Next Level Pros - #119: How to Do More of What You Love

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Welcome to a new episode of The Founder Podcast! Today, Chris and Daryl dive into a crucial topic for any entrepreneur—how to manage energy and maximize efficiency by identifying tasks that should be outsourced. They discuss the importance of focusing on activities that not only excite you but also play to your strengths, transforming how you approach work and life. This episode explores strategies for auditing your time, understanding the value of different tasks, and prioritizing what truly matters to energize your daily routine. https://nextlevelhomepros.com/june25thworkshop  Highlights: "Identify what you need to outsource so you can focus on what gets you most excited." "If it's low energy and you can hire it out, why keep it on your plate?" "We need to be trading up, always aiming to operate in our quadrant four." "The energy matrix helps you identify what truly matters in your work and life." Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction to Energy and Efficiency 02:49 - Discussing High Energy and Low Energy Tasks 05:00 - The Importance of Delegating Unwanted Tasks 08:40 - Introducing the Energy Matrix and Time Audit 10:04 - Calculating the Value of Your Time 13:15 - Applying the Matrix to Real Business Scenarios 16:27 - Strategies for Eliminating Low-Value Tasks 20:00 - Balancing Personal Satisfaction with Professional Efficiency 23:48 - Hiring Passion vs. Hiring Desperation 26:44 - Engaging in High Energy, Low Value Activities Looking to scale your business? Want to learn directly from the same team that helped me sell my last business for 9 figures? Click this link below to check out how you can work with us. https://nextlevelhomepros.com/grow-home-service-vsl  Join my community - Founder Acceleration ⁠https://www.founderacceleration.com  ⁠ Apply for our next Mastermind: h⁠ttps://www.thefoundermastermind.com ⁠  Golf with Chris: h⁠ttps://www.golfwithchris.com ⁠  Watch my latest Podcast Apple- ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-founder-podcast/id1687030281S ⁠ Spotify- ⁠https://open.spotify.com/show/1e0cL2vI1JAtQrojSOA7D2 ⁠ YouTube - @thefounderspodcast

I get paid a lot of money and it excites me, right? But you're going to miss out on some beauties of the world, right? Like the time with the kids, the time on the boat, the time doing the little hobbies that you can easily hire out, right? I think what's interesting is the conflict is a lot of times we're so stressed and so busy doing things we don't want to do that they exhaust us and we don't have the energy to show up for the things that we actually do want to do. And it's working all day and then coming home grumpy because you're just exhausted. Yo, yo, yo, it's Chris and Daryl from another episode. We're super excited to be

talking about what it is that drives you, what gives you energy, what gets you excited to get out of bed in the morning. A lot of us end up doing jobs or running businesses where we're wearing all the hats and there's just so much stuff that we absolutely hate doing. It drags down our energy. It's unproductive. And so in this episode, we're going to dive in on how you can identify the things in your life that you need to outsource, that you need to hire out, and so that you can start focusing on the things that get you most excited, that are your gifts to the world.

All this and more on this episode of the Founder Podcast. Daryl, good to have you. Good to be here. Oh, baby. Today we are talking about one of my favorite subjects, in which we're talking about how you can really develop the gifts that you've been given, right? That just get you excited. Like for example, I want anybody that's watching this or listening to this right now, I want you to think about what motivates me,

what gets me out of bed, what is something that when I do it, I want to do more of, right? Like that it's just like so energetic, so fulfilling. You're like, man, that is what God put me on the earth to do. When you hear those words, Darrell, what are you thinking? Like what are the things that get you excited that are like your top tier talents that God put you on the earth to do? Yeah, I think, you know, growing a business, I think of all the problems you get to solve every day, but then also doing that with people. And I enjoy connecting with people,

understanding people's perspective, and just figuring out how do we take this perspective? How do we take these people, this structure, this organization? How do we accomplish these goals? And so I think for me, I love that aspect of business. Nice. For me, I think about sales. I've always loved sales, right? Like when I am selling somebody or influencing, I think it actually stems more from influencing. When I'm influencing someone to do something that's from my perspective and they buy into it,

right? They're like, wow, this is awesome. Whether it's a product or a service or a mission or whatever it is, right? That's always given me the most energy. I also think about leadership. I think about influencing and helping others. I think about giving back. What about things that suck energy from you what would you what would you put in that camp you know it's funny as you're talking i have this like conflict in my head of like working out yeah because i don't want to start but once i start

i love doing it and i love the result so it kind it's in there. Well, working out is a funny one because you can't really hire anybody else to do it for you. It's true. That is the one, no matter how much you love it or hate it, you've got to do it. Tried to hire it out. Tried to hire it out. I hired a trainer.

You can do some things. You can do some things to enhance it, but at the end of the day, you've got to take the action. It's true. Sorry, what was your question? So what are some of the energy suckers in your life that you hate doing that you want to be away from? You know, I think one of the things

that we experienced earlier on in our business was just understanding which partners we wanted to work with and which ones we didn't. Yeah. And there are some people that I was, you know, I was ready to go to the battlefield with them. I'm ready to stand in the front lines and go. Then there's other people where I'm like, man, like,

I just want to find a different place to exist, not around this person. It is interesting, right? There's certain people that are either energy vampires or energy producers, right? Like the reflectors or they absorb it all. You know, that is a complete, we could probably do a whole nother episode on that. I guess one thing I want all the listeners and people that are viewing,

I want you to take out a sheet of paper and think for yourself, like what is it that I do every single day that I absolutely hate, right? And like when I think about that, I think about like bookkeeping. I think about organization. I do like, there's some organizational things. Like if people just took care of it for me, fantastic, right? Like I want to just kind of create in my mess or whatever else and like have it automatically be cleaned up every single day. You know, I think about things like from an operational standpoint, like sometimes fulfilling, even though I want to make sure a great product gets delivered.

I don't necessarily want to have to do all the details on delivering that product. You know, it's funny when you're talking about this. I'm thinking of like when you have to organize things, right? When we're trying to like, when we were first in your garage, we had to clean everything up and like put things away. I remember you standing there with a blank stare on your face, like you didn't know what to do. Yeah. It's like things are hard for you to organize,

but ideas and thoughts are where you thrive. Right. You really like doing that. So it is interesting to realize like what do you spend your time doing and which ones do you like doing and which ones don't you? Um, yeah, there, there are a lot of tasks, bookkeeping, um, gosh, just, just getting the mail. There's sometimes like, there's a mail or a letter that I need to address that just sits there for like weeks. Yeah. And it has like no big consequences to it. It's just like, I just don't have the energy to do it.

And I always find someone to do it for me and take care of those tasks because they're common. And then there's times where like everything flows and I can get stuff done. Right. And then you think outside of business, obviously like there's a whole nother aspect to how we live life, right?

And so like the things that give me energy, I love spending time with my kids. I love playing games with them. I don't necessarily love like driving them to and from practice. That's not like my favorite time unless they're engaged with me and talking. I'm not a big fan of like cleaning the house, but there's certain aspects that I enjoy doing, like going out and pruning my trees or mowing the lawn. I actually enjoy doing. And so it's interesting.

Each one of us, the key thing that I want each of you guys as you're listening to this thinking about is like how each of us tick differently. And what you like and dislike, like it doesn't matter what anybody else likes or dislikes. This is you, right? Life is what you're and dislike, like, it doesn't matter what anybody else likes or dislikes. This is you, right? Life is what you're getting out of it. And so when we're talking about energy, so today we're going to be talking about the energy matrix. And we're going to jump over here to what I have drawn out here on the iPad, which is the energy matrix. But before you get into the energy matrix, you have to do what's called a time audit. And so I'm going to, I'm going to write that down on here. So time audit,

and this is a best practice where you can just go through and it's got to be more than one day because one day could be completely different than the next, especially if you're an entrepreneur and wearing a bunch of hats. Right. And so the best practice is to do this time audit for two weeks at a time. And what you want to do is write down what you did with your time every 15 minutes. And it could be like, I woke up, I work out, I did scripture study, I walked with my wife, I checked the mail, checked my email, checked social media, posted on social media, whatever it is, right?

And like, right, just create a time audit in a spreadsheet and every 15 minutes go back and like try to track it as close as you possibly did, right? Like a lot of times we'll forget what we actually did during a certain time. So like the faster you can check up and just put that into there, the better. And then next to that into there, the better. And then next to that time audit, once you have done that for two weeks, I want you to go through and I want you to assign energy and value to them. Okay. And essentially we've given

the way that we identify energy and value. Energy is something that gets us excited, right? Like gives us energy, right? And anything that's low energy is something that sucks it away. You feel terrible after you're done with it. You're like, I never want to do that ever again. I got to take a nap. I got to take a nap, right? Whatever it is. So those are the differences between high energy and low energy. Now, value isn't your traditional value. In value, we're talking about money, okay? Low value is something that you can hire out, okay?

And high value is something that makes you a lot of money, okay? So strictly money. And the best equation that I know for identifying a low value product, so we're going to put it on here on the iPad, low value equals one quarter of your wage. Okay. So, and the way that you determine your wage, even if you own a business or whatnot, is you want to take your total income made for the year. Okay. Let's call it 200,000. Say you made $200,000 last year. You're going to divide that by two and that gives you a hundred. Okay. Now obviously a hundred

thousand, but we're going to go a hundred. Your wage is a hundred, hour. And this is because throughout the year, 50 weeks, you're going to have, what is it? 20,000 or 2,000 hours is what it is. So 50 weeks times 40 hours a week is 2,000. So now if you only made a hundred grand last year, your wage would have been $50 an hour. So now you're going to take that final and you're going to divide it by four. So in the a hundred dollar example, you're gonna have 25 bucks. So anything that's low value is going to be $25 an hour. Okay. So, so when you're looking at, as you assign this to it, okay. It of your energy and value, like, does it give me energy? Does it suck my energy? Okay. Whatever, whatever the, the, uh, the different thing that you did during that 15 minute block. Okay. And then the other thing is,

can I hire it for 25% of my wage? Okay. So in this example, you would say, like if say I checked my email, okay. Checking my email. I hate checking my email. I hate like having to delete stuff. I hate having to organize it.

I hate having to like go through something that maybe causes me anxiety initially only to find out it's not even that important of an email. Everything about email, I freaking hate. Right. Yep. And so, so what I would say is, one, does it give me energy? No, it doesn't. I hate it. It's low energy. Two, can I hire it out for 25% of my wage? Now, since I make millions of dollars a year, like say at a million dollars a year, my hourly wage would be $500 an hour, which means anything at $125 an hour or less would be considered low value. So my question to me would be, can I have somebody check my email for $125 an hour or less? Now, if I'm making 200

grand, it's going to be the same thing. Can I have somebody do it for $25 an hour or less? If the answer is yes, you've now identified something that is in your quadrant one, right? Because quadrant one, as you guys are looking at the recording here, is low energy, low value. Okay? So I guess my question for you, right? If you go back to when you were starting some of your businesses, how could you have applied this in a way that would have maybe helped you in those starting days when you have so much on your plate, right?

Yeah, so really you always have to do this. No matter where you're at, whether you're in startup mode, you're employee or whatever else, there are things that you are doing, right? That are quadrant one activities that you can hire out. Even if, even if say your current wage is only 25 bucks an hour, right? All you're making is $25 an hour. Divide that in a, by four is what? 6.25? Are there people in the world that will work for $6.25, Daryl? Yep. Where at? I mean, we have people in the Philippines.

Yep. So there's people in the Philippines that will work for $6.25. So even if you're a wage earner, only making $25 an hour, there's things that you can get off your plate that's going to allow you more time to go and do things

that are going to produce at 25 bucks an hour. Yeah. Right. And so everybody, whether you're an employee or you're building your first side hustle, you've got to put a value on what you're doing. Right. Whether that's 25 bucks an hour, whether it's a thousand dollars an hour, whatever, you know, that if like, for example, when we first started with Solgen, I knew that if I was out selling, I could make the company, you know, $1,000 an hour that I was out working, right? And so if I'm busy doing $20 an hour work, I'm costing the company $980 an hour, right? And so, like, that's how you have to start thinking about things is like opportunity cost. You really going back over here to the iPad, from a business standpoint,

you want to be hanging out in quadrant four, the things that get you excited and pay you a lot of money. Okay. High energy, high value. Quadrant three is also okay to hang out with in the starting stages, because even though you hate it it's high value right so this would be low energy high value say you hate sales right it doesn't give you energy but you're really good at it right and you can make the company a lot of money that you're just starting by doing it you're going to initially do those things right you're going to want to trade quadrant one activities for quadrant three. You can hang out doing sales, even though you absolutely hate it. But even

though you hate email and you hate sales the exact same, one costs way less to hire out than what you can go and produce, right? And so initially the goal in all of this is how can I get rid of my quadrant one, the things that are less than 25% of my hourly wage or what I could be making and the things that I hate doing. So that's number one. And I think the trap for quadrant one is we all have the same amount of time every day and we fill that with things we deliberately choose to do, but then all the extra time gets filled in with so many other things.

And if you're not paying attention, you don't realize what you're doing and how you're wasting your time. And to your point, you don't want to eliminate an activity unless you're going to replace it with a higher value one. I don't want to eliminate emails only to do shopping for drinks for the company. Because both of those are quadrant one activities.

I want to replace all quadrant one with a minimum of one of the other three quadrants. I would much rather do something that gives me high energy that I can hire out for less versus something that's low high energy that I can hire out for less versus something that's low energy, low value. And so that's the whole key here is that you want to be trading up all the time. And so from a business standpoint, you want to first get rid of quadrant one, and then you want to get rid of quadrant three. Now you're asking like, why wouldn't I get rid of quadrant two first? Now quadrant two is a funny fickle little son of a gun because this includes things like pruning my trees,

playing with my kids, doing things that I could hire out, right? Like, and the sad part is, is a lot of entrepreneurs fall in the trap of hiring quadrant two things out. You know, it's the things that they're excited, that they love doing, that give them energy, but they think, oh, everything's got to be

all about producing value, producing money, so I'm going to hire this out. So I'm going to hire somebody to take care of my kids. I'm going to hire someone to do the things that actually I enjoy doing, like pruning my trees or I'm going to do this, that, and the other. Where have you seen, have you ever made any mistakes in quadrant two where you've hired out something that you actually really love doing?

Yeah, well, it reminds me of the story of the guy that lives on the coast and he's fishing in a poor country, right? And some people visiting pass by and see what he's doing. And this guy was an entrepreneur and starts telling him, hey, do you know that, you know, instead of catching fish just for your family, go build a whole fleet of, and he goes through this whole process of, you know,

what he can do to. Yeah, essentially how he could scale up his one person fishing operation to go and eventually take it public, right, and have this huge organization. And the fisherman's always like, and then what? And then what happens? And the businessman is like, well, so then one day you can go and retire and you can live next to the ocean and you can fish all day. Yeah, basically just a full circle of like, a lot of times what we

get into business for is to have more freedom of time, spend time with our family, uh, things that give us energy, develop hobbies. Yeah. Things that give us energy. But oftentimes we get so busy that we're like, Oh, those things, I don't have time for them. And you push those off. And I think the realization is that time goes by quick. You know, I already have a 16 year old and that is crazy to me. How quick kids grow. Well, I'm growing the same rate. And so I think that's important to realize is like, your life's going to go by whether you use it for the reason you want to or not. Right. And I think that's where like the focus of this episode is like, it's really easy to look

at the four quadrants and say let's all go to quadrant four right high energy high value i get paid a lot of money and it excites me right but you're gonna miss out on some beauties of the world right like the time with the kids the time on the boat the time uh doing the little hobbies that you can easily hire out, right? I love using pruning trees as an example, because pruning trees is one of the, probably the lowest wage earner things that you can do on a farm, right? Like when I get my cherries pruned, I need to have it done in a timely manner. And so I hire it out. I just can't, I don't have enough time to be able to do it, but I always prune my walnut trees because I don't have that many trees but i enjoy doing it and so you know i can go get my cherries pruned

for 1500 bucks they'll prune nine acres right like and and they'll do it over a few days and it's like dude the cost of that is like is nothing compared to the amount of hours that go into it but when i am out pruning my walnut trees, it like connects me with the earth. It helps me meditate. It's a time to like, just think about like the principles of creation and everything else. Like just, there's so much that I love about it

that if I was missing out on that, right? Like that energy producer in my life would be gone. And frankly, I don't think I would be as good of a entrepreneur. I think what's interesting is the, the conflict is a lot of times we're so stressed and so busy doing things we don't want to do that they exhaust us and we don't have the energy to show up for the things that we actually do want to do. Right. And, uh, you know, it's, it's working all day and then coming home grumpy because you're just exhausted. Yeah. Um, and, and so to your point, like, I think it's important to you understand as a startup entrepreneur,

you're going to be doing quadrant one activities. The goal though, is you got to focus all every extra additional ounce of energy of getting out of that, right? Like how do I identify an assistant that can come in and take off quadrant one activities? How do I identify a bookkeeper can come and take out quadrant one activities? How do I identify a landscaper that can come and take off these quadrant one activities that I absolutely hate? Whatever it is, right? And so, you know, and that's where the goal comes in is like, okay, initially you're working 80 hours, hopefully 40 hours in quadrant four and 40 hours on everything else. How do I replace those additional 40 hours with somebody

that is going to absolutely love doing the things that I hate, you know? And, and I think that's probably the craziest phenomenon about this whole energy matrix is your quadrant one is somebody else's quadrant four. Yeah. Right. Meaning that there is somebody out there that they're like, this is in line with my wage, so it's high value. And I absolutely love doing it. Yeah. Right.

Like there is somebody out there that loves bookkeeping. There's somebody out there that loves creating folders and creating just a whole system around your emails. There is somebody that loves digging ditches and doing this, that, and the other. And when you build a phenomenal organization, what you've done is you've actually gotten people all into their quadrant four activities, right? Like a top, and now it's impossible to ever achieve this, but the goal as a company should always be, how do I get every single person in my company in their quadrant four, right? Something that is in line with their wage, what they feel is high income, right? And gives them energy. I think this goes to the principle of like, whenever I hire somebody,

I always want to know what their next step is, right? And if you can help them get to the next step, whether that's in your company or outside your company, the energy they spend in your business is going to be significantly more. And so the value they bring is significantly more. But a lot of times we feel like, oh, we don't want to lose this person, you know, and we don't energy they spend in your business is going to be significantly more. And so the value they bring is significantly more. But a lot of times we feel like, oh, we don't want to lose this person, you know, and we don't develop them. They just give less and less. And so I think it's super important to realize like how this principle works in real life.

It's, hey, you know, if you come and join us, like what's your next step? Where do you want to get to and how can we help you get there? And on top of that, like not only what's your your next step but like why would you love doing this like why do you want and if they're like well it's just a job and like i'm trying to pay the bills and i'm willing to sacrifice short term to do like that's not necessarily the person that that you want right you want somebody that's like yo i organizing emails. I love doing bookkeeping. Like this is my, because dude, the cool thing about human beings, no two, one is the same.

Two of them are the same. Like, and so believe it or not, somebody out there loves doing the stuff that you absolutely hate. Yeah. I think it's, it's identifying hunger versus people that are starving. You got some people like, yeah, I'll do anything just because they're starving. You have other people like, I'll do anything because they're hungry. They want opportunity.

They want to create opportunity. So there's a very strong difference. And one's very long-term, one's short-term. Yeah, absolutely. And so, guys, like one thing I really want you to take from this episode is, is the best practice of you doing this for the rest of your life, right? Going and auditing your time because as you know, here's the cool thing. As you replace those quadrant one activities from a financial level, your total yearly hour, your hourly wage will increase, right? So if I am making a hundred dollars an hour

and I get $25 an hour work off my job, if I'm making a hundred, that means there's certain activities I'm doing that are probably worth two or $300 an hour, right? And so if I get $25 an hour stuff off my job, off my plate and go identify the two to $300 stuff I can do, all of a sudden that hourly wage is going to continue to creep up, which means that your quadrant one will also creep up, right? Once I get it up, my hourly wage up to $200. Now my quadrant one is 50 bucks. Now I can afford to hire out things that much higher qualified people can do until eventually you're making a million dollars a year and pretty much everybody falls below your hourly wage. You're a thousand dollars an hour, that 250, you can hire most

things out for $250 an hour, right? Now, once again, you only want to hire it out if it's low energy, right? Because if it's high energy and you love doing it and it produces great value, keep doing that crap. Keep doing the things that you love. And that's really the whole point of this episode is how do we get ourselves to the point where we love showing up to work, to home, to the relationship, to our communities. How do we do the things that we absolutely love? Another perfect example, like a quadrant, going back to the quadrant two, like I want you, Daryl, I want you to think about like what your quadrant two activities are, right? What are the high energy, low value things that you can easily hire out for?

Like for me, football coach, right? Like football coaches make hardly anything. So I could hire somebody else to be a football coach for very little, right? But I freaking love it, right? Like football coaches make hardly anything. So I could hire somebody else to be a football coach for very little, right? But I freaking love it, right? Like it's my way to give back to my community, be in with the youth, developing them, gives me energy. Like I love Friday Night Lights. I love everything about it. Like Quadrant 2, if I can hang out in the football universe forever, along with producing high value, high energy things for my economics, like dude, that is my ideal life of quadrant two, quadrant four. What's your ideal?

So low value, high energy. No, no. Yes. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Come on. It's motorcycle riding. Well, that's obvious. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Um, come on. It's motorcycle riding. Well, that's obvious. Yeah. I mean, dude, I'm not even you

and I could identify this. Can you hire a, someone to ride a motorcycle for you? Yep. You can. And can you do it for 25% of what your hourly wage is? Yep. Absolutely. So it's low value. It's true. I love doing that. I love, I love teaching my kids's low value. It's true. I love doing that. I love teaching my kids. I love being with my kids. I love driving the boat. Yeah. I'm good at it now.

It's just fun. You know, I think just hitting this principal home before we wrap up this episode would just be like, you know, picking on my Indian friends a little bit. So me and you, we have a lot of friends from India. Yep. Right.

And a lot of wealthy friends from India. Like, I mean, we're talking billionaires and stuff like that. Over in India, it's very common, very common to have someone that does everything for you. I mean, we have friends that have literally never ironed a shirt, never done their own laundry, never made a meal, never done any of these type of things. And my caution to anybody is like, and maybe this gives them energy, right?

Maybe those things they absolutely hate, but there are some things about the basic essentials of life, doing them on a daily basis, even though they almost feel ashamed that every once in a while I mow my lawn. Or I almost feel ashamed that I even know how to wash my clothes in a washer and dryer when I'm at Harvard, right? But then I'm reminded of this principle of like, no, this is who I am. I don't need somebody else to validate what gives me energy or what connects me with, with the world, just because it's a low value

activity doesn't mean that it's unfruitful. What are your, what are your thoughts on that? Anytime you see someone with a lot of passion, you love it. And sometimes you see, there's a guy who rides a, this scooter it's like looks like uh yes you know down on road 68 with the spikes yes yes dude this guy is all over tri-cities all over tri-cities and just rides this thing around on the streets up and down up and dances like he's only like one block up and down and you can tell i don't think he's on drugs i don't know but all you can tell is he loves doing it he loves doing it and you're like dude that guy you don't know, but all you can tell is he loves doing it. He loves doing it. And you're like, dude, that guy, you don't ever think negative things about him. At first you're like, what is

he doing? But once you see him three or four times, you're like, dude, this guy loves doing this. And it's, it's cool. It gives you energy just realizing, dude, that guy is living his life. Yeah. Living his best life. Yeah. So that's the goal that we would share with you guys today. Ask yourself, how can I hang out more in quadrant two and quadrant four, doing the goal that we would share with you guys today. Ask yourself, how can I hang out more in quadrant two and quadrant four doing the things that give me the most amount of energy? Until next time.