Welcome to this week's training. The frameworks, tactics, and know-how you need to kick arse and take names in the trenches. Today: 5 min read.
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How Top Producers Scale Their Books Without Burning Out
I talked to a multimillion-dollar producer last week.
He is an elite, top-tier producer at a top 5 shop, so he asked to remain anonymous. For the sake of this letter, we’ll call him Eli, since that happens to be the first three letters of the word elite.
A year ago, Eli hired an executive coach. It wasn’t for sales or leadership, but for something far more interesting:
How he spends his energy.
To understand why he went looking for that type of coach, you have to understand where he’d been. Eli’s book of business had grown substantially, but it came at an ever increasing cost. He was completely run thin, on his way to burnout, and living with a constant, low-grade anxiety.
He’d tried all the time management and productivity hacks with no luck, unable to figure out how to manage it all, much less keep growing. That is what forced him to realize that the problem wasn't his hours, it was how he was spending his energy.
Once he wrapped his head around “energy mangement”, everything changed. His calendar, his team, and his production all transformed. Now, I’m no expert at this so I can only tell you what he told me.
Here are the cliff notes.
Time Management vs. Energy Management
Most of us try to fix a stalled business with tighter calendars and more discipline.
Eli did that for years. But as he explained to me, time management is just table stakes. In our industry, you generally get about three years to validate your nut and keep your head above water. Time management gets you through those first three years.
Your career, though, is a 30-plus-year build.
You can’t out-discipline a bad energy budget for two decades. Working hard at the wrong thing isn’t discipline, it’s just expensive suffering. Time management keeps you alive on that first clock, but energy management is how you win the second one.
The Four Fuel Tanks
Eli learned that "energy" isn't just whether you had enough coffee this morning. You’re actually running on four distinct fuel tanks:
