Let's start with a little thought experiment: What is draining your time and energy right now? Not all tasks are equally draining. That leads us into our first big idea. 1) Go after the things that drain the most energy first, not necessarily the most time. Chances are, your business only needs a few key skills from you. And of all the other things in your business that you do, some of those things aren't a big deal, and some drain your energy. If you're like me and it hurts your soul to check your email, create a simple system and hire someone to handle your email immediately. A few years ago I realized that my podcast agency only needed 3 things from me, and they were the things I was highly skilled at and enjoyed doing. Everything else I ruthlessly started to get off my plate. So how do you get everything else off your plate? 2) Systems first, People second. We're living in a massive labor shortage. A-players are hard to come by. A-Salespeople and high-level integrators always have been hard to come by and always will be. If you focus on rockstar systems, you don't need A players all the time to have a great business. The better your systems, the better your baseline level of performance in your business. Rockstar systems means you can hire good, smart, capable people, and still get rockstar results. So what happens when you have an A player? Squeeze them for everything their worth by having them upgrade your systems while they're with you. Plan on them to outgrow the role and probably leave. I hired an A-player in the middle of last year, and together we built a great system inside my agency. He even documented the whole system step-by-step and helped hire and train the 2 people it took to replace him. So when he got an opportunity with an awesome startup, he was able to turn over the keys of the system to the people he'd trained and I wasn't left scrambling. I was actually better off for him being with me for a year. So I don't plan on retaining rockstar people for my business to work. If you're building a lifestyle team, at some point you're going to hit a business sweet spot, where you're not looking to just grow for its own sake. And at that point you have to be honest with yourself and the people on your team. You may not be able to retain all your A people by giving them a vision within your team. Their vision may take them out of your team, so you may as well plan for it. McKinsey Consulting is the best example. They've known for decades that they'll retain 1 out of every 5 people they hire, because they only keep the best of the best. That creates the famous "Up-or-Out'' structure McKinsey is known for, and creates an international fraternity of former McKinsey types who weren't retained but ended up at other companies. They then turn around and recommend their companies hire McKinsey, so often the candidates that didn't make the cut end up being McKinsey's best clients. And McKinsey gets the best out of all their people while they're there. We can all do the same thing by having an informal "Up-or-Out" policy. You only retain the best, those who can make you a lot of money or save you a lot of money. Everyone else will "outgrow" their role and move out of your team at some point, and you support them in that journey. That brings us to one of the biggest challenges in building a team: Losing too many good people, especially A players. Rainmakers and founders tend to burn through good people, and some do it over and over again for years. I have a client who made 1.3 million last year in billings all by himself. That means he is worth $650 an hour, every single working hour a week for 50 weeks a year. If he paid a VA $650 a week, all they'd have to save him is one hour of work to be worth it. Yet he's the classic rainmaker. He's burned through so many people over the years that now he shies away even from hiring a part-time assistant. And so he continues to do a bunch of energy draining...