The life of an employee:
You go out and hunt every single day. You’re constantly being encouraged to sprint here and accomplish this next project. When the opportunities arise you sprint even faster to go out and kill and bring back food to the rest of the company (the owners).
Every two weeks the business owner gives you enough food for you to feed your family and then he keeps the rest for himself.
You keep hunting daily and you keep getting paid every other week. If you stop hunting you stop getting paid and your family gets hungry until you start hunting again… even though your last kill was more than enough food to feed your family for 6 months.
The life of a business owner:
You have a team of lions in your company. They hunt daily while you sit on a rock. If you’re in a good business and you have good hunting grounds your employees bring back a lot of food each time they hunt. More than they could possibly eat.
You get all of the food and throw it in a pile (your bank account). Every two weeks you hand out enough food (money) to each hunter (employee) for them to feed their families and stay excited about waking up to hunt (work) again tomorrow.
At the end of the month there is excess money and you get to hold on to it to do with as you please.
You continue to sit on a rock, playing golf or traveling or whatever you want.
And here’s the kicker:
Every now and then a big opportunity comes about… A gazelle in the field that is too big and too fast for your employees to chase down and kill. And you have a choice…
Do you get off the rock and go out in the field to (try to) kill the gazelle or are you happy enough just sitting around?
Does the gazelle look fun to chase and the reward look big enough to get you excited?
Good. Let’s go.
You hop off the rock and you sprint. You work your ass off for a few weeks or a few months and you kill the gazelle and you capitalize on the opportunity. Your team grows and your business gets better and you gain a competitive advantage. All of the sudden your hunters got better tools, instead of bows they’re using high powered rifles. They are more effective and more efficient and they’re bringing back more money.
Your leverage is increasing and your business is getting more valuable. It is an asset.
Then you sit back and the hunters collect even more money each day. You give them each a slice of it every 2 weeks. And your pile grows and grows and grows and you do whatever you want (sit on a rock).
This is how leverage grows and grows and your time can become more and more powerful. You do something, explore an opportunity, or seize a competitive advantage and your entire team can piggy back on that and execute your plan. They are extensions of you.
You’re learning new hunting styles and claiming new fertile hunting ground and your army of hunters begin to produce.
Note: Not all business owners have this leverage. Many are sprinting around daily solving problems and putting out fires. Their employees depend on them every day. They can’t go on vacation and they can’t step away. They are the bottleneck in their own business. They aren’t business owners, they own a job.
The beginning isn’t so sexy:
A note that it doesn’t start off this way.
I see far too many entrepreneurs try to put the cart before the horse and try to sit back on the rock when they’re just getting started. They have no turf (fertile hunting ground) and no skill (hunting ability or tools) so you have to go out and figure it out.
You are the hunter.
In the beginning you can’t just hire employees to go out and execute while you have no idea what they’re supposed to be doing.
So you work it.
I moved the first 1,000 boxes at my moving company. I underwrote the first 500 self storage facilities at my RE PE firm. I made the first 1,000 cold calls to potential sellers. I took the first 500 investor meetings. I spoke with and negotiated with the banks on the first 5 loans.
Today I don’t do any of those things. But I didn’t sit on the rock in the beginning. I was the hunter.
It’s a process. You put in the work. You learn the skills. You build the leverage…
THEN you delegate once the hunting ground is located and the skills are transferable and your employees can be trained to hunt and kill fairly quickly.
Onward and upward,
Nick