I’d rather have 1% of the effort of 100 men than 100% of my own effort.
– J. Paul Getty
You can’t leverage every aspect of your life. There are limits to this tool.
For example, you still have to do your own pushups if you want to get in shape. The only person who can play the husband role with my wife is me (or we’re both in trouble). Only I can be a daddy to my children. Only I can take care of my health, write my books and courses, and interview for media appearances. I can’t leverage any of these activities.
But the number of roles and tasks in your life that can be leveraged greatly exceeds the limited number of roles that can’t. Deciding which roles to isolate and leverage depends on your interests, and on the skills and resources you bring to the table. You must identify your strengths and your weaknesses to know what work is best completed by you and what should be delegated.
For example, I have leveraged my financial knowledge over and over again in each business throughout my lifetime. That was unique to me, but yours will likely be different.
The principle you’ll apply is to identify which high leverage activities make sense based on your skills and interests. You do this by identifying what things you, and only you, must do. Then you have someone else do the rest – because you’ll achieve more, better, faster results through delegation and partnering. It also frees up your time and energy to focus on your strengths and gifts.
For example, I’m the only one with the expertise to write this book and create my courses. But other people can edit, produce, and market those products. Other people can do accounting, answer certain emails, and do any other task that isn’t absolutely essential for me to complete.
One of the great entrepreneurial mistakes is falling prey to what Chris Ducker called the “Super-Hero Syndrome.” It’s a self-limiting belief built around the cultural notion of self-reliance that you can do it yourself better, or easier, or cheaper. You can’t!
If your goals are wealth and freedom, the only way you can have both together is with the help of others. If you think you can’t afford to get various types of assistance to accelerate your results, then you probably can’t afford not to, and the real holdback is simply not knowing how to do it right.
You have to decide what your highest and best value is to the implementation of your wealth plan and then delegate the rest. If you can’t deliver more value than what an employee in your organization costs then you don’t deserve more than a normal wage because you have nothing worth leveraging. Harsh words, but it’s also the honest truth.
You must identify the unique knowledge, systems, and abilities you can deliver that should be leveraged through employees and business systems to maximize the value you deliver to the world.
You can’t know everything. My general rule is that if specialized technical knowledge is required, then it should probably be delegated. For example, all of my website programming and development at FinancialMentor.com is delegated to an expert who does nothing but focus on that skill all day, every day. Similarly, you shouldn’t write your own legal contracts or perform your own brain surgery. Professionals specializing in these skills will always know more about their field of expertise than you could ever learn.
The point is you should only do what is absolutely necessary for you to do – where you are the required expert with the necessary skill. You’ll never be the best at everything, so let other people shine by demonstrating their expertise. Make yourself unnecessary everywhere possible so you can focus your limited time on those few areas where you’re truly necessary.
Don’t be a super-hero and try to do everything yourself. It’s a fool’s game because when you’re the cog, then you’re the clog. There’s always more to be done than any one person can do. The more you try to do by yourself, the more you’ll just slow your progress and place a ceiling on how successful you can become.
The smart strategy is to identify those tasks that only you can complete, and delegate the rest. Focus your limited time on the few activities where you’re absolutely essential. Let others shine by doing everything else, thus leveraging other people’s time to accomplish more while focusing your limited time on just the highest value activities requiring your attention.
Download the time tracking spreadsheet that is part of your free exercise workbook found at https://financialmentor.com/free-stuff/leverage-book.
The purpose of this exercise is to identify and categorize how you spend your time, so you can pinpoint specific tasks that are either low value and should be delegated, or could be better performed by someone else with specialized skills.
The idea is: you should only do what produces the highest and best value for your time and what matches your special skill set.
Most people track their time using either an app on their smartphone or writing everything on a sheet of paper. The key is to tabulate all activities down to 30-minute intervals for at least two weeks.
You will probably be able to identify many activities that consume your precious time but provide little financial return. Some may be necessary, but you may be able to eliminate others. Also, look for tasks that don’t take full advantage of your talents. These tasks can usually be organized into standard operating procedures (SOP’s) and delegated to someone whose skills perfectly match the task.
The way you do this is by examining items 1, 3, 4, 5 and 7 above as potential delegation targets. These are the obvious activities to get off your plate.
Next, figure out how you can allocate more productive time to work on items 2 and 6. How can you design your wealth plan so those activities are your focus going forward?