The Subtraction Method: how Sabri Suby protects his time and focus (Part 1)

moves the needle. In this episode, Sawbury takes me inside his full system, his King's audit process, whey he only takes meetings on Mondays and Fridays, how he trained his fixer to defend his time like a ouncer at the door, and the dream day exercise that keeps him from chasing shiny new objects. Welcome to How I Work, a show about habits, rituals and strategies.

And then you realize very very quickly, as you keep on building your business that your time is the most valuable resource that you've got. And everyone's heard of that. It's a very cliche thing, but the people that say it and then they don't treat their resource like it is the most precious thing. So the King's Audit is

all about finding exactly where your time is going. You run a full week with measuring every hour in that week, and then when you get to the end of the week, you look at it all and you basically identify which of the tasks that you did that move the money needle. And everybody knows how much money that they make in a year, or they should if they run a business and they can figure out, okay, this is how much

profit my business makes. Then you just divide that by the number of hours that you're working and you find out how much a unit is time is worth to you. And basically, you shouldn't do any tasks that are less

than you're making per hour. Right, It's a simple thing, and then you start delegating and outsourcing all the other things that aren't that thing, because basically the game as an entrepreneur is to keep on increasing how much value that you get for each unit of time, and the only way to do that is to keep on working on the higher value things, and you can't do that if you're stuck in the day to day operations of

the business. Most people are kind of they'll identify with that, and that will resonate to them on some level and they'll be like, yeah, I get it, like I need a high a receptionist or someone to do bookkeeping, and they easily let go of the things that they don't

enjoy doing. Where it gets hard is when you have to actually start giving up the things that you do really enjoy doing, or when you have to start automating your personal life as well and delegating things that you might have stigmas attached to, like I need to change

my bed sheets, I need to clean the house. When you actually do the King's audit, and let's just say that, you know, you make two hundred dollars an hour, and then you realize that you could have somebody, for instance, come and clean for fifty or one hundred dollars an hour. You realize, hey, this is actually costing me one hundred dollars an hour to clean my own house, and you start to value time differently.

to the next level. There's always things that even though I'm so ruthless with my time management, things that creep in. I have outsourced a lot of the things that I

don't like doing. But then there's things that I really like doing, and so I have to make the hard decisions of looking at it being very pragmatic and removing my emotions from it and even going okay, even though I love meeting with these teams, or I love doing last round interviews, or I love doing these one on ones, is that the thing that's going to move the company forward at this stage? Or is it just something that you like to do. It's habitual, so you do it.

That's the big realizations that I have, is like a lot of the things that I'm emotionally attached to it, or I have some of my identity attached to I must do this because I am the business owner, I am the CEO XYZ. But then you realize that these are not necessary things. As they say, new levels have new devils, and a lot of the times that if you want to get to that new level. It's like you're going to have to give away something that you really really love in order to get there.

One thing that I did many years ago, and I haven't actually replicated it, but I realized that every Sunday morning, my family and I used to have a little ritual where we'd go to the South Melbourne Market. We would stock up on all the fruit and bedge for the week, and then I would spend two or three hours washing and cutting and prepping fruit and vedge, and like, my happy place is not in the kitchen. I hated doing all the cutting and I probably injured myself lots of

times because I don't have good nice skills. And I then thought maybe I could find someone to do this, like surely there would be a university student that is working in a cafe doing food prep, and maybe they would like to come to my house and do this for me and I can pay them and that is

going to be less than my hourly rate. And so for about a year I did that and it was so wonderful And I don't do it anymore because my husband actually loves kitchen stuff and so we don't outsource cutting of vegetables anymore anymore, which has very very privileged. But yes, it did work out to save me time. It was like it was time that I'm like, well, I could be spending that with my daughter and being really present rather than in a kitchen and just consumed by carrots and pumpkin. Yeah.

a cook that comes in does the food prep. You know, I kind of count my calories and macros, so I know I have one hundred and fifty grams of like chicken breast, and all of my lunches are like prepacked in the fridge ready to go. Then in addition to that, yes, I have cleaners that come in, I have you know,

other helps that come around the house. And a lot of people see that and they're like, oh, but what if you love cooking, Well, someone like you that you don't love doing food prep, right, And so a lot of the time that people that hate against this is because they feel attacked by the decisions that you're making. And so the way that I look at it is like, I want to free up as much of the minutia that doesn't need to be done, but it must be

done to keep the household running. The changing of bed sheets, the washing of towels, the laundry, the cleaning of the house, the chopping of food, all of those things. So that I have three daughters under the age of nine, and I want to make sure that the time that I have with them is the best quality time. I don't want my wife to be stressed about having to do these things, or for me to be stressed about having

to do them. I leave the house at five am in the morning when all of my girls are asleep, and then I get home and I get an hour and a half with them in the evening, and I want that hour and a half to be like really high quality time. I don't want to be like I'm frustrated because I'm going and cleaning up the play room or doing any of these things. So any of those things I can automate, I do so that looks like a cook, a cleaner, nanny's to help with the dropping

to certain extracurricular activities that the kids do. Landscapers come in and do all the lawnmowing, the pool guy comes in and does the pool naturally. Then if I have any annoying tasks that are like husband tasks that need to be done, like screws need to be tightened in draws or anything like that, I use air Tasker. So just take a photo, upload it on air Tasker and I can have someone there in like an hour. I

don't engage in those things. I'm not going to be like trying to figure out how to fix the AC unit, Like that's going to cost me thousands of dollars if I try to entertain those little things. So I always

look for what I call like wastage of things. I like, I wouldn't choose to do this, and it doesn't add any value to my life, but it does add value being able to free myself up and take my girl's horse riding, or take them on a nature walk, or do some painting with them and spend that quality time. And I try to remove all the stuff that isn't that.

need to do. So I found that it was very difficult to build my business and to jump in between problem solving in a meeting, dealing with a HR issue, trying to hire somebody, sorting out anything that needs to be done international payroll, and then trying to jump in and do creative deep work, and so all of that work is like shallow work, and the deep work is the work that's actually going to propel and grow the company forward. And these are things that must get done,

Like I must meet with my senior managers. I must meet with my leaders. I must meet with my operations manager. But I compartmentalize it to those two days, so I just write those days off. Like so I'm like, this is a necessity. I need to do this, I need to do interviews, and I hammer them all out in terms of confining it to fifteen minute increments. Most people

don't know how to run a meeting. You just get in there, there's some loose agenda, there's nothing really like this is like people are talking and it's not necessary. So I first of all try to eliminate the meetings by using like Loom videos and like just like hey, send me a Loom video that just walks me through it. It forces someone to think about what they're going to say. It's very constructive, it's short, and I can just basically answer it on the go through a voice note. And

so if someone's like, hey, let's have a meeting. I'll be like, okay, Also, we've got fifteen minutes to have the meeting, and you'll find that they'll compress all of that. That doesn't mean that all of my meetings are fifteen minutes, right. I have more senior leadership meetings that might go for an hour. I have a quarterly off site that might go for half a day. But if it's like you need something for me, my fixer, so I don't call my assistant an assistant, they're a fixer that they're to

fix problems. She will basically be like, Okay, what's ther agenda? What do you need and make sure that it's an absolute must. And a lot of those meetings, when their requests to have a meetings, they don't even end up as a meeting because once they go through my fixer, they're eliminated in a meeting as it him needed.

down and I just unload. So basically, I plan my day the day before at four pm every day, so I don't wake up and go what am I working on today? I know what I'm working on. I've got three things that I need to knock down, and then

typically I'm going into my office. I'll have some song that I play constantly on replay while I work, and it depends on what the task is but there's always typically some form of music playing and it's repetitive, so I don't need to think about doing I don't like this song, let me skip it or anything like that. It's just like, this is a song I feel like listening to and it's just one repeat, and I pretty much work for as long as I can uninterrupted until

I need to take a break. And then when I need to take a break, I'll go have something to eat or have a shake or whatnot. On my deep work days, I don't have like any calves until the evening because I find if I eat calves, I crash and then I'm no longer effective. So let's just say that I sit down to work at the computer between five and six am in the morning, and then I'll try to sprint until like eleven thirty or so, with one break in between there, and then I'll go for

like an hour walk into nature. I'll then do any email, send any voice modes or anything that's not deep work, and then I come back and I do the second shift for the day, and so I try to eliminate everything that is not work. Most people, they're like have some like secret productivity ritual that they do or they use some crazy software to track everything that's not the thing. The thing is the thing, So I just focus on doing the thing. And what I mean by that is

the way that you focus is through subtraction. It's not by addition. You don't add more things. You don't add some special Pomeodoro clock or time tracking technique. It's just like anything that is not doing the thing isn't focused work. So I try to eliminate all communication phones on aeroplane mode, everything's away from me, and all I'm trying to do is extend the amount of time that I can work on something without being interrupted.

I want to achieve? And I used to have like these like long lists of all of these things that I wanted to achieve, And as I keep going, I realize that I just try to put it down to like maximum of two things, and I ask myself, out of all this list, so I still write the full list of goals, and then I say, what one goal if you hit on this list would make everything else irrelevant? And then I'm like, that's the thing I need to prioritize.

And so then once I find out what that one thing is, then I say, Okay, what actions would I need to take to make it unreasonable for me not to hit that goal? Like what would be unrech reasonable amount of work, amount of inputs that you had to put in where it's like that would be almost impossible for you not to hit your goals. And then I start with that, and I use that to back into the year, so then I'll be like, Okay, if that's what it is, that's the level of activity that's going

to be unreasonable for you not to win. Then I go, okay, what does that look like broken down to a quarter to a month, to a week and to a day. And so I hold myself accountable quarterly on like, hey, this is you need to directionally be moving in this way in order for this quarter to be a success. Because there's no universe that exists where you're going to finish this first quarter not be on track and then

you're just going to magically hit your goals. You obviously need to use your prioritization and really understanding what are the inputs that are really going to drive it. And as you go through the year, it's like constant experimenting. It's like, oh, I thought this was going to get me closer, but it turns out that that's not really doing it, So I need to test a new hypothesis, and so you get a chance to do that every week.

do around productivity and innovation and high performance. And it just completely exploded And now it's about two thirds of the business if I look at revenue, and that was completely unplanned and kind of following that and prioritizing what was going on with those experiments then became the main thing, but it certainly wasn't the main thing at the time. So I'm sure that this happens a lot in your world,

where just unpredictable things good and bad happen. How do you account for that when you're thinking about what is the thing that I'm focusing on, what are my goals for the year, the quarter of the day, and so on.

focus on the things that aren't going to change. So in business and with what we do, like ultimately we're all compensated by the amount of value that it is that we create and the way that we can do that. They are going to shift and move over time. But it's fundamentally about looking at, Okay, what's true for your business? Right? What are the things that aren't going to change. It's like how Jeff Bezos that Amazon looked at it for this is where I got that from. He's just like,

all right, there's so much changing in e commerce. What isn't going to change? People are always going to want the widest selection and they're going to want the cheapest price, and so everything else outside of that is kind of noise. And until there is something that comes and actually materially changes your business, like AI. Then once that happens, then I'm like, Okay, I better pay attention to this because

it's actually making a change. But there's so many things that popped up like AI, Messenger, chatbods, x y Z that appears on the surface like, hey, this is going to be something that's worth my time. And I call them shiny objects, right, And I had SOS shiny object syndrome very very badly when I was a young entrepreneur, and so that affected me way more than ignoring everything else and seeing what actually meaningfully disrupted my business and

then jumping on it. And I think that most people their businesses don't work because they're trying to do too many things. It's not that they don't allocate enough time for serendipity or this magic thing that they want to work on. Most people are doing that because they naturally gravitate towards where they get the most dopamine. And you get the most dopamine from doing like new, shiny, sexy things and not the boring things that actually scale a business.

what's going to materially change with your life? And so the exercise that I go through with anybody that's looking to scale their business is like why, like where do you want to go to and why? And most people they don't have any idea of why they want to go there. And I have a saying, you want to make the why so big that the how becomes easy.

And when you have such a big why and you know, okay, this is exactly why I want the thing, And the best place to start is the dream day exercise if you ask most people, what does it your dream life look like? Like, Oh, I don't know because it's such a big question. But if you say, what would a dream day look like to you? What time would you wake up, who would you be waking up with, what would you eat for breakfast? Then? What would you do? What would you be working on? Who would you be

working with? What are you going to do in the afternoon? Are you going out for dinner? Are you cooking in? Do you have children? What does the day look like an absolute dream day? And then you get clear on what that looks like, and then you come up with, Okay, what do I need to earn in order to make that dream day a possibility? And then you have the

target and you have why you're doing it. And then whenever you're looking at opportunities that present themselves to you, you ask yourself, is it going to get me closer to that outcome or is it something that's just going

to distract me and looks fun? And what people don't understand is the more quote unquote success that you get, the bigger and the more illustrious the oportunities look like, and the opportunities that like, I need to have discipline to turn down now like phenomenal opportunities, and they look like incredible opportunities from people from the outside as well, but I know that they all come with a cost.

And most of the time it's not right. Most of the time it's like, yeah, I'll just say yes to that coffee meeting or this random thing or speaking at this conference or whatnot. But when you ask yourself and you're really really clear on like what your goals are, and you know the inputs to get your goals, and you go, okay, well, if this is an input for me to get to my goal, is it going to

get me there? And most of the time it's like no. So then it's like the answer is no, because like prioritization means to cut off right, to cut off the other alternatives. And most people hear all these things but they don't practice them, but I try to. Once I find something that works, is just optimize it and do

it to the nth degree. And so it can be unfortunate for a lot of people, and some people might be like, oh, it's a little bit jarring, but at least they know that I'm honest, which is good.

I'm like, I don't know whether that's a yes or a no, and you must get that a lot. How do you make that decision where it's not a hell yes and it's not a clear no.

to where I want to go? And not a lot of the time it's like you can see, okay, clearly black and why this is no, it's definitely not going to help me. And yes, it's going to help me. A lot of the time. The problem is in the middle right when you're trying to ascertain whether or not it is and then you start to just think about, like what's the probabilities of this being because you always kind of fantasize in your mind that it's going to

equate to this. But once you've done it enough and you've done enough of these meetings, or you've said yes to enough of these things, you kind of know. And then it's like, am I just being obligated to say yes even when I truly know that this is not the thing I need to be doing? Like, look at all these other things that I need to be doing, And then it's like, this is a list of things that I know that I need to get done this week.

If I did those and I completed all of them, would the probability of me getting closer to my goals increase more so than this opportunity that is in front of me right now. And I think that if you're being true to yourself, you do know that it's like a sixth sense that you ultimately dial in over time,

But you don't know. When I was on like Shark Tank, it came through as like an unsolicited message in the DMS, like the producer was calling my phone, like hit me up on LinkedIn, all social media platforms, and like they couldn't even get on the phone with me because I have so many layers of defense to not distract me. And I was like, then my assistant was handling it my fixer, and they wouldn't tell her where they were

calling from. And I was like, yeah, I'm not going to jump on the call then, and then so they reluctantly told me. I was like, okay, let's jump on the call. And then even then, you still think it's a scam because every day there's somebody from somewhere that's calling about something. And unless you have like these default nos, it seems so innocent. But even entertaining something takes your way.

So it might take two or three hours to sit down with your fixer or your assistant or whoever it is that handles your time and say these are the frameworks for determining whether or not something is worth of my time. And unless it passes this, don't even make me aware of it. Like I tell like with my fixer, it's like, I'm not looking for someone that I want

to manage. You are here to manage me. You are the conduit between me and the outside world, and your job is to be like, defend my time at all purposes. The barbarians are at the gate and they're coming from my time, and you must defend me. And if for some reason one of these guys or girls gets in and they appear that they are of value and they're not, then we have let the system fail.

of communication. We're also going to get into why he thinks a video sales is the single most powerful thing any business can have and is top tips for negotiating from someone who's closed over three hundred million dollars in deals. If you like today's show, make sure you hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when new episodes drop.