#235 - Why Most Entrepreneurs Never Become Time Rich

People who get rich are not the hardest working. They're the best at actually buying back their time. Being time poor shouldn't be glamorized. It's a trap that keeps you broke and worse, burned out. What are you buying with the money you have to print money while you sleep? And what I learned later was it's better to have 10% of a watermelon than it is to have 100% of a grape. And the only way to do that is to stop and ask yourself, where is my leverage?

I'm Lloyd James Ross, seven-figure investor and entrepreneur, and I've helped thousands of business owners and professionals turn financial stress into success. If you're stuck in old money habits, overwhelmed by investing, or unsure where to start, this is for you. I'll give you the mindset and strategies to take control, grow your wealth, and achieve financial freedom. It's time to make your money work for you. Are you stuck on the hurry hamster wheel? Are you suffering from

a bout of the busyness bug? Because if you are, chances are you actually believe that busy equals success. But I'm here to tell you that's an absolute lie. I know that most people and most entrepreneurs confuse movement and doing things with progress. They confuse being busy with progress and they wear their busy badge on their shirt with pride. I'm busy. But being time poor shouldn't be glamorized. It's a trap that keeps you broke and worse, burned out. The real currency is time. Because

you see, money is actually abundant. You can always get more money, but you can't get more time. And time is, it's got an expiration date. We all die, we all part this physical life. And the time between now and when we do that is called our time. And here's the thing, if money weren't abundant, we'd only be able to accumulate as much as we were old. So for example, if I lived to the age of 120 and money wasn't abundant, I could only make 120 bucks, perhaps a dollar per

year I'm alive. But we know that people have made hundreds of billions and trillions of dollars in that life of a hundred years. So we know one thing is for sure, that money is abundant. But we also know one thing for sure, our time here on earth is also not yet abundant. It might be in the future. It might be when science discovers how to give us eternal life. But for now, we have a finite window

to make things happen. And if you're not in control of the time between now and when you pass away, those very precious moments, then you're going to have a life that's not fulfilled and not living life in your own terms to bring the most amount of joy and happiness that you can create. And so part of the process of becoming wealthy is not just to have money. It's also to have a level of life that you enjoy and fulfillment and bring a level of juiciness to your life that you can only get if

you have both money and time. Because after all, what's the point in having a gold Rolex if all it tells you is what time to be back from lunch? What's the point in working your butt off to have a wonderful beach house if you can't enjoy it with your family? People who get rich are not the hardest working. they're the best at actually buying back their time. Because here's what you don't want to do for sure. You don't want

to have to get rich and then build yourself a prison at the same time. You don't want to build a prison, you want to build a business. And most people who build businesses, they think they've got a business, but it commands and demands all of their time. So if your business doesn't run without you, it's actually not an asset, it's a liability. And most people who have a business are actually just self-employed. And I used to be in the

same boat. I used to be in real estate and I was still selling real estate and I would always have to be in the office to do the deals. I'd always have to be doing something to make money, working six days a week, having to do something to make money. Now,

without a doubt, when you first start, you're going to have to do something. You have to work but I had no ability to get leverage, meaning I had to do all the work myself to get paid all the money myself. At that point in time in my life, I had what's called 100% of a grape. And what I learned later was it's better to have 10% of a watermelon than it is to have 100% of a grape. So what was I going to do to create 10% of a watermelon? The reality is I had to find

or develop a business and build a business that had more leverage. And so I started out building a network marketing side hustle where the money we made was based on product purchase from customers while we weren't there. and the scaling of that than it was about me being there to provide a service. And that's why I do love product-based businesses over and above service-based businesses. So I had to figure out how we're going to create more money and more time

at the same time, right? Because that's the goal. It's about getting freedom, not just money. That's what becoming time rich actually means, to enrich the ability for you to control and manage your time. Meaning, who do you want to be with? What do you want to work on? And this is the things that I wanted to do. But you got to have a business vehicle or some way to exchange value with the world that allows you to do that. So network marketing was our first step out

of this prison of I have to be there to make the money. Because what happened to us was once we started that, one day I looked at my bank account and there was more money in there. And I hadn't done more work. The money that was coming into our account was based on work we had already done. So the residual efforts of our work, we're starting to get paid the fruits of that. And that's when I realized we had a real business on our hands that would

actually pay us while we slept. It had turned into an asset. And so once we figured that out, we're like, well, let's do more of this type of work. Let's do more of the work that once we do it, will pay us not once, but over and over and over again, it will repeat. And the objective is, if you want to get money as well as time, you have to find a repeatable exchange of value in

the world. And so we had this business where we could solve someone's problems, they order the product, and if they wanted to keep solving the problem, they had to keep ordering the product. And that created a subscription-based income for us. We all pay subscription-based bills, so why not have a subscription-based income? And it's not easy to get off the ground, it's not easy to start without a doubt. but it is

the path to getting more money and more time at the same time. Just quickly, if you're ready to take control of your finances but feel stuck on where to start, I have a solution. My book, Money Buys Happiness, simplifies investing and wealth building with practical steps to help you achieve financial peace. Get your copy via the link in the show notes and let's get your money working for you. Now back to the episode. Now, as we scaled that, we started to realize it was

taking a lot more of our time to build it to a new level. So what we had to do was we had to implement some systems in place to take the heavy lifting out of it for us. And we had to find some people to do the work with us so we could also earn from their efforts. These two types of things are called people leverage, where it's not you just doing all the work, it's other people, and systems leverage, where it's actually systems doing the work for you while

you do something else. Now, systems can be hard systems and soft systems. The difference are soft systems are a process to follow to save time. Hard systems are things that actually do the work for you. So think of software, machines, robotics, right? And so we had to implement some soft systems to process things, to teach more people, to

achieve more by doing less. And we had to implement software and certain processes like a selling system, a webinar, a repeatable marketing and selling system, a training system that was through videos was able to be used by the team to do things while we weren't there. And so you have to have both hard systems and soft systems in your business to run without you.

Otherwise, you don't have a business, you have a job. And so once we had established those systems in our network marketing business, we could actually still work on it, but we were achieving a lot more output for the input. And that's what leverage is all about. Now once we had got to that point, we wanted to get more wealth but we also wanted to save a lot of time. And so one thing we did was we carved out some capital from that business and we started

to scale our message through books, courses and podcasts. And by leveraging those forms of media, that's another way to achieve more by doing less because the people consuming our books in our podcast, in our courses and content, they were doing it while we were sleeping, meaning I didn't have to be there for them to do that. That was another form of leverage. A book is one of the most effective and wonderful ways to get your message out there on

repeat. You may be reading one of our books right now, but I'm not there reading it to you. That's where media can have a very big impact on the leverage you can create for yourself, why starting a

YouTube channel, starting a podcast, writing a book, developing courses and doing it at a bit more scale can actually allow you to achieve more by doing less. You can help more people solve their problem without you requiring to put more hours into it. These are the types of things you want to develop from the capital you develop from your business or

your job. You want to deploy the capital to create a book, to create a podcast, to create a YouTube channel, to develop your business along the way so that you can actually leverage that capital and create more by doing less. And so part of becoming time rich is to really ask yourself the question, if I'm overwhelmed, which many people are, and you might be overwhelmed listening to this, if I'm overwhelmed, it means I don't have enough leverage. In which case, which leverage

lever will I pull? Will I pull the people leverage lever? We're actually asking people to do work for me. And don't forget, Your delegation is someone else's personal development. Meaning, don't ever feel guilty or shameful by giving someone work to do because they're pining for it. They're seeking to build their skills. And by you not delegating your work that you can easily do, you're not giving them the chance to build the skills they wanna build. So in saying that,

if you don't delegate simple tasks, you're selfish. because you're preventing someone from learning the skills they wanna learn so one day they can be you. So never feel guilty or shameful about delegating. But people leverage lever requires you to pass the work onto someone else. Yes, it means you're gonna have to give up control. Freaking control freaks out there, you can't control everything. Stop trying to control all parts of your business.

Stop trying to control all parts of your life. You can outsource many things. Some of you are still cleaning your house. I know you do a good job but there's people out there better than you and you can pay them to do it. This is what I mean by pulling

the people leverage lever. Next thing, if you've got some people leverage, the next lever to pull is if you're overwhelmed still, if you're still doing a lot of things yourself, if you're still booking your own calendar appointments, if you're still writing your own emails, if you're still you know, running webinars live. Like if you're still physically doing things and you're overwhelmed, then it's time to pull the systems leverage lever. And that means, okay, can I

get chat GPT to write that for me? Can I sequence that and get an email nurture software sequence so I can email people that happen to be there and do it? Can I engage Spotify and YouTube and Facebook and Instagram and these social media platforms to put my content out that's repeatable over and over again? Can I use software to scale my activity and my tasks and my content? Can I use Calendly to book appointments for me? Can I use Zapier

software to link things up? Can I use whatever it is, whatever software is available to you to use, the objective of it is to do the repeatable tasks for you. Better yet, if you have a person from people leverage, and then you have software for them to use, you have the elements of scaling your activity drastically. So when you've got people to run the systems you're putting in place, you can start to scale your message, you can start to scale the amount of clients you get, and

you can start to deliver at a higher level. And the final leverage lever to pull is the capital leverage. So if you're making money in your job or your business, how are you deploying that capital into other assets to produce money for you with no effort? So for example, if I happen to have $100,000 and I

bought shares in an index fund that paid me 13% dividend, yes they are out there, and paid monthly, it means that I'm making $13,000 a year, on

a monthly basis, about $1,000 a month. Now, if you're making $1,000 a month, which is about $250 a week, which is probably around about $40 a day, $40 a day, it means that you are not having to do that hour task that's going to take an hour from you and give you $40 in return and most jobs these days are about $40 an hour job, it means you don't have to spend that hour doing that because you're making the $40 for that particular day from an asset and that's how you leverage

capital to buy back your time. That's how you use capital to become time rich. So what people leverage are you pulling? What systems leverage lever are you pulling? And what capital leverage lever are you pulling? Meaning, what are you buying with the money you have to print money while you sleep? If the answer is none, then it means you don't have any leverage.

If you don't have leverage, You cannot turn your 100% of your grape into 10% of a watermelon, which means you can only make as much money as you can work in the day. And we all know we've only got 24 hours in a day, can only work 16 of those, which means your money is now capped. So learn to pull the leverage lever in all those areas and start to actually achieve more by doing less so you can get wealthy without getting busy. And we all suffer at some point in our lives from the busy

bug. And if you're someone who's overwhelmed, you're anxious, you shake your leg, you're in a hurry, the objective would be to eliminate that from your life. And the only way to do that is to stop and ask yourself, where is my leverage? And if I know it exists, but I haven't done it, what internal story am I telling myself that's preventing me from doing it? What's the guilt and the shame of me not delegating? What's the lack of control that

I can't deploy because of software? What sort of self-sabotaging story am I telling myself that prevents me from implementing software? Do I not trust it? Do I not think I'm a tech person? And what's preventing me from getting partnerships in my business to do things that I can't do? Am I worried or scared that someone's going to kill my business? Am

I worried or scared that they're not going to be fun to work with? What is the deep-seated worry and concerns and anxieties that you have on a programmed level that you've learned that's preventing you from getting leverage. Because I promise you, it's just a story that you're telling yourself that's not real that's preventing you from doing those things. And everybody can

do this. You can start very small. If you're still cleaning your house, the very first step to do is to go to Air Tasker and find a cleaner and outsource that. If you're still cleaning your pool, the next step is to get a pool cleaner and pay them. This is the very beginnings of people leverage. If you can't use systems, the very first step you can take is to get your phone, pull up ChatGPT and start getting it to write your emails. For goodness sake, why are you still writing your

emails? Why are you still writing your sales copy? Why are you still writing your Job description. Why are you still running cover? Why are you still writing emails to your kid's principal when you can just get Chatty Petite to write an amazing email, right? The other day, something happened to me. I got an unwarranted parking

ticket on a private property that was way out of order. So I went straight to Chatty Petite and I said, Chat, you are a Queensland lawyer, highly trained in parking ticket infringement law. Please write me an email that subjugates and prevents me from having to go and fight this to the next level and write it in a nice way that's not too conflicting and not too combative." It wrote that for me and I sent it across and I haven't received an email back, which means I

feel like I've got a lawyer in my pocket. Now, I'm not suggesting that for every single thing that happens to you, but why would I go and craft things when I have that powerful engine in my pocket? And I find that people just do not know how to delegate their thinking. They don't know how to delegate their activity. They believe wrongly that they have to work harder to get ahead. But we live in 2025. Finally, you're living in a time in our lives where

we can actually work less and achieve more. I'm not suggesting you don't have to work at all, but I want you to work smarter, not harder. You've heard the saying, work smarter, not harder. Well, let's see what you've got. This is not as easy as what you think. People have a grip on control of they must do everything themselves and I'm here to help you loosen the grip because I don't want you to be just rich. I want you to be time rich

because I want you to have money and the time to enjoy with your family and just do the things that bring you actual wealth, which is not a beach house incidentally. It's actually not a jet. It's the ability to say, yes, honey, let's go on a walk with our dog at 10 o'clock this morning. Yes, let's have lunch together today. Yes, let's go to the recital. Yes, let's go on a family holiday. Let's do those things we want to do. That's wealth.

And it's not just sitting around bouncing around from task to task and event to event and thing to thing. You do not want to build a new prison when you escape one. So my advice to you about becoming time rich is this. If you are overwhelmed, you just don't have leverage. Now you know how to get it, go get your leverage. Start with small tasks and start today. Because if you don't become time rich, it will not matter how much money

you make, you'll never ever be happy. So if you've enjoyed the episode, hit the subscribe button, share with a friend, and I wanna see you not just become rich, become time rich. See you at the book launch. Thanks for listening to Money Grows on Trees. If you enjoyed the episode, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and subscribe to us

on YouTube so you never miss an episode. And if you're serious about building wealth, make sure to check out the links in the show notes and follow me on all social media platforms at LloydJamesRoss for