Mike Andes breaks down a time-blocking system for scaling to a million-dollar business. Solo operators work labor from 7 am to 3 pm, then shift to sales and admin from 3 to 5 pm. Fixed time blocks eliminate context switching and cut the productivity drain that kills growth.
You don't need a million-dollar idea. You need a million-dollar schedule. I show you the time blocking that I use at every size of business. You can see mostly architect time, a little bit of manager time. That's a big business. But if I'm a smaller company, if I'm a solo operator, most of my day is actually going to be spent in labor time. But I'm going to time block. For example, you might work from 7:00 AM till 3:00 PM as a laborer, and then from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM, You do sales, you do admin, you do other tasks in the business. But by blocking my sales, operations, and admin, it gives me the ability to know, oh, this is a sales task. I will do that from 3 to 5 PM during that block of time. Right now, I need to focus on being a great laborer because that's what the time block says. By doing this, it prevents the switching costs going from, oh, I'm doing an estimate, then I'm out in the field working, then I'm answering the phone, then I'm doing an email, then I'm responding to a review, and you're going through all these different tasks. And the switching cost is killing your productivity.
