How to Remove Yourself As The Bottleneck In Your Business

What would it mean to protect your mornings completely?

In this episode, Emma Mills shares the real story of a business owner who was checking his emails at 10pm every night. His doctor had told him to stop. And yet he couldn't  because he genuinely believed there was no one else who could do it.

Emma unpacks the myth that doing everything yourself is quicker, faster, or better and why believing it is costing business owners far more than lost productivity. It's costing their sleep, their health, and their ability to show up at their best during the hours that matter most.

What you'll take away:

• Why the "I'll just do it myself" mindset is holding your business back
• How to recognise the real cost of staying in your own inbox
• The 80% mindset shift that makes delegation feel safe
• Permission to protect your morning as your most valuable business asset

If you've ever caught yourself working late just to keep up — this one's for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Focus on the Fun Stuff, the podcast for business owners who want to build a business that they actually love. I'm your host, Emma Mills, the seven-figure founder of MyPA, the UK's leading virtual PA support agency. And since 2008, MyPA has helped thousands of business owners to buy back their time, get out of the weeds, and focus on what matters the most. And every week on the podcast, I'm sharing my own journey live as it happens, and interviewing other business owners who've been exactly where you are now. And we're sharing practical tactics and real strategies to help you build a business that works for you and not the other way around. This week in the office, we had a discovery call with a potential new client, really smart guy, growing business, and he told us that he only gets to his emails at 10 pm at night. And even his doctor has said to him recently that he needs to stop because it's affecting his sleep, it's apparently affecting his melatonin levels, how much he's on his screen and sass at his laptop. And this is the life of a lot of business owners. And so on the discovery call, when we asked him why you do like why are you doing that, why are you doing it all yourself? And he's like, Well, there is no one else to do it. There is no one around me that can help me. And the thing is, so many business owners have this problem. Like, I know there'll be lots of people watching this and nodding. And what this episode is about today, that it's not just about costing you opportunities, you know, costing you doing the higher value tasks, like it is, but it's also costing you your health, your ability to make really good decisions, and the hours in the day when you operate at the best. Like, I don't know many people that are gonna say, Do you know what? 10 pm, that is my peak time to get good shit done. And today's episode is gonna show you how we fix that. So we probably covered this so many times on this podcast, and I will keep banging the drum until it helps one more person. Is that the myth of doing it yourself is quicker, is faster, is better, is honestly probably nine and a half times out of ten a complete myth. Yes, okay, there will be the odd occasion where it's a quick thing, you can do it now. It's not impacting you, it's not reactive. But honestly, it's probably it's probably higher than nine and a half times. Nine and a half times, that is a complete myth. And every single business owner goes through this. Like, I don't know any, like all the successful business owners that I'm either mentored by or I admire, people that have cr have like achieved the most incredible, profitable businesses of their dreams. Every single person has been through this journey where because we have to just make stuff happen at the very beginning, because we're doing all the things, because at the beginning we're doing the marketing and running the discovery calls and and making sure wages get paid wages get paid, and God, it's emotional for me that big, clearly. And because we're having to do all the things, um, like it we all go through this journey of well, we did all the things, and we get into this habit of knowing what we know they'll get done. They might not always get done in the best way, but we know we have that satisfaction of knowing that it's got done, and every single business owner has to go on this journey of self-discovery to know it's only gonna get me so far to get to the next level. I can't do every single thing, and I have to be of the mindset of that 80% done is a hundred percent better than me having to do a hundred percent of things. And so if you're listening to this podcast and you're nodding your head and you're going, yeah, okay, this is me. What are we gonna do about it? I just want you to, because for ages, honestly, ages in my business journey, I knew that was happening, but I didn't, it wasn't sufficiently painful for me to do something about it. There were three things I just want you to think about. One is opportunity loss, no way are we doing everything, doing everything amazingly well, and seizing all the opportunities that are around us, and even having thinking time to do you know those like shower thoughts. There's a reason why you have shower thoughts, it's because your brain is completely devoid of having to think about doing anything else, all the things you're doing is on or like uh is automated, and so your brain in that moment is fully, fully free to think. And that's why when you're driving, when you're having a shower, that's when you come up with your best ideas. So, not only like being absolutely at the kosh all the time, being maxed out, working till 10 pm, not only you're definitely going to miss out on opportunities because no way we can get to everything, but you're actually gonna stop your own creativity, strategy, all the things that make you a business owner. Like they don't, they don't get any chance to shine. Not only that, but as I mentioned in the beginning, everybody has a peak time of the day that that is their stuff that their brain is switched on to make the most important decisions, to be most creative. For me, that is definitely first thing in the morning. If my morning starts to get pushed back, or I haven't started work early enough, or I start to feel a little bit antsy because I know that as the day cracks on, my peak time to do good stuff, to be clear-headed, to have good ideas, to write good copy, to come up with ideas for podcasts and all those things, that it diminishes. And we all have those moments. There is no way that one person is as creative and energetic as they are in the morning, in the evening. The timing is different to everyone, and I'm not saying that people have to get up early. That is definitely not on my radar at all. You just need to be aware of when is the good time for you. So we lose out on opportunity and creativity and vision when we're doing it all ourselves. We lose out on using our brain at its optimum time of the day because the guy that's getting home at night and doing his emails at 10 pm, no way is that optimum performance in his business. And I'm this isn't like I've been there as well. I've been there where it's seven days a week, and this is in no way a kind of a oh, like you shouldn't be doing that. We all go on this journey, but today's podcast is just about realizing I just want this to be at least a kind of a halt for at least one person to go, okay, enough is enough. I I know that I'm I'm not optimizing my business in the best way because I'm in this situation and this is what we're gonna do about it. And the third part is that for sure when you are going from one thing to another just trying to keep your head above water, you are for sure lost any strategic um direction that you can that you can push the business into. We've all been there when you are just trying to keep your head above water and that in itself doesn't help the business. And so the third part with the strategic part is that I've talked about this so many times, I know, but it's so important. Every business owner should be aware of what the top, the most like what is the priority of the things to get done today. Is it the top three? Is it top one? Whatever it is, everybody should go into the day with a sense of if I just get this one, two, or three things done, today is boxed off and a good. I'm not talking about a to-do list of ten things. We can all make long to-do lists, I'm just talking about getting super clear on these three things. And what came up in this discovery call is that this guy also, to kind of put the cherry on the overwhelmed cake, is that because he was so in the weeds, his whole day was guided by what was in his inbox. So he literally said on this discovery call, when I open my inbox, that is what dictates what I'm gonna do in the day. So the things that come in, the the sales, the complaints, the finance stuff, whatever it is, the opportunities, whatever it is that comes into his inbox, he keeps it open and that's what dictates his day. And if anybody's listening to this and going, oh yeah, I know I see that, like my my outlook, my Gmail pretty much sets off the path of where I'm gonna go, the things I'm gonna do today. That is a massive red flag, honestly, in any business owner's life, because the inbox is just a list of everybody else's priorities. Whatever's on that person's mind that they want to get solved, or ask information about, or complain about, or whatever they've decided is important to them now. Lons on your desk. And really discerning business owners go, okay, this might be I I take, I get it completely, this is important to all of these people, but still I have got top priority today that I'm gonna make sure that I get done. That comes above everything. And you might think, yeah, but I've got to get back to the customer quickly, I've got to respond to this complaint. What a new inquiry, invoice query, whatever all you know, there's a million and one things that can come into your inbox. And yes, totally get it. I'm not saying don't go, don't go in there, don't get stuff done, ignore your customers. I'm not saying that at all. But number one, if you go into the day only being directed by your inbox, that is a red flag as to how optimized your time is. And two, it is completely possible to have things running and happening in your inbox while you work on those most priority, high priority things. No matter how much of a control freak you are, no matter how much you think nobody can do it better than you, it's totally possible to have all of that stuff flowing behind you while you focus on the most important stuff in the business. And one way I like to look at it that I think really brings it home to me, the myth of doing it all yourself, is that if you continue to perpetuate that, to continue to go, oh, it's fine, I'll just get on with it, I'll just work a bit later, I'll just catch up at the weekends, I'll just, I'll just do this and then get to my stuff tonight. Every single time we do that, I think of it as an invisible tax that each of us gets taxed each day. And it doesn't have to it like this doesn't have to happen, but for me, this is what happens when you're in the weed, when you're when you're doing all the things when you bel when you want to keep believing that, but nobody can do it better than me. So for me, there are five parts of this invisible tax. Number one, every single low value, and I I kind of don't like the word low value in a way, or you might go MOI if you just use it then. But I feel like it's kind of universally known that there are tasks in the business which are not all tasks are the same, output, impact considered the same. And the low value tasks, whether it's getting stuff in the inbox done, whether it's sending stuff to the bookkeeper, whether it's the things that somebody else could do easily, though you don't want to believe it at the moment, the low-value tasks, the cost of you doing them is beyond the time it takes. It's like the the context switching between all the little pings and just sorting these things out. So imagine you start the day and you've got a full tank of fuel, and that like that's what's in your brain right now. And then as you go through the day and all the little pings and notifications and the things happen, the tank of fuel starts to just reduce bit by bit until you get to the end of the day, you're tired, you want to go to bed, and like the tank's empty and we go to sleep and it refuels the following morning. So every single time we commit to just going the little thing, the little thing, I'll just box it off the little thing. We're like draining this tank really quickly, and there is nothing left to make the meaningful stuff happen. Like invisible tax number two is the context switching between between things. Deep work is called deep work for a reason. Like every time you're distracted, it takes, and these are scientific studies, it takes like 20 to 25 minutes to get back into the thing you were doing. Like deep work is a thing, and these phones and you know the these um the technology guys in Silicon Valley are paid hundreds of thousands of millions to steal our attention, and that's why deep work is more optimized than ever and and more highly valued than ever because nobody's bloody doing it. So honestly, even if you just do deep work every day, you're already in front of everybody else. But the context switching is really, really hard for you actually for you actually to properly put good energy, value, and time into everything. So every low-value task has a cost. The context switching between doing all of these little things yourself, tax number three, the mental load of knowing it's still there are like I don't know about you, but my brain doesn't empty until somebody on my team says I've done it or I've written it down and I know that it's like somewhere. The mental load of knowing it's still there and you have to do it is for me draining in itself. Tax number four, by the time you get around to the high value stuff, even if you even actually get any time to focus on growth, marketing, partnerships, conversations, all the stuff you should be doing as the business owner, like you're gonna be pretty much running on empty by the time you get to it. And tax number five, decision fatigue is real. There is a reason why I get so frustrated when that question of what do you want for dinner comes up, because I'm like, I don't know, I don't care. And there's an actual reason why, because I like cooking. But actually, by the time you get to the end of the day, do you have any energy left to even make this small decision? Like it's so far removed from everything you've had to do in the day. So as you go through the day, this decision fatigue is a real thing. So if you're using your peak decision-making skills at the beginning of the day to, I don't know, answer stupid questions from the team. I say stupid, but do you know just the stuff of like you need like it can be solved later, it's not urgent, like answering stupid decisions, responding to a client email that actually is not urgent and it could just wait till the end of the day. Actually, say what used to be my worst. Fiddling about in zero. That used to be my absolute when I was, when I had not planned what my priorities were for the day, I would log into zero, I would see what was going on, I might do a tiny bit of reconciling, I might like look, oh, oh, I can fix that. Oh, I've just spotted that, the accountant never spotted that. That would be my kryptonite of wasting my brain fuel and decision making. So, like every time basically we subscribe to it's quicker to do it myself, all of these things take us further away from where we want to be. And just one thing that came up in our office last week from a conversation that we had with a with a different prospect was that they were talking about how they were in their inbox all day, um, that that pretty much drove what they were going to do in the day. Like they were totally open about it and they knew that this wasn't the way it should be and they should be more strategic. And they literally said that they are using um co-pilot um flagging system in their emails and they're using the Microsoft to-do list. And even though they've got these, like they've got AI on the go, they've got this to-do list, they've got a flagging going on, it's only them in their inbox, so still they're the person doing the thing in it, which is not where we want to be. But even with like these systems and stuff that they're trying to implement, they're still the person doing the thing. So even though they're like got tech and some systems and some stuff going on, like when the actual system is broken of how we're gonna get out of it, it doesn't matter how many like email AI fixes you put in there or how many flagging systems, if you're still the person doing the thing, like for me, you it's not it's not a level up. And honestly, you can't grow a business, and it's not just about growing a business in revenue. I'm talking about you can't create a business that you want, whether that's the time, the profit, the amount of hours you're working, who you're working with. Like we all have different ideas of what success and wealth is an achievement in our business, but you can't achieve that, I don't believe, when you are the bottleneck in the business. And honestly, like I get it, like even last week, I was very aware that across Monday to Friday, there'd been various instances of on different Teams channels and in different emails. And I, because I'm like, I know I can solve something, I'll go, all right, yeah, no, uh, don't worry, I'll send you a quick video on how to solve that, or I'll send a quick loom video. Honestly, I got to Thursday and I was like, Emma, you absolute idiot. Like I realized that I had this little list cropping up of all the things I said I was going to do. Like, I'm I'm a bit addicted to solving problems, I guess. As business owners, that's what we do. We are paid to solve problems constantly throughout the day. But I had actually um volunteered for, oh, uh, well, actually, I can do that because I know how quickly I can do it over somebody else in the team doing it. But by the Thursday or the Friday, I'm just like, the hell? Like, you've added 10 things to your to-do list, which you now need to plan in and which you don't really have the time to do. And so I had to have a word with myself, I had to re-delegate the stuff, I'd filmed a couple of quick looms for some more complicated stuff, but like I'm very aware that it's e it's so easy to just say yes to all the things, and next minute, like you're back in the weeds. And although I'm very aware, like we talk about time management a lot on this on this podcast and in my content, and it isn't just about time management. Like, one of the things I've learned over the past 12 to 18 months, I would say, is how much of an impact my energy as an individual has on the success of my team and my business. And it was our COO, Mike, who definitely brought this way into the forefront for me. And it was like, Emma, when your energy's good, everybody's feeding off it in the office. Like it's you know, it's energetic, it's good stuff, like let's make things happen. When Emma's stressed because she's in the weeds, because she's doing all the things, because she's trying to be a superhero woman to everyone, like that that energy of oh my god, there's too much to do, completely flows through to the team as well. So also you have I just want you to be very aware of if you do have team members, whether they're virtual or in-house or employed, like it completely flows through. If you're constantly in a state of I've got too much to do, it will flow through to everybody else in the business. So the goal, I think, for me and for every single business owner out there, the number one goal should be to protect our best time in the day, protect it to do our best work, to do the things only we can do, to do the things that meaningfully move the needle forward. And it's not about handing every single thing over overnight, but I think all of us should have an internal goal that every single thing that crosses our desk at some point we're like, who can do that in the future? Is that something I can easily hand off now? Is that something I can easily, with a couple of steps, give to somebody else? For me, that should be our continuous like thought loop for all for every business owner. If something's on my desk, I'm like, okay, well, maybe I do have to do this right now, but it's on my list to get somebody else to do this. And in the case of the business owner who we spoke to last week, who was like, I am doing my emails, starting my emails at 10 pm at night. If anybody listening to this is in the same boat, and I suspect lots of people are, we've had umpteen clients every year come to us to say that, you know, I'm coming to you because I spend my Saturdays catching up on my inbox when I should be with my kids, that I invariably get home late because I'm getting to all of that stuff at the end of the day. If there is one thing that is consistently making you stay late, uh get the laptop out at home, get the laptop out, God forsake, when you're in bed, and it's I've done that as well. I mean, that is so stupid. Um, getting the laptop out when you, you know, when you sat in bed, get like actually going, well, it's Saturday morning, but I'm just gonna do a few hours. If there's like one or two things that are actively making you continually have to work additional hours, work at times you don't want to work that are times that are not productive and they are not needle-moving stuff. Like, fair enough, if you're going out for a dinner with a potential new client, that's very different to sitting at your desk still at nine o'clock and doing your emails. I want you to just really get a feel for what is that thing. For most people, to be fair, it is their emails. It is my WhatsApp's getting to be the same way. It's like a new thing to manage because there's just so many of them, and I have to get back to them. For most business owners, honestly, even now, even in the age of maximum AI hype, even in the age of AI is coming to do everything, and there's all of these tools and tricks, and it is still the number one pain in the bum for every single business owner. The amount of business owners that are working more hours than they should, not even on the most productive things, because they're just sat in their inbox, is mind-blowing. And for eight out of ten business owners, I would say it is the biggest leap forwards they can make. Imagine not having to think about it anymore. Like, imagine that knowing that at the end of the day, you're just gonna get a WhatsApp summary, a voice note, a WhatsApp message to go, hey, like these are the these things came in, I handled this, this is what I need to know. This needs a bit of attention from you, this one email, and we promise to do this by Friday. Imagine feeling confident that you've got someone else in there who's making shit happen. Like for me, that is gold, and it is gold for so many business owners. And I just think it's like it is pretty wild to me that it is still so the number one bane. I I got a text message this morning from a guy from a client that we used to work with um maybe eight years ago, maybe even more than that, it's texting this morning saying, Emma, my inbox is out of control. Like it's not it's not unique to you or to me or to anyone else, it is the number one thing for every single business owner. And for me, while email feels quite basic, I feel like to a lot of people, the impact of getting it handled, the impact of imagining not having to look at it again is massive. And for me, if every business owner could just work on and focus on protecting the most important time in their day, winning two or three hours back to actually go and get some meaningful stuff done, like that for me is number one for every business owner. Because when you get your inbox to a good place and you don't have to think about it, like you can actually switch off at the end of the day, you know things are being handled. That is like utopia for most business owners. And the thing is that's really frustrating, it's so easily, so easily achieved by the right person. Obviously, you know this is what we do, and if you want to chat to us about it, you want to help us solve that problem, you can. But just for anybody listening that's like they just need that, oh my god, I need to do something about it. I hope this is the episode that changes that and protects your most important time in the day.