This is a transcript from the Business Secrets Podcast With Robert Kanaat. Click here to view and subscribe on iTunes.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Business Secrets. My name is Robert Kanaat – founder of wanderlustworker.com, the premier online destination for all things inspirational and transformational.
Now today I wanted to talk to you about what it feels like to be an entrepreneur. I want to do everything. I literally feel like if I do it, it will get done right. I know that you probably relate to this. As entrepreneurs, we want to do everything, don’t we? We want to have our hands on everything so that it gets done right.
But here’s the problem in doing that. It is absolutely impossible to scale your business if you are doing everything. The hardest part is really finding people that you can trust. As an entrepreneur, you have to get out there and really fire yourself. I know it sounds kind of weird, but you have to fire yourself.
I first heard this concept from Russell Brunson. I actually was listening to a podcast of his, and he talked about firing himself. I thought that was really, really interesting. Because it’s so true that we get stuck in our ways and we can’t actually scale our businesses when we try to do everything ourselves, so we have to fire ourselves.
How do you go about firing yourself? Here’s how you do it. The first thing that you have to do is take a look at what you’re doing every single day. Write it down, what did you do from this time to this time? Do it like in half hour blocks or 15 minute chunks. If you did a certain activity for longer than that, just write it down. At the end of the day, take a look at what you did the entire day, and then assess how much of what you did actually impacts your bottom line.
Remember the 80/20 rule? So 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts. What in your day did you actually do that produced some results? Did you do anything that produced results, or were you just stuck with busy work? Crazy thing is, we get sucked into this busy work, and it takes and consumes all of our time – and it’s the worst, most incessant thing that we can possibly do.
We have to actually get away from that. In order to do that, we have to look at what we’re doing in a given day. What are the activities that we’re spending our time on? When we assess our days in that way, we can literally fire ourselves from most of the things that we’re doing.
The truth is that you have a core set of activities and expertise and skill set that is going to produce the biggest results, so you have to work on doing just that in the day. Not anything else. Not concerning yourself with busy work and getting sucked into certain things that are going to waste your time. That’s not what you’ve got to do. That’s not what you have to do even remotely. You have to focus and concentrate on the things that are going to help you move forward.
What I want you to do is, I want you to spend the time actually writing down what you’re doing. I want you to spend the time listing it out during the day. So during your waking day, what you did with your time is extremely important. If you listen to the time management episode on how to manage your time – I forget which episode number it was now, after recording so many episodes. But go back and listen to it, it’s very useful.
It’s the Quadrant Time Management System. This will actually get you listing out what you’re doing, but more so paying attention to the tasks that you don’t need to be doing in business, not just the time wasters. In the Quadrant Time Management System, we look more for the time wasters, and try to cut that out. Like excessively surfing the internet or binge watching Netflix series and things like that.
We have to actually be conscious of what we’re doing. Not just eliminate all the time wasters that we’re wasting our time on. But be conscious of the things that we’re doing in a given day, and learn to fire ourselves. You have to not only fire yourself from those activities, you have to find people that can do those activities for you – so how do you go about doing that?
My two biggest resources are fiverr, and Upwork. You’re going to have to locate good talent that’s going to be able to help you with any endeavor. Whether it’s literally graphic design or web development or marketing or copy writing, proof reading – like literally, anything. You have to locate those people, so you have to get on and start searching for those people. Where are they?
If you have somebody on your team, great. Take the things that you’re doing in a given day and give them off to somebody else who can do them for you. Don’t waste your time on them. Why would you waste your time on those kinds of things? Literally your time is best spent building your business. Focusing on the core activities are going to produce results.
That’s the way that you scale. That’s the way that you exponentiate your business, your income – everything. When you’re not focusing on that, if you don’t fire yourself – if you do not spend the time doing the right things – creating content, building new products and services. These kinds of things, whatever it is that you are literally doing. Like if you’re not spending the time on that stuff, you are wasting your entire day – so fire yourself.
I want you to go through, I want you to list out – take a look at the list of everything that you’re doing, and then prepare a job description for somebody else to do those things .If it’s multiple things that you’re doing, great. Prepare multiple job descriptions, or find a virtual assistant or find an actual physical assistant who can come to your office, and who can help you.
These kinds of things are really important to do. The more you pay attention to not only the right things to do in a given day, but also to outsourcing the wrong things by firing yourself – the quicker you can scale and grow any business. It doesn’t matter what niche you’re in, what industry you’re in. It really doesn’t matter.
That’s really the secret sauce. That’s the secret sauce on getting to a bigger scale in your business. That’s the secret sauce into growing any company. You have to fire yourself. You literally have to just fire yourself. If you don’t fire yourself, you will never be able to scale. Because you’ll always be trying to do everything yourself.
I know that I am definitely, definitely, definitely to blame for something like this. Because I’ve done this in the past before – and I really have learned a lot over the years on how to delegate and how to manage the activities that I have to do. How to outsource and have team members manage the other activities that I shouldn’t be doing, that I shouldn’t be wasting my time on.
You should be doing the same. You should definitely be doing the same. You should be going through your time and figuring out how much of it is time that you have to be working on something, or how much of it can be given to somebody else on your team or outsourced some other way. The better that you do that, the better that you can be able to do that, the quicker you can actually grow your business.
I know as an entrepreneur, I have a fear of having other people do that. I have to break through that fear. Because literally – as long as what’s being done is close enough to good, then it’s okay. It’s close enough to our ideal set, then it’s okay. As long as it’s not the core activities.
The core activities – you should be doing, you should be handling. The things that you’re known for. The things that have helped you grow the business that you are an integral part of. The 80/20 – The Pareto principle stuff. Yes, you should be doing it, but eventually you can even outsource that to team members and scale more and more. Remember, nobody’s going to be able to do everything perfectly on the first go around, it takes time.
You shouldn’t expect your team members to be able to do something perfectly. It’s going to take them time to get it. But they are going to get it, and they are going to get really good at it – and they might even surpass you – funny thing. That’s the point, like that’s how you build a business. You cannot always be doing everything yourself.
Rely on others. Reach out, put your feelers out, use Upwork, use fiverr to reach people – interview them. Or get somebody on your team to do it. If you already have a somewhat sizeable team, get those people to do it – and fire yourself, literally fire yourself from what you’re doing in the day. Because I assure you that a lot of what you’re doing in the day, you shouldn’t be doing.
Not just the time wasters. I’m not just talking about like the Netflix. I’m talking about the other activities, even related to your business that you feel like you should be doing – that you get sucked into doing, and then you start doing it and you think like, “Nobody else can really do this as good as you.” Well I’ve got some info for you. I’ve got some news for you. If you continue to do that, you can’t progress forward. You cannot grow the business that you desire to grow, it just isn’t possible.
You have to buckle down, get organized, take notes. Really be meticulous about your activities and where you’re putting your focus. Focus is everything. When I wake up in the morning – for example – whatever I start doing, I usually want to continue doing. It’s a momentum thing. That’s the thing that has my focus. As soon as I shift off to something else, it’s like a big interruption in my mind.
I think to myself, “Today, I’m going to be doing this. The next day I’m going to be doing just this.” It’s so much more useful for me, and efficient in my time. But that thing that I’m doing in the day, all day – should be something that only I should be doing. Not something that somebody else should be doing. Find the things that other people can do and let them do it.
That’s what I had to say for you today. So please like and subscribe to this podcast. Comment, share with your friends. Thank you so much for listening, and I will speak to you guys next time.