Episode 23 / Mike Michalowicz
Mike Michalowicz’s Strategies to Find Entrepreneurial Freedom, Fast
This episode is for you if you’ve ever wondered:
How entrepreneurship parallels moments of creativity and vulnerability, similar to creating music.
The significance of having honest dialogues with your team and making incremental but permanent shifts towards a collective vision.
Practical advice on balancing business growth with team flexibility to avoid burnout.
The transformative impact of Mike Michalowicz's book "Clockwork" on Lindsey's business, and how it can help achieve freedom and scalability.
Strategies for eradicating entrepreneurial poverty by achieving financial, personal, and impact freedom through delegation and building a supportive team.
About Mike
Mike Michalowicz is the entrepreneur behind three multimillion-dollar companies and is the author of several business books, including Profit First, Clockwork, The Pumpkin Plan and his newest book, All In.
Mike is a former small business columnist for The Wall Street Journal and business makeover expert for MSNBC. He regularly travels the globe as an entrepreneurial advocate
“I know quite a few entrepreneurs of owning various types of businesses in any industry, of all different sizes, of all different journeys, and everyone experiences imposter syndrome. I don't have it. But what I have noticed, the people who are successful, what I mean by that is they sustain with it, they keep with it, and it achieves some version of their vision.”
Mike Michalowicz
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Lindsey Epperly [00:00:02]:
Awesome. Mike, I am so excited to have you on today. Thanks for coming on. Who made you the boss?
Mike Michalowicz [00:00:06]:
Lindsay, it's a pleasure to be here with you. Thanks for having me.
Lindsey Epperly [00:00:09]:
Yeah, well, you know, you've dedicated your life to focusing on entrepreneurs and small businesses, ensuring they get the absolute best of branding and profit and leadership to the highest potential. I want to talk a moment to focus about you and your story. You know, who made you the boss? The title comes from the fact that when we look ourselves in the mirror as entrepreneurs, the answer is, I made me the boss. And that can be a bit of a lonely journey, a bit of a unique path. So can you just give us a high level perspective on, you know, what made you pursue this very unique path?
Mike Michalowicz [00:00:39]:
Yeah, I think who made me boss was a few bottles of Budweiser and it's true story. I, after college, I worked for a short period of time for a computer business and I just remember thinking, the boss is in the back smoking cigars and counting money and I'm working my tail off to make his dreams come true. So one night I went out for some drinks with a colleague there. Liquid courage kicks in, a few budweisers in. I'm like, my gosh, I could start my own business a couple more. And I made something that actually transformed my life. I made a decision to transform my life. I left a message saying, I'm starting my own business.
Mike Michalowicz [00:01:17]:
Next morning, I woke up in panic and fear. Like, what the f did I just do? Am I an idiot? And he, I called him and said I was, you know, I'm embarrassed and ashamed. He's like, you are an idiot. Good luck, kid. And I was out the door and, um, I was off to start my own business and, and that's what I did. And fear became a great driver and motivator, but it became a transformative moment of my life.
Lindsey Epperly [00:01:38]:
That's incredible. Thanks for the honesty.
Mike Michalowicz [00:01:41]:
Yeah, the stupidity. I don't encourage anyone, like, you know, don't go about that way.
Lindsey Epperly [00:01:46]:
I think it's one of those things, you know, looking back on my own journey where I think if someone had told me what it was going to take to build and scale this business, I don't know that I would have signed up. So that young ignorance is kind of a blessing.
Mike Michalowicz [00:01:57]:
Ignorance. Ignorance is, is bliss. It truly it is.
Lindsey Epperly [00:02:01]:
I'm curious, you know, we talk a lot on this show about imposter syndrome and kind of how that manifests oftentimes along the journey. I am curious, and maybe you haven't felt that maybe after those Budweisers and that confidence, it just was. It was full steam ahead. But have you experienced that at any point in your journey?
Mike Michalowicz [00:02:16]:
For sure, I still do. I regularly do. And for me, it's kind of this waffling. So yesterday was an imposter day. I'm like, what am I doing? I'm an idiot. No one cares. And stick a fork in you. The next morning, I wake up and say, double down.
Mike Michalowicz [00:02:35]:
I know quite a few entrepreneurs of owning various types of businesses in any industry, of all different sizes, of all different journeys, and everyone experiences imposter syndrome. I don't have it. But what I have noticed, the people who are successful, what I mean by that is they sustain with it, they keep with it, and it achieves some version of their vision. Do you have this ability to put that monkey mind in the backseat, to squash it and say, yeah, fine, I'm potentially imposter, but I'm just gonna keep trucking anyway? Yeah, I think, I don't know anyone that's never or not experienced imposter syndrome. Have you? I assume you have.
Lindsey Epperly [00:03:18]:
Well, you know, I interview people on the show, and everyone's admitted to it so far, yeah.
Mike Michalowicz [00:03:21]:
Okay. Okay. So 100% so far.
Lindsey Epperly [00:03:23]:
Yeah, exactly. Well, it's interesting, too, to hear you say yesterday was an imposter day. To think about it in the light of, there are just going to be those days where the inner critic shows up, the little gremlins show up, and. Yeah. And to your point, you have to be able to. In my perspective, I think that society is often so quick to say, just shut it up and put it in a box, you know, put it in the corner and tell it to. But I actually feel like those are the days that I want to honor, that I must be doing something right if it's showing up, because I'm getting out of my comfort zone.
Mike Michalowicz [00:03:51]:
Yeah. It was so interesting. They, I don't know who the they is. They say the most important day in the gym, as an example, is your worst day because you still showed up and went through the process. And someone else said that our performance will ultimately be at the level of our practice, and therefore we revert to kind of our practice, our ongoing, uh, and not these highlight moments. But I think most entrepreneurs, we have this highlight. Maybe not the right word, but we have this moment, this epiphany, this great expression of ourselves, and we say, yes, that's my standard. And it's not.
Mike Michalowicz [00:04:29]:
It's just, it's a high moment, and it's a capability, but we're going to revert down to this base. And the question is, when you're at that base level, do you keep trucking forward? Do you keep moving forward so you give yourself the opportunity to have those burst or unique moments?
Lindsey Epperly [00:04:42]:
Yeah. What you're describing almost sounds like moments of creativity. And I actually interview quite a few artists on this show for that same reason, because I feel like the entrepreneurial muscle we're creating. We like building. We like bringing something to life that wasn't there before. And those are when we feel our deepest insecurities, that what if what we've created is not good enough, is not going to make it. It's going to get judged, whatever that looks like, because it's kind of a vulnerable position, that art of creating a.
Mike Michalowicz [00:05:09]:
Business yesterday, it's funny, as I look back on it, so throughout the day, it felt like an imposter day. But I look back on it, I say, oh, my gosh. I had a epiphany, at least for me, of something I can do. I'm working on my next book. I'm like, oh, my God. That's the strategy I've been looking for. And yet I judged other components because there were some numbers that weren't the numbers I wanted them to be. And I'm like, I suck.
Mike Michalowicz [00:05:30]:
It's just interesting, the framing, I guess. It's just human nature. It doesn't matter if you're an entrepreneur or nothing. I'll give you another story. So I play guitar marginally, and we had a conference recently, and so myself and some of the members, we said, why don't we put together a little group and we're going to do a performance. We did 15 songs. Ends up we were in a bar where our conference was kicking off, but there was public guests there, too. So we do our 15 songs.
Mike Michalowicz [00:05:57]:
The bartender goes to one of our members, not knowing they're a member or what we're association. He goes, this band sucks, right? And when my friend repeated this to me, I said, oh, my God, we have a band. I didn't even know we had a band. Like, it was so interesting in that moment. And that reflected on, like, oh, my gosh. When something's presented, you know, that between action, reaction, whatever is at that moment, they say, are we defaulting to a spin that is of service to us? We have a band. There's opportunity, or we really do suck. Gosh, we're horrible.
Mike Michalowicz [00:06:32]:
I should give up on this. And I think I've tried to program myself in a way that when I do choose the negative path just to realize it, recognize it, say, okay, imposter moment, but then say, what's the reframe? I could do? And more often than not, habitually, I reframe into, oh, my God, we have a band.
Lindsey Epperly [00:06:49]:
Yes. Yes. Oh, my God. Oh, my God, we have a band. I love that as. I hope you're gonna use that in a future book.
Mike Michalowicz [00:06:55]:
I think I will. Yeah. Cause it was such a. Yeah. I was like, and we did.
Lindsey Epperly [00:06:59]:
And we sucked.
Mike Michalowicz [00:07:00]:
We sucked.
Lindsey Epperly [00:07:00]:
We had the best time now.
Mike Michalowicz [00:07:01]:
And we sucked. But, gosh, we have a band now.
Lindsey Epperly [00:07:03]:
Yes. Oh, my gosh. I love that.
Mike Michalowicz [00:07:05]:
I love.
Lindsey Epperly [00:07:06]:
And I feel like that's a, that's a tangible tip listeners can take right now and, and use to apply to reframing when that critic shows up. I want to actually, speaking of tangible tips, because you were just so chock full of them. Your writing is so chock full of them. So I'm going to put you on the spot for a few and a few different categories here, but it's only because clockwork absolutely changed the trajectory of my business and my.
Mike Michalowicz [00:07:24]:
Yeah, I love hearing that.
Lindsey Epperly [00:07:26]:
Thank you. I'm one of the people. I'm pretty sure I sent you an email because you encourage people at the end of the book to say, send me an email and tell me when you want to take your vacation. Because the whole point is to find a way to allow your business to run without you for a certain amount of time. And so it's learning the art of delegation. And, Mike, I will never forget reading this because I own a travel agency, and at the time I was building it up, I was sitting in the Bahamas hosting a group, which sounds luxurious and whatever it does, does. It sounds like that. But for every minute I'm spending with that group, I've got a client stuck in Bangkok that needs to get out.
Lindsey Epperly [00:08:01]:
I've got someone else waiting on a trip. I'm just in the thick of it because I was a solo practitioner at the time as well. And so it was the first time I really started dreaming up what it would look like to create a team and to be able to delegate and actually say, well, maybe I'm not going to have to be the lead salesperson for forever. Maybe I could run, you know? Now here we are. The company turns ten this year, celebrating that fact that we scaled. We landed on Inc. 5000 last year. I get to sit as the CEO.
Lindsey Epperly [00:08:27]:
I don't deal with client stuff anymore, like all of these amazing things 100% because I read clockwork.
Mike Michalowicz [00:08:32]:
Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you for the accolades, but admittedly, fried first is a. Is a recipe. You're the cook. So amazing that you pulled it off. Good job.
Lindsey Epperly [00:08:42]:
Well, for any listeners who need the recipe, I'm definitely recommending clockwork. But I wanted to talk, you know, just a minute. About a lot of your work revolves around the idea of freedom. Right. Like you believe your readers, you yourself are pursuing. I myself, that is a goal. My husband is my business partner. It is all about freedom and flexibility for our family.
Lindsey Epperly [00:08:59]:
That's why we pursue entrepreneurship. So I want to talk about how that manifests for entrepreneurs, right. Because I think the dream is you get into running your own business and immediately you're free. And that is not the reality at all. So tell me kind of cadence of freedom in entrepreneurship and what we can be thinking of to make that more in our favor.
Mike Michalowicz [00:09:18]:
Yeah. Check this out. My wall. This is my office. Office. But my home office had the same thing. It says eradicate entrepreneurial poverty. I have that everywhere I go.
Mike Michalowicz [00:09:27]:
I'm not into tattoos. Otherwise I would tattoo myself with that because I think that's my life's purpose for myself. I know it's my life's purpose, but I don't know how it was expressed, if it's spiritual or self given. But what I found to your point is there's multiple categories of what entrepreneurs are expecting from their business when they start it. When I survey audiences informally, but ill ask, ill say, why did you start a business? And its always the same three and its usually in this order. Financial freedom. Not worrying about bills. Personal freedom do I want when I want and impact.
Mike Michalowicz [00:10:01]:
I want to serve my community, my family and so forth. And im like, okay, great, so now we know why you started it. Which ones are you achieving? Zero. Zero. I have no money. Im putting the few dollars I have in it and it's killing me. So I'm more impoverished than ever before. I'm broke.
Mike Michalowicz [00:10:16]:
Secondly, personal freedom, forget about it. I'm in the Bahamas working on the beach and people think I live a glorious life. But my God, I am devastated, I'm exhausted. And then lastly, impact can't have impact. I have no freedom financially. I have no freedom in time. I can't be of service. I have become enslaved to the business.
Mike Michalowicz [00:10:33]:
So it's ironic. The three primary reasons we start a business are the three exact things that don't happen. And for most entrepreneurs, and this is devastating, you will be more financially successful working a job and that's painful because entrepreneurs hear the word work a job for someone else. It's like a gut, a knife to our gut. But you'll be more financially secure with a job. You'll work less with a job. And maybe you can use some of your spare time to have that impact that you envisioned. That is the harsh reality, but it's not the necessary reality.
Mike Michalowicz [00:11:06]:
So that's why I've been writing my books. I've lived that life of no money, no time, no impact. And admittedly, every book I write is actually something I need to learn. I didn't know how to be profitable. I figured out a way that worked for me, and then I codified it into profit first, I didn't know how to take vacations for real. I didn't know how the business could operate in my absence. What I love to do is be a spokesperson, like what we're doing here, and be an authorization. That's my things.
Mike Michalowicz [00:11:34]:
Everything else I suck at. I gotta admit it, I suck at it. Well, over time, I've used clockwork myself, found a way to develop a team where people are doing what they love to do. And it's given me this personal freedom, which with those two components, financial freedom, personal freedom, I now can have impact on the community I want to serve, which is micro enterprise, small business, anyone under $10 million of revenue, you're my people. If you're under a million, my God, you're my people. And if you have a hot dog stand doing 50,000, my God, my God, are you my person?
Lindsey Epperly [00:12:03]:
I love it. I love the eradicating entrepreneurial poverty point.
Mike Michalowicz [00:12:07]:
Thank you.
Lindsey Epperly [00:12:08]:
Because I think it's not something that any entrepreneur even thinks of when they go to start their venture, right? It's typically so pie in the sky. And to your point, we've got these dreams, we've got these visions, but, oh, man, what it takes to get there.
Mike Michalowicz [00:12:19]:
And there's so much shame around it. And actually, even worse, there's not even worse than shame. There's a necessity to deny it. So imagine you're my travel agent, and I call you up, and you're in a world of hurt financially and so forth. I call, you say, hey, Lindsey, I'm thinking about going to the Bahamas. And what you should say is, hey, I happen to be here right now. It's amazing. Got this thing.
Mike Michalowicz [00:12:43]:
What if you said the reality saying, I work my ass up right now. I am desperate for money. I need clients, but I can't take on more clients because I'm so desperate we won't do business together. We are told to engage a customer, you have to exude confidence, and that's what our customers want. Here's the ultimate irony. Your customers will never say this. Your customers want you to be wildly profitable. They'll never say, like, hey, charge me more.
Mike Michalowicz [00:13:07]:
Rip me off a little. Lindsay, could you, could you, could you take some money out of my pocket? But what they will say is, I want your full and divided attention. I want to be treated like your number one customer. This vacation is life changing or life altering for me, and I want to be treated accordingly. That's what they're feeling. And the only way you can give them that degree of attention is if you're sustainably profitable. If you're worrying about money, you're worrying about getting clients and so forth. If you're not worrying about money, you can take care of the job at hand.
Mike Michalowicz [00:13:33]:
Your clients want personal freedom. Then they'll never say, hey, Lindsay, I wish you weren't around. Go do whatever they'll say, I want you. But they don't really want you. They want the solution that we're providing. And if it's fully dependent upon you, the day you got a toothache and you can't come to work for a day or two, everything is askew. So what the client wants is a surety of availability from the resources, the team, the technology they want. Confidence is going to be there when they call upon it.
Mike Michalowicz [00:14:01]:
And the only way to do that, I think it's clockwork. Extract yourself from the business being dependent upon you so it can operate on its own. So ironically, your clients want all this stuff for you. They just don't use those words.
Lindsey Epperly [00:14:13]:
It's so interesting, Mike, because everything you were describing that you would never say to your clients, but they actually want these things for you. I also feel is parallel to your team, right, when you're in a leadership position, that there are the times that we want to say, hey, this is a lonely road and I am struggling, but we cannot say that. But at the same time, your team wants to know, where is this going? Where is this going? And I think that's why I'm actually sitting here curious, having read many of your books now, is there an order to them that you recommend? Because it's almost like you grow with the business now that all in is out, and it's actually about leading a team, right? Like that is information I needed after clockwork. But you need profit. 1st 1st do you actually have a recommended direction that people read your books?
Mike Michalowicz [00:14:53]:
I kind of do. So I don't suggest a book. Where I do is I respond with a question. I say, what is the biggest challenge you're facing in your business right now? Because that's the starting point. I think books, any books, aren't necessarily, you know, read it because everyone else is reading it. Yeah, maybe you'll get some education, but what will serve your business in this moment? And maybe I haven't. Maybe it's something I haven't written on, and there's. There's amazing books out there, so identify that.
Mike Michalowicz [00:15:19]:
But I also wrote a book specifically when you don't know what the next thing is, it's called fix this next. So I consider that the hub. If you don't know what the most important thing in your business is right now, and most of us don't, that book helps you identify. Start here now. And then you can find the resources, coaches or books or other resources to see through that. I do want to share one thing about your team, because you were talking about. So I wrote another book, believe it or not, another one called all in. And I'm not trying to be pluggy, just to give context.
Lindsey Epperly [00:15:47]:
No, I was planning on talking about all in. I'm excited you're bringing it up.
Mike Michalowicz [00:15:49]:
Oh, awesome. So here's what I found. I used to own a business in computer crime investigation, and I remember running all these numbers, and I said, oh, my gosh, if we do x, Y and Zenith, we can achieve $10 million in revenue next year. And we're only three years old. I've never had a business of that size up to that point. So, like, this is it. So I come out of my office, I call my team. Together, we had 30 employees this brick and mortar back in the day.
Mike Michalowicz [00:16:11]:
I have this huddle room. Everyone's gathered around. I have the tiger playing in the background. Just get people jacked up. I wrote $10 million in my best bubble letters I could with a sticky note over. It was big, mega post notes, and with great flair. I said, this is the year we're going to do 10 million in revenue. Expecting the people to lose their mind.
Mike Michalowicz [00:16:32]:
And there's the silence, cricket, silence. I'm like, did I not do the guru kind of head bow and kind of open hand gesture that gets everyone fired up? My team just shuffled away and said, let's get back to work. My sister at the time, her name's Patty, and she said, mike, if we achieve $10 million in revenue, you get the bigger house, you get the new cardinal. What about our vision. And that became the realization that now I deploy completely. But I used to think that the corporate vision was the vision. We're all told, what's the corporate vision? What's the mission? It's all bull. It's not the corporate vision.
Mike Michalowicz [00:17:11]:
It's the collective vision. Everyone in their lives, yourself, myself, everyone has intentions for their lives. Small, big. Actually, you shouldn't even judge it. But maybe someone wants to learn a new language. Someone wants to buy a house, someone just wants to spend more time with their family. All those things are equally important because that's what's important to them. Great leaders identify, what is everyone looking to achieve out of this life experience? Then how can the business help support it? Now, this is not a make a wish foundation.
Mike Michalowicz [00:17:39]:
You don't buy a house for someone or sign them up for lessons, but you can keep that dream in front of them, that vision, give them that guidance and support it. And I found through reciprocity, when you truly care about someone's vision for themselves, they will care about the vision for the corporation. Here's an interesting thing about the vision for the corporation. It's inevitably the vision of the owner. Or if there's a collective group of leaders that serves my fat ego, there's a reason I want to get there, because I can walk around in front of my family and say, I can do this successfully. I'm not a moron, or whatever it may be, but the reason I want, and I would do that with my family, I'm not a moron.
Lindsey Epperly [00:18:18]:
I actually had imposter syndrome coming through.
Mike Michalowicz [00:18:20]:
Love me, mom. Please love me. But that was a little close to home. So if our team sees us caring for them, it's natural to care for us. Corporations are the x on the map. This is where we're going. Collective visions are locked arms. We're all doing this together.
Lindsey Epperly [00:18:40]:
Yes. Okay, so let's camp out here for a bit, since I really want listeners to experience what you're talking about when it comes to leading a team and to helping guide them to that vision. And what's the first step? Like, how do you even begin to shift the tides of what we've been told as entrepreneurs and building this with the corporate vision? And now you're the man, right? Like, now you are the reason that people kind of want to work against, because you're taking that corporate mentality and it no longer feels like, yeah, right.
Mike Michalowicz [00:19:07]:
And who wants to work for the man? Like, it's the grossest thing on this planet.
Lindsey Epperly [00:19:10]:
It totally is. And you didn't become an entrepreneur to do that.
Mike Michalowicz [00:19:14]:
Right, right. And that's a trap you and I fall into. We become the main.
Lindsey Epperly [00:19:17]:
Okay, so how do we, how do we, what do we do?
Mike Michalowicz [00:19:19]:
What we do? The first thing is to start having an honest dialogue. Now, here's what happens with entrepreneurs, is we have this almost bipolar behavior that, oh, I can't be the man, I got to be the embracer. I gotta be this wonderful thing. And we come back and it's such a pendulum shift. I go to conferences and share some thoughts, and I'm like, the biggest danger now is you've heard all these presenters and so forth. Your team is back in the office right now just saying the hurricane's coming back. You know, button down the hatches, because they're going to come and it's going to be this vomit of stuff we have to do, and it's going to change us forever. But if you simply wait three days, most hurricanes pass over, we'll clean up the wreckage, and we'll go back to the same way, the same thing.
Mike Michalowicz [00:19:59]:
So that's the problem. What we need to do is make incremental but permanent shifts. So what we do with our team is we just start having an honest dialogue, saying, you know what, I've never really properly inquired about you, what's going on with you? And here's what's going on with me. People won't just blurt out, say, oh, you know, I've always wanted to do this. They'll say, well, what do you mean? And you've never talked like this to me before, so just inquire and start sharing. You'll also find, depending on the size of your organization, we're small. We collectively, we have 20, 21, 22 people here, small. But you'll find one or two people become more of the advocates, like, well, this is what I've always wanted to do.
Mike Michalowicz [00:20:38]:
Then you can start building this vision team where you say, hey, why don't we meet once a month and start talking about this? Then maybe find an advocate. Kelsey, the president of our company is the advocate for this. Every quarter. It's also on this wall right down there, that little poster thing. There it is. I'm pointing it now, that poster. We meet every quarter and we talk about our individual visions. So it has for 2024 this year, it has five years from 2029 and 2023, what I currently envisioned.
Mike Michalowicz [00:21:07]:
Then we went so far as building a. I dont know if its a mnemonic, but some kind of physical manifestation of it. Outside my office, these are high walls, maybe 12ft high. And outside, there is a tree similar to the one behind me, but its wallpaper based and its barren. No leaves. What we do is we document every quarter what were looking to do as it changes over time. Every quarter. We also say, well, what have you achieved? What has manifested? Someone on there said, I just want to clean my house.
Mike Michalowicz [00:21:40]:
I want to clean my attic. That was Corday when she did it. Said, I have a clean attic now. She wrote on a leaf, paper leaf, that says, I cleaned my attic and put the date on, and we pasted this on the tree, and there was our first leaf. That tree outside this wall has 100, 200 leaves. Of these individual accomplishments, it's a physical manifestation and a recognition of the importance of everyone's collective vision. Regardless of what it is, it just manifested. This tree is in such bloom, there's no more spaces for leaves.
Mike Michalowicz [00:22:11]:
So I had this idea. I said to Amy, she's our office manager, I said, you know what? We should take down all the leaves and start over again. And she goes, Mike, are you effingennesse kidding me? She goes, we achieve that shit. She goes, get your hands away from that. We're not touching this. She goes, I'm buying us paper clouds and paper flowers. But those accomplishments stay. And that became another realization.
Mike Michalowicz [00:22:33]:
Oh, my God. Of course, this is what's important to us. And now, for the first time, a business is recognizing ourselves, as opposed to the board out there that says, $10 million in revenue, check or not.
Lindsey Epperly [00:22:47]:
This. Okay, I want to ask you just two more questions before we wrap up, because that's good. And, you know, we talked at the start of this about, like, all the things that, as leaders, we experience in terms of insecurity and imposter syndrome and burnout. But now you've got a team, and you've got to balance this tension, right, of wanting to grow a business and wanting to delegate accordingly after we read clockwork. And also a team that also would like some flexibility and freedom that you don't want to just overwhelm and burn out is such a real thing. You know, it's. It's now part of the World Health Organization's actual terms. Like, this is a real deal.
Lindsey Epperly [00:23:16]:
And coming out of a pandemic, people are just in a different mindset. What do you recommend that we do to make sure everyone's being heard and seen and kind of like, where does the. This is maybe a larger question, but, like, where does the employer's responsibility end and begin when it comes to.
Mike Michalowicz [00:23:31]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I'm not necessarily a proponent of like a Kumbaya type of business, but I do believe the business has to appreciate the individual beyond their work. You know, we're not these robots that get plugged in, albeit they may be coming with AI and stuff, but who knows what. I do believe, what I believe is interesting was there was research that came out of England, I don't recall the source identified. In the knowledge working space, the average worker produces 3.2 hours a day, regardless of the hours worked. So every business travel, what I do as an author, every office has a knowledge component. You probably have some hands on, you may have tour guides and stuff like that. But when we do the knowledge work, realizing this, if I hire someone to work an eight hour day or a four hour day, they're probably producing about 3.2 hours a day.
Mike Michalowicz [00:24:20]:
Therefore, we want to build in recovery time. And I'm a massive fan of part time work. So there is a large community that's looking for part time employment, which can reduce the costs of a business. That's significant, give them the flexibility they need or want so they can live their outsized life, but that's also recharging the battery time. So here at our office, what we've done, and it's been a fascinating experience for the last three or four years. We're a four day work week business for the last four years, um, right. Actually, even before the pandemic. So maybe longer now, Monday through Thursday, no Friday work.
Mike Michalowicz [00:24:55]:
Uh, but you can choose to come in. Sometimes people choose to come in, and, uh, everyone here works part time. Um, you can choose your hours. So we have flexibility, but most people work a four hour to five hour day. I choose to work a longer day. Whats so fascinating is the output of our organization has increased. Now, I dont only attribute that to we compress time. Theres advancements in technology and so forth.
Mike Michalowicz [00:25:18]:
But heres my team comes back and says, ive been thinking about what I need to do, and theyre making much more strategic decisions in their work, as opposed to execution work, which is just get the job done and you repeat a, you have time to think and improve.
Lindsey Epperly [00:25:34]:
Amazing. Okay, Mike, I could keep talking to you all day because, and I'm liquid.
Mike Michalowicz [00:25:38]:
I was talking a lot.
Lindsey Epperly [00:25:39]:
No, I love this. I want to be respectful of your time.
Mike Michalowicz [00:25:42]:
Thank you.
Lindsey Epperly [00:25:42]:
What can we, the listeners, have heard all about amazing books that you've written and the company you run. Like, what are you looking for from our listeners? What can we do to support you?
Mike Michalowicz [00:25:52]:
Well, okay, two things. So I'll have an ass. For me personally, that's the selfish ass, the big ass, and this is genuine, is be a freaking successful entrepreneur. And what I mean by that is just stick with it. The global economy depends on small business, so just go for it. We are starving for your success. And I mean that emphatically. So dont give up on you ever, please.
Mike Michalowicz [00:26:14]:
If you want to explore what im doing, what does help me is getting books. And I think dollar for dollar is the best value that I can offer, as opposed to educational courses and conferences. And of course I do that stuff. A $25 book I hope will be transformative in your life. The best place to get started is Mike Motorbike. My last name is Michalowicz. No one can spell it. Mikemotorbike.com.
Mike Michalowicz [00:26:39]:
it's my nickname. I don't drive motorcycles. I kind of look like I might. I don't. I'm actually afraid of them. So that's my nickname, mikemotorbike.com. all my books are there. You can check them out.
Mike Michalowicz [00:26:49]:
Free chapter downloads. I used to write for the Wall Street Journal. That's available there, too, along with my podcast.
Lindsey Epperly [00:26:54]:
Amazing, Mike. Thank you. And I can. I can say firsthand your books are transformative for entrepreneurs. So thank you for your work.
Mike Michalowicz [00:27:00]:
Thanks, Lindsay.