Why “Busy” Is Not a Strategy | Episode 213

 Busy is the biggest badge of honor in business today. Ask any business owner how they're doing and you'll hear it. I'm busy. 

We're busy. But here's the problem. Busy doesn't mean progress, it doesn't mean profitable, and it doesn't mean scalable. 

In fact, busy might be the biggest red flag telling you that your business isn't moving forward at all.

Welcome to the Buddy Entrepreneur Podcast. I'm Randy Bridges, business advisor, consultant, coach, and trusted partner to service-based business owners who are serious about performance, profit, and progress. 

This podcast exists to do one thing, help you solve the real problems that stall your growth, kill momentum, and burn out the very people who built your business. So let's get started, shall we?

All right, all right. Welcome back to episode 213. 

Today is Wednesday, August 20th, 2025. In this episode, we're tackling a truth that most business owners know deep down, but they don't say out loud. You're not short on effort, you're short on direction. 

Because when busy becomes your default mode, your business is going to plateau. And in this episode, we'll unpack why busy is not the same as progress, the three hidden costs of a busy business, a real-world case study of a CEO who broke the cycle, and a quick audit to make sure you're running your business strategically, not frantically. Well, let's dive into the content.

Busy is an illusion. It feels productive because it's full. Your calendar's packed, your inbox is stacked, your to-do list is just exploding.

But the real illusion is that busy is reactive. It's working on everything that comes at you, instead of what actually matters. Did you know that you can fill 60 hours a week with busy, and still not move the needle on growth, profitability, or freedom? You know, I've lived it, realizing later that busy became just plain motion.

Instead, what we want to develop is a self-strategy, which then generates momentum, not motion. And we have to do that with others in order for it to be effective. That being said, let's look at the three hidden costs of busy. 

Number one, burnout without breakthrough. You know, when everything runs through you, you eventually hit a wall. And instead of creating breakthroughs, you just exhaust yourself. 

That's one of the worst places to be as a business owner, because everyone and everything around you relies on your energy to move things forward, even if it's only the illusion of movement. Number two, bottleneck leadership. This is where I was for a long time.

It's where you're in every decision, every client issue, every approval. You've essentially stopped leading at this point, and you've become the lid on growth and development. And finally, blind spot growth. 

Busy really leaves no space to see patterns, test ideas, or to think long term. All you do is busy, busy, busy. That means you keep solving problems instead of finding the root causes that created those problems.

So let's look at a mini case study. I like to call this the busy CEO. I had a client who came to me saying, "Randy, I don't know what else to give." 

I don't know what else to do. I'm already maxed out, and I'm not getting anywhere. Well, we mapped out her week, and what we found was not amazing and not surprising, but certainly not helpful for her.

Essentially, she was in 25 or more hours of meetings every week. Right? Meetings, the practical alternative to work. She was also the go-to for every client escalation.

When there was a problem, everybody always went to her. And finally, she was reviewing the proposals, financials, even marketing drafts for everyone after they'd completed it. And, you know, we all know that you don't really need to be reviewing the drafts. 

Maybe the finals, but certainly not the drafts, because drafts will be iteration after iteration after iteration. This is where you have to get to a point that she had to get to, which was, you know, her calendar was packed, and the problem is that revenue hadn't grown in 12 months. And I surmise that the reason why was because she was just simply overloaded and not able to get anything done. 

And the truth was, and she admitted it, that she wasn't leading her company forward. She was essentially running in place all day long, not able to achieve anything that she wanted. So we made three key changes. 

Number one, we cut her meeting load in half. We said, you know, only the ones that require strategic input, those are the only ones that stayed on her calendar. Number two, we delegated client escalations and project reviews to her ops director, with clear accountability and reporting. 

That meant that the ops person only came to her when there was a real critical issue. And number three, we shifted her freed up hours into growth priorities. We developed strategy blocks, client expansion planning, not work planning, and we developed two new service offerings together, simply in the available time that she had. 

Six months later, here's what changed. She had her first true leadership team in place. She had four people that were across different aspects of the business that were handling the leadership of those decisions, and she would meet with them once a week to wrap up everything and make any final decisions. 

Also, the new offerings accounted for 22% of her ongoing revenue. That way she could actually focus on things and have the money and the bandwidth to be able to grow the business without having to fight with it. And her time now became about 70% focused on growth instead of firefighting. 

There were days when they were good, and that 70% could fluctuate either way, but ultimately revenue growth got back on track. She was much happier, much more satisfied, and her leadership team was also a happier group of people, because they weren't being micromanaged every step of the way. The lesson of this case study, you don't escape busy by working harder. 

You escape it by replacing yourself in today's work, so you can create tomorrow's opportunities for you and your business and your customers. At this point, I like to bring in a quick audit, a tool that you can use in your own business to understand, are you running busy or are you running strategy? So there are three questions to ask yourself. They're very simple questions. 

Number one, are you spending more than 50% of your time reacting instead of creating? Number two, does your calendar reflect growth priorities or other people's priorities? And number three, if you took a two-week vacation, would progress stall or would it continue? See, if you answered the first one of these in any of these questions, you're not running strategy. You're definitely running busy. So in our closing reflection, you didn't build your business just to fill every hour of the day. 

You built it to grow, to create freedom, to make an impact. Busy, as much as we may like it and it feels good, it simply doesn't get you to any of those. Structure does, strategy does, but not busy. 

So the next time someone asks, hey how's your business going? Don't aim for describing busy. Instead, compare where you are against your future outcomes and the good that they're going to do. That's going to make all the difference and give somebody a real handle on where your business is. 

Don't forget, build it smart, run it clean, and stay aligned.

That's it for this episode. I hope you picked up some valuable insights and maybe even sparked a few new ideas. 

If you want to keep the conversation going or maybe even explore partnerships, don't hesitate to reach out. And hey, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share this with someone who needs to hear it. The steps you take today could be the start of something big tomorrow.

For The Budding Entrepreneur, I wish you the best in your health, your wealth, your business, your family, everything about you. Take care, and we'll see you back here next week.