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Give Me 18 Minutes and Your Business Will Run Itself (From a 2X $100M+ Founder)
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Most entrepreneurs stay stuck because they secretly believe they have to do everything themselves. In this episode, Matt Clark — who owns three companies doing around $100M a year while running none of them — breaks down the five steps to building a business that grows without you. You’ll learn how to hire away the right work, install a real operator, and turn your company into an asset instead of a job.
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Transcript
Entrepreneurs' Mindset on Business Management
00:00:00
Speaker
There's one belief that keeps more entrepreneurs stuck than any other. They think that they have to do everything themselves. They think that they're the smartest person in the business, that only they can manage their finances, only they can do the marketing, only they can manage people, only they can manage the entire company.
00:00:16
Speaker
And I'm here to tell you that there's another way to do this and that you can free yourself up from running anything in your business while your businesses still scale.
Matt Clark's Business Strategy
00:00:25
Speaker
I'm Matt Clark and I own three businesses that do about $100 million dollars a year and I run zero of
Five Steps to Financial Independence
00:00:31
Speaker
them.
00:00:31
Speaker
In this video, I'm gonna show you the five steps to hitting your money-making goals while building a business that runs without you. So step number one is to remember what business really is. Now, if you're already running your own business, you probably have forgot long ago why you got into this thing in the first place. But I guarantee you a big part of your motivation in starting your business was to be able to make money without having to work so much.
00:00:55
Speaker
And yet here you are, probably working harder than you did as an employee, grinding away building your business. The whole point of a business, the reason it exists, sure, we can serve customers, we can make an impact, we can do a lot of good things, but at its very core, before you can do any of that sort of stuff, you've got to make profit. You've got to sell some stuff, and the amount you sell that stuff for has to be greater than the cost it takes you to make it and to deliver it. And that's the entire nature of business. And so when you take that simple formula, which a mentor used to literally had it on his sleeve of his shirt, said R minus C equals P, revenue minus cost equals profit.
00:01:34
Speaker
When you realize that, you're not the only person who can do that in business. There are other people who can fulfill all of those functions and have fulfilled all of those functions business. in other businesses. And so the first thing to remember is why you got into this thing in the first place. You wanted to be able to build a business that brought in money so that you didn't have to work so much.
Profit: The Core of Business
00:01:54
Speaker
And so the profit that business brings in you would reinvest some of it to keep growing that business, keep growing the machine. And then you take the other chunk of that profit and pay it out to yourself. Now, the way you build a more valuable business is to make more profit. Sounds simple, but a lot of times we get confused because we see these tech companies, you know, whether it's OpenAI or whoever getting valued at who knows how. Based on what they think the business is going to do in the future, not the profit it's producing today.
00:02:20
Speaker
But at the end of the day, the most sure way to build a successful business is to produce a lot of profit because you're going to be paid on a multiple of that profit. So the higher you can get that profit, the more your business is going to be worth. And ideally, that profit has to not be dependent on you as the owner.
00:02:36
Speaker
to run and produce that amount of profit. Otherwise, your business is going to be worth far less. So if you have a business that does a million dollars a year in profit, 100% dependent on you, maybe that business is worth anywhere from zero to maybe a million dollars. Now, if you have that same business and it's growing 15% to 20% a year and it's not dependent on you whatsoever and you have a repeatable structure and products and people that are working in your business that are growing it, then that business could be worth five, 10 times your annual profit, $5 to $10 million, dollars or potentially even more, depending on the industry and the type of the business and how well it's growing. So first thing to do, remember why you got in business in the first place. And the whole goal is to bring in more than what it costs you to deliver and service those sales.
Freeing Time by Delegating Small Tasks
00:03:21
Speaker
Step number two is to get rid of the small stuff. And so this is the stuff a lot of times we want to hire away first anyways, which is great. And so I remember when I was first building my business, I left my investment banking job. And my business was only doing, you know, three grand or so in profit per month. But I was like, you know, just...
00:03:37
Speaker
inundated with customer service requests i was doing phone customer service email chat customer service everything you could possibly imagine and i was like the only way i'm ever going to keep growing this thing is like because i can't spend more hours on this physically there there's no more hours left in the day because have to hire somebody so i basically took my profit almost down to zero and i hired a guy uh kyle off of craigslist and he had just moved to austin from arizona And was looking for a job and ended up being a great employee. And so he took over all of that stuff while I could keep focused on growing the business. So first thing, hire away the small stuff. And the way you know what that small stuff is, is I recommend doing this about every six months, but do a two-week time log.
00:04:16
Speaker
Literally open a Google Sheet or spreadsheet and log every single thing that you do. Yeah.
00:04:28
Speaker
talking with people doing customer service you know stuff outside of work stuff outside of business working out all that kind of stuff so you can see where your time actually goes now it's interesting to look at that stuff from your personal standpoint because when you say you're working hard you may not really be working that hard But more importantly for this case is you want to look at where your time is going in your business. If you're spending two hours a day on customer service or product design or graphic design or web development or whatever, then that's the stuff that if you can hire somebody to do it as well, if not better, do it. That's going to be the first thing to free
Investing in Quality Employees
00:05:00
Speaker
yourself up. And one tip I have for you that took me a while to learn is to pay for quality. And so I would much prefer have, you know, a $20 an hour us based customer service person than to have, you know, some $5, $7 an hour person overseas. That's just a nightmare to manage. It's a whole nother job to manage them I'd rather hire the US person than let them hire and manage those people because that's going to free up way more time than you managing, you know, 52 people overseas when you can pay one person to do a good job, build the systems and let them manage those kind of people. And I learned this lesson because almost anything is possible when you hire good, high-quality people. We've put on some events that would have as many as 3,000 people live, usually in Vegas.
00:05:44
Speaker
And people would ask me, Matt, you know how did you how did you learn how to do those events? I was like, all I did was I went to one event that I liked. And I liked the quality. I liked the production. I liked everything. And I hired their event manager. And I hired their production team that does all the lighting and sound and all that kind of stuff. The event manager handles everything.
00:06:01
Speaker
hotel stuff and you know all the logistics and literally with those two resources it was never an issue every live event you know people loved them we did a good job there was no there's always small issues but there was no major issues very high quality production going from basically zero experience And so that's what's possible when you pay
Hiring for Your Strengths
00:06:19
Speaker
for quality. Step number three is to get rid of the big stuff.
00:06:22
Speaker
And so I, you know, when I was building one of my businesses that was just scaling like crazy, we went from basically nothing to like 60 full-time, you know, a lot of six-figure employees, big office, all that kind of stuff in Austin. And when we did that, i mean, we had people doing everything. I mean, everything from...
00:06:37
Speaker
shooting videos, editing videos, writing emails, sending emails, you know, everything, all that we had, like eight finance employees, all that kind of stuff going on. But the one piece that I held on to was copywriting. Because, you know, we had done all these launches, you know, it generated basically $100 million dollars in sales with copy that I personally wrote. And so I thought I was the only person who could write that kind of copy.
00:06:59
Speaker
And because I had freed up my time on doing everything else, writing copy was taking me up to eight hours a day, which sounds crazy. But we would do some launches and I would write literally 100 emails. I would write what ended up being like 50 pages of video scripts. It was crazy. And it was like the more free time I had, the more copy I wrote. And...
00:07:17
Speaker
I was getting very burnt out on writing copy. It was also taking up a lot of my time. I wasn't able to do other things. And everything changed when I hired that thing that I thought I was the best at.
00:07:29
Speaker
Rather than just hiring the small tasks away, that frees up, you know, 30 minutes here, 40 minutes here. Hiring the thing that you're best at is where you really become an entrepreneur. I all of a sudden went from eight hours a day to basically nothing. um That was what was possible when I hired the stuff that you know I was just keeping a hold of in my business. And that really opened my eyes up to what came next. And this is where that two-week time log really comes into play. Because if you find that you're spending all your time on those little tasks, that may be what you need to hire first. But if you find that like that stuff doesn't take up that much of your time, you still may want to hire it away. But if it's like 15, 30 minutes of your day,
00:08:07
Speaker
What is the rest of your time going towards? It's likely to these things that you think you're the best at. Could be marketing, could be ordering products,
Delegating Profit Responsibility
00:08:14
Speaker
anything. And so it kind of divides up into four categories. So think about what you think you're best at of these four categories. Is it marketing and sales? That's category number one. Category number two, operations slash kind of people management.
00:08:28
Speaker
Category number three, finance. Category number four, technology. You may find that you are great at one of those things. That's probably the thing that if you can figure out somebody else who can do that is going to free up the most amount of time for you as possible. And the way I've been able to find high level people typically is, you know, I heard kind of heard a long time ago, there's kind of two approaches. You know, what big companies do is they take people straight out of college that have no experience but are sort of driven, motivated, smart, high-achieving people, and they train them and give them those skills over years. I've never done that approach. Approach number two is you hire an outside person as a consultant or a contractor where there's not that big of a commitment. You work with them for a few months. Then you bring them on as a high-level full-time employee. every single high level full-time employee that i've had that's worked out has been from that second approach just worked with them on a project basis we liked each other they did a great job ended up bringing them on as a full-time w-2 employee usually with a six-figure salary and bonuses and all that kind of stuff and that's what's worked great for me so contractor to full-time hire is a way you can get really high quality people so step number four is to hire the main manager now this doesn't have to be a ceo title but we'll talk about that in a second So you want to hire the main person who basically runs the entire business. That means they're responsible for the profitability of your company, how much profit your business produces per year and how much that grows each year.
00:09:56
Speaker
That's the final role you'll want to hire for that frees up your time
Learning from Successful Entrepreneurs
00:10:01
Speaker
forever. So I remember i was listening to a podcast one time and this guy, Andrew Wilkinson, from the holding company Tiny that owns a lot of pretty cool brands. And he talked about somebody asked him, like, you know, how do you hire these CEOs to run your business? And, you know, he gave the standard advice, LinkedIn, internal hire, et etc. But the most important thing that I think he said was like, you got to build scar tissue.
00:10:23
Speaker
And that just stuck with me. And that's been my experience as well. When it comes to hiring any role, really, but especially that main manager or CEO role, building scar tissue is going to be your experience. And that's the only way through it. The goal is not to, you know, hire one person and it works out great. And then if they don't work out great, you're back in the CEO role. No, it's if they don't work out, you hire a new person. And just keep going until you find the right person. You're getting smarter each time. You're getting better at hiring, better at choosing, better at managing every single time. i remember from my company, amazing.com, the first time when I was really ready to step out and bring in somebody,
00:11:00
Speaker
that was not my other co-founder to run the business. We brought in a guy that was our chief operating officer and basically promoted him to CEO of the company. He was great and one of the best people managers I've ever seen in business. Like we were just constantly having ah chaos that usually I was causing the business because I wanted the thing to grow really quickly, causing all kinds of people issues. He was able to massage those and create magic out of those what would have other been like nightmare situations with these employees.
00:11:27
Speaker
Promoting him to CEO, though, um for our business, he could have been great for a lot of other businesses, but our business was very dependent on a certain skill set of online marketing, direct marketing, and that just wasn't really his background. And so it didn't work out. But that was a big learning lesson for me because he's a great guy, did really good at a lot of things. But that one thing was just not a good fit. And so, you know, at first I was like crap, you know, now I got to do this myself. I'm the only person who can do this, which is just not true. But then kept trying and eventually found somebody that has really worked out, that's able to run the business. And then my role in that company is basically down to 30 minutes a month. I review our monthly financials. That's literally it. There's nothing else involved in running and growing that business for me. And that's what's possible for you with any company.
00:12:12
Speaker
This is the exact same model that people like Warren Buffett Hughes, who owns 60-plus operating businesses, a lot of them which are huge, pretty much all of them are multi-billion-dollar companies. He runs all of them from his office in Omaha, never visits any of them, just reads financial reports all day, talks with people, and
Monitoring and Trusting in Management
00:12:30
Speaker
that's it. That's his entire job while these companies run and operate. Because he's got a key manager, usually they're called the CEO, but the title is kind of irrelevant, got key manager. but a key manager in place in that business running things for him. Now, if you're running a smaller business, you know you may not want to call somebody CEO because then it may make them harder to replace. It may make them that you can never make them go back down to their previous job.
00:12:52
Speaker
So you may have a different title such as you know senior manager or whatever you want to call them. But basically, regardless of the title, the role is that they are responsible for the total growth and profitability of your business. You don't do any of that sort of stuff in there. You let them run the entire company. Another person who's used this model is Richard Branson. He basically is incredible at branding and has used his brand to build a lot of other businesses that he doesn't run really any of them. And I don't know if he ever has other than the first couple decades in business, but for the last say 20 plus years, he has not been the active CEO of any of those businesses that are all using his brand name Virgin. So different Hughes is his brand name on everything. Berkshire Hathaway, Warren Buffett's company it does not, but they both do the same model of having a key manager or CEO in place that's of every single business which allows them to run an unlimited number of businesses so step five the final step to building a business that runs without you is to trust and verify and so you want to not just abdicate your responsibility of running a business just like you do with any role but especially running the whole company but the good thing is is with the whole company it's very easy to measure success is it Is the business producing sales? Is it producing profit? And how are those trending over time? Because with the key manager or CEO, that's their responsibility. So it's much easier to measure their performance than almost any other role, which makes managing a CEO or a key manager of a business the easiest job on the planet because you can literally look at the financials every month and know if they're doing a good job or not. So I recommend monitoring the cash balance and In most of my businesses, I get a cash balance sent to me every single day. That gives me a good pulse on the business. Then reviewing the monthly financials. If you don't understand how to review financials, you have to learn that as a skill in business. There's great books out there that'll teach you exactly how to manage and manage monitor your financials in a business you need to know what a profit and loss statement is a cash flow statement and a balance sheet very basic financial reports you don't have to be the world's greatest experts in any of those but that allows you to see that's your scoreboard for business so i get that package sent to me every single month ideally by the 15th of every single month so i know how that business is doing and if there's anything else that i need to do and as long as things are going well i don't have to do anything
00:15:12
Speaker
I get whatever profit I get from that business, depending on what arrangement we've set up. I'm able to take the cash and do whatever I want to do with it and keep growing, living my life and building other businesses. Then your only job becomes to monitor the CEO's performance and replace him or her if necessary.
00:15:31
Speaker
That's literally it. That's all Warren Buffett does to manage his companies. He's asked those CEOs because a lot of them, they get you know older because they're doing such a good job. So they're 60, 70, 80 years old. So he's like, hey you know if you kick the bucket, you know who would replace you? That's all he asked them. He asked them that everybody every two years is who would replace you if you could no longer do this job.
00:15:49
Speaker
Otherwise, he gets that one piece of information and then looks at their financials on a periodic basis. And that's the entire job of running an unlimited number of businesses. And the ultimate test of whether you're doing a good job with building a business that can run without you is could you step away for six months, not have any contact whatsoever with the business. And after six months, that business was stronger than when you left it.
Lifestyle Benefits of Delegation
00:16:15
Speaker
If so, you have effectively learned how to run businesses without yourself. This whole idea of having automated businesses that run on systems is all just nonsense. Because as soon as you try to automate a business, you're going to be competing against somebody else that's hungry, that's building a business day in and day out with all their blood, sweat, and tears because they want to make money and they're going eat you alive. So you need somebody, even if it's not you, with that same level of motivation. And when you do,
00:16:43
Speaker
anything is possible you can literally do whatever you want to do in life run an unlimited number of businesses make whatever impact you want to do that's what's possible when you build a business that runs without you with these five steps so those are the five steps i've got nothing to sell you i'm giving all of my best strategies away after selling 450 million dollars online and helping people sell an estimated 10 billion dollars in their own businesses since 2012 giving all of that stuff away for free right here on my youtube channel All I ask is that if you have a comment, please comment below because I would love to hear what you thought about this video so I know whether or not to create more videos like this one or what else you would like to know.
00:17:24
Speaker
Also, go ahead and subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can get all the future videos that I create while I'm sharing all of this experience that hopefully can benefit you to make you more successful, more fulfilled and achieve all your dreams that you want. So adopting this one belief that you don't have to do everything in your business and there are other people who can do everything in your business, including running the entire company as well or better than you, that will change your life forever and will free you up from ever having to run another business again in the future. So that's it for this video. I've got nothing to sell you.
00:17:57
Speaker
um All I'm doing is giving away all my best strategies for free right here on YouTube. So all I ask is that you drop a comment below this video. Let me know what you thought of this one so I know whether to create videos like this or something different in the future. And go ahead and subscribe to my YouTube channel so you can get the future videos that I release on how to build a business, scale faster, and build companies that run without you.