You Can Increase Profits & Enjoy Your Work More, with Andy Clark

Welcome to Building Your Leader Brand. Today on the show, Bob is speaking with Andy Clark. What has become even more important over the last few years is just how important customer experience is to any, any business, because how easy, how loud the customer's voice is now, how easy it is for a customer to tell the world that you've let them down. That's even more important than ever now is really getting clear on how it is you want to make your customers' lives better. Hi there and welcome back to Building Your Leader Brand. My name is Bob Gendron and every week I speak to incredible people who share their secrets to building, marketing, and monetizing your expertise and the mindset you need for your business to grow and thrive. If you're new to the show, pull over, pull out your phone, and hit follow like or subscribe. Now you can start driving again. Thank you very much for your kind attention. Again, while you're listening, before I kick off, I've been saying the last couple of episodes, if there's anyone you would like me to speak to on the show, challenge me. Who's going to scare me? I really would like to know. Additionally, if there are any topics that you would like me to cover, let me know, because I like curating my guests. I have great fun with it, but I only know what I want to know. I want to know what you want to know. So on that note, what I want to know. Bob Gentle loves a system. Bob Gentle is probably the world's biggest fan of frameworks. It's one of my very first podcast guests, Mike Vardy, coined the term frameworks foster freedom. And frameworks have changed my life. And this week is going to be no different. I think we're going to have great fun today. Helping me discuss whole business frameworks, Andy Clark, creator of the Whole Pie System. Andy, welcome to the show. Thanks, Bob. Great to be here. And I hope I don't scare you today, or maybe I hope I do scare you. I'm not sure if that should be my objective. Honestly, everybody scares me. Oh, everybody does. Okay. No, what I meant by that is everybody finds their comfort zone, their sweet spot, and you keep doing what you do and it kind of works. But the problem, I think, as a Zig Ziglar, if you always do what you've always done, you always get what you always got. And the same goes with people. If you always hang out with the people you always hang out with, your income rises to the level of the 5 people you spend most time with. That's a very commonly coined phrase that aggregates up. And similarly, your aspiration, your ambition, your competence, your vision is impacted by the people you spend time with, which is why I like the idea of spending time with people that intimidate me. It's because they challenge my comfort zone. And that's one of my favourite things. It's never comfortable, but it's what drives change. All growth in life, all growth in life, Bob, you've heard this before, happens outside your comfort zone. Exactly. You have to get there. So for the listener who's meeting you for the first time, who is Andy Clark? But more importantly, what is the Whole Pie System? Amazing name for a framework. Very evocative. Well, thank you. Ease us in gently. Yeah. Who am I? So I'm a Canadian who spends most of his time in Costa Rica. I have a wife and 4 kids and a dog. We moved to Costa Rica about 4 years ago, and it's been awesome. Don't mean to rub it into all my Canadian friends or Scottish friends or people who live in the— and it's been a rough winter. Oh my gosh. So I've heard. So I'm very pleased that I am coming to you today from Costa Rica. So number one, it's, you know, husband and father. But in my business life, which started practising business law for about a dozen years, working with a lot of small business owners and then gravitating, realising that after about 12 years that that wasn't why I was put on this earth, to be a business lawyer. Gravitated into being a client rather than the lawyer. So owning and managing businesses in a few different industries and learning a lot about what it means to be a small business owner, what it means to lead, own, and operate small businesses, and almost more importantly, how difficult it is and trying to figure out why is it so difficult. If you believe, as I do, Bob, that like small businesses are the fabric of our communities, They are the innovators. They are the employers. They are the sponsors of the soccer teams. Why are the cards stacked against them? These, these risk takers and drivers and leaders in our community, the cards are stacked against them. Government red tape and with, you know, all kinds of— it's almost like it's we dare you to be a small business owner and see how it goes. And we know we all know the statistics. About how many small businesses, you know, are alive after 12 months and 5 years and this kind of thing. So why is that? Well, there's lots of reasons, but like, what if there was a way that we could make it easier, right? We could make it easier for a small business owner to be successful. And what does that mean, to be successful? In my view, to be successful as a small business owner is you need to be profitable, you need to be impactful, which means your business is making other people's lives better in some way, and you need to enjoy, you need to be happy, you need to be enjoying the process of owning and operating and leading your business. And if any one of those three things, and they're all interconnected by the way, which we can talk more about, but If any one of those three things isn't meeting your objectives, then I would say, and I haven't had a lot of people that have challenged me on this successfully, I would say that you're not a successful small business. Something is missing. And so if that's true, why not build something, a system that is very intentional about that? Why not, rather than leave it to chance and say, hey, Mr. and Mrs. Small Business Owner, You know, what do you want to achieve? And they might say, I want to achieve X, Y, and Z. Great. Let's go build a plan around X, Y, and Z. Want to be more intentional about that and be like, what do you want to achieve on the money side? What do you want to achieve on the impact side? And what do you want to achieve on the enjoyment side? And let's build tools and tactics and strategies and metrics and data around in each of these three areas. So we're moving these three ahead simultaneously. And so, that's really the big idea behind the Whole Pie System, PIE being profit, impact, and enjoyment. And then, there's a whole framework and system that's behind it for the purposes of generating more of those three outcomes, profit, impact, and enjoyment. So, one of the things I know about the Whole Pie System is that it's a pre-AI framework, which I'm intrigued by because honestly, you can come up with a framework for almost anything in under 60 seconds these days. But this was different. And frameworks before the pandemic, they took creativity and they took insight and they took time to create. And they usually come out of real lived experience. And they usually are developed by people who are natural systems thinkers. They're people who inherently join dots. Businesses are essentially very simple things, and yet we all manage to make them very difficult. And I'm curious, as somebody who joins dots and focuses on systems, where do you see people most commonly having their blind spot in their business that means that the whole system fails to thrive. Lots of things work well, but there's always one or two things that people really resist seeing and addressing. Yeah, so I think two things come to mind when you ask me that question, Bob. One is that if you're a small business owner, most likely you're naturally good at big picture thinking, at ideas, at relationship building, coming up with, you know, ideas for new products or services or marketing. Or usually, if you've had some success in your business, you've gotten to the stage where you've been in business, let's say, 3 years or more, and you've got, you know, several hundred thousand dollars of revenue a year out of that initial startup phase, you've had some success. It's usually because you're, as a business owner, are that big picture visionary strategic thinker, which is great, but it also means that you're probably not very good at the day-to-day execution, at the following through on those big ideas because very rarely do those two skill sets reside in one person. Very rarely. I'm more of a number two. I'm a good, "You tell me what you want to accomplish, Bob." I'm very good at breaking that down and making the game plan to accomplish it. My wife is just the opposite. She's big picture. She's also a business owner, big picture thinker. And she would say, if she was sitting right here, I would say it in front of her, she would admit she's terrible. She's terrible at follow-through, at day-to-day execution, organisation, all that stuff. So, when you ask me like, where does it fall down a little bit? It's because what has made you successful as a business owner when you get to a certain stage, it's also what's going to hold you back unless you have either somebody else in your business that's their sole job or you have a structure, a system, a framework like the Whole Pie System. So, that's kind of the first thing that came to mind. And the second thing that came to mind is kind of similar but a little bit different is usually business owners are either really good at words Or they're really good at numbers, meaning they're really good at making a strategy. Let's accomplish this and that and the other thing, and let's go do this and have this marketing plan and blah, blah, blah. But they're not very good at figuring out what the numbers are, the metrics that they need to focus on to make sure that they're on track to achieving those goals. Or they're good at numbers, but they have a difficult time translating that into forward progress. By leading their team and that sort of thing. So those are two areas that come to mind when you ask me that question. So the impact side of things, I think a lot of people might look at that as a luxury. And I think you mentioned impact with your clients, impact more widely in your community or commercial ecosystem. I guess there's two mindsets here. One is, and this really upsets me when I see it, but my business exists to separate other people from their money. That is a mindset that exists, but it's actually not the majority. The majority of people who go into business have a service mindset, and within that impact strand, a lot of people miss a tremendous amount of opportunity to move from simply delivering their service to delivering something that's an experience. Within your framework, do you have specific tools that allow you to move from transactional to tremendous? Hmm. I like that. I made it up just now. Did you? Was that an audible? That's impressive. That was good. So, I'll talk a little bit about impact kind of generally and then we can maybe talk about the tool or maybe even better, a specific example about how one business that I worked with honed in on impact and it really made a huge difference. So, impact, like I said, you're making other people's lives better. Typically, those other people fall into the buckets of customers. Your employees, and your community at large. And it's up to the business owner and the leadership team, if there is one in place, to decide what that is for them. Where do they want to focus on their impact? But what I've learned actually, and this wasn't intentional by me when I decided that impact should be one of those three kind of pillars of a successful small business, is that if you're really doing impact right, then you do really have to start with your customer because they are the people that are buying your products and services. And the only reason why they're going to do that is if it makes their life better in some way, whether it's buying a hamburger and it makes their life better for 5 minutes or whether it's buying a couch which might make their life better for a year or whether it's buying— it's working with Bob Gentil and your business and your life gets better. Forever. Always. Always. Forevermore. So, in terms of a tool around impact is not so much a tool but an exercise that we will all go through is getting very clear on what is that impact that you're trying to create for your customer. And when you do that, then you automatically get into the realm of customer experience. And when I said this wasn't intentional, what has become even more important over the last few years is just how important customer experience is to any, any business, because how easy, how loud the customer's voice is now, how easy it is for a customer to tell the world that you've let them down. So that's even more important than ever now is really getting clear on what that impact, how it is you want to make your customers' lives better. And the example that I think allows us to hit home is one of the businesses that I work with. They're an owner and operator of automatic car washes, the kind that there's nobody on property, like the kind where you go through. They're called in-bay automatic car washes. I'm not sure what it's like in Scotland. We have those. But in Canada, they're really big. And in the US, they're big also, more so tunnels where there are actually people on site. But the business that I work with, all in-bay automatics and self-serve bays. So one of the beauties of that business model is, hey, you don't— we don't need people on site. One of the downsides of that business model is what if something happens? What if something goes wrong? There's nobody you can tell. And what's been amazing over the time that I've worked with this particular business as they've acquired a number of mom-and-pop car washes, to add to their portfolio is how many of them didn't even have a number, phone number on the wall somewhere that somebody could call. And what you said earlier was their business really was to separate people from their money. But the business that I work with, Rubber Duck, they recognise how do we make ourselves different in this space is automatic car washes are known for having terrible customer service. Why don't we flip that on its head and let's be known as the company that, yeah, it might break once in a while, maybe it'll take your money and you won't get the service, but my goodness, if you call that number on the wall, we will make it right for you. And they do. And then they build all these metrics around how many complaints as a percentage of customers are in and what are those Google reviews. And they call or contact every single person that leaves a negative review. And all of that stuff. And what does that do when you're making customers' lives better? It turns them into raving fans. It turns a negative experience into a positive experience. And where are they going to go the next time they want a car wash? They're going to come back because they know they're going to get looked after. And what does that do? It affects your P, right? It affects the money side. And interestingly, if you know you're doing right by your customer, that, you know, we're human, as you mentioned, and that makes you feel good, that makes you enjoy the business a whole lot more, which was the interesting takeaway is that's why I is in the middle of the P and the E. It's almost like you can— it's the connector, it's the bridge between the two in many ways. I think every business owner will identify that when you know your customers are genuinely happy, there isn't a time really when you are happier. I don't think there are many business owners who resent happy customers. As you were speaking, I was also thinking about what is it that drives profit in a business. Sales are great, but if your retention is poor, you're just fighting hard to stand still. But if you have a good customer experience and you have retention, you see the same amount of sales, but now you have profit. Retention is outrageously underrated. And yeah, I think that's really powerful. The other thing that you were saying there was turning a negative experience into a positive experience. One of the things I've been paying attention to quite a lot recently is assumption that people take an impression of us that we have zero control over. But if we know that is going to happen, what can we use to shape those assumptions? They're going to make assumptions, so we can set the direction of travel with those assumptions with clear signalling. And that simple thing of, we will find out what happened and try and make it right, there's a cascade effect through the whole business that that's how they do things. It's much greater than the sum of its parts. Which is, again, it's a very simple thing, but simple things are often not easy and they're so easy to underestimate. And that's why the simple things are often the point of difference and the competitive advantage. You like sports, Bob? I would not ever call myself a raving sports fan. I'm more of a nerd and science fiction fan, but I'll go with sports. I know what sports are. You go sports. This is what I I appreciate one of the things that I get back from people, you know, when I'm having meet lots of new people in Costa Rica. Hi Andy, what is it that you do? Right? And you know, I don't know how you find it, Bob, but like when you're consultant, coach, advisor, strategist, whatever the right word is for a small business owner, it's not always easy to articulate like what is it exactly that I'm gonna buy from you, Mr., Ms., girl? Mr. Andy, right? And so, I've given a lot of thought to this. And, where I've landed for those that know sports or maybe even movies is on this. So, have you seen Moneyball or heard of Moneyball? I've heard of it. The baseball team. So, Brad Pitt stars in this movie. It's called Moneyball. And, he plays the general manager of the Oakland A's, which is a baseball team. And, at this point in time in the evolution of the Oakland A's, their ownership didn't want to compete with the New York Yankees or the Los Angeles Dodgers in terms of payroll. It's just like, we want to be as competitive as we can, but we're not going to go out and buy the best players. So what happened is that they needed to figure out a different way to compete. And this is the early days of analytics in sports. And what they found out was, is that the metrics that most up until that point baseball teams were focusing on weren't the right metrics. They were focusing on batting average. So how often you hit the ball versus on-base percentage, which is how often you get on base, whether that's by hitting or getting a walk or whatever. And with that one change in metric, they changed their whole team. They got rid of guys that were high-priced and they hit a few home runs, but they didn't get on base very often. And they brought in all these guys who didn't hit a lot of home runs necessarily, but they got on base often and they started winning and they started winning. Another example is in basketball. There is the Golden State Warriors. Have you heard? Like Steph Curry. I don't know if you follow basketball, but they had a dynasty about 10 years ago and that followed different metrics once again. Once the NBA brought in a 3-point shot that's further away from the basket than the regular 2-point shot, they were the first ones to realise, well, you know what the difference is between 3 points and 2 points is? It's 50%. It's 50%. So every basket that you're scoring from beyond the 3-point arc is worth 50% more than the ones from in close. Why not bring in a lot of guys that are really good at shooting like Steph Curry and Klay Thompson from the 3-point. And that spread out the floor because they had these really good shooters. The defence had to come out and then the 2-point baskets became easier. So, the point of all— and there's examples in soccer, examples in hockey, which is my favourite sport. But the point of all this is that winning organisations, and that would include business, even small businesses, winning organisations, what they do first is they identify the drivers of success. They identify, like, for their industry, for their business, what are the key drivers of success, and then they build their people and their systems around that. That's what I do. That's what the system does for a small business owner. Does that make sense? It makes perfect sense, and I'm extrapolating very selfishly what this means for me. If you were to take the average advisor, consultant, somebody in the expert space, even yourself, I guess this is actually the core question. When you're looking in a mirror, what are the key performance indicators or the metrics that you look at in terms of your business? A lot of what I would call leading indicators, right? To use business jargon, which I try to stay away from, but you know, it's easy to say, okay, how much revenue came in? How many clients did I get? How many engagements did I sign? So those are all great and they're necessary. You want to track those and you want to set goals and metrics around those. They're very much end of the line. They are. They're trailing indicators. And so it's really important to focus on, well, what are the things that I can control that will lead to more client engagements, to more money at the end of the day, and to greater impact? The more clients I work with, the more businesses that I work with, I cannot only, I think in my crazy little mind, I cannot only impact the business owner, but all the employees and the families and all of that stuff, right? Like, that's kind of neat. So then, what's on the front end? So, why am I here today talking to you, Bob? I want to get my storey out. Why did I write the book? I wanted to get the storey out in as many hands as possible so that you don't have to come and hire Andy Clark. You can actually you can kind of try the pants on before you buy them, as one of my clients says. And so it's, you know, number of podcasts I'm on, how active am I on LinkedIn, number of— then you have your whole sales funnel. So you want to set some goals around that. And you know, how many, how many initial calls am I having? How many follow-up calls am I having? So those are the kinds of metrics that I focus on. Then on the impact side, there's feedback, customer feedback, there is actually tracking how well the customer is doing on their end in terms of the P and the I and the E after working with me. So, we track that. And then, on the enjoyment side, one of the things that I do is I actually have a— I learned this from somebody else, but I keep a daily— I call it a bullet journal, but I actually rate my day every single day. I've been doing this for about 6 years. On a certain scale that will tell me today was a good day, today was less of a good day. And then I can actually go back and see like what are the things— like I can actually mine that data to see what are the things that make it a good day versus not such a good day. So lots of things. There are lots of things that you can do to measure the outcome, not only on those traditional financial metrics, but also on the— what can seem initially, and a lot of clients have a little bit of trouble with this at the outset, is how do we quantify impact? How do we quantify enjoyment? There are ways, believe me, to do that. I think once you give yourself permission to quantify them, they're probably quite easy. And again, on the topic of permission, I am wondering, with a lot of those early, I could never remember what's the difference between a leading and a lagging activity. Leading is at the front end and lagging is at the— Leading then. So these things that, for example, going on a podcast or writing a book, a lot of business owners, they built their business because they're kind of good at what they do. They had a modest-sized network that acknowledged that. And reciprocated with some opportunity. But that very quickly hits the limits of nature. And at that point, we need to start building systems and doing specific things to see specific results. But for a lot of business owners, they look at these leading indicators and think, that looks like busy work. I'm far too busy to do those things. Not appreciating what comes out the other end, that these are the things that drive there's a disconnect there. How do you help people through that? Or do you actually find the people who come to you already are ready for that? So the question is, how do we get people invested and seeing the benefit of spending the time on leading indicators? Yeah, when there isn't a clear ROI, where it's very much delayed gratification. You have to invest in the system for a while before it comes out the other end? Yeah, truthfully, that hasn't been an issue. You know, once people understand that— like, for example, I, I ran an accounting firm actually for about 4 years after my, my legal days. And accounting firms are, are wonderful, great, necessary business in the world. But generally what an accounting firm is going to do to you is they're going to tell you what happened in your business anywhere from 12 to 18 months ago. Yeah, tell me about it. What— so what value is that to you? Like, you know, you have to file your tax return and yeah, it's great, I guess, to know what those numbers were 12 to 18 months ago, but it doesn't really help you today. So once people understand that, then it's— I think it's a pretty easy hurdle to get over to be like, yeah, it's great when When you have a customer that— who pays you, that's, that's great. It's great for cash flow, and you don't want to have AR and all that good stuff. Very important. But what's more important is the things that happen before a customer pays you. And how can we do more of those things and track them? You've just given me an amazing idea for something we can talk about later. Okay, great. But I think you're right, because having run an accountancy firm Everybody recognises, anybody that's ever been through a couple of years of taxes, sitting in your accountant's office and they say, you had a wonderful year, you made a great profit. Where? Where is this profit? I'd like to speak to it. Oh, it's not that kind of profit. What kind of other profit is it? I need some money, please. Oh, no, there's no money. You've had that conversation a few times, you'll be ready to listen to, these are the things you need to do in order to see the change, but you will never get that from your accountant. You might get how to be more productive with your money, but they're never going to tell you this is what you need to build a better business. And that's very much a gap. And the difference between profit and cash flow is also one that business owners need to understand as well. Yes. You know, and by the way, frameworks are frameworks for a reason. You know, you need to build a nice memorable framework. When I say profit, it's because P and I, it spells pie like it. But when I say profit, it's basically the financial aspect of your business. So it includes profit, it includes cash flow, it includes, you know, anything to do with money coming in and out of your business. That's what that means. Not technically profit from an accounting sense. From my perspective, profit is the whole pie. It's the profit aspect, the impact and the enjoyment. If you have all of those things, your business is bringing you value. That's genuine profit. Well said. I'm interested to know, obviously we've got the book and then there's working with somebody like you. If somebody picks up the book, what can they expect from it in terms of being able to do something from it? Thank you for asking that question because That's really the question that I had in my mind when I was writing it was because there, as we talked earlier, there was a lot— I forget if it was before we hit record or not, but we talked earlier about, you know, there's lots of other models and frameworks and business minds that are out there. One of the gaps that I saw was how easy could it be for a busy business owner to pick up this book and to benefit from it? And so, that's why it's laid out step by step by step by step. Exercise 1, exercise 2, exercise 3, exercise 4. There's no room for what should I do next. It's very one step follows the next follows the next follows the next. Now, will that resonate with everybody? Probably not. But for those people who want to maximise their time and know that they don't really have to think about, "Okay, I read this book. Now what?" The experience of this book will be just the opposite. There will be no question in anybody's mind who reads this book, where do they start and where do they finish? So, that's number one. And then, I guess, number two in terms of a differentiator is, so I think this is easier to implement for a business owner on their own versus some of the other models that are out there. And then secondly, if a business owner chooses to have guided implementation, i.e., work with Andy Clark to get that extra accountability insight, work with the person who actually created the thing who knows the most about it. Momentum. You know, that's my model is built for the small business, recognising the constraints of small businesses in terms of how much they have to invest in external consultants. EOS is a great model. Traction is a great book, but I know from experience it's priced out of the range of a lot of small businesses that, hey, yes, they would love to bring in this person, but just their model with franchise fees and all the stuff that they have. Beneath that model, it's just, it puts it out of range for a lot of small businesses. So, that's what I've been really trying to conscious about as well. And I guess as a third thing is one of the ways that I help businesses is in a group format, which I don't think exists in most, if not all of the other kind of models that someone might be looking at. And I think that actually adds, you know, you can work one-on-one to have that bespoke experience, but you can also work as part of a group, which requires less of an investment. And in many ways, not always, but many ways, that learning from the other business owners around the group that are all going through this process together, there's a lot of value there as well. Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I think for me it comes to the impact piece as well, that accessibility and availability for me is really important. I don't want anybody to feel like they can't access working with me in some way just because of money. And a group format gives you a way to be very accessible without feeling like you're compromising all the time. Correct. So what does a dream client look like for you? Oh, I have some, thankfully. And I have to tell you, I'm so grateful for the opportunity to work with some of the wonderful business owners and leadership teams that I work with. I think that what makes it most valuable, what's a dream client, is just that reciprocal respect that we develop. They recognise the value that I bring to their business. And I work with business in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it's just implementation. Sometimes I work with them quarterly, annually, sometimes weekly. It just kind of depends how it all evolves. But a client who recognises the value in the system. And luckily, it's pretty easy for them to recognise that value because it doesn't take too long for some of these changes to start showing up in increased profit, increased impact, increased enjoyment. So, but in terms of like, a lot of people ask me like, well, what industries you like working with the best? And I love the opportunity to peek under the hood of all kinds of different industries because as I said before, I get to learn a lot about different industries because the framework is industry agnostic. Best business practises in this framework, like, they run across industries. And so I've worked with— it says that I list them all in the book, like, all, like, the 30 different industries that I've worked in, which is crazy when you think about it. I've worked with goat farmers. I've worked with car washes. I've worked with— oh my gosh— consulting firms, marketing agencies, human resource consultants, accounting firms. Landscaping company. Like, it's just, it's great. Yeah, I think it's, you're a lot like me and I've worked with business owners exclusively for almost my entire adult life, if not my entire adult life, because I probably matured late. And when you've done that enough, you realise every business owner thinks they're unique, but every business has essentially the same simple raw ingredients. And their customers are different, their products are different, their experiences are different. That's generally what you're working with. And the machine itself is universally simple. Yeah. I learned this in my legal days, Bob, is that everybody likes to pigeonhole themselves, not pigeonhole, but maybe label themselves. And maybe they think it gives them advantage. Like I'm a mining lawyer or I'm a I'm a financial services lawyer, or I'm a whatever intellectual property lawyer. Now, within those disciplines, there are specific pieces of legislation that are specific to those industries, but the base of commercial law is the same for, you know, contract law applies to all of those industries and dispute resolution applies to all those industries. And so it's quite similar in the, when you're looking at advising small businesses, is that yes, of course, every industry and every business is a little bit different and a little bit nuanced. And that's where the advising comes in. There's that value add there. But you can go a long way with just the basics, quote unquote, of business best practises that are nicely put together in a framework like the Whole Pie System. Yeah, there are nuances, but the universal laws pretty much always apply. So the book, 4 years ago, and also over that 4 years, things have changed quite a lot for you. I'm really interested to know what did the book change? And obviously lots of things have changed for the better, but I'm also curious to know within your business now, what do you struggle with? Because he's talking about competency and things is wonderful, but it's actually often instructive to find out what somebody's maybe resisting or resenting or avoiding. Yeah. Or just doing and not really feel like they're thriving. Yeah. So the book is, it came out in November actually. So I don't know when this is landing within the last 6 months. Yeah. So the system has been alive for about 6 years and tried and tested. That explains a lot. Yeah. So the book is just, is the product of basically 5 years of trial and error, mostly good stuff, but a few errors and a few mistakes and a few learnings that have continually made it better, right? So, that's what the book is. How has the book made my life better? Well, I love having the book because when I get questions now about what it is that I do, it's like one of the easiest entry points is just pick up the book. And, if you wanted to get it on Kindle, it's literally 99 cents on Kindle. It's $20 in the hard copy. I would suggest the hard copy because there are exercises in the book and I'm more tactile. So, it's probably more effective to buy the hard copy of the book. But, the entry point to understand what this system is all about is 99 cents. So, that's pretty low barrier. So, I love that if people are showing interest in the book, that's really kind of the first or the interest in the benefits that working with me can provide, the book is a good first stop to see if it resonates and to see if they want to learn more. What I don't like about having a book is that every single person asks me, "How's the book going? How's the book going? How's the book going?" Well, I would love to say that the books are flying off the shelves at, you know, thousands at a time. The reality is that the book world is a very crowded marketplace. And there was an initial launch, which did great. Lots of books were sold and it went to number one in a bunch of different categories, but then reality sets in and you're in it for the long haul. Right. And so I'm still not sure how to answer the question. How's the book going? Is it going as well as I would love? It's fine. I know, but is it, am I proud of the book and is it part of my long-term strategy to create more impact with small business owners, 100%. No, you kind of did answer the question. And I think for anybody listening, volume sales of a book like this are not the point. It's never going to be the point. Somebody like you doesn't drive their business through book sales. The book has a very specific role in your ecosystem, and it's doing very, very well because that's why you're here. That's it. There are people listening, paying attention. After this, I will introduce you to podcaster friends and they will equally echo you through their world. Thank you. That's the power of a book. Author and authority go hand in hand. Once you've got the book, it adds credibility, it adds weight, it adds legitimacy. Whether or not people read the book, it has an impact on them. So it's a very important move and it just adds weight to framework. And the impact. So let's get into part 2. This is, if you're new, where I invite the listener to share 3 things that you can take action on in the vaguest possible terms. A book, a mental model, your favourite podcast, something everybody should be eating. It's very diverse. So, Andy Clark, amplifier number 1. Amplifier number 1 is, you know, if you're a small business owner listening, self-awareness is important. And when I say self-awareness in this context, it's like it's self-awareness as it relates to your business. And so, one of the amplifiers that I would recommend if what I'm saying is resonating with you is to go and do a 10-minute health cheque on your business called the Whole Pie Health Check. And it's basically an assessment of how you rate in terms of 25 different best practises of running a small business. And the goal of the exercise is not to get 100%. The goal of the exercise is to be honest in terms of self-evaluation. And it will tell you where you're strong and where you might be a little bit weak. And you probably, as a business owner, already, you know, have a general sense of where you're wrong or where you're weak. But almost everybody who takes the assessment learns something new. So you can find that on the website at thewholepiesystem.com. There's a button that says take the assessment. It's called the Hope High Health Check. I'll put a link in the show notes. So, if you're listening, look at the show notes. You can take the assessment while we go into amplifier number 2. Amplifier number 2 is what I call the stop doing list. The stop doing list. So, you're a business owner, you are busy. Your to-do list, I'm sure in every given day or most given days, is longer than the things that you scratch off that list. It's kind of just the nature, the nature of being human almost these days, but particularly as a busy small business owner. But I can guarantee you there are things that you're doing on a day-to-day basis that you do not need to be doing to move your life forward and your business forward meaningfully. Again, because you're human. I'm the same way, Bob, you're the same way. We get into these habits. We do things because we've always done them. So, I challenge you to do the stop doing exercise. It's the first exercise in the book. And actually, I think if you go on Amazon and you don't even want to buy the book, you can get access to the stop doing list just in the— what do you call it? Preview. The sample, the preview. And if by chance you can't get it and you want to do the exercise, It'll be in the show notes, I'm sure. It's only $0.99. You can send me an email and I'll send you the exercise. And even if you don't want to do that, all you need to do is just take stock. And it does require some effort and some consciousness to take stock of what is it that you're doing in the run of a week inside your business and outside your business. Write it down without judgement. Where are you spending your time? And then reflecting after the week. And identifying 2 to 3 hours worth of activities that you could stop doing, you could delegate, you could minimise, you could defer, you could figure out a way to free up that time. And the reason why it's the first exercise in the book is because I want to get over that hurdle of, "Oh, shit, I already am too busy. I don't have time to do this stuff." So, the first thing we need to do is is to clear out some space. Where I come from in Eastern Canada, Bob, there's an expression of trying to stuff 20 pounds of potatoes in a 10-pound bag. And that's what a lot of business owners, I think, feel like their days and weeks and months are. They're trying to stuff 20 pounds of potatoes in a 10-pound bag. So we want to clear some of those potatoes out so you get down to maybe 15 pounds of potatoes in the 10-pound bag. Rather than 20. It's a great exercise, and I'm sure that you will come up with 2 to 3 hours of time that you can find in your week that you can reinvest into meaningful things. I love this. I mean, I'm pretty ruthless with pruning, but I'm reflecting even now, there's a lot that I could do. I think one of the things— I don't know how many interviews this is now, it's well over 350— one of the consistent themes is that abundance never comes through complexity. It always comes through simplicity. And the most successful, happiest, wealthiest people I meet always have the simplest— I'm going to say businesses, but always roles. And they really focus on simplicity. Simplicity is really a key success driver. And you will never get where you want to go by simply adding things ever. That's a really— love it— a very valuable amplifier. Amplifier number 3. So amplifier number 3 is a lot of people say, well, how do I— you know, it gets back to this conversation we had about enjoyment. Like, you know, how can I really— like, I will be happy when I make more money, or I will be happy when I get more customers, But at a really simple— and we're getting back to simplicity— at a really simple level, when you think about it, there is something and probably lots of somethings in your business that frustrate you. Your quality of your enjoyment, the level to which you enjoy running your business, will increase if you can remove even one frustration in your business, one thing in your business that frustrates you. So think about it. What frustrates you in your business right now? Make a little list and pick one of those frustrations to either eliminate entirely or to reduce. So, for example, you know, you have that one person on your team and they're just they're driving you crazy or they're driving the team crazy and you know they've got to go, but you're delaying that decision. You're trying to see the bright side. But every day that that person is in your business is a day that you are preventing them from going and finding where they really should be. And they're not only driving you crazy, but they're also probably driving the rest of your team crazy. And you risk losing some of your A players to try to allow a B or C player to remain on your team. So, that's just one example. That might be a bit of a dramatic example. There could be lesser things like, you know, I hate going on podcasts. So, I'm just going to, you know, they frustrate me because I have to talk to people like Bob Gentil and he asked me hard questions. So, I'm just going to stop. I'm going to stop going on podcasts. So, that one's a bit silly, but there's definitely a frustration in your business that you you could literally solve this week. And as a result, you will be happier and you'll enjoy your business more. So what is it for you? You know, that's fascinating listening to that because I often think in terms of friction in a business. Where are we experiencing friction? But it's very mechanical. It's very transactional. Frustration lifts, elevates it to emotion. It elevates it to enjoyment. And if I reflect on my business from the frustration, I'm seeing completely different things. It's like I've put on a new pair of glasses and I'm seeing things. Do you remember this movie from the '70s or '80s called They Live? No. Never mind. Anybody who's seen it will know what I'm talking about. It's like you put on these glasses and suddenly you see all these things around you that weren't there before. That's kind of what I'm experiencing with looking at things from the frustration lens rather than the friction lens. And yeah, I can imagine. I might make some decisions differently based on frustration than I would from friction. Friction I would fix. Friction I might systematise. But the frustration will still be there. Just because it might add a little bit of value to somebody else, it's really diminishing my experience of running the business. So maybe there's another way I can add value that means I can eliminate that. Fascinating. Love it. I've had a lot of fun. This has been really good. We must speak again. If people want to get closer to you, they want to find out more about Andy Clark, what's the best place to do that? Where do you like hanging out online? I'm LinkedIn. That's it. I'm on LinkedIn. Find me there. That's where I post my stuff. And I'm a LinkedIner who, I probably don't even know how to use it properly. This week I posted about one of my kids did something great, so I put that on there. My other kid did something great. I probably use LinkedIn like it's Facebook, but that's where I hang out. And then you can find me at thewholepiesystem.com. Yeah, find me there, book a consultation, send me an email, do whatever. That's where you'll find me. And then the book, of course, Getting the Whole Pie, is on Amazon. Well, I have ordered it. It hasn't arrived yet. My research arc for my guests is fairly limited. So I don't spend weeks researching. It really began today. But I'm very enthusiastic about your book and I really hope it does well. Thank you, Bob. That does bring us to the end of another episode. Andy, you have been awesome and you at home for listening are also awesome. Thank you very much for being there. If you've enjoyed this, then I would invite you to leave a 5-star review. Count them like the fingers on your hand, 5, wherever you listen to podcasts. And again, if you've enjoyed this, you will love the Personal Brand Business Roadmap. Everything you need to start, scale, or fix your expert business, 100% free as a gift from me. Visit the link in the show notes or amplifyme.agency/roadmap. Again, scare me with your guest recommendations. I'm open. Like Andy, LinkedIn is where I'm at home. Just search Bob Gentle. There's probably probably only one. I haven't checked. Actually, Andy, you know, the other Bob Gentle I used to compete with in Google was the guy who did all the backdrops for Scooby-Doo. Ah, that's tough. That's tough to compete with Scooby-Doo. Well, I beat him now. Andy, thank you very much for your time. You've been great. My pleasure, Bob. Thank you.