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Would you like to work with better clients, make more money, and build a business that gives you true freedom?
Have you struggled with the loneliness that comes with working long hours and solving the dozens of complex problems you face as an entrepreneur?
Do you ever feel like the most valuable business secrets are shared behind closed doors—where only insiders have access?
Welcome to The Inside BS Show—your daily invitation to step behind the velvet rope and into the room where real business leaders talk strategy, success, and scale.
These are your people. They've been where you are, and they've gone where you want to go. But most importantly, they feel your pain and can help it go away.
If you're an entrepreneur, CEO of a private company, or leader of a professional firm, this show is your secret weapon.
Each day, we break down the business growth strategies that insiders use to win—revenue generation, building influence, succession planning, hiring top talent, navigating legal minefields, and crafting an exit strategy that maximizes value.
But this isn’t just a podcast—it’s a community. We don’t just talk at you; we bring you into the conversation.
Your hosts, attorney/entrepreneur Nicola Gelormino (Nicki G) and author/consultant Dave Lorenzo (The Godfather of Growth), give you an exclusive front-row seat to the insights, strategies, and behind-the-scenes conversations that drive business success.
A new episode drops daily at 6 AM—because insiders start their day ahead of the game.
Want to connect with Nicola, Dave, or our team? Call us at (305) 692-5531.
What are you waiting for? Join us ON THE INSIDE.
Hey entrepreneurs, do you want to be more productive? Who doesn't? Join us on this edition of the Inside BS Show. Hey now, I'm Nikki G. This is the Inside BS Show. Here with me is my partner Dave Lorenzo, the godfather of growth.
Dave, how are you? Hey now Nikki G, I'm doing great. How are you today? Great, thanks. Are you ready to talk about productivity? Because today's show is all about how to be more productive.
This is for you entrepreneurs, so listen up. Dave, what is the first thing on your list for how entrepreneurs can be even more productive? Well, Nikki G, the first thing on my list is make mundane tasks friction-free. That's right, take the tasks that you do over and over again and make them easy so you don't have to think about them.
I use an example all the time about the clothes that I travel in. So one of the things that I can't stand about business travel is packing and having to think about all the stuff that I have to put in my suitcase. And I travel almost every week, at least two or three weeks a month.
So here's what I do to make that travel experience friction-free. Number one, I travel in a uniform. And what that uniform is, it's quite similar to what I have on now.
It's a black jacket, it's a t-shirt, and it's the same pair of jeans. I have seven different versions of the same t-shirt. I have two of these black jackets and I have four different pairs of jeans.
I have one pair of black sneakers that I always travel in. So when I'm traveling the next day, I know t-shirt, jeans, black jacket. And the reason for the black jacket is because it's a safety net in case I forget to pack a suit jacket, I at least have a black blazer with me.
I can throw a black blazer on over anything and it looks semi-decent. I also have a checklist and I look at my checklist for all the stuff I have to pack so that I don't have to think about it. And everything goes in a specific place in the suitcase.
So you take the mundane tasks and you make them friction-free so you don't have to think about things. When I get up in the morning, I do three things first thing in the morning every single day. I wake up in the morning and I sit in the same chair and meditate for 20 minutes.
First thing I do while I'm meditating, my coffee, which is on an automatic timer, is brewing because I set it up the night before in advance. And then while I'm drinking my coffee, when I get to my desk, I look over my to-do list which I've written and left on my desk from the night before. Those are the three things I do to start my day every day.
So I don't have to think about making coffee. I don't have to think about meditating. I don't have to think about what are the first few things I'm going to do at work.
It's all set for me. Take the mundane tasks and make them friction-free. That's my first productivity tip for our friends who are entrepreneurs today.
Dave, I think we're working off of the same to-do list because some of those are also some of mine. I think that's great. Having the coffee on auto brew.
I hate packing for travel. So that's all done in advance. So I think we're working off that same list.
But for those of you listening, it is really life-changing. You will be so thankful for yourself. You don't have to deal with all of those things in the moment.
Point number two for me, and it's similar to this, the one that you made, Dave, is do the hardest things first in your day. That is huge for me. There are especially, you know what I do, listeners, litigation attorney, and there are phone calls.
They're going to be difficult. I'm going to deal with someone difficult on the other side. Or it's that email that I'm just not ready to send.
What do I do? I prioritize those. And those go first in my day. Because I know that if I put them off, then that's going to be weighing on my mind.
And it's going to impact my productivity. So I'm knocking those out first. And I know that I'm going to have to do it.
I get through it. And I can't tell you how thankful I am that I do this first. Don't have to think about it the rest of the day.
Shift my mindset. And then pick away at my day. So doing the hardest things first you don't want to do will put you in a much better mindset to approach your day.
And you'll be so relieved that you've got them out of the way first. Yeah. My next point for productivity tips for entrepreneurs is making appointments to do your project work.
So, Nicola, you go to court. And what happens to an attorney if they just forget or blow off a court appointment? What happens if you have an eight o'clock hearing and you just don't show up or you forget about it? What happens? There's a lot of consequences for that. I mean, look, most severe consequences, your case can get thrown out.
Depending upon the type of hearing. Yeah, there are huge consequences. You cannot afford to miss any hearing.
So you need to take your project work, the work that's going to advance your business, and put an appointment on the calendar for that project work and treat it exactly like you would be treating it if you were a litigation attorney with an appointment in front of a judge for a hearing. It is sacred. You do not violate that time for anything or for anyone unless the building that you're in is on fire and you need to run out to save yourself.
That appointment on your calendar is inflexible. You make an appointment to get your priority project work done and you keep it on the calendar and do not change it. Do not violate it for anything.
This is something that I learned years and years ago when I was writing my first book. I could not, just could not focus on sitting down to write because there were 30 other things that I had that I thought were more important. You know what happened? Three months went by, I hadn't written a word, and I had a deadline to submit my work and I was up against it and I didn't know what I was going to do.
So once that deadline was front and center, I really buckled down and I focused and I had some long days ahead of me getting that project done. I learned from that that we as human beings are responsive to deadlines. So I put stuff on my calendar and I view it as inflexible.
I view it as something that I just cannot avoid. I'll tell you how this has manifested itself outside of work for me. I put an appointment on my calendar, a recurring appointment, and this is going to sound like such a freakish thing to do, but how you do one thing is how you do everything.
I put an appointment on my calendar every two weeks to get a haircut. It's a recurring appointment and I put it for the entire year. In January, I sit down and I make an appointment to get a haircut every two weeks.
I do not miss that appointment for anything. And the reason I don't miss it is not because if my hair goes an extra week, it's going to be too long. I mean, look, I'm at a stage in my life where it's not like my hair grows all that quickly.
The reason that I do that is because of the discipline involved. I firmly believe that keeping that appointment to get my haircut is a symbol of how I do everything else. There's a book by Charles Duhigg, Power of a Habit.
We'll put the information down in the show notes. And what Charles Duhigg says is there are, I think he refers to them as either keystone or cornerstone habits. And there are certain habits that you have in your life that influence everything else.
So for example, working out influences your habit for eating. Because if you work out every day, you don't want to make the workout a waste of time by eating more calories than you just burned off in the gym. So working out is one of those cornerstone or keystone.
I can't remember what he refers to them as. One of those cornerstone habits that if you work out every day, it affects your eating. It affects what time you go to sleep because you don't get as good a workout in if you're tired.
It affects everything else you do because it's one of those cornerstone habits. So for me, that haircut every two weeks is like a triggering habit. It's a cornerstone habit where I know if I get that haircut, I look better, I look more professional, I feel more professional, and it makes me more productive.
So figure out what the cornerstone habit is for you at the beginning of your day. If it's doing a meditation, brewing your coffee, and reviewing your to-do list, make those cornerstone habits central and they will influence what you do the rest of your day. Your thoughts, Nikki G? You know, I say this often, Dave.
If it is not on the calendar, it is not going to happen. So even if it is not work-related, but something that you are looking to get done, it's the haircut for you, Dave. For me, sometimes it's the haircut.
Maybe it's getting my nails done. But something that is important, you want to get it done, put it on your calendar. Why? Otherwise, you're going to scuttle right over it and you're not going to get it done.
And if it's something that you're really trying to accomplish, maybe for you that out there, it's business development. Maybe you really want to think about, I need to spend time reaching out to people in my network I haven't touched in a while. If you block off time on your calendar to make that happen, you're going to get it done.
You've reserved that time. You're going to make yourself get it done by creating that habit. I want to add one more thing to this.
You know, even how we do this show, right? You and I have a set time every week that we meet to do the show. And we know how many shows we want to do in a month. And we have that time set on our calendar.
And we're focused and we keep that time every week with the exception of if one of us is traveling or in your case, if you have to go to court or you've got something big, a big project that you're working on. But since we started doing the show, I think we've only missed one of these set times. And for me, what that does, you know, speaking just for myself is it gives me something to look forward to every week.
This is like the highlight of my week is spending this time with you because what people don't realize is when the cameras aren't on, we are absolutely having a great time. But the other thing it does is we know that we have to be sharp and we have to be on during our recording session because if we don't get it done, there'll be no shows the week after. So having that in the calendar, making it a sacred time period is what helps us make sure we get these shows done.
All right, Nikki G, give us the fourth one, please. The fourth one, this is a big one. Say no.
This bears repeating. Say no, entrepreneurs. You get asked a lot.
There's a lot of demands on your time. I know that you want to take that extra one-on-one meeting. Someone really wants a coveted lunch spot in your schedule.
And there's so many of us, Dave and I, I know we both personally struggle with this. You really want to say yes because you enjoy fostering good relationships with those around you. But if you don't know how to say no, it will eat up your time.
You have to be able to say no, know when things are not going to be a good use of your time and you can politely decline them. But that is really a critical aspect you need to develop in your business is saying no. You know, I couldn't agree with you more.
And you're right. You and I, we talk about this all the time, how we constantly say yes to too many things. And I'm often on the phone with you while I'm driving to an airport for something I should have said no to.
And the first thing out of my mouth is, this is a trip I absolutely should have said no to. I think part of the reason we do this is the feeling of guilt you have when you say to somebody, I just can't do that. And you got to stand that on its head.
Stand the whole thing on its head in that you owe it to yourself. You don't owe the person anything. You owe it to yourself.
All right folks, that'll do it for this episode of the Inside BS Show. We gave you four productivity tips for entrepreneurs. My name is Dave Lorenzo.
I'm the godfather of growth and she is... Nikki G. And we're here every day with a great new show. We'll see you back here again tomorrow. If you like what you heard, if you like what you saw, watch or listen to another show.
Until tomorrow, here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life.