How To Only Work 3 Hours A Week While Making 400k In Revenue Per Month

Bryan: All right, we are back people’s it is the authority project. You are the project we want to slap authority to your name so you can sell more of what you’re great at. And I am here again with Matthew Hayes. I’m sorry, I keep saying Hayes, Matthew Yahes, Matt Yahes, please.

Matthew: My whole life. Everyone messes it up. People put in like an L. Q. They just make it my whole life.

Bryan: Apology my friend. Apologies. 

Matthew:All right.

Bryan: So how are you doing today? How’s it going?

Matthew Yahes: I’m good, man. You know, I have no complaints. Living the dream – most.

Bryan: Oh, yeah. That’s wonderful. That’s what that is wonderful. That’s great. So let’s let’s talk about first of all, before we dive in, who Matt Yahes is, who are you personally and professionally?

Matthew: So I think personally, I’m, I guess I’m a serial entrepreneur. I think at this point, it almost is my identity. But no border, do it. Well, I’m a kiteboarder. I’m terrible at it. But I love it. I travel a lot, not during COVID. But normally leave with my wife. And you know, we spend most of our time in Lake Tahoe, Nevada. So right in the mountains, eight minutes from the ski left eight minutes from the beach. Love it.

Bryan: Yeah, that’s wonderful. Well I’m here, freezing my butt off here in Boston, and apologize for you for hearing me mad winds put like 5050 miles per hour winds over here. So just look out for that. But anyway. Anyway, so what –what is your current project at the moment that you’re here?

Matthew: So in the middle of the pandemic, right, so this is, you know, a lot of lessons unpack there while I started but middle pandemic, I decided to start an outsourcing agency connecting workers in the Philippines with people in the United States, and just really high quality people, not the $5 an hour stuff you see all over LinkedIn. And I focus all my time helping entrepreneurs grow just by getting better people. And it’s not honestly, it’s not rocket science. Just have a different twist.

Bryan: Awesome, awesome. And lastly, take us through your daily routine, if you have one.

Matthew: So I really don’t I mean, I can tell you the only thing that is really typical every day, I do two things. One, I have a meet a stand up meeting with my team, to I get an update from all my businesses for my chief of staff. And she just tells me, here’s what’s going on, here’s what you need to do. Here’s what I need from you. Go have a good day, honestly, half the week these days, I’m snowboarding. Like I want to be honest with you like like after days, I’m just snowboarding because I have a team to do stuff. Right? And I think that’s like the thing is entrepreneurs. That is you listen, we all are perfectionists we all think, Oh, we’re special. Truth is we’re not. And there’s no famous successful person, you know, we’re not faking a successful person who’s an entrepreneur who did it on their own. There’s not one and so just build that team.

Bryan: Preach, preach, and I like it. I like it. So let’s dive into this three hours of work. Yeah, okay. 400k a month topic here, because I want to see the big reveal on this. Is this really real, Matt? Yeah. So it’s a clickbait title. If I’ll be honest, you kno–

Matthew: It’s clickbaity.

Bryan: but Is it attainable for everyone? Can we all do it?

Matthew: Okay, so first things first, you have –a have to have a business that makes money, right? I mean, you know, so that’s, there’s, there’s not like this magical spring. It’s not like the internet like, get rich quick, here’s 400 caring, you’re gonna make it a month. I saw one recently that was made $300 by doing nothing with Google Maps, I was like, it was on YouTube, like in my YouTube feed. I was like, no one’s making 300 a day by doing nothing. Right? You’re doing something. But so you have to have a business. First and foremost, the secret is how to have a large business. And it’s not really a secret how to have a large business by not but not have to work. Right? That’s where the secret sauces. So whether you’re making 10k a month, or 400, there’s a way to do it. So you’re not sitting there getting crushed every day. Right. And here’s the origin story. So I have an E commerce company, right? I bought it about five years ago. And it was I for three and a half years. I worked 14 hours a day. I was a dog, man, I was a slave. And it was terrible. It was terrible. Like it is this business like you to talk about people like they just get crushed. Right, by their business. And that was made. And so you know, I had these people who worked for me in the Philippines. I started outsourcing, experimenting, figuring out how to how to work, right. And you know, what happened was, we were going to China. And my wife said to me, she goes, Why don’t you hire some of the Philippines to, you know, work for you, you know, to run your whole business. Right? And she was like, I really don’t want to work on this vacation. So I was there. I said, Honey, you can’t really do this. It’s not. You can’t find that talent. And she looks at me. Are you married? Brian? Yes, I am. Okay, so you’ll know this look? Yes. Poor poor man. Poor man. It’s 100 million people. You’ll find one person. 

Bryan: Yeah. Right. Exactly. You will? It’s a good point. 

Matthew: Yeah. So it was like you’re sitting here in the garden, honey. Yes, yes. You don’t know what you’re talking about. And so what happened was, I spent like two months 500 resumes on repeat interviews, whittled it down. And I found someone who, you know, her name is Angelica. She was Chief of Staff 400 person company. And I convinced her to work for my six person company at the time. And what you know, and all I did was tap the global market for better talent. I did a small entrepreneur, what someone like, you know, Citibank and all these big companies do. Yeah. And what the secret to and so here’s why the happened. Once outside, the United States has been 150,000 year person, which I couldn’t afford. At the secret was you tap the global market stop thinking we’re special. And within one week, she had an 80%, right? We went to China, there were no issues. Within six weeks, I went from 14 to three hours a day, because I levered my time. But I leverage my time with the right person, which is different, right? It’s not just getting someone, I got the right person. And I went, I reduced my time by 11 hours a day. And truthfully, I worked one hour a week on that business now. And that’s the truth, then. That’s what happens in the business. 4000 orders a month, one hour a week. That’s – 

Bryan: Yeah. So that. That sounds great. That sounds great. So I want to dip down to one of our other questions here. So starting with that, though, how do you start with getting beginning that that person? What was your process for that? Did you Where did you look? Where do you look? Did you go to somebody that you already know that you say you know that you Google it and say hey, I’m searching what was your process on that? 

Matthew: So the first thing is, and this is the number one mistake, okay? So if all the people here, okay, like, just listen to this, the number one mistake, everyone, including myself, when I first learned how to outsource, the number one mistake people make is they don’t write a job description. What are you gonna have these people do? So before you know where to go? Yeah, that’s that that’s actually not that hard, right? Google? What are you having them do? And the simple way to figure that out, is divide your day into two categories strategic and tactical. Just boom, take a piece of paper, write a line down the middle old school, strategic, tactical, strategic, everything that requires Brian’s knowledge and experience, aka makes you money, tactical, everything else that would include let’s use your podcast, you know, as things, everything from booking a guest, to any any conversations to post production to follow up to, you know, upgrading your subscription on stream yard, I mean, you name it. Anything else you mean like anything, right? That’s tactical project management, project management over others. That’s not strategic next tactical. For me, this makes you money makes me money for you, this makes you money, right? You’re getting your audience. And once you do that, write a job description. If you’ve never wrote a job description, right? You could find on the internet, it’s really not that hard. You’re just selling your job, your company, right? Once you do that, and you’re like, Okay, this is this makes sense. Show it to someone else who’s not you, you know, maybe significant other friends, whatever to make sure it you’re not, you know, it’s legible. Like make sense, right? And then give it to you, then you go, I went to an online Filipino job form. That’s known for a lot of, like, a lot of people but low quality, but that’s the only place I knew. And it turns out, I got lucky that I got someone so high quality, but that’s what I did. And I just just grounded out for two months, you can go to Upwork. Right. That’s another one very famous place. You know, again, you have to you have to know things about the platform you have to learn. But you know, then you go start the interview process.

Bryan: Okay. So I think there are several, there are several out there first of that, for sure. 

Matthew: Yeah. 

Bryan: But I think, I think the first thing that pops up in everyone’s mind when they’re contemplating this is cost. People are afraid of getting into the old into the hiring thing. Where did they screw up your baby, you know, your crowning achievement of a business, man? You know, what happened? Why do this white, why let go into somebody that you don’t know that you, you’re afraid that they might, you know, mess up, you know, this good thing that you have going on already?

Matthew: Alright, here’s my mantra. Okay, and I say this to myself. And I’m telling you, it’s not easy. You’re not special. Like you’re not special. Like, that’s just what it comes down to. Like, just stop, you’re not special, right? And once you really internalize that, right, you realize most everything you do, it can be done by someone else, and they’re not going to screw it up. Okay? Are they gonna make you everything as perfect as you? Maybe not, but they’re gonna do some things better than you. And that’s how you make more money. So if you’re afraid of success, if you’re afraid of your business growing, if you want to just work 14 hours a day, don’t hire anyone. Or if you don’t want to do that, and you want to be successful, you want to make more money, and you want to grow, go get someone to do a lot of these tasks, and just say it, I’m not special. And it’s amazing what will happen when someone’s focused for eight hours a day, and all the stuff you hate and never got into business for.

Bryan: Stick with that, because that’s my next question about about about burnout, because it’s a real thing. Burnout is a real thing for many entrepreneurs, who are still, you know, grasping with doing it all themselves. Tell us more about why it’s so important to get out of that type of positioning for yourself so that you’re delegating more of your time and your work to others.

Matthew: Sure. And then I’ll touch on the cost because there’s another way to look at how much money you’re spending. Right? That’s a very good way of looking at it. So let’s talk about burnout. I’ll use myself as an example. I’m a grinder, right? I wasn’t working 14 hours a day because like, oh my god, what was me I’m working 14 hours a cup again. I’m grinding it out. This is what listen, I 45 years old. I know who I am at this point in life, are you I hope I do. Right? Yeah. And so I’m just grinding it out. And you know, what happens? Like the truth is my quality of work suffers. Right? So if you’re grinding it out, and I’ve grounded out my whole life so this is like point your quality of work suffers. Your personal life suffers in my case my marriage was suffering all right. Let’s say that you know relationships suffer but I’m like Oh, I’m gonna you know grow and write your your bid, but most importantly, your business will see offer, because you’re not focused on the one thing that’s the most, that’s most important. Growth. That’s it, you have to look, you have to execute a certain level. Everyone I say this to people, they always think like I’m talking about, well, execution is really important, and I’m gonna have better operations. But the truth is, right, of course, that’s important. Yes, that’s table stakes. You can’t have bad operations, you have to do your job, of course, right? Like, if you’re, like, focus on tactical nonsense, right? How are you actually going to grow your business? And that was my mistake. When I hired Angelica. What happened? I first of all, I felt guilty after a six year like, what the heck do I do all day? But, um, strategy? Yeah. New vendor acquisition like it. And then on other business, right? People strategy? Oh, wait, magically what happened? The business started to grow. Right, me then COVID hit and it’s in weddings, you can now that’s a whole nother story. But, you know, it’s you think about that, right? Like that. That’s, you need to focus on the right things, man.

Bryan: Awesome, awesome. So how do we start? How do we start? Then, as far as when we look? Do we do it? Do you think the approach that you took we find is the one person first? Should we try to find a list of people who do different things? Build a small new team? What is the blueprint that you that you think is the best in your experience, but yourself and others that you’re you’ve helped in the you know, since you started?

Matthew: So I’ll tell you what I did? I’ll tell you what I did at first, and I’ll tell you what I’ve learned. 

Bryan: Okay, sure. 

Matthew: So what I did at first, my ecommerce business is I started with the lowest paid person first, I’m just gonna get someone there. I quote, The myth of the $5 an hour VA, actually think that someone you’re paying in another country for $5 an hour is going to change your life. You’re smoking crack. Right? And so, like, okay,

so, before that, tell us what that looks like. When you did that. Can you can you do that? Tell us what that looks like?

Sure. So here’s the truth about a $5 an hour virtual system, and really any, any help overseas. What everyone stopped forgets is how much management time it takes to manage the person. Right? So now, let’s just say you’re at $100 an hour, your your time, you manage them for 30 hours a month. Now, every hour, because your time plus their time is $105, you’re spending on a $5 an hour task. It equates roughly to like 27 an hour, some somewhere around that 20 an hour, you’re spending 20 an hour for something you thought you’re paying five. Right? And so at lower levels of talent, like more junior people, right, you’re getting people right out of college, you know, the thing, they can go like this, like that’s it, they’re just straight ahead on Oh, there’s deviation? Oh, you know, there’s nothing you can do. And, you know, and it just it just it’s not their fault. They just Jr. Right? Right. So I did that. And it was I mean, that’s part of the reason I was working all this time. By the way. It’s because I built a team like this, right? And they’re asking me questions. And you know, I had systems in place, but it’s just constant questions, right, that I wasn’t just that how to do because it was me. Now, what I’ve realized is that’s the wrong strategy. But that’s the strategy the entire industry pushes. Yeah, the right strategy is hire the highest paid person first. Why? First of all, let’s talk what are we talking about here? We’re talking 16 to 20 an hour. And that’s like what we charge to a client for someone really high quality who you can offload work to. Right. It really depends what you want, right?

Bryan: Let me ask what does that equate to in the US employee when you say, let’s say that kind of kind of kind of our what what does it equate to? Here in the States?

Matthew: 150 000 here.

Bryan:  Wow. Okay.

Matthew: Okay, that level of employee. So at 20 bucks an hour, I’ll get you someone who has $150,000 

Bryan: Wow. Right. 

Matthew: So I mean, so here’s what my like I showed you the quote, the most incredible person I hired boss yesterday, the most incredible. He the most senior person I hired to a client was 27 an hour and he ran a 2000 person division. So think of the scope of that. Yeah, more senior than neighbors guys before successful.

Bryan: Right. Gotcha. 

Matthew: Crazy, right?

Bryan: Yeah. 

 Matthew:And this guy is like strategic thinker and ran a BPO company and he’s brilliant. But so you know, It typically per client, it’s like 1617 to 20 for, someone really high quality, who can change your life. And so that’s, you know, you start thinking about that, right? That is, you hire that person, you work with it. Now, if you don’t have systems already, they can work with you to develop them, and you build out the structure of your business with them doing it, everyone’s always worried, well, they’re not going to want to do, you know, let the quote level one work in the Philippines, which is like, they’re doing work, right. They’re not just managing, it’s not true, they will be they’re happy to do it. They love working for US companies, right? And so they help you build it. Now, when you need more help, like, okay, like, I have this concept I do my company called firing yourself, meaning you should look at your job and fire yourself every three months from it, meaning push it down to someone, you know, to build it, build a pyramid, push it down, give it to someone else. So you can focus on a higher level task. Right? So now you’re gonna fire that person from certain tasks, you get them, but then when you hire a more junior person, you’re gonna hire, they’re gonna manage them, not you. So all this cultural, these cultural things, like they need more help, or the way they ask questions, how to get the best out of them, you don’t have to deal with, right? Not that you don’t want to talk to them. Not that you’re a bad person. Not that you’re never going to speak to them. Day to day management is not your responsibility. Yeah. So that’s how you then boom, you’ve slot in more junior people. And you interface–  I interface with one person every single day. I talk daily stand up for 15 minutes. But beyond that, I don’t talk to any member of my team whatsoever, except for one person. Okay, so internally, we have roughly 20 people, right? So, you know, total companies like says 70, something like that now. So, but I only talk to those people I you know, you know, between two companies, like you know, those 20 people between companies, I talked to one person that’s my cheapest actually quarterbacks at all for me, and she has other people, managers that help her with stuff. But what that allows me to do is free up the back and forth the business every single day. And I just get to have conversations like this, which is, you know, helping grow my business.

Bryan: Yeah. Well, that sounds fantastic, Matt. That sounds fantastic. However, when people that when people think about this, that was when I got back into this. When Should people think about really diving into this? Like, yeah, when the seemed like okay, now I’m doing all this now I’m starting this business. When should they be like listing looking to really taking this step and doing this?

Matthew: If you’re Yeah, so if you Okay, so when you first start a business, any business, right, in this case, even my offshore business, I happen to have someone who works for me. So, you know, right away, we split up the tests. Right? I did all the onshore stuff, sales marketing, visioning. She did like the hiring and recruiting and that kind of stuff. Right? So, right, but this the second, right so you could say she’s my business partner. The second, we were taken up like all the tasks we were doing started impeding our ability to grow. We hired. Yeah, that’s it. So let’s just say for the sake of discussion, this is your podcast, you’re making all this money, millions of dollars, it’s coming from heaven, right? You’re famous. Now, all of a sudden, you’re doing all these things that are taking away from you making money. Right? That’s stopping you like, Oh, my God, I couldn’t follow up with this guest. I couldn’t get this thing done. Now you should do before then, once you start seeing that’s going to happen, but let’s just say you’re like most people, you wait till it happens, you know, then you should actually hire someone. So I was on I was talking to someone recently, they said, it’s when the pain of change is less than the pain of continuing. Right? So when it’s when it’s more painful to continue the way you are, then change, or it’s stopping your growth, then you you hire, and most people will then say to back to the money thing, which is oh my god, it’s so expensive. 30 $40,000 a year, whatever. Well, don’t think of it like that. Think of it is a few 1000 a month, which I’m not saying it’s not a lot of money, right, especially when it’s your own. But within three months of getting rid of all these tasks, if you’re not growing, and that’s not paid for call for months, maybe there’s a problem with your business. Right where Yeah, something else is going on. And you need to really think about your business. Because $3,000 Should it as it’s really growth investment, because it’s freeing you up to grow, that $3,000 should pay for itself. 500.

Bryan: Gotcha. That’s great. That’s great. I haven’t got more questions here. And I think it’s just I just want to really dig into the people who are who are listening to you right now. Right? And they’re still saying, they’re still saying, but three hours of work this does scratching their heads, can you? Can you tell them? Have you ever run into people like that, where they still don’t sit? Don’t think that this is possible for them? How How, how it can be such a great thing for them to really dive into this this concept?

Matthew: Well, what’s your job? So what is your job as an entrepreneur? It’s your job to actually do day to day work. So it took me a while to realize, what’s your job? Ya know, your job is to think about how to grow. Right? So my job as CEO of my E commerce business with 10 people 1000s of orders a month is not to manage the team. My job is to set direction. The truth is I need this is now I need one hour a week to do that. That’s it, I don’t need to do anything else day to day. Right? In my outsource, so that’s that business in my outsourcing business. Okay, what’s my job, right now, my job is to do marketing and to grow. And to do this. In the next six, four to six months, I’m going to have a salesperson, I’ll have to do podcasts. So in a marketing like this, I’m gonna have a marketer. And my job is going to be to meet with the team give direction. That’s it. The only other thing I will do is talk to people like you. You know, which is it’s I mean, essentially, honestly, this is marketing, right? We both write. And so talk to people like you, which is the highest and best use of my time. So if I did five podcasts a week, that’s five hours a week, I need to be on, I need to work. And then another two to three hours, it was just saved even Five more hours to say an hour a day giving direction to the team. What else am I doing? Like literally, I don’t know. What else I think because I’ve structured it properly if they might if I as an entrepreneur, I believe our job is to structure a business to run without us by to. So you get the right people in place to execute. Right? Yeah, at first, that’s not the case. Listen, I mean, I’m still working, I’d be like you said, I work in this outsourcing business, I don’t work. One hour a week or three hours a week, I work a lot more. But in the next four to six months, if I am working 40 hours a week, I failed, because that means I’m not getting the right people. Right? At the point it’s soon enough. It’s going to be 100 to 150 person, maybe 150 person company this year. Right? What I mean, if I don’t have salespeople, like what am I doing? Right? If I don’t have marketers, what am I doing? And if I have those people? Well, then they’re doing their job. All I have to do is say yes, no, yes. No, yes. No, go about my day read think about how to grow the business. And that’s really it. And you can do that every entrepreneur can do it. They just need to let go. Right? It doesn’t matter the size of the business. Right? Look, if you’re a VC backed company and making a billion dollars, okay, it’s different, like okay for me, right again. 96% of companies in the United States make less than a million dollars a year. Yeah, yeah. 91% make sure there. There’s no way that 10 million are on aim for you just to be the executive. And there’s no way you just have to have, that’s how you do. I will build your business, get experts around the world. They will help you make more money and as a consequence, get out of your business.

Bryan:  Awesome. Awesome. I think I lost you a little bit. There are some Wi Fi issues there. Just a tad. I think we get the gist of it. Gist of it.

Matthew: Sorry about that. I paid for good energy I swear it was supposed to be like 300.

Bryan: Yeah. yeah.

Matthew: Would never lie to me. 

Bryan: Okay, so I only have one last question. And I actually have all of my guests. And it goes something like this, Matt, there are people on here or listening to you, they’re watching you. And they want to they want to be or have similar interests, similar journeys as you goals and interests. And they want to do some of the things that you’re doing helping people, build their businesses, helping them scale, and might quite possibly helping them with business business that you’re that you’re running right now. Can you tell them just in your own words, how they can become an authority in this space that put you front and center?

Matthew: Yeah. So what I would say is for any space, be authentic, be yourself work at your craft. For me, I basically built the business on without sourcing, and now I’m helping doing it for others. By leveraging my own experience, everybody is an expert at something you’re an expert or being you just think about your skill set, think about what you do, and then talk to the world about it, you’ll be authentic, and I can guarantee people will start to turn to you for help with what makes you special.

Bryan: Awesome. I love it. I love it. And that’s that’s all I have. This is great man. This great out of the ground that anyone who has to will see this episode or watch it, watch it or listen to later would not get it. When I get it you have this has to this has to happen. Especially if you’re a solopreneur solopreneur, Kingston, I’m so I’m so confident that you cannot stay a solopreneur and thinking to continue being an entrepreneur, the way you’ve always dreamed up where you desired. So I’m glad you got that point across. Please, please tell tell us where they can find you. Or you can help them after the show.

Matthew: Yeah, so go to extend your team.com you have it there. Connect with me on LinkedIn. Right messages will get answered. Right. And you know, you can also book on Excel on the website. You can book a call with me. No obligation, even if you just have questions. Hey, Matt, I’m buried. I’m not going to try to sell you. Right? If you don’t like if you just I honestly, I try to I tell people all time I don’t sell like this. I’m just telling you offer new better way. But I’m not going to try to sell you if you have questions on how to do it. I’m stuck. How do we think about it? We only do full time people. But if you if you don’t need full time, I can always point you in the right direction to talk to someone some people I know. And just yeah, go to the website. Reach out to me or LinkedIn.

Bryan: That’s it, guys. That’s awesome stuff. People that’s how you do it. That’s how you do with three hours of work. This guy really is. That was one hour, one hour  work really on one

hour business. 

Matthew: That’s it Oh, I don’t know. Honestly brother there’s nothing for you to do like I just don’t have anything to do. 

Bryan:  People, that’s –that’s reality, living the dream. Okay, that’s that’s not Will Ferrell living the dream. That’s that’s Matt Yahes, he’s living the journey.

Matthew: It is not  Tim Ferriss right.  At work that guy’s working hard. 

Bryan: Right, right. Exactly. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, he’s the real deal. Guy. That’s the real thing. So people, please connect with him. Go to extend your team.com Check him out on LinkedIn. He’s a real guy. He’s a real dude. Just just check him out. Yeah, he obviously has plenty of plenty of time to answer your questions. 

Matthew: After I go snowboarding. 

Bryan: Right. Right. Exactly, exactly. So So do that people go there. And like I always say, go to them and then go to my little big little thing here called the authority letter.com. And get on that three- part, we have a three part video series to help you build your authority platform, through in from the inside out, is what I’m saying now. Build it from the inside out. And really grab a hold of what you what you want to do in life and what you want to be and I have videos that I can write to you every week. So get on that. It’s a real deal. Real, real really good stuff. And we’re building a community there. So that’s it for me, people. Thank you so much for being on this one again. Remember, remember, remember, build it, share it and they will come. That’s all you got to do. All right, take care. And we will see you on the next one, peace.

Narrator: And that’s a wrap for this episode of the authority project. Thanks so much for tuning in. And if you like what you heard, we want to hear from you, subscribe, rate, and give an honest review, share and tell your friends so they can hear too. And for even more authority building tactics, be sure to sign up at the authority letter.com Get free weekly content and ongoing digital product giveaways to help you on your entrepreneurial journey. We certainly hope you got a key takeaway or maybe an aha moment from today’s broadcast. Just remember, it’s your authority, build it, share it, and they will come until next time.