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What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. And today what I want to talk about is one of my core, I'd say, like, shifts in 2025, which was eliminating an immense amount of meetings from my calendar. So I will say that I am not somebody. Like, I don't like to waste time. And I also feel like I have a pretty good idea of what a productive meeting is versus an unproductive meeting. But I will say that this year has been the year that I have made the most changes to my calendar. Probably because it started a little bit with, like, I had no choice. But then I saw how things did with me having a less chaotic calendar, with me having more time to do things for myself, more space, more thinking time. And it was at a level and has been at a level that I just haven't had before. And so I wanted to share it with you guys, because as you go into 2026, I would love if you could take some of these lessons so that you don't have to learn them on your own, but you can just learn from what I have experienced. So I. So I will say that, like, 2025 was the year that I deleted the most of my meetings ever. And the funny thing is, is that I didn't do it because I wanted to be more productive. I did it because I had to. Back in the early part of the year, I had some health issues, and I was in a ton of pain to the degree that I was, like, working from bed on my phone for God, like, all day, every day. I lost, like, 20 pounds. I was just, like, really couldn't figure out doctors were trying to figure out what was going on, and it was just like a series of misdiagnosis. So I was in pain for months, and I was still working because those of you who have had health issues, you know that if you just lie in bed, nothing, you also would probably not want to be there. So you're like, I have to do something at the same time, which I'm glad I did. But I was like, I cannot do the amount that I'm doing right now. And so it really was a forcing function for me. And the amazing outcome of that is that I have completely eliminated things that are wasteful from my calendar and my life. And it is something that, though I had to change because of something that really sucked and I would never want to wish upon anybody. I'm really glad that I was able to take away some of these lessons. And so once I started cutting meetings, I started learning things about How I work and how I operate, that I don't think I would have learned if I hadn't done that and if I hadn't gone through that. And it really brought me to be the person that I need to be coming into 2026 in order to actually grow my business the way that I want to. And so what I realized, first of all, is that if you do not control your calendar, your calendar will control your life. Now, one lesson I will start with is this. Even if you have an executive assistant and you have an executive team, you have people. Like, your time is the most important thing you have in life. Not just your business, but your life, you cannot just expect other people to know how to manage it. In fact, you, like, if you think about, like, what do you have in this world that you cannot get back? Time is the most finite resource. And so one thing that I decided is that I'm going to actually be more involved in my calendar and in my time. You know, I have an amazing team of executive assistants. But what I realized is that this is the number one asset, resource, finite, anything that I can supply to my life or my business. Why am I letting anybody but myself make these decisions? Now, I can help, I can guide, I can have people take it, you know, to the yard line. Like, I can have all of that. But I need to be the one making decisions about where my time goes, because I'm the person living my life and I know what's most important at any given day, any given week. And there's a million variables that go into that, and they're always changing, which I'm sure you guys can relate to. And so what I realized is that my calendar is actually a mirror. It is a reflection of my priorities, my beliefs about myself, about other people, my fears, my insecurities, my identity. And so, you know, when I looked at mine, it's so funny. I looked back at my calendar from about 12 months ago and I was like, oh, wow. I was trying to be everything to everyone and I have a super high pain tolerance. So I was able to do that to a degree, but it wasn't serving me and it actually wasn't serving my business. I was in back to back meetings. I had standing commitments that I didn't even remember agreeing to. And that I would say, yeah, yeah, okay, I'll do that. And then like, the day would come, I'd be like, fuck this, I hate this. I did not want to do this. I had other people's priorities filling the space where I wanted my life to go, right? And then it hit me when I was dealing with all this health stuff, if I don't take control of this, nothing in my life is going to change. Because eliminating meetings, this is what I understand now. It is not about time. It is about who you are and the standards you have for yourself and, and becoming the person who doesn't need to put other people's priorities first in order for things to work. So, for example, some things I had to do this year that my old self would have never done, right? I stopped doing one on ones for multiple different periods of time, right? I have done that for 10 years. 10 years. I have not skipped one on one. 10 years of my career. I thought that I would die. I thought that my team would quit. I thought the world would burn down if I stopped doing one on ones. I just felt like that is what's created success. And therefore, because it's created success, if I stop doing it, success will deteriorate. And I was, honestly, it created a lot of anxiety into me, even just the thought of not doing them. And then I realized I was like, I am at a point where I, one, have an executive team rolling into me like they can function without this, and there are other ways that we can keep in touch and keep a pulse. And two, I don't think I can do my job and do this amount of 1 on ones because the amount of people rolling into me in doing all this, what I realized is like, it's not about the time you have, it's about the standards you hold for yourself and how valuable you really think your time is. And if you don't think your time is valuable, then you will treat it like it's everybody else's to give, right? You will treat it like other people's requests of you, other people's desires of you, other people's priorities of what they think you should do. And so that was really uncomfortable for me because I realized so many of the things in my calendar were not there because they were important. They were there because other people thought they were important. I was afraid in some way of saying no and what that would mean and what it would do. Now, the second thing that I realized is that most meetings exist to solve problems that should not exist. Okay? One of the biggest realizations I had is that most meetings exist because there's a lack of clarity somewhere else, right? And this has been key to eliminating like 99% of meetings that were useless on my calendar. Most of the time, it's that somebody doesn't have a clear role, clear responsibilities. We don't have clear reporting, we don't document a process. We don't have a decision making framework. And then what we do is we fill in the gaps with meeting. And so meetings become the band aid for a structural problem. So the question you want to ask is, why do we need a meeting? Why do we need a meeting for this? And if you keep asking why, then you'll see that oftentimes meetings occur because there's a lack of structure and they are a band aid for that thing that you don't actually have. And so what I started doing is I started asking myself, well, why do I need this meeting? And what would have to happen to make this meeting irrelevant? What would I have to do? What would I have to start doing or stop doing for this meeting to not be needed or to disappear? And so that was one of the easier props for myself because then when I realized, like, oh, there's a lack of process here. Oh, we don't have a dashboard here. Oh, we need clear responsibilities here. And then once you're able to do that, it becomes really easy to be like, oh, we don't actually need a meeting. I cannot tell you how many less meetings I have on my calendar now from simply asking those questions, looking at meetings and thinking, why does this meeting exist? Why do we even do it? Do we even need it? My company also, I will tell you, follows suit. People are canceling meetings left and right. I cannot tell you how many people now I see canceling meetings. They're like, we don't need this meeting. The purpose was for this. We no longer need this done. Therefore it's canceled all the time in our slack channel, which people might be like, oh, that's bad. Why is that bad? Why is it bad for people to cancel a meeting that is completely fucking useless and drain some of energy? I think it's like people think they're like, well, the boss much. I don't like meetings. Are we fucking kidding me? People are like, well, I don't want to disappoint my boss by canceling the meeting. Are you kidding me? Your boss doesn't be in the fucking meeting. I don't want to be in the fucking meeting. I want to be working and doing shit and moving shit forward. I'll be sitting there listening to words that could have been an email, could have been a slack, or were the result of one person's misunderstanding or not, you know, submitting something in time instead of meetings being the glue, you Being the glue, other people being the glue create structure, and then you don't need glue. If you have proper structure to a building, then you don't need the glue, right? The glue is like Band Aid. And so get the structure right and you don't need so much glue. Now, I will say that the third one, I think I have had this. And if you guys have watched my content, I think you probably know, like, I'm fairly direct and I am not. I don't have a problem being direct. But I really had to understand this is that saying no is a skill. It is not a personality trait. And I had a belief many years ago, I want to say, like a decade ago, that some people are just really naturally good at saying no. And I was just not one of those people. In fact, I remember specifically when I had a conversation with a therapist I had at the time, and I told her, you know, I'm a personal trainer. I've got all these clients and they're all asking me to do these crazy hours. And so it's like, you know, I've got one at 4am and one at 8pm and then I had all these times, I'm exhausted, I don't have time to work out. I don't have time to do anything for myself. I don't have time. And she was like, right, so you have to say no. And I was like, oh, say no. I'm like, well, what would happen? I could lose them. I could do this. I could. I'm just pleasing them, right? And I remember she explained to me, she's like, this is a skill. There's nothing wrong with you. You have not practiced saying no, so you need to practice. So I want you to find as many opportunities as possible to say no. And so I did that. And it was like, every time I didn't take on a client because they had a time that didn't fit in with me, I was practicing that skill every time. I didn't justify that. No, I built my confidence. And every time that I protected my personal time and energy by saying no to things that would rob me of it, I built a new sense of confidence in myself because I knew I had my own back. And what was actually crazier is that people adapted very quickly because here's the thing. When you respect your boundaries and time, so do other people. But when you don't, other people don't either. So it's not only that you don't respect your time and you fill your time with useless shit, but other People don't respect your time, and they fill your time with useless shit. So you have to stop first because it's just one of the most obvious things in the world, which is, like, people are not going to treat you better than you treat yourself. People are not going to respect your time more than you respect your own. And so you have to be forthright about these things. I will say that I have done a great job of saying no, and that's not been a problem for me in my career. I couldn't do what I'm doing if that was. But I took it to another level this year, which is, like, I was totally okay with completely dissatisfying people on a regular basis. And these are people who work for me and on my team and who are very crucial to my business. But I realized that if I. If I say yes to every single one of them all the time, right? Just because it's this, you know, somebody who's I really like talking to or just because, you know, I think it would mean a lot to them. But if there's 17 just because it's a week, because I have a big team, well, then nothing gets done for me. My life, my work, the business, I don't actually get to do my job. And so I want you to approach, like, if you have trouble with this, like, saying no is the skill. This has nothing to do with your identity. Like, please give up that bullshit. That is not true. It is a skill. You say the words no, and then you don't explain. You don't need to explain why, because it's like, you don't owe everyone an explanation all the time. You can just say no because you don't want to, or you can say no because you simply just don't feel like doing something. Or you can say no because you have a legitimate conflict. But, like, you don't owe people an explanation. You can just say, oh, no, that doesn't work. That doesn't work for me. Just practice it. I swear, like, I've had a few people in my company do this. I'm like, you need to practice saying no. And they've gotten way better just by finding things to say no to and then practicing saying no. It sounds so simple. But I swear, this is like something that probably 99% of people need to work on. And if you do work on it, I promise, like, you will be so. You'll have so much more confidence with yourself. Because I think the ability to say no and to put yourself first, it just waterfalls into all the other areas of your life. The next lesson that I have learned is that one deep day, one uninterrupted day, beats five half interrupted days. Okay? I really went ham with my calendar this year and, and I consolidated as much as possible into meeting days versus not meeting days. And the cool thing about that is not only did I get more done, I got smarter this year for sure. I got smarter, I got calmer, I got more creative, I got more effective, I got less reactive. And so it's really not about doing more. It's about doing the right things with the right energy and creating the conditions where you can have that energy for those things. And once that happened, I realized I do not want to go back to that. And so a lot of you, it's like, okay, I have this huge presentation, I've got this big quarter coming up. And so it's like I'm gonna get two hours of work done every day for the next 14 days. And I just realized how much lower my quality of work is when I do that. And so I've said so many times this year was like, yeah, I'm gonna cancel the whole week. And my assistant's like, oh fuck. What? And I'm like, yep, gotta cancel everything this week. I gotta work on this instead. I don't apologize, I don't say sorry because I'm doing my job of what's best for my time to serve the company. Nobody knows how you are going to serve the company better with your time than you. And so you have to be the one to put these guard rules up and say these things and say them with confidence. Don't, don't tout yourself. Don't sound unsure. Don't like shake when you tell people, don't, don't say, I'm so sorry. It's like, you don't need to say sorry. Stop saying sorry. Like, let's just do it. Because you shouldn't be sorry. You should never be sorry for putting your time first so that you can better grow your own company to pay the people that are asking for your time, like you. Please. I just want this to get through of how ass backwards this is. And this kind of leads me to my last point that I have learned over time and especially been reinforced this year, which is eliminating meetings forces your team to grow without you. And if you are the bottleneck in your company, then your company will never grow. You cannot assume that you are involved in all areas of growth for your company. That's just not going to help work. I Mean, think about it. If you want to grow a $5 million company, sure. 10 million. Sure. 20 million. Sure. 30. Harder. 40. Harder. 50. Harder but not impossible. 60. Painful. 75. Really painful. 100 million. Fuck. And so you have to solve for net zero. How do you grow your company? How do you grow your team without your involvement? This is one of the hardest lessons emotionally, but also incredibly freeing logically. Every time you remove yourself from a meeting or a slack channel or a project, you force somebody else to step up into it. You create leaders, you create ownership, you create accountability. And at bare minimum, worst case, you see the gaps in your own business. So the less available you become, the more capable your team must become. Removing yourself is not abandoning your team. It is empowering them. And that is what I want to click for you. Meetings are not helping your team with you in them. They are holding them back from growing. That's like, if I could sum everything else up from this year, that's what it would be. If you step up and out, then you can see who's going to step in to fill the gap. And so eliminating meetings is not just about productivity. It's about becoming the leader that you need to be in your life and in your business to be more present, more strategic, less available, but more impactful. And so, to sum this all up right, if you are drowning in meetings, this is not a scheduling problem, and this is not a time problem. This is a standards problem, an identity problem, a confidence problem. And the moment that you change these habits and these behaviors, you will become the person who is able to bring your company into the vision that you have for it. But it starts with how you respect yourself and how you treat yourself. Because every single other person and everybody in your company will not treat you better than you treat yourself. So that is my rant for today, ladies and gentlemen. I appreciate you guys. I can't tell you how often people bring up to me that they're just drowning in meetings. And it just is so painful to hear because you can just say no. You can just say no. I would say second to that, we have a term that we say@acquisite.com, which I really like, which is we say wanth write a fucking memo. So every time someone asks for a meeting, we have this little phrase. Now we're like, write a fucking memo. Like, when we do schedule meetings, we will not schedule them unless there's a memo that has been well thought out, with context, a proposed solution, pros and cons, where they're stuck and what exactly they want to get from that meeting. So if any of this was helpful, go ahead, share this podcast with somebody, let me know on Instagram, tag me in it and I will see you on the next one.