1099: Buy Back Your Time and Achieve Scalability by Learning to Work ON Instead of IN Your Business with Strategist and Co-Founder of Better Than Rich Mike Abramowitz

Robert Plank 0:04 We're here with Mike Abramowitz from better than a rich.com/ninety day plan. And we're here to talk about how to do this elusive problem and get to the solution of buying back our time, right? It's so easy for you to create a business with the best of intentions. And the next thing you know, you create another job for yourself and you sacrifice that entrepreneurial and time freedom that drew you to entrepreneurship in the first place. So it's time to change course to take the game back. And to get ourselves on a better path. We're talking about delegating, we're talking about systematizing, we're talking about AI, and everything that comes up with that, because you hear these buzzwords, or you you you do the learning and you think, you know, I coulda woulda shoulda to do that are done that someday. And Mike is here to set us straight to get us on a plan to break through some of these mental barriers and have us go from I can't do that, or I should do that, too. I will do that. And I'm going to do that with Mike's help. So Mike, glad to be speaking with you.

Mike Abramowitz 1:08 Hey, thanks for having me, Robert. Happy to happy to be here and add value where I can. Yeah.

Robert Plank 1:12 And that's a great mindset to jump into. Right? They call that servant leadership, right to add value to contribute. And we hyped you up a little bit put in your own words, what are you all about what gets you excited and motivated? What's your current focus? current

Speaker 1 1:26 focus is helping entrepreneurs if they have a business, and they have a family and their high earning is to help them buy back their time, so they can reinvest the time to what matters most to them. The short of it is I was in the hospital with my son for eight and a half months when he was born at one pound four ounces. And my business was able to run without me for those eight and a half months, and still produce six figures in profits and revenue without me there. And then my wife had to leave her corporate job to become a full time medical mom. And because of that, I was able to have the time freedom to pursue a second career. And that second career is now helping busy overwhelmed entrepreneurs do what I did, which is to create predictability in my business and install systems and automation and proper team and TAC and offshore virtual assistants in order to help me by back my time. So it's through circumstance, I have been able to learn and now I'm in a position to teach now that my son is doing great. He's thriving, and we just had our welcomed our daughter into the world as well. So my son is three and my newborn is four months old. So it's it's fun to be at this chapter of life. Right

Robert Plank 2:27 where you're at the beginning, and there's so much potential, but you've already accomplished so much. And I love your story here because the mediocre land is scary, right? Doing just enough and just limping along. And then sometimes it takes being hit with some kind of stress, conflict adversity to say hey, now this is the time for me to really man up and maybe do what I could what I should have done years ago and do this thing like systematize the and so you know what you mentioned and a little bit in there, what's involved. So you're saying that we need like, we need to make these systems and hire these people and delegate, but it seems like I mean, a lot, a lot can go wrong with that. Right? And it's sometimes easier said than done, because it's easy enough to say, oh, I should just you know, create some automations. But what holds people back from getting this done? Is it not having a plan not having urgency not having help all the above? Like why is this not just snap your fingers and son?

Speaker 1 3:25 It's a good question. I think there's a several pieces to kind of unpack here. And the first reason is, is the business owner needs to know what their priorities are and what the reason is they're running a business in the first place in the way I define a business is a vehicle a business is a vehicle to help me pursue my life. It is not my life. And my 20s my business was my life, I was running a direct sales organization with Cutco and vector and I was grinding 24/7. So people say they had a nine to five, I had a 24/7. So I was working constantly. And I didn't wasn't able to let go of control. Not that it didn't trust my staff. But I didn't let go of things let go of control of things, because I knew I could do it better than them. So when I hired my business coach in 2016, to help me learn how to remove myself as a bottleneck from my business. That's where I really started poking around and asking some of the deeper questions like what's the purpose of me running a business in the first place? And my answer to that was, I wanted to create a predictable machine that produces Predictable Revenue. That also buys me time freedom, the revenue from that business can then be invested in a passive investment stream. So that money makes me money, the business buys me back time. And that way I can have 3x freedom on the other end so I can spend my time on what matters most. And leveraging our business to be a force for good for myself and others. So it's like I had to get clear of what that means for me. And I think that's a great place to start. So that way, when a business owner is saying, Oh, I'm the only person who could do something that they get, they fall into a trap this control trap that I was in where it's like, I'm the best person to do everything, which is probably true. But Dan Martell says in his book 80%, done by somebody else is 100%. Awesome. So what I would suggest is getting very, very clear, what are the things that are in your genius that only you can do that brings you energy? And then what are all the things that can get offloaded that other people could do maybe 80% as good as you, but allows you to buy back your time, so you can spend that time on what matters most to you. So I have what is called the time rich six that I created for myself. That is kind of helped me and, and it's helped some of our students inside of our community, I could walk through that if you think it could be appropriate.

Robert Plank 5:37 Yeah, let's do that. So give me a moment to kind of like digest what you said. And think about this, because I liked the way that you phrased it, because this is like the ultimate entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial nut to crack, right? Is this kind of the arrogance of that? No one else can do it, as well as me and you're saying like, maybe that's true. But can someone do it? 80% as well as you were? Can someone do it more consistently? Or can is there something that you're good at, but you just don't like to do or someone else could do it. And now it free up for you to focus on that you said your zone of genius, but also even within the zone of genius, that overlap of what also gives you energy. So this is wonderful to think about. And just in the way that you phrase it, it's like, well, of course we're pulling ourselves back by of course, we're having the bottleneck, letting the emotion ego get in the way. So let's bust through that. Tell us about that. This six step component is

Speaker 1 6:30 great. So the timer six, I'll give the overview. Number one is boundaries. Number two is communication guidelines. Number three, systems. Number four, playbooks number five, team, and number six tech. So these are the six items that worked for me, and I didn't know this was the curriculum that I followed. But now that I have gone through it, this is what helps. So number one is boundaries. So boundaries, what am I protecting? What are my priorities? What are the things that matter most to me, what am I running this business for? For me, it was to be a family man with a business, not a businessman with a family, I wanted to be a present husband and a present father. So I didn't want to have to say no to a lot of things that my dad said no to me, because he was grinding and ambitious in his business, running a plumbing business. I just wanted that different for myself. So I wanted to create a schedule where I could work in my business nine to four, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, nine to two on Friday, have evenings and mornings off Saturday and Sunday with a family and a personal day on Monday. And that's where I'm living now. But I had the intention 10 years ago to build a business that eventually I could get to that point. So knowing what the priorities are, knowing what the boundaries are to protect that time. So that way, when someone crosses out of bounds, they call me at 10 o'clock at night, or they contact me on my personal day or reach out on a weekend, I can let them know, Hey, you're out of bounds which ties into number two, which is communication guidelines. How do I want it what deems a text versus a live call versus an email versus a zoom call? What are what what how do I want people to communicate with me? When I ran my direct sales business, everyone had my personal cell phone, I had 1000 clients who bought Cutco from me, I had new recruits that wanted to work for me. And then my current team who worked for me, all of those people, I trained 5000 people to sell just under $20 million for the product line. So it was a pretty large organization, I had a lot of people wanting to get my attention. So of course, of course I was the bottleneck. So I had a restructure how to remove myself as the bottleneck by installing a cloud phone number by installing internal communication chats with WhatsApp with virtual assistants inside of those channels, how to install a virtual assistant and manages my inbox. So when clients ever request there's a buffer between me and my clients. So, by putting this infrastructure in place allowed me to have explicit communication guidelines that are protected protecting my boundaries, which leads into number three, which is systems what is systems systems are we define it better than rich as a series of processes, policies and technologies that aim the goal of the business? What is the process a series of if then statements, so in the four pillars of business, attract, convert, onboard retain for the talent journey in the client journey, attracting new talents, attracting new clients, converting that whether it be sales or the hiring process, onboarding them, and then retaining them client maximization or talent retention? What are all the if then and all the predictability like Michael Gerber's E Myth? How can we create series of events that are very predictable inside the system for for every user inside of that system? So that's number three, which is system so boundaries, thing, communication guidelines and systems. I could stop there for just a moment come up for some air just in case you want to interject and that could do the next three, which is playbooks team and tech but obviously, this is something that's super, super relevant to me and I hope it's relevant to your audience. I don't want to just preach because the want to add value like I mentioned, right, and it is

Robert Plank 9:53 good to take a slight break and have give us a little bit of suspense and give you a little like a few moments to rest here. And I love how it's, you seem like you're, you're introspective. And you've thought this through and you've written some of this down, and that you're also in the pursuit of simplicity, because you could have easily said, Oh, here's this 25 Point Plan. But you're also saying, hey, when we say boundaries, here's what I mean. Here's my schedule. When I say systems, I mean, here's what I mean. It's these if then statements. So I think I find that just very helpful in general, that you said, Well, here's what the definition is right here. When I say system, here's what I mean. And so I find that very helpful. And so So yeah, so we're, as we're thinking about this. So all right, so to recap, you said that there the the first three are boundaries, and what else? communication guidelines, communication guidelines, and systems? And then systems. All right, so boundaries, communication guidelines and systems and on the back half. Now, what are the final three? What does this lead to?

Speaker 1 10:54 So then once you have the systems, you have these events, right? All right. Like I McDonald defied my business. If a client wants to get my attention and needs a resource, then they email me and ask me for that resource as an example, or I must have a resource library that exists, right? That's what I mean by that if then, so therefore, the playbooks are like the documentation of those resources. So there might be 100 plus playbooks, SOPs, you could call them standard operating procedures that are inside of that system. So the system is like, if you think about it, like the X's and O's, the playbooks are the actual like plays that we're calling like, we're actually running these plays, and it's the documentation in one organized place. So that way, it's very predictable, it's very simple to follow. There might be a playbook for lead nurturing, there's a playbook for how to get on pod paths. There's an SOP and a playbook for managing my inbox. There's an SOP and a playbook for social media content creation, for how to have how to send a certain email to the certain type of client internal communication channels created like SOPs for everything learning management software's I mean, every single thing that part of the business, ideally has some sort of playbook. Why? Because we want to create a system and unpredictability, so that way, if a talent leaves their position, if they move on, it's documented, so it's very easy to drop and reload, so it's not reliant on the owner to then go step in and do a lot of work, I would rather have this done and predictable. So it's easy drop and reload. I'll give you an example. Robert, my wife and I took a three week road trip in in 2020, before our son was born, and we did $100,000 In sales, we crush will be provided 1000 jobs during COVID. Because we were equipped here to run a virtual business. And during that week, while I was on my road trip, one staff member quit. I had systems and processes and documentation in place, whereas drop in reload, the next person stepped up, they followed the documentation from that person's position. And we didn't skip a beat. And we did another week of $100,000 in sales without skipping any type of beat requiring me at all other than one quick five minute conversation of welcoming them into their new role. Letting them know, Hey, your compensation structure is going to be this, you need to step into your role. These are the expectations. Are there any questions? Cool, go through our virtual library of videos that are already documented, go through it, and then you're going to direct report to this person as your senior leader is that all pretty clear? Okay, great. I'll follow up with when I get back and that person stepped in the role got their training was all predictable and done. And all because they premeditated it doing this time rich six, working on the business versus me constantly doing the thing inside the business. And that runs into number five, which is team who are the Who's that are going to be calling the plays, I don't want to be the coach that's also beat playing as quarterback that's also being the kicker, that's also being the running back right the coach isn't running, going into the game to run the plays the coaches calling the plays, and then there's other shoes that are actually running those plays. And I think that's really important for administrative for marketing for sales for client fulfillment. So different who's there's experts like Been there done that. And then there's followers and the how detailed and dialed in those systems and playbooks are determines the level of talent that you're going to need to pay. So if you have very simple systems, McDonald's have hide your business you could pay $25 An hour or less for someone to step in. If you're not very organized and you need a Been there done that you're gonna have to pay $75 Now or two. So depending on how organized and simplified your business is, is going to determine what type of who you're going to need to install into the business. And then number six is the technology what type of tech solutions are going to support those whose What is your CRM? What is your you know, what is your project management software, your learning management Software, what is your internal communication channel? And most importantly, in my opinion is how do you use AI? How is AI being used by those whose to create predictability and have an excellent user experience that's consistent with your writing style with your tone with your brand ethos with, you fill in the blank, just to make things effective and efficient. So those are the those are the six boundaries, communication guidelines, systems, playbooks team, and then tack.

Robert Plank 15:28 Very nice. And so this is great to kind of get into your brain here and to find out how your business is run, because it's way too easy to get stuck in academic land, right, and, or to focus on just one little area. So it's great to kind of get the whole overview of all these different parts of it. And what I like, especially is how there's the there's the systems and the playbooks, right, because it's really easy to to say like, Okay, we'll hire this person, and we'll figure it out. But then when you lose the person, then you have to sort of start from scratch. And then when there's like the over reliance on the systems there, it might not be very well documented. And then you have this black box, right? You have all these things happening. And then you're like, Well, I'm afraid to even improve the system or mess with it, because I don't have that kind of other layer of the documentation. And so just hearing about this, kind of like thinking in objection mode, it seems like there's a lot to be written down, like when you mentioned, like hundreds of SOPs, and then you might say, well, that's that's kind of necessary, right to account for all the kind of the kind of account for life happening. But is there ever an element of like, sometimes like tearing down the system or updating it like updating the videos or the software? The process, like if it becomes like, a few years at a date is there's as there's this aspect of like, improving or recreating?

Speaker 1 16:49 Absolutely, and we call that the five ds of systematization, inside of better than rich, the first D of design. So we designed the F ns, once we designed the if then then we document those if that's that's the that's essentially the playbook. So we then we document that. If not, it's once we document it, then we disseminate, we train on those if then so we're training those whose once we train those who's then we're going to defend the system. So we want to defend the system, essentially, that's the accountability. That's where how are you tracking your KPIs, what's working, what's not working, and then once we see what's working and not working, then we develop a new system or an upgraded system in order to design the next version of what we need to do. And those are the five days of systematization. So absolutely, they're just like an iPhone or an iPhone 56. Right, because it's this constant evolution of those five DS, which is designed, then documentation, then dissemination, which is training, and then develop, defending, which is the KPIs and then develop, which is where can we make upgrades because some things are inefficient? So that's, that's, that's, it's a great question. And that's how we have found. What we have found most business owners do not choose to do is because they don't have those boundaries, they can't separate themselves from working in the business because they're too busy doing the thing, that they don't separate from working on the business to be able to have these conversations with themselves for them to step back and say, Hmm, why is this inefficient? Or where is this inefficient? Let me look at these KPIs. Let me look at these, you know, these internal communications, let me look at a traffic light report. What is the traffic light report, red, green, and yellow for each person on my talent journey? And each client in my in my pipeline? Where are they at? Where are the reds? Well, why are they red? Where are the greens? Why are they green? How can we get referrals from those greens? How could we make the Reds better you create a better user experience if the owner is not having that type of conversation with themselves because they're not creating boundaries to work on the business because they're so busy working in the business. That's that's the challenge. It's scalability for the business, but it's also the challenge with buying back some time, and having some level of time freedom to separate themselves. It is a process it is a discipline. And, and frankly, I think this is this is why I do what I do this is this is why it's important for someone to say, Man, I love what I do. And I'm working a lot like I am constantly needed. Great. Good job. And let's stop that stuff. You don't need to be needed all the time. Let's let's let's create some predictability that can run without you. They're

Robert Plank 19:40 wonderful and this is what we all need. Right? We need to have to get that fulfillment, that excitement from doing what we do best but without the time busyness. And what I like about this is it's like, Okay, the first step here is boundaries. So that way you can get yourself on that path to becoming clear like well Should I do and what shouldn't I do? And then when you figure out this abstracted miss, figure out the KPIs and traffic light reports, then it seems like it opens up new ways of thinking, right? Because like you're saying, like, Okay, well, the green lights, how can we get referrals from there, you might not even have have that line of thought, if you were so busy putting out the fires or doing the 24/7 job, like you mentioned at the beginning, so, so I can imagine that people need to be woken up about this, they need to see that there's a better way, but they might not be able to do it on their own. Right? And you might think, well, if they they could do it, they would have done it already. Right. And it takes for sure, a certain type of brain to figure out some of this stuff, right, so you get excited and energized about the if then statements or about the SOPs, and so if someone says, okay, like, you've given me a lot to chew on, and you'd be like these cool, listen, these cool concepts, and you've kind of woken me up to where I might be going wrong, how can someone reach out to you and get some help? Like, what are the resources the best path like a book a coaching call a course? Like how can someone get the help they need from you and your team?

Speaker 1 21:08 Number one is offload the bottom 20%, all that administrative that is just not needed by the owner, social media, inbox management, video production, graphic images, any anything that is administrated related crm management, all of that stuff. And that's why we have is we have an agency, we will install a team of virtual assistants into someone's business that are powered by AI, to handle all of that for them. We have a team of 35 to 40 individuals, they all who do work for me. So they're all trained on how to do this stuff for me and my business, and we will install them into your business. So that's that's our one of our services that we provide, if that can be a value to someone, but in order to really help them figure out what are those bottom 20%, maybe we can help maybe we can, I'm doing a free 90 Day delegation planning session with them with a time audit workbook that can help them figure out what are those bottom 20% tasks for their business specifically, that are energy draining that are below their target dollar per hour, we'll reveal that in about 30 or 40 minutes together. And on the other end, once that's revealed, get those offloaded during the next 90 days, so you can buy back that amount of time. And you I would I would bet you're spending 10 hours a week at least if I can help you by back 40 hours a week, or 40 hours a month. During the next 90 days. Now we can take those 40 hours a month to work on the business. So you can work a little bit more in higher value activities. And they can do that better than rich.com/ninety day plan nine zero day plan and book that conversation that goes directly to me better than rich.com/ninety day plan. And if our services can help, I would love to have them use our service. But maybe our services isn't a good fit for them. I'd love to at least have the conversation if it makes sense for them to figure out what those bottom tasks might be.

Robert Plank 22:59 I love that. Yes, it's worth at least having a conversation to have that curiosity and figure out what could be done either, like you said the kind of the customized solution or just get that bottom 20% out of the way. And you mentioned a few times about I'm not sure what the metaphors but kind of like the an upward snowball, so to speak, right? You free up 10 hours a week there. And then that then now that's 10 hours you can put towards something else you could put towards family time, refresh, recharge better get some better insights, get to the networking, the joint venturing that passion project you already did. And then as you and I both know, Mike, it's, it's kind of a struggle to get those first couple of hires. But when you do, it's kind of addicting, right? When you see like, oh, man, I didn't have to think about this, this got done magically. Now I don't have to be a control freak in this way. It can be a very upward climb, to getting other people to handle the business. So that way you get this predictability that you mentioned, that way you have this consistent machine, you have less stress, you have something that you can then sell or keep it if you want, it opens up many possibilities that just aren't there if you are the sole operator or if everything is just like, you know, running around you. And so better than a rich.com/ninety day plan is the way to claim that zoom session and have that conversation with Mike just to get some of this stuff figured out. And this might have been on your mind for months, if not years. And you've heard about people, including Mike who have crossed that chasm who have figured out how to buy back the time as he says, and you owe it to yourself to go to better than arish.com/ninety day plan and sign up for this. And as we're wrapping up our conversation here, Mike, since it's a podcast, it's always fun to end on one final little soundbite, right like a fun quote or lesson that has helped you or can help us so what comes to your mind when I asked you for a quarter lesson?

Speaker 1 24:54 A lesson is know what season you're in. So are you in winter season of unpredictability where you're You're fighting a fight right now, if you are create a minimum viable product, so you have the least amount of consequences when spring comes around. If it's a spring season, you're planting seeds, make sure you're planting the appropriate seeds. If you want an apple tree in the fall, to make sure you're planting apple seeds for your type of business that you want. If you're in a summer season, you're grinding and you're working, make sure you keep your head down on one thing that is your revenue driver, and not trying to tackle multiple things at once. And if you're in a fall season, reap the rewards enjoy the harvest while also taking time for strategy. And also preparation so that way when that next winter unpredictable season comes, you have enough resources and enough energy to weather that storm. So know what season you're in. And make sure you're navigating with the appropriate strategy depending on what season you're in.

Robert Plank 25:44 Very nice, very helpful. You sure delivered on that for a soundbite Mike and so better than a rich.com/ninety day plan to talk to this guy and you can just tell from his teaching here and the storytelling that he's done it he's seen it he can and he will help you and your job now is to go to better than rich.com/ninety day plan. Go there claim a time slot talk with Mike you be glad that you did and wonderful speaking with you today, Mike.

Unknown Speaker 26:10 Thanks for having me, Robert.

Robert Plank 26:14 This is Robert plank from the marketer of the day podcast which you can find at marketer of a day.com for more episodes, and d f y podcast.com forward slash free if you want to know more about running your own podcast or running a better or more fun or easier or less time intensive podcast. Go to do fly podcast.com/free To find out more right this instant