Doug Fath and Jeff Greco discuss how to stop doing everything in your business in their latest video. Click the video below to watch now.
| Jeff Greco: | Jeff Greco with Legacy Capital.
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| Doug Fath: | Doug Fath, also with Legacy Capital.
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| Jeff Greco: | And in today’s video we’re going to be talking about how as business owners you stop it and focusing on what you’re best at. And really this video comes from every year Doug and I like to do one on one interviews with a handful of our clients to really understand the biggest challenges that they’re dealing with, and in our interviews at the end of last year. Our clients for the most are growth minded, they want to continue to grow and scale the business, they love what they do. Frankly they’re mostly artists when it comes to rehab and they love the craftsmanship, and they love fixing up real estate either to flip it or to build a rental portfolio. They love almost everything about real estate, and in fact we ask them, “If you had all the money that you wanted or if you didn’t need to work again what would you do?” And without fail they all said, “I would do more real estate.” So this video really comes from that place.
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| Doug Fath: | Yeah and the other thing that they said is really that they have a commitment to mastery, mastering their craft. And inside of that commitment to mastery there is also levels of perfectionism or no one could do it as good as I can or as good as we can. And as you’re growing and scaling a company, that mindset is part of the magic and what has you great and do the amazing job that you do, it could also limit and be an inhibitor as you look to grow and scale.
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| Jeff Greco: | So I would now like to take full responsibility for this beautiful stop sign that was created. It’s not red, as you can see. In my high school days art was clearly my best class by far.
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| Doug Fath: | Just in case you couldn’t tell, that’s a stop sign.
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| Jeff Greco: | This handwriting’s mine too.
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| Doug Fath: | Somebody may call it a circle, we call it a stop sign.
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| Jeff Greco: | So Doug and I put this stop it here because inside the challenge that Doug laid out, in terms of our clients commitment to mastery and wanting to continue to grow and scale the business, what we found is really … What we first wanted to say to them or what we did say to them was stop it, and really what we mean by that is stop doing everything in your business. As human beings there’s only 24 hours in a day. You gotta eat, you gotta sleep, you gotta do some other things outside of business, some personal time, some family time, some friend time. But at the end of the day, I don’t care how hard you work or how much you burn yourself out, at the end of the day there’s only so much you could do.
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| So when you hit that breaking point or when you hit that frustration or that ceiling, it’s called a couple of different things, the question is how do you go through to the next level? And what we found was really two key topics which we’ll touch on today, which will help alleviate some of that frustration, to give specific action items on how to get to the next level. One is the concept of unique ability, which I believe comes from Dan Sullivan at Strategic Coach. Number two is the concept of an accountability chart, which we’ve used inside the book Traction as well as Rockefeller Habits. Both of those books talk about accountability chart.
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| So first and foremost unique ability. The concept of unique ability is that we’re all special, and we’re all not great at everything. And so what that really means is that unique ability is something that one, we have a much higher skill level at than other people. Two, we enjoy doing it, we get energized and lit up by the fact that we get to do those type of activities inside your unique ability. And three, it’s some sort of valuable activity that adds money or value to the business at hand. So unique ability is really getting clear on what’s your best bet, and the good news is that everyone has a unique ability. My unique ability is different than Doug’s unique ability, which is probably different than your unique ability. But at the end of the day the concept of unique ability is understanding and getting clear what you’re good at, enjoy doing, and adds value to the business.
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| Doug Fath: | Yeah I think one of the key distinctions is certainly you want to identify what your unique ability is, and then there are gonna be things that you’re doing that are not in your unique ability, that you still feel no one could do it as good as you. And really the whole purpose of the unique ability is those things that you really think no one could do as good as you, if it’s not really your unique ability you don’t wanna be doing that. You wanna be focusing your time and energy on your unique ability. It’s where you provide the most value, it’s what you’re best at, it’s where you get the most fulfillment and energy with what you’re doing. And then you really wanna build a unique ability team and find other people to do those other things, that delegation, where they’re operating inside of their unique ability, and that’s really where … or not where but where the accountability chart becomes important so that you can identify what the different roles are and who’s accountable for what.
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| Jeff Greco: | Right and so getting clear on unique ability there’s an activity inventory you could do. In a normal day or in a normal week what type of activities do you do? And then bucketing them into yeah I’m best at them, they add a high amount of value, or what would it cost or understand what would it be like to delegate to other people? Specifically when it relates to our clients, there’s two key areas that we feel like our clients are still doing that are not a high value to the business and frankly they’re frustrated or annoyed doing that. Number one is the bookkeeping. So we still see a lot of clients who are trying to figure out QuickBooks or frankly they have a whole bunch of receipts that they deliver to their CPA at the end of the year, so certainly delegating or bringing in a bookkeeper. Either it’s a full time employee or an outsourced solution or someone that comes in part time. Bookkeeping and keeping track of the books is really an easy, simple, straightforward way that is not the best use of the business owner’s time.
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| And number two, a lot of our clients who are mostly artists, craftsmen, enjoy doing the real estate, are not so strong at some of the administrative organizational things. And so whether that’s having a personal assistant or having someone who’s operationally focused or someone who can help you keep your life organized. But we found those are really the two biggest pain points that our clients are currently feeling and experiencing that are preventing them from going to the next level.
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| Doug Fath: | Yeah and oftentimes not only are they the biggest pain points they’re also, as I think Jeff was saying, it’s some of the areas where they’re most weak. Going back to essentially doing an activity inventory, we look at that and strategic coach talks about this is breaking it down into four different areas. There’s your unique ability, that’s where you want to spend the majority of your time. There is excellent activities. There’s then activities that you’re confident in, that you’re good at. And then there are activities that you’re incompetent in. And oftentimes the bookkeeping, the admin stuff usually for clients fall, it’s an activity either that they’re incompetent in or just barely competent, meaning sort of the lowest of the four levels. And those are the things that you need to delegate, that’s where you want to start delegating with those lowest levels. The things that you hate, that you’re not good at, those are first things to delegate, and those are two examples of that.
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| Jeff Greco: | Yeah and as entrepreneurs it’s kind of a blessing and a curse that we feel like we’re all powerful and that we can do everything, the amount of energy, focus, intensity it takes to create something from nothing and to get a business going and growing and scaling. And the curse of that is at some point to get to the next level you need to bring in other resources, other people, so we can refocus the leader or leaders of the business into doing what they do best and bringing the most value to the business.
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| So the next concept is the accountability chart, which is talked about in a lot of different ways. We really implemented it and we used Traction, a book by Gino Wickman, in our business. I know it’s also talked about in a book called Rockefeller Habits too. Not sure who wrote it.
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| Doug Fath: | Verne Harnish.
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| Jeff Greco: | Verne Harnish. But essentially just stealing what the Rockefeller family used to grow and manage the family’s activities and their wealth. And really the concept of the accountability chart is even if it’s two people in an organization or three people in an organization, the accountability chart will look way different than a fortune 500 company, but really it helps you understand that even if your name falls into a few different buckets in the accountability chart, it’s getting clear on what are the key areas of the business and who’s really gonna be responsible for each area?
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| So even when we started our business and it was your and I name a few different places in the accountability chart. There was certain things that Doug was responsible for, there were certain things that I was responsible for, and we would take the lead on those and understanding what activities or what responsibilities or what goals really fit in to each one of those accountability chart shapes.
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| Doug Fath: | Yeah and as Jeff mentioned, when you’re starting the business especially from the get go you may find your name in multiple accountabilities, which is fine. But the important thing is there can only be one person that’s accountable for those different boxes. This way it’s really clear, Jeff’s accountable for this, I’m accountable for that. So it’s fine if you find yourself in multiple boxes. The key though is that there’s only one name in that box so that accountability is clear.
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| Jeff Greco: | Yeah. And just the last thing which ties into the accountability chart, which I believe is talked about in Traction and Rockefeller Habits, is once the accountability chart is established, really getting clear on what are the most important things to do inside that role that make the biggest difference to the business. Because it’s very natural for business owners to go into when they hit this ceiling of going from doing everything to starting to get traction or momentum in the business, is that they realize they are at the capacity and they get overwhelmed and frankly they don’t know where to turn. So implementing unique ability, as Doug said, getting clear on where your activities fit into the quadrant to refocus you on what you do best, and then looking at bringing in additional people or getting clear, what are the most important things in that role to help you continue to do your business successfully so we can turn the stop it sign into a green go forth and multiply sign.
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