Why You're the Bottleneck in Your Own Business | 327

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Welcome back to the Business of Beers Podcast, your daily dose of strategies, tools, and tips to help you build an eight-figure business. Today's episode is a clip from one of my YouTube lives. If you'd like to hear the whole thing, there's a link below in the description. Cheers. There's a reason that you're doing all these things, right? There's a reason that you are handling all the marketing. Maybe you you are the one who is like dictating every marketing. Maybe you are the one who is selling every job, hiring all the employees, disciplining everyone, like in the in the day-to-day, right? There's a reason because you don't have somebody else doing it, right? I mean, it's as simple as that. And so you want to figure out those, so why are you still doing it? And it's usually two reasons. One is, you know, what is like you legitimately should not be doing that thing, and you want to instead like hand be able to hand it off to somebody. And maybe you have that person on your team and you just can't let it go, right? Maybe you have a person who should be doing all the hiring, but you've always done it and you just you're afraid to let it go. And so you want to think through why am I not letting go of this thing? Is it because the person that I would hand it off to just truthfully isn't the right person? Could be, could totally be a problem, right? It could be that you know you just haven't given them a chance to succeed. Like you've made it part of it, but you haven't let go. It could be that your system's broken, that you don't have a system. You're doing all the hiring because it's all in your head and you have a gut reaction of, oh, I I know how to recognize talent, right? Which, you know, I mean is one of my like I'm really good at recognizing talent, but like, and you feel that they can't do it because they don't they can't see what you see, right? So you you want to think through like what are these things that you are doing that you need to stop doing, but then what is the constraint? And our goal is going to be able to solve the constraint. And so, and that's the those are gonna be the 90-day goals. Those are gonna be the bottlenecks. And so let's go back into like this this hiring example, which is if I said I am really talented at I am really good at hiring talented people, and I think that is the number one thing for my business to succeed is my is the ability to hire talented people. So then we want to like break this down. Like, so this is so your goal by the end of the 90 days is that you have systematically gotten everything out of your brain and into a tool that allows your uh somebody else on your team, like one of your managers, to be able to you know hire the quality of person that you would. And like I would make it to the goal as if like within Mark by March 31st, someone else has completely taken over the hiring system and hired somebody just as good, if not better, than you would have found. Right? So like that's how I I'm thinking through goals is we not only think of the constraint that, oh, I need to get better at hiring, but we want to break it down. Like, what does success look like? That's really what we want to think through. Uh I'm gonna edit this doc here. Um, is what does success look like? And and you want to be as detailed as possible. So in that example, it's like, all right, I need number one, like I'm good, but we need to translate my if I want to be able to let it go, I gotta get it out of my brain and I gotta get it into a framework, a system, a a process that I can document that is the way that I do something. Because honestly, that's like the this is like at its core, this is the biggest problem that almost all business owners face is like I I call it the hero trap, but basically, like you're the hero of the business, you're the one that does everything. You know, you solve every problem, you fix everything, like you're all in on saving the day, and that like is really good, it's the best way to get started. Is being the hero is the best way that you can go from essentially zero, where you build this thing from nothing, to a profitable business that is like providing for your family and like doing doing all the things it should do. But the the trap is that that hero can never scale a business because you can't you can't just be the hero more. Like at the certain point, you run out of time and energy and focus on all these things. And so you need to go from what what's called the hero to the architect. And the architect is the person who builds, right? It's the person who has the vision. Even in my business, like I was the hero for many, many years. I was like from zero to building the company to about five million dollars. That I did literally everything. I was my phone would would heat up and eventually shut down uh in the middle of the summer because it got so hot. And you know, but I was like proud of that and and I was successful. But then I realized like I like to scale the company, I could never, I had to get out of that being the hero. And I instead needed to hire the heroes, to hire the people who are better than me at doing all these things. And this is like the big thing that almost every single person struggles with is we start from hero and we have to change our identity to be the architect, to the person who builds the system, who hires the people, who like gets out of the way, totally out of the way, to be able to let the heroes save the day. Even in my cup, my company, like I'm not the uh I I I promoted our COO to be CEO last January. So like he is he is totally in charge of the auto repair, our auto repair business. And we had a record-setting year. We're up 30% in December. We're up like 12 or 13 for the year. It was the best year we ever had with me not in charge, right? And like many people would think that and feel like negative about it. And I I think it's awesome. Like, I I love the fact that you know the business can grow without me. Because otherwise, like you become this bigger bottleneck and your your company can't grow, your people can't succeed, because if everything has to run through me, and then I'm the constraint. And the truth is there's other people that bring perspectives to things that you don't have, that I don't have, who are better than me, right? And you have to be able to good at whatever identifying those talented people, hiring them, getting them on board, enabling them, and doing all the things. And so a lot of the constraints back to this that we're gonna we're gonna you're gonna you're gonna identify are gonna be related to being the hero and things that you need to stop doing if you truly want to build uh a scalable company. And a lot of that starts with that this idea of I do everything, uh, the success, the the frameworks, everything's in my brain, and I need to get it out of my brain. And we start that first is by looking at what are all the things that I'm really good at, and then you should spend some time to put that into a framework or system. Okay. So if we go back to that hiring example that says, hey, I'm I'm really good at hiring. Uh I can identify talent really well. So then what we want to do is you have to figure out, and you could use we could use ChatGBT, you could use Claude, you could use like AI to like talk you through this. But essentially, you're gonna go through and say, why like what do I what do I see in people that other people don't? Right? So like I'm really good at hiring people. And my thing is like I I personally I want to look at core values. Like I care more about the person than I do about the resume. And like what I care about is their energy. Like if I pick you up, if if I if I call you and you pick up, the first 30 seconds, uh honestly, first 10 seconds, I'm gonna know if I like you or not. Because of like the energy. Are you excited to talk to me? Do you seem do you seem like you like want this job? Are you pumped up? Are you are you do you sound like you just woke up like enrolled out of bed with like cheetahs all over you, and you have no interest in talking to me? Right? So, like so that those are the things like I'm looking for for people's energy. So that's like what it sounds like. Well, what does that look like? I'm looking for people's energy. I'm looking for, do they seem to have drive? Are they like, do they seem accountable? Are they gonna do the things that they said they're gonna do? What is the future vision of their life? You know, yes. And for humans, like that's what we want. We want to make progress in our lives in in like all aspects of it, whether it's relationships, your business, and you know, your your your fitness. And so, like when I'm talking to people, I ask them, like, what are some of your bigger goals in life? Like, where are you going? What does success look like for you in five years? And if someone's like has no goals and they have no like drive and they're just like gonna live on repeat mode, versus like I can talk to somebody else who has this very clear plan of what they want and where they're going, and then how this role with me can help them get them there, man, like like those that's the kind of talent. So as you think through like how do I go replacing myself, and I'm really good at these things, document as much as you can the things that you are good at, why you think you're good at them. So we can create a system in a playbook. And the best way, honestly, is to use is we use Chat GBT to then have a something that someone else on your team could run it through like it's you, right? That is that is like the end result. That would be like the constraint that I would want to solve within the 90 days, right, is saying that like you know, we have a a hiring system, for example, uh that you know our our team can run without me, uh, which equals we've hired someone. Okay. Uh, because that's the second part of this, is we don't want you don't want to set a goal that's just like, oh, a hiring system that team can run without me. Like that is like kind of vague, and that's not outcome driven. We want all of our goals to be outcome driven. So the outcome that we're really looking to achieve is that we've hired someone, you know, who I approve, or like who I would like, like I'm impressed with. I am impressed that someone else on my team has hired this person. Because if you can, if that is your biggest constraint, it's like I spend all my time hiring people and I can't focus on any of this growth, I can't focus on our margins, I can't focus on our marketing, I can't focus on X, Y, and Z because I spend all my time doing this thing. That is your constraint. And at the end of 90 days, if you have a proven system that is working to hire people better than you would have found on your own, think about, think about how much relief that would put on you to you, which totally unlocks a new level to the game, right? Because like if we if you think through through through franchising, you know, because I'm, you know, this is this is this is all it's it's all about copy and paste, right? So we it's all about how do we have a system that we can we can be successful in a single location, and then we can copy it, and we can run that same playbook at a second location, and a third, a fourth, a fifth. And then once we have five or six, then we have a market. And then we can have that market and we can have a district manager, right? We can have that regional person who oversees the market. Once we can successfully operate one market, there is almost no difference to go to two markets, three markets, four markets. It's it's it's like, you know, the restraints, the constraints that you have then at that level are like, you know, you you obviously you're gonna need money. How do you find money? You're gonna have back office, like make sure people get paid. Like you're gonna have different constraints as you go, right? But but the the core constraint that most owners have that I that I talk to and that we help with in eight-figure franchisee are like constraints around hiring, the constraints around sales and people, right? So hiring sales and people, that's where I would first look at to diagnose and really get like you have a solid system. So if your constraint is that you sell everything, like you are the number one salesperson in your company, and then if you stop making calls, that the money stops. Like that is a constraint that honestly, that would be like one of the one of the ones that I would look to solve as quick as possible. And so then it's like, well, how do I can solve that? Well, I need to go hire somebody who's better than me, right? Who's a better salesperson than me. That would be the constraint that I would look to solve. And now you may say, well, I have people on my team and I'm gonna work to train them, right? But the truth is with sales that people generally can sell or they can't. It's like it's it's riding a bike. They either know how to ride the freaking bike or they fall off. And so it is much, much quicker to just go and hire somebody who knows how to sell and knows exactly what you want to get done than it is for you to focus on, you know, develop, you know, I'm gonna spend 90 days to develop like a sales training program when it's like just go hire somebody and and it's it's solved. So those are the ones. So it's sales marketing people. Those are gonna be the the number one things that I that I would recommend you look at to figure out where you can go. And and then the second part of this is how would you spend your time if you solved that? Okay? We want to think through that because it's not only you know, I've I've hired somebody, I have a hiring system, but how are you gonna spend your time? Once again, we're we're all trying to go back to being intentional. And I'm intentional is how I set my goals, I'm intentional in the the the habits and the and the things that I'm gonna change about my life and my my style and who I operate with and the level that I play at. Like I'm intentionally gonna put myself in rooms with people like me and other people operating at a high level because I think I can learn from them way quicker than I could on my own, right? That's being intentional. I I I'm gonna figure out these constraints. I'm gonna go as deep as I need to and not just pick surface level constraints. Because this is the big thing. Because if we're gonna say for the next 90 days, all my attention is gonna be focused on solving like this one thing, we we have to pressure test it. And a couple of the things we can do to do that are first, make sure it's something that you can control. Don't, if it's something external, it you're gonna drive yourself crazy. So don't do that. For example, like, can I control who I hire? Yes, 100%. Can I control my ability to identify that the salespeople? 100%, right? All that stuff. Like the weather, we can't control the weather. So if if it's all about you know the weather, the economy, uh, I don't know, things your franchise or does, like, oh, like I want to be able to open this new location by this date. But like if there's if there's a bunch of things that other people that you you have no control over, you're gonna be really frustrated with that. And so focus on the things you can control. Number two, for this constraint, if you solved it tomorrow, uh, would that big goal, the 10x goal, whatever you want to call it, would you actually be closer? Like, does this thing that you're looking to solve, does this actually move the ball? Or is this like, yeah, that'd be nice to have, but like it's it's not it's not one of the critical rocks you have to move in order to hit that big goal. Can you solve it in one to two weeks? If you can, it's a task, it's not the constraint. So if it's something like, I don't know, your your constraints, you're spending all your time doing the books. Like you, you know, you're you do all the admin work, um, the accounting, the credit cards, and you you hate it. You just have to like, you know, uh just know what to do. So I would go through there. And then we ask ourselves, is this a real constraint or is it comfortable? Is it something you're already like 80% done? You're like, hey, this is like a checkbox, um, or is this you're picking this because it's real and you really want to drive it forward. So all right, so we got that. So we fixed the thing. So from this higher example, the constraint, the success is I've built an aut uh an automated or semi-automated system that allows our team to hire high-quality candidates uh with minimal interaction from me. And uh now I don't have to like be scraping on Indeed, and I don't have to be like calling all these people who don't show up, and I can focus on growing the profits of the business, which is you know what I need to do in order to be have enough cash to be able to expand, right? Whatever that looks like. So then we want to go into the intentionally saying no to. Uh a lot of uh entrepreneurs, uh driven people, high performers, we we tend to say yes to a lot of things that honestly we we we really shouldn't do. And so what this looks like is a um a business, another business. You're saying, hey, I've I've got this business, but ooh, I uh you know, you hear me talking about auto repair shops, you hear someone else talking, Cody Sanchez talking about laundromats or you know, car washes or whatever, and you're like, oh, I that would that sounds good. I would I would love to do that. I I want another source of income. And uh and and so all of a sudden now you're going down this rabbit hole like on BizBy Sell looking at laundry bats and stuff and not focused on your main thing. And so I have that habit, it's a very bad habit of getting, you know, I look at all these businesses, you know, I I you know, we have a lot of people who run other things, they make a lot of money, I see it and think, oh, it'd be cool to be in that business. Like I could just build a team just like the team I've got. But then, you know what, every time that you say yes to something, it means at the same time you're saying no to something that you're currently doing. Okay, so every yes equals a no. And so if you start saying yes to all these things, like, hey, I'm gonna get into this other business, I am going to go buy real estate, I am going to start taking a bunch of these meetings, I am gonna take over the sales process because my team sucks and I gotta blah, blah, blah, right? All these things that you start saying yes to, that you're gonna start doing, it means something else in your life or your business is gonna say no to. You're gonna spend less time with your kids. You're gonna spend less time. You know, if I bought another business, I'd spend less time on this business, right? Uh if I started buying real estate, I'd probably, you know, in rental properties and deal with Airbnbs and whatever, all the stuff. That would be less time that maybe I could spend just buying another Midas shop. Like I'd just be working with Midas real estate people if I want to buy real estate, right? To go find shops. And so the best approach, and I and you may not you may not have this problem, but I do. And the thing that I've found the best for me is to create a list of all the things that normally totally derail me. The things that like I am, I am, it's a honey trap. And I'm gonna write all those things down. And and these are gonna be the things that I'm gonna say no to. And so when I'm going through my like, you know, what my big goal is, what the constraint is, and what the roadmap and all the things we're gonna talk about in a minute, uh, I'm gonna make sure I review, okay, we're not gonna look at other businesses to buy, we're not gonna look at this, we're not gonna look at that. Um, or like it could be stuff in your work, your work life where, for example, maybe um maybe you micromanage too much, right? And you're like, I've I'm building this team, I want to delegate, but you know, I I just keep getting into the weeds, and I know that if I keep getting into the weeds, I'm never A, my team's never gonna learn what to do because like I'm just doing it. And then B, like I need to be focused on all these bigger things. Like, like future Brian running this massive company isn't going to be micromanaging how um assistant manager at store number 34 picked up the phone and you know didn't answer the call the this the way they should. And if you spent all your time, because you would go crazy, right? You would go absolutely crazy if you tried to micromanage to the T every little thing in the business. And it's gonna keep it's it's gonna keep you from growing. Uh, I have this saying that progress is more important than perfection. So progress over perfection. So what I'm looking for, and and I and I have for my entire life, and and and it's it's honestly, I think, a pillar of how I've grown, is that I'm looking for progress. So is it like, yes, he could have done better, but you know, maybe that call is ten times better than his call from the previous week, and in another week or two, he'll have it down, right? If he's making progress every week, that is more important to me than the perfection of did we nail it to every little point. And so, anyway, go through this list as you go, and you say maybe I'm gonna not chase shiny objects, I'm not gonna micromanage, I am uh I'm not gonna buy any real estate, I'm not gonna get like try to put my money in in all these things that distract me. I am uh not gonna get into you know random fights on the internet with strangers that make me angry. I am, I don't know, all these things that like normally you do that you know you shouldn't do to be very intentional, because that's all what 26 is about for me. It's how I'm gonna create success, is I'm gonna be extremely intentional in everything I do. And saying no is just as important as the things that you're gonna say yes to. And your future self is gonna thank you. Like, future self in five years or two years when you've hit this massive goal is gonna say thank you for not getting derailed by doing all that dumb stuff that you used to do.