When you look at most entrepreneurs, they seem to glorify “the grind”. You’re not a success if you didn’t put in all those hours. If you make time for yourself and your family, you’re not really hard core.
I never got why working 40 to 60 hours a week is a badge of pride for entrepreneurs. Your time is priceless. So every hour you work should be making you more money. There’s a limit to how much you can make when you do everything yourself. When you have a team of virtual assistants working for you, there’s no limit to how much you can make.
This is the guiding philosophy Ryan and I have in common. We don’t believe in sacrificing our time just for money. It was just as important for us to live the lifestyle we want as making as much profit as possible. We both believed that freedom and business growth don’t have to be mutually exclusive concepts. You can have both when you choose to outsource to the Philippines.
Don’t just take my word for it.
Here’s Ryan sharing how he made outsourcing work for his business and how the experience has changed his life.
Did you become an entrepreneur because you wanted freedom? You wanted to make your own work hours. You get to decide how you spend your time each day. You can have a long lunch with your spouse whenever you’d like. You can go to your kid’s ballgame. When you originally knew you wanted to be an entrepreneur, you likely had many of those same thoughts.
Now that you’ve taken the leap and actually are an entrepreneur, do you have the level of freedom you daydreamed about when you were working for someone else? Do you find yourself having extra time to do those things you’ve always wanted to do?
Probably not.
The reality is you probably work many more hours now than you ever did before you started your own business. You still want the freedom of having a more open schedule but your business just isn’t quite ready for you to take breaks. There is always one more client, one more email, one more meeting that you “have” to get done so your company can continue to grow. It’s a never ending cycle. I get it.
These days, when you belong to any sort of entrepreneurial group, it seems like everyone glorifies “the grind”. This person says they worked 86 hours last week and someone else mentions they average 16 hour work days. It almost becomes a competition about who is working harder.
Should that be how we measure ourselves in our businesses? At the end of the year when you run your company’s numbers, you likely don’t calculate how many hours you worked. So why are we so hung up on working every waking minute?
While I do admire a good work ethic and think it is vital to success in business, many of us only know “the grind”. We feel that if we aren’t grinding then we aren’t giving it our maximum effort. If we feel as if we aren’t giving it maximum effort, why even bother. Right? We might as well just go back to the cubicle of a corporate office. This causes “the grind” to become a lifestyle and directly opposes the exact reason you probably started your own business…. freedom! Is working 16 hour days, every day, freedom?
Go back in your mind to the days when your business was brand new. What did you picture your life would be like in 5 years, 10 years or 20 years? Financial stability, freedom of time, freedom of movement, family time, vacations, etc. Do any of those sound familiar? Likely yes but probably not 16 hour work days! Yet we keep on doing it and not achieving our original mission.
….But Ryan, you don’t understand my business. You don’t understand the complexities of what I have to do on a daily basis to keep everything moving forward.
You’re right.
I don’t know what you do each day but I can relate to it. I have those same challenges in my own business where you feel like you are the only one that can do it correctly.
That mindset is keeping us in this constant grind. We haven’t created a business for ourselves rather than a job. Yep, we have created a job for ourselves. If we don’t show up today for work, nothing gets done and the company doesn’t make any money. We never want to admit it but we have a job where we work for ourselves…. not a business.
Ok cool…. Don’t work 16 hours days each day. Got it. How am I supposed to do that?
In order for you to get closer to your goal of freedom, you have to let go and delegate. You cannot be doing every little step inside of your business. You need to delegate these lower level tasks and leverage other people’s time to get the results you want.
I have a mentor that tells me ‘if you can find someone to do a job 80% as well as you can do, then hire that person to do those tasks’.
Let’s face it. If we can swallow our pride and be truthful with ourselves, there are many people that can do many of our daily tasks at 80%. The hardest part is simply admitting it.
Early in my entrepreneurial journey, I didn’t feel like I deserved to be successful and make a lot of money unless I was constantly in the “grind”. I thought that was what would equal success.
As I’ve grown as an entrepreneur, I realized I was wrong with that mindset. A strong work ethic is vital but that alone will not get you to your goals. There are millions of people out there that work hard every day and still live paycheck to paycheck. Working hard is only one part of the solution.
The piece I was previously missing is… your job as an entrepreneur is to solve problems. Those 16 hours days should slowly shift into working less hours but spending those hours on the tasks that you excel at. You will also start making big decisions that will affect your company’s growth and success. These are the things you should be doing rather than tedious tasks all day.
Figure out what is going to move the needle for you and your business. Figure out how to spend your time working on those important things rather than the minutiae of the day to day.
So what is this phrase that has exploded my business and will do the same for yours? Here it is…
Stop doing $10 per hour tasks and
start doing $1,000 per hour tasks.
Write that phrase down somewhere and read it each day.
Try this… write down what you do each day. At the end of the day, look at that list and ask yourself ‘how many of these items on my list are $1,000 per hour tasks?’ The truth will likely be shocking. You will probably see a list of time consuming activities that weren’t maximizing your impact to the company.
Rarely do you see someone whom is super successful as a single person. Without fail, these high performers need help in certain areas and find people to help them maximize their time. Again, they find ways to spend their time on those income producing items.
You don’t have to be an expert in every area of your business. If you aren’t an expert in a specific area or it isn’t the best use of your time, find someone who is. Don’t spend 6 months studying HTML to figure out how to build your own website. Hire someone who already is an expert and pay them to build it for you. You concentrate on the high dollar activities that will move the needle in your business.
If you are lacking the freedom you want, you must change the way you are doing things. Figure out what tasks are going to make huge improvements to your business and concentrate on those tasks. Anything that doesn’t fall within that category, look for a way to hire someone else to do that work.
This will accelerate the growth of your company and give you back the freedom you’ve always wanted.
Ryan Smith
Are you ready to change your life like Ryan? You too can have a world class virtual assistant working for your business.
Get started! Post a Job or Browse Resumes on OnlineJobs.ph.
About John Jonas
John helps business owners learn to outsource to the Philippines and replace themselves with virtual assistants.
He founded and owns OnlineJobs.ph.
He currently employs 14 amazing Filipino workers full-time and loves every one of them. He lives in Utah, has a wonderful wife, 4 amazing kids, and golfs 4-5 times/week.
Find John at JohnJonas.com and Facebook.
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