Why Top CEOs Should Work 2-Hours a Day with Siimon Sander

0:01Like that, Sparkfire Nation, JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network with great shows like CEO School. Today, we'll be breaking down why top CEOs should work two hours a day. To drop these value bombs, I brought Simon Sander into EO Fire Studios. Simon runs a portfolio of profitable internet businesses, including About Hire, Oscar Hamilton, and Podcast Wise. And today, our foundation will talk about productivity. We'll talk about the day-to-day of CEOs. We'll talk about a chief of staff and why you might need one. And the most common mistakes management makes over and over and over again and so much more.

0:41And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Simon and our sponsors. Many EO Fire listeners have launched franchises in a variety of industries outside of food and Fran Bridge Consulting has guided them to these premier opportunities. The founder, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com. Outbound Squad, hosted by Jason Bay, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Tune in for convos with leading sales experts and top performing reps to help you land more meetings with your ideal clients.

1:22One of my faves, the monthly ep with Jason and Ethan, where they share hacks, tips, and tricks. Listen to Outbound Squad wherever you get your podcasts. Simon, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. You know, I think most entrepreneurs don't work, don't need to work extreme long hours to build successful business. You know, John, there's obviously exceptions when you're working on really hard problems, trying to build a nuclear fusion startup, you know, to provide clean energy or you're venture backed or you know you have vcs holding gun to your head but i think for most medium small size businesses out there i don't think working hard is the answer uh and i can kind of expand on that if you'd like yeah i'd like to expand on that just a little bit so fire nation can really get a clear grasp on this yeah i think a good question to ask yourself is what would happen at your company if you went on a vacation for, you know, six months, 12 months.

2:25And if you think things would start falling apart, then working hard is usually not the answers. And, you know, putting in more hours, working 12 hour days, like a lot of entrepreneurs do. But instead you need to focus on building systems, processes, and spending time with things that you're actually really good at and leaving everything else to your team. And it makes me really sad because I see a lot of entrepreneurs who were working insane hours and their companies are successful on paper, but they're not seeing their friends, they're not seeing their families, they don't have time to do things that they really care about.

2:58And I used to be in the same boat for many, many years. So I love shining light on that challenge that you don't really need to work that hard. You need to put together a good team, delegate everything that you don't enjoy doing. Well, in our pre-interview chat, Simon wanted to make sure that I was still batching my interviews and I let him know, yes, I'm still doing seven interviews one day per week for entrepreneurs on fire, as well as one day per month. I do between 10 to 20 interviews on other shows. So I really batch those as well. And man, I'll tell you, it just frees me up for so much stuff.

3:33And it makes me so much more productive when I'm doing this. Like, man, you know, I'm every 40 minutes right now for the day. So I am just like on top of it. Like, like you, like my bathroom breaks are scheduled, but I love it that way because it frees me up so much more for other things. Like I leave next week, Simon, for three weeks in Japan. And like people like, how can you do that? I'm like, well, I'm actually booked out through April now. So like I could be gone even longer than that. Because one thing that I really want to talk about is that word productivity that we keep dancing around.

4:03For me, the definition of productivity is producing the right content. Right now I'm actually being productive because I'm producing the right content for what my businesses, which is Entrepreneurs on Fire, our daily podcast interviewing the world's most successful entrepreneurs. What's your definition of productivity, Simon? Working on things that you're uniquely good at and that actually, you know, give you energy. I think a good thing to do is, you know, take a step back and do a calendar audit. You know, tomorrow when you start working, track your time in 15 minute increments and, you know, know, be really honest with yourself.

4:41What are some repetitive tasks? See what can be delegated? What tasks train you? And you know, what really gives you energy? And what are you only uniquely good at? And when I did that exercise a couple years ago, you know, I quickly realized that, you know, there's like 95 % of tasks that I, you know, ended up doing for many, many years that could have been easily delegated to, you know, people who actually are better, number one, better than me at those things. And also, you know, enjoy doing them way more than I do. And we're talking about, you know, admin tasks, maybe it's, you know, hiring, maybe it's collecting invoices, sending invoices, you know, whatever that might be.

5:18So what you want to do as an entrepreneur is, you know, spend at least 80 % of your time on tasks that you are actually, you know, amazing at. And, you know, 20 % of the time you can spend it on low value tasks and, you know, reactive requests. So I think productivity comes down to not, you know, squeezing out every minute from 24 hours, but, you know, really asking yourself, am I spending the time and mindfully every single hour? I love those audits that we do, those self audits we do on ourself and our business. And I also love the reality, Fire Nation, that so many things in life come down to that 80-20 rule.

5:53I mean, how are you using your time, how are you making your money, how healthy you are? Like 80 % of the time, are you eating like the right things? Like, think about that. I mean, you need to be always kind of going back to this. And CEOs, Simon, they have literally, and I mean literally, infinite things that they could be doing on a day-to-day basis. So how could those leaders of businesses, and this is you, Fire Nation, if you're the founder, I mean, how can we make sure that we're only working on high leverage activities? I think calendar audit is a good place to start. If you truly are feeling overwhelmed, there's a good chance that, number one, you're, you know burnt out or number two you just have too much on your plate and i always recommend when i when i talk with entrepreneurs or just you know working crazy hours evenings weekends get yourself a chief of staff and chief of staff is basically somebody who's going to help you manage day-to-day tasks at your company uh they can you know take tasks off your plate start hiring people attend meetings on your behalf and eventually you know make decisions behalf of you it's it's essentially the right hand person to run the company with you.

7:01There's also, you know, online business manager, there's also virtual assistants and so on. But I've sort of gotten most success with the chief of staff, especially from that executive position. And I'm happy to kind of go into how to find one for your company and you know, how we can onboard them without a lot of effort from your part. Yeah, I'd love to really dive into what a chief of staff is and why specifically that we need one. Yeah, I think for entrepreneurs, you know, there's endless responsibilities. If you, you know, if you have a successful business, and I, you know, really well, John, that, you know, you end up getting crazy amount of emails, I don't know how many you get a day, but I end up getting, you know, 80 to 100 emails each day.

7:41and you know there's constant fires that you have to put out and you know you spend four or five hours on these tasks each day and then you know it's monday 2 3 p.m and you realize like oh crap i haven't actually focused any time on you know long-term projects um so getting help um chief of staff can kind of help those get those low value tasks off your plate so you can really focus on high priority responsibilities uh so the current rule i have for myself is you know the first four hours of the day is to focus on top priority long-term work. I don't check my email. I don't, you know, I'm not reactive at all.

8:18It's just my time and I focus on long-term projects. So when it comes to chief of staff, when you're too overwhelmed, get yourself one. First obvious step, put up a job post, you know, use weworkremotely.com or, you know, similar and make sure you get, you know, at least 100 to 200 applicants. So you have enough of a pool to choose somebody from. And, you know, my advice is to get somebody young, somebody hungry, they don't need to have, you know, be X, you know, consultants or, you know, super well, like great academic background, just somebody young, hungry, you know, ideally from your, you know, either from tech background or the industry you're in from that background.

8:58And give them, you know, if you like somebody on board them. And the number one, you know, thing I've heard is, hey, I don't have time to, you know, onboard them correctly. So here's what I would do. If you find somebody that you really like, start doing Zoom phone calls with them. And here's what I did, you know, for my agency, Oscar Hamilton, I was just overwhelmed with everything and they didn't have time to onboard somebody properly. So I would start doing these Zoom calls where I would invite my chief of staff, Tammy. And basically I would just go about my day normally, you know, I would answer emails, I would check in with my employees.

9:32Sometimes I would, do one-on-ones and so on. And so eventually, after one week or so, she kind of realized, hey, I can start taking this thing off your plate, Simon. I can take this thing off your plate. And if there were more complicated situations, I would give my reasoning why I'm thinking this way or that way. And I would say after 60 days or so, she was able to take off at least 95 % of my day-to-day tasks from answering emails to doing one-on-ones. and when something hits my calendar today, I know it's, you know, like one of these, like this interview, John, like this is the thing that I can only do from my company, but almost everything else, somebody else can do better than me.

10:14So getting that chief of staff in is very important. I love when people look at their business this way because again, Fire Nation, there are things that you are amazing at and if you can spend more time doing those things that you're amazing at, of course your business is going to flourish and those things that, hey, you either don't like doing that take away your energy, take away your focus. I mean, that needs to be pushed on to other people, to other things. So that is a great situation that a lot of us can get into right now is, let's sit down, let's do a situational audit, let's make this happen.

10:44And we're gonna be talking about a lot of things around this when we get back from thanking our sponsors. I still can't believe Kate and I met as neighbors almost 13 years ago. We were incredibly lucky to find ourselves sharing a wall, both of us driven individuals who share the same values because I know that can be tough to find. If you're a busy, successful professional looking for a partner who shares your drive and values and your neighbor isn't quite your perfect match, then Elite Singles is the perfect dating platform for you. With their psychologist-backed personality test, you'll receive tailored matches in less than 25 minutes.

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12:04John and his Franbridge Consulting Team are part of the largest brokerage in the U.S. and have vetted the market thoroughly. Franbridge is hands down the premier source for the best opportunities in the non-food franchise world. They represent every type of non-food franchise, from healthcare to dumpsters, used soccer to oil changes, specialized senior care to dog training, to insulation and floor coatings. John has served as an Inc. 500 franchisor and a multi-brand franchisee, and he does more placements than any other in the country. Sign up for a free consultation call with John today or get a free copy of his book, Non-Food Franchising, at FranBridgeConsulting.com.

12:40That's Fran, F-R-A-N, BridgeConsulting.com. Tech is great. It can help us grow and scale our businesses in so many ways, but it can also be clunky, time-consuming to manage, and expensive. That's why I'm excited to introduce you to HubSpot CRM, the best platform to speed up your sales and scale your business without blowing your budget. HubSpot's all-in-one CRM helps you automate tedious tasks, keep track of all your deals in one place, and make sure your whole team has access to the same data. No need to worry about the management and cost of a massive tech stack. HubSpot gives you everything you need all in one place.

13:17Plus, with fast activation, HubSpot makes it easy for the entire team to get up to speed, saving you precious time. And best of all, you can try before you buy. No commitment, no hidden fees, not even a credit card is needed to sign up. Get started for free at HubSpot.com. That's HubSpot.com. So we've talked about the power of bringing somebody on. Like specifically, we've been kind of dialing in on this chief of staff idea. Let's talk about finding one right now. Let's talk about finding one, onboarding them, without having to now take away a ton of time and energy from our own personal day-to-day.

13:53Once you do that Zoom call, work as you normally would, whatever you work, four hours, six hours, eight hours, having that chief of staff, just basically observe how you do work on a day-to-day basis. If you aren't a remote company, having chief of staff sit next to you, attend all the meetings, attend all the one-on-ones, really get a sense of how you operate. And it was really interesting you know that really famous youtuber mr beast i actually heard a couple months back in an interview that he did something similar for his own business i mean he runs a bunch of different businesses in youtube like a chocolate company his philanthropy project and he had the same thing done actually he brought somebody in who had literally observed him in person for several months and then that person is basically running all his businesses because once you observe somebody for long enough, you really get an idea of how they make decisions, you know, how they like to think about things, even like down the nitty gritty, how they like to write emails.

14:54So, so yeah, it's, it's a bit of trial error, but you don't need to write, you know, long step-by-step processes of, hey, this is how I make a decision. This is what you should be doing. Just have them observe you via Zoom. And then slowly, if they're smart, you're going to take things off your plate. One thing that both you and I have found running our businesses, that if critical tasks don't get executed, a company will fail. I mean, it's that simple. It's that black and white. How can we make sure that all our company's tasks get executed? You know, even if people get sick, or if they leave suddenly, because I mean, things are always going to happen, and we need to be able to adjust.

15:33Oh, this is a concept I wish I knew, you know, when I started off with my first business. So we like to use this thing called areas of responsibility or AORs. And Apple is really famous for pioneering this in Silicon Valley. And most of successful tech companies use that today. So basically what you want to do is create a list of every single function in your company. You know, it could be collect invoices, publish weekly blog posts to one-on-ones. For you, John, it could be, you know, edit the podcast, push it on social media, interview guests. I mean, send out interviews to guests. You get the idea.

16:10And next to each function, you want to list the directly responsible individual and the backup person and then cross train them. And the final piece, which is super important, is you want to document the processes step by step exactly how to do every single function at the company. So, you know, when people get sick, let's say your audio producer, John, gets, you know, has to leave the company or, you know, takes a vacation or whatever that might be, you can get a new person or a backup person jumping in literally next hour without the machine stopping. And just one kind of important note here, you have to be ruthless with your team and yourself to update these progress, update these processes.

16:51so if somebody leaves a company you make sure this gets updated and it can feel a bit tedious to have you know list out all the functions and you know have these step-by-step guides and it took us almost half a year to put all of this together but it's it's night and day how company operates now versus how it used to fire nation one thing that i've done for years now which has been critical is every time i'm training somebody or anytime i'm having somebody on my team train somebody, I'm having them record this. They're making video tutorials of this. And this is building a video library. So if an individual leaves, a person comes in to take that place.

17:28Hey, guess what? I don't have to recreate the wheel. I just send them there. I say, report back after you've watched all these videos with your questions. And we make that happen. And that makes, you know, again, if somebody leaves or disappears in the night, like, boom, like we can keep on rocking. Now, let's be honest. There are mistakes that management makes over and over and over again. And it's really sad to see because it doesn't have to be that way. So let's talk about those common mistakes that management makes and how we can avoid them. Good question. So I think there's three things that come to mind.

18:00Number one, micromanage your team. If you find yourself supervising too often, you probably hired the wrong people. Number two, I think you, this is an interesting one, but don't tell people what you're doing wrong. Instead, teach them how to do something right. And, you know, there's a very subtle difference here. You know, somebody messes up something, like you can, you know, you get really angry and you're like, hey, don't do this. But instead, shift it and say, here's how you should do this instead. And then third, which we've covered a lot today, is spending too much time on doing busy work and also this concept called heroing, which is the idea of, you know, fires are burning, you're basically heroing and jumping in to fix other people's messes.

18:45Instead, you should be the coach, you know, teaching, but not, you know, going to the field and playing the game. So don't hero and don't spend your time on busy work. And I think there's a couple of things that I've sort of learned about management over the years. Obviously, work on the business, not in the business. And this is such a crucial concept when it comes to team management. And set goals, not tasks. This is a common one. Again, if you've hired people and you feel like you are constantly giving them tasks and tasks, it might be that you are a poor leader, but it also might be that you've hired a poor performer.

19:26And this is the most important one. Keep your eye on your team's health and happiness. Something we like to do at our company, and I think a lot of our companies do the same thing. Once a month, we do an anonymous survey in Slack. You can set it up via Google Forms, email, whatever, and basically ask a series of questions. It's, you know, what do you think about your CEO? Do you feel like, you know, he's performing? What do you think about your executive team? Do you feel like your management team is, you know, helping you reach your goals? What do you think about your compensation? All of these questions that typically we wouldn't get answers to.

20:00And once your team grows, it's really hard to get feedback as you are, you know, because you're not working in the business anymore. You're sort of only having maybe a couple of people report to you. So having this anonymous service to keep your eye on team's health and happiness is so important. Fire Nation, I really hope you're understanding what Simon's saying, because he's creating the type of business that I've created. He's talking about implementing the kind of things that has now allowed me to run Entrepreneurs on Fire, a daily podcast, that's seven days a week, one day per week, 52 days per year, and just crack open so much opportunity in different areas because of that.

20:42So Simon, let's give Fire Nation the one final takeaway that you really want them to make sure they get from this conversation. Give us the best way to connect with you, your business, and any call to action you have for our listeners, and then we'll say goodbye. Yeah, thanks, John. I think kind of reflecting on what we talked about, be extremely mindful every single hour how you spend your time. If you're not, you won't be able to spend more time with your friends. You won't be able to spend time with your loved ones, with your partner. If you have a dog or a cat, whatever that might be that really gives you joy.

21:18It's a myth that you need to work insane hours. So please, I'm begging you, be mindful of your time and put together a great team. So you can only work on things that bring you joy. That's what great business is all about. If you want to learn more about me, check out abouthire.com, which is my company that lets you hire great talent faster through video interviews. And I'm pretty active on Twitter as well, which is Simon with two I's and Sander on Twitter. Thanks, John. Fire Nation, you're the average. Of the five people you spend the most time with, you've been hanging out with Simon with two I's in JLD today.

21:56So keep up that heat. If you have any direct questions for Simon, find this episode on the podcast listening app, Podopolo, post a comment, get the conversation rolling. And of course, eofire.com, type Simon, S-I-I-M-O-N in the search bar. The show notes page will pop up with links to everything. And Simon, thank you for sharing your truth, knowledge, and value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you, brother, and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you, John. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Simon for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3 ,000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17-step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment.

22:41I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuk. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step-by-step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams, visit UncommonSuccessBook.com. Order your copy and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. Many EO Fire listeners have launched franchises in a variety of industries outside of food and Fran Bridge Consulting has guided them to these premier opportunities. The founder, John Ostenson, has done more placements than any other in the country.

23:18Sign up for a free consultation with John or get a free copy of his book, non-food franchising at franbridgeconsulting.com. Outbound Squad, hosted by Jason Bay, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Tune in for convos with leading sales experts and top performing reps to help you land more meetings with your ideal clients. One of my faves, the monthly app with Jason and Ethan, where they share hacks, tips, and tricks. Listen to Outbound Squad wherever you get your podcasts.