Scott Fitzpatrick:
Hi, everyone, what I want to talk now is around functionality. And in particular, this concept of Black activity, you would have heard through our podcasts, Paul Crane, talking about setting up functionality in your business, around red, blue and black, red being administration, blue being getting the work in and getting the work out, and black being the future thinking or creating the future revenue for the business. So in particular, I just want to talk about what Black activities are. So for me, it’s thinking about future services for clients, multi-family office, intergenerational wealth concepts, future pricing strategies, future relationships that I would like to develop. Typically, for me, my Black times, my Fridays, I like to have time out of my diary to sit there generally with a blank sheet of paper and think about what am I doing? Where am I going? What’s the next phase of the business for me, most professionals get caught up in the red and the blue and spent a lot of time just doing the work in, work out, without a lot of thought about the Black. For me, the Black seems valuable.
And I know it’s worth thousands of dollars to get this right. And to spend time on it. Black’s not just going to lunch a lot, it’s around a whole bunch of different activities. I want to just walk you through my activity schedule. So this is just, the activities are used to generate new business. It’s not future concepts. It’s just my activity that I try to schedule throughout the year. Typically for me, I use this on a Sunday night to have a look at my month or couple of weeks in advance. What have I got in the following way to make sure I’m keeping my activities up? I’ll just read this through with you. So activity one, is around my Centers of Influence. Am I catching up with my accountants, my legal, my independent directors, finance, business coaches, and my good clients? And I’ll come back to those. Am I maintaining my network and keeping myself in front of these people, letting them understand new concepts that are coming out new learnings? Am I learning from them? Is a really great piece around education in here.
So inside the business, obviously we’ve got our newsletters, there’s breakfast, there’s connectors, is it annual review documents, is our asset protection issues, estate planning, and there’s lots of emails. So, next activity one, which some of us do well, some of us could do a lot more. Worth having a look at. Activity court two is my bold calls. I love that term. It’s not a cold call. It’s a bold call and it could be I’ve picked up a new client. And what I love to do is find out who their other professionals are. So if they had an accountant, new accountant, I would love that bold call to pick up the account and say, Hey, John Scott Fitzpatrick here, I see we’re both working for a mutual client. I’m always screening other professionals for suitability. Have you got time for a coffee catch-up? You might be what we’re looking for some of our other clients. I’ve never had anyone say no to having that coffee catch-up and that can be the start of possibly a new distribution relationship. It’s worth making the bold call.
The other one is around activity three, is around people I know. I know people around town, I know business owners around town, I know different people who influence around town and it’s always worth a coffee catch-up and that conversation goes, I’d love to catch up for coffee and chew the fat with you and a little bit, what were you doing? What you’re up to? I keep hearing good things about your business or I think things are changing around your business. I’d love to know more. It’s a coffee catch-up, it’s not there to sell anything to anyone. It’s a coffee catch up to be able to introduce what we do, see where they’re up to as a business. Quite often, that might not end up in a work for me, but it might end up with, you know what, I don’t need you today, but jeez, I’d love to introduce you to my friend, Bill Smith down the road. It’s an activity to get involved in each week. Activities Three is events I go to, I’m always very selective about what events I go to, whether it’s sports lunches, wine nights, business breakfast, et cetera. I do go to them. I’m just quite selective about being there. I don’t want it to be what I call a spray and pray, spray something out and pray someone rings you. I’d rather be much more focused. Activity four, which is the really interesting one, which is my good clients peer group. There’s a lot of research now that your higher net worth clients, business clients trust their peer group possibly more than their other professionals or as well as their other professionals. So quite often, I like to create our opportunities with my best clients to be introduced to the peer group.
If I’m sitting with a client and they’re really happy with what we’re doing for them, and they keep talking about their mate, John who works in Brisbane in a large concrete factory business, I would go, you know what that guy sounds really interesting? Would you mind introducing me to him one day and they’ll go, Sure. And the next question is the most important one. It’s how would you do that? Would it be by phone, email or a coffee catch-up and then shut up. It’s a great way to make new people from your existing peer group.
And then the last one, Activity Five. I like to create intriguing events, I would say intriguing, but events that people aren’t going to get somewhere else. So I love the whole concept of a wine night. We have a master of wine coming in, there’s only 300 of these people in the world, come in and talk about wine. It’s not there to talk about business. So I create events for clients or distribution to bring their best friends, to bring their peer group in for a night. Normally outside of our business venue, and sure we talk about business for about one minute, hi we’re Fitzpatrick’s, it’s great to have you here. Hope you enjoy the night. And throughout the course of the night, while I’m going to have an introduction, when I have a glass of wine, possibly at the right time or say, Hey, thanks a lot for coming along. Love to catch up with you for coffee one day and I’ll leave it at that. It’s just a great way to meet new people.
There’s that beautiful phrase about what’s the difference between your business this year and last year? The difference is the people you’ve met. So, the trick is to keep meeting, keep creating events, to meet the right people. Just as a summary. This is just one activity sheet that I used to keep me on track in my diary to ensure I’m doing the appropriate activity to meet the right people that falls into red, blue, black. It’s part of my Black activity which should be at least 20% of your week, at least one day a week in this type of activity.
