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Music. Welcome to design for the creative mind, a podcast for interior designers and creative entrepreneurs to run their business with purpose, efficiency and passion, because while every design is different, the process should remain the same. Prepare yourself for some good conversations with amazing guests, a dash of Jesus and a touch of the Woo, woo, and probably a swear word or two. If you're ready to stop trading your time for money and enjoy your interior design business, you are in the right place. I'm your host. Michelle Lynn, you
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Hey everybody, glad you're here. I'm Michelle Lynn. This is the design for the creative mind podcast, and I love to have badass guests. I want to introduce you today to Andrew Hartman, he is the founder of time boss, which is a productivity training organization that helps leaders and their teams take control of their time to get the results that they want without stress or anxiety. And y'all know that as a small business owner or as an entrepreneur, there's enough stress and anxiety in our life that we don't need anymore. So Andrew actually founded time boss after burning out several times over and even losing his sense of smell for a season, we're going to we're going to dig into that he's taken all that he's learned over the years to build a simple and easy framework that's backed by science and ensures that business leaders avoid the same mistakes and chaos. Andrew, welcome thanks for being here.
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Michelle, thanks so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here, absolutely. So
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dude, you got to tell me the story about the loss of smell. Let's just start with that, because I read that and I was very curious. You
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make me go back to the painful era of life. Now I'm kidding. I'm happy to shout, but
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it wasn't a smelly area. Might have been painful, but it was I
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wouldn't have known because I didn't have the sense of smell. Could have been very smelly. Yeah, I was, I was early in my career, mid to late 20s. Had already had jobs where I did fine, shut up. No problem at all. But I ended up in a role where I had so much more to do than I had time to do it, and I was instantly overwhelmed. And really, that's how most of us are. Our time management systems work for us pretty well until we have more to do than we have time to do it, and then we don't know what to do. And often, our stimulus response, the way our brain is wired, is, is we just shovel faster. We just, I'm just going to dig my way out of this. The challenge is, when we end up in roles. I have to imagine, for individuals in your audience, that they are in roles where that list never stops, and it's only getting longer. It looks like the end is proceeding into the distance.
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And that was me, and I was doing the best I could. Really wanted to do phenomenal work. I believed in the work I was doing. I wanted to deliver for my team, but I just couldn't keep up. And it was poor sleep, not taking care of my health. Waking up in the middle of the night, you've probably done this before. You wake up in the middle of the night and you're like, oh gosh, I forgot about that thing. Or you're managing a project in your dreams. I would literally have a post it note next to my bed, and I would try, in the middle of the night to just write it down so I could get it out of my head and onto the post it note, just so I could worry about in the morning only to wake up and look at that post it note, and you wrote chicken scratch that no one could read anyways. It was, yes,
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it was dark. He didn't want to wake up the wife, all the things, all
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the things. So I would, I would wake up in like a cold sweat from oh my gosh, like I can feel my to do list another thing, just another day I have to do this. And over I did that long enough where eventually one morning I could feel it going away, and eventually one morning it was just gone. Wow. And the our body will do weird things to get our attention. There is our body truly is always communicating with us, and if we are taking actions or making decisions that are ultimately detrimental to our long term health. Our body will give us migraine headaches, or we'll have issues with our digestive system, or people get hypertension or heart challenges. And for me, it just was a, it was a wacky smell sensation, but it was really, it was a wake up call. It was a hey, we can't go on like this. It needs to be different.
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That makes perfect sense. That's interesting. So how long did it take you to get your smell back to six months?
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Wow. And if you don't, if you can't smell, you can't taste, so food became,
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oh, I didn't even think about that. It was brutal. I wouldn't mind six months.
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It's a you know what? I probably lost weight under six months. It's a good fad diet. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but, yeah, no,
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that makes sense. Okay, so let's talk about time boss, yes, in a nutshell, what is it? Yeah,
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so time, boss is a framework to help you get whatever you want. That's really what it
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is. So it's a framework. It's not a problem. Product?
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No, not a product. It is a way of thinking about time. And this is really all time is so if you think about it, we all are wired for the Savannah. A joke that the tiger shows up on the Savannah and we run it's stimulus response an item ends up on our to do list. We start working on that item when too many items are to do lists, and we don't have enough time, we don't know how to think about it. And so we get overwhelmed. And so with time loss, it's a it is a simple set of habits and mental models to help you deal with the complexity of your world, all the items that are coming at you. How do you make sense of those items?
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How do you decide what priority they should be worked on? How do you decide when you're going to work on them? How do you make sure that you have buffer to deal with reality? Because we all know life is chaotic. I can't control my client having needs, my boss calling me, my kids getting sick, my water heater breaking, which actually broke just last week. So that's a very real time example for me. So we just can't control it. And then how do we deal with the items that don't fit? So if we decide, for me, I choose to work 50 hours on what I would call income generating activities, so businessy stuff, things related to time, boss or other projects I'm working on that is only so much time that is a fixed amount of capacity. And so I have to think of that like a currency. It is a currency I am spending to get the things that I want. What naturally comes from that is there's no way I can get everything done. There's no way I'm going to get to everything on my list for most people, right? Especially in jobs that are growing and scaling, and there's a lot of opportunity
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business that we're doing things it's never ending. Yes,
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yes. You absolutely know, Michelle, it's never ending. There's always there is no sense of done in our work, and so I can't shut my laptop any day at 6pm and say I'm done and there's no more work to be done. That will never be the case. So I have to have a framework that helps me deal with that, where I can shut my laptop and say that was enough. I made the progress that I need to make today, and now I'm going to be present to the rest of my world, because I feel good about the work that I did, and so that's really what time boss is. The framework teaches people to get what they want and do so in a way that is sustainable, where they can run at a high pace, do their best work and not be dragged down by anxiety and stress and the things that pull us out at the present moment.
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So what makes it different from other ways of thinking, because I'm thinking of the ways that I've taught my team and teams in the past how to navigate. What sets it apart?
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I think the biggest thing is reality. So I've read every book, Michelle, you name it, I bet activity. And truly, because I mentioned I was in my late 20s, I didn't really solve this till my late 30s, so it was a 10 year process of me experimenting and learning and reading the books, because time boss is this tacit knowledge that it's not this tome of information we get senior of college, and we're good for the rest of our life, unless we had a kind boss like you that's trying to teach your team or a parent, we probably we're Just fending for ourselves. We're doing the best we can. Best we can. Yeah. So in that process, what I really came to is nobody's dealing with reality. No
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one that could be a whole different conversation.
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It's true. There's a classic thing a number of people in your audience, I bet they've read it's getting things done. If you go to Barnes and Noble right now to the productivity section, getting things done will be on the end cap. Getting Things Done has nothing to say about what do I do when the list far exceeds the amount of time that I have? Yeah, there's no finish line. And so scientifically, there's a couple things that our brain just longs for. One is our brain longs for progress. So it wants to understand that we're making meaningful progress. And so our system has to account for that. Two are it our brains long for a sense of doneness. Did I do enough? And in a knowledge working world, like your world as an interior decorator, or in my world as a coach, or in any world a software developer, it doesn't matter what you do. If you are a knowledge worker, there is no widget you did not at punch out 10 widgets today, whistle blows like on the Flintstones, and you leave for the day that world doesn't exist.
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And so we have to create systems for ourselves that say I have done enough to be successful. I have delivered my portion that's going to help me achieve my goals, and now I can rest or recover and come back and let's do it again tomorrow. And that's really what I came to as I was going through these systems, I was looking for someone to tell me, what do I do with the never ending list? And that's why I built the framework. And it just it came naturally. Truly, I didn't build it to launch a business called time. Boss. I built this business to help me solve never losing my sense of smell again. And then the other part of that, Michelle, that was sad, was I was leading teams in early stage company environments where those individuals were burning out as well because of the way that I was managing them, and that was a real burden for me, of I can't do this to myself. I know how it affects my wife, how it affects my kids, yeah, I can't do this to the people that I work for. I must create a system where we can absolutely deliver on. Outcomes we're responsible for, but we can do it with peace and freedom and clarity, not stress, fear and anxiety being this just emotional drain on our experience of life, ultimately even affecting our health. That's why I built it Latin. I think
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that you were very fortunate, going back to how it affects our health, you were very fortunate that you had something show up that was, yes, I don't wanna say visible, but that you could tell immediately that something is wrong. I think there's so many people who are just walking around and it's going wrong on the inside, and our body's not telling us. So this is applicable again. My next question was like, Who is time boss for? But it's applicable for everybody? Yeah, absolutely. Like, your target audience is anybody who has, like, a
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pulse. I do say it's for people that are up to something you you have to care deeply about what you want, and time boss for someone that wants to run into low gear is actually not a very good solution. It's for someone where they are pressing, they there's a preferred future that they want to exist, and they're precluded from it for two reasons. One, they can't get out of their own way because they're just putting out fires all day long. And so they never feel like they're making progress on their big goals. Oh, yeah. Or two, they are really good at making progress to their big goals, but they never stop. They're a grinder, and they're wearing themselves down because they truly because they don't have any definition that says this is enough. And I can shut my laptop here at 5pm or 6pm or whatever time they choose, and say, I'm going to rest and recover tonight because I did enough today. Those are, that's what time boss is for. Yeah, absolutely. That's
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so hard to because you want to be present with your family, or, heck, even if you're single, you just want to be sitting at home watching TV, drinking a glass of wine with your dog, but you're thinking about work
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joy out of that. It takes, yes, the average. And this is, like you said, it's for everyone, that the average individual that works is overwhelmed. On average, three out of five people are going to experience burnout this year that do anything for money, which is a wild number. It's a wild statistic, but that's the state of the modern worker. And yeah, we're carrying it home. States. Yes, my wife would say there were years where I was physically present at home, playing trains on the ground with my son, but emotionally I was still at the office, answering email, thinking about that project, getting in cold sweats while I'm there with my son, and it for me, my opinion, is just no way to live. I just think there's a better life available for us.
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I love that. So what is the favorite ask, what? What's the favorite part of your what you do so you coach individuals. So let's give the audience a little bit of understanding. So your so time boss, in order to utilize this framework is offered through some different, yes, different. There's different offers as how to work with it. Correct? Yep. Well, okay, yeah. So
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the best way to think of time boss is a framework. It's a set of habits and mental models that information is free. We can share later. There's a link available online where people can go through 90 minutes and watch the entire thing. We then people can implement with a digital course, which is just hand hold someone through the process. If they need additional support, they can jump in a six week cohort with six other individuals, and we go, we do it together. It's group coaching, or I also do one on one coaching. So that's really what time boss is my deepest joy. The thing that I will do this the rest of my life for is when someone gets their relationship with time right, and everything becomes available to them. Because most people are fighting time, they will say things like, there's not enough time. As my enemy. I hate my to do list these things that are just so disempowering, and so pull them out at the moment. The reality is, time is the currency to get whatever you want.
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You are it is going to take time. It is going to take time for you to set up your finances, to to bring you passive income over time. It's going to take time for you to build your business, for it to be what it wants to be. It's going to take time for you to be the parent or the spouse that you want to be. And so we must have a relationship right with time. And so when someone gets their head wrapped around it, and they understand their actual capacity, and they understand the things that they want to have happen, and they marry those together, this light turns on that is peace and freedom and clarity. And I live for that moment, and I live for emailing them six months later and them telling me all the things that is happening now because of that. It's the best. It's just the it's the best job in the world. So I love, love, love. What I get to do. I
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totally understand that it's the high that keeps you getting out of bed in the morning. Exactly. It's
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so good. I just, I just my personal mission in life is to be a shortcut or cheat code for anyone. I want them to get the life that they want faster, because I'm there, and it took me 10 years to get the life that I want in my relationship with time, and I want people to get it as fast. Get it as fast as they possibly can in days and weeks.
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I love that. So what are some What are a couple of habits that somebody could do as soon as this podcast is over that could give them a little bit of that piece in their
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schedule? Great, absolutely. I love it. Great question. Great question. Michelle, number. One I would suggest, is adding a thing called whirlwind to their day. And what whirlwind is once you know about how much you want to work, most people work somewhere between 40 and 60 hours, but it's obviously up to them. It could be 20, could be more. There's really no judgment there. It's really up to them and what they want to give to work. Once they do that, I recommend they dedicate anywhere from 10 to 40% of their day to what I call whirlwind. And whirlwind is email, phone calls, interruptions, your water heater breaking, the dog needs him to go to the bathroom. Dog need to go to the bathroom. That that client called and they need something ASAP, because those things are happening to us all the time. Yeah, and they create such stress for us. But for one primary reason, the one primary reason, one is obviously, if it's a real time urgent need, we just need to meet it. Two is we are so afraid of forgetting. We're afraid if we if I don't do it right now, I'm going to forget because I don't have a system that I can trust. And what that means is we are constantly pulled out of this present moment. So you and I both know you've probably done your best work in your life where you could just get deep into that project. Think deeply about the client you're supporting, or the thing you're building with your team, and every interruption that comes at you pulls you out of that moment, yeah, and limits your impact. And I'm here to say that multitasking is a total lie, especially multi focus. You can't focus on multiple things at a time, right?
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Yeah, I totally agree. But we were sold that bill of goods that was,
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it's such a lie. It really is. And the way marketed it really well, the way to think about it is, every time you switch tasks, so every time these interruptions come that we're talking about, you are booting up that context. And every time you boot up the context of that new thing, it depletes from your brain's limited energy that you have for that day. And then when you go back to whatever you were working on, it costs more energy for you to come back to the task, because now you have to remember where you were. You have to get that context back. So the more that we do that, the more we drain our brain. Not only are we bringing a less good self to that task we're working on, but we're exhausting ourselves in the process. So we're both overwhelmed and we're doing crappy work. It makes zero sense. And so what I recommend people doing is literally scheduling whirlwind in their day. So say, I'm going to say from three to 5pm every day, I'm going to call that whirlwind, and then when an interruption comes. My first move, if I can, is to say, Hey, can I get back to you at three o'clock today? Can I give you a call back at three? Or let me take care of that at three?
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Or, you know what? I know that I have time on my schedule for my email, so I'm not even going to look at my email right now. I'm going to, I'm going to get to it later on the day. What that and you can always do that, and we can talk about what to do if that's the case. But what that does is, the primary thing it does, is it gives people permission to focus on their priorities that actually matter, because they trust that there will be a time in the day when they can get back to those urgent things that are coming in real time and not all the time. There's my kid comes in sick. I'm going to take care of my kid. It's that's the highest priority. But that happens about 5% of the time. And so people tend to get hang ups and what abouts and resistance around the 5% and instead of planning for the 95% where they could be getting the life that they want, prioritizing the big rocks that are really going to deliver the experience of life they want to have, they don't do that for all the exceptions that they're thinking about.
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And so for me, plan for whirlwind. Redirect as much as you can, as much of those distractions, into whirlwind as you can. And then the magic trick of whirlwind is you're not going to need that time every single day. And if you don't need that time and again, if you're up to something and you care about the world that you're trying to create, you can start pull working on whatever you had planned to do tomorrow, and instead of constantly feeling like you're playing from behind, and now you begin to feel like you're playing from
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ahead. Imagine trying to bake a cake without a recipe. You kind of know what the ingredients are, but you don't know how to put it all together after lots of hard work and trying different combinations, all you are left with is a sticky situation and a stomach ache. Babe running an interior design business can feel exactly that same way. That is why I created the interior design business bakery. This is a program that teaches you how to bake your interior design business cake and eat it too. If you don't want to figure out the hard way and you want guidance to follow a recipe that has already been vetted, someone that has already been there and done it and will help you do it too. Then check out the year long mentorship and coaching program, the interior design business bakery. If your interior design business revenue is below 300,000 or if you're struggling to make a profit and keep your sanity, this is the only program for you. You can find that information at designed for the creative mind. Dot com, forward slash, business, dash, bakery, check it out. You won't regret it,
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and it is a fundamentally different experience of life when you don't feel behind the work you do, the way you bring yourself to that task is totally different. And so to me, whirlwind is this little magic secret that forces you to deal with reality. Yeah, that helps you take a step towards the life you
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want. And I love that because it gives a place for it to go. Because one of the ways that I work with my team, and eventually I'll teach it to my kid, is that if it's urgent and important, then you have to drop everything you're doing to get to it. But if it's important but not urgent, then you can get to it. Let's say between three and five o'clock, when you've set that time up apart so that you can work on the important but not urgent, right? That's exactly, or like the Yeah, but like the juicy stuff, the stuff that makes us come alive, the design, like as designers, what we love to do is, let's dig into that pretty project, and then we'll deal with all the other stuff later. But that later is intentional. Yeah,
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you're protecting the space for it. You're literally, the language I use is shielding. So if you think about that time, you're saying that time to get into the pretty space and really think about it. What you need is protection to focus. You literally need shields that prevent you from being pulled out of that moment. And whirlwind is one of those shields, because it gives you confidence to know I will still deliver, I will still with integrity, follow through on whatever this real time request is coming in on I'm just going to do it later, and I've already resourced the time to make it happen. I can see it on my calendar from three to five. That's when we're going to do it. It gives people peace and freedom to show up in this moment in focus, and it takes away the anxiety 100% I don't want to forget that, I don't want to forget that, I don't want to forget that, I don't want to forget that, and that just rolls through our head and it
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pulls us out of the moment. So that's one tool for helping take care of the anxiety, and that's something that like, I've I take anxiety medicine. Let me just put that out there. Do not be ashamed, y'all, if you need to take a little bit of help in hand. And I used to take it on an as needed basis. And then as life got busier, I've got more companies. I've got a six year old. I take that shit every day. But if I could find a way to lessen anxiety, because I don't think mine's necessarily a chemical imbalance. So let's just be honest, there some people have that chemical imbalance, but that's a whole different podcast. But in that respect, like, Where does anxiety come from? Yeah, and these tools are helping us to lessen it 100%
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Yeah. So primary anxiety for the language that I use, for how I describe your nice world, is we are knowledge workers, meaning, it's what I was saying before. There's no widget, right? We are paid for what's happening between our ears and in that environment. That's
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right, really frightening.
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That's right, that's right. Some years are better than others, I guess we could say, but so if you think about that, then we become the primary creators, as I was saying earlier, of what enough is. And so in a given day, the average knowledge worker dramatically overestimates what they can get done dramatically. Yeah, and they have a tulip to do list that's a mile long. The average person has 121 items on their to do list, which, how are you not get two things done a day? Yeah, how are you not instantly over on without that? What happens then is, most people will approach a day, and they may think, I can get five things done in a day. And the reality is, they can probably get two or three. The big things done is probably what's true. The challenge is, we finished that day, and instead of getting five things done. We got three things done. And we don't say, Wow, I got three urgent and important items done that move my business forward. We say, look at these two items that didn't get done. I am such a loser. Time is my enemy. There's not enough time, and we've we spin up this anxiety engine where we wear those things into the evening. They impact our sleep. We feel the stress of not getting those done, so we don't get our work in it work out in the next morning, because we just want to get up early and start working. And the insidious thing about that is we don't fix our understanding of our capacity so that we take those two things we didn't get done yesterday, we shove them into the day. We maintain that same expectation that we're going to get five things done finish the day, and we run the whole script over and over and over and over again that
24:23
that sounds so much like a previous version of myself. Yeah, not that I have it figured out, but I'm trying to get older and wiser, but you're right, but what I would do is I would take those two things that I didn't get done, and then I'd add them to the five things that I was expecting to do the next day, so then I had 700%
24:44
Yeah, and that's
24:45
so not even like you say that out loud right now, and it's just ridiculous well,
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and it's the challenge is we have a really high opinion of our present self, like you and I, are hyper focused on this exact moment. And. And having a great conversation, and we don't tend to think about our future self as this individual that is very quickly coming that's going to have to deal with whatever good or bad decisions that we make. And so in that example we gave, it's like the person that tells themself I just need to get past this project. If I get past this project, it's going to be different. But again, we're hyper focusing on our present self, and I'm just trying to get this person past it, but the reality is, we will eventually show up as our future self, and they are going to deal with the same exact struggles if we don't deal with our habits. And so that's where my time boss is fundamentally anchored in habits. I'm a huge atomic habits believer. I call James clear, Uncle James. I'm just such a fan of him. And the power of getting these time boss habits in your world is you have backstops that prevent you from just running the same script over and over every week you're reflecting and saying, what adjustments do I need to make this week to drive more towards making the progress that I want to make, but doing so with peace, freedom and clarity, not stress, fear and anxiety. Instead of just running that same hamster wheel week over week, I just need to get past this project. I just need to get past this project. I just need to get past this project and never actually making change.
26:14
So your framework goes deeper than just being organized on paper 100%
26:21
there's a there's the work that we do, and then there's the story that we tell ourselves about the work that we do. And you have to get both right. You have to do great work, and you have to structure in a way. Whereas you look at it, you can feel great about it, and you can shut the laptop at 6pm feeling like you've done the work that you need to do. And most people are hyper focused on just being more productive. Can I get more done today than I got done yesterday? And I just think it's that you gotta solve both or
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and my audience that we're talking to right now. I think that this is really probably resonating, or at least it is with me, and I think that I relate to my audience pretty well, because not only are we business owners, but we're moms, and moms have this other set of responsibilities and a different hat that we have to put on when that laptop closes, right? So it is oftentimes an argument between which identity which hat we're wearing, and which one's going to win, and
27:21
what balance absolutely and what becomes really critical in that conversation then, and then we work this out in the framework is, how do I, how do I really align well with the stakeholders in my life, which are, which is both, if you're a business owner, it's your team, it's your clients, and then if you're a mom, or, for me, a dad, it's my wife and my kids, where I need to be aligned with them. Of how much of my life am I giving to I use the language income generating activities, right? And Kelly and my wife and I have an agreement there, and so she knows between five and six every day the laptop is shutting and I am now fully present to home. That's an agreement that we've made together. And that might be 2pm for some people, when their kids get home that might be 6pm it doesn't that doesn't really matter. But the key is the alignment with those stakeholders and the framework we primarily, the primary person that is going through time, boss right now, is doing it for their business, because they can make an emotional and intellectual ROI case about doing it because it's for something that makes the money. But the reality is, time is time.
28:20
So the same rules that will make you feel like a superstar as a business owner are the same rules that are going to make you feel like a superstar as a parent. At the end of the day, the relationship you want with your child will cost you the currency of time. It will cost you prioritizing that time to be present in homework, to be there at bath time, to sit on the floor like I did with my son and play trains. And so it's the same exact rules that are going to help you hit the key performance indicators that you have for your business or the goals you have for your clients. The same exact habits work in all areas of life. Absolutely,
28:53
even though you wear two different hats, they oftentimes you're wearing the same hats at the same time, right? So that makes sense. Wow, that that sounds like a fantastic goal to start working towards. It's a completely different perspective,
29:13
yeah.
29:14
How do you get the how from a business standpoint, how do you get people to understand that, other than doing badass podcasts like this,
29:23
that's right, yes, I do. I so appreciate you having me. Michelle, thank you again. But we have grown primarily via referral and speaking engagements. We're starting to more of that, and typically, when I start talking people, some people know that they are really struggling with overwhelm. There's a life that they want, but they want, but they feel overwhelmed, and that's precluding them from getting it. Those are easy conversations. Often, when I start talking, people realize, Wow, I have been living this with for a long time, and I didn't even know there was another way that we could that this could be overwhelm becomes the default. It's what they expect that
29:55
makes sense, but it's true. I think that oftentimes we just keep repeating what we. See,
30:00
right, exactly, right.
30:02
My My mom was a hustle. I want to say she's a hustler, but that sounds pretty bad to say about but the host the hustle culture is so prevalent in our society that I think oftentimes, I personally, used to wear it as a badge of honor. I'm exhausted. I'm working so hard. It's like, why is that a badge of honor? That's, that's lame, right?
30:24
Yeah, it's a miss. It's a misuse of the currency. It's, I think it's a confusion for people that that busy equals progress, right? And I think we're just trying to flip the script for people. And some of that, again, I think hustle culture was born out of knowledge workers finding themselves without a machine to punch out widgets and not knowing what to do, and so they just decided to grind because there was nothing telling them to stop. There was no governor to say, this is enough or this is enough time. And the reality is, that's a very personal decision, and I think that's why it's challenging. But for me, there is a portfolio of things that I must be successful at for me to feel successful. One of them is time boss. I want I believe in this. I so desperately want to help people get their relationship with time. But another is my relationship with my wife Kelly, that that has to work, and my relationship with my kids. I have to be present and available to them, and in my community, in my church, and the ministries I lead, and all those things, I have to have a broader definition of what success means, and that hustle culture does not fit with the way that I define success. And I think that most people are actually like me. My fundamental belief is that we all actually want that we just don't know how to get it. I think that's the gap people feel.
31:39
I love that, and I think it's so true. You just put it into words, yeah, and and provided a roadmap on how to get there that it is possible 100% so what would you be do? What would you do more of? Let's say you could put time boss on a on autopilot, right? Didn't have to have you navigating. What would you be doing with your time?
32:03
Oh, I would have my calendar open in 30 minute slots for anyone in the world to drop in and talk to me about their relationship with time. It's what I love. It's it every person, when I meet with someone, Michelle, they're walking into that call or that meeting with a spear in their chest about the life that they want that they can't have, and it's just that they can't have that they think they can't have, that their habits currently preclude them from getting. And it is, I don't know how to express it. It's just my deepest joy to help them understand that there's another way, and to help them get that win. And I would do it all day long, all the time.
32:41
You had mentioned that you lead ministry in your church. This sounds like this is your ministry. People move towards their happiness and their joy and maybe spending more time serving others, and absolutely,
32:56
the people that you know. In any business you build, in some ways, you're building a tribe. And as I talk, I tend to resonate with people that want the same type of life that I want. They care about they care deeply about the work that they do, the contribution they're making, their family. And when I empower those type of people, I know the world gets better with each individual that gets their relationship with time. That's what I said, that when they come back six months later, and they tell me about how their world works, I just, it just lights me up at a whole new level. And so if I, if I could do that all day long, if that was the only thing I ever had to do for time boss, I would be in my happy place.
33:33
I wish that the audience could see your face, because you just light up when you talk about it. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that makes sense. Then when do you think about your, let's say your business strategy,
33:48
yeah, yeah. That's a great question. We run on a strategic execution model, where we set quarterly goals, and then we run weekly meetings where we're tracking against those quarterly goals looking at a there's a couple different key performance indicators for us that we're looking at, and then we just steer the ship that way. So we've tried to build in very intentional rhythms to operate as a business while maintaining that same part of we just want to serve as many people as we can, as well as we can love that. Yeah.
34:22
Okay, so some other random questions is, would you share? Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?
34:28
I'm a total introvert. So if I sat on those calls all day long at 6pm I would be the best kind of exhausted, and I would need to recharge all night long. Yeah, I don't get energy from people. Sadly, I wish I wish I did. I think that would be a superpower, but I definitely need my solo time to recharge.
34:45
I can appreciate that. What piece Okay, so I probably, we can probably guess where this is going to go. But what piece of advice would you give your 20 year old self if you could go back?
34:57
Oh, I would give him time, boss. I just, I. Yeah, I needed me like I didn't. I don't want to sound haughty about that at all, because surely it was built to solve that kid's problem. No, I just needed to know that my time was finite, and because it is finite, it is necessarily so valuable. And I just didn't treat it that way. I was swiping a time credit card for years, and then I had to come back and pay that bill. And I think it I think, had I known that 20 or 20 year old Andrew could have stated a preferred future and gone after it in a totally different way than the way he did that said, I'm one of those people, Michelle, that I don't know sometimes the sticks have to hit us hard enough to make change, and I don't know that I even could have received it then,
35:44
no, because we know everything when we're 20. Yeah,
35:48
and I am, I don't ever want to go back to not having a sense of smell. I don't want to ever go back to cold sweats. I don't want to ever go back to any of that. But those scars are gifts to me now that I want to hand to others where I can see the stick flying at them, and I want to tell them to duck, and so I just, I feel grateful for the path that got me to where I am today. Yeah, I love that, and I'm excited about
36:09
what's next, and you're modeling it for your children, yes. So in that respect, it might not be your 20 year old self, but you are passing it on to that next generation. And I'm sure a lot of your clients are as well. So that's exciting. One time boss at a time.
36:24
There you go. It is one of those things where you know our stated big mission, the capital and mission, is that the time boss framework would become the common knowledge of time. And my hope is that for my kids, it would be silly for them to ever show up in a coaching cohort called time boss, because this is just how time works. Like, why wouldn't I understand my capacity and prioritize my tasks and map it to my calendar and have whirlwind and all the things like, why wouldn't I do that? Of course, it's the most logical thing I should do to get the life that I want. That's what I want it to be.
36:54
That that makes sense, all right, other than atomic habit habits, what book would you recommend reading now? And it doesn't have to be business. Is there a really good book that you've just enjoyed reading? Oh,
37:07
sure, atomic habits is I literally paid my children the past two summers to read atomic habits. It's so good. The other book that I really value is one called The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. It's by Patrick Lencioni, and it's a fable, so it's written like a story, but any you don't have to be a business owner to read it. Anyone would value it, but it just helps teams align and pull together and set aside ego and value conflict. Well, in terms of serving the greater goal, it just is really it's a wonderful book. Oh no, I would recommend it, Michelle, and it's a great one for teams read together. It's very powerful. Love it, yeah, it's great one,
37:48
yeah, all right, last but not least, is there any piece of wisdom that you would like to leave with our audience?
37:56
Think it's what I said earlier about myself. I just think for anyone listening, your time is so finite. It's so limited. You are not infinite. And because of that, it is necessarily so valuable. Anything finite is necessarily so valuable. And I would encourage in each and everyone listening to truly believe that, to own it. And if you don't, if you look at your calendar with that mindset, and it does not match your goals and your values and who you want to be, I just would consider what change needs to be made to make those things align with
38:31
that. How can people get in touch with you? Thank you. Seriously, like this has been such a great conversation, and it just gives such a new perspective to something that I think we all inherently feel that how can readers or how can our listeners connect with you, and then you would also mention that there's a link with the tool that I want to make sure we drop into the show
38:55
notes. Yes, absolutely. LinkedIn or Instagram are both great ways they can find time boss and then the masterclass. So I had mentioned earlier, we do have a free 90 minute overview of the time boss framework. If you go to timeboss dot s forward slash masterclass, or timeboss.us if you look at the resources tab, we have lots of free resources there. I'm a firm believer that information should be free, and if you need help implement with implementation, there's lots of options with timeboss you can take but all the information but all the information is there. If you are a self starter, watch the 90 minutes. You can be up and running with this framework tomorrow, and I would just love to support you any way I can. So
39:32
make time to watch it. Yes, fine.
39:35
It'll be a valuable, I promise. I promise. It'll be a valuable. It'll be worth 90 minutes of your time,
39:40
that is awesome. I will make sure that those details are listed in the show notes for our audience. Great. And for those of you listening, hop on over to design for the creative mind.com and check out our workshops. We are host, I am hosting a workshop on this. 16th of September, and I think we are going to publish this podcast on the ninth so there's still time for you to there's still time for you to register. It is a masterclass on marketing. It's a three day masterclass where I am teaching you my layered cake method. So if you are feeling the pulls of this wild market that we're in right now, the ups and the downs of the uncertain economy, but also, if you don't want the highs and lows in the future, that's what I'm here to show you. So cruise on over to design for the creative mind.com and then click on the workshop and sign up for the masterclass. It's free, it's three days, it's an hour a day, at noon, Central Standard Time. You don't want to miss it. So Andrew, thank you for being here. It has been an absolute pleasure, and for our listeners, choose to be great today and every day, we'll see you next time. Hey y'all, if you love the show and find it useful, I would really appreciate it if you would share with your friends and followers, and if you like what you're hearing. Want to put a face with a name and get even more business advice, then join me in my Facebook group, the interior designers business Launchpad. Yeah, I know it's Facebook, but just come on in for the training and then leave without scrolling your feet. It's fun. I promise you'll enjoy it. And finally, I hear it's good for business to get ratings on your podcast, so please drop yours on whatever platform you use to listen to this. We're all about community over competition, so let's work on elevating our industry one designer at a time. See you next time you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
