At the end of each year you should be working less in your business than you were at the end of the year before. This objective is something that’s missing in typical business plans and yet your goal towards freedom should always focus on leverage, leverage, leverage.
Here’s a definition of ‘leverage’ I found online at businessdictionary.com:
“Leverage is the ability to influence a system, or an environment, in a way that multiplies the outcome of one’s efforts without a corresponding increase in the consumption of resources. In other words, leverage is the advantageous condition of having a relatively small amount of cost yield a relatively high level of returns.”
If you add the words “or time” after the words “small amount of cost” in the above definition then I think we can really start to appreciate what leverage means in a business sense. It’s about you achieving more by doing less – multiplying the outcome of your efforts and decreasing the time you spend to get this outcome. A typical owner operator business, such as a plumber or an interior designer, spends all of their time IN the business doing the work to make the money. This is the opposite of leverage. This is using all of your resources to achieve the same return, day in and day out. As I said earlier, you are never going to get rich exchanging time for money.
How do you stop the business being dependent on you? If your own skills and talents form the basis of the income for you business, please start right now to think about how you can change this.
Another great sales tip from guest entrepreneur Mike Brunel
Mike Brunel is a director of a number of companies both in New Zealand and worldwide which specialise in generating sales revenue for television newspaper and radio stations. NRS Media operates in over 65 markets throughout New Zealand, Australia, US, Canada and Europe. Their simple sales concepts have generated in excess of US$900 million. Mike is a phenomenal sales person, as well as a stimulating and relatable trainer. Contact him at 
Someone once told me that life is like a game of soccer. It’s a game of two halves. In the first half you are becoming an adult and you’re full of energy. You’re also a bit stupid and you have all your learning experiences and make all your mistakes. And then you have your second half of your life where you accept that you are going to die one day and the quality of life becomes important. Your priorities change and the focus of where you put your energy changes.
I had a very enjoyable interview with John Holt (co-founder of HR Software provider Sonar6 which was sold to NASDAQ listed company Cornerstone On Demand) for my regular NZ Business Magazine column. He said many wise things.