How To Unlock More Freedom and Flexibility With The One-Day Workweek | Capability Amplifier EP#134

Not accepting the status quo. You know, again, that if you want to make it in America, you got to get up early, work late, work long hours. Like that's the, that's the reality for the overwhelming majority of entrepreneurs. And I was like, I don't want that.

What are the shortcuts? What's the fastest way to get the most profitable, productive results with the team? And knowing what you know now, if you had to do this all over.

Again, there was so much crap I was forcing myself to do that was essentially the equivalent of drinking bleach. And so I would do everything I could not to do them. I'd force myself to do them and I'd do a shitty job doing them because I never wanted to do it in the first place. And I just figured, well, I'm a CEO, so it's part of the job.

Hey everyone. Welcome to Capability Amplifier. This is Mike Caine, Exand Tomlin Bot.

Hello everyone.

My special guest today. So 20 years ago, right before the four hour workweek came out, I got an email from Tim Ferriss asking for help. Now at the time I had a product in the publishing space and I carelessly missed his email. Now when the book Four Hour Workweek did come out, I was blown away like a lot of other people and I wound up doing, developing a relationship with Tim. Now it turned out my assistant Lori uncovered that email and we were able to reconnect. Now, Tim at the time got criticized because a four hour work week is extremely difficult to implement for most business owners. That takes a special kind of person, a special kind of business, and a special kind of mindset to be able to achieve that. And what most people found frustrating about the Four Hour Workweek was that it wasn't an implementation guide, it wasn't a handbook. So if you're a founder, it might not be the four Hour Workweek you seek, but instead what you're looking for is a way to create more value in your business so when you sell it, you can have a big enough payout so that you'll never have to work again. Now, what Dan Sullivan says we all want as founders are the four freedoms. Freedom of time, money, relationship and purpose. And if you talk to any business owner or founder when it comes time to sell the business, if the business depends on you to run, the multiples you're going to get are going to be pathetic, frankly, depressing. But if you've got a business that's self managing, self running, that doesn't need you, the multiples will be considerably higher. Plus As a founder, you want to be able to spend the majority of your time in your superpower, your zone of genius, or your unique ability as a visionary, an ambassador, working on, not in your business. You want what all of us want, and that's freedom. So today we're gonna talk about the one day work week created by my guest, Tom Lombat. He knew me from my days as an online marketer, and when we connected at Strategic Coach. Now when we started chatting, I was super intrigued. Now he has two companies and he spends one day on each per week. And last year he took 150 days off so he could spend time with his family. Four kids, a two dogs, a bunny, a cat, and well, of course his wife. So he's got a lot. And I don't know if there's another. Another critter in there too. Is there another critter?

There's the mother in law.

Oh, the mother in law, too. All right, so. So anyway, he's got a full house, but at the time, what I did is I asked him, how do you do it? And could you help other entrepreneurs do the same thing you're doing? I mean, look, I want the same thing he's got too. So that's what today's interview is about. In full disclosure, we've spent the last two days, this is our third day together, preparing for this interview, documenting and spending time with the COO and integrator, Chris, who's made his one day work week possible. And in fact, Chris is doing the exact same thing. So the good news is you're going to learn his framework in less than an hour. And we put together some resources that we'll share at the end of the interview, including his top technology maximizer tools. The links are in the show, notes in the description, if you're watching this on YouTube. So welcome, Tom. Thanks for being here, my friend.

Thank you for having me, Mike.

All right, so I've been, of course, looking forward to this. And before we get into the nitty gritty.

You do have four kids. You're about to get another one. What's the story there? I want you to tell a little bit about the family situation.

Yeah, so all our four kids are adopted. So we get them. We bought our kids a few weeks ago when we were telling our kids, hey, we're gonna get one more. My youngest, Kia, who's six, she's like, mom, are you gonna buy another kid? So it's pretty, pretty hilarious.

It's so funny. Well, one of the things too, that we were talking about and in fact he was just here a few weeks ago is Jim Shiels. And you've got a great why story. I think it's another reason why you and I connected and related right away. So you want to tell your Jim Shiels story and why that's important to you.

Y. Yeah. So Jim Shields wrote a great, super easy, quick read, called the family board meeting like a surfboard. And the byline on that cover is, you have 18 summers to create lasting connections with your children. And that sentence has just been ingrained and burned into my mind. You know, everyone always tells you, oh, it goes by so fast before you have kids. Then you have kids, you're like, holy shit, it's going by so fast. But there's something about the way that's phrased. You have 18 summers, you know, and they just clip on by so fast. I can't believe my eldest, Eliana, is 11. So I look at that, I'm like, wow, I have seven summers left. And you know, I don't want to be the entrepreneur. I've always been very selective with the amount of time I travel. Pretty much just Strategic Coach.

And because I don't want to be the, you know, the traveling dad that's always gone so busy building this company and, you know, earning the money to create the freedom in life we want. And then by the time I get there, I look back and I go, whoa, my four kids are all out of the house. And there's this other article online, something about the long tail or I forget what it was. But essentially it's that by the time your kids turn 18, you've spent 96% of the time you will ever spend with them. And so I believe that every business owner can work less so they have more freedom and spend more time with the people who matter most. And sadly, I think that's more of a pipe dream in our society. You know, I used to belong to another organization before Strategic Coach. And the mindset was like, oh, you got to keep a close eye on your employees because they're going to screw you. And if you want to make it, you got to get up early and work late. And I'm like, no way. I don't, I don't buy into that mindset. That's what really attracted me to Strategic Coach. And you know, I work from eight o' clock to three, 34 days a week. And I think I didn't realize, I just assumed everyone else, you know, in coach created a self managing company and I was talking to A good friend of mine, Steve French, his dad was in strategic coach. He's been in coach for 10 years and he's like Tom, I don't think you realize this but I can count on my hands a number of people who ever truly built self managing companies. So I kind of took it for granted. And so I went on a little, little tangent but that kind of going.

Don'T worry about it, don't worry about it. I think you know the, the theme is, is clear. And again what intrigued me was meeting someone who's actually done it. And you've got, you know, you got a complicated family situation dynamic with a lot of kids. Like you say the mother in law lives at home. Thank God, because she's with the kids right now in Cleveland, Ohio as we speak. That's awesome. But let's, before we get into the meat and potatoes of the system, I do want to, let's talk a little bit about who the one day work week is for. Who you've found are ideal candidates who can successfully implement and get this. And then we'll, we'll deconstruct the, the most important things because one of the other big takeaways, what you and I have in common is you're a big tech guy, you've spent a lot of time in the tech and doing technology management. That's one of your companies. But let's get into the who's one day work for work week four.

Yes. And it's funny because.

When I looked at a lot of other systems, I never met their criteria but I knew what I wanted and so I made the decision early on, like yeah, I'm not quite there but I'm going to implement it and build it because I know that's where I'm going. But you know, the one day work we kind of, this whole thing we've created is really for founders and co founders, you know, running companies between 2 and 25 million. You know, some, some of the things that tend to be consistent is they have more business than they can handle. So some companies have a marketing or growth problem. Right. We're not getting enough business. You know, we need to find a way to do that. So you need marketing experts. But there's plenty of other companies that, that are on the complete opposite side of that. And so they've got plenty of business but then they're hesitant about taking on the business because they don't have the confidence in their operations and so they end up being tied and depended upon for everything.

Right, Got it. And.

When you.

Yesterday I introduced you to someone who I thought would be a perfect candidate to work with you. We got him on and.

He'S already breaking at the seams. He's got tens of millions of dollars in brand new business and right now he's just got to keep this ship together so he can fulfill and continue to grow because he expects to get to $100 million in the first year. So as I expected, he raised his hand and he was in before we had to talk for very much to him. But.

I think. Is there anything else that you want to add about the who this is for? Because I think he's pretty typical. He's like, I got a big problem. I have more business than I can possibly handle right now. He's cash flush, which is a good position to be in, but won't be unless all these things get fixed.

Yeah. And you know, it's, it's funny, many people would, would love to have that problem. Right. But it is a real problem. I've been there as well before where we had, you know, new clients coming in and I didn't have the confidence in my team or our current resources to confidently handle that. And so, you know, this client here, he's, I mean, he's got clients knocking on his door saying, hey, I've got another 10 or 20 or 30 million dollars in revenue I want to send your way. And he's having to stall. Right. That's a horrible place to be in. It's a good problem, but it's a.

Very high quality problem. High quality problem. Right. Well, that's. And I also want to go back to the Tim Ferriss thing because you, like me, we're always looking for what's a good strategy. So Tim got scrutinized for the four hour work week, being gimmicky. And even Tim would say, well, you know, people always say, well, do you work four hours a week? And he goes, no, I don't, but I could.

And I think what's important is he really taught a mindset and he introduced outsourcing 20 years ago and the system was more for solopreneurs than it was for entrepreneurs versus something to build on top of. But you've studied tons and tons and tons of systems strategies.

Maybe talk a little bit about what inspired you to end up building and creating what you have right now.

I know you read a ton of books.

Yeah, I think it was really led by my priorities, you know, for, you know, above and beyond anything else and not accepting the status quo. You Know, again, that if you want to make it in America, you got to get up early, work late, work long hours. Like, that's the, that's the reality for the overwhelming majority of entrepreneurs. And I was like, uh, I don't want that. And, and so I, you know, continually, I, I've been seeking, you know, knowledge. I love to learn. I've read, you know, hundreds upon hundreds of books. I've been through tons of courses. I've invested probably, I, I'm pretty sure I'm over half a million now in personal development and courses and strategic coach and EOs, you know, implementers and all different kinds of things. You know, kind of seeking and finding the tools that I need to create this reality.

So.

That, that's kind of the backstory. And I wasn't trying to create this. You know, sometimes you're. You're doing something, you're in the moment, and you don't realize where you're headed until you're on the other side. Now, that being said, for years I've been writing on my goals. You know, I'm working one day a week in glomac. It. I never really knew how that was going to happen. I probably didn't believe in, you know, it could be done at the time, but I continued to pursue it. And, you know, over time, you know, we tried different strategies and implemented them and kept refining and, you know, looking at different systems, you know, scaling up and eos and Patrick Lencioni and Jim Collins and that whole kind of world of knowledge of, you know, business strategies. And so it, you know, it was just a synthesis of all that information over 17 years.

Got it. Well, maybe again, before we deconstruct this, you had a moment five years ago where you had to fix some big business challenges. And I think that became the moment when you had to either do this or the business was going to fold. And you really figured out how to bring in the biggest solution of all, which is Chris, your co integrator. So why don't you give us that backstory and then we'll. We'll tear into the, into the, the system itself.

Yeah. So it was, it was do or die. And I think it's a very common entrepreneurial problem. So this specific year, we had zero clients for the first six months. So you're like, okay, we got to market, we got to get new business. All of a sudden we had it. We added on six new clients in the second half of the year, essentially growing our monthly recurring revenues by 60, 60%. Awesome party. Celebration you know, fun times. Until reality came crashing down the next year, and we lost 40% of our monthly recurring revenue because exactly what we've been talking about. We did not have the systems and the processes and the right people in place to deliver the services in a good way. So we were signing up new clients, and I'd throw them in the back of the truck to get them started, and another one would be falling off the back of the truck at the same time. So we were either going to fail or find a way. And so.

You know, at that time, we selected EOS as a system to implement. We tried to implement it ourselves first because we were bleeding cash, you know, and we failed. We spent a tremendous amount of time. At the end of the first day, we were worse off than we were at the beginning of the day. So that's when I knew, okay, that's why we have the credit line. I, I don't want to do it, but it's do or die. So we pulled on the credit line, we hired an EOS implementer, and we worked with them over the next two and a half years and slowly but certainly turned the ship around. Spent a tremendous amount of time developing. Chris, who is my integrator today, but he started as an admin working for my team seven years ago. Over this time, we built a system and an approach that has evolved into our, what we call our velocity engine.

And, you know, just last year, I had another breakthrough moment, but more of a. It was a character building, challenging time, but it was really positive. Looking back at it, my wife Christine got sick during the lockdown, and she was in bed for 30 days. I mean, 100%, zero energy, totally out. And I was able to leave the business with 100% for the entire month. I didn't have a handoff process. I didn't have a meeting with my team. I was like, hey, I got to take care of my family, my kids. I'm out. And nothing fell through the cracks. Everything kept on humming along. Zero client complaints or employee issues. You know, everything just went perfectly smooth.

That's great. And maybe just for a little bit of context, because we didn't talk about this yet, is you've got two businesses right now. What are the two businesses? So people understand sort of how they run. And I think that'll provide some additional framework and context too.

Yeah. So my first company is Global Mac it. We do outsourced IT for law firms that use Apple computers. So very specific niche. So we work with law firms with about 10 to 50 users nationwide. And then the second company I started is called Bobagard, and that is a turnkey cybersecurity security suite built specifically for law firms. And the only reason I was able to build this second company is because I was able to get to Globe Mac it spending less than one day a week. So it gave me the freedom and kind of ability to use my creativity to create the problem to another solution that I identified in the market.

Right. And one of the things that I want, I'm going to circle back a little bit to the EOS experience because, okay, so here you are, you got a big problem, you made the leap, and it took you two and a half years really to get this. And I know I was in a pickle with my last companies and we just knew we were an operational train wreck. And I remember talking and wanting to do the EOS thing too. But what I found frustrating at the time was, okay, I got to shell out a bunch of money and it felt like a theoretical system to me. It was like I needed my, my stuff fixed now. And.

You know, the nature of it is it takes a while to get it rolling. Hence the big opportunity here, which is, is there a way to accelerate what scaling up what Jim Collins talks about and practically every other systemization, create a great COO process led business is all about.

And I think that might be a good place to transition over to the system you have. So why don't you again, talk a little bit about the one day work week system. And we did talk about where it came from, but, you know, what are the foundational building blocks of it?

Yeah, again, you know, I was heavily influenced by EOS and Rocket Fuel, which was written by Mark Winters and Gina Wickman. You know, scaling up all of Jim Collins's work. I'm a huge fan of Greg McKeown, essentialism, Benjamin Hardy, all the strategic coach, and.

I'm a big believer in fractals. I can't talk to them in any length of time that would make sense. But essentially I think everything is the same. Right. A car is a car, whether it's a Ferrari or a Kia Sorento. Right. They've all got the same basic components and, and so it's just different ways to build it. And I've always loved, like take cooking for example. I'll go on a quick tangent. My brother loves to cook. My parents do. My sister was good at it. Through college, my parents, you know, my whole family used to joke that I didn't know how to boil water. Right. It was Mac and cheese and classic, you know, college food. Really, really basic, you know, fast forward 20 years later, I'm a pretty darn good chef. And that's not because I went to school. It's because I went and found proven recipes and processes and I follow them to a T. And most people don't do that. I've seen people fail at implementing every single system I talked about here. You know, EOs, scaling up, etc. And so what I'm constantly seeking is how can I improve them? What are the key things that are missing that we can tweak and improve that's going to increase the chance of success. And so that's essentially what we've done. Right? So we've been building a library of SOPs. We've templated a lot of the key pieces, we've created additional tools that kind of address some of the gaps to help our team get there faster, help our high performing employees who rise to the top. But they tend to be rugged individualists and now they need to learn how to delegate. So we've learned how to shortcut that entire process.

Yeah, I'm going to take a breather and see where you want to jump in there.

Well, I think the biggest things is, what I really want to do is explore through your lens.

Doing this for yourself inside your own businesses and what you see the needs are in other companies. When you tear in and find how do you, what are the things that you can do that are the biggest shortcuts that prove provide the most significant results in the shortest period of time? That.

Like let's pretend for example, you do what you guys do, which is, you know, you workshop this and in three days you start building out a process and implement it with an organization. Like what are the things that you focus on first? Or should we just go through the system and tear it apart that way? So I'm going to let you decide how to answer that question. But ultimately I'm going to approach this from the listener or the viewer's point of view, which is what are the shortcuts? What's the fastest way to get the most profitable, productive results with the team? And knowing what you know now, if you had to do this all over again, so start another company and do it right this time. What are the key things that you do, in what order? Or if you were acquiring a business and you had to go in and fix it, what would you do? Or if you're just going through and doing what you guys do, which is advising organizations going in and providing this as a service, like what's the approach and how do you get the most, most done in the shortest period of time and get a team on board too, or if there's missing team members, you know, what do you focus on first?

Yes. So this is exciting because it's kind of like a choose your own adventure kind of thing.

That's the whole idea.

I can choose option C. We're going to take one step back, I think, before talking about, you know, the solution and kind of what we've created. I think it's important to understand like, you know, because people right now there's probably a lot of people running on EOS or scaling up, you know, by Vern Harnish or these different things and they're like, what's, what's wrong? What's the problem with those? You know, the client you introduced me to yesterday, for example, he had implemented eos and this was one of the worst examples I've heard. But he shared that it almost drove his business into the ground. You know, his EOS implementer didn't have real enough real world experience. You know, one of the key things with EOS is that they cannot give advice. They just kind of guide you through the tools. There's value in that, but there's also a drawback, right. Sometimes if we don't have the capability, if we haven't been through something and it's like, oh, you know, follow the tool, figure it out, you know, And I think sometimes people want that advice. You know, if you have specific guidance you can share, it can be, you know, immensely impactful at the right time and place.

Yeah, but if I'm driving my, my high speed sports car and I'm about to plow into a wall, I don't want someone to say, hey, read the manual. So, yeah, all right, you can buy.

That car, you can drive it around and act like you're, you know, who knows what, and you go right into the wall. Or you can go to a little training course, little one day, you know, course thing with it with a guide or what if you could have a, you know, professional driver be in the car with you every day for 30 days. Yeah, I mean, that latter option, obviously you're going to be light years ahead of where you would be with 1, 1 and 2. And so I think the, you know, there's, you're handed a manual and you've got to fill it out, right? So I think that's one of the drawbacks with eos, with scaling up. When we had tried to implement it a few years back. It was too complex. You know, it wasn't really a step by step system. You know, again, you need the consistent thing that I realized is that you need a guide to create real transformation quickly. We didn't have that right. We worked with our EOS Simple Owner for two and a half years, but it took us another two and a half years after that to get to where we are now. And even then, we are the exception to the rule. When I talk to a lot of companies running on some of these systems, they're not running on some of these systems, they're running on a modified version that they lazily veer off of. And that's everything in life, right? You get in shape, you get fit, then you start veering off, and then you get back on track.

But I think the key is you need a guide alongside you. You know, what are the shortcuts that are available to get you from here to there in a shorter amount of time? Essentially, that's what we've been kind of obsessed over and created.

Yeah, that's. And I look at it, you know, if selling me five years is not attractive, selling me a year isn't attractive unless I really, really know what the end result is. If someone says to me, I'll give you six months worth in a week, but it's going to cost you a 10x premium.

It'S easier for me to do the math in my head and figure out the benefits of that.

So I love that. So let's just kind of rip into the process. Let's go through it step by step and I'll just ask you questions along the way. Cause I really want to. I'm thinking about this through every person I work with right now, thinking about like, who needs this the most?

Yeah.

Hey, action taker Mike Koenig's here and I just wanted to interrupt for a second and let you know that if you're ready to reinvent yourself and your business, go to connecttomike.com to learn more and book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode.

Who's got the growth and the opportunity, but doesn't have the confidence in their backend systems.

You know, I mean, if. If you had all the tools, all the shortcuts, and were able to implement all these in real time with your team over a few days, and then you handed someone who's trained and developed to take over all that, you're going to, you know, make a giant leap, right? It's almost. I love a term, you know, the unfair advantage. Right.

So do you want to jump into the different components, the steps?

Yeah, I think. I think that's good. And then I'll tear them apart with you and ask some questions along the way. Again, I'm looking at this through.

Again, thinking practical, tactical. What can I use for my own team? What do I know I need? And if I think through all the organizations I'm working with right now, you know, like, who would I send through this? And again, because I know, just like you, a lot of people who have EOs, a lot of people have scaling up, more people who need it than have it, and more people have got the gaps.

So the velocity engine, there's six different components. So the first one is vision design. Then we've got diagnose and track. The next one is the right team. The fourth is the process hub. The fifth is the tech ROI multiplier. I think that's a key component that's not really featured in most of the other systems. I've got an IT background. I think there's a tremendous amount of leverage that is continually untapped into most organizations. And then the final step is the velocity. That kind of ties everything together and gets the momentum. So you're moving forward, making continual progress.

Okay, so let's tear into the first one, the vision design. What is it? How's it different from some of the other systems? And what do you focus on when you're doing this?

Yeah. So if you can imagine, running a business without a clear vision is kind of like packing for a trip without knowing where you're going. Right. All right, Mike, get packing. We're leaving in four hours.

Yeah, my wife hates it when I do that. So that's my way, by the way, of I'm quick start. I just like to be moving. So I'll drive 50 miles out of the way as long as I'm moving versus stand in line.

But so I'll say, let's get in the car. She's like, where are we going to go? And I go, I don't know. I'll figure it out. As soon as we get on the road. We got a couple miles till we're on the highway.

Might work for you.

We're either going to go. Here's what I'll tell you. We're either going to go north or south, honey. Is it going to be great places? There's great places either way, but I swear to God, that's the way I do. That's the Way I do dinner, I like a surprise and I'll think about it, but I just want to get moving.

Yeah.

Come on, honey, let's get out of here. You got enough makeup on?

I need a code. Well, I need a swimsuit. You know, do I need bug spraying? Right.

You're perfect just the way you are, honey. Perfect the way you are.

If you don't know where you're going, it's really hard. And especially again for this entrepreneur who's got more potential business coming in than they're able to handle a lot of them. Again, like your client we spoke to yesterday, he's like, I don't have the time to stop and create and do all this. He's like, I'm just trying to keep the whole thing together. You know, if I'm blowing up, if I lose this one giant client, it's, you know, 10, 15, 20, $30 million gone.

Yeah, there's no, there is no time for him to slow down. He's either going to be fighting fires and adding competent people that hopefully are going to come to the table with instruction manuals and systems with them. That's, that's his reality. And, and I, even when I was just telling you the story about my wife a second ago, that's basically the way I've started and run most of my business. It's like, let's get moving. I'll sell stuff, we'll figure it out when we're there. And we can always afford to pay good people as soon as we're moving. That's been my reality.

We'll figure it out.

Yeah.

The problem that I find in, in a lot of these systems that I learned is that, that they're not holistic. So they're, you know, it's just like, okay, let's make a long term vision for the business. Let's have a bhag. Let's do all these things. But what about personal? Where does your personal life come into that? And if it's not a priority, you're going to build a, you know, super successful path to divorce, or a lack of a connection with your children, or you wake up one day and you're like, wow, I've got all this stuff, but all my kids are gone and my wife left me and I'm miserable and I'm out of shape. Right. So you've got to consider both. So it's the long term personal and business goals, you know, that inspire you, your team and your loved ones that you've got to create. And so we did our own visioning, kind of synthesizing, you know, a whole bunch of different tools and approaches and crafted our own.

Okay, great. All right, so that makes a ton of sense. And so step two, what do we got?

Step two is diagnose and track.

You know, I learned, I think it was Robin Robbins. She runs an IT producers club. And, you know, I learned from her. She said prescription without diagnosis is malpractice. Right. So essentially, you got to figure out.

Where'S the issue? Where's the primary pain? What's the single domino you've got to first focus on? And again, typically, when you've got a whole hot pile of messes, most people will try to work on every single mess at the same time, making zero real progress. And so Dan Sullivan says all progress starts by telling the truth. So you've got to be able to identify.

All your challenges that exist in your business and figure out what's the priority. Right. What's the single biggest issue that if we address this, it's going to resolve the most amount of pain right now. You know, we realized when we started, you know, we started analyzing all of our contracts and agreements that we had when we finally had the time to figure it out, and we realized we were essentially paying a client and he was the biggest pain in the ass client that we had. So we let him go. We increased our profitability, and we were reduced 80% of our stress. And the whole team was extremely grateful.

Once you get the clarity around your financials and clear insights, you can kill the spray and pray approach. Just the frantic putting out fires constantly in a reactive mode of chaos. I know so many entrepreneurs that operate from that zone, and all you're doing is backpedaling. You can never actually stop and be really intentional. And so you've got to do that. You got to diagnose, where are you? Where's the pain? What's the solution? What's the order of priority? We want to work on different things and go from there.

Yeah. I don't remember if it was you who said this yesterday when you were chatting about. It's a story about someone who is pulling people out of a river who are drowning. Was that your story?

Yeah, it's a story I remember from Tony Robbins would tell in Personal Power too.

I believe it was Personal Power two.

He's got the Tony Robbins voice I won't try to make.

That's it. That's how I met him, too. Personal power too.

And you know, essentially he's like, oh, you're walking along and you see someone floating down the river and like, help, I'm drowning. And you jump into the river and you pull them to, you know, to, to the edge and you save them. And as soon as you do that, you see someone else coming down the river and you jump back into the river and you pull them and you, you rescue them and you pull them to the edge and you're so focused doing that that, that you're not able to, you know, stop and go upstream and figure out who keeps throwing them in. Right. So when you're in chaos mode, you're not fixing the root cause of an issue and you keep revisiting the same problem over and over and over again.

Yeah.

You know, so single problem you don't end up paying for just once, but you're paying for it 5, 10, 15, 20 times.

Yeah. Right. So the bottom line is you got to find the source of the disease if you're going to cure it. And if you're looking downstream or looking at the stuff symptoms, you're screwed. There's a old saying, it's a. I've used it for many, many years. When I'd speak, it's he or she who first diagnoses the disease is the one to be trusted with the cure. And that is totally true, is when you can go in, I can remember it wasn't that long ago I met with someone and I had heard them speak and I said, hey, if you'd like, I'm happy to meet with you for a minute because I think there's a couple things I can give you. Just a couple ideas that'll remark that'll change your business. And they're like, okay. So we sat down and I told him one thing.

And basically I said, what I want to do is give you a gift, but I'm going to be really, really direct with you. Is that okay? And he says, sure. And basically I told him this one thing, and it would. I said, this thing is you're going to waste six to 12 months and a minimum of $2 million, and I'll prove it to you. And I know, and you will know it's true when I tell you what it is. And he looked at me, he said, okay, that's right. And he goes, what do you think I should do instead? And I said, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, all right, what do you think that'll cost? How much will it take? And I go, I think it's about 300 grand. He goes, let's do it. So I want a $300,000 client from solving 2 to 3 million dollar problem he was about to make and wasting at least six months of time. And so one of the things I, and I wanted to relate that to you because I know just in looking at your materials, like what you've. You and Chris have done is just built tools, you know, resources that are repeatable and reusable. So. All right, let's land in number three. This is, this is actually my favorite one. And it's the one that I'll have to admit is not my specialty. Not just yet, no. Yeah, there you go. Listen to you, Mr.

Positive.

And it actually has been, but not to the degree I'd like it to be. Not at scale.

It's, it, it, it's a tough one. Before we jump into that one, the, the, the second one. So diagnose and track. And so the tracking part is really figuring out what, what are the most important things in your business. You know, most CPAs are historians, right. By the time you're looking at a P and L statement, that's a historical document. Right. And so you've got to figure out what are the leading indicators, what are the tasks that if these things are happening on a regular basis, I know business is good. I know clients are going to be happy. I know we're going to be growing, we're going to be productive, profitable, and so forth. So that's another component of that, the diagnosis and track as well, figuring out what are the key things to monitor. Okay, so the third one is the right team.

If you're stuck working in your business all the time, as opposed to working on your business, if you don't have the freedom to focus on growth and creativity, if you're working more than a couple of days a week, it's very likely you don't have an effective and properly leveraged COO or integrator. And so the right team is. Yeah, this is a challenging light. You know, I remember we had.

A mixed team of players, right? A, B and C players. Buy some Bs.

You know, we had kind of hot and cold employees. Oh, this guy's great if he's having a good day, but if he's having a bad day, everyone watch out.

Yeah.

You know, some people you have, you'll have no employees. Whenever you have an idea or something you want to do, the answer is no. You know, there's also nice people syndrome. That's a really tough one that, that took me years to overcome. I love helping people. I believe in people. I believe People can change and improve.

And just because I like you doesn't mean you're doing a good job.

Yeah. And I kept team members on for way past their prime because of that, because, oh, they have families, they have kids at home and all this. And I justified it.

You got squeaky wheels, people afraid of change. You've got people that have been with you since the beginning. So you feel that they. They're. You know, it's almost like they're tenured employees, but the truth is, they're doing crappy jobs now or they haven't grown with the growth of the company. Right. We have one team member. He's like, yeah, I just like things how they used to be. I used to be able to talk with you, Tom, all the time, and now I barely ever talk to you. It's like, well, we're changing, we're growing, we're going a different direction.

Yeah.

And some people resist.

Or you haven't been evolving, which is why you're stuck. And, you know, that's a choice. Right. That wasn't inflicted on you. And, yeah, I got it.

Not having the right team. You know, I think this is one of the most common reasons entrepreneurs might be thinking you're looking for an out. Right. Five years ago, if I could have, I would have sold, you know, my first company, globemak it, and walked away because I was just sick and tired of it. You know, I had so many team members, so many drops and problems, and well over half of our leadership meetings every single week were spent discussing about issues and problems with employees and some of the causes. And you end up holding back on specific initiatives you want to make because you're not confident in the person who it should be going to. And so when you add up all these different things, first off, you're bleeding hundreds of thousands of dollars because you're not making the progress. You know, you're losing clients. You know, things are getting dropped. There's so many painful processes. And so getting to the right team, to me, the right team is having the right structure to support you, first of all, as a CEO. So do you have an executive assistant? Is she properly trained? Is she. You know, the right executive assistant is going to double to quadruple the amount of things, things you get done, hands down. I put off hiring an EA for years. You know, the. The most important role in your team is the coo, you know, and are they properly developed? Do you have a strong relationship where you're both supporting each other?

So the goal is to have 100 A players. Right. If you want a winning team, you know, you look at sports, so you don't get a winning team with a bunch of B players. So how can you get to having A players across the board?

Got it. Okay.

So, you know the big one that I envy the most when I look at your systems, like, I met Chris yesterday. He's your COO slash integrator. He started with you when he was young. He was an EA originally, and then he evolved and developed. And being able to cultivate that is awesome. I also think it's probably fairly rare. And I was at a conference this summer in Mexico, and one of the guys there said, and he's in his 40s now, and he's had a couple very successful tech firms that have sold. And what he said is, he said, I will never, ever hire anyone who hasn't done what I need done before. In other words, he's, he has. He just said, I, I'm done cultivating talent. I'm only going to find and select it and I'll pay the extra and, and get what I need. Do you have an opinion on that? I'm curious what your point of view is.

I. I would be more on the flip side of that.

Okay.

I fear people inherited beliefs and limited viewpoints that, you know, can be developed, you know, in the ego of like, oh, this is how I do, and I'm really good in this, you know.

Not to say that I'm right. That's just my viewpoint. I believe in hiring the right people, people, the, the people that align with our core values and our culture and who we are as a company, where we're going and then I believe, you know, and teaching them the skills that they need. And it's, it's a lot easier to do because we have the processes in place that are documented, so that, that really helps us create that reality. But when you hire, if you hire for skill and you overlook the core value fit, you're going to have a bunch of really skilled people that don't fit in and don't work out. Those are expensive men. Mistakes.

Yeah.

So as long as his approach is to hire with the skills and ensure they're 100% aligned with the core value, the mission of the company and all that.

Right on.

Then I think that'll work.

Yeah. And that's. That is.

You know, when you look at it, it'll be like, are our skills harder to hire for than values? Or are values harder to hire for than skills? And can you spot them sooner that's an important question. Again, I'm curious what your perspective is on that one.

Definitely. And that's really a component of the right team here. You have to know exactly what your core values are.

So that goes back to the vision side of the process.

We use these to attract and repel when we're hiring. Our recruiting process, for example, Example, our job description. We've just trashed the stereotypical job description and we do a kind of a Q and A format. So we've got two sections. So one is job specific. So essentially we come up with five to 10 questions. They interview me, the CEO, like, hey, what's this person going to be doing? What does their job look like? What is it not going to be? You know, what are you looking for? What are you not looking for? And then we also have a number of questions about the culture of the company. And we get amazing, amazing feedback and compliments.

You know, from, from guests, from different people all the time. So.

Yeah, and that, I love that. That's something I'd. We could do a whole podcast on, which is the hiring process. That's super intriguing. And I, I haven't had a time. Time to, to tear into that yet, but I, you know, if there's two things that I look at that I'd want to learn from you so far and all the stuff that we've discussed over the past few days, it's the find, hire, train, the COO implementer, because if a great chief of staff is unbelievable. But also, we're in the process of adding a couple new people to our team. And I know I have some bad hiring habits. I just know it. And I want to eradicate those. But. Well, let's, let's go into step number four.

Yeah, step number four is the process hub. You know, 20%, probably 10% of your processes within your business are responsible for creating 80% of the results in the output. And so you've got to define what are your foundational processes that your business runs and depends on. So, for example, you know, recruiting.

Yep.

Right. You should always be recruiting, always interviewing.

That was Steve Jobs, his number one thing. He said was this the reason why Apple was so successful. He said that is the, that was his primary focus. And number one thing that a great business has to do.

Yeah. Most people have a reactive recruiting process. There's an empty seat. Let's flow as fast as we can. Yeah, right. Versus, do you have a Rolodex of people you can choose from? And you know, so for, from that one, it was heavily influenced by the top grading methodology. So we took a lot of things that we liked from it and we tweaked and kind of made it ours.

You know, so you've got to figure out the key processes and that's where, you know, EOS is really strong with that. But then it's like, all right, document them. There's a three step process documenter, but still people get in their heads. People don't know where to start, what tool do we use, how do we do it? And creating processes is one of the biggest challenges for people. And so what we've done is we actually interview people on our team. Interview people on your team to pull out the complexity and kind of build out the first versions and get all the stuff stored in their brains. So you start actually getting some processes and then you learn, you see how it's done because it's being done with you. And so your entire teams learn how to do it. Then they start, you start creating these, you know, sop, self replicating, you know, team members, right. They're creating more. And so, you know, we figure out the best of breed applications, services and automations that can do a lot of the work for you.

I love that. And you know, what I've seen of you is you guys.

So this is a struggle I had. I can remember, you know, every time I've got a, a problem to solve, I look and I search. I'm like, can I find someone else's SOP that most closely matches what we need to do? So I can pass that along or introduce, you know, a team member to someone who's been actively doing it for a little while. Yeah, and it is incredibly difficult to find.

Pre made SOPs. And again, that was my pain when I tore into all these business systems is they talk about the thing, they don't give you an instruction manual step by step guide. And the ones that I do see are usually horrible. I mean it's like they're.