Ep124: How I'd Find 20 Hours In Your Week

What's going on, team? Welcome to the Leveraged CEO Podcast. My name's Matt Dart. I'm super pumped to give you heaps of value today. So we're going to talk about how to actually find 20 hours in your week to get your time back. So let me first, first off, start by saying I've done this in two businesses of mine over the last 6 years or so. One that I had for my personal training business, uh, where I actually completely removed myself from day-to-day operations. I had a team of 12, uh, we're doing about $500,000, so $500,000 to $600,000 a year, and I wasn't working, uh, in the business. Well, I was working in the business, I mean, not, not say that, but I didn't have to. Um, so I'm going to go through a couple of ways that you, we can do similar things for you if that's what you want. Uh, otherwise, my current business that I've got for PT Mastery I only work in that business for 5 hours per week and we do about $20,000-$30,000 per month. So I'm going to go through how I would actually find 20 hours a week if you were to work with me in the Leveraged CEO. So let's go through, well, firstly I'll go through like kind of like the premise here. So when I say I can get 20 hours a week back, People think I'm actually like exaggerating or it's not possible. I'm literally telling you I can get you back 20 hours per week if we sat down together. It's either gonna be either yourself doing a lot of things that you shouldn't be or the team is being unproductive or your system is just completely broken. So I'm gonna go through the 3 things that you need to do. I'll go through that in a second. But let's first go through where the hours usually tend to hide.. So it's not usually the big stuff, it's more the individual invisible stuff. So answering team messages in Slack, double-checking work, admin invoicing, which can be semi-automated, chasing information across different softwares and platforms. I spoke to someone else the other day and they said they were basically just utilizing all the free softwares. So they had 6 or 7 different softwares, none of them talking to each other. And anytime someone needed something, they had to go to multiple softwares. To actually find the data because nothing talked. They just wanted all the free versions. So although they could just combine everything into one CRM that did pretty much everything and cost them, you know, $150, $200 a month, rather than doing that, they're having team members, you know, they're paying $30, $40 an hour to go back and forth with different softwares to get all the right information. Where if you had it all in one software and we could set up like some AI workflows and systems, we could get all the reporting done for them almost instantly. So that right there, honestly, building out a CRM to have all the information in the one spot would honestly save a good chunk, like 10, 15 hours a week. Another person that I've spoken to recently said they were doing everything manually in terms of their sales pipeline. So manual check-ins, manual follow-ups, manual nurture, uh, and he said that task alone would take him 10 hours a week. So you'd be surprised on how much time this actually adds up and how much time you would get back if we were to systemize, automate a lot of things that— or automate 70 or 80% of the task, and you just have to do like the last 10 or 20%. But also the team as well. So if you got the team more productive, you could then give them more jobs or more things that you do to get your time back. So it's, it's a, you know, obviously we would start with you being the founder, but then we also get the team up to speed as well. And then if you're not able to delegate properly and they still have to come back to you, then that's another issue as well. So, so another example of this is another person that we work with. They, uh, they're finding that the team keeps coming to them. And I had, uh, I gave her this example where your team is either donkeys, horses, or stallions. Donkeys are you need to basically hold their hand for everything and tell them exactly what to do, and they don't do anything for themselves, which you need to fire them. Then you got horses who, if you give them a task, they'll do the task that's about it. They need to be told what to do. And then stallions are, you give them the outcome and they just figure it out. You don't need to hold their hand, you don't need to baby them, you just give them the right tools and support and they just, um, they just go figure it out. So you need to have horses and stallions. Stallions are hard to come by because you usually have to pay them a bit more than the average person, and also yeah, they're usually already working at another job because they're good at their job. So you generally have to poach them or know them already. Horses are good. You're not going to get too many stallions in the business. So horses are good. Give them the tasks, give them the system, the SOP, and they'll follow it. But donkeys are the ones that are constantly sending you messages, getting you to check stuff, or you're having to check stuff because a lot of the time it's wrong because you're not walking them through it bit by bit. Um, or they're just not following like an SOP, for example. So a lot of this stuff, if the team is coming back to you, they're, they're very, uh, they're set on tasks, not outcomes, and we need to change that. So that's also something that we can do for you guys as well. So there's always time to get back. And the, the real question is, you know, if I could get you 20 hours a week back, what would you be doing? Would you be taking your kids to school every day and picking them up every day? Would you be going to their soccer games? Would you be spending it doing more marketing and sales to grow the business a bit more? Would you be spending it upskilling your team? Would you be, you know, whatever it is. But the thing I want you to understand is it's absolutely possible for you to have a really good team, that can grow the business pretty much on your behalf, and you just give them the system support and tools to be able to, to do that. So let's go through how we actually do it. So there's 3 things that we do. We, uh, either eliminate, delegate, or automate the systems. So eliminate, eliminate first essentially means there are tasks in everything— there are tasks in every single business that no one should be doing. Reports that nobody reads, meetings with no decisions, no outcome, approvals that don't need approving, that still happens in the business. So the first thing we do is we audit the systems and processes and we go through the ones that we don't even need anymore. We just get rid of them. So if Jenny is doing some tasks that aren't required or that doesn't move the needle, get rid of those tasks. There's no point having them. The second thing we do is delegate. And the key distinction is you hand over the ownership of the outcome, not the tasks. Okay, so if you say, hey, we need to get, uh, $30K in sales, new sales this month, go to your sales manager or your closer or whoever, whoever does the sales, and say, this is the outcome that we need, I need you to figure out exactly what we need to do to achieve that goal. Say, cool, tell me what you need and you can go do it. Basically, you want to fire yourself from roles. Okay, so basically what I did when I was— when I basically removed myself from the first business that I had for, um, for my PT and when I owned the gym was that the catalyst for this was we were— me and my wife were— no, my wife was pregnant with my daughter, and I basically said, hey, look, I'm gonna move my business online, and I'm gonna reduce the amount of time that I'm required in the business so I can be at home a bit more. Now, I was actually able to take off a whole month. I pretty much did nothing in the business, like very little, for a whole month after my daughter was, was born. The challenging part to that is my, my wife had a business as well, and I actually worked in her business for that month. But my business, I had the right people in place for it to keep growing without me. So that's essentially what happened for, for me. I was able to delegate a lot of the systems and processes to other people. The last thing that we do is we automate. So this can be AI agents, it can be workflows, systems, software. That talks to each other. So you don't necessarily have to do something. So super easy one for people to automate is like reporting from different systems. You shouldn't have to go and get the data yourself. You should be able to automate that pretty easily. So like if you think about the stuff that we talked about, I can almost guarantee for the people listening to this episode, I'd be able to get back 20 hours a week. So the first thing what we do on the call, uh, if you haven't booked a call with him, make sure you book in that call, is we spend, uh, about probably 30 minutes or so just going through all your processes and systems and seeing what we either eliminate, delegate, and automate. From there, we'll be able to get a bit of an understanding of how much time we can save you, and then you basically just decide, hey, look, you know, you want us to do it for you, and we offer a done-for-you service. We do it for you, uh, or you can obviously have a crack at doing it on your own. It's up to you. It's obviously going to take you a lot, lot longer if you're doing it on your own because you're already very busy, which is why you booked a call or you're inquiring with us, uh, to start with. So yeah, that's essentially what we, uh, what we do. So eliminate, delegate, and then automate. So the difference between what we do and some other people is a lot of people would like mentoring and they'll, they'll teach you how to do this type of stuff. But the problem is you're already super, super busy and you don't have a whole lot of time to be able to make these new systems or delegate it or automate these things with like AI agents and that type of stuff. It takes a lot of time to build them, but it also takes a lot of time to learn how to use AI properly. So the difference is we actually do this stuff for you. So we're literally actively working in your business for like 20, 30 hours a week. Doing the stuff for you. So it's completely different to just teaching you how to do it. We do it for you, and then once it's done, we teach you how to manage it yourself. So if you need to update it or systems change, you can always update it from there. So I hope this was an insightful, uh, episode on what it would be like, uh, to kind of work with us, I suppose, but also where we can actually save you a bunch of time. And I wanted to finish on this and just ask you, have a think about what would you actually be doing with the extra time? A lot of people that we talk to say they want more time to themselves so they can have their own hobbies, their own things that they want to do away from the kids, away from the family. Some people say they want to spend more time with the family. I met another guy that we're working with that um, says he almost spends no time with his kids. Like, it's absolutely crazy. Like, for me, I've got two young kids. I've got a 4-year-old and a 2-year-old. Every single morning I'm with them, every single afternoon, every single weekend. Yes, they go to daycare. I drop them off, I pick them up. I go to my daughter's dance class every single week. We take them to swimming lessons every single week. I don't miss out on anything. So I, I would say there's a few people listening to this that is exactly what's happening for you. So if you haven't booked a call, make sure you book a call. I'll put it in the description if you haven't yet. If you have booked a call, then this is what we're going to figure out for you. And all I want you to come, uh, come to the call prepared to make a decision, uh, and we can get to work straight away. So I'll leave it there. I'll see you next week.