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The need to work 40 hours a week is entirely fictional.
You don’t need to work a 40-hour workweek just because that’s the standard, and because there’s a whole system, economy, business organization structure, all set up around the idea of a 40-hour workweek.
As a CPA firm owner, you can work less and you can work on your business to increase your revenue. And your revenue is not reliant on the time that you put in. Your revenue is reliant on how much value you create for your clients and how effective you are at capturing that value created with your prices.
So I want to talk about the process of getting down from an overworked state, be it 50, 60, 70 hours, or more a week, down to a 40-hour workweek and what that looks like. And then setting up to get down to a 25-hour workweek, and letting go of the appearance of safety of the conventional 40-hour workweek, and taking a fresh approach so that you can have the business that you want and have the life that you want, with your business that supports that and fits nice and neatly inside that life.
Through this process, I also worked on my thinking, because the more I could switch myself into more productive, effective thoughts, the more time I started getting back for myself.
Steps to get down to a 40-hour workweek:
1. Disengage
2. Highgrade your best clients' package and price.
3. Deal with your most pressing challenges.
4. Organize and protect your time
5. Work on the thoughts so that they help you get where you want to go.
It is absolutely possible for you to work the number of hours a week that you want to work, whether it's 40, 38, 32, 28, 24, or 18 and a half. You get to design and you get to decide what you want. And it has nothing to do with the 40-hour standard, which is fiction. You get to decide what you want. And you get to design it.
When you do this work going through this process of getting yourself down to a sane workweek and bringing in the high margin revenue that suits you, it's better for your business, it's better for your clients, and it's better for you and you your life on your one trip through space.