The Trap of the “Part-Time Firefighter”
Gresham Harkless addresses a common trap for founders: the tendency to become “part-time firefighters” who spend their days putting out every single fire in their business. He introduces the 80/20 rule as the ultimate CEO hack for those who feel stuck doing everything—from marketing and sales to admin and operations. The core truth is that 80% of your results come from just 20% of your efforts; recognizing this shift is an absolute game-changer for anyone wearing too many hats.
Auditing Your Time for Maximum Impact
To reclaim your schedule, Gresh challenges founders to track their week and identify where their time is actually going. By highlighting the activities that move the business forward—such as bringing in customers, building relationships, or creating content—you can pinpoint your high-impact 20%. Everything outside of that 20% should be automated, delegated, or deleted using tools like Zapier and Notion, or by hiring freelancers to handle tasks that drain your energy.
Scaling with Intention and Systems
The “cold hard truth” of entrepreneurship is that founders cannot scale by simply adding more hours to the day; they scale by adding systems. Gresh encourages builders to identify their top three high-impact activities and double down on them immediately. By focusing on what truly matters, entrepreneurs can stop doing everything and start growing with intention, finally making the impact they sought when they first started their business journey.
Previous Episode: https://iamceo.co/iam2693-the-importance-of-building-connection-from-day-one/
- Blue Star Franchise: bluestarfranchise.com
- Browse the Franchise Inventory: bluestarfranchise.com/franchise
- Is franchising right for you? Check this out to see: bluestarfranchise.com/assessment
- Franchise CEO (A CBNation Site – coming soon) – franchiseceo.co
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Transcription:
Gresham Harkless 00:00
That's called the 80/20 rule, and it's the ultimate CEO hack for founders who feel stuck doing literally everything. Now, just start out by tracking your week, look at where your time is actually going. Now highlight this, has that move your business forward. The ones that bring in customers, clients, build relationships or create content. That's your 20%. That's where you should be spending your time. Everything else automated, delegated or deleted.
Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I Am CEO podcast. And this is a special episode, episode number 2287 of our I Am CEO podcast. And this is actually going to be a snippet of a snippet, so to speak. I'm just doing an intro because I've been starting to document my journey into starting what is now called Blue Star Franchise. We're also going to do a kind of sub site within CB Nation called Franchise CEO. So you'll see some links in the show, notes related to that. But, um, just wanted to give you a little bit more insight, give you a little bit more color in some of the aspects of why I'm actually doing this. Because one of the things I was doing as I was going through training to start up this new business was realizing and hearing from the founder of fba, the Franchise Brokers association, that it'd be really cool to document your journey going through and building this out. I think it's something that would be super helpful, obviously for people that are looking for and thinking about starting franchises. But frankly, if you're starting anything, any type of business, I. I think it's really cool to kind of just even see the journey and how it's been going from there. So I'm going to share a few of those snippets from the. From the first couple of videos that have been created. But definitely, of course, subscribe to our YouTube. Check out a lot more where I figure out exactly where Herald Leonard Post is. So I'll have that information that's available to you. But regardless, if you're a builder, continue to keep building. Continue to do your thing. The world definitely needs exactly what you're trying to build. It needs you to be your unique self. So make sure to run your own race, because nobody can run your race like you. This is Gresh signing out. I hope you have a phenomenal rest of day.
Gresham Harkless 01:58
If you're wearing a lot of hats in your business right now. Marketing, sales, admin, operations, R and D. This one is for you. Here's the truth. Not every task deserves your time. In fact, 80% of your results come from just 20% of what you do. I often say that entrepreneurs, CEOs and business owners end up being like part time firefighters. They're literally putting out every single fire. But understanding that 80% of the results are actually going to come from 20% of the things that you do is an absolute game changer. Now that's called the 80/20 rule and it's the ultimate CEO hack for founders who feel stuck doing literally everything. Now, just start out by tracking your week. Look at where your time is actually going. Now highlight this hacks that move your business forward, the ones that bring in customers, clients, build relationships or create content. That's your 20%. That's where you should be spending your time. Everything else automated, delegated or deleted. Use tools like zapier notion to automate routine steps. Hire a freelancer using tools like upwork or onlinejobs ph to handle what drains your energy. Because if you keep doing everything, you'll never have time to do what actually grows your business. Now here's the cold hard truth. Founders don't scale by adding hours to the day. Trust me, I tried to get 25, 26, 30 hours out of a day. It doesn't work. They actually scale by adding systems. So here's where I'm going to challenge you. Identify your top three high impact activities and double down on them. Right now, today, this week, I want to see you double down on these activities. That's ultimately how you stop doing everything and start growing with intention. And at the end of the day, didn't we start this business so that we can make the impact that we sought? So why not spend the time being able to do that?