Unveiling Business Clarity

0:08Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tapeaket marketing podcast. This is John Jantz, and my guest today is Jim Vassilopoulos. He is a C-level business advisor with a proven record as a leader, strategist, rainmaker, and new business development expert. He's the founder of Rafty Advisors, LLC, where he helps early-stage companies get off on the right foot, growth-stage companies push through plateaus and mature organizations with strategic shifts and complex challenges. He's also the author of Clarity, Business Wisdom to Work Less and Achieve More. So Jim, welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you for having me, John.

0:48Appreciate it. So how did I do with that very Greek name? You did great. You did great. You know, a lot of people just don't even give it an attempt. So I really appreciate it. Most people go by Jim B. So. I, you look at my name is spelled very, you know, a lot of consonants crushed together. So I know a lot of people struggle with it. So I make an attempt to get everybody's names right. So I'm always curious about names, speaking of names, business names. So Rafty Advisors, what's the Rafty? Well, seeing as I'm Greek, Rafty is a Rafty actually in Greek is a small town in the mountains of Peloponnesian Greece, where my dad was from and where I hearken from my relatives and that pays homage to my heritage.

1:31And from which I gained a lot of the, I think, wisdom that is ever present in the book I just wrote. Awesome. Well, I'm glad I asked that. So, all right. So give us a little, you know, a lot of times when people write a book, you know, they've had a long journey that brought them to that point. Give us a little bit of your kind of business background that led you to where you are, but maybe also give a sense of, you know, what kind of experience you were able to gain, you know, that let's face it, allowed you to write a book to tell people how to do stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's, you know, I'm one of those guys who probably needed to learn lessons the hard way, you know, and I think sometimes that's the best way to learn, you know, but I'm writing a book, so not everyone has to, you know, learn the hard way, but I've been very fortunate to have a lot of great mentors and people along the way, guiding me, nudging me, giving me advice.

2:20And I was always just very mindful of those moments that you could almost recognize in your life that were kind of pivotal. And I just wanted to capture all that. You know, I had a pretty successful corporate career, started as an entrepreneur pretty early in my life, in my early 20s. And then, you know, I'll tell you, it's been wonderful, but it hasn't been something I did alone. It was always with the help of other people. And I wanted to kind of credit many of those folks that were known benefactors of mine. And some of them that, you know, I call in the book momentary benefactors, people who played an outsized role, they didn't even realize it.

2:57And, you know, I think that's important in life. That's interesting. I, you know, like a lot of entrepreneurs, I've read thousands of books, you know, certainly when I was getting started, I leaned very heavily on people like Peter Drucker and Seth Godin, you know, who's become a good friend. And, you know, I always tell people that, you know, they were like mentors to me. They didn't know it, you know, at the time, certainly Peter Drucker was not even alive. But I think probably most entrepreneurs have that collection of people that we sometimes just kind of forget really played a role. Yeah, I mean, I think it's important to kind of be intentional.

3:29And, you know, one of the great joys actually, you know, and I just sent a batch out of books today, mailing them to some of these folks. Just I wanted to have a copy of say, listen, with a nice little note inside saying like, you really helped me and you may not realize it, but you had an outsized impact on my trajectory. And I think that level of gratitude and is important to having a good life where you feel fulfilled. and it also, you know, is moves the needle forward and makes everyone else in your sphere feel maybe an inch taller as well. So they feel like, you know, Hey, I didn't realize I had done something good.

4:04That's always a nice thing to do. I've written a number of books and I occasionally hear from people that have little stories, big stories about the impact. And I will say that you're right. You know, sometimes you write these books and you think, is anybody even reading these things? And then you hear a story from somebody and it made a difference. And I, that's why I do this. Yeah, exactly. So break down both parts or a number of parts of your introduction, but going to the book, it's interesting clarity. A lot of, like, I think if you went to business owners, I know that I do it all the time.

4:34I don't think a single one of, well, I shouldn't say so. Most would not say my greatest challenge is I don't have clarity. They know something's wrong. They can't figure it out. They're doing what they've thought, you know, is the right thing to do. That word clarity, have you come to discover that when you can get people to understand that, that they realize that is the most significant thing missing? You know, it's one of those things that I think, as you said, people don't go looking for it, but they typically are looking for something they don't know what it is and they feel, you know, confused or burdened or just overweight with, you know, just all kinds of stimuli that are coming at them.

5:13And, you know, really it was my clients that told me that's what they valued. in the beginning, I thought they would have said like, oh, Jim, you're wise and we value your wisdom, but they really didn't value the wisdom. They valued the results of the wisdom, which was clarity. They said, I feel like less encumbered. I feel like I know what to do next. I feel like some of the worries I had are muted or at least put on the side because I know that which matters most right now is in my, you know, sights and I'm going to go after it. And so clarity was a word that came up time and time again for my clients.

5:52And I thought, wow, that really is what people value. And if I'm going to write a book, let's, you know, put that right front and center. This is what people value. So why do you suppose that it quite often, most often takes a third party, you know, from the outside to come in and give you clarity? I mean, why is business owner, the person that's in it day to day, not able to see that's the missing piece? Well, I mean, because we're human, you know, I think it's really hard to kind of sip through your own head trash sometimes. And, you know, we have so many filters that we put between us and reality.

6:27I mean, the first part of the book talks about, you know, from a business sense of what, you know, goes on with business problems you're trying to deal with. But really, as you get deeper into it. It gets very much more into the kinds of things that distract us, how easily distracted we are with assumptions and led astray by our emotions and to try and understand how to peel back those layers of the onion. It's always easier to see a fault in someone else's golf swing or in their tennis stroke, but it's hard to see it for yourself. And so these are the kinds of things that getting objective partners, and it doesn't always need to be someone who has more experience than you.

7:05You know, I will tell you, I work with a lot of entrepreneurs and business leaders who are, I believe, far more accomplished than I ever was. But, you know, they're human. And so it's easier for me to see something going on than for them to see it themselves. So I think there's a partnership there between a player and coach that can be productive when people lean into that relationship. I've had examples over the years where I've had like a 10 or 12 year old look at a website that we had designed for somebody and we thought was perfect. And they're like, well, how do I make it do this? And you're like, you know, all these experts looked at it and they didn't have that question.

7:42And I think you're right. Sometimes it just takes somebody who's not involved in a way that, you know, that could show you something that's, you work with businesses in, in numerous stages. And I'm curious, do you find that they come to you with very similar characteristics? So like the startup phase has similar characteristics, Somebody who's plateaued, as you talked about, you know, they've got the same challenges, you know, almost all of them. You know, somebody who's now a mature business. Talk to me a little bit about what you see as the characteristics at each stage, because I'm guessing also there's a level of lack of clarity that maybe changes it.

8:17Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, one of the dirty little secrets, having been a consultant for many years, is that most businesses actually face very similar problems across the board, even spanning industries and sizes. et cetera. I mean, they're very similar. No one wants to hear that, but that's the truth. If I were to say though, if there's some things that tend to be more, I'd say popular with smaller companies, I think a lot of times smaller companies get sequencing wrong. They do, they know all the things they need to do. They tend to do them in the wrong order. You know, they might obsess about operations and efficiency when they really should be focused on sales.

8:52And it's not that both aren't important. It's just, you know, one might not be as important yet. And so I think that, you know, plagues smaller businesses. In bigger businesses, I think you get in a lot of time management issues around delegation and accountability and trying to come up with systems that allow you to kind of manage the broad scope of things because it's too big for any one individual to try and get their arms around. And it maybe was easier, you know, 30 years ago when we had a lot of middle layers of middle management. But now that we've got pretty flat organizations, those problems become a lot more severe more quickly.

9:28And so just getting the structure right on how you're going after things. And sometimes that just is getting a focus on what to do. Much about that, you know, from a management standpoint, it's about saying no. You know, management isn't about approving things. Management is about saying like, hey, this is what we should not do. Or if I approve, this is the implicit no that goes with it so let's make it an explicit no yeah and now a word from our sponsor work better now work better now provides outstanding talent from latin america hand matched to your business with over 40 roles across various industries including marketing they're a reliable partner for consistently finding the perfect fit for your business simply tell them what you need and they'll handle the rest hassle-free we have two work better now professionals on our team a marketing assistant, and a marketing coordinator.

10:20And we've been blown away by their abilities, responsiveness, and professionalism. They've really become an essential part of our growing team. And to top it off, each dedicated and full-time Work Better Now professional is$23.50 per month. And there are no contracts. To schedule a 15-minute consultation with a Work Better Now rep and see how they'll support your business growth goals, visit workbetternow.com. So mention the referral code DTM podcast, and you're going to get$150 off for your first three months. That's workbetternow.com. And don't forget that DTM podcast code. That's interesting.

11:02You know, I often tell people that all the time that half the job I do, you know, in developing strategy for people is telling them what not to do. Because I do think that's a real challenge for most businesses. They've got everything. Everybody's telling them they need this idea and this idea. and it's really easy to get scattered. You know, we fall into this trap where we say, oh, this is a good idea or this is a bad idea. You know, most of the ideas tend to be pretty good. I mean, it's just a matter of it's not good now. And I think putting things in the context of time, like, you know, we can't do it all.

11:32This is a good one. This is probably the best one to do now with the limited resources we've got, whether it's time, money, people. And then say, it's not that the other ideas were bad. It's just not yet. And so, you know, when it comes to strategy, strategy is about like the sequencing of all the tactics we want and all the initiatives we want to put together. And I think we frequently kick people to the curb with their ideas and have them think their idea was bad. It might be a perfectly great idea, just not yet. You talk about in the book, the idea of business symptoms being like or medical symptoms.

12:08Talk a little bit about how they are the same and maybe how they're different. Because I often talk about, you know, a business comes to us and they have symptoms of not having a good strategy and they're, you know, they're trying to cure the symptoms. Talk a little bit about your view of that. The reason I compare them to kind of medical symptoms is because I want people to kind of internalize this in a way that makes sense to them. And so like, you know, accountability is a huge problem most businesses face. And, you know, I kind of talk about how it's kind of like having a fever. It's really common.

12:37But just because you have accountability, I mean, you might treat a fever with aspirin, but there's a root cause behind that. There's a reason there's a fever. The fever isn't the problem. The problem is an infection or something else. And so we always have to dig deeper. And what I like to help people realize is that the symptoms are always outcomes. You know, an outcome is, you know, if you have misalignment is the problem. That's an outcome of other issues. and so you want to be really careful with that. You know, being too busy or having conflict with your organization, those are outcomes.

13:12Even culture, probably the most controversial symptom I have in my book, is an outcome because I always talk about that like the immune system of your body. You know, it's not that you have a bad culture or a good culture. You've got a culture that is sometimes weak and sometimes strong. And the culture is really a manifestation of the actions you take on a daily basis. It's an outcome. What are the things driving those actions? Well, that starts getting you closer to the ground truth and where you can really have an impact solving a problem. Yeah. And I love that analogy because there are definitely a lot of businesses out there that are just trying to treat tactics, you know, or treat what they see as a problem with the tactic, you know, the tactic of the week.

13:53And that, you know, they really just end up creating another problem a lot of times. You talk about making time your friend, probably the greatest challenge certainly small businesses face. How are, I'm sure listeners are waiting. How do you make time your friend? Part of it is, you know, focus, saying no to things, you know, being very intentional about stuff. I think, you know, one of the other great ways to make time your friend is to really understand, take the time to think through what matters most. There are so many things we do that we don't need to do. Okay. And you just need to really think about that.

14:28Make a little bit of time to evaluate what you're doing on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, on a monthly basis, and just say, did that move the needle? Why do I keep doing that? Who's telling me I have to do that? Is there a reason? Is there a discussion I can have to stop doing that? And in my career, I was able to do things that, you know, formally, or, you know, took me 40 to 60 hours a week to get done and get that down to four to six hours a week. and everyone says, oh, that's crazy. But I really just applied some of the same thinking that like Tim Ferriss had in his book, The Four-Hour Workweek.

15:02And I just said, he always like, just threw the rule book out the window and just said, let me question everything. And that's really a good practice. Then I think there are a couple other little things I'd add to that mentality. One of them is timing, sequencing, timing and patience. Really, those are really powerful things that can make time your friend, knowing the right order to do things. And then timing, you know, the same amount of energy goes in hitting a foul ball versus a home run. It's just a matter of hitting the ball at the right time. And so understanding your timing and knowing what the right time is.

15:37And are you spending a little bit of extra time here and there to really figure that out? Because when you figure that out and you start hitting home runs all the time, well, guess what? Work gets really easy. And then you build up more time to learn and improve. So it's like the self-fulfilling prophecy. If you just spend a little bit of a time trying to figure out the right timing for things, the right triggers for things. And that is a process I really call conscious competence, which is, do you know why you do things? Do you know why this particular phrase or this particular process works so well at this time?

16:11And if you know the right things to do at the right time, work gets easier, time becomes your friend, and you get to invest way more time, getting even better at it. So the promise of the book really shows up in the subtitle, Work Less, Achieve More. How do you get to that point where you actually can experience that as a reality? We live in this really busy world. We've all got a million things coming at us. And whether it's from the internet, TV, our clients, our email, I think it gets down to stripping away layers of the onion and getting to that which matters most. And so you can have the most impact with the least amount of work.

16:47So I'm inherently a super lazy guy. I've had a lot of success in my life, but I'm always going to take the leap path of least resistance. So I'm like water. I'm going to find the easiest way to get through something. And so the outside layer is, you know, don't focus your time on symptoms, you know, recognize symptoms, peel them back, understand where the problems are. Once you understand the problems, peel those back and understand what's clouding your perception of those problems, because it's the little things that cloud our ability to kind of see the world clearly and cleanly that slow us down.

17:20And so you peel that away. Then, you know, I kind of add in this kind of, you know, emotional aspect of trying to see, you know, other things that affect our demeanor, our temper, our perspective. Then you get into sequencing, timing and patience. I have a clear view, but now I can order things and organize them in the right way so that I can have the most impact and start hitting home runs instead of foul balls. And then, you know, as we kind of get further into the book, it says, and here is the process you use. And it's really this conscious competence and working with other people to help them feel empowered to get to a point where you're getting a lot done, you're working a lot less, and you're achieving your goals much more because you're not wasting a lot of time on stuff that doesn't matter or move the needle.

18:05And, you know, it can be done. And I just wanted to share that with folks because, I mean, literally at the end of my professional career, before I got into coaching and advising, I was doing the work that other people were taking 60 hours to do in like less than a day. And like, it got to the point where it was annoying people. They're like, well, how do you do that? And I said, well, you know, this is the recipe. This is how you do it. Awesome. Well, Jim, I appreciate you taking a few moments to stop by the Ductate marketing podcast. Is there some place you'd invite people to connect with you and obviously pick up a book or find a copy of Clarit?

18:38Yeah, so I've got this terrible last name that's hard to find on LinkedIn and everywhere else. So I tried to make it easy for everyone. Businesswisdom.com. If you go to businesswisdom.com, you can connect with me on LinkedIn. You can see information about the book and about my business. And, you know, everything you need is right there. Awesome. Well, I appreciate it again for you taking a few moments and hopefully we'll run into you on these days out there on the road.

19:03you