I Made All the Big Events. That’s About It.

Introduction to Busy Is Broken series

00:00Bill Gallagher: Have you ever had a week when you're completely slammed, but somehow nothing actually moved? Is this one of those weeks? That's not really a time problem. It's a busyness habit problem. My new book, Busy Is Broken, Do Less, Scale More, is all about growing by doing less, not more. Read or listen to a sample chapter over at busyisbroken.com. That's busyisbroken.com. It's also on Amazon and other booksellers.

00:34Bill Gallagher: Well, I'm talking to you today about the personal costs of all of it. What is it actually costing you? What's the impact in your life of the things that you're missing out on? It's a very personal conversation today. I'll share with you what it was like for me, and maybe that'll let you see something about yourself as well.

00:58Bill Gallagher: Hey, everybody. I'm Bill Gallagher, scaling coach and host of this Scaling Up Business podcast. In this series of solo episodes, I'm talking about the ideas that are in my book coming out now, Busy Is Broken. You'll find Busy Is Broken at busyisbroken.com. You can preorder the book, get some samples, things like that from it. This series of podcast solo episodes and articles, that kind of thing, are all to do with some of the ideas of that. Busy Is Broken. Where do you keep trying to work harder and harder? And you're holding the company where you are the bottleneck in the business, the kinds of things that need to evolve and change as you do the work of scaling up. How do you need to change and evolve? That is the point of this whole series. You'll find this series and all the things related to it at busyisbroken.com.

01:45Bill Gallagher: If you want to know about our regular, the broader coaching, scalingcoach.com. That is our website where we have our Q20 diagnostic and we have our monthly workshop series and we have our various coaching programs, things like that, that are chances to work with us and help get your company scaled. We've worked with thousands of companies now at this point over the last thirteen years with me and my team, and we have all kinds of different things to help you grow your business and evolve as a leader and make that growth actually fun.

02:18Bill Gallagher: I share with you examples. So we're going to talk about a personal one, not a client story today, but my personal story and the example of what happened for me, what I did, what I screwed up in growing the business. So look, I was actually, my son was over just yesterday and I was talking with him about this whole part of the book and he shared this. He's like, "Dad, you were there a lot, but you weren't really there. You were away at nights. Some nights you were just away, like teaching class, coaching, doing some other kind of thing like that, doing a meeting, traveling. But when you were home, you were on the phone."

You were there a lot but not really there

03:02Bill Gallagher: When you were handling all kinds of calls and doing things, working on stuff from home, even when you were here. I asked my wife about this. I'm like, "Did I miss out on the kids growing up?" She says, "No, no, no. You made all the big events, the graduations, the performances, the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs. You were there for those." I have the photos. I was in the right seat at the right time in all of those moments that had a date on the calendar, crowd in the room, but that's maybe about it.

03:35Bill Gallagher: She said, "You missed all the little moments, all the things leading up to the big game, the rehearsals before the play, the meetings with the rabbi the weeks before the Bar Mitzvahs. You weren't in those. You didn't go to or from those. Ordinary Tuesday nights, Saturday mornings, all those things that make up life. The times when we're raising our kids. You were there for the key things, the photo moments, the photo ops, most of them. The rest of the stuff, you missed out. I took care of those things."

04:09Bill Gallagher: I was off building the business. I was coaching. I was teaching, training. I was on a plane, on a call, a lot of calls. I was in front of the room, on a stage somewhere doing important work for our business, for other people's companies. While all those little moments of my life happened without me there.

Nobody sends a calendar invite for family legends

04:33Bill Gallagher: Nobody sends you a calendar invite for the night your daughter told a funny story at dinner and that story became a family legend that you were never part of. You just look up one day and your kids are grown. My kids are grown. My daughter lives in LA. My son lives very close nearby, but he's got his own life, his own daughter now. And he's doing his thing. He's got his own career. They, I've talked about that plenty, both of them. Sophie traveling around the country, around the world, touring. Jack, working in AI, raising his daughter. I see them plenty. I talk to them, but all those little things, right? There was a lot of that. I can't go back and get that. It's not self pity. That's just the hard facts, right? The moments happened. I wasn't there for a lot of that. No amount of any of our success makes any of that different.

05:25Bill Gallagher: The thing that drove me is ego and adrenaline. I love being the hero. I love being needed. So showing up in a critical thing, I'm there. Showing up for every little thing, just being present, not so much. Every rescue from a business, a person, whatever, is proof that I mattered, right? It kept me on a plane. Look, I love being called out. I'm like, oh, I get on a plane today. I go work somewhere. It makes me feel important. I guess I'm going to go help someone. It is important. It does help. I am helpful in that way. But that's a real cost.

06:04Bill Gallagher: And the question underneath all of it is why that pattern? Why was I working so hard? What, I'm working on things I care about, but why working on them in that way? Why the midnight emails, why the inability to let my team make more decisions? Why all of those things that cost more than they actually earn, than they provide?

06:33Bill Gallagher: I talk about this not because I want you to feel sorry for me, because I want you to take a look in the mirror. I know many of us do this again and again. We make sacrifices because we say it matters, because it's what I have to do. It's just the thing that, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a founder. I'm doing what I'm doing. I wish somebody had asked me, that had pointed out so that I would just settle down. There were moments.

07:03Bill Gallagher: I remember one time I came in the house on the phone and I continued to be in the house. And then when I finally hang up the phone, it was probably twenty minutes or something like that, I continued a phone call after coming in late. Dinner's already done. They're eating. I come in late, I'm on the phone. I stay on the phone. They're doing homework. And after I get off the phone, my wife says to me in the most heartbreaking way for me, just like, "If you're going to be just on the phone when you get home, maybe just stay at the office." And I was like, I just was gutted by it. Like really? I thought I was doing good. And then I realized not being present and not being able to let go of things was really a problem.

If you're just on the phone, stay at the office

07:55Bill Gallagher: So here's my invitation for you tonight, literally tonight, put your phone in another room during dinner. Put it away, put the laptop away, the phone away. Our phones are flipping in our lives with everything twenty four seven. I don't mean on silent. I don't mean face down, in another room, right? Don't police everybody else to do it.

08:17Bill Gallagher: Just be with them. If they're all on their phones too, because you've created a thing, just watch that and let that break your heart a little bit, and then let it start to change things. But before you start preaching it to everybody else, do your own work, put it down, watch them, love them, appreciate them, be with the people you love. Those moments that haven't happened yet, right? The things still to come, tonight's dinner, the months ahead, the years ahead, that's all still available. Right? Every moment we have a choice. This is the opportunity of our work and to make a difference, to start to interrupt your patterns and level up. Look what happens when you put your phone down, you get present. Look around, look at the people, talk to them. Don't tell yourself, oh, I need my phone because we're gonna use Google or AI to have a conversational assistant in the middle of this thing. Leave it alone, put it away, be with people, look at people, notice the sounds, take in the smells, notice the sights, the tastes, all the little cues, the body posture, just really be present. Notice yourself. Notice your discomfort with being present, with being idle, with having nothing to do or say. See if you can turn that into a living kind of a meditation, a mindfulness practice where you just are with people and where you're being with people creates an opening for people to be with you and to be with each other. See if you can be, like, the clearing or the catalyst, the opportunity for that to arise among the people. And then think about what happens in the background. Think about other people being able to step up, being able to breathe, being able to do their own work because you're not in everything, everywhere, all the time. That's the invitation for this week.

Notice your discomfort with being present

10:12Bill Gallagher: Actually, for the next two weeks. So put your phone in another room, start tonight, then start to do more and more of it every day, every night. Have times when you're fully, fully present, fully there. Notice if you're staying too late. Notice if you're getting home, but then still doing other kinds of things. Start to work on actually being present. That means disengaging. That means letting your team step up and step into things, but it also means getting a fuller, richer, rested, connected, loving you. And that can only be good things for the business and the team that you're also building. The family, the life, the business, the team, whatever it is.

10:50Bill Gallagher: Anyway, this has been a conversation in particular about the leader's perspective, my perspective, what it was like for me. Now I do today have a great relationship with my daughter. I have a great relationship with my son. I see them both frequently and I talk to them and it's rich. There are those moments. We both know them. Like the kids know it. My Lori knows it. I know it. But we also then have the now. Right? So the shift and things like that. So if this is your perspective, your experience, in two weeks' time, we'll talk about what it's like for your team. What does it sound like when you're being a boss who doesn't delegate, who micromanages, who's too in the weeds, who's too much of a perfectionist. What when you're doing the kind of the worst traits of a leader of a business that can't scale where you are the bottleneck, what's it like for them? I'm gonna share with you some stories, some examples of what it's like to be in their seats, what they say about you, about us, and so you can get a picture of that and start to interrupt with that. So that's all coming in the next episode.

12:05Bill Gallagher: Until then, if you wanna know more about the book, busyisbroken.com, that's where to go sign up for the release or preorder it. By the time this is out now, you can preorder the book so you can get and there's a lot of bonuses with the preorder. So go preorder the book now, busyisbroken.com, and you'll get a lot of little extras for the people who order it before the actual full release of the book, the publication date. And then if you wanna know about our workshops or coaching programs, scalingcoach.com.

12:32Bill Gallagher: Big thanks to Wanda who helps us get the shows ready and out the door every week, to our AI assistants, to Verne Harnish who created the whole Scaling Up framework. Until next time, keep scaling.

12:47Bill Gallagher: Thanks for listening today. One last thing. If anything in this episode hit home, my book digs into it further. Busy Is Broken. Do Less. Scale More. It's all about how to stop drowning in work and build a business and a team that scales without you. Available right now with content samples at busyisbroken.com. Go grab it. Be less busy.