Breaking Free from the Time Trap: The Counterintuitive Path to Time Freedom

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implied shall be extended to W four CY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to Powerful Business Strategies, where you will find out that everything you have ever learned about growing your business is wrong. Finally, a show where you'll learn the right way to grow your business by learning business and financial strategies that your competition isn't doing. And now here's your host.

0:47 President of NeXTSTEP CFO Michael Barbarita and joining Michael for today's show as an executive moderator is chooky obia. Yes, this is schooky and I believe that gratitude is undefeated and growth is about the next step. It is an honor for me to moderate today's discussion with my good friend Michael. Michael, how are you excellent, Choky. I apologize everyone for being a minute late because of technical difficulties, but it just happens. It's funny, Michael says. Technical difficulties. I say, Michael was gathering the wisdom for today's show. A lot of brought we have to gather for today's show, so Michael really excited.

1:32 Well, thank you, Chokey. My name is Michael Barberina, President of Next Step CFO, and Next Step CFO is a fractional CFO and strategic compmitation firm. Our vision is to ensure overwhelmed business owners achieve the time freedom and consistent profits to build a legacy and the life they desire. Our mission is dedicated to guiding small business owners to leveraging their time, exploding their profits and build a meaningful legacy. And the show Powerful Business Strategies and our book of the same name is a step toward accomplishing that mission and vision. And so with that, I'd like to hand it back to my co author and moderator for the show today, Choky. Obi up, Michael, thank you so really energized by today's episode.

2:15 The title is Breaking Free from the Time Trap. The counter Intuitive Path to Time Freedom just really really impactful stuff that Michael is put together for us, and Michael, as always, we'll have a number of questions from our audience. So we have business owners that listen coast to coast, so really really enthused by the insights that we have. Just a quick disclaimer before we get started, Michael and I are both affiliated with a number of different organizations. I currently serve as the managing director of business development for Better Price, a global business focused law firm. In addition to that, look, I find it and on it to collaborate with Michael to moderate business roundtables, as I said, coast to coast with small to medium business owners, and we document the best practices from these roundtables. In fact, we've got the insights. We've put it together in a book called Powerful Business Strategies, which Michael referenced earlier. But please note that the views expressed on this show are our personal views based on successful experiences, and my mission as a fearless moderator is to ask the right questions to help you the listener, learn the best strategies that the competition isn't doing. Michael, back over to.

3:31 You, Thank you, Thank you to Key so today's topic is like the elephant in the road. Yes it. You know, part of our vision is to ensure overwhelmed business owners achieve the time freedom. And so today we're talking about something that hits home for every business owner that I know, and that is being trapped by their business. And so last week it was I was on this zoom call with a client at a thirty night and he looked exhausted. His daughter had a dance recital that evening that he missed again, and he turned to me and said, Michael, I'm working seventy hours a week. I make good money, but I never see my family. This is not what I signed up for when I started the business. Does that sound familiar? Well, maybe you're listening right now while driving between job sites, or maybe you're catching this show during the only forty five minutes you have free today.

4:30 But and maybe you can't remember the last time you took a real vacation without your phone buzzing every hour with some crisis that only you can handle. Well, I've got some news for you. Everything, and I mean everything you've ever learned about time management is wrong and I can prove it to you today. So, and did you know, by the way, another little fact that working longer hours actually makes you less productive. Study show that after fifty hours a week, productivity drops so sharply that someone working seventy hours gets the same amount done as someone working fifty five. So you're literally working an extra fifteen hours for nothing. Whoa, here's what's fascinating.

5:15 Yes, oh, I was just gonna say, I mean, yeah, we may want to repeat that. That's just so impactful, Like we're getting some buzzes on that. Yeah. So study show that after fifty hours a week, productivity drops so sharply that someone working seventy hours gets the same amount done as someone working fifty five hours. So you're literally working an extra fifteen hours for nothing. Wow. And here's what's fascinating about that. Right now, in your industry, there's probably a competitor who works forty hours a week, takes regular vacations, makes more money than you do. Same market, same business type, completely different life. So over the next forty minutes, I'm going to share specific strategies that have helped CEOs transform their businesses from time sucking monsters into well wealth machines that can run without them. And the best part is these strategies. They work in every industry, and I'm going to present the strategies from these case studies that I've compiled. So grab a pen and paper, because I'm about to share strategies that will completely change how you think about time and business that if you're driving, don't worry. You can catch this episode again on our part podcast at powerful business Strategies dot com. So if

6:46 you're just tuning in, we're talking about breaking free from being trapped by your business and I promised to show you exactly how to do it. So let me tell you about Mike, a remodeling contractor. Mike. Mike was the classics superhero business owner. Every problem had to go through him, every decision needed his approval, Every client wanted to deal directly with him. Does that sound familiar at all? So one day, Mike's wife asked him a question that hit him like a ton of bricks. She said, if you got sick tomorrow and couldn't work for a month, would your business survive? And Mike realized that the answer was no.

7:28 He had built a business that was completely dependent on him and it was slowly killing him. And here's the first major myth about time management. That's keeping you trapped. Nobody can do it as well as I can. I hear this from business owners all the time, and you know what, they're right. Nobody will do it exactly like they do. But here's the million dollar question. Doesn't really need to be done exactly like you do. Let me show you something fascinating. We did an exercise with Mike where he we tracked every minute of his time for a week, and what we discovered, out of seventy two hours that he worked that week, only eight hours were spent on tasks that truly required his unique skills and expertise.

8:22 The rest anyone could have done with proper training and systems. And what's really interesting is we discovered that Mike was spending fifteen hours a week just answering basic questions from his team, things like what color should we use here? What suppliers should should we use for this? How should we handle this customer complaint? So he created what he called the decision Tree system. For every type of decision that commonly came up, he created a simple flow shot. If A happens, do B, if C happened, do DP, and he documented every decision Mike had had to make over the past month and turned them into standard operating procedures.

9:11 The results those fifteen hours of answering questions dropped down to two in the first week. But his what's really great, His team started making better decisions than he did. Why because they were following a tested, proven system instead of making emotional decisions in that moment. You know how we business owners will were pressed for time, we just oh, we just blurt out anything, and when afterwards you think, did I really say that? You know, did I really answer that question that way? It's because we're under so much pressure that we get a question, we're just make it, making a quick decision without even thinking. So let me share another example that will really drive us home. So Sarah owned a successful marketing agency. She was working eighty hours a week, missing her kids' events, and falling behind her Her biggest problem, she was the bottleneck in every project.

10:11 She then implemented what she called the eighty twenty time Audit. And here's how that works. You track everything you do for two weeks guy, categorize each task by importance and dollar value, identifying which twenty percent of activities produce eighty percent of your results. I'll get that in a minute. Create systems to delegate or eliminate the other eighty percent. Now, if this sounds familiar, this is exactly what we've discussed on a previous show called the seven Step Pathway to Profit Formula. That show you will learn the actual activities that make up the twenty percent that business owners should be doing that produces eighty percent of the results. So to go to that show, go to a powerful business strategies dot com and look up the show titled seven Step Pathway to Profit formula. Because what Sarah discovered is that she she was spending thirty hours a week on admin administrative task that a twenty dollar an hour virtual assistant could handle. She was spending another twenty hours doing fifty dollar an hour work when she could have been doing five hundred dollars per hour work. But here's a real kicker. She was so busy doing twenty dollars per hour work that she was turning down high value projects that only she could do. She was actually losing money by working more hours. She then created the value based

11:44 time management system, and every task in her business got assigned a dollar value. She wasn't allowed to do anything that could be done by someone she could hire for less than her target hourly rate, and so the results within six days, Her work week dropped from eighty hours to forty five hours, her revenue increased by forty percent, her profit manchus went from twenty five percent to forty two percent, and she hasn't missed a single one of her kids events since. But what's really powerful about that system is it forced her to create processes for everything. Because she couldn't touch the low value tasks anymore, she had to document exactly how she wanted these things done.

12:28 So let me give you another example. Bom runs a plumbing company, and like most service business owners, he was trapped by constant emergency calls. Nights, weekends, vacate didn't met vacations. It didn't matter if a customer called with an emergency, he answered. He implemented what he called the Freedom Framework. First, he analyzed every after hour's call he'd received in the past year, and what he did discovered is that eighty five percent of these emergencies followed the same five patterns. Once he knew that he could create systems to handle them without Rob's involvement. So it's just basically understanding what those emergencies were, are those crazy after ours calls, and then creating a system to handle it without his involvement, since eighty five percent of the emergencies were fell into five categories. But here's what's really interesting. He found that forty percent of these emergencies could have been prevented with proper maintenance. So he created a BP maintenance program that actually generated more revenue while reducing emergencies. And the key to all of this is understanding a crucial truth that time freedom isn't about managing time better, it's about managing your business better. But let me show you something even more powerful than what Tom discovered at Tom's Plumbing company.

14:02 Remember how I mentioned that forty percent of the emergencies could have been prevented. Well, here's exactly how he turned that problem into a profit center. He created what he called the Crisis Prevention Program. So instead of just responding to emergencies, he analyzed every emergency called from the past year and categorized them. And here's what he found. Twenty five percent of those calls were due to a lack of maintenance, fifteen were due to outdated equipment, thirty five percent of them were from minor issues that became major, and twenty five percent with genuine emergencies. So he created a three tier maintenance program Bronze, which was a basic annual inspection, Silver, which was quarterly maintenance, plus Priority service Old, which was monthly checkups, twenty four to seven emergency access and equipment monitoring. And then he priced the Goal program at three times what Bronze cost. What ended up happening is that over forty percent of the customers opted for Gold because he showed them how the actual cost of emergencies that they'd faced in the past year, and the program was cheaper than dealing with the emergencies, So that's why they jumped all over it. But here's what's really powerful about this system. It's not only not only prevented emergencies,

15:34 it created predictable revenue. The famine cycle of emergency calls, TOM now had steady recurring income and its emergency calls dropped by sixty percent and its problemagice went up by forty five percent. So you know it. Once again, it's it's how you run the business, not how you really manage your time. And let me share another quick example. So another Sarah this time with a successful dental practice, was constantly interrupted by staff asking basic questions about insurance coverage and treatment plans. And she was spending two to three hours every day just answering these questions. So she implemented what she called the knowledge Capture system for two weeks to record every single question that the staff asked, and then she created a searchable digital manual, quick reference guides, decision flow charts, video training modules, and weekly team training sessions. Now, the time invested up front about twenty hours. The return on that investment is she got fifteen hours back every week.

16:52 A lot of these strategies do require upfront time. And I know people are going to say they don't have the time, but think about that leverage. You know, twenty hours invested once save sixty hours every month to a eternity. You think about that, right, twenty hours that pays you back every month, sixty hours of time. M That is really leverage. Absolutely. But here's what's Here's the really important part. Her staff actually started making better decisions than they were when they were relying on her. Why because well, they had clear, consistent guidelines instead of uh, you know, catching her between patients when she was rushed and stressed. So when we come back from this ninety second break, we'll talk more about breaking free from your business because there's bour case studies that I want to share. Great, hey, their business owners.

17:49 Let me ask you something. Are you tied of blending in with your competitors? Frustrated with slow growth and slim margins? Well, I've gotten news for you. Anything you've ever learned about growing your business is wrong. But don't worry. I'm here to let you in on a secret weapon, your position of market dominance. It's what sets you apart, makes you irreplaceable, and has customers lining up at your door. My name is Michael barber Rita from Next Step CFO. I know what you're thinking. Sounds great, Michael. How do I find my position of market dominance? Well, that's exactly why we've created our game changing impleventation program called Next Step to Market Dominance. In just ninety days, we'll guide you step by step to a position of market dominance by uncovering your unique strengths that competitors can't touch. By crafting a message that resonates deeply with your ideal customer, by building a strategy that turns you into the go to expert in your field. Now this is in theory. These are battle tested strategies that have helped businesses like you as double, triple, and quadruple their revenue. Don't let another quarter go by struggling to stand out. It's time to dominate your market. Period.

19:03 Go to NEXTSTEPCFO dot net forward slash contact. Fill out the form and in the message section put the word dominate or call us at seven eight one three two six three A two two. That's next step CFO dot net forward slash contact or call us at seven eight one three two six three A two two. So if you're just joining us, we're talking about breaking free from being trapped by your business. And I just shared how the Freedom framework transformed a plumbing company. Now let me show you some more time freedom strategies. So let's talk about First of all, talk about the second major myth that's keeping you trapped, and that is this I need to be available all the time or I'll lose customers. Well, this is probably the biggest live business owners tell themselves.

19:55 Let me give you an example. David owns an IT service company and like to it professionals. He was essentially handcuffed to his phone. Every client had his personal cell phone number, and they used and they used it. Nights, we get at holidays didn't matter. His wife actually threatened to throw his phone in the swimming pool during their anniversary dinner. So he did something radical. He created what he called the client communication Pyramid. And here's how that works. So Level one was for true emergencies, like, for example, the system is down or there's a data breach. Level two was urgent, but not an emergency like a slow printer or a system or other printing issues. Level three important but not urgent, and that's like upgrades and some maintenance.

20:56 Level four regular service requests, new users, set up password resets and things like that. For each level, he created response time standards, communication protocols, escalation procedures, pricing tiers, and staff assignments. Was David nervous about implementing this, no question about it. He was convinced he'd lose clients. But what actually happened is his client satisfaction scores went up forty percent. And why well, because now they had clear expectations and consistent service. But here's where it really gets interesting. He created a VIP service tier that actually charges more for that twenty four to seven access, and know how many clients opted in for it, well less than ten percent.

21:50 It turns out most clients, Yeah, most clients didn't want to pay a premium price for Olbauer's access that they rarely needed, you know, but they had it sell phone number and everything, so you know, they just figured it would just call any time for any reason. So let me share another example that will really drive us home. So Elaine runs a successful real estate agency. She was working seven days a week because she believed clients would only work with an agent who was available twenty four to seven. She then implemented what she called the presence paradox system. Here's the fascinating truth that she discovered. The harder you are to reach, the more valuable you become if you do it right. Let me say that again, the harder you are to reach, the more valuable you become if you do it right. And here's exactly how she structured her business. Monday through Thursday, both client meeting schedule, Friday team meetings and strategy only Saturday Sunday completely offline.

23:01 All showings handled by team members and she only attended final negotiations and closings. And what happened to her business is it tripled in eighteen months. But here's what's really interesting. Her average sale price went up by forty percent. Why because she positioned herself as a high value advisor, not an always available showing agent and subservient vendor. So that was really something that hit home. And then she also created what she called the time multiplication system, and the principle of that was every hour you spend, you should create at least ten hours of value. Let me give you a specific example. So, instead of doing individual buyer consultations, Elaine now does a monthly buyer success workshop. She spends two hours presenting to twenty potential buyers instead of twenty one hour meetings. This is called the one to many model.

24:12 But here's the genius part. She records these workshops, so now when a buyer comes in, they can watch the recorded workshop, complete a detailed questionnaire, meet with a team member for specific questions, and only meet with a lane for the final strategy session. She turned twenty hours of meetings into two hours of high value presentation time, plus created a valuable asset that she can use over and over. But the secret to making that work is you have to be willing to let go of the myth that be equals successful. In fact, we found it to be the opposite. We're the most successful business owners are the ones who have the most free time. Le me give you another example. So Jim runs a manufacturing company and he works seventy five hours a week and was proud of it, and he thought it showed dedication. But when he analyzed the company's performance, he found something shocking. The weeks he worked the most were the weeks his company performed the worst. So the weeks that he worked the most were the weeks the company performed the worst. And why well because he was solving problems instead of preventing them, putting out fires instead of fireproofing his business. He was the bottleneck that was actually causing many of the problems that he was working so hot to solve. So let

25:45 me share something that might shock you about Sarah's real estate date business transformation. Remember how I mentioned she completely stopped working weekends. Well, most real estate agents would say that's impossible, that's when see houses right. Well, what she discover is when she actually analyzed her time. On average, she was spending twelve hours every weekend showing houses. But when she looked at her conversion rate that is how many of these showings actually turned into sales, it was only fifteen percent. That means eighty five percent of her weekend time was spent with people who never bought a house for her. So what she did is she created what she called the qualified buyer system, so before anyone could schedule as showing, they had to watch her buyer education workshop, complete a detailed needs assessment, and meet with a mortgage broker, and also have a phone conversation consultation with her buyer specialist. Was she worried this would drive people away? Because she was definitely worried that it would drive people away, and she was very resistant to do it.

26:48 But what actually happened is her showing to sale conversion rate from fifteen percent to sixty five percent because she was only in time with serious qualified buyers, not tire kickers, and so she started to getting referrals from people who never even bought a house from her. Why Because her education materials were so valuable they recommended her to their friends even though they were ready to buy themselves. Let me get another example, you know, and once again this works in any industry. A custom cabinet maker who was working ninety hours a week because he was the only one who could design and price custom jobs. He was the bottle lick in the entire business. So he implemented what he called the knowledge transfer protocol. And here's how that works. So week one, he recorded every design decision that he made. Week two he documented his pricing formulas.

27:55 Week three he created design templates and guidelines. Week four he trained his team on the new system. Was it perfect right away? No? No, of course not. Fascinating. After six weeks his team was actually creating better designs than he did. Why focus solely on designs while he had to be trying to design while also running the business, managing production and handling customer service. So the results his involvement in design work dropped from forty hours a week to five hours just final approvals. But the best part is his closed rate on proposals went up by forty percent because his team could turn them around in forty eight hours instead of the two weeks that used to take him when everything had to go through him.

28:45 So it's really fascinating how some of these business owners are able to just save an ordinate amount of time by managing their business better through systems and through things like recorded trainings. They don't have to keep. Repeating exactly Michael. So, look a couple of questions from the audience. Do you have, you know, two minutes to take on some questions? Absolutely? Yeah, great, So let's start with the first one. So why do you think business owners embrace the myths that you talked about? What is it about the process of business ownership that allows those myths to develop in their minds?

29:29 Well, one of the reason, the main reason is is that you know, they truly believe that it's the business is their vision. Yeah, and they have there has to be some things done absolutely their way. M This is a myth though, Yeah, absolutely their way or the or the business will you know disintegrade mm hm. And it's it's that mindset. It's a mindset thing. Yeah. It's like, you know, you just think that you know, only you can answer the question, only you are dedicated to the business is another is another thing that's really a problem where the business owner is so focused on the fact that he's the only one that really cares really dedicated to the business, and no one else really cans. And I think that that's part of the reason why they try to handle everything or they have to have things done a certain way, when in fact they don't have to be done that certain way exactly. Yeah, when and when somebody else handles it, it's just done more effectively and more efficiently.

30:40 For scalability purposes, for purposes of growth, right, I mean, it's just really interesting. So last question, and this is kind of a consolidation of a number of the discussion questions that we're getting here. The idea of using this as a way to reconnect to their origional passion for the business or their number one goal. How do. Let me see some of these exercises, some of the tools and techniques that you've talked about, Like, how do you see that connect into the business owner's number one goal for their business? Well, Chokie, in our analysis of people's number one goals, when we when we have a prospect, we always ask them what their number one goal is, and it always comes down to one of three things that they're that they're looking for or a combination of these three things that that a business owner is looking for time freedom.

31:40 Mm hmmm, leverage revenue. And what I mean by leverage revenue is like one of the practitioners, I think it was the the I T guy with the with the late night calls. He turned that into a revenue street. And that's leveraged revenue because uh and and he he had a set up so he didn't have to take those calls. He said, he had it set up so he was able to monetize a subscription program. That's leverage revenue where you generate revenue without doing without the business owner having to do the work. And so time freedom, leverage revenue. And the third thing was to build a legacy.

32:23 So those are the three things that business owners usually have one or more of those three things is their number one goal when it comes right down to it. You know, they might say the number one goal is to do a million dollars worth of sales, but that's really not their number one goal. That that might be a conduit toward it, but it's not their number one goal. Very helpful, thanks, Michael. And so when we come back after this thirty second break, we'll talk more about breaking free from your business. Hey, their business owners, let me ask you something. Are you tied of blending in with your competitors, Frustrated with slow growth and slim margins. Well I've got news for you.

33:09 Everything you've ever learned about growing your business is wrong. But don't worry. I'm here to let you in on a secret weapon, your position of market dominance. It's what sets you apart, makes you irreplaceable, and has customers lining up at your door. My name is Michael Barbarrita from Next Step CFO. I know what you're thinking. Sounds great, Michael, How do I find my position of market dominance? Well, that's exactly why we've created our game changing implepitation program called Next Step to Market Dominance. In just ninety days, we'll guide you step by step to a position of market dominance by uncovering your unique strengths that competitors can't touch, by crafting a message that resonates deeply with your ideal customer, by building a strategy that turns you into the go to expert in your field. Now this is in theory.

34:00 These are battle testing strategies that have helped businesses like yours double triple, and quadruple their revenue. Don't let another quarter go by struggling the standout. It's time to dominate your market period. Go to NEXTSTEPCFO dot net forward slash contact. Fill out the form and in the message section put the word dominate or call us at seven eight one three two six three A two two. That's next STEPCFO dot net forward slash contact or call us at seven eight one three two six three A two two. So welcome back to powerful business strategies. And if you're just joining us, we're talking about breaking free from being trapped by your business. And now I want to show you something that will completely change the way you think about your time. So let me introduce you to what I call the Time freedom FOA. This is the exact system a contractor used to go from working seventy hours a week to forty while I'm increasing its profit by eighty five percent. The best part is that this works for virtually any business. But let me first tell you about Bob.

35:08 I'll cover that later on, but let me tell you about Bob, who runs a successful contracting business. Bob was the classic overwhelmed business owner, constantly running between job sites, putting up buyers, dealing with employee issues, and trying to squeeze in estimates between all that chaos. Sound familiar, Well, here's the third major myth that was keeping Bob trapped. I need to work harder and everything will fall into place. Now, this is probably the most dangerous live business owners tell themselves. And let me show you why. He did what he called a time money now time to money analysis. For one week, he logged every single activity. This is so important, by the way, you gotta log your activity just for a week or two. And he logged every single activity and he assigned it a dollar value. And here's what he discovered. Thirty percent of his time was spent on twenty five dollars an hour tasks, forty percent of the time was spent on fifty dollars an hour tasks, twenty percent was spent on one hundred dollars an hour task, and only five percent, five percent was spent on five hundred dollars an hour tasks, which is the task that he should be doing, and he only spends five percent of his time on it. That five percent of his time that he spent on high value activities generated sixty percent of his profit. Whoa think about that for a minute, Just three and a half hours a week was producing most of his profit. So we implemented the mnemonic called

36:42 AID AID COD And here are the five components of a CO number. One. A stands for automate, What can we systematize? Two I I stands for innovate? Solved any roadblocks? D stands for delegate, what can someone else do? C stands for cancel what can we stop doing entirely? And O stands for outsource? If there are no employees that have the skill, then outsource that task. And let me show exactly how this worked for Bob. So automate, he created what he called decision trees for every common situation employee issues. Here's the protocol, customer complaint, here's the process material delay, here's the system. So instead of Bob having to handle every decision, his team had clear guidelines for handling ninety percent of the situations. Next innovate. Bob was constantly innovating with all the new systems he created, and a lot of this process led to innovation. So as he was creating these systems, he discovered more and more opportunities to improve it to if baby and then delegate.

38:08 This is where most business owners get stuck. They say, well, nobody can do it as well as me. His here's what Bob's wife toldbot. If nobody can do it as well as you, you failed as a leader. It's true, okay, and that and that that's a that's an ouch, it's true, and then cancel. He found he was doing free estimates for anyone who asked. Seventy percent of these people are never going to buy. It was just price shopping. So he created a paid consult consultation model. If they hired him, the consultation fee was applied to the project. His time spent was on estimate. It's time that he spent on estimates dropped by sixty five percent, and he doubled his closing rate. So what he did he actually charged everybody out there basically has all these free estimate stuff, he actually charged for it because, first of all, his consultation during estimates was very valuable.

39:12 And people were getting it for nothing. And a lot of people were getting it for nothing, and they would run to the competitor and take that advice for the competitor. So that doesn't work. So and so he he developed this this this system where he was able to monetize his estimating estimating process and certainly if the if the if the prospect became a customer, then he would deduct it from the from the estimate outsource. He discovered there were still tasks that he was doing that someone else could do, but there was no one in the organization with this organizationization skills needed, so he outsourced of virtual assistantes where they needed admin skills organization skills, I should say so. Pot of Bob's innovation was creating what he called the skill transfer system.

40:11 So for every task Bob handled, he documented the process step by step. He created training videos, he developed checklists, he established quality control metrics, he built feedback loops, and was a time consuming. Upfront hope was it was absolutely happened. Not within ninety days, his team was handling eighty percent of what used to land on his desk, and once Bob wasn't trapped doing twenty five dollars an hour work, he could focus on the five hundred dollars hour per hour activities, which was strategic planning, key client relationships, business development, process improvement, and team development. But here's what's really powerful about the system because it creates what I call time momentum.

40:56 Every hour you invest in systems and trainings give you back multiple hours in the future. It's just leverage, tremendous leverage. And Bob used to spend ten hours a week dealing with scheduled changes and crew assignments. He created a simple scheduling system and trained his project manager to handle it, and that ten hours became thirty minutes of review time, and the schedule actually got better because his project manager was focused solely on this task and could give it the attention to deserve while Bob was trying to do ten thousand crisis calls and other estimates and all these different handling customer complaints and employee issues without focusing on the estimate. So within and by the way, within six months, his work we dropped from seventy hours to forty, his profit increased by eighty five percent, his employee turnover dropped to zero, patis factions scores hit all time highs, and most importantly, he hasn't missed a single one of the kids' games this season.

42:08 The sidelines faring on right, Yeah, you got my sidelines, I was saying, he's on the sidelines cheering on right. I mean, that's right, that's right, yeah, exactly, And so let me circle back on that time freedom formula. I promise to share with you that this is the framework that ties everything that we've talked about together. It's based on what I call the four zones of freedom. And here's exactly how that time freedom formula works. Zone one is the foundation zone. This is where you document everything you do, I mean everything, creates, systems, processes, procedures for every recurring task in your business. And yes, it takes time up front, but it's like laying a foundation of a house. Do it right and everything else becomes possible exactly.

42:56 Zone two the multiplication zone. This is where you multiply your time through people and technology. For every task, you ask yourself, can this be automated? Can this be delegated? Can this be canceled? This is essentially eight come. Zone three deliberation zone. This is where you create what I call time freedom triggers specific points in your business where you step back and you'll let systems and the team take over. For example, when revenue hits X, you stop doing estimates. When profits hit why you hire operations manager? When systems are document meant did you reduce your hours to forty hours per week. Zone four is a leverage zone.

43:39 This is where the magic happens because in this zone you're only doing things that only you can do, that you love to do, that generate the highest return of your time, that move your business forward strategically. So the formula works like this. This time spent in zone one creates freedom in zone two. Success success in zone two enables zone three, and then a Zone three catapulture is zone four. So remember Bob the contractor using this formula. He spent ninety days in zone one documenting everything. He used zone two to train his team and implement systems. He activated zone three by gradually stepping back from daily operations and now operates in zone four, focusing on only high level strategy and growth. The key is here is to move through the zone systematically, and most business owners try to jump straight to zone four without building the foundation.

44:39 That's like trying to put the roof on the house before you built the walls. So that is pretty much st ended by strategies today for time management time freedom. I should say that more time freedom you just you run your business better and it will result in and freedom. And so now it's type of compliments. Yes, Michael really energized by our segment on business complements. So there are a number of business owners coast to coast that we want to spotlights. I will start with Jay Miller. Jay's she's a financial planner based in Florida, Michael, and she's affiliated with Haven Partners Group hPG Holdings. Get this.

45:28 Her focus is building wealth, is about moving the needle and making measurable progress. That's her mindset to your point, and her headline and mission statement as part of that mindset is to focus on this hashtag hashtag needle mover. How about that you need if you need a catalyst or creating a prosperous environment, or you just need a go to financial consultants. Yeah, touch base with j and you can find her as again j Millers Spelt ja Ye Second Spotlight and Austin and Austin. She is a certified financial advisor with Raymond James Financial Services Incorporated. She's based in Georgia, Michael. Get this. For her headline statement, she is a financial professional serving her community in retirement, college and estate planning. Very focused on those three pillars.

46:28 You can find out more about Ann Raymond James dot Com, Forward Slash and Austin. The third spotlight is on Lorie Rogers. Laurie Rogers. She is with Keller Williams main Line. She works relentlessly for her clients. She's got extensive knowledge in the real estate market really throughout the Philadelphia and Greater Philadelphia area, and she really tries to keep the process fun for her clients. That's one of the things that clients love about working with Laurie. You can find out more about her l our homes dot com, so effectively al Forlori Rfurrogershomes dot com. The next business owner of Spotlight Frank Scerbo. Frank is the leader with Serve First Solutions based in Massachusetts. They are a nationwide payment solutions firm assistant small to mid sized businesses with a focus on vertical specific to the B to B sector and I like this leadership tagline from Frank. I have the care for high credit card process and fees full stop. Right.

47:36 You can find out more information about Frank at serve iphen First dot com. So that's Serve dash First dot com. And then last business owner of Spotlight in today's segment is Jason Fiala. Jason is the president of Premium Termite and Pest Control based in California. They serve all of SoCal so from the greatest San Diego area and beyond. And I really like this focus. So their focus is to provide amazingly fast turnaround on termite reports for escrow purposes. And even better than that, they're very committed to providing amazing care, compassion Michael, and customer service. So they combined compassionate customer service. So with that, I'll welcome back over to you. Those are the compliments for the week.

48:25 Thank you, Chicky. So you know the great paradox of business success, it's the less dependent your business is on you, the more successful it becomes. And the less you try to control everything, the more control you actually have. The more you go, the more your business grows. Great point. And so to get a copy of the book Powerful Business Strategy, simply go to our website www dot NEXTSTEPCFO dot net. It's totally complimentary and until next Monday at noon Eastern time. For Chicky Obio. My name is Michael Baberita and member don't keep doing what your competition is doing.

49:06 You have been listening to powerful business strategies finding out that everything you ever learned about growing your business is wrong. Tune in next week and every week at noon Eastern time on W four CY Radio with your host Michael Barbarita of NeXTSTEP CFO and moderator chugy Ovio