True Gravity, The Practice of Creating Stellar Business.
BD Dalton’s Background
BD Dalton II talks about his book True Gravity, The Practice of Creating Stellar Business.
Bart, he prefers BD, hails from Tacoma, Washington State and nowadays lives in Birmingham, UK. There he runs Taurus Wealth and provides financial services advice to affluent individuals in the West Midlands area. He and his son love watching Real Madrid when they take time out at their house in Spain.
Although he never wanted to be a financial adviser, after a gap year ’89-90 working in Spain, he eventually joined the firm his father works for, Edward Jones, a large US financial intermediary. Numbers is not his thing particularly, but he realised the work was far more about working with people. A strong suit.
In 1997, he ran an office in Tacoma for Edward Jones, a 25,000-person firm, and went from no clients to 1,100 clients in 2002, through door-knocking and networking. He pestered his Senior Partner to ship out to Europe. In 2002, he got his wish. However, Edward Jones, post financial collapse exited Europe.
BD had to start his own firm in 2009, now known as Taurus Wealth.
True Gravity – The Book
BD wrote a book called True Gravity in 2014. The book is available on Amazon http://amzn.to/2mjJiio in UK and http://amzn.to/2lZMcI5 in USA. He took networking and the process of building a business and put it into context that people would understand. He wanted to help people draw pictures in their mind.
It takes people on the journey from ourselves as the centre of the universe, then introduced the notion of primary planets as your best friends, secondary planets as your networking contacts and then the asteroids who are everybody else.
This planetary metaphor helped him create descriptions of ‘mood-hoovers’, or as BD calls them Black Holes. With a black hole the middle of it has nothing and the outer edge has light. We’ve met people like Black Holes haven’t we? Some of them you’d like to chuck right into a Black Hole! The thing BD wanted was this visualisation of the concept to make it easier for people to grasp his ideas.
When you build a business you take on anyone who’ll pay you. The importance of designing systems to attract your ideal customers, and avoiding the wasting of your time and the time of non-ideal customers, runs through the True Gravity model. He wanted a simple process.
NOTE: if you are around BD and someone refers to you or someone you know as BH, they don’t mean Big Hitter!
Primary Planets
You can only have 3 best friends. In a month, you can only meet your 3 best friends one weekend in 4, plus a weekend for your own family. Time to engage with them. Your story needs to be right. All 4 stories need to align, so you complement each other. All best friends complement each other.
How to choose them? You must spend time with them and like them. You must be able to refer your top client or family member to them and they need to be aligned to your trajectory. The book shows you how to measure that. To help you search these people out in your life ask these questions…where did you last get your last GOOD referral from? Who helps you build you up, who gives you energy?
BD suggests you write down a charter between your planets. Give yourself a month to get to the first step of having your primary planets.
Secondary Planets
You’ve built up a primary team that sings your praises. Then you have a maximum of 8 secondary planets your benefit as well as theirs. They might be on a different trajectory to you. You make them look good. Tell the secondary planet WIIFM. Whatever is in it for them, they need to see it. You’ll spend time with them here and there, at the golf club, chamber etc. They must be able to sell your service in a sentence.
Keep them informed and refer business to them and they’ll pull in business for you too. Multiple people pulling new business towards you.
How do you get your ‘story’ right? You need to be clear on what you do. Who do you do the thing you do FOR? The tighter your focused persona, then the easier it will be for your secondary planets to identify new business opportunities for you. Then you get the right type of clients from the right story.
Don’t be thinking about getting brand aware etc, just focus on getting your story right.
So, is this approach at odds with networking organisations? BD was able to start a network when he arrived to the UK. They are not always a good source of being introduced to the right people. BD recognises these networking groups as useful to establish an initial network. They have their place, but when you are clear about your target persona, if this exceeds the capacity of a local network group to deliver business, then exit the group.
How would BD advise your next 100 Day plan?
Measure where you are getting your referrals from.
- Measure them in terms of profitability. If you are getting no or poor referrals, then you must go look at your story. Who are you delivering your ideas to.
- It’ll be hard to get your primary planets joined up to your story. Meeting regularly. Getting respective personas right. Then getting a marketing plan together. It’s a marketing plan. How do you make sure you attract the right customers? Measure.
- You may break away from your primary planet choices. They’re no longer in your gravitational pull.
- The primary planet is really a mastermind. It holds people to account AND delivers for each other. BD calls it a Mastermind Plus.
- BD also gets his wider circle together every month. He calls it the Mercantile Club. It’s about systems. We love systems deep down, especially those that make you feel liberated.
Be a 3G Adviser
- GUIDE – I’ve found a solution to a problem, let’s both do some research. Ask the person YOU are guiding this dynamite question…“If there is one thing in your business that we can change together in the next 100 days, what could we do together to get you to that point?
- GURU – I’ve been there and done that. You are just going to have to trust me.“You are hiring me (insert client’s name) to do X. When we come to a point that I know that this is the right thing for your business, will you just trust me. If they say maybe or no, you don’t have buy in. It’s a test of resolve with planets or clients. If they need to ask someone else they are not a long term customer for you.
- GLADIATOR – We set a goal. You say, but if you change your mind or do anything you’ve entrusted me to get this goal. You’ve got to have the trust to implement for your client. The gladiator needs the authority to have the trust to get that OK. You must have the authority to tell you no. If you have lost trust, you may need to SACK YOUR CLIENT. You need to have those questions to decide who is going to be your primary planets or clients.
The “Heart Attack” test
The inspiration was BD measuring his contacts and their silence. He uses the ‘heart attack’ test. If you had one, how many of your LINKEDIN contacts would know about it or care about it or get in touch and want to do something for you about it.
He wanted to break the silence in the business world. He wanted to become an authority. He decided to be the person they like. Energy, Time and Focus. Get your focus right, you’ll have more energy and time!
Accelerators for Companies
Takes the True Gravity book and puts them into business growth. BD has small groups of 5 to hone their stories in masterminds. BD is now helping businesses with their sales and whole business strategies too.
How to contact BD Dalton II
https://bartdaltonconsulting.com
For the Creating True Gravity map:
The Next 100 Days Podcast is brought to you by Graham Arrowsmith and Kevin Appleby
