Ep 185 - Finding More Time for What Matters with Mike Abramowitz

Entrepreneur and family man Mike Abramowitz joins us to reveal his secrets to achieving time and financial freedom. Drawing on 20 years of direct sales experience and authoring 9 self-help books, Mike lays out a proven system for leveraging automation, delegation, and processes so you can escape the daily grind.

Key Points:
👉Learn how Mike built and systemized multiple six-figure businesses and a nonprofit while still being present for his family
👉Discover a framework for calculating your target hourly rate and identifying lower-value tasks to outsource
👉Mike explains how to implement automation tools like Zapier and build an effective virtual assistant team to free up more of your time

If you feel trapped by your daily workload and want to experience more freedom and fulfillment, this episode is for you. Mike delivers actionable tips for outsourcing your way to more time for what matters most. Tune in now to start reclaiming your schedule.

Connect with Mike thru the social links below and learn more about his business:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/betterthanrich
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/betterthan_rich/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@betterthanrich
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/betterthanrich
Website: https://va.betterthanrich.com/

Unlock 3+1 degrees of freedom (time, location, financial + health) with our 5-Point Blueprint! https://elevateequity.org/podcastgift

If you really enjoyed this content and are looking for more, you can continue to learn more about us in several different places for free!

• on our website for blogs & other podcast interviews! elevateequity.org
• our YouTube channel! youtube.com/channel/derekclifford
• our book/audiobook! amazon.com/dp/ebook

If you'd like to have a FREE copy of our 7 Ways Commercial Real Estate Syndications Protect and Build Wealth, simply click the link below. We are here and vested in your long-term success! elevateequity.org/7waysEbook

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the three degrees of freedom podcast, where we explore lifestyle engineering with our expert guests to bring you in alignment with your own three degrees of freedom, location, time, and financial independence.

Derek: 0:14

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Today, we have someone who has been leveraging 20 years of direct sales experience and nine self help books. Mr. Mike Abramowitz. He empowers entrepreneurs to achieve time and financial freedom and having built and systemized multiple six figure businesses and a nonprofit. He helps busy founders implement automation, delegation, and processes to liberate themselves from their daily operations. He is also a devoted family man. Mike also enables entrepreneurs to become true business owners who can fulfill their dreams of having location, time, and financial independence. Mike. It is great to have you on the show, man. How are you?

Mike: 0:59

I'm doing great. Thanks for having me, Derek. Appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely.

Derek: 1:02

We're excited to have you on the show and to get rolling in the conversation right now for me and the audience. I always like to have audience member or guests on here who are admittedly a little bit self serving. I always have curious questions that I want to ask and get from these incredibly wise people. And I figured you'd be an awesome guest to have on the show. First thing is, as we start with this question with every one of our guests, which of the three degrees of freedom, location, time, financial, do you feel like you're the strongest in right now? And which one of those do you want to develop

Mike: 1:37

further? Strongest is time freedom. And I could expand on why. And then as far as the one I'd like to continue to work on is the passive. The passive financial freedom as I continue to work towards that one. Can

Derek: 1:49

you explain a little bit about what it is that you gave you that time freedom and then why You are looking more at the

Mike: 1:57

financial so the time freedom I'll give a little just a small amount of context and then we can unpack it. However, you choose the small context, the quick story is my son was born on New Year's Eve December 31st, 2020. He was in the hospital for eight and a half months and cause he was born at one pound, four ounces. So during that time, because I put business systems in place. My wife and I were able to be present with our son while my business still created over six figures in revenue and profits without me there. So that's just a little bit of context that when a circumstance happened, I was able to dedicate that time to be present. And then since then I've specialized and partnered up with my coach at the time. Now he's my business partner to teach what you just mentioned, which is teaching busy. business owners, entrepreneurs, any individual who wants to get their time freedom, how to build systems in their business and also in their life to buy back their time so they can spend that time on what matters most to them. So like last year, for example, 2023, I took nine full weeks off was able to move into a new place, was still able to. Buy a new car. We bought a bed, bought a couch, donated to all of our a hundred families. We invested over 30 grand in personal growth and still saved a hundred grand last year around all of this and given my lifetime and myself time that. So time I could talk about that is like my. My badge of honor is making sure that I am time rich for sure. So we could a hundred percent jam on that. Lots of nuance to it, who I was, why is this important to me? All of that. But that's just like the longer, longer, short version, I'll say.

Derek: 3:36

Yeah, I would also say to just to interrupt here a little bit. I'm sorry to do that. But for those who are listening, Mike also has an incredible podcast about just this. And Mike, you want to tell them what your podcast is

Mike: 3:49

before we Yeah, it's called the better than rich show. And Derek, you were a guest on that show. And it's we have so many conversation topics exactly around how to build systems in life and business. And then Mike, When you build those systems in life and business, what is on the other end of that? And how you can, what do you do with the time freedom with the money freedom and the location freedom that you have?

Derek: 4:10

And what I love about what you just said is okay, I built up my time freedom and now I'm working on full financial freedom or working like to get that. Even more larger and larger. And what I love about this is that your show, right? Your podcast talks about being better than being rich, which is time rich. And I just love how you zeroed in on that directly. And you're like, I have time freedom. And most people, if you were to take a step back, Mike, some people have the opposite. And they're more miserable because yes, they have financial freedom, but they're not really time for you, meaning they can go wherever they want. They can eat whatever they want to do, but they have their they're committed with their time to do everything. And in the end when you have kids, you have obligations and you have. All these things to do, right? Money just doesn't matter, right? Because when you end up, getting on your deathbed or approaching the phase of life where you're more reflecting out or backwards rather than, looking, projecting forward in our later years, right? What really mattered was how you spent the time and where the time was because that is truly the ultimate finite resource we have. Location freedom and money, those are all things that we can attain. And we can always grow right with the right skills and the right insight, the right connections and work ethic and all of that. But time is this equalizer that can only be modified with health and the right choices and what you put in place, which is systems, processes, working with assistance and people on all of that. Yeah. I love that you had to put these in place. Now, let's drive this in a little bit more. Can you give people a little bit of an overview as to how you were able to achieve this time freedom in terms of what you implemented that changed your life, like down to the details, like maybe the tools you used or the perspective changes that you had when you had to do them in order to create this time freedom

Mike: 6:04

for yourself. Great question. I'm glad you asked. Context. I graduated from college with my engineering degree, but I was in direct sales with Cutco Cutlery, the kitchen knives and vector marketing as a student, paid my way through college, and then I advanced into management with the company. So I became a direct sales manager in my early 20s. I also invested at a young age. I bought my first house when I was 20 and had three rental properties by 22. My, my mom passed when I was in my early twenties. So between my money I earned from college or life insurance money, I was trying to get ahead, buy rental properties and retire when I'm 40, like that was the goal. So I was like, work hard, just do everything I can. But then the market shifted, as we all know. So I lost the properties. I lost my money. My self worth was tied to my net worth. So I was negative 130, 000 at a 400 credit score. I was near bankrupt. The girl I was with, we worked together for seven years. We parted ways. I started having unhealthy eating, eating habits. And I just tried to like. Work as much as possible just to get myself out of the hole. And I knew that as my identity because I saw that's what my dad did. My dad owns a plumbing business up in New Jersey. He's still to this day, he's 82 years old. He'll be 83. He still works six days a week in his business. So like he missed a lot of basketball games growing up. And I just didn't want that for myself when I met the new, into the new chapter of my life when I was like, okay, this relationship didn't end. It didn't go well. I went to a Tony Robbins event. 2012 2013. I walked across fire. I learned at that event. My mess is my message. And I said, that's it. The valley of my twenties is going to turn into the success story of my 30s. So I launched the books. I started speaking at the schools. I was speaking. I did 300 hours that year of just speaking and crafting my message for my first book. I launched a nonprofit PB and J for Tampa Bay. We fed over 100, 000 homeless people. But the challenge was I had my business in direct sales. That I started like getting neglected a little bit. I started this other speaking business and authorship and writing books and book signing, which also required time. I was like, crap, I'm still not going to be able to be a family man with a business the way I want. So I proposed to my wife and I hired a business coach and that business coach showed me. How to build systems in my business. And this is where we could get into the specifics, of course, of like how to leverage offshore workers, how to leverage things like automation and technology like Zapier and how to simplify processes and onboarding and interviewing and recruiting and attracting talent and conversion. How can I simplify some of those? And we could get into the nitty gritty on some of this. So I spent 2016, 17, 18, just really building this stuff out. When COVID hit 2020, it was all systems go. So we were having 100, 000 sales weeks. We provided over a thousand jobs in during COVID. My business was thriving. And then, like I said, when my son James was born, because of all those systems I put in place, I was able to step back. My wife became a full time medical mom when we left the hospital and I had to replace her corporate jobs income of 80 grand a year. And I figured out how can I do that? So I called my business coach and I said. Do you think we could teach people how to do this? And he said, let's find out. That was the birthplace of what we're doing now. So 2022, 2023, we launched a virtual assistant services. So we have an agency. We have over 65 clients who use our virtual assistant services that are all powered by AI to do everything from video editing to social media, lead generation administrative inbox management, calendar management. They do all of that for me. And then they. do all of that for our clients. So it's like a one stop shop of of administrative operations. And then we also launched an educational pillar to teach business owners how to do this. And that's essentially what we've been doing. And in 2023 we went to full market. We, we launched everything, launch our services. And it was really cool to to do. to help hundreds of people. We've helped hundreds of people now win back and buy back hundreds of hours. Our average is about 65 hours per month that we have saved and won back for each of our clients and each of our students in 2023. And our goal for this year in 2024 is 100 clients and students. To buy back 100 hours per month on average and that's essentially what we're doing right now. It's really, it's been an awesome shift. And I officially retired from Cutco and Vector after 20 years in 2023 in December to transition and do this as the sole focus. Again, I could get into the specifics. I know I just wanted to give a little bit of the context of the background of how this came about though.

Derek: 10:43

Yeah, that's awesome. And thank you for the background. I appreciate that. I did want to something that I have a lot of questions on, the entire story that you shared. But one thing that I wanted to ask was, early on, you said, unfortunately, someone, your I think you said that your mother passed away. at a very early age, right? Left you with some capital to be able and you had to learn really quickly how to manage this and preserve it, right? Luckily, you had an engineering background so a lot of that is great. You and I share that in common also. And I think that's one thing that early on was a huge blessing for me as well. And I think for anyone with an engineering degree you have an innate Advantage or some sort of leverage to be able to use into your future by really leaning into that engineering mindset, because it really does help, especially with stuff like this. When you're thinking about processes and systems. But what I wanted to ask you was at such a young age, there are so many different routes you could have gone right when you were in school and trying to manage this money and go through college and to do all of this. But it seemed like You made all these decisions that kind of stacked up to the direction where you were currently, and there were some failures, obviously, and some setbacks, but in the end, they became stepping stones to the success that you're in today. Can you talk a little bit about what it is that you think happened, or what personality trait you had early on that helped you move in that direction? At that moment in time when everything was crumbling around you and you had all this money and all these problems and you were just out of high school,

Mike: 12:16

it's a good question and I was surrounding myself around really great mentors in the sales position I was in. So they gave me a book rich dad poor dad as a part of my leadership training and that book. said buy assets, avoid liability. So instead of buying a new car, which I was due for, I was right around my hand me down 1991 Mitsubishi Eclipse that usually when I parked, it made this big, giant bang. Like it was like, I arrived, and it was I was ready to buy a new car, but instead I put that money down for a down payment on a house at that point in time. So it was because I read that book. So I was surrounding myself around mentors that were a couple of chapters ahead of me on that journey. And my dad also, he owned a bunch of properties when he was younger and he sold it like the worst time. So that's why he still works so much. But so he, because that was what I was associated with. That's what I knew. So I was a product of my environment. So I think a willingness to learn, a willingness to surround myself around people that were a couple of steps ahead of me, asking questions to those who were a couple of steps ahead of me, asking them If you were me, what would you do? Seeking counsel. I think that's something I've really pride myself on is asking questions and seeking to learn. I actually failed reading in middle school because I hated reading books. I just didn't want to read the books, but then. The reframe was reading is not reading, it's learning. So if there's actual books that you can be interested in that could actually peak your attention, that you can learn from, that can help you get further and faster, then you could draw out this wisdom. Why not? So I became an avid reader and learner. During those early 20s, and then I would just adopt the characteristics from these individuals. So I didn't want to be Michael Jordan, but how could I have his work ethic? I didn't want to be Tony Robbins, but how could I live a principle based life? So I didn't want to be these people, but how could I adapt their characteristics? And embody them and create my own version of them. And now at 38, I would say, yeah, looking back on it, it's 20 year old Mike, when he, when mom passed, of course, was the hardest thing I ever had to go through. And then that prepared me going through that hard, prepared me for the next series of hard. during the next upcoming chapters of life.

Derek: 14:30

Yeah. And that common thread, of, of constant growth, that maybe you earned from, or that you learned from Cutco early on, of like seeking resources, mentors, just knowing that you needed help, that was, that's exactly, I think the key that I see among all successful people that I've come across. And we've had a lot of guests on the show, about 180 different guests come on and almost every one of them had that same. Approach to like the constant growth mindset, always being aware of resources you have available and trying to ask questions instead of just giving up, right? And throwing your hands up there. And I just really like that. And the other thing I have to say that we have in common is that early on in school, I absolutely hated English. As a matter of fact, I was better at foreign languages. Then I was an English because in a foreign language, it's more vocabulary and understand like it's a different mindset, right? It's a different type of approach. And with English, like I, other than for some reason, I really liked some Shakespeare stuff because I really liked the plays and the way the pros like interact with each other. I just was never that great at English at all. And that's one of the reasons why I got into engineering school. And then I had all of these like Systems ideas and numbers and repetition and standardization like that slant just got pounded into my brain. So in a way, I got very lucky because I didn't like the English. Just this is just a moment of self reflection here on the podcast live. Anyway, backing up. I want to talk a little bit more about how this is applicable to some folks in the audience or some folks who are listening here because obviously you've worked with a lot of people. You've had a lot of people that have come to you for help. What do you think? Is the most common challenge that solopreneurs and small business owners face when they're coming to you? What are the things that they want to fix and what are common problems that you can help them with?

Mike: 16:23

Number one is letting go of control. They feel that they must be in control of everything and all that pressure is on them. And there is some truth to that. That, that is. the decision maker. You're, if you're running the show, there is some sort of pressure that is that the buck does stop with you. However, the power of delegation is really what we start with, but we have to figure out what are we delegating. So what we walk them through is step number one is what is your dollar per hour worth? So we start there and we say, let's just start with how much do you want to make in a year? How many hours a week do you want to work and how many weeks of year do you want to work? We start there and get a number. So if they said, I want to make 300, 000 for the year. I want to work 40 hours a week and I want to work. I want to take five weeks off. Okay. So it's cool. 48 times 40. Gives you a number and then 300,000 divided by that number. It's probably somewhere around 150 to $250 per hour. So it's great, let's call it 200 bucks an hour. Now we say, let's have an idea of what are all the tasks that are not $200 an hour. Not only are they not $200 an hour, but they also drain your energy like there are a distraction for you from the main thing, or they drain your energy. They bring you down. We make that list. For me, it was like checking social media, checking my inbox and my email. For me, it was like creating a graphic design on Canva. A podcast production for a podcast. Like these were just things I was just like, this sucks. This is not stuff that I enjoy doing. So we start taking, making that list for them and say, what would life look like if all of that was delegated and offloaded? And what would that feel like? And how could that help benefit you? And then if you offloaded all of those things. What would that free you up to do? What would you focus on? What are the 200 plus dollar an hour activities that like bring you energy and are in your genius. Then we focus on strategy and planning and being guests on podcasts or doing more like a strategic partnerships or, sales even like whatever it might be, it's great. So the goal would then be, how do we delegate and simplify and get all of those things offloaded that are under your target dollar per hour, and how do we make sure you set up boundaries in your schedule so you can have protected time for your high value activities. Once we have that in place, Usually they'll say, great, that sounds awesome. How do I go spend the time to interview, train, hire, and find, and source the people to take all these low wage offer tasks off of my plate? Because it's now I have to take the time to go find all these people, interview them, train them, onboard them, retain them, making sure they're qualified. I don't have time for that stuff. And that was the birthplace of our agency on our services that we provide, because it's great, we kept seeing this problem over and over again. So it's let's just try to solve this problem in the marketplace. And that's what we did. So we created a model where it's almost like a one stop shop to do all the low value tasks. For the average business owner, and we have an account manager model, so it's like they only have to have one person that they report to, and then there's a team. We have a team of over 35 assistants that are specialists in different tasks that the account manager says, All right, this client needs these tasks done video editing or inbox management or calendar or social media. So we just have made it as easy as possible for someone who wants to offload those tasks. Boom, just use us. We have a one stop shop. But sometimes they already have a team in place. They don't need our services. They could still take that concept offloaded to their team and just use their current team just a little bit differently.

Derek: 19:56

Yeah, said. I appreciate you breaking that down for us. And I think that's something that people who are Who are just looking to get started need to think about in terms of partnering with people that can help bring these off the plate. And I want people to really pay attention to what Mike said early on, which was if you can find out what your number is for how much you want to work and work in your zone of bit of genius and everything below that, like you're at your dollar rate per hour that needs to be outsourced. I was going to ask you, but I think you answered this question. I just wanted to see if you had any followup to it, to this question is how do you know. When someone is ready to bring someone on as a team member, like how would you say that a business is ready for that? Because even though I know you can say, all right this business is supposed to make 300, 000 a year, or at least that's the target. My hourly rate needs to be this much working 40 hours a week in order to get that. How do I outsource everything else at a lower rate so that I can hit that goal, right? But how do you know when someone is even ready to ask that question? Maybe there's some people out there that are struggling with that at this point.

Mike: 21:01

It's not necessarily when it, the question is, when is now a good time? That's the question you're asking me. It's like, when is now a good time for me to start delegating? And. Not many people could really answer that question other than if you're actually asking the question, I would say now is probably the time because you have an awareness once there's an awareness that Oh my gosh, I'm a bottleneck or I'm frustrated or I'm time burnt. I'm time stretch. That's the moment in time that I think someone should create some sort of change in their life and start investing into resources and resourcefulness instead of scarcity of what if I spend money and time on bringing on these who's and then I free myself up and all I do is just go make a sandwich and I make, and I'm like, not productive with my time. And I, let's find out, like that's the, just like my business partner said to me, it's let's find out. I don't know. Maybe you are a lazy sack and you shouldn't, spend the money on some who's so you can make a sandwich. But realistically, if that is the kick in the tail that you need, Hey, I'm going to invest resources to buy human capital and put some systems in place and delegate some things. So that way I have the. The tension and the positive pressure to actually go perform now. Great. Go live out your genius. Go see what's possible. And sometimes we need that positive pressure from those in our life. And I just, I know I was just talking fast and going off my little passionate rant. I don't know if you know this or not, Derek, but I want to make sure your listener does currently right now that like delegation plan that I just walked through, I'm doing those. Every single day right now for everyone for free who has been listening to our podcast or our audience And I'd love to offer that to yours as well. And they it's a free 90 day delegation plan I will sit down with you on zoom and map out exactly what I just said What is your dollar per hour worth and what are those low value activities and whether or not use our service? Just you getting clear of what that is for you and for your life you could go to better than rich. com slash 90 day plan. That's nine zero day plan Just it goes right to my calendar link and boom, you're booking times up with me right now because I'm just getting so much energy from having these conversations with these people and helping them realize what is their time worth and what are the low value tasks. And since it's bringing me energy, I want to continue to do it. And obviously it's it's no cost to you from better than rich. com slash 90 day plan. I'd love to have that combo if it makes sense.

Derek: 23:27

For sure, man. Thank you for promoting that. I really appreciate that. And for those out there, I don't see why you wouldn't do something like this to, to at least, get some extra perspective on what even could be delegated. Because my next question is for folks out there who are wondering I don't even know where to begin. I know that I'm busy. I'm just putting my head in a few of my clients that I've worked with before and have invested with us and other properties. They are, they're so busy working their full time jobs. They have laundry to do. They have administrative stuff at home to do, right? What type of things would be available for something like that? If you could give some concrete examples, I know that's what your call is there for, but I really want to underscore the fact that everyone can use this because I completely agree with you. And I really want to try to get some more concrete out of some of those really high level tasks that almost anyone can tap into.

Mike: 24:18

Sure. The first one immediately. And by the way, I recommend buy back your time by Dan Martell. It's a really great book. But I would start with everything administrative. So first and foremost is inbox. So it doesn't matter if you're a W two or you're 10 99, just think about all of your inboxes. That would be your email, your Facebook, your LinkedIn, your Instagram, like any inboxes where people are getting your attention. I would say, how could we organize filter and get that checked by someone that's not you. So that way, okay. You're paring down the hundreds of people that are trying to get your attention to only maybe the 5 percent that actually need you actually need need to get your attention. So you're only looking at those. I think that's really important. And then what's, what I would also say under that umbrella is training that who that is filtering and checking that training, then I'm on how to respond and give people what they're looking for. So that way you could even pare that down even more. So if they open it, for example, let's say a real estate deal comes across your desk and it goes into your inbox and you're like, I only want deals that fit this criteria, anything that fits this criteria. Then send to me and I'll respond. If it doesn't fit this criteria, then respond to them using this template that says, thank you for reaching out. This is, Derek's assistant. This is not the current deal that we're looking for at the moment. But if you find something that fits this criteria, please be sure to send that my way. I'd love to take a look at that. Thanks, Carl, Derek's assistant, something like that. So now we can build out a playbook on how your assistant could respond as you for you, just not by you. And the only thing that's getting your attention or things that fit in the criteria that you suggest. Same thing with calendar management. If you have anyone that's trying to get on your schedule, as far as appointments go, I would want to make sure that I have some sort of boundaries and playbook in place for how does someone get my schedule. So if someone pic calls you a lot, if you find yourself answering the phone frequently, I would try to put in some sort of buffer there. So that way it doesn't number one, either. It doesn't ring your phone. It rings like a different phone number and have an assistant answer that phone. So use like a cloud phone number as a buffer or. If someone calls you, just have a template of text that says, Hey, I'm in a meeting right now. How can I help you and then have a link based upon what they need so that we use? Oh, okay. You want to talk about blank. Here's a scheduling link to get on my schedule to have a conversation around that topic. And then eventually when you build it out from your if it's from your like I message, Okay. Again, you build that out on your iMessage, move it over to a cloud based phone number, so that way your assistant can have that conversation on the cloud phone number versus the bottleneck being you on your iPhone, as an example. These are a couple that come to mind immediately. The third one I'll give you is using some sort of outreach. So if you're reaching out, doing mess, direct messages or lead gen or emails or like you're trying to get on podcasts or you're trying to get cold leads on your calendar or you're trying to nurture relationships with clients and you want to take them out for coffee, I would have your virtual assistant use, put your writing style and your tone into AI so that way they could get what your tone and your writing style is. And do some outbound messages, outbound text, outbound emails on your behalf in your tone and in your writing sound. This is something we train all of our team on how to do for all of our clients. So that way you can have someone be outbound messaging, text, email or social media messaging as you for you, just not by you. That could potentially help you fill up your schedule, help you with nurturing prospects or even doing some cold outreach and generating new leads for your business. Those are a couple, like no filter and I can obviously go into more, but those are some right off the top of my head.

Derek: 28:04

Yeah, I have, I definitely have some thoughts on all of those because we've done them all and I and they're amazing. And again, to me, I'm picking up everything that you're putting down because I love this type of stuff and there's all types of software and automation like I love, especially Zapier. I know that you mentioned that earlier before there's ways to tie basically, you can tie Gmail. To, Excel together if you wanted to there's all these different things that you can do in that environment. And I think it's super powerful and empowering to see used cases so that people can understand what it is they can automate. Because most of the time, right? I know there are people out there that have come to me and they've said, Hey, I know you're an automation expert, That you like to build this stuff up and software, which I do, I love all of that stuff, but I just don't know what to do. What are you using it for right now? Like I'm busy all the time. I just don't know what I don't know. I don't know how to connect all these. I just know there's a better way. So when people come to you with that where you're like. Maybe this is a preview of what people will get when they get into a 90 minute or a 60 minute call with you over that 90 days. What is the first thing that you say to them when they don't know what they could be delegating or what they could be saving their time on?

Mike: 29:15

The first place we always start is what are all the tasks that again, you feel are taking your time and your energy. And then once we know what the tasks are. Then we can ask the second and third question. And the second and third question would be who are who's that can do this and or what is a technology, a tech solution that could do this? Because to your point, Zapier, for example, we can, we use Zapier all the time. And a lot of times, even like the CRMs, like a go high level is what a lot of our clients use. It has some of those automations already in there, so you don't necessarily need to use the third party of Zapier. So that's why we have to get clear of what is the if thens? Because that's essentially what we're asking. If this happens, then I want something else to happen. So we're trying to create some level of predictability. So depending on what we want to be predictable, we will use either a tech or a team solution. Oftentimes they're probably going to pair together. Especially if you want something a little bit more customizable. So if you wanted a blanketed, templated response, that's easy. Automations and Zapier are great, but if you want to add that human element where it doesn't feel so copy paste, especially right now depending on who you're dealing with, most savvy professionals. have their radar on at an all time high, it doesn't pass the sniff test. If it looks too robotic or too chat GPT ish, or if it's too blanketed, they're pretty much they don't read it or they don't open it or it doesn't grab their attention as much as maybe it did 12 months ago. But right now that's why we pair. I very much encourage you to pair. The tech solution, the AI solution with a human. And Dan Martell talks about 10, 80, 10. So the 10 percent is you. Building out what do you want done? The 80%, the middle 80 percent is the tech or the team crafting the template or doing, doing the thing. But that last 10 percent is you just auditing it to make sure it's like in your tone to make sure it looks good, to make sure it's finished that, that would be just my answer to that.

Derek: 31:18

I love that because it's exactly without even knowing that book and that reference, that's exactly what we've been doing. We're using AI to basically augment or help our our assistants become more efficient. And in that way, Mike, this is actually pretty proprietary, but I'm happy to share. This won't be coming out until, a couple months or so after the, after we recorded. But we're using something right now, a very intelligently worded prompt, as well as like a personality profile of what, who I am as an individual and the way I've responded to social media posts in the past. And I'm using that to basically create in an option for some, you can take a social media post and drop it into the model. And then what it will happen, what we'll do is it'll create five responses that I would say to that post. And then I can bring that to my assistant, and we can review that all in one shot in one day, and we can look at it, and since, because of the time frame that we actually coordinate with each other I can pick this one, that one, or the other one, and it gets really close because I've given it some information. So some of these models that are out there make it really incredible. For you to be able to outsource some of even your own decision making. And sometimes the things that it comes up with is better than the things that I could come up with on my own, but it is in my style because I've given it my style to play off of. And it is personal because I'm picking. Which of the five prompts for that response is going to go out there. So there's really cool things that you can do with some of that stuff to help make your performance just way, way better with that technology. So otherwise my assistants are fantastic at what they do. But they have expressed concerns with them drafting stuff in my response, even if I give them like the, how to respond it verbally, right? Because the written text is much different than the verbal. And so these types of things with technology are making it very easy to be able to do this type of stuff. And I think the augmentation is just absolutely spot on there as

Mike: 33:15

well. It's great. It's true. And frankly, here's what I'll say. If somebody is creeped out about AI or it's like inauthentic or whatever, you have to understand. Yeah. We can't be everywhere at once. Think about the ultimate celebrity that you think that you would be deemed a celebrity. I mentioned Tony Robbins before, so I'll just use that name. Do you think Tony is like responding to his own emails? Do you think he's responding to his inboxes and comments and stuff? Of course not. There's someone met, we're doing that on his behalf, but it's like, how do you get through the this, Oh my gosh, I can't believe that I'm not like that. Tony would have somebody else do this, right? Here's how I get over this. And this is a hundred percent on me. I'm not imposing my beliefs on you or your listeners or anybody else. Social media has become a facade. It is not the truth. It is not reality from my lens of the world. So therefore it's a giant playground of a game and I just play the game that it's not reality. If I want to have a human interaction with someone, I set them up to have a conversation on zoom. I'll pick up the phone. I'll call them. I'm not using social media. To be social media, there's two types of people. There's producers and there's consumers. I choose to be a producer on social media and not a consumer on social media. So my social media as a business owner has become production of content. And if I want to consume, I go to podcasts, I go to books. If there's a couple of people that I want to follow and just see what they're up to, there's a few people I'll consume their content to learn from be up to date with. But it is a crap show over there. And this is what has helped me overcome some of that insecurity that I felt on what about, what will people think? I'm like, the only people I care to think of the people in the room, my daughter, my son, my wife. And it allows me to have every night, all weekends, one full day off every single week. And that time freedom is more significant than to me than what a stranger is going to think about how. I or my A. I commented or my virtual assistant responded to something like that's more significant to me. So if it's 80 percent done by someone else and it's good enough as Dan Martell says, 80 percent done by someone else is 100 percent awesome. So I very much modeled that philosophy.

Derek: 35:29

Yeah, no, it's very well said. And as a matter of fact, I think that A. I is actually going to make it easier to be more authentic. I know it sounds crazy, right? It's It's how the AI is used because eventually I'm just mark my words, Mike, I'm pretty sure that eventually there's going to be some way for us to be able to answer a bunch of questions into an AI and the AI can stand in for us as a chat bot. I'm sure it's already out there probably, but there's things out there where we can train a computer system to think like us. And if we do, then in a way, it's creepy what those companies may be able to do with that information and be able to like make decisions like us on behalf. But that actually brings us, if it's used in a responsible way, closer to being the authentic person at scale. With the individuals. And then of course there's the opportunity to reach out directly with the individuals. So I didn't mean for this to be a philosophical show but I think you and I see eye to eye on this and I think we understand each other pretty well when it comes to that. So great. That's great. Yeah, no, for sure. So I have, it's unfortunate, but I don't have much time left here on the show. But what I do want to do is I want to give you the rapid round, which is the five questions that we ask every one of our guests that are meant to be answered in 30 seconds each, because it's going to be a rapid. Succession question. And so we're going to just rapidly ask them to you if you're ready for

Mike: 36:55

it. Ready quick. All

Derek: 36:57

right. Number one, name any resource that was, or still is essential in your journey to pursuing the freedom you have. I mentioned

Mike: 37:09

buy back your time by Dan Martell. I love that book. I think it's been a great resource for me. So I'll stick with that one. I love it. That's a fantastic answer. And Tim Ferriss is for our work week. It's a little outdated. I think It's super relevant to anybody right now. The

Derek: 37:23

attitude you can say what you want about the attitude of the book, but the message behind the book and what the intent that it brings really helped set the stage for, what happened with COVID and all this work from home type things. It's really great. So I highly recommend pick that up. Okay. Number two, if you woke up and your business was gone. And all you had was 500, a laptop, a place to live, and some food. What would you do first to rebuild what you have today?

Mike: 37:51

I just watched Undercover Billionaire. That's so funny that you asked this question. If you haven't watched it, he started, he flipped like a tire, and then he flipped a car, and then he flipped a house just to start a business. It was really cool. I liked it a lot. And I would I would do what we did. I would start by adding value. I would create a community, number one, so create a community of people that rallied around a problem that we all want to solve. So how would I do that? Probably a Facebook group. Once I rallied the community in a Facebook group around a problem that I wanted us that we all wanted to solve, I would see how I can help solve that problem with them and for them. Set up one on one conversations with me, seeing how I could. Learn how to solve those problems for them and then charge some sort of premium for me to solve those problems for them, depending on the size of the problem would be determined by how much I would charge. That's what I would do.

Derek: 38:41

Consulting. I love it. And finding the need. Fantastic. Number three, what does your self reflection and goal setting practice look

Mike: 38:49

like? Journal pretty much each day. I'm an avid journal or if you look in video, I kept track of all my journals for the last decade. Simple one that you I do and that you could do is the gap in the gain from yesterday, whatever the wins I had today do this at nighttime. And then my focus for tomorrow, my gap for tomorrow, then do the exact same thing each day, real simple practice that has served me. And I think it'd be really helpful for somebody.

Derek: 39:13

Yeah, intention is powerful, especially if you're doing it, retroactively and in the, for the future as well. All right, number four, what are the core work habits? or personality traits that you attribute most to your success today?

Mike: 39:29

Willingness to learn, I would say follow through no matter what. If I made a commitment, I'm going to follow through on that commitment until and curiosity to understand the other person's lens as much as possible and allowing me to draw for my own intuition from a place of curiosity first. Versus the intuition first and then curiosity second. So curiosity first and then draw from my intuition.

Derek: 39:57

Beautiful. Said, man. Speaking of curiosity, I am super curious to hear the answer to this one because you know a lot of systems and have a lot of tricks up your sleeve. But let me ask this question. Number five, what tool or process has become one of your most important time, money or energy saving ninja magic tricks? That you use every day.

Mike: 40:20

My, my 14 virtual assistants is probably my ninja magic trick that all use AI. I know we already hit on that, but that has been a game changer for me. So I, that allowed me to have a three week road trip this summer and still produce 12, 000 in profits without me there for three weeks. So I think having a team around me that can be me. Done for me, as me, not by me the art of delegation and letting go of control and simplifying some of those processes to allow that to exist. It would be that that superpower ninja move that I think everyone can learn. I'm not special. I just spent a lot of, hundreds of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours to learn how to do this stuff. And, now I'm excited that I'm able to teach it and share with other people

Derek: 41:01

to implement it. Yeah, absolutely. And then have people, be a part of it and grow along with you. So I think that's amazing. Mike, I wish we had more time to talk because we have more in common with most of the guests that I've had on my show. I love the system oriented thinking, the, yeah. The diehard focus to time freedom because that's ultimately the true currency of in life and then the willingness to use assistance and ask for help and bring in people and build systems around you. That's absolutely what we love doing as well. That's our time pillar freedom that we talk about in our three degrees of freedom. And I think that it's just such a powerful thing that you're bringing to the table. So yeah, Before we go, can you please tell the audience how they can learn more about what it is that you have going on? I know you already mentioned your site and your 90 day your 90 day consulting service. But I figured I'd open up the

Mike: 41:50

floor once more for you. Yeah, I appreciate that, Eric. And I would start, I would just go there. I don't know when this airs, so you might. I just make the caveat that it might not be me. It might be someone on my team when you listen to this, if it's a few months from now, but as of right now, February 2nd, when we're recording this 2024, I'm doing the delegation plan. So better than rich. com slash 90 day plan, a nine zero day plan. That would be the best place to go. Book a call. If it's not me, it would be someone on our team and we would love to support you and serve you and making sure that you could get your time freedom as well. That's awesome.

Derek: 42:22

Mike, thank you so much for coming on the show. It was great to have you. And for your listeners that have been with us all the way to this point in the podcast, just want to thank you as well. And please, wherever you're listening or watching it please subscribe, comment please engage with us so that we can attract more people just like you. And also get some more high powered guests, just like Mike come on the show and help provide some wisdom to share with everyone. We all win in this situation. And so we want to also appease those algorithm gods to make sure that we get in front of more and more people as well. So your help in doing that for us really does assist us in that. Mike, once again, thank you for coming on, man. It was a pleasure to have you. Thank you. All right. We'll see you guys next week. Take care.