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- [00:06]
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When I first started teaching Financial Peace University classes, I drive to the venue, set up all the equipment, teach for hours, break down the equipment, get home exhausted, and then do it all over again multiple nights a week, all by myself. And that's how it is. When you're starting out, everything depends on you. You're the salesperson, the operator, the customer service department, the janitor, all of it. And that may work for a while, but you can't unplug, because if you stop, the business stops and sudden no longer running the business, it's running you. That's exactly where I was before I hired my first team member, Russ Carroll, and that changed everything. Because if you want to scale, you can't keep doing what you've always done, at least not without running yourself into the ground. So today, Entre Leadership's head coach, John Felkins, is going to break down the four things you've got to get right if you want to get off the treadmill and build a business that can actually grow beyond you. Let's get to it.
- [01:00]
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I once coached a guy who was a veterinarian cardiologist. He had even performed heart surgery on a polar bear. He was one of 300 people in the world that were doing this, and he was good at his job. His business was thriving, and he was in high demand and making good money. But he was exhausted. He wanted to pull back a little bit, but he couldn't because he was the only one in his business who could do what he did. Now, you may not be a polar bear heart surgeon, but if you're a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic, or really any other business owner, you've probably felt this before. I just spoke to a guy the other day who installs fiber optic cable. When he was getting started, he had to be on the drill at 7am in the morning, work all day, and then do paperwork until he fell asleep at night. That's the epitome of what it means to be in the treadmill operator stage. We know that most of you are in this stage, and here's what it feels like. Everything depends on you. You're grinding all day, making the money, and at first, the hustle is necessary. It's even exciting. But then you're exhausted and you're asking, how do I grow this without me doing everything? The fact is, you don't own a business. You own a job. This is where a lot of business owners get stuck. If you want to get off the treadmill, you have got to create margin in your business. You've got to create margin in your time, your finances, your team. You can make good money and even hire a little help. But until you figure out how to make the money without you being in the room, you'll stay stuck. There are four things every leader needs to get right if they want to level up. Without these, you'll continue to stay stuck on the treadmill and eventually burn out. The first thing is time management. For the polar bear heart surgeon, his biggest problem was that his calendar was too full. He was in high demand and constantly doing these surgeries. He had no room to think, to find help or to build a system that could relieve some of the pressure. You could be doing well, but at some point you're going to hit your limit. You become the bottleneck. You have to make time to work on your business, not just on the day to day work. This is where I hear a lot of pushback from business owners who say I, I don't have time. That's not true. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. The real issue is that everything feels urgent. You never stop to decide what's really important. The first step is knowing what you're actually spending your time on and you can do that with a time audit. We've got a guide to help you do that and we'll link it in the description below. A lot of business owners think they know where their time goes until they actually track it. You may find that you're wasting time by sitting in meetings you don't need to be in, answering the same questions over and over again, reacting to constant interruptions or texts. So after the time audit, ask yourself, what can I stop doing to create more margin in my day? The second thing is budgeting back to the veterinarian. He needed help. He knew he couldn't continue to do every surgery, every visit, everything else by himself. But growth requires a financial investment. If there's no margin in your budget, you can't hire more people to help you. A lot of business owners say, I'll hire when things calm down. No, you won't. Things never calm down when it all depends on you. You need a financial plan that creates margin. You can do two things to create margin, cut unnecessary expenses or increase revenue. And maybe one option there is to raise your prices. And that sets you up for the third key thing you need to look at hiring. Our veterinarian's problem was he couldn't find anyone to do what he did. Well, yeah, there aren't a lot of polar bear heart surgeons out There. But here's where a lot of business owners get stuck. They think they have to hire someone exactly like them. You're not hiring clones. You're hiring people you can train. For most of you watching, there are people out there that you can hire, even specialized roles. Make sure your expectations are realistic, though. Look for potential. Look for people that are coachable, who have the raw skills and the character to grow into the role. The veterinarian knew he couldn't find another surgeon at his level, so he started scouting veterinarian graduates. And people say training takes too much time. Well, would you rather take the time to develop someone or do something yourself forever? It's not about finding a perfect replacement and it's about building a team that will allow your business to grow beyond you. And that brings us to the final key point. Delegation. And this is a big challenge for a lot of business owners. They're afraid to let go of control. They say, nobody can do it like I can. But if you don't delegate, you become the ceiling for your business. You're spending your time doing 20 hour tasks when you should be focused on $2,000 an hour decisions. Decide how much your time is worth. What are the tasks that drain your time but don't require your expertise? What could you give someone else to do even if it's not done perfectly? Free yourself up to do the things that only you can do. Yes, that'll be uncomfortable, but you have to train up people and trust them to do the job. And my friends at Belay talk about delegation all the time because they've seen what happens when leaders refuse to let go of control. Eventually your team starts operating as at the pace of your chaos. Listen, if you don't delegate, your team never learns ownership. They wait on you. And over time, that becomes your company culture. People waiting on you instead of taking ownership. That's exactly where Belay can help. Belay matches you with executive assistants who can take those repetitive day to day tasks off your plate to help you have time to do what only you can do for your business. Because when leaders finally have space to think, cast vision and communicate clearly, healthy culture gets built on purpose, not by accident. I've known the folks at Belay for years. They really want to help. And if you'd like to see where your own company culture might be starting to suffer, Belay has a free resource for you right now. It's called Culture Clarity and you can download it for free by texting entree to 55123. That's entre 255123 so if you want to get off the treadmill, it's not about working harder or getting more customers. That just adds more pressure. If everything depends on you, you're not scaling, you're surviving. You have to make the intentional leadership decisions that create the margin required to grow the business beyond you.
- [07:36]
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The treadmill stage is part of the journey. Almost every successful business owner goes through it. But you don't want to want to stay there because you didn't start this business just to create another job for yourself. You started it to build something bigger than you. If you want help figuring out exactly how to do that, my book Build a Business you Love breaks down the five stages of business and shows you what to focus on at each level so you can stop surviving and start scaling. We'll leave a link in the description if you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to like and subscribe for more real world leadership content. I'm your host Dave Ramsey. This is Entree Leadership.