The Relationship Action Sprint
The scale · Thirty points, four bands
Cares a great deal. Very little of it leaves their head.
Excellent in the room. Quiet in the six weeks after it.
Does this well when they do it. The trouble is the word “when.”
Initiates without being reminded. Rarer than people assume.
Consistency.
Your prescription for momentum:
Which is fine, because the rest of this page is the part that matters. Ten workdays. Ten people. One deliberate rep a day, done on the call instead of added to your list.
If you want the number first, it takes about three minutes.
That number says nothing about whether you care. People who do not care never finish a quiz like this one.
What it says is that a lot of what you feel has never made it out of your head. The gratitude, the admiration, the conversations you have genuinely meant to have.
Good intentions do not build relationships. Good repetitions do.
You already know what to do, which is what makes this frustrating rather than confusing. Should keeps getting murdered by urgent, and Monday keeps becoming next month.
You are probably excellent in person. People like you, conversations go well, you walk out feeling like it went great.
That is a real gift and it is a different skill from the one this measures.
You call yourself relational. You might be charismatic. Being personable is not a strategy.
Remember the game at the fair where you swing the mallet and the puck flies up the tower and rings the bell? Then it drops all the way back down.
Your score says the first impression is handled. What happens in the six weeks afterward is not.
You do this well when you do it. That is what the number says.
The problem is the word “when.” A good week, then a quarter-end, then a fire, then three weeks of nothing, then guilt, then another good week.
Weak relationship activity depends on motivation. Strong relationship activity has rhythm.
You are closer than most people who take this. One system away from consistent, and consistent is where the compounding actually starts.
This is a high score and you earned it. You initiate. You say things instead of only feeling them. Things leave your head.
Two honest notes. Scores like this are rarer than people assume, so it is worth asking whether you answered as the person you are on a good month or an average one.
And a rhythm this good is worth defending. The most common way it breaks is a great quarter that eats the calendar.
If you want the reps alongside other people who take this seriously, and a written Focus 10 you actually work, the Sprint will sharpen something you are already good at.
Want to make sure this gets done? Join our Relationship Action Sprint.
Learn MoreThe problem
It is from somebody you like. They said something kind, or asked how you were, or sent a thing that made them think of you.
You read it in a parking lot. You meant to write back properly. Properly never came.
It is still there. So is the LinkedIn comment from the guy who congratulated you in June.
Nothing about either one is on fire. No deal moves because you answered. Which is exactly why they keep losing to the things that do.
You know you should get in touch. Check in. Make the introduction. Send the article. Say the thing you have been meaning to say. Remember the birthday before the notification does. Call the person you have been meaning to call since roughly March.
You know all of it.
And then should gets murdered by urgent.
Monday becomes Friday. Friday becomes next month. And people you genuinely care about slowly turn into people you used to be close with.
Nobody decided that. There was no fight, no falling out, no moment. It happened because nothing happened.
And you will never see what it cost you
That email does not exist. It never arrives.
You never get the referrals they didn’t send you.
The whole bill stays invisible, which is exactly why this keeps happening to people who care.
Why it happens to good people
The more successful you get, the more exponential the pile. More clients, more decisions, more requests, more fires, more people who need something from you today.
Relationships are almost always important. They are almost never screaming.
So the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The client with the emergency gets the call. And the person who quietly referred you, believed in you, or vouched for you in a room you weren’t in gets whatever is left over. (Which is often nothing. They notice, by the way. They just don’t say anything.)
Proximity creates priority. Whoever is in front of you right now gets your best. Everybody else gets your leftovers.
If you are charismatic, you have been getting away with this for years.
You are good in a room. Conversations go well. People like you. You walk out feeling like it went great, and honestly, it did go great.
Now picture the carnival game with the mallet and the tower. You swing, the puck rockets up, the bell rings, everybody looks over. Then it drops right back to the bottom and sits there. That is a fantastic call followed by six weeks of silence. You are not building an asset. You are playing the game at the fair.
Likability is not loyalty. People liking you in the moment is a different animal from people working on your behalf over time. One of those you can pull off with a good personality. The other one costs you something.
Weak versus strong
Caring was never the variable. Look at what actually leaves the building.
Read the left column again. None of it is a character flaw. All of it is a systems problem.
(We know, because we wrote that column off our own behavior. See: the note on the desk.)
What the Sprint is
Before day one, you build your Focus 10. Ten people who get your time and attention for two weeks. Written down, on purpose. Prospects, allies, clients, team. The client you only ever talk business with. The prospect who went dark. The referral partner who stopped sending things your way. We send the worksheet and sixteen thought joggers so you are not staring at a blank page Sunday night.
Ten is the number, by the way. Not eight. If your list runs to fifteen, good. Circle ten and keep the rest for when the two weeks give you room.
A text. A voice memo. A ninety second video. A call. An introduction. A note that actually gets stamped. A DOV, which is our word for a small useful thing you do for somebody with no hook in it.
Create one unexpected relationship moment with someone whose loyalty matters.
Initiate it. Make it real. Get it out of your head and into their world.
Their response is irrelevant. The rep is the win.
Thinking about calling John is a loss. Finding John’s number is a loss. Thirty minutes of tidying your CRM is a very sophisticated loss.
One rep. Not three, not five, and never “contact everybody on your list.” The standard has to survive the ugliest Tuesday of your year or it is worthless.
A shared group space for what happened, what surprised you, and what people say back to you. Some of those replies are worth reading twice.
The week after, a one on one reflection call. One hour, scheduled between October 19 and 30. What worked for you, what didn’t, what rhythm actually survives your real calendar. That hour is where two weeks of activity turns into something that is still alive in November.
Why this works when willpower didn’t
“It’s that extra accountability to get out that card I’ve been putting off or researching that card I meant to send. It’s a significant calendar event for me to always strive to attend.”
That is the whole mechanism, said better than we could say it.
Nobody here is going to teach you how to send a thoughtful text. You need thirty minutes on the calendar where it happens, and a few other people who will notice if it doesn’t.
What you can expect
In ten workdays you will deliberately show up for ten people who matter to you. Those ten are more likely to feel noticed, remembered, appreciated, or helped, because you did something instead of thinking about doing something.
And you will feel better, because you finally did the things you have been meaning to do. Gratitude guilt weighs more than the task that would clear it. It always has.
Blinn said this after a few months of the practice:
“I’ve noticed relationships are now becoming more intuitive. Instead of just thinking ‘they’d like this,’ I’m actually reaching out. Sending the text, sharing the article, passing along the resource. It’s becoming more of a habit!”
Ten workdays will not get you all the way there. It will get you enough repetitions to know what it feels like, which is the part almost nobody ever reaches.
Sometimes one of these unlocks something wildly out of proportion to ninety nine dollars. A referral you never asked for. A prospect who went dark coming back. A client remembering why they work with you, months before anybody says the word renewal.
That is ROR, and it works precisely because you weren’t fishing. You were showing up.
We can’t promise you that. We can tell you it happens, and that it has never once happened to somebody who did nothing.
Who this is for
Why now
If your 2027 requires other people, clients, partners, referrals, advocates, somebody willing to pick up the phone for you, then those relationships do not start on January 1 when you suddenly need them.
You are not going to show up in January, follow a plan, and grow. If that worked it would have happened last year, and you would not be treading water.
This is when you sharpen the axe.
You don’t need a New Year’s resolution. You need $99 and to show up on Monday.
The details
| Dates | Monday, October 5 to Friday, October 16 |
|---|---|
| Daily calls | 30 minutes, weekday mornings, 8:30am or 11:30am ET |
| Reflection call | One hour, one on one, scheduled between October 19 and 30 |
| Price | $99 per person |
| Enrollment closes | Wednesday, September 30 |
Questions
You take the next rep. You do not make up a missed day by doing two the next day, the same way you don’t answer a missed week of workouts by doing a week of workouts on Saturday. Miss one, start again the next morning. The standard is built so you can still win on the ugliest Tuesday of your year.
Take the other session time. Both are the same call.
Yes, openers included, so you can catch what you missed. The reps are the point though, and those don’t happen in a replay.
No. You need ten names and a phone. A pen, some note cards and stamps will get used.
No. Your Focus 10 can include prospects, and business things do happen, because business is H2H. But this is not ten sales messages wearing a nicer hat, and running it that way produces worse results in both directions.
Yes, and it works well as a group. No team rate. It’s $99 a head.
Your Focus 10 list, and the supplies to actually follow through. Note cards, pens, stamps, mailing addresses, phone numbers. Nobody should arrive on day one wishing they had note cards.
Your reflection call, where we work out what rhythm survives your actual schedule. If you want to keep going with us after that, we’ll talk about it there. Nothing is automatic and nothing gets charged to you without you asking for it.
Your relationships are not waiting for your calendar to clear. Someday is how valued relationships become former relationships.
Two weeks. Ten people. One rep a day.
Enrollment closes Wednesday, September 30.