AL #031: The Founder Loop

Two simple concepts to radically simplify decision making.

A lot of business boils down to the sequencing of objectives.

Pick a distraction or a battle you can't win and your business will stall.

In a previous newsletter Release Your Bottleneck, I outlined the importance of identifying and fixing bottlenecks in your business as a way to uncover the optimal sequence.

After reading Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell, I'm realizing this approach has an oversight.

The issue with Bottleneck analysis

It ignores Founder pain.

Founder pain (a term that Dan uses in Buy Back Your Time) is something that accumulates when the business demands too much time from the Founder and specifically time spent doing things that they don't enjoy.

As a result, Founders don't persist through the pain. They self-sabotage in various ways such as by stalling the business or even selling it.

For example, let's say sales is the primary bottleneck for your company. If you don't enjoy doing sales, you may start to question whether you want to continue with the business “it's become something I don't enjoy doing”.

The Buy Back Your Time approach

The approach Dan advocates is buying back the Founder's time. He recommends doing a “time audit”, logging your activities over 15 minute increments and then looking back and figuring out which low value activities could be delegated.

Freed up from less enjoyable or lower value tasks, the Founder can use the new time to focus on higher value activities.

How do we know what those higher value activities are?

We already know this from bottleneck analysis.

The high value activities are precisely the actions that will unlock the next bottleneck.

This is why the techniques work so well together. Let's detail the final process that integrates both.

The modified Founder loop

For Founders that are struggling with bottleneck analysis and finding themselves not enjoying the business or taking on too much pain, here’s a revised approach.

Start by fixing the first bottleneck.

As you do it, growth improves but so does Founder pain.

Once the bottleneck is unlocked, use techniques from Buy Back Your Time to reduce Founder pain and free up time.

Then use that time to solve the next bottleneck.

Repeat ad infinitum.

I read this book while going through early fatherhood with a young newborn (the title resonated – of course).

I didn't realize it would carry lessons that would have helped me since day 1 of my business.

It was refreshing to read a take on entrepreneurship that didn't just recommend suffering through issues. Instead it points towards a path where Founder energy can be managed and even increased over time, resulting in a greater enjoyment of the business.