MBA1984 The Fire Yourself Experiment

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Visit Dell.com deals. Hey, welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA show. Powerful business lessons delivered every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of Webinar Ninja, an independent software company I started with my co founder back in 2014. And in today's episode you will learn the Fire Yourself experiment. We're going to run through an experiment that we're going to do together. You can see this as a thought experiment or a planning experiment where you're going to see what it takes to totally remove yourself from the business, to literally fire yourself. What needs to be true to allow your business not only to survive but to thrive. We're going to take off our CEO hat. We're going to take off our action taker, our implementer hat off and we're going to put on the investor hat. Imagine you bought your business right now and you're going to fire yourself and you're going to have to figure out a way to make the business work without you. What would you have to do now? You might be asking Omar, what's the point of all this? Well you might say this won't work for my business so why should I even try or do this experiment? Well don't worry I will explain, I promise. But at the very least, what you'll get out of this experiment is a deeper understanding of work that you're doing that is either unnecessary or can be done by somebody else. This will free up your time for other projects, for family, for travel, or maybe another little business. But most of all, you're going to learn what will it take to make your business truly passive? So let's get into it. Let's get down to business.

We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk?

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.

The fire yourself experiment is all about just learning, exploring. What will it take to run a totally passive business? What do I need to do? What needs to be true? Sometimes we just need to see the facts in front of us. And once they're presented, we can then evaluate. We can say, okay, that's doable, or maybe that's going to take X amount of time. But for most people, when they do this experiment, they realize this is possible. I can actually do this. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but very possible in the near to midterm future. So let's break down what this experiment's all about and take the first steps. Everybody's level of attachment to the business is different. Some people can step away from their business for a week and no one will even notice. Others, they're gone for a day and their inbox and their messages and their slack is blowing up and they feel like, man, I can't get away. This is often caused by the fact that you, yes, you, are the bottleneck in your business. This means that too many decisions, too many tasks are going through you. People can't make decisions. People can't move forward. Whether that's clients, whether that's your own team members, whether that's suppliers or vendors. The point here is that you control all the keys. Everything has to go through you. And therefore the business is dependent on you in order for it to function. Here is what's great about this situation. You are not special, okay? Now I know that is maybe tough to hear or a little bit harsh, but you're a human being and there are other human beings in the world that can do what you do on a day to day basis or can be trained to do it. One of the exercises I highly recommend you start with is to list every single thing you do in your business. Now I must warn you, this is going to take you some time. It could take you a few hours, it can even take you a few days, even a week. Why? Because things will start to creep up or you'll forget that. Oh, I actually do this too. And I actually do this. And when somebody has a problem, I'm the unblocker. I'm the person that helps out. I'm also the person that gives them access to this. And you just write down and you make a tally of all the tasks. I remember when I first did this task a few years ago, it was over 200 items. It was pretty embarrassing. Once you have your list together, your first job is to eliminate what are things that you're doing that you really don't need to do anymore. Like you don't have to actually do this anymore. Not delegate, not hand it over to somebody else, not hire out for. Just totally stop doing unnecessary. The second step is to look at your task list and say, what can I automate with technology? Is there anything I can automate with any kind of app or autoresponder or email sequence or calendar type of app? The point here is that can I replace me with a machine? And today this is becoming more and more common. So that kind of gets rid of a few things off the list as well. The next is what can I delegate? Who on my team right now that I already are employing or already paying them a salary, I can hand over and give them some tasks on my list. This could be one person, it could be several people. The point here is that there going to be things that you do that you don't need to do. You don't have special skills or knowledge. I want you to question yourself. Can you just train somebody? Can you shoot a video? Can you walk them through it? Most things you can teach people. Most things you can just show them. It just takes time to teach and a lot of us don't want to invest the time thinking that it's faster just to do it. But no, you are stopping yourself from actually progressing as an entrepreneur and having a passive income or a passive business because you are responsible. You are always there and needed to do the task. Whether you're on vacation, whether you're working, whether you're not working. The point here is that there's gotta be somebody you can train to do most of your tasks already. Now, if you don't have somebody on your team that can do the tasks on your list of to do's or the things you do, because there may be decision making, maybe it's hiring, maybe it's making product decisions. Who can you hire to do that? This is when you're putting your investor hat on. If you're an investor in this company, if you bought this company, you're not who you are now or who's doing all the work. You bought this company and you needed somebody to do some of these tasks, who would you hire? Well, maybe I need to hire a product manager to do all my product decisions. Maybe I need to hire a customer service manager to deal with my high level customer service needs. Maybe I need to hire a head of finance or even just a bookkeeper to do all my payroll. Who would you hire? And this is not the time to think small. Don't worry about how you're going to afford it right now. Don't worry about how much are the salaries and how you're going to find these people and the recruiting process. Don't worry about any of this. What you need to focus on is what needs to be true, what has to happen to remove yourself from the business as a practical exercise, as just, hey, I'm an investor. I want to find a way to make this business run without me. This is the hardest step of this experiment, okay? Because you have to start thinking differently, okay? Because right now you are doing most of the stuff that you would normally hire for. And you basically need to break down everything you do, including decisions you make, including the management you do, including leading your team, including making decisions on your actual products and services and prices and all that kind of stuff. And one way to just get to grips with this whole situation and to actually fulfill this exercise is to ask yourself the question, are you the smartest person in the world? Okay. The answer is no. There are other people in the world that are probably smarter. Are you the most qualified person to do all these tasks? Probably no. There's going to be people that are highly skilled, highly specialized, that could do each of your tasks better than what you can do. But here's the kicker. Even if whoever you hire in this exercise is mediocre, is not that great, that will do the job that you do on a bad day, your business will most likely be fine and will probably continue to grow because this person just specialize in one area of your responsibilities. Let me give myself an example. I love doing webinars. I've been doing webinars for years and years and years. I've run over 500. I think I'm pretty good at it. I think I bring in a lot of customers when I do our webinars. I think I nurture our customers really well. But here's the reality. I can probably find somebody who's even better. And if not, I can probably find somebody who's just as good or can be just as good with the right training and some time. So webinar, trainer and presenter is a job I can hire for. Now, at this point, you have your list of things that you do and you have basically things you've crossed out, things that you've automated with technology, things you've already delegated to people on your team and things. Things that you can hire for, you can find people to do for you. When you sit back and look at that, you start to realize, wow, this can be my reality. And what you start to realize is your job is not to do all the work. Your job is to assemble a team that can do the work and fulfill your mission, to fulfill your vision, to build and to run the business of your dreams so that you can live the life of your dreams. That's what entrepreneurs really do. They use resources like people and money and technology to be able to create a reality called their business.

We've all been there. You hold onto a coupon, hoping to cash it in at the store, but then you forget about it and suddenly you've got a mountain of useless expired coupons.

Do you think this one's still good? Free milk.

Oh, mate, that expired in 1993.

Dang it.

Fortunately, there are better ways to save money. Like by switching to Geico, you could save about $900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

Ooh, how about this one? Half off floppy disks.

Now you should try a bit of spring cleaning.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to Geico.

To wrap up today's lesson, the point of the fire self experiment is to imagine a world, a life, a business that does not require you, does not require you to even work there. Now, if that's not what you want, if you want to be involved in the business to some extent, this exercise is still helpful because we all, as entrepreneurs will tend to overwork ourselves, take on more than we should. And this is a good way for us at least to take things off our plate, to give us ourselves some thinking time, some growing time, some improvement time, some rest time. But ultimately it allows you to imagine what a business looks like that is incredibly autonomous and so easy to sell because it doesn't require you thanks so much for listening to the $100 NBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe, hit follow on your favorite podcast app so you don't miss a beat. Tomorrow's Q and A Wednesday where we answer the question, how do I connect with more positive people? We get into that in tomorrow's episode, so don't miss it. Before I go, I want to leave you with this Sometimes we get bogged down in what we do every day. The routine, the to do lists, just what we are used to, and we never step back and think, does it have to be this way? Maybe I can work on different things. Maybe I can change the way I work or how I work or who I work with. It's important to check in with yourself and your business and your relationship with the business from time to time. I highly recommend doing doing this thought experiment at least once a year to see where you stand. Are the things on your list getting less or more? Did you actually delegate or automate or cancel altogether the things that you said you would? Did you make any hires in the right direction? It's a great way to check in to see how you're progressing, thinking like an investor and not just a business owner. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

We've all been there. You hold on to a coupon but forget about it and suddenly it's Expired.

Expired in 2012. Dang it.

Fortunately, by switching to Geico, you could save about 900 on car insurance without ever touching a coupon.

It feels good to save big. It feels good to geico.