We’ll say things like, “oh man, there’s just so much going on. I’m so busy. I’m just busy, busy, busy every day.” When you’re saying that sort of thing, it’s a strong indication that you’ve got a bunch of unfinished business. You’ve got open loops, and maybe you’re not capturing it.
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David: Hi, and welcome back. In today’s episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I will be discussing the topic of no more unfinished business. Welcome back, Kevin.
Kevin: Good to see you, David. How you been?
David: Been doing great. And you?
Kevin: Good, good. So unfinished business. What do you mean when you say that?
David: Well, I learned this somewhere, a number of years ago, and when I first heard, I was like, “oh man, this is me.”
They were talking about the fact that in business there are starters and there are finishers. And very often they’re not the same person. Right? There are some people who are very good at starting projects and other people who are very good at finishing them. A lot of entrepreneurs, and some salespeople as well, are very good at starting projects.
We’re all excited and we’re very happy to dive in, and then we tend to lose interest as we go.
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
David: And what that creates is a lot of unfinished things all around. And when you’ve got these unfinished things, they weigh on you. Right?
And so when I talk about the idea of no more unfinished business, what I’m saying is that we should look at the things that are out there, that are stuck in the back of our minds. It’s like, “I know I need to do that. I know I need to finish it. I haven’t done it yet, but I don’t feel like it,” or whatever it is that’s keeping us from getting it done.
Kevin: Is it possible that you need to look at it and say were these things really that important in the first place?
David: That’s a great way to approach it. Right? Because there are things you just say, you know what? I started that, but no, that’s not worthwhile.
Kevin: There’s a reason I didn’t finish it. Yeah.
David: Exactly. And it’s good to eliminate that sort of thing. Whenever you’re able to do that. If there’s something that you’re working on, you decide, look, this is not generating the results I’m looking for.
Yes. Just make sure that you don’t cancel it because you don’t feel like doing it, right? You got to cancel it for the right reasons. If you’re going to eliminate it, make sure that you evaluated it first.
One of the things that I’ve talked about a lot in terms of just the things that we do in our projects is looking at things, I refer to it as the RADD method, RADD.
It stands for Remove, Automate, Delegate, or Do. Okay, so we start with the R. Remove.
And there’s a reason these are actually in this order, which I’d nearly forgotten. But the reason is that if you do it in this order, you’re going to end up a lot better off. If you start by removing the things that don’t have to be done, then wow, that’s a big relief.
You’re able to, essentially,
Kevin: Your list just got smaller. Yeah, yeah.
David: Yeah. You just eliminate it before it even becomes a problem, so that’s the first step. You basically remove it.
Second step is if you can automate it, right? If it’s something that can be automated, then you don’t have to do it. You don’t have to have anyone else do it, and it will happen automatically going forward.
So simple things like email autoresponders can allow you to create responses to something once and then have them happen again and again and again. So anything that can be automated, ideally should be automated.
Third step is delegating. Can I delegate this to someone else? Can I delegate it to someone else in my organization? To a virtual assistant? Can somebody else do this effectively?
And then the fourth one the second D is Do it. Then you actually do it. And if you go through this in that order, you remove things first. You automate them second, you delegate them third, then you’re only left with having to do it.
If you haven’t been able to remove it, automate it, or delegate it.
Kevin: Right.
David: So that tends to work really well. Now, in terms of being in a situation where you don’t want unfinished business, if you look at that sort of model and say, okay, this is what I’ll do.
I’ll remove the unnecessary stuff first. Automate the things I can. I’ll delegate what I can, and then eventually I’ll do it. Then you should have fewer or ideally no more unfinished business on your plate.
Kevin: Do you find that businesses and business owners that have a ton of unfinished business sort of on the plate that it drains their energy?
David: I know it drains mine, when I have stuff on my plate.
Kevin: Yeah, it almost becomes overwhelming, right? Like you just don’t even know where to start and you lose some momentum, you lose some drive.
David: It’s awful. And I think particularly for salespeople, when you’ve got a bunch of people out there who are in decision mode, they’re trying to decide if they’re a yes or a no, and they drag it on for weeks, months, or years. That is just crazy.
Are you familiar with the term open loops in psychology?
Kevin: Yes.
David: It’s such an important concept and for those who are watching who aren’t familiar with this topic, the idea of open loops in psychology, goes back to the idea like if you’re in a restaurant and a waiter or a waitress comes over and takes your order and they’re not writing anything down and you’re thinking, how are they going to remember this?
There’s this thing in psychology where people tend to be able to remember things short term for as long as it’s necessary to remember them, right? So if you come back three weeks later, the likelihood of that person remembering your order, unless you’ve ordered it a dozen times, is very low, right? They don’t hang onto it forever.
But this is how things work, generally, in our minds, is that we tend to be thinking about the things that are unfinished. Like if you’ve got unfinished business, it’s going to gnaw at you. That’s what I take away from the idea of open loops.
If you’ve got open loops, it’s going to gnaw at you. It’s going to drive you crazy.
So the idea of having no more unfinished business, in your business, goes back to that idea. You’ll be less stressed and you’ll feel better, you’ll be able to get more done when you’re able to accomplish this.
So by looking at how can I do this, how can I close as many open loops as possible? It just liberates you In your business.
Kevin: You mentioned sales teams. How do unfinished tasks impact the momentum or the confidence of a sales team?
David: It impacts them a lot. And I know that for a lot of years, in sales, what I would do is if somebody was even potential, if they were like, yeah, I’d really like to do it, but I’m not quite sure when or what. I mean, I would just continue to follow up again and again and again and again over weeks, months.
And a lot of times people are just nice and they just don’t want to tell you no, but that’s not being nice. That’s really not nice at all. It’s about the worst thing they can do.
Kevin: Yeah.
David: So one of the things that I started doing in my own sales career is that I realized when somebody starts going off in that direction, where they start out very sure and very confident and very certain, and they sound like everything is ideal and perfect, but then they get to a point and they start going the other way.
Yeah. Well, I, no, I’d really like to do it. Now’s not a really good time, but you know, Hey, I’ll get back to you. I’ll get back to you soon. In my head I’m going, this is done, right? Now, it may not be done. But it’s done on my end, right?
I’m not going to keep that as an open loop thinking, “oh, maybe that person’s going to come back.” And maybe they will, and you leave the door open, I’m not saying you say, “well, that’s it. No soup for you.” We’re not doing that, right?
We’re not taking that approach, but we are saying, at least internally, we’re saying, okay, I’m not going to follow up with this person, necessarily. I may keep them in terms of getting ongoing emails or things like that.
I may check in or may have someone else check in with them every now and then. But I’m not looking at this as being a deal that’s going to get done, unless something significantly changes.
So you leave the door open, but if they come back six months or a year later, things are probably going to be entirely different anyway, right?
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
David: Somebody tells you they want to buy something and then they come back six months later? Maybe the pricing has gone up. I might not even be offering it anymore. Maybe things have changed. So a lot can happen.
Kevin: Maybe it’s discontinued. Yeah. Who knows?
David: So I feel like leaving open loops, even for prospects, is not a great idea. To let them know, “okay, well it sounds like you’re not ready to move forward at this point. If you’d like to reach out, at your convenience, that’s fine to do that. At this point, I won’t follow up with you unless you think you’d like me to call you at a certain point in time.
And then you decide whether or not it makes sense for you to call them at that certain point in time, because it doesn’t always make sense to do that.
Kevin: We’ve all been guilty of what we’re talking about today. I think we’ve all have had a lot of unfinished business, a lot on our to-do list. I can definitely think of times where I have maybe finished something imperfectly just so that I can get it off my plate.
What do you feel about that? Like, is it important from a psychological standpoint to make sure it’s done right the first time? Or can you kind of get through it and still feel like you’ve accomplished something?
David: Yeah, I think you’re better off getting something good out today than something perfect six months from now.
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
David: And man, I lived that in a number of my businesses where I realized sometimes we could stretch things out for a really long time, and it didn’t make a difference.
If you look the 80 20 rule, right? If you can get it like 80% of the way there, and I’m not talking about slip shot work. I’m saying like, if you’re able to get something to the point where, yes, this is good for the client, this will work for us, and you can get it in front of them now, you’re far better off doing that.
Kevin: Going back to your RADD method, I liked the RADD method, but it could be difficult to figure out, sometimes, what tasks fall in which category. Do you have any tips for people to try to figure out which ones go where?
David: Yeah, you got to make the call. That’s the difficult part for most people is making that decision. Especially when you’re starting with the idea of removing something, eliminating it. It’s hard to do.
And a lot of people work from to-do lists and those to-do lists just have ideas from years and years, right? And you say, “oh yeah, maybe I’ll do that someday.” And you might, but you’d have to go back through the list.
So, if you’re keeping a list like that, I suggest reviewing it, frequently, and saying, “okay, is there something that I’m just never going to get to that I can actually remove?”
And of the things on this list, are there things that I could automate? Is there something that I could take maybe an hour or two and automate it, and never have to do it again? Because that’s beautiful when that happens.
Kevin: Especially in this day and age with all the AI tools out there.
David: Exactly! Right! And same thing with delegation. If you look at your list and you say, “okay, how many of these things can I delegate?” If you’ve got other people in your organization, you’ve got people working in there, if you’ve got VAs or whatever, and you say, “how many of these things can be delegated,” you can actually check off a lot of things from your list simply by doing the first three, the remove, the automate, and the delegate.
And then that will leave you with fewer things that you actually have to put on your own “to do-for-real” list.
Kevin: Mm-hmm. to do-for-real. Yeah. I like that. Are there any systems or habits that you recommend that can prevent unfinished business from piling up?
David: I think just the fact that we’re having this conversation helps, because people don’t tend to think about it. We feel overwhelmed and we’ll say things like, “oh man, there’s just so much going on. I’m so busy. I’m just busy, busy, busy every day.”
When you’re saying that sort of thing, it’s a strong indication that you’ve got a bunch of unfinished business, you’ve got open loops, and maybe you’re not capturing it. Because if you’re capturing that stuff, and you’re aware of what it is, and you’ve got it budgeted into your calendar?
Not just a to-do list, right? But if you actually have it on your calendar, what are the next steps? If I know who I’m approaching, what I’m going to be saying to them, and when I’m going to be saying it.
If I’ve got all that stuff planned out in advance, then even those open loops are going to feel a lot more in control, because it’s not just something that’s floating around in my head that I’m not acting on.
Kevin: So like tools or, you know, CRMs, organizational things like I mean all these things can help us with staying on task, not letting things pile up. Are there any types of tools that you typically will say, “Hey, this is something that I could see you really benefiting from?”
David: Well, I think the overall things that you just mentioned, having a CRM is going to be critical in terms of knowing what to say to your clients. So it’s not just follow up. because that’s about the worst note you can ever enter into your CRM.
“Follow up with Kevin,” right?
Kevin: Follow up?
David: That’s a worthless note.
Kevin: It is, yeah.
David: Right. So your note needs to be, you know, “we spoke about X, Y, Z product. He said he has an event coming up in October. Give him a call in July to talk about his October event.”
Right? So then when you come to that person’s name, you contact him in July and say, “Hey Kevin, I was thinking about that event you said you have coming up in October.” And, and he’s like, “oh, cool. I wasn’t thinking about that at all. I wasn’t going to think about that until the last minute.”
So you are planting the seeds with them that you’re actually paying attention to what they need.
So utilizing a CRM is important and utilizing a calendar is important. And very often those two things are tied together. I think those are the two biggest things you need to make that happen.
Kevin: What advice would you give to someone who feels completely buried in open loops and how can they reach out if they have more questions or want to get some more tips from you?
David: Okay. Well, first thing I do is I make that list, right?
Kevin: Yeah.
David: Even before you reach out to me, make that list of what are the things that are driving you crazy. And then go through that RADD method, mentally. If you just do that, it’s probably going to clear up a lot of things for you.
But then if you’d like to have a conversation, by all means, TopSecrets.com/call schedule a call with myself or my team.
If you are in a situation where you know there are things that you need to get wrapped up, if you’re good at starting projects, but you’re not great at finishing them and you know you need to do that, maybe you need to add some systems or processes to your business that will allow that to happen more systematically, then that would be a great thing to do.
TopSecrets.com/call.
Kevin: Great advice as always, David. Well thank you everybody for joining us and thank you David for being here. I really enjoyed the conversation.
David: Alright, thank you Kevin.
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