How I Structure My Week With 120+ Employees

I run a company valued at $43 million with 120+ employees, and things break every single day. New problems show up, priorities shift, and it's not clean. So instead of trying to control the chaos, I built my week around it. Every decision starts with one question: What is the biggest constraint in the business right now? In this video, I'll show you exactly how I structure my week around that. So even when things feel messy, the business keeps running. Growing. So everything I do comes back to a framework that I talk about all the time inside my content, and that's called the 4L Framework. And you thought it was only for turnarounds, but realistically, the 4L Framework, you talk about liquidity, this is cash in the bank that can be constrained. If you have no money, it's very difficult to grow a business. This is why everyone says it takes money to make money because you need liquidity. And then usually what you're going to do is you're going to take that liquidity and turn it into leads, going on advertising, getting more customers. And then once you get enough customers, eventually you're gonna have a constraint with labor. You gotta get the work done. Someone's actually gotta do the things that you promised you would do to get the leads. And then as time goes on, you have so many people on your team now, you need managers and a framework and a hierarchy to be able to lead. Once you do that, you get a whole bunch of overhead out of the business and all of a sudden you realize you don't have enough profits. And so liquidity becomes a problem again. And so this is the constant growth engine that every business goes through. And it's not just for home service businesses. It's whether it be my franchise, whether it be the software, whether it be the media side. This is the constraints that you will face as you grow the business. At any given time, one of those is the major constraint. It's very easy to be like, well, I have cash problems. I also can't get any customers. No one wants to work for me. My managers are falling apart. It's easy to see problems in every aspect of this. There are problems in every constraint in the 4L framework. However, there is only one major constraint where I wanna focus most of my time on, and that constraint is what decides my week. Right now, for me personally, it just leads. And everyone says this, everyone thinks that leads is their problem, but to be very honest, it's been 5 or 6 years since this was my constraint, and I'll get to that later on the video. So most of my time, because my constraint is leads, it goes into how I get leads, which is creating content, videos like this, courses, books, strategy, the turnaround show, and everything to do with the media side. And so when you look at the holdco that we currently have, there's 3 departments. Number 1 is the media that drives customer acquisition cost down and we get leads. Then we have the franchise, which is kind of like the cash engine, very profitable. And then there's the software side, which is HomeWorks, and that is where there's valuation, the growth, and that holdco is what we want to take public. In the next 6 to 8 years. And so what I've focused on right now is getting more leads. But in the past 4 or 5 years, it was actually building out the infrastructure around command center at Augusta Lawn Care, as well as the leadership and the talent at HomeWorks. That's really been my focus for the past 5 to 6 years since we franchised Augusta Lawn Care and then the past couple of years since we took on HomeWorks. So it's actually relatively new for me to feel like lead constrained or demand constrained. Like I need more people to buy my stuff because I was spending so much time building out Command Center that has 87 agents now. And so worried and concerned about getting better leadership and better talent at HomeWorks on the software side that I really did not deploy much energy in terms of percentage of my week towards getting more leads. So right now, for the first time in a while, leads is actually the constraint to the business because there's great leadership in all departments of the businesses, in the media, the franchise, and in the software. And so for many home service businesses, this is their constraint, getting more customers. And really getting more customers in most home service businesses comes down to two things. One is a website. If you just have a great looking website and you answer your phone, you're probably gonna beat out like 99% of your competition. Uh, the reason is because 60 to 80% of your leads are going to come from your website. And so I'm going to talk a lot about what I do to get leads— creating content. For most of you, you're not having a YouTube channel as the source of your leads, but you can— every time I talk about content, just think advertising, just think website, just think door hangers, flyers. You're getting more leads. It's pretty basic. But the major reason when when people say I'm lead constrained or I need more leads to grow my business is they don't have a good website. This is why we have homeserviceaudit.com. You can, for completely free without even signing up or it's, there's no cost. Just put your website in and I'll analyze it for you based on everything I talk about and over my experience of building over 1,000 home service websites. So go check out homeserviceaudit.com. It's completely free. The second reason why a lot of people feel lead constrained in home services is because they don't sell more to the people that are already in their database. And so for example, last month at my location, Augusta Lawn Care, we sent out 40 upsell videos. The crew did. The crew sent out 40 upsell videos from the Field Force mobile app inside of HomeWorks. They can record the video. It just gets attached directly to the property. And then the general manager can send that to the customer. We sent out 40 upsell videos and 15 of them were accepted. It's not bad. That's about what, like a 40% close rate? And all the 15 of those new jobs in the past, if I would not have sent those videos out, I wouldn't have got them. And so we use HomeWorks to be able to upsell our existing database to get more leads. Everyone thinks that leads is kind of like getting a new prospect or the first time you interact with the customer. I think of leads as not only getting them on my website, very good, but also then upselling them over and over again to to be able to generate more leads. That's why when I make these videos, the same way I encourage you all to be able to send out texts and emails and upsell your customers, that's why I have an email newsletter. That's why I have Shorts. That's why I have long-form videos. This is why I reach out on multiple channels because I'm trying to upsell. I'm trying to get people inside the funnel to continually buy over and over again. And that's what we should be doing in our home service businesses as well. So how does this actually change my calendar? We've identified that currently for the first time in a while, I am lead constrained. And I think that as I go into this era, a lot of people are gonna enjoy it because most of us, when we're trying to grow a business, this is where we feel the most pain. 'Cause like, man, if I just got enough customers, it would solve everything. And ultimately that's actually true. Even though when I go do turnarounds, a lot of times I am immediately identifying problems in leadership or labor. If you have enough leads and you're just drowning in leads, guess what you can do? Raise prices.. And once you raise prices, you can then afford better labor and better management. And you can also slow down and delegate things off of your plate 'cause you have plenty of cash. But you only get enough cash when you have enough leads to be able to have confidence to raise your prices. And so sometimes it's chicken and egg game of like, well, I need the leads and the huge amount of customers so I have the confidence to raise prices. But ultimately raising the prices is the thing that allows you to get better labor and then improve as a leader. Now, when it comes to leads for me personally, now knowing that that is the constraint for us to be able to grow the business, how does that actually change my calendar? So I don't try to balance everything. If leads are the constraint, I'm not going to spend as much time in operations unless it's absolutely necessary. And I say that because it's very easy to fall in love with your calendar layout. And how your calendar currently looks today, if your business is growing and you're evolving and moving through the stages inside the 4L Framework, your calendar will change because your priorities change. And your priorities change because the constraint of the business changes. Whatever the current constraint is, I'm going to change my calendar to make sure I solve that problem using my time in the most efficient manner. So right now, because leads is the constraint of my businesses, whether it be HomeWorks on the software side, Augusta on the franchise side, or on the media side, this is how I've organized my week. So if I have, let's just call it 5 days, I work on the weekends, but let's just assume for the sake of this example that we don't. So we got 5 days in the week. So it's gonna be Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Now, as I say this and as I record this, keep in mind, this will change. As your constraint changes, your priorities change. As your priorities change, your calendar should change also. And so right now, as it currently stands, I have one day, Fridays, which is manager day. This is where I get all my meetings done. I show up in the morning and I leave at the end of the day and just meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting. I walk in the door Friday morning knowing I will not strategically move the priorities of the business forward at all because I have tons of meetings. I then try my very best to ensure that the other 4 days are all sent, for architect time. Now, some people call this maker time, and I like to call it architect time. The reason I call it that is because I like to think of it as when I'm first getting started, labor is actually the time that I'm spending. And then as I begin to grow and get employees, it turns into manager time. And that is where I have to have a bunch of meetings, I have reviews, one-on-ones, I have to hire, train, etc. That's manager time. I think that the third part is architect time. I think if you wanna oversimplify this, you could just call this manager time and then just call this maker time. So just to use the common vernacular, this is what Paul Graham has used, maker and manager time. I like to break it down one step further below that because when you're a solo operator, when you have 1, 2, 3, 4 employees even, you actually spend a lot of time doing the work regardless of what industry you're in. And so I consider that labor time. As the business grows, your calendar should change. So if I was just getting started, it'd probably look much more like labor, labor, labor, and then maybe one day of management. Okay, so maybe 4 days of the week I'm out in the field doing the work. On Fridays, I am hiring, I am firing, I'm doing one-on-ones, I'm looking at numbers, I'm looking at spreadsheets, I'm managing the business. Okay, but at my current stage, I am trying my very best to ensure that the majority of my week is spent in architect time. Architect time is when I step away from the business. I'm not doing the work. I'm not managing the employees who are doing the work. I am trying to think about the architecture of the building. So I'm not laying the bricks. I'm not managing the people laying the bricks. I am stepping back and I am looking at where are the areas of weakness and the systems in this structure. The same with an architect does not go inside of the building and start doing piping and plumbing and pulling wire. They step away from the business and look at the blueprints. They step away from the building and they start looking at, okay, this is where this needs to go. This is where this is going to be organized. And they strategically think about the business. I will say this. Many people try to jump into being an architect way too soon. Do not look at this calendar and think that if you're under $1 million in annual revenue, that this is what your calendar should look like. Again, I'm going to match the constraint to my priority and the priority dictates my calendar. And so right now I have identified the constraint as leads. My priority is to make sure that I am making content, I am architecting the business in a way to get more leads, and therefore 4 outta 5 days in my week is architect time. So don't beat yourself up if you're like, well, most of these are L's in terms of labor time. That's fine. I started there too. It was 7 days a week L was what, was when I was first getting started. And then as time goes on, you get more employees, you start moving more into manager time, and eventually more into architect time. Now, what I have found is that the ratio of architect to manager time directly correlates with growth. So for example, last year, 2025, across the whole co, we grew revenue about 25 to 30% across all 3 divisions: media, franchise, and software. I expect in 2026 for that to increase to 50% year-over-year growth. So 50% increase in revenue across all the divisions. Now increases in revenue, but also the valuation. So in 2025, our valuation, our 409A evaluation went from $30 million to $43 million in 2025. So about a 50% also increase in value. I believe that also this year we will probably see a 50% year over year increase in the valuation of the business. Again, because I spent more time on architect time instead of manager time. Okay, so we've talked about what my week looks like. And what the current constraint in the business is, let's talk about how I handle urgent problems. Because every single day you or I are going to be inundated with customer complaints, employee issues, random fires in the business that are happening, lawsuits, threats. It happens literally every single day. And my goal is to not jump into all of those things. And I try to stay focused on what I already decide matters most. And that is the— in the 4L framework, the constraint is leads. And so anything pulling me away from that better be very high priority. Not the loudest fire, not the most urgent, the most important thing. When you do this, it means that smaller fires in the business are going to sit longer than people in your organization or outside of your organization would prefer. And so what I try to think about is I'm trying to fix the fuel of the fire because all day long we can be going and fighting fires in the business instead of just being like,, "Oh snap, someone over here is pouring on a bunch of fuel, a bunch of gasoline. Let's go fix that problem before we go start fighting fires." And the challenging part is we as entrepreneurs, as problem solvers, as people that are do-it-yourself type A individuals, many times have an identity with solving problems. We are constantly trying to jump in and put out the fires inside the business because it gives so much dopamine to be able to say, "There's a problem and I solved it." And you become the fix-it person for everything inside the organization. This is tempting to continue the same reinforcement behavior, but as the business grows, it's counterproductive because you jumping into the window with the axe, you pushing down the door as a firefighter looks cool, it feels cool, but let's just address the fact that there are structural issues to the way that the house was built and the fact that there's gasoline being poured on it as to why the fires even exist. So recently I talked to our owner success manager at Augusta Lawn Care. His name's Nick. We were having a one-on-one and we were talking about what some of the priorities in the business in his role. And one of the things that we talked about was creating a one-on-one system for our owners inside of Augusta Lawn Care and their general managers to use. 'Cause if you haven't done a lot of management in the past and you haven't had 20, 30, 50, 100 employees, it's difficult to see the value or even conduct a one-on-one with your employee on a monthly basis, be like, here's what went well, here's what you could work on, et cetera. It's awkward. You might feel like it's very structured. Maybe they don't feel engaged. So like, how do we warm people up with the right questions, connect with them on a personal level, understand their goals, and then align the goals of the business with the goals of the individual? That's what a one-on-one, a productive one-on-one, should look like. And so he was like, man, like, I just, I don't really understand how this is aligning with the objectives of the whole organization, why this is important, 'cause there's just so much chaos happening in Spring Rush, which always happens when you're hiring tons of people and thousands of new customers are being added every single week. And this is where this whole analogy came from. And I said, sometimes it's easy to start jumping into, through windows and fighting fires, when we have to step back and ask ourselves, are we building the building in the right way so that it doesn't burn? Because if you build a house in a specific way and use concrete and use glass, it's harder to burn. If you use a whole bunch of wood and a whole bunch of insulation and you use a whole bunch of wood products, it's easier to burn. And so instead of constantly focusing on the fires that keep popping up around the house, let's just try to build the house in a way where fire doesn't exist. The problem is that takes a lot longer. It's a lot harder to create systems in the business, i.e., build the house in the correct way so that fires don't even happen. They don't start. And it's very easy when you go into spring rush, just be like, "All right, here we go. We buckle up. This is a feature and not a bug of the industry. We're getting super busy. We know where there's gonna be problems. There's gonna be problems with customers. There'll be problems with employees. People are gonna walk off the job." And we just kind of accept that instead of asking ourselves, What could we do to build a system and build the house in a way where the fires don't happen? And this includes building systems like we did for a one-on-one meeting, like we do for hiring and onboarding and training. This is the unsexy part of building the house in a way that regardless of the heat, regardless of the elements around, it still doesn't have fires. And so if you're constantly firefighting, and you've been reinforced for that being a positive thing and it's a part of your identity, realize that's probably the thing holding you back from scaling the business. So what happens if there are fires and I do get pulled in? And inevitably this is going to happen. As the leader of any organization, you're going to get pulled into something. Afterwards, I'm always trying to ask myself, though, why did this require me? Because ideally it shouldn't. Ideally, there should be people in place. There should be systems in place. There should be processes in place. And anytime I get pulled back into something that I shouldn't be focused on, and that is what I should be focused on, the constraint around leads, I should be focused on that. Anything else is a system failure. And so I think of this the same way. If you're just getting started and you're an estimator or you're just getting your business started and you get pulled into operations or you get pulled into customer complaints or you get pulled into a specific job or specific customer issue, if you get pulled into those You might do it because you know that business needs it today. But I've got to step back and say, system failure, and figure out a system, build the house in a way where that same fire doesn't happen again. So I handle the issue and then look at how to prevent it next time. Now, if you do get pulled in time and time again into problems inside your organization and you're trying to scale, it's going to keep you from focusing on the main constraint. And so it is a problem. What this can indicate is there's a skill gap with your current managers or your team. This can mean that you got to train them. It can mean upgrading talent, which is a fancy word for releasing people into the wild and finding better, more experienced people. Ultimately, you're either going to have to increase their skills by training or you're going to have to find someone else to replace them and upgrade that talent. This can mean that the business has also grown past their level of skill of that current manager. Or they need more manpower, they need more budget, they need more systems, they need more technology. And you have those resources to be able to give them. And so if I ever get dragged into something and I'm like, I know this is not the constraint of the business, but I'm getting pulled into this problem. Okay, great. Let it happen. We fix the problem. Great. And now I'm doing a recon on that and being like, why did I get pulled into that? Was it the fact that I offered a service I shouldn't? Was the fact that I have underskilled employees? Was the fact that I didn't give someone the ability or the resources or the manpower or the budget or the systems or the software that could help them do their job. And so by doing the recon, my goal is that I prevent that fire from happening again. And when I constantly see business owners, and I'm guilty of this the same, is we just keep fighting the same dragons every single year instead of like, I want to be fighting dragons. I just want a new upgraded version of the dragon so that it means my business is growing. Let's step back into manager mode. Which is you have technicians doing the work out in the field, out on the job. And I remember being a manager and having 10, 15 employees, $1, $2 million in annual revenue, and a job would go south and I'd get pulled into it. And so using a landscaping example, they'd be like, well, where do we plant these trees? Or where should we dump the material? Or where should we be parking? Why is this over here? And does the customer want this? All these questions that pulled me back in the job was an indication that I did not set them up for success, that I didn't give them a video. I didn't give them clear job notes. I didn't give them good enough training, and I potentially needed to rebuild the business, i.e., cut out certain services that were constantly causing these fires that dragged me back into the business. And so as you move up from a laborer to a manager and into an architect, every time the architect steps into a building, Bad news. It's usually someone's getting fired, a wall's coming out, someone's getting demoted, there's a lawsuit happening. If the architect steps back into the business, system failure. And so regardless of whether or not you're a manager or you're an architect, anytime you have to step in and go do something that is not the main constraint of the business for it to grow, I'm going to do a recon and solve that problem with a system. And that might mean cutting out a service because systems are simplification and standardization, meaning I might just cut that service out completely and simplify the business so that that never happens again and rebuild the structure of the building in a way that it doesn't burn. Now, when it comes to my schedule, there are certainly reactive tasks. We've talked about fires, things that drag me away from the main constraint of the business. But the objective is to be able to have as much of your schedule planned as possible. I know what it's like to walk into your week, have basically nothing really scheduled on your calendar, but just know you're going to work 80 to 100 hours a week of just complete chaos. And you're just going from one fire to the next. And just like this rotating conveyor belt of problems that are going to be served to you on a silver platter. And when you're smaller, you'll be reinforced for being reactive. So you have been reinforced in the past for staying busy. You have been reinforced for being reactive to customers, to employees. And now as the business grows, I had to learn this. I am actually going to keep the business from growing if I stay busy and I stay reactive. And quite opposite, I want a blank calendar as much as possible, and I want to have a planned calendar as much as possible. This is what keeps most small businesses small, is they're constantly reactive throughout their day. They're reactive to phone calls. They're reactive to emails. They're reactive to text messages, online reviews from employees, from customers. They're constantly reactive. And reactivity will prevent you from focusing on the main constraint. So as it currently stands, I would probably say in my calendar, about 70% of my week is preplanned and about 30% is reactive. Now, that's been improving because even a year or 2 years ago, it was probably the opposite. Probably 70% of my week was reactive and 30% of it was planned. As the business has grown and the leaders in the organization handle more of the day-to-day operations and they handle manager time, my focus must be on architect time. It must be focused on the main constraint. So how do I structure communication with these leaders? How do I communicate with my team when I'm out here trying to create content, create leads, generate more sales, and focus on architect time, but I still have a whole bunch of people in the building. I have a whole bunch of people managing the labors inside the building, to use the analogy. How do I communicate effectively? So I usually do it through my direct reports, even when it's slower. And you know what's even slower than having to always go through your direct reports to talk to your team is if you have leadership churn. And it's always very tempting to just go around your leadership team and then your direct reports as the organization grows. Again, I'm talking like $5, $10, $15 million in annual revenue and beyond. It's very tempting for you as a leader to go around your mid-level managers and just talk to people inside the organization. And a lot of us are tempted to do this because we hear of entrepreneurs like Elon Musk, who has famously said he just goes straight to the engineer and deal with the problem, the person closest to the problem. And that sounds good. But the other thing that I see with Elon, and I cast no shade on him, he is a fantastic entrepreneur. There's probably no one that even comes close to him or casts a shadow on him. That style of leadership I have seen not work for most people that are not named Elon Musk and do not have not only the money, not only have the credibility and the experience that he has. And so trying to take that same notion that I will just go straight to the problem, even though I've never talked to this person, I never hired them, I have no context about their skills or their experience or their background, but I will go to them because they're closer to the problem. Sounds good in theory. The problem is it makes your leadership feel horrible. It makes, it's like, why am I here then? Like I'm in the middle, like the leadership and then my managers and then frontline team members. And you're just gonna cut me outta the equation and go straight to them. And if you notice when it comes to Elon, for example, his leadership team, huge amounts of churn. And personally, this is just personal preference, I would rather keep my leadership team. I would rather slow down, quote unquote, than have churn at the leadership level, 'cause that slows down the organization also. And so I've been very privileged and very fortunate to be able to have leaders that have stuck a very long time. I don't know if we've ever had a lot of leadership churn ever in any of the departments. And I'm very grateful for that. All of the leadership team has been with me for multiple years. And some of them 8, 9, 10 years. And I see more value in that than me going around them, going straight to team members that they manage and have full context of and just trying to solve a problem. Although it is very tempting to go straight to the person that is closest to the problem, I found that long term that breaks the structure of the team and the trust that I have with my leaders and the trust they have with their team. And it causes people to actually pause every single time they're about to execute on something because they're wondering whether or not I'm going to cut their legs out from underneath them and go around them. This is something I've only recently learned, and I'm still in the process of learning because I've been so inclined so often to focus on speed instead of honoring the structure of the organization and building that trust with my direct reports. So I'm going to go through my leader of, hey, there's a problem with this or this department. I'm going to go through my leader also because they have full context. And so I don't want to also go to a team member that is very close to the problem and me come from the outside without full context of what's going on. And I'll be honest, like, this does not come second nature to me. I like creating personal connections. I like being able to go straight to the problem and fix it with somebody. But I have found that it has been very difficult for me personally to not create personal connections and try to foster those with all team members. The problem is I started to realize just doing the math. If I spent 10 minutes every week with every employee and you have 120, 130 employees, that'd be like 20 to 30 hours of my week. And just trying to build a surface-level understanding of what they did for the weekend, what their preferences are, how things are going, how their life is. And although personally, that's what I would prefer to do. But I saw around 50 to 60 employees, it started to really hurt me from being able to spend time on the major constraint. Like, if we just boil this whole video down, it's like all of our time and energy should be focused on the next major constraint for the business. Everything else is a distraction. And the thing that actually convinced me that it was not in the best interest of my team for me to be always talking with them, trying to create connection with every single team member, it wasn't just the math. It was also the fact that by me being selfish and trying to create the connection with people, 'cause I think that's an admirable thing to do, it prevented the organization from growing. And by preventing the organization from growing, I was hurting 120 people trying to be with one. And so me trying to create this connection with one person prevented me during that time from helping the other 120 people that relied on me fixing the next constraint of the business so that the business could grow, they could get to the next stage of their career, they'd be able to move up inside the organization, they'd be able to make more money, they'd have harder problems to solve, and they'd gain more skills. And so instead of it, like the only way I was able to break out of this mentality, I need to talk to everyone, I need to know everyone's birthday, I would send them videos on every single birthday, every single work anniversary, like that took a long time for me, like, okay, this is not going to work in the long term from a math perspective, but also, me spending time on this is robbing every other person in this organization because I should be deploying this time and energy towards solving the next constraint. People showed up here for not only to be able to provide for their family, but to gain skills, to be able to get ahead in their career. They didn't show up because they wanted another buddy to talk to them for 10 minutes a week. And that was the thing that convinced me that I can still be a good person and care about people deeply, but sometimes caring for them deeply doesn't mean having small chat with them. It means solving the constraint, the big hairy problem in the business, so we can continue to grow and they can move forward in their career. So meetings become a big thing in an organization. As you start passing $3, $5, $10 million, you're gonna have a lot of meetings. So I'm going to give my logic on meetings. And I will say this, this has evolved and this will continue to evolve as I grow my businesses. But I try not to be in meetings unless I'm needed for a decision. When we look at the framework of how we want to get progress in a business is we are identifying a problem. So we have problem, and then we have solutions, and then we've gotta execute on it. Okay? I only really need to be here for one very small portion of this process, which is a decision. Technically speaking, a great team member, a great manager can identify the problem and identify the solution. They will then usually run it by me. Ideally not. They don't have to. But like, the only value I should offer to this equation is for big decisions that need to be made so they can go execute. I'm trying to make sure that any speed bump, any hurdle, anything that they might not see because they don't have full insights to the whole organization is cleared up so that when they execute, this has the highest probability of success. And so that is the one key function that I, as the founder or the CEO, am able to offer is insights from a 30,000-foot view that they might not see in their individual department that adds clarity to the decision so that when they execute, it's always a winner. And when it comes to meetings, if I'm just listening for the sake of like awareness or FYIs, I usually don't need to be there. I found that, and I'll talk about in a second how I actually systematize still being able to be aware inside the organization. But I have found as the business has grown, the most value I can offer is helping with decisions. And this is a short period of time. I believe that spending a lot of time on identifying the problem correctly, identifying the solution, this is very time heavy. And this is what can be delegated to great competent managers and leaders. But I only need to be here for a short period of time, 10, 15-minute blocks. And this is why on my calendar, I only have 15-minute time blocks for my booking link. I used to have 30 minutes, 60 minutes, I used to have a 120-minute time block. It's like, oh yeah, like this is an important decision. Here's a 60-hour Zoom call that we can hop on. Honestly, 15 minutes is usually enough to make a decision and move on. And I have found that the time of a meeting just expands to the time that you allot, but the decision is usually just an instantaneous decision that is required. And so 15 minutes, for most of my meetings works. And if I believe it might go over, I'll leave some time behind the meeting in order for it to be able to go over. But most decisions can be made within 15 minutes. Now, the question is, well, where do you stay involved? There are only a few areas inside the organization where I stay really involved. These are things that are going to have a huge impact on the internal team and all of the customers. Most of my time and attention is focused on having a really good pulse of what the customer needs and where their problems are at. Because if I have a clear understanding of that, I'll have more clarity of the things that I do need to actually jump into operations for. So this is things like when it comes to software product decisions, what kind of features are, what's the focus? Where are we deploying energy? What are the features we're building? The customer journey. When a new customer comes on, what does that process look like? Because I know, maybe I'll make a video about this in future, but like, 30% of people churn in the first 90 days. I have seen this across lawn care. I've seen this across franchise. I've seen this across software. And that is within the first 90 days, if you can keep a customer, they stay for a very long time, assuming you have a good product. But if you don't have a good customer journey, they'll never recognize that and they'll never even see the benefit of your product or service. And so me being focused on the customer journey, those first 90 days, high leverage. Pricing, long-term strategy. These are the things that I will jump in and stay very hands-on, even if it pulls me out of my daily focus on the main constraint of the business. But that's intentional because I want to have a pulse on those specific areas. Everything else in the business should really be handled by the team. Now, my ideal week versus reality looks different because my ideal week is pretty simple. Uh, not a lot of meetings, uh, and a lot of time to think with AI. Maybe again, let me know in the comments if you'd like to see this, but I can make a video about it. I have a 26-page prompt that I've created with AI that I input on every chat when I'm talking with it, and I'm able to help process problem solution and execution and how to make decisions better. And so many times when I am solving the main constraint, AI is a huge— like AI, everyone's talking about AI, like AGI and taking over everyone's jobs and robotics. And self-driving cars. I think for the vast majority, 99.9% of business owners, the best thing AI can do is help you make better decisions. And to do that, I need time and space to make sure that the inputs I give AI, whether it be my voice, whether it be documents, I need to be able to make sure I have time to go through those things with AI and fully flesh out my decisions. Perfect week, not a lot of meetings, time to think with AI's help. And time to work on that main constraint. That is the perfect world. Okay. Lots of white space, lots of place to be able to use my architect mode. Great. The reality is it's still a mix. Like I said, 30% of my time is still reactive to problems that happen in the business. Things come up, but over time it's gotten a lot more structured. And as you grow your business, if 90% of your time is still being reactive, it's still being pulled into the firefighting that's happening below you in the organization, that will prevent you from growing. When I personally have a blank schedule and a large problem to tackle, those are my best days and the highest leverage that I can offer the business. If you think of every person in the organization as just like value to the company, you are not most valuable as the leader if you are fixing operational problems inside of a 50-person team, inside of a 100-person team. You are not being the most valuable to the overall organization. And so even the past year, as I've given some equity to team members as well as to members of Augusta Nation, and they were able to invest inside the Holdco, it really forced me to think of, okay, now there's people that are investing, whether it be time or money, into this company. I am now— have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that I deploy my energy and my time towards the highest value task. And sometimes it's very clarifying because it's no longer just your time. It's like someone else is invested in this and I need to spend it wisely and be a good steward of it. And so in the perfect world, lots of blank space, but I will still get pulled into stuff occasionally. So I will go over some of the things I don't do anymore. One of the things is sitting in meetings just to stay informed. And I talked about this, this previously. I will also not allow people to book random time on my calendar to catch up. The fastest way for someone to get blocked on my phone is to simply say, "Hey, it's been a long time, let's catch up." Or, "Hey, this is so-and-so," and I have no idea who this person is, "When can we book some time?" Or, "I have something to go over," or, "I have a proposal." If you're not gonna respect my time and the fact that I'm trying to stay focused on my main constraint and you think you can just kamikaze that by throwing stuff on my calendar, it's not happening. Getting pulled into every single aspect of the business, also detrimental to the growth of this business. If I'm in a meeting and I'm just there to listen, and I'm just trying to get information, there's ways to do that and stay informed about problems and solutions before I need to make a decision. There are ways to do this other than just sitting in the meeting. For example, if it's an FYI meeting, if it is a meeting that I just need to be informed of, you can watch the recording at 2x speed and get half of that meeting time back on your schedule. AI, great use case, summarization of a meeting. If I don't have an hour to be on FYI engineering meeting, but I still need to be aware of the problems and solutions being offered so that when I make a decision I'm fully informed, I should not be on the hour-long meeting where I'm just listening to engineers and half of it is technical talk that I don't understand. But I do need to understand generally the problem and the solution. And so being able to use AI to get a recap or a summary of what happened at that meeting, super valuable. Most of this video is just been about my calendar and the way I schedule my week. Because for small business owners, our calendar reflects what we think matters most right now. And you can tell me what matters most, but show me your calendar and I'll tell you what you think is actually the most important thing in your business. And if I'm spending time on the constraint, the major constraint, for me right now it's leads. If I focus on that, things move forward. If I'm not focused on that, The business plateaus. The same problems keep recurring. I keep fighting the same dragon every single spring. I keep fighting the same dragon every time I hire a manager. I keep playing the same game over and over and over again, and I'm not learning a lesson. If you're stuck at the same size of business, if you're stuck at the same amount of profits, you are likely focused on the wrong thing, like I was for a very long time. So that's how I structure my week. Hopefully it gives you insights into what your schedule will look like as you grow from $1 million in revenue to $10 million+. And if you want me to make a video about how I use AI to make the calendar work and be efficient and stay organized, just comment below and I'll make that video in the future.