[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to the Independence by Design podcast where we discuss what it means to be a business owner and ways to get unstuck from the day to day so we can design a business that gives us a life of independence.
So, Dr. Sabrina, this is so fun. And as you and I were saying, it's been two years. I'm very excited to catch up because your 10,000 how to make your time worth $10,000 an hour is like very centered to the independence by design and time and money decision, the time, cash flow, and wealth. What are you focused on right now? Give that kind of the broad overview and then we can kind of go back and kind of unpack some stuff. But I was really excited how you framed it up.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: I think we are at such an exciting point in how everything is evolving right now with AI when we think about our time as entrepreneurs, we really need to think about our time is being worth $10,000 an hour. And that means that we need to be intentional to be working on our highest value activities. So a $10,000 an hour activity is when we are working from our strengths and we are making everything else easier for ourselves or others.
So this definition means that there are things that we entrepreneurs should not be doing in the business because they're not our strengths and they don't make things easier or unnecessary for ourselves or others. It also means that every member of our team has the potential to be doing $10,000 an hour activity, and AI is putting that time on steroids for us, for ourselves and our team members.
That is what I'm excited about because we are at a time where there is unlimited potential for ourselves as entrepreneurs and for our team members.
And when we business owners get out of the way in our businesses, we remove the glass ceiling that we put in place. When we continue to hold on to all these different activities in the business, we remove that glass ceiling and we create opportunities for advancement for our A players.
Our A players crave opportunities to grow and advance and to show what they're capable of.
And every time we step out of the way, we are creating that in the business.
That is the number one retention tool for retaining your A players, and it's the number one tool for attracting A players to your team.
Worth. What are the salary?
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Yeah, and I, I agree with that. And I know people where the A players are like, okay, so this is the size of the company forever. And this is my.
They. They can see their glass ceiling. And there's a quote. I think it's Dan Martell who says that Our dream has to be big enough to fit everybody else inside of it and their dreams inside of it, which I like how he frames that. What do you think are the narratives that should be shooken up and are the incorrect narratives about 10,000 hour work and this unlimited potential that you're talking about? Like, what are some of the narratives that you hear? People bring up a lot that result in that glass ceiling.
[00:03:21] Speaker B: I think the. The easiest narrative is it takes too long to train someone to do it.
I don't think they're going to do it as well as I will.
An example for me, and I love to use my own experience and what we're doing at Tap the Potential as an example to show entrepreneurs all the ways I fall into my own traps in my thinking and all the ways that my team helps get me out of it. And that's the beauty of sharing the chart of $10,000 an hour activities with your team members, because they will hold you accountable to it. And by the way, if you want to download my chart of $10,000 an hour activities, you can get
[email protected] 10k.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: And I'll put the link in the show notes.
[00:04:08] Speaker B: Yeah, so I.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: What are some of them? Sorry, I don't want to.
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Yeah, so an example for me is visibility.
And I for years owned the Profit by Design podcast. Like, that was my baby at Tap the Potential.
And I identified guests to come on. I identified the topics, I recorded the episodes. I was the host.
I did pretty much everything. I did have a production company, so I wasn't. I wasn't doing the editing and all of that. But when my husband passed away suddenly, unexpectedly, two years ago, I could not work for an extended period of time.
Six weeks.
It was the most. I was completely out of the office.
And we have never missed an episode on the Profit by Design podcast. We've dropped one weekly since the inception of the podcast.
And my team member, our lead strategist at Tapper, Potential Melissa K, Stepped up and she said, I've got this. I will just take the podcast and run. And she did that for six weeks.
Now, a rule of thumb when it comes to delegation is once you've delegated and it's carried out successfully by another person on your team, you do not take it back.
So it would have been easy for me to come back and say, thank you so much, Melissa. I appreciate you taking that on. I know you're so busy. I don't want to burden you. That's another false belief. We don't want to burden our A players. I don't want to burden you. So I will take the podcast hosting back. You can let it go.
I did not do that. When I came back, number one, I couldn't do that. Grief does not confine itself to six weeks.
It didn't just go away on and on and on. And I knew I was in no mental space to carry the podcast and so I let her continue to host it. Now she is the host, I am the co host, and I'm pretty much a guest on my own podcast. When I show up, she tells me the topic. She says, this is what we're going to talk about. And. And we go.
[00:06:14] Speaker A: It's awesome.
[00:06:15] Speaker B: She brings on guests. She takes responsibility for the lineup of our topics and what we're promoting and how we run things.
That is an example of delegating a $10,000 an hour activity.
[00:06:29] Speaker A: On that chart, do you have a way of identifying what that might be for the person, given everybody's situation might be different?
[00:06:35] Speaker B: So this is where it gets really interesting. In my book, how to Hire the Best, I talk about when we hire A players, we want to have clarity around the role. And each role on our team should have one result that they're responsible for. And you need to be able to identify how that result drives profitability in the business and how it pertains to the sweet spot of the business. So the sweet spot is the intersection of your top clients, their unique needs, and the systems that you have in place to serve your top clients.
So every role has a result that ties to profitability and the sweet spot you want to intentionally hire for people who have the strengths needed to deliver their one result exceptionally well day in and day out.
So if it's a customer service role, you're hiring somebody who's a people type, who enjoys people.
And typically you also have somebody who's great with detail because they catch all the details and remember those things and that's what makes them great in that customer service role. So that's an example of a strength.
So we have a program that we teach at Tap the Potential called Leadership Bootcamp. And this is for the A players on our clients teams.
And it's a six week program. They come in and they learn about their strengths and then they start to identify how they can leverage their strengths to to serve the sweet spot and the profitability of the business. So this becomes the team member taking ownership of this. And this is so beautiful for the business owner because the business owner is feeling like, okay, Now I have to keep up with everybody's strengths on the team, and I have to make sure they're in the right roles. It's like playing chess, and it's overwhelming.
But when we get the team members owning this themselves, they come forward and they say, here's what I can do for you. And an example is I had a client who had a team member. He put him in leadership bootcamp, and he said, I'm really confused about this team member's performance because he was a rock star for a couple of years in the business, but now his motivation has gone down, and we can't figure out why. He doesn't even know why. We've tried to have conversations.
So this team member came through leadership bootcamp, and it was around week two that he raised his hand and he said, I want to share something really cool, Dr. Sabrina. And I said, what? Tell me. And he said, I figured out what's been bothering me, and I figured out what to do about it. I was like, that's great.
And so he had been putting forth all kinds of ideas. He was an idea guy. He saw a problem, and he was like, I got 10 ideas for how to fix this. And he wasn't seeing his ideas go forward. The business owner was blocking them. He wasn't taking action on them. And he said when he started to understand about the sweet spot of the business, he realized all of his ideas were not related to the sweet spot, and that's why the business owner wasn't taking action on them. And he realized he was losing his motivation because he didn't feel like his ideas were valued. And he said, when you taught me about my strengths and I started looking in my role and what I do and how it serves profitability, I realized I love to negotiate, and I love talking to people.
I started renegotiating our vendor contracts and getting better terms with our vendors. And he said, I saved the company over $10,000 this month just in one negotiation.
And he said, I have a list. I'm planning to go to multiple vendors and renegotiate terms.
And he was on fire. And that's. That's it, right? This is going to be. It's going to save the company money. It's going to contribute to profitability.
He's working from his strengths, and he is fired up.
That is a $10,000 an hour activity.
So on the chart of $10,000 an hour activities, there are examples like that.
And I really encourage everyone to get very specific with your business and look at what Are what's our sweet spot, what drives our profitability and how do these roles that we have people in what result are they responsible for and have start having those conversations about what can you do from your role to serve our sweet spot. And that's where the ideas come forward. And that when I say there's unlimited potential to be tapped in our businesses, even before AI, there was unlimited potential within our A players on our teams that we weren't tapping into.
But now that we have AI because we can take all these rote tasks that we do ourselves and that our team members do delegate that to AI and free up our mental space to have ideas and make the connections that AI will never make for us, that creativity AI will never be able to
[00:11:44] Speaker A: touch that super fascinating. One of the things that so you said a couple things that really intersect with what I've created at ibd. And actually let me people that have been listening and have seen this a bunch of times. But I want to show you this what Dr. Sabrina so for people listening and it's the leadership chart. So the way that I've got this framed up so the ownership goals here is the board, which is the only thing that they need to know is what's the free cash flow, what's the valuation and the trade offs between cash flow and reinvestment. Then there's the CEO, which for the owner operator might be wearing both of these and if not, or all the hats. But the CEO is responsible for the board's objectives of cash flow and value. But then there's the three buckets of the CRO, which is the revenue, the COO, which is the margins, and then the CFO which is cash flow normalized EBITDA. But the reason I'm bringing this up, Dr. Sabrina and kind of going back to the $10,000 an hour work, I see the $10,000 an hour Work is at the CEO level and then eventually when it's not even tied to your time because you have cash flow coming out of your asset while someone else is running it. And so there's this whole mindset of like how do you delegate down? And look at this, there's three KPIs revenue margins normally and there's three buckets of the income statement. So what ends up happening is this.
I spend a lot of time with people trying to help them think through how to push down and how to elevate these people up. Because it is three numbers which is, you know, frames up into your situation.
And that's where I think People struggle going, okay, how do I actually go through the process of delegating? So understanding it is one thing, but then there's the narratives that people have issues with of like, you know, it's too burdensome or I don't have the right person or that. Yeah. You start to think about the ripple effect of like, great, like I hear people go, I get it, Ryan.
Now how do I actually lean into this?
[00:13:46] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. So getting the right person is number one. And we lose so much profit in our businesses by retaining team members who are not a good fit.
And so you may have hired an A player. And let me, let me back up and define an A player.
An A player is someone who is intrinsically motivated.
Intrinsic means it comes from within.
They are not motivated by bonuses and raises.
They may think those are nice and they certainly appreciate them, but that's not what drives their behavior.
Their behavior is driven by an internal need to achieve and to complete things and to feel good about their contribution in the world. That's an A player. They are good communicators.
They are team players.
When they encounter an obstacle, they start to figure it out.
I was having a conversation with my 19 year old daughter yesterday who works on the Tap the Potential team and she was complaining about some of her peers in college who just throw their hands up when they encounter an obstacle. And she said of the victimhood, she said, mom, when I struggle to figure out something on for Tap the Potential social media, I go to AI and then I go, I look at our other videos and I go to YouTube. And she said, I try three things before I go to my supervisor at Tap the Potential and say, help me. And when I go to her and say help me, I show her what I've already tried so she knows exactly where the gap is. She said, I don't understand why my peers at college don't do that.
And so that's, that's a player behavior. You want to see that from every member of your team. If you don't have that behavior going on, you don't have A players.
When we keep a, when we keep people on our team who are not A players, we are draining profit out of our business.
[00:15:48] Speaker A: How does this. So the way I, I can't, I'm tracking yet and I love it. The, the biggest obstacles for people actually delegating because like, you know, there's this whole great, I want to be worth $10,000 an hour, but I don't have the cash to do it. So then there's this process of actually delegating over time as you're growing any other like narratives that you see people that are blocking them, like come, like if they have the cash, maybe let's, let's take cash out of the equation. Like is there other kind of like bad behaviors that you've seen? People,
[00:16:20] Speaker B: whether cash is present or not, it's really, it comes down to the things we hold onto that we don't even pay attention to, that we're holding on to them. There's research that shows that we knowledge workers are doing 41% of our tasks that are discretionary tasks that could be competently handled by ourselves or others, most likely by AI in a 50 hour workweek that is 20 hours of our time doing crap that's not adding value to the bottom line.
And so we really need one of the simple things that we do at tap the potential is we have all of our business owners doing time audits and they hate it because it's tedious to monitor your time in five 10 minute increments for two weeks.
But it reveals so much about how we waste our time, how we are context, switching, jumping from one task to another, completely, completely draining our brain power when we do that.
And so a lot of times it's easy for us to come in and identify, hey, this is stupid stuff that you're doing. This can be easily delegated. And let's get these $10 and 50 an hour tasks off your plate and let's identify what the higher value activities are that you should be doing. And so it's a gradual process.
It's not an immediate like we're going to cut 20 hours out of your work week in the first week. The gradual process over a couple months and we, within the first 30 days with us, our business owners are cutting 10 hours off their work week period. Like that's our standard. Some of them cut more.
A lot of our business owners are going to 25 hour weeks. I currently work 10 hours.
And what we're optimizing for is moving closer and closer to doing the $10,000 an hour activity. So start with the easiest things, get those off your plate first and then move up to the higher level.
[00:18:20] Speaker A: What's some of the most like, duh stuff that you see?
[00:18:23] Speaker B: Oh gosh, bookkeeping. I hate this. Business owners will resist letting go of bookkeeping because you want to be in control of the finances and you need to know where every dollar is going. And usually there's a story about somebody, you know, a team member who did embezzlement or you heard about another business owner who was embezzled from or whatever.
And, and so there's checks and balances that can be put in place for that. Running payroll on vacation, like, I've got to go, I'm going to take vacation. I'm going to take my laptop with me because I need to push payroll through. Like, that's stupid.
That's not the best use of your time.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: That is stupid. Agreed.
[00:19:03] Speaker B: I know I'm not supposed to be
[00:19:04] Speaker A: judgmental, but really, no, it's like, yeah, I agree. Well, and it's building that the way I frame it up is like because people are like, well, I still like working. It's like, I'm not saying you don't have to work. Create optionality because if you're trapped the moment, even if you love it, the moment that something happens, like a death of a spouse, like you went through like, or something else happens, like you're, you realize that you've got a prison you didn't know until that moment. And that's what I'm trying to save people from.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: So we have, we have to talk about this because I wrote the book the Four Week Vacation. I've been advocating for entrepreneurs for years to be able to take a four week vacation where you are completely unplugged from the business. And it allows, it forces delegation.
It allows the business to run without you through a complete, complete business cycle. It creates value in your business immediately because it's no longer dependent on you.
When I lost Ned and I could not function like I the he passed away one afternoon. The next morning I called my team first thing in the morning to tell them I couldn't come into work. And my team member said, we already know because one of your family members called us and told us like, oh, okay. They had already huddled and created a plan for helping handle and they and my team member said, you don't have to worry about anything. You go take care of yourself, go take care of your family. We've got this.
You want a business that can run like that.
And so many business owners say exactly like you said, I love to work.
I don't need to take a four week vacation. I don't need this business to be independent. Independent of me. I love to work too.
I spend a lot of my time with my kids on a farm raising goats and riding horses.
And we're looking at how to make this farm profitable and how to sell these goats and creative regenerative ag ideas. That is fine. That's work to me, my business takes 10 hours of my time. I don't even have to be there. We identified when I came back that we needed the business to be completely independent of any one team member, not just me but anybody spent a good six months working through that process and getting all of that in place.
And so the business can completely run independent of any one team member. And that's how you create value.
Because we don't know what's going to happen to us in life. We just don't know.
[00:21:39] Speaker A: And having the change of desires too is okay and then allows you to not be trapped if you change what you want to do. And I, I, I think it's so fascinating you said like it's stupid, like I don't know what's, if this is just you know, baked into my personality. Dr. Sabrina but like I don't want to do any of this shit. I've never wanted to do any of it. And like so when we had the family business or even like with a couple businesses I've had over the last couple years and specifically my coaching and with AI like as much and as fast as I can buy my time back I will eat crap to like on the, on the number on the dollar amount side to reinvest to buy my time back. Because I actually my default is I don't want to do this. I don't want to be sitting here doing this. So why wouldn't someone else do it? And it's usually just a money constraint for me if there is one. So it's just so fascinating to like work with other people that's not the case. And like trying to explain like why would you want to do this? It's just like it doesn't and let's
[00:22:38] Speaker B: take it from the money perspective because a lot of times business owners will say I can't afford to hire someone in this higher level role.
You absolutely can't afford not to. And the reason is when you hire someone into a higher level role in your company they are freeing up your time to focus on higher value activities immediately. Immediately. And so if you can create the business case for how is the person in this role when they drive the result that they're responsible for, how is that going to contribute to our profitability and grow the profitability, not necessarily the revenue, the profitability of the company, that is where you can a lot of times you'll see I can easily afford to hire this person as long as I onboard them, train them in the key result that they're responsible for and do their training as quickly as possible and bring them up to speed and then turn them loose and say tell me your ideas.
And that's really when you turn them loose. And they know the key result they're responsible for and they know your immutable laws and they know your vision.
Now they have everything they need to be able to perform within the context of what you, what you want from them and to really tap their potential.
[00:24:00] Speaker A: I've got a couple interesting, very practical case studies. So I've got the two I'll pick from because a lot of my clients have been working with for now a couple years they got to the point where they, they've got their plan, they've got their machine that they built out on the financials, the revenue and, and the operations and now they're at that leadership side.
One of my clients was mate because they were going through a tough time. It's like, okay, well maybe I'm just going to like replace my controller for 140 grand. I was like, if you do like given the size of the company, I was like, if you do this, like I don't know what else I can do from you. I said if it was me, I would literally go into my personal account and this is exactly where the return will happen. Well they did that and they went into the base pay was 270 plus like 100k annual bonus plus some phantom stock day one.
All the monkeys are off his back. He's like. And like I actually had to be go through a couple of monthly calls and there was PTSD going on because he was like, I'm like, yeah, it's taken care of. You hired this person. And it was just like disbelief.
[00:24:59] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: And then he's now looking at vendor relationships and more strategic elevating to the CEO. Another one of my clients, same thing with the sales head of sales and the croat. Same exact experience, same pay. They actually were paying about a quarter million bucks. And like immediately things are better. And then we're talking about how to maintain different product and service mixes to maintain like viability over the next couple years, which could be very difficult economically. But to your point, getting that person is like if you're going to tap into your personal bank account, I've watched it. If it's the right person, completely change the game.
[00:25:39] Speaker B: Yes. Yep. And that's it. So there is a little bit of that gasp factor when you have to use more money than you were would like to but it pays off exponentially over time. And you want to have a plan in place for how it's going to pay off. So it makes no sense to make a loan to yourself or from yourself if you have no plan for repayment. But when you say the person in this role will be doing X, Y and Z, and this is the multiple that I'm going to get on this investment.
You absolutely should.
[00:26:12] Speaker A: You know, it's an interesting metric that I've been thinking about. I'm curious if there's other ways that you actually track the $10,000. Because, like there's the W2 Paycheck. So if the CEO, if they're like running the CEO spot, like you're still getting paid a paycheck. Finally get into the investor perspective and it's just cash flow through distributions.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: Right.
[00:26:30] Speaker A: One metric that I've been liking, Dr. Sabrina, is how many hours the CEO, owner, operator's working and the gross profit that the company generated. Or normalized ebitda.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:26:43] Speaker A: So you're actually taking the whole company and saying, okay, what, like let's say the normalized EBITDA is $3 million. And you say I worked 20 hours a week or something like that. So screw this revenue per employee count, like how much is the normalized EBITDA or the gross profit per hour the owner worked?
[00:27:02] Speaker B: Right. I think that's a great ratio to look at that. And because that incentivizes us to drive our time down.
[00:27:09] Speaker A: Love how you worded that. What are things that you've seen, you know, given your psychology background of, you know, the trying to get rid of things versus being pulled towards something. Any thoughts about, like, how to like, come you mentioned your farm. Right. Or is it like, like how to pull yourself towards something to get you excited about this stuff.
[00:27:28] Speaker B: So this is where vacation testing your business really becomes valuable because you can't just go from working 40 to 60 hours a week in your business and say, okay, I'm going to take a forward vacation in two months. That doesn't happen. There's a, there's a gradual process. And so what we do is we have, you start looking at what's the longest you've been able to be away from your business, fully unplugged. So if that's been a week now, we're going to go to two weeks. So we're going to stretch you a bit. And then we have to look at, well, what's not going to get handled when you're not here for two weeks. All of that needs to get delegated. And then the next step is a three week and then a four week and then you never are done by the way, with the four week vacation. You need to do at least one of those a year because the business changes. And you'd be amazed at how much you can take on in the course of a year that you have to delegate out.
Go on a four week vacation.
And you also want your leadership team taking four week vacations because you don't want them holding on to things that creates a real vulnerability in our businesses that we don't realize exists until.
[00:28:29] Speaker A: I love how you just said. I don't know if I've ever heard you say that. Having your leaders take four week vacations, is that new or is that always been something?
[00:28:36] Speaker B: That's something we've talked about. Very few business owners actually do it, but it's a great perk to attract a player.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: No shit.
[00:28:43] Speaker B: At potential, we offer unlimited vacation.
All you have to do to take a vacation at tap, the potential is make sure there's coverage for your key result.
Which by the way, that means you have to make sure you're, you're delegating your key results and that there's an SOP in place and everything is operationalized and so are in. When you delegate. When you take vacation, delegation always needs to go down the org chart, not up.
[00:29:13] Speaker A: Oh man, I bet you people are like, say that again for everybody listening.
[00:29:17] Speaker B: Yes. Okay.
When you step out or when a team member steps out, delegation always goes down the role chart, not up the roll chart.
[00:29:27] Speaker A: Shit rolls uphill.
[00:29:31] Speaker B: So if a member of your leadership team says, I'm going to come out, I'm going to be out for five, four weeks in June. Okay, what's your plan to make sure everything gets handled? And I'm have you do this and that. No, no, no, go down.
We, we need to be taking these vacations. And the reason, going back to your question about having something that pulls us out of the business is we have to create lives away from work.
That's, I mean, most of us have been raised in hustle culture from grade school. It's been taught and pushed on us that we need to, you know, have better grades, perform better in sports, work our tails off. And so it's no surprise when we go into business, we decide that in order to be successful, we're going to work our tails off. And so we don't develop the other areas of our lives and where our relationships suffer, our friendships suffer. Having friends, a lot of entrepreneurs, if you're married, your spouse is your friend. And then you have your kids, but your friends away from work, who are they and how much time do you spend with friends?
And if that question has you stumped, like if you're saying, well, that would be zero hours this week, Dr. Sabrina, pay attention.
[00:30:52] Speaker A: I think people listening in should actually do a self audit because I think we have all like, might have a lot of friends about how many hours you actually spending with them. I got a buddy who is. His name's Brandon. I won't put the last name in there because hopefully he's listening to this. It's like he's got a very successful business and he works with unbelievably successful people. And I was like, you need to delegate your shit so I can hang out with you.
Yeah. It's like I want, selfishly, I would like more time to ski and to do other things with you. And you're working too much. Cause you can't even text me back. And I know it's not because you don't like me, it's because you're too busy.
[00:31:31] Speaker B: Yes. And this is a real problem for male entrepreneurs. I hear this over and over from men that they have no friendships.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: And it's so interesting to me isn't like it's so sad.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: It is very, it's very sad. It's very detrimental to our mental health. And it's not, not good for your marriage because if your spouse is the only person you're confiding in, they're carrying a huge burden.
You, you need people. Ned had male friends, multiple male friends. And whenever he had issues, he would talk to me, but he would also go talk to them. And so when he was making decisions about how to handle things, he had a whole perspective from a variety of different opinions before he decided, okay, this is my course of action.
We need that in our lives.
And so we need things that compel us away from work. We need hobbies. A lot of entrepreneurs haven't had a hobby since you were in high school and don't even know like, if you were to think about what would I enjoy doing if I wasn't working? I don't even know that gap in it that's there. You need to pay attention to that. And so when you are taking time off and you're vacation testing, you're forced to, to look at how do I fill this void? What. And it's really like just pay attention to what are you mildly intrigued by.
And I've been through this process personally in the last two years in my grief process because grief changes us. And so I really feel like now I'm an adolescent and, you know, in adolescence we had to figure out who we are and what we like. The things that I used to like and the things that I used to enjoy doing, they're kind of like, meh, for me now. And a lot of that is because it's tied to Ned. And so I need to find other things that light me up and make me excited. And so I just pay attention to, hey, this looks kind of fun. I want to go explore this. And then spending some time doing that thing. The deeper we go with it, the more we're going to enjoy doing it.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: How do you. What words of advice do you have from your personal experience going through that, like you just mentioned with Ned, or your actual educated background and experience working with people like I have found. So I'm going to think a lot and reflect because I think there's an interesting.
Help me find the gold nugget here because it's like at the tip of my, my tongue here. Dr. Sabrina. Like, I see that people have a lot of fear and anxiety around that space for some reason and I don't know necessarily what that is from or why.
I remember going through my, like I've been through many identity changes over the last 15 years.
I remember how hard it was after we sold to then like the four different iterations that I've had and how difficult that is. And especially like when I look at other entrepreneurs like you had mentioned, and I don't know if it is just male. I think there's a probably huge proportion, maybe a larger percentage of the pie towards male, like the lack of outside friends. That's why a lot of business communities become very popular.
It's. It's fascinating to me how interesting this situation is because it's a real thing. I had a. There's a guy, Brent B. Sure. I don't know if you ever heard of him. He said, yeah, Brent, one of Brent's comments, because, you know, he's a big Christian now and I don't know if he always was, but then he's kind of been. He's been a big proponent of his faith. He said, we, we say that with all these things about Jesus that are very interesting, we forget how amazing it was that he was 33 and had 12 dude friends.
And I just think it's so fascinating and like, I am curious because I don't have these problems.
So I feel weird because, like how many passions I have and how many hobbies I have and how many friends I have, that it's a problem, actually.
And so, like. But yet, like, there's a huge. Like, the opposite is more of an issue. And so it's a. I've struggled with a.
I struggle with that dynamic because I feel such abundance that I know people don't. And also I watch the loneliness, and it just is an interesting dynamic. I just. I don't know if there's something in
[00:35:52] Speaker B: there, but, yeah, there's a lot in there, Ryan. And I thought. I've thought about this a lot. We are not good at being bored.
And now with technology, we have our phones in our hands and that is our pacifier. The first moment we feel bored, we start scrolling.
And I read an article by Cal Newport just a couple days ago, and he said, your Tiktoks, your reels, that's like eating Doritos. It's like your junk food for your brain.
Oh, that's such a great metaphor. And so when we are filling our time scrolling, we're eating junk food with our brain, and we really have to really retrain our brains to think more deeply. And, you know, he said, you know, read a couple dozen pages every day and get off, off the scrolling.
So that's one aspect of it. We have more time for friends, for hobbies, when we're not on our phones.
[00:36:54] Speaker A: That's.
[00:36:54] Speaker B: That's a big piece of it. We have to tolerate boredom.
So, you know, we learned as little kids not to be bored. Like, that was a problem if we were bored. Boredom is not a problem. Boredom predates creativity.
When we feel bored, we are going to come up with something to do and we're going to. It's going to be creative.
But if we pick up our phone, we short circuit that process.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: I agree. And it's really interesting because our dear friend Rob Dubay, I remember when I interviewed him, Sabrina, it was 2017 or 2016. 2017, when Rob and I met. He read how to Do Nothing. Whatever, Do Nothing, the book. And I remember having the conversation with him.
Being on a silent retreat gave me a stomachache.
And now I have been meditating every single morning for six years.
I value my alone time.
It's like I don't even know who the current Ryan is compared to what. I mean, even since I started this podcast. I mean. Cause that predates the podcast or. No, the podcast predates that. And I just find it fascinating what you're saying here and how it just relates to the personal individual, because the people that you and I work with and talk to are people, and we're trying to change behavior, like delegating your work and, like, driving towards something. And I think this fear and this dopamine. Have ever read the book Dopamine Nation?
[00:38:21] Speaker B: I've heard of it. I know the general.
[00:38:23] Speaker A: Unbelievable.
[00:38:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: Yeah, unbelievable. It's. It's just like, we can't. Like. Like, I had to go through and re. That's why I quit drinking and all these other things, like recalibrating my dopamine system, because then it makes everything else brighter. It's just a weird, interesting situation.
[00:38:36] Speaker B: I really think about myself as having to rewire my brain because of what I went through in losing Ned. It. It touched every aspect of my life.
And I found myself in the grief process a few months in realizing, oh, my gosh, I'm grieving. But I've also taken a victim stance. Like, all these things happened to me, and, yes, they happened to me. I had no control over those things, and it's affected every area of my life. And now I get to own the choices that I'm making going forward.
And so I am intentionally rewiring my brain to be able to think more deeply, to be still.
And in that meditation, I've been. The meditation has been critical in helping me through the grief process.
I was on spring break last week, and I was on vacation for the first time in years by myself, all alone.
And I got tough.
It wasn't tough.
I was exhausted, so I needed to just decompress. But after the first two days, I did, I had to deal with being bored. Like, you know, there's only so much alone time a girl needs and trying to figure out, like, what do I do with myself? And then I just got calm and peaceful, and I went snorkeling. And I remember just looking and observing.
And I thought, my only job in this water is to just observe and see what I can see. That's it. I don't need to think, you know, worrying about, what about this and what about that going on in my life and in the business.
Letting all of that go and the ideas, the energy, the creativity that comes out of that is amazing. And we are not allowing that to happen in our lives when we stay busy, busy, busy.
[00:40:34] Speaker A: What I think is really fascinating is with AI and this ties into. I think there's a. Well, I see the threat. I'm curious if you do. So.
AI Is unbelievable at rope activities.
It's so good if the goal is clear. And I call it first principle deterministic situations. Where there's a yes or no answer. Physics, math, that kind of. And everything in business can be tied to cash.
Like there's an actual math equation to say if we do all these things, it results in more or less cash. The.
So it's really good at enhancing all of the output.
It cannot come up with good ideas at all. And that is really the, in my definition, this is Ryan's words that will determine AGI versus not. And I think we are, I can't see a path towards that is where like an idea is creativity and the ideas are gold. Like, like actual gold. Because like with AI we can do it and it's just like this crazy. So like the value that you just said of being bored, going on vacation, coming up with the ideas is probably a hundred thousand dollars an hour work, if not even million dollar hour work.
[00:41:53] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yes. And our team members can do this too. And that's, that's really what I want your listeners to hear is that the potential is exponential. When we get our team members thinking in this way,
[00:42:09] Speaker A: what are you seeing? How are you like what are some of the applications that you're seeing for like taking those ideas from the owner operator to then like the leadership team. Like, like use cases of AI that you're excited about.
[00:42:23] Speaker B: So there's so many ways like the simplest thing that we're doing on our, on our team is looking at what are the typical objections that we encounter in the sales process and having scripts that AI creates to overcome those objections and documenting those things. It's not that we, we didn't do that before AI.
It's the time that it took. Took, yeah, do that before AI. So hours and hours are getting freed up when, when I can I go live every day and when I go live making sure that I have an overview of what I want to talk about and that it all connects together and that because you know, I'm, I've got ideas so I don't want to go off on a tangent one day.
So I use AI to pull. I dump brain dump it. I use AI to pull it all together and make sure there's a flow to all of these lives so that I'm actually teaching something that's of value to the people who are tuning in.
And that's just a simple example. It's higher level brain work that AI is doing.
It's not the best use of my time. The best use of time is coming up with ideas and when our team members can look in and see, okay, our clients attack the Potential get stuck here and they get bogged down and they actually have thinking time. Our team members block thinking time on their calendar and they come up with ideas for solving those problems and bring it to the leadership team and say, I've identified this problem. Here's my plan. I want to try to address it. That's going to be my quarterly rock.
[00:44:08] Speaker A: Have you figured out any effective ways to foster that thinking time? Back to like, I think there's like a withdrawal, like, you know, of our phones, of the tech, all that of being busy to what the hell am I supposed to do and think. And like. So is there any, like, prompts that you like? It's almost like reverse prompting. We're prompting the humans so that way the humans can actually interact with like. Any thoughts?
[00:44:30] Speaker B: Yeah, there are great, powerful questions. There's a book right behind me, the Road Less Stupid.
[00:44:37] Speaker A: Ah, Keith Cunningham and his accent of the dumb Tax.
[00:44:42] Speaker B: If you listen to it, I love the dumb tax. I mean, I don't love paying it, but I love that concept.
[00:44:47] Speaker A: I've paid my fair share of the tolls on the dumb tax.
[00:44:50] Speaker B: Yeah. That book is full of powerful questions. And if you block two hours of thinking time or half a day of thinking time, take one or two of those powerful questions. And if you're a journaler, write and just re. Well, like, keep the pen moving across the paper and if you write for 30 minutes, you'll be amazed at all the, like, the, the longer you write, the deeper you go, the better the ideas get and the connections that you start to make.
When I was on vacation and I was not distracted with technology, with a long list of to dos, I had insights about challenges and relationships that I have in my life that I would never have had if I was just busy, busy, busy, going, going, going.
So it is that decluttering of our mental space and, and we have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. It's not going to feel good to sit and do nothing. It feels like we're sitting and doing nothing for four hours.
We're doing amazing things.
[00:46:00] Speaker A: The way that I framed it out, Dr. Sabrina is making better decisions because the, the thing that I've learned is like, with the IBD ownership os, it's like coming up with a clear goal for time, cash flow and wealth. Like, very specific, like, here's how much I want to be working for my hours. Here's what I want my cash from salary versus distributions, and here's what I want my wealth outside wealth and the actual valuation and what period of time frames up. Then we can accelerate using AI and delegating down because we have that clear goal to figure out how to push everything else away.
That then has helped me at least as I've been using my own material for years is when I in the morning. So I, I wake up, I meditate, then I journal, then I go for a run lift and then I'm at my computer by 8:30. So I've done all that. So that way like I mean when I'm running or coming up with these ideas, so when I sit down, then it's execution mode.
[00:46:57] Speaker B: Yeah, right.
[00:46:58] Speaker A: So then it's just like complete focus. And, and like when, when we're sitting in a board meeting like all people are doing is making a decision should we do this, that or that and delegating resources and like it just helps it. So I think my point of this comment is encouraging people to under and having that confidence like that thought process is what's valuable. So it's like I think we've been taught to your earlier point that that's not valuable. Like thinking is the most important thing we could do.
[00:47:25] Speaker B: It absolutely is. And there is no reason why we can't run our businesses on 25 hours a week or less, including our team. So at tap the potential, all of our team members work 25 hours a week or less.
And that's done very intentionally because I want them to have lives away from work. I want them feeding their, their soul and their brain away from work because it gives them better ideas. They're more, they think more clearly when they are at work.
And so when we delegate these $10, $50, $100 an hour our tasks, we are freeing up time for us to be able to block thinking time.
And we want every member of our team, especially the leaders, to be doing this. But we also want people who are not in leadership roles to have thinking time because they need the opportunity to develop themselves and to grow. And when they're just doing, doing, doing, they're not developing, they're just learning how to do faster.
[00:48:28] Speaker A: What are you seeing with people and retaining employees by doing this? And like how they're like, have you seen any with your clients successful ways of adopting AI and this thinking tent throughout their organization? Like what are some things you've been watching?
[00:48:43] Speaker B: So what I see happening is our clients have A players that they have not tapped into. And so they are sending their A players through our six way leadership boot camp program. Their A players are entering into conversations with them now on a weekly basis about I have this idea. I have that idea. So it's, it's not dependent on the business owners starting those conversations. And that really, I think is. Has been key because business owners are completely overwhelmed. There's too many things on your plate. And so when we have our team members coming forward with the ideas and pushing for those conversations, that's where things start to snowball. And when we get team members who are talking across department and solving problems collaboratively across departments, that drives profit and it drives retention because people start to feel more connected.
And this ties back to the loneliness epidemic pandemic.
Work can be that safe place for people. Safe and supported environment. We hear this from our team members, we hear this from our clients team members that their workplace is their safe, supported environment.
It's predictable. There's no drama. They know what's expected of them.
And that creates this feeling of no matter what else is going on in my life, I know I can rely on this and I enjoy being here and it feels good. My contributions are value.
[00:50:15] Speaker A: What are some thoughts or feedback you have from people where they don't have that right now and how they start moving that direction? What are some of the biggest obstacles and what are the biggest wins? Earlier wins.
[00:50:27] Speaker B: Okay, so the typical company is full of a mix of A players, C players and F players.
There might be a few B players thrown in.
And so it's like, how do we start moving in this direction? You start having these conversations with your A players, identifying what their strengths are, giving them a clear result.
And so we break the typical pattern of behavior. And that is we spend time with people who aren't performing. We have meeting after meeting with our team members who don't perform.
Stop it.
Have meeting after meeting with your A players and put more time and attention on them, then work to hire. Take your B players and your C players and your F players. Identify one or two that you're going to replace with an A player and go through that process and get your team stacked with A players.
And the most valuable activity that can go on in your business is a weekly one to one with each team member. Each team member should have a weekly one to one with a supervisor. And supervisors should have no more than five direct reports.
If you have 20 direct reports, you have a problem. If you have somebody, what would you
[00:51:44] Speaker A: say about 10 or 12? That is probably a common thing.
[00:51:48] Speaker B: There's no way you can have a connected, close relationship with that many team members where you're really supporting their development and investing in their growth. Because when you invest in their growth, they are going, you're going to have exponential dividends paid back to you through the company.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: Do you think that that's one of the lowest hanging pieces of fruit people can pick is like.
Have you ever heard of Dunbar's number?
[00:52:16] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:52:17] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like the, like I use it. And so one of my cause in my time section of my academy, I talk about the time audit as well. And like the 5, then 15, then the 30 and then the 50 and then 100. It's 150 people is all we can manage. And like I've got like my time and weeks calendar there for my whole life. I got my big ass calendar there for my annual and then I've got my, my weekly. And like I think so many people lie with how much time we have.
And like if you just said like 12 people, like we were just talking about, that's 15 hours a month, a week. If you're just talking to them, you
[00:52:52] Speaker B: know what I mean?
[00:52:52] Speaker A: Just like we're not, we're given a little bit of like liberal like wiggle room on how much the context shifting and like the prep and the before and the after, I mean that's just ridiculous. And then like what are you getting done?
[00:53:05] Speaker B: Right, right. You're not. And, and they're not feeling like you're connected with them at that point. It's just something you're checking off on your. To do that you had this meeting and so you can have these very short and sweet 20 minute one to ones every week with five team members and they feel that you're supporting their development.
And so where do you start with that? If you're supervising 12 people, identify an A player that you're supervising. Teach them leadership, teach them how to do one to ones. Teach them coaching skills. And we teach all of this in our leadership boot camp.
And let them start doing one to ones with five people.
[00:53:43] Speaker A: Well, I was gonna say because that, that, that becomes one of the very clear objectives of AI to say reorganize so you can have that dynamic because then you're gonna have, you're gonna be leveraging down and then you know, like, I don't know if you've framed up this way either or, or have thought about it like this one. Because when people are talking about AI and like what's the. Because I mean we're seeing mass job block and I think, I don't think it's gonna stop. I think there's a shit storm coming. However, I don't know if you're seeing this with your type archetype of clients, that's all the big companies that are publicly traded and all the sass and all like, like. But like when I look at like the, the workshop I. The quarterly workshop I had this morning of 35 people, it's like I call it real people doing real shit for the real economy and the real services. It's not fake stuff. And they all have big goals so they are going to be able to scale with less overhead. So they're not planning on cutting. That's how I think most people are looking at it. But then it kind of ties into this leverage down 5, you know, the 10,000 hour work, this mindset.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: One of the strategies in the TAP the potential solution is step four which is build your lean and mighty team.
A players are capable of doing 900 to 1,200% more. A warm body and that's before AI.
[00:55:01] Speaker A: Where. Where did you get that kind of thought process or that's that like what's the it.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: It shows up over and over. When we have our business owners who learn how to hire the best in our workshop that we teach them how to hire the best and they learn how to hire A players and they start replacing their D, C and F team members.
They realize they don't need as many team members as they thought they needed.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: Because I think that's what's going on with the public companies by the way. I think that this is absolutely.
[00:55:26] Speaker B: It is. That's exactly why I'm bringing this up R. Because when we're talking about real people doing real shit for real, for real people, for the real people, not for AI bots.
[00:55:39] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:41] Speaker B: We can have these lean and mighty teams and A players and we can be so productive.
We can make massive things.
We've had this feedback on the TAP potential team for years. When people see what, what we're doing, like the outward facing of what TAP the potential accomplishes, they always say you have seven part time team members. What? And they're only working 25 hours a week. I thought you had a team of at least 20 working full time.
No, we don't.
It's because we have A players we have clear results that they're responsible for. They get their result done. I don't care how many hours they're working. I don't want them working more than 25.
And if they get it done in 15 and they're paid for 25, lovely. That's a perk for them.
[00:56:29] Speaker A: When I think the, the ability to just get shit done with AI with where we're going and like it.
I like the prioritization around the like a very healthy reporting structure of the 5ish people because then you can build loyal people and then you're not worried about the people leaving and then you actually know what they're doing and you can have space to think and talk with them and collaborate with them and then leveraging down, getting rid of the rope test with AI. So then people are all working it just so much waste out there and I think that's what people are like missing like how much waste. I mean like when I will look at these companies. Actor Sabrina, you know, because Minneapolis or Minnesota has, I think it's 19 public companies in Minnesota which is like one of the largest quantity in the, in the country. And they can just like Riff 8,000 people and no one knows. I'm like well that is 8,000. And by the way, I know these people because they're all double income earners. Making 150 grand a piece is double income. They're like levers to the tilt and these. And then I'm like, and you don't fucking work.
Like I know you don't work. And like no wonder everybody's getting laid off. And so I don't know.
[00:57:45] Speaker B: There's incredible inefficiency in these larger corporations and that's what's, that's what's getting cut with AI.
What's going to happen? I think there's tremendous opportunity for us as entrepreneurs because entrepreneurs solve problems and when we hire a players we hire more people on our team to solve problems when we have time and space to relate and to connect as human beings to our team members and to our top clients and customers to better understand their needs and challenges so we can solve problems for them.
[00:58:18] Speaker A: Thinking and talking, thinking and talking, thinking and talking.
[00:58:21] Speaker B: And AI takes off all the drudge work. So think and we can talk and connect and relate, solve problems where our opportunity as entrepreneurs lie. And, and for people who work on our teams in these smaller businesses, I,
[00:58:35] Speaker A: I was, I'm on a group text with a group of buddies which the title of the text string is Bitcoin. And all we talk about is money and AI.
And so like it was Saturday and like all of us are like on our terminals with all of cloud code going on and like they run professional services or not. Professional home services companies is one of them. And so here's what like it just. I'm gonna, I think it really highlights a lot of what we've been talking about.
So he's got like 30 people for his company.
He's in a dirty job. So it's a mike row type of business and his entire company is having weekly huddles around how to use quad code.
And then it's so effing awesome. And like the amount of shit that they're gonna be able to do as a company because he's got his customer service, his internal team, his production team and his like and they're just cranking along. And then I go around to some of my corporate friends from like college and they're like, well our CEO might let us log into AI sometime this year. And I'm like, you're fucked. Like, because I watch how fast these little companies are going now and I'm like, and it's kind of the David versus Goliath entrepreneur. Like go us is kind of what I'm thinking about.
[00:59:56] Speaker B: I, I had a guest on my podcast about six months ago and he made this statement that just blew my mind. He said, if you're a small business and you are not using AI, you are going to be left behind.
[01:00:09] Speaker A: Toast.
Toast.
[01:00:12] Speaker B: You have to adopt this and get your team members adopting it, teaching each other and, and really it's, it's like any other team member you want to take the reins off and give them free rein within parameters. Give them the vision, your immutable laws and the results they're responsible for. That's the parameters that you use AI with. That's the parameters you use your, with your team members and let them get creative and, and solve the problems because you will retain your AI.
[01:00:39] Speaker A: But then you don't have to do it yourself. Back to the 10,000 hour like, like that's it.
[01:00:43] Speaker B: So when, when I, when we onboard a client now at half the potential, we tell them you will be able to take a fully unplugged 4 week vacation within 12 months time.
You will be able to cut 10 hours of your work week within 30 days.
You are going to at a minimum get your profit to be 7x of what it is before you started with us, your owners pay at least 50 increase.
Do you know how we do all that?
It's because I let my best team member figure out what needed to happen so we can guarantee results like that.
That is when we, when I stepped out of the way because all of this transpired over the last two years when I stepped back, my best team member who was working directly with our clients, she said the tap of potential solutions solution is Great. And we need to get even more specific with it and give more step by step to our clients.
And now we have a 91% retention rate of our clients into year two with us.
[01:01:48] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[01:01:48] Speaker B: The industry average in coaching. You probably know this Ryan. 40% of clients don't even complete the first year of coaching when they're in a 12 month program.
1% of our clients going into your too.
[01:02:00] Speaker A: That's awesome.
[01:02:01] Speaker B: And it's about relationships. It's about taking the time to get to know people and what their challenges are and come out with solutions.
[01:02:09] Speaker A: You know what I think is.
Oh, and I agree. And I think what's. What I think is so interesting to watch unfold is everything's outcome focused now? Because AI is the great equalizer. Like for $200 a month I have access to like an army of everything.
[01:02:33] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:02:34] Speaker A: And like so does every company. And so when I say the great, great equalizer is it can be so whether it's a coaching business or a services business or anybody listening in, everyone needs to be like outcome focused. Then I think no matter what type of company we have, our clients will stick with us. Because it's outcome focused.
Right. Which is also back to leverage and delegating down and clarity. It's just outcome focused versus like I think we've been just stuck around just checking the box of stupid shit for two decades of just like more and more computer work versus like here's the outcome. Go. And now we can get to that outcome. Who cares how much time we're spending?
[01:03:13] Speaker B: And we, and we need to rely on each other to ask better and better questions of ourselves and of a high because our, the, the solutions we find comes down to what questions are we asking?
[01:03:25] Speaker A: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Elon always talks about this. I don't know if you've ever heard like, so that whole movie is like what's the why, why are we here? Or whatever. And the answer is 42.
And it's like it's the wrong answer. It's the wrong question. It all comes down to the questions because the answer's not for like what does that mean? I don't know. What's the wrong question?
[01:03:48] Speaker B: Right. We have to ask these better questions and that's it. When we're going to prompt AI if we're not asking a good question, we don't get good results. When we're interacting with our team members, if we're not asking good questions, we don't get good answers. When we're talking to our top clients and customers. If we're not asking good questions, we don't get good answers and we solve the wrong. A lot of times we're solving the wrong problems when we create a product.
[01:04:09] Speaker A: I like that.
[01:04:10] Speaker B: Yep. And it doesn't sell. And it's something that was an upsell for our top clients and customers. A lot of times it's because we didn't ask good questions to begin with.
[01:04:19] Speaker A: And I, I think that it's the white space that helps us think to think about what problems are the right problems to solve. And we can't do that for. People are scrolling or they're just checking boxes.
[01:04:32] Speaker B: One of our favorite activities among our clients when we do VIP days or retreats is Q storming. So brainstorming is where you're throwing out ideas to solve a problem. Q storming is where you throw out a problem and then everyone offers powerful questions to solve the problem.
So there's answers given. It's just. Let's brainstorm questions.
[01:04:56] Speaker A: What. As we wrap it up here, what. What are you most excited for that's coming up in the marketplace and your clients?
[01:05:03] Speaker B: I really am excited for our clients atop the potential to leverage their team members and see seeing team members executing $10,000 an hour ideas and, and activities and taking ownership. When, when team members take ownership.
I, when I was on vacation, the, the guy who was driving me to the airport was asking me about my stay and I was chatting with him and I said how long have you worked with this company? And he said 30 years.
Whoa.
[01:05:39] Speaker A: It's awesome.
[01:05:40] Speaker B: 30 years. That's loyalty. That is somebody who feels invested, like he really cared. He wanted to know everything about my experience.
It was his market research that he was doing for the company because he wants to make them better and better.
We need team members like that.
[01:05:59] Speaker A: So fun. Tattepotential.com we got your TEDx out there. You got your books.
[01:06:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:06:05] Speaker A: Is that the best place to find
[01:06:06] Speaker B: how to hire the best series and the four week vacation? Those are my books. Tap the potential dot com. We have a profit by design podcast and if you want the chart of ten thousand dollar an hour activities, it'
[email protected] and I recommend you download it for yourself and share it with your team members.
[01:06:26] Speaker A: Dr. Sabrina, so fun to catch up. Thank you so much.
[01:06:29] Speaker B: Thank you, Ryan.
