Laura Giacomelli: From Choreography to CPA

In this episode of the Business Owner Breakthrough Podcast, host Pete Mohr is joined by Laura Giacomelli, who shares her journey in the entrepreneurial world of dance studio management. They delve into the nuances of business process management, emphasizing the importance of evolving from hands-on tasks to a more strategic and overseeing role.

Here are a few things Pete covers:

• The transformation from detailed involvement to a dashboard overview in business management.
• The significance of communication, process, and accountability in business success.
• Adapting business processes in response to changes, like the COVID-19 pandemic.
• The role of training and delegation in achieving business efficiency and personal freedom.
• Utilizing technological tools like Trello for effective project management.

It’s time to take action:
Reflect on your own business processes. Are you too caught up in the details? Consider tools and strategies discussed in this episode to elevate your role from being an operator to a visionary. Empower your team, delegate effectively, and embrace the tools that can streamline your processes.

Connect with Laura:
Libra Dance Studio - Warminster, PA
Website: www.libradancestudio.com
Email: laura@libradancestudio.com

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Are you looking to make some changes in your business and your life in 2024?  Head over to speaktopete.com and book a chat with me to see if we're the right fit!

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Transcript

Pete Mohr: 0:38

Hey welcome back to another edition of the business owner breakthrough. And today special episode, we have Laura jakka mele. She is a dance school owner just outside of Philadelphia. She owns Libra dance studios, and she's done so well. She's basically 10 times her business over the last 10 years and has 11 People working with her. And, you know, one of the things as business owners we talked about is freedom. And Laura has done a pretty good job in getting some more freedom over the last couple of years. But she's looking for even more. And that's pretty common as we roll through our business. And one of the things that we talked a little bit about, was this idea around trust. And is it the people that we don't trust to hand the stuff off to? Or is it the process that we don't trust, and it's often not the people, it's often the process. So today was really digging into a couple of the process management tools that she could take in use and reframe, in order to hone that process a little better, so that everybody has proper communication on where things are at in her business. And things are being done without her managing or micromanaging within that business. So that it's just taken care of. So let's dig into it with awesome business owner, Laura Laura Giacomelli, it is a pleasure to have you here on the Giacomelli. business owner breakthrough today,

Laura Giacomelli: 2:02

thank you for having me, I'm very excited to be here, feet,

Pete Mohr: 2:04

you know, we met through re gold and dance life and the gold mastermind and all of those kinds of things. And I know you are one of the onboard coaches there and doing some stuff with Ray as well. He's got such a great community of dance school owners and wanted to invite a couple of you on to my podcast here, the business owner break through and go through a few things that we talked about at some of the conferences and some of the shows and some of the different things. And when I reached out to you, it's like, yeah, yeah, love to come on. And it was it was so so great. And you know, one of the things that we talk a lot about here on the business owner breakthrough, the whole podcast series is all around communication process and accountability, what I call the CPA, you know, in mastering your CPA, not your Chartered Professional Accountancy, but your mastery as a business owner of communication throughout your business, process management throughout your business, and accountability throughout your business. And when we were chatting a few minutes ago, just before we hopped on your like, I still want to get through some process and accountability stuff, because these are the things and Laura, I know you work with a bunch of dance school owners as well. But these are the things that just keep coming back all the time, right? We're always honing these different pieces of our puzzles as business owners. Well, I think because when you realize your business is like a living entity, right? It's always growing and changing, and you're keeping up with things that are happening in the world, and what you're going to offer your business. So like you have your systems and processes, but what I'm realizing is like your systems and processes before COVID are different during different post COVID are different right now are different, like, so I feel like the growth of it all. And the evolution of it all is always changing. So it's a lot to keep up with. And it's what I'm having my issue with is putting the systems in place, maybe if they're slightly changed, or a little different from the previous year and expectations. And now making sure my employees are at that expectation of following through with the updates, I guess I would say, it's really interesting. One of the lines that I've used over the years, and I haven't said it lately, and it just kind of came back when you're talking about that was there are no perfect processes, but we're always trying to perfect them. I think that's exactly what it is. Yeah, you know, it's I mean, unless you're literally building the same widget for 10 years in a row and you put it in the computer system, and the robotic arm just drops the thing. But for most business owners, small business owners, because that's our audience here today is it's really things do revolve and you know, whether it's your kid from three year old that day school to my kid at 23 year old and off on his own, you know, things evolve and our businesses evolve to as leaders, what we need to be doing is continuously evolving these three things communication, process management and accountability. And I think the big thing when we look at the idea, because a lot of people who are business owners bootstrapped it, I'm gonna start those first one to three years. And I think a lot of listeners here can probably associate with this, that first one to three years. It's like I just got to put in my time, get everything done, and we get habitual alized into making all the decisions. Right. And I think you get into that headspace where I have to do it all it has to be me and I'm just speaking as like a small business owner. I've been open for 13 years. And I feel like once I got into more upper education and putting myself in rooms where people are already at the spot where I wanted to be that was when I started really listening to the people around me being like I shouldn't be doing cleaning the toilets and running payroll and teaching all the classes and doing all the math

Laura Giacomelli: 5:38

are getting and the media at like, you can't, the goal needs to be to get everything out of at least in my mind, this is what my goal has been, I needed to get it out of my mind, put it on paper, and then delegate it like that. To me, that's, that's my goal. And I feel like that has been my goal a lot. Since, as you mentioned, I have a three year old, right and I, I want to make sure that my first baby, which is labor dance studio, that baby's taken care of, right. So I can now be at home when I want to and take care of my my new baby, which is cold. That's always been like my, my long term goal with libre dance studio is to not have to micromanage it. But I think you're right, I think a lot of us get in that mindset of small business owners, well, it's mine, I have to do it, it's mine, I'm going to do it better, I'm going to do it, if my name is on, it's going to be done the way I want it to be done when in reality 80%, okay, like the 8020 rule, if it's 80% done, and you can put that other 20% on it and buffer it up and make it really the standard that you want it to be, it still got 80% done without you doing it. The end, you know, and that's once you kind of, in my mind, once you switch to that mentality, I felt less overwhelmed, I felt very overwhelmed with my growth of the business until I started switching it up. I mean,

Pete Mohr: 6:57

you're you're talking my language for sure. And when we look at these things, the other way of looking at that is going from detail to dashboard. Right? So and when you start doing that, I use a lot of thinking tools with my coaching Laura, and one of the one of the thinking tools that I came up with quite some time ago, now it's called assign it and assign it revolves around the four A's. And we've had podcasts on the four A's before but the four A's are really this, assess it, address it, align it and assign it. So we're looking at taking those things, whatever it is cleaning the toilet use cleaning toilets. And by the way, I had a toilet cleaning business for 10 years, I've cleaned more toilets than you could ever imagine. But I didn't do it forever. Right. I did it when I had to because I had to fill in for somebody or wherever the case is. But I had a team of people out there cleaning toilets every day, like we service 300 restaurants and dance studios and all sorts of different places. Right? So you know, when we look at this, this philosophy of taking something, whatever it may be, whether it's bookkeeping, or whether it's the next class that you don't actually want to run yourself, you know, it doesn't matter or or in your industry, I know that ordering costumes is a big piece. And

Laura Giacomelli: 8:06

and that's what we're in the middle of right now. It's costumes, and now whole separate systems for that so that I'm not drowning in ordering eight 900 costumes on my own. What do you do? And all that inventory comes in? What is that process of them getting? You know, like having all of that we're literally in the thick of it right now. And yeah, years ago was all me doing it. I can't think back and I'm like, What was I thinking? So thinking doing all of

Pete Mohr: 8:32

that, flip it back, you know, I'm a shoe store owner. So we own shoe stores? Well, yesterday, I was buying shoes for next fall and winter, even though it's only November as we're recording this. So we have to order out a year in advance. But this earlier this year, I lost the person that's been doing that for the last five years, a key person in our organization. And before that, I did it but you know, I lost? His name was Brock. And in our accountability chart, that's a big hole to fill. Absolutely. Yeah. But you know what, because we had looked at sort of this assessment, address it alignment and assign it, it's like, assess it, okay, well, we need somebody else to do this, address it, what's involved in doing it, align it, who else on the accountability chart? Do we need or some people use the word organizational chart, but I prefer accountability chart because it means this person is accountable. And then assign it, boom, that person is there. And so you need to have your process in place. Because getting back to the idea of do I need to micromanage or whatever the case is all this idea I've owned, she told me since 2010. So we're parallel there. 13 years for this, this business. I've had other businesses before, but you know, how do we set this up? And who else can manage this? And how do I feel comfortable, but 13 years later? It's not about do I trust my team? Because hopefully you actually have people working 13 years later, you know, when we talk about well, I don't trust them to do it. Because this is something that goes through owners heads a lot, right? I don't think I trust them enough to get this done. That's why we feel as though the pressure of having to micromanage things and dig it like what the reality is. It's not that you don't trust the person. It's that you really don't trust the process.

Laura Giacomelli: 10:16

I agree with you. I feel like think talking about say costumes. When I I have a process of how I go to costumes and to be honest, it starts in August and I've only been technically ordered them until October and November. I have two waves that I order if the company costumes that we order because they have to come in earlier for competitions. And later we have the recital and that's not until June. So we have a nice big buffer with that. I never wrote anything down or explained to my people exactly how I did it. You know, it's like, well, you measure this. Yeah. Well, how do you measure them?

Pete Mohr: 10:52

Exactly? What does that mean? Would it right? Like, this

Laura Giacomelli: 10:55

is how you measure their chest, you have to you have to keep in mind, it's October, they need these in June, how much are they going to grow? Right? So what is what are you adding? What are you subtracting, and it's different for each measurement their chest or waist or hips? And so when I would say measure, they don't know, right? So now I, I literally went to every single my senior teacher. And then my three staff members who run my office and I said, Everyone come here and I pull a dancer out of the classroom, I said, this is how you measure this. This is how you measure this, this is how you measure this. This is their girth. And I said, and when you give me measurements, you give me their exact measurements, because some of them were adding, not adding. And then I was like, costumes were coming in. And they're coming in wrong. Too big. They're too small. And I think as business owners in my mind, I'm like, well, that's money, because now I have to pay to return it and exchange it. And now we're going through all of that. And that's just costing the business mistakes and money and mistakes and money. And my original fear was like, I'll just do it. And then I was like, I think the more mature I got and comfortable and confident with owning my business, I said, No, I'm going to take time to train them. You have to take the time to train them. Like, I literally ended and it's, I did it last year, right when we were measuring. And I did it again this year. I said I know you won't know how to do this. But here's your refresher. This is how you do this. This is how you do you know and it that's just one piece of the huge pie. But taking measuring 500 Students alive, I don't want to be there every single day measuring 500 students, right? Like, I need my office staff to be able to handle that and send it to me via email at the end of the day. Right. That's it. I don't need it. I don't need to do it.

Pete Mohr: 12:37

Put it in the spreadsheet and away we go. Right. Exactly,

Laura Giacomelli: 12:40

exactly. And not not feeling like I have to do it. So it's going to be right trust trusting them that they can I gave them the training I they have the skill, right, they can do it. And it's interesting once I kind of figure out what I need to put those refreshers in. Yeah, I literally I just had 400 costumes come in, like 450. And they tried them on last week. And this week, I think I have five that I have to return.

Pete Mohr: 13:04

Oh my gosh, that's, that's awesome. Yeah, five out

Laura Giacomelli: 13:08

of 450. I'll take? Yeah,

Pete Mohr: 13:10

for sure. Yeah, especially when you're dealing with kids that are growing and all that.

Laura Giacomelli: 13:15

And knowing that they have space, and the older guys aren't gonna grow as much, you know, like all the little innuendos of it all. And I'm just like, wow, like, we actually did that. As a team, which, and I didn't have to do it all myself, which is the number one thing for me, if

Pete Mohr: 13:30

we look at that process, you know, when when I look at, you know, honing process and process management, stuff like that, you probably don't know, I'm a Kobe certified coach, as well. And Kobe is sort of how you make decisions and all this sort of thing and how you see things and how you want to communicate and people communicate in different ways. And so, you know, one of the things that I would suggest that you might do is, if you may already are doing this, but when you're doing your training, like showing somebody how to measure, make sure it's recorded, oh, set up the tripod. And you record yourself measuring somebody so they can physically see you doing and say, here's the difference between 32 inches and 32 and a half like this is how the tape measure wraps around, you got to get it from this side, because that's a half a half inch difference, like show like if you because some people are very visual. Other people are audio. Yeah, other people want that. They want to read it, right. So when you start building your process in order to trust your process, which is kind of this idea before you can assign a line and assign your process and feel comfortable and trusting the process so that you can then assign it to somebody with confidence. They need to be able to receive it in a way that makes sense to them. Because we have our own ways of making sense. But that doesn't mean it makes sense to them.

Laura Giacomelli: 14:49

Right? And that from a teacher's standpoint, like my mind, that makes total sense. Because, like if I'm teaching a kickball change, I'm demonstrating it. I'm also like saying it, I'm breaking it down for them. So like what you're saying makes complete sense. I totally understand that. Yeah, and so a staff page on Facebook that it's like a private little page and I can just say like, here's your neck next year. Here's the video reminder, this is how we work it you know, as

Pete Mohr: 15:15

we're talking about honing your process, this is this is one of the things because every year you're gonna have 500 or more to measure and you may have new people that haven't been through it before. So the idea here is you get a captured on video, and I'll go back to some history for me. I mean, I've captured some of this stuff years ago on video and it has to be redone because it's it's we've changed a little bit right And it's old video and all that sort of stuff. So that has to be redone. But if all I have to do is redo that one training video that I don't know, 50, or 100 people have watched over the last year or two, once every couple of years, as opposed to having those 50, to 100 presentations to all those different people through training over the course of those last two years, I'm happy standing in front of the camera on a tripod and going through that exercise once every two years to update that video. And that's a good use of my time. And the other thing is that, from a perspective of all of the team that you are now having as accountability partners in this particular task, they're getting the same message every time. The exact same message every time, right,

Laura Giacomelli: 16:23

and there's no miscommunication between whisper down the lane, oh, my, I'll tell the Tuesday person what the Lord told me on Monday, it's just seamless. So

Pete Mohr: 16:31

you put it, you put it into your rhythm of the videos, like when it's time to measure, they all see that video again. And they take the 10 minutes to you know, properly measure. And that's just part of the rhythm of the process that you have in making sure that you are I mean, obviously it worked well this time, but you did it live this time. But if you don't want to do it live or can't do it live next time, who knows, maybe you're having another baby next time when this happens, and you're not going to be available to do that, I

Laura Giacomelli: 17:00

mean, on vacation pee.

Pete Mohr: 17:02

And you know all of these different things, because life does take us away from our business, right. And so the idea behind communication, because now we're communicating that process, through video. And here's the other beautiful thing of all these different API's and everything. Now you take that video, you transcribe it in something like otter, it becomes a transcription, you take the auto transcription, pop it into something like chat GPT. And it does the whole description for you. And that description goes in alongside of the video so that the people that want to watch it, watch it, the people that want to listen to it can listen to it, the people that want to read it can read it, and you've got it all with one video that you have done, or whoever's doing who's currently accountable, so that it can be cross trained throughout your organization. And you can feel comfortable about process management within your business. So you're trusting the process, not having to feel as though you have to trust the person to know everything that's in your head.

Laura Giacomelli: 17:57

I actually I have another question about that. So we're open six days a week, we're Monday through Saturday. I mean, we're we have three studios in my facility. I have hundreds of kids coming in out of the building, I'm, we're, we're big at this point, I'm blessed. But now it's like, we have people in my front office. And one process that I'm struggling a little bit with is I have different people in the office each night. You know, I'm after school activity, and it's an awkward time. It's like three to nine or three to 930 supper and all that. Yeah, exactly. So it's not ideal for someone who has a family. You know, it's just it's hard. It's a hard time. So I have an alumni who's in college right now she has three of the days she's fantastic. Because she grew up, you know, has been to my studio, she understands when someone says what's the recital, she, she's lived, right? She gets it. My mom is my Monday night person. She's great. She's been with me since the beginning. And then I have another alumni who's there on Thursday nights. And she's been with me for years as well. So she's graduate, she's about 2627. But now that we have so many people on each night, it's the transition of the tasks that had to be done, maybe weren't finished, the next person has to pick up the ball and start running with it on Tuesday. And I do this year, I did like a checklist. So when they go into the office, there's a log, and it says here's the things within the first 20 minutes, you need to do return phone calls, check the bathrooms, make sure the lobbies you know good. Make sure the facility basics, right, all that. And then throughout the night, there's like things you need to check off. And then as you lock up, these are the five things you need to handle whether it's vacuuming the waiting room, making sure there's no sticky stuff on the chairs, just like you know, things like basic maintenance. Exactly. But then there's also things that pop up, like checking in the costume, which is what we're handling. We have, you know, 30 or 40 people we don't even know if they're doing recital yet because they it's been you know, people haven't returned phone calls, haven't handed in paperwork, have returned emails, you know, normal dealing with busy parents, right? Yes. So it's, I have them write a log for the next person and leave it on the desk. But sometimes it's like getting lost in translation still. Well, you only got through one through eight. I thought you got one through one through 10 What you like there's just the communication between my people isn't as clear as I would like for it to be and it's them Calling me Hey, Laura did such and such get it done. I'm like, I wasn't even in the office on Tuesday, I don't even I was at home doing my own stuff when it was your day off,

Pete Mohr: 20:47

whatever, you know, or whatever it

Laura Giacomelli: 20:49

may be, I wasn't in there. And my response is, well, you have to call whoever was in there and ask them where they were at with that project, or, you know, if it was complete, I don't know if there's a better way of making of taking me out of the occasion. So that system flows better. I thought, I've said it the right way. But they're still coming to me saying, Oh, she didn't do this, or I thought this was done does this my responsibility. That's where I'm getting a little lost right now.

Pete Mohr: 21:20

So there's a couple of different ways of looking at that. And there's some technologies there, if you choose to use it, some people do, some people don't, it's all good. One of the things that we use, it's called Voxer. It's a voice message app. It's like a walkie talkie. And we have a Voxer channel in amongst our management team. And so every day in the morning, there's the three priorities of what you're working on. And if there's any sort of stuff like at night, I would say just send a box and say all is okay, do that kind of thing. If you're a voice type person, if you'd like to, if you're a checklist person, of course you can have you can form up and curate your checklist a little bit better. This is what I consider project management type stuff, as opposed to just did the bathroom get cleaned that checklist, you know, but we're talking about the continuing projects? Not necessarily did I shut the lights off? And did I you know, put the money in the safe and stuff? Correct? Right? Correct. So the continuing projects, ones should be should live on a different sort of board than the actual checklist. Okay, so

Laura Giacomelli: 22:18

yes, that's my opinion. Now it's front page and back page. Yeah. So check it, simplify it. But it's not

Pete Mohr: 22:24

checklist. This checklist, it's not project management, project management is, is Did you know, there's the list of 12 people that need to be contacted? How far did you get down? That's not the daily checklist. So the daily checklist is the daily checklists, we sweep up, we wipe up, we do all these different things and, and you know, we lock the door, we open the door, all that kind of stuff, that's daily checklists. And you might have a weekly checklist to where you're walking around the studio, checking for lights and all the other stuff and, you know, checklist type stuff which are repeated, done the same way every single time. What we're talking about here is a little bit more project management, and project management of all those independent projects that kind of have a start and an end, can live in a different file if you're paper based, or we like to use a program called Trello. And Trello allows us to set up columns, and everybody's attached to the Trello board. And each project has its own card and the card moves across to do doing and done. And, you know, you you can really just set up columns that are to do doing and done. And then each one has its own card and you build your card, you could have 15 cards there that are all in the to do list. And like if when you get back from your conference, and you have 52 to do lists, then you would write out all the 50 twos, but you don't have they're not in process yet. They're going to be in process some time. But when you pull them into process, they become in process, and somebody's name gets put to that like in your case might be Laura or in my case, you might assign Peter to it or Well, whoever and whoever's little head is there. They're accountable for that process until they've assigned it to somebody else or moved it to the column that says Done. And when it's done, it's done. Nice. So it's sort of what was that we were doing done? program again. Yeah, it's called Trello. And other people will use one called Asana. I mean, there's a lot of different project management type style boards, but Trello is free for I mean, we pay for an upgraded version, but it's free for anybody that wants to use it. And it's it's nice to you can share to anybody who's on that Trello board, and they can see who's accountable and where everything's out. You can put up checklists, you can attach it to your Google Drive with other files and different things like spreadsheets and stuff like that, if you choose to. There's a lot of different little things that you can do with that that will help you in your process management.

Laura Giacomelli: 24:39

That's awesome. Yeah, just because that was just that, for me is going to be the way to take me out of the equation like I don't want nothing. They you can call me with questions. You can. Sure. But there's still the owner, right? But the communication between each other, I want that to be smoother, right? It's not, I don't want to necessarily be the middleman in every conversation. What did she do yesterday? What did she not do? What like? So having something like that I feel like would be yes. Or just completely upgrade everything at the studio in the office? Yeah.

Pete Mohr: 25:11

So if you put your lens on two different things. The one thing is the checklist of sort of what we do every single day are opening checklists, cleaning the bathroom, all that sort of stuff. And the other piece of the puzzle is a project management process board. And that's going to be where are we standing with all this stuff. In the end, we talked earlier about the term detail to dashboard. This is where you can be on the dashboard of this but you can dig in if you happen to be on Trello and you want to know where any of these projects is lining? You go in and you're like, Oh, they're on step number seven, and Judy's accountable for that. And that's great. Okay, so at least I know now now I have the overall view or, as I would put it in Dansko language, the view from the balcony instead of from the floor. I've got the overall view of the production happening here, but I'm not necessarily on the stage running the production.

Laura Giacomelli: 26:01

Yeah, 100%. And I feel like the older we get, at least for me, although I get as a business owner, the less I want to be on the stage dancing, the more I want to be in the balcony watching, right.

Pete Mohr: 26:12

And that's fair.

Laura Giacomelli: 26:15

Yeah, I say, like, when I talk about Libra, I say, she's my baby, but my baby's 13. Now, like, there's things that a 13 year old should be able to do by itself, right that like, that's your, to me, that's the goal, as a business owner, it's like, You're certain things that I shouldn't have to baby her with, she should be able to function and move forward without me running it every single day. And I think down to like, the systems and processes, I'll definitely have to look into that program, because that was, I was like, that's what I need, that I need something to just connect the dots there, because they're looking at me to help connect the dots. And not that I don't want to help them when they need help. But I feel like that would just take a lot off my plate.

Pete Mohr: 26:53

That's the whole point of our conversation here today, Laura is to free you up, right. And if something like Trello is it's a piece that can free you up, and then the conversation is a good one. And you know, a lot of this stuff you got into business 13 years ago, because you have dreams of a better life. Yeah, then then whatever it was, I didn't know what you were doing before. But whatever it was before, but I can tell you, almost every single person that gets into business for themselves has dreams of a better life. And if all you're doing is head down, working 50 6070 hours a week, not getting home for supper, because your business happens to be open through supper time, not having the opportunity to spend Saturdays with your young child and family and friends and whatever the case is, or not being able to take a little trip away, because you want to take a trip away, because you feel that you have to stick around, then we got work to do. Right, right. And so the next piece of the puzzle is once that starts coming, it's like, oh, how much more freedom can I get when I start implementing some of this stuff, because the freedom that you get, maybe you want to open another studio someday, maybe you want to start an entirely different business. Or maybe you don't want to or maybe you want to move to a different town, but still have this business as a great viable investment that you have, that you're involved with, as needed. There's so many different ways of looking at this as we get through here. And you know, my biggest thing that I see a lot of people when they get overwhelmed, overworked feel as though you know, they just can't do it anymore. They want to sell their business because they just can't, then it's like, I just don't want to do this anymore. And it's usually not because they don't love the business. It's usually because they don't love the detail. If they could get themselves out of the detail to the dashboard, they probably still want to be there.

Laura Giacomelli: 28:30

Right? And I feel like too, I'm sure that's probably common in our industry. It's like people get into this because they love working with children. They love to teach. But I don't think we always understand the business side of it, right? Like I went to school, I have a BFA in dance. And my biggest regret in life is not having a business degree. Yeah, honestly, because I always do I want to open a studio, but I never went for business classes, which is why, you know, I do continuing education and things like that. But yeah, I mean, I don't I feel like the burnout comes from, I don't think necessarily from the teaching, I think it's from running the business, because it is a business. It's this is not, at least for me, this is not a hobby, this is my livelihood, this is my career. So I very much take it seriously in that way. Right? I found it that way.

Pete Mohr: 29:16

I'm an image guy. And one of the cartoons that I had drawn up a while ago was, you know, a dance school owner sitting at her desk with papers, you know, all these papers and and she's in sort of the the admin room looking out at the dance floor, basically saying what do I really want to be in here or don't want to be out there, right. And it's kind of like, these are the things when you start getting your business going and running on rails, you should be able to choose where you truly want to be and my framework around that is called Love it or leave it and, you know, you should be able to love what you're doing and leave some of the other stuff. And if, for example, bookkeeping isn't what you want to do, then you find somebody else to do the bookkeeping portion, right?

Laura Giacomelli: 29:56

I just hired a bookkeeper and I kick myself in the butt now that I have her like, why did it take 11 years? Like what what was I thinking? Not something I like doing, but my money's going right? Like really know where my money's going. So it's funny because I feel, I think, probably listeners too. Don't be scared to you have to spend money to make money early on. I think I was nervous to do that. Also, it's like hiring people cost right. When in my mind, I once I really thought about it, I'm like, Well, if I can delegate this, then I can create something new over here. And there's something new over here can generate money, right? And maybe a portion of that can take care of that. Right? For sure. But that's another way to think about it to not to be nervous about delegating and doing things like that. Because in the end, it frees up your time to either create something new or have free time and do whatever you want with your own family and your own self.

Pete Mohr: 30:50

I love it. I love it. Well, I think we've had a great conversation here today, Laura, thanks so much for taking part and being a part of the business owner breakthrough. I'm so excited to see you again at one of the events down the road here and look forward to chatting with you and watching your growth as a business owner.

Laura Giacomelli: 31:09

Thank you so much for having me. It's been awesome. Thank you. All

Pete Mohr: 31:12

right, make it a great day. You too. Bye bye.

Buzz Burbank: 31:21

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