Episode #40
Working remotely enables you to have time for yourself, to have your own personal development and let go of control knowing things are going to work out while you are away. Having tools in place will help you track your business outcomes and will give you peace of mind while having that personal time for yourself.
Technology nowadays enables you to work on your businesses remotely while doing things that you love, doing your hobbies and having quality time with your loved ones.
There are countless available communication channels in the world that you can use to connect with the people you are working with. Aside from this, it is also important that your company has a structure and KPIs in place to serve as a guide for the staff to perform efficiently. Having these tools allows them to be in the driver’s seat while you are away and let your business serve your life.
Make sure that your team understands the goal of your company clearly. Assign people who will monitor outputs and performances based on their KPIs. You should hire the right people in order for you to easily find the key people you can delegate responsibilities to and to be able to lead your business remotely while doing the things that you want and will make you happy.
In this episode you will learn :
- How you can run your business successfully, working less than 10 hours a week
- How to run your business remotely
- The tools that can help you run your business remotely
- Importance of technology in running a business
- Importance of communication and teamwork
- Importance of KPIs and organization structure in place
- Letting your business serve your life
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Episode Transcript
Tim Matthews 0:03
Not everybody wants to lead those companies remotely and work a few hours, and some guys get significance from being busy. That’s cool if that’s what you want to do. I know for me, that’s not my aim. Because there’s a whole world out there, I’d love to explore many interests that I’d love to get into. Life is meant to be lived.
Doug Holt 0:25
Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man show. I am your host, Doug Holt, with my co-host, Tim “The Powerful Man” Matthews. Tim, how’s it going? Brother?
Tim Matthews 0:39
Yeah, very well, very well. Indeed. This is interesting. Stood aside, have you recorded a podcast episode that is moving back and forth. Because obviously, I’m here. For The Alpha Reset. We traveled there today. Now Yeah, I’m doing well. I’ve been here a couple of days, recovered, go over the fly hit in the gym. Always good. Had some amazing lobster last night, the best lobster of my life. So good.
Doug Holt 1:04
It’s great. So, Tim, we are here; we are heading towards The Alpha Reset up in the mountains, which will be great. I think we have nine men coming in total. So one of the topics we talked about over lobster dinner was how we run our businesses remotely; that conversation comes up. We’re running companies, and we’re working on an average week; we calculate out about 10 hours a week, on average, to get the businesses up and to run. So let’s share that with the listener some of that conversation, making them kind of a fly on the wall. What are some of the topics you think that most men want to know about?
Tim Matthews 1:41
I think what technology, what technology they can use to run their businesses remotely because a lot of the guys when we work with them don’t have many systems in place. A lot of it is not in place to look at it and lead it from any time and anywhere in the world. Anyone can access it as well. So the technology for one, and then also the leadership at a team having clear roles, responsibilities, KPIs, and accountability in place, so that everyone is very clear on the outcome of their role within the organization, and how that comes together as a team to achieve as a team, the end goal. They also communicate as the leader, rather than just getting lost in the house all the time.
Doug Holt 2:37
Awesome, awesome. So when we think about that, I’ve been running my teams remotely for a very long time. One of the keys for me with managing remotely that I found one, obviously is delegation but is managing those KPIs and having a place to go to look at this. So as a business owner, often, we talk about this a lot that you should be journaling, going through what we teach The Activation Method, and we call it the coil, going through your coil, and knowing what the plan is. But most business owners feel like they’re just putting out fires, they don’t have control of their schedules, they wake up their money or their morning commonly, and someone has taken over their lives. The key was being able to manage multiple companies or multiple teams remotely. Do it in a very efficient manner is knowing the health checkup of your business, knowing what moves the needle in the business rather than just tasks. So knowing what those are now, for many businesses, it’s going to be cashflow sales, but what are the critical drivers to those numbers, whereas you can take a snapshot in time of your business and know exactly what its health is. I’m making sure you do that. So we talked about technology, or you mentioned that. Some of the things that I use, use project management software, which is pretty common, I use teamwork. I’ve been using it for over a decade now. To run all the companies and easily, we can push a button and see how all the projects are moving forward. The projects can be small, and they can be big tasks. You can see who’s behind, who’s ahead, billable hours, non-billable hours. There are easy ways to calculate efficiencies in the business. Tim, were some of the tools you share with them, instead of just talking about some of the tools we use within The Powerful Man to manage the movement.
Tim Matthews 4:22
Yeah, so what, However, what you’re talking about teamwork, and he said about tasks and not getting lost in the tasks and seeing the outcomes because it’s key, isn’t it when you run in the company. There’s so much going on for you to be able to be clear and focused with the outcomes each day. for us, one of the key elements of that, especially with having a team there’s all over the world spanning time zones from Cyprus, which is two hours ahead of the UK across to the west coast of the US, which is eight hours behind the UK. So as well as having teamwork, it’s having to communicate And channels like voxer., I think that’s a great tool for us, the communication hierarchy we use within The Powerful Man. So voxer is what we use to send messages voice notes exclusively, some texts, but mainly voice notes. We want a quick response; he’s it’s kind of like it’s important, but not urgent, is voxer. So then beneath that is where we use Slack, we have different channels within slack that we have an example of the channels would be the leadership team, The Activation Method, The Alpha Reset, The Brotherhood marketing, sales the different people within the team are in the different channels so that within now we can then, upload files, links to Google Drive, different methods, different means of communication, where we can all keep it in one place.
So, for example, we might check on voxer, and the leadership channel or the leadership team check their one thing for that day. Then check out at the end of the day what they have accomplished. that then enables the company’s leader to be able to go about their business having the peace of mind that they know what’s going on, on a very loose ball. So firm enough level, whereby if anything does require further looking in, they can then dive into something like slack, or something like teamwork, but one of the keys here, in my opinion, Doug for this to work well, is to have those KPIs for the people within the organization we have worked with many men who have generated have a company that generates millions of pounds a year, yet, they don’t have any structure within the company in your KPIs. What that means is although someone’s task may be to check teamwork and pull up that report, like you’re talking about, and of course, they may do that task. But another layer to that is someone being responsible for making sure that those tasks are completed on time. So the one or two KPIs, there might be the number of outstanding tasks or the percentage of lead tasks, and the number of tasks brought to completion. It’s key to have somebody reporting on responsible for those two KPIs so that you can ensure that teamwork is used in a way that’s going to drive the business forward. Not only that, it’s going to be used in a way whereby it gives you the owner of the company, the leader of the company, the peace of mind, to then be able to go and enjoy your life without stressing about work. So you can deepen the connection with the people you love, invest in your health, and have time doing the things you love as well.
Doug Holt 8:05
Well, that’s the key. So, recently, I took everybody knows a couple of months traveled across the United States and Canada. Before that, I took a little over a month off, and I went to Alaska. During that time, my businesses all grew and increased in revenue and everything else, and the team managed that effectively. During that time, I didn’t have Wi-Fi and very spotty self-service, if any. So by having these in place, and having the team understand what the mission is of the businesses, right, so having a leadership team in each company, and knowing what those KPIs are and what those KPIs meant to them. Now, we talked about KPIs. For some of you, that might sound weird, and those are key performance indicators. Another way to think about that is goals, right, or metrics that tell you the health of your business; you’re trying to hit a target. So a KPI and your health might be dropping 10 pounds, or being at 180 pounds it is a key performance indicator, and you’re at 180 now, and, you go up the scale, and you end up at 190. That’s a red flag for you. So knowing those KPIs, and having your team know those KPIs, allows them to be in the driver’s seat. Effectively what you get to do once you’ve managed yourself, right, once you’ve taken care of yourself and your own, you’re your person, as the leader of the team, you effectively can coach them to do the same and take ownership of the business.
That’s where having a stack, right a software suite or a stack available to you for communication channels. So at The Powerful Man, we have emergency channels, and then we have general channels. The difference would be one is if I want to send a message to Tim, about an idea or about something that one of the men is going through, but it’s not an emergency, something that I would expect him to get back to me and maybe 48 hours or so. We have one channel for that. But then something might come up where maybe a man is facing a certain issue. That I’m working with and maybe there I don’t have time or I feel Tim is better suited for this example or one of our other master coaches, then I’m able to jump to another channel, which is kind of all hands on deck when that alarm bell fires, everybody answers and jumps right to it. So having that hierarchy of communication is critical to allow you to monitor your businesses and give you that peace of mind because that’s the thing I find Tim with least for me. Most business owners that we coach are a lot of its that peace of mind, it’s detaching, letting go of control, knowing things are going to work out. Having these systems in place is mission-critical.
Tim Matthews 10:42
Yeah, it is without them that happens, you just feel like you are holding everything to do with your business in your head, and that’s why you didn’t get laid in bed at night and your mind’s racing. You struggled to switch off your emails going all the time, and the phone’s pinging. He would just become very reactive without knowing your business is not serving your life. Your life isn’t serving your business. I’m sure that is not why you’re going to business on day one; I’m sure it wasn’t to ever be able to switch off from your business, always be stressing about it. Having it then affect the relationship with your wife and your kids, you go on holiday takes you days to relax and come down, enjoy yourself. Before it, you’re back at business, back in your business. So having these communication hierarchies and having the opportunity and ownership for the people on your team through things like KPIs and team meetings, how you conduct those, as a leader of the companies is important. So again, just imagine this for a second, you as the leader of the company you’re the one that tends to take the biggest risk risks, you’re the one, well aware, everything all the responsibility falls on to Now, what if you were in a position whereby you knew that you were able to go away, tomorrow, you’ve got the money there, you’ve got the freedom now your businesses come around from anywhere, anytime, and anyone can access them., tomorrow, you want to just treat your family to a short break away. So you look at some flies you want to go to Italy, you look the best place to go at this time of year, book a flight to Rome, and you just got out for a long weekend., you fly on Wednesday. You’re able to do that because your team will be checking in with you through something like voxer once a day morning so you can hear what that one thing is within a few minutes.
They’re going to check in with you again. If you don’t hear anything from them throughout the day, then that everything is running smoothly. Then to proceed that right before you go away, you can have a staff meeting whereby everybody is reporting on their own KPIs, their rocks within the company, how they are progressing, how they are moving forward, and how the company’s moving towards the overall goals. Wow. You now have the structures in place. Also, you as a leader, like I think you said something key that Doug you as a leader then been able to coach and train your staff, empower them, basically and lead them Because ultimately people want to be let Doug, that people working for you and with you. They’ve partnered with you because they believe in you and want to be led by you. They see something within the company within the mission within whatever business you’re in. they like you, and they want to be led by you that requires you to show up as a leader that requires your cook to be full that requires you to be present. So all that energy that you then reclaim from not having to worry and stress about the business you can reinvest back into your development as a leader so that you can then empower your staffs that on the team meetings and in between times they then have the confidence and the clarity to be able to execute on their job with confidence. that confidence in trickles down throughout the team or the team members feel it. It’s just an amazing cycle to get in because you feel it they feel it company performs can just go on and go on. Also, if something isn’t if someone or something isn’t performing, then you can spot it a lot sooner rather than only realizing after the fact and no spine it to let in. before it. The ship has hit the iceberg, and the ship sinks, and he tried to plug the holes. Again, having the structures and leadership style in place enables you as a business leader to spot things sooner and empowers you and a business leader to lead your team in the company in the best way.
Doug Holt 15:03
Hey guys, I want to interrupt this episode because I want to talk to you about something important. We put together a case study on how almost 300 men have taken control of their lives and their 4x in their business revenues and have more connected intimate sex, all without sacrificing their relationships or health by using The Activation Method. Now, a lot of you have contacted us, and they want to know how they’re doing it. We put together this short 11-minute case study just for you. So you can see how these entrepreneurs are achieving this level of success. To get this case study, all you have to do is go over to ThePowerfulMan.com/bonus. Yep, that’s one, one. You can get the case study right now. All right, it’s only 11 minutes, and it’s going to show you exactly how these men have done it. Alright, let’s get back to the episode. Yeah, so when we’re going through the evidence, perfect, we’re saying, and we’re just touching on the tip of the iceberg here. The key when people ask me how I’ve done in the past, and how we do it, Tim, with a powerful man and the men that we coach, it all has to do with what I was taught by my mentors early on, is that a company can only grow as far and as high, so to speak, as the leadership team. This is why, when companies grow, they bring in CEOs, and founders start to bring in and hire CEOs and consultants. Because it’s up to us, as business leaders, leaders in our community, to continue to grow ourselves to continue to, to better ourselves, when I first started managing my companies with very little time, one key question I asked myself. We could do it with this because we’re using 10 hours, as the example is, if you only had 10 hours in a week, so you had a medical condition God forbid, or something happened to you, and you only had 10 hours, you couldn’t do 10 hours in one minute 10 hours is your cap? What would you do? And why?
And who could you delegate it to? So once you have that list, what I always ask is okay. Is any of this anything on my list for these 10 hours? Can any of it be delegated? Write truly delegated, oftentimes have to look at it multiple times? Because they’ll often say, well know, gee, I got to do it. So when you look at it multiple times, Do I have to do it, or Can somebody else step in for me, and I got to say, Tim, nine times out of 10, it can be delegated out. The owner is trying to maintain control to maintain quality because I like to do it or whatever else it may be. But we want to look at those things that we can give up to somebody who hopefully can do better than us, that means we’re hiring the right people who can do it better than us, and thus multiply our efforts. Then we can spend the remainder of our time developing ourselves. Now, when I say developing yourself as a leader, I’m not just saying your leadership skills. That’s very important. I mean, developing yourself as a person, taking care of your health, your wealth, yourself, and your relationships on top of your business is critical. Because you want to think of those as almost like pillars, holding you up and lifting you, they have to be strong. So if one does crumble for some reason, or something happens in your life, your health, or your relationships, for example, the other pillars are going to hold you strong while you’re building that back up. Because otherwise, what I’ve seen Tim, and let me know if you’ve seen this, is business owners make this jump. Oftentimes they do so with the skit with the tools, but, in the sense of having teamwork and things we’re talking about, but they haven’t done the mental work and the mental game. They’ve just focused on business, then all of a sudden, a relationship crumbles or their health gets something happens, and then all of a sudden, their whole world collapses. It forces them, if they’re lucky, it forces them to retreat into their business. Then they’re working that 80 hour week just to get things back in order if they can survive. But most of them aren’t even lucky to do that. Because they haven’t built a solid foundation. So the whole thing crumbles in front of them.
Tim Matthews 19:08
Yeah, so true. So true. It’s subsequently key., what does supersede you’ve been able to do this and lead your company and as a result, lead your life and have your business serve your life does come down to you being able to, first of all, walk the path personally, you got to be able to lead yourself personally before you can lead yourself professionally. Just it is., the more you reinvest that time and energy that you reclaim into yourself, the’s it’s huge. It is huge. He said a key thing there that the business will only grow as much as a business leader does. The business now very very rarely outgrows the business leader. So it’s, Yeah, key point.
Doug Holt 19:59
Yeah. So I think that’s one of the takeaways; when you look at this is, there are so many people out there you got the four-hour workweek that came out in like, what 2006 or so, or I can’t remember exactly when I first read that. We have all these books that talk about this idea of only working a few hours a week, but very few people out there living examples of how to do it, and not only how to do it, but do it successfully and sustainably., if you’re out there in your business or listening to this, and you want to give some examples, Tim, myself, and a number other than men in The Brotherhood are perfect living examples. We’ve done this for, gosh, seven, eight years now, something along those lines that are proven to work well. Along those times, what we’ve seen are a couple of trends, we touched on 1, you guys got to know your KPIs, or got to know what are those numbers that move the needle in your business and all departments, 2, is, do you have a solid leadership team in place? 3, is do? Or do you have a place where you can monitor everything that’s going on in your business? I like we call it a dashboard? Some people often call it a cockpit, whatever you want to name you to want to use. Finally, are you doing the work now, the personal development, as well as the business development? Still, the personal development to make sure that the legs on the table or the columns or the structure that’s holding you up in the areas of self, wealth, relationships, business, and health, are all strong, and you’re reinforcing those pillars.
So when you can wean away from your business or jump away from your business, you have that stability within yourself and elsewhere to move forward. So those are the keys guys that I want you to think about and consider as you start this journey or at least this idea, where are you investing in yourself as a leader? And where are you investing in your team? That’s something we haven’t touched on in this talk. These podcasts are short, and this is a conversation we have with a man over several days but are you investing in your team, your key people? If you’re, you’re passing on your baby, so to speak of your business, I spend a ton of money, and Tim does too. We do with The Powerful Man movement on developing the leaders in the team. That’s it. That’s one of our top investments, not only ourselves but also the other leaders and coaches within the team, developing them, developing their skill sets, and always sharpening the saw with them. These are key components to running a successful company.
Tim Matthews 22:27
Yeah, completely, completely. There’s a reason why within The Activation Method, we hold off until day three of The Alpha Reset to even dive into any of this. That’s quite simply because the guys aren’t ready. You must get the personal practices in place before you can even look at this. Otherwise, in life, he’s going to continue to serve your business. Another thing we’ve not touched on here, that we have spoken about in previous podcasts is the driving force beneath all of this as well, again, because none of this is going to work for you if you are operating from fear and the desire to prove and a lot of the other motives that we often see within the man believing that money is the answer. The more money you make. Your success has to be hard, all those kinds of things. The belief systems all come. First, it does. Not everybody wants this. Not everybody wants to lead that company remotely and work a few hours, and some guys get the significance from being busy. Some guys get significance from feeling like they’re in demand and that they are needed. That’s cool. If that’s what you want to do. I know for me, that’s not my aim., I’m all about business serving my life. Because there’s a whole world out there, I love to explore many interests that I love to get into. Life is meant to be lived.
Doug Holt 23:57
So true. So Tim is the reason we do what we do. It’s funny as we record this podcast, which is you guys got to be laughing. If you’re watching Tim and me change the setup here, we’re bouncing back and forth from the mic. But I’m looking out the window of this house that my wife and I were renting by the beach, and my son’s out there right now, with my wife in the rain. It’s kind of sprinkling, playing with trucks and dirt, and playing out there. We’re going to go out there and play too. Here we are during a workweek. This is what we do is what we choose to do, and the lifestyle we built. I can look out the window right now and know exactly why I’m doing what I’m doing. It’s a phenomenal thing to have. So, gentlemen, we’re wrapping this episode up. We’re excited about The Alpha Reset. Of course, by the time you guys listen to this, we will have about nine men that have gone through and made transformational changes, which is another reason why we do what we do. It’s just so much fun. I wish you guys could have been there amazing lobster dinner, and we talked about this for about an hour about how we do this and work with the men. So obviously, we can’t touch on all of it here in the podcast. But gentlemen, I’m going to implore you to go over to the Facebook group. Ask any questions that you have. I’ll monitor the Facebook group for a week after this podcast goes out. So many questions that you might have regarding managing your actual business remotely? I’m happy to jump on and answer I’m sure Tim is as well. We’ll get that wrapped up. So that’s another episode for us in the bag. I hope you guys have an amazing week, and we will see you over in The Activation Method Facebook.
