How To Get Back Your Entrepreneurial Freedom

0:00Hey, this is John, and before we get started, I have a gift for you for being such an amazing listener. Everyone's talking about AI these days, but most of it's about tactics. We've created a series of prompts we use to create strategy, and you can have them for free. Just go to dtm.world slash free prompts and grab yours. Now, let's get started.

0:29Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantz, and my guest today is Dr. Sabrina Starling, the business psychologist. She's an international bestselling author of How to Hire the Best and The Four Week Vacation. She's the founder of TapThePotential.com and host of the Profit by Design podcast. She and her team coach entrepreneurs to take their lives back from their businesses, and they're on a mission to disrupt hustle culture by sending 10 ,000 entrepreneurs on a four-week vacation in the next 10 years. So big, hairy, audacious goal, as she stated.

1:09Sabrina, welcome to the show. Thank you, John. I'm delighted to be back here with you. So let's talk about this four-week vacation. What's the idea behind that? I think a lot of, well, I mean, I think a lot of entrepreneurs probably think that idea is crazy. They don't get four weeks maybe in two years strung together, but you're talking about four consecutive weeks. I'm going to leave my business and it's going to run itself. Yes. So this comes from the coaching that I've done with entrepreneurs over the last 17 or 18 years. And one of the awarenesses that I had is when they were reaching out for coaching, they initially seemed to have a work-life balance problem.

1:48Like I, my perception was these are workaholics. They don't know how to stop. And yes, there's a handful of us that are workaholics, but that's not the real issue. The real issue is the systems and the lack of A players, the ability to hire A players in the business that keep the business owner from being able to take that vacation. Well, as a psychologist, I have I've seen a lot of business owners dealing with burnout and I see how hard, you know, working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, you know, just grinding it out and seeing the impact that has. and we tell ourselves when we're doing that, I'm doing it to get to this point.

2:27You know, when I get that new team member hired, it'll all be better. And that the reality is that day never comes. And so if we don't get in front of the bus and stop the bus and say, it's time, I need to take a break. I need a vacation. And the, the idea behind a four week vacation, what really became clear to me around that is that means you have a team and you have systems in place and that business can run without you, which is very important if you ever want to transition. And I say, if you ever want to transition, when you transition the business, when you sell it, or you want to retire and someone else on your team is going to step in and run it.

3:07And if you get these things in place now, you can enjoy your life. And that's really all of us go into entrepreneurship for freedom. And a lot of it is we want time freedom. We want to be able to call our own shots and make our own choices. And then the irony is when we get into business, we feel like we have less freedom. And we also feel like no one else around us understands because they think we're the business owner. We can run our schedule however we want. And we feel like, no, we're at the mercy of every other person on this planet as a business owner. So the four-way vacation is all about really taking care of the entrepreneur.

3:44Do you feel like sometimes there's always more to do than you can get done in a day, David, you feel like sometimes there's a perception, you know, the business, it's almost like if I'm not working 40 hours a week, I'm cheating. You know, I'm not doing this right. I mean, is part of that pressure there? Absolutely. I mean, our culture in the United States is a grinded out culture. It's not just entrepreneurship that has the hustle grinded out mentality. When I started my business, I decided to become a coach instead of working in another business and have I wanted to have my own business because I was raising children and I wanted to be able to be available for them.

4:21So I decided I'm going to run my business on 25 hours a week and I've made it work all these years. I've been able to grow the business doing that, but I kept it a secret for many years. I didn't reveal to my clients that I was working 25 hours a week because they were all working 60, 70 hours a week. And I was afraid they would say to me, you don't have a real business, Dr. Sabrina. You don't understand. Because a lot of them were men. A lot of them were in construction. And so I just kept it quiet. And in the last five years, I've started talking about that everywhere because I realized we all want someone to tell us it's okay.

4:56It is okay to work less than 40 hours a week. And it's really cool if you can. so you just went on a four-week vacation you were telling me before we started you just got back do after about you know i'm thinking of you know you're very motivated very driven person you've built a wonderful business you know after about two and a half weeks you start saying what am i going to do now for another week and a half that that actually happened about like three and a half weeks in like i still had two days left on my fourth vacation i was like okay i'm bored i am bored. And I think it's because I have, I have done multiple four week vacations and I've really developed over the years, my interests away from the business.

5:39But I think the first time as business owners, when we take four week vacations, we do have that feeling like within a day of what do I do with myself? Cause we're not used to having hobbies. Like I know you have, you play the guitar, you do woodworking, you have a rich life. I mean, where you live is a beautiful area. You have a very rich life away from the business. And what I find is the bigger we make our lives away from the business, the easier it is to put these healthy boundaries in place in our businesses. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I don't suffer from this anymore, but you know, early on in my, my business, I would go on vacation.

6:17I would be very, you know, even if it was just a week long vacation, first couple of days, I was very fidgety, but then, you know, know, then you start settling in. It's like, you know, it's going to all be fine. Michael Gerber, who was an original mentor of mine, wrote the E-Myth. I'm sure, you know, listeners are familiar with that. He actually wrote the Forward to Ductate Marketing. Told me once, he said, if your business can't operate without you, it's worthless. And I think that's pretty, pretty strong medicine, isn't it? It is. And it's exactly true. And as I wrote the four-week vacation book, I had a number of family members of business owners comment to me, you know, I wish my husband or I wish my wife would have read this because, you know, they thought we were going to retire and then go travel and have all those things that we put off.

7:04And for whatever reason, they had a health reason. Some of them had passed away very early in life, much earlier than they should have. But it was because of the stress, I believe. And so when we think about there's all kinds of reasons that we want our business to have value without us. And one of them, one of the most important ones is what happens to our family if we just drop dead in the business and all those years of all this hard work that we've done. There's no value in the business if it can't run without the business owner. So there's the family is left without being able to really benefit from that.

7:39But then there's your team members as well. If the business can't carry on without you, then you have a whole bunch of people who've lost their jobs now and their families are impacted. So you mentioned already that you've really grown your business working 25 hours a week. You know, when I started, like I, you know, for a number of years now, I have not done much on Fridays work-wise and don't have scheduling appointments. You know, I've been, I've done that forever. And when you start doing that, you start realizing how much time you're actually wasting in the business. I found, you know, because it was like, no, I got to sit here until five o 'clock.

8:14And so you go chase, check Facebook one more time or something. You know, I bet you most people could actually condense what they do that is valuable down to, you know, a couple hours every day. You actually, in fact, where is it? The$10 ,000 an hour activity you want to have, I think that relates to what I'm suggesting. This is exactly it. And I will share that when When my first daughter went off to kindergarten, I thought, oh, my gosh, I have all this extra time now because she's in school all day. And then I was frittering my time away. I was on social media and it was worthless. So what one of one of my big awareness is when I started my business and I had an infant at home and I had these 25 hours a week to work.

8:56I had a huge meltdown in my laundry room, just crying and blubbering because I had just dropped her off at daycare. but she had thrown up overnight. And so I had to come home and instead of working, I had to launder all the bedding and everything. And I thought there's just not enough time and I can't get it all done. And I had this epiphany come over me around, okay, Sabrina, if you can only get one thing done today, that's going to move the needle forward in your business, what are you going to do? Because you only have a few hours to do this in. And I don't know what my answer was that day, but it was like this huge clarity.

9:29And I have run my business every day forward with that question. And it's made me realize that we have high value activities in the business that grow our business and that add value. And if we're intentional to do those every day, and you know what, I don't get high value activities done every single day, but I make sure once a week, some five, you know, five to six hours has been high value,$10 ,000 an hour activity time. And my awareness around the$10 ,000 an hour time came from reading the book 80 20 by Perry Marshall and recognizing that 20 % of what we do in a given day or given week leads to 80 % of the results that we get.

10:12And I, I started looking at what is it that we entrepreneurs do that's worth$10 an hour versus$100 an hour versus$10 ,000 an hour. And I created a chart around this based on Perry Marshall's work. And I share that. Anybody who wants to get it, we'll send it to them. You can go to tapthepotential.com forward slash 10K. And having this chart in front of you is so powerful because it's a reminder that if you're not doing the$10 ,000 an hour activities in the business, no one else is. And when we business owners struggle to pay ourselves appropriately, I think one of the hard questions we need to ask ourselves is, when was the last time I did a$10 ,000 an hour activity?

10:57Because we're not growing. If we're stuck doing the$100 an hour,$500 an hour or$10 an hour activities, that's the reason the business isn't growing. That's the reason we're not identifying how to add value and create the margin that we need to pay ourselves appropriately. So when somebody comes to you and I'll back up a minute, I had Dan Martell on this show recently, and he wrote a great book called buy back your time. And he said, if you don't have an administrative assistant or executive assistant, whatever you call them, then you are at, right? Cause you're doing that work. And I was like, yeah, that's pretty hard to swallow, but it's true.

11:36So if somebody comes to you and they're like, okay, I get it. This idea of four week vacation sounds really awesome, but like couldn't happen today. Where do they start? So this is a really good question because when we hear four week vacation, I think most of us feel like that's so pie in the sky. I can't even imagine. And it all, it starts with the small steps forward taken in a consistent direction that lead to big change over time. When I started my four week vacation journey, I felt like I, you know, I gave myself 18 months and I thought that's going to be really hard. I can't imagine doing it.

12:12And, you know, it was, we were a very small team at the time, but once we get clear, this is what I want. This is meaningful to me. Then it's easier to start seeing the how, the how we have to trust that the how will show up. And so I recommend look at the longest you've been able to be away from the business fully unplugged. And if that's zero days, because in the research I'm doing with entrepreneurs, we hear that a lot, like that's zero days, Dr. Sabrina, then walk one day and tell your team you're completely out of pocket and you got to unplug or start with unplugging in the evenings. Like you go home at a set time and put your phone in a drawer and just be present with yourself and your family.

12:58That's the first small step. And then build from there and really pay attention to, well, what actually fell through the cracks when I was unplugged time and again, we hear, I can't believe my team handled everything. Like when I went on this four week vacation, this was the first one I'd done in 18 months. We had two team members who were newer on the team who'd never experienced it. So I thought, and I had been training them. So I thought they're going to need me. I don't know. We better set up some, you know, somebody else needs to jump in and train them while I'm out. they stepped up in huge ways and it showed me that I had been telling myself a story in my head about how much they needed me so we have to watch this with ourselves and the stories we tell so try a day try two days try a week and see what actually falls through the cracks ask your team for their input on where they needed support and you weren't there and then look at do can you create a system or do you need to hire?

13:58And start taking those things off your plate. And the most important thing when you take it, whether it's a day off or a week off or four weeks off, whatever you delegated before you took that time off, do not take it back when you come back. Right. Yeah. So what you just talked about too. Yeah. And I think what might be missed in that, what you just described there is we sort of disempower the team sometimes by feeling like Like we have to give them all the direction, giving a chance to let them figure it out. You know, they'll actually be more empowered by that, won't they? Yes, they will. And if we take it back, it's very disempowering for them.

14:38So when I came back, I asked my newer team members that I've been running a meeting with every week, what did they do with that time that we were meeting? And, you know, how would they like to revamp this meeting going forward? And they found they worked on strategy. They mapped things out, things that I wasn't even aware needed to be mapped out or laid out. They had done that. And they said, going forward, we'd much rather use this rather than just going over our basic numbers. I mean, we'll obviously do that. But we'd much rather use this meeting for strategy with you, Dr. Sabrina. I'm like, yes, because if I have team members who want to think strategically, they're thinking about$10 ,000 an hour activities from their seat.

15:19And that adds a lot of value to the business. You know, one of the mistakes I'm sure you've come across all the time, I've certainly seen it is, you know, a lot of times, particularly when people are maybe just getting started, they fail to invest in their team or they try to hire the cheapest help that they can find. And ultimately what you're saying is the real key to this is you've got to have that leadership team or whatever you call them of A players. I mean, this is not going to happen until there's people that can do the selling and, you know, the things that you thought only you could do.

15:49So how do you help people kind of change that mindset? And obviously, I know you have a whole program around developing A players, but first one is probably to change that mindset, isn't it? It's to change the mindset that if you're in the middle and all the decisions run through you, you're going to lose your A players because they feel very disempowered. But I think a lot of times what I hear from entrepreneurs is I don't know that I can afford to hire an A player. And I actually would argue that you can't afford not to hire an A player because you may pay them to say you pay them ten dollars an hour more.

16:25But the reality is that A players will be nine hundred to twelve hundred percent more productive than warm body team members. So like your C players. And so you may pay them ten dollars an hour more. But if you need fewer A players, because you don't have C players anymore, you have A players, your payroll is actually reduced significantly. And those A players will help you create systems. Those A players step up. They're natural problem solvers and they're good communicators. They don't necessarily need to be extroverted. Not every A player is extroverted, but they like to communicate and support each other as team members.

17:04And that is the best thing for you, the business owner, because when you're out and they don't know what to do, they don't know how to handle something. They go to other people on the team and they ask for help. Yeah. And I think another thing, too, a lot of times people just jump to, oh, I need to have somebody whose resume says they were five years as X, Y, Z. And I think a lot of times if you get the right person and you're committed to investing in their growth, you'll grow A players, right? Yes. So an example that I like to think about is when I started my business, John, I knew nothing about marketing, nothing about sales, but I'm an A player.

17:43I learned duct tape. Marketing was one of the first books that I read to learn marketing and our A players will do that. So let go of the belief that you need to hire for a lot of experience and really hire the people who are hungry and motivated and then look to align what they're doing with their personal strengths. And in the interview process, you can identify strengths by just asking them, you know, what are the things you love to do that come easy to you that other people seem to struggle with? And they'll just they'll tell you, here's the things that they're easy for me. I don't know why other people have trouble with this, but comes easy to me.

18:22and make sure that those strengths align with the results that you need from them. And then knowing what you know about what you learned how to do in the business, have confidence that you can break it down and train them. And you are going to be much better off when you do that because it opens up a much broader pool of candidates for you. And as you create these systems to train, you're not at the mercy of one team member. And if that one critical team member leaves, oh my gosh, what are you going to do? you have a system to train the next person and you know, it works and you can refine the system the second time around.

19:00So you're, we've been talking about some of the various things that you do from a coaching standpoint, maybe you kind of unpack the, like when somebody comes to you and you're, you know, the stated goal is that they're going to go on a four week vacation. You know, what are all the kind of avenues that you, how you impact their business? Yeah. So we utilize the tap the potential solution with our clients coming in. Most of the clients who come in are established businesses. The business has been around for a while and the business owner is recognizing despite my best efforts, I can't take time off.

19:34I can't be away. This isn't working or they're realizing they're not profitable or it's a combination of I'm not profitable and I'm tied to the business. And so we work on designing the business to be sustainably profitable. Every decision going forward needs to be based on, does this add profit to the business or does it take away? And once we have it designed to be sustainably profitable, then we look at niching down with a clearly defined sweet spot. A lot of established businesses are what I call overweight businesses. And that means that when you're starting out in business, you say yes to every opportunity that comes your way because you need to get revenue coming in the door.

20:12but then you don't have a real sweet spot anymore and you're spread really thin and your team is too. And so I think our businesses need to go on a diet at least once a year and we need to look at where are our best opportunities? What are we going to stop doing? And really focused on the top clients. And I know you teach a lot of this yourself, John, but it makes your marketing easier. It simplifies the business considerably. So that's where we see a lot of stress come off for business owners. And then we start talking about innovation, which is again, paying attention to what your clients tell you they want the most and how they see you as unique and different, incorporating that in what you do, which allows you to charge more and create more margin.

20:55And then we focus on hiring the best, building your lean and mighty team around that sweet spot. And then the final step is to learn how to network to continually attract a player so that you never run out of team members because now that you have a sweet spot and you're innovating and you have a players on your team, you better be ready. Your business is going to grow and you're going to need a lot of a players. But in the meantime, more and more is coming off your plate and you're taking your life back. So our goal is, I mean, yes, I want lots of entrepreneurs taking four vacations, but ultimately our goal is that you get your life back on a daily basis in your business.

21:35Awesome. Sabrina, always great to catch up with you. I appreciate you stopping by the show. You want to tell people where they can connect with you and find out more about your work. Absolutely. So I mentioned that you can get the how to make your time worth$10 ,000 an hour download in the PDF chart of$10 ,000 an hour activities. Just go to tapthepotential.com forward slash 10 K and you can learn more about us. Obviously it's half the potential. I record weekly on the Profit by Design podcast and share tips, tools, and strategies to help you make a design a sustainably profitable business that gives you your life back.

22:11And I just want to share as a fellow podcaster, those of you who get benefit out of duct tape marketing, please leave a review on whatever platform you're listening, because that's how other people find great podcasts like duct tape marketing. And podcasting is a labor of love. John is putting out tremendous content. So please leave him a review. Well, I appreciate that, Sabrina. So again, thanks for taking a moment and hopefully we'll run into you soon out there on the road. Okay. Thank you, John.