Owner Occupied Episode 10 - Working On (Not In) Your Business

All right, welcome back everybody. We are here with Owner Occupied Episode 10. It's hard to believe we're 10 episodes in already. We're so excited to bring you today's episode. We do a deep dive on working on your business instead of in your business. This is a great topic that I think is relevant to almost anyone who either owns a small business or is looking to buy a small business. And I think there's actually a lot of takeaways here, even for those who are still at a, at a W-2 position. So we're going to be referencing the article I wrote on Medium called "How to Work on Your Business.". We just do a kind of a deep dive on that. We go through it pretty much section by section and put some color on the various points and discussion topics there. So it's a fun one. Stick around and let's get right into it.

Good afternoon, Peter. How are you doing?

Hey, I'm doing well, Russell. How are you today?

I'm doing really well. It's been a, it's been a busy week as we're— I'm small enough to where when we add a couple of big clients, it's rearranging all of the decks because all of our lives look a little different. But I'm, I'm definitely in the process of two hires this week. And, and so that, that's been dominating my time. But I think I've got one perfect person lined up, which I think becomes the most important sales process I've got is convincing really high-caliber people to join a smaller shop and saying, life is really better over here.

Yeah, hiring really is a sale. Everything is sales, but hiring is definitely sales. Yeah, maybe if we have time, I'd love to hear more about that. Is this two people that you're considering for the same role, or you're hiring two for two different roles?

Two different roles. I could probably use three people, but I'm gonna try and get two people that can cover three different roles. That's a little less, little less risky, but it's, it just flows out of the demand for, from existing clients and some of the new contracts to where it makes, I can get higher quality hiring than I could, than I can service with freelance and outside help. There's a, there's a bunch of great freelancers out there and I love them. My business is dependent on them and they're great relationships, but At a certain point, it's time.

Well, maybe we could talk about hiring next time because I'm right in the middle of a critical hire myself. I'm always reminded when I start the hiring process again of how important it really is and how hard it is to do well. So maybe we'll tease that for next time.

Hey, that's a great tease. I would say, and I haven't even really talked about it even on Twitter or anywhere else, but My business is 3 times bigger than it was a year and a half ago. My first hire, my most important hire was hiring somebody at a senior level. I basically— she's my partner and making that decision. Was the smartest. The reason my business is taking off the way it is, is because 18 months ago I took a really big risk and hired an outstanding talent who just made it possible. It would not have been possible if I hadn't terrifyingly pulled that trigger.

Yeah, well, and this actually ties in really well with today's topic, which is how to work on your business and not in it. —yeah— a huge part of doing that is hiring people. And I think for me, I'm very, very comfortable hiring, quote, lower-level employees who— they're paid hourly, it's full-time, but their, you know, their salaries are starting with like a 3, 4, or 5 maybe. Right. And not like an 8, 9, or 10. Right. Pulling the trigger on a higher-paid person like that, you know, a management or executive level thing, is something that I am still getting comfortable with myself. And, but at the same time, I recognize what a game changer it could be to get that right person in there because they would be bringing 10 times the value of what you're paying them. And it's a no-brainer, but man, it's hard to get comfortable with that.

Yeah, that was— I did it before I was comfortable. And I could not imagine, I could not imagine doing it, not doing it today. And so when you talk about that phrase, when I look back on it, that hire in this process of reading your blog post on how to work on your business, not in it, I'm working hard still. I'm just working on completely different things, things I'm better suited for that are better for the business. Like podcasts. Well, the podcast is a labor of love. I've gotten so much from the— and we've talked a little bit, but I've gotten so much from all of the interaction on Twitter. This is just a way to give back. I don't know, consciously anyway, of getting anything out of it other than giving a little bit back to that community that I feel like I've taken from. I could never give back as much as I've gotten from it. That's for sure. But in your blog post, and I love this about not just Twitter generally, but you, you give us books that we can use and help. And I've always looked at books as extended mentoring. Like I can pay for an hour with somebody or I can just read the books that they recommend and maximize that time. So, you started off with two book recommendations, E-Myth and Traction. Why don't you talk about those?

Yeah, so two fundamental books that every entrepreneur should read. And as I mentioned in the post, if your business is under $1 million in revenue or you're just starting out, I think the E-Myth is a great one. It's a little bit more approachable and it's much more relevant for someone who's either still on their own or maybe just has, you know, 1 or 2 or 3 employees. It's very much— it's kind of written almost from the perspective of like a main street business owner, which is how I think a lot of people when they first think about owning a business is that's something they can relate to or they're familiar with or their dad owned a butcher shop or something. And so I think the examples that they go through in this book and the advice that they give is written from that perspective or for that perspective, I guess I should say. So it's, you know, it's funny. I think I might have mentioned this on another show, but I avoided this book for years because I thought it had something to do with e-commerce because it's called The E-Myth, but it actually has nothing to do with e-commerce. It's about entrepreneurship. That's what the E stands for. So I think actually the current version is called The E-Myth Revisited. Michael Gerber is the author, very well respected. And you can go super deep with this book if you really enjoy it and you think that part of this is all about, you have to find a sort of a framework or a way of thinking that resonates with you. I mean, there's 100 different ways to run a small business and grow a small business that work. Eventually, you're gonna read a book or an article or you're gonna find someone who talks your language and you're just gonna be like, yes. This, I totally get this, I love this, this is exactly what I've been looking for, and you're gonna go deep on it. And maybe that will be E-Myth and maybe it won't, but if it is E-Myth, they've got a whole, you know, and all these guys do this, they offer consulting and they have a club you can join and you can really go hard on it. But even if you don't do any of that, there's still a lot of value there. And then the other book, Traction, if you're getting close to a million or you're over a million in revenue or even much higher, Great book. Not gonna be of any value really unless you already have probably around 5 to 10 employees at least. It's much more set up to sort of bring order to chaos, and the chaos comes in as your business starts to grow and grow. So it's, Traction describes EOS, or the Entrepreneurial Operating System, which is just a way of thinking and operating a small company that has been proven to be very effective. So it's how to run meetings, it's how to set goals, it's how to plan, it's how to strategize, give some basics around marketing, give some really useful advice around hiring, culture, how to organize the business in a way that makes rational sense. And if you haven't, I highly recommend you take this organizational checkup that I link in the article. That will really give you a sense of where you're at in terms of if you actually need traction or not, which, spoiler alert, you probably do because everyone's business is in chaos at all times. But it's very interesting to see, like, articulated very clearly what is possible or what is like sort of perfection. When it comes to running a small business. Like, let me just give a couple random examples. I'm going to run this off the top of my head. Like, every employee knows precisely what is expected of them at all times and is held to account for that on a monthly basis. Like, you know, something that ideally we should all be doing that, but realistically we get busy and we, you know, either don't do it every time or we never did it to begin with. So there's lots of stuff like that where it really kind of, it's like a reset for how you should be running things from people who have been there, done that.

I'm thinking about the traction model and the key performance indicators that, from a previous conversation that we had, and I'm going to do that. I acquire a printing business. We're supposed to close on that May 1st. All, there's no, it's clear sailing between now and closing as far as I can see. I've heard that there can be bumps bumps in the road at this point, but it's hard for me to see where any bumps could come up at this point. So that's a good spot. But, but the process of thinking through the KPIs and, and implementing the EOS system made a lot of sense for me as a way to learn the new business and, and for me to manage it and with similar to a way that it's already being run. That it wouldn't be totally foreign as I'm introducing myself to new employees to really set those expectations early. And then once I set the big broad parameters, I can then grow it. So we drill down on more KPIs over time, but I can set sort of that tone from the beginning on things that people already embrace and understand. So I actually have a meeting with management this week with existing management that's going to be around, and I'll do some listening and making sure I'm picking— I'm sure as I ask them about the business and based on previous conversations, that they'll quickly identify the things that matter so that I pick KPIs that we start with that they're already familiar with and comfortable with and that fit that vision. So, I'm looking forward to doing that. Yeah, that's great. You mentioned the The Ivy Lee method is when you launch from the general, from picking a system to some more specific ideas about, with the goal of extracting yourself from the day-to-day operation of the business, the Ivy Lee method. What's that?

Yep. So, the Ivy Lee method is very simple. Just take a Post-it note and at the end of your workday, take a few minutes, think about what are the 2 or 3 most important things that you need to do tomorrow that are going to move your business forward, and just write those down on the Post-it note. And then when you come in the next morning, it's already— it's right in front of your face and you know exactly where to start. And so that way, instead of opening up your email and getting distracted by a bunch of nonsense that really is perhaps urgent but not important, you can take your first 90 minutes and crank through some truly important but not necessarily urgent items. And that those small incremental moves that if you can do that consistently every day, that is going to help get you where you need to go. And it's, there's just something about, like, if you were to come in in the morning and try and do it at that same time, like, okay, let me first think of the 2 to 3 most important things and then start working on them. For whatever reason, it just doesn't work as well. There's something about that time and space between when you're thinking about what needs to be done and then actually doing the work that helps bring a little bit of perspective and clarity. There's also some of this, like, when you're writing down the things, you're like, "Well, this is tomorrow guy's problem." Like, you can sort of, you can almost be like a manager of yourself and you can be like, okay, forgetting the fact that this might suck tomorrow, I know I need to do these things. They're actually super important and they're going to move my business forward. So let me write them down and I can sort of gear up so that when I come in tomorrow, I know it's like yesterday me thought this was really important, so I better get to work on it. I don't know, it's kind of weird, but there's, there is something there I think that, that is more powerful than just sitting down making a to-do list and then starting to work on it right away.

So, well, when you do that, um, when I hear that, I would be inclined— I'm often, it's never far from my mind, um, the new business or growing the business, or if I get these contracts, this is the talent I'm going to lead. And so, which can lead to me, um, pressing the sales function and then, um, the operations piece, I wind up, and I can look back and see the problem, but I've now spent too much, I wind up spending more on operations because I insist on a high-level delivery for the clients, which means I wind up spending more to service the client than if I'd spent time on operations on how do I serve the client. So that decision point about, those 2 or 3 things that I need to work on, my brain is all— it tends to default to, um, what do I need to do to land that, that next big contract that will allow me to grow to the next level, as opposed to maybe I really need to be working on, uh, operationally, how can I service— build my service capacity so that when I land the next one it won't be as disruptive to the whole team as it is now.

Yeah, and your KPIs will help drive that because if you get some good KPIs in place around operations, you know, you should have some KPIs from sales and some KPIs from operations, um, and some KPIs from finance. Um, it should become clear, like, and it can be hard to get KPIs around maybe like consulting type work, but I'm sure that there are some that you could use. And, and then when you see that those are getting out of line, like deliverables are getting missed or staff is— morale is down because people are overworked or whatever, then you— it will help you focus on, okay, I really need to sit down and generate some ideas around how we can improve that rather than just how to win the next client. Yeah.

David, our production engineer over here who's recording and editing the video and does does great work on this stuff, is smiling and shaking his head as you're talking. April, and I thought I was leading in a really good way by telling the staff, I could see what was happening at the beginning of March, and I just said, April is gonna suck. There's just no way, there's no way through it. But man, it's gonna be great in May after we digest all of this stuff. But operationally, it has been a challenge for everyone around here. So, and it's just not my strong suit. And I've been looking for more KPIs in this consulting world. And maybe one of your podcast listeners or something will be able to direct us to, to someone that can help with that. For the printing stuff, it's actually been easier, and maybe because I'm, I'm more humble. I'm going into an industry, one, that I don't want to get sucked into the operations. It's not natural gifting, and it's already running without me, so I just have to not insert myself in it. So I think about how do I manage it remotely as opposed to how do I get myself out of it, which I definitely want to extricate myself, mainly because I think it'll be a better product for my clients. But you talk about gaining leverage and that being a way it works for both things, both getting myself out but delivering for clients. Why don't you talk about that gaining leverage component? Yeah.

And I'll mention one thing before I jump into that. So I was a guest on a podcast called the Naked Leadership Podcast. The episode came out really great, so you can check that episode out if you want. But the reason I bring it out, bring it up, is because the group that, that produces that podcast is a company called Take New Ground. It's a, it's a, an executive coaching consulting company, and I worked with a guy named Dan there for about 6 months last year, had great success with it, and they have got it figured out in terms of how to scale a consulting type business. So I don't know if it would be worth— maybe they talk about it elsewhere on that podcast. They might have some really good ideas around that. But okay, so gaining leverage is the next section in this article I wrote about working on your business instead of in it. And you, you got to get leverage, right? So when I think about leverage, you know, I go back to the example of like When you run a business, you're just turning cranks. You're turning a crank to produce whatever the work or the service or the product is. And when you first start out, you're turning the crank. You're at the mill or whatever the analogy is. And you want to, if you wanna grow, you can't be the one turning the crank, right? So what do you do? How do you extricate yourself from that? How do you get 2 or 3 or 4 cranks turning so that you can produce more? So leverage is how you do that. Leverage means you do a little bit and a lot happens. Leverage can be really powerful. It can also be dangerous because it's a magnifier, right? So software is the sort of the purest form of leverage that there is. You know, picture Google. Where with just a few engineers and some software code, they're able to produce a search engine that works worldwide. Software is the ultimate form of leverage, and you should look for places to deploy software in your business. I've got a great article about how we use software in our company that I linked in this article if you want to get into some of the nitty-gritty, no-code, low-code options that are out there where You don't necessarily need to hire a software company to build you a whole app or a whole custom, uh, like ERP monstrosity to make your business efficient. Um, there's so many options now as someone with very limited or no skill in programming that if you own a business and you know how to use an email client, you can go out and, and use these tools like Zapier or Integromat to tie different parts of your business together and automate them. So that area of sort of small business owners using these low-code, no-code tools is exploding in growth right now because it's becoming easier every day. And it's— I think it's definitely worth looking into that. Okay, so that's software. The other form of leverage is labor. It's employees, right? So if you hire a few employees and you're able to essentially charge a high enough price for your product or service that you can cover the cost of paying those employees and still have a little bit left over, you're in business. And so that's the age-old story, right? The huge companies, especially in the mid-20th century, were built on the backs of just enormous workforces that levered up their production capabilities. So that, although that it's obvious that it works at a large scale, it can be hard when you're a small business owner to imagine it working at a small scale because it's just difficult to picture someone else doing work that you've been doing. You know, it's like you're the guy or gal, you started the company, you've been doing all this work. And now you're thinking, "Oh, I'm gonna bring someone in and pay them and they're gonna do as good of a job talking to customers as I do? No way, that's never gonna work." Well, it does work and it's not free and it's not easy, but if you put some systems and processes in place and you have a training manual and you do a good job hiring and you support that person, they can excel and succeed and even surpass how you were doing that role. So it's very difficult. It's a combination of ego and fear that sort of prevents people from going down this path. The ego is, well, only I could do it, like no one's gonna be able to do it as well as me. And the fear is like, well, if we hire someone and they do a bad job, then we're gonna lose the client. So that ego and fear, they play off each other and they make it so difficult for a lot of small business owners. To ever gain any type of scale because they feel like they have to have their hand on the crank at all times.

It's an interesting dichotomy in our business where I do some political consulting and advising and strategy work and figuring out the combination of words and phrases and who needs to say what in what order in order to get a favorable outcome. I can't not do that. I just think that way. And I think about problems that way. And often I develop those solutions. And then I approach a client with a solution in mind. And then, but the execution of that solution, I can do it. But I often know a lot of other people who can do it better. So extricating myself from that process, is not difficult. That part has been— I enjoy it. The staff and people we put together, that part is good. But systematizing it and knowing exactly what it means after I've thrown it over my shoulder, so to speak, and I disrupt things by interrupting people's workflow and saying, I have this other idea, let's use this instead of that. I sometimes think my interjection into that process doesn't hurt, doesn't help. And David?

Yeah, there's definitely something to that. It can be hard to fully step back from parts of the business where you, you know, you finally get the guts to go out and hire somebody, train them, now they're doing it and now You know, there's a temptation to stay very involved in what they're doing and that, that's hard. And there is a balance, right? Because I actually, I have a tendency to swing the other way where once I get them in and they're trained and they're doing the job, it's like, I'm like, you know, I feel like I want to be completely done with it and never think about it again. Uh, but it's actually, you have to strike that balance where you keep your finger sort of on the pulse of what's happening. Um, and you pay attention to the quality of the work and the morale of the people that are doing the job. And you're still going to be having to step in for edge cases and sort of course corrections.

So that can be difficult. I laughed when I read your post about— the part of your blog post about procrastination when there was a— the CEO's job is to has various definitions, but, you know, generate revenue, make sure the business, the checking account doesn't run out. The COO's job is all the crap that the CEO doesn't want to do. I had that in mind when I read your guide to procrastination as a guide on hire, but it's more elaborate than that. Why don't you tease that out a bit?

Yeah, so the way I think about procrastination now is that, you know, when it comes to work tasks, especially as a business owner, if you agree to do something either with yourself and you say, you know, I really need to do this, or someone asks you to do something and you say yes, if it doesn't get done within like 2 to 3 weeks, That means that you shouldn't do it because it means that for whatever reason, you either don't have the skills or you don't— it's not— it doesn't spark joy or, you know, but it sounds silly, but it's actually true. Like, you should actually outsource that. You should get someone on your team to do it, or you should hire somebody like a, you know, a virtual assistant or something because it's obviously not an area of interest for you. And so it's just going to be a fight to get that work done every time. And you're much better off going and putting your sort of your highest and best use to work and exercising your talents and your areas of strength rather than trying to shore up the weak areas. And kind of beat yourself up and, you know, why haven't I been able to get this done? I'm so lazy and blah, blah, blah. No, just forget all that. It's all nonsense. You have my permission. Just abandon it. Give up. You're not going to do it and just go find someone else to do it. Everyone's going to be better off if you do that because you're going to get the task and give it to someone who actually is good at it and enjoys doing it. So it's going to be done better than if you were to slog through it. And then by getting that sort of weight off your shoulders, now you're unburdened and you can go out and use your natural talents to bring value to the business in other ways.

So I like that. And we tend to think of procrastination, and I know it comes up when I'm with my kids, or, and I beat myself up about it. You're lazy. You know it needs to get done, you didn't do it, you're lazy, and that moral component. We'll talk about this a little bit, but I'll give you a preview of all of our interactions over the last 3 months or so. This is one, this is probably the first one where I had a little disagreement with you, and it'll be interesting to tease that out a little bit. I'll let you start, but you can prep that I'm gonna push back on it a little bit. I'll let you introduce the idea that there's, that to shed the Puritan work ethic, What do you mean by that?

Yeah, so the Puritan work ethic is something that was sort of drilled into me from a young age, which is, you know, you work hard. There's a virtue in working, and it's right and correct and proper that you should go out and work a full-time job. And people who don't work and are able to work are lazy and don't deserve the same things that people who work. So it was very much— and I had some lazy tendencies. So, and I say in the article here that I probably needed a lot of this when I was younger because I have lazy tendencies still even as an adult. So there certainly is a balance here where, you know, but I think for people, especially founders and entrepreneurs, you can get really stuck on this and it can actually hold you back quite in a significant way. Where you feel like you need to be the hardest working person at the company, right? You need to be there first and leave last. You need to be the one who's taking out the trash. You need to be setting the example. You need to be, you know, nose to the grindstone evenings, weekends. Like, you show the team how it's done, blah, blah, blah. And maybe that's appropriate here and there. If, like you were saying, April's crazy busy, maybe that is appropriate for April, or maybe that's appropriate for the first 6 months of a startup or something. But I really believe that you have to get rid of this mindset and sort of release yourself from it because I have found that my most transformative work or ideas come when I let go of that and I go and get away and I just sort of rest and I don't feel that I should be working because that's when your brain is going to start to make connections. And synthesize ideas and books that you've read and podcasts that you've listened to. And especially, you know, I think we've all had that experience where you get to work early, you're all fired up, and you put in like 2 or 3 hours of real hard work and it took a lot out of you. And now you're sort of like, your brain's a little fuzzy, you're feeling a little tired, and you're like struggling to do anything. You're just, you're trying to respond to emails and you can't figure out how to write them. And then people are asking you questions and you're like, can't even make a decision. At that point, I just get out of the office and I leave because I'm not being productive. And it can be difficult to, to sort of walk past all the other people that you're paying who are working hard and go for a stroll in the sunshine or go lay down, take a nap at home or something. But that actually is, I think, the right course of action because what ends up happening is I sort of rest and reset and then I'm able to get back at it. And even be more productive than I would have been.

So that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And, and we're not going to have nearly as much disagreement as I, as I, as I took when I read it. Maybe, maybe, maybe add this, maybe add this video, flesh that out a little, that flesh that out. But I had in mind, I, and I saw it, it was transformative. And, and when I worked in government, I managed large state agencies and you had people who couldn't get fired or it was nearly impossible to get fired. One example, if you work for the state of California and you, and you, you just don't show up for work for 3 days, as long as you call in before that 4th day, you won't be fired for being AWOL. So an excuse could be, I went on a 3-day bender to Las Vegas and got drunk. But as long as you call in, It's not a firing offense. Wow. So, so this— it's, it's difficult. Yeah, it's fired. It is very hard to get fired. And, or I'd work in the state capitol and you would get interns or, or folks like that, and, or younger people who, who didn't have a concept of what work was. And, and, and I don't know if you've ever been there, I suspect not. But there's a sense where the worst and most draining, tiring days for me would be when I've been lazy at work. It's not healthy. I'm— I'll have a busy slam day where I work through lunch and the phone was going nuts and things were happening. And I'm arriving home and I'm more energized than that day when the cat video popped up, you know, and sucked out. And so, I felt and I've watched it transform people who were unhappy and I drilled them. I was a slave driver and I made life unpleasant until they were working. And once they got past that unpleasant phase, they became the most loyal employees and followed me throughout government because we were getting stuff done and there was a sense of accomplishment and purpose. And so, and I ascribe that to, there's a, I think there's a, the moral dimension is where you feel guilty when you're stealing from your employer by being lazy and you didn't earn your paycheck, it's time to go. And so that people feel good when, You feel good when you've earned your paycheck. And in that sense, um, I think, I, I think there is a moral component to that, but you're not talking, you're talking, it sounds like you're talking overwork. I love the fact that I'm done. I'm taking off early because I'm fried. I'm going to go, go do something else.

Yeah. And I think it's important to draw a distinction between an employer and an employee, right? So if you're an employee and you've agreed to work for some hourly rate for 40 hours a week, I think you should fulfill that and you should give it your all because that's what you've agreed to do. And that's what I tried to do when I was an employee. And there is absolutely a value of work to give people a sense of purpose I think we all have seen people where when they find a job that syncs up with them and they work hard at it, they're so much happier than the guy sitting around on his couch playing video games every day. Totally, 100% agree with that. I think where I drift apart a little bit is when it comes to, like, if you're having one of those days where you're feeling lazy, as a business owner and you're having trouble getting anything done, I think if in addition to that, now you feel guilty because you feel badly, you feel like you're being a bad person, that is not helpful. It's not useful to bring that on yourself. And I think depending on your upbringing, it can be very hard to shed that. And to, I think some people it comes naturally and they're just like, Yeah, of course, I'm going to go rest and recuperate and reenergize and I'll be back at it tomorrow stronger than ever. But I think for a lot of people, that is not intuitive, I guess.

Yeah, maybe that's how I was just reading it from the perspective of there's no way I can look back over building the business over the last 3 years and going from bare walls to what I am and worry that I didn't work hard enough in the scope of things. And so, any particular day— Hey, how did your day go when I get home there? Any particular day may look harder or more or less work than any particular day, but I've clearly checked the hard work box in my mind, so I'm not beating myself up for that hour or that day.

Yeah. And the other thing is that you got to remember there are no prizes for hard work. There's no, there's no reward. It's not, you know, if you can generate the same level of income by working 2 hours a month as the other guy working 40 hours a week every week or 80 hours a week every week, that guy isn't getting anything extra, you know. So if you can find a way to make your business be productive and profitable with less input from you, uh, more power to you, and you should not feel guilty or badly about that. A friend of mine owns about 3 businesses that are all very successful and has just struggled with this as he's pulled back from being involved in the day-to-day operations and moved more into a pure-play owner/investor role. He's having meetings with his team and they're grinding it out and he's kind of flying in, flying out for these meetings. I think that's a real psychological shift to get used to the idea that you can draw a salary from a company that you are not working in or on at all. And the other people who are in, in that business are, are turning those cranks and you are pulling off some of that profit. So I don't know, we could probably go for a while on this, but no, it's good.

I think it may also be helpful for, for any of your listeners who may be in a 9-to-5 job or considering that entrepreneurial path. I see it when I look back now, but I had a fantastic job. I was a high-level lobbyist in town and I was ambitious and I'm doing all these things. And at one point, I was planning out my week and I thought I could do most of what I had to get done that week in about 10 hours and an intern. And I actually took an intern plan to my boss without explaining the whole thing, but asking for an intern. And when I got turned down for the intern, I went back shortly there after I was complaining about it to a friend. And I eventually, I put in, I put in my notice and began the transition then, because I just didn't feel good about what they were paying me and the work I was delivering. For the effort it took. I mean, and my wife was, "You're complaining? You have a smart boss who's giving you credit. You're making money. You're complaining about trips to golf courses and exotic places. You're not allowed to complain about these things." But what brought me joy was more of the hard work, more responsibility, and that creative element more than just even some of that providing value. And that's tied to sort of the last point or toward the last point of your blog post when you talked about the importance of not just planning but powerful planning. What do you mean by that?

Yeah. So, I was introduced to planning by the business coach I mentioned earlier, Dan. Prior to that, I was weak on planning. And I didn't recognize my weakness, and he was able to show me that. Um, there is a real power in planning your week out, specifically your week. And I've always been good with planning my, my annual goals and hitting them usually. Um, and I've always been pretty good as well with sort of planning out my day and making sure that I had, uh, things scheduled. But, but there's something about the weekly cadence, I think, that is just different where a week is a short enough length of time that you can really clearly envision it in your mind. And it's, it's sort of short-term enough, but it's also long enough time that you could get something of significance completed. So what I have found to be a game changer similar to the Ivy Lee method is on Sunday nights or Monday mornings, I sit down and I plan out my week. Not that I set my schedule, but I think about all the areas of my life you know, my personal life, my household, my kid, my business 1, business 2, and different areas within those businesses. And I think about what's wanted and needed. So what needs to happen here to keep me on track for my quarterly goals and my annual goals? So it's like a, it's not like the 30,000-foot view that you do for your annual or your quarterly planning, but it's not the right there on the ground every day, you know, dealing with operations. It's sort of the medium height, 10,000-foot view or what have you, where you're, you're able to take stock of what's going on. And before the craziness of the week hits you and the emails and the phone calls start flying, you think about, okay, well, what are my priorities? And it really lets you sort of reorient around that. And it's kind of subtle, but over time it's compounding.

And it's very powerful, I have found. I can see that planning and plotting those out and thinking about those different areas. I have a spiritual devotion time in the morning kind of before the kids get up and I'm doing my coffee and that sort of stuff. And then I have a get ready for work. I'm pretty isolated at work. My wife and I don't text back and forth. I'm not really thinking about my personal and private and home. And then the daily, I will— so I focused on my business and then my kid time, right when I first walk in the door till a little bit after dinner, I'm really focused on my kids. And then I end the day and I'm primarily focused on my wife and that relationship. I'm not messing with the phone. I'm not— if I mess with the phone, I duck into another room, deal with stuff real quick. But I'm really, I'm really focused on my wife. And that kind of keeps my— I know I haven't neglected my, my spiritual life. I haven't neglected my, my business. I haven't neglected my, my kids, and I haven't neglected my wife. On a daily basis and then things can get out of whack. But if that's the daily rhythm, then I can quickly get back on track and I haven't left anything off the plate. The idea of doing that on a weekly basis in the areas that matter, I'm not as organized as you and I think our brains work differently. So I do, I do annual and daily. And so I, and so that's, that works, but I'd be stronger if I had, if I thought about things on a quarterly and weekly basis. I suspect my annual, my annual targets could be maybe bigger than I imagined if I added that more weekly quarterly discipline. Yeah. Yeah.

I imagine you might be right about that. That'd be interesting to experiment with.

Well, I'm hoping to learn when I go to that, the podcast I jotted down and get some of this applied to the consulting world in a more concrete way. I hope maybe I can grow some more in that area. You mentioned the environment. As following on, on your planning environment, thinking about your physical environment. Why don't you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah. So, you know, I've really found over the years that you're, like you said, your physical environment has a huge impact on your mindset. And if you think about this, you'll realize how true it is. And I think some people discuss this in terms of like the 5 people that you spend the most time with, you become the average of those 5 and what have you. And I do think that's true. But your physical environment also affects you. Everything from what your office looks like to, you know, the quality of the buildings and the architecture around you, to if you're comfortable. These things over time, they sort of mold and shape your view of what's possible and what's normal. And, you know, it kind of harkens back to the old nature versus nurture when you're looking at rearing kids, you know, how much of it is the way they were born and how much of it was how they were raised. And I think it's, it's both. And I think as a small business owner, you, you have to, to think about your environment because if you want to get— if you, if you want to make forward progress, I think investing some time and money into altering your environment could yield a lot of fruit.

Can you give some concrete examples of what that might look like? What do you mean by that?

Yeah, I mean, so like, for example, when I go to lunch or dinner, I try to go to somewhere nice because being around the nice environment and the well-dressed people and other successful people and the nicer areas of town It sounds really dumb and like shallow, but it actually does affect my brain. And I think, I suspect it affects most other people's too, even if maybe they don't realize it. But if you contrast that with just like grabbing a quick lunch at McDonald's or something where you're surrounded by, you know, maybe some litter and everything's just kind of run down and you're sort of like overhearing people's conversations about their troubles in life and you sort of get in this like short-term mindset where you just sort of want to get through the day and everyone's like, oh, it's Monday again. It's just, I think there's something to the idea of putting yourself where you want to be and putting yourself in an environment that's reflective of where you're trying to go. And it's kind of like that whole thing, like, dress for the job you want. And I remember when I first started my company, So when I was working as an employee before I started my company, I was always trying to dress down. I was like trying to get the— I was trying to like push the boundaries of the casual side of the dress code because I wanted to be super comfortable. But then when I started my own company, pretty quickly I started dressing up and I threw— I actually threw away all my polo shirts and I threw away all my sort of ratty jeans and I would only wear slacks or nice dark jeans. In a button-down. And to this day, you'll never see me really at work in anything other than a button-down, except maybe once in a while on a Friday. And even when it was just me or me and one employee, I was like, "You know what? I want to be a CEO of a big company and this is how someone like that dresses." And so I kind of did that from day one. And so it's kind of along those same lines, I think.

Surrounding yourself with the environment where you want to be and treating yourself as if you belong. We read and hear a lot about that imposter syndrome of people not feeling like they belong where they do, and maybe they fit right in, but they just don't feel that way. It seems like shaping that environment could be— Yeah. —could be important. Part of that is the communication You— some of the most important people in the world, they're not running around checking their email constantly. For most of my career, it was a status symbol. But I had two phones. I had the BlackBerry that clipped onto the belt that was— and that you had two of them was a status symbol. For different lines of things that you were working on and who was trying to get in touch with you, that, that was what was important. You describe a completely different approach. I'm not sure it directly applies to my line of work, but why don't you talk about how email and communication overall fits?

Yeah. So when you think about trying to work on your business and not in it, communication is a big part of this because It can be very easy to slip into just constantly being available for everybody, and especially when you're starting a company, like you said, it's almost like a status symbol, like, "Oh, I've got my phone out. I'm super busy. People are getting a hold of me. People are calling and texting me and emailing me. Oh, I got to take this call," whatever. And maybe that is a status symbol still among certain folks, but You got to get out of that because that just destroys your ability to focus and, and really do long-term important work. And I think as you, as you sort of mature and your company matures, you need to put some systems in place to handle communication so it's not all flowing through you and not all decisions are being made by you. I had a guy tell me one time to keep a list of every decision I was asked to make at my company. Over like a week and then categorize those and then work to, work to get those decision-making bottlenecks, pull myself out of them basically and put systems in place so those decisions were being made either by other people or by a system or what have you. I thought that was really interesting. But So email, I think, is particularly damaging here because, and I still, I find myself slipping into bad habits too of just leaving my email open all day long, operating out of my email inbox almost like my to-do list. The old saying here is that your email inbox is a to-do list made by other people. So, you know, there's been many millions of words spilled on this topic, but it's worth stating again that, you know, turn off notifications on your phone. Be deliberate in when and how you're checking your email so that you don't just get sucked into it constantly, and consider setting limits on how people can reach you and when they can reach you to sort of at least keep a lid on it.

One thing we didn't talk about, I think anyone interested in the subject of working in your business instead of— working on your business instead of in your business will get a lot of value over what we talked about the last few minutes. One thing we didn't touch on much is the importance of that concept to maximizing the value you get out of your business because someone else will buy it. And if you've got a system that is in a business that's throwing off cash, that's not dependent on you genuinely because you've got processes and systems and documentation, absolutely something that somebody else could see stepping into, that's a much more valuable entity than if you don't have those systems.

Yeah, that's the difference between someone buying a business and buying a job. That's right, you know, that's, that's the old joke, I guess. But yeah, there's— that's absolutely true. There's a direct correlation between how involved you still are in your business and the value of it, or an inverse correlation, I should say. Um, so yeah, super important.

Yeah, the book Built to Sell was really, um I want to read that. I haven't read it yet. It's really good. Well, you've done it, but it's really helpful. It was really helpful as a mind shift for me to understand. And I laughed. I laugh at my mistakes and I guess I can because it's work. But I absolutely bought myself a job and I thought I was building a business and I bought myself a job. And that book helped me think about it in a different way. And so, as I'm going about the acquisition and add-ons and bolts, I'm working on cleaning up my current situation, but also not importing the mess into my bolt-ons. And so, I suspect the bolt-on stuff and the reason I'm doing the bolt-ons in the way that I'm doing is so that I can add the value and build those businesses without me in there right from the start. And that's been something that I've learned. So, I don't know that I'll fully be able to extract it from from my existing one, but I expect to improve it. But I will definitely do it on the new stuff that I'm adding. And hopefully, other people will get some value out of this.

I felt like it was there. Yeah, this was a great one. And we love your feedback. If you have thoughts on this episode or agreements, disagreements, we'd love to hear from you on Twitter. If you have a few minutes to just engage with Russell and I, it's always nice to feel like we're not just talking into the void. So yeah, we appreciate everyone listening and we will see you next week.