Leading an organization is a big responsibility. But it does not mean we have to drown and stretch ourselves too thin. Even better, we can actually lead without working (and being) neck-deep in the company. Sounds impossible? Let Mandi Ellefson of Hands-Off CEO share how you can run your business profitably without you! In this episode, she joins Michael Zipursky to tell us all about their company, what it means to be a hands-off CEO, and the steps that take you from being just one responsibility lighter to completely taking your time and space back as CEO. Whether you are a CEO or consultant, don’t let yourself burn out by putting more and more on your plate. More work does not necessarily mean more profit. Learn the art of productivity and delegation as you join Mandi in this conversation on building a hands-off consulting business.
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I am excited to have Mandi Ellefson joining us. Mandi, welcome.
Thank you so much for having me.
Mandi, we’ve known each other for quite some time. I’m excited to have you on and dig into the work that you do, your experience, and your journey building up your company Hands-Off CEO, where you work with agencies and firms to get back their time, helping them to scale their businesses. I thought maybe a great place to start would be is talking about the name of your company, Hands-Off CEO. What does that mean? What does a hands-off CEO do? How should people think about that?
There are five different levels of being a hands-off CEO. We could go into that but one of them starts with getting out of client support onto removing yourself as a CEO and being able to sell your business. A number of our clients love to get to about level three. Hands-Off CEO level two allows you to get the company to run without you for a matter of weeks at a time. Level three is where you’re able to have the company grow without you. That is a pretty freaking sweet business to have.
I wanted to ask you about the five exits. Is that the same concept?
Yes.
We’ll put a bookmark in that for a moment and then we’re going to circle back and dive deeper into it. I thought to define that. You’ve given a good high-level perspective and overview of the idea of a hands-off CEO. I want to dig into one of the things you help your clients to do, which is to get back time. A core part of being able to be a CEO is to have time to think strategically, plan or work with a team but there are a lot of things that can eat an owner’s time.
They wind up essentially having a job or being a lot busier than they were before. Walk us through what you’ve seen. What are the big opportunities for owners to think about getting back their time? What are some tactical steps that they can take to start to create more time and space for them to be more strategic in planning or enjoying life?
That’s going to be different based on the stage of the company. We’re working with companies when they have at least a few people up to about 25. That’s where we’re typically working with consulting agencies. To be able to get your time back, when you’re a lot smaller, you’re teeny tiny, or maybe even solo, you’re focusing on productivity, automation, and those little things to be able to get your time back. Those are all relevant.
You need to get more productive by getting productivity through other people, not necessarily by squeezing more into your day. Click To TweetWhat happens is that you continue to grow and look to scale your company. What you need to do is be able to get more productive by getting productivity through other people, not necessarily by squeezing more into your day. Trying to squeeze more into your day and becoming more productive is one of the biggest things that we see leading to CEOs burning out of this stage. What they need to do is open up whole days in their work week where they have a lot of time and space to be thinking and generating those ideas to be able to expand their vision.
They need to be able to get a lot more done by doing a lot less. That means you’ve got to get that team in place doing it. A big piece that I see missing is not having the sales structure, the offer structure, and the pricing in place to be able to afford them. It’s like a multifaceted challenge that to be able to get out of your day-to-day, you need to be able to sell more. The problem is you can’t sell more because you don’t have the time or the people to deliver the work. It’s this catch-22 place that a lot of consultants and agencies get stuck in. It’s challenging.
Let’s dive a little bit deeper into that. The distinction that I’m hearing you make here is that at the earlier stages, a consultant will be focused on their productivity, revenue generation, sales, and delivery. They’re doing a lot of different things and they might even have some team members but there’s a line in the sand that is drawn for you to be able to scale to that next level and continue growing.
It’s not about you as the owner and leader becoming more productive yourself. It’s about shifting productivity, systems, outcomes, and output more to team members. When is that time? In your experience, is there a certain level of revenue and the number of team members? When should people start thinking as a solo or small team hustling and making things happen, growing revenue to thinking about, “I need to intentionally focus on systems and building my team?”
It comes down to what your goals are. There are some consultants who want to be solo or maybe have a couple of contractors but they want it to be their show and that’s all that they want to do. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s knowing what your goals are. If you know that, you want to have a company that can be able to run without you and you can someday maybe be able to sell if you want to.
It’s a company that allows you to be able to generate income that’s not dependent on your hours is a real company. That’s when you get into a real company. The sooner you can start thinking that way, the better. It starts with making that decision on what company you want to create. From there, as aggressively as you can, that’s what gives you that freedom and the ability to be able to sell into that capacity.
Take the consulting business owner that is busy delivering on client projects. They do want to grow and scale to that next level. They could try and shift the delivery off of themselves to team members. They could shift to trying to get a salesperson in to do more of the sales or bring in a marketing person to do more of the marketing and lead generation. There are a lot of options that an owner has. Is there a certain place where you have seen people tend to see better results or what they should focus on first? Should they focus more on delivery, sales, or marketing? What do you think about that? What’s your experience there?
I’ll go through that and share an example from a client that we’ll call Sam. First of all, delegating out sales, especially when you’re dealing with high-ticket consulting services is one of the last things you’re going to delegate. It’s hard to get out of it. You’re going to delegate out certain pieces of it but I see many consultants try to do that way too early in the game. I’m sure you’ve seen that too, Michael. They’re like, “This is hard, scary, and uncomfortable for me. I’m going to go ahead and delegate that to somebody else.” It never works. I’ve never seen it work before.
The challenge is that it’s not defined enough for it to be a process that you could delegate to someone else. In the meantime, as a consultant, as you’re figuring those things out and getting better at articulating your value, with your charisma, energy, and enthusiasm, you can sell it even if you’re not that good of a salesperson.
The founder is always able to sell more effectively than a salesperson would because of their knowledge and the energy that they bring to it. The other thing that you’ve mentioned, which we’ve certainly seen a lot, is that one of the challenges in selling consulting services, let’s say through a salesperson, is oftentimes the consulting businesses have too many offerings. There’s too much custom in there so it becomes challenging. That’s one thing that you focus on. We’ve seen this a lot as well. Having a more structured offering, a program, or a product as an offer, selling then becomes a lot easier.
There are a number of things that you want to be doing before you can step into that sales piece. One of those things is dialing in the offer. Going from selling twelve different things, it’s custom when you’re having the sales conversation. You’ve seen this, Michael. It’s so much easier to go and say, “We’ll do this and this,” especially when a lot of the work is coming in through referrals.
I don’t want to go too much into this because I know we are going to be talking about excess and everything but going into what is that top 10% of the work that we can do? Who can we do it for? Looking at that world-class outcome that you could create, that could be our offer. Going from, “We’re selling affiliate marketing consulting,” to, “We add $10 million in 3 years for beauty and skincare brands.” It’s a real-world example of one that in a matter of a few weeks, doubled its lead flow and also the price point that they were able to sell at.
This is about the power of focus and specialization of power. We see this all the time as well. You have consultants and firms that think volume. It’s like, “We need a ton of leads and target hundreds or thousands of people.” It’s the focus of knowing who is that real dream client, the highest value client you can create the most amazing outcome for, and then focusing your messaging on those people with more personalized touchpoints and value. You’re doing that and your messaging is for them specifically so they also see you as being that premium provider and then you can support higher pricing.
I like that you said the power of focus. We call it the power of ones. Not one industry but one client type specifically within the industry. We’re getting narrow here. One specific problem like a painful hair-on-fire problem and then one outcome. Not like clarity. None of this stuff. We’ve seen our clients be able to double and quadruple their fees consistently doing that. We’ve seen it up to 10X even.
I want to go a little bit deeper into this and then we’re going to shift over to the five exits. This is an area that so many people have real trouble and a challenge with. You’re saying one client type. How do you guide somebody on narrowing into one client type? You’re even saying one industry. Get clear what exactly to target when they could. Realistically, they could help many different types of clients within one industry or even multiple industries. What’s your thought and mindset around that level of focus?
The second thing that I’ll put in there is the challenge around problems. Often, consultants don’t necessarily know what the number one problem is for their clients. If they do have ideas, they might have a list of 3 or 5 or many different problems. They don’t know which is the one. If you don’t know what the number one problem is, how should people lead with their messaging, outreach, and communications if they’re not certain themselves about what that number one problem is?
This is a little bit of an algebra problem. You have the client type, the problem, and the outcome. The client type can be an obvious one to look for if there was some clear focus for a particular consulting agency. Sometimes it’s more like we have been able to add $5 million of growth for companies like they’re here and here. You have to look at where the strongest point is. That’s what we look at when we go through this process. This is not an easy process. That’s why clients work with you. That’s one of the reasons why we have advanced marketers who come to work with us. It’s advanced CEOs who have MBAs. They’re not just starting.
It’s a challenge for everyone. It doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been in the corporate world or how big of a business you’ve built. You’re still narrowing in when you know that you could serve more but you know it’s going to serve you best to serve fewer.
We're not taking on any more of these clients that don't fit because it's just crazy for us to utilize our capacity for less profitable clients. Click To TweetFirst of all, it’s getting over that scarcity mindset like, “We’re letting go of all this opportunity if we focus.” This is not where you don’t ever take on clients outside of. This is where you’re narrow focusing if you’re doing a specific campaign or your dream ideal clients. You’re specifically having this offer that’s knocking them in the head and they’re like, “I have to have this. This is the only place I can get this.” That’s what you want to do.
What we have found is that once our clients do that and start getting that response from their market and it’s more fun to work with and profitable, they’re like, “We’re not taking on any more of these clients that don’t fit outside of this because it’s crazy for us to utilize our capacity for less profitable clients.” You still do. It’s a transition.
Mandi, what I’m hearing you say is if you’re planning and thinking about this, you’re likely going to have all kinds of thoughts, doubts, and considerations but ultimately, when you get out into the marketplace and start having conversations and validating that there is a need and there are people that you can help that are interested, those conversations are what ultimately then gives you the confidence to say, “I’m going to focus a lot more on this and not pay as much attention to all the other things that we could do.”
There are a lot of mistakes that happen in trying to do research without a solid enough plan for it. You’re sitting there like, “What do you want?” It’s like, “We didn’t know we wanted an iPhone.” We didn’t even know it was possible. You’ve got to imagine these things for your clients. They’re looking for you to have a much bigger vision. When you have a way bigger vision for the outcome that they can have in their business, that’s when you will eliminate all of your competition. You can show that you can be able to generate outcomes for them.
You have a little bit or a lot of an idea going in. We add $10 million in 3 years for beauty and skincare brands. That was the outcome statement that they had. They started changing their marketing to the things that they were already doing. Immediately, they got traction from it. If you sit around and have all these conversations, sure, you can do that but it’s an earlier stage business. When you’re first starting, that might be what you’re doing. If you can bring the market something that you have a pretty good idea and hypothesis based on what you’ve seen, then you’re seen as the expert. They’re like, “We want to have this.”
The other side of it is that you’re asking, “How do you know the problem?” I like solving expensive problems. I go for where the money is at. That’s what makes them motivated to be able to invest, even if the problem that you’re solving is harder to quantify with money. Sometimes that is the case. For example, some of our clients have been in the operations space and it’s harder to quantify that but when you do break it down, quantify, and help them see how much profit they’re going to be able to save how much extra capacity that’s increasing and how much more growth that they can have from this, you’re selling money. People like buying money.
Especially when they’re going to get a lot more back than they’re putting in.
That comes down to the client that you want to serve, too. There are going to be some clients that feel that pain so much more intensely than others. Even if they could feel the same intensity of pain, there are some that it’s a $1 million problem or a $10 million problem. There are some that it is a $100,000 problem. Which one are you going to get paid for more? What is that sweet spot where you want to do it, too? Where you want to serve must be aligned with your mission. That’s the other aspect of it.
When you’ve seen people who have an offer that will resonate or a problem they believe the market has and they go out and it doesn’t resonate or they don’t get the traction they would hope for right away, what’s the shift they need to make? How do you typically counsel or advise people to deal with that situation when it does come up?
First of all, I want to check their stories. Often, they’re like, “This isn’t working.” “How many people did you reach out to?” “Ten.” I’m like, “That’s not enough information.” If it were ten clients that have that specific problem, that’s good information. That’s valuable. If it’s ten cold people that have no idea who you are and never responded, you got to run the numbers here. That’s the first thing I’d look at. I’d look at the hook. Is it sexy enough? Is it going to cut through the noise?
The hook, meaning the hook in the message you’re communicating and putting into the marketplace. Is it compelling, enticing, and interesting enough for somebody to want to respond to you?
The other part of it too is, “Is it even landing in their inbox?” If you’re sending out a cold email, for example, are they even getting it? That’s one thing that might mean that you’re calling them to double-check. The number one thing I would be looking for is, “Are you working on it?” The number one breakdown that we see is that resistance comes in and says, “I don’t want to bother people or do this.”
Put on your big girl panties and go make the calls. You got to do it to be able to figure that out if it’s going to work and fail fast. Keep pivoting. The biggest thing is that when you’re having conversations, you have an idea about messaging that you might share. As you’re talking to people, you’re like, “That’s it. That’s the thing.” You keep tweaking it, making sales along the way. That would be my approach to it in a simplified way.
I want to touch on the 5 exits to the 5 levels. Before doing that, I have a feeling that I’m going to get messages afterward, saying, “Michael, you start asking about should be with folks first on delivery or sales in terms of how to expand or grow in the team.” You addressed, “Do not start with sales.” Let’s come back. If somebody is starting to reach capacity and they’re busy delivering, what’s the first step that they should take to create some breathing room and space for them to be more strategic and keep the business growing?
Thanks for circling back on that because this is an important thing to look at. The reality is that nobody’s talking about this piece right here. They talk about systems, putting EOS in place, and all of those things which are great but they’re not talking about the people component of it. It should start with a vision, people, and then process, not the CEO getting their hands in the weeds and building the processes. That’s not your job. Your job is to hire people to build those processes for you.
The biggest thing that we’ll see hold back CEOs from bringing their company to $3 million is a good operations manager who can run the business based on repeatable, proven processes. There are a number of things right there. Not just run the business but they need to innovate those processes. That’s one of the biggest things that we see holding them back. If companies are struggling to get to $1 million, this is also a problem. They don’t have an effective management structure.
If they’re effective, then they shouldn’t have a problem. If their offers are selling and they have a project manager or something in place that’s pulling all that off of their plate, they shouldn’t have any problems getting to $1 million. We’ve found that there are five expectations of an exceptional operations manager. I shared one of them. The reality is that we see even a lot of companies moving up into the eight figures that their COO doesn’t even provide its role.
What’s the real role of that ideal operations manager? If we envision a consulting firm where the founder is still doing all the sales, is very involved in marketing, and maybe has a couple of people that are helping with the delivery, admin, or social media, what is the role of that ideal operations person plays? What should they be looking for and thinking about if they’re to bring that person on?
When you have a way bigger vision for the outcome that clients can have in their business, that's when you completely eliminate all of your competition. Click To TweetThis gets into the exits a little bit. We’re morphing over things. The first thing you want to get out of is account management. That’s the client communication and the client support role. That’s going to be the easiest thing for you to get out of. The systems and structures around that are pretty simple and straightforward. It doesn’t require a lot of strategies to outsource that role. A good EA would be able to take care of that well. Training someone up to be able to interface with your clients will free up at the very least 10 hours but we find it frees up about 20 hours per week for a lot of consulting agency CEOs who are stuck in that. That’s exit one.
They build on each other too because exit two is operations management. The operations management can also be that person who is client support. An operations academy is a piece of our scale of freedom program that we train and develop the operations leaders to grow into solid operations managers. For more of the senior-level people, we’re helping them grow into a COO or VP of Operations. Exit two is to be able to step into that operations manager role.
Exit one could be an executive assistant or some kind of assistant. Their main function is to take some of the project management or communications around delivery away from the founder and handle that, freeing up the founder to have more time for strategic planning and all that stuff. Exit two is potentially that same person but getting more involved in the overall operations of the business or it could be a different person.
It depends on how senior level this person is. I want to make a clear distinction. Exit one is not just an executive assistant. An executive assistant is going to be scheduling and taking things off of your plate, certainly in an important role. A client support project management type of person could be trained and developed from the level of a good EA. Our favorite way of doing it is training and developing someone who has great skills instead of trying to hire someone. You then have to go and train out all these bad habits that they have.
Exit two is in operations management. This is where they’re getting into the manager-level stuff. There are five aspects of this role to get it right. One of them is leading the team in building repeatable systems to profitably run the company. There are a few different aspects of that to profitably run the company. With repeatable systems, the worst thing to have is a manager who’s running your business and the business being dependent on someone else besides you. That sucks.
I’ve been there before. Many of us have and it’s hard. What we need them to do is to innovate repeatable systems. I don’t know what you’ve seen, Michael, but we see that with fast-growth companies, their systems can break down as early as 90 days. They’re breaking systems so quickly. Systems need to be innovated every 3 months to 18 months, depending on how fast the company is growing.
The biggest thing that we see that holds back the growth of the company is that the CEO is constantly being pulled back in to keep on updating those systems because no one on the team knows how to do that. The whole team needs to be doing it but you need to have an operations manager who’s overseeing innovating that.
I want to get to level 3, level 4, level 5, or at least at a high level so everybody knows what they are. For this operations type of person, what are the characteristics or skill sets that are needed? Do they need to have project management training? How should somebody start identifying that right person in terms of their characteristics, skill sets, or certifications? What’s ideal to have in that high-quality person?
More than anything, what we look for in a Kolbe score is a high fact finder, high follow thru, and low quick start. Those are the main things. Interestingly enough, it’s a similar profile that you’ll have in what other operations leaders do that are different roles. It is an interesting thing that we’ve found over the years. What you’re looking for is someone who has the mindset of owning it. They’re willing to take responsibility. They’re good with details but they can also see a big enough picture. You get along and communicate with them. This is your right-hand person as a CEO. They’re going to get to a point where they’re reading your mind. They’re staying 3 or 5 steps ahead of you. It feels amazing when you have someone like this in place that are reading your mind.
You mentioned Kolbe A. For those who aren’t familiar, this is an assessment that you can take through the Kolbe Corporation. They have a lot of different types of assessments. You talked about the fact finder. It’s a detail-oriented follow thru. They’re not just going to start something and not finish it. They’re going to make sure they get stuff done. You said high in both those but low in quick start. Why low in quick start?
If they’re high in quick start, they’re going to be breaking things left and right. I am a 9 out of 10 in quick start. You’re probably lower than quick start than me, Michael. I’d be surprised if you were more than seven from knowing you. These aren’t bad things. They’re good things. It’s just knowing how you operate. Someone high in quick start is going to jump into action fast and might not think through all the things before doing it.
A lot of entrepreneurs are a very high quick start. It’s what makes us able to get things off the ground. They’re going to get so stuck in the details that they won’t get anything off the ground. You need to have the balance there. It’s also based on the CEO, too. I’m giving some generalizations here. You have to look across the point. It’s not foolproof but an indication of what we look for generally in a profile.
I wanted to share a couple more things to look for in this operations manager, too. The other thing that you want them to be doing is solving problems before you’re aware of them leading the team in that. Their job is to take your vision and turn it into reality, not bring their own vision but take your vision, buy into it, communicate it to the team, and then manage the team. Their job is to continually look for ways to increase client quality and improve profits. When you have this person in place, that’s what allows you to let go of these things.
I was going to share a story because you’re asking about getting out of delivery versus getting out of sales. I’ve seen it in the real world with one of our clients. I’ll call her Sam. She had already hired a salesperson. I would not have recommended that she’ll hire a salesperson but she already had a salesperson on the team so I’m like, “We’ll work with this.” She had an operations manager but they were not performing so she had to let them go.
We helped her get in place a good operations manager. This person is starting to be hitting these five expectations. It’s been incredible what she’s been able to do. She’s been able to bring in 6 new sales in 1 month. She’s been able to crush her sales goals because she has that person to rely on who’s delivering the client’s services. She knows that they have the capacity for sales. She knows that the clients are being served well.
She has a salesperson there who’s supporting her to do some of the menial tasks but what she’s found is that this person, even though they have all this experience, has not been able to close sales without her. She’s been able to put him in a place where he can be able to generate leads. She’s lining him up and knocking him down. That’s what makes a huge difference in the growth.
We talked about exit 1 and exit 2. Tell us about exits 3, 4, and 5.
Exit three is getting into the sales piece. This is a perfect lead into this. This is where you’re scaling sales. You’ve gone from organic sales within your network at this point moving in a deliberate way. This is where you’re getting out of the business development. You have a business development team that’s lining up leads for you. Your offer is so dialed in at this point so you can develop the person to be taking over the sales and the high tickets of closing if you choose to.
One of the biggest things that hold back CEOs from bringing their company to 3 million is a really good operations manager who can run the business based on repeatable, proven processes. Click To TweetThere are a number of things that go into that but that’s exit three. At that point, you have a company that can run without you, exit 1 and 2, a company can run without you. In exit three, you can have a company that can grow without you. That means that you can be gone for months at a time from your business and it will continue to grow.
The fourth exit is client strategy. Sometimes this happens earlier depending on the company. This is where you’re getting out of the client strategy and putting in place other strategists. The way most consulting companies work is that they hire high-level talent and solve all these customized types of problems. When we talked about the offers, we were talking about it all from the perspective of sales and marketing.
From the perspective of raising your fees, you had the cashflow to hire people. This is what we found makes such a big difference in having that clear offer and then you can build the leaders in your team who can help you build repeatable systems for how you’re delivering high-level work. Most people think that you can’t scale consulting work because it’s too custom. If you’re servicing 10 different markets and solving 10 different problems, that’s impossible to scale. You do the math on that. There are too many variables.
You require a lot more infrastructure and resources. It’s a whole different endeavor. It makes sense in terms of what you’re talking about. If you’re going to that custom route, then you’re going to have to invest in high salaries to get somebody who’s able to process and think across industries or specific unique situations.
Hopefully, everybody can see that as you develop a more standardized program or product to offer or you have more guidelines around what you do and don’t do, then when you bring people on, they still need to be smart people and very capable. You don’t have to invest at the highest levels to get those custom people because you’re able to get people that can follow the systems and processes and innovate and deliver on them. It’s a different level than if you’re going custom.
That’s what allows you to scale. What we do is create that client success map at an earlier stage. That goes over those power ones we talked about. Having that client success map is the foundation for the training. You can also bring in high-level experts that can help you build out those systems. That’s what we’ve done at Hands-Off CEO.
Our operations academy is run by another advisor who is exceptional at training operations managers. He’s way better than I am at it. He’s built out a whole curriculum in it. He has an MBA and all of his expertise in that. He is training and developing other people that are supporting that as well. That’s what allows you to be able to build in that scale and high touchpoint with your clients as well without having to have high-level people with all of your clients. The problem is that high-level people as well want to do things their way. It’s difficult to manage quality. More than anything, it’s a quality issue. That’s exit four, getting out of client strategy.
Exit five is executive leadership. Not all of our clients ever even want to get to exit five but by the time you’re at exit four, you have a pretty sellable company. Exit five is where you can put in place another CEO. You could step back and be an investor in your company. That’s an extremely sellable company there. We’ve had clients who have done that and who have taken their COO and promoted them to the CEO. They’re out of their business. It’s just an investment for them. They get to be involved in it to whatever level they want.
We’ve had other clients who have been able to sell their companies and then take the same thing they’ve learned from this whole process. They’ve got ten other hands-off CEO companies that they’re running. It’s incredible to see what you can do and stack on. Sometimes, that’s like keeping the company you have but then acquiring other companies, too. We call it Hands-Off CEO ecosystems.
Those are the five exits. Getting to exit three will be about where you can get to $100,000 a month in profits. Exits 1 and 2 are where you get to $100,000 a month in sales. One of the things that I see though is that a lot of consulting companies will skip steps early on especially exits 1 and 2. They miss a couple of steps, even if they’re further along and trying to get to exit four. That foundation makes everything crumble apart. Even if the company is successful already, skipping those steps is what makes the CEO continue to be stuck in the day-to-day. It stalls growth.
Mandi, I love how you’ve broken that down. This is a powerful path and series of steps for people to work and think through a logical progression. We’ll make sure that people can learn more about everything that you have going on at Hands-Off CEO. Before we wrap up, I want to make sure I can ask you a couple of quick questions that I’d like to ask all guests if I possibly can. The first one is that you’re building your company and have your team and a lot going on. What are 1 or 2 things that you do on a regular daily basis? Maybe it’s a habit or routine that you feel leads to your productivity and your higher levels of performance or clarity or being able to be successful.
It’s being proactive about planning my day.
When do you plan your day?
If I’m on the ball, it’s the night before. A lot of my planning will happen on Sunday evening when I’ll look at the week ahead and then plan out some of the things I need to have done on individual days. Meditating is also helpful for me to be able to help maintain a real consistency and overcome the head trash or whatever things that I got to deal with in the world.
When do you meditate typically and for how long?
Typically, in the morning. I used to meditate for an hour a day. I fell off the wagon on that so I need to get back up to that.
Is that a chunk of one hour or do you do it a couple of times?
It’s a chunk of one hour but if I can’t do that, maybe I’ll break it up into two different times in the morning and the night. It makes a huge difference to do it in the morning. The number one thing is to exercise every single day but I don’t do hardcore training or anything on Sunday. Certainly, that makes your body look better but for me, it makes my brain function better and feels good. It’s the key to happiness.
The worst thing to have is a manager running your business, and the business now dependent on someone else besides you. Click To TweetI am with you on that 100%. If I don’t get my morning run or exercise, I don’t feel the same. I’m a big believer in that. The final question before we wrap up is, “What is a book that you have thoroughly enjoyed?” It could be fiction or non-fiction, anything that you would be like, “I’d recommend this. I enjoyed it.”
It’s hard to decide because I love reading. One of the favorites that I enjoyed was Draw to Win. That was a good one.
The author is Dan Roam. A Crash Course on How to Lead, Sell, and Innovate With Your Visual Mind.
I used to be a graphic designer and I think the way that he’s teaching. It’s such a good book. I love it. We integrate a lot of those things into our processes. We help leaders how to visualize and draw pictures to be able to help their team better. I don’t want to go into too much detail about it but I love that concept.
I have not had that come as a recommendation before. I appreciate you sharing that. Mandi, thank you so much for coming on here, taking us through the five exits, and giving us a glimpse into operations and how you’re seeing people move through this process. You’re doing great work. I appreciate you coming on and sharing some of that here with us.
Thanks. If anyone is reading this and like to do a deeper dive, we have an executive briefing that we do. You can go to HandsOffCEO.com/Briefing and sign up for our next executive briefing. We’d love to have you and chat a little bit more about what’s going on.
Awesome. Good stuff. Thanks, Mandi.
You’re welcome. Thanks for having me.
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About Mandi Ellefson
I help the CEOs of successful consulting agencies scale their business, step back from the day-to-day, and attract the kind of clients who will pay double or more their current retainers.
Too many consulting agency owners feel trapped in their business. They’re trading hours for dollars, putting out one fire after another, and are mentally and emotionally exhausted by the end of their work week… if they can take a day off at all.
This is no way to live, and it’s certainly no way to grow a business.
Dozens of successful consulting agency CEOs have doubled their consulting fees and even added millions of dollars of growth by using my Scale to Freedom system. And they did it while improving quality and freeing up their most valuable resource: their time
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