Ashao Freesky – Double Your Time Off

It seems that almost every business owner is after two things, 1) Freedom and 2) Money to enjoy that freedom.  It also seems that almost every entrepreneur starts out with these in mind, then gets caught up in the prison they built.  They work at all hours, not always getting anything to grow the business done.
They get stuck in the cycle of spinning plates, with no end in sight.
Ashao Freesky knows how this works first hand, and he has devised plans to help entrepreneurs get out of the ruts they find themselves in and get back wot earning their freedom and money, just as they originally intended.
Listen as Ashao gives some great tips on building your business as a tool to help you live the life you always wanted.
Enjoy!

[00:00:00.000] – Speaker 1
You have found Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. Downloadable audio episodes of the Authentic Business Adventures program can be found in the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. That is a mouthful. Holy cow. We are locally underwritten by the Bank of Sun Prairie. My name is James Kademan, entrepreneur, author, speaker, and helpful coach to small business owners across the country. And today we are welcoming/preparing to Learn from Ashao Freesky, the owner of Double Your Time Off. Com, which I’m pretty sure that sounds awesome. So, Ashao, how would you take it from here? What is Double Your Time Off?

[00:00:44.470] – Speaker 2
Hey, James, thanks so much for having me on the show. Double Your Time Off is really rooted in the struggles I had as an entrepreneur to really get myself organized in a way that I could get what needed to get done in as efficient of a manner as possible so that I wasn’t just filling up my full week and full day with nothing but work. I think a lot of us entrepreneurs tend to just work as much as we can. And for the parents out there, I had a daughter. I have two kids now. And when I had my daughter, I really realized that I was putting so much focus on business that I was missing out on her childhood. And that didn’t sit well with me. I didn’t want to be an absent father and it really forced me to find some other methods and how to create systems and effective habits in my business that allow me to cut down my work hours and actually get more done than I did when I was working seven days a week.

[00:01:57.400] – Speaker 1
Nice. Very cool. It’s interesting. I had a son and that, I guess as my wife was pregnant, I was trying to map out, I guess we were trying to map out how we were going to get stuff done, taking care of him and all that jazz. And yeah, it’s interesting when it was just her and I, I was working all the time. And it forces you to just think, Wait a second, what’s the goal here? Why are we busting so much tail here? What are we trying to accomplish? That’s interesting that the kid was the…

[00:02:31.820] – Speaker 2
The catalyst.

[00:02:32.670] – Speaker 1
Factor, I guess, the driver of all this.

[00:02:37.230] – Speaker 2
Yeah, absolutely. I remember just working and getting up and up, going to work, and then being gone all day, coming back. My daughter had maybe a couple of hours with her before she had to go to sleep. My wife would tell me, Oh, this happened. This happened. And I was just projecting out of the future and seeing, okay, if I’m on this trajectory for 5, 10, 15 years, what is that going to be the outcome? And it’s actually an exercise I like to do a lot is if I were to continue down this path, 5, 10, 15 years down the road, what are going to be the outcome? And it wasn’t pretty. And I knew that there had to be a different way.

[00:03:27.070] – Speaker 1
Fair. Totally fair. So what type of business were you in before?

[00:03:32.890] – Speaker 2
Well, I’ve run multiple different businesses. I’ve run an online retailer, run a membership site, and done some marketing consulting. That was the most recent thing I was doing before this iteration of the business. I was helping financial advisors with their marketing. It was good. I like helping business owners, but it wasn’t quite what was really lit me up. I knew there was some a change that had to happen, but I didn’t know exactly what it was. After taking some time away from work and just giving it some thought, I realized that I wasn’t bringing my full gifts and the things that I’m really passionate about to the table in the work I was doing. That really comes down to system design and behavior design, some of the things that might sound a little dry to some people, but to me, it’s something that I absolutely love is how to create, how to design systems in a way that makes our lives as easy as possible. And how do we get ourselves to do the things that we know we should do or want to do, but for some reason just can’t get ourselves to do it.

[00:04:58.900] – Speaker 2
And so it really aligned with my passion to help myself and to help other parents reclaim those magic moments with their kids.

[00:05:09.940] – Speaker 1
Yeah. Systems can make or break a company and they’re a huge deal. It’s interesting how many business owners that I run into that they got their systems all up here. You asked them to write them down and they’re like, Ah. It’s going to take some time.

[00:05:29.100] – Speaker 1
It’s interesting. It reminds me of the book, The E myth. I remember I had a… Oh, man, this was my first business, printer repair company. I had a one person show graphic designer say, James, you should read The E myth. And I thought, this is just me not asking enough questions. I thought that The E myth, I thought E stood for entrepreneur, and I thought it was going to say, Don’t start a business.

[00:05:53.990] – Speaker 2
And.

[00:05:54.920] – Speaker 1
So I didn’t read the book. I just avoided it until it finally got recommended enough times I read it. It was essentially just saying systematize everything.

[00:06:03.210] – Speaker 2
Which I’m.

[00:06:03.800] – Speaker 1
Like, oh, I should have read that about 10 years ago. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, super cool. So does that mean that you got out of the other business and move towards something closer to what you’re passionate about?

[00:06:16.270] – Speaker 2
It was more that the business morphed and I let go of my other clients and I’m now picking on new clients for this different iteration of the business.

[00:06:28.650] – Speaker 1
Got it. All right. So what you’re promising, I guess, with the name Double Your Time Off, I imagine some people are like, Wait, what? Because if I had a website that said Double Your Returns or something like that, people would be like, Where are the strings? So how do you get people to believe that you can help them with this?

[00:06:50.340] – Speaker 2
Well, it’s really a matter of awareness and really realizing how much time we are spending on different parts of our business. Just one, for example, just email. On average, people who have a smartphone spend three to five hours a day in email.

[00:07:16.900] – Speaker 1
Wow.

[00:07:17.820] – Speaker 2
And you don’t even realize that’s five days a week. So it comes out to maybe 20 hours a week, absurd amounts of time just an email.

[00:07:29.850] – Speaker 1
And.

[00:07:30.300] – Speaker 2
It’s really completely unnecessary.

[00:07:35.820] – Speaker 2
A lot of people have, check an email. Oh, I don’t know what to do about it. Market is unread or leave it in the inbox, go to the next one. Check email on the phone, I get a chance. I used to do this all the time. Instead of having, again, this is my recurring theme. Instead of having a systematic process that you have implemented where you only touch the email once you open the email, what needs to be done? Is it an action? Do I archive it? Do I need to reply? But you don’t. Market is unread. You don’t just leave it in the inbox. That’s the whole can of worms. That’s just one example of how much time we spend just on email. That’s not even all the activities that we’re doing that we shouldn’t be doing. Maybe low level activities that really should be handed off to a team member, systematized and delegated. I think it really comes down to awareness and realizing that we spend, especially in the smartphone age, we have these things on us all the time, and we don’t even realize that we are working when we could be focused on something else like family.

[00:08:54.340] – Speaker 2
And so the diverted energy, multitasking, jumping from one thing into another, it really drains a ton of time.

[00:09:02.220] – Speaker 1
I like it. It’s interesting. I was helping a client, and for whatever reason, I was on site and they opened up their email inbox and they had, I don’t know, it was like 27,000 emails and it just in their inbox. So they just… There’s no organization, no system at all. I was just like, How do you know what you’ve done and what you haven’t done? And she’s just like, They’ll email back. Oh, my gosh. It was insane. I just felt, and I can tell that she did, too. She didn’t like opening up her email inbox because it was instantly overwhelmed. Because how could you possibly just sit down and take care of 27,000 emails and it’s your select all, delete, start over or something like that?

[00:09:54.880] – Speaker 2
It.

[00:09:55.310] – Speaker 1
Was interesting how, I guess to your point, if they get a system for something like that, then on top of them saving time, they’re also probably saving some energy and not feeling overwhelmed in a situation like that.

[00:10:10.770] – Speaker 2
Yeah. And you touched on something that’s actually really important and really overlooked, which is energy. T hat’s actually one of the three core pillars in my program, which is all focused on energy. Okay. Because a lot of people say time is your most valuable resource, and there’s definitely truth to that. Now, the thing is, is what is time if you have no energy? If you are depleted, if you’re overwhelmed, if you’re stressed out, if you’re just like in bed and sick, time is completely useless to you.

[00:10:46.140] – Speaker 1
And.

[00:10:47.160] – Speaker 2
So you can maximize the amount of energy you have so that you are sharp when you show up. You feel healthy and vibrant and you can really show up as the leader in your business and your family that they need you to be. That’s a game changer. Everything else becomes 100 times easier, and it’s so overlooked.

[00:11:08.890] – Speaker 1
Nice. I like that. I’ve never heard anyone talk to just mention time like that, combining the time and the energy. I like that. That’s very clever.

[00:11:19.040] – Speaker 2
Tell us.

[00:11:19.470] – Speaker 1
About the other two pillars.

[00:11:22.810] – Speaker 2
There’s energy, which is the first pillar, and the second pillar is focus, and the third pillar is priority. I think of it as an analogy of a laser beam. If you think of the sun that emits billions of kilowattts of energy down onto the earth. Now, if you go into the sun, the worst that’s going to happen is maybe you get a sunburn. Now, a laser beam…

[00:11:51.190] – Speaker 1
If you go into the.

[00:11:51.980] – Speaker 2
Sun, like the sunlight? Yeah, you have sunlight. Okay. If you walk into the sunlight.

[00:11:56.800] – Speaker 1
It could be a hell of a sunburn. Okay.

[00:12:00.610] – Speaker 2
You’d be.

[00:12:01.640] – Speaker 1
Toast, literally.

[00:12:03.010] – Speaker 2
Now, if you think of a laser beam, which focuses just a few Watts, not even kilowattts, not billions of kilowattts, but that’s enough to cut through diamond. That’s the power of focus. First, you need a sufficient amount of energy to actually show up in the world and be sharp and be on task. But then you need to know how to focus that energy, which is really about plugging distractions like energy sucks. Email inbox in the back of your mind, there’s attention, residue, things you’re thinking about that you shouldn’t be thinking about. They should be captured in an external brain or an external system that you know everything’s taken care of. That’s also ties into all of the social media pinging, our phones pinging, being able to sit down and just focus. Attention is so key to showing up and being effective in the hours that you have. That’s really the principle is like, if you want to work less and double your time off, well, you need to maximize less time. You need to be maximally efficient in the time that you have. You have energy, you’re focusing that energy, but then now you need to understand where to focus that energy.

[00:13:23.540] – Speaker 2
That’s where the third pillar, perfecting your priority comes in, which is identifying… One way you can do this is to do a time audit. Just basically write down for one week, look at everything that you work on. You start a new task, you write down when you started, when you ended the task, you just inventory how you’re spending your time. Then now you can take an objective audit of where you’re spending your time, where you shouldn’t be, where should you be, maybe delegating, what can you systematize, what can you automate, what can you just cut out altogether. And I do that on a weekly basis so that I can continually become more and more effective so that I can get more done in less time. And then basically, then you do that. You create systems and you delegate it out so that you can focus on higher leveraged activities and spend less time in the business.

[00:14:21.050] – Speaker 1
Nice. That’s very cool. So how did you come up with all this? Was this stuff that you figured out more or less by making mistakes, I guess, the hard way?

[00:14:31.970] – Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s a combination of research, just studying those who’ve been before, like you said, eMith reading books, Michael Hyatt reading books like virtual freedom, clockwork, just research, taking programs, implementing it into my own life, testing it every day. I run everything off of a system. Anything that I do more than once, which is virtually everything, has a system for it so that I can basically externalize my thinking process. When I know I’m going to do something more than once, and if I’m doing a new task, ask myself, Will I ever do this again? And if it’s a yes, which it often is a yes, then right on the spot, I create a system, which is going beyond the scope of our conversation, but my systems are categorized so that it doesn’t take very much time for me to start creating a system. People think like, Oh, my God, SOP. This is going to take forever. But really, it takes a little bit more time when you do it the first time because you have to document what you’re doing. You’re just basically capturing what you’re doing, just like a sequence checklist. Then next time when you go to do that activity, you don’t have to think about it.

[00:15:48.240] – Speaker 2
You can look, you’ve externalized your thinking process. Now you can analyze it from a higher level of thinking, and then you can just follow the steps. But not only that, you now have the opportunity to look at those steps and see, Is this actually the best way to do what I’m doing, or is there a better way to do it? It’s very difficult to analyze your own thinking process as you’re thinking about what needs to be done. Once you have systems captured, not only is it faster to do because you don’t have to rethink, you’re not reinventing the wheel, but you’re actually improving your system every time you do it, which again, cuts out time. You find ways. What if I just automated this? Just recently automated something in my email and saves me an hour every week, it’s automated. It’s like zero time required of me. I don’t have to hire someone to do it. These are little improvements like Kaizen, the Japanese never ending constant improvement. That’s how you get to cutting down 15, 20 hours out of your work week and actually getting more done is that constant, never ending improvement.

[00:16:55.860] – Speaker 1
Nice. Very cool. When you get a client, how do you find out where their lowest hanging fruit is, essentially to help them save this time?

[00:17:06.120] – Speaker 2
Great question. We go through a business audit and it’s really going through the three pillars and all nine steps of my program and just auditing them on each one of those and finding out where are their systems that are really lacking, where are they spending a lot of time that they shouldn’t be. We do that time audit. That’s a really powerful exercise. And also just identifying what’s the bottleneck or the constraint that’s holding back their business, and then designing a 90 day outcome and an action plan to unlock that.

[00:17:49.350] – Speaker 1
Nice. I imagine you get some push back from people when you suggest something. Because I know I’ll just give you a really quick example that alluded to me asking the question. Back when I had my first business, printer repair thing, we used to save, or I and my technicians used to save test pages and staple them to work orders. And then we would file them. And by we, I mean me. E ventually that filing, once we grew to the point that I couldn’t keep up with it, my filing was just a stack on a table. And eventually that stack on the table became just overwhelmingly large. My wife says, Hey, we’re going to clean up this office. You just tell me what to do and I’ll do it. I said, Hey, we got to file these things. I create a file folder for every client, alphabetize it, blah, blah, blah. She looks at it and she’s like, Do you ever look at these again? I’m like, Well, no, but we could.

[00:18:53.000] – Speaker 2
If.

[00:18:53.140] – Speaker 1
A client ever reaches out and says, Hey, this printer is having this problem, whatever. And she’s like, So how long has the stack been growing here? And I was like, I don’t know, nine months, something like that. Nine months, you never went back to that stack. What if we just organized it by month? Every client, every work order for that month goes in that folder. Then if you do need to search, you just have to figure out what month it’s in, throw it in there. At first I was like, Oh, my gosh, that’s crazy. Then I thought about it. I thought that would make filing way easier. And realistically, for nine months, I haven’t looked at it, that’s probably pretty smart. So let’s do that. She did that, boom. I don’t know if it took her an hour or something like that to just figure out what months they were in, the way she goes, and much easier to keep track of that system.

[00:19:48.900] – Speaker 2
So.

[00:19:49.280] – Speaker 1
It’s interesting because initially I was like, Whoa, I got a process. I’m not following it, but I have a process. So I wonder if you ever get push back from people and you have to tap dance around that or convince them that, look, your process sucks because you’re not following it or something like that?

[00:20:08.650] – Speaker 2
Well, you just illustrated a great example of the power of a second set of eyes on your business. When people come to me, we do a business audit, I just offer them a second set of eyes and show them, Here’s your stack of paper. We could cut this down to whatever 30 minutes a week of work instead of however much time you’re spending now. Just giving that perspective shift, yeah, people seem to get it when it can be explained in a way that is aligned with what they want, which is achieving more while doing less.

[00:20:49.710] – Speaker 1
Nice. The clients that you have, are they typically national or international, or are they local to you when you go on site and peek over their shoulder for a day?

[00:21:00.980] – Speaker 2
Ideally, I would love to be doing things in person. I only have one person right now that is local. That’s the process we’re going to go through. Most people are in the US, and so we do things virtually. Luckily, we have video shares and we can show each other around the office and whatnot. Make things that way is better than being on the phone. But obviously, in person is always ideal.

[00:21:30.630] – Speaker 1
Sure. How do you market a business like this?

[00:21:35.310] – Speaker 2
Well, right now, I’m doing a podcast tour. Yeah. I’m just finding people who speak to the same people that I do, which is entrepreneurs, business owners, ideally coaches and consultants, people who sell their expertise and their knowledge. Then I show up on the podcast, teach what I can share, and people resonate with it. Then they can download a 90 day cheat sheet that I have. Then that’s how I get people interested. Actually, it’s quite funny. I didn’t expect this, but a lot of the podcast hosts that I speak to are like, You know what? I need what you’re doing.

[00:22:25.010] – Speaker 1
That’s cool.

[00:22:26.350] – Speaker 2
Good portion of people have been podcast hosts.

[00:22:30.450] – Speaker 1
Oh, very cool. Yeah, I.

[00:22:32.000] – Speaker 2
Speak with.

[00:22:32.760] – Speaker 1
Well, that worked out.

[00:22:34.120] – Speaker 2
That.

[00:22:36.140] – Speaker 1
Worked out very well. With your kids and stuff like that, how has your life changed since implementing all this?

[00:22:45.000] – Speaker 2
Well, I feel like I can be more present with them and spend when my daughter comes and asks me, I’m going to go buy this thing and play. This morning I spent maybe two hours with them just going outside and we have spring coming in here now. Thank God the sun is back.

[00:23:12.940] – Speaker 2
Just outside and doing things and just feeling like I’m present with them and they’re still young. So to me, that’s the greatest gift. The more I reflect on my life and what’s truly important to me, I really realized that it’s my family and the relationships that I have. Money is important. Creating an impact with other business owners is important. It’s just really allowed me to focus on what’s important to me.

[00:23:49.360] – Speaker 1
Nice. Very cool. I guess from a business standpoint, when a client works with you, are they working with you for a few months or is it longer term than that?

[00:24:03.370] – Speaker 2
The program is a six month program. That’s the core implementation portion. If people want the follow up support and further integrating the systems and just really constantly optimizing, then we can work on a longer basis than that. But that’s the core program. There’s also one day system implementations, business audit, whatever is the lowest hanging fruit for them. I have someone right now that I’m working with that that’s probably what we’re going to be doing is just doing a one day, creating some basic delegation systems, setting that in place. That’s what’s most important to him right now. Then you’ll probably see how much more needs to get done. Then hopefully, we want to keep working with me.

[00:24:56.440] – Speaker 1
Sure. Just keep climbing the tree, build it up. That’s cool. That’s cool. What have been some of your greatest success stories so far?

[00:25:04.290] – Speaker 2
Well, one of them, there’s this one person I was working with who really, I guess you could say he’s a visionary, so ideal guy. Just has a lot of really great changes he wants to make in the world. But integrating, if you know Gino Whitman’s Rocket fuel Visionary Integrator, you’re really lacking an integrator and how to take that and put it into practice. And so working with people like that, I feel is the most rewarding for me because that’s really where my strength lie is bridging that vision to integrating. And so when someone has these great visions but they don’t know how to set that into motion and helping him create the systems in his business and then now working with him on a second business, it just really feels rewarding because I see these visionaries struggle where they’re like, Oh, I have all these great ideas, but I’m going in a million different directions at once and then not seeing progress on any one of them. I love when I can just hone in, help them focus on, This is the most important thing you need to be doing right now. Let’s put some structures around that, get some support in there, and rock and roll.

[00:26:30.040] – Speaker 1
Nice. I love it. From your business point of view, do you have employees or do you subcontract out help in certain areas? Yeah, I.

[00:26:38.470] – Speaker 2
Work with contractors. At some point, might have inhouse employees, but right now that works great for me.

[00:26:47.040] – Speaker 1
Okay, right on. Then where do you see your business going in, I don’t know, it’s called 5, 10 years, something like that? Is it to the point that you’ll grow? Is it the point where you’re going to maintain what you have? Is it the point that you’ll replace yourself thing? How does that work?

[00:27:05.820] – Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, the way I’m running my business right now is I’m functioning in the way that I’m intending to replace myself. Even if I don’t end up doing that, I think it’s a smart way to build a business where thinking, What’s your exit plan? I’m building out the systems internally, but then also building out the coaching systems so that I have a process that I can teach to other coaches so that I can bring coaches on, help them, that they can then serve people and build out a team of coaches so that at some point, if I would like to, not be in the business whatsoever. I love what I do, so I don’t know if that will ever happen, but it’ll make for a well organized and streamlined business.

[00:28:01.100] – Speaker 1
Totally fair. What have been some of the challenges you’ve had in this business and businesses prior?

[00:28:10.100] – Speaker 2
Recurring challenge for me is letting go of control.

[00:28:13.990] – Speaker 1
Huge.

[00:28:14.630] – Speaker 2
One. It took me way too long to make my first hire. I knew I should do it, but then I was like, Oh, how do I do it? I got hung up on the how. Then when I finally got to the point where I was like, This is absurd. I have to do this, made my first hire, hired an assistant. Then it was just so much easier. I still come up when I’m doing my weekly effectiveness review, I realize I’m still holding on the tasks that I really shouldn’t be. I think I’m pretty quick at creating the systems and then delegating it. But sometimes I’ll have a system sitting there for a while and it’s ready to be handed off, but I’m just still doing it myself.

[00:29:09.940] – Speaker 1
What do you think is the basic limitation for something like that? You feel like it would take too long to train? You feel like you don’t want to relinquish control because maybe it’s financial numbers or something like that? Are you afraid they’re going to mess it up? What are the reasons?

[00:29:26.040] – Speaker 2
Yeah. So for myself, my main one has been feeling like they won’t do it as well as I will.

[00:29:37.440] – Speaker 1
Okay.

[00:29:38.270] – Speaker 2
And that’s a recurring, I guess, objection that I’ve heard come up. And there is some truth to it. And that being said, it shouldn’t be a deal breaker. And it’s not always true either. Sometimes someone’s going to come in and they’re actually going to be better than you at doing it. Or if they’re not as good as you, that’s okay. You can don’t expect them to be as good as you on day one. They’re going to improve, but that’s going to free up your time to do something else. And so it’s worth the trade off. That one for me has been main one. But the other ones that you mentioned in terms of like, it’ll take too long to train someone, that used to be one for me now that I’ve gone through the process. I have systems categorized and stuff. It’s not so much of a thought in my mind these days, but that is one that I also hear. Then money, of course, is always one. That’s also one that in the past I really had was like.

[00:30:44.940] – Speaker 1
Oh, I just can’t afford it. Money as far as you have to pay for that assistant or you have to deal with financials and you don’t want them to necessarily either see that or you don’t want to risk them messing it up.

[00:30:55.840] – Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, for me, it was not feeling like I had the funds to make more hires.

[00:31:02.790] – Speaker 1
Fair. Okay. Totally fair. Yeah, I imagine that’s just about every business owner has run into that. I need the help, but I have to pay the help. So it’s the…

[00:31:16.580] – Speaker 1
Fair, totally fair. So I guess going back on that, how do you get over that or recommend that other people get over that? I don’t know. I’m going to use the word fear, even though I think that’s a little strong for something like this. But maybe.

[00:31:28.830] – Speaker 2
Yeah, I would say it’s a fear. So what I do with clients and what I’ve done with myself is looking at the opportunity cost. And so if I’m continuing to do what I’m doing now, focusing all this time on these $10 an hour tasks, how much am I really sacrificing the growth of my business?

[00:31:51.210] – Speaker 1
And.

[00:31:53.930] – Speaker 2
If you really take a good look at all the things… I don’t know, maybe not you, but just in general, looking at the time wasted on low level activities that could be spent on higher level activities, it’s really like, I don’t have the money to do this. Well, the reason you don’t have the money to do this is because you haven’t done it. It’s a chicken and egg situation. All right. That’s one thing. But if you can delegate out low level activities that are also directly related to revenue generating activities. I’ll give you an example. For me, podcast outreach is a big portion of our marketing. I broke down the process into chunks of little bite sized pieces like, Okay, first you need to find a podcast host that might be a good fit. There’s a system for that. Then you have to find an episode that might be a good fit for what they do related to what I do. There’s a system for that. This is directly related to bringing in leads and clients, but it’s also low level work that I was doing. So if you can delegate out, first of all, low level activities that are necessary, that should go.

[00:33:08.680] – Speaker 2
But if it’s related to the bottleneck or the constraint in your business, and if that’s lead Gen, then that’s going to be a perfect place to start.

[00:33:22.250] – Speaker 1
Nice. Very cool. You raise an interesting point. This is probably getting a little bit off topic, but this is well, it’s curiosity thing, as well as I think some listeners would benefit from it. I, as a podcast host, I get reached out to all the time from people saying, Hey, I want to be on your podcast and all this stuff. Some are cool, some are good guests, some we have on, and others, no. But I feel like it’s grown. The number of people that are reaching out to try to be guests on a podcast has grown quite a bit even in the past year.

[00:33:56.780] – Speaker 2
And at first.

[00:33:58.430] – Speaker 1
I’m like, Whoa, people are seeing the podcast. That’s great. T hen other times I’m like, What rock were you under before?

[00:34:07.460] – Speaker 1
T ell me, what made you think of going after podcasts or doing the podcast tour, you said?

[00:34:15.100] – Speaker 2
Well, I’m part of a coaching program. There’s a team of coaches I work with who help me with my marketing strategy. T he big lever that we press on is partnerships.

[00:34:29.300] – Speaker 1
T hen.

[00:34:29.870] – Speaker 2
So win win collaborations with other people in a similar industry, like a shoulder industry, ideally, where it’s someone who serves… We both serve the same audience, but in different capacities. M aybe one person teaches marketing, whereas I’m more on the operations side, or someone else may be an accountant who serves the same people as I do. We can fill in the content gaps for each other. We’re not stepping on each other’s toes. We’re helping each other out while helping our audience at the same time. We’re both either getting the content we need or we’re both growing our list. That’s the core concept that I’m working with right now is partnerships. It’s a really fantastic strategy. Podcasts, in terms of partnerships, is a great place to start because a lot of podcasts are looking for guests to have the looking for content. It was a natural place for me to start in terms of partnerships. Yeah, it’s interesting.

[00:35:37.810] – Speaker 1
I guess me as a podcast owner, I’m always looking for guests. Sometimes you have to sift through a lot of that. You had some interesting stuff that you had going on. Of course, you have to do a search online and figure out what’s going on, what’s good and bad. Maybe not even necessarily bad, just doesn’t necessarily fit with the main goal of the podcast. That’s interesting. Podcast is a whole different world, man. It’s interesting how it’s changed in the past… Man, I’m trying to think how long we’ve been going on. Three and a half, four years, something like that. It’s changed quite a bit in that time. How so? Well, one, there’s more people. It used to be a challenge to find guests. It’s interesting. Pre pandemic, of course, we were in person. The majority of the guests were in person. It took me a little bit of time to get over the head trash, let’s call it, of allowing remote interviews. But you’re certainly limited when you don’t have remote interviews about who you can interview.

[00:36:46.160] – Speaker 2
And then there.

[00:36:47.540] – Speaker 1
Were times that I reached out to people and I’m like, Hey, you want to be on this podcast? You got a cool business. I’m sure you got a cool story. Let’s get you on there. And people say, No. And I was thinking, Why would you say no to that? It’s essentially free marketing for your business. And people love talking about themselves. So it just seemed like, Why would you say no to that? I didn’t get no a lot, but I did get enough for me to just wonder. And I found out that a lot of people, even though they’re successful in business, are just camera and microphone shy.

[00:37:23.250] – Speaker 2
They are.

[00:37:24.220] – Speaker 1
Doing just great with their employees, but if you ask them to get in front of a crowd, even if it’s a remote crowd, it’s not live, they still lock up. I’ll tell you this really quick anecdote about a guy that I interviewed. He asked for questions ahead of time. I used to have people do that pretty often, but it hasn’t happened in years. I’m like, we got to go off the cuff. It’s just like we’re chilling out with a coffee or a beer and just chatting. It’s just what people want to hear. It’s just conversation. He’s like, I really like questions ahead of time. I’m like, okay, part of my apprehension with that is then I have to ask those questions. I have to remember, I have a list, whatever. It just seems more like a job interview than a fun podcast. Anyways, I give him the questions. A couple of weeks later, we have the podcast interview at this time. It’s live, it’s in a studio. I have these questions and I’m asking him, and I swear he seems like he has written those answers down and memorized them word for word. He didn’t have a notebook paper or anything like that in front of him, but I’m like, Is this a script?

[00:38:38.830] – Speaker 1
So then I was like, Okay, we got to get him off script because this is the most boring interview ever. So I just threw him a curve ball and I just asked a question, just run on the mill, whatever question, and it loosened him up.

[00:38:52.540] – Speaker 2
So it.

[00:38:53.100] – Speaker 1
Was just like, Hey, you started out… I forget where he was. He moved or something like that. I just asked him a question about that. It was somewhat curiosity question, but it was also like, we got to get you off your script. We got to get you to loosen up. So it’s interesting how many business owners, I don’t know, say on paper online, seem like they got it going on. They got it all figured out. But some of them are just not the most… I don’t know, they’re just shy, I think is what it comes down to.

[00:39:22.170] – Speaker 2
Yeah.

[00:39:23.560] – Speaker 1
In a venue like this, I guess not everyone’s an extrovert is what it comes down to, I suppose.

[00:39:29.750] – Speaker 2
To me.

[00:39:30.380] – Speaker 1
I thought it’s free marketing, man. It’s more brand awareness. You can have fun. There’s probably a story that you would love to tell the public that you just don’t really have a venue for because if you do it in a 30 second ad or 10 second ad, ads keep getting shorter. It’s probably not going to do any good. No one’s going to listen to it there. But in podcast, they’re going specifically to hear your story. So it’s interesting. Anyways, side tangent there. All kinds of good fun. Are you married?

[00:40:01.240] – Speaker 2
Not officially, but I call her my wife. Okay.

[00:40:04.200] – Speaker 1
So the person you call your wife, when you told her that you’re making the shift in your business, how did she react to that?

[00:40:12.030] – Speaker 2
She was apprehensive.

[00:40:14.980] – Speaker 1
All right, fair.

[00:40:19.220] – Speaker 2
She’s very supportive. So it took her a few days to, Okay, you’re letting go of your clients, you’re shifting directions. So she was hesitant, but ultimately she was like, Yeah, go for it. So I feel very blessed that over the course of our time together, she has always been very supportive of the scary leaps that we’ve taken together. So I try to reciprocate that as well. Nice.

[00:40:54.370] – Speaker 1
All right. Does she have her own business?

[00:40:56.500] – Speaker 2
She does. Right now, it’s more on the back burner because we have a two year old, and so she’s still in that mama mode, just taking care of him. Got you.

[00:41:09.220] – Speaker 1
All right.

[00:41:09.960] – Speaker 2
She still runs things here and there, but it’s not eah. All right. Mainly she’s being the mama caretaker right now.

[00:41:21.540] – Speaker 1
Fair. Lucky you. That works out. Were you guys together when you started your first business?

[00:41:28.320] – Speaker 2
Yeah, we were. It was actually when we had our daughter that was the catalyst for me to want to become an entrepreneur because like I said, I was working seven days a week and missing out on this young child’s life. I was like, I need something that’s going to give me more flexibility.

[00:41:50.510] – Speaker 1
So.

[00:41:51.230] – Speaker 2
Became an entrepreneur. Then I was working seven days a week instead of five.

[00:41:58.120] – Speaker 1
You get to work whatever 90 hours a week you want, right?

[00:42:01.770] – Speaker 2
But then I ran that in and got the systems in place. Got you.

[00:42:07.160] – Speaker 1
When you quit your day job, whatever, and you told your woman, Hey, I’m going to quit my job, start my own gig, so I get more freedom. How does she react to that?

[00:42:19.210] – Speaker 2
I said, Over the course of our time, she had been apprehensive in our jumps. That was one of them where she was like, I don’t know about this. None of us do.

[00:42:34.040] – Speaker 1
It’s all good.

[00:42:35.610] – Speaker 2
No. I was expecting her to come back and be like, No, that’s not a good idea. But she was like, Okay, let’s do it.

[00:42:42.860] – Speaker 1
All right. So it worked out. It worked out.

[00:42:46.380] – Speaker 2
It’s working out.

[00:42:47.280] – Speaker 1
Very cool. Very cool. What is your favorite thing about doing what you do?

[00:42:53.420] – Speaker 2
Well, I really love seeing aha moments in clients and people that I work with when they’re like, Wow, I’ve been spending all this time doing it this way when I could not do it at all and let a machine do it for me. That really fuels me. Also just the work itself of helping with clients, just going through their business, figuring out how we can optimize things. I don’t know, my brain works that way. I love that work. Yeah, very cool.

[00:43:24.720] – Speaker 1
What’s your least favorite thing about it?

[00:43:26.830] – Speaker 2
Probably sitting at a computer a lot. I really want to be out in the sun more. Just figure out a way to design an outside office.

[00:43:39.810] – Speaker 1
There you go. I get that. I totally understand that. It’s interesting how there’s so much power in a computer. You can do so much stuff. It shrinks the world, all that jazz, but it often keeps you out of that world, which is ironic. Yeah, totally understand that. And sitting.

[00:43:59.940] – Speaker 2
Like this, I’m in a weird office like these dormers, and so I can’t actually fit a standing desk here. Oh, no.

[00:44:09.730] – Speaker 1
So.

[00:44:10.600] – Speaker 2
I’m sitting all day. The last office I was in, I was standing, which is much better. So we’re going to be leaving here probably pretty soon. All right.

[00:44:22.740] – Speaker 1
Where are you located?

[00:44:24.330] – Speaker 2
I’m in Winnipeg in Canada.

[00:44:26.430] – Speaker 1
Oh, nice. All right. Great North there.

[00:44:31.070] – Speaker 2
That’s funny. Yeah. It was like, Spring came, and then we had this biggest snowfall of the decade, and all the snow came back like, you know, mid April. But the sun is out now. It’s good to be out today. Nice week.

[00:44:45.340] – Speaker 1
I’m in Wisconsin, so I’m just below you there. I think we had spring for a day, maybe two. Now, I don’t know, we’re probably on the end of winter number 4 or 5, like fifth winter. So, yeah, I’m right there with you. You can just tell people they’re just bottled up. They’re ready to pop. And see.

[00:45:08.760] – Speaker 2
Let’s get outside. The first.

[00:45:12.330] – Speaker 1
70 degree day, I think literally everyone is just going to get out. Even if they physically can’t, they will crawl out the door, find a way because we’re just late. It’s been rough. Ashao, how can people find you?

[00:45:29.440] – Speaker 2
Well, if you go to doubleyourtimeoff.com/James, I have a 90 day action planner that you can download. It’s meant to figure out how to design an action plan that is aligned with your big picture vision so that you can unlock the biggest bottleneck in your business and spend less time working. Very cool.

[00:45:54.220] – Speaker 2
That’s doubleyourtimeoff.com/James. That’s right.

[00:45:58.570] – Speaker 1
Perfect. I love it. Well, Ashao, thank you so much for being on the show. Well, thanks.

[00:46:03.050] – Speaker 2
So much for having me, James. It was great. This is cool.

[00:46:05.360] – Speaker 1
You got a lot going on and it’s very impressive. I mean, time and energy, like you said, huge things that we got to take care of. Otherwise, it’ll go away is what it comes down to. Absolutely.

[00:46:17.820] – Speaker 2
Awesome.

[00:46:18.800] – Speaker 1
This has been Authentic Business Adventures, the business program that brings you the struggle stories and triumphant successes of business owners across the land. We are underwritten locally by the Bank of Sun Prairie. If you’re listening or watching this on the web, if you could do us a huge favor, smash that big old subscribe button, give it the big old thumbs up, and of course, comment. Let us know how the time saving has gone for you and the whole energy thing as well. Big deals. My name is James Kademan and Authentic Businesses Adventures is brought to you by Calls on Call, offering call answering and receptionist services for service businesses across the country on the web at callsoncall.com. As well as Draw In Customer’s Business Coaching, offering business coaching services for entrepreneurs looking for growth on the web at drawincustomers.com. And of course, The Bold Business book, a book for the entrepreneur in all of us, available wherever fine books are sold. We’d like to thank you, our wonderful listeners, as well as our guest, Ashao Freesky of DoubleYourTimeOff.com. Ashao, can you tell us that website one more time?

[00:47:16.060] – Speaker 1
doubleyourtimeoff.com/James.

[00:47:19.520] – Speaker 1
Awesome. Makes it so easy. And what can they find there?

[00:47:24.000] – Speaker 2
So like I said, that’s the 90 day execution planner, which is three phase process where you identify your big picture vision and then you set an outcome that’s going to get you there in the next nine days. How are you going to make massive progress towards that vision? And then how do you create an actual plan? That’s what are the behaviors you need to take so that you can get that outcome and get that vision. Nice.

[00:47:51.360] – Speaker 1
I love it. Just think, what could that do for all the businesses that actually do that, implement that, move on? Super cool. Huge. Past episodes can be found morning, noon, and night with the podcast link found at drawincustomers.com. Thank you for listening. We’ll see you next week. I want you to stay awesome. If you do nothing else, enjoy your business.

 

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