350. Achieving Time Freedom | Delegation Infrastructure with Mike Abramowitz

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Mike Abramowitz: 

Get clear of exactly the type of things that you want in your life or don't want and pursue the things that you want and let go of the things that you don't want with intentionality. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Hello and welcome to The Daily Helping with Dr. Richard Shuster, food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, tools to win at life. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, and whatever you do, this is the show that is going to help you become the best version of yourself. 

Each episode, you will hear from some of the most amazing, talented, and successful people on the planet who followed their passions and strived to help others. Join our movement to get a million people each day to commit acts of kindness for others. Together, we're going to make the world a better place. Are you ready? Because it's time for your Daily Helping.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of The Daily Helping Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Richard. And our guest today is awesomeist, definitely a kindred spirit. His name is Mike Abramowitz. He has 20 years of direct sales experience, training 5,000 plus sales reps with $17 million in sales. He has nine books in the self-help space, and he founded PB&J for Tampa Bay.

He has scaled numerous six figure businesses, and a nonprofit to be run without him so he can experience the time freedom that he desires. 

He's a busy father and husband who helps other busy entrepreneurs implement systems in their businesses by leveraging automation and delegation to help the business operators become business owners and truly experience that financial and time freedom that drew them to entrepreneurship in the first place. He also has a podcast called the Better Than Rich Show and a community called Automate, Delegate and Systematize. 

Mike, I'm so excited for this conversation. Welcome to The Daily Helping. It's awesome to have you here with us today. 

Mike Abramowitz: 

Dr. Richard, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to serve in any way I possibly can.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I’m grateful for that. I know that you're going to be a great help to everybody listening to this today. So what I love to do, let's start this way, I love to hop in the time machine and go back and really explore what put people on the path they're on today. So what was the spark? What was the thing that moved you into this space where you are today?

Mike Abramowitz: 

So my origin started in New Jersey, youngest of eight, and I watched my dad growing up on a plumbing business. So he worked a lot and he missed a lot of basketball games, but he was overly ambitious. And if he didn't work as hard as he did, there's no way that myself, my siblings would be able to have like the house and live in our neighborhood and do all the things we did. So I loved his ambition, but I wish he was around a little bit more. 

So I left New Jersey, went to college at USF on one path, studying industrial engineering, got my industrial engineering degree, but I started selling Cutco kitchen knives when I was in college. And that entered my whole world of direct sales of being a business owner, understanding sales, understanding business, understanding running a company that also offers a little bit of time freedom, potentially different than my dad, but it wasn't the case actually. 

In fact, Cutco, I was there for 20 years. But during that season of my 20s, after I got my degree, I ran my Cutco office, like my dad ran his business. So I was grinding, working six, seven days a week, working really hard, until I went to a Tony Robbins event. And at the Tony Robbins event was my first time where I really saw the possibility of time freedom. Circa 2012, 2013, I was having these conversations with these people about like authors and traveling and speaking. I was like, that's the lifestyle. That's what I want. So that's where I left that event, walked across fire, said my mess is my message and created books, started speaking. 

And then from there, I had this whole brand built. I had the lifestyle built, but then my relationship at the time suffered, a seven-year relationship ended. My health started declining a little bit. And I was like, there's no way that this is sustainable running my direct sales office, being a speaker and an author and all these things. So I hired a business coach and that business coach was in corporate, and taught me how to corporatize my small business. 

And that's where I started learning how to buy back my time, building out systems, using offshore staff for delegation, how to delegate the local charity that we started, the nonprofit PB&J for Tampa Bay, how to start getting this time freedom. And it was pretty amazing to see what is possible with intentionality. So then obviously I can continue to present day, but that's a lot of the origin of what has led me to do what I do, which is to help busy, overwhelmed entrepreneurs buy back their time. 

Because on the other end of helping me buy back my time, the ultimate test was, I built these systems in my business, my wife and I had our son, I was just telling you before we click record, on December 31st, New Year's Eve 2020. And when he went into the hospital, he was born at one pound, four ounces. We were in the NICU with him for eight and a half months, but my business was able to run without me and still produce over a quarter million in revenue and six figures in profits without me there because of the infrastructure that I built in direct sales.

So when we got out of the hospital in September 10th, 2021, I reached out to my coach and said, “Hey, do you think we can partner up and teach other people how to do what you taught me?” And that's the birthplace of what I'm doing now, what I've been doing since really the end of 2021, which is teaching busy entrepreneurs on how to use systems and automation and delegation in their business to buy back their time. So that way, if an emergency happened, like what happened with me, the machine of the business can still function and run without me there. 

And JFK said it best, best time to work on the roof is when the sun is shining. So, if I waited for the circumstance, I would have been screwed. So that's the very long origin story, but we could go into any direction of any of those pieces that feel relevant to your audience. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Well, we were talking a little bit before and I'm glad your son is okay. I know a parent who goes through something similar. I did. It is scary. So, but again, you had these systems in place. So, let me, I want to do kind of a pre and post here. So, before you have these systems in place, how many hours would you say you were putting in, in a given week? 

Mike Abramowitz: 

I mean, it was nonstop. Like if people say 9 to 5, it was more like a 24/7. I mean, I was on call because the way my business was set up, it was we were recruiting a lot of college kids. So I recruited over 5000 students and not only would I get the recruits constantly hit me up, but then the active sales representatives would be hitting me up. And then I would also have my own customers. So I sold Cutco for a thousand people and they would be hitting me up. 

So I would have three different audiences, new recruits, current sales reps and customers hitting my phone up. And I was the bottleneck to all three of those parties. So it was impossible. Like I thought it was impossible to escape that. But until I put in some boundaries, and we could talk about that, but the question is, like, what was life like? Constant reaction mode.

And on top of that, I didn't quite know how to create separation between myself and their problems. So, anytime they had a problem, I allowed that to become my problem too. So if a sales rep was like, oh, I'm having trouble at home. It's like, oh, my God, tell me what's going on. Like I would take the burden of what's happening in their personal life on them. A customer is complaining, they didn't get their order in time. It's like, that's supposed to be customer service corporate, but I would do my best to support. 

So it was like, I was always trying to please every single person that contacted me as well, which was extremely draining. So, of course, it would have to take a toll on my relationship with my significant other. Of course, it took a toll on non-healthy eating habits. So yeah, it was a grind. It was a grind. It was hard. And also, Dr. Richard, this backstory that I didn't hit on, I invested in real estate when I was 20. So, I bought my first house when I was 20 and then mom passed when I was 20 as well. So, I used her life insurance money to buy a second home. So, I had three houses by the time I graduated from college and that was 2008. 

So if you think if you do the math, then the market collapse, I lost the properties, I lost $130,000. And I also was down to a 400-credit score on top of grinding nonstop. So the emotional stress of the finances, the managing of the properties, trying to overcome that, the 20s, I call it the valley of my 20s, man. It was a beast, a lot of learning that took place during that decade for Mike Abramowitz, 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Well, I hear that and it's very similar what a lot of entrepreneurs tell me that it's these mistakes they make in their 20s. And for a lot of people, it can be derailing, but they can also be, in the end, the best lessons that anybody can ever take from that. So I want to fill in the gaps in a minute. But today on average, how many hours are you putting in a week?

Mike Abramowitz: 

It depends on the week, but my schedule set up where Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, my schedule is usually like a nine to three or nine to four. And then Friday is like a nine to two. So, and then Monday's personal day, evenings are with my family. Saturday, I usually, in the past, we just had a newborn on December 4th, so four weeks ago. So previously, I give my wife a personal day on Saturday, and I hang out and have a daddy day with my son. And then Sunday is always family day. So that's what we've done for pretty much a couple of years. 

But now with our newborn, it's kind of fluctuating a little bit, but I've very much created those boundaries in the schedule where anybody who wants to get my attention, they could only get my, I only give them my attention during those times. And then if I wanted to, I give attention outside of those boundaries, but it's pretty firm, like a nine to three, nine to four, Tuesday to Thursday, and then a nine to two on Friday. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

So I want to spend a little more time with boundaries and we'll get into your systems and the delegation piece in a bit. But for so many people, that's difficult, having the boundaries with their customers, with their employees, because they think, and rightfully so, that a good boss or a good vendor gives amazing customer service, right, so you want to make your clients feel heard, you want to make your employees feel heard, or just as a parent you want to make your family feel heard.

So talk to us about if you're listening to this, if someone is listening to this and like, I don't know how I would ever set up these boundaries. How did you do it? And give some good tips there.

Mike Abramowitz: 

It was definitely a ramp. So, Dr. Richard, it wasn't like overnight, I'm going to like neglect every relationship in my life and just go there. So it started as a ramp where the Monday personal day was the first one. I was like I needed to make sure that I have time for Mike because I was so drained through. Because I'll say this in the most loving way possible, I am on in business and I'm also on as a husband and I'm on as a father. So I want to be off sometime. 

And I need that off where I don't have to have that responsibility. And that started with a half a day on Monday. I was like, I just need a couple hours. These couple hours would be a massage, a couple hours of golf, a couple hours of have stillness, a couple hours to take a nap, a couple of just go for a walk, be lost in nature, go to the library, read. Like whatever I could do.

There was one time, Dr. Richard, I brought a lawn chair and I just put it in my trunk, and I was like, let me just see where I go. I went to Olive Garden, had all you can eat soup and salad and then I went to a tree in a park, and I just sat in the tree and watch ducks for hours. I mean, we're talking like that's the type of space that sometimes I needed for myself.

So making sure Mondays was protected was the first. 

And then from there, it kind of grew into, I also went to evenings. And then the answer to the question though, is how did I get to the place where I created boundaries? I think the big awareness happened where any time an emergency took place, I knew I could make time for the emergency. If a doctor needed to schedule our son, or my wife needed to go do something, or if I wanted to plan a vacation, anytime I needed to make adjustments to my schedule, I did. 

What did I do? I communicated that to everyone in my staff. I communicated that to my email list. I put an away message up on my WhatsApp and now Slack. I communicated like, “Hey, I'm not going to be available during this timeframe. So if you need me, get in touch with me before or after this blank timeframe”. So it's like, can I just do that all the time? Like, why do I have to do that only when I go on a vacation or only when I'm not available for an appointment or something like that.

So those were kind of like the beginning stages where putting those boundaries in place of making sure I had a communication set up ahead of time, making sure I had some people in place around me. That's where right now, I mean, I have a team, there's probably 12 virtual assistants right now that are acting as Mike Abramowitz at the moment, that are like my gatekeepers that are supporting me and getting things done for me as me, just not by me. I have a nanny right now that's upstairs with my son. So she's like acting as me right now, but it's not by me. 

Like there's so -- but these types of boundaries happened first and then it was a who question. Who can be me when I am not there? And then that's kind of where the transition into delegation comes into play, how to properly delegate me. And that's why I love Dan Martel's book, Buy Back Your Time. That's been a great resource. He pretty much contextualizes everything that I was doing for the last five to six years. He put into a book. It's an unbelievable playbook, Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martel. Highly recommend it. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

So, I want to take this the next step here, right. And you're kind of teasing the breadcrumbs. So you're making this so easy and fun. You moved into -- you were able to establish these healthy boundaries and then you shifted into how do I basically clone myself without actually cloning myself? So talk to us a little bit more about delegation. 

You mentioned Vas. That scares a lot of people because for many people, they don't know what they're getting. They're scared they're going to say the wrong things or act the wrong way. So talk to us about delegation. Then I want to know how you were able to use VAs to really be your voice when it's not you.

Mike Abramowitz: 

Yeah, it's a great question because I struggled with this too. In fact, I didn't hire my first technical offshore virtual assistant until 2020. My coach was telling me about how beneficial it would be. I'm like, there's no way that this can happen. So there was this control thing, but I delegated to a lot of my staff. These 18 to 22-year-olds were running my Cutco office for me for years. So I was like, okay, I could delegate them, promote from within.

But the biggest shift that took place for me was if I can simplify what I do, then I can teach it to somebody else to do it for less. Like McDonaldify my business and McDonaldify what I do in my life. So The Founder, a really great movie, that was a piece of that inspiration where it's like, if I can so easily dumb down what Mike does with a playbook or a video of me doing it, that's essentially what I did. And I just got, I mean, pen and paper, flow charts, if thens. 

So, it's very much like this, Dr. Richard. If a sales representative needed to get a question answered, then how can I make sure that they don't ask me that question? Let me create a video library of frequently asked questions that 80 percent of the time these are the questions I get. So that way they could go to the FAQ library first, see if their question is there, then if the question is not there, can I put somebody else in place that they could reach out to first to see if that person can answer their questions? And that person could be trained by me on those 80 percent as well, so if they need a human. 

And then if that doesn't work, then that human will reach out to me and ask me, hey, I didn't know if the library answer question. I didn't know the answer to this question. And then when I would teach that human the question, I would then say document it and add it to the frequently asked questions. So now it's 82 percent of the time. And that's essentially what we did is as this example. 

So I would try to get 80 percent of the way there for most parts of my business and most parts of my life. And Dan Martell says 80 percent done by someone else is 100 percent awesome. So how did I let go of control? It wasn't just like here, take it all. I started letting go of control of the lowest value activities that I thought somebody else could do. 

And how can you, as a listener, really get into your mind if somebody else can do it? Go to indeed.com and see what qualities and character traits and skills are out there in the marketplace. And you will see a range of jobs from like $18 an hour to $35 an hour. And then if you're an entrepreneur that makes a $100 an hour, as an example, well, your time is worth $100 an hour. And then somebody else can do these tasks at $18 to $25 or $30 an hour. Well, I need to spend my time and control the high value activities, and I need to let go of control for the low value activities. 

And that was a big paradigm shift for me. And then finding the right people and then putting systems in place, onboarding those who's, attracting those who's, training those who's, and then retaining those who's. And that's, I mean, that's the fun part of operational side of business, but that's what allowed me to go from a solopreneur doing everything to an owner having some people around me. 

And again, that staff, most of the people that are acting for me as me are offshore, but they're trained. They're trained on how to be me. And then that goes into the next part of the question where I could talk about that, but I don't know. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I want you to talk about that next piece because I think it's important.

Mike Abramowitz: 

So coming back to how these individuals, so I started thinking about what are the things that bother me and drain my energy. That was the place to start. What trained my energy with social media. That was the first thing. And the big, if any, Dr. Richard, actually happened was when my wife asked me what takes you so long in the bathroom. I don't know if your wife ever asked you that. But she's like, what takes you so long in the bathroom? Me, I was like, I'm scrolling. Like I had my like routine. I would go to Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, my WhatsApp and my email. And I would just go through and clear of my inbox if I'm in the bathroom and just sometimes I'll get caught in the trap of scrolling and it would just be an extended stay let's call it. 

What was the, so what for me is like, if I'm that distracted while I'm just in the bathroom for 20 or 30 minutes, I know it's long for a guy, where else am I distracted? Where else am I doing this mindless scrolling? Where else am I going to all these apps? So then I started thinking, how can I have somebody else in those inboxes that's not me? 

So I was like, okay, how can I get my email offloaded? What is the system behind that? So filtering the inbox, my VA, my inbox manager for my email take screenshots of any emails that he thinks needs my attention and sends me those screenshots on Slack. And then once a day, I go into slack, so I don't have to go into my email and get distracted there. I just go into Slack and see the two to five emails that actually need my attention to avoid the 82,000 emails that were unread. He obviously cleared out my inbox. 

Same thing on Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram. I have a VA specific in those inboxes. And if somebody needs my attention, they'll take a screenshot, send a screenshot to Slack and say, “Hey, you might want to see this”. Again, how many actually need my attention? Not many, because they're trained on my tone using AI. This is a beautiful thing over the last 12 to 15 months with AI. My tone and writing style is inside of ChatGPT and inside of AI. 

So my VAs that are managing my email and my inbox, just go to my tone and my writing style and say, how would Mike respond to this in his tone? They will respond as me if somebody asks a question or somebody needs something or has an inquiry about something that. Doesn't have to be me, but it's my voice, it's my tone, it's my writing style, but another human is clicking those buttons. So it's not a bot. It's just a lower wage worker that's using AI to act as me for managing inbox. 

Same thing with like some other parts of social media that are really important, posting content, repurposing my podcast. The first time we launched a podcast, I was like, this sucks, taking all these video editing and chopping it up, putting into reels, captions, hashtags, all this. So we started looking and seeing like, what is the service for someone else to do all this stuff? And it was expensive. I'm like, I don't make money off my podcast. This is just for fun. It's like, man. Well, we figured out how to simplify it, use AI, have our power team do that. 

So we started doing all these things, Dr. Richard. And then that turned into a service that we now provide to -- we have a community of students that we teach how to do this. But now we have a service of providing a team of virtual assistants that are powered by AI to help them offload these things. And that was a birthplace of one of our services. 

We have 65 clients that use those same virtual assistants that I use. We have a full team of, like, 30 or 35 assistants that do this work for our students and for our clients, everything from admin to inbox to social media to podcast production to even some voice work. I mean it's wild what's possible when someone just starts thinking differently and just letting go of control. It's fascinating. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

The AI stuff in particular is really interesting to me. So you said that you were able to, through ChatGPT capture your tone. So did you come up with a set of Mike Abramowitz prompts to say ChatGPT, I want you to be energetic and XYZ? Was that your kind of strategy? And then everything they write, they use those prompts? 

Mike Abramowitz: 

The secret sauce is this. I have a lot of content that I put out. I have a blog. I have nine books. I have tons of long form posts, long emails. And so I have a ton of writing. And then all of my videos have transcriptions. So we could take all of these words that Mike has said, put it into the AI and say, “Describe this tone and writing style”. Go back and forth with a full description as long as possible. What else? What else? What else? That is how Mike sounds. That's how Mike writes. That's his style. Boom. We capture that for myself. 

They do that for all of our clients. So the same thing. And that way, anytime we want to respond to someone, it's using AI, but it's using the human's tone and the human's writing style. And this has been a game changer. Now, Dr. Richard, I understand this is only in the last 15 months and it's only going to continue to evolve and get better. But the process to get there is the part that I want to make sure that listeners understand. 

The tool is like having a shovel, but if you don't know how to dig, it's not going to be that helpful. So understanding and thinking differently, letting go of the control of the low value task, but also questioning how might I simplify what I do? How might I use a camcorder method like Dan Martell talks about, record myself doing it, turning that into a playbook or an S.O. P. so it's simple for someone else to follow. How can I, like you said, clone myself, but I got to simplify what I'm doing in order to clone myself. And it requires a little bit of intentional thinking. 

So I would invite the entrepreneur or anybody listening if you want to buy back your time, highly recommend that personal time, that personal time. That's why that Monday to protect me was for me to get into a creative space to allow creativity to exist. So that way, when I get back into working on the business, I actually have the energetic capacity to be creative, to build some of those systems and redesign some things. 

That would be, if there's any takeaway from this, it's not the AI. It's the reimagining how things could be possible in your business by creating those boundaries and have the space to rework your current business model.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

The systems are the one piece we really haven't talked about in depth, so take us through what you implemented and how you did that. Now, you've bought back some time, you've got some VAs, you've trained them, they're doing their thing. Talk to us about the systems. 

Mike Abramowitz: 

I mean, you have to understand that's a loaded question because there's probably a hundred systems without exaggeration. So would you want me to dig? Is it a sales and operations, marketing? Is it -- if you wanted to get just like --

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Let's do it. Let's just say operations. Let's make it easy.

Mike Abramowitz:

Okay. So operations. So I'm going to go with -- can I go with -- I could go hiring a new talent and operations, or retaining a new talent or retaining a talent, like, which again, there's operations has like, I could contract, I could hire, I could onboard, I could train, I could retain. There's like different segments of it. Every one of those have different systems. I just want to be cognizant of time because I know like this is a four-hour episode. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Yeah. Let's do retention because I think a lot of people understand their business and have good ideas about what kind of person they want in there. But let's talk about keeping those good people once we find them. 

Mike Abramowitz: 

Perfect. So a system for retention would fall under this curriculum that I've done in the past. Number one would be having my KPI, the data's points, I would need to know what are the most important needle movers of my business. So virtual assistant, get these data points for me. Okay. 

Then once I have those data points, I analyze those data points first before I bring them to our meeting. The system is what is the meeting structure of a conversation? So we use start, stop, and keep. They fill out a form. What am I going to start doing? What am I going to stop doing and keep doing at the end of every meeting? So when we start the next meeting, we review. What was your start, stop and keep from last week? Give us an update. How did these go?  That's the cadence. 

I show them the data of the needle movers that are most important for them, showing them -- praise publicly. By the way, so praise publicly is a part of the system and then set up one-on-ones to reprimand in private, if any of them are lower than the desired standards. I review those standards in that meeting. And then we do another start, stop and keep. So the system of retention for this example would be the meeting cadence of how to communicate with your staff, publicly praise, data driven decision making, start stop and keep to empower them to feel like they're making their choices. 

And then the back end of that is the accountability where I set up the one-on-ones, kind of like a one-minute manager approach with one minute praising publicly, the one-minute reprimand happens privately. And then if we have one minute goal setting to set those goals to make sure that they're hitting those standards, that also can happen publicly if we want. We capture it on the sheet, on the form that captures all the information, simple Google form and a Google sheet is all I did for this for years. 

And I had a same staff for again, these are college kids in a lot of cases, but some of them were with me for three years, four years, five years, all through college, fully retained. Some of them have developed working with us. I have my same head virtual assistant since 2020. So right now it's 2024. So I mean, the retention is pretty powerful when you can have like a cadence and a system of communication for these individuals. 

Again, it's not sexy, it's not fancy, but it's predictable. And what was nice about it is it was so predictable that eventually I was able to remove myself and somebody else was able to run this flow, so therefore I could remove myself from those meetings, which I eventually did.

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

That’s fantastic. And like you said, it's not a four-hour show. I kind of wish it was in this instance, because I feel like we've only scratched the surface. But as you know, Mike, I love to wrap up every episode by asking my guests a single question, that is what is your biggest helping? That one most important piece of information you'd love for somebody to walk away with after hearing our conversation today?

Mike Abramowitz: 

I would say get clear of exactly the type of things that you want in your life or don't want and pursue the things that you want and let go of the things that you don't want with intentionality. And if there's any way that we could support with our team, with Better Than Rich, to support with that, I would do a free delegation plan with any of your listeners. If they want to reach out, I would do a 90-day delegation plan of how to let go of anything is that they want to let go of and get off their plate. It's something that we love doing for anybody that would enjoy having that conversation by the way. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

I love that. And I will definitely highlight that in the show notes at thedailyhelping.com. But tell us where people can find out more about you. 

Mike Abramowitz: And I appreciate that, Dr. Richard. If they went to VA, like virtual assistant .betterthanrich.com, that kind of gives an overview of our virtual assistant services. That's a lot of what we hit on today. Because on that site, there's a link to book that 90-day delegation plan. So if they went on that site, they can learn a little bit about more about our story, the access to our podcast. But va.betterthanrich.com, they could schedule a consultation right there on that link. And I'd love to have that conversation with them myself or someone from our team. 

Dr. Richard Shuster: 

Perfect. And we will have that and everything Mike Abramowitz linked again in the show notes at dr.richardshuster.com. Oh, Mike, I loved our conversation. The time went too quickly. Uh, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your wisdom with everybody.

Mike Abramowitz:

Thanks for having me. 

Dr. Richard Shuster:

Absolutely. And I want to thank each and every one of you who took time out of your day to listen to our conversation. If you liked it, if you're inspired, if you're going to book that free consultation, go give us a follow, and a five-star review on your podcast app of choice, because that is what helps other people find this show.

But most importantly, go out there today and do something nice for somebody else, even if you don't know who they are. And post in your social media feeds using the hashtag #MyDailyHelping, because the happiest people are those that help others.