by Peter Knight - Wednesday, 26th September 2007 - 2 comments

Take Dr Fred Grosse, for example, who was one of the speakers I heard. A former rabbi, Dr Fred retrained as a psychotherapist and, for the past 30 years, has coached, mentored and hugely improved the lives of thousands of entrepreneurs.

Dr Fred’s programme, entitled “Black Belt of the Mind”, with the subtitle “how to double and treble your income in less time”, awakened my sceptic sub-personality. However, how wrong I was to allow a seemingly corny title to put me off!

At 71 years old, he is the most charismatic of speakers and his lessons are extremely powerful – when applied.

In particular, I was taken by Dr Fred’s observation that most people, in his experience, turn up for work and spend less than eight hours a week on “dollar-productive activities”, or as I will now refer to them here in the UK, “Sterling Behaviours”.

Now you might think this doesn’t apply to you, as I first did, but when I started to look at my diary and asked myself “how much time did I spend making money today?” the answer was sobering.

One of Dr Fred’s simple lessons is to work out what your Sterling Behaviours are – the activities that actually make you money – and then schedule your time to be completely focused on these activities and delegate, as much as possible, all the other stuff.

Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Go and try it! Notice the distractions, the interruptions, the emails and phone calls, the repetitive weekly meetings, the social chitchat, the politics and the office affairs – to name just some of the many obstacles to Sterling Behaviours.

At the beginning of each day you might like to ask yourself “what am I going to do to double my income today?” and at the end ask “what have I done to double my income today?” and notice any difference in the answers. Be prepared for a shock!

The next speaker was a 26-year-old salesman who, three years ago, after six months in his first sales job, was on the verge of jacking it in when he discovered his secret formula. Phil Harris is an auctioneer and real estate agent and he identified that there are just 35 different scenarios a salesman will ever encounter in his profession.

Phil subsequently wrote scripts and dialogues for every single one, which he refines and hones on a dedicated hour-per-day basis with his sales team. He attributes this process to his extraordinary success: he’s now one of the top earners in Australia and winner of many national awards.

Again, I heard myself groan as I read Phil’s biog and thought “scripts and dialogues – that won’t work for me/the UK”. I was so wrong. Think about it. Every time you meet a client or call them on the phone you’re delivering a script or dialogue.

Wouldn’t it be better to have these really well crafted so you can deliver them elegantly and successfully?

If you think this is too rigid, tape yourself making your next five sales calls and notice how often you already use the same words and phrases and how your tone of voice changes, almost exactly at certain times during the conversations.

You already have a series of scripts and dialogues – the questions to ask are: “Are they good enough and could they be better?”

One of Dr Fred’s quotes that I liked very much was “breathing in the office isn’t earning a living”. Phil Harris is a young man who has clearly learned this lesson well and realised that habits are created by repetition. Of course, this applies to bad habits as well as, if not more than, good ones.

I’m fully aware that none of this is particularly new, but it was a useful reminder. I saw some old lessons afresh, and I now awake each day with a single-minded determination to double, then treble, my income in less time.

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