What if the biggest problem in your business isn't your marketing, leads or money?

What if it's you?

This week on Sugar, Spice & Spirits, Kelly, Mindy and Natalie sit down with entrepreneur, business coach, real estate investor and airline pilot Steve Rozenberg for a conversation about what separates a business that gives you freedom from one that simply becomes another job.

Steve's entrepreneurial journey began after 9/11 when he was furloughed from the airlines and suddenly discovered that the "safe and secure" career he'd built his identity around wasn't as safe or secure as he'd believed.

Instead of simply finding another version of the same career, Steve started studying wealth and real estate.

Eventually, he built a real estate property management business while returning to aviation — and that's when the two worlds collided.

Sitting at the gate preparing to fly a Boeing 777 to Tokyo, Steve watched hundreds of passengers leave an aircraft while teams unloaded baggage, cleaned, catered, fueled and inspected the plane before another group of passengers boarded.

It happened because everyone knew exactly what to do.

Systems. Processes. Checklists.

Steve realized his business needed the same thing.

In this episode, we talk about why entrepreneurs can actually grow themselves into bankruptcy, why the system should catch human mistakes, and why your business needs a specific destination before you can create the route to get there.

Steve also gives small business owners an actionable challenge: spend four hours every week working ON the business instead of IN it.

That means creating SOPs, processes, procedures, policies and checklists that allow the company to operate without everything depending on you.

But this conversation goes far beyond business.

Steve opens up about losing his 19-year-old son, Jett, in a motorcycle accident and the perspective that experience reinforced about family, time and the dangerous assumption that tomorrow is guaranteed.

He also shares the mission behind the Live Like Jett Foundation, which helps high school students who cannot afford trade school pursue careers in skilled trades.

And then we make the questionable decision to ask Steve to put on his CEO hat and evaluate Sugar, Spice & Spirits.

It takes him approximately five seconds to find a problem. 😂

His challenge forces us to look at alignment, our ideal customer, the problem we're solving and the importance of marketing.

As Steve puts it:

The best known beats the best all day long.

This is one of those conversations that starts with business systems and ends up asking a much bigger question:

Are you building a business that supports the life you want - or sacrificing the life you wanted in order to keep the business alive?

Grab a Woodford Reserve, add the big cube, and join us.

Sugar, Spice & Spirits - where Happy Hour Meets Hustle.

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