The Hands Off CEO Blueprint: How to Build a Business that Runs Without You with Mandi Ellefson

First of all, big reason why I'm in this business. And I have gone through the challenges of building a million dollar company. There's a lot of challenges in getting that. There are a lot of different levels you have to get to and, and changes that you have to make. Like your personality even. I mean, like, if you, if you want to change your personal reality, you have to change your personality.

Hey, I'm Joe Fear, and welcome to the Hustle and Flow Chart podcast. This is where we talk all about building businesses so they give you the freedom and fuel for your life. I'm not here to help you build a billion dollar business. Am here to help you create a business with systems that work for you so you can make more money than you need just by working part time. You know, I was a chronic hustle mode kind of guy and I want to share my experiences and mentors I've met along the way to help you reframe things to be the most effective as an entrepreneur. I wish I had this guidance and insight when I was younger. So that's what I'm doing here for you. Please share and enjoy.

All right, Mandy, we are here together and it's been a while. I know since when we met originally it was at a traffic and conversion summit in San Diego. We went to some kind of lunch or dinner. I don't know, we were with a group of folks. But right off the bat, it was immediately clear that you thought differently than a lot of other folks. You're very efficient with your thinking and you've been able to help tons of other people to see that in themselves and their businesses to expand on. But I'm curious to hear how you describe yourself or how you want people to, you know, hear about your superpowers and what you bring.

Great. Well, thanks so much, Joe, for having me. I remember that lunch. That was years ago, but it was really. It was a really a fun time. And to answer your question, you know, my company is hands off CEO. And what we do and what my superpower is ultimately simplifying and being able to look at very complex problems and looking at how do we be able to do that with a lot less energy, resources and really being able to help people create a much bigger vision for their life than they thought was possible before. And with that is a much bigger vision for their business. That's a lot of the work that we do at Hands off CEO. There's lots of nitty gritty systems and processes that go into that, but the bigger piece is really to be able to help the individual to be able to become a better person. And what that means is their ability to impact the world is. It's much greater because they have more freedom, they have more money. And I just love being able to facilitate that change in people because that's the ultimate leverage for me.

Yeah. And definitely that's what I saw. And after diving into some of your podcasts, Hands Off CEO podcast, and you've been on some friends podcasts like James Schramko a couple times, I think, last year. And a lot of folks, a lot of his listeners are also here too. So it's just really cool. It's almost like collapsing time, allowing for business owners to be fully them. Even though, like a lot of business owners, I think, well, I know they wear all hats a lot of the cases a lot of times, I'm sure a lot of the folks that come to you as well, and I was looking at your process and kind of how you take those talents from folks and probably open their eyes in a lot of ways, but then you have all these other systems and other people that can really replicate a lot of those efforts, probably in a more systemized, better way. So the business owner themselves can be more of them, which probably frees up a ton of time. I'm sure it makes them a lot more money, but I'm sure there's some resistance to that as well.

Well, it's a big transition as you're continuing to grow your business. There are transitions from plateaus that happen. And on one side of that, there's, there are the systems. This is. There's the how to, and it's, you know, the. This is how you actually delegate this. This is how you'd be able to create this kind of offer that you're going to be able to charge for a higher price point. There's specific systems and processes, and that's what most people focus on. But what actually holds you back from being able to implement any of that is the mindset P so when you're leveling up, there's a mindset piece and a system piece. And if you don't address both, then you will be stuck where you're at and it will take a lot more energy because it's just wasted energy and time in that space. So there's this transition that happens, but your role in your business as a leader really changes too. So there's some growth that needs to happen there. As fast as you're able and willing to grow is as fast as your income and your business is able to.

Yeah. So on the mindset piece, it's better to start with your story, just to kind of understand who you are behind the machine and behind all this. And then I'm curious to dive into how that looks on the mindset side as that being kind of the switch and diving in what you've seen, like, how that looks like for other folks too. But let's talk about you. Like, was there actually a switch at one point that made this all kind of click for you?

Yeah, definitely. I think I was sharing with you earlier about how the creation of Hands Off CEO was a big mistake. I didn't mean to start a consulting company. I had an agency before this where I was doing branding and web design. And I was in this transition at one of those growth stages. And I basically had blown up my personal life. It was really a stressful time where my company was the peak of success that it had been. And it just didn't really fit with my personal life. At the same time, I had a four year old. I was pregnant. I was about eight and a half months pregnant. And I was trying to exit certain parts of my business and to be able to really just be able to wrap it up so that I could take a maternity leave. And I had team members were dropping off the face of the planet and I was just stuck knee deep in all of this gunk that I couldn't actually move forward so that I could go and have the time with my family that I needed. Meanwhile, my husband was in this demanding graduate medical program and we had moved across the country. I didn't have any family around me and I was very alone. And meanwhile my body was just shutting down. It was so bad that even just turning a doorknob handle was excruciatingly painful. And there were times when I wasn't able to. So all of this stress, after I had gotten things in the business where it needed to so I could shut it down, I had to shut the business down basically for me to be able to have a maternity leave. And this is a time that this is not what I had in mind at all. It wasn't the kind of freedom that I had in mind for when I started the company. And, you know, it would have been nice to be able to have that income when we were, you know, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical student debt. And that's what happened. And I looked at this situation, I'm like this. There's something very wrong about this. I had been A manager in another company. I had gotten that company to run without me. And I'm like, why can't I do this with my own company? I was so frustrated about it. And that's what led me on this journey to be able to understand the situation better for myself. And then that actually was what turned into Hands off CEO that I started as a result of the work that I did just from, from learning how to solve this problem.

Wow. Yeah, that's, that's a wake up call. And especially with, with anyone coming and all that. Yeah, it's like probably not how you ever pictured being pregnant and having a new one into the world and spending time with them. So I mean, my wife had similar things happen. I know a lot of women, entrepreneur women have fallen into that similar kind of scenario. Better for worse. And, and, but hopefully, I mean for you, it sounded like there was a big aha moment. It was a shift for you that you're not going back to the old ways. What was the thing? Because you were able to build it for other people, but before this time you weren't able to build it for yourself. Was there a reason that you've been able to identify?

Definitely. So this was 11 years ago. It was actually probably closer about 12 years ago. But we're in 11th year of business and one of the things that I discovered that why I wasn't able to do that, here's the reality of this. I was actually able to solve this problem for clients of ours before I was able to solve it for myself. Part of the reason why I started going and just having interviews with other entrepreneurs to understand this problem better because I, I'm a problem solver. I know that if I just understand the problem, I can be able to solve it and I could be able to solve it for myself. Then what happened is as I was doing that and helping other people, then people just started to ask me to help them. And that's what started the consulting company. But one of the things that I noticed made a really big difference is there are a number of structures that need to be in place in the business, but there's also way of thinking and going all in. In scaling your company that I did not have at that.

So it was more of a. Yeah, you didn't have the, maybe the Runway in your mind and the, even the motivation and focus obviously.

Yeah. And that can happen when you're burnt out. But there were some things that were missing in there and one of them was that what I was selling in my previous business didn't have enough value in it to charge a high enough price to be able to properly fund the right kind of people to do the work.

Got it? Yep.

And that's one of the key things that we help our clients be able to solve as part of what they're doing. And then we're not working with broke business owners. You know, most of our clients are a million plus. We'll work with them as early as a half a million. But they have really great results, great case studies. They're not charging enough. They know they're not charging enough, but they're, they're doing pretty well. So we look at how do we be able to create more value in the perception of your ideal clients? How do you create more of an end to end solution? How do you be able to, to package that in a way that can be semi standardized, like 80% standardized? So it's on the offer level, it's the integration of the sales and the marketing and the operation. And what I have found over the years is that that is the missing piece, especially for service based companies. Our market is we work mostly with marketing agencies and consulting companies, you know, where they're doing some kind of work for their clients and the CEO gets too stuck in the day to day of it for them to continue. And the CEO tends to get very stuck in the business in the same way that I did in my last business. But that foundational piece first is getting that offer right. That is easier to sell, is easier to price for a much higher price point, and also is easier to deliver because it's very clear on, on what a client is getting. But you can still customize.

Yeah, you, it's very obvious to the buyer or the customer, but that the whole thing is it can be kind of delivered in a unique experience in a unique way.

And even more than unique, the most important thing is yes uni. But more than important is that generates results, generates clear, tangible results. One of the problems that happens is that business tends to be able to generate results when the CEO is very involved. But how do you be able to generate those results when the CEO steps back from it? How do you be able to generate sales if the CEO is not the one doing it? Well, you need to have very, a very clear criteria for who you're working with, what they're getting, what the problem is that you're solving. And then you use that to leverage a much higher price point. You have the cash flow to hire really good people. You actually can step back because the reason why that the business owner tends to get so involved in the day to day is because there's actually not enough cash and profit for them to be able to pay other people to replace them in those key, those key roles. And that's something that we have learned how to, how to fix for the kind of clients that we work with.

So how would you approach that with someone who feels like they are maybe, maybe not burnt out, but they feel like they could be going that direction at least and you know, writings on the wall, oh my profit margins aren't where I feel like they are. Is that like from what you're describing here? And maybe they don't even know what healthy is, but it's almost like they're pairing up or what you do is you pair up. This goal of okay, hands off CEO, I mean true to the name is you shouldn't be the one doing all the things, especially probably not the operations and all the things that delivers things. How would you approach a business that is struggling with that scenario?

Now where you want to start is the vision or what do you, what do you actually want to create? And the vision for what, where your business is going, but also the vision for what you're doing with clients without this clear vision going and trying to create systems and processes and delegating all this different work, hiring all these people, you're putting the cart before the horse because you're hiring people based on you don't even know what they're going to be doing. So you need to have that foundation in place for what is this irresistible offer that we're bringing to our clients? How are we going to use that to be able to, to really fund our growth? And then now that we have this structure, we put it together for our clients and what we call this client success map so we get really clear on who that power ones the one, the profit sweet spot client. What is that pain point that they have? And, and it's really choosing what pain point you want to solve, right?

Yeah.

What is, what is that problem that you actually want to do? I mean I could go and change somebody's oil if I wanted to. I could mow someone's lawn if I wanted to. Those are problems I could solve. But I'm not going to get paid very much for those problems. I'm not going to enjoy it either. I don't want to mow anybody's lawn. I haven't done that for, you know, probably 15 years. But what I'm saying is that we want to choose choose where our skills can align with the highest monetizable ability in the market, and also where our passion. When we're clear on that, when we're clear on what's that problem we're solving, then we can get really clear on what's this outcome. And if this is not about just taking what you have and repackaging it, it's not about that. It's about expanding your vision of what's possible. Who is the soulmate client that we could deliver even better results for. And a lot of times that client that you want to work with might be out of your reach at the moment, or maybe you have, maybe you have a couple of those clients. But you know, how do we generate more of those clients? How do we be able to attract those type of clients? Well, what those kind of clients want is they want tangible results. And when you can offer them that, they're willing to pay significantly more, significantly more. And what that looks like is, you know, we put that together into this visual client success map. We help our clients, we actually create that for our clients. And then what we've seen is it's helped them increase their fees 50 to 600%.

Okay.

And a lot of them are now selling six figure multiple six figure. We even have a couple up to seven figure type of, type of clients that they're, they're bringing on. Now imagine if you're bringing on clients that are, you know, twice as much, three times as much or more than what you're charging now. How many clients do you need to hit your profit goals? Significantly less. That changes the kind of processes that you build. It changes the kind of people that you have. You're looking at this and say, well, you know what, we actually only need two more clients to be able to hit that level. And now when you're looking at that, you're saying, well, what is that going to take? Well, you know what we can say, we could say no to these other clients here that are just going to eat up our bandwidth so that we can support these other type of. This is the key way of thinking that I see a very big difference between, you know, our clients who have gone through this process. They make decisions aligned with their vision, even if it's a little bit scary when they're doing it, but they've reset, rewired the way of thinking versus other CEOs who I talk to who are like, well, I don't have the cash in the bank, I can't do this because of this. I'm Afraid of, because of this, the market. Da da, da. All of these external things and they become a victim of, of their small minded thinking.

That's right, yeah. So back to mindset I guess, right. It's, it's to get clear on our own vision. What are the motives behind what we're doing here and why am I talking with Mandy right now? And amazing structures and everything. It's, it's to identify the growth potential within the things we have. And I'm curious if someone doesn't feel like they have these offers established yet or maybe they don't even do consulting. Maybe they're selling a digital product as a however way, but they're not actually consulting. I feel like there's an opportunity for everyone to at least do a bit of that within the circle that they already have or even just within the network and offer whatever this service or this deliverable they can give with tangible results. Would you recommend someone to approach consulting in a way so they can create these margins to then build a better system around their entire business?

So are you asking, would you do in these other type of business models to be able to apply these same kinds of strategies?

I think that's a, that's a good way to put it. Yeah.

First of all, big reason why I'm in this business and I have gone through the challenges of building a million dollar company. There's a lot of challenges in getting that. There, there are a lot of different levels you have to get to and, and changes that you have to make like your personality even. I mean like if you, if you want to change your personal reality, you have to change your personality and there are, so there are changes that you have to make. I'm in this to really make an impact. I'm not interested in selling products that are not, that are going to have a, you know, 95% washout rate that aren't being used. So I'm going to look at that product and I'm going to say, well how can we make this more usable? How can we make this so that they can actually generate results from this? Is there are service offering that we can add to this that's going to actually increase the price point dramatically and that will actually increase the results and increase the impact that we're, we're making with what we're doing. There's, there's a lot of product companies out there that are not interested in doing this and I understand why it feels like it's not very scalable and for some of those companies they Just want to turn and burn, you know, for them. I don't really, I can't really advise much on that because it's just not aligned with my values are. I think there's a huge missed opportunity in the product world to add support. Support will be able to get them the results that they actually want. And it's a huge missed opportunity that's left on the table. And I'll just add one thing on this. One of the biggest costs of your business is client acquisition. So if you're selling a product and the price point is low, you could be profit negative in it and be relying on this, this whole like ascension model funnel to be able to sell. And you could be upside down and not actually making enough money because the cost of the acquisition is too high.

Exactly. And that could crush the business just right there alone. And that's why I asked the question, because not every business has that kind of structure. Maybe you've thought about margins and how those can equate to freeing up our own time hiring the right people to then. Yeah, really execute a lot of the things we're in the middle of.

Well, the other thing about this too is I would just be running the numbers and actually looking at it from the perspective of how many sales do I need. If you sell something, let's say a product, just giving a scenario here. If it's $2,000 versus a hundred dollars, I mean, how many sales do you need to make to be able to make the same amount? Like, well, what would it take to be able to create $2,000 worth of value? And if you're, if you're selling it for 2,000, it's not $2,000 worth of value. It's 4 to $5,000 worth of value. So how many less sales do you have to make for that? And it's changing your. The way that you think. The only time I'd want to sell something that's really low price point is if I want zero friction or very, very little friction to be able to sell something much bigger. That's the only time I want a lower price point. Every other time you spend so much time and energy when you could just sell something bigger and better that makes a bigger impact. It's a much, much simpler model to scale.

I'm right there with you. Selling something for much higher margin has much more value. Maybe it's customized. It allows. The scalability is still there because of the team and the systems that you can create around that to deliver it.

Yeah, well, and I think there's this big belief that I don't want to sell my time for. If you're in there building all these very intensive marketing systems to be able to sell something lower ticket or you're selling your time for money, everybody is selling their time for money. Instead of looking at and saying, I don't want to sell my time for money, just look at it as and saying, I don't want to sell my time for that much money. So what can you do to become so exceptional that you can sell your time for such a high dollar value? I mean, we'll all sell our time for money. That's the reality. If someone comes to me and said, hey, I'm going to give you a million dollars to work one on one within this structure, this very structure that I don't normally do, and that it's not, it's not aligned with the typical way I want to do in my life. And I'm like, yeah, I'll probably do that. Right. I'm going to send my time for money on that. And is it scalable? No. But does it, does it align with what I want to do? Perhaps. So anyway, so I just, I would encourage people to be thinking about that in a different way because there's nothing wrong with selling your time for money. It's just how much are you going to sell it for? And so instead just focus on becoming more exceptional.

Actually, this reminds me of something, this book called Die with Zero. And essentially it's, it's maximizing your life and all the experiences but you know, and using your money in a way to do that. And so you're not just accumulating for the rest of your life and not actually living during your life. There was a highly recommended book and there was something he says about a personal interest rate and how we can choose things that we commit to. Kind of like what you're describing here is like, oh, that makes sense. All my time for money. Maybe that thing is just better later on and have a higher interest rate. If I put that off, there's all these different trade offs. And I think that goes into the types of businesses you can build. And really going back to this podcast, that was why I wanted to start talking about this. Hey, us as entrepreneurs sometimes go and go mode and we want to keep building and we feel like we are the ones to do that. We are this, we're the executors, we're the best execution. All these other things tell ourselves we're the fixers, which all that is probably True. But at the same time, with the right approach and if we're actually focusing on the right things to achieve these things in our mind, this enough, whatever that is, it can be restructured. And what you're saying here, there's a lot of things that we're might not even be focusing on the right things to find that enough for ourselves. I know you sent me some thoughts on this prior to as well. I'll just read the first one, just maybe jog your mind and I'm curious to get your thoughts on it. But focusing on deliverables, not the results, that was one of them there. And obviously working with clients, that can make all the difference right there.

Right. Well, I know this, this is one of the big themes here for you. Is this like being enough, not enough. And when you focus on these key leverage points in your business or in your life, really, it allows you to be able to accomplish a lot more with less. And one of them. And I've talked about some of the specifics around this, but selling the right offer, it all comes down to this bigger picture concept around selling outcomes versus deliverables. And it's going to be increasingly difficult in the market to actually be selling profitable work based on deliverables with increases in technology and AI. And it's just going to be. Deliverables now are becoming more commoditized than ever before. They became very commoditized with offshoring, but now the new threat is just how much faster technology is keeping up. And I wouldn't say it's a threat. It's real opportunity. That's one of those leverage points there for sure. The deliverables versus results.

That's a great insight of what you said is deliverables are being more commoditized, but there are opportunities there, as with everything. But yeah, I want to get into. And there was a point you said about focusing on managed person versus agreements and I thought that was interesting because of people, it's like we're very interesting things. But I guess talk about how focusing on managing the person versus agreements kind of lines up in this thing.

Yeah, definitely. A lot of people spend great deal of time and energy trying to manage people. And with the expectations like, well, my job is to manage these people. Well, yes and no. Because as humans, we. We're not really manageable. Like we can't really manage people. But what we can do is we can manage agreements between people. The reality is, is that we all have agreements between two people. You know, Joe, you and I, we had Some agreements that were set before coming on to this podcast interview about, you know, what we're going to talk about, how long it was going to be, those type of things. And then we also got on this call and then started clarifying some of those agreements to make it even better. Right. But without having that agreement in place, there's nothing to manage too. So all you have is just basically unmet expectations on both sides. So to be able to get better results from the people on your team, getting very clear about what that agreement is, setting the success criteria, and then using that as a way to age success. And when you have people in your life that are not living up to those agreements, then you can point to the agreement. We got our daughter an iPhone recently and worked for Christmas. We put together this contract and we made it kind of funny. We all signed it. Me, my husband, and my daughter signed this agreement. And you know, when she is going out of alignment with agreement, instead of talking about her bad behavior, which is a very easy thing to do with a teenager, we can just talk about. All right. Did you agree to this? Yes or no? Well, yes, but stop. You agree to this, that means that you're not having your phone to them. Being able to manage the agreements like that in your life, what it does is it dramatically reduces the amount of energy that you have to expend in each situation. And it's fair. It's. It's fair. It takes a little bit more intention up front. But when you run your life in that way, you run your business in that way, you can be able to accomplish a lot more with less time and energy.

Yeah. And expectations that can. That can make everything or ruin a lot of things. And yeah, with an agreement there, it's a. It's a mutual thing, binding agreement, of course. And. And yeah, it is work up front. And some people are. There's folks in even business that have run things successfully, but when there's people like other people working and collaborating, it could be some resistance shows up. Agreements between business partners, between any affiliate partners, you know, these are all very important to lay out expectations. Obviously with clients, you know, what are the boundaries? You know, these. And actually agreeing with yourself that you're going to hold your boundary. You know, it's very easy to maybe pleasing a client just to not lose them per se.

And that's. That's a great example of that too. It's be able to set the agreements with your clients. You have to also clear on what do you want? What do you want to create and that clarity and I think there's. This is a challenge that a lot of leaders have is that they know what they don't want or they just kind of muddle through, but they don't actually stop and are, and are very conscious about what they want. And, and I have some ideas on why that, why I think that is. But what I do find works very well in this situation is to first look at all the things that you don't want because what you don't want gives you an idea of what you do want. And then once you have that on mind, you can start writing all the things that you do want and believe that it's even possible for your expand that. And you know, going back to what I was talking about that foundations of the offer is the better the offer that you have better articulated it is the more concise the outcome is, the easier it's going to be for you to be able to create agreements with clients that are favorable to you. And saying this is how we work. I understand that. No, it's not okay for you to text me at 8 o' clock at night. And the reality is, is that when you set agreements powerfully upfront, you don't even have to have those conversations. I've never had a client text me at 8 o' clock at night. In fact, they almost never text me because that's just, that is inherent agreement. Just how I'm showing up tells them that that's not appropriate.

Yep. And there's. Yeah, that's the thing. It's establishing the grounds up front. Great. But it's usually, it shouldn't be something that we have to constantly think about because we, we have chosen each other, you know, in this and so being a, you know, consultant and the person that's delivering the, the goods there. But I mean, at the end of the day, it's a relationship that we should have that should flow. You know, if this thing is worked out, we've done all of our work, the agreements up front, boundaries are sides. I'm curious of more of these thoughts on, on figuring out what is it that these leaders want that we want. And it is difficult because it's probably easier to focus on the negatives. You know, that's what we're kind of our brains go to, it seems like. And when we put them on paper, they become a little bit more real. And I'm sure, you know, it is. And I've done this kind of exercise, it's flip those to the positive.

So I always first start with what do you, what do you not want? Right? And what do you want? And then the next thing I would look at is what are all the reasons why I can't have that? So that's where all the resistance comes up, right? And then once you have the resistance, then you can go and rewire that mindset. You can choose to say, well, well, okay, that's a, that's a thought that's coming up for me right now. I could create a new thought though. One of the biggest mistakes that we make as humans is we actually believe that our thoughts are real. And you can look at that from people in your life too, who you can see are creating misery for themselves through their thoughts. I mean, just think, think about somebody in your life. Everybody who's listening can think of someone in their life who, their thoughts, they believe and keeps themselves in a trap where they're, they're no longer self imposed prison where they're not able to create the outcome that they want. Because what's going on is that the thoughts that they have are creating certain feeling that they have and that feeling is creating the results. So for example, I'll just give you an example. Someone who is maybe having a hard time finding a job. The thoughts might be that, you know what, I'm bad at interviewing. It might even be I'm worthless, like nobody wants to hire me. It could be I'm just using this example because everyone knows someone in their life who, who has this kind of challenge, right? So what actions are you going to take the lines of that? Well, you're probably not going to be that assertive in the interview because you're going, you're going to be feeling depressed about it, feeling like you're not worthy. All of these feelings that are creating the outcome of the very thing that your thoughts are directing. So that's the same thing that goes with thinking about in your business. A really common one is I don't have enough time to scale my company. I don't have enough time to do this. I don't have enough money to do this. Time and money are like the most common. Whenever you hear the objection in your mind, I don't have the time, I don't have money to do. It's resistance, okay? That's just what it is.

Just call it out, Just call it out.

And when that shows up, then you can just look at that, get curious. If you're saying, I don't have time to scale my company, say look at that and say instead, I have plenty of Time to scale my company. When I focus on the right things, I have plenty of time to focus on the right things. I'm just kind of coming up with some of these things as we go and I wasn't planning on talking about the subject, but rewire those thoughts, choose new thoughts. When I'm thinking about I have plenty of time for the things that are my priority. That makes me feel like, oh yeah, and then I go and take those actions as opposed to doing nothing because I feel like I don't have the time to do it.

There you go. And that's why I love this little diversion here because this is exactly, it's practical. It's something that we can implement in all sorts of different things, not only here. But you're right, it gives us, lets us off the hook in a lot of ways.

But this is what comes down to really being responsible for the thoughts that you're thinking because they create your reality. So our graduates who are still in our scale, scale to freedom world and you know, in our boardroom we have our highest level where we're just kind of pissed level. We're just in this smaller group and just, you know, masterminding, learning from each other. It's way beyond that. But one of the things that I've seen is that, you know, they've added multiple millions dollars of growth and you know, one of them is on track to, to get close to an eight figure company. And what he shared was biggest thing that's made the difference for him getting there is mindset. He shared that with the rest of our tribe. We have this call. I was, I was really interested to hear that. I knew that's what it was. But I was surprised to hear him say that because, you know, we, I started working with him probably about somewhere between six and eight years ago. I don't remember exactly. It's been a few years. And you know, he was, he was just a little bit below a million. And that's not what he would have thought his biggest problem was at all. He thought his biggest problem was is that I don't have money to hire another engineer. His problem was that now I'm working round the clock. How can I actually bring on another client when I have no more time? Like these are, these are very tactical type of things. But what was going on is the way he was thinking about it was keeping him stuck in that. And just in the first week that we worked together, we helped him be able to free up at least 20 extra hours per week off of his schedule. But he had to think about it in a different way. And what that did is it allowed him to add $2.1 million in the first year working together because we were able to help him get focused on the right things. How you can think about something and then having the ability to follow the right systems, that's what actually creates the results. But unless you change your thinking, no system's going to fix anything.

That's right. And I'm sure it's an evolution and I know it is. After, you know, you change one thought, you're obviously we're confronte with some other new challenge that our brain isn't equipped for or have ever experienced before. So it's, it's an evolution. It's like we don't just stop one time or you know, we figure it out one time over. Yeah, I mean it's fascinating to hear it especially when there's someone with a successful business saying it's hey, it's mindset that really freed open the door for it.

Mindset is literally worth millions of dollars. Millions. Because if you don't believe that you can to can accomplish that you'll never accomplish. And if you, and if you're getting so stuck in the problem, you're just like if you're trying to solve problem, you're in the problem and you're creating more of the same. What we want to do is step completely out of that and then create a new reality. Actually go and create something different where the pro problem no longer exists.

That's the root of everything. A hands off CEO and what you do and that's where it's incredible because a lot of us, I think one of the things you are, the main thing is you like you can package everything up that you do really well and there's obviously a whole process to it that you have and then someone like an operations manager and essentially handle it all. That load, that mental load, physical load, whatever load we all have and now like you just said, frees us up to who knows. There's a whole nother world out there that we weren't even aware of because of all this stuff that we're right.

And the operations manager, for them to be effective, they need to know the what, the why, their job is the how. But you need to be very clear about where you're going why and how are we, how are we going to operate and make decisions the business and then they have that and they can actually be able to support the business, drive growth and really be a Profit center in the business.

Yeah. Now, last question. And it goes to the operations manager because I luckily have an amazing gal that works with me and has worked my wife on her businesses for years. I mean like I don't have to complete a sentence and she gets it and that's amazing. It's difficult to find. Are there any strategies or any advice that you can give folks for finding that kind of person to insert into their business?

Finding the right person. So first of all, knowing what level you need, so don't go in and try to hire a COO thinking that, well, if I just spend enough money then this person is going to be able to take all the problems away from me. They're not going to. And if you over hire this role, it can actually be pretty detrimental in your company. For some people, the best place to start is a really good executive assistant. And I can't even begin to tell you how many million dollar companies where the CEO does not have an executive assistant. And I'm like, that's crazy. Just get an executive assistant. That will free up capacity for you in a big way. Might even need a really good project manager even before an operations manager. I am a really big proponent of getting a good operations manager. Hiring them as early as you can and that might mean that you even hire them from a different location in the world so that you can get better talent for the budget. Look at this from the perspective of investing ahead. And when you have your idea of what you're selling and you have more predictability in your business in that way and your ability to be able to generate more sales, it's easier to invest ahead of your company. That's why I going back to that those foundations are what allows you to be able to put all the pieces in place profitably, sustainably and in a way that's actually going to work.

I love that. And then, and investing ahead of time is just going to make, you know, the year ahead so much easier because they're going to be invested in how we are actually running our businesses, the vision of things. Maybe they can collaborate with us to clarify those along the way so they own it right along with us. And that's always going to give a better outcome, buddy. So Andy, this is, this is a lot to think about and I know you have a lot more that people could dive into as well. So handsoffceo seems to have it all and they know you have a guide there, a podcast. Is there anything that, that you would recommend folks to kind of start with as they explore this further.

So you can connect with me on LinkedIn. Amandy Ellefson but you spell it M, Andy I and then E, L, L, E, F, S, O, N. So you can find me on LinkedIn. We have our Hands Off CEO podcasts. You can just find that again. You can go to handsoffceo.com. sorry I'm giving so many of these places where you can find us, but we have a book coming out. It's. It's finished. We're polishing up right now and we are making our final decisions on the title. But main premise of it is how to be able to scale consulting agencies. How to scale multi million dollar consulting agencies that can run without you, that you can one day sell if you want. And how do you be able to get your whole team really implementing and executing in a way that's going to give you freedom and wealth? So that's what the book is about. And if you, if you join our mailing list, then you'll be able to find out when we have that, that launched. And I'm really excited about it. It's. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but it is a really good book. I've spent five years putting it together and a little bit uncomfortable. The amount of stuff that I've actually decided to put in there for almost free. I mean, a book is almost free, right? It's like, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Not very much. Right.

So get the book.

If this, if this, if the topic that we're talking about today interests you, I think you're going to love the book. Sorry, Shameless Plug.

Don't be shameless about it. It's all cool, actually. Be shameless. Yeah. No, go to the website handsofceo.com grab the book. I'm excited to read it. Mandy. Thanks for putting so much effort into it. Sharing it, that's difficult. I have a lot of ideas and things and I've jotted so many notes and I'm like the book daunting to put out there. Appreciate your time, Mandy. Excited to learn more.

The pleasure's mine. Thanks so much for having me, Joe.

All right, all right. That's what I got for you today. And remember, it's not all about living to work. It's all about working to live if you need to do the work. But you know, work can be fun and it should be fueling for your life. So if you enjoyed what you just heard, if you got some nuggets of wisdom that you want to share or you're just noodling on right now. Please go tell others. The way that people find this show and how you can help others get their aha moments is through word of mouth. So if it is telling your friend, telling your family, send an email to your list writing a review or whatever it might be. Everything helps. So thank you so much for listening to the Hustle and Flowchart podcast and I will see you next time.

Sam.