How to Stop Working IN Your Business and Start Working ON It

Are you running your business—or is it running you? If you feel trapped in daily operations, drowning in tasks, and wondering where all the profit goes, this episode is for you.

Join Pete Mohr and Stacey Morgan as they discuss real strategies for stepping back, building systems, and increasing profitability—without working more hours. Learn how to shift your role from operator to true business owner and create a company that thrives without you.

Key Discussion Points: 

→ Why most business owners are stuck in the day-to-day grind 

→ How to build a business that runs smoothly without you 

→ The biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when trying to scale 

→ Actionable steps to increase profit and free up time

🔗 Connect with Stacey: SimplyStaceyMorgan.com | Instagram | LinkedIn 🔗 Connect with Pete: Instagram | LinkedIn 🔗 Subscribe & Listen on Your Favorite Platform

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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Book a no charge Freedom Call with Pete, to see if you’re a good fit for his business coaching or talk to Pete about speaking at your next event head over to http://speaktopete.com to find a time that works for you!

Pete's Websites:

Pete-Mohr.com
The Exit Ready Business
Kolbe Coach
Simplifying Entrepreneurship

LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/petemohr/
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Transcript

0:00

Stacey Morgan, it is a pleasure to have you back on the podcast. It's so nice to be here, Pete. I love talking all things business, and when I'm talking all things business with somebody as clever as you, it just makes it so rewarding. I'm happy to be here. We always have fun together. You know, we were doing a workshop with a group of dance school owners the other day in Australia, and I said, we gotta get you back on the podcast. And, you know, let's, let's have another great chat because we always have such great chats and we have the same sort of mindset as we work towards helping our clients build better businesses. You know, all these things that we've been talking about. We met each other as we, as we went through the business, made simple programs and help our clients through that sort of stuff several years ago and have seen each other along the way. It's just so great. I think I want to dig right into it. Stacy, you're a story. You know, you've got all kinds of awards. You've done all kinds of stuff. You even run an awards. It's called the Roar Awards. Right. I've helped out with that a little bit. You've got your dance schools, you're helping dance school owners, all these crazy things and, and, and having a good life, too. And that's what it's all about, Pete. Right? Does it. The awards and the businesses and the success and all of that doesn't mean anything unless you also have the opportunity to have a life. And the more I work with small business owners, the more I realize that that's the missing piece. We get into small business because we want to have the freedom to be able to figure out how we can spend our time. We want to do school pickup or we want to go on vacation. We want to have all of these big and dreams. But sometimes it doesn't work like that. Sometimes we end up so deep in the trenches that we forget why we got into it in the first place. And so I love working with small business owners to help them really articulate what that thing is. What does having a life mean to you? And how can we make sure that your business is how you're working, not just in your business, but you're also having the opportunity to have your business work for you so that you do have the freedom and the time and the energy to go and spend on the things that matter to you most. I love it. You know, in some of my talks that I give, I call it, you should have your. You should design your business to prop up the life that you want to live. Instead of you always holding and propping up your business and. Same sort of thing. Why is it that so many small business owners, you know, don't come to this realization that they can make this happen, do you think? Stacey? I think we start our small businesses because we have a passion and for. For a particular area, we want to have an impact, we want to be able to help people, and we get into the doing of that. And in the early days, it's often just us. It's often us doing all the hr, we're doing all the marketing, we're doing all the sales, we're doing all the systems. It's all us. We wear all the hats. And I think taking that journey and being able to actually figure out what you like, figure out what you're good at, figure out what really lights you up, and then to be able to create a role for yourself within your business that really focuses on those things and doesn't focus on being everything to everybody. That's a really hard shift, especially if you've been doing all the things all along. And, and so it's really important for us as business owners to not just be working for the sake of working, but instead be working in our zones of genius, working on the things that we know can really move the business forward, but also the things that we're really good at, the things that we enjoy, the things that are the reason we got into business in the first place, and that will enable us to bring on people who are better at things than us. You know, I talked to so many small business owners who don't want to hire people because they're like, they won't do it the same way as I do it. Yeah, no, great. Hopefully they don't. Hopefully they do it better. Hopefully it's their zone of genius and they can teach you a few things and, you know, bring that to your business and do it faster and cheaper and better than you could do it anytime. Because what that'll do is it'll give you the chance to be able to really lean into the things that you're good at and will empower others to be able to lean in, into the things that they're good at. But I think sometimes small business owners, a bit scared, are a bit scared to kind of take that, take that leap. And so we take on more, the business grows, things get bigger, problems get bigger, and we end up getting ourselves into a. Into a place where we don't have a life. We are just living, eating and breathing the business 24 7. And that's not a good place to be. Yeah, it's not. It's not good for your health, it's not good for your mental health, it's not good for your physical health. And if we don't have good mental health and we don't have good physical health, it's hard to have a good business, a healthy business. If you're a. If you're the leader, and we're talking to leaders here on this podcast, you know, if you're the leader, how do you expect to run a healthy business if you can't actually be healthy yourself? If you can't get up in the morning with a healthy mindset, if you can't physically do what you need to do to lead the team to, you know, run. Run the. Run the show from the leader's position, essentially get up and, you know, communicate and all of the different things that you need to do properly. It's so important to have that time and all of those things. You know, one of the. I loved what you were talking about, sort of lead in your zone of genius and stuff a few years ago. One of the things I do with all my clients, Stacy, is I put them through a exercise. I call it Love it or leave it. And basically what I have them do is write down all of the stuff that they are personally accountable for, which on. On the first pass, you're going to get 70% of it. If you sit down for 20 minutes and just do the big list, you might you a couple of pages depending on where you're at in your business, and that's fine, but it's a reality. And then the other thing is you leave it, sit there for, you know, another week, two weeks, because there's lots of little accountabilities that only come up every now and then. And it's like you keep. Continue that list. And sometimes those ones are take a lot of time, but they don't take a lot of time all the time. So you need to kind of think about those too. And once you've crafted this list, then you ask your team, what else am I missing here that you come to me for? And they'll add a few more, too. Now you've got a really good list of all the stuff that you're personally accountable for. And then what you do is you put it in and recategorize these into four different boxes. One box is I love it and I'm good At it, which is where you want to live. That's your genius zone that you were just chatting about, right? Absolutely. The other one is I love it, and I'm not good at it. And as the entrepreneur, if it's something you really love and you want to put time in it, if you want to do that, okay. But the other one is I'm really good at it, and I don't love it. And when I look at most entrepreneurs, they spend a lot of time in this box, and it's unfortunate. And then the last part is the box that is usually the least filled. I'm not good at it, and I don't love it, but sometimes we're there too, and that's the stuff you got to get rid of first, and then you move through the other things. But the idea, the next idea, is it just as a. As sort of a general overlook? How much percentage of time in my work week am I spending in each of these boxes? And then how much do I want to be spending in each of these boxes next quarter, next year, as I'm working my way into my Lovett zone? And when you're working in your love it zone, it doesn't even feel like work. It's like, this is what I love to do. And the next powerful thing is when you can do this and let your team do it, too, so that they're working into their love it zone. That's when things get powerful. Yeah. But would you agree, Pete, that even if you're working in your I love it and I'm good at it quadrant all the time, if you're not looking after yourself, if you're not doing what you need to do in order to. To fill yourself up and to keep yourself healthy physically, mentally, spiritually, all those things, even that can become a drain. And so many small business owners get into that where they've been doing it for so long, they start to resent it. And even though it is stuff that they love, it becomes a real task. They're dragging themselves into the office, into the shop, or, you know, it makes it really hard to sit. But then you don't love it anymore. Do you think? Or you just think that I do. Sometimes we need to fill ourselves up. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But there's. There's something else you got to find that's going to fill you up then, and that's the time to delegate those tasks. If you're not loving it anymore, that's the. That's the cue. If you feel emotionally tired, if you Feel drained at the end of the day. Even when you think at one time of life this is what you love to do, maybe you don't anymore, and that's okay. We go through stages of life, we go through stages of business. And if you feel drained at the end of the day, it's probably because you're not living in that box as much as you should be. And that's like if you take tough call to make. But that's what business owners do. We make tough calls every day often. Don't you find that we make those tough calls when it comes to other people, but for ourselves, we could hold onto that job for a good, you know, six still doing it, still hating it. And sometimes we have to, like we have to sometimes, let's be real. It's not like we can just sometimes it's money related. We can't afford to hire the right person. You know, it depends on what stage you're at in business. And we, you know, I can't discount that. But that's why I'm saying just acknowledge where you are in these boxes. That's step one. And now it's what am I going to do to shift around my time so that the time that I am willing to dedicate is in that box? Because maybe, maybe you're just working too much all around. Maybe you're working 60 hours and what you really need to be working is 40 or maybe you really need to be working 30. That's part of this too. Because as I'm panning off those things, I still want my 30 hours to be in my love it zone. Yeah. Yeah. I think about the different ways that my role has evolved over the years in my business. And there are things that used to, I used to just love to do at that stage in my life. I used to love to teach little, little kids. When I had little kids, I loved to teach little kids. I was the first one to put my hand up to do the nursery rhymes and to do the I'm a little teapot and all the dances and just, you know, jump around the room and. And be play the fool and loved it. And now my K a bit older, I'm like, oh my gosh. Little kids. No, thank you. And so I've kind of evolved out of that. That part of my business and that part. Luckily I've got great team members who are stepping into those roles. But even as you're talking, Pete, I'm reflecting for myself. There are a few things that I'm still holding on to perhaps out of fear. I've always done it. I used to love it, but I've always done it. So keep doing it. And maybe it's time for me to kind of hand those things off to other people. This has been a nice little wake up call. You know, I've got my 5P structure and we talk about that all the time and everything. But one of the things that I know you have is your own set of 3Ps and I want to talk about that a little bit today too. Your, your set of three P's. Why don't you tell everybody what they are? You know, no matter what small business owners I'm working with, in what industry, there's always things that the same things keep coming up. People want to build their profile, they want to be known, they want more customers, they want more people through the door. They want to stop working harder and work smarter. They want more profit. They want to like, where's the money? How many business owners say to me, well, just, I just don't know where all the money's gone. Yeah, we often don't think about that profit and the importance of profit. And then that come comes down to productivity. I don't have any time. I'd love to do that, but I don't have the time. And so I really find myself talking about these three things a lot. How to build people's profile. How to really create more visibility for themselves, for their personal brand and their business business. How do we make more money and how do we make the most of the time that we have so that we can spend time in life with the things that really matter, which kind of links back to what we were talking about in the first place. Running a successful business isn't success if you don't have a life. And so working those three three things into the overall plan for a business owner is super important. Sometimes we get super focused on one, I want to make all the money this year. Sometimes we get really focused on, I want to, you know, increase my followers and grow my audience. But I think when we get the balance right between those three things, it enables us to have that fulfillment that we are after in running our own business. But it also gives us the opportunity to enjoy our life at the same time. When we look at profile, how important do you think it is for the business owner to have a profile that is separate from the business identity? Like, let's split the two identities. We have the business identity and we have the business owner identity. How important is it that you, I Mean, obviously it's, it's important that we're building the profile of our business, but how important do you think it is on building the profile of the actual business? I am hearing nonstop that this part of business ownership is not only growing and the importance of it is growing, but people are also kind of waking up to the importance of it. It's no longer good enough to hide behind your brand. People don't buy brands necessarily. They buy. People buy from people. People want connection, people want relationship. Well, I think we've gone through this phase of like everything being online and we've come, you know, full circle back to where people actually want to build relationships with people. They want to connect with people. They want to have, you know, story to be able to tell about the purchases that they're making and the ways in which they're spending their money. So if you're a business owner that thinks it doesn't matter about me, my business is not about me. It says, I'm going to hide here in the back and just put my logo in the front. 2025 coming to bite you in the butt a little bit because you're going to need to start creating a personal brand for yourself. Now, I'm not saying that you have to change the name of your business to your personal name and make it all about you and make it all about your story. But I do think there is an important part of the customer story, the story of your business that includes you. Why did you start your business in the first place and how can you share that story with your customers? Why is it that you get out of bed every morning and are passionate about having an impact in your local community? What's, what's the drive behind that? What's the story behind, behind that? Is that something that you saw modeled when you were growing up? Is it a dream you've always wanted to have? People are going to be so much more invested in, in your business brand if they understand the story behind your own personal brand. And so more so. I see people being more active on LinkedIn. I see people creating their own profiles when it comes to social media, people getting, you know, speaking platforms and having their own podcasts and creating their own blog posts and giving people an insight into their world that is so much more than the business brand. And I think the two just go hand in. It's no longer just okay just to have the one. The two need to be working side by side in order to really grow that know like and trust factor within your audience. It's an interesting thing, you know, and this is something at 30 years been. I've been in business now, Stacy. And this is something that I always felt that the brand should be first and that it didn't matter about me as the business owner. It was more, let's get the brand out there. The brand is doing good for the community. The brand is. And if they knew I was the owner, that was a side effect, let's say. But in the last couple of years, and you mentioned it the last couple of years, people are starting to. I have noticed it more. I mean, for. For this coaching business, of course, that my brand's out front. I'm. I'm the guy in front of the camera and on the podcast and on the stage and at the coach and all that kind of stuff. So. And I think it wasn't really until I started the coaching side of my business five or six years ago that I started having a change in a flip of opinion there, that even for our shoe stores, that I needed to be more visible as the owner front stage, not just. Not just making sure stuff happens backstage. And we've always been. We've always done good for the community and gone out. We have all sorts of different programs that we do and give backs and all sorts of different things. But I never really wanted to be sort of the front person because I always felt a little weird about that in that it's like I don't want to sort of go out there and say, hey, it's Pete doing good here. It's, you know, because I always wanted to, and include, you know, all my customers and everybody else that's making this happen. But at the same time, I do think it's good and I do think that there's more value than I ever thought there was there, and people have somebody to rally around instead of just a brand name. Yes, absolutely. Because that relationship can go so far. The relationship people can have with a brand will take you to here, but the relationship you have with a person, that's a lifelong thing that can go and extend and especially if you have the opportunity to be able to link your interests and your. You know, we talked before about zone of genius, but, you know, you're doing this incredible coaching, you're doing all of this incredible work. You're helping business owners are all around the world. People in your local community need to know that and need to know that that is also linked to the great work that is happening in the stores. There's. There's kind of flow on effect from that. And you talked before about, you know, that now the fact that I've won lots of awards and now I run my own awards program that was kind of like a fast forward, like a forward moving train in terms of my, my personal brand. Because whilst it was my business that was winning the awards, it's me getting up on stage and saying thank you for the trophy and here's why we won and how great's my team and, and all of those things. And so building your personal brand alongside your business brand just gives people so much more buy in because they can really feel that connection. And I just don't think that in this day and age you can do one without the other. And that's why I love now running a business awards program that gives people the opportunity to amplify that profile, to really be visible within their own business brand. Not only is it their business winning, but they also get the photo of them with the trophy on stage and they get to promote that amongst their people and their people get to get excited about the fact that they've won an award. And it just tells the community, hey, look, here we are doing great stuff. Come and be part of what we're doing. You have some fantastic business owners that take part in that every year. I mean, I've had the pleasure of helping you out on the judging side for the last last couple of years. And boy, reading through the profiles and going through stuff, it's like people are killing it and doing some great stuff in their communities, growing their businesses. I mean, it's been a really great thing for you, hasn't it Stacy? Absolutely. But we're so lucky to have people with expertise like yours, Pete on the judging panel. And we do have a broad range of judges from all around the world that they give their insight because there's nothing quite like being able to get feedback from people who are also in the trenches. Like our judges aren't kind of like retired billionaires who are sitting up on a pedestal saying, oh, you just should work harder, you should work as hard as I worked. The judges like yourself, who are working with business owners all the time, you're in business yourself, you're seeing the ups and the downs, you're seeing how things grow and change. That gives our entrants such great feedback for their own businesses that they can then take and, you know, move into the things that they're doing in their business in order to grow their businesses. At the end of the day, that's what it's all about. Whether we're building our personal profile or our brand for our business. We want our businesses to grow. And so thank you for always being open to sharing that wisdom with our entrance. It's entering business awards. It's such a great strategy for building that visibility. I highly recommend it. If you're not an Australian, it doesn't have to be my awards Anywhere around the world, in your local area, in your state, there are always awards programs that you can enter that will help you grow your business. And I think it's incredibly worthwhile as. We'Re talking about growing your business. Part of growing your business is not just growing the top line, it's growing the bottom mine. And it's one of the P's that I, you and I both share in our models profit. How important is profit, Stacy? Well, I like to buy things, Pete, don't you? And I'm kind of a bit done with the whole rhetoric of I own my own business. Like, I'm slogging it through, I can't afford to pay myself. I, you know, work 80 hours a week. I hate it when people share that meme on Instagram that says I'm a small business owner. I get to choose which of the 18 hours a week, a day I work. I'm done with that. We deserve to make money. We work really hard for it. We're sharing something, something unique and incredible with the world. We deserve to be able to make money. But sometimes we spend so much time putting money back into our business in order to grow our business that we don't actually think about the profit. And I have my husband to thank for this because when I started my business, I was just stoked to be alive, Pete. I was just happy to be a small business owner. Look what I'm doing. I'm having a great time. Everything I was doing felt like it was in my I love it and I'm good at it quadrant. I was just living my best life. And on the very day that my business hit five years, my husband said to me, where's the money? And I was like, what? And he said, well, most businesses fail in the first five years. You haven't failed, but most businesses take about five years to start running, you know, making a big profit. Where's the money? And I was like, oh, I don't, I don't, I don't know, quite sure. And he was like, what? Because up until that point, I'd just been, you know, spending money willy nilly, not really thinking about my expenses, not really thinking about what I was charging, just happy to be alive, happy that I had happy customers, happy that I was winning awards, growing my bit like, no. And he was like, what? What is going on? What is this? And it was this real wake up call because I'd never really thought about it before. And so from that point onwards, I, you know, did what I should have done from the first point, let's be honest, got myself a good bookkeeper, got myself a good accountant, got myself a good financial planner and said, how do we do this and how do we do it? Well, how do I make money? I knew that money was coming in. I also knew that I was taking a lot of money out. I was buying new things here and there and, you know, judging up the, the foyer and, like, was living the dream. But there was no profit to show for it. And so, so many business owners are like this. They throw the money back into the business. They think that's what they should do. They don't make any money. Then they get to or 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 and there's still no money. And they go, well, I've had enough of this. And they flip the table and shut it all down, and that's that. When it doesn't have to be that way. If we're strategic about how much money we want to make and we're putting that money aside. You know, I'm a big Fan of Profit First, Mike McCallowicz's book that talks about thinking about your profit first and then making, you know, decisions to make sure that money is set aside. I think it's incredibly important as small business owners that we do pay ourselves, that we do pay ourselves well, that the businesses are set up to make money, that we understand what is making us money, what is losing us money, what's costing us so much money every month. And are all of those percentages in line with, you know, industry averages and what we should be paying? If our wages are taking up 70% of our income, then we're in trouble. We need to make some changes. I think profit is a really big piece of the puzzle when it comes to building a successful business and still having a life. That profit, when you've got a profitable business, you have so much more flexibility. And so I think as small business owners, we need to take a little bit more time to get strategic about the profit in our business. And that's easy to do when you're tracking numbers, but so many times we stick our head in the sand and just hope for the best. I think you Know, one of the things that I see with a lot of small business owners, Stacy, is they don't understand their financial reports. They really don't get it. And they're afraid to admit that in a lot of cases. And you know, they might not have gone to business school and they, you know, they all the different things and their accountant gives them a profit loss sheet or a balance sheet and they don't even look at it because they really don't know how to read read it and they don't know what to look for. They don't know how to look at it from a managerial lens to say this is out of whack and something we need to make a decision here because these numbers are too high or too low or whatever the case is, or they aren't within the industry standard if you have industry standards. And I strongly encourage anyone listening to make sure to join your local association for whatever association. In my case, I do a lot of work with the National Shoe Retailers association, but I'm also a member because we own some shoe stores and they, they prepare a report for industry standards every couple of years that we map our stuff to. And it's like, oh, we're out of whack here. What's going on? We should, you know, and, and most associations for your, whatever industry you're in have those kind of data prepared for you. They might not be currently up to date entirely, but at the same time, it's a benchmark that you can use to dig in and look and see how you rack up. Because if you don't have something to at least compare to and you don't know how to read the numbers, these are the things like how important is it? As we go, our listeners know, and I think you know now too, Stacy, that I'm a certified exit planner. But from when we start looking at this whole package as we prepare a business for exit, the financials are usually the most important thing and then everything else kind of stacks underneath that. So there's going to be a ton of information that people want around in due diligence around your profit. And by the way, a multiple of zero is zero. It doesn't matter what the multiple is. So we need to stack that business and make it look as though it's got a ton of profit. And sometimes it takes time. You said it five years and you weren't profitable yet. But the next however many years, I'm sure when you hit that switch and you started looking at this, you're like, within a year or two, you're, you're saying this is where it is, this is. And your decision making changes. Absolutely, absolutely. And it changed within the year. Just looking at the numbers, understanding the numbers and most importantly, bringing on people who could help me understand the numbers, because I was happy to look at the profit and loss and scroll down to the bottom and go, okay, it's not red. Great. Wasn't red. But it was like 20 cents. And I was like, okay, fine, that's not. 20 cents is not enough. But bringing on people who could help me understand it was, was a super important part of that too. And I think one of the, one of the things here is that, that if you're listening to this show today and you don't understand your profit and loss, and you don't understand your balance sheet and you don't understand a cash flow analysis or some of the basic sort of sheets that are, should be prepared for you. And if your bookkeepers or accountants aren't preparing these things, you need to start asking for them more than once a year because decisions need to be made with these things on an ongoing basis, year long. You don't want to get to after December comes. If your year ends in December and you get your reports back in February or March and you're looking back at stuff 15 months ago that you should have had the data on, then it's. Too late, too late. And, and we need to be looking at our numbers. We need to understand profitability, we need to understand those expenses, we need to understand what investments we're making and where that's going to go and is it going to pay back profit? I love talking about this stuff. Now that I understand it before, when I didn't understand it, I would avoid any conversation about money in my business. I would move to anything, anything else in order to avoid it. But it is so important to get those people on board so that you can understand each of the elements of the business. And as you said, like, when it comes to the exit, we've worked hard, we've grown this business, we've created it, we deserve to be rewarded for that. But you can't buy potential, you can't buy hopes and dreams. No one's going to buy your hopes and dreams, but someone will buy your profitable business. And so the earlier you can get those ducks in a row, the more years you can show a potential buyer that you had it together and that it was profitable, the more reward you're going to get on the other side. And that is what you know as business coaches, we want for our people, right, Pete? Absolutely. I mean, our sort of philosophy is we need to build value in our business every day, and profit's one of those ways of doing it. But there's all sorts of other ways I use my P's, you know, build. Build your product, align your product assortment, align your process, and align your people to that. And I know your P in this sort of zone is productivity and working smarter, not harder, right? Yeah. So many people run out of time at the end of every week, and it's not necessarily because they're not working hard enough. We're all working hard. There's no doubt about that. But are we working smart? Are we working in the areas of our business that can really move the business forward, or are we just busy being busy? Because everybody's busy. Everyone's got a to do list that seems a mile long. But I really encourage business owners to look at their to do list and to really be able to pinpoint the things on the list that are making you money. Are there things here that you're just doing because you've always done them, or are there things here that could actually move the needle, actually put money in your bank account this week, next week, this month? Because we should be in charge of those things. We should be really driving the vision, we should be driving the strategy. We should be the people that are bringing money in. It doesn't have to be us doing the sale at the end, but in terms of creating that product and creating the pathway for that sale to happen, that's part of our job as. As leaders. And so often we get stuck cleaning the toilets or changing the water in the plants, and these are all things that need to be done in our business, but they don't necessarily need to be done by us. Very true. Yeah. The productivity part for me has always. Has always been kind of my secret weapon. And that is because I have adhd, and so I can get a lot done when I'm focused. I can get all the things done. And so I've kind of taken those skills that I have from knowing how my brain works and. And built myself some systems for productivity that really work. I do have a really robust to do list system that, you know, breaks your tasks down into A tasks, B tasks, C tasks. Because a lot of time we have trouble prioritizing what we want to do. We sit down and we think, which, what's the easiest thing on our list today? Okay, I'll just do that. But if we just do the easy Things we don't do the important things, then you know, our business is not going to move forward. I've got a really great calendar system in terms of making sure that your week is set up for success. You don't want a week that's got you coming in and out of the office and to a meeting and back from a meeting and over this side of town and over that side of town and then online and then offline. And you want to batch different things that you have as part of your to do list. You want to do all your meetings in one day so that you get, get all of them out of the way the next day. You can actually sit down and do some of the action points that you wanted to action from those meetings to get stuff done. I think a lot of the time small business owners find, you know, we find ourselves ping ponging all around from one task to the next and we don't actually have that focused time. So if you want, you know, part of that system that to do list, that calendar system and all of the things in between that I help to use it. I do have a free download that you can get@simply stacy morgan.com which is 10 tips to maximize your productivity. Because as I said, I feel like that's a bit of my secret weapon and I'm happy to let you in on all my secrets. I love it. I love it. What's your, what's your calendar system that you use? Do you use a proprietary one or you Google Calendar or Outlook or what? When you, when you actually are hopping on your phone and looking at your calendar type thing, what, what is it? Well, first and foremost, Pete, I don't care. I don't, I don't have any allegiance to any particular calendar anything. But I do deeply believe that we all need to pick one. Because when, when we on our phone and one on our desk and a post it note on our computer screen and writing on the back of our hand and then also the dentist appointment stored in our brain. Like that's no way to live. That's, that's just creating chaos. So whatever system you use, you have to just choose one and you have to really lean into that one. And I use Google Calendar. Not difficult. The reason I do is because it's got lots of colors. So I like to color code my calendar. Like all my work stuff in blue. I like all my kids stuff in orange. I like all of my me time in that, that beautiful flamingo color. A lot about flamingo time on my podcast and the reason I do that is so that at the beginning of the week I can open it up and look at it and see a rainbow. And I know that if I don't see a rainbow, if it's all blue or if it's all orange, then it's not going to be a good week because I'm not going to get the. Either the work done that needs to get done or I'm not going to get enough time with my family. And that's going to make me cranky. So I have this, you know, visual system where everything has its own color and if I can see all of it visually and it looks like a rainbow, I know I'm going to get to the end of the week feeling really balanced and feeling like I've got stuff done and I'm moving forward rather than just getting to the end of the week and being a hot mess. I once had a mentor that said no one follows a hot mess. I used to think there was something kind of alluring about being the business owner that was so busy and crazy and wild. And she was like, no one follows. No one's going to follow a hot mess. And I was like, oh, I thought that people thought that was intriguing. She's like, nope. People just think, yeah, hot mess. So getting my calendar in into order is one of the most important productivity things that I've done for myself and for my business to make sure that every week I'm setting myself up for success. I love it. I love the, I use the colors too, and I use them in a little bit different way because we own different businesses. So I use the colors to, to sort of look at and say, okay, well, this time is my coaching time. This time is my shootopia time. Whatever I'm working on from that. And I have a personal one as well. But the other one I do with Google Calendar is all my team has their calendars too. And I love just being able to flip the switch and seeing where they're all as well and they all have different colors so I can look at and I say, oh, Michelle's doing this and Jen's doing this and you know, all that kind of stuff and it seems to really flow nicely. But I think the big takeaway here is it, it doesn't matter. I'm tool agnostic too. I mean, I really don't. Doesn't matter. Whether it's Outlook or Google, we happen to use Google because we use Google products within our business and they just work well together. But for our business Anyway, but the idea here is that I think the. The thing around shareable is interesting, too, with calendars, and that it can be shared with the people that need to know where. What you're up to and what you're doing. You mentioned earlier about getting into focus time, and I think, you know, my. My team knows they. They can look and they can say, oh, Pete's on a podcast, or Pete's in a coaching call, or Pete's at a. At a. A meeting with a vendor for shootopia, whatever the case is. And they know off the bat before I, I never get bothered during those times because they just are habitualized into looking at the calendar, seeing what's on and whether there's open time. And. And it takes away one of the frustrations, which is the knock on the door, the phone call, the text, the. All these different things. So it's like, hey, you know, I'm not going to be ready for this call, so I'll get to you when there's an open space on the calendar. And, you know, being able to share that across the team is an interesting. Thing, too, and my team are great at doing that. If you could just get my husband to look at it. Yeah, likewise. He's like, what, you. What do you mean you're going away this way? Like, like, look at the calendar. I. You and I share that. You know, my wife's the same looking at your calendar everybody else does in our. In our whole world, right? And she's like, nope. That's hilarious. Actually, speaking of picking one system, my. Like, I had this, you know, and Heath would be happy for me to tell you how frustrated I am with the calendar, because it's no surprise. So he said, I want to get one to put it up on the wall. And I was like, where are we going to put that? And he's like, how about this wall? Wall? Like, it's the wall over our bed in our bedroom. He puts up this big calendar. And I think, wow, that's romantic. That's just. That's beautiful. And so I'm like, okay, well, this is your system. You've. You've chosen this system. I'm going to lean into your system because I've already got my system that works. But if this is what's going to work for you, let's. Let's make it happen for the family. And so off we go. We. I take everything from the electronic calendar. I stick it on the actual calendar on the wall over our bed. And he doesn't look at that either. He just, he's like, hang on a second. I go, it's on, on the calendar. It's just there. And where's your stuff, by the way? Right into it. You're like, I put all my stuff there. Where's your stuff? Stuff just lives in his head. And he just hopes that I'm a good mind reader. That's pretty much how it's working. But I think it is important to find that one system that works for you. And if it, you know, if the calendar on the wall isn't working, then try something else. And I know, you know, a lot of people love to have it in their hand. They love to carry their diary around with them so that they can open it up and write it down physically. It's good for their brain and it's good for the way they work and good for you. That's your system. Lean into it. Yeah, it's. It's an interesting thing. Like, I use, I basically use an iPad and I have a journal that I use and I write down stuff in my journal. But that's separate from my calendar. You know, my calendar's. I mean, even on the iPad, my journal's digital. And I can, you know, it's, it's fine. Even though I like, I still like to scribe and write things with my pen on the iPad, but, but I still take what I need to take and put it in the calendar, right? Yeah, yeah. Got to stick with the system. It's the way I look at how I can be most productive through the day. Let's wrap up the three P's, Stacy. And you know, when you get these things in alignment, your profile, your profit, your productivity, and you're working on this, and I think this is a never ending process, Stacy. We're always working through these three things, trying to enhance them a little bit. But, but if you've listened to the conversation here today, and you probably know there's an area or two in each of these that you've got a little bit of work to do. Where do they start? What do they do? How do they get rolling with this? I really think the big picture question is, how do I want to design my life? And I know you talk about this too, Pete. What does the overall picture look like? It's no use me being more productive if I get all this extra time and then I don't know what to do with it, it's no good. If I build my profile and all of a sudden everyone knows me and I'm doing All these great things. And yet then I'm like, what do I do next? I don't know what happens. So it's really about thinking about the bigger picture, thinking about what is the impact I want to have, how much time do I want to spend working, how much time do I want to spend at home, what relationships do I want to nurture and build in my life, what are my hobbies, what are the things that light me up, where do I want to vacation to? Australia's great, by the way. And like, what are these things going? How are these things all going to work together to create the life that I want and then being able to, to go, okay, well, if it is more time that I want to spend with my kids, then how can I work on my productivity to, in order, you know, to make sure that I can do all of these tasks that used to take me three hours in two hours to give me an extra time, an extra hour of time to spend with the kids. If it is about, you know, I want to be rich and famous and for my business to make more money, then how can I build my profile in order to bring more customers into my business, in order to, to make more revenue and therefore be strategic about the profit that I'm going to make? It's really about thinking about the big picture first. And as we started off by saying, Pete, often we just get busy being busy in our businesses and we are just working, working, working like a hamster on the wheel. I think it's important to take the time to take a breath, to think about our 1 year, 5 year, 10 year goals and plans and then to be able to design our life around that. And if you can start there, everything else will become really clear to you. I love it, Stacy. I love spending time with you. Going through all this stuff. We, we always are pulling each, you know, all the stuff out of each other's head and it's like, oh yeah. I like that, I like that it's good. And you're not ever afraid to challenge me too, Pete, which I like as well. Oh yeah. I always learn something when I'm talking with you and I love that you are happy to share all of your knowledge with your audience on the podcast and also audiences all around the world. Very lucky to have you in my orbit. Awesome. I'm looking forward to recording one with you here shortly too on for your podcast. And just to recap our event here, I know you if you would just let everybody know where they can get the 10 tips to maximize productivity again. Tell them how they can reach out and touch base with you to learn more about Stacy Morgan and maybe some of the social channels you're on. Absolutely. You can find everything you need to know at simply Stacy morgan.com it's simply Stacy Morgan because I like to do things simply. I don't like to complicate things. There's no ambiguity, there's no extra. I'm authentic, I'm real. What you see is what you get. We keep it simple. So go to simply stacy morgan.com on that homepage. You'll see the download to be able to get the 10 tips to maximize your productivity. You can also find me at simply Stacy Morgan on Instagram. I'm at Stacy Morgan on LinkedIn. I'm trying really hard, Pete, to be more active on LinkedIn. That's kind of one of my missions for 2025 in terms of building my own profile, working hard to be showing up on LinkedIn. And if you want to know more about my awards program, Raw Success, you can find out more at Raw Success on instagram or@rawsuccess.com thanks so much for having me. Awesome. Thanks so much for being here and I'd like to have you back down the road as well. Again, it's always good. It's been too long since our last episode and for those of you that love this episode, just go back in the previous episodes and you can listen to another great episode of Stacy and I chatting a couple of years ago show about some other great business related topics. Until then folks, thanks again for being with us and make it a great day.