Andy O'Brien, ActionCOACH of Central Texas

[00:00:55] Sanjay Parekh: Today's guest is Andy O'Brien. You might remember Andy from our episode focusing on family businesses. We liked Andy so much, we decided to have him back to learn about him and his business. Andy is a senior partner at ActionCOACH of Central Texas, a business consulting firm that has offices globally. Andy started his branch over a decade ago with his wife, Jody. Andy, welcome to the show. 

[00:01:19] Andy O'Brien: Thank you so much, Sanjay. I love being here again. 

[00:01:24] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for being on. I know some of our listeners have probably heard you before, but for those that haven't, can you give us a little bit about your background and what got you to where you are today?

[00:01:34] Andy O'Brien: Wow, that's a deep question. So the first part of it is I grew up in a family business, right? I grew up in a moving business. I heard this line over and over my entire life: "The truck never unloads itself." I was in that business until 1993 when all I ever wanted to do was work for my grandfather, work for my dad. Got married, started working with my father. As you can imagine, a loud mouth, younger son, my dad and I had a little disagreement, and he was right. I was wrong. And I left that business in 1995. Jodee and I started our first business as a manufacturing repping sales consulting business, was in all the warm states, Wisconsin, Minnesota, North and South Dakota.

And then, I sold that business in 2007. I went to the corporate world for three years, or four years, three years. And that business ended up in receivership because of all the shenanigans of the housing shortage and building trades and all that. And then, July 7th of 2011 I pulled the pin, and we bought this business, a franchise, and we've never looked back. We'll be going on 14 years this year. 

[00:02:54] Sanjay Parekh: Wow. So, one of the questions I often have for guests on the show is, have you had entrepreneurial experience, entrepreneurs in the family? Obviously, it sounds like a lot of that. Who was the first entrepreneur, your grandfather or does it go deeper than that? 

[00:03:08] Andy O'Brien: It actually goes deeper than that on both sides of my family. So, both grandparents, both grandmothers, their parents before them. My grandmothers, both of my grandmothers’ families both immigrated here, one from Italy, one of Jewish descent. I just can't pull the name right now. We get in these interviews, I'm like, "Oh, it just disappeared." But they both immigrated here. So, their parents before them and then, as they grew up here, one part of my family was in the car business, the other part was in the moving business. My grandfather was in the bar business, which I don't highly recommend. Apparently, it ends in divorce and other shenanigans like that. So, we stayed away from that area, but yeah. But it's, it's all through my family lineage and I love it. I tried working for somebody else. I tried working for my dad. It doesn't always work. 

[00:04:14] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting story that you've got as great grandparents that were immigrants, and you see that a lot of times with immigrants, because they've just got to hustle and do things and make money and start businesses. And it's great to see that it's come down your family tree and it's still alive today with you. 

[00:04:33] Andy O'Brien: I've said this since the day we started our first business in 1995. It is the entrepreneur that drives the economy. I know there's a lot of stories of all these big boxes and big companies, but the reality is that, that's great for the economy, we need every business in the economy, but it's people like you, it's me, it's the coffee shops. It's the gas station. It's the automotive repair. It's the family grocery stores. All of these things drive the economy. 

[00:05:05] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah 100 percent agree, if you look at the stats the vast majority of revenue generated inside of a country is from small businesses. It's not the big companies, even though the big companies are the ones that you always talk about on the news and everything, because it's just more interesting to talk about these companies of thousands of people, instead of the coffee shop with five baristas working there. 

Okay, so let's talk about starting this. You had all these businesses and then you decided to go all in on helping other people. What was the thought process there of making this change? And you still have a business, but it's really about helping others that have businesses. Like, why did you want to make that change for yourself? 

[00:05:52] Andy O'Brien: Okay. That's what I didn't tell you was, when I and Jodee went to the corporate world in 2008, there was a moment that I didn't even know about. I'd never read it. I'd never seen it. I was never told about it until one day I read the newspaper and I saw my dad's and my aunt's name in there that they had sold the business earlier in that year.

But in order to get out from underneath the business, they both had to file bankruptcy. And that was the catechism of me just going, "where was his support system?" I was too young and dumb at that time. At least I thought I was smarter than I realized today. But you don't know what you don't know.

And you look at those people, the folks, the baby boomers, the people that are previous in a lot of communities, there's usually accountants and bankers and they have great information, but there's no accountability. So, looking at all of the different models and looking at all of the things, I wanted to help families and family businesses or businesses in general, not have to do that.

I saw what that did to my father. I saw what it did to my aunt. I saw what it did to my sisters, my mother. For a goal for me, I never want to see that again.

[00:07:18] Sanjay Parekh: Right. Yeah, it's tough and I've heard these stories too, and I know people that have gone through these things as well and it's difficult and especially when you don't have somebody to talk to and a lot of times as entrepreneurs, we don't have people to talk to that we know that we have gone through these things. But people have gone through these things. It's just a matter of finding those folks. 

Okay. So, this is your first time then 14-ish years ago, right? Doing coaching. Was there anything that made you nervous about going into this? You're like, you've done businesses yourselves, but now this is telling instead of doing, and how did you think about that for yourself?

[00:07:59] Andy O'Brien: Oh, you ever heard the phrase, "I didn't want to have imposter syndrome." I had a lot of head trash around that. What I learned quickly was, my experience in my first business, my wife's experience in her first business, as a design consultant, PR, marketing, we had this reality. Plus growing up, we saw some things, but my biggest fear was people seeing through, that I didn't know everything.

That was a big part of it. And once I finally got past the, "I don't have to know everything." I have to guide people through awareness, education, implementation, and to move their business to the level they want to move it to. And once I got past, "it's not about me." It made life that much easier, and it made results that much easier for clients.

[00:09:01] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, what's funny about your statement there is, as entrepreneurs, the way that we have to embrace being an entrepreneur is that we have to realize that we don't know everything and you just have to dive into it. And you've been an entrepreneur multiple times. And then starting into this, you had that same quandary again. 

[00:09:21] Andy O'Brien: I don't know if it's my head trash. I know it's not just my head trash, but we all go through it. I can't remember if it's Richard Branson or who it is that he always says, "once you learn to run one business, you learn to run multiples." That is a true statement, except for sometimes our ego and our arrogance get in the way of reality. Like, "Oh yeah, I got this." And then you trip or you fall or you make a mistake. Not that I've ever made those. I got a closet full of those locked up at home. 

It's those, "Oh, okay." And then you see other people that have made the same mistake. I use my grandson as a great example. When he was five, I would tell him, that's not going to work out well for you. And I must've said this, he's five, he's a great kid, but as a grandpa, I let him do more than I ever let his father do. And it's so funny, one day he looked at me and he's like, "why do you say that?" I'm like, "What?" "That's not going to end well." Every time you say that I get in trouble. It was like, so he had connected the dots, but he missed the part in between where it was his problem, not mine. 

And that's what we see with entrepreneurs. We can just be like, "Let me help you through that. Here, let me show you what will happen if we don't plan for that. Let me show you what will happen if you do plan for that. Let me show you how a different decision could help you. Or let me ask you a different question that gets you off of that ‘I know’ mindset into a "I didn't look at it like that. Okay, great."

[00:11:00] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. It's a challenge I think that all of us as entrepreneurs have, and I appreciate what you said there too, in that, I don't think it actually goes away, right? Like you move from business to business and there's always things that you don't know, but a lot of times, if you feel like you've been successful in the past, "Oh, I got this." And each business, even if they're in the same industry, are never the same, right? There's always something that you don't know. 

So, let's dive into how you deal with that as a coaching business because I think it's interesting. Like when you've got a client that's doing that, that has been previously successful and then now it's, "Ah, it's all good. Whatever." How do you make them aware of, you don't actually know all of this stuff? You need to actually think about the things that you don't know. 

[00:11:51] Andy O'Brien: That's a great question. And it's a little longer than you're probably going to want.

From a coaching perspective, it's taking them on a guided journey of where I want them to go. So, we could sit here and talk about communication styles, but there are different styles and usually, like you just said, those styles are dominant and assertive. They have an "I know" mindset, so it's asking them questions to get it to be their idea, not mine.

It's getting to ask the questions of, "So what were the results of that find?" And it's telling them, "Oh my god, that's great. Would you mind if I use that with another client?" But it's also asking them really difficult questions about specifics that they brush over, to get them to recognize there might be a gap in their knowledge base. There might be a gap in the results. Or there might be a better result if they tweaked it a little. 

[00:12:49] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, fascinating. I love that and hopefully that's good advice for some of our listeners as they think about their own businesses and what they know. Let's dig into kind of your business, starting this out. So when you took over this franchise, was it already existing and you bought it or was this starting from scratch? 

[00:13:08] Andy O'Brien: We bought the franchise, which was a toolbox, right? It's a toolbox full of tools, systems, processes. We bought that, I started it from scratch in our community in north Iowa, so we started with, just like everybody else, goose eggs of revenue, right?

[00:13:28] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. So, how did that make you feel? And, when did you start feeling comfortable? At what level of revenue were you like, "Okay, this is going to work?" 

[00:13:38] Andy O'Brien: The first thing was, it's really one of my driving forces and maybe it's just me, but I think it's a lot of entrepreneurs. When somebody tells me I'm going to fail, I totally just stick that in my pocket. "Oh, all right. Challenge accepted. Here we go." So, I had a lot of that. I had a lot of people, you know, you go from one business, you sell a business, then you go into corporate and then you start a new business. I had family members telling me it would be better if I went and worked at Staples because it was safe. These are real conversations.

So for all of you entrepreneurs out there, you're not alone. Usually, our greatest adversaries are the pukers and doubters that are in our own family, let alone friends. So, it scared the hell out of me. It totally scared the hell out of me with people, but it also gave me motivation. 

When did I start really turning the corner? I would say the first two or three years we did about 380, 390 in revenue, and it was just me, right? I'm going to say this, Sanjay, for everybody out there, the greatest mistake that I ever made was I didn't leverage myself and I never hired an assistant. We could have done probably double that, but I was too, "I'll do the marketing, I'll do the sales, I'll do the operations, I'll do the coaching. Nobody can do it better than me. I know everything." Dumbest person in the history of the world. 

[00:15:00] Sanjay Parekh: I think that's pretty standard, right? All of us as entrepreneurs, we do that. No, like they are not going to know, it's going to take me more time. This is the classical, "It's going to take me more time to explain to them than if I just did it myself."

[00:15:12] Andy O'Brien: Exactly. Exactly. So, I sat in that squirrel cage for four or five years. And then I started realizing like, "Wow." So, I personally have never gotten over the fact, even running at two plus million dollars in revenue now, I'm wired in the way where it's never enough, right? I'm wired in a way where it's like, I can go on vacations now, but I still worry about people quitting and business not getting taken care of. And that's one of the belief systems that was ingrained a long time ago. I don't know if it's a good one or a bad one, but I'm always thinking of it. 

But it really started dawning on me in probably 2017, somewhere in there, where I need to bring people on the team. I'm running myself ragged. I could do better business, be more profitable, have more, when I start focusing on financials of the business, focusing on, "Hey, I'm really bad at administration. Maybe I should stick to my guns and operation and sales. I'm really good in those areas." And so, I had to really focus there. And once I started doing that, the business started changing for the better. 

[00:16:31] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, so a quick comment because I find it very interesting you touch upon this. When I quit my first corporate job to start my first company — and I've never looked back after that — I was told the same things by people in the company. "What are you doing? We're just weeks away from a big bonus check. This is obviously not going to work. You're going to fail” and this and that and the other. And in the years since then, now I reflect and when people say this kind of stuff like, "Why don't you just get a safe job with a corporation?" I actually counter back and say actually I'm not a risk taker. And that's why I do companies and startups because when I work there, nobody can fire me. You're such a risky person that you're willing to go work for a corporation that they can fire you at any time. I don't know if I could ever be so risk taking like you. 

I like to turn around that concept and it really makes people think, "Oh, wait a minute, you're right. Like I go to work every day and they could just fire me, and I have no control over it." And in my very safe job as an entrepreneur, there's nobody that can fire me except me. And so, I'm very much in control of it. I think as entrepreneurs, we have to change that narrative a little bit and make people realize it's not all roses working for them.

I'm not saying that it's a bad thing working for a company. It's a fine thing if that's what you want to do, but don't paint it out as being an entrepreneur is so much more risk taking than having a corporate job. 

[00:18:01] Andy O'Brien: Oh, absolutely. And they do that. They're like, "Oh, look how smart I am. And look at, I have this cush job."

Yeah. I had just had a client in December, as an executive coach client. His company went in and removed 14 of the executives, 14 of 70. It was like, that's a big swing of the ax and obviously, that's a corporation that has venture capital behind it and they decided they wanted to do something different.

And if you look historically, especially today with economics, right? I'm not going to make this political. It doesn't matter. But economics of today, we are seeing more and more people laid off today from large corporations than we've seen probably since 2011 and it's not the post-COVID blues.

It's the people are really tightening their belts again. And that means, "Am I safe?" If we don't do any business, Andy doesn't get paid, which is not going to happen, but that's this quick math equation. Other people it's "Oh, we can't make payroll or our stocks moving or our shareholders are pissed off, man." The first thing they're going to do is cut. And they're going to cut deep. 

[00:19:24] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent agree. So, it's not all roses on either side. They have different challenges. Pick your poison type of thing. But if you like one, don't throw rocks at the people that are doing the other. It's just different. 

[00:19:39] Andy O'Brien: It takes us all. 

[00:19:41] Sanjay Parekh: Exactly, It takes us all. 

[00:19:46] Adam Walker: Support for this podcast comes from Hiscox, committed to helping small businesses protect their dreams since 1901. Quotes and information on customized insurance for specific risks are available at Hiscox.com. Hiscox, business insurance experts.

[00:20:05] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, let's switch gears a little bit. You touched on this, and I really want to dive deep into this. Okay, how do you manage the stress of owning a business and working full time and everything else in life? You talked about being on vacation and still worrying about the business. I think this is a perennial challenge with us as entrepreneurs and having to balance and be on vacation and really be on vacation and not really thinking about work and "Oh, let me just reply to this email or two."

Like, how do you think about that? And how do you deal with it? 

[00:20:35] Andy O'Brien: So it's been a long journey. So, it was really interesting. I just did a video a few weeks ago when I was on holiday, the greatest lesson that I learned in 2023 was trust. That would, that's a really steep — let's just put it this way, I've been sitting on the edge of that cliff for a long time and never pulled the pin and it was trusting my team members. It was trusting in Tanner and Jodee and Taylor and DMH and all these people that have my back when I was on vacation. I was literally on vacation. Yeah, for me, Andy, I set up a window in the morning, it's 30 minutes. If it's on fire and somebody else can't handle it, then they'll reach out to me. I look at my emails really quickly in the morning. In 30 minutes. And I let them go and then I go sit on the beach and I go become one with myself and I use the term grounded, right? So, people can laugh, but I really like to be grounded with the earth, feet in the sand, sitting in the ocean.

For me, that is relaxation. And it's saying a lot because I don't relax. I am as high-strung. I suffer from all the acronyms, ADD, ADHD, BSO. I was a clinical poster child for Ritalin in 1974. Okay. But back to the stress part of it, for me, my stress release has always been working out. I'm not some super athlete, but for me, it's clarity.

[00:22:15] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. We’re going to touch on exercise routines that you mentioned in a second, but first I want to dive a little bit deeper into this, because I think your situation has even got an additional wrinkle in the fact that people in the business are your family. When you're on vacation your wife is with you, conceivably potentially your son as well.

Like how do you control that and do you have rules about saying "Hey, if it's family dinner time, we don't talk about business?" Like how do you draw that line and set those boundaries because there is so much blurring of business and family?

[00:22:47] Andy O'Brien: Oh, it's so funny you mentioned that. So, I've done extensive research. In my family life, when I was a kid, every Sunday was dinner at grandma's. Okay. Everybody was in the family business, and we didn't have boundaries. We had zero. Birthdays, Christmas, Easter, you name it. Every holiday, every weekend, every dinner time was a board level discussion about the business. Okay?

That's so in our business, we do have parameters. Jodee and I, when she left the corporate world, she's one of those, like her mind never shuts off. As the CEO of the United Way for a long time, we had to do some hot points. Because she's really good, she was always really good about laying down on the pillow, "Oh, I wanted to tell you this.” Or, “You need to do this." And for me, then I'm up and I'm thinking about stuff. And so, we had to really draw a line in the sand.

So, on vacation, yes. Did we talk about business? You're absolutely right. But did it consume us? No. We put time limits on it. We have direct conversations. My daughter-in-law is really good about weekends when the grandkids and we're around, if we start talking about business, because her, let's just be honest, her husband, my son, didn't have really good role models. We had to learn this.

Let's just call it what it is. I've always been that, even when I was on vacations, the kids can tell you stories of me standing on a tree stump in Northern Minnesota on vacation because that's the only place my cell phone worked. So he didn't have a really good role model, but we have put those things into play now that.

We only, if it's business, we try to get it done between 7am and 6pm And there are things that will float around, we have a written document about communication. All of us partners do. Here's how we communicate. Email's for this, phone's for this, text is for this. We have group texts. We have it documented so that one person or the other, and don't get me wrong, we've all failed at it as a family, like "Hey, I need to talk about this. It'll just take a minute." And 20 minutes later… but it's a work in progress. There's no, I don't care, in family, there is no silver bullet that says, "Oh, we can't talk about this." Well, we'd like to not talk about this, but we have to have private conversations because what boundaries mean is, when you have sisters and siblings and brothers and aunts and uncles and other people in the business, everybody takes a side.

And if you're going to talk about business, and it's a hot button, then let's have a private conversation between the two of us, not an outgoing, let's have everybody's opinion matter. And that's where it gets into trouble. That's where, "Let's have a debate. Oh, now I need you on my team and you're on your team." So we go back to work on Monday, it's just a giant crap show because everybody's taken a side. 

[00:26:02] Sanjay Parekh: Right. And whatever group is not going to be happy when the decision gets made that is not theirs.

[00:26:08] Andy O'Brien: Exactly. It's hard, buddy. It's really hard. 

[00:26:12] Sanjay Parekh: It is hard and that's I guess the challenges of family businesses right there. Okay let's dive into, you mentioned exercise. What is your exercise routine and how do you make time for that in your day? 

[00:26:26] Andy O'Brien: Today it's much different than it used to be. So, in the first nine years of our business. I did triathlons. I don't know how I made time for it. It's so funny, I've done six Ironman, I've done hundreds of triathlons. I have no idea how I fit it all in, but I used to. I got nothing. But the majority of it is I'm an early morning person. So today, literally, my alarm goes off at 4:22. I roll out, grab a cup of coffee, get dressed and I head to the gym.

Now I do, I call it the geriatric CrossFit workout. It's functional fitness is what it is. And I go there for an hour every day and that's the start of my day. And then from when I get done, from 6:15 till 7 o'clock is my time, shower, do all the things. And usually by 7:30 I'm at my desk responding to emails.

But for me, it's always been when I'm exercising, I find clarity. It gives me a chance to clear my head because I'm not in the moment. I'm doing something else that's intense that allows me to take my mind off the problem. So I actually find a solution. And that for me has always worked.

And that doesn't work for some, but for me, it's like when I'm full on sweat about ready to die, that's perfect. And people are probably laughing and go, "man, he's fluffy." I am now and I'm okay with it. I have paid my dues, right? But the intensity is what gives me clarity. 

[00:28:13] Sanjay Parekh: I don't know that anybody listening is going to call you fluffy after knowing that you've done triathlons and Ironmans and things like that. I definitely wouldn't. But I'm with you. I, a lot of times when I'm working out, I will come up with ideas or things. And then the other places for me is when I'm driving or I'm in the shower. Like those are times when something else, I'm just doing things and not really thinking, and that kind of free flow creativity is where it hits for me. 

[00:28:42] Andy O'Brien: I agree. It's that, I find answers in the quiet. 

[00:28:48] Sanjay Parekh: Right. Yeah. Nobody has a chance to bother you. Like when you're running on the treadmill or something, like you're not answering a phone call, just leave me alone, let me do my thing. 

[00:28:59] Andy O'Brien: It is that way. And I used to find, I used to love to run. I used to love that because you could go run on trails or get off the beaten path and there's nothing easier to put your mind back on what you're supposed to be doing, is when you're running and you trip over some tree roots and you bite it.

[00:29:18] Sanjay Parekh: It's like, maybe I should stay focused on what I'm doing here and not anything else. 

[00:29:23] Andy O'Brien: Exactly. 

[00:29:24] Sanjay Parekh: Okay, Andy. A couple more questions for you. You've had a long stretch now coaching and then before that doing these businesses. If you could go back in time and do something differently, what would that be? And why? 

[00:29:41] Andy O'Brien: Oh, great question. Holistically, in this, today, if I could go back to one thing, I would have never sold my first business. I would have put people in play to run that business while I was doing other businesses because that created a different wealth event. Yeah. Did we make some money? Absolutely. But we would have not, we would have made probably 10X that number had we kept that business and put people in play. And I think that's the part of entrepreneurship that we all don't always lose track of. But it needs to be like this. I work with a lot of businesses that are in the exiting side of the business, right?

One of the common themes, and this goes to your point of what would I do differently was, I would have kept those businesses and grown them so that the these generational or the wealth event would have been 10X. During that time, because at the time I was a younger man, it's like, “Oh, it's cashflow. It's quick cash. We can do other things with it. We can invest it." But even investing that money wouldn't have had the, it still doesn't have the effect of it if I would have kept it. So that's what I would have done differently. And I would have kept Jodee's business going. But again, this is that whole thing. I told you about this business, I did not know what I didn't know until I was prepared to know it. By leverage, teaching people, getting them to do more, building systems and processes in the business. I didn't do that. So therefore, I was a solopreneur that thought I could do everything. And now I'm 54, I've been doing this for almost 14 years.

I know my mistakes. I know that now I play to my strengths. I don't play to my weaknesses. Somebody wants me to build a spreadsheet. I'm like no, straight up, not going to happen. And they're like, "Why?" "Because I don't have to." I don't, and I will pay somebody who will do a better job, who has the financial aptitude, who will build it exactly like I want it with the results.

And the same thing goes for marketing, operations, HR, IT, those are areas we hire people for because they're better at it than I am.

[00:32:03] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. Yeah, 100 percent agree. 100 percent agree. Okay. Last question for you. What would you tell somebody who's thinking about taking the leap of starting a family business, joining a family business, starting a side hustle, like any of those things?

Like what's your piece of advice for somebody like that? 

[00:32:21] Andy O'Brien: The original answer's do it. Do it, but build a plan first. Don't wing it. Don't just, "Hey, we're going to jump into this. We're going to figure it out as we go." That is not a plan. That is a stressful heart attack waiting to happen.

Build out a plan that has all of the things that, you know, your crystal ball. List out all the things that will go wrong. So that you're fighting that battle now, not when it happens. "Oh, I'm going to have a fight with my wife. Oh, I'm going to bring in my son and they are going to do this. They're going to sweep the floor. I'm going to bring in this, my daughter after college. Oh, my siblings are going to have a fight. Plan for it." Plan for the problem. Because if you plan for it, the likelihood of it happening isn't going to be there. But if you don't plan for it, you don't have any action steps or policies put into place, then that will happen. And then you'll have to deal with the ramifications. 

[00:33:25] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. And you're scrambling for what to do next because you can't think calmly in the heat of the moment. Absolutely great advice. This has been fantastic. Where can our listeners find and connect with you? 

[00:33:40] Andy O'Brien: They can connect and find me at, do you want my email address? You want my website? 

[00:33:45] Sanjay Parekh: Website's great, email address, whatever you want to share. 

[00:33:48] Andy O'Brien: Yeah, they can connect with me at [email protected]. They can connect with us at actioncoachcentraltx.com. We have, and of course all the different social media stuff that goes with it. Whether it be Instagram or TikTok or Facebook or LinkedIn, just give us a look and we'll be happy to have any conversation with anybody that's looking at any challenge or just wants the advice of should I do it or should I not?

[00:34:18] Sanjay Parekh: And you just recently had a book published too. Why don't you mention that as well? 

[00:34:22] Andy O'Brien: We did. We did. Is it okay if I show it? 

[00:34:26] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah, absolutely. 

[00:34:27] Andy O'Brien: We published on January 1. And it's called "WTF was I Thinking: the Family Business" and it's humorous, it's a short book about me and family businesses and all the different family businesses that I've worked with. And there is, in the book, there's 17 action items to check in your business to help you in those areas.

Plus, with over a hundred different takeaways of what to look for in your business to help you not make the same mistakes that I've made. Wait, I didn't make any mistakes. Sorry. I'm just kidding. It's to help you not make the mistakes that I've made in the last 35 or 30 years of business. 

[00:35:13] Sanjay Parekh: Yeah. This has been awesome, Andy. Thanks so much for being on today. 

[00:35:17] Andy O'Brien: Thank you so much. I really appreciate you, Sanjay, and the opportunity to be with you. 

[00:35:23] Sanjay Parekh: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the Side Hustle to Small Business Podcast, powered by Hiscox. To learn more about how Hiscox can help protect your small business through intelligent insurance solutions, visit hiscox.com. And if you have a story you want to hear on this podcast, please visit www.hiscox.com/shareyourstory. I'm your host Sanjay Parekh. You can find out more about me at my website, www.sanjayparekh.com.