Episode 105: The path to a 7-hour work week - How to build a scalable business that can run without you

Never too late to scale your business and achieve freedom! 

Explore the transformative approach of the WizeGrowth program and get 1:1 hands-on help with Wize Mentors who are business owners themselves. We have helped a hundred firm owners and you can be the next one. See if you qualify: https://forms.zohopublic.com.au/wizementoring/form/WizeGrowthDiscovery/formperma/xWwns0wTLoKShmR0jlg0VMaW0FHVQ-V4UdDDecy9aYM

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Have you ever dreamt of a business that thrives without your constant oversight? 

In this week's episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, Kristy Fairbairn deep dives into Jamie Johns' journey on his 7-hour work week - how to decrease your workload, establish systems, and grow your business in a way that doesn't depend on you.

From his early days of entrepreneurial overwhelm, Jamie unveils the pivotal lessons learned under the guidance of mentor Ed Chan. It's a saga of self-discipline, where the simple act of dedicating just one hour each day to strategy, systems, and growth can shift a business from demanding to independent. His insights on coaching for performance, akin to a sports team, will inspire you to take your own steps towards a life that affords leisurely walks on the beach and serene moments at your beach house.

Join us for an enlightening conversation that intertwines the significance of robust systems, empowered teams, and the delivery of unfaltering client service.

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PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 3 ways we can help you transform your accounting/bookkeeping practice:

1. Join 40,000+ subscribers to our transformation Friday tips – Every Friday, our Wize Mentor and Thought Leader of the Year, Ed Chan will send one actionable insight from his experience of building a $20 million accounting firm that still runs without him – Subscribe here

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3. Join the waiting list for a free login to the world's best accounting business intelligence software for scaling your firm. Take a look at the app we use to build our own $10million firm in just 7-hours a week – Get a FREE login here

Transcript

Jamie Johns: 0:00

When I first started my own firm, everyone I thought oh, this is going to be more freedom, more time and more money. And what happened was the opposite.

Wize Mentoring: 0:12

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time- poor practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

Kristy Fairbairn: 0:32

Hello everyone. Our topic is the path to a 7- hour work week, and how to build a scalable business that can run without you. More and more, we get to see Jamie living his ideal lifestyle having more and more freedom, walking on the beach, time at the beach house, and doing the things that he's passionate and loving. So, Jamie, I feel like you're kind of perfect to be answering some questions on this and how we can all be like Jamie. How do we decrease the workload and get our systems in place to grow and not have our business sacrificed at our desire for freedom?

Jamie Johns: 1:09

Yeah, don't sound, don't make my life sound too cushy. So, yeah, look, I start off. It's all the start, beginning with the end in mind. When I first started my own firm, everyone I thought, oh, this is going to be more freedom, more time, and more money. And what happened was the opposite. Probably everyone can relate. Just yeah, it was a total shock to the system. After, you know, probably after about the first 12 months, the first two years, um, just yeah, it didn't have a life. Basically, I sought out and tried to reach out to different coaches and people within the industry and did all the IT that I possibly could.

Jamie Johns: 1:52

At Wize, we do a lot of surveys around. You know, various questions on whether you know your firm's moving forward or not. I think everyone seems to tick the box. You know, do I keep ahead of technology? And everyone ticks, yes, but what we find is technology, you know it helps, but it doesn't really move us forward, often in the direction that we want to go.

Jamie Johns: 2:13

We just sent to me, Kristy, more on tap than ever. You know, you've got teams, you've got Zoom, you've got Instagram, you've got Facebook and so like. You're constantly looking at messages and I haven't even touched on email, yeah, we're much more accessible and it's okay to be accessible, but causes your life a lot of stress as well particularly if things get out of balance. So you know, I think for me it was just really resetting the clock and you know, obviously, when I met Ed Chan, everything started changing then and you know, essentially I had to change my thinking. It's pretty hard to change habits, though everyone after you know, I was a guy in my late 30s when I met Ed and you know Ed's saying think this way and I'd say, no, ed, I've done this like this for 20 years. You know this is what I've done and he says no, that you got to change your thinking. You know that the hardest thing, Kristy, was to change my thinking.

Jamie Johns: 3:09

The way that Ed would think, yeah, you know, and that's the thing around coaching and mentoring, and you know everyone. We're so familiar with coaching and mentoring in sports. You know, I think every night on the, the nightly news, you know, there they have the sports section which teams are going well, who's winning, which players are going to another team. It won't matter what country you're in, sport plays a massive role, you know, just in, I guess, everyday lives or just culture in general. But I think business is missing that sort of healthy competition, that focuses on results. And that's what we bring at Wize is a focus on results which you know, makes it non-emotional and you can determine.

Jamie Johns: 3:51

You know your own performance or your own business's performance, and we tend to be so focused on helping our clients with their business and you know whether that's profitability and cash flow and their team, but we often ignore ourselves. You know we get so busy, we get more referrals and then it's sort of that catch-22. We wish we could improve our business, but we're so busy in helping our clients that we forget the obvious. So, yeah, it's really a mindset. Then you've just got to crawl your way out of that busyness and out of that workaholic life if I can put it like that and crawl your way out of that busyness and out of that workaholic life if I can put it like that.

Jamie Johns: 4:27

And crawl your way out of that. And just starts with self-discipline. And everyone would have heard me say this, but for me, it started just one hour a day. Some days I would miss that one hour and I would be sort of disappointed in myself that you know, for that one hour and one day I didn't work on my own business, but just through sheer persistence and self-discipline. And I have a saying called honor the calendar. So if it's in your calendar that one hour a day, or if you can't do one hour a day, do one hour a week, it's up to you. You know, we say honor the calendar.

Jamie Johns: 5:03

So the thing about our industry, whether you're into bookkeeping or whether you're a tax, accounting, or coaching, whatever it may be, we are all driven by a calendar. You know we wake up oh what have I got on today, Kristy, what have you got on today? You know. So if you put that one hour aside to work on and not in, then you will see change. But it does take persistence and consistency but you will get the results and I think it's a sort of a universal law.

Jamie Johns: 5:35

Once you work that one hour a day, within that hour you'll be doing quite different types of work. So you'll be developing policies and procedures, and you'll be looking at your capacity plan. Who do I need to hire next? How can I delegate better? How can I micro- train and not micromanage? You know how can I see the potential in others, in my team, for them to become who they need to be to help me with the business? So it's quite different thinking. I think if everyone can recognise that you have to think differently in that one hour, then you'll be on a path that I took and eventually the destination is to, you know, is to grow your business and to achieve the goals that you want to achieve it's about being clear and focused with that hour, isn't it?

Kristy Fairbairn: 6:24

it's not about using that hour to do filing or cleaning out your emails or something like that. You want to be really intentional with what you're going to do and have an impact.

Jamie Johns: 6:38

That's right. You can't have interruptions in that one hour. You know, not unless I say it's an emergency.

Jamie Johns: 6:42

I used to say to my staff you know if it's an emergency you know, come and see me, but for that one hour my door's closed and there's no interruptions. I can't take client calls, I can't do emails, and all that sort of thing. You've actually got to just choose. You know one thing you know part of the mentoring that we do, the one-on-one mentoring, is really looking at. You know, at the end of every board meeting and you can do this yourself if you're self-disciplined enough, disciplined enough but you should just sort of at the end of you know, every four weeks or end of your monthly board meeting is just decide on the one thing, the one thing that you're going to improve, and then in the next four weeks make sure you're trying to achieve that one thing.

Jamie Johns: 7:24

There's a really good book on this by Gary Keller called The One Thing because you know, if I spoke to every individual here, they would probably tell me on average you know 40 to 50 things, Kristy that they'd like to change in their firm, and that's not uncommon. We're all in the same boat, but you can't do 40 or 50 things at once. This is the whole point. You know. You can look this up yourself and test what I, what I'm telling you, but multitasking, really doesn't exist. Multitasking doesn't exist, you've got to laser- focus your energy on one or two tasks between now and the next. You know four weeks to achieve that. But what does happen is you gain momentum. Once you get one project done, you gain momentum and then you get more time and then that momentum builds until to the point that you've. You know you're achieving your goals, you're achieving your objectives, what you set out to do, so you know.

Jamie Johns: 8:25

I think the other thing that Kristy to touch on is to tell everyone to just focus on one goal for the next four weeks and get that one thing done. You know, follow Gary Keller's advice I think he built the biggest real estate business in America and it's a great book to get the one thing. But he talks about the benefit of just laser focusing on one project at a time and then gaining momentum. And he talks about like dominoes. You know it has a domino effect the little domino hits a bigger domino, and then a bigger one, and a bigger one, a bigger one. And that was what I experienced exactly when I was working with Ed and just following that self-discipline of doing one task and getting that one task done and then doing the next and the next and then that momentum builds, then one of the things that we admire about you here at Wize, Jamie and aspire to learn more is also your ability to delegate, to identify what's there to be done, but to delegate it, and delegate it quickly and smoothly.

Kristy Fairbairn: 9:21

So you know, if we could just touch on that a little bit more today for the attendees, that'd be really great.

Jamie Johns: 9:28

Yeah, delegation, it's the most important, I think, technique or tool or skill to learn. You know, Dr. Stephen Covey, in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, talks about the importance of delegation. The delegation, he says, is it's the most important thing to both personal and organisational growth. But the core of delegation is really that human interaction that, you know, dr Covey calls interdependence, and interdependence can only be activated by independent people. So, you know, independent people can do things themselves, but when you get two or three people together to achieve a goal or an outcome, that's interdependence.

Jamie Johns: 10:12

And what does that really mean? Well, essentially, what it really means is that you have to micro- train people. You know, I hear all the time that people say to me oh, my staff can't do it like me, my staff, or my team, they lack the skills, they lack the experience, they lack the attitude and I've heard it a thousand times and you know if you can relate like, put your hand up and I was the same, but there's only so many years it can go on where you know you blame external circumstances for a lot in life.

Jamie Johns: 10:44

So you've really got to understand that in order to help people do their jobs or clone yourself if you like is that you literally have to get in the trenches with them. So you've got to be able to sit with them next to you day in, day out, record exactly what you're doing, a document like a document, exactly what you're doing so that they understand and you understand what the objective is in the task that you're doing. If you look at the five steps of delegation, the first step in delegation is what they call what's the desired results. What are we trying to achieve here? So the delegation is a very personal, I think, transfer of knowledge from one person to the other.

Jamie Johns: 11:34

But business is complex, so you have to document everything that you do and make sure that you know the person that you're delegating to has the natural DNA to do their job. So, for example, a client manager would need the DNA of having you know interpersonal skills. You've got to be able to like people you know, but some people aren't like that. Some people, Kristy, just love doing the work. As Ed Chan says, play people to their position. Yeah, and the role of a coach is if you own your own firm or if you're a senior client manager and you're in a leadership position, you have to become a coach. Now, being a coach is harder than, obviously, being a critic and it's all so harder than sort of being, say, a captain. A coach has to see the potential in people and develop that potential. And the more that you can document, get people in the right position on the field, the more that you can document in detail what they have to do, you'll help them achieve success.

Jamie Johns: 12:40

You know, documenting is very important. Creating policies and procedures is very important because that then will reduce errors. You know there's a thing everyone can look up called Six Sigma. You know, basically, it's a business concept that means so many errors per transaction or so many errors per iteration, and the way that you reduce errors and the way that you increase the quality of the outcome is by systems and policies and procedures. T here's another book that you can look up called The Checklist Manifesto and it's basically about a study in us where a lot of patients in hospitals were dying or getting very ill and as soon as the author came to the hospitals and consulted them, they established policies and procedures because what was happening was patients were getting the wrong medicine, they were getting too much medicine or not enough medicine right and people were dying. Pretty serious, deadly serious, yeah.

Kristy Fairbairn: 13:38

Yeah.

Jamie Johns: 13:38

So they brought in this that's what the book's about The Checklist Manifesto.

Jamie Johns: 13:42

So they developed checklists and had people follow policies and follow procedures and then you know people stopped dying.

Jamie Johns: 13:49

It's a bit like another analogy is pretend that you go to work every day and you're flying a 747 with 300 people in the plane and you're following all the checklists because if you don't flick one button, people's lives are at risk. So again, the policies and the procedures are very, very important. And when do you make those policies and procedures? The one hour a day that I said you know, and then the key to that is then communicating the policies, procedures, communicating the checklist to the people that are important. The best way to do that is with your daily huddle, your weekly meeting or your monthly board meeting. People sort of ask me what I do one day a week at Sky Accountants and essentially at its core, that is approved policies and procedures over and over and over and over yeah, it's such an important part and I really love the way that everything intertwines with micro training comes down to systems and processes to follow and teach to your team.

Kristy Fairbairn: 14:54

Freeing up your time comes down to tracking where your time is being spent and creating policies and procedures to then delegate that work and you know. It also empowers your team members to be successful in their roles because they've got systems that support them. You've identified what seat they should be in, where are they in their greatest state of flow, and then making sure they have systems to support them. The clients get the greatest outcome because the work is consistent. It never skips a beat, no matter who's doing the work. It's such an intertwined.

Jamie Johns: 15:29

Part of your business is of getting those processes in place because the ripple effect is across all of it the other thing I'd probably touch on christy too that I think that a lot of us miss out on when we're trying to grow our firms is the level of the relationship with your direct reports, and I've studied a lot on this and learned a lot myself. But essentially, if your direct reports feel uncomfortable in bringing to you any problems or any issues they have in their role, then the relationship's not developed deep enough. It's so, so important that your direct reports feel 100% comfortable you as their coach, as their leader, as their mentor that any problems, particularly within work and also personally, can come to you and say hey look, I've got these issues going on. Can we fix them together? A classic example of where this happens is when you get a resignation out of the blue and you're not even aware of it. It's just like bang, it's a shock. That is a classic sort of symptom of relationships that you're not building deeply enough.

Jamie Johns: 16:44

Technology won't save you. We said that earlier. If you really want to grow your firm, you have to become the leader in your own firm and in yourself that people feel comfortable coming to you with their problems. Because if it's not, then you need to work harder on those relationships. That's the level that we're talking about here, because you know people don't leave firms, they leave their direct report. You know you're not going to have 100%. You know perfect success rate every time, but you know perfectionists never get anything done.

Jamie Johns: 17:16

It's all about progress. But just keep that in mind. Everyone is that your firm at its core if I could give you one message today your firm at its core, all right, if I could give you one message today your firm at its core is about relationships with people. It's all people and it's not technology. Technology is not going to save us, but what's going to save you and everyone around us is the belief in one another, the strength of the relationships in one another to achieve a common objective. That's the main thing that I think Ed taught me is to become someone that people are comfortable coming to you so that you can help them solve their problems in their career and in your business. It's a relationship, christy, that I think that we're falling down on in firms.

Kristy Fairbairn: 18:05

I think that's a really great point, Jamie. There's lots of hype in the media sporadically about AI replacing accountants and bookkeepers because it's so fabulous, but all it does is create more space for better relationships. It can give you better data. It can be a useful tool, but it still needs the person in the business to explain it to the business owners. It still needs the team members in the business to validate and interpret and managing those people. Relationships is so important because it's such a tough labour market at the moment. You know it can't just come down to dollars and what you pay your staff, because at some point you'll price them out and you won't be profitable and you risk your business. You've got to look at the workplace culture that you create, the relationships you create with the clients, how everyone interacts together, because it really is. Yeah, our people are so important. Without our people, we don't get the freedom from our firms.

Jamie Johns: 19:10

Yeah, I think you know one of the in the Ed Chan Black Book. Ed says you know people are our greatest asset but also our greatest challenge, and he's so true. So you really need to be the jedi night master of managing your team, managing people with all the issues and the idiosyncrasies that come to that. You really need to arm yourself with the skills, with the tools you know, such as no triangles policy I absolutely love that. You know the no bypass policy is extremely important. You know debr debriefing after meetings. There's so many tools that we teach at Wise around the leadership aspect. And you know, dan, I always stress to everyone if you really need to develop those relationships deep enough and work out those relationships to build your firms, because technology won't save you. What's going to save you is the level and the connectedness and the depth of the relationships within the business. That's been my direct experience.

Kristy Fairbairn: 20:09

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Jamie.

Wize Mentoring: 20:14

Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, please remember to subscribe and leave us a five-star review For more practical wise tips on how to build a business that runs without you, head over to wisementoringcom forward slash podcast to download a free copy of the Accountant's 20-Hour Workweek Playbook. We've included a link in the show notes below. See you on the next episode.