Andrew Hartman with Time Boss

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Time Boss, Mr. Andrew Hartman. How are you, man?

Andrew Hartman: Hey, Stone, I’m doing great. I’m so glad to be here. Thank you for having me.

Stone Payton: Well, it is an absolute delight to have you on the broadcast, Andrew. I got a thousand questions. I know we’re not going to get to them all, but a great place to start, in my experience, would be if you could share with me and for the benefit of our listeners, mission. Purpose what what are you and your team really out there trying to do for folks, man?

Andrew Hartman: Yeah, absolutely. You know, my heart is for people that are up to something, that have a contribution that they want to make, and they are precluded from getting that because of their relationship with time. Either they are overwhelmed. Too many things going on, always stuck putting out fires, or they are making their contribution happen, but they are burning too bright and they are going to burn out. They’re going to get checked out of the game because they just can’t sustain that pace. So I am for those people. I want them to take control of their time to get the results they want without anxiety or burnout being a part of that equation.

Stone Payton: So I got to know, man, what’s the backstory? How in the world did you find yourself in this line of work trying to serve this constituency?

Andrew Hartman: Yeah, I wish I could say that. I woke up and had a great idea, Stone. But, uh, you know, I was late 20s, uh, gotten a job where I had more to do than I had time to do it. Uh, almost instantly overwhelmed. Didn’t have the mental models to to handle it. Found out very quickly that I had been handed a to do list and a calendar, but no one ever taught me how to track, how to manage my time. Great parents went to a great school, great education, all the things. But what I realized is time management is tribal knowledge. If you don’t have parents that are good at it, or you’ve never had a boss that taught you how to do it, you just kind of have to figure it out on your own. And no one ever showed me. So overwhelmed. Wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats. You know, grab a notepad near me and just try to write down whatever was stressing me out or in my head. Wake up in the morning. Look at that notepad and it was just chicken scratch. Anyways, I didn’t get anything down. Meaningful. Um repeated that day after day, week, week after week for quite a while. Ultimately, ultimately led me to actually losing my sense of smell. Like I could feel it coming on well, well before Covid. And stress is wild. Stress has has really weird impacts on the body. You know, it’s hypertension, stomach issues. Uh headaches. Uh, and for me, it was lost. My sense of smell. So that was a real. That was a real red lights flashing on the dashboard moment of.

Andrew Hartman: Okay, it’s it’s got to change. Um, wish I could say I made a flip turn right there, but it took me quite a while. Um, you know, I joke often, I really started to run this weekly process of trying to fix it, and it it took me it took me a couple of years to really figure it out. And my conviction was this stone. I was I was an early stage software companies that, you know, short runways, high expectations. And a lot of us are in environments like that. You know, it’s not just early stage software companies. And I was feeling myself burning out. I was watching people on my team burn out, and I just came to the point where I thought, this is so silly, this is illogical. We need we need to be in the game as long as we can and go as fast as we can in as sustainable fashion as possible. So that led me to build out what ultimately became the Time Boss framework. And I started going fast without anxiety and burnout, making big impact. My team started making big impact. Individuals would leave my teams or end up at other companies and be like, hey, can you come and show us whatever we were doing back there? Because that was really working. And I, I just kind of backed into this framework that was really universal and made sense in any environment. And very candidly, I’ve just ridden the horse in the direction it’s going since then, and that’s where we are today.

Stone Payton: So this is a full time pursuit. This is what you do. You and your team are out there serving. Whoo!

Andrew Hartman: Uh, so we primarily serve, uh, companies that are in growth mode or growth mode, or they’ve had some type of compression on their time. So think knowledge workers where they are 100%, 100% responsible for their calendar. Their calendar is a wide open space every week where there are outcomes they’re responsible for and the decisions they make, literally the things they get on their calendar are the way that they drive value Incredibly stressful place to be. If you don’t know what to do with that. You’ll have more ideas, more things to do than you have time to do it, and you’ll find yourself overwhelmed pretty quickly. Or you’ll just start grinding and you’ll work crazy hours and it’ll start impacting your health. It’ll start impacting your relationships. Those are the people that we serve tend to be earlier stage companies. You know, larger corporates, unless they’re in growth mode, do they have some compelling event they’re driving. They’re just in a lower gear and can kind of get by without it. But for those companies that need it, it’s a life saver. Yeah.

Stone Payton: So let’s dive into the work a little bit if we could. And I’d like to explore it. Working with individuals, as I understand that that is an option, a path, but also with teams. I’m particularly interested in what happens early on in. I’ll call it an engagement cycle. That might not be the right phrase, but kind of early on in the relationship.

Andrew Hartman: Yeah. Yep. Early on it’s all about assessment. So we all have lived into a certain set of habits related to time, and we’ve done it for really, uh, rational reasons. Right? The people that are overwhelmed are doing their best, like they’re not choosing overwhelm. It’s just this is the best they have. This is what is in their hand right now. So what I’m really trying to understand is where are the individuals at or where are the teams at in their relationship with time. And that becomes our baseline. That really becomes our pivot point to say, okay, let’s get really clear on how our current habits are sending us sideways, either as an individual or as a team. And then let’s chart a path. Let’s let’s install the time based framework, and then let’s just start dealing with the friction that comes from that and helping people find that next gear. And the language we use is their highest sustainable pace. What is the what is the most impact you can have, the most outcomes you can drive in a way that’s ultimately sustainable for you. Where you are in the game the longest, you’re not. You’re not checking out because of stress or anxiety or burnout. You’re not getting diminished results because you’re burning too bright. You’re really finding that right pace for you and for your team to drive to drive the most impact possible.

Stone Payton: So what are you finding the most rewarding. What’s the most fun about it for you at this stage?

Andrew Hartman: I love that question. So thank you. Uh, you know, I was just telling a buddy, I, I feel like the work I do is I’m helping people realize that they have a bear trap on their foot, and they don’t even realize they have a bear trap on their foot. And when you open that bear trap and people are like, oh my gosh, this is what it’s like to run with two feet. They don’t even realize what’s possible when people get their relationship with time, right? The entire world opens up. It’s not just their professional world, it’s their personal world. You begin to be able to name a preferred future, and then you have the tools in your toolbox to actually make it happen, to represent those items on your calendar in a way that they’re actually going to get done. That’s that’s the greatest gift for me. I, I’ve always said I want to be a shortcut or a cheat code for anyone in their life. I just want to help them get what they can’t get on their own. And helping people solve their relationship with time is truly exponential, because it’s not just next week where they get that win. It’s every week for the rest of their life. And then, you know, a lot of people that go through time will say, I’m going to show my kids this. Like, this is just the way that time works. I want them to get this too. And that’s when I get into generational impact and legacy. I mean, I’m truly stunned as I’m talking about it. I’m getting goosebumps. Like, I just this is my love. This is my this is my lane. This is my assignment. Everyone involved with time, boss. This is what we’re up to.

Stone Payton: Well, that frame, that lens is very helpful for me personally. The way you characterize it as your relationship with time right out of the box, that helps you just look at it completely differently, doesn’t it?

Andrew Hartman: 100%. Yeah. We most people will say they’re fighting time. There’s not enough time. You know, we have these really negative self-talk tracks that we get stuck in. And what I try to help people understand is time is the opportunity. Time is your currency. It’s the way you make things happen. You know, it would be like an investment manager, uh, not wanting to deal with money. It doesn’t make any sense. You know, it’s a categorical mismatch. We are the stewards of this time that has been given to us. And I’m simply just trying to empower people where they look at every week as opportunity, not as man, how am I going to get through this? You know, last week was hard enough. How am I going to get through this week? And truly, that’s the average. That is, the average knowledge worker in at least in Western culture, is is running on overwhelm, experiencing some level of burnout, seeing waning, waning results. And it’s it’s self-inflicted wounds. It doesn’t have to be that way. And people just need to be shown that there’s a different way.

Stone Payton: I gotta believe that you run into observe some similar some patterns, like you get into a situation and you’re like, yep. And you may not. You’re probably more socially skilled than me. You might not let the person know that you’ve been there before, but you’re thinking to yourself, yep, seen this one before, and I bet we need to talk about this this and and and this is that is that accurate? Do you see some of the same pathology? Maybe a little strong but some of the same challenges across different clients? Hundred percent.

Andrew Hartman: Yeah. There’s three three personas. To your point, it really most people fall into one of these buckets, sometimes multiple, but often they’ll have one that’s dominant. There’s the firefighter where they are addicted to anxiety. Um, they let things catch on fire. Because what’s what’s nice about being a firefighter is, you know, your job. If the house is on fire, I’m supposed to put it out. And so you’ll have people that just live for the firefight, and they will tend to work extended hours or overwhelm themselves because they can’t get anything done on their priority list until it’s quiet, you know? And that often means early mornings, late nights, weekends off hours where they’re giving more of their life to work than they want to. And that’s really beginning to impact them. Uh, second persona would be a, uh, excuse me, a grinder. And these are people they are very clear on how to create value, but they have no governor on their speed. And so they will work more than they want to work because they constantly feel behind. They don’t have mental models that help them understand that they’re making good progress, so they just grind. Those people tend to burn too bright.

Andrew Hartman: This is I was actually in both of those personas at different points, but I tend to be more on the grinder side where that person really needs a good understanding of progress. They need to understand what enough is on a day by day and week by week basis, where again, they can really find that pace. Third one is an ideator. These are people that just are constantly coming up with new ideas. Those new ideas are constantly interrupting the old ideas. They tend to violate their own boundaries related to how much time they want to give to work or whatever area of their life, because they’re just so distracted. I joke, I joke, they tend to work extra hours because of squirrel, like something comes into their field of view and it sends them in another direction. And so those are I mean, truly, when I sit down with anyone, it’s it’s one of those three personas. And then each of those has a bit of a prescriptive path that you ask the right questions, you help them get the right mental models. They can make progress really rapidly, provided they have strong accountability to help them make that change.

Stone Payton: Because I don’t have my video on you didn’t see me grinning ear to ear when you talked about the squirrel.

Andrew Hartman: Are you. Are you an ideator stone? Is that your lane?

Stone Payton: I resemble that remark. I just I get so much, I guess, emotional compensation for for thinking I see something in a different light and then and then going down that path and and it has worked out just enough, right, that I want to keep doing it. Yeah.

Andrew Hartman: Right. Well and that’s, you know that what I was Sharon Stone, is it like you do that for a very rational reason. And people are firefighters for very rational reasons, and they’re grinders for very rational reasons. They have lived their way. We have all lived our way into our current experience of life for good reasons, for survival reasons, for the wins that it’s given us. And what I, what I really am helping people see is there’s there’s another mountain, there’s another lane, there’s another way to operate to get you what you want without the anxiety or the burnout or the stress, you know. But we replace that with peace and freedom and clarity, where you can just attack the things that matter to you without having those anchors on you that are also going to wear you down or pull you out of the game.

Stone Payton: So I’m around small business entrepreneur people a lot here in this community where we have a physical studio. It’s one of our business, radio X Studios, and I’m kind of like the social mayor here in little old Woodstock, Georgia, because I’m a radio guy that invites people to come talk about their business. And I don’t know if this is confined to small business people, but I observe a lot. What I would say some of these folks, in my opinion, and maybe it’s a little unfair because I’ve kind of reached a different level in my life and career, but it’s almost like they where busy as a badge, you know, is that you see, you’ve seen that. Yeah.

Andrew Hartman: Oh, absolutely. It’s an identity thing. And it’s, you know, the metaphor given to me by a mentor is we get excited about light bulbs when we need to get excited about lasers. You know, we walk in these rooms where it’s really bright and there’s so much going on, and we wear that in identity. But if we really care about our contribution, we got to get really clear of what is the outcome that we’re trying to drive. And then the next question is, how much of your life do you want to give to this thing? For it to actually get accomplished and busy is not busy is immaterial to that. Um, that equation. There are people that put that have decided to give 20 hours of their week to whatever they’re trying to make happen in the world, and they’re utterly overwhelmed, burning out. And there’s people that have decided to give 80 hours of their week or more, and their heart is on fire and they’re making amazing things happen. So time is not at all an indicator of success. And busy is not an indicator of success. It’s about what do you do with the currency of time you’re willing to give to that area of your life? And so yeah, I really I actually encourage those people, you know, they and I’ll hear, you know, we’ll hear it all the time. I can’t make that change. I’m just too busy. Well, we are all 100% responsible for our lives all the time.

Andrew Hartman: We whether we whether we like it or not. This is where the language time box came from. We are the time box of our future self. We are making decisions that will constrain our future self into having to carry out those plans. And so I’m simply encouraging people look at next week like a blank slate. How much of your life are you willing to give to this area? You know, most people will say most business owners will say 40 to 60 hours. They’re mostly they’re typically in that range. And then I simply say, what are we going to fill that with? What are the outcomes that you’re trying to drive, and what are the highest leverage things we can fill that week with with reasonable buffer to make those outcomes happen? And then whatever else doesn’t fit, we’re either going to say no to. We’re going to defer it. We’re going to delegate it. We’re going to figure out a way to digitize it. But we our first move is not busyness. Our first move is what are the highest leverage things that can drive the outcomes that I want. Again, under that big idea that we are 100% responsible for our life, our life is not happening to us. Our calendar is not happening to us. We are always choosing it. And I’m simply encouraging people to assume their role as their time boss and do something about it in a way that’s going to get the outcomes they want.

Stone Payton: You mentioned the term burnout and as an individual contributor, father, husband, friend. I don’t want to burn out for me. But as a leader in this organization, I absolutely don’t want my people to burn out. And I, I don’t have any hard data to prove it, but it’s probably out there. I mean, that can be a real dollars and cents impact. The people burning out, quitting on you, being unhappy, retention, the whole bit. Right.

Andrew Hartman: Absolutely. Yeah. If you look at an employee level, you’re looking at one and a half to two times the cost of that individual’s annual salary to replace them and to get them productive to the level of the person that left. So it’s I mean, it’s dollars and cents to not have people burn out. And the challenge is it’s not a, you know, no, burnout is not a gear that we shift into. It is a it is a week to week, month to month evaluation of where are we at. And that’s the that’s the power of of really looking at our time like habits. If we build in this weekly planning meeting and the time boss framework really runs around this idea of a weekly planning meeting. One of the key activities within that weekly planning meeting is asking myself the question, do I need more progress this week or do I need more peace? And that’s really a pendulum. There’s going to be there’s going to be weeks where you’re in too low of gear and you’re like, you know what? I need more progress. I need to I need to go a bit harder this week because I am responsible for these outcomes. I want to drive harder. And there’s going to be weeks where, you know, man, I have been burning too bright.

Andrew Hartman: If I don’t slow down, this is going to go bad. This is going to lead to burnout. This is going to impact my results, or this is going to impact my people. And you need to course correct back towards peace. But it requires an honest person evaluating that on a week to week basis. And that’s how you find your highest sustainable pace, where week over week over week, you’re making those tiny little course corrections to really find your lane. I know for me, I can do 50 hours, 50 hours of what I call income generating activities. If I press beyond that for multiple weeks at a time, I’ll feel it. My family will feel it. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. If I do less than that, I think I’m leaving meat on the bone. I think I can do more and I care about my contribution. I want to impact as many people as I possibly can with time, boss. But if I’m not careful, that means I could just work every waking hour, which I have in past areas and areas of my life. That kind of led me to this framework. So I’m really mindful of what is that highest sustainable pace to maximize my contribution over the long haul, over the long haul.

Stone Payton: So when you get on the other side of those 50 hours and it sounds like you more than most would be very tuned into that and self-aware. Do you choose to pursue other interests, passions, hobbies, and if so, speak to that a little bit, because the reason I’m asking is I’m operating under the distinct impression that the things I like to do, which most of my listeners know that I like to hunt, fish, and travel, that I really feel like a it gives me some space, but I feel like I come back refreshed, recharged, and that much better prepared to genuinely serve.

Andrew Hartman: Absolutely. I mean, think of it. If you think of it, if you just max the RPMs on your car all day long, you would get to everywhere you want to go the fastest. But over the long haul, that’s going to wear down your car. Like there’s a it’s just not rational. And so what you’re what you’re describing, stone, is you’ve found your highest sustainable pace or you’re in pursuit of it. Right. That travel and fishing and hunting, those restore you to bring you back with the energy you need to be as successful as you can in this area where you really want to contribute and have massive impact. And so that’s the same for me. So I you know, what’s outside of my those 50 hours. So I, you know, I think of them like buckets of currency. So 50 hours is a bucket of currency that I’m trying to be as judicious as I can. And the rest of my life is another bucket. So then in that other bucket, it’s I’ve got teenagers, so it’s time with my kids. These are such critical years for me to be present in their life. And I am not successful if I if time boss is successful and continues to scale the way I want it to scale, and I lose relationships with my kids or with my wife, I’m not a success.

Andrew Hartman: My my definition of success is broader than simply that this this area where I professionally want to contribute. And so relationship with my kids, in my community, volunteering in my church. We love travel. My son and I love to fish. My daughter and I love to surf. My my wife and I love to go to great restaurants. Those are also priorities. I can’t look at those as like be priorities and I have to protect them. Just like I protect my professional hours, my work hours. Both of them have outcomes that I’m trying to drive. And truly, you know, Time Boss is primarily focused around people’s relationship with time at work. Most people take the same habits and frameworks and mental models into their personal life, because it works the exact same way. If whatever you want, whatever preferred future you want, you must represent that on your calendar. Because your calendar is your currency. It is the time you have, the time that you are stewarding, whether that’s hunting or fishing or surfing or going to great restaurants or relationship with your kids or your church or whatever you decide. We’re all 100% responsible. And so we have to prioritize it, and we have to map it to our calendar, and we have to be committed to our calendar or it’s just not going to happen.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practice like yours, a firm like yours? How do you get the new business or you get to have conversations like this?

Andrew Hartman: Yeah. It’s great. I appreciate that question. You know, we are still in testing and learning phase to date. What’s really worked well is referral, which is great. I you know, I come from I mentioned I was an early stage software companies. I was primarily on the product side. And a really good product is all about solving a real problem. Um, and so we time boss has gotten really good at solving people’s relationship with time. That’s a that’s a spear in their chest. They feel overwhelmed. They feel like it’s precluding them from the life they want. And then those individuals refer their friends. They, you know, one individual comes from a company. They go back to their company and they refer coworkers or, you know, one business owner or team leader goes through. They refer, um, colleagues at other companies. The other thing that we are doing is quite a bit of speaking. So we we’ve just gotten into the vistage, um, speaking circuit. So we’re doing more speaking within Vistage, which has been great. And really, it’s just, you know, I’m at this stage, I’m, you know, we’re developing the name of Time Box, but we’re very early, so we have to go via venues that transfer authority. A referral is a powerful authority transfer. Speaking authentically and very practically in front of business leaders is a is a really powerful authority transfer where Vistage is saying we trust in this individual and then I can create real value in that environment. And then those those business owners are very open to, uh, having a next step conversation with me or referring me to to people that they know that where it might be a good fit. So those are the those are the primary ways right now. But like I said, we’re you know, we’re still young. We’re about a year and a half into this adventure. So we’re continuing to test and learn how we might grow it.

Stone Payton: Sure. Well, doing good work is turns out that’s a fantastic sales tool, isn’t it?

Andrew Hartman: Absolutely, yes. I keep telling our team if we one of our core values is solve real problems, that there’s nothing fluff in time. Boss, we are so committed to removing that spear from someone’s chest that is, you know, a sideways relationship with time. And I truly believe if we are, we stay committed to that. We will innovate the right ways. We will. We will be in the game long enough to discover the right paths for for there really to be great opportunity for everyone, because it’s at the end of the day, it’s creating value. This isn’t a this isn’t a shell game. This isn’t a smokescreen to get someone to sign a contract. This is a heartfelt connection to these individuals that I know what it’s like to get your relationship with time right. And I want everyone that we support to have that same experience because their whole world will open up to them. And I live for that. And anyone that joins the Time Boss team has to live for that. That’s the heartbeat. We have to have to be successful.

Stone Payton: Before we wrap up, I’d love to leave our listeners with a couple. I call them pro tips. Just a couple. I don’t know if it’s a do’s and don’ts, something to read, something to be thinking about. And look gang. The number one pro tip here is reach out to Andrew and his team and just have a conversation with them. But uh, prior to that, maybe there’s a couple of things we could leave them with an actionable pro tip or two.

Andrew Hartman: Yeah, absolutely. Number one pro tip, I’d say is get everything out of your head into a list. So if you’ve ever read Getting Things Done, this is a maxim within getting things done as well. But most of our stress and overwhelm comes from the fact that we can only hold 5 to 7 things in our head at a time, and anything else that’s out there just creates stress. So pro tip would be get it out of your head, get it onto a list, a single list that you’re going to be committed to. And then, you know, certainly there’s so many strategies beyond that of what to do with that list, but I think that’s a great place to start. Other thing I would highly recommend for people is, uh, put on their calendar right now 2 to 3 hours a day. I call it whirlwind and just have it be buffer in your calendar where you’re not overscheduling yourself, and that’s where you handle emails, client calls, water heater breaking, kid get sick, all the things that are going to happen in life. Just add some realistic buffer to your calendar. And here’s the thing that happens when you do that. If you have buffer and you have time where you know you can deal with the realities of life in the other part of your schedule, you will be so much more likely to be committed to your highest priorities. And certainly there’s ways in the time boss framework to maximize that time to really get the outcomes that you want. But just separating out some whirlwind time and some priority time will make you much more committed to your priority time. Instead of constantly feeling interrupted, constantly feeling like things are crashing into your world and adding and stress to your day to day. So those are. Those are two quick pro tips I would absolutely recommend.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I asked. All right, man, what is the best way for our listeners to tap into your work? Maybe have that conversation with you or someone on your team, whatever you feel like is appropriate. Website, LinkedIn, email, whatever. But let’s make it easy to get to you.

Andrew Hartman: Yeah, absolutely. So you can check us out at Time Boston, US. You can reach out. We’ll do a free consultation with anyone. Oftentimes we end up solving a pretty hard problem even within that consultation. So no matter what, I think you’ll get a win from it. And we can definitely discover if there’s ongoing conversations to have. The other is on our website at Time Boston, US. If you hit resources, we have a 90 minute masterclass, which is a high level overview of the time boss framework. Incredibly actionable. You can put in whatever you learn in that masterclass into effect today and start getting wins on your calendar. Um, you know the the dirty little secret of any habit change is accountability is so critical. So my encouragement to anyone is watch the masterclass, find accountability, whether that’s with a friend or a coworker or with us with time boss. But that is how you will change. And so the masterclass is a great, great place to start. It’s absolutely free. It’s my way to serve the community. I think information is free if you need additional support to implement, we’d love to help.

Stone Payton: Well, Andrew, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. I can’t think of a more marvelous way to invest a Thursday afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, your enthusiasm, your heart. Keep up the good work, man. What you’re doing is so important and we sure appreciate you.

Andrew Hartman: Well, thank you so much, Stone. That’s really encouraging and a pleasure to be with you as well. I love, love your energy and your approach to life.

Stone Payton: My pleasure man. All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Andrew Hartmann with time boss and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.