689 — I Made All the Big Events. That's About It. (Book Solo #6)

Well, I'm talking to you today about the personal costs of all of it. What is it actually costing you? What's the impact in your life of the things that you're missing out on? It's a very personal conversation today. I'll share with you what it was like for me, and maybe that'll let you see something about yourself as well. Hey everybody, I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of the Scaling Up Business podcast. In this series of solo episodes, I'm talking about the ideas that are in my book coming out now, Busy Is Broken. You'll find Busy Is Broken at busyisbroken.com. You can preorder the book, get some samples, things like that from it. This series of, uh, podcast solo episodes and, um, articles, that kind of thing, are all to do with some of the ideas of that. Busy Is Broken. Where do you keep trying to work harder and harder and you're holding the company where you are the bottleneck in the business? The kinds of things that need to evolve and change as you do the work of scaling up. How do you need to change and evolve? That is the point of this whole series. You'll find the series and all the things related to it at BusyIsBroken.com. If you want to know about our regular, the broader coaching, ScalingCoach.com. That is our website where we have our Q20 diagnostic and we have our monthly workshop series and we have our various coaching programs, things like that, that are chances to work with us and help get your company scaled. We've worked with thousands of companies now at this point over the last 13 years with me and my team, and we have all kinds of different things to help you grow your business and evolve as a leader and make that growth actually fun. I share with you examples. So we're gonna talk about a personal one, not a client story today, but like my personal story and the example of what happened for me, what I did, what I screwed up in growing the business. So look, I was actually, my son was over just yesterday and I was talking with him about this whole part of the book. And he shared this, he's like, Dad, you, you were, you were there a lot, but you weren't really there. You were away at nights. Uh, some nights you were just away, like teaching class, coaching, doing some other kind of thing like that, doing a meeting, uh, traveling. Um, but when you were home, you were on the phone. Um, when you were handling all kinds of calls and doing things, working on stuff from home, even when you were here. Um, I asked my wife about this. I'm like, did I miss out on the kids growing up? She says, no, no, no. You made all the big events, the graduations, the performances, the bar bat mitzvahs. Um, you were there for those. Um, I was, I have the photos. I was in the right seat at the right time in all of those moments that had a date on the calendar, crowd in the room. Um, but that's maybe about it. Um, she said, you missed all the little moments, all the things leading up to the big game, the rehearsals before the play, the meetings with the rabbi the weeks before the bar/bat mitzvahs. You weren't in those. You didn't go to or from those ordinary Tuesday nights, Saturday mornings, all those things that make up life. The times when we're raising our kids, like you were there for all the little things, just the key things, the photo moments, the photo ops. Most of them, The rest of the stuff, you missed out. I took care of those things. I was off building the business. I was coaching. I was teaching, training. I was on a plane, on a call, a lot of calls. Um, I was in front of the room on a stage somewhere doing important work for our business, for other people's companies, while all those little moments of my life happened without me there. Nobody sends you a calendar invite for the night your daughter told a funny story at dinner, and that story became a family legend that you were never part of. You just look up one day and your kids are grown. My kids are grown. My daughter lives in LA. My son lives very close nearby, but he's got his own life, his own daughter now, um, and he's doing his thing. Like, he's got his own career, and I've talked about that plenty. Both of them. Sophie traveling around the country, around the world, touring. Jack working in AI, raising his daughter. I see them plenty. I talk to them. But all those little things, right? There was a lot of that. I can't go back and get that. It's not self-pity. That's just the hard facts, right? The moments happened. I wasn't there for a lot of that. No amount of any of our success makes any of that different. The thing that drove me, um, is like ego and adrenaline. I love being the hero. I love being needed. So showing up in a critical thing, I'm there. Showing up for every little thing, just being present, not so much. Every rescue from a business, a person, like whatever, is proof that I mattered, right? It kept me on a plane. Look, I love being called out. I'm like, oh, I get on a plane today. I go work somewhere. It makes me feel important. Yes, I'm going to go help someone. It is important. It does help. I am helpful in that way, but that's a real cost. And the question underneath all of it is, why that pattern? Why was I working so hard? What, like, you know, I'm working on things I care about, but why working on them in that way? Why the midnight emails? Why the inability to let my team make more decisions? Why all of those things that cost more than they actually earn, than they provide? I talk about this because I, not because I want you to feel sorry for me, because I want you to take a look in the mirror. I know many of us do this again and again. We make sacrifices because we say it matters, because it's like what I have to do. It's just the thing that— because that's kind of— I'm an entrepreneur, I'm a founder, I'm like doing what I'm doing. I wish somebody had asked me that, had pointed out so that I would just settle down. There were moments I remember one time I came in the house on the phone And I continue to be in the house. And then when I finally hung up the phone, it's probably 20 minutes or something like that where I continue to phone call after coming in late. Dinner's already like done. They're eating like whatever. I come in late, I'm on the phone, I stay on the phone, they're doing homework. And after I get off the phone, my wife says to me in the most like heartbreaking way for me, she's like, if you're going to be just on the phone when you get home, Maybe just stay at the office. And I was like, um, I just was gutted by it. Like, really? I thought I was doing good. And then I realized, like, not being present and not being able to let go of things was really a problem. So here's my invitation for you tonight, literally tonight. Put your phone another room during dinner. Put it away. Put the laptop away, the phone away. Our phones are flipping in our lives with everything 24/7. I don't mean on silent, I don't mean face down. In another room, right? Um, don't police everybody else to do it. Just be with them. If they're all on their phones too, because you've created a thing, just watch that and let that break your heart a little bit. And then let it start to change things. But before you start preaching it about everybody else, do your own work. Put it down, watch them, love them, appreciate them, be with the people you love. Those moments that have— haven't happened yet, right? The things still to come, tonight's dinner, the months ahead, the years ahead, that's all still available, right? Every moment we have a choice. This is the opportunity of our work and to make a difference, to start to interrupt your patterns and level up. Look what happens when you put your phone down. You get present. Look around, look at the people, talk to them. Don't tell yourself, oh, I need my phone because we're going to use Google or AI to have a conversational assistant in the middle of this thing. Leave it alone, put it away, be with people. Look at people, notice the sounds, take in the smells, notice the sights, the tastes, all the little cues, the body posture, like just really be present. Notice yourself, notice your discomfort with being present, with being idle, with having nothing to do or say. See if you can turn that into a living kind of a meditation, a mindfulness practice where you just are with people and where your being with people creates an opening for people to be with you and to be with each other. See if you can be like the clearing or the catalyst, the opportunity for that to arise among the people. And then think about what happens in the background. Think about other people being able to step up, being able to breathe, being able to do their own work, 'cause you're not in everything everywhere all the time. That's the invitation. For this week. I actually, for the next 2 weeks. So put your phone in another room, start tonight, then start to do more and more of it every day, every night. Have times when you're fully, fully present, fully there. Notice if you're staying too late. Notice if you're getting home, but then still doing other kinds of things. Start to work on actually being present. That means disengaging. That means letting your team step up and step into things. But it also means getting a fuller, richer, rested, connected, loving you. And that can only be good things for the business and the team that you're also building. The family, the life, the business, the team, whatever it is. Anyway, this has been a conversation in particular about the leader's perspective, my perspective, what it was like for me. Now, I do today have a great relationship with my daughter. I have a great relationship with my son. I see them both frequently and I talk to them and it's rich. There are those moments, we both know them, like the kids know it, Lori knows it, I know it, but we also then have the now, right? So, the shift and things like that. So, if this is your perspective, your experience, in 2 weeks' time, we'll talk about what it's like for your team What does it sound like when you're being a boss who doesn't delegate, who micromanages, who's too in the weeds, who's too much of a perfectionist? What— when you're doing the kind of the worst traits of a leader of a business that can't scale, where you are the bottleneck, what's it like for them? I'm going to share with you some stories, some examples of what it's like to be in their seats, what they say about you, about us, and. And so you can get a picture of that and start to interrupt with that. So that's all coming in the next episode. Um, until then, if you want to know more about the book, busyisbroken.com, that's where to go sign up for the release or preorder it. Uh, by the time this is out now, you can preorder the book so you can get— and there's a lot of bonuses with the preordering. So go preorder the book now, busyisbroken.com, and you'll get a lot of little extras for the people who order it before the actual full release of the book, the publication date. And then if you want to know about our workshops or coaching programs, scalingcoach.com. Big thanks to, to Wanda, who helps us get the shows ready and out the door every week, to our AI assistants, to Verne Harnish, who created the whole Scaling Up Framework. Until next time, keep scaling.