595. Have a life while growing a massive business - with David Finkel

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And when I look at it, if I can just identify what are my A and B level activities? What are my D level activities? My goal is how can I create a time structure that blocks out D time so that I can have A and B moments?

Welcome to the Earn your happy podcast. I'm Lori Harder, founder of The Bliss Project, 3 Time Fitness World champion, fitness expert and cover model turned sleep self.

Love junkie, lifestyle entrepreneur and author.

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Here we go. Welcome back to the show.

My guest today is David Finkel. He is the author of the Freedom Formula and co Author of Scale 7 Proven Principles to grow your business and get your life back. He is one of the nation's most respected business thinkers, a Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek bestselling author of 12 business books. David's a regular columnist for Inc.com FastCompany.com and Forbes.com reaching over 1 million readers each year. Over the past 20 years, David and the Maui Coaching and advisor team have scaled and sold over $62 billion of businesses. Maui Mastermind helps business owners build companies they love owning again. So for the value they create, the lives they touch, the profits they earn, the team they employ, and the freedom they get to enjoy, their clients have enjoyed an average annual growth rate five times higher than the average privately held company, while at the same time reducing their company's reliance on them as the owners by an average of 191%. He's an ex Olympic level athlete turned business multimillionaire. David and his wife Heather and their three sons live a very simple life in Jackson and Hole, Wyoming. You guys, I loved this episode. You know that I am so into talking about business while also being able to preserve your life. So if you have big dreams about business but you're scared because maybe you won't be able to live the life that you want or really truly feel, you know, fulfilled and be able to take care of yourself, you have to listen to this episode because David is going to share how it is possible.

David, thank you so much for coming on the show. I'm really excited to chat with you today.

Oh, pleasure, Lori. I'm really happy to be here.

So you have one of my favorite topics, and this is actually what my husband and I love to talk about and also do, is to help people grow and scale their business. But I was really excited to talk with you because you love to help people grow and scale their business without selling, sacrificing their life. So can you tell me a little bit about why this became your focus?

Yeah, absolutely. So I built an early company. Well, actually the first company I failed. I want to be clear on that. I haven't had a perfect track record. Second company I scaled and the third company I scaled and I sold both of those companies and it did well. I was in my mid-30s and I did those first two companies that worked by Working really hard, you know, on the road, traveling two, three weeks out of a month, working 60, 70, 80 hours. And toward the end, I started getting burned out and thinking, this is not the way to do that. And probably the epiphany for me happened in 2009. My first two sons were born. I've got three sons, and they were born. And I just. It was no longer an option to work that way. I kind of set it as thinking of like an astronaut who has a certain limitation of consumables. I said, I'm going to work 40 hours or less per week. I'm going to take 10 weeks of vacation every year of real vacation, not just working from a pretty spot. And with those as the limitations, as constraints, I went about, how do I design the business? How do I design how I do work to do that? And then over the last 15 years, I've just been using all the work that I do with clients on the coaching side just to see how can they replicate their own way. Different people want to work different amounts. For me, that works great. There are people out there, that's too much. There are other people who say, if I can't work more, I go crazy. For me, that works.

Mm. So it's kind of where all good things come from. And that's when you're forced into figuring things out for sure.

It's amazing what a little bit of necessity and a little bit of motivation that way, when you have a line in the sand that says you need to figure it out, it's amazing how creative we can become.

So I think for some people, and I know even for me hearing this, it's like, in the beginning, I have this. I have this theory that sometimes in the beginning, you. It's like it's almost hard to break through the atmosphere without going to extremes, without spending that extreme amount of time. So what can you help us with? If we're in the beginning of our business, and it just feels like if you don't do it and you don't get it done, then it's not going to get done. It's not going to get done. Right.

You know, there's the. One of the things I think is really important is to make a distinction. This is probably the core of what I wrote in the Freedom Formula, which was there's two economies in the world. There's the time and effort economy, where people are getting paid for effort and hours and for attitude. And I think a lot of business people early on think that that's the way that they're creating value by working really hard. But that's really not true at all. We all live in the value economy. We get paid. Our business generates profit not based on hours and effort, but based on value created. And this is a good thing. This is good news. There are some things that hold me back into the time and effort economy. But. But if I can recognize I'm getting paid and my business is getting paid to create value, now I can start recognizing that not all activities create the same amount of value. And I'll share a distinction I think is really important. Laurie, a lot of people know about the Pratos Principle is 8020 rule, but we can take that to its most productive extreme. So if 20% of what I do gives me 80% of the result, that 8020 part we'll call the 80% D time. It's very low value. It's the 80% junk that gives me 20% of the value. And C time is that that 20% that gives me 80% of the value. Well, if I apply the same math again, then 20% of that 20% gives me 80% of the 80%. We'll call that sweet spot B time. And that the math works out to be 4% in gives me 64% of my result. And if you bear with me for one more math moment, what that looks out like, you know, that 20% of the 20% of the 20%, that magic 1% input generates half the result, and we call that A time. And when I look at it, if I can just identify what are my A and B level activities, what are my D level activities? My goal is how can I create a time structure that blocks out D time so that I can have A and B moments? And if I can do that consistently, I can create and grow a company 20%, 50%, 100%, 500%. But I can do that not by through, you know, effort hours and just sheer guts, but I can do that with some intelligence. And that's the difference.

So is that what you first did? You sat down and just really looked at where your time was going, and then how did you know what to take action on first? Did you hire someone? What were your. What are the first steps for people in those, you know, beginning phases, or maybe they've been, you know, burning the candle at both ends and they're ready to do this type of thing?

Yeah, well, first of all, you have to ask what's causing the behavior of working so hard? And I think for most people, it generally boils down to what I'll call. It's a medical condition called controlitis, the inflammation of your control gland. And I get it. I'm a control freak, Lori. I am.

But self conscious as well.

Okay, good. Thank you. I'm in good company. If I can't fight that, if I can't deal with that urge, then I realize that what that is is me feeling scared or uncomfortable with being out of control. But that aside, the simplest starting point here to entering into the value economy is to start off by doing something I call focus days and push days. So I pick one day of the week to start with. Let's say I pick Tuesday and I put on my calendar as a recurring block, a focus block, two, three, four hours every Tuesday. So maybe it's 9 o' clock to 11:30. A two and a half hour block every Tuesday, that's my focus day. Every other day is a push day. I'm just getting the job of what I need to get done. And on every push day, I block off one hour of focus time. So all I'm really blocking off is I'm changing how I go about six hours, eight hours of time every week and I block those out first. And if I do that, those five, six, seven hours of time I blocked off, I can do all the rest of my time however I want. But if I do those five or six hours where during those time I use those blocks of my best attention to focus on my A and B level work, that's where I can create some magic. So once I block that off and it has to be a recurring appointment, if I don't put it on the calendar as a recurring appointment, you could almost guarantee it won't happen. And I make a joke with clients. I was talking to one of my clients and I was saying to her, show me your, show me your phone. And she's what do you mean, show me your phone? I said, well, you just mentioned to me that you feel out of a little bit out of whack, where you're not getting stuff done, you're getting pulled in a thousand directions. Show me your phone. And it turned out didn't have focus time blocked off on there. Funny how that would be. And then the second step just goes straight to writing down what are your A and B level activities. And generally speaking, everybody has a few things that they do that create the most value. It's almost never the direct production of their product or service. So for example, let's say you've got Cheryl, who's listening to this and she runs a business where she's doing a service, some kind of service that for a homeowner, for example, or service for a professional firm. Well, she thinks doing the service is where she creates the most value. And it almost never is. Generally speaking, doing the product or service that you sell, the fulfillment of that usually sea time at best, the creation of it, the decision about who to sell it to, the selling of it, the getting a second person who can sell it, the marketing of it, that's probably A or B time, depending for an early stage or a middle stage entrepreneur, almost never the direct fulfillment. And most people don't really have a clear understanding of is this A or B? Don't worry. Early on if it's A or B, we know it's qualitatively a magnitude more valuable than than C or D. And the D stuff is easy. It's the, the junk stuff we escape into or the junk stuff we feel we have to do for other people. But we know in our heart of hearts it really doesn't create the value.

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Yeah, I can look clearly back at all the different businesses that I have been in and all of the time that I've spent in C and D as a form of escaping. And also just like sometimes, sometimes when you don't feel you can almost feel like you're not doing enough like your work that that very focused work because it doesn't necessarily require a ton of time. It's almost like you feel like you should fill time sometimes as a like new entrepreneur. Do you know what I'm talking about? Where you're just.

I do. Like I feel guilty almost like gosh, I'm not doing enough. Like I should be doing more yet I shouldn't be doing more, I should be doing less. But the less I do should matter a whole lot more.

Even just saying that out loud and hearing you say that makes so much sense. I'm actually starting a new company Right now. And sometimes I'm like, wow, I feel like I'm doing the most important things, but I finished it. Like, I think we can get so addicted to the busyness and that's what burns us out. And then we're not creative for the things that are the most important.

It's remarkable for me. I used to be a night owl since kids, no longer. But there will come a time around three or four o' clock in the afternoon and I spot myself. I know I'm not doing anything valuable. I call it one pacing. I'm just going through the motions. And for years I would stay there and grind it out thinking this is what I'm supposed to do. Nowadays if I'm at that point, I just leave, I'll go for a walk, I'll go home and play with my kids. My wife and I will have a nice moment together. I'm not doing anything valuable anyways. Might as well enjoy life more and I'll come back refreshed and I'll do more things more valuable the next day.

I think it's so great for people to hear this and even for myself as a reminder. And just that's pretty much what we've been doing the past couple years. But there's still that part of you that can actually trick yourself and be.

Like, I should be doing more.

Especially when you start, you know, another new venture or project and this is like such perfect timing for me and I know for so many people listening as well because of that importance of the recharge. Can you just talk on that for just a little bit? Especially if you are the person kind of running the creative side or marketing or you know, really understanding who your customer is or learning how to pull in more customers that are perfect for you.

Yeah, I'll share with you my favorite way of growing a business. I use this with coaching clients all the time. So Laurie, what we do is we ask the question to our client. We say, hey, what, what's the single biggest limiting factor in your business? The, the one current constraint to growth. And usually it's something like I need more leads or my conversion's not working or you know, I have plenty of business there, but I don't have enough capacity. I'm turning business away. So they, they list their single biggest current constraint to growth. The one thing over the next three to six months, their short term limiting factor. And when we've identified it, we do a sweet spot analysis. This is a wonderful tool. So I, I brainstorm 10, 15, 20 different ideas to push that limiting factor back. So, for example, if it was lead conversion is my big, my big challenge point. I say, okay, I could hire a salesperson, I could script out the sale, I could create a sales video, I could do a better direct mail piece, I could hire a copywriter. And I put all these ideas down and I put them through two filters. The first filter we call low hanging fruit. Is this easy to do with a high likelihood of working? So I go to every idea, is this a low hanging fruit? Is this a low hanging fruit? And if it is, I put a little lh by the idea and then in a second separate pass. And that's pretty important. Laurie. I don't want to look do it at the same time. I do it as a separate pass. I ask, is it a home run? And a home run means if this works, will it have a big impact? Is this a home run? Is this a home run? And what I look for is any idea that's both low hanging fruit and a home run by definition is my sweet spot. And that's what I choose to do. And if I have more than one sweet spot, great. I pick one because it's a great high leverage place. By definition. It's easy to do, high likelihood of working, and it's going to have a big impact. That's what I focus in on. And one way of growing a business is every quarter I step back and ask what's my current limiting factor and how do I push that limiting factor back? And I do it quarter by quarter by quarter. It's a great way to make, in a very concrete way, growing a business tangible and much more straightforward.

So you talk a lot about growing and scaling and really trying to figure out your end goal. Do you work backwards with people to see, you know, so what I'm trying to ask is when people have a really large goal and sometimes it can feel like, are you telling me that I can actually live a balanced life? If I'm thinking of selling this massive company for X amount as my goal, like, how do you take that and you know, put it into kind of bite sized pieces where you can then see what your just everyday life will look like with more balance and structure.

It's a great question. And it reminds me I'll come back to an idea of three questions that one of my mentors, Stephanie Harkness, a phenomenal businesswoman, shared with me. That really changes how I evaluate things. But directly hear what you say, I would start with this. Certainly I think about the big picture, what Is it over the next three years, five years that we're looking to build. But I need to bridge that, that big picture goal. You can't do it, you can't behave it day to day. So instead what I use is I use a quarterly plan because a rolling 90 day plan, if I can do this, and we do it with clients as one page, a one page quarterly plan is a wonderful bridge between this big picture goal. You know, build a $25 million a year company and sell it for, you know, $25 million or whatever the goal might be and the day to day, week to week execution. And so what I would recommend is you start and just ask yourself, what are the one, two or three focus areas this quarter? The things that are most important in the business where I want to put my discretionary time, let's face it, for an early stage or a middle stage company, 70, 80% of what the business owner does is already spoken for. She doesn't have the discretion for it. She's going to have to do what the business needs. But there is some choice with 20 or 30% and where I invest that 20 and 30% is what gives me growth or what traps me in the business. And so I ask, what am I going to do? My limiting factor is one place to look at seizing my biggest opportunity might be another place to look at mitigating my single biggest risk might be another place. And I ask, you know, for example, if lead conversion was the issue, I'd say, okay, what's the criteria of success after 90 days? What will I concretely have done in this area of the business? I'll have a proven sales letter that generates at least a 10% or better conversion. I'll have mapped out my conversion funnel on my website, whatever they might be. And then from there I can put in my action steps and milestones. And all I need to do at the beginning of each week is I pull up my action plan. It's one page, it's easy to take in at a glance. And I ask myself, what are the key steps I need to do this quarter on the action steps and milestones I've set up here. And I already have time carved out. I've got my focus time, I've got five or six hours every week that I can use that are discretionary, I've blocked into my calendar and I can do that. And I think that's one big important way. The second one is I've got to give up some control. Specifically, I've got to start letting Other people own functional areas of responsibility. Most people who are earlier middle stage business owners, they're really good at giving tasks. I asked Judy to do this, I asked Rosario to do that. But everything comes back to the owner who's directing everything. And what I would encourage is how can you give a responsibility that they own over time versus just task by task by task. And if I can start to slowly hand off bit by bit the things that are lower value for me to do so that I can save my time. And probably the first key hire as an assistant. Whether it's full or part time, whether it's on site or virtual, that's probably the most important first hire. That's why we talked about it in chapter two of the book. But as you go forward with that, I can start to hand off other pieces. And again, quarter by quarter, I chip away at doing those things that create the most value with just my discretionary time while I use my massive time to keep the business going forward. You know, I've got to. I've got to make some sales. I've got to produce my product or service for whoever bought it from me.

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So we work with a lot of early stage entrepreneurs and I think one of the biggest things I'd love for you to talk to is sometimes I think our potentially our expectation of even when we first start hiring our team or hiring an assistant. If you've never owned a business before or you. Yeah, if this is, you know, the first time you are hiring team, sometimes we don't realize that the beginning of hiring can actually be the most challenging time. Especially if it's a business where you don't know what people's exact positions are going to be and what they are going to be capable of doing. So can you tell us about that sort of challenging time when you're first hiring people and you have to be training them and taking all of this extra time and all of a sudden it actually feels like more work.

Yes, yes, yes it does. Absolute it. Concrete. Let's say you're hiring your first key person, which is your assistant, for yourself. And the big thing with hiring that people get it wrong is they're not clear on who they actually need to hire. They kind of do it with a little bit of gut and intuition versus thinking through who do I need to do some specific role. So for an assistant I ask what are my must haves? What are the four or five things that are non negotiable? So for example, I have learned over the years, I've had over a dozen assistants over the last 25 years that I can't hire a nervous assistant. I need someone who can handle a little bit of ambiguity because I don't like spelling things out so concretely and completely for an assistant. I'd rather sketch it out, let them figure it out from there. And I know that I have to hire for somebody who's able and has proven to show that they can handle ambiguity and figure stuff out. I call it MacGyvering. Right?

Yep.

I, I know for me, I need to hire someone who's willing to do it in my style. So I delegate auditorily. I leave messages through an app, and I want to take in information visually by them typing it and sharing with me in an email or on a, on Asana or one of the other apps that we use. So I know these things so I get clear on that. Number two, when I'm doing the hiring from this part with an assistant. Here's one key thing. Part of your assistant's job should be building the system to be a world class assistant for you so that if they're great, you can promote them. For example, my company coo, Teresa, over a decade ago, she started off as my assistant and clearly she was just too good to stay in that role. She was too bright, too ambitious. And so over time she started then moving into operations and then she ran operations and now she pretty much runs everything. So I can grow that role. But part of her initial role was to create the system to be my assistant. So her next person who filled in the role had a starting point that was further along. You know, the systems for how do I like my travel arranged and how do I want my calendar scheduled today? It's all very well decked out. And so Emily, who's one of two assistants I have right now, she has the benefit of all those things that years ago Teresa started. And the key is a lot of business people think that, oh, I should be creating these systems for my assistant or for this first hire. No. When I meet with my assistant early on, I'll ask her, say, hit the record button on your phone. Let's go through it together. If we're doing it by web video conference, let's record. You turn this into a version 1.0 of the system for each of these things I'm training you on. Because let's face it, early on, it's really difficult to give them things to do because they don't have enough background to do those things. So for the first month or two, when they record and Start to systematize the pieces that I'm trained them on. It actually gives them something meaningful to do. They learn it faster and I get valuable output even though they can't do something else. And I guess one last comment, which is I tell this to a lot of business people. Hey, David, I don't have time to have an assistant right now. It takes too much time to train, or I'm training them, but I'm so busy keeping them busy, I can't get my stuff done. And I laugh. I say, well, what's the worst that could happen if you don't have them fully busy? It's okay to absorb an assistant over three months and if they have some empty time, even if you're paying for it, your time is more valuable than an hour of their idle time. So if you've got other stuff to do, it's okay to absorb them slowly. The ideal is, you know, start them off part time and let them go into the role. But a lot of people who I might hire, they need full time now. And if I've got a great person, I don't mind knowing that for the first month, two or three, there is going to be some inefficiencies or some downtime that they're not going to be able to fully use. That is okay. But once you have that person on there and you start delegating to him or her, you will never not have enough to give to your assistant. I can promise you that. I'm sure you've, you've had that experience yourself. Once you start having that support person, it's like, how did I ever get by without this person before?

Yes.

Yes.

We've actually had so many different assistants and this is such a. You have so much insight here. So I'd love to ask you a question that I also hear a lot and that I have experienced is how do you know when it's on you if your assistant maybe isn't necessarily looking for what to do next? I guess a better question for you would be how did you know with your assistant that you promoted to who's now your coo? What were some of the signs for you that you knew that she was just somebody who had to be promoted quickly?

So there are three levels of an assistant. There's actually four, but I'll talk about three. Funny enough. Of all the articles I've ever written for INC or other different business websites, one that still gets probably 20% of my article reads every month still is this article I wrote about the levels of a personal assistant. I laugh. I don't know how it struck a nerve. But the first is a gopher, right? Hey, please, do this, do that. I just command and control. Second level is simply what I call an administrative assistant. She's someone who's able to do admin that's discreetly, clearly defined tasks she can do well with. And then you have an executive assistant. This is somebody who can take ambiguous, ambiguous situations in the. In the world of operations or admin and figure out those things. They're not going to be comfortable in other settings, but in those settings, they can do that. And so when I hire, I'm always hiring for somebody, even if I don't start them there because they still have to learn enough. I'm hiring someone who's got a track record that shows that they can figure stuff out. That, for me, is one of the things I value most in an assistant. And a listener here, Lori, might say that that's not what I value most and that's fine. But for me, that's one thing I value most. So I look at that, and then I ask a question. Is this person a role player or a growth player? And the difference is a role player just wants to do their job and go home. At the end of the day, I want to get good at it, but just let me not think about where. I don't put me in new situations. I don't want to grow. I just want to do what I know how to do. And I've had some assistants who are really good at the role of assistant but didn't want to go any further. Perfectly fine, as long as I identify it and as long as they're good at it. If they're subpar and they're a role player, I've got to replace them. A growth player. Somebody says, I do want to grow and keep, you know, creating skills and new situations and new circumstances to expand my abilities and my capabilities. And how do I tell. It's not what they say. It's two things. How do they handle feedback? Growth players welcome feedback. They hunger for it, and they put it into practice. When you give them feedback, a role player, they get defensive, they rationalize away. When you give them feedback, they get uncomfortable with it, they avoid it. And the other way I can tell is, do they want new situations? I test out assistants at various times by asking to try something. For example, recently I was looking at some of those places to market some of our materials on some of these other platforms that I had never looked into. Coursera and some other ones. So I gave a simple assignment around that. Well, if it comes back and it's well done and the person takes this thing and really runs with it, that gives me an indication that they want to grow. If they do just what I've asked for, no more haven't given any thought to it or procrastinate it because it's not so clearly formed. I know that the wrong person, they're a role player. So I have to be careful about that.

So once you have that realization, are you, you know, are you looking. Are you letting someone go when you realize, oh, this is not the person for this job, do you do it?

I manage them differently. It's a great question, Laurie. I manage them different. So if it's a role player and they're really good, I manage them for results. Which means much clearer, much shorter conversations, you know, hey, Shirley, can you do this by this time? This way, yes or no? She says yes. If it's a growth player, I don't do that. I oftentimes will manage them more for development. So I'll say, hey, here's what I'm trying to accomplish. How would you approach that if I wasn't here? How would you handle it? Got it. That sounds great. Why don't you do it that way? So I'll ask more questions, take more time, give more of the why. But when I'm managing for just the result with a. With a role player, I just go straight to the bottom line. The person I won't stand for is a role player who's not good. I like role players who are great at what they do. We need them. But if they're not good and they don't want to grow, they can't stay with me.

Okay, beautiful. Okay, so I have questions around. Let's see. I'll see if I can keep this to two final questions. I'm not really sure that's going to happen. So, okay, so how about when people have their business, maybe they've had it a few years, and they just. They feel stuck, like they don't know where to go. They kind of feel like they've reached their max and they. How do we start evaluating what that is in order to scale to the next level?

Generally speaking, what causes people to have a business cap out is because the owner is doing too many different things. And this seems strange, but the businesses that we've helped scale, one of the indications that it's a successful business and that you're growing as a business owner is you actually do fewer different things, but the things that you do have more importance for the business. So when I first got started in business, I did 75 different things every week. Today I do four things every week, but those four things matter a heck of a lot. And then I might have another 10 or 15 that are kind of low value or more kind of ad hoc, but I do a lot less that creates value. So that's one way that I look for it. So for a business owner who's capped out, usually the reason it's capped out is the owner is going so fast themselves that they can't brute force the answer. Brute force is the wrong way to go. So I have to step back. Okay, if I had a little bit of time and what's holding the business back, where would I focus it? What's the opportunity that I'm not seizing right now because I'm so busy. Oh, gosh. I'm so busy because I'm the one doing all the client work. I mean, I sell the jobs, I produce the jobs, I have to deal with the accounting and the collections. Great. Well, what's one part of that equation I could let go of and give to somebody else? What's one part of it I could systematize or template that could go faster? Is there a way that I and I just start doing that sweet spot analysis? So oftentimes, for example, capacity becomes the second hurdle for a business that's trying to scale. And the owner says, well, no one can do what I do. I hear it all the time. No one can do what I can do. And I used to say that myself. I built a coaching business prior. We were originally working with about 30 to 50 clients a year. At the end, we were working with 2000 clients a year. I couldn't coach that many people. There's no way. So here's the weird part. I thought no one could coach as well as I could. Well, the results of clients got better when I was no longer coaching. And you'd say, well, does that mean you had better coaches? No, I had great coaches. But I was able to focus on the structure of how we coached because I wasn't doing all the coaching. And when I did that, results started to improve because we created programmatic ways of improving. So usually that's what stops people. They're so busy doing, doing, doing on the production of their service or their product that they don't have capacity and I have to find places to let go of. So I'm doing less.

So who is your Business coaching for. Is this for all levels of people? Is this for people who are growing a large company? Is this what, what is it and how do we know that you are? It's funny because I'm literally looking for somewhat of a business coach right now. And what I'm doing, I'm starting a new CPG company for an alco and it's just so extremely different from what I've worked in in the past. But you know, similarities, but extremely different. And it's kind of in that place of. And also asking for everybody who's listening to this as well, early phase entrepreneurs, mid, you know, maybe mid phase entrepreneurs who have been in it three to maybe five years and then myself who's been an entrepreneur for like probably 10 years, but now moving into a completely different style or a completely different area. So how does your system work for all of those things?

That's great. So generally speaking, we tend to work with what we'll call a middle stage business or someone starting to get a little bit above there. So we work with companies that are already profitable, we work with companies that are owner reliant, where the owner wants to scale, grow sales, grow profit, but also most importantly wants to grow owner independence, wants to make the business more independent of themselves, which is what allows it to be scalable. So we generally, we don't tend to work with startups. That's just not our niche or specialty with that part we have we ever, of course, but that's just not who we focus. Generally speaking, we tend to work with clients that are probably half a million on the low end, all the way up to 20/2 million on the upper end. And again, our focus has always been how can you grow the business but also grow its independence from the owner? If someone wants to get a taste of that, to learn how we approach it, I'd say the easiest way to do that would be to get a copy of one of the last books that I wrote, which was called Build a Business, Not a Job and they can do that for free on our website or they can get one of our other books through Amazon or Barnes and Noble or any other places. But, but if it really fits for them, they're going to be able to tell if the approach is what resonates with them, if it makes sense to them. And I guess I'll share one last thing here. I know we're heading toward the end here, Laurie, but you had asked a question earlier which was how can I make sure that as I build this, I don't lose sight of why I'm building this if I have this ambitious goal, but not give up everything for it. And one of my business mentors, her name was Stephanie, I actually co wrote Build a Business, Not a Job with her. She built her manufacturing business from scratch all the way up to and sold it for a significant amount of money. Was a former chairperson of the national association of Manufacturers. Just a phenomenal person, right? Her and her husband have been together for 50 years. They raised their kids. She's just a good person. She said to me, David, when I make a decision, I ask three questions. What matters most for the sake of what and how much is enough? And so going back there, I had ambitions early on of building this billion dollar company and then I had kids and I had a reality check. For me, I want to have a massive impact on the world. I've already won the financial game, but I want to have an impact. But I know for me that. But how much is enough for the sake of what? Those answers are so clear in my mind. Impact, creation, my family. Those are the values that I hold dearest. And that means that I want to work, but I also want to play with my family and I want to find for me that right balance point. I think anyone listening to this one question to ask yourself is what is the right balance point for you? What's your inventory of hours and what's your minimum vacation time you're going to take each year? And then how can you design a business that serves that? Regardless of how the business fares, whether it grows to be a million dollars or $100 million or more, you can still have an extraordinary life within that. If I can build the business to what my parameters are.

Man, that is such a. I just wrote those questions down. It's such a, an important thing to think about because we can have these goals and not realize what we are sacrificing for them. And you can wake up and realize that this was not the life you actually intended. So the dream that you had was to have that freedom or to have those, you know, that time with your family or whatever that looks like. And I've definitely woken up in one of those businesses where I was like, wait a minute, I don't even know why or what I'm doing this for anymore. And this was not, not the original goal. So I think that's so incredibly beautiful. What book would you recommend of yours? If we are looking to. Is it your freedom formula book or is it the last one that you recommended? If we're looking to get some of that time back and ask ourselves those questions and create systems.

Great question. If I was a business owner, had an existing company, I would probably go with build a business, not a job. If I was working in someone else's business or if I was scaling a very large company, Freedom formula would be the book that I would go with. Both are great. But the build a business, not a job is probably perfect for an entrepreneur who's got a company. You know, from a few hundred thousand in sales up to a few million, then the Freedom formula would probably apply. Even better after that point.

Okay, amazing. Do you have any last words that you want to leave our listeners with?

Yeah, I guess my last comment here is how doable this is. I mean, I, I love what you're approaching and what you're doing here, which is how can I find my heart's passion and make it a vibrant business and do it in the community of other people? It's so important. I know so many entrepreneurs who isolate themselves, especially when they struggle. There's embarrassment, there's a little bit of shame around that. We all need other people. The times in my life where I found myself hiding were the times that I struggled. My business struggled the most. And what I've learned now is that my business struggles and all of us have struggles. I reach out to the people that I know and care about. So I love that you're building community around that of just incredibly empowered group of people. I think that that's great. So I would say connect and I would say it is doable. I've watched so many different business people, you know, that have been able to scale companies, none of whom went to Harvard for their mba. These are all people who are just normal people who built an extraordinary business. It is absolutely doable. You don't have to be in a high tech company to be able to have an extraordinary business. Although if you are, that's great too. But I think a lot of times we have these cultural myths that, oh, I've got to be in my twenties in a college dorm room, ideally an Ivy League school or Stanford, as I'm starting this business. That's the only way I'm going to be one of these big successes working, you know, building this. That's just not true. It's not true. You can do it so many other ways and it's so much more frequent for doing it in these ordinary, mundane businesses that still serve the world in great ways.

David, thank you so much for your time and for your wisdom. I have a feeling I could probably have you on here for five hours and we would just still be completely interested in learning so much. I really, really appreciate and valued all of this information. I know that you are a wealth of knowledge in so many different areas from, you know, even just looking through all of your things from level one to level two, three, scaling massive businesses. So I think that you covered such a range here and just so grateful for you. And where can we find you, follow you and I believe get your books as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So best website to go to would be Maui mastermind.com that's our main one for our main coaching business, Maui mastermind.com you can get build a business, not a job there. And actually on the site you can get two chapters of the Freedom formula for free also. And hopefully if you love it, you'll get the book. And then online, I would encourage people join our Facebook community. Under Maui Mastermind, we've got some really vibrant entrepreneurial business communities that people are helping each other. We've got some that are just for clients, but we have others that are open to everybody and I think they do a great job serving each other. Ideas, support, accountability, inspiration, all those things that every one of us needs.

Thank you so much, David. And you guys, if you loved this podcast as much as I did, one of the most beautiful things that we can do for our guests is to tag them and let them know what your biggest takeaway was. David, what is your. Do you have an Instagram handle?

It's a great question. Actually, I don't right now. I'm laughing at myself. I was talking with someone earlier today about that. I guess I'm. I'm about to turn 50. I'm a little old for that. I laugh. So no, I don't. But through our website or through Facebook.

And I'm going to let you know.

About all of the love that they.

Poured out onto you. So you guys make sure you take the podcast and let us know what your biggest takeaway was. And David, I always reshare it so.

We can check out all the love.

On my page of what everybody is learning from the podcast. So you guys, as you know, sharing is always the best, best way to help other people in your community as well. And until next time, earn your happy. Bye, everyone.

Thank you guys so much for spending this time with me on the earn your happy podcast. I am so glad that you stopped by. If you could take one second to share this episode with someone you think would love it, that would be absolutely amazing and we would be forever, forever grateful. Also, please leave us a review if you feel so moved by going to itunes and leaving us an honest thought and honest comment. Tell us what you think, tell us what you want to hear more of. It would really help us out on our journey to helping thousands and thousands of people. Until then, don't forget to earn your happy. Thanks again guys.

Bye bye.

Sam.