Your phone just buzzed again, did it not? Another email. Another fire to put out.
You're driving between jobs, and your mind is a spreadsheet with a thousand open tabs. You're thinking about the proposal you need to send, the client who's late on their payment, the new hire you need to train, and the fact that you're the only one who knows how to fix that one weird software glitch.
You tell people you're busy. You might even be proud of it. Being "slammed" feels like a nickname for "successful." You're the heart of the operation. The engine. The indispensable core of the business you built with your own two hands.
But let's be radically transparent for a second. In the quiet of this truck, or on this treadmill… What does it really feel like?
It feels like you’re drowning.
It feels like if you get sick for a week, the whole company grinds to a halt. It feels like you can't take a real vacation—not one where you truly unplug—because you are the system. You are the bottleneck.
And you've accepted a myth as an absolute truth: a truth that working 16 hours a day is a sign of your commitment. That being the hardest-working person in your company is a badge of honor.
Today, we're not just going to challenge that myth. We're going to prove it’s the single biggest lie holding your business back from true scale, and your life back from true freedom.
To understand this, I have to take you back to a place that has nothing to do with accounting, and everything to do with running a business. I want to take you to a damp, concrete-floored laundry room in Plainview, Texas.
Picture this: It’s 10:30 PM on a Tuesday. The air is thick with the smell of industrial-strength bleach and the sweat from two dozen basketball jerseys. The quiet was filled with a domestic symphony: the steady, sloshing rhythm of the washer and the deep hum of the old dryer.
I was the captain of my college basketball team. That was my $1000-an-hour job. Leadership. Strategy. Setting the culture. Calling the plays on the court. That was the highest-value work I could do for the team.
But at 10:30 PM, after practice, after my classes, after studying… I was also the guy in the laundry room, washing the team’s uniforms to make a few extra bucks for groceries. That was my $10-an-hour job.
I can still feel the damp heat coming off the dryers and the ache in my back from hauling heavy, wet mesh bags. And I remember the internal monologue so clearly. It was a war between pride and necessity. Pride in being the leader, the captain… and the raw necessity of the hustle. Of survival. I was doing what had to be done.
My teammates, the guys I was leading, were back in the dorms resting, studying, recovering. They were focused on their high-value work. And I was in the basement, surrounded by soap and smelly laundry, doing the one job that anyone on campus could have done.
That duality defined my early years. Grit was the only currency I had.
And here’s the trap that so many of us fall into: because that grit got us started, we think it’s the blueprint for how to operate forever. We start our businesses, and we carry that same exact mindset into our companies. We become the team captain who insists on washing the laundry.
Now, I need to address something here, because your brain might be playing a clever trick on you. You might be hearing this and thinking, 'But what about servant leadership? A good leader is willing to get their hands dirty.'
And you are absolutely right. But your brain is using that noble concept to disguise a fear of letting go. True servant leadership isn't about personally doing every low-value task. It's about doing what is best for the team. Your greatest act of service as a leader is to focus on the high-value work that ONLY YOU can do. You serve your people more by navigating the company's future than by personally scheduling their meetings. You build a better future for your team by doing the visionary work, not the busywork.
I didn't have the language for it back then, but the truth was right there in that laundry room, humming under the fluorescent lights. A truth that took me another decade, and a pantry office, to fully understand.
You cannot lead the team if you are stuck in the laundry room.
Let me say that again. You cannot be the strategist, the visionary, the leader your business desperately needs you to be, if you spend your days doing the $10-an-hour work. If you are the one sorting the socks, you cannot be the one looking at the horizon.
That moment of realization is when the hustle myth shatters. Being the bottleneck isn't a sign of your importance; it's a sign of your lack of systems. There's a saying in the corporate world that every entrepreneur needs to tattoo on their foreheads: if you are indispensable, you are unpromotable. In our world, it means you can’t scale. Your to-do list is not a measure of your worth; it's a measure of your inefficiency.
Your identity has become so wrapped up in being "the guy who does it all" that you've forgotten what your real job is: to build a machine that does the work, so you don't have to. If you do not build the machine, you will be the machine, forever. And a machine can't scale. It can only break down.
So, how do we get you out of the laundry room?
It starts with a process I call The Elimination Audit. It’s the foundational system for reclaiming your time and forcing you to focus only on high-value work. It’s built on a simple, three-step framework: Eliminate, Automate, Delegate. E.A.D.
But before you can use the framework, you have to be brutally honest about where your time is actually going. You need to conduct a Forensic Time Audit.
For one week—or even just one day to start—track everything you do in your business. Every phone call, every email, every task. Write it down. In my CPA firm, we are obsessive about this. We track our time in six-minute increments—that's one-tenth of an hour. We have to, because we sell time and knowledge, and every minute counts. Now, I understand that's asking way too much from you, but I wouldn't be asking you to do this if I hadn't done it myself at a much more detailed scale. So, for you, just track the tasks. From there, I want you to categorize every single action into one of three buckets: $1000/hr work, $100/hr work or $10/hr work.
The $1000/hr work is strategy, high-level sales, building key relationships, creating systems like this one. It's the work only you can do. It's being the captain.
The $100/hr work is project management, execution of your core services, and low-level sales. It’s the work you love doing for your business and the reason why you started your business in the first place. It’s being the point guard of your basketball team.
The $10/hr work is everything else. Sending invoice reminders, scheduling appointments, fixing a typo on the website, uploading a social media post. It's the laundry.
Once you see, in black and white, that you're spending 80% of your day on the laundry, you're ready for the E.A.D. Framework. You go down your list of $10/hr tasks, and you ask three questions in order:
1. Can I ELIMINATE it?
This is the most powerful and most overlooked step. We are addicted to tasks that feel productive but produce no real value. Are you in meetings that could have been an email? Are you creating reports that nobody reads? You have to be intentional here. The goal of a great business isn’t to do more work; it’s to achieve more results with less work. Challenge every task. Does this actually make a dollar? If not, why are you doing it? Eliminate it.
2. Can I AUTOMATE it?
If a task cannot be eliminated, the next question is: can a machine do this for me? In today's world, the answer is almost always yes. Client scheduling? Use a tool like Calendly. Following up on proposals? Your CRM can do that. Sending invoice reminders? Your accounting software can do that. Every hour you spend on a repetitive, rules-based task is an hour you are stealing from your $1000/hr work. Automate it.
3. Can I DELEGATE it?
This is the final and most terrifying step for an entrepreneur. We tell ourselves, "It's just faster if I do it myself," or "No one can do it as well as I can." This is a trap. It's the thinking that keeps you small forever.
Let's do the math on that excuse. You spend one hour today training someone to do a task that takes you ten minutes each week. In the short term, you've lost 50 minutes. But you're not thinking long-term. That one-hour investment buys you back ten minutes every single week for the rest of your life. That's the brutal ROI of delegation. It’s an investment in your future freedom, not an expense for today.
If a task cannot be eliminated or automated, it must be delegated. The key to effective delegation is creating what I call the Perfect Standard Operating Procedure, or SOP. It’s not a dusty binder on a shelf. It's a living document—a simple screen recording of you doing the task, a checklist of the steps, and a clear definition of what a successful outcome looks like.
The actual training itself follows a simple, three-step model: First, you do it and they watch you. Second, they do it and you watch them. And finally, they do it on their own. I do it, you watch. You do it, I watch. Then you go do it. This is how you train someone to wash the laundry your way. This is how you build a system that protects your competence and buys back your time. Delegate it.
Now, I need to pause here because I know exactly what your brain is doing right now. It’s putting up a roadblock. It’s a sneaky, powerful defense mechanism I call The Perfectionist's Trap.
As you think about a task—say, managing your inbox—your brain tells you, 'Well, I can't delegate all of my emails, some are too important. I can't automate every response. I can't eliminate all the junk.' And because you can't get to 100%, your brain concludes the only logical alternative is 0%. You do nothing. You stay stuck. But what happened with all the numbers in between 100% and 0%? What happened to 80% so you can manage the leftover 20%?
This is a cognitive distortion. It’s a lie your brain tells you to keep you in your comfort zone—the comfort zone of chaos and control. It disguises procrastination as high standards.
Let’s be transparent: The goal here is not 100% perfection. The goal is 80% progress.
If you can delegate 80% of your inbox, you just bought back hours of your life. If you can automate 80% of your scheduling, you've eliminated dozens of low-value decisions every week. An 80% solution that is implemented is infinitely more valuable than a 100% perfect plan that lives only in your head.
The voice that demands 100% is the same voice that is keeping you in the laundry room until midnight. Your job as a leader is to tell that voice to shut up, and go capture the 80% win. That is how you get free.
When you commit to the Elimination Audit, something incredible happens. The chaos starts to recede. The constant buzz of your phone gets quieter.
You stop thinking about the next fire and you start thinking about the next opportunity. You finally have the mental space to be the captain again. To work on your business, not just in your business.
Freedom isn't about sitting on a beach. It's about having control over your time and your attention. It's about choosing to spend your day on the $1000/hr work that truly moves the needle, and getting home for dinner with your family, mentally present and accounted for.
That is the promise of systems. It’s not about working less, it’s about making the work you do matter more.
So here is my challenge to you this week. It’s built on Action Over Theory.
I want you to perform a one-day Forensic Time Audit. Just 24 hours. And hey, if you’re the hustler I know you are, challenge yourself to do the whole week. From the moment you start working to the moment you stop, track everything you do. Then, at the end of the day, put a $10, $100, or $1000 value next to each task.
The goal isn't to judge yourself. It's to see the truth. I want you to find the laundry in your business. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. And that’s your first step to stop washing the laundry. That's your first step to getting free
