728: The Legacy of a Lazy Leader
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What happens when a leader stays incredibly busy but keeps avoiding the work that only they can do? In this episode, we unpack what “lazy leadership” actually looks like and why it has far less to do with how hard we work than with which responsibilities we choose to avoid. We discuss the difference between delegation, rest, hustle, and avoidance, along with the consequences our teams and future selves inherit when difficult decisions are continually delayed. We also explore how our unspoken behaviors teach employees what standards really matter, whether we intend them to or not. Finally, we challenge ourselves to identify the one difficult responsibility that belongs on our plate and deliberately do the hard thing before somebody else inherits the problem.
Main topics:
Recognizing selective leadership avoidance
Delegation versus avoiding responsibility
Modeling standards through actions
Protecting teams from burnout
Practicing deliberate self leadership
Main takeaway: “The opposite of a lazy leader is not a hustling leader. It’s a deliberate one.”
You can work from sunrise to sunset and still avoid the most important work in your business. Leadership isn’t measured by how many visits you complete, emails you answer, or boxes you check. Sometimes the real work is raising the price, writing the SOP, confronting poor performance, reviewing the numbers, or making the decision you’ve been putting off.
And when we avoid those responsibilities, they don’t disappear. Someone inherits them—our employees, our family, our clients, or our future selves.
Good leadership isn’t about doing everything. It’s about deliberately doing the work that belongs to us, especially when it’s hard.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
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Meghan 0:02
What do you think the legacy of a lazy leader is? Nobody thinks of themselves as lazy. We are exhausted. We are tired. We're doing so many things in our businesses. But exhaustion and laziness can both live within us. But lazy leadership is selective. It is being busy in the easy things and lazy and the hard things being a kind of a procrastinator. Fundamentally, when you put off the hard things, avoid the conversations, don't do the price increase. It teaches yourself, your team, your clients what's actually important to you. On this episode, we're going to talk about lazy leadership, what it is, what it's not, and when you hear of a lazy leader, who do you picture? Hi, I'm Megan.
Collin 0:44
I'm Collin.
Meghan 0:44
We are the hosts of Pet Sitter Confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you for joining us today on this episode. We'd also like to thank our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates and Pet Perennials, and our Patreon supporters. They are pet sitters and dog walkers just like you, who have found value in the podcast and want to give back. We have actually recently added a few different levels to Patreon, so go and check those out. You can go to petsitterconfessional.com/support.
Collin 1:09
I know initially, just the phrase "lazy leader" does pull to mind somebody who is never engaged, somebody who is never involved. They don't know what's going on. Maybe they are always pushing off the work onto somebody else. They never take ownership for what they want to do or what is going on in the business and the work that's happening, and they just kind of exist and they let other people take the lead, or they they allow other people to make decisions without them.
Meghan 1:40
Yeah, I agree. Somebody who is avoiding the work, especially the hard work, we do a lot of difficult things that some are not in our wheelhouse. Running numbers or doing spreadsheets, you know, a lot of us love the animal aspect of this job, but the business side is not sometimes fun.
Collin 1:56
Well, and in our industry specifically, there's this weird like badge of honor that people wear and that we try and wear. Of like, I'm doing all the visits. I started at five a.m. or I'm doing the midnight shift or I've I've never taken a day off or I've worked every single holiday for the past 30 years, and that's not the lazy part. Like that's that is not lazy. That is hard work. That is dedication. I think what we're trying to get at here is that lazy leadership actually is the avoidance of the work that maybe only you can do as the leader, as the one in charge. Anyone can do the dog walking. Only you can do things like fire the wrong employee, develop the marketing push, raise the prices, write the SOP, have that awkward conversation with a client, or, or like you said, Megan, look at the numbers that you've been ignoring. That's our role. That's my responsibility.
Meghan 3:05
We can get caught up in the busyness. We use it as a hiding place. Oh, I'm so busy doing visits. I I don't have time to actually be marketing other than word of mouth, which has gotten me far. But is it going to get me to the next stage? Or we reorganize our software or redesign our logo for the 15th time, because oh well, this pink isn't really working for me anymore. I'd like a darker pink. But instead, we should be working on taxes, or going to networking events and getting our name out there, or doing some data number crunching. That's not really our specialty, but we do need to be doing it. These things that we tinker with in our business, like our logo or our website or pressing buttons in our software, these can feel really productive. Ooh, I'm doing things. Or when we do 1520, visits a day, I'm getting things done. I'm serving clients. Yes, you are, but what are you actually pushing down? What are you avoiding? What are you doing that's not necessarily safe and comfortable. The hard things are scary. That's why the easy things feel so good. They give us that endorphin rush of ooh, I've done a good thing, and that is important. But we have these things in our business that are hard that we don't want to do. Maybe we delegate them off to somebody else, but maybe we should actually be doing them ourselves because we're the decision makers, the easy things expand to fill our days. Oh well, I've accomplished so much today. Well, did I actually do some of the hard things on my list? One of the hard things I avoided this week was payroll. But I know on the other side, if I don't run it, nobody else is going to, and then our employees aren't getting paid. Not a good scenario. So I needed to do
Collin 4:44
it. I'm a massive people pleaser, and I want to make sure that people like me. So one of the hard conversations that I tend to avoid in our business is having the hard conversation of when people are not meeting the standards, or when it's actually time to fire somebody and have that discussion with them. And that tends to delay and delay and delay, and instead that means that like it's lowering the standards of everybody around. They see that impact, and I go and I hide in futzing with the website or writing another blog or doing those things instead of the one literally the one thing that I need to do that week.
Meghan 5:19
As you're listening to this, think about if there are hard things that you are trying to avoid, things that you've been skipping over as you've done other things. You keep adding to your to-do list, but those things that are closer to the top, the hard things, are still there.
Collin 5:32
Well, and the hard things. This is really vague, and and so that's intentional because the hard things are hard for everybody. Like they're they're different for every single person. We've given out lots of examples so far in this episode, and I think that probably speaks more to what Megan and I view as hard and difficult than what than what you may find hard and difficult in your business. Because again, it could be numbers, it could be confrontation, it could be marketing, it could be the website, it could be whatever is under your control that only you can do, but we avoid it, and that's the difference here. Of of okay, there's a I can delegate versus avoid, and that's the that's really the where does the center of ownership exist? When I am delegating a task, I am giving ownership of the thing to someone else.
Meghan 6:24
Yeah, it's all about how much control you want to have. I don't necessarily like doing payroll. I could hand that off to somebody else with the right training and the right metrics and and borders and all that sort of stuff. I could hand that off. The hiring, all of the the interviews and and deciding I could outsource that social media you know basically anything in our businesses we we can hand off to somebody else we just have to decide how comfortable we are with that
Collin 6:51
yeah versus avoiding of no I am the only one who is capable of doing payroll because I don't have that staff in place and I don't have the hiring in place, and I can't delegate that right now. It's only me, and I choose not to do it. Instead, I'm going to go do something else. So this is really where the I have the ownership, I have the ability, and I choose not to do it. That's avoiding. If somebody else is given the authority, is given the ownership, and I don't do it well. That's just good delegation. That's saying I'm not capable of doing this right now. You need to do this. Here's how you do it. Here's all the things in place. That that is not lazy leadership. That's actually very good leadership of recognizing when you need to delegate and when you need to not,
Meghan 7:41
because there are definitely seasons in our business where we're busier than others, or we want to focus on some things like big projects. We want to get an entire website redone, and we love doing that. So we want to pour ourselves into that. So for a time, we need to delegate other tasks. There is also this difference between a lazy leader and somebody who actually gets rest. Rest is not the same as being lazy. You can take a nap, and that's not laziness. So how do you tell the difference? This episode is brought to you by Pet Sitters Associates. Running a pet care business comes with risk. You're in clients' homes, handling animals, navigating unpredictable situations every single day. Pet Sitters Associates provides the insurance coverage designed specifically for pet care professionals like you, so you can focus on doing your job well without constantly wondering what if. If you're not properly covered, or if you've been meaning to review your policy, now is the time. Head over to petsitllc.com to get more and get started. And as a listener of the show, you get $10 off your membership when you use the code confessional at checkout. That's petsitllc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. When you have that feeling of avoidance, that bodily dread, that can be laziness. Rest does not have that. Rest is saying, Ah, I need to breathe right now so that I can come back and be a better leader and focus on these hard things.
Collin 8:58
Again, it's all about that intention of why am I doing this? Because you may see, oh man, that person is really resting right now. Well, they could be being lazy and actively avoiding the work that they need to be doing and trying to pass it off as rest. But somebody who is taking time to themselves is needing to unnecessarily setting everything aside to give space and make space in their day, so that they can come back refreshed. Because that's the thing that I've noticed is that avoidance does not equal refreshed. At the end of the day, you can avoid and avoid and avoid, and it does have this bodily feeling, this dread, this kind of ominous thing, tightness in your chest and in your gut, you don't come back ready to work from them. You actually come back ready to avoid even more.
Meghan 9:47
Yeah, kind of fight it a little bit. Our our work as a leader never vanishes. You know, we can delegate things, we can hand things off to people who have less authority with us or less context. But at the end of the day. There are tasks that we have to do: manage the managers, manage the people. If we want to avoid and not write an SOP, well, that could look like there are 20 repeated questions that come up in our group chat and unanswered questions, the same ones over and over every time. If we avoid having the hard conversations with our employees about how they're performing or lack thereof, their performance, that can be some team-wide resentment that happens because everyone who knows the person not pulling their weight, they have to pull extra, and everybody is watching what you tolerate when you don't have that hard conversation. Say, hey, it looks like you're not performing to this standard. How are we going to fix that? What training do you need? What tools and resources can I equip you with to help you in this?
Collin 10:49
Nobody enjoys scheduling or reviewing the schedule. Some people do. Some people find joy in that. But if you don't and you avoid it, it may feel like, oh, well, I'm not going to do that. So the the people will just figure it out. My employees will just figure that out. Well, if we don't stay on top of that, somebody's going to miss a visit, and then the sitter takes the blame publicly, really publicly, for something that maybe a failure that started at the top. Actually, because we didn't put X, Y, and Z together, we didn't look at these things, and and yeah, all of this means that there, all of this does mean that there is there's a lot of pressure on on the leader, and I think that's the entire point here: is that leadership is not easy. Being a good leader is hard, with all these multi facets in it. We have our proclivities. We have the things that we love. We have things that we don't love so much. And yet, whose responsibility is it to get it done? To actually do it. If you don't like doing the schedule, but you're not in a place to hand that off to somebody else, the responsibility still falls to you. It still falls to us to actually get it done to set them up for success,
Meghan 12:02
I think as pet sitters and dog walkers, just about all of us are guilty of that postponed price increase. So we say everybody's going to leave us; it's going to be all horrible. But then I feel like we also complain about people who don't value us and who use us and abuse us, basically who cancel last minute, who book last minute. Who don't see the value in what we do, but then we don't see the value in ourselves either, and we don't do that price increase when we really should.
Collin 12:30
And it means that we end up subsidizing every single client. We take money that would have gone into our pocket and we give it back to the client whenever we don't do our price increases. And this is especially insidious when we have employees. When you do have a team, basically you let the client pay for a portion, and then you take money that would have gone to your bank account, and you give that over to your employee. That that's that's a trade off we all make. It's the amount that's happening is going to really be the difference. But then we ultimately end up resenting the people who are paying us. We resent them because we say they don't value us, or that we're not making enough, or that times or the margins are really slim. And for some reason, that gets directed back to the client as opposed to decisions that maybe we have control over. We have a process of allowing the team to communicate changes or alterations to a client's home or the pet care routine to us, so that we can update the client notes directly, so that team members coming after them know what's going on. We had a morning employee who did the first visit and recognized that there were some things that changed. They sent us a big long list and actually took sent a photo of a written note that the client had left for us, and I avoided it. I I looked at that and I said, I do not have time to parse through those notes to get dive into here. I need to go work on these other things, and and I I knew it was critically important. I knew that this was actually this is my responsibility in our business was to take care of these kind of things that come in. I didn't do it by the afternoon. The next visitor, the next sitter came over, and they didn't have those updated notes. And they actually did the visit incorrectly because I had not informed them of those major changes, and so they had to bear that burden. They were actually struggling and working hard to do the visit correctly, but it didn't all quite line up. And had I done my job, had I done my responsibility, that person, my employee, would have been able to do theirs a lot better.
Meghan 14:29
And that's a good reminder that as leaders, when we do our jobs, it makes everybody else's jobs easier, and we all can work as a team, as a cohesive unit, pushing forward with serving more clients.
Collin 14:40
Well, and it's also a good reminder of how do we recognize these gaps? How did I know that the afternoon sitter didn't actually do the work? Well, it's because when I went to go review the report, I noticed that there were some differences between what the morning person had done. So I caught that, and so the question. Comes? Do now I have to be responsible for catching the gap? Do I empower my employees to communicate when there's a mismatch here? When I'm not doing my job, am I getting reviewed by my employees? Am I having that conversation? Are there ways in our business to get that kind of feedback? That's what really helps expose a lot of these things, and then we have to understand and address them, and go. Okay, how do I take care of this? Can I take care of it right now? Do I need to actually delegate something, or how does that look to run in my business?
Meghan 15:29
Think through in your own business if there is something that is currently distributed to somebody else on your team, but is actually your responsibility that you need to take back ownership of because they're either not equipped or not doing a good enough job or just didn't have the right training. What do you need to take back on? And it could just be for a time, or you could realize, hey, I do need to be doing this. This is
Collin 15:56
another legacy of a lazy leader. It means that the top performers pick up more things that they find that have been dropped than they have been given and delegated. Is that if you have amazing people on your team, they are going to see where the cracks are. They're going to see things that aren't getting done, and they're going to offer to do them. They're going to pick them up and start trying to do them themselves, even though you never gave it to them. And we tend to go great. This person already has it handled. I'm awesome. And really, what it was is you had somebody who is really devoted to the business, really sees the mission and vision and values, and wants to see that continue and be successful. Picking up the things that we are dropping or intentionally letting go of, and and avoiding entirely.
Meghan 16:39
That can be so dangerous, though, because they start to get burned out. They are finding all of the cracks and trying to fill all of them, or plugging the holes in the ship. And ultimately, that's not their responsibility. That's you. You need to be delegating those tasks out or holding people accountable to filling their own holes. Well,
Collin 16:58
because we are always training people. Every interaction that we have with our team, with the employees around us, is training them in something. We tend to only focus on how I hold a leash, and I'm going to train the person what it means to write an update, and how I take good photos, and how I enter a home, and how I and how I and how I. But the bulk of the training for how they interact with the company, and what the company culture actually is comes from the unspoken nature of how we interact. It comes from the standards that people see that are upheld and are not upheld.
Meghan 17:33
When we talk about culture in your business, it is not your mission statement, but it is what you tolerate, what you let go, what you say? Okay, this isn't really up to my standard, but I'm too tired to deal with this, or I don't have the bandwidth right now. I have to be focusing on this other project. So this one time or these couple times, it's okay to not hold to the line that we do.
Collin 17:56
Yeah, they start thinking that standards are optional, and if they see that you are repeatedly doing things like avoiding hard conversations or not owning up to responsibilities, they're going to do the exact same thing, and I think ultimately this leads to a team who stops asking questions entirely, and it's not because they know exactly what to do or they are 100% clear or you explained everything perfectly the first time. It's because they learn that nobody answers, or it really doesn't matter. Nobody cares at the top, and I think this is one of the biggest concerns that you can have in a team is that when you have total silence, because I promise you, it is rarely about competence and professionalism. It's more often just like surrender to the process. They've gone well. I used to ask questions. I used to ask questions. I used to go for help, and now I don't anymore because nothing changes. It doesn't matter. We don't do anything with that. So why bother? Why would I waste my time writing it out, thinking about it, scheduling the meeting, going through that process. I'm just gonna, I'm just not gonna bother because other people get away with things, and I'm. It's just gonna be fine, and I. So they go quiet, and then we think, great, everything's
Meghan 19:11
peachy keen. Nobody has any problems, but that silence really is dangerous.
Collin 19:17
And there's this difference between building up independent people on your team, and having siloed team members, and that's what this happens here. Is is we think I want an independent person out in the field, and we all do. But what we're talking about here is this person becomes siloed because they start doing their own thing entirely with no connection, no relation to any of the other work, no, no, no true view of the higher vision that we have and the goals that we have as a company, and they are just out there operating totally on their own. The reason they have no questions because they're their own thing. They don't need to go to you. They don't want to go to you,
Meghan 19:56
and that's why it's so important to have SOPs written down and to have the. Meetings and to have the one-on-ones and to check in with people, going, "How are you doing? Where are you struggling? How can I better support you? What would make you leave this job?
Collin 20:08
Well, and there's that other thing of a lot of times this shows up and turnover that we can't explain of the people who just go, "You know, I was just looking for something else, or "No, I'm just looking for something new. A lot of times that is true. People get into this job and they think they know what it is, and it's not what they not what it actually is, and so they they do decide to leave. But we each time we need to critically think about what were the issues, what were the senate, what was the scenario leading up to this person departing my company because it may have been well. I just got tired of caring at this job more than you do.
Meghan 20:48
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Collin 22:30
then we have some ownership in what's happening right now. If not, then this is on the employee. But you always have to ask yourself, and this isn't a paranoid thing of I've got to walk around on pins and needles, or I have to be perfect. It's not an I have to be perfect scenario. It's a am I modeling the behavior that I want everybody to have? Do I have the standards? A great example. How many of you train your employees that it's okay to be late to a visit, and then if they are late, what are they supposed to do? They're supposed to text you well in advance that they're going to be late. But if you're shadowing them on a visit and you're late, when did you let them know? Was it 15 minutes after you were supposed to start, and you're telling them, "Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry, I'm running late. I'll be there in five, because you've just taught them that it's actually okay to be late and you don't have to text early, that model is what you model is what they will pick up,
Meghan 23:26
and that's why having employees is a lot of pressure. Having a team is not for the faint of heart. A lot of us are solos. We don't want employees, but that doesn't mean we aren't leaders. Solo operators lead a business of one. You are leading yourself, and the person inheriting your lazy leadership is you in the future.
Collin 23:46
Future you, yeah. The
Meghan 23:47
taxes that you don't do right now, and you do the day before they're due in April, that is not good leadership. If you have a new policy, but you don't actually update your contract, well, when the client comes to you and holds you to that and says, "Well, it wasn't in here, then you're going to lose out on that money or possibly that client. When you have boundaries, it helps you, but if you don't, it becomes burnout. Sometimes you're doing too much for a lot of people, and sometimes for not a lot of pay,
Collin 24:17
and leads to burnout that makes you hate the business that you used to love, or makes you hate the life that you're living when you started out for your own purposes, or to have your independence, or to have your freedom, or to be with animals, to go after that vision. The boundaries are what helps protect that, and then we end up. But but it takes a leader to hold to that. It takes a leader to set that. It takes a leader to maintain that standard of boundaries.
Meghan 24:42
Well, because here's the thing: you as a solo, you can't quit your own business. You can't end it for sure. But you as the the sole employee, you are held to your standard. What are you allowing yourself to do? You it just gets you get more tied. When you have more compromises for yourself, when you say I'll put that off for another day, or that's not fun, or I I don't want to do it, it's surely it's not that important. You know, we just get more tired and more bitter, and eventually we take it out on clients and their pets.
Collin 25:15
And then people can tell whenever you're in this state, and we often think, okay, well I've cared too much. I've I've burned out in this. Ultimately, this is a self leadership failure, and the legacy of that is I end up embittered and exhausted at the end of the day. That's harsh, and I. But but we're the only ones involved in our business when it's just us. When we're a solo operator, it's us. It's you. What legacy are you giving yourself in the future? How are you building yourself up for success? What are you actually doing? Are you actually firing those nightmare clients, or are you holding and clinging onto them because you don't have any other options? Are you actually taking time off? That is a leadership decision for you. If you had an employee, would you encourage them to take time off and get rest? Why don't you encourage yourself to take time off and take rest? Well, in order to do that, you have to have good pricing. You have to have good boundaries. You have to have systems in place and communicate well. You have to have the hard conversation to the clients to say, "Hey, the third week in October, I'm actually taking completely off because I need some rest. That's a hard conversation, and if we don't have it, we tell ourselves, we tell all the clients, "My time is not my own. You take advantage of me. It's totally fine and it's okay. Building the systems may feel unnecessary because you quote unquote don't need them right now, and you might not ever need to hand it off to somebody. But building systems, a good client intake, a marketing plan-all of these things-all of this helps you stay more organized when the rush and the panic and the tired happens, when the boundaries need to be enforced and when the standard needs to be maintained.
Meghan 27:03
So, if you are solo, think about yourself right now. And if you had a meeting right now with past you, how would that past you be different than you right now? Is it different? Are you tolerating more bad things about yourself, or have you actually improved? That will tell you how future you will be able to handle things,
Collin 27:23
or or just hey, past you, you didn't have the hard conversation, and now I have to have it right now. Hey, past you, you didn't set me up for success by putting in the 5p.m. boundary for emailing and contact during the day, and now I'm swamped with all of these communications, and I can't get out. Hey, past you, you didn't set up daily time rest time, or you didn't set up your annual vacation in the calendar and block that off. And now I'm having to carve out and dig out of that debt in the business and in my personal life, and is really hurting me.
Meghan 27:56
But that does mean that you can inform future you by doing those things right now in present you, yeah. Now,
Collin 28:02
now you are now past, future, present you. You are right now. Set future you up for success. Make decisions right now. Be that strong leader, so that when you have that exit interview for future you, looking back where you are right now, you're saying thank you for doing those things instead of complaining about
Meghan 28:19
it. A few years ago, there was this term called hustle culture, and I think when we think of being a strong leader, a lot of us have that in our mind of just hustling all day, going and grinding, and and getting as many clients and in whatever ways as possible, and kind of sacrificing our mental health, our personal health to just go after it. But this concept of a hustling leader is not the opposite of a lazy leader. There is a middle ground here. It really is all about deliberateness and intentionality with being a leader, because you can be a hustler, but you can also be lazy.
Collin 28:54
Because if you're only focused on the motion, hustle has this concept, has this idea of I'm just going to be working all out all the time on stuff, I guess, instead of having a set direction. It's about being that deliberateness, right? I'm saying I'm doing the right hard thing. I'm doing the right work, the correct work, the necessary work, instead of just all of the work possible, because if if I if I do the work right now, if I do the hard work right now, it's not going to compound into somebody else's problem in the future, and I can go about and be all the hustle culture culture of marketing and marketing and marketing and marketing and marketing and networking and networking and networking and I can avoid the actual hard decision of firing the person, just being in the hustle culture doesn't mean you're hustling on the right stuff. It doesn't mean you're being deliberate in making those decisions and actually pointing in a single direction and moving there.
Meghan 29:54
It is really about avoiding that chaos. So you can be busy doing all sorts of things the wrong. Things and it just it's it's chaos in your mind. What this looks like practically is making a list of things that only you can do, and this may look different in the future if you want to hand off taxes to somebody else or hand off payroll to somebody else. But what are things that only you can do in your business?
Collin 30:17
And then we have to have the discipline to avoid the one hard thing before we get to the fun things. Make that short. Make it a weekly list. This this week here are the here are only the things that I can do, and I have to do at least one of these before I can do and go do the fun things for me. Kind of gamifying this. It's not a productivity system. It really is a courage system. It really is saying these are the decisions that have to be made. These are the calls that have to be made. These are the people that have to be talked to. These are the systems that must be designed this week, and they are on my plate and my plate alone. And now I have to do those before I go do the fun things. This builds your courage to tackle them one at a time to take them on.
Meghan 31:00
But that self-discipline is really difficult. Building good habits, doing the hard things, it's not always fun. And you have to have this self-determination to go, okay, I want to see my business succeed. You have to look at it at a 30-1000-foot view of, I am the only one who can do this, and of course, I want my business to do well and to continue to serve people for 1020, years. The only way I can do that is by doing these hard things.
Collin 31:28
Okay, we've titled this "The Legacy of a Lazy Leader. What kind of legacy are we talking about? When you look at that list of things that are that you have to do, the one question to help put this into some framework into some perspective for you is who inherits this if it doesn't get done, or who inherits this problem if I avoid it. If the answer is your team, your family, future you, that's the work that you have to do. If it's just the person tomorrow or the other person. Okay, let's focus on the other actual stuff. Let's focus on the decisions that need to be made so that nobody is in debt to this in the future. They're not digging out of any bad decisions, anything that we purposefully avoided. Well, you know, we would have had okay. If you're solo, hey, I would have had the taxes to pay this, but past me decided that they didn't want to set up a separate bank account to put the money in to to set that aside every month. Now I have to pay. That is a literal debt that we can get in based off of lazy leadership, or my team, my future you. That's the work that we have to be about doing.
Meghan 32:38
We also have to come down and have some perspective here. That there are times every one of us we are lazy leaders. So this is not a shame episode. We're not trying to make you feel bad or trying to make you do more or feel like you're not doing enough. But it is about choosing excellence every day. That looks different for different people and in different stages of your business, and it looks different every single day. But it does mean choosing that so we can have a lasting legacy, whatever that looks like for you. When we choose to do the hard things, it makes our business better. It makes our employees thrive. It helps us have more boundaries. There certainly is a time for rest and a time to breathe and a time to refresh yourself. We just want to make sure that that time doesn't evolve into laziness or avoiding the hard things.
Collin 33:27
Legacies don't just happen; they are made. Legacies are made through decisions that happen on a daily basis. Little decisions, big decisions, every single day, and that means that I have every day. I every day I'm given a chance and an opportunity to have the legacy that I actually want in my in my personal life. Yes, but also in my business, you get the opportunity every day is a new day to make decisions for future you to make and shape and write the legacy that you actually want, and you want to be remembered by, and you want to impact people in your community and in your business. The
Meghan 34:08
legacy of a lazy leader is a busy team, and it is silence. It's the problems that don't necessarily get solved here. When you are a lazy leader, your legacy looks like a busy team and silence and avoiding problems, but when you are deliberate about it, when you have that self-discipline, it means that problems get solved in your business. People are held accountable, standards are upheld, which is how we go about serving clients with excellence every day. We hope this episode has been helpful to you. Name one thing this week that you have been avoiding, that's on your list that you need to get done. Do the thing this week. If this episode has resonated with you, feel free to share it with another dog walker or pet sitter friend. Thank you for listening today. We'd like to thank our sponsors, Pet Sitters Associates and Pet Perennials. We will talk with you next time.
Collin 34:57
Bye.
