October 20, 2025 • 20 mins
This week's Powerful Business Strategies segment with Michael Barbarita of Next Step CFO is You started your business for freedom - time freedom, financial freedom, the freedom to control your own destiny. But somewhere along the way, your business became your prison. You're working more hours than you ever did as an employee, you're more stressed than you've ever been, and you feel like you can never step away.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hi, you have learned to censure. Wow for you.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Your This is the Pipe Main here on the Adventures
Pipe Man W four c Y Radio, and once again
it's time for a positively Pipe Main segment. This is
where we give you great business strategies, motivational strategies, empowerment
(00:36):
strategies and much more. And right now we have our
expert resonant or resident expert something like that, something like
that in business and powerful business strategies and we're gonna learn.
Oh my god, the one we're going to talk about
today is exciting for me because just about every business
(01:00):
owner experience is that, even the strongest and most positive
of us. And so let's welcome to the show. Michael Barbarina.
How are you?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Fantastic? Dane?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
How are you? I'm doing good except a little dyslexic
today I think maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Really huh well, thank you for having me. And today
I want to talk about something where I'm going to
get vulnerable.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
How do you like that?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Oh? Yeah, I need to work on this really bad,
and I have been. But it does take time, especially
when you're sixty eight years old and you've been doing
something for fifty years, you know, the same way. But
basically I'd like to talk today about scheduling freedom. We
(01:50):
business owners get caught up in you know, working more
than forty hours. We get caught up and working a
ton of our is because of well, the emergency nature
of your business, the reactionary nature of your business. And
what I want to do today in our in our
segment is talk about three fundamental shifts that have to happen.
(02:16):
And then I also want to talk about once you
have those shifts in mind, what are the fundamental pillars
that you really have to attack if you will, if
you're going to really schedule freedom and scheduling freedom means
being able to having the business you know, serve you
(02:39):
first and foremost, but also serve you to the point
where now you have the time to spend you know,
more time to spend with your family, uh and you
know you could go to your kids games, You can
adjust your schedule anytime you want, and the and the
business is still serving you with the the leverage, revenue
(03:01):
and income that you've always desired. And that's really where
I think all of us want to be. Certainly where
I want to be and certainly what I'm working towards
and like I said, being being vulnerable today. This is
something that I'm still in the process of working on.
So the three fundamental shifts that are needed for scheduling
freedom is shift number one is going from reactive to proactive.
(03:26):
So instead of letting your day happen to you, you
design your day around your priorities. So instead of responding
to whatever screams the loudest, I think every business owner
knows what it means to that you focus on what
moves your business forward most efficiently. Now, these things not
easy to do, and we have some pillars of fundamental
(03:48):
pillars of success on how to achieve these. But that's
shift mind shift number one. Mind shift number two is
going from task or to outcome focused, or task focused
to outcome focused. So instead of measuring your success by
how busy you are, which sometimes we business owners do.
(04:10):
I know I do that, you measure it by the
results you produce. So instead of wearing your eighty hour
workweek like a badge of honor, you've on creating maximum
impact with optimal efficiency. It's a little different. And then
the third shift is from indispensable to systematics. So instead
(04:32):
of being the person who has to handle everything. You
become the person who builds systems that handle everything. Yeah,
that's that's really the really critical because once you build
a system that handles something, you don't have to handle
it anymore. The time leverage of that one system that
(04:55):
you built that handled something that you were handling has
an incredible compound effect.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I think you have to trust that system too, because
a lot of us as business owns that system may
not do it as fast as you do, or even
or as good as you do. And I think you
just have to let that go because you're never going
to grow to business. There's only so far you can
take the business on your own, no matter how great
you are, how talented you are, anything like that get
(05:26):
You're only as good as your team, which your system
is your team.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Absolutely. And you know, we talked about mindset shift being
one of the critical five steps that you have to
take in order to implement business and financial strategies that
your competition isn't doing. And think we talked about that
two weeks ago, and this is part of that shift,
and I realized it isn't easy, but it's so very
necessary and building the right system, just if you just
(05:55):
built one system this month. Even if you built one
system this quarter, you know, because this is where you know,
it's October and and this is quarter four. And if
you just built one system, the compound effect of time
savings that one system will have is unthinkable. It's it's unimaginable.
(06:19):
So so now, achieving true scheduling freedom requires mastering five
fundamental pillars that I that I mentioned I would talk
about earlier. And these really aren't time management tips. These
are strategic frameworks that will change how you operate your business.
So the first, and this is I'll tell you it's
(06:41):
hard to get business owners to do this number one.
This first thing, and that's what's called a time audit
and awareness. So before you can optimize your time, you
need to understand where your time is going.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
People don't want to know that. That's why I want
to do.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I think you're right, but I can help. I can
tell you something. I came up with an idea this
week for a business owner that I've been pounding this
into him, always complains about there's no time, there's no time,
there's no time. Well, let's see what you're spending your
time on. And of course he came up drive three
weeks in a row, to which I pounded the table
(07:19):
and said, look, he loves his cell phone. Now, most
cell phones, if not all cell phones have recorders on them,
so you don't have to write it down. Just talk
into the into the phone what you're doing right now,
and that's it. And then we'll take all of that
(07:39):
recording and we'll format it to understand what you're doing.
So when you'd start a task or start a stop
a task, you just hit the recorder. So that's the
best idea I could come up with him, and of
course it's working. Yeah. So but this guy is so
(08:00):
attached to his phone.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I don't know about other people in your audience, but
most people have their phone with them, so it helps them.
But it's you're gonna stay trapped if you don't identify
how you're spending your time. So you need to track
your time for a full week, just a week, every
single activity, every interruption, every distraction. But it's it's just
(08:25):
so relevant and you'll discover that activities that take that
you think take thirty minutes actually take two hours. When
you when you're you know, all of a sudden, now
you're on your phone it's two hours later and you
thought it was going to be thirty minutes later. Yeah,
and you realize you're spending your day, you know, three
hours a day or four hours a day on tasks
(08:46):
that could be delegated or eliminated totally.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
It's just like finances too. Like while it's in the
investment business, you would do a financial needs analysis, right,
and you would always find at least east at the
very least, and usually more two hundred dollars a month
in ghost money that people couldn't account for. And people
with that too, they don't want to do that analysis
(09:10):
because they don't really want to know how much they're spending,
you know, but that's the only way they're going to
get to have more money, and that the freedom is
the same thing. I did it with brokers that worked
for me when I had a brokerage firm. Basically, generally
brokers worked twelve to sixteen hours a day at my
(09:33):
competition all the time, and I had this viewpoint of
you know what, I've seen what happens as being a
broker myself. When you got to work at twelve to
sixteen hour day, you pace yourself, you don't have any
personal free time, so you steal that personal time at work,
and so you're doing personal time at work to stretch
(09:55):
out at twelve to sixteen hours. When I found out
by implementing what I did, it was by telling my
brokers they only had to work an eight hour day.
They would work in that eight hour day because they
had personal time. They didn't have to steal personal time.
And that goes for business owners. Listen, you know whatever
(10:16):
you do as a business owner, yes, you tend to
be a slave to your business, but that doesn't get
you anywhere because it inhibits you from moving upward and forward.
And you need to have you time. And we all
do it. I do it. I'm guilty of it. There's
times that I only I don't even go anywhere all
week because I'm too busy working morning till night. And
(10:39):
I sit there and say, well, isn't that dumb because
I could probably get all that stuff done still and
have personal time for me, and I would be more motivated,
have more energy because I had the freedom of me time.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Interesting, Yeah, no, that's that's a that's a great point.
And so you know the goal of the time audit
is it to micro manage every minute. The goal is
to just gain awareness of where your time is actually
going versus where you think it's going. You know, and
you can't fix what you don't measure. It's just another
another reason why you do the time ondit. But the
(11:18):
second pillar is priority alignment. This is where most business
owners completely miss the mark because they try to manage
their time without first clarifying their priorities. And this is
where I go back to what we wrote about in
our book, Dean and what we talked about God. I
think it was one of our first shows where the
eighty twenty rule comes in, where eighty percent of your
(11:40):
revenue comes from twenty percent of what you do every day,
and that twenty percent was broken out in a seven
step pathway to profit formula. And I'm just going to
quickly review those You go back to that show, because
I think the show is called the eighty twenty rule
or something to that effect.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
But it's lead.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Generation, attracting your ideal customer conversion optimsation, converting those leads
into your sales process, closing rate improvement, and rolling more
prospects into your product or services. Customer retention which is
very well ignored. Keeping the customer you have.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Which might get that. Why people ignore that.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
That's yeah, they ignore that. That's the biggest, easiest. Yeah,
that's the biggest one that's ignored. That's the biggest one. Wow,
we all think that we once we get a customer,
we get to keep them by default.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
And then the fifth is average dollar. Increasing that average dollar,
so increasing the transaction value. The sixth is frequency of sale,
getting customers to buy more often. And then of course
we have to control our cost both fifth fixed and
variable costs. And if you're not spending the majority of
time of your strategic time working on these seven areas,
(12:49):
you're missing eighty percent of your revenue potential. Yeah, so
that's what's pillar number two. Pillar number three is calendar control.
So your calendar is essentially your life. If someone else
controls your calendar, they control your life. And and if
urgent tasks control your calendar, then urgency controls your life. Yeah,
(13:12):
and you don't, You don't control your calendar, to where
if you don't control your calendar, chaos controls your life. So,
for whatever reason, the calendar, that's why I say the
calendar is your life. And the rule is simple. If
it's not on your calendar, it's not going to happen.
This means time blocking your priorities before you schedule anything else.
(13:34):
I had to learn this, So every every space in
my calendar is blocked at the start of a day.
I might only have two meetings, but every space is
blocked with the priorities that I have to address. This
is part of my growth and development and part of
me learn how to how to get how to schedule freedom.
(13:57):
And it means protecting that strategy agent time like you
would protect a meeting with your most important client.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
That's the key.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And so most business owners fill their calendars with reactive
activities and then wonder why they never get any proactive
work done. Strategic business owners just do the opposite. They
protect their proactive time and fit reactive time around that.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And so the fourth pillar is what I call distraction.
And I know I'm running out of time here.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Okay, Okay, it's important.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Okay. So the fourth pillar is distraction management. Those distractions
are not random events that happen to you. They're predictable
interruptions that you can systematically prevent or managed to see.
The average business owner gets interrupted every eleven minutes. Imagine
that every.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Eleven I do imagine that.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I mean that means they never get deep into the
strategic work. So you need to identify your most common
distractions and build those systems first, as we talked about earlier,
to manage them. And it's and is it employees who
interrupt you with questions that they should know how to answer?
Is it build a better training?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You know what I mean. That's the other thing. Some
employees just like to play. It's safe, So they asked
the boss, right, that's a that's a safe way to
get you.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Know what I do in that situlation. Yeah, tell me
I have learned my lesson and I will not answer
the phone first. Five minutes later, I kid you not
never mind, I figured it out. Oh god, because especially nowadays,
good people's first thing is to ask somebody or even
(15:50):
ask Google. You know, it's not to think, you know,
and to sit there and go, well, what should I do?
Without asking? And then when I don't respond right away,
it forces them to have to think and then they
(16:10):
come up with the answer unbelievable. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
And so the fifth pillar is self care in personal time.
This is the pillar that most business owners sacrifice first
and it's a mistake that destroys everything else. You cannot
build a sustainable business if you're running on empty. You
cannot make good strategic decisions if you're exhausted, stressed, out,
burned out, whatever you want to call it. So self
(16:34):
care isn't selfish. It's strategic. Taking care of your physical health,
mental wellbeing, relationships. They all make you more effective, not
less effective. So arrested, energized, focused business owner will accomplish
more in six strategic hours than an exhausted owner will
accomplish in twelve chaotic.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Hours, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
And so you have to schedule time for exercise and
family time, not because you have left over time, but
because these activities fuel the energy and creativity that you
need to excel your business.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
What's funny about that, too, is you know that when
you say the family time, the way I am now
is the same as I was before I had kids.
And basically what that message is is when I did
have kids growing up, that I scheduled family time. And
guess what, I was just thinking about it, Like just
(17:33):
this morning, I was thinking about it was amazing that
I got through everything I did and business was so
successful by working less than I ever had. Amazing.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, it's amazing how that can work.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
That's why that freedom so important. And we think we
don't have it, and we think our business is going
to fall apart. We think we're not going to get climbed.
And what you really find out is you get a
lot more by scheduling your freedom, because not only do
you have your freedom, but you have your energy, you
have your mindset, and you have everything else to make
(18:12):
your life not stressful and happy instead. Right right, absolutely,
so great words from you, and I want to hear
more great words. So let's tell everybody how they can
reach out to you and get more information on this
but many other subjects and even help for their business
(18:33):
because you do help businesses. You're not just absolutely a
guest on my podcast. It's not, you know, So let's
let them know how to dig in.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Okay, just go to NEXTSTEPCFO dot net and you can
download a free copy excuse me, a free copy of
my book called Powerful Business Strategies Progging in my Throat here, sorry, Dan.
And so what we also love to do is we
love to interview business owners. It's our favorite thing in
the world because we keep writing additional additions to our
(19:04):
book because business is always changing. So you go to
next step CFO forward slash contact, fill out the contact
form and the message section right book interview and the
way the book interview works, it's it's sixty minutes on zoom.
I present strategies from my book. I ask you, simply
ask you what you believe would be the impact of
(19:26):
that strategy should a business owner implement it in your industry?
And I document it for the book. And by the way,
all the things that I talk about, I provide clarity,
a step by step roadmap. I help you upgrade your skills,
I help develop your mindset, and I also optimize your environment.
So all of those things is what I work towards it.
(19:48):
And hey, where about implementation. I never say that we're
business coaches. First of all, we're CFOs that understand strategic implementation,
because implementing strategies is where it's at. It's not learning
them can learn anything on Google like you said, or AI.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
There you go. Well, yes, you are a master at
the powerful business strategies. And I'm glad you're on our
show every week and you'll be on again next week.
So everybody's got to tune in. If you've missed any
other episodes before, go to the back catalog and check
them out. These are key secrets to your success, and
(20:24):
they're right here for you on the Adventures of Pipe Man.
Thank you Michael, thank you for having me here. Thank
you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin. I'm w
for CUI Radio.
Hi, you have learned to censure. Wow for you.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Your This is the Pipe Main here on the Adventures
Pipe Man W four c Y Radio, and once again
it's time for a positively Pipe Main segment. This is
where we give you great business strategies, motivational strategies, empowerment
(00:36):
strategies and much more. And right now we have our
expert resonant or resident expert something like that, something like
that in business and powerful business strategies and we're gonna learn.
Oh my god, the one we're going to talk about
today is exciting for me because just about every business
(01:00):
owner experience is that, even the strongest and most positive
of us. And so let's welcome to the show. Michael Barbarina.
How are you?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Fantastic? Dane?
Speaker 2 (01:10):
How are you? I'm doing good except a little dyslexic
today I think maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Really huh well, thank you for having me. And today
I want to talk about something where I'm going to
get vulnerable.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
How do you like that?
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Oh? Yeah, I need to work on this really bad,
and I have been. But it does take time, especially
when you're sixty eight years old and you've been doing
something for fifty years, you know, the same way. But
basically I'd like to talk today about scheduling freedom. We
(01:50):
business owners get caught up in you know, working more
than forty hours. We get caught up and working a
ton of our is because of well, the emergency nature
of your business, the reactionary nature of your business. And
what I want to do today in our in our
segment is talk about three fundamental shifts that have to happen.
(02:16):
And then I also want to talk about once you
have those shifts in mind, what are the fundamental pillars
that you really have to attack if you will, if
you're going to really schedule freedom and scheduling freedom means
being able to having the business you know, serve you
(02:39):
first and foremost, but also serve you to the point
where now you have the time to spend you know,
more time to spend with your family, uh and you
know you could go to your kids games, You can
adjust your schedule anytime you want, and the and the
business is still serving you with the the leverage, revenue
(03:01):
and income that you've always desired. And that's really where
I think all of us want to be. Certainly where
I want to be and certainly what I'm working towards
and like I said, being being vulnerable today. This is
something that I'm still in the process of working on.
So the three fundamental shifts that are needed for scheduling
freedom is shift number one is going from reactive to proactive.
(03:26):
So instead of letting your day happen to you, you
design your day around your priorities. So instead of responding
to whatever screams the loudest, I think every business owner
knows what it means to that you focus on what
moves your business forward most efficiently. Now, these things not
easy to do, and we have some pillars of fundamental
(03:48):
pillars of success on how to achieve these. But that's
shift mind shift number one. Mind shift number two is
going from task or to outcome focused, or task focused
to outcome focused. So instead of measuring your success by
how busy you are, which sometimes we business owners do.
(04:10):
I know I do that, you measure it by the
results you produce. So instead of wearing your eighty hour
workweek like a badge of honor, you've on creating maximum
impact with optimal efficiency. It's a little different. And then
the third shift is from indispensable to systematics. So instead
(04:32):
of being the person who has to handle everything. You
become the person who builds systems that handle everything. Yeah,
that's that's really the really critical because once you build
a system that handles something, you don't have to handle
it anymore. The time leverage of that one system that
(04:55):
you built that handled something that you were handling has
an incredible compound effect.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
I think you have to trust that system too, because
a lot of us as business owns that system may
not do it as fast as you do, or even
or as good as you do. And I think you
just have to let that go because you're never going
to grow to business. There's only so far you can
take the business on your own, no matter how great
you are, how talented you are, anything like that get
(05:26):
You're only as good as your team, which your system
is your team.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Absolutely. And you know, we talked about mindset shift being
one of the critical five steps that you have to
take in order to implement business and financial strategies that
your competition isn't doing. And think we talked about that
two weeks ago, and this is part of that shift,
and I realized it isn't easy, but it's so very
necessary and building the right system, just if you just
(05:55):
built one system this month. Even if you built one
system this quarter, you know, because this is where you know,
it's October and and this is quarter four. And if
you just built one system, the compound effect of time
savings that one system will have is unthinkable. It's it's unimaginable.
(06:19):
So so now, achieving true scheduling freedom requires mastering five
fundamental pillars that I that I mentioned I would talk
about earlier. And these really aren't time management tips. These
are strategic frameworks that will change how you operate your business.
So the first, and this is I'll tell you it's
(06:41):
hard to get business owners to do this number one.
This first thing, and that's what's called a time audit
and awareness. So before you can optimize your time, you
need to understand where your time is going.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
People don't want to know that. That's why I want
to do.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I think you're right, but I can help. I can
tell you something. I came up with an idea this
week for a business owner that I've been pounding this
into him, always complains about there's no time, there's no time,
there's no time. Well, let's see what you're spending your
time on. And of course he came up drive three
weeks in a row, to which I pounded the table
(07:19):
and said, look, he loves his cell phone. Now, most
cell phones, if not all cell phones have recorders on them,
so you don't have to write it down. Just talk
into the into the phone what you're doing right now,
and that's it. And then we'll take all of that
(07:39):
recording and we'll format it to understand what you're doing.
So when you'd start a task or start a stop
a task, you just hit the recorder. So that's the
best idea I could come up with him, and of
course it's working. Yeah. So but this guy is so
(08:00):
attached to his phone.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Now.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
I don't know about other people in your audience, but
most people have their phone with them, so it helps them.
But it's you're gonna stay trapped if you don't identify
how you're spending your time. So you need to track
your time for a full week, just a week, every
single activity, every interruption, every distraction. But it's it's just
(08:25):
so relevant and you'll discover that activities that take that
you think take thirty minutes actually take two hours. When
you when you're you know, all of a sudden, now
you're on your phone it's two hours later and you
thought it was going to be thirty minutes later. Yeah,
and you realize you're spending your day, you know, three
hours a day or four hours a day on tasks
(08:46):
that could be delegated or eliminated totally.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
It's just like finances too. Like while it's in the
investment business, you would do a financial needs analysis, right,
and you would always find at least east at the
very least, and usually more two hundred dollars a month
in ghost money that people couldn't account for. And people
with that too, they don't want to do that analysis
(09:10):
because they don't really want to know how much they're spending,
you know, but that's the only way they're going to
get to have more money, and that the freedom is
the same thing. I did it with brokers that worked
for me when I had a brokerage firm. Basically, generally
brokers worked twelve to sixteen hours a day at my
(09:33):
competition all the time, and I had this viewpoint of
you know what, I've seen what happens as being a
broker myself. When you got to work at twelve to
sixteen hour day, you pace yourself, you don't have any
personal free time, so you steal that personal time at work,
and so you're doing personal time at work to stretch
(09:55):
out at twelve to sixteen hours. When I found out
by implementing what I did, it was by telling my
brokers they only had to work an eight hour day.
They would work in that eight hour day because they
had personal time. They didn't have to steal personal time.
And that goes for business owners. Listen, you know whatever
(10:16):
you do as a business owner, yes, you tend to
be a slave to your business, but that doesn't get
you anywhere because it inhibits you from moving upward and forward.
And you need to have you time. And we all
do it. I do it. I'm guilty of it. There's
times that I only I don't even go anywhere all
week because I'm too busy working morning till night. And
(10:39):
I sit there and say, well, isn't that dumb because
I could probably get all that stuff done still and
have personal time for me, and I would be more motivated,
have more energy because I had the freedom of me time.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Interesting, Yeah, no, that's that's a that's a great point.
And so you know the goal of the time audit
is it to micro manage every minute. The goal is
to just gain awareness of where your time is actually
going versus where you think it's going. You know, and
you can't fix what you don't measure. It's just another
another reason why you do the time ondit. But the
(11:18):
second pillar is priority alignment. This is where most business
owners completely miss the mark because they try to manage
their time without first clarifying their priorities. And this is
where I go back to what we wrote about in
our book, Dean and what we talked about God. I
think it was one of our first shows where the
eighty twenty rule comes in, where eighty percent of your
(11:40):
revenue comes from twenty percent of what you do every day,
and that twenty percent was broken out in a seven
step pathway to profit formula. And I'm just going to
quickly review those You go back to that show, because
I think the show is called the eighty twenty rule
or something to that effect.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
But it's lead.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Generation, attracting your ideal customer conversion optimsation, converting those leads
into your sales process, closing rate improvement, and rolling more
prospects into your product or services. Customer retention which is
very well ignored. Keeping the customer you have.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Which might get that. Why people ignore that.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
That's yeah, they ignore that. That's the biggest, easiest. Yeah,
that's the biggest one that's ignored. That's the biggest one. Wow,
we all think that we once we get a customer,
we get to keep them by default.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
And then the fifth is average dollar. Increasing that average dollar,
so increasing the transaction value. The sixth is frequency of sale,
getting customers to buy more often. And then of course
we have to control our cost both fifth fixed and
variable costs. And if you're not spending the majority of
time of your strategic time working on these seven areas,
(12:49):
you're missing eighty percent of your revenue potential. Yeah, so
that's what's pillar number two. Pillar number three is calendar control.
So your calendar is essentially your life. If someone else
controls your calendar, they control your life. And and if
urgent tasks control your calendar, then urgency controls your life. Yeah,
(13:12):
and you don't, You don't control your calendar, to where
if you don't control your calendar, chaos controls your life. So,
for whatever reason, the calendar, that's why I say the
calendar is your life. And the rule is simple. If
it's not on your calendar, it's not going to happen.
This means time blocking your priorities before you schedule anything else.
(13:34):
I had to learn this, So every every space in
my calendar is blocked at the start of a day.
I might only have two meetings, but every space is
blocked with the priorities that I have to address. This
is part of my growth and development and part of
me learn how to how to get how to schedule freedom.
(13:57):
And it means protecting that strategy agent time like you
would protect a meeting with your most important client.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
That's the key.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And so most business owners fill their calendars with reactive
activities and then wonder why they never get any proactive
work done. Strategic business owners just do the opposite. They
protect their proactive time and fit reactive time around that.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
And so the fourth pillar is what I call distraction.
And I know I'm running out of time here.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
Okay, Okay, it's important.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Okay. So the fourth pillar is distraction management. Those distractions
are not random events that happen to you. They're predictable
interruptions that you can systematically prevent or managed to see.
The average business owner gets interrupted every eleven minutes. Imagine
that every.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Eleven I do imagine that.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I mean that means they never get deep into the
strategic work. So you need to identify your most common
distractions and build those systems first, as we talked about earlier,
to manage them. And it's and is it employees who
interrupt you with questions that they should know how to answer?
Is it build a better training?
Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:17):
You know what I mean. That's the other thing. Some
employees just like to play. It's safe, So they asked
the boss, right, that's a that's a safe way to
get you.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Know what I do in that situlation. Yeah, tell me
I have learned my lesson and I will not answer
the phone first. Five minutes later, I kid you not
never mind, I figured it out. Oh god, because especially nowadays,
good people's first thing is to ask somebody or even
(15:50):
ask Google. You know, it's not to think, you know,
and to sit there and go, well, what should I do?
Without asking? And then when I don't respond right away,
it forces them to have to think and then they
(16:10):
come up with the answer unbelievable. Unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
And so the fifth pillar is self care in personal time.
This is the pillar that most business owners sacrifice first
and it's a mistake that destroys everything else. You cannot
build a sustainable business if you're running on empty. You
cannot make good strategic decisions if you're exhausted, stressed, out,
burned out, whatever you want to call it. So self
(16:34):
care isn't selfish. It's strategic. Taking care of your physical health,
mental wellbeing, relationships. They all make you more effective, not
less effective. So arrested, energized, focused business owner will accomplish
more in six strategic hours than an exhausted owner will
accomplish in twelve chaotic.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Hours, no doubt.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
And so you have to schedule time for exercise and
family time, not because you have left over time, but
because these activities fuel the energy and creativity that you
need to excel your business.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
What's funny about that, too, is you know that when
you say the family time, the way I am now
is the same as I was before I had kids.
And basically what that message is is when I did
have kids growing up, that I scheduled family time. And
guess what, I was just thinking about it, Like just
(17:33):
this morning, I was thinking about it was amazing that
I got through everything I did and business was so
successful by working less than I ever had. Amazing.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
Yeah, it's amazing how that can work.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
That's why that freedom so important. And we think we
don't have it, and we think our business is going
to fall apart. We think we're not going to get climbed.
And what you really find out is you get a
lot more by scheduling your freedom, because not only do
you have your freedom, but you have your energy, you
have your mindset, and you have everything else to make
(18:12):
your life not stressful and happy instead. Right right, absolutely,
so great words from you, and I want to hear
more great words. So let's tell everybody how they can
reach out to you and get more information on this
but many other subjects and even help for their business
(18:33):
because you do help businesses. You're not just absolutely a
guest on my podcast. It's not, you know, So let's
let them know how to dig in.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Okay, just go to NEXTSTEPCFO dot net and you can
download a free copy excuse me, a free copy of
my book called Powerful Business Strategies Progging in my Throat here, sorry, Dan.
And so what we also love to do is we
love to interview business owners. It's our favorite thing in
the world because we keep writing additional additions to our
(19:04):
book because business is always changing. So you go to
next step CFO forward slash contact, fill out the contact
form and the message section right book interview and the
way the book interview works, it's it's sixty minutes on zoom.
I present strategies from my book. I ask you, simply
ask you what you believe would be the impact of
(19:26):
that strategy should a business owner implement it in your industry?
And I document it for the book. And by the way,
all the things that I talk about, I provide clarity,
a step by step roadmap. I help you upgrade your skills,
I help develop your mindset, and I also optimize your environment.
So all of those things is what I work towards it.
(19:48):
And hey, where about implementation. I never say that we're
business coaches. First of all, we're CFOs that understand strategic implementation,
because implementing strategies is where it's at. It's not learning
them can learn anything on Google like you said, or AI.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
There you go. Well, yes, you are a master at
the powerful business strategies. And I'm glad you're on our
show every week and you'll be on again next week.
So everybody's got to tune in. If you've missed any
other episodes before, go to the back catalog and check
them out. These are key secrets to your success, and
(20:24):
they're right here for you on the Adventures of Pipe Man.
Thank you Michael, thank you for having me here. Thank
you for listening to the Adventures of Pipemin. I'm w
for CUI Radio.
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