Episode 437: My Profitable Productivity Strategy to Save Your Business
If you’re like most business owners, you know that feeling of having way too much to do and not enough hours in the day. Don’t worry – you’re not alone in this time crunch.
In this episode, Adam Stott addresses one of the most significant challenges facing business owners—time management. With a focus on productivity and efficiency, Adam introduces listeners to a unique and revolutionary framework known as the “T.O.A.D. Methodology,” designed to help entrepreneurs effectively manage their time and resources.
By harnessing the power of strategic delegation, outsourcing, automation, and disciplined action, business owners can break free from the day-to-day grind and steer their companies toward sustained growth and profitability.
Show Highlights:
- The T.O.A.D. strategy: Train, Outsource, Automate, and Delegate is essential for entrepreneurs aiming to reclaim time and enhance productivity.
- Business owners should assess and optimize the three critical resources: skills, time, and capital, to boost business growth.
- Overcoming the bottleneck effect requires strategic thinking and leveraging team strengths, focusing on delegation and training.
- Investing time in training and outsourcing can significantly yield long-term time savings and operational efficiency.
- Implementing discipline within a team is crucial to ensure alignment and higher productivity in business operations.
Links Mentioned:
Get your Business Growth Secrets SUCCESS PLANNER for FREE and profit like a pro: https://adamstottplanner.com/free-book47315172
Adam’s website: https://adamstott.com/?el=Pod
Watch the Episode on Adam’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/adamstottcoach?el=Pod
Connect with Adam on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamstottcoach/?el=Pod
Join Adam’s network on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-stott-coach/?el=Pod
Coaches, consultants, and business owners – lower your marketing costs, increase ticket prices, and get more high-ticket clients: https://3daybrandbuilderworkshop.com/start-here?el=Pod
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
Adam Stott: Have you ever felt that no matter how hard you work, you’ve just never got enough time? Well, this is something that many, many business owners struggle with, and in this video I’m going to show you one insanely profitable productivity strategy that can change that for you forever. So let’s jump on in.
[00:00:26] So the framework we’re about to share with you can revolutionize your business, get you your time back, and really allow you to grow. And this came about, I wanna give you a bit of a, an idea of how this framework came about, how we’ve been using in the business and the results that we’ve been seeing.
[00:00:42] Where really comes from this principle that there are three critical resources in business. So you as a business owner, whether you sum at the beginning. You are really successful or you are somewhere in between. You have access to these three critical resources when it comes to growing your business.
[00:00:57] You have skills and you go into starting your business with a ton of skills. You might have skills in accountancy, but not in sales, or you might have sales skills, but not accountancy and vice versa. Whenever you start a business, you’ve got these skills to bring to the table. What you’ve also got to bring to the table is time.
[00:01:18] This is critical resource number one, skills, critical. Resource Number two is time. Now, imagine that you bring your skills to the table, you go to work in your business, and I take all your time off of you. Then you haven’t got the ability to implement those skills into your business. Does that make sense?
[00:01:33] I’m sure it does. So we’ve gotta be really careful to make sure that we manage our skills in the right way. We manage our time in the right way. And then finally. There’s another one, which is super important, which is of course, capital money. So when you are building a business, you’re investing capital, you’re investing time, and you’re investing skills in growing your business.
[00:01:51] The problem that most small business owners have is they run out of time, which means they can’t. Bring their skills in. ’cause they’re too busy being busy, they don’t make enough money, which means they can’t buy more skills in. They just end up in this place where they struggle in so many different areas.
[00:02:08] And hey, if you’re watching the channel for the first time, we help business owners to start their businesses and make it easier. So if you’re the beginning, this could be awesome for you. We help people to grow their businesses and grow faster using marketing, sales, branding, and all the techniques that take you to the top.
[00:02:22] And you’ve got a big old business, you wanna make it even bigger. We help you to scale. So as long as you are a business owner that once we either start, grow, or scale, you are 100% in the right place at the right time. And the strategy that I’m gonna share with you, that one strategy that I wanna share with you, which is super important, is gonna help you to be able to leverage your skills more.
[00:02:41] Get you more time back and allow you to make more money. So I imagine that you’re feeling pretty excited. Now, what I hope you are, and we’re about to jump into that in just one second, but first of all, I’ve gotta tell you where we came up with this one framework and this one strategy, which I prepared earlier for you.
[00:02:58] So if you’d like my drawing of this tote, go and put tote in the comments, right? Or let us know. And some of you might be going, Adam, I think you’ve spelt that wrong. But I haven’t, I haven’t actually spelled that wrong. Strategically. I’m gonna explain that to you in a minute, but I wanna tell you where this came from, this framework and this strategy that let me tell you, you should be stealing this framework and this strategy, implementing it into your business, because if you do, everything’s gonna change for you.
[00:03:25] I’m running at Teams, if you can imagine this, the team I have in the business that I run, my events and coaching business, I have multiple businesses, my events and coaching business, an eight figure company. We’ve got 50 employees here, and we have a managed meeting, so I’m bringing my managers into the meeting.
[00:03:39] We’re sitting down and we’re literally doing this every single week. And then we have a big one at the end of the month where we review the performance. By the way. This is something you should be doing in your business. Keeping up with your teams, especially you’ve got managers. Some of you going, Adam, I don’t have managers.
[00:03:52] How this relevant for me? You can use this strategy with you at the beginning or you’re scaling. Doesn’t matter. Anyhow, let’s get back to it. So bring the managers in. I’m talking to them. I. And in talking to ’em about where they’re at in the business, we’ve got our marketing managers, our branding managers there.
[00:04:08] We’ve got our client service managers, got our sales manager, got whole team finance everything there. And I’m going round and the same problems coming up again and again and again. But I, I just don’t have any time I. I’m out of time. And you know, it’s, it’s really frustrating because they want to do more.
[00:04:24] They want to drive their business on, and they were struggling for time. So I got into, we started having this chat and we’re going through it. I started to share this framework. I said, look, okay, so we’ve got this really important management. We’ve got all these topics on the table. We’ve got all these improvements that we wanna bring to the business we wanna help our clients with to take you to the next level.
[00:04:42] But if you don’t have any time, we can’t do it. And this is where it comes back to yourself that are watching right now. You’re probably a business owner that wants more from your business. You want to grow, you’ve got lots of ideas going on. You want to execute those ideas ’cause you know that’s how you’re gonna grow.
[00:04:59] But you probably feel right, you’ve just got a hundred things going on and you’re probably saying to yourself, I’m so busy I don’t have time. And you, and that’s probably running through your mind constantly. And you’re probably just seeing yourself doing the same things every single day. And if you are falling into that trap and you essentially fall into a loop, because this is what happens a lot.
[00:05:19] Business owner goes out, needs some clients, so they go out needing their client, they go. Maybe they go networking or they do some marketing. They get themselves some leads. They get themselves a client. Client says, I want this. They go off, they make it, they get it ready for delivery. They go back, they deliver it to the client.
[00:05:37] Client says, thank you, and then they give ’em their thing. Then they earn their money. Guess what? Now they go again and then they end up in this, like this is what we call like the day to day who’s ever been, has stuck in the day to day of the business. Well, the problem is if you are in this loop and you just go round and round and round and round and round and round.
[00:06:00] In the day to day, you can’t do what you know you need to do, which is to work on the business and start being strategic. So what I wanna share with you is what came out this meeting. So as I’m going through it and I’m talking to the team, I said, right, I think what we need to do, we’ve got all these initiatives, we’ve got all these things that wanna go on, but many of you in this loop, you’re, you’re in this day to day at the minute, and it’s causing a lot of stress and a lot of frustrations.
[00:06:23] We need to break the loop. So this is how you break your loop as well. What you gotta do, take a breath. Calm down for one moment. Don’t get stuck in the internal chatter of, but I can’t do this and I’m too busy to do that. I don’t have time and I’m doing this and I’m doing that. Break that for a minute and just take a breath.
[00:06:41] That’s the first step, and we’re gonna go through a process of how you manage your workloads, how you become insanely productive, and because you’re insanely productive, you then become insanely profitable. You follow? Our towed methodology. So we look at all of your workload, we look at all this stuff that you’ve got going on, and we say, okay, I’ve got these different things and I’ve got all these different things to do.
[00:07:07] So many of you have got big old to-do list. I’m sure you’ve got a big old to-do list and it keeps getting bigger. And many of you don’t need a big old to-do list. You need to stop doing list. ’cause there’s some stuff that you’re doing you shouldn’t be doing. So anyway, we take this and you’ve got all these things on your desk.
[00:07:23] Most business owners’, first instinct is to say, how do I go to war and break through all these tasks? Bang, bang, bang, get it done, get it done, get it done. And how do I go and do all that work? I. The longer the list gets, the more overwhelming the work is and the less likely said business owner is to start.
[00:07:44] So we’ve gotta break that habit, and this is what was happening with our managers. I’m like, you’ve got all this stuff. You’ve got all this stuff you’re doing. You’ve got all these things to go and do. You’ve got the day-to-day going on, you’ve got this endless list of task. So what we’re gonna do to break it?
[00:07:57] First of all, we’re gonna look at our workload, our things to do, and we’re gonna go through a few questions. So these are the questions that I wanna share with you. So just imagine for a moment while you are on with me, now that you’ve got this to-do list, you’ve got all this stuff you need to do, and you’re in a place where maybe you’re feeling a bit overwhelmed, you’re procrastinating a little bit, and then we can take you through the process of how you become insanely productive.
[00:08:20] That’s the first thing we’re gonna do, is we’re gonna ask this question because it’s a very important question. Hey everyone. Hope you’re enjoying the podcast. We’ve got a free training that I’m doing right now online from the comfort of your own home called Standout Brand. What this does is it shows business owners how to get noticed on social media standout I.
[00:08:40] Get more leads and get more sales. So if you want to make more money in your business, head over to adam.com/sob. That’s adam.com/sob and join us on the free three day workshop, standout brand. Who else can do this? Because essentially we’re talking about how do you get other people doing the work. Now the first thing, many of, you’ll be sitting there and you’ll be going, well, no one else can do this.
[00:09:09] I don’t have a team or everyone on my team is really busy, that’s like question one. Then we need to say to ourselves, okay, well if nobody else can do this, that means that you are going to have to do it or we’re gonna have to find someone else to do it. Hopefully that’s making sense. So the first question I always ask is, who can do this?
[00:09:30] And if I don’t have anyone available, I say, who can we train to do this? Because sometimes these different tasks you’ve been holding on to the years, you’ve been doing it yourself over and over and over again. But you’ve got probably people that work for you, people you know, freelancers available, all these different people around you, but because they’ve never had any training, they can’t go and complete the tasks, which means people getting stuck.
[00:09:56] So when you ask that question, who can I train to do this? It opens up your mind and it allows you to stop just being solely reliant on yourself and gets you into a place where you can say, actually, you know what? I possibly could train Jamie, or I possibly could train Rachel to do this. And then you’re like, yeah, but I don’t have time.
[00:10:14] So this is the principle that we’ve gotta understand is, let’s imagine we’ve got this task and you’ve been doing it all along and, and it takes you an hour per week to do it. And you’re saying, well, no one else can do it. So that means that this task per year is gonna take you 52 hours. You’ve gotta train someone, but you don’t have any time to do it.
[00:10:34] So my advice and direct advice will you would be take your Jamie, your David, your Rachel, your freelancer, anyone around you, and spend 10 hours training them so you can get 52 hours back this year. Then what you’ve done is you’ve increased the level of the team that you’ve got, and guess what? You’ve saved yourself 42 hours.
[00:10:58] And I think this is something that business owners miss massively. I’ve been training business owners now since 2016. I’ve seen the time and time again. The business owner thinks they have to do everything. They think that the most important person in the business, usually they are, but they also don’t realize that they are the bottleneck of the business.
[00:11:13] Everything’s running through them. If we are trying to. Run water through this bottle and we flow the water in. We can’t get through the top because it’s too thin. But if we add another bottleneck to it and we bring this through, we’d be flowing four times the amount of water. So the first question you ask is, who can I train to do this?
[00:11:32] And if you’re making notes, make sure you write that down. Um, and, you know, get committed, right? Because your first instinct might be, I can’t train anyone. If you could, who would it be? Starts to think outside the box. So that’s your first part of the toe. Now, it might be that you can’t train anyone. It might be that genuinely you don’t have anyone available for that right this moment.
[00:11:52] So we ask ourself a different question, and this question is, who could I outsource? This role to this role, I’m spending one hour per week. And this is what I think a lot of people don’t realize. Just imagine you’re doing something for one hour a week. It’s a fairly skilled task that you need to do.
[00:12:12] You’ve got no one that you’ve been trained to do it. You can go and get somebody that you can outsource it to. You can outsource work to abroad globally. You now source work to the Philippines. You can outsource, uh, source work to South Africa, multiple different places all around the world, and you can get somebody fractionally.
[00:12:29] So what that means is. They have their time available and you can buy a sliver of their time, and that means you pay a tiny amount of money to get a tiny amount of their time. You now outsource this job that you are spending one hour a week on and you outsource it to someone else. You might only pay $20, right?
[00:12:52] To get that time back, or if it’s the Philippines might be as little as $5 or $10. You actually pay something to do it. Now what you’ve done, you’ve just done something which you want to do something which is beautiful, something that will help you grow and something you want badly, and you put it in the chat, the comments you have just.
[00:13:13] Bought back your time. You have literally just bought your time back. You’ve bought it back. How awesome is that? So you bought that one hour a week back, you got somebody else to do it. Now you’ve got one hour free. So this is where the commercial part comes in. If you wanna make more money, which I’m sure you do, because you wouldn’t be watching this if you didn’t.
[00:13:29] Right. So how does the commercial part come in? Well, you paid someone $10 to do it. So your job is in that one hour. How do you then make $50? In the hour you now have back, how do you make a a hundred dollars in the hour you have back? How do you make $200 in the hour you have back? How do you make $500 in the hour back?
[00:13:50] And you might go, no, but I dunno how to do that Adam. Well go sell something. Go market your business in that hour. I. Because now you’ve bought your time back. You’ve done it for 10, $10. Your job is to make sure you multiply and you go out and you make more money. That’s the key to outsourcing, and then you look at all the areas that can buy your time back in.
[00:14:08] This is what good entrepreneurs, good business owners do, is they buy back their time. That’s your number two. If you can’t train it. To an existing team, can you outsource in? This is the thing, right? When I had this conversation with, uh, with all my managers and all my, my managers in, I took ’em through the Toad, right?
[00:14:26] And they all like have a joke about it now. And then I trained all my inner circle members on this concept as well because they’ve got teams and they’re like, ah, you know, I need the toad. So they’ve started using the toad in their business. They go, can I train someone to do it? Can I outsource it? And a lot of people, this is a success that I’ve seen and one of the things that my, one of my market managers was, was struggling with was the copywriting.
[00:14:48] So we bought him his time back to be able to go and do the copywriting. Then one of the things that market managers struggling was, is the funnel building. So we outsourced some funnel building, bought him his time back. Now he’s able to use and work on high income generating campaigns because he’s not fi around with those bits.
[00:15:03] And this is the really cool thing. He’s not that good at copywriting. And the one that he’s gone and hired and he is bought his time back is really good. So what have we done? We took those critical resources. We’ve got him his time back, which is really cool, but we’ve also got more skills into the business.
[00:15:20] Is this making sense? If this is making sense, going to the comments and put it makes sense, Adam. Okay. So what’s number three? Alright, number three is, if you can’t train it and you can’t outsource it is you automate, I. So automation is where you simply are going to use technology to do that task, that thing that was in your way, and you’re gonna get it automated.
[00:15:44] So have you got a CRM system that you are using? Have you got, um, are you using AI within your business? This is where we’re gonna start to look at technology. Have you got a task management system in your business that you can use? So if you can’t. Train it and you can’t outsource it. You automate it.
[00:16:06] These are the three things. Now, by the way, what I’m trying to do for you in this video is I’m trying to get you to own this thought process because if you wanna be really successful, you want to build a million pound business, you wanna build a 10 million pound business, the real skill is to make sure that you are doing less and you are earning more.
[00:16:23] You are able to get everybody else performing at great levels and you become the leader, not the doer. If you are constantly doing the doing, you can’t be doing the leading, which is what you need to do to build a really great business. So what happens next after the automation? You’re like, I can’t automate this.
[00:16:39] This is like, I. Really tricky, right? This is something that I don’t know that you know I can do. Then we go to the next one, which is delegate. Now the way I was speaking to, I did a really cool thing. I’ll take you back to that managers meeting that was having the managers. I did this really cool thing. So if you’ve got team and you’ve put in the comments team, but if you’ve got, so I know that you’ve got a team, um, if you’ve got a team, this is a really good one, right?
[00:17:02] This is a cool exercise. I said to all the managers, right? Write down, this is what I’d encourage you to do as well. Write down out 10. How busy are you? So you go and you write 10 outta 10. Oh, I’m so busy. I’m like so busy. I’m a 10 out of 10 busy. And that’s what everyone always says. And you know, if you are saying you’re a 10 out 10 busy, how did you find the time to get this far on a video?
[00:17:24] So maybe not a 10, nine outta 10 busy rather than a 10 outta 10 busy for, you know, I’m just, I’m just playing with you. I’m sure you’re having some downtime, which is cool, but we’ve got really, really busy. This is what all my managers said. I went around and said, well, how busy are you at 10 IE 10 is, I’m working every hour.
[00:17:39] I’m getting there early. I’m staying late. I’m giving him my all. I’m working really hard. I’m super busy. You know, I run off my feet. I’m busy. From the moment I get into the moment I leave, that’s a 10 out 10. It’s like, well, you know, I’m sort of busy. I’m doing my thing, you know, I’ve got time to look at these things.
[00:17:54] Distract. Then you’re not a 10 out 10 busy. You’re a seven, eight out 10. Anyhow, I then said to my managers, which most of them said, by the way, ’cause I’ve got great team. I just wanna frame this. My team’s incredible. Got great team. Um, I said to him, okay, great. You are a 10, outta 10. I think everyone round the table was, no one was less than a nine.
[00:18:13] A few of ’em are nine, few of ’em are 10, and we go round. I said, now tell me outta 10, I want you to write down the names of your team and I want you to put a score of how busy they are. They’re like, well, my team’s just like, well, you know, so and so’s a seven outta 10, so and so’s a eight out 10, so and so’s a six out 10, so and so’s a five outta 10, da da da, so and so’s a and I was like.
[00:18:41] Every single one of them, they were like 10 outta 10, nine outta 10 busy. And all of their team were like, sevens and eights. I said, right, okay. Well first of all, we’ve got to give them more. So we’ve got to start delegating. You’ve gotta get more off your plate. You’ve gotta get other people working on your stuff so we can become more effective.
[00:18:59] And if they’re not good enough, we come back to here. Done that to my toad again. Right. But this is where we’re gonna come back to. We’re gonna come back to, well, we’ve gotta train them. And this is where we come back to the training of we spend 10 hours to get 50 back. So we take the training to get the people to the next level, which is super important.
[00:19:19] And when they started to realize this, they had a bit of a realization. And I’d encourage you to do the same thing. If you’re a business owner with a team, you’re watching this right now, how busy are you out 10? How busy your team out? 10. Because what can you offload? What can you delegate to your team to get ’em doing more work so you can get more productive?
[00:19:34] Now, the final one. Is when we go through this process of the toad, and we’re at Toad right now, but we’ve got the double D coming in. And this is something that many people lack, which is actually super important, and this is what could help you to become this insanely productive productivity machine that’s gonna get you much better results.
[00:19:55] I’m gonna give you the outcome of that in a minute. Is that. Something that’s often lacking in a business. If you are 10 outta 10 busy and your team are not 10 outta 10 busy, then you might be lacking. Some discipline. So we need to look at how disciplined are you being with yourself, with your time, with following through.
[00:20:16] How disciplined are you being with your team? How much are you driving your team? How much are your team reporting to you? How much are you driving the performance? Is there a lack of discipline rather than a lack of delegation? Because if you keep going, well try to delegate. They don’t do it. Well, guess what you’ve got?
[00:20:32] A problem over here on the second D, not necessarily on the first. Many people I tried to delegate, they didn’t do it. Well. This is where we need to get stronger over here. And when you combine these elements and you really start doing the toad and you can go and put Toad in the comments, what happens?
[00:20:46] This is what happens. And by the way, I want you to commit here and now you’ve watched this video, you’ve got this far, uh, you’ve done a great thing to come through these different elements, but there’s no point in getting information that we don’t use. So if you are going to use this, I want you to go and put Toad it in the comments right now.
[00:21:05] So go and put Toad It and that tells me that you are committed. You’re gonna start using these elements. This is really gonna help you. This one framework gonna help you to become insanely profitable. So go right now. Go and comment that. So I can see that you’re gonna do that. And by the way, if you’ve got a boss, you’ve got a leader, someone you know that needs to know this principle, go and hit the share button and share it with them.
[00:21:25] This literally can transform leaders within your business. I saw my people really, really grow because of this process. This is something I use personally, and what I did is I pulled this out in my head. It wasn’t meant to be a big picture of a toad. I’m just like, can we train your people? Okay, uh, can we literally outsource this to someone that needs it?
[00:21:45] Can we automate it? Can we delegate it? Can we discipline? I was like, okay, that spells Toad. Great. We’ve got this system. It came out in this, this management beam. I want to now pass it to you so you can become more successful. This is the outcome of what happens when you use this framework. The outcome is rather than you feeling like you’ve gotta do everything all the time, you now have options.
[00:22:04] You have a, a model and a framework to run through that every single time something comes up, you go, okay, great. I’ve got this problem. I’m procrastinating, I’m feeling overwhelmed. My team isn’t doing the work. Can I train someone else to do it? Cannot I literally outsource and get somebody else to do this?
[00:22:18] Cannot I automate this to make it easier? Kind of delegate to someone to get it done, kind of discipline it. And if we put that as a program in your mind, that runs every time you consider and, and the trigger is, I’m procrastinating. I’m not doing it. The trigger is I’m feeling overwhelmed. The trigger is people don’t listen to me.
[00:22:33] It’s bang. That’s when you told it. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed learning this framework, discovering it. This river runs deep. We can really go a lot deeper on this and show you these specifics of how do you set up training in your business? How do you set up outsourcing? How do you go deeper into this to make sure that you.
[00:22:49] Execute with true efficiency. And if you wanna find out more about how we can help you grow your business, go over to the description and click the link, book a call with our team and we’ll have a really good chat with you about how we get you to the next level. I wanna say a big thank you for watching and I look forward to seeing you on another episode of the box very soon.