AP 1164: I’m Working SO Many Hours to Run My Business, What Should I Do?

AP 1164: I'm Working SO Many Hours to Run My Business, What Should I Do?

Pat Flynn:
What's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here and welcome to episode 1164 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 Peter Birch from TalkingHealthTech.com. He is somebody who's recently quit his job to go full-time with this and, very common story, it's starting to feel a little overwhelming. In fact, he's working a lot of hours. He's got a family, he's got a mortgage to pay, and there's a lot of weight now that he's running his own business. He even says himself in the show that if you were 20 and there was less risk involved, he'd be fine. But there's just so much weight here. What do we do?

Well, this is what we discussed today. So whether you're just starting out and you want to make sure you avoid these situations, or when you come across them, or if you're going through this right now, hopefully this will give you some ammunition to help through those situations for you. Listen in. This is a good one. Again, you can check out Peter at TalkingHealthTech.com or check out his podcast, Talking Health Tech. Here we go.

Peter, welcome to AskPat 2.0. Thanks so much for being here today.

Peter Birch:
Thanks so much for having me, Pat. It's great to be here.

Pat: Really excited to chat, and I'd love to start off by asking you a little bit about yourself. What do you do?

Peter:
Sure. Sure. So my name's Peter Birch. I am the founder of Talking Health Tech, which is a podcast and online community for the Australian health tech scene; so doctors, decision makers and developers that are here in Australia working within the health tech industry, so making solutions that are based in technology for those providing health care.

Pat:
So does that mean like software and other things like that?

Peter:
Yeah. Yeah. So in my career, when I started, I was predominantly focused on creating software for GPs, like primary care physicians. I'm not a ... Just to set the scene as well, I'm not a doctor or a developer, but I play nicely with everybody. So I've been mostly in operations management roles and general manager roles within larger organizations like corporations that were providing health care. Then generally, I've kind of progressed down from working in very large organizations right through to now being my own solopreneur and entrepreneurial type gigs. So it's been great to see that progression over the past 15 years from how healthcare utilizes technology and it's so ... Since doing the podcast and being involved in the industry, interesting, particularly in the last 12 months or a bit longer now with COVID, how much the industry relies on technology. So not just the software providers, but those creating devices like medical devices, but also pharma companies, pharmaceutical companies through to aged care and disability. So it's an interesting area that I thought was kind of quite super niche, and it then has broadened out into more of a general health care setting.

Pat:
That's so cool. Now, are you... Is your business model, are you more of like a consultant to these people or are you actually connecting the developers and providing solutions and then selling them? Are you having people... How does the business model work? I'm just curious.

Peter:
So it was funny because when I started, when Talking Health Tech started, the concept wasn't meant to be monetized in my head. So it was a podcast. I had a background in community radio. I thought, "Hey, it'd be nice to start up a podcast..." a bit of a personal branding experience to take some of the conversations I'm already having with people within the network and do them in a more, in a more public way, I guess, and with the whole intention of trying to improve collaboration within the industry. Because most people within the Australian healthcare industry, but I think it's the same thing globally, is that you feel so alone when you're working within it and no one speaks to anybody.

It feels quite isolated. To be able to have that kind of connection, at least go, "Oh, okay. I hear that this person is having the same problem with Medicare," or, "You know what? That sounds interesting. I'm working on a similar project. Let's collaborate." So I thought, "Look, I'll do a podcast. There might be maybe 20 episodes that I could do..." because I'm thinking maybe this is just the size of my kind of pool. After that, we can just see how it goes. Fast forward two years from then, I just recorded episode 120 yesterday.

Pat:
Wow.

Peter:
There's a pipeline of interviews for the next three months that are booked down. We do four episodes a week now, which is ridiculous doing four episodes a week.

Pat:
That is kind of ridiculous.

Peter:
Yeah, but it's -

Pat:
Good job, though. That's awesome.

Peter:
Yeah. Yeah. It's great to know that there's so much interest and it's such a great platform to be able to have those long form conversations with individuals that covers such a broad range of topics that would have just taken so long to otherwise put into a white paper or a document which is normally the way that things were communicated within healthcare.

Pat:
Cool. The work you're doing is so important. Obviously, we're helping people. So you've sort of found your own little way to do that by playing connector, and that's one of the best things you can do in business is to figure out who out there might need each other and then be the ones to connect them. I absolutely love that. So what's on your mind? Are you struggling with anything, challenges, et cetera?

Peter:
Yeah. And it's funny because when we originally connected when I applied for AskPat, I was at that point where I was working within a startup, scale-up company, and I was employed to run the business there and that was going great. But then this Talking Health Tech was continuing to bubble up and starting to monetize and saw the opportunity to make that my full-time thing. I struggled with that kind of decision for a while, and it's great because I joined SPI Pro and had those conversations with people in the community, was able to do the AMA with you as well. I was able to get that confidence to then make that jump and the world didn't end and it wasn't a disaster.

Pat:
It's going okay?

Peter:
Yeah, it's going really well. It's going really well. It's a profitable business. There's a lot of good opportunities that are arising, and that's really exciting. I guess the one thing that has come up out of all of this though, is that I am so tired, Pat. It's such a... Running your own thing and having that weight of everything... If it was just me by myself making that move in my 20 years, it'd be like, "Oh, well, if it fell down, I'd just go find another job and that's okay," but got the mortgage, got the three kids, got the wife, got all those other responsibilities of being an adult behind you.

So whilst it's all going okay, I'm putting in a lot of hours and it's kind of... The irony is I'm working in healthcare. So normally, whilst I'm not a physician or anything like that, there's something about it where I feel like, well... It's almost disingenuous sometimes where I think, "Well, I'm putting in all this extra time and effort and feeling like that continued at this rate, it's not sustainable." But at the same time, I sometimes justify it as like, "Oh, well, short-term gain. Do it all now quickly and then you're able to chill a bit later," but sometimes it's hard to see that light at the end of the tunnel.

Pat:
Yeah. When is later? Is later after you burn out and crash? Or is later because we've sort of planned and sort of started to remove yourself from the process or systematize? So I appreciate you sharing this because I think a lot of people can relate to this, or it is actually a fear that people have when getting started. So you're putting in the hours now and you are investing into the future, but what have you done already to potentially think about how you can manage time and the workload and be less overwhelmed?

Peter:
Yeah. I think I might be at that tipping point, but I'm not seeing the fruits of the labor yet. So it's almost like I'm at that point where I need that extra kind of push to get through and it might be getting harder because - I'll explain the context. So I've got extra help basically. I've got a community manager who's come on who's a great guy, medical student and software developer, the perfect combination of tasks for what I'm doing and brought on someone else's as a content manager. So since we're pumping out four episodes a week, having someone to be able to then manage all the contractors, so also contracting out -

Pat:
Editing and all that stuff.

Peter:
Yeah, post-production and then some graphics and some other bits and pieces. So I did spend a lot of time working out the process at the front end and I thought, "What can I farm off? And then what can I do?" I think my problem then though, it becomes as soon as I get a bit of space, I then try and fill it with something else because I'm like, "Oh, that's great. Now, I've got time to then scale up this new initiative and this one." So I'm worried that it doesn't matter how much kind of I hand off just because I'm always looking at new opportunities and wanting to kind of progress that I will then go, "Great. I'll just fill this space with working on the summit or working on something else," you know?

Pat:
Yeah. I know exactly how you feel. Trust me. You almost feel bad not filling in that time. You're like, "This is a waste. I could have done something different," or, "I could do something more and scale up." The way that I approach this and how I want you to at least think about this with me here on the show, is instead of thinking about your business in just as its own container, think about your business and your personal life, your just life in general, all as one whole holistic thing.

When you do that and you start to think about the time that you're getting back from these efficiencies that you're building and these systems inside of your work, you can then, yes, fill in that time, because we don't want to just sit on the couch all day, but how might you be able to fill in that time with the stuff on the personal side of things with the family, with hobbies that you might have and other avocations, other interests that you might have that can actually refuel you or light you up? Have you considered filling in those gaps with things outside of work?

Peter:
Yeah. It's funny. You almost feel a bit lame, don't you, when you think, "Well, what do I do? I work and I've got the family side of things." I think, "What are my hobbies?" I did very much used to be into health and fitness and just generally looking after yourself. Running was a big thing, was training for a marathon ages ago. I'm definitely not training for a marathon right now, at least not a -

Pat:
You're running a different right now and it has to do with work.

Peter:
A different marathon. Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So I feel like there's part of me that... There's a lot that's involved in a lot of research and a lot of kind of interesting areas that, again, are complimentary to what I do, but it's quite different. That's something that certainly does interest me. Being able to make time and space for that could be interesting.

Pat:
Do you feel like if you were to insert some of that health and fitness into your life, would that take away from other opportunities in your business or could that actually have an opposite effect and actually add a level of energy to what you're doing?

Peter:
Yeah. See, this is the thing. I know. The irony is if someone asked me, I'd almost be like, "Well, when you're out, when you've got a healthy mind, the juices are flowing, you're doing anything that's relating to fitness, generally then new ideas might come to you or you're rejuvenated." It's sometimes I just think, "Oh, well... Oh, this email..." I might be getting ready to go out for a run, but it's like, I could just get this one thing done and then this would be beneficial. So there almost seems to be a level of discipline or something that I need to be -

Pat:
Yeah. That's the word. That is the word. For me, discipline is hard as well because I kind of just am often a fly by the seat of my pants kind of person. If I, like you, get an email or something, I'll answer this email and then I'll go on a run and then something else gets in the way and something else gets in the way. For me, it's about the discipline and the prioritization, and for your ability to honor what you said you're set out to do. With email in particular, it's interesting because that is in fact when you zoom out, I think Tim Ferriss said this, that is other people controlling your time and sucking the energy and sometimes the life out of you at their request. So that's why for email, for me, I have specific times of the day where I'm going to enter this next phase of the day. All I'm doing is email and I can focus on that.

Then this other phase of the day, it's all family time. It literally is in the calendar. So that because it's on the calendar, is the top priority, is the most important thing, and I cannot let anything else go through. That's hard to do in the beginning, especially. With email, in particular, I remember having feelings of what if there's something that like goes wrong? What if there's some emergency of some kind? I need to be there right away. Jess, who I hired to help me with my email said, "You're going to be fine. There's not going to be anything that's going to go wrong to a point where if you don't answer within a day, it's not going to work out in the end." She's like, "If you have something that is an emergency, I will text you or I will let you know. Otherwise, if you're not hearing anything, things are going fine," and that was a huge weight off my shoulder.

Peter:
Yeah. I didn't think about email. I've outsourced a few different areas of things where I don't add as much value and others can probably do it better than me, but for some reason, I've kind of just left email there and you just reminded me that that's probably an area that I do spend a lot of my time and -

Pat:
Email's the worst. Email's the absolute worst. Email is the worst.

Peter:
I was going to ask just off the back of the time-blocking and being able to make time for only doing this task at this period of time, do you find that... My concern with that sometimes is, well, what happens if something, if there's an emergency like a family situation or something else comes up in the business, and then all of a sudden, you've put all your recordings or this particular task in one particular bucket, then all of a sudden you've wiped out that? I see almost the benefit in spreading the risk of recordings, but that also drains me a lot. I spread out a lot of recordings for podcast since we're doing so many episodes. It's spreading them out spreads the risk so that if for some reason I'm not available that day or whatever happens, I'm not then burning three episodes and I've got to reschedule three things, but maybe it's a bit of a trade-off.

Pat:
It is a trade-off and no matter what, there's always going to be pros and cons, of course. But I find that when I time-block and do a little bit of batch processing with things, I actually can get more done than if I were to spread them out. I might be able to get four episodes done in a two hour period, versus three and a two hour periods spread across more time. Then again, when those things get completed, it's sort of out of my brain now and I've done my job for the weekend, I can open up more availability for other things, business or personal. Yes, there's of course the opportunity or the possibility of something happening, but I think, and I'm sure you know this, you've took one of the biggest risks ever. You quit your job to now do what it is that you're doing.

The approach of, "Well, I'm not going to do this because this might happen," is more of a reactive approach than a proactive approach. You know what I mean? So I think that things will happen. You reschedule when it comes up, but the pros and the benefits of that will far outweigh those moments where you can sort of reschedule, plus the fact that you probably get ahead. I mean, there are moments when I have a week where I'm just like, "No, I'm not feeling that this week," but we're two months ahead of schedule. So I'm totally fine. I can just either add an additional episode for the next few weeks every time I sit back and record and get it back, and that's the kind of cool thing. You get a little bit more flexible, which then opens up more room and you feel a little bit less overwhelmed. I do want to ask you about four episodes per week. That is a lot. I'm guessing you're the host of all of them. It's your voice. Right?

Peter:
Yeah.

Pat:
You have these editors and such, but what if it was three? What if it was two? Would there be any less value to the listener? The reason I ask this is that I've had this experience before on YouTube, not a podcast cause I never went... Well, in fact, I did go daily with AskPat for a while, but it was a very short episode. With my YouTube channel, I remember publishing daily to a point where people were like, "I can't follow you anymore because I'm so behind. I just feel like I'm overwhelmed with all of your content. You're not even giving me a chance to absorb everything and actually take action on it." How would you respond to that in light of four episodes per week?

Peter:
Sure. So to give context, I have three... And this is actually a topic that I've been thinking about for a little bit so I'm glad you brought it up. I have three episodes on our main podcast feed for the public, and then I've got one extra bonus episode for members. So again, using Supercast, which is great.

Pat:
Yeah.

Peter:
The bonus episode, that's something I need to find more time for just separately because I'm using the bonus episode as a way for me to be less of the guy that's asking questions, more of the person that's imparting my kind of insights into how to build your health tech startup, or how to raise capital, all that kind of stuff, which is great. But again, I haven't done the episode for this Sunday, for example, and it's Friday when I'm recording. So I've got to somehow find time to work that in.

Pat:
Well, we'll finish up soon. I promise.

Peter:
No, no, no, that's fine. But with the other episodes… See, the business model that I've got is that maybe about half of the episodes that we have, our organization, because we're quite B2B, it's an industry podcast, a lot of organizations see the podcast as a marketing opportunity and have paid to be able to be on the podcast. So this is an interesting kind of thing that I didn't think of. I didn't think I was going to go down that route and it's something that when organizations do choose to purchase a dedicated episode of the podcast and be interviewed, I'm also wanting to make sure that the quality of the content is high and the listeners still feel that they're getting value out of it. They're not being sold to and all that kind of stuff.

That's generally, the companies agree with that. That's how I get the most amount of value out of doing that as well. So the reason for expanding out to three was because of demand, but then at the same time... So that I could fit in more podcasts because more organizations are keen to essentially pay to be on the podcast. But yes, I've been thinking about that kind of issue of that's not infinitely scalable and that also then I've got a risk there of diluting impact or the value of that the further that goes. There's probably some value in having scarcity as well because it got to a point where organizations were wanting to pay to come on the podcast, but it's like, "Well, I'm booked out for three, four months in advance." It's like, when you're at that really early stage, turning away a client is a hard thing to do.

Pat:
Right. It's hard, but with scarcity comes the ability to increase your price per a person to get moved up, for example. So you can have an opportunity like that where the wait list is three months, but if you pay this much, we can definitely push you forward or something like that. That's not always possible. I'm just kind of thinking out loud here because with scarcity comes opportunity to raise prices. It's just economics.

But the other thing is, and another thing I like to challenge people on is okay, if you're doing all this work, does it still have to be you? Can it be maybe one episode a week that's hosted by maybe another person on the team? I know a person who also has a podcast where they're not even supplying the information. It's literally more of a course where a person will come on and record on their end for 30, 45 minutes and then just give them the audio to put in. It almost becomes like a masterclass versus an interview, thus removing them from the entire interview process for that one episode.

Peter:
I'm also definitely really interested in exploring this concept too, because it ties to another thing that's been on my mind around expanding the offering to be more than just for Australia. We're very Australia focused, which has been good for the audience that I'm targeting because here in Australia, being ... we're sometimes a bit isolated from everywhere else. There's nothing really specific for Australian health tech. So that's where the value has been. But at some point, I'd want to be able to explore going more global with the opportunities because a lot of exciting things are happening more globally in health tech. So then when I was thinking about that, I was thinking about, well, there could potentially be a show based on some other area and then have someone else host that podcast or something.

But I, I have actually been toying with the concept of not me not hosting everything. For example, we do have a virtual summit coming up in about a month that I was contemplating me being the do-er and, "Hey, I'm going to do everything here," I'll host all of these conversations with individuals, like fireside chats or panels and it'd just be like an extended version of the podcast. Then I realized that would be me talking for eight hours and I'd probably dropped out at the end of it. So having individuals chair those sessions and other people present is a neat kind of soft way to do that. Also, we're doing a live stream, a weekly live stream, and I'm jumping on with our community manager who's again, that medical student and software developer. He's a cool guy and it makes for great conversations.

So I'm slowly introducing others into these conversations because I also feel it as well. If I'm listening to a podcast and then all of a sudden there's someone else that's hosting, I think it happens sometimes with Tim Ferris or others where it's like you almost feel like, "Wait, where did Tim go?" Or, "Where did this person go?" So I get worried about that, but I think maybe slowly others into the fold could then open up the opportunity for it not being just the Pete show. I'm totally all for making this much way bigger than myself. So this show isn't about me. The community isn't about me. That's why it's great having the online community as well. So slowly, I'm trying to bring more into it. So hopefully, that can alleviate some stress for me.

Pat:
There could be some opportunities for episodes of the week to be actually community members. Maybe they get a little access to telling their story, which serves as both a way for them to get a little bit of exposure, but also a way to give others exposure to you and what you've done for them through their lens, which would be really interesting, especially if you're inviting more people into Supercast or inviting people into your courses and other things that you might have to offer, which is really interesting. I think the biggest lever here is going to be discipline when it comes to when you have more time to not consider just, okay, what else can I do in the business to fill in that time? But rather, how can I create that space so that when I go back into business, you have a little bit more energy?

It's almost like sometimes if I'm working really hard on a project or a launch or something, instead of staying up super late and continuing to work on it... Just like in university, they say if you were to stay up all night and cram everything and pull an all nighter, that's worse than going to bed and just taking a break and then coming back, for energy levels and for your brain activity and such. So I think that discipline is going to be really key. Then also, like we talked about, we touched on email a little bit, we touched on potentially bringing other members on. You perhaps have seen us within SPI and especially in SPI Pro, it's a lot of my team members stepping up because they also have their super powers that they're able to bring to the community that I'm not even able to do. So it's starting to become this sort of like team now versus just me, and I really love that and that is opening up more time for me as well for other business things, but also more family related things as well.

Peter:
Yeah, because we've got a Circle community as well and we launched that a couple of months ago and that's been great. It's nice to be part of SPI Pro to be able to see what happens there and then kind of apply some of those back into our community too, which is a bit of a double whammy. But I totally agree. The last couple of days, there's been so much activity in there, which is fantastic, and there's been some long form posts that individuals have made, like members, that paying members have made into the community and they're all engaging. I'm like, "I need to catch up with what's going on in my community." I've seen the notifications go off, but then I've checked in and thought, "Oh no, everyone's waiting for me to reply to something." No one's waiting for me to reply to any of these messages in the community.

I can certainly get involved wherever I can add value, and I'm just starting to see some of those things where there is movement. So I guess it is providing me hope, but it's like at that old lame graphic where there's that miner that's underground and he's digging, digging, digging, and he walks away just before he hits the spot of gold. So yeah, it's continuing on, making sure that conscious of those things. There is opportunities to farm off email, which I've totally not thought about. So I'm definitely going to explore that more and make some room for something about me and try and get back into the running as well. That could be . . .

Pat:
Yeah. That would light you up, I'm sure. Plus, I know for me, as somebody who had run as well a while back, a lot of my best business ideas came on the sort of meditative runs that I've been on. So I think it's not taking away. It's actually adding to not just the business, but holistically, you as a person, and you as a father, you as a husband, and I think that's all the more reason to focus on this. Final point here before we finish up -, thank you for this, by the way, I love how you've shared this, again, this is going to be really helpful for a lot of people. On the community thing. You touched on something really important and it's this idea that you personally, at this point, don't need to reply and be there for every single conversation that's happening.

If you are starting out, that's really important because you want people to feel heard and make them feel like they belong and such, but eventually there's a tipping point in a community where that would be weird if you actually did that. If you imagine going to a giant dance or something and there's all these groups of people at this dance and in a gym, it would be kind of weird if you went to every group and was like, "Hey, what's going on?" Okay. I'm going to go to this group, "Hey, guys. What's going on?" It would be kind of awkward. You're going to be the person more on the stage sort of welcoming everybody in at the same time, and perhaps there's a welcome committee or other people. Plus, people find each other and then you just let those conversations happen. It's awesome.

Peter:
Yeah. Well, I like that idea of a welcome committee. I've not thought of that, because I try and send a Bonjoro personalized message, but that's getting a bit hard now, but so I'm thinking about scaling those up a little bit. But that worked quite well at the start and people found that highly engaging, the personalized contact. But I invest a lot of time in the individuals, in those founding members of the community.

Pat:
As you should.

Peter:
Yeah. And just now, we're seeing them all engaging with each other. It's good having a community manager who, he's remunerated a little bit, but it's more about the opportunity that exists within the business too. So having that help is quite good. Circle's a really good platform to be able to do that on too. Yeah, it's great.

Pat:
Well, Peter, thank you so much for today. I hope this was really helpful. If you could offer everybody who's listening where they can go to learn more about you. That'd be great.

Peter:
Yeah, sure. So best is go to TalkingHealthTech.com and we're on LinkedIn is where we have a lot of activity on socials, but we're also on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter. So check us out there.

Pat:
Perfect. So you mind if we reach back out to you in the future to see sort of how things progress?

Peter:
Yeah. I love it. I'll let you know how many runs I'm doing a week and who's handling my emails. Yeah.

Pat:
I'm going to hold you accountable to those miles, okay?

Peter:
All right. All right. It's on.

Pat:
Thanks, Peter.

Peter:
Okay. No worries. Thank you.

Pat:
All right, Peter, thank you so much for your generosity with your time and your vulnerability today to share with us what you're going through and what you're going to do to hopefully manage the time and the energy moving forward. This is a, of course, a very common thing, like I said in the intro, that a lot of people go through and I'm just very grateful that you can help us lead by example here. And we look forward to connecting with you and again in the future. And again, if you want to check out his podcast, Talking Health Tech, and again, TalkingHealthTech.com, you can check him out, Peter Birch, thank you so much.

If you want to get coached here on AskPat, I'd be more than happy to, but can't pick everybody. Truth is, I can't pick you unless you at least apply. You can apply at AskPat.com. Just find the application button, record a little voice memo to myself and my team, and we'll help figure it out, and we may be reaching out to you sooner or later. Sometimes we reach out to people six or seven months after, sometimes even more, and even in this case with Peter, he even said, at the time he applied he was doing something else. So we reach out and try to help as many people as possible here on the show. And again, make sure you subscribe if you haven't already. And again, AskPat.com. Thanks in advance for all the reviews. I appreciate you for your time today. Thank you so much. I look forward to serving you in the next episode. Until then, keep crushing it, take care, thank you, and as always, Team Flynn for the win. Peace.