brain about how to make the most out of Provisor. What do you think about the whole, I don't know you, I'm just going to ignore you.
Nicola Gelormino (12:44):
That wouldn't have been my first reaction because I am someone who again, prides herself in responsiveness. But there's something to be said about that. I'm really thinking about this one hard because especially when your profile raises, you're going to get exponentially more reach out and emails, and you're right, we can't take the time to respond to all of them. Would we like to? Yes. I would like to say that I'd love to meet with all these people one-on-one that I'd love to respond to every one of those emails, but it's becoming to the point where I can't, even now I'm thinking about there's one, it's now a delayed response because I've just got too much going on. And I think that we ought to understand that as professionals about each other. That does not mean there are people who will walk away and not seem offended by it. But I think there is some good advice there from the person you identified, which is, if that person is offended, I simply didn't respond to an email that I didn't expect to receive, then what does that mean for the potential relationship with that person? Do I want to associate with that person?
Dave Lorenzo (13:56):
Well, and the expectations are the thing that makes it tough. Nobody speaks in front of, you're starting to speak in front of more people now, but I speak in front of a lot of people and there are a lot of people who now that we're on YouTube and we're doing this, more people listen to the show and they feel like they have a relationship with you, and then they see you at breakfast and they're a banker and they come up to you and they say, I heard your show. I've seen this happen with you. I've heard your show. You're so professional and you seem to be doing so well. I want to ask you a few questions. Can I spend some time with you? What they're doing? Let's be candid about it. What they're doing is unfair. They're asking you to invest your time to make them more successful, and they're viewing you as a public service because you are doing a podcast for them.
(14:53):
So they see me speak and they see me in front of a room and they see me giving advice from the front of the room. Somebody's paying me to do that, but they're not thinking that I'm getting paid to do that. They then have a specific issue that they want to ask outside the context of the speaking engagement, and they think that I have an obligation to connect with them, and this is a particularly tough situation in the context of the provisors community. They see me speak at a group launch event in, and everybody wants to connect with me and pick my brain for the secrets to being successful in improvisors. Well, I speak to 200 people a month as a profession. I do a podcast where I get leads that I have to qualify that come in every week. I have 56 members of a networking group who when they have a referral to pass, they call me. And that's really important, but it doesn't benefit me in any way, but that's an obligation that I have that I have to respond to. So I think, honestly, Nicole, in that case, ignoring the email is the way to go. I mean, there's no good answer. There's no
Nicola Gelormino (16:09):
Good answer. I think I'm leaning that way too, is just not responding to it. It's such an unfair ask. It really is. You don't know somebody. It's imposition an ask, and you know what it takes to get those people together. You're making a request of someone you don't have a relationship with. Don't do that. It puts us in a bad position to have to respond to that, but it's not a good practice. As a professional, you know what you're doing when you're asking someone to take the time out of their schedule to do that.
Dave Lorenzo (16:38):
Awful. I got 50 people who asked me for this, and I got a whole life.
Nicola Gelormino (16:44):
You have an actual day job, don't have
Dave Lorenzo (16:46):
Time. And there's no way to say that to somebody like this who's not going to be offended. This guy, if I tell him, no, I can't do it, I don't have time. He's going to be like, well, if the Pope was coming to town, he might be friends with somebody I'm friends with in Chicago who comes to town and who I get five people together and we go to breakfast together so that I can introduce him to the five people, and then he's going to really be offended. Oh, you did it for Steve, but you're not going to do it for me because I'm friends with Steve. He's my friend. I don't know you. It's just one of those things. I think we got to get rid of the guilt and be protective. The thing about time is if somebody came running into my house and I was sitting on my couch watching TV, and somebody opened the door to my house, walked into my kitchen, took something to eat, and then walked upstairs to my dresser where my wallet is, took my wallet, took my money out of my wallet, took my credit cards out of my wallet, came back down, went back to the fridge, got something else to eat, and then walked out the front door.
(17:54):
They wouldn't get in the door. I would be hitting 'em with a baseball bat. I wouldn't let them steal food or money from me. I would not let them into my house to steal my food or my money. Yet I let them steal the very thing that enables me to provide the food and to make the money, which is my time. If I say yes to this guy, I'm letting him come in my house, take my food and take my money. That's what I'm doing.
Nicola Gelormino (18:22):
I'm thinking two ways to respond, one to not respond, or two, there's also a regional director down here as part of Provisor who could help get those people together. Maybe there's an event going on. Maybe that person actually be a better person to coordinate getting people together than you. But the bottom line for me is we need to just keep saying no more because we have business goals right now. We are driving business together and we need to be able to focus on it. And the more things we say yes to, it is taking time away from that. And you and I said it in a prior episode, you got to say no, and you and I need to say no more to, and yes, this is a small community which makes this one hard. It's a small community. It's not a speaking engagement where there's 300 people.
(19:02):
It's outside of the organization. We have to continue to interact with these people inside of this community. That's why I think we're having a more detailed discussion about this particular instance because we know that there will be some discussion about that. Somewhere down the road, that person will bump to someone that knows you. And his only interaction with you was, Hey, Dave, want to put this vent together for me? So I think that's why we're exploring this one more because we do think that it won't end there, like a one-off speaking engagement might, but the bottom line is we need to say no.
Dave Lorenzo (19:30):
Well, so here's what I've done, and you saw part of this week. So I sent an email to the people who are leaders in our Provisor group, and I told them, I'm stopping all this other stuff. These are the only things I'm doing in provisors, and basically putting them on notice. Don't ask me for other stuff because I'm not doing it. Now, I run a high net worth networking group, so anybody who wants to spend time with me can come to that and they can see me there and they can connect with me there, ask me questions there in front of the group in a professional setting. That's a free way to pick my brain. Okay? There's a second free way to pick my brain. I do a breakfast every month on the third Friday of the month, and I do an educational talk at the breakfast.
(20:16):
If you have a question and you can wrangle me aside, you can ask me that question. I'll answer your question in about a minute, and then I got to move on to the next person. But that's another way you can get me because I'm there and I'm accessible in that setting. But outside of those two areas, I really can't invest any kind of time because I just have too much going on. And this goes back to clarity of purpose, and we could probably do a whole show on this. My clarity of purpose right now in my work life is to get exit success lab off the ground and producing revenue as quickly as possible. And you and I have a revenue goal of producing at least a hundred thousand dollars a month by July 30th of next year. That's my clarity of purpose. This is a hundred million dollars business, easily a hundred million dollars business, and the first step is to get to a hundred thousand dollars a month by July 30th, 2024.
(21:28):
The only way I can do that is if I am a savage and eliminate everything else. That is not that. So the more this is a show between you and me, I don't care if anybody else listens to. So if those of you who are listening, if you hung in there this far gold star for you, because this is a show that I'm going to listen to over and over again because this is the way I'm going to remind myself maybe I'm just going to start doing these shows for us. I'm going to remind myself, do not respond to these unsolicited bullshit requests. Don't do it anymore. You can't do it. You just can't fricking do it. We can't. Can't do it, Nicole. We can't do it. No, you have to respond to the court. You have to respond to the people on the other side. You have to respond to all kinds of things in your personal life. That's got to be your priority. Your personal life has to be your priority. Alright folks, thanks for listening. If you like this show, send it to somebody else, but this is probably not the one that you want to send around because nobody's ever going to call us after this. We'll see you tomorrow. Take care.

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The Productivity Episide (Completed 09/24/23)
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