How To Establish and Stick To Long-Term Goals

 

 

 

 

Starting the conversation:

All action comes with risk. You can mitigate the risk by breaking down multi-year initiatives into smaller goals. Picking one small goal provides a way to collect information and gain additional knowledge to then sort, think through, and prioritize the next best step.

In this program, you will hear that making time to reset and recharge ensures you maintain the focus needed to face the next uncertainty; how building in accountability promotes forward progress; and about the importance of endings so the next can begin. Jess Dewell talks to John Bertino, Founder of The Agency Guide (TAG), about how to successfully reach your long-term goals.

Big dreams happen by taking the first intentional step, and then the next, and then the next. Just a general outline is necessary to begin shaping what you want to contribute to the world five-plus years from now. Each set of actions and each completed goal create momentum to keep moving your company forward. John Bertino, Founder of The Agency Guide (TAG), shares his journey in developing an idea, achieving proof of concept, and scaled growth.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guests: John Bertino

What You Will Hear:

Explore new ways to do work together.

The wrong clients will run your business into the ground.

A business model that creates value – and #winfinity.

Big dreams are broken down into attainable steps. Consider SMART goals.

Near-term steps appear from taking time to sort, think, and prioritize action.

Take time to reset and RECHARGE.

The truth of the M word…mediation.

Take time to think and still respond quickly.

Workcations and retreats.

Additionally, for the Fast Track Your Business Today Uncut conversation:

Goal setting is qualitative and quantitative.

Be accountable to business development activities.

What the BIG internal initiative TAG is working on right now.

What ‘you’ve got to’ really means.

Ends allow for celebration – even when you take losses in stride which thickens your skin.

Tap into your inspiration for motivation – make them habits.

It is BOLD to choose the action that allows you to reach your long-term goals.

Get started and make a difference in your business with a Growth Framework Reset.

 

 

Resources:

 

Transcript

 

ANNOUNCER 00:03
Welcome. This is the Bold Business Podcast. Your business has many directions it can travel. The one true direction of your company creates the journey for you to move toward a new, exciting level. We call this the Red Direction. In today’s program, we delve into one idea. The idea will support you as you work on ever-present situations, including how to stay competitive in a changing market, how to break through the business plateau, and how to anticipate the changing expectations of your stakeholders. Jess Dewell is your guide. Jess brings you a 20-year track record of business excellence, where strategy and operations overlap. Your Path comes from consistently working from the special place. Your unique True North. Now, here’s Jess.

Jess Dewell 00:51
Welcome to the Bold Business Podcast. I am excited to be here with you today. I’m excited to have this conversation. Because you know, when we have conversations that go beyond what we’re working on that go into the way we think into the way we plan how things turn out? Versus what how we thought they turn out. And can we get better at that? And do we think we did a good job along the way? And most importantly, can we celebrate how far we’ve come? All of those things are overlooked in the grand concepts of what a business strategy can bring to us. And you want to know something. When I met John, he and I were having this, this interesting conversation, he was telling you the story that I can’t wait, he’s going to share at least parts of it with you about where he started and where he ended up. And how to sustain and how it’s different. Then in that all along that journey, one of the things that John Bertino has done is he has created and founded the agency guide, also known as TAG, which is a collective of seasoned marketing executives that is, has been built to help brands source reliable marketing partners to get the extraordinary results that they’re looking for. And here’s the thing, it’s not like this is trial by fire or learn as you go, I can climb the ladder for myself, in addition to a whole bunch of other things, which is part of it. Don’t get me wrong. John has had that learn as you go. He is also very studious, and has studied and has been a university professor. He’s a score business mentor. And not only does the agency guy does his current project really bring executives together. He, for marketers, here’s the deal that’s happening in his own experience, too, because he has more than 15 years of marketing as a consultant background, wringing all of the things and on top of the changes and thinking about things in new and different ways as he’s been going along. So to explore today with him these, this concept of long-term goals, this concept of where did we come from this concept of celebrating our wins along the way. Wow, John, I am so glad to have you here with us today.

John Bertino 03:05
Awesome. Love the intro Jess, love the enthusiasm. I’m stoked to be here. Let’s do it.

Jess Dewell 03:10
Let’s do it. Let’s do it. Yeah. Okay, so we’re gonna just start out already, I already I didn’t mean to tease this and like, totally give the ending away. But one of the things. So we’re just gonna start with that, and then see where it goes. We’re gonna go to the end and then have the great big long PS as the entire show. And that is 10 years ago. Did you know you’d be here? Right now? Did you know you’d be doing this?

John Bertino 03:35
I did not know I’d be sitting here with you just That’s, it comes as a complete surprise. Did I know that I would be making a living matchmaking brands with marketing agencies now? No, I didn’t, although we’ve been doing it for eight years. So probably about 10 years ago was where there started to be some concept that this might be a thing. You teed up my background, pretty good. But, you know, essentially, I spent the better part of a decade working for marketing agencies of all different sizes in a mix of business development and strategy roles. And through doing that, I noticed there was kind of an issue where boutique agencies, which is the vast majority of them smaller operations, we’re struggling to find the right clients. And honestly, a lot of people don’t know this, but taking on the wrong clients is one of the quickest ways to run your fledgling boutique agency into the ground. But. but at the same time, you know, it’s kind of like, I don’t want to say Beggars can’t be choosers, but you don’t also want to be turning a ton of business away. So fledgling agencies struggle to find the right clients that are really going to help them grow but At the same time, of course, the brands themselves struggle to find agencies that are reliable and deliver and after, like I said, about a decade in the space, I started to go, you know what, I think I can do something to help this equation. And that was about 10 years ago to your question. I knew I wanted to work with people, I had recognized that that was a strength of mine. And I wanted to lean into it. And I knew that I wanted to be doing something that was kind of a b2b sales type role, because that allows you to sell in a consultative way, which I’m a staunch believer and, and frankly, the only type of sales I want to be associated with is something that is really consultative and adds value. But no, again, to your question, I did not know I’d be a marketing agency matchmaker for a living.

Jess Dewell 05:50
Oh, and it’s amazing. 10 years ago, I had the same thing with, with podcasting as part of what I did, and in fact, longer ago than that, we just found a video. Like I think it was my very first video ever. And it sounded a little bit like this. And I didn’t really, and I was looking at that going, boy, have I come a long way.

John Bertino 06:17
Big and bold down.

Jess Dewell 06:20
Well, and you know, so I want to think about that, too. So if we think about that, I’m like, wow, well, that’s what I thought it was when I started. When did you know you had something that you were like, Okay, we’ve got this, we can be the matchmakers here. Was it, was it about two years in was four years in?

John Bertino 06:41
Yeah, sure. And so I guess there’s a key part of that key part of this whole thing that I didn’t mention yet. And that’s it, that we do this for free? Well, we do it for the brands for free, to be clear, because we make our revenues through the agencies we represent. And so I knew I had enough experience in the marketing agency world where I was like, you know, what, I think the agencies are gonna love this, and they’re gonna get what they want, and I’m gonna get what I want, which is to work for myself, and to be able to close more business because, you know, as I kind of alluded to earlier, when you work for, if the agency is smart, if they’re younger, more in their fledgling years, they turn a lot of business away, ironically, because again, sometimes it’s more disastrous to take it on and to turn it away. But as the guy that was compensated for, for closing business, that’s not really a good position to be in any business development rep out there that has a parent employer that likes to turn stuff away can really relate to that. And so I said, you know, I want to go out on my own, I want to represent not one agency, but a bunch, but you’re but, but the real question was, how are the brands going to respond to the brand is going to find this valuable? Is there actually a need for this, which is at the crux of your question. But I’m happy to say eight years into this, the brands love it. There’s really two distinct parts of the value we’re adding. The one which is implied, and we’ve already discussed is we’re matchmaking them with a, with a fantastic agency that we vetted, it makes their search much quicker and makes the whole process much less painful. But we also add a tremendous amount of consulting along the way, as you mentioned, with my background, I’ve got almost 18 years and digital and brand marketing behind me now, we provide a ton of really experienced pro bono consulting along the way. And so some brands are savvy enough that they don’t really want to consulting, they don’t mind hearing our input, but maybe they know what they want. They just want to get fast track to the perfect agency partner. And we’re perfectly fine to do that for them. But other brands, just to your question, are much more confused. They’re really not sure what marketing channels they should be investing in in the first place. Maybe they have an idea, but they’re not sure what fair objective investments in those channels wouldn’t, should look like. And we help answer all of those types of questions. And as already said, we do it at no charge. And so eight years later, happy to say, man, we’ve had some brands that absolutely have loved and adored our process. And we get we have the luxury of getting a lot of great glowing testimonials, which by the way your listeners can find on our Facebook page.

ANNOUNCER 09:24
You are listening to the Bold Business Podcast. We will return to the show soon. But first, I want to take a moment and give you a peek into what additional services and solutions you could access to Fast Track Your Business. This program was created to develop your capacity on demand by sharing insights tips, as well as lessons learned by business leaders unedited and uncut. And we don’t just stop there. There are three additional benefits to help you reach your growth goals. You’ll also have unlimited access to one hearing tips and insights to develop yourself as a leader to get better results more often, too. of experiencing viewpoints from many different business leaders, three, receiving frameworks to build core competencies. And to more effectively focus on business growth and leadership. altogether. The Fast Track Your Business program will allow you to face uncertainty, anytime, anywhere, you can access what will become the most versatile tool in your toolkit by going to Fast Track Your Business today.com. Now, back to Jess.

Jess Dewell 10:29
It’s interesting to listen to your talk and that even in the reflection that you’ve shared and the experience that you’ve shared, you didn’t know if every party was going to like it, yet, you plan for what I call win-finity, you in client wins, the agency wins. And then because of that all of their customers win. Right? So that’s that ripple-out effect. And I call that win-finity. And so it’s, do you know when you were like, oh, yeah, we can. we can grasp on to this. We’re making some money. We know we can scale this because? Or was it a different thing that showed up? Of Oh, everybody does like this. And this does serve a need because it is a slightly different business model than what it what a typical agency relationship would look like.

John Bertino 11:16
Sure. And I mean, you know this, but just to be clear for the listeners, like we’re not an agency, right? We’re a consultant in the middle that match makes pro bono, so on, so forth.

Jess Dewell 11:25
Thanks for the clarification there. Yes.

John Bertino 11:29
Yeah. Well, look, first things first. As much as it’s, I’d like to think a clever model. It’s not the most scalable in the world. And that’s putting it nicely, right? There’s a lot of intrinsic struggles with scaling a business like this, and I still am working through those to this day, I’ll probably always be working through some of those challenges. And so to that point, this is certainly, certainly wasn’t isn’t a get rich, quick business. You know, you know, I mentioned a couple of times already that we do this process, pro bono, which means, you know, we have deals that don’t go through, there’s a lot of work we do that goes on unrewarded, or at least on paper. And, you know, that can be a pretty unsettling thing for a new business owner, which I was eight years ago. But you know, it’s funny, I love your win-FINITY. You know, saying, because the model is innately creates these Win-Win-Win scenarios when we get it right. And it sounds so cliche to say it, but that’s it. Right? Yeah. If I say this all the time, though, it’s so cliche to say it, but that’s really what when we do what we do, and it works, it’s exactly what we’re doing. We’re giving the agency exactly what they want. We’re giving the client, the brand, exactly what they want. And of course, we’re getting what we want. And yeah, so it took a while to really master the process. But I think we’re doing a pretty good job with it now.

Jess Dewell 12:58
That’s, that’s fantastic. So you have to have, so Okay, so now I’m thinking about goals, right? And, and to get a business to be as far along as you are, and to have gone through those initial changes of okay, I can keep the lights on. And now we’re figuring out how to scale them. How does scaling look, today versus in 10 years versus in 20 years? And I think that while that’s all relevant, my questions around, I’m interested in short-term goal stuff but I’m also interested in that long-term goal stuff. Because if you didn’t know you were going to be doing this the way that it’s being done. 10 years ago, today, there was a lot of faith involved with some good starting background. And the only way to get to this, or understand when you were able to like understand what this vision actually looked like, was to have these short-term goals. Is that, is that a, an okay, way to paint that picture? And what would you add or change about that picture painted?

John Bertino 13:57
So recently, one of my favorite motivational speakers has become Steve Harvey, the comedian. [Yeah.] Did you know he does motivational stuff? I didn’t know he just is so good. It’s such he is he gets me fired up like nobody else. Okay, you know, you’ve seen those classic YouTube motivational videos with like the jacked-up weightlifter, and he’s like, screaming into the microphone and right, like, that’s, that’s cool, but it doesn’t get me nearly as pumped as Steve Harvey does. Which is funny to say, right? And Steve says, You got to dream so big that it overwhelms all your fears and causes you to never give up. He’s a believer in having the biggest dreams. Grand dreams dream so big. That, as I said, use it really encapsulates, I think where I come from, what, what my mindset is as it relates to goals setting in dreams. And so I believe that that you should dream huge, you should have really lofty goals, big picture that you execute with small, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic goals short-term. Hence the dream is free the hustle is sold separately. So the old SMART goals is, is, is, is well-touted. For those that don’t know, what is it. Measurable? The S is escaping me through measurable, attainable, realistic time bound and the S is.. forgetting the S.

Jess Dewell 15:42
I think we’re both becoming a blank here. Yeah, I’ll think of it. Yeah, that’s okay. It’ll come.

John Bertino 15:48
But you need those measurable, realistic, attainable goals in the short term that you hold yourself to. Ultimately working towards a much broader grand goals in my opinion.

Jess Dewell 16:02
Yeah. Ah. Okay. So I think it’s really interesting that we’re talking about how you take this big dream. And then you are able to have these will just go SMART goals, SMART goals, and…

John Bertino 16:19
Specific.

Jess Dewell 16:20
Ah, specific, which well, that goes back down from big dream to very, very concrete. actionable, right? So starting with a specific so Okay, so with these goals, it’s really interesting to do that dance between, well, here’s my dream that’s so big, it’s going to overwhelm all my fears. And here’s what my, here’s what the step I’m choosing to take right now. I hesitate to call it first step. Because I don’t think there is a first step, I think there’s just a step, and then another step will appear. And sometimes it looks like the Goonies, and sometimes it looks like Indiana Jones. And sometimes it looks like your walk to the park. Right? Yeah.

John Bertino 17:04
I think that’s well said.

Jess Dewell 17:06
Um, so did you, did you think like that, too? And? Or do you now think like that, that you don’t, you don’t necessarily have to know what the first step is? But you have to have some thing that is specific and attainable in a specific period of time to measure results so you can uncover what’s next.

John Bertino 17:24
Most of the time, the near-term steps present themselves and almost forced themselves upon you.

Jess Dewell 17:33
Right, when you’re really specific about them, absolutely.

John Bertino 17:36
Kind of like we all have our own, like household to-do list. Yeah, you don’t gotta search too hard to have that list of things you got to get done, like this weekend or this month, like, they find you, you don’t need to find them. [Exactly.] But you know, by having that bigger picture goal down the road that starts to kind of dictate what those near-term steps are going to be.

Jess Dewell 18:00
So it’s how you choose and prioritize.

John Bertino 18:03
Well, yeah, that’s right. It’s in fact, though. So that’s a great point, right? So like, to my point, these things present themselves, and oftentimes, there’s a lot of them these, these next steps I should take, and in sorting through the mess, thinking it through, and prioritizing them, ultimately becomes essential. And I’ll tell you what, I hate to admit that a little bit, right? Like, that’s something that I struggle with is the prioritization. You know, stopping myself from just being like action-oriented, go, go, go, go, go do-do-do-do-do, and to stop, pause, take a step back, reflect, and force myself to prioritize what things I really want to do. I’d love every morning to just answer the easy emails at the coffee shop. But the truth be told is a lot of times the ones I really need to do those private, those high-priority next steps are the things I’m putting off. And I know I’m not unique in that way. It’s, it’s most of us.

Jess Dewell 19:08
Me, too. I will put myself right in that camp, at least in this conversation. You are not alone. Yeah. And it’s true. So okay, well, so how do you, know we’re going to totally change, it’s gonna seem like we’re changing gears, but we’re there. And I think it’s important. Since so many of us and you and I are both talking about this influencing us. We end up consciously or unconsciously putting off what actually needs to be done. How do you day to day or week to week even in those smaller moments where we’ve got these specific, attainable goals? How do you make sure that you are doing the tasks that need to be done? Just stay true to your goal. Or accountable to your goal?

John Bertino 19:53
Maybe Yeah. A few things. The first that comes to mind actually is allocating time throughout the day or the week to reset. Recharge? Okay, so So yeah, so the obvious thing is trying to take time with the family on the weekends or after hours. But when I’m more angling at actually what works for me, I can’t vouch for others, but what works for me and what is really, the only way to charge my batteries is, is health and fitness, honestly. Yeah. And, and fitness is different for every person, but whatever it is that you like to do to stay active. I’m a firm believer in again, at least for myself, some type of physical activity really allows me to recharge. And so I’m also big into meditation or trying to write a lot of people like to throw around, throw around the M word as if we’re all masters of it already. And I’m far from that. But the reason I segue directly to that next is that I actually think those two things can be one in the same. In fact, they are one in the same and not enough people talk about that. Because if you’re in your fitness regimen, whether you’re into weights, or just a walk outside, are you the type that likes to hike up the local mountain or go for, you know, through the walk through the woods neighborhood, or whatever it is, oftentimes, your mind is singularly focused on that one activity. And if it’s not, it’s a lot easier to get your mind focused on that one single activity, then, then say like, I don’t know, other times in your life. So again, the neighborhood walking through the neighborhood lends itself to you, lets me just focus on this. And the interesting thing, this really gets back to your question about allowing yourself the space to recenter, our headspace, I find, ironically, paradoxically, perhaps allows to clear out a lot of the junk is flowing through our minds, and allows us to slow down our thought process, and then opens up the pathways for like, enlightened thoughts to come through. And I don’t mean that to sound like again, like, you know, I think we could take that to another place. metaphysically. But really, I just mean, when you allow your, your own headspace the time to slow and calm down, it really helps open up those lanes, like congested traffic, for the cars that need to get through, to get through the thoughts that need to get in, to get in. In other words, slow the hell down. And the way I do that is through fitness and meditation.

Jess Dewell 22:45
Yeah. Okay, I’ll give you a real-life example. So I, the first thing that goes on my schedule, I wish it was meditation, but it is not. It’s my tea in the morning, and I sit in my favorite chair. And sometimes it’s just looking out the window. And sometimes it’s doing something. And that’s productive, like a reading. And sometimes it’s not, I might listen to a funny commercial about cat videos, or dog videos or something, right doesn’t matter. But that’s like my little tiny mini morning routine is that cup of tea and whatever comes with it, the thing that actually gets on my calendar that lets me physically know that I am, that I have, where my headspace is that and how much trash is like floating around in there is when I’m on a yoga mat. And so, four times a week, I commit to going to a yoga studio with other people. So I can have a guided meditation that allows me to really have to be present in the moment with all that it with all that is right there. And if I have a monkey brain, which by the way, I was on a mat today, monkey brain.

John Bertino 23:50
Monkey mind.

Jess Dewell 23:53
Oh, um, yes thank you. That’s the right term, did it? Monkey Mind. Right, I couldn’t balance at all. And I was like, and I actually was like, Oh, my gosh, here I am. I know I can do this. I’ve done this for years, sometimes off and on, but really consistently over the last year and more and more and more, and I was in there and I couldn’t balance on one foot. And it was so weird and different. And I went, I laughed, and that the instructors finally know that when I’m laughing or smiling, it’s not out of stress. It’s because I’m totally being curious and present. And a little, the little girl version of myself going, well, who knew I could do that? No, I can’t do that. To the end. It’s only today. It’s only in this moment. But you have that concept of it does show up even if you can’t see it. And fitness and moving and meditation when you can allows you to start to see it differently. Because I could tell you 10 years ago if I had a day like I did today where my mind was on fire and I couldn’t get it calm down and I would have come home angry upset, and I don’t need to be angry and upset, I just need to be present in the moment and go, Wow, there’s a lot going on that’s impacting my ability to be right here right now. No problem.

John Bertino 25:13
That’s right. So again, counter-intuitively paradoxically Call it what you will I find the way to handle massive amounts of stress or, or elements of business and work that required deep thought is to take the time to not be thinking?

Jess Dewell 25:31
Well, it’s okay, so let’s talk about that deep thought, right, that creative piece. And as a marketer, you know, there’s execution, there’s always execution, all that stuff that comes before execution is deep thought. And so sometimes we have those short-term and long-term goal pieces in it. But sometimes, so So do you have like a rule of thumb, if I know execution is going to take to actually do the implementation and start the execution to whatever that ongoing routine will be for a period of time is? Do you like say it’s twice that to prepare to design to think about do you have? Have you ever thought about it like that? Or what is your measure to say, here’s just the beginning amount of time to plan for to do that deep work, and maybe not think is part of it?

John Bertino 26:18
So in my particular, work life, yeah. At the end of the day, what we’re running here is a business development operation. That’s big on the consultative sales, I guess you would say. So we’re doing a lot of consulting, but it’s a business development operation, which, you know, in layman’s terms, sales, I suppose. And with sales, I’m, I don’t even know if I would call this old school, but I’m going to call it old school. I’m a believer in you need to act and respond relatively quickly. When you have a prospect that is showing signs, they want to engage as showing signs, they want to move the process forward. In other words, if you got a hot lead, you got to act. Right. So this, so this creates a lot of challenges. When it comes to getting the types of stuff done, you’re asking me about, which is basically everything else? All the other sides, right? Like, you know, it’s the whole working in your business versus on it, right? So when I’m working in my business, I’m the rep, I’m fielding the inquiries. And I guess the point I was making is, I feel like unlike other professions and other lines of work, there really is a pretty big sense of urgency to handle the emails that came in fairly quickly, to not postpone that call or reschedule for another time to take the damn call. Yeah. And, and that, I guess, I think the net, net of that is that makes it even more challenging. Maybe I’m just complaining. But it makes it even more challenging, to get to operations to get to administrative to get to Big Picture planning to get to our own internal marketing, because they really, at least in my mind, really couldn’t and shouldn’t be putting off those emails and couldn’t, shouldn’t be putting off those calls. And so what it really ends out being, ends up being for me is, I block out my mornings, I usually try not to take calls in the mornings, I try to get a little bit of that stuff done then. But truth be told Jess, and I don’t know if this is the perfect solution. I can only tell you what I’ve done and what’s working for me to an extent. I don’t have the whole world figured out right?

Jess Dewell 28:32
Once you do you better, let me know. Because I’m coming to your house. I’m gonna work with you in your office.

John Bertino 28:38
I’ll bring you onto the private plane, and we’ll talk about it when I’ve got that off. Yeah, right. I’m not Sunday when I have one. But. But what I’m ultimately getting at is the way I’ve currently dealing with all these things. And it’s a lot for any small business owner. I have what are called Work workstations, which I’ll tell you about. And I have usually a night or at the brewery once a week, where nobody’s calling me. Nope. Maybe they’re emailing me, but they’re not expecting an answer. And I’m at the brewery, I have a three-beer limit. I stretch each beer across one hour. So it’s usually a three-hour session. One beer an hour, I get the lightest beer they have you stay away from them heavy beers. And you got otherwise your chips gonna be a lot shorter. Exactly. So yeah. And those three hours I cherish at that for my weekly brewery sessions and then the workstations I do sometimes I’ll take a Friday air quotes off to do them. I’ll tell the rest of the world I’m off or I’ll, I’ll bite the bullet and do a Saturday and Sunday. So I have I’m married with one child, so I really can’t be it is there’s a lot of distractions at home a lot of things to prevent you from doing those tasks you’ve been putting off those internal tasks. Oh, I like to actually go grab a local air b&b somewhere. I live 15 minutes outside of Philadelphia. Sometimes I actually go get an Airbnb next door and Philadelphia cost me money. And you know what, I don’t care because I can sit in solitude and that air b&b And that hotel and get done when I need to done and to get done. And I’ll make those I’ll stretch out those days, maybe I’ll do a Friday, Saturday, there’ll be 1011 12 hour days, by myself just working. But that’s how I managed to stay on top of my stuff and do what I need to do. Did I answer your question?

Jess Dewell 30:33
That was my question, and I love it. I love it. Because we all have to find our own ways to do things. My, in addition to yoga, I actually have created habit of walking in the middle of the day, eat and sometimes walking in the middle of the day means eating lunch on the roof of the building that I happen to be at, right? And so, but it’s outside, it’s a change of pace because something else needs to happen and there needs to be a reset. And so day to day in the business, it’s a great way to do that. And then the cadence for the other things, too. I’ve never heard of a brewery session, and I really liked this. Okay, I’m going to totally have to try that out. If not it. I don’t know if I, I Like spirits more than I like beer, but maybe I could do with wine instead. I’m like, I’m not sure good whiskey might not be good to have three hours.

John Bertino 31:31
You probably only get an hour and a half, but maybe zactly whiskey sessions a week.

Jess Dewell 31:35
Hey, oh, that Yeah, exactly. I like the idea of the beer and wine concept a lot. The other thing is, I have never taken and I like this, I take big retreats for myself once a year. And to really put myself in a room. Sometimes the team comes parts of the time and sometimes they don’t. But, but I’ve never done it more often than that. What’s your frequency for those? Now? I’m really curious, is it like monthly is it quarterly?

John Bertino 32:03
So it started during COVID. Prior to COVID, I would fly out to our west coast air quotes office because we’ve got team members a lot of agency relationships where I originally founded the company in San Diego, I would fly out every quarter to do business. And I found that on those week-long work trips, which were intense, I would still have a ton of time to myself. And that’s where I would like it happened to organically I would start to catch up on all my internal stuff. And I would come back from these week-long trips to San Diego exhausted but extremely well caught up in COVID Hit Yeah, and I started falling work was great a lot knock on wood. Lucky for me like business marketing booms during COVID. Because everybody wanted to get online to ecommerce. But I was not getting to my internal stuff. And that was when I discovered the workstation. I once you know we got a couple of months into COVID. And they start opening the urban BB and B and B’s backup. I’d shoot over the bridge and go do it in Philly or shoot up the highway and go do it in New York. And that was how, you know that was a huge help. And by the way, real quick, I just want to mention that. Yeah, I love what you said about just simply breaking up the day. Oh, I’m huge on that I usually get my workouts in, in the middle of the Well, I used to do them in the middle of Workday. I’ve somehow managed to do them in the beginning of the day, these days. But like before work but, but that’s actually become problematic because now I’m not taking that break. So I’ll do the coffee shop or go for a walk or put the workout in the middle of the day intentionally. Right. It’s not a distraction. It’s not something that I’m doing because I don’t feel like working. I’m intentionally breaking up that work day to make it more palatable just like you.

Jess Dewell 33:44
Yeah. And, and that’s cool that we actually seem to have a similar workflow in terms of energy. And that’s actually something that people who are listening mica Well, mine is at night. Well good. Do that then, right? Figure out what are the weird where to break things up to keep your momentum going. What can really serve you because I’m glad for the similarities. And it’s only a starting point to that exploration. We’re gonna take a break here because everybody listening to the Bold Business Podcast, this is John Bertino. And guess what? Guess what this conversation is going to continue for Fast Track Your Business. So those of you who are listening to us out there on our regular feed, go log into your TrueNorth to get the rest of this amazing conversation. For those of you who don’t take something actionable away. Go use it in your business right now. And we’ll call it when finished. If you want to find out more about the program, visit Fast Track Your Business today. See you next time.

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