Michael Levitt, President CEO, Breakfast Leadership
Michael Levitt with Breakfast Leadership, is a public speaker and published author of 369 Days: How To Survive A Year of Worst-Case Scenarios, brings people back to life. Focused on helping individuals and leaders within corporations (Re)Learn BOUNDARIES in their work and personal lives – So that they can accomplish more, by doing less, which will save their careers and possibly their lives. Michael lost his health, his job, his car, and his home all in 369 days. Michael teaches people on how that happened to him, so that they can make the crucial changes in their lives to prevent those losses from happening to them. Michael grew up in Metro Detroit, and has lived and worked in 3 of the 6 Original 6 NHL Cities (Detroit, Chicago, Toronto.)
https://www.breakfastleadership.com/
https://www.breakfastleadership.com/bucket
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bfastleadership/
AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:22] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For more details about the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive . That’s E C K F E L D T. com / thrive
[00:00:57] Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. And our guest today is Michael Levitt. He is president and CEO of Breakfast Leadership. We're going to talk a little bit about the challenges of leadership, the mindset of leadership, some of things you need to do as leaders, which are sometimes not easy and the things that need to happen to be able to grow and scale your business. I'm excited to talk about, but kind of practical, logical side, but also kind of the psychological side gets in our heads, what gets in our way and what we need to do to level up, be better leaders and grow our businesses. So at that. Michael, welcome to the program. Great to be with you, Bruce. So why don't we talk a little bit about your background? Before we kind of jump in to the topic, how did you get into the work that you're doing now, working with leaders, working on kind of the psychology and the mindset? Tell us about the background.
[00:01:42] For me, I was thrown into leadership at an early age when I say thrown and I actually applied and was hired. But yeah, I was like, why not? Let's see what happens, UPS. Well, you know, that happens sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, seriously. You know, I been fortunate to have a dynamic career. I started off in public accounting and then rode the dot.com wave until that blew up and then crawled back to being accounting and then entered health care because I had nothing better to do and was a health care executive for almost a dozen years. And during that time, I was also going through some significant burnout and stress and had a pretty horrendous year and had to rebuild and reinvent everything. And I did. And then the reason why I launched my organization was because I was seeing way too many people going down the same road that I did. And it scared me. And I made the decision that I could not stand on the sidelines and allow it to happen to others. So I needed to do something about it. So that's why I launched my organization.
[00:02:43] Yeah. You know, I think it's an important discussion because I think that unfortunately there there is a lot of stress. There's a lot of bad outcomes from stress on the business side in general, particularly in the entrepreneurial world. There's, you know, tragic stories, obviously, of people coming to high levels of stress. But I think even just just the general entrepreneur, you know, is dealing with just day to day constant levels of stress. You know, but both kind of physical, mental. And it has all sorts of, I think, negative outcomes for not only for them personally, but for the business. So, you know, important topic. Tell us about the organization. So how did you sort of take this sort of the insight or the passion that you had about addressing this issue and turn it into the work that you do? What's the format? How do you actually help folks with these issues?
[00:03:24] Well, the first thing I did is I made sure to seek out some really smart people that had gone before me, maybe not so much in the stress management, in burnout prevention type of world, but entrepreneurs that were relatively still new into their business but had gained some success because I figured they probably fell on their face a few times. And if they could help me at least minimize the number of trips that I have and in the launching of the business, that was important. So I was fortunate to seek out some really intelligent individuals for specific areas that I needed to grow, as I had alluded to earlier on. I started off in accounting, so marketing was not an area that I was particularly familiar with. And we made a lot of fun of the marketing people. I did take a marketing class because it was required for me to get my bachelors degree. So otherwise I probably would not have taken it. But I regret that decision if I could tell my earlier self. You know, one thing that would be it's like you maybe take a couple more marketing classes. I was smart enough. I took a bunch of typing classes in high school because I didn't want the homework and it really helped me in my career. But I approached it made sense in marketing an entrepreneur specifically. They are a group that I'm really passionate about because obviously I'm one of them. But also, too, I see too many of them just spending all of their time on their business, which I get. And they're trying to launch it. They're trying to get everything growing, meeting with clients, figuring out social media, figuring all these things. And they are short changed their own life and they stop doing things that are beneficial to them. And it impacts their health, their home life, their friends, everything. And it's all those things where it's like, OK, congratulations, you have a successful business.
[00:05:06] You're too darn tired now to enjoy any of it. Why? Why are you doing that? So it's a marathon. It's not a sprint. I know a lot of people want their businesses to be a multibillion dollar entity after six weeks. That's not typically going. Happens, so you need to pace yourself and look to those that have done it before you. And what I've discovered is there are so many of us that are so willing to give our guidance and tips that's worked for us. Now, it may not work for somebody else, but at least, you know, reach out to those people that are doing well and more often not their very generous with their time to say, yeah, maybe not do this, try this and avoid that shiny object. This is, you know, a good colleague of mine, Kim Sutton, talks about that all the time. And she because she's guilty of it. She's publicly admits that she is guilty of shiny object syndrome. And yes, it's a great idea. But is it in line with what you need to be doing right now to grow your business and scale it up? And if it isn't, then put it off to the side or like they do in all those fun meetings we get to go to from time to time.
[00:06:12] You put it in the parking lot and and drive as far away from that parking lot as you can. They forget that part. They don't forget about it.
[00:06:21] The parking lot. Forget about it. This is talk about stress a little bit, because I'm always kind of curious how people kind of define or categorize or kind of analyze stress. When you look at or when you're working with with somebody or you're working with an entrepreneur or working with a leader, and you're trying to kind of assess how kind of quote unquote stress they are, what are the things that you're looking for? What are the things that, from your point of view, kind of define or qualify or indicate that they are under a high level of stress?
[00:06:46] Oh, for me, I ask them, what has their nutrition been like lately? Is it different from what it usually is? How's their sleep patterns? And one of those exercises that I do with groups and individuals is I have them take a sheet of paper and draw a line down the middle of it, a vertical line. And on the left side, I want them to write down everything that they do that they really enjoy and love, whether it's a favorite coffee shop, vacation destination, going to a sporting event, anything, you know, things that they really love doing. And after a couple sheets, I have them. Okay. Now, this is as complete as you can think of at the moment. Great. Can now on the right of each of those items, I want you to write down the last time you did them and 100 percent of the time or at least ninety nine percent time. I usually hear groans or I see eye rolls or, you know, some self guilt because they don't do the things that they enjoy. And I ask them, when are you to get around living your life and and actually enjoying yourself? And they say, well, they don't have time. And I'm like, yeah, you know, I was in IKEA yesterday and they don't sell those twenty five hour clocks. I looked like they don't exist. So we all get the same clock. Yes.
[00:07:58] Some last summer digital somewhere analog, but it's the same 24 hours. So you have to build in some time to do this. No matter if you're a single individual solo entrepreneur trying to build this business, you're trying to cover your rent and food. I get it. Believe me, I know all of these pressure points. But you have to do things that you enjoy. And and I look at these lists and there's a ton of things on there that either costs nothing or under $10, you get a trip to the Riviera and a cruise and all that. Of course, that's going to cost a little, but I get that. But, you know, going to your favorite coffee shop in the morning, you know, as long as you're not indulging too much, you're going to be able to get out there reasonably, though, you know, putting a dent in your wallet. You do those things and schedule them. And then the follow up exercise, they say, okay, I want you to pick three things on this list and put them on your calendar and you're going to do them within the next 10 days and treated as if it's the most important meeting you'll ever have with your boss. Don't skip it. Don't miss it. Don't come up with excuses. Go. You know, there's got to be a time slot. You can put these things in. Yeah, do them.
[00:09:02] I think there's a couple of things I know that I think I'm want to kind of dig into, because I think you're bringing up topics or issues, dynamics that I see again and again. And I think that they really end up impacting kind of not only affected us, but kind of I won't even call it happiness because I tend to not think of it so much as about.
[00:09:17] Are you happy? But are you engaged? Like, are you? Are you feeling kind of positively productive and enjoying things that may be hard? It may not be something that you're, you know, is quote-unquote fun or happy, but they won't make you want to make people feel engaged in the work they're doing. But this idea of money, I think is a really important one. And yes, if you're gonna put you know, I want to travel by private jet to Ibiza and, you know, a party for a week, it's like, okay. Yeah. I mean, that's going to cost a lot of money. But there are things you can do day to day, just shifting how you do something, whether it's you know, instead of having this meeting, you know, in the conference room, go for a walk and have the meeting. Right. And it completely changes your engagement or your sort of enjoyment of something. You're still getting the work done and there's new monetary shift there. But there are choices that you can make about how you do things that are gonna drive kind of more satisfaction, more engagement in your day to day. And I think that's a really missed opportunity. I think a lot of people's kind of our focused on this. Well, the things that I need money to to do versus just things that I, you know, are not a money factor. They're just a choice about how I choose to execute on this.
[00:10:20] Yeah, exactly, and going for a walk for lunch or or picking a different lunch place, for example. Fortunate you know where my offices is in downtown Toronto. I mean, there's no possible way that I can eat at all the restaurants that are down here. It just I unless I just constantly eat. And that wouldn't be good. It's just impossible. So for me, you know, we all are a creature of habit. So we want to get where I always eat here. We eat the same sandwich at the same place at the same time. And so you mix it up, you know, do something different. Like you said, go if you're gonna have that meeting. You have a walking meeting or say, hey, why don't we? Why don't we extend it a little bit? Because if we did it before lunch or after lunch, like, why don't we go have lunch? Have the meeting somewhere. If the company can't afford it. Great. Okay. Then everybody pays that. You're gonna be buying your own lunch anyway when you went out to lunch. So it's not a big deal. Spread it out and change things up because sometimes when you get out of the fishbowl, you tend to see things a little bit clearer and it's a different state in from an environmental standpoint. The atmosphere is different. It's not the stodgy boardroom that we all loathe. And we see all the mission, vision and values posters that are hanging up on the walls. So nobody reads. Exactly. So you get outside and get some real vitamin D instead of, you know, the the pill form and the way you go.
[00:11:33] Yeah. Yeah. And this whole idea of the like I like the idea of the list and having, you know, kind of ready now and all the things the thing that I find, I think I personally do it and I certainly have the folks that I work with is is kind of this idea of do I do I want to do this or do I have to do this?
[00:11:49] And the more things we can kind of get into that, I want to like that's a choice that I make. Like you can I think there's a big difference between someone who is working really hard, long hours, really intensely, like really putting all in on something that they want to do versus someone who is burning out because they're slaving against a list of things that they really don't want to do they feel they have to do. I think there's a big difference between those two lists. I mean, from the outside, it may look like the same person working really, really hard.
[00:12:18] But I think internally, I think the mindset or the, you know, how it's impacting them, you know, psychologically can be quite different.
[00:12:24] And I'm curious on your take on that as someone who's sort of dealing with in these intense situations.
[00:12:29] Oh, I agree 100 percent with you on that is a lot of times. And this is something where organizations and employees need to communicate better on is finding the sweet spot. Now work is work. So, you know, some people love work more than others. And there's some people that are absolutely in the wrong job. And there may be circumstances that are keeping them in that role right now. It could be financial location. Who knows? But at this particular moment that we're having this conversation overall in North America, the economy is doing rather well when it comes to jobs and opportunities. There isn't the massive amount of unemployment that we saw a decade ago with the economic recession and everything like that. So overall and again, there's instances where maybe in your community that's not the case. But overall, there's there's choices. Also, with online, there's ability to do your own business and all that stuff. So there's you have choices. But of course, there's going to be work involved with that. But ultimately, we want to find and I think you alluded to this earlier when you mentioned happiness. I think people are trying to strive so much for happiness. They're driving way past what really is important and essentially fulfillment. It's reconnecting with. OK, why did you apply to work at this organization in the first place? What was about this job that enticed you? Try to get back to that. Look at the organization again. Could be small. Could be big. If you're an entrepreneur, it's the same thing. Why did I launch this business? Why did I feel that I was going to make an impact by doing this business? If you launched this business purely on I'm going to be rich, reconnect with that, make sure that it's actually right for you.
[00:14:08] Because in order for you to get, quote unquote, rich, you need to offer something that is going to be beneficial to others and something that you enjoy doing. Because if it's like running through mud, you're not going to hit those levels because you don't like doing it. And when you get into that situation, it's just going to bog things down. It's just going to pile up and make things worse. And this is where the stress builds up and burnout can come in as when you're constantly fighting against it. Other things in your life start to get irritating and be relationships. Second, B, organize things and they say, you know, your fuse gets shorter and shorter and all of these things start happening as a domino effect and you really start struggling. And again, you got to refocus on things and you have to focus on what you say yes to and really, really focus on what you say no to. I like to say no is a complete sentence and you need to be comfortable with that. And too often people aren't because either either A people pleaser, b, they are afraid of what the other person is going to say, whether it's their boss or a loved one or friend, or you have to take care of yourself first. And saying no to things that aren't in alignment with what you need to be doing right now is crucial. And we have. Give ourselves permission to say no more or return to our inner toddler because they say no all the time, I have an 18 month old.
[00:15:29] That is a favorite word. Yeah. No. So you have a built in mentor in your house. Congratulations. Exactly. Channel my inner son Libya. [00:15:38] Because I think I see this a lot in leaders, you know, CEOs, founders, CEOs, and they got companies of tens of millions of dollars. And we start going through basically what they're doing week to week. You know, how are their days, how are their week structured, what are the activities? And we start listening on all these things. And there's just long lists of things that they're doing that they don't like doing. They're not particularly good at yet. They they somehow are convinced they still need to do it. They're somehow obligated to do. And it just it baffles me because they're I mean, they have complete control, 100 percent equity in the company or, you know, they're controlling shareholder in the company.
[00:16:15] You know, they have all the right and all the ability and all the role power in the world to be able to say, I'm going to do this or not do it. But yet they don't do it. And I'm just I'm curious. You know, I'm assuming you run into those. Right. And you see those. And I just. What do you think is going on in there?
[00:16:28] Like, what do you think is the mindset or the issues that are blocking them from being able to say, hey, look, here's something that I don't like doing. I'm not pretty good to get at. I should delegate. I actually get someone else to do those. I should I should let this thing go. I guess. What's your experience or what's your kind of thinking in terms of what gets people in that situation?
[00:16:44] Well, you're describing a version of me from 10 years ago where, you know, I couldn't delegate anything because for me, I see a common element with people like this that, you know, they rose through the ranks. They were really successful in their career type, a personality driven, changing things, really making things better. And there's an element of addiction to that feeling. There's also, I think, from the perspective of thinking and being too tied to controlling the entire journey of whatever they're doing, a project, a service, whatever. And and for me, I was that way. And even to the point where, you know, I was like, yeah, you know, they can do it, but I can do it faster or they're too busy. So I'll go ahead and do it. And that's it. That's a one off. OK, but if it's everything, then all of a sudden is a director or C-suite executive V.P., whatever you are to lead and direct the organization or your department or your division. You were the leader will use a baseball analogy. You know, we youngsters last day of the regular season managers are out there. They are really directors of the team. They're not out there playing. They're out directing. They're putting people in the right place to do the things that need to be done for the mission, which in this case is to win a baseball game has a chance of happening. That's the same thing as C-suite executive or a leader or even an entrepreneur. There are things that you're doing that you can delegate. And if you do that, then what happens is it frees up the time for you to work on the things that only you can do.
[00:18:18] So the reason why people hire you, whether you're a C-suite executive or you are an executive, your own organization and clients work with you. They hire you for something that only you can do. So that's what you should be focusing on. And delegate the rest. Yes, I know oftentimes money can be an issue, but in this online space, you can get basically everything done at a very affordable rate. But then again, going back to what do we kind of alluded to earlier with the shiny object syndrome, you have to figure out what do I want to do? What's my organization about? What do I do? What are the things that I offer? If you try to offer one hundred things, you're going to be in a lot of trouble because you're not going to be able do all of those things. Pick a couple things that you're really, really good at. Focus on those parking lot. The rest doesn't mean you won't get to them. You might do it if your clients want it, of course, you know, and they're willing to pay for it by all means, you know, figure out a way to offer that to them as a value add or maybe even, you know, a side business of your other organization. The delegation is is crucial. And I went from my pendulum, swung from not being able to delegate anything to the point anything lands on my desk or in my inbox again. Okay. Who besides me could work on us? And the assistant I had at the last place that I was at actually despised me for saying that she she would hear me on interviews and I'd say that.
[00:19:37] And she just would open up the door quietly, look at me and stare at you alive. And then slowly closed door back. And I'm thinking I'm kind of afraid to open that door. And I'm not sure what's up. Shows up. Exactly.
[00:19:50] Yeah. And I think you touched an interesting one, which I do see reasonably frequently, which is I think I kind of I kind of get into this mode in, you know, with the folks that I work with. I'm thinking it's a skill thing. So we go into. Oh, well, so how are you delegating? We're gonna go through a delegation strategy and, you know, how do you have the conversation and who you darling, do you like? It's kind of like a tactical issue. And what is happening is then I kind of ask this question of, okay, well, so if you delegate and you free up your time, what are you gonna do with your time? And they end up looking at me with this blank stare.
[00:20:18] And I realize that is the problem is that. It's not so much I mean, they may not know how to delegate effectively, but it's not so much about that. It's more if they don't know what to do with their time. And so it ends up becoming this kind of ego kind of fear thing where it's like, well, they don't want to give up the work because if they're not doing the work, they're not sure what to do. And now they're they don't have value or don't they're creating value. And so it ends up becoming this. Yeah, it's almost like an addiction issue. Like they're kind of addicted to the work they're doing and they can't give it up because they don't have something else to go to. And it really becomes a conversation. Okay. So what do you need to do next? Like, what's the next level of the company strategically? Where do you want to go? How do we set some bigger goals? You know, creating kind of pull to get them into these other tasks to allow them to give up, because otherwise I find that they won't give up. I mean, they just won't give up task if they don't know what they're gonna do with their time.
[00:21:02] Yeah. That's the thing. They're spending so much time doing things that they don't have the opportunity to look for, to see, you know, where the organization will go. You know, to date our conversation, you know, there's there's been discussion about a potential recession. I mean, the indicators aren't there yet. But anybody that paid half attention in econ class in college knows that they happen. They come and go. You live in a cyclical economy. Exactly. And we you know, of course, I think there's still some wounds from the last one. So I think people automatically default to what's going to be that bad.
[00:21:33] It may not be. I hope it wouldn't be. But if you were spending time on task in the day to day type of stuff, it doesn't give you the opportunity to look forward to be able to pivot or look for growth opportunities or offerings or engage with your stakeholders, your clients just to see how are things going? You know, just to check and type of thing. You know, you start adding that tier repertoire. You are going to scale your business because you're spending time on growing it instead of just doing it. And I see it all the time to where like, well, I don't have the right people. Well, there's this thing called either A, train them. B, you can hire, new people can modify. And that's the thing I always tell people, especially if they're leading a team, is you'll get to know the strengths and the areas of growth for those people in interest, because you may find that you have somebody working in a particular division that would be so much better. And another one. And also and your business starts to grow because she just shifted some pieces around you. And and that can be the same thing with an entrepreneur in a solo. Purnomo It's like, OK, what are you good at? What do you lousy yet? Don't do what you're lousy at. Because you will hate it and he'll throw in the towel and you'll say, I'm not doing this.
[00:22:46] And one of the things that bugs me is when I see entrepreneurs leave their startup so early is how many great products and services that would dramatically impact our world in a positive way. Never see the light of day because people gave up too soon. And that's like it doesn't have to be that way. People, you can do it. You just understand. Like you said, it's a marathon. It's not a sprint.
[00:23:09] And and do the right things and and say no to those right things, to say no to and yes to the things that will will benefit you and the people you serve.
[00:23:19] When you mentioned this earlier and I wanted to come back to this idea of if you're growing and scaling your company as we kind of figure out really what you're going to focus on. I was at a business competition, startup competition this last weekend and I was there was mentoring one of the teams and they were they had a product, a fairly successful niche product in the industry that they're working on.
[00:23:36] They have sort of a unique approach to it. And they're doing pretty well. And they've they're getting traction. And then they're talking about this new product that they're developing, which is kind of the more traditional way of dealing with the situation and talking about how they're going to develop this new one. And and and I was kind of asking like, well, why are you. Why are you developing this new product, which is really the old way of doing it? Well, because, you know, there's still a lot of people that want this thing and there's companies out there produce it. We feel we realized we could use some of the things we do and produce it pretty quick.
[00:24:02] I'm like, okay, wait, so you're gonna you're gonna start a two front war, get one using a new product, which you're clearly a believer in. You know, are there no more customers for that product out there like, oh, no, we could we could, you know, ten times the business on that new product. But I'm like, okay. But yet you're gonna open up a new product line to compete on an old technology with a very competitive marketplace. And as I was kind of and they're like, oh, yeah, we shouldn't do that, should we? I don't think it is just like this desire to like, oh well here's another like oh we could sell this thing or we could sell that thing and we could have that service. We get out that service and people just getting so distracted, particularly at this scaling, that it may look, if you're a hundred million dollar company and you're trying to figure out, you know, how to open new divisions and stuff like that. I'll have that conversation with you. But if you're less than a hundred million dollars, like doubling down on the things that are working is probably the best thing you can do.
[00:24:52] Oh, great. Because otherwise you start spending all of your effort on all of these things that have no synergies and then you're stretching your team. And deliverables, of course, are never in alignment. So you're trying to finish this project or that project. The clients are different. Their demands and needs are different. So you end up you almost get to the point where you start having an identity crisis or schizophrenic. Yeah. Yeah. Who are? Yeah, exactly, you're going to the doctor and getting stress medication because your company decided to completely switch gears on what they offer and offer something else. I saw that growing up. I grew up in Detroit, so I saw GM do that in the 80s. And like, you make cars. Oh, yeah. Well, we bought a satellite TV business.
[00:25:37] What? What? I know something does not compute.
[00:25:41] I know diversify. Income is something that you hear people talk about. I mean, at a small scale, you're General Motors. You're just a gigantic organization. Why are you spinning your wheels over on this? It doesn't make sense. Maybe try making some cars better, then you'll sell more. And guess what?
[00:26:01] Things take care of themselves, or at least something to do with motors. I could see you got a be. Efforts are diversifying around a core competency and a different market, but going to satellites, not less high tech satellites. Don't run on gas powered engines.
[00:26:14] No, not now. As far as I know, they don't. I'm sure that's pretty much all electronically designed and floating in the air, basically.
[00:26:24] What are some other things you can do or are things that you've seen in terms of, you know, effective leaders finding that kind of hesitate on balance? Because I think I think successful people sometimes still are not totally balanced, but at least an integrated kind of work life, personal like habits, routines, things that help them be more productive, more successful, you know, in the marathon rather than just kind of the daily sprint that they're in.
[00:26:50] I like to use the phrase so, you know, work-life harmony and sort of balance.
[00:26:54] Balance doesn't, you know, doesn't work other than it being an album The Van Halen released in 1995. You know, it's funny, the the liner notes of that album, there's an egg that's resting on Eddie's guitar neck. Of course, anybody is. Try to stand an egg up. It's not gonna work unless it's if it does, I'm going to look at that. Yeah, yeah. If if that egg does balance, I wouldn't necessarily eat it because it's a modified and.
[00:27:20] No, I don't do that.
[00:27:22] Not going to get into that discussion. But for me, one of the things that I see people really become a little bit more successful in getting that harmony going is to really track their time. And if they can use a calendar. I use a digital on that's accessible on my phone, on the computer or wherever. Some people use paper ones. That's great. Doesn't matter what format you do, but in track how you're spending your time and color code things so your meetings are in. I like doing meetings and read because that's usually what I see when I get another meeting. But then for things that are beneficial to you that you enjoy doing self-care or, you know, take care yourself, launch whatever, take your favorite color. So use a highlighter or if you're using a digital calendar, then you know, color code them. Then that way over a period of time, over a week or a month or a quarter. You can look back and you can look for certain colors and you'll see themes. You'll go. OK, I didn't spend as much time on self-care this month as I normally do, but this was our product launch month. I get it. So you can you can kind of get ahead of these things from happening. Case in point, I did this exercise at the beginning of 2016. I was on two boards of directors and part of a very busy health care organization, multi-asset organization. And of course, I color coded my meetings and I looked at my calendar and it literally was a sea of red. And I counted all the meetings that I had, whether it was internal meetings at the office, board meetings, committee meetings, whatever. In the month of January, I had 54 meetings.
[00:28:50] Wow. And I said to myself, okay, burnout guy.
[00:28:54] Bcse You've come in time for you to eat your own dogfood here and and will adjust this. So I immediately resigned from both boards and changed some of the internal meetings to say, okay, do I actually need to have these? What what's going on with these? So by April, I think there was like seven meetings because otherwise it would have just continued down that path. And I thought, no. So you have to you have to get in touch with how you're spending time and with the harmony component. You know that depending on your industry. There are seasons that may be a little bit more chaotic than others will factor that in. Understand that for me, I know that my autumn tends to be busier just because it's a natural time of year. Everyone's refreshed from summer vacation and there's initiatives. People are trying to get things wrapped up before the end of the year. All kinds of things. So items tend to be busy for me. So I know that some very particular and what I do, how I schedule things and and what not and in learning and getting an understanding with that can help you prepare and adjust things to the point where it doesn't stress you out. You know what it is. And you're going back to the point you mentioned before with your delegating and in freeing things up so you have some more time. You know, there's nothing wrong with sitting in your office for half an hour and not doing anything.
[00:30:14] Exactly. It's actually because you're really doing something. There's something going on in your brain while you're sitting there. Not focusing on any particular task, and that's really important time.
[00:30:23] It's the clarity creates opportunities for growth and things that you wouldn't have seen because you're you're running, you know, some imagine you're driving down the I-5 and you're doing your one hundred and twenty. Don't don't get pulled over actually with traffic. You're you're not. You might you might. One point you owe not one hundred twenty. Sorry I misspoke there. But anyway you see you're driving along and you're not going to see things if you're hopefully paying attention to the road and you're going pretty fast when you're sitting at a standstill. You can look out and you go, wow, look at whatever. Or look at that car. Look over and see. I've never noticed that house before. And so I get why I've never noticed that field before or there's a lake there. I never knew that I'd been doing this route for 20 years. You know, you just there's those things where when you do take time and you just do nothing, you'll you'll discover some things that you wouldn't have seen 'cause you're just constantly go. So definitely build in building some break time, you know, keep track of how you spend your time. So that way you can kind of design your life in a way where you can do things that make sense in rhythm with your energy as well. It's it's it's a big exercise that that's paid big dividends for me and for the people that I helped, you know?
[00:31:36] That's great. We're going hit time here. Michael, if people want to find out more about you, about the work that you do, what's the best way to get that information?
[00:31:43] Best way to find me is just go to breakfastleadership dot com. I'm on LinkedIn and Twitter and Instagram and Facebook under Bfast leadership.
[00:31:53] Also, don't put that on a license plate. That's not a good idea. Yeah. The police will please see faster.
[00:32:01] Yeah, exactly. That attracts attention.
[00:32:03] Exactly. It's like. Hmm, yeah, it's like. So yeah. Breakfast leadership. That comes the best place to find me. If people want a free template for that bucket list thing that I referred to about listing things on the left and right. Just go to breakfast leadership dot com slash bucket and just enter some information. I'll email it to him right away.
[00:32:20] Excellent. Michael this has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking the time. Great takeaways for our folks here as have been really valuable. Thanks so much for. Enjoyed it.
[00:32:28] You've been listening to Scaling up Services with Business Coach, Bruce Eckfeldt. To find a full list of podcast episodes, download the tools and worksheets and access other great content, visit the website at scalingupservices.com and don’t forget to sign up for the free newsletter at scalingupservices.com/newsletter.