Productivity does not equal more time!

Alright, thanks for joining me on today's episode just started an interesting Audible is a book called clockwork by Mike McCalla wits. I think I got that right, Mike, if you see this, and I didn't get your name, right, I'm sorry, buddy. This is the third book of his that I've read. Yeah. So I've read Pumpkin Plan, and I've read profit. First, these books are awesome. Like, if you're an entrepreneur, go get yourself a copy of these books extremely helpful. Mike is on a mission to eliminate entrepreneurial scarcity, which is just super cool. And this book I begin began this morning is called clockwork, it starts off with a fairly harrowing story of an email written by a business owner, who is cleaning floors of a business at 2 am in the morning. Now, that might sound pretty bad, it really is very bad. But it's symptomatic of problems in her skill set as an entrepreneur. It's like, Why are you cleaning the floors, presumably, there's not enough money to actually run the business. And so she's paying with her own time to make up the difference. It is a stark warning for those of us who are in the entrepreneurial game and not paying attention or simply don't realize that this game has been worked out. Like there are books that you can buy that will tell you how to run a good business. But what was really interesting was not so much this harrowing tale, but rather that Mike identified a particularly cool equivalent to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And this was that the business also has a hierarchy of needs. To lay it out pretty simple. Simply, there were only three one at the bottom was sales, if you're not selling and you're not having money come into the business, then your business will die. It's a matter of time, you can borrow, you can beg, but if the owner sells and there is no cash coming in, then the business will die. The next level up was very interesting, it was profit. So it is possible to be selling a whole lot, and yet not be profitable, not actually be extracting any benefit from doing the work of the enterprise from organizing the work of the business, that it all just goes in and out, hopefully in equal amounts, but most likely, in more spending than revenue. And so it's definitely possible to go broke selling a lot. But let's say that you've got both of those on the point that you managed to have a business that sells consistently and it is profitable. Then there is one further trap beyond both of these, and this is time that the entrepreneur, the business owner, just like our unfortunate broke, preschool owner from the beginning, is spending all of their time running the show. They have no way of extracting themselves out of the business. Way back when I first began my journey, I remember there was a wonderful definition of business. And this was by action coach coaching, Brad Sugars. And I was part of that with a group of three coaches Bruce Campbell, where Campbell and Wade forgot last Wade's last name, but work was my coach. And or, in fact, my wife and I, and they had a definition of business, a business being a profitable enterprise that runs without me. I really liked that, that suggests that a business should be something that can run without the business owner or the entrepreneur putting their 40 6080 hours of working as they manage their teams and tell people what to do. But I really like this idea of the hierarchy of the business needs, sales, profit, and finally, time and so the lesson out of this is a very interesting one. And that is that productivity in itself does not grant you more time they time must be created for yourself. You must be able to delegate and get the team to do the work. You will pay one of two ways to get the work done in your business, one of which is with money to buy Hey, your team to do work. The second is with your time, which, unfortunately, many entrepreneurs fail to actually pay themselves for the work. And if they did, then the business goes under. It's like, oh, man, not only are they not profitable, but they're not actually paying themselves. And these are, these are nasty traps. These are nasty traps that leave people wondering, where did the dream go? Where did the vision for this business go? It's a gut-wrenching place to be, it's no fun, it is harrowing, it is a trap that is very difficult to get out of. So know that increased productivity in itself will not guarantee you more time something else must go on. And really recognizing that you pay one way or the other. Either you pay with time, your time or you pay with money, then He gives you the question of what are you paying for? What I want to suggest to you is that there is a virtually endless amount of work that you could do. And the real art form is to make sure that the right work gets done. What is the work that actually generates your profits? What is the work that generates your sales? How do you make your business valuable enough to you that you don't need to be there? What would be required? And I want to suggest to you that you're going to need two things. One is the instructions for people to do the work in this business of yours. Like if you had the instructions, then suddenly, it no longer becomes guesswork about how the work gets done. Rather, it is much more like building a Lego set. Hey, we need an X Wing built out of Lego. Here are the pieces and here are the instructions. Go for it. Secondly, you need to know what the teams are working on. Like what are your people doing? Hopefully, that applies to you as well. If you're still in your business, Hey, What work are you doing? But also, can you go across and see what your team is working on right now? Like what instruction manual are they following? Right now? If you need help with this, then I suggest you head over to www.systemio.dev, popping your name and email there go grab the training that I put together around this very challenge. Alright, thanks so much for tuning in today. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode as we continue this journey into the exploration of power and production and profitability on tomorrow's episode.