Busy Is Broken: Why Working Harder Can Hurt Your Business | Bill Gallagher

What I realized is that actually that extra work is hurting the business. The overwhelming, like, conversation in our media around business, that kind of thing, is hustle, grind, lean in, right? That's the message. And then I thought about my work. I'm torn with all of that. And then I thought about my clients over, like, you know, I've worked with so many thousands of entrepreneurs at some level for the last 13 years. And then I realized some of the worst examples are people who did that. And some of the best examples are the opposite. And then I started looking around and thinking about my own life and what did I do? And I realized, oh, there's a key moment where things shifted for me. And I started looking at some of my clients who shifted and were different, some public figures. And I realized, oh, maybe that sacrifice— we know it costs us, impacts our family life, impacts our health, it impacts our marriages, our relationships. But we think it's important because we're building something. So we make that deal. What I realized is that actually that extra work is hurting the business.

Bill Gallagher, great to see you again.

It's so nice to see you.

Yeah, you and I've been friends for a long time, but today we're gonna talk about your new book that's coming out. This is your first— is this your first book though, isn't it?

First book. I've been involved with so many projects as a producer, partner, that kind of thing, but not under my name. Yeah. So finally, halfway, almost there, but yeah.

Well, finally, you're overdue 'cause you've, you've certainly had so much expertise in the business world and so much to talk about, and you've, you've worked and influenced so many companies over the years. I'm glad you've finally got it done. So the book is called Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. And you and I were just chatting briefly about some of the contents of the book, but why don't you tell us about kind of the overall premise and then what got you to the point that you really wanted to get this book out the door to start?

Well, those are 2 very different things, but I guess they're connected in a larger sense. So the overwhelming conversation in our media around business, that kind of thing, is hustle, grind, lean in, right? That's the message. And, uh, and then I thought about my work and I'm sort of, I'm torn with all of that. And, and then I thought about my clients over it. Like, you know, I've worked with so many thousands of entrepreneurs at some level for the last 13 years, more than that, if you count the sort of before full-time coaching. And, and then I realized some of the worst examples are people who did that.

Mm-hmm.

And some of the best examples are the opposite. And then I started looking around. And thinking about my own life and what did I do? And I realized, oh, there's a key moment where things shifted for me. And I started looking at some of my clients who shifted and were different, some public figures. And I realized, oh, maybe that sacrifice, we know it costs us, impacts our family life, impacts our health. It impacts our marriages, our relationships. We know it, it does all of that, but we think it's important because we're building something. So we make that deal. What I realized is that actually that extra work is hurting the business.

Well, it's not only hurting the business, but it's hurting the family unit. It's hurting the entrepreneur themselves, which ends up hurting the family unit. What did your parents do when you were growing up? What were your mom and dad's jobs? What did they do for work?

Well, so my mom never really worked. She was very well educated, but she mostly didn't. But my dad was alternating. An entrepreneur and a professor.

So professor— Was your dad grinding it out or was he home for activities or where was, where did he kind of fall?

He, a mix of the, of the two.

Yeah.

He, so my dad was bipolar and, and so he would obsess something. He was a very grandiose, charismatic, brilliant man, like a hyperpolyglot, passable in 17 languages. Like just really remarkable in some ways, but he would, uh, like he was like grand and, and amazing. So you would just get caught up in his orbit and hold into his gravity. And I was very close to him. So mostly I didn't think about this as much from that, but I, I tended to obsess on things myself.

And then you asked like, what got me to, you know, well, let, let me give you, I wanna give a, a kind of a, a point why I believe your content is so powerful. I grew up with the opposite of the very kind of hyper-focused, burned-out entrepreneurial. My dad was an entrepreneur his whole life.

Yeah.

But he was at every activity. He was at every family dinner. He was at all my sports. He embarrassed me by coming to practices and he worked really, really hard at building his business. But he also played golf every Wednesday afternoon and every Saturday morning. And he really modeled to me that you could build a successful business and have a successful Company, but, but it didn't have to be your everything.

Yeah.

So I'm really lucky I learned that, but I even failed that way cuz I burned out along the way too.

Yeah. I would say that I thought more about myself and my own effort, that kind of thing. But I did tend to like want a rich, full life. Like my natural bias was for a rich, full life and for, um, like more play, more interest and, and not Working so hard. So, I did do that. And yet, um, in 2009, when our kids were, um, uh, 10 and 12, and we reflected on where we were and what we were dealing with in that year coming out of the 2008 recession, we're in full crisis mode and that kind of thing. We realized we'd said that when our kids hit that age, like before they turned 14, we were going to travel seriously with them. Now, we'd taken them around in business always. Like if we went to visit the factory in Bali, we'd take them. If I did a trade show in New York, we'd take them. We, we integrated things with them, but like serious time off, it was supposed to be like a year, all summer, that kind of thing. And yet when we thought about that, I realized in that year I couldn't go away for a week without being on phone calls, Zooms, emails, or that wasn't Zoom then, but like, you know, things nonstop.

Yep.

I couldn't detach even for a week. So a long weekend, yes, but, but not beyond that. And so I began my own personal effort that year to, and it took me about 10 months of serious retraining and a specific sort of committed action. So I said, okay, next summer we're going away for the summer and we're going to take the kids, whether we have a business or not, we're going, whether we're backpacking or in nice hotels, we're going. And then I started asking the question of my team every time somebody came into my office. And at that time we were growing a lot and, um, I had people coming in all day with problems and that kind of thing. And I would just tell them what to do, right? And send them on their way and listen and then tell them what to do. And I stopped doing that over about a 10-month period and asked more questions, asked them what their ideas were, how did they think they should solve it? What will they do when I'm gone? Because I'd said I, now we were going, and Lori and I worked together in, uh, her business that in those years. So I started saying, okay, next summer I'm gonna be gone. When you have a thing like this and I'm gone, what will you do?

And great.

That push, that was a forcing action that committed me. And so that's where my transformation occurred. So I did have that good life, but all that then, like it, it was always in tension and I would go somewhere and I'd be on phones and email. So 10 months. We went to Italy. It only ended up being for a month, but for a whole month in a period where the company was growing very rapidly, um, and with new people and things like that, I didn't have to do calls, interventions, meetings, things like that for a whole month. And I came back, the team was better, the company was better, I was better, right?

I, I find that so many entrepreneurs tend to get hyper-involved in the business because it's the only thing that they get satisfaction from in life. And I've noticed from living globally now for the last 5 years, we've been nomadic and traveling around the world for 5 years. Most of the entrepreneurs around the world have hobbies, they have friends, they have family. Like, that stuff's very important to them. And they never say that work is their hobby. Their hobbies are their hobbies. Work is work. And they're very delineated in that way. Whereas so many North Americans like, oh, business is my hobby. Well, Then I don't want to hear about your hobby. Like, I found out recently, about a year or so ago, that you're into kiteboarding.

Yeah. Wingsurfing.

Wingsurfing. Okay. Like, that's advanced kiteboarding. Did you do that kind of stuff when you were running your company, or was that like a learn later?

Yes. So, I did do that. So, and, but it wasn't from a, like a settled place. So, when my kids were young, one of the things that I did, I had grown up, with some access to planes, had served in the Air Force, things like that, but I was never a pilot. And then after our son was born, my daughter was on the way. Um, I panicked and I went and got my pilot's license and then I would fly a lot and, you know, flying like personally for fun and that kind of thing, aerobatic flying and, and just, uh, punking around flying. Um, you know, that feels like selfish and expensive hobby to have. And like it is, but, um, but I feel guilty about it. Right. So, um, I did things like that, but I knew they cost the business. I didn't set it up in a way powerfully in those days. So I had always had different activities and interests.

Um, and it doesn't have to cost the business either, does it? Like you, did you just, were you doing it and then abdicating or doing it and walking away or doing it and not making sure your team was focused? Like how would you, how would you do that same hobby and maybe even do more of that hobby now, but do it in the right way?

Well, the right way is you fully set up your team and you delegate powerfully, and then you coach them or get them coaching, and you set them up with the right structures and the, and the clear strategy, and people know what they're doing and they work together well. And, uh, and then, and your job, you know, you look, you articulate the grand strategy, you put the right people in the thing, you empower them. And you give some oversight, but you're not managing every little— and then you're thinking more broadly about what's happening in the marketplace and what are my competitors doing and where's the world, where's the puck going? Um, you know, you're more of that kind of thinking than, than like operating things.

Yeah. That's why I was asked by Fortune Magazine back in 2003, how do you motivate your employees and hold them accountable? I said, I don't. I hire motivated and accountable people and I show them where we're going and I get outta their way and I support them if they need me. Um, I have a friend of mine in Vancouver, Canada, an old EO member. You and I met through the EO, through the Entrepreneurs Organization, and his name is Dave Feller, and he was a member of the EO Vancouver chapter. And he opened up what is now a very large company, a couple hundred million dollars in revenue. His head office is in Vancouver, Canada, and all of his employees are in Winnipeg, which is about 2,000 miles away.

Mm-hmm.

And I said, Dave, why would you ever open your head office in Vancouver and start hiring everybody in Winnipeg? And he goes, Because I don't want to go into the office. I don't want to be involved in the day-to-day. So I realized if I hired them far enough away, I wouldn't be able to get dragged into the day-to-day. I mean, he's all about the do less, scale more, which is your subtitle.

I, I, countless examples of people who did that, but more that I've heard from that are like, yeah, I'm like, I don't know. I like, I, I used to do XYZ, but now my business, my hobby. I've heard that many, many times, uh, in North America in particular. In some other, like, uh, China and Japan, Korea also seem to have some of this problem. Um, you would think it's not the case at all in Europe. Um, but you find so many of the entrepreneurial culture, the CEO culture worships American entrepreneurship and business culture that then they emulate some of the stuff. So you'll have a culture where they respect email time boundaries and they take serious time off. But you'll still see the CEO doing some of this behavior too, because they worship American business.

Well, and they probably haven't— well, they clearly haven't read your book yet. They don't have a framework for it. So I know you've got a bunch of case studies in your book that you've talked about. Can you give us a couple client stories of people that I guess are doing it the right way? And then I wanna talk a little bit about some of the systems that you cover in the book around the 4 sins.

Well, I'd love to just drop a remarkable one on you, like the cautionary tale first.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, so I was coaching a company. I have the cautionary tales anonymized because nobody wants to be called out that directly, but I'm coaching a company. Um, the founders grow this thing. It's a tech business. It goes past $2 billion in revenue pretty quickly. We do a change with a new CEO, remarkable human being, educated, brilliant, um, trained, like great experience, lots of things like that. But now they're $2 billion and he's, he's a, you know, a big deal and they open up too many fronts. And then he tries to be Superman and fly everyone and do everything and be in everything and everywhere all the time and fires off things to people. And it ends up getting like unfocused and they start to stumble. And then he tries to be more Superman, to work harder and that kind of thing. And he really is capable of some remarkable thinking, but it doesn't matter cuz it's a 1,000-person firm and all that. We go from a $2 billion valuation, we stumble, parts are sold off for $180 million.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Wow.

From $2 billion in revenue to $180 million breakup. That's brutal.

That is a brutal kind of a thing. Right. And, and, uh, so I think there are a lot of examples like that. You could contrast even some, a couple well-known CEOs, um, Michael Eisner and Bob Iger. Okay. Both Disney. Yeah, both Disney. Runs the company first for many years. Company does phenomenally well. He's brilliant. He is really, really brilliant. He does all kinds of things really great. But he is a, like, a toxic-level micromanager. And he is involved in everything. And then, because of the overwork or whatever, he has a pretty serious heart thing. He's getting quadruple bypass surgery and Wall Street panics. They're like, wait a minute, this guy is key man, right? Talk about key man risk. If he dies, this company is borked. Um, and, uh, so that starts to falter then because he's such a micromanager, he starts to piss off people, you know, but like serious people like Steve Jobs and with Pixar and Katzenberg and, and other critical partners. So he ends up doing more and more of it. Like, this is a guy who sends and gives feedback on the lampshades in a hotel in a Disney property in Europe at 2:00 AM. Just like, get out of people's business, right?

Yeah.

So he has the whole thing. Eventually he's tossed out. Um, and it takes a little while, but, but he's gone. Bob Iger comes in. Look, Bob Iger's an intense guy. Everybody, you and I, are busy people. We lead very full lives compared to the average Joe. We were taking big bites out of life, you know, but so he wakes up very early in the morning, but he starts with fitness. He gets in before other people to get his head clear and that kind of thing. But then when he pulls the team together, he's like, what are you guys doing? And how do I support you? And how do we coordinate better? It's more about empowering the team and letting them do their job than being in everyone's thing.

Yeah.

And, and then he tries to knock off most nights and go have dinner with the family. On the weekend, he's sailing with the family, like, and friends. He has time for that. Eisner never had any of that, right? Yeah.

There's a few, there's a few, few core phrases that come to mind from Jim Collins' book. And he talks about, um, focus on the critical few versus the important many. And he talks about delegating everything except genius.

Yeah.

I remember when I was the COO at 1-800-GOT-JUNK, one of our franchisees came to me one time and he said, Cameron, you major in the minors. And I said, I said, what do you mean? He said, well, you're all pissed off that all the franchisees aren't using the proper email signature, that the email signature isn't proper. He said, but you're missing the point. You know, at that point we only had about 30 franchisees. When I left, we had 330. But with the 30 franchisees, he said, don't worry about the email signature. He goes, none of the 30 have a marketing plan, a marketing calendar, or a marketing budget. And you're worried about a fucking email signature? Why don't you worry about the big things that are going to make, you know? That's a good point. Versus the tiny little things. But I didn't understand that I was over-involving in that. So how do you advise CEOs or executives that are kind of doing those, the critical few things, or that aren't, or that they're not delegating? Where do they make the mistakes and how do you help them with that?

Well, first of all, at some level, you know a little bit of this already, except I think like psychologically, we all do our best to present our best face, right? We look for the best parts, right? Think of even the very basic way. The way I look at myself in the mirror is designed to minimize the pain and manage like how we show up. I like this particular camera angle and lighting that I do my show out and that kind of thing. But if I get a side view or whatever, I'm like uncomfortable with the way I look. So true with the way we operate as CEOs that we have blind spots, right? And, and you don't wanna really notice. So you can begin to know, and you kind of know, oh, I'm a micromanager. And I've had many tell me that. I had one, one of my bad CEO, mm-hmm. Like sinning CEOs say, oh, I'm sorry for— and then go ahead and do it anyway.

So just a quick sidebar on micromanaging. If anyone is trained in something called situational leadership, which every executive, every leader should get trained in situational leadership, sometimes micromanaging is exactly what that person needs, right?

Yes.

If it's a brand new task or they're overwhelmed or they have no idea how to do it, They need to be micromanaged on that. But there might be lots of other projects that they just, they don't even wanna be praised. Like, cuz that would be like patronizing to them. Right?

Right. Right. So, uh, the fundamental thing is you wanna start to cultivate and be curious about the feedback, other people's perspective. And you wanna start to get that maybe you don't see how bad you actually are. And then, and you wanna start to figure out how to move into a new model. So in the, in the, like, as a leader, gets more and more effective as your organization grows, and if you manage to hang onto it, it's gonna be because you were a leader who created leaders who created leaders, right? Who, who empowered and who re— really fully passed the baton at a global theoretical scale. You've created a movement that like they don't even exactly recognize what you did to it cuz it's now theirs. They own it so completely.

Sure.

And I think that's the shift. Like we gotta start to, to start to evolve the way we, the way that we did that got us there, the effort, the passion around the problem, that kind of thing. More and more, you're just, you're, you're like creating some and sharing some vision in the world and you hopefully you've passed the values along and love people and, you know, that kind of thing.

You know, I was working with a CEO, one of our COO Alliance members. I was working with their CEO on some stuff and he tended to be kind of that in the business, in the weeds. over-involving, 16 hours a day running his company.

Yeah.

And I realized he had no hobbies, he had no bucket list, he had no trips planned with his wife, he had no time in his calendar for his kids. So, I started spending a lot of time with him just on getting his shit together and having a personal life and some hobbies and reconnecting with what was important. And when all of a sudden he was getting excited about those things, he was more able to start delegating because he realized, you know what, I'd actually rather go to Italy for a couple weeks than Is that, do you work with them on that stuff or do you cover that at all?

Um, a million percent. I think so in coaching, right? As you know, there's what people tell you, and then there are little clues that you can see from other people around them and you intuit from the conversation, but they hide stuff, whether intentionally or not, things are hidden from your view. So you only get so much of it and that kind of thing. But I think if you simply disappear to Italy tomorrow, Um, you will probably damage your company because you haven't done the work to do the change. So committing to go to Italy the next year and then starting to say, okay, I'm not ready for this. I need to work at this. And then working at it consistently over 10 months is what led to something positive. Well, I know, I know that one right now who's struggling with, like, they've done some of the work, but they're still like working through it. Right. Yeah.

I know that one of your, um, your 4 sins that you cover in the book Busy Is Broken is You know, the failure to delegate.

Yes.

I think what's also tied to the failure to delegate is the inability to delegate properly. Like there's actually a skill and a model to delegate properly. Can you cover a little bit of both sides of that for us? Yeah.

So I would say the book doesn't address a whole lot of exactly like the optimal way to delegate or that kind of thing. It just, it taught, but I do think of it as the first sin. So the, The, and the conversation I mostly hear is I'll start to delegate more when I have the right people.

Yep.

And I'm like, yeah, it's nonsense. Anybody can tolerate some delegation. Everybody degrees and steps, and they may continue to level up, but you could delegate with whoever you've got right now. The key in my mind, in my view, is think about what makes people strong. Like I'm gonna delegate to Cameron something. Why am I giving this job to Cameron beyond I need a job done? I'm giving it to Cameron in particular because he's really good at this. And I, and I see this connection. And then if I know more about you, like I know that you are trying to create a nomadic lifestyle, or you're like, if I could tie it to what you like personally and your strength, then I can say, we got this thing that needs doing over here. It's perfectly suited to you and it helps you achieve your life goals. Like, you're like, I'm all in. Then I just need to actually make sure that you don't drop the ball. Right.

I'll tell you, one of the best examples of somebody delegating was a CEO I used to coach years ago. Her name is Suzanne Evans, and Suzanne runs a coaching program, has about 600 entrepreneurs in her coaching program, and I was coaching her. But what she does on Sunday night is she makes a list of all the stuff that she wants to do over the next week, and then she takes that list and prioritizes it into A's and B's and then numbers them A1, A2, whatever. Then puts a time block on each of them as to how much time in like hourly increments it's gonna take from 30 minutes to an hour. She totals up the time for all the stuff that's on her list. And before she allows herself to check an email or start working on any of the projects, she delegates 80% of the work hours to someone.

Hmm.

Even if she has no one to delegate it to, she picks someone anyway. And she says she'd rather spend her time teaching the person Than doing the work, and I'm like, fuck, that's so good.

I love that. Yeah, it's a particular.

She said like her to-do list doesn't have her name on it.

It's a very like engineer systematic way to do it. Like she's creating a list and she's estimating times and she's totaling things and she's blocking them off and right.

Well, and she's just forcing herself to do it. You know, because it's so easy for us to say, oh, I will just, I will just like when was the last time you or I cleaned our house or scrubbed the toilets? We don't. We have a cleaning aid that comes and does that right, or cuts the lawn or. Or fixes the car or changes the oil or paints our house. So, there's all this stuff that we can do, but we tend to— I think business people tend to do so much of it because that's where they get their only dopamine rush.

Yes.

Because they don't have the other hobbies. So, they get stuck in that stupid groove. So, you've got the failure to delegate, you've got micromanaging, and then you've got perfectionism.

Yeah. So, before you move on, let's say one thing about micromanaging. Micromanaging is, and some people aren't clear about this, collapse it with the other one. Micromanaging is I delegated to you, but now I'm still up in your business. So like you're doing it in name only. I'm actually telling you every single thing to do. And as you pointed out earlier in our conversation, there's only a couple of times where people want to be told in the very beginning or when they're in a crisis or overwhelm, right? Like the rest of the time, back off. So those are the, that's the relationship of the micromanager, uh, to the delegate. Perfectionism then follows kind of soon after that. And it's, it's like, no matter who's working on it, I don't ship it. I'm obsessed over it. I end up coming back in and working on it, reworking it, and like going around and around, um, putting in extra hours on things because I won't let it go. It's good enough. Look, look, I just found, uh, we're talking about my book and that kind of thing. And recently, and looking at the manuscript and that kind of thing, I'd hand it off and I found I found out a fact out there. There's a, there's a couple bad facts in there that we missed in rounds of stuff, like whatever, it'll go, I'll apologize.

Right. And then you can get it your next round. You can get it your next edit. It's not going to kill anybody. You know, no one's life is at stake. There's no planes that are going to crash, right?

A year was quoted wrong. Like, you know, a stat, a stat like wasn't found in the research, you know, stuff like that.

Like I heard a really good example from a mentor of mine. Years ago, I was being groomed by the COO at Starbucks. He was doing coaching calls with me every month and then meeting with me in person every quarter for about 2 years. His name is Greg Johnson.

Mm-hmm.

And when Greg was working as that incoming COO, he got a phone call from the current CEO at the time, Howard Behar. And Howard said, Greg, why is the letter B on this sign at 50th and Wallingford in Seattle not working? Now, that's a real micromanaging question from the CEO of a 14,000-location. But Greg turned back to Howard and said, that's not the right question. Howard said, okay, well then what is the right question? Greg said, the question you need to ask is, what system do we have in place to ensure that every letter on all of our signs at all of our locations are always working? That's a question I will answer. But why is that letter not working? I'm not even going to respond to. And I was like, that's so good.

Cheeky.

But it's also really a good lesson right there.

But it's really brilliant. Like, stop focusing on that one sign. It's representative of something. Let's figure out what the systemic problem is.

CEOs and leaders have to ask leadership questions instead of like, why is that mistake in that book? What system did we not have? Or what system that was broken that allowed us to have the mistake in the book? Or like, I did a 2 million direct mail piece one time, and when we, we were so excited about it, we opened it up and instantly saw 2 spelling mistakes. I'm like, well, fuck, we proofread it 7 times. Like, broken system, right? Missing system. No one's fault. Okay, so you've got the perfectionism. I heard from Dan Sullivan that perfectionism and procrastination really slow everything down. So I've always talked about minimum viable everything. Get it done and out the door. Yep, yep, yep, yep. How do you know when to balance the MVP versus perfection? Like, where do you need some perfection, or to what level of perfection is it? 5, Sigma, Six Sigma, where do you get to?

So in my mind, um, it's really about, is it better than whatever else is out there? Um, is it an improvement? Does it solve the core problem? Then let's ship it and let's worry about the next version next. Right. Let's get people in using it because, and I remember in that period of growth with the jewelry business years ago, uh, I had a bunch of young new managers coming in and working on things. We'd hired them and they're stepping up and And and it's all good, and we're growing. And they they came back with this elaborate plan for a thing that ultimately worked out, but they were so sure that they could conceive of and execute a plan flawlessly. And I'm like, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy. Every single plan is gonna fail and stumble. And you know, like who know who the hell knows? No, we thought of that. We thought of that. We thought of it. Yeah, it's an infinite universe. You didn't think of everything.

Like General Patton from the US military said, a good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week. Good job.

Tyson said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. And life has a way of punching us in the face on the regular.

We sure learned that as entrepreneurs for sure. The last of the 4 sins that you had is this strategic myopia. That's the only one I have no idea what the heck that means. What does that mean?

It just means I'm so obsessed with all the doingness, the busyness, the operations of the company that I'm not thinking about what's happening in the marketplace. I'm not noticing the competition. I'm not noticing the shift in technology and whatever, you know, I, I'm, I'm like, I'll worry about that development later. I'm too busy to worry about AI today. I've got to sell something, you know?

Oh, cause you're so focused on what's happening inside the business. You're not looking outside.

You're completely internal. And certainly as the CEO in that leadership role, you've really got to have a lot of outside perspective.

I heard a great story about these 2 managers who were charged with clear-cutting a forest, and they both had these big sections of forest and teams of people. And the one guy was clear-cutting the forest and all the logs are falling and they're really, really productive. And the other leader climbs up to the tallest tree and looks around and says, holy shit, we're in the wrong forest. It goes back to that whole thing of like, there's nothing worse than having the best people working as fast as possible, you know, getting everything done, but going in the wrong direction.

On stuff that doesn't even matter anymore. Or on stuff that doesn't actually matter. This is actually an issue with some of the like management systems and things that you and I are around. I have people and they're like, oh, we, we discuss issues and we have a whole issue discussion system. And, and we spend dedicated time. I'm like, yeah, but you're missing the point that you should just shut that thing down because you're like talking about things that you should just move on from.

Yeah.

And if your company fails and I'm the turnaround guy, I'm gonna make a list of all these issues and all the things that are working. And I'm just gonna kill all those projects and I'm gonna put any money I have left on those things that are working. And I'm gonna see if a company emerges. That is the universal turnaround strategy. Right. Okay. Yeah, no, go ahead. Anyway, we don't do that enough to ourselves and then we miss the big opportunities where we're busy, like solving issues and problems and fixing that connect and then getting those forms right and whatever. And then we miss, like, everybody went somewhere else. Like the whole opportunity has shifted, you know?

Yeah.

All right.

So in your book, Busy Is Broken, you know, the whole do less, scale more, you, you've covered, we've talked a little bit about some of the client stories and how CEOs and executives are hurting the company and The 4 sins that are related to, what would you leave us with as some advice? You know, what are the things that they really should be doing? Can you kind of give us the, the Coles notes or the, the, um, the, the, the kind of, if you could give us the advice on a Post-it note, what would it be?

Well, I, I, I like to think that we have the company that we deserve and we deserve the company that we have today, right? The company that we have built so far is perfectly matched to our present sort of set of level of leadership and style. So, Right. if you wanna develop the company and level up and that kind of, you wanna bring in scaling up, you wanna bring in any of the COO Alliance idea, any of the things that you and I work with people on, you also wanna work on yourself and you wanna start to level up your approach. The think about in the same way we think about like 10x or 100xing the business, what would it be like to be a leader? Of a company that was 1,000 times bigger, what, how would you have to lead like? What would it be like if you couldn't directly manage everybody's little thing?

You know, this, that's my biggest issue with all of the operating systems, whether it's EOS, Scaling Up, Metronome, Next Level Growth, um, Align, whatever they are. None of the systems teach the actual leadership skills to grow people and get results through people. They don't cover situational leadership. They don't really get into coaching. They don't get into interviewing and hiring and running effective meetings. Maybe the L10 only. They really don't get into proper delegation and managing projects and time management and handling conflict. Like all of this, the true skills of how to get more done with less people faster.

So here's the thing. I, I think the reason is we're so blasé about leadership. So there's 18,000+ leadership books out there.

Mm-hmm.

It all sounds like a lot of platitudes of should do and things that are obvious that like, whatever. And we don't stop to go, okay, set aside all that theory. What am I doing today that I need to move beyond? What am I doing today that I don't see and appreciate that I'm avoiding looking at? Like, just start to look in the mirror and then look at how other people see you and, and be curious about that. And then start to think about what would I need to do? There is not one way to be a perfect, brilliant global leader. There are many different flavors and styles, and we could pull out endless examples, and they're all like complicated human beings. You were, oh, Steve Jobs, much admired. Nobody's gonna ever award him Father of the Year. Henry Ford was a Nazi sympathizer. Uh, Elon Musk is arguably, you know, amazing as an entrepreneur, but not everybody's best friend, like kind of obnoxious.

And horrible, horrible dad. Like, I don't know how many kids he's got.

Probably also a dad. Like, but in his view, he's probably a great dad because in his view, what he needs to do is produce a lot of babies. 'Cause he, yeah, like, oh, I'm brilliant or whatever.

So you're, you're talking about examining your own self, right? And reflecting on your own self. Yes.

And finding your path and your unique version, but it's not more of the same.

Mm-hmm. I've been talking a lot recently that when you point fingers at someone, And say like, so-and-so is causing a problem or this is wrong. When there's 3 fingers pointing back at you.

That's very good. Right?

Yeah. So, it's like that person's not doing a good job. Well, I hired him. I onboarded him and I led him. So, what am I doing wrong? And it's kind of forcing yourself to have some level of introspection there. Is that where coaching comes in then?

I think a lot, right? I don't have to— and somebody will mistakenly look for a coach who did what they want to do before, like, oh, had you coached a company past a billion or whatever. I've coached companies much bigger. It has nothing to do with it. I'm just outside eyes, right? I'm not swimming in their water. I'm not—

A mentor has done it before. A coach can ask you the questions and a consultant can do the work for you. A lot of people think that they want a coach, but they really want a mentor. They want someone to teach them what they've always done. Yeah. The coach is someone who can ask you questions and hold the mirror up and let you look in the mirror and can help you reexamine the problem. Right.

But what worked for that person won't also work for you. So, not at all. If I tell you, here's the steps I did to grow that business past $500 million, and then you go do those steps, they won't work. That time, that person, you're not me. It's not then. None of that doesn't— like, I, I just think it's absurd. Uh, and if you think about Michael Jordan, um, uh, Tiger Woods, All of the peak people in any realm have been coached by somebody who never did what they did.

Not to that level, for sure. Exactly. Not a single pro athlete has a coach that can play the game as well as they can play the game. We used to always joke that you always want to get a second opinion on all expert advice.

All right.

Give us a parting tip. If we had one final thing you want to leave people with from the whole busy is broken, do less, scale more, what would that parting tip be?

Well, that— stop doing more of the same. Try some new things.

Try some new things. Bill Gallagher, the author of Busy Is Broken: Do Less, Scale More. Thanks very much for joining us. Really appreciate the time today.

Thank you.