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- [00:00]
A
This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business in the Becker Private Equity Podcast. I am thrilled today to be joined by a brilliant leader. We're joined today by Chris Pampin. And Chris wears several different hats. He's an attorney, he's a cpa, he's a professional speaker, he's host of a podcast, and he's also the author of 168 Hours and a professional coach. Chris, can you take a moment before we get started? We're going to talk about leadership, but about how people use those 160, those 168 hours. Well, and a lot more. Can you take a moment and introduce yourself and tell us about your background?
- [00:38]
B
Yeah, Scott, thanks for having me. Kind of the Cliff Notes that I like to give people is I'm an attorney and CPA that works with small businesses, and small business owners have had parents that were entrepreneurs, kind of grew up in a lifestyle that is exactly the same thing that all of our clients kind of do. And through this representation over the years, we've kind of developed out more than just kind of compliance type work. So we focus on an advisory or a coaching side conversation that tries to align objectives, you know, client side objectives with the execution and the hard work that gets people to where they want to be.
- [01:26]
A
And how did you evolve into this, this, this mix of work? And do you practice full time or speak and write as well? How do you balance your time and, and what you do?
- [01:39]
B
Well, it's, it's an art more so than a, than an exact replica or, or template or anything like that. But it was all originally born out of kind of the experiences I had through school. There became an actual point in my accounting education where we were skipping chapters and books and I went to the professors and was kind of like, hey guys, what's going on? This is good stuff. And they said, well, that's really where the CPA ends and the lawyer begins. Fast forward. Maybe not as intentional as it's going to sound on a recording like this, but fast forward and I kind of saw that path. There's, there's, why do we need to meet with multiple parties? Why do we need to do this in, in two or three different firms? So as I left law school, I sought places that did exactly this and kind of represented small businesses and small business owners under one roof. Now fast forward that to the actual question you're asking. How do I balance it all functionally? It's not six or seven or 10 different businesses as it might think feel. It's the same Types of conversations. It's the same discipline. I like sports analogies here because when you go to, to a soccer practice or a football or baseball practice, everybody knows what the objective is to win. So you're refining your skills inside of whatever the discipline is or whatever the tasks are to make the team better. And it's very similar in a business. It's just, how do you define your objective towards, quote, unquote, winning or succeeding? And the same disciplines, the same exercises, the same overlook applies. So when you represent one small business owner, oftentimes there's a very good template to get them to their objective, but they may have some customizations along the way. So I like to dub it as a customized template for folks. You know, a lot of times people are starting a business to grow it and sell it. We've all heard that story before. What you do between point A and point B matters. But point A and point B are not unique to small business owners. So I think that's a decent way to think about it. Even though the in between can be all over the place and to the moon and back.
- [03:58]
A
No. Thank you so much. And when you look at leaders today and clients running small businesses, when you talk to them about sort of their performance, what they're doing, and you serve as sort of that trusted advisor role with your clients, what is the. When you think about internal barriers that hold them back or, or even better, that allow them to perform at their best, what makes the difference in your, in your clients that are your clients you all love? What are the clients that are really achieving their objectives doing versus those that are. Something's holding them back? What kind of things do you think about when you, when you look at that?
- [04:37]
B
So I think it's. It all boils down to clarity. And I, I recognize that getting to that clarity is going to be a challenge. And hopefully we can talk a little bit about that as we go. But think about Monday and think about the process. Kind of like a firefighter for a minute. If you're a firefighter in your business, you show up on Monday and whatever's in your inbox or voicemail or phone call, that's what you're fighting first. And that's not what successful business owners focus on. There's a different level of intentionality. There's a different infrastructure. When they show up on Monday, they're executing the list that they put in place oftentimes 18 months before or even further. But it's a different mindset. And this is where I think folks challenge Me and say, well, Chris, what do you do about the emergency phone call on Monday? Well, it depends if you are in an emergency type of business. My law firm is from time to time where you're filling phone calls where people have fallen ill or there's a catastrophe in the family. And we need to execute on estate planning. That's very different than a business owner calling me on December 20th because it's near year end and we need to execute on planning. My sarcasm says we've had 340 other days of the year to execute on this planning. Because you chose to make it important late in the year does not make it an emergency. And I think that illustration is really what sets people apart. Sometimes things come up. I get it. But did you build the Runway to know what you're doing day in and day out so that you're building your marketing funnel or developing a new service line for your customers or optimizing those products that you're selling externally? It all kind of boils down to each business owner. But are we reacting on Monday or are we executing on Monday? That's really the key.
- [06:48]
A
Thank you. And you talk a lot about this, about this clarity. And so many of us struggle. You know, some people at the start of the year put together like, almost like resolutions. But this is the business plan for the year. And exactly as you said, they put together that plan six months into it, it's Sunday night, it's Monday, and where are they going that day? How do people keep on coming back to that clarity? And how do they do that when they're stretched, overwhelmed, they're making decisions all the time, and they're just embedded by life itself. How do you keep on coming back to that clarity about here's what we're trying to accomplish now, here's the goal, here's what we need to do. How do you keep coming back to that?
- [07:26]
B
I'm going to give two quick answers and hopefully ask a quick question in here. But number one is you've kind of got to know your why, if you will. A lot of people have heard this and kind of the Simon Senate concepts apply here. But what's our objective? What's the bigger picture we're shooting at? The second piece, I think boils down to not, not necessarily knowing the why. And I think, you know, mission, vision, value sometimes gets lost in the execution. So drawing a connect between the actual thing you're doing today and the thing we're going to do in, say, six months, nine months, 12 months, I think a lot of people have reverse engineered, you know, I want to be somewhere in five years, and they work with every way back and say, okay, in three, I need to be here to be able to do that, and so on. But somewhere between those, those two components, I see building out enough infrastructure. But the question I've got for you real quick in here is in asking this question, I'm sure you visited lots of other folks on this too, but do you find a lot of people actually have the answer, or do you think people stumble through the answer as they go through it?
- [08:42]
A
No, I think that's. I think that's a great point. I think so many of us, I would say that, Chris, so many of us go through periods of time and speak about oneself and what we see in others where they've got great clarity and sort of what they're trying to accomplish, what they're trying to achieve, what their objectives are. And then other times where it's much messier and less clear. And to your point on the why, sometimes when you can't get that clarity and really combine these things, your passion, your clarity, your goals, you end up, even though they look great on paper, they may not be easy to execute because you've really not connected it really well to your why. And I think it's literally all over the board. I mean, you and I both see periodically, colleagues, clients, people that have great clarity of putting together a vision and achieving that vision, executing on it. And it, it, it's not that it's so rare, but it's not that common either, that people are so good at going from point A to point B in what really seemed like a straight line. Particularly when I look at people that have put together business plans and then executing those business plans so successfully, I, I'm always amazed at that. The people that actually do it so completely and so many do it well, but, but some do it just extraordinarily well. And it's, it's, it's not that common, and it's really impressive, but I do think many of us struggle with it periodically.
- [10:05]
B
And this is why I asked the question, because you've kind of painted the picture on both sides here. And the reason I pose it the way I do is because you have to remain rigid in the execution towards the lie, but flexible enough that you're able to achieve the objective despite obstructions. And a great analogy here is I challenge folks and say, hey, when you went to the grocery store and aisle five was closed for whatever reason, did you stop and go home or did you figure out how to get the stuff you needed on your grocery grocery list despite that one aisle being closed or being restocked or whatever. And everybody kind of laughs at me and they're like, of course I went through the grocery store and got what I needed. I mean, that's not that big a deal. But it illustrates the exact same concept I'm trying to benchmark with folks. Like, you need your list of stuff, but sometimes how you get to this stuff doesn't really matter. At the end of the day, you got to get yourself in the store and figure it out. And that's the key. Can you stay disciplined enough to figure it out?
- [11:07]
A
No, I think that's great. And we'll talk in a few minutes about burnout and time and all kinds of other stuff because it's so funny you mentioned that. And there's days where you're so tired, so burnt, so exhausted that it's not an IL5IO5 is closed and you take the decision to go home because like, oh my God, I just, I'm overwhelmed. I don't want to deal with it today. And there are those days. But talk about this. You've written about 168 hours in a week. How do successful leaders manage their 168 hours to sort of ensure that they're productive, balanced and able to sort of maintain their well being?
- [11:41]
B
So I think first and foremost you need a form of time blocking and you have to be protective over those elements that are, that are not otherwise able to be sacrificed. So I'm going to say it in a little bit different form. You must sleep or you will die. So 168 hours gets narrowed real, real fast because we have to rest. There's family time that gets inside of there. So that same 168 hours gets compressed. Then there's business time inside of that bubble. So as you start to kind of break these things down into maybe three versions of eight in any given day, you know, I got eight hours for rest and eight hours for family and eight hours for work or something along those lines. If you time block in that sense to make sure that of the eight hours that you give to your business, maybe half of it is to development. And if you're an owner operator, half of it is to operations. If you're not an owner operator, if you're just the owner, well, you've got a different makeup on that. But I think first you've got to define and realize, what do I have to work with before you can start to frame things out. I have some busy seasons and my eight hours go to 10. And that's okay because in CPA land we have deadlines and you do more work, but then we flex to where my eight hours during the summer and winter months might go to six to kind of balance out all of that time. So it's not always about doing more. It's really about being effective and kind of knowing when to flex those different things. And then on the fatigue element, you know, we've all been to the grocery store one day, looked at the, the parking lot and said, you not today or I'm going to a different grocery store or I'll go at a different time. I think you have to realize that internally to know when to check out because there's too many people that just keep burning the candle at both ends and they run out of wick over time. And you've got to know when to recharge, you've got to know when to disconnect. You've got to kind of strike that yin and yang balance as you go through. And sometimes there is no right answer. You just do what you think is best on a Tuesday and figure out what you need to do next on a Wednesday and try to overcome it. It's okay to fall down, it's okay to stumble. Not all of us are going to succeed every single time. I've fallen down plenty. But getting up and persevering and working through and staying accountable to what you said you would stay accountable to, those are the keys along the way.
- [14:11]
A
And talk about that for a second because in, in high pressure environments, whether the ones that we deal with all the time, entrepreneurship, small mid sized business, people are going to make mistakes. You're gonna have good days, you're gonna have bad days. How do you sort of get back on the horse? Or how should we just talk to themselves after a setback that fuels growth and gets them going again rather than reinforce itself, doubt, oh, I made a mistake, I'm going to do it again. How do you sort of refuel that positively?
- [14:42]
B
So in the, in this scenario, I think we need to focus on an analogy with F1 racing. When you focus on the pit crew, they each have a job to do and in theory the racer could stay out. But the rules sometimes mandate that the racers come in, change tires, whatever it is that they need to go do. So in F1 you don't refuel. So this isn't about refueling, it's about meeting the objectives. Well, let's say you're in first place. If you go in and pitch, you might fall back to 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th. And it's the same type of mindset that I think you have to take into business. Sometimes you've got to slow down, retool and adjust so that when you go back out on the racetrack, you can run faster. Maybe you need a new CRM. Maybe we need to shift software around so that we can achieve our objectives with our customers in a better way. And it's not always 100% press all the time. Sometimes we need to conserve, sometimes we need to adjust. So I think for me, business owners have to recognize sometimes you press, sometimes you back off. And oftentimes when you back off is when you start feeling that friction or maybe you start making mistakes or if there's change in the environment that's going on, that's a great opportunity to slow yourself down so you can assess the different variables that are in the environment. Because usually when there's changes or there's mistakes, that's where we're creating rest. So this slowdown scenario allows us to better manage the risk rather than just plowing through, pace be damned. Let's go as fast as we can. Because creating unnecessary risk is what creates those financial hurdles that everybody's scared of. If you can minimize that risk or you know, worst case scenario, maybe there's an accident and somebody gets hurt, there's a lawsuit that ensues from that. How you respond to the lawsuit can matter. Do you take care of people? Are you going to try to disclaim or. You know, there's lots and lots of ways, but there's story after story after story where people got in trouble. And because they didn't tell the truth after they got in trouble, they actually got in more trouble. That's what got people hung. So that's where I think slow down and be mindful through that process. Think your way as an F1 racer as you go through that. Because sometimes you need to slow down to go faster.
- [17:19]
A
Take a second on this. And it's really a follow up to that. Because that issue of slowing down, taking a step back for type A driven individuals can be so hard to do, but so important. You work with a lot of different leaders. Talk about a habit or mindset shift that consistently separates high performers from everybody else, regardless of industry.
- [17:44]
B
I would say there's two mindset shifts that are required here. And this is not a type A type. This is not a male, female thing. First and foremost is the ability to reflect. If you have the ability to kind of step aside, look backwards and do a real assessment about what worked and what didn't. Oftentimes you can adapt in a different way than other folks can. And I think we're all familiar with a person who's never wrong or it's always somebody else's fault. And those create a lot of friction and abrasion. And I, you know, the ability to adapt inside of there, kind of be self aware is key. A second element to it is when I think about those that typically hit those home run benchmarks for a lot of our clients. There's, there's always conversation about I'm going to grow my business and get to an inflection point where I can sell. Maybe it's to a public company or private equity or to a large group that's trying to acquire. But in those scenarios, people are taking on strategic risk. A conversation I had with a client went something like, hey, in the next five years I'm going to wind my debt down to zero. At the end of five years, they had tripled their debt. So when you think about the conversation and the objective, you're like, are they nuts? Did they not listen? No, they saw an opportunity and they knew they needed to get to a specific number of locations for certain suitors to consider them. So that upon exit they had a specific payout in mind. So the recipe was can I get more on the sale that I'm taking on in debt in incremental acquisitions over time? So the end game was the same get out of debt. How we got out of debt is what changed. So it wasn't in five years. We went down the whole time. We actually went up to go down because on liquidation we were able to satisfy all of those different liabilities. So that strategic risk taking is that second piece that I think is key for folks.
- [20:04]
A
And that is so hard too for so many people. So many people that are sort of entrepreneurs but debt averse or entrepreneurs or they're not debt adverse. I mean it's really all over the board in terms of entrepreneurs view of debt and how to use, utilize and leverage it. But, but fascinating talk for a second, Chris. You do a lot of advising of clients. You also do a lot of public speaking and writing. It's a fascinating mix of characteristics you bring to the table. Just a fantastic group of characteristics and thinking. If you were to take to advise me to take one action the next 30 days to improve their leadership focus or their mental resilience, what would you tell somebody to do? Where would you tell them to sort of start first. And why does that work?
- [20:51]
B
Well, thank you for the compliments in there first. And as a good attorney, I never give one answer, so I'm actually going to give you two. One, which is going to feel like a little bit of a cop out, but I think is rest and reflect. Sometimes people in this space will not carve out the time for that. And you need to. You've got to calm your mind for a little while to allow space for other things to creep into it so that you can kind of get those creative juices flowing again. The second piece of it is, is really inside of the intentionality. You know, it, it's going to come back to the why or, or, or, you know, all of those different components and recipes that are there. But set an intentionality to work on my business, one hour a day time, block it, and then hold the discipline true on the back end to make sure that you do it. Because if you'll commit to that, you'll start to see that incremental change that I think you're trying to achieve. Whereas a lot of people say they want to do it and then let everything else get in the way and kind of sweep it under the rug. And I am guilty of this too. I always set up my objective, and then in tax season, I shift stuff around because I've got to get client deadlines achieved rather than some of these other, other conversations that are more important to me. It's okay to flex, but it's not okay to sacrifice the discipline that gets you to the objective you said you wanted to get to.
- [22:19]
A
Point being there's periods of time when almost all of us have to flex in some way or another.
- [22:24]
B
Yeah.
- [22:25]
A
For whatever reason. And how do you then use that discipline to come back to your core principles of that hour a day or blocking your time and planning out your 168 hours. How do you sort of make sure that you're mindful of coming back to that?
- [22:42]
B
For me, it's, it's. I'm not going to say it's necessarily a time recipe, but there's an element that is time. You know, if you say you're going to work on something for one hour a day, and then instead of doing it one hour a day, you do it five hours on Friday, you know, that's one way to kind of help flex that around. But I have found if you're that rigid with kind of the thought process, I think you miss the bigger objective. Sometimes you need to sit down with Other thought leaders. You know, just this conversation today, Scott, is. Is an opportunity for me to work on my business. Because you've provoked thought, you've provoked some answers that I am able to give to my clients and customers. So am I able to take something like this and redeploy it in a different way? Because some of these questions actually benefit my business, not just our listeners. So you can kind of be creative inside of that if you have the infrastructure in place. Obviously a recording helps. So there's things like that that you can do to be creative. But at the end of the day, you have to create that space or create that intentionality. Or, you know, in my case, I've got my cell phone, I jot a thing or two down as I talk with folks. That becomes my anchor point so that when I come back, I'm not just.
- [24:04]
A
Sweeping it under the rug, but I love that overall. And there's so many things here about taking a second to slow down, to rest and reflect, to be very clear about what you're trying to accomplish, to black out times for the key priorities that are so helpful to all of us, including myself. Chris, I feel like I'm the beneficiary of getting a chance to talk to you as well. I want to thank you, Chris, so much for taking the time to join us in the Becker business and the Becker Private Equity podcast. Chris Pappin. Chris, tell us title where people could find you on LinkedIn and so forth, if that's okay.
- [24:42]
B
Yeah, absolutely. So the. The easy place is to search for Chris C H R I S P A P I n on LinkedIn. You'll find me. There's all kinds of fun content that's out there. Another great place is papandspeaks.com you can find more about the podcast, the 168 Hours book, and other support material if you're interested in grabbing those things.
- [25:08]
A
And Chris, where can I buy the book?
- [25:12]
B
The book will be available directly on papandspeaks.com or also on Amazon and I guess in a digital, you know, E read. I never read anything. I listen to everything, so you'll get an audible version as well.
- [25:26]
A
Thank you so much. No, I'm looking forward to it. As I've aged, I do far more listening than actual reading by doing a little bit of both. But much more listening than reading. Chris, thank you so much for joining us today. What a pleasure to visit with you. Thank you very, very much.
- [25:40]
B
Appreciate you, Scott. Thank you.
- [25:44]
C
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