 
By Helen Thompson
Ever notice that you don’t have as much time as you used to? Seems like the more successful you become, the harder it is to just get by. Sure, you’re financially more stable than you ever have been, but you’re being pulled in a lot of different directions. You may find that you have a plateful of responsibilities and only 24 hours in a day to get them done. Sleep? What? Rest and relaxation? Free time? Unheard of!
“There isn’t an easy shortcut,” says Trent Bryson, father of two, president of his own company, as well as of Long Beach AIFA, and a YAT task force member. “You are going to have to work hard.”
The balancing act
Bryson wears three hats as president of Bryson Financial, an employee-benefits firm that focuses on health and welfare benefits, retirement-planning consulting and third-party administration of retirement plans. The company also has an individual life-insurance planning and wealth-management division. First, he’s responsible for seeing and managing clients. Secondly, he runs the marketing arm of the business. Finally, and what he considers to be the most important, he manages and develops his 20-person staff.
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| Bryson has a knack for getting all of the different parts of his life to work together, but the real secret behind his success is his willingness to have fun while working.
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“You can create a vision,” he explains, “but you can empower them to run with that vision. I wanted to create an environment here where it would be successful with or without me, so if I went to Fiji for a week, everything would run smoothly.” Technology is helpful—he’s very fond of his Blackberry, for instance, but it’s more important for him that his staff be prepared to make their own decisions and handle things without having to run to him to confirm details.
A day in the life
Then, at home, there’s his wife, Summer; his 4-year-old-son, T.J., and his infant daughter, Alexa. Somewhere, he has to find time for them, for working out, for sports, for paperwork, for meeting with vendors, and—oh, yeah, eating and sleeping, right?
A typical day: |
5 a.m. |
Alexa wakes up for her morning feeding. |
6:15 a.m. |
T.J. wakes up. “He’ll jump on me too,” says Bryson. “So from 5-7:30 we have kid time, eat breakfast, play and then I drop him off at school.” |
7:30 a.m. |
Client calls until lunchtime. |
Noon |
Lunch with vendors. “Rather than meet with them here at the office, I meet them there,” Bryson notes. “If they come here, that’s dead time.” |
1 p.m. |
Staff meetings and individual staff development through the afternoon. |
5 or 6 p.m. |
Work out. |
7 p.m. |
Home for dinner with the whole family. |
8:30 p.m. |
Goes back to the office to do paperwork and handle correspondence. “It’s a beautiful time to get things done that might take away from quality time with my clients or my staff,” he says. “Sometimes I’ll go out on a meeting and make notes using Copytalk, so that when I come back in the evening, I can use those notes to create a follow-up letter to the client.” |
10 p.m. |
Home. |
“Luckily I live about 10 minutes away from my office,” says Bryson. And he does have other things in his routine, as well as weekends that he likes to devote to recreation. Every Wednesday he has lunchtime Rotary club meetings, Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings he plays soccer, and on Saturdays he plays golf. Once a month, he has an early morning meeting as a board member of the local Boys and Girls Club.
Within this structure, he’s able to accommodate his many demands, and because he spends so much time on staff development, he knows he can count on them when he’s called to travel or serve at an extracurricular function.
He’s fortunate also in that he has a supportive family. “Every weekend, my mom picks one evening to take the kids overnight and that allows my wife and me to have a movie night or to go out together,” he says. And he always sets Sunday afternoons aside for his family. His wife stays at home during the week, so sometimes that’s her free time while he takes the kids. But just as often, they all go out together.
Work hard, play hard
Bryson has a knack for getting all of the different parts of his life to work together. The golf game might be with a prospect; the vacation to Fiji might be with another client; the kids’ playmates are often the kids of other networking contacts. He organized a NAIFA charity event to benefit the Long Beach Boys and Girls Club. “I just put together the resources that I already have,” he says.
The real secret behind Bryson’s success is that he is willing to have fun while working. “We have an amazing opportunity in that our business is so relationship-driven,” he says. “If I can bring people together somehow—whether it’s someone trying to get a loan, find a job or buy a house—I have a great network of friends and clients, and I can help them connect with each other.”
APRIL 2006
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