Where Do People Go Wrong With Time Management? James Dooley and Mads Singers on Priority Management for Agencies

James Dooley: Where do people go wrong with time management? Today I'm joined with Mads Singers. Obviously, you're looking at a lot of different businesses doing consultancy, you're scaling, you've got a recruitment company. Where do you feel the number one reason is that people go wrong with time management?

Mads Singers: Time management itself. Um, we can't manage time. Where people go wrong is that they think time management is about doing more things. Whereas really what we should be looking at instead is priority management. Because people who are successful is not successful because they do a lot more stuff in the same time. They're successful because they do the right things. And the key thing when you're looking at your business is understanding what are the things that move the needle. Because reality is, for most business owners, it's not that they're not putting in the hours. They are. The problem they have is that they're putting in the hours in the wrong things, right? And for me, that's the number one thing when it comes to time management. Every single person who asks me, "How do I get better at time management?" They're asking the wrong question from the starting point. Right.

James Dooley: So on there, obviously people say it's not about working harder, it's about working smarter. And there you've mentioned priority, but how does someone decide? Is there any, like, kind of written rule or anything that needs to be putting into place to say this needs to become priority of what you should be doing and therefore this isn't priority and you should be looking to delegate that out?

Mads Singers: Yeah. So the way I look at it from a business owner standpoint, and obviously businesses are different at different levels, at different points, but generally what's very important to understand is that business has four core areas. Right? So they have finance, operations, marketing and sales. And at any one point, one of those four areas is a bottleneck. At least one of them, right? But when a company is growing, what happens is that the bottleneck in one of those four areas is going to stop the growth. Right? So you're either struggling making enough sales, you're struggling getting enough leads, you're struggling to deliver, or you have some financial constraints, right? Like, and that one of them will always be the bottleneck. Now, which one is the bottleneck will change over time, but it will always be one of those four. So the real questions that I sit down and ask myself when it comes to my companies is to say, okay, right now for the next quarter, where do I see the core bottleneck right now? So in our recruitment company, for example, I look at these things and I say, well, you know, where are we struggling? And it's either in delivering, it's in getting leads and marketing, or it's in sales. That's, that's for a service-based business, that's often the areas where the struggle happens, right? So there's not really a right or wrong approach, but the fundamental thing to ask yourself is how, how do I make sure that I work on the area that is struggling? Because what most people do is they're struggling. They might be struggling on sales, or they're not getting enough sales, or they're not getting enough leads, but they're so focused on operations. They're spending all their time and effort in operations to improve that and make it better, but it's the wrong area because that's not where the issue currently is. Right?

James Dooley: If you're thinking big, think of a serial entrepreneur, right? They've got more than a dozen companies and they're working on the business. They're not in day-to-day. So, in the four pillars of what you just spoke about there, they're not involved with that. Yeah. They have been looking at the bottlenecks and they've been improving the bottlenecks all the time. Do you think in time for serial entrepreneurs they actually need to employ someone in time to run the group and their role is to end up working out the bottlenecks themselves?

Mads Singers: For sure. Um, I love building companies. And I, for me, it's always about putting someone in place to run it, right? Like, you want to have someone who is responsible for a business because that is the only way you can take yourself out of the situation. Most business owners is the bottleneck in their company, right? Like, reality is most of the people I coach, their biggest challenge is often not sales or marketing, operations. Their biggest challenge is they're the bottleneck of everything. Yeah. And the problem is many people, they look at people like Gary Vee or they look at Elon Musk and they're like, "Oh man, they're working 16 hours a day." It's like, yes, but someone like Elon Musk, he's not just working 16 hours a day. He's working 16 hours a day on the right things, right? That is very different than many of these people. They, like, most people cannot work 16 hours a day efficiently. Most people get a way higher output working eight than working 16 hours. But it kind of makes them feel good because they're like, "Oh yeah, I'm putting in the hours. I'm doing the thing, right? I'm doing, like, what all my heroes want." But they're doing the wrong things. And because they're doing the wrong things, they're not getting the output. So they feel they're doing the right thing. They're putting in the hours, but the business isn't growing on it though. Right.

James Dooley: With regards to time management, I want to kind of role-play something here. Right. So you've got two different sides where some people says, "But Mads, I really enjoy what I'm doing and because I enjoy it, I want to carry on doing it." However, the chimp in the head's going, "But you need business growth. You want to keep growing it. You want to earn more money." So they're being the bottleneck because they enjoy what they do, but on the flip side, they're saying, "But I want to grow it." How does somebody like yourself go in there and explain to the business owner who owns the operation, you're the problem?

Mads Singers: So again, this happens for many of the agencies I work with, particularly SEO and PPC and so on, right? Like, because the people like that job. But in reality, it's making a conscious decision. So if I sit down with you and said, "James, you know, yes, you can keep doing your SEO, but you know that it is at the expense of making more money." So you have to make a choice for you. Do you want to do the thing that you enjoy doing and, more importantly, the thing you're comfortable with, or do you want to build a bigger business? And as long as you're okay with making that choice and say, "Hey, I'm okay doing what I love doing and I don't want to build a bigger business," fine. But if you want to build a bigger business, we have to look at doing things differently. Right? That's the core aspect from my point of view.

James Dooley: Do you find a lot of business owners are willing to take that advice on? Like, do you find... I'm presuming that they would, like, generally speaking, if they're an entrepreneur, they're fine with failing. They're fine with actually being told, "You're wrong." A lot of the time they try to prove you wrong the opposite way, obviously. Um, but do you find that that comes across well with the people that are hiring? I'm presuming, like you said, because someone's hiring you as being the expert and you come in and you dissect it and you say, "You're the bottleneck. You need to sort it out." Have you, have you managed to say that to some business owners and entrepreneurs and they've took it and gone, "Okay, I'm going to work on it"?

Mads Singers: Yeah. I would say when people struggle, it's always bad anecdotal evidence. They're like, "Oh, but, you know, I have this friend who's just doing SEO and he's making so much money," or, "He's doing this thing." And I'm like, "Are you?" Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. The amount of business owners that I see who is running agencies that are, like, in principle big agencies. Some of them, dude, like, I've seen a guy recently who was doing over 200K revenue. He was putting three grand in his pocket a month. Three grand. And you just, you know... But it happens in so many agencies, right? So many agencies. Scary.

James Dooley: Anyone, anyone who's watching this, time management is absolute key. Um, especially for myself, I've got three kids. I want to try and make certain priority comes with family time. I have always said it that, wait, you can... I'm not bothered about wasting money. Don't waste my time. Wasted time is way worse than wasted money. Yeah. Um, time management is key. Make sure you check out a few of the other episodes in there about hiring the right team, especially in the AI era. How to level up staff in the AI era. Anyone who is struggling with regards to time management, I strongly recommend hitting Mads up at MadsSingers.com. He's an absolute legend when it comes to business consultancy. And thank you very much. As always.