The following transcript is provided by YouTube. Mistakes are present. To hear the podcast episode, click HERE.
[Music]
scaling up nation we finally have a prep class for you to help build your
confidence to take the certified water technologist designation exam go to
scaling up h2o.com forward slash cwt prep to enroll in the class that teaches
you why each one of the answers on the mock exam is the best answer i work each one
of the 75 questions giving you insight into how i read into those questions to
build your confidence so you can go in and confidently sit down to take the
certified water technologist examination go to scaling up h2o.com forward slash
cwt prep today [Music]
welcome to scaling up h2o the podcast where we scale up on knowledge so we don’t scale up our systems i’m trace
blackmore i get to host this awesome podcast scouting up nation it is almost
the end of april where is the year going it’s almost the end of the first month in the
second quarter and just like we start each and every year we talk about goal setting we talk
about evaluating how the previous year went what life was trying to teach us
along that year what we got accomplished what lessons we learned and then we applied that to
the current year we then break that down into quarter bite-sized pieces
and we’ve already finished one quarter we’re now almost one third into the
second quarter my question for you is how are you doing
and it really doesn’t matter how successful you are if you’re not
measuring so my real question for you is how do you know
how are you keeping score what are the things that you are measuring
to make sure that you are getting the things accomplished that you want to get
done peter drucker said what gets measured gets better and we all know
that if we measure something that means we’re looking at something and the only way anything gets better is we have to
look at it and then get the information do something with that information
and that just in itself will make whatever we are looking at better
so how are you keeping score one of the tools that we use in the
rising tide mastermind and i’ve shared it here on this podcast
is a book called the 12 week year and exactly what i just described in this
opener is exactly what that book teaches you to do
what are your three-year goals then you break those down into your one-year
goals then you break those down into your quarterly goals and then you keep score
each and every week are you doing the things that you need to do in order to get those things
you want done done it’s a great book you can get a copy by
going to an affiliate link that we have set up for you scaling up h2o.com forward slash 12
week nation i know you’ll enjoy that there are a bunch of episodes that i’ve done on that book
and don’t think just because we’re one-third in to the second quarter that
if you haven’t started those things that you cannot get them started there’s a
chinese proverb out there that says the best time to plant a tree was 20 years
ago the second best time is today make today
the day you plant that tree nation we got a couple things coming up one of the
things i want to mention is the international conference on biological wastewater treatment technologies that’s
taking place in new york june 2nd through june 3rd if that’s something you
want to find out more information about go to scalinguph2o.com and we’ll have all that
information for you also the national rural water association is having their
in-service training in anaheim california june 7th through 9th again
we’ll have all that information for you so you can find out all about that on our show notes page
the event that i want to make sure that you are participating in because it is
such a great cause and we are going to have a lot of fun doing it
is the 6k that we are having teams scaling up
participate in on may 21st that’s a saturday and it’s
being held by team world vision of course you heard steve speer in the
episode a few weeks ago talk all about team world vision and how he actually
ran from one coast to the other coast all the way across the country so he’s not a
cross-country runner he’s a cross-country runner he talked about that experience
but he also talked about all the things that he does with team world vision and
what the 6k is and what world vision does when people participate in the 6k he
told us the reason that it’s a 6k because that’s the average amount of distance somebody that doesn’t have
access to clean drinking water has to walk in order to go get drinking water
and bring it back we heard in that interview a lot of times that water is very far from
anything you would consider clean i urge you to go to scalinguph2o.com
forward slash 6k to sign up to become part of team
scaling up nation or maybe you want to sign up your own team i don’t care i
just want you to get involved i want you to share your pictures of you
participating in this 6k with all the hashtags that we are
posting on social media we’re going to be posting to scaling up h2o and hashtag worldvision
and there’s probably some others out there that i’m not thinking of but the whole point is is i want you to be part
of this community and show off that you are having fun and you are participating
in this so worthy cause to find out more go to scaling up
h2o.com forward slash 6k nation i feel like each and every week i
tell you how excited i am about our guest this week is no different
i am so close with the person that we are going to talk to
so here is our next interview
scale up nation my lab partner today is my mastermind facilitator none other
than big a walker welcome big a hey trace man thank you for having me
you know i used to tell people all the time they never could pronounce aaron they would always say aaron and i’m like
hey my mama said a run so it’s aaron i changed it’s a big a so nobody would
mess it up man what a pleasure it is today to be with you trace thank you for having me absolutely and to have you
back you were on almost a year ago and you were sharing all things big a walker
you were telling us a little bit about how you started your mastermind how you’ve been a huge inspiration in how i
started the rising tide mastermind and recently you did something that just
inspired the heck out of me i don’t know if i can ever do it we’re going to talk about that on the podcast but you
recently took a sabbatical i want to talk all about that
yeah man i never thought i would do it either and because i do facilitate your mastermind group i’m going to see to it
that you take a sabbatical so we’ll talk about that more later but man i didn’t think i could either 43 years this year
i’ve been in business and i’m like there is no way all the team members was talking about me being
gone and i was scared to death and all my buddies jumped in and so
yeah i did and i took off longer than they had told me originally and we can get into the details of that but i’m
telling you trace it was life transforming to take a sabbatical i’m
just telling you man so much clarity was gained as a result of that and uh yeah i know everybody can’t do it
just immediately but it is something that we all can aspire to well i can’t wait to have that conversation i do want to remind the
audience how awesome you are with all the things that you do so if you were to sum up what it is that
big a does how would you do that well a summary like a one-line summary i
help ordinary men become extraordinary in all they do you know my life’s mission is motivation helping other
people accomplish their goals and dreams and it’s just something that gets me up each
and every day i love to help everybody else accomplish what they’re trying to in life and so i feel like with 43 years
of business and 42 years of marriage maybe just maybe i can give you one or
two nuggets to help you along the way well big a you and i get to see each other each and every week and i’m going
to say your superpower is to be able to
give somebody something that’s really hard for you to say hard for them to hear but you do it in
such a caring way you’ve got courage doing that you do it with tact and people always take it well
how do you do that because that’s got to be difficult well you know i it’s funny you’re saying
this because i had coffee with a buddy of mine yesterday and we were talking through some of our
superpowers and blind spots and kryptonite and things like that and he made a comment
similar to what you just said and here’s what he said and we’ll go with it he
said you really care about people that’s the reason that they’re willing to listen and i think that’s true i mean i
do care about people you know i mean i get to spend time with people and help them you build these relationships and
build a rapport with people and you know my mom and dad always said be authentic and genuine and uh i just guess i
genuinely care about people and you’ve got to say hard things often times it’s not things you want to say but that’s
the reason we call it iron sharpens iron sometimes their sparks fly and if it doesn’t then you’re really not
sharpening iron and so i just say you have to say it with compassion empathy
and genuine love for the person you’re talking to when you came on last time we talked a
lot around the mastermind and i i don’t want to redo that episode but you are
the master behind mastermind you’ve written the playbook for it you’ve helped so many people create their own
mastermind we’ve got people that are listening today and maybe they heard me do some commercials for the rising tide
mastermind maybe they’ve heard some other mastermind maybe they don’t even know what that term is how would the
master explain to somebody what a mastermind is yeah you know i think that we’re
designed to be in community just humanity in general is designed to have
other parts around you that can supplement where you’re possibly weak
and there’s so many things i may be good at but there’s things that i’m not so good at and i need people to aid me in
that process so it’s really more of a peer advisory group it’s kind of your own board of
directors it’s people that really know you intimately obviously i have conversations with
business people each and every day and had an interesting conversation with a gentleman yesterday and kind of went
like this he wanted some advice and i said well it’s hard for me to give you just blanket advice like i could tell
you what i would do but if i don’t know you intimately and i don’t know what your goals are your vision is i don’t
know your super powers your blind spot i don’t know of interest that you have in this world i don’t know anything about
your family i don’t know about your history it’s hard for me to tell you anything that would be solid advice for
you specifically when you get to know people in a mastermind you find out every answer to
those questions that i just posed and then i can walk alongside you and say if
i were in your situation this is what i would do otherwise it’s just generic blanket information that sounds good on
the surface but it’s not applicable to most people one of my favorite things that we do is
we always ask for wins something positive that happened between this meeting and the previous meeting
and it always happens somebody’s win is really the group’s win because that was
an issue we helped him process yeah each person has privy to the
information behind the scenes they have context for the conversation and so we’re able to celebrate
in the mastermind together you know oftentimes there’s not a place to celebrate we have wins and we have things that we
would like to share but if people don’t have context to that conversation they’ve not been on board they don’t
know the particulars around it it’s hard you know as well as i do trace just to go in and say hey i accomplished this
today they look at you like you’re boastful or you know they don’t have the context but when the mastermind members
have seen you struggle they know exactly what you’ve gone through they know what you’ve given up they know the hours that
you’ve put in in order to accomplish that it’s a huge celebration for everybody in the room which then gives
you more encouragement to tackle the next process and so it’s just being in
community you know masterminds somebody asked me one time they said what is the oldest mastermind i said well jesus had
12 and so i guess we can go back to there and start and there’s just a model
that’s set before us that just shows that we can go further and last longer
when we have community around us well i’m assuming that in your mastermind somebody told you that you
needed to take some time off that you need to step away from the business you needed to unplug from your regular
day-to-day and work on those things is that where that idea came from a little bit we’ll dive in because trace
you know from being around me i’m pretty vulnerable i mean i’ll say it so i’ll just say some things
because i don’t hide you know i we all go through things i was having a really tough time back uh in 2021 uh my sleep
was not good at all i was really having some trouble sleeping i had hired a couple of doctors and we were trying to
get to the bottom of that i didn’t feel like i had anything to worry about but there were some chemicals that were out
of balance and there were some other things that i needed to do and i became foggy like i wasn’t in the conversation
i would show up and i would be fatigued i would go to bed and i would get up and i would still be tired and that takes
its toll on you after years of going through that and a couple of people told
me he said big a you need to take a vacation you need to take some time off and then a couple of guys in the mastermind said no you need longer than
a couple weeks and i’m like what are you talking about they said you need to take a month and i said a month are you kidding me
i’ve been working 43 years there’s no way i’m taking off a month and they said well do you have a
business or do you have a job and i said what do you mean by that they said well it sounds like to me you’ve got a job
because if it were a business it could operate without you well i don’t know if that made me mad or
it motivated me but i started thinking about it and i said you know that’s true because
you know i don’t want just a high paying job i want a business that has processes and systems and people in place that can
go on without me so i go to another mastermind group i’m getting opinions from them as well and a guy in there
named lance baleen lance is a great guy he’s in the financial industry he said big guy you need to take two months off
i said what there is no way you have lost your mind he said it’ll take you
with your personality as amped up as you are a month just to relax and then you’ll be able to get into a
good spot where you can really figure things out so i went to another doctor which was a neuroscientist and uh
neurologist and she said you know there’s something to that with your personality you really do need to
take an extended time and i’m like dang i think y’all are you know banning against me and you know
you’re plotting in the background behind me and they said no you really need to do this so i went to robin talked to her
she said no it sounds good and so i went back to our team and i said listen uh this was in the middle of october and
i said i’m going to take a sabbatical and the team goes okay good win i said in two weeks they said in two weeks and
i said yeah they said how long are you going to be gone i said two months and they said what are you saying two months
and i said yeah i’m gonna take two months off and it took them about a day to digest that it took them a little
time to process it and then the team rallied around me and they said no big o you need to take off the time and so
yeah we prepared we made the designations that we needed to and we delegated the tasks that uh things
that i was doing and i was off to the races so yeah november 1st 2021
i had completely unplugged from everything except my family
big a i get it if it’s a real running business we should have systems and people in place that the owner shouldn’t
need to be there however there is something that goes through the owner’s mind that they have to be there
that if something happens and they’re not there to take care of it what if how
did you deal with all of that well it was hard tracing i’m not going to sit here and say it wasn’t difficult
all those thoughts went through my mind you know this is not not to boast in any way but this is
my 14th business that i’ve started i started when i was 18 years old and this
is our 14th company and i’ve always thought i was indispensable you know i
was like man i’ve got to be there and i’ve got to check on everything and you know there’s a certain amount of that
that’s true with small businesses to a point but you’ve got to really think through it and this allowed me time to
think through those questions it’s like what if you had a stroke today like you’re a small business owner and you’re
listening to me do this interview and you’re like well i hadn’t really thought about that who then would run the company what
would you do and then it’s like there’s worse things than dying and that
could be you becoming impaired to a point that you couldn’t even make decisions now what’s going to happen to
your business you couldn’t even direct it god forbid that to ever happen to anybody but i started really thinking
through this and i said i went into business to be able to have a lifestyle
that i wanted to live i didn’t go into business to be a slave to the job and only be
able to have to work each and every day all day long and it couldn’t survive without me
that sounds more like you’re in jail than it does owning a business when you put it that way sure yeah and it really
is you’ve kind of created an environment to where there’s no systems there’s no
processes there’s no way to you know delegate out the steps along
the way that you’ve so masterfully done and so then you’ve really honestly just
you just have a job and i just said i don’t want a job i want a business the other thing when you
get ready to sell it and i’ve had the distinct privilege of selling numbers of companies
when it’s reliant on you primarily you devalue the business exponentially
because the person that’s buying it can’t measure up from a personality standpoint
you don’t have systems and processes in place the businesses are worth more that can run without you
and so just food for thought as you’re building your business along the way you know if you’re ever going to sell it
or transition you need to have these systems and processes in place that can run without you so
yeah just the realization of that thinking through it i said well you know this will
kind of stress test our team we’ll we’ll see what they’re made of and i’ll go a step further i’ll even tell you some
things that we did like i i get between 100 and 150 emails a day
every day and i’m very prompt at replying to those emails and i didn’t look at one
for 60 days i delegated that to my executive assistant her name is romly and she does
an amazing job when i came back i thought man i’m gonna have a real mess well here we are several months passed
the sabbatical and i didn’t have one complaint not one i get 100 150 emails a day
and so what i elected to do is to stay on that program so even when i came back from sabbatical she’s still managing
that and she gives to me now in a personal file folder email digital
folder the things that only i can do so i don’t have to sift through those
things no social media and i was jonesing like the first two
weeks literally visually shaking i was like looking at my hands and i was like robin what in the world is wrong with me
because i’m so used to doing things i’m so used to being on social media answering emails and like i would pick
up my phone and i would go i don’t know what i’m going to do with this and i would lay it down
i’m embarrassed to admit a lot of these things trace but some of the listeners out there today are in a similar situation the first week i was off i
looked at my phone of the previous week and i’d picked up my phone a thousand forty five times in
a seven day period and i’m like that’s sick like that’s sick
and so the first two weeks i continually reached in my back pocket where i carry my phone and i picked up my phone i
caught myself doing it at the grocery i would go pick up some things for robin and while i was standing there waiting on the checkout line i would pick up my
phone i was like why do i keep picking up this phone i’m like nobody’s calling me and i’m not calling anybody i can’t
answer an email i can’t do social media posts and so i really became fully aware that i was
addicted to social media into email productivity making something happen and i was like
this is not really a healthy spot to be in this is not like good for me as an individual what i found out after doing
a little more research is that every time you pick up your phone you go to email you go to social media you get a
dopamine hit and i was addicted to the dopamine hit i felt like i was making progress
and so it was very telling on me as an individual taking the sabbatical because
i’m really having time now to evaluate things that i was doing that i wasn’t even aware of if somebody had asked me
how many times do you pick up your phone a week i would have said a couple of hundred but a thousand 45 times i was
like that’s sick and so it really allowed me some time to really think through those top habits
when you took off on sabbatical what was your goal a successful sabbatical when i come back
in two months i would have accomplished these things yeah well what it allowed me to do there
was two things my first objective was to get healthy physically that was the
thing that i was most focused on because i had to get some sleep i did two sleep studies during the course of that 60
days and we found out some real problems my oxygen level was going down to 82.
well they’ll put you in the hospital for your oxygen level going down which tells you the reason that i was having
these fog issues you know then you’re not getting sleep you’re not staying asleep so physically you’re going to
sleep your brain’s not going to sleep and then when your brain’s going to sleep sleep apnea kicks in now your
brain says hey you need oxygen it goes to you so i’m like man i’m going to die if i don’t get this fixed i’m going to
die so my first primary objective was to get some rest and to get some sleep i’m
happy to report today i’m sleeping seven and a half to eight and a half hours a night every night there’s no more fog i
move my workout schedule to the mornings instead of the evenings i feel like a new man i mean literally feel like a new
man like i’m in this conversation no fog total clarity so that was my primary
focus the secondary focus was you know i’m 61 now and so after 43 years of
being an entrepreneur i needed some time away to really focus on what is mine and robin’s life going to look like during
these latter years you know i mean i’m not going anywhere for a long time but i’m no spring chicken either and so i’ve
got to think you know what am i going to do what is the lifestyle i want to live because robin and i elect to live very
proactively not reactively i don’t want to just get up every day and you know meet the days
challenge and go about it i want to be proactive in my life so i needed time to
plan for that and then finally i wanted to see if the business was really a business or job and i discovered it is a
business because we have an incredible team and they never missed a beat when someone goes on sabbatical does
that mean you go somewhere you’re trying to stay outside of your regular day-to-day
yeah i’ll just go through my schedule with you i’ll tell you what i did the first two weeks i shook a lot and i sat
on the patio that was my first two weeks i lit up a couple of fires out there i’ve got a hot tub and i’d get in the
hot tub every day and normally you know i do that anyway but i have a schedule and i’m like i don’t even have to get
out i look like a weathered grape most mornings i get out of that hot tub and
i’d go in the house and i’d be like man i got nothing to do and so you know i’d go to bass pro shop or i go to home
depot or lowe’s and hang out for a while come back home and eat lunch with robin and i was like dang this is pretty nice
you know it’s like i don’t have the phone ringing because i put the phone aside you know it’s like i’ve got two
phones i’ve got a phone that only three people have the number two and that’s my family and if they need me
they can get me then i’ve got a business phone i turned it off and i’m like i wonder if anybody’s calling and i was
like put a message on there that said hey if this is an emergency contact romly my assistant at this email address
and so that’s what i did the first two weeks so after that a friend of mine invited me down to key
west he’s got a house down there so i went down there and fished for a few days that was a lot of fun came back and
on my way back he’s got a boat in west palm beach and he said hey nobody’s using the boat won’t you go up and stay
on it for a few days and i’m like really man i’ve never done that like i’ve never done a sabbatical first of all and then
i’ve never really gone away for any period of time alone like alone alone like with nobody
and so i went up it’s got a really nice boat there so i went up and got on the boat and i stayed three days nobody but
me on this boat and i took naps in the middle of the day i set out on the back of the boat and read i’m christian by
faith so i prayed i read my bible i journaled i’d go take another nap in
between lunch and dinner and i was like this is starting to like feel pretty good and it seemed like during that time
i was able to relax because i said hey i’m really really going to unplug here and then what was
amazing to me is is the depth of my thinking at that point
it wasn’t just dealing with emails and social media and customers that were unhappy in another coaching client and
doing a podcast interview i was like man i can really think through what i want to accomplish i can
really think through what mine robin’s life is going to look like because we’re so busy and we’re so
clouded with activities we can’t get to that level and so that was probably a
highlight for me i came back robin and i went on a cruise we did the
mexican riviera down through cabo and puerto vallarta
and had a really good cruise and then i came back and uh spent another couple of
weeks during thanksgiving and during christmas and then had a really good new years and
uh there again i’m gonna be just blatantly honest with you for me
six weeks would have been perfect eight weeks was a little too long like at the end of six weeks i was fired up i was
rested i had a plan and i was ready to come back but i promised my family and i promised our team that i would stay gone
eight weeks and so i really could have gone back after six weeks but i stayed
the other two weeks and then came back well big a i have to say from having you not in our group for two
months that was very weird we missed you we got by and you gave us the tools so we were able to lead the meetings and be
as productive as we could but you came back totally different and you could not
wait for your turn to speak when we all shared some wins and you said i got to tell you about the sabbatical you were
so fired up and you were sharing all the things that you just shared with the scale it up nation
it was inspiring now i still don’t know if i can do something like that but i
want what you came back with yeah you have to experience it on your own no one can convince or talk anybody
into doing it you just it’s kind of a leap of faith a little bit some people initially like you’re
hearing me tell this right now you’re a solopreneur you don’t have a team and i get that so i don’t want to come here
and say oh yeah anybody can do it like everybody can’t do it initially but you
can set a target date to get yourself in a position to be able to do it
another reason that you really need to do it every person needs to i used to think that it was rich people just using
that as an example to take an extended vacation but i can really see people
you know friends of mine have told me about this and i’m like yeah i hear that but i don’t know if i could do that and
i always kind of put it off but what i really learned out of the sabbatical also is really doing a deep dive in
myself like i met with four counselors during this time and i really shared my
heart and i found out that i really had some misplaced priorities like i would come in the
mastermind group and i would tell y’all things and you really need to do this but i actually wasn’t doing it myself
and it felt very hypocritical it was like you know i’m teaching these things but i’m not even doing that
myself and so it allowed me to really reformulate in my mind the big rocks the
big things that were priority in my life and i came back and i redid my entire
schedule i put the big rocks in first it was like my faith and my family and my health and relationships and then
business and so now i’m able to start my day a little bit later i’ve delegated out about 75 of what i do and i’m only
focusing on the things that i consider my lane of genius like yeah i could do
my zone of competence but that doesn’t mean that you should do it and you hear these fancy terminologies
and you say yeah that sounds good for you but i couldn’t do it well i thought the same
but you can do it and so i just want to encourage those that are listening just
do it incrementally don’t set it aside and think i could never do this you could
but it just takes a little bit of energy the other thing that really helped me is i learned what was exhausting me i
learned the things that were sucking the energy out of me and i said i can’t be my best self and
my best person if i’m doing tasks that’s draining me and so now i’m pretty fired
up most every day because i’m doing the things that give me energy the things that i really aspire to do
there again some of you listening to my voice today there’s certain tasks that you have to do in your business because
you don’t have anybody else to do it i get that i’ve done that numbers of times
but aspire to delegate those things out to a virtual assistant or another team member
and then really focus on what you do best and you’ll grow your business exponentially faster
than you would trying to do everything on your own big a is it an all or nothing approach
can somebody start with just taking a friday off every friday yeah that’s actually what i did a couple
years ago is that uh i worked five days a week and i actually retired 11 years
ago and i started coaching a couple of people that turned into a podcast interview that turned into multiple
podcast interviews that turned into now 17 mastermind groups robin said i’m
working more now than i’ve ever worked in my career and it’s probably true but i’m loving it more than anything i’ve
ever done and so now it’s a passion project now it’s something that really feeds my soul there’s great purpose and
meaning in it yes you can start with a single step and i challenge all my buddies people that
are around me now about four years ago i started taking off every friday and
quite honestly i’ve watched it and i make more now than i did when i was working five days a week because i’m
more productive the hours now i really focus and i accomplish more
in the four days than i did in the five days and quite honestly i’m looking at now eliminating thursdays
and so i bet you five dollars i’ll become more productive i’ll use my time more
strategic and i’ll probably make more money and get more accomplished in those three days but it’s incremental right so
start with a friday work towards a thursday work towards a few weeks sabbatical
you know maybe work your way up to a month and you know a lot not a lot of people is going to take two months off
you know that you need to be a little more seasoned have a few more years under your belt and then aspire to do
two months how have your relationships change post-sabbatical
well the main relationship that’s probably better than it’s ever been is the one with robin robin and i’ve been
married 42 years now i wasn’t so fun to be with in 2021 because i was tired i
was foggy and when i came back to be honest again i keep saying that because
your audience doesn’t know me but to be honest with you i’m not sure she believed i was going to make some
changes and so when i told her what i was going to do she said yeah i believe that when i see it and i’ve done it
and she’s encouraged our team is very encouraged because brooke my daughter is
the ceo of our business and she told me one day she goes dad quite honestly these meetings go better when
you’re not in there i got kicked out of my own meeting and she said you’ve always got all these
ideas we need to let you be a visionary and we need to bring you in when we need you and now quite honestly they do get
more done when i’m not there because i disrupted the meetings kevin wallenbach is our integrator does an outstanding
job and he is really implementing these strategies that we’re putting in place and i’m doing what i do best and that’s
connect with the members podcast interviews i encourage help i support i
challenge i cast vision other things that really give me energy so yeah i would say our entire team is
thrilled because i’ve reallocated the things that i do and i’ve allowed them to operate in
their zone of genius as well was it hard to come back no i was excited to come back
you know robin told me a couple of times she goes i kind of like you being around like this and i said that’s good but i’m
not retiring right now you know we’ll look at that later it really wasn’t hard for me to come
back because i knew that i was going to make some changes i knew i would be invigorated
you know i’m a very goal-oriented person i love to be happy i choose to be happy
and i’ve eliminated the things in my life that caused me to be unhappy and so for that reason you know i feel more
motivated now than ever before okay what one word would you use to sum
up your experience energizing yeah i would never have thought that i
thought i would come back and it would be something that you know the wheels had run off that i felt like see the
other thing is is i’m kind of a control freak like i have to know everything that’s going on in every facet of my business
and i’ve always been that way in every business i’ve ever owned until i really got into this business
and got the competent capable people and empower them to do their job god
gives each one of us differently and i was trying to do administrative work and tasks and processes that i’m not gifted
at and i need to stay in my zone of genius i need to stay in that lane
and do what only i can do and let other competent capable people stay in their zone and when you do that it runs like a
well-oiled machine one of the things you said in the very beginning was that the business is
running well it should be able to afford to allow you to do this when you came back were there certain cracks that you
found needed to be repaired just within myself you know it was like man why didn’t i delegate that out
earlier why didn’t i allow them here’s the thing too is that i’m very good at
allowing people to make mistakes because we all make mistakes and i said hey if if it’s not right i’ll support
you but just don’t do it again and they’re like man that is really good the thing that i discovered in myself
was is that i felt like before i left i had to master every platform you know
there were so many different things and i just want to say that we’re a lot better off being an inch wide and a mile
deep because really the riches are in the niches i mean that’s the place that we
are really going to flourish you know specialists get rich and hogs
get slaughtered and i had rather worry about the guy that practices one kick 10
000 times than the guy that practices 10 000 kicks once
because he’s the guy that’s gonna really get you and that’s what i wanted to become i wanted to do the gary keller thing you
know the one thing it’s like what is it that i can do that will really move the needle and
what is the focus i don’t have to master every platform i only need to be really really good at a couple of things
and let my team take care of the other things big if you were to pull your phone out
right now how many times have you looked at it last week oh probably half of what i used to and
the reason is is because i don’t do those tasks as much on the phone anymore i don’t have to and so i haven’t mastered it just to be
honest i’m still not where i want to be uh i still catch myself grabbing my
phone and it’s a process and that’s another reason that i’m kind of re-exploring atomic habits you know
james clear does a really good job in that book teaching us habitually how to do things
and so uh yeah i’m not where i want to be but i’m a lot better off than i was
i think our listeners are a lot better off than they were i never thought that i could do something like this but it
starts with one day and it starts with the attitude and it starts with the expectations of being more energized
being more available to the people that are important to you and being more rested being all those things so i want
to thank you for coming on sharing the story and inspiring me and all the listeners
man i really appreciate that you know if you get a chance and i’d love to interact with your listeners in the
future but we’re doing something really fun right now called tuesday noon
dot live l-i-v-e tuesday noon dot live and it’s free we don’t charge anybody to
come it’s just something you come i teach i educate i help you get unstuck i help you go through transitions
understand what accountability is and i would just invite your listeners if they want to hear more please join me
i’ll make sure to put that information on the show notes page big a thank you so much for coming on scaling up h2o
i enjoyed it trace we’ll see you buddy
a little over a year ago we invited big a on the show that was march 5th of last
year if you did not hear my original interview with big a that’s episode 184 and i just love
talking to big a as i mentioned his superpower is to give you the hard
information that you need to hear in a way that you can hear it he is so caring and
he can deliver some really harsh news that nobody else has told you and he
does it in a way that allows you to just want to improve on it want to ask more
and then he’ll hold you accountable to make sure that that gets done i introduced him in episode 184 as my
mastermind mentor big a was so helpful in helping me set up the rising tide
mastermind and making sure that the experience with all the members within
the rising tide mastermind was positive and everybody was growing everybody was
getting better everybody was part of a community definitely big a was on my board of
directors making sure that we were hitting on all of those cylinders big a
thank you for all of that and thank you for opening my eyes that the strength of the business isn’t
the strength of the owner it’s the strength of the business to be able to
run without the owner if those are not words of wisdom that we all need to live by
especially a small business owners i hope that you do something with that i
am really big on processes and procedures i really think it’s my love language and so i think we’ve got most
things covered but i’ve got to ask myself could the company
run the way it’s supposed to with me not being here and my first reaction is yes
i really think we have a lot of processes and procedures but moreover we have incredible people
on our team they are just fantastic they care as much if not more than i do about
each and everything that they do they pour themselves into everything that
they do i almost want to try having a sabbatical just to do that test that big
a was talking about eventually i’ll get there i really like where he was coaching me to maybe just
take one day a week off and nation big a was very transparent
very vulnerable i’m going to do the same thing with you i am a workaholic i love getting things
done but a lot of times that’s to the detriment of all the important relationships in my life and it’s
probably not a well-balanced life and if you’re not paying attention to all the
other relationships that are going on something is going to happen so when big
a was telling me about his sabbatical i too thought that was just a fancy word
for rich people taking an extended vacation but i think it does so much so if you’re
in the same boat that i am and you don’t think you can go away for an extended
amount of time i want you to have a goal just like i do
to do that i think it shows that you have confidence in your people i think it shows that all of the leg work that
you’ve done to make sure that you have processes and procedures that they are
working that they are being followed and you know what if something happens
you’ll find out about it chances are it’s not going to be as bad as you think it is and then you can get it fixed and
as big a mentioned if you ever have aspirations to sell your company
you’re not going along with that deal and if you do it’s only going to be for a few years
how much more valuable is your company going to be when you can prove that it
can run without you folks i just think that the ideas that
big a shared today are true game changers for people that want to make
sure that they have businesses and not just jobs as big a said
one of the things i love about big a is he is always challenging me and everybody around him so i hope what he
mentioned today gives you a little bit of a challenge and of course speaking of challenges we’re thinking on water with
james mcdonald here he is [Music]
welcome to thinking on water with james the segment where we don’t give you the answers we give you the topics and
questions for you to think about drop by drop now let’s get to it
in this week’s episode we’re thinking about how sodium hypochlorite or bleach controls microbiological growth
what’s happening outside the microbiological cell what’s happening inside what are the chemical species causing
this how much time is required to get effective microbiological control
how does ph impact these chemical species does the reservoir effect soften the
impact of ph take this week to learn more about sodium hypochlorite and its impact upon
microbiological growth be sure to follow tow 22 and hashtag scaling up h2o share
your thoughts on each week’s thinking on water i’m james mcdonald and i look forward to learning more from you
thanks for that james nation if you have not kept up with james’s challenges
don’t worry they’re on each and every episode of scaling up and if you need to
go find out what you’ve missed go to our website scaling up h2o where we have all
of those listed for you also while you’re there don’t forget to sign up for the 6k
scaling up h2o.com forward slash 6k we’ll have a sign up page for you it’s
just fifty dollars that fifty dollars you heard a couple of weeks ago what
that can do for one child that does not have clean drinking water and then it will also
allow you to participate in the 6k they’ll send you a jersey they will send
you a medal and then you will get that most coveted bib with the child’s
picture that you are sponsoring and i promise when you are walking
running crawling using a walker pushing a stroller however you decide to do this 6k on
saturday may 21st people are going to stop you and ask you
who is on your bib it is a conversation starter and you will love
sharing that information with people i can’t wait to share that whole experience with you through social media
so if you haven’t gone up one more time scaling up h2o.com forward slash 6k
folks i sure enjoy bringing this podcast to you and until next week when i have a
brand new episode for you i hope you have a great week take care of each other folks
[Music] nation almost two years ago i started
the rising tide mastermind we have over four groups and a waiting list for a new
group folks it is wildly successful and what i mean by that is that we are able
to process issues together and get new ideas about how we solve the issues that
we all face day to day in ways that we might not have come up with on our own
folks look into the rising tide mastermind to see if it is right for you by going to scaling up h2o.com forward
slash mastermind if what you see looks interesting schedule an appointment with
me and we will see if the group is right for you and you are right for the group