Joe Sova is an entrepreneur based in Omaha, NE. He began his professional career by helping small business owners streamline internal processes and workflows. He later transitioned to a direct sales role where he learned practical sales ideas and strategies for small businesses.  In 2011, Joe took the lessons learned from his prior experience and started a B2B service business. Today that business helps hundreds of small business clients annually. In addition to his business, Joe hosts the Local Business Talk podcast where topics include small business, entrepreneurship, and local business success!


Connect with Joe Sova:
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Ideal Payroll Service
Local Business Talk Podcast

Mike: [00:00:00] Hey everybody, welcome back to in the trenches with Michael King where we talk with business owners, leaders, and executives about the lessons they've learned while fighting in the trenches of the business battlefield. I am Michael King. I don't know about you, but one of the biggest struggles I've had as a professional, and I don't even mean just as a business owner, but just as a professional in general, is this kind of inability for me to leave work at work.

[00:00:26] And what I mean by that is. I'm at home watching a movie with family maybe, and 

[00:00:34] my phone or my watch vibrates 

[00:00:36] and I look and it's an email from a client or a text from a colleague or a notification from a vendor. And I feel like I just am absolutely obligated to respond. And it's not like I do anything that's.

[00:00:53] Saving lives or responding to a nuclear missile crisis, and like time is of the essence. But I still have always struggled with, with saying, I'm at home right now. I'm not going to respond to this. It can wait until Monday.  and I'll tell you that that has historically had a negative impact on relationships.

[00:01:15] There's never a relationship that I've had that's been better for me responding that way, and in fact, it's really unhealthy. As far as the relationship goes with the client, the vendor, or the employee that sends it because. It tells them that I'm available 24 seven and now they have this expectation of me that they can reach me at any time.

[00:01:36] It's just not healthy. But boy, that struggle has been real for quite a while and luckily is I've grown and matured as a professional. I've been able to keep those boundaries in a whole lot healthier place. But definitely over time some damage has been done and today we're going to talk with Joe Sova.

[00:01:54] Joe struggled with the same thing, and in fact that inability to keep the work at work came to a head one day. Joe was it the OB GYN with his wife. She had recently found out she was pregnant with twins and they were getting their very first sonogram, and while they were in the middle of the sonogram.

[00:02:12]  Joe had a call from a client, and he excused himself from the room to go take the call. And in that moment, Joe realized that. This is out of hand. Something's got to change. And so, Joe's going to share a story with us today about his journey to that point, and he's going to share with us how he repaired the relationship with his wife and how delegation for him was a big game changer.

[00:02:40] And how keeping those boundaries,  in a healthier place and how delegation with his team and trust with his team have really helped to elevate his business and his personal life and all the relationships in between. So, without further ado, here's my conversation with Joe Sova

[00:03:05] Joe, thanks for joining me 

[00:03:05] Joe Sova: [00:03:05] happy to be here, Mike. Thanks for having me on the show. 

[00:03:08] Mike: [00:03:08] Absolutely. So, Joe, we're going to talk today about the time that you were with your wife.  she was pregnant with your first children. They were twins. You are at the OB GYN getting an ultrasound. Everybody's super excited to see pictures of what the twins look like.

[00:03:26] And while you’re at the. OB GYN in the middle of the ultrasound, your business phone rings, and you tell your wife, sorry, I have to take this call. It didn't go well from there. So, we're going to talk about that. But before we get into the details of that, Joe, tell us a little bit about you, your background and your business and how you got to that point.

[00:03:49] Joe Sova: [00:03:49] Yeah. So I was with a large national payroll processing company for several years. I was in the corporate world for multiple years working with other small businesses to help them.  I left there in 2011 I did not bring a book of business with me, so I started at zero,  just went out and hustled in.

[00:04:05]  hustle, kind of a buzzword these days. But,  it was just me. I was doing it all. I was doing the sales and marketing the service,  so I was picking up clients. I had some relationships that I could lean on and leverage, and I knew how to sell.  that's what I was doing in my other corporate job.

[00:04:19] And so I could go get the business though early on.   obviously we start at zero revenue, but. We, we were adding clients at a pretty good clip initially back then in 2011, it was, it was just me.  I was basically in a closet of an office,   no windows on the interior of a building and all that stuff.

[00:04:37] So,  I wasn't in my basement. A lot of people thought I was in my basement working out of that, but I wasn't actually, I had an office space, but it was a, it was tiny. It was just me and I.  we've grown over the years. We've got a great team now, but,   it wasn't always that way. It was,   it was, it was a grind at the beginning, and.

[00:04:52] Yeah. At the time I thought that was the way it had to be. I thought that was fun and cool and the thing to do. But,   I've learned some stuff over the years as well. 

[00:05:00] Mike: [00:05:00] So in the world of building a payroll processing business, what is grind and hustle look like? Are you, are you literally going door to door to businesses asking them about their payroll processing needs or how are you finding business.

[00:05:13] Eight years ago. 

[00:05:13] Joe Sova: [00:05:13] Yeah.  a door to door. Certainly you don't making phone calls,  pulling lists of,  new businesses in the area, things like that. That's part of it,  developing relationships. So a lot of our businesses referral based, so,  I'd go into a big accounting firms and say, Hey, this is what we're doing.

[00:05:28] This is how we compare it to the other.  big corporate companies out there offer an alternative and they have to sell. I had to sell myself, had to sell the vision.  you can imagine back then, a lot of questions are, well, are you going to be around in one month, let alone three years, or whatever it is.

[00:05:41] So there was a lot of questions that we had to overcome, trust that we had to build a, but  it was, it was knocking on doors, getting people to say yes. And that's a sales at its purest form right there. So it was fun. 

[00:05:52] Mike: [00:05:52] Okay. So w when was the. Was there an inflection point in the business where it became obvious that you had to grow your team?

[00:06:00] Joe Sova: [00:06:00] Yeah.  probably a little bit into the second year. So we started, I started,   late, let's see, late 2011,  maybe third quarter, 2011. So probably about a, I want to say. Middle of 2012 so less than a year later. I mean, it was probably, obviously before that, honestly, Mike, but that's when I decided to bring on a part time person and  by nature, I was very conservative, very frugal with what I wanted to do because this was.

[00:06:30] A dream I had for a long time. I wanted to make it work. So I thought, okay, I've got to pinch every penny and  save every dime. So I was reluctant to hire somebody, which again, looking back, you learn those things. That's not necessarily the best way to grow at all. But I brought somebody on part time and then eventually full time later that year, I want to say towards the end of 2012 so about,  maybe six months to a year and we had a full time and a part time person working with me.

[00:06:53] So then we finally had a week. I can say we legitimately at that point, okay. 

[00:06:57] Mike: [00:06:57] So the teams now three 

[00:06:59] Joe Sova: [00:06:59] at this point, that point, yes. 

[00:07:01] Mike: [00:07:01] What were some of the struggles you faced going from me to we, I mean, the 

[00:07:06] Joe Sova: [00:07:06] biggest thing is delegating, right? So everything was in my head.  initially I didn't build out any processes or systems.

[00:07:12] Everything was in my head. This is how we, we quote unquote, we do it when it was just me. And so I knew what to do. I knew how to service a customer. I knew how to. Work software. I know how to do all the ins and outs inside the business, but I didn't document anything. It was all in my head.  so they, when I bring on somebody more or less, I was letting them answer the phone and then I'd do everything after that.

[00:07:32] And maybe they were making some copies or,  doing some little things, some data entry type things. But I was not delegating any of the day to day function. So if I would have walked out on the street and got hit by a bus, we were not for there. There was no. You've done it. See, there was no training, there was no processes in place, and that was a struggle.

[00:07:50] Letting go, I guess is how to sum that up. Letting go of the day to day and how to actually operate the business was difficult because I was in the mindset of, okay, it's got to be me.  I can do this better than anybody else. Even though I had already hired somebody to do it. I wasn't letting them do their job.

[00:08:06] I wasn't getting out of the way. I was the bottleneck, which was a huge issue. Initially and continued to be for several years after 

[00:08:12] Mike: [00:08:12] that. So I imagine if you can afford a staff at this point, the client roster is increasing, the workload is increasing, but what you're saying is they were barely scratching the surface on the workload.

[00:08:25] They were doing just some very kind of basic tasks answering the phone. Copying things, copiers. Remember copiers. They're making some copies and stuff, so I'm just super basic admin work. What that probably means is your workload was increasing as the client base increased. I imagine that meant a lot more working hours.

[00:08:48] Probably a lot more stress. 

[00:08:50] Joe Sova: [00:08:50] Oh, 100%.   it was exponentially growing, so  we were bringing on more clients,  word was getting out. That trust is being built.  so I was doing great in my sales role, but I was also having to do customer service role. I was also having to do the second level support role.

[00:09:04]  because we started bringing on more clients. We started bring on bigger clients. All that stuff combined is,  again, it exponentially increases the workload. So  stress level increases. And honestly, at the time, Mike, I'm just thinking back to those days at the time, I'm like, I can handle this, right?

[00:09:21] I'm, I'm tough. I'm strong. I can push through this. This is,  my dream. This is the, the way small businesses have to work. And, and so at the time it didn't really. Hit me that, Hey, this, this is becoming more stressful. It was just, Hey, there's more work. I can handle it. But if I was going in,  after 7:00 AM and if I was leaving bus for 7:00 PM, that was a short day.

[00:09:42] You know that that was my norm day in, day out, weekends, it didn't really matter. So I was in my mind, I was doing what I had to do to get, get things done, and that was the only way to do it. I didn't even consider, Hey, I should cut back a little bit and think long-term it was in the moment. Now let's push through this and get it done.

[00:09:58] Mike: [00:09:58] What gave. In my experience when you have extended periods of time, like anybody can grind through a project or like a really tough season, right? Maybe it's,  like in the accounting world, the tax season is pretty tough and there's a lot of hours, but  that April 15th for that,  in that example, your taxes are done and you come out the other end.

[00:10:19] But what I'm hearing you say is this was just the norm, the new norm. And in my experience, something has to give,  a lot of times for me, it's. My eating habits go down the tubes, right? I'm at Chick-fil-A and  whatever I can grab because I use that as an excuse. I don't have time to do this, and then sometimes sleep starts to give just because it's easy to cut that out.

[00:10:41] What did you find in your life that started to give. 

[00:10:44] Joe Sova: [00:10:44]  100% agree.  the, the food thing,  it's whatever is easiest. I wasn't watching what I ate and I stopped caring.  I was a pretty healthy person before that. And, and,  would exercise and eat healthy or do my best to do that.

[00:10:57] But I stopped caring about that. I,  one donut, it's not going to matter today. And guess what happens the next day and the next day and the next day you get man, tits. Right. There you go. Right, right. I didn't get that far, thankfully, but  it was on its way.  so it stopped exercising,  eating right.

[00:11:13] That kind of stuff.  it obviously had an impact on the relationship with my wife and our in our family.  what did that look like? We, we didn't see each other much, you know?  when I would get home, I'd.  I'd be pretty burnt and pretty exhausted,  so,  wanting to do anything outside of work.

[00:11:30] I, I felt,  it would take away from,  I, I knew my success was inevitable, right? I had that mindset that, Hey, I'm going to make this work. And anything outside of that, I thought was taking away from that work. And that included,  going to a movie or whatever it was, the mind never stops going, you know?

[00:11:46] So my mind would constantly, I wouldn't be able to focus on a movie, quote, unquote, or,  anything else, what we may be doing, you know. Whatever it was, going out for a drink or whatever. It was all business all the time. Of course,  then, then we ended up having kids a couple of years into it as well.

[00:12:02] That was 2014 so three years in and that changed everything and it kind of blew things up in its own right and in different ways as well. For 

[00:12:11] Mike: [00:12:11] me, when I'm in places like that, I'm kind of, I find that I'm on the phone all the time. Checking emails, responding to emails, texts, did you find that that was true for you or was it more around you?

[00:12:24] Just your brain was constantly. In gear, thinking about all the different,  what you have to do tomorrow, or I wonder if this got done or is this client going to leave me, or, Oh crap, we screwed this up today. What, what's that going to look like? How much is that going to cost me? Or was it a combination of those?

[00:12:41] Joe Sova: [00:12:41]  definitely a combo with technology, it's easy to bring that stuff home.  the, the phone and computers and email and all that stuff. So it was,  I would even want to see a stat on how many times I would refresh my email or check my email. I mean, it'd be probably a hundred or a thousand times a day.

[00:12:54]  you're just constantly. Look at that. And again, back then in my mind, the only way to do it was to,  I had to have the best customer service possible. So I had to respond to those emails right away, whatever time of day, Saturday, Sunday, whatever it was I was, I was had to, that's, that was my mentality is that a, it can't wait even it was something simple.

[00:13:12] So  check an email, sending out quotes, whatever it was doing. From a work standpoint, it never turned off 100%. So 

[00:13:20] Mike: [00:13:20] one day you and your wife get pregnant. That's exciting. You go to get an ultrasound and what happens? 

[00:13:29] Joe Sova: [00:13:29] So,  you know what? We just talked about it. It never turned off no matter what was in front of me.

[00:13:33] Right? So we're in there and, and I, I specifically remember my phone ringing. I didn't even have the ringer off. That's how maybe out of it I was. So it's ringing in and I think I hit the button one time. It rings again. I hit it again. And, and  and the, the number keeps popping up. And. I got to take this call,  so I was texting before that.

[00:13:52] I don't think I mentioned that, but I'm texting people before that and I take the phone call and  after that, it really, I mean, while I'm on the phone, I'm feeling guilty. Right? And, and so it's one of those moments, I guess you look at it almost as a turning point, and you kind of say, while I'm on the phone, I'm talking to this customer or this prospective customer, and it's, um.

[00:14:14] I'm out loud saying, yes, I need to take this call. But in my mind, I'm thinking, this isn't right there. There's something broken here. There's something wrong here. This isn't what I envisioned. This isn't what I signed up for initially. And it had gotten to that point,  over the years, just the way I designed the company, of being that bottleneck of, of all of this information and, and driving and grinding and everyday hustling.

[00:14:35] But at that point in time, it finally registered in my mind that this wasn't right. The right way to go about it. So that was a, that was a turning point. It was, it was difficult, I guess, to come to that realization cause I knew I didn't know what to change. I didn't know how to change it, but I knew something had to change.

[00:14:51] Mike: [00:14:51] I think that's a, a point a lot of us get to in business and in life where as Dave Ramsey puts it, sometimes you get sick and tired of being sick and tired about a thing. Right? Whatever that thing is.  but a lot of times we don't know what to do next. One of my favorites mental models that I learned back when I was in the manufacturing world was in order for human behavior to change, three conditions have to exist.

[00:15:15] You have to be uncomfortable. With the status quo, which it sounds like you were. 

[00:15:20] Joe Sova: [00:15:20] Yes. 

[00:15:20] Mike: [00:15:20] You have to have a clear vision for a better state, right? Wouldn't it be great if,  I'm working 40 hours a week, 45 hours a week, and I'm not answering the phone and I have this healthy relationship with my wife and I don't have man tits.

[00:15:34] Right? You have this clear vision, but that third component that I think a lot of people miss is a path to get from. Status quo to that clear vision. And if you don't know what that path looks like, then people won't take action. What was your path like to get from the place where you thought it was okay in the moment to answer your phone while you're at the doctor's office with your wife to today?

[00:16:00] How did you get there? 

[00:16:01] Joe Sova: [00:16:01] It took a lot of reflection, a lot of self-study,  mentally and introspection, I guess is the word I'm looking for to know. So I had to. I had to slow down somehow and say, okay, what? What do I want this to look like? You know? I had ultimately, I had created myself a job that I didn't like.

[00:16:19]  I was overstressed, overworked, and I, and I didn't even like going to my own company day in, day out. That's a problem. Right? So I had to decide what do I want this to look like? What, what will I enjoy and how can I get there? And so I invested in myself.  I did a lot of reading. I did a lot of follow-ups, one-on-ones with other business mentors of mine.

[00:16:40]  I invested in some coaching as to how to get out of this situation and started to put the pieces,  slowly in place,  step-by-step baby steps as, as it was in, in order to get. Out of that dark cave. I had to crawl my way out, essentially. And that was through building processes and systems and, and hiring a players in our team, things like that.

[00:17:02]  but I had to learn that by, by really investing in myself, both mentally and,   monetarily by hiring people and coaches and things like that. 

[00:17:10] Mike: [00:17:10] So what books would you recommend if somebody's in their car right now? Driving to the their company slash basically just job that they're, they're resenting in there.

[00:17:22] They know isn't healthy. What, what book can they start reading to help get out of 

[00:17:26] Joe Sova: [00:17:26] that hole? There's one called work the system. It's all about creating systems. I'll send you a link or something to the author. I can't remember the author of it, but it's called work the system. Mike McCallum has come out with one recently on a similar topic called clockwork.

[00:17:38] Very similar style, very similar, uh. Topic, but it's all about putting processes and systems in place so that things can operate without a bottleneck, without,  the owner has to do everything. The owner has to be the decision maker here and there. It's about documenting that stuff and building those processes.

[00:17:54] So those are two I would recommend right off the top of my head. 

[00:17:57] Mike: [00:17:57] One of the things that he talks about in clockwork is if, if you as the owner can't take an uninterrupted four week vacation, then you don't have a business. 

[00:18:08] Joe Sova: [00:18:08] You've got to, 

[00:18:10] Mike: [00:18:10] yeah. If, and that should be like the goal is a, now you can't just jump from where you were, for example, into a four week vacation.

[00:18:18] It, it takes a year or two years. To get everything documented and get the team trained and empower them and tore them up in into, I don't know if he says this, but I'll say it is to get your mind shifted, right? You can't just jump off the deep end, right. That's, it's something that you have to kind of step into.

[00:18:36] Joe Sova: [00:18:36] Right. But that's, that's a great book 

[00:18:37] Mike: [00:18:37] and we'll put a, I'll make sure to include links to those books in the show notes. What about coaches? Boy, I'm . Amazed at how many coaches there are in the world. This is something that I've, I, I had no idea how many. People out. There are coaches of various types of what is, what kind of coaching did you get?

[00:18:57] How did you find somebody? 

[00:18:58] Joe Sova: [00:18:58]  that's a good question. And back to your last point, it did take me probably three years to get to that point of, of having things work. Right? So we're talking 2014 when my kids were born. And then I still wasn't really able to go on a vacation until 2017 I finally left the country for a week and everything worked like clockwork, so it was awesome.

[00:19:18] So it does take 

[00:19:18] Mike: [00:19:18] time. I see what you did there. 

[00:19:20] Joe Sova: [00:19:20] Clockwork. Exactly. Yeah. As far as the coaching thing, Mike,  coaches are out there,  I don't want to say diamond does, but you can. You can trip over a month, especially on the internet and start searching entrepreneurial stuff.  those ads will start.

[00:19:32] Firing up on your, on your feeds and things like that. So you've got to find somebody. Well, number one, you've got to have your eyes open.  that's how I found one is,  I started looking before that. I wasn't really looking. And, and I finally admitted to myself that, okay,  NBA players,  basketball players, football players, all these guys have coaches.

[00:19:50] Why wouldn't I as a business owner,  at least consider this?   I'm kind of on an Island by myself.  so I think the concept of coaching is good at weeding through all the stuff out there. I think you've got to do your own due diligence. You've got to interview several and see who's a good fit.

[00:20:05]  there's different styles. So it depends what you want,  do you want group coaching online? Do you want somebody face to face in your office? Do you want a course type format? So there's different things to look for out there, and it really is on your personality and where you're at right now.

[00:20:19]  today you might be in such a dire spot that you need somebody in your office weekly, but in a year, maybe a monthly phone call is good enough. So it really depends. And as you do your research, you'll find different personalities out there. Some are.   expert at sales. Others are operational experts.

[00:20:35] Some are,  really driven direct. Others are more fluff. So you've got to see what fits with your own personality and how you're going to react. This is, again, back to the sports analogy. It's,  certain players,  they, they can react better.  and, and coaches can press buttons on certain players differently.

[00:20:52] Then another coach. So it, it's the same in business. The same with us.  find that coach that that can actually press the buttons that you need, press at the right time, the right way, and it's okay to change, right? So you can have somebody for a month or two and you're like, this isn't working out and go find somebody else.

[00:21:06]  it's not like you hire one or take one program and you're done.  it's okay to make a mistake or,  learn from that and figure out what you want next time. So sometimes it's an evolution of the process and what you really need. 

[00:21:20] Mike: [00:21:20] Let's talk about processes now. I always find it, I came from a nuclear engineering background.

[00:21:25] Processes are at the core of what is done every day in nuclear engineering because we don't want things to blow up in a bad way. But from a business owner's perspective, particularly if it's somebody that doesn't have any processes or maybe they've only got a few. Well, what kind of guidance would you give them on where to start?

[00:21:45] Is it how to make the coffee, or is it how to hire somebody? And then what vehicle do you use to document those processes and refer back to them? 

[00:21:54] Joe Sova: [00:21:54]  a good question.  you've got to start small, but you've got an even know where to start. Right? That's, that's the key. So what I recommend there is, and this is an exercise that idea that was extremely helpful, is,  take a week.

[00:22:08] And literally write down everything you're doing every single day. So,  on Monday, every time you're doing a different task, whatever that is, write it down on a spreadsheet or a piece of paper. So you've got everything that you did that day in front of you because there's stuff you're doing that you probably don't even realize you're doing.

[00:22:23]  whether that's making coffee or,  responding to a customer email that somebody else could have responded to. When I looked at that list and I marked off everything I was doing. There was maybe 10% left that I actually should have been doing and that I couldn't delegate to somebody else.

[00:22:37] That was eye-opening because before that, if you would have asked me how important is my role? Oh  I, I'm running the company, but was I w responding to the customer service email that somebody else can be trained to do. That's not running the company. Right? So you've got to know what you're doing and what to delegate.

[00:22:52] What do you have your list. Then you can look at it and say, okay, these are the first three things I want off my plate. I hate doing this more than anything. I hate taking out the trash in the morning or whatever it is. I'm going to hire a cleaning company tomorrow. It's worth my 20 bucks a week, or whatever it is, and you can do that even with internal staff.

[00:23:08] So you can say, I really don't really like responding to customer emails. I'm going to have Sally do that, and here's how to do it. Then you can build this. The process for that and say, okay, here's the response and this and that. So it takes a little work after that, but to start figuring out what you're doing, figure out what needs to be delegated and then then you can build the processes 

[00:23:27] Mike: [00:23:27] from there.

[00:23:28] I read a great book this year called free to focus by Michael Hyatt, and it gives a really good framework that launches off exactly where you said the launch off with making a list of all the things that you do throughout the day, throughout the week, start to compartmentalize those into different quadrants.

[00:23:45] There's a lot on my plate right now, so I just went through and redid that process and. Bucketed out my weeks so that I know on Monday mornings I'm focused on this Tuesday afternoons for the podcast. I'm only doing podcast interviews and prescreens now on Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons.

[00:24:03] Again, if you can't take a vacation for two or three or four weeks where you're completely unplugged and completely disconnected, you're kind of, you kind of just have a job that you happen to pay yourself to do. It's not, it's not really a 

[00:24:15] Joe Sova: [00:24:15] business. Exactly. And, and here's, here's the, to piggyback off that Mike, is,  when you're doing those little tasks that,  social media is a perfect example.

[00:24:23]  you don't like it, you're not good at it, but you think you have to do it. How much are you costing yourself an opportunity? Costs, right? You could be doing something else that you're really good at that is going to drive the business in that same time that you're supposed to be doing the social media.

[00:24:37] Maybe you pay somebody, I don't know, 10 bucks, 15 bucks an hour, whatever it is for. Social media manager to put some post up during that time, you could be out making a new sale, right? Bringing on a new client or building a bigger process for something else that actually drives revenue in your business.

[00:24:55] That'll make it thousands and thousands over and over time for. 50 bucks an hour, right? I mean, you've got to understand that counterbalance thereof, okay, this is what I'm bad at. I don't like doing it, but I'm saving money doing it. That's not true. You're, you're costing yourself thousands and opportunity costs where you could be focusing your attention to drive your business and grow your business, and that's your job.

[00:25:15] As a business owner, as a CEO, not doing all the little tasks. Again, I was doing all that stuff so I can speak from this and it took years to learn, but hopefully others out there can listen to this and understand that, Hey, even that little stuff isn't worth doing. Now. When you think you don't have any money to pay for it, you, you do cause you're losing money on the backend.

[00:25:33] Mike: [00:25:33] I'd love for you to give me contact info for the cleaning company. That's 20 bucks a week in the great social media manager. That's $10 an hour. I haven't been able to find them, but, and I don't want everybody else to know about them because I want to make sure I get them. 

[00:25:45] Joe Sova: [00:25:45] Prices go up. I'll hook you up.

[00:25:47] No doubt. 

[00:25:48] Mike: [00:25:48] On a serious note though, one thing that I think when you shift from. A solopreneur mindset into a business owner's mindset. It's really important for you to think about what your time is worth, and there's an exercise that you can kind of go through and you say, all right, in 2020 I want to make this much money.

[00:26:07] Profit in the business. I want to be able to pay myself this much money. And you think about, okay, if I work five days a week, eight hours a day, whatever that is, and you extrapolate it out and do the math and then divide, and you say, okay, my time is worth, let's call it $100 an hour based on how much I want to make.

[00:26:24] Anything that you're doing that you can outsource. For less than a hundred dollars an hour. You need to be outsourcing. And whether that's getting a subcontractor vendor or hiring somebody, but that kind of needs to be the mindset. And it's not the rule. But the rule of thumb is,  Hey, if my time is worth a hundred bucks an hour to me.

[00:26:44] I'm going to outsource this. All right, right? So somebody that's $10 an hour, I, again, I'm not sure where you find $10 an hour labor, but maybe, 

[00:26:52] Joe Sova: [00:26:52]  a VA or Jonathan online, right? You could, you could do that, right? 

[00:26:57] Mike: [00:26:57] But that needs to be, the mindset is,  what, what is my time worth? And anything that I'm doing that's less valuable than that needs to be outsourced.

[00:27:06] And I think that's a really important mind shift. The, that people need to be aware of when you're shifting from a side hustle or a hobby or an early days solopreneur into an actual business. Right? Because like you said, that, Oh, that's, that's opportunity cost. Right now you're, you're leaving,  if you could outsource it for 20 an hour, your time's worth a hundred an hour.

[00:27:24] You're leaving $80 an hour on the table by doing 

[00:27:26] Joe Sova: [00:27:26] that. Right. And the other part of that, Mike, is too. You've got to fill your time with those actual valuable activities. Right. Because early on I hired people, right? And I was still filling my plate.  it just, I was still filling it with garbage right there.

[00:27:39] It wasn't tasks that was driving my business. I would just take on more and more and more.  we tend to do that. Sometimes we'll fill this, okay, I got rid of social media, but I'm going to do a, I'm going to mess with my landing page, or something like that,  or whatever it is, my, my font on my webpage.

[00:27:55] And you start doing these other little tasks. Because  mentally we get just blocked and stuck from doing the work that matters. So it's important, number one, to understand that what is my time worth? And then number two, to actually use your time for something of that value. 

[00:28:09] Mike: [00:28:09] So if I need payroll services.

[00:28:11] How can you help? 

[00:28:12] Joe Sova: [00:28:12] We get, we can help for sure.  so our company's ideal payroll service, we're online ideal payroll service.com.  you can reach out to us. (402) 614-3028. We've got clients across the country. We basically provide the personalized. Service that the big guys may be lacking,  with the state of the art technology.

[00:28:32]  so we, we try to give the best of both worlds and happy to help any way we can. 

[00:28:37] Mike: [00:28:37] Here's an ideal client for you. 

[00:28:38] Joe Sova: [00:28:38]   we focus typically on the,  100 employees and under, that's really our bread and butter, the 20 employee auto shop or the,  30 employee doctor's office, things like that. Any industry is good, but,  the small business, that's who we saw.

[00:28:53] Awesome. 

[00:28:54] Mike: [00:28:54] Thanks for coming by today, Joe. This was a lot of fun. I appreciate your time. 

[00:28:57] Joe Sova: [00:28:57]  I'm happy to do it, Mike. Thanks for having me on.

[00:29:13] Mike: [00:29:13] Thanks for joining us today. Please don't forget to subscribe to In the Trenches with Michael King on your favorite podcast platform like Apple, Google, or Spotify. Once again, I'm Michael King with KFE Solutions.