Staying Healthy While Running Your Small Business – Small Business Show Episode 81

Small business show at BusinessShow Co episode number 81 for Wednesday, August 24, 2016 greetings folks and welcome to the to the Small Business show at businessshow Co. The show by, for and about small business owners and anyone really interested in small business, including folks that haven't yet started one. Here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And in Lafayette, California, I'm Shannon Jean. How goes it, Mr. Hamilton?

It goes. It's actually, it's been a, you know, every week's a crazy week. But, but it's been, it's been good. It's, you know, sometimes you do things and you get decent results and today or this past week that has happened. I think I mentioned in the last show that we moved Mac observer over to HTTPs. We made the whole site ssl. Yeah, I mean it's got to happen eventually, right? Google's pushing it. And Google, and that's the interesting part is Google has said we will use HTTPs as a signal for a more reputable site.

Yes.

But they've made it clear like don't do this and expect dramatic increases. It's like, you know, if quality content is worth 10, you know, brownie points, HTTPs might be worth 1.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Yeah. Right. So it's like, you know, do this.

But don't expect probably not as important when they told everybody, hey, if you don't have a mobile site, right, we're going to bury your results.

Yeah, exactly. Well, we moved to WordPress back in June from the previous content management system that we had. And then in August last week we moved the whole site to HTTPs. And this is a non trivial thing to do because you have to, not only do you have to get your certificates and all of that, which is relatively straightforward, you have to make sure every single resource called by every single page that you have is secure. And that includes not just your resources which are like pictures and JavaScript and style sheets and all of that have to be called HTTPs, but every third party resource is called that way. So if you're pulling an image or JavaScript from someone else, you have to call that securely, otherwise your page won't validate. And then multiply that times four for us because we have essentially four different iterations of content management systems there at TMO that sort of all exist in their own way. You wouldn't necessari notice it as a reader, but as the, you know, the people behind the scenes were very much aware of it. So it was, you know, it was an, it was a non trivial Thing and it's one of those projects where all the balls are in the air simultaneously, you know, and they all have to land at exactly the right time otherwise the site craters, you know. And so we made it work as we always. Yeah, as we always do. Yeah. And then traffic shot through the roof.

Really?

Yeah. They actually said Google says, look, when you do this, you're going to see a dip for two weeks as we kind of figure out what's going on with your site and then it'll be back up and running and all of that. But what you have to do is you go into Google's webmaster tools and you actually have to put your site in again.

That's scary.

Yeah, I know. So we had HTTP macobserver.com and now we have HTTPs macobserver.com and they say you put it in as a separate site. But don't worry, we know that it's the the same and instantly you'll see a lot of your stats automatically copy over and that should placate you a little bit and make you not freak out. And so I did all the things we were supposed to do and I mean, traffic up 50%, that's awesome. Yeah, especially search traffic. So I can attribute it, it's great. I'll take the win, right? Sure. I can attribute it to one of two things. It could be that you get a whole lot more Browning points for HTTPs than Google says. But I don't think that's the case because I know others who have done this and who have seen more predictable results more consistent with Google's guidance. So the other thing is, as I said, we have four iterations of Mac observer out there and it's been a long time since we've told Google to go back and re index everything. I mean, I guess you can tell Google to do that, but this sort of forced that and man, I mean it's just been fantastic. So I'm curious what happens over the course of this two week window? Do things increase from where we are after two weeks or do they settle back down to where they were when Google finally gets itself straightened out and says, oh yeah, that's who these guys are. Okay, great. I don't know but I'll take it. It's a nice little thing to see. All plus.

Well, it actually brings up a good point that about security on your, on your website for your small business as well. And you know, where it used to be you would, you know, get your security certificate through whoever you're buying from. And you know, most all if you're, if you're rolling your own website, you know, usually your registrar can help you with that GoDaddy or whoever you're using or if you're on one of this, the E commerce platforms, you can go through them, but used to be where you would just do the security certificate when they hit the cart.

Right.

Added something to the cart.

Right.

And when we built our new site, I guess about 18 months ago for Tech Restore, it was one of the, you know, really important things was not only that the whole site be encrypted, you know, HTTPs when you came in the front door.

Yeah.

But also we did the extended verification.

Yep.

For a business, which is great because you have all that stuff they're going to ask you for.

You do. It's totally easy to do. I mean it costs you an extra 100 bucks or your search, but.

Yeah, but it gives you the big nice green bar that instead of just the little small green lock and you know, people can click on it and it explains all that stuff. So I think that's a, a very good investment. And I did it all. Everybody's.

Yeah, I did it for Mac Observer. There was no reason not to. I mean again, it was 100 bucks, you know, every two years difference. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although I do want to point out that it was two years ago that Google said we have this movement, we're starting it called HTTPs everywhere and we want the whole web to be secure for a variety of reasons. And they're all actually very, very good reasons. And since then there have been some changes in the pricing of certificates. In fact, in December a company called let's encrypt@letsencrypt.org started offering free certificates for anyone interesting. And they are truly free. Now. There is a catch, and the catch is that they expire every three months, which is sort of a pain in the neck. Except they also publish a tool that you can install on your web server if you're so inclined that will every 60 days update those certificates and keep them total. It makes it totally automated and totally seamless and you're good to go. So we already have our extended verification or extended validation cert that we're using for the front door stuff. But we have some, as I said, everything has to be HTTPs. And so there were some domains or subdomains that we had that were not as part of that initial certificate. And so I thought, well, let me do. Let's encrypt certs for those nobody's Ever going to load images.macobserver.com and care if they see the green bar or not. That's not actually one, but there's quite a few of them that I bundled into a let's Encrypt cert. And it works totally fine and it works great and it doesn't mess with my main page being ev. The extended. That all just works because everything's secure and it works great.

Yeah, that's really cool.

Yeah, it's cool. I would say if you want to save money and you're not going to do the extended validation certificate, I would just do a free one from let's Encrypt. I wouldn't even bother in the middle, you know. Yeah.

Now if you're on a platform like Volusion or Shopify or something like that, you know, go through there. I mean, the easiest thing to do is just select and have them do that for you and they will. You're not. It's not free, but you know, it'll.

Be just built way easier.

Yeah, it is way easier if you're, if you're, you know, rolling your own, doing your own stuff. This is. I think it's a great idea.

Yeah. No, the let's Encrypting it was in terms of all the non trivial stuff that I dealt with last week. Installing and building the let's Encrypt engine to keep itself up to date was one of the most trivial things I did.

That's hard to get because it was.

Just follow these directions, don't color outside the lines, everything will work perfectly. And sure enough, it does. It's perfect.

Yeah, that's totally cool. So talking about juggling and keeping lots of balls in the air, both of us have massive projects always going on. You know, whenever we start the show, we always usually spend about the first half an hour talking, you know, non recorded about what's going on. And it's always like, oh man, he's got more stuff going on than I do. Which is unusual.

Yeah. Actually I feel it's funny that you say that because I feel the opposite. I feel, wow, he's got more stuff going on than I do. Yeah, my stuff's manageable. Right. You know.

Yeah, so is mine. For me, I couldn't manage your stuff. I'm a lousy drummer, but. And you probably would have a hard time managing my stuff, correct? Yeah, everybody has their stuff. And you know, we, we thought today we would talk for a little bit about keeping your energy up so that you know how you can Keep all these balls in the air and, you know, staying healthy because, you know, let's, let's, you know, back up and business is great and all that stuff. It's awesome and we're very excited about it. But if you don't have your health, you have nothing else and you, you don't want to drive yourself in the ground for your sake and the people that you know around you, that care about you. So we thought we'd chat a little bit about it today and, you know, I'd love to start talking about one of my actually favorite subjects. Sleep.

Yeah.

You know, and my take on sleep's a little different. You know, you can look up, you know, online, you know, being healthy and everything, and it's always like, oh, get enough exercise, eat a good diet, make sure you get enough sleep. But for me, I think about sleep more of optimizing it in a way that maximizes how effective you are. So does that make sense?

No, dude, no, no, no. It totally does. Finish what you're gonna say and then I'll, and then I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why I'm laughing.

Okay, good. Yeah. Because I am, you know, absolutely a late night person. I feel it coming on at about 10 o' clock at night and you know, especially when I was younger, in my 30s and 40s, but even now, you know, you start to get that second wind, you call it, whatever you call it, or getting creative. And I can work until, you know, one or two. And I always wanted to start a business and call it, you know, 10 to 12 or, you know, 12 to 2, because that's when you're always up.

Working, you know, just call it bar time.

Yeah, part time. That's right. That's perfect. And so a lot of, you know, there's this kind of historical thing. Hey, you know, you work eight to five or whatever and then you go home, you spend time with your family, and 11 or midnight you go to bed and you get up. Well, if that works for you, that's great. But if you're a super early morning person, like, you know, my wife is, what's to say that, you know, maybe you should get up at 5 in the morning or 4 in the morning and really kick it out so that when the time comes and you really just done at, at 9:00 clock maybe, or whenever it is, you can go to sleep, you know, and vice versa, if, if you're a late night person, maybe you need to work until 2 in the morning and, and, or 3 in the morning and get up at 10 o'. Clock. Now we don't all have the ability to do that, but for me one of the real keys to having and living a charmed life like we talk about here a lot is, is having that flexibility. Knowing that my employees are going to open, you know, or start the businesses at, you know, typically 8:00am and that I don't have to be there was a huge, huge step for me. So for me sleep is more about maximizing, you know, your energy levels throughout the day and night versus hey, get on this schedule and you got to stick to it.

Yeah. Oh no, that, that's it. The reason I was laughing is, you know, I've got kind of a crazy, a crazy for me week this week just in terms of schedule because tomorrow morning I have to get up very early to make an 8 whatever 15am flight out of Boston to fly to San Francisco. And of course by the time I land, it's not even noon. Yeah, right. That's right. And then I've got a gig to do tomorrow evening. It's a low key gig and early in the day, but still. And then I've got Friday sort of to decompress a little bit and then I've got more gigs to do on Saturday and Sunday. And so I know that I need energy for this, not only just to be able to perform, but I'm playing, I'm subbing with a band that has a big following and the expectations are very high and so I have to be mentally alert too. I can't just show up and just pound out on the drums and expect it to just come out of my hands automatically. I'm going to have to think for these gigs a little bit. And, and so I was talking to somebody who is actually a fan of one of the other shows that I do called Gig Gab and he's going to be at, at some of these gigs and he was texting me and we were talking. I said, well, yeah, I've been really working about working on banking sleep. And, and he said, yeah, which is why I laughed. And, and he laughed. He's like, oh, you coined a new term. I thought, wow, I've been using that term for, you know, decades.

Right.

But, but it really, it's not so much banking sleep, it's. But I do this before I go to trade shows and things where I know I'm not gonna get the sleep that I want. Right. Once tomorrow starts or even really tonight, to be perfectly honest, I'm not gonna get as much sleep as I want. And that's probably gonna continue at least on and off for the next six days. Friday night I got all stressed out about stuff and actually about these songs that I needed to learn and stayed up until like three in the morning. Cause that's when I get stuff done. Learning these tunes starting on Saturday, I really got regimented about, okay, I'm going to get to sleep and make sure I give myself seven, eight hours of time. That's going to be uninterrupted and I'm just going to get sleep every day because I know tonight I'm not going to get what I would normally want because I can't go to sleep at 8 o'. Clock. I mean, that's crazy. That's never going to happen. But yeah, that concept of just being aware of it and knowing I need to think about this and knowing what my energy level is going to be and that's really what banking sleep is about, is managing my energy level and in this case being proactive about it so that I have what I need or have as much as I can get.

Yeah. And I think the keyword you said there is being proactive. I think it's much harder to catch up or to think you're going to catch up like on the weekend or whatever. I mean, your body's going to eventually force you to get more sleep, but I don't think you're going to wake up and feel more energized. But doing it, doing it in advance and trying to make sure you're, you know, really well rested when you hit the ground. I think it's a great idea. Yeah, I really like it. So, you know, and it's hard to convince people, let's just call them normal people that are not that don't own a business or don't have that flexibility, you know, it's hard to convince them that. I mean, because I will tell you, most people, if they, you know, if you're in bed after like, you know, seven o' clock around here, what, you are just a slacker, you know, what are you doing, you know, that kind of thing and the whole, I don't say the whole world, but a large part of the world feels that way and you have to kind of ignore that unless you are an early morning person, which is great.

Sure.

Or if your business just, hey, requires you to be there that early and you don't have, you know, employees to do that stuff for you.

Right.

I highly recommend you think about and look inside yourself about. Okay, when am I most productive? Because I know for me, you know, if I'm up super in the, more early in the morning, I'm not going to get much done. It's just not my time. But I can, you know, kill it at midnight, no problem.

Yeah. If I'm sitting in, you know, if we watch a movie or something with the kids at, you know, at 8, 9 o', clock, I'm fine and I can like sit on the couch. But 10 o' clock comes and I start getting antsy and I'm like standing around. It's like they asked me like, want to go? Yeah, yeah, I think so. I think I need to go and do something else, get some stuff done.

Yeah, yeah, that's good. So, yeah, so think about sleep maybe a little differently. Whatever might work for you. And you know, we'd love to hear tips on how you manage, you know, a crazy schedule like I'm sure a lot of you have out there. And you know, send us a text at 401-472-4249. That would be awesome. We would love, love to hear, love.

To hear from you. 401-472-4249. Lots of fours. And that's for you. It's actually four fours. Isn't it powerful?

That's powerful. You did that on purpose.

I think I did that, yeah.

And how about art? Maybe, maybe I'd like this subject might even be more, more interesting than sleep is. What about food? You know, we talked about don't forget to sleep. But eating I think is, you know, entrepreneurs and guys like us, we're often very jacked up and excited and you know, self motivating and I think a lot of times you can forget to eat. Right. Because of that.

Yeah. I actually have a question for you about, about food or just intake? Are you a coffee person?

I am a, I am a coffee person.

Okay.

I like, I'll have coffee when I get to work but I typically don't have it first thing in the morning. I probably don't go to it until 9:30, maybe even 10 o'. Clock.

Yeah.

And I'll have, I'll fill up my mug and I'll go back to my desk and get some stuff done there. But like on the weekend I rarely drink coffee.

Yeah. Okay.

And so, you know, I'm kind of a coffee person. But I mean I like it but you know, I don't depend on it as much.

Yeah. Yeah. So I, I have a very delicate relationship with caffeine. Well, you know, as you said I'm a very high energy, kind of hyper guy. Caffeine is fine as long as I'm on my own, like doing all the stuff last week with the HTTPs stuff when I'm coding or doing that kind of sysadmin type of stuff or anything where I'm just in project mode and I don't have to deal with other people much. I'm fine with caffeine, and it can actually really help me focus and stay on task, but it really does further reduce my tolerance for humanity in a way that's not productive in, In. In many scenarios. So.

Sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's good. It's good to recognize that.

Sure. Totally. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And I often will, you know, I'm. I'm kind of a sugar guy. You know, I have a big sweet tooth, so I, I often would rather grab a. Like a Red Bull. Yeah. Versus.

Oh, yeah. I don't like coffee. Coffee actually has too much caffeine for me. If I have a normal cup of, well, I don't know what we have at my house. My wife, I think she has a real high tolerance for caffeine, but if I have a cup of coffee out of our thing, literally 10 hours later, I'll see the ground move. I mean, I get visual hallucinations from that much caffeine, but a little bit in tea or a soda or something I can deal with.

Yeah, no, that's cool. That's good stuff.

Like you said, you just got to learn how to live with yourself. Yeah.

And. And it's good to recognize that, you know, you. You want to hit the caffeine hard. When you're by yourself. You can get a lot done, and then, you know, you don't have to worry about interacting with anybody.

Yeah. You know, so what about. What about, like, other food? How. How do you make sure that you. Or do you make sure that you eat, like, throughout the day?

I. Well, the thing is, I think that's important. The way I do it is throughout the day, it's. It's grazing for me is much, much better than sitting down and having, you know, like a big breakfast or a big lunch, even a big dinner. I just can't do it because I get into sloth mode. If I eat a big, heavy meal, it's much harder. Okay. Now I got to get up and I got to go do this. And I would much rather, you know, keep it light but, you know, hit it throughout the day. That works really well for me. And I've been, you know, I've been doing it for a long time. But maybe, I mean, like my breakfast, I may have a piece of toast.

Okay.

And a glass of orange juice, you know, or a couple of pieces, toast and glass of orange juice and I'm gone. And I'm. It's great.

Okay, so you will start the day with, with simple sugars, like a, like bread or whatever. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, yeah, I will do that. I know you're not. And I, I don't think, I think we're in agreement with this, that, you know, breakfast is not a critically important part of the, of the day. It just depends on your individual thing, you know, and if that, if it, if that works for you, have some protein or what are some sugars, that's great. But you don't have to have it.

Breakfast for me is really dependent on how much and how late I ate the night before.

Yeah, sure.

I mean, I do, I have to be careful because I will suffer from becoming what, what we like to call hangry here in our house. And if so, if I don't have enough food, I'll get really irritable. But, but if I've eaten like a big meal or a late meal or had like a lot of dessert or something the night before, oftentimes I wake up and I'm just not hungry. I'll have a glass of juice, you know, start the hydration of the day going and that's enough. But if I do eat breakfast, it's typically an apple sliced up and some cheddar cheese and that's it. And that's great. Yeah. And I find that not having like breads and stuff in the morning really keep. It lets me keep my energy level not only high, but for a lot longer. As soon as I start eating, I get hungry faster, you know? Sure. So if I don't have breakfast, I can go till like 2 o' clock before I start thinking, hey, wait a minute, that's pretty good, you know, I need food. But if I have, if I ate like a bowl of cereal or, or a bagel or something, By 11, I'm hungry again, you know, Whereas, yeah, I.

I definitely start getting hungry again, but. And I'll have, I mean, like, you have some fruit or something like that.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, it's finding that thing. And one of the things I love to do, I love to go out to breakfast. I think it's fantastic. And I don't know what it is. I love to have a breakfast meeting. Like if we're going to Have a meeting. I would always rather have a meeting over breakfast. I don't eat a lot, same kind of thing, but going out, maybe getting a couple. I rarely eat eggs, but going out and have somebody make me, you know, and to make a bacon and egg sandwich or something like that is a huge treat. And so it's definitely, you know, well.

And you're not breaking up the middle of your day with a, A meal meeting too. Yep.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. So, you know, and again, I think it's fine tuning it. You know, whatever works for you if nobody likes to eat. And for me, a lot of it depends on the clock. If, if I wake up and, you know, I gotta be somewhere quick, I mean, it, it's gonna be really quick, you know, if I grab something at all. But I am always, I think my stomach's pretty small because I'm always looking. Okay, what can I just grab. Grab and go. And you. I have, you know, eating in the car. Fantastic.

Have you, are you a. Do you enjoy snacking on nuts?

Yeah, I'll eat, yeah, sure, absolutely.

Yeah. That's like my go to snack and has been for a couple of years. Yeah. And it really, you know, it's got some protein, it's got some fats, it makes you feel full, but it doesn't for me anyway, it doesn't slow me down. So. Yeah, nuts, you know, I can't do peanuts because I'm told I have a peanut allergy. I don't know, it's one of those things.

But anyway, yeah, and I think that's the thing is, you know, really being able to stop and think about what works for you. I mean, if you're burnout every day at, you know, 10 o' clock in the morning, try maybe thinking about what is it that is causing that, you know, and adjusting things, it's like, you know, it's coming back to developing systems that help you, you know, get where you want to be. And if, you know, you have a big, you know, big day ahead and you're, you're trying to hustle and going to be up late, you know, what is it that you need to intake into your body to, you know, to keep you moving forward.

Yeah. Like, I know tomorrow I've just got to eat a lot more than I normally would because I won't have enough sleep. And so I've got to compensate for that. And the gig tomorrow night's at a wine bar. So that's, you know, going to negatively impact me.

Yes.

Yeah.

That's right. You got it.

Thankfully, it's only a two hour gig.

So that's not bad. Short. I can loosen up.

Yeah, I can totally, I can, I can totally deal with it. That's right.

Yeah. That's good. It's not like you're showing up and doing accounting. Right, Right.

Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's good. That's good. Yeah. And then kind of the same sense of exercise, you know, what is it that makes you feel great? What lifts your energy level? Is it, you know, going to the gym every single day before you go to work? Great. You know, or is it, I used to go at night because I would knew that I was ramping up and my kids would go to bed and I would go to the, you know, go work out, come back home and I would just be ready to go. Now, you know, we, we walk like crazy. I mean, I take my dog to work every day. About 11:30, he comes up, starts giving me those big eyes and wants to go. So we, you know, we walk a couple miles every day, fast, brisk walk during the middle of the day. And it, it, you know, it makes you feel great. I love it. And so just trying to look at it, you know, what, what works for you. And maybe you just need to get, especially during the day, maybe you need to just get up if you're, or if you're walking around or get away from everybody coming into me. I spend my day being interrupted, which is fine. It can be very productive.

It can, yeah.

But it is really great. My wife and I, you know, Renee and I will go, we go for this loop and take a walk with the dog. And it's great because we get to talk about, hey, what's going on with kids, or we talk about work, but we get to focus on each other and on having a discussion without somebody walking into my office or her office.

Yeah. No. Well, yeah. That's so interesting, the exercising in the middle of the day. I mean, it's really important to get that time. I mean, there's so many things happening in what you just described. Because that's not just exercise, right?

Yeah, that's right.

It's either, I mean, it's exercise plus either communication time with another human being, which is good. And also one that's not only your spouse, but I mean, I know with the way you and your wife are, you talk about the business a bunch. I mean, she's more than just wife, you know what I mean?

Oh, yeah, of course, of course, of course.

Well, not everybody has that. And that's okay. Sure, sure. But if she's not there, you're getting that sort of decompressed time that is so important. And one thing that it's not typically for most folks, not exercise, but is valuable decompressed time is the commute. And as someone who generally works from home, I mean, I commute, I walk across the driveway to my office. I need to artificially create that commute time somehow each day.

That's right.

And if I don't. And there's many days where I don't, where I'm just too busy. And the problem is you really need that time where your mind is idle and it's never. And the thing is, of course it's never idle, but you're just not adding stimulus to it. Right. You're not actively doing something. You're either walking or you're driving or whatever it is you're doing. And you just get to process. And that is so important.

So important.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it's that. That having that 20 minutes.

Yeah.

Of focused, you know, not focusing on anything.

Right. Yeah.

You know, for.

For me, it's meditation.

Yeah.

Any way you want to look at it anyway.

That's right. Like, I can't do it on the commute because I get too, you know, frustrated at. Because, you know, everybody in front of me isn't. Is a jerk.

It's a moron.

And everybody flying past me is insane. Right.

There's that George Carlin routine. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. So I don't do it in the queue. But you. Things settle down in the house and, you know, the kids head off to school and that kind of thing. I'll try if I have time. And I usually try to make the time is just sit down, you know, and grab my book, something I'm reading, and just sit for 20 minutes before I head out for the day. And it really helps get. Kind of set myself in the right mood. And, you know, I often find myself not even turning, just turning a few pages. And then I start to go off on something and thinking and in your head. Oh, yeah, yeah. And go. Oh, the 20 minutes is. Is up. I gotta. I gotta roll. I don't get anywhere. But you were able to just sit there and I look out the window and, you know, okay, great.

Zone time. It's important. No, it is important. It really is. And it, you know, as that transition from employee to business owner. Every employee. I know this. And I've been an employee I have employees, you have employees. I. Everybody zones out at work. It happens. But when you start running your own show, you start feeling more guilty about that zone time than you do when you're an employee, which, frankly, I encourage my employees to zone out a little bit. I mean, you can't spend three weeks zone out. But that's where I was talking to John Martolero, who's one of our writers at the Mac observer and comes up with the most thoughtful pieces. And they're not only thoughtful, they are thought provoking. And that's a great thing for a writer. I mean, they're not clickbait. They're real, honest to goodness pieces that get people really engaged. And he can do this time and time again. And, and I heard him talking the other day. He's worked for us for, you know, almost 10 years. And he, he said, oh, yeah, you know, last night, you know, when I did what I normally do, I took my iPad and I went and sat in the chair. And before I even open my iPad, I just close my eyes and I sit and I think for 20 minutes.

Yeah, that's huge.

And I thought, that's the magic right there. And I stopped the meeting. I'm like, does anybody else here do that? They're like, no, we're always busy, like, hunting for the. Whatever we're gonna do and then just writing and doing it. Like, all right, everybody, for two weeks. That's great. Listeners to this show know that two weeks is the thing that people will accept even when you're saying, do this forever and ever.

It's an experiment. It's an experiment.

It's an experiment. Yeah. So it was like, for two weeks, everybody do this. Take 20min before you start doing anything and collect your thoughts. And it's been great, you know, and this was, it was, it was a couple of, couple of weeks ago. Yeah, but, but yeah, you need to do that and you need to give yourself permission to do it because otherwise you won't and, you know, or you'll feel guilty while you're doing it and you'll, you'll cut it short or you'll say, oh, not today, because I really have this other stuff to do. No, that time is super valuable to you, especially to you as a business owner. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know, I think, you know, on this, on this topic, well, one thing I want to say about the walks or the, you know, getting out of the office in the middle of the day, like, I will often, like, if Renee's not around, you know, I'll often grab one of my employees and go, hey, come for a walk with me. You know, and that's a great thing as well, is to get someone out of their environment that they're sitting in just to have a chance to talk. And maybe, you know, it's not the person you necessarily would take to lunch or something, you know, if you're gonna have a meeting, but certainly, you know, walking. Going for a walk during the day and chatting about, hey, what are you doing this weekend? Or this kind of stuff can really go a long way to learning more about the people that work for you. Them learning more about you and all that stuff is very helpful in the dynamic of creating a culture that. That you want to, over time, where people are working for you out of respect and out of, you know, they value what you say and all that kind of stuff. It's a great way to help build the foundation for that. So I highly recommend it now.

It's totally true. Yeah. Steve Jobs was a big, big walker in terms of, like, meetings. They would always, you know, he would always take somebody for a walk. It was always.

That's good.

Yeah, that's.

That's awesome. So I guess, you know, one of the really important things, you know, you and I, we talk business all the time, and it's, you know, we really enjoy it. Otherwise, I wouldn't talk about it so much. But a really important concept, I think, is that, you know, your life is not your.

Your.

Your whole life is just not your business. You have to, I think, work on compartmentalizing things in. In order to get that 20 minutes to yourself, in order to get that time for your family and your spouse and all that kind of stuff and a great way. And I didn't do a very good job of that when I was, you know, much younger. But I read a book that, you know, came out by the guys from. They make a product called Basecamp, which is a great communication tool for. For businesses and contractors and stuff. But they wrote a book called Rework, and I had already kind of been started on the path of breaking things up a bit and, you know, not being so focused on business 24 7. But this book, Rework, will really reset you on the value of all these different aspects of your life. And that's just what they are, different aspects of them. And you want to give energy to each of them. They're equally important. And I would highly recommend that. It's a very brief book. You can read it in a weekend. We'll link it to the site today and maybe we can have one of these guys on sometimes one of the authors, but just, you know, really can make a difference in thinking about why you just cannot drive yourself into the ground. And it's just not going to make you more successful. It's going to make you more frustrated. It's going to hurt your interpersonal relationships with, you know, your friends, your family, you know, all that kind of stuff. So that balance is really important. And it takes, I just speaking from my own experience, it takes a long time to get it figured out.

And have you, do you feel like you figured it out yet? I mean, let me ask you this. Have you stopped tweaking it?

No, I don't think I've stopped. No.

No, no, no, no, Never. Yeah.

But I think I figured it out in that I don't worry about things beyond my control when I'm doing other things.

Right.

And we could probably, you know, we could talk for a whole other.

That was going to say, that's a whole episode. I was, I, I had to, I had to address something like that with my employees today. They're like, they were freaked out about the fact that Facebook, if you looked at our feed there, one way wasn't showing any of our posts, but another way it was, it was like, okay, but you can see them one way. Right. Defer for 24 hours.

Sure.

That's probably their problem. It's probably not ours. All our stuff showing up there.

Yeah, just.

You got to move on.

Yeah, that's correct. And that's a very good piece of advice. So, you know, developing, you know, putting things in perspective. And, you know, I used to freak out about every little thing and it did make me, at some level, it made me more successful because I was always worried about little things that eventually turned out to be big things.

But you need to be detail oriented or detail aware is really the key. Without being detail obsessed. And it's a very hard thing to learn.

And I would say if you can't learn it, you need to hire people that, that can do it so you can step back because you're never going to almost hit the microphone. I'm so, you know, adamant about this. But you're, you're never going to get out of it if you can't step away from your business. You know, is that old adage, you know, you got to be able to work on the business, not in the business.

Right.

And if, you know, for me, I have a few people that work for me that are super detail oriented and worry about things way more than I do.

Yeah.

Which is great. And I love them for it. And. And have allowed me the freedom to, you know, be released from that. So that's one way to do it. But we'll revisit this topic on another show. And, you know, we have some great shows coming up and some great guests that we've lined up, and we'll definitely spend more time on this topic.

Dave. Yeah, absolutely. I think we got to about 20% of what I wanted to cover here, but it's good.

That means we get to come back.

No, it is. It's right. It's all about learning how to live with yourself. And I think that's one of the most important things to take away from at least this episode is your business is an extension of you. In the beginning. It's. It's all you. Yeah. Yeah. It's good stuff. All right, folks, facebook.combusinessshow co is where you can find us, of course, feedback businessshow co on the. The voice and text line that Shannon mentioned earlier. 401-472-4249 if you're hearing this right now, just send us a text. We want to know that the line works. There you go.

Yeah.

401-47-2424. 249. All we need. Hello. That's it. That's it. If you want, you can text this Charmed Life. I don't know. It's just our thing, so you can text that, too. But that's. That's all I got. And we'll. We'll take it from here.

Awesome. Have a great rest of the week.

You too.

Take care.

Thanks.

Sam.