EP538: Dr. Sabrina Starling - Work From Your Strengths: Build A Profitable Firm Without Burnout

Speaker A: What can I do from my strengths that makes everything else easier or unnecessary? When we do that ourselves, we're doing $10,000 an hour activity. When we hire team members and we teach them about the sweet spot of our business and we teach them about what drives profit in the business and we get clear on what their strengths are, they also have that opportunity to do $10,000 an hour work.

Speaker B: You're listening to the Successful Bookkeeper with your host Michael Palmer. Listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success to help you increase your confidence, work smarter and build a business you love. This episode of the Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by PureBookkeeping.com the proven system to grow your bookkeeping business.

Speaker C: To the Successful Bookkeeper podcast. I'm your host Michael Palmer and today's show is going to be, I think, exciting based on our pre conversation with our wonderful guest. She is a business psychologist and founder of the Tap the Potential who helps entrepreneurs grow profitable companies without burnout by building strong teams and scalable systems. Dr. Sabrina Sterling, welcome back to the show.

Speaker A: Thank you. I'm very, very excited to be here. Um, and I it is my intent to help make business owners lives better. So that's what we're going to do today.

Speaker C: I think that's why I said it was going to be an exciting show because if I am a our listener, I'm thinking please tell me how you're gonna do that. Make my life better, please make my life better. Sign me up. Who wouldn't want that? Ah, well, let's start there then with maybe telling us a little bit about you and your career leading up to this journey of now helping make people's lives better, certainly.

Speaker A: So I started my business 20 over 20 years ago and I was working as a psychologist in a community mental health center and I was so burnt. We worked 40, 50 hour weeks and took on um, call. So I would be getting up in the middle of the night to go to the hospital and then coming in at seven in the morning and sitting down to meet with clients and then try to prop my eyelids open and pay attention to what they were saying and be emotionally present with them. And I would come home at the end of the day and I would flop on my couch and mutter, I have nothing left to give. And then turn on the TV and within an hour be out because I was so exhausted and, and I was starting a family around the same time as I started my business. And I thought, I cannot recreate what I just escaped from because there's no way I can be a good mother to my children if I am that exhausted. So when I started my coaching business, I decided I'm only going to work 25 hours a week. That was a very naive declaration because I had no idea what was involved in owning and running a business, much less what was involved in raising children. Because that was, you know, I was opening my business at the same time I was having my first child, couple kids, new business.

Speaker C: This is great. This is gonna be awesome. It'll help. 25. That's it, kids. Sorry. Clock's done. You're done. I love that. That's funny.

Speaker A: Yeah, it is funny. Um, so needless to say, I was on the verge of a breakdown very quickly after my daughter was born, and my business was growing, and I was wearing all the hats and I was learning how to do all the things. And I remember one night, I was rocking her to sleep, and there was just enough light streaming in through the window from the moon for me to be reading, because I was making best use of my time. And I was reading the E. Myth by Michael Kerber, and it hit me, like, oh, my gosh, I'm doing this all wrong. Like, I am not building a company. I am building something that depends on me. And so I knew I was doing it all wrong, but I didn't know what to do about it. And anybody, I think, who's read the E. Myth has probably had a very similar experience. Like, yeah, I get it up here, but I don't know how to change anything down here to make that big picture work. And so I was actually at a conference, um, a year or so later, and I heard Michael Gerber speak. And we got to. After he spoke, we all got a copy of his book, and, um, he was going to sign it. And as we were waiting in line for him to sign our book, this lady came through and she said, when it's your turn, you get to ask him one question and he'll answer your question. And so I was like, okay, I've got to have a really good question. So when it was my turn, I said, hey, Michael, I'm a business coach like you, and I'm like, coaching business owners, and I'm helping them hire a players on their team, and I'm getting them, um, out of the day to day. I said, but the big problem is, is I'm the only one in my business, and I'm getting burnt out, and I don't know how to do in my business what I'm helping them do. In their businesses. And I said, how did you do it? And he looked at me and he said, my dear, I own a coaching company and I have never coached a day in my life. I just kind of nodded and I said, okay. And I walked away. And I was mad. Like inside. I was like, he didn't tell me anything. What kind of answer is that? But then as I started walking away, I realized he's told me everything. Like, he told me that if I want something different, I have to show up differently and I have to think different, differently about my business. And that really put me on the path to building a company versus a business of me delivering services and collecting money. So the dollars for hours model, and I know so many bookkeepers are in that dollars for hours model. So as I went back to the 25 hour, I want to only work 25 hours a week. That actually turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. As naive as it was, it was the best decision I ever made. Because limits force innovation and creativity. That 25 hour work week has forced me to be laser focused on only doing what works and only doing what I can uniquely do in the business that provides value. And so one of the things that I quickly realized is if I only have five hours a day to work, cause that was the most I was willing to put my daughter in daycare. I need to use one or two of those hours every day to grow the business. I need to be doing something that I know is adding value and turning this into a company versus just dollars for hours and me doing everything. And so I had that intention. But I quickly, like most business owners, you come into the office, you check your email and then you are, uh, responding to all the flyers in the email and you're responding to phone call and text messages. And so I was losing track very quickly of my best intentions. Like, I started my day and this one thing that I know that's going to move the business forward, I'm going to get that done before I do anything else. Well, ten minutes in the office that was gone. I was off track. And then I would end the day and I was hadn't done anything that made the business more valuable. I'd taken care of a lot of people and their problems, but I hadn't added any value to my business. And so what I did is I started thinking about that, uh, one or two hours of my day at the start of the day as my $10,000 an hour activity. And I blocked it on my calendar that way because when it's blocked on the calendar as $10,000 an hour activity, it's much harder to blow past that block of time and jump into answering emails. The other thing I did is I created a chart for myself of $10 an hour activity in the business versus $100 versus $1,000 versus 10,000 dol value. And I printed it out and I put it behind my computer monitor so that my eye would fall on it regularly. And so inevitably I would be nose down working on something for a client and then I would look up and say, oh my gosh, I've just spent four hours in ten and hundred dollar an hour activity. I haven't done any ten thousand dollars an hour activity today. And it created huge accountability for me. So I want to give your listeners the opportunity to download this chart. In case you're listening to this and thinking, I want that chart for myself, you can go to tapthepotential.com 10k. So as I became more intentional to do the work in the business that makes everything else easier or unnecessary, a lot of fires stopped happening. I started to notice that things started to feel more calm and in control and less chaotic. And that's what happens when we are doing work that makes everything else easier or, uh, unnecessary. So when I had a group of clients that had a particular issue, instead of solving it for one client, I started looking at, well, how could I solve this if I were going to solve this for all of my clients? And how can I make sure that I'm working only with clients who have similar issues? So that's where I really started moving, moving the business towards a sweet spot. And when we're doing our ten thousand dollar an hour time, we're looking at what can I do from my strengths that makes everything else easier or unnecessary? Uh, when we do that ourselves, we're doing $10,000 an hour activity. When we hire team members and we teach them about the sweet spot of our business and we teach them about what drives profit in the business and we get clear on what their strengths are, they also have that opportunity to do $10,000 an hour work. Because every role in the business has that opportunity to look at how do we make things easier or unnecessary, uh, for ourselves or others in this business. And that's where you get a business that has a lean and mighty team. Uh, our entire team at Tap of The potential works 25 hours a week. I'm not the only one. I work about 10 hours now. The rest of the team is 25 hours a week. And we are focused on delivering results for our clients. And we're real clear on what those results are. And everyone on our team is asking, how do I make things easier or unnecessary for myself or others?

Speaker C: Well, that's amazing. I love the story and I love, uh, Michael Gerber. We talk about Michael Gerber here a lot. When you. I'm thinking one of my questions is like, what were some of the 10,000, like, what would you do with your time in the $10,000 hour block? Some examples.

Speaker A: Well, I'm going to take you way back 20 years ago when it was just me. So my first hire was a virtual assistant. So the first thing that I did was figure out if I'm going to bring on assistant, what is the highest and best use of her time that will free me up to do higher value work in the business. And one of the things where I was getting bogged down a lot was doing our client newsletter. We send out a newsletter every week. We've been doing that at tabitha potential for 20 something years now.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: And I would spend hours putting that newsletter together because I would get into like, does it look good? You know, should we put a picture here and do we have enough space here between the picture and the text? That wasn't the best use of my time. The best use of my time was writing an article about solving a problem for a client that would help somebody else who would possibly become a client. So I needed to free up my time for the thought leadership in the business. And so I hired an assistant to help me with my newsletter and to schedule client meetings and respond to emails for me and calendaring, that sort of thing. And so I asked myself, if I'm going to have somebody in that role, what strengths do they need to do that job exceptionally well day in and day out to deliver a quality, good layout newsletter to interface with clients and communicate with clients. And I quickly identified I need a people person who's very detail oriented, simple as that. And so I started, um, searching out a virtual assistant. And back then there was a company that was very large and they, um, matched people, they did matchmaking. And it went on. And I put in my request and what I was looking for. And then I just started paying attention to how the virtual assistants were responding to me. And I quickly weeded out, okay, typos in that email. Not a good communicator there. Focused on themselves, not focused on serving me. You know, like I could see the, the immutable laws, the core values coming through, the lack of detail needed to do the job well. The lack of people skills but person really stood out and I brought her on. She's still with me to this day and in her role. And her role has evolved. We've gotten her away from doing the newsletter because that was not her greatest strength. Her greatest strength is people and details. She is our client concierge and she pays attention, she onboards our clients, she makes them feel welcome, she makes sure they have everything they need. And when there is a gap in our service delivery, when we start doing something that we strategists think would be good for the client, but it creates confusion for the clients, she's the first one to say, I know what you intend to do over here, but you're creating confusion and you're creating a gap. We need to pay attention to these details here because those are her strengths. So over time, she has shifted into a role that really is her $10,000 an hour activity. And what she's done in the business serves the sweet spot incredibly well. And this is. I'm sharing that example because that was when I was in the startup phase and it was my first hire because I want everyone to see the time that I was spending to think about, well, what do I need this person doing? What is the key result that I'm going to ask them to deliver? That's $10,000 an hour activity for that stage of the business and where I was, because that was going to get us to the next level 20 years in. My $10,000 an hour activity is doing exactly what I'm doing here with you. I'm sharing and I'm teaching and I'm helping other business owners in a way that will make their lives better.

Speaker C: I love it. So it evolves over time. But I think that that was an amazing example. And did you find that it was difficult to, um, stick to your $10,000 an hour block? You mentioned other blocks earlier on where you're like, this is $100 block and that was maybe a time analysis piece or activity is that. That was like sort of your compass to keep, oh, wait a second, I'm doing a $50. Get off that 50 DOL.

Speaker A: So we do time audits now, um, in the company. And so once a quarter, we ask team members to monitor their time in 15 minute increments, um, for a week to look at where they're spending their time. Because we're always looking at what can we take off your plate, because everything we take off your plate creates that opportunity for you to do more Higher value work. So the ultimate is getting somebody who comes in at entry level be able to do their $10,000 an hour activity. The thing though is when we continue to hold on to $50 an hour tasks, $100 an hour tasks, because we think it's. We don't want to burden our team or it'll take too long to train them. What we're actually doing in our business is we're creating a glass ceiling. Inadvertently we're creating these glass ceilings and our team members have no opportunities for advancement. Well, I've written a book. I've written a whole series, how to Hire the Best. And one of the things I know from studying A players in our clients businesses, the number one thing A players want is opportunities for growth and advancement. And so when we hire A players, but then we don't allow them to grow, we're going to lose them. So the best thing we can be doing is getting more and more off of our plate as business owners so that we retain our A players.

Speaker C: Wow, that's great. Um, and the book was called how to hire the Best.

Speaker A: Yes. Yeah. So everything that you heard me say about how I my thinking about how I hired my virtual assistant who's still with us 20 years later, that was the seed of the how to hire the best system. Um, it's much more fleshed out than that now. But it's that simple. It's that basic for how you get players on your team in the right roles. 1 a player in the right seat working from their Strengths will be 900 to 1,200% more productive than a warm body team member. And so this is how we build lean and mighty teams. Your payroll is your biggest profit leak in a business, in a growing business. And I'm talking, I'm preaching to the choir bookkeepers. You guys see this all the time in businesses. Payroll is huge and it's usually not optimized with A players. So. And m, what's really surprising for a lot of small business owners is you don't need as many team members as you think you might need as soon as you know how to hire those A players and get them in the right seats. And that allows profit to happen and it allows more time, freedom, um, for the business owner.

Speaker C: Wow.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker C: Makes a ton of sense. And so now you've been at this for a while. So 20 years this is. You've been doing this. What have you seen over those last 20 years with the way the world was then you spoke to Michael Gerber and uh, he gave you this epiphany and then you've done things, you grew your business, you've been growing your business. The world has changed in 20 years. What stayed the same, what still is the same, what's totally different and what's, you know, what's the future hold?

Speaker A: Okay, so what stayed the same is this, uh, every small business, regardless of what industry you're in, has the same challenges when you grow. That has not changed over 20 years and it doesn't change by industry. And we serve, we have a lot of bookkeepers that we work with at tap the potential. We, we, we coach cross industry and that's very unusual. And we our clients to niche down and have a clearly defined sweet spot. We have a clearly defined sweet spot. We serve businesses who are at a certain level of growth where the business owner is maxed out because the business is succeeding. But we coach cross industry and it's amazing how cross industry, the issues are all the same. So that has stayed the same. Hiring has stayed. Uh, the challenges with hiring, like business owners getting to a point where you just snap and you've got to quickly hire somebody because you just can no longer do it on your own. And then you get somebody in and they're not a good fit and they create chaos and that feeling of disillusionment and you question, can I, do I even have what it takes to grow a business? All that self doubt that stayed the same. That has not changed over 20 years. What has changed is there's much more awareness now about work, life, balance at tap the potential. We are all about work supports life, not the other way around. When Covid hit and people actually started having conversations about, about I want work to support my life, I thought, oh my gosh, I've been saying this for 20 years. People are finally getting it. So there's more awareness around that than there's ever been. And a lot of business owners really struggle with this because we get so hung up on especially if we have virtual teams. Are they clocking in? Are they putting in the hours? We need to shift that and really look at what are the results. We need our team members to deliver and focus on results and allow them to get better and better at delivering those results. Results in less and less time because that allows them to have the flexibility A players crave flexibility. And that's how we retain, attract and retain our A players is by offering that. The other thing that in the last few years we now have AI and so a lot of our $10 an hour tasks can be done by AI. And what we're not paying enough attention to as business owners is that, that our team members are scared to death of losing their jobs to AI. And this is real in accounting and bookkeeping. It is a huge threat. Um, and accountants and bookkeepers feel that threat yourself. Like you're, as the business owner, you feel that what we're missing is when we free up our time from doing $10 an hour tasks and we give it to AI, when we start looking at how do we serve our top clients better and better, how do we connect more with our clients and our team members as human beings and understand their needs and challenges more and more. And we have more time to do that because we've delegated a lot of busy work to AI, we create huge value. And when we convey to our team members that we want them doing $10,000 an hour work and we're going to show them how they get so excited and they are relieved because they know they have job security at that point.

Speaker C: So true. It is amazing how things have stayed the same and how they've evolved. And this really is, I think, a moment of rapid change where, uh, the uncertainty is certainly there. And yet it's also super exciting for the opportunities to be able to get rid of those $10 and $50 whatever, uh, an hour jobs in your business to free you up to do the bigger work, like what you said. Oh, we can really spend time figuring out how to serve our best clients and make their experience even better. I mean, that's what everybody's been dreaming about doing for decades and never getting there because they're stuck working on the newsletter or, you know, rewriting, editing some, whatever they're doing. So that's, it's both daunting and exciting. It's just, yeah, we've got to go through this uncertainty. And I think, you know, the word that pops into my head is adaptability is that, you know, the ones that can adapt are the ones that thrive.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker C: And so that's a little bit. And I imagine you're helping clients with that and maybe spend a little bit of time just talking about what it takes to be someone who can adapt.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker C: So I want to face in there

Speaker A: as the business psychologist, I'm going to put on my psychologist hat for a minute and talk about the personality type of people who are attracted to bookkeeping and accounting. You're very task oriented, very detail oriented, and that is a huge strength in the work that you do. The other side of that is that type of personality, you crave safety and security. I know this because I have a lot of task type in me. So I understand, like, change is scary. Like we enjoy knowing what's predictable and like this, this is the same as what I did last year and the year before. And it's all good. So where we have our greatest opportunity is to take that detail oriented part of our personality and talk to our top clients, the ones, the 20% of our clients that are driving 80% of our revenue, the ones that we enjoy working with. And so I want to clarify that just because a client contributes a lot to your revenue and your business does not make them a top client. Because if they are PETA, if they're pain in the assets to work with, you don't want more of them, um, in your business, no matter how much they pay you. So I'm really talking about a subset of your top 20% that are responsible for 80% of the revenue. And the ones who are a joy to work with, and the reason they're a joy to work with is their immutable laws. Their core values likely very much align with yours. And that's what creates that ease of working together. So you want to have conversations with them and use that detail part of your personality to really, really tune into what are they worrying about, what are their greatest challenges, what's keeping them awake at night, what would make their lives easier? What could you do to eliminate something off of their plate through the work that you do and because you are in their books and you see so much detail that they may not see, even though you know it looks to you like it's painfully obvious, they don't see it. How can you support them and how can you provide that value? Because that's. As you're continually having those conversations, you will see ways to do what we call attack the potential micro innovation. So like that example that I gave where Donna, our client concierge, comes and says, you guys put this new system in place and we know your intent is to make it easier for your client, but actually I'm seeing it's making things harder and more confusing. You need to adjust this. That is a micro innovation right there. That's an example of that. And the more of that micro innovation that you do in a business over time, we have another saying. Small steps forward, taken in a consistent direction lead to big change over time. Over a year or so, what you'll notice is you are very far ahead of your competition. You've actually further developed your sweet spot and Your area of uniqueness. And when you are unique and you're serving your top clients, they're not going to fire you. They're not going to replace you with AI. They may look you up in AI, they may say, what would Betty say to me about this problem in my business? But they are not going to replace you because you are providing that extra level of value.

Speaker C: So true. Well, it's really very exciting to hear from, uh, someone with your background the psychological differences that our listener would be going through. And I'm sure they're nodding their head saying, yes, that's me. It's like you know me, which is always fun. Um, maybe end on. And we've talked about a lot. There's a lot of gold in this whole conversation. But you brought up the one offer that you have, which is the $10,000 tool. Maybe tell us a little bit more about that because I think everyone's going to want to go and get that from you. So tell us a bit more about it. Again, we'll have make sure we have the link there and I, uh, think that'll be super valuable for our listener.

Speaker A: Yeah. So, um, when you download the chart of $10,000 an hour activities as a PDF download, you will also get access to two episodes that I recorded specifically on the Profit by Design pod. That's our podcast where I walk you through in 30 minutes how to use the chart for yourself and start implementing. And then the second episode is how to use it with your team because that's where the greatest value really kicks in. And the goal here is to get you to a point where the business does not depend on you. When you have a business that depends on you, you have a lot, uh, of risk in that business. And, and we don't have time to get into it here, but I have a lot of personal experience. It's very emotional personal experience that I share on the podcast about why it's so important that the business be able to run and grow without you being in the day to day.

Speaker C: Mhm. So true, so true. Well that's a super.

Speaker A: And the link to that was tapthepotential.com 10k.

Speaker C: Great. And we will have that obviously in the show. Notes for people to go and grab. You know, it's such, uh, a great episode. A reminder of the E Myth for people to read the original work by Michael Gerber. It's created so many epiphanies for people like you in shifting the way they see themselves in their business. And are you building a job? Are you building an enterprise, uh, that can support your life. Uh, so if you haven't already read that book, do it. Buy the book, read the book. It's so valuable. And then we've got this great download that you can go get from our guest here that is just a, uh, tee up to changing the way your business works and giving you more of your time back in your life, which I think is just such a beautiful gift from you. So I want to thank you for that. Uh, and this has been a real pleasure. So on behalf of our listener, I want to thank you for your, your generosity and coming on the show.

Speaker A: I, I'm delighted. It's been a great conversation.

Speaker C: Ah, uh, yes. Well, the pleasure is all ours. And with that, we wrap another episode of the Successful Bookkeeper podcast. To learn more about today's wonderful guest and to get access to all sorts of valuable free business building resources, you can go to the successfulbookkeeper.com until next time. Goodbye.

Speaker B: You've been listening to the Successful Bookkeeper with Michael Palmer. For more information and to download the resources mentioned in this episode, please visit us@the successfulbookkeeper.com thank you for listening.