November 6, 2025 • 36 mins
Most business owners eventually hit a ceiling: too many demands, too little time, and a constant pull in every direction. In this episode of the Business Roundtable Podcast, host David W. Carr speaks with Justin Lund, entrepreneur, coach, and founder of Propel, about how leaders can break free from bottlenecks and reclaim both their time and their growth.
Justin shares his powerful journey—from early success scaling a company to nearly nine figures, to losing tens of millions through poor systems and oversight, to rebuilding his career by helping founders master the essentials of business freedom. Together, David and Justin explore:
Special Resource: DM Justin the word steward on Instagram to receive his free Founder Freedom Playbook—a practical guide with playbooks and checklists to start reclaiming your time today.
Connect with Justin Lund:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsjustinlund
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-lund-propel
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-roundtable--6049255/support.
Watch more episodes on YouTube and subscribe here:
https://www.youtube.com/@steward_your_business
Connect with Steward Your Business:
Website: https://stewardyourbusiness.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwcarr
Justin shares his powerful journey—from early success scaling a company to nearly nine figures, to losing tens of millions through poor systems and oversight, to rebuilding his career by helping founders master the essentials of business freedom. Together, David and Justin explore:
- Why most entrepreneurs get stuck in cycles of firefighting and burnout
- How mindset shifts open the door to sustainable growth
- The three-part Founder Freedom Flywheel: mindset, systems, and delegation
- Why skipping straight to delegation usually leads to frustration and wasted money
- The Delegation Pyramid and why starting with admin, not leadership hires, is the key to scaling
- Quick wins that free up hours every week and reduce overwhelm
Special Resource: DM Justin the word steward on Instagram to receive his free Founder Freedom Playbook—a practical guide with playbooks and checklists to start reclaiming your time today.
Connect with Justin Lund:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/itsjustinlund
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justin-lund-propel
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/business-roundtable--6049255/support.
Watch more episodes on YouTube and subscribe here:
https://www.youtube.com/@steward_your_business
Connect with Steward Your Business:
Website: https://stewardyourbusiness.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidwcarr
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Welcome back to the Business Roundtable podcast. I am your host,
David Carr, founder of Stewards at Business, where we bring
people together to accomplish great things, including awesome new guests,
and today we have Justin Lund on the podcast. Welcome Justin.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hi Dad, thanks to be here, Glad to have you here,
Glad to have you here.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Now, Justin, before we get into the meat of it,
because you're going to talk about some great coaching, guiding principles,
frameworks that you use and helping business owners really scale
and develop their business more effectively. But I always like
to let our listeners kind of hear a little bit
about those guests are coming on as your journey as
(01:11):
a business owner. You know the things that you've gone through,
and why do you do what you do today? What
gets you up in the morning and say, man, I
love doing this. I love helping business owners improve their businesses,
making them run better. So take us back a little bit, Justin,
give us a little bit of your background here and
I'll be asking you more questions through the podcast so
everybody else will get.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
To know more as we get in here. Yeah, I'd
love to, I'd love to. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah,
I guess, you know. I started at a young age.
There were things like Tony Robbins on infomercials on TV,
but it kind of got me going. My brother, actually
older brother, bought one of those. And this is the eighties,
so I think they were three hundred bucks for the
personal power, yeah yeah, and he let me just use
(01:51):
it and listen to whenever I wanted. I thought that
was the neatest thing. I was probably eight, you know,
I was a little kid. Yeah, but I thought it
was cool. This guy just getting everybody all pump up.
And he talked about flying in his helicopter into these
events that he would speak and I just thought, man,
that'd be cool. Be your own lass. You know, this
is cool. And then fast forward through several years life
(02:14):
and jobs and different things that I did, got married,
I had some struggles with addiction and painkillers, went through
that some of those challenges that led me to start
learning about Well before that, I was in sales and
I loved the blend of psychology. I took psychology classes
in college, but I wasn't really into I didn't really
(02:37):
want to go into therapy or anything like that. When
I got into sales as a way to put me
through the through college. I loved it because I was
using psychology learning more about it. But I can talk
just like Tony Robbins in my sales pitch, you know,
I was like how to accomplish goals and dreams. So
I love that part of it. But that's where the
introduction of drugs came from. That I went into a
(02:59):
rehabilitation facility and that was all about psychology. I mean,
I really got to learn about myself. I learned about frameworks.
I learned about systems and why I might make the
choices that I made. Sometimes some of the things that
were triggering that were just below the level of consciousness,
and I learned how to bring those up to the
(03:19):
level of consciousness, so I was aware of them. Coming
out of that situation that chapter, I had a bit
of a motivation, maybe even a chip on my shoulder
to really prove to the world that I wasn't just
really a worthless bum, that I could accomplished something. So
I put everything into a business and I started to
(03:42):
see some good success and results with that, and I
grew that very rapidly over the next few years. It
reached seven figures, then eight figures, and then just shy
of nine figures. Through that process, I brought an individual
into help me because I'm not good with numbers and
I was really the taxes scared me and I had
some look at beliefs like that. And the short version
(04:05):
of the story is he kind of took me to
the cleaners and took tens of millions of dollars for me.
So this big enterprise that I had built with almost
one hundred employees ninety something million dollars of revenue just
like emptied it all the way and with that kind
(04:26):
of committed some tax complications, you know, where there were
four signaures on tax returns and claims and the taxes
that were filed that said there was three hundred thousand
dollars of revenue in a year when there was thirty million.
It's like, oh my gosh, yeah, it's not quite right.
So that created a four and a half year battle
(04:50):
legally to try to go back and substantiate you know,
who did what when where, go through the process of discovery,
killing back a dozen even hundreds of shell companies. Our
money was funneled and siphoned taken, So all these things,
and I wasn't good at the numbers, the accounting, the taxes.
I had to get a master's degree in it from
(05:10):
the Boulepard knocks. Yeah, oh man. And so that brought
me like through the about the middle of that litigation process,
a friend of mine called me and said, don't you
have guys that do like payroll and stuff now for you?
And I said, well, I mean, I guess you know,
because I had I employed a number of accountants and
bookkeepers and even lawyers on staff when I was fighting
(05:32):
that battle to try to get out of that situation.
So as a favor, we told her that we would
do her books and file her and take care of
her payroll. She loved it so much that she told
five of her closest friends and they all called us
and by it. Within a year, we had fifty clients
(05:53):
that we were doing their books, their payroll, all the admin,
all the things that suck about the business. You know.
They they started a business because they like to make cookies,
but that's what they want to stay in the kitchen.
They don't want to stay in So we just took
that stuff on and just build them by the hour.
And that's kind of what got me started in with
that and my role in that because I'm not an accountant.
(06:15):
I'm not. I won't find me spent an extra time
in spread shet yeh, yeah, me neither, But I did
through those experiences of life in those fifteen years and
the hard fought lessons that I learned, I recognize that
I don't need to be scared of spreadsheets. I don't
love them. My role through those years as we begin
(06:39):
and Propel was born, just like an outsurf outsourced service provider.
I would work with the founders on their growth strategies.
I would work with the founders on a tax strategy
or just even tax like just thinking about it and
giving them basic simple frameworks as well as just kind
of unlocking some limiting beliefs. Having having gone through this
(07:02):
having a PhD in limiting beliefs and how to overcome them.
Relate to that, yes, yeah, so that's kind of what
landed me here. And now my sweet spot is really
just working with other founders you know that have that
are one or two or three or five years into
their process, some much more, but you know, it tends
to be a revenue target that I see where people
(07:23):
hit some of those. Yeah, lifecle the business, right, you know,
you've been there, and they hit I call it a
capacity ceiling of some sort. They start out doing the
thing they like to do, but then within a period
of time, and usually it's you can tie it to
an amount of revenue, they start to get these other
draws on their attention. You know, they hire people, they
(07:45):
have tax issues, they have all these things. They have
nothing to do with the business they started initially. And
that's where there's not a switch. There's nobody there to
tell them, hey, it's time for you to now stop
being a plumber and start being a human resource manager,
union to spend five hours a month learning how to
manage human beings. You know. So those great problems because
(08:08):
we kind of just deal with what we have to.
We put out the fire and then we jump into
the next thing. We get to the next bid, we submit,
the next quote, we do the next RFP, you know,
whatever it is. We go back to the business of
trying to run the business. And these things tend to
build and fester, and what that usually creates is some
sort of a pain threshold. So I'll see founders start
climbing and they get to the ceiling, and then they
(08:30):
start going down again, because that's that ceiling is kind
of where all that pain starts to come to the
surface of tex issues, payroll issues. You know, they'll hire
an operator and then pay the one hundred grand a year.
After six months, they realize the only thing that change
is their balanceingt They've got less money now because they
paid all this money to somebody they didn't really know
(08:51):
how to manage. They didn't have the systems in place
for a person like that to come in and actually
be successful. Kind of start back to the beginning and say,
let's work up this this process. I call it a
delegation Pyram. You got to start the foundation. You don't
build a house from the roof down, you start on
the ground. Yes, absolutely, that's my tweet spot. I love it.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, No, I want to dig into it. So the
reason I appreciate you sharing your journey justin in the
sense of a lot of business owners. You know, they
haven't got to that level where you got where maybe
in ninety million revenue, but here's the reality. But you said,
if you don't have the right systems and the processes
and people in place that can all be gone and
new complications, and so you know, listening to you Justin
(09:35):
as an example, having somebody that's been there, done that
can help guide you avoid some of those pitfalls and
go further faster, hopefully with your help.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
And you know, Justin, you and I we talked before
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I'm focusing only on one aspect of this part of
the of the delegation is the people specifically, And this
is why I love having you come in, because I
love having working with folks like you, Justin with business owners,
because you're getting them to think more strategically, stepping back
and not being in the weeds of the business, which
is easy to do. Like you said, you getting pulled in,
That's what I heard you said, getting pulled in a
different direction, and before you know, you look up and
(10:11):
you're like, we've drifted where I'm not clear where we're at.
I don't have a real an understanding of all these things.
And so maybe maybe spending more time and energy and
I'm excited to break this down with you in one
area of the business where I was just talking with
a business owner today, Justin where he was like, oh,
I've been focusing so much on the sales side bringing
(10:32):
in the revenue, but the operation side has been neglected,
and we've had a lot. Now we just had a
ten ten thousand dollars problem because we didn't.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Think about that, and I got to fix all of that.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
That's a lot because I was all focused over here,
but that was being neglected, the operation side of it.
So it's like it's a challenge, right for a business owner. No,
it's on top of all this stuff totally.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
So what you just described, I mean, I can see
that visually in my head so well, because I've talked
to hundreds and hundreds of founders that describe a picture
is very very similar, if not exactly the same to that.
So picture this way, You're going this direction, sales, sales, sales, sales, sales,
oh wait, operations, operations, operations, oh wait, customer service, customer service, delivery, delivery,
(11:13):
you know. And then so you've got this way, this way,
this way, this way, and then you get to the
end of the month, the end of the quarter, the
end of the year. And because you went this way
twenty five percent of the time, and then you went
this way twenty five percent of the time, now you're
back where you started. And you're just feeling like, what
the hell am I doing? You know, and it feels
(11:35):
that feeling it probably the best word to describe that.
I've heard most people say it's just stuck, you know,
I just feel stuck or trapped, like nothing's changing, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, right, you're stuck or or you know,
or totally burned out too. You're like, I don't even
know if I want to do this anymore, yeah, you know,
or I feel trapped in my business, you know, yep, yep, exactly.
You've heard that, but now you've you've been able to
get on the other side. So from this getting stuck
or having a breakdown, you have been able to help
(12:06):
fix businesses and see some things even said even you
said earlier, you know, some the limiting beliefs or mindsets
about some things. I think that they hear these things
out there, and I felt like, at least for me,
just I felt like sometimes they felt like, well, I
should know all this stuff, I should figure out all
this stuff on my own.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Maybe be aware of it.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
But to your point, you know, you're kind of your
own limiting factor, right, You're you're a certain point where
you're you're the governor, you're the you can't go any further,
So speak a little bit about that their journey of
like where you've seen business owners and you've worked with them,
where they're like, Okay, I'm willing to be coach, I'm
willing to look at the strategy or feeling like they
have to know all the answers. Talk about the little
(12:44):
differences that you see in the success.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, certainly, so that's a big as. Okay, the founders
usually looked up to they're the bombs, right, So you
have all these people, especially if you have a team,
you know, two, three, five, twenty five people, they're looking
up to you. The answer is always to you. So
what that creates It's a bottleneck, right, It's the top
of the bottle. It's the smallest part of the bottle.
(13:08):
It's where the least amount of throughput can go. And
I try to practice and teach things to the people
that I coach. You don't want to be the smartest
person in the room. And I tell my team all
the time, if you guys are waiting for me to
have all the answers, we're screwed. Like it's not gonna act.
I like to say things like that, just to emphasize
(13:29):
and reiterate that we all need to go find answers
to the problems that we're dealing with. So I deal
with there's I call it the freedom the founder freedom
flywheel because it's kind of a three sided thing that
has motion, right, and the three pillars of this is mindset, systems,
and delegation and those we go through this process, we
(13:50):
work on some mindset to kind of see what might
be holding us back, what's sticking. You know, somebody might
think I have to solve every problem. When somebody comes
to me, I have to answer because who else will? Okay,
so we got to work on that. Right. Once we
work on that, then we need to develop some systems
so that when people approach that person for answers to everything,
(14:11):
there is not just a reaction, but there is a
set of dominoes that fall. Oh this happens boom boom
boom boom boom boom boom. System. Okay, system anything that
saves your self time, energy, money, system acronym. So remember that.
And then delegation like how can you get it off
of your plate so that you as the founder, because
nobody knows more about the business and these people started
(14:35):
a business because they have some passion, they have some
I think entrepreneurs are some of the just brightest, you know.
And that's why I learned and rehab that if I
could deploy my mind and my faculties into something good
instead of some stupid addiction that was taking it was
all consuming, might just be able to accomplish something pretty cool,
you know. And that's what all these founders are up against,
(14:58):
this capacity ceiling where the pain threshold is so great
and they feel like I'm burned out, I'm stuck. But
all they need is a little shift in mindset, development
of some systems, and then to delegate the things off
their plate. So we go through time and energy audits.
We take a look at what things are, What are
the things in the business that really light you up?
(15:18):
What are the things the business that really suck? What
are the ones that doesn't mean they can't be done?
And you can just pick, oh, anything that sucks. But
there's a system that we can create, and there's delegation
tactics and playbooks that we can implement quickly so that
you can still inspect what you expect. Okay, I didn't
do that and lost twenty five million dollars. Okay, so
(15:39):
don't do that, like don't bury your head in the sand.
You have to inspect it. But if you have the
right mindset to go into creating a system, and you
have somebody that can help you to create the systems
where you may lack a little bit of the knowledge,
then you have the delegation tactics and inspecting what you're expecting.
Then you've created. You give yourself a little more room
(16:00):
your calendar, a little more space, a little more time,
a little less feeling of stuck. And when you're okay,
I can breathe. Now, now what are you going to
do with that new time? Can you it back into
the areas that light you up, the areas that bring
you more revenue, the areas that you know those things,
And some of it needs to go into self development,
Like if numbers are your weakness, you have to spend
(16:21):
a little bit. You do not need to be a CPA.
You do not need to go to college and get
a master's degree in accounting. Now, one of the first
things I set up with clients is I tell them
to set up a meeting with their CPA four times
a year, Like do it today after our first coaching.
There you go, book it. Don't do it in March,
don't do it in April. You may do it just
(16:45):
after these big pressing deadlines and just get on the
phone and talk and just let them know what's going on. Yeah,
well you brought up a couple good points.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
So as I'm following you, it's it is first the mindset,
then then we get into the systems. I'm making figure
out to delegate. So I hear I think this is
important as you're breaking it down. When I'm hearing justin
is because I think a lot of times people say
and I want you to speak to this subject because
I'm sure you probably hear this a bit, and I
hear this sometimes I'm trying to help people and I
(17:13):
really can make a difference. And that's why I have
you on the podcasts because I you know, voices like
they always need to be heard. But some people say
it's usually you know, they might have the money, but
they was like, well I don't have the time for this,
Like is this gonna like take me away? And that's
a mindset of like, you know, I don't have enough. Instead,
you know, tell me, just how do you reframe it,
(17:33):
because I know you do. I just want to hear
it from your way of like to the business owner
just says, well, I don't know, Can I just go
on a little longer and not doing this? And you know,
the pain is there, and what happens We can kind
of get numbed to a pain, right justin I mean,
you've dealt with addiction and certain there's a certain point
where it's just you're like, okay, just we're just kind
of it's our new normal and that's not good, right,
that's our normal.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
That's what we know right now. Yep. Well, yeah, let
me speak to kind of two sides of that issue. First,
the latter is the new norm is actually a pretty
vicious dopamine release cycle. Okay, So when you are dealing
with the pain, and so let's say the pain is
everybody runs to you. You're the hero, You're the firefighter.
(18:15):
Well that there's a little voice in the back of
your head that's not very loud, but it says, look
how important I am, Look how much validation I get
at a day's work. And so with time it becomes
very hard to let go of that. And that's one
of the things that takes if somebody's I've got a
few clients right now that they're twenty twenty five years
in business, and it's very hard for them to let go,
(18:37):
and it's it's hard for them to even see younger
guys that haven't. They don't have that much history of
the habits they're recognizing a little quicker typically that oh whoa, yeah,
I don't. I don't want to be the hero. I
want to be on a beach man. I want to
be enjoying the business. Yeah. So that's one thing that
you've really got to be mindful of and then just
think about it. You know, you have all these people,
(18:58):
all these issues, and you have to solve it. What
did that say? The underlying messages I'm important, I matter.
What I say is the high you know, my way
or the highway kind of thing, And that just makes
you feel like, Okay, I may not I may not
know how to scale this business to ten million dollars.
I may not know how to have an exit and
(19:18):
get out of here, but at least I'm important in
what I do every day. So that's a bad thing
potentially that you Yeah, the other part of that is
people feeling like, uh, maybe I'll just do it myself,
(19:41):
you know. That's that's it's kind of what you were
speaking to and what's coming to my mind. I don't
want to, I don't have to. I'll just figure it
out on my own. Yeah, just take me longer to
teach somebody else than a will to just do it myself.
And that's true in a sense. But those are some
of the blocking mindsets that again with mindset systems and
then delegate. So the way I try to get into
(20:02):
that is show them well. One of my philosophies is
quick wins, David, I try to you know, I could
sit and talk about mindset for weeks on end, but
a lot of people are like, okay, cut to the chase.
I'm busy, what are we going to do? So I
have a library of playbooks, and one that I would
pull out in this case is called recording and routing. Okay.
(20:23):
So when somebody says, I spoke to a woman yesterday, Okay,
I've got a session with her today, and she's like,
I've got all these things and nobody knows how to
do it but me, And I'm doing all these things,
and I'm working eighty hours a week and it's just
it's killing me. I can't. I'm like, okay, well, how
hard are the things you're doing? And what I'm going
to go into with her today is recording and routing
(20:43):
because the work that she's doing is admin work. I mean,
it's basic. I can outsource it to somebody in the
Philippines for twelve to fifteen bucks an hour and get
it done probably better than her, you know. But they
need a playbook to follow, they need a construction manual
to follow, and she created one. So in her mind,
she's very scared to do that because that's not her
(21:06):
strong suit, that's not what she excels at. So you
know what I do. I grab this. This is how
I create. I record. I have a rope tripod that
I keep with me in my bag and everywhere I go.
And when I'm doing something that I don't like doing
that I do again and again and again. I pull
out the tripod, I stick my phone on it, I
record what I'm doing, and then I route it to
(21:26):
the right place now with a few so I have
a playbook that kind of breaks down how to do this,
how to record it, how to take a few different
iterations of it, how to upload it and the right
prompt to use with chat GPT, and then you've got
version one of a playbook. And then you take that
playbook and you turn it into a checklist. Now you
have your first SOP. You know, it's it's standardized, it's
(21:48):
ready to use. It's not perfect, but it's ninety percent perfect,
eighty percent perfect. And if you can get that stuff
off of your plate. So back to your question, like,
what if somebody just feels like, nah, I don't really
want to let it go. It's gonna be longer. It's
harder for me to teach somebody else and just do
it myself, and they're gonna mess it up anyway. Well,
if you can get back five hours this week, seven
(22:10):
hours this week taking some of these things off of
your plate, that's a huge win. And even if they
only do it eighty percent as effective as you would do,
but it's zero percent of your time. I'll take that
trade every single day of the week for sure.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Right, And they don't see that without somebody like you
justin coming in and auditing it and saying, look, what
are these things that you're doing. And this is the
power of having somebody like yourself Justin, and I do
it on.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
The people's side too.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's like, hey, lean in and that's why we have
you on the podcast and other guests he come check
out Justin. We're gonna make sure you guys can connect
with him because we're connect them on LinkedIn and other
links and all that stuff. Will have all that in
the show notes. But you know, just recognize, are you
in that space right of the mindset and if not,
the mindset they can Hopefully we'll get getting that place.
(23:00):
I'm sure it creeps in even while you're working with
folks that might come back in. I'm sure, Justin.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
But the point of like going quicker and you've done this.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Through multiple multiple businesses and different types of industries and things,
and saying, okay, how do we get through and start
creating your baseline, like I like your flywheel of you know,
the systems in place, so that way we can then
actually because you then you can get to the point
where you're talking about delegation. But you can't delegate if
you don't have it clearly identified like all the things
(23:29):
that we do right correct.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And often when you try to and this is another
major common mistake is you know you feel that pain.
You're hitting that level and you feel the pain of
all this time and effort and energy. Same with the
woman I just mentioned from yesterday, she's feeling the pain.
She hired an assistant and now has nothing but negative
things to say about that. A system you know now again,
(23:51):
not only is that is the work not She's working
just as much and now has less money to spend
because some of that money is going out to pay
ass who is ineffective and she's in effective because we
didn't start with the mindset and the systems before we
got to delegation started saying here's a bunch of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
I tried to train and then tried to retrain. So
(24:12):
she's reducing her time that she could work into her
she's reducing her money by paying this other assistant. So
all these things go down. And that's such a common
pattern that I see with small business owners as we
just again, we start a business because we have a
thing we like to do. And I use like baking
cookies as just an example, because you can picture this person.
(24:35):
They got a little chef hat on and they got
flour on them, and they're in the kitchen and they're
having fun. You know, now enter spreadsheets payrolled nine forty
one withholding return forms like the irs, like, has nothing
to do with the business that they started. So that's
typically if you follow that analogy along, it's like you
start because you're good at it. You know how to
(24:55):
make a cookie to put smile on people's faces, and
you're like, maybe I'll go do it this, you know,
and then before long you're dealing with all these problems
out there that have nothing to do with bacon cookies.
And that's where you're like, I don't know what to do.
And you reach this point where you just need you
need to look at mindset, systems and delegation and David
(25:16):
with that process that flywell creates levels, Like as soon
as you go through that cycle once then you can
level up. And as you get to a new level,
there may be a new devil, you know, So there's
more mindset and systems to deploy and bring in to
bear there. And that's why I have a delegation pyramid.
Starting at the bottom, it's getting rid of the administrative,
(25:37):
the admin stuff that you you know, the payroll, the email,
the calendar, the basic stuff that's necessary evils. Then you
go into more of the fulfillment and the delivery and
the onboarding side of it. Then in marketing, then you
go into sales, then you go into leadership. Okay, what
(25:58):
a lot of people do is try to jump to leadership.
They feel this pain and they're like, I need somebody
that can just lead this mess, and they go hire
a CEO or coo. Uh huh. Terrible move because they
have no experience in building any of that foundation up.
They can't even manage their own email, and they're trying
to manage themselves.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's the same thing I see too,
justin where I see people do like, oh, I don't
really like doing sales really well, so I'm gonna hire
some salespeople. But if you don't know the process and
understand it, they're gonna do like you said, if best
maybe eighty percent or something, they're gonna do it less
than you can so and then you're gonna frustrate I'm
spending this money, they're not getting it done, like yeah,
(26:35):
because you didn't understand this right right.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And even sales is a great example because there's a
lot of people. I worked with a lot of software
development firms and a lot of software guys don't like
to sell. They're introverted. Right. Here's the interesting common theme
that I've seen with all the software guys that I've
worked with, introvert as they are. Once you get them
in a situation where there's an opportunity, unity and a
(27:00):
prospect to talk to, and that prospect has questions and
they're talking about the service. So the offering that they have,
these introverts light up. Why because they're talking about their expertise,
they're talking about their sweet spot. Yep. So they think
limiting belief that they can't do sales, and then they
(27:21):
try to delegate something that is second in my pyramid.
It's second to the top. For you delegate that second
to last. Okay, so they if they can just stay there.
There's different things that we do that with like magnetic
marketing to just bring people into their world. If you
have prospects that are leaning in, that are familiar with you,
that know what your service is about, we can make
(27:44):
sales calls not really feel like sales calls. They're just
conversations with people, and even introverted software developers kind of
like that, you know, to get out of the code
for a minute. Because who else could talk about those solutions.
Do you think some outside sales rep is going to
talk about a high tech complex AI solution that they're
going to build news Not a chance. Yeah right. I
(28:06):
even acted as a salesperson in a software development firm
that I was a part owner of. This is how
I would sell. I'd get on the phone and I
would say, Dave, Hey, great to meet you. Awesome. So, yeah,
we're gonna get into the nuts and bolts of this stuff.
But here's my partner here blank, and he's way smarter
than me. I'm just here to tell a couple of
jokes and everything. So tell us much one you see
it up and all the rest of the conversation with him,
(28:29):
and I just take some notes. And I was taking
notes to build a contract, and I'd put that into
a contract and I'd send them and that was it.
We're done. And I worked really well. But he didn't
like sales. And I'm like, do you realize you handle
ninety nine percent of the conversation, Like you don't really
need me, but I'm happy to show up.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Well, I think to your point. And this is one
thing I like justin is as you're helping them a strategy.
It's important that they do the work mindset, understanding who
they are. I use you know, I do that with
the teams too, in an integrating place. Point right, it's
like knowing how to communicate with these different folks. What
whether it's in a sales conversation or whether it's you know,
(29:09):
in internal communications. Understanding this so that you're not undermining
your influence. I understand how you naturally show up to
your point justin there's we all have these different mindsets,
but then we all have different strengths and abilities and
and things we have to know where hey, this is
not my strength or I need to be aware, and
then how do I better leverage the team?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
And getting to your point?
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Where I love if we can get all of the mindset,
the systems really dialed in and the delegation, then that's
where I love working with you because I'm all about
the building out that team. That then we're talking about
the leadership. We're really getting all those folks working well
together in a line.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
And this is the business.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And I'm sure right justin you're trying to get them
stay on mission, vision, your values. What's the big thing
we're trying to accomplish instead of getting sucked back into
the weeds. What would why did you create the business
to begin with? What was the purpose in creating this business,
this organization and what I love? And I'm sure you
probably do this with justin because one of the things
is as you come together as a business owner, is
(30:07):
it becomes more than you. Hopefully it's its own organism,
it's its own entity. So what does that look like?
And how are you stewarding it? And of course in
my words, stewarding stewarding it well versus you know, we
see many businesses, you know, start off in one way,
but they go off the rails, they lose their their kind,
(30:27):
of their their mission and like the relevancy I should say, right,
you're helping them, I hear, justin keeping relevant, keeping on point,
and also being able to adjust. We see a lot
of changing things, technologies and demands and so terror wish
looking at terrorists or whatever. There's certainly always coming in, right,
(30:47):
it's not. It's so it's like you can't just set
it and forget it, right a strategy?
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, right exactly, And I like what you just said,
and that's that's so important to know. Why did you
start this business? What was the goal? And you have
to slow down to get to that point, you know,
And a lot of people that I talked to don't
feel like they can slow down. And that's why I
like to focus first on some quick wins. If I
(31:14):
can get five, six, seven hours back in your week,
and I can measure that, I can show you how
you have clawed back some of that time. Now, can
I convince you to deploy some of that time to
actually go back to that question, why did you start
this business? What was the point? Because the analogy we
used earlier left right forward backwards. If they could align
(31:36):
those actions so that they were all going in the
same direction, now, four hours spent get you four hours
ahead of an hour this way that way to land
you right back where you started. So to me, that
alignment is critical. I usually can get more buy in
(31:56):
for people to spend that time with that alignment, David,
once we get a few quick wins, ends with some
systems and some delegation, because I often, unfortunately people usually
land on my lap when they're feeling like I can't
you take this anymore? They're just getting pulled in every direction,
and it's like they want to give up, they want
to quit, and a lot of people come to me
(32:17):
just because they're like, I want to sell this business.
I'm done with it, I'm tired of it. So getting
systems in place makes your business more valuable, because if
you are the lynchpin, if you are the hub that
everything has to go through, your value is going to
be not much because yeah, but if you have systems
that run despite you and whether or not you are there,
(32:38):
that add value. So what we'll see in maybe half
of the occasions is somebody even that wants to come
in really get things going so that they can sell
out and be done. Half the time they're like, this
is better. Now I'm going to see if I can
grow this a little bit more because now there's some
systems in place that they've learned how to relieve that bottleneck.
They've they've learned things like the theory of constraints that
(33:01):
show them that hey, this is the area to focus
on put everything into that basket and tell you expand
capacity there. And it's like, hey, I'm kind of good
at this. Well, yeah, that's why you started the business,
right absolutely.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
I know we're getting into the end of the podcast here, Justin,
you've graven us some great resources the freedom flywheel. Looking
at these things, hopefully people are thinking things a little
differently than when they first started listening to this podcast
and doing a little maybe self reflection as to where
am I and in this flywheel and where do any
maybe make some adjustments and perhaps have a conversation with
(33:35):
Justin And like I said, I'm going to make sure
all of your contact informations in there Justin here on
our show notes. Leave comments by the way, you guys,
if you're hearing something you want to comment.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Share, We love that.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
We love your feedback of course, liking and subscribing all
that fun stuff wherever you guys find the podcast.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
But Justin, I want to give you an opportunity as
we're wrapping up the.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Podcast today, as you shared a lot with us, what
would you say, you know, is if I'm the business
owner that I should really take action today or consider
or reflect whatever the case might be for you, is
say what you want in part with them to say, Hey,
if nothing else, if you took nothing else on this podcast,
this is.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
What I want you to walk away from today. Well,
so many things. I first one to offer what I
first want to offer to anybody listening is if you
found any of this useful or resonating with any of you,
then come and find me on LinkedIn or Instagram and
David will put everything in the in the notes here
(34:32):
it's it's justin Lund is my Instagram handle. Just come
and follow, give me a follow, and send me a
DM that says Steward Freedom and I'll send you my
Founder Freedom playbook that has three components to it. And
that's probably the best place to start because and I
don't I don't need to email address, I don't need
to just all I ask for is a follow. Just
(34:53):
try to grow my followers a little bit there. But
I'll send you it's a Google doc. There's a series
of Google docs, and you just have act to the books,
the playbooks that I use, and inside of those there'll
be little tips like do you need an executive assistant?
Then just message me back again EA, and I'll send
you executive assistant playbook. That's I think, David. The biggest
thing that people back to your point, I think you
(35:16):
nailed it right on the head. Most guys, most gals
in this position that are feeling this pain just feel
trapped that I just need to keep it myself because
it's going to be too hard or take too much
time to delegate. Try one of my playbooks. Just take
the playbook and deploy it. You don't even have to
work on the mindset and do all the woo wo stuff,
none of that. Just do that. I promise you you'll
(35:38):
see a win. I promise you you'll get an hour
or two back. I promise you you'll feel the pressure
go down a little. So I just want to help
do that. And if you like the content and you follow,
that's great too. So happy to help anywhere that I
can with that stuff. Great. Thank you, Justin.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
You guys, this is a great gift, an opportunity for
you to get a little bit better time back.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Justin've been doing this for a long time. Justin. I
really appreciate you coming on and sharing that with our
audience today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me Dan absolutely
well you guys. You know you know the drill.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
We love you guys, sharing, subscribing, following along, that's all great.
The whole point of this podcast is to help you,
the business owner leader, be more effective and how you're
showing up every day and feeling really good about the
way you're called to show up and lead your team,
lead yourself, and again thank Justin for being here and
(36:30):
look forward to having you guys back in our next episode.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Until then, be well everybody, thanks for listening and
Welcome back to the Business Roundtable podcast. I am your host,
David Carr, founder of Stewards at Business, where we bring
people together to accomplish great things, including awesome new guests,
and today we have Justin Lund on the podcast. Welcome Justin.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hi Dad, thanks to be here, Glad to have you here,
Glad to have you here.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Now, Justin, before we get into the meat of it,
because you're going to talk about some great coaching, guiding principles,
frameworks that you use and helping business owners really scale
and develop their business more effectively. But I always like
to let our listeners kind of hear a little bit
about those guests are coming on as your journey as
(01:11):
a business owner. You know the things that you've gone through,
and why do you do what you do today? What
gets you up in the morning and say, man, I
love doing this. I love helping business owners improve their businesses,
making them run better. So take us back a little bit, Justin,
give us a little bit of your background here and
I'll be asking you more questions through the podcast so
everybody else will get.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
To know more as we get in here. Yeah, I'd
love to, I'd love to. Thanks for the opportunity. Yeah,
I guess, you know. I started at a young age.
There were things like Tony Robbins on infomercials on TV,
but it kind of got me going. My brother, actually
older brother, bought one of those. And this is the eighties,
so I think they were three hundred bucks for the
personal power, yeah yeah, and he let me just use
(01:51):
it and listen to whenever I wanted. I thought that
was the neatest thing. I was probably eight, you know,
I was a little kid. Yeah, but I thought it
was cool. This guy just getting everybody all pump up.
And he talked about flying in his helicopter into these
events that he would speak and I just thought, man,
that'd be cool. Be your own lass. You know, this
is cool. And then fast forward through several years life
(02:14):
and jobs and different things that I did, got married,
I had some struggles with addiction and painkillers, went through
that some of those challenges that led me to start
learning about Well before that, I was in sales and
I loved the blend of psychology. I took psychology classes
in college, but I wasn't really into I didn't really
(02:37):
want to go into therapy or anything like that. When
I got into sales as a way to put me
through the through college. I loved it because I was
using psychology learning more about it. But I can talk
just like Tony Robbins in my sales pitch, you know,
I was like how to accomplish goals and dreams. So
I love that part of it. But that's where the
introduction of drugs came from. That I went into a
(02:59):
rehabilitation facility and that was all about psychology. I mean,
I really got to learn about myself. I learned about frameworks.
I learned about systems and why I might make the
choices that I made. Sometimes some of the things that
were triggering that were just below the level of consciousness,
and I learned how to bring those up to the
(03:19):
level of consciousness, so I was aware of them. Coming
out of that situation that chapter, I had a bit
of a motivation, maybe even a chip on my shoulder
to really prove to the world that I wasn't just
really a worthless bum, that I could accomplished something. So
I put everything into a business and I started to
(03:42):
see some good success and results with that, and I
grew that very rapidly over the next few years. It
reached seven figures, then eight figures, and then just shy
of nine figures. Through that process, I brought an individual
into help me because I'm not good with numbers and
I was really the taxes scared me and I had
some look at beliefs like that. And the short version
(04:05):
of the story is he kind of took me to
the cleaners and took tens of millions of dollars for me.
So this big enterprise that I had built with almost
one hundred employees ninety something million dollars of revenue just
like emptied it all the way and with that kind
(04:26):
of committed some tax complications, you know, where there were
four signaures on tax returns and claims and the taxes
that were filed that said there was three hundred thousand
dollars of revenue in a year when there was thirty million.
It's like, oh my gosh, yeah, it's not quite right.
So that created a four and a half year battle
(04:50):
legally to try to go back and substantiate you know,
who did what when where, go through the process of discovery,
killing back a dozen even hundreds of shell companies. Our
money was funneled and siphoned taken, So all these things,
and I wasn't good at the numbers, the accounting, the taxes.
I had to get a master's degree in it from
(05:10):
the Boulepard knocks. Yeah, oh man. And so that brought
me like through the about the middle of that litigation process,
a friend of mine called me and said, don't you
have guys that do like payroll and stuff now for you?
And I said, well, I mean, I guess you know,
because I had I employed a number of accountants and
bookkeepers and even lawyers on staff when I was fighting
(05:32):
that battle to try to get out of that situation.
So as a favor, we told her that we would
do her books and file her and take care of
her payroll. She loved it so much that she told
five of her closest friends and they all called us
and by it. Within a year, we had fifty clients
(05:53):
that we were doing their books, their payroll, all the admin,
all the things that suck about the business. You know.
They they started a business because they like to make cookies,
but that's what they want to stay in the kitchen.
They don't want to stay in So we just took
that stuff on and just build them by the hour.
And that's kind of what got me started in with
that and my role in that because I'm not an accountant.
(06:15):
I'm not. I won't find me spent an extra time
in spread shet yeh, yeah, me neither, But I did
through those experiences of life in those fifteen years and
the hard fought lessons that I learned, I recognize that
I don't need to be scared of spreadsheets. I don't
love them. My role through those years as we begin
(06:39):
and Propel was born, just like an outsurf outsourced service provider.
I would work with the founders on their growth strategies.
I would work with the founders on a tax strategy
or just even tax like just thinking about it and
giving them basic simple frameworks as well as just kind
of unlocking some limiting beliefs. Having having gone through this
(07:02):
having a PhD in limiting beliefs and how to overcome them.
Relate to that, yes, yeah, so that's kind of what
landed me here. And now my sweet spot is really
just working with other founders you know that have that
are one or two or three or five years into
their process, some much more, but you know, it tends
to be a revenue target that I see where people
(07:23):
hit some of those. Yeah, lifecle the business, right, you know,
you've been there, and they hit I call it a
capacity ceiling of some sort. They start out doing the
thing they like to do, but then within a period
of time, and usually it's you can tie it to
an amount of revenue, they start to get these other
draws on their attention. You know, they hire people, they
(07:45):
have tax issues, they have all these things. They have
nothing to do with the business they started initially. And
that's where there's not a switch. There's nobody there to
tell them, hey, it's time for you to now stop
being a plumber and start being a human resource manager,
union to spend five hours a month learning how to
manage human beings. You know. So those great problems because
(08:08):
we kind of just deal with what we have to.
We put out the fire and then we jump into
the next thing. We get to the next bid, we submit,
the next quote, we do the next RFP, you know,
whatever it is. We go back to the business of
trying to run the business. And these things tend to
build and fester, and what that usually creates is some
sort of a pain threshold. So I'll see founders start
climbing and they get to the ceiling, and then they
(08:30):
start going down again, because that's that ceiling is kind
of where all that pain starts to come to the
surface of tex issues, payroll issues. You know, they'll hire
an operator and then pay the one hundred grand a year.
After six months, they realize the only thing that change
is their balanceingt They've got less money now because they
paid all this money to somebody they didn't really know
(08:51):
how to manage. They didn't have the systems in place
for a person like that to come in and actually
be successful. Kind of start back to the beginning and say,
let's work up this this process. I call it a
delegation Pyram. You got to start the foundation. You don't
build a house from the roof down, you start on
the ground. Yes, absolutely, that's my tweet spot. I love it.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Yeah, No, I want to dig into it. So the
reason I appreciate you sharing your journey justin in the
sense of a lot of business owners. You know, they
haven't got to that level where you got where maybe
in ninety million revenue, but here's the reality. But you said,
if you don't have the right systems and the processes
and people in place that can all be gone and
new complications, and so you know, listening to you Justin
(09:35):
as an example, having somebody that's been there, done that
can help guide you avoid some of those pitfalls and
go further faster, hopefully with your help.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
And you know, Justin, you and I we talked before
this podcast.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I'm focusing only on one aspect of this part of
the of the delegation is the people specifically, And this
is why I love having you come in, because I
love having working with folks like you, Justin with business owners,
because you're getting them to think more strategically, stepping back
and not being in the weeds of the business, which
is easy to do. Like you said, you getting pulled in,
That's what I heard you said, getting pulled in a
different direction, and before you know, you look up and
(10:11):
you're like, we've drifted where I'm not clear where we're at.
I don't have a real an understanding of all these things.
And so maybe maybe spending more time and energy and
I'm excited to break this down with you in one
area of the business where I was just talking with
a business owner today, Justin where he was like, oh,
I've been focusing so much on the sales side bringing
(10:32):
in the revenue, but the operation side has been neglected,
and we've had a lot. Now we just had a
ten ten thousand dollars problem because we didn't.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Think about that, and I got to fix all of that.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
That's a lot because I was all focused over here,
but that was being neglected, the operation side of it.
So it's like it's a challenge, right for a business owner. No,
it's on top of all this stuff totally.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
So what you just described, I mean, I can see
that visually in my head so well, because I've talked
to hundreds and hundreds of founders that describe a picture
is very very similar, if not exactly the same to that.
So picture this way, You're going this direction, sales, sales, sales, sales, sales,
oh wait, operations, operations, operations, oh wait, customer service, customer service, delivery, delivery,
(11:13):
you know. And then so you've got this way, this way,
this way, this way, and then you get to the
end of the month, the end of the quarter, the
end of the year. And because you went this way
twenty five percent of the time, and then you went
this way twenty five percent of the time, now you're
back where you started. And you're just feeling like, what
the hell am I doing? You know, and it feels
(11:35):
that feeling it probably the best word to describe that.
I've heard most people say it's just stuck, you know,
I just feel stuck or trapped, like nothing's changing, you know.
Speaker 1 (11:45):
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, right, you're stuck or or you know,
or totally burned out too. You're like, I don't even
know if I want to do this anymore, yeah, you know,
or I feel trapped in my business, you know, yep, yep, exactly.
You've heard that, but now you've you've been able to
get on the other side. So from this getting stuck
or having a breakdown, you have been able to help
(12:06):
fix businesses and see some things even said even you
said earlier, you know, some the limiting beliefs or mindsets
about some things. I think that they hear these things
out there, and I felt like, at least for me,
just I felt like sometimes they felt like, well, I
should know all this stuff, I should figure out all
this stuff on my own.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Maybe be aware of it.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
But to your point, you know, you're kind of your
own limiting factor, right, You're you're a certain point where
you're you're the governor, you're the you can't go any further,
So speak a little bit about that their journey of
like where you've seen business owners and you've worked with them,
where they're like, Okay, I'm willing to be coach, I'm
willing to look at the strategy or feeling like they
have to know all the answers. Talk about the little
(12:44):
differences that you see in the success.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, certainly, so that's a big as. Okay, the founders
usually looked up to they're the bombs, right, So you
have all these people, especially if you have a team,
you know, two, three, five, twenty five people, they're looking
up to you. The answer is always to you. So
what that creates It's a bottleneck, right, It's the top
of the bottle. It's the smallest part of the bottle.
(13:08):
It's where the least amount of throughput can go. And
I try to practice and teach things to the people
that I coach. You don't want to be the smartest
person in the room. And I tell my team all
the time, if you guys are waiting for me to
have all the answers, we're screwed. Like it's not gonna act.
I like to say things like that, just to emphasize
(13:29):
and reiterate that we all need to go find answers
to the problems that we're dealing with. So I deal
with there's I call it the freedom the founder freedom
flywheel because it's kind of a three sided thing that
has motion, right, and the three pillars of this is mindset, systems,
and delegation and those we go through this process, we
(13:50):
work on some mindset to kind of see what might
be holding us back, what's sticking. You know, somebody might
think I have to solve every problem. When somebody comes
to me, I have to answer because who else will? Okay,
so we got to work on that. Right. Once we
work on that, then we need to develop some systems
so that when people approach that person for answers to everything,
(14:11):
there is not just a reaction, but there is a
set of dominoes that fall. Oh this happens boom boom
boom boom boom boom boom. System. Okay, system anything that
saves your self time, energy, money, system acronym. So remember that.
And then delegation like how can you get it off
of your plate so that you as the founder, because
nobody knows more about the business and these people started
(14:35):
a business because they have some passion, they have some
I think entrepreneurs are some of the just brightest, you know.
And that's why I learned and rehab that if I
could deploy my mind and my faculties into something good
instead of some stupid addiction that was taking it was
all consuming, might just be able to accomplish something pretty cool,
you know. And that's what all these founders are up against,
(14:58):
this capacity ceiling where the pain threshold is so great
and they feel like I'm burned out, I'm stuck. But
all they need is a little shift in mindset, development
of some systems, and then to delegate the things off
their plate. So we go through time and energy audits.
We take a look at what things are, What are
the things in the business that really light you up?
(15:18):
What are the things the business that really suck? What
are the ones that doesn't mean they can't be done?
And you can just pick, oh, anything that sucks. But
there's a system that we can create, and there's delegation
tactics and playbooks that we can implement quickly so that
you can still inspect what you expect. Okay, I didn't
do that and lost twenty five million dollars. Okay, so
(15:39):
don't do that, like don't bury your head in the sand.
You have to inspect it. But if you have the
right mindset to go into creating a system, and you
have somebody that can help you to create the systems
where you may lack a little bit of the knowledge,
then you have the delegation tactics and inspecting what you're expecting.
Then you've created. You give yourself a little more room
(16:00):
your calendar, a little more space, a little more time,
a little less feeling of stuck. And when you're okay,
I can breathe. Now, now what are you going to
do with that new time? Can you it back into
the areas that light you up, the areas that bring
you more revenue, the areas that you know those things,
And some of it needs to go into self development,
Like if numbers are your weakness, you have to spend
(16:21):
a little bit. You do not need to be a CPA.
You do not need to go to college and get
a master's degree in accounting. Now, one of the first
things I set up with clients is I tell them
to set up a meeting with their CPA four times
a year, Like do it today after our first coaching.
There you go, book it. Don't do it in March,
don't do it in April. You may do it just
(16:45):
after these big pressing deadlines and just get on the
phone and talk and just let them know what's going on. Yeah,
well you brought up a couple good points.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
So as I'm following you, it's it is first the mindset,
then then we get into the systems. I'm making figure
out to delegate. So I hear I think this is
important as you're breaking it down. When I'm hearing justin
is because I think a lot of times people say
and I want you to speak to this subject because
I'm sure you probably hear this a bit, and I
hear this sometimes I'm trying to help people and I
(17:13):
really can make a difference. And that's why I have
you on the podcasts because I you know, voices like
they always need to be heard. But some people say
it's usually you know, they might have the money, but
they was like, well I don't have the time for this,
Like is this gonna like take me away? And that's
a mindset of like, you know, I don't have enough. Instead,
you know, tell me, just how do you reframe it,
(17:33):
because I know you do. I just want to hear
it from your way of like to the business owner
just says, well, I don't know, Can I just go
on a little longer and not doing this? And you know,
the pain is there, and what happens We can kind
of get numbed to a pain, right justin I mean,
you've dealt with addiction and certain there's a certain point
where it's just you're like, okay, just we're just kind
of it's our new normal and that's not good, right,
that's our normal.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
That's what we know right now. Yep. Well, yeah, let
me speak to kind of two sides of that issue. First,
the latter is the new norm is actually a pretty
vicious dopamine release cycle. Okay, So when you are dealing
with the pain, and so let's say the pain is
everybody runs to you. You're the hero, You're the firefighter.
(18:15):
Well that there's a little voice in the back of
your head that's not very loud, but it says, look
how important I am, Look how much validation I get
at a day's work. And so with time it becomes
very hard to let go of that. And that's one
of the things that takes if somebody's I've got a
few clients right now that they're twenty twenty five years
in business, and it's very hard for them to let go,
(18:37):
and it's it's hard for them to even see younger
guys that haven't. They don't have that much history of
the habits they're recognizing a little quicker typically that oh whoa, yeah,
I don't. I don't want to be the hero. I
want to be on a beach man. I want to
be enjoying the business. Yeah. So that's one thing that
you've really got to be mindful of and then just
think about it. You know, you have all these people,
(18:58):
all these issues, and you have to solve it. What
did that say? The underlying messages I'm important, I matter.
What I say is the high you know, my way
or the highway kind of thing, And that just makes
you feel like, Okay, I may not I may not
know how to scale this business to ten million dollars.
I may not know how to have an exit and
(19:18):
get out of here, but at least I'm important in
what I do every day. So that's a bad thing
potentially that you Yeah, the other part of that is
people feeling like, uh, maybe I'll just do it myself,
(19:41):
you know. That's that's it's kind of what you were
speaking to and what's coming to my mind. I don't
want to, I don't have to. I'll just figure it
out on my own. Yeah, just take me longer to
teach somebody else than a will to just do it myself.
And that's true in a sense. But those are some
of the blocking mindsets that again with mindset systems and
then delegate. So the way I try to get into
(20:02):
that is show them well. One of my philosophies is
quick wins, David, I try to you know, I could
sit and talk about mindset for weeks on end, but
a lot of people are like, okay, cut to the chase.
I'm busy, what are we going to do? So I
have a library of playbooks, and one that I would
pull out in this case is called recording and routing. Okay.
(20:23):
So when somebody says, I spoke to a woman yesterday, Okay,
I've got a session with her today, and she's like,
I've got all these things and nobody knows how to
do it but me, And I'm doing all these things,
and I'm working eighty hours a week and it's just
it's killing me. I can't. I'm like, okay, well, how
hard are the things you're doing? And what I'm going
to go into with her today is recording and routing
(20:43):
because the work that she's doing is admin work. I mean,
it's basic. I can outsource it to somebody in the
Philippines for twelve to fifteen bucks an hour and get
it done probably better than her, you know. But they
need a playbook to follow, they need a construction manual
to follow, and she created one. So in her mind,
she's very scared to do that because that's not her
(21:06):
strong suit, that's not what she excels at. So you
know what I do. I grab this. This is how
I create. I record. I have a rope tripod that
I keep with me in my bag and everywhere I go.
And when I'm doing something that I don't like doing
that I do again and again and again. I pull
out the tripod, I stick my phone on it, I
record what I'm doing, and then I route it to
(21:26):
the right place now with a few so I have
a playbook that kind of breaks down how to do this,
how to record it, how to take a few different
iterations of it, how to upload it and the right
prompt to use with chat GPT, and then you've got
version one of a playbook. And then you take that
playbook and you turn it into a checklist. Now you
have your first SOP. You know, it's it's standardized, it's
(21:48):
ready to use. It's not perfect, but it's ninety percent perfect,
eighty percent perfect. And if you can get that stuff
off of your plate. So back to your question, like,
what if somebody just feels like, nah, I don't really
want to let it go. It's gonna be longer. It's
harder for me to teach somebody else and just do
it myself, and they're gonna mess it up anyway. Well,
if you can get back five hours this week, seven
(22:10):
hours this week taking some of these things off of
your plate, that's a huge win. And even if they
only do it eighty percent as effective as you would do,
but it's zero percent of your time. I'll take that
trade every single day of the week for sure.
Speaker 1 (22:28):
Right, And they don't see that without somebody like you
justin coming in and auditing it and saying, look, what
are these things that you're doing. And this is the
power of having somebody like yourself Justin, and I do
it on.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
The people's side too.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
It's like, hey, lean in and that's why we have
you on the podcast and other guests he come check
out Justin. We're gonna make sure you guys can connect
with him because we're connect them on LinkedIn and other
links and all that stuff. Will have all that in
the show notes. But you know, just recognize, are you
in that space right of the mindset and if not,
the mindset they can Hopefully we'll get getting that place.
(23:00):
I'm sure it creeps in even while you're working with
folks that might come back in. I'm sure, Justin.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
But the point of like going quicker and you've done this.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Through multiple multiple businesses and different types of industries and things,
and saying, okay, how do we get through and start
creating your baseline, like I like your flywheel of you know,
the systems in place, so that way we can then
actually because you then you can get to the point
where you're talking about delegation. But you can't delegate if
you don't have it clearly identified like all the things
(23:29):
that we do right correct.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
And often when you try to and this is another
major common mistake is you know you feel that pain.
You're hitting that level and you feel the pain of
all this time and effort and energy. Same with the
woman I just mentioned from yesterday, she's feeling the pain.
She hired an assistant and now has nothing but negative
things to say about that. A system you know now again,
(23:51):
not only is that is the work not She's working
just as much and now has less money to spend
because some of that money is going out to pay
ass who is ineffective and she's in effective because we
didn't start with the mindset and the systems before we
got to delegation started saying here's a bunch of stuff. Yeah, yeah,
I tried to train and then tried to retrain. So
(24:12):
she's reducing her time that she could work into her
she's reducing her money by paying this other assistant. So
all these things go down. And that's such a common
pattern that I see with small business owners as we
just again, we start a business because we have a
thing we like to do. And I use like baking
cookies as just an example, because you can picture this person.
(24:35):
They got a little chef hat on and they got
flour on them, and they're in the kitchen and they're
having fun. You know, now enter spreadsheets payrolled nine forty
one withholding return forms like the irs, like, has nothing
to do with the business that they started. So that's
typically if you follow that analogy along, it's like you
start because you're good at it. You know how to
(24:55):
make a cookie to put smile on people's faces, and
you're like, maybe I'll go do it this, you know,
and then before long you're dealing with all these problems
out there that have nothing to do with bacon cookies.
And that's where you're like, I don't know what to do.
And you reach this point where you just need you
need to look at mindset, systems and delegation and David
(25:16):
with that process that flywell creates levels, Like as soon
as you go through that cycle once then you can
level up. And as you get to a new level,
there may be a new devil, you know, So there's
more mindset and systems to deploy and bring in to
bear there. And that's why I have a delegation pyramid.
Starting at the bottom, it's getting rid of the administrative,
(25:37):
the admin stuff that you you know, the payroll, the email,
the calendar, the basic stuff that's necessary evils. Then you
go into more of the fulfillment and the delivery and
the onboarding side of it. Then in marketing, then you
go into sales, then you go into leadership. Okay, what
(25:58):
a lot of people do is try to jump to leadership.
They feel this pain and they're like, I need somebody
that can just lead this mess, and they go hire
a CEO or coo. Uh huh. Terrible move because they
have no experience in building any of that foundation up.
They can't even manage their own email, and they're trying
to manage themselves.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Oh yeah, yeah, it's the same thing I see too,
justin where I see people do like, oh, I don't
really like doing sales really well, so I'm gonna hire
some salespeople. But if you don't know the process and
understand it, they're gonna do like you said, if best
maybe eighty percent or something, they're gonna do it less
than you can so and then you're gonna frustrate I'm
spending this money, they're not getting it done, like yeah,
(26:35):
because you didn't understand this right right.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
And even sales is a great example because there's a
lot of people. I worked with a lot of software
development firms and a lot of software guys don't like
to sell. They're introverted. Right. Here's the interesting common theme
that I've seen with all the software guys that I've
worked with, introvert as they are. Once you get them
in a situation where there's an opportunity, unity and a
(27:00):
prospect to talk to, and that prospect has questions and
they're talking about the service. So the offering that they have,
these introverts light up. Why because they're talking about their expertise,
they're talking about their sweet spot. Yep. So they think
limiting belief that they can't do sales, and then they
(27:21):
try to delegate something that is second in my pyramid.
It's second to the top. For you delegate that second
to last. Okay, so they if they can just stay there.
There's different things that we do that with like magnetic
marketing to just bring people into their world. If you
have prospects that are leaning in, that are familiar with you,
that know what your service is about, we can make
(27:44):
sales calls not really feel like sales calls. They're just
conversations with people, and even introverted software developers kind of
like that, you know, to get out of the code
for a minute. Because who else could talk about those solutions.
Do you think some outside sales rep is going to
talk about a high tech complex AI solution that they're
going to build news Not a chance. Yeah right. I
(28:06):
even acted as a salesperson in a software development firm
that I was a part owner of. This is how
I would sell. I'd get on the phone and I
would say, Dave, Hey, great to meet you. Awesome. So, yeah,
we're gonna get into the nuts and bolts of this stuff.
But here's my partner here blank, and he's way smarter
than me. I'm just here to tell a couple of
jokes and everything. So tell us much one you see
it up and all the rest of the conversation with him,
(28:29):
and I just take some notes. And I was taking
notes to build a contract, and I'd put that into
a contract and I'd send them and that was it.
We're done. And I worked really well. But he didn't
like sales. And I'm like, do you realize you handle
ninety nine percent of the conversation, Like you don't really
need me, but I'm happy to show up.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Well, I think to your point. And this is one
thing I like justin is as you're helping them a strategy.
It's important that they do the work mindset, understanding who
they are. I use you know, I do that with
the teams too, in an integrating place. Point right, it's
like knowing how to communicate with these different folks. What
whether it's in a sales conversation or whether it's you know,
(29:09):
in internal communications. Understanding this so that you're not undermining
your influence. I understand how you naturally show up to
your point justin there's we all have these different mindsets,
but then we all have different strengths and abilities and
and things we have to know where hey, this is
not my strength or I need to be aware, and
then how do I better leverage the team?
Speaker 2 (29:30):
And getting to your point?
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Where I love if we can get all of the mindset,
the systems really dialed in and the delegation, then that's
where I love working with you because I'm all about
the building out that team. That then we're talking about
the leadership. We're really getting all those folks working well
together in a line.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
And this is the business.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
And I'm sure right justin you're trying to get them
stay on mission, vision, your values. What's the big thing
we're trying to accomplish instead of getting sucked back into
the weeds. What would why did you create the business
to begin with? What was the purpose in creating this business,
this organization and what I love? And I'm sure you
probably do this with justin because one of the things
is as you come together as a business owner, is
(30:07):
it becomes more than you. Hopefully it's its own organism,
it's its own entity. So what does that look like?
And how are you stewarding it? And of course in
my words, stewarding stewarding it well versus you know, we
see many businesses, you know, start off in one way,
but they go off the rails, they lose their their kind,
(30:27):
of their their mission and like the relevancy I should say, right,
you're helping them, I hear, justin keeping relevant, keeping on point,
and also being able to adjust. We see a lot
of changing things, technologies and demands and so terror wish
looking at terrorists or whatever. There's certainly always coming in, right,
(30:47):
it's not. It's so it's like you can't just set
it and forget it, right a strategy?
Speaker 2 (30:52):
Yeah, right exactly, And I like what you just said,
and that's that's so important to know. Why did you
start this business? What was the goal? And you have
to slow down to get to that point, you know,
And a lot of people that I talked to don't
feel like they can slow down. And that's why I
like to focus first on some quick wins. If I
(31:14):
can get five, six, seven hours back in your week,
and I can measure that, I can show you how
you have clawed back some of that time. Now, can
I convince you to deploy some of that time to
actually go back to that question, why did you start
this business? What was the point? Because the analogy we
used earlier left right forward backwards. If they could align
(31:36):
those actions so that they were all going in the
same direction, now, four hours spent get you four hours
ahead of an hour this way that way to land
you right back where you started. So to me, that
alignment is critical. I usually can get more buy in
(31:56):
for people to spend that time with that alignment, David,
once we get a few quick wins, ends with some
systems and some delegation, because I often, unfortunately people usually
land on my lap when they're feeling like I can't
you take this anymore? They're just getting pulled in every direction,
and it's like they want to give up, they want
to quit, and a lot of people come to me
(32:17):
just because they're like, I want to sell this business.
I'm done with it, I'm tired of it. So getting
systems in place makes your business more valuable, because if
you are the lynchpin, if you are the hub that
everything has to go through, your value is going to
be not much because yeah, but if you have systems
that run despite you and whether or not you are there,
(32:38):
that add value. So what we'll see in maybe half
of the occasions is somebody even that wants to come
in really get things going so that they can sell
out and be done. Half the time they're like, this
is better. Now I'm going to see if I can
grow this a little bit more because now there's some
systems in place that they've learned how to relieve that bottleneck.
They've they've learned things like the theory of constraints that
(33:01):
show them that hey, this is the area to focus
on put everything into that basket and tell you expand
capacity there. And it's like, hey, I'm kind of good
at this. Well, yeah, that's why you started the business,
right absolutely.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
I know we're getting into the end of the podcast here, Justin,
you've graven us some great resources the freedom flywheel. Looking
at these things, hopefully people are thinking things a little
differently than when they first started listening to this podcast
and doing a little maybe self reflection as to where
am I and in this flywheel and where do any
maybe make some adjustments and perhaps have a conversation with
(33:35):
Justin And like I said, I'm going to make sure
all of your contact informations in there Justin here on
our show notes. Leave comments by the way, you guys,
if you're hearing something you want to comment.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
Share, We love that.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
We love your feedback of course, liking and subscribing all
that fun stuff wherever you guys find the podcast.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
But Justin, I want to give you an opportunity as
we're wrapping up the.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Podcast today, as you shared a lot with us, what
would you say, you know, is if I'm the business
owner that I should really take action today or consider
or reflect whatever the case might be for you, is
say what you want in part with them to say, Hey,
if nothing else, if you took nothing else on this podcast,
this is.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
What I want you to walk away from today. Well,
so many things. I first one to offer what I
first want to offer to anybody listening is if you
found any of this useful or resonating with any of you,
then come and find me on LinkedIn or Instagram and
David will put everything in the in the notes here
(34:32):
it's it's justin Lund is my Instagram handle. Just come
and follow, give me a follow, and send me a
DM that says Steward Freedom and I'll send you my
Founder Freedom playbook that has three components to it. And
that's probably the best place to start because and I
don't I don't need to email address, I don't need
to just all I ask for is a follow. Just
(34:53):
try to grow my followers a little bit there. But
I'll send you it's a Google doc. There's a series
of Google docs, and you just have act to the books,
the playbooks that I use, and inside of those there'll
be little tips like do you need an executive assistant?
Then just message me back again EA, and I'll send
you executive assistant playbook. That's I think, David. The biggest
thing that people back to your point, I think you
(35:16):
nailed it right on the head. Most guys, most gals
in this position that are feeling this pain just feel
trapped that I just need to keep it myself because
it's going to be too hard or take too much
time to delegate. Try one of my playbooks. Just take
the playbook and deploy it. You don't even have to
work on the mindset and do all the woo wo stuff,
none of that. Just do that. I promise you you'll
(35:38):
see a win. I promise you you'll get an hour
or two back. I promise you you'll feel the pressure
go down a little. So I just want to help
do that. And if you like the content and you follow,
that's great too. So happy to help anywhere that I
can with that stuff. Great. Thank you, Justin.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
You guys, this is a great gift, an opportunity for
you to get a little bit better time back.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Justin've been doing this for a long time. Justin. I
really appreciate you coming on and sharing that with our
audience today. My pleasure. Thanks for having me Dan absolutely
well you guys. You know you know the drill.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
We love you guys, sharing, subscribing, following along, that's all great.
The whole point of this podcast is to help you,
the business owner leader, be more effective and how you're
showing up every day and feeling really good about the
way you're called to show up and lead your team,
lead yourself, and again thank Justin for being here and
(36:30):
look forward to having you guys back in our next episode.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Until then, be well everybody, thanks for listening and
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