AP 1160: How Do I Take My Offline Business Online and Manage My Time and My Team Too?

AP 1060: How Do I Take My Offline Business Online and Manage My Time and My Team Too?

Pat Flynn:
What's up everybody, Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1160 of AskPat 2.0. You're about to listen to a coaching call between myself and an entrepreneur just like you. Today we're talking with Colm, who is somebody who is on the other side of the world. He has a physical product business with a team that helps with landscaping and keeping golf courses looking neat and tidy over there. And of course, if you start to realize just where this person is from, you can tell that he's probably got access to some of the best golf courses in the world. But he wants to take his business online and he wants to do stuff online as well and he also has to consider his team and the work that he's still doing on the field himself. So we actually discuss a lot of things with regards to his team and also taking things virtual, even though he has a physical product or an in-person type of business where they go in and actually landscape.

So what do we do from here? Well, Colm is going to tell us a little bit about what his plans are and we're going to dive into what we can do to make things and ensure that things are going to work out well over time. And I'm just overjoyed from this episode because Colm has a lot of nice things to say about how Team SPI has helped him. And I have a lot of fun with this one, and I hope you have a lot of fun too. So here he is, Colm McCarthy.

Colm, welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Colm McCarthy:
Hey Pat, thanks so much for having me on, it's a moment in my life to be on this show.

Pat:
No, I appreciate you for that. So tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do. And it doesn't sound like you're in the US either, right? You are where right now?

Colm:
I am in Ireland, which I think you've a connection with. I'm in the South of Ireland, a County called Limerick.

Pat:
Limerick. Nice. Well, it's one of my life goals to visit one day. Maybe we'd be able to see each other when that happens, of course when it's safe to travel again. But anyway, not about me, this is about you. So tell us a little bit about what you do?

Colm:
Well, I suppose my trade is greenskeeper, so I work on golf courses. I suppose I've developed to the stage where I'm a golf course manager or a superintendent. I'm 31 at the moment so I'm doing it about 15, 16 years. And when I was doing that, because I was an apprentice, basically the money wasn't great so I decided to buy a small van and lawnmower. And what I've done from that then is I developed a landscaping company, kind of specialized in maintenance and that grew and grew and it grew to the stage where I was leaving the golf course game.

And when I approached - it's a golf course management company that I worked for, and when I approached the owner at the time he had a couple of kids, he was getting a bit older and he kind of wanted out so I ended up buying the golf course management company off of him and now I own the company I worked for for 16 years, and the landscaping company. And we're really starting to develop into... We still do homes, we do very high-end homes and we do golf course management and consultancy as well.

Pat:
That is amazing. First of all, golf in Ireland would be a dream for one, so I'm sure that you've golfed or have at least been on several very famous golf courses and whatnot. That's a dream. And to now own the company that you once worked for, I'd love to hear from you, what is that even like?

Colm:
It's surreal. The day that I went up and we did the deal and we shook hands, I remember taking a picture of the check and I think he thought that maybe I thought there was something illegal about it or I wanted evidence and he was looking at me saying, "What are you doing?" I said, "I've never written a check this big in my life. And I don't know when the next time I'm going to do it is. And hopefully I'm receiving it, not paying it out." But it was a bit surreal.

I remember the next morning I could barely sleep. I'm on the West coast and he lives on the East coast so I had to go two hours to his house and whatnot. And I came home and went into work the next morning and I was driving one of the machines out, this is a machine I'd been operating for - not the exact same one but a similar type of machine for 15 years. I went to fly out the door and next thing I realized, Oh my God, this is my machine. If something goes wrong, it's me paying for it. It was a bit surreal, but honestly, it was always the dream. And I'm very lucky to have had the opportunity and to make it a success so far anyway.

Pat:
That's amazing. Well, what an incredible story. What's the name of the company if you don't mind me asking?

Colm:
Mack Golf. Now there could be a similar American company, but it's Mack Golf. Not very much might pop up for that yet because we're still very much developing that brand. There was also an English company, but we're the Irish version of it for now, and we're running one small golf club here in Limerick as well under contract at the moment. But we are looking to expand and I suppose that was part and parcel of the reason that I wanted to come on the show.

Pat:
Yeah, well let's talk about it. What's been on your mind? What can I help you with?

Colm:
Well, I suppose we have two physical businesses at the moment. Obviously we've got the landscaping and that covers residential and commercial high-end and we're actually developing into a cleaning company now as well at the moment, because quite a lot of landscaping in general is actually cleaning work. So we've that, and then we've got the golf course. I'm fairly good with social media, but what people don't realize about greenkeepers is that I am naturally sitting on a machine for five or six hours a day - not so much anymore, I'm more office based now, but even during the summer, I listen to, don't ask me names, but you and your buddy the wealth manager walk around New York -

Pat:
Yeah, Ramit.

Colm:
Yeah, Ramit Sethi isn't it? Yeah, I listened to that show and I was mowing. So I could listen to five hours of your content in one day easily because I'm sitting on a lawn mower all day and of course it's automatic to me what I'm doing. I've listened to huge amounts of your content. To just say, thanks very much. I really appreciate the amount of work and effort and time that you and all your team put into your work, and it shows. So it got me thinking, I was thinking for three months solid of what kind of a podcast I could do. So I've started a podcast. I did your Power-Up Podcast course, which by the way, you should charge double for. I thought at the start, it's a good chunk of money. I did it, and it's absolutely brilliant. There are so many things in it that I wouldn't have realized, and it was perfect.

So what I'm looking to do now is develop an online business, not so much for the money, because I don't believe in it. I'm very much long-term oriented. So much so my accountant told me I should be paying myself double what I pay myself, but I'm into developing businesses. And what I want to do is develop an online business and an online college specific to, I suppose, greenkeeper training.

The problem that I have is obviously... well, I suppose it's a problem and a good thing, you've got two extremely well-known colleges in America. You got Penn State and Ohio State, and they're the two big, big universities for turf care. In Ireland at the moment, there isn't much behind it. So basically what I'm trying to do is I'm actually setting up a trade organization to help self-fund it and set up an apprenticeship scheme in Ireland for greenkeepers. And I want to have kind of an online training course where it's not a huge amount of money to participate in courses. I need to do the maths obviously to work out, the course is going to cost me just say $50 or $100 to do. And that then goes back into the business and develops it further.

So my main two questions to you today is number one, how are you organizing yourself to do so much and get all the things that you do done? And the second part then is, what you think would be the best way of developing... I have a physical business, which I need to put online and put all of my knowledge, and not just mine, but I need to ask other people in the field to contribute to that, to materialize it into an online and a virtual business.

Pat:
Yes. Okay, cool. I love where this is going and we'll talk about the online course and university/college that's going to help people learn how to manage turf. And you know, we'll talk about that in a sec. Let's first talk about your first question, and thank you for all the great compliments by the way, and congrats on the podcast. What's the name of the podcast by the way?

Colm:
It's called the GrassCast, as in a podcast. The GrassCast podcast. I've six episodes done, logos. I interviewed a doctor from Penn State about two weeks ago and I'm reaching out to these guys and they're just like, "Absolutely, what a great idea," because no one else, there is no other people doing a specific greenkeeping podcast, which I was amazed at. But I've had really good feedback and I'm just basically working through scheduling, but I actually use SquadCast as well. So I think it's really cool. Yeah.

Pat:
Thank you. Well done on the show. It's a lot of fun to have a podcast. I do want to talk about that in a minute. But the GrassCast, that is awesome. Just good branding there. I love that. Before I get even into organization, I would just love to know, you and your goals, you could go anywhere and do anything that you want and you chose to focus on this, why? What are your goals? What is your vision?

Colm:
I suppose overall, I do remember quite early on when it came to the purchase of the golf course management company, the previous owner said, you've got to make a decision now on how you operate the business. You either want a lifestyle business which basically gives you and your family a comfortable life. If you want trips and this that and the other, it'll pay for all that, you get time off when you need it. Or you can have a big business and a commercial entity. So that is far more intensive. It's much, much bigger. It's a lot more money. And I want the commercial side of it. I'd like to work a lot until I'm about 50 and then retire quite young. But I think I'm also the kind of person that when I say retire, it will be money in the bank and I'll have several projects that I'd still like to tip on really. But that's pretty much it for me is just develop this golf course manager brand, develop greenkeeping.

One of the funny things with greenkeeping is, and it's the only industry that I probably know that it happens, is I could have a retired solicitor or a doctor or a retired podcaster in a few years telling me, the expert, what I should be doing. And I'm trying to flip the curve to say, Well, I'm the expert, I have the qualifications. You should be listening to me. I am the golf course manager. That's what happens in the United States. And as far as I'm concerned, Britain and Europe and the other countries, we're about 10 to 15 years behind the States. So I'm trying to jump on that wave now and catch the curve really.

Pat:
Yeah, I think you're really smart. And I think that the approach is great. I think whoever had given you that advice is mostly correct, right? You could either build it and keep it small and then you'd be able to have some time. But I see that you're investing that time and effort and work now so that you can have more time later. And with the sort of more commercial, bigger business thing, this relates to your first question about organization and how I'm able to do so many things and build not just an amazing business, but have this team that now is managing our membership site, SPI Pro. And we have some podcasts network related things coming out next year and all these bigger projects, plus the SwitchPod, our physical product that came out, plus this other thing. All these things.

The answer to that is I don't do it all myself. You can have it all, but you can't do it all. And that's something that a guest on my podcast said at end of 2020. In fact, at the time of this recording, that episode hasn't come out yet, but it's a woman who has, I think, nine kids, and she's able to still run a business and successfully teach other women and still is a mom. And she's like, "It's because I've learned how to delegate." And for me, I have to give a shout out to, especially when you go... when you really are serious about the business and you want to go big, you need a right-hand man. You need somebody who you can trust to do a lot of that heavy lifting. The stuff that's yes, required, but maybe isn't stuff that you necessarily need to, or want to do.

I have Matt, for example, I'm sure you've heard of Matt Garland on my team, the chief operating officer, chief financial officer as well. I mean, I wouldn't be doing, and you wouldn't see all the things that are here if it wasn't for him, because I can still do the things that I want to do and be more in the creative aspect. For you that would maybe be you on the lawn, still mowing, doing the things that still light you up and make you happy, whilst he's taking care of a lot of the bigger business decisions for me or with me.

But for example, the team that he's managing, that's my team, but he's the one that's dealing with the teams. And if there's ever any fires, he sees it first. And then it only boils up to me if it's really, really something I have to focus on so that I can just stay in the same space that I'm in. And instead of devoting a hundred percent of that extra energy and time back into the business — I do put some of that back into the business, for sure — I can also devote more time to my family and my wife and my kids too. So I'm sort of in the camp of, well, why not both? You could have somewhat of a lifestyle design business, but still grow it incredibly if you have the right people to help you and you know what your goals are and you see that road ahead. How does that sort of sit with you?

Colm:
Yeah, I think it's something that I'm trying to get my head around. I lived in London for about a year and I learned two things. Number one, I don't want to live in London. I did love living there, but I'd rather live in Limerick. It was great experience, but there's always good and bad. And the other thing was the British really look after their gardens, like the Americans. Lawn care in America, I follow a lot of guys on Facebook and there's guys with 2000 and 3000 contracts. And I'm looking saying I've got nine contracts, I'm pulling a hundred grand a year off that and it's incredible, but I know it's a different setup there. And so I started developing it about two or three years ago to say, okay, number one, I need a right-hand man.

Before that happened I set-up a Facebook group and there's 29,600 people on it. And it's called Make Your Garden Your Own. And basically it's a community where people can post pictures, ask questions about what should I do with this for my garden and that. And it's practically autonomous to me. I'll answer lawn questions because I know what I'm talking about with that. But with a lot of other stuff, I wouldn't be an expert on plants and such. So through that, I then met my business partner which I'm 50/50 with, a guy called Darren Degan and Darren is a hard landscaper. So he does patio, cement, foundation work. And like I say, pergolas, gazebos, all that. He does all the hard landscaping construction and I do all the soft landscaping maintenance and then the golf course management. So he is a guy that I'm leaning on quite heavily at the moment. While I'm making all the office decisions, he's physically out mowing the lawns.

So I may not be a hundred percent happy, but I can appreciate at the same time we need to put this work together to do that. My wife also works for us. She runs the golf course and the administration for all of the companies and all the club house work and the accounts and whatnot. And like that I've developed one or two of the staff. We've done a bit of a shuffle recently with staffing up there on the actual golf course itself and we've moved a girl up that was in the club house, now she's basically assisting my wife.

So I can appreciate what you're saying with that. I would be, especially as a greenkeeper, everything is perfect to the millimeter cut right and everything's clean and tidy and it's a real perfectionism job. So handing it off was quite difficult for me. But as your buddy says, "What has gotten you to here will not get you there." And it's something I say to myself constantly: if you want to develop, you have to be able to let go a little bit. And if you have to teach people the standards that you want and train them as to this is how I do it, this is the way I want to present it. And then once they start replicating that, it's just a matter of expanding really.

Pat:
Exactly. Exactly. And then with regards to growth, you had compared some of your numbers to some of the contractual numbers that people have in the US in the thousands. I think you could get there if you wanted to, but we need a plan. We need a map. We need a roadmap, we need to determine, because when you then lay out - it's almost like when you get in a car. When you get in a car and you have a place to go, you could either just drive around and try to find your way there, or you can put in the numbers in the navigation and then that'll tell you, okay, go left, go right, U-turn, whatever. And if you get off course, you can at least get some guidance to go back on course. So we need to have some sort of destination.

So how much are you and your partner planning in terms of, let's say five years out, what are your numbers? How many contracts do you have five years from now? Three years from now? How many one year from now? So that way you can get a growth trajectory and go, okay, well, if we really want this many contracts this year, what else do we have to have in place and is that possible? And you can start to move pieces around.

This is what we do in our business. We've already planned out 2021. We know what pieces are coming, who we need to hire to support those visions, those goals. We had some things in the plans that we pulled back on, because then we sort of from a high level, got to see, okay, this is the plan, this fits within our mission. That's another important component of this. If you have a company mission to drive decisions, you can easily say yes to things and easily say no to things if they don't fit in. And that's guided us as well, having a very clear mission and goals and values to support that. So how are you doing on the forecasting and the planning in the business?

Colm:
One thing that I would never have been very good at would have been the financial side of it. And of course, I was just a young lad cutting grass. It didn't matter. I was out cutting lawns. I know it sounds funny, I love this light and dark lines. I just love doing the patterns and all of that. And I just was so into it, but it was because I was so into it that people kept saying, you're really good at it. And it was because it was my passion. So what I did was a friend of mine who I would have worked under him in the UK, he would have actually been quite senior in the company at the time. He ended up moving to Ireland for work quite close to us here in another county. And we've actually hired him as our business consultant and development officer.

And what he is doing for us now is like that he's getting... I tend to jump on all over the place, even though I'm still getting things done. I'm a little bit frantic in the way I do things, but that's because I'm used to literally putting out fires because I take on so much and I didn't have the capacity. So he's asked us to forecast, 2021, 2022 as far ahead as in actual figures and whatnot, and like that planning where the company needs to go. So we're in the process of doing all of that now and putting our skates on to get it there. And I'd like that tidied up. So I think that's something that's going to come, it's just not there right now, but we should have a lot done by the end of the month.

Pat:
That's great to hear. When you get purposeful with what you do and how it's helping you get to where you want to go, things just start to align and get so much more clear. Not just for you, but even for the other team members. If they're also on board with where things are headed and what needs to be done and the plan and the vision, everybody's all working in synchronization. And so that's great that you're making those efforts and you're finding the people who sort of, that's their language and they know how to share that with you. Kind of interesting that you hired this person now and you're paying this person who you would have normally worked under. That's pretty interesting. It's funny how life works out like that sometimes.

That all sounds great. I mean, hopefully that sort of answers your first question about finding the right people to either fill in those gaps or to do a lot of the stuff that's going to take stuff off your plate so you can do more of what you want to do, and then having that vision to help you organize the plan so that you know where you're going. So that's sort of question one. Are we good there?

Colm:
Yep.

Pat:
Okay, cool. Now let's talk about what seems to me a very passionate project of yours, which is this idea of creating an online college to help people who are into this. And of course you are the expert on this, it's obvious to me. And there are loads of people around this world that, despite there being Penn State and other places that do talk about these things in a more university type fashion, I mean, I know from my own experience, first of all, I didn't go to business school and yet I'm still able to help people because I was in the space. I figured it out on my own. I started an architecture website that then blew up and then I've been sharing that information since. Yes, people can go to Haas Berkeley School of Business or USC, whatever, they can go to those places if they want. But I also know that there's people in this world who also like the more down to earth and more approachable sort of education that they can get from me. Just like how you've been getting educated while on your lawnmower.

And the cool thing about the fact that you have a podcast and that there's online courses now... We used to say that there was automobile university. You're in your car and you're learning on the go and you can either get access to free content, like on a podcast, or you can pay to get access to that information. And for you, it's more like lawnmower university, I guess we could call it. But anyway, this vision is so big and I love it so much, but it is hard because it's so big. It's like, where do we even begin? So I would love to have you and challenge you to go, okay, well, let's say that, the vision, that's where we're going, but what's the first step? What needs to happen now? So if this were easy to fulfill this ultimate goal of wanting to help people, what might you think would be an easy way to start getting students to come in and start learning from you?

The big time thing will come later. The stuff that's going to require probably investments or outside help or a board of advisors, whatever. That stuff will potentially happen and that's where it gets big time. But to start out with small - and this is a question that I always tell myself, I got this from Tim Ferriss. To start out with, if this were easy, what would it look like? So I'd love to ask you that question. This idea of an online college, if this were easy and to start with, what would it look like do you think?

Colm:
My vision for it was the podcast is free, obviously, unless you pay for Spotify premium or whatnot, but the podcast is there for free. It's a tool for me to interview Dr. Such and such or greenkeeper X and ask him for his experience. Now, I can go for the Rolls Royce. Like you've got Adare golf club over here. It's actually in Limerick. It is literally like six or seven star, it's absolutely unbelievable. You can interview him. But if you're talking to a normal greenkeeper in a normal golf course, they're struggling. So I'm trying to give them a blend of we're speaking to supplier, we're doing this, and we're bringing everybody in on a level of sharing information and communicating with each other. And it's an open door policy. I've templated emails to send out to suppliers and say, Llook, I appreciate that you may be a supplier. Don't turn this into a sales pitch because if you do, I will edit it out if it goes over the top.

It's all about not pushing the product and making money and monetizing the podcast because I can appreciate I can do that. For now, I'm trying to capture my audience. Once I have that up and running, I then start saying, we've been doing this and I get a lot of questions about doing courses, so I've actually developed a small online course. And I could tie that in with a podcast, like if I was interviewing you and your podcasts guy and I said, well, we've developed a very short course. There's 10 slides, 10 questions at the end and it's only a couple of bucks to do that. So that's something that I was thinking, was if it was me, start off with nice basic, but really, you always say, "The riches are in the niches."

Pat:
Right.

Colm:
And it's niche, to correct you.

Pat:
I know.

Colm:
I'm only joking. I asked the American doc is it niche or niche? He goes, well, it's niche but, "The riches are in the niches." So I want to niche down really specifically on this topic. This is why I am speaking to this guy or this doctor, this is what the podcast is on. And now we have a course for this as well, if you want to take part in it. So I think if we modulate it really, really small, it will eventually... If I have a guy in America taking the course, I can't say, Oh, well, it's accredited by the American such and such. I could, but imagine the scale of doing that in Canada, America, South America, Africa, Europe, like there's Ireland, England, all the different countries. So basically this is going to be... I think eventually I'm hoping we can set up a global turf manager association.

I think it's that scalable because the only time that grass actually really changes, there's some different stuff in America and there's some different stuff in Australia, but the practices of how we look after it are basically the same. So I'm thinking we could have a global organization and say, well, this is accredited by, you know, the way like architects and doctors I assume have to do up-to-date courses and professional development. So you could do something like that and say, this is recognized by our global network as part of your career development. I think that's the entire goal of it. But to do that, we start with the podcast, we gain the audience because it's multinational, multicultural, and it's just a central point that everyone's listening. Every greenkeeper you look at either has ear defenders on or headphones on and they're listening.

Pat:
Yes. I love it. It's similar to when I started my food truck website back in the day. People in food trucks prepping food for the day would just - they couldn't read a blog post or watch videos, they were just listening, right? So the podcast is a perfect medium. I had this vision of you literally taking somebody under your wing and giving them the education that you ultimately want to give to so many other people. But I've been sharing this with a lot of people lately and it's been really resonating with them in terms of how to get started. And it's just like, just find one. One person who you could help. Number one, that helps you just with the exercise of finding that one person and what it's like to talk to them and how they can respond and kind of weeding through the right words to say and whatnot.

But the cool thing about having a podcast for example is you can highlight this one person and their entire journey that you're taking them through. Because when you share publicly - just kind of like how we're publicly sharing this conversation right now. And even without doing it, like when I do these coaching sessions, I get messages all the time, direct messages, emails from people saying, "Hey, can you coach me? I'll pay you." "Can you coach me? I'll pay you." Because they're seeing me coach somebody else. They get to know my style. They get to know how I do it. They get to see the results from the people when the people come back on the show or they get information that can help them and they want to do it too.

So I was imagining if you can maybe over the course of however long it might take to give them all the information they need, you can essentially take somebody into like a mentorship type situation where now the listeners can feel like they're in it with them. But of course, they're getting this tailored information specific to that individual, but people are listening more publicly. And then at the end of it, they get the result. They get their accreditation or they get this incredible education and they're off and they're doing their thing. It's like, hey, by the way, if you really liked this series, this was specifically somebody in Ireland. And if you happen to be in Ireland as well, I'm going to be taking 10 people and we're going to be doing this as a group together. And if this was something that you're interested, you want to get access to me and get your questions answered, I'd love to help you out and we can do it. And this is where you go. And this is where you pay. And this is an online course just for you.

And then the next time you do this, maybe you focus on US and you bring somebody who's in the US to come on the show and you kind of coach them and you train them. And now you're starting to pick from all the different regions. And then over time, maybe you have somebody in the US that you partner with who becomes your US-based sort of, concierge, if you will, who is the person leading the sort of US podcast, but you just happen to be there too offering advice. And then that person begins to take a more managerial role for this aspect, but in the US, and then you have another person in, like you said, South Africa, and then another person somewhere else and you can start to grow from there. But start small and start with one. It teaches you so much about the systems and the how to and what they need and the language that they respond to. And then you can go from one to 10, 10 to a hundred, a hundred to thousands.

Colm:
Yes, yes.

Pat:
How's that sounding?

Colm:
Yeah. That sounds really good. I did a course actually in January this year and it was Lean Six Sigma. I don't know if you ever heard of that?

Pat:
Yeah, we've heard of that.

Colm:
Yeah. My dad was a toolmaker, which is like a process engineer by trade. And he said to me, you'll love it because it just teaches you ergonomics. And like that putting a system in place for process mapping and then develop it. So yeah, I can see what you're saying. If I write the course from start to finish, step by step, like Power-Up Podcast. Genuinely, now that you're saying that, that's exactly what Power-Up Podcasting is, because I remember you saying, I take you step by step, literally step by step through it. And some of the videos are 30 seconds, you've got to do this and some are 15 to 20 minutes when you run through the difference between SquadCast and how to use SoundCloud.

And it literally felt like you had my hand from the start until the finish. And little things like, don't forget that you need to get this pixel for your logo because it's going to be white, and this is going to be different for Facebook and Twitter... And like that, I suppose it really, even though I can appreciate you have that course designed for the masses, it literally felt like it was you directly teaching me that course one on one.

Pat:
Do you know how that course was created? I sold that course before it was made. I had a group of students and I said, "Hey, every week I'm going to come out with a new module." So I knew exactly where they were and I had that accountability. So I even had that working in my favor too so that by the end of it, there were already people in it and testimonials that I can then share to then promote it, and then we launched it publicly. So I think you have a plan, and start small because it seems like you're busy already. I think going full into all that is going to require full energy, but you can work your way there. And as you are sort of taking yourself out of certain things in the current two businesses that you have, maybe that's when more time gets dedicated to that as you scale things up.

But it doesn't mean you have to wait. You can start small, start now, and start to kind of get a feel for it. And the other cool thing about starting small is you might get a feel for... You dip your toe in the water and you're like, "You know what? That's not actually what I thought it was going to be like, let's try something else," versus getting funding and building a website and all this stuff only to realize after you do it, it's like, "Oh, this isn't what I thought it was going to be." So you can start small to learn even if you like it. And that's the direction you want to go.

Colm:
Well even, and you've touched on it in a podcast. If you were to do 15 minutes of work on this project a day, four days a week, that's an hour a week. And it's better than constantly saying, I must sit down and do five or six hours and this, or develop this and develop that. One thing I use is Google Keep, and I just have hundreds of notes. So I might be doing something or I might be working on something, I have a thought, stop, jot down the note. And that's something that I find with a lot of real, high-end entrepreneurs, Elon Musk, Richard Branson, they constantly write notes and notes and notes. They always have a pad and like that. I've read about, say, Elon Musk, having a three-minute meeting walking from one place to another. He's meeting someone. So it's I suppose time efficiency.

The thing with me is, even though I'm busy now developing and restructuring the two businesses. And as I said, we're actually in the middle of setting up a third business. That's not including any of the podcast or the online thing. It gets dark at 4:30 in the day over here so I've got six hours of darkness where I can't work and it means that I'm inside. So I really catch up on quite a lot of things in the winter.

Like when I set up that garden page on Facebook, that was in the winter because I had the time to develop it and now it's up and running on its own. And as I said, there's just under 30,000 members on that. So for me to do this now, I think I could actually do a lot of damage in the next... For the end of February is kind of my cut off for a lot of the work because March it comes back. But I think that's a really good setup if I was to do weekly modules and pick one person, run the entire thing with them and then start developing, I could work the podcast 10 weeks out and be developing the next week worth of modules and whatnot.

Pat:
Yeah, and with the podcast itself, you've already had a pool of people who know you, like you, trust you. You've gotten sort of a taste test of what it is that you're doing, and then you'll learn as you go. And that's the cool thing. I just think waiting on it would be tough, but also making sure that you are able to still do the things you need to do. So, prioritization, and like you said, maybe just once a week, once a day doing that. And so, man, I love it, dude. I'm so excited for this. I can't wait to sort of see what happens. If you don't mind, I'd love to reach back out to you in the future and see if we can get you back on and talk about kind of the things that you're going to do. Would that be okay?

Colm:
Yeah, absolutely. I'd love it. And as I said, and I'm not just saying it because I'm talking to you, I was listening to so many of your shows when they came out. Someone said, why're you listen to all of the shows, listen to what you need to listen to. I just genuinely always felt I always picked up something. You just always learn something from someone. There's so many episodes I can't think of it, but I've learned an unbelievable amount of content from you. And I always feel like you're very, very transparent, very, very upfront about everything and how everything is and how everything needs to be done, good, bad, and otherwise. So I do genuinely really, really appreciate the amount of work that you put in. I know now you're probably reaping the benefit over it. I don't think you thought it like this at the start, but it's genuinely pays dividends to show that you put in the work and really and truly do get it back out if it's heartfelt and it's meant, it's genuine. You want to actually help people and it's very, very apparent.

Pat:
Well, thank you so much for that Colm. I appreciate you for that sentiment. It just makes me smile. It's the perfect way to end the show here. And I'm very encouraged for what it is that you're going to do. I can't wait to see where it goes from here. And I think we hit on all the really important marks here. So thank you again so much for coming on and inspiring us and for just the plans. I'm so excited. I can't wait to catch up with you in the future. I appreciate you.

Colm:
That's great, Pat. Thanks so much again.

Pat:
Thank you.

Colm:
Cheers.

Pat:
All right. I hope you enjoyed that coaching call with Colm. He is the superintendent at Rathbane golf course, R-A-T-H-B-A-N-E in Ireland, and is just doing some really amazing things. And I cannot wait to hear what he does from here. So if you enjoyed this episode, thank you so much. Make sure to subscribe to the show if you haven't already and thank you in advance for all the amazing reviews that have been coming in this year so far, I appreciate you for that. And of course, if you'd like to get coached on AskPat as well, all you have to do is go to AskPat.com and you can click the button to apply on that page and we'll get that information and we'll reach back out to you if it's a good fit and it might be soon, it might be later, but just keep an eye out for those emails. So thank you again, I appreciate you, and make sure you subscribe because we've got another amazing episode coming at you next week. Until then, take care, and as always, Team Flynn for the win. Peace.