How To Get Leverage Without Hiring More

Hey, this is Shoran Trevaz. Welcome back to the Business School Podcast. In this episode, I'm going to show you how to get massive leverage. You don't have to take a course, read a book, or go put massive effort into something else. I'm going to show you a simple three-step formula on how you can get the most nuanced things out of your head without a lot of effort and get your team to work for you, get AI to work for you, and just by listening to this three-step process, you will easily be able to run more things on autopilot without you being involved. Therefore, you can be happier, your team can work without you, and you can stop being the bottle like in your business, and you can make way more money and have more time. I'm going to break it all down step by step on how to get more leverage without hiring a new person starting right now. One thing is for certain. Just because it's tried and true doesn't mean it's working right now. So the big question is this. Where can you learn what is working right now? The strategies, the tactics, the psychology, and the exact how to. How to go your business. How to blow up your personal brand and supercharge your personal growth. That is the question, and this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Sharon Tribata, and welcome to Business School. So the topic for today is leverage. Now what is leverage? I think every business owner wants more of leverage, more output. They want more freedom. They want more stuff getting done without every small thing coming back to you or to me. And when I think when people think about leverage, they think normally they think more about hiring. They think that, "Hey, I need another assistant or I need another salesperson or I need another ops person or I need someone to take this something of my plate." Right? Sometimes yes, I think sometimes yes, that's true. But a lot of times I'm going to wait here that a new hire or getting someone new in your business actually is to show you the real problem that you have. Because let me, let me present the two. If everything is still in your head, which is normal for a lot of high achievers like you, the new person becomes one more person who needs you to give them stuff. Right? They need, I don't know, they need your notes. They need your judgment. They need the workflow that you have. They need the edits that you're going to make. They need your taste because only you can design it that way. They need it, they need your idea of what good looks like because you have to define what good looks like because you do what good looks like. So I've been thinking, so the better question to ask is, how do you get more leverage before you hire somebody or how do you make the business easier to run? Maybe with the team that you already have because picture this idea. How do you turn your brain into a playbook? Right? So that's kind of like the big idea for today. So let's first define leverage. What is leverage? Leverage means getting more output from the same effort or that's probably a decent definition. So I mean, you do the work once and then the work that work keeps doing the work again after you. Like that's cool, right? So like, for example, if you explain a task to your assistant one time, that means you're getting help from somebody else. And if you turn that same task into some kind of SOP that your assistant can use every week. Now that's leverage because you don't have to do that again. If you write a awesome client email one time, that is work that you did. Yeah, good job. Right? But if you turn that, I don't know, email into a skill on Clawed that your team can use over and over again. Now, that is leverage because you created an asset. If you handle a client call, well, you're awesome. You got the charisma. That's the skill. Well done. So what that call and you use it to train the next, I don't know, three people, then that is leverage, which is super cool. So the easier way to kind of do is invert this like what is not leverage and what is not leverage when you put more hours in is that not leverage. I think more hours is just more hours, right? Doing the same task faster is just doing it faster. Doing more hours is just doing more hours hiring someone who still needs you. And for every step of the way, just creates another inbox for you to manage another inbox for data management them for them to not feel fulfilled that you're actually like not letting them do their best work. It's like buying a tool or a piece of software without teaching it your way of doing something like if you took AI out of the box and you didn't train it, then it would now it creates more work for everybody. And I think the real leverage is when your work becomes reusable, when your work becomes re-useful in a lot of ways. So I think that's a really good thing. And I think this is how you get leverage before you have to forcefully hire somebody. And if you think about it, like I like to internally call name things for myself. I call this the reusable work. How do you create reusable work? And there's three parts to it. And I'm going to give you the parts that you can just organize it in your brain. Part number one is you build your playbook. Part number two is you write the win. And the part number three is to show the gold standard, right? Now, you don't remember any of this. I'm going to walk it through it right now. So let's get the first one, which is build your playbook. The idea is pretty simple. Your weekly work is just raw material. If you think about it that way. Meaning anything that you do, I don't know, once, twice or three times becomes a part of this playbook. Now, think about your week. The way you get ready for a sales call, the way you prepare for the next week, the way you send a weekly update, the way you look at a deal, the way you write a proposal, the way you bring on a new client, the way you handle a complaint, the way you respond to an email when somebody gets mad, the way you follow up when someone goes dark or someone needs a nudge. All of that, you think is random work because you do it naturally, but that is how your business runs. Your business runs on an operating system, which is you. And for most business owners, it's all stuck in their head. So what happens when the whole playbook of your business is stuck in your head, you become the playbook, you are the playbook, you are the thing. And you don't want to be the thing because if you are the thing, then you can't grow the business. You can't find peace. You can't get time and you'll work until you die. And this sounds fine until you want someone to help. And then you get frustrated when you hire someone to help because they still need your brain because you are the playbook. You can grow, but now what? Now you have to teach more people and you're like, man, I would just rather do this myself. You can take a day off, but someone's total talk takes you, slacks you, emails you. I'll tell you something crazy. I had this happen with a memo I was writing for my team. So like every week I was writing the same thing over and over again. And I would go into AI. I would explain the same thing over and over again. I would say, hey, here's the memo that I want. Here's a tone I want you to use it. Here's a format from last week. Here are the rules. Don't use like m dashes and a bunch of these other things. Here are the mistakes you need to avoid. And I did that over and over again. I'm like, this is dumb. This is dumb. I kept asking the same things over and over again because it was just easy for me to hit the whisper button and just talk to it. But then I was like, all right, I am looking at this recipe from my memory every time to make, I don't know, but I'm putting. And even though I could have just written this whole recipe card one time and fed it into AI. I literally stopped. I was so frustrated. I stopped. I spent 10 minutes and I used, and I was like, what if I had to create this reusable version where if I could not do this thing again? So I tried to build the prompt. I figured out the rules. I wrote the format. I did a few samples and then I just told AI, what did the last chat and I'm like, yeah, I gave you everything, right? I don't want to do this again. And I want you to give me this entire package that you, that I can just give you one time the next time I'm working on so that I don't have to read input all of this. It was there. I didn't have to do any of the extra work. I just went back to the same chat and I said, I just don't want to do all of this again. Package is all up for me. And what did do that? I think that's true leverage. It made something reusable and that was making your playbook. All right. So if I would call you out on something, I would ask one big question, which is, it's really hard for you to do. What did you do this week that you also did last week? Think about that. And if you just start there, that is one tiny workflow. You don't need to try to write a whole, I don't know, company manual and put it on a website and creative, you know, I don't know, a learning system. You don't have to do any of that. What is one thing that you did this week that you also did last week? It's probably just one task or one workflow or one thing that you keep doing every single week. Can you just turn that into a playbook? That way someone can read and be like, ah, I know exactly what's around it. I can run this overall. Now you may say, well, so how do I do that? You know, it's all in my head. Now I'll give you a couple ideas. One, you can record your screen while you're doing it and just ask AI to turn it into steps. Two, you can have your assistants sit with you if you're there, if your assistants remote, just get her, him or her remote, share your screen and do the whole thing. By the way, I've done this before. I literally said, but to my assistant, hey, I'm going to share my screen with you. I don't want you to say anything. You can record my computer. And if anytime I am doing something that you don't understand why I'm doing it, you can say, hey, she's on an ask. But otherwise, I just want you to see exactly how I'm doing the thing. And I just had her watch me do the thing. You may think that's crazy, but they can watch and learn. And they just, she just watched me do the whole thing. She had it recorded. And she was able to do exactly what I did, which was crazy. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't even have to record her video. I didn't even talk. I just did the thing. And then she interrupted me a couple of times and asked me a question. But she just watched me do the whole thing. And the crazy part here was I just moved her camera outside so I didn't even see her there. I just kept working. And she saw me do the whole thing. I also think you can just ask someone on your team to write what they think the steps are. And then you look at their draft and you just fix the draft. That way, you don't have to do any work. I do this offered by the way. This is the other way. I just go for a walk. Bye. Open my voice recorder on my phone and I just literally describe what I'm doing out loud and then when I come back I just take the transfer to that and I just have yeah make it into steps But whenever I go for a walk somehow I can think about it a lot more clearly and I could just talk it out loud completely And those are the ways that I think about just taking the idea out of my head and actually making it a playbook of sorts because How else are you gonna do it otherwise right and so you may say oh Archron? I'm willing to go for a walk I'm willing to like do the thing But it's really weird for me when I have to like explain the thing. How do I you know? Is there a playbook for that? So no, I'm gonna give you a playbook of a playbook like really matter concept here, right? So the thing that I think about is I just follow it sequentially so Here's a couple questions that you can use by the way the transcript of this video is gonna be in my show notes But I first think I'm like what do I do first? What do I look for? What do I avoid? What makes this good? What makes this bad? Right, I'm just thinking about that. Hey like what do I do first? What do I do second? Cool? What's not good? What's good? What makes this bad and I just asked those questions and that makes it a lot easier because that's the raw material right so that would someone knows Exactly what makes it good what makes it bad how to start something and that's really good because if it stays in your head There's nothing to hand off and there's only like what do you hand off you handed to yourself doing it again next week And that's terrible. You shouldn't do that. So let's not do that right cool. So you got the first one, which is like build a playbook Second one this is called right the win and now what do I mean by right the win? This is one of my favorite ways to actually make something powerful come to life. So so let me walk you through it I don't know if you do this but we do something called an end of week report So I have all the executives that you know kind of reported to me turn on end of week report and that is just there's a couple of questions that they answer so I know what they did by the end of the week and My so normally what people do is they look back on their week and they break down what they did that week that makes sense It's an end of week report my my challenge for you would be write your end of week report before the week starts for example on Sunday or Friday for the next week. You're like hey, these are the things I'm going to accomplish next week So if you write your end of week report like you've already completed it then Something magical happens because you've already said that you've done the thing. So you will prioritize doing the thing so before You're just gonna already look like what you're gonna deliver on Friday and most people will get to Friday and say What happened this week? I want you to get to Friday with like hey? I already did the thing and so what you prioritize in the week is You're like man. I already wrote this in my report. By the way, I'll tell you where I learned this when I was When I first got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes my doctor told me something He said and he's running so kind of figure out what you're gonna eat and In the moment or look at the menu etc. He's like on the next day in your app like I was using My fitness power something I can remember. He said just log your food For tomorrow today, and I was like what do you mean? I've not eaten it. He's like that's right Just you know what you're gonna eat make a commitment for what you're gonna eat and already log it in your app And if you already logged tomorrow's food today Then you've already accepted that you're gonna eat that same thing tomorrow So you won't deviate from what you're gonna do And it was important for me because I'd to manage my glucose because I was just diagnosed with type 1 diabetes And I'd like manage with the insulin etc So I didn't want it like Veroe from it So that one thing just writing already writing it into the app inputting it to the app what I'm going to do tomorrow Made it amazing because I was like wow I'm not gonna go back and change it so I'd already committed to doing this thing And so if you like I would say on my end of week report Hey, I followed up with this prospect. I handled this pricing and I got a yes or no And I would just write it in the report that way. I know that that's what I'm gonna do that week and It's really good because it makes you Already pre-commit to the thing that you're you're going to do and so like when you start on Monday You know exactly what you're gonna do on Tuesday if someone is trying to like Where you away from your goal? You're not gonna do it because you already know what you're gonna do that week So before the week starts to I don't make your week go crazy If you have pre-decided what you're gonna deliver that week you have no choice but to deliver on what you already said that you were going to do So you pre-write your end of week report for yourself which is insane, right? So you may say like sure on how do you actually do this? I would not overthink this one. What'd you get done? That's it just ask the question what you get done and now you pre-write what you're gonna get done because then you will Reprioritize your week to actually do that thing which is insanely powerful now You may say well, so I'm a solo operator. I'm a founder like I don't you know I don't have anybody to do this. This is how I would do it Opening new chat in AI and say hey, you're my end of week report partner I'm gonna give you my and just tell them exact tell the chat exactly what you're doing Give that person the end of the week report that you're gonna do and then just check in every day And then go back to the end of week and say yes, I did I didn't do it to at least you have a way to stay accountable because the best part is it Access a forcing function for your prior for prioritization during the week Otherwise your week will drift and you will just write your end of week report on what you did as opposed to writing your end of week report And what you should have done easiest hack will crush for you overall all right last but not least part three is to show the goal standard and Here's a big idea people cannot Copy or make it reusable what they have never seen so you have to define what good looks like meaning your team is not gonna be able to Match up your energy or the or I don't know the thing that you want in your head if you never show them what they look like in your head And I think this is a Really terrible thing for business owners because they get mad when someone on the team doesn't get it right The if the report is wrong or the email is doesn't feel right or the client call feels messy or the follow up is too slow or like the The proposal is not like formatted cleanly and then the boss thinks that hey Why didn't they get it but the real question if you think about it is did you show them what good looks like? Because telling someone is I don't know super weak compared to showing someone so if you tell someone make it more professional What does that mean if you say beam warmer with your clients? What does that mean if you say send a better recap? What does that mean and I think that you as the owner you you have taste? I guess you have judgment you you know what good feels like the team doesn't know They don't know what good feels like they don't know what you want and then everybody gets annoyed and then the boss you think that Everybody should have known and you don't believe in like getting anybody to do anything anymore And so the answer is really simple show the gold standard if you want a memo written a certain way Give them a memo that is already written that way so that they can model to it and just say hey Follow this follow this is a model if you want a client call handle a certain way Record a call where you did it that way and say follow it this way if you want a proposal to look a certain way Do it one time send the best one that you have to them and say follow it this way if you want to I don't know follow up with a certain tone Tell them three four five examples of exactly what the words are based on the tone and they would do it exactly for you Just like you would give AI those recommendations you need to give your team those exact same recommendations You have to show them what good looks like it I think about this way. It's like You go to an ice cream store and you get a sample of the ice cream well the samples Teach the person significantly what to do better than just looking at the ice cream Flavor through the glass right the sample is the big idea and this is super important when someone joins your team for the first time The best time to show somebody what good looks like is before they build any habits that you have to what fix later Why would you do that if time has already passed? I you know I get it if time has already passed and you have not done it You can still reset the conversation and so the best time to fix something is when they started the second best time to fix something is right now So you just take responsibility if somebody breaks something if somebody does something that you don't like the easiest way to fix that is for you to take responsibility Hey, oh my gosh Jenny wrote that email and I didn't like that. It is my fault I need to show her what good looks like and then you say hey Jenny You're awesome you write great emails, but I have not done a good job of showing you exactly how I think how we can write emails in My voice to to make it easy for the client would it be okay if I showed you three examples of how I'd like it done and Maybe you can do that going forward. That's it right that is your defining what good looks like up front Which is so perfect that is a gold standard. That's what you want to call out I don't think I need to talk about this anymore, but the fact is this it's super simple all you have to do is if someone is not doing something the way you want it Just take responsibility for it. That's it because then you can say hey I'm going to take responsibility. I'm going to show them what I'm going to define what good looks looks like and once they have that They will do it the same exactly alright So if you want more leverage in your business, please please please think about this concept of reusable work How can you reuse work that you've already done because we know what leverage means was leverage leverage means getting more output from the same effort So I talked about three things today number one bill your playbook, which is take it out of your head number two Write the win first or write the end of week report first that way you can prioritize your week accordingly and number three Show them the gold standard meaning define what good looks like. Hey, so I hope this is helpful to you If you have a team member, please send this to them because then they can hold you accountable to getting things out of your head And they're like yes, finally Listen to this shuangai. He's weird, but like he knows what he's talking about because he can get you to leverage me more Which is exactly what we want overall alright if you like this can you do me a favor please? Can you one send somebody on your team that can help you but more importantly can you take a screenshot of this episode and tag me That you like this and I can make more like this for you So please take a screenshot of this episode if you liked it and tag me and I can make more like this for you Especially when you have more time to get more leverage Hey, this is shuan. I have an awesome free gift for you just for listening to the podcast as you may know I've got a chance to build two billion dollar companies a hard way So if you liked this episode you will love getting the exact playbooks from those wins It's on my sub stack called my next billion. It has the exact frameworks I wish someone had given me when I was figuring it all out now You get the real lessons from the trenches as they go for a three-peat and build the next billion so everything's free at my next billion dot com please check it out. Mynexbillion.com.