How to Achieve Business Profitability While Working No More Than 3 Hours a Day

The owner, actively involved in managing a manufacturing business for the past decade, faces the challenge of doubling net profit. This objective was set two years ago, and the owner diligently followed established business practices to achieve it.

Collaborating with the team, they meticulously analyzed various strategies for sales growth and market share expansion. After careful evaluation, they selected the most promising approach, devised a comprehensive plan, and commenced its implementation. The chosen strategy capitalized on existing market opportunities, backed by thorough calculations and data. Despite the owner and the team investing significant time and effort, their endeavors fell short of the desired outcome. The market experienced unfulfilled demand, while the company possessed ample resources for growth.

Frustratingly, the owner expressed their dilemma as follows: “We seem to be executing all the right and logical steps, with my team working diligently as planned. However, it feels as if we lose momentum midway through, and there’s an elusive element preventing us from attaining the desired results. I cannot pinpoint what exactly it is.”

Our work comprised twelve one-hour sessions and spanned approximately six months until we achieved the final outcome.

In the initial sessions, our focus was on clarifying and refining the client’s true objectives. We began by exploring the connection between business growth and broader aspects of the owner’s life, such as his desired lifestyle and personal goals, which necessitated doubling the company’s profit. As a result, the client realized that it was not only the final profit size that mattered to him, but also his emotional well-being throughout the process of achieving the desired outcome.

The client posed the question, “What approach should I choose to double the income in a way that brings me joy and avoids unnecessary stress?” This reframed task provided the owner with a crucial filter for selecting strategies and options for implementing them.

I proposed that the client consider his situation from a holistic perspective. In addition to focusing on the “hard” aspects of the business, such as plans, tasks, processes, and numbers, we delved into the client’s internal state: his emotions, desires, worldview, and how these factors manifested in his actions. We also examined his relationships with key team members and his close circle.

The owner began observing his daily activities and asking himself questions such as, “Which tasks do I genuinely enjoy investing my energy into? How much energy am I sincerely willing to dedicate to business development? Which methods of interacting with my team yield the best results?”

Throughout our sessions, we explored the interplay between the client’s internal state, his focus of attention, the outcomes of his decisions, and their impact on his management team. The client’s major realization was the recognition of an internal conflict between the belief that “achieving significant results requires working more, on a larger scale, and with complexity” and a deep, genuine desire to limit his daily management commitment to 3-4 hours, focusing solely on activities that ignite his enthusiasm.

We also directed our attention to the owner’s relationships with his key employees. By examining them through the lens of energy balance and the results achieved, the client discovered that he had a habit of exerting considerable effort in tightly controlling aspects of the team’s work where his employees had long proven their ability to make sound decisions independently.

During one of our sessions, the client formulated a hypothesis: to utilize the volume and direction of his personal energy as a starting point for selecting a business development option. Consequently, he made the decision to drastically simplify the business model: retaining only high-margin products and clients in the portfolio and outsourcing the majority of internal processes. This reduction in operational workload allowed the owner to concentrate on tasks where he excelled, such as nurturing relationships with key clients and partners.

After reaching this decision, we dedicated several sessions to addressing the client’s fears associated with implementing an entirely new approach to running the business. To test the viability of his simplification strategy, the owner opted to experiment in a few relatively safe areas before embarking on large-scale transformations.

The objective of doubling net profit while simplifying the business model was successfully achieved within a span of approximately six months.

As a result, the client experienced a significant increase in available time and energy, enabling him to actively search for and explore new entrepreneurial ideas.

Furthermore, the client observed a noticeable transformation in his key employees, who became more proactive and autonomous in their roles.