Mike Abramowitz 10:14
Well, that’s when I said, All right, I’m out. Like, I’m out of the business, I’m not, I’m going to be in the hospital with my son, and my wife, and I just delegated everything to my staff. And I said, let’s see if, let’s see if the systems work. And I didn’t care. I didn’t care because this was the most important, you know, time of my life to be present with my wife and my son. But for eight and a half months, my business still did over six figures and net profits, without me there. And that’s when we got out of the hospital, September 10, of 2021. I called up my coach, now business partner, and I said, we have got to teach people how to do this, like I literally removed myself from my business, and still made over six figures in profits and over 250,000 in revenue. Without me there, we got something here, everything you showed me how to do, let’s package this up and start teaching this to other busy entrepreneurs that would help them win back their time. And that’s, that’s what I went full tilt and started doing. And it’s 2020 to really end of 2021 into 2022 started teaching this started helping people and now serving 61 clients at the moment helping them do pretty much what I did in my Cutco operation, it’s just been really, really cool to see. Because I didn’t know there was a need in the marketplace. So right now to this at this moment, right now with May of 2023. My Cutco Office runs fully without me just like it did in 2020 and 2021. Except I still have that going. But now I have that time to replace my wife’s income and then some teaching other business owners how to do what I did. It’s been been cool in some
John Corcoran 11:53
ways, you know, you’re the ultimate example because if something that is was is face to face and not delegate double as direct face to face sales, if they are still pieces of that, that you can delegate, you can automate the consistent ties you can remove yourself from, then I suppose lots of other professions could as well what are some of the big barriers when you talk to someone who hasn’t done a good job of removing themselves from the business? What are like the the mental blocks and and other barriers that that they usually raise?
Mike Abramowitz 12:27
The number one was working on the business versus in the business? So I started dedicating time to just reimagine what was so I would create flowcharts of like, alright, what are all the events of the business and just breaking it down to each interaction that a recruit goes through our client goes through the recruit journey, or the client journey, and also onboarding a new staff like what is that journey step by step and really creating a flowchart of what that looks like? And then asking individual questions around that. It’s like, how could we find a team member or tech? To do that, that doesn’t involve me. So that’s where it started. That was number one, creating those flowcharts and create making the time to work on the business. Number two, was, this is a hard one, but letting go of control. Being a control freak of where I have to be in charge of everything that was really tough, where I said, Okay, how can I simplify this in a way where somebody else can do it? So I came up with these three questions. It’s like, okay, what are you going to do? When are you going to do it? And how will I know? And anytime I offload it to a 17 1819 year old kid or virtual assistant, I just came up with those three questions. Alright, what are you going to do? I’m going to do this when? How will I know they’ll send me screenshots or send me recordings or this updated report or whatever it might be. And then it was just back and forth of let’s let’s let’s work through that. Let’s make that better. Let me help you improve that. So I would let go of control of things. But I would still be in the know, because they created those boundaries. So that was really important right away. And the last one was, was this tech stuff wasn’t really my forte, but using these tools like Calendly that was like a game changer versus like constantly reacting to self like text. Hey, look, book that appointment that’s finding time and then and then
John Corcoran 14:12
that is a huge barrier. Just that one, right? There’s so many so many. I mean, I It baffles me, people that run massive businesses. And still they’re messaging back and forth with someone trying to find a time themselves personally.
Mike Abramowitz 14:26
It’s It’s bananas, and one. Here’s one. Every time a sales representative has a question. Most people they have a textbook, they send a text to their phone, but we use whatsapp so we had an internal communication sometimes it’s slack, or go Group Me or whatever. But we were using WhatsApp and we still do. So there was a channel and that Representative just communicate to the channel and who’s in that channel. 12 other staff members are in that same channel with that one representative call that representative or recruit or client whatever you want. So that way I wasn’t the bottleneck. Any one of those 12 people could have respond to that one recruit. So if we have 1000 people who are selling and that 1000 1000 people need help, and I’m the only one that they’re reporting to, there’s a problem, I couldn’t serve them. So I put all staff members in that channel. So that way anybody could respond to that person if they needed to it was individualized to that one human. So yeah, my staff is in 1000 different channels, let’s call it, but there was a system behind it, we built it up into pods, and we organize it. But these are just examples of weak, we decided we could systemize anything, if we simplify it. There are tech solutions that are very, very simple that that could be implemented for very inexpensive, they’re very inexpensive. And then just making sure designated the time to work on the business, not just in the business. So I could reimagine some things and look at flowcharts and try to see how we can involve team and tech to win back some of my time.
John Corcoran 15:53
It’s funny, because when you mentioned that just the the philosophy of having communication be open so that multiple people can weigh in and can answer a question. It’s, it requires a bit of a shift from people that are used to commuting one communicating one to one, but once you get used to it, personally, to me, it’s like a pet peeve. Now, someone messages me one on one, because I know that I can’t you know that that puts more things on that person’s plate, you know, I end up having all these things on my plate. And it’s this mental energy that I need to follow up on this one piece versus if it’s a message that has multiple people like on a WhatsApp, or slack or something like that, that I know that someone else might chime in and help with that particular concern before I can even get to it. And it takes that mental energy away from me. Does that make sense?
Mike Abramowitz 16:45
Absolutely, it’s almost like office hours, that’s pretty much what I created for myself, there’s 30 minute block, it’s like, Hey, I’m going to handle the inbox during this block of time, everything else, hey, I’m not going to be available. And they knew that it’s communicated to those 12 staff members. So that way, it’s Hey, you guys are in charge of this. But I’ll jump in after this 30 minute block each day. And then I would have one on one conversations with them, each of those 12 staff members, and then one group meeting and all departments meeting and other department meetings. So what used to be where I would dedicate 60 hours a week, undoing everything, it started breaking down to like 40, and then 30, and then 20, and then 10. And then five last year, last year was two and a half, I just ran 530 minute meetings. And this year, it’s completely zero completely offloaded, brought it an operator who’s never worked in vector marketing or Cutco cutlery, and she’s doing a great job completely running full point on operations. And then I have my department managers, and each of those department managers have virtual assistants to handle their admin. And it’s there’s a really cool model. And it’s taboo in direct sales, network marketing, like no one does that. But it’s able to produce last year last year without doing two and a half hour meetings, that’s it produced over six, it was right at 98,000 in profits that I got last year without me there to free me up to do the other things that are really important, like raising our son and placing my wife’s income and student doing this other business startup to teach other busy entrepreneurs.
John Corcoran 18:08
Ya know, it’s interesting, because there’s kind of a hustle culture that is celebrated in this culture, where people will will say like, Oh, I’m just grinding, grinding, grinding. And part of this is like kind of four hour workweek Tim Ferriss kind of stuff, that he that he kind of uncovered in his original book. But how much do you is that a struggle when you’re working with these clients to help them get past that mentality of, you know, to work a lot of hours equates to some kind of self worth, or means that I’m working harder on the business and and therefore it is good.
Mike Abramowitz 18:49
All I would say to that person is if you were to work hard, you can still work hard, but I would work hard in the right area. So all I would say is do $1 per hour activity, and we would do $1 per hour activity. What’s your time worth? Let’s say if they wanted to make 250,000 a year, they want to work a certain amount of hours in a certain amount of weeks, we figure out what their dollar per hour is. Let’s say it’s $120 an hour. Great. What are all the tasks that are under $120 an hour that you can pay someone else to do? What are all the tasks that are over $120 an hour that you enjoy doing what drains your energy, what brings your energy up. So if you want to work really hard, that’s great, just work really hard intelligently in the things that bring you more energy and also bring you more revenue and making sure that you’re delegating all those things that drain your energy and they also are not revenue producing activities, anything that you really enjoy doing, that you want to dedicate your time to, but doesn’t make you money. Those are hobbies good. You could work in your heart and your hobbies too, if you want, but just be intelligent with how you’re monitoring your time and monitoring your energy and and then put $1 to and I think that could help with a little bit of Revelation there.
John Corcoran 19:53
Right. You know, it’s it’s something similar that I advise with our clients when they are a I’m starting to create content like we do through a podcast. I used to when I, when I first started with podcasting, I did every different piece. And I eventually realized that I’d much rather do this, this is what gives me energy is talking to someone like you. And then taking all the other pieces off of my plate. Of course, it’s different for every, you know, different business, every different individual, what is the highest leverage use of their time, what they should be spending the time on? I want to ask you, you work with all kinds of different entrepreneurs, is that a challenge to work with all different types of entrepreneurs rather, versus like saying, you know, we’re only going to work with, you know, people that are in direct sales or one particular industry?
Mike Abramowitz 20:43
It’s a good question and something that we really kind of my business partner I was toying with for a little while trying to pigeonhole ourselves into a vertical because we wanted to be one niche, and this is who we serve. But what we found is just by like, opening up our services to anyone, is we did find our niche, but that niche is overwhelmed, busy time stretch entrepreneur, and the industry didn’t matter. Because the same the principles are the exact same, do they have to hire staff? In most cases, even if they’re a solopreneur? They need to onboard some sort of staff. So they need to have an onboarding system? Do they have some sort of client that they serve? Yes, then they’re probably going to need some sort of prospecting system. So we just help them with their prospecting system and their lead gen and their sales, and their onboarding and their staffing and their retention and their training. Those are pretty, pretty much staples. Do they know what their KPIs are? K RAs are their business? And is that documented? So the solution to the problem of busy time stretched, overwhelmed entrepreneurs is going to be the same, regardless of their industry. They just need to have a desire to want to win back that time. That’s the only thing that that matters most. So do they know I am a cog in my machine, or I’m spending time on energy draining low wage activities, I gotta win back some of that time. And as long as that’s that’s the staple for any client that we’re serving them, then we obviously can help them because there’s enough pain for them to want to change.
John Corcoran 22:08
Now, you just mentioned K RAS. I’ve heard of OKRs, and KPIs. What’s K RAS?
Mike Abramowitz 22:13
A key result area is what just another was just another way of saying the same thing. Yeah, got
John Corcoran 22:18
- And then you mentioned WhatsApp earlier. Are there any other tools or software that you’re a fan of? Are you more tool agnostic?
Mike Abramowitz 22:27
my business, my business partner handles a lot of the technology. I’m very much a Google Sheets guy. I built my entire two and a half million dollar year Cutco operation there off of Google Sheets. So WhatsApp Calendly, but there are several that we like I would say I use Thinkific a lot for our learning management software. So a lot of our videos so I’ll record Loom is a great tool. So Loom we record our videos on Loom, and then we will have our virtual assistant team upload those into Thinkific and Thinkific. We use Zapier a lot. So Zapier will send communication we use Texting Base for a texting platform. So Zapier will communicate between Thinkific and Texting Base. So that way, as soon as somebody needs to get communicated, that a new module is up, or that they have access to it, it will speak to each other so that way, they’ll get a text, they’ll get access to the videos, and all the videos are in one place. So we use Thinkific. For to host the videos, we use Loom to record the videos, we’ll use Zapier for the technologies to speak one another Texting Base to send the text messages. Everything I just said is like under combined under $100 a month. So it’s like for less than 100 bucks a month that just took away like probably three humans jobs and saves me a ton of money and a ton of time because it’s all happening instantaneously. without me having to do it. I just had to set it up one time. Yeah, so that’s just an example of a few technologies that we use, and that we that we like a lot. There’s probably more but those are off the top right now and
John Corcoran 24:05
love that you’re capturing these trainings, ideas, philosophy strategies in a video in a Loom video and then putting them into a members area. My business partner, Jeremy and I were just doing this this morning, actually, and we keep a board. Speaking of tools, I love ClickUp. So we use ClickUp we ever we have a board of just common questions that come up, and then we will meet once or twice a week and talk about okay, what are the what’s the most urgent? A common question that we haven’t yet created a training on a video training on and we’ll spend that hour just recording that training and putting it in there and then, you know, our team can then refer people back to it just like as you said, you know, you just think of it in that way. And that’s that’s so great because then that really frees you up from having to it’s a resource you can point people to the next time the question comes up.
Mike Abramowitz 24:54
Yeah, our version is Asana. We use Asana for that and some people use Trello, ClickUp is really popular as well. Another technology we really like is our CRM, we use ActiveCampaign. And it works pretty well because we could send like a text to join through ActiveCampaign, which is really helpful. So it’s like text word to phone number. And then that we could, they could subscribe and join our list. And that triggers an automated email to them. So easy way to capture some people’s information and be able to market to them. So ActiveCampaign is a helpful resource there but Texting Base has an auto responder that works well to to have a feature like that.So yeah.
John Corcoran 25:30
All right. Last question on geeking out on tools, so we, we are big fans of SweetProcess, which we use for SOP capturing, I know there’s others that are coming out these days that are that will even take like a Loom video. And then using some AI will create like a step by step process from that Loom video, which just sounds like kind of a game changer. And in particular SOP software that you like.
Mike Abramowitz 25:57
Yeah, actually, our virtual assistant team uses one and it slipped in my mind that the second so that’s not,
John Corcoran 26:03
that’s the best answer of all.
Mike Abramowitz 26:07
But that’s they do they exactly do that. So a client records a Loom video sends it to the to the VA and the VA puts the video into the software into the AI and the AI creates an SOP and then we put that SOP in their Google folder. So that way it’s captured. Yeah, it’s it’s really cool when you do like Descript, not necessarily for SOPs specifically. But it’s a really cool tool that can essentially create shorter videos and also take scripts from a video that if you put it into the tool, we actually believe it or not, John, we just hired a firmer dad who’s who Isaiah who’s like a specialist in technology to help us know and be on the cutting edge of AI. So if you’re listening to this, you might want to consider hiring like hiring a technology consultant like we just did, because it’s changing so fast. Oh, yeah. And obviously ChatGPT has been a game changer for us, too. I should probably just that’s goes unspoken. But I think it needs to be said,
John Corcoran 27:00
yeah, no, I think definitely having some tech wizard in your back pocket who can advise you on these things is super valuable. And by the way, I think that the best answer of all is when someone asks you what tech tool do you use? And you say, honestly, I don’t know. Because adapta asked my team. Before we wrap up, you mentioned front row dad’s, which is how we met through each other to a group for I think they say, dads who have a life and a business or I forget exactly what the
Mike Abramowitz 27:31
what the family meant with businesses versus businessmen with families. Yeah, that’s
John Corcoran 27:35
what it is. Yeah. Talk a little bit about that community and what you’ve gotten out of it. It’s a great community so far.
Mike Abramowitz 27:42
Yeah, it’s a great group of like minded individuals are six pillars we focus on health we focus on Well, we focus on intentional parenting focus on thriving marriage, we focus on business evolution. And we want to make sure that we’re thriving in all areas, not just one as men, as business leaders as patriarchs, that our household. And it’s, it’s been remarkable just to have the resource of other like minded men that are accessible, they’re all trying to do the same thing, whether it’s emotional intelligence, or business intelligence, or marriage resources, homeschooling, I mean, tons of unbelievable dudes that all have one goal in mind, which is, let me make sure I’m showing up as a better man for my kids. And for my and my partners that I’m doing life with. And it’s a highly, highly recommend it. And if you’re a dad listening to this, I would check it out. If you’re not a dad listening to this, maybe you’re a mom or a wife or spouse, I would, I would kick them in the nuts and tell them, hey, you should go check out this community because it makes them a better a better person for your home. So highly recommend checking out the community.
John Corcoran 28:46
Before I get to my last question, which is my gratitude question. You touched on something earlier that I wanted to get back to, which was you said that your coach eventually became your business partner? You don’t hear that every day? How did that come about?
Mike Abramowitz 29:00
The short version is I was his first client ever, from a cold LinkedIn message, by the way, and I was like, alright, I’ll take the bait. I’ll try it out. And from there, I just grew my business to a level that was unimaginable. And that’s when I called him like I said, when I got to the hospitals, like, listen, I think we can help people do this. And so he’s like, Alright, cool. So he went, we went 5050 on our on the business. And we started the business 2020 to like the sector of the business. And our first 11 months, we did 130 grand combined, you know, in the first 11 months, and then since December, from December until now, we’ve been having 40 to 60k months, from December until May, just because we’re just locking arms and figuring things out. So it’s almost like a glorified startup. But it’s been unbelievably fantastic because he was going a little bit slower by himself doing whatever he was doing. And we knew that we could go a lot further and faster together. So after those First 1516 months. I mean, we’re really getting things humming right now. So yeah, I would say the big thing, that step separated myself from all the other people he’s worked with was, I was putting in all the work he was he scaled the company in India from 6 million to 30 million. So he was in corporate, and he started teaching entrepreneurs how to corporatize their business, me being his first client, I probably could have just said that, but yeah. About what we’re doing, you know,
John Corcoran 30:25
yeah. And, and also, a part of what you’re doing now is actually placing virtual assistants, admins, inside of the clients that you work with. So talk a little bit about how that can really help free up people’s time.
Mike Abramowitz 30:39
Well, it was a, it was a huge shift for me, John, like if I didn’t have a team of far offshore assistants doing a lot of admin for me, none of that was like a huge piece of the puzzle for me. So I am the avatar. So everyone we serve as me a couple years ago. So the company that I got my virtual assistants from, I had to pay 2500 bucks. And then I had to figure out how to hire them, like how to pay them, how to coach them, how to manage them, if they sucked, then they would have to find a replacement and then train that new replacement. It was a pain. So I saw there was pain point in the marketplace, I was like, how could we offer this to some of our clients that we’re serving, we’re coaching, and we built a model, that would be the ideal model that we would have loved. And now instead of giving one assistant, we give them two to three assistants, instead of having to worry about the client paying them, we pay the BAS, they do a monthly subscription with us, we just like created it in a way that makes it really, really easy for a busy entrepreneur, to just click a button. And we take care of all their admin stuff for them, as them just not by them, and we help them win back. Last, each day, we have an ongoing calculator. And we’re saving our team anywhere between 80 and 120 hours a day, all of our clients and we’re on a mission right now is to calculate this and to help these this group of people win back and reinvest 10 million hours over the next 20 years. That’s our big hat, big, hairy, audacious goal and have a tracker on this. And just really, that’s 1100 years of life time, is 10 million hours. So we’re really excited about that. Because these people, these business owners, we believe entrepreneurs are the backbone of of the change that we want to see in the world. And if they can have that time back and reinvest it into their marriages and into their kids or into their communities. It’s like, what does that do for the divorce rate? What does that do for the suicide rate for their teens? And what does that do for the communities that we live in? I think the big positive change starts with those entrepreneurs. So we love we love serving this demographic and want to help them win back some of that time.
John Corcoran 32:39
I love that. Last question, Mike. I’m a big fan of gratitude, especially expressing gratitude to those who helped you along the way. So if you think about your contemporaries, others in your industry, maybe even mentors, you mentioned here, coach, turn business partner, who out there would you want to just give them a public shout out for thanking them for helping you along the way.
Mike Abramowitz 33:01
There’s three men in particular first one is Matt King, who was my original manager with Cutco. When my mom died at 20. He really was there with me when a time I really needed him. And then when the market collapsed in my mid 20s, as I alluded to, he was there to just kind of help me put my head down and just work really hard. And just just instilled a lot of that into me at a time at a chapter of life. I really needed someone. The second person is going to be Chris Krimitsos. Chris Krimitsos is here in Tampa. He’s been he was the inspiration of grab tomorrow, he gave me an hour of his time, even though I was a stranger to show me how to build the brand and build the book and launch a book and, and he was a great counsel. And now a great friend, he runs Podfest. He’s incredible human. And the third one is Andrew Biggs is the third who’s now my business partner when my wife and I decided to get married and then having to go through IVF due to male factor and having a stillbirth at 20 weeks and several miscarriages and the being in the hospital for that timeframe. He’s been just an absolute incredible support system for me to be able to offer perspective and have counsel and be be there at those valleys that I really needed someone and also be there at the peaks to celebrate with me as well. So those are three men that have had my back at real pivotal times in life where I needed someone.
John Corcoran 34:19
So Mike, it’s been such a pleasure talking to you where can people go to learn more about you and also learn about the services that your company provides?
Mike Abramowitz 34:26
Well, if they go to VA.betterthanrich.com, they can set up a free consultation with one of our staff members and the strategist will poke around their business with them do with the dollar per hour wage activity with them and and see if we can help them win back some of that time and put some of our virtual assistants and a team to work for them. And if not, they’ll at least get value out of that complimentary call. So VA.betterthanrich.com has that and we have tons of free resources. We have our podcast we have a free Facebook group automate delegate systemize on Facebook, and we would love to have anyone who’s injured Send this topic you know, join in and join in the conversation and support automatedelegatesystemize.com is the website to so we’re really you could probably get a theme there. We’re really trying to own that in the marketplace. Automate delegate systemize, though.
John Corcoran 35:15
Yeah, it’s a great, great domain. Mike, thanks so much for your time.
Mike Abramowitz 35:17
Thank you, John.
Chad Franzen 35:21
Thanks for listening to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast. We’ll see you again next time and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.